Starlight Riders Boxed-Set 50 Western Classics in One Edition. Ernest Haycox

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      CHAPTER XI

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      In the rolling mists that preceded dawn, Clint Charter-house woke from his short sleep and moved on to the east. Desert cold cut through his clothes, the stars glimmered frostily and the slim silver crescent of the moon began to fade slowly from the sky. Visibility increased by slow degrees as be traveled—still keeping to the arroyos that ran into one another all the way toward Dead Man's Range.

      The range itself was a darkling, irregular bulk in the foreground, but Clint paid it scant attention; more immediately interesting was the nearing outline of Fort Carson, a deserted and empty relic of the Indian fighting days. It made a very good tenement for the lawless band troubling Casabella. Clint half suspected Curly's men to be hidden in those small frame buildings that ranked evenly all the way around a rectangular parade ground; yet he rose from the protection of the arroyo and came flanking in toward the fort for a closer view.

      This last hour of the night was a time when almost all men slept, no matter what danger confronted them and no matter what devices they might be up to; it was the lax hour, the hour of low ebb in courage and vitality. So he drifted quietly along a lane of poplar trees leading to the parade ground and stopped in the convenient gloom created by one of them.

      From his post he looked directly upon the buildings, the offset barns and sheds. To one side were the larger buildings—company barracks, he surmised—in a crumbling state of disrepair; to the other sat those smaller, neater houses meant for officers and their families. Some of these, too, were sagging at hip and eave, and their doors and porches were ripped away by passing punchers in need of wood for fire; yet other structures seemed to have been kept up. But nowhere did he see a horse, nowhere a sign of present occupancy. As a matter of self-interest he trailed his horse all about the fort and looked at it from opposite angles.

      "Deserted," he mused. "Curly figures it too exposed a place to camp. He must be hiding in the hills."

      Light was perceptibly creeping over Dead Man and filtering through the desert gloom, the fog dissipating. The world would be awake presently and hidden men again be on the watch; so Clint took up his march for the hills, reached the bench land within fifteen minutes and filed up a rocky, barren draw. At an elevation of about five hundred feet he found himself in a maze of bowls, pinnacles, rock cairns and animal trails. From his vantage point he surveyed the western flatlands rise through the fog.

      Leaving his horse in a depression, he went back to the rim and swept the scene with careful attention. Dawn suddenly surprised the world; the eastern light grew stronger and then the first shaft of the sun streamed like a golden banner over the prairie, bringing all objects into view with startling clarity; at about the same moment Clint saw two or three riders dusting out of the southwest—from the direction of Shander's.

      He rolled a cigarette contemplatively while time passed. "Bit by bit this crooked scheme coils tighter," he reflected. "Here's a fine, bright day which was meant for men to enjoy; yet if ever hunches played me right, these next twelve hours will be Casabella's worst memory for years to come. And those fellows yonder open up the ball."

      They swung on their course and pointed for Fort Carson. Three of them loping along at their ease. Clint waited stolidly as the sun began to beat upon his back and all the crisp freshness of the small hours was sucked out of the air by the burning ball of fire riding up the sky. The riders quested into the fort parade ground and were temporarily lost. Ten minutes later they emerged and came straight on for what Clint recognized from description to be Dead Man Range. Clint ran his eyes along the foot of the hills carefully. A main road seemed to cut directly into Dead Man Ridge a mile south of his location, and this road the three riders too, presently going around a shoulder and disappearing.

      Clint hitched up his belt and started afoot across the rough terrain. It was confusing country and a little way off he turned to identify the bowl in which his horse was hidden; then he pressed on, rising and falling with the rugged pitch. Dead Man was a naked, treeless ridge with a series of spines divided by deep depressions; thus it was Clint had only a partial view of the country immediately about him. Going to the south, he came upon a round and grassy bowl fit to hold fifteen or twenty head of cattle compactly; skirting it, he observed the charred circle of an old campfire at the bottom.

      But he refused to go down for a closer look. Taking to a runway gouged out by winter's rain, he fell into a jog trot until warned by a blank cliff ahead that he was nearly arrived at the main pass.

      He left the runway, angled for a more rocky stretch and flattened himself full length on the ground, shoulders between a widely split stone and chin almost hooked over the rim of the pass. Some distance below and eastward the three riders had halted to confront a fourth who seemed to have made his appearance from the southward reaches of Dead Man. This was Curly, white face visible beneath the tipped hat; the others had their backs to Clint, but he thought he recognized Studd by the man's bulky torso. They were gesturing freely. The restless Curly kept cutting the air with his quirt and his horse shifted. Then all four had veered and faced a fissure leading into the pass as another man rode quickly down into view and halted them. Clint half rose and fell back with a long sigh of pure astonishment. His eyes narrowed and all his muscles tightened up.

      "Good gosh, who will it be next? I don't believe this, but it must be so."

      All five stood in a circle. The parley kept on for a quarter hour, at the end of which time the fifth man turned abruptly and disappeared whence he had emerged. Curly made a swashbuckling circle in the air with his arm and climbed a southward trail; the original three turned down the main road, backtracking for the prairie. When they rode directly beneath Clint, he recognized them all—Studd, Shander and Haggerty. As long as he had sight of them he waited, then rose and cut back for his original point of observation. At that location he rolled another cigarette and settled down to long watchfulness and grim reflection.

      "Farther I go into this mess the worse it gets. But what in hell is the reason behind all this?"

      The three had reached the fort again and were up to something. One man pulled away and galloped in a looping course toward Angels. "Must be Shander, going home," Clint reflected. "But it might be Studd or Haggerty hitting into town. Now what?"

      The crack of a shot came thinly back. A second rider turned the fort and СКАЧАТЬ