I scouted every bit of country before I rode across it, studying the lay of the land and trying to set no pattern so that a man might trap me up ahead. I’d ride toward a bunch of hills, then suddenly turn off along their base. I’d start up the hills on a diagonal, then reverse and go up the opposite way. Whenever I rode into trees or rocks, I’d double back when I had concealment and cut off at an angle. It took time, but I wasn’t fighting time. The main idea was to get there alive and in action.
Not that I had any very good idea of what I was going to do when I arrived. That part I hadn’t thought out too well. I decided to just let things happen. Mainly I wanted them not to drive off the cattle.
Nightfall found me under some bluffs near the head of Little Bluff Creek. It was a place where a big boulder had deflected the talus falling off the rim to either side, leaving a little hollow maybe thirty yards across. And the slope below was scattered with white rocks.
There was a cedar growing near the boulder, low and thick, and some mesquite nearby. I scouted it as I rode past. Then, stopping in a thick patch of trees and brush, I built myself a small fire, made coffee and fried some bacon. When I’d eaten and sopped of the bacon gravy with one of the biscuits Essie had packed for me, I dowsed my fire, pulling the sticks away and scattering dirt over the ashes. Then leading my horse, I walked back several hundred yards to the hollow below the boulder.
Stripping my rig from the horse, I let him roll, watered him and picketed him on the grass below the boulder. Then I unrolled my bed, took off my boots and stretched out. And believe me, I was tired.
If I had it figured right, the Llano was about eight or nine miles due south, and the holding ground for the cattle right beyond that river. That young rancher I’d sent north after Balch and Timberly had laid it out pretty good for me, and Baker was running his cattle in a sort of triangle between the Llano and the James, and just east of Blue Mountain … but trying to hold them between Blue Mountain and the Llano.
The moon was up when next I opened my eyes. Everything was white and pretty. I could see that black-legged horse cropping grass out there, but I couldn’t see his legs at all, only his body, looking like one of those white rocks. I turned over and started to go to sleep again, and then my eyes came wide open. Why, I was a damned fool. If they came sneaking up on me … them or the Kiowas … I’d never have a chance. They’d spot my bed right out there in the open and fill it full of lead. Well, I slid out of that bed like a greased eel through wet fingers. I rolled a couple of rocks into my bed, bunched the bedding around it, and went back into the deeper shadows under that big boulder. And with the saddle blanket around my shoulders, I leaned back and dozed again, rifle to hand and my gunbelt on.
Dozing against that rock, suddenly I heard my mustang blow like a horse will sometimes do when startled. My eyes opened on three men walking up on my camp. One whispered, “You two take him. I’ll get his horse.” Flame blasted from the barrels of two rifles and there was a roar of sound—the harsh, staccato barking of the rifles.
They stood there, those two dark figures, within twenty feet of my bed, and they worked the levers on their rifles until they shot themselves out of ammunition. I had my Winchester in my hands, pointed in their direction, and I was maybe forty feet from them.
That ugly roar of sound was to ring in my ears for many a day, as they poured lead into what they thought was me, shooting and shooting again. I heard the horse snort, and a voice called out, “You get him?”
There was a rude grunt and the other man said, “What the hell do you think?”
The moonlight was bright.
I stood up—one nice, easy movement—taking a pebble from the ground as I did so. They had half turned, but some slight rustle or shadow of movement must have caught the ear of one of them because he looked toward me. Backed up against that big boulder as I was, he could have seen nothing or, at best, only a part of something. With my left hand, I tossed my pebble off to the right, and they both turned sharply.
“You bought the ticket,” I said quietly. “Now take the ride.” My Winchester stabbed flame and knocked one man staggering, reaching for his pistol. The other turned sharply off to his left, diving for cover as he drew, but I was always a good wing shot, and my bullet caught him on the fly and he went plunging straight forward on his face.
The echoes of my shots chased each other under the eaves of the cliffs, then lost themselves along the wall.
There was then a moment of absolute, unbelievable silence, and then a voice:
“Boys? … Boys?”
I said nothing. Somewhere out there in the night, and I could have put a bullet through the sound, was Tory Benton. The trouble was, he had my horse, and I’d no desire to kill a good horse in trying for a bad man. So I waited … and after a moment there was a drum of hooves. And I was alone with two dead men and a moon that was almost gone from the sky. I was alone, and I was afoot, and when daylight came I would be hunted down. A faint breeze stirred the leaves, moaning a little in the cedar, rustling in the mesquite. I thumbed shells into my Winchester.
27
Of course, Benton had taken his men’s horses, also. I had to be certain, but I was sure from the sounds that he had taken them. Rolling the rocks from my bed, I shook it out and rolled it up. Shot full of holes, it was still better than nothing, and the nights were cold. One other thing I did. I went to where the men I’d shot had fallen …
Only one remained!
So one of them was still alive, able to move, able perhaps to shoot. I stripped the cartridge belt from the remaining man and slung it across my shoulders, after a brief check to make sure he was using .44s as I was. His six-gun was there, so I tucked it behind my belt, and both rifles lay nearby. Evidently, the wounded man had been more eager to get away than to think of fighting, and had failed to take his rifle. Carrying both of them, I walked away, keeping to the deeper shadows, wary of a bullet. When I was off a hundred yards or so, I pointed myself south and started to walk. There were men beyond the Llano, as well as cattle, and where there were men, there would be horses, including mine.
When I had walked about four miles or so—I figured it took me about an hour and a half, and that would come to close to four miles—I found myself in the bottoms of another creek. Maybe it was Big Bluff, I could only guess, knowing the country only by hearsay.
It was dark under the trees and, finding a place off to one side, I kicked around a little to persuade any possible snakes that I wasn’t good company. Then I unrolled my bed and stretched out, and would you believe it? I slept. The first light was filtering its way through the leaves when my eyes opened. For a moment I lay there between two big logs, listening. There were birds twittering and squeaking in the trees, and there was a rustle, as some small animal or maybe a lizard moved through the leaves. And there was the faint sound of water running.
Sitting up, I looked carefully around. Great old trees were all around, some mossy old logs, and a few fallen branches-a blowdown of three or four trees, and not much else. First off I checked the spare rifles. One was empty, the other had three shells, which I pocketed. Finding a hollow tree, I stashed the rifles there, then checked the loads on my rifle and the extra pistol. Shouldering my bed, I crossed the creek, stopped at a spring that trickled into the creek and drank, then drank again. Following it upstream, I left it and headed for the breaks along the Llano.
By the time the sun was well into the sky, I was looking down on as pretty a little camp as I’d ever seen, tucked away in the trees with several square miles of the finest grazing in Texas laid out there in front of it. Now grass is an uncertain thing. Some years it can be good, and some years it wouldn’t keep a grasshopper alive. This was a good year, and in spite of the cattle down there it was holding up.