Showdown On the Hogback (1991) (20 page)

"Sure as I'm alive! But," Escavada chuckled, "that ain't the best of it. Lyin' there on the floor, deader than last years hopes, was a young fellow. He had a knife, old-time Spanish knife that a fellow in armor might have carried, an' it was skewered right through him!"

"A young man-dead?" Kedrick suddenly leaned forward. "Anything odd about him? I mean, was he missing a thumb?"

Escavada stared. "Well, now, if that don't beat all! He was missin' a thumb, an' he was crippled up mighty bad in the other arm. Carried her in a sling."

"Dornie Shaw!" Laredo leaped to his feet.

"Dornie Shaw, by all that's holy!"

"Shaw?" Escavada puckered his brows, his old eyes gleaming. "Now that's most odd, most odd!

Shaw was the name of that boy, the one who didn't get killed with the wagon train!"

Kedrick's face was a study. Dornie Shaw-dead! But if Dornie had been the boy from the wagon train, that would account for his superstitious fear of the grulla mustang. But to suppose that after all these years Dornie had been killed by the same man, or ghost if you believed in ghosts, that killed the rest of them so many years before was too ridiculous.

It was, he thought suddenly, unless you looked at it just one way.

"Man can't escape his fate," Escavada said gloomily, "That boy hid out from that knife, but in the end it got him.

Kedrick got up. "Could you take us to that place, Escavada? Down there on the Hogback?"

"I reckon." He glanced outside. "But not in this rain. Rheumatiz gets me."

"Then tell me where it is;" Kedrick said, "because I'm going now!"

They were crossing the head of Coal Mine Creek when Laredo saw the tracks. He drew up suddenly, pointing at the tracks of a horse, well shod. "The grulla!" Kedrick said grimly. "I'd know those tracks anywhere!"

They
pushed
on. It was very late, and the pelting rain still pourer down upon their heads and shoulders. The trails were slippery, and dusk was near. "We'd better find us a hole to crawl into," Shad suggested. "We'll never find that horse in this weather!"

"By morning the tracks will be gone, and I've a hunch we'll find our man right in that cliff dwelling where Escavada saw Dornie's body!"

"Wonder how Dornie found the place?"

"If what I think is right," Kedrick replied, wiping the rain from his face, "he must have run into an old friend and been taken there to hide out.

That old friend was the same rider of the grulla that killed his family and friends with the wagon train, and when he saw that armor, he knew it."

"But what's it all about?" Shad grumbled. "It don't make sense! An' no horse lives that long."

"Sure not. There may have been a half dozen grullas in that length of time. This man probably tried to capitalize on the fears of the Indians and Mexicans who live up that way to keep them off his trail. We'll probably find the answer when we reach the end of our ride!"

The Hogback loomed black and ominous before them.

The trail, partly switchback and partly sheer climb, led over the sharp, knifelike ridge.

They mounted, their horses laboring heavily at the steep and slippery climb. Twice, Tom Kedrick saw the tracks of the grulla on the trail, and in neither case could those tracks have been more than an hour old. Kedrick glanced down when they saw the opposite side and then dismounted.

"This one is tricky," he said grimly. "We'd better walk it."

Halfway down, lightning flashed, and in the momentary brightness, Laredo called out, "Watch it, Tom! High, right!"

Kedrick's head jerked around just as the rifle boomed. The bullet smacked viciously against the rock beside him, spattering his face with splinters.

He grabbed for his gun, but it was under his slicker. The gun boomed again, five fast shots, as fast as the marksman could work the lever of his rifle. Behind Tom Kedrick, the anguished scream of a wounded horse cut the night, and Shad's warning yell was drowned in the boom of the gun again. Then he flattened against the rock barely in time to avoid the plunging, screaming horse!

His own Appaloosa, frightened, darted down the trail with the agility of a mountain goat. The rifle boomed again, and he dropped flat.

"Shad? You all right'?"

There was a moment before the reply, and then it was hoarse, but calm. "Winged me, but not bad."

"I'm going after him. You all right?"

"Yeah. You might help me wrap this leg up."

Sheltered by the glistening, rain-wet rock, with gray mist swirling past them on the high ridge of the Hogback, Kedrick knelt in the rain. Shielding the bandage from the rain with a slicker, he bound the leg.

The bullet had torn through the flesh, but the bone was not broken.

Chapter
17

When the wound was bandaged, Kedrick drew back into the shelter of the slight overhang and stared about.

Ahead and below them was a sea of inky blackness.

Somewhere down that mountain would be their horses, one probably dead or dying the other possibly crippled.

Around them all was night and the high, windy, rain-wet rocks. And out there in the darkness a killer stalked them, a killer who could at all of three hundred yards spot his shots so well as to score two hits on a target seen only by a brief flash of lightning. Next time, those shots could kill. And there was no doubt about it. Now the situation was clear. It was kill or be killed.

"Sure," Laredo said dryly, "you got to get him, man. But you watch it. He's no slouch with that Spencer!"

"You've got to get off this ridge," Kedrick insisted. "The cold and rain up here will kill you!"

"You leave that to me," Shad replied shortly.

"I'll drag myself down the trail an' find a hole to crawl into down on the flat below this Hogback. Might even find your palouse down there. You got grub an' coffee in those saddlebags?"

"Yeah, but you'd better not try a fire until I come back."

Shad chuckled. "Make sure you come back. I never did like to eat alone!" Slipping his hands under his slicker through the pockets, Tom gripped his guns. His rifle, of course, was in his saddle scabbard. He was going to have to stalk a skilled killer, a fine marksman, on his own ground in absolute darkness with a handgun! And the killer had a Spencer .56!

Lightning flashed, but there was no more shooting.

Somewhere out there the killer was stalking them. He would not give up now or retreat. This, for him, was a last stand unless he killed them both. His hideout now was known, and if they escaped he would no longer be safe. That he did not intend to be driven from the country was already obvious by the fact that he had stayed this long.

Kedrick crawled out, using a bush to cover his movement, and then worked along the windy top of the ridge toward a nest of boulders he had seen ahead of him by the lightning flash. The wind whipped at his hat and flapped the skirt of his slicker. His right-hand gun was drawn, but under the slicker.

He crawled on. Lightning flashed and he flattened out on the rocks, but the Spencer bellowed, the bullet smashing his eyes and mouth full of gravel. Rolling over, he held his fire, spitting and pawing desperately at his blinded eyes.

There was no sound but the wind and rain. Then, in the distance, thunder roared and rumbled off among the peaks, and when the lightning flashed again he looked out along the high ridge of the Hogback. Lashed by the driving rain, its rocks glistened like steel under clouds that seemed a scarce arm's length above Kedrick's head. Mist drifted by him, touching his wet face with a ghostly hand, and the weird white skeletons of long-dead pines pointed their sharp and bony fingers toward the sky.

Rain pelted against his face, and he cowered, fearing the strike of a bullet at each flash of lightning, smelling the brimstone as the lightning scarred the high ridge with darting flame. He touched his lips with his tongue and stared until his eyes ached with strain.

His mouth was dry and his stomach empty, and something mounted within him. Fear? Panic? He could stay still no longer. With infinite patience, he edged forward, working his way a little over the edge of the ridge toward the hulking black clumps of some juniper, ragged trees, whipped to agonized shapes by generations of wind.

There was no sound but the storm, no sight of anything. He moved on, trying to estimate how far away the cliff house would be, to guess if he could reach it first or get between it and the killer out there. Flame stabbed the night, and something burned sharply along his shoulders. He let go everything and rolled, crashing down a dozen feet before he brought up in a tangle of dead limbs.

But the killer was not waiting. He loomed suddenly, dark on the crest; and crouching like a hunted animal, every instinct alert, Kedrick fired! The dark figure jerked hard, and then the Spencer bellowed. The bullet plastered a branch near him, and Kedrick knew that only his own shot had saved his life. He fired again and then deliberately hurled himself backward into the night, falling, landing, crawling. He got to his feet and plunged into the absolute darkness, risking a broken limb or a bad fall, anything to get the distance he needed. Then lightning flashed, and as if by magic the Spencer boomed. How the man had followed his plunging career he could not know, but he felt the stab and slam of the bullets as they smashed about him! This man was shooting too close! He couldn't miss long! His shoulders burned, but whether that shot had been a real wound or a mere graze he did not know. Something fluid trickled down his spine, but whether it was rainwater through the slit coat or his own blood, he could not guess.

He moved back, circling. Another shot, but this slightly to his left. Quickly he moved left, and a shot smacked right near where he had been standing.

The killer was using searching fire now, and he was getting closer.

Kedrick moved back, tripped, and fell, and bullets laced the air over him. Evidently the man had a belt full of ammunition, or his pockets stuffed. Kedrick started to rise, but his fingers had found a hard smoothness, not of rock, but of earth and gravel! Carefully, he felt about in the darkness. The path! He was on a path, and no doubt the path to the cliff house! He began to move along it, feeling his way carefully. Once, off to his left, he heard a rock roll. He took a chance and fired blind and then rolled over three times and felt the air split apart as the shots slammed the ground where he had been. He fired again and then again, always moving.

Lightning flashed, and he saw a hulking thing back on the trail the way he had come, a huge, glistening thing, black and shining. Flame sprang from it, and he felt the shock of the bullet. Then he steadied himself and fired again.

Deliberately, then, he turned and worked his way down the path. Suddenly, he felt space before him, and found the path here took a sharp turn. Another step and he might have plunged off! How near was his escape he knew in another instant when lightning flashed and he saw far below him the gray-white figure of the Appaloosa standing in the rain!

He worked his way down the cliff. Then he found a ledge, and in a moment, his hands found the crude stone bricks of the cliff house. Feeling his way along it, he felt for the door, and then pushing it open he crawled into the inner darkness and pushed the door shut behind him.

After the lashing of wind and rain the peace seemed a miracle. Jerking off his soaking hat he tossed it aside and threw off the slicker. There was a chance the killer would not guess that he knew of this place, and undoubtedly had he not known he would have passed it by in the darkness and storm.

Working his way along the floor, he found a curtain dividing this from an inner room. He stepped through it and sat down hard on the bunk. Feeling for his left-hand gun he found the holster empty, and he had fired five shots with his right gun. Suddenly, the curtain stirred and there was a breath of wind. Then it vanished. The killer was in the other room! He had come in!

Kedrick dared not rise, for fear the bed would creak, but he heard a match strike, and then a candle was lighted. Feet shuffled in the other room.

Then came a voice. "I know you're in there, Kedrick. There's water on the floor in here.

I'm behind a piece of old stone wall that I use for a sort of table. I'm safe from your fire. I know there's no protection where you are.

Throw your guns out and come with your hands up! If you don't, I'm going to open fire an' search every inch of that room!"

Over the top of the blanket curtain, which was suspended from a pole across the door, Tom Kedrick could see the roof in the other room. The cave house was actually much higher than need be.

Evidently the killer had walled up an overhang or upper cave. Kedrick could see several heavy cedar beams that had served to support a ceiling, now mostly gone. If that was true in the other room, it might be true in his also.

He straightened to his feet, heard a sudden move, and then fired! From the other room came a chuckle. "Figured that would draw fire! Well, one gun's empty. Now toss out the other an' come out. You haven't a chance!"

Kedrick did not reply. He was reaching up into the darkness over his head, feeling for the beams. He touched one, barely touched it, and then reached up with both hands, judging the distance he had to jump by the width of the beams in the other room.