Devils canyon, p.7
Devil's Canyon, page 7
Within fifteen minutes the ground underfoot was churned to red mud by the passing herd. The wagon was barely making headway. The sun had not yet gone down, but the sky was as black as pitch. Kirby hoped that Tomas, riding point, was steering them correctly toward the canyon route, because he could do nothing but follow along, pinching the herd together.
Lightning struck so near that it startled the gray badly. Kirby could smell sulfur in the air as the following thunder, half a second later, seemed to rock the earth beneath them. The sky went briefly to an incandescent white and then returned to utter darkness, leaving a jumbled image of wet longhorns and riders on Kirby’s retinas.
Hours passed with incredible slowness. They seemed to be gaining no ground at all, but Kirby became aware of the land rising beside them, craggy red hills where water streamed in a thousand tangled rivulets. They had made the mouth of the canyon passage at least. Dallas appeared from out of the storm and he leaned near to yell into Kirby’s ear above the pitchforks of rain and the eerie howl of the wind. ‘Flank riders to the point!’
Kirby nodded his understanding. The walls of the canyon would keep the herd pinched together. Now the thing to do was to gather at the point to try to halt any attempt at a stampede. It was dangerous business, but it would be disastrous to have the steers scatter now. Days could be lost gathering the herd again.
Kirby started toward the head of the herd. He saw Red just ahead of him, his paint pony slogging through the hock-deep mud. Red was bent low in the saddle. Apparently he hadn’t gotten the word to move to the point. Kirby approached him and shouted above the whip and roar of the storm.
‘Flank riders to the point, Red!’
When Red didn’t respond, Kirby reached out and tapped his shoulder.
Red toppled from the saddle to lie face down in the mud as the paint skittered away. Kirby reined up and leaped from the gray’s back as the herd lumbered past. Crouching over Red, he turned him face up.
He was dead. There was a bullet hole through his neck. He had been shot by a sniper, and above the wash of the storm, no one had even heard it.
Kirby looked around, scanning the surrounding bluffs, but there was nothing to be seen beyond the curtain of rain. He caught up the shuddering paint pony, hoisted Red across its back and led it forward.
Reaching the point he found the colonel and Asa Donahue in a heated argument. They had reined up at the side of the trail in a shallow hollow at the base of the rising bluff. Kirby rode nearer in time to hear Asa shouting.
‘This is crazy! We’ve got to make camp! We ain’t gonna make any more miles today. Not in this!’
‘It’s better if we keep them moving!’ the colonel shouted back.
‘The men can’t take much more, Colonel! Halt the herd. At least let them have a cup of coffee in shifts!’
‘Cooky can’t make coffee in this downpour, Asa! Besides, I want these steers as weary as possible before we bed them down! Lessens the risk of a stampede.’ The colonel saw Kirby now, and he turned to yell at him. ‘What do you think, Kirby—? What happened—?’
Suddenly he was aware of the body thrown over the paint’s back and his sentence broke off.
‘Is it Red?’ Donahue asked.
‘Yeah.’ Kirby wiped the rain from his face. There was some respite from the storm in the hollow. It was no more than twelve feet deep, but still it was some sort of shelter.
‘Who did it?’ Asa Donahue demanded. His eyes were fixed angrily on Kirby as if he were responsible.
‘A sniper. The same way Avery Peck got it.’
‘Why don’t they just come down and fight!’ Asa said angrily. As much as Kirby disliked the man, he gave him this much – he was genuinely upset about Red’s death.
‘Why would they come down?’ the colonel asked sadly. Then, ‘Kirby – keep them going or halt the herd? Donahue says make camp; what do you say?’
Kirby was thoughtful for a moment, then answered, ‘Colonel, I’d say keep them moving, except this storm is a lot more than we expected. We can’t even see what we’re doing out there. I say halt the herd, too.’
Asa appeared surprised that Kirby was agreeing with him. ‘Very well,’ the colonel said at length. His voice was stiff. He hated to lose any time. He wanted those miles tacked on. So did they all, but conditions were impossible.
‘I wanted them too weary to stampede.’
‘I know it, sir, but if they were to bolt now, you’d have a crew too tired to control them.’
‘All right,’ he said, waving a hand in frustration. ‘Catch up with point and tell Tomas we’re halting. I’ll have Cooky set up camp here.’ The colonel looked up at the seeping walls of the hollow. ‘This isn’t much, but maybe he can at least get a fire going in here.’
‘I’ll see to Red,’ Donahue said. His face was drawn and Kirby wasn’t sure if it was because Red had been his friend, or simply because Donahue was coming to realize that his men could be shot as well, and if enough of them were killed, it would ruin his scheme to steal the herd.
Kirby rode forward carefully along the herd’s flank. A stream was collecting in the bottom of the canyon and mud was beginning to slough off the canyon walls. He squeezed past the longhorns and finally caught up with Tomas half a mile ahead.
‘The colonel says to hold them up!’ Kirby shouted. Tomas just nodded. He waved Bull over to him and gave him the word, and the four men on point started to slow the herd and turn it back on itself.
‘Did you see that hollow back a way?’ Kirby shouted. ‘When you get ’em settled down, tell the boys Cooky should have some coffee and bacon going in half an hour or so. You figure out how to divide the shifts.’
Again Tomas just nodded. Shouting above the wind took more trouble than it was worth unless it was truly important.
Kirby rode back toward the hollow himself. The cattle were angry and confused. Bunching up now they bumped into each other, some going one way, some the other. The rain made them unhappy and the lightning made them jittery. There was no graze and no room to lie down. It would be a rough night trying to keep them calm. Kirby didn’t like to think what a stampede in the close confines of the canyon on a dark night would be like.
Reaching the hollow again he found the colonel alone, standing close to a small, smoky fire he had built by throwing together wet wood from the cave, torn branches deposited there in past floods. The colonel’s horse, unsaddled, stood miserably against the back wall.
Kirby swung down and led the gray into the hollow.
‘Everything all right up ahead?’ the colonel asked.
‘Tomas has them turned. It will be all right.’
‘For a while?’ the colonel said with a thin smile.
‘There aren’t many guarantees in life, are there, sir?’
‘No, no,’ the colonel said wearily. ‘You’re right, of course, Kirby.’
‘We’ll make it, Colonel. Nothing worthwhile comes easy.’
‘Of course not. I’m sorry, Kirby. A man builds up pictures in his mind of what is to come. Seldom, if ever, are they true to life.’ He squatted down and prodded at the poor, smoking fire.
‘Where is Cooky?’ Kirby asked, looking out into the rain. ‘He should have been here by now. Boys will be wanting something hot to eat.’
‘It’s gotten very muddy out there, Kirby. With the rain and eight hundred steers churning up the ground.’
‘Yeah. Maybe I’d better go back and have a look. He might have gotten the wagon bogged down.’
The colonel agreed. ‘Yes, maybe you had better. The boys will certainly want a cup of coffee, and I could use a cup myself.’
There was nothing Kirby wanted to do less than to go back out into the teeth of the cold storm, but it had to be done.’
By the time he had tightened his cinches again and started back, the tail end of the herd was just passing, Len Parker and the kid named Archie riding drag. Kirby held Len up and told him what was happening.
‘I wondered,’ the cowboy growled. ‘They were moving almighty slow.’
‘Where’s Cooky?’ Kirby asked.
‘You know that’s funny,’ Len said, looking back. ‘He was right behind us, but in this rain.…’ He shrugged. ‘Can’t be too far back.’
Kirby started on. The rain and wind were at his back now, but that was little relief. It was still cold and his buffalo coat was heavy with rain over his damp shoulders. He did have a slicker in his roll, but there hadn’t been time to dig it out before the storm hit; besides a slicker offered little warmth.
He slogged on, the gray hock-deep in cold mud now. The cattle had churned up the ground horribly. The odds were good that Cooky had gotten stuck. Hopefully he hadn’t broken a wheel or an axle! That would delay them interminably.
A quarter of a mile on he still found nothing. He was alone in the cold night. Pausing, he listened, hoping to hear the creak of wagon wheels and harness, but the night was still except for the wind.
For a time there was a silver ghost of a moon beaming through the sheer clouds, and it was by this meager light that Kirby stumbled across some sign: the ruts cut by wagon wheels into the mud; overlaying the tracks of the cattle, they were clearly visible. Then the sky closed up again, the moonlight fading, and Kirby swallowed a curse.
The tracks he had found were not heading northward, following the herd, but had veered off sharply toward the east and the shallow draw he had seen.
Why? Cooky couldn’t have mistaken the trail, and he wouldn’t have pulled aside even if he were breaking down. There could be only one explanation.
Someone had taken the wagon and captured Angela as well!
SEVEN
Kirby rode with supreme caution. The night was foul and dark, the wind whistling down the canyon eerily. The rain came in sheets, cleared briefly and then would wash down again in a hammering assault.
He had guided the big gray horse into the wash, but now he more or less let it have its head. He could not see clearly enough to guide it further.
Now and then the gray misstepped, jolting Kirby’s spine. The ground underfoot was treacherous. There were many round rocks along the trail – if trail it could be called – the earth cleared from the stones by the rain.
He strained his eyes against the coal-black darkness, looking for a silhouetted image, a flash of white which might be the canvas top of the supply wagon, but for minute after interminable minute, he saw nothing.
He estimated he had been riding in that lonesome draw for half an hour at least when his search was rewarded.
The wagon stood in the road ahead of him, silent and unmoving. The horses had been unhitched. Eyes narrowing, Kirby continued on, very slowly now, approaching the wagon up a slight grade. The walls of the canyon rose around him, and the air had gone suddenly still and colder yet.
Nothing moved.
He dismounted twenty yards from the wagon and approached it with ultimate care, Winchester in his hands. His boots slipped on the mud as he crept toward the wagon. Everywhere else in the night was as still and silent as a tomb.
Reaching carefully for the flap of the canvas, he took a deep breath and threw it back, pulling away, rifle to his shoulder, but there was no response.
It was empty except for Angela’s bed.
The supplies had all been taken. Horseshoes, ammunition, sugar, bacon, beans, flour. Everything usable. Everything they desperately needed for the drive. The men, he thought drily, would be eating a lot of beef from here on.
He circled the wagon slowly as a light rain fell again. There was no sign of anyone. Blessedly, no corpses on the ground.
So, then, what had become of Angela and the cook? Could they have gotten stuck and decided to cut the horses free of their traces and ridden on? No. The wagon was not bogged down on that stony trail, and that theory would not explain the missing supplies.
They had been ambushed, that was certain.
Kirby stood, one hand on his hip, the other dangling the rifle, looking ahead – for it was certain they had been taken that way. He had passed no one coming up the trail, and the high walls enclosing the draw allowed no passage either right or left. Searching the ground for tracks was fruitless, as he had expected. Any sign would have been washed away almost immediately by the falling rain.
There was no choice. Kirby mounted again and started the gray forward toward the distant head of the draw, not knowing where it led or who waited there.
He soon discovered why whoever had captured the wagon had chosen to abandon it. The road narrowed rapidly and began to climb more steeply, the canyon walls closing in so there was barely room for two horses to pass side by side. Water rushed past beside the trail, a narrow, fast-moving creek racing toward the canyon floor below. Visibility was nil.
Kirby saw the gunman rise from the dark ground and he fired at the silhouette he presented, but he was a fraction of a second too slow. The sniper’s gun fired in return and a sudden jarring pain flooded Kirby’s skull and he fell awkwardly from the rearing gray’s back, landing hard. He saw the gray start away at a trot and tried to get to his feet to prepare himself for a fight, but the Winchester had slipped from his numb fmgers and there was blood in his eyes. There was a momentary flash of color in his skull, like close-exploding fireworks, and then everything went cold and utterly black.
The silver rain was falling into his eyes. He was too stiff to attempt movement. Kirby tried lifting his head, but that simple effort sent a bolt of pain through his entire body. He lay back, closing his eyes again. He was very cold, but he was alive. Maybe. In those first few waking minutes he wasn’t even sure of that; then logic told him no one could feel so cold and wet and be dead.
He moved his hand, searching for his Colt. If he at least had that … he did, but curiously, he discovered with his moving fingertips that someone had thrown a blanket over him. He opened his eyes and looked down painfully. True. Someone had thrown a red and white Indian blanket over him. His fogged mind struggled with that concept. Someone had ambushed him and then come to cover him with a blanket?
‘You’re awake! Don’t move, Kirby. I couldn’t get you anywhere drier. And there isn’t anyplace, anyway.’
It couldn’t be, but it was. Kirby saw Angela walk to him, her face drawn with concern. She knelt down beside him.
‘I tried to bandage your head. I’m afraid I didn’t do a very good job. But the wound isn’t as bad as it probably feels.’
‘Where in hell … what happened, Angela?’ Kirby demanded. He tried to sit up, failed, and settled for leaning back on his elbows as the concerned girl hovered over him, her lips pursed with concentration as she examined his head.
‘The man who shot me …’
‘You got him too,’ Angela said. ‘I found his body. I never saw him before.’
‘Where’s Cooky? What happened?’
‘Just a minute and I’ll tell you. You’ve got to sit up. Can we get you against that boulder? Try it. I’ll help you.’
That accomplished, Kirby sat there dizzily, his back propped against a cold reddish boulder the size of a wagon. Angela examined his head wound again, clicked her tongue, and bound it up once more.
‘You need some stitches. Your scalp has been laid open.’
‘Tell me,’ Kirby said, spacing his words out carefully, ‘what happened to you.’
Angela wiped back her hair and settled beside him with a sigh.
‘The rain got really heavy, as you know, and we started falling further and further behind. Cooky was cussing fiercely at the team, but they couldn’t do any more than they were already doing. Once we got bogged down to the axle, but somehow we got out of the mud.
‘I wasn’t contributing anything, and Cooky growled at me to just lie down in the back and go to sleep if I could. It was so cold that I crawled under the blankets just to keep warm although I knew I wasn’t going to sleep.
‘Then I heard someone shout- in English – I didn’t get the words, but Cooky halted the team. I thought it was you, or someone from the crew, but when I looked up. I could see that Cooky was holding his hands in the air, and a man climbed up on the seat beside him with a drawn gun.
‘He ordered Cooky to turn the wagon and start up this draw. There were three men altogether – or that’s how many I heard anyway. I stayed under the blankets, petrified that they might find me.
‘It was slow-going up the trail. It’s pretty steep and slick as you know, and the team was struggling mightily. Finally we stopped and I heard the men talking loudly. They decided to cut the team loose and use them for pack animals. That meant they were going to unload the wagon. My heart started pounding crazily. I knew they’d find me in the wagon, so I eased back toward the tailgate. It was very dark, the rain pounding down. I didn’t see anyone, so I figured they couldn’t see me. I slipped out of the wagon and hid in a stack of boulders beside the road.
‘I watched them unload the wagon in the dark and load the provisions onto the horses. I waited a long time yet, not moving. When they were gone, I went back to the wagon and snatched the blankets from it. They had left them, thank goodness. Then I found better shelter and hid there to wait until daylight.’
‘What happened to Cooky?’ Kirby asked.
‘I don’t know,’ she said worriedly. ‘I thought I heard a shot once, but I might have been mistaken. The storm was clattering over, making so many noises. I think they just took him along with them.
‘Then you came along,’ Angela continued. ‘I was up ahead about fifty yards or so, and I started back toward you, blankets over my head, wading through the mud. I saw the man with the rifle leap up from behind the rocks, saw him shoot … it almost stopped my heart. When you fired back, he went down and stayed there.
‘I came to you, but there was nothing I could do but cover you up and wait, hoping none of the other raiders came back to see what had happened to their friend.’
‘My horse …?’
