Desert of the Damned

by Nelson Nye

  “Hell with you,” Reifel muttered.

  Frenston moved again, dropping his weight across Reifel’s legs, securely pinning him against the bed. “How you feelin’ now, bucko?” He drove his down-chopping gun barrel against Reifel’s right shoulderblade, then cracked it against his left. Reifel gagged. His shape went limp and Frenston chuckled.

  Laying down his gun he swiftly bound Reifel’s wrists. “I ought to bash your damn head in,” he snarled, getting up then. He slid the gun back into his holster, bent over and reached for Ben’s nearest boot. He got it, too — though not quite the way he’d expected.

  Reifel’s flexing knee brought that spurred bootheel up in a jingling arc. The flashing rowel caught Frenston flush on the jaw and ripped his face open from chin to eyebrows. A strangled scream burst out of him and he went over backwards, flopping around on the floor like a crippled snake.

  Reifel flung himself over and managed to get off the bed. It was sheer torture, his pounded shoulderblades feeling like a mule had trampled him, but he dared not wait lest Frenston’s racket trap him here.

  He slammed an uncaring boot against the side of Frenston’s head and, when the man’s outcries ceased, hurried over to the window above the street and smashed the glass out. Backing up to it then he sawed his lashed wrists against the jagged shards, ignoring the pain, until he had his arms free.

  He scooped his money off the bed, snatched Frenston’s pistol from its leather, whirled across to the door and pulled back the bolt. He was that way, forward leaning, with his hand upon the knob, when a rush of booted feet hit the bottom of the stairs.

  With his eyes like polished ebony Reifel knew one moment of frantic desperation. It was too late to go out the window — men on the street would have heard Frenston’s uproar and would start throwing lead the moment they sighted him. In another few moments that crowd on the stairs would be into the hall and it would be all over. Reaching deep into his reserves for the strength to do it he bent down, got Frenston around the waist, heaved the man’s inert shape to an agonized shoulder and, with a hard wrench of muscles, came erect.

  He pulled open the door, the racket on the stairs sounding ominously close, and staggered into the hall. The shadowy stairwell was black with men. “This what you’re lookin’ for?” Reifel grated, and flung Frenston into them with all his strength.

  He didn’t wait to see what effect this had on them but, swapping ends like a cat, dived into a room across the hall. This room had no window. Its light came from a glassed box in the ceiling and, springing onto a chair, he pushed the trap up and hauled himself after it. He might be swapping the witch for the devil, but it was neck meat or nothing and he pulled himself through, shoving the trap closed behind him.

  The roof was flat but he was concealed from those below by the high false front of its street side. The roof of the bakery, to the left, was a full story below him, but the building to the right was the same height as this one. It was four feet away across the width of the alley and, without pausing to see if there were men looking up, Reifel made the jump, running swiftly to the skylight and throwing open its waterproofed hatch.

  With his head over the opening he saw a storeroom below him filled with the accumulated odds and ends of years. There were planks and storm windows and a pile of smashed flowerpots, six spools of barbed wire and a ten-foot-high stack of dilapidated scenery. Without looking any farther Reifel dropped to the floor. Picking his way with care through the mounds of dusty junk he came to the door, quietly depressing its old-fashioned thumb latch. The mechanism worked, he even heard the hasp lifted on the panel’s farther side, but the door didn’t budge.

  He remained like this a long moment, considering it, understanding it was secured by a padlock which he couldn’t get at. He could of course shoot the door open but he was loath to make any more noise than he had to. He swore in exasperation when he saw that even the bolts to the hinges were on the door’s farther side.

  He stepped off a bit and picked up one of the planks, a four-by-eight about six feet long. He hated the noise this was going to make but saw no help for it if he would get himself out. He found a place on the door where dry rot had set in and brought the end of his plank hard against it sharply. Under the shock of that blow the ancient wood ripped apart from top to bottom, the half on the hinges slamming back with a clatter. Dropping the plank, he went through with gun lifted but there was nothing to shoot.

  He was on a balcony-like overhang, with a guard rail around it, which was not only empty but covered with bat droppings. Rusty iron stairs led steeply down into darkness and these he took slowly, step by cautiously planted step, listening intently for the first hint of danger. It seemed too absurd to hope he had not been heard.

  When he reached the next landing that hope looked a lot less forlorn. A short row of numbered doors confronted him in the light of the match he held cupped in left palm. He took the first door by its knob and pulled it open, wrinkling his nose at the smell of musty clothing. If this same kind of windowless six-by-eight cubbyhole was behind each one of these other doors it seemed fairly certain he was standing before the dressing rooms of the abandoned old opera house.

  Just to make sure, he pulled open another door and in the feeble glow of his nearly burnt match saw clothes and gear strewn all over the place. Match expired, he was about to push the door to when a sudden weird notion put a mighty peculiar feeling in the bottom of his stomach. He was probably crazy as hell but he couldn’t think why any playacting chick would have wanted to wear chaps or tote a forty-pound saddle. He struck a fresh match and the raveling flame showed clothes for a female so dadgummed old they were just about ready to fall off their hangers. But that slick fork center-fire saddle on the floor had been used no later than sometime yesterday; same way with those chaps.

  It came over Ben Reifel like a bucket of cold water how extremely unhealthy it could be to be found here by the owner of that saddle. Breen? It could be. Or one of Breen’s men.

  He backed away from the room into the cavernous shadows of this behind-the-stage runway. Cowtown theaters were generally built to a pattern and it was dollars to doughnuts there would be a side exit someplace handy to these dressing rooms. There was. He saw it just as his match went out.

  With stealthy haste he found its knob and turned it with an infinite care, right hand still filled with Frenston’s gun. This knob had recently known some oil for it turned without protest, the door opening softly. But almost at once Reifel stopped its swing, held rigid by the guarded pitch of near voices.

  Not ten feet away, in the deepening gloom of approaching night, a group of four men had their heads together. Nate Lamtrill was talking, his outraged voice thick with anger. “Of course I can weather it! What beats me is why the hell you didn’t catch him — ”

  “We’ll get him, all right. He’s in one of these buildings. I’ve got twenty men with Winchesters — ”

  Reifel’s skin went cold and began to crawl. His hands started trembling and his mind was in such turmoil he almost missed the banker’s words. “You had better get him, Crawford,” Lamtrill said, “if you know what’s good for you.”

  Crawford! Lamtrill called the man Crawford but the man’s voice was Breen’s — Reifel would have known that saturnine cadence to the ends of the earth. He had to fight back the leaping urge to pull trigger. With an extreme reluctance he dragged his sights off the man, ashamed of his squeamishness and not understanding it. Here — so close he could almost touch him — was the brass-collar dog in Lamtrill’s drive for empire. “Crawford” Lamtrill had called him, and Crawford was the name of Devil Iron’s range boss; and, by Mossman’s figuring, this was also Kid Badger, merciless leader of the region’s roughest wild bunch.

  Reifel, put upon too many times, half lifted Frenston’s gun again. He felt an overpowering tendency to do the thing of which he had been accused and become the killer the reward bills called him. The skin pulled tight across his cheeks, the bones of his face stood out like
castings as he lined his sights on this man who had framed him — who even now was coolly assuring Nate Lamtrill that Curly Ben hadn’t a snowball’s chance in hell of getting clear.

  To hit back with an insensate revenge, to drop this double-dealing twister in his tracks and go out in a blaze of gunfire, exerted a tremendous appeal to Ben’s enraged senses. He could rationalize this brutal instinct and almost make himself believe that murdering Breen and this range-hungry banker was the thing to do — almost, but not quite. For a part of his mind was remembering Mossman, was hearing Burt Mossman’s voice say with conviction: “Two wrongs never make a right. They never have and they never will. Life can be damn cruel, mister, and nobody knows this better than me; but right-minded men will back the law, knowing if they don’t we might as well all be beasts howling through a desert of the damned”

  Ben Reifel lowered the muzzle of his gun. He had been a long while in that kind of desert and was matured enough now to know that Mossman was right. Lamtrill was a wolf and Bo Breen was his jackal but if enough people stood foursquare behind the law…. Reifel couldn’t quite believe the world’s ills were that simple but he was willing to admit he wasn’t smart enough to judge.

  He drew back, pulling the door shut; and the door’s hinges wailed like a banshee. There was one singing instant of breathless silence and then Breen’s challenge struck the night with a roar.

  Reifel whirled, bitterly swearing, and tore across the ink-black murk of the dusty stage, missing the steps leading off its north side and crashing headlong into the building’s outside wall. He lay there stunned for a moment, his throbbing heart fluttering wildly. He got a shaking knee under him and clawed himself upright; and not till then did he realize he had lost Frenston’s gun. Sick and desperate he crouched there waiting for discovery.

  But no hand touched that squealing door which had betrayed his presence. Breen and Nate Lamtrill were too smart for that. They weren’t inviting hot lead; their business was throwing it and in a matter of moments they would have this place sewed up, covered from every angle by the bleach-eyed crew who took their orders without question. If Ben was going to get out he had to get out quick.

  His groping hands found the door.

  He flung it wide, went diving through, seeing the waiting shapes too late. A down-slogging gun barrel stretched him prone three feet from the door.

  20. DEAD END

  THERE WAS a man standing over him when Reifel opened his eyes. It was the big fellow, Chet, who had been so hellbent to see him swung in the Cherrycows. He still looked that way but the sour quirk of his lips showed who was running things. “If you’ll step outa there now,” Lafe said, “I’ll git this door shut.”

  Chet strode out very much on his dignity. Scowling blacker and blacker he finally growled: “Ain’t you figgerin’ to question this joker a-tall?”

  “Why, sure,” the Cochise sheriff replied. “Expect I will when I git around to it. If you’re comin’ back this way, an’ it ain’t too much trouble, I’d be considerable obliged if you could fetch this guy’s supper.”

  “I don’t figger,” Chet scowled, “he will be here that long,” and struck off through the office like a cat with wet feet.

  Old Lafe, frowning, stood silent till they heard the front screen slap. “That bank’s closed its doors an’ the news of what’s happened may very well break Lamtrill’s other one. Them boys won’t settle for anything less than your hide.”

  Reifel’s head, on the arms folded over his knees, showed the oldster nothing but a mane of black hair somewhat clotted with blood where Chet’s pistol had rapped it. He growled, “What does it matter?” without bothering to look up.

  “Boy,” Lafe said irritably, “if you want to strum harps just keep on the way you’re goin'. There’s a lot of riled people in this burg tonight. After you passed out the Big Wheel around here come pirootin up an’ demanded you be searched. Seems like you had some kinda paper they was wantin’ but all we could find was that bill o’ sale for Cog Wheel.”

  He said then, plainly angry, “I been to a passle of trouble on your account, what with diggin’ up stiffs an’ trackin’ sign plumb to hell an’ gone. When I turned you loose in the Cherrycows I figured you was the sort of guy which would go straight given the right kinda chance. You had the savvy an’ experience Burt Mossman needed — which was why I talked you up to him. But if you ain’t got no more guts than you’re showin’ right now I might as well have run you in when I had you dead to rights with that damn paper in your pocket!”

  Reifel’s head came up, narrowed eyes sharp with interest. “So you engineered that.”

  “An’ you was playin’ possum.”

  “Old man,” Reifel said, “you’ve got your tail in a crack. If you know I didn’t kill Turner what’s the idea dumpin’ me into this jail?”

  “If I hadn’t,” Lafe answered, “you’d been dead by now. That bunch was all set to chop you up proper — ”

  “This is Seeb Dawson’s county. You’ve got no jurisdiction — ”

  “That hadn’t occurred to Nate Lamtrill when him an’ his foreman took off for the ranch. All upset like he was over that run on his bank I expect mebbe he supposed I was holdin’ you for Dawson who wasn’t around when we grabbed you. Mebbe he wanted it that way; mebbe he’d sent Dawson off himself. Some friends of his right now is talkin’ up a lynch mob down at the Sparrowhawk. Which is prob’ly where that Chet’s taken off to — ”

  “Get me a gun and a fresh horse — ”

  “It ain’t quite that easy. A bunch of Crawford’s tough hands with rifles is keepin’ close tabs on this crackerbox to make sure you stay put till that crowd at the Sparrowhawk gits into action. I thought I might git Joe Clinton to set fire to the Opera House — ”

  A commotion out front thrust its racket through his words and he reached through the bars, handing Reifel a sixshooter he took out of his hip pocket. Then he moved toward the office but had not gone two steps before a grizzled old buck with a baked-brown skin showed up in the doorway with a look on his face that would have curled up an oak post.

  “Black!” Reifel called, and the two old men locked eyes and stood glaring, each with a hand halfway dropped to his belt gun. “It’s all right,” Reifel told them, “we’re all in this together. Black’s ramroddin’ Cog — ”

  “Ben,” Black said harshly, “them bastards have got Gert!”

  Reifel’s boots hit the floor. His cheeks were like parchment, his eyes two black slits. An unreasoning fury had hold of him and Black said bitterly, “It’s that guy you left out there — the one the Old Man hired.”

  Reifel said tightly, “Start at the beginning.”

  “I got through with that wire about one o’clock an’ headed for Boxed Y. I found Kavanaugh sprawled at the bottom of the steps with a hole through his skull big enough to house a gopher — got it from behind an’ damn close by the look. Tracks show the girl put up a hell of a scrap before this skunk got the best of her. I seen where he loaded her onto a horse an’ follered sign far enough to make sure they was headed for Devil — ”

  “Good!” Lafe cried, showing a jubilant excitement. “If we can pin this to Lamtrill — if we can show her on his ranch bein’ held against her will — ”

  “You talk,” Black snarled, “like she’s a pawn in some chess game!”

  Reifel’s eyes were like fires in a face dark as thunder. “Quit the goddam jawin’ and let me out — ”

  “You’ll git out,” Lafe remarked, “when there is some point to it. I don’t want Seeb Dawson comin’ in to find you loose. An’ I don’t want him seein’ that gun.” He slanched a frowning glance at the cell’s high window. “I ought to git word to Mossman — ”

  Black spun him round. “I been in the dark long enough! What the hell’s goin’ on here? How come Ben’s locked in this boobyhatch an’ how do you git the right to be passin’ out the orders?”

  Lafe told him, flashing his badge to back it up. “Any minute that bunch — ”

/>   “Hell, the skies may fall but we don’t hev to set here an’ wait fer it! I’ll pull them gundogs’ eyes away — ”

  “No,” Lafe decided, “we’ll let Clinton handle that. I’ve cached a couple horses out back of Ed Jones’ gunshop. Pass Clinton the word to build a blaze in that theater and, while he’s about it, you latch onto a fresh bronc an’ wait for us where I’ve left them horses. Try to keep outa sight an’ act mad enough, goin’ out of here, to tear the dadblame roof off. That way, mebbe, they won’t think to put a tail on you.”

  Black, swearing noisily, headed for the street.

  Lafe, staring after him, detached a key from a ring and, with a kind of dour grimace, passed it through the bars to Reifel. “This’ll open your cell in case that bunch at the Sparrowhawk happen to git up here before we cut our stick. I’ll be snuffin’ these lamps soon’s the chance looks ripe.”

  • • •

  Reifel knew when the fire commenced attracting attention.

  Because the old theater building was about two hundred yards away he caught the lifted panicky shouts which heralded its discovery almost four whole minutes before the soaring flames began to throw writhing patterns across the bars of his cell.

  Running feet pelted by outside his grilled window, but this was too high up in the wall for him to see anything from it save a handful of stars. Since it had no glass he could hear the excitement on the street pretty plainly.

  With the speed of an avalanche its contagion was spreading. Not all those voices were raised in consternation, not all were alarmed lest the fire get out of hand; more than a few vicious threats were hurled at Ben’s window, and abruptly he was seeing the refracted light of the holocaust. The sound of the devouring flames became an all-pervading roar, carrying through and above the bedlam cries of those who were afraid for their personal possessions, for a threatened livelihood or — in some few cases — for the future of the town.

  Lafe appeared to have hit on the one sure thing which could take these people’s minds off his prisoner. Was he brooding in Dawson’s office over the cost of what he’d done? Could a sheriff get away with deliberate arson, trading destruction for one man’s life? And what of Gert Kavanaugh, lashed to a horse and rushed away through night’s darkness, a lone white chip in a no-limit game? — a hostage that Lamtrill, turned uncaringly desperate, might salvage the shape of his stolen cow empire.