Chancy (1968) (14 page)

Hunkered down behind the crest of the hill, I sat with Cotton hiding his cigarette in his cupped palm, and watched the ranch buildings turn from gray to black, then merge into the night, leaving only the lights in the window showing. For a short time, against the red of the sky, we could see the thin gray column of smoke, but it vanished shortly after the first star appeared.

Down below us a door slammed and we heard voices, but at that distance, we could make out no words. How many were down there? There might be two, or two dozen.

And where was Tarlton? Was he dead back there on the Wyoming grass? Or was he somewhere about, watching those lights, as we were? Or was he, perhaps, a prisoner down there? I doubted that. If they found him, they'd kill him ... if they could.

"What you figurin' to do?" Cotton asked.

"I'm studying on it. The logical thing would be to slip down there, open the corral bars, and stampede their horses and then the cattle. We could have them well on the trail north before they ever got horses."

"They'd come a-huntin' you," Cotton said.

"I'll face that when the time comes. The thing is, where's Tarlton? I've got an idea he's somewhere about, contemplating the same sort of action we're studying. I wouldn't want to stampede those cattle right over him."

We waited a spell, giving them a chance to finish eating and get to playing poker with their boots off, maybe, or to crawl into their bunks.

"Cotton," I said finally, "I'm going down there and scatter their saddle stock from hell to breakfast. You hang your rope over a post on the upper fence and pull her down, then circle around and start the cattle running. Get them out on the flat. Get them started north if you can, and come daybreak try to bunch them a mite. I'll catch up and lend a hand."

He pushed his hat back on his head and rubbed out his second cigarette. "No, you don't," he said. "We're in this together. I signed on to ride for the brand; and where you go, I'm going. If there's any shootin' done, it will be down there by the house and I want my piece of it."

I won't say I wasn't pleased. Two of us could handle it down there better than one, only I'd hoped to keep him out of range. "All right," I said, "if you want to get a belly full of lead, come on."

We tightened our cinches and mounted up. I doubted if they were keeping any sort of watch, but they would be quick to react to any kind of trouble. Our plan was simple: we would ride down the corral bars, and stampede the horses. All of them, I hoped.

Once the horses were on the run, we would ride to the corral and cut the north fence and stampede the herd. We would start them up the creek to where it came down from the flat, and start them north.

It wasn't likely they would be expecting trouble, for this was a lonely, isolated area in which nobody had begun to settle as yet. North of us and south of us there were trails or stage routes, but through this region there was nothing, and no ranches anywhere around.

To the north and south there were several good markets for small bunches of cattle. To the north it was the forts and the Indian agents; to the south it was the mines.

The night was still. We walked our horses down the slope of the hill toward the creek, following no trail. We could smell the wood smoke now. At the back of the corrals we drew up and swung down. "You keep an eye on the door and the windows," I said. "I'll open the corrals."

Hunkered down behind some logs, Cotton made ready to argue with anybody who might take it into his head to come outside. Me, I walked along the corral toward the gate, and was so intent on opening it quietly that I overlooked something I should have noticed. Lifting the bar, I swung the gate open and all hell broke loose.

They had rigged a weight to pull the gate shut when anybody let go of it; and fastened to the same line they had half a dozen tin cans of pebbles. When I pulled that gate open, the line tightened and all those loose pebbles rattled in the cans.

Inside the house a chair fell over and somebody swore. The next thing I knew, as I was propping the gate open the house door opened and light fell across the yard, putting me right in the spotlight. At the same instant, Cotton fired.

The bullet hit the door jamb and the man in the door sprang back, swearing. Cotton fired again and I heard a rattle of falling glass, and then I was around the corral, sprinting for the back of it.

Cotton was up, yelling at the horses, and we heard them start. A rush of hoofs, more yells and shots, and the horses exploded from the wide-open gate.

Somebody fired from the house, the light went out, and men burst from the door, scattering right and left. I hit the saddle on the run and felt my horse's muscles go taut as he leaped away. Cotton let out a wild Texas yell, and we skirted the corral, guns blazing at the men around the house, and then we were racing away up the draw toward the cattle.

Cotton ran his horse up the bluff by a trail we had spotted earlier, while I drew up in the deepest shadows under some trees and waited, counting the seconds it would take him to reach the other side. Suddenly I heard a screeching of wire. Something broke, and I yelled at the cattle and fired my six-gun.

From almost under my feet a man leaped up and fired, the gun blazing right in my face, so close my eyes were momentarily blinded and I felt the powder sting my cheeks. I slammed down with my gun barrel at the black object I took to be a head and felt it fall away under my gun barrel with a grunt of pain.

My horse lunged toward the path up which Cotton had gone, but even as he sprang that way I saw something dark race across the trail ahead of me. "Block the trail!" came a yell, and I turned the buckskin on a dime and went racing away.

There were bluffs on both sides near the ranch house, and no chance to go up either of them. The pasture fence blocked the way toward the cattle and Cotton, and the only way left was back down and past the house. There was no time to hesitate, and I took it on the run.

Somebody had relighted the lamp in the house and the door stood open, throwing its rectangle of light on the hard-packed ground between the house and the corrals. I crossed that stretch of ground with my horse running all out, heard the slam of six-gun shots against my eardrums, and saw a man leap to the door and swing up with a rifle. Dropping low alongside my bronc, Indian-fashion, I snapped a shot at him from under my horse's neck. Snapped was right--the gun was empty!

Tugging myself back into the saddle, I saw the rifle stab the darkness with flame and, holding the reins in my teeth, I thumbed cartridges into my gun. There seemed but one possible chance, and I turned my horse downstream, skirting a stack of hay and plunging into the unknown darkness beyond.

My horse was going full tilt when we saw the fence. It was just a glimpse, the darker bars across the gray, and the buckskin did the only thing he could do ... he jumped.

There was an instant of flight, then the buckskin hit, went to his knees, and sent me flying over his head. Instinctively I tucked in my head, and when I hit the dirt I landed on my shoulder and rolled over. Momentarily dazed, I lay still, unsure whether I was alive or not. Staggering up, I could see nothing of my horse.

From the house came a shout. "Go get him! He can't get away!"

There was the sound of running feet and, turning, I plunged into the blackness where there had been trees along the stream, if memory served me right. Luckily, dazed though I was, I reached the trees. Instantly, I stopped.

They would be right behind me, and they knew the terrain and I did not. Desperately, I needed my rifle, but it was in the scabbard on my saddle. The six-shooter was all right, but I trusted myself better with a rifle, and was prepared to face anything with a Winchester in my hands.

There were perhaps seven or eight of them, to judge by their voices. Occasionally they called out, as they moved down toward the pasture fence. They assumed I did not want to let my position be known and would not risk a shot, and they were right. To have fired one shot would have been to draw fire from all their rifles. One shot might miss; it was unreasonable to suppose eight would.

Putting my hand behind me, I felt bushes, and to my left a tree. I eased back against it, and worked my way around it, placing my foot down gently at each step until I knew what lay beneath it.

As they came on, I managed to put thirty feet or so behind me, and was desperately hoping to find some place to hide. The night was still. The lower pasture they were coming toward was much like the upper. As they reached the fence where I had taken my spill, I came to the fence along the side toward the creek. My hand touched a bark-covered rail, felt for the space beneath it, and then I slipped through. The stream must be close now.

It was growing lighter now the moon would be rising. Remembering how the stream had looked from the crest of the hill above, I recalled that the stream bed was all of fifty yards wide, but the stream itself not over five or six. That meant I would be fully exposed, a black figure moving across white sand; and without doubt a rifleman would be watching such an easy target.

If a body had been taking odds, my chances were about fifty to one to wind up a corpse. There were a lot of men out there with the idea of salting me down, and they had the guns to do it with. Otis Tom Chancy's time looked to be about up. Nevertheless, I figured to make them pay for their fun. I had me a good bit of ammunition and I could shoot maybe not as well as some, but well enough. As a last resort, I had a bowie knife with a blade sharp enough to slice bone as if it was cheese.

Suddenly a voice spoke, not twenty feet off. "Bud? I figure he got away. Plumb and total."

"You just hold that. You stow that gab. He didn't get away. There's no place he could go."

Looking past the two who spoke, I could see the dim figures of two or three men out in the pasture. Suddenly I had an idea. With those two there close by, I wasn't going to get away, but if--

Straightening up, I took careful aim at the little knot of figures out there, and fired.

Instantly, I dropped to my belly in the grass. It was as I'd figured. Those men out there in the pasture didn't stop to ask questions--somebody had shot at them and they shot back, all of them, and they kept on shooting. I got up and legged it out of there, running eight or ten steps before I slid down a bank and ran up a slight cut toward the cabin and the corrals.

Somebody back there was yelling. "Don't shoot, damn it! You've got Pike!"

Thumbing a shell into my gun, I came up out of the little draw, crossed behind the cabin, and started for the hills. It looked as if I was going to make it.

But all of a sudden a bunch of riders, unheard by me because of the shooting and yelling behind me, came down the trail to the cabin, right toward me.

There was no place to go. I was caught dead to rights, fair in the middle of the trail, with the moon just showing over the ridge. And my gun was in my holster...

The riders drew up when they saw me from a distance. "Pike, what the hell's going on out there?"

It was Caxton Kelsey.

Chapter
10

Kelsey had mistaken me for the man called Pike, and this gave me the break I needed. My holster was set for a crossdraw, and my right hand was at my belt. Moving it over, I shucked my gun, the darkness of my body masking the movement.

"Kelsey," I said, "I've got a gun lined on your belly. I've heard you're a fast man, but I don't think you are fast enough to beat a bullet."

He never moved. He was no fool, and he was not one to gamble against a sure thing. Nor were the others. They sat very still, every one. But you know who worried me the most? It was that red-headed woman, Queenie. A man you can figure on; a woman you can't. They're likely either to faint, or to grab for a gun regardless of consequences.

"It's you they're after, then." Kelsey drew on his cigarette and made it glow red in the night. "We'll get you this time. You're afoot."

"Not any more, Kelsey. I'm riding out of here right now. I'm riding your black. I'm not inclined to shoot unless called upon, but at this range I should get two or three of you, including the girl there."

Now, you hear about men arguing in the face of a gun, or taking wild chances, but it is a rare thing that you find a gun fighter gambling like that--he knows too much about guns. By now I was within fifteen feet of them, and just out of line of their horses.

"You could start shooting, or I could," I said, "and I'd dearly love to put lead into you, Kelsey; but the way I figure it, whoever starts shooting gets killed, and somebody else as well, maybe all of us. I don't like the odds, but I don't have a choice. You boys do."

"What do you want us to do?"

"Let go your gunbelts. Just unloose the buckles and let them fall. And when you've done that, shuck your rifles and drop them."

"Cax, you ain't going to let him get away with this, are you?" It was Queenie, and she was mighty angry--ready to spit and snarl and scratch, given chance.

"Queenie," Kelsey said, cool and quiet, "you make one wrong move and I'll kill you myself. This man means business, and he's got nothing to lose." He chuckled a little. "Besides, I like his nerve. It will be real fun next time we meet when I gut-shoot him."

They unloosed their belts and let them fall, then dropped their rifles.