Saloon justice, p.10
Saloon Justice, page 10
Of course, they couldn’t maintain this pace for hours at a time, but then again, neither could the riders behind them. When they slowed down to a trot for a bit, Jerry said to his companion, ‘Where did you learn to ride like that? I never saw the like!’
Travis seemed pleased at the compliment, but he was vague about where he actually had learned to ride so skillfully, saying merely, ‘Oh, you know. I’ve been around a bit.’
It was perfectly plain that the riders behind were following them. Really, Jerry had known this all along. Why on earth should a group of riders leave the road and pursue just exactly the same course as he and Travis? Unless, that is, they wanted to catch up with them? As the hours passed, it became increasingly obvious that there was a posse behind them. The distance between them and the men riding after them did not diminish, but neither did it grow any greater.
‘I mind that we’re going to have to let the horses rest for spell,’ said Jerry. ‘There’s no purpose in riding them to death.’
‘Then what?’ asked Travis scornfully. ‘Sit here and play cards until your friend Singer catches up with us?’
‘Not hardly. See over to the left there, that little group of hills?’
‘Yeah, what about them?’
‘I say we slow down a bit and then head towards them. We’re not going to be able to lose those men out here in the open, assuming that they are after us.’
‘They’re after us all right,’ said Travis grimly. ‘I know the look of a posse. I’m telling you now, those men are chasing us.’
They changed direction and veered off towards the hills, which, as they approached them, were revealed as being more like a miniature mountain range. It was a curious rock formation, rearing up from the plain. The ground did not slope gently up into these craggy outcrops, but they rather thrust themselves from the grassland, as though erupting fully formed from the earth beneath.
‘That’s an odd looking place,’ said Jerry. ‘I hope there’s some path or track leads up towards the top.’
Any uncertainty as to whether the riders behind them were really on their tail had vanished since the two men had altered their course. No sooner had Jerry Freeman and Dave Travis turned in their path, than the other men had done likewise. Even more alarmingly, it appeared to Jerry that the gap was closing between them and their pursuers.
By the time that they reached the steep slopes and cliffs of the limestone crags, it was perfectly plain to both men that the posse was gaining on them. Worse, their horses were flagging and if they didn’t let them rest soon, there existed a very real possibility that one or other of the animals would simply stop dead.
By good fortune, a crevice in the rocks, which at that point were almost like a cliff face, showed that a manageable, if steep, way led up into the rocky hills. The walls of rock rose on either side of this slope, leaving a winding path which was barely fifteen feet from side to side. It was of slippery limestone, covered in moss and it would have been madness to attempt anything faster than a walk up it. The two men dismounted and led their horses as fast as they could, up into the rocks.
‘There’s one thing,’ said Travis. ‘If we can’t ride here, then neither can they. All we can hope is that we can find somewhere to hide out.’
‘How many of them do you think there are?’
‘I’d say seven. Not enough so that they can afford to split up to search for us up here. We’re lucky that that was all they could raise to come after us. It could be worse.’
Once again, Jerry was struck by the extraordinary sang froid that his companion was displaying. He was himself on the point of becoming hysterical with fear, but Travis was taking the whole thing in his stride, as though they were out in a boat and a storm had come up. He was excited, but not in the least fearful, at least if Jerry judged the matter rightly. Indeed, he almost thought that the man had become more alive since he knew that the posse was on their tail, like a sportsman faced with a stiff, but not daunting, challenge. You’re a strange one, thought Jerry Freeman to himself. I wonder what happened to that diffident and good-natured fellow with the open face and agreeable nature that I saw in the cell? Still, there would be time enough to ponder such questions when once they were free from the threat of lynching by Judge Singer and his men.
Travis said, ‘Hold up a second, let’s see if we can hear anything.’
They stood there in silence for a while. The only sounds were the strenuous breathing of the horses and the cry of a bird, far overhead. ‘Well, they aren’t right on top of us yet, at any rate,’ said Travis with satisfaction. ‘And look here now, here’s an encouraging thing.’ He pointed ahead.
The canyon along which they had been plodding, alongside their horses, opened out on to a plateau of rock. This was split into a network of gullies and other little crevices and canyons, some of which were big enough for them to enter with their mounts. ‘Why,’ said Jerry. ‘This is a regular maze. If we now dive off into another of those pathways, say that gully over yonder, then we might be able to lose those men entirely.’
‘You might be right at that.’
They chose another narrow gully which wound up into some higher slope of the plateau. Apart from the clip-clop of their horses’ hoofs on the bare rock, there was dead silence.
‘Least the horses are getting a rest,’ observed Travis. ‘I felt sure that mine was about to drop dead back there.’
‘I had much the same feeling,’ said Jerry. ‘One thing is certain, there’ll be no galloping on this rock. It’s as slick as you like and covered with green.’
‘We’re not out of danger yet,’ said Travis and no sooner were the words out of his mouth when a figure leapt on him from above.
At this point in the gully through which they were walking, the rocky faces on either side rose to ten or twelve feet above their heads, meaning that they were only able to see right ahead of them. Whoever this was had evidently been stalking them from above, and had now taken the opportunity to attack. For a few seconds, Jerry was so paralysed with surprise, mingled with stark fear, that he was unable to react at all to this event. He just stood there, staring stupidly as the stranger grappled with Travis. Then he recollected himself and drew the gun at his hip. Jerry Freeman had had little experience with firearms, other than shooting out in the woods with a scattergun. His main fear was of killing Dave Travis by mistake.
The young attorney raised the pistol and aimed it at the struggling men. He had at first taken it more or less for granted that they had been ambushed by the posse from which they were fleeing. He had assumed that the men from this group had somehow got ahead of them and had now jumped them. By the time he raised his gun to fire, it seemed to Jerry unlikely that this was the case. After all, there was only one man here and neither sight nor sound of anybody else. Surely, the men from Mineral Springs would have stayed up on the rocks and called on them to surrender, rather than leaping recklessly down on them in this way.
All these thoughts flashed through Jerry’s mind in a second or two. When he actually focused on the fight taking place in front of him, he saw that this was most definitely not a member of any posse from Mineral Springs. The raggedy figure wrestling with Travis was, for one thing, an Indian. He had no gun and was armed only with a knife, which he was attempting, with great vigour, to stick into his adversary’s throat. Travis had a grip on the man’s wrist, which prevented the Indian from using his knife, and the two men rolled around on the rocky floor of the gully, each frantically seeking an advantage over the other. Jerry called out, in a thin and reedy voice, ‘Hey, just let him alone there!’ As soon as he had spoken, he knew that this was sheer foolishness and that the only way of resolving this situation would be for him to kill a man. He took careful aim at the Indian, but neither he nor Travis would remain still for even a second. It was hopeless; he could not possibly fire under such circumstances. Then, his chance came.
Somehow, the Indian succeeded in throwing Travis against the side of the gully, where the other man’s head banged on the rock and he lay momentarily stunned. The Indian then bounded to his feet as though he were made of India rubber and gave a cry of exultation. This slight display of bravado proved to be his undoing. As he stood there, about to spring at Travis and cut his throat, Jerry fired once. He thought at first that he had missed, because he had a vague idea that when you shot a man, he kind of flew backwards or something. The Indian, though, just carried on standing there.
Just as Jerry was lining up to take another shot, the Indian began making a strange coughing or hawking noise, like he had something stuck in his throat. Then he gave a convulsive jerk and retched. To Jerry’s unutterable horror, a great gout of blood gushed from the man’s mouth and he dropped to his knees, still making those peculiar choking noises. Then he keeled over and lay still. Meanwhile, Travis, having recovered from the stunning blow which his head had received, stood up and came over to where Jerry was standing. He said, ‘You took your time there.’
Jerry Freeman turned to look at the man with whom he was travelling, the individual for whom he had risked everything; up to and including his own neck. There seemed nothing to say and so he went over to the Indian to see what was what. He found that his bullet had taken the fellow through his throat and that he must have choked to death on his own blood. It was a hideous sight and suddenly, it was all too much for him. He stumbled off and vomited profusely, until there was no more bitter bile left to bring up.
‘We’d better not stay here any longer,’ called Travis. ‘We still have that posse to worry about.’
When Jerry came back to where the horses were waiting patiently, Travis said to him, ‘First time you ever saw a man killed, eh? Yes, it’s the hell of a thing.’
The words were meaningless. Travis might be saying that it was the hell of a thing, but he was comporting himself as though a bloody death of this nature were just one of those little hitches which were bound to crop up during a journey. Jerry shook his head in disbelief and said, ‘What’s wrong with you? I just killed a man. He’s dead.’
‘Yes and if you hadn’t killed him, he would likely enough have killed me and then you too. I’m grateful and all that, but we still got to get moving.’
Chapter 10
After another twenty minutes travelling, the two men came to a point where the gully along which they were walking divided into two. It really was like a maze up here on the limestone plateau. The odds of anybody being able to track them through these paths was exceedingly slender. It wasn’t like travelling over grass or through a wood. The bare rock gave no indication at all that anybody, either man or horse, had passed that way. Unless the men in the posse split up and tried to search every canyon, crevice and gully on this rocky massif, there was next to no chance of their being able to pursue the two fugitives.
‘What say we take a proper rest?’ said Travis. ‘I could surely do with one and I dare say the horses could as well.’
Since they appeared, at least for the time being, to have shaken off the men who were hunting them, Jerry agreed to this proposal. The two of them sat down on a couple of rocks and had another bite to eat. ‘You all right now?’ asked Travis.
‘I’ll live. Which is more than can be said about the fellow I shot.’
Travis looked a mite irritated at that, as though he thought that Jerry was making too much of what was essentially a matter of little import. He said nothing though for a space and then remarked, ‘He was a Kiowa. I wonder what he was doing up here on his own.’
‘On his own? What makes you think that? I shouldn’t wonder if his relatives and friends are somewhere nearby.’
‘There’s a thought. You might be right about that.’
‘You think this fellow that went for you was part of this trouble you were telling me of, this ghost dance business?’ asked Jerry.
‘It’s likely enough. The Kiowa and Comanche are quiet enough these days. It’s been a good long while since anybody was attacked round here by Indians. We’d best have an eye out for them as well as that damned bunch from Mineral Springs. Thing is, Indians are apt to make a good deal less noise about their approach than white folk. We’ll hear any posse of white men coming from a mile off, but that’s not how it’s like to be if a band of Kiowa are on our track.’
This was the longest speech that Jerry had heard Travis make since they had teamed up together. He noticed that Dave Travis’s conversation concerned itself almost entirely with the here and now and that at no time did he talk about what he had done or would be doing in the future. Still, Jerry hadn’t talked a whole lot about this himself. He said, as a way of opening up a little talk on the topic, ‘I’m thinking that I shall wire my family for some money, if we get out of this fix in one piece. This sort of life isn’t for me at all, I’d be better off back in New York.’
‘Yeah?’ said Travis, without showing any interest. ‘I guess you know best.’
‘What about you?’ persisted Jerry. ‘You think you’ll go back to Arkansas?’
‘Could be,’ said the other indifferently.
‘You sound as though you have something on your mind.’
‘I’m thinking about that posse.’
‘What of it?’
Travis said, ‘It’s mighty strange that we haven’t heard hide nor hair of them since we’ve been up here in these hills. Our own horses are making the devil of a racket on these stony ways. Not only that, there’s seven or eight men. You’d think they’d be talking, making some noise. Just listen now.’
The two of them listened. There was nothing at all, except in the distance, the occasional bird calling.
‘What’s more,’ continued Travis, ‘you might have thought that shot would create some interest. I don’t think that they followed us up here at all.’
‘You think they turned back?’
‘That’d be nice, wouldn’t it?’ said Travis, smiling. ‘No, I don’t think that for a moment. They followed us this far and were closing on us. No, I think they’re still around.’
‘Well then,’ said Jerry, slightly nettled at the know-it-all attitude of the other man. ‘What do you say is happening?’
‘I think they’re still down there on the plain. How big do you suppose this stony outcrop is? It puts me in mind of the bluffs you get in some parts, where a mass of rock just sticks up from level ground.’
‘You mean,’ said Jerry thoughtfully, ‘when we’ve finished roaming around up here and head back down to the plain, they’ll be waiting for us?’
‘Yes, that’s what I mean.’
‘What should we do?’
‘I think, head on as we were and hope that we miss them. They might figure we’ll double back. Or again, they might be waiting just exactly due north of us, in the direction we were going. We can’t calculate how they’ll play it. One thing is for sure, we can’t stay up here for long. There’s no chance of any food and I think you’re right, that Kiowa probably has friends in the area. Sooner we get back down to the grasslands, the healthier, I reckon.’
They carried on leading the horses north, using the sun, which was an hour or two past its zenith, to orient themselves. Jerry was no woodsman, but he knew well enough that at noon, the sun is just precisely due south in the sky. So walking away from it between, say ten and two of the clock, will take you roughly north.
Travis showed no inclination to talk more as they moved across the limestone plateau and that was fine with Jerry Freeman, because he had some hard thinking to do and the less chatter, the better. He had somehow had a picture in his mind, back in Mineral Springs, that when he had sprung Travis from that cell, that he, Jerry, would lead them to safety. But the boot was all on the other foot now and he couldn’t for the life of him figure out how that had come to pass. After all, what would the well-to-do son of a factory owner know about adventures of this sort?
They came to a pool of fresh water, a natural cistern where the rainwater could collect. Jerry filled up their canteens, which were all but empty and then they allowed the horses to drink their fill, being careful not to let them foul the water as they did so. Travis looked at the two animals critically and said, ‘That’s one more reason why we have to start making our way down to the plains.’
‘What’s that?’
‘Those critters need food. We need to let them graze for an hour or two. They could do with some oats really, but I can’t see that happening.’
‘You fond of horses?’
‘Wouldn’t say that I’m exactly fond of them, no. They’re useful for getting you from here to there.’
‘It’s odd that you turned up at Albert Fallon’s farm on foot. I’d have thought that you might have left home on a horse.’
Travis turned to face Jerry. His eyes were completely cold and his face an expressionless mask, as he said, ‘Anybody ever tell you that you ask a lot of questions?’ He kept his face absolutely blank and wholly devoid of any human emotion and to Jerry there was something terrifying about this, almost as though he were looking at an animal that has somehow managed to assume human form. Then Travis turned away and the spell was broken. The episode left an unpleasant taste in Jerry Freeman’s mouth though.
As Travis had guessed, the plateau on which they were wandering was not a vast one, being no more than eight or ten miles across. If it had not been for the fact that they were compelled to weave back and forth along the gullies and crevices, they could have walked from one side to the other in three or four hours. When first they began exploring the place, they had been aware that there was always a gentle slope upwards, in the direction in which they were travelling. For the last few hours though, they had been moving gradually lower. Rather than the plateau being quite level, it was in fact a very shallow dome.
The two men did not exchange another word after leaving the waterhole. For his part, Jerry had been unnerved by that blank and expressionless face which Travis had turned to him. What the other man was thinking of, the attorney neither knew nor cared. His chief aim now was to get down from this place and find his way to a town. The sooner he and Travis parted company, the better that Jerry would like it. He had always prided himself upon being a sound judge of character, but he had surely taken a wrong turn here. This was a very different man indeed from the one who he had visited and consoled in his cell.
