Of course, the rider might be a complete stranger, somebody drifting down out of the Oregon-Idaho country to get away from the Indian trouble.
Kilrone was a good mile out on the flat now, and if there were Indians waiting at the mouth of the pass, they must have seen him by now. Occasionally he glanced toward the pass. He was angling that way, ever so little. Where were the Bannocks, he wondered. His best guess put them somewhere in the breaks along Chimney or Porcupine creeks.
Suddenly he saw the wagon. At first it was just a flash of sunlight on a rifle barrel, then a wagon-top. Instantly, he slapped the spurs to the gray and swung right into the mouth of the pass. The horse must have made about four fast jumps before Kilrone saw half a dozen Indians break from the bed of Tony Creek, dead ahead of him.
Barney Kilrone, gentleman adventurer, soldier, and cow-hand,
he was thinking,
here’s where you buy it. Here’s where you wash it out, every last bit of it, so make it pay.
He went down the canyon toward the Indians at a dead run, and lifting his Colt, he slammed a shot. He did not expect to hit anything, but he did expect to alert the oncoming wagon.
At that moment he topped out on a rise and saw a rider approaching the wagon, and the wagon slowing to meet him, but two of the soldiers were up in their stirrups, staring toward Kilrone.
The Indians were on him. There was one riding far out, to cut off any attempted escape, and four coming right down the center at him. He suddenly slowed his horse and leaped to the ground. He stood there, wide-legged and braced, looked down the barrel of his gun, and, lifting it as the Indians swept in upon him, he fired right into the chest of the nearest one. A lance ripped through his shirt, something burned along his shoulder, and a horse knocked him sprawling. He came up shooting, and suddenly the afternoon was filled with the thunder of rifles.
The Indians came around on him, and he saw his gray horse off to one side. He fired again, saw an Indian jerk in the saddle, and he put another bullet where the first had gone. The Indians were on him again, and he threw himself down a grassy slope into a small gully, rolled over and came up, diving into the brush as a rider came down on him. He felt the lance tear through his pants leg and plunged through the brush, fighting his way out.
As he came up, he saw an Indian rounding the clump of brush with bow lifted, arrow pointed at him. He dropped an instant before the arrow left the bow, fired, missed, and fired again. He slid down a steep bank into the creek, where he stood knee-deep in the water and ejected a cartridge, fed another in, and scrambled into the brush just as a Bannock came downstream, hunting him.
He pulled back, a branch cracked, and the Indian turned and fired. He felt the bullet smash through the brush within inches of his skull, but he dared not fire. He had to make each shot count. He had managed to reload one chamber—were there two shots left—or only one?
The Indian was trying to force his horse up the bank, but it was unable to get a foothold. The Indian fired again, but although he was closer now, his horse’s movement spoiled the shot. A gap showed in the bushes and Kilrone fired, saw the bullet smash blood from the warrior’s cheek, and then he scrambled back as bullets came from other directions, stabbing into the brush after him. Lying flat, he ejected another cartridge and loaded, loaded another and another.
As he made his way through the brush, he saw a game trail wide enough for him and eased down it.
He paused again to eject a cartridge and load another chamber. Crawling on, he saw his gray horse thirty yards off, and left his cover on a run. The gray wheeled as if to run, and he called out to it. The big horse hesitated, and in that instant he reached it, grabbed the pommel, and left the ground in a leap, almost losing his grip on the gun as he swung astride.
A shot smashed behind him and he rode into the brush, turned at right angles, then went up the slope and out of the creek bed.
Before him, not fifty yards away, a horse was down, struggling in its harness; one soldier lay sprawled, and the others were firing, coolly and carefully.
With a yell he started toward them and saw a soldier lift his rifle to fire, saw Rybolt’s hand drop to the man’s shoulder, and then he drew up and slid to the ground. “Come to warn you!” he called. “The post is under attack, Paddock’s gone north after Mellett!”
Dropping down, he scrambled to the dead or wounded soldier, grabbed his rifle, and stripped his cartridge pouch. He fired immediately, and then again. The Indians wheeled away, and for a time there was silence.
“Kilrone, isn’t it?” Rybolt said. “I heard you were up here. What’s happened?”
Crouching low, while the others dug with bayonets to throw up a wall of turf, he explained what had happened at the fort, and what he believed was happening here. “What happened to the white man who came to stop you?” he asked.
Rybolt pointed. “Out there.” He saw the body, with the rusty hair, lying among the Indians who had been shot down on the first attack.
Kilrone sliced into the sod with his bowie knife and cut out a long rectangle of it. Quickly he cut others, hollowing out the ground beneath him, and piling them in place. Their position was not at all bad; the Indians had tried to catch them in the open, but they had also provided them with an excellent field of fire.
He continued to work until he had a protecting wall of sod; and now he lay quiet. He smelled gunpowder and blood, the stale sweat of his own body, and the cool earth where he lay. What would they do now? The initial attack had failed, at least a third of the attacking force seemed to be down—either dead or injured. Scattered shots struck near the soldiers, but they did not return the fire. Their rifles re-loaded and ready.
“How many do you think there are?” Kilrone asked.
“Thirty…no more than that.” Rybolt answered, and looked around at him. “That shot of yours saved our bacon. Somebody saw the dust in the distance, and then that other rider showed up. That bothered me some, because your dust was back a little way, and I couldn’t figure where this one came from. Then you shot, and we were all set for trouble when the Indians opened up on us.”
After a moment he asked, “You saw Mrs. Rybolt?”
“Yes, I did, Lieutenant. When I left there she was in fine shape and doing the work of two people.” He explained about the move to the warehouse.
“It’s a good, solid building,” Rybolt said. “I think it will hold.”
It was very hot on the little knoll. They could hear the water in Porcupine Creek, directly before them. There had been no attempt to kill the horses; the one lying out there might have been hit by accident. It could be that Sproul planned to use them to haul away the gold, if he got it.
Where was Sproul? Was he still somewhere close by? Was he waiting at the stage station even now?
Chapter 15
S
HADOWS GATHERED IN the notches of the Bloody Run Hills. The horses were clustered together now under the bank of a small ravine near the wagon. Working with their knives and bayonets the troopers had dug out a trench leading to the ravine, and had snaked up some dead-falls and piled them into a parapet.
Gus Rybolt was a soldier, a veteran, a careful man. He allowed no resting time until their shelter was improved. The ravine was scarcely more than a notch in the earth leading down to the bank of the creek. It provided shelter for the horses and for three of the men, the others remaining in proximity to the wagon and the gold they protected.
Rybolt had been cool, efficient, aware of every possibility. Kilrone found a corner in the ravine where there was shade and shelter from the ricocheting bullets, and stretched out to rest.
Surprisingly, he slept. When he woke he listened to the silence a moment, then crawled over to where Rybolt was sipping coffee, unperturbed by the occasional bullet that whistled by overhead or smacked into the wall opposite.
“Coffee?” Rybolt said, and gestured toward the pot. “Spare cup yonder.”
When Kilrone was seated beside him, Rybolt said, “Nobody is going to get this payroll without more of a fight than this. My idea is they’ll quit.”
It was Kilrone’s idea too. Sproul had planned on a sudden surprise attack, a quick victory, the Indians then returning to their people at the post, and he himself driving the wagon away with its gold.
Only Kilrone’s warning and Rybolt’s alertness had wrecked the plan. Rybolt had lost a man; but here he was, dug in securely, showing no disposition to be stampeded into any foolish action, and apparently ready to stand a siege.
“After dark,” Kilrone said suddenly, “I’m going to try to get out of here. I want to check that stage station up at Cane Springs.”
“Wait…play it safe. They’ll be gone by tomorrow.”
“Tonight,” Kilrone said. “There’s too much at stake.”
T
HE SILENCE AND the waiting brought on a brooding feeling. Suddenly he wanted to get away from it all. He wanted to get away from the fighting, away from northern Nevada, clear away from Denise and Frank Paddock, and everything connected with them. Frank was the lucky one, having Denise. What good did it do a man to keep moving from place to place, and never a place of his own? Being around them had only intensified the feeling.
Of course he could not leave now. He owed it to too many soldiers he had known, and to too many Indians. And he had to get Dave Sproul. Whatever else happened, Sproul must be exposed, defeated, driven from the western frontier. Too many men had died because of him, both Indian and white.
After that he would ride out again, yet even as he told himself this was what he would do, he knew it meant only more riding. Somewhere, somehow he had missed the boat. He had traveled, and he had seen much of Europe and the United States, and he knew that here in this far-western land was all he wanted of home.
Well, not quite. It was all right to talk of riding free, of having a home wherever he hung his hat, but it did not work out that way. With all that far horizons had to offer, there was something that was missing. A man needed a woman…he needed someone to turn to in the night, someone to share things with, someone to whom he could say, “Look at that now!” So many times he had seen the beautiful when there were no other eyes to share it with; too many times he had wished to speak and to listen, and there had been only a horse and a lonely campfire.
He was no longer worried about Rybolt. The man was a good soldier, stern, but considerate of his men, alert for trouble—a man careful when care was needed. Rybolt was in a secure position, and it would take many more Indians than these to trouble him. And when the attack broke in the north, if it did, it was unlikely those Indians would come south. They would ride east and north toward the Bitterroots or the Beaverhead Mountains, and lose themselves there. A few might scatter into the Steen Mountain country.
Kilrone went to the gray horse, stripped off his gear and let him roll, then rubbed him down with handfuls of coarse grass. He let him drink from the trickle in the bottom of the ravine, then saddled him again.
There was only sporadic fire now. The Indians had lost their taste for it. They might make an attempt during the night, but more likely toward dawn…if they were still around. This was not an easy position to attack. To approach from the ravine side was impossible, and on the other sides the charge must be uphill and in the open.
Kilrone drank coffee, chewed on some jerky, and waited for darkness.
Gus Rybolt came from the breastwork and dropped to his haunches beside him. “You riding out?”
“I’ll have a look over at Cane Springs. If Sproul is around he’ll be there.”
“You’re sure about him? I always knew he was a crook, but I never figured he’d be dealing with the Indians.”
Before midnight, Kilrone led his horse from the ravine, shook hands with Rybolt, and then led the horse away, keeping to the side of the knoll to leave no outline against the sky. Every few steps he paused to listen, but the night sounds were normal ones, and when he was out at least fifty yards and had found no trouble, he turned at right angles and mounted the gray, riding toward Tony Creek.
He crossed the creek and paused again to listen. He heard only the sounds of small animals stirring, and the wind. Far off a coyote yapped irritably at the sky. Following the sandy bed of the stream, where water flowed only along one side, he rode on until he could smell the water at the springs and feel its coolness. He knew there were several good-size pools there much of the time, and the stage station lay just north of them.
Leaving the gray in a clump of brush, he went on up to the buildings. There was a long, low-roofed structure, a shed, and a couple of pole corrals.
He waited for several minutes, feeling of the night. Overhead the stars were out and, his eyes being accustomed to the darkness, he could see well enough, except for the deepest shadows under the trees or near the station itself.
There were no horses in the corral, but he believed he detected a faint smell of smoke in the air. Moving with care, he crossed the yard and went along the side of the corral.
The place smelled of trouble. Hesitating at the corner of the corral, he listened again. The building seemed to be empty. The shuttered windows showed no light, but the door stood slightly ajar. As he started to step forward something slipped under his boot and he caught himself. Curious, he crouched, feeling about with his fingers.