Rimrock Trail by Joseph Allan Dunn (best novel books to read .TXT) 📕

Jordan made no answer but started the engine. The gorge began to narrow perceptibly, its floor slanted upward and the machine labored with a mixture that constantly needed more air. The way zigzagged for half a mile and then they came to a second fence. No buckboard was in sight. Beyond the wire the pitch of the ravine showed steeper yet, as it mounted to a sharp turn. Leaning against a post stood Soda-Water Sam, smoking a cigarette, his gun holster hitched forward, the butt of the weapon close to one hand. Jordan and his men leaped out as the car stopped, Mormon following more slowly.

"Afternoon, hombres all," said Sam. "Joy-ridin'?"

Jordan wasted no more explanations.

"You take down this fence," he fairly shouted.

"What fo'?"

"Ask yore partner."

"Sheriff claims we're cumberin' the landscape with our li'l' corral, Sam," said Mormon. "He's got a paper that gives him right of way, he says. Seen anything of Molly Casey?"

"Not for quite a spell. Go easy with them wires, Sheriff. Price of wire's riz considerable."

The second barrier down and the car through, Jordan ordered Sam to get in the car.

"Jump, or I'll put the cuffs on you," he said.

"Not this trip," replied Sam coolly. "No sense in my climbin' in there. Me an' Mormon's through with our li'l' job. We'll go back in the buckboard. It's round the bend. I was jest goin' to hitch up."

Jordan glared unbelievingly, yet Sam's words carried conviction.

"Yo're sure goin' to have trouble turnin' yore car right here," Sam went on imperturbably. "Kind of mean to back down, too. It's worse higher up. Matter of fac' the gap peters out jest round the turn. This is Bolsa Boquete. Bolsa means purse, Sheriff, one of them knitted purse nets. Good name for it. Look for yo'self, if you don't believe me."

Jordan and Plimsoll strode on up the pitch. Mormon followed, Sam stayed with the two deputies. Around the bend stood the buckboard with the buckskins in a patch of shadow under a scoop in the ending wall that turned the so-called pass to a box cañon.

"I told you the gel warn't erlong," said Mormon. "She and Sandy was with us fo' a spell. But they're goin' visitin' an' they shifted to saddle way back, out there by the spring beside the lava strip."

Mormon's bland smile masked a sterner intent than showed in his eyes. Jordan, furious at being outwitted, dared not provoke open combat. He had nothing on which to make arrest of the two Three Star partners and he was far from sure of his ability to do so under any circumstances. Mormon hitched up the buckskins, but followed the sheriff and the scowling, silent Plimsoll back to the car.

"See that notch, way over to the no'th?" said Mormon, bent on exploiting the situation to the full. "I reckon Sandy and the gel's shackin' through there about now. Hawss trail only. 'Fraid you won't catch him, Sheriff. They aim to ketch the seven o'clock train at Caroca. It's the on'y pass over the mesa. If Sandy had knowed you wanted him he might have waited. Why didn't you phone? Ninety mile' around the mesa, nearest way, an' it must be all of five o'clock now, by the sun."

He stopped, puzzled by the change in the sheriff's face. Chagrin had given place to exultation.

"Catch the seven o'clock train at Caroca?" said Jordan. "Thanks for the information, Mormon. That schedule was changed last week when they pulled off two trains on the main line. The train leaves at nine-thirty an', if I can't make ninety miles in four hours an' a half, I'll make you a present of my car. Stand back, both of you. No monkey business with my tires. Cover 'em, boys. The law's on my side, you two gabbing word-shooters."

He handled the car wonderfully, backing and turning her, and, while Mormon and Sam stood powerless, the former crestfallen, the latter sardonically gazing at his partner, the machine went tilting, snorting down the gorge.

"You sure spilled the beans, Mormon," said Sam finally. "I'd have thought them three wives of yores 'ud have taught you the vally of silence."

"I ain't got a damned word to say, Sam. But I'd be obliged if you'd kick me—good. Use yore heels, I see you got yore spurs on."

In the throat of the gorge the sun shone red on the tawny cliffs. The trail, a scant four feet wide at its best, with crumbled, weathered margin, crept along the face of the cliff above a deep cañon where the night shadows had already gathered in a purple flood, slowly rising as the rays of the setting sun shifted upward, not yet staining the summit.

It was close to seven o'clock. Sandy's lean face was anxious. The girl drooped in her seat tired from the long climb, not yet inured to the saddle. The horses traveled gamely, sure-footed but obviously losing endurance. Every little while they stopped of their own accord, their flanks heaving painfully in the altitude.

Sandy had only once crossed the Pass of the Goats and that was years before. There had been washouts since then. Several times they were forced to dismount and lead the nervous beasts, Sandy doing the coaxing, helping Molly over the difficult places. He rode a mare named Goldie and the girl a bay with a white blaze that Sandy had chosen for the mountain work and which had been brought to them at the lava strip.

The mare halted, neck stretched out, turning it to look inquiringly at her master. A sharp incline lay ahead, the path little better than one made by the goats for which the pass was named. Behind, Molly's mount followed suit, blowing at the dust. Sandy patted the mare's neck and dismounted.

"It's late, ain't it?" asked Molly. "Will we miss that train?"

"There's others," answered Sandy. "Or, if there ain't any mo' ter-night, we'll hire us a car an' keep movin'. Yo're sure game, Molly;" he added admiringly, "you must be clean tuckered out."

She shook her head with an attempt at a smile.

"I'll be glad when we start goin' down, fer a change," she admitted, looking into the gloomy trough of the cañon through which the night wind soughed.

"I'll tighten up yore cinches," said Sandy. "Worst of the climb's jest ahead. Then we start to drop down t'other side. You don't have to git off. Trail's bound to be better once we git atop the mesa and start down. Mesa's right narrer, as I remember. T'other side's away from the weather. There's a cañon with oak trees an' a stream of water." He tugged at the leathers, his knee against the bay's ribs as she grunted.

"You ain't much furtheh to go, li'l' hawss," he chatted on. "Downhill all the way soon an' then a drink to wash out yore mouth an' the best feed in Caroca fo' the pair of you."

"Gits dark mighty quick up here," said the girl.

A great cloud was ballooning above them, like a dirigible that had lost buoyancy and was bumping along the mesa ridge. Its belly was black, its western side ruddy in the sunset. Sandy viewed it apprehensively. In superficial survey the mesa seemed much like the stranded carcass of a mastodonic creature left behind when the waters departed from these inland seas. A hard skeleton of igneous rock, with clayey soil for flesh, riven and seamed and pitted, crumbling and dusty in the sun, ever disintegrating with wind and water and frost. Under a rain the trail was slimy as a whale's back. The cloud was soggy with moisture. Bursting, it would send torrents roaring down every ravine, wash out weathered masses of earth, sweep all before it as it gathered forces and rushed out on the desert, leaving the main cañons carved a little richer, the surface of the soil on the sink a little deeper, against the time when men should control these storm waters or bring the precious fluid up from underground reservoirs and make the desert blossom like the rose.

Where Molly and Sandy rode they were exposed to the first drench of a cloud-burst. Deeper in the pass, where the flood would be confined, their chance for escape would be infinitesimal. Even on the heights it would be precarious unless they could cross the remainder of the up-trail before the inevitable downpour.

Sandy examined his own cinch and tightened it before he mounted. And he whispered something in the mare's ear that caused her to lip his sleeve.

"Let yore hawss have his own way, Molly," he said. "I'm lettin' Goldie do the pickin' fo' the lead. Ready?"

It was growing cold in the deepening twilight, the belt of sunshine was rapidly climbing toward the topmost palisades with the purple shadows in the gorge mounting, twisting and eddying in skeins of mist, twining up toward them. One spire ahead glowed golden. The cloud drifted down upon it, glooming and glowing on its sunset side. The crag pierced it, ripped it as it glided along, like the knife of a diver in the belly of a shark. A cold wind blew from the riven mass. Then came the hiss of descending waters. There was neither thunder nor lightning, only the steady rush of the rain that glazed the slippery trail, hid the opposing cliff from sight, sheeting it with dull silver, pounding, pitting, beating at them as they plodded doggedly on, almost blinded, trusting to the instinct of their horses.

Through the steady patter began to sound the savage voice of torrents falling over cliffs, rapids rising and surging in deep gorges. The wetness and the cold sapped Molly's vitality. She shivered, her flesh seemed sodden, her hands and wrists began to puff and she saw their flesh was purple in the fading light. She rode with hands on the saddle horn, her head bowed, water streaming from the rim of her Stetson, the thud of the rain on her tired shoulders heavy as shot. The bay slipped, lurched, scrambled frantically for footing, hind feet skidding in the clay, haunches gathering desperately, heaving beneath her to the effort that brought him back to the trail. She saw Sandy ahead, dimly, like a sheeted ghost, twisted in his saddle, watching her. From the hips down he was a part of the mare he rode, from waist up he was in such exquisite balance while keeping his individuality apart from the horse that, despite her present misery and a presentiment of coming evil that was beginning to encompass her, Molly realized what a magnificent rider he was, and clung to his strength and skill, sensing the comforting power of his manhood.

To her right was the cliff, slimy with water, the trail so narrow that now and then her elbow dug into the soft stuff. To the left was blackness out of which mists ascended, writhing, like steamy vapors, the rain pelting into the gulf, far, far below; the thunder of augmenting waters. Masses of broken cloud swept on above their heads, purple and crimson and orange as they streamed across the summit like the tattered banners of a routed army. The light rayed upward at an acute angle. In a few moments it would be dark. But they were close to the top. The mare already stood on a level ledge of side-jutting rock, a horizontal protuberance that marked the extreme height of the Pass of the Goats, from which one could look down into the cañon of the oaks and the unfailing stream.

Sandy heard a cry from Molly and saw, through the curtain of the falling rain, the wide-flared nostrils of her horse, its eyes protruding as the brute, with the ground