Redding stiffened imperceptibly, nudging Lennon’s bony shoulder as he saw O’Connor leave the barn with two saddled horses. The Irish stableman was heading into town.
“Means nothing,” the sheriff grunted. “He delivers horses to customers who stop overnight at the Tavern.”
Fifteen interminable minutes later O’Connor returned. The two lawmen waiting in the cottonwoods saw him go into the barn. When O’Connor appeared again he would probably be bringing a harnessed team to hitch to Tondro’s wagon. The hour was about up.
They had chosen to wait here, spying on the wagon, rather than risk an open hunt along the main street business houses or any of the various honky-tonks and deadfalls on side streets where Tondro might be trading. That method would have invited an ambush shot, if Tondro caught sight of his erstwhile prisoner in the sheriff’s company, or might have tipped the rustler boss off to go into hiding or take flight.
As they watched O’Connor’s barn, they glimpsed two horsemen heading across the Basin flats toward the eastern foothills, too far away to be recognized. These were probably the customers who owned the saddle horses O’Connor had taken into town.
Minutes dragged into another quarter hour, a half hour. O’Connor finally reappeared, leading an apaloosa mare over to his blacksmith shed. There, the Irishman started cranking the bellows of his forge preparatory to shoeing the animal.
“Sheriff,” Redding said, consulting his watch, “Tondro’s half an hour overdue back to his wagon. I think our birds flew the coop. I think those horses O’Connor led off were for Tondro and Zedra.”
“The hell you say!”
“I think O’Connor must have spotted me leaving the wagon and lit a shuck to tip Tondro off. Tondro figured he couldn’t risk taking the wagon back for fear he’d be followed.”
After another futile quarter hour of waiting, Sheriff Lennon readied the end of his patience. “I’m goin’ over there and brace the Irishman,” he said. “Cover me in case O’Connor spooks.”
Redding, cursing himself for a fool, remained in the concealment of the cottonwoods as the sheriff got to his feet and crossed the road, toting his carbine. O’Connor was shaping a horseshoe at his anvil when the sheriff’s shadow fell across the shed opening. The blacksmith glanced up and gave the sheriff an easy smile of greeting.
“Who belongs to that yeller wagon yonder?” Lennon asked.
O’Connor laid down his hammer and tongs. “To John Montalvo, Sheriff. The breed prospector.”
“When’s he headin’ for the hills?”
O’Connor reached under his leather apron, the gesture causing Redding, across the road, to lift his rifle to the ready. But the Irishman merely carried a plug of tobacco to his mouth and worried off a quid.
“Why, he’s already left, Sheriff. Had me saddle him a couple hosses. Said him and the Stiles gal were ridin’ back to their minin’ claim in the hills.”
“He come into town on that wagon, didn’t he?”
“Yeah. Wanted me to re-tire a wheel and set some loose felloes. Said he’d call for the wagon in a couple weeks.”
The sheriff’s shoulders slumped. Without explanations he turned and shuffled off up the street toward the jail-house.
Redding, having listened in on Lennon’s conversation with the stable tender, rejoined Lennon in the sheriff’s office ten minutes later.
“Tondro outfoxed us?” Redding asked.
“Looks that way. I ast Madame Carlotta over at the Fandango where Zedra was. She said her and Montalvo headed for the hills a-hossback. Reckon that was them we seen, Redding.”
Redding sat down on Lennon’s cot and buried his face in his hands, anticlimax tugging at his keyed-up nerves. Tondro had been in his grasp, here in town this morning. Something had warned the outlaw to leave Trailfork in a hurry. The fact that he took Zedra back with him might be ominous or otherwise.
Finally Redding looked up, his red-shot eyes holding their bleak look of frustration and defeat. “I told you what this Thunder Rock Canyon looked like,” he said. “Does it fit any of the country you know?”
The sheriff walked over to peruse a big survey map of his county. Most of the Navajada mountain area was frankly labeled: Unsurveyed, Unexplored Territory.
“Well, the waterfall don’t mean anything. Every crick that drains the Navajada watershed has a few waterfalls. As for the abandoned mine, them mountains are speckled with old mine workings. Thing that buffaloes me is you sayin’ Tondro’s hideout can be reached by a hoss and wagon. That stumps me.”
Redding said, “We followed a creek for the last couple of miles in. We hit the stage road maybe five-six miles east of town. Lots of wild mint growing close to where the wagon left the creek. That give you any notion which creek it might have been, Sheriff?”
Lennon shook his head. He tapped a half-dozen spots on the map where squiggly lines indicated the approximate course of creeks which flowed out of the Navajadas to link with Whetstone River, the watercourse which drained the Basin.
“Could have been any of a dozen cricks. Like lookin’ for a grain of sand on a beach, to find which one.”
Redding stretched himself out on the sheriff’s office cot, his brain sluggish with fatigue. Suddenly he knew he had readied the limit of his physical endurance. Two nights without sleep, coupled with the head injury he had suffered at the hands of Jace Blackwine, had drained utterly dry his capacity to think anything out.
“Your string is frayed out,” the sheriff said gently. “After a few hours’ rest, we’ll tackle this thing again. I’d haul O’Connor in and make him talk if I thought—”
“No,” Redding said bleakly. “It’s very possible O’Connor is innocent. We couldn’t prove he knows that Montalvo and Tondro are one and the same.”
* * * *
Redding spent the rest of the day sleeping like a drugged man inside Lennon’s personal quarters at the rear of the jail. Late afternoon’s westering sunrays brought him awake; he sat up groggily to find Val Lennon busy cooking a meal at his rusty stove in the corner.
Something that had nagged his troubled dreams during this refreshing slumber came to him now. He shot a question at the grizzled sheriff. “Who’s the fat hombre who wears a black Mormon hat, the one I saw tacking up a notice of the Pedregosa Indian Agency’s beef bid at the Fandango the other day?”
Lennon thrust a chunk of ’squite wood into the stove and went on slicing onions into a fry pan.
“Sounds like Joe Curtwright. The Agent over at Pedregosa. He drops over to town this time every fall tackin’ up his beef-contract notices around the county.”
Redding walked over to the zinc-lined sink, pumped himself a basin of water, and started working up a lather with a cake of lye soap.
“Curtwright’s crooked, then. He was visiting Tondro’s camp yesterday. I saw him.”
The sheriff showed no sign of surprise. He pulled a pan of steaming potatoes out of the oven and carried them over to his deal table. “This range has thought all along that Curtwright had some kind of a shady deal worked out with Wagonwheel. Leastwise that British combine always nabs the beef-issue contract. As for Curtwright workin’ with Blaze Tondro, that don’t surprise me none whatsoever.”
During the meal which followed, Redding amplified the morning’s brief recital of his experiences at Tondro’s hideout, on the slim hope that his detailed description of the place might rouse some clue as to its whereabouts in Lennon’s mind.
But the sheriff had no theories to offer. Redding’s sense of distance covered and time consumed, both on his ingoing ride with Jace Blackwine and his outcoming trip in the grub box of Tondro’s wagon, was too meager to be of any value.
Concerning the mysterious Duke Harrington who ram-rodded the Wagonwheel Ranch for its British owners, the sheriff could supply little more information than that which Doc Stiles had given Redding.
“Duke Harrington is supposed to be a filthy-rich remittance man who spends most of his time in California,” Lennon said. “He’s never been to Trailfork to my knowledge. Fact is, I don’t know of anyone who has actually laid eyes on him.”
“Heard anything about his background? Apparently he knows me by sight—knows I’m an Association star-toter.”
“Well,” the sheriff drawled, “the gossip is that Harrington was chased out of England, Wales to be exact, for some crime against the Crown. His blue-blooded family keeps him across the ocean to save the family honor, or something. So far as runnin’ Wagonwheel’s affairs, I reckon the Duke is just a figgerhead.”
Redding ferried a slab of apple pie over to his plate to wind up his meal. “Our friend Darkin’s probably up at Tondro’s hideout by now,” he said. He grinned, visualizing the excitement at Thunder Rock this morning when the empty assay room and its smashed padlock had been discovered. “I’ll bet Jace Blackwine is a sorry critter about now. That’s one mustanger who’ll do no more hunting in this Territory. As long as he knows I’m on the prowl Blackwine will keep his distance.”
* * * *
At sundown, Doug Redding rode out of Trailfork astride a pinto gelding he had borrowed from the sheriff’s remuda. He carried a repeating Winchester in the boot under his saddle fender and a pair of matched, ivory-butted Peacemaker .45s strapped at his flanks, having selected the weapons from the arsenal of guns Lennon had confiscated from sundry evil-doers during his many terms in office.
He was heading for Crowfoot; he wanted a council of war with Joyce Melrose, during this roundup period when Teague Darkin would be on the Axblades side of the Basin gathering the fall beef herd.
He had covered half the distance to Joyce’s ranch headquarters when a dollar-round moon wheeled over the jagged peaks of the Navajadas and flooded the Basin flats with its argentine glow.
Riding at a steady lope, steering for a landmark butte he knew to be above Crowfoot Ranch, Redding occupied his thoughts with the sticky problem of trying to retrace mentally the route of Tondro’s wagon back into the hills, drawing on the scanty clues that he had gained from his blind ride out of Thunder Rock Canyon in the grub box.
It was paradoxical that he had actually visited Tondro’s den but was still ignorant of even its approximate whereabouts.
Off to the south of this short cut he was taking across the bunch-grassed prairie, he saw a motte of dwarf willow and salt cedars marking the water hole where he had made his deal with the horse trader, the morning of his arrival in the Basin.
He swung the pinto that direction, with the intention of letting the horse have a needed drink. His mind, refreshed and keen after this day’s sleep, was dwelling with a warm anticipation on his imminent visit with Joyce Melrose.
The girl had never been far from the edge of his thoughts, since the whispered intimacy of their conversation concerning Teague Darkin’s loyalties, that morning on Trailfork’s street.
He found himself thinking now, Strikes me she’s fallen out of love with that walloper, and that thought set off a train of speculation as to why he so urgently wanted to believe that was true. There was no room for romance in the life of a man who wore an SPA star. A woman’s love had been responsible for Matt’s finish.
With that distraction taking the edge off his usual alertness, Redding jogged up to the prairie water hole and dismounted, letting the pinto plunge its muzzle into the muddy pool.
He was easing the cinch when a pony’s whicker broke the utter stillness of the night from a nearby willow growth. In that same instant, two horsemen spurred into view, the moon’s rays flashing on naked gun metal as they separated and bracketed him between double gun drops.
“Reach, bucko!” came the harsh order from the big rider who covered him from the right. “No booger moves, Redding.”
Being called thus by name told Doug that he had ridden into a trap here; that his approach had been spotted as he crossed the Basin flats, by these riders who had been at the water hole ahead of him.
Redding stepped away from his horse, hands upraised, knowing that to buck this crossfire setup would be suicidal. Then his shuttling glance saw the moon’s full radiance strike the faces of these converging riders, and shock welded its paralyzing chains on his reflexes.
The man on his right, who had barked the showdown order, was Jace Blackwine.
His companion was Joe Curtwright, the Mormon-hatted Indian Agent from the Pedregosa Reservation whom he had glimpsed last night at Blaze Tondro’s hideout.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Blood on the Sage
“Stand hitched, Redding.”
Blackwine held his grulla broadside to the scene as he kept his gun trained on the range detective.
“Joe”—the mustanger lifted his voice—“hustle your fat carcass over behind this bucko. Dehorn those holsters and use his shell belt to dally his arms behind him.”
Curtwright was wheezing stertorously as he swung his porky bulk out of stirrups, ground-tied his buckskin pony, and sidled in between the pinto, drinking at the pool, and Redding’s back. The Indian Agent was not cut out for physical violence; his forte was behind-the-scenes political string pulling, and he showed his distaste for what Blackwine had ordered him to do.
“Why play it so risky?” Curtwright demanded sourly, gingerly stripping the ivory-handled guns from Redding’s holsters and tossing them to one side as if he were drawing a rattler’s fangs with his bare fingers. “Once you seen it was Redding, you shoulda dropped him from the brush.”
Jace Blackwine’s taut hand on the reins kept his grulla confined to a back-and-forward dancing. Contempt was an acid in his voice as he rebuked the Indian Agent. “We’ll not cash in his chips till we know how much he’s uncovered about this setup of Tondro’s. We don’t even know but what he’s got deputies from the Association helping him.” Curtwright drew a .38 pistol from an armpit rig, cocking the gun as he reached a timid arm around Redding’s body and started fumbling at the buckle of the lawman’s outer gun belt. So far, Redding had not uttered a word.
“You’re a slippery, customer,” Jace Blackwine commented with grudging admiration for his former employee. “When Tondro’s boys found that busted padlock on your jail and saw you’d flew the coop, that place was buzzin’ like a smashed beehive.”
Redding made no reply. Curtwright had unbuckled one of his cartridge belts and had thrown it to one side. Now he was working on the others, which he would use to pinion Redding’s arms.
“Don’t mind admitting I was headin’ back to my crew’s camp at the north end of the Navajadas,” Blackwine went on conversationally, “to pick up my possibles and then light out for Mexico. Figgered the Territory wouldn’t be too healthy with you knowin’ I wore Tondro’s collar.”
Redding gave no sign that he had heard. Curtwright was reaming the muzzle of his Bisley against Redding’s spine as his fishbelly-white hand struggled with the buckle tongue of his prisoner’s remaining shell belt. In his shaky condition, Redding had a real fear that the Indian Agent might inadvertently put too much pressure on the .38 trigger.
“Teague Darkin expects to find you at Tondro’s,” Blackwine went on, “and by God he’s going to. Joe, hurry that up. Redding won’t bite yuh.”
The Indian Agent’s breath was warm against Redding’s neck as he shot back, “Suppose you give me a hand, damn you, instead of settin’ on your rump and givin’ me orders.”
Redding took his gamble then. He brought his right foot up behind him in a lightning movement which drove his spur rowel into the Indian Agent’s crotch. In the same instant Redding flung himself to the ground with a side-wise rolling movement which carried him out from under the blazing muzzle of Curtwright’s .38.
The slug bored off into the night sky, fired by pure reflex as Curtwright doubled up with the agony of his spur-gashed groin. Close on the heels of the Bisley’s report
, Jace Blackwine’s big Colt spat its nozzling stab of blue-orange fire.
But the mustanger had not followed his target’s earthward dive; his wild bullet fanned Curtwright’s grease-rimed cheek and struck Redding’s pinto in the shoulder, dropping the horse into the shallow edge of the water hole.
The dying animal’s threshing hoofs caught Curtwright’s buckling knees from behind, and the beefy Indian Agent fell forward over Redding, shielding him from a follow-up shot from Jace Blackwine’s swinging gun.
The crash of guns, crowded into the space between two ticks of a clock, spooked Blackwine’s grulla saddler, and the mustanger lost his precious moment’s advantage as he fought to retain his seat in the saddle.
Curtwright writhed free of Redding’s legs, retching as paroxysms of agony laced through him. Redding’s out-flailing hand brushed one of his grounded six-guns, and he snatched it up, swung his half-lifted arm, and drove a snap shot at Blackwine.
The big Colt recoiled violently against the crotch of Redding’s thumb, a snake tongue of fire slicing outward. His bullet drilled Blackwine’s barrel belly at a glancing angle, just as the mustanger was about to curb his grulla’s bucking.
Blackwine’s gun clattered to the dirt. Hard hit, the red-bearded giant made a gagging shriek and grabbed leather. Blood spurted through the moonlit dust which swirled around him. Then Blackwine lost his grip on his reins and the grulla bolted for the open prairie, out of control.
Behind Redding, the fat Indian Agent had regained his feet, but his Bisley was lost somewhere in the mud beside the jerking hoofs of the pinto, and he dared not retrieve it.
Knowing Curtwright was no immediate threat, Redding scooped his second gun from the dirt and came to his feet, laying an alternating pattern of slugs on Blackwine’s bolting grulla.
He saw the big stallion swing sharply to the north, stung by a bullet. For an instant Redding thought Blackwine was guiding the horse in getaway; then he realized the horse had tripped on a dangling rein.
Redding was vaguely aware of the gargling screams of his pinto, head churning the edge of the water hole in its last agony. He saw Curtwright limping toward his own horse, reaching for the reins; but the buckskin shied off, and Redding kept his attention on Blackwine.
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