HE SAT STRAIGHT in the saddle, his fist locked around the reins, his collar up against the mountain downpour. Beside him Bones slouched.
“Maybe,” Bones allowed, “we were fools to let him go.”
“He won’t be back. We scared the hell out of him.”
“Sure. But he’d have made a lovely witness.”
“This business has gone too far for the law. Wate pointed the finger at Sid Vivian, but he admitted that Ben hired the Crews boys. With Ben and Sid in this partnership, we can’t ride safely until both of them are gone.”
“Easy to say,” Bones said.
“Only one thing disappointed me. Wate didn’t know who held up Jim and me in Gunsight. But we’ll have to set that aside a while longer. Right now, I’m going to drop this war right in Ben’s lap and watch him take it. Small, snap raids at his line camps. We’ll burn his buildings and scatter his herds and shoot the horses out from under his men. No amount of money will hold a man if he’s scared enough.”
“There’s a few of ’em will never quit him,” Bones said. “Carruth and Roy Durand, to name a couple.”
“They don’t amount to a thing,” Chavis said, seething with the inner anger that had been building ever since the fire in the Chainlink barn.
The rain quit and the sun appeared and by eight o’clock they were down past Vivian’s, headed for Chainlink Pass.
“Riders comin’,” Bones warned softly. They screened themselves behind a thick line of creosote brush, and waited.
Connie Boyce, McCaig and Gary Niles appeared around the trail’s bend. Chavis frowned and rode out onto the trail. “We hoped we’d find you up here,” said Connie.
“What the hell is goin’ on?” said Bones. His curious glance drifted from Connie to the other two riders.
“We got run off,” said McCaig.
“Who?” Chavis asked. “How?”
“Ben Majors.” Connie’s lips were tight. “Moved his whole crew onto Chainlink last night. Threatened to burn us out. We left when they started shooting.”
“Did a little shootin’ ourselves,” McCaig put in.
Connie spoke in a rage: “We’re strong enough now. We’ll ride back there and kill every Spur man we see.” Wheeling her horse, she cried, “Let’s go!”
“Hold on.” Chavis grasped her reins. “No sense in committing suicide. Let’s hash it over some.”
She said, “What’s the matter, Tracy? Scared?”
“I’d be a fool not to be. When you cool down you’ll see that. We’re out-gunned four to one. The way to get at Ben is to snipe at the edges, wear him down.”
“That takes a long time.”
“We’re a long time dead, too. This way we stand a better chance of being alive when it’s over. Ben can’t watch all his holdings all the time. We’ll hit him where he’s not looking. His line camps, water holes, the herds.
Finally she saw the sense of his argument. “All right,” she said impatiently. “What do we do now?”
Chavis didn’t speak; he was considering it. Gary Niles drew over beside him.
“Sid Vivian was there,” said the kid. “All of Spur, I’d guess, and maybe two or three of Vivian’s men.”
Chavis nodded. “We’ll have to hide out up here in the mountains. It won’t be too comfortable, but in the valley, someone would be sure to spot us. Did you bring provisions?”
“My saddlebags are full of food,” said McCaig, “and the kid’s got some grub, too.”
Chavis nodded. “Bones, find us a place to hole up.”
Bones moved out, and Chavis let the others ride ahead. The lack of pursuit puzzled him. They had been driven off Chainlink now, but until Ben destroyed the Chainlink men and Connie the job wasn’t done. Majors knew that. He’d run a woman off her own place. When the country heard about it, Ben Majors would be driven out. So before any of the Chainlink people had a chance to talk, Majors would have to shut them up. Undoubtedly, then, Spur would soon be on their trail.
He buttoned his collar, feeling the bite of the wind that carried with it a chill drizzle. Their progress was slow, and somewhere in the next half-hour the same feeling ruffled his flesh that had warned him on his first night in Spanish Flat. He pulled off the trail, heading for a high point nearby.
From here he commanded a panorama of the land behind him. Nothing stirred. He frowned. To the west, where they were headed, the shape of low hung, jagged clouds told of a tremendous wind rushing toward them, and behind those clouds marched a spreading darkness.
Chavis touched his spurs to the horse, and ran down the slope to catch up to his crowd, keeping an uneasy watch on the gray wall of the approaching storm. Tall larices of cloud shot forward from its crest. Now came the roar of the storm in full fury. Rain slanted down in a watery opaque screen. Presently Riley’s voice drifted back. “We turn off here.” Single file, they left the trail and entered timber. Chavis rode up beside Connie and handed her his slicker, getting only a short nod of thanks. They came into a clearing with a creek running through its center. Bones stopped here under a leafy overhang.
“I guess this will do,” he said, and stepped down.
“Sam,” ordered Chavis, “go back and watch the trail. We’ll have to take turns at it.”
Chavis tied his horse on a long rope, letting it pick at leaves and sparse grass. The misery of the storm piled on top of the setback they’d just suffered created a dismal mood.
He turned and strode over to young Gary Niles. “I’ve got an important job for you. Ride back over to the rim of the pass where you can see the ranch. Get back here by the middle of the afternoon and let us know who comes and goes down there. They must have moved in a crew to hold it. Try to count the number of men.”
Niles nodded and rode out. Bones Riley sat back on his elbows and watched the storm. “This is a hell of a way to fight a war.”
In Spanish Flat there was no letup in the rain. The news in the Drovers’ Rest, where Larry Keene went for a drink, was that the Majors/Vivian partnership had raided Chainlink but that no one had been on the ranch at the time. He had no way of knowing that this story was carefully planted by Spur men. What he did know was that the whereabouts of the people from Chainlink was a mystery. Privately he felt that Connie and Chavis were heading for the reservation – eighty miles across the Yellows – with the combined Spur and Flying V on their trail.
Hating his own ineffectualness, Keene soon left the steaming, clammy saloon. There was no reason to ride to his ranch, so he settled down in the hotel lobby to wait out the storm by reading week-old newspapers.
The rattle of a buckboard came from outside and then light steps on the boardwalk. The door opened and Sara Majors entered, bundled in a man’s mackinaw and hood. Keene rose and came to her with his familiar smile and helped her remove the coat.
“What would bring you through this to town?”
He saw the tremulous strain in her face. “It’s Dad—I think he’s gone completely mad, Larry. He went with Vivian to Chainlink this morning and they haven’t come back yet. They were going to run them all off!”
“I’ve heard about it.”
“What’s going to happen, Larry?” She was desperately frightened, he saw.
He shook his head; he wished he knew ....
Sound pummeled the air and immediately Sam McCaig whirled into the meadow.
“The kid’s comin’ back,” he said. Brush crashed behind him and Gary Niles reined into the clearing, scattering pine needles and cones.
“Spur’s on the road back there!” he panted. “Ten or fifteen of them. Not more than twenty minutes behind me. I spotted them coming up the pass.”
Bones nodded. “Thought so.”
“Get aboard,” Chavis ordered. “We run for it.”
The five rode single file out of the clearing. The storm was now a steady downpour. That racket fell among them when they entered the dripping mist of the forest. They fled soundlessly. They crossed a creek, rested a moment, and afterward rode by swinging arcs up a broken, water-coursing incline, going ever higher. Behind them, southeast, the terrain they had come across swelled and dropped, and a patch of darkness moving back there gave warning: Majors on the trail.
“Find a stream,” Chavis called forward. “We’ll have to circle around and confuse them.”
Bones waved and pushed north for a silent half hour, using his knowledge of the country.
“Oro Creek,” he said, and put his horse into the rocky bottom, heading downstream. The following crew would expect them to continue running west. This eastward maneuver might fool them long enough for the rain to fill in their tracks. They splashed through the creek for perhaps two miles until canyon walls began to rise steep around them.
Bones said: “Any farther and this would trap us.”
He lifted his horse out of the stream onto a rock ledge and crossed that, leaving Spur to guess where they had left the water. They continued descending into the dim, steamy solitude of the forest.
They rode two hours through darkness and finally settled down restless in a clearing, hearing the horses stir and hunt for grass. The rain had almost stopped but the ground was sopped and everything was damp and clammy. They ate sparingly of the hardtack McCaig and Niles had brought. Unable to sleep, Chavis walked aimlessly until he encountered Bones, standing watch. “We ought to be near where we caught Wate last night. Made a circle.”
“Right. We’re ten miles north of Vivian’s. Ben won’t find us here tomorrow or tomorrow night, but he’ll get here. He won’t quit, Tracy.
“We’re three hours from the top of the Yellows, and it’s a day’s ride from there down the other side to the reservation—by road. But if we had to keep to cover, maybe it’s two days.” Bones considered. “North is closed to us—too rough to get through with horses. South leads smack into Sid’s territory. So we keep runnin’ over the Yellows, or we go back. Or we stay here, which is plain damn foolishness.”
Chavis nodded, realizing that the decision now was squarely up to him. Bones faded into the trees and presently another shadow stood before him—Connie.
“I can’t feel any reality,” she said. “I feel as if I’m going to wake up in the morning in my own bed, and none of this will have really happened.”
He shook his head, preoccupied with his thoughts.
“You’re thinking of the gamble,” she said. “You’re thinking of me. But you were never made to run—you told me so yourself. Don’t rim, Tracy.” Her voice was soft and for this one brief while she seemed to reflect none of her old animosity. “I know it looks impossible,” she said.
She moved away from him and spread her blanket on a needled carpet – the driest spot she could find – and lay back.
It was, Chavis thought, the best idea at the time and so he bedded down across the clearing near the horses. But half an hour later he found himself sitting bolt upright, scowling, unable to close his eyes. He sought out Bones.
“I’ll take the watch. Can’t sleep,” Chavis said. “Do you remember that cave we camped in when the norther caught us up here, eight or nine years ago? Isn’t that around here somewhere?”
“Not far,” said Bones. “What of it?”
“Nobody else knows about it. We can’t run now—and we can’t stay here. In the morning you take Connie and the boys over there. Wait for me. I’ll draw Ben off and come back.”
“Yeah,” Bones said with skepticism. “Sure.”
“Today’s Wednesday. If I’m not back by Saturday morning you take over. Get Connie out of here somehow.”
Once away from the camp, he retraced the afternoon’s path to Oro Creek and used its waters again to cover their trail and thus protect Bones. This precaution taken, he rode directly east—into the jaws of the lion. He had to draw Ben away from the district where Bones was hiding Chainlink. To do that he had to expose himself. Presently he topped a hill and dismounted and bellied down, his eyes on the winks of Spur’s fires below. He had Corey Wate’s .32-20 rifle with him and now he calculated the drop of the bullet and let go.
The slug scattered sparks in the biggest fire. Instantly horses reared and jumped, men rushed in confusion, aimless shots and cries filled die night. Then Majors’ heavy bellow of authority got Spur into the saddle, and plunging up the mountainside.
Ducking back into the trees, Chavis threw himself on his horse and rode, creating as much noise as he could as he headed southwest. Spur came after him in loud pursuit.
He tried to keep a certain lead on Spur, far enough to be safe from shots, yet near enough to be sure they wouldn’t lose him. The night went on and pursuit fell behind but he had them well away from Bones’ district now, and had planted the belief in them that he was heading for the reservation. He had to keep that belief alive.
He couldn’t turn back because by this time Ben would have all the trails closed and would have not only his own men but most of Vivian’s crowding his backtrail. So he went on, angling to the southwest. His only chance was to play cat-and-mouse until he managed to slip through and regain his own crew’s position. He turned his horse into a ravine and started to climb.
Still tight with the strain of escape, Chavis listened for sounds behind him as he achieved the top of the ridge and paralleled the gulch. From the sloping leg of the ridge he caught no sign of pursuit and descended again toward the creek, crossing it and riding into the thin woods which masked a trail heading upslope. Following this trace’s windings as it matched the curves of the stream, he watched the shadows ahead in case of trouble and listened behind for the rumor of running horses.
Once he stopped to blow the horse, and turned from the gulch into the hills. Ahead of him lay perhaps eighty miles of unbroken wilds, at the end of which was the reservation, lying beyond the Yellows. He had never made that crossing, he did not know the country, but he decided to keep aiming in this direction in order to nourish the idea in Ben’s head that he was clearing out.
He rode at a trot and wound through the Yellows’ black alleys while the night ran on. At dawn’s first pale signs he stopped by a creek for a drink and went on until noon found him on the edge of timber overlooking a meadowed corridor.
There was a scratchy trail here, not much used. It wound through a cottonwood grove and crossed another shallow creek. He dismounted and let the horse browse in the bottom grasses while he rolled a smoke and allowed himself to relax for a quarter hour.
He mounted and rode on, forming a sort of plan in his mind. Coming to yet another creek he turned into it and dismounted to drop belly-flat in the water at the horse’s feet and drink in greedy, heavy gusts. Somewhere ahead of him this canyon would reach its top and he would then have a choice to make: keep running, keep drawing them after him, or try to circle back and get through their lines. Either way he was an open target. By now, with Spur so far behind him, he had a good deal of room to play around in. He decided to come back around.
Presently he left the stream after covering his tracks in the water for a quarter-mile, and rode on well back in the trees.
Hunger made him eat the lone hunk of hardtack beef he had brought along. A plan had materialized in his thoughts, and to try it out, he must get back on the desert as soon as he could.
Majors and Vivian had almost all their men on his trail. If he could thread a way through and get behind them, he could gather his men and raze Spur to the ground, scatter the herds and then begin his sniping game. The war was not yet lost. A man who worked for forty dollars and found was going to think twice about his life if he rode in continual fear.
He ascended the reaches of the narrowing canyon. Ahead of him it narrowed to a twenty-foot passage between converging boulders. From what he could see beyond, it ended in a wide meadow at the foot of a high peak. At that point he would swing wide to the south and turn east, trying to go around Spur’s line. Coming up to the two guardian boulders, he passed a spring bubbling out of a crack at the base of one, and went on through.
“Hold it right there, cowboy!”
The voice came from above and behind. He had no choice. He hauled in and raised his hands above his shoulders.
“Use your left hand,” the voice commanded. “Unbuckle your gun belt and throw it away from you. Then your rifle.”
With no say in this, he did as commanded, not yet having seen the man behind him.
“Step down and tie your horse. Now get away from it.”
With the animal tied, he walked carefully several paces from it and turned slowly. He saw a block-shouldered figure sliding down the side of the boulder he’d just passed.
“Well, well! I’ve got me a catch. You’re Chavis!” He walked forward, untying the horse and motioning for Chavis to walk ahead. This rider would be one of Sid Vivian’s far-flung allies, a small rancher who lived back in this wild country, eating the beef of others.
A gun at his back turned him to a narrow passageway between rocky walls, and at its end he stepped out into a small hollow, surrounded by rock walls of sand-red stone. At the corner of this natural fortress stood a cabin, a small barn and fenced corral. It was a perfect place for the stolen beef that Vivian drove across the mountain.