Then Bell was outside of town and his horse was running free. The last thing he saw as he went out of town on a hard gallop was Colleen Riley. She had come out on the upstairs porch of the hotel and stared after him.
A half-mile out of town he slowed the horse to a canter, then to a walk.
Now the full force of those arrayed against him was making itself felt. Noble Wheeler was without doubt the man behind Devitt, the source of Devitt’s information, and perhaps the reason why he had chosen to get his timber from the Deep Creek forest.
No loan was to be had and he could ship no cattle. He was broke, flat broke.
He held the only two known routes into Deep Creek, but the enemy held the whip hand. Kesterson might continue to sell him supplies but it would mean a gun battle to get them. He was encircled and they could draw the noose tighter. It was small consolation that they could scarcely starve him out as long as he had beef.
One man was dead. Bell knew his own shooting well enough to know he had killed the unknown drygulcher who fired from the loft door.
His first shot had disarmed the man, his second had killed him. This was war—war to the death. Devitt had made that obvious in the brutal attack on Garry and Jones. And now in this attempt to kill him from ambush.
Bell could have spared the man in the loft, but only to give him another chance. And in this battle there were to be no second chances for anyone.
Jud Devitt had prepared his ground well, and it was equally obvious that he intended to use the forces of the law whenever possible. The old shooting in which Montana Brown had engaged had long ago been dropped without a charge being filed. No jury would convict him now, but he could be arrested and held for trial, and to resist arrest would be to play right into Devitt’s hands. Clay had no doubt the warrant would be served by a posse made up of Devitt’s own men.
Drawing up at the crest of a low hill, he scanned his back trail. It was growing late, and the sun was already behind the mountain. The softness of desert evening was settling over the mesquite country, and he sat his horse a minute, studying the terrain with a careful eye. At no time would he be safe, but there was nothing on the trail, no dust, no movement.
The palouse, restless for home, moved off of his own volition, and Clay let him go. The air was cooler now with the sudden coolness of a desert sundown. The pastels of evening gathered in changing color along the far off hills. The sky held a lone star, and somewhere a coyote yapped shrilly.
Before him the dark mass of the mountain loomed, bare rock, tufted with vegetation in the draws and canyons, and showing the darkness of forest on its higher slopes. A distant sound, foreign to the evening, caught his ears: he drew up sharply against the black of a clump of brush, listening.
The night was silent . . . no sound . . . only cool air, refreshing as a drink of clear, cold water. He drew it deep into his lungs, touched with the faint scent of sage. The palouse moved on, and slowly his hand came away from his gun butt.
Each clump of mesquite or juniper now was a spot of darkness. The floor of the desert was gray . . . more stars blossomed in the clear field of the sky. His horse walked on, and suddenly, there was a flicker of darker shadow among the mesquite clumps and metal clicked.
Clay threw himself flat along the horse just as something struck him a wicked blow on the shoulder. He grabbed wildly at the saddle horn and clutched it with a drowning man’s grip. There was another shot, and he was struck again, and he seemed to go tumbling forward, over and over into soft, velvety darkness, but his fingers clung to the one real thing in all this nightmare . . . the saddle horn. With all his will, his fingers shut down on it and held.
Through a heaving, roaring blackness he felt himself plunging ahead. Behind him there was another sharp, splitting crack . . . then no other sound.
Clay Bell fought his way back to consciousness into the sunlight. He lay flat on his back, half under a tree, and the sky beyond the tree was blue and flecked with fleecy clouds. He could hear his horse cropping grass near by, and he lay very still, afraid to move, trying to locate himself.
He had been to Tinkersville. That much was clear. There had been trouble there, but he’d ridden safely from the town. He scowled over that, puzzling at what else might have happened and where he might be now. Evening . . . it had been cool and pleasant . . . he had been riding. Then it all came back, clear and sharp. He had been ambushed, drygulched. Yet how could that be? The burro trail toward which he had been headed was unknown in the valley, and it was unlikely that any of Jud Devitt’s crew could have happened upon it.
Now pain made itself felt. It was his right shoulder. He rolled over carefully, using his left hand, pushing up to a sitting position. Carefully, turning his head on a stiff neck, he looked around.
He was among the ghost buildings of Cave Creek. Somehow his will must have kept his grip on that saddle horn until he reached here. Assurance of safety must have let his subconscious relax that death grip, and he had fallen. His mouth and throat were parched and there was no strength in him. Using his left hand, he pulled himself the dozen yards to the mountain stream and drank deep. Then, working with his left hand, he ripped the shirt over his wounds. Two bullets had hit him. One had skidded off the shoulder muscle, ripping the deltoid. This wound was scarcely more than a graze. The other had gone through his shoulder below the collarbone.
Carefully, not to start the bleeding again, he bathed both wounds in cold water. It was a slow, painstaking job, and when it was finished he lay back on the grass, panting heavily. His thoughts were muggy and he could not seem to bring them to any focus. Undoubtedly he had lost much blood. For a long while he lay on his back staring up at the sky.
A distant sound of firing brought him out of it. He struggled to his feet and started toward the palouse, but his weakness was too great. Something hooked over his boot toe and he fell, sprawling upon the ground.
When his eyes opened again it was sunset and the air was cool. He lay there against the grass, his shoulder on fire and his head humming. A long time later, while he was listening to the water running over the stones, he heard in his memory the sound of firing. Clay lifted his head to listen, but heard no sound. He remembered then that he heard the firing hours ago, before noon.
He lay back upon the grass. There had been trouble and he had not been there to help. He rolled over and got to his knees, crawling again to the stream where he could drink long and deep of the cold water. His thirst seemed without end . . . and he remembered from somewhere that thirst usually accompanied loss of blood
The memory of those shots blasting out of the darkness returned. Probably not Jud Devitt . . . how could the contractor have known of the old trail? But there was no reason for anyone being near this point unless to wait for him. Who in town would know that he used this trail? Or that the trail existed?
His head throbbed heavily and his shoulder flamed, but he sat up and tried to assay his position. Nothing in the situation was favorable except that he was alive. He had no way of knowing what had happened at the Gap, nor at The Notch. The shooting had to come from the latter place—he was still too far to hear firing from Emigrant Gap.
In his present condition he was no good to anyone. On the other hand, there was not a chance in a million that anyone would ride this way unless one of his own men came looking for him. The first thing would be to check his weapons to make sure he was prepared to defend himself, get the saddle off the palouse, and to dress his wounds, somehow.
He was on the bank of the stream with the nearest building not twenty yards off. It was the sagging frame structure of what had, by the faded sign, once been the town’s saloon. Across the street was an assay office, and farther down were other buildings, all of frame or log construction.