The Sixth Western Novel

Home > Science > The Sixth Western Novel > Page 33
The Sixth Western Novel Page 33

by Jackson Gregory


  Zedra Stiles, wearing a Spanish sombrero and an Army overcoat over her dance-hall costume, was seated in the wagon, holding the lines. Doc was busy hitching the tugs to the whiffletrees.

  Redding stifled the cry of new hope which sprang to his throat. Zedra, whatever her fears of him might have been down in Trailfork, must surely be his ally now. The old medico had doubtless acquainted her with the identity of the prisoner Jace Blackwine had brought to this place.

  Fifty feet of open ground lay between the shaft house and the waiting wagon. He remembered that Sheriff Val Lennon had mentioned how Zedra often left Trailfork in a wagon, ostensibly to carry supplies to her prospector father. Perhaps Zedra was getting ready to return to the Basin now.

  Redding crouched low and raced out of the covering shadows of the shaft-house wall. The strike of his boots was the first inkling either Doc Stiles or the girl had of his approach.

  Redding heard the girl’s low cry of incredulity, saw the pink cavern of the old man’s gaping mouth as Doc Stiles wheeled from his work to stare at-the apparition sprinting toward them.

  Redding skidded to a halt alongside the wagon. He saw Zedra make a quick movement toward the lantern on the seat beside her, jacking up the chimney and extinguishing the wick flame.

  “Daddy left your door unlocked, Doug?”

  Redding panted heavily from the exertion of his run.

  “No—Tondro can’t pin this on your father, Zedra. I smashed the lock—tell you how later. Can you help me get out of here?”

  Old Doc Stiles caught Redding by the sleeve. “Tondro is taking my daughter back to Trailfork tonight,” the old doctor whispered. “Your only chance is to head for the river—maybe you could swim past the canyon guards—”

  Zedra whispered hoarsely from her elevated position in the wagon seat, “He can’t do that, Dad. The grub box—the grub box—Tondro won’t think to check that—”

  Doc Stiles tugged at Redding’s arm like a dog worrying a marrowbone. Redding stumbled around to the end gate of the wagon and saw the old man’s scrawny paw tugging at the lid of an oblong wooden box built into the rear of the wagon.

  With frantic haste Redding set foot to the bull bar and straddled the edge of the grub box. He flung himself in a cramped kneeling position in the box as Doc Stiles closed the lid and snapped the catch.

  Redding felt a rush of fear akin to claustrophobia assail him at being encased in this coffin. But he realized how slim had been his margin of concealment when spurred boots made their approach from the direction of the shaft house, and the democrat wagon lurched on its leaf springs as a man climbed over the front wheel to take his seat alongside Zedra.

  “Vaya con Dios, daughter,” he heard Doc Stiles’s farewell to his daughter, in the language of her dead mother.

  He heard the girl answer in a steady voice which gave no hint of the strain she was under, “I’ll be back in a couple of weeks, padre mio.”

  The heavy voice of Blaze Tondro reached Redding’s ears as the wagon gave a lurch and the mules swung out onto the trail. “Not that soon she won’t, Doc. I can’t gamble on you two cookin’ up a double cross any longer. The next time Zedra sees Thunder Rock will be as my wife.”

  The wagon jounced and lurched over rocky ruts. The boom of the waterfall standing guard over the outlaw hideout faded in Redding’s hearing.

  A mile down the canyon, Redding shoved tentatively against the lid of the grub box with his shoulders, to confirm his dread that Doc Stiles had closed the hasp on the outside.

  He was at the mercy of the fates that ruled his stormy years now. It was up to Zedra to find the time and the place to open the box which was smuggling Tondro’s prisoner out of the canyon, with Tondro himself the unwitting instrument of Redding’s escape.

  Cramped there in the total blackness of this bouncing coffin, Redding thought, That explosion didn’t rouse the camp. But if a guard checks on that assay room at dawn, they’ll send a rider to overtake this wagon sure.

  In the following hours, Redding lost all track of time, of mileage covered, of direction. Now his body was thrust against the rear of the grub box as the wagon climbed a sharp uptilt of ground; now he was flung against the forward wall as they zigzagged down a dizzy series of looping switchbacks.

  There was no keeping count of the thousand twistings and turnings of this road out of Tondro’s lair. He only knew for certain that their route was dropping them steadily out of the Navajadas. If he lived to see daylight again, he would carry with him one faint clue to the route which he and Blackwine had traveled during his period of unconsciousness: Thunder Rock could be reached by a road wide enough to accommodate a mule-drawn wagon, and wagons left wheel tracks. An old mining road, no doubt.

  What might have been an hour or a day later, Redding became aware that sunrise had broken over the foot slopes of the Navajadas. The shine of it was visible through a nail hole in the end of the grub box, against which his injured skull was being thumped with every jounce of the spring wagon.

  Looking through that nail hole gave him no clue as to passing landmarks; he saw only the revolving spokes of a hind wheel, the meaningless blur of rocks and brush beyond them.

  Bruised and aching, dissolving in his own body juices, the air fouled with his own breathing, and asphyxiation warded off only by the fortuitous nail hole in the end of the box, Redding endured his torture with the dogged patience of a man who did not question the maneuverings of a capricious destiny. The ceaseless bouncing and twisting made his stomach churn, made him close to vomiting on several occasions. This was a purgatory little short of hell, but he was alive, and each revolution of the wagon wheels was taking him farther away from the canyon end where Doc Stiles endured the tortured existence of a lost soul.

  From time to time he heard the guttural voice of Tondro talking to Zedra. Her replies were pitched too low for him to catch through the thick wooden shroud which encased him.

  His groping hands found a moldy husk of bread, somewhere along the tortured journey, and he chewed it ravenously. At the time it seemed to spell the difference between keeping his sanity or losing it.

  The wagon emerged from the canyon, a fact which the sudden lack of confined echoes told him. Long afterward he heard the wheels churning through shallow water, as if Tondro’s route was taking him off the road into a creek bed.

  The spicy odor of wild mint filtered through the nail hole in Redding’s coffin and served to identify, however vaguely, the place where the wagon finally turned out of the watercourse and climbed a gentle bank slope through whippy brush. Eventually the wagon leveled itself and hit a dusty, relatively straight patch of ground which could only be a traveled road.

  He stored these scanty clues to his route away in a corner of his brain, against the time when he might be able to use them to retrace this hellish journey.

  Tondro whipped the jaded mules into a trot. They were traveling an arrow-straight road now, level as a floor. The prairie. Lavarim Basin. The mountains were behind them at last.

  Without warning the journey came to an end, as Redding had despaired of its ever doing. For Redding, this was the crucial moment. If for any reason Tondro should open the grub box—

  He heard Tondro climb out of the democrat, Zedra following. Tondro spoke gruffly to someone. “Unhitch and curry ’em down, Clark. I’ll call for the wagon and a fresh team in an hour. You might grease that off hind axle.”

  Redding could not be sure if the wagon had reached town or an outlying ranch. He heard the strike of boot heels on the wind-scoured hardpan as Tondro and the girl walked away. The wagon box jolted slightly as someone let the tongue drop between the blowing mules. Trace chains jingled, and then Redding heard the mule span being led away.

  The sudden following quiet seemed unreal. It was broken by the creak of a door being opened somewhere, and a splashing noise as the mules plunged their muzzles into a trough.
/>
  After an interminable interval Redding was startled to hear Zedra speak through a crack in the box lid as she unfastened the hasp. “Doug?”

  “Yes.”

  “Listen close, amigo. This wagon is in O’Connor’s stable yard at the edge of Trailfork. You will have one hour before Tondro comes for it. Wait ten minutes. Will you make me a promise, Señor Doug?”

  Redding resisted an urge to shove his back against the lid. It suddenly seemed that he had to feel the sun’s warmth upon his flesh or go berserk.

  “Promise what?”

  “That you will not stay in this Basin, amigo mio. Tondro will hunt you down, kill you as he did your brother. You have already used up all the luck God can give a man, amigo.”

  He protested desperately, “Zedra, I’ve got to talk with you—”

  “Hush! This is adios. Go with God.”

  She was gone. There was nothing he could do but remain in this cramped coffin until Zedra had her chance to get well away from O’Connor’s wagon yard.

  And she was right. He had used up all the luck a man could rightfully expect in a lifetime.

  But she had not waited to get his promise. He would see her again, just as he would see the hideout at Thunder Rock Canyon again.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Flight from Trailfork

  Blaze Tondro, after leaving O’Connor’s stable on the outskirts of Trailfork, walked along the town’s main street with the easy assurance of a man who had no fear of being seen or recognized for what he was.

  Throughout the Territory, this half-breed’s name was a malediction on the lips of the frontier populace. His name was emblazoned on reward dodgers throughout Lavarim Basin; the Spanish version of those posters were common throughout Mexico’s northern provinces.

  But no accurate description, no photograph accompanied those bounty notices. No gringo sheriff or Sonoran rurale policeman had any means of connecting the name and the man. So far as Trailfork was concerned, this swart-browed visitor was one of the prospectors who still combed the Navajada wastes in search of his lucky strike.

  Zedra had walked with him only the length of a block before returning to O’Connor’s to pick up—so she had explained—a pair of boots for repairing. But so unchallenged was Tondro’s status in this cow town that he had no fear of being seen in Zedra Stiles’s company. The girl’s frequent trips into the hills to visit her prospector father were well known to the patrons of the Fandango.

  It was believed in a vague sort of way that this man with the strange polecat streak on his scalp was a partner of old man Stiles, and that the supplies he carried into the wastelands in his rickety yellow wagon every few months were intended for Zedra’s father and himself.

  Except for certain trusted individuals—such as Clark O’Connor, the stable boss—Tondro’s alter ego was an inviolate secret. In Trailfork he went under the name of John Montalvo.

  His purpose in coming to the Basin today had been to pick up mail, which would include cunningly disguised messages from various vendors of stolen goods in El Paso and Phoenix and Santa Fe who carried on a flourishing commerce in contraband with Tondro’s couriers.

  At this early hour, Trailfork’s street was deserted except for a hostler making up the Paloverde stage in front of Wells Fargo, a drunk or two sick or asleep in the dusty gutters under the high wooden curb fronting the Fandango Saloon, and a swamper polishing cuspidors on the sunny porch of Emigrants’ Tavern.

  Reaching the Trailfork post office, Tondro heard someone call, “Hey, Montalvo!” and turned to see Clark O’Connor running up the dusty street toward him.

  Sensing the urgency of the stableman’s pace, Tondro waited on the outer edge of the plank walk. O’Connor’s ruddy Irish face held a pallor of excitement now. Glancing up and down the empty street, he spoke to Tondro in a hoarse whisper.

  “Blaze, who was that jasper who made the trip with you?”

  “What hombre?”

  “The one I seen crawlin’ out of the grub box on your wagon.”

  Tondro’s granite eyes showed their sharp surprise as he reached a hand up slowly to remove a black cigarette from his lips.

  “How’s that?”

  O’Connor knew by Tondro’s reaction that his news was important. He said swiftly, “I was curryin’ your mules inside the barn. I went out front to get some screwworm dope to rub on a cut in the crop-ear’s gaskin when I saw this jasper crawl out of your grub box and high-tail it out of my yard like the devil was after him with a hot pitch-fork. I says to myself, this is something Tondro ought to know about.”

  The rustler boss flung his cigarette into the street and said, “Must have been old Doc. Hooked a ride in the box as we were pulling out of Thunder Rock. I been careless with him.”

  The Irishman shook his head. “Wasn’t Doc Stiles. Big husky feller, stranger to me. Gringo. Wore a calfhide vest. Don’t fit any of your me’jicanos.”

  Tondro’s cheek muscles stiffened. He mused half to himself, “Fits that Redding hombre, but—” He shook his head, rejecting that possibility. He had personally checked Redding’s prison lock. And yet, O’Connor had identified the mysterious passenger as a gringo. Someone had smuggled himself out of Thunder Rock, and that was dangerous.

  “Where’s this cabron now?”

  O’Connor flushed. “Wouldn’t know. He ducked acrost the road and vanished behind them cottonwoods.”

  Tondro dragged a knuckle across his jaw. The man couldn’t have been Redding. Or could he? Was it possible that Stiles could have hacksawed the padlock to release Redding? There had been time enough for that. Ample opportunity for Stiles to have concealed Redding in the wagon.

  “O’Connor,” Tondro said, “saddle a pair of fast horses and bring them around behind the Fandango, pronto prontito.”

  “Two hosses?”

  “I’m clearing out and taking Zedra back with me. Looks like one of the bunch got a cold gut and high-tailed it. I won’t know who until I get back to the Rock.”

  When O’Connor had left on his way back to the stable, Tondro crossed the street to the Fandango Saloon, turning down an alley cluttered with tin cans and broken bottles which skirted the dance-hall annex.

  “If Redding ain’t there when I get back I’ll get the truth out of Doc if I have to torture Zedra in front of him.” But it was impossible that old Doc Stiles could have released Redding from the assay room. Tondro had checked the padlock himself. He possessed the only key. But who else could have been hidden in that grub box? No one at Thunder Rock owned a calfhide vest. And O’Connor had identified the interloper as being a gringo.

  Tondro opened the rear door of the dance hall and stepped inside. A swamper was sweeping litter off the maple floor at the far end of the hall. The consumptive pianist they called the Professor was sprawled drunk or asleep on the bandstand.

  Tondro headed for the row of doors in the back which opened on dressing-rooms used by the percentage girls. He headed for one of these, found it unlocked, and stepped inside.

  Zedra Stiles was seated at a mirror, hiding the ravages of her sleepless night’s journey with mascara and rouge. At Tondro’s entrance she started violently, her eyes round with alarm as she saw the taut fixture of the half-breed’s mouth reflected in the blemished glass.

  “Who was the hombre in the grub box, Zedra?”

  His slurring whisper curdled the blood in her veins. Long schooled in masking her emotions toward this man who had held her and her father in bondage for so long, she gave no outward sign of the raw horror which Tondro’s words put in her.

  She turned slowly to face him as he strode toward her.

  “What grub box?”

  He halted alongside her, grabbing her wrist with a pressure that whitened her cheeks with the pain.

  “The grub box in our wagon.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking
about, Blaze. Let go my arm. You’re hurting me.”

  He released her, curbing a restless urge to smash his fist in her face. His own vanity made him draw back, refraining from ruining this girl’s beauty. Some day she would be his, and he wanted the border underworld to look up to the beauty of his wife.

  “Clark O’Connor saw a gringo crawl out of the grub box and high-tail it after we left the wagon at the stable yard.”

  Zedra shook her head slowly. In her heart she was more happy than terrified, now. At least O’Connor hadn’t captured Doug Redding. She had worried about that.

  “It wasn’t my father, if that’s what you’re hinting, Blaze.”

  He laughed harshly. “We’re heading back to Thunder Rock, anyhow. Now. Both of us.”

  Despair touched her then, showing in the black pools of her eyes. She had made up her mind to contact Doug Redding and tell him how to reach Tondro’s lair, thinking that by so doing she could prevent him from attempting such a suicidal mission.

  “’Stá bueno,” she said heavily. “I would rather be at the Canyon with Dad than working in this dime-a-dance hovel.”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Water-Hole Man-Trap

  After leaving Tondro’s wagon, Redding had gone directly to Sheriff Val Lennon’s quarters behind the jail-house. The two of them were now bellied down in the cottonwood bosque across the road from Clark O’Connor’s wagon yard.

  “Tondro was to pick up the wagon in an hour,” Redding whispered, hands gripping the .30-30 carbine the sheriff had provided him. “It shows the gall of the man, showing up in your town this way.”

  Suspense laid its cutting edge on the old sheriff’s spirit as he squinted along his rifle sights at the yellow spring wagon parked in front of O’Connor’s barn.

  “From your description of the man,” Lennon muttered, “I’d say that Tondro is a breed prospector we call Montalvo around town. Supposed to be some kind of a pardner of Zedra’s father. If Doc Stiles is Tondro’s prisoner, it fits.”

 

‹ Prev