The Rider of Phantom Canyon Read Free Page B

after his wife had passed away from consumption.
    It was then that Dub noticed the man. He sat in a small wagon, a two-wheeled wagon, loaded with some kind of goods, and the man was staring at Dub. The worn-out teamster jumped to his feet, wondering what was happening to him now. The man smiled and doffed his hat. Dub nodded, shivered, and turned to relieve his bladder. The man said that he had come out of Florence and was carrying supplies up to a mining claim he had filed miles up the road.
    Bringing a coffeepot and some food over to the cavern, he gave his horse a rest and made breakfast for the two of them while Dub explained his tale. It was very obvious to the man that Dub was indeed frightened out of his wits. He did not know what to make of the monsterstory, but he did not believe in spooks and haunts. Nonetheless, he caught himself looking all around at the surrounding cliffs and trees while they spoke.
    The cougar was long gone and had fed on the horses earlier, but now was sleeping on a ledge above them. Mountain lions would make a kill, almost always a deer, by attacking from a short run or jumping from above, and would grab the prey on both sides of the body with their long, curved, retractable claws and then would bite the back of the spine in order to break the neck. After making the kill, a lion would feed on the intestines first, then the leg meat. After a first feeding, it would select a perch, as this one had, above the kill site and keep watch over it while it napped.
    This particular tom would soon leave the horses, because a silvertip grizzly four miles away was now standing on its hind legs, nose testing the wind. Grizzlies’ sense of smell, like that of all bears, was incredible. This big boar grizzly instinctively catalogued the smells entering his nostrils. He smelled some cedar trees, water from the creek, various human scents still coming off the road, and the smell of the crashed wagons, but beyond all, he smelled the spilled blood and meat of the horses. He would trot, nose working feverishly, downhill to the source of the smell. When he arrived, the cougar would begrudgingly slink away to search for more prey elsewhere. The grizzly would remain there and would not be a threat to Dub.
    The man in the wagon offered to take Dub to Cañon City to the sheriff’s department, an offer that the teamster gladly accepted. He just wanted to get home, and he could not wait to tell his story again, but he wondered if the sheriff would think he was drunk. They doused the fire, buried it, and loaded up. Dub was fast asleep within one minute, sitting up on the buckboard.
    They had not gone a mile when a large mule deer buck bolted from some scrub oak along the road, and Dub, in shock, sat up and drew his pistol, firing at the shaking, small trees. The horses pulling the wagon bolted, eyes wide open in panic. The driver, Jerome Taylor, who had been dozing almost, was completely relaxed and was flung from his wagon seat, landing on his back, and his head hit a rock. He was knocked out cold. The wagon traces fell down between the horses, and Dub holstered his gun, his heart still pounding wildly as he stood on the wagon seat peering down for the flying reins. The horses, in full-panic flight mode, ran into the trees alongside the road now.
    Panicked himself, Dub started yelling, “Whoa, boys! Whoa!”
    *   *   *
    It was almost dark when Jerome sat up, shaking his head and looking around. He was totally confused and disoriented. He stood on rubbery knees and walked over to a rivulet of water running down the roadside cliff. Hecupped his hands, splashing water all over his face. Jerome did not know what had happened, but he did remember meeting this Dub hombre who’d scared him half to death with tales of a ten-foot-tall, hairy monster.
    Thinking of that, he started moving ahead as quickly as he could on wobbly legs. His head ached horribly, but he had to head toward Cañon