CHAPTER III.
Strong rode on, his face like flint. The raiders had a long start, but he did not expect to overtake them, to even let them know he was on their trail.
One-handed as he was they might well overcome him. It was practically a certainty that they would. He wanted to make sure. If he could follow their sign to Doom Cañon then all his belief would crystallize into proof that could not be ignored. He had still to show that Lobo was the director of the raid but he let that rest. The man who had killed Bramley as he lay held under his horse—he would kill him as surely as the sun was in the heavens. And he meant to bring the rest to justice, whether the law had anything to do with it or not.
He sensed the temper of the association. Bramley had been a favorite among the cattlemen. If he could bring them proof that the raiders were from Doom Cañon, something might be done. He would organize them, clean out the foul brood. Lobo he held responsible and he hoped to see him through powder smoke, after he had killed the other. Perhaps they might invoke the law, stir up public sentiment, purge the Three Corners. He did not care what the method, how far-reaching the result. He was going to see that the murderers of his partner chewed lead of his sending. That was immutable.
But it hung upon his trailing them. And that seemed simple enough to Strong. Others might be stopped by rim rock and malpais but he was not. There was always something to be found if a man was keen enough.
Back of his mind was the fixed thought that Lobo was the man ultimately responsible. The one who had killed Bramley must suffer but it might as well have been any of the others. They had gone out under orders—from Lobo. Those orders had been to ambush, surprise and kill—from Lobo.
From now on his life held but the one inflexible purpose—to connect the raid with Doom Cañon and then to turn their own tactics upon the scoundrels who lived there. They were cowards. None but a coward at heart would have planned such a thing, none but cowards would have carried it out—none but cowards would have quit as they did the moment the shooting proved too fast for them. They had killed Bramley, wounded Strong. The vaqueros charged but they would not have stood against similar tactics.
If Lobo and his men were ever up against a strong combination, Strong believed that they would quit.
They were a power yet. He would have to go shrewdly about his self-appointed task. There had always been a stamp of recklessness on Strong's features, just as his talk usually was savored with a jest, often with a light-hearted song. All that was changed. It was as if his face had been dipped in acid. It had aged and lined. The sparkle had gone out of his eyes and been replaced by a steady light, a spot that any one would know presaged steady, grim purpose. Bitterness flooded out all his light-heartedness, bitterness and sorrow for the man he had learned to love in their short acquaintance, as only men can love, deeper than friendship, enduring even after death.
The roan noticed the difference. Strong's voice was crisp and cold and stern. He did not talk to his mount as he usually did when they were alone, but rode silent save for a few syllables of command.
The trail was as easy to follow at first for Strong as the green line on a subway passage to a commuter. It did not make directly toward the main pass between the two ranges, Huecos and Cornudas, but that did not trouble him. Sooner or later it would swerve that way.
To the west was the Rio Grande, beyond the Huecos, with El Paso not far away. But he did not believe they were bound for El Paso. The eastern spurs of the Huecos and mounting mesa-lands toward which he was rapidly advancing, eating up mile after mile on a trot, had plenty of rim rock over which they could travel and which would leave no hoof trace. Then he would have to go more slowly. After dark it was probable that he would have to make a dry camp and wait till daylight to pick up the almost invisible sign.
He was too late to try and cut in ahead of them and wait for them as they entered Doom Cañon. While such procedure might not sufficiently establish proof, it would inevitably lead to a fight. He knew by now that there were always lookouts at the mouth of the cañon, that it was guarded a little way inside its mouth by a fence too heavy for wire cutters to demolish, moored in sockets in the solid rock in which anchors were fixed in molten lead, the fence entered by a securely padlocked gate. The lookouts could command approach by day, but by night he could not be sure of his men. And he meant to be sure.
The weather was fair. It showed no indications of anything that would disturb the sign he would be looking for.
At noon he watered the roan, gave it a chance to crop sweet grass in the little mountain stream and managed, despite his arm, to cut some for its later meal. Then he redressed the wound. It had reddened a little and swollen and it hurt prodigiously as he exposed it to the blistering sun before he plunged it and held it in the ice-cold water, plastered it with chewed tobacco at entrance and exit of the bullet and bound it up again. In a pinch he could use that arm. Maria was a marvel at simples—poor Bramley had told him—she had herbal ointments that would swiftly heal a wound. His scuffed rib had stuck to his shirt but he ignored that.
The trail told him several things. The horse the cocinero had hit bled badly and went dead lame. They caught another, probably the mount of the leader or the first man Strong had got in the draw, and they had killed the wounded one. It was a buckskin with a dozen brands on its hide. Small proof there and a lot of delay and trouble to skin and take along the hide, Strong decided. They had either taken the saddle or had buried it. But saddles, unless their owners' names were carved or stamped in them were not always good, evidence.
He thought and considered wisely, coldly, as he rode. There would be indignation over Bramley's death which would inevitably die down. The ranchers were all short-handed, overworked. Indisputable evidence would have to be submitted to them and they would have to be worked on personally before they would undertake the hazardous job of cleaning up Lobo and his men, with most of the local population against them. Some of them were slow to action, cautious, suspicious, hard to wean from their own affairs to enter others that might be far from profitable to them personally. They would even, some of them, wonder whether Strong did not color things to back his plea.
The vaqueros—Maria or no Maria—would never go beyond their timid denials. It was not an easy task to which he had set himself, after all. But he had years to work it out in and he must be careful not to limit that time by rashness. With him dead, no one would avenge Bramley, lying there stiffening under his cairn, unbathed, his clothes glued with his blood, the poncho about him all that there was between him and the dirt while the coyotes sniffed overhead and scratched until their pads were raw in their endeavor to dig down. They couldn't do that. He had made the pile too heavy.
He came across a place where the raiders, taking each at first his own line, had come together, had halted, perhaps discussed going back. It would not be the easiest thing, Strong imagined, for them to return to Doom Cañon with news of failure. With three dead and another hurt, Lobo would not be likely to accord them too welcome a reception though their losses were their best excuse. And even Lobo could not go too far with men who might give out the mysteries of why they lived in that seemingly uninhabitable place, why they fenced it off and how they got the gold they spent so freely.
So they seemed to have argued and gone on. Their horses had cropped some grass, had been watered. One man had lain down and there was trace of blood there on the grass. It was the one he had shot in the shoulder as he was going out of the draw, Strong reflected with hard satisfaction. The jolting of his galloping pony kept the wound bleeding. If he dropped behind he might give him an inquisition that would yield results. He was in no humor to spare such a captive.
That luck was not with him. Before sunset he hit the malpais and, from then on, he had to slow down. He had to find some indisputable sign, since the rock showed scant trace, though here and there he found a weathered fragment that had scaled off under the shod hoofs. It was all ancient lava here and even Strong, save by deduction, could not be sure how freshly it had been broken. But there were other things, his own judgment of the way horsemen would follow contours—a burned end of a match, the stub end of a cigarette.
Once, after he had cast about for almost half an hour, with the sun sinking fast toward the Huecos peaks, he picked up sign by finding a few grains of tobacco that had been spilled or wind-blown from a half-rolled cigarette or open bag. That was the first time he was actually bothered about the trail. It had not followed the natural path that would have been chosen over that terrane by experienced riders or by horses left loose-reined.
He would himself have allowed his roan to pick its own footing. Why they should choose a defile between the spurs instead of a better trail direct to the pass puzzled him. He was sure now that they did not intend to go west to El Paso. They had gone well beyond any pass and the saw-toothed divide that now lay on his left, sharply outlined in rich indigo against the golden sunset, could not be negotiated either afoot or in the saddle. He felt sure, by his acquired mountain knowledge, that the trough in which he had found the tobacco would not long continue.
Ahead was the jumbled breakdown of the great mesa at the end of the Huecos Range, a great jutting from the main mass of the mountain chain. To the north of this Doom Cañon opened. Its southern extremity—he could see it clearly enough in the rare atmosphere though he knew it was at least twenty miles away, was a series of high cliffs and shallow terraces towering up in pyramidal fashion.
Nor could he be sure whether this tobacco had not been spilled by the wounded man who had separated from his companions, or perhaps been left behind by them and bidden to take a roundabout way for precaution's sake, since he could no longer keep up their pace.
He cast back to the last sign he had cut, found it and resigned himself to make the camp he had expected. He gave the roan the grass he had cut for it and most of the contents of his canteen, using his punched-in sombrero crown as a bucket. For himself he munched some cold soda biscuits he had taken from the wagon and finished the water. He could have done with a good jolt of whisky, he told himself, as he pulled out an ancient pipe—better to smoke after dark without a fire than cigarettes—filled it and puffed away, the roan daintily finishing its grass and resignedly making the most of it.
Strong was stiff and sore and his arm throbbed painfully but he did not feel like sleep though he needed it. There was nothing but rock in the defile and the finding of a comfortable bed was impossible. He grudged the hours until daylight. At last, inaction becoming unbearable, he decided to try and find a way to a ledge he had noticed before it became dark.
The starlight was bright enough to help him and he went carefully, coming out at last on a considerable eminence, hoping to see the light of a fire that would assure him he was on the right track. One wounded man in a country where wood was as scarce as this one, where it would have to be climbed for, would not have bothered to build a fire so close to home. But there was no spark and he made his way back again to where the roan nickered softly in welcome and reproach at having been left alone.
What ease he could find on the inhospitable floor he exploited though it was very cold and he had no covering but the damp saddle blanket. The chill got into his arm and it pulsed like a toothache. He got some sleep, waking by pressure on his wound, and then he saw the sky beginning to gray and saddled up, riding on again to where he had found the tobacco grains.
The defile broke up into a maze of ravines. They forked like the sticks of a fan.
He searched the one that seemed to turn back toward the pass, more and more fearful that the jumble of lava hills he was now among was impenetrable ahead, as far as leading to any definite spot was concerned. It was an ancient flow, weathered down by the ages, split and crevassed by more recent upheaval, a jumble of blind entries. It might have been traversed by the shortest route by some one initiated into its eccentricities—but to what end, Strong asked himself. He had ridden to the south of the mesa with Bramley after some strays and he felt sure that it all led into the tumbled breakdown of that table-land.
He drew blank in the first ravine and in two more. Then he found the ashes of an old fire that had been wind-whirled into a crevice with some charred fragments—those and a small brass button, no larger than a medium-sized bead. He held it, frowning, for he had never seen a button like that before. It looked like a woman's article. Perhaps it was a keepsake or a trophy lost from a man's pocket, pulled out with a handkerchief. He could make nothing of it. It was tarnished and he believed it had been there for a long time.
He rode ahead to come to other forking ways that opened up and delayed him. The sun beat down, and he got feverish for lack of water, faint for lack of nourishment, while the roan plodded on between the heat-reflecting rocks wearily. It was definitely established, unless some passage suddenly appeared leading to the north and east, that the raiders were not making for the pass at all. There must be some other twisting way they knew. There had to be. Men and horses had passed here, not once, but often.
As he gradually worked out of the lava hills into others that were not so flinty, where cactus grew occasionally, he found, close to the only practical trail, horsehairs caught in the spiny growth where the ponies had flicked their tails. And these were not all from the same horses, but were of various colors.
He had followed the trail truly enough. They were a long way ahead of him now but the mesa was looming up, and around the foot of it a creek came out of the cliff, tumbling down in a streaming cascade and then running in a ravine that had for its northern wall the mesa itself, cut through the breakdown or perhaps merely following the easiest outlet through an earthquake split that had torn loose the original southern face of the mesa.
In that ravine he and Bramley had found their strays. On the mesa side there was no footing but, on the closest bank, there was some soil, some grass and a narrow beach of pebbles. They would have to leave their sign there and—if the trail led down to it, as it must—there was the explanation of how they could get round to Doom Cañon without going through the pass.
They figured, even if they were not immediately followed, that it was no use to leave plain sign along the obvious route that might link them up with the cañon. Probably they were following out Lobo's orders. It was simple enough, now that he had shuttled his way through the tumbled hills.
And, at last, he found himself riding down toward the creek over a precipitous but practical route. He found more match ends, the torn-off edge of a brown cigarette paper. He was nearing the goal and he forgot his pain and weakness. Here was water for him and the thirsty roan with grass for the game pony. And the sign could no longer be covered, so he had to ride with his eyes on the ground continually.
The roan drinking carefully, wise enough to know how much to take of that icy flow. It was welcome to Strong. His bandage was dry as an old bone and he found a pool and lay down, letting the water gurgle against his inflamed arm after he had contented his parched throat.
The gap through which he had descended to the ravine was higher up than he and Bramley had come after the cattle and, even from a short distance, no one would have suspected any such exit. Even when one faced it, it did not look practical. At the end of the gorge the cascade streamed down the closing cliff like an old man's wispy beard and a cool breeze came down the ravine. The roan cropped eagerly at the scanty grass. There was driftwood that must have been brought down from the heights and there were storm-water marks at various elevations.
There was sign in plenty, hoofmarks in the shingle on the margin of the water where the horses had entered, probably to drink after the thirsty trip. Displaced pebbles and broken turf were there also. But the riders seemed never to have come out again. He had come to the end of the trail. And it did not lead to Doom Cañon.
It took him a long time to come to that conclusion but there seemed no other. They could not have ridden downstream to skirt the mesa to Doom Cañon for it was blocked here and there by great boulders, fallen masses from the cliffs above, by stretches of rapids and, in one place, by a cataract with a deep pool below it which they could never have negotiated. The beach itself showed no sign. He waded across the hardly fordable creek to the cliff opposite the hoofmarks and found no landing place, only a vertical wall.
The last of the light came by the time he had searched all the beach that ended completely a short way above the last of the sign. He rode down toward the pass again in the twilight, just enough of it left for him to see that the herd had not yet passed, but he decided not to wait for it. He needed food and a bed. The disappointment had brought back his fever and a temperature was mounting, so he began to get lightheaded, to ask himself whether he had not misread the sign after all?
It was after midnight when he reached the Bar B. Bramley's dog rushed out in impetuous alarm that changed to greeting and changed again to a howl. Strong turned the roan into the corral, gave it hay and a measure of grain—for he had ridden slowly—and bent slow and weary steps toward the house.
Bramley's death was heavy on him. Perhaps, he told himself, if he had not gone into the draw it might have been avoided. His vitality was low. A light suddenly showed and Maria appeared at the door. The dog was howling again.
“Señor,” she said in her broken English, “there is trouble. Perro has howl all last night and all day he lie an' watch—watch weeth head on paws. This night he howl some more. Where is Señor Bramley? You do not speak—an' you are wounded! Where is he? He is dead?”
Strong nodded, started to enter and staggered against the wall. The stout and sturdy old woman caught at him, steadied him.
“Lobo has done this thing. I say yes. Señor, you are seek. Maria weel make you well an' then we weel avenge. You do not know what Señor Bramley do for Maria. Some day I weel tell you that. Now, I look at that wound! An' I feex you something to eat.”