the Riders Of High Rock (1993) (3 page)

"Mebbe I don't." Red was feeling good and refused battle, even with such a time-honored opponent as Hopalong. "This here Bolt hombre is a tough feller." He looked up suddenly. "You seen Mesquite?"

"Seen him? How could I? He ain't around here, is he?"

"You know wherever you are, he ain't far away. That lad sets a sight o' store by you, Hoppy. Reckon he'll show up?"

Hopalong chuckled and grinned at Red. "Not unless he figures there's trouble over here, but if he gets wind of a scrap, he'll come a-floggin' it. You know him."

As darkness drew nearer, Hopalong became increasingly restless. Red's fever was mounting and there were times when

he lapsed into delirium. Hopalong made broth from the sage hen and fed it to the wounded man, then drank some coffee himself.

With Gibson short-handed and laid up with a broken leg, no help was to be expected from that quarter. Moreover, this was far to the east of his holdings, for Red had trailed the stolen cattle for some distance after he found their tracks. Red needed rest and quiet, and before that could be had they must get out of the mountains and down to civilization. Still farther east was the town of Charleston, but from all Hopalong had heard along the trail, that was an outlaw town and a tough one.

A stranger in the vicinity, especially if he wore a badge of any kind or looked like he might represent the law, was sure to draw rifle fire. The inhabitants had long since discovered that one way of keeping their privacy inviolate was scattered shooting at any doubtful-looking stranger. The sheriff who could ride into Charleston and out alive was rare, although there was a rumor that one had done so and lived to brag about it for years. Actually, only a couple of misguided strangers had been found dead. The rest had taken the hint when a few casual rifle shots came too close.

Charleston might be a place to investigate, but that would come later, and it was certainly no place to take Red in his present condition. Other towns were too far away, so that meant a lonely ranch somewhere, or a hideout camp.

Chapter
3

A Horse for Red
.

T
hat night Hopalong bedded down near Red and lay awake, watching and listening. Several times he dipped a cloth in water and placed it across the wounded man's forehead, caring for him as much as he could. Once, when he walked towards the mouth of the canyon, he thought he saw the slinking form of a big cat, and several times an owl hooted. At the canyon mouth all was still. A cricket sounded in the brush, a night bird called, and the wind sounded on the strings of the tall timber.

Red awakened early and stared at Hoppy. "Been awake all night, I bet. You get some sleep. You look like you need it."

Without a word Hopalong rolled up in his blanket and dropped off. Red rolled a smoke and stared at him. Did ever a man have a better friend? All along it had been Hoppy he wanted to see, Hoppy who he knew could pull them out of this, as he had so many times before.

Red's eyes scanned the cliffs. It was unbelievable that he had actually gotten down from there, wounded and only partly conscious, yet he had done it. He had done it and was alive to tell the tale, although had Hopalong not found him he would have been dead for hours now.

Red's mind returned to the trail he had been following when attacked. There had been at least thirty head in that bunch and they had been pushing them fast. None of the riders were known to him and it was a complete mystery where they were headed with the stolen cattle. He suspected all were recently rebranded 3TL steers--ample evidence to stretch a few necks if delivered to the right sources.

They would never rest now until they had him. A cowboy named Grat had been in that crowd before the cattle were delivered to the strange riders. He knew the horse he rode and had followed its tracks more than once, often on Jack Bolt's range.

He checked his rifle and grinned when he saw it was loaded. He threw sticks on the fire and, without moving from his propped-up position, succeeded in getting the fire going and the coffee on. It was boiling when Hopalong opened his eyes and came awake.

Hopalong Cassidy checked his guns and belted them on, then accepted the cup Red offered him. "You look better," he said at last. "I'm going to leave you in this hideaway. Nobody seems to have come here for years, and if they do, you're well hid. The trees and rocks give you cover, and you're sure not going to let many of 'em get close with that rifle."

"Where you goin?" Red demanded.

"To get you a cayuse. You can't walk out of here, and I'm not going to load my horse down with your carcass."

Red snorted and Hopalong swung into the saddle of the palouse and started off. Leaving the canyon, he took to the rocks, careful to leave no trail. In so doing he looked for his incoming tracks but found none.

It was an hour later when he found fresh tracks of the

cordon of riders that had been beating the canyons and valleys for Red Connors. The tracks looked less than an hour old, as nearly as he could judge, and they led down along the mountainside through the trees.

Four riders were gathered over the ashes of a fire under the shade of a huge slab of granite. One of them he recognized at once, from the description Red had given, as Grat. Big, rough-looking, Grat was leaning against a rock, smoking a cigarette.

"The devil with it!" Grat was saying. "He's dead or gone out of the country!"

"Well, someone slugged the Breed here," Bones explained. "But I don't think it was our fella. Anyway, what difference does it make? If we go back, we'll be ridin' fence and brandin' cows. This here ain't a bad life."

The others were a dark-faced man who wore his hat high over a makeshift bandage on the back of his head--Hoppy recognized him as the man he had hit with his pistol--and Hoyt, who had been one of the watchers left on the crest after Red had disappeared.

Hopalong circled warily up the hillside behind them, then left his horse and worked his way down through the trees towards the rustlers' camp. He had heard a few words and wanted to hear more, but he also wanted a bay that he could see picketed about twenty-five yards downhill from where the men were relaxing. On second thought he picked a gray. At a distance that bay might look enough like a sorrel to warrant investigation, and he wanted no trouble while Red was wounded.

He studied the four men individually and found them true to type. All were tough-looking, all packed guns low, and all

looked like men accustomed to using them. If this was the brand of men Jack Bolt had doing his rustling, they were no pushovers in any kind of a scrap.

Nobody spoke for a few minutes. Hoyt was lying on the ground now, his head pillowed on his sombrero. He drew deep on his cigarette and looked up at the blue sky and idly drifting clouds.

"The boss said he was takin' a couple of us into Tascotal tonight," he said. "I hope it ain't me. This is the first rest I've had in months."

"I could go for some of that panther sweat they sell in there," Bones said thoughtfully. "This ridin' is mighty dry work."

Hopalong had moved down now within pistol shot of the horses, who were beyond the riders in a grove of trees. With infinite care, and taking all the time in the world, he eased himself through the trees and reached the picket rope of the grey. The horse jerked his head up, and Hopalong spoke gently to him. Curiously, the horse came nearer, and Hopalong murmured to him and scratched his shoulder, then his chest near the foreleg. The grey liked it, and after a minute or so Hopalong turned and led the grey back into the trees and tied him. Returning, he released the other horses. They seemed ready to go, and began drifting off.

Mounting his own horse and leading the grey, Hopalong allowed his tracks to merge with the others in the trail, then cut off the traveled way, keeping to the flat rock of the country alongside the road and moving from one wide, wind-swept rock shelf to another until he had put a half mile between himself and the camp.

After a couple of miles he cut off through the timber towards the canyon. Several times he made abrupt turns; once

he made almost a complete circle, working his way farther back into the hills. It was almost sundown when he reached the canyon.

Red looked at him and grinned as he came up. "Saw you comin'," he said. "You got a horse."

"What did you want--a cow? Although," he added dryly, "she might be easier for you to ride."

"Huh! I can ride anythin' you can put a saddle on!" Red bristled. "I've seen you get piled a few times!"

"You dream a lot!" Hopalong looked at him critically. "You figure you can stay in that saddle if I put you there?"

"Try me!" Red hitched his way along the ground. "Let me get a hand on that stirrup and I'll get in the saddle by myself."

"And get your head kicked off!" Hopalong replied.

When Red Connors was in the saddle he grinned at Hoppy. "There was a time back there when I didn't know whether I'd ever get up here again," he said. "I figured maybe they had my number up at last."

"Let's go!" Leading the way, Hopalong started down the canyon. They were careful to leave no tracks and once out of the woods near the canyon, Hopalong turned back into the higher mountains towards the north. At all costs, even at the risk of a longer ride, they must avoid trouble. Red was in no shape for a fight right now.

"What about this Jack Bolt, Red? Know anything about him?"

"Only what Gibson told me. He came in here about four years ago with two riders and bought a small spread. He paid cash for it, I hear, and the owner who sold to him left town right after. Seems somethin' happened to him, because a year later they found what was left of him over near the Bruneau. He was long dead, just his skeleton and a few rags of clothes.

They identified him by his boots and some letters in his leather jacket.

"Nobody seems to have thought anything about that, including Gibson. Lately, however, he's been wonderin' if that feller Newcombe wasn't followed away and killed.

"Bolt went to ranchin' an' stayed away from town most of the first year. When he started comin' around, it was just to buy supplies, and he acted like a quiet, peaceful rancher. Then two rough-looking hombres hit town askin' for him, and they went to work as hands. One of them was this Grat, who's with him now. The other was Bones. Bolt, he got mighty friendly with that tough Springer outfit, but trouble didn't start until Grat pulled in.

"It was about that time folks began to miss a few cows. Bolt complained, too, but not until there had been some talk by others. Then Bolt went to the sheriff an' told him he was missin' stock. For a while the sheriff investigated, but nobody lost any stuff for several weeks, and then Fielding of the 3F came up with a lot of stock missin'."

"That 3F would make an 8 Boxed H, too," Hopalong commented. "How about the other brands?"

"It will cover more than half the brands in this neck of the woods," Red said emphatically. "And you wonder why somebody ain't pointed it out? A feller named Brown sure tried it. He said it right out in meeting before Grat, and Grat told him if he said the Bolt outfit were thieves, he was a liar!"

"And Brown grabbed iron?"

"Don't reckon he meant to. I just heard about it. He said somethin', and I figure he aimed to claim he was just men-tionin' the fact, but Grat called him a liar again, and that time he reached. He never got his gun clear. Grat downed him."

"And since then no comment, huh?"

"That's right, Hoppy. Bolt's kept a good reputation somehow, and there's only a few who think he's anythin' but honest. None of them cotton to his outfit too much, but nobody will come out and call 'em thieves."

Jack Bolt had every reason to feel satisfied. In the seven months of rustling, his hands had stolen over a thousand head of cattle from ranches within a day's ride of his 8 Boxed H. All but fifty head of those cattle were safely out of the country, transferred to another ranch he now owned in northern California.

With only six hands doing the rustling, the split was small, and not one of the six had any idea how he disposed of the cattle. At a certain point on the trail the herds were turned over to other men, who drove them north, then west. Only one herd had followed the trail discovered by Red Connors and that had gone to the mining camps of Western Montana for the purpose of immediate cash. Most of the returns had gone to the six cowhands.

Bolt sat in a hide-bound armchair on his veranda and contemplated the situation. Gibson was down with a broken leg but would be out and around soon. If a big strike was to be made, it should be now. With Red Connors out of the way, the one man who knew anything definite had been eliminated, and

the chances were, people would believe he had drifted out of the country as he had come in.

Bolt was very well pleased. The whole job had been handled simply but effectively and without any suspicion being directed towards him. There had been a little talk when Grat killed Brown, but Grat was only considered overhasty and was not otherwise under suspicion. Bolt had been careful to report small losses of cattle from time to time and, while making the usual complaints, had suggested the losses could also have been from straying, varmints, or lack of water.

Jack Bolt was a tall man, well over six feet, and slightly stooped. His shoulders were narrow and rounded, his face long and saturnine, narrow through the cheekbones but wide at the jaw. His hide was browned like saddle leather, and his large nose jutted from between close-set black eyes. The hand that held his pipe was large, with prominent knuckles.