As he did, he passed the stalls where the mounts belonging to Stovepipe Stewart and Wilbur Coleman were kept. He’d halfway expected to run into the mysterious cowboys by now, since they seemed to turn up wherever he was, but so far he hadn’t seen any sign of them.
Obviously they were still in town, though, since their horses were here.
Sam said so long to Garralaga and rode out of Flat Rock, heading south. He had only the vaguest idea of where the Devil’s Pitchfork Ranch was, but he knew it lay south of the settlement.
If he had told anyone he was heading for John Henry Boyd’s spread, they probably would have advised him that he was loco. Boyd, Lowry, and the rest of the Devil’s Pitchfork bunch had shady reputations to begin with, and now they were all stirred up because they believed the Navajo had killed two of their men and rustled fifty head of cattle.
Sam didn’t believe that, but he knew he was running a risk by riding on Boyd’s range. If any of Boyd’s men caught a glimpse of his coppery skin, they would probably shoot first and then figure out who he was.
This trip served two purposes, though. Sam didn’t want Caballo Rojo’s people being blamed for something they didn’t do. If the army was drawn into this, it would only make the trouble worse. The best way to avoid that was to find out what had really happened to the rustled cattle.
Also, Sam was still trying to draw out the men who had attacked him and Matt. He couldn’t give them a much more tempting target than this.
Of course, that meant he was risking his life, but he thought it was worth the gamble. He hoped so, anyway.
If nothing else, the landscape was spectacular in its stark beauty. Dark, rugged mesas thrust up imposingly from the flat land around them, as did towering spires of red sandstone. Ranges of rocky hills bordered vast sweeps of empty ground. Cliffs jutted up and ran for miles. Colors faded from brown to tan to red to black. It was almost like being in an alien world devoid of life, Sam thought.
But here and there, pockets of life did exist. Canyons cut into the hills and cliffs, and in their shaded reaches, springs bubbled up, allowing hardy grass and stunted trees to grow. Higher up in the mountains, the slopes were dark with pine and juniper. This was a hard land, but it would support people who knew how to use it.
The Navajo possessed that knowledge. It was part of their heritage, going back centuries.
Most white men didn’t know how to use the land the way it was, Sam reflected. What they knew was how to change it. They would find a way to bring water into dry country and make it bloom. They would lay down steel rails to span vast distances. They would gouge holes in the earth and rip minerals from its heart.
In truth, Sam didn’t know which way was better. But there had to be a land somewhere that would finally defeat the ingenuity of the white men.
If such a place existed, it just might be the Four Corners. Maybe someday they would realize that and leave it to the Navajo, the Pueblo, the Hopi ... the people who were born to this forbidding landscape.
Despite those musings, Sam was still alert. His gaze roamed constantly over the country around him. Because of that, he was able to spot a thin line of smoke rising into the air a couple of miles ahead of him.
That was probably smoke from a chimney, he thought, and a chimney meant the headquarters of the Devil’s Pitchfork Ranch. So he was on Boyd’s range now.
Or rather, the range that Boyd claimed the use of. All this land was supposed to belong to the Navajo. Obviously that didn’t matter to some people.
If the trouble between the white settlers and the Indians escalated to the point that the army was sent in, that would give the politicians back in Washington the excuse they needed to invalidate the treaty establishing the reservation.
Sam had no doubt that they would do it, and that thought made him frown. In other places, evil men had attempted schemes such as that. Although he and Matt had never encountered any themselves, Sam had heard about them. In Denver, he had overheard men discussing just such a plot that had been broken up by the famous gunfighter Smoke Jensen and other members of his family.
Sam didn’t know if that was what was going on here, but it was possible.
And he found himself wondering if that bushwhack attempt on him and Matt could be connected to it in some way. That seemed far-fetched, but reality was often stranger than any fiction could ever hope to be.
He came to a pair of shallow hogback ridges about a mile apart. They ran roughly parallel for at least two miles, and the smoke rose at the far end of the valley they formed.
Also at the far end of the valley, looming over it, was an odd, three-pronged rock spire. As Sam looked at it, he realized that it resembled, at least roughly, a pitchfork.
That was where the ranch had gotten its name, he thought.
There wasn’t much grass in the valley, but there was some and cattle grazed there.
Sam reined in and sat there looking toward the far end of the valley. That was where Boyd’s ranch house was located, he thought. And it was from this valley that the cattle had been stolen.
He lifted his horse’s reins, ready to start riding back and forth until he found the tracks that fifty head of stock must have left.
Sam had just heeled his mount into a turn when he heard a bullet whip past his ear, followed instantly by the sharp crack of a shot.
Chapter 23
Sam didn’t know where the shot came from, but he could tell from the sound of the report that it had been fired from a rifle, probably a Winchester.
He also knew that the rifleman would have a harder time hitting him if he was moving, so he continued pulling his horse into a turn and jammed his heels into the animal’s flanks to make it leap ahead in a gallop.
Sam leaned forward over the horse’s neck to make himself a smaller target. As he did so, he saw a puff of gunsmoke spurt out from a spot about halfway up the ridge to his right.
That was the direction he was headed.
He was charging right toward the hidden bushwhacker.
Bushwhackers, he corrected himself as he spotted another jet of powder smoke from a different place on the ridge. There were at least two of them—again.
These would-be killers seemed to like working in pairs.
Sam gritted his teeth. This was what he had wanted, to draw the bushwhackers into attacking him again.
This time he intended to take one of them prisoner so he could get some answers. Chances were, the man wouldn’t want to talk, but threatening him with some Cheyenne torture would probably loosen his tongue ... whether Sam intended to follow through on those threats or not.
He was getting ahead of himself, Sam thought as he sent his horse plunging back and forth at zigzag angles to keep the riflemen from drawing a bead on him.
First he had to actually capture one of them.
And to do that he had to keep from being killed.
His horse suddenly gave a wild leap underneath him. Sam knew the animal must have been hit. As he felt himself come out of the saddle, he kicked his feet free of the stirrups. That was all he had time to do.
Sam sailed free through the air for a breathless second before the ground came up and slammed into him. He landed on his shoulder and rolled.
Pain shot through him, but he ignored it as his momentum made him roll over a couple of times. He let it carry him up onto one knee and looked around for some cover.
He knew he was going to need it.
Sure enough, more slugs plowed into the ground around him, spraying him with grit and gravel. Sam got his other foot underneath him and shoved himself upright.
Several good-sized rocks lay a few yards to his right. He flung himself toward them as another slug burned past his ear. A desperate dive landed him among the rocks. He hugged the dirt as a couple of bullets whined off the big chunks of stone.
A slug hit the ground right beside one of his outstretched feet, close enough that the impact made him wince. He drew his legs up as much as he could.