Ernest Haycox - The Greatest Westerns of Ernest Haycox

Right on the heels of the challenge a rider shot from the massed and weaving figures and drove into him. The belch of powder covered his face. He veered aside, firing at the bobbing target. There was a yell, a terrible guttering of breath; rider and horseman alike disappeared into the mêlée. Denver plunged on, feeling his men behind. But the target he aimed for had shifted. Shifted and given ground. Dann bellowed again, deeper in the woods; and like phantoms Redmain's men slipped away through the trees. Hominy Hogg spurred past Denver.

"I know this trail!" he bawled. "Come on!"

Denver heard Dann again, a few yards to the left; he galloped between the clustered pine trunks and rammed a turning rider. An arm reached out, slashed down, missed his head by an inch and struck into his thigh with the barrel of a gun. He clamped the gun in his left hand, beat back with his own weapon, and heard a bone snap. His antagonist gasped and tried to fight clear. Both horses pitched. Denver crooked his right elbow about a sagging head and dragged the man bodily from the saddle; his left hand ripped the fellow's weapon clear, and at that point he let the man fall and spurred away.

The encounter had taken no more than two or three minutes, but in that space of time both the pursued and the pursuers were far ahead. Denver fought through the brush, ran into a fresh deadfall whose branches would not let him pass over, and swung to skirt it. Still he found no trail. An occasional shot drummed back. Riders were drifting all over the country. Presently the horse seemed to find a clear pathway and went along it. Denver considered himself being pulled too far northward and attempted to angle in the other direction. Each attempt brought him sooner or later to some sort of a barrier. Back on the trail he decided to return to the clearing and make a fresh start. He hauled about and heard a rustling dead ahead. Another rider darkly barred his path.

"Who's that?" said the man huskily.

Denver had the feeling a gun was trained on him. "You tell me and I'll tell you," was his grim retort.

"I don't make yore voice."

"Maybe I've got a cold," muttered Denver, feeling his way along. Any D Slash man would know his voice, though some of the Steele outfit might not. The reverse was also true. It was possible that this might be a Steele hand.

"Well, well," grunted the man, "we can't stay here all night. Let's get it over with. You sing out and so will I. We done spent enough time in these god-forsaken trees."

"Sounds to me," observed Denver, "that you don't like this part of the country."

"Mebbe so—mebbe not. Depends. It's good for some people and not so good for others."

"Come far?" asked Denver.

"In one way, yes. In another way, no."

"Had a square meal, lately?"

The man thought that one over carefully. "Brother, you got a ketch in that. I eat now and then."

"Just what part of the country are we in?" pressed Denver.

"You want to know, or do you want to know if I know?" parried the other.

"Let it ride. Your turn now, fella. If you got any ideas how to break the ice let's hear 'em."

"How about you and me lightin' matches at the same time?"

"A good item," agreed Denver. "We'll count to ten and strike."

"I'm damned if we will," said the man, suddenly changing his mind. "You fell too quick. Must have somethin' up yore sleeve. No, it's out. I tell you—supposin' we just natcherlly turn about and ride in opposite directions?"

"You sure we want to go in them directions?"

"What directions?" said the man cautiously.

"What directions have you got?" drawled Denver.

"Good God, am I goin' nuts?"

"I'd have to know you better to tell." Denver shifted in his saddle. He heard a creaking of leather, and finally an irritable mumble. "What you doin' over there?"

"Nothing, brother, nothing at all."

"That's what I'm doin', and I don't like it."

"Got your gun leveled on me?"

"No."

"You lie like a horse," said Denver.

"Let it ride, then," said the other and began to swear. "Supposin' I have? If I thought you was what I got an idea yuh are, I'd knock yuh outa the saddle and no regrets. Yellow Clay County—"

Denver let his arm drift down. It touched, gripped, and drew the gun clear. He broke in softly. "You're one of Redmain's imported gun slingers, mister."

"How do you know? Who are you?"

"The name of this county's Yellow Hill!"

The explanation all but cost him his life. A bullet bit at the brim of his hat before his first shot blasted into the eddying echo of the other. The shadow in front became but half a shadow, the upper part melting down. He heard a stifled moan; the man's horse bucked away and stopped. Denver advanced five yards, swung down, and lit a match. The first flare of light was enough. And there was a cropped sweat on his own face.

"High stakes for that gamble," he muttered, pinching out the match. That was all. He turned his pony and started along the trail. Every vestige of pursuit had died in the distance. Somewhere Redmain's men were slipping through the trees, collecting again, and somewhere his own riders were groping as blindly as he was. At the end of five minutes he detected a fork of the trail, and he took the one going south. It was a bad guess; after some three hundred yards it stopped and jumped aside like a jackrabbit. He accepted the offshoot wearily. So he drifted, feeling himself sliding more to the north-west. After a time he ceased to keep count with the changing trails; and when he did that he automatically lost himself. Somewhere around one or two in the morning he cast up his accounts mentally, drew into the secretive brush, tied his horse short, and unsaddled. He wrapped himself in the saddle blanket, gouged a channel to fit his hips, and was soundly asleep.

The training of the range man will not let him sleep beyond dawn; and his vitality springs freshly up after a few short hours of rest, no matter how much physical punishment has gone before. This is his birthright, and never does he lose it until the day he forsakes the queer combination of sweaty drudgery and wild freedom of cattleland and tries another trade. The regularity, the comforts, and the pleasures of the city man may come to him. But never again will he wake as Dave Denver did on this morning, alive, buoyant, energy driving through him; and never will he see through the same vision the first bright shafts of dawn transfix the gray mists. For a thousand such mornings the outcast range man may have cursed himself from his blankets; but looking back upon that time he will wistfully know the best of himself was left there.

Saddling, Denver took the trail again. To the south it was still dark. But ahead and northward the country lightened up rapidly. The trail widened, climbed considerably, and at last left the trees altogether; and he found himself standing on the rim of one of the innumerable small holes framed within the hills. The trail dropped down without much ceremony to the floor of the hole. A half mile onward the hole narrowed to a rocky throat. He thought he saw a trail shooting up the ridge to the right of this throat, but the fog, though diminishing, was still thick enough to blur his view.

"Tom's Hole," he grunted. "Great guns, I've dragged my picket halfway to the Moguls. Now, what to do? Straight back, or across the hole?"

To retreat meant bucking a lot of rugged terrain that he knew little enough about. But he was clear enough in his geography to reflect that beyond the north end of the hole was an east-west road which would carry him into Sundown Valley. His men also knew the road, and it stood to reason that those who had lost contact with the main party would probably drift that way as soon as they oriented themselves. It was no use considering a scout through the timber for them.