I got the saddlebags loose, tugged the one from under the horse, and then with them over my shoulder I started up the canyon.
They’d said it was boxed in. Maybe. One thing was sure, the way I felt I wasn’t going down canyon to give them a shot at me. As I recalled, there was no cover near the cabin…I’d have to break into the open within easy range of it, and they could set right there in the warmth of the cabin and pick me off when I tried to get by.
There was some grub in those saddlebags. Down on the slope I leaned against a tree, because it hurt to bend my leg to sit down, and I ate some jerked beef and a chunk of bread. Then I started on.
My head was throbbing. When I’d made no more than a hundred yards, I had to sit down. I almost fell onto a log and stayed there, panting. My forehead was hot, and my eyes didn’t seem to focus right. After a bit I went on, struggling along through trees, over slippery rocks, working my way higher up the canyon.
Presently the canyon narrowed, and a branch came in from the south. Standing there, swaying a little from weakness, I stared up the branch.
You never saw such a mess. There’d been a blow down, leaving hundreds of trees, fallen and dead, crisscrossing the canyon.
Sometimes a howling wind will funnel down such canyons, all its strength channeled into one tremendous blast. Every once in a while in the Rockies you’ll come on a canyon like that…they seem to suck the winds down them.
This one had blown down most of a small forest, but it had left some trees standing, and others had grown up among them. The place was like a nightmare, but it gave me hope.
Already I could see the rock wall at the branch canyon’s end, and it looked sheer and seemed to promise nothing, but I had just an idea that the mess of dead wood might offer something. They had said there was no way out, but I was willing to bet no cowboy had ridden into that canyon, or tried to climb very far through those fallen trees.
Weak as I was, and fuzzy as was my vision as well as my thinking, I had the wild animal’s urge to escape, to escape and to hide. At the canyon’s entrance I turned and brushed the grass upright where I had stepped. Just the bending over almost caused me to fall, and my hip hurt bad. Turning, I went into the canyon, ducked under one deadfall and half fell over another. I sat down there and swung my legs over a moss-grown boulder and went on. When at last I looked back toward the mouth of the canyon, it could no longer be seen.
Here it was shadowed and still. The whisper of the rain was the only sound, except once in a while the rubbing of one branch against another in some slight stirring of the wind.
Sometimes I fell. My hands were scraped by rough bark when I tried to catch myself. My pack and my rifle caught again and again on branches into which I blundered. But somehow I kept moving because it was in me that I had to move.
I could not let them beat me. I had to get out of here. I had to make them pay for what they had done, but most important, I had to get that money back. I had to get it back for those neighbors of ours in Texas.
Sometimes I passed out and lay still against the wet grass. I wanted to stay and just rest…but always I started crawling again. My wound opened and bled, and it hurt, too.
Once when I opened my eyes I found I wasn’t among pines any more, but among aspens, so that meant I was getting higher up. Grasping the slender trunk of the nearest tree, I tugged myself up and leaned against it.
The rain had stopped, but there was drifting mist around me. Looking back, I could see nothing of the canyon, for now it was thick with cloud. But on one of the bare, rain-wet peaks above me I could see the reflection of sunlight. Using the trees to help, I pulled myself on, from one to the other.
Aspens are the forest’s effort to recover itself, the first trees to spring up after there has been fire, and often they grow on the steep mountainsides below a ridge. They give shelter to wildlife, and to the young evergreens until they are strong enough to stand alone. As the evergreens grow tall, the aspens die out, for they need sunlight and open ground.
This idea worked its way through my fuzzy, wandering thoughts as I struggled along, but a spasm of pain went through me and I fell. I lay gasping, too weak to get up. After a long time I slowly pulled myself up again.
I did not want to go on…I wanted to quit. Just to lie down, close my eyes, and not try any more.
That was the way I felt, and that was what I thought I wanted, but something kept urging me on. And suddenly I was at the top. I came out of the trees into a mountain meadow. The far side of the meadow was in sunlight, and when I reached it I stood still, soaking up the warmth.
My eyes had been on it for several minutes before the realization of what I saw reached me.
It was a chimney. A chimney of stone…of native stone.
Where there was a chimney there must be a house or cabin. A house or cabin sometimes meant people.
Walking very carefully so that I would not fall, I went through the trees and brush toward the building, which was a cabin. From behind an aspen I studied the layout.
The cabin was small. There was no sign of life anywhere around, but there were some horse droppings in the yard that might not be old. With the recent rain it was hard to tell. There was a corral and an open-faced shed.
Walking slowly, my rifle ready in my hands, I went around to the front. No tracks since the rain. A path led away from the cabin and down into the trees.
The door opened easily under my hand. Inside, the cabin was spotless. There was a neatly made bed, a fireplace with the fire laid, and a floor that had been scrubbed…something unusual in the mountains.
A blanket hung over a door to a room beyond. Pushing it aside, I saw another bedroom, this one with curtains. In a crudely made wardrobe were some women’s fixings.
I put my gun down and laid my blanket roll on a bench, and then I lit the fire and put on a kettle. I knew that I was working against time. That I was in bad shape, nobody needed to tell me, and it was time I bathed the wound in my hip and discovered what else had happened to me.
Weak as I was, I had no idea whether I’d get through the day or not. Taking off my slicker, I unslung my gunbelt, blinking my eyes in dull amazement at what I saw.
The bullet had evidently hit my belt, exploding at least two cartridges and leaving that part of my belt mostly blown away. The explosion had torn that hole in my side. Suddenly scared, I peeled down my pants and lifted my shirttail free.
The folded flannel had stopped the blood, but where it didn’t cover the wound I could see the shine of a fragment of metal from the exploded shell. If that stuff was all through the wound I was in mighty serious trouble.
I hunted around for coffee, but didn’t find any. There was some tea, and I put some in a pot and poured boiling water over it.
Then with a white cloth I found in the room I began to soak the edges of the wound and to sponge it off carefully. Twice the cloth caught on bits of metal, and each time I got them out with care. The wound had begun to fester a little, so they came free easy.
Finally I could lift the flannel pad out, and with hot water I cleaned out the wound. It was tough working on it, for I had to twist around to get at it. I found several pieces of cartridge casing and hoped I was getting them all. A couple of times I stopped to gulp down hot tea. The room was warm and I felt dizzy, but I knew I had to get done what I’d started.
A time or two I got up and hobbled around, trying to find something to use on the wound. There was half a bottle of whiskey, but I hesitated to use that, although I had taken a stiff jolt of it myself. It seemed a shameful waste of good whiskey to flush out the wound with it, but that was what had been done many’s the time on the Plains, I knew. I was fixing to use it when I found some turpentine.
Mixing some of that with hot water, I bathed the wound out, and if I was sweating before I surely was then. I made another pad from some of the clean white cloth I’d found and put it into the wound and tied it there.
I gulped down more tea, and then, putting my rifle alongside the bed and my pistol handy, I just lay down and passed out.
The last thing I remembered was worrying about my muddy boots. I’d not had a moment to get them off, and I feared to struggle with them, for it might start the bleeding again.
Those muddy boots, and the firelight flickering on the walls…It seemed to me it was raining again, too.
Chapter 8
T
HE COLD AWAKENED me. I lay shivering, uncovered, on the bed. The cabin was dark; rain fell on the roof. The fire was out. Lightning flashed, momentarily lighting the room. Alone in a strange place, I knew I was sick…sicker than I’d ever been.
Rolling over on the bed, I swung my muddy boots to the floor. My head was burning with fever, my mind searching through a fog of pain for the right thing to do. Stumbling to the fireplace, I fumbled with a poker and stirred a few dying coals among the gray ashes and the charred ends of sticks.
With an effort, I clustered some of them near the coals and blew on them. Smoke rose, but there was no flame. I looked around for something for kindling, and finally tore a few handfuls of straw from the broom.
A little tongue of fire fed on the straw, and made a quick, bright blaze, and I put on pieces of bark and slender sticks to keep it burning. I nudged the pot, and saw that steam still rose from it. Again I drank tea, sipping it slowly.
Huddling near the fire, I shivered. One side of me was icy cold, the other burning. I fed more sticks into the fire, then wrestled a heavier piece and still another into the blaze.
Then for the first time I saw a bootjack, and hooking my boot into it, I managed to draw off one and then the other. After that I tumbled back to the bed and crawled under the covers. At first I still shivered, but at last I grew warm and slept again.
It was a restless sleep, with shifting scenes. In one I stood alone in an icy field and saw a line of men on horseback charging down upon me. Their knees were drawn up like jockies’, and they wore black leather shields and carried curved swords. I fought and struggled as one rushed at me, swinging a blade. I felt it bite deep, and I fell.
For a long time I lay there in the cold, and then my eyes opened.
I had fallen to the floor; the fire was down again, and the room was still dark. Crawling to the fireplace, I fed sticks into the coals and the flames leaped up. I listened to the wind and rain…how long would this night last? The wind lashed the trees outside, and rain whipped against the cabin. I managed to pull myself to the window, but I could see nothing, only the blackness and the windowpane running with water. Somehow I got back onto the bed, and could only stare up at the ceiling.
Later, I once more got up and added fuel to the fire. The supply of wood was getting low. Soon it would be gone.
Again I slept, and again there was nightmare. Only this time I was on a great slippery rock with waves breaking over it, cold waves that rushed over me as I clung to the rock.
I dug my fingers into a crack, and with each wave that came I was stiff with fear. My fingers became numb. How long could I hold on?…
And then I was awake and it was day. The rain had stopped and the wind was gone. The cabin still stood. I was too weak to move. My wound had bled some more, but that had stopped. My mouth was dry, but I had no wish to stir. My fingers did move, to feel for the gun…it was still there.
For a long time I dozed. But at last I was awake, really awake. Light from the windows was the dull light of a cloudy day, or maybe the light of evening.
Turning my head, I could see the fireplace. Some coals still remained, and a thin thread of steam rose from the pot. Only two sticks were left.
When I tried to rise my head swam, but I made it. Without fire, I doubted if I could survive another night. I got up slowly, added the two sticks to the fire, and poured another cup of tea.
Huddling there, I drank it. Then with an effort I got to the bed, took up the gun, thrust it into my waistband, and stumbled to the door.
For a moment I leaned against the doorjamb, watching outside. Not thirty feet from the door there was a woodpile. Holding my hand against my side, I made it to the pile and gathered three or four sticks together, about all I figured I could carry. I was just stooping to pick them up when I heard hoofbeats on the trail…more than one horse.
Clumsily, because of my side, I dropped to one knee. The woodpile was about five feet high, and thick through. Wood had been taken from the place where I crouched, leaving a notch in the pile, and in this I waited, gun in hand. Four-foot lengths of wood almost surrounded me.
Heseltine’s voice was the first I heard. “Aw, he’s dead, Kid! We’re wastin’ time.”
“I’ll believe it when I see it. We figured to have him twice before.”
“There’s no way out of that canyon, and even if there was, how could he crawl all the way over that mountain? Anyway, the canyon heads up off south of here.”
“Just the same, I’m lookin’ around.”
A saddle creaked, and footsteps sloshed over the wet earth. I heard a step on the porch; momentary silence, then the door creaked open.
“Nobody in there,” Reese said doubtfully. “The fire’s almost out.”
“If you two will stop being such fools,” a girl’s voice said, “we can be on our way before somebody comes back and wants to know what we’re doin’ here.”
“So?”
“What are you going to tell them, Kid?” Ruby Shaw’s tone was contemptuous. “Everybody in Leadville knows we’ve had trouble, so if Tucker shows up dead, they’ll know we were hunting him.”
“She’s right, Kid.”
Reese still hesitated, but finally, grumbling, he went to his horse. Stirrup leather creaked again, and for a moment I had a wild urge to step out just as they rode away. I was sure to get one of them…maybe both.
Good sense warned me. In my condition I couldn’t even be sure of putting a bullet close to them…even be sure of holding a gun at arm’s length.
Dry-mouthed, gun in hand, I listened to them ride away. Slowly I holstered my gun and picked up the armful of wood. I’d taken two staggering steps toward the house when a voice said, behind me, “Thought there for a minute I was goin’ to see a shootin’.”