R. Trembly - Madigan

A few minutes later Sherm showed up with the rest of the supplies. Madigan quickly loaded them on the packhorse, said his good-bye to Roy, and was on his way. Madigan couldn’t help feeling that Roy wished he was riding along with him. But age has a way of keeping the body from doing the things the mind still believes it’s capable of doing. So it was with Roy Talley; the mind was willing, but the body was not.

The trail turned southwest just out of town, and Madigan rode steadily onward for the first few miles, then turned his horses off the path to wait and see if he was being followed. Satisfied that he was alone, he started to remount when a curious thing caught his attention. There in the dirt were the large and small prints that he had seen before. So the two men he had saved were still ahead of him. And from the looks of the tracks, they weren’t taking any chances either!

Now Madigan had what could turn out to be a serious problem. Behind him were the cutthroats from town, ahead were the two men he had saved days before. Both parties would sooner or later be closing in on each other, with Madigan in the middle. So Madigan would have to make a decision soon, whether to ride this trail or turn northward and take the longer trail to California.

Sometimes a man is compelled to do what he knows is not in the best interest of survival, spurred on by a longing inside to go just a little further, and so it was with Madigan. He continued to ride on to the southwest and his destiny.

He was riding into the land of the Navajo and Hopi, and from what he had heard, they were at peace now, if Indians ever were at peace with the white man. But where there were Indians there could be trouble, and a lone rider had all the odds stacked against him from the start. Madigan checked his guns before riding on, wondering what the next few days would bring.

The Navajo was kin to the Apache, one of the most fearsome warrior tribes known to man, and they had long used the white man coming through their land as their own personal trading post. Only what they were trading left no white man alive.

In a few days Madigan would cut the northwestern corner of New Mexico, and a few days later, if he kept at it steady, would be in Arizona. The scenery was already changing as he rode further south. There were fewer trees and more canyons and cactus.

Sometimes the trail was hard to follow and he would have to dismount to check for tracks. And always there were the hoofprints of the two men’s horses leading on as if they had been here countless times before and were following some unseen map in their minds.

On the second day, Madigan knew he had crossed into New Mexico, as ahead was a mountain he knew to be Shiprock Peak. Here the trail turned even more southward, and as Madigan rode deeper into the Navajo nation, he kept a weary eye out for any sign of trouble ahead.

At night he made a cold camp in whatever cover he could find, always checking for snakes among the rocks before settling down for the night. No man wants to wake and find a rattler in his bedroll with him, least of all Madigan.

Here the stars were the brightest he could ever remember seeing and they seemed to go on forever. And even though he was vigilant to danger, he could not recall sleeping on the trail as sound as he did these nights.

The next morning, he passed an old Navajo village whose people had disappeared years before. It gave him an eerie feeling as he skirted around it.

The trail was well marked by the two men ahead, and he had no trouble following it, only occasionally having to look where they had gone off the path to rest their horses. From time to time he would pass patches of quicksand and would have to detour around them to keep from being swallowed up.

On the third day out from Durango, Madigan topped a rise and saw dust rising miles behind him and knew that the rogues from town were unknowingly closing in on him. Judging from their position, he figured he still had a day before he had to take evasive action.

It was near noon when he stopped to get a bite to eat and contemplate his next move. The day was hotter than Madigan liked it, and the temptation to find a cool spot and take a nap was almost overpowering, but he resisted.

Letting his thoughts wander, Madigan soon realized he was irritated at having circumstances control his life, instead of him controlling his own fate. What started as a fairly simple trip to California had turned out to be a fight for his life.

There had been many times when he would have liked to fish a stream along the way or rest a day or two, taking in the beauty of his surroundings, but instead had to be constantly on the alert for trouble.

He even entertained the thought of setting up an ambush for his followers. He could simply lead them into a deep canyon with shear walls on either side and pick them off one by one with the Sharps.

Out here no one would ever know, or care, for that matter. They would just be a pile of bones after the vultures got through with them, a pile of bones to ride on by and be glad they weren’t your own.

The more Madigan thought about it, the more it sounded like just plain murder to him. He may have been a lot of things in his life, but a murderer was not one of them, so he solemnly rode on.

For the last few days there had been less trees and more barren ground. Sometimes he would ride through canyons with slick red rock walls going up three hundred feet or more, and the color was such that it made the rest of the landscape seem dull by comparison.

Madigan’s guess was that he was riding into the Canyon De Chelly area, from the description Talley had given him. To his right were the Chuska Mountains and ahead the trail disappeared into a labyrinth of steep rock walls.

A chill was in the air and he stopped to put on a jacket while he checked his back trail. He had been riding up an incline for several miles and now was somewhat higher than the terrain behind him. From here he had a clear view for about twenty miles on his back trail.

And there in the distance, as he had expected, was the telltale dust cloud marking the progress of his enemies. He stood watching for a long while when something caught his attention only a few miles away. He stared hard but could no longer see anything. Was it his imagination or did he really see a wisp of smoke floating just above the rim rock?

After watching the spot for close to five minutes, he was convinced it was only the heat playing tricks on him in the late afternoon sun. Still, something told him he had better be careful.

O’Neill couldn’t believe his luck. He and James Thomas had ridden out hours ahead of the rest of the gang. The trail was dusty and little wind stirred to move the dust away. They were in broken country, the trees slowly dying away leaving little else but rock and red-walled canyons. A thundercloud loomed over the mountains a few miles to the west, threatening rain and the possibility of flash floods.

Thomas, who rode slightly behind O’Neill, marveled at the rich color displayed around him, while O’Neill hardly seemed to notice or care. He was like a man possessed with one purpose, one reason for living-to find the treasure. But even more than that, he was obsessed with the idea of killing the man called Madigan.

The day was hot, and from time to time O’Neill’s temper flared, leaving Thomas to wonder why he had volunteered to come along. For two days they had ridden hard, only taking time to rest the horses and leave trail markers at crucial points along the way for the others to follow.

Every so often the two men would climb high on the rocks above to look over the trail ahead. This time it unexpectedly paid off. There on the trail below, resting his horses, was the man O’Neill hated most in the world-Sam Madigan, the man O’Neill had sworn a vengeance to kill.