Chapter 33
Chapter 33 of Gunside Pass, How Oil Came to the Cattle Country and Brought a New West by William MacLeod Rain. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. On the Dodge Up in the hills back of Bear Canyon two men were camping. They breakfast on slow elk, coffee, and flour and water biscuits. When they had finished, they washed their tin dishes with sand in the running brook. Might as well be hitting the trail, one growled. The other nodded
without speaking, rose lazily and began to pack the camp outfit. Presently, when he had arranged the load to his satisfaction, he threw the diamond hitch and stood back to take a chew of tobacco while he surveyed his work. He was a squat, heavyset man with a chihuahua hat. Also, he was a two-gun man. After a moment, he circled an arrow-weed thicket and moved into the chaparral where his horse was hobbled. The man who had spoken rose with one lithe twist of his big body,
His eyes hard and narrow watched the shorter man disappear in the brush. Then he turned swiftly and strode toward the shoulder of the ridge. In the heavy undergrowth of dry weeds and grass, he stopped and tested the wind with a bandana handkerchief. The breeze was steady and fairly strong.
It blew down the canyon toward the foothills beyond. The man stripped from a scrub oak a handful of leaves. They were very brittle and crumbled in his hand. A match flared out. His palm cupped it for a moment to steady the blaze before he touched it to the crisp foliage.
Into a nest of twigs he thrust the small flame. The twigs dry as powder from a four-month drought, crackled like miniature fireworks. The grass caught, and a small line of fire ran quickly out. The man rose. On his brown face was an evil smile.
In his hard eyes, something malevolent and sinister. The wind would do the rest. He walked back toward the camp. At the shoulder crest, he turned to look back. From out of the chaparral, a thin column of pale gray smoke was rising.
His companion stamped out the remains of the breakfast fire and threw dirt on the ashes to make sure no live ember could escape in the wind. Then he swung to the saddle. Ready, Doug? he asked. The big man growled in ascent and followed him over the summit into the valley beyond.
Country needs rain bad, the man in the chihuahua hat commented. Don't know as I recollect a drier season. The big hock-nosed man by his side cackled in his throat with short splenetic mirth. It'll be some drier before the rains, he prophesied. They climbed out of the valley to the rim.
The short man was bringing up the rear along the narrowed trail ribbon. He turned in the saddle to look back, a hand on his horse's rump. Perhaps he did this because the power of suggestion. Several times Doble had already swung his head to scan with a searching gaze the other side of the valley. Mackerel clouds were floating near the horizon in a sky of blue.
Was that or was it not smoke just over the brow of the hill? Can't be our campfire, the squat man said aloud. I smothered that proper. Them's clouds, pronounced Doble quickly. Clouds and some mist rising from the gulch.
I reckon, agreed the other with no sure conviction. Doble must be right, of course. No fire had been in evidence when they left the camping ground, and he was sure he had stamped out the one that had cooked the biscuits. Yet that stringy gray film certainly looked like smoke.
He hung in the wind half of a mind to go back and make sure. Fire in the chaparral now would do untold damage. Shorty looked at Doble. If that's fire, Doug. It ain't no chance, snapped the ex-foreman.
We'll travel if you don't feel called on to go back and stomp out the mist, Shorty, he added with sarcasm. The cowpuncher took the trail again. Like many men, he was not proof against a sneer. Doug was probably right, Shorty decided, and he did not want to make a fool of himself. Doble would ride him with heavy jeers all day.
An hour later, they rested their horses on the divide. To the west lay Malapi and the plains. Eastward were the heaven-pricking peaks. A long, bright line zigzagged across the desert and reflected the sun rays. It was the bed of the new road, already spiked with shining rails.
I'm going to town, announced Dobble. Shorty looked at him in surprise. Want to see your picture, I reckon. It's on a heap of telegraph poles, I've been told, he said, grinning. Today, went on the ex-formin stubbornly,
Big raw-bone guy, hooked nose, leather face, never took no prize as a lady's man. A wildcat in a rough house, and sudden death on the draw, extemporized the rustler, presumably from his conception of the reward poster. I'll lie in the chaparral till night and ride in after dark. With the impulsiveness of his kind, Shorty fell in with the idea.
He was hungry for the fleshpots of Malappie. If they dropped in late at night, stayed a few hours, and kept undercover, they could probably slip out of town undetected. The recklessness of his nature found an appeal in the danger. Damn if I don't trail along, Doug.
You're say-so about that. Like to see my own picture on the poles. Sawed-off little runt, straight black hair, some bow-legged, wears two guns real low, don't you monkey with him unless you're hell a mile with a six-shooter.
One thousand dollars reward for arrest and conviction. Same for the big guy. Fellow that gets one of them rewards will earn it, said Doble grimly. Goes double, agreed Shorty. He'll earn it even if he don't live to spend it, which he's liable not to.
They headed their horses to the west. As they drew down from the mountains, they left the trail and took to the brush. They wound in and out among the mesquite and the cactus, bearing gradually to the north and into the foothills above the town. When they reached Frio Canyon, they swung off into a timbered pocket debouching from it.
Here they unsaddled and lay down to wait for night. End of chapter 33
