Gunsmoke Masquerade Read online

  “You’re making a mistake, Sheriff. I’m not Kincaid,” Streak said between two mouthfuls of the stew he was wolfing. “One of Kincaid’s sidekicks gave me that letter to give to Tex if I saw him.”

  The lawman’s glance went a trifle flinty. He ignored Streak’s denial. “So you’re wanted for lettin’ off a shotgun in an express messenger’s back? It’s funny, but I was beginnin’ to sort of take to you before I read that. Right now I can’t say I do.”

  “That sure busts me all up, Sheriff.”

  Kelso’s look turned to disgust at the sarcastic rejoinder. He straightened from the wall and limped to the outside door. On second thought, he wouldn’t wait to take the empty bucket back to the restaurant. The Pride still offered its attractions, for Strosnider had thrown in a second case of bourbon free. And talking to Kincaid somehow lacked the exciting quality Kelso had anticipated. The man was nothing but a hard-bitten and cold-blooded killer, regardless of what he had seemed earlier.

  In reality, Kelso wanted to leave before the prisoner became his real self, which the lawman imagined might be a disgusting revelation. He didn’t admit it, but he was a little hurt to think he had so misjudged a man.

  Chapter Eight

  The brief dusk hadn’t quite given way to total darkness when a whisper of sound, of metal scraping on rock, sent Streak crouching into the cell’s back corner. Shortly, when the silence had run on unbroken a few seconds, he stood flattened to the wall and started easing toward the window, wary at remembering that bushwhack through a jail window is no unheard-of thing. At the moment he saw a man’s head and shoulders vaguely outlined in the paler darkness of the window, a low whispering voice said: “Be ready to come through fast, Kincaid. When you get out, follow me. Here goes.”

  The man thrust a heavy iron hook attached to a steel cable through the bars, around four of them, then drew it out again. Streak, reassured, stepped over to get a better look. Although he had expected something like this, a strange amused run of excitement went through him. He was trying to imagine the look on Fred Kelso’s face tomorrow morning when the sheriff looked into the cell.

  Out there, Streak caught the indistinct shapes of three riders beyond the man afoot. This last, the one who had spoken to him, pulled a short length of the cable through the bars with a sound like the running of a coarse file over rock. Streak saw him kneel and made out that he was fastening the hook to a heavy ring spliced into the cable. Beyond, a big wooden pulley lay on the ground, ropes running through its slots to mark it as the near end of a block and tackle. Barely in sight, some twenty feet from the cable, Streak saw a rope trailing the ground and fixed to the base of one of the stunted but tough cedars that dotted this hill slope.

  “Pull, Slim.”

  Streak barely heard the hoarse whisper of the man afoot that sent one rider out from the rest, the rope end of the block and tackle tied to the horn of his saddle.

  All at once the big pulley lifted from the ground under the tension as the rope tightened. It creaked an instant, the cable grated and slipped as the two ends of its loop equalized, then Streak saw one of the thick window bars bow outward. Suddenly that one bar broke from its bedding. The others bowed and were taken from the weakened base to be whipped outward into the darkness. Streak put hands on the window’s broad and broken sill and vaulted up onto it, belly down. The deafening burst of a gunshot ripped away the night’s stillness.

  Out there, a man grunted in pain. The instant explosions of two nearer shots blotted out the sound of his voice. A frightened horse’s shod hoofs racketed against bare rock. Just before Streak wriggled out the window and fell, headfirst, to the ground, five feet below, a hand touched his arm and that same hoarse whispering voice snapped: “Quick, feller.”

  He took up the weight of his fall on one shoulder, rolling to his feet. A gun was thrust into his hand and he wheeled to follow the indistinct shape of his guide as a spasmodic burst of renewed firing cut loose close by.

  Streak had a fair idea of the position of the three riders siding the man leading him, who he now followed at a run back up the hill to the jail’s rear. When another shape plunged down out of the near darkness from that direction, Streak rocked his gun up, drew wide of the mark, and laid two swift shots past the rider’s head. He dodged aside, anticipating the waist-level stab of powder flame of the rider’s answering fire. A bullet slapped the jail’s rock wall a moment before the gun of the man ahead spoke once. The rider, his horse wheeling sharply away, slumped in the saddle and melted slowly down out of it.

  Behind now was utter confusion. Streak’s one backward glimpse showed him a riderless and crazed horse pitching in among the riders there. The continuous and unevenly spaced racket of gunfire echoed back from the buildings flanking the street. A man’s strident, profane cursing sounded momentarily. The acrid tang of burned cordite tainted the air, and from the left, higher on the hill, new guns sent sharp explosions of sound down the slope.

  Streak’s guide lunged in behind a big squat juniper and they were abruptly alongside a pair of horses. The man ahead chose the outside animal, leaving Streak the nearest, a scrawny-necked gray gelding. As Streak swung up into saddle, he could catch the labored breathing of his companion. All at once the man’s voice lifted in a shrill—“Yowee-ee!”—an obvious signal, and he was reining his horse around, raking the animal’s flanks with spurs.

  Streak followed him closely, the first hundred yards of the gray’s slogging run proving his looks exceedingly deceptive. Time and again the animal slipped on loose rock, breaking his stride, but always he would recover, instantly obeying the slightest pressure on the reins. Bending low over the gelding’s withers as the air whip of a bullet fanned his face, Streak knew he was sitting a real piece of horseflesh and forgot his lack of spurs. Within two hundred yards they came to an abrupt shoulder of the hill where the going leveled off. There the rider ahead lined out at a dead run. Shortly the sound of the firing on the hill became ragged, sparse, then faded altogether.

  They left open ground and zigzagged in through a thin stand of jack pine, climbing again. The smell of dust kicked up by the horse ahead blended with the clean odor of the pines, reminding Streak once more of the dryness of the country and of the fact that sign would be easy to follow with the top soil baked and crumbling dry. It seemed that Kelso wouldn’t have too hard a time telling where his prisoner had gone if he was interested enough to spend some time finding out. But, Streak decided with some amusement, that was Bishop’s worry.

  The timber gradually thickened and they pounded into the narrow aisle of a little-used trail. After ten minutes of fast traveling along it, the man ahead pulled down out of his run and let Streak close in on him. In this tree-vaulted darkness, Streak could no more than make out the white blur of his face as he turned and called: “We’ll ease along and let the others catch up!”

  There was something familiar about the voice but Streak couldn’t place what it was. “That was close,” he said. “Who were your friends throwing the lead at us?”

  The rider drew rein, halting close ahead. His reply was preceded by a dry mocking laugh. “Bishop’s bunch. We halfway expected ’em.”

  Tension brought Streak up rigid. Then he relaxed. The laugh told him who the man was. He had heard it once before, last night in the feed barn directly after Kelso’s shot on the street as he stood looking down at the battered and beaten Riggs.

  “So did I,” he drawled. “You’re full of surprises, Paight.”

  “So’re you, friend. Last night, for instance. You weren’t packing a hogleg. Sort of risky, ain’t it, for a man with a price on his head?”

  Streak gave the first answer that came to him. “That’s the surest way I know of keeping out of trouble.”

  “Only you didn’t . . . Kincaid,” Paight reminded him, laying clear emphasis on the name.

  Streak’s impulse was to tell Paight the truth, that he had used Kincaid’s name as a ruse to break jail, but there was something he wanted to know first
, something he would like explained in the light of Paight’s belief that he was an outlaw.

  “What happens now that I’m out?” he queried.

  “We’ve got a job for you.”

  “Mind letting me in on it?”

  “If there’s time.” Paight stood in stirrups, his attitude one of listening. Streak could hear no sound back along the trail. “Tom Buchwalter, the boss, thinks he can use you,” Paight went on. “It’ll only be for a day or two. Is that a fair enough trade for busting you out of that lockup?”

  “Sounds like it. But what can I do for him?”

  “Maybe you’ve heard our outfit’s been trying to bring in sheep? Well, Tom’s decided that tomorrow’s the day. He’s working on the idea that none of Bishop’s bunch will care to tackle a tough crew with you leading ’em. You’ve got a name.”

  “The fastest man that ever packed a Colt is dead easy game for a bushwhacker,” was Streak’s drawled reminder.

  “That’s the chance you’re running . . . that Bishop won’t go that far.”

  Out of the downward distance came the muted hoof thud of running ponies. Paight’s solemn words ended. At once he reined off the trail, drawling: “This just might not be the bunch I’m waiting for.”

  Streak put the gray over alongside the other’s horse, a few feet off the trail, in the deep obscurity of a tall yellow bark pine. He noted that the Fencerail man drew his gun.

  Shortly the muffled rhythmic beat of the running horses came abruptly up on them. Shadows raced out of the near darkness and three riders boiled past.

  Paight hailed them. One man heard and called to the others and in a moment they had gathered close to Paight and Streak, the winded ponies’ labored breathing rising over the sound of straining saddle gear.

  One man spoke up immediately. “Art stopped a slug, Bill. He’s bleedin’ more’n he should, even if it’s only a scratch.” Streak noticed the man alongside the speaker sitting hunched over in the saddle, holding his right side. “We’d better get him back to the layout fast.”

  “Go ahead, then,” Paight told him. “Kincaid and I are heading for the camp at the needle rock. Remember what you’re to do. You’ll have a moon in another hour, Slim. Put two men in the house, another in the crew shack, another in the barn loft. Stop anyone you spot riding in across the meadow. Warn ’em once and, if they keep coming, make your lead count. Is it bad, Art?”

  “Grazed a rib and slit me open some,” the hunched-over rider replied in a voice that was none too steady. “Only I can’t get the damn’ thing to stop bleedin’.”

  “Here, let’s have a look at it.” Paight reined over alongside the man and pulled his shirt aside. “No wonder,” he muttered. “You haven’t tied it up.” With a knife, he cut the tail from the man’s shirt and succeeded in binding it around his chest, using his own neckpiece wadded tightly over the ugly-looking wound to stop the bleeding. Finished, he said curtly: “Now shake a leg. Riggs is liable to be on his way up there already.”

  “We sure as hell give it to ’em,” Slim drawled as he swung his pony around and led the others away.

  When the sound of their going had faded into the stillness, Paight gave Streak a sideward glance. “Well, are you with us?” he asked. “If you ain’t, now’s the time to say so. You’re free to ride out if you like.”

  “I’ll hear a little more about it.”

  “That’ll take some doing, maybe two hours of hard riding. Buchwalter and the others are waiting for us up above. I’m headed there now.”

  “Then let’s get started.”

  “We swing off here.”

  Paight led the way obliquely left from the trail and struck off through the trees. Once again he set a stiff pace, one intended to cover as much distance as possible without wearing out their horses. It was hard going, much of it over bare rocky hill shoulders. This, Streak realized, was Paight’s way of confounding anyone who might tomorrow try and follow their sign.

  Now, more than ever, Streak realized that this rugged hill valley was a contradiction to any he had known. Instead of the hills smoothing out in the valley’s bottom, those they traveled were like the abrupt rises at the very base of high mountains. But within the hour, as the two of them climbed higher, the going became easier and they crossed several park-like meadows breaking the seemingly endless stretches of timber. Once they had the lights of a cabin on their left and Paight took care to keep to the margin of trees that skirted the open ground around it. Another time they struck the line of a three-strand fence and rode what Streak judged to be at least two miles before lining out north again at its corner. From there on they had the light of a waning moon to travel by.

  A short time after leaving the back line of the fence they were in a tangle of the roughest hills Streak had ever ridden. A man could easily lose himself in them, but Paight seemed to know where he was going. They rode a cañon that started wide and low-walled at the mouth and soon became narrow and the moonlight shut out by high and precipitous cliffs on either hand. As the cañon’s bed narrowed, the continuous roar of a stream was amplified until the sound of rushing water drove out even the rock-slapping hoofs of the two horses. Finally the creek took up the whole width of the narrow defile’s uneven rocky floor and they rode within the margin of the foaming water.

  The horses had a harder time of it now, unable to see their footing. The gray’s energy seemed limitless. Once Paight’s horse went down, the rider jumping clear barely in time. He stood knee deep in water. When Streak got down to help him get the horse on its feet again, the man was grinning. It was that same rash grin of last night. Streak decided there and then that, regardless of the ethics of running sheep, Fencerail must have a lot in its favor to attract a man like Paight.

  As they started on once more, Streak made a conscious effort to plan his next move. He obviously owed Fencerail whatever help he could give in return for their having risked men in breaking him out of jail. He might be with them a day or two, an interlude during which he would have to forget his main errand here of discovering what had happened to Ed Church. Although this prospective delay galled him, he was a man on whom even the smallest unpaid debt of close friendship weighed heavily. Not to try to repay this debt to Paight, to Fencerail never once entered this mind. What worried him was picking up a line to follow once he finished with this obligation.

  The last twenty-four hours had been crowded with tension, suspense, and violence. Streak had bought into a brawl—one of the best he could remember—he had seen a bushwhacker come close to shooting down a woman; he had been arrested and broken out of a jail—and at least one man had come close to losing his life in that break—and now he was running from the law. But what had it all amounted to? Nothing, absolutely nothing as far as helping him accomplish his purpose in coming to this country. In two days he had made but one slight forward step beyond the point Guilford had left him along the pitch-dark trail of Ed Church’s mysterious disappearance. That one step had been the discovery that Ed had hired a horse in Agua Verde and completely vanished thereafter to be labeled a horse thief. No one had seen Ed in Ledge; at least Kelso hadn’t, and as a peace officer Kelso would theoretically have his finger on the pulse of the town. There was only one thing to do, as Streak saw it. He’d keep on asking questions. He’d ask them of Buchwalter and, later, of Bishop. He thought he knew how he could walk into Bishop’s layout and get any answers the man might have to give him.

  The tangle of Streak’s thinking was interrupted as Paight, close ahead, abruptly put his horse into the middle of the stream and headed for the opposite bank, a good twenty feet away. Streak followed him across, climbed the narrow strip of the far bank, and swung aground, as Paight did. And now that he stood separated by a few feet from the roiled water near at hand, its rushing voice was overridden by a louder one, the thundering roar of a falls. The towering walls magnified the sound and gave it a definite vibration. Streak wasn’t sure but what he could feel the solid rock under his boots trembling with the
magnitude of the sound.

  Paight stepped over to him, cupped a hand at his mouth, and shouted to make himself heard: “There’s a big falls right ahead! We go around! Up there’s the needle rock!”

  His hand lifted high to indicate a vague and high-spired shape ahead darker than the night’s almost total blackness. It was only the faint sheen of moonlight on the east face of a slender, nearly vertical rock formation that made it possible for Streak to distinguish it at all.

  Paight started up along the streambank. In less than fifty feet it became a narrow ledge choked by a tangle of brush. Paight shouldered into it, stumbling on. Presently Streak could see the gray curtain of the falls dropping a good thirty feet from the higher bed of the stream. A misty vapor dampened his face and made the chill air bite deeper. Gone was the dry dusty smell the air had borne in the foothills below. It was fresh now, smelling of leaf mold and green vegetation.

  The ledge tilted abruptly upward, so steeply that Streak had to get behind the gray and force the animal on ahead for fear of being trampled in one of the gelding’s lunging upstrides. At one point he had to go to hands and knees. He could have stretched out his hand and had his arm numbed by the force of the falling water. Finally a last reaching step took him to the top of the climb, close alongside the solid oily-looking water where it curled over the lip of its rocky bed before plunging downward.

  They mounted again but only to ride as far as the broad base of the formation Streak had made out from below, a high needle rock, now plainly distinguishable through the darkness. Paight swung left, toward the stream, along a sheer granite wall. Within a few yards, Streak picked up a faint rosy tint against the night’s cobalt shadows beyond a far turning of the wall. That glow grew stronger as Paight circled.

  All at once a fire was in sight, a bright smokeless blaze burning at the center of a small peninsula that thrust out from the east face of the needle rock and divided the stream at almost its exact center. Streak saw that dividing of the stream into two separate channels and noted it only casually, his glance more interested in the indistinct shapes of several men who stood at the outward limits of the fire’s light.