Land Grabbers by Paul Lederer

Author:Paul Lederer
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781480488434
Publisher: Open Road Media

SIX

We could see their dust. Studying them through the field glasses that Charles Webb had brought along, I could make out the horses, small as ants and the wagons they were pulling. Hammond Cole’s soldiers, flanked out on either side of the trail, moved slowly toward Canoga, their horses obviously desert-weary.

‘I counted twenty-two men,’ Charles said as I handed the binoculars back to him. His expression was grim but not fearful. He passed the field glasses to his brother, Oliver, who lay stretched out beside us as we studied the approaching enemy from the sun-heated ledge of stone. Below us was the road Cole must travel to reach the Canoga. I had noted that when first studying the map the Webb boys had drawn up for me.

There were only two ways to reach Canoga, sheltered as it was on three sides by the broken hills. The first was across the naked desert, the route Trish and I had traveled; the second was up through the depths of the mile-long canyon. This was the trail the settlers used when they had to leave Canoga to conduct business or reach far-off Tucson to freight in supplies. Cole’s spies had certainly reported this to him after reconnoitering the valley.

‘How are we going to fight that many!’ Ollie asked with a soft whistle.

‘Maybe Dad and the others will believe us now and get together,’ Charles said. He looked hopefully to me. ‘Giles?’

‘We can only delay them,’ I said. ‘Try to hold them back until the cavalry from Fort Grant can reach us – or at least until the ranchers can arm themselves for the fight.’

‘Delay them?’ Charles’s face was blank, then as he peered down the long red-walled canyon the hint of a smile appeared. ‘Oh … I see!’

‘Somebody tell me,’ Ollie Webb said heatedly. ‘I don’t know what you two have in mind.’

A part of the solution, although only a temporary one loomed beside and above us, an upthrusting monument of crumbling red rocks. Some of the stones were house-sized – these we could not hope to move without explosives, but others seemed so precariously balanced that with effort and the help of inertia, they could be sent rolling and tumbling from the canyon rim. Would this be enough to clog the road making passage impossible? Probably not, but certainly enough to halt the wagons, enough to make picking one’s way through on horseback slow and dangerous. Dangerous because once the landslide occurred the riders would become aware that there were men watching them through their gunsights from the rim above.

‘Pa would kill us,’ Ollie said dolefully. ‘You know how long it took to grade that road in the first place?’

Charles and I ignored the complaint. For his part Charles was already to his feet, circling the towering stack of boulders, searching for a weak spot.

‘That won’t stop them, if they’re as determined as you say,’ Ollie complained. ‘After we block the trail – supposing we can – they’ll still be able to

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