Driftin' (Shad Cain Book 3) Read online

  Sitting by the fire drinking coffee and nibbling on some dried apples, Max Bell and me were talking things over. He knew I was getting itchy to stir something up… and I truly was.

  “Max,” I said, “they’ve already used up better than a week, and they’ve been beat back every time. I figger they’ve only got a week or two left before the loggers show up. So Glazer’s gonna want to get us out of here pretty soon now.”

  He agreed with that and asked if I had any plan, him knowing full well that I did, else wise I wouldn’t a brung it up.

  “Well sir, as a matter of fact I believe so… now that you ask.”

  “I can’t wait to hear it.” He said with a grin.

  “I kinda had it in mind to go back up there where I had me a lookout right over the boss man’s house…. Now I’m not looking to do no cold blooded killin’, but when they should start movin’ around lookin’ like they may be ready to do some harm… well… I could just rain some hells fire and brimstone on ‘em for a spell.”

  “It won’t matter if it’s day or night. I won’t be shootin’ for the kill anyway…. I’ll just be shakin’ the trees to see what falls out.”

  “What if they come up after you? You’d be trapped.”

  “It’d take a mountain goat to reach me from below, and they’d have to go three or four miles around, mostly on foot, to get behind me… I’d just fade away back in those mountains if they tried to squeeze me.”

  “Need any help?”

  “Nope… just Dog… I won’t even take my buckskin. I’ll take a bronc and send him home when I get to where I start my climb. If I come out at all… it’ll be a walkin’.”

  I rode out early the next morning, with the Curly from the Bellem. He was to relieve Charlie Collins on the mountain side of the valley. He thought I was crazy going up there, but he wanted to go with me, I could tell. I didn’t want anyone with me unless it was one of the Collins brothers. The way they moved and carried their weapons… they knew wild country. They could take care of themselves.

  Giving the mustang I was riding to Charlie to take back to the Adams place, I told them, I may be gone several days and not to wait up. Curly just looked at me funny, but Charlie said, “We’ll leave a light on fer ya.”

  Turning to the pine and cedar covered hills I started walking east. Within an hour and a half I was high on a bluff and looking down on the Glazer headquarters. As best I could calculate, my little home was a good six hundred feet above the ranch yard. That works out to two hundred yards. It wasn’t an easy shot with a short rifle like a Winchester especially downhill. One of those old muzzle loading squirrel rifles would have been the thing to have. But I didn’t have one, and I wasn’t here on a killing mission. I was here on a make their life miserable mission.

  I sat there most of the day watching the goings on down below. The main house was directly below me and about a hundred feet out from the bluff. The barn was also below the bluff but about fifty yards to my left. The bunkhouse was between them with the front facing the house and the back facing the barn. I found myself wishing I’d had a couple of kegs of Ben Blue’s blasting powder… I’d light up the night.

  Rolling boulders down on the buildings was my first thought, but they were too far out, and would take some lucky bounces to do any damage. I sat back and took stock of what I had to work with… I had me a plan. It wasn’t a great one or even a real good one, but it might work.

  So I moved back up into a clump of cedars, and shortly I had me a cedar stick about four feet long. It was green and it was strong. It wouldn’t be worth beans if it was dry, but it had just enough spring to it to do the job. I whittled on it and within a half hour I had me a poor to middlin’ bow. Next I found some barely suitable dry limbs for arrows. It took me another half hour to trim down three of the most miserable arrows a body ever saw. But this wasn’t a beauty contest.

  I left the one end thick, but the rest was trimmed nicely and notched. I needed the extra weight on the one end because I wasn’t going to take the time to feather them or put heads on them. They would never hit within ten feet of where they were aimed, but it didn’t matter.

  Then I built a small fire and fried up some bacon on a stick and let it drip on some buckskin pieces that I cut off the tail of my hunting shirt. It wasn’t easy keeping those buckskin pieces moving in and out of that fire, and it took a while. But I got several pieces pretty well covered with grease.

  By the time it was getting close to dark, I had my arrows and my bow ready to use. The buckskin was wrapped around the heavy end of the arrow with the greasiest pieces on the outside. I had moved back down to my original place. The ranch yard had never been out of sight or earshot while I’d been working on my secret weapon. So I was aware that men had been coming in. There must have been something in the wind. The bunkhouse was full, and eight or ten men had taken their bedrolls to the barn. It looked like they would be moving out the next day or in the morning. But they seemed to be in for the night.

  When the dinner bell rang, they all went in and got their plates and cups, but they came back outside to eat. It was more like an army camp than a ranch yard… I ate my well cooked bacon, and Dog went off to find something. Then I laid back and closed my eyes.

  I opened my eyes a few times, but there was still too much going on down below, so I rolled over and went back to sleep. I heard Dog scratching at something that was bothering him and opened my eyes. All was pitch black and deathly quiet down below. Letting my eyes become accustom to the little bit of light the stars provided, I was able to pick out the three structures that interested me the most.

  The main house and bunkhouse were just darker spots in the darkness. But the barn was bigger and had a lighter colored roof. It didn’t stand out like a beacon, but it was more like a lighter dark spot in the darkness. So I moved to my left until the barn was right below me. Hidden behind a pair of large boulders, I built a very small fire of twigs and pine needles.

  When the fire was burning on its own, I strung my crude bow and picked my first arrow. Finding the notch in the dark I fitted it to the rawhide bowstring. Then I dipped the grease soaked hide arrowhead into the tiny fire. It caught and I toyed with it and encouraged it a little.

  When the buckskin ball was burning well, I used my best sense of distance, and my best guess to point, pull, and let her fly. I have to admit, it was a pretty shot, even if it was a few feet short of the roof. It hit the back wall and slid to the ground, where I lay and flickered. I was disappointed, but that was my first try with a makeshift bow and arrow rig.

  The second arrow went long and bounced off the roof to the front. The third was my last chance. If the third arrow didn’t start the barn burning, I’d be pot shoting them in the morning when they got ready to ride out. Oh well, there was nothing left to do but do it, so I took my last arrow and pulled it to somewhere between the first two… and let go.

  Chapter 15

  She sailed high in the air and made a perfect arc before she landed square on the roof, bounced once and went dark. By then I really was disappointed… maybe I’d wind up throwing rocks at them after all.

  I was sore tempted to fling that bow as far as I could in hopes to knocking down the barn. And I stood up to give it a try, when I saw the glow from the first arrow flickering in the dry grass at the base of the barn. Leaning over the smaller of those boulders, I tried to give those flickers all the encouragement I could. I even tried blowing from six hundred feet above.

  It seemed to be working because it was getting brighter… a whole bunch brighter. But that brightness wasn’t coming from the back of the barn, it was coming from the front. It was starting to show more than brightness; it was shooting flames up beyond the roofline. The sky was starting to light up with flame brightened billowing smoke.

  Those fellas who were bunking in the barn came stumbling and coughing out of there. Men started boiling out of the bunkhouse in various stages of undress. The horses in the corral were going crazy and runnin
g back and forth trying to get away. They finally broke down the rails at the far end and took off into the dark.

  The barn wasn’t too far gone yet, so someone organized a bucket brigade and started to put it out. It only took three well placed shots into the ground between men carrying water to stop the line… It wouldn’t have done them any good because the little flickers at the back of the barn had climbed up the wall and reached the roof by then.

  I saw a little fella stomping around down there telling them what to do, but they weren’t even trying to listen. Nobody was paying attention to him and I was beginning to feel sorry about that. So I paid him some attention with a couple of shots near his feet. The distance and the flickering light wouldn’t allow a great deal of accuracy, so I had to aim as close as I could and hope he didn’t bleed too much. I didn’t know a fella that little and dressed in such a fine robe could jump that high. I reckoned him to be Glazer.

  None of them down there were going to get any sleep this night, so I did. At first light, I was awake and watching an all mighty tired and bedraggled bunch of gunslingers. One fella was bringing in some horses, and he was doing it bareback. It made me wonder how many of them had stashed their gear in the barn. Now that could be a costly error in judgment. Why, if I’d been down there amongst them, the first thing I’d have thought of would be some fool of a mountain man burning down the barn.

  Those boys down there probably figured on me being long gone hours ago. So they were just moping around like, all they had to think about was how tired and grumpy they were. If there’s one thing I hated worse than somebody bothering and pestering me, it was when nobody was paying attention to me. So I let them know I was still up in the rocks looking down on them.

  That string of horses they just brung in were all together too peaceful, so I placed a few bullets at their feet and then I spread out a few more with no particular targets. Then I moved back into the brush and asked Dog if he was ready to mosey… he said he was, and we did.

  They’d be sure to send some boys up there to roust me out, of that I had no doubt. So I left them a note tied to that miserable cedar bow written on a piece bark saying,

  A barn for a barn. The house goes next. That wouldn’t bother them much, but it would sure bother the man who lived in the house. Sometimes I can get so ornery, I couldn’t even stand myself. But I sure had me a good time up there on the bluff.

  Taking it slow as to not leave much of a trail, it took me longer to get back than it did coming. But that was all right since I was on a holiday, and there wasn’t anyone waiting for me anywhere.

  I came down out of pines at the same place I went in and found myself looking at the backside of Curley’s horse. I stepped out and said, “Hey Curley, don’t go pointin’ that horse’s butt at me…. that thing could go off.”

  He jumped and swung around like he’d heard a ghost… Well, maybe he did. Those fellas tossed a bunch of lead my way last night and this morning. One of them could’ve got me, and I didn’t even know about it. I’d never been killed, so I didn’t know what it was like. I’ve heard a sight of talk about what went on, but who can speak from experience…at least nobody in the last couple thousand years.

  “Good God! Cain… you plum scaret me to death… Charlie was tellin’ me about the big fire up that way last night. And a might of shootin’ too, he said… I just figgered they had your hide stretched and salted fer shore.”

  I looked down at myself, and couldn’t see any bullet holes or any place that I’d been leaking from. So I declared myself to be still alive.

  “No sir, I reckon they missed…. But I didn’t miss their big old barn.”

  “Hee Haw.” He laughed. “Ya reckon they’ll pack it in?”

  “Not till the money runs out.” I said as I turned to walk back to the Adams place.

  “You want to take my horse? Charlie can bring it back this evening.”

  “No… you might need it if they come across the fork… you’ll have to get back in a hurry and warn the others.”

  “Oh yeah… forgot about that.”

  “Thanks anyway, Curley, but I learned to walk long before we had a horse that didn’t pull a plow… I don’t mind it a bit.” I didn’t want to have a horse waiting there for me because if there was trouble that horse could be tied to a tree for days. Or hurt himself trying to get loose. Or Curley would have forgot about it.

  It only took me about an hour to walk back to the Adams ranch. Most everyone was a bit surprised to see me, them all thinking me among the dead because of what went on the night before.

  “From where I was,” Charlie Collins said, “the whole world was on fire. And there was a powerful lot of shootin’ goin’ on… I figgered they had you dusted but good”

  “They spent a lot of lead on me, but I was pretty high up. All they were doin’ was wearin’ out the rocks at the top of that bluff.”

  Then I told them about the bow and arrows, and how I wouldn’t let them put the fire out and made old Glazer dance.

  “But the important thing is they were planning a big move for this morning… It looked like they had the whole crowd together. They couldn’t get them all in the bunkhouse or feed them at one sittin’. When the barn caught fire there were a half dozen men sleepin’ in it…. there corral stock broke loose and ran off.

  “I would suspect most of their saddles and other gear was stashed in the barn. I didn’t see a single saddled horse this morning when I gave them a good mornin’ greetin’. That greetin’ assured me they’d have men out beating the bushes looking for me…. oh, they were mad all right.”

  “That’ll slow ‘em up some, but they’ll be a comin’ after us Injun style, with blankets tied on their horses. So we can’t let up even a little.”

  I could see it in the faces of some of the men around me. They had cattle to tend to, hay to cut, and about a hundred other things that needed doing. Most of all they had families to take care of. They were wondering if it wouldn’t have been better to just pack up and sell out… no matter what the offer.

  Having never owned anything more than a mountain cabin, a horse, a dog, and a couple dozen sheep for about a week, I was no one to judge what those men were going through. And not having had a family since I was fourteen, I sure didn’t know the responsibilities of raising kids.

  Shadrac Cain would stand to the last drop of blood was spilled, whether it was his or the fella trying to send him to hell. I was sure Bell and some of the others were cut from the same bolt of cloth, but there were some who… well, every man has his own thoughts and his own demons.

  That evening, when the Collins brothers rode out to their guard posts, I rode out with them and tagged along with Dave as an extra pair of eyes. Charlie didn’t talk much, but his brother Dave didn’t talk at all and that was fine with me. I wasn’t there on a social outing. Talking things over out here was just a good way to pass the time and get yourself killed.

  After a little while, I rode off about a half mile east and left Dave there. It was maybe three hours past sundown when I heard the rattle of gunfire up toward where Charlie’s post. I wheeled and headed back to where Dave was waiting.

  This part of the valley had plenty of trees and brush, so sound wouldn’t travel as far as it did in the mountains. Big old leafy trees can soak up a lot of sound. So I figured Dave hadn’t heard it. When I told him, he was ready to go up and help Charlie.

  Grabbing his rein, I told him, “By now, Charlie’s either delivering the warning at the ranch… or. Either way, we can’t help him. We’ve got to hold our position in case they try to swing past Adams’ place and hit the Murchison ranch…. Or torch one or two of the other ranches.”

  Glazer had been beaten at every turn. And I had a feeling he was pulling out all the stops. He didn’t get his money by being stupid. His biggest fault so far was thinking the ranchers were stupid. Maybe he had learned to respect his foe.

  There was nothing coming from the south. I didn’t know what we would be able to hea
r from that direction. But we were going to wait a while longer until the raiders had been given plenty of time for us to hear them coming or for them to reach us.

  Keeping an eye on both my horse’s head and watching Dog’s movements, I hadn’t seen anything that would make me think they were coming our way or were heading for the ranch. Then both heads came up at once. And both were looking south toward Adams’ ranch.

  “Either we got a bear stalkin’ us or they’re hitting the ranch right now. The horses and the dog hear something that way.”

  Dave Collins never even replied, he just wheeled his horse and gave it the spurs. I was right behind him. Within a few strides I was even and soon ahead. That big Arab Mustang had some speed. We could hear the gun fire after about a mile’s ride. And when we got close to a half mile out, we slowed to work our way in. The last thing we wanted to do was go flying in there and get shot by our own friends.

  The raiders were riding back and forth between the stand of trees, where I’d first messed up their attempt to burn Adams out. It was like an Injun raid. They were too far out for the ranchers to get clean shots in the dark. But Glazer’s men were keeping the rancher’s pinned down with heavy fire.

  I motioned to Dave to go into the trees and I followed. I never liked shooting at a body when he ain’t looking my way. But those boys had bought their tickets, and they were going to have to take the ride. They were a lot closer to us than they were to the ranchers, and we had some pretty good targets.

  Dave’s first shot, emptied a saddle blanket, and my first shot put a man to bending over… but he stayed. When they turned back I took down the lead rider, and Dave sent a horse to pitching. Dave’s first man was trying to get back on his horse, but the horse was having none of it. What made it worse was the lack of saddle horn or stirrup. That boy was riding bareback. A shot from the house finished him.