by T. T. Flynn
Roger Travis’s face had a stiff feel as he walked back to the corner of the plaza. It could have been an ordinary thief who had tried to get money from the account of R. Travis in the South Bay Bank. But suppose the man had not been some shifty stranger off the San Francisco streets? Travis suspected he was not. He had been certain that the real Roger Travis was dead. Now it seemed that the man must be alive, and had returned to San Francisco and tried to draw money from his account. Only the real Roger Travis would have presented a draft in the South Bay Bank with such confidence. And the fellow was free now, knowing what had happened, and undoubtedly hunting the man who had taken over his name and all that he had.
Travis had been a lone wolf. He had always jeered at weakness. But now, suddenly, he caught himself scanning every man in sight. He had never seen the real Roger Travis. Any stranger could be the man. And the real Travis would know him. Here in the Soledad country, the name was riveted on him. And most of the money was committed here now. He couldn’t leave.
Sweating tension was building in Travis as he started across the plaza to Ledfesser’s Mercantile to buy a gun and strap it on while he tried to think this out.
X
In Dr. Paul Halvord’s sprawling adobe house west of the Soledad plaza, Clay Mara stood, red-eyed and groggy, while Howie Quist lay stripped to the waist on a narrow table covered with white oilcloth. The lanky young doctor’s big-knuckled, awkward-looking hands were marvelously deft and gentle as they washed, probed, cut, and sewed Howie’s wounded side. Under his unruly hair, the young doctor’s raw-boned, craggy face was cheerful and his comments made even Howie grin weakly.
Howie was a tough bucket, the young doctor said, slapping Howie’s bare shoulder. Had a stave punctured and had leaked too much. But the hole was plugged now and Howie would fill up again. The doctor had been flicking professional glances at Clay. Behind the house was a spare room, Dr. Halvord said. Why not go back there and rest?
It was a small outside room with a floor of smooth, dried mud and walls whitened neatly with yeso. Restfully cool and quiet as Clay sat on the rough plank cot and wearily tussled boots off swollen feet. A blue-tailed lizard whisked in from outside and froze on the window ledge, beady eyes watching Clay strip off socks and grunt with relief as cool air laved hot, blistered feet.
Civilized hooraw of soap, razor, and clean clothes could wait until sleep gave enough alertness to deal with the fellow who was calling himself Roger Travis. Hard humor bent Clay’s mouth as he dropped back on the lumpy pallet in his clothes and visualized the man’s stunned surprise. His grimy mouth was still grinning faintly when sleep came in a sodden wave.
* * * * *
He was stretched inertly on the cot when rusty door hinges creaked. Instinct drove Clay into movement before his eyes opened. A startled, “Hold it!” reached him as his eyelids opened. While his head had lifted, his hand had cocked and aimed the revolver he had left inside the top of his pants. In the open doorway, a rigid figure held empty hands at chest level as Clay thickly demanded: “Who’re you?”
“Gid Markham! You sent for me!”
Clay grunted and swung bare feet to the dirt floor and laid the revolver on the pallet. He pushed fingers through dusty hair, blinked puffy eyes, and yawned, trying to come awake. “You lost eighty-two horses at the Red Rock Tanks,” Clay said shortly. “Now you worry about it.”
Markham was younger than Clay had expected, wiry and broad-chested, wearing sober black. A thin, clean-chiseled face tightened to taut angles as Markham stared with suspicion at the red kerchief still around Clay’s neck, the grimy shirt, unbuttoned coat, worn wool pants, all still dusty from the howling sandstorm yesterday.
“You pulled that gun fast,” said Markham brusquely.
“Knock before you walk in on a stranger,” Clay said drily. He yawned again and asked: “Why’d you send an old man like Ira Bell up in the Navajo country for horses? He’s too old.”
Markham shrugged. “My mother knew Ira when she was girl. He’s been a good man. He wanted to go. Why let him feel useless now?”
Clay eyed with new interest the thin, chiseled face with its touch of arrogance and pride. “I see,” said Clay drily again, and he had a new opinion of this Gid Markham after the revealing statement. “Seven men,” Clay said, “were waiting for us in the sandstorm up on the ledges by the Red Rock Tanks. They wanted the horse herd. But they tried to get us, too, after old Bell shouted that the horses were yours. They acted like they knew you.”
“Most thieves know me,” said Gid Markham curtly. “They knew my father, Amos Markham, too. Knew him from old Mexico to the big Colorado. We’ve hunted thieves down, hung ’em and shot ’em until they know.”
With humorous irony, Clay said: “That way?”
“That way,” said Gid Markham. “What happened at the Red Rocks?”
He sat on the end of the cot, resting a wiry, hard hand on a knee as he listened intently. His thin, dark face tightened as he heard of the pinto gelding callously shot as it tried to get up to water. Approval burned in the black eyes at Clay’s handling of the camp guard, the furious slashing of saddle cinches and stirrup leathers. Markham’s scowl set at the final ambush by one man at the lonely lava dike in the first dawn.
“So I walked in,” Clay finished.
“And you’ve kept quiet about it?”
“Bell said he met a drifter up north, and spoke to the man of coming south soon with his horse herd,” Clay said calmly. “That talk must have gotten to someone. The bunch at the Red Rocks knew we were coming. They must have friends here in Soledad. I kept quiet until you heard.”
Markham’s spur chains clinked softly as he got to his feet. Legs spread, hands adjusting the heavy cartridge belt under his coat, Markham thought over what he had heard. “See any faces at all?” he inquired keenly.
“I saw the camp guard’s face.” Clay’s slow smile of anticipation considered a thought. “The big fellow who seemed to be head of the bunch yelled raafle, instead of rifle. With my back turned and my eyes closed, if I hear that raafle again, I’ll have him nailed.”
Gid Markham said: “Rifle . . . raafle . . . raafle?”
“Close enough,” Clay said. “And I’ve got one of their horses, a sorrel gelding with a blaze and white stocking. I didn’t notice the brand. Couple of Mexicans packing ore on burros are bringing him in. They work for Pat Kilgore, I think.”
Temper and suspicion leaped into Markham’s black eyes. “You know Pat Kilgore?”
“She was the first one I saw,” said Clay shortly. “She turned her horse out from the road to meet us. A Missus Strance followed in her buggy, bringing the two Mexicans. I heard their names . . . and whose business is it who I know? Happens I never saw the Kilgore girl before, though.”
“My mistake.” Markham pushed his hat back off the damp hairline and stood thinking. “Ira Bell went north quietly with his silver for trading, so he wouldn’t be followed. No honest man around here should know anything about it, even now. We’ll keep it that way. I’ll ride fast to the Red Rocks with enough men to hang that bunch if we corner them.”
“And what will the sheriff be doing while you go hunting and hanging?” Clay inquired with irony.
Markham’s shrug dismissed it as a useless question. “The sheriff,” said Markham indifferently, “will be a hundred and fifty miles away, around his courthouse in Socorro, where he usually stays.”
Clay considered that. “No law around here?” he asked with interest.
“A town marshal, and a deputy, for what he’s worth when he’s around. He’ll thank me for this.” Markham pulled off his hat and smoothed damp hair. “You are a stranger, Mara. We settle our own troubles out this way.”
“I run to that myself,” Clay said. “And if you ride near that lava dike, Howie’s saddle and mine are there. I don’t know where Bell’s horse gave out. Oh . . . and bury that man at the lava.”
Markham nodded carelessly and swung on out with haste. Clay was closing the door behind him when h
e heard footsteps and waited. It was the doctor, his craggy young face regretful.
“Sorry, Mara. Gid insisted on waking you.”
“I wanted him to. How are Howie and the old man?”
“They’re asleep.” Halvord’s keen eyes were curious. “You had another visitor I turned away . . . Roger Travis.”
Clay kept his voice casual. “And who is Travis?”
Paul Halvord’s smile came instinctively. “Fine chap. He’s made friends everywhere.”
“Who is he?”
“Roger Travis was Dick Kilgore’s partner in Central America,” Halvord said. “Both the partners sent money to Matt Kilgore to buy cattle for their joint account and to hold on Matt’s ranch for the increase. Dick was killed down there in an accident, and Travis came here to dispose of his share of the cattle.”
Clay grinned at the idea. “Does he think I’ll buy his cattle?”
Halvord smiled, too. “Roger’s investing in the Kilgore Ranch and planning to stay, evidently. Gossip has it that Dick’s sister changed his mind. Travis lost a wife rather tragically about two years ago. Now he seems to be finding happiness here.”
“I see you like the man, too.”
“Everyone does.” Halvord’s look took on a faintly guarded expression. “Roger seemed under some strain. He’s never worn a gun, but he had one on today.” Halvord hesitated. “I shouldn’t speak of it. I’m a doctor and don’t take sides. But you men are under my treatment and you’re Markham men.”
“Not Howie. Not me. We don’t work for anyone.”
Halvord’s raw-boned young face took on a puzzled expression. “My mistake,” he said finally. “Gid said all three of you were his men. You know, I suppose that there’s bad blood between the Markhams and the Kilgores, which naturally includes Roger Travis now?”
“Markham didn’t mention Travis. I’m a stranger here.”
Halvord was rueful. “None of my business. If Roger Travis comes back, d’you want to see him?”
“Some other time, Doctor. I’ll be asleep.”
Clay was thoughtful as he closed the door and sat on the edge of the cot, musing on what he had just learned. Little law in this Soledad country. Travis had friends everywhere. The man was investing heavily in the Kilgore Ranch. And the fellow was still trading on Vicky’s death. Clay dropped back on the hard shuck pallet and stared unseeingly at the log vigas overhead. The ache of loneliness for Vicky came back. He was thinking of Travis in simmering anger when utter weariness came down upon him again and sleep gave him peace.
XI
In a sweating hour, walking alone on the outskirts of Soledad past barking dogs and shrilling children, Travis faced the full dangerous knowledge that the real Roger Travis must be alive and was undoubtedly hunting him. The man would eventually come here to Soledad. How much time was left? Tension crawled in Travis as he faced the trap he was in. He had meant to sell the cattle and leave quickly. And he had stayed, planning a future in this country far bolder than anything he had visualized in the past. Most of his money was committed here now—and the telltale name of Roger Travis was riveted on him.
Anger and a kind of helpless despair came as Travis realized the scant choices he had now, and all that he stood to lose. He could vanish, leaving behind most of his money and abandoning all thought of Patricia Kilgore, or he could risk a week, two weeks, more here—did he have that much time?—and get out with what money he could recover, and probably with Patricia. Or . . . ? Travis halted by an empty corral. A new and flaring hope held him motionlessly. There were other kinds of traps. The real Roger Travis could walk into a trap. If the fellow were killed . . .
When Travis walked slowly back to the Boston House on the southwest corner of the plaza, he was a more dangerous man than he had ever been. He was waiting to kill a man he had never seen and would not know when they met. But the man would know him. Day and night he would have to live with the grinding, watchful tension.
Patricia Kilgore had not returned. Travis was closely inspecting the hotel register for strangers in town when the smiling clerk said: “A young lawyer name of Rapburn got off the Socorro stage, Mister Travis, and hired a buggy and drove out to the ranch to see you.”
Travis managed his usual warm smile and thought a moment. “When Miss Kilgore comes in, tell her I’ve gone back to the ranch to see the man.”
He held the smile as he walked across the plaza to Ledfesser’s Store. An hour ago, buying the revolver and gun belt now strapped under his coat, he had bought a carbine also and left it in the store. He rammed the carbine into the empty saddle scabbard in a vicious mood of finality, and rode out of the plaza without looking back. And almost immediately he came upon the one man he least wished to see while planning to kill a man in cold blood. Father Philippe, the sun-browned little Franciscan padre, was vigorously driving nails into the gate in the low adobe wall enclosing the bare yard of his small church. With a hammer in hand and sleeves of his brown, belted robe turned back, the padre’s smiling greeting forced Travis to pull up.
“I see you have started to carry guns now, Mister Travis.”
Travis barely managed a civil: “Everyone does.”
“A custom that would be alarming in my native France,” the padre said cheerfully.
“This isn’t France,” said Travis carelessly. He was lifting the reins to ride on when the padre’s gesture held him.
Kindly now, and earnest, Father Philippe said: “Your generous gift some time ago has not been forgotten. Daily, Mister Travis, you and your departed wife have been remembered in prayers. Particularly that you may be granted all that you deserve.”
“Don’t bother anymore,” Travis said shortly. “I’ll get what I deserve myself. Always have, always will.”
The padre’s small smile was serene as he rolled a sleeve of the brown robe higher. “Prayers are never wasted, Mister Travis.” And when Travis shrugged and put his horse in motion, the padre called the friendly parting of the native Mexicans: “Vaya con Dios.” Go with God.
Unreasonable anger, and again a small chill of foreboding, stayed with Travis as he shook the horse into a fast lope. He had been a fool some time ago carelessly to hand the padre the one hundred dollars for luck. Gambler’s luck. And now, while he was planning to kill a man, he was being linked in prayers with that man’s dead wife. Travis had never considered himself superstitious—but the smiling little padre made him so now. Some things were best left alone.
In that mood, his anger turned to the trouble that Grady Doyle and his men seemed to have made with Gid Markham. What had happened, Travis still did not know. He had tried to talk to the stranger named Clay Mara, and the doctor had refused to disturb the exhausted, sleeping man. Mara and his two companions had reached Soledad. There was a chance that Grady Doyle’s bunch had returned. But when Travis rode down through trees and brush once more and sighted the low, slab-rock line cabin again, deserted quiet still hung over the place. In a memo book, Travis wrote with slashing strokes: Doyle—see me at the ranch at once. He weighted the note under an empty bottle on the littered table inside the cabin, and rode on at a faster pace.
Now the great sun-flooded draws, the long, sheltering ridges, and soft haze of distance on far mountains began to take on new values. So did the Kilgores when Travis thought about them. Matt Kilgore and Patricia Kilgore. In the journal of the real Roger Travis, he had read with casual derision about the man’s high hopes and eager plans, and of the man’s young wife in Wyoming who had been a part of it. Something that Travis still did not quite understand had happened to him here in this Soledad country. He had found his own high hopes and eager plans—and the girl to share them. And he had found more than that, Travis realized as he skirted the last ridge covered with piñon and juniper, and saw across the smiling grass flats the distant Kilgore ranch house. He had come cynically to sell cattle and depart, and now that he faced losing everything, it came to him that the house ahead was the only place he had ever really been glad to come ba
ck to. He was wanted here. Without meaning to, he had become part of a warm-hearted family. Here he had found all that the real Roger Travis had found in Wyoming and had lost. And mockery filled the thought that, while using the other man’s name and identity, he himself might lose everything here.
The tension of what he faced, and what he must do, caught Travis again as he sighted Jim Rapburn’s buggy in the ranch yard behind the house, and Matt Kilgore out in the open talking to the young Socorro lawyer. Travis put his horse into a final run, planning how best now to use this lawyer he had hired some time ago.
When Travis swung down by the two men, Matt Kilgore’s chuckle greeted him. “You got sensible an’ bought a gun, I see,” Matt said.
“I took your advice about Gid Markham,” Travis said lightly, and it pleased Matt as he intended. Travis turned to Rapburn. “Jim, I heard in town that I’d missed you.”
Jim Rapburn’s handshake was warm. He was shorter than Travis, and his gray suit, narrow-brimmed hat, white linen shirt, and soft calfskin shoes marked him a rather prosperous townsman.
Matt Kilgore broke in: “Roger, lemme see you use that new gun.” Matt’s rope-scarred hand pointed to a newly peeled corner post of the nearest corral. “See that rosin spot halfway up?”
Good-naturedly Travis said: “Matt, I can use a gun.”
A grim smile touched Matt’s weather-scoured face. “Come a day that rosin spot might be Gid Markham’s gun muzzle. Or one of Gid’s men. Show me we won’t lose you then, son.”
Without haste Travis drew and fired—and in the instant, his face hardened as he thought of the real Roger Travis. He drove two bullets fast at the post. The reports slammed across the yard and echoed back from the low, timbered ridge to the north. Matt peered at the post and chuckled with satisfaction.
“Either one’d stop a man.” His callused hand dropped on Travis’s shoulder. “Ain’t much call to worry about you. I got things to do now. We’ll get together later.” Matt walked away.
The peculiar expression on the young lawyer’s face brought Travis’s amused comment: “Jim, you look like you’ve seen a ghost.”