Novel 1978 - The Proving Trail (v5.0) (29 page)

Suddenly they began shooting, searching fire aimed at driving me into the open. Hugging the ground, I let them shoot. Only a ricochet could get me where I lay, but there were a couple that came too close for comfort.

Right then I was wishing pa was with me. Then I was glad he wasn’t, only I was a mighty lonesome boy with all those men shooting to kill me and me here alone without a soul to help.

The fire was still showing coals and the coffee was hot. I poured and drank a cup, hunkering down under that ol’ spruce. A couple of hard biscuits in my saddlebag provided all the meal I was likely to get, but they tasted good.

It was clouding up, clouds gathering real heavy around the Spanish Peaks. Unless I missed a guess, it was going to be one of those thunderstorms that scare the living daylights out of a man. Up this high, every bit of lightning in miles would be drawn to those towering peaks above me like to a lightning rod. I’d heard folks say that aside from the Lone Cone out in western Colorado, there was no place like the Spanish Peaks for lightning. A magpie who had been fretting and scolding around evidently figured the same way, because he flew off and left me there alone. I finished the last of my biscuit and brushed off the crumbs. A bullet clipped a bit from the spruce and dropped it to my shoulder.

Those folks out there now, those Yants and L’Ollonaises or whatever their names were, had they ever been through a thunder and lightning storm up this high? If they hadn’t, they were going to get a surprise, I could tell them that.

When the lightning starts striking around within a few yards and the thunder starts rolling and banging down those rock-walled canyons, it’s enough to make the hair stand on end…but the electricity in the air takes care of that.

How many of them were out there? Four? Or a dozen? And that woman…she was out there.

Where was that Joseph Vrydag, said to be the worst of them?

Emptying the grounds from my coffeepot, I packed it up. Suddenly I was thinking that when darkness came, or in the midst of the storm, I was taking out of there. I was going to run like a scared chicken. Right then I just didn’t want anybody shooting at me again.

The storm came with a rush of wind and a crash of thunder. Lightning struck that peak above me, and the air was filled with the smell of brimstone. The rain was a solid wall advancing toward me on the breast of the wind. I made a run for my horses. To hell with it! I was—

And there they were, three tall Yants, or whatever they called themselves. They stood facing me and they had guns and the next thing I was shooting.

Chapter 23

T
HE SUN WAS gone but its bloody light lay splashed upon the Sawtooth Rocks, and upon my left enormous masses of black and ugly cloud thrust like Hercules between the pillars of the twin peaks, cloud shot through with lightning that lit up the bare pink slopes of Huajatolla.

And facing me, three tall dark men, their faces reflecting the red light of the dying sun like light from the fires of hell.

No word was spoken, nor could one have been heard. The sky in that moment was weirdly lit, and then the rain swept on us and our pygmy guns made tiny sounds against the crash and roll of thunder.

Their eyes were on my rifle in my left hand, and the surprise for them had been as great as for me. Only I dropped the rifle and opened fire with my six-shooter and I saw a man spin and drop, and firing again I saw a blood-red face turn to blood itself as my bullet smashed him back.

Desperate, alone, fighting for life and for the death of my father, I triggered the gun empty, then grabbed the second from my waistband. Then another gun was firing on my right. I saw them fall, and a man at whom I had not fired spun and dropped with the rain driving down upon him, and then it was that all three were gone, and for a moment I stood in the driving rain staring at their crumpled bodies, and a hand fell on my shoulders and a voice said, “That was for pa, Kearney,” and turning around I saw it was Pistol.

His battered hat was rain-soaked now, but he was smiling and his teeth showed white. He grabbed my hand and put an arm around my shoulder. “Let’s get out of here, boy,” he said, “there’s a better place close by.”

It proved not to be so close by, but it was a better place. It was a long cabin at a place called the Gap on the Cucharas River. We followed the Peaks Trail down along the slopes and then cut across a saddle to come down to the cabin. It was warm and pleasant inside and there was a good smell of frying meat.

A bald-headed man turned around from the fire. He had a fringe of red hair around his ears and a wide red mustache, waxed at the ends that stuck out beyond the sides of his face.

“Set up, boys!” he said. “The steaks are fried and the beans are on the way!”

We’d been soaked through before we got our slickers on, so we were wet now. We backed up to the fire, and steam began to rise from our clothes, but the smell of the food was too much for us and we sat down on the homemade benches and ate, and while we ate we did not talk.

When we had eaten and the coffee was poured, Mustache put more wood upon the fire. Outside the wind whipped the house with lashes of icy rain, but we sat snug within, and Pistol and me, we looked at each other. At that moment I was proud of my broad shoulders and the strength I had, for Pistol had been a boyhood idol for me.

“Ah, lad,” he said smiling, “you’re a man now!” He turned on the others. “Would you believe it? He had two of them down and was working on the third before I could get a shot in. This kid is hell on wheels!”

“You taught me,” I said.

“Not me.” His face was sober. “It was your pa taught us both, and a better man never lived.” He looked at me. “It was them killed him, wasn’t it?”

“One of them,” I said, “shot him in the back of the head.”

By the firelight in the old log cabin, I told them of the judge and how I recovered my money and of the fight in the snowbound cabin. The words I used were stark and simple words, for these men had lived such things and they needed no dressing up. What was not said they could supply, for they knew how such things went. They were lonely men, hard men, men who had lived by the gun. One of them was Red.

“I wanted to tell you, McRaven,” he said, “but the name I’d have used wasn’t one you’d have known. He told me to tell you to wait, and if the sheriff there had known Pistol was close by, he’d have killed horses trying to get him.”

Our eyes met, and surprisingly he was embarrassed. “Yeah,” he said, throwing the dregs of his coffee into the fire, “your pa tried to steer me clear, but somehow I was just headed down the outlaw trail. He was a good man, your pa.”

“When this is over, I’m going to ranching, Pistol. I’m going to need good men who can handle cattle.” I told them about Ben Blocker and the deal we made, and Mustache said, “I rode with Ben. I rode up the trail to Kansas with him, and on to Ogallala, and a squarer man I never knew, nor one more loyal.”

“You can ride for him again,” I said, “and for me.”

“You settling down?” Pistol looked at me, and I nodded.

“I’ve got a girl in Silverton, and when this is over I’m riding back that way.”

“When it’s over?” Pistol looked up at me from where he sat by the fire. “It’s over now. That was the end of it.”

“No,” I said, “I saw their faces there in the last sunlight. Felix Yant was not one of them. So he’s left, and so is the woman.”

Red shifted his feet, and his boots grated on the sandy floor. “There’s another, too. He did not come with them. He told them they were fools, that they must wait for you to light somewhere, but they wouldn’t listen.”

“Felix stayed?”

“He didn’t say why. He just stayed.” Red paused. “It was the woman got it out of him. I’d followed them and I listened outside the wall, pulled mud from the chinks and listened. She told him he’d gone soft.

“Felix, he looked at her and said, ‘He’s one of us, after all. He’s kin.’

“‘Wasn’t his father kin? You killed him.’ That was what she said.

“‘This is different,’ he said. ‘Why, he could be my own son! If I had a son—

“Then she laughed, she just laughed at him and said, ‘Felix, you’ll never have a son! You couldn’t have one if you wanted one!’

“Well, he just looked at her. He said, ‘Delphine, if somebody else doesn’t kill you, I may.’

“‘Stop it,’ this Vrydag interrupted, ‘just stop it. We’ve troubles enough. Our strength has always been because we worked together, and we must work together now. We must destroy him.’

“Felix Yant smiled. ‘And suppose he has established a legal claim to the estate? What then?’”

Red waved a hand “That was the way it sounded. Anyway, it isn’t over. There’s three of them left.” He paused. “That’s a mean lot of folks, believe me. In all my born days, and I’ve ridden the trail for years, I never seen such a poisonous lot.”

“I’m going to Silverton,” I said, “and they can follow if they like. I want no more killing.”

“Sounds like this Felix Yant likes you,” Pistol suggested.

For a minute I considered that, then shook my head. “It’s just a notion. It won’t stop him, believe me. That’s a hard man yonder.”

Outside the rain came down in a drenching downpour, and I knew the canyons would be running neck-deep with flood-water. It was no time to travel.

Pistol had aged and seasoned, but there were laugh wrinkles at the corners of his eyes and his face was leaner and harder.

“When you ride, boy,” he said, “I’m riding with you.”

“It’s been a long time,” I agreed. “We’ve got a lot of ground to cover, talking about pa and all.” I glanced around at him. “You knew more about pa than I did.”

He nodded. “He helped me when it was needful, and I was a good listener. You were young, Kearney, and he didn’t like to burden you with all of it. Me, I could listen and keep my mouth shut, and much of his talking was just sort of thinking out loud.”

“Wherever you go,” Red advised, “watch your back trail.”

We ate the steak and beans, and we ate doughnuts that Mustache made, and we talked of cattle, horses, and mines as such men will. Each had a tale to tell of a horse or a place or a time, and the cabin was warm and pleasant, with the storm outside.

Often I just listened, and sometimes my thoughts would wander back to the Spanish Peaks and the three dead men who lay together there, their bodies washed by rain and the hate they carried dissipated by the bullets that took their lives. They were strange men, born to hatred and motivated by little else. Even the desire for the estate, which was strongest in Felix and Delphine, seemed less a motivation than that blazing fire of hatred and the lust to kill.

These men were riding the outlaw trail, but all of them had punched cows in their time, and no doubt would again.

There were things to be learned by listening, and I was always one for learning, yet I could not forget Felix Yant and Delphine. That other one, with whom I’d had no contact, was not quite real to me. A danger…but a quantity unknown and therefore not to be judged.

Where were they now? They had not followed, but soon they would know something had happened if they did not know even now.

Suddenly I became worried about Laurie. Suppose Delphine learned of her?

Yet how could she? I had walked along a street with Laurie, I had spent an evening in her home—was that so much?

Did I dare go to her now? Might I not attract the vindictive spite of Delphine to them?

“Storm or no storm,” I said suddenly, “I’m riding out at daybreak.”

“And I’ll ride with you,” Pistol said.

Mustache packed grub for us, and when the first light came, we took out down the trail. Red was outside with Charlie and Mustache, and they said, “Don’t you worry none about anybody along this trail. We’re going to stake it out.”

Well and good, but they could not watch all the trails.

We had two packhorses now and we took off down the Cucharas River, and Pistol led the way up a narrow game trail along the east slope of a north-south ridge to Coleman Canyon, then down to the head of Rilling Canyon, following that for roughly a mile then cutting through the forested hills to Indian Creek.

It was a lonely route, and we were whipped by wind and rain, the rocky trails often slippery underfoot.

We camped near a rainwater pool in rocky country surrounded by cedars just shy of La Veta Pass. We had pushed hard, but that night we sat by the campfire and remembered the days when we were boys together and wandering with pa.

“You saved my bacon that time,” Pistol said suddenly. “That man would have killed me. And you just a youngster, too.”

“It was our fight you were fighting.”

“Mine, too. When your pa took me up and helped me, I got to feeling I was a son to him, too.”

“And we felt the same,” I said.

“It’s been a rough ride since,” he said. “I came upon trouble here and there, so I got to riding the wrong trail, just like Red did.”

“In every town in the West there’s men who got off into rough country a time or two,” I said, “but it’s their own fault if they stay there. The way I see it, every time a man gets up in the morning he starts his life over. Sure, the bills are there to pay, and the job is there to do, but you don’t have to stay in a pattern. You can always start over, saddle a fresh horse and take another trail. Now look at it straight. I’ve come upon some money from pa’s winnings. Perhaps there’ll be more from that estate back east. Anyway, I’ve bought cattle and I’m going into the Rockies to locate in some high country I know, and I’ll need help. There will be a job for you, and one for Red, and Mustache…well, I could eat his cooking forever.”