by Lauran Paine
Trent had come half the distance. Sweat made his shirt limp. He dozed off and jerked awake, doing this mile after mile. The burden of existence was almost more than a man could bear in this midday summertime desert if he was fully attuned to it, but Trent wasn’t; he was traveling on guts alone. But it takes a lot more. The desert isn’t a place where one ever finds excuses or compassion or pity. The desert is a world of death. It is steeped in an endless, depthless silence. In midday summertime nothing moves, nothing changes, there is neither perspective nor limit. The summertime desert is infinity and to brace into its overwhelming immensity unprepared is fatal.
A thousand years of mankind had made only one scratch on all that changlessness—a road. And every winter the wild winds covered those roads, obliterating in a week what mankind had taken laborious generations to create. The desert never compromised.
Trent was a speck moving with painful slowness down through all that. He had his canteen but frequent injections even of the sole substance in this arid place that could prolong life were not enough. Unless a man was physically prepared in all ways, water, like the sun itself, produced not the necessary sustaining power, it produced instead illness. That’s what Trent’s canteen was doing to him.
He was two-thirds of the way along, the sun had begun to assume that pinkish glow from afternoon’s dust-laden, metallic-scented atmosphere, when his stomach rejected water. He dismounted, leaned upon his horse, and gasped until the inner retching was over. Then he walked on for a mile beside the horse. That helped somewhat because he walked slowly. But in a clear moment, as he paused to look from slitted eyes out through the dancing distances, it dawned on Trent that he wasn’t going to make it.
He didn’t argue with this sudden, and solid, realization. He couldn’t accept it because, like all men, Trent had a secret belief in his own immortality, his own indestructability, but he also, in a very human and contradictory manner, knew that he could die, that someday he would die. But the trouble with these conflicting thoughts was simply that Trent, like most men of strength and imagination, just would not believe that this was the place.
A man should die with guns blazing, with great ideals at stake, with his courage and his convictions vindicated. He should die with glory and honor—not out in the middle of a god-forsaken desert like a rat dies or a lizard or a snake, not by simply falling down in the endless silence and yielding up his soul for nothing, so that, when he’s afterward found, he’s shriveled from the sun like a piece of discarded leather, burned black, and with his swollen tongue protruding making him appear in death both ridiculous and unheroic.
It was the indignation, the scorn for this kind of a death that kept Trent going. He swore at the desert, at the sun, at Troy Warfield. Even at the steeldust horse, blaming all of them for the conspiracy that had gotten him out here like this. He marched along with anger and nothing else sustaining him until three horsemen, sitting motionlessly across the roadway, gravely watching his approach, brought him to a final halt.
He peered at those burned-black desert riders. They stared back. The sun was falling away toward the west. There were thin shadows creeping out here and there across the desert’s floor. One of those men was raw-boned and sparse. He had eyes as cold as the eyes of a snake; they seemed as lidless, too, because this man never blinked. On either side of him were men with more weakness, more moral frailty in their faces. But that one in the middle showed iron and unrelenting resolve.
This one finally said to Trent: “Mister, you ain’t going to last long, the shape you’re in. How come you didn’t wait until sundown? What’s your hurry, mister?”
Trent flagged outward with a stiff arm. “Get off the road,” he snarled, his voice so hoarse it was barely audible. “Get out of my way.” He added a fighting epithet to that, but those three horsemen sat up there, gazing downward, untouched.
“Where’s his hat?” one of them quietly asked. “Look at his danged eyes … burned nearly closed and puffed up like he was bee-stung.”
The raw-boned, leathery man in the center said nothing, but his companion to the right said: “Hell, Lem, I got my doubts about botherin’ with this one. He’s near done for.”
But Lem knew better. “He’ll make it all right. He’ll be blind as a damned bat for a day or two, but this one’s tough. He’s mean and he’s tough. You don’t see these angry ones go down on their whimpering hands and knees. Go put him on his horse, tie him up there, and let’s get back.”
Both the other men swung down, and, as they approached Trent, one of them said over his shoulder: “I’ll look through his gatherin’s.” And he did that with Trent making futile, blind swings as those two manhandled him, rummaged his pockets, appropriated his wallet, his papers. Then one of them swore a strong oath and stepped away holding a bright-shining little German-steel badge on his palm.
“U.S. marshal, Lem. Look here.”
Lem leaned from the saddle, took the small badge, and gazed at it for a long time. He eventually dropped it into a pocket, saying brusquely: “Hurry up, will you? We got to be back in town before evening.”
They got Trent into the saddle but he still writhed and twisted, making the matter of tying him up there almost impossible, so, as Lem led the steeldust by the reins, the other two rode close on either side of Trent, balancing him up there.
After a while Trent’s resistance dwindled. He sank into a kind of sick stupor. From there, all the way into the desert town of Fulton, he was like a sack of meal. They had to push him upright and keep a light hold of him, but he offered no further resistance. Finally, after something like ten or eleven hours, Trent’s will had atrophied, leaving him like a vegetable—alive and functioning, but helpless and senseless.
They were within sight of the dusk-shadowed town when Lem said: “They don’t send U.S. marshals after common horse thieves, boys.”
One of the others agreed with this. “I never before seen one down here. I’ve seen deputy U.S. lawmen, sure, but not full marshals.”
“Does that put you in mind of anything?” Lem asked.
The other man shrugged. “Should it?” he countered.
Lem snorted. “Yes, it should!” he exclaimed. “If you had the brains of a goat. A full-fledged U.S. marshal’s after someone big … someone like maybe a bank robber or a big-time, stage hold-up man. Someone who’s done something besides shoot a gambler or steal a horse. Now do you get it?”
The other rider’s eyes brightened. “Sure,” he retorted. “I get it. Somewhere there’s a big-time outlaw and this here U.S. lawman’s trailin’ him. And that big-time outlaw’s probably got a pair of saddlebags bulgin’ with banknotes or raw gold … enough to patch hell a mile.”
Lem smiled, swung to gaze approvingly backward, and didn’t say any more because they were nearing the environs of town. He led them around to the east so that they didn’t pass down Fulton’s main roadway. He obviously wished to keep Trent a secret from the rest of the town. He took them to a meandering, filthy back alley and down it to a rickety, warped horse shed and got stiffly down in front of this building, walked back to steady Trent until his companions also got down, then he walked on into the old shed.
“Fetch him in here for now,” he commanded. “After full dark we’ll take him into the saloon’s back room.” He stepped aside as his grunting companions strained on past. Trent’s feet dragged lifelessly, making two uneven squiggles in the dust.
They put him in a corner upon an ancient manure pile and Lem stepped up to gaze at Trent. “Sure a mess,” he said. “All right, you boys stay with him. Wet some rags and put ’em over his face. Don’t give him anything to drink. That’s half his trouble now … too much water under an overheated hide. And keep him quiet. This one’s ours. No one else is going to know. You understand?”
The two sweating cowboys nodded, watching Trent. One of them said: “When he comes around, he’ll tell us all about that.”
The other unkempt man tucked in his shirt tail and spat aside before
he said: “Yeah? And supposin’ this feller he’s after’s already rid on past? It could happen, if he started out say late yesterday afternoon. And that feller’ll be smart, too. They don’t put no U.S. marshals on the trail of simpletons.”
“Then,” said Lem in his usual, cold, hard, and thoughtful way of speaking, “we’ll go after him.” He looked at the other two. “We’ll get him, don’t you worry about that. We’ll find him and I don’t give a damn where he goes … we’ll get him.” Lem pointed at Trent. “But this one’s the key, so you fellers baby him like he was your damned brother. I’ll be inside … if he says anything you come tell me. Otherwise, stay with him and keep him cool until night, then we’ll give him better quarters inside.” Lem chuckled as he turned away. “This one’s worth a fortune to us, I figure, so he deserves the best we got.”
Lem stopped in the doorway, gazed outward for a moment, then said over his shoulder: “Get those damned horses out of the sun. ’Specially his horse.” He walked on out of the shed, heading over toward the rear of a building no more than thirty feet off on his left. He entered there, looking perfectly blank and expressionless everywhere except in the eyes; there, he looked mightily pleased about something.
Chapter Seven
A man could conceivably travel through purgatory as long as he did it at night, and, barring some misadventure that might tumble him into the pit, he wouldn’t suffer any noticeable inconveniences.
And the desert was purgatory, even at night. It fooled no seasoned traveler simply because at night it was cool and quiet and very pleasant to pass through, lacking, as it did, the mountains and cañons and other travails that beset horsemen in other places. But at night it was a pleasant kind of purgatory.
It was even a good place to dwell upon poignant thoughts, for, chameleon-like, the desert could alluringly fit a man’s every mood. It could seem to smile with him, to weep with him, or it could match his melancholy. It was the latter mood it matched tonight as Warfield passed down it. Every stiff-standing Joshua tree or pitifully thin and listless paloverde seemed bowed with sadness this night. Every cactus squatting low alongside Warfield’s eastward path seemed sad, seemed to understand what it was that kept the bronzed horseman’s face settled in its melancholy lines.
How many times in a man’s life did he find a truly receptive woman? Once, maybe twice. Not more than that, for, although the variety of humankind was endless, the virtue of selflessness was not endless. In fact, it was quite rare.
That girl back there had possessed it. She’d inherited it from her mother and it was there in her dead-level gaze, along with her need and her frustration. So, twice now Warfield had encountered the powerful constancy that makes a girl a woman, and which makes a woman loved and cherished long, long after youth departs.
That’s why he rode southward down the still, warm night with his melancholy. Twice now he’d been upon the verge of true and faultless happiness, and twice now he’d had to saddle up and ride on, never to return.
It was a tantalizing thing that fate had done, permitting him two pure visions, and at the same time withholding from him the right to either.
He took a tiny sense of pleasure, though, from the knowledge of what he’d glimpsed twice, and he also thought that, sad as each departing had made him, he was still far luckier than most men, because most men never find constancy in womankind at all, fleetingly or otherwise.
And as the hours passed, Warfield’s spirit brightened in another way, too. He’d suspected vaguely that by depriving his thoroughbred of rest back at Lincoln, he’d given his pursuer a near-fatal advantage. But now with the bay’s great power rhythmically functioning under him, he knew this was no longer the case, and he felt good about that, so in the end, he told himself, a man’s good fortunes and misfortunes balance each other out—providing, of course, that he does not make the same error twice, and providing, too, that he does not lose sight of his objective.
He came across the north-south stage road with the moon over his right shoulder. It lay there empty for as far as night gloom permitted him to see in both directions. He reined out upon it, swung southward, and let the bay have his head.
His thoughts, seldom rushing on ahead for the elemental reason that he didn’t know what lay ahead, drifted back to young Will and the pup, and to the man Will longed to love but who was half a lifetime distant from the carefree toilless days of youth, and who could not breach that gap.
He thought, too, of Abbie and of Abbie’s mother. He thought, finally, that he knew what he’d seen in Mrs. Crockett’s expression that he hadn’t been able to define, that vague regret and frustration lying just behind the smile. A mother wished for her daughter much more than life had given her. But in this desolate country—where was such a life? Nowhere. And Abbie’s mother knew it. For the daughter the future held nothing grander than it had held for the mother. Work and save and scrimp—bear children, grow old, and eventually leave this same unbearably dull legacy to still another generation. If a shining knight ever came out of the sunrise or the sunset, he would come only in a dream.
Maybe someday there would be a better life, Warfield thought, but not yet and probably never in this desert world where the most herculean efforts of the strongest men could accomplish nothing more than make a campsite that would disappear as soon as the power of sinew and muscle faltered.
He saw a milestone and read it. Fulton—twenty miles. He hadn’t asked at the Crockett place and no one had told him there was a town down here. Not that it mattered. Nineteen miles from now he’d be interested, but right now, as every previous day—and hour—he’d lived for the here and the now. The future was inexplicably tied up with a stocky graying man astride a durable steeldust horse, and somewhere down here that other horseman was also riding. Perhaps not this late at night, yet one never knew. The John Trents of this world didn’t achieve their notoriety by sleeping when other men slept or by thinking as others thought.
The bay horse shied around a mottled Gila monster in the road and walked on. The Gila monster, deadly as was his bite, was a stupid, stolid critter. He killed careless men but no other kind.
A little ground breeze came on from the north, making things pleasant for as long as it lasted. This time of night it wasn’t uncommon for these little whispers of fragrant air to pass along.
Warfield made a cigarette and smoked it, more to kill time than because he felt any need. In this strange, silent race for survival in which he was involved, speed was an actual detriment so far as running one’s horse was concerned. Endurance mattered here—endurance, sagacity, toughness of man and horse. Perhaps a hundred miles farther south they would be neck and neck. Then Warfield might have to use his ace-in-the-hole. But not for a long while did he have to worry about that. At least that’s what he thought.
What he had to worry about now was just exactly how long this desert was. He would stop at this village of Fulton after daybreak, and, if it was a likely place, he might even wait out the hot time of day there. According to his calculations Trent was back at Daggett. However, he hadn’t gotten this far south by underestimating his enemy, either, so he would carefully assess Fulton even though he hardly thought Trent could be ahead of him.
Another of those little ground swell breezes came running along. This one came from the south and the east and it had a scent that was pungent and familiar—sheep.
Warfield wrinkled his nose. As a lifelong cowman he cared little for the odor of woollies, but he’d never been violently against sheep and sheepmen, either. In Colorado there had been enough blood shed between cowmen and sheepmen. In Warfield’s experience there was enough room for both.
He speculated upon the strong scent as he rode along, and after an hour he left the stage road, following his nose. Cattle didn’t thrive on the summertime desert but sheep did. In fact sheep wool seemed to act as insulation for woollies as much against the heat as it did against the wintertime cold. And shepherds invariably knew the land. They were more often than not
an insular breed of men whose lives centered around their flock, their dogs, and the predators against whom they waged a ceaseless warfare. And shepherds had another propensity, too—they saw everything that happened within the miles-deep circumference of their ranging bands. Next to a saloon or a livery barn, the best place to pick up information and gossip in a new land was at a sheepherder’s camp.
It was no trick to locate that camp even in the quiet depth of the night. Warfield was still a half hour’s ride distant when he faintly heard the dogs tune up. He might have marveled at the sensitive noses of dogs whose lifetimes were spent in an overpowering sheep stench, but he didn’t. He simply used those barks as the compass needle leading him on in.
The camp had a faggot corral laboriously built by hand enclosing nearly a full acre of dust and sand, where the woollies were enclosed at night. It also had a pair of harness mules nearly as old as Warfield was and much grayer, who solemnly walked up out of the brush, stopped side-by-side, and solemnly watched Warfield come up.
There were three long-haired dogs and one of them had startling blue eyes. These animals made the little short rushes that were typical of their kind. They weren’t mean, probably wouldn’t have bitten Warfield if he’d stepped down, but they were a shepherd’s one-man dogs. They had a master and viewed other humans as interlopers.
The wagon was a combination Mexican carreta and Gypsy caravan. A crooked stovepipe protruded through an ancient and much-patched canvas top, pots and pans, along with coyote traps and other impedimenta, hung from its sides, and for a hundred feet all around the earth had been brushed off and vigorously swept clean.
Warfield sat his saddle, quietly looking. He knew those dogs had told their owner what he had to know, and that somewhere around here was a man with a gun, watching him. He spoke a little to the dogs. They listened, their tails faintly vibrated, but the voice was wrong and so was the man smell, so they stood guard in their intelligent, stiff-legged manner, until a silent silhouette stepped on around the wagon with a long-barreled Winchester rifle held up, and said gravely—“Buenos días, hombre.”—paused, studied Warfield a silent moment, then lowered the rifle a little, and said with a small shrug: “It is late for a person to come calling, señor. The night is more than half gone.”
