After a long time, Chartres asked: “When did you hear my name again?”
Wearily, Zion looked up. “When my pard come. He told us somebody was helpin’ the sheriff clean up Jores. We asked who it was. He said Luke Chartres. And Mother, she … I found her on the couch, cryin’ and sayin’ to nobody … ‘My God, why hast thou forsaken me?’”
* * * * *
In the dead of that fateful night under a high-riding moon and moving stars, three riders crossed the wild Montezuma to Sentry Crags to watch for the return of the Jores.
“When they go in,” Zion said, all Jore again, “I’ll turn you loose.” No need to state the alternative.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
THE RIDER’S NAME WAS DEATH
Far up in the headwaters of Placer Creek, René Rand paced his lonely camp and kept the trail hot to the ledge above it that he might strain his eyes on the gap between two buttes to the east, where Race would first show up, when he came back. If he came back, René would think, all but frantic. Race had been gone five days now, each one an eternity, each one making it harder for them to find Zion. For the law was hunting Zion, too. And every day the hunt would broaden.
Why didn’t Race come? Had something happened to him? Not likely; Race looked out for number one. Had Race walked out on him? No chance; Race was twice as crazy about that horse since Revel had given it to him, crazy to get possession. Race depended on his being able to persuade Zion to turn Black Wing over to him. Then what was keeping Race?
He said he’d be back the next night when he left. He’d just gone to Big Sandy to hear the latest, so they’d have some idea where to begin the search. He, René, couldn’t go. He was a fugitive—something new, not to be able to go where he wanted to; to know folks considered him too dangerous to run loose; that he’d be arrested on sight and locked up, so he couldn’t keep his promise to Eden. He’d do anything to do that—even the rabbit act. He’d steer clear of towns and let Race find out things, as Revel must have foreseen he’d have to, when she’d bribed Race to come with him. But if it was going to take Race this long …?
For the seventh time that morning, and the morning was young, he climbed the ridge, scouring the glaring sage flats, with no better results. Then he dropped down on the ground to watch, although he told himself that this was the last way to bring Race, for a watched pot never boils. As if to hasten his coming, he turned his gaze to the haze-swathed Montezumas, his thoughts—where most of his thoughts had been these frantic ages of watching—with Eden in the Picture Rocks. He thought of her watching for him, as he watched for Race, in ten times the suspense. He envisaged her up in the crags, her blue eyes haunting the Picture Rocks’ trail in longing and hope and fear that seemed to reach him, to reproach him for doing nothing, to urge him to do something.
Frantically pacing the wind-swept knoll, he thought of her and Revel up there alone. It worried him. He shouldn’t have left them. But he couldn’t stand to see them worrying so about Zion. Now, he couldn’t see anything else for them. Yance and Abel would go to prison, for life, as Joel had. And they’d always be alone in that wild basin. If he did take Zion home, they’d be worse than alone. For the state wouldn’t give up trying to bring Zion to justice. In time, it would win. For there wouldn’t be force enough now to guard the pass indefinitely. And to see Zion taken away to face the consequences of acts he wasn’t accountable for would kill his mother and sister. Better, for them, if Zion never went back to the basin, better if Dolan …
A horrible fear shot suddenly through René’s heart. Was that why Race hadn’t come back—because there was no rush, because Dolan had got Zion?
Then his eyes, swinging back to the gap, saw that for which he had watched so long. At least, he saw a mounted man. But with the caution he must now observe, he watched until positive the rider was Race. Then, tearing down to camp, he leaped on the bay—kept up, saddled, ready to take the trail the instant Race returned—and galloped to meet him.
Riding close eagerly, he sought Race’s eyes for the news he was frantic for but feared to ask. But Race’s eyes, shifty always, were on the jump now. René couldn’t catch them. Nor could he get in a question.
“Kid,” Race was babbling, as he yanked up, “I got something! I swear to heaven, I don’t know what. It scares me … what I got. You’ve heard of Luke Chartres’ runners, Goblin and Mate?”
“Sure,” René affirmed wonderingly. “You can’t be around racetracks, and not.”
The man sputtered: “He beat ’em. Not just a plain win. He walked plumb away from ’em!” Talking of races, when …
“Race, what are you talking about?”
“That horse of mine.” Race blew up, his swarthy face ignited by the flame that always spelled Black Wing. “Kid, you’ve seen coyotes play with ranch dogs? You’ve seen how they lope off a safe ways, and set down and set down and laugh at ’em, till the dogs get close, then they do it all over again? Plumb tantalizin’ ’em! Well, that’s what Black Wing …”
“But Zion,” René cut in anxiously. “What did you hear about him?”
“Naturally,” Race frowned, “Zion was on him. Zion robbed the Big Sandy bank Monday, and a posse took after him. The sheriff and Chartres on Mate and … I tell you, kid, that horse …”
“Race,” the young fellow begged him, “get your mind off Black Wing! I know he’s the whole show to you. But not to me. Me … I’ve gone ’most crazy for thinkin’. Tell me what happened.”
Angrily, Race threw up his hands. “Holy smoke, ain’t I tellin’ you as fast as I can? Zion robbed the bank. A posse took after him. He decoyed Pat Dolan and Luke Chartres away from the rest, got the drop on ’em, and swore he’d kill ’em, unless the posse went back and let the Jores out of jail and sent ’em back to the basin!”
Let Yance and Abel out? “Race, did they do it?”
“So quick it made their heads ache. Think they’d risk the sheriff’s life? Risk Luke Chartres’ precious hide? Zion Jore”—Race’s eyes had a nervous glitter—“ain’t to be monkeyed with. They done what he asked. Now every loose man in the county’s joined the big hunt for him.”
“You mean”—René was suddenly faint—“Zion killed Dolan and Chartres?”
“No! He turned ’em loose, when he saw his uncles ride into the basin. Now he’s goin’ his old gait again. He told Dolan he was goin’ to get his father out of the pen and kill Shang Haman before he went back to the Picture Rocks. But,” added Race with a grim laugh, “there ain’t much danger of his doin’ that last. For Shang was in the basin when Yance and Abel got home.”
Shang in the basin. But René didn’t dare to think about that. Whatever had happened was over. Yance and Abel would have settled with Shang. But nobody on this earth but himself could possibly stop Zion Jore from this mad endeavor to free his father.
“He’ll do it, too!” he told Race wildly, spurring back to break up camp and get to doing something, trying to get some idea what to do out of this man. “He’ll do it or die tryin’. That’s what’ll happen. Unless we stop him. We’ve got to stop him, Race. Where is he? Where was he seen last? You must know something. You’ve been gone …”
“See here, kid!” Irritably, Race swung on him. “I can find out as much as the next man. But I can’t perform miracles. If anybody knows where Zion Jore is, he’s keepin’ it to himself. There’s a big reward on him, savvy? And it piles up every day. That’s what’s been keepin’ me … tryin’ to pick up some clue. But all I got was the story of a cowpuncher who told Dad Peppin he’d sighted a man on a cream horse in the Montezumas, headin’ south. That was yesterday. Tomorrow you may hear he’s a hundred miles off, headin’ north!”
“No, you won’t,” René said excitedly, leaping down to get ready. “He said he was goin’ to free his father, didn’t he? Well, that’s where he’s headin’ … south, to the state prison. Yesterday, you said? Race, we’ve got to head him off
.”
But Race was strangely unresponsive. Making no move to help René, who was hurriedly throwing their few camp belongings into the saddlebags, he sat apart, lost in guilty thought, until René was buckling the flaps.
“Kid,” he said then, and he looked like a sheep-killing hound, “I ain’t goin’. I hired you to get that horse.”
It was out, at last. His eyes shifted to René to see how he was taking it. What he saw was so surprising that it might have been the first time he had seen him since that far-gone day on the tracks. He saw not the sick, hopeless lad he had driven such a hard bargain with, bullied so mercilessly that day he got off the train in Big Sandy, but a cool-eyed, firm-jawed young Westerner, hard as nails, fired by a desperate purpose, and adhering to a sense of obligation far greater than he owed Race Coulter.
“No, Race.” René’s smile was cold. “You don’t worm out of this. I agreed to get Black Wing, and I’ll do it. But you’ve got to be there to take him. You’ve got to help. I can’t go this alone. You know I can’t show up places.”
Race reverted to bluster. “You’ll have to. I can’t risk gettin’ caught with you … mixed up with the Jores, like you are. A outlaw! I’d be aidin’ and abettin’.”
“Yeah?” René drawled. “I’m outlawed because I aided and abetted you. But suit yourself, Race. If we don’t find Zion, Dolan will. And where will Black Wing be then?”
In the Val Verde stables of Luke Chartres—the mere thought gave Race fever and chills. Torn by this fear and the fear that had tortured him ever since he left the basin, he was reduced to begging. “But, think of the fix this puts me in. Zion Jore’s got it in for me. Years ago, just a kid, he almost killed me over that horse. What’ll he do to me … now, man-grown, with who knows how many notches on his gun … when I ask him to turn over Black Wing? No, kid, I ain’t goin’!”
Sure that a stiff bluff would bring him to time, René sat down on his saddlebags. “That’s right. Well, we’d better forget it. I’ll go back to the basin. And we’ll let Chartres take the risk.”
Race stared at him, beaten. Then, sullen of face, he got up, growling: “Come on, then! Let’s get it over with quick!”
But the hunt for Zion Jore wasn’t to be quickly gotten over with. Mapping the probable route he would take, they rode south. Extending their horses recklessly, considering the long search that might be ahead, they hoped that Zion’s pursuers would drive him into hiding for a while, so they might head him off. Riding furtively, they kept to the foothills and unpeopled places, for René’s description had been broadcast the length of the state, and they ran a grave risk of his being recognized as an ally of the Jores. But three hard, hot days, and a hundred and fifty wearisome miles, gave them no clue to Zion.
Then one evening, while René waited in camp, in the bare desert hills near Malo Tanks, Race went into the little settlement for supplies and brought back the discouraging news. “Just like I told you,” he broke it gently, “next time we’d hear of that kid, he’d be a hundred miles off, headin’ north. While us and everyone else has been combin’ this southern country, he’s been goin’ the other way. Just yesterday, he held up the Yava stage north of Big Sandy.”
Bitterly, René blamed himself. He might have known Zion would do the unexpected. He was too cunning to tell them where to set a trap and then walk right into it.
“And now what?” asked Race.
“Get north as quick as we can,” said René.
Race didn’t demur. In the days passed, and in the days and days of riding back to the country where Zion had been last seen, Race conceived a vast respect for René Rand. He recognized that the young fellow’s range training made him the natural leader in a mission of this kind. Out here, where he was like a fish out of water, he deferred to René in all things.
Though suspicious by nature, he came to trust René as he never had another man. Nor could he ever get it out of his mind that Black Wing was not the primary object of this hunt, that René was hunting Zion only because Zion had the stallion.
“Kid,” one day, jogging along, Race said out of the thin air, “you’re sure a square-shooter.”
“How, Race?” René was astonished at this praise.
“The way you’re stickin’ to your promise to get me that horse. Most men, in the fix you was in, would agree to. But when they got well, they’d forgit all about it.”
René smiled wearily. “That’s why I can’t forget it. The better I am, the more I remember the shape I was in.”
“And that,” declared Race, with a glance at René’s young face, so tired and worried beneath his sombrero, “is why you’re a square-shooter. Any other man would consider the debt paid, when she gave me the horse. But you’re stickin’ to the spirit of the deal as well as the letter. Standin’ by till I git delivery.”
René put him straight. “I can’t take credit for that. It jist happened we’ll both get what we’re after at the end of this trail. I’m out for Zion.”
Yes—that was his goal, the one aim and purpose of his existence, to take Zion back to Eden. He didn’t look beyond it. Strangely, there seemed to be nothing beyond it. There seemed to be no today, no tomorrow, just this riding, hiding, fighting down his horror lest Zion elude them, reach the prison, and do whatever mad thing he had in mind—just this, and allaying Race’s terror of what might happen when they found him, and watching a changing landscape, by the changing shine of sun and stars, for a yellow horse.
But there was a yesterday. René lived it a thousand times—a yesterday that seemed to contain all the happiness he had ever known. Home-hungry, he had found home. Lonely, he had found kin. In that yesterday, he had found love in blue eyes, by the blue lake, in the heaven of the Picture Rocks.
Ten days on the trail, and they were covering the wild, broken mesas of the Yava without another hint as to Zion’s whereabouts. Frequently, when they were near some town, René waited while Race went in for information. But Race’s rare talents in his line availed him nothing. Oh, he heard about Zion, and little else, wild, fantastic rumors that did not help.
Then, utterly without warning, bright and early one late-August morning, they came on Zion’s trail, so hot it smoked.
It was up in the gaunt, sandy, forsaken Black Spout region, the rendezvous of two-bit rustlers, horse thieves, and the like, where a man who had committed a petty offense, and made himself scarce, was said to have “gone up the Spout.”
Up it, René and Race went in their quest. Suddenly, rounding a sharp bend, they came upon a camp so unexpectedly that René had no chance to slip out of sight and let Race sound out things. They had been seen. There was nothing to do but face it out, and trust to luck he wouldn’t be recognized.
So they rode boldly up to the group of men gathered before the rude shelter, built in a mesquite thicket, a score of the
hardest-looking men they had seen in all their journeying, and who were, they noticed with misgivings, strangely disturbed about something. The sudden arrival of strange riders here might well cause a commotion. But René was sure they hadn’t caused it. Their attitude suggested an ordeal passed, as men stand, awed, stunned, amid the wreckage of a cyclone. So these men stood, too stunned to extend even the common courtesies of the range.
Uninvited, René got down. Then he saw what they were grouped about; saw the wreckage, covered by an old bit of canvas, that failed to hide its still, dark outlines from the eyes. René’s eyes, as creeping horror filled him, turned, with horrible intuition, to search the remuda of horses below the camp, fully expecting to see among them a horse whose skin of gold was marked only with a jet-black wing. When he failed to see it, relief giddied him.
“Had an accident?” he asked the men, with a nod at the tarpaulin.
There was a long wait. Each fellow looked at his neighbor. Nobody wanted to speak first.
Finally, one whiskery, weasel-faced individual took the re
sponsibility on himself, laconically venturing: “You might call it that.” Seeming to feel this didn’t suffice, he added: “He tried to ride a hoss.”
“And it throwed him?” queried René, strangely tense.
“Throwed a dead man when it did,” said weasel-face.
“He told us”—shrilly this burst from a hard-faced young man—“he told us the rider’s name was Death.”
There was a strangled cry from Race. His face was pasty with fear.
René cried wildly: “Zion Jore told you! He’s been here! When? Where’s he gone?”
The first speaker gave him a long, hard look: “Nobody said it was Zion Jore. But you guessed right. Young Jore stopped here last night. And Fresno … that’s him”—hoisting his boot toward the tarpaulin—“got infatuated with that yellow horse and ’lowed to elope with him. He figured all he had to do was git on and vamoose while the kid was asleep. But there’s them as says Zion Jore don’t sleep, and I believe it! Fresno no sooner hit that stallion’s back than the kid was settin’ up in his blankets. He whistled. The horse whirled. And Zion yells … ‘The name of the man that sits on him is Death.’ And it was.”
“You mean,” faltered René, “Black Wing killed him?”
“No, no,” was the slow response. “I don’t mean that. But he’s just as dead as if he had. He was fool enough to go for his gun, and … he was dead, when he hit the ground.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
CAUGHT
No more, now, to follow the trail of Zion Jore. No more doubt that, at last, he was definitely on his way to free his father. His reported depredations marked his course straight south, toward the little desert town where the state prison was. Residents, for a hundred miles about it, were plunged in panic. Bars were inflicted on doors to which they were strangers. Loaded guns were laid on convenient shelves or window ledges. But what use were bars and guns in this case? The wildest rumors were rife. The least credulous gave them some credence. And why not? Half the sheriffs of Arizona, hundreds of citizens, were doing their frantic best to stop Zion Jore. Yet through them he passed, invisible, save to the unfortunate few to whom he chose to reveal himself.
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