Where the Long Grass Blows (1976) (14 page)

"Pull in your neck then, sorrel-head!"

Canavan growled. "I'm going to take a look at the valley, and then Roily can scare up some chuck."

"How about that rumblin'? I heard it again last night. Gives a man the creeps."

Burt sat up and rubbed his unshaved jowls, looking around for his boots. "Damn it," he muttered, "I need a shave."

"Never seen you when you didn't." Mabry thrust his thumb through a hole in his sock and swore, then pulled it on. "You need a haircut, too, you durned Siwash Ugly, that's what you are! What a thing to see when a man first wakes up! Lucky you ain't never hitched with no gal. She'd surely have nightmares, just lookin' at you!"

Canavan left them arguing and, taking a cup of coffee, went to the nest of boulders he used for a lookout.

Taking a careful look around, wary of any visiting rattler or scorpion, he sat down and, putting his cup on a flat rock, took his field glass and began a study of the country below.

At first all seemed serene and lovely. Morning sunlight sparkled on the waters of the pool below, and he could hear the pleasant sound of running water. The air was exceptionally clear, and there was no sound. Then some distance off, he heard a cow bawl.

The sun felt good on his back, and he shifted a little and pointed his glass once more. Instantly, he froze. A group of riders were coming up the trail toward Thousand Springs, riding slowly, as if tired. Star Levitt was not among them ... at least, there was no white horse and no white hat.

As they drew nearer he made out Syd Berdue, Emmett Chubb, Kerb Dahl and Voyle. He did not know the others, although he had seen them around.

They drew up right below to let their horses drink.

And on this morning, they were not speaking in the low, conspiratorial tones as before, and he could hear them plainly enough.

"Beats all, what happened to him!" Voyle complained irritably. "One minute they were both there and then they were gone."

"We'd better find "em," Dahl replied.

"I never did see Star so wrought up about anything as when he found they'd gotten away. He must have turned over everything on the flat, hunting them. He just refused to believe they'd not been killed. Man, I never seen anybody so mad!"

"He's a bad man to cross," Streeter added.

"When he's mad he goes crazy."

Chubb hung back from the group, taking no part in the conversation. From time to time his eyes went to Berdue. From where he lay among the rocks, Canavan could not see his eyes, but he could see the turning of his head. Getting down, Chubb walked to the springs for a drink, and when he stood up he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

He took out the makings and began to build a smoke. "Some things about this here that I don't like," he commented, after a bit.

There was no reply, but Canavan had an idea he was expressing a feeling that was pretty general.

Syd Berdue idly flicked his quirt at a mesquite.

Berdue looked up. "At least you can't say he isn't thorough!" he said dryly.

Chubb looked around, then spat. "He's thorough, all right! Almost too thorough! He had me primed to start the action by picking a fight with Riggs. He had Riggs pegged as a hothead who would blow his top first thing. Well, I had no use for Riggs.

He rubbed me the wrong way, and we'd likely have been in a fight sooner or later anyway. He never said a word about what was to come after, and it was pure luck I didn't get killed!"

Streeter nodded. "I had three targets laid out me. I was to kill Reynolds and then get some lead into Pogue if time allowed, and even if somebody had beat me to it."

Hanson chuckled without humor. "I was to kill Pogue, then take a shot at Reynolds. Then I was supposed to turn my gun on Jason Farmer. Farmer was a tough man who'd been with Pogue a long time."

Dahl changed the subject. "Where d'you figure Canavan went?"

"Where did Roily Burt go?" Voyle asked.

"If you ask me, that Canavan's no fool. Mabry and him got shut of those brandin" pens in a mighty big hurry.

I never figured either one of them would run from a fight."

"You got to ask yourselves whose fight it was,"

Streeter commented. "It surely wasn't theirs.

Canavan made it plain he had no use for either Pogue or Reynolds, so he'd be a fool to get shot up for either of them."

"Might have left the country," Voyle suggested.

"I doubt it," Chubb said quietly.

"Canavan's after my scalp. I killed a friend of his. He wouldn't leave without tackling me."

"Pity he couldn't have done it earlier," Voyle said.

"It would have saved us a lot of riding."

"He's tough," Streeter said. "He jumped the boss a couple of times. Pogue, too. He don't seem to take water for anybody."

Syd Berdue turned to look at them, waiting for somebody to mention his own meeting with Canavan, but they avoided it.

"I'd say the thing to do is stop chasing around the country looking for him and just keep an eye on that Kinney feller at the hotel. Seems to me they were all-fired friendly."

"Wonder where Canavan come from?" Voyle asked.

"Used to be down in the border country," Streeter said. "Had quite a name down there."

"Gunfighter?"

"Well ... not really. But as a fighter, yes.

He had the name of a man to leave alone. He was a bronc fighter, wild-horse hunter. But he'd ridden shotgun on stages and such-like."

"He was friendly with that Venable girl, too,"

Voyle said. "I think the boss is buckin' a stacked deck there. I don't think she's got any use for him."

Canavan's eyes were on Dahl, who hovered in the background listening but offering no comment.

Very likely he would go to Levitt as soon as they rode in and repeat every word. Dahl had not been planted on the W for nothing. All of them were talking too much, and Levitt was not a man who would like loose tongues.

How many of them would be allowed to remain alive once Levitt had accomplished what he wanted to do was something else. From his viewpoint, there would be no sense in having men around who knew too much, for the country was changing and new people would soon be moving in, crowding out the wild elements, bringing with them churches, schools, banks and more ordered ways of business.

This Star Levitt knew, and he hoped to have himself firmly established before such a change took place, the owner of vast lands with no one to question his right or how the lands had been acquired.

There was more talk and he listened, but heard nothing of importance. He watched until they rode away, following some lead they believed they had. In the future, Canavan decided, he must be more careful.

There must be no trail to be followed, and the path up the mesa must be blocked off or watched.

Long after they rode away, he lay waiting, hoping for some sight of Dixie, but there was none. Either she was too closely watched or she had not suspected this meeting. More than he liked to admit, he was worried. Star Levitt had revealed himself as a more ruthless man than anyone had suspected.

Of them all, perhaps Emmett Chubb's judgment of the man was the most accurate. There was small chance that anyone would escape the Valley to repeat what they knew when, sometime, they had imbibed too freely. No doubt he had not been merely careless in not warning Chubb of what was to happen, for Levitt knew full well that the massacre at the branding pens would eliminate his most formidable rivals.

And if Chubb or a few others were killed in the crossfire ... who was to care?

There was little Canavan could now do until Levitt's next move was revealed. All they could do was sit tight and try not to be found. As long as they were free, Star Levitt's plan was incomplete, and they would be a constant worry. Yet Reynolds and Pogue were gone and the Valley ranches lay right in Levitt's palm, or so he would believe. Of course, he actually had nothing, for Canavan held the water rights.

Levitt, with his penchant toward the illegal and the use of the strong hand, had undoubtedly not even considered such a possibility. Most land in the west was held by squatter's right, and the idea of acquiring land by legal means almost unknown. The land was there for the taking, and most men looked upon it as they did the buffalo or the trees they so freely cut down as theirs by right of discovery and use.

Returning to the fire, he ate a late breakfast and sat talking over coffee. Finally, he said to Burt, "All right, we'll see what you've got to show us, then Mabry and me will go down into the lava beds and push out some more cattle. Nothing like giving Levitt something to worry about."

"You be careful," Roily warned. "He's smart as an old fox. All the time you're making your plans, he's probably thinking away ahead of you."

Roily Burt, whose leg was almost back to normal, led them through the aspens to the open mesa, and then along its top toward the jumble of boulders that blocked off any approach from the northwest except by the narrow trail they used in coming and going.

The way Burt took was a dim path, long unused, that led them into a maze of boulders and great, broken slabs of rock. Several times, Canavan stopped to look around. He knew little of such things but it appeared to be an old earthquake fault, where in some vanished time the rock itself had fractured and split. The vague path ended at a great, leaning slab of granite under which there was a dark, ominous opening. They hesitated, not liking the looks of the place, but Roily went on.

"Come on. You ain't seen nothing yet." He had brought with him several candles, and he passed one to each of them. "Found these in the stores you hid up here," he commented, "and we'll never need them more than here."

He stooped and went into the opening. A moment longer Canavan hesitated. He had no liking for holes or cramped places, but he ducked his head went in, almost at once feeling a sense of space around him, and he held his candle high as Burt was doing and looked down a steep floor that fell away before them in a long, gradual descent. Far away in the abysmal darkness they heard faintly the sound of falling water.

The air was damp and cool, a faint breeze coming from somewhere deep within the mountain. Yet this was no narrow passage in which he found himself but a vast cavern where Burt led them, hobbling with his single crutch, deeper and deeper into the mountain.

They had descended seventy or eighty feet below the level of the mesa's top when he paused on the rim of a black hole. Leaning forward, holding his candle out, Bill Canavan found himself looking into a vast, bottomless depth from which there came at intervals a weird sighing and a low rumble.

"We've got maybe ten minutes, the way I figure it Then, to be on the safe side, we've got to get out." He knelt and touched the rock at the edge of the hole. "Look how smooth] Water done that, water falling on it, water running over it for maybe thousands of years.

"I tried to time it yesterday, an' it seems to come about ever' three hours. Pressure must build away down inside the mountain and then she blows a cork an' water comes a-spoutin' out of this hole. She shoots clear up nigh to the roof, an' she keeps spoutin' for three, four minutes, then it dies away and that's the end."

"I'll be doggoned." Mabry exclaimed.

"I've heard of this place! Injuns used to call it the Talking Mountain! Folks were warned to stay clear away from it. Said it was a death-trap!"

"When she shoots up," Burt said, "stones come boilin' up with it, too, an' water fills this room and turns it into a huge whirlpool. But that ain't all. Look up yonder." He stepped back and pointed up.

High above them in the vaulted top of the cave, they could make out several ragged holes where a vague light filtered in. "They seem to be well back in the trees, but a man could walk right into one of them if he wasn't careful. If the fall didn't kill him he'd be trapped here when the water came."

They turned and started back, yet they had taken no more than a step or two when from beneath them they heard a dull rumble.

"Run!" Burt's face was panic-stricken.

"Here she comes!"

He broke into a limping run, then tripped and fell full length on the steep upward trail.

Canavan stooped and lifted him, but Roily Burt was a heavy man and had not Mabry grabbed the other arm he would never have gotten him up the steep trail in time.

Plunging ahead, they scrambled to the top and out of the cave only just in time, bursting into the sunlight, faces strained and pale. Behind them they heard the roar of water and the pound and rumble of boulders battering the cave walls and even the roof.

For several moments they stood panting and listening to the rumble from down below. Slowly it died away, and then there was no sound.

"That," said Mabry, "is a good place to keep out of!"

When they returned to the camp, Burt started for his horse. "I'll saddle up and help you gents.

I've been loafin too long!"

"You stay here and keep an eye on the Springs.

I've a hunch we're going to have more visitors and I want to know who they are. Anyway, this is a two man job. If we need help tomorrow, we'll leave Mabry behind and you can have a go at it."