Bullets hailed around his shelter, most of them glancing off the rocks, but one got inside and ricocheted past his head. A hair closer and he would have been dead.
Flat on his belly he stuffed the tablet and pencil in his pocket and crawled along the bottom of the shallow cave. Painfully, he wormed his way along the cave for thirty yards and found a place where it was a few inches deeper and where some animal or bird had long since gathered sticks for a nest or home. Gathering some of the dead sticks together, Boone built a fire.
The long-dead wood made little smoke and the tiny flame was comforting. Later, when it was dark the reflection would give him away so he tried to shield it with rocks as much as he could. He held his blue and shaking fingers almost in the flame, but it was a long time before any warmth reached him.
They were waiting now, waiting for darkness. He must finish his letter. There would be no time later.
“Mighty cold, Son, I’ve moved a mite and got me a fire. Well, the black was dead but we had us about forty head of good horses ready to move. Sam and Lisha, they set out for Durango. We figured to buy Ma a new dress for her birthday and to get us some tools we needed and other fixings. Going in the boys had to drive past the DW where the Watsons ranched. They seen Dick a-watching them, but thought nothing of that at the time.
“Well, when they got into Durango the sheriff come high-tailing it up with five, six men, all armed heavy. They tell the boys they are under arrest for stealing horses. The boys tell them they trained them horses, that they was wild stock afore. The sheriff and that bunch with him, one of them was a Watson, they just laughed.
“Well, the boys was throwed in jail, but the sheriff, he wouldn’t let them get word to the rest of us. Only Johnny, he got to thinking and when the boys was slow gitting back, he mounts up and heads for town. But they was ready for him, the Watsons was.
“Johnny, he seen the horses in the corral, and he high-tails it for the sheriff. The sheriff is out of town, maybe a-purpose, and Johnny, he goes into the T-Diamond Saloon. And there’s three Watsons and two brothers-in-law of theirs, all setting around.
“These brothers-in-law, one named Ebberly, the other Boyd. This Boyd was some gun-slinger or had that reputation. Johnny, he never knowed them at all, but he knowed the Watsons. He asked the barkeep where was his brothers, and Dick Watson speaks up and says they are in jail for stealing horses, where he’ll soon be. Johnny, he knows what Ma would say, and remarkable for him, keeps his head. He says nothing and turns to go and Dick Watson says, “Like you stole that black mare.’
“The three Watsons are spread out and ready. He seen then it was a trap, but still he never knowed those other two which sat quiet near the door, never saying I, yes, or no. Johnny, he says, “I trained that black mare, Watson, an’ you kilt her. You snuck up an’ shot that pore little horse dead.’
““I never!’ Watson says, and folks say he looked mighty red in the face. “You’re a liar!’
“Watson grabbed iron and so did Johnny. The Watsons, they got three bullets into Johnny, but he still stood, so this Boyd, he shoots him in the back. Johnny went down, but there was two Watsons on the floor, one dead, and Dick badly hurt.
“Johnny, they figured for dead, and they was so busy gitting their kin to the doc they never thought of him. He was alive and he crawled out of there. A girl he knowed in town, she got her Pap, who was a vet, and he fixed Johnny up and hid him out.
“This here girl, she run down to the jail and told Lisha and Sam through the bars. She said they better get set, there’d be trouble. She had Johnny’s gun and she passed it through the bars and along with it a chunk of pipe standing close by.
“We heard about it after. The one Watson that was on his feet, him and Ebberly, Boyd and some half dozen others, they got them masks and come down to the jail to lynch the other boys. They got into the jail and the jailor he just stepped aside, easy as you please, and says, “In the second cell.’
“They rushed up. The boys just stood a-waiting, just like they didn’t know what was going to happen. The barred door swung open and then Lisha, he outs with his gun and that bunch scrambled, believe you me. One of them turns to slam shut the door, but Sam, he got his pipe betwixt the door and the jam to keep it from closing. That feller dragged iron, so Sam raised the pipe and shoved it into his throat. That feller went down. The mob beat it, and so the boys, they took out. They told that jailer they would surrender to a U.S. Marshal, but nobody else.
“Lisha and Sam, they went to the corral and got their horses, every head, and they started out of town. By that time the story got around that the Tremayne boys had killed two men and wounded a couple of others, then broke jail. So they fetched their guns and come running.
“They got Sam right off. Folks said he was shot nine times in that first volley. At that, Lisha rode back to pick him up, but he couldn’t get nigh the body, and could see by the way Sam was that he must be dead. So he headed off to home with his horses.”
Boone Tremayne put aside his letter and added a few tiny sticks to his little fire. It was so small a man might have held it in his two hands, but the little flame looked good, and it warmed his fingers which were cramped from writing and the cold.
An icy wind blew over the slope of the mountain. Boone looked longingly at the woods below, and the first silver line that was the Middle Fork of the Green, which stretched away almost due north from where he lay. If he could get down there he might still have a chance…but there was no chance. The lost blood, the lack of food and the cold had drawn upon his strength until he was only a dank shell of a man, huddled in his worn clothes, shivering and freezing and looking down at the hunters who held him.
Cautiously, the man under the shelf below was moving. He, too, was feeling the cold. “Well, feel it,” Boone whispered, “maybe next time you won’t be so anxious to go hunting a lone man!” He ricocheted another bullet off the rock shelf.
Several rifles replied, and suddenly angry, Boone fired a careful shot at the flash of one of the guns. He heard a rifle rattle on rocks as it fell, and then a heavy body tumbling into brush. More shots were fired, but now he had turned ugly, the loneliness, the cold, the fear of death, all crowded in upon him and he shot rapidly and frantically, at rifle flashes, and dusting the brush around the smoke of the fires. He fired his rifle empty and reloaded and then with careful shots, proceeded to weed the woods below.
Then he doused his fire and moved further along the undercut rock and found another place, almost as good as the last. Here he started another tiny blaze, shielding it with a large slab of flat rock.
“Finished off telling how Sam was kilt. Johnny, he was shot bad and we didn’t know if he was dead for two days, then that girl, Ellie Winters, she come up the mountain with the news. The town was mighty wrought up. Some of them was coming up after us.
“We kept watch, Burt, Lisha and me. Meanwhile, we tried figuring what to do. For Ma’s sake we would have to pull out, git up into the high meadows or west into the wild country over the Utah line.
“Now we knowed they was hunting Johnny, and Ellie’s Pa was worried too. So the three of us ups and goes down to Durango. Johnny, he mounted the horse we brought for him, and we dusted out of there.
“Slow, and careful not to leave no tracks, we moved out, leaving our cabin, our crop, everything but the horses. We made it west-northwest past Lone Cone and finally crossing the San Miguel into Uncompahgre Plateau country. We found us a little box canyon there with grass and water, and we moved in. By hunting we made out, but Ma was feeling poorly so Burt, he stayed with her while Lisha and me, we mounted up and with five head of horses, we headed for a little town north of us on the river. We sold our horses, bought up supplies and come back.