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We heard a yelp of pain, then the clatter of a rifle falling among rocks; and
then there was a burst of firing and we left our saddles as if we'd been shot
from them. We hit ground running and firing, changing position as we hit
grass, and all shooting as soon as we caught sight of something to shoot.
They'd caught us in the open, on the slope of a rock-crested knoll crowned
with trees. We were short a hundred yards or so of the trees, but Cap and
Galloway made the knoll and opened a covering fire. Costello helped Walker to
a protected spot, whilst Moss and me gathered the horses and hustled them
behind the knoll.
We stood there a moment, feeling the scattering big drops before an onrush of
rain. The back of that knoll fell away where a watercourse made by mountain
runoff had cut its way. There was shelter here for the horses, but there was a
covered route down to the next canyon.
"They aren't about to rush us," I told Moss. "You stay here with the horses.
I'm going down this gully to see if we can get out of here."
"You step careful, boy," Reardon said. "Them Fetchens have no idea of anybody
getting home alive."
The Fetchens were going to be wary, and all the more so because they probably
figured they'd either killed or wounded some of us when we left our saddles
like that. Now they were getting return fire from only two rifles, with
occasional shots from Costello, so they would be sure they were winning and
had us nailed down.
Rifle in hand, I crept down that gully, sliding over wet boulders and through
thick clumps of brush. All the time I was scouting a route down which we could
bring our horses as well as ourselves.
Suddenly, from up above, a stick cracked. Instantly I froze into position, my
eyes moving up slope. A man was easing along through the brush up there, his
eyes looking back the way I had come. It seemed as if the Fetchens were
closing in around my friends, and there wasn't much I could do about it.
Going back now was out of the question, so I waited, knowing a rifle shot
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would alert them to trouble up here. When that man up there moved again ... He
moved.
He was a mite careless because he didn't figure there was anybody so far in
this direction, and when he moved I put my sights on him and held my aim, took
a long breath, let it out, and squeezed off my shot. He was moving when I
fired, but I had taken that into account, and my bullet took him right through
the ribs.
He straightened up, held still for a moment, and then fell, head over heels
down the slope, ending up within twenty feet of me.
Snaking through the brush, I got up to him and took his gun belt off him and
slung it across my shoulders. Also taking up his rifle, I aimed it on the
woods up above, where there were likely some others, and opened fire.
It was wild shooting, but I wanted to flush them out if I could, and also
wanted to warn my folks back there that it was time to get out.
There were nine shots left in the Winchester, and I dusted those woods with
them; then I threw down the rifle and slipped back the way I had come. A few
shots were fired from somewhere up yonder, fired at the place from which I'd
been shooting but I was fifty yards off by that time and well down in the
watercourse where I'd been traveling.
Waiting and listening, it was only minutes until I heard movement behind me
and, rifle up, I held ready for trouble.
First thing I saw was Moss Reardon. "Hold your fire, boy," he said. "It's us
a-comin'."
Me, I went off down the line and brought up on the edge of a small canyon; it
was no trouble to get down at that point. When the others bunched around, I
pointed down canyon. "Yonder's the dunes. And there seems to be a creek
running along there. I take it we'd better reach for the creek and sort of
take account of things."
"Might be Medano Creek," Cap said.
"What's that amount to?"
"If it's Medano, we can foller it up and over the divide. I figure it will
bring us out back in the hills from Buzzard Roost."
Once more in the saddle, I led off down the canyon, and soon enough we were
under the cottonwoods and willows, with a trickle of water at our feet. There
was a little rain falling by then, and lightning playing tag amongst the
peaks.
Ladder seemed to be in bad shape. He was looking mighty peaked. He'd lost a
sight of blood, and that crawling and sliding hadn't done him any good.
The place we'd come to had six-foot banks, and there was a kind of S bend in
the stream that gave us the shelter of banks on all sides. Just beyond were
the dunes. From a high point on the bank we could see where the creek came
down out of the Sangre de Cris-tos.
"We might as well face up to it," Galloway said. "We're backed up against
death. Those boys are downstream of us and they're up on the mountain, and
they surely count us to be dead before nightfall."
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"One of them doesn't. I left him stretched out up yonder. This here's his gun
belt."
"One less to carry a rifle against us," Moss said. He leaned back against the
bank. "Gol durn it. I ain't as young as I used to be. This scramblin' around
over mountains ain't what I'm trimmed for. I'm a horse-and-saddle man myself."
"I'd walk if I could get out of here," Galloway said.
Costello was saying nothing. He was just lying yonder looking all played out.
He was no youngster, and he'd been mistreated by the Fetchens. So we had a
wounded man and one in no shape to go through much of this traveling, and we
were a whole mountain away from home.
That Medano Creek might be the way, but I didn't like the look of it. It
opened up too wide by far for safety.
"Make some coffee, somebody," I suggested. "They know already where we are."
Moss dug into his war-bag for the coffee and I poked around, picking up brush
and bark to build us a fire. It took no time at all to have water boiling and
the smell of coffee in the air. We had a snug enough place for the moment,
with some shelter from gunfire, and water as we needed it.
Galloway and Cap had gone to work to rig a lean-to shelter for Ladder Walker.
There were willow branches leaning out from the bank and they wove other
branches among them until they had the willows leaning down and making a kind [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]