Hell's Gate (Ben Blue Book 8) Page 9

  Flynn was working his way to the side window, so I held off on throwing anymore rocks. He reached the window and waited. Pushing his hat back so it was held to the back of his neck by his chin thong, he ventured a peek through the window. Then he drew back and moved to the other side of the window.

  “She’s clear, your H-onor.” He called out to Claybrook. “The cottage, she be emptier than a nun’s dance card.” Flynn had a way with words.

  Flynn went through the door. Even though it was empty, he had his rifle held at the ready. The others moved out from cover, and I was working my way down the front slope. As I skidded the last few yards down to level ground, Claybrook was checking on the outlaw. He was on one knee when I reached him.

  “He’s still alive, Ben, but he won’t be long. He took one in the shoulder and two in the belly… If we can get him awake maybe we can find out where the others are.”

  “I’m awake… just don’t move… me.” Came a weak voice from the man on the ground.

  “We won’t touch you unless you want it… What’s your name, Mister?”

  He didn’t say anything for at least a half minute, but the grimace on his face told us of the pain he was in. He was pulling his knees up tight, like he was trying to smother the pain. Then he seemed to relax a bit. Claybrook looked at me like he thought the man had died. I’d seen those spasms enough to know what they were, and I knew they’d get worse.

  “Glover… Abe Glover… Don’t let the… coyotes and bears eat me.” He was one of the men from Grossman’s ranch.

  “Fair enough, Abe Glover, is there anyone we should write to and let them know?”

  “No… don’t tell them… they’re better off…” Another spasm hit him, so I waited.

  When his features relaxed a little I asked, “What happened to the others?”

  “They left yesterday…. My old horse was lame… they left me… even bastard Parsons”

  “Can you tell me where they went?”

  He went into another spasm, and it was a big one. His eyes were clamped tighter than at any time before, and his neck was arched back. He was shaking and jolting as he tried to squeeze the horrific pain out of his body. His chin was thrust out and his teeth were clinched tight enough to break them. Every muscle in his body was straining against the pain. He was holding his breath trying anything he could to put pressure on his wounds. Then through clinched teeth he whispered, “Where the devil… live…”

  I barely heard it, and I wasn’t sure I heard it right. I started to ask him again when I heard the air come through his mouth in a whoosh, and his body went limp.

  “What’d he say?” Ethan asked.

  “I think he said, ‘Where the devil lives’… I guess he was telling us, they went to hell or he was putting a curse on them of some sort.”

  “Damn!” He spat. “That leaves us with nothing!”

  Chapter 16

  “That explains all the traffic on the trail… We’ll just have to track ‘em… It won’t be easy, but it’s something we can do. Billy Stevens knows wild country, and old Rubio has taught me a thing or two about tracking.” I told him.

  “I tend to forget this isn’t Baltimore, where you can’t find a track on cobble stone streets.”

  As soon as Claybrook had gone through Glovers pockets, Stevens and Coaker dragged the body away for as much of service as Abe Glover was likely to get. Claybrook and I were going over the dead outlaw’s personal effects. There have been times when a man writes a name or an address down and sticks it in his pocket. But there was none of that in Glovers stuff.

  Flynn came from the cabin and said, “Squire Blue, I was pokin’ around in the cottage tryin’ to find anything t’would help. There’d been little left, but I found this in the ashes of the hearth.”

  He handed me a portion of burned sheet of paper. Only an incomplete word remained it read, “ellsgate”. I would have dismissed it on sight, except it was written by the same deliberate hand as the bits of notes found among Cooter’s things. But there wasn’t enough to make sense of the word.

  Every time I tried to make a word from the eight letters written on a mostly burned sheet of paper, Ethan would correct me on spelling or imagination. In other words, I didn’t know how to spell and I was likely to make words up. All I knew for sure was it was written by the same man who wrote the others.

  Corbel had gone down and brought the horses up, and as we were getting ready to mount up, Claybrook was stuffing Glover’s two handguns in his full saddlebags he said, “Here, Paddy, you need a backup… I’m all out of room.” And he handed one of the two pistols to Flynn.

  “Thank ye, Laddie… one can never be too well armed, can one?”

  “Not likely.”

  Flynn took a moment to check the cylinder and reload, and we rode out. Following the trail down was no problem, it was fresh and there were a number of horses to churn up the ground. The whole time we were riding, I was working on those strange words written on that scrap of paper… it just didn’t fit anything.

  We crossed the river and headed north then northwest. None of us had been in this part of the country, so we were taking note of landmarks and turns in the river. Looking back to the southeast, I tried to picture where Junction City was and by extension where Bull Grossman’s ranch lay. I guess the fact that Glover had been one of Grossman’s riders made me think of the big burley brawler.

  Thinking about our fight, I saw two big men clashing together because it was inevitable. Paul (Bull) Grossman would have it no other way. The moment he saw me, he began to paw the ground and snort. No one else could see it, but I could, and I figured we just as well get it over with. I knew he’d have a different attitude after he’d whipped me. I didn’t think of what he’d be like if I whipped him… I wasn’t sure I could.

  We were crossing the river again, and coming out of the water there were still plenty of tracks. Within two hundred yards the tracks were gone. We had ridden right into loose sand with tracks going every direction. I would guess that eight out of ten were made by wild critters coming and going to water, but those other two out of ten looked just like the rest.

  Calling a halt, I looked back again in the direction of Grossman’s place, when it came to me and I said, “Hells Gate… the H is burned off.”

  Everyone sat their saddles and looked at me like I’d been in the sun too long.

  “When I was talkin’ to Grossman, he told me about a no account settlement up this way that’s at the edge of some sort of badlands…He said the old timers called it the Gate to Hell, but they shortened it to Hell’s Gate… That’s what Glover was trying to say ‘Where the devil lives.”

  “Did he tell you how to get there?”

  “Well sort of… he’d never been there, but some of the old timers told him about it in case he started losing cattle… We keep going northeast and follow where the land leads us… He says in some places we can only go one way.”

  “Lead the way.” Ethan said with a sweep of his arm.

  The country before us was broken and rugged. Desert plants grew and even the ever present cedars thinned to almost none. You would see one clinging to the side of a dry bluff fifty feet above us and wonder how it got there. But there was no answer, nor was there any sign of how it got water.

  Life is a struggle in the desert for plants, animals, insects, and men. But man is an adaptable creature… he finds a way to live almost anywhere. Maybe he can’t live at the bottom of the ocean. But I wouldn’t put that past him… someday.

  Wisely, we had watered the horses and filled all the canteens with fresh water because it was all mighty dry here. After a couple of miles we came out of the sand and found the tracks again. We were shot with luck on that discovery because I had just been playing a hunch on the direction.

  We worked our way up and over several small mesas and around a few larger ones. There was no telling what this land was like a thousand years ago or ten thousand years back… I was pretty sure that’s how far back th
e earth would go. I got the feeling that at one time, this place we were riding had once been the San Juan River. You could almost see where the earth had split, with the river tilting the other way.

  The river went along its merry way with a change of direction, while the road to Hell’s Gate fell away. We were at least fifty feet below the banks and moving steadily lower. There was no doubt in my mind that this was an ancient riverbed. The walls were as smooth as if they had been sculpted from clay and smoothed by hand. But the top portions on either side were sharp and rugged. It was definitely a water line… in my mind.

  The lower we went, the warmer it seemed to get. There was a breeze coming up from below, but it was hot air. Mike Flynn was riding beside me and fussing about it.

  “Squire… d’ye think this Hell’s Gate could actually be the gate to hell? Ye have a mind that it might be boilin’ over?”

  “I reckon.” I told him. “If we’re lucky, there’s a big burley Angel guardin’ the gate to keep us from goin’ too far.”

  The best answer I could conjure up was the fact we were in a long narrow canyon under direct sunlight and very little air moving. The canyon or the old San Juan river bed were one in the same in my opinion, and they were both crooked and both hot.

  After about a half hour, the canyon walls started showing signs of decay and destruction. Huge cracks were more common than before, and portions of the walls had tumbled onto the canyon floor making the trail narrower. Around the next bend the destruction was much more pronounced. It looked like a total collapse of the walls, but a narrow trail still existed. It would have been wide enough to drive a buckboard through if the low level debris had been cleared away. But nobody had seen the need to take a wagon through there yet.

  We had been in the relative comfort of the shadow of the walls for roughly a quarter mile. But we could see the clear white hot sky above us and ahead. We knew the shade would end soon and we would be once again facing the place where the devil lives.

  Passing through the worst of the collapsed walls, we rode out onto a wide slope. To the south it presented an open hillside scattered with sheep stretching off to become part of the plateau many miles away. To the north, a massive red escarpment blocked the view, but leading one to believe there was nothing but rock and more rock beyond it. To the west, the trail went downhill in three easy levels. From where we sat on the top, the bottom was no more than two hundred feet below. But to reach the lower level we’d have to travel a mile of slope.

  Beyond the point where the trail turned right at the base of the escarpment there was nothing. One could see what looked to be an edge of a cliff or bluff or even a river. The edge was dotted with growing cedars and other high plains plants, but it all ended there. All that could be seen was a brown haze as far as the eye could see. There were no mountains, hills, or prairies to mark the horizon. Was this the end of the earth?

  I knew how the early voyagers must have felt, when they first moved far enough out on the ocean to lose sight of the land. The difference was I could see the end and they didn’t know when they would just fall off. I’m not ashamed to say, it was a bit unnerving.

  But sheep grazed on the hills to my left, and there was supposed to be a town here somewhere. How could life go on in a place where one missed step could send a horse, sheep, or man off the end of the world?

  I looked over at Flynn, who had just crossed himself and asked, “What are you thinkin, Mike?”

  “I’m thinkin’ that when that sheriff wanted to parole me into your service, I should have said, ‘No thank you Sheriff, but I’ll do the six months in jail… Jasus, Benny, the world ends down there.”

  “Ben, that’s the damnedest thing I’ve ever seen, and I’ve seen more than a little.” Claybrook proclaimed.

  “I don’t reckon we’ll ever know what all that’s about, by just sitting here lookin’ at it.” I said as I touched heels to my gray. He stepped right out. What we were shocked and stunned by, the horses seemed to take in stride. The rest followed without hesitation. What we saw as something that was just plain wrong, the animals saw as just another fact of life.

  The farther down the slope we got, the more mysterious it became, until we were at the same level as the edge. Looking up at the light brown cloud, we could see that it was exactly that…. a cloud… a cloud of fine dust. The dust showed on the face of the escarpment. It fell on our hats, our clothes, and on the hairs on the backs of our hands. It was everywhere, but the slightest movement would cause it to fall away.

  The dust where we were was fallout from the cloud that hung over whatever was beyond the edge. It was riding the air currents, after being scooped up from below; it was carried high into the air and curled back on itself.

  “We found the hell… now let’s go find the gate.” I told them.

  I think they were all pleased with that idea. No matter what we faced when we came head to head with the outlaw bunch, we understood lead and gunpowder, none of us understood that strange cloud of dust.

  We followed the trail to the right around and past that huge chunk of rock. Once we reached the other side, we could see what looked for all the world to be the face of a low mesa. But there was no flat top. It kept climbing for hundreds of feet, until it ended in a series of red dagger like spires. That churning cloud of dust was about a half mile to our left. We had the feeling that at each minute it would change direction and consume us all.

  Riding with that red rock wall to our right and the evil cloud on our left, we were hemmed in. If we were ambushed there, we’d be in a lot of trouble. I think most of us would have rather tried climbing the rock wall than take a chance on what was below that cloud.

  The red wall seemed to be a good deal friendlier than the cloud, so we rode close to it. Of course, calling that thing a wall didn’t in anyway mean it was flat and straight. It pushed out and it drew back so we were constantly going around one turn or another.

  About the fifth or sixth time we went around one of those intruding features, our eyes settled on a wind hollowed cup in the wall. It was like the hand of God had scooped out a huge chunk of that wall. The cup was at least two hundred yards from end to end and a hundred feet to the domed ceiling. The best way to describe it would be to call it the inside of a clam shell.

  That big clam shell was interesting enough, but the fact that it had a half dozen Navajo hogans scattered around a rickety old cabin added a good deal of interest to it. I loosened my Winchester in my saddle scabbard. I knew it was fully loaded, with one in the chamber, so I didn’t do anything with it. I heard several rifles being ratcheted behind me.

  The first things I looked for were horses… there were none. Oh, there was a stable built into the corner of the shell, but the only horse there was more suited for pulling a plow or a wagon than carrying an outlaw. I saw a few burros scattered about the hogans. If there were any outlaws staying in this place, I saw no sign of it.

  I moved ahead and turned Smoke so that I could face the group.

  “Ethan, I’m going up to the cabin… I don’t see any sign of anybody but a few Navajo and whoever lives in that cabin. I’ve got the fastest horse, and he can switch ends as fast as any. So if I have any hint of trouble, I’ll fold my cards and get out of the game in a hurry.”

  “Ben, as senior Marshal, it’s my job to go in.”

  “Do you speak Navajo? I may be able to get the information without getting too close.”

  He looked down at his hands resting on the horn and shook his head from side to side… I didn’t tell him that many Navajo spoke Spanish and some English.

  “Squire… You be careful… If I go home without you, your lady will have me mucking stalls and washing baby nappies till they outgrow the need of ‘em.”

  I swore I’d be extra careful to keep him from washing diapers.

  Chapter 17

  Slipping the thong from my Colt, I pulled the Winchester from the scabbard, and pulled the hammer back over a live cartridge. I then rode with it ready
to point and pull the trigger. Naked children ran up to within inches of Smoke’s hooves laughing and jabbering, while they tried to keep up. I nudged him into a lope wanting to leave those youngens out of harm’s way. Navajo women were running out in my wake snatching up kids, two and three at a time.

  I pulled up about thirty yards from the front of the cabin and called out, “He-loo the cabin… US Marshal Ben Blue.”

  There was a rustle of what sounded like flipping tin cans in an iron skillet. And then a man with more beard than I thought possible came to the door.

  “How do Marshal… light and sit. I was just puttin’ some stuff away or I’d a seen ya… Reckon I know what you’re here for… they ain’t here… they stopped by yestiday and got whiskey… I was just makin’ up another keg.”

  “I’m lookin’ for seven or eight hardcases. They would have come in here yesterday or the day before.”

  “Yep, thems the ones, Curley, Bob Cutter, and O’Dowd… They’s the first uns, but they got more since then… can’t recomember all they names… He he… I caint even recomember your name… oh yeah… it’s Marshal. But I know my own name and that’s what matter.”

  “What is it?”

  “What’s what?”

  “Your name… what’s your name?”

  “Oh… Davis Time.” He said as he stuck his chest out with pride.

  “Well, Mister Time, where might we find those gentlemen who got whiskey form you?”

  “You mean Copeland’s boys …. They’s about a mile up that a way.” He pointed north. “They got ‘em a overhang like this’n, but it ain’t as big. I gave ‘em some flour an salt pork an such…. Copeland brung it out a year or so back… he said his boys would need to rest up now and then… so we made a deal… You’re gonna need some help cause that’s a tough bunch up there.”