Dead Man’s Cañon

by Paine, Lauran; Burns, Traber;

  He lit up, exhaled, and waited a moment or two longer before starting back uptown toward his jailhouse. On the way he made up his mind about two things. He wasn’t going to believe or disbelieve a single thing Clayton had told him until he got back replies to those letters he’d sent off earlier, and he wasn’t going to turn his back on Archer Clayton, either.

  On just one score was he perfectly satisfied. His initial assessment of Clayton had been a bull’s-eye. Clayton was a dangerous man, a genuine killer. The question was did Clayton kill legally or illegally? That was exactly what Claude made up his mind to determine—and soon, too.

  Chapter Five

  Archer Clayton didn’t appear again at the jailhouse until well after dark. Claude didn’t worry. He thought he knew what Clayton was up to, so he went over to the café for supper, had a glass of ale up at Mather’s saloon, then made a round of town before heading on back.

  Clayton was waiting for him on the bench outside the jailhouse. He sat down gravely and they talked. Rainey’s first question took care of the immediate past.

  “You been burying him?”

  Clayton said, “And this time of year it’s damned hard digging.”

  So that settled that; the Mexican bushwhacker was dead. Claude then said, “I reckon I’d better alert the town vigilance committee. Just in case Bríon rounds up a herd of those other cowboys of his and tries hitting the town for that ten thousand dollars. He knows it’s here.”

  Clayton looked pained. In a tone of voice he might have used toward a child he said, “Sheriff, Fernando Bríon doesn’t give a tinker’s damn about that ten thousand dollars. It didn’t mean anything to him when he handed it over to my partner. What Bríon wants is the rest of those gold coins. And I’m the only one who can tell him where they are.” Clayton waited until an elderly couple strolled by in the warm night, then said, “If he finds the cache of gold by putting all the little scratches together off those coins, he’ll probably have so much more wealth than my ten thousand dollars over there in the storekeeper’s safe, it’ll look like chicken feed to him.”

  Claude nodded. He understood that part well enough, it was simply that he couldn’t altogether give up the notion that he was protecting that ten thousand dollars against anyone, legal or illegal, who’d come for it. As Al Trail, Hightower ranch’s range boss, had said, sooner or later someone was going to come for that money. Well, as it turned out, it looked as though Al had been only partly right. It looked like someone had come for it all right, but he didn’t really care as much about the ten thousand dollars as he cared about other things.

  Claude said, “Mister Clayton, why don’t you just sell those damned gold coins to Bríon? You’ve already copied down all the telltale marks. You can put them together into the map and get to that cache before Bríon can.”

  “I’ve thought of that, Sheriff, and I’ve also thought of altering a few of the little marks, or of keeping back five or six of the key coins, just to bait Bríon up over the line where I can settle with him for what he has done to my partner.”

  “Well …?”

  Clayton shook his head. “I want more than just revenge, Sheriff. I want to bust Fernando Bríon down into the dust. I aim to destroy him completely, and that also goes for his assassins. But first I want the name of the one who killed my partner, and the name of the one who killed that US deputy marshal.”

  “It looks to me, Mister Clayton, that when you find out the names, it’s going to turn out to be the same man,” said Rainey. “I can give you a pretty good idea of how to determine which of Bríon’s cowboys he is. Just bait a trap at long range and see which one of those Mexicans steps up to try his aim at a couple of hundred yards.”

  Clayton said no more about this, so evidently the same idea had crossed his mind earlier. “Sheriff, Bríon knows by now I got his bushwhacker. It’ll only take him a second or two to figure out why I took that dead Mexican with me … to sweat some answers out of him.”

  Claude, listening closely, began to get the gist of Clayton’s thoughts. They brought him up straight on the bench. The implications suddenly had Claude Rainey right in the middle of what could very soon become a savagely bloody encounter.

  “As soon as Bríon knows I’m on to him,” went on Clayton, “he’s going to send those killers of his up here, sure as shooting. It won’t be a matter of killing me if they can help it. It’ll be a matter of catching me alone, getting me away some place where they can build their torture fire and strip off my boots and socks. You understand?”

  Claude said, brushing aside the last question, “Get on that chestnut horse, Mister Clayton, and head out of Springville as fast as he can leg it.”

  The younger man cast a sidelong glance at Sheriff Rainey, his eyes sardonic. “Go where, Sheriff? Back up to Raton? I’d never make it. But even if I did … then what? They’d come up there, too. No, I’ll stay right here. One place is as good as any other.”

  Claude nodded. “I was afraid you’d feel that way.” He sighed. “You’re dragging me and my town into this with you.”

  Clayton shrugged. That didn’t seem to worry him. “If not you and your town, Sheriff, then some other sheriff and some other town.” He stood up. “I need a drink, care to join me?”

  They went along together, walking slowly and thoughtfully up toward Mather’s bar, which was northward and across the road. Springville was lively around them as the night deepened. That little sickle moon up there had thickened at the girth, fleshed out a little at both upper and lower horns, and now was casting downward some genuine brightness. As Sheriff Rainey walked along in deep thought, it occurred to him that if those vaqueros who’d been on the verge of shooting him down at Dead Man’s Cañon were still north of the border, they might very probably be skulking around on the outskirts of Springville right this minute, seeking Arch Clayton. It also occurred to him that Bríon’s visit to Springville returning the effects of Jonas Gantt hadn’t been at all as generously philanthropic as it had seemed at the time. Bríon had obviously come to town for a look at the place, at the people, even at the variety of law enforcement that existed.

  Claude paused to say, “Mister Clayton, you said you’d already worked up a map off those coins, didn’t you?”

  “Yeah. I’ve got it in a little book.”

  “In a little book,” murmured Claude, raising shrewdly appraising eyes. “And this little book … you’ve got it on you right now?”

  “Yes,” replied the younger man, stopping to turn and gaze at Rainey.

  “That’s what I was afraid of,” Claude murmured, and resumed walking. “I’m also afraid of something else, Mister Clayton.”

  “That Bríon’ll hit your town with his vaqueros looking for me, Sheriff?”

  “No, not exactly that, Mister Clayton. I’m afraid the reason you’re carrying that little book with you, down here, is because this is where that damned map told you the rest of the bullion is buried.”

  Clayton’s eyes widened slightly as he paced along, gazing at Sheriff Rainey. “I said it before, Sheriff, but I’ll say it again … you sure fool a man.”

  Claude brushed what definitely was a compliment aside and raised his bushy brows. “Well …?” he asked.

  “You’re dead right, Sheriff.”

  “Yeah. I’d rather just be right, though. Now I do need that drink.”

  They reached the Oasis and barged on in. It was a midweek night with a few card games going at the tables, and with a handful of range men up along the bar, but mostly the patrons this night were townsmen. Barney Whitsun was there, along with Hank Smith, the blacksmith, and a few other local merchants or tradesmen. Jack Mather came down to them for their order, looking bored. Clayton called for whiskey and Mather looked at him with rising interest. Around the room elsewhere other men looked up, also recognizing Clayton as the second of those two deputy US marshals. They showed the same astonishment
at seeing Clayton alive that Mather showed. After Jack had gone for their drinks, Sheriff Rainey said from the edge of his mouth, “They didn’t expect to see you come back all in one piece and standing up.” He said no more until the drinks came, and Jack had gone back down his bar in response to a cowboy’s call. Then he said, “Mister Clayton, if these men knew what you’d brought back with you, I’ve got a hunch they’d pick you up bodily, tie you on your horse, and hooraw you out of Springville.”

  The younger man was skeptical. “You could always tell them,” he said, tipping back his head and dropping the shot of whiskey straight down. Then he pushed the glass away, twisted to lean upon the bar, and said, “Of course that wouldn’t make much difference, Sheriff, because those first ten coins we sold to Bríon were the ones with the first few miles of the journey scratched on them.”

  Claude’s eyes rolled. “Wait a minute,” he whispered. “Are you saying they’d lead him to Springville?”

  “Dead right, Sheriff.”

  “I wish you’d quit using that expression.”

  “Excuse me, Sheriff. The answer is … you are perfectly correct. They’d bring Fernando Bríon right into the heart of your town, down near the southern end where those ancient Mexican jacales are.”

  Claude signaled for two more drinks and hooked his elbows over the bar, looking morosely at his own worried, seamed, and leathery countenance in Jack’s backbar mirror. Above the mirror hung an old painting of a Spanish conquistador in full armor, on a snorting horse. The Lord knew where Mather had ever come across that dark and sinister old work of art, and it was out of place in its crude frontier barroom setting, but evidently Jack had liked the thing, so there it hung.

  Sheriff Rainey raised his second glass in a little salute to the hawk-nosed armored Spaniard and said under his breath, “Here’s to you … you damned louse,” and drank his whiskey off neat, put the glass down, and turned to see Clayton’s eyes looking at him in wry amusement. “What’s so funny?” he demanded.

  “You, Sheriff, and that painting up there. What did you expect them to do when they conquered the Indians around here a couple of hundred years back, sit down and raise kids and corn and squash?”

  “No,” stated Rainey. “But if they’d taken their lousy gold with ’em when they left, I’d’ve thought a heap more of them.”

  “Bríon wouldn’t’ve, Sheriff. Care for another drink?”

  “Two’s my limit. You staying at the hotel?”

  “Tonight I will, yes. But first I’ll go see to my horse. Meet you at the rooming house in a little while.”

  Rainey watched Clayton depart, was still staring over at the roadside doors through which he’d vanished when Jack Mather walked up and said, “Claude, that one must be tougher’n a boiled owl. I’d sure have lost money on him, wouldn’t I?”

  “Maybe,” muttered Claude. “But his little chore is a long way from being finished, so you might still be right.” With that enigmatic remark, Sheriff Rainey also walked out of the saloon.

  Down at the rooming house he routed out the landlord, paid for another room, took the key, and went down into the tiny lobby to sit and wait, so Clayton would know which room was his when he returned.

  He didn’t return.

  Claude Rainey was comfortable in the one old overstuffed chair in the lobby, and fell sound asleep there. When he awakened, there was that little predawn chill to the air. He sat a moment, drawing together all the interrupted threads of thought, then stiffly arose, gingerly arched his back to rid himself of a kink, scratched his head, and walked outside. Springville was as quiet and still and dark as a graveyard. He went southward to the first intersecting roadway and craned around toward the horizon. It was at least five o’clock in the morning. That had a very sobering effect.

  He walked on down to the livery barn, kicked the chair leg of the drowsing nighthawk until the man came awake, then asked if the hostler had seen a husky man on a handsome, breedy chestnut horse ride out of town. The nighthawk not only hadn’t seen such a man ride out of town, he hadn’t seen anyone ride out of town.

  It was pointless to ask if Clayton had kept his chestnut at the barn, but Claude asked anyway. He drew exactly the reply he’d expected.

  “No. Ain’t had no such a horse as you describe at all, Sheriff.”

  Claude eased off the little tie-down thong holding his six-gun in its holster and went over among the eerie, dark, and utterly hushed mud hovels at the lower end of town. He went through them one at a time, and since none of them had more than two rooms, he didn’t have any difficulty determining that neither Arch Clayton nor his chestnut horse were in any of them. He did, however, find in one jacal indications where someone’d very recently kept a horse. This house was directly across a crooked little alleyway from where Bríon’s dead Mexican had cashed in the afternoon before.

  With little hope of success Sheriff Rainey completed his search and emerged back upon the main roadway just as the sun began climbing from over the edge of the eastern horizon, sending up lovely pink streamers of soft light in advance of its full rising.

  Claude stood and rubbed his beard-stubbled chin. He had a very strong idea of what had happened and it frightened him. When a man has lived among Mexicans long enough, he makes a rather basic discovery; while these people are the most hospitable, courteous, generous, and friendly people under the sun, they also have an inherent and off-handed cruelty that is also second to none under the sun.

  Bríon would know all the methods. He’d have learned them from his peons, who had in turn learned many of them from Apache Indians, or from other peons who’d heard of the tortures employed by the old-time Spaniards. Burning the bottom of the feet was only the first and gentlest of the tortures used.

  Claude went over to his jailhouse, got his booted carbine, shoved an extra box of cartridges into his pocket, and went down to the livery barn calling for his horse to be saddled at once. While he stood waiting, he wondered about routing out a few townsmen such as tough and scarred Jack Mather and the blacksmith, Hank Smith, to go along with him. What prevented him from doing this was the alacrity with which his horse was brought forth, saddled and bridled, as well as the knowledge that he’d have to kill another half hour or so waiting for them to get dressed, rigged out, and ready to ride.

  He mounted and buckled in the saddle boot, then drifted on outside of town, beginning to ride in a big circle. It was too early for interlopers to have marred Bríon’s fresh tracks; he was counting very heavily on that, for otherwise he’d have no idea in which direction to look.

  Dawn light steadily brightened, and that helped, too. When he found the tracks, finally, they went southeast.

  Chapter Six

  For a while it looked as though the tracks might head straight for the border, and that was what made Sheriff Rainey a little desperate, for if they did head down that way, and made no stop between Springville and the boundary line, then no matter how far or hard Claude rode, he was going to be much too late. The Mexicans had a good two-hour start on him, and perhaps even a three-hour start.

  But the tracks veered off, eventually, heading over toward the empty, eerie desolation of Dead Man’s Cañon. Claude was relieved. He was also puzzled. What was the point in Bríon or his majordomo—his range boss—whichever was doing all this, in taking Archer Clayton over to where his partner had died?

  Also, Claude worried about something else, something infinitely more immediate to his own well-being. Clayton’s abductors had utilized the darkness of full night to make their grab and subsequent run. Claude was crossing a barren, empty world out in plain sight, alone, in the first soft blush of new daylight. Bríon’s men would have spies out watching their back trail. They’d see Claude coming, and, if they were worth their Mexican salt, they’d drop down in a gulch somewhere and wait to pick him off as he drifted past.

  To avoid at least the last part of this, Claude did a
s he’d done before—he rode well away from any logical places for assassins to hide. Also, he left the tracks when he was satisfied where they were taking him, cut far around to the west, then the north, and emerged upon the high plateau above the cañon, up where he’d squatted that other time when he’d been in trouble out here.

  This way he couldn’t be ambushed. They’d probably spot him eventually, but at least he’d also see them before they could get close enough to open up.

  He made a smoke in early morning coolness and edged over as far as he dared to go on horseback toward the northerly slope. That permitted him a fairly good view down into the broad, barren cañon. From there he went along on foot, crouched over and with his carbine in one fist, like an Apache the way he trotted closer to the downhill slope. Finally, because he could see nearly all the cañon below except that spot where the mummified remains of the horse lay, anyone down below, if they raised their eyes, would also be able to see him. So Claude got down on all fours and crawled the last hundred and fifty feet.

  Then he saw them, and obviously they’d been there an hour or two. Their horses were standing ground hitched and drowsy a short distance from the mummified remains of the horse. There were four of the Mexicans, three with bullet-studded bandoleers slung crossways over their chests, while the fourth one, taller, blacker, more fiercely mustached than his vaquero companions, wore his six-gun tied to the leg and hung low like any other border gunfighter. Also, this one didn’t wear the enormous sombrero of the Mexicans with him; he wore instead a typical Southwestern range man’s hat with a brim only four or five inches wide.

  On the ground, sitting with his arms lashed behind his back, was Archer Clayton. Standing with the other horses was Clayton’s powerful and breedy chestnut horse. From time to time one of the three peons would turn and covetously gaze out where the chestnut stood. If they said anything among themselves, Claude couldn’t hear it, or, for that matter, even see their lips move, but he didn’t have to; he knew that look on the face of lifelong horsemen. It was the same look men elsewhere put upon handsome, voluptuous, very desirable women.