Lone Star 01 (18 page)

The creek brought her to another halt. It was a fast-rippling flow cutting right across the trail—but it quickly became apparent that the tracks didn't come out the other side. They entered at an upstream angle and stayed in the water. Turning, Jessica headed up along the creek, riding slowly while scrutinizing both banks for wet impressions of the horses having left the creekbed.

The canyon slopes rose higher and drew nearer, becoming cliffs hemming her into a narrow culvert. The only tracks she found were those of animals that had come to drink. By now it was well into midmorning, the day proving to be overcast, the air cool and very still. Too still. The lack of noise bothered Jessica, for if the rocks ahead were devoid of humans, she should have been able to hear little scut tlings, tiny chirps and buzzings.

She moved on, increasingly wary of her surroundings.

The creek grew wider and deeper, making an S-curve, a swath of tall grasses and a few saplings sprouting in its bend. Rounding it, Jessica saw that the creek rushed disjointedly from between boulders, down from a collecting pond and a short waterfall. Slowly she continued parallelling the creek on a moss-covered ledge, a cold clammy sensation nestling between her shoulder blades.

A gravelly voice said, “Hold it, sister, and get down.”

Jessica reined sharply and dismounted, seeing a thickset man with stubbly cheeks and watery eyes emerge from the rocks just ahead. The Winchester he pointed was all the more dangerous for his shaky trigger finger.

“Been spyin' you since you came into the pass,” the man said, coming closer, eyeballing her and licking lips like slices of liver. “What's your name, sister, and whatcha doing way up here?”

“Imogene,” Jessica said demurely.

“Yeah? Imogene what?”

“Just ... Imogene. I find last names kind of get in the way between friends, don't you?”

The man laughed once, derisively. “What're you doing here?”

“Well, I was out riding, and I got ever so lost.”

“Balls.”

“Truth, mister. If you could direct me back to—”

“Nobody can get so damned lost that they wind up back in this buzzard's roost, and you know it. Now, why're you really here?”

Jessica smiled shyly and folded her hands in front of her, thumbs hooking behind her belt buckle. “I reckon I can't fool a big smart man like you. I'm looking for the rustlers.”

“The—? What'n hell you want us—them—for?”

“You got to understand, mister, I'm new to Eucher Butte, having run out of luck down Cheyenne way. But the dance places, like the Thundermug, are all full up and don't need new talent, and I'm kind of broke, and a girl has to make a living, y‘know what I mean?”

The man's face remained poker straight. “No, tell me.”

“Well, when I heard about a bunch of men hid out up in these hills, it seemed to me that if they couldn't come to me, I'd go to them. So, if by some chance you could help me—if you could escort me to their camp, I'd be grateful. Very grateful.”

“I ain't that crazy! Once you got in there with all them, I wouldn't get nothing for a month of Sundays.” The man backed a pace, raising his rifle and gesturing with it. “Get into the bushes, Imogene, I'm taking you all for myself.”

The bullet entered his stomach while he was still gesturing with his rifle. It hit low, straight, shot from Jessica's derringer when she snapped the hidden pistol out from behind her belt buckle. The man seemed paralyzed from the impact of the .38 slug, mouth wide as if to scream, but no sound coming out.

Jessica was in motion even as the bullet struck. She leaped for the man, snatching the rifle from his nerveless fingers and springing for the cover of the nearby rocks. She crouched, waiting.

The man stayed upright, although his knees were gradually bending. He clasped both hands against the wound, trying to hold himself together, his rolling eyes glazed and disbelieving as he stared down at his red-staining shirtfront. His legs buckled; he toppled over, slowly crumpling to sprawl inert.

Jessica stayed put, drawing her revolver, then reloading the derringer and slipping it back behind her buckle. Her horse browsed near the stream, shaking its head once. The man lay absolutely still, his hands pressed to his midriff, his face retaining its startled expression, as if sealed by wax. Jessica ignored them both, her attention centering on the crevices and shadowed nooks above and around them.

She had killed again. To keep from being raped, true, although she'd purposely tricked the man into believing she was a whore. And if he'd agreed to take her to the rustlers' hideout—where, she was convinced, the tracks she was following ultimately led—she wouldn't have shot him. At least not right then, and maybe later it wouldn't have been necessary. But she had only a moment to spare for remorse; there was a job that needed to be done.

By the time flies had begun to gather on the man, Jessica was pretty sure no partner was hiding, anticipating revenge. Nonetheless, she took care. She dashed from the rocks and grabbed the man's legs, then hustled them both behind cover. After another long pause, she darted out again and led her horse into the rocks, where, out of sight of the brook, she tied its reins to a tree.

Alive, the man had virtually admitted being one of the rustlers; dead, he told her two other important facts: he must have been posted as a sentry, and he hadn't gotten wet on the job or while stalking her. Which meant, Jessica figured, that the hideout had to be nearby, on this side of the stream. On the surface, that didn't add up too well, because obviously neither the rustlers nor the horses she'd been tracking were anywhere in the canyon, and the waterfall ahead was pouring over what was essentially the canyon's rear wall. Yet she felt her hunch was right when she glimpsed a pale drift of smoke rising from the hills beyond; it was scarcely more than a thin, indistinguishable smudge against the drab skyline, but it was enough to confirm that somewhere up there to her left, somebody was using green wood to fuel a campfire.

From here, she would go on foot.

Chapter 13

Tempering her impatience, Jessica scouted the area, then cautiously started up the slope of the canyon. She climbed at a crawl as the morning eased toward noon with a light sprinkling of rain. There was a tenseness to the cooling drizzle, a hush as if the hills resented her and the thickening slurry of clouds, and it made Jessica watchful and slightly nervous. Nearing the rim, she groped for handholds in the weathered rock, testing each one before placing her weight on it; the cracked, fissured stone crumbled easily in her fingers. Once she almost lost her balance and toppled back into the chasm of the stream. She clawed frantically, pressing against the cliff face and grabbing onto an outcropping that trembled and fell loose as she hauled herself to another high point.

Easing over the top, she flattened herself, trying to catch her breath from the last desperate pull. For long moments the pounding blood in her ears made her deaf to the gravel and dirt trickling down the way she'd come. Then she started forward, keeping low and in line with the upper course of the stream, as it bubbled and stewed toward the surging waterfall on her right.

She entered a tangle of shrubs and stunted trees, whose windswept limbs were twisted at every conceivable angle. She stood in their shadows a while, silently listening for men and looking for that telltale ribbon of smoke. Then, moving to her left, away from the waterfall, she struggled through a cluttered grove of conifers, eventually emerging where a rotted tree had settled, roots upended, by the very edge of a straight-sided drop.

Crouching on the ledge and concealed by a low hedge of brush, Jessica peered over the side into a small, box-shaped pocket canyon. It was slightly at an angle to the other canyon, a land-bridge connecting the two; and either through erosion or upheaval, the bed of the stream skirted the pocket and formed the waterfall at the narrowest point of the land-bridge. A curious quirk of nature, but not uncommon; mountains were like this, concealing deep pockets till one stood on their very brink.

Most of the pocket was overgrown with tall grass, scrub, and thickets of aspen, fir, and pine. But a quarter of the way in from the land-bridge, at a tangent to the waterfall, she saw a log cabin and some motley shacks clustered around a wide clearing, in the middle of which burned the fire whose smoke she'd spotted. A path led from the clearing to a point below and just to one side of the waterfall—the pocket's only entrance, Jessica assumed, though she couldn't make it out precisely because of her distance and poor angle.

Four men were standing at the fire, cooking something in a cast-iron kettle. Another fourteen or fifteen men could be seen elsewhere in and about the clearing, walking, talking, or doing nothing, ignoring their scattered equipment and the loose cavvy of untended saddle horses. Obviously the men were lazy, badly organized, and poorly disciplined, which didn't surprise Jessica; and whatever else they were, they were not defense-conscious. The chain of tall ridges surrounding the pocket, watched over by the now-dead guard, was evidently trusted to be protection enough; a single shot would warn them, and they were camped in a natural fort, a hole-in-the-wall that had one hidden gap through which they could be attacked.

Since it was impossible from here to detect which, if any, of the horses wore a broken shoe, Jessica ignored the cavvy and concentrated on the men. She searched out each one to see if she could recognize any. They were depress ingly similar, dressed in grubby shirts and pants, needing shaves and trims, none with a three-fingered hand, say, or only one ear. No peculiarities at all. No Ryker, no Volpes, and most discouragingly, no Ki.

Jessica sat back, contemplating. If Ki was in the pocket, he was either imprisoned or buried. Of course, she had no way of knowing if he was down there; she'd been following horses, not men. Back when the eight horses had split up at that pass, she'd chosen the broken-shoe trail because the other trail appeared to simply head to the Block-Two-Dot. For her to brave Ryker's stronghold alone would have been foolhardy; to have gone there first, and not found Ki, would have also allowed time and weather to obliterate the meager traces and signs leading to the canyon. But whether Ki was down there or back at Ryker‘s, there was no doubt in her mind about the men she could see. Trash. Nor did she question if she should do something about them, only what she should do about them. Afterwards, she'd allow herself the luxury of feeling regret. But only afterwards.

Jessica thought a bit longer, then slipped back into the brush and began hiking back to the bluff overlooking the canyon. She took her time, not risking detection, yet she wanted to hurry, knowing that sooner or later someone would be detailed to relieve the dead sentry. Reaching the spot where she'd climbed up, she started her treacherous way back down again, sliding and plunging, digging in her heels and clutching with her hands to keep from tripping into a headlong dive.

Once at the bottom of the creek, she hurried to remount her horse and ride back out of the canyon, still keeping a cautious eye on the terrain around her. Without lingering, she entered the maze of crooked ridges and twisting gorges, hoping her sense of direction would not fail her, scouting steadily through the roughs of brush, rock, and forests for familiar marks that would lead her back to the plateau. Twice she followed false sign and had to backtrack, the wasted time frustrating her, making her edgy. If she was a good enough tracker to find the canyon, she chastised herself, then at least she ought to be able to track her own goddamn backtrail out again.

Finally she reined in and smiled, seeing the plateau up ahead. She headed out across it, toward the mouth of the canyon from which the rustled cattle had fled, figuring to pick up the path there that would return her to the Spraddled M. Approaching, she saw that the last leg of her trip was unnecessary. Daryl Melville was standing just inside the canyon mouth, holding the reins of his buckskin. Beside him, Deputy Oakes had one foot on the ground and the other lodged in his stirrup, in the process of either getting on or off a moro with tan leggings. Spotting her, Daryl began gesturing and moving forward to meet her, while the deputy merely put his stirruped foot down and waited.

“God, but I was worried about you,” Daryl called, even before she could come to a halt and dismount. “When I woke and you weren‘t—I mean, I guessed you'd come here to look for your friend, but then when I couldn't find you ... you should've told me, Jessica!”

“Oh, it wasn't that important,” she said vaguely, smiling as if the whole thing had been just a whim of hers. “Certainly not so important that you should've called the law in.”

“He didn‘t, ma'am,” the deputy said, answering for Daryl as he politely removed his hat. “No, ma‘am, I was over looking for you at the hotel, and they said you might've gone to the Flying W, so I rode there and they said you might've gone visiting the Spraddled M. Then I got tooken here. My, you sure do lead a feller a merry chase.”