"He pushed up and lunged off in a run, and tripping,
fell head-long, hearing the sharp whine
of a ricocheted bullet." . . .
CHAPTER 1A
A buzzard hung in the sun-misted sky, a shimmer of heat waves danced upon the wide plain, and in the thin edging of shadow beside a boulder, a lone man crouched. His face was drawn with exhaustion and his eyes were deep-set at the bottom of dark hollows.
His was a big frame on which shirt and jeans hung loosely, and his worn boots were scuffed and down-at-heel. The battered hat he wore was stained and dark from much handling, and sweat trickled down his gaunt cheeks as he squinted his eyes to look down the trail.
Only his dead horse was visible, glistening and bright in the hot glare of the sun. His Winchester was under that dead horse and he was debating his chances for another attempt to get at it. He had tried, struggling against the weight of the horse until overcome by panic, and then he fled.
He heard them coming now, and torn with despair, he turned swiftly, despite his exhaustion. Ducking behind another boulder, he ran in a low crouch, gained a stunted cedar, paused to gasp a quick breath, then ducked into a draw.
It was oven-hot on the white sand of the bottom. With the mountain man’s instinct he knew he was facing a dead-end so he ran for the far bank and scrambled up, pulling himself over the edge to lie flat out on the desert, the sand fire-hot beneath him.
He pushed up and lunged off in a run, and tripping, fell head-long, hearing the sharp whine of a ricocheted bullet. The gravel had torn the flesh of his palms but he was scarcely conscious of it. He scrambled to his feet and dove for the partial shelter of a cedar.
By now they had found his horse and his rifle and would know he was unarmed ... there had only been five shells in the magazine, anyway.
He was desperately tired, and his lungs gasped at the thin air. He glanced toward the ridge beyond and wondered if he could make it, knowing it was one chance in a hundred. Keeping in line with the cedar he started up the slope, running clumsily, for it was steep.
A bullet snapped angrily at the gravel ahead of him, and the report racketed down the hills and out over the plain. Yells and more shots told him he had been seen and with a last burst of strength he threw himself wildly at the summit with lead singing in the air above him. He guessed they had held their fire expecting him to skyline himself as he went over.
Safe for a minute or two, he rolled to his knees. There was no time to choose a course or to think, and he started down the steep slope, running with uncontrolled momentum, taking tremendous strides, risking a broken leg or twisted ankle with each step.
He was running all out when the earth dropped away sharply away before him and he caught a brief glimpse of a curving creek bed, and the ground falling sheer away for twenty feet. There was no chance to stop, but he threw his body desperately to land in a mass of wiry brush. He struck hard and broke through, the sharp spines tearing at his flesh, and then he fell free and lay on the ground, gasping from tortured lungs.
They were going to kill him. They were going to hang him or drag him.
Struggling to his feet, he looked wildly around. Beyond a mass of cat-claw and prickly pear, beyond some massed pin oak brush he saw what might be an inward shelving of the bank over which he jumped.
Already he could hear the riders on the slope down which he had run, but they had still to find a way down. Finding a slim opening through the brush, he crawled through and saw a small space, scarcely a foot high and seven or eight feet long where water had undercut the bank. Lying right in front of it, coiled with flat head poised, was a big diamond-back rattler.
Riley was in no mood for fooling. He caught up a broken branch as long as his body and thrust the end of it into the coils of the snake.
The rattler, also in no mood for fooling, struck viciously at the stick, and then struck again, the yellow venom trickling down the stick. On the third try he got the stick into the coils and lifted the snake but it slipped off and fell back on the sand. He got it again, but before it could slip he managed to swing the stick and throw the snake beyond the brush.
Glancing into the recess to be sure it was free of more snakes, he flattened out and squeezed in, pulling some loose tumbleweed closer to partly obscure his position. It was poor concealment, but there was no more time.
They came with a rush, and instantly there was a furious buzzing as the angry snake coiled to meet the new challenge. A gun blasted, and there was a shout, “Missed him!” The voice was hoarse with excitement. “Let me try!”
At least three guns fired at once and the rattling stilled, sounded briefly again and drew another shot which sprayed sand against the pin oak leaves.
“Got him!” There was a momentary pause. “Leave him alone. The heads will bite even after they’re chopped off.” Silence.
“Now where did he get to? He sure didn’t go far.”
Somebody chuckled. “Goin’ the way he was he might be clean into the next country.”
The first voice was cool. “If he is, he’ll come back. This here is Lost River, and there’s no water anywhere else about. All we have to do is sit on this water-hole and pick him up when he comes in.”
The man working in the meadow started to run for the house and they shot him down, riding their horses up to him and emptying their pistols into him.
He lay still, listening to them work up and down the dry creek bed. He had been in the country only a short time but already he knew of Lost River. At this point, hit upon by accident when his horse fell, the river came to the surface in a pool some twenty feet long by a dozen feet wide. A several miles back in the direction from which he had come the river ran on the surface for a good three miles, and far below it appeared again. For himself, for all practical purposes, there was no other known source of water but this.
Two days before he had been quietly working on his timber claim, cutting wood to be sold in town, when he had seen a group of horsemen ride up to a small ranch house near the meadow below. The man working in the meadow started to run for the house and they shot him down, riding their horses up to him and emptying their pistols into him.
The man’s sixteen year old son, Riley had known them slightly, rushed from the house and fired a wild, desperate shot. They had fired on him, and when the boy tried to get his gun up again he was roped and dragged to death.
The men were not even masked ... there were nine in the group, and Riley recognized several of them. Ackermann was a big rancher who owned or claimed several dozen square miles of nearby range, and Gilfoyle, a reputed gunman who worked for him. At least two of the others Riley knew were ranchers named Dowth and Nugent, and a powerful, brute of a man named Kells who worked for Nugent.
Not over two hundred yards away, Riley had carefully put down his coffee cup. His small fire was almost out and apparently had gone unnoticed, but he had no doubt what would happen if they realized there was a witness to the murders. Although scattered trees intervened, he was in full view of the men below and he dared not chance remaining where he was.
He threw his legs over the logs on which he sat, and dropped flat. Then he began to crawl. Down below he heard the sound of smashing crockery and the crackle of flames as they fired the squatter’s shanty. When he had crawled some twenty yards, Riley got up and started for his horse. And they saw him.
There was a startled yell, a quick shot, but Riley was in the saddle and his bay horse went up through the trees and out of sight.
That was how it had begun. There had been bad feeling on the range and much talk of impending trouble. Cattle losses had been heavy and some of the ranch operators, compelled to explain to eastern investors, had blamed cattle rustling by squatters. It was always easier to blame rustlers than over-grazing or bad management.
No doubt some of the ranchers actually believed the squatters guilty. Many of them were too new to ranching to realize the risks or understand the safe-guards. They had been told the cattle business was the quickest way to wealth, and when wealth failed to come they did not look to their own mistakes but for some outside cause.
Now the killing had begun, and to save themselves they must kill him, too. They had probably convinced themselves he was one of the supposed rustlers. It was easy for the self righteous to create excuses for their actions.
Riley lay very still. In the clear mountain air the slightest sound could be heard much further than expected, and he dared take no chance of discovery. Yet man had survived on earth so far by using his head, and Riley knew that if he was to get out of this alive, he must think his way out.
A few miles back was the river, but access to that water lay across Ackermann controlled range, past the ranch headquarters and right into the middle of country where Ackermann riders were busy. It would be foolhardy to try for that water.
For the first time Riley began to get mad. A quiet, serious-minded man given to hard work, he had bought the timber claim with almost the last of his money, spent the remainder on supplies and went to work cutting wood to sell for winter fuel. Now, through no fault of his own, he was on the run with his life at stake. And he decided he didn’t like it.
He had nothing to do with the cattle industry, and knew few of the people around the country by sight. Nevertheless he had been attacked, chased, and his horse killed.
He would need a horse and a weapon. He considered the men beside the water. A few of them were the group who had killed the nesters, but they had been joined by by other men, men who might ride for the brand and whose loyalty to that brand was a matter of both honor and pride. Yet not all who now chased him were murders or vigilantes, some were honest men. Ackermann though, he was something else.
When it was dark, Riley eased out of the hiding place and stood erect. Across the chin high pin oak brush he could see the glow of a fire near the water. That fire had been built to light the edge of the pool so it could not be approached unseen.
His mouth was dry and his legs stiff, but he chafed the muscles for a few minutes and them worked his way along the face of the bank, searching for a way through the brush. He had glimpsed what seemed to be an opening while it was still light. He found it, and eased through, holding back a branch or two so it would not rasp on his jeans.
When he was out he crouched in the darkness and considered the pool.
He could smell coffee, and there was beef broiling. He was hungry, but what he needed most was a drink of water. Some willows shaded part of the pool, and at the end nearest him there were some reeds growing along the edges and in the water.
- End of Fragment -
