CHAPTER XXXIII
THE CANYON OF THE FALLING WALL
Laramie, after disposing of his prisoners, had ridden north with lessof a hunted feeling experienced every time he mentally inventoried therocks commanding the trail, the boulders looming ahead of him, and thecottonwoods through which he wound his way along the creek bottoms.And when at length he looked across Turkey creek, he was not surprisedto see his cows straying down the hills toward their own range.
Even the bitter sight of the ruins of his cabin bore upon him less nowthat he had put Van Horn actually in jail for the trick. "You can'tkeep him there long," Tenison had cynically warned him.
"I've put the mark on him, if he's only there overnight," had beenLaramie's reply. "He'll be a long time explaining. And I want you tonotice, Harry, with all the fighting they've put me to, they've nevergot me locked up yet--not for a second. I guess for that," he added,reflecting, "I ought to thank my friends."
Never so much as that day had he realized how every aspect of hissituation, as he viewed it, was colored by the thought of KateDoubleday. If he were determined that despite any intrigue workedagainst him, he would never be locked up alive on a trumped-up charge,it was chiefly because of the disgrace of such a thing in her eyes. Ifhe avoided opportunities now of finishing with Van Horn, he knew it waschiefly because of her. She would probably never see that finish, butshe would hear the story of it from his enemies. Laramie was not atany time thinking merely of being justified in the last resort, nor ofthe justification of his friends, which would in any case be his. Butwhat would Kate think?
Yet he knew what was ahead of him; he knew what lay at the end of thetrail he and Van Horn were traveling. Lawing, as Sleepy Catcontemptuously termed it, was the least of it all and the mostfutile--yet in thinking of the other, her judgment was what he dreaded.This bore on him and perplexed him. It had, more than all else, puttwo little vertical furrows between his eyebrows; they were there oftenof late. Suppression of the feeling that had always and irresistiblydrawn him toward her, had only intensified this worry. His pride hadsuffered at her hands; yet he made excuses for her--he had no highopinion of himself, of his general reputation--and had built dreams onthe fanciful imagining that she should, despite everything, some daylike him. He wearied his brain in recalling a chance expression of hereyes that could not have been unfriendly; an inflection of her voicethat might have carried a hope, if only their paths had been lesscrossed: and his pride, despite rebuffs, sought her as a moth seeks aflame. It drew him to her and kept him from her, for he lacked for thefirst time in his life the boldness to stake everything on the turn ofa card, and ask Kate to marry him.
Simeral had told him that John Frying Pan saw the cabin burning, andLaramie rode up to his place on the Reservation to talk with him.Failing to find him at home, Laramie left word with his wife and turnedsouth. It was then late. The trail had taken him high up in themountains and he made up his mind to ride over to the old bridge, stayfor the night, pick up the few things he had left there and take themover to Simeral's in the morning.
Night had fallen when riding in easy fashion he reached the rim of thecanyon and made his way from foothold to foothold until he came to anopen ledge with grass and water for his horse, near the abutment.Leaving him in this spot, Laramie, carrying his rifle, climbed by azig-zag footpath up a hundred feet to the shelter and rolled himself ina blanket for the night.
He woke at what he believed to be near midnight. The night was coldand he began to think about something to eat. With the aid of a candlehe found bacon cached under a crevice in a baking-powder can near hisbunk, and found some splinters of wood. These he laid for an earlybreakfast fire and wrapped himself again in his blanket. He had closedhis eyes for another nap when a sound arrested his attention; it wasthe rumbling of a small piece of rock tumbling into the canyon.
Nothing was more common than for fragments, great and small, of thesplintered canyon walls to loosen and start in the silence of thenight. As mountain trees withstand the winter winds only to fall insummer calms, so it seemed as if the masses of rock that hung poised onthe canyon rim through countless storms, chose the stillest hour of thestillest night to ride like avalanches the headlong slopes, plunge overdizzy cliffs and crash and sprawl in dying thunders from ledge to ledgeinto the river below. All these noises, big and little, were familiarto Laramie's ears. He could hear them in his sleep without losing thethread of a dream; but the echo of a single footstep would bring him upsitting.
The sound that now caught his attention had a still different effect.Listening, he lay motionless in his blanket with every faculty keyed;had a man at that moment stood before him reading his death warrant, hecould not have been more awake. The noise was slight; only a smallfragment of rock had fallen and the echoes of its journey were lostalmost at once; it was the beginning of the sound that he was thinkingof--the noise had not started right. He thought of the four-footedprowlers of the night and as a cause eliminated them one after another.He thought of his horse below--it was not where such a sound couldstart. But always slow to imagine a mystery when a reason could beassigned, Laramie, lying prone, was brought back every time to hisfirst instinctive inference. Numberless times when tramping the canyonwalls, his foot slipping before he recovered his balance had dislodgeda bit of loose rock. He knew that sound too well and it was such asound he had just heard. Behind the sound he suspected there was a man.
He tried long to reason himself out of the conviction. For an hour helay perfectly still, waiting for some further alarm. There was noneand the night was never stiller. Nor was there any haste, even if itshould prove the worst, about meeting the situation. He was caught notlike a rat in a trap but like a man in a blind canyon, with ample meansof defense and none of escape except through a gauntlet. No enemycould molest him where he lay, but he could not lie there indefinitely.And with little ammunition and scarcely any food or water, he had nomind to stand a siege.
If his enemies had actually discovered his retreat and put a watch onhim, he must in any event wait for the first peep of daylight. The onechance of escape lay down and not up, and the descent of the canyon wasnot to be made in complete darkness. A moon would have been a godsend.It would have made things easy, if such a word could be used of thesituation; but there was no moon. Acting on his premonition as if ithad been an assurance, Laramie, at the end of a long and silent vigil,rolled out of his blanket to save his life if he could. He lighted hisbreakfast fire and fried his bacon unconcernedly. He could neither berushed nor potted and if there was a touch of insolent bravado in hisseeming carelessness he was well aware that while the appetizing odorsof a good breakfast would not tantalize an enemy believing himselfmaster of the situation, it would make him believe he had taken thequarry unawares.
Below, he felt that all was safe--no one without passing him couldpossibly reach his horse.
By the time the eastern sky warned him of the coming dawn he hadcrawled to the edge of the abutment to look down and estimate hischances for dropping to the narrow ledge on which it stood footed.Then he crawled noiselessly toward the overhead break through whichKate had plunged. The sky was alive with stars. Worming himself closeto the opening, he lay for a time patiently scrutinizing the rockscommanding the abutment from above. One of these long vigilsdisclosed, he fancied, against the sky the outline of a man's hat.
To satisfy himself if it were one, Laramie picked up a chip of rock andflung it down the canyon wall. The suspicious object moved. Laramieslowly took up his rifle and leaning forward raised it to his shoulder.Against the eastern sky the man's head made a perfect target. It wasclose range. Laramie covered the hat low. The bullet should penetratethe brim just where it covered the forehead. His finger moved to pressthe trigger before he thought further. Then he hesitated.
It seemed on reflection like murder, nothing less. He did not know theman, though he was no doubt an enemy who had come either to kill him orto help kill him. And to his nat
ural repugnance to blowing off the topof an unknown man's head even in constructive self-defense, there wasthe thought of another's view of it. This might, after all, be merelya Texan acting as a lookout. It was even possible, though improbable,that it might be Barb himself. And if the man were not alone lesswould be gained by killing him.
The rifle came down from Laramie's shoulder as slowly as it had goneup. He made immediate disposition for his escape. Retreatingnoiselessly from the opening, he found his blanket, cut from it fourstrips, knotted these into a rope and creeping to the face of theabutment, lowered his rifle, ammunition belt and revolver down to thefooting some twenty feet below, where they hung in darkness. Forhimself there was nothing but to drop after his accoutrements. At onepoint the horizontal footing ledge below jutted out in a blunt tonguesomething like six feet; this tongue was where he must land; elsewherethe ledge narrowed to only a foothold for a sober man already on it.
Laramie found an old mackinaw of Hawk's, put it on over his coat, andpadding his back under it with the pieces into which he tore a quilt,strapped the mackinaw tight and returned to look over the ledge. Hethought he knew precisely where the tongue lay, but wanted a littledaylight to dispel any misgiving about letting go at a point where hemight drop two hundred feet instead of twenty.
From the abutment the depths of the canyon looked in the half lightpretty black, but its recesses hid no terrors of sentiment for Laramie.Fairly serene and stuffed in his baggy mackinaw, he lay for a fewminutes flat on his stomach peering over the edge. Far below he couldhear the rush of the river. Day was racing toward the mountain topsand diffusing its reflected light into their recesses. The rock tonguebelow outlined itself faintly in an almost impenetrable gloom. Waitingno longer, Laramie, with a careful hand-hold, let himself down over theface of the abutment and hung for an instant suspended. Loosing onehand he swung sidewise and threw back his head. The fingers of theother hand, straightened by his weight, let go.
Falling like a plummet, one of his heels smashed into the rocky graveland he struck the ledge on his back. With such instinct as the swiftdrop left him he threw himself toward the canyon wall when he landedand, shocked though he was, tried to rise.
He could not get a breath, much less move. His mind remained perfectlyclear, but the fall left him momentarily paralyzed. His efforts toregain his breath, to make himself breathe, were astonishingly futile,and he lay annoyed at his helplessness. It seemed as if minute afterminute passed. Listening, he heard sounds above. Daylight was comingfast and every ray of it meant a slenderer chance of escape.
To his relief, his lungs filled a little. Soon they were doing more.He found he could move. He turned to his side, and, beginning lifeover again, crawled on hands and knees to where his belt, revolver andrifle hung suspended. He stood up, got out of the mackinaw, adjustedhis belt and revolver, and with his rifle resting across his forearmlooked around. He was battered and had a stinging ankle, but stoodwith legs and arms at least usable. Listening, he tiptoed as fast ashe could to the narrow footpath leading into the canyon, and turning acorner of the rock wall hastened down to where he had picketed hishorse. This trail was not exposed from above. But when he reached hishorse and got stiffly into the saddle his problem was less simple.
To get out of the tremendous fissure in which he was trapped fromabove, Laramie had one trail to follow. This led for a hundred feet inan extremely sharp descent across the face of a nearly vertical canyonwall that flanked the recess where the horse had been left. This firsthundred feet of his way down to the river, so steep that it was knownas the Ladder, was all that caused Laramie any uneasiness; it wascommanded every foot of the way from the abutment above.
Making all possible haste, Laramie headed his horse stealthily for theLadder. He knew he had lost the most precious juncture of the dawn inlying paralyzed for some unexpected moments after his drop. It was achance of war and he made no complaint. Indeed, as he reached thebeginning of his trail and peered downward he realized that he neededdaylight for the perilous ride. To take it slowly would be child'splay for him but would leave him an easy target from above. To ride itfast was to invite a header for his horse and himself; one misstepwould send the horse and rider bolting into space. How far it was tothe river through this space Laramie felt little curiosity in figuring;but it could hardly have been less than two hundred and fifty feet.
There was no time for much thinking; the trail must be ridden and thesooner and faster the better. He struck his horse lightly. The horsejumped, but not very far ahead. Again Laramie used his heels and againthe frightened beast sprung as little as he could ahead. A stinginglash was the only reward for his caution. If horses think, Laramie'shorse must have imagined himself backed by a madman, and under thegoading of his rider, the beast, quivering with fear, peered at thebroken rocks below and sprang down among them. Concealment was nolonger possible.
Like a man heading into a hailstorm, Laramie crouched to the horse,dropped the reins low on the beast's neck, and, clinging close, madehimself as nearly as he could a part of the animal itself. The trailwas five to six feet wide, but the descent was almost headlong, anddown it the horse, urged by his rider, sprang in dizzy leaps; where thefooting was worst Laramie tried to ease his frantic plunges. Strickenwith terror, the beast caught his breath in convulsive starts andbreathed in grunting snorts. Halting and bucking in jerky recoveries;leaping from foothold to foothold as if every jump were his last, andtaking on a momentum far beyond his own or his rider's control, thefrightened pony dashed recklessly ahead. It was as if a great weight,bounding on living springs, were heading to bolt at length against thesheer rock wall across the canyon.
Half the distance of the mad flight, and the worst half, was coveredwhen a rifle cracked from the top of the abutment. Laramie felt aviolent blow on his shoulder. There was no possible answer; therecould be no more speed--no possible defense; the race lay between therifle sights covering him and the four slender hoofs of the horse underhim. Ten yards more were covered and a second rifle shot crackedcrisply down the canyon walls. Laramie thought it from a second rifle;the bullet spat the wall above his head into splinters. They wereshooting high, he told himself, and only hoped they might keep tryingto pick him off the horse and let the horse's legs alone. None knewbetter than he exactly what was taking place above; the quick alarm,the fast-moving target in the gloomy canyon; the haste to get the feetset, the rifle to the shoulder, the sights lined, the moving targetfollowed, the trigger pressed.
It was a madman's flight. As one or other of the rifles cracked athim, Laramie threw himself back in the saddle. With his hat in hishand, his arm shot straight up, and pointing toward the abutment heyelled a defiant laugh at his enemies. In an instant the hat wasknocked from his fingers by a bullet; but the springing legs under himwere left untouched. The trick for the rider now was, even should heescape the bullets, to check the flight of the horse before both shotover the foot of the Ladder into the depths. Laramie threw his weightlow on the horse's side next the canyon wall and spoke soothingly intohis ear as his arms circled the heaving neck.
And on the rim of the precipice, high above, two active men, bendingevery nerve and muscle to their effort, stood with repeating rifleslaid against their cheeks, pumping and firing at the figure plunginginto the depths below.