The Man from Bar-20/Chapter 15
CHAPTER XV
BLINDMAN'S BUFF
IT WAS nearly dark when he came to the long slope leading to the plateau behind the QE ranch-houses and he went on with infinite caution, at last looking down upon the buildings, which showed no lights.
Had they gone on another raid and had he missed the opportunity of trailing them? He shook his head. There would be no more raids until they were sure that no one was watching them. Suddenly he grinned. The Circle S puncher, when last seen, was going straight toward the ranch-houses. It was simple now. Having been told all that the Circle S man knew, they knew that only one man was watching them and would plan accordingly.
"Layin' low an' settin' traps for me," he grunted. "Bet th' three canyons are guarded—an' that trail down th' blind canyon farther along this wall. That's th' easiest for me, so I'll slip up there an' look around; but first I'll take a look down in th' main canyon."
A short time later he peered over the rim of the chasm and chuckled, for a small fire, cunningly placed so as not to shine in the eyes of anyone in the houses, burned at the base of the great wall and made sufficient light to show a watching marksman every rock and hollow across that part of the canyon.
"They can set in th' house at a loophole an' keep a good watch," he muttered. "There ain't a man livin' could cross that patch of light. An' if they're guardin' one end they're guardin' th' others—an' I'll exchange compliments with one bunch."
Squirming back from the edge he started north, and he stopped only when the plashing of water told him that he was near his objective.
"If I was watchin' that trail I'd stay down below," he thought. "It would be near th' narrowest part of the ledge an' where nobody could shoot down on me. I know th' place, too; glad I learned th' lay of th' land around this sink."
He crept forward confidently, his rifle strapped across his back, for he decided to depend on his Colts. Reaching the head of the trail he dropped to all fours and crept onto it; instantly a flash split the darkness ten feet below him, the bullet ripping through his sombrero. He did not reply, but wriggled against the base of the wall, where an out-cropping stratum of rock gave him shelter. As he settled down he heard a sound above him and a pebble clicked at his side and bounced out into the chasm.
Here was a pleasant situation, he thought. They were guarding the top of the trail when they should have been guarding the bottom. There was an outlaw below him and another above him, and at the first streak of dawn he would find himself in a bad fix. Glancing up at the sky he saw that the ledge protected him from the man above; but it would take the man above only half an hour to run back along the canyon, round its upper end and appear, ready for business, on the farther side, in which case a certain member of the CL outfit would be neatly picked off at the first blush of daylight.
"I was hell-bent to get down here," he soliloquized in great disgust; "an' now I'm hell-bent to get back again. What business have they got to watch this end?"
He looked back up the trail and could see nothing. Then he held out his hand and could not see that. "That fool didn't see me; he heard me! I'm glad I didn't shoot back. He'll wait a while, doubt his ears an' think mebby that he's loco."
But Ben Gates, firing on a guess, thought he saw what he fired at when the flash of his gun lit up the trail in front of him. True, the smoke interfered; but Gates was backing both his eyes and his ears.
Johnny waited half an hour, and then grew anxious. His enemies were not doing anything, but appeared to be copying the patience of the noble red men, and waiting for dawn.
"Cuss th' dawn!" mused Johnny fretfully. "If th' feller below still thinks he heard me, th' feller up above may get dubious an' reckon his friend pulled at nothin'; an' he's th' man I got to gamble with an' th' sooner th' better."
He wriggled backward an inch at a time until he had gained a few yards and then he softly turned around. Another pebble fell on the ledge close to the place he had just evacuated. The instant he heard it he moved a little more rapidly because he was now east of the man above. A soft shuffle came to his ears and he swore under his breath when the sounds stopped at the head of the trail. The man above was now east of him, and painfully alert.
Slowly arising, Johnny hugged the wall and felt it over carefully. There were knobs and slight foot-holds and small cracks in it, and he took the only way open to him, desperate as it was. He judged the rim to be thirty feet above him, and setting his jaws he started to climb it. The shuffling again was heard and it now passed to the west of him.
"Cuss him!" gritted Johnny. "He acts like he don't know what to do with hisself. Why th' devil can't he stay where he belongs?"
Stepping back on the trail again Johnny stooped over and ran silently toward its upper end, thankful that he was wearing moccasins; and he had come within ten feet of it when the shuffling sound again passed him, eastward bound.
"There!" grumbled Johnny. "I knowed it. He acts like a bobcat in a cage. All right, d—n you! I'll give you some music to shuffle to!"
Finding several pebbles, he threw them, one at a time, over the rim and about over the place where he had found shelter. A muttered expletive came from above and the shuffling went rapidly toward the sounds. Below him on the trail he heard a slight stir, but ignored it as he sprinted up the trail, silent as a ghost, and gained the shelter of a bowlder. Here he waited, grim and relentless, for the sentry's return.
Shuffle Foot was peeved, and cared not a whit who knew it. Just because he was hitched to a fool was no reason why he should endure asinine practical joking; so he peered over the canyon's rim and spoke softly:
"What th' h—l do you think yo're doin'?"
The silence below was unbroken; but the astonished Mr. Gates longed passionately for the power of thought transmission. It was all right for Nat Harrison to go wandering around and braying like a jackass; he wasn't lying almost nose to nose with the most capable two-gun man that had ever cursed the Twin Buttes country.
"'Sleep?" queried Harrison. "What did you shoot at; 'nother ki-yote?" Receiving no answer he became exasperated. "If it was anybody but you I'd pay some attention to it. First you shoots a cougar out of a tree when we're all holdin' our breath to keep quiet. Then you let drive at a measly ki-yote, which you opined was a he-man. Next you plugs Long Pete, thinkin' he was Nelson. An' now what do you think you see? If I poke my head out far enough, even though I'm talkin' to you, I'll bet you'd let loose at it, thinkin' th' Lord only knows what. Why don't you say something? Do you think we're playin' some kid's game, where th' feller that keeps still longest gets th' apple? Did you make that noise?"
Gates writhed in impotent rage; but he suffered in silence, which only increased the pressure of his anger.
"Mebby you done shot yoreself," suggested Harrison hopefully. "Didn't see somethin' down by yore feet, an' shoot off yore toes, did you? What's th' matter with yore mouth? You can use it enough, th' Lord knows when nobody wants to hear it. Say somethin', you locoed polecat."
The pause was fruitless, and he continued, cheerfully:
"Mebby he's clubbed you again," he said. "Clubbed yore stone head with th' butt of his gun an' gagged you with yore own handkerchief; yore very much-soiled handkerchief. But I hardly reckon he did, because any blow heavy enough to send a shock through that head of yourn would 'a' been heard at th' houses, an' I didn't hear nothin' like that. Goin' to say somethin'?"
Harrison chuckled, and tried again: "Well, if you ain't talkin' I'll bet yo're thinkin'. Bet yo're wishin' I'd find a million dollars, get elected president of th' country an' not have nothin' to worry about all th' rest of my life. Ain't you, Dan'l Boone?
"You must be scared 'most to death," he continued after a pause. "Any time you can't find a chance to talk you shore are in a bad fix. I'm beginnin' to lose my temper. You make me plumb disgusted, you do. What th' devil do you think I was doin' out here all night? Think anybody got past me to go down there for you to shoot at? If there's anybody down there he come up from below an' crawled over you before you woke up."
Suddenly he cocked his head on one side and listened as a low gurgle sounded in the canyon.
"Cuss my fool hide!" he whispered. "Mebby he did see something! Mebby somebody come up th' trail, tryin' to get out of th' valley before daylight! Mebby it wasn't Ben at all that did th' shootin'! Hey, Ben; Ben! For heaven's sake, say something, anything!"
Gates, stung into a blinding rage which swept aside every thought of caution, did say something. Nature seemed to shrink from the stream of throbbing profanity which came shouting up out of the black canyon, whose granite walls flung it back and forth until the chasm reverberated with it.
Harrison listened, entranced, his open mouth, refusing to shut, testifying to the great awe which held him spellbound. Never in all his sinful life had he heard such a masterpiece of invective, epithet, and profane invocation. The words seemed to be alive and writhing with venom; he almost could hear them crackle in the air. He heard himself called everything uncomplimentary which a frontier vocabulary saved for just such situations. He heard his ancestors described back to the time of Adam; sweeping up to the present, himself, his relatives, his ambitions, habits, and personal belongings were dissected by the man below. And then his future and the prophesied future abode of his spirit were probed and riddled and described by a furious, vitriolic tongue. His hair, eyes, ears, nose, gait, and manners were gathered up and torn apart for microscopic examination and the descriptions were shouted at the top of his companion's voice, which bellowed and boomed, rasped and coughed, screeched and shrilled down in the blackness forty feet below him. Then there fell a sudden calm, a silence which seemed doubly silent, unreal, because of the contrast. A convulsive, retching, strangling fit of coughing broke it, and then a hoarse, rasping voice asked mildly, anxiously, a mild question:
"Is there anything I forgot?"
Johnny, standing up behind the smaller bowlder that he might not lose a word or an inflection of the masterpiece, lost in admiration, forgetful of purpose and the situation, danced gleefully and gave a joyous shout: "Not a cussed thing!"
Harrison fired at the sound, and a sharp, lurid flash replied to his own. He staggered back as he fired again, and an answering flash doubled him up. Gamely he pulled the trigger again and two spurts of flame, so close to each other that they seemed almost to merge, sent him staggering and reeling toward the edge of the canyon. Tripping over an inequality in the earth he threw out his arms, fought to regain his balance and with a sob plunged over the wall into the darkness below.
Down on the trail Gates muttered in sudden horror as he felt the wind of the hurtling body, and he leaned against the wall, white, sick, shaken. A muffled, sickening sound came up from the pit, and Gates dropped to his hands and knees, not daring to stand erect.
"Nat!" he cried. "Nat! Was that you? Nat! Nat!"
At the top of the trail a rapier-like flash of fire split the darkness, and then a series of lurid spurts of flame stabbed in short jets, rapidly, regular as the ticking of a clock, marking the place where two heavy guns crashed and jumped as they poured forth a stream of lead down the narrow rock shelf that formed the precarious trail. The canyon roared in one prolonged reverberation and the bullets whined and spatted and screamed in high falsetto as they cleared the wall or struck it to glance out into the valley below.
Gates, on his hands and knees, shaken, sick with horror, crept slowly downward, oblivious to the crashing, rolling thunder and the flying lead.
"I didn't mean it, Nat!" he muttered over and over again. "I didn't mean it; not a word of it!"
A sharp spang! sounded on a rock close to his head and a hot splinter of lead cut through his cheek. He stopped and spat it out, his nerve returning as a cold rage swept over and steadied him. Jerking his gun loose he emptied it up the trail, and, methodically reloading, emptied it again, slowly, deliberately, moving it a little at each shot so as to cover a short arc. Another spurt stabbed the darkness above, and his gun, again refilled, replied to it. Again the canyon sent roaring echoes crashing from wall to wall as flash answered flash. Then suddenly the gun below grew silent, and the guns above spat twice spitefully without a reply, and they, too, ceased.
Gates stirred and slowly raised himself on an elbow, groping blindly for his gun. His trembling hand struck it blunderingly and knocked it over the edge of the trail as his numbed fingers sought to close over it. Dazed, racked with pain, he sobbed senseless curses as he slowly dragged himself down the trail, desperately anxious to reach his picketed horse before his reeling senses left him.
After an unmeasured interval, as vague and unreal as an elusive dream, he stumbled over the picket rope and sprawled full length. Arousing himself he felt along it and managed to loosen it from around the rock which served as a picket pin; and then, slowly, by a great effort he crawled along the rope and staggered to his feet to grasp the pommel of his saddle, where he clung and rested for a moment.
The restless horse, scenting blood, tossed its head and moved forward; but Gates, by a great, supreme effort, crawled heavily into the saddle and bound himself there with his lariat. Then, spurring clumsily, he started the animal toward the ranch-houses, fighting desperately to keep his wandering senses.
An hour later two men stole to the door of the end house and listened, questioning each other. Actuated by a common impulse they slipped out toward the corral, gun in hand, and found Gates, unconscious and weak, but alive, huddled forward on the horse's neck.