by E. R. Slade
Noon went by, and then the afternoon ripened. The wind blew harder, coming unbroken across as much as a hundred miles of desert. The dust grew thick as the inside of a smokehouse, stinging their reddened eyes like endless volleys of needles. They pulled their neckerchiefs around and up over their noses, tugged down their hat brims and plugged on.
They couldn’t see much of the men they were after now. The occasional glimpses became fewer and fewer until Coe realized they hadn’t seen anything of them for at least an hour. He looked around, and the Calicoes were gone. You couldn’t see more than a hundred feet in any direction. The grit paraded over them in tall pluming clouds, snaked along through the stiff little clumps of cactuses like gauze streamers.
They had not been trying to follow tracks, having had the men in sight, and Coe realized that looking for tracks now would be futile. Any tracks they had left would be filled in a matter of minutes, even moments perhaps. The two men were at least twenty minutes ahead, probably more by now.
Coe called a halt, and they let the horses put their tails to the wind.
“If it was me,” Coe said, “I’d use this chance to change my direction. Which way do you think they’d go?”
Underwood, hunched under his hat, red dust caked on his sweaty bandanna, glanced over at Coe with red eyes. He looked miserable. Coe imagined that he looked the same himself. He certainly felt miserable.
“Nothin’ but desert clear to the border,” Underwood said. He brushed dust from his bandanna where it covered his mouth and nose.
“I’d go into the Calicoes,” Tower said. Coe squinted through the dust at him. Tower seemed to be standing up to the elements fairly well. He hadn’t sweated much, and therefore his bandanna wasn’t soaked and caked with grit. His eyes were red and sunken though.
“Why?” Coe asked him.
“Plenty of places to hide. If they stay in the desert, they’ll be easy to spot when this clears, unless they hunker down in a wallow. But they can’t afford to stay put for long out here. They got no food nor water to amount to nothin’, if they got any at all, which I doubt. So they’ll have to make for the border as quick’s they can, if they stay on the flats, and there’s nothing much any better for a long way on the other side; but if they go into the Calicoes, they can find a place to hole up without no trouble at all. Plenty of game to shoot. We’ll have the devil’s own job tryin’ to locate ’em. They can wait us out, then go south when they get good and ready.”
“He’s right,” Underwood agreed. “That’s the way I’d think, if it was me.”
“Are they smart enough to think that all out?” Coe asked Tower.
“Oh, I reckon so. They ain’t stupid.” He shook his head. “They been good steady hands a long time. It just don’t figure, all this.”
“I reckon it does,” Coe said. “They fit the description the stage driver gave of the road agents. They sure act like they’re scared of something besides comeuppance for chasing me out of town. They wouldn’t get more than a few days in jail for that—am I right, Sam?”
“I wouldn’t arrest ’em this late for that anyway,” Underwood said flatly, “except I wanted an excuse to scare some answers out’n ’em.”
“Pole and Frank—road agents?” Tower’s tone was very dubious—but Coe thought it sounded phony. “I don’t believe it. They just ain’t the type. And if they were, where’s the gold they stole?”
“That’s something we want to find out,” Coe said. “Listen, Mr. Tower, did you ever meet my brother Pete?”
“No,” Tower said.
“He would have been a fast-talking kind, wanting to play you a game of poker, or wanting to sell you some mining stock. The reason I ask is, the way it looks to me, Turner and Gordon held up the stage. I know they wanted me to leave town. Now, the only thing I was after in town then was to figure out what happened to my brother. Word must have gotten to them, and it made them nervous for some reason, and so they came to drive me off. Well, you see how it looks.”
“You think your brother was mixed up in the holdups, with my hands?”
“One way or another, yes. It wouldn’t be like him to go out and hold up a stage. It’s not his style. But he might have found out who was doing it and tried to pry money loose. I don’t like bad-mouthing my brother, but it’s no use pretending he was things he wasn’t, or wasn’t things he was.”
“You think he got them worried and they killed him,” Underwood said. “That could be.”
“Yes,” Tower agreed, “it’s possible. Except I don’t really believe my hands pulled the holdups. I just cain’t bring myself to that.”
“Well,” said Coe, “let’s go over into the Calicoes and start hunting for them. Maybe if we can corner them we can make them talk.”
Nobody replied. But Coe was sure both of the other men were thinking, as he did, that it wasn’t going to be easy to pry much out of Turner and Gordon. Not if they really had pulled the holdups and done a couple of murders.
Chapter Twelve
“Such a big, empty house,” Maria said, as they went in. “And we have it all to ourselves.” She looked up at him impishly.
“You’re a brazen little hussy,” Buckshot Justin said. He wasn’t really thinking about her. Things were happening. His own position might be in danger of exposure. He found himself wondering just how much the deputy and Pete Dolan’s brother really knew. For a few minutes it had looked as though he was clear and riding free, when the deputy decided not to arrest him. But when the deputy fumbled the arrest of Turner and Gordon, things changed.
It was true that it was unlikely Bert Tower had told his accomplices that Justin had him by the small hairs, and in any case, they could not testify to anything directly against him. But if they got caught and started flapping their lips, Tower was done for, and Tower would be sure to let Underwood know how he’d been rode by Buckshot Justin.
Besides, this business of the stage holdups was something he wanted time to check on himself. If he sniffed around enough, he might get his hands on some of the loot.
“What’re you thinkin’ about?” Maria asked, leaning against him.
“Go get changed,” he told her, pushing her away.
She went, spitting and snarling like a mountain lioness run off from her catch.
Buckshot Justin got into his old clothes, the ones he’d come to this part of the country in—except he wore his new riding boots. Then he went out and saddled his horse and rode off, going down the valley after the others, but being very careful to keep hidden. That was one thing he’d had a fair amount of practice at, and he was good at it.
When they got out on the open ground and headed southwest along the mountain range, he swung short and rode up and down the low foothills of the Calicoes, paralleling the others. It wasn’t long before dust kept those riding the desert mostly out of his sight.
His guess was that when it got thick enough, the two hands would swing west into the Calicoes and hunt up a hole to hide in. Justin hoped so. That would give him a better than even chance of finding them before the others did and shutting the escapees’ mouths. He just couldn’t afford to have those two wagging their tongues. He’d been thinking of doing something about them anyway. Now there was no choice. In fact, it was better this way, maybe, since if he buried their bodies and sold their horses to somebody on the way to somewhere else, it would be assumed the men had simply gotten away and were in Mexico. How to explain their disappearance, them being longtime, loyal hands, had been the main problem he’d been up against before. Now the situation allowed that question to be neatly resolved.
But he had to get to them before the others did.
He spurred his horse.
~*~
It was Bert Tower’s guess that the men would get away, unless he and Dolan and Underwood got very lucky. Turner and Gordon knew this country well. They were always making use of free time to go fishing and hunting. They’d been all over these mountains. They would know every nook and cranny.
Tower figured he knew a bit about the mountains himself, having ranched in their lap for close to twenty years. But he hadn’t had time to really explore them the way Turner and Gordon had. They had lived in this area all their lives.
There were two reasons Tower wanted to find the men. One was, he wanted to know where Justin had gone while in town this morning. It wouldn’t happen again until next Sunday. By that time there was no telling what else Justin might demand. The other concern was, what would being kicked free of their home do to the boys? Would they decide to talk if they didn’t like Mexico? They might. Gordon seemed uneasy about the whole thing. Turner would probably be all right alone, but he’d have trouble with Gordon. Tower knew he couldn’t afford to have them walk into Underwood’s office sometime unexpectedly and lay the whole thing out for him.
The men had to be found, there was no choice.
But after the boys had been found, there arose other problems. Getting a chance to talk to them privately after they had been captured could be difficult, perhaps impossible, without making Underwood or Dolan suspicious. Ideally, he would get such a chance immediately after the men had been caught, and then he’d look for a way to let them escape, and then shoot them as they did so. But that kind of thing would be hard to bring off successfully without a lot more luck than any man was entitled to.
It was Tower’s judgment that Turner and Gordon weren’t apt to spill anything to the law in the very near future without at least some pressure being applied. So it might be an acceptable risk to wait until they were jailed, and then arrange a break, slipping them word that if they kept their mouths shut he’d see they got clear. They’d go for that, for sure.
Afterwards, he’d talk to them, and then kill them out in the desert somewhere.
There was another possibility: kill Dolan and Underwood as soon as the boys had been found. That way, there would be no risk of the boys talking while in jail, or of a break going wrong, and he wouldn’t have to worry about Dolan and Underwood getting suspicious.
As he rode through the dust, which was thinner now, where more vegetation grew, he took sidelong glances at his companions, trying to decide just how hard it might be to overpower them. Underwood was tough when it came to dealing with brawling miners and cowboys, but he wasn’t too sharp. He could be outwitted. However, Coe Dolan was something else again. He had self-confidence, anyway, sticking around to hunt for his brother, never mind the risks. Word was he’d crossed Whittaker, too. That was definitely the move of either a complete idiot or of a man who knew he could take Whittaker. Nobody fooled with Whittaker. Tower figured himself for a reasonably good gunfighter, but he had decided not to cross the gambler. Just looking at Coe Dolan, it was hard to tell whether Dolan was a fool or a man confident for good reason. For now, Tower decided he’d kill Underwood and Dolan only if he saw a clear need to. Killing Turner and Gordon would be the better method. A shame to do it, but necessity was necessity. They’d lost their heads and could no longer be trusted.
They were out of the blowing dust now, in the foothills. Dolan pulled up.
“Good to get out of that stuff,” was the first thing he said, and peeled off his bandanna, snapped it in the breeze, clearing it of dust.
Tower shook out his own bandanna, mopped at sweat which the beat of the sun was raising on the back of his neck, and then put it on again so the thick part of it protected his neck from the sun.
“All right,” Dolan was saying, “if you were Pole Turner and Frank Gordon, which way would you go into the mountains from here?”
Tower was just wondering that himself, and scanning the wall of the Calicoes for a likely point of entry.
“I’d go up that valley off to the left there,” Underwood said. He coughed and blinked grit from his eyes, mopped his face with his bandanna, smearing the dust in streaks.
“It looks like the easiest way into the mountains,” Tower had to agree.
“Then let’s skedaddle up that valley,” Dolan said, and set spurs to his horse.
Tower sent his mount cantering along after the others. But he was thinking now about Buckshot Justin. This business was surely going to be a threat to him. Would he just sit home and wait and see what happened?
It wasn’t likely.
No, he’d be following along after them, like a shadow. Like as not, they’d never see him. But he’d be there, maybe waiting for them to catch up with the two escaping hands, or maybe even hunting the boys on his own. Either way, his idea would be to make sure they never talked to anybody.
Tower took killing men fairly lightly—there had been need for lot of killing in the old days, and he couldn’t see why things should be any different now the country was getting tamed—yet the thought of Justin’s way of operation left a cold knot in Tower’s stomach. It was mostly the idea that this man had just walked in and taken up the easy life—and Maria—cool as a breeze off a mountain pond. It galled him. There wasn’t a thing he could do, either, until he got his hands on that written account and his watch in the lawyer’s office. Probably they were in a safe, but he’d just steal the whole safe if he had to. And then he was going to find it a real pleasure dealing with Justin.
But all this depended on getting to Turner and Gordon before Justin did, to find out the location of that safe, or desk drawer or wherever the evidence against him was.
Chapter Thirteen
They rode until their horses were plodding, their spines and tailbones worn out, their eyes strained from looking at the ground for tracks and the area ahead for horsemen. They hunted up the valley until it became a deep, steep-walled canyon and they discovered they would have to backtrack out. They hunted until it got dark and the stars and planets were twinkling at them from the big sky. But they didn’t find anything but jackrabbits, mule deer, an occasional stray cow or steer, and one tawny-coated mountain lion which darted for cover and was gone. If they were within reach of the men they were after at any time since turning into the mountains, it might have been a thousand miles for all the good it did them.
“I’m plum beat,” Coe said finally, when it had been too dark to see anything for at least an hour. “Let’s make camp.”
“Might as well,” Underwood agreed heavily.
Since none of them carried anything more than a canteen of water, and nobody had any ambition to go hunting in the dark, they hobbled their horses in a meadow next to the creek, spread their bedrolls and sacked out. They decided not to build a fire, which could only serve as a beacon to show the running men where to stay away from. Underwood seemed morose, and Coe guessed the man was blaming himself for the escape of the two XBT hands.
Coe was thoroughly weary. It was partly that he was sore from so much hard riding, but mostly it was the strain. Catching these two was extremely important. The men were clearly right at the core of things. If they escaped, it might be impossible to discover what had happened to Pete. If they were Pete’s killers, they’d get away with it.
In spite of his weariness, Coe’s thoughts were too full of the jumble of recent events and questions raised to sleep. His mind worked feverishly trying to piece it all together, but without any convincing success. However, one thing stuck in his craw. Bert Tower and Buckshot Justin had a very peculiar relationship. Coe had a strong notion that Justin had something on Tower. Perhaps Tower was at the bottom of all this. Perhaps he had given orders to stage the holdups, Turner and Gordon had carried them out, and Justin had seen them and was holding it over Tower’s head. It made a certain kind of sense; but if it was true, why did Tower put up with Justin? Why not just kill him, as Turner and Gordon had probably killed Mulberry? If Justin was dead, he couldn’t talk. And all this still didn’t fit Pete in anywhere. There were places he might fit in, but no evidence which actually connected him to Tower in some specific way.
The questions began to circle his head like buzzards waiting for him to die, and then he was asleep.
~*~
There was somebody or something in the camp.
<
br /> Coe’s eyes came open, but he didn’t move otherwise. He listened, and all he could hear at first was the cool breeze in the surrounding trees.
A twig snapped.
A shadow crossed the small piece of starry sky he was able to see from his position.
Coe’s hand sought and found his pistol under his saddle, which he was using as a pillow. He got out of his bedroll as silently as he could, and moved on stockinged feet across the camp. When he reached the place he’d seen the shadow move, he stood looking and listening, gun held ready in his hand, though not cocked. He hadn’t cocked it for fear the noise would startle the animal or person who was prowling around.
There was no sound, no movement.
The camp was in a gap in a maple thicket along the stream bed. The steep sides of the valley rose on either hand, dark and featureless. Coe slipped out of the maples and up the southwest wall of the valley, picking his way over the grass and around the scattered bushes. Fifty feet up, he stopped to survey the bottoms. It was too dark to see much, though he could make out the mass of the maples below, and the slight change in tone of the darkness where their tops were etched against the background of the far valley slope.
Neither seeing nor hearing anything out of place, he went back down to the camp, and took a careful look around it again, checking on his companions while he was at it. They were both still sound asleep. He went to the horses, found them quiet and calm. Whatever it was hadn’t been a mountain lion.