Nighthawk

by F. M. Parker

  Russ measured the vastness of the lava mountains, marveling at their stark beauty as the sunlight flooded the towering peaks. He surveyed the terrain carefully, knowing if he was to survive he must quickly learn the trails that penetrated this immense land and the location of every water hole.

  Three distinct ranges of foothills stepped up to the final rampart of the mountains. On the higher hills patches of dark green juniper lay scattered about. Three thousand feet above that, ponderosa pine clothed the mountain slopes, growing especially dense in the moist coves where snow was piled in tremendous drifts by the frigid winter winds. And finally, towering above all the lesser land, the ultimate crown of the mountain, Polaris Peak, its soaring rock spires dominating everything.

  “What mountain is that over there about fifteen miles and the one beyond that about twice as far away?” asked Russ, pointing east.

  “That’s the Eagletails in the far distance. The closer mountains are the Little Horns. Raasleer uses both of them sometimes to hide stolen cattle in. But the Kofas are much bigger and have more live water so he keeps most of his cattle there. At least that’s what Tanwell told me.”

  “Why hasn’t someone gone into the Kofas to catch Raasleer?”

  “Several posses have tried to hunt him down. All they got for their effort was sore asses and now and then a warning bullet from some great distance or from a high-rim rock that only a crow could get up to. Those posses have found some cattle at times and took them away with them.”

  Caloon took off his hat and wiped the sweat from his forehead. “It’d take an army to get Raasleer out of those mountains and he’s not worth that much yet. But as much trouble as he is causing, the Army will come one of these fine days. Maybe this fall before he starts his cattle drive to Mexico. Or they may wait for him down in the desert and try to catch him while he is driving them south. I would expect that to be the plan most likely to succeed.”

  “Seems like Raasleer’s a king with a fortress and as long as he stays in it he’ll be safe,” said Russ.

  “You won’t find it to be anything like that. It’s not a castle. The mountain is a place where outlaws hide and live a hard life. Let’s ride on.”

  * * *

  The hot fireball of the sun climbed its heavenly arc, passed the zenith, and began to fall toward the peak of the mountain. The men met no other riders and saw no sign of cattle. Nor did they find any water. Toward mid-afternoon, they spooked a band of wild mustangs, blacks and browns, on a projecting point of the mountain.

  The herd stallion, a powerful black with many battle scars, had seen the men before they spotted him. His nostrils quivered and sucked at the air, and his large intelligent eyes watched every move of the intruders.

  As the men drew near, he bugled his challenge at them. He charged his harem of mares and their colts, his ears laid back and his teeth showing, pushing them before him around the side of the mountain toward a large thicket of juniper and safety.

  As the band streaked through the juniper, the black animal bugled again, threateningly, encouraging the laggards to hurry, to give their all to escape. A colt tumbled, falling hard, his long legs thrashing the air. Then he was up and racing away, his little lungs pumping. The large bruise on his shoulder from his fall was unfelt in his fear.

  “If we had time, we could backtrack that herd and find their water hole,” said Caloon.

  “Don’t we have all the time in the world?” asked Russ.

  “No, the sooner we get to working with Raasleer, the larger our share of this year’s stolen cattle will be. I’m sure he has several herds of cattle already hidden in the mountains now. There’re several weeks left before the first snow falls and he’ll rustle some more before they’re driven south for sale to the Mexicans. We got to help him rustle these last bunches and make the drive to Mexico.”

  “All right,” said Russ. “The horses can do without water until tomorrow, if we don’t luck out and find some before that.”

  Shortly after noon, when the heat was at its greatest and the horses were lathered with sweat, the men stopped beneath a rock cliff. They rode their mounts in under the lava ledge, loosened the saddles, and lay down to rest in the shade. Occasionally one of the men would get up and walk out to a vantage point and, using Russ’s telescope, search along their back- trail for approaching enemies. The route across the desert basin and the hills always lay empty.

  Mid-afternoon the two riders again took up their journey, working northwest along the front of the Kofa Mountains. Caloon rode morose and not talking. Russ tried to draw him out with questions about the roads and trails into the mountains. The older man did not respond. With a strange haunted look on his face, he rode stonily in the lead. After several attempts to talk with Caloon, and not understanding the change in the man, Russ gave up.

  Caloon knew he had made a great mistake, had unthinkingly encouraged the young man to come with him to join Raasleer’s outlaw gang. Caloon feared that once among the owlhoots, caught up in their criminal ways, Russ would never be able to break away and find an honest life among decent men. Sadness filled Caloon; had his son been alive, he would never have allowed the innocent to come with him.

  Russ’s attention to the details of the landscape did not lag. His restless eyes constantly marked the location of prominent landmarks, filing them away for future reference. Often he cast his glance along their backtrail, not only to look for pursuers, but also to record its appearance from the opposite viewpoint so he could return, even in the dark if necessary.

  They selected a dry camp in the late evening on a high knob of the mountain. Russ dismounted and climbed out to the farthest jutting point of rock. He looked down upon the foothills, and beyond in the far distance, and two thousand feet below, the desert valley of the Palomas.

  A coyote lay napping in the shade at the base of the rock just below Russ. He was startled awake by the human’s sudden noisy appearance and sprang up and loped away.

  Russ’s hand stabbed for his six-gun, drew, cocked it, and aimed at the coyote in one swift movement. He did not shoot, only followed the moving target with the open end of the barrel. Then he holstered the gun. Practice, always practice, he thought, and do it at unexpected times from strange unnatural positions.

  He returned to where Caloon sat near the horses. “How about giving the ponies half a gallon of water each?” asked Russ. “It won’t mean much to them, but I think we should do it.”

  “All light, but save us a full drink for tomorrow morning,” agreed Caloon, speaking for the first time in several hours.

  Russ poured his hat full from a canteen and held it out for his roan to drink. The thirsty animal, watching him with gold-flecked brown eyes, slurped it up noisily. Russ gave the other horses equal amounts of the scarce water.

  The sun sank below the horizon. A breeze found its way around the side of the mountain and began to carry away the heat from the rocks and ground still hot with memories of the burning sun. The night insects crept from their daytime hiding places and those that flew launched themselves into the air to find a place to feed.

  The high-frequency cries of the tiny winged life woke the dozing nighthawk. He rose and stretched and waddled to the mouth of his burrow in the rocks of the mountainside. With his unimaginably keen eyesight, he saw the swarm of insects, like a thin mist, rise up from the ground and circle and mill in the sky.

  The nighthawk, hungry after his daylong fast, yet knowing he had much time to hunt, paused to groom his wing feathers with his tongue and beak. As he finished cleaning and shaping each feather, it was carefully placed in the exact position for best flight.

  With great ease, the hawk lifted up from the land, the white spots on the underside of each wing flashing like tiny beacons. A four-winged bug with a short plump body sailed into the path of the hawk. He scooped the creature from the air, crushed the soft carcass with his bill, tasted the sweet flesh and juice, and then speedily devoured all with one gulp.

  At the delicious
flavor of the insect, the feeding frenzy surged through the nighthawk. He sounded his killing cry, screaming it loudly, piercing the half darkness for nearly a mile. He finished his cry and dove to catch another bug, instantly flung himself to the right, and caught yet another.

  A second nighthawk swooped in, eager to join the attack on the airborne prey. Then a swarm of the voracious birds appeared out of the deepening shadows and with raucous half- hooting calls of delight, united with the first two for the feast.

  Russ and Caloon sat and watched the erratic darting acrobatics of the hunting nighthawks and listened to their savage cries.

  “That’s sure a wild sound,” said Russ.

  “Yep, wild and hard. Same as the land. All the brush has thorns. A man can wear out a pair of boots in a week, a horse a quarter inch of iron, and when it rains it’s a gully washer. But I have seen the desert bloom. One year in every ten to fifteen, a warm spring rain comes and it continues through June and July. Flowers of a thousand colors bloom and cover the land, even growing from the rocks, and the grass is the greenest you ever hope to see. Some of the seeds must have waited for years for just the right weather to make them grow.”

  Russ did not answer. He had never seen what Caloon described. He let his mind visualize and contemplate that wonderful sight.

  Caloon went to his blankets, but Russ remained to watch. Finally the dark obscured his vision; still he sat and listened to the sounds of the night.

  He thought of his mother. What was she thinking, doing? Was his father healing rapidly from the bullet wound? Russ hated being separated from them. He was an outcast without a goal in life, completely rudderless. A heavy loneliness crept in to grip his heart.

  He wondered what his new life—an outlaw life—would bring. He looked in the direction where Caloon slept. Though the man was strange, his advice to ride on to California was more than likely sound. Russ fingered the gold coin. Maybe tomorrow he would strike out on his own.

  * * *

  “Damn these boots,” cursed Caloon, “they’re killing my feet.”

  Russ, his mouth dry and pasty, did not answer.

  The two men walked, leading their gaunt, thirsty horses along the rocky side of the main flank of the Kofas. It was early evening of the third day and the sun burned down with the same ferocious heat it had poured on the earth for the past week. They were beyond the easternmost swell of the mountain. The valley of the Palomas lay far behind, and the Ranegras Desert crowded the base of the mountain. They had found no water and all the canteens had been dry since the morning drink.

  Caloon led the way across a land that had grown more steep and broken as the two men had worked their way north. They traveled a trail that hung at an elevation that contoured the mountainside just above where the deep cuts of the canyons were birthed. From this vantage point they could see down into the rock-walled trenches that slashed east through the foothills.

  Suddenly Caloon halted, ducked down, and backed away from the crest of a small ridge he had just topped. He jerked his horse quickly out of sight. “There’s something moving. An animal on the skyline about three hundred yards ahead. Loan me your glasses. Hurry!”

  Russ dragged the telescope from a saddlebag and shoved it at Caloon.

  The man scrambled back to the ridge line.

  “A buck deer, a big one,” said Caloon in a voice barely audible. “He’s moseyin’ down the slope and angling off a little to the north.”

  He crawled away from the crown of the hill and, grinning widely, walked to where Russ held the horses. “Deer water in the late evening or early night. That buck was taking it slow and easy, and I believe he’s on his home range. His water hole will be within a mile or two.”

  Caloon dropped down on the ground and stretched out his legs. “We’ve got it made now. We’ll wait awhile and then follow that old rascal to the water. Main thing is that we don’t scare him and cause him to run off in the wrong direction.”

  “Let me take a look,” said Russ.

  The deer, a large gray animal, with a tinge of brown draped over his shoulders, nibbled at the tender tips of an occasional bush as he ambled down the slope. He raised his magnificent antlered head—the main beams nearly as large as a man’s wrist and with four tines on a side—to scan ahead with cautious eyes. Velvet, dry and peeling, hung in short streamers from the antlers and waved in the wind with each movement of his head.

  Russ moved his field of view down the incline, trying to locate the destination of the deer. A ridge cut across a few hundred yards in front of him, obscuring his view.

  As the minutes passed, the buck leisurely worked his way behind the hill.

  “He’s out of sight,” said Russ. “We can move up to the next point.”

  Caloon nodded and, gathering the reins of the horses up in his hand, followed quietly behind Russ down across the swale and partway up the next slope. After tying their mounts, they crept up to the summit. A low quarrelsome bawl of a cow floated to them as they peered over.

  A saucer-shaped basin, maybe a mile across, lay before them. In some ancient time, a fracture caused by some powerful force had split the earth, slicing down through the rock layers of a shoulder of the Kofas. Millions of tons of rock and its mantle of soil had slipped four or five hundred feet down the mountainside. The mass had come to rest in almost a horizontal attitude with a shallow depression occupying the center. Above the basin, broken, crumpled beds of rock hung from the ruptured flank of the mountain.

  Near the top of the basin, a dark green patch of grass with a few willows marked the location of a moist area. Several reddish-brown cows stood in the meadow with their heads down, grazing.

  “Cows mean humans are close,” said Russ. ‘What should we do?”

  Caloon stepped astride his horse. “We came for water so let’s go get it. If someone shoots at us, ride like hell back the way we came.”

  Russ mounted and spurred his mount to catch up with Caloon and take up position on the man’s right. He pulled his rifle and held it ready in front of him across the saddle.

  The cows were quiet and the basin lay silent under the hot sun. The muted thud of the horses’ hooves and an occasional creak of leather were the only noises.

  The buck deer spotted the two riders when they appeared on the ridge top. He froze, filled with alarm. He thrust his ears forward, listening intently, and watched them ride into his basin.

  “There he goes,” exclaimed Russ, pointing at the great stag as it bolted away toward the low end of the valley.

  The frightened animal raced through a herd of a dozen cows, frightening the clumsy animals into awkward, galloping flight for a few hundred feet before they stopped. They milled about, their tails switching nervously and their ears cupped in the direction of the riders.

  The deer sped directly for a narrow canyon that drained the basin on the east side. With a long easy bound he leaped a rock fence that blocked the mouth of the canyon, and continued at full tilt down the dry stream bed.

  Caloon gave only the slightest glance at the deer. His attention was riveted on the cows, interpreting the variety of brands. He spoke in a low voice. “The cows look like stolen stock to me. I count three different brands. I bet Raasleer rustled them and has temporarily cached them here.”

  “Maybe we’ve accomplished two things, found water and Raasleer,” said Russ.

  “I don’t think Raasleer would be caught near a herd of stolen cattle. He’s too savvy for that. But somebody else may be watching the cows. If so, that thick patch of mountain mahogany on the far side of the valley is the most likely place for them to be hiding.”

  “There really isn’t any need for anybody to hang around except to see that the cows have water,” said Russ. He pointed to the place where the deer had vanished. “They were probably driven in by way of that canyon that leads off toward the low country, and then the gap closed by the rock fence. The cows can’t go back home that way even if they tried and now they’re anchored to the water here i
n the valley as tightly as if they were tied with long lassos. They’ll graze out a mile or two, then come back here to drink every day.”

  “Yep. You’re right. Maybe there’s no one here. Let’s just ride straight up to the spring. Don’t pay any attention to the cows.”

  They crossed the open land to the willows near the water. The spring was weakly oozing a small flow of water from a mucky quagmire of cow tracks and manure. Two cows lifted their muddy noses up from where they had been sucking at the slow seep of water and trotted off with a bawl of protest at being disturbed.

  “The spring needs to be dug out if it’s going to water the number of cows that are here,” said Russ.

  “They can use the hole we dig,” said Caloon. “Begin work up at the head of the flow just below that thin rock ledge until we get clean water. Help me keep watch while we dig so someone can’t sneak up on us without us seeing them.”

  Gouging at the muck with broken lengths of willows and scooping out the slimy soil with their hands, the two men sought the source of the water. Finally a depression big as a washtub had been excavated and the clean, cool water bubbled up from deep within the earth.

  “You drink first,” said Caloon, washing the mud from his hands and picking up his rifle. With a worried frown on his face, he swiveled his eyes, sweeping the basin for danger.

  Russ lay down and drank deeply, the cool wetness of the water pleasant in his parched mouth. And when he stood up, the cool weight felt comfortable in his gullet.

  Caloon killed his thirst while Russ kept lookout. Then they led up the horses to drink their fill with noisy pulls at the water.

  Caloon grew more edgy, his skittish eyes darting.

  Russ sensed the man’s tenseness and also turned to survey the brush and boulder fields on the opposite side of the valley. He felt his short hairs curl. “Somebody’s watching,” he said in a tight voice. “I don’t know where they are, but they’re here.”