SIXTEEN
Jolly Benabas hunkered down and drew with his finger in the sand. His bony shoulders hunched against the morning chill, his right eye squinted against the tobacco smoke.
"Sure, that place you call the amphitheater, that's here. Now right back of this here cliff is a trail. You can make it with a good mountain horse. When you get on top, that's the mesa above Dark Canyon. The trail I seen was over across, nigh six mile. There's a saddle rock over thataway, an' when you sight it, ride for it. On the north side you'll find that trail if the wind ain't blowed it away."
Jonathan had bunched forty head of cattle for me, and I walked to the buckskin and shoved my Winchester in the bucket. Then I stepped into the leather.
We started the cattle, but they had no mind to hit the trail. They had found a home in Cottonwood Wash and they aimed to stay, but we finally got them straightened out and pointed for the hills. Jonathan was riding along, but he would leave me when we got into the canyon.
He carried his Spencer in his hand, a lean, tall boy, narrow-hipped and a little stooped in the shoulders. His face looked slightly blue with the morning chill, and he rode without talking.
As for myself, I was not anxious to talk. My mind was not on my task. Herding the cattle up the canyon was no problem, for they could not get back past us, could only move forward. Nor was I thinking of the mission that lay ahead of me, the scouting of the group of men Nick Benaras had seen near Dark Canyon.
Had it really been Moira I'd seen? And if so, had she heard my call? Restlessly, I stepped up my pace. I was angry with myself and half angry with her. Why should she act this way? Did she really believe I'd kill her father? Both Canaval and Chapin had disclaimed any suspicion of me, although there were others who still believed me guilty.
Irritably, I watched the moving cattle, pushing them faster than was wise. Jonathan glanced back, but said nothing, moving right along with me.
At the amphitheater the cattle moved into the grass, lifted their heads and looked around. We swung away from them and slowly they began to scatter out, already making themselves at home.
There was no sound but that of water running over stones. Jonathan put his rifle in the boot and hooked a leg around the saddlehorn. He rolled a smoke and glanced at me.
"Want company?"
"Thanks ... no."
He touched a match to the cigarette. "I'll stay with the cows for a while, then. Maybe some of 'em will take a notion to head for home."
He swung his legs down and shoved his boot into the stirrup.
I was thinking of Moira.
"You take it easy, Matt. You're too much on the prod."
"Thanks ... I'll do that"
He was right, of course. I was irritable, upset by Moira's action the night before, and I was in no mood for scouting. What I really wanted was a fight.
The trail that Jolly had told me about was there. Looking up, I backed off a little and looked again.
At this point the red sandstone cliff was all of seven hundred feet high. The trail was an eyebrow skirting the cliff face, and one which a spooky horse would never manage. But I was riding Buck, who was far from spooky, mountain-bred, and tough. He could have walked a tight wire, I think.
We started up, taking our time. It was nearing noon and the sun was hot. The cliff up which the trail mounted was in the mouth of a narrow canyon. The wall across from me was not fifty feet away, and as I mounted the distance grew less and less, until it was almost close enough for me to reach out and touch the opposite wall. I penetrated almost a thousand yards deeper into the canyon, then emerged suddenly on top.
Here the wind blew steadily. The terrain here was flat as a floor, tufted with sparse grass, and in the distance a few dark junipers looking like upthrust blades from a forest of spears.
Sitting very still, I scanned the mesa top with extreme care. From now on I would be moving closer and closer to men who did not wish to be seen. No honest men would gather here, and if these were the Slades, then they were skilled manhunters, and dangerous men.
Nothing moved but the wind. Overhead the sky was wide and blue, with only a few tufts of lonely cloud.
I walked my horse forward, looking out for the saddle rock. In every direction the mesa stretched far, far away. I could smell sagebrush and cedar. Here and there on top of the mesa were tufts of desert five-spot, a rose-purple flower with flecks of bright red on the petals, and scattered clumps of rabbit bush.
My horse walked forward into the day. The air was clear and the chill was gone. Suddenly ahead of me I saw the dark jut of the saddle rock, and closed the distance, keeping my eyes roving, wary of any rider, any movement.
At the saddle rock I dismounted to rest the buckskin, and let him crop some sparse grass. There was a niche in the black lava of the rock, and I led Buck back into it and out of sight.
Trailing the reins, I stretched out on the grass in the shade. It had been a long ride, and I had been late to bed and up early. After a few minutes, I dozed. Not asleep, nor yet awake. Several minutes must have passed, perhaps as much as half an hour, when suddenly I heard the sound of a trotting horse. Instantly I was on my feet and, moving swiftly to Buck's side, I spoke softly. He eased down, waiting. The rider came nearer and nearer. I slid my Winchester from the scabbard and waited, holding it hip-high.
Then I realized the rider would pass on the far side of the rocks, where Jolly had told me I'd find the trail. Swiftly, careful to make no noise, I climbed up among the jumbled rocks toward the saddle itself. When able to see the mesa beyond, I settled down and looked past a round rock.
For a minute, two minutes, I saw nothing. Then a horse came into view, now slowed to a walk. A horse ridden by a huge man, and there could be but one man of that size.
Morgan Park!
Where he rode I could see the dim tracks of other horses. After a moment of watching, I drew back and slid down off the rocks. Leading the buckskin, I walked around to where I could stand concealed, yet could see the trail ahead.
Morgan Park rode on until he turned, over a mile away, to the edge of the cliff. There he disappeared.
Waiting, for he might have stopped to watch his back trail, I let three, four, five minutes pass. Then I mounted and rode out to parallel the trail he had taken. The hoof prints of his big horse were plain, and I studied them. Also, the other prints that were several days old.
The day was hot. A film of heat daze obscured the horizon. Shimmering heat waves veiled the Sweet Alice Hills in the distance, the hills that seemed to end the visible world. From time to time the trail neared the lip of the mesa and I could look out over an infinity of canyons.
Yet when I reached the place where Park had disappeared, instead of the trail going over the edge of the mesa as I had expected, it merely dropped to a lower level and continued on.
Before me the mesa stretched ahead, apparently to the foot of the Sweet Alice Hills. But knowing that country, I knew half a dozen canyons might cut through the mesa before those hills were reached.
There was no sign of Morgan Park. He had vanished completely.
Riding on, I came to a fork in the trail. Here there was only flat rock, and, look as I might, I could find no indication of which way Park had gone.
Finally, taking a chance, I held to the trail that kept closest to the mesa's edge.
Suddenly the edge of the cliff broke sharply back into the mesa and showed a steep slide. From talks with the Benaras boys I knew this was Poison Canyon. So I went down the slide and ended in the bottom of a narrow canyon.
If I met a rider here, there would be nothing to do but shoot it out. No man could get back up that slide under fire, and one could only go along the canyon's bottom. I slid my rifle out of the boot and rode with it in my hand, ready to shoot.
The canyon bottom was sand littered with rocks of all sizes and shapes. The walls rose sheer on either side. There was little vegetation here, but many tumbled and dried roots washed down in the freshets that swept these canyons after rains.
Suddenly, I smelled smoke.
Drawing up, I listened, waiting, sniffing the air again. After a moment I got a second whiff of wood-smoke.
There was no cover here, so I walked my horse on a little further. A brush-choked canyon opened on my right, filled with manzanita. Swinging down, I led my horse back into it, pushing through the brush until I found an open spot with a little grass. I tied the buckskin to a bush and worked my way back, then slipped off my boots and continued on in my sock feet.
No air stirred in the canyon. It was hot, stifling hot. Sweat trickled down my body under my shirt. The hand that clutched the rifle grew sweaty. Careful to avoid thorns, I worked my way out through the manzanita and in among the rocks. Here I hunched down behind a clump of mixed curl-leaf and desert apricot. Then, working forward on my knees, I crept deeper into the thicket.
The air was motionless ... the heat was heavy ... the leaves of the curl-leaf had a pleasant, pungent, tangy smell. I lay still, listening.
The smell of woodsmoke again ... then a faint rattle of rocks, and the chink of a tin pan on rock.
Keeping inside the thicket of curl-leaf, I crawled forward. A lizard lay on a rock staring at me. His lower lids crept up, almost closing his eyes, his sides throbbed. My hand moved and he fled away over the sand. I crawled on, then waited, hearing a low mutter of voices.
Nearer, I could distinguish words. Settling down in the thickest part of the tangle of brush, with a rock in front of me, I listened.
"No use to shave. We won't get to Hattan's now."
"Him an' Slade are makin' medicine ... we'll move."
"I don't like it."
"Nobody ast you. Slade, he'll decide." Tin rattled again. "Anyway, what you beefin' about? Slade will have the worst of it done before we move in. They's two, three men on the Two-Bar, that's all. 'Bout that on the Boxed M."
"Big feller looks man enough to do it himself."
"Then you an' me wouldn't have the money."
There was silence. Sweat trickled down my spine. My knee was cramped, but I did not dare to move. I could see nothing, for the curl-leaf thicket reached right to the edge of their camp.
I dried my hands on my shirt front, and took up the rifle again.
"Finder'll raid today. Maybe that'll take care of it."
Finder ... raid.
My place? Where else but my place? While I lay here in this thicket, Mulvaney and the Benaras boys might be fighting for their lives. I started, then relaxed. I could not get there in time now, and the Benaras boys were no chickens. Neither was Mulvaney. Their position was strong and they had food and water.
"Who gets Brennan?"
"How should I know? Big feller maybe."
"He's welcome."
"Finish that coffee. I want to wash up."
"You can't. Slade ain't et yet."
There was silence then. Cautiously I straightened my leg, then eased away from the rock. Carefully, I began to retreat through the thicket.
A branch hooked on my shirt, then whipped loose, a dry, rasping sound in the thicket.
"What was that?"
I held very still, holding my breath.
"Aw, you're too jumpy. Settle down."
"I heard somethin'."
"Coyote, maybe."
"In this close to us? You crazy?"
Footsteps sounded, and I eased my rifle into position, mentally retracing my steps to my horse. Where were Morgan Park and Slade? I might have to ride in a hurry and I knew no way out but up the slide, which would be impossible under gunfire.
"You goin' in there? If you do, you're crazy." The speaker chuckled. "You got too much imagination. An' if there was anybody in there, what would happen to you? He'd see you first."
The footsteps stopped ... hesitated. A sound of brush against leather came to me, and I put my thumb on the hammer of the Winchester. I knew right where the man was standing and at this distance with a rifle I could not miss. Whatever happened afterward, that first man was as good as dead.
He didn't like it. I could almost see his mind working. He suddenly decided he had heard nothing. He still stood there, and I gambled and eased back a little further. There was no sound, and I withdrew stealthily to my horse.
Mounting, I walked the horse out of the brush-choked canyon and started back toward the slide. But when I reached it I went on past.
Around a bend I drew up and taking out a handkerchief, mopped my face.
Then I walked my horse deeper into the unknown canyon. I'd found what I wanted to know. Slade and his gang were here. They were waiting to strike. Even now they were meeting with Morgan Park.
Tomorrow?