by E. R. Slade
Jeremy gestured with his good arm. “I got to leave,” he blurted out. As soon as he spoke he knew it was the wrong way to put it. He’d hardly said a word to her since arriving here, and nothing at all for several days. He thought he should be thanking her, telling her what a good nurse she was, but he just felt the heat rising in his neck and his tongue big and useless in his mouth.
Sarah set down the tray and laid a hand gently on his good arm, looked up into the face earnestly.
“What’s wrong, Jeremy?” she asked. “The sheriff hasn’t returned to town, and there are rumors that he is dead and never will return. People are saying that he was corrupt. In any case,” she added, with a look in her eyes he’d never seen before, “I will not allow anyone to interfere with my patients while they are under my care. You are safe here, Jeremy.”
Jeremy gestured again, helplessly, could say no more. She sat him down on the edge of the bed and saw to it that he ate, and then she helped him remove his shirt and she changed the bandage.
“Now promise me you’ll take off your trousers and get back into bed,” she said, at the bedroom door, tray and old bandages in hand.
Jeremy couldn’t look at her. His shoulder hurt and he was thinking of the long ride to Texas, and of how comfortable the bed was here, and how nice it was to be around Sarah. But he knew what he needed to do—there was no getting around it.
“Jeremy?” she said.
“I got to go,” he said. “I’m sorry. I got to. I don’t have no money to pay you with, but when I get home to Texas I’ll send you some. For Leanda, too,” he added, and then wished mightily he hadn’t said it.
Sarah set down the tray again, came and sat next to him on the bed. “Don’t worry about paying me, Jeremy,” she said. “If that’s what’s bothering you, set your mind at rest about it. The Bible says we are not to pass by on the other side of the road when someone has wounds that need to be bound up. Have you ever read that? Anyway, that’s all I’m doing, just as anyone else might.” She paused, then became agitated, shaking her head. “No,” she said, “that’s not completely honest. I would have looked after you whether it said such a thing in the Bible or not. It’s blasphemous for me to pretend I’m so sinless. But,” she went on, turning earnestly to him, taking one of his hands between hers, “your friend Leanda is in no condition to travel. If you try to carry her as far as Texas she will probably die.”
“I wasn’t planning to take Leanda nowhere,” Jeremy said miserably.
Her hands stroked his absently. “You mean you intend to come back for her, or send for her when she is well?” she asked.
“Leanda’s nothing to me,” Jeremy said. “I just found her all battered up out in the mount- ... in the desert—well, outside of town a good ways. I thought I ought to bring her back here in case she might live.”
“Oh, I see,” Sarah said doubtfully. Obviously, she didn’t believe his story. The knowledge that Sarah believed he was lying to her—and that he was lying to her, in part—was excruciatingly uncomfortable.
“I got to go,” he said, and swayed to his feet, feeling her warm hands dropping away from his. Something about that tugged painfully at his heart, but it only made him more desperate to get away.
Ten minutes later he was out in the street, Sarah standing worriedly in the open front door. “Be careful, Jeremy,” she said. “Please be careful.” As he lifted his good arm in response, she added wistfully, “I hope you’ll come back someday when you can tell me everything.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
Two hours later, those words were still smoking like a new brand in Jeremy’s thoughts. He was riding southeast toward the hot dusty plains aboard his old horse, full of turmoil. He’d been desperate to leave, but now he’d done so he realized he’d forever made it impossible to go back to the comfort of that quiet bed and Sarah’s tender care.
He fretted about Leanda: what would she say when she recovered? Or would she ever fully recover? Would Sarah find out parts of the story—the bad parts—and be stuck looking after Leanda forever while thinking the worst of him? And he still had that locket he’d picked up next to the bodies of Tyler and Hart. What should he do with that?
But the thought which recurred most painfully was that Sarah knew he wasn’t telling her the truth, and it hurt her. He’d hurt her. That was all he’d managed to do in return for all she’d done for him. He kept picturing her, the way she moved around the room with her duster, the look she got in her eyes when she saw him; and the further he went away from her the more he longed to see her again, but the more obvious it was he couldn’t return.
Jeremy rounded a small knoll and passed a mesquite thicket and there in front of him stood a very familiar-looking wagon, canvas covered, with ten mules hitched to it. The mules were trying to graze, creaking the wagon slowly forward a step at a time. The only man Jeremy saw was lying flat on his back, arms spread out, rifle near one hand, a bullet hole in his head.
Jeremy pulled rein, simply stared. It couldn’t be.
All was silent, except for the groaning creak of the wagon, obviously heavy loaded. Then the mules noticed him. One of them nickered. Jeremy wondered if they were thirsty—how long had they been here?
He investigated the situation thoroughly and carefully. All of Courtland’s men were dead. None lay more than about a hundred feet from the wagon. The horses seemed to have been driven off. Probably they’d found a water hole since they had not returned. Stevens’ face was half blown away, the gunfighter and Courtland each had a bullet hole in the back. The rest had gotten theirs from the front.
Appearances suggested a falling out and a resulting gun battle, and everybody had come out a loser.
Jeremy looked at the sturdy little wagon and began to shiver. The gold—the real gold this time—was most certainly under that canvas cover. Just sitting out here unattended.
He walked cautiously to the rear of the wagon, took a long, careful look all around, and then untied a corner of the cover. Inside were wooden crates, very sturdy and fairly small. He lifted a lid and gasped when he saw the sunlight dazzle off gold bars.
He climbed into the wagon and struggled to turn the little box on its side so as to spill some bars out. He picked one up and stared at it, feeling an excitement beyond anything he’d ever felt before. Here in his hand was what he’d come so far to find. He’d been tricked and used and put to every sort of trouble, and he’d nearly been killed more than once. Yet he had survived while other men died.
There was Courtland, Stevens, the gunslinger, Watson, Blue, Cork, those Mexicans, and the rest. All dead over this gold. Leanda might or might not recover from what had been done to her on account of it. They had all thought they were pretty smart and they wound up losers. He hadn’t noticed any of them thinking good old Jeremy Waite was too smart—but look who’d come out the winner.
He glanced furtively around, afraid somebody was watching. Nobody was. He stood up in the wagon box, searched the horizon meticulously, and then, still seeing no one, he looked at the seat, the reins, the mules all hitched. He had it all. There was nothing to stop him from driving away a rich man.
Jeremy licked his lips. Something inside was saying don’t do it, it’s all wrong; but he climbed down, retied the canvas cover, went and got his old horse and hitched him to the tailgate, gathered up all the weapons and ammunition he could find, and then climbed onto the wagon seat. He sat a moment, savoring the heady unfamiliar feeling of being a winner. Then he yelled, “Yahoo!” and aimed for Texas.
But he hadn’t gone far when he began to wonder just what to tell them at home about how he’d come by a wagonload of gold.
Pa won’t like the truth, he thought. Then he thought, But he won’t never believe any lie I tell. Then he admitted, Besides, I don’t want to lie no more anyhow.
Jeremy reined in, reconsidering his destination. Maybe he shouldn’t go home after all.
Where, then?
Not Parkersville or anyplace else Leanda was likely
to go—if she survived, sooner or later she’d be bound to make trouble. And if he ran into Sarah ...
Jeremy couldn’t bear to speculate about that and quickly put Sarah out of his mind.
“I guess there’s Mexico,” he said aloud, doubtfully. “But Mexico’s a long way and I don’t know nobody there.”
The longer he sat undecided, the more he began to think of all the killing, and he found himself looking around to see if anybody was sneaking up behind him. When the wind moved a bush he thought he saw somebody’s gun hand in it, and when the grass rustled he strained to listen, trying to decide if he heard approaching hoofbeats in the distance. Uncertain, he dropped the reins and picked up a rifle, loaded it. By now he was sweating rivers.
He had to go somewhere with the gold. The longer he sat still the better the chance somebody would find him with it. But every place he thought of seemed less likely than the last. Where would he hide it if he drove into a town? He couldn’t just park the team in the street or leave the wagon at a livery unless he unloaded it first. Where would he unload it? How could he know what bank to trust? Probably he couldn’t depend on any of them. And as soon as he hauled out a gold bar to do anything with it, word would get out. There’d be men ready to kill him from then on. They’d come from everywhere determined to get their hands on his gold.
The sun seemed intolerably hot. Sweat ran so freely into his eyes he could hardly see, and he kept looking all around, terrified somebody would discover him any second and start shooting. He felt rattled thinking of how close bullets had already come to sending him to try his luck at St. Peter’s Gate. Suppose one or more of Courtland’s men had survived and expected to return for the gold? He began to think it likely, then he thought it certain, and every moment he believed he heard their hoofbeats.
The tension inside Jeremy built and built until he could stand it no longer.
“I think this here is the wrong kind of riches, somehow,” he blurted out, and climbed shakily down from the wagon seat. His knees were untrustworthy, but he made them take him away from the wagon. The sense of relief that washed over him was like a cool breeze, though the sun was just as hot.
Feeling over-lubricated in the joints, Jeremy unhitched the mules, put them on a string. He took the loaded rifle and the best pistol from the jumble in the boot, and then climbed aboard his old gelding.
For some moments he sat contemplating the wagon, his face acquiring a sour expression.
“Cain’t eat it, cain’t drink it, cain’t ride it, cain’t graze no cows on it. Cain’t even spend it without you got to fight off everybody who wants it theirselves. I guess I know where there’s easier range to ride than that.”
He spat in the dust and pulled his horse around.
But he didn’t head for Texas. He rode for Parkersville. Because suddenly it seemed to him that he was chock full of things to talk to Sarah about.
GUNMAN’S GOLD
Chapter One
Lee Calloway drained the last drop from his canteen, hot like a drop of molten lead on his tongue, a mockery of his thirst.
He waited hopelessly with the canteen mouth over his tongue for another drop, just one more. But there wasn’t any.
With a swollen, sore tongue he touched his lips, cracked and crusty with scabs of dried blood. He stopped that immediately, suddenly fearing to lose any more water to evaporation.
Lee Calloway had been in the desert for ten days now. There had been one stop at Corson Wells, and he had had to wait in the night until the Apaches left before going to drink and fill his canteen. He had not dared stay long for fear of being trapped there by them.
He had seen Apaches twice since then. They had to have known about him, if he had seen them, yet they had so far left him alone. Perhaps they had other, more interesting prey.
His sorrel was getting towards the end of its endurance, head hanging down and feet plodding slower and slower. Mirages of lakes on the horizon mocked the dry heat. Lizards and snakes and scorpions were in the tiny bits of shade—chunks of rock and brush, and here and there a cactus.
It might almost have been better to hang, however innocent he was. But he had escaped, choosing the desert, and now he was alone and likely to die of thirst, if the Indians didn’t work up an interest in him.
Thinking these thoughts, Lee, lean and hard and with a ten-day black beard, rode endlessly south. He knew little of the country down here. He had come from Birch Island, Maine, to make his fortune in the gold camps in New Mexico. Instead, he had almost immediately been grabbed while walking the streets of San Pablo and been accused of murdering a man, mistaken for an outlaw named Chuck Riley, who he apparently looked like. He had been quickly tried, condemned, and that night in desperation he had managed to trick the sheriff’s deputy and get his gun. At gunpoint, the wide-eyed deputy, fearing for his life at the hands of the notorious Chuck Riley, had set him free. With one canteen of water, and food enough for about two weeks, if he stretched it, he had ridden out of town, going south into the desert, figuring that it offered the best chance of escape.
But that had evidently been a mistake. He had been told tales of gold camps in the mountains somewhere to the south, but where exactly they were, he hadn’t heard. He’d been over some low hills the last two days, but now the country was flat again. There were mountains on the horizon, but no matter how long he rode, they seemed to stay the same distance away.
What was that?
Reflex action caused his hand to swing down to the stock of his saddle-slung Winchester. He had distinctly heard a woman’s scream. It didn’t seem at all reasonable. But he heard it again.
“Help! No, don’t ...” and then a bloodcurdling screech.
He spurred his mount mercilessly towards the sound, which emanated from an arroyo to the left. Winchester in his right hand, he dismounted at the top of the bank, and looked down into the wash, dry and rocky. He saw a group of saddled horses, and then their riders, rough looking men in sweat-stained, grimy Stetsons and cotton shirts with the sleeves rolled up, a number with fancy spurs, unfiled on the points, a sign of cruelty on the part of the wearers, for such spurs were hard on horses.
They were grouped around a woman whose loose, Mexican-style blouse was ripped open, exposing one breast and part of her belly. She was on the ground on her side with her knees drawn up and long dark hair spread out fanlike in the dust. She was moaning with pain and holding her side.
A man who looked somehow familiar to Lee stood over her, cigarette dangling from the left corner of his thin, hard mouth, hands on his hips, Stetson on the back of his head, wearing the meanest looking spurs Lee had seen anywhere—the points gleamed from having been filed sharp rather than dull, like ice picks. He suddenly realized why the man looked familiar: he looked, superficially, like what Lee saw in the mirror, when there was one to hand.
Now he knew why he had been mistaken for Chuck Riley. There were some differences, of course. Riley’s face was thinner, meaner, and the nose was more prominent and bony. Riley smoked, and he did not. But by the drawings on the wanted posters, you couldn’t tell which man was more likely the outlaw.
After hearing what Riley had been accused of in court, Lee had no wish to tangle with him. What he wanted to do was ride off as quickly as possible and hope he hadn’t been seen. After all, the woman was no concern of his, was she? He didn’t know her, didn’t know what she’d done to provoke Riley’s rage. Knew nothing of whether she deserved what she was getting. Besides, there were twelve of them, not including the woman, and only one of him. And they didn’t look like they lacked for water, where he’d run dry and was feeling it. No, he didn’t want trouble.
But at that moment, while he was making excuses to his conscience, he saw Riley—for that was who it had to be—raise his foot in the air, and coldly bring the sharp spur down with force into the woman’s side, causing her to scream with terror and pain. When the foot was drawn away, blood reddened the white of her blouse, while the scream faded into gasping. Le
e could see the tears glistening on her face, running down to coagulate the dust.
He couldn’t quite hear what was being said. Riley was talking, and the woman was shaking her head, closing her eyes, squeezing out tears.
The spur-armed boot heel lifted again. Lee reacted before he had time to think.
“Riley!” he shouted as loudly as he could, surprised at the strength of his voice after all the weakening of the desert sun. He stood with the Winchester at his shoulder, sights lined up on Riley’s back.
At the shout, Riley turned, almost as if he’d been spun around by a bullet. The others also started around to look in his direction.
“Ride,” Lee commanded. “There’s a slug in this rifle for each of you, and three to spare. Nobody goes for his gun. You leave them there in a pile beside the lady.”
Men looked to the nearest cover, which was yards away. Riley’s face, minus the cigarette, which had dropped to the ground in his surprise, screwed up in frustrated annoyance. But at last he gave the command to his men to lay down their arms.
“Leave your canteens,” Lee added.
This was met by fury, but Riley gave that direction also.
“Don’t just stand there a-gawking,” Lee said irritably, more in irritation at himself than at their slowness to leave. He was considering the full ramifications of what he had done. He had bought trouble, clear and simple. You didn’t buy trouble out here. But leave it to old Lee. First take off into the middle of a desert, then give the most dangerous and wanted outlaw in New Mexico good reason to hunt him down. And for a woman he’d never seen before nor had any reason to care about.
Stupid, doggone stupid. But Lee Calloway was in it now, Lee Calloway had to get out of it.
He watched the men slowly mount up and wait for Riley to lead them out of the arroyo.