by John Long
He turned to leave; a couple of hanging milk-jugs jangled together; Teresa opened the door, and found herself in Jeff’s arms.
‘Bring my hoss round the rear,’ he muttered.
‘But – but why?’ she asked, trembling against him as he thrust her out.
‘My hoss!’ he commanded.
‘Do as he says, Teresa,’ Ma Keller softly interrupted from the outer doorway; she was wearing a shawl for the evening was chilly and there was a flash of excitement in her eyes. ‘Come here, son,’ she added, giving him a pathetic look while Teresa departed. ‘Be careful. You just ain’t ready for it.’
‘I know, Ma, I know!’ he spoke impatiently; then he looked at her sharply, surprised at her penetration. How much did she guess?
She stood regarding him steadily and gravely, the side of her wrinkled mouth twitching nervously. Rand felt his exterior hardness crumbling away as she seemed to go mining after his true self. He muttered irritably to himself, wrung his terrible hands together and looked away. He was afraid he might show how scared he really was; he was afraid he might suddenly embrace the grand old lady.
With a choking sense of gratitude, Rand obviously yearned to say many kind things to her, and to give parting respects to Pa, yet he could say nothing. He retreated backward to the rear door, seeming kind of entranced by the gentle encouraging smile on the old woman’s face. Teresa had by now returned, hot and breathless. She stood in the shadow beside that door, and there were tears in her wide, staring eyes. He glanced quickly at her. Thereat she thrust a parcel of food into his hands, upon which hands she fixed her attention with such mounting tender emotion as would have alarmed any man.
‘Whereabouts is Sweetwater?’ he abruptly asked with a queer huskiness.
If Rand had dived for his guns and explosively shattered the strained peace of the moment, the two women could barely have looked more horrified. The old woman’s smile vanished; tightly she clutched her shawl around her narrow shoulders as if she felt the breath of Winter. Teresa uttered a cry of dismay.
‘What’s the matter? Where’s Sweetwater? Hurry! Please quit the foolin’, Ma!’ Rand whispered in growing desperation: the creaking of the rocking chair had ceased out on the veranda.
‘Sweetwater! It’s a hell-pot! Don’t go, son!’ the old woman croaked oddly; and, continuing to deplore the place as a den of iniquity, she extended a trembling hand westwards.
‘Goodbye, Ma,’ whispered Rand, sharply swinging around. ‘Goodbye!’
‘Rand!’ Teresa screamed his name as she released feelings long held secretly in check. ‘Come back, Rand!’
A lone rider was streaking across the parched range-land, with his own name echoing sadly in his ears. The price for a recent slice of happiness was giving a mighty power of pain, and the pain was reforming an old resolution. No, Rand would always run wild, always ride alone. He headed for the desert.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
A desolate region marked the outer edges of Keller’s one-time booming cattle country, a land of dust, prickly-pears and antique oxen skulls. Through this sad scenery rode Jeff Rand, heading directly west into the sea-like setting of the desert sun. His mission was death.
Being on horse-back again imparted a relieving sense of security; he felt at home where he belonged, instead of getting all awkward and shy of manners among homesteaders and decent peace-abiding folk like the Kellers. For a man like himself the ground was dangerous. Thus the first dozen or so miles of galloping gave a right smart uplift to Rand’s spirits; but as he progressed further, as the sun submerged itself and the stars inherited the heavens, shining chilly over the running sand, he began to consider more profoundly the object of his ride. Thereat he was possessed by an awful sinking sensation in the body. He knew then that he was going to die.
Beyond a certain expanse of cacti and Spanish-nettles he dismounted for a while. According to his calculating it was close on two a.m. Sweetwater should be located, if Ma Keller had pointed in the right direction, somewhere around dayrise. There was no hurry, however; the end would come soon enough. No doubt Ives, the old gunman Pa had mentioned, felt just this same way afore being hanged. Debating in this way, Rand kept himself company; and his argufying ended by praising Teresa’s goodness. She had slung fat water-skins across his saddle, which he now found excellently cooling. He also chuckled at the piece of knitting she had confusedly bundled among the provisions. He smelt it, stretched it with animal-like curiosity, then hucked down to brood and drink and chew dried apples.
Of a sudden he stiffened alertly: a horse’s hoof had struck flint, way out there in the blackness.
‘Sheriff’s men,’ he muttered, first spitting out a mouthful of fruit as he stretched himself upon his stomach.
For a long while he spied nothing, until he happened to peer eastward. Then he perceived about thirty riding shapes moving against the starlit sky. They were drowsily steering a course for Vulch City.
‘Miners,’ Rand breathed. ‘Miners what are rarin’ to lynch a fella; you bet. They are boiling mad for Bruce Gang blood, and aching to get back to their diggings. Disturbing man, that sheriff. He don’t quit easy. He must guess the gang ain’t yet crossed the border.’
Presently Rand was back in the saddle again, and riding due west. A couple of hours lapsed by before he made out a cloud-like outline of mountains over to the left.
‘Grapevine Gulch, twenty miles south, mebbe more,’ he idly murmured, reaching forward to stuff dried apples into the horse’s mouth, then wiping his slobbery hand on its mane. ‘Touch of frost in the air. The falls a-coming. Poor Pa Keller! Selling out the old place. Darned shameful thing. There’s Grapevine now! That tall monument of stone is like a tombstone for Smily. He was a fine boy. He hadn’t a chance. Symes just….’
But recollection of that gunfight, of the terrible death-dealing swiftness of Symes, caused Rand’s gorge to rise in fresh dread.
‘With yuh soon, Smily,’ he snarled, trying to be tough with himself. ‘Yeah; you too Jim Miller. And I’m a-bringing company for hell.’
He gave the animal a nervous slap; it grunted and cantered more resolutely over the rolls of sand.
Riding, riding, riding across ever grimmer looking territory; sometimes searching all directions, most times nodding, jerking up in alarm, taking another swig of water, often feeling gun-butts, then peering woefully at distorted hands – under such occupation as this did Rand while away the time. In half-dreams he pictured the people he had met since Jim Miller died; and finally he ruminated on his last moments with the Bruce Gang. Again he asked himself the old problem: whose brain really operated the outfit? Again the same solution was reached: the man who held Miller’s watch was boss – the same man Sturdy whose gun he still felt in his back just before that last fight in the storm. Nevertheless Sturdy’s move had saved him from being cruelly slain. But the move had been made for a greedy purpose; no doubt Sturdy was hoping Rand would return to cut down his enemies, thus saving a wasteful share-out of dollars. Reaching this dreamy conclusion, Rand once more jerked up in alarm, and looked behind. A tingling thrill passed through his body. Already he was being pursued by the light of dawn.
Newly alert and anxious his searching eyes roved ahead. Somewhere in the darkness yonder this foul desert must be merging into grassland. He broke into a steady gallop, his intention being to get into town before the citizens began to stir.
About thirty minutes later Rand drew rein, dismayed to see, by the spreading paleness, a seemingly endless panorama of desolation. Mound followed mound on every side. Furthermore he kept glimpsing dark forms soaring overhead, circling lower and lower: he was being haunted by death-forseeing vultures. The atmosphere just hereabout was something more than melancholy – it was downright sinister. As he again scanned the distance his blood ran cold: his horse began to tremble under him; an uncanny moaning and sighing was creeping out of the sand.
Never in his life had Rand been afraid of loneliness. Yet here at this hour both he and that wise old horse were su
re uneasy about the unknown. The whole district was empty in the purple shade; the moaning died away; all was as silent as the stars again, with a deadness seeming just as ancient. Rand could now feel his heart drumming under stress of danger.
First it was a little movement nearby that attracted his notice: a red leaf on a thorn branch was twisting round and round in the motionless air, as if by a secret mechanism. Gradually the deceptive light expanded, hounding away the shadows, until Rand next spied little holes appearing in the sand, like the holes in a frying flapjack. Then the sighing breathed forth again, turned into a snake-like hiss – the holes multiplied, spread rapidly around him – the desert was draining off, vanishing under his horse. Suddenly, jolting his heart into his throat, there came an ominous crackling and snapping.
Digging spurs into his mount, he leapt free. Next instant the place collapsed. Haggard and white of face, Rand drew up and gazed back. A black chasm yawned up at him. He could see rotten planks, and deep below were rows of bottles, winking like eyes, while around them lay heaps of bones. Slowly and terribly realisation came like the dawning around him – he had been standing on a cabin roof; and, as he watched the sand filtering from the remainder of it, he could read the following gaudy lettering:
SWEETWATER SALOON
It took a considerable while before Jeff Rand overcame the shakes that had attacked him, quietened his horse, and got down to thinking straight and to surveying his surroundings with more particularity. He was standing amidst a half-buried town, dead in the centre of the Bruce Gang’s hideout.
Two lines of mounds, similar to the one he had been standing upon, extended right and left before him: this apparently had been the main street. As his gaze travelled down it he could make out sections of stove-pipe protruding from the sand, further on roof-tops showed like a fleet of half-sunken river-boats. At the extreme end of the town the shacks stood comparatively free, their lifeless windows and doors giving them a ghoulish appearance. Old Ma Keller had been dead right when she said:
‘Sweetwater is a hell-pot. Sweetwater packed more sin than a full-blowed city, so she got smote and clean Godforsaken.’
Now, as Jeff Rand viewed that scene with an even deeper feeling of foreboding with Ma’s words a-ringing in his ears, the yellow sunlight came and tinged everything like a sickly disease, while spooky shadows got to haunting behind those distant buildings, and while the stillness and quietude continued as if in eternal mourning for the dead. He decided to do something; if he just sat there looking he would get too scared to do anything except run away.
‘Best take a quick squint round,’ he whispered softly to himself. ‘Won’t go far, though, too derned gruesome. Wonder why they calls it Sweetwater. Don’t seem to be no water no place, sweet nor sour; and no life neither; no Bruce Gang just no nothing.’
Whilst he hesitated a moment longer to bite into a chaw of tobacco, a thin taper of blue smoke started to breathe straight upward from one of the furthermost buildings.
‘Whoa, Jeff!’ He paused with the tobacco clenched in his teeth. ‘They’re still here. That’s a funny thing.’
He sounded calm and self-possessed, when actually the old quaking sensation was at it again, but now operating like the gripes.
‘Why ain’t they shooting at me? Lookouts must have spied me by this time. Mebbe Bruce and his boys are waiting till I’m well in and sealed afore blasting.’
He checked over his guns, transferred a certain mining certificate from a pocket into a saddle-bag, then plodded with lazy slowness down the main street of Sweetwater.
‘Townfolk sure left in a hurry,’ he observed, his quick eyes flashing into passing doorways, noting broken furniture, and even searching out sand-filled mugs and pans, and tables spread for some long forgotten meal. ‘Say, just look there! Now that’s real weird.’ Mournfully he beheld the rising ground to the left of town, where lay a half-submerged wagon train complete with sun-bleached skeletons of oxen. ‘You know what? A thing like that could scare a normal fella. I’m real scared. Yeah, but I wonder what lies behind that great rift o’ dust. An army could huck down there and bushwhack another army, so to speak.’ He plodded past the rift which extended from the stables to the stage-office. ‘All clear!’ he breathed. ‘Whole cabins are showing up now. How-dee, how-dee! The smoke’s stopped. Which building had it been belching from, anyhow? And where…. What the blazes!’
There came a stunning crash. A hot blast of air rushed past him. Rand’s guns were half-drawn; his body was twisted in the saddle; furiously he sat regarding a certain window shutter, swinging loosely in the sudden charge of wind.
‘Nasty shock, that there!’ he grunted, moving on with eyes still wide. ‘Sun’s fading afore it’s even ripe. Wind’s coming in earnest; dust clouds in the south; looks bad, but it won’t be much. Reckon I’ll make for yonder Hurdy Gurdy House.’
More hot rushes of air set that shutter slamming behind him with dismal regularity. Little eddies of sand and rubbish scuttered in and out of gloomy doorways. Further on a liquor dealer’s cabin set up a swaying and squeaking like a tombful of devils in a brawl. Right opposite stood the Belmont Hotel, lopsided and roofless. Next door, looking more substantial and habitable, was the Hurdy Gurdy House, a haunt of wildly gay memories, and it happened to be the chosen hideout of the Bruce Gang.
A hideout in Sweetwater had been a very shrewd choice; no posse would give the place a second thought: Sweetwater was dead, empty, buried, offering no refuge; and surely no living man would have nerve enough to lay low in a den of evil spirits. Since Sweetwater was Godforsaken the devil had taken over, lock, stock and barrel, not to mention normal spooks.
‘We ain’t seen nothing, dead nor alive in weeks, ’cepting the local population of lizards and bugs, and a wandering phantom or two.’ So complained many of the gang with tempers frayed. ‘We’ve gotten ourselves a fat load o’ dollar bills, yet we suffer real awful poverty and won’t get a pauper’s burial at this rate, what with hungry guts hanging out, dried up livers and all, not to mention lumbago and attacks of scratchy-back. By hell!’
‘Wish you boys would quit foolin’ around.’ Big Bruce was savagely snarling, as he sat jerking beans out of a can at the bar. ‘Give me some coffee, Gowl. This filth is lousy; feels like I’m being hanged.’
‘Coffee, coffee, coffee! Don’t he do nothin’ but drink that bilge?’ grumbled Clay, who had apparently acquired a delicate taste during his late saloon-sweeping days.
‘Never mind that. You hand back my soap, Clay, and watch your own affairs!’ roared Mex, his brawny body stripped to the waist and flecked with lather from the razor he brandished at Clay’s face. ‘Give back. I say give or I cut ears off Meester Clay!’
With a frightened curse and a stagger, Clay retreated as the frothy razor flicked dangerously close to his eyes.
‘Slice him up, Mex! Cut him to stew-meat!’ Symes urged in a rapture from his bunk, which was the top of an old square piano. ‘Slit his beeg fat tongue, Mexy boy. Then have a nice clean wash for old time’s sake.’
‘Quit foolin’, all of yuh!’ Bruce bawled more loudly. ‘Gowl has plenty of soap to go round, he even thickens the coffee with the stuff, fear it goes to waste. Just go easy on the water, Mex, that’s all. Why shave, anyhow? Nobody else does.’
‘ ’Cept me,’ yawned Symes, stretching out again, a little disappointed in Mex. ‘I even get me a wash.’ This was true; somehow Symes had mysteriously preserved a well groomed look. ‘There’s only one other thing required, Bruce, and that’s for Mister Sturdy to ride back safe, saying the search is off.’
‘Don’t worry, Symes. Sturdy is clever. I’m glad he drew the ace when we cut cards for it.’ Bruce sipped thoughtfully at his coffee and soap. ‘It’s like being in lousy Noah’s lousy Ark, being penned up in here, and sending a fella out to check land this fashion. Never mind, soon as we get word the sheriff’s gathered himself enough saddle-corns, soon as he goes back to his red-hot town, then we’ll ride slick across the border. Then co
mes the share-outs and a rip-snorting life.’
‘You bet. We’ve earned it,’ agreed Winters, eager to please Bruce after the whipping he had received at the gulch.
‘Look here, boss,’ said Gowl, leaning persuasively over the bar. ‘Just because I wasn’t on the raid doesn’t mean I get a thin cut, I hope. My job’s important. Without grub you’d all die, then where would you be? Wherefore I figures I’ve kind of saved your lives, getting all these supplies out here. Wherefore with Larry swallowed up in the storm, and numbers now being what they are, my slice should be – erm – thick.’
Bruce grinned largely into his face, raised a can of boiling coffee, and slowly poured the liquid over Mister Gowl’s head.
‘You poison me, same as this bilge,’ he whispered confidentially, shaking out the last dregs, and thoroughly enjoying everybody’s laughter as the cook, howling pitifully, leapt back in agony.
‘Big and beautiful wads o’ bills, fellas,’ drawled Symes, heartlessly ignoring the incident, and now standing on the piano to turn out the kerosene lamp. ‘Then comes the fine food, the peach brandy – and the gals.’
‘Did anyone hear them noises agin, last night?’asked Tom, nervously shuffling a pack of cards.
‘Don’t interrupt me, Tom; it’s naughty,’ Symes coldly reproached him, his black eyes glaring wide. ‘Lay off the whiskey, Tom, then the spooks will hightail it.’
‘ ’Tain’t just whiskey, neither,’ argued Gowl, sounding spiteful and breathless, with an old shirt round his half-boiled head. ‘I was reared here in Sweetwater; there now. This town’s bad medicine today, and yesterday it was worse than Deadwood is today, and that’s talking some, I can tell you. There used to be shootings and stabbings no end, drink came cheap, and every citizen from kids upward became a roistering drunk at sundown. I ain’t lying, boys. Sin up and slaughtered most townfolk, and what sin didn’t get the desert did. Why, there’s hundreds o’ skeletons in this here sand, under your boots.’