by Paul Lederer
The so-called gang was a joke. They were now reduced to only three men, and men with no apparent plan on how to proceed. Well, Johnny had a plan. He would hit Phoenix or Tucson, maybe even New Mexico, with his saddle-bags filled with money. Then he could do anything he wished. Start a new horse ranch, buy the affection of a dozen women, prettier and more accommodating than the haughty little Kate Cousins. He meant to travel the little-known south trail which wound along the river, even deeper into the Tanglewood but terminated, he believed, on the boundary of the open desert beyond.
The law in Lordsberg could not possibly know of the trail, and Johnny was certain that he could elude them. As to the Tanglewood gang, what there was of it, they would not be aware that he had taken anything until he had a lead of many miles on them. If they tried to follow – well, it would just be too bad for them.
Johnny had fallen in with the gang only out of desperation. There had been nowhere else to go at the time. He felt no true loyalty toward them. They were fighting for a lost cause. As for the money, why should he not deserve a share? He had done as much as anyone else had done for it. Looking back, he had probably saved Trace Dawson’s life as well at the bank.
At least that was the way Johnny saw it, and at this juncture, the way he saw things was all that mattered.
He had not yet heard the bark of Curt Wagner’s Winchester, meaning that the tall man was still stalking a deer. After he had one, gutting it and hauling the meat back to camp would take some time. Now there was only Ben to worry about, and the bald man concerned Johnny only a little. Ben had shown little heart for the fight.
Walking his paint pony back into the outlaw camp, Johnny saw no sign of either Curt or Ben Torrance. Likely Ben had gone to the creek to clean up a little. Crouching, Johnny sorted rapidly through the unsorted stash in the bags. The legal documents he had no use for and tossed them aside. At the bottom of the first sack he found stacks of neatly bundled twenty-dollar notes. Just what he had been looking for. Then his searching fingers came upon two smaller banded sheaves of hundred-dollar bills. Better and better. Reluctantly he left the gold bars at the bottom of the bag alone. He had enough money to make it to Tucson and beyond. To China if he wished to go! Stuffing the loot into his saddle-bags he kept his eyes on the surrounding tangle of brush and trees, watching for any sign of a man approaching, but he saw no one as he swung into his saddle and started the paint pony forward.
Thunder boomed to the north and the clouds there darkened. The wind increased as Johnny Johnson, a rich man now, searched for the southern trail out of the Tanglewood.
By the time Trace Dawson returned to the camp, it had begun to rain. The mounting clouds seemed to have serious intent; the wind was gusting heavily down from the mountain flanks. The horse he rode – Dan Sumner’s – was weary and uncomfortable with the rain in its eyes.
No one seemed to be in the camp. Trace’s own gray gelding, Curt’s dun pony and Ben Torrance’s horse were tied to a picket line, shuddering in the cold and rain, so apparently they had not gone far. Trace did notice that Johnny Johnson’s black and white paint pony was gone and he frowned as he swung down from the saddle. Maybe Curt had taken it into his own hands to tell Johnny that he was no longer wanted among the gang.
Trace unsaddled, removed the blanket from the back of Sumner’s horse, slipped the bit and left it tied to the picket line with the other horses. It was then that a tall figure appeared from out of the lowering mist, toting a deer carcass on his back.
‘Damned weather,’ Curt Wagner muttered as he let the deer fall free and stretched his weary back. ‘It sure set in fast. Well, at least we’ll have something to eat for a while.’ Curt had been grinning. Now as he looked around the empty camp the smile fell away from his face.
‘Where is everyone?’ he asked.
‘I was just going to ask you the same thing,’ Trace said. ‘Johnson’s pony is gone. I thought maybe you gave him the word to travel on.’
‘No, I was going to leave that up to you as we agreed. Is Ben’s horse still here?’
‘Right where it belongs,’ Trace said, nodding toward the picket line.
‘Then what—?’ It was then that Curt Wagner’s eyes fell upon the opened burlap sack, the strewn court documents gathering rain and he cursed slowly, adeptly. ‘The kid took something, I’ll bet you.’
‘You don’t think he would have killed Ben? Maybe he got caught in the act.’
‘I can’t see Johnny doing something like that,’ Curt replied. ‘But—’
But then, you never knew what a man, a desperate man, would do. ‘Let’s get to shelter,’ Curt said as the rain continued to hammer down, the skies to darken, the wind to increase.
‘We have to catch up with Johnny,’ Trace argued.
‘Where? And how, in this weather? It’s impossible even to follow a dry track in the Tanglewood. He could be anywhere.’
As they spoke they rushed to the crude shelter of a tarp tied up between the scrub oak trees of the grove. Sitting on a groundsheet they watched the silver rain pelt the earth, listened to the thunder, winced as close lightning struck, illuminating the skies with momentary brilliance.
‘Hell of a bunch of outlaws,’ Curt Wagner muttered and Trace had to laugh. ‘How is Dan getting along?’ Curt asked, and Trace told him about the episode in Lordsberg.
‘Well, at least he’s got a roof over his head for now. And a bed,’ Wagner said miserably.
‘Brighten up, Curt,’ Trace told his old friend. ‘Let’s see if we can forage a few dry twigs and boil some coffee while we wait out the storm. Maybe if we put our heads together we can figure out how to proceed from here.’
The thunderstorm had caught Ben Torrance by surprise. He was not a man of the wilderness, and was unable to read the threatening signs of the gathering clouds and rising winds. He had gone to the creek to clean up, crossed it at the shallows, and then he sat on a low sycamore tree limb trying to clear his head, to decide what he should do. This was no life for him, and he knew it. He had sworn allegiance to the gang, but those promises, made when envisioning a better future, were much simpler in the imagination than in the living of them. His vows had come to seem reckless and foolish.
Ben Torrance was no gunman, no roughshod fighting man. He hadn’t really believed that Trace, Dan and Curt meant to go through with their plans, but he had wanted to be a party to their hope without actually being involved.
A childish concept, he now recognized. He had gone along primarily, he supposed, because he had nowhere left to go in all the broad West. He had worked and succeeded in making a comfortable life after digging the lone well in the vicinity of Lordsberg. Having congratulated himself on his success, he had forgotten that success is fleeting.
Ben looked up as the thunder racketed down the valleys, sounding like two monstrous beasts butting heads, and lightning crackled. He rose, still without having made a decision, and started back toward the camp, but he had left it too long. The rain began to come down in sudden torrents, veiling his vision. Before he had even reached the river crossing the water had risen, and swollen and furious, the stream rushed between its banks. He could not find the ford he had used earlier.
The cold rain, whipped by the rising wind, fell in confusing swirls, and Ben in sudden panic realized he was not going to be able to cross the river unless he found an easier path. He started downstream.
There the river briefly fanned out and flowed between thick ranks of cattails and reeds. Screened by the constant rain, the far bank remained hidden. Ben was cold, soaked through. He desperately made his way to the riverbank, and squinting through the steel curtain of the rain, believed he saw a safe way to cross. A small mound of earth rested in the center of the quick-flowing rill and beyond it was a fallen log. If he crossed now, before the water got perilously high, he thought he could make it. Ben eased cautiously from the edge of the creek as the silver rain fell harder.
And stepped into the sucking mud of the bog.
It
seemed as if giant hands had reached up to clutch his ankles, trying to drag him downward. Now, panicked, he flailed and tried to propel himself more quickly forward, but it was no use. He continued to sink. To his knees, to his thighs. Now half-running, half swimming he knew that nothing he could do was going to save him. He fought violently against the inevitable but found himself sinking lower and lower into the ooze. He screamed, but his throat made little sound above the roar of the water, the rush of the storm, and he simply slid away from life into the depths of the bog.
Johnny Johnson could not find the head of the southern trail in the heavy weather. There was a fog across the land and a simultaneous pounding of the rain. The land around him was Tanglewood land: patches of snarled vines and a confusion of interlaced tree branches so tightly packed that they seemed to grow together. He was cold and growing desperate. He gave his pony its head, but the confused animal could find no exit through the mass of dense undergrowth. The wise choice would have been to stop, find some sort of flimsy shelter and sit waiting in the cold for the storm to blow over. But Johnny was a thief and a traitor, running away from his crimes and he thought that when the storm cleared, he might find Curt Wagner and Trace Dawson on his backtrail, wishing to show him a little frontier justice for abandoning the gang. Of course, he considered, as the rain streamed down from his hat brim obscuring vision, the gang itself was a broken concept. There was nothing more to be done against Blakely and Ross; all they had succeeded in doing was to outlaw themselves.
Johnny did not wish to wait around for the law to catch up with them, nor did he wish to face either Trace or Curt Wagner. He knew that either of them was too much man for him to handle.
He could only push on, unsure of his direction, and so he did, forcing his paint pony through the thickest of the briars and brambles and thorny vines, seeking a path out of the Tanglewood.
Fearing that there was none. That once a man entered the Tanglewood, he could never leave.
Dan Sumner rose at the first light of dawn. The storm had broken. Golden sunlight fanned its glow through the scattered remaining clouds. The house was still and cold when he dragged himself from his bed. Kate would have begged him to remain here, he knew. But Dan was suspicious of her father. He thought that perhaps Gentry Cousins had it in mind to turn him over to Marshal Standish, cutting a deal for himself.
Maybe not, but he was nevertheless putting Kate at risk by staying at the house. What if Kaylin Standish decided to storm the place to capture Dan? He couldn’t allow that to happen. There would be gunplay, because Dan would not go along willingly.
And so with the sun barely risen, the shadows deep around the house, Dan slipped through the kitchen door and limped toward the barn. He would have to borrow a horse, but what was one more crime?
He swung the door open and entered to find Kate, dressed in riding clothes, scowling at him.
‘I thought so!’ she said in sharp accusation. ‘Once you’ve gotten doctored up, you’re just going to ride off and leave me?’
‘It’s not like that, Kate,’ he said, going toward her.
‘I know,’ she said in a kinder voice. ‘I know you well enough to guess what’s going on in your mind. You didn’t want to make more trouble for Father and me.’
‘That’s about it,’ he admitted. ‘And I need to get back to the Tanglewood. They’ll be waiting for me.’
‘For us,’ she said definitely and it was Dan’s turn to scowl.
‘No.’ His voice was firm even as he took both of her slender shoulders in his hands and looked into her liquid brown eyes. ‘You know what kind of trouble we’re in, and you know now what the Tanglewood is like. It’s no place for you.’
‘No place for a girl?’ she jibed.
‘That’s right – it’s no place for a girl.’
‘Kiss me.’
‘No, I don’t think I will,’ Dan said, his voice uneven.
‘I’ve got two horses saddled and ready to ride, along with a few sacks of provisions – corn-meal, flour, coffee and beans. If you want them, you’ll have to kiss me.’
He did.
The dawn sky still held color as they walked their horses carefully away from the house. Dan feared a shout of alarm; Gentry Cousins would not suffer this lightly, but no cry was raised as they left the grove and found themselves on the long plains, veering north, angling well away from Lordsberg.
The morning was cool, the sunlight scattered, the wind fitful as they guided their ponies toward the Tanglewood. Dan considered simply riding off with Kate to Pueblo or even Denver, giving it all up as a lost cause, but he had given his word to the others, and he knew that even Kate would have thought less of him had he made such a suggestion to her. His face was grim as he rode on; only now and then did he glance at Kate, expecting to see doubt in her eyes, but she was steadfast and occasionally smiled brightly.
It was going to be a rough trail with a good companion.
They came upon the strange rider half a mile from the Tanglewood.
CHAPTER SIX
‘Thank goodness!’ Ruby Rose Lee said as they drew their horses up beside the dance-hall girl mounted on a pretty little palomino horse. ‘I’m damned if I can find a trail in!’
‘Why would you want to?’ Dan asked, momentarily stunned by Ruby’s sudden appearance.
‘Why?’ Ruby gave a full-throated laugh. ‘Ask her,’ she said, inclining her head toward Kate Cousins. ‘I’m sure she understands. I want to find Trace Dawson. He is my man, you know.’
‘But Ruby—’
She held up a hand with polished fingernails. ‘I know, the Tanglewood is hell. Trace has told me all about it.’ The wind shifted a strand of henna-red hair that had freed itself from her man’s Stetson across her forehead. ‘So is life without him hell. Besides,’ she shrugged, ‘there’s nothing much left for me in Lordsberg, or nothing that I want, not with Gentry Cousins having been forced out of business. The saloon has become a nightly mob scene under Blakely and Ross. I’ve had enough. Now I’m taking my last chance at a real life, and that involves my being with Trace.’ Her eyes flickered to the other woman. ‘You can understand that, can’t you, Kate?’
‘Fully,’ Kate responded firmly, casting a brief glance at the doubtful Dan Sumner.
Dan grumbled, ‘Let’s get moving then, before someone spots us. Though I don’t know how I’m going to explain this all to Trace and Curt.’
‘We’ll do the explaining,’ Ruby said cheerfully, ‘you do the guiding.’ And the two women drifted their ponies a little away from him to engage in some girl talk as they rode, even chirping a laugh from time to time. Dan led the way gloomily into the depths of the Tanglewood.
With the arrival of morning, Curt and Trace Dawson slipped out of their crude shelter, stretched and looked about them. There was still no sign of Ben Torrance. Johnny Johnson they did not expect to see ever again. It was growing cold, but the sunlight that winked through the trees was bright. It looked like the weather would hold for a while.
‘We’re going to be in real trouble if we’re still up here when the snow starts to fall,’ Curt commented.
‘That’s true,’ Trace said to the tall man, ‘but we’re in a lot of trouble no matter the weather.’
‘Have you dreamed up any ideas?’
‘On how to proceed – I think so,’ Trace said, shaking the coffee pot to see if there was anything left in it.
‘Do you mind letting me in on the plan?’
‘After we spark this fire to life and heat up the cold coffee,’ Trace said. ‘Let me get the chill out of my bones and the cobwebs out of my head.’
After the coffee was warmed they stood together, drinking from tin cups. Trace asked Curt Wagner without making eye contact: ‘You were going to tell me how you learned the art of cracking a safe.’
‘Was I?’ Curt looked away and then seemed to shrug off his reticence. After all, Trace was a friend of his now. Curt had a long habit of withholding any and all information. It had kept him ou
t of prison. ‘All right,’ he said at last, ‘you’ve probably already guessed. I used to ride with an outlaw gang – the Clinch Mountain boys, as a matter of fact.
‘I got fed up with it all – the running, the sleepless nights, the prairie hideouts, the internal bickering, the swaggering, the gun fights – I gave it up. Saddled my pony and rode off as far as I could get, looking for a place to settle down and live out my years peacefully.’
‘Lordsberg.’
‘Yes. Anyway,’ he said with a quick smile, ‘in my younger years I learned a lot of crafts I had hoped never to use again. I rode a rough trail, but the people here seemed to like me and trust me enough to hang a badge on me. A lot of men take those jobs out of necessity, but I took it because it made me feel wanted, accepted. No more rambling, no more bad companions. I was truly content doing what I did, Trace.’
Trace nodded his understanding. It was about what he had figured. Both men had empty cups now and there was nothing to refill them with. The fire was sizzling out and they tossed the dregs and grounds from the coffee pot and their cups on the fire to help it along its way. They were always cautious with fire. If the Tanglewood ever started to burn there was no rapid escape from the place.
Curt had his head cocked, listening to something. He placed his finger to his lips making a silencing motion to Trace and snatched up his Winchester. Curt pointed to the east and mouthed the word:
‘Company.’
Trace, too, reached for his rifle and the two men concealed themselves. Could it be Johnson coming back, or Ben? More likely it was the law looking for them and both men waited with rifles at the ready.
‘Hello, the camp!’ a familiar voice called out. They recognized Dan Simmer’s baritone. A minute later they saw him riding in. There were two people with him.