CRAWLING STONE WASH
Where the Little Crawling Stone River tears out of the Mission
Mountains it has left a grayish-white gap that may be seen for many
miles. This is the head of the North Crawling Stone Valley. Twenty
miles to the right the big river itself bursts through the Mission
hills in the canyon known as the Box. Between the confluence of Big
and Little Crawling Stone, and on the east side of Little Crawling
Stone, lies a vast waste. Standing in the midst of this frightful
eruption from the heart of the mountains, one sees, as far as the eye
can reach, a landscape utterly forbidding. North for sixty miles lie
the high chains of the Mission range, and a cuplike configuration of
the mountains close to the valley affords a resting-place for the
deepest snows of winter and a precipitous escape for the torrents of
June. Here, when the sun reaches its summer height or a sweet-grass
wind blows soft or a cloudburst above the peaks strikes the southerly
face of the range, winter unfrocks in a single night. A glacier of
snow melts within twenty-four hours into a torrent of lava and bursts
with incredible fury from a thousand gorges.
When this happens nothing withstands. Whatever lies in the path of the
flood is swept from the face of the earth. The mountains, assailed in
a moment with the ferocity of a hundred storms, are ripped and torn
like hills of clay. The frosted scale of the granite, the desperate
root of the cedar, the poised nest of the eagle, the clutch of the
crannied vine, the split and start of the mountainside, are all as one
before the June thaw. At its height Little Crawling Stone, with a head
of forty feet, is a choking flood of rock. Mountains, torn and
bleeding, vomit bowlders of thirty, sixty, a hundred tons like pebbles
upon the valley. Even there they find no permanent resting-place. Each
succeeding year sees them torn groaning from their beds in the wash.
New masses of rock are hurled upon them, new waters lift them in fresh
caprice, and the crash and the grinding echo in the hills like a roar
of mountain thunder.
Where the wash covers the valley nothing lives; the fertile earth has
long been buried under the mountain _debris_. It supports no plant
life beyond the scantiest deposit of weed-plant seed, and the rocky
scurf, spreading like a leprosy over many miles, scars the face of the
green earth. This is the Crawling Stone wash. Exhausted by the fury
of its few yearly weeks of activity, Little Crawling Stone runs for
the greater part of the year a winding, shallow stream through a bed
of whitened bowlders where lizards sun themselves and trout lurk in
shaded pools.
When Whispering Smith and his companions were fairly started on the
last day of their ride, it was toward this rift in the Mission range
that the trail led them. Sinclair, with consummate cleverness, had
rejoined his companions; but the attempt to get into the Cache, and
his reckless ride into Medicine Bend, had reduced their chances of
escape to a single outlet, and that they must find up Crawling Stone
Valley. The necessity of it was spelled in every move the pursued men
had made for twenty-four hours. They were riding the pick of mountain
horseflesh and covering their tracks by every device known to the high
country. Behind them, made prudent by unusual danger, rode the best
men the mountain division could muster for the final effort to bring
them to account. The fast riding of the early week had given way to
the pace of caution. No trail sign was overlooked, no point of
concealment directly approached, no hiding-place left unsearched.
The tension of a long day of this work was drawing to a close when the
sun set and left the big wash in the shadow of the mountains. On the
higher ground to the right, Kennedy and Scott were riding where they
could command the gullies of the precipitous left bank of the river.
High on the left bank itself, worming his way like a snake from point
to point of concealment through the scanty brush of the mountainside,
crawled Wickwire, commanding the pockets in the right bank. Closer to
the river on the right and following the trail itself over shale and
rock and between scattered bowlders, Whispering Smith, low on his
horse's neck, rode slowly.
It was almost too dark to catch the slight discolorations where
pebbles had been disturbed on a flat surface or the calk of a
horseshoe had slipped on the uneven face of a ledge, and he had halted
under an uplift to wait for Wickwire on the distant left to advance,
when, half a mile below him, a horseman crossing the river rode slowly
past a gap in the rocks and disappeared below the next bend. He was
followed in a moment by a second rider and a third. Whispering Smith
knew he had not been seen. He had flushed the game, and, wheeling his
horse, rode straight up the river-bank to high ground, where he could
circle around widely below them. They had slipped between his line and
Wickwire's, and were doubling back, following the dry bed of the
stream. It was impossible to recall Kennedy and Scott without giving
an alarm, but by a quick _detour_ he could at least hold the quarry
back for twenty minutes with his rifle, and in that time Kennedy and
Scott could come up.
Less than half an hour of daylight remained. If the outlaws could slip
down the wash and out into the Crawling Stone Valley they had every
chance of getting away in the night; and if the third man should be
Barney Rebstock, Whispering Smith knew that Sinclair thought only of
escape. Smith alone, of their pursuers, could now intercept them, but
a second hope remained: on the left, Wickwire was high enough to
command every turn in the bed of the river. He might see them and
could force them to cover with his rifle even at long range. Casting
up the chances, Whispering Smith, riding faster over the uneven ground
than anything but sheer recklessness would have prompted, hastened
across the waste. His rifle lay in his hand, and he had pushed his
horse to a run. A single fearful instinct crowded now upon the long
strain of the week. A savage fascination burned like a fever in his
veins, and he meant that they should not get away. Taking chances that
would have shamed him in cooler moments, he forced his horse at the
end of the long ride to within a hundred paces of the river, threw his
lines, slipped like a lizard from the saddle, and, darting with
incredible swiftness from rock to rock, gained the water's edge.
From up the long shadows of the wash there came the wail of an owl.
From it he knew that Wickwire had seen them and was warning him, but
he had anticipated the warning and stood below where the hunted men
must ride. He strained his eyes over the waste of rock above. For one
half-hour of daylight he would have sold, in that moment, ten years of
his life. What could he do if they should be able to secrete
themselves until dark between him and Wickwire? Gliding under cover of
huge rocks up the dry watercourse, he reached a spot where the floods
had scooped a long, hollow curve out of a soft ledge in the bank,
leaving a stretch of smooth sand on the bed of the stream. At the
upper point great bowlders pushed out in the river. He could not
inspect the curve from the spot he had gained without reckless
exposure, but he must force the little daylight left to him. Climbing
completely over the lower point, he advanced cautiously, and from
behind a sheltering spur stepped out upon an overhanging table of rock
and looked across the river-bottom. Three men had halted on the sand
within the curve. Two lay on their rifles under the upper point, a
hundred and twenty paces from Whispering Smith. The third man,
Seagrue, less than fifty yards away, had got off his horse and was
laying down his rifle, when the hoot-owl screeched again and he looked
uneasily back. They had chosen for their halt a spot easily defended,
and needed only darkness to make them safe, when Smith, stepping out
into plain sight, threw forward his hand.
They heard his sharp call to pitch up, and the men under the point
jumped. Seagrue had not yet taken his hand from his rifle. He threw it
to his shoulder. As closely together as two fingers of the right hand
can be struck twice in the palm of the left, two rifle-shots cracked
across the wash. Two bullets passed so close in flight they might have
struck. One cut the dusty hair from Smith's temple and slit the brim
of his hat above his ear; the other struck Seagrue under the left eye,
ploughed through the roof of his mouth, and, coming out below his ear,
splintered the rock at his back.
The shock alone would have staggered a bullock, but Seagrue, laughing,
came forward pumping his gun. Sinclair, at a hundred and twenty yards,
cut instantly into the fight, and the ball from his rifle creased the
alkali that crusted Whispering Smith's unshaven cheek. As he fired he
sprang to cover.
For Seagrue and Smith there was no cover: for one or both it was death
in the open and Seagrue, with his rifle at his cheek, walked straight
into it. Taking for a moment the fire of the three guns, Whispering
Smith stood, a perfect target, outlined against the sky. They whipped
the dust from his coat, tore the sleeve from his wrist, and ripped the
blouse collar from his neck; but he felt no bullet shock. He saw
before him only the buckle of Seagrue's belt forty paces away, and
sent bullet after bullet at the gleam of brass between the sights.
Both men were using high-pressure guns, and the deadly shock of the
slugs made Seagrue twitch and stagger. The man was dying as he walked.
Smith's hand was racing with the lever, and had a cartridge jammed,
the steel would have snapped like a match.
It was beyond human endurance to support the leaden death. The little
square of brass between the sights wavered. Seagrue stumbled, doubled
on his knees, and staggering plunged loosely forward on the sand.
Whispering Smith threw his fire toward the bowlder behind which
Sinclair and Barney Rebstock had disappeared.
Suddenly he realized that the bullets from the point were not coming
his way. He was aware of a second rifle-duel above the bend. Wickwire,
worming his way down the stream, had uncovered Sinclair and young
Rebstock from behind. A yell between the shots rang across the wash,
and the cringing figure of a man ran out toward Whispering Smith with
his hands high in the air, and pitched headlong on the ground. It was
the skulker, Barney Rebstock, driven out by Wickwire's fire.
The, shooting ceased. Silence fell upon the gloom of the dusk. Then
came a calling between Smith and Wickwire, and a signalling of
pistol-shots for their companions. Kennedy and Bob Scott dashed down
toward the river-bed on their horses. Seagrue lay on his face. Young
Rebstock sat with his hands around his knees on the sand. Above him at
some distance, Wickwire and Smith stood before a man who leaned
against the sharp cheek of the bowlder at the point. In his hands his
rifle was held across his lap just as he had dropped on his knee to
fire. He had never moved after he was struck. His head, drooping a
little, rested against the rock, and his hat lay on the sand; his
heavy beard had sunk into his chest and he kneeled in the shadow,
asleep. Scott and Kennedy knew him. In the mountains there was no
double for Murray Sinclair.
When he jumped behind the point to pick Whispering Smith off the ledge
he had laid himself directly under Wickwire's fire across the wash.
The first shot of the cowboy at two hundred yards had passed, as he
knelt, through both temples.
They laid him at Seagrue's side. The camp was made beside the dead men
in the wash. "You had better not take him to Medicine Bend," said
Whispering Smith, sitting late with Kennedy before the dying fire. "It
would only mean that much more unpleasant talk and notoriety for her.
The inquest can be held on the Frenchman. Take him to his own ranch
and telegraph the folks in Wisconsin--God knows whether they will want
to hear. But his mother is there yet. But if half what Barney has told
to-night is true it would be better if no one ever heard."