Without help he could not escape from the dead horse, and Utah Blaine could kill him any time he wished.
"You had Timm killed," Blaine said conversationally. "You had Coker shot up, an' you've hired murderers to get me. You were one of the lynchers who tried to hang Joe Neal an' by all rights I should shoot you full of holes."
Nevers did not speak. He lay still. Now he was aware that
^
Blaine did not intend to kill him. Frightened as he had been ai first, he was remembering that not far behind him were Rinl Witter and his killers. They would hear the shooting and woulc know what to do.
Blaine fired again, and then he faded back into the brush anc ran to his stallion. Keeping the lineback to soft sand where he made no noise, he circled swiftly and raced the horse for the river. Crossing it, he headed for the trail to head off Witter. He was coming down the mountain through the trees when suddenl) he heard a yell. Not two hundred yards away, fanning across the hillside were a dozen riders! It needed only a glance to tell hiir that these were Fox and his men.
Snapping a quick shot, Utah wheeled the stallion and plungec down the trail. He was just in time to intercept Witter--but this wasn't the way he had planned it. The surprise was complete. He charged down the mountain and hit the little cavalcade at full speed. They had no chance to turn or avoid him; his stallion was heavier and had the advantage of speed. With his bridle reins around his arm, Blaine grabbed a six-shooter and blasted.
A man screamed and threw up his arms and then Blaine hii him. Horses snorted and there was a wild scramble that was swamped with dust. Through the group the lineback plunged, and Blaine had a glimpse of Rink Witters contorted face as the gunman clawed for a pistol. Blaine swung at the face with the barrel of his six-gun, but the blow was wide and the back of his fist smashed into the seamed, leathery face. Witter was knocked sprawling, and then the lineback was past and heading for the river.
A shot rang out, snapping past him, and then something hit him heavily in the side. His breath caught and he swung the lineback upstream. Then slowing down deliberately and turning up a draw, he doubled back. Every breath was a stab of pain now, but the horse was running smoothly, running as if it was its first day on the trail, and Utah turned for a glance back. Nobody was in sight. He cut up the hill and crossed the saddle into the bed of the dry wash and rode northwest toward the 46 ranch house. It was more than ten miles away, but he headed for it, weaving back and forth across the hills, using every trick he knew to cover his trail.
Twice he had to stop. Once to bandage his wound, another time for a drink. The bullet had hit him hard and he had lost
blood. His saddle was wet with it and so was the side of the stallion. Turning west, he skirted the very foot of the mesa and worked toward the ranch house.
As he rode, he thought. They would know he was wounded. He mopped sweat from his face, and saw there was blood on his hand. He rubbed it against his chaps. They would know he was hurt. Now they would be like wolves after a wounded deer. He had planned to come down behind Witter, to disarm the others, then shoot it out with him. But the arrival of Lee Fox had wrecked his plans and now he was in a fix.
He walked the stallion, saving its strength. He checked all his guns, reloading his pistol and rifle. His throat was dry, and before him the horizon wavered and danced. It was hot, awfully hot. It couldn't be far to the ranch.
They were after him now, all of them. Rink Witter would now have a personal hatred. He had been struck down, and Nevers had been frightened to death. All of them . . . closing in for the kill. He tried to swallow and his throat was dry. The sun felt unbearably hot and his clothes smelled of stale sweat, and mingled with it was the sickish sweet smell of blood.
He looked down and saw the ranch close by and below him. It looked deserted. Was that a trail of dust he saw? Or were his eyes going bad on him? The heat waves danced and wavered. He turned the lineback down the trail through the woods, and he slumped in the saddle.
A last stand? No, he needed food for the run he had ahead of him. He had meant to get some from Angie, but his hunters had come too quick.
Angie . . . how dark her eyes had been! How soft and warm her lips! He had never kissed lips like them before. He remembered his arm about her waist and then he raised his head and saw that the stallion was walking into the ranch yard. He slid from the saddle. How long did he have? Ten minutes ... a half hour ... an hour?
They would not expect him to come here. They would never expect that. Suddenly the door on the porch pushed open and a man came down the steps. Utah Blaine stopped and squinted his eyes against the sun and the sweat. He saw Lud Fuller.
"Dumb, am I?" That was Lud's voice, all right. "I figured it right! I slipped away! Knowed you'd come here! Knowed you was
bad hurt! Well, how does it feel now? Me, Lud Fuller! I'm goin' to kill Utah Blaine!"
Utah wavered and stared through the fog that hung over his eyes. This man--Lud Fuller--he had to kill him. He had to. He gathered his forces while the foreman blustered and triumphed. He stood there, swaying and watching. Fuller had a gun in his hand. Stupid the man might be, but he was not chancing a draw.
Utah Blaine got his feet planted. He smelled again the smell of his stale, sweaty shirt and his unwashed body. He peered from under his flat-brimmed hat and then he said, "You're a fool, Lud! You should have gone when I sent you!'
The strength in his voice startled Fuller. The foreman stared, his eyes seemed to widen, and he pushed the gun out in front of him and his finger tightened.
He never saw Blaine draw. Blaine never knew when his hand went for the gun. There had been too many other times, too many years of practice. Wounded he might be, weary he might be, but that was there, yet, the practice and the past. And the need all deepened into a groove of habit in the convolutions of his brain. It was there, beyond the pain, the sweat and the weakness. The sure, smooth flashing draw and then the buck of the gun. Fuller's one shot stabbed earth, and Utah Blaine shot twice. Both shots split the tobacco-sack tag that hung from Fuller's shirt pocket. The first shot notched it on the left, and the second shot notched it on the bottom. Swaying on his feet, Utah Blaine removed the empties and thumbed shells into his gun.
He did not look down at Fuller. In the back of his mind he remembered those brutal words when Fuller had tried to make Joe Neal die slow. Back there at the lynching--well, Fuller had certainly died fast.
Utah Blaine went into the house, and he found a burlap sack in the pantry. He stuffed it with food, anything that came to hand. Then he walked out and looked in the cabinet and found some shells. He took those and put them in the sack, too. He walked out, avoiding Fuller's body and went to the corral.
A big black came toward him, whimpering gently. He put his hand out to the horse's nose, and it nudged at him. He got a bridle on the stallion and led it out. Then he switched saddles and turned the dun into the corral, but before he let the horse go he took an old piece of blanket and rubbed him off with care.
When he had finished that, and when the sack was tied behind
the saddle, he bathed his wound. Still watching the trail, he took off the temporary and bloody bandage and replaced it with a new one. He was working on nerve, for he was badly hurt. Yet men had been shot up much worse and had kept moving, had survived. Nobody knew how much lead a man could carry if he had the will
to live.
Somehow he kept moving, and then with the saddle on the black, he crawled aboard and started north. The river swung slightly west, he recalled. He could cross it there and get over into broken country to the northeast. As he rode he tied himself to his saddle, aware that he might not be able to stick it.
Not over three miles from the house he struck the river and crossed. There were two peaks on his left and one right of him. The rest of them were ahead. There seemed to be a saddle in front of him and he started the black toward that. Then he blacked out for several miles. When he opened his eyes again, he was sl
umped over the saddle horn and the horse was walking
steadily.
"All right, boy," he said to the horse. "You're fine, old fellow." Reassured, the horse twitched an ear at him. The sun had set, but there was still some light. Before them the dark hollows of the hills were filled with blackness, and a somber gray lay over the land. The higher peaks were touched with reflected scarlet and gold from the sunset that still found color in the higher
clouds.
All was very still. The air felt cool to his lungs and face. He held his face up to the wind and washed it as with water. His head felt heavy and his side was a gnawing agony, but before him the land was softening with velvety darkness, turning all the buffs, rusts and crimsons of the daylight desert and mountains to the quietness of night and darkness. Stars came out, stars so great in size and so near they seemed like lamps hanging only a few yards away. Off to his right lifted a massive rampart, a huge black cliff that he remembered as being in some vague account of the place told him by Neal when they traveled together. That was
Deadman Mesa.
Dead man ... he himself might soon be a dead man . . . and he had left a dead man behind him.
Dead man ... all of them, Rink Witter, Nevers, Lee Fox and himself, all were dead men. Men who lived by violence, who lived by the gun.
Swaying in the saddle like a drunken man, he thought of that, and the names beat somberly through the dark trails of his consciousness. Rink an' Nevers an' Fox ... Rink . . . Nevers Fox ... all men who would die, all men who would die soon . Rink, Nevers an' Fox.
The last light faded, the last scarlet swept from the sky. The dark shadows that had lurked in the lee of the great cliffs or the deepest canyons, they came out and filled the sky and gathered close around him with cooling breath and cooling arms. And the black walked on, surely, steadily, into the darkness of the night.
Chapter Fifteen.
Ben Otten hunched gray-faced in his office chair. The bank had closed hours before, but still he sat there, the muscles in his jaw twitching, his stomach hollow and empty. He had the news, what little there was. The lawyer, Padjen, was still in town. He had been retained by Neal, paid in advance, to stand by Utah Blaine.
The twenty handbills posted by Ralston Forbes had been torn from the walls by the order of Nevers, but that did not end the matter and all knew the news. Forbes was barricaded with his printer in the print shop and both men had food, ammunition and shotguns. This time they did not intend to be ejected or to have the press broken.
Mary Blake was back in town with the story of the fight at the Crossing. Rink Witter was around town with his face bandaged because of his broken nose. The smash of Blaine's fist had done that, and Blaine was still alive to be hunted down. But the hunters were not having much luck. They had trailed Blaine, finally, to the 46 Connected, but once there all they found was the body of Lud Fuller, dead hours before.
Clell Miller . . . Lud Fuller . . . Tom Kelsey . . . Timm . . . how many others? And no end in sight, no end at all.
Nevers and Fox had come to the bank that morning. They had
served Ben Otten with an ultimatum. They were all in it, there was no need for him to say he hadn't been. From the first he had known the score, and from the first he had lent tacit support to their plans. He had taken no active part, but the time had come. Either he came in or he was to be considered an enemy.
The prize was rich. More than three hundred thousand acres of rich range--some of it barren desert range--but the remainder well-watered and covered with grass. And the cattle. On the two ranches there must be fifty thousand head, and it was past time for a shipment. Why, there must be four or five thousand head ready for shipping right now! And a big fall shipment, too! No other range this side of the Tonto Basin would support as many cattle as this, and well Otten knew it.
If the combination won their fight, if they took over the two big outfits, they would all be wealthy men. Already two of the men who could have justly claimed shares had been eliminated. Now, if he came in, and they needed him badly, there would be but three. He could figure on a hundred thousand acres of range-- more than four times what he already grazed!
All that stood between them and that wealth was one man. If Utah Blaine were killed the opposition would fall apart at the seams. For after all, Blaine had no heirs; the lawyer's part would be fulfilled, and he might take a substantial payment to leave. Mary Blake could be promised and promised and gradually squeezed out of the country with nothing or a small cash payment, which by that time she would probably need desperately.
He knew about that, for Mary Blake had no more than three hundred dollars in cash remaining in the bank.
Forbes . . . well, Ralston Forbes could be taken care of. With Blaine out of the way it would be nothing for Witter to do. And then the big melon was ready to be cut--the big, juicy melon.
Ben Otten rubbed his jaw nervously. It was a big decision. Once actively in, he could not withdraw, and he was secretly afraid of Lee Fox. Still, the man was wild, erratic. He might get himself killed, and Nevers might, too.
Ben Otten sat up very straight. Nevers and Fox dead! That would mean . . . His lips parted and his tongue touched them, trembling. That would mean that he might have it all, the whole thing!
How to be sure they died? Of course, with Blaine in the field, anything might happen. He had his grudge against them, and he
would be seeking them out soon. Blaine had killed Fuller, even though it was known that he was badly wounded. And if Utah Blaine did not? Otten remembered the cold, deadly eyes of Rink Witter ... for cash ... a substantial sum . . . such men were without loyalty.
He got to his feet slowly and began to pace the floor, thinking it all out. There remained Rip Coker, but the man could not live. In a pinch he would see that he did not. Yes, it was time for him to get into the game, to start moving . . . but carefully, Ben, he told himself, very, very carefully!
As he turned toward the door he had one moment of realization. It was a flashing glimpse, no more, but something about what he felt then was to remain with him, never to leave him again. He saw in one cold, bitter moment the eyes of Utah Blaine. He saw the courage of the man and the hard, driving, indomitable will of him. And he remembered Rip Coker, his back to the wall that propped him up, shooting, shooting and killing until he dropped. And Rip Coker was still clinging to a thin thread of life.
What was there in such men that made them live? What deep well of stamina and nerve supplied them? Coker had been deadly, very deadly, but at his worst he was but a pale shadow of the man known as Utah Blaine. In that brief instant with his hand on the door knob, Ben Otten saw those green, hard eyes and felt a twinge of fear. A little shiver passed through all his muscles and he felt like a man stepping over his own grave.
But the moment passed and he went on outside into the dark street. The lights from the saloon made rectangles on the street. He saw the darkness of the print shop down the street where Ralston Forbes waited with his printing press. Forbes was not through . . . what would he run off next? The stark courage of those handbills blasting Nevers and Fox was something he could admire. Forbes had nerve.
He shook his head wearily and pushed open the door to the saloon. A man turned from the bar to look at him. It was Hinkelmann, who owned the general store. As Otten moved up beside him, Hink asked, "Ben, what do you make of all this? How's it goin' to turn out? I can't figure who's right an' who's wrong."
"Well,'' Ben Otten agreed, "I've thought about it myself." He ordered his drink. "I've known Nevers a long time. Always treated me all right."
"Yes," Hink agreed reluctantly, "that's right."
"He pays his bills, an' I guess it rankled to see an outsider, a man with Blaine's reputation, come in here and grab off the richest ranch in the place. Although," he added, "Blaine may be in the right ... if he and this lawyer aren't in cahoots. After all, Rink killed Neal, but who put him up to it?"
"He's workin' for Nevers, " Hinkelmann suggested une
asily.
"Uh-huh, but you never know about a man like that. Offer them the cash an' ... sometimes I've wondered just how hard they were tryin' to find Blaine. Doesn't seem reasonable one man could stay on the loose so long."
They talked some more, and, after awhile, Otten left. On the steps he paused. Well, he had started it. There was still time to draw back . . . but deep within him he knew there was no time. Not any more. He was fresh out of time.
Lonely in her cabin on the river, Angie turned restlessly, wide-eyed and sleepless in her bed. Somewhere out there in the night her man was riding . . . wounded . . . bleeding . . . alone.
Her man?
Yes. Staring up into the darkness she acknowledged that to herself. He was her man, come what may, if he died out there alone; if he was killed in some hot, dusty street; if he rode off and found some other woman--he was still her man. In her heart he was her man. There was no other and there could be no other, and she had felt it deep within her from that moment under the sycamores when first they talked together.
She turned again and the sheets whispered to her body and she could not sleep. Outside the leaves rustled and she got up, lighting her light and slipping her feet into slippers. In her robe she went to the stove and rekindled the fire and made coffee. Where was he? Where out there in the blackness was the man she loved?
Stories traveled swiftly in the range country and she knew all that anyone knew. She knew of the killing of Lud Fuller, of the bitter, brief struggle that preceded it and how Blaine had ridden, shooting and slashing like a madman, through the very middle of Rink Witter's killers. She had heard of Rink's smashed nose, heard of the man screaming his rage and hatred, and of how slowly Blaine would die when he got him.
She had also heard that Utah Blaine was wounded. They had followed him part of the way by the drops of blood. He had been shot, but he had escaped. Had she known where he was, she would have gone to him. Had she had any idea . . . but it was best to remain here. He knew she was here, and here she would stay, waiting for him to come to her. And so he might come.
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