She drew back, her mouth bitter. “I don’t want you to forget.”
“Then look at it this way. Joe needs you.”
“Joe needs a mother. He doesn’t need a wife.”
“You don’t know Joe like I do,” Clay said. “He worships you, Nina.”
“But I don’t want to be worshipped!”
“Look, Joe’s lived a tough life. He never had much. I knew him years ago, remember. The kind of women he met, well, they weren’t like you. Then he came to New Mexico and met you. He thinks you’re better than he is. You’ve got an education. You own a ranch. Joe’s been nothing in his life but a forty-dollar-a-month cowhand. But now he’s got some cattle of his own. Why don’t you give him a chance?”
“The chances are running out, Clay.” She leaned close again. He could see a pulse in the white flesh at her throat, the thrust of her bosom against the cotton shirt. He didn’t move.
“Why didn’t Joe stick up for me?” she said petulantly. She sailed a couple of rocks down the ravine. “Lon Perry said—”
“Joe’s gun-shy now,” Clay said. “But look out. One of these days he’ll get over it. Don’t egg him on until he makes a killer out of himself just to prove something to you.”
“Nobody could push Joe that far. Nobody.” She gave him a sulky sidelong glance. “I’m tired of things the way they are. Joe and I make up. And then he does some fool thing that turns me against him again. I’d like somebody to take care of me for a change. Really take care of me.”
He rolled a cigarette because he could think of nothing more to say in Joe’s defense.
Suddenly she flung herself across his lap and her shoulder knocked the half-finished cigarette out of his hands. He leaned back from her, bracing his body with his hands against the ground. They sat looking at each other a moment. He had an unholy urge to take his hands off the ground and grab her.
“I wonder if I ever loved Joe at all,” she whispered.
“Sure you loved him. You still do.” His voice had a sharp edge. “If you’ll ever get some sense into that head.”
“It’s you I love, Clay.”
“No.”
“It must be you. Why else would I want to turn to you?” She lowered her eyes. “To go away with you.”
“You’d be sick of me in a week.”
She shook her head. “I love your strength. Because of what you did to Lon Perry, maybe.”
A faint alarm touched him. High up on a hillside, a tiny spot of sunlight glinted on glass. Then it was gone. She shifted on his lap and her nearness made him forget anything else.
“You slapped Lon Perry’s face,” Nina said tensely. “Kate told me how you humiliated him. He’ll never again be able to hold up his head around here. Without firing a shot you ruined the man.”
“Somebody had to do it.” He made a half-hearted effort to push her off his lap. Something he could have done easily with one hand, but didn’t do because he lacked the will. In another minute…in one more minute… Ah, but then, in the light of a hundred campfires in the years to come, he would see Joe Alford’s face reflected there, and he would know what he had done to Joe.
There was a roaring in his ears as she pressed her mouth against his. But still he did not take his hands from the ground. She bit his lip lightly with her small teeth, then drew back, seeming unable to understand his lack of interest.
“You’re not made of stone,” she whispered. “Don’t pretend that you are.”
“No, I’m not made of stone,” he admitted tensely. “You’re going to make a fool out of yourself. Out of me. And when it’s over you’ll still be in love with Joe Alford.”
“That’s where you’re wrong. So very wrong.”
When she tried to claim him again he fended her off with a forearm. “I’m a stranger who came into your life at a time when you’re having trouble with a husband.” He made a cutting gesture with his hand. “It’s happened plenty of times before. It’ll happen plenty of times again.”
She seemed angry and at the same time puzzled. “Clay, it’s us. Together—” His lip still throbbed from the bite she’d given him. He watched her eyes. They were very bright, and he knew he had to try once more. He said the first thing that came into his head. “How do you know I’m not in love with somebody else?”
She sat up abruptly and the brightness left her eyes. For an instant she seemed stunned. Then she cried, “It’s Kate. You’re in love with Kate French!”
He was startled to hear it thrown back at him like this. But, wanting to end it between them for good, he pressed on. “It had to happen sometime in my life,” he said, very deliberately. “I’m glad it’s Kate.”
“Why, damn her, damn her, damn her!” Nina beat the ground with her fists. Then the rage was gone. She put a hand across her eyes, and wept, and her whole mood changed.
“I’m glad, Clay. Really I am. God knows Kate needs a man.”
He didn’t know what to say. He felt at a loss with a weeping woman on his hands. Nina dried her eyes on a bandanna she took from the pocket of her divided skirt.
“Maybe what happened out here today was good for me,” she said. “I got something out of my system.”
He helped her up. “It was worth it then,” he said, but watched her warily. She was unpredictable.
“Did I make a fool out of myself, Clay?”
“Everybody does. At least once in a lifetime. Now go home to—” His voice broke. Far up the slope, he had seen the crown of a man’s hat briefly outlined against the junipers.
CHAPTER 14
Because he said none of his men had the brains to track a five-legged cow through ’dobe mud, Byrd Elkhart hired Charlie Snow. Snow was a squawman who lived up on the Rim, raised a few horses and goats and hunted a little when he felt like it. For a time he had been an Army scout at Fort Ross. He was a graying, solid man who had lived so long among the Indians that strangers frequently mistook him for one. During the winter he wore a blanket over his shoulders and favored an old black slouch hat with a feather in it.
For extra money he sometimes hired himself out as a tracker. He had sharp black eyes wreathed in wrinkles at the corners from years of squinting at the ground to read sign.
This day Byrd Elkhart met him at Arrow and told him what he wanted done and Charlie Snow grunted and agreed to do the job for five dollars and a bottle of whisky. They started out at Squaw Creek where the stench from the slaughtered—and still unburied—Chihuahua steers was almost unbearable.
While Charlie Snow dismounted and prowled around, Elkhart sat easy in his saddle. So did Lon Perry. But Russ Hagen and three other Arrow men who had come along all dismounted and sought a tree to rest under.
Lon Perry removed his hat, smoothed his yellow hair and watched Charlie Snow bent over the ground, studying it with his wise old eyes. “If Charlie don’t find Baldy,” Lon Perry said to Elkhart, “there’ll never be any finding him.”
Elkhart paused in the act of lighting a cigar and glared at Perry. Without speaking he finished puffing the cigar alight. Perry looked at the rest of the crew, all sprawled in the shade, and then he reined his horse closer to Elkhart’s pinto.
“Look, Byrd, there’s no use bein’ sore. I told you I lost my temper with that son—”
Elkhart’s teeth clamped down on the cigar butt. “Dragging Nina Alford’s name in like that. In a saloon. Lon, I ought to shoot you. Sure as hell I ought to.”
Lon Perry sat very straight in the saddle. He put on his hat and said flatly, “Don’t talk about shootin’ people unless you mean it.”
Because he wanted no more trouble on his hands than he had already, Elkhart pretended to back down a little. “I don’t give a damn what you do to Clay Janner. But it can be done without bringing Nina into it.”
“I’ll take care of him, don’t worry,” Perry snapped.
Elkhart scanned his for
eman’s face. It was still puffy from the backhanding Clay had given him in the saloon. “You’ll have to do better than you did the last time you met up with him,” Elkhart said, because he just couldn’t resist saying it.
Perry colored. “If he hadn’t had that damn pool bunch at our backs we’d have finished him.”
“We’d have finished him? How many does it take to put Janner in the ground? I thought you were tough enough to do it yourself, Lon.”
“You tryin’ to pick a fight with me?”
Elkhart gave a slight shrug. “I just don’t like all these lies about Nina.”
“They ain’t lies.”
Elkhart dropped his right hand to his gun. “Nina was never out in the cottonwoods with Clay Janner.”
“But Hagen saw ’em—”
“And Hagen’s a liar. How many times do I have to tell you?”
Hearing his name mentioned, Hagen jerked up his head. He sat a little apart from the three regular Arrow men. His face was so misshapen as to be hardly recognizable. One eye was still nearly closed. He had a cut on his jaw, and his knuckles were raw and swollen.
“I seen ’em,” he said shortly. “Don’t worry about that.”
Elkhart started to rein his horse toward Hagen. The rawhide quirt which had been dangling by its wristlock flicked up into his hand. Lon Perry drove his dun in front of the pinto to block him.
“Don’t do some damn fool thing you’ll be sorry for, Byrd,” Perry warned. “You got enough trouble without layin’ the quirt to Hagen.”
Elkhart pulled up, scowling, just as Hagen came to his feet. He thoroughly hated Hagen for spreading those lies about Nina. And he hated Lon Perry’s part in the business at Fierro’s. It was bad enough that the woman he intended marrying had been dishonored in a saloon. But his own foreman and his men had been made to look like a pack of fools. He’d gotten the whole story from some of the eye witnesses to the affair.
And on top of everything else Hagen had been soundly whipped by Clay Janner.
“I suppose when it comes down to it,” Elkhart muttered, “I’ll be the one to handle Janner.”
Charlie Snow grunted something, and that broke it up. As they followed Snow along a narrow trail Elkhart admitted that he welcomed the interruption. Perry had spoken one truth today, at least. He had enough trouble already without adding to the burden. He was glad he hadn’t quirted Hagen.
Moving through the heat of the forenoon, Elkhart thought of how he would really make the basin ranchers crawl now. The hell with two bits a head toll. He would make it twice that—unless Nina agreed to quit stalling and kick Alford off the place and let him start the judge working on a divorce. If she keeps on, Elkhart thought grimly, she won’t have to divorce Alford. She’ll be a widow instead.
Several times on the trail Charlie Snow got down on his hands and knees, sniffing the ground like an old hound dog. Elkhart knew the trail was stone cold now, and no telling how many riders had been over this ground since the day Baldy Renson disappeared. His own men had covered it a dozen times, hunting for a trace of the missing rider. But if anybody could find sign on a cold trail, Charlie Snow could.
Shortly before noon Charlie Snow called another halt. He dismounted and sniffed around and then went off the trail a few steps and stood looking at something, arms folded, a faint grin of triumph on his lips.
Elkhart came up to stand beside him. Charlie Snow pointed at a pile of rocks. He stepped forward and began pitching the rocks aside. The waxy-dead face of Baldy Renson appeared, and then the whole body. Elkhart ordered it wrapped in a blanket.
“Take him to town, Charlie,” Elkhart said, and dropped five silver dollars into Snow’s outstretched hand. Then, thoughtfully, he added two more. “Take him to the sheriff. Maybe this’ll get Bert Lynden off his dead ass.”
“You promise whisky,” Charlie Snow grunted.
“Get it from Fierro. Tell him to put it on my bill.”
After the body was loaded and on its way to town, Elkhart took a deep breath. The stench here had been almost as bad as the dead-cow stink at Squaw Creek.
“Well, you got Janner right this time,” Lon Perry said, grinning. “Let’s go find him.”
“Bert Lynden hasn’t hung a man in a long time,” Elkhart remarked. “About time he had a little practice.”
“If Bert’s got a weak arm,” Perry said, “I’ll work the trap lever myself. It’ll be a pleasure. When Janner drops through the hole I’ll spit in his face. That’ll also be a pleasure.”
“We haven’t got him yet,” Elkhart said.
“We’ll get him.”
Because one of the Arrow men had reported activity to the south on Spade range, the group headed that way.
Just past noon, as they were crossing a timbered ridge, Lon Perry pulled up. “Let me have a look through them glasses, Byrd.”
He held out his hand. Elkhart rose in the stirrups and peered below. He saw nothing but a Chihuahua steer in the canyon. He removed a pair of field glasses from his saddlebags and handed them over to Perry.
Perry adjusted them to his eyes, then whistled softly. He lowered the glasses and gave Elkhart a long, speculative look.
Exasperated at Perry’s behavior, Elkhart said, “What’s down there?” He extended his hand for the glasses.
“This is something you won’t want to see, Byrd.”
“Give me those glasses.” Elkhart took the glasses, and while he adjusted them, Lon Perry gave the order for the rest of the men to dismount.
Gradually, as he focused the glasses, the scene in the canyon came into Elkhart’s view. He saw two saddled horses below, reins trailed. He shifted the glasses and caught his breath. He closed his eyes for a moment, then opened them. No, his vision wasn’t playing tricks on him. Down in that canyon, Clay Janner was sitting on the ground. And Nina Alford was lying limp in his lap.
He felt a sudden tautness in his chest as if his heart had swelled and threatened to burst through his breastbone. He lowered the glasses, put them in his saddlebags. He swung down. He was very pale.
A faint, wicked grin started across Perry’s lips. He caught himself and masked it. “Satisfied?” he asked softly.
Elkhart nodded. He didn’t trust himself to speak.
“I told you the kind she was, Byrd.”
Elkhart spun, jerking up his gun. “Goddam you, Lon,” he said. Then he got hold of himself and holstered the gun. The men were looking on, owl-eyed. They did not know what was happening in the canyon below.
Elkhart cleared his throat. A vein pulsed at his forehead. “Nina Alford and Janner are down there,” he said, jerking a thumb toward the canyon. “Let’s get Janner.”
“We don’t have to wait for the sheriff,” Lon Perry said, and unfastened his saddle rope.
“We’ll handle this my way,” Elkhart said. His lips thinned like a bloodless gash across his bloodless face. “Understand?”
Leaving one man behind to bring up the horses at a signal, the rest began to make their way down the slope.
CHAPTER 15
The instant Clay saw the crown of the hat against the hillside, it disappeared. The horses had caught a scent and were moving restlessly behind them. Clay whispered, “Get behind me, Nina,” and the girl, frightened now, moved as he directed.
Before Clay could draw his gun, Lon Perry’s voice reached him from the opposite side of the canyon. “Hold it, Janner. You don’t want the woman hurt, do you?”
Clay felt a quick fear as he saw Perry standing not a dozen yards away holding a rifle. Perry stepped forward, and then the rest of the party came down into view. Clay saw Byrd Elkhart, and Hagen, his beefy face scarred from the fight in the bunkhouse. Two other men were with them. One of the men turned and shouted something toward the rim and in a moment a rider leading saddle horses started down a slanted trail.
Clay said, “Get
your horse, Nina. Ride out of here. They won’t stop you.”
Nina was numb with terror. She stumbled toward her horse.
“You stay here,” Elkhart ordered. His face was a stone mask of rage. “I want you to watch it,” he added.
Slowly he paced across the canyon floor, his men spread out, each holding a gun. Elkhart came to a halt a few feet away and gave Nina a terrible smile. “Lon, if Janner makes a wrong move, shoot him. In the stomach.”
“I hope he makes that move,” Lon Perry said. “I’d like that.”
Nina stepped in front of Clay. “Please, Byrd, you don’t understand. Don’t do anything to him. He talked sense to me about Joe. I—”
“I heard the sort of woman you are,” Byrd Elkhart said. “I didn’t believe it till now.”
Nina went white. “Byrd, you misunderstand—”
“We watched you through field glasses,” Elkhart said.
Clay swallowed. Field glasses. Sure, the reflection of sun on glass he had seen briefly.
Elkhart put out a thick arm, encircled Nina’s waist and drew her against him. “I wait for you to make up your mind about Joe. And all the time it’s Janner. I find you out in the brush with a range tramp like him.” He gave an ugly laugh.
“Byrd, don’t do anything you regret,” Nina said. She tried to struggle but he held her too tightly.
“Get his gun,” Elkhart ordered.
Clay felt sweat break out on the nape of his neck. He heard Perry come up behind him, felt the pressure of the rifle muzzle against his back. One of the Arrow men came around and lifted his revolver.
Elkhart said, “Remember what we did to the Mex we found with the running iron?”
Perry laughed softly. “Hell, you must really hate Janner.”
“Don’t you?”
“Yeah, a little,” Perry drawled. “He mussed up my face. I’d like to take him to town and see him hang for killin’ Baldy Renson—” Clay stiffened.
“Yeah, we found his body,” Lon Perry told him grinning a little. “But maybe this other will be better than a hanging. It’ll last longer, that’s for sure.”
On Elkhart’s order two of the men got saddle ropes and spun out loops. These they dropped over Clay’s head, cinching them tight at the waist. Keeping the pressure on the ropes, the two men edged away from Clay, leaning on them as if holding a downed steer. Clay tried to tense his muscles to stave off the ropes cutting into his waist. He didn’t have long to wonder what was happening next. He saw Nina, looking sick, Elkhart holding her with his arm, his eyes glittering. To one side, Russ Hagen stood with his big fists clenched, waiting.
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