At first sight, all the advantage lay with the men from the ‘Barred Os’ when it came to the contest between them and Dan Lewis. Had you known nothing about either of the parties, you might have thought that there could hardly have been a more unequal match: ten ruthless and determined grown men, all armed to the teeth on one side and on the other, a boy of barely seventeen years of age with little experience of the world, other than that gained on his mother’s farm. Still and all, things are not always as they first appear and whatever it looked like on the surface, the odds were not really so stacked against young Dan Lewis as at first sight appeared.
For the last three years, Dan had been, in effect, the man of the smallholding which his mother ran. He had been doing a man’s work physically since he was fourteen years of age. This had made him as tough and wiry as any grown man and stronger than most. He was used to going on short commons, too; the farm not being so successful as to make his mother and him assured every day of a full stomach.
There was more to Dan Lewis though than just being able to put up with a little hardship. He also happened to be the best shot in the county whether the weapon was a scattergun, rifle or pistol. As a child, he had learned that his was an unerring eye with a slingshot; he simply hit what he aimed at and that was all there was to it. When he was twelve, a neighbour had allowed Dan to join him on a hunting expedition. The man had pitied the fatherless child and thought that a day or two away from his home might be a treat for the boy. That trip was a turning point in Dan’s life, because it was the first time that he had ever been permitted to handle a firearm.
At first, the farmer had been reluctant to let the boy fire the twelve-gauge scattergun which was almost as long as the boy was tall. Still, he reasoned, what was the worst thing that could happen; maybe a bruised shoulder from the recoil? When Dan took that weapon in his hands, he knew at once that it was nothing more than a cumbersome and exceedingly noisy slingshot. He held it for a moment, saw a duck flying overhead and then, all in one fluid movement, raised it to his shoulder and fired at once. Old Jed was taken aback by the speed of it. He was even more taken aback when the dead duck landed on his head and nearly knocked him senseless.
‘Hoo boy,’ said Jed, when he’d picked himself up from the ground, ‘That was one lucky shot!’
Dan turned to the old man and said politely, ‘Oh no, Mr Carter, that wasn’t luck. I meant to hit it.’
‘Let me see you do it again. You got a barrel still charged.’
No sooner were the words out of Jed Carter’s mouth, than Dan raised the gun once more, and this time let fly at a squirrel on a branch some fifty yards away. Once more, he hit the creature without even appearing to aim. By the time that hunting trip was over, Jed was convinced that the boy was the best shot he’d ever met in his life.
Mrs Lewis wasn’t all that amazed when she learned that her son was a regular whizz with a scattergun. Her husband had been a crack shot in the army and she recollected that skills like marksmanship were apparently handed down from father to son. She allowed the boy to take out his father’s gun, which she had previously kept locked away, and he soon began providing the two of them with meat for the pot; jackrabbit, squirrels, birds and anything else which crossed his path. This was useful in its own way, but it led to more, and became an occasional source of cash money for Dan and his mother.
For some while, neither Dan nor Mrs Lewis knew if the boy would be as good with a pistol or rifle as he was with his pa’s old scattergun. In time, men started dropping round at the farm, to see if young Dan Lewis was all he was cracked on to be in the shooting line. He was, and visitors soon found that the boy could shoot straighter than any of them.
In the summer, fairs were sometimes held at Indian Falls and other nearby towns, such as the county seat. A popular feature of some of these events were shooting matches with men competing for a cash prize. One day, a man who lived in Indian Falls came to visit Dan and Mrs Lewis with a proposal. He suggested that he should accompany Dan to the county show, lend him a gun and then they would share the prize money if he won.
Mrs Lewis was more than a little dubious when first she heard this notion, but her son was so keen on showing off his prowess in front of a bunch of strangers, that she felt it would be unkind to prevent him. The county fair netted a purse of a hundred dollars, which Dan and the owner of the rifle which he used split right down the middle. Over the last few years, Dan had made a fair piece of money from this game.
This then was the sort of person that those ten men were hunting: a tough, self-reliant young man who could shoot better than any of them could ever hope to. True, he had never yet shot a man, but then neither had eight of the ten who were tracking him. All things considered, the odds were a lot closer than most folk would have thought.
By about midday, as the group of riders from the ‘Barred Os’ were catching up with Dan Lewis, Abraham Goldman had a stroke of luck. He had been budgeting on not getting to the ranch run by the Carmichael Cattle Company until the evening at the very earliest. By good fortune though, he stumbled upon the founder of that enterprise himself – Ezra Carmichael – in person.
In recent years, Ezra Carmichael had delegated much of the day-to-day running of the ‘Three Cs’ to his nephew, Jethro. From time to time though, the old man had a hankering to revisit his youth. This wistful longing took various forms, most of which were familiar to the men working for the ‘Triple C’. For instance, one morning they might get up to find that their boss had cooked up breakfast for them. Another day, he would join in the branding – swearing like a mule skinner and expecting them to treat him like just another cowboy. A few days previously, Ezra Carmichael had announced his intention of joining a cattle drive to Elsworth. The large drive, for which Dan Lewis had been engaged, had only left a few days earlier, but there were another five hundred steers which also needed to be taken up to Elsworth. Despite anything that his nephew could say to the contrary, old man Carmichael was determined that he would ride the trail one last time.
‘You’re sixty-four years of age,’ Jethro had reminded his uncle, ‘Suppose you take a fall?’
‘I suppose you’d like to see me snoozing in a rocking chair or something o’ that sort?’ replied Ezra Carmichael testily, ‘Well, you needn’t think it for a moment. I built up this business and as long as I’ve got breath in my body, I’ll carry on working for it.’
It was hopeless to argue with the old man when he was in that frame of mind and so Jethro instructed the trail boss to set an eye on his uncle and warned him that if any harm befell the old man, then the trail boss would be looking for another position that self-same day.
So it was that Ezra Carmichael was trotting along the track leading south towards Indian Falls when Abe Goldman saw in the distance the column of dust rising from the cattle drive into the clear morning sky. An hour later, he could see that it was indeed a cattle drive and a glance at the brand on the nearest steer told him whose. It was when he saw an elderly party, clearly the wrong side of sixty, that he guessed that this was the very man he was heading to see. He had heard the stories about Ezra Carmichael and his endless attempts to rekindle the passions of his youth.
‘Excuse me, sir,’ said Goldman courteously, ‘But might I be addressing the proprietor of the Carmichael Cattle Company?’
‘What of it?’ replied Carmichael shortly.
‘Well sir, I have some information for you that you might be glad to hear about.’
‘What are you, spy or informer?’ asked the old man shrewdly.
Abe Goldman was a little taken aback by such bluntness. This was not at all how he had rehearsed the interview in his mind. ‘I, that is to say, I have to tell you… Well, that is…’
‘You got aught to tell me, then you best up and out with it. We got five hundred head o’ cattle to get to Elsworth this side of summer. What is it?’
Briefly and without naming the ranch or its owner, Goldman gave an outline of the racket that he had uncovered. As he talked, old Ezra Carmichael’s face grew darker and it was plain that he was in the grip of strong emotions. When Goldman had finished, Carmichael said, ‘All right, out with it man. Who’s running this rustling game?’ When there was no immediate answer, he said slowly, ‘Ah, that’s the way of it, is it? You want paying first. Well, the choice is yours. I can give you some gold now or if you’d sooner wait for more, I can let you have an IOU. You can redeem it up at my spread, my nephew’ll pay out.’
The last thing that Goldman wanted was to start fooling around with names and bits of paper. He was playing a tricky enough game as it was; one which might yet end in his losing his position with Pinkerton’s if it should come to light that he had put the bite on a client for extra payment. He said,
‘I reckon sir, as I’ll take whatever you happen to have here in cash money.’
The old man stared thoughtfully at Abraham Goldman. ‘You had better not be trying to rob me. I have a long reach in these parts.’
Goldman shivered, as though somebody had just walked over his grave. ‘I’m not cheating you, Mr Carmichael. I‘ll put you onto the man who is stealing so many of your cattle.’
Ezra Carmichael took out a leather bag and counted out ten gold $10 pieces. He handed these to Goldman, saying, ‘Let’s have that name.’
‘It’s Carson. David Carson. He owns a spread as lies a few hours south of here.’
‘I know the name. Met the man too, if it comes to that. Well, I’m greatly obliged to you, mister…?’
‘Jackson, Joe Jackson.’
‘Thank you, Mr Jackson.’
Ezra Carmichael watched as Goldman rode back the way he had come. There goes a crawling snake, if ever I saw one, thought the old man to himself. Once the man was out of earshot, Carmichael called over one of the men and said, ‘Ride on and find your trail boss, what’s his name, Lenny. Tell him that I want to see him right this very minute.’
***
Dan knew that he was being followed and could take a good guess at how far behind him the pursuers were. That these were men from the ‘Barred Os’ wasn’t hard to work out and nor did it take any kind of genius to know that they meant him ill. Dan Lewis was a God-fearing young man and not given to cursing and strong language, but when he looked back and saw that a dozen or so riders were on his tail, he muttered to himself, ‘All right you bastards, let’s see you take me.’ Strangely enough, he wasn’t scared in the least. Sure, he was a mite nervous, but his main emotion was one of anger. He had come pretty close to being hanged and all as a direct consequence of those men and their friends.
The road ahead led past a range of low, rocky hills; scarcely high enough to be dignified with the name of mountains and yet tall enough and craggy to look like such at a distance. Dan recollected this row of craggy bluffs; they had passed them on the way north. He spurred his horse on, into a canter, and headed off the track towards the rocky cliffs. If he couldn’t arrange some little surprise for those boys on his tail, well then, his name wasn’t Dan Lewis!
Two miles ahead of them, the figure of the lone rider was little more than a black dot, but Fats was certain in his own mind that this was the boy they were seeking. He called to the others to rein in and then, when they were gathered round him, he said, ‘You all listen now to me. Here’s how we’ll play it. I don’t want that boy harmed, leastways not ‘til I had a chance to question him. Any man as kills that fellow will be leaving the ‘Barred Os’ this very day. Is that clear? Take him alive.’
One man was incautious enough to ask why and Fats rounded on him savagely. ‘Never you mind the whys of the case, you son of a whore. Just do as I bid you. Is that clear enough for you?’ It was, and the ten men rode off towards the rocks and cliffs which lay to the right of the trail.
Young and confident as he was, Dan could see plainly that if he rode against ten or a dozen men, then he wasn’t likely to come out ahead of the game. As he headed up the slope into the rocky bluff, he scanned the crags carefully, looking for a good location. It didn’t take him long to find what seemed to him ideal for his purposes. He had deliberately slowed down to a steady trot, in order to make sure that those following him could see just precisely where he was going. He wanted to know where those men were going to be in a fifteen minutes or so. The horse refused to carry him up the smooth, steeply inclined limestone slope and so Dan dismounted and led her up. The mare’s hoofs could not get a good purchase on the slick rock and towards the top, Dan felt as though he were dragging the beast up by main force.
Somehow, Dan got both himself and his horse up to the top of the slope, which was littered with boulders and rocks which the frost and rain had split off from the cliffs towering above this vantage point. As he had hoped, there was a way down on the other side: a hair-raisingly steep and precipitous path, which led to a somewhat lower point. He would have to hope and pray that this was not a dead-end and that he would be able to get back to the track leading north.
Leaving his horse, Dan crept back to the pile of boulders and scree which lay tumbled everywhere. The rocks varied greatly in size; some were as big as half a house others, no bigger than loaves of bread. The young man hunted around for one of a reasonable size and eventually settled upon a fairly smooth chunk, which came up to his chest and had weathered away until it looked for all the world like a giant pebble. Dan pushed against this tentatively and found that it rocked easily enough. If he put all his strength into the task, he was sure he could tip the thing over and sending it rolling down the slope.
‘Hold up,’ cried Fats, as the band of riders progressed gingerly across the flat expanse of limestone. We can’t follow a trail cross bare rock. Time to use our brains.’
‘He might’ve gone ahead, round the side, up those slopes or most anywhere,’ said one of the other men, ‘Happen we should split up.’ As he finished speaking, there was a faint creaking noise, which rapidly became a rumbling. It was not possible at first to tell where the sound was coming from, because the echoes bounced wildly off the surrounding rock-faces. By the time they knew for sure what was happening there was little enough that could be done about it.
The enormous rock gathered speed as it rolled down the slope towards the riders. A couple of the sharper witted among them spurred on their mounts frantically to escape, but their horses hooves slipped and slid across the slick, white limestone. The other men were paralysed by surprise and in that attitude; two of them were struck by the boulder. One horse was hit side-on, the huge rock shattering the leg of the rider. It was then deflected into another horse, which had its front legs broken. The rider of this horse fell heavily to the ground, fracturing his right arm in the process. Then the next boulder came rattling down the rock slope in their direction.
The angles were such that Dan Lewis was pretty sure that he couldn’t be seen from below, as he heaved the rocks down. Never the less, he took care to keep low. After setting five of the biggest he could manage, rolling on their way, Dan ran off to where his horse was waiting for him. That wasn’t a whole heap more difficult than playing skittles, he thought to himself. He mounted up and then, very slowly, urged on his horse down the narrow path leading, he hoped, to the plain below.
The damage inflicted by the rocks which Dan Lewis had sent down onto the ten riders was something else again. The boy had moved fast, setting one boulder after another rolling and not stopping to see the consequences of his actions. Getting the horses to move quickly on that slippery rock was impossible and the screams of the first injured animals served to spook the others, making them jittery and hard to control. Fats shouted angrily at his men, urging them to stay calm and not try to gallop over such a treacherous surface; but it was all to no avail. It was, as Dan Lewis had thought, just like a game of skittles.
After the fifth rock had come to rest and if looked as though there weren’t any more coming, Fats took stock of the situation. It was an absolute disaster. Five of the horses were crippled and they were laying down whinnying, pitifully. Five of his men were similarly out of action, with two of them looking to Fats as if they were like to die. The second man to have been injured, the one who had fallen from his horse and broken his arm, had been struck fairly and squarely by the next rock to come tumbling down. It had split open his head and although he was still breathing, he was quite unconscious. Another fellow’s chest had been crushed when his horse fell onto him. The other three wounded men would probably be all right if they received medical attention, although one would perhaps lose his leg.
A terrible, killing rage had engulfed Fats. Everything had been going so well and he still couldn’t work out how things had gone so wrong, so quickly. He said to the four men who were still in good shape, ‘You men go back on our tracks and then see if you can find him on the other side of that bluff. I’ll take oath he’s doubled round there. I’m going up yon hill after him.’
‘You want one of us should come with you?’
‘The kid ain’t yet begun to shave. You think I can’t brace him by my own self? Just do as you’re bid.’
One youth on the spur of the moment manages to find five rocks, all small enough to be moved but big enough to do damage, and all poised in such a way that, despite being in different spots, and having to roll down by different routes, they just happen to land on the same group of riders, who fail to get out of the way or fire back ... this is better than Hollywood.