Gunsmoke and Trail Dust

by Bliss Lomax

  “You’re all that matters to me, Clay! But there’s my aunt and uncle. They’re old. To go without a word will crush them, darling!”

  “I’ll see them and explain why it had to be this way,” Ringe offered. “It isn’t as though you weren’t coming back, little girl. I promise the two of you that I’ll be busy while you’re away. This rotten deal cries out to heaven for justice, and I’ll get it for you. I don’t want you to write me, Clay; Dufors will be watching the post office for some word to come from you. When I have something to tell you, I’ll come to you. I won’t risk putting anything in writing. Nevada is a long way off. Barring accident, you’ll be safe out there.”

  Clay told him where he and Eudora could be found.

  “Don’t get impatient if the months go by without your seeing anything of me,” the big man cautioned. “I’ll be trying every day.” He walked over to the safe. “I’ll get your money; you’ll need it.”

  Clay ran up to his room and stuffed a few things in a saddlebag and got his rifle. He found Ringe and Eudora waiting for him at the foot of the stairs.

  “I don’t want to hurry you,” the old cowman said, “but an hour saved now may come in handy. I’ll go down the yard with you and get some horses.”

  Eudora turned to him just before Clay helped her into the saddle. “What a good friend you are!” she murmured, pressing her cheek against his. “When you see Aunt Jude, tell her not to grieve for me; I know I’m doing the right thing. I’m not afraid.”

  “There’s no reason why you should be,” Ringe returned, his voice heavy with emotion. “This boy will never let you down, Eudora. If I’d ever had a son of my own, I couldn’t have wished for him to turn out any better.” He glanced at Clay. “We’ll just say so long for the present. I’ll stand here till you’re across the creek.”

  Clay nodded. “So long, John,” he said, tight of lip.

  Big John turned back to the house, when they had faded into the night. “They’re a fine pair!” he muttered grimly. “With God’s help, I’ll put up a fight for them!”

  Chapter Eighteen

  GOOD NEWS

  SUMMER PASSED and the crystal-clear days of fall followed. One morning, from the doorway of the cabin, high on the shoulder of Buckskin Mountain, Clay looked to the west and found the tip of Disaster Peak white with snow. It reminded him that weeks and months had been slipping by. No word had come from John Ringe.

  Clay had hired an experienced hardrock miner to work with him. They had exposed a small vein of gold-bearing quartz. It assayed high, but how rich the mine was remained to be determined. News of the find leaked down over the Hinkey Summit to the little town of Paradise Valley. On one of his weekly trips below, for supplies, Clay had been offered three times what he had paid for the property.

  Until now, no whisper of what had happened in Mescal had caught up with him. It failed to ease his mind, for, from his own experience as a detective, he knew that the passing of time held only a false security for a wanted man. Winnemucca, the county seat, with its railroad, lay 40-odd miles to the south. Though he arranged his business so that he had no occasion for going there, he realized if word of him got that far that the sheriff of Humboldt County would find him promptly.

  “I found a little house in Paradise today that we can rent for the winter,” he told Eudora, at the end of the week. “We’ll be all right up here until the first of November.”

  “Will you be safe there, Clay?”

  “As safe as I am here. I thought we’d be seeing something of John before this. It’s roundup time now; it’ll keep him tied down for a couple weeks. We’ll just have to wait.” He saw Eudora wince.

  “Oh, I know how hard it is on you!” he explained, taking her into his arms. “You’ve never complained, but I can see it’s wearing you down.”

  “I’m not thinking of myself, Clay. Despite everything, I’ve been happy here. So happy, darling! Honestly, I have!”

  “Do you want me to write John?”

  “No, we’ll wait. He warned you not to write. My faith in him is as strong as ever. I don’t believe a roundup, or anything else, would hold him back if he had good news for us.”

  The haze of Indian summer crept into the sky. But for the shadow hanging over them, life on Buckskin would have been a pure delight. They could see the road that led up to the big National mine. Teams and horsemen often moved over it, but they came no further and it was seldom, indeed, that anyone toiled up the road Clay had cut. One noon, in mid-October, however, a buckboard slowly negotiated the steep climb.

  “Clay, do you suppose it’s the sheriff?” Eudora queried breathlessly, as she got up from the table and ran to the door.

  He studied their visitor with narrowed eyes. Suddenly, recognition electrified him.

  “Dora, it’s Ringe! Look at the size of him! It’s Big John!” Catching her hand, they ran down the road together. The big man waved to them.

  “Good grief!” he boomed. “Talk about Arizona roads! They’re boulevards compared to what you’ve got here!”

  He climbed down from the buckboard and embraced the two of them. “I’ve got good news for you! I hardly know where to begin.”

  “Has Clay been cleared?” Eudora demanded, unable to control her voice. “That’s the important thing, Mr. Ringe!”

  “Honey, I wouldn’t be here if he hadn’t! But that takes the punch out of my story. There was a mix-up about the reward money, Clay. Even though you got away, it was paid. Dufors tried to renege on the deal he’d made and keep it all. Eph Adkins was in it with him; he found that half dollar in the store. You can imagine the noise he made when he saw himself being done out of his half. It brought Barry up to Mescal. And humble the little runt was; he’d changed his tune considerable. He was all for arresting Eph for bearing false witness and so forth; I thought it’d be better not to bring any charges if Eph would talk. Barry agreed to it, and we got the whole story. Dufors was the rat I wanted to get!”

  “Looks like you had him dead to rights,” Clay said.

  “We sure did! But Dufors was hard to find; he’d lit out for Mexico.”

  “Does that mean there isn’t a warrant out on me?”

  “How could there be in the face of what I’ve just told you? And that isn’t half of it. We’ve got a new deputy sheriff in Mescal. I had something to do with getting him appointed. He’s Virgil Hume.”

  “Virgil?” Clay echoed. “He ought to be a fine man for the job.”

  “He’s done all right so far. The two of us got our heads together over what Verne Nichols told you, Eudora. We put it up to Webb. The upshot of it was that Webb surrendered the boy. On account of his youth he’s been sent down the State to the Industrial School. They’ll keep him there five or six years.”

  Clay and Eudora couldn’t have asked for more. The weeks and months of waiting, of anxiety and uncertainty were gone forever now.

  “I saw the Stoddards just before I left,” the big man told Eudora. “They’re fine, and just waiting for you to come back—you will go back with me, won’t you?” He was speaking to the two of them.

  “We’ll go back for a visit, John,” Clay answered. “We’ve still got a little traveling to do in Texas too. But the mine’s looking so good I’ve got to stick with it.”

  “Good Lord!” Ringe boomed. “Do you mean to tell me that after spending your life with cows and cowmen you’re going to be satisfied to settle down here and burrow in the ground like a confounded gopher?”

  “There may be a pot of gold in this hole, John,” Clay said laughingly. “That makes quite a difference.”

  “Well, we’ll see!” big John snorted. “You’ll have to spend the winter somewhere. You can do it in Mescal as well as anywhere else. I’m telling you the Diamond R is pretty big and lonely without you fussing around. I may have a proposition to make you before spring comes up again.” He tightened his arm around Eudora and grinned at her. “It’ll come out all right if the two of us work together on him.”

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