The Ferguson Rifle

Yet I was involved. Lucinda Falvey had put her trust in me and in my companions. I did owe them a debt, and surprisingly enough, I did not want to stay out of it.

It irritated me that Rafen Falvey should take me lightly, and there was something in the man that made me bristle. I did not think of myself as good, but I was quite sure he was evil.

On cat feet, I eased through my brief shelter of spruce boughs and looked about.

nothing. Regretfully, I glanced down at my moccasins. I would have to repair or replace them, for this ru

Moving from tree to tree, I worked myself along and down the slope. Before me there was another, younger stand of aspen. When I moved toward the trees, I heard water ru

After a long look around, I lay down and drank my fill, then splashed the cold water on my face and in my eyes. Nor did I delay at the water, but stepped quickly over it and went swiftly down the hill to the edge of the aspen.

From there I had a clean sweep on the talus slope that led to the crest of the mountain, and it was bare ... empty of life.

No shooting... nothing.

Often as a child in the eastern woods I had played at Indian while hunting for meat, and now I moved much as I had then. Using the best cover, I moved along and down the slope, switching back suddenly to change direction, and then again. There was cover enough.

My view of the bottom was suddenly excellent. A long meadow through which the stream ran, aspens and willow at the stream's edge, a few cottonwoods, and some low brush I could not make out at the distance, and on the meadow a half dozen marmots were feeding.

It was a pleasure to watch them, for shy as they were, they would scuttle into theirthe holes in the rocks at the slightest movement.

Seated perfectly still, I let my eyes range over the bottom where they were, trying to see any disturbance in the grass to indicate tracks. I found nothing. The trees along the creek were few and scattered, and except for an occasional cottonwood, not large.

Where would my friends be likely to be? And where was Rafen Falvey?

Concentrating on these questions and studying the creek timber below and the scarp opposite, I scarcely noticed the piping whistle of the marmots. It touched my consciousness but made no impression until suddenly the lack of movement did. The marmots were gone!

Both hands gripped my rifle and I rolled into deeper cover and wound up lying prone, propped on my elbows, my rifle in position.

They came quickly, two men riding point, one of whom I'd seen before, and a dozen yards behind them, Rafen Falvey, then the others. It was as tough a lot of men as I'd seen. They rode on by, and then suddenly, Falvey shouted.

Instantly the two files faced in opposite directions and slipped the spurs to their horses, and each file charged into the trees. It was a move calculated to scare anybody in their path, and it worked.

One rider was charging directly toward me, and I shot him through the chest. He threw up his arms and fell, hitting the earth not twenty feet from me, dead before he reached the grass. For a wild, flashing instant I thought of grabbing his loose horse, but then I was ru

A passage like a hallway opened before me and I ran down it, then ducked right toward the mountainside. Behind me I could hear shots and yells and somebody was racing a horse opposite me, then on past. Behind the rocks and brush, I was unseen, but it would be a minute only until they closed in all around me.

A space too narrow for a horse opened on my right, and gasping for breath, I went into x, turned sidewise and edged through. A brush-choked hollow lay before me, but I thought I saw a place where animals had gone through, and dropping to my knees, I crawled in, and fortunately had the presence of mind to scatter some leaves behind me, and to pull down a branch so no opening was visible.

On elbows and knees, I wormed my way along the passage, if such it could be called.

All around me was thick brush, much of it blackberry brush with thorns like needles. But wild animals had used this opening, and I made my way through.

At the end it opened on a sheet of bluish rock scattered with pebbles fallen off the mountain.

There were slender aspens here, and I stood up and faced into them, loading the Ferguson as I went.

They were no more than a hundred yards away, and it would be only a matter of time until they found me. What I needed now was a place to hide.

Or a place in which to make a stand.

Falvey was shouting angrily. Suddenly I heard a shot, then a burst of firing... and silence.

A moment I listened, but they would be searching for me, knowing me trapped against the face of the mountain.

I went down the dry watercourse through the aspen, their leaves dancing overhead, and then turned and found myself with a sheer wall of rock on my right hand, a wall at least thirty feet high, and without a break!

The place was shadowed and still, dappled by sunlight falling through the leaves. I walked on, careful to make no sound. My enemies were close beyond the scattered boulders, brush, and trees on my left, and on my right a rock wall not even a squirrel could climb.

Soon they would discover it was not thick brush and boulders to the rock wall. They would find there was this ancient watercourse.... Suddenly it ended.

The rock bed along which I had been walking suddenly turned right, dipped slightly down, and came to an abrupt end.

From around that corner, back up the way, came a shout. They had discovered my hidden path. In a moment I would be fighting for my life.

Glancing quickly around I saw what I had not seen before, a black slit at the foot of the rock wall into wh the water had evidently poured. It was narrow, but there was just a chance. Suppose it dropped off fifty or a hundred feet into blackness? I'd wind up in a cave with a broken leg and no way to get out. The thought was not pleasant.

Nevertheless, there might be a foothold, something to which I could cling-- Dropping to my knees, I lay flat, then backed my feet into the hole. Squirming back, only my shoulders, arms, head, and rifle still outside, I felt for a foothold.

And something grabbed me!

Before I could yell, I was jerked bodily back into the hole and tumbled in a heap on the sand at the foot of it.

There was a moment when I saw a grizzled old man in ragged, dirty buckskins, and then he was fitting a stone into the slit.

"Shush now!" he whispered. "They're a-comin' on the run." I heard their boots pounding on the rock outside, shouts, then swearing as they found nothing.

We could hear them threshing in the bushes, hear boots scraping on rock. "Hell," somebody said, "I'll bet he never came this way at all!" The old man whispered. "We got to set awhile, let 'em work off their mad. They won't stay long." I was too astonished to speak, and sat, clutching my rifle... only I wasn't.

My hands should have been gripping my rifle and they were not. It was gone!

Faint light came from a crack around the rock that blocked my point of entry. The Ferguson rifle was in his hands, the muzzle pointed right at me!

CHAPTER 16

The hands that gripped the Ferguson were gnarled and old, but they were also thick and powerful. "You jest set quiet, boy. I ain't about to let them find you. Or me," he added, with a faint chuckle.