Free the Lonely Men (1969) by Louis - Sackett's 14 L'amour Page A

down. Falling rain masked the depths below, the great peaks were shrouded in cloud. Thunder rumbled around us, tremendous sounds as if we were inside an enormous drum. We dashed into a pine forest, ran our horses for a hundred yards, then slowed for a steep slide and a muddy scramble.
    Battles' horse slipped and fell, spilling him from the saddle, but the horse was game and scrambled up. By the time it was on its feet, Battles was in the saddle again.
    There was no chance now for the black rock atop the boulder. Anyway, because of the rain Harry could not see it.
    Me, I kept looking back over my shoulder, wondering when the Indians would catch up. The rain might have muffled the shots enough so that the other rancherias would not be alerted to our coming. We drew up briefly under the trees and I eased the girl into a better position on the saddle before me.
    "Were there any other children back there?" I asked her. "White ones, I mean?"
    "No," she said. Her eyes were bright, but she looked excited rather than scared.
    "Which one is Orry Sackett?" I asked.
    She just looked at me. "Neither one. Those two are the Creed boys. I never heard of any boy called Orry."
    Something turned over inside me. "Tamp," I yelled, "my nephew isn't here!"
    "I know it," he said. "He ain't here at all. These were the youngsters the Taches took. The only ones."
    "That's not possible!"
    "You better get goin' " Spanish said. "This here is no time to talk."
    We started on, knowing there could be no hesitating, no turning back. The hills would be alive with Apaches now, and if we got out of here alive we'd have to have uncommon luck, which we had come into the mountains knowing.
    Slipping and running, scrambling up and down muddy slopes, slapped by wet branches, racing through the forest ... first and last, it was a nightmare.
    We came finally to the place above the first Indian encampment, and I passed the girl over to Battles. "I've got to get that boy Harry!" I told him. "Don't be a fool! There's no chance!"
    "Keep going," I said. "I promised him."
    They all looked at me, each of them holding a youngster -- three tough, hard-bitten men with no families, no homes, nothing to call their own but a set of guns and saddles. They sat there in the rain, and not one of them could come with me because now they had the children to think of.
    "Run for it," I said. "This here's my scalp."
    "Good luck," Spanish said, and they were gone. Me, I watched them go, then swung my horse toward that boulder. Far back up the mountains, I thought I heard a shout and a shot. But I went down that trail to the place where I'd met the boy.
    Hounding the boulder, rifle ready, I stared toward the rancheria, and suddenly out of the wet brush came the boy, Harry Brook. He was soaked to the skin and he was scared, but he came toward me. "Mister," he said, and he was crying.
    "Mister, I was scared you wouldn't make it."
    Reaching down, I caught his hand and swung him up to the saddle.
    "They know you're gone?" I asked. "I think so ... by now. Somebody came in and said he'd heard shootin', but the old bucks wouldn't believe him. No chance in this rain, they said, not in these mountains. I figured it was you, so first chance I had, I cut and run."
    We started up the trail. Up there on the ridge I could see the muddy tracks of the other horses, and I swung into the trail after them, but then pulled up sharp. Their trail was almost wiped out by the track of other horses, unshod horses.
    "Apaches," I said. "Is there another trail?"
    "Down there." The boy pointed toward the canyon. "The Old Ones' trail. An Apache boy showed it to me. It goes out across Sonora to the big water." Harry looked up at me, his face glistening with rain. "Anyway, that's what he said."
    The black was fidgeting. He liked the situation no more than I did, so I pointed his nose where the boy said. He shied at the trail, then took it gingerly.
    It was no kind of a place to ride even in good weather, let alone in a rain