Savage Country

by William W. Johnstone

  “You will learn to trust him, Señor. He will not disappoint you.”

  Frank mounted up as well and took the reins of the packhorse from Gomez. “I reckon we’re ready to ride.” He had already settled accounts with the stable keeper. “So long, amigo.”

  “Vaya con Dios, Señor Morgan. Be sure to bring Señor Stormy and Señor Dog back here when you return to El Paso.”

  Frank wasn’t sure he would be returning to El Paso once he had dealt with the troubles plaguing Conrad’s rail line, but he didn’t say as much. He just smiled and waved to the little liveryman as he heeled Stormy into motion.

  Beside him, Conrad banged his heels harder than necessary against El Diablo’s sides, but the horse just took it stolidly and walked down the street next to Stormy.

  As they rode along, Frank realized that he kept thinking of the railroad as belonging to Conrad, when in reality he owned part of it too. But Frank had never really cared that much about owning anything except his guns. He supposed that in the eyes of the world, he owned Stormy and Dog, but to him they were more like friends and traveling companions. A bunch of other possessions would just weigh a man down.

  There had been a time in his life when he had dreamed of starting a little ranch somewhere, of raising cattle or maybe some fine horses. Of being married and having a family.

  He had been married twice. The first union had been annulled by Vivian’s father. The second one, to a beautiful woman named Dixie, had ended in tragedy when she was cut down by outlaw bullets. Vivian too had died senselessly at the hands of owlhoots. Since then, Frank had vowed to himself that never again would he place a woman in the dangerous position of being married to him. His romances, such as the one with Roanne Williamson, were sweet but not the sort that lasted, and he made sure that the women involved knew that from the beginning. The dreams of permanence he’d once dreamed had now receded. Now he truly lived up to the name he had been given so long ago.

  The Drifter.

  The scenery was beautiful as they left El Paso. The early morning sun washed over the Franklin Mountains to the north, the twisting Rio Grande to the south, and the rugged hills that rose in Mexico on the other side of the border river. The Mexican city of Juarez, originally known as El Paso del Norte, sprawled along the southern bank of the Rio Grande, an older and even larger settlement than the American city to the north. People had lived here for hundreds of years. It was the most important border crossing along the entire boundary between the United States and Mexico.

  Frank had spent considerable time in Mexico the previous autumn, and he had found the inhabitants to be a warm, friendly people—the ones who weren’t trying to kill him, that is. He wasn’t going to miss it, though. As always, his eyes were turned to the future, to the next hill, the next sight that he hadn’t seen before.

  He and Conrad angled northwest, following the course of the river for a short distance, then crossed the Rio Grande on a long wooden bridge that paralleled a railroad trestle. That put them in New Mexico Territory, because the river had turned north. They had left Texas behind. Now they followed the railroad instead of the river.

  The terrain flattened out some. There was another range of small mountains ahead of them, but they wouldn’t reach those for another day or so, and then would loop around them to the north. Around mid-morning, a locomotive went past on the tracks a couple of hundred yards to their left, billowing smoke from its stack and heading westbound with a long line of passenger cars and freight cars behind it.

  Conrad gazed wistfully at the train and said, “We could have been on there, you know, riding in comfort in a club car.”

  “Breathing smoke and cinders, you mean,” Frank said. “It’s better to be out here in the fresh air.”

  “That’s a matter of opinion,” Conrad muttered.

  “Besides, a train goes too fast,” Frank went on. “You don’t have a chance to see anything. For example, you’d never see that from the train.” He pointed to the ground at the base of a bush that Conrad was riding past.

  El Diablo suddenly shied as a buzzing sound filled the air. Conrad looked down where Frank had pointed, saw the huge rattlesnake coiled there, and cried, “Oh, my God!” He grabbed the saddle horn with one hand and tightened his grip on the reins with the other to bring his spooked mount under control. Looking over at Frank, he demanded, “Aren’t you going to kill it?”

  “Why?” Frank asked with a shrug. “Snake hasn’t done anything to me. If we ride on and leave him alone, he’ll leave us alone.”

  “But . . . but it’s poisonous!”

  “Venomous,” Frank corrected. “The poison only comes into play if he bites you. You can eat rattlesnake meat. I have, and it’s not too bad. Tastes a little like chicken.”

  Conrad looked aghast. “Eat snake? I don’t think so!”

  “You’d change your tune if you were hungry enough. Then you’d eat snake and be glad to get it.”

  Conrad shook his head and said, “I’d never get that hungry.”

  “Just because you never have doesn’t mean you never will.”

  “Well, if you’re not going to kill that vile creature, I am.” Conrad drew his Colt Lightning. “Even if it doesn’t harm one of us, someone else might come along and get bitten. You can’t just sit by and ignore something dangerous like that. You get rid of it so it can’t threaten anybody else.”

  He steadied El Diablo, then drew a bead and squeezed off two fast shots from the double-action revolver. The rattlesnake’s head blew apart as the bullets struck it. The thick, headless body writhed furiously for a moment before setting into the stillness of death.

  “Sure you don’t want me to take it along and cook it up for supper tonight?” Frank asked.

  Conrad took a couple of fresh cartridges from the loops on his gun belt and replaced the empties in the chambers he had fired. “No, that’s perfectly all right,” he said coolly. “Leave it for the buzzards.”

  Frank shrugged. “Your kill. Your choice.”

  They rode on. Frank didn’t let Conrad see the smile on his face. It wasn’t because Conrad had demonstrated his marksmanship, although Frank was pleased by that too. He was glad that Conrad had risen to the veiled challenge and recognized the danger of leaving a rattler alone just because it wasn’t about to strike you. The real danger was to the innocent, unsuspecting folks who might come along later.

  The boy was learning, all right. Yes, sir, he sure was.

  Chapter 5

  They rode all day, stopping only to rest the horses and to eat a cold lunch of biscuits and salt pork. When they made camp that evening at dusk, Conrad said, “I don’t think those mountains up ahead are any closer than they were when we left El Paso this morning.”

  “It sort of looks like that,” Frank agreed, “but the truth is that we covered a nice piece of ground today.”

  “How long will it take us to get to Lordsburg?”

  Frank did some quick calculations in his head, based on what he remembered from maps he had seen of the territory. “Five days, maybe six,” he estimated.

  Conrad sighed. “We could have been there on the train in less than a day.”

  “If wishes were horses, beggars would ride,” Frank quoted.

  “I have a horse already. What I’m wishing for right now is a nice comfortable Pullman berth.” Conrad pressed his fists into the small of his back and groaned as he stretched sore muscles.

  Frank built a small fire in a ring of stones he put together, fried up some bacon, heated a pot of beans, and brewed some coffee. They still had biscuits too. The fare was simple but good, the sort of food that sticks to a man’s ribs. Conrad didn’t complain too much as he was eating. Frank let the fire burn down as they spread their bedrolls on either side of the dying flames.

  An extra lasso had been included in the supplies he bought at Holtzmann’s. Now Frank took his own rope and the extra one and arranged them in a circle on the ground around the bedrolls. Conrad asked, “What’s that for?”r />
  “Snakes are cold-blooded critters, so they seek out warmth,” Frank explained. “If you don’t want to wake up with a rattler sharing your blankets, put a rope around your bed like this. A snake won’t crawl over a lasso.”

  Conrad shuddered. “We wouldn’t have to worry about such things if we had—”

  “Taken the train, I know,” Frank finished for him. “But there’s something else you’ll never see from inside a train car.” He pointed up.

  Conrad tilted his head back to peer at the now-dark sky. “What are you talking about? I don’t see anything.”

  “The light of Western stars,” Frank said. “If you can’t see that, I reckon I feel sorry for you.”

  Conrad sat there in silence for a few seconds, and then he said quietly, “Oh. I suppose I see what you mean. There are rather a lot of them, aren’t there?”

  “Millions,” Frank said.

  They stretched out on their bedrolls, using their saddles as pillows. Conrad complained a little about how uncomfortable it was, but Frank wasn’t surprised when he heard soft snores coming from his son only a few minutes later. A long day in the saddle wore a man out when he wasn’t used to it. If you were tired enough, a bedroll and a saddle weren’t that bad.

  Frank stayed awake for a while longer, looking up at the stars and listening to Stormy and El Diablo crop at the sparse grass around the campsite. Dog lay nearby, his head on his paws. The night was mighty peaceful.

  Then Frank heard the clink of metal against rock.

  The sound was so faint that at first he thought he had imagined it. Then it came again and he knew he hadn’t. It could have been almost anything, but Frank knew it for what it was: the sound of a horseshoe striking a rock. It hadn’t come from Stormy or El Diablo. The distance was too great for that. Out here in the still, thin, dry air, sound could travel for a long way. The horse responsible for those two clinks—which hadn’t been repeated—might be a quarter of a mile away.

  That was still too close for comfort. Frank reached over and scooped up a handful of sand. He tossed it on the embers of the fire, covering up some of them. Two more handfuls of sand put out the rest of the embers. Only when the faint red glow had been completely extinguished did Frank sit up and reach for his Winchester, which he had placed beside his bedroll before he lay down.

  He didn’t say anything to Conrad, didn’t try to wake him. Conrad would start talking, asking questions and such, and his voice would carry too, just like the sounds Frank had heard. Instead, he sat there with every sense alert, being utterly still and quiet.

  The moon hadn’t risen yet, so there was only the light of the stars to illuminate the semidesert around them. The ground was rocky and sandy, with scattered clumps of hardy grass and stubby mesquite trees and some other bushes here and there. It was going to be difficult for anybody to sneak up on them. He listened intently, putting as much faith in his ears as he did in his eyes.

  Somewhere out there in the darkness, a horse blew air through its nose, a sound that was cut off abruptly. Dog lifted his head and growled. Frank knew that someone had clamped a hand over the horse’s nose to silence it, but the damage was already done. A man yelled, “Get ’em!” and suddenly orange flashes of muzzle flame bloomed in the night.

  Frank was ready, though. The Winchester came to his shoulder in a swift motion. His hand worked the rifle’s lever as he lifted it, throwing a cartridge into the chamber. He fired as soon as the barrel was level, aiming for the muzzle flashes that had just started to split the darkness.

  Frank cranked off five rounds in a little more than three seconds. The firing from the lurkers in the darkness stopped, and as Conrad came thrashing up out of his blankets, yelling in alarm, Frank heard the rataplan of hurried hoofbeats a couple of hundred yards away. He barked at Conrad, “Get down! Stay down!”

  Conrad flattened back out on the tangled blankets. He was on his belly now, and he had his revolver in his hand. “What are we shooting at?” he hissed at Frank.

  “We’re not shooting at anything,” Frank replied in a whisper. “Somebody tried to bushwhack us, but I think they’re gone now. Stay down, though, until we’re sure.”

  “All right.”

  A couple of minutes went by. Frank asked, “Were you hit by any of those bullets?”

  “No, I’m fine. I was just startled by the shots.” Conrad paused. “What about you?”

  Frank was a little touched that the youngster would ask. He said, “I didn’t get elected. Thought I heard one of those slugs come close enough to almost nominate me, though.”

  “Can’t you just say that you weren’t hit?”

  Frank chuckled. “Reckon I could. But it wouldn’t be as colorful.”

  Conrad muttered something. Frank couldn’t make out the words, but he figured it was something about Westerners and their way of talking, or maybe something about how Frank could make light of the situation when somebody had just tried to kill them.

  After a moment, Conrad asked, “Who do you think it was?”

  “No way of knowing. I didn’t get a look at them, didn’t really see anything except their muzzle flashes. But if I had to guess, I’d say they were friends or relatives of those Callahan boys, back in El Paso. They’re the only ones I’ve had trouble with lately.”

  “Of course, it could have been someone looking to avenge one of the other hundreds of men you’ve killed,” Conrad said scathingly.

  “I wouldn’t say hundreds. . . .”

  “Scores then.”

  Frank didn’t argue with that.

  He hadn’t heard or seen any signs of the drygulchers since those hoofbeats. It seemed likely they were gone, but he wanted to be sure. He leaned over, put an arm around the big cur’s neck, and felt him quivering with eagerness. Frank said, “Go take a look around, Dog.” When he let go, Dog bounded off into the darkness.

  “You trust an animal to do your reconnoitering for you?” Conrad asked.

  “There’s not a better scout around than Dog.”

  Frank waited tensely for the quarter of an hour or so that went by before Dog came loping back into camp. He carried a dead jackrabbit in his strong jaws.

  “What’s that?” Conrad asked in disgust. “Some sort of animal?”

  “A jackrabbit,” Frank said. “Fresh meat for breakfast in the morning.”

  “You mean the dog just went out and ran down a rabbit instead of doing what you told him?”

  “No, that rabbit tells me there’s nobody else around now. If there had been, Dog wouldn’t have taken the time and trouble to do a little hunting. He would have come right back.”

  “You’re placing an awful lot of faith in the judgment of an animal.”

  “You’ve got to trust a few folks in this life,” Frank said. “Dog hasn’t let me down yet.” He came to his feet. “Pull your boots on and get up. We’re getting out of here.”

  “What?”

  “We’re moving our camp, just in case those hombres decide to come back. And it’ll be a cold camp this time, with no embers or smell of wood smoke to lead them to us.”

  “I thought you said they were gone,” Conrad said as he sat up and reached for his boots.

  “Shake those out before you put them on, just in case any scorpions crawled in there while you were asleep.”

  “My God,” Conrad muttered as he shook out the boots. “How many menaces are there out here?”

  “More than you can count,” Frank told him. “And like I said, just because those bushwhackers are gone now, that doesn’t mean they can’t come back.”

  “That’s not exactly what you said. But I suppose you implied it.”

  They saddled up. The darkness didn’t bother Frank. He had saddled so many horses he could have done it if he was blind. Conrad struggled with the heavy Western saddle, though. Finally, he got the cinches tightened and everything ready to ride.

  Frank led the way. The moon rose, adding its light to that of the stars, so they had no trouble being able to s
ee where they were going.

  When they passed a dry wash, Conrad pointed at it and said, “What about there? That looks like a good place to camp.”

  “Nope. You never make camp in an arroyo like that. Too much danger of flash floods.”

  “Floods?” Conrad repeated. “Out here in this dry country?”

  “It can come a cloud, even out here. And when it does rain, it rains hard. The water runs off fast, and the dry washes fill up in a hurry. Then they’re not dry anymore. They’re nasty little rivers that can sweep a camp away in seconds.”

  “Yes, perhaps, but there’s not a cloud in the sky tonight. All those stars you pointed out are proof of that.”

  “It doesn’t have to storm here. A heavy rain up in the hills will do it too.”

  “All right,” Conrad said wearily. “I bow to your superior expertise, Frank.”

  As they rode on, Frank thought about Conrad calling him by his given name. He didn’t expect the young man to call him Pa or Dad or anything like that. After all, Frank hadn’t raised him. He and Conrad had been complete strangers, unaware of each other’s very existence, until Conrad was eighteen. It was no surprise that Conrad didn’t really regard him as a father. Faced with the trouble Conrad had encountered with his rail line, he had turned to Frank more as a business partner than a member of the family.

  Still, that didn’t mean Frank couldn’t try to teach him a few things....

  They made another camp about two miles from the spot of the previous one, and the rest of the night passed quietly. Frank slept lightly, waking up often to look and listen and make sure no one was trying to sneak up on them again. He relied on Dog’s senses too. The big cur would smell men or horses if they were upwind. Dog didn’t growl in warning the rest of the night.

  The next morning, after the sun had risen, Frank built another fire and roasted the jackrabbit Dog had caught the night before. As the smell of the cooking meat filled the air, Conrad asked, “Why didn’t those men press their attack last night? There must have been several of them, judging by all the shooting that was going on. I’m sure they outnumbered us.”