Atlanta Daily World

THE VALLEY OF VANISHING RIDERS
Copyright, 1946, by Dodd, Mead & Company
Distributed by King Features Syndicate
NORMAN A. FOX
CHAPTER SECOND
THIS broken land, this timbered, rocky desolation stretched to the far horizons, a place of emptiness, a place of ponderous silences, a land deceptively peaceful to look upon. From the high ridge where the three waited they could see the whole sweeping panorama of the basin with the cottonwood-fringed creek snaking below them and the scattered brush and rocks and trees all glorious and golden in the last light. Farther away, to the north and west, the high outlines of the Tumblerock Range built a pine-crested barrier, and a storm, gathering about the peaks, painted the sky a muddy hue. Such was the scene, primitive and forlorn, monstrous and eerie, yet somehow magnificent.
To Chip Halliday, possessor of a lively imagination, it was a battleground for giants, an arena where a Paul Bunyan might have engaged in titanic struggle with some awesome creature of another age. Stretched upon the ridge top, Chip was easing the weariness of his long, lean body, the accumulated weariness of three hard days riding upon a stolen horse, and while he rested, his blue eyes glazed with dreaming, he let his fancy play. Ute Kincade, given to more practical thinking, said, "They're down below, I tell you. I just saw another move in those trees by the creek. They're closing in on us, mister-closing in for the kill!"
Hunkered at Chip's elbow, Kincade now came to a careful stand, moving back from the lip of the ridge. A slack-jawed man who ran to arms and legs, this Kincade had grown more testy each hour that the pursuit had gained upon them. Anger in his little eyes, Kincade said, "Well, are you just gonna lay there, Halliday, till they come and snap the iron on your wrists?"
The third man, old Singin' Sam McAllister, was with the horses, a dozen paces away. A little man with almost half a century of saddle-whacking behind him, his legs were bowed and his egg-shaped head was bald, but he owned a luxuriant yellow moustache of pretentious size. "Lay off the kid," he said. "When he's figgered out what to do, he'll tell us. There's more ways of killin' a cat than chokin' it with buttermilk!"
"Sure, keep your shirt on, Ute," Chip drawled. "Remember the bargain when we took you with us? We're running this play, and if you're going to tag along, you've got to do things our way."
Then let's be doing them!" Kincade snapped. "I'm not going back to Deer Lodge pen, savvy! It's ninety-nine years for me, plus whatever they tack on for making this break. And those boys down below are likely thinkin' of the reward that's been pinned on our scalps!"
Something sang a high, thin song over their heads, a rifle cracked far below; and the silence of the basin was shattered asunder as the walls caught the echo and multiplied it. Kincade shouted, "I saw the smoke! Down there, by that big boulder! Just let him show himself again!"
Dragging a forty-five from a battered holster, he edged toward, but Chip came to a stand then, seizing Kincade's elbow. "Save your lead, you fool!" Chip ordered. "They're out of six shooter range. You'd just be throwing it away."
"Save your lead!" Kincade half bled. "Save your lead! That's all I've heard since we scaled the wall at Deer Lodge and found these guns at that old empty ranch house that same night. The way you act, Halliday, you'd think those jiggers below were friends. That's Tate Strunk leading that posse, mister! Do you understand? The toughest screw in Deer Lodge pen-a galoot who's a prison guard all the way through-a galoot who's got prison stone and prison steel in his heart and soul. He'll take us back alive, or he'll take us back dead, it makes no never mind to him. And you want me to sit here till he climbs the slope!"
"I want you to use your head!" Chip countered. "Strunk knows our horses are tired, his posse's probably changed mounts a dozen times in the last three days. Likewise he knows he can either starve us out of here or wait till we run low on ammunition. Just don't play into his hands, that's all!"
"What are we gonna do?" Kincade wailed.
Old Singin' Sam eyed that spreading darkness above the distant peaks. "Rain's comin'," he said.
Down below the rifles were hammering in unison, a score or more of them, and Chip saw now that the posse had spread itself out along the creek. But that thin chain of riflemen was drawing nearer; he marked more than one man darting from bush to stone. And he saw the strategy of Tate Strunk with like clarity: the man was moving up slowly and waiting for darkness to come-the darkness that would cloak the posse while they rushed the slope. These three fugitives had climbed as high as they were going to climb. they had run the legs off their horses, and there was no escape for them. Not unless-
Singin' Sam said, "I've been quiet so long that my vocal chords is likely plumb paralyzed, but I reckon there's no more need to keep hush." Whereupon he began a squeaky and tuneless rendition of a song as old as the Texas trail:
As I walked out one mornin' for pleasure,
I spied a young cowboy a-ridin' alone;
His hat was throwed back and his spurs was a-jinglin',
As he approached me a-singin' this song
Whoopee ti yi yo git along little dogies,
It's your misfortune and none of my own.
Whoopee ti yi yo git along
"Aw, quit that damn caterwaulin'!" Kincade interrupted. "This is enough like a funeral without havin' music throwed in!"
Rain, Sam said exultantly and held out his hand for confirmation.
The gold was gone from the basin now. Across the sky the pall of darkness had spread and below, the shade had fallen over the land. The drops came, a mere spattering at first, and then hard, driving pellets, lashing down upon these three, making them hunch their shoulders and pull their sombreros low. It was wet and it was miserable up here on this rocky shoulder of a ridge, and there was no shelter for the three. The sky deepened to a scowling black; the light was fast fading, and only the intermittent lightning flashes gave life and shape to the basin below. Beyond the peaks the thunder exploded and still the guns spoke as before.
"They're getting just as wet as we are," Kincade observed. "But they've got slickers damn 'em. And they'll be comin' now, comin' fast. Another night and we'd have been knockin' at the gates of Forlorn Valley, and once into that land beyond the law, we could 'a' thumbed our noses at every tin-horn in Montana. A fine finish this is!"
Chip, holding silent for many minutes, had been studying the dark pocket of the basin, marking gun-flashes and noticing that they were drawing nearer. Now he said, "Here's where we split up, boys."
"Split up?" Kincade frowned. "What do you mean, Halliday?"
"This darkness can help us as much as it can them," Chip observed. "I'm going down that slope, and I'm taking all three horses with me. And I'm gambling that I get chased by the whole bunch, they'll figure we're all making a break for it. That'll leave you two afoot, but it will leave you with a chance to sneak off. It's either that or sit till the bunch climbs up here."