Novel 1978 - The Proving Trail (v5.0) (24 page)

Settling back in the saddle, I came down off the rise and immediately turned down a draw, then up another one, and cut across a low divider between two more. It looked like nobody was out there, but I did not feel that way. I just had a hunch, and it kept spooking me…somebody was closing in on me from somewhere.

Again I switched back and rode up a draw in some soft sand, then out upon the plains, where I let the roan run for a bit, then slowed him down. The country ahead was rimrock country, low hills rimmed with sheer faces of rock, some of them no more than four to six feet high, while the hills themselves varied around forty or fifty feet. There was a lot of juniper here and more cholla. The Purgatoire River was off to the west.

My trail led me up on the mesa again. It was very hot. Wiping the sweat from my brow, I looked all around. Empty…not even an antelope. Heat waves shimmered and danced. Mopping my face, I rubbed my hands down on my pants to dry the palms. No tracks but animal tracks. I drew up at a little seep and let the horses drink. Trotting the horses down the draw, I wove around through some juniper and then went up on the cap-rock for another look around.

Off to the southwest there was a plume of dust, and it seemed to be coming my way. Walking my horses toward it, I suddenly sighted a well-worn trail and beside it a stone corral and a building. There was a faint suggestion of smoke rising from the chimney.

Pulling up in a clump of five or six junipers, I stepped down, and rifle in hand, walked closer. There were several horses in a corral, and a harnessed team waiting.

A stage station! Sitting down in the shade of the junipers, I watched the stage come in, saw some dusty people get down to stretch their legs, and watched the teams changed. I saw nobody whom I knew, but there were two horses at the hitching rail near the station.

After a bit the stage pulled out, but nobody came near the horses. I was hungry and there would be food down there I did not have to fix for myself, and fresh coffee.

Mounting up, I rode around the corral and down to the stage station, coming up on its blind side. I shucked my Winchester from the scabbard, tied my horses in what little shade there was, and walked around the corner.

It was a low-roofed building with two windows and a door. The door stood open and I stepped inside.

There was a man behind the bar with no hat on, and two men on the business side of the bar who wore hats. Both had been and were drinking. One was a stocky, barrel-chested man with thick legs and worn-down boot heels. The other was lean and tall, slightly stooped. He turned his head slightly and peered at me. Crossing to the one table, I pulled back the bench and sat down, laying the Winchester across the bench beside me.

The man without the hat looked at me and asked, “What’ll it be?”

“Coffee,” I said, “and whatever you have fixed to eat.”

“Give you a chunk of pot roast,” he said, “if you like buffalo.”

“I could eat a wolf,” I said. “Let’s have it.”

The tall man looked at me again. I knew trouble when I saw it, and did not meet his eyes. “I’m a wolf,” he said.

Under my breath I swore. The last thing I needed now was a quarrelsome drunk. I was hungry and I was a little tired and my patience was running short. The heavyset one had not even given me a glance. He was pouring another drink.

“I’m a wolf,” the tall one repeated.

Ignoring him, I watched the man bring in the meat from the kitchen. He put it on the table in front of me and said, under his breath, “Watch yourself.”

The tall man had turned his back to the bar and was looking at me, a hard, ugly stare. I’d seen the kind before. Give them a drink and all their natural meanness comes out and they’ll pick on anything handy, preferably an Indian or a Mexican.

“I’m a wolf,” the man repeated. “Let’s see you eat me.”

The meat smelled good and I started to eat, ignoring him. Yet I’d had no more than two bites when he loomed over the table.

“When I talk, damn you, pay attention!” He grabbed at me, and I knocked the hand aside and shoved the table into him. He staggered and went down. I walked around the table, and when he came up off the floor I hit him with my left hand.

As I did so, I moved so that he was between me and the man at the bar, who had not even turned around. That way I could see them both. The tall man was four inches taller and had longer arms, but loudmouthed as he was, he knew nothing about fighting. He took a long, clumsy swing at me, and I grabbed his sleeve and jerked him toward me, kicking his feet from under him. He hit the floor hard and for a moment sat there, shocked and suddenly sober…or nearly so.

“I’ll kill you for that,” he said, matter-of-factly.

“I’d give it another thought,” I told him. “You haven’t done very well so far.”

Without taking my eyes from him, I said to the stage tender. “You got a graveyard out here?”

“We have. Nothing but Injuns in it, though.”

“If you want to be remembered,” I said to the tall man, “you’d better tell him your name before you reach for that gun.”

“Think I’m scared?” he demanded, and I knew he wouldn’t fight unless the odds were all with him.

“I don’t think you’re scared,” I said, “and I hope you’re smart.”

He stood there, and I backed off and sat down at the table. When I picked up my fork, it was with my left hand. He looked at me and he wanted to kill me, but he simply didn’t have what it took. “To hell with you!” he said.

He looked at me, and my right hand was resting on my thigh close to my gun butt. It was even closer to the gun in my waistband, but I didn’t believe he had even seen that. It was also within two inches of my Winchester, which was pointed toward him under the table.

“To hell with you!” he repeated. Then he turned to the man at the bar. “Come on, Shorty. I’m leavin’.”

The man at the bar still did not turn. “You go ahead, Slim, I’ll stick around for a while.”

“You what?”

Shorty turned his back to the bar. “We ain’t known each other long, Slim, but I reckon it’s long enough.”

Slim stared at him, unbelieving, then he went out and slammed the door behind him. Shorty looked after him, then turned back to the bar.

After a minute I said, “Shorty?”

He turned his head to look at me. “Have you eaten yet? This pot roast is pretty good…if you like buffalo.”

“I’ve et it a time or two,” he said.

“Sit up, then,” I said. “I’m buying.”

He walked over with his drink and sat down across the table from me. He had a broad face and a thick neck, and he looked like a fighter and a stayer.

“Him an’ me,” he said, “we rode for the same outfit. We quit at the same time, just naturally drifted off together. I never saw him when he was drinkin’ before.”

“He’ll get himself killed,” I said.

“And I’d be his partner. I’d have to stand with him,” Shorty said. “If a man has to die, it should be for something worthwhile, not a two-by-twice loudmouth trouble-hunter.”

We ate and we talked very little. When I’d finished my third cup of coffee, he said, “You goin’ far?”

“Huntin’ a ranch out on the western slope. Figured to look over the Wet Mountain country first.”

“Mind if I ride along?”

“You hadn’t better, Shorty,” I replied. “I’ve got trouble on my trail, but it’s my trouble, not yours, and I want to handle it alone.”

“Too bad,” he said, wistfully, “you’re the kind of gent I’d like to ride along with.”

“Shorty,” I said, “my name’s Kearney McRaven. I’m headed for the upper Colorado River area on the west slope. I’ll be hunting ranchland. I’m going partners with Ben Blocker and a lawyer named Attmore from Kaycee. We could use a good man.”

“I heard of Ben Blocker,” he said. “He any relation of Ab Blocker, the trail driver?”

“Not that I know of,” I said, “but they’re cut from the same mold.”

“Those fellers you got trouble with…are they close by?”

“I have a feeling they are, but I don’t know. It’s an ugly fight, Shorty, but it’s my fight and I have to make it. I don’t want a good man to die because of me. If you see two or three long, tall, slim men wearing black outfits, you fight shy of them. They are mean, and they are trouble. They will face any man living with a gun, but they’d just as soon shoot him in the back, dry-gulch him, or drop poison in his soup. So stay clear…but I’d like it if you showed up out west there, rustling a job.”

“I can use a gun.”

“Not this time, Shortly. You come west and you’ve got yourself a partner, but this is my fight. There’s another thing, Shorty. I’m keyed for this fight. I’m ready to handle it alone. If I start depending on somebody to help, it will take the edge off and I’ll be less careful. There are times when it is better for a man to be alone and dependent on nobody but himself.”

“Your funeral.”

“It may be.” I paid for my meal and his and then walked outside. After a careful look around, I switched the gear to my other horse and rode out of there. When I topped out on the ridge, I glanced back and Shorty was standing there, looking after me.

Most western cowhands rode partners with somebody, and often they stayed together for years, but I had ridden with nobody excepting pa, and when I was a youngster, with Pistol.

When I pulled out of that stage station, I didn’t plan on going far, but I found a good horse trail that led toward the south and took it. This was country I’d been through a time or two and I held to a good pace. I knew where I was going now, for it was a place where pa and me had holed up once a long time ago.

It was coming on to dark, with a few stars already in the sky, when I unsaddled and picketed my horses. There was water there, and grass. There was a good stand of juniper around and a place where a fire could be lit and kept out of sight. By day a man could see for miles, for we were a good thousand feet above the rest of the country. The view to the north was especially good.

There was plenty of dry wood around that would give off no smoke, so I had a fire, a hot meal, and some coffee. I took the horses to water again because I hadn’t let them have much there at first, then picketed them again.

Leaving the coffee on the coals, I took my rifle and picked my way through the rocks and the juniper to the edge of the cliff…or as near as I needed to go.

Above were the stars, a million or two of them, it seemed like. Below was a vast empty blackness, blackness without a break for miles and mi—

There was a fire down there. It was a long way off, a pinpoint of light was all, but a campfire nonetheless. Nobody needed to tell me who was at that fire. Of course, it could be somebody else, but I knew it was not, and at the same time I had a sort of strange premonition that a showdown was before me.

I didn’t mean a showdown on some far-off day, I meant now…soon…within hours.

Walking back to the fire, I laid out my guns, and one after the other I cleaned them, checked the action, and then reloaded them.

All right, then. They were asking for it and they could have it.

Unrolling my bed, I banked my fire a mite and laid some sticks close to hand, for the night was cold. This country was like that. Hot as it might be in the daytime, a man could always use a blanket at night…and I was at an altitude of about sixty-five hundred feet.

Twice during the night I awakened to listen, and each time I checked my horses, but they were eating quietly, unworried by anything.

Lying awake that last time, I tried to come up with some scheme that would give me the advantage, but the trouble was, I would not go hunting them, and that gave them the choice of a battleground. Think of it as I would, I could come up with no bright ideas.

I was going to have to face two or three tough, dangerous men, and I would have to do it alone.

The Mesa de Mayo, where I now was, was a lookout point long favored by Indians in the area. From one position or another atop the mesa, a man could see for miles in any direction he chose. Before daylight I was up, saddled the roan, and packed my gear as soon as I’d had some coffee. There was no need to make fresh coffee. I just drank what was left in the pot.

Somehow they had managed to stay with me, losing the trail now and again, but generally aware of what my destination might be. I could be sure they would have a man in Silverton and probably one in Rico, and they would be watching the railroads and scouting the main routes west.

Coming down off the east end of the Mesa de Mayo, I crossed the Cimarron, taking time to water my horses as I did so. Then I doubled back to the west, keeping the mesa close on my right.

By noon the coolness of the morning was gone, and once again the heat waves were shimmering, turning the horizon and the plains before me into a dancing, liquidlike air. The Spanish Peaks, which I knew were far away, suddenly stood in the sky before me.

There was no water that I knew of close by, although there were creeks that ran into the North Canadian. However, I did not want to turn from my trail and pushed on. Turning off might have saved me a lot of grief.

There was a dim trail led between Sierra Grande, a huge peak lifting thousands of feet above the country around, and Capulin Mountain, a sort of tower. I startled some antelope, and they went bounding away, taking my attention with them. When my eyes returned to the trail, I pulled up sharply.