Where the Long Grass Blows (1976) (6 page)

Try as he might he could find no trail into the beds, so as dusk was near he started back toward Thousand Springs. He would try again. At least he knew there was one cow in that labyrinth. And if there was one, there would almost certainly be more.

The trail he had chosen led him up the mesa above Thousand Springs by a little-known route. He wound around through clumps of pinon until he topped out on the relatively flat surface.

After that he rode slowly, drinking in the beauty of the place he had chosen for his home. Purple haze had thickened over the distant hills and gathered shadows around the trees in the forested notches. The pines fringed the sky with blackness, and a star appeared. Then another.

Below him the mesa broke sharply off and fell for over a hundred feet of sheer rock. Thirty feet from the bottom of the cliff, the springs for which the place was named trickled from the fractured rock, covering the rock with a silver sheen of water from which many small cascades fell into the pool below.

Beyond the pool's far edge, fringed with aspens, the Valley swept away in a long sweep of grassy range rolling into the dark distance against the mystery of the far-off hills. Bill Canavan sat his horse in a place rarely visited by men, for he doubted if anyone had climbed to the mesa's top since the last Indian had done so. At least, he had found no tracks nor sign nor horse, no cow nor man, and nothing but the fallen ruins of an ancient stone house or houses that seemed to have no connection with any of the cliff dwellings or pueblos he had seen.

The range below him was the upper Valley, supposedly controlled by Charlie Reynolds. Actually, he rarely visited the place, nor did any of his riders. It was far away from any of Reynolds's other holdings, yet the water below was available to cattle when they wished to come to it, as did the deer, antelope and wild horses.

Just back from the rim in a grove of pinion was where Canavan had started to build his house, using a foundation laid by the prehistoric builders, part of their floor, and many of their stones. The floor covered a wider expanse than he planned for his first house, so he swept it clean, paced it off, and planned what he would do. For the moment he was intent only on rebuilding a part of the old house to use as his claim shanty.

There was water here, bubbling up from the same source as Thousand Springs. He knew the water came from the same source, because several times he had dropped sticks into the spring only to have them appear in the pool, far below.

From where he sat, he could with his glass watch several miles of trail and see all who approached him. The trail up the back way was unknown so far as he had been able to discover, and the only tracks he had found were those of wild game.

To the east and south his view was unobstructed.

Below him lay all the dark distance of the Valley and the range for which he was fighting. On the north the mesa fell sheer away into a deep canyon with a dry wash at the bottom. The opposite side of the canyon was nearly as sheer as this, and almost a quarter of a mile away.

The trail led up from the west and through a broken country of tumbled rock, long fingers of lava, and clumps of pinon giving way to aspen and pine.

The top of the mesa was at least two hundred acres in extent and impossible to reach by any other route but that he had used.

Returning through the trees to a secluded hollow, he swung down and stripped the gear from the Appaloosa and turned it loose. He rarely hobbled or tied the horse, for Rio would come to him at his call or whistle and never failed to respond at once. A horse in most cases will not wander far from a camp fire, feeding away from it, then feeding back toward it, seeming to like the sense of comfort a camp fire offered as much as a man.

He built his fire of dry wood, keeping it small.

Down in the hollow as he was, there was no danger of it being seen and causing wonder. The last thing he wanted now was for anyone in the Valley to find him out After he had eaten, he strolled back to the open ground where the house was taking shape. Part of the ancient floor he was keeping as a sort of terrace from which to view the Valley below.

For a long time he stood, looking off into the darkness and enjoying the cool night air. Then he turned and walked back into the deep shadows where the house stood. He was standing there, considering the work yet to be done, when he heard a low, distant rumble.

Suddenly anxious, he stood very still, listening.

The sound seemed to come from the very rock on which he stood. He waited, expecting the sound to grow. But after only a minute or so it died away to a vague muttering, then it ceased. Puzzled, he walked around for several minutes, waiting and listening, but there was no further sound.

It was a strange thing, and it left him disturbed and uneasy as he walked back to his camp. Long after he lay in his blankets, he puzzled over the sound. He had been a boy of five in California when the greatest earthquake in Southern California history hit in 1857.

This had not felt like an earthquake, yet it was something deep underground.

He noted with an odd sense of disquiet that Rio stayed close to him, closer than usual. Of course, there could be another reason for that. There were cougars on the mesa and in the breaks behind it. He had seen their tracks, as he had seen those of elk, deer, and even bear.

The country in which he had chosen to settle was wildly beautiful, a strange, lost corner of the land cut off by the rampart of Thousand Springs Mesa.

He awakened with the sky growing gray, and found himself sitting bolt upright And then he heard it again, that low mounting rumble, far down in the rock beneath himas though the very spirit of the mountain was beneath him in his sleep. Only here the sound was less plain. It was fainter, farther away.

"It's all right, Rio," he spoke quietly.

"It's all right"

And he hoped it was. ...

Chapter
VI

When he awakened again the sky was light. He rolled out of his bed, started a small fire and put on the water for coffee. While eating, he puzzled over the strange sounds of the previous night. The only logical solution seemed to be that the sounds came from the springs, from forces of some kind that were at work deep under the mesa.

Obviously these forces had made no recent changes in the contour of the rock itself. So they must be insufficient for the purpose, and probably of no immediate danger. When he had finished breakfast, he packed up and made ready to travel. Only then did he return to work on the house.

Unlike many cowhands, who preferred to do no work that could not be done from the back of a horse, Canavan had always enjoyed working with his hands.

Now he had the double pleasure of knowing that what he built he built for himself. By noon he had completed another wall of heavy stone, and his house was beginning to take shape.

He stopped briefly to eat and slipped on his shirt before sitting down. As he buttoned it he caught a faint movement from far down the Soledad trail.

Digging out the field glass, he took a position on the rimrock And making sure the flash of sunlight from his glass would not give him away, he studied the approaching rider.

Canavan was too far to be sure of his identity, but there was something familiar about the rider. And only when he drew nearer was Canavan sure. It was Sydney Berdue.

What was the Reynolds foreman doing out here? Of course, as this was CR range he might just be checking the water or the stock. Yet he was riding at a good pace and taking no time to notice anything around him. When he reached the pool down below, he swung down, seated himself on a rock and lit a cigarette.

Waiting for someone!

The sun was warm and comfortable after the hard work of the morning, and Canavan settled himself down to wait. If Berdue was meeting somebody out here, he wanted to know who it was. Several times he turned his glass down the trail, but saw nothing.

Yet when he swept the glass to cover the country around, he found another rider, a man on a sorrel with three white stockings, who must have come up through the timber, as he was not in sight until the very last minute. He rode up to the pool and stepped down from the saddle. Puzzled, Canavan shifted his glass to the brand.

The sorrel wore a W on his shoulder. A

Venable rider meeting Berdue of the CR at what was apparently a secret meeting place. Now he saw two more riders approaching, and one of them was the big, slope-shouldered man he had seen in the restaurant, and he rode a Box n horse. The last man rode a gray mustang, wearing Star Levitt's Three Diamonds on his hip!

Now this was something to think about. A secret meeting of men representing four brands, two of them outwardly at war and the others on the verge of it Canavan cursed his luck that he could not hear what was said. But from where he watched, it looked like Berdue was laying down the law. He was doing the talking, with emphatic gestures, pacing up and down as he spoke.

Then Canavan saw something else.

At first it was only a vague suggestion of movement in the grass and brush near the foot of the cliff.

And then he glimpsed a slight figure, edging nearer to the talking men. His heart chilled as he saw that it was Dixie Venable, creeping ever closer.

Whatever the meeting of the four might mean, it certainly was obvious they did not wish to be seen or heard, and if Dixie were seen she would be in great danger. Pulling back from the cliffs edge, he ran to the place where he had been working and caught up his rifle. By the time he got back into position, the meeting was breaking up, and whatever they had meant to decide was now decided. One by one the men mounted and rode away. Sydney Berdue was the last to go.

The girl lay very still below him, and only after they had been gone for several minutes did she rise and walk down to the spring for a drink. She drank, then stood as if in profound thought. Finally, she drank again then went into the brush. Shortly afterward, she emerged on Flame.

She was no more than two hundred yards away.

But by the time Canavan could have got his horse and ridden around there, nearly an hour would be gone, and so would she.

He lay still and watched her ride away. What had she heard? And what had aroused her suspicions of double-dealing? There had been a meeting here of men from the four brands, but not of the leaders. And she must have had some intimation that such a meeting was to take place or she could not have followed so carefully.

Moreover, she had moved along that hill like an Indian. Not one of the men below was what you would call a tenderfoot, yet she had approached them and listened without giving herself away. Dixie Venable, he decided, would bear watching.

It was time he returned to Soledad. That he might be riding into trouble, he was ready to believe.

But he had expected trouble when he first rode into the Valley. It was one eventuality for which he had been prepared. He had not been prepared for Dixie.

Mentally and physically he had prepared himself for what was to come. He had gathered the intelligence necessary, and understood the chances he was taking. But he had known for months that a shooting war was about to break loose, and he hoped to be a winner when it was over.

Saddling Rio, he rode back through the aspens and then down the narrow and dangerous trail to the Valley floor. He had found no way to enter the lava beds and, if he was to take the next step in his pattern for conquest, he must find the cattle that he was sure must still roam that remote area.

The afternoon was well along before he found himself skirting the rim of a canyon that opened near the lava flows. And when he reached them, it was already late. There would be little time for a search, but despite that he turned north, planning to cut back around the mesa and return to Soledad by way of the Springs. Movement among the trees brought him up short, and he waited, watching several elk drifting slowly down a small wash toward the lava beds.

Suddenly he held his breath. There was no water of which he knew nearer than Thousand Springs, yet these elk were walking away from it rather than toward it As they usually watered at sundown or before daybreak, they must be headed toward some other source of water, and that could only be in the lava beds.

He sat his horse and waited while the elk crossed before him, and when they vanished into the trees, he followed. He could dimly see their tracks, and they led him to a narrow cleft between two great folds of the black rocks, a space scarcely wide enough for his stirraped feet to pass without scraping the walls, its entrance concealed by an overlap of one wall Riding carefully, for the trail continued narrow and the walls on either side were black and rough, he followed the elk. It was easy to see how such a trail might exist for years and not be found, for at least once he actually had to draw one leg up and hold the stirrup in the saddle to pass through a narrow opening.

The trail wound around and around, covering much distance without penetrating very far. The rocks on each side were rarely more than a few feet above his head when mounted, except occasionally when for some reasonan obstruction, no doubt, the lava had piled up even higher. Suddenly the trail dipped down through a dangerous-looking cleft. For the first time, he hesitated. If a man were trapped or hurt in this lava bed he would die here. If any other human being had ever followed this route, he had left no sign of his passing, although it was likely Indians had, in some bygone time. Yet by and large, Indians avoided such desolate areas. Lava was hell on moccasins and rarely would game be found there.