The Strong Land Read online

  Then, in the rocks farther along the rim of the cliff, he detected a slight movement. He looked again, widening and then squinting his eyes. It looked like a boot heel. Not much of a mark at that distance, and not much damage could be done if he hit it.

  We’ll scare the daylights out of you, anyway, he thought, and, lifting the Winchester, he nestled his cheek affectionately against the stock and squeezed off a shot.

  Dust obscured the spot for a moment, but no dust could blot out the startled yell he heard. Somebody lunged into view then, and the Sandy Kid’s jaw dropped. It was Betty Kurland! She was wearing a man’s trousers and a man’s shirt and limping with one boot heel gone, but that hair could belong to nobody else.

  He got up, waving his arms, and ran out to meet her. She turned on him, and her own rifle was coming hip high when she got a better look and recognized him. She came on a couple of steps, and then stopped, her eyes flashing with indignation.

  “I thought you were my friend!” she flared at him. “Then you shoot at me!”

  “You shot at me!” he declared. “How was I to know?”

  “That’s different!”

  Such feminine logic was so amazing that he gulped and swallowed. “You shouldn’t have come out here,” he protested. “It isn’t safe!”

  “I wanted to find my father,” she said. “Where is he?”

  He led her to the lip of the cliff, and they found a way down. The Kid wanted a look at that desert, first. They came around in full sight of the mine tunnel and were just in time to see a man climbing out of a hole.

  “I’ll go get what’s left of Kurland,” they heard the man say. “They’ll never find him here.”

  The Sandy Kid was cursing softly, for he had been so preoccupied with the girl that he had walked around unthinking and now found himself looking into a gun held by Jasper Wald. The rancher had seen him, even if Jack Swarr, climbing from the freshly dug grave, had not.

  “Well, now,” Wald said. “If this ain’t nice. You and that girl walkin’ right up on us.”

  “Don’t you try nothing,” the Kid said. “This girl is known to be here. If she doesn’t show up, you’ll have the law around.”

  Wald chuckled. “No, we won’t. Not for long, anyway. I’ll just tell them this Kurland girl showed up to meet you, and you two took off to get married, over to Lordsburg or somewheres. They’ll figger you eloped and never even think of lookin’ for you.”

  Swarr grinned. “Hey, that’s a good idea, boss. An’ we can pile ’em in the same hole with her pa.”

  “If I were you,” the Sandy Kid said, “I’d guess again. I just come from Argo Springs. I know all about that gold ore you’ve been shipping to El Paso, and I ain’t the only one.”

  Jasper Wald hesitated. His idea for getting rid of the two had been a sudden inspiration and a good one, but the thought that the Kid might have mentioned the gold to someone in Argo Springs disturbed him. It would mean he would have to move slowly, or worse, that he was already suspected.

  Suddenly there was a clatter of stones, and they looked up. Only Wald, who held the gun on the Kid, did not shift his eyes. The newcomer was Dutch Schweitzer.

  “Watch that hombre, boss,” the German said hoarsely. “He’s a gunslick.”

  “Him?” Swarr was incredulous. “That kid?”

  “How old was Bill Bonney?” Dutch asked sarcastically. “He flashed a gun on me today so fast I never even saw his hand move.”

  Angered and worried, Jasper Wald stared at the Kid.

  “Listen, boss,” Dutch said, “he’s lyin’. I nosed around town after he left. After he left me, I mean. He never talked to nobody.”

  “How did I find out about the gold in that box you brought in? Addressed to Henry Wald in El Paso?” the Kid asked him.

  “He must have seen the box,” Dutch protested.

  The Sandy Kid’s mind was running desperately ahead, trying to find a way out. “Also” he added, “I checked on this claim. You never filed on it, so I did.”

  “What?” Wald’s shout was a bellow of fury. His face went dark with blood. “You filed on this claim? Why, you …” Rage drove all caution from his mind. “I’ll shoot you, blast you, and let you die right out in the sun! You …!”

  “Boss!” Swarr shouted. “Hold it! Mebbe he’s lyin’! Mebbe he didn’t file! Anyway,” he added craftily, “why kill him until he signs the claim over to us?”

  Wald’s rage died. He glanced at Swarr. “You’re right,” he said. “We can get possession that way.”

  The Sandy Kid chuckled. “You’ll have no cinch getting me to sign anything.”

  “It’ll be easy,” Wald said sharply. “We’ll just start by tyin’ up that girl and takin’ her boots off. By the time she gets a little fire on her feet, you’ll sign.”

  Dutch Schweitzer glanced at his chief. Then he helped Jack Swarr tie the girl. Swarr knelt and pulled off her boots. He drew deeply on his cigarette and thrust it toward her foot.

  Dutch stared at them, his eyes suddenly hardening. “None of that,” he said. “I thought you were bluffin’. Cut it out!”

  “Bluffin’?” Swarr looked up. “I’ll show you if I’m bluffin’!” He jammed the cigarette forward, and Betty screamed.

  Dutch Schweitzer’s face went pale, and with an oath he grabbed for a gun. At the same time, Jasper Wald swung his gun toward the German. That was all the break the Sandy Kid needed. His right hand streaked for his gun butt, and he was shooting with the first roar from Wald’s gun.

  The Kid’s first shot took Jack Swarr in the stomach as the big man lunged upward, clawing for his pistol. Dutch had a gun out and was firing. The Kid saw his body jerk with the impact of Wald’s bullet, and he swung his own gun. Wald faced him at the same instant.

  For one unbelieving instant, the Sandy Kid looked over the stabbing flame of his own Colt into the flaring muzzle of Wald’s six-shooter. He triggered his gun fast at almost point-blank range.

  He swayed on his feet, his legs spread wide, and saw Jasper Wald’s cruel face turn white before his eyes. The rancher’s knees sagged, and he went to the ground, glaring bitterly at the Sandy Kid. He tried then to lift his gun, but the Kid sprang forward and knocked it from his grasp. Wald slumped over on the sand, his face contorted.

  Swarr, the Kid saw at a glance, was dead. Yet it had not been only his bullet, for the German must have got in at least one shot. Swarr’s face and head were bloody.

  Schweitzer lay on his back, his face upturned to the sun. The Sandy Kid knelt beside him, but a glance told him there was nothing he or anyone could do.

  Dutch stared at him. “Never was no hand to abuse women,” he said, “never … no hand.”

  The Sandy Kid turned to Betty Kurland, and quickly untied her.

  “Let’s get out of here,” the Kid said. Taking her by the hand, he led her toward the path down which Schweitzer had come.

  On the cliff top, they stood for a moment together. Betty’s face was white now, and her eyes seemed unusually large and dark. He noticed then that she hadn’t limped.

  “Was your foot burned badly?” he asked. “I didn’t think to help you.”

  “It wasn’t burned at all,” she told him. “I jerked my foot back as he thrust the cigarette at it.”

  “But you screamed?” he protested.

  “Yes, I know,” she said, looking at him. “You had to have your chance to draw, and they hadn’t taken away your gun. And I knew about Dutch Schweitzer.”

  “Knew about him? What?”

  “The Apaches killed his wife. They burned her. I thought, maybe that was why he drank so much, I guess.”

  When they were on the trail toward the Forks, he looked at her and then glanced quickly away. “Well, you’ve got your claim,” he said. “All you’ve got to do is stake it out and file on it. I never did. You found your pa, too. Looks
like you’re all set. I reckon I’ll hug the rawhide and head out of the country. A loose horse is always hunting new pastures.”

  “I’ll need a good man to ramrod that mine for me,” she protested. “Wouldn’t you do that? I promised you half, too.”

  “Ma’am”—the Sandy Kid was growing red around the gills and desperate, for she was sure enough a pretty girl—“I reckon I never was made to stay no place. I’m packing my duffel and taking the trail out of here. If anybody comes around asking for the Sandy Kid, you tell ’em he lit a shuck and went to Texas.”

  He turned his horse at the forks of the road and headed for the Bar W. His own horse was there, and, since Wald wouldn’t be needing this bay pony, he might need him out West there, Arizona way. He sure did aim to see that Grand Cañon down which flowed the Colorado. A mile deep, they said. Of course, that was a durned lie, but she might be pretty deep, at that.

  Once, he glanced back over his shoulder. The girl was only a dim figure on the skyline.

  “First thing we know,” he said to the bay pony, “she’d have me a-setting in church a-wearing a fried shirt. I’d shore be halter broke.”

  The bay pony switched his tail and picked up its feet in an Indian trot, and the Sandy Kid broke into song, a gritty baritone that made the bay lay back its ears.

  Oh, there was a young cowhand who used to go riding,

  There was a young cowhand named Johnny Go-day!

  He rode a black pony an’ never was lonely,

  For a girl never said to him Johnny, go ’way!

  The Nester

  and the Paiute

  He was riding loose in the saddle when we first saw him, and he was wearing a gun, which was some unusual for the Springs these days. Out on the range where a man might have a run-in with a locoed steer or maybe a rattler, most of the boys carried guns, but around town Sheriff Todd had sort of set up a ruling against it. It was the second time I’d seen him, but he looked some different this morning, and it took me a minute or two to decide what it was made the difference, and then I decided it was partly the gun and partly that look in his eyes.

  He reined in that yellow horse in front of Green’s and hooked one long leg around the saddle horn.

  “Howdy.”

  “Howdy.” Hatcher was the only one who answered; only the rest of us sort of looked up at him. He dug in his shirt pocket for the makings and started to build a smoke.

  Nobody said anything, just sort of waiting to see what was on his mind. He had an old carbine in a saddle scabbard, and the scabbard wasn’t under his leg, but with the muzzle pointed down and the stock close to his hand. A man riding thataway ain’t rightly figuring on using a rope on no stock. That rifle would be in the way, but if he was figuring on needing a rifle right quick, it would be a plumb handy way to carry it.

  When he had his smoke built, he lit it with his left hand, and I got a good glimpse of his eyes, kind of cold and gray, and them looking us over.

  Nobody here was friendly to him, yet nobody was unfriendly, neither. All of us had been around the Springs for years, all but him. He was the nester from Squaw Rock, and nesters aren’t right popular around cow range. However, the times was a-changing and we all knew it, so it wasn’t like it might have been a few years before, when the country was new.

  “Seen a tall hombre on a black horse?”

  He asked the question like maybe it was a formality that he wanted to get over with, and not like he expected an answer.

  “What sort of man?”

  It was Hatcher who had started the talking as if he was riding point for the rest of us.

  “Maybe two hundred pounds, sort of limp in his right leg, maybe. Rides him a black horse, long-gaited critter, and he wears two guns, hanging low.”

  “Where’d you see him?”

  “Ain’t never see him. I’ve seen his sign.”

  Yanell, who lived over nigh to Squaw Rock himself, looked up from under his hat brim and spat into the dust. What he was thinking we all were thinking. If this nester read sign that well and trailed the Paiute clean from Squaw Rock, he was no pilgrim.

  That description fitted the Paiute like a glove, and nobody amongst us had any love for the Paiute. He’d been living in the hills over toward White Hills for the last six years, ever since he came back to the country after his trouble. The Paiute had done a bit of horse stealing and rustling from time to time and we all knew it, but none of us was right anxious to trail him down. Not that we were afraid. Only, none of us had ever caught him in the act, so we just left it up to Sheriff Todd, who wanted it that way. This here nester seemed to have some ideas of his own.

  “No,” Hatcher said, “I ain’t seen nobody like that. Not lately.”

  The nester—his name was Bin Morley—nodded like he’d expected nothing else. “Reckon I’ll ride along,” he said. “Be seeing you.”

  He swung his leg back over the saddle and kicked his toe into a stirrup. The yellow horse started to walk like it was a signal for something, and we sat there watching him fade out down toward the cottonwoods at the end of the town.

  Hatcher bit off a hunk of chewing and rolled it in his jaws. “If he meets up with the Paiute,” he said, “he’s asking for trouble.”

  Yanell spat into the dust. “Reckon he’ll handle it,” he said dryly. “Somethin’ tells me the Paiute rustled cows off the wrong hombre.”

  “Wonder what Sheriff Todd’ll say?” Hatcher wanted to know.

  “This here Morley, now,” Yanell said, “he sort of looks like a man who could do his own lawin’. He’s one of them hombres what ain’t felt the civilizin’ influences of Sheriff Todd’s star, nor he ain’t likely to.”

  The nester’s yellow horse ambled casually out over the trail toward White Hills. From time to time Bin Morley paused to study the trail, but from here it was much easier. He knew the look of the big black’s track now, and, from what was said later, I reckon the Paiute wasn’t really expecting any trouble. Me, I was plumb curious. My pappy always did tell me my bump of curiosity was too big for my britches, but after a few minutes I got up off the porch and walked around to where my steel-dust was standing, three-legged, in the dust. I threw a leg over him and trailed out after the nester.

  Maybe I’d been listening too much to the old-timers around telling of cattle drives and Indian fighting. You listen to the stories a mite and you get to honing to see some of them fracases yourself.

  Now I knew the Paiute. Actually he was only part Paiute, and the rest was some brand of white, but, whatever it was, the combination had resulted in pure poison. That was one reason everybody was plenty willing to accept Sheriff Todd’s orders to leave law enforcement to him. I will say, he did a good job. He did a good job until it came to the Paiute.

  It was understandable about the Paiute. That Indian left no more trail than a snake going over a flat rock, and no matter how much we suspected, nobody could ever get any evidence on him. Sheriff Todd had been on his trail a dozen times, but each time he lost it. I knew what Yanell was thinking just as well as if it was me. Anybody who could trail the Paiute plumb from Squaw Creek wasn’t likely to holler calf rope for any Indian rustler without smoking things up a mite. Me, I was just curious enough and ornery enough to want to see what would happen when this nester cornered the Paiute.

  He was a big, sullen brute, the Paiute was. Rumor had it he’d killed a half dozen men, and certainly there were several that started out hunting him that never showed up until somebody found ’em dead, but there’d never been evidence to prove a thing. He could sling a gun, and, when we had the turkey shoot around about Thanksgiving, he used to fetch his guns down, and nine times out of ten he got himself a turkey—and he used a six-gun. You take a man that moves around over the hills like a ghost, Indian footing it over the rocks and through the brush, and who shoots like that, and you get an idea why anybody was worried about getting him in
a corner.

  Six miles out I got a glimpse of the nester. The yellow horse was ambling along, taking it easy in a sort of loose-jointed trot that didn’t look like much but seemed to eat up the country right fast.

  The day wore on and I kept to the brush, not knowing how Morley would take it if he knew I was trailing him. Then all of a sudden I saw him swing the yellow horse off the trail and drop to the ground. He was there for a minute, and, riding closer, I could see he was bending over the body of a man. Then he swung back into the saddle and moseyed off down the trail.

  When he went over the next rise, I turned my horse down the hill. Even before I rode up, I knew who the dead man was. I could see his horse lying in the cactus off to one side, and only one man in that country rode a bay with a white splash on the shoulder. It was Sheriff Todd.

  There was a sign around, but I didn’t need more than a glance at it to tell me what had happened. Sheriff Todd had run into the Paiute unexpected-like and caught him flat-footed with stolen stock, the first time he had ever had that chance. Only from the look of it, Todd had been caught flat-footed himself. His gun was out, but unfired, and he had been shot twice in the stomach.

  Looking down at that body, I felt something change inside me. I knew right then, no matter how the nester came out, I was going to follow on my own hook. For Sheriff Todd was still alive when he hit the ground, and that Paiute had bent over him, put a pistol to the side of his head, and blew half his head off. There were powder burns around that hole in his temple where the bullet went in. It had been cold-blooded murder.

  Swinging a leg over that gelding, I was starting off when I happened to think of a gun, and turned back and recovered the one Sheriff Todd had worn. I also got his saddle gun out of the scabbard and started off, trailing the nester.

  From now on the sign was bad. The Paiute knew he was up against it now. He was taking time to blot his tracks, and, if it hadn’t been for Morley, I’d never have trailed him half as far as I did.