Right then I did not care, but, as I ate and drank coffee, my mind began to function once more. After all, this was my country. I belonged here. For the first time I really felt that I belonged some place.
“Am I crazy, or was Olga here last night?”
“She was here, all right. She saw part of your fight.”
“Did she leave?”
“I think not. I believe she’s staying over at Doc and Missus West’s place. They’re old friends of hers.” Chapin knocked out his pipe. “As a matter of fact, you’d better go over there and have him look at those cuts. One of them at least needs some stitches.”
“Tharp arrested Park.”
“Yes, I know. Park is Cantwell, all right.”
Out in the air I felt better. With food and some strong black coffee inside of me I felt like a new man, and the mountain air was fresh and good to the taste. Turning, I started up the street, walking slowly. This was Hattan’s Point. This was my town. Here, in this place, I would remain, I would ranch here, graze my cattle, rear my sons to manhood. Here I would take my place in the world and be something more than the careless, cheerful, trouble-hunting rider. Here, in this place, I belonged.
Doc West lived in a small white cottage surrounded by rose bushes and shrouded in vines. Several tall poplars reached toward the sky and there was a small patch of lawn inside the white picket fence.
He answered the door at my rap, a tall, austere-looking man with gray hair and keen blue eyes. He smiled at me. “You’re Matt Sabre? I was expecting you.”
That made me grin. “With a face like this, you should expect me. I took a licking for a while.”
“And gave one to Morgan Park. I have just come from the jail where I looked him over. He has three broken ribs and his jaw is broken.”
“No!” I stared at him.
He nodded. “The ribs were broken last night sometime, I’d guess.”
“There was no quit in him.”
West nodded seriously. “There still isn’t. He’s a dangerous man, Sabre. A very dangerous man.”
That I knew. Looking around, I saw nothing of Olga Maclaren. Hesitating to ask, I waited and let him work on me. When he was finished, I got to my feet and buckled on my guns.
“And now?” he asked.
“Back to the Two Bar. There’s work to do there.”
He nodded, but seemed to be hesitating about something. Then he asked: “What about the murder of Rud Maclaren? What’s your view on that?”
Something occurred to me then that I had forgotten. “It was Morgan Park,” I said. “Canaval found the footprint of a man nearby. The boots were very small. Morgan Park…and I noticed it for the first time during our fight…has very small feet despite his size.”
“You may be right,” he agreed hesitantly. “I’ve wondered.”
“Who else could it have been? I know I didn’t do it.”
“I don’t believe you did, but…” he hesitated, then dropped the subject.
Slowly I walked out to the porch and stopped there, fitting my hat on my head. It had to be done gently for I had two good-size lumps just at my hairline. A movement made me turn, and Olga was standing in the doorway.
Her dark hair was piled on her head, the first time I had seen it that way, and she was wearing something green and summery that made her eyes an even deeper green. For a long moment neither of us spoke, and then she said: “Your face…does it hurt very much?”
“Not much. It mostly just looks bad, and I’ll probably not be able to shave for a while. How’s Canaval?”
“He’s much better. I’ve put Fox to running the ranch.”
“He’s a good man.” I twisted my hat in my hands. “When are you going back?”
“Tomorrow, I believe.”
How lovely she was! At this moment I knew that I had never in all my life seen anything so lovely, or anyone so desirable, or anyone who meant so much to me. It was strange, all of it. But how did she feel toward me?
“You’re staying on the Two Bar?”
“Yes, my house is coming along now, and the cattle are doing well. I’ve started something there, and I think I’ll stay. This,” I said quietly, “is my home, this is my country. This is where I belong.”
She looked up, and, as our eyes met, I thought she was going to speak, but she said nothing. Then I stepped quickly to her and took her hands. “Olga. You can’t really believe that I killed your father? You can’t believe I ever would do such a thing?”
“No. I never really believed you’d killed him.”
“Then…?”
She said nothing, not meeting my eyes.
“I want you, Olga. You, more than anything. I want you on the Two Bar. You are the reason I have stayed here, and you are the reason I am going to remain.”
“Don’t. Don’t talk like that. We can never be anything to each other.”
“What are you saying? You can’t mean that.”
“I do mean it. You…you’re violent. You’re a killer. You’ve killed men here, and I think you live for fighting. I watched you in that fight with Morgan. You…you actually enjoyed it.”
Thinking that over, I had to agree. “In a way, yes. After all, fighting has been a necessity too long in the life of men upon earth. It is not an easy thing to be rid of. Mentally I know that violence is always a bad means to an end. I know that all disputes should be settled without it. Nevertheless, deep inside me there is something that does like it. It is too old a feeling to die out quickly, and as long as there are men in the world like Morgan Park, the Pinders, and Bodie Miller, there must be men willing and able to fight them.”
“But why does it have to be you?” She looked up at me quickly. “Don’t fight any more, Matt. Stay on the Two Bar for a while. Don’t come to town. I don’t want you to meet Bodie Miller. You mustn’t. You mustn’t!”
Shrugging, I drew back a little. “Honey, there are some things a man must do, some things he has to do. If meeting Bodie Miller is one of them, I’ll do it. Meeting a man who challenges you may seem very foolish to a woman’s world, but a man cannot live only among women. He must live with men, and that means he must be judged by their standards, and, if I back down for Miller, then I’m through here.”
“You can go away. You could go to California. You could go and straighten out some business for me there. Matt, you could…”
“No. I’m staying here.”
There were more words and hard words, but when I left her, I had not changed. Not that I underestimated Miller in any way. I had seen such men before. Billy the Kid had been like him. Bodie Miller was full of salt now. He was riding his luck with spurs. Remembering that sallow face with its hard, cruel eyes, I knew I could not live in the country around Hattan’s Point without facing Miller.
Yet I saw nothing of Bodie Miller in Hattan’s Point, and took the trail for the Two Bar, riding with caution. The chances were he was confident enough now to face me, especially after the smashing I’d taken. Moreover, the Slades were in the country and would be smarting over the beating I had given them.
The Two Bar looked better than anything I had seen in a long time. It was shadowed now with late evening, but the slow smoke lifted straight above the chimney, and I could see the horses in the corral. As I rode into the yard, a man materialized from the shadows. It was Jonathan Benaras, with his long rifle.
When I swung down from the saddle, he stared at my face, but said nothing. Knowing he would be curious, I explained simply. “Morgan Park and I had it out. It was quite a fight. He took a licking.”
“If he looks worse’n you, he must be a sight.”
“He does, believe me. Anybody been around?”
“Nary a soul. Jolly was down the wash this afternoon. Them cows are sure fattenin’ up fast. You got you a mighty fine ranch here. Paw was over. He said, if you needed another hand, you could have Zeb for the askin’.”
“Thanks. Your father’s all man.”
Jonathan nodded. “I reckon. We ai
m to be neighbors to folks who’ll neighbor with us. We won’t have no truck with them as walks it high an’ mighty. Paw took to you right off. Said you come an’ faced him like a man an’ laid your cards on the table.”
Mulvaney grinned when I walked through the door, and then indicated the food on the table. “Set up. You’re just in time.”
It was good, sitting there in my own home, seeing the light reflecting from the dishes and feeling the warmth and pleasantness of it. But the girl I wanted to share these things with was not here to make it something more than just a house.
“You are silent tonight,” Mulvaney said shrewdly. “Is it the girl, or is it the fight?”
I grinned and my face hurt with the grinning. “I was thinking of the girl, but not of Park.”
“I was wondering about the fight,” Mulvaney said. “I wish I’d been there to see it.”
I told them about it, and, as I talked, I began to wonder what Park would do now, for he would not rest easy in jail, and there was no telling what trick Jake Booker might be up to. And what was it they wanted? Until I knew that, I knew nothing.
The place to look was where the Bar M and the Two Bar joined. And tomorrow I would do my looking, and would do it carefully.
On this ride Mulvaney joined me, and I welcomed the company as well as the Irishman’s shrewd brain. We rode east, toward the vast wilderness that lay there, east toward the country where I had followed Morgan Park toward his rendezvous with Jack Slade. East, toward the maze of cañons, desert, and lonely lands beyond the river.
“See any tracks up that way before?” Mulvaney asked suddenly.
“Some,” I admitted, “but I was following the fresh trail. We’ll have a look around.”
“Think it will be that silver you found out about in Booker’s office?”
“Could be. We’ll head for Dark Cañon Plateau and work north from there. I think that’s the country.”
“I’d feel better,” Mulvaney admitted after a pause, “if we knew what had become of that Slade outfit. They’ll be feelin’ none too kindly after the whippin’ you gave ’em.”
I agreed. Studying the narrowing point, I knew we would soon strike a trail that led back to the northwest, a trail that would take us into the depths of Fable Cañon. Nearing that trail, I suddenly saw something that looked like a horse track. A bit later we found the trail of a single horse, freshly shod and heading northeast—a trail no more than a few hours old.
“Could be one o’ the Slade outfit,” Mulvaney speculated dubiously. “Park’s in jail, an’ nobody else would come over here.”
We fell in behind, and I could see these tracks must have been made during the night. At one place a hoof had slipped and the earth had not yet dried out. Obviously, then, the horse had passed after the sun went down.
We rode with increasing care, and we were gaining. When the cañon branched, we found a water hole where the rider had filled his canteen and prepared a meal. “He’s no woodsman, Mulvaney. Much of the wood he used was not good burning wood and some of it green. Also, his fire was in a place where the slightest breeze would swirl smoke in his face.”
“He didn’t unsaddle,” Mulvaney said, “which means he was in a hurry.”
This was not one of Slade’s outlaws, for always on the dodge nobody knew better than they how to live in the wilds. Furthermore, they knew these cañons. This might be a stranger drifting into the country looking for a hideout. But it was somewhere in this maze that we would find what it was that drew the interest of Morgan Park.
Scouting around, I suddenly looked up. “Mulvaney! He’s whipped us! There’s no trail out!”
“Sure ’n’ he didn’t take wings to get out of here,” Mulvaney growled. “We’ve gone blind, that’s what we’ve done.”
Returning to the spring, we let the horses drink while I did some serious thinking. The rock walls offered no route of escape. The trail had been plain to this point, and then vanished. No tracks. He had watered his horse, prepared a meal—and afterward left no tracks. “It’s uncanny,” I said. “It looks like we’ve a ghost on our hands.”
Mulvaney rubbed his grizzled jaw and chuckled. “Who would be better to cope with a ghost than a couple of Irishmen?”
“Make some coffee, you bog-trotter,” I told him. “Maybe then we’ll think better.”
“It’s a cinch he didn’t fly,” I said later, over coffee, “and not even a snake could get up these cliffs. So he rode in, and, if he left, he rode out.”
“But he left no tracks, Matt. He could have brushed them out, but we saw no signs of brushing. Where does that leave us?”
“Maybe”—the idea came suddenly—“he tied something on his feet?”
“Let’s look up the cañons. He’d be most careful right here, but if he is wearin’ somethin’ on his feet, the farther he goes, the more tired he’ll be…or his horse will be.”
“You take one cañon, and I’ll take the other. We’ll meet back here in an hour.”
Walking, leading my buckskin, I scanned the ground. At no place was the sand hard-packed, and there were tracks of deer, lion, and an occasional bighorn. Then I found a place where wild horses had fed, and there something attracted me. Those horses had been frightened.
From quiet feeding they had taken off suddenly, and no bear or lion would frighten them so. They would leave, but not so swiftly. Only one thing could make mild horses fly so quickly—man.
The tracks were comparatively fresh, and instinct told me this was the right way. The wild horses had continued to run. Where their tracks covered the bottom of the cañon, and where the unknown rider must follow them, I should find a clue. And I did, almost at once.
Something foreign to the rock and manzanita caught my eye. Picking it free of a manzanita branch, I straightened up. It was sheep’s wool.
Swearing softly, I swung into the saddle and turned back. The rider had brought sheepskins with him, tied some over his horse’s hoofs and some over his own boots, and so left no defined tracks. Mulvaney was waiting for me. “Find anything?”
He listened with interest, and then nodded. “It was a good idea he had. Well, we’ll get him now.”
The trail led northeast and finally to a high, windswept plateau unbroken by anything but a few towering rocks or low-growing sagebrush. We sat our horses, squinting against the distance, looking over the plateau and then out over the vast maze of cañons, a red, corrugated distance of land almost untrod by men. “If he’s out there,” Mulvaney said, “we may never find him. You could lose an army in that.”
“We’ll find him. My hunch is that it won’t be far.” I nodded at the distance. “He had no pack horse, only a canteen to carry water, and, even if he’s uncommonly shrewd, he’s not experienced in the wilds.”
Mulvaney had been studying the country. “I prospected through here, boy.” He indicated a line of low hills to the east. “Those are the Sweet Alice Hills. There are ruins ahead of us, and away yonder is Beef Basin.”
“We’ll go slow. My guess is we’re not far behind him.”
As if in acknowledgement of my comment, a rifle shot rang out sharply in the clear air! We heard no bullet, but only the shot, and then another, closer, sharper!
“He’s not shootin’ at us,” Mulvaney said, staring with shielded eyes. “Where is he?”
“Let’s move!” I called. “I don’t like this spot!”
Recklessly we plunged down the steep trail into the cañon. Down, down, down. Racing around elbow turns of the switchback trail, eager only to get off the skyline and into shelter. If the unknown rider had not fired at us, whom had he fired at? Who was the rider? Why was he shooting?
Chapter 11
Tired as my buckskin was, he seemed to grasp the need for getting under cover, and he rounded curves in that trail that made my hair stand on end. At the bottom we drew up in a thick cluster of trees and brush, listening. Even our horses felt the tension, for their ears were up, their eyes alert.
All was st
ill. Some distance away a stone rattled. Sweat trickled behind my ear, and I smelled the hot aroma of dust and baked leaves. My palms grew sweaty and I dried them, but there was no sound. Careful to let my saddle creak as little as possible, I swung down, Winchester in hand. With a motion to wait, I moved away.
From the edge of the trees I could see no more than thirty yards in one direction, and no more than twenty in the other. Rock walls towered above and the cañon lay, hot and still, under the midday sun. From somewhere came the sound of trickling water, but there was no other sound or movement. My neck felt hot and sticky, my shirt clung to my shoulders. Shifting the rifle in my hands, I studied the rock walls with misgiving. Drying my hands on my jeans, I took a chance and moved out of my cover, moving to a narrow, six-inch band of shade against the far wall. Easing myself to the bend of the rock, I peered around.
Sixty yards away stood a saddled horse, head hanging. My eyes searched and saw nothing, and then, just visible beyond a white, water-worn boulder, I saw a boot and part of a leg. Cautiously I advanced, wary for any trick, ready to shoot instantly. There was no sound but an occasional chuckle of water over rocks. Then suddenly I could see the dead man.
His skull was bloody, and he had been shot over the eye with a rifle and at fairly close range. He had probably never known what hit him. There was vague familiarity to him and his skull bore a swelling. This had been one of Slade’s men who I had slugged on the trail to Hattan’s Point.
The bullet had struck over the eye and ranged downward, which meant he had been shot from ambush, from a hiding place high on the cañon wall. Lining up the position, I located a tuft of green that might be a ledge.
Mulvaney was approaching me. “He wasn’t the man we followed,” he advised. “This one was comin’ from the other way.”
“He’s one of the Slade crowd. Dry-gulched.”
“Whoever he is,” Mulvaney assured me, “we can’t take chances. The fellow who killed this man shot for keeps.”
We started on, but no longer were the tracks disguised. The man we followed was going more slowly now. Suddenly I spotted a boot print. “Mulvaney,” I whispered hoarsely. “That’s the track of the man who killed Rud Maclaren.”
The Lawless West Page 21