the Tall Stranger (1982) (14 page)

John Kies's white face stared at him from an open window of the store.

"Where's Mort?" Kies asked. "That's them coming now."

Lamport chuckled and spat into the dust. He scratched the stubble on his heavy jaw and grinned sardonically at Kies.

"He's around, I reckon, or maybe he blowed out. The rest of 'em have."

Stark fear came into the storekeeper's face. "No! No, they can't have!" he protested. "They'll have an ambush! They'll--"

"You're crazy!" Lamport sneered. "This show is busted. You know that. That's Bannon comin' now, and when that crowd of his gets through, there won't be one stick on another in this town."

"But the settlers!" Kies wailed. "They'll stop him."

Lamport grinned at him. "The settlers have took to the hills. They're gone! Me, I'm waitin' to kill Rock Bannon. Then if I can fight off his boys, I'm goin'."

They came up the street, walking their horses. Rock was in the lead, his rifle across his saddlebow. To his right was Bat Chavez, battle-hungry as always. To his left was Red, riding loosely on a paint pony. Behind them, in a mounted skirmishing line, came a dozen hard-bitten Indian-fighting plainsmen, riders for the first big cow spread north of Texas.

A rifle shot rang out suddenly from a cabin in back of the store. Then another. A horse staggered and went down, and Bat Chavez wheeled his horse, and with four riders, raced toward the cabin. The man who waited there lost his head suddenly and bolted.

A lean blond rider in a Mexican jacket swept down on him, rope twirling. It shot out, and the horse went racing by, and the burly teamster's body was a bounding thing, leaping and tumbling through the cactus after the racing horse. Chavez swung at once, and turned back toward the saloon. The riders fanned out and started going through the town. Where they went, there were gunshots, then smoke.

Rock Bannon saw Lamport standing on the porch. "Don't shoot!" he commanded. He walked the steel-dust within twenty feet. Lamport stood on the edge of the porch, wearing two guns, his dark, dirty red wool shirt open at the neck to display a massive, hairy chest.

"Howdy, Rock!" Lamport said. He spat into the dust. "Come to take your lickin'?"

"To give you yours," Rock said coolly. "How do you want it?"

"Why, I reckon we're both gun-handy, Rock," Lamport said, "so I expect it'll be guns. I'd have preferred hand-fightin' you, but that would scarcely give you an even break."

"You reckon not?" Rock slid from the stallion. "Well, Lamport, I always figure to give a man what he wants. If you think you can take me with your hands, shed those guns and get started. You've bought yourself a fight."

Incredulous, Lamport stared at him. "You mean it?" he said, his eyes brightening.

"Stack your duds and grease your skids, coyote!" Rock said. "It's knuckle and skull now, and free-fighting, if you like it!"

"Free, he says!" A light of unholy joy gleamed in Lamport's eyes. "Free it is!"

"Watch yourself, boss!" Red said, low-voiced. "That hombre looks like blazin' brimstone on wheels!"

"Then we'll take off his wheels and kick the brimstone out!" Rock said. He hung his guns over the saddlehorn as Bat Chavez rode around the corner.

Lamport faced him in the dust before the saloon, a huge grizzly of a man with big knuckled hands and a skin that looked like stretched rawhide.

"Come and get it!" he sneered, and rushed.

As he rushed, he swung a powerful right. Rock Bannon met him halfway, and lashed out with his own right. His punch was faster, and it caught the big man flush, but Lamport took it on the mouth, spat blood, and rushed in swinging with both fists. Suddenly he caught Bannon and hurled him into the dust with such force that a cloud of dust arose. Rock rolled over like a cat, gasping for breath, and just rolled from under Lamport's driving boots as the big man tried to leap on him to stamp his life out.

Rock scrambled to his feet, and lunged as he picked his hands out of the dust, butting Lamport in the chest. The big renegade jerked up a stiff thumb, trying for Rock's eye, but Bannon rolled his head away and swung a left to the wind, and then a driving right that ripped Lamport's ear, starting a shower of blood.

Lamport now charged again and caught Bannon with two long swings on the head. His skull roaring with pain and dizziness, Rock braced himself and started to swing in a blind fury, both hands going with every ounce of power he could muster.

Lamport met him and, spraddle-legged, the two started to slug. Lamport was the bigger, and his punches packed terrific power, but were a trifle slower. It was nip and tuck, dog eat dog, and the two battled until the breath gasped in their lungs and whistled through their teeth. Lamport ducked his battered face and started to walk in, stemming the tide of Bannon's blows by sheer physical power.

Rock shifted his attack with lightning speed. He missed a right, and following it in with the weight of his body, slid his arm around Lamport's thick neck, grabbed the wrist with his left hand, and jerked up his feet and sat down hard, trying to break Lamport's neck.

But the big renegade knew all the tricks, and as Rock's feet flew up, Lamport hurled his weight forward and to the left, falling with his body half across Bannon. It broke the hold, and they rolled free. Rock came to his feet, and Lamport, catlike in his speed, lashed out with a wicked kick for his head.

Rock rolled away from it and hurled himself at Lamport's one standing leg in a flying tackle. The big man went down, and as they scrambled up, Rock hit him with a left and right, splitting his right cheek in a bone-deep gash, and pulping his lips.

Lamport was bloody and battered now, yet he kept coming, his breath wheezing. Rock Bannon stabbed a left into his face, set himself and whipped up a right uppercut to the body. Lamport gasped. Bannon circled, then smashed him in the body with another right, then another and another. Lamport's jaw was hanging open now, his face battered and bleeding from a dozen cuts and abrasions. Rock walked in, measured him, then crossed a right to his chin. He followed it up with two thudding, bone-crushing blows, and Lamport reeled, tried to steady himself, and then measured his length in the dust.

Rock Bannon weaved on his feet, then walked to the watering trough and ducked his head into it. He came up spluttering, then splashed water over his face and body, stripping away the remnants of his torn shirt.

"We got 'em all, boss," Red said. "You want we should go after the settlers?"

"No, and leave their homes alone. Where's Kies?"

"The storekeeper? Inside, I guess."

Rock strapped on his guns and strode up the steps of the store with Red and Chavez at his heels. Kies was waiting behind the counter, his face white.

"Kies," Rock said, "have you got the bills for the goods you sold the settlers?"

"The bills?" Kies's frightened eyes showed doubt, then dismay. "Why, yes."

"Get 'em out."

Fumblingly, Kies dug out the bills. Quickly, Bannon scanned through them. Then he took out a match and set fire to the stack as they lay on the counter.

Kies sprang for them. "What are you doing?"

"You're payin' the price of hookin' up with a crooked bunch," Bannon said grimly, as Chavez held the angry storekeeper. "You got a horse?"

"Yes, I have a horse. But I--"

"Red," Bannon turned. "Give this man some shells, a rifle, a canteen and two days' grub--skimpy rations. Then put him on a horse and start him on his way. If he tries to load that rifle or if he doesn't ride right out of the country, hang him."

"But the Indians!" Kies protested. "And my store!"

"You haven't got a store," Bannon told him harshly. "You'll have to look out for the Indians yourself."

"Boss." Chavez touched him on the shoulder. "Hombres here want to talk."

Rock Bannon wheeled. Tom Crockett, Pagones and Dud Kitchen were standing there.

"Bannon," Crockett said, "Harper took my girl. Kitchen saw him tying her to a horse."

Rock's face went white, then stiffened. "I reckon he was the one she wanted," he said. "She had Zapata waitin' for me, and she led that raid to the ranch."

"No, she didn't do that, Rock," Pagones said. "The raid wasn't even organized when she left. As for Zapata--"

"He forced himself on us," Crockett protested. "And she was tied to the saddle. She didn't want to go with Harper. She loves you."

"That's right, Rock," Pagones assured him. "Mary's known that for weeks."

"All right," Rock said. He jerked a shirt from a stack on the counter and began getting into it. "I'll find "em."

"Who goes along with you?" Bat asked eagerly.

"Nobody," Bannon said. "This is my job."

Chapter
IX

The steel-dust stallion liked the feel of the trail. He always knew when he was going some place that was beyond the place where distance lost itself against the horizon. He knew it now, knew in the sound of Rock Bannon's voice and the easy way he sat in the saddle.

Rock rode through the poplars where the wagon train had spent its last night on the trail, and as he passed, he glanced down at the ruts, already grown with grass. It seemed such a long time ago, yet it was scarcely more than days since the wagons had waited here. He had observed them from the mountains, looking back for the last time as he rode away from the train.

He turned the stallion up the long, grassy canyon where Freeman had been killed. The trail Mort Harper had left was plain enough. So far he had been running, later he would try to cover it, yet already Bannon was looking ahead, planning, trying to foresee what plan, if any, could be in the man's mind.

The Day's River region was one of the most rugged in all America. No man knew it well, few knew it even passingly well. Unless a man chose carefully of the trails that it offered, he would run into a blind canyon, a trail that ended in a jump-off, or some blind tangle of boulders.

There were trails through; the Indians had used them. Other Indians, ages before, had left picture-writing on the canyon walls, some of it in places almost impossible to reach. No man living knew the history of this region.

There were places here with a history stranger than any written--an old weapon washed from the sands of a creek, a strange date on a canyon wall. There was one place miles from here where the date "1642" was carved on a canyon wall among other dates and names, and no man has yet accounted for that date, nor said who put it there, nor how he came to be in the country.

From Grass Canyon the trail of the two horses led into a narrow draw with very steep sides overgrown with birch, balsam and cottonwood. His rifle ready, although anticipating no trouble at this stage, Rock pushed on.

The draw now opened on a vast region of jagged mountain ridges, gorges, cliffs, and mesas. The stallion followed the trail along the edge of a meadow watered by a brawling mountain stream. Some teal flew from the pool of water backed up by a beaver dam, and Rock heard the sharp, warning slap of the beaver's tail on the water.

The trail dipped now down a narrow passage between great rock formations that towered heavenward. On one side was an enormous mass of rock like veined marble, and on the other a rock of brightest orange fading to rust-red, shot through with streaks of purple.

Boulders scattered the space between the walls, and at times passage became difficult. At one place great slabs of granite had sloughed off from high above and come crashing down upon the rocks below. Far ahead he could see the trail leaving the lowlands and climbing, threadlike, across the precipitous wall of the mountain.

Studying the trail and the speed of the horses he was following, Rock could see that Mort was trying for distance, and fast. Rock knew, too, that unless Harper was far ahead, he would, if watching his back trail, soon know he was followed. From the incredible heights ahead the whole series of canyons and gorges would be plainly visible except when shoulders of rock or boulders intervened.

The trail up the face of the cliff had been hewn by nature from the solid rock itself, cutting across the face of an almost vertical cliff, and only emerging at times in bare rock ledges or dipping around some corner of rock into a cool, shadowed gorge.

"He's headin' for Big Track," Rock told himself suddenly. "He sure is. He's headin' for Big Track Hollow."

He knew the place, and certainly if Harper were following a known or planned route, he could choose no better. Big Track Hollow was a basin over six thousand feet above sea level where there was a wealth of grass, and plenty of water and sheltering woods.

This would be the best place in this region to hole up for any length of time. Long ago, somebody had built a cabin there, and there were caves in the basin walls. It took its name from gigantic dinosaur tracks that appeared in the rock all along one side.

For Harper the place had the distinct advantage of offering four separate avenues of escape; each would take him over a trail widely divergent from the others, so once a follower was committed to one trail he would have to retrace his steps and start over again to find his quarry. The time consumed would leave him so far behind that it would be impossible to catch up.

Rock Bannon stared thoughtfully at the tracks. It would soon be night, and the two must stop, yet they had sufficient lead on him to make it difficult to overtake them soon, and at night he could easily get off the trail and lose himself in the spiderweb of canyons.