The Loner: The Devil’s Badland

by J. A. Johnstone

  He shook his head. “No, that’s not practical, or I would. But as soon as we get to the mountains, we’re going to find a safe place for you to stay while the rest of us check out that smoke.”

  “You’re going to leave me by myself?” She sounded like the prospect frightened her.

  “You’ll have your pistol,” he told her, “and we’ll leave you that rifle and plenty of supplies. If anything happens and…we don’t come back, you’ll be able to reach Val Verde in a couple of days. Just take note of where the sun comes up and ride toward it. Once you hit the railroad, you can follow it straight to the settlement.”

  “By myself?” Her voice shook a little.

  He resisted the impulse to tell her that she should have thought of that before she set off after him. Instead, he said as reassuringly as he could, “You’ll be fine.”

  “If you say so,” she said. She didn’t sound like she believed it for a second.

  The mountains took on a greenish tinge due to the scrub pines and clumps of hardy grass on the slopes. The Hatchets were low enough so that none of the peaks were above the treeline. They weren’t the same sort of craggy, gray mountains that were found farther north in the Rockies. They still had a bleak look about them, however, despite the vegetation. They might have almost been mountains on the moon, Conrad mused. He felt that far from everything he had ever known.

  They reached the mountains in the early afternoon. The smoke was still visible, rising from a point above them. Conrad spotted a cluster of pines at the base of a hill and pointed them out.

  “There might be a spring over there,” he said. “We can water the horses and leave Miss Tarleton there if there is.”

  “Sounds like a good idea,” Whitfield agreed with a nod. “Let’s check it out.”

  What they found was a little oasis in the middle of this dry, rugged landscape. A spring bubbled out of some rocks, forming a pool about ten feet across. Several pines ringed it, and the grass was thicker and greener on its banks than anywhere Conrad had seen since leaving Val Verde.

  “This will be a good place for you,” he told Pamela as the riders dismounted and began to water their horses.

  “I don’t suppose it would do any good to say that I’d rather go with you.”

  He shook his head. “Not a bit. You’ve got food, water, and shelter here. If none of us have come back to get you by morning, you head for Val Verde, you hear me?”

  “I’m going to have to spend the night here by myself?”

  “Possibly. I don’t know yet, because I don’t know what we’ll find further up the mountain.”

  Pamela sighed. “All right. I know you’re just doing what you think is best, Conrad. I hope you’re right.”

  “So do I,” he said, and meant it.

  After all the horses had been watered and had rested for a while, Whitfield said, “I reckon we might as well mount up and get on up the mountain. Find out what’s waitin’ for us.”

  “Trouble,” Trace said. “That’s what’s waitin’ for us.”

  Whitfield grunted. “More’n likely.” He grabbed the saddlehorn, put his foot in the stirrup, and swung up. The rest of the men followed suit. Whitfield gestured toward the smoke and said to Conrad, “This is your party, Browning. Why don’t you and MacTavish lead the way?”

  Conrad knew what the rancher meant. If there was an ambush waiting up there, Whitfield intended for him and James to take the first bullets.

  He was willing to run that risk. He glanced back at Pamela, who stood beside the pool looking forlorn, and then heeled his horse into motion. James was right behind him.

  A couple of narrow valleys twisted through the hills at the base of the mountains, rising steadily at the same time. The riders followed them and came out on one of the lower shoulders of the tallest mountain in the small chain.

  “That’s Big Hatchet Mountain,” Whitfield said with a nod toward the peak. “I hunted bighorn sheep on it once, but that was more’n ten years ago. The Apaches did some huntin’ on that trip, too. I damn near lost my hair. I, for one, ain’t sorry to see them red savages put on reservations.”

  “That’s because you weren’t forced off your land like they were,” Conrad pointed out.

  “Their land? You’re sayin’ this was their land?” Whitfield snorted and shook his head. “Only because they stole it from some other bunch o’ red savages who lived here before them, and that bunch stole it from whoever had it before them. I reckon you got to go all the way back to the Garden of Eden to find some land that wasn’t stole from somebody else at one time or another.”

  What Whitfield said made sense, Conrad supposed. He didn’t really care at the moment, though. His only concern was locating Margaret MacTavish and finding out if he was right about the identities of the men who had taken her from her home.

  When they were within a few hundred yards of the place where the smoke appeared to originate, Conrad said, “We’ll dismount and go ahead on foot from here.”

  Whitfield and his men complied, although Trace grumbled a little about having to walk. Conrad understood. Even though these men were hired guns rather than cowboys, they shared the common rangeland belief that an hombre shouldn’t walk anywhere he can ride.

  A ridge jutted up ahead of them, and as they came closer, it was obvious that the smoke came from the other side of it. Conrad motioned for the other men to stop. He said quietly, “The rest of you stay here. James and I will go up to the top of the ridge and take a look.”

  “Hell with that,” Whitfield said. “I’m comin’ with you.”

  “So am I,” Trace added.

  Conrad thought about arguing with them, then decided that it wasn’t worth the trouble. Both Whitfield and Trace had much more experience on the frontier than he did. They wouldn’t give away their presence.

  Anyway, if he was right, the kidnappers were already waiting for them.

  The other four men stayed where they were and held the horses while Conrad, James, Whitfield, and Trace approached the crest of the ridge on foot, as quietly as possible. A few stunted bushes grew on top of the ridge. The men used them for cover as they took off their hats and edged up far enough to peer over the crest.

  They looked down the far side of the slope for a long moment, then Whitfield breathed, “Well, what do you know about that!”

  Chapter 17

  The brushy ridge dropped steeply into a circular depression about five hundred yards across. The ground at the bottom of it was fairly flat and grassy. Stands of stubby pines grew here and there, and other areas were choked by briars, cactus, and scrubby mesquite trees.

  It wasn’t a very pretty place, but at one time somebody had thought it would make a decent place to live. A large log cabin that looked at least twenty years old sat in a clearing in the pines. The smoke Conrad and the other men had been following rose from a stone chimney at one end of the structure.

  A pole corral with a number of horses in it lay behind the cabin. Conrad didn’t see anyone moving around.

  “They’ve got her in there, the bastards,” James said through gritted teeth. “I know it.”

  “More’n likely you’re right, boy,” Whitfield agreed, keeping his rumbling voice as quiet as he could. “I don’t see a good way of gettin’ in there. I reckon we could lay siege to the place, but who knows how long it’d take to get ’em out that way.”

  “Too long,” Conrad said. “If they have Meggie, they could threaten to kill her if we didn’t let them go.”

  He frowned as he studied the terrain. After a moment, he went on, “It looks to me like a man could get pretty close to the cabin and still stay in the trees. If he could work his way around behind the cabin, then climb on the roof and throw a blanket over that chimney…”

  “Smoke ’em out, eh?” Whitfield nodded. “Might work. Fella who tried it would be runnin’ a mighty big risk of bein’ shot before he ever got there, though.”

  “I’ll do it,” James said without hesitation.

>   Conrad shook his head. “That will be my job. And we’ll wait until dusk. That way it’ll be harder for their guards to see.”

  “Dusk is hours away,” James argued. “We don’t know what’s goin’ on in there. They could be doin’…anything…to Meggie.”

  Trace laughed. “Don’t worry about that, MacTavish. Anything they were gonna do to your sister, they’ve already done…probably more than once.”

  James’s face reddened angrily. Whitfield snapped, “Damn it, Jack, there ain’t no call to talk like that.”

  “Just tellin’ the truth,” Trace said with a shrug.

  “Let it go, James,” Conrad said. “I know that’s easier said than done—”

  “Damn right it is,” James said. “What if that was your sister in there, Browning?”

  Conrad didn’t have a sister—at least, not that he knew of for sure, although Frank had dropped hints that there was a girl back in Texas who might be his half-sister—but he had gone through the ordeal of Rebel being kidnapped. He said, “I know how you feel. It’ll still be better to wait until the light starts to go.”

  “Yeah, you’re right,” Whitfield said. “Why don’t we leave a man here to keep an eye on the cabin, and the rest of us can go back to where we left the others?”

  That seemed like a reasonable suggestion to Conrad, as long as it wasn’t James MacTavish they left behind. He didn’t trust the young man not to do something foolish. Trace solved that problem by saying, “I’ll stay, boss.”

  “All right. You let us know if anything changes down there.”

  Trace nodded. “I will.”

  Conrad felt worry stir uneasily inside him. He didn’t trust Trace, but as far as he could see, the gunman had no reason to betray them now.

  He moved back down the ridge with Whitfield and James. Two things filled his mind—concern for Meggie MacTavish, and the knowledge that he might soon be face to face with the man truly responsible for Rebel’s death.

  When they rejoined the other men, Whitfield explained the situation to them. They nodded, taking the news expressionlessly. They were professional fighting men, so the prospect of one more battle didn’t faze any of them. They didn’t have any emotional ties to Meggie. This was just another job to them.

  Conrad and Whitfield hunkered on their heels to work out the rest of the plan. Everyone except Conrad would take up positions on top of the ridge so that they would have good shots at the cabin in the depression. Conrad said, “Chances are, when the smoke forces them out, one of the men will have Meggie and will try to use her as a hostage. Since I’ll be the closest, I’ll take him. I’ll jump him from the top of the cabin and get her away from him. As soon as I’ve done that, you open up on the rest of them.”

  “Gun ’em down, just like that?”

  “They tried to kill Hamish MacTavish. They may have succeeded, for all we know. And they kidnapped an innocent young woman. I’d say they deserve whatever happens to them.”

  Whitfield shrugged. “Don’t reckon I can argue with that. One thing worries me, though. We figured they planned on bushwhackin’ us. How come they didn’t? How come they’re just sittin’ down there like they’re waitin’ for us to come callin’?”

  Those questions nagged at Conrad, too, but he didn’t have any answers for them. “I don’t know,” he said. “Maybe we’ll find out once we’ve taken the girl away from them.”

  “If she’s down there,” Whitfield said, voicing another of Conrad’s worries.

  “She’s there,” he said. “Where else can she be?”

  Where else, indeed.

  Conrad knew from experience how difficult waiting could be. That afternoon was a good example. It seemed to drag by as they waited for the sun to dip below Big Hatchet Mountain. Conrad went up the ridge a couple of times to check with Trace and see if there had been any activity around the cabin. Each time the gunman shook his head and said, “Nobody’s as much as even poked a head out. Are you sure they’re down there, Browning?”

  “They have to be,” Conrad said. “Their horses are there.”

  Trace shrugged. “I reckon.”

  Late in the afternoon, James MacTavish approached Whitfield and said, “You’ve got to give me my gun back now. You can’t expect me not to help rescue my own sister.”

  “You’re convinced that I didn’t have anything to do with her bein’ carried off?” the rancher demanded.

  “Yeah. I don’t think even you would’ve gone to this much trouble to fool me.”

  Whitfield snorted. “Damn right I wouldn’t. I got better things to do…like keepin’ my beef from bein’ widelooped by a bunch of no-good squatters.”

  James’s anger flared up again. “Haven’t you figured out by now that we’re not rustlers?”

  “Then what happened to that stock of mine that’s disappeared?”

  Conrad spoke up, saying, “Any number of things could have happened. Mexican bandits could have come across the border and stolen them, like I told you before.” He moved his head in a barely perceptible nod toward the hired gun-wolves who waited nearby. “Or maybe you’ve got some men on your payroll who are working more for themselves than they are for you.”

  Whitfield glowered at him. “That’s a mighty sorry accusation to be makin’, considerin’ that you’re gonna be fightin’ side by side with those boys before too much longer.”

  “One thing doesn’t rule out the other,” Conrad said.

  “No, I reckon not,” Whitfield admitted. His mouth worked as he thought, which made his heavy jaw shift from side to side. “I suppose it ain’t impossible…”

  “But it doesn’t have anything to do with the job that’s facing us now,” Conrad went on. “When we get back to Val Verde, you really ought to sit down with Hamish MacTavish and hash out the problems the two of you have with each other. You’d be better off in the long run if you were friends, rather than enemies.”

  “How would you know? You don’t strike me as a man who has many friends, mister.”

  That was true, Conrad thought. Phillip Bearpaw might qualify, but there was no telling when, or even if, he would ever see the Paiute Indian again. He and Frank Morgan were friends now, over and above the blood tie between them, but Frank was a man who went his own way. Conrad had inherited that same trait. Even in his younger days, he had never opened up and let anyone get that close to him. He had always been something of a loner…

  Until he met Rebel. Things had changed then.

  And with her death, they had changed again. He might spend time with families like the MacTavishes, might ride for a while with men such as Devil Dave Whitfield…but in the end, if he lived, he would move on by himself. That was the way he wanted it. A solitary man.

  A loner, now and forever.

  The sun finally made its long, slow way down the western sky and slid behind the mountains. As shadows gathered, the men started toward the top of the ridge, taking their horses along with them this time. When they left, they might have trouble on their back trail, so there wouldn’t be any time to waste.

  James had his long-barreled Remington revolver back, along with his Winchester. Although an air of tension still existed between him and Whitfield, Conrad believed that the two of them had called a truce. He hoped it would last once they got back to Val Verde—assuming, of course, that they made it back to the settlement safely.

  He stole ahead of the others, since he’d have to get in position first. He had a rolled-up blanket tucked under his left arm. When he got on top of the cabin, he would use it to block the chimney and cause the smoke to back up into the structure.

  As he approached the spot where they had left Trace earlier in the afternoon, he called the gunman’s name softly. It was never a good idea to risk spooking a man who made his living with a gun.

  Trace didn’t respond. Conrad called his name again. Still nothing. Conrad stiffened with alarm for a second, then drew his gun and went on to the top of the ridge.

  Trace was nowhere in sight.<
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  Conrad bit back a curse. He had no idea where Trace could have gone. There hadn’t been any shots, so it was unlikely that the kidnappers had stumbled on him. Of course, it was possible they might have taken him prisoner without having to resort to gunplay, Conrad supposed.

  Regardless of what had happened, he didn’t have time to search for Trace right then. He had to get down there and put the plan he’d worked out with Whitfield into action.

  Carrying the blanket, he slipped over the crest and started down the slope, half-crawling and half-sliding. He used the brush for cover. If anyone was watching from inside the cabin, they might be able to catch a glimpse of him, but in the fading light, a watcher might not be able to distinguish him from an animal.

  When he reached the bottom of the ridge, he stayed in the brush and began working his way around the circular depression. Briars and thorns clawed at him, but he ignored the discomfort and kept his attention on the cabin. He wondered if anyone was even in there, smoke had been rising from the chimney all day, so someone had to be inside feeding the fire.

  When he was behind the cabin, he crawled out of the brush, came up in a crouch, and darted behind the nearest tree. Moving from tree to tree, he approached the building. The shadows were thicker since the sun was setting.

  Conrad paused behind a tree about five feet from the rear wall of the cabin. One of its branches stuck out far enough that he could climb onto it and drop down onto the roof. As a boy, he had never been one for climbing trees—one just didn’t do such things in Boston—but he thought that he could manage.

  Climbing the tree proved to be harder than he expected, but he managed to reach the limb he wanted. Carefully, with his legs wrapped around the branch, he pulled himself along it until he could slide off. When he hung by his hands, his boots touched the rough wooden shingles on the roof. He let go. It seemed likely to him that whoever was inside didn’t even know he was up there. The plan was working perfectly so far.

  As quietly as possible, he moved over to the chimney and draped the blanket over the flue. He held it in place and waited to see what would happen.