by T. T. Flynn
The look of leashed force was on the rugged, long-boned face that Travis turned from the window. The cool awareness of wide experience was in the alert blue eyes. “You knew when you sold the note to Markham that it would be called on Matt Kilgore.”
“When the loan committee voted to take Gid Markham’s offer, I went to Kilgore,” said Ed Jackson defensively. “Kilgore couldn’t offer hope of taking up his note.”
“How much premium did this Markham pay?”
“Two thousand dollars,” said Ed Jackson uncomfortably.
Travis weighed the statement. “He must have figured Kilgore was ready for the kill.”
“Gid Markham,” said Ed Jackson slowly, “has waited a long time.”
“I’d like to see him when he hears he loses his two thousand dollar premium and gets nothing,” Travis said, turning back to the window. A moment later he said: “Kilgore is riding into the plaza now. Let’s get it over with.”
Jackson swung to his desk. “Indians killed two of Matt Kilgore’s boys, different times. Dick was his last boy. Losing Dick down there in Central America, on top of his other troubles, just about finished Kilgore. He gave up. Your coming to Soledad to see about the cattle he bought and was holding for you has done a lot for Matt.”
“I almost didn’t come. At least for another year or so,” Travis said, staring out the window. “Now that I’m here, I seem to be staying on.” Travis was smiling as he moved back to his chair.
“I heard,” said Ed Jackson, “that a rock slide caught Dick and his horse.”
“A one-mule trail in Guatemala, and a drop to a river with rapids and falls,” Travis said, sobering. “I was ahead of the mozo and pack mules. Dick was riding behind when a sheet of rock let go. He didn’t have a chance.” Almost believing he had seen it happen, Travis dropped into the chair at the corner of the desk and finished: “Dick was one to go with.”
“I always thought so.” Ed Jackson looked up. His smile came. “There’s Kilgore outside now. Got a whoop back in his voice.”
Travis smiled, too, faintly, remembering the spiritless greeting that Matt Kilgore had first given him. The man had seemed beaten by bad luck and grief. Boot heels thumping into the bank now had the impact of purpose, and the illusion of size and power which once must have been on Matt Kilgore like a lusty shield filled the office doorway.
Travis got to his feet. Kilgore waved him back. “This ain’t no secret.”
Matt Kilgore was not a big man actually. But from worn boot heels past gun belt, open vest, and powerful chest, to the seamed face cut with shadings of fiery force and sadness and lusty humor that reports said the man had once had, Matt Kilgore seemed big. Emotion was in him today, Travis knew, but Matt Kilgore said only: “That note you sold young Markham, Ed, is due. He’s in town. Tell ’im the next move is his.”
“Roger Travis just bought the note,” Ed Jackson said mildly. “Gid Markham’s shut out of the matter now.”
“Bought it . . .”
As Matt Kilgore moved forward, Travis had the feeling that the man did not really see him, but a callused, rope-burned hand went out and gripped his arm for an instant as Kilgore walked past the front window. Under his breath, getting it out with difficulty, Matt Kilgore spoke to the dusty window glass: “Seems like Dick come back.” Then, not turning, he said: “I passed Patricia outside town with the burro string from her little two-bit mine. She know you done this?”
“No,” Travis admitted.
“Well, tell ’er!” Matt Kilgore boomed. “She’s ridin’ into the plaza now.”
Ed Jackson was smiling broadly when Travis walked out and the flat, metallic jangle of burro neck bells was in the plaza.
Patricia Kilgore’s long string of pack burros looked diminutive under the heavy leather alforjas of ore they carried. Two dark-featured Mexicans of the country, father and son, who worked Pat’s skimpy little ore vein high on Big Jack Mountain, were walking with the burros. When Pat Kilgore saw Travis heading to the plaza corner to intercept her, she swung her roan gelding into a run toward him.
Pat sat the sidesaddle like a lithe boy, not even worry subduing her eagerness and zest for life, Travis thought as she came up with a rush, reached down for his hand, and slipped lightly off. Pat’s skirt was rough manta cloth of the country, dyed blue. The dried tunnel tailings on her duck jacket showed she had ridden all the way up to the little pack mine that was hers by discovery of the outcrop.
“Gid Markham,” said Pat rapidly, “is across the plaza with two of his men. Where’s Dad?”
“In the bank.”
Pat’s small, strong hand loosened the braided leather barbijo, the chin strap of her straw sombrero. She pulled off the hat and asked anxiously: “Does he seem to want trouble with Gid today?”
“Didn’t seem to,” Travis said, holding off mention of the note. He was thinking that Patricia Kilgore reminded him of that dead wife in Wyoming who he had never seen. She was that vivid girl, unafraid, with eagerness and laughter and a capacity for tenderness.
Pat bit her lip. Her black hair shone darkly in the sun. Her greenish-blue eyes, direct and honest, were clouded now with concern for her father. “Matt’s bitter,” she said. She would have said more, but Travis blocked it.
“Here comes the redheaded widow who owns the paper,” Travis warned under his breath.
He was stirred again by this Mrs. Strance, who published the weekly paper her husband had owned. Lamplight burned late at her desk. Dorothy Strance was everywhere, seeking news, often driving her rattly old buggy out of town, her small daughter usually on the seat with her. She dressed plainly. Dot Strance knew everyone. Her name was never connected with a man. But as she stopped now at the edge of the walk, Travis once more had an uncomfortable awareness of her. She wore a plain cambric wash suit and her flat-brimmed straw hat seemed to sit without thought on the severely pinned, bright hair. But all this could not hide a warm, attractive woman in her restless, eager prime, ripe for affection and wanting it, yet holding back, as if afraid, Travis suspected.
“Mister Travis, I’m going to print what the padre just told me,” Dorothy Strance said. Patricia Kilgore’s smile turned puzzled, and Dorothy Strance explained: “Mister Travis just gave the padre a hundred dollars, which the padre can use, heavens knows. Father Philippe gives everything he has away and lives on beans and chili which he dislikes.” An odd intentness suddenly dropped on Dorothy Strance’s attractive face as she looked past them.
When Travis turned and saw the three riders coming across the plaza, he became watchful. Before long, he suspected, he would clash violently with young Gid Markham who led them. Gid Markham’s father had been a shrewd Vermonter who had reached New Mexico with the Mexican War troops in the same company with Matt Kilgore. The elder Markham had married into a leading native family, and the son had a Vermonter’s shrewd control laced with hot Mexican pride. The sum of it was a controlled arrogance that made Gid Markham’s look toward them now almost like a slap.
Pat Kilgore spoke under her breath: “Gid knows Dad’s in the bank. He couldn’t wait . . .” She broke off and caught Travis’s arm.
Matt Kilgore’s broad-chested figure was sauntering out of the bank with visible expectation. Vest open, thumbs hooked on his wide cartridge belt, Matt’s jeer to the three riders pulling up before the bank was audible.
“So the young feller couldn’t wait? Greedy like his old man always was. Go in an’ pick up your money, boy. I’ll be laughin’ when you find you’re skunked again.”
Gid Markham sat in straight, cold silence, curbing his restless horse. Then he wrenched the horse around and drove it toward them. Pat’s hand tightened on Travis’s arm as Markham pulled up before them. Seen close, he had a wiry, broad-chested look and thin, clean features that showed little of his Mexican heritage. He was wearing sober black, and the hard, bitter anger in his stare at Travis was near violence.
“Kilgore didn’t have any money,” he said. “No one but you could’ve put it up
.”
Calmly Travis said: “Well?”
“You came here a stranger, and you’ve butted into things that are none of your business.”
“You wanted your money today. Go in and pick it up,” Travis said coolly.
Markham had a belt gun under his open black coat, a carbine in his saddle boot. He wanted to use a gun now. The look was on his thin, cold face. Travis turned his back, and was glad he did when he saw the expression on Mrs. Strance’s face as she gazed at the man. There it was in the open, ripe and eager for an unguarded moment, and the resentment Travis felt surprised him.
He heard Markham wheel the horse away. Pat Kilgore was saying breathlessly, accusingly, with shaken laughter and relief in her tone: “Why didn’t you tell me?”
Travis grinned and caught Dorothy Strance’s speculative glance. “You do nice things, Mister Travis,” she said. “The padre and now Matt Kilgore.” She hesitated. “But you’ve made an enemy.”
“Sorry, ma’am.” His smile considered her. “Are you going to print this, too?”
“I’d like to,” Dorothy Strance said. “But I’ll wait. There might be more to print.” The thought seemed to give her no pleasure, and Travis suspected why.
IV
In early June, in northern Arizona, old Ira Bell watched two strangers approach the yellow sandstone cliffs at the mouth of the canyon called Little Bitter Water by the Navajos. They rode tired horses and led a packhorse. They were heavily armed, unshaven, and rough-looking, but they appeared reasonably honest, Ira Bell decided hopefully as they rode to the wisps of his campfire and dismounted.
He was a leathery little man, dried and brittle as an old sand-scoured cholla cactus. “Howdy,” he said. He jerked a thumb at the scattered horse herd nipping sparse bunch grass back in the narrow canyon. “Ute an’ Navvyjo horses I traded fer.” The taller stranger cast a sardonic glance at the horses, and Bell said piously: “Leastways the Utes an’ Navs claimed ’em.”
The second stranger, a muscular man, broad across heavy cheekbones, said humorously: “If them horses could talk, I bet they’d be cryin’ ‘Morman settlements.’”
Ira Bell scratched the long gray stubble on his jaw and grinned. “Ain’t a hoss said a word. I’m takin’ ’em to good feed an’ honest ridin’, which is all ary man can do. But them two bucks helpin’ me is spooked. One seen his mother-in-law’s face two weeks ago an’ is fixin’ to go blind any day now.”
The taller stranger chuckled. “Her face ugly enough to blind him?”
“Ain’t that,” said Ira Bell tolerantly. “Helps a Navvyjo man get shut of his mother-in-law, though. He’s chancin’ sure blindness to see her face.” Bell shook his head. “An’ last night a coyote howled at the moon, which means bad news. This mornin’, when we started, a wildcat run acrost the trail. Means bad luck ahead, so we had to turn back . . . Goin’ blind, bad news cumin’, bad luck ahead,” said Ira Bell glumly now, “has took them two bucks’ stomach fer trailin’ down to Soledad in New Mexico. I got to have help.”
The tall stranger was reaching for his saddle cinch. “Sole-dad?” he said, not turning. “Ever hear of a Kilgore family near there?”
“Matt Kilgore,” said Ira Bell readily, “owns a big, near-busted ranch he’s fixin’ to lose before long.”
The stranger pulled a straight-stemmed pipe from his shirt pocket. “Ever hear of a man named Travis?”
Hopefully Ira Bell said: “At the Kilgores when I left. You know ’im?”
“Never met him.” The bronzed stranger glanced at the yellow cliffs baking in the last red light, and at the sudden alertness of his companion. His smile came and broadened. “I’m Clay Mara. This is Howie Quist. Mother-in-laws don’t worry us, or wildcats or coyotes. We’ll help to Soledad. Eh, Howie?”
“I was thinkin’ so,” Howie Quist said.
* * * * *
They were five days from the Little Bitter Water, and the last rank water was forty miles back in the shallow Absalom Well, when the towering pall of a sandstorm advanced like yellow smoke and struck the plodding horse herd. Clay Mara, riding ahead, pulled his red bandanna up over his nose against the first swirling dust. Light faded as the gale settled in and great ground gusts began to drive sand in flat, pelting sheets. Hat yanked low, coat collar turned up, bandanna masking his face to the eyes, Clay shouldered into the belting sand. The wildness of the dry storm stirred memories of what had happened to him, and of what lay ahead. Even now it was hard to believe that a man he had never seen, who he would not know when they met, had traveled from Guatemala to San Francisco and had taken his identity and all that he possessed.
Once more Clay recalled the cascading rocks sweeping Dick Kilgore and himself off a narrow trail into the river below. An elderly Indian had fished him out, apparently dead. Cracked ribs, fractured leg, bashed head had held him helpless in a thatched jacal. Dick had never been found. The mozo and two pack mules had vanished into the river, also, Clay had decided. When, finally, he had moved on, weak, half-crippled for a time, he had slowly traveled south, and tried to forget.
Only in San Francisco had he realized what must have happened. The mozo and pack mules had escaped. A stranger had gotten possession of the mule packs, had found the journal that Roger Travis had kept for years, the certificate of deposit in the South Bay Bank, papers, letters . . . Now the man was ahead.
When Clay looked back, Howie Quist and old Ira Bell were bowed and ghostly figures in the storm. Howie rode forward and shouted ruefully through his masking bandanna: “I bet that bad-luck wildcat them two Navajos seen scratched up this dust!” Then Howie said: “What if we miss them Red Rocks?”
No water beyond the Red Rocks, Ira Bell had said, until the foothills forty, fifty miles on. Too far for the horses. “Stay close to the old man,” Clay ordered.
He rode on, peering steadily at the drifted trail. At times he lost it. The wildly buffeting gusts finally lulled a little and vision extended to the warped gray boards of an abandoned wagon bed off to the right. Sand was piling against the boards and streaming over in smoke-like veils. A little beyond, low red rocks were thrusting up from the desert floor. Clay relaxed.
The rocks became a low ridge, a series of higher red ridges, and the trail veered between two crescent ridges into a crude amphitheater where the gale was broken and the flying dust thinned. Howie and Ira Bell rode forward.
Bell’s voice was hoarse through his black face cloth: “The tanks is up in them rocks ahead.”
Tails, manes blowing, the horses streamed by. Clay followed them to the rocks ahead where the horses were bunching in confused uncertainty, knowing water was close. Clay dismounted and caught the canteen strap off the saddle horn. The muted punch of a gunshot brought him around quickly, as the sound batted off the bald rocks into the gale whining above over the ridges.
Howie and Ira Bell rode close, peering for the source of the shot. A wind-strangled shout drifted down to them: “No water here for them horses!”
These Red Rock Tanks, Ira Bell had said, were natural catching basins for the infrequent, furious desert rains. The tanks lay on the ledges of the bald ridge sloping back in front of them. When the lower tanks were dry, water from the higher pools could be thrown down, or carried down—and no man who reached this spot ever minded the labor.
Strong eddies of the gale overhead were sweeping dust across the ridge slope. The man who had shouted was not visible. Clay looked at the horses. Eighty-two had started from the Little Bitter Water, and old Bell’s assurance that water would be here at the Red Rocks, in the upper pools, had brought them along without worry.
Tersely Clay called to the old man: “You said there’d be water!”
Ira Bell’s hand gestured helplessly. Tired bewilderment filled his voice. “Was when I come through, headin’ north.”
Clay turned back to the ridge, shouting at the man he could not see: “What happened to the water?”
“We’re holdin’ what’s left!”
“We’re from
Absalom Well! These horses can’t get through without water!”
“Fill canteens if you like!”
Howie yanked the blue bandanna down off his grimy face. “They think they’ll make that stick?”
Studying the rocks, Clay said: “Easy, Howie.”
The murky sandstorm shrilled across the red rock ridges as Howie Quist swung off his horse in visible outrage. Clay stood beside his restless horse, canteen in hand, trying to stifle the feeling that there was real danger.
This crude amphitheater between two curving arms of the ridges gave a measure of protection from the storm. But a thin dust haze boiled around the milling horse herd. Smoky curtains of dust and sand swept across the higher ledges of the sloping ridge before them. The armed strangers on the upper ledges were invisible. Any water in the tanks up there was being held from Bell’s horse herd. Such things were done. The danger Clay could sense was beyond that. It came to him suddenly. The bawled permission to fill canteens was warning enough.
Clay called: “Howie, get Bell’s canteen!”
Ira Bell’s irritable gesture waved Howie away. “Ain’t he’pless! Get m’own water!”
They both watched Bell dismount. The long miles from the Absalom Well had visibly drained the old man. His leathery face had a dried, drawn look of exhaustion under the bristly gray beard stubble as Clay stepped to him and asked: “Any idea who’s up there?”
“Passel damn’ water hogs! The Absalom Well trail ain’t the only one hits by here. Might be anyone.”
Clay was looking around. “Where’s their camp, their horses?”
“They’s another pocket in the rocks half mile south . . . some runty tanks there.”
Howie joined them, and Clay said briefly: “They don’t mean for us to ride far and tell what happened here.”
“Said we could fill canteens,” Howie reminded.
“But no water for the horses. Canteen water sounds like bait to draw us up on the rocks closer.” Clay turned to his horse and pulled the carbine from the saddle boot. “I’ll take the canteens up alone.”