Novel 1963 - Dark Canyon (v5.0) Read online

  He had an idea he would have that cash from Gaylord Riley.

  The ranch was deserted when Riley rode into the yard. A note on the table told him that all three men had gone back to the basin to brand stock.

  Riley stripped the horses of their packs and turned them into the corral; then he took in the articles purchased in Rimrock and arranged them on the shelves. Among other things he had bought five hundred rounds of ammunition.

  He chuckled when he recalled the expression on the storekeeper’s face when he had given his order. “Five hundred rounds! What are you expecting? A war?”

  “Hate to have one come an’ not be ready to take part,” Riley had replied. “Like goin’ to a hangin’ and forgettin’ your rope.”

  He heard the horse walk into the yard, and turned quickly to the door. It was Desloge.

  The outlaw drew up, smiling with his thin lips. “Like old times, ain’t it, Riley?” he said.

  “What do you mean? Old times? I never saw you but once in my life before, and I’ve no business with you.”

  “Well, now.” Desloge was very sure of himself. He clasped his palms on the pommel and continued to smile, but there was no friendliness in his eyes. “That’s as may be. S’posin’ I was to go to Dan Shattuck with what I know? Or to that Swede sheriff?”

  Riley’s reaction was so swift that Desloge had no time to prepare, no time to resist. A swift blow knocked his hands loose from the pommel, then he was jerked from the saddle.

  Desloge hit the ground with a thump, and Riley grabbed him by the collar with a short, twisting grip that set the outlaw to gagging. Jerking him to his knees while Desloge’s hands clawed at his wrist, Riley slapped him three times across the face, ringing blows that left streaks where they landed. Then he threw Desloge to the ground and stepped back.

  “You’ve got a gun,” he said coolly. “All you’ve got to lose is your life.”

  Desloge lay where he had fallen, his stomach tight with fear. Nothing had gone as he had planned. He had been sure his threats would frighten Riley into a payoff, and he knew Riley had the money. He had planned to suggest that for a thousand dollars he would ride clear out of the country, but now he had a sickening realization he would be lucky to get out alive. He had expected a half-frightened boy. He had cornered a mountain lobo.

  “All I wanted,” he said, and his voice was shaking, “was a road stake. Say a hundred dollars?” Riley had shaken his confidence—nine hundred dollars’ worth.

  “Ride out the way you rode in,” Riley replied, “and be glad you’re able. And stay away from Rimrock. If I hear one word of this I’ll hunt you down and hang your pelt on the nearest tree.”

  Desloge struggled to his feet, careful to keep his hands free of his gun. Even more carefully he climbed into his saddle. As he settled down and started to turn his horse, four men rode into the ranch yard. Three rode in from the basin: Tell Sackett, Darby Lewis, and Cruz. The fourth was a hard-faced man with white hair, a stranger to the other three.

  “Take a good look,” the white-haired man advised them, “then you’ll be able to swear that man rode away from here, and what he looked like. Get that?”

  And then the white-haired man turned his horse and rode away, following Desloge.

  Forty minutes later Desloge slowed his running horse to walk him down a slope near a butte.

  It was sundown, and the shadows were long. Odd, how much the shadows added to the fearsomeness of this wild land. Down there, near the brush … that rock looked like a man on a horse.

  Desloge rode on, and the rock moved. It not only looked like a man on a horse; it was a man on a horse, and he knew the man. A man with white hair and a seamed brown face.

  And in that instant, Desloge knew he was going to die.

  He had killed men, but he had never known how it felt to be about to die. He knew now.

  “Couldn’t let him live honest, could you?” There was no anger in the man’s voice. “Your kind could never do that. He put fear into you, and you’d ride away, but sooner or later you’d talk. You would spoil something fine.”

  Desloge struggled for words. He wanted to beg, but he had a feeling it would be useless. He wanted to deny what the man said, but he would be lying; and he felt that now was not a time to lie.

  “I’ll ride,” he said at last. “I won’t even stop for my warbag. I’ll just keep going.”

  “You’ve killed men. You’ve got a gun.”

  It had grown dark, but then an early moon had brought more light. Desloge cleared his throat. He started to speak, and then he thought he saw his chance. He touched his horse with a spur and swept his hand down for his gun as the horse leaped.

  The gun cleared the holster. He felt a bursting sense of triumph as his gun swept up, then down on its target. He’d show that old—

  He ran into something in the darkness. Something white-hot that burned all the way through him and somehow started him floating toward the ground. He felt himself hit and roll over; and then he was looking up at the moon and he was dead.

  It was Sheriff Ed Larsen who found the body.

  He was not surprised. Desloge had come to the sort of end such men as Desloge all come to sooner or later, led to it in many cases by their very attempt to escape it.

  Nor was it by accident that he found the body, for he had been trailing Desloge and had hoped to catch him before he reached Riley’s ranch.

  Larsen, who had seen many men die, was never astonished by death. Desloge had had his chance. His gun lay where it had been jolted from his hand. He had been struck by only one bullet and there was almost no blood. Death in this case appeared singularly undramatic.

  Despite his age, Larsen was a powerful man. He picked up the dead man and draped him over the empty saddle of his horse, then leading the horse, he returned to his own, took some piggin strings, and tied the body.

  He turned back to go to Rimrock, but the Shattuck ranch was closer, and he went there.

  There was dancing at the ranch. Marie came quickly to the door at the sound of the horses, and Larsen thought he detected disappointment in her eyes when she recognized him. He had dropped the reins of the dead man’s horse back at the edge of the light.

  “Gaylord Riley? He is not here?”

  “Did you think he would be?” Shattuck had come to the door, followed by Oliver and two other men, Eustis and Bigelow. “In this house?”

  Larsen glanced slyly at Marie. “I thought so,” he said. “I thought he might be … around.”

  “What’s the matter?”

  “Feller killed … oudt by the buttes.”

  “Riley!” Eustis exclaimed. “By the Lord Harry, we’ve got him! Need a posse, Sheriff?”

  “If you like, come. Dere will be no trouble, I t’ink.”

  “He has some men out there,” Shattuck said, “but Lewis won’t fight. Neither will Cruz. Not when he sees who it is.”

  “Cruz will fight,” Pico interrupted. “He will die, if need be.”

  “Then we’ll hang Cruz along with him,” Eustis said angrily. “I’ve lost sixty, seventy head in the past two weeks.”

  Pico looked at him. “To hang Cruz will not be easy … nor to hang Riley. Men will die before either is hung.”

  Dan Shattuck glanced sharply at Pico. The Mexican was a shrewd judge of men, and he thought he detected a note of liking in his voice.

  “You are not with us, Pico?”

  “In this, I am with the sheriff. I think he will do what should be done. To talk of hanging is foolish.”

  “Stay here then, and be damned! We don’t need you!” This was Eustis, who was a hothead.

  The men rushed to get their horses, and as Larsen and Pico stood together, waiting, they heard another horse slip away in the darkness.

  Pico smiled … she had chosen well. The horse she had taken was a racing mare. It is good to be young and in love, he told himself. Like my own daughter she is, he thought, and I was afraid it would not come for her—the joy, and the hurt.


  The mare ran, then trotted; ran and trotted, walked and ran again. Gaylord Riley heard the racing horse and was waiting on the trail in the moonlight when she appeared.

  She drew up, swinging her horse broadside to him. “Riley, did you kill Desloge?”

  “No.”

  “They believe you did. They’re coming for you, Larsen and the ranchers!”

  “All right!” he said calmly.

  She almost cried with impatience. “Don’t just stand there! You must get away. You can go to Dandy Crossing!”

  “I’ll wait for them.”

  She started to protest, then recognized the futility of it. “They’ll not believe you,” she said.

  “I have wanted a home too long to run from it now. I shall stay.” He indicated the house. “Go inside. I’ll put your mare in the stable out of sight.”

  She was surprised at the neatness of the room, and she liked the way it was built. She looked around curiously. There were two doors, closed up now, doors obviously meant to lead to other rooms.

  When he came into the house she was drinking coffee. She looked at him, so tall and strong; yet somehow so much alone, and her hands wanted to reach out to him.

  “I have not thanked you,” he said. And then he added, “When this is over, I should like to come calling.”

  He gestured around, not waiting for her reply. “This is only one room. There will be seven or eight. I shall build the house in the shape of an L, with the open side toward the south, I think. The setting sun is beautiful, but it can be hot.

  “I want some old Spanish furniture, large, very comfortable, suitable for this house. And I want a garden out there.” He motioned toward the south. “I have heard of flowers that do well at this altitude, and I shall send for as many as I can think of, or hear of.”

  They heard the sound of the horses on the hard trail, and on the rocks.

  “When this is over,” he said, “I shall want you here … always.”

  He was standing alone in the moonlight when the sheriff rode into the yard with the posse.

  “Late riding, Sheriff,” he said quietly, “but you’re in good company. Or are you?”

  “We want you for killing Desloge!” Eustis announced loudly. “Drop those gun belts!”

  “I talk here,” Larsen said sternly.

  Dan Shattuck was a man honest with himself, if stubborn and opinionated, and he found himself admiring the cool courage of the young man who stood alone in the night, facing a hanging posse. There was no bravado in this young rancher, only a calmness, a certainty of himself.

  “Did you see Desloge today?” Larsen asked.

  “He was here.”

  “What for?”

  “That’s my business.”

  “It is my pusiness now. He has been killed.”

  “I didn’t do it.”

  Eustis started to interrupt, but stopped at Larsen’s lifted hand.

  Cruz moved out of the darkness and took his place a few yards from Riley. Darby Lewis was just beyond him. Tell Sackett walked up and stood beside Riley, waiting.

  “Come away from there, Darby!” Oliver said. “This isn’t your fight!”

  Surprisingly, Darby replied, “If you draw a gun, it is my fight,” he said. “I ride for the brand.”

  Cruz spoke up, telling quietly of the strange man with white hair and his advice to them.

  “A lie!” Eustis said.

  Cruz looked at him. “Another time, señor, we will speak of that. I do not lie.”

  “He’s right,” Darby agreed. “Never saw the man before, but I’ll read you this. He was nobody to mess with.”

  Sheriff Larsen believed them, Riley was sure of that. There was no telling what Shattuck believed, but Eustis did not believe, nor did the others, except Oliver.

  Larsen’s gaze shifted to Sackett. “You I do not know.”

  “I’m Tell Sackett,” the man replied, “and I ride for the brand—or shoot for it.”

  Sackett … several pairs of eyes turned to look again, for it was a known name.

  “One question,” Larsen said. He seemed ready to leave. “Had you ever seen Desloge before?”

  “Yes … once before, and only once. He was a thief and a cow rustler. I ordered him off the place.”

  “I t’ink dat concludes our pusiness,” Larsen said. “We go back to town.”

  “Now, see here!” Eustis protested.

  “We go back to town,” Larsen repeated.

  Dan Shattuck was strangely silent. Bigelow and the others looked to him for leadership, but he said nothing. Only once Larsen saw Shattuck’s eyes stray toward the house, but whatever was in his mind remained unspoken.

  Eustis alone objected. “Damn it, man! We came out here after a rustler, and I’ll be damned if—”

  “I keep the peace here,” Larsen said. “You will ride back with us. You will go back freely, or as my prisoner.”

  “Well, I’ll be damned if—”

  “We go,” Larsen said, and they went.

  CHAPTER 11

  CRUZ AND THE others strolled away, and Gaylord Riley stood alone, staring into the night, listening to the fading sounds of the posse. So far, so good, but nothing had been changed—nothing had been changed in the least.

  Only Larsen had stood between them and gunplay, and even he might not have averted it had not Dan Shattuck hung back. Why?

  Turning toward the house, he saw the movement within, and suddenly he knew.

  Shattuck knew or had guessed that Marie was here, and had the house been attacked, her presence would have been discovered. And no explanation would have prevented people from thinking the worst.

  He went into the house and closed the door behind him, and Marie came quickly to him. “What you said before they came”—she caught his arm—“did you mean that?”

  Miserably, he knew he had no right to involve her in what lay ahead, yet it was what he had wished to say, and the words, started from him as they had been, were nevertheless what he felt. But when he recalled Jim Colburn and the others, a connection that sooner or later must be exposed, he hesitated.

  She saw the hesitation, and misunderstood. Abruptly, her face pale, she pushed by him and started for the door.

  “Please! Let me answer.”

  “You didn’t mean it,” she said. “You didn’t mean it.”

  “I meant it,” he insisted, “but I’ve no right. I—”

  She ran out the door, and went to her horse, which Cruz was holding for her. Riley started after her, then stopped. For what was there to say? How could he ask her to share what he faced? His ranch was at least half owned by his outlaw friends, and it was to them he owed his first loyalty. And there was trouble coming, trouble that would split the Rimrock area wide open, and he would be a fool to ask her to join him in that. Especially when Dan Shattuck was on the other side.

  A WEEK PASSED, and then another. The branding went more slowly as they found fewer unbranded cattle. They had begun to know the terrain, and now each rider carried a running iron and branded any that needed it, wherever they could be found.

  There was much to do besides the branding. They built a dozen small spreader dams on hillsides to spread out the runoff and give the water a chance to sink into the ground; and they built a bunkhouse. Fall would be coming with its cold winds, and winter with its snow. There was no need to build windbreaks, for they came naturally in this country of mesas, canyons, and jumbled heaps of boulders. From a meadow near a seep, Riley, helped by Sackett, cut several tons of hay.

  Tell Sackett, the tall, quiet young man from Tennessee, used a scythe easily and with skill. The man cut the hay, stacked it for winter, and, knowing how cowhands hate to do manual labor, Riley took it on himself to cut wood for the winter. He rigged a stone-boat and hauled logs from wherever he found them. There were a number of deadfalls, trees that had fallen or had been blown down, and these he gathered first, to remove the danger of fire in the woods and to give what grass might come up a
chance.

  They saw no one, and they heard no news. None of them went near Rimrock, nor did any rider from the town or the other ranches approach them. Once, riding to Dandy Crossing after tobacco, Darby Lewis heard that Doc Beaman was talking up trouble over the death of his nephew, insisting that he had been murdered, his cattle stolen. Eustis was no longer even speaking to Larsen, and had banded together with Bigelow and some others to seek the sheriff’s removal from office.

  In the days that followed, Riley began his exploration of Dark Canyon. It was a gorge from fifteen hundred to two thousand feet deep, so narrow that for miles the sun never reached the bottom except at noon, when it was directly overhead. In some places scarcely a hundred feet wide, it ran from Elk Ridge, some miles east of the ranch, to the Colorado, where it ended as a mere slit in the rock wall.

  Much of the canyon bottom was choked with a thick growth of trees and brush, dotted with pools of clear, cold water supplied by small streams trickling down from a number of springs higher up the canyon, as well as in the branch canyons. Here and there the pools were fairly deep, and were shaded with cottonwood, box elder, ash, and ferns. When sunlight touched the higher walls of the canyon it turned to amazing color the sandstone and limestone walls, stained by water, streaked by iron or salt. Only one trail led to the bottom, a dim trail used only by wild animals.

  On one of his exploring trips in the canyon, Riley dismounted and walked ahead of his horse, allowing the animal to choose its own way. At times the inside stirrup scraped the wall as the horse edged past.

  The walls towered immensely high above him. It was very still. Pausing, he listened, and beside him his horse listened, ears pricked.

  Great boulders bulked among the trees; willows leaned over the still, cold pools. There was no sound but the faint trickle of water and the hum of bees. When a rock fell, it only emphasized the stillness and solitude of the place.

  Riley walked on, almost on tiptoe, bringing his own silence to the silence of the canyon. If worse came to worst, he thought, he would come here, he would hide out here.