Dan Younge said: “I used your horse yesterday, and he’s a good one. Do you want to sell him?”
Sell was a word that Charley Sydnor would always hear. He said, “He traces back to Justin Morgan on both sides. There isn’t any better blood.”
“That’s why I want to buy him.”
“How much was you thinking of paying?”
Phyllis Sydnor left the counter and came over. She spoke to her husband, but she stood so that her full skirt would conceal her hand, and she caught Dan Younge’s fingers and squeezed them. She said, “Charles, Mr. Willows is asking for credit. He says the new prices have washed out all his cash reserve.” Charley Sydnor said, “Willows has all his money tied up in freighting teams. Might be dead before this is over. Tell him to wait.”
“Yes, Charles.” She gave Dan’s fingers a final caressing and was gone.
Dan Younge hoped the red in his face didn’t show too much. “I need a horse,” he said, and thought that he meant it now more than before. “And I’d like your Morgan. But there’s many a good one going begging on the market. Say—sixty dollars.”
Charley Sydnor’s voice was gloomy as a hound dog’s. “Coulda gotten three-fifty, maybe four hundred last week,” he said. “He goes good in a harness, under saddle, he does it all.”
“A good Morgan will,” Dan Younge said. “Sixty dollars.”
“Done,” Charley Sydnor said. “I’ll make you out a bill of sale.” He stamped over to the standup desk, opened it, and rummaged for a paper.
Dan Younge took out his wallet, counted out bills; he’d drawn on the last two nights from Wellman to go buy his horse. If Rylan’s plan works, he thought, I’ll be out of here tomorrow, maybe…
“Good morning, Mr. Younge.”
Dan bowed. “Mrs. Lea, you are looking well.”
She was eyeing him with a certain sharpness he hadn’t seen in her before. Either she’d noticed the lady’s little handplay, or maybe Phyllis was being too open in the way she watched him. He looked over and decided that was it; she didn’t like him talking to Ellen Lea. Oh, man, let me out of this jackpot.
Ellen Lea said softly: “You haven’t changed your mind about working here?”
“Shotgun guard on a grocery store? No, I haven’t changed my mind.”
“Too bad,” Ellen Lea said. “You’d have been someone to talk to.” At once, as though she’d said too much, she was gone back to the counter, looking after the customers.
The horse was in a box stall. He went in with him, began running his hands over the Morgan’s legs looking for flaws. This is the wrong way to go about it, he thought. Fault the horse first and buy him later is the way to end up rich.
A faint odor of cologne cut through the rich warm scent of the stable. He looked up. Phyllis Sydnor was leaning on the edge of the boxstall. “Dan,” she said.
“Phyllis, you’re crazy to come here.”
“Nobody’s interested in the stable. Nobody thinks they’re going anyplace.”
“But, Sydnor…”
“Shurtz sent over his boy for some groceries. Sydnor told me to go along and collect,” she held up a hand full of money. “Charles isn’t trusting anybody—unless they sign the pledge.”
He felt stupid as he asked, “The pledge?”
“Some of the men are signing up not to go out on any posses, to stay and protect the store. Then he gives them credit. I’m sick of credit and cash and groceries and posses. Oh, Danny!”
He hated being called Danny. But she was opening the latch, coming into the boxstall. He said: “Careful, you don’t want to get kicked.”
“Oh, Ranger’s a kitten, a little woolly lamb.”
She almost leaned on the horse’s haunch as she came towards Dan Younge, pressed herself into his arms. He was sweating from fear, but hardly from fear of Charley Sydnor. The storekeeper was no threat. Kill him now, and no man in town would serve on a hanging jury. Sydnor’s profit-making use of the siege had taken care of that.
But the local bravos had their code, and one of its strictest rules was the protection (from everything but overwork) of the women. If he was caught compromising Phyllis Sydnor, he would have to marry her, and he had not bought a horse in order to settle down in Rock Spring with the lady.
On the other hand, a man refusing proffered feminine charms is an idiotic spectacle, and he has his own body to fight. Dan Younge’s hands, all of Dan Younge, were trying to go towards the lady. Only his mind went the other way.
So, while he found himself putting his arms around her, he was looking desperately for someone to interrupt him.
She said, “Where can we meet tonight? I can make an excuse to Charles, get out of the store… Now that we’ve moved down there, I never get to see you anymore.”
Her lips were against his chin. He ducked his head down and kissed her, and she was cooperating enough to drive most of his worries out of his mind. But when the kiss was over, they crowded right back in on him, and some inner Dan Younge sneered at him. He wasn’t man enough to pay for what he wanted.
He said: “I’m afraid we’ll have to wait till the siege is lifted, and you’re back in your own house, lady.”
She moved away from him, both physically and sympathetically. “Maybe it’s a good idea. I’m down at the store now. You were attentive enough to that Ellen Lea!”
“Ah, lady, I have to have an excuse to come into the store,” Dan Younge said. “I can’t buy something every time I want to see you.”
Oh, break it up, the inner Dan Younge said. Face up to her. Tell her off!
But she was falling for it. “You’re clever, lover.” She moved in towards him again. She was, as he liked his ladies to be, a restrained user of perfume. The scent came up to him only when she was close, and warm and…
For God’s sake, Younge, get hold of yourself.
He was saved by boots stamping down the runway of the stable. It was one of the soldiers. “Lieutenant wants to see you.”
He placed the man as one who had gaily lost a month’s pay in poker last night.
“Me, Haley? Or Mrs. Sydnor?”
Haley said: “You, mister,” and turned away again.
Phyllis Sydnor said: “That was a curious question. Why should Mr. Beer want to see me?”
Dan Younge sighed. “Haven’t you noticed him looking at you? No, you wouldn’t. He’s a shy young man; he’s mostly sighed after you when your back was turned. I’m afraid you’ve broken another heart there, lady.”
Phyllis Sydnor said: “Jealous, lover?”
“Not so long as you don’t look back at him. I’ve got to go, lady. I’ll see you in the store. I’ll think of something to buy.”
“Or come courting Ellen Lea,” she said. “That looks natural enough.”
Haley was waiting outside. He gave Dan Younge an amused grin and said: “I wouldn’t mind a deal or two of that myself. The officer’s in the hotel, him and Sarge Rylan. I’ll walk across with you.”
But he didn’t need any guide to find Beer and Rylan. They, together with Jack Romayne, were the center of a knot of arguing men.
Dan Younge pushed his way into the center himself.
Beer said, “Glad you’re here, Younge, we seem to have run into a squabble.”
A voice said: “We don’t need no gambler to tell us what’s good for our town!”
Rylan’s heavy voice answered before the lieutenant could. “Only one man in this town stood with the lieutenant and his boys yesterday. Only one was out with the sheriff when we first ran into your trouble here. I’d listen to Mr. Younge, gambler or horse thief or whatever he was!”
“Why shouldn’t you?” someone asked. He shoved forward and it was Patson, the blacksmith, not a loudmouth. “You’ve got nothing to lose if they raid the town while you’re gone. We’ve wives and children, homes and businesses.”
> Dan Younge said: “You’ll lose them if you wait. We’re in a trap here. It’s up to us to fight our way out.”
Rylan said, “There’s so many of the Indians that if they decide to raid the town, a few defenders more or less won’t help you. I’m asking twenty men to go with me, and four of our boys. Mr. Younge makes one. How about nineteen more?”
A man said, “We’re having our government taken away from us by a soldier and a gambler! We goin’ to stand for that?”
Dan Younge said, “That sounds like Willows’ voice. Any of you know he’s being paid by Sydnor to keep the men here to defend Sydnor’s store?”
Willows said: “That’s a lie.” He was back in the crowd when he said it, but somebody shoved him forward. Other men parted to give him passage, and he ended up right in front of Dan Younge.
Dan Younge said, “Well, say it again.”
Willows shrunk back into the crowd, and Rylan got a laugh by saying, “That one wouldn’t do to take along, anyway. Anybody comin’?”
Amazingly Big Red, the bartender at the Great Chance, stepped up. “Here goes nothing.”
Wellman’s voice came clear from the crowd. “Who’s running my place tonight?”
Red’s voice was respectful. “The day barman says he’ll stay on. And you can sit in for Dan Younge.”
Rylan said, “We’re not going on any long journey. They tell me we can be at the malapie in less than two hours. How long d’ya think a fight can last?”
Patson said: “No man does my fighting for me,” and joined Dan and Red.
That did it. The quota of twenty was filled in a few minutes and the men scattered to get their horses.
Dan Younge led Ranger out of the stall, stepped to his back, and jogged down the boards and out into the sun-drenched street. There was a canteen tied to the cantle. He untied it and carried it up to his hotel room, got his rifle and shotgun and filled the canteen. By the time he’d tied all this on the saddle, and ridden across the street to the store, half the possemen were there.
Sydnor stood in the door of the store. Three or four men were ranged behind him. When Dan Younge saw that one of them was Willows, he knew what they were there for. Jack Romayne was nowhere in sight.
Sydnor said, “Now, I’m a man who speaks his mind, and I’m saying that this whole posse’s just a dodge for men to get out of their natural duty, which is to stand up and defend their homes.”
“An’ Sydnor’s grocery store,” one of the posse said. Dan Younge turned his head. It was Brister who’d said that. Brister added, “Charley’s getting rich off our misery; no wonder he don’t want them miners licked.”
Sydnor said, “That’ll be enough of that!” He suddenly unholstered his gun. “This store’s mine, and I’ll stand and fight for it. It’s more’n you runaways’ll do.”
“Show you,” said Patson, and hoisted his compact bulk forward. He walked up to Sydnor, right up to the barrel of the pistol. Then his heavy forearm chopped, and the gun clattered to the boards. “Bullets’re under the back counter, boys. Take what you need.”
Dan Younge went in with the rest. He swore at himself a little, because he felt ashamed to be doing what he was doing. It was theft. Necessary, of course, but he had never stolen before.
Ellen Lea looked at him. He looked away, and was staring straight into Phyllis Sydnor’s eyes. He smiled at her, finished filling his belt and his pockets and looked further.
Sergeant Rylan was breaking open a case of cooking chocolate, passing the pound slabs of hard stuff out to his men. “We may be there all night,” the sergeant said. “This’ll keep you alive but it won’t taste so good you’ll eat it all first thing.”
Dan Younge went over and got a slab of the bitter chocolate. “If it’s good enough for the soldiers, it’s good enough for us. We all better take some.”
They tramped out of the store, mounted, and rode for the prairie, taking the trail he and Jack Romayne had taken, avoiding the Indian camp.
But they didn’t avoid it by enough, they could hear chanting and drumming coming from there. “Funeral party,” Rylan said, sitting arched in his saddle beside Dan Younge. “They lost a man or two in the ruckus yesterday.”
“We’re not doing this any too soon,” Dan Younge said.
Rylan said, “No,” and they rode on.
CHAPTER XX
All over the West, there are places that they call malapie in English, malpais—badlands—in Spanish. They are all alike, except in size: rolling deposits of black volcanic rock, looking like soft tar, full of pits and crevasses and caves where softer stone than the dense basalt has long ago weathered away.
The malapie near Rock Spring was about two miles wide and three long. No trail went near it, because the basalt was hell on horses’ hooves. The heavy black rock was a great catcher of heat, and even skirting it a quarter of a mile away gave a man a killing thirst.
There were grassy patches between the rolling waves of black, shallow cracks that had trapped blowing dirt and grass seeds and grown up into something. There were other cracks too deep to fill up, and Rock Spring mothers before the siege had frightened their children with tales of people who had wandered into the malapie and never been seen again.
Also, it was good rattlesnake country.
Dan Younge had seen the malapie from a distance, rising from the prairie like an empty ship on the Mississippi, but he’d never been in it, or very near it.
They had left town at a steady lope, but as they got closer to the malapie, they began to drop down to a trot and then a walk, despite Rylan, who kept saying: “Keep up the canter, boys.”
There was something about the black rocks looming ahead of them, getting larger all the time, that chilled a man’s soul, Dan Younge thought. He wondered how the miners had gotten in there. Probably there had been posses from the Colorado camps after them.
He’d worked in a lot of goldfields in his time, and they were rough places. A man had to be pretty bad to get run out, and the gang that had stormed Rock Spring behind White Hat had looked bad enough.
He had a shotgun under his knee and a rifle across his saddle and a beltgun strapped on. A man ought to feel safe enough with all that armament, he thought, but he didn’t feel safe. Yesterday he’d been a hero when he stayed and fought it out against the Indians, but it was easy to do that.
Going towards a fight was a lot harder than staying in one. He couldn’t remember when he’d ever done anything like this before. He turned to Rylan and said, “They pay you fellows much for this sort of work?”
“Naw, but we get a military funeral.” He rolled in his saddle, and cocked a bloodshot eye in a way that made Dan Younge laugh. The sergeant was out of uniform except for his yellow-striped blue pants. But as he stood in his stirrups and yelled, “Pick up the trot, Yoooh!” it would have been hard to mistake his calling.
Dan Younge lifted his reins and stood in his stirrups. If any of the men behind them felt reluctant about hurrying towards the malapie, their horses were fighting to keep up with the leaders. A man would have had to hold back on his lines enough to show, and that no man would do.
Dan Younge, his weight on his insteps, his rifle in his hand, thought they were getting awful close, within rifle shot. But no shot came, and he began to wonder. The miners must have been pretty desperate to raid the town the way they did. When the raid failed, maybe they took off, were starved out.
It was a cheery thought. As the big Morgan cut down the distance, it was a thought to cling to.
There was lava rock under their hooves now. Dirt had blown over it, and a thin mat of grass turfed it, but the hoofbeats had a different sound, a sort of drumming that they had lacked on the sandy prairie.
Then one of Ranger’s hooves rang on bare lava, and they were in the malapie. Rylan raised his hand and brought down the clenched fist in the signal to walk, and for a moment
the possemen bunched up behind them.
“Spread out, there,” Rylan bawled. “Don’t bunch up.” He muttered something under his breath about damned civilians, and raised his voice again. “Schwartz, Haley, Harrington.” Three of his troopers, all in half-uniform, came up. The fourth soldier, a corporal named Petty, was right behind them.
Rylan said: “Each of you take five men, dismount, and work one of these side canyons, line of skirmishers. Petty, take what’s left as horseholders. You’ll know how to cover them. I’ll scout ahead of you, Schwartz, an’ Dan Younge’ll be picket man for Harrington on the other wing.”
“You do me too much honor,” Dan Younge said.
They were dismounting. Rylan bumped against Dan Younge. “Harrington’s a young one,” he said. “He knows just enough to stay the right distance behind a picket. Go slow and careful, and everything’ll be fine. I brought him because he’s a marksman.”
Dan Young turned and looked the crowd over. “Which one’s Harrington?”
The soldier who raised his hand looked young enough not to shave yet, but surely they didn’t take them in the Army till their beards sprouted. Dan said: “I’m riding with you, Harrington.”
There was a wild excited look in the youngster’s eyes for a moment. Then he nodded, and said: “Yeah, I heard the sarge.” He pointed: “You, you, you and you. You’re in my detachment. Two of you on either side of me, an’ th’ gambler out front.”
Dan was at his saddle, choosing. A man couldn’t carry a rifle and a shotgun both. He looked over the men who were going to follow him. Harriman had his Army carbine, a townsman named Nelson had a rifle, the rest of them just beltguns. Well, a carbine and a rifle would do for the long distance work; he took his shotgun. A man gathered Ranger’s reins in his hand with some others, said, “All right, boy,” in an idle voice, perhaps ashamed to be back holding horses while other men went up into the malapie.
Harrington was pointing his men into position. The rifleman went on one side, Harrington himself closed the file on the other; the pistoleers filled in the middle. Dan Younge said: “I’ll want at least fifteen feet between me and the line of skirmishers, or whatever you call it. Don’t crowd me, and don’t hurry me.”
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