Novel 1968 - Down The Long Hills (v5.0) Page 12

  Peering over the rocks, Hardy and Betty Sue saw Jud build his loop and make his cast, but as Hardy could have told him, Big Red was too canny. The horse ducked his head and ran, circled, and then came back, neck arched and head canted to one side, his teeth bared.

  Jud gathered in his rope, but at that instant Red charged. He threw himself, screaming with rage, at Jud. The horse thief swung his own horse, but its hoofs skidded on the icy ground, and the horse fell hard.

  Red kicked viciously, missed Jud, and then charged at Cal. Cal tried to throw his gun, but, hampered by his heavy coat, the gun did not come up fast enough. His horse reared to meet the stallion’s attack, and Cal went off, falling into the snow.

  Big Red’s shoulder hit the smaller horse and it fell, then it sprang up and raced away into the night, the red stallion pursuing.

  Cal got up, swearing and thoroughly scared. Jud was helping his own horse up. He had jumped free a split second before his pony fell, and now he was up and ready.

  “Let’s get out o’ here!” he said. “I’ve had enough!”

  “You can get out—I’ll have that damned stallion or know the—”

  He stopped and looked around. “Where are the young uns?”

  “Ain’t seen ’em. But they must be here.”

  “Fire’s out,” Cal said. “That ain’t like that kid.” He stirred the ashes with a stick. “Still some coals, but not much. I can’t see that boy lettin’ his fire go out on a night like this.”

  Cal’s head turned, and his eyes swept the place. His anger made him hasty, and he overlooked both the tumbled buffalo coat and the small sack of supplies, almost empty now, that lay toward the rear. There wasn’t much to see, certainly—just a few sticks of wood piled near the fire…

  Cal looked around more carefully. “Jud, this ain’t the boy’s fire,” he said. “That there looks like an Injun fire. Maybe those young uns never did catch that horse again. He might be trailin’ ’em.”

  Jud considered that. Then he shook his head. “I doubt that. Without that horse those kids would never have come this far in this short a time. No, they’ve been here.” He hesitated a moment, knowing the hair-trigger temper of his companion. “Cal, let’s forget ’em and get out of here. I don’t like this.”

  “What don’t you like?” Cal almost snarled the words. “And how are we gettin’ out…on one horse?”

  For an instant Jud was silent, suddenly aware of the dangers represented by one horse between them. Of course, he might catch Cal’s horse, or the horse might come back to its running mate. Otherwise they were left with one horse, and Jud had a fair idea of how long Cal would put up with that. For that matter, he had no taste for it himself.

  Mentally, he stacked himself up against Cal and did not like the result. Cal was fast…one of the best men with a gun he knew, and quick to shoot. Also there was that heedless cruelty about Cal, that willingness, almost eagerness to kill, with no regard for the consequences.

  Jud was a bad man, and he admitted it to himself, but he was a cautious bad man, with a wholesome respect for his hide, and he had a hankering to live to an evil old age. The more he considered his future with Cal, the less likely his chances began to seem. No man in his right mind went around crossing up people like Scott Collins or Bill Squires with any anticipation for much of a future.

  Collins was a law-and-order man, a quiet, hardworking man, but one who did not hesitate to stand up and be counted. His voice had the ring of authority, and Holloway had demonstrated what happened when you challenged that voice.

  “No use startin’ out in the dark,” he said casually. “We might as well stir up the far. Anyway, those young uns may be somewheres about, an’ if they are that stallion will come back.”

  Cal simmered down slowly, complaining in his irritating nasal voice. Jud quietly ignored him, and went about getting wood without comment. Cal would settle down after a while, and he could be fairly easy to get along with when calm. The trouble was, a man had no idea when Cal would decide to come uncorked.

  Then and there Jud made his resolution. He was going to get away from Cal, and at the first opportunity it seemed possible. If he ever encountered him again, he would have a plausible excuse…an excuse he hoped never to need.

  The boy had rustled up wood and he had, as always, chosen a likely spot for his camp. Jud stirred the fire up, and after it was burning well he studied the ground for tracks. They were there, a profusion of them, but Jud’s own tracks and those of the stallion had all but obliterated them.

  Neither man made any move to search the back of the cave for the simple reason that they took it for granted that the children had abandoned the place some time before. In fact, there did not appear to be anything to search. The overhang was there for all to see, and the tumbled pile of rocks, the remains of an ancient wall built by bygone Indians, seemed innocent enough. Such walls are to be found in many places throughout the Southwest.

  Behind the rocks, Hardy and Betty Sue huddled together. There was no way to get out, and nowhere to go if they did. Here at least there was a little warmth, for the reflector, as well as the way the air circulated, brought some heat into their corner, though not enough to keep them really warm. They needed the buffalo coat for that, and Hardy found himself looking at it longingly.

  When they had scrambled to get out of the way Hardy had dragged the coat into a heap near the wall before they got untangled from it, and it lay there in the darkness now, looking almost like another rock. If he could somehow…

  He gave up the thought even as it came to him. There was no chance. He must lie still and wait. It would soon be light, and the men might go away.

  Finally both men lay down to sleep. An hour passed, then another. The sky grew pale, and Jud got up to replenish the fire. He had turned around to lie down again when he saw the coat. For a moment he just stood looking at it as if it were some strange animal, then he went over to it, picked it up, and let it fall.

  “Cal,” he said.

  The other man’s eyes opened, instantly alert at the tone of Jud’s voice. “Cal,” Jud said again, “there’s somebody else in this. Here’s his coat.”

  Cal sat up, staring at the buffalo coat. The coat presented a new problem, and Cal did not like problems. Moreover, ever since he first set eyes on that red stallion there had been more and more problems.

  “Who’d be out this time o’ year?” he asked irritably.

  “Somebody’s around,” Jud answered. “A man just don’t go off leavin’ a good coat behind.”

  Cal stretched out again and composed himself for sleep, but the thought of the coat nagged him, and after a bit he sat up and tugged on his boots. Besides, the bacon Jud was slicing into their frying pan was beginning to sputter, and it smelled good.

  “He’ll have a horse,” Cal commented, “and we need a horse—at least a saddle.”

  “He’ll have a gun too,” Jud warned, “and by now he must know we’re here, else where is he?”

  The two men ate in silence, and Hardy, crouching among the stones only a few feet away, looked down at Betty Sue and saw that she had gone to sleep again. He was frightened, for if she moved or made a sound in her sleep they would be discovered at once, and Hardy had no doubt what that would mean.

  He lay there, clutching the derringer with its single bullet, and there was no doubt in his mind as to what he must do. No matter which one discovered them, it was Cal he must shoot. Cal was the meanest one, and it looked to Hardy as if even Jud was afraid of Cal.

  But he really didn’t want to shoot anyone. All he wanted was to find pa, or some nice folks somewhere.

  Only a few miles to the north, Ashawakie, leading his small band of six Cheyennes, started the ponies through the snow and headed south. They expected to be gone from their camp for only two suns, and to return with both ponies and the loot from two camps. Ashawakie had put in his claim for the red stallion beforehand.

  In the meantime, in the cold of early dawn, Scott Collins
gathered wood for their fire then climbed atop the highest ground and stood staring around. The clouds had disappeared, the air was clear, but it was intensely cold.

  His eyes swept all the vast space, lying white and still, and he saw nothing, no movement anywhere, and he heard no sound.

  He could not ask Darrow and Squires to stay out any longer. No youngsters could live through this weather, and if they fell in the snow it might be spring before their bodies could be found. But though he could not hold the others any longer, he had no thought of giving up himself. Hardy was his son, and Betty Sue was the daughter of his friend.

  He turned to start back to camp, his boots crunching on the snow.

  It was then he saw the smoke.

  Chapter 14

  THE SMOKE WAS far off, and was not much more than a suggestion in the sky, not to be recognized except by eyes accustomed to all the shadings and changes of mountain, plain, and sky. The quality of the eyesight is often of less importance than the selectivity of the brain behind the eyes. From the hundreds of patterns and the shadow-play of sunlight and storm, the conditioned eye is quick to choose that which is different, or seems different.

  Just as the eye of the trained tracker can see a disturbance in the dust invisible to the casual eye, so anything that does not fit, that does not belong, is quickly seen by the mean trained to the wilderness.

  What Scott Collins saw was a vagueness in outline only a shade different from the trees around, and above it a scarcely perceptible shading against the sky. Under other circumstances it might be dust or it might be smoke, but with snow on the ground dust was eliminated, and he was sure it must be smoke.

  But he did not move to call the others. It was all too easy to lose such a sight, to return to what seemed the same position but was off just enough to make the smoke invisible. He remained where he was, and with great care he chose landmarks, lining up a route that would take him to the smoke. Only when he was sure of its location did he go back to the camp.

  Squires and Darrow listened, then Squires got up and set about smothering the fire. “I think it’s worth a look,” he said.

  Within minutes they were moving out, holding to the cover of trees, emerging only long enough to check their direction. All three rode loose in the saddle, with their rifles across their saddles. The smoke might mean the children were there, but it also might mean either the Indians or the horse thieves.

  “That rider now,” Darrow said suddenly, “I recall who it was.”

  They waited.

  “It was Cal Thorpe. Least, that’s the name I knew him by. A bad actor, that one.”

  “I know him,” Squires said. “He’s killed a few men. They suspicioned him of robbing sluices around the Dry Diggin’s.” He looked over at Scott Collins. “That’s what they called Hangtown afore your time. In the first few weeks they called her that, and Cal was around then. There was a lot of us down from Sutter’s place to the Dry Diggin’s together…Cal was in the outfit. He’s a mean one, all right…quick as a snake an’ just as untrustworthy.”

  The country over which they had to ride was rough, and there was no direct route. Time and again they had to swing wide to avoid some obstacle, but always they found their way back to the course Scott had chosen. At times they spread out, searching for tracks, but they saw none until they were in an area they believed to be close to where the smoke had come from.

  Frank Darrow threw up his hand suddenly and motioned them over. “Indians,” he said, “at least four. Mebbe twice that many.”

  It would complicate things. They had no desire to run into a bunch of scalp-hunters. They wanted only to find the missing children, not to have a fight with Cheyennes. Besides, a lot of shooting might draw more Indians down on them—the Sioux traveled this country, too.

  “Headed southeast,” said Squires. “D’you think they saw that smoke?”

  “Mebbe. Could be that Injun who was follerin’ the kids took off to line up some help, seein’ our tracks like he did. We’re goin’ to have to ride careful.”

  Scott Collins would not allow himself to hope. He realized that the fire might not mean the children at all. It might be from some other passing travelers or hunters. Not that travelers were apt to be in the area at this time of the year. Nobody in his right mind would want to be out in the open.

  Whatever smoke there had been was gone now. They knew they were within a mile or perhaps less of the place the smoke had come from, but their landmarks, taken from a distance, could give them no closer clue to the actual spot.

  “We could scatter out,” Darrow suggested.

  “No.” Scott was definite. “There’s too much risk. We’ll stay together and throw a loop around the area, cutting for sign. Anybody who rode in here should have left some tracks, and if we ride a circle we’ll sure enough find them.”

  “It’ll take us a while,” Squires said, “but it’s better than goin’ it blind.”

  They rode with caution. Scott Collins took the lead, guiding his horse among the trees until they reached the fairly open boulder-and brush-strewn area beyond. The only tracks they found in the snow were those of coyotes and rabbits. Coming down a slope, they watered the horses at the Little Beaver.

  It was very cold and still. The air was crystal clear, and they listened, sensing the wind for any slightest sound.

  “I don’t like it,” Squires said in a low voice. “She’s too quiet. We know there’s Injuns about.”

  Scott led the way across the stream and up the bank beyond.

  UNDER THE OVERHANG, Cal finished the last of the bacon in the skillet. “I got to get me a horse,” he said. “I don’t cotton to this place.”

  “It oughtn’t to be hard to catch that pony of yours,” Jud said. “I should saddle up and have a look around.”

  He held his breath, waiting for Cal’s reply, but Cal was thinking his own thoughts. “We could head back for Californy,” he was saying. “I’ve heard that Pueblo de los Angeles is a live place. An’ it’s warmer than here.”

  “All right,” Jud said, “I’ll go hunt up your horse.”

  Cal looked up, his snake-like eyes followed Jud as he picked up his saddle. “All right, Jud,” he said, “You find him. But you be almighty sure you come back. If you don’t, I’ll track you to hell an’ gone, but I’ll have your scalp.”

  “Don’t talk foolish. No man in his right mind would want to ride alone through the country between here an’ the coast. You set tight…I’ll find that horse.”

  He gathered the reins and put his foot in the stirrup with the hair prickling on the back of his neck. Not for a minute did he believe Cal would let him ride away—yet he did. He simply sat there watching as Jud moved off slowly.

  Immediately Jud was out of sight Cal got up, and he was grinning. “You damn fool,” he said aloud, “don’t you suppose I know whose coat that is?”

  The story of Pete Schifflins’s gold was widely told in the cantinas of California, and Cal heard it there. Moreover, he had known Pete, and had even seen a sample of the gold. Not many believed in the story and quite a few did not know gold from iron pyrites, but Cal did. He had been one of those who helped push the Cherokees off their land in Georgia because of the gold strike there, but that had been piddling compared to California.

  He had recognized Schifflin’s coat the instant Jud held it up, for Pete Schifflin had one short arm, caused by a bad break years before, and he had hacked off the end of the sleeve to allow free use of his hand.

  If that was Schifflin’s coat, then somewhere around had been Schifflin’s diggings, and that probably meant a cache of gold.

  He got up and went to the far end of the overhang, and with quick, practiced skill he began scanning the wall, the ground, the whole layout. If there was a cache here, there would be some sign of it.

  Hardy lay still, listening. He could not see Cal from where he lay, but the man was busy doing something near the end of the overhang. Hardy desperately wanted to peep out, but he was afraid o
f being seen. He could hear Cal coming nearer, but so slowly that Hardy could not guess what he might be doing.

  Then Cal came within sight. Hardy saw him examining the rock wall, moving rocks that lay against it, obviously searching for something. When only a few feet from the rocks that hid them, he turned and went back to the fire, replenished it, and stood there warming his cold fingers. Then he poured a cup of coffee and started to sip it.

  Hardy was shaking with cold, and his fingers were stiff. He tried to cover Betty Sue a little better, but he was fearful that he might wake her. He even thought of trying to run for it, but Betty Sue could not run fast enough, and he was afraid Cal would shoot them. Touchy as he was, he would be likely to shoot at anything that moved…and he had intended to kill them, anyway.

  Cal sipped his coffee slowly. Close beside Hardy, Betty Sue was waking up. Her eyes opened, and Hardy put his finger over his lips. He looked longingly toward the trees and brush, not over twenty feet away. He could see the body of the wolf Cal had killed lying out on the snow, and a thick clump of trees just beyond it.

  All of a sudden he had an idea. He put a stone in his sling, drew his arm back, hesitated, then threw it hard toward the brush beyond the wolf. It struck the trunk of a tree there with a loud crack, and Cal threw himself sidewise, grabbing for his gun as he moved.

  Hardy had never seen a man move so fast. Nor did Cal stop; he changed position swiftly, moving out to a pile of rock, and retrieving his rifle as he did so. There he lay, poised and ready to shoot, leaving Hardy no better off.

  If they tried to move now, the slightest noise would make Cal turn around, and he would turn shooting. Hardy had hoped to get him out into the brush, away from the cave. He fitted another stone into the sling. There was only just enough room to throw if he threw flat, with a side-arm swing.

  He pitched the stone, getting this one farther out. It lit in the brush and Cal’s rifle muzzle lifted slightly, but he remained where he was, obviously puzzled. Then he got up to his knee, ready to move.

  “You get ready,” Hardy whispered. “We’ve got to run.”