Troublesome Range Part 10

Ten minutes later they headed away from the camp, going down-basin, Saygar leading them well into the edge of the creek. The horses made work of it, with the insecure footing of the flooded stream's rocky bank. But Saygar kept to the stream all the way to the lower edge of the basin, a good half hour's going, where they came upon a ridge that marked the beginning of a rocky and treeless tangle of hills falling gradually toward the mesa.

Saygar rode with even more care now, making long detours to avoid crossing the occasional areas of topsoil. They left the roar of the Troublesome far behind, until it became but a faint murmur almost inaudible over the clatter of their ponies' hoofs on bare rock.

The night's chill was settling down and this slow going made Reibel, who had foolishly worn only shirt and vest, hunch his shoulders for added warmth. Overhead, the dusting of myriad stars in a cloudless sky gave them enough light to see plainly where they were going. The faint breeze carried with it the clean-washed smell of pine and juniper that flanked this narrow strip of barrens. Once their horses spooked as a startled steer crashed away through a nearby tangle of scrub oak in the bed of a wash. Saygar stopped as they neared the lower margin of the rocky breaks, better than two hours out of camp.

"Can we hit that Diamond trail without leavin' this rock, Pecos?" he asked.

Pecos thought a moment. "Try it off to the left," he said then.

Saygar turned east and presently, without leaving the rock, they came to the line of a trail and took it, not caring that now they were leaving sign, for this trail was used fairly heavily.

Twenty minutes more of steady going brought them to within sight of Diamond's bunkhouse lights. Those lights of Middle Arizona's headquarters were less than half a mile away as the four men rounded a spur of the hills backing the mesa. At that point Saygar swung sharply off the trail and southwest across the lush gra.s.s flat of the mesa. He rode neither fast nor slow, but at an alternate walk and trot. Close to an hour of this riding brought the sound of the Troublesome close again.

Finally Pecos pulled up abreast of Mike. "This ought to be about right, boss," he drawled.

They halted. Saygar squinted, trying to pick out details of what lay ahead. At length he said: "Whitey and Reibel will work off to the right. You stay left, Pecos. When you come on 'em, push easy until they begin jammin' up. I'll give you half an hour. When I shoot, you do the same. The rest ought to take care of itself."

"You want 'em all pushed in, Mike?" Reibel asked.

"No. There's too many. Dunne said not to bother if even half of 'em broke away. One thing more. We're goin' back the way we came, across that rock. You're to hit that Diamond trail and ride it a ways before you head for the basin. Go ahead now. And make it good."

They separated, drifting away to be swallowed by the night. Saygar sat his horse, motionless for many minutes. Then, lifting his reins, he put the animal straight south at a slow walk. Shortly he came upon a bunch of grazing steers, and reined over toward the bunch. They lifted their heads, wheeled, and lumbered away at his approach. He saw more cattle. Patiently he reined from side to side, pushing them on after the others. Soon those gathering bunches made a broken black line close to the outward limit of his vision. Saygar rode in on them obliquely, pushing first against one segment, then another, until he had them moving slowly in the direction of the distant angry mutter that was the pounding of tons of water down the mouth of Rainbow Gorge.

When they started breaking out of line, loping back the way he had come, Saygar drew his .45, lifted it above his head, and sent one shot, then another, racketing into the confusion of sound. As the explosions cut loose, the nearest steers plunged away from it, into the ma.s.sed animals ahead. From off to Saygar's left came other muted gunshots. Then Reibel and Whitey opened up far away to his right. The bawling of the cattle was drowned by a growing hoof thunder. Fear-crazed animals reared and plunged, pawing the backs of those blocking their way. A few turned and ran back away from the main body of the herd. Saygar let them go. Time and again he shot into the air. When his gun was empty, he reloaded, taking his time, sensing the relentless forward surging of the herd now.

Up along the creek bank, the inky, fast-swirling waters formed a barrier the closest animals shunned with greater fear than that which had made them run from the sudden press of animals closing in on them. But the press of those gun-shy steers farthest behind pushed them relentlessly on, to the edge of the water, into it, then on until they lost a foothold.

Rank after rank of animals plunged into the creek, lost footing, and tried to swim to the far bank close at hand. A few made it. But the powerful rush of the current caught the rest, swept them relentlessly on toward the roaring rapids that marked the Troublesome's precipitous plunge into the depths of the gorge. The bawling of the lost animals was drowned in that roar as they were swallowed by the curving high crests of the mounded waves racing across the jagged humps of huge boulders.

Saygar felt the forward motion of the herd slow. In another moment it stopped and he emptied his gun over the heads of the nearest steers. The sounds seemed to drive them completely mad, for they suddenly turned on him. He wheeled his pony around barely in time, driving home his spurs. His horse ran for his life, urged on in stark fear at the thunder of hoofs on all sides. A plunging steer came close to knocking the horse from his feet. Saygar lost a stirrup and thought he was going to be thrown. Then, miraculously, the horse pounded into the open and away and he was safe.

Behind, the bawling of the herd faded gradually until finally the night's serenity remained unbroken by anything but the steady slur of the pony's hoofs sliding through the knee-deep gra.s.s.

Saygar struck the Diamond trail a quarter mile beyond the point he and his men had left it. He turned in toward the Middle Arizona Ranch and rode the trail in that direction until he saw the lights once more. Then, heading back up the trail, he started for the basin.

Danger Signals.

The glowing coals of the cedar fire tinted the cave's walls with a ghostly pinkish light that lacked the strength to cast a shadow. Jean Vanover sat in the feeble outer radius of that light, near the blanket-draped figure that gave out but a faint whisper of shallow breathing. It had been this way last night and all day today, and now, at the beginning of this second night, there was no change that Jean could see in the unconscious man.

Last night there had been something to do. Before Blaze had left, they had bathed the deep gash in Joe's head and bandaged it with a cleanly washed strip of the flour sack. Then, with Blaze gone in the hour past midnight, Jean had heated some condensed milk in a pan on the fire and tried to make Joe drink it. He hadn't seemed able to swallow. The girl tried every way she could to make him, as he lay flat on the blankets, finally lifting his upper body onto her knees. It was while she held him that way, his head lying in the crook of her arm, and looked down into his face, that she felt the first unaccountable stir of feeling toward him.

Before that moment, Joe Bonnyman had been simply a man hurt badly and in need of help, a man who perhaps piqued her curiosity in a strange, indefinable way. But, as she held him close, feeling his solidness and strength, and yet knowing that he was as utterly helpless as a small child, that new and stirring emotion took her. He was hers to watch and protect, to bring back to life, and since that very moment she had wanted Joe Bonnyman to live, wanted it more than she'd ever wanted anything. She couldn't define her reasons for that fervent hope. It was there and it was all that seemed to matter.

The day had dragged. Jean cooked and ate a meal, not relishing it. Many times her imagining had taken her quickly across the cave to kneel beside Joe in a breathless expectancy, thinking she had heard a change in his breathing, or that he had moved. Each of those times had brought a deep disappointment. He was always the same, lying the way he had when she last looked down at him; she would feel his pulse and it would be strong, betraying her fear that his shallow breathing was a prelude to death. Through the long hours she had been half sick with fear of his dying. At times she imagined she could feel another presence in the cave, a sinister presence, and in those moments she would go to Joe and lift his head into her lap and hold it close, as though shielding this man who should be a stranger, but wasn't, from the beyond.

Now, with the total darkness of this second night, Jean was fighting a battle of her own. Sleep was relentlessly crowding in on her. She fought giving in to it with all her will, drinking the coffee she had brewed at midday, bathing her eyes with cold water, even rubbing them to make them stay open.

She invented a problem to keep awake, going across to sit beside Joe and thinking back on what little Blaze had told her or the circ.u.mstances surrounding the shooting. Trying to remember what little she had learned from the doctor about dealing with emergencies like this. Had she forgotten anything? Was there anything at all she could do to help this man keep his slender hold on life? Trying to think of something helped her fight her drowsiness.

When she had exhausted every possibility, Jean's thoughts turned to something else. Ruth Merrill loved Joe Bonnyman, and Ruth was the one who should be here now. Jean knew that Ruth had been Joe's choice years ago. More than likely, Ruth was one of the reasons Joe had come back home. Jean thought of the two, what the future might hold for them, in an angry, defensive way that had no logic or reasoning behind it. It became as though she, not Ruth, had some rightful hold over this man and was unwilling to relinquish it. She finally realized the absurdity of her att.i.tude and tried to be amused by it. But that feeling of possessiveness stayed with her, regardless of the effort she made not to let it.

In late afternoon she had dozed for a few minutes, stirring out of a deep, dreamless sleep with an acute feeling of guilt. As dusk settled prematurely in the narrow caon, she had gone out and gathered more firewood, knowing that Blaze might not have the chance to get back here tonight. He had said he wouldn't come if there was the slightest possibility of being followed, and with another night's lonely vigil in prospect, the girl was counting on the friendly glow of the fire to drive out her despairing mood.

When she could no longer make out the light at the cave mouth, when the darkness in the caon was complete, that feeling of despair became so strong that she wanted to cry out. She was sure now that Joe Bonnyman would never again be alive and well. The injustice of the thing galled her. For, from what Blaze had said last night, she saw now that Joe was more the victim of circ.u.mstances than the unprincipled betrayer of family and friends. She was a little ashamed of her father's share in giving Joe the name he bore on this range.

So engrossed did Jean become in trying to see how Joe was to come out of this, provided he lived, that she let the fire die. When the sound of a pony's hoofs striking rock beyond the cave mouth echoed in to her, the cave had become a sinister place. She was badly frightened.

She reached for the Colt Blaze had left with her the night before, and, pushing back into the shadows at the rear wall, she waited, hardly daring to breath.

Then Blaze's cheerful-"Anybody home?"-sounded hollowly down the short tunnel, and the quickness of easing nerve strain hit her and left her almost too weak to speak.

"Just the two of us, Blaze," she said, trying to make her tone casual.

When Coyle crawled into the light, his freckled good-natured face showed a wide grin. "Then he . . . he's hangin' on?"

"He's just the same."

They knelt alongside Joe, Blaze reaching down to feel of his friend's wrist. When he straightened, he gave the girl a look, and his expression sobered. "You're tuckered out. Better get some sleep while I sit with him."

"I'm not sleepy," she insisted. "How is Dad taking this?"

"Sort of hard," he admitted. "They've got men out. I wanted to tell him, but . . ."

When he didn't go on, she said: "I know. It wouldn't be fair to Joe. Dad will understand when it's all over."

Her face flushed after she had spoken, and Blaze knew that she instantly regretted her choice of words. Pretending not to notice, he said quickly: "They've put a reward out for Joe. A thousand dollars. Want to turn him in and we'll split it?"

"Blaze!"

He laughed softly, glad to have prodded her from her dark mood. He went on then, telling her of the three strangers who proposed to homestead the basin, and how the mesa ranchers would be too busy until the hunt was over to do much about them, how if they thought much about these homesteaders, they'd probably decide they were hired to come in by Middle Arizona. But he saw that Jean wasn't listening. Her eyes seemed to be staring through him at something beyond, and whatever she was seeing patterned her face with sadness, an expression that changed her prettiness to outright beauty.

Blaze paused a moment, then asked quietly: "What is it, Jean?"

It was the first time he had ever called her by name. It seemed to bring them closer. Abruptly she choked back a sob and whispered: "Blaze, I'm afraid, terribly afraid."

"What of, girl? Joe? He's tough, I tell you, hard to kill. He'll be all right."

What he said didn't change her wide-eyed and alarmed look. "We can't stop hoping, can we? He'll wake up tonight, won't he?" She lifted a hand and ran it over her eyes. "Don't pay any attention to me, Blaze." She tried to smile. "Build up the fire. Let's see if he'll eat something."

Blaze reached across Joe to get a stick of wood. Hand outstretched, he all at once froze in that att.i.tude. Then he was saying hoa.r.s.ely, gladly: "Joe, boy! It's me . . . Blaze."

And Jean was hearing Joe's evenly drawled: "You always were a sucker for a wake, you red-headed b.u.m."

Blaze hunkered back on his heels and let out a whoop that made the cavern ring. Tears glistened in Jean's eyes. She brushed them away as Joe's glance came around on her. His smile broadened and he seemed about to say something when a grimace of pain crossed his face and he closed his eyes.

He lay that way a long moment in which Jean's breath wouldn't come for fear of the thing she had been dreading. Then, gradually, his expression eased and he was looking at her once more.

"Does it hurt much?" she asked.

"It did there for a minute. You . . . you've been here all the time?"

"Since midnight last night," Blaze told him. "I couldn't think of anyone else to bring."

"They know where you are?" Joe still looked at the girl.

"No one knows," she a.s.sured him. "You're safe. We'll keep you here until you're well again.

"What will they think?" he said.

"It doesn't matter what they think." She spoke defensively. "What does is that you're alive. We . . . we weren't sure you'd ever be this way again."

"Who was it shot from behind that rock, feller?" Blaze queried.

"What rock?" Joe asked absently. "There are lots of rocks, big ones and little ones, all falling up the hill. Up, not down Blaze! It sure was a . . ." His voice trailed off and he closed his eyes..

Blaze gave Jean a queer look. "You were lyin' along the creek up at the edge of the basin when I . . ." He broke off to reach over and shake Joe by the shoulder. "Joe!" he said urgently. "You hear me?"

But Joe's eyes remained closed. His breathing was deep, even. After a moment Blaze said: "He's pa.s.sed out again." He didn't look at the girl.

Jean sat back. " Does it mean he won't . . . ?" she began lifelessly.

"He'll be all right," Blaze quickly a.s.sured her. "But you've got to get some rest. Here, take this blanket. He can have my coat." He pulled the blanket off Joe and spread it out for her.

This time she made no protest, but lay on the blanket and closed her eyes. Blaze, putting wood on the fire, thought she dropped off to sleep immediately. But just as he decided this and faced the sobering possibility that Joe might this time not regain consciousness, she spoke: "I'm going to stay here until he can be moved. And, Blaze . . ."

"Yes?" he answered when she paused.

"I'm not afraid any longer."

"Neither am I. Never was," Blaze lied. "Now get some shut-eye."

A moment later her even breathing told him she was really asleep this time.

In the next two hours Joe wakened three times, each time seeming a little stronger and more rational. At last he asked to sit up. At first Blaze wouldn't let him, but then he gave in, moving Joe so that he could sit with his back to the wall. For a minute or two Joe's face paled. Then his color seemed better.

"I could eat a side o' beef," he said finally. "Anything around?"

Blaze filled a tin cup with steaming coffee he'd put on the fire after Jean had gone to sleep. "Try this."

Joe downed the coffee. "Anything else on the menu?"

Blaze heated a cupful of the condensed milk. Although Joe made a wry face when it was offered, he drank it.

"Better?" Blaze asked.

"Some. If that wall across there would only stop spinnin'. Sit still, can't you?"

"All right," Blaze said, realizing that the aftereffects of the concussion must be severe. "Here's something to steady you down. Three homesteaders filed on quarter-sections in the basin this mornin'. They're movin' right in."

"No," Joe breathed, and it seemed to Blaze that his eyes were more alert. "Who are they?"

Halfway through Blaze's description of the three strangers, Joe cut in with: "Saygar's crew."

"What about his bunch?"

"That's them, those three. The young one was blond, sort of tall? Did you notice the way he wore his iron?"

When Blaze described Whitey in detail, Joe was sure. He told of his ride up the Troublesome, of running into Saygar at Hoelseker's cabin, of his escape with Clark.

"Then it must've been one of that bunch that bushwhacked you and left you layin' there for someone else to find," Blaze said. "No one in this country has ever laid eyes on those sidewinders, only a few on Saygar himself. He probably put a man after you to make sure you wouldn't give away this play he's making for the basin." A look of worry came to his face. "Do you reckon he could have sent another man out after Clark? Clark wasn't in town today."

"You'll have to find out," Joe said, his lean face going grave. "I should have done like Clark said, headed out. Then I'd have been with him as far as the pa.s.s. Blaze, there's a gent that don't happen often. He invited a slug in his guts just to save me when we made that break."

Blaze eased the somber run of his friend's thoughts by saying: "If anything had happened to him, I'd've heard of it. Murdock would have reported down to Lyans."

"That's so," Joe agreed, and seemed relieved. "How do you figure this play of Saygar's? He's a rustler, not a rancher."

"I can't figure it."

"He's workin' for someone."

Blaze frowned. "Middle Arizona?"

"Maybe." Joe looked down at Jean and gave a slow shake of the head. "But not for Vanover. What's his foreman like, this Neal Harper? Would he be smart enough to hide behind Vanover and set out to take over the country for the outfit the way they tried to in the beginnin'?"

"Search me. That jasper's a hard one to figure. I've had him pegged as a brain-shy gun boss. But maybe I'm wrong. Vanover agreed at the meetin' the other night to let him go. Accordin' to the girl, he's agreed to pull out tomorrow."

"Without any fuss?"

"So she says. Vanover never liked him much, because him and that crew he brought in made it seem like Diamond was c.o.c.ked for trouble. The way she makes it look, Vanover's been just as bogged down over this mess as the rest of us."

"Maybe she's tellin' the truth, Blaze."

Blaze shrugged. "I'd take her word before most anyone else I know. But if it ain't been Middle Arizona, who has been stirrin' up all this trouble?"

"The same party that's behind Saygar."

Blaze sat a little straighter, eying Joe sharply. "That don't hold water," he said patiently. "There's just two sides to this, and only two. There ain't no in-between."

"There could be one we don't know about."

"But who, d.a.m.n it?"