Charles West - Lawless Prairie

Back up at the rim of the ravine, the two gunmen picked their spots to lie in wait for the unsuspecting lawman. Lying flat on their bellies, they watched as Clayton drew near, waiting for him to come within range. “I got ten dollars that sez my shot is the one that hits him first,” Ballenger said.

“You got a bet,” Yancey replied with a confident grin. “You ain’t seen the day you could outshoot me.”

Clayton eased his horse back to a slow walk after having held the sorrel to a steady lope for some time. The trail, now leading over a series of cuts and ravines at the base of a low butte, was easily identified because of the tall grass on this side of the hills. There remained two distinct trails left by Ballenger and Yancey, fresh enough so that the grass had not yet recovered. From prior trips through this part of the territory, Clayton knew that this was a small area of tall grass. The tracking might not be as easy on the northern side of the hills. But if he was in luck, he figured he might catch up to them by sundown. He discovered in the next few minutes that his progress had been even greater than he had figured.

He heard what sounded like zip-thunk , moments before he heard the crack of a rifle. The sorrel screamed in pain, and before Clayton had time to react, a second bullet thudded into the horse’s chest. He tried to turn the frantic animal, but the horse’s instincts told it to run. It tried to gallop off to one side, but staggered and stumbled. Clayton came out of the saddle just as the mortally wounded horse crashed to the ground.

With bullets ripping the ground all around him, he scrambled quickly to take cover behind his fallen horse while angrily cursing himself for riding blindly into an ambush. One look at the sorrel’s wounds and he knew the horse was gone. He apologized earnestly for causing the faithful animal’s death as he ended the sorrel’s misery with his pistol.

Lying on the ground behind the carcass, he looked behind him, then to each side. He had been caught on open prairie with no apparent cover readily available. His horse would have to do. Pulling his rifle from the saddle sling, he tried to pinpoint the source of the attack. He soon figured out that his assailants were firing from the rim of a ravine about a hundred and fifty yards away. I guess I’m just lucky they didn’t wait till I got a lot closer , he thought.

Sharing Clayton’s thought, Clell Ballenger expressed his displeasure. “Dammit, Yancey, why the hell couldn’t you wait till he got in decent range? Now we got no choice but to waste a helluva lot of ammunition, tryin’ to get a lucky shot.”

Too anxious to win his bet with Ballenger, Yancey could only offer a lame excuse. “Hell, I thought I could hit him.” He shrugged. “At least we got him pinned down. He can’t move from behind that horse.”

“We coulda used that horse,” Clell fumed.

“Even if we don’t get a shot at him, at least he ain’t gonna be doggin’ us no more. Why don’t we just ride on now?”

“I want him dead, dammit,” Ballenger insisted. “I don’t wanna look around a month from now and see that son of a bitch on my tail again.”

“He ain’t shot back once,” Yancey said. “Maybe one of them shots caught him.”

“I doubt it,” Ballenger replied, and gave his partner a withering glance. “He’s just got more sense than to waste a lot of cartridges when he ain’t got a likely target.”

Yancey pumped a couple more slugs into the sorrel’s carcass. “I’ve got that horse sighted in,” he said. “If that marshal shows his head, I’ll get him.” As if cooperating to prove Yancey’s point, Clayton eased the rifle over the saddle and took aim at the rim of the ravine. Yancey immediately pulled the trigger, sending a slug to embed in the saddle inches from Clayton’s head. “Hot damn!” Yancey brayed. “I told you I had him! Let him stick his head up there again!”

Clint pulled Rowdy up short, turned his head to face the wind, and listened. There it was again. This time he was sure it was a rifle shot—someone hunting, or someone in trouble. Judging from the sound, it was probably two or three miles away. A few moments passed, and then he heard more shots, too many for a hunter. None of my affair , he thought, and nudged Rowdy into motion again. But he found it difficult to ignore when the shooting continued sporadically. He remembered his father’s warning about Indian activity in the area. Not this close to Cheyenne , he told himself. Finally his conscience called upon him to at least have a look to make sure some settler wasn’t in trouble. He turned Rowdy’s head west and prodded him into a lope.

The gunfire continued as he drew closer until he felt certain it was just beyond a gentle rise that almost formed a ridge between him and the source of the shooting. Knowing he would be silhouetted against the blue sky behind him if he rode over the top of the ridge, he dismounted and left his horses there below the rise. Making his way the remaining distance on foot, he dropped to his knees and crawled the final few feet.

The first thing he saw was a man lying behind his dead horse, obviously pinned down in the open on a flat expanse of prairie. While he watched, he heard a few more rifle shots that sent slugs pounding into the carcass, causing the trapped man to try to lie even flatter. Scanning back a hundred and fifty yards or so, he finally sighted the shooters on the edge of a ravine. After another minute, he decided there were two of them. There followed a few moments of hesitation on his part. What he had stumbled upon, he wasn’t sure, but it was obvious who the victim was. Whether he deserved it or not was impossible to say. He decided the only way he might be able to tell who was in the right and who was in the wrong was to get around behind the two riflemen to get a better look. Could be they were Indians, and they had bush-whacked the man trapped behind the horse. Looking beyond the ravine, he saw that his best chance was to circle all the way around to the base of the hills behind the two shooters.

Pulling slowly away from the top of the ridge, he stayed on hands and knees until sure he could stand up without being seen. Back to his horses, he mounted and nudged Rowdy into a lope once again. It took fully half an hour to make a wide enough circle to position himself directly behind the bushwhackers in the ravine. He pulled his horses up as close as he dared before leaving them in a narrow gully fifty or sixty yards away. Pulling his rifle, he climbed up to the top of the gully and dropped to the ground to look the situation over.

There was nothing but flat open ground between his gully and the ravine, so that was as close as he dared go. He discovered, however, that he had a clear view of the two men lying at the opposite lip of the ravine. They were not Indians. He stared at them for a long moment, still uncertain as to what he should do, if anything at all. Then as he continued to stare, one of the men rolled over on his side to say something to the other, and Clint almost grunted aloud his cry of surprise— Ballenger!

For a moment, Clint was stunned. How could this be? It was almost too much to believe that, in this vast Wyoming prairie, he had once again crossed paths with Ballenger and Yancey. He had thought he would never see the notorious killers again, having assumed that Ballenger and his cohorts were heading down into Colorado. Recovering immediately, he took another long look. There were only two. He searched as much of the ravine as he could see, looking for Skinner, but he was nowhere to be seen.

It was a hell of a turn of events, but one thing he felt sure he could assume—the man pinned behind his horse had to be the innocent party and most likely a lawman after them for robbing the bank in Fort Collins. Without further thought, Clint raised his rifle and sighted it on Yancey. When the rifle spoke, Yancey yelped in pain and rolled over and over. Clint quickly shifted his aim and pulled the trigger again, but Ballenger moved to the side just in time to cause the bullet to miss. Without a clear target now, Clint cranked round after round into the chamber, spraying the side of the ravine with lead.