The footsteps stopped … hesitated. A sound of brush against leather came to me, and I put my thumb on the hammer of the Winchester. I knew right where the man was standing and at this distance with a rifle I could not miss. Whatever happened afterward, that first man was as good as dead.
He didn’t like it. I could almost see his mind working. He suddenly decided he had heard nothing. He still stood there, and I gambled and eased back a little further. There was no sound, and I withdrew stealthily to my horse.
Mounting, I walked the horse out of the brush-choked canyon and started back toward the slide. But when I reached it I went on past.
Around a bend I drew up and taking out a handkerchief, mopped my face.
Then I walked my horse deeper into the unknown canyon. I’d found what I wanted to know. Slade and his gang were here. They were waiting to strike. Even now they were meeting with Morgan Park.
Tomorrow?
SEVENTEEN
It was mid-afternoon before I found a trail out of Poison Canyon. It was at the head of the canyon, and I came up out of it heading almost due east. Rounding the end of the canyon, I started back along Dark Canyon Plateau.
At sundown there still was far to go, and when my horse began to tug the bit toward the north, I let him have his head. Ten minutes later we had come up to a spring.
My horse was dead beat and so was I. It would soon be dark, and the trail was only vaguely familiar to me. The spring stood in a small grove of aspens over against the mountain. There were tracks of deer and wild horses, but no tracks of shod horses, nor of men.
Stripping the saddle from the buckskin, I gave him a hurried rubdown with a handful of dry grass, and picketed him out on a patch of grass. Impatient as I was, I knew better than to arrive home on a worn-out horse.
Behind me the Sweet Alice Hills lifted their rough shoulders, all of a thousand feet higher than the spring where I was camped. Eastward the sun was setting over the Blue Mountains and, hunkered down over a tiny fire, I prepared my supper, worried and on edge because of all that might be happening.
Yet, as the evening drew on, my anxiety left me. The hills were silent and dark. There was only a faint trickling of water from the spring, and the comfortable, quieting sound of my horse cropping grass.
Putting on more coffee I sat back, watching the fire, but far enough away from it to be out of sight. But I was not worried. I had strayed well away from the trail across the plateau, and if Morgan Park elected to return that night, there was no danger that he could find me.
Finally, banking my fire, I rolled in my blankets and was ready to sleep. But in those last minutes before I slept I decided what to do. Up to now we had been attacked; now I would stage a one-man counterattack. I would strike at the home ranch of the CP.
At daybreak, when long streamers of mist lay in the canyons, I was up and making coffee. As soon as I had eaten I saddled up and started back, and I rode swiftly.
The CP lay among low, rolling hills covered with sparse grass and salt-bush. Here and there were were clumps of snowberry. Along the slopes were scattered pifion and juniper, and weaving among them I worked my way close to the ranch.
It lay deserted and still. A windmill turned lazily, and there were a few horses in the corral. Watching, I saw a big-bellied, greasy cook come to the door and throw out a pan of water.
He stood on the steps, mopping his face with a towel, then turned back inside. When the door closed, I swung to the saddle again, rode close, then suddenly spurred my horse and went into the yard on a dead run.
As I had planned, the sound of the racing horse brought the cook running to the door. He rushed outside and I slid my horse to a stop, with my gun on him.
His face went pale, then red. He started to speak but I dropped off my horse, turned him around, and tied him up. Then I grabbed him by the collar, dragged him inside, and rolled him under the bed. He promptly began to yell so I rolled him out and gagged him solidly.
Outside once more, I took down the corral bars and hazed all the fresh horses out and drove them off. Rummaging around in the tool shed, I found some giant powder that had been used to blast rock. I went back into the house and raised up a stone in the back wall of the fireplace and put the can of powder in the hole, then trailed a short fuse from it into the fireplace itself.
Finding several shotgun shells, I scattered them around and brushed ashes over them. Then I placed a few logs carefully over them, and filled a can with water for coffee and placed it on top.
Returning to the brush on a little bench overlooking the ranch, I settled down for a long wait.
A slow hour passed. The leaf mold upon which I lay was soft and comfortable. Several times I dozed a little, weary from my long ride. Once a rattler crawled by within a few feet of my head. A packrat stared at me, his nose twitching. He came closer and looked again. Crows quarreled in the trees above me.
And then I saw the riders. One look was enough.
Whatever had happened at the Two-Bar, these men were not victorious. There were nine in the group and two were bandaged, one with his skull bound up, the other with an arm in a sling. Another was being brought home tied over his saddle, head and heels hanging.
Lifting my rifle, I waited until they were down the hill and close to the house. Then I put my rifle to my shoulder and fired three times as fast as I could trigger the rifle.
A horse screamed and leaped into the air, half-turning and scattering the group. A man grabbed at his leg, lost balance and fell, his foot catching in the stirrup. His horse raced fifty yards, then stopped.
As one man they had scattered, some for the barn, others for the main house or the bunkhouse.
Two bullets I put into the barn wall, and then turned and shot at the hinges on the kitchen door. Two bullets in the lower hinge, then two in the upper. Taking time out, I reloaded.
The door hung in place, but I was sure the shots had gone true. Shifting my aim I smashed a window, holding the sight just above the sill where a head would be apt to be. Then I shifted and broke another window, swinging the rifle further to fire at an ambitious cowhand who was trying to get a shot at me from the barn door.
I took aim at the top hinge again, and taking up the slack of the trigger, eased back. The rifle leaped in my hands and the door sagged. Hastily I shifted my aim to the lower hinge and finished it off with two more shots.
My position was perfect. I lay among rocks and brush on a bench overlooking the ranch yard, where the barn door, the rear of the house and every inch of the space around the bunkhouse door were visible. Nor was there any way for a man to slip out and get into the brush without exposing himself. There was no cover away from the ranch buildings.
The door was open now, and I put two rifle bullets through the opening, heard a startled yelp from one of the men, then fired again, knocking more glass out of the window. Although I still had shells in the rifle, I took time out to refill the magazine.
Several minutes passed. I put the rifle down and rolled a smoke. Shifting my position to one more comfortable, I waited. A couple of tentative shots were fired from the house, both wide of my position.
One man suddenly ducked from the barn and darted toward a heavily planked water trough. I let him run, then as he dove behind the trough I put two bullets through it, right over his head, letting the water drain out over his head and shoulders. When he made a move, I put a bullet into the dirt beside him.
Waiting, I saw his rifle barrel come up. His position was a little better, but obviously he was trying to reach the corner of the corral from which he might outflank me. His rifle barrel was steadied against the post at the end of the trough. Taking careful aim at the edge of the post just above the rifle, I fired.