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.
The prisoner said, “If you’d take these cuffs off, I could help.”
“You want to help, take the horse upslope as far as you can and tie him to something, then come back.”
“Won’t he be exposed up there?”
“Sure. Out of range, too. They’ll spot him, but so what? They’ll know we’re here. Might save me a round if they grow cautious before I have to waste good lead just funning.”
“Won’t they know, once you miss a couple of times, that you don’t mean to kill nobody?”
“Don’t aim to miss by all that much, and if it comes down to real hard fighting I’ve been known to draw blood, in my time.”
The prisoner led the bay away, and by the time he returned, Longarm had erected a breast-high wall of slabs.
He said, “look around for some sticks, dry grass and such. You can work as well with your hands
