creek running along there. I take it we'd better reach for the creek and sort of take account of things.'
'Might be Medano Creek,' Cap said.
'What's that amount to?'
'If it's Medano, we can foller it up and over the divide. I figure it will bring us out back in the hills from Buzzard Roost.'
Once more in the saddle, I led off down the canyon, and soon enough we were under the cottonwoods and willows, with a trickle of water at our feet. There was a little rain falling by then, and lightning playing tag amongst the peaks.
Ladder seemed to be in bad shape. He was looking mighty peaked. He'd lost a sight of blood, and that crawling and sliding hadn't done him any good.
The place we'd come to had six-foot banks, and there was a kind of S bend in the stream that gave us the shelter of banks on all sides. Just beyond were the dunes. From a high point on the bank we could see where the creek came down out of the Sangre de Cris-tos.
'We might as well face up to it,' Galloway said. 'We're backed up against death. Those boys are downstream of us and they're up on the mountain, and they surely count us to be dead before nightfall.'
'One of them doesn't. I left him stretched out up yonder. This here's his gun belt.'
'One less to carry a rifle against us,' Moss said. He leaned back against the bank. 'Gol durn it. I ain't as young as I used to be. This scramblin' around over mountains ain't what I'm trimmed for. I'm a horse-and-saddle man myself.'
'I'd walk if I could get out of here,' Galloway said.
Costello was saying nothing. He was just lying yonder looking all played out. He was no youngster, and he'd been mistreated by the Fetchens. So we had a wounded man and one in no shape to go through much of this traveling, and we were a whole mountain away from home.
That Medano Creek might be the way, but I didn't like the look of it. It opened up too wide by far for safety.
'Make some coffee, somebody,' I suggested. 'They know already where we are.'
Moss dug into his war-bag for the coffee and I poked around, picking up brush and bark to build us a fire. It took no time at all to have water boiling and the smell of coffee in the air. We had a snug enough place for the moment, with some shelter from gunfire, and water as we needed it.
Galloway and Cap had gone to work to rig a lean-to shelter for Ladder Walker.
There were willow branches leaning out from the bank and they wove other branches among them until they had the willows leaning down and making a kind of roof for those who would lie down. Where the creek curved around there were two or three big old cotton-woods and we bunched the horses there.
We sat around, shoulders bent against the rain, gulping hot coffee and trying to figure what we were going to do.
The Fetchens had us bunched for the kill. They were good mountain fighters, and they had herded us right into a corner. Maybe we could ride up Medano Creek and get clean away, but it looked too inviting to me. It would be a death trap if they waited for us up there where the cliffs grew high.
If we got out of this alive we'd have to be lucky. We'd have to be hung with four-leaf clovers - and I couldn't see any clover around here.
Chapter 15
The worst of it was, we weren't getting much of a look at those boys. They were playing it safe, slipping about in the trees and brush as slick as Comanches.
'Galloway,' I said, 'I'm getting sort of peevish. Seems to me we've let those boys have at us about long enough. A time comes when a man just can't side-step a fight no longer. We've waited for them to bring it to us, and they've done no such thing, so I figure it's up to you and me to take it to them.'
'You give me time for another cup of coffee,' Galloway said, 'and I'll come along with you.'
Cap Rountree looked at us thoughtfully. 'What you expect us to do ... mildew?'
Me, I just grinned at him. 'Cap, I know you're an old he coon from the high-up hills, but the fewer we have out there the better. You boys can stay right here. They'll be expecting us to move on pretty quick, and they'll be settled down waiting for it. Well, me and Galloway figure to stir them up a mite.
'Anyway,' I went on, 'Ladder's in no shape to travel more'n he's going to have to, getting out of here. Costello's in pretty bad shape, too. I figure you and Moss can hold this place if they try to attack you, which I doubt they will.'
Galloway and me, we picked up our rifles and just sort of filtered back into the brush. 'You thinking the same thing I am?' I said.
'Their horses?'
'Uh-huh. If we set them afoot we've got a free ride ... after we get through that valley yonder.'
We'd been timber-raised, like most Tennessee mountain boys, so when we left our horses we swapped our boots for moccasins, which we always carried in our saddlebags.
The weather was clouded up again and it was likely to rain at any moment. We found no sign of the Fetchens until I came upon a corn-shuck cigarette lying on the moss near the butt end of a fallen tree. It was dry, so it must have been dropped since the last shower. After scouting around we found tracks, and then we worked our way up the mountain, moving all the quieter because of the rain-soaked ground.
Suddenly, high up on the mountain, there was a shot.
A voice spoke so close we both jumped in our skins. 'Now what the hell was that?'
Galloway and me froze where we stood. The speaker couldn't be much more than twenty feet off from us.
'Do you s'pose one of them slipped out?' another man said.
'Naw! That's gotta be somebody else. Huntin', maybe.'
'In this rain?'
We eased up a step, then another. In a sheltered place in the lee of a rock stood two of the Fetchen outfit. I knew neither one of them by name, but I had seen them both before. In front of them was a grassy slope that fell gradually away for about fifty feet, then dropped off sharply. The two stood there, their rifles leaning against the rock wall, well to one side, and out of the wet. They were sheltered by the overhang, but could watch a good distance up and down the canyon. One man was rolling a cigarette, the other had a half-eaten sandwich in his hand.
Taking a long step forward, rifle leveled, I turned squarely around to face them. Galloway stepped up beside me, but several feet to my right. One of them noticed some shadow of movement or heard some sound and started to turn his head.
'Just you all hold it right where you stand,' I said. 'We got itchy fingers, and we don't mind burying a couple of you if need be.'
Neither of them was in shape to reach for a gun fast, and they stood there looking mighty foolish. 'Go up to 'em, Galloway,' I said, 'and take their hardware. No use tempting these boys into error.'
Galloway went around behind them, careful to keep from getting between my rifle and them. He slipped their guns from the holsters, and gathered their rifles. Then we backed them into the full shelter of the slight overhang and tied them hand and foot.
'You boys set quiet now. If any of the Fetchens are alive when this is over, they can come and turn you loose. But if we should happen to see you again, and not tied - why, we'd just naturally have to go to shootin'.'
'If I ever see you two again,' one of them said, 'I'll be shootin' some my own self!'
So we left them there, scouted around, found their horses, and turned them loose. Then we went on up the mountain, careful-like. It wasn't going to be that easy again, and we knew it.
Suddenly, from up the mountain there came another rifle shot, and then a scream of mortal agony. And then there was silence.
'What's going on up there, Flagan?' Galloway said. 'We got somebody on our side we don't know
