The Second Western Novel

by Matt Rand

  “Must hurry, too,” added Cavorca. “Water is seeping in here fast, and there isn’t any too much air to breathe, either.”

  They went to work, levering masses of stone loose with rifle barrels. Clawing away the muck and the smaller fragments, Rance felt confident they had not far to go.

  It was the water that worried them most. It rose steadily, seeping through the crumbly wall in a dozen places. Part of the wall was little more than loosely packed shale and earth. Here a stream poured steadily, growing in size as the minutes passed and more and more of the spongy mass sluffed off. Rance gave it many anxious glances.

  “Theah’s a whole dam river back o’ that mud,” he told Cavorca. “If she busts loose we won’t have no more chance than a rat in a rain barrel.”

  As they progressed the fallen rock became packed tighter. Soon they were loosening the fragments with great difficulty. The water kept coming faster.

  Gypsy suddenly screamed. A whole section of the rubbly wall had sluffed away. A torrent of water gushed through the crevice. More and more of the wall dissolved under the pressure.

  Rance hurled fragments of rock into the opening. They were swept away almost as fast as he threw them.

  “They ain’t big enough!” he panted. “We need somethin’ long and heavy to hold the water back till we can build the wall up again.”

  He was shoved aside. Manuel Cavorca wedged his tall, broad-shouldered body into the crevice.

  “Here is something long and heavy,” he gasped, his face whitening with the strain. “Quick, build up around me with rocks and mud!”

  “Feller, you can’t do that!” protested Rance. “Yore liable to be crushed to death any minute!”

  Cavorca’s unbelievably handsome face contorted.

  He lapsed into his accustomed tongue, Spanish.

  “Do as I say! It is not our worthless life of which I think! It is for my cousin, my only friend, I do this. Hurry!”

  “Right!” the Ranger barked. “Feller if you go out, you’ll go out like a man!”

  With rocks and muck they walled him in, up to his laboring chest, almost to his shoulders. The water still gushed through, but the wall ceased to sluff off. Rance and two of the Mexicans went back to the barrier, leaving one man to fight the water flow. They found the fallen rocks almost immovable.

  “We gotta blast a hole through,” said Rance. “Is theah any more dynamite?”

  “No,” replied one of the Mexicans, “there was but one steeck!”

  “Hafta use powder then,” decided the Ranger. “Pull the bullets outa ca’tridges and make a pile. Keep it dry.”

  While the Mexicans jerked the bullets loose with their teeth, Rance made a hole for the charge, carefully fining it with bits of dry rock. He formed it deep in a crack between two huge fragments, where the powder would exert its full force. From time to time he glanced to where Manuel Cavorca stood crucified in the crevice. Blood was trickling down the bandit’s mouth. His face was gray with suffering; but he stood like a figure of stone.

  “Bad—bad all the way through,” muttered the Ranger, “but he’s got the guts of a man, I’m tellin’ the world!”

  “The powder she is ready,” called one of the Mexicans. “You will need a fuse.”

  “Wet a strip of cloth, rub powder on it and twist it,” Rance ordered. “Let’s have that powder.”

  With the greatest care he placed the charge, tamping it down, wedging the makeshift fuse in place with bits of rock.

  “All right,” he told the Mexicans, “take the señorita back with you as far as you can go. I’m gonna touch her off.”

  The girl protested tearfully. “Rance, if that fuse doesn’t burn right you’ll be blown to pieces.”

  “Manuel’s takin’ his chance,” replied the Ranger. “I gotta take mine.”

  “Let me light it, Rance!”

  Rance gestured to the Mexicans. “Get goin’ hombres, take her back.”

  Still protesting, Gypsy was hurried as far from the charge as possible. Rance set his jaw grimly and struck a match. If the fuse burned too fast—!

  He touched the match to the twisted strip. It smoldered, sputtered. The fire raced along it.

  Rance hurled himself away, striving madly to get at least some distance from the explosion. The powder let go before he was a dozen feet from the fallen roof.

  He was swept from his feet and smashed against the muddy floor. His ears rang to the roar, his senses reeled. He was showered with fragments of rock that cut and bruised him.

  Almost beside him sounded a groaning sigh. Manuel Cavorca pitched headlong from the crevice, blood pouring from his mouth. Over him rushed a torrent of water.

  “Outside, quick! The way’s clear!” yelled Rance, snatching Cavorca from the water. “You all right, Gypsy?”

  Through a ragged opening they scrambled, coughing in the powder fumes, fighting the rising water. Rance held Cavorca with one arm and helped Gypsy with the other. Water was swirling through the cleft knee deep by the time they reached the outer air and sank panting and exhausted at the foot of the white cliff. Old Doc McChesney was just riding up.

  Doc examined Cavorca briefly. “Done for,” he stated. “Artery busted. Back too, I got a notion. Guess yore job is finished, Rance.”

  “Uh-huh,” Rance nodded, “That ends the rev’lution and saves a border war.”

  He gazed down at the dead bandit still startlingly handsome despite the blood that streaked his face.

  “Doc,” he said softly, “somehow I got a notion the Big Boss of the Big Spread acrost the River ain’t gonna be so turrible hard on a feller what cashed in his final chips savin’ other folks’s lives.”

  He turned to the three Mexicans, who stood staring sadly at their dead leader.

  “You boys did yoreselves proud,” he told them. “Hope you have good luck down in mañana land.”

  “Thank you, señor,” they replied simply. “We wish you and your lovely señorita all happiness.”

  “Ain’t so sho’ she’s mine,” muttered Rance, “but I’m sho’ hopin’.”

  “I see you still got yore arm ’round her, and she sho’ ain’t makin’ no fight to bust loose!” grunted old Doc.

  Gypsy blushed, and snuggled a little closer.

  TO HELL—AND TEXAS, by Giles A. Lutz

  Copyright © 1956 by Fawcett Publications.

  Chapter One

  The night breeze stirred the rising mist, stripping it into wispy, clinging tendrils. The mist rose from the river below, and the breeze was losing ground against it. Soon Natchez would be blanketed with a gray mantle that would dim lights, make vague the outlines of buildings, and turn the few people on the streets into drifting, disconnected shadows.

  The mist carried with it the smell of the river, a moist, sour smell of decay. It cut a man off from the world, making him feel small and insignificant, until he longed for walls around him, for the sight and warmth of a crackling fire and the sound of human voices.

  Nelson O’Shaughnessy missed a turn and retraced his steps for almost a block. His stride was quick, the stride of a man with much to do, with great distances ahead of him to cover. He had walked that way since he was old enough to take his first firm steps.

  He turned to his left, and lights gleamed from the top of a hill above him.

  “Gilreath’s Hill,” he muttered.

  Connelly’s Tavern stood on the hill. Three years’ absence from Natchez and the strengthening mist made O’Shaughnessy’s memory hazy, even though eight years of his childhood had been spent in this city. He hoped to find Forrest Goedeke in the tavern, and his impatience grew as he climbed the hill. The memory of Goedeke’s colored butler darkened his eyes. Nelson was positive the man had been lying when he said Melissa Goedeke was not in. It showed in the startled flash of the man’s eyes, in his uneasy, stammered words.

  “No, suh, the butler had said. “Ah don’ know where Miss Melissa is. Mistuh Goedeke not heah, eithuh. Yuh might find him at Connelly’s Tavern.�
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  He was lying, Nelson told himself. Melissa was there.

  But why should the man lie? Nelson felt a stab of fear at the thought. Three years’ absence could change many things; it could change a woman’s feelings.

  He stopped before the tavern, letting his eyes refresh his memory. It was a two-storied building of brick and wood, its double galleries running the full length of the structure. It was one of the show places of Natchez, built in 1795, thirty years ago. Its architecture was early Spanish, and Nelson remembered that its timbers were supposed to have come from abandoned sailing vessels.

  He remembered the taverns of the past three years, their dirt floors and walls, their smallness and reeking smells. This was elegance, and at the moment he would have been more comfortable in the others. Three years could change a man’s viewpoint, too.

  He stepped inside, the light catching the droplets of mist that clung to his face and clothing. A half-dozen men looked up at his entrance, and their laughter and talk stopped.

  He caught the look of withdrawal in their eyes, and it made him conscious that he needed a shave, that his clothing was travel-stained and rough in comparison with theirs. He looked at his boots, and they were caked with Texas mud. Honest mud, he thought, and his lips curled at the foppishness of these men’s clothes and manners.

  Their eyes wavered before his steady gaze, and they looked away and picked up the threads of their conversation. From time to time a pair of eyes would flick at him, then move away from the ready meeting of his eyes. His head came to within a few inches of the lintel of the doorway, and the breadth of his shoulders almost filled it. His face was fashioned with the same rawboned leanness as his body, and by no stretch of the imagination could it be called handsome. The mouth was big, the lips set in a thin, severe line. The nose was cut with a flaring stroke, thrusting forth like a ship’s prow. The cheekbones were high and prominent, and above them the dark eyes were set deep. The forehead was high and broad, and the hair above it was black as chimney soot. The hair was long beneath the battered felt hat, reaching almost to his coat collar and curling at the ends.

  His eyes moved from the men gathered around the table and slowly roamed the room. The floors were concrete, the walls plastered. The intricate grillework was carved from cypress, and the doors were solid slabs. A sturdy building, and someday he would build one like it. Better than a hundred miles from here.

  One of the men glanced at him again, and his eyes widened with recognition. “Nelson O’Shaughnessy,” he said, getting to his feet.

  Nelson’s forehead wrinkled with the effort of putting a name to that vaguely familiar face. He could not recall it as he shook hands.

  “You’ve been away,” the man said.

  “Three years.”

  He was aware of the veiled scrutiny of his clothing, and guessed at the thoughts that must be forming in the man’s mind. His clothing said the three years were wasted. Nelson wondered what the man would say if he knew of the paper in Nelson’s pocket—a paper that gave him better than two hundred thousand acres of land for himself and additional land for eight hundred families.

  He let the man grope for words to weave the fabric of the conversation. Talk was a city art. In lonely country, a man grew used to his own thoughts, and words were not a necessity.

  “Traveling?” the man asked.

  “Texas. And Mexico.”

  “Texas.” The man’s eyes widened. “We got reports that it’s a wild country.”

  Nelson’s lips curled with wry amusement. Wild was a mild word for it.

  The silence grew awkward, and the man looked with longing eyes toward his table, regretting the impulse that had put him on his feet.

  He said lamely, “It’s been good seeing you again,” and started to turn away.

  Nelson asked, “Have you seen Forrest Goedeke here?”

  “He’s in the old Tavern Room. Through that door.”

  Nelson nodded his thanks and strode into the rather small room with its great fireplace. The floor was brick, worn by the passage of countless feet. A plain wooden table and six straight-backed chairs were the only furniture.

  Forrest Goedeke sat at the table, his bleary eyes staring at nothing. A half-filled bottle of rum and an overturned glass were before him. His sleeve rested in a puddle of liquid, and the strong smell of rum filled the room.

  Nelson stepped to the table and asked, “You drunk, Forrest?”

  Goedeke’s head came up, and he made an effort to focus his eyes. “Drunk!” he said, an indignant edge in his voice. “I’m never drunk.”

  Nelson’s grin disclosed strong white teeth. “Then you’re giving a good imitation of it. Don’t you know me?”

  He waited while Goedeke’s eyes struggled to throw off the befogging effects of the rum. Forrest Goedeke’s clothes spoke of prosperity. He was dressed in the height of fashion, though his linen was stained with liquor, and the fawn-colored coat showed a long streak of it.

  “By God,” Goedeke shouted, “it’s Nelson O’Shaughnessy!”

  He struggled to his feet, nearly overturning the table in the process, and thrust out a hand. Goedeke’s hand was like the rest of him—soft. His stomach hung down over his belt, and his face was dull and soft, the dull blue eyes almost hidden by folds of flesh. The man’s appearance spoke of pampered living with no work to harden any phase of it, and Nelson knew a twinge of disgust. He did not remember Goedeke as being in quite this bad shape. Those three years had made another change.

  “It’s been so long since we heard from you, we thought you were dead,” Goedeke said.

  Nelson frowned. “Didn’t Melissa get my letters?”

  Goedeke reeled and threw out a hand to steady himself. “Four letters in three years. You can hardly call that keeping us posted on what you were doing.” He belched and covered his mouth with drunken dignity.

  He reeled again, and Nelson said, “Sit down before you fall.” He sat down opposite Goedeke and filled the glass with rum. He downed it in two swallows, feeling the moisture come into his eyes. It was good rum, a blend of hot authority and stinging potency.

  He turned the empty glass in his fingers, his eyes far away. Perhaps he should have written more often, but those four letters had said everything that was in his heart. Repetition would not have made his words or his feelings more genuine. And it was difficult to write when a man was busy with the basic business of protecting his life.

  He said slowly, “I asked directions to your house. Your butler said Melissa was not there.” He could not keep the anxiety from his eyes.

  Goedeke scanned Nelson’s appearance, and his eyes were not too bleary to appraise the rough clothing. He said, “I told you when you left you’d come crawling back. The wild scheme fell through.”

  He reached for the glass in Nelson’s fingers, half filled it, and tossed it down. He shuddered as the raw liquor ran through him.

  He stared at Nelson and said, “You can’t expect a girl like Melissa to wait forever. Not when you go off for three years and come back with nothing.”

  Even in his loneliest hours Nelson had never considered that she would not wait. He understood the butler’s behavior now. Goedeke’s words made everything very clear. He said dully, “She’s married.”

  Goedeke wagged his head. “Not yet. But it won’t be long. She has everything to offer a man. Why, man, she’s rich now.” His tone swelled with drunken boastfulness. “You wouldn’t believe how much money I’ve made since you’ve been gone.”

  Nelson’s anxiety fell away from him like a discarded shirt. It did not matter how much money Goedeke had. In a year or two he could match it—or surpass it.

  He said with full assurance, “She waited. And the wild scheme did not fall through. The Mexican government gave me land for eight hundred families. And for each hundred families, more than twenty-five thousand acres for myself.”

  The figures were impressive. He knew. He had repeated them often to himself, and repetition never dulled
them.

  Goedeke’s eyes widened. His eyes showed laborious calculation, and he said, “Almost a quarter of a million acres of land. You’re a wealthy man.”

  Nelson’s grin was wry. “Not yet.” His pockets held little cash money, but that would come as the land was settled.

  “Nearly a quarter-million acres of land,” Goedeke said. He was fascinated by the figure. He leaned forward with warmth in his manner. “Tell me about it.”

  Before Nelson could speak, Goedeke looked over his shoulder and shouted, “Chauncey. Chauncey Stevens. Come and join us.”

  Nelson turned his head and looked at the man in the doorway. He saw a man of medium height and on the thin side. The face was weak, the chin slightly receding. The nose was a rather shapeless blob. The hair showing beneath the pearl-gray topper was a mousey color. The eyes were good, though, a warm brown with a level appraisal. The man was dressed in tight doeskin trousers and a sharply cut blue coat. He wore a flowing silk cravat and carried a cane. The topper and cane far outweighed the eyes. Chauncey, Nelson thought derisively. That finished it.

  Stevens came to the table and gave Nelson a limp hand. Nelson resisted the impulse to crush it.

  Goedeke’s manner was effusive toward Stevens. He said, “Sit down, Chauncey. Nelson just got back from Texas. He was starting to tell me about it.”

  Stevens carefully parted the tails of his coat before he seated himself. Nelson kept his grin from showing. But he could not help contrasting Stevens with the men who lived around Nacogdoches, Texas.

  Stevens said, “Texas,” and leaned forward. His eyes held an eager shine. “For some time I’ve wanted to see it.”

  Nelson almost laughed aloud at the thought of this fop in Texas. He said, “It’s a rough, wild country, filled with rougher, wilder men. I saw the body of a man who had been tortured because someone thought he had money. They used heated knife blades on him, then wound up by sprinkling live coals on him as he lay tied.”

  He was satisfied at the horror in the sound of Stevens’ sharply drawn breath.

  Goedeke said, “He came back with a quarter-million acres.” He made a grimace of distaste. “Land means work.” He held out his soft, white hands. “Can you see these hands plowing and planting?” The boastful note was back in his voice. “A smart man doesn’t have to work. Do you think I made my money by working? Speculation, that’s the secret. Speculation on cotton.”