“The motor overheated and conked on me,” he explained.
He eyed her speculatively, almost prompted to ask what business brought her on foot into this God-forgotten wilderness. He wondered if it was possible she were bound for the same place he was. He forced an end to his speculation.
“She’ll be cool enough to start off again pretty soon,” he said. “You’re welcome to ride along as far as I go.”
There was a certain blankness in her gaze that troubled him. Her blue eyes clouded briefly.
“How far are you going?” More than ordinarily curious, the tone was.
“Wereville.”
He wondered if it were only imagination that made him believe she gasped as he pronounced the name. It was devilishly hot. Enough to fry your brains and make you imagine almost anything. She didn’t ask why he was going to Wereville.
He took advantage of their momentary silence to replace the water-tin in the luggage compartment. She stood silently in the blazing sun, shoe-soles sunk into the powdery loess. Her look as she regarded the dead motor was as if she hoped by some alchemy of glance to bring it to life again.
“I think it ought to run now,” she said.
He tramped forward through the dust and peered at the thermometer. The crimson line had shrunk somewhat, although it still hovered near the danger-line.
“A few more minutes, anyway,” he told her.
* * * *
Dust churned from under the wheels of the green coupé. Its engine was functioning wonderfully again.
Mulvaney had never seen ten such miles. That’s what a native of Lastwater had said it was. Lastwater was on the highway. Wereville was in the foothills of the mountains looming bluely ahead. In between were ten scorching miles. The road they were on—if it could be called a road—led to Wereville and a few isolated ranches in the mountain valleys.
They passed a cowboy cantering along on a paint pony—a thin, gray-faced man with the clean look of the open about him. A ten-gallon hat shaded his lean face. He reined to one side, waved as they passed. Then he inclined forward in his saddle, cut short the salutation and sat rigidly, staring. Mulvaney observed the dancing image in his rear-vision mirror and clucked.
“Almost friendly for a minute, wasn’t he?”
Already the cowboy was hidden in the dust that swirled behind them. The girl did not turn to look. She shrugged only slightly, and the expression of her eyes was singularly blank.
“You live on a ranch out this way?”
She shook her head.
If she didn’t live on a ranch, she must—He put the thought into words.
“Then you must live in Wereville.”
She turned her head quickly and stared full in his face. A faint expression of scorn curled her red lips, and her eyes were flashingly cold.
“Suppose I do? So what?”
The tone of her voice was sharp, combative. He recoiled from the fierce glow of her expression. A sterner man would have been tongue-tied. Mulvaney was completely stopped.
In spite of her sudden, wolfish ferocity, he felt that her attitude was not meant for him. Somehow, he realized vaguely that she directed it at the cowboy they had left sitting on his paint pony by the roadside.
The question Mulvaney had been about to ask her was stilled on his tongue. Chance was, she couldn’t help anyway. Better to wait until he got to Wereville and make his inquiries there. Then he thought of the grim figure the cowboy had made after his initial gesture of friendliness. Something very like a chill prickled along his spine.
It was an eerie feeling he had that all was not well with the town of Wereville. He vaguely recalled things he had read about range wars. Could he be getting into something like that here? If so, the girl and the cowboy evidently belonged to opposing factions. That would explain this slight incident—or would it? He shrugged dismally and scanned the road ahead.
They were skirting the shoulder of a tan hill. In front of them the dusty green foliage of a clump of cottonwoods glimmered in the sun. A small herd of cattle browsed on the grass that grew sparsely. A creek tumbled out of a ravine here, spanned by a wooden bridge. The girl laid her hand on his arm. The touch electrified him.
“Stop here,” she commanded.
He eased in the clutch and let the green coupé roll to a halt at the approach of the bridge.
The road continued straight ahead, angling across the desert.
“Wereville is that way,” the girl said, pointing across the bridge, toward the ravine. “I’ll walk in from here. You better go back to Lastwater—or stop at one of the ranches hereabouts and go back in the morning.”
She started to get out.
“Forgive me for not telling you sooner.” She smiled slightly. “It was awfully hot and I was tired of walking.”
He looked at her with blank amazement.
“But you don’t understand! I’m going to Wereville, too!”
She shook her head. “You thought you were. You’re going back to Lastwater—really.”
She slid toward the door.
“Here!” Mulvaney said. “You can’t do that! I’m taking you to Wereville!”
Her eyes grew stormy.
“Don’t be a fool, Mister—whatever-your-name-is! They won’t let you in! Go back now and save yourself trouble!”
“I’m not in the habit of saving myself trouble,” he said grimly and let out the clutch.
The green coupé nosed into the bridge-approach and roared into the cottonwood grove. Just in time, Mulvaney plunged his foot upon the brake. The coupé halted with not six inches separating its front bumper and the massive palings of a wooden gate.
A lean stranger in dusty overalls sat hunched on the top rail, meditatively chewing a blade of grass.
“Ain’t no passage beyond this gate, Mister!” he called out.
Mulvaney’s glance swiveled to a weather-beaten sign. WEREVILLE—5 MILES, it said, and had an arrow pointing off up the ravine.
“You had to be smart,” the girl said. “I told you so—but thanks for the lift.”
She got out and waved to the man perched above them.
“Hi, Jim!”
“Hi, Joan! Your paw and maw is waiting for you. Better git along!”
“You can’t block a public thoroughfare like this!” Mulvaney cried out hotly. The man Jim pointed silently to a cloth sign tacked upon the gate. It bore the signature of the Sheriff, proclaimed that intruders were trespassers, and such would be prosecuted.”
“I don’t care what that says,” Mulvaney thrust at him. “I’ve got business in Wereville, and I’m going there!”
“What business you got in Wereville?” Jim said, and whistled softly.
Three men armed with shotguns stepped out of leafy concealment. The eldest of the trio had a white beard. They stared levelly at Mulvaney.
“No strangers. It’s for your own good,” the beard said flatly.
The girl was watching Mulvaney with something like grim amusement in her glance.
“Maybe you’ll give up now,” she suggested.
He surveyed the armed group doubtfully. They appeared menacing enough, but not overly dangerous.
“Damn it—no!” he explained. “I’m not a stranger!”
“What’s that you say?”
The bearded man stepped closer and peered at him through the bars of the gate.
“I’m not a stranger,” Mulvaney repeated. “I—I—well, I belong here!”
“Who are you?”
“Kenneth Mulvaney. I was born in Wereville. I left with my parents while I was still a baby.”
“Tod and Mary Mulvaney?” questioned the oldster.
“The same.”
The man Jim had clambered down off the
gate and joined the armed group. Mulvaney remained angrily at the wheel of the green coupé. The girl Joan—he wondered vaguely what other name she had—regarded him with startled wonder. The graybeard harangued the group in low tones, then turned back to Mulvaney. Mulvaney stuck his head from behind the windshield.
“Well?”
“I’m Hank Simpson. Where’s your folks, boy?”
Mulvaney hesitated.
“—Dead, sir,” he said reluctantly. “When I was still a boy. I was raised in an orphanage.”
“You remembered your people coming from Wereville?”
Mulvaney crushed back a desire to resent Simpson’s questions.
“No, sir,” he said truthfully. “I read about it in my mother’s diary. I thought maybe—maybe I might find some relatives here.”
Simpson shook his bearded head, pale eyes bright.
“No. Tod and Mary had no kin. But if you’re who you say you are, you’ve got friends. If you’re not, may God help you. He’s the only one can!”
Hank Simpson stepped aside and jerked his head to the others. Watching Mulvaney curiously, they came forward and swung the great gate wide.
The green coupé left the quartet standing by the gate and chugged along the narrow road. The way rose gently, twisting through the narrow canyon. It followed the course of the creek, sometimes crossing it only to re-cross it farther upstream. The narrow bridges were rickety, and Mulvaney eased the coupé over them with trepidation.
He felt like Alice in Wonderland. Things were getting curiouser and curiouser. He didn’t pretend to understand what was going on here, what subtle cause prompted the people of the valley to bar their town to strangers. Mulvaney recalled the words of the service station proprietor at Lastwater. He had stopped there to get gas.
“A queer bunch up there,” the fellow had told him, gnawing a generous chunk from a plug of tobacco. “Holed up in that valley since God knows when. Nobody ever goes to Wereville—them that does, comes right back. Never say nothin’, neither. ’Shamed o’ gettin’ run out, I guess.” He laughed sharply and leered at Mulvaney.
He glanced sideways at the girl in the seat beside him. Beyond a certain amount of reticence, she had displayed no peculiarity that he could discern. She had seemed tense on the journey across the desert—especially after they had passed the cowboy—but that seemed gone now. She laughed and the tips of her teeth showed white between red, half-parted lips.
Only her eyes were the same—almost ingenuously blank. And the men at the gate. A sinister feeling shook him. Their eyes were the same. It baffled him. He could not know that his own bore the same look.
“It’s all very confusing,” he said drawing the words from nothingness.
She smiled briefly. “I suppose it is.” Shadow hovered over her full, soft mouth. “There’s no reason why you shouldn’t know,” she said slowly. “As long as you’re one of us.”
Her acceptance of him as one of the people of the valley comforted him, at the same time that it repelled him strangely. He steered the coupé expertly around a curve, waiting for her to continue. “It’s the ranchers, of course.”
He nodded. “That explains the cowboy?”
She divined what he meant. “Yes. He recognized me. I suppose he did, anyway. I’m in Lastwater frequently. Everyone for miles around is there at one time or another. We’re poison around here, Mister Mulvaney.”
“Cut the formality,” he said. “You don’t look poison to me.”
“You’re one of us,” she said simply, as if that explained everything. “There’s been a kind of feud between our people and the ranchers for more years than I can remember. It’s more bitter now.”
“So bad you have to guard the road to keep strangers out?”
“Of course. Besides, the moon is full tonight. We’re particularly careful now.”
Mulvaney furrowed his forehead. Rangeland hate must be at fever pitch to make them fear an attack in the night. Whatever side the girl was on, he felt, must be the right side. So he pictured the ranchers as inconsiderate monsters.
The walls of the canyon sloped and fell away. The green coupé thrust itself around a bend and into as beautiful a valley as Kenneth Mulvaney had ever seen.
The valley bottom was a prairie perhaps a mile wide by twice as long. The creek meandered through its middle, bisecting green and yellow fields with its line of standing cottonwoods. On either side, pine-clad slopes rose steeply, stepping up toward the head of the valley.
The quick glance Mulvaney cast in that direction chilled him. A mountain guarded the valley’s upper end. Even in the sunlight, it had seemed somber and brooding, like a giant wolf frozen in solid granite, overshadowing the valley with its baleful presence. Mulvaney spared it another quick glance, and the feeling it inspired in him increased. He shrugged and avoided looking at it, turning his attention to the valley.
A quarter of a mile ahead, a small aggregation of houses glinted in the rays of the westering sun. Details were hidden in the foliage of the many trees that sheltered the town.
“Wereville,” the girl said. “It isn’t much—only a dozen or so houses—a general store—a blacksmith shop—population sixty-three.”
Grazing cattle were brown dots in the fields around the town. Wheat stood waist high, rippling with golden waves on either side of the road. The blaze of the sun was fierce and mellow at once. The green coupé streamed into Wereville like a comet preceding a fanned-out tail of tan dust particles.
Most—if not all—of the town’s population was gathered in the square in front of the general store. Mulvaney braked the dusty car to a halt near the tail of a bay mare tied to the hitching rack. The mare’s flanks were covered with dust and sweat. The animal was winded as if from a hard ride.
Mulvaney squinted through the insect spotted windshield at the group facing them.
Sullen expressions were there. Some of the women were fierce in their looks, as though resenting his intrusion into their town. The female of the species has the more protective nature, he thought.
His eye caught sight of a familiar figure in blue denim, loafing in the foreground. Jim—the man at the gate. A short-cut, Mulvaney thought fleetingly. Jim had taken advantage of it to ride ahead and warn the villagers of their coming.
The girl opened her door with a shrill screech of metal and got out. The crowd kept silent. An elderly man stepped forward and the girl greeted him.
“I’m back, Dad.”
“Joan! Who’s that feller with you?” She explained rapidly as Mulvaney got out beside her. Then she caught sight of the man who had ridden the mare from the gate. She stopped abruptly.
“Why—there’s Jim! He could have told you!”
“He told us what this feller said. How do we know it’s true? Maybe it’s a trick.”
Mulvaney felt seriously uneasy before the menacing look of the crowd. There was something about them—a wolfish ferocity held in abeyance—that made his flesh crawl.
“Look!” the girl cried. “Look at his eyes!”
Mulvaney felt the intensity of the crowd’s gaze focused on his face. He was embarrassed.
“I can prove I’m Kenneth Mulvaney,” he said.
He brought a packet of papers from the pocket of his jacket and held them out to Joan’s father. Hoofs clattered across the square.
Mulvaney looked up and met the fierce, lupine gaze of the man on the black stallion. The beast reared, and its rider leaned out of the saddle, seized the papers from Mulvaney’s grasp.
“I’ll look at these!”
The valley people fell back with respect and awe. The horseman was darkly, cruelly handsome. Black eyes darted over the papers he took from the packet. It contained Mulvaney’s birth certificate, a picture of his parents, and his mother’s diary bound with a faded blue ribbon. The
man held the picture out for the townspeople to see.
“That’s Tod and Mary, all right,” agreed Joan’s father.
The attitude of the crowd changed perceptibly. Their expressions became friendly. All but the lupine rider of the black stallion. He passed the packet back to Mulvaney. He roamed his glance possessively to Joan. Mulvaney felt his scalp tighten as the probing stare rested on the soft, warm curves of the girl’s body. The eyes came back to Mulvaney. Thin lips smiled sneeringly.
“It takes more than credentials to hold your proper place in this valley, Mulvaney. We don’t run alone here.”
With these cryptic words, he wheeled the restive, wild-eyed stallion and galloped away across the town square.
“Who does he think he is?” Mulvaney queried resentfully.
“Bock Martin,” Joan said quietly.
“Bock’s a hard feller to get along with,” her father added. He held out his hand. “My name’s Jordan. Welcome to Were Valley, Mulvaney.”
Mulvaney shook hands. “Thanks. I’ll probably not stay long. I just came to find if I had any folks living here…”
“You’ll stay,” Jordan said, peering at him. Mulvaney could not describe the look—the queer lack of expression—that was in his eyes. “Few ever leave,” Jordan went on. “Those who do generally come back—unless something happens.” He turned to his daughter. “Find out anything in town?”
“The place was practically deserted. Even the priest was gone.”
“Where’s your horse? Leave it at the gate?”
Mulvaney lifted his head. The girl had been walking when he picked her up. She shrugged slightly.
“It’s dead. One of the ranchers shot it.”
“Shot your horse!”
A sigh went up from the villagers.
“Yes. I was taking the shortcut through Baxter’s Canyon. A man was hidden behind a rock, and he shot my horse. He shouted that that was just a warning, and I heard his horse’s hoofs as he rode away. I never did see him.”
The 7th Golden Age of Weird Fiction MEGAPACK®: Manly Banister Page 3