Lost Trail

by Paul Lederer

  The Lost Trail

  Paul Lederer writing as Logan Winters

  ONE

  Through the thin mountain mist the stars were only silver scars lingering from the hard battle that the settling night had waged against the sweltering day. John Tanner’s gray horse waded on through the mist spread across the mountain flank, its hoofs silent against the damp pine needles. Did the horse have a memory of the trail? Tanner wondered. If it did, there was no indication of it in its plodding, methodical motion. Maybe horses are not burdened by remembrances of death and destruction. Having no memory of what once was they could not be fearful of the repetition of pain.

  Tanner, however, recalled the past too well – yet he, only half as smart as his horse, was returning to Knox to offer his body and soul up on the altar of retribution. He shook his head and half-grinned ironically. A man long alone on the trail can fall into strange conversations with himself.

  He found himself now six days out of Kansas City, only a morning away from the town of Knox where two years before….

  The pale moon lifted itself slowly from its eastern bed and rose higher, appearing like a pocked, leering skull as Tanner left the bunkhouse, walking to the gazebo set away from the house among the oak trees. The night altered its aspect as he neared the cone-topped building; the moon itself seemed to alter, becoming a golden promise riding high in the summer sky. Once he saw Becky he could hear the night birds singing in the willows along the creek. The moon, he decided, wore many faces.

  Becky Canasta was wearing white and with her slender figure and long pale hair she was a quite angelic apparition as she stood in the gazebo waiting for Tanner. She did not turn her head at the sound of his approaching footsteps, but continued to lean on the railing of the structure, her eyes on unimaginable distances.

  She was a girl to whom the night, the future held indefinable yet wonderful promise. When Tanner appeared at the foot of the steps leading up to the gazebo, he removed his hat and stood for a moment, overwhelmed by her quiet beauty.

  ‘Hello,’ Becky said softly as her eyes lifted to John Tanner.

  There seemed some hesitation in her voice, a hint of fear in her eyes. Something Tanner did not understand, but which was obviously troubling her. He walked up the wooden steps of the gazebo and tried to fold her into his arms as he had at every opportunity since their first meeting on the C-bar-C Ranch, at the first indication that she had feelings for him as well – how could fortune have delivered such a gift to him? He was not rich, only a hard-working cowhand. He was not the sort you consider unusually handsome, but he seemed to suit Becky well enough, and that was all that mattered.

  She held herself at a little distance from him and the troubled look remained in her eyes. Tanner lifted her chin and asked, ‘What is it, Becky?’

  ‘I can’t tell you,’ she replied, her lip trembling slightly. She held a small reticule in her hands. Now she turned away and twisted its tie-strings nervously.

  ‘You can, you know. You can tell me anything, Becky.’

  Then Tanner caught a moving shadow out of the corner of his eyes and she didn’t have to tell him anything. Matt Doyle was stalking toward them, his eyes wide with rage.

  ‘Didn’t I tell you to stay away from that man!’ Matt Doyle shouted, and he started up the steps of the gazebo.

  Becky turned toward him with a pistol she had taken from her reticule and shot the man twice in the chest. Matt Doyle reeled back and slid down the steps on his back as lanterns were lit in the big house and the bunkhouse. Already a few men, drawn by the shots were rushing toward them through the oak trees.

  Becky was trembling. Matt Doyle lay dead at the foot of the steps.

  ‘What will I do!’ she sobbed as boot steps came nearer.

  ‘Give me that,’ Tanner ordered and she meekly handed him the pistol she had fired, its barrel still warm. By the time the body of men rushed from the trees toward them, Tanner was standing over Matt Doyle, the pistol in his hand.

  What else could he have done? Let Becky go to prison?

  Tanner only received a two-year sentence because Becky Canasta had convinced judge and jury that he was protecting her from Matt Doyle. Still, the judge, noting that Matt Doyle had been unarmed, pronounced sentence, saying that he could not simply let Tanner go free.

  The next two years….

  Becky quit writing a long time ago. Now he was back. There was no telling what kind of reception he would meet with.

  Cresting out the pine-clad knoll he was able to look down on the C-bar-C now shrouded in low clouds. The main house was painted a dark green which almost matched the color of the surrounding trees. The bunkhouse and other outbuildings – except the barn which was bright red – were whitewashed and weathered. There were a dozen or so horses in the corral and three hitched in front of the bunkhouse.

  Of the gazebo Tanner could see nothing through the trees.

  He waited, breathing shallowly, having no idea what sort of welcome he would receive. The gray horse shuddered and stamped a hoof impatiently, perhaps smelling the other horses and hay ahead. Tanner stroked the big gray’s neck and started winding his way down through the timber, a man returning to the scene of his crime.

  Reaching flat ground he started his horse immediately toward the main house, not knowing how Ben Canasta would greet him; if Becky were there, she would certainly welcome him, knowing what he had done for her. If everyone else on the ranch or in town misunderstood the killing of Matt Doyle, she certainly knew, and knew that Tanner had paid the penalty for her crime.

  That might not be enough to make her love him, but he would find out.

  The ranch yard was quiet, except for one old yard man Tanner did not recognize. He swung down in front of the big green house, looped his reins around the hitch rail and started up the steps leading to the porch. He paused uncertainly at the door before knocking, but finally, with a deep sigh, did rap his knuckles on it.

  It was a long time opening. Tanner could hear the slow shuffling steps approaching. They seemed hesitant, uncertain. Certainly it was not the welcoming he had imagined – with Becky rushing to greet him, perhaps throwing her arms around his neck with joy. That was the trouble with daydreams – eventually they collided with reality.

  The door creaked open and a face Tanner should have known but found difficult to recognize peered out. It was an old face, weighed down with sorrow, it seemed. It flickered with surprise and a few words creaked from its lips.

  ‘John Tanner!’ the weak voice said. Now John recognized the man, though how he could have aged so much in a brief two years was a puzzle. Or maybe two years at the end of life are as short as they seem long in childhood.

  ‘It’s me, Mr Canasta,’ John said to the ranch owner.

  ‘Well, well,’ the old man said, swinging the door wide. ‘Come in, son. Come on in!’ There was a real welcome in his words, but little strength behind them. Ben Canasta, it seemed, was fading rapidly.

  Tanner followed Canasta through the entryway, through the living room where no fire burned in the fireplace despite the chill of the night. The room had a disused feel about it. They walked to Canasta’s office which Tanner remembered well. Small, cluttered, with a tall window looking out at the grassland and the pine-shrouded hills beyond. This room, too, seemed almost neglected. There was a clutter of papers and folders on the desk and on the bookcase to the side, but it seemed to be old clutter, not the careless confusion scattered around by a busy man.

  ‘Sit down, John,’ Canasta was saying. He himself looked as if he could no longer hold himself upright as he sagged into the green-leather upholstered office chair behind his desk. ‘It’s fine to see you; I’m glad you came back,’ Canasta said as he pointlessly stacked some of the papers on his desk with pale, cr
ab-like hands. ‘I hope they weren’t too rough on you up there.’

  ‘No, not really,’ John said, as if it were a simple thing to rise before dawn and march in leg irons to the quarry at New Mexico Territorial Prison and swing a twelve-pound sledge hammer for ten hours a day under the raging sun, making small rocks out of big ones. There was no point in telling Canasta about all of that, and Tanner wanted to forget it himself.

  ‘How’s everything around here?’ he asked the old man. It didn’t seem possible, but Canasta’s frown deepened still more.

  ‘Becky’s gone,’ Canasta said. Tanner felt his heart twitch a little.

  ‘Gone? You mean she moved into town, or got married? Something like that?’

  ‘They stole her away,’ Canasta said, his voice breaking badly. ‘Held me up, robbed my safe and took her off with them.’

  ‘When?’ Tanner asked.

  ‘Four days ago.’

  The day before Tanner had been released from prison! ‘Who did it, Ben? Tell me all about it.’

  Ben Canasta nodded weakly as if his scrawny neck could barely support the weight of his head and the burden he carried. ‘There was three of them, all wearing masks, and they pushed Becky into the room with their guns drawn. They told me to open the safe – I wasn’t going to argue with them, not while they held Becky under their guns. I gave them everything in there, including the money from the sale of this year’s herd.

  ‘They told me not to try following, not to call the law on them or something could happen to Becky. Then they took her and the money and were gone.’

  ‘You’ve no idea who it was?’ Tanner asked, feeling a cold fury beginning to grow in his chest. Becky? In the hands of gunmen.

  ‘Of course I do!’ Canasta said more strongly. ‘It had to be someone who knew the workings of this ranch, didn’t it? The following day there were three men missing from the bunkhouse – and it was two days before payday! I suppose that’s not enough proof for a court, but it was enough for me.’

  ‘Who were they? Would I remember them?’ Tanner asked.

  ‘One of them was a new-hire named Charlie Cox, one was Wes Dalton – you might remember him. Their leader was Morgan Pride – I know you recall him.’

  ‘Yes, I do,’ said Tanner, having a vivid memory of the dark-eyed, broad-shouldered man with the narrow mustache who had tried more than once to badger Tanner into a fistfight over trivial matters. Dalton he barely remembered, except to recall that he was a sallow, silent blond who never put in a day’s work if he could help it.

  ‘What can I do to help, Ben?’ Tanner asked.

  ‘Get Becky back for me,’ Ben Canasta asked, lifting his watery eyes in a plea to Tanner. ‘John, I don’t think I’m long for it. My health’s been failing. I need to know that my daughter’s safe; I need to have her brought home to me.’

  ‘Surely the hands….’

  ‘We possed up at first, but those thieves had it in mind to ride long and hard. They each took an extra horse from my string and lit out across the desert. Three days it was we chased them, but the sun grew hotter, the land wilder. I knew the boys had lost their will to pursue them. Then we lost their trail up in the red-rock hills. There wasn’t anything more to be done. Besides the ranch needed to be tended to. If I could have gone on by myself, I would have, but I just couldn’t, John.’ Now his deeply concerned frown returned. ‘Maybe thirty years ago, twenty even, but now….’

  ‘I’ll give it my best try, Ben,’ Tanner told him. ‘Give me an idea of where you lost the trail and I’ll start from there – we’ll talk later,’ he added, noticing that the old man was now having difficulty staying alert. The weight of his sorrows, the guilt he felt over not being able to find Becky were a lot for him to carry. Tanner turned and started toward the door, trying to frame a plan in his mind.

  ‘Dine with me tonight, John,’ Canasta said. ‘After a nap, I’ll have more strength to go over all this.’

  John just nodded, a gesture Ben Canasta probably did not see. John believed that the old man had fallen asleep at his desk.

  John Tanner went out into the corridor and began making his way toward the front door. He was nearly to it when a side door of the corridor opened and he was confronted by a small dark-eyed woman wearing a neat black dress with white lace at the neck and cuffs. Tanner knew her – Ben Canasta’s housekeeper. She was on the young side of thirty but acted much older.

  ‘Oh,’ was what she said, but not in the way a person does when surprised. There was something approaching disgust in her voice, at least distaste. She puckered her mouth so that small vertical lines appeared on her upper lip and her dark eyes flared.

  ‘Hello, Monique.’

  ‘I thought we’d seen the last of you. I’d hoped so,’ the housekeeper said.

  ‘Not yet,’ Tanner replied. ‘There’s several things that still have to be straightened out. For instance, Ben wants me to have a try at finding Becky.’

  ‘She’s gone,’ the housekeeper said, stepping nearer to look up into John Tanner’s eyes. ‘And we’re all the better off for it. Even Mr Canasta, though he doesn’t realize it yet.’

  ‘I don’t think so – I think the old man is dying and he needs his daughter around the house.’

  ‘Why? I see to Mr Canasta’s needs. Better than his daughter ever could.’

  Tanner shifted his feet and turned his hat in his hands. Monique’s anger was obvious, but not who or what she was so angry with.

  ‘What do you know about the robbery?’ he asked and her face tightened still more.

  ‘Nothing – it happened, that’s all I know. But I have an opinion: Becky was behind it!’

  Tanner shook his head, not believing the hatred in those black eyes. ‘That makes no sense,’ he said. ‘Becky will fall heir to everything her father owns. The ranch, cash money – everything. Why would she plot to rob him?’

  ‘Because that’s the way she is! She wants everything and she wants it when she wants it. She doesn’t like to wait. She’s behind it, I promise you.’ Then Monique bowed her head into her palms and sobbed. ‘She just takes things,’ Monique blubbered, ‘like she tried to take Matt Doyle from me.’

  That was a stunner, if true. But it could not be, could it. Monique had loved the dead cowboy, but he had been pursuing Becky? Things like that did happen, of course, but if it was true that Becky had loved Matt Doyle in return, why had she killed the young man? John Tanner shook his head. It had been a very long day and he had a long ride ahead of him. He needed a good night’s sleep just then more than anything else. Monique was a jilted, hysterical woman, nothing more.

  Without another word he nodded, made his way out the door and into the chilly, foggy night. When he glanced back, Monique was still standing in the doorway, arms folded beneath her breasts, staring out at him, the night or at lost dreams.

  It was chilly and so after putting his horse up in the barn, which took no more than a half an hour even with pitching hay down from the loft for the gray to munch on, he walked across the yard, passing through the oak-shadows, to the bunkhouse which was lighted but strangely silent. There was usually a lot of joking, teasing in bunkhouses as the hands prepared for bed. There was none at all on this night.

  Just as he stepped up on to the porch, Tanner caught a glimpse of a shadow flitting away between buildings to disappear among the trees. A woman in black, her dark hair now loose around her shoulders. Monique, who else could it be?

  Opening the door to the bunkhouse Tanner stepped into a wall of silent resentment. Men sat at the low tables or on their bunks, watching with angry eyes as Tanner entered. Matt Doyle’s killer had returned.

  The man who came forward to meet John Tanner was named Ted Everly. A big red-headed man who had lost a lot of hair in the last two years and now appeared to have a monk’s cap. Time had done nothing, however, to diminish the massive shoulders and deep chest of Everly, nor the cutting gaze of his gray-blue eyes. Everly planted himself in front of Tanner, hands on his hips and said:
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  ‘You’re not wanted here, Tanner.’

  ‘I work here,’ John replied, watching as some of the hands began to gather in a knot. ‘Ben Canasta just took me on.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter,’ Ted Everly said, stepping even nearer, his eyes losing none of their threatening expression. ‘I don’t want you here, Tanner. None of us does. You can either get out now, or I promise you you will never leave – not alive.’

  TWO

  Tanner made his way to the barn across the yard where the oak trees cast moon shadows. Even with the thick ground fog he could find his way easily. The tall red structure was black against the starry skies. Riding farther on this night was unthinkable, no matter what Everly and the boys in the bunkhouse had strongly suggested. The last few days had left John Tanner trail-weary and sore.

  Entering the barn he first saw that his horse still had enough water and feed, then climbed up a pole ladder into the hayloft. Pulling the ladder up after him, he formed a bed of hay in the farthest corner and lay down to fall into a heavy but troubled sleep.

  Morning arrived far too early, the harsh glare of low sunlight cutting into the barn through the small loading window. Tanner sat up rubbing at his sleep-encrusted eyes, scratching at his arm where some small insect had bitten him half a dozen times. Then he lowered the flimsy ladder once more and descended with stiff muscles to the floor of the barn. The double doors to the barn were suddenly swung wide.

  ‘I told you that his horse was still here,’ a cowboy Tanner did not recognize said proudly. Ted Everly and three other hands stood there, silhouetted by the rising sun. Everly was glowering and he unbuttoned his sleeves to roll them back over his thick forearms.

  ‘I told you to go, Tanner. I’m going to make you wish you had listened.’

  With that, the bulky Everly crossed the straw-strewn floor of the barn, his broad face set with vengeful purpose. John Tanner could do nothing but wait, measuring his chances against the bull-like Everly. John’s muscles had become nearly as solid as the rocks he had been breaking up at the Territorial Prison over the past two years, and even before that they had been as strong as five years working on the range could have made them. Still, Everly’s chest was twice as thick as Tanner’s, and he had at least fifty pounds of weight on him.