Zane Grey (35 page)

Queen! At the last his nerve had revived. He could not crawl any
farther, he could never escape, so with the courage of fatality he
chose the open, to face his foe and die. Jean had a thrill of
admiration for the rustler. Then he stalked out from under the pines
and strode forward with his rifle ready.

A watching man could not have failed to espy Jean. But Queen never
made the slightest move. Moreover, his stiff, unnatural position
struck Jean so singularly that he halted with a muttered exclamation.
He was now about fifty paces from Queen, within range of those small
guns. Jean called, sharply, "QUEEN!" Still the figure never relaxed in
the slightest.

Jean advanced a few more paces, rifle up, ready to fire the instant
Queen lifted a gun. The man's immobility brought the cold sweat to
Jean's brow. He stopped to bend the full intense power of his gaze
upon this inert figure. Suddenly over Jean flashed its meaning. Queen
was dead. He had backed up against the pine, ready to face his foe,
and he had died there. Not a shadow of a doubt entered Jean's mind as
he started forward again. He knew. After all, Queen's blood would not
be on his hands. Gordon and Fredericks in their death throes had given
the rustler mortal wounds. Jean kept on, marveling the while. How
ghastly thin and hard! Those four days of flight had been hell for
Queen.

Jean reached him—looked down with staring eyes. The guns were tied to
his hands. Jean started violently as the whole direction of his mind
shifted. A lightning glance showed that Queen had been propped against
the tree—another showed boot tracks in the dust.

"By Heaven, they've fooled me!" hissed Jean, and quickly as he leaped
behind the pine he was not quick enough to escape the cunning rustlers
who had waylaid him thus. He felt the shock, the bite and burn of lead
before he heard a rifle crack. A bullet had ripped through his left
forearm. From behind the tree he saw a puff of white smoke along the
face of the bluff—the very spot his keen and gloomy vigilance had
descried as one of menace. Then several puffs of white smoke and
ringing reports betrayed the ambush of the tricksters. Bullets barked
the pine and whistled by. Jean saw a man dart from behind a rock and,
leaning over, run for another. Jean's swift shot stopped him midway.
He fell, got up, and floundered behind a bush scarcely large enough to
conceal him. Into that bush Jean shot again and again. He had no pain
in his wounded arm, but the sense of the shock clung in his
consciousness, and this, with the tremendous surprise of the deceit,
and sudden release of long-dammed overmastering passion, caused him to
empty the magazine of his Winchester in a terrible haste to kill the
man he had hit.

These were all the loads he had for his rifle. Blood passion had made
him blunder. Jean cursed himself, and his hand moved to his belt. His
six-shooter was gone. The sheath had been loose. He had tied the gun
fast. But the strings had been torn apart. The rustlers were shooting
again. Bullets thudded into the pine and whistled by. Bending
carefully, Jean reached one of Queen's guns and jerked it from his
hand. The weapon was empty. Both of his guns were empty. Jean peeped
out again to get the line in which the bullets were coming and, marking
a course from his position to the cover of the forest, he ran with all
his might. He gained the shelter. Shrill yells behind warned him that
he had been seen, that his reason for flight had been guessed. Looking
back, he saw two or three men scrambling down the bluff. Then the loud
neigh of a frightened horse pealed out.

Jean discarded his useless rifle, and headed down the ridge slope,
keeping to the thickest line of pines and sheering around the clumps of
spruce. As he ran, his mind whirled with grim thoughts of escape, of
his necessity to find the camp where Gordon and Fredericks were buried,
there to procure another rifle and ammunition. He felt the wet blood
dripping down his arm, yet no pain. The forest was too open for good
cover. He dared not run uphill. His only course was ahead, and that
soon ended in an abrupt declivity too precipitous to descend. As he
halted, panting for breath, he heard the ring of hoofs on stone, then
the thudding beat of running horses on soft ground. The rustlers had
sighted the direction he had taken. Jean did not waste time to look.
Indeed, there was no need, for as he bounded along the cliff to the
right a rifle cracked and a bullet whizzed over his head. It lent
wings to his feet. Like a deer he sped along, leaping cracks and logs
and rocks, his ears filled by the rush of wind, until his quick eye
caught sight of thick-growing spruce foliage close to the precipice. He
sprang down into the green mass. His weight precipitated him through
the upper branches. But lower down his spread arms broke his fall,
then retarded it until he caught. A long, swaying limb let him down
and down, where he grasped another and a stiffer one that held his
weight. Hand over hand he worked toward the trunk of this spruce and,
gaining it, he found other branches close together down which he
hastened, hold by hold and step by step, until all above him was black,
dense foliage, and beneath him the brown, shady slope. Sure of being
unseen from above, he glided noiselessly down under the trees, slowly
regaining freedom from that constriction of his breast.

Passing on to a gray-lichened cliff, overhanging and gloomy, he paused
there to rest and to listen. A faint crack of hoof on stone came to
him from above, apparently farther on to the right. Eventually his
pursuers would discover that he had taken to the canyon. But for the
moment he felt safe. The wound in his forearm drew his attention. The
bullet had gone clear through without breaking either bone. His shirt
sleeve was soaked with blood. Jean rolled it back and tightly wrapped
his scarf around the wound, yet still the dark-red blood oozed out and
dripped down into his hand. He became aware of a dull, throbbing pain.

Not much time did Jean waste in arriving at what was best to do. For
the time being he had escaped, and whatever had been his peril, it was
past. In dense, rugged country like this he could not be caught by
rustlers. But he had only a knife left for a weapon, and there was
very little meat in the pocket of his coat. Salt and matches he
possessed. Therefore the imperative need was for him to find the last
camp, where he could get rifle and ammunition, bake bread, and rest up
before taking again the trail of the rustlers. He had reason to
believe that this canyon was the one where the fight on the Rim, and
later, on a bench of woodland below, had taken place.

Thereupon he arose and glided down under the spruces toward the level,
grassy open he could see between the trees. And as he proceeded, with
the slow step and wary eye of an Indian, his mind was busy.

Queen had in his flight unerringly worked in the direction of this
canyon until he became lost in the fog; and upon regaining his bearings
he had made a wonderful and heroic effort to surmount the manzanita
slope and the Rim and find the rendezvous of his comrades. But he had
failed up there on the ridge. In thinking it over Jean arrived at a
conclusion that Queen, finding he could go no farther, had waited, guns
in hands, for his pursuer. And he had died in this position. Then by
strange coincidence his comrades had happened to come across him and,
recognizing the situation, they had taken the shells from his guns and
propped him up with the idea of luring Jean on. They had arranged a
cunning trick and ambush, which had all but snuffed out the last of the
Isbels. Colter probably had been at the bottom of this crafty plan.
Since the fight at the Isbel ranch, now seemingly far back in the past,
this man Colter had loomed up more and more as a stronger and more
dangerous antagonist then either Jorth or Daggs. Before that he had
been little known to any of the Isbel faction. And it was Colter now
who controlled the remnant of the gang and who had Ellen Jorth in his
possession.

The canyon wall above Jean, on the right, grew more rugged and loftier,
and the one on the left began to show wooded slopes and brakes, and at
last a wide expanse with a winding, willow border on the west and a
long, low, pine-dotted bench on the east. It took several moments of
study for Jean to recognize the rugged bluff above this bench. On up
that canyon several miles was the site where Queen had surprised Jean
and his comrades at their campfire. Somewhere in this vicinity was the
hiding place of the rustlers.

Thereupon Jean proceeded with the utmost stealth, absolutely certain
that he would miss no sound, movement, sign, or anything unnatural to
the wild peace of the canyon. And his first sense to register
something was his keen smell. Sheep! He was amazed to smell sheep.
There must be a flock not far away. Then from where he glided along
under the trees he saw down to open places in the willow brake and
noticed sheep tracks in the dark, muddy bank of the brook. Next he
heard faint tinkle of bells, and at length, when he could see farther
into the open enlargement of the canyon, his surprised gaze fell upon
an immense gray, woolly patch that blotted out acres and acres of
grass. Thousands of sheep were grazing there. Jean knew there were
several flocks of Jorth's sheep on the mountain in the care of herders,
but he had never thought of them being so far west, more than twenty
miles from Chevelon Canyon. His roving eyes could not descry any
herders or dogs. But he knew there must be dogs close to that immense
flock. And, whatever his cunning, he could not hope to elude the scent
and sight of shepherd dogs. It would be best to go back the way he had
come, wait for darkness, then cross the canyon and climb out, and work
around to his objective point. Turning at once, he started to glide
back. But almost immediately he was brought stock-still and thrilling
by the sound of hoofs.

Horses were coming in the direction he wished to take. They were
close. His swift conclusion was that the men who had pursued him up on
the Rim had worked down into the canyon. One circling glance showed
him that he had no sure covert near at hand. It would not do to risk
their passing him there. The border of woodland was narrow and not
dense enough for close inspection. He was forced to turn back up the
canyon, in the hope of soon finding a hiding place or a break in the
wall where he could climb up.

Hugging the base of the wall, he slipped on, passing the point where he
had espied the sheep, and gliding on until he was stopped by a bend in
the dense line of willows. It sheered to the west there and ran close
to the high wall. Jean kept on until he was stooping under a curling
border of willow thicket, with branches slim and yellow and masses of
green foliage that brushed against the wall. Suddenly he encountered
an abrupt corner of rock. He rounded it, to discover that it ran at
right angles with the one he had just passed. Peering up through the
willows, he ascertained that there was a narrow crack in the main wall
of the canyon. It had been concealed by willows low down and leaning
spruces above. A wild, hidden retreat! Along the base of the wall
there were tracks of small animals. The place was odorous, like all
dense thickets, but it was not dry. Water ran through there somewhere.
Jean drew easier breath. All sounds except the rustling of birds or
mice in the willows had ceased. The brake was pervaded by a dreamy
emptiness. Jean decided to steal on a little farther, then wait till
he felt he might safely dare go back.

The golden-green gloom suddenly brightened. Light showed ahead, and
parting the willows, he looked out into a narrow, winding canyon, with
an open, grassy, willow-streaked lane in the center and on each side a
thin strip of woodland.

His surprise was short lived. A crashing of horses back of him in the
willows gave him a shock. He ran out along the base of the wall, back
of the trees. Like the strip of woodland in the main canyon, this one
was scant and had but little underbrush. There were young spruces
growing with thick branches clear to the grass, and under these he
could have concealed himself. But, with a certainty of sheep dogs in
the vicinity, he would not think of hiding except as a last resource.
These horsemen, whoever they were, were as likely to be sheep herders
as not. Jean slackened his pace to look back. He could not see any
moving objects, but he still heard horses, though not so close now.
Ahead of him this narrow gorge opened out like the neck of a bottle. He
would run on to the head of it and find a place to climb to the top.

Hurried and anxious as Jean was, he yet received an impression of
singular, wild nature of this side gorge. It was a hidden,
pine-fringed crack in the rock-ribbed and canyon-cut tableland. Above
him the sky seemed a winding stream of blue. The walls were red and
bulged out in spruce-greened shelves. From wall to wall was scarcely a
distance of a hundred feet. Jumbles of rock obstructed his close
holding to the wall. He had to walk at the edge of the timber. As he
progressed, the gorge widened into wilder, ruggeder aspect. Through
the trees ahead he saw where the wall circled to meet the cliff on the
left, forming an oval depression, the nature of which he could not
ascertain. But it appeared to be a small opening surrounded by dense
thickets and the overhanging walls. Anxiety augmented to alarm. He
might not be able to find a place to scale those rough cliffs.
Breathing hard, Jean halted again. The situation was growing critical
again. His physical condition was worse. Loss of sleep and rest, lack
of food, the long pursuit of Queen, the wound in his arm, and the
desperate run for his life—these had weakened him to the extent that
if he undertook any strenuous effort he would fail. His cunning
weighed all chances.