Mustang Man (1966) (11 page)

Nothing...

And then behind me I heard a faint movement. Turning my head, I looked across the small clearing among the trees and brush. The dun was standing head up, nostrils wide, looking toward my right. Stiffly, I turned my head.

Andrew was standing very still in a narrow space between two clumps of mesquite, a prickly pear almost waist-high in front of him. He was holding his rifle up, ready to shoot, and his eyes were moving along the thicker brush on my side, looking for me. And when he shot, he would shoot to kill.

Andrew Karnes was no more than sixty feet away, but I was drawn back under the low-growing juniper and it was not easy to see me. His eyes were shifting around quickly, like a weasel's eyes, hunting something to kill.

My pistol was in my right hand, and I was looking back over my left shoulder. To shoot, I'd have to swing around, and that would make a noise. I had watched Andrew, and I knew he was quick as a cat--and there was no way I could move without giving him the first shot. I didn't want to chance it at that range. So I just lay there, hoping he wouldn't see me.

He came forward a step. His eyes went to the horse again, then began again their restless search for me.

I was going to risk it. I would have to. When his eyes got down to the farthest rocks, I would roll over and fire. I wouldn't be in the best shooting position, but I had no choice. It was him or me.

The dun stomped his hoof, and Andrew looked in that direction. Not wanting to take my eyes from him, I moved my left hand to a position under my left shoulder and pushed up, then I moved my right arm under my body.

Actually, I hadn't an idea whether I could do it. Each movement was a gamble, and each might be my last. My left hand started across my body. My eyes were on Andrew; my right hand was coming forward ... and then he saw me.

He must have failed to believe what he saw. Or maybe the shadows were thick enough so what he saw was indistinct, for there was an instant when he froze.

And then the rifle whipped to his shoulder.

Even as he moved, I moved; my left hand slapped the ground and my right thrust forward. My gun must have gone off an instant sooner, or perhaps he shot too fast, for the bullet whapped into the ground right where my body had been before the half-turn was completed.

My own shot was high. It cut a furrow across the top of his shoulder and his involuntary move jerked the rifle out of line. He levered another bullet into the chamber, but my second shot went right through his face. It was a miss, for I'd shot at his body, but the bullet went in under his eye and came out the back of his head.

He fell forward, all sprawled out, into that mess of prickly pear. The rifle, thrown forward as he fell, dropped into the sand beyond the patch of cactus. I held the gun on him, ready for another shot, even after I realized the back of his skull was gone.

Working feverishly, I poked the two spent shells from the cylinder and slipped two others in place. I listened, but I heard no sound. Catching hold of the branches of the tree, I pulled myself up, and was surprised that I could do it.

The shock that had temporarily put me out of action was wearing off.

My first move was for his rifle, for my own was on the dun, and I had no idea where brother Ralph was. Staggering, I got to the rifle and picked it up, then looked carefully around.

All was quiet again. How many ears had heard those shots and were now listening, I did not know. I only hoped that somewhere out there Penelope was able to listen.

My head still ached, and every step I took was made with caution, for I had no idea how bad a shape I was in. My fingers went to my skull. There was a deep furrow above my ear that had cut the scalp almost to the back of my head.

Leading my horse, for even if I could stay in the saddle I would be too easily seen, I started down the gradual slope, which flattened out toward the creek.

From time to time I paused, careful to conserve what strength I had.

Before riding away, I studied the area carefully, but there was no sign of life, no movement. What worried me most was that I had no idea what was going on, nor where anybody was. Penelope had been out there in the rocks somewhere, but she had vanished as if she had never been. And across there in the trees Ralph might still be waiting, to say nothing of that poisonous flower, Sylvie.

There were big old cottonwoods and willows along the creek, and there was water.

Once under the trees, I got down and took a long drink. I was hungry, but to risk a fire was to risk my neck. I wasn't that hungry. More than anything else, I wanted to find a place under a safe tree and sleep, but there was no chance of that.

Near me was a huge old cottonwood whose thick leaves rustled and whispered endlessly. Glancing up, I noticed the huge branches and the idea came suddenly.

After tying my horse to a shrub, I rigged a quick sling for my rifle from a couple of piggin strings and then reaching up, I caught the lowest limb of the big tree. Its leaves and the other trees around me offered concealment, and I climbed carefully until I was about twenty feet off the ground and could see all around me.

The first thing I saw was a dust cloud. It was some distance off, downstream, and whoever was causing the dust was out of sight beyond the rocks. My guess made it about half a dozen riders.

Not far away I could see some bones, lying time-whitened under the sun. Were these the bones of Nathan Hume's mule train? I remembered that there had been another battle, a hundred and fifty years before, when an army of Spanish pioneers whipped a huge band of Comanches at this place.

Chapter
9

It was very still. The only sound was the gentle rustling of the cottonwood leaves, which never seemed to be quiet. After a few minutes, just as I was about to get down from the tree, I saw Sylvie Karnes come down from the rocks riding a bay pony.

Now where had she gotten that horse? As I watched, she was followed by Steve Hooker, Tex Parker, and two other men whom I did not recognize. This looked to me like too much activity around for one lone Tennessee boy, even if he was a Sackett. My better sense kept telling me I should pull out of here, and fast.

Sylvie by herself was a package of dynamite, and I wanted no part of her. When they discovered Andrew dead--for it was likely they still did not know about it--they would have another reason for hunting me down.

Gold is a hard-won thing, and hard-kept, and when Nathan Hume bought smuggled gold from the Spanish miners in the San Juans he little knew what he was starting. Those old Spanish miners preferred to sell their gold in secret to traders like Hume, rather than have a big part of it taken from them by the Spanish or Mexican governments, to say nothing of the governors of New Mexico.

What Hume had started was being played out now, right here.

The group rode out on a little meadow about a quarter of a mile back from the creek and dismounted. They looked as if they were going to camp.

Carefully, I climbed down the tree. My neck was stiff and my head still throbbed with a dull, brow-wrinkling pain, but my muscles seemed to have loosened up.

Mounting up, I walked my horse down through the willows and across the creek, which here was only eight to ten inches deep.

The rest of the day I scouted around, searching for the box canyon. All I knew was that it was somewhere north of the Rabbit Ears, which was little enough to go on. And during all that day I stayed clear of the Karnes outfit, riding wide around. Now that they had tied up with Steve Hooker and the boys from Coe's gang, my troubles were multiplied. Of course, I couldn't wish the Coe gang any worse luck than making a deal with Sylvie. She was likely to poison the lot when she got the gold ... if she got it.

When night came I was far out to the north, and I rode on a few miles and camped on a little creek that emptied into the North Canadian. As I was eight or nine miles from the Rabbit Ears I figured to be pretty safe, so I built myself a fire I could have covered with my hat, and made coffee and broiled myself a steak. I had plenty of fresh meat now, for earlier that day I had killed a yearling buffalo well over to the east.

Just as I was about to pour some coffee, the dun, who was drinking at the creek, suddenly jerked up his head, water dripping from his muzzle, and looked across the creek into the darkness. Before you could say scat I was back in the darkness with my Winchester cocked and ready.

"Hold easy on that trigger, son. I'm huntin' help, not trouble."

I knew that voice, and while I lay quiet trying place it in my memory, it spoke again.

"That horse knows me better'n he does you. I gave him to you."

"Come on out then. Show yourself."

"You'll have to give me time. I'm hurt."

Well, I taken a long chance. That voice did sound familiar, and only one man could know how I got that horse. So I went down to the creek and crossed it.

The old man lay in the grass on the far side of the creek, and he was in bad shape. He had been shot more than once, and his left hand was a bloody mess, but he was game. There was no quit in that old man. His kind come from away up the creek, and he was a tough old mossy-horn with a lot of life in him yet.

So I just picked him up and carried him back to camp. He couldn't have weighed more than a hundred and thirty soaking wet, and I'd never seen the day when I couldn't pick up three times that much.

He was in bad shape, but it was his left hand that gave me the turn. Every fingernail was gone, and his ringers all bloody ... and that could have been no accident.

"Comanches?" I asked.

"In-laws," he said grimly. "Sometimes they can be worse."

"You ain't related to that Karnes outfit?"

"You met up with them?"

"Uh-huh."

First off, I filled a cup with hot, black coffee and held it for him to drink.

He was shaky, and he needed something to pick up his spirits a mite. He drank it, taking it in his right hand, while I put on some water to heat up to clean him up with.

"Looks to me as if everbody on the Staked Plains is related," I said, "and all of them after Nathan Hume's gold."

"I got a claim to it, better than any of the rest."

"Better than Penelope?"

"You don't say. She here?"

"Unless they've killed her, she is. She saved my bacon yesterday, and a fine girl she is."

After he'd drunk the coffee he laid back while I washed out a couple of bullet wounds, neither of them serious, beyond the blood he'd lost. At least, I'd seen men survive worse ones. I always made shift to pack a few wrappings of bandage, for a man on the dodge can't go running to no doctor. So I fixed up the wounds as best I could, and that hand along with it.

The fingernails had been missing for a while, but crawling through the brush he'd evidently torn open the wounds.

"You must have known something they wanted almighty bad."

"I should smile, I did. I knew where that gold was. And I know just where that box canyon is."

"I wonder they let you live."

"They fired my place and then rode off, leaving me hog-tied in the house. I was out cold and they never figured I'd get out alive. Well, I fooled 'em."

"Seems like everybody in the country started after that gold all to once."