Last of the Breed

by Les Savage, Jr.

  She stepped up onto the walk and stopped. The light shone softly against the high peaks of her exotic cheekbones and made little pinpoints of glitter in her black eyes. She seemed to search for something in his face. Finally she said, softly, “Brian.”

  “Arleen.”

  She hesitated. Then, stiffly: “I thought you were with Sandoval.”

  “We had to come in for some grub.”

  He rebelled against the absurdity of the prosaic. There was so much else to be said. Yet he felt blocked, held back. Her nearness brought the old excitement. The soft white throat, the shape of her breasts, the supple hips beneath the skirt. The cotton seemed to thicken in his throat. His face felt hot and he was angry with himself that this had not changed. Because too many other things had changed. It was not the same. Too many new barriers stood between them.

  She took a step closer. “Are you really going to try a desert drive?”

  “Ring Partridge must have been in town,” he said.

  “Surely you know what you’re getting into.”

  “Are you warning me?”

  She made a hopeless little sound. “Why didn’t you give in to Tarrant in the beginning? Everything would have been so right.”

  “Was Tarrant right?”

  “For you he was. You belong with the big ones, Brian.”

  “The ones who helped me when I was down?”

  Her body seemed to stiffen. She was searching his face again, both hands gripping the reticule tightly.

  “We’re talking about the wrong thing,” he said. “Why are we afraid to talk about us?”

  Some of the tension left Arleen. Her voice had a slack and husky sound. “You wanted me to marry you. Are you asking for the answer now?”

  “How could I?” he said. “Sandoval lives in a two-room house with a mud floor. Is that what you want?”

  “Don’t talk that way. You’ll pull out—you’ll come back.”

  “And you’ll wait?”

  She hesitated. “Is that what you want?”

  “That’s what I’m getting at, Arleen. How can I ask anything of you? You didn’t agree to anything. I can’t hold you to something that isn’t there.”

  “Maybe you want out. Is that what you’re trying to say?”

  He was surprised that it should put him on the defensive. “Of course not. I’m just trying to square us away.”

  “Maybe you’re trying too soon, Brian.” Her voice grew husky. “This thing has changed both our lives. We’ve got to face it. But underneath we’re the same. Maybe it will just take time.”

  He wanted to believe her, wanted to think she was saying she’d wait. Yet somehow he was not convinced. There was an undercurrent of something else, a subtle taint that held him back. He didn’t know whether it was in him or in her. Suddenly, with her nearness goading him on, he had the urgent need to take her in his arms, to sweep all the barriers away with the passion they had known before. It was an urge too strong and too elemental to check and he was about to reach for her when the heavy stamp of boots in the doorway halted him.

  Sandoval came out carrying a fifty-pound sack of flour on his back and Jess Miller’s clerk followed laden with a side of bacon and towsacks of beans and coffee. Sandoval halted, looking embarrassed. Then he touched his hat and murmured a greeting in Spanish and circled around Arleen. The clerk followed. Arleen and Brian stared helplessly at each other. He felt an intense frustration. She moistened her lips. Her voice sounded stiff, brittle.

  “Good luck, Brian.”

  She turned and walked into the store, fumbling in her reticule. The clerk had tied the sacks of coffee and beans behind Brian’s saddle. Brian saw Jess Miller approach Arleen inside, bowing and smirking and rubbing his hands like a sycophant. The clerk unhitched the black roper and led him around to the barn behind the store. With a soft and helpless curse Brian wheeled and tramped off the walk and climbed onto his horse. Sandoval finished lashing the flour behind the cantle and mounted up. Near the edge of town they passed a rider coming in. He passed ten feet on their flank, looking at them without speaking or acknowledging them in any way. It was Nacho.

  A hundred yards farther on they reached the Mescal Springs Trail. Without even looking at each other they turned onto it. They knew that within half an hour the whole town would think they had turned south into the desert.

  “On high ground we’ll be in twenty minutes,” Sandoval said. “If anybody follow us we see them.”

  Brian only half heard him. He was looking back at the winking lights of the town. Sandoval knew what was on his mind.

  “Well,” Sandoval said. “We both leave something behind.”

  “Yeah,” Brian said. “I guess we did.”

  CHAPTER 13

  They saw no one following and they caught up with the herd near midnight. They pushed hard and got the cattle up into the rugged tumbling country that formed the climb to the Rim. They bedded down at dawn in a lost canyon where a spring ran with more water than they’d seen in a month. They traded off on watches, two men sleeping, one holding the herd, and two others scouting the surrounding country for any stray riders that might come too close.

  It went off without a bobble and that night they got up onto the plateau. They were in different country now. They were on top of the Rim, a mile above the desert. There was water in the creeks and the sage was green on the slopes and the air was like syrup when the wind came from the northeast with its scent of distant pine forests. Wirt Peters caught up with them at Three Crossings, pushing two hundred head of tired and dusty steers. Iguala was with him but his other Mexican hand had refused to come. From Three Crossings they drove directly into the reservation.

  On the first .morning after crossing the line they bedded down in a tortuous pass south of the Salt River Gorge. Sandoval sent Asa to cover their back trail and Cameron to scout ahead. Brian had taken the scout the previous day, had only known four hours’ sleep in the last forty-eight, and was drugged with exhaustion. He stripped his horse and opened out his bedroll while Pancho threw their grub together. The smell of pan bread and boiling Triple X was torture to Brian. He was so exhausted he didn’t think he could stay awake long enough to eat.

  Sandoval was bringing more wood for the fire. He stopped sharply at the outskirts of camp, hugging the armful of dead wood to his chest and staring eastward.

  “They seen us,” he said.

  Brian turned to look. There was sand in his eyes. He rubbed them, squinting, trying to bring the horizon into focus. Dawn lay in a pearly sheet above the broken rim of country ahead. Then he saw the smoke. It struck at the sky in short puffs at first. Then a long pennant drifted up.

  “What’re they saying?” Brian asked.

  “How many men we got. How many cattle. Which way we go.”

  “Think they’ll bother us?”

  “They don’t like it.”

  “How about Tarrant?” Peters asked.

  “Too far west he is to see it,” Yaqui said.

  “Wouldn’t do him any good if he did,” Brian said. “I don’t think there’s a man on his crew can read it. Tiger was the only one that paid any heed to these smoke signals.”

  Peters scrubbed a thumb through his blond beard. “Well—you can’t tell about these Apaches.”

  None of them answered. Finally Sandoval walked to the fire and dropped his wood beside it. Pancho slid the pan off the fire and began to slice the bread. Brian got his utensils from his saddle roll; he filled his tin plate and cup and sat on his saddle to eat. He fell asleep twice before he finished. Then he scoured the cup and plate with sand, tossed it with his other gear, rolled into his blanket fully dressed, and was instantly asleep for the third time....

  The smoke signals followed them all the way through the reservation. They never saw the Indians but they knew they were being watched every minute of the time. It wa
s a growing pressure against them, only adding to the tension and exhaustion of the drive itself that had worn the men down till they were nervous and jumpy as cats. Shorthanded, forced to take extra watches, losing their sleep to the constant necessity of scouting, they were all closer to the breaking point than they realized.

  But there was still no sign of any Tarrant men when they crossed out of the reservation at Feather Mountain. They pushed west till the Sierra Anchas rose on their flank—somber tumbled peaks mantled with the silvery shimmer of a thousand aspens. At the end of a night’s drive they found themselves in a broad basin deep in pine grass and wild clover. It was ideal graze for the tired cattle but too exposed for Brian’s peace of mind. Before he would let the herd halt he scouted northwest and ran into the toes of another mountain chain. He returned to find the herd halted and the men gathered at its head.

  “There’s a lot of spur canyons about a mile up there,” he said. “We can cut ‘em up in little bunches with a man to each one.”

  Asa showed temper. “I ain’t driving a mile out of the way to sit up all night with a cut of spooky beef.”

  “We can find box canyons and sleep at the mouth.”

  “And get clobbered when the beef stampedes over you,” Asa said.

  “This is the closest we’ll be to Tarrant’s range,” Brian said. “We can’t leave them out here in the open.”

  “Tarrant, hell. If he was gonna jump us he’d of done it before now. You’ve kept us in the saddle every night with that kind of talk. I ain’t going to kill myself just so’s you can play the big ramrod.”

  Sandoval rubbed scarred knuckles against his red-rimmed eyes, speaking wearily. “Brian he’s been right up to now. The cattle I think we better put in them spur canyon.”

  “Go ahead,” Asa said. He swung off his horse and began to unlace his bedroll from behind the cantle. “I’m camping right here.”

  This undercurrent of conflict had run between Asa and Brian from the very beginning and Brian had known that sooner or later it would come to a head. But he was so tired he couldn’t even feel angry at the man. He was miserable and drugged with exhaustion and for a moment he didn’t give a damn whether Asa camped here or whether Tarrant found them in the next minute or whether the cattle ran off the Rim and broke every one of their fool necks. He wiped a dirty hand across his chapped lips and tried to arouse himself from the lethargy. He heeled his horse over beside Asa and then swung off with a tired wheeze.

  Slowly Asa came around to face him. Brian stood slack and wide-legged and sway-backed. His broad shoulders were bowed and in the wan light of dawn his face was a waxen mask of grime and sweat and exhaustion.

  “One man camped here in the open would give the whole thing away,” he said. “You’re going with the rest.”

  “I ain’t going.”

  “I haven’t got much juice left in me, Asa. I’m not going to waste it fighting you.”

  A contemptuous shape came to Asa’s thin lips. “I thought it was all hot air.”

  Brian kicked him in the shin. Asa doubled forward with a sharp cry of pain. Then his face twisted viciously and he went for his gun. Brian got his out first and whipped it down. Asa was still bent forward and the gun barrel caught him across the back of the neck. He sprawled on his face.

  Cameron cursed thickly and started to swing off his horse.

  “Don’t be a fool,” Brian said. “Pick Asa up and put him on his horse.”

  Cameron stood by his fiddling animal, staring at Brian’s gun. Brian put it away. Cameron’s broad chest rose and fell with his angry breathing.

  “I oughtta break you up,” he said. “I oughtta break you up in little pieces.”

  “Slack off,” Peters told him. “You know Brian was right.”

  Cameron did not move for another space, glowering at Brian from beneath his thick hedge of sun-whitened brows. At last he walked over to his unconscious brother. He picked Asa up like a baby and slung him on his belly across his saddle. Brian turned and dragged himself aboard his horse. The expenditure of emotion seemed to have drained him as much as the physical clash.

  They pushed the herd across the basin, and found a blind canyon that would hold a hundred head of steers. They drove the cut in and Wirt Peters settled down at the mouth in the cover of some scrub oak. They found another box canyon and left that bunch with Cameron. Asa was still out cold and Cameron heaved him off his horse and stretched him flat on the ground with his saddle roll for a pillow. Sandoval had been studying Brian with a quizzical smile.

  “Is funny,” Sandoval said. “When this start, I think the boss I am.”

  It made Brian realize how, little by little, he had been assuming leadership. It had been an unconscious thing on his part. He hadn’t been aware of its entire pattern until now.

  “I didn’t mean to take over, Chino.”

  The Yaqui shrugged. “Who’s complaining?”

  Brian grinned wearily at him. “Maybe you’d better give a few orders.”

  “Bueno. You take the scout. Get up high. See much. Come back at noon and I take over.”

  Brian nodded and turned back across the basin. In the first flush of sun the glens and canyons seemed pooled to the brim with a purple haze and the horizon was so mist-shrouded it was hard to tell where earth and sky met. He was across the basin and on the first shoulders of the Sierra Anchas when he saw the riders skylighted on a ridge above him. He pulled quickly into the cover of timber. He moved to the edge of a park where his view was not obscured. He could see the riders again, coming down off the ridge into timberline. There were three of them, too far away to recognize.

  He realized his hand was on the butt of his gun and pulled it away with a soft curse. That wouldn’t do him any good. What if they were Tarrant men? How could he stop them? He couldn’t just murder them from ambush. And if he showed himself in any way it would tip his hand. He could think of no possible way to handle all of them. One at least would escape and bring the whole pack. It was what he had dreaded from the beginning of the drive.

  They were passing him in timber now. He could hear their voices and the snorting of their horses at a distance. He moved cautiously to a new position and saw them cross a last park below him, still headed for the basin. But they were close enough to recognize now. They were Kaibab and Stubs and a third horse runner named Bill who had worked off and on for the Double Bit.

  He felt sick with relief. Then he realized how false that was. Latigo had been seen among the men who stampeded their cattle at Rabbit Sink. That meant the Double Bit was committed to Tarrant’s wishes.

  Brian saw the three men leave timber and drop into the basin. In a matter of minutes the lid would be off. They’d see the fresh cattle sign; they’d know Tarrant wasn’t running any beef drive this far north and it would make them suspicious enough to investigate.

  Driven by a sense of desperation, Brian put his horse down through the timber to intercept them. He came into the open when they were well into the basin but the sight of him checked them. He came up with them in a few minutes and saw that they had not reached the tracks of the herd yet. He halted his horse and greeted them. Kaibab touched his hatbrim silently. Stubs met his eyes, then looked aside, clearing his throat. The relationship of boss to hand was gone. They didn’t know exactly how to treat him.

  “Thought you was with Sandoval,” Kaibab said.

  Brian made a disgusted sound. “Who’d stay with him?”

  “Where you bound?”

  “Flagstaff maybe.”

  There was a silence. A wind boomed out of higher timber and rattled Kaibab’s hatbrim. His narrow face was dark and sharp with suspicion.

  “Hunting some green stuff?” Brian asked.

  “Calf roundup was hard on the saddle strings,” Kaibab said.

  “Flushed some broomtails about dawn,” Brian lied. “They headed west toward the Ri
m.”

  An eager light came to Stubs’ eyes. “Big roan leader?”

  “Yeah,” Brian lied. “You after him?”

  “We saw him through the glasses yesterday. Looked like a prime bunch of mares. Maybe we could run ‘em down—”

  Kaibab’s sharp glance stopped Stubs. Kaibab’s scarred hands fluttered on his reins and he looked across the basin toward the spur canyons in which the cattle were hidden.

  “Glasses picked up something over there while we was up on the ridge. Get a bunch in one of those blind canyons, be like havin’ ‘em in a bottle.”

  “What bronc would be dumb enough to run in there?”

  Something sly came into Kaibab’s eyes. “Maybe Snakebite.”

  “Snakebite?”

  “Yeah.” The bronc-stomper squinted quizzically at Brian. “He’s been seen around Red Bench this year. Couple of Seven Eleven hands told me he’d torn his saddle and bridle off somewhere. Meaner’n ever.”

  “And smarter’n ever,” Brian said. “He wouldn’t put himself in any blind canyon.”

  Kaibab was sardonic. “You seem so sure.”

  “That was some pronghorns your glasses picked up,” Brian said. “I flushed ‘em when I camped over there last night.”

  Stubs seemed convinced. He looked westward. “How far ahead of us would you say that roan is?”

  “Half an hour. Moving easy.”

  “We’re wastin’ time,” Stubs said.

  Kaibab glanced obliquely at Brian. Then he held out his hand. Frowning, Stubs fumbled a pair of army binoculars from their case strapped to his saddle. He handed them to Kaibab. The bronc-stomper held them to his eyes and looked across the basin. Brian felt breathless and sick. Kaibab was studying a spur canyon farther north than the ones holding the cattle. But if he moved the glasses to the—