somewhere, but pretty soon I began to get a feeling I didn’t like very much.
Sometimes a man’s senses will pick up sounds or glimpses not strong enough to
make an impression on him but they affect his thinking anyway. Maybe that’s all
there is to instinct or the awareness a man develops when he’s in dangerous
country. One thing I do know, his senses become tuned to sounds above and below
the usual ranges of hearing.
We caught, of a sudden, a faint smell of dust on the air. There was no wind, but
there was dust. We walked our horses forward and I watched Sate’s ears. Those
ears pricked up, like the mustang he was, and I knew he was aware of something
himself.
My eyes caught an impression and I walked my horse over for a look where part of
the bark was peeled back from a branch. There were horses’ tracks on the ground
around the bush.
“Three or four, wouldn’t you say, Tyrel?”
“Five. This one is different. The horses must have stood here around two hours,
and then the fifth one came up but he didn’t stop or get down.”
Several cigarette butts were under a tree near where the horses had been
tethered, and the stub of a black cigar. We were already further north than we
had planned to go and suddenly it came to me. “Orrin, we’re on the Alvarado
grant.”
He looked around, studied our back trail and said. “I think it’s Torres.
Somebody is laying for him.”
He walked his horse along, studying tracks. One of the horses had small feet, a
light, almost prancing step. We both knew that track. A man who can read sign
can read a track the way a banker would a signature. That small hoof and light
step, and that sidling way of moving was Reed Carney’s show horse.
Whoever the others had been, and the chances were Reed Carney had joined up with
Fetterson and Pritts, they had waited there until the fifth man came along to
get them. And that meant he could have been a lookout, watching for the man they
were to kill.
Now we were assuming a good deal. Maybe. But there was just nothing to bring a
party up here … not in those days.
Orrin shucked his Winchester.
It was pine timber now and the trail angled up the slope through the trees. When
we stopped again we were high up and the air was so clear you could see for
miles. The rim was not far ahead. We saw them.
Four riders, and below on the slope a fifth one, scouting. And off across the
valley floor, a plume of dust that looked like it must be the one who was to be
the target.
The men were below us, taking up position to cover a place not sixty yards from
their rifles. They were a hundred feet or so higher than the rider, and he would
be in the open.
Orrin and me left our horses in the trees. We stood on the edge of the mesa with
a straight drop of about seventy feet right ahead of us, then the talus sloped
away steeply to where the five men had gathered after leaving their horses tied
to the brush a good hundred yards off.
They were well concealed from below. There was no escape for them, however,
except to right or left. They could not come up the hill, and they could not go
over the rim. Orrin found himself a nice spot behind a wedged-up slab of rock.
Me, I was sizing up a big boulder and getting an idea. That boulder sat right on
the edge of the mesa, in fact it was a part of the edge that was ready to fall
… with a little help.
Now I like to roll rocks. Sure, it’s crazy, but I like to see them roll and
bounce and take a lot of debris with them. So I walked to the rim, braced myself
against the trunk of a gnarled old cedar and put my feet against the edge of
that rock.
The rider they were waiting for was almost in sight. When I put my boots against
that rock my knees had to be doubled up, so I began to push. I began to
straighten them out. The rock crunched heavily, teetered slightly, and then with
a slow, majestic movement it turned over and fell.
The huge boulder hit with a heavy thud and turned over, gained speed, and rolled
down the hill. The riders glanced around and seemed unable to move, and then as
that boulder turned over and started to fall, they scattered like sheep.
At the same instant, Orrin lifted his rifle and put a bullet into the brush
ahead of their horses. One of the broncs reared up and as Orrin fired again, he
jerked his head and ripping off a branch of the brush, broke free and started to
run, holding his head to one side to keep from tripping on the branch.
The lone horseman had come into sight, and when he stared up the mountain, I
lifted my hat and waved, knowing from his fawn-colored sombrero that it was
Torres. Doubtfully, he lifted a hand, unable to make us out at that distance.
One of the men started for their horses and Orrin put a bullet into the ground
ahead of him and the man dove for shelter. Orrin levered another shot into the
rocks where he disappeared then sat back and lighted up one of those Spanish
cigars.
It was downright hot. Settling in behind some rocks I took a pull at my canteen
and figured down where they were it had to be hotter than up here where we had
some shade.
“I figure if those men have to walk home,” Orrin said, “It might cool their
tempers some.”
A slow half hour passed before one of the men down below got ambitious. My rifle
put a bullet so close it must have singed his whiskers and he hunkered down in
the rocks. Funny part of it was, we could see them plain as day. Had we wanted
to kill them we could have. And then we heard a horse coming through the trees
and I walked back to meet Torres.
“What happens, señor?” He looked sharply from Orrin to me.
“Looks like you were expected. Orrin and me were hunting a place for ourselves
and we found some tracks, and when we followed them up there were five men down
there.” I showed him where. Then I explained our idea about the horses and he
agreed.
“It will be for me to do, señor.”
He went off down the slope and after awhile I saw him come out of the trees,
untie the horses and run them off.
When Torres rode back Orrin came up to join us. “It is much you have done for
me,” Torres said. “I shall not forget.”
“It is nothing,” I said, “one of them is Reed Carney.”
“Gracias, Señor Sackett,” Torres said. “I believed I was safe so far from the
hacienda, but a man is safe nowhere.”
Riding back toward Mora I kept still and let Orrin and Torres get acquainted.
Torres was a solid man and I knew Orrin would like him, and Torres liked people,
so the contrary was true.
Torres turned off toward the ranch and we rode on into Mora. We got down in
front of the saloon and strolled inside. It took one glance to see we weren’t
among friends. For one thing there wasn’t a Mex in the place and this was mostly
a Mexican town, and there were faces I remembered from Pawnee Rock. We found a
place at the bar and ordered drinks.
There must have been forty men in that saloon, a dusty, dirty lot, most of them
with uncut hair over their collars, and loaded down with six-shooters and bowie
knives. Fetterson was at the other end of the bar but hadn’t seen us.
We finished our drinks and edged toward the door and then we came face to face
with Red … the one my horse had knocked down at Pawnee Rock.
He started to open his mouth, but before he could say a word, Orrin clapped him
on the shoulder. “Red! You old sidewinder! Come on outside and let’s talk!”
Now Red was a slow-thinking man and he blinked a couple of times, trying to
decide what Orrin was talking about, and we had him outside before he could
yell. He started to yell but Orrin whooped with laughter and slapped Red on the
back so hard it knocked all the breath out of him. Outside the door I put my
knife against his ribs and he lost all impulse to yell. I mean he steadied down
some.
“Now wait a minute,” he protested, “I never done you boys any harm. I was just—”