the Rider Of Ruby Hills (1986) (42 page)

He had his knife, and it was razor sharp. Even as these thoughts flitted through his mind, he was drawing the knife. Luckily, before leaving his horse he had tied a rawhide thong over each sixshooter, so his guns were secure. Yet the rope was rawhide and tough. Could he slash through at one blow?

The answer to that was simple. He had to. If he swung out over the void below on half or less of the strength of the lariat, there was small chance it would not break at the extreme end of the swing, and he would go shooting out over the deadly waste of the Smoky Desert to fall, and fall-over and over into that murky cloud that obscured the depths.

He let go and shoved hard with both feet and hands. His body swept out in a long swing over the breathtaking depths below. Then, hesitating but an instant as the rope tore at his sides, he swept back like a giant pendulum, rushing through the air toward the cliff! It shot toward him, and he raised his arm, and seeing the cedar below and ahead, he cut down with a mighty slash.

He felt himself come loose and then he was hurled forward at the cedar. He hit it, all doubled into a ball, heard a splintering crash, slipped through, and felt the branches tearing at his clothes like angry fingers. Then he brought up with a jolt and lay, trembling in every limb, clinging to the cedar.

How long he lay there, he did not know. Finally, he pulled himself together and crawled out of the tree and got his feet on the narrow foothold. He worked his way along until the ledge grew wide enough for him to walk. His breath was coming with more regularity now. He felt gingerly of his arms and body where the rawhide rope had burned him.

The path, if such it might be called, slanted steeply away from him, ending in some broken slabs. He stopped when he reached them. He was, at last, on the Smoky Desert.

Chapter
X

Land of Legendary Men

Lance Kilkenny stood on a dusty desert floor littered with jagged slabs of rock, obviously fallen from the cliff above. There was no grass here, no cedar, nothing growing at all, not even a cactus.

Above him the dark, basalt cliff lifted toward the sky, towering and ugly. Looking off over the desert he could see only a few hundred yards, and then all became indistinct. The reason was obvious enough. The floor of the desert was dust, fine as flour, and even the lightest breeze lifted it into the air, where it hung for hours on end. A strong wind would fill the air so full of these particles as to make the air thick as a cloud, and the particles were largely silicate.

One thing he knew now. Crossing the Smoky Desert, even if there was a trail, would be a frightful job. Unfastening the thongs that had held his guns in place, he walked on slowly. It was still, only a little murmur from the wind among the rocks, and nothing else.

The cliff lifted on his right, and off to the left stretched the awful expanse of the desert, concealed behind that curtain of dust. He stepped over the dead and bleached bones of an ancient cedar, fallen from above, and rounded a short bend in the cliff.

As he walked, little puffs of dust lifted from his boot soles, and his mouth grew dry. Once, he stopped and carefully wiped his guns free of dust and then lowered them once more into the holsters.

Then he saw the white scar of the road, tracks of vehicles filled with fine white dust, and the rough, barely visible marks of what had been a fairly good road, dwindling away into the gray, dusty vagueness that was the desert. He looked up and saw the trail winding steeply up the cliff's face through a narrow draw.

Turning, he began to climb the trail. Several times he paused to roll boulders from the path. He was already thinking in terms of a wagon and a team. It could be done. That is, it could be done if there was still a way of getting a team onto this trail. That might be the catch. What lay at the end?

Sweat rolled down his face, making thin rivulets through the white dust. White dust clung to the hairs on the backs of his hands, and once when he stopped to remove his sombrero and wipe the sweat from his brow, he saw his hat was covered with a thin gray coat of it.

He looked ahead. He could see the road for no more than a hundred yards, but the cliff to his right was now growing more steep, and glancing down, he could see the trail was already far above the valley floor. He walked, making heavy work of it in his riding boots, sweat soaking his shirt under the film of gray dust, and the draw was narrowing.

The rock under the trail sloped steeply away into a dark, shadowy canyon now over two hundred feet down. He walked on, plodding wearily. For over an hour he walked, winding around and around to follow the curving walls of the canyon. Then he halted suddenly.

Ahead of him the trail ended. It ended and explained his difficulties in one instant. A gigantic pine, once perched upon the edge of the cliff, had given way, its roots evidently weakened by wind erosion. The tree had blown down and fallen across the trail. Pines had sprung up around it and around its roots until the trail was blocked by a dense thicket that gave no hint of the road that had once run beneath it.

Crawling over the pine, Kilkenny emerged from the thicket and walked back to his horse. Mounting, he rode slowly homeward, and as he rode he thought he had never been so utterly tired as he was now. But there was coolness in the breeze through the pines, and some of their piny fragrance seemed to get into his blood. He looked up, feeling better as he rode slowly along the grassy trail, through the mountain meadows and down through the columned trunks of the great old trees toward the Hatfield cup.

Yes, it was worth fighting for, worth fighting to keep what one had in this lonely land among the high peaks. It was such a country as a man would want, a country where a man could grow and could live, and where his sons could grow.

Even as he thought of that, Kilkenny found himself remembering Nita. King Bill Hale wanted her. Well, what would be more understandable? Certainly she was beautiful, the most beautiful woman in Cedar Valley and many other valleys. And what did she think? Hale had everything to offer: strength, position, wealth. She could reign like a queen at the Castle.

And Hale himself? He was a handsome man. Cold, but yet, what man ever sees another man as a woman sees him? The side of himself that a man shows to women is often much different from that seen by men.

Worry began to move through him like a drug. Nita nearby was one thing, but Nita belonging to someone else, that was another idea. He realized suddenly it was an idea he didn't like, not even a little bit. Especially, he did not want her to belong to the arrogant King Bill.

Hale wanted her, and regardless of what she thought, he could bring pressure to bear, if his own eloquence failed him. He was king in Cedar Valley. Her supplies came in over the road he controlled. He could close her business. He could even prevent her from leaving. He might. Jaime Brigo was the reason why he might not succeed. Brigo and himself, Kilkenny.

King Bill's lack of action disturbed him. Hale had been beaten in a fist fight. Knowing the arrogance of the man, Kilkenny knew he would never allow that to pass. He had refused them supplies, and they had come and taken them from under his nose.

Was Hale waiting to starve them? He knew how many they were. He knew the supplies they had were not enough to last long. And he held the trail to Blazer. Did he know of the trail through the Smoky Desert? Kilkenny doubted that. Even he did not know if it were passable. The chances were Hale had never even dreamed of such a thing. Aside from the Indian to whom he had talked, Kilkenny had heard no mention of it.

Saul Hatfield walked down from among the trees as he neared the cup. "Anything happen?" Kilkenny asked.

Saul shook his head, staring curiously at the dust-covered Kilkenny. "Nope. Not any. Jesse took him a ride down to town. They sure are gettin' set for that celebration. Expectin' a big crowd. They say Hale's invited some folks down from Santa Fe, some big muckymucks."

"From Santa Fe?" Kilkenny's eyes narrowed. That was a neat bit of politics, a good chance to entertain the officials and then tell them casually of the outlaws in the mountains, the men who had come in and tried to take away valuable land from King Bill.

Lance knew how persuasive such a man could be. And he would entertain like royalty, and these men would go away impressed. That King Bill didn't intend to strengthen his position very much would be foolhardy to imagine. Hale would know how to play politics, how to impress these men with his influence and the power of his wealth.

The audience would all be friendly, too. They would give the visiting officials the idea that all was well in Cedar Valley. Then, when the elimination of some outlaws hiding in the mountains was revealed, if it ever was, the officials would imagine it was merely that and never inquire as to the Tightness or wrongness of Hale's actions.

In that moment, Kilkenny decided. He would go to Cedar Bluff for the celebration.

Yet, even as the thought occurred to him, he remembered the thick neck and beetling brow of Tombull Turner.

For the first time he began to think of the prizefighter. He had seen the man fight. He was a mountain of muscle, a man with a body of muscle and iron. His jaw was like a chunk of granite. His flat nose and beetling brow were fearsome.

Kilkenny rode down into the cup and swung from his horse. Parson walked slowly toward him, Jesse and O'Hara beside him. They stared at the dust on his clothes.

"Looks like you been places, son," Parson drawled.

"I have." Kilkenny removed the saddle and threw it on the rail. "I've been down into Smoky Desert."

"Smoky Desert?" O'Hara stepped forward. "You found a way?"

"Uh-huh. Take a little ax work to clear it."

"Could a wagon get across?"

Kilkenny shrugged, looking up at the big Irishman. "Your guess is as good as mine. I know I can get a wagon into the desert. I know there used to be a trail. I could see it. There's parts of a wagon down there. Somebody has been across. Where somebody else went, we'll go."

"How about gettin' out?" Parson drawled.

"That," Kilkenny admitted, "is the point. You put your finger right on the sore spot. Maybe there's a way, maybe there isn't. There was once. But I'm a-goin'. I'm goin' over, an' with luck I'll get back. We'll have to take water. We'll have to tie cloths over our faces and over the nostrils of the horses. Otherwise that dust will fix us for good."

"When you goin'?" Jesse demanded.

"Right soon. We got to make a try. If we could make it soon enough we might bring the others back that way. I'll start tomorrow."

"Leave us shorthanded," Parson suggested.

"It will." Kilkenny nodded agreement. He looked at the old mountaineer thoughtfully. "The trouble is, Hale has time, an' we haven't. I'm bankin' that he won't try anything until after the celebration. I think this is not only his tenth anniversary but a bit of politics to get friendly with them down at Santa Fe. He'll wait until he's solid with them before he cleans us out!"

"Maybe. Ain't nobody down to town goin' to tell our side of this. Not a soul," Hatfield agreed.

"There will be." Kilkenny stripped off his shirt and drew a bucket of water from the well. His powerful muscles ran like snakes beneath his tawny skin. "I'm goin' down."

"They'll kill you, man!" O'Hara declared. "They'd shoot you like a dog."

"No, not while those Santa Fe officials are there. I'll go. I hear they want me to fight Tombull Turner. Well, I'm goin' down an' fight him."

"What?" Runyon shouted. "That man's a killer. He's a ringer."

"I know." Kilkenny shrugged. "But I've seen him fight. Maybe I'm a dang fool, but I've got to get down there an' see those Santa Fe men. This is my chance."

"You think you can do any good against Hale?" Parson asked keenly. "He'll be winin' and dinin' them folks from Santa Fe. He won't let you go nowhere close to 'em."

"But they'll be at the fight," Kilkenny told him. "I'm countin' on that."

At daybreak the labor gang had reached the thicket of pines covering the entrance to the road. Axes in hand, they went to work. Other men began bucking the big fallen tree into sections to be snaked out of the way with ox teams.

Once, during a pause when he straightened his back from the saw, Quince looked over at Kilkenny. "They should be there today," he drawled slowly. "I sure hope they make it."

"Yeah." Lance straightened and rubbed his back. It had been a long time since he'd used a crosscut saw. "You know Blazer?"

"Uh-huh." Hatfield bit off a chew of tobacco. "Man there named Sodermann. Big an' fat. Mean as a wolf. He's Hale's man. Got a gunman with him name of Rye Pitkin."

"I know him. A two-bit rustler from the Pecos country. Fair hand with a six-gun."

"There's others, too. Ratcliff an' Gaddis are worst. We can expect trouble."

"We?" Kilkenny looked at him. "You volunteerin' for the trip?"

"Sure." Quince grinned at him. "I need me a change of air. Gettin' old, a-settin' around. Reckon the bore of that Kentucky rifle needs a bit of cleanin', too."

They worked on until dark, and when they stopped, the road was open. O'Hara, who had done the work of two men with an ax, stood on the edge of the canyon in the dimming light and looked across that awful expanse toward the distance, red ridges touched now with light from a vanished sun. "It don't look good to me, Kilkenny," he said. "It sure don't look good."