"That's right. We travel."
They proceeded and within a half mile were warned again. A murmuring rose up from the foreground and trembled back along the earth—an illusive shuffling, tapping sound that defied location. Either men were crawling slowly through the darkness close by or they were galloping rapidly in the distance. The partners fell into a deep gully—that same gully which William Wells Woolfridge meant to use for his main ditch— and stopped.
"Can't be them buzzards has got around us," said Mack Moran. "Wish I could smoke."
"Think it's another party."
"Great snakes, how many parties is out on the warpath? . . . Blockin' both ferries against yuh. Hell . . ."
The murmuring sprang to a definite rhythm of scudding hoofs. Bridle chains jingled, and the partners, warned nearly too late, pulled out of the gully. Riders went by, leaving a backwash of talk.
"A little further ..."
"Naw, this is foolish . . . Go back to the ferry."
Mack waited a safe interval. "Don't sound like nobody I ever heard. Now, what?"
"They're strikin' all around us. We wait awhile."
Time dragged. It might have been a quarter hour or it might have been a half hour before they picked up the signal of that scout party again. It had left the gully and split into sections. One ranged over nearer the canyon. The other seemed to be wandering piecemeal southward. Once this latter section came so close that Jim Chaffee thought he and Mack were about to be run down. Then that exploring fragment drew up and retreated, making a sudden flurry elsewhere.
"Must smell somethin'," grumbled Mack. "Else they wouldn't be so nervous. What to do?"
"Wait it out. If we go ahead we'll maybe bust right into some wandering galoot."
The search party gathered itself eastward, between the partners and the trail to Lee's ferry. It moved away and seemed to leave the neighborhood entirely. Yet there was a queer drop- off to the sound of their retreat that left Chaffee unsatisfied. Mack was restless, muttering dire things under his breath. The shadows fell more thickly about the land, but as they waited with patience ever shortening they saw the promise of light soon to break across the peaks.
"Got to tackle it," whispered Mack. "Can't delay no longer."
"Swing wide—don't go straight ahead."
They veered, the soft abrasion of the ponies' progress running ahead and sinking into silence. They lost a mile in that detour and much good time from the slack pace. In that interval the eastern sky broke to the coming day's first thin and cheerless wedge of light. The peaks stood dim and cold. Without speaking the partners increased their speed, and in the pale dawn they came to the rim at a point where a road dived downward into the misty depths and stopped short at Lee's ferry. They saw a light glimmering through the fog. The ferry itself was just visible, resting on the far bank. A lantern sparkled over there, too. Behind them the desert broke its vigil, pale and frosty.
"Ferry's acrost. That's bad. Make us wait twenty minutes. Meanwhile we're plumb in a trap. Jim, supposin' some o' them suckers is below waitin' for us?"
"I'm thinkin' about that item," replied Chaffee.
"Doggone, it's cold. What to do? It looks spooky to me."
"I guess we'd better brace it," decided Chaffee. "Can't turn back now." The horses, single file, walked stiff-legged down the grade as the barren wall threw its shadow over them. Halfway, they halted and studied the house, the yard, and the surrounding buildings. Nothing but the light indicated people up and about. If any of the pursuing men were below they could only be hiding in the flimsy barn.
"It's doggone ticklish," averred Mack. "Why don't that ferry start back?"
They finally came out upon the narrow beach—the only foothold of any kind for fifteen miles along the river—and advanced to the door, still in the saddle. The door came open and a woman, old and suspicious, peered out. "What you want?"
"Ferry across."
"Ferry was stoved again' the far bank yestiday," said the woman. "Old man's over tryin' to cork up the hole now. You'll have to wait till noon, mebbe more."
This was disaster. Mack's weary face settled. Chaffee never had seen his partner take any piece of news so hard. As for himself, he was very tired, and the swift shuttling of fortune and misfortune during the last forty-eight hours left him somewhat hardened to a bad break such as this.
"Well, you've got a rowboat, haven't you?"
"Can't take horses over in a rowboat, mister," said the woman. She looked closely at the pair. "You must want to git away powerful bad. We've had lots of 'em like that. What's your name?"
"Look up!" cried Mack.
Chaffee tilted his chin. A line of horsemen tipped over the rim and started downward, headlong and reckless. A shot broke the cold air and rocketed between the towering banks, sounding strange above the unchanging surge of the river. Mack drew his gun and at sight of it the woman screamed and slammed the door. Both partners were out of the saddle and racing toward the rowboat drawn half from the water. "Boost that brute!" snapped Mack. "We'll get acrost, which is plumb more'n they'll do!"
The rowboat slid into the stream, both men scrambling aboard. Chaffee seated the oars in the rowlocks and pushed the skiff away from the shallow gravel. The swift current gripped the boat in a vise and shot it downward; Chaffee threw his weight full against the oars; they quartered across the grass-green surface.
The posse was almost down; guns began to wake the echoes. Across on the ferry side old man Lee straightened and ran momentarily out of sight. When he reappeared there was a short barreled shotgun in his fists. He peered through the thin fog, raising the gun uncertainly, not knowing what to expect. Mack Moran yelled at him, but the sound of the water only blurred Mack's meaning. The posse raced to the river's edge and laid a line of fire against the boat, all shots falling short. The woman screamed again and it may have been that Xavier Francois Lonestar Lee heard that scream, though the noise of the canyon might have absorbed so shrill a sound before it reached the man's ears. But at any rate he saw the posse through the fog and he heard them shooting; and he obeyed a natural, primitive impulse. Raising the shotgun he fired point-blank at the nearing boat. The fine shot sang and snapped in the water. Mack yelled again and ducked. "Let 'er go! The crazy loon's reachin' for more shells!"
The second blast came sleeting across the interval, indescribably vicious as it sheered and spat in the current and whined against the boat's side. Jim Chaffee felt a thin, sharp pain slicing into his shoulder; turning, he saw that Lee was making ready for another aim, and he understood then how impossible the situation had of a sudden become. Buckshot was deadly; he dared not attempt to bluff through it. So he reversed the impulse of the oars and the boat, urged onward by the added force, raced into the dim, droning depths of the canyon.
Mack Moran's immediate reaction was one of absurd, hilarious satisfaction. "Doggone that Lee person. He'll never get this boat back again. Serves him right." Then he noticed Chaffee's wrist muscles snapping hard against the oars and at that point the full realization of the approaching ordeal smote him squarely in the middle of his shoulder blades. His leathery cheeks tightened; through the gray gloom his face seemed to pucker owlishly, and there appeared to be a withdrawal of blood from his compressed lips. "Man, let's you and me hit for the shore sudden."
"What shore?"
"Huh?" Mack looked around, startled. The lower end of that gravel strip upon which Lee's house precariously perched was sliding past them, narrowing swiftly to nothing more than a ledge. Even as he looked that ledge fell away into the river and was absorbed by the sheer face of the canyon wall and there was nothing left but a stubborn, black expanse of pitted rock rising and vanishing beyond the curling mists. The booming fury of water struggling through the farther recesses grew perceptibly louder. Chaffee threw his weight against the oars and the skiff, traveling stern foremost, shot along like a thing alive. Mack protested.