The Overlanders

by Nelson Nye

  “When I seen Irv duck into these oaks just now, and Farraday ramming into them after him, I fed the hooks to my bronc and cut over, figuring to head them. But I cut over too far. I was just swinging back when I heard the shot.”

  He said bitterly, “I didn’t see him kill Irv. But the light from your lanterns showed where Irv was. I found Farraday standing over him — smoke still coming out of that Colt gun. I ran up and wrassled it away from him.”

  Farraday, reaching over, took Ben’s gun from Sary’s hand as casually as though he were about to sniff its barrel. He made sure, instead, the patent barrel-latch was locked and, smiling coldly at Hollis, slipped a finger around the trigger. “Very plausible,” he said, “but what’s it all about? I haven’t denied killing French. As for those tracks —” he glanced at Sary, “they were there if you’d wanted to find them. Olds, when he gets back, can tell you all about it.”

  “Olds!” Hollis blurted, and threw a wild look about him.

  “The kid,” Grete said patiently. “Barney Olds — hadn’t you missed him? French slipped the plates to Idaho. I gave them to Barney to put on his horse — along with the rifle which the kid also found, and told him to put down a trail into the mountains. Whatever Irv may have been up to isn’t like to come off quite the way it was planned.”

  They all caught the black look Hollis stabbed at the gunfighter. Idaho, loosening bony shoulders, ignored him, heading back for the fire. “Gee-rusalem!” Rip said, and felt around for his bottle.

  Hollis bared his teeth; but after looking at his Schofield casually balanced in Farraday’s fist he shut his face — as someone said afterward “hard enough to bust his nut-crackers.”

  Sary said, “What are you going to do about… that?”

  Grete looked down at French. “I guess,” he said, not without an edge of malice, “we’ll let Mr. Hollis take care of Irv. Rest of you better go hang on the nose bag. In case you’ve forgot, we’ve got stock to ride herd on.”

  Sary, as they moved back toward the grub, returned Grete’s pistol and cartridges. He gave her Ben’s Schofield. “A poor weapon to be caught with in this kind of country. It sure excells at unloading — spills empties and live ones all over your lap, but it sure don’t get along good with this dust. Cavalry had to get rid of them.” He pulled his stare from the swell of her shirt and brought his mind bitterly to the business in hand. “Case you’re wondering about those fillies…”

  Her head came around. “But I thought you traded —”

  “I sold those jaspers a bill of goods. We had to find grass and we had to have water. Happens all the water in this country’s right here; those springs that pair have squatted on, this seep and a hole at the other side of the pass.” He didn’t know why he was bothering to explain this.

  She said after a moment, “Why didn’t you just plug them the way you did French? It’ll come to that, won’t it?”

  “We might have lost some of the crew. They was set for it then.” He punched the empty out of the Colt’s cylinder and reloaded, thrusting the gun back into its holster. “If they’ve got to be shot I’ll drop them where it won’t matter.”

  They went the rest of the way in silence. But as they came up to the fire she said to him quietly, “You’re tough and pretty ruthless but you’re not quite the bastard you make yourself out to be.”

  She turned away, picking up a cup and tin plate, and set about the business of getting them filled. He thought angrily, staring after her: Now where did she come up with that idea? and twisted his jaw to look across the fire at Idaho. He hadn’t yet got it smoothed out in his head what the gunfighter’s stake in this deal added up to. He remembered Ben’s baleful look after mention of French’s plates, and cursed impotently under his breath. These were the men he was going to have to make his fight with and he had better weigh them careful.

  He got a layout of tools for himself from cook’s box and bent over the kettle, afterwards forking a couple of biscuits from the oven and dumping a splash of black coffee into one of the battered tin cups. This was just about the kind of crew a guy would pick if he was fixing to make off with a fortune in horses. It was hard, nevertheless, to imagine Ben killing French for the sake of the hole he must have reckoned the man’s death would put Farraday into. It had come near enough doing it, Grete thought, suddenly sweating.

  A galoot who would go that far to gain his ends was nobody to stamp your foot and yell boo at. It was a sobering thought. With his mouth full of stew he turned it over, glimpsing one other thing. Sary had said she was afraid of this crew, yet Ben had put it together. She had also claimed they were after her horses, but again you were forced to come back to Ben Hollis. If a man covered his dead brother’s horses, might he not also lust after that brother’s comely wife?

  One by one the men swabbed out their plates and went off to the caballada. Farraday dug out the makings and patched up a smoke, trying to trace out the probable succession of events by which Ben might hope to gain control of this stock. But he remained too aware of Sary’s proximity to get very far with any serious thinking.

  He got up, grinding out the butt of his cigarette, and tossed his tableware into the wreck pan. Biggest problem right now centered around Curly Bill. That false trail the kid was laying might keep Bill himself off their necks, or it might not. But this was the best Grete could look for. The moment that swarthy outlaw decided the horses weren’t coming through Stein’s he’d have moved to seal off every trail they might use and then, with what was left of his men, he’d have set out to find them.

  Grete snaked a fresh mount from the cavvy under rope off to one side at the left of the fire. You couldn’t turn geldings in with mares, particularly when there was a stallion around. It was remarkable when you stopped to think of it that Steeldust behaved as well as he did. Someone had obviously spent a lot of time with him. Barney, probably — he seemed to have a knack with stock. French had a way with stock too, Grete remembered, and irascibly hoped his faith in the kid would prove better justified than his snap judgment of Hollis.

  It was Idaho that Grete couldn’t figure. Considering the pounding that lay between them the gunfighter’s present cooperative attitude looked phony as anything Grete had come up against. Had Idaho swallowed his feelings or was he only dissembling? By every standard the man should be itching to take a fall out of Grete to recover the prestige Grete’s fists had drubbed out of him. That thing of him coming up with French’s plates still had Grete going around in circles. Or maybe it was lack of rest that made his head hurt.

  He considered the mares and found the bulk of them grazing. Stars glimmered like jewels in the black night above them. There was no wind. The moon, in its last quarter, had not yet come up. A rider drifted out of the dark motte of trees with a soft “Quien es?”

  “Farraday,” Grete said. “Everything quiet?”

  The Mexican shrugged. “Poco bueno.”

  “Where’s Idaho?”

  Frijoles pointed. “Far side, I sink.”

  “Slip back and catch a few winks.” Farraday rode on. He was so exhausted he could hardly keep his eyes open. He yawned prodigiously. Next horseman he encountered was Rip. He sent the man in. Off somewhere above the pass a coyote irritably yammered, and a picture came up in Grete’s mind of the way Ben had looked when the younger of those two blockheads had made his crack about a “sorrel filly.” Stifling a yawn he saw the forward-hunched gauntness of Idaho drift out of the gloom.

  “Damn funny thing,” the gunfighter said, “we ain’t seen more of them broncs those two rannies is supposed to be raisin’. I run off one stray and Rip choused a couple. Way that pair acted, a feller would think these goddamn rocks was bulgin’ with stock.”

  “Range ain’t fenced,” Grete said without giving much thought to the matter. “God, but I’m tired!” He yawned again, allowing the horse to carry him away from the gunfighter. Then he skreaked round to call, “I sent Rip and Frijoles back to the fire to catch some sleep.”

  He
didn’t know if Idaho heard him or not. He guessed it didn’t make any hell of a lot of difference. He hadn’t forgot what he was doing here. His mind never strayed far from Crotton. It never strayed very far away from Sary either, and this tendency he despised as an indicated soft streak in a purpose that was otherwise as hard as rage could make it.

  Perhaps he drowsed. It looked like some of the mares had gone to sleep on their feet. Something got through to him, rousing him enough to pull the chin off his chest. Sary’s voice said out of the darkness, “You’d better get off that horse before you fall off.”

  “I’m all right,” Grete muttered.

  “That’s pure stubbornness talking. This crew can’t take the punishment you’re giving it — a man’s got to rest. Listen to me, Grete —”

  “I’m awright,” he snarled, angered.

  “You’re not all right and neither are the rest of them. You don’t have to kill yourselves nursing this stock. The stud will take care of… Anyway, I haven’t seen any — have you?”

  Farraday knuckled his eyes, trying to grind the sleep out of them, dragging his hands down across the rasp of unshaved cheeks. “Have I what?”

  “Seen any loose stock. For horse ranchers that pair don’t seem to have many horses. I’ve got a feeling,” she said darkly, “there’s something wrong here someplace.”

  Grete stared at her blearily. The flutter of her words flapping round inside his head vaguely stirred something touched by Idaho when the man had spoken to him earlier; but he couldn’t seem to get his thoughts scraped together.

  “You don’t know that pair, do you?” Sary’s voice prodded him.

  “How the hell,” he said irrelevantly, “does that one-eyed wooden-legged cook stick a saddle?”

  “He’s got a cut-off rifle scabbard rigged for a stirrup. Here —” she passed her water bag to him. “Splash some of that on your face and pay attention.”

  He noticed while he was doing this the nervous way she kept peering off into the dark. He sleeved his cheeks and gave her back the corked bag. “Supposing,” she said, “someone had started a ranch here. That pair we saw don’t have to be the ranchers. They could be somebody Curly Bill —”

  “By God!” he said, suddenly coming wide awake.

  “They could have been here to hold up this drive. One of them even now might be riding —”

  “I can damn soon find out!” he said, thinking how goddamn stupid he’d been. He gave her a kind of wondering look, for the first time actually considering this woman.

  She smiled at him oddly with her head tipped back so that starlight showed the faint shine of her teeth. “Perhaps we’ve both,” she said softly, “been thinking things we’ve had no right to.” They stared a moment longer. Impulsively she put out a hand and he took it, feeling a confusion of warmth rush all through him.

  Then, recalling his plans, he turned loose of her, anger lashing the sick shame that unaccountably laid hold of him. Was he a child to be swayed by the swish of a skirt!

  Swearing under his breath he sent the horse curvetting away, wheeling its head toward the deep stain of trees that twenty yards out cut across the trail to hide the ranch’s distant buildings.

  The horse hadn’t hardly got into its stride before Grete saw the tall blackness squarely set across his path. He pulled up with his nerves and his fears jerking at him. He caught the pale glint of gun steel and the motionless legs of a horse plain below it; all else was obscure against the smother of trees.

  There was nothing obscure about Idaho’s voice. “You won’t be needin’ no woman when you’re stone-cold dead!”

  EIGHT

  While Farraday, growing wilder and angrier, was trying to catch up with the full import of this, a second blotch walked its horse out of the shadows and, coming up on Grete’s far side, revealed the scowling rage-roughened cheeks of Ben Hollis. But it was the gunfighter Farraday continued to watch while the tone of those echoing words carried alarm through every nerve in his body.

  He wrapped both hands over the pommel of his saddle. “So you’ve patched up your fences,” he said at last, gruffly.

  “Never mind about that!” Idaho’s voice held the twang of stretched wire. “Keep away from her — hear?”

  Farraday pressed his mouth together and something about this wicked calm seemed almost beyond bearing. “I hear you,” Grete said; and Hollis, breathing raggedly, suddenly backed his horse away from them.

  Although expecting trouble and braced for it ever since he’d hooked on with this drive, Farraday abruptly was left without speech. The gunfighter’s glance, aroused as the stalking hunger of a tiger left him nothing to get behind. Looking into that unwinking gaze it suddenly came over Grete that neither horses nor any damage which could have stemmed from the beating he had given the man was behind this. Loss of face at Grete’s hands had nothing to do with the gunfighter’s fury. Farraday was appalled.

  And yet, inexplicably mixed with his revulsion and shock, was a chastening humility, a reaching out, almost a compassion for this gaunt ox of a man, this hardcase spawned of chaparral and gunsmoke — in some weird way a kind of affinity. Something of this may have crept through his tone. “All right,” he said, “you can back off now. You’ve got no quarrel with me.”

  But the man, too wound up, couldn’t ease off the hook. His feelings were too powerful, too ravaged by suspicion and the ugly visions bred of it, to accept any easy assurance. Knowing what Grete had been to Crotton’s brawling empire, he read into Farraday’s tame reaction something which he could not brook. He had no faith in Grete’s sincerity. It was too alien, too contrary to personal experience.

  Grete, sensing this, gauging the futility of attempting to convince the man, picked up his reins. “When I go hungering after a petticoat —”

  “Never mind! You been warned. Get this straight,” Idaho growled harshly. “Long as your actions stay in line with her best interests I’ll back your play. When they don’t I’m comin’ after you.”

  Farraday reined his horse about, too bitterly furious to risk further words.

  • • •

  No light showed in the log house of the brothers, but this was a country that went early to bed. In the east the great orange disc of the moon was pushing its face above the black steeps of Knight Mountain, bathing in leprous ochers the roundabout knobs and ridges.

  He paused after a bit for a glance at his back trail, peering into the dark of trees, the deception of shadow patches, remembering Ben who might not be above taking his goose any way he could catch him. But he saw nothing which alarmed him and presently went on, walking the horse, hand by the butt of his holstered pistol.

  He reckoned he’d better get rid of that gunfighter. Sooner or later the man would breed trouble. Idaho wouldn’t like the Swallowfork end of this. He would consider that Grete had lied to the girl, bent the truth inexcusably, cheating her; he might force a showdown Grete wasn’t ready for.

  This made Grete shake his head. Getting rid of the man wasn’t in the cards. When they came up against Crotton Grete would need every one of them. Regardless of that, Grete’s hands were tied. Idaho was in deadly earnest about Sary; whether or not he had any chance in that quarter, the gunfighter’s interest in the girl would never permit Grete to send him packing; and Farraday, in this brew he had cooking, couldn’t afford to be laughed at or ignored. He might just as well pitch in his hand as to issue an order he couldn’t make stick. The fellow would never let it come to fists again.

  Anger came up in Grete’s throat so thick it choked him. But he couldn’t find any way around his dilemma. He didn’t have to grab any gypsy’s fist to know he’d wedged himself between a rock and a hard place.

  He paused again, halfway down, to take a feel of the wind. There was precious little blowing but it made him do some shifting to come onto the flat where the brothers had built without giving their penned stock something to nicker about.

  Hereabouts the oaks were gnarled and stunted, mostly brush, mixed u
p considerably with thorny thickets of mesquite and catclaw. The drugged light of the moon, still furry and orange, didn’t make things any better. Employing a great deal of care he skirted the barn, pausing a further while when the log walls of the house came blackly out of the piled-up shadows. There was still no sign of movement in the yard though he could see a huddle of stock behind the nearest rump to head in the small round corral that had the post in its center. He debated getting down off his horse but decided against this.

  The place looked deserted. Grete didn’t want to be caught with the appearance of sneaking up on his layout and if the brothers were gone he dared not risk any more time in scouting. With a prickly feeling between his squared shoulders he put the horse into motion, riding openly into the pale gloom of the yard.

  Nothing happened until he got half across it when the geldings set up a racket from the horse trap, joined by the softer-pitched whickerings of the fillies. Grete reined up by the porch. “Hello, inside there — anybody home?”

  He got out of the saddle and stepped up on the porch. He called again with his glance prowling the yard and this time heard the strained groaning of bunk ropes as someone turned over and slapped bare feet to the floor. Something sharply metallic, like a gun being cocked, came out of the sounds the man made moving around. It was the older brother’s voice that called. “Who is it?”

  “Trail boss — Farraday.”

  “Be right with you.”

  Grete heard the man pulling on his pants, then the slap of his weight crossing the boards of the floor. The door was yanked open. Something gleamed in the gloom. “What’s up?” the man said.

  “Where’s your brother?”

  “What difference would that make?”

  There was an edge of suspicion in the rancher’s surly tone and this — coupled with the gun he had hold of — convinced Grete. He said, to throw the man off guard, “Take a look over here and tell me if this is him.” He wheeled then, turning as though to cross the porch but coming all the way around. One down-chopping hand knocked the gun from the rancher’s fist; Grete’s other hand, lifting, cracked him wickedly across the throat. The man gagged, staggering back. Grete, coldly furious, smashed him in the face. The man went down as though hit with a club.