the Mountain Valley War (1978) (11 page)

"They say you've killed thirty men." Irritated, he looked up. "I have never said that. I don't talk about such things. Like some of the rest of them here, I was in the army, and I did what I had to do. We were fighting to preserve the Union. Since then there has been a little trouble here and there, but I never looked for it or wanted it, like here.

"Your pa--Dick Moffit--he didn't want it, but they brought it to him. A man must defend himself or die."

"Do they use guns so much back east?"

"Almost as much. Remember, it was only a few years back that Andrew Jackson killed a man in a duel. Then, there was the Hamilton-Burr affair. Alexander Pushkin--he was a Russian poet--was in a number of duels and finally killed in one. I don't like it, but that's the way it is."

On the morning of the third day after the wagon left, Kilkenny mounted and started for the rim. He caught Parson watching him, but the old man offered no comment.

This time Kilkenny had a plan. He was returning to the place he had been before, and by one means or another he was going down the face of the cliff to the ruins of the wagon; then he would try to discover how the wagon came to be there.

It lay much too far out to have ever fallen from the rim, so there had to be a trail. Once down there where it was, he could either find something of the trail down which it had come, or by backtracking and search from below, he could find the route it used.

If he could find no trail, he would have to get back up a cliff that was at least three hundred feet high, but that was a bridge he would have to cross when the time came. He was taking a long chance, but if ever there was a time for risk-taking, it was now.

Somewhere in that vast jumble of broken cliffs and canyons, fallen slabs, and shoulders of stone he would find a way down.

It was almost seven o'clock in the morning when he reached the point where he planned to descend. He had brought along several ropes, not enough to reach the bottom but enough to get him to the steep talus slope down which he could make his way.

Lying flat, he peered over the edge. At this point the cliff bulged out somewhat, and he could not see the bottom immediately below, but he hoped to swing back in against the cliff face, where he could use roots or projections of rock to help in his descent. He was no mountain climber, although he had once read something of their methods in an old magazine, Atlantic or Century, he believed. He wished he could review it now, for he would need all the help he could get.

Forcing himself to think of nothing but the task at hand, he lowered himself over the edge, and when he got the merest toehold, he felt below until he could grasp one of the roots, and slowly eased himself lower.

The depth below was sickening, and he had never cared much for high places. He had made fast his rope to an ancient gnarled and twisted cedar near the edge, and had run the rope between his legs, across his chest, and over the opposite shoulder, then across his back, gripping it in his right hand. In this way he could lower himself carefully, occasionally guiding himself with his left hand.

Resolutely he kept his thoughts away from the vast depth below, but in a matter of minutes he was wringing wet with perspiration. He lowered himself slowly, but the rope was burning his skin right through his clothes. He slid, held himself, and grabbed a projection of rock and felt for a toehold on the wall. For a moment he was still.

He dearly wanted to wipe the perspiration from his face. It trickled into his eyes, which smarted from the salt sweat. He glanced to the right along the face of the cliff, and far off in the blue he saw a buzzard swinging in lazy circles.

His fingers ached with gripping, and he released his hold on the rock and let himself slide down some more. If an enemy discovered him now, he would be cold turkey, no chance to even fight back. The slightest slackening of grip on his right hand and that rope would be gone and he would be falling.

He needed to ease the weight again. His toe found a rock, tested it. Solid. Slowly, carefully, he began to settle weight on the ball of his foot. Suddenly there was a sag in the rock beneath him, and it gave way and the rattle of falling stones told him he had lost that toehold.

Slowly he lowered himself again. What in God's world was he doing here, anyway? This was a damned fool thing ...

The rope slipped and burned through his hand, across his back. He gripped it hard and regained control. If he just had nerve enough, he might lower himself all the way down without trusting to foothold on the cliff face, but he was wary of it, afraid of going too fast.

He glanced up. He had come down at least fifty feet, and perhaps farther. If he quit now, he could climb that distance hand over hand, but if he went farther, he doubted he would have the strength to climb back.

He lowered away, got his toe in a cleft of rock, looked to right and left. Nothing. He lowered away again, and the rope grew hot. He waited, his left hand clinging to a root, and glanced to the right. A cedar grew there from a cleft in the rock, and beyond was a series of tracks. He glanced down. Fear tore at his guts. He clung for a moment, thinking desperately. He had underestimated the distance, for looking down from above, it was not easy to judge, and he was almost to the end of his rope, with a good forty feet to go, over jagged rocks, then the talus slope of smaller broken slabs.

If he could swing over to that cedar ... It was a good, strong-looking tree, not more than four feet tall but almost twice that across, with thick, strong branches. Such a tree might be several hundred years old, for they had a fantastic ability to survive. Below it, there were several other trees, the nearest a good ten feet lower down.

Yet, if he could get over there, get his fingers in those cracks, he might make his way to the bottom. The distance to the head of the slope was about the height of a four-story building.

If he could start himself swinging, and at the farthest point of his swing cut the rope, he had a good chance of landing in that cedar.

And a better chance of missing and breaking his fool neck.

He pushed against the rock, tried to get himself swinging across the face of it. A push here, another there, and he was swinging like a pendulum. With his free hand he got out his knife. It was a good blade, and razor sharp.

Could he cut through in one slice? That knife would cut through anything, but...

He swung wider and wider, a great human pendulum against the face of the rock. The cedar was there; then he was away from it. It was a good rawhide riata, and he hated to sacrifice it. He let the swing reach its full distance, and when he neared a projecting rock, he shoved hard with his feet; the swing of the rope carried him farther over each time^ yet scarcely far enough.

Could he cut through the rawhide with one slash? The answer was simple. He had to. Again he reached the far end of the swing. With feet and hands he shoved off hard from the rock; then his body swept out in a long swing over the breathtaking depth below. There was an instant of rushing air; then the cedar was there, just below him and ahead. Raising his left arm, he saw the cedar there and cut down and across with a sweeping slash.

He felt himself falling, and then he was thrown rather than fell into the cedar. He hit the tree all doubled up, and the short, stiff branches ripped at his clothes like stabbing knives. He fell through the outer branches and hit the second tree well below. For an instant the branches seemed to hold him, and then he slipped through and fell again. He hit a bunch of brush and was dropped off the edge of it to the slope. He hit the sand, rolled a few times, and lay still.

After a long, long minute he pulled himself together. He glanced up and could see his rope dangling there, so far above him that he could not believe it. Gingerly he felt of arms and legs to see if all was intact. Aside from a few minor bruises, contusions, and scrapes, he seemed all right.

Now he was down. How he was to get back to his horse and rifle was another thing.

He turned and began to walk.

Chapter
10

Lance Kilkenny stood on a dusty desert floor littered with slabs of rock obviously fallen from the cliff above. He stood in a dry water course, or on the edge of it, along which water actually ran only during or after rains. Yet the first thing he saw other than that was immediately reassuring. It was an ancient Indian petro-glyph.

It was on the face of the cliff thirty yards away, but clearly visible, although the colors had undoubtedly faded. It had been painstakingly pecked out of the rock, as he could see as he walked closer, and then tinted--or so it appeared.

Indians, at least, had been here.

To the west, vision was obscured by dust; it was a fine dust set swirling by the least wind. He knew nothing of what lay out there except that beyond a part of it lay Blazer. The first thing was to find that broken wagon.

His guns, which had their rawhide thongs over them, had stayed with him. His knife was lost. Or was it? Certainly it had fallen after he lost his grip on it when he cut through the rawhide.

He scrambled back up over the rocks and looked along the base of the cliff.

The knife was easy. The bright steel blade caught the sun and flashed brightly. He walked to it, picked it up, and then, when he turned to retrace his steps, he saw about twenty feet of his rawhide riata, the part that had been wrapped about him when he fell. He retrieved it with the awareness that a man never knew what would be necessary, but as he did so he suddenly realized he was without water.

On the mountain above, that had presented no problem, for there were frequent springs and small streams that ran from under the slide rock toward the crest of the ridges. Here there seemed to be no water.

The particles of dust in the air seemed largely to be silicate and finer than sand.

He slipped the thong from his right-hand gun.

He stepped over the bleached bones of an ancient cedar and walked on. From behind a dry desert bush he glimpsed the white rib cage of a horse, and he walked over to it. The dry, curled leather of a saddle lay near it, a very old saddle of a make he was not familiar with. Men had come down into this country from Canada long ago, as early as or earlier than Lewis and Clark.

Sweat rolled down his face, and the thick dust rose when he walked. It was hot, very hot. He looked about for shade, but there was none. The face of the cliff was like a great reflector sending the heat back into his face.

It was very dry. He paused; removing his hat, he mopped the hatband, then put it back on his head and slipped the thong under his chin. Dust arose in little puffs at every step.

Twice he glimpsed whitened bones, those of a bighorn sheep, and again of a deer. He saw no tracks, nor did he see anything alive. He looked up at the sky, partially obscured because of dust, and he could not see the buzzard.

Nothing that lived ... not even a lizard.

Suddenly he saw the wagon wheel. Weathered by sun, wind, and rain, it was great and splintery, the iron rim rusted almost away.

A little farther along, the wagon lay, and another wheel half-buried in dust. He walked on. An old wagon. A cart, rather.

Yet somebody had been here, somebody who had found a way to get down the cliff with a wagon. Unless--the thought turned him sick when he thought of it--unless that wagon had come across the desert and had been abandoned here when no way could be found to scale the cliff.

That was a probability he had not considered. He stood there for several minutes studying the cliff itself. Higher in some places than others, in no place was it less than two hundred feet from the rim to the foot of the talus.

He walked on. It was hot. Dust and sweat made his skin itch. Several times he turned and looked back. Only pits in the sand remained of his footprints.

Ahead of him there was a jutting promontory of rock where the cliff thrust out into the desert.

How far had he come? At least a mile, perhaps a half-mile more. The promontory was at least a mile ahead of him. He walked on, wishing he had a drink, and alert for any sign of water.

One thing he realized at once. Crossing this country looked to be a frightful job. Where the sand was not heaped in drifts there were areas of bare, wind-worn rock, often tilted so badly that men might have to resort to what the Mormons had called "dugways," cutting a rut for the upper wheel so a wagon would not tip over when crossing a steep side hill. That meant slow, painstaking work.

He came upon the track suddenly. He had reached the promontory and rounded it, and there it was before him. Not a road, certainly, but at least a place where wagons had gone. The edges of ruts cut into the surface were visible, although most of the way they were filled with dust.

The wagon track came down off the cliff in a steep, winding trail down which no wagon could have come without some kind of a brake, a line perhaps that was fastened to the rear axle and then paid out gradually to keep the wagon from overrunning its team. Although the team might have been taken down separately.

He turned at once and began to climb. His mouth was dry, and he wanted a drink, and while there might be water down here, he knew there was water up there in the forest. Several times he stopped to roll boulders from the trail, and once he worked for half an hour with strength, as well as crude levers made from broken limbs, in an endeavor to roll a big log out of the way. He succeeded at last, and had the satisfaction of seeing it fall, bounding from rock to rock until it splintered in several pieces.