by Arthur Kent
They went on again, following the ridge of the washout, worming beneath more brush. Occasionally they heard movement close at hand, just beyond the thickets. They passed the blood-stained body of a sharpshooter, topped from the rim above earlier in the battle. Further on, somewhere to their right, a man called out in a pain-choked voice for water.
They came into the open again, looked right, and saw the caves below them. Finding cover, they looked down, and saw men secreted in the brush. They began together, poking carbines over the rim, pumping shots at the exposed men, killing some, wounding others, and sending them, demoralised, for further shelter in the brush.
Frome could see the wide basin now. He could see the scattered posse-men. Even as he looked, several men came running for the slope, pumping the triggers on their rifles as they moved. He knew now that it was all over, that they were on the point of defeating Bennett and Speakman. But he still had to find Bennett. And Speakman. Telling the youth to stay in position and fire down into the slope, Frome moved upwards. He had to turn to his left and again to his left as the slope wall became too steep. It took him from the scene of the battle, but he hurried on, sure that if Bennett would be anywhere it would be on the rimrock.
He rounded an outcropping and came up a track that snaked to the rim of the canyon. He began to move up it, gripping grass and bush as leverage to make better speed on the slippery track.
He was halfway up, bellied down, using his left hand as a hold, when two men appeared on the rim. They dropped to the track, moving quickly, and for a fraction of a second, they didn’t see Frome. He had enough time to lift his carbine. As he pressed the trigger on the leader, they saw him. The man he hit rolled down the slope, his feet barely missing the rancher. The other, squatting, already sliding, clawed for his holstered gun.
Frome jacked the guard, pressed on the man, and found that the carbine was empty. He dropped it, and his hand dived for his holstered Colt. He had to drag his slicker away. The man fired, but his shooting was wild. Mud churned up by Frome’s head. Another bullet skidded and ripped past his feet. The man was still sliding, crashing nearer to him, still pumping shells.
Frome’s Colt came up, taking aim from his static position. He saw the man now, scared, almost on top of him. The man’s mouth opened wide, yelling either for help or mercy. Frome, jerking the trigger, placed two bullets there, aiming for the cavern-like mouth.
The man thundered forward, rolling over Frome, heavy riding boots slapping the rancher in the mouth and bringing the salty taste of blood there. Without looking back at the rolling man, Frome sprang up, clawing again for the rim.
He reached it, folded over it. A man was halfway across the top, carbine at his side, racing for this same track. It took him a moment to recognize Frome. And then he fired, the slug scorching off the rim, showering Frome with rocky splinters. Frome fired with his Colt and missed the dancing figure. A bullet slammed across his shoulder, ripping open his slicker. Frome levelled his Colt, holding grimly to the slippery surface with his palm extended left hand, digging his fingers into the mushy ground. He fired one, and the man staggered. He fired twice more, pumping his shots into the man. The rifle dropped, the man’s head shafted skyward, then he crumbled to the ground.
Frome swung on to the rim, got to his feet and began to move toward the right where rock formation broke the flat surface. He kept inward from the rim so as not to be fired upon by the posse.
He reached a boulder stand, rounded it, and came up near a man. The man was tall, dressed in a slicker. A Spencer seven-shot was aimed downward, and as Frome saw him, so the man fired.
The man swung then to jack home a fresh shell, and then he saw Frome. It was Peter Speakman. Frome fired his Colt from his hip, but Speakman was sliding to one side, his knee folding. Frome darted at the mine operator, pumped the Colt’s trigger, only to hear an ominous click. His Colt was empty.
He saw the tight sneer on Speakman’s face. He saw the Spencer, with a fresh shell in the barrel, coming up. Then Frome launched himself.
CHAPTER 18
Speakman’s carbine levelled. Frome had a horrible sensation that he wouldn’t reach him in time. The Spencer was almost pointed at Frome’s chest as his boots skated over the smooth rock surface. His Colt cracked against the barrel of Speakman’s gun with a metallic clang, turning it as the man fired. The bullet slammed at rock yards away. Then, sweeping the Colt onward, Frome laid the barrel along the mine operator’s head, putting all the power into his arm that he could muster. Frome lost balance then, skidding to the ground, sprawling, pain zipping through him.
Speakman teetered back, dropped his rifle. Then he was on the edge of the rim, his arms slicing air trying to regain balance. His mouth was a scarlet O as he fell away, over the side of the canyon rim, and a horrible scream whipped back at Frome, bringing his heart into his mouth.
Then Frome was up and moving again, clawing up Speakman’s rifle, jerking a shell into the breech, hurrying along the rim. A man twisted up from the rocks at him. Frome brought the stock round, slammed it into the man’s surprised face, dropping him unconscious.
Looking quickly down the slope, he saw that the battle was almost over on the lower slopes. He saw Justin way back in the grass, his coat off, somebody bandaging his arm. He saw a line of men advancing up the slope. He saw other scattered figures rounding up the ponies.
But where was Bennett? Surely not on the slope somewhere? If Speakman had been up here, then surely Kyle Bennett had been with him, since it seemed logical that they would be together? Frome moved on again, impatience building within him.
Then he remembered how he had seen men fleeing from the battle. Could Bennett have decided to make his escape after seeing that the battle was lost? It seemed probable. Speakman, with more to lose, would have hung on those few extra minutes in a desperate bid to save his vast copper empire. But Bennett would have scurried away. But where? Then, recalling earlier visits to the canyon, Frome turned hard left, moving inward across the rim, guessing where the Bennett-Speakman gang would have kept their ponies.
Before he had reached the other side of the wall, he heard the sound of hoofs. He began to run, raising the carbine. Near the edge, he dropped and crawled forward. Looking down on the inner canyon, an apron of tree-studded rock and grass, he saw four riders, strung out in a line, swinging up the opposite side towards a crevice in the canyon face. The leader was Kyle Bennett.
They were two hundred yards away. Frome felt frustration grip him. Surely Kyle Bennett, out in the lead, wasn’t going to get away. Not after all this. He had to get a horse and follow. He looked around the basin for the remuda. He saw forty-odd saddled ponies moving along the basin, bunched, probably driven that way by Bennett. He realized that before he could reach them they would be more than a mile away, if not out of the inner canyon into the main one.
Frome swung his carbine towards the four men. He had to get a horse. He aimed carefully, levelling on the last of the four men as the leader disappeared into the crevice. Frome squeezed the trigger. At the end of his barrel he saw the man shudder, slide limply from the saddle, and the pony turn, spooked. The two riders still showing did not look back. Spurring their broncs they dashed at the crevice, both fighting to get to its cover first. They disappeared, and Frome was already moving, his eyes on the pony which had turned away. He had guessed right. The pony had not tried to escape by galloping for the crevice because it was blocked by the mounted men. It turned downward, moving at a canter for the canyon floor.
Frome poked his legs over the rim, abandoning Speakman’s rifle because he could see a carbine in the saddle bucket of the riderless pony. He lowered himself to a shelf, clawed along it, dropped to another ledge, and moved along that. His hands and face were mud-caked and mixed with his own sweat. His clothes were torn. He abandoned his ripped slicker to make better speed.
Halfway down the slope, he saw that the fall-away was not too abrupt. Folding off the ledge, he skidded down the slope, using his h
ands and feet as a brake. He wormed through brush and finally reached the canyon floor. Breaking out of timber he saw the pony, a sorrel, standing by a muddy pool in the canyon’s centre. He moved towards it casually, whistling softly.
The animal, still spooky, watched Frome, but did not turn from him. Frome reached it, gathered up the reins and stepped into the saddle as he swung it. He heeled it up the slope for the narrow gorge through which Bennett had escaped. He took the rifle from the bucket, and inspected it.
It was new, probably one of those purchased by Glinton and brought from Gulick’s by Bennett. Frome found that the carbine was empty. So he refilled it with slugs from his shirt pocket.
He reached the crevice and found that it was a narrow cut some six foot wide. He remembered it of old, a narrow alley of towering rocks which led to rocky wastelands, to pasture and eventually, to Plattsville.
He put the pony into the pass, his senses tuned for movement ahead. He didn’t think that Bennett would plan a bushwack, for Bennett couldn’t have known that it was Frome who had fired the shot or had made any attempt yet to follow. Bennett would be on the run. He would want to cover ground fast. He would make all possible speed for the border.
With these thoughts, but remaining alert, Frome put the bronc at full speed through the gorge. The sharp crack of his pony’s hoofs sounded like thunder off the rock walls and floor. He found that after a quarter of a mile the ground widened, and he could put the pony into a lope. Then the gorge fizzled out into a half basin, dropping to a brush-choked floor with narrow trails made by cattle. When he was well into the floor, he bent several times from his saddle, looking for Bennett’s sign. Eventually he found prints, but where he least expected them. Instead of turning for the wastelands Bennett had apparently turned towards Plattsville. Frome followed. He came out of the brush to open ground, and the signs still moved westward toward Plattsville. Now the sign was easy to follow, and he put the bronc forward at speed. Broken branches en route told him with what speed Bennett had moved this way.
He followed sign for three miles through brush country, the sign still pointing to town. He decided that Bennett had turned that way to outfox any pursuit, that he would cut away suddenly somewhere before town. Bennett would be hoping that the posse, agreeing that he was going to Plattsville, wouldn’t bother to follow tracks too carefully, and would continue towards the town long after he had turned away.
The miles chipped away. Noon passed. The thunderheads rolled across the sky, cutting off the few streamers of sun which had poked down. It began to rain, and without the slicker, Frome became soaked and cold.
He traversed high ground, prairie and a tangled forest, still following trail. Occasionally he checked that the three horses had gone this way, wanting to make sure that Bennett hadn’t turned off and left his men to confuse pursuit.
Towards evening he reached the Tulle River. He smiled grimly. This was where Bennett would pull his trick. He would turn either up stream or down and, unless he picked the right way, Frome would lose valuable hours.
He put the pony into the water, crossing straight, looking for prints on the opposite bank which he thought wouldn’t be there. To his surprise, he found that three horses – the very three he had followed – had waded ashore and struck out directly for the town. Frome, still puzzled, put his horse into a mile-eating gallop, wondering why Bennett would head for Plattsville.
CHAPTER 19
Old Man Night had pumped lavish helpings of his indigo dye into the thunderclouds and Frome forded the Plattsville Creek in rain and darkness and saw the lights of the town twinkling below him. He looked at the sprawl of the town, from the railhead at one end to the skeletal sun-sucked clapboards at the other. Things seemed normal. No gunfire. The only sound the distant tinkle of a saloon piano. If Bennett was in town, the few able-bodied citizens who hadn’t joined one of the posses didn’t know about it.
Frome put the bronc downhill, swinging across pasture which was as sodden and oozy as his own clothes. He thought of Bennett and what would have brought the man to town. He thought he knew. The town was practically wide open, all the lawmen and best citizens were up at the Muleshoe Canyon Pass, and it wasn’t like Bennett to slink away with his tail between his legs, conceding defeat. Now Bennett’s ego would demand that he left his mark, that he rode out in triumph. Moreover, that he rode away with sufficient funds.
Well, there were funds at the bank, and nobody much to look after them. An urgent call to the chief clerk, a gun barrel jabbed in the man’s back, a walk through the deserted alleys to the bank on Main, a few moments for the clerk to open the safe.... Frome saw it all, and it was the way Bennett would work it. You don’t know a man for six years without being able to predict some of his moves and his way of thinking.
Frome put his pony into a sprawl of alleys at the centre of the town. Occasional light dripped from shack windows. He swung left, then right, and came to the rear of The Drovers. Curly was in there, somewhere, near at hand, and it brought back the scene at his cabin, and an ache touched him.
He swung the pony to a wall, hitched it at a post, then slid from the saddle. He headed for the back door of the saloon, found it unlocked and entered it. He moved along the dark corridor. Light shafted from beneath the door to Sturmer’s office. He knuckled the door, and Mike Sturmer’s voice reached him, telling him to come in.
He entered. Mike Sturmer, still wearing his bar apron, was seated behind his desk, knife and fork in hand, about to slice into a porterhouse steak. It reminded Frome that he was hungry. The aroma of fried onions greeted him.
Sturmer looked him up and down. He was surprised.
‘Dave, what a surprise,’ he said.
Frome crossed to the table. ‘Curly get back OK?’
‘Yeah, Dave. About Curly... .’
‘Seen Bennett?’
‘Bennett? You mean – here – in town?’
Frome nodded. Sturmer put down his knife and fork. ‘No, what’s happened?’
Frome picked up the fork, stabbed it at a section of steak, and lifted it to his mouth. ‘Speakman’s dead. We’ve defeated their mob at Muleshoe Canyon Pass. Bennett got away ... headed this way.’
‘You mean you’ve wiped out the entire bunch?’
Frome chewed on the steak. ‘Huh. Good steak.’ He scooped up some onion, popped it into his mouth. ‘Order me one of these, Mike.’ He moved to the door.
Sturmer came up. ‘Sure. You need it. But where’re you going?’
‘Over to the bank.’
‘This time of night?’
But Frome had gone. He moved along the alley, reached Main. It was still raining and the street was deserted. He looked up towards the sheriff’s office. It was in darkness. His eyes moved to the bank. No light from there either. He smiled. Bennett had it all his own way. He had to be right. Bennett wouldn’t miss something as easy as this. And he had help – two gunslicks.
He figured as he crossed Main that Bennett couldn’t have been more than an hour ahead of him. He reached the opposite boardwalk, cut down into an alley beside Ma Connick’s, and reached the rear. He pictured what Bennett would have to do on reaching town. First he would have to find or buy fresh horses. He would need to have them hitched at the rear of the bank. Then he would have to go a half a mile to the chief clerk’s house, bring him back, and yet keep off the main street.
Perhaps the gunhawks with him could move about openly. But Bennett couldn’t. He was too well known, and everybody would have heard by now that he was behind the murders of Denny Le Roy, Glinton Le Roy, Matt Grape and Dwight Taber. The miners in town wouldn’t shake his hand on meeting him either – not if Broome had told them that Bennett had lynched Tony Wolf.
He passed behind the café building, the sounds and smells of cooking reached him. It reminded him of when he had last eaten – at the Double Star at dawn that day. Hesta had cooked him eggs and bacon, fresh rolls and coffee. He thought of Hesta, remembered that she had been without the engagement ring t
hat morning. He remembered shaking her hand before they had ridden out. Her words imprinted themselves on his mind.
‘Take care of yourself, Dave,’ she had whispered. ‘I was wrong about you – terribly wrong – but it’s too late now.’ There had been something final about the way she had said goodbye. She had not needed to use that expression. She could have said ‘so long’, or ‘I’ll see you soon,’ but she had said ‘goodbye, Dave.’
The alley opened suddenly before him. He saw the black poles of an old corral rear suddenly in the faint light thrown from a shack window further down the alley. He was at the rear of the bank now, and he lifted the carbine.
Now he listened for sounds. He heard nothing. He moved on again, reaching the side entrance to the bank. Then he heard a horse stomp the hard-baked ground near the corral. He swung. Beyond the corral, at the other side, he saw the blurred lines of three ponies. And a rider. A man was astride the middle pony. A footstep somewhere in the bank made a board creak.
Frome moved away from the building, darting around the corral, moving swiftly yet quietly. He came up around the man, saw that he was unhitching the ponies. Even as Frome moved forward, the carbine reversed to strike, the man swung the ponies from the rail and moved for the bank building.
Bennett was doing it by the clock. The man would have allowed Bennett and his companion some ten minutes in the bank, and then moved to the backdoor with the fresh getaway ponies. The hoofbeats of the ponies allowed Frome to follow the man. He stepped quickly between the ponies. He swung the carbine’s stock. It hit the man on the side of the head with a sound like a cleaver going through a hunk of beef. Frome dropped the rifle, grabbed for the horses to pacify them. The man slid limply from the saddle without a sound. Frome stepped into his place.
The horses settled and moved forward for the bank building.
Frome stopped the ponies at the rear door, his Colt held low by his side. He looked up the alley, saw the lights on Main. Anybody passing, looking down and seeing the ponies with a rider in the saddle at the rear door of the bank, would certainly give the alarm. If he had the courage, he might start firing.
