They rode along the teams of patiently plodding oxen and found Jed Tucker, a burly man with a brutal face and a chest covered in black hairs. Yeah, sure, he was on guard at that time. Yeah, sure he remembered the riders going past. Yeah, sure, they was sure raising the dust. Yeah, sure, he thought to himself that was kinda funny. Maybe some cowhands going back to their headquarters after a night in town. Only they wasn’t shouting or yelling none.
They thanked him and went on. So they knew the three men had come thus far on the trail itself.
Charlie Two Moons said: “They come all this way and they’re still traveling fast. They have to make a change of horses someplace.”
The two white men agreed. So where did they have the spare horses? Hidden in an arroyo? Or at some house? They scanned the plain and saw little more than heat-haze.
Malcolm then had his bright idea.
“Scrubber’s Place,” he said.
Travers said: “Art Scrubber is Pete Offing’s cousin.”
Malcolm nodded. He said: “Charlie, if they turned off near here for Art’s place you should be able to pick up the sign.”
They left the trail and turned southeast. They were now headed toward Scrubber’s Place and the hills. Charlie rode away from the trail, then turned parallel to it so that he cut any sign leaving it. Inside fifteen minutes, he found it. Three horses, he said, had gone at a fast pace this way. That, said Malcolm, would take them to Art. Charlie came on some droppings pretty soon and broke them with his fingers. He looked up and said: “Not long. It could be them.”
“Good,” said Travers, “let’s get on.”
They headed for Art’s place. The man was well known to them. You couldn’t call him an outlaw, though everybody knew that he lived outside the law. In the early days, men said, he’d run whiskey and guns to the Indians. More lately, he had lived on other men’s cows.
The house they approached an hour or so later was a rundown wretched-looking adobe that was badly in need of repair. The only other landmarks hereabouts was a solitary cottonwood and a corral. In the corral were five horses. Three of them looked in a bad way. They didn’t have brands on them.
They rode into the yard and shouted.
A slatternly woman appeared. They asked for Art. He was sleeping, she told them. Then wake him up, Travers said. She shrugged her shoulders and slouched inside.
A couple of male yells and a female scream came from inside and a short while later a man dressed in shirt and pants and nothing else came out and stood scratching himself under the left armpit. The little hair he had was over his face, masking small hog’s eyes. He looked like a gross animal. He looked forty-five. Travers knew he was ten years younger.
He stood staring at the lawmen through his hair. If he was thinking anything at all, it didn’t show.
“Where’s Pete?” Travers asked.
“Pete?” exclaimed Art, as though amazed at the mention of the name.
“Where is he?”
The scratching stopped.
“Christ, how should I know where he’s at?”
Travers stepped down from the saddle, walked up to Art and said: “He was here this morning.”
“Naw,” said Art, shaking his head.
“Pete warn’t here. No, sir. Pete warn’t in a hunnerd mile o’ here.”
From his saddle, Malcolm shot the question at him:
“How long those three beat-up horses been in the starve-out, Art?”
Art looked in astonishment first at Malcolm and then at the horses.
“Them hosses? Coupla hours mebbe.”
“Why they worn down that way?”
“Wore down? Hell, they ain’t wore down. They’s a li’l played out—sure. But they ain’t wore down. Me an’ the boys been ridin’ a mite. Drivin’ cows. Reckon we run ’em too much in the sun. Come night they’ll be fresh as daisies.”
Lin Travers prodded him in the chest with a tough forefinger.
“Art, we know Lincoln, Strange and Offing rode in here on those horses early this morning.”
“Mist’ Travers, you know better’n me.”
“We don’t want to get rough with you, Art, but if we have to…”
Art didn’t show fright. He didn’t budge.
Travers said over his shoulder to Charlie Two Moons: “Charlie, circle and pick up sign.” Charlie wheeled his pony and went off. “Art, bring your wife out here. And the boys.”
Art shambled inside the house. He yelled around a bit, then appeared herding the woman and the two young boys. Both men questioned them closely. They fired question after question for ten minutes and received sullen stares or unsatisfactory answers. Either way, they didn’t get anywhere, till Malcolm said: “Where the boys’ saddles, Art?”
The four of them stared at the two lawmen struck dumb.
“The saddles, Art,” Travers barked.
“You know the boys don’ have no saddles, Mist’ Travers,” Art said.
Malcolm said: “Those horses have been ridden with saddles. The marks’re plain. You’re lying to us.”
Art swore fiercely by God in heaven he wasn’t. They couldn’t get any more out of him. Charlie Two Moons came riding back. He picked up fresh sign he said. New horses and they were going hard.
Travers said: “We’ll be back, Art. You have a day or two to think it over. This is a hanging matter. You’d best talk some sense into him, Mrs. Scrubber.”
They mounted and rode out. They came to the sign that Charlie had found and the two white men had to confess there wasn’t much sign there to see. But Charlie was sure. The three men had left their tired horses with Art and had ridden on on fresh mounts.
They settled down to a long hard ride.
Chapter Three
At the same time the following day they came to the first of the hills. Now they were wary. Men like Lincoln would watch their back-trail. They could run into trouble around the next corner. Certainly, the men had taken no trouble to rub out their sign. They had been sure that they would not be followed. They had traveled fast and far. Just the same, they rode with their eyes skinned. Beyond this range of foothills they could see the triple peaks of Los Tres Soldados, rearing heads of the mighty sierra country. They could lose three men forever in that country. It was as wild and wide as any place on earth. Still, it was said it was the home of small scattered bands of wild Apache. From time to time lone prospectors disappeared without trace. Badmen who were tough enough to survive the country and had no wish to take refuge below the border sometimes hid out there.
Charlie lost the sign on rock several times and that slowed them up, but he cast around and picked it up again without too much trouble. They found themselves on a faint but regularly used trail. They came on a scattering of cattle that ran from them wild as deer. They disturbed deer at pasture.
The horses were pretty well played out now and they decided to camp. They got a fire going and made coffee, luxuriating in it, their legs painfully stiff from hours in the saddle. When they were through eating, Charlie killed his smoke and said he had a feeling. They respected the Indian’s feelings and said so. He said he thought the men they were following were not too far off. He would go on foot. Please would they not shoot at him when he came back into camp. They promised they would be careful and he slipped away into the darkness. He had changed his white man’s boots for a pair of moccasins.
It was nearly midnight when he returned. He was pleased with himself and he had good reason to be. He had found the horses they were following.
The two marshals sat up and took notice. Charlie talked. He had gone about four miles east of here and found this shebang with a corral alongside it. He had taken a good look around. In the corral were a number of horses. He examined their feet and found the three horses they were after among them. He knew the hoof-marks well. He was sure he couldn’t be wrong.
“Who was in the house?” Travers asked.
Of that he couldn’t be sure, but he thought several men. There were, he said
, five saddles on the corral rail.
The two lawmen were excited. They agreed that they should make a try in the dawn.
They tried to sleep after that, but, even as tired as they were, they couldn’t. They were on the move well before dawn, working their way east, with Charlie leading the way. It looked as if they were up against at least five men, but they didn’t let that daunt them in the slightest. They had been up against bigger odds than that in the past and were still alive to talk about it.
After they had been traveling for nearly an hour over extremely rough country, Charlie halted and told them to dismount. They did as he said and followed him forward, leading their horses. After a while Charlie halted again and told them to tie their horses. They tied their animals to some brush and followed Charlie forward again with their rifles in their hands and their pockets full of shells.
Charlie walked for some three hundred yards, then made a sign for them to be silent. They edged forward a few yards through some poor timber and found themselves looking down at a house. The first light of dawn had begun to appear and in it they saw a pretty poor dwelling made of split logs. There was a stone chimney, badly made, and from this issued a wisp of smoke. To the right of the house was a pole corral and in it eight horses. The door of the house was closed and the windows were covered with oiled-paper.
“Charlie,” Travers said, “how far you willing to go in this with us? We only hired you as a guide remember.”
Charlie gave them a quick grin.
“Deputy’s pay,” he said.
“Done,” said Travers. “I’ll stay here. George, you work your way around to the other side. Charlie, you cover the rear.”
They nodded and went off. Travers hunkered down behind a tree and waited. It had all been so much easier than he had thought possible. Maybe there was a catch in it. Maybe they were expected. He’d soon know.
He gave them fifteen minutes.
The door of the shack opened and a man walked out. He was dressed in long johns and pants. He scratched the stubble on his chin, yawned and scratched himself all over his body. Then lazily he started to split wood with an ax.
Travers recognized him as Pete Offing.
So far so good.
The other two should be in position by now. Travers stood up, levered his rifle and sang out: “You’re covered, Pete.”
The man started violently and dropped the ax. He turned and gazed in Travers' direction.
“Who’s this?” he demanded.
“Travers.”
“What do you want with me, Travers?”
“I want you for murder, Pete.” He raised his voice: “Lincoln, Strange—come on out. The place is surrounded.”
Offing called out: “There ain’t nobody else here, Travers.”
There was something about the way the man said that that made the marshal uneasy. He glanced across the draw and saw Malcolm half-hidden behind a tree, rifle pointed at the man below.
“This is no time for fooling around,” he shouted. “Come on out, boys—the game’s up.
He heard the report of a rifle and his tense nerves seemed to explode inside his body. The bullet had chipped the tree behind which he was standing. He knew the shot came from behind him. He threw himself down and forward so he half-rolled down the sloping side of the draw in which the house stood. The rifle slammed again and again. From over the other side, Malcolm had started to fire. There came the distant sound of another rifle. He glanced over his shoulder and saw Offing flat on the ground behind a pile of wood firing with a six-shooter.
A man appeared above him. He slanted the rifle upward and pressed the trigger only to find that he hadn’t levered a fresh round into the breech.
The man above him fired.
Something seemed to smash into the upper part of his chest. He tried to rise and lever his rifle, but he was suddenly terribly weak. He lost his balance and fell down into the draw, taking loose stones with him as he clutched at them desperately.
He knew that he had to shoot or the next shot would kill him. His rifle was gone. Pulling back the skirt of his coat, he heaved out his Colt gun with an enormous effort, got it cocked and fired upward at the figure that loomed above him.
There seemed to be shooting going on all over the place.
He heard a shout and the pounding of running feet.
He was still firing blindly, automatically.
He must have passed out for a short while. Somebody had him by the shoulders and was dragging him. He choked a little and knew that he was choking on his own blood. He was dying.
After that he didn’t know much. There were two men now, they were carrying him between them. Here were the horses. He tried to clear his dimming sight and saw the faces of Malcolm and Charlie Two Moons. He tried to tell them to leave him, but he didn’t get words from his mouth, only blood.
He was on his horse and the animal was starting to move. Only a few minutes back he had been fully alive, ready to take men in. Now he was faced with death.
There was the distant firing of guns. They couldn’t hurt him anymore. The horse was running and he was clinging on for dear life. He looked to the left and saw a horse with an empty saddle running beside him and he knew that either George or Charlie were down.
The guns had stopped and the horses were walking. He could hear their feet going shush-shush through long grass. He’d like to lie in that grass, he’d like to stop this awful effort of will to stay in the saddle. All he wanted was to go quietly to sleep.
George Malcolm didn’t know what to do. There weren’t many times when he didn’t know the answer to a question, but this one had him helpless.
He knew that Travers was dying.
He knew that he himself was in a pretty bad way. He knew that Charlie Two Moons was somewhere back there, wounded or dead. All three of them had been too smart. They had been suckered. They should have known better to think that men like Lincoln, Strange and Offing could be taken easily.
He had managed to get Travers out of the saddle, but there was little else he could do for him. He was shot through the lungs and it was only a matter of time. He himself had been hit in the back, high behind the right shoulder and there wasn’t anything he could do for himself either. If he didn’t get help soon, he’d bleed to death. He sipped a little water from his canteen and thought. He didn’t come up with anything bright. He knew he couldn’t just leave Travers there. He knew he couldn’t move him.
They were in a valley, lying in the shade of some trees. He thought: they were lucky Lincoln and his crew hadn’t come after them to make sure. All he wanted now was a miracle to save him.
His horse whinnied.
Malcolm raised his head. A rider came slowly toward him. Like so many men of the West, he knew the horse before the rider. He knew there could be danger here, but he was too relieved that it was not Lincoln or his men to worry about that.
The man rode up on his neat mare, looked down at Malcolm for a moment and dismounted. He came toward him. His rifle was in his hands.
“Spur,” Malcolm said. “Sam Spur.”
The newcomer was a man of medium height, slimly made and with fair hair that showed bleached lighter under the hat he had pushed back from his face. The face beneath was that of an easy-going, easy-smiling man, the kind that women and kids take to. Malcolm knew that it was the face of the most wanted outlaw in the West. He reckoned that Spur was the fastest man with a gun he had ever known. He had known a good few gun-artists in his time.
Spur said: “Looks like you got trouble, George.”
“I got trouble all right,” Malcolm said. “I’m asking for help, Sam.”
Spur smiled.
“Truce till we call it off,” he said.
“All right,” said Malcolm. “My word on it.”
Spur looked at Travers.
“He ain’t goin’ to last too long,” he said laconically.
“Reckon not,” said Malcolm.
“Who done it?”
&nb
sp; “Lucky Lincoln.” Spur nodded. His mind worked ahead. He knew what he could be letting himself in for, helping a lawman like this. But, like Cuzie Ben said, he was soft. Too soft maybe for the business of an outlaw. Malcolm went on: “He killed Wayne Ulster.”
That shook Spur. He turned and stared at the marshal. A dozen questions buzzed through his head. What would make a man like Lincoln kill a man like Ulster? The law in Arizona wouldn’t sit still until the murderer was caught. Why hadn’t Lincoln headed for the Border?
“I’ll fix that shoulder of yourn,” he said, “then I’ll ride and fetch the boys, we can’t handle Travers alone.”
The next thirty minutes were painful ones for Malcolm, but he knew that they saved his life. With a steady hand and no hurry, Spur removed the lead that was lodged against the shoulder blade, bandaged the wound and put the arm in a sling made from Malcolm’s bandanna. Then he stood up, mounted the mare and said: “I’ll be back.” Malcolm knew that he’d be as good as his word.
Spur, riding away, thought: Wonder what the boys’ll say to this?
Chapter Four
The boys didn’t say much because Spur didn’t tell them that the men who needed help were lawmen. In fact he was careful not to even mention their names.
He rode up to the cabin which he shared with his two partners and merely said: “Two fellers down in the valley. They’re hurt bad. One’s like to die.”
Cuzie Ben didn’t say anything. He just upped and went out to the corral to catch up his horse. That was like him. He didn’t ask questions. If he wanted to help, he just got on with it. Ben was a Negro, a former slave, who was the best man with horses, wild or tame, that Spur had ever known. He was a grizzled man of indeterminate years and was wanted for killing a white man in Texas. Spur had met him in the Cimarron country when Ben had saved his life on more than one occasion when both the Texas Rangers and some bounty hunters were after him. He owed Ben a lot and he didn’t forget it. The two men understood each other. Spur was maybe the only friend Ben had had in his life. Certainly the first white friend.
Trail West (A Sam Spur Western Book 6) Page 2