Gunsmoke Masquerade

by Peter Dawson

  The echo of his voice came back at him and struck more faintly against the pocket’s far wall in a prolonged and eerie fading.

  “Streak!” he called again, louder.

  And again the echoes were his only answer.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Streak had known that his guess was right the instant Buchwalter reined in and sent that furtive backward look down along the narrow corridor of the cañon. From that moment on, he stalked his quarry as warily and patiently as an Apache.

  It was a full quarter hour before he stepped around the final turning of the hide-out entrance and brought the grassy sunlit pocket into view. That pleasing vista broadened before him as he cat-footed the length of the passageway. Shortly he could see the two horses, Buchwalter’s and the grulla. And finally he could see the two men. He experienced a momentary and numbing shock at sight of the man leaning against the high and narrow cave opening talking to Buchwalter. It was Ed Church!

  Excitement held him rigid, unbreathing, refusing to believe what he saw, yet having the proof before his eves. He was unmistakably seeing Ed’s high shape that didn’t appear as tall as it was because of a barrel chest and thick arms. He would have known the rawhide conch-buttoned vest anywhere. Familiar, too, was the horn-handled gun, the lazy pushed-back set of the tan narrow-brimmed Stetson. And the sunlight shone fully on dark auburn hair exposed by the back-tilted hat. Suddenly Streak let his breath out in a gusty exhalation, his glance holding to the tied-down holster low along the man’s thigh. The position of that holster told him a lot. Into his consciousness sounded clearly remembered words he had years ago heard Ed lazily drawl: Pack your iron below the knee if you want, friend, Ed had said as he and Streak argued the best position in which to wear a gun. As for me, I belt mine tight and high. I never was hell on wheels for a fast draw. It’s what you do after you unlimber your iron that counts. Ed Church had never worn a holster the way the man across there with Buchwalter was wearing his. Rather, Ed’s was always belted awkwardly high, at waist level. So this wasn’t Ed Church.

  In that moment the feebly glowing spark of hope that Ed still lived died within Streak. Across there stood a man who looked enough like Ed Church from a distance to be his twin. He wore Ed’s outfit, probably down to the boots. Ed himself would be wearing those clothes if he weren’t in his grave. And now Streak had again the thought that had been plaguing him all night. He had dreamed of it in that brief and fitful two-hour sleep while Bill stood guard at the hide-out entrance before dawn. It came in a single word, and that word was a name, the name of the man across there he was sure now had killed his friend. A cool and furious anger welled up in him. His hand lifted toward his holster. He felt his palm cool and moist, and deliberately wiped it along his thigh before lifting the .45 clear of leather. He drew back the Colt hammer slowly, easing the catching of the sear with a steady pressure of the thumb. He lifted the weapon and rocked the sights into line with the broad chest of Buchwalter’s companion. The range was long for a gun he had never before used. But in his anger Streak’s thinking wasn’t rational. His finger laid pressure on the trigger.

  All at once his quarry straightened from that indolent stance against the rock wall and lazily turned and strode out across the grass toward the grulla. Lowering the gun, Streak heard the man speak gently to the animal, the even drawl of his voice drifting clearly across: “Steady, boy, steady.” Then the animal was being led back toward the slitted cave entrance.

  Time and again during the next few minutes, Streak tried to lay his sights surely on the man, but each time, as he made ready to shoot, his target would move, busying himself in saddling the splay-foot. Finally the man who looked so much like Ed Church led the animal up to the cave entrance, into it, and out of sight. Streak heard Buchwalter say: “Make sure of it. This is our big chance.”

  Buchwalter’s turning and leading his horse toward the pocket entrance nearly caught Streak unawares. Had he not a few moments before stepped well back into the narrow channel to rest the .45 against a narrow rock shelf and steady his aim, Buchwalter would easily have seen him. As it was, he had time to draw back out of the other’s sight.

  In the following brief seconds, he wondered what he should do. Then he knew. He wasn’t going to leave this place until his gun had brought down the man he was sure had killed his friend.

  About four feet short of its abrupt outer opening, the left wall of the narrow corridor in which Streak stood was indented deeply enough to conceal him from anyone looking along the passageway. He eased back into the shallow hollow and waited, the slur of Buchwalter’s boots against the tall grass clearly audible now as the man approached.

  Then Buchwalter’s boots grated against the rock as he entered the passageway. All at once the Fencerail man was within reach. Streak lifted his gun and laid a sharp, nicely placed blow alongside the older man’s head. For one instant there was amazed and fearful recognition in Buchwalter’s eyes. Then his spare frame went loose, he tottered forward, and his brief expression of mute astonishment was wiped out as his eyes rolled up in the vacant stare of unconsciousness.

  Streak caught him as he fell, eased him to the ground, and snatched the horse’s reins from his hand before the animal could jerk loose and shy back into the hide-out. He spoke soothingly to the animal a moment, edged out past him, and dropped the reins.

  He knew that the momentary advantage he had gained might end at any moment. At first puzzled by Buchwalter’s companion having led the grulla into the cave, he was now even more intrigued by the mystery of the man’s failure to reappear. But, so long as he remained out of sight, Streak still had the chance to surprise him.

  Quickly Streak began circling the pocket, knowing his quarry wouldn’t be overly curious if he heard someone moving about. About ten feet from the narrow high entrance to the cave he paused, a beady perspiration cooling his high forehead. He took the time to thumb open the loading gate of the .45 and spin the cylinder. All but one chamber was loaded. He let the hammer down on that empty chamber and edged nearer the cave mouth, not stopping until his shoulder was close to the break in the wall.

  Breathing shallowly, standing motionless as he listened, he was shortly rewarded for his wariness when from the cave came the muffled hollow ring of a horse’s shod hoof striking against rock. The sound seemed to come from a distance, as though sounding up out of a deep well. It puzzled Streak but at the same time was faintly reassuring. He steeled himself to make the move he knew might mean instant death. Then, in a sudden wheel, he spun in through the cave mouth and slammed hard against the right-angling inside wall, gun arcing up to elbow level.

  The explosion of a gunshot he had expected as a certainty didn’t come. He took three quick strides that put him well inside the entrance and into deep shadow. Pausing there, letting his eyes gradually focus to the semidarkness, his stomach muscles knotted at the still expected threat of a bullet coming out of the darkness at him.

  All at once the tension eased out of him, for again he caught the sound of a few moments ago; only this time it was but a faint far-off echo, muted by distance, barely audible, coming from deep in the cave, and on the heel of that sound came another equally as faint, the querulous clipped tone of a man’s voice raised in anger.

  There was a moment in which Streak felt a relief so acute that it left him weak. He had made his bold entrance firm in the conviction that he faced a shoot-out. Instinct had told him that the element of surprise might spoil the aim of Ed’s murderer, gave him the hope that he could get in a telling shot before he was cut down. Now came that far-off echo of a voice telling him that he was momentarily safe, and the let-down was severe. He was still alive and the man he was hunting didn’t know he was here.

  The cave was obviously deep, probably roomier farther back than here near the entrance. That alone could explain the disappearance of the grulla and its rider, the echoes that came from such a distance. But why the man he hunted had led the grulla in here still remained a mystery. Considering h
is next step, the old wariness in him again and his momentary uncertainty forgotten, Streak’s glance roved the faintly lit corridor directly ahead. He saw rumpled blankets lying at the base of the opposite wall. Beyond that crude bed was piled a disorderly array of unopened cans, tomatoes, beans, a half-empty flour sack, a salt jar; half a side of bacon hung from a cord tied to a rock finger that stuck out near the top of the head-high and insloping limestone wall. A lard pail, Dutch oven, frying pan, and coffee pot completed the furnishings of the cave. Streak knew that someone, probably Buchwalter, had brought these provisions and utensils here. There were plenty of signs—empty cans, the half-used bacon—that this was not a new camp.

  Now that he had made certain of his advantage over Ed’s killer, Streak felt nothing but a wish to get what was coming over with. He had never before planned the killing of a man but now he set about it meticulously, cold-bloodedly. Kneeling, he took off his boots and tossed them into the space between the blankets and the wall. For a moment he tried to think of a way to avoid outlining himself against the light coming from the cave mouth, but in the end he knew he would have to risk this.

  As he started back deeper into the cave, reaching out with his left hand to guide himself by the feel of that wall’s contour, every instinct in him was sharpened by the threat of the danger that lay in wait. Somewhere ahead was a man who would kill him as quickly and mercilessly as he himself would kill. He owed it to the memory of Ed Church to outwit this man. Within a dozen steps, the line of the cave tunnel angled abruptly and he was in total darkness, no longer endangered by the light at his back. Twice he stumbled over the rocky floor’s unevenness. The rock was damp and felt cold and slippery against his socked feet. He had to go on slowly. But this didn’t worry him; there was plenty of time, for the killer couldn’t get past him and away.

  The farther he went the more Streak wondered at the absence of all sound. There was the whisper of his hand palming the wall and the faint slur of his feet sliding over the floor. But, aside from that, nothing interrupted the utter stillness of this cavern. Gone were those telltale sounds of a minute ago. The stillness was ominous. For all Streak knew, he would stumble on the man he stalked at any moment. Perhaps the killer had come as far as the turning, seen him, and retreated to lie in wait at a spot of his own choosing. Thinking that, Streak drew the Colt again and lined it into the pitch-blackness ahead.

  His reaching hand felt the wall angle sharply. He stopped, listened. Still no sound. He advanced a sideward step, groping with his hand to determine whether the rock was only indented or turning down another corridor. That step brought him into sight of dim light down another angling aisle of the tunnel. At first he thought he might be seeing the light of the lantern the man ahead had most surely brought back here to light his way. But the radiance was too pale and colorless for lantern light. He started on toward it, warily, soundlessly, gun cocked now. And the light strengthened as he advanced.

  When he could make out the break in the rock along the top of the tunnel, he stopped, understanding that it was daylight that shone through and onto the tunnel walls. He didn’t go on until he had studied every shadow, every outline, every break in the wall. Finally he was sure that a man couldn’t be waiting concealed up there.

  He stood at the lower mouth of a broadly climbing chimney and looked obliquely upward a hundred feet and out into a patch of dazzling blue sky where a hawk wheeled lazily in the heavens. It was hard to believe what he saw, harder for his disappointment. The long-climbing alley of the chimney, a fault that had doubtless been washed clear by centuries of rain and erosion, offered a second entrance, or exit, to the cave. He realized that the sounds he had heard back there near the pocket entrance must have been made by the grulla in climbing the steep angle along the fault, that the man’s voice must have sounded in an irritable oath as the grulla balked at a particularly steep part of the climb.

  Forgotten now was the wariness of the past few minutes as he started up the chimney. His shirt was plastered to his sweating back as he pulled himself up the final ten feet on hands and knees. Suddenly the broad view of a flat piñon-studded mesa lay before him. Westward, the line of the cañon showed plainly, more closely a deep and twisting cut in the surface of the mesa. Beyond, the flats stretched out for perhaps a quarter of a mile, finally giving way to a tangled and barren maze of sharply rising hills. To the north, the mesa continued on for a lesser distance before butting a series of stepped hills that were timbered in their higher reaches.

  Up there Streak could make out the high pinnacle of the needle rock along the line of the cañon. The spired peaks formed the upward horizon, patterned sharply against the deep blue of the morning sky. To the south, the mesa soon gave into a torn and rocky maze of thinly timbered hills; he could remember the look of those craggy slopes as he had yesterday seen them from the lower end of Prenn’s pasture, forbidding, seeming too tangled and rocky for even a horse to travel.

  It was eastward that Streak found what he was looking for. Momentarily outlined at that limit of the flat, fading from sight in a dark belt of pine that blanketed the first abrupt hill, he made out the moving shape of a rider. He glimpsed this for an instant only, at first not sure that he had seen it. But when he was sure that he had seen the man he was hunting, hope flowed strongly in him again. He turned quickly and started back down the chimney into the cave.

  A quarter hour later Streak was leading Buchwalter’s pony up out of the chimney. The horse was breathing hard, shoulders glistening from the effort the climb had cost him. Streak sat down a moment to catch his breath. His lean face was lined with sweat, his shirt clung to his broad, rope-muscled shoulders, and, when he took off his Stetson to mop his brow, the line of the hatband was imprinted damply in his waving black hair; never had the pattern of the pure gray hair been so pronounced against the black as now. Streak was tired, weary to the bone, and his head was aching once more, but his sharp-planed face bore a smile; it wasn’t a pleasant expression but cold and deadly as he looked eastward and marked the spot he was to ride for.

  Knowing that a long and hard ride might lie ahead, he spent a few minutes letting down the stirrups on Buchwalter’s saddle and readjusting the blanket under it before he tightened the cinch. He wanted everything to be right when the moment came to face Ed’s murderer. A short stirrup or a loose cinch might mean the difference between a poor shot and a good one. He wasted more precious seconds emptying his borrowed gun and several times testing the trigger pull. When it came to needing the weapon, he wanted to know the feel of it.

  One regret rode with him as he swung into the saddle and started out across the mesa. He hadn’t taken the time to go back into the cañon and tell Bill where he was headed. Down there he had felt strongly the urgency to get back here and set out after the killer; there hadn’t seemed time to go back into the cañon. Now he was wishing he had, for eventually Bill, and perhaps Kelso, would tire of waiting for him and come to investigate. Unless they could make Buchwalter talk—and Streak supposed that the man would have a glib story—they wouldn’t know where he had gone. They might just possibly explore the cave and find the chimney climbing to the mesa, but Streak doubted that. They would be too interested in forcing Buchwalter to tell the truth, and that, Streak guessed, the Fencerail foreman would never do.

  This regret was keen as he put the strange animal to a high lope across the half mile distance that separated him from the timber where he’d last seen the man on the grulla. Pulling down out of his run as he neared the trees, he began casting for sign. Presently he found it clearly marked in the sandy clay, the track he knew so well, that of a right forehoof widely splayed.

  The sign led him into the jack pine and dense clumps of second-growth aspen, which here was floored with white-oak bush and barberry. Still, the tracks were fresh and plain enough so that he could easily follow them along the narrow aisles the grulla had traveled. Within three hundred yards the smooth contours of the ground broke off to a rocky ravine slashed with s
eries of steep hummocks that formed the shoulder of the first long hill.

  Now Streak could understand Bill’s claim that only a few men knew this vast northeastward lip of the valley. There was nothing to bring a man up here, no grass, no trails, no goal beyond that hitherto impossible one of finding a pass across the Arrowheads. Without a thorough knowledge of the country, a rider could easily become lost in this thickly wooded hill tangle. It would be hard to get a glimpse of the valley proper from here, for there was always a maze of hills in the foreground to confuse, to make a man doubt his sense of direction. He found himself already doubting his and for that reason tried to imagine the exact spot he was traveling.

  Prenn’s meadow, he knew, lay somewhere downward and to his right. East of Prenn’s, angling slightly southward out of the direction he’d traveled yesterday in coming down from the pass, was more timber that stretched all the way south to the creek that wound down from the dam at Elbow Lake, past Bishop’s, and finally past town. To the south of that creek were the big outfits whose unfenced sections took up the many miles to the valley’s southward limit. Then from this point in three directions, except to the west, lay an enormous expanse of waste and virgin timberland, uninhabited, untraveled, covering the whole vast sweep of the valley’s northeastward segment all the way up to the meeting of the two lines of mountains.

  Streak had no way of knowing what errand had taken the man on the splay-foot away from the cave. He was puzzled at the direction in which the sign was now leading him, for he judged the direction to be almost due east. No definite purpose that he could think of could bring a man up here. The farther the devious line of the sign led him, the more Streak began to wonder why the man he was hunting had ridden this way.

  The breeze that had sprung up so abruptly at dawn had now strengthened, still coming out of the northeast. If it held this way, Streak supposed that it would bring the overdue rain the valley ranchers had longingly awaited. It was a gusty wind, bending the tops of the aspens in fitful sweeps. It moaned softly through the tops of the taller trees, the Douglas firs and the blue spruce. Except for that sound and the muffled footfalls of his pony, the forest seemed strangely silent. Every sense in Streak was acute to a high-strung caution. Ordinarily he could have depended on the scream of a jay or the scolding of a squirrel to warn him of his drawing up on the grulla’s rider, but as the miles fell behind, his pony settling down out of its first nervousness to the steady going, he felt the lack of these sounds. Only once did the voice of the forest break its silence, as faintly, in the distance, Streak caught the shrill whistle of a camp robber.