Free Feud On The Mesa by Lauran Paine Page B

hurt?”
    “No, tired and filthy from wallowing in the mudout there.” Caleb nodded toward a rain-flecked window where the slippery, dark earth was shiny with water. “But not hurt.”
    “You stop fight, then.”
    “Huh?”
    “You stop fight. Crows let Texas cows go to the Platte if cowmen let Crow warriors guide them through Crow land by way of Canon del Muerto.”
    Caleb looked thoughtfully at the scarred warrior before he answered. Canon del Muerto—Dead Man’s Canon—was aptly named. The trail was narrow above a deep canon. Many emigrants had been am-bushed there in the early days. Now, even with the Crows to guide them, the canon trail would be a treacherous, slippery quagmire. Still, it was preferable to the fighting at that time still echoing through Lodgepole. Anything, Doom thought, to get rid of the Texans and their cattle. He nodded abruptly. “I’ll see what I can do.” He turned and opened the door a crack before Sally Tate caught his slippery, mud-covered arm.
    “Caleb, don’t go. They’ll kill you. Oh, Caleb.…”
    “Sally, I’ve got to try an’ stop the killing. Bull Bear’s offer to cross…. ”
    “I don’t care, Caleb. You’re hurt. Stay here and let me bandage your side and wash the mud off you. Let someone else go.”
    Caleb fixed her with a critical look. “Who?”
    She looked around her for a desperate moment, saw only the blank, disapproving look of the Crow chieftain, and let her arm drop as Caleb slipped out of the café into the drizzle and mud.
    The rain was coming down in a steady, persistent sheet of water now and Doom was thoroughly drenched and streaked with the cloying mud beforehe managed to get to the Longhorn. A bullet came out of nowhere, smashed into the rear door of the saloon, knocking it violently inwards. Caleb jumped frantically into the room, crouched and ready, but saw no one. He swung over to the stairway leading upstairs and mounted them two at a time, a filthy, grim figure of a man, hair straggling over his grimy, hollow-eyed face, the wet .44 glistening in his muddy paw.
    Caleb searched each room until he found what he was looking for, a small trap door in the ceiling leading up onto the roof. With surprising ability, he leaped up, caught on with his powerful fingers, and shoved the wooden cover away so that he could wiggle through. The rain hit him like a hundred cold little fists as he clambered out onto the roof. Straightening up, he was startled to see a crouched rifleman over be-side the edge of the building’s false front. Apparently the drenching rain had muffled his noisy ascent. Stealing forward, he raised and cocked his six-gun. “Drop it
hombre
, or I’ll drop you.”
    The lean back tensed but the rifle fell into the pool of clear water at the man’s feet. Caleb risked a quick glance down over the town. He could command the front of the livery barn easily from up here and it dawned on him where the gunman had been who had first shot at him as he had emerged from the stable.
    “Turn around, but don’t raise up too high or you’ll get it from down below.” The man turned. Doom recognized him as one of the men who had been with the gunman foreman at the saloon. The man’s eyes widened when he saw the filthy, ragged apparition before him. He recognized Caleb as the killer of his foreman and a dry tongue flickered over his rain-washed face. “What’s the name of that big
hombre
with the flashy clothes? The one who did all the hol-lerin’ in the saloon this mornin’?”
    “Jeff Chandler. He’s the owner o’ the cattle. He’s a big man down in…. ”
    “Who was the other feller? The one I killed?”
    “Powder Hudson. He was the foreman o’ Chandler’s trail drives.”
    “What’s your name?”
    “Buck Gleason.”
    “Got a good pair of lungs, Buck?”
    “I reckon, why?”
    “Go over to the edge of the false front, where you were, an’ holler out for Chandler.”
    “Like hell,” the answer came from a white and frightened