by Nelson Nye
“Well?” He stared at Ben bleakly. “You heard the questions.”
Reifel managed to nod though he wished that he hadn’t. When the vibrant dance of those roundabout faces jerkily subsided into complete immobility he searched his mind for something to say — just anything at all which might tend to stave off for a few breaths longer the ugliness he saw taking shape behind the dark glitter of hostile eyes.
But that was his trouble. He’d talked too much already. These men hadn’t come along with Lafe for the ride. They had come to implement the Law’s retribution and were anxious to be done with it and rejoin their families.
They were anxious, he thought, to get at the fall planting; to round up their beef and trail their yearlings to market. They had come with Lafe because they’d put him in office, not because they shared or gave a damn about his problems. They had come because they felt they owed him that much allegiance. They had come to catch a bunch of marshal-killing crooks and saw in this lone stranger a fitting subject for example.
One of them took something off his saddle and the warning of that movement roared all through Ben’s arteries.
A voice cried harshly, “What the hell are we waitin’ on?” and a growl ran through those stiff black shapes like the snarl of a wolf pack scenting blood.
“Lafe,” Chet said, “get that polecat’s gun. We passed a tree back yonder that’s — ”
“Let’s keep our heads, boys …” The sheriff’s voice buckled and he stared uncertainly at Chet across a shoulder. He licked at dry lips. “Two wrongs won’t make a right. This gent’s got a right to explain — ”
“Why ain’t he doin’ it then?”
“If he ain’t mixed up with that stage-robbin’ crew — ”
The sheriff said nervously to Ben, “You better talk, boy. You better talk quick if you got anythin’ to say.”
And that was God’s truth.
But he had told them one story and to attempt to change it now would only be to dig himself in that much deeper. Nor would the actual facts of the matter help him — even an edited part of them. Anything he said now would have to be geared to fit what he’d already told them.
When he had led this bunch to believe he’d met Bo Breen on the trail he had committed himself and would have to stay with it. When he had shaped that story he had not intended to let them know he had been wounded, so the changed shirt hadn’t entered into his figuring. He’d been too intent then on directing their interest to a bastard who had earned the entire sum of their attentions.
It was big Chet’s talk which had sidetracked him into imagining that wound could get him out of this. He’d misread for a fool the sharpest thinker in this outfit.
Chet’s bull voice jumped out of the silence. “Whereabouts were you at when you caught that slug?”
“Silver Creek Canyon. A little west of Paradise — ”
“I thought you claimed the guy was goin’ to Paradise!”
“He was when he left me. But he was coming from there when I — ”
“You told us you were comin’ from Paradise!”
“You want to tell this story?” Reifel said in the tone of a man hard tried.
The sheriff said to Chet, “You can’t be judge an’ jury, too — ”
Another voice cut in. “Got that rope handy, Curly?”
Lafe whirled his mare. “Next one of you boys makes a crack like that can hand in his badge an’ get the hell outa here!” He glowered a moment. He nodded curtly at Ben. “Go ahead.”
Ben tried to marshal his thoughts. “I ran into him just a little west of town, perhaps a quarter of a mile beyond the Squabble O Cafe. He was coming fast and had a gun in his fist — ”
“He had a .45-90 last time you told it.”
Ben said patiently, “That’s a gun, isn’t it?”
“Never heard it called — ”
“You’re hearin’ it now.” Ben clutched the horn harder. “I thought this bird was going to ride me down. Like I said, he was looking back over his shoulder. I yelled at him. He came around like a twister and whipped up his rifle. That first slug missed. I flung a couple back, not so much out of anger as to wake the fool up. That was when I seen the color of his eyes.”
Ben’s glance roved their faces. He said finally, desperately, “His next shot connected but he was already whirling when I piled from the saddle.”
There was no belief in the look Chet gave him. That sardonic stare was cold as a well chain. “An’ then?”
“I got on my horse again — ”
“Just climbed right up on him?”
“It took me a little while,” Ben said.
“But you finally got on him. Then what’d you do?”
Ben closed his eyes to try and clear his focus. “I stopped at a friend’s — ”
“What’s the name of this friend?”
“That won’t make any difference. He wasn’t home. I patched myself up and got into this shirt — ”
“Why’d you change your pants?”
Chet’s words hit Ben like the flat of a hammer. For one stunned moment he tried to consider what thoughts had prompted them. But their implications, like the man’s jeering face, danced out of his reach; and a gathering blackness rushed across his vision. He knew that he was falling but he couldn’t stop himself.
7. RELENTLESS ENEMY
IT WAS heat that fetched Reifel out of the blackness.
He couldn’t seem to get hold of his breath and there was weight against his lungs and a searing pain that he could not get away from.
He imagined some fool had built a fire on his chest. He tried to brush it off. He tried to wriggle out from under it and finally, in desperation, he attempted to roll over, hoping to smother it with his body.
But his body wouldn’t function. His telegraphed demand flew along his nerves with the familiar urgence but nothing came of it. He was like a man in the grip of a nightmare, and then it came to him with the jarring impact of utter conviction that he was paralyzed. It was fright of this notion which clawed his faculties awake.
His jerked-open eyes found night still around him. What he’d imagined to be the roaring of flames was nothing more ominous than wind in the willows. The suffocating sense of heat on his chest was the result of a blanket tossed carelessly across him; but he could not put down the growing feel of urgence, the dire sense of peril which was hemming him in. He lay flat on his back in the full glare of moonlight, exposed as a fish in a bowl of water.
God, but he was thirsty! His throat felt parched as a burned-dry pan. Every pore of his tissues cried out for moisture.
He could not think where he was for a moment or how he could ever have been so brash as to ignore the rudimentary precautions of his trade. Then it all came back in a breath-taking rush — the fight with Turner at the plundered cache, Breen’s attempt to kill him and the subsequent flight which had been stopped at the ford when he’d run into Lafe’s posse.
He remembered then with the numbness of despair the jeering look on Chefs face and the cat-and-mouse way that big man’s questions had been cutting the ground out from under him. He remembered his own mounting sense of frustration as, with each frantic jump, he’d been bogged more deeply in the lies Chet encouraged to put a rope around his neck.
He strained his ears to catch some sound behind the moan of the wind in the willows and the nearby murmur of running water. Where was Chet now? Where were the rest of them? What had happened at this crossing after the weakness of exhaustion had sent him tumbling from the saddle? After Chet’s adroit questions they would hardly have been minded to let the sheriff turn him loose.
He was tied, of course. That was it! Not caring to be bothered with a badly wounded prisoner, and naturally anxious to come up with the rest of the bunch involved in Schmole’s killing, they had tied him up like a turkey for the roasting, thrown a saddle blanket over him and gone on to Paradise. If he could loosen his bonds, if he could get free now….
He listened into the night
with a fiercer attention but caught no sound beyond the wind and the water. He stared into the shadows thickly blanketing the willow brake and found no indication that he had not been left alone. Consumed with impatience, with the need to be gone from here, he lay motionless, waiting, wanting to be sure before he made the faintest move.
When he could stand it no longer he tried out his muscles once again to test the ropes. A cold shiver ran through him. He could hardly believe the evidence of his senses when, beneath that covering blanket, he felt his hands move freely. Scarcely daring to breathe he tried his feet and they moved, too. Why, the fools hadn’t tied him!
He threw off the blanket and came onto an elbow and still nothing happened except that his head started to pound and his chest felt as though a knife embedded there had been suddenly, viciously twisted.
But he did not fall back, he couldn’t afford to give way to weakness. He had to get out of this goddam country before Lafe’s star-packers came back to fetch him. But he would have to go easy, kind of feel his way along. He dared not risk passing out again now.
When his head quit whirling he eased himself over, got his hands and knees under him and gradually, with a great deal of care and considerable grunting, he got himself erect.
He stood there, swaying, his body drenched in cold sweat.
But he felt better now. The sounds from the creek made a very enticing melody and he straightened himself around and took a few steps toward it, his dehydrated body suddenly fire-hot again.
The dark swaying masses of wind bent foliage and the alternate lacings of light and shadow tended to confuse his pounding head and did nothing whatever to make the going less difficult; and the way the goddam ground kept heaving he reckoned he was reeling like a pulque-drunk squaw. But presently he seemed to get his sea legs under him and managed to achieve a kind of whoppyjawed rhythm which permitted him to get a foot down each time the billowing ground surged up.
But he hadn’t gone farther than a handful of paces when the awful craving for water that had hold of him threatened to propel him into a headlong run. He took himself in hand just in time. He had watched men lost on the desert go through this and had no hankering to start scooping up sand under the crazed illusion that he was lapping up water.
He knew he wasn’t yet that bad off but he could see what might happen once he’d thrown himself down to get his face in the water. In his present condition he might never have the strength or the courage to get up.
And time right now was paramount. He must get just as far from this place as he could before Sheriff Lafe and his boys got back. He never doubted for an instant they would come back. They’d be back all right, and if they got to talk with Breen they’d be coming like the devil emigrating on cart wheels. Breen would see to that.
He peered around through the shadows to see if they’d left his horse. He didn’t think even a dimwit like Lafe would be dumb enough to leave a horse here for him, but he had to look anyway. He sure wouldn’t get far without one. It might have been that knowledge which had decided them to leave him here.
Cripes, but he was weak! Every time he stood still his goddam knees got to knocking and the song from that creek just about set him crazy. He thought he might stand it if he could just have one swallow. But, scared to trust himself, he bent his steps toward the willows which was where the horse would be if they had left one anyplace round here.
He prowled the brush for quite a spell and then, abruptly, saw it. His own horse, too — the one he’d got from Turner. He could see the big roan just as plain as he could hear that goddam water. They’d stuck him over in that box elder thicket hard against the south swing of the creek below the crossing.
For an eternity of heartbeats he just stood there wide-eyed, watching. He had some trouble with his breathing and what was left of his strength was just about drained out of him. He caught hold of a willow and clung to it, shaking.
He knew the roan wasn’t there but he hated to admit it. He hated to acknowledge that he was watching a goddam shadow, another hallucination like the fire he’d imagined on his chest. He, wanted to turn his back on the thing just to prove, by God, he had a little sense left. But he just couldn’t do it. He had used up all his will power keeping away from that damned water.
If the moon would hit that thicket right he knew the horse wouldn’t be there, but he’d never seen a finer sight. The proud carriage of that lifted head, the forward prick of listening ears — he could see that horse as plain as life. He even saw the neck come round but knew the wind had done it.
All right. He’d be a friggin fool. He’d go over there and prove it.
He had one foot half lifted when the horse let out a nicker.
Breen, after Reifel’s departure, remained crouched in the stable’s shadows, his gaunt cheeks twisted with an abysmal fury. Naked as Reifel had left him, the night’s growing coldness passed completely unnoticed in the heat of his virus imaginings.
He was a man who could not abide defeat. He got no pleasure from the coup which had taken Reifel’s crack band of stick-up men away from him. This, an integral part of his program from the rough-out, was not enough. His sense of well being was dependent on pride, the very core and mainspring of the man’s warped ego; thus his vanity was outraged by what Ben had done to him. It was unthinkable that Reifel should get away to spread that story.
The two courses of action which Ben had foreseen would recommend themselves to him were examined by Breen and as swiftly discarded. He could wait right here to put the law on Ben’s trail; but the law might not come or it might not catch Ben and, even if it did and swung Ben for him, it might still come back to bite the hand which fed it. It were safer not to have any truck with the law; and the same thing applied to sending the gang after Ben, for that course too might whirl around to unseat him.
Crouched beyond the bar of light spilled into the stable from the open office door, Breen heard Turner pull himself to his feet. He was like that, listening, when his roving stare suddenly focused on the banknotes Ben had left in the doorway.
Breen’s eyes narrowed. A grin crept across his tight-lipped mouth and exultation was a joy inside him.
There was a better way to do this. A much better way.
He stepped over the currency and entered the office, his bare feet traveling the boards without sound. In the lamp’s yellow flare Cy Turner’s bull shape was bent over the desk with its broken arm dangling, its good arm hidden to the elbow in a drawer.
Breen said: “Turner, I want some clothes and a gun.”
Turner lunged around, startled, and broke into a spate of vicious invective when his damaged arm painfully collided with the desk.
“I ain’t got all night,” Breen snarled irascibly. “You must have some duds I can wear around here someplace.”
Only then, it seemed, did the liveryman actually take in Breen’s appearance. He gawped like a fish suddenly yanked out of water.
Breen crossed to a closet and jerked open the door. Rummaging inside he tossed out boots, a pair of checked pants and a shield-fronted shirt. He was clapping a cream colored hat on his head when Turner bleated: “You can’t have them! Chrissake, Breen, them’s — ”
Breen came out of the closet with a shell belt and holster. These were handstitched and fancy and the latter was loaded with a pearl-handled pistol. He slid the weapon from leather and hefted its weight. “You’ll get your pay,” he told Turner. “Got any bullets for this thing?”
Turner still held the bottle he had taken from the drawer. The eyes behind his wire-rimmed glasses considered Breen bitterly. “Them’s the…. Watch where you’re pointin’ that — ”
The crash of the shot sent the lamp’s flame scooting to the top of its chimney. With his mouth stretched wide in an unheard yell Turner reeled against the desk, took one staggering step, tried to catch himself and crumpled. The bottle skittered out of his loosening grasp and brought up with a thump against the farthest wall.
Breen worked fast.
<
br /> With his hard glance raking the room in swift stabs he got into the things he had fetched from the closet. Time had swapped sides and was no longer an ally but Breen didn’t let that fact put his wind up. Every move he made had its own thought-out purpose, its full share of weight in this thing he was building to polish off Ben Reifel.
Finished dressing, he caught up the pistol he had just used on Turner, dumped its loads and spent cartridge case into a pocket, ran a rag through its barrel and, returning it to leather, put it back with its belt on its nail in the closet.
Gathering up the rag and broken pieces of Turner’s knife, he felt his way through the feedroom till he came to the broken window. Raising the sash he thrust his leg across the sill and quickly dropped to the ground. The rag and broken knife he tossed into some bushes. The loads and spent cartridge case he’d shaken from the liveryman’s gun he chucked into the shadows of the yard beyond the fence.
He felt around then until he got hold of the gunbelts and pistol Ben had heaved through the window. Buckling these around him he went back inside and found the gun he had dropped when Reifel’s shot creased his elbow. He wasn’t worried about that wound; it was already clotted. The skin hadn’t hardly been broken.
He paused in the stable to gather up the money Reifel had forced him to disgorge. He stopped again in the lamplit doorway of the office to pick up the currency Ben had left for Cy Turner. That goddam liveryman wasn’t going to need it.
He pulled a couple of calendars off the walls of Cy’s office then went over to the desk and pulled all the papers out of its pigeonholes, scattering them as though he had been searching for something. He dumped the stuff from its drawers and pulled the stuffing from a cushion.
He guessed that ought to hold them.
He moved over to Turner. Being careful to keep the man’s gore off his clothing he lifted Turner’s head and had a look at his eyeballs. Satisfied, he dropped Turner’s head back into the blood and broken glasses, caught up a limp hand and pulled the arm out from under him. Squatting then, Breen used that hand dipped in Turner’s blood to daub Reifel’s name on the dusty floor.
