by Lauran Paine
“Swift? Glad I caught you before you left. Josh Logan wants to see you. He was by your shop but it was closed.”
Jack shortened the reins. “What about? I’m in a hurry.”
“Well,” the deputy drawled, “he seems to think you encouraged the kid to run away.”
“He’s a damned liar!”
Spencer shrugged. “Tell him that, not me,” he said. “You goin’ to see him?”
“Maybe when I get back. Not now.”
“You goin’ to look for the kid?”
“Yes.”
“It’s a pretty big country.”
“I know that.”
“Any idea where you’re going to look?”
Jack edged the horse up toward the roadside doorway. “None at all.” He nodded at Buck, who had come up, and rode out. For a time the liveryman and deputy watched his progress through town. Buck looked secretly pleased about something.
“Big feller, ain’t he?” he said to the lawman.
Spencer nodded, still watching Jack ride out. “Yeah, he’s big.”
“Be a hard man to whip if he was mad.”
“Yeah.”
“If I was Logan, I wouldn’t go out of my way to start a fight with him.”
Will Spencer looked around. “Logan’s no greener, either, Buck. That boot’d fit both feet.”
“Logan,” Buck said flatly, “has lots of hired help but damned few friends. I got a notion in a mix-up like this friends’d count.”
Will Spencer continued to regard the old man for a while in silence, then he left. Walked as far as the roadway and looked north. Jack Swift was growing small out along the stage road. He was riding toward the fork in the road where a scraggly old juniper tree stood. Nailed to its trunk was a roughly lettered sign with names on it and an arrow pointing westerly. Will Caldwell C.B. Swinnerton Paul Visher Diamond O Ranch P. Merton.
He took the left fork and followed wagon ruts lying like twin snakes where they threw themselves up and over a barren ridge, then down a steady slope to a juncture with another road. There, a second sign pointed the way to the Merton place, and later, as Jack was riding into a yard where gusts of autumn wind made loose gates squeak, a big man, old and gaunt, came out to watch him approach. He rode up and swung down.
“Howdy.”
“Howdy.”
“Is this where the stud horse was stolen from?”
“It is. You a new deputy?”
“No,” Jack answered. “Mind showing me where he was taken from?”
“Don’t mind at all,” the old man said. “Come on.”
They walked beyond the edge of the stony yard. There, the old man raised an arm. “Yonder. See that ’ere pole corral? That’s it. I kept him down there so’s he wouldn’t be a-squealin’ every time someone rode a mare into the yard.”
Jack looked beyond the corral toward the blue-tiered, long lift of mountains. In the near distance some horses were grazing. “Those your animals, too?” he asked.
“Yep. Got about eighty head. Whoever stoled my stud horse knew better’n try to catch one of them.”
Jack studied the corral. A crippled kid would know he couldn’t catch loose horses. The old man’s voice was running on.
“I got a notion that ’ere horse thief knowed my stud.”
“Looks that way,” Jack said, drawing the livery horse up close, toeing in, and swinging up. “Did you look for sign?”
“Yep.” A thin arm shot up, pointing westward. “I tracked him out a piece...’most as far as the lava beds...about six miles from here. Then come back and went to town to tell Sheriff Farmer. Catchin’ horse thieves is his job, not mine. Besides, I got chores to do.” The old man’s arm dropped. He studied Jack a moment, then frowned. “If you figure to track that feller, you’d best get damned well ahead of them railroaders. They’re tramplin’ the sign right out of sight.”
“How many railroaders?”
“Seven. Josh Logan sent ’em out this mornin’ all mounted on big team horses. Damnedest sight you ever seen. I showed ’em the tracks and away they went a-whoopin’ and a-hollerin’ like a band of Apaches.” Merton spat. “Hell, they’ll get no farther than the lava beds. Some of ’em could hardly speak English. As trackers they couldn’t find their backsides with both hands an’ a candle.”
Jack nodded and reined around. “Thanks.”
The old man took a few steps beside the horse. “Figure you can find the thief?” he asked.
“I can sure try,” Jack replied.
He rode directly to the pole corral and picked up the broad trail of Logan’s men. It was wide and clear. He kicked the chestnut into a long lope and rode steadily until evening grayness swept in, fast. Then he sighted the railroaders up ahead a short mile. They were milling around, apparently confused by something. When he got closer, Jack saw what it was. Old Man Merton’s lava bed turned out to be obsidian, as slick as glass, as shiny, and just as treacherous to a mounted man on a shod horse.
Without a second thought Jack swung wide in a northerly way and by-passed the railroaders. Once a call sounded and he looked around. A man waved. He ignored it and kept on going.
Irony was in his expression. A scared kid using obsidian to hide his trail was a long way from panicking. Rob had won the first round; his uncle’s men were stymied at the glass rock.
He rode until evening came with great, florid splashes of red upon the gray horizon, strokes a thousand miles long reflecting downward from the tucked-up gut of heaven. He left the wide plain of obsidian behind, buttoned his coat against the chill of dusk, and off-saddled when it became too dark to see tracks any longer. Wind whimpered through the grass above a lee gully nearby. He hobbled the chestnut and lay down with the saddle blanket over him.
When he found Rob — what? Take him back to Cavin’s goat shed? Hand him over to Logan’s crushing hatred? He pressed flatter against the ground and tucked his collar in, against the cold fingers of a fall night.
Or just take the gun away from him, give him some money, and tell him to keep on going? That would be easiest. No, Logan wouldn’t accept that and, anyway, the boy would be exactly where he was right now — hating, rebelling, and running. Then — what?
Night came fully after a while. The sky was clean-swept by a high wind. There was a hint of rain-like electricity in the air. Coyotes tongued in the distance and the livery horse worked his ears uneasily over their sound. Somewhere in the blue blackness a cow bawled, got a quavering answer, and became silent. Night owls skimmed past on silent wings, low, and the grass stirred uneasily where mice, catching some instinctive warning, raced for cover.
Overhead the stars looked down impersonally. Jack stirred. It was easy to say — “I don’t know.” — but it solved nothing. And there was a heap at stake, too. More than a stolen stud horse, more than Amy’s anxiety, Logan’s anger, or the sheriff’s mild interest. There was a future at stake, a boy’s belief that the world was a dry shuck of a place. Saying — “I don’t know.” — didn’t help a bit. Of course, he didn’t know what to do — what man would have known? But all the same he had to do something.
He fell asleep on that, but before the first streaks of dawn appeared off in the east, he was heading northwest again, walking ahead of the saddled horse, taking plenty of time to read the prints on the shadowed ground.
The new day brightened gradually, took on the color of diluted blood. There was a somber silence to it; the rain-like electricity was stronger than ever.
When it was light enough to make out tracks from the saddle, Jack mounted up and pushed on. Finally he hauled up, studying the land ahead. He could go on a yard at a time until Doomsday and never catch up. He’d always get up where Rob had been, but that way he’d never get where he was.
The sprawl of land was lavish. Westerly the country was more or less open with scattered patches of sa
ge and chaparral, a few squatty trees, mostly junipers, an occasional piñon or the burst glory of late-blooming paloverdes, green trunks slim and graceful. But it was too open a country for a boy to use who had had sense enough to cross obsidian to hide his tracks.
Northward was forest, rising up mountain slopes to a purple, hazy crest. It was a wild, hushed world of its own. Easterly lay foothills, more trees and more open spaces. Jack rode in that direction, kept to it until he crossed an old roadbed and found the stud horse’s unshod hoof marks turning along it, following it toward those far-away hills.
Jack reined up again, farther along, wondering why Rob was following the road instead of heading directly into the hills. Up to now his diversion tactics had been excellent. Then he saw the answer: broken chaparral branches all pointing one way — northward. He smiled. A hungry boy would follow his nose. Only wagons consistently heading in one direction would break branches like that — they would be heading for home.
Jack rode slowly for a while, feeling the new warmth of day and studying the land ahead. Near the foothills he caught a quick light flare where the sun struck a tin roof. He loped ahead for several miles without bothering to read sign and eventually came out into the clearing of a mine. Two men looked up from a rickety oak cart as he approached and moved out to meet him. He drew up and nodded.
“Howdy. Did a kid on a stud horse ride through here a while back?”
One of the miners grinned when he answered. “He rode through, yes.”
“Did you feed him?”
“Yep, an’ he ate like a bear, too.”
“How long ago did he ride on?”
“Early...hour or so after sunup.”
Jack looked toward the mountains. “By that way?”
“Yep.”
“Did he have anything to say?”
“Not a hell of a lot. Only that he was heading east looking for work.” The miner smiled. “’Course, he was headin’ north all the time.”
The second miner came closer. “Run off with his paw’s stud horse, did he?” he asked with amusement.
“Something like that,” Jack answered.
“Quite a horse, too. Only now he’s a mite lame...walkin’ on eggs. The kid should’ve got him shod first.”
Jack agreed. “He’s getting pretty tender all right.”
The miner’s twinkle lingered. “Not as tender as the kid’s backsides’ll be when his old man catches up to him, I reckon.”
Both the miners laughed. Jack asked how Rob was holding up and the first miner shrugged.
“That game leg’s botherin’ him a mite. Outside o’ that he’s holdin’ up all right.”
The second miner sobered. “Touchy about that leg,” he said. “I was fixin’ to help him down...he give me one hell of a dirty look and got down by himself.”
Jack slacked off the reins and nodded. “Much obliged,” he said, and lifted the chestnut into a lope and held him to it until he was dark with sweat, then he alternated between a standing trot and a fast walk, cooling him out. Then more loping until the road into the mountains switched back, almost meeting itself near the summit of a ridge. There Jack stopped, put both hands on the saddle horn, and bent forward, blocking in squares of countryside seeking movement.
Ridge after ridge of rocky upthrusts lay, blue and heat-hazed, as far as he could see. Through them the old road wound, yellow, showing briefly clinging to a slope, then plunging deep into timbered cañons to struggle upward again, always working its way northwesterly toward the horizon.
He got down, made a cigarette, and smoked it leisurely while the sun climbed steadily higher. Smoked and never looked away, knowing sooner or later movement would show in all that stillness, when Rob would come working his way out of some gloomy cañon or through some dark spit of trees.
Then he saw him, a dark speck far ahead, moving slowly over the dusty roadway. He watched him stop where a freshet gushed from a hillside, water the tired stud horse, and sit wearily and dejected in the warming light.
He got up, mounted, shook out the reins, and set his horse toward the claybank road. He made a little better time than he should have in that rugged country but he wanted to close the distance before afternoon shadows came. Later, he sniffed the air to make certain it was blowing away from him. He did not want the stud horse to scent his mount and whinny.
The distance closed swiftly. Jack reined down to a fast walk, watching ahead to avoid rocks — anything that would sound under a steel shoe and warn of his coming. The only sound he made was of rubbing leather.
He came at last to a buck run and pushed his horse up it. From the ridge he paused briefly to admire the smoky view and blow his mount, then he started down the far side. Ahead, he could hear the rush of falling water. Where he rejoined the road a long-spending curve separated him from the ridge and the spring. He rode around it on a loose rein. Rob did not sense him until the stud horse snorted. Then he started violently and sprang up, one hand white-knuckled around the pistol butt at his waistband.
Jack drew up, let the reins hang, gazed down, and nodded. “You made pretty good time,” he said.
The boy’s face filled with dark color and he said nothing.
Jack looked at Merton’s stud horse. “Too bad he wasn’t shod. You’d have been out of the county by now.”
Puzzled because the big man had come from the north, Rob asked: “How did you get here?”
“Followed you.” The man grinned wryly. “If I’d been you, I’d have stayed down around that glass-rock country. You could see anyone trailing you and hide from them.” He swung down, stood hip-shot in the roadway, watching the boy. “Well, it’s all over now.”
Rob’s nostrils quivered. “I’m not going back,” he said with vehemence.
Jack shrugged. “If you don’t, it’ll mean the others’ll catch you farther on. You can’t hope to escape them on a sore-footed horse, Rob.”
“What others?”
“Your uncle’s crew from rail’s end. They’re behind us somewhere. You lost ’em at the glass rock but by now they’ll have worked around it and found either your tracks or mine.”
The blue eyes were unblinkingly on the big man. “I can’t go back.”
“Sure doesn’t seem that simple now, does it?” Jack’s gaze dropped a little. “Is that the gun you were going to bring me?”
The boy looked down and touched the weapon. “Yes.” He looked up again. “You want it, Jack?”
“No, you keep it for now, son.” He paused a moment, then said: “You can’t solve anything with it, Rob.”
“I could’ve gotten away, though.”
“Naw, not really. What you were running from isn’t that easy to evade. What was it? Cavin...your uncle? You’d have found others just like them somewhere else. Then you’d have had to run again and pretty soon you’d be doing nothing but running.”
“I don’t want a sermon,” the boy said bitterly. “I’d have started fresh somewhere else...where I wasn’t known.”
Jack watched the stud horse nuzzle the spring water. “Why?” he asked mildly. “What’s wrong with Herd? Don’t blame it on the town, Rob. You know something? I came a long way to settle in Herd, and I’ve seen lots of towns in my time.”
“But you’re big and strong.”
“Let me finish,” Jack said. “No matter where you go, you’ll always remember Herd. For one thing your folks are there.”
“Dead.”
“All right, dead. But they’re there and no other place’d have the same meaning for you. So...the thing you’ve got to do is face up to whatever’s in Herd you don’t like. Face up to it like a man would, Rob...like I’d do...and prove to yourself in your own eyes that you’re a man.”
“I can’t, Jack.”
“Listen, Rob, every time you run away from something, you just become that much more of a coward.
..to yourself. Maybe no one else’ll ever know you’re a coward but you’ll know it, and that’s what counts, believe me.”
The thin face lifted. It was wan, drawn, and tired-looking. “I don’t have to be a coward. The next place I come to I can stay in.”
Jack shook his head. “No you couldn’t. You’d just stay until someone said...‘I don’t believe I can use a cripple in my shop...,’ then you’d be off again. You’d be running from something you’ll probably never escape from. See, Rob?”
“It isn’t that. It’s my uncle. He hates me. I know he does. Before my grandpaw died, the other kids used to play with me a little. Now they don’t. My uncle told Mister Cavin not to let them.” The blue eyes changed, became hard. “But if they knew I’d outridden a posse....”
“You didn’t outride it, though.”
“All but you.”
“Don’t you think I’m part of it, Rob?”
“No, you wouldn’t be riding with my uncle’s men.”
Jack squatted in the roadway, picked up a pine needle, and broke off small segments of it. “No,” he said slowly, “I’m not part of your uncle’s posse. But I’m going to take you back just the same. Rob, it’s got to be that way.”
The sound of gusty breathing made the man look up. Rob was struggling to hold back hot-welling tears. “What did I ever do to you?” he demanded.
“Nothing. I’m not thinking about me, I’m thinking about you.”
“What is there about me that makes everything turn out...bad...always?”
Jack snapped the last of the pine needle and dropped it. “It’s not you, Rob, it’s life. Sometimes it seems like some of us get more’n our share of misery.”
“Why? What have I ever done?”
“Well, folks’ll tell you things happen like they do so’s you’ll grow up to be a better man,” Jack said, recalling words from his own youth, words he didn’t believe were right.
Rob shook his head on the verge of tears. “I didn’t ever want to lose my mother or my dad or my grandpaw. I didn’t want to be a better man. I don’t want to grow up to be one now.”