by Brett Waring
Nash was lifted clear off the ground at first, the horse took off so fast. Then he jarred back with a jolt that smashed the breath from him and Dekker rode hell-bent down the slope, dragging Nash behind him. Nash rolled onto his belly and he smashed through a line of bushes. Men cheered and yelled encouragement to Dekker. Nash felt the consciousness being battered from him as Dekker swept in past the blazing cabin and through a pile of burning shingles. The glowing wood seemed to explode apart as Nash’s body was dragged clear through and then he was out in the front yard of the ranch, jolting and bouncing over the earth, trying to retain enough consciousness to free those loops from his boots. But it was no use: the rope was taut as steel and then, suddenly, he stopped and he lay there on his back, half-conscious in his own ranch yard, head roaring.
“Figured you might want somethin’ special done with him, Cash,” Dekker said and there was satisfaction and pleasure edging his words as he sat his horse in front of Matthews.
The big rancher looked soberly down at the bloody, dirt-caked, semi-conscious Nash. After a spell, he nodded. “Why not, Vern? I said I wanted the sodbusters to know I’d had a bellyful of ’em. I’ll make a prime example of Nash. Be better than killing him outright ...” He smiled faintly, just lifting one corner of his mouth. “Ever hear of a thing called ley del la fuga?”
Dekker raised his eyebrows and the men who had gathered around looked mostly blank, but one man, a half-breed Mexican nodded and spoke to Matthews.
“Si, Don Mateo. It is the law of the fugitive.”
“That’s it, Pasquale,” Matthews said, raking his eyes around his men before glancing down at Nash. The cowboy was starting to sit up, still dazed, bleeding, badly shaken by his ordeal. “The law of the fugitive ... Saw it during the war. We were chased across the Rio Grande by a bunch of Yankees and spent a few weeks in Mexico, licking our wounds. Some of us stayed on a hacienda and the Don there had occasion to punish one of his men. He stripped down that Mex to his hide and had him drug out into the badlands at the end of a rope. He turned him loose and sat back eating a hearty meal at the hacienda and entertaining us for the next three hours. Then he went out with his men and hunted down that Mex. Took ’em near four days, but they got him. If the Mex had managed to get away, he’d have kept his freedom and his life. That was the law. But he slipped up. He had to have water and he’d been hanging around this animal spring most of the time. Where he made his mistake, he left a toe mark in the soft earth around the spring. Just one toe mark, but the Don’s tracker spotted it. They just sat within spyglass distance of that spring and when the Mex came down to drink, that was it ... ”
“What’d they do with him?” Dekker asked.
Matthews shrugged. “Crucified him on a big cactus. It was their way.” He looked down at Nash and gave him a crooked smile. “So I’m being generous to you, Nash. Instead of having you killed, I’m going to let you watch your home burn to ashes and then give you your chance to beat the ley del la fuga!”
Matthews laughed, pleased at the thought.
Nash was not amused but he had managed to get the rope loops off his boots now. Matthews nodded and Dekker and the Mexican ’breed yanked Nash to his feet where he stood, swaying, his clothes torn, flesh scraped raw over his shoulders and lower back. He looked past Matthews at his cabin. It was completely engulfed in flames now and would soon be no more than a shell. Matthews saw the direction of his gaze and smiled crookedly.
“I’ll leave those ruins there,” he told Nash. “They’ll serve as a reminder to every stinking sodbuster who passes by that I don’t allow homesteaders near the M-Bar-M. And those who see it will know that it once belonged to you, Nash, for they’ll have heard about what happened to the man who tried to beat the law of the fugitive.”
“I’ll beat it, Matthews,” Nash gritted quietly. “And I’ll be back to square things with you.”
For a moment, Matthews’ face straightened and he felt a brief chill as Nash’s bleak gaze touched his face. Then he jumped his horse forward and freed a boot from the stirrup. He kicked Nash in the face and the cowboy’s legs buckled. He would have sagged to the ground only Dekker and the Mex held him up between them. Matthews made an impatient sign to Dekker.
“All right, tie him up. Too late to start him out into the badlands now. I want him to go out there knowing he’ll have a full day’s sun to suffer.”
Nash struggled but they lashed his wrists together behind his back and drew the ropes so tight they bit into his flesh. Dekker glanced up at the mounted Matthews.
“Where do we keep him for the night, Cash?”
“In the root cellar at M-Bar-M. And tie his hands in front of him. He can walk behind your horse at the end of a rope, Vern.”
Dekker gave a faint smile as he worked on the ropes. That suited him fine.
It was all right as far as the river. Dekker walked his mount slow enough for Nash to trot along behind with the rope from his wrists running to Dekker’s saddle horn. At least he was still on his feet. But, within five yards of the river, Dekker jammed home the spurs and his mount leapt forward with a jerk that yanked Nash violently off his feet and slammed him hard against the sandy ground. He was dragged roughly over this fighting and twisting and turning, and then the animal plunged into the river and Nash was surging through the shallows. He shook his head free of the water spraying up, tilting his neck back painfully so he could breathe. But then the horse reached belly-deep water and Nash nearly drowned. His half boots filled with water and dragged his feet down. Dekker kept the rope taut so he couldn’t possibly use his arms or bound hands to help keep afloat. He scrabbled desperately with his legs but couldn’t touch bottom. Water closed over his head and he gasped and spluttered as the forward motion forced it up his nostrils, causing him to cough and choke. Somehow he managed to get his head above the surface for an instant and he gulped down a shallow breath before he was plunged under again. By the time Dekker dragged him up the opposite bank he was half-choked and retching and unable to make any effort to get his feet under him.
“Don’t kill him yet!” Matthews snapped.
Dekker shrugged and stopped his mount. They halted and watched, amused, as Nash vomited muddy river-water and gagged, fighting to his knees, doubling over with spasms. He dragged down a breath that tasted like acid in his raw throat and burned his lungs. Wet hair hung across his forehead and down into his eyes. Through it, he saw the M-Bar-M hard cases watching him, making ribald remarks and joking among themselves. He took in the details of every man’s face, his mount, clothes, bearing. He would never forget any single one of them. If he lived through this, every man present would be dead within a month ... He made himself that promise, finally settling his gaze on Matthews and Dekker. Those were the two. It wouldn’t matter to him about the others so much, just so long as he was able to get those two.
Vern Dekker heeled his mount forward and Nash had to leap wildly to get his feet under him. He staggered forward up the slope behind the mount, stumbling, zigzagging, near exhausted. He hadn’t travelled twenty yards before Dekker increased the horse’s pace again and he was yanked violently off his feet once more, dragged full-length through the dust and kicked-up gravel, cannoning into small bushes and grass tufts, other riders deliberately putting their mounts in close, the hoofs coming within inches of his head and body.
By the time they reached the M-Bar-M and flung him into the underground root cellar, he was barely conscious. He landed on sacks of potatoes and lay there, bloody, clothes in rags, wrists still bound. The heavy door slammed and plunged the cellar into pitch darkness. But Nash did not know it. He was already falling into oblivion.
Three – Survival
IT WAS past sunup when Nash stood on the edge of the badlands, wrists still tied, stripped to the waist, his raw wounds ugly in the orange glow. He was surrounded by the hard cases, and Matthews sat his big Arab next to him, his boot almost touching Nash’s shoulder.
“I’m being generous, Nash,” Matthews sai
d sardonically, “allowing you to keep your pants and your boots ... Not that they’re much good, with one heel gone and worn through already on the soles. They’ll be in shreds inside a couple of hours on the lava out there ... Can’t give you any weapons, of course, or a hat. That wouldn’t be following the rules, and water and food is your own concern. But, all in all, you can’t say I haven’t given you a chance.”
He laughed and some of the others joined in. Nash looked at him with a tight face and eyes that were like gun barrels, Matthews looked away from that deadly stare, uneasy, and made a sign to Dekker. The big ramrod climbed down off his mount and took out a clasp knife. He cut the ropes binding Nash’s wrists and folded the blade back into the handle, pocketing the knife again. Nash’s hands and lower arms were like lead, without circulation, but he swung an awkward, clubbing blow at Dekker, both hands clenched together. He leaned into the blow, knowing there was not much force in it, and it took the ramrod across the face, turning his head on his shoulders, sending him staggering back a step or two, blood showing at his mouth. He cursed, wiped blood from his lips and lunged at Nash, smashing him to his knees with two sledging blows, then drawing back a boot to kick him in the kidneys.
“Hold it, Vern! Hold it!” snapped Matthews. “Damn it, we don’t want him crippled before we turn him loose!”
Dekker checked, glared at Matthews, then backhanded Nash across the face before casually stepping up into leather again. Nash shook his head and climbed painfully to his feet. He massaged his forearms and hands, grinned bloodily at Dekker.
“It was worth it!” he grated.
Dekker filled his mouth with saliva and spat at the cowboy. Nash dodged and Dekker cursed.
Matthews pulled a large silver watch from his vest pocket, turned the face so he could read it in the growing light. “You have three hours’ start as of—now! Then we come after you.”
Nash, swaying on his feet, not having eaten or had a drink since yesterday, gave Matthews and Dekker one terrible final look, then turned and walked out into the badlands, limping, off-balance because of the heel that had been shot off his boot in the fracas at the cabin. The M-Bar-M men laughed at the spectacle he made, half-naked, flesh scraped raw from the root cellar, staggering and swaying like a drunk.
“It’ll only take us an hour to find him if he keeps movin’ at that speed,” Dekker allowed.
Matthews frowned. “Yes. There’ll hardly be any sport in it.” He drew his engraved Winchester from the saddle scabbard and put it to his shoulder. He sighted carefully, fired. The bullet kicked dust a few feet in front of Nash, making the man stagger to one side. He tripped on a rock and sprawled forward. The hard cases laughed.
As he picked himself up, Matthews fired another shot and this time it was within inches of Nash’s left boot. He got the message and, without looking back, started to jog-trot forward, his stumbling and limping exaggerated by the increased speed. The hard cases cheered derisively. A couple drew their six-guns and loosed off a few shots into the air, speeding Nash on his way ...
“All right,” Matthews said curtly. “We go back to the ranch for breakfast and no man returns here until I tell him it’s time.” He raked his hard eyes around the men. “In three hours, it’s all stops out to hunt down Nash. There’s a hundred-dollar bonus for the man who brings him in ... dead or alive.”
That seemed to please the hard cases and they discussed it amongst themselves as Matthews and Dekker led the way back to the M-Bar-M.
Clay Nash didn’t look back. He knew that Matthews, with his warped sense of ‘sportsmanship’ and his feeling of identification with the Spanish Don he’d spoken of, would give him the full three hours’ start. In any case, the M-Bar-M men would have to make their own preparations for a desert search. They could no more set out without supplies of food and water than Nash could: they’d soon find themselves in the same predicament as the cowboy if they did.
He sat down after about twenty minutes, legs aching from the uneven walking. Glancing back the way he’d come, he could not see any sign of Matthews or his men through the dancing heat haze that was already beginning to rise from the desert floor. He took his hunting knife from inside his right boot. It had been lucky they’d allowed him to keep his boots and had not searched there for weapons.
Nash used the blade to prise off the heel from his good boot. It would even his gait, if nothing else. He kept the thick leather: it might come in handy as a missile if he spotted a small animal. Nash rammed his knife into his belt and stood up. He glanced at the sun where it was crawling up the sky. It wouldn’t reach really intense heat for another hour, maybe an hour-and-a-half. That was another of Matthews’ mistakes. He’d turned Nash loose too soon. He’d have done better to wait until mid-morning or later when the sun was really hot. This way, Nash could travel quite a long way before the heat began to suck the sweat from his body and dehydrate it. He started off at a steady jog-trot again, his boots jarring through him without any heels at all, but he tried to put a spring in each step by using his toes more. He kept his mouth closed and breathed through his nostrils: this saved drying him out and helped conserve body moisture.
He knew he was going to have one hell of a time trying to survive out here, but, given half a chance, he was confident he could do it. Clay Nash had earned his living as a buffalo hunter at one time and had befriended one of the Comanche Indian skinners. He’d learnt many survival techniques from the Indian and had had to employ them twice over the years. Without the knowledge of them he was certain he would die.
Food he could do without for a day or so. Water was his most urgent requirement: water and some protection from the sun. Though the glare was not yet blinding, it soon would be and good vision was vital to him, now that he was the hunted as well as the hunter: he had to be able to see any signs of Matthews’ crew, as well as any animal or plant that could help him survive. He didn’t know this desert very well, but he could ‘read country’ and pick up general signs that might mean food, water or shelter.
Maybe that soaking and near-drowning in the river had helped, now that he thought about it. They’d left him in his wet clothes all night so his body had been absorbing the moisture and this could likely be almost as good as a drink of water. He was thirsty and hungry now but didn’t allow the pangs to intrude as he jogged along. When he felt his breath coming hard enough to force him to open his mouth so as to drag down huge gulps of warm desert air, he stopped and then started off again at a walking pace. He wasn’t moving in just any direction: he knew he was heading north from the position of the sun, but he aimed to make a long swing around to the northwest when the chance offered. For one thing, there were a couple of remote stagecoach way-stations out there and it was the last direction Matthews would expect him to take. The big rancher would be expecting Nash to make off to the east where there were towns and a railroad, a well-travelled cattle trail with water tanks and windmills along the way. To head northwest meant he would have to traverse the line of broken hills and heat-pulsing canyons that lay that way, and the only water there was what a man could find himself by digging in likely spots. But, to Nash, that was the way to survival. To the east, despite the towns and water and ranches and settlement in general, lay only pursuit and eventual death at Matthews’ hands.
The sun was burning his skin like a blast from an oven and the top of his head felt as if it was on fire. He squinted his eyes down as much as he dared and stumbled over small obstacles several times. Not far ahead, lay a rise in the ground, broken lava slopes, studded with sotol, cactus, agave and yucca. They would expect him to head there and waste time searching for water or food, or even shelter.
Well, Nash aimed to head there, all right, and he figured he’d spend the best part of an hour on the rise, but it wouldn’t be time wasted: it would be time he would use to prepare himself for the desert beyond. It would be his only chance when he could do what he had to do and know that pursuit was still far off. He figured there was still well over an hour
yet before Matthews would start his manhunt and this was precious time without tension that he simply had to use while he had the chance.
He was slowed down to a staggering snail’s pace by the time he reached the rise and clambered painfully over the lava chunks, burning his hands against the hot rock. He was breathing hard, mouth hanging open, his throat parched, as if he’d been breathing in smoke from a campfire. Well, he’d be doing that pretty soon.
There was some shade cast by a large slab of lava that angled out from a small bluff. He staggered around until he found a rock that was a couple of feet high and he sat on this, ignoring the heat coming through his levis, knowing that to stretch out or sit on the ground would only dehydrate him further. The temperature only a foot or so above ground level could be as much as twenty, thirty degrees less. There wasn’t time for getting his breathing under full control or resting his aching muscles. He didn’t dare remove his boots in case his feet swelled so much he couldn’t get them back on. He stumbled around, collecting sotol brush, crumbled some of the dry twigs into tinder and then searched through the broken stone for a piece of flint. Using the back of the knife blade, he struck sparks from the flint over and over until the tinder began to smolder. Blowing very gently, he fanned the spark into a small flame and pulled some of the sotol brush over it. In half a minute, he had a blazing fire roaring, the heat beating at him. He piled more and more brush on, not bothering about the smoke. Matthews knew where he was most likely anyway, and he didn’t have time to try to disperse the smoke.
While the fire was burning down, he crawled around the slope, looking for vegetation. The cactus was large and therefore wouldn’t have a lot of moisture content, but he found one that was bearing fruit. He peeled this carefully but still got his hands covered with the fine spines and the saliva formed in his mouth as the juicy flesh began to appear. He crammed it into his mouth and savored the astringent flavor. While he chewed, he peeled another fruit and another until he’d eaten all that was on the plant: five fruits. His stomach rumbled and growled away while he hacked into the cactus’ heart with his knife and cut out the pith. It was reasonably moist and he chewed on it until it was like sawdust, throwing the remnants away: he’d have choked if he’d tried to swallow it. He cut several big pieces of pith to carry with him. Then he returned to his fire that had, by now, burnt down to coals and ashes.
