by John Glasby
‘Sherman!’ There was a trace of surprise in the other’s voice. He kept the barrel of the rifle trained on the other’s chest, then came forward a little way, clambering over the smooth, treacherous rocks, wet with rain. He peered up into Sherman’s face, then nodded his head slowly, let his breath exhale in a thin whistle through his clenches teeth. ‘Now why should you be riding out here to parley with Hollard?’ he said, half musingly.
‘That’s no business of yours,’ snapped Sherman. ‘Just take us to him.’
‘Well, well, now. You seem mighty sure of yourself, Mister Sherman. Maybe you’re forgetting whose spread you’re on.’ The insolence in the other’s tone was readily discernible, but Sherman forced himself to ignore it. He was in a very precarious position here and recognised the fact instantly. Even with his men with him, even if he did go for his guns and shot these three men down, there would be more than two dozen others on their backs before they could ride a quarter of a mile, and that was not going to help him with his problem.
‘You going to take us to him, or do I have to find him myself and tell him that you tried to stop us from seeing him?’ he asked quietly.
For a moment he thought he saw the tight look on the man’s face turn nasty and there was a lot of meanness in him as he said: ‘All right, mister. Follow me. I must say you were the last man we figured on seeing here.’ He turned on his heel, boots rasping on the rock as he led the way down the slope of the hill, across to the corral and the ranch house. There were lights burning in several of the windows, and Sherman could smell smoke in his nostrils as he reined his mount in the courtyard and slid from the saddle, standing weakly by the animal for a long moment, sucking the air down into his gasping lungs as a wave of weakness went through him. Gradually his whole being steadied. He did not want Hollard to see how badly hurt he had been during the fight with Roberts. It might give the other man ideas about taking over the whole of the range in that part of the territory if he figured that he could get him at a disadvantage.
The gunman walked to the door of the ranch and rapped loudly, waited. A moment passed and then the door was flung open and Sherman saw a short, stocky figure outlined against the yellow light from inside. Evidently Hollard was not anticipating trouble otherwise he would never have outlined himself in silhouette like that, inviting a bullet from the darkness.
Hollard hesitated, then walked out into the pouring rain. A flash of lightning picked out his short figure as he made his way across the courtyard until he was standing in front of Sherman. His keen-eyed gaze flickered over the other as he stared at him, the rain streaking his features.
‘Slim says that you want to speak to me, Jesse,’ he said harshly. ‘I reckon it must be something pretty important for you to come riding out here to find me. Better come into the house. We can parley in comfort there.’ He turned his head and ran his gaze along the line of men seated in the saddle around him. ‘I know you’ll understand if I ask your boys to go with mine into the bunkhouse where they’ll get themselves a bite to eat and something hot to drink.’ A faint smile flickered around the edges of his mouth.
‘Sure, sure, Matt.’ Sherman gave a quick nod, following the other into the ranch house.
Hollard waved the other towards a chair in the well-lit study at the rear of the ranch. Then he lowered himself into his own chair, let his gaze drop to the bulge of the bandage under Sherman’s coat. ‘You look as if you’ve been hurt, Jesse. Not trouble, I hope.’
‘Nothing I can’t handle, Matt,’ acknowledged the other. ‘But I’d like your help in this.’
The dark, thick brows lifted a little over the deep-set eyes. ‘My help? Now this must be the first time you’ve ever come asking for that. What sort of trouble is it?’
‘Settler trouble and a man called Neil Roberts.’ Sherman saw the speculative expression grow in the other man’s eyes. Hollard leaned forward over the polished top of the desk in front of him, placed the tips of his blunt spatulate fingers together.
‘Roberts. Sure, I seem to recall that name. He made some trouble for me a while ago. Shot some of my best men. I’ve always wanted to meet him face to face. Where does he fit in with you?’ A certain hardness to the other’s tone now.
‘I want him dead and I want to pull the trigger that sends him into eternity, and I want him to know that it’s me who’s shot him.’
‘Did he do that?’ Hollard nodded his head in the direction of the bandage around Sherman’s shoulder.
The other nodded slowly, lips tightening a shade. ‘He killed some of my men and made me look a fool into the bargain, in front of most of the people of Twin Creeks. But there’s more to it than that — a lot more. He’s leading a wagon train west to California. One of the biggest collection of settlers you’ve ever seen, and they slipped across my land before I could finish them. I had some of my men stampede a herd of beef at their wagons, but they managed to get into shelter before the steers hit. Now they’ve passed out of Twin Creeks and are headed over your land.’
Hollard jerked up his head at that. ‘Over my territory,’ he boomed, rising swiftly to his feet. He stood for a long moment, staring down at the other, then forced himself to relax and sat down again … ‘That’s right. I know you’d normally go after them yourself. But that’s why I’m here. I’ve got something personal in this. I swore I’d hunt them down and kill them all and fire their wagons around their ears. I want your permission to ride across your land after them and carry out that threat.’ Hollard rubbed a hand down his cheek. There was a thin smile on his lips as he gazed directly at the man in front of him. ‘Do you reckon that with that wound you’re in any condition to ride out on their trail, Jesse?’
‘I’m damned sure I can. I mean to kill Roberts and everybody who’s riding with him, particularly a giant of a man called Jackson. No flesh wound is going to stop me.’
‘You must hate this man Roberts,’ murmured the other. He grinned quickly. ‘I never did see eye to eye with you, Jesse, in the past, and that boundary has always been a bone of contention between us. But I guess I could stretch a point here. I have no liking for settlers myself.’
‘I figured you might see it that way,’ agreed the other. ‘In that case, I’ll be on my way. That wagon train could make plenty of ground during the night, and the sooner we catch up with ’em the better.’
Hollard gave him a quick, shrewd glance. ‘You ain’t thinking of riding on after them tonight? Good God, man, you’ve been hit. There must be a hole in your shoulder the size of my gun barrel and you’ve obviously lost a lot of blood even riding the trail to get here. They won’t get far with this storm blowing up. I’d be surprised if they made it to the river by morning. My guess is that they’ll make camp somewhere on this side of the bluff. That river can be real mean if she’s full, and right now, with the heavy rains to the north, she’s running hard and strong. Roberts is no fool. He won’t put those wagons over after dark, not with the rain beating down in a solid sheet, the current running fast in the middle, and the lightning flashing fit to put the fear of all creation in those horses they have pulling the wagons.’
‘Do you know Roberts?’ inquired the other, getting unsteadily to his feet, trying to hold himself tautly upright, not to show Hollard just how badly hurt he was. There seemed no point in showing just how much in this man’s power he really was. The friendship which the other had extended did not go very far below the surface. Deep down inside, Hollard hated him just as much as he disliked the other man.
Hollard frowned suddenly. ‘I’ve heard a lot about him in the past three, maybe four years. Is there anything more to know?’
‘I reckon that I know him better than any other man alive, maybe even better than he knows himself. He’ll put that wagon train across the river even at the height of this storm and in total darkness, too, because he knows I’ll be riding out after him, and he knows that I can have more men with me than he can stand up against unless he can choose his own defensive ground. That’s why he wo
n’t really rest until he’s over that river and there’s one natural barrier between us.’
‘Suit yourself,’ growled the other harshly. ‘It’s your funeral. If you want to risk your life going after him right now, when I don’t reckon you need to, that’s up to you. Do you need any more men to go with you?’ He looked directly at the other as he spoke, eyes lidded, speculative.
Sherman hesitated, then shook his head quickly. ‘I figure we can handle them,’ he said decisively. ‘He shot down some of my boys on the eastern edge of my spread and I’ve a few men with me who want a chance to get him in their sights.’
*
A fresh gust of wind from up the mountain rocked the branches of the trees that grew on the edge of the spread around the ranch house as Sherman remounted and waited for the rest of his men to put in an appearance. They came straggling from the direction of the long, low bunkhouse to find him in an evil humour, sitting tight in the saddle, lips twisted a little in a dark scowl. The light from the doorway of the ranch showed Hollard standing there, a thin black cheroot between his lips, looking out at them.
‘Get mounted!’ he called sharply. ‘We’re riding on after that wagon train.’
A flurry of wind and rain caught his words and whipped them away into the darkness. His sodden clothing clung to his body as he leaned forward in the saddle. Behind him the men climbed grumbling into the saddle, urged their mounts forward, raking spurs over the horses’ flanks. They pushed on along the narrow, winding trail that led over the low hill, and as he rode Jesse Sherman peered straight ahead of him, pushing his sight into the rain-soaked darkness, trying to pick out the man he intended to hunt down and kill. For a moment, with the rest of the men around him in a tight bunch, he reached down with his left hand and touched the hard, cold metal of the Colt, fingering it almost caressingly, lips tightened into a thin, hard line across the middle of his features. The rain beat down against the wide-brimmed hat and ran into his eyes, and he brushed it away with an irritated impatient gesture.
As they reached the top of the hill the wind built up into powerful gusts which tore at them from all sides. More than ten miles ahead of them lay the river, and Sherman felt the impatience building up in him as he realised just how much of a lead the train had over him because of that forced stopover at Hollard’s ranch. He felt certain that Roberts might decide to put the team into the water that night, refusing to let them make camp until they were all on the far side. Hollard’s opinion that the train would hole up for the night near the bluff he did not believe for a single instant.
He drove the men with him, at a savage, cruel pace, punishing the mounts, forcing them to the limit. He knew that the men with him were grumbling at his insistence on continuing to ride in that weather, but he ignored them. They would obey every order he gave, no matter how foolish or unnecessary they considered it to be, because they had no other choice.
At the back of his mind, however, there was a nagging little thought which would not give him peace. Had he made a mistake in asking Hollard’s permission to ride out over his territory? Would it not have been in his own interests to have simply cut across country after the train in the hope that they could do so without being spotted by any of Hollard’s men? Now Matt Hollard knew that he was headed west after Roberts and the wagon train, knew that he had most of his best men with him, that his own ranch and spread would be virtually unguarded. There was nothing to prevent the other from mustering as many of his men as he could and riding out east, burning and destroying, as he had sworn to do so many times in the past.
It was only with a tremendous effort that he succeeded in putting the thought out of his mind and concentrating on the task in hand, riding down that wagon train and destroying it utterly.
An hour passed. Then another, and still the rain poured out of the dark and overcast sky. The horses covered the distance quickly, but not swiftly enough for Jesse Sherman, who kept urging his men on at a breakneck pace, over rough country that would have tried the endurance of any mount in broad daylight; and now, at night, in that terrible weather, it was a hundred times worse for the tired animals and rain-soaked men. At times Sherman halted his group, held up his hand for silence and listened, trying to pick out the rumble of wheels on the wet earth, a sound which would tell him whether they were close to the wagon train. But he heard nothing, and the knowledge came to him that they had already reached the river, were possibly crossing it at that moment.
*
A night crossing — rain and wind and total darkness, with all of its hidden thousand dangers and fears. There was no moonlight to show the river in its full flood, the white, sweeping foam where it plunged over the needle-sharp rocks of the river bed, the logs which were being borne down by the current from further upstream.
Riding to the ribbed bank of the river where the plunging, sweeping water had eaten into the soil, Neil stared about him, taking in everything. Vivid flashes of lightning lit the scene, showed him the boiling, bubbling water in front of him, dull, cold brilliance against the dark background of rocks.
‘You reckon it would be wise to try to cross in this storm?’ Jackson came riding up, turned his head a little to peer directly at the man who sat tall and straight in the saddle at his side. ‘It could be dangerous.’
‘We’ve got to reach the other side before Sherman gets here with his band of killers,’ gritted Neil harshly. ‘We’ve no choice.’
‘You think he’ll come tonight?’
‘He’ll come, make no mistake about that. He’ll be riding out on our trail right now, with as many gunhawks as he could collect. They won’t stop until they’ve caught up with us. That’s why I feel we have to put the river between them and us as soon as possible, certainly before morning.’
‘I suppose you know best.’ Jackson threw a swift, apprehensive glance in the direction of the raging torrent in front of them, then wheeled his mount and galloped back to the wagon train, waiting a hundred yards away. A flash of lightning showed them clearly to Neil as he glanced behind him, the wagons outlined brilliantly against the glare, the canvas tops gleaming white, the horses in the traces, heads drooping, the rain steaming off their flanks.
It would be men’s work getting those wagons safely over the swollen river. The danger was there, hanging over them all. And behind them, drawing closer with every passing second, came Sherman and his gunslingers, thirsting for revenge.
Rain dripped in an endless curtain from the low clouds as the first of the wagons moved slowly, hesitantly, down the river bank and into the swirling water. It was characteristic of Jackson that he sat on the tongue of that wagon and drove it into the sweeping current himself. Neil would never have thought it could have been otherwise. Whatever else Clem Jackson lacked it was certainly not courage and he would never ask any man to do what he was afraid to do himself.
Slowly at first, then faster as though hurried along by the brief flashes of lightning and the booming roll of thunder as it roared over the hills, the wagon moved into the middle of the raging torrent. The horses plunged and reared at the tremendous weight of water, thrust down by the current, caught them on the side, threatening to hurl them sideways, to bring the top-heavy canvas of the wagon toppling down.
Neil sat tightly in the saddle, watched through narrowed eyes as the wagon moved deeper into the river. For a moment he saw the wagon sway dangerously to one side as a wheel struck a hidden rock under the water. The rushing water attacked it hungrily, struck with a titanic force; then, miraculously, the wagon righted itself, continued forward until it dragged itself, dripping, up the other bank.
One by one the other wagons in the train began the crossing. Neil watched tensely. At any moment danger could strike and a wagon, possibly more, could go tumbling into that foaming water and be washed away before they could get a lariat around it and bring it back upright. For a while everything went well. Most of the wagons had crossed, were safely on the other side. There were only four left to move over, four and Neil him
self.
A half-hour. Twenty minutes. Then the last two wagons were moving slowly and unsteadily across. Neil waited for a moment, then put his horse into the water. It moved strongly forward, sure-footed, keeping its balance with ease. The tension grew in Neil’s mind. It only needed one mistake, one piece of ill fortune and —
It happened suddenly and without warning and although he had half-expected trouble, it came with the shock of the unexpected. He heard the shouts of the men and women on the wagons, could just glimpse their white and frightened faces in the flashing lightning that seared across a heaven gone berserk. Then the last wagon suddenly tipped over to one side. The horses struggled in the traces, tried to keep their balance against the dragging weight of the overturning wagon. The shrill scream of the woman inside rose to Neil’s ears.
‘Hold those horses steady!’ he yelled, shouting at the top of his voice, but the warning was drowned out by the peal of thunder which broke almost directly overhead, and the warning came too late, anyway, to save those in the wagon. Crashing into the water, it turned over and over, the white canvas, sodden with the water, curling and flapping about it as the current caught it and carried it unresisting downstream. The horses suddenly broke free of the leather, struggled upright, neighing in fright, swam for the further bank.
Turning his own mount, Neil plunged down towards the overturned wagon, his lariat whirling in his right hand. He caught a brief glimpse of the white arm upraised from the smashed Conestoga, tried to make a cast, but the wind caught it, deflected his throw and the noose fell short. Then there was nothing he could do. Those in the wagon were lost. Wearily he wound the riata, coiled it back into place. There was a deep weariness in him as he made his way to the bank.
Jackson came stumping back, rain puddling about his feet. He stared up at Neil, blinking the water from his eyes, wiping it swiftly from his face with the back of his hand.
