Deadman Canyon Part 3

"What of it?" she demanded. "Tom can see what's going on, and he's not afraid to speak up."

"I don't like it any better than you and Tom do," Clay told her. "But what's that got to do with my not going into the mountains?"

"Don't you see?" she cried. "Damson can't afford to have you around - not after the threats he's made. And Vanner can't afford it either. Because if you did manage to make a success of your ranch, then you and dad together would be bigger than Damson could ever hope to be."

Clay gave her a puzzled look. "You're afraid of Damson's power but you don't want me to try to fight him. What kind of sense does that make?"

Tonia flushed. "I've waited for you for five years," she whispered. "People laughed at me and told me you'd never come back. But I knew you would, and I kept on waiting." She turned her eyes away from him. "I could stand waiting again - if I knew you would come back. But I couldn't stand it if there was - wasn't anyone to wait for."

"What do you want me to do?" he asked. "Turn tail and run? Leave the valley to Damson and Vanner?"

"You wouldn't do that," she said in a low, controlled voice. "Even if you hadn't promised to bring dad's cattle down to the valley, you wouldn't stay away from the mountains."

"Why should I?" he demanded. "It's my land. I have a right to be on it."

She swung toward him, her eyes blazing with sudden anger. "Is that why you're going? Because it's your land and you want to live on it? Or are you trying to make a fool of Bick Damson? Trying to dare him to do something to you? Dad told me how you plan to make your place into a paying ranch. But you'd risk that - you'd risk everything - just to prove that Damson and Vanner can't run you out of the valley! It's your stupid pride that makes you go back up there now!"

She raked her heels across the sorrel's flanks and sent it flying down the road toward the Winged L. Clay made no effort to follow. Her sudden attack had caught him by surprise and left him confused.

A woman in love just made no sense sometimes, he decided as he jogged the dun along. With a man it was different. He had to learn to put his feelings aside when there was work to be done. Clay was not a man who expressed his emotions easily, and he knew he had not let Tonia know how empty these past five years had been.

But, he thought, there was more behind Tonia's outburst than her fear for him. He was sure she'd had more reasons than she'd given for not wanting him to go up into the mountains. For the first time since he'd known her, Clay had the feeling she had not been completely frank with him. And that was so unlike Tonia that it made no sense at all. Yet the more he turned over her words, the more sure he was that he was right.

He worried the problem past Bick Damson's land with its new fencing and elaborate house and on to the north edge of the Winged L. The road turned here, starting east toward its climb over the pa.s.s. Clay saw two men working in a hayfield bordering the road, and he recognized Pete Apley, the foreman of Judge Lyles' ranch, and Bert Coniff, one of the hands who had hired on the year before Clay left the valley.

He waved to them and then glanced back along the road. He caught a glimpse of Tonia and her sorrel racing up the lane leading to the Winged L headquarters; then she disappeared behind the big white house. Clay turned his dun east and started toward the pa.s.s.

He saw a pair of riders moving fast along the hill road. They reached the crossing with the main road and went on past, toward Clay's land. When he came to the crossing, he slowed the dun and reached down, loosening his rifle in the boot under his left thigh.

He saw the riders again as he rounded a bend in the trail. They sat their horses in the middle of the road, looking his way, clearly waiting for him.

Damsons men, Clay thought angrily. They had seen him in the valley and had been ordered to ride this way to head him off. The trick was typical of Bick Damson. Vanner would have been more subtle. But not Damson. Money wouldn't have changed his belief that, by throwing enough force against a man, you could break him.

As Clay drew close, the men moved their horses so that they blocked the trail. Clay pulled the dun up and looked the pair over slowly.

They were strangers to him. The smaller one was short and wiry, with narrow, bright eyes and sharp features; the other was as big as Bick Damson but soft looking, with a dull, almost empty expression on his heavy face.

The small one moved his horse closer to Clay. "You're Belden?" he demanded in a thin, reedy voice.

"That's right," Clay said.

"I'm Abe Marnie," the small man said. "And this here is Ben Pike. We work for Mr. Damson." He grinned at Clay, showing a badly broken set of teeth.

Clay looked quietly at him, saying nothing.

"We figured you might need a little help getting out of the valley," Marnie said. His grin broadened. "What with snipers in the mountains and all."

Clay said slowly, distinctly, "Go tell Damson that if he wants to fight me, to crawl out of his hole and do it himself."

He lifted the reins as if to move the dun along. He saw eager desire for action spring into Marnie's face and he had a quick glimpse of Pike making a clumsy move toward the gun on his hip. Clay jerked the reins suddenly, wheeling the dun around and ramming it against Marnie's horse, pinning the small man's leg down.

Marnie cursed shrilly and leaned back to reach for his gun. Clay caught the front of his coat with both hands. He urged the dun back and then jerked Marnie out of the saddle. He pressured the dun with his knees, urging it forward so that Marnie's horse stumbled back toward Pike.

Pike had his gun up now but he couldn't shoot with Marnie hanging between him and Clay. The dun drove forward as Clay raked a heel across its flank. Pike tried to back his horse away but he moved too slowly. Clay threw Marnie at him and Pike raised his hands and dropped his gun in an effort to keep the smaller man from knocking him out of the saddle.

Marnie hit the ground on his side, rolled and staggered to his feet. He reached for his gun and stopped only when Clay pulled his rifle from the boot.

Marnie stared at the rifle and then his head swiveled slowly around toward his partner. Pike had both hands on his saddlehorn. His eyes were on Clay's rifle, and his expression said that he wasn't interested in going after his gun lying on the ground.

Clay said quietly, "Throw your gun down, Marnie."

Marnie looked back at Clay, his eyes squinted as if he was trying to find some advantantage in this for himself. Then he pulled his gun and let it fall to the road. He stepped back toward Pike's horse.

Clay rode the dun to Mamie's horse and caught the reins. He looked at Pike. "Climb down," he ordered.

"It's my horse!" Pike objected in thick voice.

Marnie turned a scathing look on him. "Do what the man says. Don't you know when you're whipped?"

Pike left the saddle and Marnie led the horse to Clay and tossed him the reins. "I never argue with another man's gun," Marnie said dryly. His broken-toothed grin showed again. "But you're wasting your time, Belden. Like Mr. Vanner would say, you're just postponing the inevitable."

Clay studied Marnie silently. He figured there wasn't much to Ben Pike but blubber, but Abe Marnie was a different story. The way Clay read Marnie was grim. With someone to lead him, Marnie was a man who could cause serious trouble.

Clay turned the horses in the direction of town and lashed his reins across their rumps. Pike yelled in dismay as both animals kicked up their heels and galloped down the road.

Clay said, "Now start walking."

Marnie stepped toward his gun and then away as Clay waggled his rifle. Marnie said, "You've had all the warnings you're going to get, Belden."

"So has Damson," Clay said quietly. "Now move."

VI.

THE SHADOWS were growing long and the air was turning cool with the threat of coming night when Clay rode up the meadow trail to the spot where he had been ambushed the night before.

He wasted little time looking for signs the sniper had left. A few quick looks showed him that the man had been back and brushed out his tracks.

In making his final check, he walked to the edge of the drop-off where he had shot at the sniper. He glanced around, expecting to find nothing. Suddenly he bent down and studied the ground with close attention. The sniper had overlooked one clear heelprint. The print showed a heel that had been worn away on the inside so that the outer edge made the deeper impression. In the center of the print there was a small puncture, as if a nail was working loose in the heel itself.

Clay straightened up with a grunt. It wasn't much to go on, but it was tangible. It was something he could show Roy Ponders if he ever had the chance.

He glanced toward the west and saw that the last of the sun was sliding over the distant Bitterroots. He hurried back to the dun and rode it down to the big bench that fronted the mouth of Deadman Canyon. He made his camp where a high shoulder of rock jutted from the steep hillside marking the north edge of the bench. He built his fire in front of a shallow overhang formed where the shoulder of rock met the hillside. Here he was protected on three sides, so that the sniper could approach only across the open bench.

Clay half expected an attack, but the night remained quiet. In the morning, work pushed the problem of the sniper to the back of his mind. Clay's plan was to avoid wasting time by driving the judge's stock down to the valley day by day. Instead, he decided to corral them until he had a fair-sized gather and then move them onto Winged L graze in a bunch.

With this in mind, he threw a brush fence across the small opening leading into Deadman Canyon. The canyon itself was long and narrow, well gra.s.sed and well watered, and enclosed by barren rock walls that rose sheer from the floor higher than a man could look without cricking his neck.

The canyon had not been a place Clay liked to come as a boy. The towering rock walls kept out the sun most of the day, making it gloomy. And he had never ridden near it without remembering how the canyon had got its name. In the early days a silver propsector had died there when a snowslide caught him at the back of the canyon and buried him alive.

Clay glanced toward the far end of the draw now as he worked to set up his brush fence. A great scar on the cliff face and a tumble of boulders at the end of the gra.s.s floor told him that flood and storm had been at work here since his last visit some seven or eight years before.

He reminded himself to ride to the end of the canyon soon and see if the rockslide might not have uncovered one of the old watercourses that honeycombed these mountains. He had found a number of them not far away when he was a boy - long smooth tunnels burrowed out of the rocky cliffs by long departed rivers. They had fascinated him then, but he had never ventured far into them because the air inside always had the rank smell of bears clinging to it.

The brush fence finished to his satisfaction, Clay rode into the high country to see how many of the judge's cattle he could spot easily. The judge had told him a hundred head were driven up in early summer. Checking the largest of the meadows, Clay counted only forty beeves. That meant the rest would be scattered, in the brush and higher up the mountains.

Clay squinted at the sky. It was bright blue and the sun still held a certain warmth. But he could feel the chill of coming winter whenever he stepped into the shade, and he knew he had no time to waste if he was to find all the cows and get them safely into the valley before the first snow came up here.

He spent the first days moving down those cattle grazing in the meadows. They were ornery and stubborn after a summer spent in the mountains, and none of them wanted to leave. Clay found that working alone he could only s.h.a.g a few head at a time down the steep trails to the bench, and he spent the better part of three days before he had forty head corralled in Deadman Canyon.

While he worked, he kept his eyes open to see if the country was as he remembered it, and if it would fit into his idea of turning this mountainside into a paying spread. His plan was to run a small herd of his own in these meadows during the summer and keep them in feed lots during the winter. The problem that had always stopped him whenever he'd considered this before was how to get the large amounts of hay he would need for winter feed.

Then a few years back he had found the answer while helping on a fall roundup in Colorado. There, a large swampy area had been drained and made into hay meadow. Clay's own hundred acres of swamp had never been anything but a nuisance - all cattails and bogland. Now he realized that if he cut his ditches right, he could not only drain the area, but he could catch all the water from the springs that caused the swamp.

The one flaw in the plan was the fact that by taking over the meadows for himself, he would hurt the Winged L. Clay knew the judge had put a lot of money into extra beef and haying machinery so he could take advantage of Clay's offer to use his mountain grazing land. In Helena he and the judge had talked about what could be done with the extra stock Winged L would have once there was no longer any place to graze it.

The judge had suggested that he sell the beeves even though it would mean taking a heavy loss on them. But if he did that, he would still have a lot of extra hay and haying machinery on his hands. Clay pointed this out, but the judge waved the objection aside. If the judge believed in a man, he had always been ready to make personal sacrifices to help that man out.

Now, as Clay stared down into the valley, he saw the solution to this final problem. The slope of the land was just right for him to channel his swamp drainage over to the judge's dry south section. Under irrigation, it would provide all the graze the judge needed to keep his extra cattle.

Excitement ran through Clay as he studied this new plan carefully. He even took time to ride into the valley and trace a possible channel from the swamp to the judge's dry section. It would work! He curbed an impulse to ride to town and tell the judge about it. After he got the stock all rounded up would be time enough since nothing could be done until spring anyway.

That problem taken care of, Clay turned his attention back to his own meadows. He saw that they were even better than he remembered. In a few places the trails between one meadow and another were little more than animal tracks snaking up steep mountainsides or edging along the lips of canyons. But in every case, Clay noted, he could blast out fair trails with a few sticks of dynamite.

Finally he. worked his way to the high gra.s.slands, a sprawled prairie, boggy right up to the end of the summer when it usually dried up just in time to catch the first heavy frosts. He found a dozen head of Winged L beef grazing on the browning gra.s.s, and he started them down to the lower country.

The trail from the high gra.s.slands dropped steeply down a mountainside, narrowed to a cut across the face of a cliff rising out of a deep-bottomed gorge, and then broadened to enter a pine-fringed meadow.

Clay s.h.a.gged the bawling steers onto the narrow part of the trail and reined in the dun. He watched the steers as they plunged in panic across the cliff face to the safety of the meadow. There, in typical ornery cow fashion, they calmed down and began to crop gra.s.s as if the idea of coming down here had been their own all along.

Clay studied the rough surface of the trail and the sheer drop alongside it. The fact that he had not been bothered by the sniper since coming up here bothered him. He had seen no one after sending Marnie and Pike running home with their tails between their legs.

A delayed attack wasn't Bick Damson's usual way of operating. He had never waited in his life that Clay could remember, but always bulled in, arrogantly sure of his own strength. And Damson wasn't a man to stand by and let the story of how Clay had handled his men get around. Even if Damson wasn't behind the sniper, Clay reasoned, he would have tried by now to get back at Clay for what he'd done to Marnie and Pike.

Unless Vanner had talked Damson into waiting. Clay considered this possibility. Vanner was a man who would seldom rush hurriedly into anything. He would bide his time, looking for the approach that would let him do the most damage with the least risk.

Clay had the uneasy feeling that moment wasn't far off. Each night he built a small signal fire on the rock above his camp, letting the judge and Tom Roddy know that he was all right. By now, the meaning of that fire would have circulated around town, and everyone would know Bick Damson hadn't made good on his threat to run Clay out of the valley. And once the townspeople started to laugh at Damson, something would have to give. Clay didn't think that even a man like Kemp Vanner could hold Damson back once the big man realized he was being made a public joke.

Clay squeezed his eyes into a squint at the glare of the bright October day and raked a careful glance over the jumble of hills on the far side of the gorge. His gaze lingered on a deadfall made from the roots and branches of a huge pine uprooted by some previous winter storm. Had he seen a stirring there or was this waiting and wondering making him jumpy?

He looked away and back again. There was no sign of movement near the deadfall. The air hung still and quiet in the sunshine, without even a hint of a breeze. Clay grunted.

"Another few days of this and I'll be seeing snipers in every shadow," he told the dun. He gave it a slap. "Let's get those cows down where they belong."

The dun nickered softly and moved out onto the narrow trail. Clay rode with one hand on the b.u.t.t of his rifle. He felt a little foolish, but the uneasy feeling stuck in his craw and he couldn't cough it free.

He was nearly to the meadow when a rifle shot hammered through the still, cool air. Clay felt the whip of the bullet tug at the crown of his hat. He threw himself forward over the dun's neck and lashed back with his heels. The dun surged forward as a second shot sent chips of rock flying just behind its kicking hoofs.

The trees fringing the meadow cut off the sun abruptly. Clay straightened up and reined the dun to a halt. He pulled his rifle from the boot and dropped to the ground. He hurried back to the first tree at the end of the trail. From here he could see the far side of the gorge. He stepped into the open and raked the distant slope with three quick shots. The echo of his firing boiled through the rocks and then faded away. The air hung silent and golden in the sunlight, mocking him emptily.

Clay stepped behind the protection of the tree and stared at the hillside. Nothing stirred. There was no hint at all that a man bent on killing him had been there a few moments before. Angrily, Clay strode back to the dun and mounted.

He left the cattle grazing and started down the trail leading to the meadow just below. A short distance along the trail, he reined to the right and forced the dun down a ridge that would bring them to the far side of the gorge where the sniper had hidden. He pushed the dun upslope until he decided he'd ridden as close as he dared to the deadfall. Then he left the saddle and went on foot.

He made his way surely, drawing on childhood memories for the fastest and easiest route to the point he wanted to reach. He approached the top of the slope and stopped. He dropped to his belly and slid cautiously over a hump of rock.

Now he looked down on the deadfall. There was no sign of movement, no sign of life. Clay climbed to his feet and worked his way from one barren upthrust of rock to the next until he reached the side of the deadfall. He squatted down, studying the ground carefully. It was hard packed but he could make out a long shallow gouge, as if someone had crawled along here, dragging the edge of his boot across the dirt.

Clay followed the gouge. It made a twisting, turning path that carried him into the center of the deadfall. Here soil-packed roots made a room, the roof high enough for Clay to kneel under without having to bend his head. Directly in front of him was a narrow opening where dirt had been pushed from between entangled roots. He squatted down and peered through the opening. The narrow trail he had ridden on was directly across from this spot. He looked down, hoping to find an empty cartridge case, but as usual the sniper had cleaned up after himself carefully.

Clay backed out of the deadfall and looked around speculatively. The man had gone westward, he decided. A narrow fold of land ran from the far end of the deadfall to a stand of stunted trees. By crawling west along this fold to the trees, the sniper could have got away without being seen from across the gorge.

Clay followed the fold until it reached the stand of trees. The forest duff had been disturbed, and he felt he was on the right track. He hurried along the upward pitch of land and almost missed the heelprint outlined sharply in a spot of moist dirt. He stopped abruptly and went to his knees. It was the same sign he had found before - a worn heelprint with a small puncture in the center.

Now he was sure he was following the sniper and he straightened up and moved on. He came out of the pines on top of a ridge. He saw where the sniper's horse had been tied to a bush and his eyes picked out a nearby deer track that clearly showed the marks of fresh hoofprints.

Clay trotted along the ridge until he came to a point above that where he'd left the dun. He plunged down through a tangle of brush to the horse. He mounted and rode back eastward. As he remembered this chopped up land, the trails the sniper had to use led down into the valley only after making a wide sweep to avoid the high cliffs that surrounded the south side of Deadman Canyon. If he was right, he could follow the regular trails down to the bench and take a shortcut from there that might put him in the valley before the sniper could reach it.

He held the dun back until they were over the steepest pitches. Then he urged it to a faster pace until they were going at a hard gallop as they reached the level trail leading to the bench. Clay reined in at the far side of the bench, trying to recall the exact location of the shortcut he remembered. He turned to his right and rode downslope until a thick stand of timber blocked him. He backed the dun a short distance and circled the trees until he saw the faint, narrow track he remembered.

Now he moved swiftly again, following the faint track as it twisted dangerously down through thick brush and then across a barren stretch and finally joined with another, equally faint trail.

From here he could see a corner of his swampland and the judge's dry south section. He looked down at the trail and elation surged in him. The surface of the ground showed the fresh tracks of the sniper's horse clearly. They pointed uphill, telling Clay the man had come this way.

He felt the dun stir under him and he leaned forward, listening. He could hear the sounds of someone riding hard, coming from well above him. Clay smiled with soft savagery. Now it was his turn.

VII.

HE BACKED the dun into a screen of trees and returned to the trail on foot. He crossed to the other side and climbed a low mound. He squatted down, keeping the hump of the mound between himself and the upper side of the trail.

He breathed softly, curbing his eagerness as he listened to the hoofbeats coming nearer. Now they were just a short distance above him. He lifted his head. The horseman was just a few feet away, riding with his head down and his hat pulled low. He was pushing his horse at a dangerous pace on the narrow, faint surface of the rough trail.

Clay drew his handgun and sent a shot in front of the racing horse. He called loudly, "You there! Hold it!"