Trackdown (9781101619384) (26 page)

That brought a chuckle from Overstreet.

“Yeah, and I reckon I had it comin’, too,” he said. “Anyway, you ought to know that one Texan can’t let another Texan go into a fight by himself. Us sons of the Lone Star State got to stick together.”

Well, that was true, Bill thought. If the situation had been reversed, he probably would have felt the same way.

“I thought you said nobody could climb that wall.”

“Yeah, but if anybody could—”

“It’d be somebody from Texas,” Bill finished the thought for him. “You’ve got your mind set on it, don’t you?”

“I sure do.”

“All right. But I’m goin’ first, and you don’t start up until I’m at the top. If I fall, I don’t want to knock you off, too.”

“How’ll I know you made it? It’s mighty dark on top of that ridge.”

“I’ll whistle like a bobwhite,” Bill said. “You hear that, you’ll know it’s all right for you to start climbing.” He paused. “And if I don’t make it, I reckon you’ll hear the thud when I hit the ground, so you’ll know that, too.”

With that grim comment, he reached up on the stone wall and felt for the first handhold. Hartnett asked, “You want me to light another torch?”

“No, the light wouldn’t reach to the top, so I’ve got to be able to find them on my own, anyway.”

Bill dug his fingers into a small crevice in the rock. He got a boot toe in a similar niche lower down and used it to lever himself upward. He reached above his head with his other hand and searched for a second handhold.

It wasn’t exactly like climbing a ladder, but for the first dozen feet or so it wasn’t too bad. The ridge was about fifty
feet high, so Bill figured he had covered a fourth of the distance without much trouble.

But then the wall began to slant out. The angle was so slight that it was almost imperceptible at first, but Bill soon felt it. His fingers wanted to slip out of the little cracks in the stone. He had to grip the handholds tighter to support himself. His hands began to cramp and ache.

Caleb Tatum had done this, he reminded himself. And Tatum was probably older, too, not as young and spry as Bill was.

Of course, he wasn’t as young and spry as he had been, Bill thought. His bad leg started to ache worse than usual.

He clung fiercely to the ridge and continued to climb. After a few feet the angle eased. In fact, the wall was no longer perpendicular but rather leaned in slightly, which allowed him to rest some of his weight against it and take a little strain off his hands and feet.

Unfortunately, that didn’t continue. The wall bulged out again. But Bill knew what to expect now, and he didn’t think this part of the climb was quite as hard as it had been lower down.

It didn’t help matters that the stone had enough chalk in it to make it a little slick. He tried to make absolutely sure of his grip every time before he trusted any weight to it. If one hand slipped off, he might be able to support himself with the other hand and his feet.

If both hands slipped at the same time, he was gone. He would plummet straight down to the slope that ran away from the ridge. The fall would probably kill him. At best, he would break an arm or a leg…or both.

Darkness had closed in so thickly around him that he was climbing strictly by feel. He wasn’t even aware that he was approaching the top of the ridge until he reached up and felt its flat surface. A feeling of triumph raced through him as he pulled himself up and rolled onto the rocky crest. He had made it!

But he still had a long way to go before Eden was safe and free.

His muscles were quivering from the effort it had taken to climb the ridge. He lay there for a few moments to catch his breath and let his hammering pulse slow down a little, but he knew he didn’t have time to waste. When he felt stronger, he rolled onto his belly and crawled over to the edge. He stuck his head over and whistled like a bobwhite. The bird call drifted through the night air.

An answering call came up from below, telling Bill that Overstreet had heard the signal. He lay there waiting.

Minutes dragged past. Bill couldn’t see much when he peered down the face of the ridge.

Then a small, lighter-colored patch came into view. It moved, and Bill realized he was looking at the thatch of blond hair on Jesse Overstreet’s head. He listened intently, and he could hear Overstreet’s labored breathing, too.

“Keep coming, Jesse,” he called softly. “You’re almost there.”

“Damn!” A second went by after the startled exclamation, then Overstreet said, “You dang near spooked me right off this rock, Bill.”

“Sorry. You’ve only got a few more feet to go. When you get closer, I can reach down and give you a hand.”

Overstreet continued laboring upward. Finally Bill was able to grasp his arm, and he hauled the young cowboy onto the top of the ridge. Overstreet flopped down limply beside him.

“Lord have mercy! I don’t want to
ever
do anything like that again.”

“Yeah, I feel the same way,” Bill said. “But we made it.”

“Now all we’ve got to do is jump those guards and get rid of ’em without makin’ enough racket to wake up the rest of the gang.”

“Yeah,” Bill agreed dryly. “That’s all.”

After a few more minutes, they climbed to their feet. Belton hadn’t been able to tell them how to get down into the bowl where the hideout was located, because he had never been this way. But he’d assured them that they ought to be able to find it.

“Climbing down in there won’t be easy in the dark, but it shouldn’t be near as hard as it is goin’ up the other side of that ridge,” Belton had said.

Bill knew the general direction they were supposed to go. When he sniffed the air, he realized they had another guide besides the stars overhead.

He smelled woodsmoke. The outlaws had small stone cabins, according to Belton, and each of those cabins had a fireplace. They must have kindled fires for cooking and boiling coffee, and now the scent lingered from the embers of those fires.

He touched Overstreet’s arm and pointed. They needed to be as quiet as possible from here on out.

Following his nose and the stars, Bill led the way across the ridge. The terrain was rugged, cut by fissures and littered with boulders, but after that climb it seemed like a cakewalk.

The smell of smoke grew stronger. After a while Bill realized that something else was blending in with the woodsmoke. Tobacco, he thought. Somebody was smoking a quirley. Had to be one of the guards down in the bottleneck. That narrow passage would funnel any night breezes up into the open air.

Belton had explained that they would have to get down in the bowl itself to reach the sentries. The walls of the passage were too steep and smooth to descend. So Bill pushed on, and after half a mile or so he and Overstreet came to a drop-off. The bowl opened up in front of them.

Bill put his mouth close to Overstreet’s ear and whispered, “Be mighty careful going down. If we start any rocks fallin’, the racket will bring those guards on the run.”

“I savvy,” Overstreet whispered back.

Bill went first, feeling his way along. The slope was steep enough that he had to turn around and face it so that he could hang on to protruding rocks and clumps of hardy grass as he descended. He took his time about it, making sure that he didn’t kick any loose rocks and cause them to roll down the slope.

It was impossible to move in absolute silence. Every little rattle, every creak of boot leather, even the pounding of his own heart was magnified and seemed much louder than it really was.

He reached the floor of the bowl, which was covered with short grass. A moment later Overstreet was beside him. Now all they had to do was slide along the rock wall until they reached the opening into the passage. Bill continued leading the way.

He drew his knife. He didn’t want to take any chances on a gun going off, so he’d made sure that Overstreet had a knife, too. Nor did he intend to leave the sentries alive behind them, even unconscious and tied up. All it would take to ruin everything would be for one of the men to wake up and get loose somehow.

The two men in the bottleneck didn’t know it, but death was slipping up behind them.

Bill and Overstreet reached the passage. Resting one hand on the wall to keep himself oriented and gripping the knife in the other, Bill plunged into utter darkness. The stars in the narrow strip of sky still visible overhead didn’t throw enough light down here to do any good.

Belton had said there was a little niche in the wall halfway through the passage where the men stood guard. They had to be getting close now, Bill thought. He could still smell cigarette smoke. That wasn’t very smart of the outlaws. It gave away their position. But they probably thought there wasn’t anyone else within ten miles.

Bill spotted a faint orange speck up ahead. That was the glowing coal at the end of the quirley he smelled. He paused, putting out a hand to stop Overstreet. Again he found the cowboy’s ear and breathed, “Ten yards ahead of us, on the left. We’ll rush them together—”

They didn’t get that chance. Suddenly footsteps echoed along the passage. A second later a voice called, “Hey, Andy! Russ! It’s Chico and T. J. Don’t get jumpy.”

“Damn well about time,” one of the guards replied. “You were supposed to relieve us twenty minutes ago.”

Bill pressed his back against the stone wall and tried to slow his frenziedly racing heart.

The odds against him and Overstreet had just doubled.

Burk Gentry had four men with him. Mordecai seemed to remember that Gentry had other sons besides Tom, but he didn’t know how many. All the men with Gentry might be his offspring, or some of them might be hands who rode for him.

Either way, Mordecai didn’t like the looks of this. Clearly, the newcomers were bound for the jail…and bound on making trouble, too.

“Mr. Shelton, you get on out of here,” Mordecai said tensely.

“I’ll side you on this, Deputy,” Shelton replied. “We won’t let Gentry take his son out of jail.”

“That’s my worry, not yours. Nobody’s takin’ a prisoner outta this jail.”

Not to rescue them…and not to lynch them, either, Mordecai thought, which was more likely something that Shelton would have in mind. Both extremes would be equally bad in the eyes of the law.

“Deputy—”

It was too late to argue with Shelton now, Mordecai saw. Burk Gentry and the other riders brought their horses to a stop in front of the marshal’s office. More dust swirled in the
air. All along the street, people looked, pointed fingers, and talked excitedly.

Gentry was a big man and looked even bigger on horseback, barrel-chested and looming above the boardwalk. He fixed a hate-filled glare on Mordecai and demanded, “Are you the lawman who locked up my son for no good reason?”

“No good reason?” burst out Shelton. “Why, that bas—”

Mordecai thrust out his good arm and pushed Shelton back as he stepped to the edge of the boardwalk. Shelton was just going to make things worse, he thought bitterly.

Somebody in town who had heard what had happened the night before must have ridden out to the Gentry ranch to tell old Burk all about it. Mordecai had hoped to have a little more time before he had to deal with that.

“I’m Deputy Flint,” he confirmed, “and I’ve got Tom Gentry locked up, all right. I reckon the judge’ll have to determine whether or not it was for a good reason.”

All five of the men were hard-faced and determined. They all had six-guns strapped on, too. Burk Gentry lifted a ham-like hand and pointed at the office.

“You get in there and turn him loose right now, and maybe I won’t whip you up this street one way and down the other. Right now, do you hear me?”

Shelton moved behind Mordecai, who shifted again to keep himself between Shelton and Gentry. Mordecai was struggling to keep his own temper under control. In the past forty years, nobody had talked to him the way Burk Gentry just had and not been made to pay for it. In fact, Mordecai had fired shots in anger with less provocation.

But even if he hadn’t been wounded, he couldn’t win a gunfight with these five men, and he knew it. If he’d had more time to get ready, he would have stepped out here to confront them with a shotgun, and even that wouldn’t have been good odds. If he slapped leather now, he would die and probably so would Walter Shelton.

Then Gentry and his men would go in there and turn Tom loose, and their deaths would have been for nothing.

Mordecai was damned if he was going to step aside meekly, though. He said, “Gentry, your son attacked his wife
and came mighty near to beatin’ her to death. He’s got to answer for that.”

Gentry let out a disdainful snort.

“She’s his wife, ain’t she? He can do whatever he wants to her. It’s his legal right.”

“That’s not a damned dog you’re talking about!” Shelton yelled. “Virginia is my daughter!”

“You stay out of it, Shelton. You squeak like a damn mouse when there’s men talkin’.”

Clearly, Gentry didn’t know anything about Walter Shelton’s history, either.

Mordecai made another attempt to head off trouble. He said, “I ain’t had a chance yet this mornin’ to talk to Judge Dunaway. This is all gonna be handled legal and proper—”