Now Brennan spoke. “Nobody but a tin-horn would file a notch on his gun!” he said. “That's a kid's trick!”
“Like hell!” Al said. “Tandy Herren does it! He's got sixteen notches on his gun!”
Brennan tasted his coffee. It was too weak. He put the cup down and picked up his cigar. Suddenly, he was worried. He glanced quickly at Al, then away. How much of a fool was Al Damon?
“I doubt it,” he said. “Tandy's a good hand with a gun, all right, but he'd never carve notches on his gun.”
“A lot you know!” Al Damon scoffed. “I seen it!”
Instantly, he knew he had said too much. He hastily gulped the rest of his coffee. “Got to see pa!” he said, and went out.
Sunlight was bright in the street, and for a moment he stood still, thinking of what he had said. Brennan would likely think he had seen Tandy Herren coming west. After all, what did Brennan know about where he had been or who he had seen?
He walked down the street, knowing he must make peace with his father, but reluctant to begin it. He would see his mother first. And then he would have to study out a way to get hold of a horse.
Macon Fallon rode slowly along the rim of the wash. He was still tired, but the warm sunlight felt good, and the air was fresh and clean. Moreover, he had water. A lot had gone over the dam, of course, but after the flash flood had ended, he still had a lot of water backed up in the wash.
It lapped within a few inches of the top of the dam and extended back up the wash for several hundred yards. The sun would evaporate a good bit of it, but even so, this water, with what the rain had done, would get their crops started. Several acres of corn had been planted, and a few rows of onions, potatoes, carrots, and such-like.
Turning in the saddle, he looked up toward the town. It was fresh and attractive in the morning sunlight, and certainly the setting was splendid. The mountains towered above and behind the town, giving the place an almost picture-book setting. With some management, it could become a most attractive place.
Not that it mattered in the long run. All he wanted was one good prospect on whom he could unload the claims.
The passing of time, however, worried him, for with each succeeding day the chances of someone showing up who knew the town as Buell's Bluff became greater. Or the chances of someone coming to town from Seven Pines.
Riding along the bank of the wash had brought him close to the grazing cattle. He turned toward the mountains to avoid coming close to Jim Blane, but the boy swung his horse around and cantered over to him.
“Pa told me what you did last night,” Jim said. “You might have been killed.”
“A man takes his chances.”
“None of that stock was yours,” Jim said. “It was different with Teel. He had a lot to lose.”
“I couldn't have done anything without him,” Fallon said. “He's quite a man, Teel is.”
They talked for a few minutes about the stock, the grazing, and the water, and then Fallon rode on into the hills. He went north, and soon found himself picking his way up the slope. It was in his mind that he might find a deer, and he had not ridden this way before. He was looking for sign when he found the remains of the fire.
Night or day, a man might ride very close to that little hollow without seeing it, and any fire would have been invisible. Whatever tracks there might have been had been wiped out by the rainâ¦or had they?
He stepped down from the saddle and stirred the remains of the fire. Rain had pounded the ashes into a mass, but the charred sticks were plain enough. Squatting on his heels, he moved a few of them. There was sand and ash beneath them, and beneath that, more ash and a few sticks that had not burned. Dirt had been kicked over the fire once, and then another fire had been built on top of it.
Somebody had come here, more than onceâ¦why? There was no water nearby, no grazing for horses within half a mile, except for the sparse brush. Altogether, it was an unlikely place for a camp, except that it offered concealment.
Mounting the black horse, Fallon found a way out of the hollow, and he had gone only a short distance when he came on the same trail Al Damon had discovered.
Fallon, wiser in these things than Al Damon, recognized it for what it was, an ancient Indian trail. It undoubtedly had also been used by game, but it had been made by Indians.
It was not much over six inches wide, for Indians habitually walk with one foot placed ahead of the other and their trails are narrow. If Indians had made it, it led to somethingâ¦probably to water or to some source of food.
He lost the trail, found it again, and then as he walked his horse under a great leaning slab of rock he saw the track. A horse had stepped under the shadow of the leaning rock where the earth had been sheltered from rain and wind.
When he had gone a little further his eye caught something glinting in the sun. When he reached it, he saw that it was a whiskey bottle.
Al Damon had been drunk. And he had not had the whiskey from Brennan, who did not sell by the bottle, anyway.
Had it been Al Damon who met with somebody back there at the hollow? Or had he merely stumbled on the place as Fallon had? Yet what reason could Damon have for being here? His job had been to watch the stock.
Turning his horse back, Fallon sought out the continuation of the trail. He followed it by guess, by hunch, by a sort of instinct for such things, as much as he did by what he saw on the ground. An Indian rarely walked right out on a ridge; he usually followed the contour of a hill, and habitually sought the easiest going.
When Fallon had ridden for half an hour he realized that he was getting deeper and deeper into the mountains.
He had ventured into a gigantic cleft, invisible from the flat below, or even from the hollow where he had discovered the remains of the fire. A shoulder of the mountain presented a false wall and he had ridden behind this. The sides of the cleft sloped back steeply, ragged with projecting crags and spurs.
It was very hot, and the air was still. He was climbing steadily. Twice he drew up, studying the hills around, giving the black horse a breather. As he left one zone behind and entered another the growth was changing. The higher slopes were dotted with piñon pine, and the growth was thicker there.
He knew he should start back, but the lure of the trail led him on. There was always another bend, always another projecting rock around which he wished to see. Suddenly the trail dipped sharply, and went into a narrow cleft where the bottom was in the shadow of the towering cliffs above. The air was amazingly cool, and he smelled water.
When he found it, he saw that the water lay in a tank, a natural stone formation some fifty feet across and deep in the shadow where the sun could never reach it. A trickle of water flowed from the tank and lost itself among some rocks off to one side. There were sheep tracks a-plenty, but no tracks of horse, cow, or man.
Yet on the wall above there was Indian writing. He studied it curiously, wondering what it was meant to say. Perhaps it was an invocation to the gods of the hunt.
He watered the black, then rode on through the cleft until it suddenly dipped around and down into a great open park of grassland. This park was all of two miles wide, and perhaps three miles long. A small stream ran down the center. All around the great bowl, the mountains towered at least fifteen hundred feet, but to the north there seemed to be a gap, and that gap could very well be the canyon that ran past the town of Red Horse.
Suddenly a marmot scrabbled in the gravel on the slope, and Fallon turned his head sharply, his hand going automatically to his gun. He saw the little animal, and saw it vanish among the rocks.
He was about to start on when suddenly he saw that the trail he had been following branched here, and the left-hand branch, which he would not even have noticed had it not been for the marmot, went up, up, up among the great crags that rimmed the valley.
Only a small section of the ancient trail was visible, and it might have seemed a patch that was naturally bare, but his eye followed the hint the marmot had given and he saw there was a break in the rock.
Dismounting, he took his rifle and, scrambling over the rocks, reached the place he sought. There was a trail, and a trail a horse could climb. He looked up, drawn by the lure of the unknown trail, drawn as he had always been. But the hour was late and he was far from town.
Descending into the open space, he started across the grassland and, when he was near the stream, a deer suddenly started from the grass. He lifted his rifle, catching a quick sight of the back of the neck just above the shoulders. He squeezed off his shot, and the deer fell.
When he had butchered it, he started for the break in the hills which he was sure was the canyon leading toward home.
Suddenly a rider appeared, riding up from some hollow where he had remained hidden until now. And then another appeared, and another and another. And then another rider appeared, far on his right, and there were five, six riders there.
Utes.â¦
Macon Fallon touched the black horse on the shoulder. “Ready, boyâ¦we may have to run again.”
He held his rifle in his right hand and he rode forward, seeming to look neither to the right nor to the left, head up, the butt of the rifle on his thigh. Wind stirred the grass, and he looked ahead to the opening of the canyon.
How far? Half a mile? A mile? Distance was deceiving on these hot, still afternoons. The wind stirred again, faintly, like a living thing awakening from a long sleep.
The riders were drawing nearer. “All right, boy,” Fallon said quietly, and the black horse began to lope. It was an easy, space-eating lope, and he was riding toward the point of a triangle, of which the lines of Indians made the two sides.
His mouth was dry, and when he touched his tongue to his lips they too, seemed dry.
They were closerâ¦within rifle-shot soon. The black had come a long way, but the horse was good for the run to the canyon.
How far now? He had gained a few hundred yards, perhaps as much as a quarter of a mile.
“All right, boyâ¦
now!
”
With a bound the black horse was off, running as if it was shot. Before him the canyon gaped. Suddenly the Indians had begun to whoop, and they were coming on, running hard.
The nearest one was over-anxiousâ¦he fired, and the sound of the shot racketed against the cliffs. The black was running fine, and the way was clear. But they were pulling up on him now, cutting across to head him off. He glanced to right and left. The nearest ones were closeâ¦too close.
The canyon opened before him, then closed to scarcely twenty yards wide. There were boulders and broken slabs of rock on the left, and Fallon eased the racing horse.
“We'll make our stand, boy,” he said, and wheeled the horse into the shelter of the boulders and hit the ground running.
The nearest Indian was no more than fifty feet behind and raced on past. Macon Fallon swung with his rifle and shot into the horse that carried the second Indian. Then, pivoting on his right heel, he fired at the Indian that had gone on past and was now turning.
He jacked a shell into the chamber and waited.
It was cool here in the shadow of the giant cliffs. Only a streamer of sky showed above him. The sand was still hard-packed from the swift waters that had so recently run over it. It would be night soon.
He glanced back againâthe Indian pony stood off to one side. The Ute lay sprawled, the sand darkened and enriched by his blood.
Out in front the valley was empty; only the long grass stirred in the wind.
Chapter 4
T
HAT WAS THE night the big train came to Red Horse.
They came in the late afternoon, forty-two wagons, streaming down the long hill, rumbling across the bridge.
Brennan heard them coming, and looked out his window and down the street toward the bridge. The biggest wagon train he had ever seen, and Macon Fallon nowhere around.
He called his Negro from the still. “Leave that for now,” he said urgently. “Go get Josh Teel.”
Al Damon was in the store. “All rightâ¦pay him,” he told his father. “I figure there should be an election. I figure we should vote, get us a marshal with a badge, and we should have us a mayor.”
“The boy's right,” Blane said. “I don't hold with violence, and Fallon has shown himself a violent man. Sure, he saved our stock, but that gives him no right to hold us up for thirty per cent of what we make.”
“We'd better talk to the others. We'll call a meeting. There's Hamilton, Budge, Teelâ”
“You can count him out. He'll stand with Fallon.”
The wagons came up the street, the big white-topped wagons, drawn by great teams of bulls, the heavy wagons with sunbonneted women and roughly dressed men, men in galluses and boots, men with rifles and men with belt guns, men ready to trade, and some looking to settle. They flooded into the stores, and for the time being all thought of Fallon was dropped.
Joshua Teel came in and had a drink with Brennan. He had a cold beer, for Brennan had found an ice cave in the lava flow at the upper end of town.
“Ain't seen him,” Teel said. “He cut out right after sunup to have a look at the water. Young Blane said he stopped by the herd, then cut up into the hills.”
Brennan was worried.
He watched the wagons roll up the street. He watched the men get down, and some of them walked up to the saloon. He served them drinks and listened, and they asked about the prospects.
“Have to see Fallon,” Brennan said. “It's his town.”
A big, square-faced man looked up belligerently. “I never heard of no man who could run the town I'm in,” he said. “Who is this Fallon?”
“He's a good man,” Brennan replied. “He started the town.”
“All right, he started it. So where is he?”
“He'll be around.”
Al Damon had come in. He still carried a few of the silver dollars. He put one of them on the bar and said, “Fallon ain't gonna run this town forever. We're goin' to have an election. We'll vote us a marshal and a mayor.”
Brennan ignored him, but he felt a little shock of doubt. If an election was called, there was no question of it being called to help Fallon in any way. It could only be called to be rid of him.
He worked swiftly and silently, talking little, and then only to reply to questions, but he was aware that Al Damon was doing some talking, and none of it friendly to Fallon.
With the rush of business, he stayed open until ten, and the saloon was orderly. Only the big man, whose name was Gleason, showed any inclination to trouble.
The wagon train had started out from Ft. Leaven-worth to come to the Nevada and California mines. They would rest and recuperate here for two or three days, then go on west.
Wagon trains were few these days, for the time of the gold rush was long past. Nowadays the wagon trains were likely to be freighters, carrying cargo to the mines or ore from them. In this train there should be a number of men or families who might be useful to Red Horse.
Fallon should be here. It had always been Fallon who sorted the men out, who looked for strong, competent men with trades, men who wanted to do something and create something. There was no one to do that now. And it was unlike Fallon to be gone.
Teel dropped in just before closing. He was gloomy. “I don't like it, John. There's a lot of talk around about electing a mayor and appointing a marshal. Al Damon's doing most of the talking, but young Jim Blane is, too.”
“Where is Fallon?” Brennan said anxiously. “If ever, he should be here now.”
Half an hour before closing time Luther Semple rode slowly into Red Horse. From a nearby bluff he had watched the wagon train and had decided that now, among all this crowd of strangers, he would have a good chance to take stock of the town.
The wagon train was such a big one that attacking the town while it was there was simply out of the question. There must be a hundred men, he thought, or close to it, with that train. Until now, they had been trusting to the reports of Al Damon, but Semple did not place any confidence in his reports. It was obvious that Al did not like Fallon, and he might have underestimated him.
Lute Semple was not particularly bright, but he had an animal instinct for danger and he had been one of those at the wagon the night Fallon rode up on them. He had not seen him, but he had heard that voice.
Since then, Al had described Fallon so it would be hard to miss him. Lute Semple wanted to see Fallon, to estimate the danger involved; for Lute had survived a good deal longer than many of his comrades because he had no desire to make a reputation, nor any urge to face a dangerous man in any kind of a gun battle.
Semple rode into Red Horse unnoticed in the confusion following the arrival of the wagon train, almost half of which was made up of freight wagons. The teamsters were well-armed and competent-looking men. There were about thirty of them, tough men and veterans of many an Indian fight.
Semple tied his horse a few doors down from the Yankee Saloon, then after a careful look around, he entered the saloon and ordered a drink.
The first person he recognized was John Brennan himself, and he remembered him from both Abilene and Corinne. Taking his drink, Lute Semple found his way to a table in the corner and sat down.
Had Brennan recognized him? He thought not. In any event, Brennan would have no reason to suspect him of anything, for Brennan had never, so far as Semple was aware, known anything about him.
A lot of money was being spent. Semple could see the teamsters crowding to the bar, and the whiskey they bought was surprisingly good.
Fallon did not seem to be anywhere around, and that worried him. If he was not here, where was he?
Semple was sitting at the table when Joshua Teel entered. He had never seen Teel before, but he recognized the type. Oddly enough, Teel had been born in a log cabin not three-quarters of a mile from Semple's home.
After he finished his whiskey, Semple got up and left quietly. John Brennan, recorking a bottle, turned his eyes to watch him go. Luther Semple had not counted on Brennan's good memory, or his interest in his customers.
“Teel,” Brennan said, leaning on the bar, “you ever hear of Luther Semple?”
“Semple? There were some Semples back home. The ones I knew of were a no-good outfitâ¦though probably were others who were good folks.â¦Why?”
“Lute Semple just walked out of here, and I'd make a small bet he's with Bellows. A few years back there were a lot of murders over on the Republicanâbuffalo-skinners murdered in campâ¦shot in the back. The camps were robbed, and at first it was laid to Indians, but then it was figured to be a well-organized gang.
“Semple was around about that time, and a man he traveled with was caught with a rifle stolen off a murdered man. Semple disappearedâdropped clean out of sight.
“Later, he was around Corinne. Back in those days it was a booming town on the Lake. If you see him around, keep an eye on him.”
Joshua Teel left by the back door and cut around between the buildings. He stood in the shadows and surveyed the street with care. He saw Semple almost at once, a tall, slightly stooped man with drooping mustaches, a man who stood alone on the street, or bent to peer into the windows of the closed shops.
Stepping out from the buildings, Teel loafed along in the shadows. He noted the horse tied at the hitch rail, a tall, clean-limbed bay with a rifle in the scabbard.
It was after midnight when Semple mounted up and rode out of town. Listening, Teel heard no drum of hoofs on the bridge. Semple had gone down on the flat, then. Teel returned to his own place and turned in.
M
ACON FALLON HAD found shelter for his horse among the boulders. Outside the canyon mouth there was no movement. His horse had drunk, and was cropping at some grass growing in the space between some of the higher boulders. Fallon settled himself down for a long stay, and waited for the sun to go down.
Could the Utes get around behind him in any way? It was possible. His only way out was down the canyon toward Red Horse, for they blocked the opening before him. Yet suppose there was a way down from the cliffs above? Supposing even two or three could circle around, slip down the cliff, and lie in wait for him?
The sun declined, seemed to hesitate, then vanished. It was twilight within the canyon now, although still bright out on the basin.
The Utes knew that when darkness came he would ride away down the canyon to safety, yet they made no further attempt to push the attack. That meant they were either waiting for darkness to attackâwhich not many Indians liked to doâor they had gotten around behind him and were not worried.
Suddenly, the black horse's head came up. His head up, ears pricked, he looked off down the canyon. Something was down there, behind him.
Carefully, Fallon replaced the fired cartridges in his Winchester, and waited. When darkness came, he took a last drink at the water, then mounted up. Slipping the Winchester into the scabbard, he drew his .44 pistol.
Riding out quietly from the boulders, he turned his horse back toward the valley from which he had come. This, he hoped, they would not expect, for he would be riding away from safety.
The sand made little sound as he walked the horse along. The end of the canyon was like a gigantic doorâ¦beyond was the valley, the star-lit skies. He had ridden sixty yards out of the canyon mouth before they discovered him.
He smelled smoke, and at the same time he saw an Indian rear up from the ground and start toward him. Deliberately, he dropped the muzzle of his gun on the slim dark figures, and fired.
He saw the jerk of the Indian's body as the bullet struck, and at the same moment he touched the black with the spurs and was off, riding at a dead run into the wide-open spaces of the valley.
Could he find the other trail? At night it would look different, but long ago he had cultivated the habit of all wise travelers in wild country, of turning to look back. Faced from the opposite direction, a trail can look vastly different, and if compelled to retrace one's trail such a precaution is essential.
He rode at a dead run for a quarter of a mile or so, then slowed and turned at right angles, making for the valley's eastern side. He found the gap, started toward it, then recalled the steep trail, and mounted to the top of the cliffs above the valley.
Leaning forward, he peered above to his right, searching for the notch in the rock, and hoping he could choose the right one.
Here, in the still, cool night, he could smell the dusty grass and the sage. Behind him there would be pursuit, and they would be sure he had come toward this trail, which he knew.
Fallon spoke softly to his horse. That horse was working overtime keeping him out of troubleâkeeping him alive, even; for a man without a horse in this country was often as good as a dead manâ¦that was the reason for hanging horse thieves.
Fallon rode carefully, easing toward the trail he had come over that afternoon. Suddenly, when almost past it, he saw what he believed was the notch he wanted. Turning abruptly, he put his horse up the steep slope. Instinctively, it held to the trail.
They climbed steeply, winding around boulders, and, suddenly emerging at the top, he was among the pines. He sought a place among the trees and boulders not far from the trail up which he climbed, and there he settled down for the night.
He slept fitfully, allowing the black horse to keep watch. With the dawn he was awake, listening. But he heard no sound but the wind in the pines, the lazy cropping of his horse. He sat still for some time, testing the morning with all his senses. If Indians were about, he wanted to know it. While he waited, he ate some pine nuts undiscovered by the birds.
After a while he got to his feet, saddled the horse, and led it to the trail. He studied the ground with care and found no tracks or sign of any kind save that of his own horse. Nevertheless, he hesitated to descend into what might well be a trap. So far as he was aware, only two routes of escape were possible to him, and perhaps the Indians knew it, too. They might be waiting somewhere below.
Mounting, he turned away from the trail by which he had reached the crest of the mountain, and rode along the slope under the pines, his rifle ready for any eventuality.
The morning was clear and bright, the air fresh and pleasantly cool. His horse trod on pine needles, and pines were all about him.
He followed a game trail along the slope. Occasionally, through a break in the pines he could see in front of him, off to the left, a towering dome of a mountain. It had a distinctive shape and looked to be the highest anywhere around.
Suddenly the slope seemed to drop completely away, and he found himself on the verge of a tremendous declivity where the mountain fell away some four thousand feet to the valley below. This must be, had to be, the Big Smoky Valley.
A few minutes later he found a spring trickling from the rocks. Here he drank, and allowed his horse to drink.
The rocks around the spring were broken and jagged, a wide vein of quartz intruding the sedimentary rock. As he knelt to drink again he glimpsed tiny, gleaming fragments on the sand at the bottom.
Gold? It could beâ¦or fool's gold. He scooped some of the sand from the bottom of the catch basin and, spreading it out, managed with a wet twig to isolate several small flakes and grains.
The shade of trees bending over the spring seemed not to affect the gleam of the particles. He tested several flakes with a knife blade, and found they could be cut.