“You step careful, boy,” Reardon said. “Them Fetchens have no idea of anybody getting home alive.”
The Fetchens were going to be wary, and all the more so because they probably figured they’d either killed or wounded some of us when we left our saddles like that. Now they were getting return fire from only two rifles, with occasional shots from Costello, so they would be sure they were winning and had us nailed down.
Rifle in hand, I crept down that gully, sliding over wet boulders and through thick clumps of brush. All the time I was scouting a route down which we could bring our horses as well as ourselves.
Suddenly, from up above, a stick cracked. Instantly I froze into position, my eyes moving up slope. A man was easing along through the brush up there, his eyes looking back the way I had come. It seemed as if the Fetchens were closing in around my friends, and there wasn’t much I could do about it.
Going back now was out of the question, so I waited, knowing a rifle shot would alert them to trouble up here. When that man up there moved again … He moved.
He was a mite careless because he didn’t figure there was anybody so far in this direction, and when he moved I put my sights on him and held my aim, took a long breath, let it out, and squeezed off my shot. He was moving when I fired, but I had taken that into account, and my bullet took him right through the ribs.
He straightened up, held still for a moment, and then fell, head over heels down the slope, ending up within twenty feet of me.
Snaking through the brush, I got up to him and took his gun belt off him and slung it across my shoulders. Also taking up his rifle, I aimed it on the woods up above, where there were likely some others, and opened fire.
It was wild shooting, but I wanted to flush them out if I could, and also wanted to warn my folks back there that it was time to get out.
There were nine shots left in the Winchester, and I dusted those woods with them; then I threw down the rifle and slipped back the way I had come. A few shots were fired from somewhere up yonder, fired at the place from which I’d been shooting but I was fifty yards off by that time and well down in the watercourse where I’d been traveling.
Waiting and listening, it was only minutes until I heard movement behind me and, rifle up, I held ready for trouble.
First thing I saw was Moss Reardon. “Hold your fire, boy,” he said. “It’s us a-comin’.”
Me, I went off down the line and brought up on the edge of a small canyon; it was no trouble to get down at that point. When the others bunched around, I pointed down canyon. “Yonder’s the dunes. And there seems to be a creek running along there. I take it we’d better reach for the creek and sort of take account of things.”
“Might be Medano Creek,” Cap said.
“What’s that amount to?”
“If it’s Medano, we can foller it up and over the divide. I figure it will bring us out back in the hills from Buzzard Roost.”
Once more in the saddle, I led off down the canyon, and soon enough we were under the cottonwoods and willows, with a trickle of water at our feet. There was a little rain falling by then, and lightning playing tag amongst the peaks.
Ladder seemed to be in bad shape. He was looking mighty peaked. He’d lost a sight of blood, and that crawling and sliding hadn’t done him any good.
The place we’d come to had six-foot banks, and there was a kind of S bend in the stream that gave us the shelter of banks on all sides. Just beyond were the dunes. From a high point on the bank we could see where the creek came down out of the Sangre de Cris-tos.
“We might as well face up to it,” Galloway said. “We’re backed up against death. Those boys are downstream of us and they’re up on the mountain, and they surely count us to be dead before nightfall.”
“One of them doesn’t. I left him stretched out up yonder. This here’s his gun belt.”
“One less to carry a rifle against us,” Moss said. He leaned back against the bank. “Gol durn it. I ain’t as young as I used to be. This scramblin’ around over mountains ain’t what I’m trimmed for. I’m a horse-and-saddle man myself.”
“I’d walk if I could get out of here,” Galloway said.
Costello was saying nothing. He was just lying yonder looking all played out. He was no youngster, and he’d been mistreated by the Fetchens. So we had a wounded man and one in no shape to go through much of this traveling, and we were a whole mountain away from home.
That Medano Creek might be the way, but I didn’t like the look of it. It opened up too wide by far for safety.
“Make some coffee, somebody,” I suggested. “They know already where we are.”
Moss dug into his war-bag for the coffee and I poked around, picking up brush and bark to build us a fire. It took no time at all to have water boiling and the smell of coffee in the air. We had a snug enough place for the moment, with some shelter from gunfire, and water as we needed it.
Galloway and Cap had gone to work to rig a lean-to shelter for Ladder Walker.
There were willow branches leaning out from the bank and they wove other branches among them until they had the willows leaning down and making a kind of roof for those who would lie down. Where the creek curved around there were two or three big old cotton-woods and we bunched the horses there.
We sat around, shoulders bent against the rain, gulping hot coffee and trying to figure what we were going to do.
The Fetchens had us bunched for the kill. They were good mountain fighters, and they had herded us right into a corner. Maybe we could ride up Medano Creek and get clean away, but it looked too inviting to me. It would be a death trap if they waited for us up there where the cliffs grew high.
If we got out of this alive we’d have to be lucky. We’d have to be hung with four-leaf clovers – and I couldn’t see any clover around here.
Chapter 15
The worst of it was, we weren’t getting much of a look at those boys. They were playing it safe, slipping about in the trees and brush as slick as Comanches.
“Galloway,” I said, “I’m getting sort of peevish. Seems to me we’ve let those boys have at us about long enough. A time comes when a man just can’t side-step a fight no longer. We’ve waited for them to bring it to us, and they’ve done no such thing, so I figure it’s up to you and me to take it to them.”
“You give me time for another cup of coffee,” Galloway said, “and I’ll come along with you.”
Cap Rountree looked at us thoughtfully. “What you expect us to do … mildew?”
Me, I just grinned at him. “Cap, I know you’re an old he coon from the high-up hills, but the fewer we have out there the better. You boys can stay right here. They’ll be expecting us to move on pretty quick, and they’ll be settled down waiting for it. Well, me and Galloway figure to stir them up a mite.
“Anyway,” I went on, “Ladder’s in no shape to travel more’n he’s going to have to, getting out of here. Costello’s in pretty bad shape, too. I figure you and Moss can hold this place if they try to attack you, which I doubt they will.”
Galloway and me, we picked up our rifles and just sort of filtered back into the brush. “You thinking the same thing I am?” I said.
“Their horses?”
“Uh-huh. If we set them afoot we’ve got a free ride … after we get through that valley yonder.”
We’d been timber-raised, like most Tennessee mountain boys, so when we left our horses we swapped our boots for moccasins, which we always carried in our saddlebags.
The weather was clouded up again and it was likely to rain at any moment. We found no sign of the Fetchens until I came upon a corn-shuck cigarette lying on the moss near the butt end of a fallen tree. It was dry, so it must have been dropped since the last shower. After scouting around we found tracks, and then we worked our way up the mountain, moving all the quieter because of the rain-soaked ground.