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  Ambush

  Luke Short

  Chapter I

  He had seen the smoke below an hour ago, a lifting pennant, gray against the mottled brass-bright desert. Because it came from a mesa top and not from the valley, it read to him and also to Diablito’s Apache lookouts on the mountain behind him, “A white man just passed.”

  He had gone quickly into the tunnel, and packed his saddlebag with food and with the three pokes of coarse gold dust, his summer’s work. Along with the canteen he had been saving for just this emergency, he placed it near the mouth of the tunnel. His saddle and rifle he had lugged out the tunnel mouth, and by that time the faraway smoke was dispersed by the vaulting updrafts of the late afternoon’s furnace hot air.

  Up and over the ridge behind him, his picketed horse lay in the shade of a piñon, waiting for nightfall and grazing. He had saddled him, tied him just short of the lip of the ridge, and returned for his saddlebag and canteen.

  Now, with the thick piñon screening him from the dry boulder-strewn canyon below, he was hunkered down on his heels, rifle across his lap, a tall, dirty, ragged, and unshaven man, who occasionally scratched his knee through a rent in his trousers. Remembering the smoke and its import, he thought, Whoever they sent from the post will never make it to me. Even if he does, he’ll pull the whole swarm of them down on us both.

  The edgy scolding of a jay down the stream-bed presently broke the late-afternoon silence. Softly, his glance still downstream, he turned his rifle over and levered a shell into the chamber with a big, large-knuckled hand, thinking, I wonder who I’ll see first—the messenger or the ’Pache?

  The silence came again, and was broken only minutes later, when he heard the ring of a shod hoof on a rock. His upper lip—long and thin, in a tranquil, alert face—lifted in an expression of weary disgust.

  Presently the horseman came into view, and Ward Kinsman, swearing softly, came erect from behind the piñon. In moving, he dislodged a pebble. As it rolled down the slope, the rider’s head tilted up; in the same movement he slipped out of the saddle on the far side of his horse, and, in still the same movement, his rifle came across the neck of his halted mount. Only his battered hat and a pair of frosty and faded gray eyes beneath thick roan eyebrows showed above the mane of his horse.

  Ward stepped out from behind the tree, rifle dangling from his long arm, and came down the slope in a loose-limbed, long-stepping haste. The tail of his sweat-faded shirt was out. The horseman, seeing him, put up his rifle and came around the head of his horse. Ward stopped in front of him and, after a second’s bitter pause, said, “You damned fool, Holly. You travel in open daylight and you don’t even bother to ride a barefoot horse. What does it take to scare you?”

  “I’m scared now,” Frank Holly said. He was an undersized man, shrunk with years and sun-blackened, and his cheekbones, barely visible under his short-cut ragged beard, were as cross-hatched with lines as leather. His glance barely touched Ward and shuttled to the near slope and then the far slope and then the back trail, before it settled again on Ward.

  “Why’d you come?” Ward asked.

  “Major Brierly sent me for you,” Holly said. “Wondered if you’d come back and work as guide again. Seems some trouble is shapin’ up.”

  Holly looked closely at Ward, frankly gauging his temper. It lay deep below the surface, Holly saw, but it was in the hard set of the wide mouth and the muscles of his blunt beard-stubbled jaw; it burned bright and hot in the deepset amber eyes beneath the salt-rimmed chestnut eyebrows. It was, Holly decided, a mature man’s anger, controlled, fully diluted with disgust, but holding neither hurt nor condemnation.

  So Holly asked, “How about it? Will you come?”

  “One sure thing,” Ward answered grimly, “I won’t stay here.” Without waiting longer, he turned up the slope, his long legs driving into the climb. He’d already talked too long, he knew. Chances were that Holly, if he’d pushed, was only minutes ahead of the Apache lookout who’d signaled. And a half-dozen of Diablito’s band, reading the smoke, were already on their way down to investigate, patiently setting a trap.

  He mounted his horse, and set him down the slope, and a hot resentment was in him. For a month now, he’d lived and prospected in the heart of this country, claimed by Diablito’s band, working under their noses, using the same waterholes that the band used. True, you couldn’t call it living; he hadn’t built a fire, hadn’t shot a gun, and hadn’t left even a moccasin track. He had faked enough bear tracks in this stretch of canyon for the Apaches to avoid it. His horse, unshod, had watered and grazed as any loose horse owned by the band. He had existed, hungry, thirsty, always alert, always careful—but he was alive. Up to now, he thought grimly.

  Holly was still afoot when he reined in. “Where to, Ward?”

  “I don’t know. Get going.”

  Ward turned up the dry stream-bed now, and Holly mounted and dropped in behind him. The time for decision was close, he knew. As soon as the Apache trailing Holly came to the tunnel mouth, saw the new set of tracks, and read the story, he would call in the others for the kill. They would learn his identity soon enough from the gear he’d left behind, and after that hell would pop. Any Apache hated ridicule, and the fact that an enemy had lived among them for a month would gall them. But the fact that he, their personal enemy, had been the man would infuriate them. Yet, the thought of Diablito’s rage did not amuse him now. He looked at the sun and judged there would be another two hours of daylight. He must spend that desperately, staking everything on the reprieve of darkness.

  Holly’s voice cut in on his thoughts. “Ain’t you heading right at ’em?”

  “So were you.”

  Bailey’s Peak, whose north slope they were climbing, was a vast, mashed-down cone whose base lay on New Mexico’s desert floor and whose summit was smothered with vaulting dark conifers. Between sand and pine, mile upon weary mile of waterless canyon maze leached out the mountain, giving reluctantly to altitude until, two thirds of the way up, a tougher rock took over to pinch the canyons tight and hold the soil for the trees. A city could be lost in any of a hundred canyons and the sum of the peak’s sprawling elephantine mass smothered an area the equivalent of two eastern counties. In the forest coolness near its summit was Diablito’s camp—the direction in which Ward was heading.

  He rode alertly now, watching the scattered pine on each side of him, his rifle slacked across his saddle, not liking this. The clatter of Holly’s shod horse sawed at his nerves; each time the metal rang on the rock, he imagined the sound of it carrying to infinity.

  The cracks of the distant twin gunshots behind them, when they finally came, were almost welcome. He heard Holly say softly, “Oh-oh,” and he reined sharply right, taking the slope of the canyon. Only when he was deep in the screening timber did he rein up and wait for the older man.

  Ward held up his hand for silence and turned his head. His horse swung its head around slowly, ears pivoting forward, listening. Off in the timber, above and to the right, they heard the pounding of a horse running full tilt. The sound swelled in volume, passed them, and was lost below.

  Wordlessly then, Ward wheeled his horse and headed west. Now that he had let Diablito’s men pull past him, he had gained, at the most, twenty minutes grace. With any luck, that would be enough.

  They rode hard then, for fifteen minutes, making no attempt to cover their tracks in the scattered piñon and pine timber. Only when Ward came to long stretches of surface rock did he take to them, thinking grimly, With those shoes on Holly’s horse, they won’t even have to dismount to track us.

  Later, when he paused to
blow his horse, Holly pulled alongside him. They looked at each other in hostile silence, and Holly said uneasily, “You know this country bettern’ me, Ward, but ain’t we headin’ for the Wall?”

  “That’s right,” Ward said curtly, and again put his horse in motion. Another pair of shots, far behind them, signaled the pursuit was on. In the next hour, if he could spend his advantage wisely, he would win his reprieve. For, as Holly had said, he was heading for the Wall, and once Diablito’s men were certain of that, they would be sure he was cornered.

  His course turned more westerly now, and ahead of him the timber thinned, giving way to a long reach of broken upthrust granite. The sun was directly in his face, and as he picked his tortuous way through the rocks, he was occasionally in cool shadow.

  He studied the tilt of the land then, and twice pulled off in a southerly direction, and finally, after the sun was full down, he came to the Wall.

  Here he swung out of the saddle as Holly rode up to him, and now Holly hauled up and said dryly, “It’s a long jump.”

  Some few yards behind Ward, the land fell away sheer; hundreds of feet below, the desert floor, sponging up the last light of day, lay in a vast smear of blue and gray and fawn, reaching far into Arizona.

  “Sit there,” Ward jibed. “Get an arrow in your back.”

  Holly swung down, saying, “You ever get a horse down here?”

  “Nobody has,” Ward was slipping the bridle from his horse, watching the back trail.

  “Boxed yourself, hunh?”

  “And you too,” Ward said grimly. “Now get your horse out of sight.”

  While Holly dismounted and led his horse behind one of the big granite thrusts, Ward chose his spot. It was a fairly large thicket of greasewood, and he found a stick and quickly beat the brush for snakes before he bellied down in it. Thumbing out a handful of cartridges, he laid them beside his gun and glanced over at Holly. The older man had chosen one of the granite upthrusts. Dusk was lowering now, and Ward lay still, carefully watching the back trail, considering this closely, considering behind that his own foolishness.

  He had never made a particular secret around Fort Gamble of his whereabouts; in this instance, he had even questioned old man Hance and others at the sutler’s post about Rouf’s abandoned workings. He had got little information and lots of advice to stay clear of it unless he enjoyed dying the way Rouf died at the hands of Diablito’s band. His mistake, he knew, lay in asking quesions, in publicly betraying an interest. For Holly had remembered and told Major Briefly, and now Holly was here, pulling Diablito on them. I’ll learn sometime, he thought with a fierce disgust.

  An ant crossed his hand, tickling the hair on his knuckles. He looked at it, and then lifted his glance and saw a faint movement in a branch of stunted cedar at the base of a rock beyond. He raised his rifle and shot, and saw nothing, and Holly called, “Where?”

  Ward moved to the left, not answering him, smelling the close heat and the warm oily odor of the broken greasewood. Holly shot now. Ward watched a brown figure cut between two rocks in the dusk, the figure shadowy and swift and unharmed.

  Ten more minutes, he thought quietly. They might try one rush before dark, he thought, but he doubted this. After dark, they would pull back, Apache fashion, and refuse to fight again until daylight. But they were sure of their quarry, backed against the cliff edge. Tomorrow, at first light, reinforced by more of the band, probably Diablito himself, they would attack. Ward smiled faintly, thinking of it. They’ll come like a runaway wagon, he thought.

  Darkness slowly settled down, and there was a profound quiet, so complete that Ward could hear Holly scratching through his beard at his chin. The flight of a bird overhead was audible as it sailed into the warm updraft of air from the cliff and was carried aloft. There would be no shooting now, for cartridges were too precious to waste in useless boasting.

  When it was full dark, Ward crawled out of the patch of greasewood, went over to his horse and took down his canteen and drank sparingly. He saw Holly approaching softly in the night, and he extended the canteen and said, “Easy on it.” They talked softly, out of sober respect for their trouble.

  Holly drank and returned it, and squatted on his heels while Ward hooked the canteen to his belt.

  “Got a sling on your rifle?” Ward asked then.

  “What for?”

  “You’ll need both hands where you’re going.”

  “Where am I?”

  “Down the Wall.”

  There was an onrunning silence while Holly turned this over in his mind. “You ever been down it here?”

  “Up it.”

  “There’s a difference.”

  “Any kid who ever climbed a tree could tell you that,” Ward said dryly. “Cut a sling out of your scabbard.”

  “What’s the difference between fightin’ it out up here and gettin’ caught afoot down there?”

  “One’s later than the other.”

  Holly rose and moved off toward his horse and now Ward, standing silently, cast back in his memory. He had the right place, he was sure. Long ago, before Diablito first broke from the reservation to make the Peak his hideout, Ward had prospected below and above the Wall. In its nine-mile length, there was not a trail he had not used and did not remember, for the desert floor was waterless, and his water had come from up here. Short cuts were precious then, and this trail had been his own discovery, possible to climb, impossible to descend with a water keg. He doubted if Diablito’s men knew it, but he must take the chance.

  Moving over to his horse, he removed the saddlebag. The jerky, which filled one side, he distributed in his pockets. The three pokes of dust he thoughtfully hefted, and then, untying the strings, he moved over to the closest rock and poured the contents in the crack between rock and dirt. He carelessly kicked dirt over it, knowing the Apaches would find it and leave it, since gold meant nothing to them. I’ll be back for that, he thought calmly, and then he moved back to his horse. Removing the saddle, he tied the reins to a low scrub mesquite.

  He was doing the same for Holly’s horse when the old man appeared. Holly, rifle slung across his back in a crude leather sling, watched him a moment and observed sourly, “Gift from the Army to Diablito.”

  “Not the first one.” Ward grunted, and moved quietly past him to the rim. He paused here long enough to tell Holly to stick close behind him until the trail began to pinch, after that, he would go ahead, and if all were clear, he would tap twice on the rock with his silver ring, which would mean to come ahead. Three taps meant Holly was to stay where he was.

  Ward made two false starts before he gave Holly the signal, and then the descent, agonizingly slow, began. After that, it seemed only moments to Holly before he was poised on the sheer face of the cliff, with only a scant toehold and at times no hand hold on the sun-hot rock. The blessed darkness blotted out the gulf below him, although the wind, oven-hot and ceaseless, pushed up from below in steady pressure.

  Cautiously, testing each foothold, Ward worked his way down, his mind clamped in patience. The trail crossed a stretch of scale now, that Ward could feel with his hands. Water had seeped in the cracks of the rock here and freezing, had loosened chunks of it. He crossed this stretch with utmost caution, and signaled Holly and warned him about it, and then went on, presently coming to another bay.

  When Holly was beside him, and his breathing had quieted, Ward said, “Give me your rifle, Holly.”

  Holly said nothing, only carefully slipped his carbine over his head and handed it to Ward.

  “I’m crossing over you,” Ward said. “Careful.”

  He passed close against Holly’s body and went back up the trail, and Holly listened, baffled and afraid.

  In a moment, Holly heard the sharp rasp of rock on rock, and he held his breath listening. For long, long moments there was no sound, and then from below him came the muffled clash of rock striking rock. It was not the sound of a falling body, Holly thought, and he waited. Presently, Ward appear
ed and slid past him and settled back against the wall.

  “I lost your gun,” Ward said then. “I bent the barrel, so I threw it away.”

  “Bent the barrel?”

  “I pried a chunk of that scale loose. Nobody’ll follow us.”

  Holly said thinly, “Suppose this trail peters out?”

  “That could happen,” Ward agreed.

  They were both silent a moment and then Ward asked curiously, “What kind of trouble is Brierly expecting?”

  “What?”

  “What kind of trouble is Brierly expecting?”

  “The hell with Brierly!” Holly snarled. “Let’s get down from here!”

  It was midnight when finally Ward felt the Wall slant away under his hand. He carefully tested the slope of talus on the off side of the trails, found it not too steep, and called, “Take off here, Holly.”

  Moments later he came off the slope at dead run, a shower of rock and dust chasing him, and checked his momentum deep on the flats. He waited for Holly’s descent, which was a sprawling one.

  “Sleep a while,” Ward said then. “I’ve got something to do.”

  “We better find a place to fort up.”

  “You sleep,” Ward repeated. He took a long look at the stars, then, and turned and struck out down the gentle slope toward the south in a long, loose-legged gait, silent in his moccasins.

  Two hours later, he woke Holly and said, “Time to travel,” and watched the old man come awake.

  “Find a place?” Holly asked sleepily.

  “I will,” Ward said. This time they struck out in the opposite direction he had taken before, toward the north, still following the Wall.

  It lacked half an hour of dawn when Ward, who was leading, said, “I’ll be back,” and again vanished into the night.

  Holly sat down and folded his arms across his knees and rested his forehead on his arms. He was bone-weary and shaking and hungry, and he contemplated the hours ahead of him with a gray distaste. He could see only one finish to this. No matter what sort of spot Ward chose for them in which to make their stand, the fact remained they had two canteens of water, a couple of handfuls of food, a rifle, two pistols and some ammunition, and two knives. And they were afoot.