Ernest Haycox - The Greatest Westerns of Ernest Haycox

The farther Clint traveled the more the injury smarted. "Slapped again," he muttered. "Seems to me I'm taking an undue amount of punishment. What's the matter with the looks of my face? Or has everybody gone crazy of a sudden?" His own clear sight told him that the threat of range war was responsible for all this touchiness and hard suspicion. But even so, it was a distinct blow to his pride to know that others failed to see the prevailing honesty of his impulses. Was the dividing line in Casabella so thin that people refused to trust all outward appearances? "Saint Peter," he grumbled, "would get run out of Casabella for being suspected of sheepherding. I never saw such a state of affairs."

For quite a long length of time Clint Charterhouse forgot the nature of his business. Not until he arrived at the top of the ridge and came upon a small glade flooded with the golden morning's light did he think much about his reasons for returning this way. The main trail leading north and south kept to the high ground; that trail he had followed out of Angels the day before. Upon it were many hoofprints but none fresh enough to have been made that morning. Old John Nickum had not yet passed down, if indeed the cattleman meant to come this way at all. Considering the problem, Charterhouse wondered why Shan-der was so very sure Nickum would keep to the trail. There was something queer about that, something that did not meet the eye. Yet he had no time at present to dig into the mystery; Nickum was on the way and possibly would soon pass by. Another half mile would bring the bluff old baron to the edge of timber and up against the rim of Red Draw. At some place along that draw the trap was set. Shander had said so and there was no doubting the man's grim, ruthless sincerity on that point.

"What of it?" Charterhouse asked himself. "Slapped three times and here I stand asking for more. A bigger damn fool never came out of the shell. Nobody's asked me to butt into this business. So why don't I roll my hoop?"

The drumming of a woodpecker shot through the trees with a startling clarity, rousing him from all this tedious thinking. No matter how little license he had for intruding on the quarrel, he had, nevertheless, lived too long with his own code to throw it over now. His reason told him that Nickum and Nickum's adherents were in the right; Shander was certainly on the opposite side of the fence—and he had always hated the kind of outlawry Shander stood for.

There was his answer. He would dip an oar in this muddy water and later tell Nickum to go plumb straight to hell, just for the pleasure of it. With that in mind he passed across the trail and threaded through the thickening pines. Underbrush impeded him in places and every few minutes he stopped to put an ear against the still air; presently he saw a break in the pines and he went forward on foot, to step to the very brink of Red Draw.

At this point the trees grew up to the margin and the winding of the chasm shut off his view to the south. Retreating, he led the horse parallel to the draw for a quarter mile and again crawled back to scan the freakish slash in the earth. This time he commanded a tolerably good view and made out where the pines dwindled to open country. It was open country also across the draw, but gigantic bald-faced boulders made a sort of parapet along the rim of the farther side and shut off most of his view. Still dissatisfied, he repeated the trick of retreating and paralleling until streaks of stronger light ahead told him he was very nearly arrived at the end of shelter; the trail, moreover, was sweeping nearer him. He veered farther away from it, left his pony in the deepest thicket he could find and squatted at the brink of the canyon with tightening anticipation. Shander had mentioned the spot of ambush to be near three particular rocks; and unless his eyes betrayed him, three such rocks, standing shoulder to shoulder, commanded the far side of the draw at the exact spot where the trail shot out of the trees. Thus any man coming down from the pines would present first a head-on target for anyone behind the opposite rocks; and later an exposed flank passing by. The distance across the chasm could not be much more than twenty-five feet, which made good revolver range and deadly for a rifle bullet. Yet the ambusher would be absolutely safe, for neither horse nor man could make the leap across and the bulwark of rising rocks formed perfect concealment.

"I believe this is the spot," Charterhouse mused. "But how am I going to find out? And I think I hear—"

His ears picked up some stray sound from up the trail about the same time his eyes lifted to the pine tops. Those ladder-like branches invited him up to have his look-see, which he promptly accepted. With both feet off the ground, it occurred to him that the warlike Shander partisan whose horse he had so unceremoniously borrowed, had been carrying a rifle in a saddle boot; so, chuckling to himself, and restored to much better humor at the prospect of a little excitement, he dropped out of the tree and went over to get the gun.

"This gun being used in wrong hands reminds me of a gent being caught in his own bear trap."

Faint rumors of men talking came down the ridge. Charterhouse threw open the rifle's breech, verified the waiting shell, and closed it carefully to prevent the metallic sound from telegraphing through the still air. Carrying it back to the tree, he took the first branches with considerable exertion; at twenty feet he found a small break in the greenery that gave him a partial glance across the canyon; he thought he saw the tip of some dark figure in the stony crevices, but was not sure. The next ten feet he climbed with cat-like caution. Right above him was a full tunnel through the branches; and he poked his head around the tree like some wary chipmunk. At the far end of this sharply angled vista, sprawled full length behind an enormous stone, was a man whose shoulders were wedged into an aperture that gave him command of the trail on this side. He looked like a Mexican, but Charterhouse couldn't be sure. A hundred yards rearward in a hollow stood a waiting horse. Voices came along the trees distinctly; whereat Charterhouse turned to catch sight of Nickum's party and only saw a momentary passage of three riders. "One more'n Shander figured," he reflected. Lifting his rifle, he rested it on a branch and drew full bead on the ambusher.

In the narrowing interval of time he debated giving the fellow a warning. He decided against it. This was war and the man had elected to kill in the meanest way known to the West. "Moreover," reflected Charterhouse, "if I sing out, he's apt to rise up and take a pot shot anyhow and run like hell, leaving me treed and openly suspected of being some help to him. No, can't be done. Good-by, brother."

Clint had his sights true on the man and the slack of the trigger taken up. From the corner of his eye he saw Nickum, Heck Seastrom and Haggerty come into the open, single file. Haggerty's face twitched aside, staring across the draw; after that Charterhouse saw nothing but the hidden killer. His breath stopped; he squeezed. A smash of sound beat over tree and rock and the clear air rang with the splitting fragments of the echo. The ambusher jumped once, and never moved again. Haggerty had thrown himself out of the saddle to the ground and was firing point-blank at the rocks, emptying his gun with a certain heedlessness. Seastrom and Nickum were still mounted, but they had swung around and were opening up more coolly.

"Get down!" yelled Haggerty. "He's trying to pot you! Same spot they got your son, John! Get down outa the sky!"

"Not for any Shander rat in the world!" boomed Nickum. Heck Seastrom had fired two shots with careful intent and lowered his gun.

"He's done," he called calmly. "I can see the front end of his rifle tipped down. Yeah, there's his head, flopped against the rock. We got him. Get up, Haggerty, you don't have to eat all the dirt off the trail."