by Lauran Paine
“You better do it and get it done with,” said the cowman. “Ander’ll be along directly.”
There was irony in Uriah’s stare. He shook his head. “We saw Ander. He was riding north, not south.” Without looking away Uriah spoke aside. “Zeke, search the house. Take the guns and ammunition and food. Hurry.”
Zeke jerked his head at Lee. The younger son accompanied him. They entered the house from the rear. Inside, the atmosphere was unreal. There was an ancient dog—stone deaf—lying on a mothy bear-skin rug. His eyes were tightly closed and he made no stir as Zeke stepped over him to enter the parlor.
A drab thin woman looked up at their entrance. Where they stood, backgrounded by the doorway, filling it, beard-stubbled, dirty, and heavy with weapons, she had expected to see her husband.
“Not a sound,” Zeke said quickly when her mouth opened. He started ahead toward a closed door beyond. “The food and shells, Lee. I’ll get Dade.”
Lee exchanged a long stare with the drab woman. There was a bluish tint under her eyes, a waxiness to her face. “It’ll be all right,” he said. “Now show me where the food is.”
“Yes, I’ll show you.”
He followed her through another doorway into a shadowy pantry and, beyond, to the kitchen. There, she turned fully to face him.
“Are you a Gorman?”
“Yes’m. Is there a sack?”
She got him one and watched him fill it from the shelves. Her eyes never left him. Somewhere deep in the house came men’s voices, then the clump of boots.
“What are you going to do?”
“Take Charley and Dade.”
“No!”
He turned, saw her look of fright dissolve to be replaced by an expression of horror and anguish.
“No! Please God … have mercy, boy. Don’t take them. Please don’t take Dade.”
“We won’t hurt them, ma’am,” he said sadly. A pain struck behind his eyes; they filled with a wetness.
The woman sobbed in terrible silence. She staggered. “Burn the house … shoot the critters. Don’t take my baby!”
A voice beyond the house called sharply: “Lee! Come on!”
He started for the door. The woman’s swimming eyes followed him dumbly. She made no sound. He turned back. “They’ll be back, Missus Simpson.”
Outside, the sunlight stung. Zeke was there to take the sack and frown at him. They were alone in the yard.
“What took so long … the others’ve gone back to the horses.”
Lee followed Zeke and despite the malevolent sunlight there was coldness in him.
The others were moving off slowly. Charley and Dade, tied to their stirrups with a lariat apiece around their throats, were being led along like sheep-killing dogs.
Their work was done. All but Lee and Zeke had fresh C Bar S horses. The men were silent but pleased-looking as Uriah led them craftily back toward the rendezvous, being careful to stay to the high country where visibility was best.
* * * * *
They had been in camp two hours before Joseph Fawcett came picking his way through the mountains with Kant U’Ren and the other men with him: Percy Bachelor and Harold Baker. Fawcett had been lucky. Each man was burdened with two sacks of provisions. For once Fawcett’s oxlike countenance was alight with a sense of accomplishment. While the plunder was being examined, he told Uriah: “We hit their line camps and roundup shacks. It was like going to the store in Bethel.”
Uriah was not elated. Pedro Amaya was long overdue. He sent Zeke and Lee to a promontory to watch for dust so long as daylight should last. He set the others to preparing a meal, then he left them all, went to a jagged slope of rock, and sat there, hunched over, and lost in thought.
On the wind-scourged promontory Zeke sank down against the rattling gravel and heaved a deep sigh. Lee went down beside him. Below them, to the curve of the world, lay a silent unmoving waste of total emptiness.
“He shouldn’t have sent them out in broad daylight to steal horses,” Lee said quietly, with his eyes roaming the distances.
“The difference is,” replied his brother in the same tired way, “you steal ’em at night and nobody sees you … but you don’t get ’em back into the hills, either.” He yawned mightily and rubbed his eyes. “Don’t worry … Pete’s no novice. He’s stolen plenty horses in his time. I’ll bet on it. Besides, he’s got miles of country to maneuver in. I’m not worrying.”
“Zeke, what if the law won’t trade with Paw?”
“Why then I expect we’ll have to run for it.”
“No. I meant what’ll happen to the Simpsons?”
Zeke’s jaw rippled with muscle. He made no immediate answer. “That’s up to him,” he said finally, biting it off.
Lee fell into a troubled silence. The last shaft of daylight was glimmering in the west before either of them spoke again. Then it was Zeke, and his tone was that same blending of rough gentleness he often used toward his brother.
“You thinking about the girl?”
“Yes.”
“Don’t worry. She’s better off than you are.”
“I wish I could see her.”
Zeke drew up on one arm, staring far out. “You can’t, so forget it. Look, look north there. It’s men driving horses.”
They scrambled up, unaware until that moment of the fading hope that had been in them both. Clear upon the still Wyoming evening they heard hoof beats. Zeke stood smiling with his craggy jaw slackened in the first real pleasure he’d known in days. Beside him stood Lee, whose smile was less and whose head was strangely canted. His eyes pinched down nearly closed and bead-like in their far staring.
“It’s Pete,” said Zeke. “I recognize that hat of his.”
“Zeke!” Lee’s fingers closed down over his brother’s arm. “Farther back there … way out toward Bethel … do you see them?”
The oldest brother went as rigid as a startled hawk. He saw nothing but he heard the alarm in Lee’s voice.
“Where? What is it? What d’you see, boy?”
“Big bunch of riders a mile or such behind Pete.”
Then Zeke saw them and spun away. “Hurry, the others got to be warned.”
They fled down through brush and boulders and burst upon the camp.
“Where’s Paw?”
“Here,” Uriah said, scenting peril and striding forward into the firelight.
The others sprang up and crowded close. The Simpsons alone did not move but they strained to hear what Zeke was saying.
“Pete’s coming from Bethel with horses, Paw, but there’s a posse behind him.”
Uriah cried an oath. “He wouldn’t lead ’em here!”
“We can’t take that chance. It looks like Ander’s posse,” Lee said. “There are a lot of ’em.”
“All right,” Uriah spoke up quickly. “All right, boys … boots and saddles. Make it fast. We’ll save Amaya and turn back his bluebelly pursuers. Don’t stand there … move!”
As the others dashed for their saddles in the gathering dusk, Lee said: “What about the Simpsons?”
Uriah shot a black stare at his prisoners. “Get ’em on horses, boy. Bring ’em along and, if they offer trouble or make an outcry, shoot ’em.” He put up a hand, touched his youngest with it briefly, then pushed. “Go on.”
In moments they were all astride and following Uriah along faintly seen game trails, twisting and turning and scrambling around side hills toward the prairie beyond. There was no room for passing until the hills sloped outward and broadened where they met flat country. Then Zeke got up where his father was, loped ahead, and drew up, listening. The sound of running horses was close. He twisted in the saddle saying nothing but looking a quick question.
Uriah flagged forward with his arm. “Spread out! Make a line. When the horses come up, stop them. There won’t be m
uch time. Get a fresh animal … but don’t let go your old one until you got the new one saddled.” He moved down closer to Zeke, pushed past, and led the way out of the hills.
They scarcely had the cordon established before the first foam-flecked animals raced up. Someone let off a high cry. They waved their hats and the horses slid to a quivering halt, spewing up dust and stones.
“Now!” Uriah bellowed.
Over the tumult of squealing, snorting horses plunging left and right against their neighbors, the sheepmen moved in. Lee caught a bulging-eyed big gelding the color of wet slate—grulla-colored. Zeke and Uriah were side-by-side; they ran each other’s new mounts together and in the confusion snared them easily. Others were working with equal frenzy. Pete Amaya’s shrill scream rose high in the night and Kant U’Ren’s cry responded.
Some of the horses escaped and some of the men had to secure aid before catching new mounts, but in the end they came all together in the dust and darkness and Lee retrieved his bound prisoners where he had tied their horses.
“Who is that following you?” Uriah thundered at Amaya.
“Following …?” Pete said swiftly, his eyes widening. “No one is following me … I don’t think.”
Uriah’s impatience was showing. “Ride east and spread out.” His arm made a slicing movement. “Let them ride between you and the hills … then shoot.” He whirled away to set the example. The others loped after him.
Lee’s grulla was powerful and excited. He searched the faces moving up and found one. With a sharp call he passed two lead ropes to the man. “Watch ’em,” he commanded, and let the grulla have his head. In moments he was up with Uriah.
“Paw? Don’t shoot them here!”
Uriah’s voice rolled over the swish of riders. “Boy, it’s time you learned to kill good … not to live long.” He veered away and Lee heard his thundering orders. His voice in the night was drumlike and rumbling; it was without excitement but it held urgency.
Into the quivering sounds came shouts of men and running horses. Lee had only a glimpse of strangers between him and the starkly etched hills, then lancing tongues of flame followed the bursts of gunfire.
Horses screamed and men shouted. There was an interval when no shots came back when the sheepmen poured lead in upon the posse men, downing horses and riders. Then Lee was stunned by the roar of shotguns, nearly blinded by enormous mushrooms of yellow-white gobbets of light. Beside him a man gasped and choked on a gush of blood. He saw him fall and was off his horse in an instant, bending forward. It was the Basque, Gaspar Pompa. He knelt lower and looked into the ashen face, into the liquid dark eyes, soft usually but filled now with an appalling knowledge, reflecting the awful burning behind Pompa’s belt and higher, where buckshot had torn the flesh and shredded the Basque’s filling lungs.
There was a roar in Lee’s head. He heard no shooting, no screaming, or the slashing of bullets. He saw only the fresh wave of blood running from Pompa’s mouth. He’s dying, he thought. Gaspar’s dying. Oh, Christ, he’s dying …
The Basque’s eyes were hotly clear and unmoving. He was holding to consciousness with terrible determination while his lifeblood spilled out, staining the tender grass and the trousers of the big man kneeling beside him. Lee put a hand to Gaspar’s face. There was no feeling, no warmth in the tan flesh or in the white flesh. There was only that eternity during which their eyes met and held and shared in that enduring moment the knowledge of hastening death. Then Gaspar Pompa died. Just a puddling of the dark flow of life outward. A gentling of the hot, terrible stare. A heavy softening of the broken body against the earth and the Basque was dead.
It was Uriah’s searing shout that roused Lee, returned him to awareness and lifted him to his feet.
“Ride! Leave off and follow me!”
He was stooping to catch the loose body in his arms when something struck him, hard, nearly downing him. He flailed for balance and wheeled. It was Zeke, mounted and glaring downward from a contorted face.
“Never mind … get astride, boy. Hurry!”
“He’s dead, Zeke.”
“Hubs of hell! You can’t help him …” A furious arm, powerful and corded like steel, caught at his shoulder, wrenched him full around, and pushed him fiercely toward his horse.
“Get up, damn you, get up!”
He mounted the plunging grulla and was borne away with wind whipping against his face. Ahead, dim in the night was the flapping silhouette of his brother and the others, all hastening after Uriah, who was well ahead and who did not turn for a backward look.
They rode hard and, because there was yet no moon, made good their escape. But in fact pursuit would not have come anyway. The Union City posse had lost four dead and seven injured. But the sheepmen did not know this, and even Uriah, who would have been bitterly pleased, forged ahead with green eyes wildly burning and dark with pure fury. In his raging heart he blamed Pete Amaya for leading the posse men to their hideout. It would no longer be possible to stay in the hills. After tonight the mountains would be swarming with the swelling ranks of their enemies.
He led them far east of Union City and in this his craftiness was evident. The cowmen would be looking for them in the hills, at their lambing grounds perhaps or maybe even at their old camps. But they would be far across the cowmen’s own brush- and boulder-strewn domain, behind the cowmen’s town, past most of their ranches even.
Uriah knew of a place where Cottonwood Creek turned marshy and ran sluggishly, where the rise of land stemmed its twisting course and diverted the flow through a tree-girted swampland. He led them there and waited in the humid darkness, prey to thousands of mosquitoes, for the last man to ride up and swing down.
“Joseph!” he called as Fawcett loomed close. “Who did we lose?”
“Dunno,” came the hoarse reply.
It was Lee who said: “Gaspar Pompa. They killed him with buckshot.”
“Anyone else hit or hurt?” Uriah queried with no sound of compassion or sense of loss in his urgent voice.
“No one else,” a voice replied from the tangle of thicket and rip-gut grass underfoot. It was Zeke. He was examining his horse minutely for signs of injury. He found none.
“Amaya!”
“Yes, jefe?”
“Didn’t you know they were following you!”
“No. I did not know. It was growing dark. The horses made a lot of noise. We watched after we left Bethel. We saw no one, jefe. I don’t know where they came from. It was good you were close by because our horses were giving out …”
“It wasn’t his fault,” a wide-shouldered short man said suddenly.
“Who’s that?” Uriah demanded.
“Me. Percy Bachelor, and I’m pulling out, Gorman. We could’ve all got killed tonight. We already lost our sheep, our wagons … the only thing left to lose is our goddamned lives and I’m telling you I don’t aim to lose mine … not just because you got a hankering to win at least one fight in your life.”
“Percy …” a threatening voice said in the darkness.
But Uriah interrupted. “Let him go. Let anyone go who wants to. There’s no place with me for cowards.”
“Cowards!” Percy Bachelor burst out. “Cowards! God damn you, Gorman, I’ve done every bit as much fighting in my time as you have. But not as an outlaw. What you’re doing here is crazy. You got us all broke and hungry and outlawed with your killing. What’s ahead? More killing, more hunger and running until every man jack is dead. Hung dead or shot dead … but dead.”
Zeke was crashing toward the mounted man through swamp creepers and rip gut. “Get out!” he roared at Bachelor. “Ride out and keep on going. And if you ever mention us to anyone and I’m able … I’ll hunt you down. Now get!”
Bachelor left, riding his foam-flecked horse south, the only way that was safe and open. The others moved without speaking, their boot steps sn
apping twigs and making sucking sounds in the swamp mud. The only man among them who found bitter pleasure in this dissension was bound Charley Simpson. Now he said: “The rest of you listen. What that man told you is right. Gorman’s going to get you all killed.”
Uriah was beside his prisoner in five, big strides. He struck the bound man down and stood over him with murder in his face. Dade Simpson struggled upright but he was caught from behind and held.
“Do that again,” said Uriah to the fallen cowman, “and I’ll kill you with my bare hands … alone.”
“Sure you will,” Simpson swore right back. “As long as you got me tied, you will.”
“Untie him!” Uriah roared.
But Lee was there to counsel another course and eventually Uriah stalked away. Lee helped Simpson to his feet; he wiped with a dirt-encrusted sleeve at the trickle of blood at the cowman’s mouth.
“Don’t push him,” he told Simpson. “Leave him be.”
Charles Simpson turned his hot stare to the younger man’s white face, blurred by shadows. He did not speak.
There was nothing to eat so they hobbled the horses, made up pallets on dry ground, and sank down in total silence with the heat of battle dead in them. Only Uriah still moved; he paced through the blackness of night following the bent of his thoughts and thinking swiftly. It was not in him ever to be defeated, and yet in his lifetime he had never triumphed.
He stalked now beyond the hungry bivouac, remembering other dark and cheerless nights; nights like this one when the unfinished matrix of his life was starkly in mind, soaringly unpleasant and goading. He was outlawed. They were all outlawed. Ahead lay more fleeing, more fighting, more burning lancets of flame in the dark. And yet it was in the cause of right he did these things; it was the law that was wrong. The law and the priority of men who thought because they had come first into Wyoming that they owned it, owned the free-graze that was Public Domain.
Was it inevitable that he use his years fighting for causes lost? If need be, he thought. If need be. It was not his right to question—only to obey the dictates of a strong heart and a resolute mind. The world was not a good place; it was full of wrong. Even when a man sought with his arms to coax a living from it, without trouble, he could not do it.