by Peter Dawson
Out of the whirlpool torment of stark fear that was in her, Cathy found a slender straw to hold to. It was the only thing she could think of and she had to clutch at it frantically for she knew her life depended on it. She raised her eyes, hoping there was tenderness rather than hate in them. “I’ll come away with you, Pete,” she said quietly. “But not now, not in broad daylight. We want to leave without anyone knowing. Dad will stop us if he can. I’ll meet you tonight.”
He frowned, hesitating in his reply. Then: “Tonight’ll be too late. That fire’s headed this way. This place will be burned to the ground.”
“Then I’ll come to town and meet you wherever you say. Can’t you see that we might be caught, might be seen, if we tried to get away now? Pete, this is my chance to find happiness. Our one last chance. Don’t be careless with it if you love me.”
“Love you?” He was suddenly in good spirits and gathered her in his arms again. Once more Cathy turned her face away and his kiss touched her cheek. “It’s tonight then, in town. I’ll wait behind the hotel. We’ll catch the morning stage out of Agua and be across Dry Reach before anyone knows you’re gone.”
Cathy went suddenly rigid and pushed away from him. “Did I hear someone crossing the bridge?” she asked in a hushed voice.
He swung about quickly, drew his gun in one smooth, swift motion, and went to the broad window to look out. The tautness went out of his face and he smiled easily. “Not a soul, Cathy. You’re on edge.”
“Pete, you’ve got to get out of here, get to a safe place, and stay hidden. So much depends on this.”
“This is the last place they’d look for me . . . if they knew I was alive. No one knows, Cathy. Only you and Tom Buchwalter.”
“But I’m afraid, Pete. Please go. Hurry.”
He hesitated a moment, but then nodded. “Anything you say. Tonight, then.”
Cathy stood rigidly as he went to the hallway door of the bedroom wing. His parting smile was easy, meant to reassure her. Yet the rigidness didn’t go out of her even as she heard him cross her bedroom and caught the jingle of a spur as he climbed out her window. Only when the muffled footfall of his pony sounded down from the timber that backed the house did she dare to take a full breath again.
She felt faint. She wanted to scream. But the utter stillness of the house seemed to hold some lurking threat that would materialize if she offended the heavy silence. Abruptly she turned and ran out into the yard. Once in the saddle, she put the black down across the bridge at a run.
Only when she was at the head of the lane did she get a hold on herself and realize that she was acting foolishly, that in this headlong flight she might be betraying the truth of her feelings to Pete if, by chance, he was watching from the timber behind the house. So she swung off toward the corral and there let the black drink at the trough. She even got down to tighten the cinch, hoping that from a distance she would give the appearance of unconcern.
She thought of Streak and was instantly and wholly taken by one mad desire—that of mounting and riding to him as fast as the animal would take her, of putting distance between her and the terror that had held her back in the house. But even as that impulse took her, she remembered. Streak needed medicine. It was impossible to take him a horse, but she would get the other things she had decided to take back to him.
Never in her life had she forced herself to such a frightening task as reentering the house. She didn’t know but what Pete would have come back. Yet she played her part to the end, not hesitating as she followed the hallway back to her father’s room, nor as she entered Pinto’s kitchen. She wrapped the whiskey, a can of baking soda, and a tin of tea in a newspaper, and left the house, resisting the impulse to look behind and make sure Pete wasn’t there in the door, staring at her, watching. She walked the black into the head of the lane. There she put the animal into a trot.
She wanted the assurance of Streak’s nearness, wanted it so much that she trembled. Yet even thinking of Streak calmed the riot of her fear. She could swing over to Jensen’s place and get a horse for him. She would see her father at Jensen’s and take him with her to help Streak and Kelso in their fight to save the Crescent B. What was she to tell Streak about meeting Pete? With that thought came a new fear, greater than the one she was now gradually leaving behind. If Streak found out that Pete would be in town tonight, wouldn’t he naturally get a gun and go to meet the man who had only an hour ago tried to kill him? And wasn’t it possible, very possible, that Pete Dallam would be the man to come away from that meeting alive? Cathy knew in that moment that she could share her secret with no one. The very thought of sending Streak into danger put a new fear in her. No, Streak had done enough. She would be the one to meet Pete tonight. She would go alone to meet him. And she would take a gun with her.
Chapter Twenty-Five
During the midday hour, the wind that had been sweeping down from the Arrowheads slacked off in a series of fitful gusts until finally the air hung ominously inert over the valley. Southward, the clouds banked heavily and high above the desert moved in slowly over that horizon. With the let up of the wind, the ragged sheets of flame that had raced along the slope mounted skyward in funnels of orange topped by mushrooming umbrellas of smoke. That dense smoke pall blotted out the hazed light of the sun and brought a premature dusk. The pulsating roar of the fires became clearly audible, a vast but low undertone of deep sound heightening the mockery of this taunting easing off of the elements. Instead of encouraging the men who were fighting to stave off their ruin, this weather change drained them of the last of their hopes. For the slow throbbing sound of the raging fires made it seem that destruction was descending on them even more swiftly than before, and the failing light brought hint of a nameless terror to come with the deeper darkness. As the light gradually faded, as the distant roar of the oncoming inferno mounted, men lost heart and ceased their struggles.
Jensen had spent the last three hours working his five-man crew in a desperate attempt to round up and drive toward the valley the two hundred head of yearlings and two-year-olds in the timber above his place. As the awesome stillness settled down around him, as he caught the throbbing echo of the distant fires, he miserably eyed the result of his labors—sixty-nine gathered animals—and gruffly told his bone-weary riders: “To hell with it! If I’m goin’ bust, I’ll go whole hog. This piddlin’ bunch wouldn’t even pay half a year’s interest on my note. Get on down and gather up your possibles and hightail. If you see anything you want around the layout, take it along.” He turned in the saddle to face Frank Bishop, who had come along to help as much as he could. “You comin’, Frank? Anything we can do down below for you on the way out?”
Bishop gave a sober shake of the head, too appalled by this momentous but unavoidable gesture of Jensen’s to find words for an audible answer.
At the Rafter B, lower on the slope, Chuck Borden took a last long look at the peeled aspen pole cabin he had last year built for his bride and turned to speak to his hired man, who lay on a blanket atop the loaded spring wagon.
“Feelin’ better, Jake?”
The answer he got came in a voice coarsened by emotion, for Jake Bigelow had been no help that morning, lamed as he was by a rebellious boot-rubbed boil on his ankle: “I’m all right. But what’s Jennie goin’ to say?”
Borden himself wondered what his wife would say. She was over in Johnsville, visiting her folks. She’d taken an inordinate pride in that two-room shack, in the new bureau, and the calico curtains now lying mussed and dirty somewhere deep in the load behind. She’d wanted to have the first baby right there in the bedroom and Doc Swain had promised to ride up when her time came. Yet none of Borden’s sorrow or regret showed as he gave his even reply: “She always said that front room was too small. Next time I’ll build her a bigger one.” It went without saying that Borden would have to spend many more years as a top hand before he could save enough to make another start on his own brand.
Schoonover, east of the cr
eek and his place doomed as the first that would go, loaded his wife and kids into an empty buckboard, saying—“Helen, you know there ain’t a damn’ bit of use cartin’ them packin’ boxes and pans away from here.”—and laid the whip to his scrubby team. Two hours later he was in town, roaring drunk.
* * * * *
When the whine of the wind eased off and that other sound took its place, Kelso and Streak, riding the sheriff’s horse double, were within half a mile of their goal, the patch of timber cut by the creek above the Crescent B. For the last hundred rods they had ridden close to the stream, and now Streak said: “This wind slacking off will give us some time. I could do with a little of that water.”
He reined in and Kelso slid to the ground and helped him down before he took his cane from the thong on the horn. The sheriff purposely avoided offering to help Streak walk across to the near bank of the creek but followed closely, his limp exaggerated because he was stiff from not having had the saddle under him.
As Streak went to his knees and scooped some water into his face with his cupped hands, Kelso announced: “Here they come, Bill and the girl together.”
Streak looked back down the trail to see Bill, with the two cases of dynamite roped to the cantle of his saddle, leading another rider and a third horse out of a clump of trees close below. “Made good time, didn’t he?” he said, and turned back to the painful job of washing some of the grime from the seared flesh of his upper arms.
Kelso was silent a long moment. Then he spoken truculently: “Mathiot, you’ve got a brain and it ain’t misfired on you so far. But what you’re aimin’ to do up here is nothin’ but wasted time. With the help of twenty or thirty men, we might do the job. But between the three of us we’ll be like three beavers tryin’ to dam the Colorado. I say to forget it. Hell, you’re bad enough off without . . .”
Suddenly Streak straightened and turned with such violence that Kelso was brought up short. Streak was staring up at him in wide-eyed amazement. Then: “The dam! That’s it, Kelso! Why didn’t we think of it before?”
“What dam?”
“The one above . . . at Elbow Lake. We’ve got dynamite. There’s a million tons of water back of that dam. Blow it out and what’ll happen?”
As comprehension dawned in Kelso’s eyes, hope replaced the dull despair of his expression. There was something awe-inspiring and frightening in the very thought of unleashing the power of a million tons of stored-up water against the raging fires, but if anything could save the east slope from utter destruction, this was it.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Elbow Lake Dam filled in the crotch between two rounded hills, a broad-based wedge of earth and logs some sixty feet high. It held back a dog-legged mass of water that was narrow but deep and over half a mile long. Working its way toward the valley, the twisting bed of the stream cut through occasional broad bands of timber beyond the series of rocky barren hills that flanked it for better than its first descending mile. Far below the timber was meadow land broken only by an occasional patch crossing to the south bank. The crests of the hills to either side of the dam had recently been flattened, the dirt and rock pulled into the gorge between them.
Streak, Cathy, and Sheriff Kelso, standing on the shoulder of the hill to the north, were only slightly above the crown of the dam as they scanned the downward distance and for the first time saw the full enormity of Pete Dallam’s intended revenge. Even this high the overcast of smoke had dimmed the day’s brightness to a feebleness resembling dusk. Far below, a vast, rosy ring of fire marked the spot where the second and third blazes had joined and were now spreading fast, so fast that even at this distance the mushrooming destruction of the flames could be seen in slow and relentless motion. The southward margin of that lower fire was already closing in on Schoonover’s place and would before long threaten the timber right above Prenn’s, whose layout marked the northernmost working limit of the narrow upper valley.
Much higher and still farther to the northeast, the blaze Dallam had first touched off as Streak lay across the glade from him had spread south and east, gutting a huge triangular swath in the carpeting of emerald aspen and darker pine. It now crept out from its wide borders and, unless the threatening rain finally came tonight, would eventually climb to timber line and travel that margin all the way across to the east pass, up and beyond the vast reach of the Association’s summer meadow here above the lake. If the dark mass of clouds to the south didn’t fulfill their promise, tomorrow would see this high fire become a real threat, for it would gut the pass and, catching in the high timber, work down from above and behind to finish what the lower fire had left of the bottom slope.
Streak, seeing this, thought—One thing at a time.—and turned to Kelso. “How much longer, Sheriff?”
Kelso had just lifted the first case of dynamite from behind his saddle. He straightened and took out his watch. “Twenty minutes,” he answered, “and he’ll need all of it.”
He referred to the errand Bill Paight had set out upon, a ride that might mean the difference between life and death to a number of people. Bill’s first goal had been Jensen’s, where he hoped to get a fresh horse and recruit part of the outbound crew to spread the news of what was coming, and to get others to clear the trails that would be threatened. Even more important, he was to find men to fight any jump fires that would later threaten that vast expanse of rangeland to the south of the creek. Lastly he was to get down to town and let the people there know what was coming.
Down below, as Cathy bandaged the worst of Streak’s burns and finally helped him into his ragged shirt, they had talked it over and finally agreed to Streak’s verdict, which had been: “We can spare you an even hour, Bill. No longer.”
That hour, they realized now, would crowd their luck. For the fire below was traveling with such speed that the next twenty minutes might completely circumvent things they were doing to make good their last desperate chance. Twenty minutes might see the flames spanning the creek below Schoonover’s; that was the danger point, for once it crossed there the outfits to the south were as good as gone.
“We didn’t figure how long it’ll take this head of water to travel that far,” Kelso said as he pocketed his watch.
Streak nodded. “Then we’d better get started. You’re sure the tools are down there?”
“They’d better be.”
Kelso shouldered the case and, leaning on his cane, started down the short slope toward a small slab shed that squatted on the near shoulder of the narrow crowned dam. In that shed, the water mason’s, they should find the tools necessary for doing a quick job, a shovel and certainly a big crowbar for the turning of the big wheel to the water gate set low on the dam’s face.
As Kelso walked away, Streak stepped over to the lawman’s pony and began working at the knot in the rope that held the second case of dynamite to the saddle.
“Don’t. Let me, Streak,” Cathy said at once, and came over to him.
He stepped back, smiled, and looked down at his blackened hands. “Maybe you’d better,” he drawled.
All the way up here Cathy had marveled at the stoicism and the seemingly untouched reservoir of tough strength this tall, rangy man had. Instead of slowing them, Streak had urged Kelso to ride faster. He had ridden well, with seeming ease. But once or twice Cathy had caught a sudden sharp cast of tight pain lined across his lean face and had realized the intense anguish the hard ride was costing him. She had seen his shoulders draw back against the pull of the burns showing through his torn shirt along his ropy, muscled back. His blister-mottled face, dark in the beginning, darker now with the stain of the wet tea leaves, glistened whitely where she had smeared the worst of the burns with baking soda. She had bound the seared channel along the side of his head with a bandage, and the streak of gray hair showing over it against the black only heightened his look of having undergone unbearable agony. But outwardly he had given no sign of anything but an urge to get this job done.
Cathy worked loo
se the knot that held the case tight and the rope suddenly came apart. She reached out and tried to catch the falling box. Streak was a fraction of a second before her, his shoulder touching hers with a hard pressure. For a moment they stood that way, each with a hand grasping a corner of the case.
Streak gave a low laugh. “Let me get under it,” he said, and moved away from her, putting both arms about the case, hugging it to his chest as he straightened and turned away with it.
In those few seconds something happened to Cathy. She felt a constriction in her throat and her heart seemed to stop its beat. She was deeply aware of Streak’s nearness and the firm pressure of his shoulder; she knew that quick move must have pulled at his sore muscles and hurt him to the bone. Yet he had laughed, scorning the pain. All at once there was an emotion in her that was a blend of tenderness and pity, of something else, too. Something that reminded her of that earlier resolve never to let Streak know her feelings toward him. Now there came the almost irresistible urge to tell this man her innermost thoughts, to tell him how wrong she had been yesterday, how hard she was trying to make amends for that shallow betrayal of her father and even shallower loyalty toward the man whose bestial cunning had nearly cost Streak his life.
The next moment a shot sounded up from the shack as Kelso broke the padlock on the door. Cathy saw him push open the door with his cane and disappear inside. Then, shortly, he reappeared. He looked up at Streak and called: “We’re out o’ luck! Except for a busted shovel, the damn place is empty!”
Streak’s stride slowed. He stopped, the move eloquent of the shock the sheriff’s words held for him. Suddenly Cathy remembered something that laid a paralysis of apprehension through her. As soon as it was gone, she hurried down to him.
