The Strong Land Page 9

  We hadn’t gone more than a few miles farther before I saw something that turned me plumb cold inside. The Paiute had turned off at the Big Joshua and was heading down the trail toward Rice Flats. That scared me, because Rice Flats was where my girl lived, down there in a cabin with her kid brother and her ma, and they had lived there alone ever since her dad fell asleep and tumbled off his spring wagon into the cañon. The Paiute had been nosing around the flats long enough to scare Julie some, but I reckon it was the sheriff who had kept him away.

  Now Sheriff Todd was gone, and the Paiute knew he was on the dodge from here on. He would know that killing Sheriff Todd was the last straw, and he’d have to get clean out of the country. Knowing that, he’d know he might as well get hung for one thing as another.

  As my gelding was a right fast horse, I started him moving then. I jacked a shell into the chamber of the sheriff’s carbine and I wasn’t thinking much about the nester. Yet by the time I got to the cabin on the flats, I knew I was too late.

  My steel-dust came into the yard at a dead run and I hit the dust and went for that house like a saddle tramp for a chuck wagon. I busted inside and took a quick look around. Ma Frank was lying on the bed with a big gash in her scalp, but she was conscious.

  “Don’t mind me,” she said. “Go after that Injun! He has taken off with Julie on her black.”

  “What about you?” I asked, although goodness knows I was wanting nothing more than to be out and after Julie.

  “’Brose’ll be back right soon. He rid over to Elmer’s after some side meat.”

  ’Brose was short for Ambrose, her fourteen-year-old boy, so knowing he’d be back, I swung a leg over my saddle and headed out for the hills. My steel-dust knew something was in the wind and he hustled his hocks for those hills like he was heading home from a trail drive.

  The Paiute had Julie and he was a killing man, a killing man who knew he was up the creek without a paddle now, and, if he was gotten alive, he’d be rope meat for sure. No man ever bothered a woman or killed a man as well liked in that country as Sheriff Todd without riding under a cottonwood limb. Me, I’m a plumb peaceable sort of hand, but when I saw the sheriff back there, I got my dander up. Now that Paiute had stolen my girl and I was a wild man.

  Ever see that country out toward the White Hills? God must have been cleaning up the last details of the job when He made that country, and just dumped a lot of the slag and waste down in a lot of careless heaps. Ninety percent of that country stands on end, and what doesn’t stand on end is dryer than a salt desert and hotter than a bronco on a hot rock.

  The Paiute knew every inch of it, and he was showing us all he knew. We went down across a sun-baked flat where weird dust devils danced like crazy in a world where there was nothing but heat and dust and misery for man and beast. No cactus there, not even salt grass or yeso. Nothing grew there, and the little winds that stirred along the dusty levels made you think of snakes gliding along the ground.

  My gelding slowed to a walk and we plodded on, and somewhere miles ahead, beyond the wall of sun-dancing heat waves, there was a column of dust, a thin, smoky trail where the nester rode ahead of me. Right then, I began to have a sight of respect for that long-legged yellow horse he was riding because he kept on going and even gained ground on my steel-dust.

  Finally we got out of that hell’s valley and took a trail along the rusty edge of some broken rock, winding higher toward some saw-toothed ridges that gnawed at the sky like starving coyotes in a dry season. That trail hung like an eyebrow to the face of the cliff we skirted, and twice, away up ahead, I heard shots. I knew they were shots from the Paiute, because I’d seen that carbine the nester carried. It was a Spencer .56.

  Ever seen one? Mister, all they lack is wheels! A caliber .56 with a bore like a cannon, and them shooting soft-nosed lead bullets. What they do to a man ain’t pretty, like you’ll know. I knew well enough it wasn’t the nester shooting because when you unlimber a Spencer .56, she has a bellow like a mad bull in a rock cañon.

  Sundown came, and then the night, and little breezes picked up and blew, cool and pleasant, down from the hills. Stop? There was no time for stopping. I knew my gelding would stand anything the Paiute’s horse would, and I knew by the shooting that the Paiute knew the nester was on his trail. He wasn’t going to get ary a chance to cool his heels with that nester tailing him down them draws and across the level bunch grass.

  The Paiute? I wasn’t worried so much about Julie now. He might kill her, but that I doubted as long as he had a prayer of getting away with her. He was going to have to keep moving or shoot it out.

  The longer I rode, the more respect I got for Bin Morley. He stuck to that Paiute’s trail like a cocklebur to a sheep, and that yellow horse of his just kept his head down and kept moseying along those trails like he was born to ’em, and he probably was.

  The stars came out and then the moon lifted, and they kept on going. My steel-dust was beginning to drag his heels, and so I knew the end was coming. At that, it was almost morning before it did come.

  How far we’d come or where we were I had no idea. All I knew was that up ahead of me was the Paiute with my girl, and I wanted a shot at him. Nobody needed to tell me I was no hand to tie in a gun battle with the Paiute with him holding a six-gun. He was too slick a hand for me.

  Then all of a sudden as the sky was turning gray and the hills were losing their shadows. I rounded a clump of cottonwoods and there was that yellow horse, standing three-footed, cropping absently at the first green grass in miles.

  The nester was nowhere in sight, but I swung down and, with the carbine in hand, started down through the trees, cat-footing along with no idea what I might see or where they could have gone. Then all of a sudden I came out on the edge of a cliff and looked down at a cabin in a grassy basin, maybe a hundred feet below and a good four hundred yards away.

  Standing in front of that cabin were two horses. My face was pretty pale, and my stomach felt sick, but I headed for the trail down, when I heard a scream. It was Julie!

  Then, in front of the cabin, I heard a yell, and that durned nester stepped right out in plain sight and started walking up to the cabin, and he wasn’t more than thirty yards away from it.

  That fool nester knew he was asking for it. The Paiute might have shot from behind the doorjamb or from a window, but maybe the nester figured I was behind him and he might draw him out for my fire. Or maybe he figured his coming out in the open would make him leave the girl alone. Whatever his reason, it worked. The Paiute stepped outside the door.

  Me? I was standing up there like a fool, just a-gawking, while there, right in front of my eyes, the Paiute was going to kill a man. Or was he?

  He was playing big Indian right then. Maybe he figured Julie was watching or maybe he thought the nester would scare. Mister, that nester wouldn’t scare a copper cent.

  The Paiute swaggered about a dozen steps out from the cabin and stood there, his thumbs in his belt, sneering. The nester, he just moseyed along kind of lazy-like, carrying his old Spencer in his right hand like he’d plumb forgot about his hand gun.

  Then, like it was on a stage, I seen it happen. That Paiute went for his guns and the nester swung up his Spencer. There were two shots—then a third.

  It’s a wonder I didn’t break my neck getting down that trail, but when I run up, the Paiute was lying there on his back with his eyes glazing over. I took one look and then turned away, and you can call me a pie-eating tenderfoot, but I was sick as I could be. Mister, did you ever see a man who’d been hit by two soft-nosed .56-caliber bullets? In the stomach?

  Bin Morley came out with Julie, and I straightened up, and she ran over to me and began asking how Ma was. She wasn’t hurt none, as the nester got there just in time.

  We took the horses back, and then I fell behind with the nester. I jerked my head toward the Paiute’s body.

 
“You going to bury him?” I asked.

  He looked at me like he thought I was soft in the head.

  “What for? He picked the place himself, didn’t he?”

  We mounted up.

  “Besides,” he said, “I’ve lost two whole days as it is, and getting behind on my work ain’t going to help none.” He was stuffing something in his slicker on the back of his horse.

  “What’s that?” I asked.

  “A ham,” he said grimly, “a whole ham. I brought it clean from Tucson, an’ that durned Paiute stole it off me. Right out of my cabin. Ma, she was out picking berries when it happened.”

  “You mean,” I said, “you trailed the Paiute clean over here just for a ham?”

  “Mister”—the nester spat—“you’re durned right I did! Why, Ma and me ain’t et no hawg meat since we left Missouri, coming three year ago.” The steel-dust started to catch up with Julie’s pony, but I heard the nester saying: “Never was no hand to eat beef, nohow. Too durned stringy. Gets in my teeth!”

  Barney Takes a Hand

  Blinding white sun simmered above the thick, flour-like dust of the road, and the ragged mesquite beside the trail was gray with that same dust. Between the ranch and the distant purple hills, there was nothing but endless flats and sagebrush, dusty and dancing with heat waves.

  Tess Bayeux stood in the doorway and shaded her eyes against the sun. The road was empty, empty to the horizon beyond which lay the little cow town of Black Mesa. With a little sigh of hopelessness, she turned away. It was too soon. Even if Rex Tilden had received her note and decided to come, he could never come so quickly.

  After an hour, during which she forced herself not to look even once, she returned to the door. The road was still empty, only white dust and heat. Then her eyes turned the other way, and she looked out across the desert, out to where the road dwindled off to a miserable trail into the badlands where nothing lived. For an instant then, she thought the heat played tricks with her eyes, for between her and the distant cliffs was a tiny figure.

  Struck by curiosity, she stood in the doorway, watching. She was a slender girl with a pert, impudent little nose above a friendly mouth and lips that laughed when her eyes did.

  She was still there, much later, when the figure took shape and became a man. The man wore no hat. His shaggy black hair was white with dust, his heavy woolen shirt was open at the neck, and his hairy chest was also dusty.

  The man’s face was unshaven, and his jaw was heavy, almost brutal under the beard and dust. The jeans he wore were strange to the cow country, and his feet wore the ragged remains of what had been sneakers. His jeans were belted with a wide leather belt, curiously carved. He wore no gun.

  Several times the man staggered, and finally, when he turned from the road and stopped at the gate, he grasped the top with his big hands and stared at Tess Bayeux.

  For a long time he stared while she tried to find words, and then one of the big hands dropped and he fumbled for the latch. He came through the gate and closed it behind him. It was a small thing, yet in his condition it told her something.

  The man came on toward the house, and, when she saw his face, she caught her breath. Sunburn had cracked the skin until it had bled, and the blood had dried. The face was haggard, a mask of utter weariness from which only the eyes glowed and seemed to be alive.

  Brought to herself suddenly, she ran inside for water. She tried to pick up the dipper, but dropped it. Then she carried the bucket to the man, and he seized it in his two big hands and lifted it to his mouth. She put out a hand to stop him, but he had merely taken a mouthful and then held it away, sloshing the water about in his mouth.

  He looked at her wisely, and suddenly she had a feeling that this man knew everything, that he was afraid of nothing, that he could do anything with himself. She knew how his whole body must be crying for water, yet he knew the consequences of too much too soon and held the bucket away, his face twisted as though in a sneer at his fervid desire for its cool freshness.

  Then he swallowed a little, and for a moment his face twisted again. He straightened it with an effort and, picking up the wash basin beside the door, filled it, and began to bathe his face and hands slowly, tenderly. In all this time he said nothing, made no explanation.

  A long time ago Tess had ridden with her brother into the badlands beyond the desert. It was a waterless horror, a nightmare of gigantic stones and gnarled cacti, a place where nothing lived. How far had this man come? How could he have walked all that distance across the desert? That he had walked was obvious, for his sneakers were in tatters and there was some blood on the ground where he stood.

  He shook the water from his eyes and then, without speaking, stepped up on the porch and entered the house. Half frightened, she started to speak, but he merely stretched out upon the floor in the cool interior and almost at once was asleep.

  Again she looked at the road. And still it was empty. If Rex Tilden were to come in time, he must come soon. Judge Barker had told her that as long as she had possession, there was a chance. If she lost possession before he returned from Phoenix, there was little chance that anything could be done.

  It was sundown when she saw them coming. It was not Rex Tilden, for he would come alone. It was the others.

  It was Harrington and Clyde, the men Tess feared. They rode into the yard at a canter and reined in at the edge of the verandah.

  “Well, Miss Bayeux”—George Clyde’s silky voice was underlined with malice—“you are ready to leave?”

  “No.”

  Tess stood very still. She knew there was little Clyde wouldn’t stoop to if he could gain an end. Harrington was brutal, rough. Clyde was smooth. It was Clyde she feared most, yet Harrington would do the rough work. He was a big man and cruel.

  “Then I am afraid we will have to move you,” said Clyde. “We have given you time. Now we can give you only ten minutes more to get what you want and get out on the road.”

  “I’m not going.” Tess held her head high.

  Clyde’s mouth tightened. “Yes, you are. Of course”—he crossed his hands on the saddle horn—“if you want to come to my place, I think I could make you comfortable there. If you don’t come to my place, there will be nothing in Black Mesa for you.”

  “I’ll stay here.”

  Tess stood facing them. She couldn’t win. She knew that in her heart. Rex was too late now, and the odds were against her. Still, where would she go? She had no money; she had no friends who dared help her. There had been only Tilden.

  “All right, Harrington,” Clyde said grimly. “You move her. Put her outside the gate.”

  Harrington swung down from the saddle, his face glistening with evil. He stepped up on the porch.

  “Stay where you are!” a voice said from behind her. Tess started. She had forgotten the stranger, and his voice was peculiar. It was low, ugly with some fierceness that was only just covered by an even tone. “You come a step farther and I’ll kill you,” he said.

  Harrington stood flat-footed. George Clyde was quicker.

  “Tess Bayeux, who is this man?”

  “Shut up!” The man walked out on the porch, and his feet were cat-like in their movements. “And get moving.”

  “Listen, my friend,” Clyde said, “you’re asking for trouble. You’re a stranger here and you don’t know what you’re saying.”

  “I know a skunk by the smell.” The stranger advanced to the edge of the porch, and his red-rimmed eyes glared at Clyde. “Get going!”

  “Why, you …”

  Harrington reached for him.

  He reached, but the stranger’s left hand shot out and seized Harrington by the throat and jerked him to his tiptoes. Holding him there, the stranger slapped him twice across the face. Slapped him only, but left him with a trickle of blood at the corner of his mouth. Then, setting him down on his hee
ls, the stranger shoved, and big Deek Harrington sprawled at full length in the dust.

  Clyde’s face was deadly. He glanced at Harrington, and then at the stranger, and then his hand shot for his gun. But the stranger was quicker. He seized the bridle and jerked the horse around and, catching Clyde by his gun arm, whipped him from the saddle to throw him into the dust.

  Clyde’s gun flew free, and the stranger caught it deftly and thrust it into his own waistband.

  “Now,” he said, “start walking. When you’re over the horizon, I’ll turn your horses loose. Until then, walk!”

  Harrington staggered to his feet, and Clyde got up more slowly. His black coat was dusty. The stranger looked at Harrington.

  “You still wear a gun,” he said coolly. “Want to die? If you do, why don’t you try drawing it?”

  Harrington wet his lips. Then his eyes fell and he turned away.

  “That goes for later,” the stranger said. “If you want to try a shot from up the road, do it. I haven’t killed a snake in a week.”

  The two men stumbled from the yard, and the stranger stood there, watching them go. Then he picked up the bucket and drank, for a long time. When the two recent visitors were growing small toward the horizon, he turned the horses loose, hitting each a ringing slap on the haunches.

  They would never stop short of town if he knew Western horses.

  “I’m going to get supper,” Tess told him. “Would you like to eat?”

  “You know I would.” He looked at her for a moment. “Then you can tell me what this is all about.”

  Tess Bayeux worked swiftly, and, when she had the coffee on and the bacon frying, she turned to look at the man who had come to her rescue. He was slumped in a chair at the table. Black hair curled in the V of his shirt, and there was black hair on his forearms.

  “You aren’t a Western man?” she asked him.

  “I was … once,” he answered, “but that was a long time ago. I lived in Texas, in Oklahoma, then in Utah. Now I’m back in the West to stay.”