Sam nodded.
“That’s the way it looks to me. The cracks are more pronounced, so you can see them better.”
“That ain’t no natural formation. The cracks may be, but the ledges connectin’ ’em ain’t. They must go all the way around the mesa.”
“The Navajo probably carved them, no telling how long ago,” Sam said. “They could put lookouts up there to watch for their enemies, and they could fire arrows down or throw rocks off to ambush those enemies.”
“You reckon those ledges are wide enough for cows, or a man on horseback?”
“Only one way to find out,” Sam said as he lifted his reins.
Before he could heel his horse into motion, Pete Lowry said, “Hold on there, breed. Where do you think you’re goin’?”
Sam hesitated.
“I have an idea where the men we’re looking for might be,” he said. “But they’re probably watching us right now, and I don’t want them to realize that I’ve figured out their secret.”
“I don’t believe you,” Lowry said. “I still think this is some sort of trick.”
Boyd rode over and asked, “What’s going on here?”
Lowry nodded toward Sam.
“The ’breed says he’s figured it out. I think he’s just tryin’ to get away from us, though, so his friends can open fire on us.”
“That’s not true,” Sam said. “Look at that big mesa in front of me, Mr. Boyd. I think I see a trail leading up to the top.”
Boyd frowned.
“Where? I don’t see any trail, just a bunch of cracks like the whole thing’s about to come tumbling down in an avalanche.”
“I’ll bet it’s a lot more stable than it looks. I want to amble over there and take a closer look, but if the rustlers are up there, I don’t want them to realize that I know they’re there.”
Boyd nodded slowly.
“That makes sense, I reckon. Go ahead, Two Wolves ... but Stewart and Coleman stay here, and if any lead starts to fly, they’ll die before we do. You’ve got my word on that.”
When Sam hesitated again, Stovepipe said, “Go ahead, son. We’ll take that chance, won’t we, Wilbur?”
“Do we have any choice?” the redhead asked gloomily.
“Not a dang one,” Stovepipe said with a grin.
“Keep an eye on the top of the mesa,” Sam told Boyd. “If I was trying to set up an ambush, I wouldn’t tell you where it was coming from, now would I?”
“Likely not,” the rancher agreed, although Lowry still looked skeptical.
Sam started his horse toward the mesa, moving at a deliberate pace. Several of the Devil’s Pitchfork hands were still searching around the other mesas, so what he was doing didn’t look too suspicious ... he hoped.
Because he could feel eyes on him. The same instincts that had warned him of danger many times in his adventurous life were setting off alarm bells inside him now.
That warning was justified, too, because he was still a hundred yards from the base of the mesa when a rifle cracked and a bullet whistled past his ear.
Chapter 29
The hot breath of the slug was much too close for comfort. Sam leaned forward in the saddle and kicked his horse into a gallop as more shots blasted. Dirt and rocks spouted from the ground as bullets struck around him.
The closest cover was at the base of the mesa itself. The riflemen on top of the formation would have trouble firing straight down at him. The big slabs of fallen rock would give him some protection as well.
As he raced toward the mesa, Sam glanced over his shoulder at his companions. Stovepipe, Wilbur, Boyd, Lowry, and the other men from the Devil’s Pitchfork were scattering as bullets whined among them, too. The riders hunted cover as fast as they could.
One man wasn’t fast enough, though. He went backward out of the saddle as a slug smashed into him. One of his feet caught in the stirrup, and the panicky horse dragged him across the rough ground, causing his body to bounce grotesquely.
As Sam reached the rocks at the base of the mesa, he yanked his rifle from its sheath and swung down from the saddle. He dropped the reins and hoped the horse woudn’t run off too far.
Bringing the Winchester to his shoulder, Sam cranked off several rounds as fast as he could toward the top of the mesa. He had seen spurts of gunsmoke from up there and had a general idea where the ambushers were.
He didn’t expect to hit any of them, but with luck he could force them back for a second, which would give Stovepipe and the others more time to find shelter.
As slugs began to search for him, Sam ducked behind a chunk of sandstone that was taller than he was. Bullets smacked into the top of the slab, some drilling into the sandstone and others whining off as ricochets.
But none of them reached Sam, and that was all that mattered right now.
Sam slid along the rock, reached the corner of it, and snapped a couple more shots at the mesa’s rim, working the rifle’s lever swiftly between rounds.
Then he sprinted toward another rock that brought him closer to one of the cracks in the mesa wall.
When he reached cover again, he looked out over the flats in front of the mesa. The rest of the men who had come here with him were out of sight now, hidden behind boulders and some of the smaller rock formations that gave this landscape something of an alien look. Sam heard shots booming out from them as they returned the fire of the rustlers on top of the mesa.
While his companions were keeping the rustlers busy, Sam worked his way closer. When he reached one of the cracks, he saw that it ran deep enough into the rock to form a ledge angling upward. That ledge was wide enough for a couple of cows to ascend it.
Driving cattle up to the top of the mesa by this route would be difficult, and once the beasts were up there, getting them down would be even harder. But maybe the rustlers didn’t intend to bring them down, Sam thought. As he had reasoned out earlier, selling the stolen stock had never been the goal.
Once the Navajo had been moved out, the rustlers could leave those cattle up there to starve if they wanted to. Such cruelty wouldn’t be beyond men who had set out to start an Indian war.
Sam started up the crack in the rock. For several yards, the climb was an easy one. When it grew steeper, he came to one of the connecting, man-made ledges that were hard to see from a distance.
Up close like this, it was obvious that the path had been hewn out of the stone by hand. All the sharp edges had been rounded away by erosion, though, which indicated that long years, maybe even centuries, had passed since the work had been done.
Sam had heard legends about Old Ones, people who had been in this part of the world even before the Navajo, and he wondered if this path was some of their handiwork. Those Old Ones had disappeared mysteriously, sometime in the dim past, so if they had turned this mesa into a watchtower, obviously that hadn’t been enough to save them in the end.
The continuing racket of gunfire from above and below brought Sam out of his momentary reverie. The past might be fascinating, but the present was dangerous and needed his full attention.
He walked out onto the ledge, keeping an eye on the rim some seventy feet above him. After about fifty feet, he came to another of the zigzagging cracks and was able to climb it to the next man-made ledge.
As he moved higher and higher, his route carried him around the curve of the mesa, so he couldn’t see his companions anymore. He heard the shots, though, as the battle between the rustlers and the Devil’s Pitchfork crew continued.
Sam didn’t know how many men he would find on top of the mesa. It would have taken at least five or six to steal that herd and drive them out here, but once the cattle were hidden atop the mesa, fewer men would be needed to keep an eye on them. Some of the rustlers could have headed to town, leaving only a couple up there.