Gunsmoke over Texas (8 page)

T
HE SHIPPING HERD
got underway on schedule. “The Turkey Track leads the way,” Tom Mawson told Slade. “Then comes Tol Releford’s Bradded R, and we bring up the rear. We figure to hold them about a quarter mile apart and we use separate bedding grounds to keep the danged critters from mixing up. Plenty of good spots and always water. Horse Creek runs close to the trail almost the whole way.”

No one rode immediately in front of the marching cattle, but off to the side and near the head rode the point men whose duty it was to veer the herd when a change of direction was desired. To this chore Slade assigned four men, two on each side. This was double the usual number assigned to the chore, but Slade was taking no chances. They paced their horses about a third of the way back from the head of the column. Another third of the way back rode the swing men, where the column would begin to bend in case of a change of direction. These were also doubled. Still another third of the way back were flank riders. These assisted the swing riders in blocking any tendency on the part of the cows to sideways wandering, and in driving off any foreign cattle that might seek to join the herd. A triple force of drag riders brought up the rear, swearing at the dust, the heat and the stragglers. Next came the remuda of spare horses in charge of a wrangler and the lumbering chuck wagon driven by the cook. As an added precaution against a possible raid, Slade had outriders fanning out from the herd and inspecting the country ahead.

Usually the trail boss rides far ahead to survey the ground and search out watering-places and good grazing grounds for the bedding down at night, but under the circumstances with the bedding grounds decided on in advance, this was not necessary and Slade mostly rode drag with the main body of his men. At times, however, he rode along the herd or even detoured to get in front of the column and study the terrain over which they had to pass.

The first day Slade shoved the herd along fast to get them off their home range where they evinced greater tendency to stray and covered a full twenty-five miles of distance. After the first day he reduced the speed to half, for to push the cattle too fast would mean to run valuable fat and weight off them. He figured on three days to cover the remaining slightly more than forty miles to McCarney.

Until the trail entered the hills north of the valley the going was good. Then the drive became slow and hard with steep slopes to breast and narrow stretches where the herd was strung out in almost single file with rugged slopes flinging up to the right and left.

Late afternoon of the third day they reached a point where the trail forked. Before starting the drive the owners had decided to take the left fork through Hanging Rock Canyon instead of the longer route by way of Horsehead Canyon.

“We’ll cut off nearly ten miles of driving that way,” Mawson explained to Slade. “We can’t use the short cut in wet weather or during the spring thaws. Hanging Rock is too danged dangerous then. Boulders come tumbling down, sometimes whole bunches of them, but this time of the year she’s safe enough even though she don’t look it.”

Early morning of the fourth day out the herd got underway with the expectancy of reaching McCarney before sunset. At the moment the trail wound through thick brush growing on either side at no great distance from the track and curtailing the view ahead. They had covered less than a mile when a tumult broke loose up front. The point men were shouting, the swing riders yelling questions. Slade and Mawson raced their horses along the moving column of cattle to find out what was going on. They reached a point near the head of the column where the brush fell away to form a clearing of some acres in extent, across which meandered a small stream.

The clearing was dotted with cattle charging back and forth in every direction, with cursing riders working like blazes to round them up and get them into herd. Near the trail stood a well blistered and still smoking chuck wagon, around which stamped a squat and corpulent gentleman who raised both clenched fists to the heavens and spouted appalling profanity. Slade recognized him as Tol Releford, the Bradded R owner.

“Tol, what in blazes happened?” shouted old Tom as they pulled up beside him.

Releford shook his fist at a lanky, elderly individual with a limp who was industriously dousing stray sparks with water.

“He did it!” he bellowed. “All cooks are crazy, but that frazzled end of a misspent life is the prime specimen of the lot!”

“Shut up, you hammered down hunk of tallow!” the limper squalled reply. “How the devil did I know the dang thing would do it? When I get back to Proctor I’m goin’ to shoot Bige Bixley for selling it to me!”

“Tol,” Mawson pleaded, “won’t you tell us what the devil’s the meaning of all this?”

Releford again shook his fist at the cook. “That spavined old pelican!” he sputtered. “He goes and buys one of those infernal new-fangled oil stoves to keep in the chuck wagon and warm up his rheumatism. This morning right after breakfast the dang thing blew up. Sounded like the sky was falling. It set fire to the chuck wagon and the canvas top shot flames into the air a couple of hundred feet. Scared the tails off the cows and they stampeded in every direction. They couldn’t run far, thank Pete, but they sure scattered to the devil and gone. Go ahead with your herd, Tom, we’ll be right on your heels soon as we Straighten out this mess.”

Shaking with laughter, Slade and Mawson rode on after their cows, leaving the irate Releford and the equally irate cook to settle their differences as best they could.

“Things like that have been going on between those two for the past forty years,” chuckled Mawson. “Tol’s a bachelor and so is Stiffy Cole, the cook. They love each other like brothers and they’re all the time fighting. Tol’s quite a hombre. His spread is one of the smallest in this section, but I’ve a notion he’s about as well heeled as anybody hereabouts. Reckon it wouldn’t make much difference to him if he never sold another cow, but he likes to keep moving.”

It was shortly before noon of the fourth day that the herd reached Hanging Rock Canyon.

“There she is,” said Mawson, gesturing to the mouth of the narrow gorge ahead. A few minutes later Slade let out a whistle.

“Good Lord! what a hole!” he exclaimed.

The trail, which was not very wide, necessitating the cattle stringing out in a long line, followed a bench that clung to the west wall of the canyon. From the bench a steep slope tumbled down to the floor of the canyon proper, through which ran a thread of water. On the east it was walled by beetling cliffs.

To the west the vista was appallingly different. It was a mighty slope absolutely destitute of growth, a gray, drab, million-faceted ascent of rocks, a mountain-side wearing down, weathering away, cracked into a myriad of pieces, every one of which had both smooth and sharp surfaces. It had the criss-cross appearance of a net of rock, numberless stones of numberless shapes pieced together by some colossal hand and now split and broken and ready to fall. Frost and heat and the beat of wind and rain had disintegrated the mountain-side till it hung in almost perpendicular splintered ruin, the heaps of broken stone clinging there as if by magic, every one of the endless heaps leaning ready to roll. From the innumerable facets the sun flashed back as from countless mirrors.

Slade glanced down at the canyon floor below. It was littered with talus, studded with boulders and fragments, some of them weighing tons. And above the slope towered dark and terrible and forbidding.

“See why it ain’t safe to go through here during wet weather or the thaws?” remarked old Tom as with the cowboys all bunched behind the drag they entered the canyon. “Them rocks are all the time tumbling down.”

“And some day the whole dang mess will slide down,” Slade predicted. “It’s a wonder it hasn’t done it before now.”

“Maybe,” conceded Mawson, “but it’s been like this ever since I can remember, and that goes back to close onto fifty years.”

The trail had a gentle upward slope to a crest at the north mouth of the gorge which was not very long, hardly more than a mile. The lead cows dipped over, the others followed. The drag reached the crest and the cowboys raced down the opposite sag where the country opened up to take their places along the marching column. Slade paused on the summit and gazed back at the frightful slope hanging poised over the trail. A few minutes later he saw the van of the Bradded R herd enter the canyon, then the hands riding bunched behind the moving cattle that trudged along stolidly under the upward sweeping wave of shattered stone. Slade’s eyes travelled up the flashing, concave surface.

From the rimrock, more than a thousand feet above, suddenly mushroomed a cloud of yellowish smoke. An instant later to Slade’s ears came a muffled boom. A huge section of the rimrock cliff leaned forward, slowly at first, then with swiftly accelerated speed. The mountain trembled to the crash of its fall.

Instantly the whole slope seemed to be in motion. Slade was deafened by a thundering roar that rolled and spread, a lifting and throwing of measureless sound punctuated by rattling crashes that boomed and echoed from battlement to battlement. A mighty cloud of dust boiled upward, thinning the sunlight, casting eerie shadows.

Under the billowing pall, Slade saw the Bradded R cowboys wheel their horses and flee madly with death bellowing at their heels. Rushing boulders struck the trail around, behind and in front of them and bounded off into the canyon depths, lending wings to the hoofs of the terrified horses. His palms sweating, his face rigid with strain, Slade saw them reach the distant canyon mouth and vanish.

So absorbed had he been in the cowhands’ race with death he had hardly noticed what happened to the doomed cattle, now buried beneath countless tons of stone.

The canyon was a seething caldron of dust through which the falling rocks boomed and screamed and rumbled. It billowed upward in fantastic shapes that seemed to toss and writhe in torment, shuddering to the loudening concussion of the avalanche, hiding the horror of the depths.

Back up the slope sped the Walking M hands. They jerked their horses to a halt beside Slade, their eyes wild and staring.

“What the devil happened?” panted old Tom. “Did the danged thing come down at last?”

“Looks sort of that way,” Slade replied.

“Good God!” muttered Mawson. “And we just got through!”

“Yes, we got through,” Slade said slowly, “but the Bradded R herd didn’t. It was in there when the infernal thing cut loose.”

“And the boys?” gulped Mawson.

“I think they all got in the clear,” Slade reassured him. “It looked that way from up here.”

Gradually the mighty voice of the avalanche thinned and deadened, until the silence was broken only by the occasional ringing crack of a belated boulder bounding down the slope. The dust cloud slowly settled and dissipated, revealing the denuded slope and the canyon choked with debris; the trail had vanished.

At the far mouth of the gorge appeared dark blobs that were the Bradded R riders. Slade waved his hand to them and they waved back.

“Well,” he said. “I reckon we might as well be shoving along. We can’t get to them over that mess. Looks like you won’t be able to use this crack as a short cut again. But I expect the railroad will be down your way before you need it again.”

“I hope so,” Mawson returned gloomily. “I’ve sure had enough of these infernal hills.”

As they rode down the slope Mawson suddenly turned to Slade. His face wore a strained look. “Walt,” he said, a bit thickly, “it would have been our herd down under those rocks.”

“Yes, very likely it could,” Slade admitted.

“And if that had happened, right now I’d be close to being a ruined man,” the ranchowner said heavily.

“Guess that was the general notion,” Slade replied, and didn’t explain just how he meant it. “But it didn’t happen,” he added cheerfully, “and we should reach McCarney okay in a few hours.”

Mawson nodded and was silent.

Walt Slade also rode in silence, for he was thinking deeply. He knew perfectly well that what he had seen and heard was a dynamite explosion set off for the express purpose of bringing down the avalanche. And there was no doubt in his mind but that it had been timed to cut loose to coincide with the entrance of the last herd into the canyon — Tom Mawson’s herd. The dynamiters, more than a thousand feet above, would not have been able to tell that the second herd through the gorge was the Walking M and not the Bradded R. They had followed instructions in line with some preconceived plan and only a freak happening had saved Mawson’s cattle. An act of wanton destruction, nothing less, with the incident of possible mass murder callously disregarded.

But why? Slade didn’t have the answer, yet, but his hazy theory regarding what was back of the strange happenings in Weirton Valley was beginning to crystallize.

Without further untoward occurrence they reached McCarney and the railroad a couple of hours before sundown. The cattle were immediately shunted into the loading pens and old Tom heaved a deep sigh of relief when a stock car door closed on the last cow.

Shortly after the chore was finished, the Bradded R bunch raced their reeking horses into town, having taken the long detour by way of Horsehead Canyon.

That night the Walking M and Turkey Track hands celebrated the safe arrival of their herds in McCarney. The Bradded R punchers didn’t have much to celebrate aside from their escape from the avalanche, but they did their manful best to make the occasion a success. It was, to which aching heads and bleary eyes attested the following morning when the long ride back to Weirton Valley started. Walt Slade and the ranch-owners celebrated with greater moderation and were in somewhat better shape.

Old Tom was still puzzling over what started the avalanche. “Reckon it must have been the vibrations set up by our cows passing along the trail,” he hazarded, “but I never heard tell of anything like it before. A thousand herds have gone through that crack and nothing happened.”

Walt Slade arrived at a decision. “Mr. Mawson,” he said, “I’m going to tell you something, but I want you to keep it under your hat.”