The Burning Hills by Louis L’Amour
Contents:
· Chapter One
· Chapter Two
· Chapter Three
· Chapter Four
· Chapter Five
Chapter One
On a ridge above Texas Flat upon a rock shaped like flame, a hand moved upon the lava. The hand moved and then was still. In all that vast beige-gray silence there was no other movement and no sound.
A buzzard swinging in lazy circles above the serrated ridge had glimpsed that moving hand. Swinging lower, he saw a man who lay among the rocks atop the ridge. He was a long-bodied man in worn boots and jeans, a man with wide shoulders and a lean tough face.
It was the face of a hunter but now of a man hunted. A man who lay with his rifle beside him and who wore a belted gun; but the man still lived and the buzzard could wait.
Below and stretching away from the very foot of the ridge to lose itself in shimmering distance lay the glaring white expanse of the lava. Beyond the lava and even now riding up to draws that would eventually open upon the dry lake were three groups of horsemen who rode with a single thought.
To left and right of the hunted man’s position the comb-like ridge stretched away like a great wall dividing the dead white of the lava from the broken lands beyond. Once in those broken lands south of the border, a man might lose himself in any one of a thousand canyons and might himself be lost.
It was a land virtually without water, rarely visited by white men and roved only occasionally by Indians for whom this was a last stronghold and at whose hands no white man could expect mercy.
Great tablelands shouldered against the brassy sky, lofty pinnacles loomed higher still and over all that red and broken land the sun lay hot and dead heat gathered in the sullen canyons.
Far and away, beyond the broken land, some great peaks reached at the clouds, purple with distance, cool, remote and lost. In those mountains there would be water and there would be grass. There a man might find shade; there would be wild game; there would be sanctuary. The hunted man had not turned to look but he knew the mountains were there. He also knew what lay between.
Yet here and there even in that broken desert land between, if one but knew where to look, there would be water.
Northward, not yet within the range of the man’s eyes, moved the searching riders. Yet the buzzard had already seen those moving shadows that stirred not with the wind but of their own choice.
The buzzard saw them and after a time saw that these were men.
The buzzard could not reason but he knew the patterns that led to food. His entire life was built upon such fragments of knowledge and he knew that where such groups of men rode, death rode with them.
They were hard men bred of a hard and lonely land, men with eyes red-rimmed from sun-glare, faces whitened by alkali and muscles heavy with weariness. Yet they knew the man for whom they searched could not be far ahead and they pushed on, riding steadily into the hot still afternoon.
Trace Jordan could not see the riding men but he knew they were out there and he knew they looked for him. Once, seven hours ago, they believed they had him and his blood-stained shirt revealed how close a thing it had been.
They had caught him in the rocks above Mocking Bird Pass, brought to bay like a lean and hungry wolf pursued by hounds. And he had fought them there, a lean and hungry man, red-eyed and dangerous, a man driven and battered and hammered but a man not beaten, a man who had never been beaten.
A rifle bullet ricocheting from a rock had ripped an ugly tear through the flesh above his hip and he had lost blood.
They had seen him fall and, not yet knowing the manner of man they fought, they had closed in for the kill. They would be more cautious if the chance came again, for upon the rocks they had left more than blood … they had left a man dead and another sorely wounded and when finally they closed their trap they found nothing, simply nothing at all.
And then they began to see the fiber of the man they pursued, for he had gone soundlessly from among them, leaving their dead behind. Wounded — for they found his blood upon the rocks — but gone as if he had never been.
Somehow he had stopped the flow of blood; somehow he had left no trail; somehow he had vanished with the desert swallowing him, taking him back as one of her own into the wild loneliness of canyon and lava.
Lean and fierce and lonely, Trace Jordan was a man of wild places and far countries, a man fitted by his experience as a wild horse hunter, cowhand, buffalo hunter and prospector for the task that now lay before him.
His empty canteen rattled upon the rocks when he moved, so he lay still, trying not to think of water, his heart pounding slowly, heavily against the rock upon which he knelt. It was time to move … they would be coming soon. He could not see them but they would seek him out. And he needed rest — rest and water. He must find a place to hide, to wait them out.
Sliding back on his belly until the ridge covered his rising, he got awkwardly to his feet. He swayed then, trying to focus his eyes, gathering his failing strength. He had taken precious time to climb up here, knowing that if his pursuers happened to swing north or south he could gain distance by riding the other way. And time and distance were now the very stuff of life itself.
When he reached his horse he took time to roll a smoke and while his fingers fumbled at the cigarette he considered his problem.
They knew the country and he did not. They would know the trails and the hiding places and moreover they had with them Jacob Lantz, the best tracker in the southwest.
Jordan knew Lantz by reputation, as such men were always known in the west. Tales were told over the campfire by drifting cowhands and retold at bars and gambling tables, the stories of gunmen and trackers, of tough town marshals and crooked gamblers, until the mind of each western man was a storehouse of such information.
Jacob Lantz was a Dutch Indian — his father a Dutch trader, his mother a Ute squaw. Lantz was a man who tracked with his mind as well as with his senses. Even as his eyes spelled out the meaning of a trail, his mind would be probing far ahead to seek out the direction and destination of the man he trailed.
A plan was a dangerous thing, yet a plan he must have, a plan would give direction and purpose to his riding; and as soon as Lantz had time to solve the plan, he must shift to another. Yet there was a chance he might lead them off his trail by such a plan.
First, he would need to point himself toward an obvious destination, a way out of the country. There was a river crossing, one of the few crossings of the Colorado, far to the northwest. That would seem logical to Lantz and to the others, for the trail would avoid towns and people who might pass along information of his passing to his pursuers. So that could seem to be his destination.
Well along the road, he could turn suddenly at some point where his trail would be hard to find and take an entirely different track. Otherwise, knowing the trails, they might find a way to get on ahead and wait for him.
Stepping into the saddle, he walked the horse down the arroyo. Westward the country was a series of towering mesas split by deep canyons. The canyons were easy of access and easy to travel, yet any one of them might prove to be a trap. He might ride for miles to find himself up against a dead end and with no way out.
He must seek out a trail to the top of the mesa. He must ride up where the wind blew and the Indians traveled. Jordan slumped in the saddle, his body smelling of stale sweat, his clothes stiff with sweat and dust. Under him the horse plodded wearily and Jordan knew the poor beast was drawing on his last reserves of strength. Even that splendid animal, the last of his captured horses, was being defeated by the tolling pace and the rough country. And they had been all night and most of the day without water. A faint deer trail led out of the wash and he took it, leaving the heavy sand for the easier travel of the mountainside. For an hour he climbed steadily, riding up a long ridge of gravel and sand sparsely dotted with bear grass and prickly pear. Before him the shoulder of a vast escarpment had broken down and among the falls, some of it huge blocks of solid rock, the deer trail led steadily upward toward the mesa top. Hiding among the rocks and favoring his wounded side, he turned in the saddle and glanced back.