Deadman Canyon

by
LOUIS TRIMBLE

a division of F+W Media, Inc.

C
LAY
B
ELDEN
came over the pass into the Wildhorse Valley shortly after sunset. He dropped out of the saddle and led his stocky dun pony out of sight of anyone who might be riding this way. Then he climbed up a big, honeycombed rock and positioned himself where he could watch without being seen.

He rolled a cigarette and smoked it slowly, looking over the valley while he waited for the October night to come. He couldn’t see that much had changed in the five years he’d been away. Judge Lyles’ Winged L spread with its fine, shiny white house and outbuildings and its neatly fenced pastures still took up the south half of the richly grassed valley. The dots of light marking the town to the north seemed no brighter nor more numerous than before.

Only Bick Damson’s place would have changed, Clay thought. And a shoulder of hill kept him from seeing that. He suppressed the quick anger the thought of Damson always brought him and stood up. The last of the evening light was fading to blackness over the Bitterroot Mountains to the west, and the stars were turning bright and hard and cold in the Montana sky. It was time to go.

Clay found the dun and led it back onto the wagon road. He mounted and gave the horse a light slap. “Keep to the middle and watch for chuckholes and you’ll be all right, fellow,” he murmured. “Now move along.”

He let the dun choose its own pace down the steep switchbacks. He rode easily, a tall man with solid shoulders, his big-boned body drawn hard and lean from this last year of working in a Butte silver mine. His ears accustomed themselves to the steady clopping of the horse’s hoofs and he listened beyond the sound, seeking any strange noise that might be out of rhythm with the night.

But he heard nothing, and when he came to the crossing with the hill road that ran along the high ground above the eastern edge of the valley, he stopped. Now the eagerness began to catch at him. His own land was just to the south and he felt the driving need to be on it once again. But memory of his talk with Judge Lyles when they had met in Helena two weeks back checked him. And once more he listened carefully to the night.

There was only the sound of the light breeze shaking the yellowing leaves of the aspens. Clay drew his rifle from the boot under his left leg and checked the load. He replaced the rifle and drew his handgun. He turned the cylinder so that the empty chamber was no longer under the firing pin. He bolstered the gun and reined the dun to the right.

“Slow and easy along here,” he whispered softly.

The trail was narrow and rough. As far as Clay knew, few people had used it since the time when a false silver strike had brought the first settlers into the valley. He had ridden it as a boy, both alone and when Tom Roddy had brought him here to teach him to read sign. Now he could feel the dun stumble over hussocks of grass and into weatherworn ruts.

They reached the branch trail that came up from Judge Lyles’ Winged L, and from here on the ground was smoother. Clay pressed on, excitement drumming in him because now he was on his own land. But caution held him back because it was here that Judge Lyles had said he would find the trouble.

The trail forked a short distance on, the wider piece going straight ahead to the big bench fronting Deadman Canyon, the narrower twisting up the rocky ridges to the high country meadows. Clay reined the dun upslope, and rode with one hand on his gun.

The breeze picked up, stirring the aspen to loud whisperings. The tops of the pines began to sway and their lower branches rustled noisily against one another. Clay leaned forward to help the dun over the steep stretches and to urge it on to more open country where he could hear more clearly.

The flat crack of a rifle shot shattered the night air. Clay heard the bullet tick leather as it scored the cantle of his saddle. The dun whinnied and reared up, catching him off balance. The horse’s twisting leap of fright lifted Clay out of the saddle and sent him crashing into the underbrush lining the trail.

His shoulder struck a rotting log. The punk wood broke his fall and he rolled behind the log and flattened himself against the darkness as the horse ran blindly along one of the game tracks leading toward the rimrock above Deadman Canyon. Then the horse stopped abruptly, and Clay could hear only soft cracklings as the dun stirred about in dense brush.

He heard no movement at all to mark the position of the sniper.

He tried to hear over the sounds made by the night wind, but he could catch only his own ragged, pained breathing. Darkness danced in front of his eyes in bursts of bright color and he rubbed at them to clear his vision.

Hoofbeats sounded from above. Someone was riding along one of the game tracks, pushing a horse hard and dangerously fast. Clay drew his gun and rested it on top of the log in front of him. In a minute the rider should reach the trail. And if he turned toward the valley, he would be in sight just long enough for Clay to get in one shot.

Clay listened tensely as the hoofbeats grew louder. The sounds changed as the horse left the soft ground of the game track for the harder surface of the trail. Eagerness shook Clay as he realized the horse had turned downslope. He saw the dark blur of the horse’s shape ahead to his left. He took a deep breath to steady himself. In just seconds the sniper would be outlined against a patch of star-studded sky.

The horse hammered on. It drew level with Clay. He let his breath out softly and fired. Too late he saw the empty saddle and realized he had been tricked into revealing his position.

A rifle blasted from across the trail. Pieces of log exploded in Clay’s face. He had a quick glimpse of a solid chunk of wood just before it caught him a glancing blow on the chin.

The force of the blow sent him tunbling backwards. He rolled through a clump of wiry buckbrush and half fell, half slid over a sudden drop-off into a stand of scrub pine. He twisted noisily down through the maze of branches, landing on the ground on his knees.

He remained that way a moment, dazed but conscious of the sound of footsteps prowling past the log where he had been. He shook his head to clear it and squinted upward. He was acutely aware of all sensation now — the feel of blood running down his chin, the hammering of his heart in his ears, whispering night wind, the stalking footsteps coming closer.

He discovered that somehow he had kept a grip on his gun. He caught his right wrist with his left hand and slowly, agonizingly lifted his arm until he had the muzzle of the gun pointed toward the edge of the drop-off above.

The footsteps grew hesitant, telling Clay that the sniper was unsure of Clay’s exact position. Now the man could-only feel his way forward, hoping for Clay to make another mistake and reveal himself again.

Clay’s rough-hewn features twisted into a savage grin. He wouldn’t be caught out twice the same way. He had played this grim game before — with claim jumpers in the Black Hills, with rustlers in Colorado, with Mexican
banditos
along the border. If it came to a war of nerves, he had his ammunition ready.

He tightened the grip of his fingers on his wrist as he felt his gun arm begin to tremble. The sounds grew louder above. The sniper was clumsy of foot, rustling the ground cover as he moved. A twig snapped dryly and Clay saw the bulk of a body against the night. His finger squeezed convulsively on the trigger as he steadied his gun arm again. Fire blossomed in the night. He heard a sharp curse of surprise and knew he had missed.

He fired again, blindly now, and a third time. Footsteps hammered through the brush as the sniper broke and ran. Clay twisted to his right and sent a fourth shot screaming into the night. Then he dropped his arm and listened to the man run down the trail until he was swallowed by distance.

Clay crawled to his feet, cursing the wind for having drowned the man’s first approach, and cursing himself for being so easily trapped. Then he realized that the sniper was on foot too. If he could find his horse first, Clay thought, he still might catch the man.

He whistled and heard an answering nicker from the dun. It was below and off to the left. Clay started in that direction, staggered as the full force of the bruising he had taken hit him, and went to his knees. He pulled himself up and fell again after two strides. He forced himself to his feet with an effort that brought the sweat breaking out over his body. He went on, falling twice more before he found the dun standing nervously in a small clearing. With a final surge of effort, he pulled himself into the saddle and reined the horse back toward the trail.

Clay let the dun pick its way downslope. He clung to the horn, fighting the waves of blackness that battered him. When they reached the fork with the trail down to the Winged L, he stopped. He could hear a rider now, going fast along the hill road toward town. Clay sent the dun that way, pushing it as fast as his strength would allow.

• • •

They crossed the wagon road he had followed down over the pass, and now he could see the rider dimly ahead. Clay urged the tired dun to a faster pace, his one thought to catch the sniper and bring him, dead or alive, to Judge Lyles.

The hill road followed the rim of the valley, running straight most of its length but twisting here and there around an outcropping of rock. Halfway to town, Clay saw lights in a big, sprawling log house. That would be Bick Damson’s new place, he guessed. Clay expected the rider to turn down Damson’s trail. When he had left five years before, the last words he had heard were Damson’s bellowed threats to kill him if he ever came back into the Wildhorse Country. And now, he thought, with Damson having struck it rich this past year, the man had the power to make that threat good.

But the rider kept straight on for town. Clay felt the cold wind whipping strength back into him, and he dug his heels into the dun, forcing it to a pounding, frantic gallop. Once the sniper reached town, Clay knew he would be gone. There he could find half a dozen places to hide or to wait to finish what he had started back on Clay’s mountainside.

The town lights swam closer. The rider raced past the first road leading to the fancy houses at this end of the small settlement. Then a bend in the road took him from view. Clay felt the dun stagger under him and he pulled it up reluctantly.

The sniper had had too great a head start. And Clay realized he lacked the strength to stalk the man through the streets and alleys where he might be hiding.

Clay reined downslope toward Judge Lyles’ big white townhouse. It stood on a knoll with the valley and the mountains to the west spread before it. Clay turned the dun into the lane that led to the big yard between the house and the stable. He passed the little cottage where Tom Roddy lived. Once he had been the Winged L foreman, but since Clay had been a boy he had spent his time hunting the mountain cats that preyed on the judge’s cattle. In exchange he received a pension and the small cottage at the rear of the big house.

Clay thought of stopping, but he wanted to speak to the judge before his strength gave out and he rode on. He pulled the dun to a halt by the rear door of the big house and half stepped, half fell from the saddle.

He caught his balance and walked slowly up the rear steps. He put a hand out and hit the door with his knuckles. He lifted his arm to knock again. The blackness closed down abruptly and he pitched forward. He fell on the splintery wood of the porch floor and lay still.