We were under cover now, out of view from both above and below, but that would not last long.
Ladder Walker came back up the trail from where he had scouted. “They’re closin’ in, Flagan. They’ll be under cover an’ waitin’ when we show up.”
The forest and the mountains have their own secret ways, and in the changing of days the seemingly changeless hills do also changed. Fallen snow settles into crevices in the rock, and expands in freezing, and so cracks the rock still further. Wind, rain, and blown sand hone the edges of the jagged upthrusts of rock, and find the weak places to hollow them away.
In the passing of years the great cliffs crumble into battlements with lower flanks of talus, scattered slopes of rock, and debris fallen from the crumbling escarpment above.
There upon the north side of the trail I saw a fallen pine, its roots torn from the earth and leaning far over, exposing a narrow opening through the thick timber and the rocks into a glade beyond. It might be no more than a dead end, but it was our only chance, and we took it.
Swiftly, I turned my horse up into the opening, scrambling around the roots, and down through the narrow gap beyond into the glade.
“Cap, you and Moss fix up that trail, will you? We’re going to need time.”
Maybe we had run into an even worse trap, but at least it was a trap of our own making, not one set and waiting for us. A blind man could sense that Black Fetchen was out for a kill. He did not want just Galloway and me, although no doubt we topped his list: he wanted us all.
While we held up, waiting for Cap and Moss to blot out our trail, I scouted around.
There was a narrow aisle among the pines that followed along the slope toward the north. A body could see along it for fifty or sixty yards. When Cap and Moss came up, we pushed on.
We rode on no trail except one we made, and we found our way with difficulty, weaving among trees and rocks, scrambling on steep slopes, easing down declivities where our horses almost slid on their hind quarters. Suddenly we came upon a great slash on the mountain, came upon it just where it ended.
A huge boulder had torn loose hundreds of feet up the mountain and had come rumbling down, crushing all before it, leaving a steep but natural way toward the higher slopes.
Costello glanced up the mountain. “We’ll never make it,” he said, seeing my look. “It’s too steep.”
“We’ll get down and walk,” I said. “We’ll lead our horses. It’s going to be a scramble, but it’ll be no easier for those who follow, and we’ll have the advantage of being above them.”
Swinging down, I led off. Mostly it was a matter of finding a way around the fallen trees and rocks, scrambling up slopes, pushing brush or fallen trees out of the way. In no time at all we were sweating, fighting for breath from the work and the altitude.
We were topping out at the head of our long corridor when Ladder kind of jerked in the saddle and gave an odd grunt. Almost at the same instant, we heard the shots.
We saw them at once. They were below us, in the open beyond some trees. They had lost our trail until we came into sight on the slope, and they had fired … from a good four hundred yards off.
Scrambling into the trees, I swung around on Ladder. “You hurt?”
“I caught one. You boys keep going. I can handle this.”
“Like hell.” I got down.
Cap and Galloway had already moved to the edge of the trees and were returning the searching fire the Fetchens were sending into the trees. We had bullets all around us, but most of them were hitting short … shooting up or down hill is always a chancy thing.
Ladder Walker had caught a .44 slug on the hip bone – a glancing shot that hit the bone and turned off, tearing a nasty gash in the flesh. It was not much more than a flesh wound, but he was losing blood.
We made a sort of pad with a patch of moss ripped from a tree trunk, binding it in place with his torn shirt.
We were under cover now, and our return fire had made them wary, so with Walker sitting his saddle, we worked our way along the slope and across Buck Creek Canyon.
There was nothing about this that a man could like. We had broken the trap, but we were far from free. They were wasting no shots, moving in carefully, determined to make an end of us. We had them above and below us, others closing in, and no doubt some trying to head us off.
Pulling up suddenly, I stood in my stirrups and looked off down through the trees toward the sand dunes. If they tried to follow along the side of the mountain below us, we might be able to drive them into the dunes.
Cap rode up beside me. “Flagan, there’s a creek somewhere up ahead that cuts through the mountain, or nearly so. I figure if we could get up there we could ride up the creek and cross the mountain; then we could come down behind the Buzzard Roost ranch.”
We moved along, taking our time, hunting out a trail as we rode. There was a good smell of pines in the air, and overhead a fine blue sky with white clouds that were darkening into gray, sort of bunching up as if the Good Lord was getting them corralled for a storm.
The traveling was easier now. We wound in and out amongst the fallen trees, most of them long dead, and the boulders that had tumbled down from the mountain higher up. The ground was thick with pine needles or moss, and there were some damp places where water was oozing out.
For about half a mile we had cover of a sort. We couldn’t see any of the Fetchen gang, nor could they shoot at us, but there was no chance to make time. Had we slipped from their trap, maybe only to get into a worse one, I wondered. We all rode with our Winchesters in our hands, ready for the trouble we knew was shaping up.
On our right the mountains rose steeply for more than two thousand feet, their peaks hidden in the dark clouds. The air grew still, and the few birds we saw were flying low, hunting cover. A few scattering drops of rain fell.
There came a puff of wind, and then a scattering shower, and we drew up to get into our slickers. The grass on the mountain slope seemed suddenly greener, the pines darker.
Glancing at Ladder Walker, I saw he looked almighty drawn and pale. He caught my eyes and said, “Don’t you worry your head, Sackett. I’m riding strong.”
It was no easy place to travel. Because the mountainside was so steep we had to pick our way carefully, stopping from time to time to give the horses a breathing spell. We were angling up again now, hunting for the cover of scattered trees that showed higher up.
Thunder rumbled back in the peaks, sounding like great boulders tumbling down a rocky corridor. Lightning flashed, giving a weird light.
Galloway, who was riding point at the moment, caught the movement of a man as he was lifting his rifle, and Galloway was not one to waste time. He shot right off his saddle, his rifle held waist-high … and nobody ever lived who was better at off-hand shooting than Galloway.
We heard a yelp of pain, then the clatter of a rifle falling among rocks; and then there was a burst of firing and we left our saddles as if we’d been shot from them. We hit ground running and firing, changing position as we hit grass, and all shooting as soon as we caught sight of something to shoot.
They’d caught us in the open, on the slope of a rock-crested knoll crowned with trees. We were short a hundred yards or so of the trees, but Cap and Galloway made the knoll and opened a covering fire. Costello helped Walker to a protected spot, whilst Moss and me gathered the horses and hustled them behind the knoll.
We stood there a moment, feeling the scattering big drops before an onrush of rain. The back of that knoll fell away where a watercourse made by mountain runoff had cut its way. There was shelter here for the horses, but there was a covered route down to the next canyon.
“They aren’t about to rush us,” I told Moss. “You stay here with the horses. I’m going down this gully to see if we can get out of here.”