the Trail to Seven Pines (1972) (22 page)

One of the last to hear that report was Hopalong Cassidy. Riding in from Mandalay Springs, he was told the story, and back at the Rocking R he sat down on the porch and thought things over.

Dud Leeman had been the riding partner of Clarry Jacks, and the two had been almost inseparable. Duck Bale had been holding the fort at the hideout, and Duck had been alive when they left. Of Laramie there had been no doubt. Hopalong had himself seen the man fall, riddled with bullets. Jacks had fallen, too, but there had been no time to examine him. Under oath Hopalong could not have sworn he was dead.

The peculiar feeling that had disturbed him for the past ten days began to make itself plain now. Perhaps there had been some unconscious realization that Jacks was not dead, but alive and a danger. Now he knew that, whatever else came, he must ride to the hideout and make sure. As long as Clarry was alive, there would be no peace here. Dangerous before, the man was sure to be utterly vicious now.

Something of the same feeling seemed to obsess the men.

"Did either you or Hoppy take a look at him?" Ruyters was asking. "Maybe Jacks is still around."

"He was dead all right!" Shorty sounded too positive. "He sure went down hard with his head all bloody."

"I've seen men live through some awful wounds. Remember how Cole Younger rode away from the Northfield raid, shot through with bullets?"

"Reminds me." Kid Newton shoved his narrow-brimmed round hat back on his head. His boyish face with its few whiskers looked very young, and only his eyes were those of a man. "Saw some tracks in that box canyon this side of Sawtooth. Lone rider, wanderin', sort of, like he was huntin' something or lookin' the country over."

"And I saw some over this side the lava beds," Hartley offered. "Somebody had bedded down near that spring. One man, ridin' a sorrel horse."

It was late afternoon when Hopalong reached Seven Pines. He went at once to Katie's, and she greeted him with a smile. "Seen Ben Lock?" he asked her.

'Tes, he's been around a lot, but he spends most of the time around the High-Grade.

He doesn't talk, not even to me, but I think he's watching somebody. Maybe it's Pony Harper."

Hopalong nodded. What did Lock intend to do? It was likely the man did not know himself.

Yet a few minutes later, when he saw Harper walk down the street and enter the saloon, he was not sure. Harper looked bad and must have lost fifteen pounds.

"Ben's been riding, too," Katie volunteered. "I don't think he believes Jacks is dead. Do you?"

Hopalong shrugged. "He took one slug, maybe two. Men have lived through lots worse than that. We'll never know unless we go back and look.

And that," he added, "is what I think I'll do."

Shorty Montana and Tex Milligan pushed into the room. "How's for some of that coffee, Katie?" Shorty demanded cheerfully. "That cook out at the Rockin' R is good, but he doesn't have your touch with coffee."

"Look, Katie," Milligan interrupted, "I tried to steer Shorty away, but there was no chance. He simply wouldn't go. I know you don't want to lower the tone"-he glanced around smugly of your establishment by havin' ornery coyotes around, but I couldn't keep him away."

"Keep me away?" Shorty glared. "Why, you waffle-headed picture of a string bean, you never saw the time you could keep me away from anything! In the first place there isn't enough of you to make a good man! You're so thin you'd have to stand twice in the same place to make a shadow!"

"Huh!" Milligan grunted. "Don't pay him any attention, Katie. He's just sore because he has to stand on his tiptoes to see over a saddle."

Both men were arguing just to hear the sound of their voices, Hoppy knew. While they argued both were acutely conscious of him, and he had a rough idea they were riding herd on him. The thought of it amused him and yet it warmed his heart to think that they liked him enough to worry. That the country was still filled with enemies of the Rocking R and of Hopalong Cassidy, they all knew. Many of the outlaws were gone or had been killed, but others might be lurking about, and some of the ranchers who hoped to profit from the fall of the Rocking R were still sore about their failure.

Con Gore had not been seen in town and had talked to no one. What he was thinking was a complete mystery. That Troy would be nursing a grudge was obvious, and it was probable that Rawhide, who walked always beside Pony Harper, was thinking of his sore feet with no pleasure. It was a rare night that some veiled allusion was not made to his hiking proclivities, and the thing was eating on him, corroding his self-control, and driving him to a fury that was beyond reason.

The sun was scarcely up the following morning before Hop-along forked Topper and headed east for the hideout to settle his doubts once and for all. As on the last occasion when he left the place, the sky was cloudy and it looked like rain. He pushed the white gelding steadily toward the faulted ground, scanning the country with care as he rode. If Jacks was alive, and if he had Dud Leeman and Duck Bale with him, Hopalong might very well be riding into a trap, and a serious one. By now they would know that he had been using the rockslide for a means of entry into the valley, and if they were still there they would certainly be on their guard against that approach.

The lowering clouds pressed down around the higher peaks and in some places had swallowed the serrated crests of the mountains, sinking in cottony billows down the mountainsides and drifting in ghostly wraiths among the scattered junipers. Once, far off, Hopalong saw a coyote lope away and vanish among the greasewood. A tall-eared jackrabbit leaped from its nest in startled confusion and bounded away to lose itself among the sage.

All else was still. No breath of air stirred, and the gelding moved steadily and easily through the brush.

Although he kept a close watch, Hopalong spotted no new tracks. Several times he stopped and, squinting his blue eyes against the distance, looked, studied, and examined all within range of his sight. The desert was empty, as far as he could see, no living thing moved or had its being. Soon scattered rocks began to appear, not loose boulders, but the upthrust ledges of the faulted ground. Uneasily he surveyed the prospect, and he did not like it. Getting into the fault canyon would be a serious problem now, and he had to admit to himself that he never approached this place without awe and wonder.

Here there was something far more vast than any work of man. This rock had been broken asunder by the forces of nature itself, a cataclysm that man could not control and before which all his powers, all his inventions were as nothing. The titanic forces that had broken these ledges far beneath the surface of the earth and thrust their jagged edges through the soil were not dead, but lying there only leashed for the time.

The land was still. A silence lay upon it, a vaster silence than the desert usually knew. No cicada sang in this cloudy weather; no bird twittered among the greasewood.

All was still, and with the stillness his alertness grew, his readiness for the danger he seemed to sense.

Topper slowed to a walk, ears pricked forward. Occasionally, of his own volition, he stopped and looked ahead and around. There was upon the earth a feeling of expectation, a sense of waiting. Uneasily, Hopalong shook off the feeling. He was a man not easily disturbed, yet the last one to shake off such a feeling as of no importance. It remained only for him to interpret it, and do so correctly and at once.

Much of this might be his own imagination, his own mind. Tough and practical as he was, he still retained strong respect for the wild. There were strange currents of feeling in the wilderness, or perhaps those feelings were in men when they were in the wilds. In any event, most men who have lived in the great loneliness of Arctic, desert, ocean, or high mountains but have known that peculiar feeling that conveys itself to all who inhabit the wilderness.

Over such country as this he had ridden much of his life. He knew its moods and changes, and at the same time he knew that sixth sense that sometimes warns of danger. He had never, so far as he could recall, underrated an opponent. If Clarry Jacks was alive, he was a deadly antagonist, a man cold-nerved but fired with killing lust, and one not easily upset by trifles. He would be a hard man to kill, and he might take someone with him when he went.

The rockslide was seemingly unchanged, but the serrated ridge showed many differences, and the towering upthrust of granite appeared to have fallen inward. Hopalong again descended to the bottom.

He had detected no sign of life about either part of the fault canyon, and now on the bottom he saw that the adobe house was a ruin. Two walls stood, but both were cracked. No horses remained in the corrals. If Clarry Jacks was alive, Hopalong Cassidy was sure he was not in the canyon.

The floor of the canyon was a jumble of fallen rock, and around the base of the walls the earth was broken and shoved back by the movement of the rock. A silence as of death hung over the place, an eerie loneliness that brought an involuntary shudder to his shoulders. Among the ruins of the house he found no sign of a body, although the darkness of blood was on the floor. Then near the corral he found a grave.

LARAMIE 1881

One grave! Clarry Jacks was alive! Swiftly now Hopalong moved to the shack where he had originally talked with Bale. Here there was every evidence of hurried leave-taking.

Glancing at the gelding, Hopalong saw the horse had his ears up and was looking wildly about. Warily, Hopalong looked around him, and then the landscape seemed to shimmer.

Cassidy reached the saddle in one long dive and swung up as the startled horse leaped into a dead run for the canyon mouth. Under the horse's feet the earth seemed to groan, and with an appalling grinding the rock to the south pushed higher and higher into the sky. With the portals of the narrow opening seeming even narrower than usual, Hopalong lunged the horse through. Beside him the earth cracked and there was a vile odor as of sulfur mingled with something long dead, and then the horse was down the draw and into the open. The effects of the quakes were noticeable even here, for long cracks ran into the desert as far as he could see. Turning at right angles, he ran Topper out of the faulted area, slowed to a canter, then a walk.

Clarry Jacks was alive. If so, where was he? Corn Patch had been burned to the ground, and while he might have ridden to join the remnants of the 3 G crowd, Hopalong doubted it. Jacks was a man to lead, not follow. Duck Bale would be with him, and by now he would be in communication with Dud Leeman.

Cutting the desert for some sign of the outlaws would be useless. If they were to be tracked it would be with the mind, not the sign they would leave upon the desert.

Dud and Clarry had both been known around Unionville, yet he doubted they would go there for that very reason. Hopalong believed that Clarry would hope his enemies would accept his death as a fact.

Night was coming on. A cluster of cottonwoods in a hollow raised the possibility of water, and Hopalong started the white gelding toward them. He suddenly realized he was tired, and he could tell by the way Topper was walking that the horse was also. The cottonwoods did not prove themselves liars, for among them was a small pool supplied by a seep. The manzanita clustered thick at one end of the grove, and there Hopalong made camp alongside a huge deadfall. Nothing bigger than a coyote could possibly get through the manzanita without making noise enough to wake the dead, and the log offered some cover in the other direction. Scraping together some bark fragments, some dead branches, and a few chunks of half-rotted wood, Hopalong got his fire going, a small fire that threw very little light.

He was pouring coffee when he heard a hoof click on stone, and he put down his cup, then rolled over into the brush near the big end of the log, rifle in hand. For a long time there was no sound, and he eyed the steaming coffee irritably. Somebody would have to come up on him just as the coffee was hot!

An idea occurred to him, and with utmost caution he snaked out the rifle barrel, hooking the front sight through the handle of the cup, and slowly dragged it back toward him. Luckily it slopped over very little, and it was with real satisfaction that he gulped the hot coffee. Now let them come. He was ready.

Again a hoof clicked, closer this time. Whoever it was approaching had become mighty cautious. Hopalong studied the skyline, seeking some obstruction that would blot out the stars, but there was none. A murmur of voices came to his ears, and he tilted his head, trying to catch the inflection. When it came to him he grinned, and easing around the end of the log, he crawled forward through the grass. When he could see their broad hats stark against the sky, he said aloud, "If you pilgrims would holler when you approach a camp, you wouldn't get caught this way."

Shorty and Tex turned sheepishly as he walked from the brush. "We sort of figured you might want company," Tex suggested.

"And as long as we're ridin' down the country we figured to bring you the news."

"What news?" Hopalong demanded suspiciously.

"Well, Doc and Miss Irene are gittin' hitched up real soon."

"I knew that."

"And there was a shindig of some sort over to the 3 G. Hank Boucher got into an argument with Con Gore, and that coyote Troy up and shot Boucher in the back. Doc figures he may pull out of it, but it's still a question."