Man must deal with himself. It is his reality he must face each morning when he rises. It is his world with which he must deal. Perhaps his end is only years away, or even months, yet he cannot more than acknowledge that, for it is the now with which he must deal, unless like a spoiled child he is to fall on his face and beat his fists against the earth. He must be, he must move, he must create.
If man is to vanish from the earth, let him vanish in the moment of creation, when he is creating something new, opening a path to the tomorrow he may never see. It is man’s nature to reach out, to grasp for the tangible on the way to the intangible.
We have hedged ourselves round with law, for we know that if man is to survive it must be through cooperative effort.
We walked our horses down a steep, grassy, rock-strewn hill, across a narrow gully, and were angling along the slope opposite. At times the trail faded or vanished utterly, and once when we lost it, Monte spotted, a hundred yards down a gully, one rock placed atop another. We chose that way and found the trail again. The rocks as we passed were, I saw, coated with the desert varnish of many years. Suddenly my horse pricked his ears and looked to the north, nostrils flaring. I spoke warningly, sharply, and my horse tossed his head, irritated with me.
It was growing light now. We waited, listening, catching a faint smell of wood smoke, then a clink of metal against metal.
“Close,” Brodie whispered. “Only a couple of hundred yards or less.” The trail we followed branched suddenly, as I had foreseen, and one branch dropped sharply down into a shaded hollow that opened into the wider canyon. Sunlight sparkled on the creek there. Each of us had drawn his rifle; we looked one to the other.
We looked down into the hollow through the trees and brush, down a steep trail made by men on moccasined feet for other moccasined feet. There was no easy way down, and from the moment we started there would be a trickle of rocks and gravel falling, warning them.
Dismounting, I walked to the rim and looked down. A horse could make it, but we could not. We’d be shot out of our saddles before we got halfway down. Slowly my eyes searched for a way.
A man on foot, if he was careful. A faint sound of voices came, a laugh; they were right below us. Yet that one man with a rifle … Maybe he could pin them down, scatter them, leave time for the riders to make it. There were oaks along the steep mountainside. A man would have to be careful to start no pebbles rolling. Even one might cause a man to look up, and the descending man would be pinned against the slope, an easy target. Studying the ground, I saw my way. Yet if the others did not manage it, I’d be trapped. Yet the horses stolen were my horses, and the trap, if such it was, was set for me. I walked back to my horse, got out my moccasins, and taking off my boots, slung them to the saddle horn. Then I donned the moccasins. “What are you thinkin’ of?” Monte asked.
“One man can make it. I’ll pin them down, then you boys come.”
Jacob Finney spat. “You let me go, boy. I’m an old hand at this game.” My eyes picked out a flash of sorrel from among the leaves. Moving over a bit, I could see the horses, all neatly gathered behind a makeshift gate in a small box canyon. There seemed to be somewhat of an obstruction further along the canyon, an improvised brush-and-timber fence across the upper end of the corraL If a man could…
“Jacob?” I pointed. “If a man could get down there and open that gate-“ “He could stampede those horses right through their camp and down the canyon,” Brodie interrupted.
“And we’d have our horses,” Hardin accepted the idea. Monte McCalla had ridden off along the ridge. Now he returned. “Yonder,” he pointed, “there looks to be a way down to the upper canyon. I figure we can make it down a-horseback. It’s a steep slope, but away from their camp, and it doesn’t look to be as steep as this.”
“Take my horse with you,” I suggested. “I’ll take this route down.” Pausing, I added, “We all know what this is going to be like. If anybody gets separated, go back to town. If we shake the horses loose, get away with them.” Monte caught up the reins of my horse. “Let’s go,” he suggested, and they rode off along the ridge and I was alone.
For a moment I stood there in the lemon light of early morning. The sky was slightly overcast. It was still cool, and I looked around, inhaling very deep. The air was fresh, and I filled my lungs with it, then walked to a big old blue oak and stood beside it, looking down the way I must go. Taking my rifle in my right hand, I started down the hill, taking my time, putting each foot down with care, lifting it with equal care.
If they found a way down, it would take them a while to get to the corral gate, which was out of sight of the camp below but had been a convenient place to hold the stolen horses.
Twelve or more men, eager to kill me, and for a minute or two I’d be facing them alone. Supposing that route Monte had found proved impossible? It could … Many a time I’d seen an apparently easy way down end in a fifty-foot drop with no way around. If that happened, I’d have something to sweat about. My moccasin came down on gray, dusty earth and pine needles. These were the needles of the Digger pine, eight to ten inches in length. Step by step I worked my way down for fifty feet, then crouched by the trunk of an oak to study the way I should take.
Three men were loafing about a small fire. A short distance away, two more were playing cards on a blanket. All were armed, all had rifles close by. There was a pot of coffee on the fire. There was no way I was going to get down there without getting my head blown off. What the hell was I doing here, anyway? Where were the other men? I had figured on at least another five. There might be a dozen more, or there might be no more. The trouble with a situation like this was that a man had to keep going forward until there was no turning back. From where I now waited their camp was about a hundred yards away, more than fifty yards of it almost straight down. Lowering one knee to the earth, I studied the route I’d have to take, then moved quickly to another vantage point behind part of a huge old oak that had broken off about five feet above the ground and lay where it had fallen.
The concealment was better, I was closer, and there was some cover from the thick trunk of the remaining stump as well as the fallen part and its branches. A stone trickled past me. Startled, I looked up, half-turning to see a Mexican in a big sombrero and a serape aiming a rifle at me. In half-turning I had thrown myself off-balance, and I just let go and fell. The rifle above blasted, and whipping over on my left elbow, I fired my rifle like a pistol. He was looming above me, not more than thirty feet away, and I could scarcely miss.
My bullet caught him in the brisket and he fell toward me. Twisting to one side, I let him fall, then whipped around to face the camp. From the canyon I heard yells and shots, and then I was shooting into the camp. One man near the fire had leaped up, and my bullet spun him around. Twisting position, I fired at one of the card-players. I missed and so did he; then I triggered another shot and he fell back, blood turning his pants leg crimson. Leaping up, I plunged down the slope toward the camp. A bullet hit a tree near me and spat bark into my face. I hit level ground and went into the camp firing. These men had, after all, prepared a trap to kill me. There was a wild yell from the main canyon, and horses went streaming past. A man leaped up to try to head them off, and I burned him with a shot that spun him around and made him dive for cover. Horsemen went streaking by, there were more shots from down canyon, and I glanced quickly around. Two men were on the ground. Another was gripping his leg and trying to stop the flow of blood. I ran down the canyon, looking for a horse. Men were coming up the canyon from some post below, and turning, I ran up the canyon, hoping for a horse, any kind of a horse. There were none.