Triple Peaks

by John Glasby

  He watched constantly ahead, for even here, death lay in wait at every bend of the trail. Hammerheads lay coiled in the shallow holes along the side of the trail, ready to strike out at a horse as it moved past them; and once a horse or man received a bite from one of these, he died within minutes, his body swollen, his limbs afire with agony.

  In places, the trail angled down to the point where it was almost level with the bases of the towering buttes and then again, it would rise steeply, up the sides of the deep canyons, around dangerous bends so that it skirted the meandering sandstone walls of the bluffs.

  The hours passed; long, tortured things. The heat head increased until he seemed to be moving through a burning, sluggish sea of air that gave him no respite. Every breath he took burned in his lungs, increased the agony in his head and although the dust kicked up by the hooves of his mount had subsided a little, the glare from the desert made it impossible to see anything clearly and had built up a sensation of nausea in his stomach. Regularly, he paused to stare into the seemingly limitless distances behind him, searching the desert for any sign of men trailing him, but as the day wore on and he saw nothing, he began to put the thought of pursuit out of his mind.

  The sun was finally westering when he rode wearily on to a low shelf of ground, the only stretch that lifted above this area of the flat desert. He paused for a moment as he rolled himself a smoke, trying to put his thoughts into some kind of order. Dejection settled heavily over him as he sat the saddle thoughtfully, shading his eyes against the reddening rays of the lowering sun, gazing out over the savage wilderness that lay ahead of him, facing the inescapable fact that he was still only at the beginning of his journey, his misery and danger. In this terrible emptiness, his chances of surviving for long were low. With little water or food, a man could wander and lose himself quite easily here, until years later, another man crossing it would stumble over a pile of white, sun-bleached bones, all that remained of him. For this was country that had no need of man, did not want him, rejected him with everything at its disposal. The dunes and gulches were swarming with rattlers, hammerheads and a dozen other species of equally poisonous snake. He dismounted, stretched his stiff limbs. The terrain ahead of him was void and silent, showing no sign of movement right out to the shimmering horizon, no indication of the presence there of any other living thing.

  *

  It was not in Turrell to wait, but he knew that he could not continue riding through the night and expect his mount to carry him the rest of the way across the desert. He made cold camp on the ridge which was perhaps half a mile in length and lifted perhaps fifty feet above the rest of the desert. The moon came up, cold and white shortly after midnight and in his blankets, he lay on his side and watched the long shadows that lay in midnight darkness across the razor-edged gullies. The sound of horses would be muffled by the sand, he knew, even in the stillness that had dropped like a cloak about him once the sun had gone down. Unable to sleep, he rolled himself a smoke, keeping his head well down as he lit it. Even in the moonlight, a keen-eyed marksman could spot the glowing tip of a cigarette half a mile away. He smoked slowly, feeling the warmth come back into his body. In the desert, the air grew bitterly cold after dark. Finishing his smoke, he thrust the butt into the loose sand in front of him, settled back in his blankets.

  He slept uneasily, waking several times, cold and miserable in the bright, clear moonlight. The steely first palings of dawn found him awake, body stiff and chilled to the bone. Swiftly, he folded up his blankets, tied them down against the saddle, let his mount eat from the coarse grass that grew in patches along the ridge, then swung up into the saddle and rode out, covering the ground with a consuming gait. Where the pinched-down mountains reached out to the desert, with the sun high at its zenith, he splashed over a swift-moving stream, the first he had encountered since he had started out over the desert, and made good progress through the lush grasses that grew along the benchlands at the foot of the mountains.

  Two hours further on and the scent of wood smoke reached him on the still air and he traced out its strengthening fragrance to discover that it originated in a small draw set among the rocks. Rounding the bend in the trail, he came out into the small clearing, saw the three men seated around the fire and reined up sharply. There were a thousand places for a man to lose himself in these mountains and one look at these men told him they type they were. Hard men, flesh burned dark by long exposure to the hot sun, scarred by trouble and maybe still looking for trouble. Along the trail, Turrell had seen many like them, restless, narrow of mind and outlook, governed by passion and greed. Such men had ridden with him further south and east before his band had been broken up.

  The man nearest him moved first. He pushed himself slowly to his feet, turned and eyed Turrell sharply. The other two men fixed their gaze on him with a dead steadiness.

  Turrell noticed the nearest man’s hand hovering close to the gunbutt at his waist and he said quietly: ‘Easy there, mister. All I want is somethin’ to eat. This is one hell of a trail.’

  The other hesitated, then shrugged. His hand moved away from his side, but not too far and he was clearly still suspicious. ‘Step down then, stranger,’ he said harshly. ‘We got venison and beans.’ He pointed at the fire. ‘Help yourself.’

  ‘Thanks.’ Turrell stepped down from the saddle, let his horse move off into the thick grass. Squatting on his haunches, he filled the plate that one of the men thrust at him, ate the hot food slowly, savouring the taste of it. The gnawing hunger pains in his belly stilled. A mug of scalding coffee was handed to him and he washed down the meat and beans, sat back and rolled himself a smoke, aware of their glances laid on him, guessing at the thoughts that were running through their minds.

  ‘You been long in these hills?’ he asked quietly, sending a level gaze at the men around the fire.

  ‘Sure,’ said the tallest man, in a tone so false that Turrell knew he was lying, but he held the other’s gaze long enough for the man to understand that he knew it to be a lie.

  ‘See a posse ride through this way any time durin’ the night?’

  ‘We seen nobody,’ grunted one of the other men, but there was a quickening note of interest in his tone. ‘You ridin’ from somethin’?’

  ‘Could be.’

  ‘Most men in these hills are.’

  ‘I guessed that. Seems like a good place to hide out from the law.’ He lit his cigarette, drew the smoke down into his lungs, aware of the close scrutiny from the three men, but giving no sign of it.

  ‘Seems to me that you’re asking a mighty lot of questions, mister,’ said the tall, black-bearded man who seemed to be the leader of the group. ‘Just what have you got on your mind? Where’re you from?’

  ‘Back east,’ he said easily. He stared at the other through the blue smoke. In these hills there was no law except that of the gun; men had been secretly killed for a horse and whatever they carried in their saddle-bags.

  ‘I had some men with me once,’ he told them evenly, his gaze steady, his tone convincing. ‘Men like I figure you are. We made a good thing near the Texas border. Trouble was, the Rangers got a little too interested in what we were doin’ and moved in against us. Seems to me that this frontier here is just waitin’ for somethin’ like that. The law is pretty scattered and there ought to be some good pickin’ to be had in these parts.’

  The short man sitting opposite him lifted his head sharply. His gaze became clouded. ‘There’s somethin’ familiar about you, mister,’ he said finally. ‘Could be that we’ve met someplace.’

  ‘Could be,’ Turrell said mildly. ‘Depends where you’ve been.’

  The other cleared his throat, spat aside, and fixed a baleful stare ahead. Then his expression cleared. ‘I know you. You’re Ed Turrell.’

  ‘Turrell!’ There was a sharp note of surprise in the big man’s voice as he turned his head to stare at the other. ‘They said you were dead. Killed by the Rangers near Tucson a year ago.’

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p; ‘Then they were wrong.’ Turrell grinned viciously. ‘They tried to kill me. But I’m still alive and I mean to stay that way.’ He could see by the looks on their faces that they were no longer suspicious.

  ‘You mean to start again to this territory?’ The short man drew in a heavy breath.

  ‘I’d need to look the place over. Any towns in this area?’

  ‘Triple Peaks,’ broke in the big man. ‘About fifteen miles to the west, over the mountains.’

  ‘You figurin’ on takin’ the place?’

  The other looked uncertain. Turrell gauged his moment. Around him, there was uneasiness stirring. He knew these men had visions of riding against Triple Peaks, but if they sat there much longer without reaching a decision, their resolution might dwindle. It was one thing to talk with him of moving in on this peaceful territory. It was another thing altogether to ride deliberately into trouble and the eyes of the many guns that might be ranged against them.

  ‘I guess I’ve outridden that posse from Culver City,’ he said with a grim smile. ‘They lost my trail a long ways back. If I had some guns at my back, I reckon I could do the same here as I did near the Texas border. And this time, we could be ready for any Rangers they might send to smash us.’

  ‘Sounds a decent proposition to me,’ affirmed the third man, speaking for the first time. ‘I like it.’

  ‘It’s a risk,’ mused the small, stockily-built man from the other side of the fire. ‘We’ve ridden into Triple Peaks and although it may be an easy town to take, there are some big men runnin’ the ranches in the surroundin’ territory and once they banded together against you — as they will — you’ll not find it so easy.’

  ‘They won’t worry us so long as we don’t bother them to start with,’ Turrell said tonelessly. He turned to glance at the big man, his face hard and fixed.

  ‘We’ve not been doin’ so badly ourselves until now,’ said the other slowly. ‘What do you say, Tragge?’

  The short man drew his brows together, lips set in a tight line. ‘I guess so. But that don’t mean to say we couldn’t do a heap better if we threw in our lot with Turrell here.’

  The big man fished in the cook pot for more beans, scooping them on to his plate. He chewed them thoroughly before he let them slide down his throat. With an equal slowness, he drained the mug of coffee at his side, then said heavily: ‘And what guarantee do you have, Turrell, that we wouldn’t run into big trouble if we backed you?’

  Turrell made a toneless reply. ‘You said yourself that it would be a pushover. Once we have the town all sewn up, we can start to really operate. There must be plenty of gold in the banks, or carried on the stages between here and Culver City. We could all be rich in no time. Once the goin’ gets rough, we pull up stakes and ride out.’

  ‘You figurin’ on takin’ on any more men?’

  Turrell shrugged. ‘If there are any who want to throw in their lot with us, why not? The bigger we are, the less chance the law has of stoppin’ us.’

  ‘You make it all sound so easy,’ said Tragge. His gaze flicked over Turrell’s face, then on to the other two men. ‘Kreb and Dufray here have always been a little wary of strangers. But I vote we fall in with your plan.’

  ‘Me, I think about this thing,’ said Kreb tautly. ‘I’ve heard about you, Turrell. You got away by the skin of your teeth when the Rangers closed in on you and left the rest of your men to die. How’d we know that the same thing won’t happen again and — ’

  He broke off suddenly as he found himself staring down the black hole of the Colt that was lined up on his chest, Turrell’s finger hard and white-knuckled on the trigger. The outlaw’s lips were drawn back in a vicious, animal-like snarl. ‘I don’t want to kill you, Kreb,’ he said thinly, speaking through tightly-clenched teeth. ‘But I will if you don’t take that back right now.’

  For a long moment, there was a tense silence around the crackling log fire. Tension hung in the still air. Eyes were bright with challenge. The gun barrel laid on the big man’s chest was stone still, steady. There was no sense in trying to gamble, although the thought of it lived for a second in the big man’s eyes. Then he shrugged his shoulders slowly, let his spread-fingered hands droop and move away from his sides.

  ‘All right, Turrell, I’m sorry,’ he muttered gruflly. ‘But you got to admit that it seems funny. We got to look after our own interests. We got a good thing here and it would be stupid to throw it all away and maybe our lives as well, followin’ you.’

  Turrell paused for a few moments longer, then thrust the gun back into leather. There had been no visible movement when he had drawn the gun and it was obvious that the three men had been virtually mesmerised by the speed of his draw. Maybe, he mused inwardly, it was this that had made them change their minds, for Dufray said smoothly: ‘Ain’t no point in flyin’ off the handle half-cocked, Turrell. We like your plan, but we’d like to know just a little more about it.’

  ‘Very well. Nobody knows me in this town. I’ll ride in tomorrow, look the place over. I want you to stay here for a couple of days and then ride down into Triple Peaks. By that time, we’ll be ready to take over the place.’

  Chapter Three: Gun Rage

  The long valley lay deathly hushed in the hot sun as Turrell rode down from the low foothills. It was a strangely menacing hush that began to work on him as he lifted himself up in the saddle and peered through the shimmering heat haze to where the town of Triple Peaks lay nestled close to the far horizon. A mile further along the trail which was wide and stony here, he came across a bent wooden sign that pointed in the direction in which he was travelling. It bore the simple legend: Triple Peaks.

  Lifting his head from his perusal of it, he felt a faint smile form on his dust-streaked face. Off in the distance, just beyond the vague dark smudge of shadow that was the town itself, he saw the characteristic mountain chain at the back of it. Even where he was, some ten miles distant, he could make out the three sky-rearing peaks that had evidently given the town its name.

  He saw no sign of life as he allowed his mount to make its own pace along the dusty trail. He was in no hurry now that his destination was in sight, perhaps three hours or so away. He should reach it before high noon and when he rounded a bend in the road and came within sight of the creek that bubbled down from somewhere in the mountains he had left at dawn, he let his mount wander with the reins trailing, giving it an opportunity to blow and drink its fill from the stream. He was a trifle bothered by the gnawing hunger pains in his stomach but this was of little inconvenience to him and he had already decided that he would eat once he got to Triple Peaks. It would give him an opportunity to learn something about the town.

  Where the creek suddenly veered to the south, cutting across the trail, he rode clear of the vegetation that grew along its banks, rode out into the hot sunlight. He had removed the bandage from around his head earlier that morning before riding out of the small camp in the hills and he could now touch the bruised flesh with his fingers without wincing every time that he did so. That doctor in the town had certainly known his business, he mused. But he was still worried about his eye. It was now virtually impossible for him to see anything clearly out of it. Only vague, blurred shapes that twisted and wavered in front of him.

  Pushing on into Triple Peaks, he rode into the outskirts three hours later. It was a bigger town than he had thought and for a moment, he doubted what those three men had told him of this place. It did not look as though it would be a pushover. There was sure to be law and order here, otherwise it would never have grown to this size, never have become so obviously prosperous. Still, one could never tell by first impressions. It was possible that there had been law and order here for so long that the townsfolk had grown used to it and would lack the ability to act swiftly when anything threatened their security.

  Situated almost at the very end of the main street running through the town was a large saloon, with a hotel standing next to it. Evidently it had been decided that the best
place for business was where men entered or left the town. He let his gaze drift over them, then continued on down the street, gaze flicking from right to left. In the stifling heat of high noon, there were few folk out on the street. Several men lounged in rockers on the boardwalk, seated in the shade, legs thrust out in front of them, their hats pulled down over their eyes. A few watched him as he rode by and he was acutely aware of their glance on him, knew they were appraising him, trying to guess why he was there and what sort of man he was.

  Most of them, he knew, were just idlers. They might be curious for a little while, but then they would forget him. But here and there, he noticed, were others who took a more serious interest in him. In front of the sheriff’s office stood a couple of men, guns slung low at their hips. Lean, hard men, with eyes that missed nothing. As he rode by, giving no sign that he knew he was being so closely scrutinised, the door of the office opened and a tall, broad-shouldered man stepped out on to the boardwalk. The star on his shirt glittered brilliantly in the flooding sunlight.

  Riding on to the livery stables, he got down from the saddle, looped the reins over the horse’s neck and led it towards the darkened interior. A couple of men leaning against one of the posts turned idly and after a pause, one of them took a piece of wood from between his teeth and ambled over to him.

  Turrell said quietly: ‘Reckon you’d better cool him off. It’s hellish hot out beyond town.’

  ‘Been ridin’ long, mister?’

  ‘Made camp up in the hills back east. Didn’t have much choice after ridin’ across that desert beyond.’ He handed the reins to the other. ‘Where’s the best place to eat in town?’

  The liveryman eyed him sharply for a moment, then turned to his companion leaning against the upright.

  ‘Hey, Joe. Take him over to Ah Fong’s.’