UNSEEN ATTACKERS
Just before he got to the trees, Fielding felt a tug on the rope and heard the blast of a rifle. The roan horse went down and jerked the bay sideways, and a second shot crashed.
Fielding jerked the dally loose and threw the rope aside, then kicked the bay into a pounding run until he made it to the trees. He pulled the horse to a quick halt and yanked his rifle from the scabbard. He placed the second shot as coming from across the opening, where pine trees grew in a slope of jumbled rocks.
He searched the hillside, which lay in shade, and when he saw movement he got the object in his sights and fired. It moved again, a man crouched and running uphill. He picked up the target, got a bead on it again, and squeezed the trigger.
The gunshot split the evening, and then the wallop of a bullet hitting a body came echoing back. A man’s cry lifted in the air.
Fielding waited. He thought he heard a second voice, the rattle of rocks, a scuffling sound . . .
Other Leisure books by John D. Nesbitt:
NOT A RUSTLER
STRANGER IN THUNDER BASIN
TROUBLE AT THE REDSTONE
DEATH AT DARK WATER
RAVEN SPRINGS
LONESOME RANGE
RANCHO ALEGRE
WEST OF ROCK RIVER
RED WIND CROSSING
BLACK HAT BUTTE
FOR THE NORDEN BOYS
MAN FROM WOLF RIVER
NORTH OF CHEYENNE
COYOTE TRAIL
WILD ROSE OF RUBY CANYON
BLACK DIAMOND RENDEZVOUS
ONE-EYED COWBOY WILD
John D.
Nesbitt
GATHER MY
HORSES
For Michael Kearns, long-time friend of the high trails.
Copyright © 2011 by John D. Nesbitt
Chapter One
As he came around a curve in the trail, swaying with the motion of his horse, Tom Fielding caught a view of the valley below the rim. Up here on top, the earth was ocher-colored, dotted with sparse vegetation and small rocks. Past the edge, the valley stretched out in dark hues of waving green. Across the sea of grass, the hills to the west rose in lighter tones, still green, while beyond them in the distance, the Laramie Mountains stood in shades of bluish gray and light purple, with patches of darkest green. Another turn in the trail closed off most of the view as the edge of the rim slanted upward. A minute later, the trail turned to the left again and began its descent, a gentle slope that led into an opening in the wall. Thirty yards ahead, the trail fell away in sharper decline, down through a gash in the bluffs. Fielding drew his horse to a stop and paused on the verge before going down.
He turned in the saddle and looked back as the first four packhorses came to a stop. The kid Mahoney had come to a halt as well, and the three pack animals he was leading bunched up behind him. Fielding motioned with his head toward the trail through the gap, and Mahoney nodded.
After a moment’s breather, Fielding nudged his saddle horse and started forward. The trail itself was wide enough for wagon travel, but late spring rains had washed trenches in the road, and the horses had to pick their feet up and set them down with care as they shifted and sidestepped. By habit, Fielding held the lead rope at his hip.
Though the ruts called for careful navigation, Fielding didn’t mind them. Until someone could get a team and a scraper up here, the only way to get by was on horseback, so a bit of business had come his way, packing supplies to a couple of ranches and farms up on the flats. It had been an easy trip, with not a single tree or rock for a horse to rub a pack against, and the kid Mahoney had gotten an introduction into this line of work.
Fielding glanced down at the ravine on his left, a deep cut in the yellowish earth where dark green cedars grew in the bottom and back up in a couple of clefts. Then the trail straightened out and the valley came into full view.
Straight ahead lay an expanse of grassland that sloped down toward darker grass. Beyond the meadowlike area, Chugwater Creek marked its course with a procession of trees, left to right, as the creek flowed northward to the Laramie River. Past the creek a half mile or so lay the town of Umber, which at this distance looked like three and a half rows of packing crates set along the railroad. The tracks themselves caught a shine from the afternoon sun as they ran parallel to the creek, through the center of the valley.
Fielding’s gaze traveled from the middle distance out to the edge and around. Off to the south, two tree lines showed where Hunter Creek flowed into Chugwater Creek. Between those two protecting groves of cottonwoods would lie the headquarters of the Buchanan Ranch. Straight ahead across the valley, where the hills began to lift, he could pick out Bill Selby’s place marked by a pale clump of trees. Farther back in the hills and up a ways, Andrew Roe’s buildings squatted in a corner made by two hills. Even farther and to the left, in a place he could not see from here, would be Richard Lodge’s hardscrabble claim that he called the Magpie. Then swinging his view around to the right and following the treetop course of Chugwater Creek about five miles north, Fielding picked out the site of J. P. Cronin’s ranch, the Argyle.
These were his reference points as he took in the valley as a whole—the creek, the town, the railroad, and the ranches big and little in the country that spread out all around. Less distinct for him was a spot on Antelope Creek, tucked away on the other side of the far line of hills. It wasn’t much as he pictured it, just a set of pole corrals, a large spreading cottonwood, a level area where he pitched his camp, and a grassy creek bottom where he turned out his horses. He couldn’t rightly call it his because it was on the public domain, with no fences or boundaries to separate it from the rest of the open range; but it was his base, the place he left and returned to when he went on pack trips.
Fielding brought his attention back to the trail as his weight shifted with the horse. He had come almost to the bottom of the steep part, and the ravine on his left opened up like the mouth of a small canyon. On the far edge stood a thicket of chokecherry bushes, leafed out and grazed across the bottom like so many trees in cow country. The earth all around the thicket, except on the uphill side, was worn bare where cattle took to the shade.
Behind him he could hear the horses coming down the last part of the grade, thirty-some hooves swishing in the soft earth, nicking on stones, as the horses heaved and snorted. Fielding looked back and appreciated the procession, rocking and jostling, sometimes lurching as a hoof slipped, but orderly all the same.
The kid Mahoney rode easy, the reins in his left hand and the lead rope in his right. The young man had reddish brown hair and a light, freckled complexion, and the upturned brim of his hat did not keep the sun off his face as he turned in the saddle and gazed off to the northwest.