He stood up and looked around. A dozen grim-faced men sat their horses around the yard. In the door of the main house, just beyond her father’s body, Elena stood with her face turned against the doorjamb. McCracken turned that way, stepping across the body, his toe accidentally kicking the rifle that lay there. He touched Elena and drew her toward him, holding her by her shoulders, waiting for her eyes to lift.
He said, ‘Just tell me who did it, Elena.’
A wan, uncertain smile rose to her face. She fumbled in her pockets and found a handkerchief to dry her eyes. She said, ‘I’m sorry, Ben. I didn’t mean to fold up.’
‘For God’s sake, nobody can blame you, kid.’
‘It was Channing Pierce. He had about a dozen men with him. Chet Six wasn’t here. The one who shot Papa—they called him Waco. The other man, the one who beat up San Saba, he was called Calabasas.’
McCracken held her shoulders in a tight grip. ‘Good girl,’ he said, and out of the swirling crush of impressions one thing in particular made its mark on him: this girl’s quiet bravery, the tightly checked emotions that allowed her to make such a concise, level report.
McCracken wheeled and lifted his voice. ‘Shattuck—Obregon—Will Garrison.’
The three Wagon Wheel hands were close by, standing with their hats in their hands and staring hollowly at Ochoa’s body. McCracken said, ‘Make a quick scout of the range, Nate. See if they made off with any beef.’
‘Hell, Ben,’ Shattuck protested. ‘That don’t seem to make much sense at a time like this.’
‘If they stole cows,’ McCracken said evenly, ‘then it will be easier to pick up their trail. On the run, now.’
Nodding, Shattuck jammed the hat on his head and turned to his horse, Obregon following. Young Will stayed behind a moment longer. Giving McCracken a shy, saddened look, he walked past him and stood near Elena and said, looking down, ‘Anything I can do, Miss Elena?’
‘What?’ Her eyes lifted. ‘Oh,’ she said. ‘No. No, thanks, Will. Just do what Ben tells you.’
‘Yes, ma’am.’ Will turned, got his horse, and followed Shattuck and Obregon out of the yard.
‘Elena,’ McCracken said, ‘I think you’d best see to San Saba.’ He knew that others could just as well take care of the battered old man, but he felt that Elena needed something to keep her busy. The look she gave him in answer seemed to indicate that she understood and that she thanked him for the thought. She turned and went down the steps and knelt by San Saba. A moment later he heard her voice, strong and practical, giving orders to a couple of men to rig a stretcher and boil water and make ready San Saba’s bed.
Bannerman came up, hat in hand, a sick look in his eyes. ‘The buzzards,’ he said.
‘Ben,’ said Sheriff Mossgrove, ‘I think you’d best tell me the name of the gent who tipped you about tonight’s raid. I get the feeling he tricked us into this on purpose.’
‘No,’ McCracken said tightly. ‘It’s my fault for believing him. The responsibility’s mine, Tom, and I’ll take care of it my own way.’
‘Wrong,’ Mossgrove said flatly. ‘It’s the law’s responsibility, Ben.’
‘The law can have them,’ McCracken said tightly, ‘if it catches them first. I’m racing you, Tom.’ He turned and went down the steps, gathering up the reins of his horse.
Mossgrove came down two steps at a time and put a hard hand on his shoulder, restraining him. ‘Hold it,’ he said. ‘It’s no good this way, Ben. I know what’s in your mind. You’re all set to ride right into Dragoon Pass and brace this Waco and the gent who tipped you off, whoever he is. But it’s not right, Ben. Waco’s the law’s problem, not yours—and for all you know, whoever tipped you off may have been telling the truth as he knew it. Can you chance killing a man when you’re not even sure he’s guilty?’
‘I’ll find that out first,’ McCracken said tightly. ‘Get your hand off my arm, Tom.’ His eyes met the sheriff’s squarely, a glitter of deadly warning in them.
‘Think a minute,’ Mossgrove said. ‘You think they’ll welcome you with open arms up there? Hell, Ben—they’ll cut you to ribbons the minute you get within gunshot of Dragoon Pass.’
‘Maybe,’ McCracken said. His teeth were locked tight. ‘I won’t say it again. Take your hand off me, Tom.’
Mossgrove stepped back. His eyes were brittle; the mustache drooped over his lips. ‘There’s no legal way I can stop you,’ he said softly. ‘But I can sure ride along with you.’
‘The roads are free for anybody,’ McCracken said. He mounted the horse and bunched the reins in his fist.
Just then, Shattuck led his two men back into the yard. His horse was lathered, breathing fast. He said, ‘I scouted the pastures roundabout. Don’t seem to be any beeves missing. I reckon they got scared when the boss was shot and it put a kink in their plans. They probably lit out for home in a considerable hurry.’
‘All right,’ McCracken said. ‘Help Elena—do what you can for San Saba. Get some rest.’ He lifted the reins and put his horse through the tangle of confused riders who cluttered the yard; he reached the trail and lifted the horse to a canter. At the main road he turned upward, toward the high country, and maintained a steady gait climbing into the switch-back turns of the mountain road. The moon was setting to westward. Anger seethed in him and he pulled the horse down to a walk and tried to force himself into calmness.
Soon hoof beats telegraphed along the ground from farther down, and he looked back. Presently a lone horseman drew into the sight, trotting up the road. He knew it was Mossgrove; he kept his horse down to its slow pace while the sheriff closed the distance between them and pulled alongside.
‘Got the makin’s?’ Mossgrove drawled.
He reached into his shirt pocket for paper and tobacco, and handed them over. Wrapping the reins about his saddle horn, the sheriff busied himself rolling a smoke, and when he had it going to his satisfaction, handed the materials back and said, ‘This is a damn fool thing to do, Ben.’
‘Sure.’
‘You’re likely to get killed. What good will that do?’
‘Maybe none. I’ve got to do it—that’s all. It’s my trail to ride. You don’t have to come along, Tom.’
‘Sure I do. It’s my business to arrest Pierce and Waco and Calabasas. I’ll arrest the rest of them too, on the hope that Elena can identify them. Any luck at all, and we’ll see Chet Six’s gang busted up for good.’
‘Yeah,’ McCracken muttered. ‘Sure we will. Tom, badge or no badge, you don’t stand any better chance of leaving Dragoon Pass alive than I do. How do you expect to arrest a dozen men by yourself?’
Mossgrove shrugged. ‘I’ve always believed in crossing bridges when I get to them.’
McCracken shook, his head. ‘No good, Tom.’ Then, quickly, he drew his gun and trained it on the sheriff. ‘This is as far as you come,’ he said gently. ‘Hand me your gun.’
Mossgrove’s eyes flashed. ‘You fool,’ he whispered.
‘The gun.’
The sheriff reached across his body with his left hand and carefully extended the gun to McCracken, who put it in his belt. ‘Now hand me the reins and dismount.’
Without expression, the sheriff obeyed.
‘Sorry to leave you afoot,’ McCracken said. ‘But I don’t want to drag you into this, Tom. I wouldn’t want your death on my conscience.’
‘If you get back,’ Mossgrove said, ‘I’ll have to lock you up.’
‘That’s up to you.’ And leading the sheriff’s horse, McCracken gigged his mount to a canter and swept away, leaving the sheriff standing alone, a blocky shape in the lonely road.
Twelve
It was the blackest part of the night. A hunting owl soared across the sky, and McCracken went up the road at a steady gait. The stars were a glittering shine; the night was layered in velvet. Here the violent pattern of the high country buckled up in crooked tangles and McCracken, his eyes strict and angry, followed the twisting road with careless disregard for e
xposing himself on the main trail. To cut around through the woods and mountains would eat up time—and the boil of his emotions would not allow him the patience for that.
He clattered through a high-sided defile and broke out of it onto the flat expanse of a long tabletop mesa. Here he struck out toward a hogback to the left. Crossing that and descending, he turned through a series of trail-loops, inspecting the thick shadows that seemed to conceal threatening mysteries. Stern lines were set about his lips. The dark was deep and still. The road carried him past a jumble of massive littered rocks, along a ledge carved into the face of a limestone cliff, and down the slope of a mountain meadow haphazardly spotted with scrub brush. Here, above timberline where no tall trees would grow, the chilly air had a bite in it that sawed inside his clothes and flesh and touched the edges of his bones. When he looked up at the stars, his face was the color of marble, no warmer. A little spiral of heat rose from his stomach as he recalled the scene by the Wagon Wheel porch. Felix had been a gentle and good man, proud but tolerant, strong but quiet. McCracken could never bring back the sharp edges of past emotions, but now and then something of them came back to him in blunt soft touches, and just now he remembered times of friendship and warmth, and there was bold anger in his eyes.
He reached the base of the boulder-strewn meadow, knowing he was drawing quickly close to Dragoon Pass, and just then a horseman’s shape, gray and half-distinct, emerged at the top of the rise ahead, coming forward. McCracken moved with a loose swing of his shoulders, reining the horse off the trail into the concealment of a gathering of high boulders. He leaned forward to cup his hand over the horse’s nose to prevent it from sounding a greeting to the oncoming pony, and waited apprehensively.
Presently he heard the muffled tramp of an advancing horse. He flexed his fingers in the cold air to work up their nimbleness. The advancing rider’s signals grew louder and presently he hove into view some distance away on the meadow, continuing toward the downhill trail. The man was too far away for McCracken to identify him; there was, however, something vaguely familiar about the long easy gait of the man’s big horse. McCracken could not place it. He knew by the man’s silhouette, even in this faint dark distance, that it was not Waco or Calabasas or Channing Pierce or Chet Six. And so he sat silently while the horseman went on up the far side of the meadow and disappeared over the rise.
Thereupon, knowing how close he was to Dragoon Pass, McCracken abandoned the trail and sought a way up around the ridges that enclosed Six’s headquarters. Presently he came upon a faint game trail and followed that up the backside of a brush-cluttered hump. From here he dropped across a series of ridges and canyons, descending in altitude until in a sheltered pocket he came across a grove of tall pines. A glance at the sky and a rough guess at the passage of time told him he had at least an hour and a half, perhaps two hours, of full darkness left before dawn.
A plan had worked its way gradually into his mind and now he set about putting it into effect. The spot he was on lay just over the back of the ridge from Dragoon Pass. Tethering his horse to a tree, he dragged the rifle from his saddle-boot and dismounted with it, climbing the few yards to the ridgetop. Moving at a crouch, he crossed a narrow flat stretch and got down on his belly to avoid being silhouetted against the sky, worming forward with the rifle until, peering around a rock abutment, he looked down on the outlaw headquarters.
There were several buildings, but only one showed lamplight: Chet Six’s store-saloon. Yellow light spilled out from the windows and open doorway. No human figures were in sight.
The stillness of the place bothered him. He had come around this back route on the assumption that Six’s men would be carefully guarding the main road and the several backtrails that led into Dragoon Pass. No doubt, Six had men posted at various points to command those entrances. McCracken wanted to find out just how Six had dispersed his men; and with that object in mind, he jacked a cartridge into the rifle chamber and took aim on a table-lamp that appeared in one of the store windows.
Making a rough allowance for elevation and downward drop, he squeezed off his shot.
Echoes slammed back at him. He missed the lamp, but had the satisfaction of hearing a faint shatter of glass. Then a man dived into sight, sweeping his hat against the lamp, knocking it down and out. Other lights quickly winked out, plunging the store into darkness. Drawing in a long breath, McCracken proceeded to rake the store with a full magazine of ammunition. The booming cracks of his shots whirled around his ears and he drew back, slipping around to the far side of the abutment, thus changing his position. Now the answering fire opened up, a number of rifles talking in harsh signals. He spotted five muzzle flashes—two from saloon windows, the other three from scattered posts among the trees along the lower road.
It told him what he had wanted to know. Six, expecting a massed retaliation, had concentrated his force on the main entrance to the Pass.
He put another magazine of ammunition into the store, changed positions again and began methodically to rake the lower road positions from which the heaviest concentration of fire sought him. A bullet shrieked off the rock beside his head and he rolled back agilely, running hunched over fifty feet to his right, fumbling shells into the rifle. Here he found a boulder notch in which he rested his aiming arm. Vague shadows were spilling across the road down there, coming up toward him, and he drove them back with a savage chatter of fire. Then the rifle was empty. He wheeled and raced over the top of the ridge, half sliding down the back slope and mounting quickly. He spurred the horse along the back of the ridge, rode it down the end of the rise, and judging himself to be almost up to the road above Dragoon Pass, he again left the horse and ran afoot across the road and into the trees on the opposite side of the Pass.
Gunshots still sounded from below, and that was good, a sign they had not discovered his absence. He ran through the timber, reloading the rifle and feeling the heat of the barrel in his hand. The trees came to an end and he found himself not a hundred feet from the back of Six’s store. Posting himself in the trees to scout the land, he saw a number of men farther down, running across the road and scratch-climbing the far slope, from the top of which he had fired on them. These men bounded from cover to cover, now and then laying down series of shots against the ridge top.
After a moment, having regained his breath, McCracken walked out of the trees and, at a crouch, crossed the open distance between trees and store. Apparently no one was guarding the back of the place; he made the crossing undetected and put his back flat against the wall beside an open window.
A deep-rumbling voice reached him from inside: Chet Six’s mutter. ‘The fools. He ain’t up there any more. Can’t they see that? Hell—for all we know, he’s circled around and up on the other ridge by now.’
Another voice, Channing Pierce’s, said uncertainly, ‘It looked like two rifles to me.’
‘All right, then,’ Six said, ‘so it’s two. Judas, man, if this crew of rawhiders can’t pin down two men, I ain’t got much to say for them. Oh, hell—ain’t nobody on that ridge any more. Light a lamp, Pierce.’
‘You crazy?’
‘Do what I tell you to do, damn it.’
A weak flare of matchlight came through the window, followed by the brightening beam of a lamp. Other lights came on in the building and then Six’s voice said, ‘All right. I’ll tell you what they’re up to, these two gents. They went up on the ridge and filled the canyon full of holes. What for? I’ll tell you, you meatheads—they wanted to draw the crew out of the canyon. You know what that means, Pierce, or do I have to spell it out?’
Pierce said nothing, and Six uttered an oath. ‘Judas—do I have to draw you a blueprint, for Pete’s sake? Those two hairpins are on their way down here—you see it now? All right. We’ll be ready for ’em. Pierce, you and Waco get back in the kitchen. We’ll set up an ambush right in this room. Calabasas, you stand by the bar like you’re mindin’ your own business. You two boys keep your guns handy. When those t
wo bust in here, let them have it from the kitchen. Get going, now.’
The window by McCracken’s head, he knew, was the kitchen window. Swiftly he put his foot over the sill and slid inside, crouching down. He set his rifle aside and drew his revolver just as two men walked into the room from the saloon. There was the odor of salt-beef strong in the air. McCracken, concealed by the shadows behind the chopping table, waited until Pierce and Waco had stopped by the door and pushed it almost closed, shutting out most of the light. Then he silently undid his spurs, set them by the rifle, and cat-footed across the room.
The two men suspected nothing. With narrowed eyes, McCracken in one long motion slammed his pistol barrel down on Waco’s head and, following through, jammed the muzzle hard into Channing Pierce’s ribs.
A savage whisper left his lips: ‘Don’t move a muscle.’ With the bulk of his body he was supporting Waco’s body, suddenly gone limp. He let the unconscious man down slowly, making no sound, and lifted the gun from the wide-eyed Pierce’s holster. Then, a gun in either hand, he prodded Pierce. ‘Inside.’
Mutely obeying, Pierce pulled the door slowly open and stepped into the saloon. McCracken stayed right behind him. When he was wholly into the room he gave the little man a violent shove that sent him sprawling forward against a card table.
McCracken stood flat-footed, shoulders pulled together, gave the room a brief study, and spoke in a voice precise and hard: ‘Your guns, boys. You first, Six.’
While Six was ponderously turning, heavy with surprise, McCracken turned his right-hand gun toward the gaunt man who sat seemingly unperturbed at the far end of the room: Cody Longwell.
Longwell grinned amiably. ‘Howdy, Ben.’
‘Drop the gun belt,’ he said to Chet Six. The huge man met his eyes evenly. There was no spark of fear in Six. His eyebrows went up and he said, ‘I never saw a man with that much gall, McCracken.’ His thick-fleshed stubby hands worked the buckle open; his gun belt slipped to the floor.
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