by Nelson Nye
Up ahead of him a pack horse went down as though axed, spilling its load and flipping all the way over, one frantic hoof catching the rump of Grete’s horse, almost knocking him into Sary’s gray which shied violently, nearly unseating her. Ben’s horse was hit and losing ground steadily; Grete saw the Mexican drop back, kicking a foot from the stirrup, and then something pulled his glance again to Sary. The gray was stumbling; there was blood on its hip. Farraday kneed his horse closer. Now they were neck and neck. The gray’s eyes were wild. Grete threw an arm out, shouting at the girl, but she shook her head at him, keeping the horse on its feet with the reins. Grete, swearing, furious, crowded his own mount against them. “Kick your feet free!”
Not even her strength on the reins was going to keep that gray going many more strides. Its head was coming down; Grete knew it was running blind. “Kick loose!” he shouted, and caught the girl about the waist.
He wasn’t a moment too soon. As her knee cleared the cantle the gray’s legs went out from under it. Grete’s look, darting ahead of them, found the mares pouring into the slot. He had never seen a more welcome sight than those canyon walls as they opened in front of him.
He let the girl slide down as soon as they got into the dropped rocks from the cliff. Yanking his rifle, he got out of the saddle and, tossing her the reins, ran back through the dust to have a look at what was happening.
“Reckon they’ve had a bellyful,” Idaho said, coming beside him.
Only three of the outlaws were still in sight. Jim Hughes, Ike Clanton and the badge-packing towhead. They sat their jaded horses back where the drive had first come onto the bench and there was nothing about their appearance to indicate an intention of carrying this further.
“Nevertheless,” Grete said, “we’ll be keeping our eyes peeled. There’s still barren country between us and Willcox.”
TWELVE
Against Ben’s grumbling and Sary’s vigorous protests they by-passed Bowie, giving it plenty of elbow-room. Grete was taking no needless chances of being further delayed this side of safety. He was on his dun with a rope around its jaws in lieu of the bridle he’d loaned the girl along with his saddle; Ben was forking Frijoles’ hull. With a rifle in his arms Grete ranged far and wide, keeping constant watch. But they saw no more of the marauders. Either Bill hadn’t come up with his main bunch or had decided any additional attempt against the drive was no longer feasible. If the latter were the case, Grete thought their present whereabouts might have considerable to do with it. For they were in country now where in the past Bill had preferred to exhibit his good behavior.
The drive pulled into Willcox on the following night and a more whipped-out bunch of hooligans a fellow never looked at. Dust-streaked and brush-scarred, unshaven, bleary-eyed, and generally acting like hell wouldn’t have them, they set up a camp out from the east edge of town where broad grassy flats made keeping track of the stock relatively simple.
“First thing I want,” Sary said, “is a bath.”
Grete could understand that; the same thought was in his own head. He stood a moment rasping grimy beard-stubbled cheeks, hard eyes picking over the rest of the outfit. “We’ve got to rest up these mares. I’ll take you in. You can put up at the hotel.”
She gave him an unreadable look. “I can find it.”
“You’re not about to go in by yourself.”
“I’ll take her in,” Ben said, reaching his coat down. “I’ve —”
“You’re staying here. And that goes for the rest of you.” Grete looked around. He got some pretty hard stares. No one talked back but he could read reservations in the cant of their jaws. “Our friend Bill ain’t the only thief in this country. This stock’s going to be watched. You’ll do no hobnobbing with strangers.”
“A man’s spare time,” cook said, scowling, “is his own.”
“When you’ve got some spare time I’ll see that you know about it.”
There was no further talk. Grete took Sary into town and saw that she got a decent room at the hotel. The clerk was inclined to be garrulous but a second look at Grete made him hobble his tongue. Outside her door Grete said, “I’ll leave your horse at the livery. If you want it, send for it; don’t go out on the street by yourself without you’re mounted.”
He saw her chin lift. “I’m used to taking care of myself —”
“Mind what I’m telling you,” he said curtly, and left her.
On the street he debated dropping in on the marshal but decided against it. Folks would know he was back soon enough without him helping it. He got into the saddle and walked his horse back to camp.
The mares, he thought, looking them over, seemed quiet enough. He swung down by the fire, more used up than he knew, wishing now he’d stopped off at a barber’s. A hot soak in a tub would have taken some of this out of him.
He hauled the gear off his horse and turned it loose with a slap, stood listening a while to the snores of the crew. He moved around, counting shapes. All here but one.
Remotely angry, he looked again. One of the shapes, twisting over, came onto an elbow. It was the kid. “I left your roll over there with Patch’s stuff.”
“Where’s Rip?”
Olds replied too quick. “Said somethin’ about keeping an eye on the stock.”
Farraday could guess what kind of stock that was. He thought, To hell with it! He went over and opened his bed, kicked off his boots and got into it; as an afterthought he pulled off his hat. He lay there a moment more dead than alive. Swearing under his breath he reached down and unbuckled his gun belt and, arching his back, dragged its lumpiness from under him. His wind came out in a long sort of sigh. Still he didn’t feel right. He pushed an arm out and brought the hat over his face and went to sleep with a fist curled around the bone grips of his pistol.
• • •
In spite of the log-like quality of his slumber he awoke at the first sound of stirring. He sat up in his blankets to find day at hand, the black crags of the Peloncillos brightly edged with silver where they touched the horizon. Cook was hawking and spitting like a man well into the last lap of consumption. The kid, Barney Olds, was breaking dead wood Patch had salvaged from their trek through the canyon, and the gunfighter, with a handbuilt limply plastered to his lip, was staring unreadably through the curl of its smoke from a perch on the folded-up bulk of his tarp.
Olds got a fire going while cook stirred up batter.
Frijoles in the middle of a snore suddenly sneezed and presently, flinging back his blankets, stomped into his boots and lit out for some buckbrush, the only thicket in sight. Farraday glanced toward the horses, discovering Rip riding circle.
The sun hooked its chin above the peaks and poured a burst of pure light across the valley’s empty acres, gilding the distant roofs of town, striking bright dazzles from east-facing windows. Beyond the gunfighter Hollis threw covers off his head. He scrubbed his eyes and blinked around and swore and crawled out and got into his pants. He scowled when his stare piled up against Grete. “We’re out four mares and a nag from the work teams.” By his tone he made it seem these facts were entirely Farraday’s fault.
Grete ignored him but the kid, straightening up, was plainly minded to speak out. He had his mouth half-open but after a quick look around he caught up a rope and went off toward the horses.
Coffee smell began to lace through the camp. Over the fire salt pork commenced to crackle and Patch, hunching over it, began cutting up spuds into half a Dutch oven. Idaho, grinding out his smoke, looked up as Grete pulled on his boots. “You got somethin’ in mind for this mornin’?”
Observing the way the man brightly watched from behind half-shut lids — listening more to the voice than to what it was saying — Farraday came fully around, tugged and swayed by his own quicker breathing. A wildness drifted across the feel of these things and Idaho pushed a thin grin over his teeth, all the cocked joints of his body crouched and tightened. Yet, in some obscure way, he seemed not entirely ready — not,
at least, quite willing to bring the gun up into his hand.
It wasn’t fear. There was no fear in him. And no forgiveness.
Farraday’s glance cut over those others. “Cook’s going into town to stock up. He’ll be glad to fetch back anything you boys want.” He said after a moment, “Barring whisky and women,” and let the stillness pile up for a laugh that never came. “Both today and tomorrow we’re going to be right here.” Some of their ill temper got into his own face. “It might be that last night I didn’t make myself plain. Nobody leaves this camp without my permission.”
Rip rode up and dropped out of the saddle. The kid came in with Grete’s dun and two others caught up from the carry. Patch said, “Come an’ git it.”
They filled their plates in a sullen quiet, squatting where the notion struck them, each with his cup of steaming java. There was no talk, no feeling of comradeship a man could look back on, nothing holding them together but avarice and hate. There was no real difference between these men and that bunch they’d come through back there in the hills. They were cut from the same cloth, moved by similar appetites. Ordinary give and take, common decencies, didn’t touch them. They were held together by their greed for Sary’s horses, and all that stood in the way of this was their fear of Grete and Idaho.
Grete saw this clearly. The silence was thick with it. And he saw with a pitiless clarity how alike he and the gunfighter actually were. It was not a palatable comparison or one he was able any longer to avoid. Gunslick!
He might hide from the aptness of the term in his own mind but deep down inside he understood King Crotton as he never had before. This was how Crotton must have seen him; here, stripped of pretense, had been the basis of their relationship. Never the friend he had imagined himself to be. Just another hired gun. Treated well, to be sure — like a fine suit of clothes or a horse hard to come by. He understood now why Stroat, methodical, unimaginative, had been passed over for himself.
Stroat had the job now — the man would be a real broom with it.
Grete bolted the last tasteless mouthful of food, choking it down, getting up just as Rip did. Rip’s eyes slid around, springing wide as Grete stepped up to him. Grete’s hard glance found the sag in Rip’s coat; his hand, stabbing out, came away with the bottle. “Lock this up,” he said, tossing it to Patch.
Cook, lips locked tight, kept his hands where they were, flinching aside just enough to avoid being hit. Rip’s bottle, striking the Dutch oven, shattered. Rip’s bugged-out eyes watched the precious liquid run across the sooty metal and become an inch of darkness in the dust of the trampled ground. The sound he made was like the scream of a hamstrung pony. He got a knife from somewhere and with the face of a wild man sprang for Grete.
Rage gave him twice the strength his frame warranted. That first swing almost skewered Grete. Too late he realized he could not watch all of them, that here was what they had likely been waiting for — a chance to gang up on him. It was in their faces, in those widesprung eyes, in the cat-quick way they all came onto their feet. He had to watch Rip. The man was rushing in again, face twisted, the shine of his eyes throwing out a turned-loose fury that had no light of reason in it.
A dozen futile thoughts whirled through Grete’s head. The glint of that blade was wicked as a snake’s tongue. There was gooseflesh at the back of Grete’s neck and a cold sick horror at the pit of his belly. Naked steel had this power.
He knew Rip meant to gut him.
He could go for his gun — the impulse was in him, but if he set hand to pistol other guns would lift. It was not fright of a shoot-out which stopped him but the certain knowledge of what a corpse-and-cartridge occasion would do to the plans he hugged for besting Crotton. Every man of this crew would be needed at Swallowfork.
Ducking, stumbling, forced around in a circle by the darting lunges of that glittering steel, Grete no longer knew where any of them were except the kid, Barney Olds, whom he could glimpse now and again against the blur of light and shadow that made a backdrop for the savage slashes of Rip’s blade. The rest, he guessed, must be someplace back of him. His only defense was constant motion, to be continually moving until he could manage to get inside Rip’s reach.
Olds appeared again behind Rip, plainer now, evidently nearer, his white cheeks stiff with tension. The boy, nerved up to something, was working closer. Now Rip, stertorously breathing, abruptly shifted and commenced to back off. The kid suddenly stuck a leg out, intending to trip Rip. But Rip, again making one of those lightning shifts, lunged forward as though to pass Grete, spinning in mid-career to drive straight in, forcing Grete around. Grete, jumping frantically back, tripped over a loose rock and went down, heavily jarred, all the breath spilling out of him. Stretched like that he scarcely heard Idaho’s shouted “Stand fast!” that stopped all the rest of them dead in their tracks. Grete was conscious in that moment of nothing but Rip’s eyes and the glass-bright shimmer of the knife in Rip’s fist.
THIRTEEN
Refreshed by her bath and a night between sheets Sary, awake much too early, permitted herself the luxury of dawdling abed until the sun, coming through the window’s cracked blind, shamed such an extravagant waste of good daylight. Stretching, deliciously yawning, she presently sat up and shook out her red hair, suddenly enticed by the prospect of eating in town. There’d be eggs and ham — all manner of “throat-ticklin’ grub” as Patch would scornfully have put it; and perhaps, she thought with a confusion of feelings, there would be Grete Farraday.
Still thinking about him she threw back the covers, slid her legs out from under and, pushing up, crossed the uncarpeted floor to the washstand. The mirror disclosed little she had not observed before.
She frowned, shaking her head, at what sun and dust, branch water and wind were doing to her complexion. But she gave this only a passing thought, having long ago discovered she hadn’t a face men would turn about to stare at — attractive enough — she had good eyes — but a vast way from being any step to sudden riches. She had integrity and courage, a certain amount of ingenuity; but what man, she wondered with a touch of dry humor, ever bothered to look at a woman’s character!
She poured alkaline water into the chipped basin, wet a corner of the dingy towel, and washed the sleep from her eyes. She combed out her hair and put it up, still thinking of Farraday. Turning away from the glass she got into her clothes and took the chair off the knob and stood a moment, suddenly sighing. Opening the door she took a last look around and went down the stairs.
He wasn’t in the lobby. No sign of him in the dining room. She held her disappointment under careful restraint, not at all sure of her feelings. She was giving too much thought to the man. She remembered his face, the sharp gray of his eyes, the tough way he had of sizing things up. He was opinionated, heavy-handed, entirely too… Well, too what? she asked irritably. Too ready to take his way by force? Wasn’t this why she had wanted him?
She found a table in a corner, ordering indifferently, engrossed in the enigma of human relationships. When the food came she ate it, the pleasure foreseen in the prospect unrealized. Two drummers across the room sat with papers folded at elbows, heads together, chuckling, the one with his back to her occasionally turning to reveal an appraising, speculative glance. She ignored them.
A man with handlebar mustaches and a star on his vest drifted in from outside, looked around and pulled a chair out, roughly halfway between Sary’s place and the drummers. She watched the waitress bring coffee. The man laid both elbows on the table and left the black hat on his head. “Any rain east of the mountains?”
“Dry as a bone,” answered one of the drummers.
The marshal wasn’t drinking his coffee, Sary noticed. Just sitting there, vacantly staring into space. She finished her breakfast, looked at the bill, and laid a half dollar on the cloth beside it.
The lawman came out of his chair before she did. A sudden coldness crept into her when she saw him cut around a near table, coming toward her.
He came up with an easy, half-smiling glance. He took the hat off his head and laid a hand on the table. She noticed the blunt square shape of his fingers. “You with them horses camped east of town?”
Sary made herself nod. “We’re taking them out to the ranch,” she said.
“And may I ask where that is, ma’am?”
“Why —” She stopped with her mouth open, belatedly realizing she didn’t know where it was, didn’t know even what name it was called by. “Grete Farraday’s ranch.”
He just stood there, not speaking. He said, “I see,” rather strangely, she thought, as though he didn’t see at all. “Grete Farraday,” he nodded, and appeared to be studying something over her head. “You know Grete pretty well?”
“I’m his partner.”
She didn’t like the still, unsmiling manner of his regard or the odd offbeat way those blunt fingers tapped the table. She said, “Is he in trouble?”
“Oh no — no,” he said — “no trouble that I know of. Whereabouts did you fetch this stock of horses from ma’am?”
“We brought them through from New Mexico.”
“Through Stein’s?”
Something about the way he was watching her suggested to Sary she might be on dangerous ground. She said frankly, “No. Grete brought us through some pass to the north of Stein’s.”
He seemed to be turning that over. “Well,” he said, “let’s ride out there,” and put on his hat, taking the hand off her table.