the Trail to Seven Pines (1972) (13 page)

"Yeah, but it's you and me today. We check the Rosebud, Rabbit hole, and the edge of the desert and around by Sugar-loaf."

Carp had warned him the attempt on his life would be made near Rosebud and on some sort of false message. There was a chance that Dusark himself was involved, but with the man close to him, he would be unable to slip away and alert the killers. At the same time Hopalong would be able to learn more about the big man, as well as the country, with which he was not familiar.

The sun was clearing the mountain's ridge in the east when they started out. Dusark looked surly and had nothing to say. Hopalong drifted along beside him, pointing their horses toward the narrow defile of Rosebud Canyon.

"Rustling," Hopalong said suddenly, "is over in this country. Within the month we'll have it wiped out. This bunch," he continued, "is getting too careless. Worse than those stage robbers."

"Nobody has got them yet." Dusark's voice was dry, his expression amused.

"Not yet," Hopalong agreed, "but that hideout of theirs won't be any good to 'em anymore. That means trouble, because they'll have to move and folks will see 'em."

"What hideout?" Dusark was surprised. "And why won't it be any good?"

"Why, I was there yesterday," Hopalong said casually. "Dropped in and had me a talk with a couple of the holdup men. An hombre by the name of Bud Frazer was one of them.

Laramie's another, but he was off tom-cattin' around somewhere."

Dusark's surprise was evident. "You mean you found their hideout?"

Cassidy nodded. He was elaborately, deliberately casual. "It wasn't hard. Good place, though. Two men there, this Frazer and Duck Bale."

"Don't know Bale," Dusark said honestly, "but that Frazer's mean."

"He was," Hopalong agreed. "A hard man to get along with. Too bad, too. He just naturally prodded himself into a grave."

"Huh?" Dusark blinked his astonishment. "He's dead?"

"Yeah." Hopalong flicked a fly from Topper's neck. "He was a mite slower than he figured:"

Dan Dusark was beside himself with curiosity. Of this he had heard nothing. He was aware that Cassidy had visited Corn Patch, for he had been the rider that Hopalong passed as he went for his horse. Dusark had heard the account of the poker game at Corn Patch from Hankins and from Harris himself. It,* worried him that Hopalong seemed to find his way around so*> easily. Despite all he had heard of the gunfighter, he had believed little of it, but now he was beginning to credit th
e stories.

Riding into the country a
stranger, Hopalong Cassidy had
almost interrupted a holdup by the fastest operating gang the.?,. country knew, and then he had whipped Hank Boucher, backed
down Windy Gore, had outmaneuvered the whole Gore outfit
and then had ridden deliberately to ,the rustlers' stronghold at
Corn Patch, beaten Harris at poke
r, which was unheard of, and
had
dared Troy to draw. He must h
ave left there and gone right
to the hideout of the stage robbers, a place not even Du
sark
knew. And while there
he must have killed Bud Frazer.

'

Uneasily, Dusark considere
d his own position. For a year
, he had been spotting herds for t
he rustlers and sharing in the
take. Did Hopalong know that? How could he know it? But how could he have known where the hideout was? How did he know a lot of things he obviously did know? And why had he chosen him, of all people, to ride to Rosebud with?

Suppose he knew of the plot against his life. Suppose Cassidy was deliberately leading Dusark into a trap of some kind. Dusark was far from a coward, but he possessed the guilty man's natural suspicion of everything he could not understand and the ignorant man's suspicion of devious methods. What Hopalong knew he could not guess; but, coupling all that had happened since his arrival with what he had heard of the gunfighter, he began to sweat.

Moreover, riding to Rosebud worried Dusark. The trap had been awaiting only a tip-off from him. But Poker Harris was furious over the flouting of his authority and skill at Corn Patch it. and might proceed on his own. Somebody might have been watching the Rocking R from the hills and might have seen the two men ride toward the Rosebud. In such case the trap might be set and waiting, and Dusark had no illusions about himself. If he got killed in the process of killing Hopalong, Harris would not lose one minute's sleep over it.

Hopalong was aware of the big man's increasing worry, and he guessed at the cause of it. His own eyes were unceasingly active. The trail held no tracks, but any dry-gulchers would certainly have circled into position.

"You know," he said suddenly, "if anybody wanted to kill a man, that defile up ahead would sure be a likely spot."

Dusark started, and his face paled. He avoided Hopalong's eyes and shrugged. "Might be. But who would want to kill anybody around here?"

"I've heard tell of it," Hopalong commented dryly. "There might even be a few hombres around who would like to kill us."

"Us?" Dusark was startled anew.

"Yeah. The rustlers have got it in for the Rockin' R, now that we've showed fight.

They'd like to get rid of all its fightin' hands. That includes both of us.

"Me, naturally they'd want me. And they might figure you, knowin' the country, could tell me where the stolen cattle are taken. A few of 'em undoubtedly go to the mines around Unionville and Seven Pines, but not the bulk. They are driven out somehow.

I've got a hunch they go west or north."

This was exactly right, and nobody knew it better than Dusark himself, who had assisted on some of those drives. But how had Hopalong guessed? He phrased the question, and Cassidy waved a careless hand.

"Simple. What's east of here? Wyomin' and Utah. Do they need cows? They got 'em, plenty of 'em. What's left? The western part of Oregon, California, and maybe the mines of western Montana. East they would bring small prices; west they would bring half again or twice as much."

"But how would they take 'em out?"

"Ever hear of Jesse Applegate? Or Lassen? They had a cutoff northwest of here. A few bad stretches, but from what I hear, High Rock Canyon has plenty of both grass and water. The rustlers could follow that cutoff just as easy as wagon trains did with their stock."

Dan Dusark stared at the gap before him and mopped his brow with a soiled handkerchief.

If they had decided on today, the ambush would be above this defile, and he was riding into it. Moreover, what Hopalong said seemed to be true-that rustling was dead in this country. With a man riding segundo for the Rocking R who could figure as closely as this hombre, it would be too dangerous to warrant the effort. He found himself wishing he had saved his money.

His mouth was dry and he kept wetting his lips. Once he risked an uneasy glance at Cassidy, but the gunfighter rode calmly ahead. If he guessed at what might be awaiting him, he gave no evidence of it.

Several times they came upon cattle feeding and started them drifting toward the holding ground. With far too few hands for the area they had to cover, it was simpler to skirt the outer edges, gradually forcing the stock toward the point where the gather was to be made. In this way the whole problem became much simpler.

And then, at the very opening of the defile, from which point there would be no turning back if they continued, Hopalong turned abruptly riding his horse over a narrow bench into a dim trail that headed due north.

Instead of being relieved by the action, Dusark was more worried. How had Hopalong known of this trail when he himself had not known of it?

Actually, Cassidy had glimpsed, from several miles back, a small patch of far-off green on the slope of a mountain to the north. That a trail must lead to such an obvious source of water he did not doubt, and presumed that a man might cut such a trail by the turnoff. That he rode into it almost at once was a surprise to him as well as to Dusark, but for different reasons.

More and more cattle appeared, and they worked hard. Dusark threw himself into the work with a will and, like many rustlers, was a good hand with cattle. Within the next two hours they started over two hundred head toward Mandalay Springs.

Meanwhile, Hopalong had been carefully searching the country for any riders or evidence of riders. Several times he left Dusark and swung wide after the few lone cattle who grazed far out from the rest, hoping to cut a trail. When he did, it was that of a hard-ridden horseman headed northwest toward the desert. Leaving Dusark to push the cattle toward the holding ground, Cassidy rode west, then struck north on the lone rider's trail.

As he rode he reflected. Most of the beef he had seen wore the Rocking R brand. Little of the 3 G stuff had penetrated this far, and there was only a scattering of other brands. On the whole, this side of the range was fairly clean of other stock. Twice during the morning he had cut the trails of small bunches of cattle traveling northwest.

This section of the range had been worked least of all by the Rocking R riders, for the very reason that it was well grassed and relatively clean of stock from other ranches. For that reason any rustler was sure to find it a fairly safe area in which to work. It did not help that the Rocking R had been short-handed ever since the death of Old Cattle Bob.

Passing over the Rocking R grass, Hopalong rode into a cluster of low juniper-clad hills and entered them through a draw littered with rounded, water-worn boulders. The hoofs of the dun clicked and grated on the rocks as he rode, but, sighting a dim trail, he turned out of the draw and onto the hillside itself.

There was sage here, and some greasewood. Bunch grass was occasionally seen, and there were patches that indicated water was not too far from the surface.

To a stranger or an eastern man this range, like that of much of the best cattle country, would have appeared dry and\ desolate in the extreme, and such a man would have doubted that anything larger than a jack rabbit could find sustenance along the sagebrush levels and the Iowa, often rocky hills. Actually much of this dry, unhappy-looking vegetation was excellent stock feed, and the white-face and shorthorn, like the longhorn that preceded them, were good foragers. Looking around, Hopalong could now see indications that this range had not long since carried more cattle than it did now.

As he rode, his eyes kept drifting to the northwest, where that lone rider's trail disappeared. Out there lay the desert, and beyond it a rugged range of mountains.

Somewhere over in there was High Rock Canyon with its grass and springs, and there were other water holes and a few small lakes. Not a difficult country to ride through if a man knew where the water was. But in almost any of this country a stranger might easily die of thirst within a few yards of water, for the springs or water holes were small, and in most cases they lay in folds among the rock or in hollows among the hills. Out of sight, and hopeless to find unless one acted with previous knowledge.

Everywhere he rode he saw indications that this range had been worked over within the past few weeks, and some of the cattle appeared to have been driven off within a few days. Here and there he found a few head and started them back toward the holding ground.

He was riding among some low hills, their flanks studded by flat rocks, when he saw a man ahead of him. The fellow was obviously old and driving a burro. He turned as Hopalong rode up, and sized him up carefully, then nodded.

"Howdy!" he said cheerfully. "Ain't seen nobody in a long time!"

"Where are you headin?"

The old man bobbed his head toward the northwest. "Them rocks. Seed some mighty good float up there and come out for a grubstake. Lots of gold in this country if a body can find it."

"Been around it long?"

"Thuty year, and most of it lookin' a burro in the behind all over these hills. Know every inch of 'em."

"Must have been wild around here then. Many outlaws?"

"Sure thing. Some bad ones, too! And you durned tootin' it was wild. Right over that"-he pointed toward some low hills to the east-"I saw Cattle Bob ride down on Dakota Jack's outfit of rustlers.

"Fight? You should have seen 'em! Both outfits were plumb salty, and Dakota Jack was sided by that poison-mean youngster, Vasco Graham! Fight started in that bottom when Cattle Bob caught up to 'em with a bunch of his cows. Rode right into 'em, and in the first blast of gunfire they shot down one outlaw and two horses. Vasco fell, and when Dakota Jack came back for him he shot Jack out of the saddle. Then he took the horse and got away."

"Dakota Jack was coming back to help him?"

"Yep. I never saw the like. The way I figure it, Vasco Graham knew that horse couldn't outrun Cattle Bob and his men if n it was carryin' double."

"That was hard . . . mighty hard." Hopalong mused.

"Sure was, but that was Vasco. Often wonder what become of him. He knew this country like a book and was mighty fast with a gun. And mighty free with it."

"Heard somethin' about him." Hopalong frowned. "I think he shot him a sheriff over in Montana one time."

It was long after dark before Hopalong rode into the ranch yard. The Chinese cook looked up irritably as Hopalong started for the cookhouse. "Supper, he cold," he grumbled. "Why you not come on time?"