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X is for Xmas: Christmas Mysteries
BLAZING TRAILS, by Francis W. Hilton
Originally published in 1936.
CHAPTER ONE
MYSTERIOUS LETTERS
Through the stifling heat of late August, “Montana” Ellis roweled his jaded mount toward Elbar. Save when the pony slowed down of its own accord to blow, not once in hours had the furious pace slackened. Sweat rimmed the brute’s eyes and ears, lather flew from its jaws. Dirty foam webbed its flanks, trickled from beneath the sodden saddle blanket. Swarms of flies and mosquitoes clung to its sweat-streaked neck.
Dust scuffed up by hoofs leaden, mechanical with weariness, rose in choking clouds to go drifting away before a slow, hot wind, then settled down in a low-hanging streamer along the back trail. Patches of alkali glared blindingly in the sun, a wilting, blazing orb crawling through a sky of glittering tin. The air was pungent with the odor of blistered sage and grease wood.
Yet for all the merciless heat, the tormenting flies, the sweat that beaded his own brow and streaked his grimy face, Montana pushed on tirelessly, relentlessly, his gaze fixed on the broken country ahead. Far behind him now lay the Bear Lodge mountains. The Big Horns were but etchings on the smoke-blue horizon ahead. About him was a region wild, desolate—dreary, sun-baked flats, steep, grottoed bluffs, towering gumbo buttes—ugly piles, drab and corrugated as molten metal that had burst its mold and cooled as it ran. Hogbacks, bristling with shelf rock and cacti, gave off shimmering rays of heat like a griddle. Majestic pine and spruce long since had given way to straggling, stunted cedar and an occasional gnarled cottonwood that bent thirstily toward the dry bed of one of the countless writhing ravines. Lilies with waxen petals fought for life beneath clumps of greasewood that grew gigantic where other vegetation withered and died. It was a region bereft of beauty, awesome in its vastness.
There was something savage in the way Montana rode, his body slapping the saddle, arms flapping with the rhythmic motion of the horse.
Tall, but of well-knit frame, he was broad of shoulder, slender of hip. Dust powdered his gray flannel shirt, thrown open at the throat to reveal a muscular, sun-darkened neck. Dust covered his brush-scarred chaps. His bronzed face was lean and firm, for all its present grimness, marked with pleasantness, the confidence of carefree youth. Yet there was about it a premature hardness; a hardness increased by smoldering blue-gray eyes which, one sensed, could grow cold and expressionless; eyes, the friendliness in which seemed to veil a cruel gleam that could, on occasion, blaze with livid flame. His lips were thin, braced. A thatch of sunburned sandy hair lay damply on a sweat-beaded forehead beneath a wide-brimmed hat. His almost too square jaws bulged with the pressure of set teeth. Except for his eyes, in which now lurked something of a half-anxious light, his whole attitude was one of reckless determination. And save for an apparently abstracted observation, which yet took keen and critical note of everything within range of vision on the limitless expanse, those eyes always were set on the dreary flats ahead.
Where Tongue River crooked a sullen arm about a small Wyoming cow town, he reined in to shift sidewise in his saddle and sweep the hazy horizon. When a careful survey failed to reveal any moving thing save small bunches of prowling range cattle, he swung down, allowed his thirsty horse a few sips of water and squatted on his dime-thin rowels beside the stream.
“I reckon that town will be Elbar, horse,” he told his blowing pony, after the manner of men of the silent trails who make companions of their mounts. His glance snapped from the animal—which stood with its weight on three legs, head drooping wearily, flanks heaving—to the village across the river, its shabby, weather-beaten buildings swaying like a mirage through shimmering waves of heat. “Now just what in the devil do we do?”
Again the question that for days had been uppermost in his mind. Hour after hour on the long hot trail he had tried to answer
it. To no avail. He was still as far from that answer as ever. For the hundredth time he fished from the pocket of his shirt a worn envelope, extracted a letter.
“Go to Elbar, Wyoming,” he read aloud the almost illegible scrawl. “At the crossing of the Tongue River, just outside the town, wait till you meet Clem White. Then—” There the letter ended abruptly. And therein lay the cause of the uncertainty in Montana’s eyes, which again had resumed their survey of the greasewood.
“Wouldn’t that stump you, horse?” he pondered aloud. “Go to the Tongue River crossing at Elbar, Wyoming. Wait outside the town till you meet Clem White. Who in all get out is Clem White? And what the devil do I want to meet him for? Damn it all, horse—Why couldn’t Uncle Nat have lived until he told me instead of shagging me way off down here on this wild-goose chase? Sometimes I think he was a little locoed in the head when he died.”
The hoofbeats of a horse, which suddenly had popped up out of a dry wash to his right, brought him to his feet with a rapid movement, the swift, agile movement of a lunging puma. He whirled. His hand shot down to close about the butt of the forty-five revolver holstered at his hip, thonged down securely to his leg. But that hand jerked upward quickly to search for papers and tobacco in the pocket of his shirt at sight of the newcomer who drew rein beside him.
“Gosh-all-hemlocks, you’re nervous, mister,” came a frightened voice. “I didn’t aim to scare you thataway. Thought for a minute you was going to drill me.”
In a swift glance Montana sized up the newcomer, a slightly built boy barely in his teens, with deeply tanned face and mild gray eyes. He was clad in a tattered shirt and patched overalls hitched around his slender waist with a piece of rope. A shock of hair protruded from a torn hat. His boots were sadly worn, run over at the heels. Yet aside from his clothes—ragged enough to arouse the pity of any man—there was about him a pride that commanded admiration.
“I am nervous, buddy,” Montana confessed sheepishly. “I’m waiting for somebody. Kind of figured when you rode up, quick-like, you might be him. Not seeing you coming, I just—”
“I’d hate to have you waiting for me if you was any faster going for that gun of yours, mister,” the lad returned soberly. “Are you aiming to shoot who you’re waiting for?”
“I don’t know,” Montana admitted. “Because I haven’t any idea in the world who I am waiting for.”
“I’m waiting for somebody myself,” the lad remarked with sudden chumminess, swinging down out of a battered saddle—held together with bits of rope and baling wire—to stretch out lazily on the ground and regard Montana inquisitively.
His nerves calm again after his start at the boy’s appearance, Montana squatted back on his rowels to tap a measure of tobacco into a paper, pull shut the sack with his teeth and twist a cigarette.
“So you’re waiting for somebody too, sonny?” he observed, striking a match on his boot sole, cupping the light in his hand, extinguishing it with a puff of smoke, and grinding the match in the dirt with the caution of men born to the fear of fire on the prairie.
The youngster nodded.
“Funny we’d both be waiting for somebody at the same river crossing, ain’t it, mister?” he ventured.
“It sure is, Button,” Montana agreed. “But then, I reckon you know who you’re waiting for—that’s a danged sight more than I do.”
“That’s the funny part of it,” the boy said, staring at the puncher with childish frankness. “I don’t know any more who I’m waiting for than you do. But I’m plumb glad it ain’t you; because if I’d of been the jasper you was waiting for mebbeso you would have reason to plug me.”
“Shucks!” Montana grinned. “I’m not so tough, buddy. Just skittish, like a green colt. Been in the saddle so long I’m plumb tuckered out.” His sharp blue-gray eyes whipped along the reclining figure. “You look like you’ve done some tall riding yourself. Who you waiting for?”
“For a jasper by the name of Ellis—Montana Ellis.”
“Montana Ellis? That’s me! So you’re waiting for me? And me, I’m waiting for a feller by the name of—But then it couldn’t be a kid like you.”
“I’m Clem White,” the boy volunteered quickly.
“Clem White!” Montana exclaimed incredulously. “Hell! Here I’ve been all keyed up for days figuring to stack up against some tough walloper who would be snorting to knock over my cob pile. And here you—”
“So that’s why you are so skittish?” The boy attempted a chuckle that ended in a nervous note. “Figured you was due for some gunplay? But me being just a kid you ain’t scared any more, huh? So you’re Montana Ellis? I’m sure glad to know you, Montana.” He sprang up to offer his hand in a frank, boyish gesture. Montana shook it gravely.
Then from the pocket of his ragged overalls the youngster extracted a crumpled envelope.
“I got a letter from some feller by the name of Ellis up in Montana,” he said. “The only letter I ever got in my whole life. And was I some proud? This jasper wrote for me to be sure and meet Montana Ellis at the Tongue River crossing outside of Elbar, Wyoming, on the twenty-fifth day of August and I’d learn something that would more than pay me for my trouble. So here I am. And now that I’ve met you, what is it, mister?”
“And now you’ve met me I’m danged if I know what it is, buddy,” Montana admitted truthfully, sucking hard on the cigarette, his gaze evading the disappointment that flared into the youngster’s eyes.
“You—don’t—know?” the boy cried, dangerously near tears.
“I just can’t say for certain as to that, either,” Montana hedged. “It won’t take long for me to show my hand. It’s thisaway. My uncle, Nat Ellis, died up in Montana a while back—a stroke—come on sudden like. Before he cashed in, Uncle Nat tried hard to tell me something, something it seemed like he just had to get off his chest before he faced the Big Tallyman over on yon side of the divide.
“But he couldn’t get it out. He just mumbled and muttered and begged with his eyes. But one thing he did manage to make me understand. That was that he had three letters cached under the mattress of his bed. One of them was addressed to Clem White, Lonetree, Wyoming.”
“And it told me to come clean up here and I’d learn something that would more than pay me for my trouble,” the boy blurted out. “I come—and I ain’t finding out anything.”
“Never mind, sonny,” Montana consoled him. “There is something back of all this, you can just bet the ace. It’s up to us to find out what it is. But as I was saying, Uncle Nat managed to tell me about those three letters. I got them out from under his mattress. One of them was for you, one for me, and the third one was addressed to a jasper by the name of Al Cousins, Elbar, Wyoming. Do you happen to know this Al Cousins, Button?”
“Never heard of him. Don’t know a living soul around these parts. I’m a plumb stranger hereabouts.”
“Well, we’ve got to locate Al Cousins,” Montana said. “For Uncle Nat made me understand that I was to mail your letter, read mine, and deliver the one to Al Cousins personal.”
“And all your letter told you was to come down here and meet me just like mine told me to come up here and meet you, huh?” the boy demanded, struggling gamely with tears. “And now neither one of us knows what for. Somebody is crazy—or playing a dirty joke on us.”
“Mebbeso,” Montana conceded, “but I’ve got a different hunch. If you could have seen Uncle Nat lying there with a pleading light in his eyes, trying to make me understand before he died, you’d believe, like I do, that there is something behind it. What it is I haven’t any more idea than you. But it’s up to us to find out.”
“And just how are we going to find out?” the boy cried. “Your uncle is dead. Besides, I never knew, or even heard of, any Ellises.”
“Yet it is a dead mortal cinch that Uncle Nat knew your name,” Montana reasoned. “And he also had your address. If h
e didn’t know you, how do you account for that?”
“I can’t,” Clem admitted. “But what gets me is what he wanted me to come up here for to meet a jasper who don’t know what for any more than I do!”
“Where you from originally, Button?” Montana asked.
“Nowheres.” There was a touch of sadness in the boy’s voice. “I reckon I just kind of growed out in the grease-wood. I don’t even know how old I am; never had any way of telling. First thing I recollect I was doing chores on a cow ranch on Powder River. The foreman used to kick me until I was black and blue. I sneaked away from that job and got another one working for a jasper over near Lonetree. He isn’t any easy walloper to work for; he busts me just plenty, but at least I’ve et and had a place to sleep. But coming up here thisaway—” He stopped, biting his lip.
“What, buddy?” Montana encouraged.
“Oh, nothing,” The boy resumed, his chin quivering, “Only I’ve come clean up here expecting to hear something and—and the old man fired me. He told me if I went I didn’t need to come back. Damn your uncle. I wish he’d have minded his own business and left me alone. I would have had a job and wouldn’t be on the drift, not knowing where my next meal was coming from.”
Montana got slowly to his feet to flick away his cigarette and grind it under his heel.
“Never mind, buddy,” he said. “We’ll be pards from now on. We’ll stick together and either find out Uncle Nat was talking sense or that he was crazy in the head.”
“You’re on!” the boy cried, seizing the puncher’s hand. “I never had any jasper who wanted me for a pard before. I’ll stick to you forever; because I know you ain’t the kind who’ll kick hell out of me. But—” New tears welled up in his eyes. “I’m broke—and I ain’t et for two days.”
“You haven’t got me beat much at that,” Montana grinned. “I figured when Uncle Nat died that I’d have the ranch. But I reckon I was the only thing on the whole place that the bank didn’t have a mortgage on. I’ve got ham-and-egg money, though. And the two of us ought to find enough work to keep us eating. Come on, buddy. Throw a leg over that crowbait of yours and we’ll put on the feed bag right now.”
The 7th Western Novel Page 2