Nan’s decision to go to Cañonville was rather sudden. She wanted to see
her father and ask him what he thought of her accepting that job at
Morgan’s ranch. Rex was of the opinion that she should wait until
Hashknife and Sleepy came back, but Nan was rather impulsive. She wanted
to go right now.
Together they saddled the horses. Nan wrote the note and left it on the
kitchen table, where she knew they would find it.
‘We’ll probably meet Hashknife and Sleepy between here and Cañonville,’
said Nan, ‘and they’ll ride back with us.’
Rex was not exactly sure of himself in the saddle; so they did not ride
fast. His mount was a perfectly gentle horse, but Nan’s horse fretted
and danced, fighting against the bit. But she was a good rider and
handled the horse easily.
Rex showed her where the stage broke down the day he came into the
country, and they laughed over the things that had happened to him
during his short stay in the cattle country.
‘Do you really believe I will ever be a cowboy?’ he asked, as they
started up the crooked grades of Coyote Cañon.
‘Do you want to be, Rex?’
‘I don’t know, Nan. When I look at Hashknife Hartley, I do. But when I
look at some of the other cowboys, I’m not sure.’
‘He’s different,’ she admitted.
‘Yes, he is, Nan. Sometimes I wonder what I am doing here. I don’t
belong here, and no one realizes it more than I do. If I had what
Hashknife calls horse-sense, I--I would--oh, I don’t know. I’d like to
go somewhere and make a lot of money, and--and then come back here and
get you.’
‘And get me?’ smiled Nan. ‘What an ambition!’
‘Don’t laugh at me, Nan; I’m serious. Ever since that morning when I
awoke and saw you looking out through the window, I’ve had just that
ambition.’
‘It will be dark before we reach Cañonville,’ said Nan, turning in her
saddle and looking at the fading sunset.
‘You always change the subject, Nan.’
‘I suppose I do, Rex. Why not?’
‘Well, I can have ambitions, can’t I?’
Nan laughed softly. ‘I suppose so, Rex. I guess I haven’t any. We have
moved from pillar to post ever since I can remember, and we have never
stayed in any one place long enough to have any ambition. Dad has always
been restless. I’ll bet I have gone to more schools in this State than
any other person. We’d stay a few months in a place, and then Dad would
hear of another range. Then it was a case of pack up and move on. This
time he promised me that we would stay.’
‘Hashknife and Sleepy always keep moving,’ said Rex. ‘They have actually
killed men, Nan. I don’t know how many. I asked Sleepy how many men
Hashknife had killed, and he said that he didn’t know, because they had
lost the complete list. It must have been a great many.’
Nan smiled sideways at Rex, whose expression was serious. She knew
cowboys and their well-stretched yarns.
‘I asked him why it was they never got hung,’ said Rex seriously, ‘and
he said it was because nobody had ever found any of their victims.’
‘I should guess not,’ laughed Nan.
Far ahead of them stretched the grades, winding around the rim of the
cañon. They could look down on the almost precipitous sides of the
cañon, where a few pinon and junipers clung to the sides of the slope.
Farther down the tops of larger trees blended with the purple of the
depths.
The opposite side of the cañon seemed to be a sheer, rocky wall as far
as they could see in both directions. Coyote Cañon was not an inviting
place. Nan had heard her father say that at some remote time an enormous
quantity of water had rushed through that cañon, tearing out great holes
in the cañon-bed. It was a sanctuary for the lion and wild-cat, where
men had never made their trail.
It was the short twilight of the Southwest, which lasts but a few
minutes after sundown, as they rounded a point on the high grades. Rex
was riding on the outside, when, without any warning, his horse plunged
headlong to the ground, almost off the edge of the grade.
Nan’s horse whirled and reared, as the hills echoed from the crashing
report of a rifle. Without hardly knowing what she was doing, Nan
dismounted and ran to Rex. He was trying to sit up, looking dazedly
around.
_Zowee-e-e-e!_ Another bullet struck the ground beside Nan and went
screaming off across the cañon, while the cliffs echoed back the report
of the shot. Rex was getting up. His face was skinned, bleeding, and he
was still dazed from the fall.
Another bullet whispered past his ear, and he jerked his head back
quickly, as though trying to dodge it. Nan grasped him by the arm, and
they both slid over the edge of the grade, while the fourth bullet
blinded them with a spray of dust and gravel from the roadbed.
To get below the road level was their only chance--and such a chance!
The gravel was loose, sliding. Nan tried to grasp a bush at the edge of
the grade, but it slipped from her hand. They were going down the steep
slope, unable to check themselves in any way.
Rex was over his daze now, and realized what was happening. He had
turned, facing the hill and dropped to his knees, trying to cling to
Nan. They were not sliding fast yet. Nan turned a white face toward him,
clutching at the sliding gravel with her hands.
‘Turn around,’ she said hoarsely. ‘Sit down and slide.’
He obeyed quickly. They were going faster each moment. Just below them
was a small thicket of pinons, and, unless their speed increased, there
might be a chance to slide into that thicket of small trees.
Another bullet snapped past them, and the tip of a pinon was severed.
Rex glanced back, trying to see the grade, but the angle was too abrupt.
He could see their trail, where the sifting gravel was following them.
Then a branch lashed him across the face, a pinon trunk sent him
spinning sideways, and he was through the thicket. His eyes were filled
with sand and tears, but he saw Nan a short distance behind him. She had
a pinon limb in her hands, which had torn off, when she tried to stop.
Up to this point the sliding had not been painful, as it was loose
gravel, which, instead of their sliding over it, seemed to go along with
them. There was no more shooting now. Rex managed to slow up
sufficiently to half-stand, and then to run sideways across the slope to
where he could reach Nan.
Her hands were torn from the pinon branches, and there was a welt across
her cheek. She was slightly dazed and hardly realized, for a moment,
that their slide was over.
‘What happened?’ she asked foolishly.
‘I don’t know,’ said Rex, clinging with toes and hands to the loose
surface, in order to look back up the slope.
They had managed to stop at the edge of a sheer place. Something was
coming down the hill toward them. Rex saw it tear through the little
thicket above them, fairly knocking down the trees. It was going to pass
them at about twenty feet, and, as it came down past them, in a cloud of
dust and sand, they saw it shoot over the edge just below them and go
hurtling off into space.
‘That is my huh-horse!’ blurted Rex.
Nan nodded, her lips shut tight.
‘How do you suppose it got off the road, Nan?’
‘The man who shot at us,’ said Nan, choking back her tears. ‘He shoved
it off the grade. Oh, what are we going to do? We can’t get back, Rex.’
‘And we can’t stay here, Nan. This stuff is sliding all the time. That
horse went over a precipice. If we could only get around to that other
slope.’
‘Maybe we can.’
Off to the left, about a hundred feet away, was another slope, which
seemed to lead around and down past the sheer cliffs. It was their only
hope. The ground was slowly moving with them.
They got to their feet and began fighting their way toward this slope,
climbing upward, trying to keep away from the abrupt drop into the
cañon. It was a terrific effort. It was like running on a treadmill.
With another ten feet to go, Nan would never have made it. She fell to
her knees, heading down the slope, but Rex still had strength enough to
grasp her by the shoulders and swing her around, when they both went
over the edge of the steep slope.
The dry dust and sand filled their eyes and mouths to the point of
suffocation, but luckily the rubble was so soft that they dug deeply
into it, impeding their progress to such an extent that they were able
to stand up, braced against the hill and work their way down.
Rex clung to Nan tightly. At times they would slip and slide for several
feet, but always they were able to keep from pitching headlong. This
slide was about two hundred yards long, and they came out in a heavy
thicket of fir and small pines, still a long way from the bottom of the
cañon.
It was almost dark down there. They could look back up the slope now,
and wonder how they ever came down alive. Above them the sky seemed very
blue, but, as they sat on a rock and took stock of their injuries, the
blue sky faded out and a lone star winked down at them.
Both of them were badly bruised and their clothes torn, but luckily no
bones were broken. They were covered with dust and sand, and altogether
miserable.
‘I think there is water in the bottom of the cañon,’ said Nan painfully.
‘We must get to water, Rex.’
‘Yes,’ dully. ‘I am numb all over, Nan. I don’t feel a bit good.’
‘Have you any matches, Rex?’
He felt carefully through his pockets. Rex did not smoke, but, due to
the fact that Sleepy was always out of matches, he had been carrying a
goodly supply.
‘Yes, I have some, Nan.’
‘Good! At least we can keep varmints away from us.’
‘What is a varmint, Nan?’
‘Oh--mountain lions and things like that.’
‘Down here? And we have no gun.’
‘Perhaps it is lucky we haven’t. I’m not much good with a gun, and if
you had one I’d be afraid you might shoot me.’
‘I suppose that is true, Nan. But do you mean that we are going to spend
the night down here?’
‘Unless you know of a way out. I don’t. I doubt if there is a man in
this country who could get out of here at night. We’ll just have to make
the best of it, and be thankful we are alive. To-morrow, if a lion don’t
claw us or a rattler bite us, we may find a way out.’
‘You are joking, Nan.’
‘I’d like to agree with you, Rex. Come on.’
It was difficult traveling over the rocks in the half-light, but they
reached the bottom of the cañon with a few extra bruises. There were
huge, whitened boulders in the dry bed of the old stream, relics of a
day when much water had poured down through Coyote Cañon. From the side
of the bank trickled a tiny stream of cold water, and they drank heavily
before building a fire.
It was cold down there, and a wind moaned through the tops of the trees.
There was plenty of wood, and they soon had a fire burning in the lee of
a big, polished boulder. Outside the illumination of the fire was
blackness and the moaning wind. A stone rolled down the slope and
crashed through the brush, bringing them both to their feet in a sudden
panic.
Rex piled more wood on the fire and they stood together, trying to
pierce the darkness.
‘I--I guess it--it wasn’t anything,’ faltered Rex.
Nan sat down against the boulder trying to calm her nerves, while Rex
hunched down beside her, poking at the fire with a stick, his ears tuned
for the slightest sound.
‘I have been wondering who shot at us,’ he said nervously. ‘Do you
suppose they would follow us down here, Nan?’
‘Not down here,’ she replied. ‘Nobody would ever come down here
voluntarily.’
‘I suppose not, I know I----’
But Rex did not finish. From just out in the blackness came the sound of
a mirthless laugh; a devilish chuckle which caused them to shrink back
against the boulder, staring wide-eyed into space.
It was not repeated. After a space of perhaps twenty seconds they looked
at each other, as though wondering if the other had heard it. Nan shook
her head at Rex. She could not speak.
Slowly Rex got to his feet, knees trembling, his hand on Nan’s shoulder.
‘My God!’ he breathed chokingly.
Just across the fire from them, as though appearing from nowhere, stood
a man, the firelight glistening on his face. He wore no hat, and his
face was gobby with dirt, swollen, contorted. He was wearing a coat, one
sleeve of which had been torn away, along with the sleeve of his shirt,
which had once been white, but was now stained and dirty.
He was looking at them in a stony sort of way, hunched forward, one hand
thrown up, as though to ward away the heat, and in the other hand was a
heavy Colt revolver, cocked.