by Lauran Paine
Jack sat with the sun across his shoulders, listening to the crashing silence and wishing mightily Amy Southard were there to put the things into words that he was thinking. He took out his tobacco sack, made a cigarette, and lit it. Then let it lie between his fingers until it went out. Finally, as the shadows lengthened, he cast it aside and stood up.
“Let’s start back, Rob.”
“No!”
Thin shoulders shook in silent anguish.
“Rob, I’ve been thinking. I reckon I sort of let you down. I didn’t mean to. I figured you were going to learn a trade. Well, seems your uncle had other notions. Now I want to tell you this...only a plain damned fool makes the same mistake twice, and I don’t think I’m a damned fool. Come on, we’ll go back and things’ll be different. I promise you that.”
“How can they be different...back there...in Herd?”
Jack mounted his horse and sat there, watching the boy limp toward the weary stud horse. “We’ll make ’em be different,” he said.
Rob wriggled up the side of the stud horse and settled into the saddle. When Jack started down the road, he followed. They had traveled perhaps a mile when Jack looked around. Rob’s face was dry but the pain and hurt were still there.
“First thing we got to do,” the man said, “is get that stud horse back where he belongs.”
VI
The next time the big man looked back, the boy had a hand on the crest of the stud horse’s neck. He saw Jack watching him and said: “He’s sore-footed.”
“Yeah, I know. I saw that from the way he was walking when I was tracking you.” Jack grinned. “You’d make a mighty poor horse thief. You’d make a lot better saddle maker.”
They rode a while in silence before the boy spoke again: “Where’ll we go?”
“Why, back to town.”
“I mean after we get back there.”
Jack settled deeper into the saddle. “To the shop, I reckon,” he said with no conviction. He began to frown.
As they rode south, furred with the dust of travel, the big man’s determination grew. He had no plan — had never had one beyond finding the boy and the stolen horse — but one thing he was certain of — Rob was not going back to Cavin’s shack.
They topped out over a knoll, barren and scrubbed clean by endless winds. There, Jack drew up to study the long breadth of land below them. There were shades of gray — sage, chaparral, buckbrush — and bursts of dark greenery. It all lay vividly clear beneath the weight of fading day. Even the square specks far ahead where the mine was, where the downward march of forest ended and the plain began, was limned with crystal clarity.
There was no wind, no sound, and no stirring. Later, when they were moving again, Jack halted once to sniff and look upward where a stealing grayness was infiltrating the atmosphere. The air had become coarse and the sky had taken on a leadenness, its distended belly low. In this threatening late afternoon environment the man and boy were silhouetted against the upland darkness, moving lower toward the flat land, where trees and brush were dwarfed by distance and the world was splashed with ragged shades of color below gray-scudding clouds. Later, when they were near the plains, the lop-sided old moon arose over all this, a blaze of silver in the stillness.
A hushed breeze ran fetlock-high through the dust of the roadway, making a sighing sound as it threaded its way over near edges and plunged downward, out along the desert.
Jack heard it, felt its residue along his legs, and smelled its roiled mustiness strong with rain fragrance. He watched its fingerlings twine up through his horse’s mane.
There was an everlasting sameness to this country, an eternal patience that permeated everything. Some of it went into him as he rode along, watching for movement, for sign of Logan’s railroaders.
He looked around at the thin face beside him, saw its drawn and tired look, and, when they were back down on the desert floor, moving through warmer air, he stopped for a rest once they hit the road. It ran torpidly crooked with a rare glint of stones along its course, like snakeskin markings.
Then, when they were moving again, they angled away from the road so as to miss the mine. Jack held to a southeasterly course, weaving his way over land swells and beyond the rolls and hollows of the foothills until they were far to the rear.
The brush became heavier on the route Jack was taking, and the stud horse wince-stepped whenever he walked on stones he could no longer see to avoid. They worked their way through the brush with only heads and shoulders showing. It may have been a needless precaution but Jack took it anyway. He did not mean for them to be found.
Once, crossing an open space, Rob said: “That’s sure a nice chestnut horse, isn’t he?”
“Yep,” Jack agreed offhandedly. “He’s good.”
“We could use a horse like him...couldn’t we?”
Jack looked down at his mount, then around to the boy. He smiled slowly. “I’ll be blessed if I know what for,” he said. “‘But I expect we could.”
“Jack?”
“Yeah.”
“I been practicing with the gun. Do you want to see how good I am with it?”
“Not right now, son. No sense in telling the world we’re out here.”
The sky became darker, the air warmer, and the night perfectly still.
They had been riding steadily for two hours after leaving the mountains when a flat-sounding rifle shot echoed in the hush.
Jack jerked his horse to a halt. Rob’s animal, following too closely, bumped him. The boy’s voice was sharp. “Wasn’t that a shot, Jack?”
“Sure was.” Jack listened a moment, then shook out his reins. “Probably your uncle’s men signaling to one another. Anyway, whoever made it was a long way off.”
“Yeah. Maybe it’s my uncle’s men an’ they see it’s going to rain and want to head for Herd.”
The big man nodded and they started out again.
“Will we get caught in the rain, Jack?”
“I suppose so, Rob. If we could go by the road maybe we wouldn’t...maybe we could hit town before she busts loose. But we can’t go by the road.”
They continued to forge ahead through the night, moving as though distance existed only to be crossed. Eventually Jack reined clear of the brush patches and kept to open country. The air smelled of brimstone. The moon began to look hazy and swollen. It shone off a broad field of obsidian ahead.
“There’s your glass rock,” Jack said, pointing.
Rob’s reply was small. “Golly, we’re close to the Merton place, aren’t we?”
“Yep.”
They made a wide circle of Percy Merton’s pasture. Jack was sitting very erect in the saddle now, alert and listening. Once, the stud horse nickered. Rob see-sawed the reins and cut him off. Then Jack swung down, beckoned for Rob to dismount, handed him the chestnut’s reins, and started forward into the night afoot leading the stud horse. He said nothing.
The corral loomed up. Jack off-saddled, turned the stud horse in, closed the pole gate, and tossed the bridle on the ground near the saddle. The stud horse went down in the dust and rolled. Then he stood up, wide-legged and shook all over. Finally, as Jack was hastening away, he threw up his head and let off a piercing whistle. Jack stopped and turned, saw a lantern appear in the middle distance, over by Merton’s house, and hurried to where Rob was waiting. He swung up, helped Rob into position behind the cantle, and rode away. The lantern was bobbing rapidly in the direction of the pole corral.
Rob said: “What’ll he do, Jack?”
“Find his horse, son. That’s about all he can do this time of night.”
They rode southward for a long time. There was nothing but the muffled scuff of the chestnut’s hoof falls to break the silence. Then the boy spoke again, his voice small.
“I’m scairt, Jack.”
“Sure you are. You w
ere scairt when you took the stud horse. And I expect you were scared out on the desert last night.”
“No, not last night I wasn’t. But I sure was when I was saddling the stud horse.”
“We’ll be back pretty quick and there won’t be much to be scared of.”
“Yes there will...my uncle.”
“Maybe he won’t find you.”
“Yes he will. And he’ll make me go back, too.”
Thin hands tightened on the big man’s upper arms.
Jack looked ahead. He could not see the town yet but it was there. Thinking of Josh Logan, he said: “If he sends you back to Cavin’s, he’s going to have to work at it, son.”
“Maybe we ought to go by Amy’s place. She’s smart...for a girl.”
“And pretty,” Jack added.
“Yeah. Smart an’ pretty.”
“Who’s her paw, Rob?”
“He’s dead. I guess he must have died when she was little...like my paw did. She lives with her mother. Sheriff Farmer’s her uncle.”
Jack craned his neck for a backward squint. “Sheriff Farmer...her uncle?”
“That’s what she told me. He’s her mother’s brother.”
The boy’s grip tightened briefly, then he pointed ahead with one hand.
“There are the lights, Jack.”
Herd lay on their right, easterly, a dark, faint series of humps and squares against the night. Jack kept on until he was at the outskirts, then he cut into an alleyway and rode down it almost to the rear opening of Buck’s barn. There he halted, got down, and helped Rob down.
“You stay here a minute,” he told the boy. “I’ll get rid of the horse, then we’ll go to the shop.”
Rob nodded. The big man walked off, leading the chestnut gelding, and Rob faded deeper into the gloom, waiting.
Where an orange oblong of light lay across the alleyway, Jack halted, off-saddled, unbridled, and flagged the tired horse up into the barn. He then put the tack inside the door and turned back. A big fat raindrop struck the earth at his feet with an audible sound. He paused, looked up, then moved on.
He and Rob crossed through the Stygian darkness down a way from the lighted section of town, got into the alleyway leading to the saddle shop, and made their way to the rear door. The raindrops were falling more frequently now and the wind was rising. Jack opened the door, moved aside for Rob to pass through, then looked back at the empty alleyway. There was nothing there; no shadows that shaped up, but he hadn’t really expected there to be. He entered, closed and bolted the door, and turned forward. The little room was as dark as the inside of a well. From a way off Rob’s voice came, timid-sounding and small.
“I thought we were goin’ t’ see Amy.”
“It’s pretty late,” Jack replied. “Maybe in the morning.”
“Oh. Jack? Could we eat something?”
The big man smiled in the darkness. “I reckon so,” he said, “providing you can find your mouth in the dark. No point in advertising that we’re back by lighting the lamps.”
They ate in darkness, listening to the rainstorm come, wave after wave of increasing wind and water. The building quivered under the impact. Finally Jack showed Rob where the bunk was and waited until the boy was snuggled down under the quilts. By then the storm was spending its full fury against the town.
“Jack, here’s the gun.”
The man took it, hefted it unconsciously, then put it on a high shelf and turned away. From the bed a tired, thickening voice said: “Aren’t you going to bed?”
“Yeah, directly. Right now I’m going out into the shop for a smoke. Good night, Rob.”
“Good night.”
The shop’s front window was streaked and blurred. Beyond it wavy paths of lamplight fell against the glistening roadway. Jack made a cigarette, smoked it standing motionlessly by the cutting table looking out. He was straightening up to turn away when a shapeless form darkened the window, then moved along to the door and rapped sharply on it.
It was Buck. He had obviously dressed in haste and his lined old face was puffy from sleep. He sputtered and shook off water as he squeezed past the open door and turned to face the big man.
Jack closed and locked the door. Without turning, he said: “That was pretty good timing, Buck.”
“Wasn’t no accident,” the liveryman shot back. “I left word for the hostler to let me know the second you brought the horse back.”
“I see.”
“Did you bring him back, too?”
“The boy? Sure.” Jack motioned Buck toward a stool. “Sit down,” he said, and went back by the cutting table. “Where’s Logan?”
“Out lookin’ for his railroaders.”
“I hope he gets drenched.”
“You got a lamp in here?”
“Sure. But I don’t aim to light it.”
Buck’s crooked, gnomish figure drew up suddenly and his voice went high. “You ain’t got him here, have you?”
“Couldn’t leave him out in the rain, could I?”
“Dammit, Jack, this’s the first place Logan’ll look when he gets back.”
“I can’t help that.”
“Listen, boy, you can’t have the lad here. That’d be all Logan would need to nail you to a cross. He’s already as sore as the devil chasin’ a crippled saint.” Buck cocked his head suddenly. “I’ve got it. We’ll hide him at my barn.”
Jack leaned on the table. “And if he’s found there,” he said, “what’ll they do to you?”
“Less chance of him bein’ found there than here,” Buck said stoutly.
“No. Nothing doing. Logan’s down on me...that’s all right. We’ll let it stand like that. No sense in getting him down on you, too.”
“It’s about time someone else got mixed up in this thing,” the old man insisted. “You don’t think I got out of bed and come down here just to give you hell about keepin’ one of my horses out this long, do you?”
“What do you mean, Buck?”
“Logan’s got a warrant out for your arrest...that’s what I mean. That’s why I wanted to know the second you came back. So’s I could warn you to saddle up and get.” Buck groped for the stool, sank down on it, and leaned forward, looking up. “Just who d’you think’s going to look out for the boy after you’re gone?”
The big man was still so long Buck didn’t think he was going to answer at all. Then he said: “I’m not going anywhere.”
“What! Are you plumb loco? Logan’ll land on you like a ton of bricks.” The old man squirmed. “Dammit, boy, when Logan serves that warrant, you’ll be out of circulation...maybe for a long time. Don’t you see? Whether you run or stay, you’re going to be out of it, and someone’s got to mind the boy.”
Jack growled: “Quit hollering. I can hear you all right.”
Buck subsided. He slumped on the stool and ran a coat sleeve along under his nose, then he perked up again. “Now, listen, Jack, I don’t know whether this is true or not and I don’t care...but there’s a rumor around that you’re an ex-convict from Yuma.”
The big man’s gaze fastened on the liveryman’s face. He said nothing.
“If that’s so, and you’re arrested, you aren’t going to be locked up for a day or two. You’ll be taken away. What happens to Rob then?”
“I’m not in jail yet.”
“Use your head,” Buck retorted, voice rising again. “Hoyt Farmer’ll have you by noon tomorrow. I know he looks sleepy and slow-witted, but he ain’t. I’ve known Hoyt Farmer twenty years and there ain’t a shrewder lawman in Arizona. As soon as he thinks you’re back, he’ll come a-lookin’ for you, and believe me when Hoyt Farmer commences lookin’ he never quits.”
Jack gestured tiredly. “All right. Suppose you hide Rob...and get found out?”
“Who’s goin’ to find out?”
“Logan, that’s who. If you think Farmer’s smart, let me tell you that Logan’s twice as smart. Who’s been my closest friend since I came to Herd? You. Who’s been outspokenly against Josh Logan? You.”
“All right! “Buck exclaimed. “Let him suspect me. Let him come an’ look. He won’t find nothin’ at all. You just leave that to me. I didn’t just come down in this here rain, y’know. I been around a long time an’ I know my way around a little, too. Logan be damned.” Buck got off the stool and raised a hand. “And another thing, Jack, you got to leave tonight...right now.”
“Why?”
“Because this here rain’ll hide your tracks, that’s why. Even Hoyt Farmer won’t be able to track you after a rain.”
Jack’s mouth quirked upward slightly in approval. “No,” he stated slowly. “I guess you didn’t come down in this rain. I guess you’ve done a little track hiding in your time.”
“Never mind that,” the old man replied tartly. “Let’s move the kid to my hayloft while it’s still darker’n pitch out.”
They got Rob, quilts and all, and carried him, half asleep, across the empty, shimmering, and rain-drenched roadway and into Buck’s barn. There, while the old man kept his night hawk in the harness room, Jack put the boy in the hayloft. Bedded him down well on the far side of the hay and left him.
When he descended the loft ladder, Buck was waiting. Jack beat chaff off his trousers and looked up with a head wag.
“That’s the first place Logan’ll look,” he said.
“Yeah? Well, he won’t find nothin’. Now come on, let’s get you a horse. It’ll be daylight in another two, three hours.”
“It’s not that late,” the younger man said, following Buck toward the rear stalls, down near the alley entrance.
The old man stopped, drew out his watch, flicked it open, and squinted downward. “Four-thirty,” he said. “It’s even later’n I thought.”
“Where’d the night go?” Jack asked, surprised at the lateness.
Buck was reaching for a stall door when he said: “They got a habit of just lastin’ eight hours. Here, put this bridle on him and I’ll fetch the saddle.”
