The Man From Bar-20, Clarence E. Mulford [distant reading TXT] 📗
- Author: Clarence E. Mulford
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“Is there anything I forgot?”
Johnny, standing up behind the smaller bowlder that he might not lose a word or an inflection of the masterpiece, lost in admiration, forgetful of purpose and the situation, danced gleefully and gave a joyous shout: “Not a cussed thing!”
Harrison fired at the sound, and a sharp, lurid flash replied to his own. He staggered back as he fired again, and an answering flash doubled him up. Gamely he pulled the trigger again and two spurts of flame, so close to each other that they seemed almost to merge, sent him staggering and reeling toward the edge of the canyon. Tripping over an inequality in the earth he threw out his arms, fought to regain his balance and with a sob plunged over the wall into the darkness below.
Down on the trail Gates muttered in sudden horror as he felt the wind of the hurtling body, and he leaned against the wall, white, sick, shaken. A muffled, sickening sound came up from the pit, and Gates dropped to his hands and knees, not daring to stand erect.
“Nat!” he cried. “Nat! Was that you? Nat! Nat!”
At the top of the trail a rapier-like flash of fire split the darkness, and then a series of lurid spurts of flame stabbed in short jets, rapidly, regular as the ticking of a clock, marking the place where two heavy guns crashed and jumped as they poured forth a stream of lead down the narrow rock shelf that formed the precarious trail. The canyon roared in one prolonged reverberation and the bullets whined and spatted and screamed in high falsetto as they cleared the wall or struck it to glance out into the valley below.
Gates, on his hands and knees, shaken, sick with horror, crept slowly downward, oblivious to the crashing, rolling thunder and the flying lead.
“I didn’t mean it, Nat!” he muttered over and over again. “I didn’t mean it; not a word of it!”
A sharp spang! sounded on a rock close to his head and a hot splinter of lead cut through his cheek. He stopped and spat it out, his nerve returning as a cold rage swept over and steadied him. Jerking his gun loose he emptied it up the trail, and, methodically reloading, emptied it again, slowly, deliberately, moving it a little at each shot so as to cover a short arc. Another spurt stabbed the darkness above, and his gun, again refilled, replied to it. Again the canyon sent roaring echoes crashing from wall to wall as flash answered flash. Then suddenly the gun below grew silent, and the guns above spat twice spitefully without a reply, and they, too, ceased.
Gates stirred and slowly raised himself on an elbow, groping blindly for his gun. His trembling hand struck it blunderingly and knocked it over the edge of the trail as his numbed fingers sought to close over it. Dazed, racked with pain, he sobbed senseless curses as he slowly dragged himself down the trail, desperately anxious to reach his picketed horse before his reeling senses left him.
After an unmeasured interval, as vague and unreal as an elusive dream, he stumbled over the picket rope and sprawled full length. Arousing himself he felt along it and managed to loosen it from around the rock which served as a picket pin; and then, slowly, by a great effort he crawled along the rope and staggered to his feet to grasp the pommel of his saddle, where he clung and rested for a moment.
The restless horse, scenting blood, tossed its head and moved forward; but Gates, by a great, supreme effort, crawled heavily into the saddle and bound himself there with his lariat. Then, spurring clumsily, he started the animal toward the ranchhouses, fighting desperately to keep his wandering senses.
An hour later two men stole to the door of the end house and listened, questioning each other. Actuated by a common impulse they slipped out toward the corral, gun in hand, and found Gates, unconscious and weak, but alive, huddled forward on the horse’s neck.
JOHNNY rubbed his eyes and sat up, wondering. It was still dark, but a grayness in the east told of approaching daylight. He was puzzled, for it had been mid-forenoon when he had gone to sleep. Unrolling stiffly from the blanket, he sat up to listen and to peer about him. From his thicket he could see the tent, with the soles of his boots and part of his blanket showing. Arising he stretched and flexed his muscles to ease the ache of them, and then approached the ashes of the fire, and found them and the ground underneath to be stone cold. Rubbing his eyes, he laughed suddenly: he had slept for nearly twenty hours!
“Shore made up for th’ sleep I been missin’!” he grunted. “An’ ain’t I hungry!”
Having eaten a hearty breakfast he scouted along his back trail, acting upon the assumption that the Circle S puncher might have gone back again, picked it up and followed it. Reassured as to that he started back to camp, and on the way topped a little rise and caught sight of Pepper grazing in the narrow canyon.
“That won’t do, at all,” he muttered, thoughtfully. “She’s a dead give-away an I now I can’t take no chances.”
Returning to his camp he packed up food and spare ammunition, and then, hurrying down the canyon, whistled to the horse, who followed him closely, as he searched in vain for a safe place to put her. He was growing impatient, when he chanced to look closely at the face of the southern Twin, and then nodded quickly. If there was water on its top, that was the place for the horse. Half an hour later, after some careful climbing, he reached the high plateau, dropped the reins down before Pepper’s eyes and made a swift examination of the top of the butte. His hopes were rewarded, as he had expected them to be, for in a deep bowl-like depression lying at the foot of a high steep ridge he found a large pool, the level of which was considerably below the high-water mark on the wall. This meant concentration due to evaporation, and he tasted the water to be sure that it was fit to drink. Whistling Pepper to him, he picketed her so that she could reach the edge of the pool and range over enough grass to satisfy her needs, cached the pack and departed.
When he reached the canyon he went around the butte and started for his camp along its southern side, critically examining the sheer wall as he fought the brush and the loose shale under his feet. There was one place where he thought it possible for a cooL headed, experienced man to climb to the top, if he put his mind to the task and took plenty of time. Giving it no further thought he plunged on, glad that the horse was out of the sight of any scouting rustler and picketed so she could not get near the edge, where she would have shown up sharply against the sky, visible for miles.
Swinging past his camp and turning to the south he cautiously trossed the rustlers’ main trail and climbed the wall behind it, and as he went forward he tried to figure out what his enemies thought of the situation. If they believed that several enemies opposed them they would be likely to stay in the houses, or not stray far from them; but if they thought only one man fought them they would most certainly take the field after him. Such was his summing up; and, bearing in mind that Long Pete, when last seen by him, was headed toward the houses, he took full advantage of the cover afforded.
Approaching the cliff by a roundabout way, he at last wriggled to the edge and peered over. A gunbarrel projected from the crack of the door in the last house; a man lay behind a bowlder on the cliff across the valley, facing eastward; and almost directly below him a sombrero moved haltingly as its wearer slowly climbed up the cliff at one of the few places where it could be scaled.
“They’ve figgered right,” thought Johnny; “an’ they’re goin’ to make things whiz for me. Red Shirt, over there, must be a thousand yards away; but this sink is deceivin’.”
He looked down at the climber, who was about half way up the bluff. “Huhl I don’t want to shoot him without givin’ him a chance; but he just can’t come up. Le’s see: one, two, three; an’ one in th’ house, wounded, is four. There’s a couple more somewhere, layin’ low I reckon, waitin’ for me to move across their sights.”
He looked across at Red Shirt and grinned. “He’s layin’ on th’ wrong side of that rock an I don’t know it I’ll tell him, an’ get rid of that climber at th’ same time. Hope he busts his neck gettin’ down.”
Wriggling back from the edge so that the man in the house could not locate him by the smoke, he took deliberate aim at Red Shirt and gently squeezed the trigger. Red Shirt soared into the air and dove over the bowlder headfirst and with undignified speed.
“Knowed it was deceivin’,” growled Johnny. “Shot plumb over him. Can’t be more’n eight hundred yards. An’ that’s a fool color of a shirt to wear on a job like this.”
Johnny’s shirt had been blue, a long time back; but now its color hardly could be described by a single adjective. Sun, wind, and strong lye soap had taken their toll; and it had not been washed since he had left his little valley.
Wriggling back to the patch of grass, a quick glance below showed the climber frantically descending; and the man in the house was making lots of smoke on a gamble. Across the valley a gray-white cloud puffed out above the big rock and a little spurt of sand forty feet to Johnny’s left told him that Red Shirt, too, was guessing.
“Must’ve been asleep not to see my smoke,” muttered Johnny.
More smoke rolled up from the bowlder and soon some pebbles not ten feet away from him scattered suddenly, while a high-pitched whine soared skyward.
“He’s pluggin’ at every bit of cover he can see,” mused Johnny, wriggling back behind a rock. “An’ he’ll prospect that bunch of grass knowed it! He can shoot,” he exclaimed in ungrudging praise; “an’ he’s got th’ range figgered to a foot. An’ he’s workin’ steady from th’ north to th’ south; an’ when he tries for that clump of brush over there he’s got to show his head an’ shoulder.”
A puff of dust and sand fifty feet to his right told him to
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