Last Train to Bannock [Clayburn 02] (9 page)

    In a couple of places they got bogged down, but were able to wrench the chuck wagon free. In one place the sand finally proved too soft and deep to get through, and they were forced to search out a detour where it was more solidly packed down underfoot. But they managed to get to the other side of the dunes in a little under an hour.

    It was going to be much slower going, Clayburn knew, with the capacity-loaded freight wagons. Leaving Roud to guard the chuck wagon and give warning with his gun of any trouble approaching from that side, Clayburn and Kosta trudged back across the dunes.

    They found the first four wagons ready to be hauled through by their doubled teams of mules. The difficulty of the way across decided Clayburn on taking the wagons one at a time. Assigning Haycox to stand guard on this side, he and Kosta guided the lead mules of the first wagon into the dunes. The teamsters from the other wagons followed on foot.

    Halfway through, the mules and wagon wheels sank so deep in loose sand that they were brought to a dead halt. The teamsters grouped around the wagon, put their backs and shoulders to it and began pushing. With them straining every ounce of strength, with Kosta and Clayburn pulling for all they were worth, and with the mule-skinner spurring the teams to renewed efforts by the stinging snap of his long whip, the freight wagon budged forward again, balking against every gained inch.

    At one point Clayburn saw Cora had joined the grunting, heaving teamsters in pushing the wagon. He knew the little she added wouldn't accomplish much, but she was probably doing the right thing. It kept her too occupied to worry; and the sight of a woman pitting herself against the sand and the heavily resistant wagon drove the teamsters into using more muscle than they'd thought they had in them.

    They kept the wagon moving. But every foot of the way cost a mountain of toil. When they finally got to the other side where Roud waited, the mules were trembling with exhaustion in their traces.

    Clayburn immediately led the men back through the dunes, not allowing them time to find out just how tired they were.

    They bulled the second double-teamed wagon through the way they had the first-and went back for the third. It was time for the midday meal when they got the fourth wagon across.

    The food and rest gave the men a chance to realize how worn-out they were-and to get over it somewhat. Clayburn was relieved to find that he didn't have to force any of them to their feet when he called an end to the meal break.

    By then the mules that had hauled the first wagon through had recovered. They were unhitched and led back through the dunes to be hitched to the fifth wagon. This time it was even slower work getting the wagon across. But they got it done. Then the mule teams that had pulled the second wagon were used to haul the sixth one.

    Clayburn was surprised-and impressed-to find Cora Sorel still with them, shoving against the wagon with the weariness-weakened teamsters. And when they went for the seventh wagon she still didn't drop out. She looked pale and shaken, and half out on her feet. But Clayburn didn't try to persuade her to call it quits. It was her cargo they were taking to Bannock. It was her money that would be lost if they didn't get there.

    Dusk was closing around them when they got the last wagon across the dunes. It had taken an entire day to traverse just two miles.

    Clayburn was gambling that the total time saved by taking the shorter route through the desert would make up for it.

    

    

    They were entering a land of rugged hills, mesas and rock canyons two days later, the wind growing steadily colder, when Ranse Blue caught up to them with news that Clayburn had won his gamble.

    Adler's outfit was more than half a day behind them.

    

    

    The sun was a dull red blob sinking into the jagged horizon, casting long tortured shadows across a landscape that might have been created by the dropping from the sky of a God-sized jigsaw puzzle of stone and clay; a land of flat-topped mesas and twisting canyons and towering masses of rock, of eroded butte spires, dry gullies and monstrous boulders. The wind was not strong, but its breath had become noticeably colder during the day's progress northward.

    Clayburn sat his tall sorrel atop a high flat rock, the collar of his sheepskin coat turned up to warm his ears as he gazed north to the dark, looming range of the mountains. Snow gleamed on those mountains, tinged with a rosy hue by the setting sun. But it only showed in patches, high up, and the clouds above the range were light and fluffy, containing no threat of more snow. Not yet.

    His saddle creaked under him as Clayburn turned slowly, taking one last survey of the other horizons. When he was studying the south, he became very still. Then he raised his field glasses to his eyes, adjusted them to the distance. There was dust rising behind the farthest rim-rock.

    It might be Apaches. But he'd spent most of that day hunting for sign of their presence, without finding any. Besides, it wasn't Apaches that he was expecting at this stage in the game.

    The dust was blown away on the wind. No more rose in its place. No riders appeared over the rimrock. Clayburn waited, watching through the high-powered lenses. Five minutes passed. Nothing further stirred back there. Finally Clayburn lowered the glasses, twitched the reins, and rode the sorrel down off the rock into a deep meandering gully.

    Two hundred yards away, the red-haired Wilks crouched in the dark shadow of a boulder and watched him go…

    The dry gully led Clayburn into a crisscrossing of shallow canyons. He pulled up the sorrel and listened. Then he kicked his mount into motion again, cutting southwest through the canyon maze. Half a mile farther on he found the wagon train filing past the bottom of a vast shale slide, Cora and Roud riding flank and Haycox trailing a quarter of a mile behind the last freight wagon.

    Cora rode up as he approached. She looked tired from the long day's riding, but she straightened on her buckskin and grinned as they met.

    "You're a little late tonight, Clay. I was beginning to worry."

    "About me?"

    "You sound surprised. Are you supposed to be indestructible? Things
could
happen to you."

    Clayburn nodded. "And have-too many times."

    "Did you find a good place for us to camp for the night?"

    "One that'll serve," he told her, and rode in ahead of the chuck wagon. Motioning Kosta to follow, he angled northeast away from the shale slide.

    Keeping pace with him, Cora said, "I've been studying the ridges all around for two days straight, ever since you told me Adler had somebody watching us. I haven't seen a sign of anybody."

    "Don't get your hopes up. He's there."

    Involuntarily, Cora glanced off to left and right. Then she looked again at Clayburn's hard, impassive profile. "Where?"

    He shrugged. "I don't know-because I've made a point of not looking."

    The wagons were halfway through a deep, wide canyon when Roud caught up to Clayburn and Cora.

    "I like the looks of this place, Clay. Two ways in or out, both real narrow so they'll be easy to defend. Walls too steep for anybody to come all the way down at us. Nice safe spot to camp in for the night."

    "It is," Clayburn agreed. "But it's not where we're camping."

    Dusk was growing into night when they emerged from the other end of the canyon, cut to the right, and came to a dead end. The area was hemmed in on three sides by low cliffs, from the base of one of which a spring trickled into a shallow water hole.

    Clayburn raised an arm to halt the wagons. "This is it."

    Roud stared around them dubiously. "Here? You usually know what you're doing, Clay, but take another look at that cliff rim up there. Be awful easy for anybody coming through the canyon to get up there and pick us off. And just as easy for the rest of Adler's men to come in at us. We'll be boxed in, no way out. It's a death trap."

    Clayburn smiled wolfishly. "Looks that way, doesn't it?"

    

    

    Wilks slipped back down the canyon to the horse he'd left hidden behind a group of boulders. He led the horse till he reached the other end of the canyon, well beyond hearing distance of Cora Sorel's outfit. Mounting up, he rode south through the deepening night. He did not push his horse too fast, but let it feel its way over the rock-strewn ground so that it wouldn't trip and break a leg. There was plenty of time. There was the whole long night ahead in which to finish the job.

    A little over an hour later he found the place where Adler was waiting with the rest of his men and their horses.

    Wilks swung down from his horse to face Adler. "Either you're a mind reader," he told his boss, "or you're mighty damn lucky."

    "Talk straight," Adler snapped.

    "You couldn't've picked a better night for it. They're camped inside a little box canyon. We won't even have to rush 'em. Just bottle 'em up in there, get our best shots on one of the rims above, and wait for dawn. Come first light, the boys on the rim can start picking them off like shooting ducks in a barrel. The walls're low enough for that, but too steep for anybody to get up at us. They'll only have one way out and the rest of us'll be waiting there for them, nice and safe behind some rocks, to cut 'em down as they come out."

    "Sounds easy," Adler said, half to himself.

    "A picnic."

    "A little too easy."

    Wilks laughed softly, his teeth showing in the starlight. "You'd like it better if it was harder?"

    Adler nodded slowly. "Maybe. Clayburn's no fool. He got Cora Sorel's wagons across the desert ahead of us. He outwitted you at that stage station…"

    "The hell he did," Wilks growled. "I did what I went there to do, didn't I? And got away clean-with all Clayburn's money in the bargain. You should have seen his face when I…"

    But Adler was busy with his own thoughts. "If he knows you've been watching them all this time…"

    "Not a chance. He didn't spot me once, didn't know I was around."

    "You're very sure of that?"

    "You just heard me say so. It's not the first time I've had to trail somebody without being seen, you know."

    Adler nodded slowly, "All right. If you're sure. Take the men in. Get it done-and done right."

    Wilks regarded him quizzically. "How about you?"

    "I'll be here. Waiting."

    It surprised Wilks. "How come? Never knew you to be scared to go into a fight before."

    "And I'm not now. But this time my only concern is with getting my wagons to Bannock; and making sure mine are the only ones that get there before the snows. If I got myself shot down there'd be no point to any of this.
You're
the one's so sure this is going to be easy. And you're the one getting the bonus for stopping Cora Sorel's wagons."

    "And taking all the chances," Wilks added cheerfully. "Okay. Just be ready to pay me that bonus tomorrow."

    He turned from Adler to Benjy, Dillon and the others. "From the marks I saw on some of you I'd say Clayburn and his bunch had a lot of fun with you back in Parrish. Tonight it'll be your turn to have all the fun… Let's go."

    

    

    Ranse Blue found Cora Sorel's wagon camp by the light of its cook fires. He rode in on a tired horse, leading another that looked equally weary, cursing at a guard who demanded that he identify himself as he emerged from the darkness. Clayburn strode to meet him, followed by Cora, Roud and Haycox.

    The old buffalo hunter, climbed down stiffly, looked around him at the low cliffs, and scratched his dirty gray whiskers. "Clayburn, you sure picked a helluva spot to receive visitors."

    "They're coming?"

    Blue turned his face slightly and spat at the ground. "They're comin', all right. Every damn one of 'em, except three Adler left behind with the wagons and mules. A helluva lot more men than we've got. And right now they're all sittin' just about an hour's ride from here. Waitin', I guess, for a fellow I spotted sneaking back down that canyon outside when I was comin' in."

    "Did he spot
you
!" Clayburn asked quietly.

    Blue gave him an offended look for an answer.

    "Clay," Cora said anxiously, "Roud was right about this being a bad place to camp."

    "He didn't say it was a bad place to camp," Clayburn told her. "He said it was a bad place to take an attack. But this isn't where we're going to take it. They've got to come through that long canyon out there to get here."

    Roud grinned at him. "You sonuvabitch! I wondered what you were up to."

    "Now you know. Get the men started pulling off that brush."

    Roud hurried off to attend to the roped bundles of dry-brush and dead twigs that Clayburn had set them to gathering and tying onto the wagons two nights back.

    Clayburn turned back to Ranse Blue. "Are Adler's wagons still half a day behind us?"

    "Nope. Not no more.
Less
, now. Adler's mules are fresher than ours. They didn't wear themselves down fightin' through those sand dunes like ours did. They're catchin' up on us. The rate Adler's closin' the distance, he'll be ahead of us again before we reach Bannock."

    Haycox gave Clayburn an amused look. "It seems you weren't as smart as you thought."

    Clayburn showed no sign of hearing him. "Then the time's come," he told Blue, "to slow Adler up some more. Get four fresh horses. Two for you, two for me. Take them all the way through the canyon and get out of sight with them past the other end. And whatever happens stay there till I come for you. It may take a while."