Saving Alice Chapter 17

CHAPTER 17

It didn’t them take long to reach the cliffs on the southern side of the wash. The cliffs were situated in a bend in the wash where some ancient flood had rushed down the canyon and ate half the hills away that stood in the waters ferocious path. After rising twenty to thirty feet, the cliffs gave way to gentler slopes.
Upon reaching the cliffs, Chet and Matthew rode up the wash for a short way, before turning back to examine the other direction. To their surprise they found a small inlet. It turned sharply around a bend behind the cliff faces. From a short distance out, the front cliff face seemed to blend in with the cliff face directly behind it. Unless you were close to this side of the wash a person might just pass right on by it with out giving it a second look.
“There they are,” said Chet with a subtle note of triumph in his voice. “The horses step off this here rock and into the sand here. And there is the heavy foot fall of that horse that ole Jack is a ridin’”
Matthew could see the tracks clearly, and even noticed how on the bare rocks there were soft scuffmarks, though these were not very distinct. He looked around to the surroundings and realized just how perfect this was.
“I recon we can head on up this here trail now and find that Alice of yours,” put forward Chet. “We is goin’ to want to move real slow like and quiet now. Try to keep your talkin’ down to nothing or little. Don’t want to be announcin’ that we is here.”
Matthew agreed to Chet’s instructions with a nodding head while Chet continued, “We also got to get the lay of the land, so to speak, so we ain’t goin’ in with guns blarin’ and all.
“That makes me recall,” Chet paused and looked Matthew square in the eye, “don’t go pullin’ that gun out less I’m dead or somethin’.”
“Chet, I’m not going to shoot you.”
“Well, that’s yet to be seen, ain’t it?”
Chet moved his horse out and Matthew rolled his eyes at the back of Chet.
They moved up the new tributary in single file. Partly because that is the way they would normally have ridden, but mostly because that was about the only way for the riders to travel through the narrow passage.
As they traveled they noticed that the walls of the passage were losing their height and growing further apart. It didn’t take long for the two men to come out of the short passage that opened to a small valley.
Chet held up his hand in signal for a stop, which Matthew was already doing. At the far end of the valley, about three hundred yards away, was a small cabin. They could see a coral partially peeking from behind the building. The land leading up to the cabin was dotted with small scrub brush and a scattering of pinions trees. Making an unnoticed approach on horseback to the cabin would be impossible. If they wanted to get there unnoticed, then it would have to be on foot.
Chet sat his horse while taking in the scene before them, examining all aspects of the valley from their vantage. The sides of the valley on their side were steep and scarcely planted with vegetation. The valley opened up to being nearly as wide as it was long, with the steep sides softening the further back they went. The far side of the valley could easily be scaled, and he thought he could see a trail coming down to the cabin from the opposite end of the valley.
The cabin was a tallish building having room for what Chet thought must be a loft. The windows were not overly big, and had the look of being designed for shooting from within. From this angle, the footprint of the cabin seemed fairly small, but he had difficulty seeing just how deep the cabin actually was. A small chimney protruded from the roofline on the right side of building and had a faint wisp of smoke escaping its top.
“That cabin’s got to be approached on foot,” said Chet in a low whisper. “I’d feel better if you did the waitin’ back here with the horse’s while I head up to the cabin.”
“Chet, my wife is in that cabin,” Matthew protested. “I’m not going to sit here and do nothing.”
“The way I’d be seein’ it all, is that you’d not be doin’ nothin’. You’d be stayin’ out of the way and givin’ me one less thing to worry about.”
“I am not a child,” said Matthew vehemently. “I may not know how to ride a horse, or shoot a gun. But I know I’m not useless. Furthermore, you can ask me to stay put, but your wasting your breath, because I’m going up there to get my wife!”
Knowing that he was at a stand still, Chet gave in. “Okay. But you got to do as I say. And if’n I ask you to wait when we get on up to that cabin, then you better do it.”
Matthew acquiesced to Chet’s leadership, and the two men slipped from their saddles, Chet doing so more quietly than Matthew. Chet lead the horses to a pinion tree and tied them to the side furthest from the cabin in an attempt to hide them from the line of sight from the cabin. Then slowly and methodically the two men picked their way up the valley choosing shrubs and the short pinions to hide their advance.
When they got to within sixty yards of the cabin the two men crouched behind a shrub as Chet gave the building another examination. He could see that the structure was indeed deeper than it was wide, making the whole of the building probably big enough to house ten or twelve men, depending up the size of the loft.
Chet still couldn’t see or hear the horses in the coral that was still mostly hidden behind the cabin. The windows revealed no movement from within, and from this distance he wasn’t sure if it was because the interior was too dark or if the windows had some kind of curtain covering them. He assumed it was the former because he knew that the men on the inside would want to see outside for the approach of anyone. The smoke from the cabin had diminished its volume since they had first seen it. Soon the thieves would have to be replenishing the fire if they were going to keep it from expiring.
Chet could see that the space between them and the cabin would have to be closed very carefully if he was to make it to the building without being seen. Looking at the surrounding terrain, he saw that if they moved to the left and approached from that direction they could come in to the corner of the building.
Without a word he moved in that direction keeping his head low while Matthew followed closely behind trying to imitate Chet’s prowess as best as he could. The change in position brought them to within in thirty yards of the cabin. The two had stopped their approach and were hunkered down behind the last pinion tree.
Once again Chet gave the dwelling his examination for the last time. The front of the house had no porch or awning, just dirt and weeds. The other side of the coral came into view, but the horses were still hidden from view.
Chet pulled Matthew closely and whispered just above a breath into Matthew’s ear for him to stay there while Chet closed the final gap to the building.
Silently Chet slipped from behind the tree, gun in hand, and raced in a stooped run to the side of the cabin. He put his back to the wall and edged his way around the corner and to the side of the window that was just to the left of the door. Doffing his hat he cautiously peeked through the window.
Matthew crouched noiselessly in his hiding place, his eyes riveted to the form of Chet who was now creeping from the first window and past the door and stopping at the other window. Matthew didn’t realize that he had been holding his breath since Chet had reached the building until now. Slowly he let out his breath while he watched Chet raise his head in order to see inside the other window. He watched as Chet pulled his head down and look back to Matthew shaking his head, communicating that Chet couldn’t see anyone yet.
After a moment of scrutiny, Chet slipped around the far side of the cabin and disappeared from Matthew’s sight. In less than a minute, which seemed to be an eternity to Matthew, Chet reappeared from around the back corner of the house nearest to Matthew having made a full circle around the cabin. Chet was now walking less cautiously, though still ready with gun in hand. He moved back to the front. He put his hand on the doorlatch and threw open the door while leveling his gun into the building.
Chet turned to Matthew and signaled him to come in, which Matthew did at a run.
“Horses ain’t out back in that coral. They done hit the trail already,” said Chet.
Matthew felt like cursing, but held his tongue in check as he kicked angrily at the ground.
The two entered the cabin to see what they could see. The fire was indeed nothing more than smoldering coals. “They ain’t too far ahead of us,” said Chet. “This fire is on the die side, but it ain’t more an hour since woods been added. So I’d say they must have left just less ‘an that to be out of sight afore we done got here.”
The rest of the cabin had a large table with six chairs and stools set around it. Four cots were set up around the side of the room, and a ladder gave access to a loft that looked like it held about four more cots. Around the fire were some shelves that held some food supplies, and hanging from the ceiling was a cured leg of pork that had been nearly stripped of all the meat.
Chet took up a knife that laid on the mantle above the fireplace and handed it to Matthew asking him to strip the rest of the meat from the leg while he took a look around back. “I want to take a looksee around that coral and see if I can’t see which way they was headin’. I know it weren’t the way we come or we’d of passed ‘em or seen their trail comin’ on out. So I suspect they went on up that trail in the back.”
Matthew did as he was told as quickly as he could. He also grabbed a tin cup from a shelf, along with a small burlap of coffee. A supply of jerky was wrapped in a bundle along with some more hard biscuit. All of which he had just finished putting in a pile on the table when Chet returned to the cabin.
“Those renegades done shucked it on up the trail that heads out over this hill in the back. We got to go get our horses, then we can stop back here and get this grub on our way past.”