“What started it?” The words sounded empty and alone in the vast stillness of the basin. Hardin turned his head slightly so the words could drift back. It was the manner of a man who rides much in the wind or rain. He shifted the rifle to his left hand and wiped his sweaty right palm on his coarse pants leg.
“Some loose talk. He was in the Bon Ton buyin’ grub an’ such. Johnny said somethin’ at which he took offense an’ they had some words. Johnny was wearin’ a gun, but this Lock wasn’t, so he gets him a gun an’ goes over to the Longhorn.
“He pushes open the door an’ shoots Johnny twice through the body. In the back.” Hardin spat.
“He fired a third shot, but that missed Johnny and busted a bottle of whiskey.”
There was a moment’s silence while they digested this, and then Neill looked up. “We lynchin’ him for the killin’ or bustin’ the whiskey?”
It was a good question, but drew no reply. The dignity of the five other riders was not to be touched by humor. They were riders on a mission. Neill let his eyes drift over the dusty copper of the desert. He had no liking for the idea of lynching any man, and he did not know the squatter from the Sorenson place. Living there should be punishment enough for any man. Besides, “Who saw the shooting?” he asked.
“Nobody seen it, actually. Only he never gave Johnny a fair shake. Sam was behind the bar, but he was down to the other end and it happened too fast.”
“What’s his name? Somebody call him Lock?” Neill asked. There was something incongruous in lynching a man whose name you did not know. He shifted in the saddle, squinting his eyes toward the distant lakes dancing in the mirage of heat waves.
“What’s it matter? Lock, his name is. Chat Lock.”
“Funny name.” The comment drew no response. The dust was thicker now and Neill pulled his bandanna over his nose and mouth. His eyes were drawn back to the distant blue of the lakes. They were enticingly cool and beautiful, lying across the way ahead and in the basin off to the right. This was the mirage that lured many a man from his trail to pursue the always retreating shoreline of the lake. It looked like water, it really did. Maybe there was water in the heat waves. Maybe if a man knew how, he could extract it and drink. The thought drew his hand to his canteen, but he took it away without drinking. The slosh water in the canteen was no longer enticing, for it was warm, brackish, and unsatisfying.
“You know him, Kimmel?” Kesney asked. He was a wiry little man, hard as a whipstock, with bits of sharp steel for eyes and brown muscle-corded hands. “I wouldn’t know him if I saw him.”
“Sure, I know him. Big feller, strong made, rusty-like hair an’ maybe forty year old. Looks plumb salty, too, an’ from what I hear he’s no friendly sort of man. Squattin’ on that Sorenson place looks plumb suspicious, for no man can make him a livin’ on that dry-as-a-bone place. No fit place for man nor beast. Ever’body figures no honest man would squat on such a place.” It seemed a strange thing, to be searching out a man whom none of them really knew.
Of course, they had all known Johnny Webb. He was a handsome, popular young man, a daredevil and a hellion, but a very attractive one, and a top hand to boot. They had all known him and had all liked him. Then, one of the things that made them so sure that this had been a wrong killing, even aside from the shots in the back, was the fact that Johnny Webb had been the fastest man in the Spring Valley country. Fast, and a dead shot.
Johnny had worked with all these men, and they were good men-hard men, but good. Kimmel, Hardin, and Kesney had all made something of their ranches, as had the others, only somewhat less so. They had come west when the going was rough, fought Indians and rustlers, and then battled drought, dust, and hot, hard winds. It took a strong man to survive in this country, and they had survived.
He, Neill, was the youngest of them all and the newest in the country. He was still looked upon with some reserve. He had been here only five years. Neill could see the tracks of the buckskin, and it gave him a strange feeling to realize that the man who rode that horse would soon be dead, hanging from a noose in one of those ropes attached to the saddle horn of Hardin or Kimmel. Neill had never killed a man or seen one killed by another man, and the thought made him uncomfortable.
Yet Johnny was gone, and his laughter and his jokes were a thing past. They had brightened more than one roundup, more than one bitter day of heartbreaking labor on the range. Not that he had been an angel. He had been a proper hand with a gun and could throw one. And in his time he had had his troubles.
“He’s walkin’ his horse,” Kesney said, “leadin’ him.”
“He’s a heavy man,” Hardin agreed, “an’ he figures to give us a long chase.”
“Gone lame on him maybe,” Kimmel suggested. “No, that horse isn’t limpin’. This Lock is a smart one.”
They had walked out of the ankle-deep dust now and were crossing a parched, dry plain of crusted earth. Hardin reined in suddenly and pointed. “Look there.” He indicated a couple of flecks on the face of the earth crust where something had spilled. “Water splashed.”
“Careless,” Neill said. “He’ll need that water.”
“No,” Kesney said. “He was pourin’ water in a cloth to wipe out his horse’s nostrils. Bet you a dollar.”
“Sure,” Hardin agreed, “that’s it. Horse breathes a lot bet ter. A man runnin’ could kill a good horse on this Flat. He knows that.”
They rode on, and for almost a half hour no one spoke. Neill frowned at the sun. It had been on his left a few minutes ago, and now they rode straight into it.
“What’s he doin’?” Kesney said wonderingly. “This ain’t the way to his place!” The trail had turned again, and now the sun was on their right. Then it turned again and was at their backs. Hardin was in the lead, and he drew up and swore wickedly. They ranged alongside him, and stared down into a draw that cracked the face of the desert alongside the trail they had followed. Below them was a place where a horse had stood, and across the bank something white fluttered from the parched clump of greasewood.
Kesney slid from the saddle and crossed the wash. When he had the slip of white, he stared at it, and then they heard him swear. He walked back and handed it to Hardin. They crowded near. Neill took the slip from Hardin’s fingers after he had read it. It was torn from some sort of book and the words were plain enough, scrawled with a flat rock for a rest. That was a fair shutin anyways six aint nowhars enuf, go fetch more men. Man on the gray better titen his girth or heel have him a sorebacked hoss.
“Why that … I” Short swore softly. “He was lyin’ within fifty yards of us when we come by. Had him a rifle, too. I seen it in a saddle scabbard on that buckskin in town. He could have got one of us, anyway!”
“Two or three most likely.” Kimmel commented. The men stared at the paper and then looked back into the wash. The sand showed a trail, but cattle had walked here, too. It would make the going a little slower. Neill, his face flushed and his ears red, was tightening his saddle girth. The others avoided his eyes. The insult to him, even if the advice was good, was an insult to them all. Their jaws tightened. The squatter was playing Indian with them, and none of them liked it.
“Fair shootin’, yeah!” Sutter exploded. “Right in the back!”
The trail led down the wash now, and it was slower going. The occasional puffs of wind they had left on the desert above were gone and the heat in the bottom of the wash was ovenlike. They rode into it, almost seeming to push their way through flames that seared. Sweat dripped into their eyes until they smarted, and trickled in tiny rivulets through their dust-caked beards, making their faces itch maddeningly. The wash spilled out into a wide, flat bed of sand left by the rains of bygone years, and the tracks were plainer now.
Neill tightened his bandanna and rode on, sodden with heat and weariness. The trail seemed deliberately to lead them into the worst regions, for now he was riding straight toward an alkali lake that loomed ahead. At the edge of the water, the trail vanished. Lock had
ridden right into the lake. They drew up and stared at it, unbelieving.
“He can’t cross,” Hardin stated flatly. “That’s deep out to the middle. Durned treacherous, too. A horse could get bogged down mighty easy.”
They skirted the lake, taking it carefully, three going one way, and three the other. Finally, glancing back, Neill caught sight of Kesney’s uplifted arm.
“They found it,” he said. “Let’s go back.”
Yet as he rode he was thinking what they all knew. This was a delay, for Lock knew they would have to scout the shores both ways to find his trail , and there would be a delay while the last three rejoined the first. A small thing, but in such a chase it was important.
“Why not ride right on to the ranch?” Short suggested.
“We might,” Hardin speculated. “On the other hand he might fool us an’ never go nigh it. Then we could lose him.”
The trail became easier, for now Lock was heading straight into the mountains. “Where’s he goin’?” Kesney demanded irritably. “This don’t make sense, nohow!”
There was no reply, the horsemen stretching out in single file, riding up the draw into the mountains. Suddenly Kimmel, who was now in the lead, drew up. Before him a thread of water trickled from the rock and spilled into a basin of stones.
“Huh!” Hardin stared. “I never knowed about this spring afore. Might’s well have a drink.” He swung down. They all got down and Neill rolled a smoke.
“Somebody sure fixed her up nice,” he said. “That wall of stone makin’ that basin ain’t so old.”
“No, it ain’t.” Short watched them drink and grinned. “He’s a fox, right enough. He’s an old ladino, this one. A reg’lar mossy horn. It don’t take no time for one man to drink, an’ one hoss. But here we got six men an’ six horses to drink an’ we lose more time.”
“You really think he planned it that way?” Neill was skeptical.
Hardin looked around at him. “Sure. This Lock knows his way around.”
When they were riding on, Neill thought about that. Lock was shrewd. He was desert wise. And he was leading them a chase. If not even Hardin knew of this spring, and he had been twenty years in the Spring Valley country, then Lock must know a good deal about the country. Of course, this range of mountains was singularly desolate, and there was nothing in them to draw a man.
So they knew this about their quarry. He was a man wise in the ways of desert and trail, and one who knew the country. Also, Neill reflected, it was probable he had built that basin himself. Nobody lived over this way but Lock, for now it was not far to the Sorenson place. Now they climbed a single horse trail across the starkly eroded foothills, sprinkled with clumps of Joshua and Spanish bayonet. It was a weird and broken land, where long fingers of black lava stretched down the hills and out into the desert as though clawing toward the alkali lake they had left behind.
The trail mounted steadily and a little breeze touched their cheeks. Neill lifted his hand and wiped dust from his brow and it came away in flakes, plastered by sweat. The trail doubled and changed, now across the rock face of the burnt red sandstone, then into the lava itself, skirting hills where the exposed ledges mounted in layers like a vast cake of many colors. Then the way dipped down, and they wound among huge boulders, smooth as so many waterworn pebbles. Neill sagged in the saddle, for the hours were growing long, and the trail showed no sign of ending.
“Lucky he ain’t waitin’ to shoot,” Kimmel commented, voicing the first remark in over an hour. “He could pick us off like flies.”
As if in reply to his comment, there was an angry whine above them and then the crack of a rifle. As one man they scattered for shelter, whipping rifles from their scabbards, for all but two had replaced them when they reached the lake. Hardin swore, and Kimmel wormed his way to a better view of the country ahead. Short had left the saddle in his scramble for shelter, and his horse stood in the open, the canteen making a large lump behind the saddle.
Suddenly the horse leaped to the solid thud of a striking bullet, and then followed the crack of the rifle, echoing over the mountainside. Short swore viciously. “If he killed that horse … I” But the horse, while shifting nervously, seemed uninjured.
“Hey!” Kesney yelled. “He shot your canteen!” It was true enough. Water was pouring onto the ground, and swearing, Short started to get up.
Sutter grabbed his arm. “Hold it! If he could get that canteen, he could get you!” They waited, and the trickle of water slowed, then faded to a drip. All of them stared angrily at the unrewarding rocks ahead of them. One canteen the less. Still, they had all filled up at the spring and should have enough. Uncomfortably, however, they realized that the object of their chase, the man called Chat Lock, knew where he was taking them, and he had not emptied that canteen by chance.
Now they understood the nature of the man they followed. He did nothing without object. Lying on the sand or rocks they waited, peering ahead. “He’s probably ridin’ off now!” Sutter barked. Nobody showed any disposition to move. The idea appealed to none of them, for the shot into the canteen showed plainly enough the man they followed was no child with a rifle.
Kimmel finally put his hat on a rifle muzzle and lifted it. There was no response. Then he tried sticking it around a corner. Nothing happened, and he withdrew it. Almost at once, a shot hit the trail not far from where the hat had been. The indication was plain. Lock was warning them not only that he was still there, but that he was not to be fooled by so obvious a trick.
They waited, and Hardin suddenly slid over a rock and began a flanking movement. He crawled, and they waited, watching his progress. The cover he had was good, and he could crawl almost to where the hidden marksman must be. Finally, he disappeared from their sight and they waited. Neill tasted the water in his canteen and dozed. At last they heard a long yell, and looking up, they saw Hardin standing on a rock far up the trail, waving them on. Mounting, they led Hardin’s horse and rode on up the trail. He met them at the trail side, and his eyes were angry.
“Gone!” he said, thrusting out a hard palm. In it lay three brass cartridge shells. “Found ‘em standing up in a line on a rock. An’ look here.” He pointed, and they stared down at the trail where he indicated. A neat arrow made of stones pointed down the trail ahead of them, and scratched on the face of the sandstone above it were the words: FOLLER THE SIGNS.
Kesney jerked his hat from his head and hurled it to the ground. “Why, that dirty … I” He stopped, beside himself with anger. The contempt of the man they pursued was obvious. He was making fools of them, deliberately teasing them, indicating his trail as to a child or a tenderfoot.
“That ratty back-shootin’ killer!” Short said. “I’ll take pleasure in usin’ a rope on him! Thinks he’s smart!” They started on, and the horse ahead of them left a plain trail, but a quarter of a mile further along, three dried pieces of mesquite had been laid in the trail to form another arrow. Neill stared at it. This was becoming a personal matter now. He was deliberately playing with them, and he must know how that would set with men such as Kimmel and Hardin. It was a deliberate challenge; more, it was a sign of the utmost contempt.
The vast emptiness of the basin they skirted now was becoming lost in the misty purple light of late afternoon. On the right, the wall of the mountain grew steeper and turned a deeper red. The burnt red of the earlier hours was now a bright rust red, and here and there long fingers of quartz shot their white arrows down into the face of the cliff. They all saw the next message, but all read and averted their eyes. It was written on a blank face of the cliff. First, there was an arrow, pointing ahead, and then the words: SHADE, SO’S YOU DON’T GIT SUNSTROK.
They rode on, and for several miles as the shadows drew down, they followed the markers their quarry left at intervals along the trail. All six of the men were tired and beaten. Their horses moved slowly, and the desert air was growing chill. It had been a long chase. Suddenly, Kimmel and Kesney, who rode side by side, reined in.
A small wall of rock was across the trail, and an arrow pointed downward into a deep cleft.
“What do you think, Hardin? He could pick us off man by man.”
Hardin studied the situation with misgivings and hesitated, lighting a smoke. “He ain’t done it yet.”
Neill’s remark fell into the still air like a rock into a calm pool of water. As the rings of ripples spread wider into the thoughts of the other five, he waited. Lock could have killed one or two of them, perhaps all of them by now. Why had he not? Was he waiting for darkness and an easy getaway? Or was he leading them into a trap?
“The devil with it!” Hardin exclaimed impatiently. He wheeled his horse and pistol in hand, started down into the narrow rift in the dark. One by one, they followed. The darkness closed around them, and the air was damp and chill. They rode on, and then the trail mounted steeply toward a grayness ahead of them, and they came out in a small basin. Ahead of them they heard a trickle of running water and saw the darkness of trees. Cautiously they approached. Suddenly, they saw the light of a fire.
Hardin drew up sharply and slid from his horse. The others followed. In a widening circle, they crept toward the fire. Kesney was the first to reach it, and the sound of his swearing rent the stillness and shattered it like thin glass. They swarmed in around him. The fire was built close beside a small running stream, and nearby was a neat pile of dry sticks. On a paper, laid out carefully on a rock, was a small mound of coffee, and another of sugar. Nobody said anything for a minute, staring at the fire and the coffee. The taunt was obvious, and they were bitter men. It was bad enough to have a stranger make such fools of them on a trail, to treat them like tenderfeet, but to prepare a camp for them ..
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