the Rider Of Ruby Hills (1986) (18 page)

Wes Hardin had beaten men to the shot several times when actually covered with a gun. There were others who had done it, but he was no fool, and he knew how tremendously the odds weighed against him. Thunder rumbled and a few spatters of rain fell.

"Better get your slicker, Sherry," he said calmly. "You'll get wet!"

His eyes were riveted upon Star Levitt, and what he waited for happened. As the girl started to move, Levitt's eyes flickered for a fraction of an instant, and Ross Haney went for his guns.

Levitt's gun flamed, but he swung his eyes back and shot too fast, for the bullet ripped by Haney's head just as Ross flipped the hammer of his gun.

Once! Twice! And then he walked in on the bigger man, his heart pounding, Levitt's gun flaming in his face, intent only upon getting in as many shots as possible before he was killed.

A bullet creased his arm, and his hand dropped. Awkwardly, he fired with his left- hand gun and knew the shot had missed; yet Star Levitt, his shirt dark with blood, was wilting before his eyes, his body fairly riddled with bullets from Haney's first, accurate shots.

Ross held his gun carefully and then fired again, and the shot ripped away the bridge of Star's nose, smashing a blue hole in his head at the corner of his eye.

Yet he wouldn't go down. The guns wavered in his hands as his knees slowly gave 'way, but some reflex action brought the guns up again. Both men bellowed their defiance into the pouring rain, their flames stabbing and then winking out. As the echoes of the gunfire died, there was only the rain, pouring down into the crater like a great deluge as Levitt lay still forever.

Sherry rushed to him. "Oh, Ross! You're hurt! Did he hit you?"

He turned dazedly. He didn't feel hurt. "Get into that slicker!" he yelled above the roar of the rain. "We've got to pull out of here! Think of those rocks in this rain and lightning! Let's go!"

Fighting his way into his slicker, he saw the girl mount, and then he crawled into the saddle. The cattle moved when he started his horse toward them. Suddenly, he made a resolution. He was taking them out-now.

Surprisingly, the big steer who took the lead seemed to head into the cleft of his own choice- possibly because it seemed to offer partial shelter from the sweep of the rain, perhaps because he had seen so many of his fellows go that way in the weeks past.

Waving the girl ahead of him, Ross followed on into the cleft, casting scared glances aloft at the huge rocks. "Get on!" he yelled. "Get going!"

He glanced up again as they neared the narrowest part. Horror filled him, for the great, hanging slab seemed to move!

"Hurry!" he yelled. "For heaven's sake, hurry!" He grabbed a stone and hurled it at a loitering steer, and the animal sprang ahead.

Sherry cast a frightened look upward, and her eyes widened with horror. Her face went stark white, as though she had been struck.

A thin trickle of stones fell, splashing into the cleft. A steer ahead stopped and bawled com- plainingly, and Ross grabbed a chunk of rock from the bank and hurled it, and the steer, hit hard, struggled madly to get ahead.

Sherry moved suddenly, closing up the gap between her horse and the nearest cattle, harrying them onward with stones and shouts. Ross looked up again, and caught as in a trance, he saw the great slab stir ponderously, almost majestically. Its tablelike top inclined, and then slowly, but with gathering impetus, it began to slide!

Shale and gravel rattled down the banks, and Ross touched spurs to his horse. The startled palouse sprang ahead, forcing Flame into the steers, who began to trot, and then as the two horses crowded up into the folds of lava, but out of the cleft in the crater wall, the air behind them was suddenly filled with a tremendous sound, a great, reverberating roar that seemed to last forever.

The rain forgotten, they sat riveted in place, listening to the sound that was closing the crater forever and leaving the body of Star Levitt as the only thing that would ever tell of human movement or habitation.

Yet as they remembered what Star Levitt had said about Berdue and Emmett Chubb, they unconsciously moved faster, and once out of the lava beds they left the cattle to shift for themselves and turned toward the mesa trail.

There was no letup to the rain. It roared down in an unceasing flood. They bowed their heads and hunched their slickers around them. The red of Flame's coat turned black with wet. Under his slicker, Ross rode with one hand on his gun, hoping for no trouble, but searching every clump of brush, every tree.

Roily Burt ran from the cabin and grabbed their horses when they swung down. "Hustle inside an' get dry!" he yelled. "We've been worried as all get-out!"

When they got inside and had their slickers off, Mabry looked up, rolling a smoke. "Burt thought he saw Chubb today. We were worried about you."

"You haven't seen them?" Ross turned on him sharply.

Burt came in, overhearing the question. "No, an' I'm just as well satisfied. Say!" he looked up at them. "That danged geyser sure gives off some funny noises! I was over close when it sounded off the last time this afternoon, and I'd of swore I heard a human voice a-screechin'! That's one reason we have been worried about you two, although Bill did say you rode off the mesa!"

Sherry's face blanched, and she turned quickly toward an inner room.

Roily stared after her. "Hey, what's the matter? Did I say something wrong?"

"No. Just forget about it. And don't mention that geyser again!" Then he explained, telling all that had happened during the long, wet afternoon, the end of Star Levitt and the closing of the great cleft.

Sherry came out as they finished speaking. "Ross, those poor men! I hated them, but to think of anything human being caught in that awful place!"

"Forget about it. They asked for it, and now it is all over. Look at that fire! It's our fire, in our own fireplace! Smell that coffee Mabry has on? And listen to the rain! That means the grass will be growin' tall an' green next year, honey, green on our hills an' for our cattle!"

She put her hand on his shoulder and they stood there together, watching the flames dance, listening to the fire chuckling over the secrets locked in the wood, and hearing the great drops hiss out their anguish as they drowned themselves in the flames. A stick fell, and the blaze crept along it, feeling hungrily for good places to burn. From the kitchen they heard the rattle of dishes and the smell of bacon frying, and Roily was pouring the coffee.

*

AUTHOR'S NOTE

Stories are rarely conceived in one piece. Often, just one situation appears, with perhaps a character in that situation. If not, one tries to find a character or characters whose presence would contribute to the drama. Fictionalized events may be chosen in the same way. For example, the trip across the mountain during the terrible thunderstorm like the one in this book happened to me. Not in just that way or at that same place, but I lived through the experience, so when I had to put it on paper I knew what I was writing about.

Men and women in the West were nearly always from somewhere else. The West in the beginning at least was not old enough to have bred grown men. Yet wherever they came from, they brought with them their previous experience, whatever it happened to be, and when a man or woman reacted to an event, the reaction would have developed from previous training, experience, and temperament.

These people who came west were largely from small towns or farms. Only a few came from cities. Many of the men had already ventured into a wilderness somewhere or had taken part in wars and were accustomed to hardship.

They adapted very quickly to new styles of living and to the customs of the people among whom they were to live.

What I have sought from the very beginning was to understand the thinking of the people of the West, to know how they worked and lived. I wished to understand the background against which dramas would be played. One cannot judge the actions of a man on the frontier in Texas by the same measure as one would a man living in New Jersey or Virginia. The thinking of the man on the frontier would be altered by the demands made upon him, as well as by the freedom from society's restrictions. Yet always there was the desire on the part of most westerners for the amenities of the more civilized life they "had formerly led.

Unfortunately, perhaps, stories deal with drama, and great drama is always found at the cutting edge, and one is inclined to forget the churches, schools, square dances, sewing circles, box suppers, and other aspects of social living on the frontier. For instance, Dodge City had gunfighters and gunfights, but it also had band concerts and a baseball team.

Chapter
I

With slow, ponderously rhythmical steps, the oxen moved, each step a pause and an effort, each movement a deadening drag. Fine white dust hung in a shifting cloud above the wagon train, caking the nostrils of animals and men, blanketing the lean sides of oxen and horses, dusting with a thin film the clothing of men and women.

Red-rimmed and bloodshot eyes stared with dazed weariness into the limitless distance before them, seeing nothing, knowing nothing. Long since all had been forgotten but heat, dust, and aching muscles. Each succeeding step lifted a powdery dust, stifling and irritating. It lay a foot deep on the endless plain, drowning the sparse grass and sage.

Rock Bannon, riding away from the train and alone, drew in his steel-dust stallion and turned in the saddle, looking back over the covered wagons, sixteen of them in a long line with some lead horses and a few outriders, yet not one who rode so far out as himself.

From where he sat he could not see their faces, but in the days just past he had seen them many times, and the expression of each was engraved in his mind. Haggard, worn, hungry for rest and cool water, he knew that in the secret heart of each was a longing to stop.

The vision was in them yet, the golden promise of the distant hills, offering a land of milk and honey, the fair and flowering land sought by all wandering peoples of whatever time and whatever place. No hardship could seem too great, no trail too long, no mountains impassable when the vision was upon them.

It was always and forever the same when men saw the future opening beyond the hills where the sun slept; yet this time the vision must hold meaning, this time the end of the trail must bring realization, for they had brought their women and children along.

All had done so but Rock Bannon. He had neither woman nor child, nor anyone, anywhere. He had a horse and a saddle, a ready gun, and a mind filled with lore of the trail, and eyes ever fixed on something he wanted, something faint and indistinct in outline, ever distant, yet ever real.

Only of late as he rode alone on the far flank of the wagon train had that something begun to take shape and outline, and the shape was that of Sharon Crockett.

His somber green eyes slanted back now to the last wagon but one, where the red gold hair of Sharon on the driver's seat was a flame no dust could dim. In the back of that heavily loaded wagon was Tom Crockett, her father, stirring, restless with fever and hurt, nursing a bullet wound in his thigh, a momento of the battle with Buffalo Hide's warriors.

From the head of the train came a long, melodious halloo, and Cap Mulholland swung his arm in a great circle and the lead oxen turned ponderously to swing in the beginning of the circle. Rock touched the gray with his heels and rode slowly toward the wagon train. He was never sure these days as to his reception.

Cap's beard was white with dust as he looked up. Weariness and worry showed in his face. "Rock," he said, "we could sure use a little fresh meat. We're all a mite short on rations, and you seem to be the best hunter amongst us."

"All right," Rock said, "I'll see what I can do after I get Crockett's wagon in place."

Mulholland's head turned sharply. "Bannon, I'd let that girl alone if I were you. No offense intended, but she ain't your kind. I ain't denyin' you've been a slight help to us. In fact, I don't know what we'd have done without you, and we're glad you came along, but Sharon Crockett's another story. Her pa's bedded down now, and in no shape to speak."

Bannon turned the steel dust sharply. His face was grim and his jaw hard. "Did he ask you to speak to me? Or did she?"

"Well, no-not exactly," Mulholland said uncomfortably. "But I'm headin' this train."

"Then I'll thank you to mind your own business! Headin' this wagon train is job enough for any man! Any time the Crocketts ask me to stay away, I'll stay, but that's their affair!"

Mulholland's face flushed and his eyes darkened with anger. "She ain't your kind," he persisted, "you bein' a killer and all."

Rock Bannon stared at him. "You didn't seem to mind my killing Indians!" he said sarcastically. "In fact, you killed a few yourself!"

"Don't get me wrong!" Cap persisted. "I ain't gainsayin' you ain't helped us! Without you I don't know if we could have beat off those Indians or not, but killin' Indians and killin' our own kind is a lot different thing!"

"You're new to the West, Cap." Bannon's voice was rough. "In a short time you'll find there's men out here that need killin' a sight worse than Indians. In fact, I'm not so sure those Indians jumped us without help!"