The light began to fade again as they rode down into the clouds beyond the pass. The top of the storm was only cold and damp, but they were back in rain before they rode under man-sized timber again. The prisoner asked, “When are we going to make camp?” and Longarm shot back, “We made it, over on the other side.”
“You aim to just keep riding, into the night as she falls?”
“Nope. We’ll rest the critters, along about midnight. If it’s still raining, we’ll build a fire. If it ain’t, we won’t.”
“Gawd, you’re going to kill me and the horses the way you’re pushing us!”
“Ain’t worried about you. The critters and me know how hard we can push.”
“Listen, you said by now we don’t have more’n a third or so of the bunch from Crooked Lance trailing us.”
“Maybe less. Day or so on a cold, wet trail can take the first flush off the enthusiasm. More’n one will have given up by now, I suspicion.”
“We’ve passed a dozen good places to make a stand. I mean, that Winchester of yours might discourage anybody.”
“You want me to bushwhack fellow peace officers?”
“Why not? They’re out to kill us, ain’t they?”
“That’s their worry. It wouldn’t be neighborly of me to blow holes in anybody wearing a badge. And I don’t want to hurt any of them fool cowhands either, if it can be helped.”
“Longarm, these fool horses ain’t about to carry us no four hundred miles in country like this!”
“I know. It gets even rougher where we’re headed.”
CHAPTER 17
The Green River is born from countless streams in the Uinta Range, a cross-grained spur of the Rockies, rubbing its spine against the sky near where Wyoming, Utah and Colorado come together on the map. As Longarm had thought before, those lines were put there on the map by government men who’d never seen the country and wouldn’t have liked it much if they had.
The Green makes a big bend into Colorado in its upper reaches, then turns toward the junction with the brawling Colorado River near the southern border of Utah. To get there, the Green runs through canyonlands unfit for most Indians to consider as a home. The Denver & Rio Grande’s western division crossed the Green halfway to Arizona’s Navajo lands at a small settlement called, naturally, Green River. The lack of imagination implied by the name was the simple result of not having to name any other towns to the north or south in Longarm’s day.
They didn’t follow the river when they reached it. For one thing, the cliffs came right down to the boiling rapids along many a stretch. For another, Longarm knew the men trailing him might expect him to try this. So he led his prisoner the shorter way, across the big bend. The shorter way was not any easier; the route took them through a maze of canyons where the floors were choked with brush and the steep, ugly slopes of eroded shale smelled like hot road tar where the sun beat down on it. They’d been riding for three full days by now and Longarm figured they were nearly a hundred miles from Crooked Lance. Anyone who was still trailing them wanted pretty badly to have the prisoner back.
It was a hot and dusty afternoon when they hauled over another pass, and looking back, spied dust in the saddle of a shale ridge they’d crossed several hours before.
Longarm tugged the lead and muttered, “That Mountie’s damn good,” as he started them down the far side. Captain Walthers’s big walker had proven a disappointment to him on the trail. The army man had chosen it for show and comfort, not for serious riding over rough country, and while the bay he’d gotten from the remount section was still holding up, the walker under him was heaving badly and walking with its head down.
The prisoner called out, “I might have seen a dot of red back there. That’d be the Mountie’s jacket, right?”
“Yeah. I saw it, too. Watch yourself, and if that bay starts to slide out from under you, try to fall on the high side. shale is treacherous as hell.”
“Smells awful, too! What in thunder is it?”
“Oil shale. Whole country’s made out of it. gets slippery when the heat boils the oil out of the rock.”
As if to prove his point, the walker he was riding suddenly shot out from under him and forward, down the slope. Longarm cursed, tried to steady his mount with the reins, and seeing that it was no use, rolled out of the saddle as the screaming horse slid halfway down the mountain.
Longarm landed on one hip and shoulder, rolled to his feet, and bounced a few yards on his heels, before he caught a juniper bush and came to a standing stop. He looked quickly back and saw that the bay had stopped safely with the prisoner still aboard. He yelled, “Stay put!” and started down the slope of sharp, black shale in the dusty wake of his fallen mount.
The walker was trying to struggle to its feet at the bottom of the rise, screaming in dumb terror and pain. Longarm could see it hadn’t broken any bones. It had simply gutted itself on the sharp rocks after sliding a full two hundred yards down the trail!
He drew his.44 as he approached the dreadfully injured gelding with soothing words. The animal got halfway to its feet, its forelegs out in front of it and its rump high, as its bloody intestines writhed over the cruel, sun-baked surface. Then Longarm fired, twice, when he saw the first round hadn’t completely shattered the poor brute’s brain.
Swearing blackly, he stepped over to the quivering carcass and got his Winchester and other possessions free, glad it was the captain’s saddle he didn’t have to mess with cleaning. He put the rifle and supplies on a rock and walked up to where the prisoner watched with a silly grin on his face.
Longarm said, “It ain’t funny. Guess who gets to walk?”
“Hell, I don’t aim to stay up here like this with the ground under hoof greased so funny!”
Longarm helped him down and led both him and the bay to where he’d piled the other things. As he lashed everything worth carrying to the surviving mount’s saddle, the prisoner asked, “You figure we got enough of a lead on them other fellers, with one pony betwixt us?”
“No. Riding double or walking, we ain’t got till sunset before they make rifle range on us.”
“You don’t mean to leave me, do you?”
“Not hardly. Just keep walking.”
“Listen, Longarm, if you was to turn me loose afoot I’d be willing to take my chances. I could cover my boot prints, I reckon, if you just rode on, leaving ‘em a few horseshoe marks and a turd or two on the trail.
“Didn’t carry you all this way to lose you, Younger. You see that half-bowl in the cliffs across the creek we’re headed down to?”
“Sure. It looks to be a blind alley, though. A rifleman could doubtless make a good stand in there, but the walls behind him would be sheer.”
“I know. We’ll dig in there, behind such rocks as we’ll have time to fort up in front of us. ‘Bout the time they make it to the dead horse, I’ll spook ‘em with a few rifle rounds and they’ll fan out every wich way, diving for cover. By then it’ll be getting dark.”
“What’s to stop ‘em from working around behind us, up on the rim rocks?”
“You want to climb a shale oil cliff in the dark? They won’t have us circled tight before, oh, a couple of hours after sunup.”
He led the handcuffed man across the ankle-deep creek and up the talus slope beyond to the amphitheater some ancient disaster had carved from the cliff face. He sat the prisoner down beside the tired bay he’d tethered to a bush and proceeded to pile slabs of shale between them and the valley they faced. The dead walker was a chestnut blob across the way. It was just at the range Longarm was sure he could handle. Any man who said he knew where a bullet was going once it got past three-hundred yards was a liar.