by Lauran Paine
But if young Parton knew this, he did not show himself to seek the cause of the turmoil. Even his grazing horse continued to crop grass, indifferent to the blue jay’s excited jabberings.
Duncan sighed in quiet relief, stepped back deeper among the trees, and resumed his roundabout pacing. With the blue jay’s departure there was not a sound to be heard anywhere. This kind of stillness was in itself an omen to experienced range men, for normally there were upland birds and other creatures aplenty in the parks and forests. Their very absence was significant. Something had frightened them off.
Duncan felt, all things considered, that his quest was nearing its end. He slowed his approach where the black bulwark stood, prohibiting any further travel southward. He squatted behind a sage thicket and blocked in squares of the area ahead, seeking, not so much the shape of a man, as the signs that would indicate that a man was somewhere close by.
He did not find these telltale bent fronds, trampled places, broken rip-gut stalks, until sometime later when the browsing horse stepped back, half swung away from Duncan, and lifted its head in a listening posture.
Where that animal had been standing, obscuring Duncan’s view, was a trampled pathway leading to the creek and beyond it through a tangle of wild underbrush. There were ample indications that a man, as well as a horse, had gone through the man-high growth there.
Duncan was satisfied. He pulled himself upright, hefted the Winchester, balanced the idea in his mind of trying to approach that hiding place, and decided instead to go back to make certain the pursuit was not close. He also wanted to bring Marianne back with him. His reason for this was simple. He not only felt responsible for her safety, but the trail from the last little park leading up and over the rimrocks led northerly, or behind where Duncan now was. If young Parton made a break for it, Duncan would need someone back on that trail to stop him.
He retraced his steps, coursed the woods until he found Marianne with their horses. He told her what he had found and went with her back along their trail to watch for more of that telltale dust.
They saw it far down the mountainside. Duncan estimated the distance, the time of morning, then, satisfied with both, he led Marianne in a swift passage back to that northerly vantage spot where the trail crossed on out of the park heading along the hillside toward the rim.
He explained what he wanted her to do. She understood but showed him an uneasy expression.
“Sheriff Berryhill will be up here within another hour and a half. You could be putting yourself between two fires, Todd.”
He smiled with his lips, but not his eyes. “If this thing isn’t settled in an hour and a half,” he told her, “then young Parton’s a better man than I am, that’s all there is to it.”
She looked ahead where the grazing horse was meandering outward toward the sunlit center of the park. “You don’t even know it is young Parton. It could be another Flying L cowboy.”
“Then I’ll find that out in the next ten minutes and we can be on our way again.”
He faced away from her, already closing her out of his mind and turning his entire attention upon the clearing ahead.
Marianne watched him ease forward for a moment, her face troubled. Finally, instead of going back along the trail as he’d directed her to do, she glided up behind him.
“Todd ... ”
He whirled, his brows drawing darkly down. “I told you to go north and watch that trail,” he said sharply.
“All right. I just wanted to say ... be careful of him.”
His frown softened toward her a little. After a quiet moment of gazing steadily at her, he got that little wicked glint in his eyes again and gently wagged his head. “You’re still going to get that larruping,” he said softly. “Sweet talk isn’t going to change my mind, woman.”
Her expression altered at once, turning bleak, turning defiant. “Any time you think you can do it, you just try it.” She spun about and went swiftly out through the trees northward.
He watched her go as long as she remained visible. He chuckled deep in his throat. That was a woman. Concerned and tender one minute, wrathful and fiery the next moment. He let the smile dwindle. She’d said he didn’t know what he wanted out of life. He knew what he wanted all right, he just hadn’t encountered it before, or at least up to now.
A twig snapped around in front, out in the park. That sharp little sound cleared Duncan’s mind in a flash. He swung, dropping down into forest gloom, and raked the clearing. The only visible moving object was that meandering horse. Duncan assumed the animal had inadvertently stepped upon a dead branch. He remained utterly still for a long moment before starting onward again, to the very limit of the last tree fringe. From here he had a perfect view of that creek-side tangle.
The horse was well away from the crushed trail through to the creek. By straining, Duncan could peer as far through that undergrowth as the creek itself. There, where dazzling golden sunlight touched down sharply upon falling water, he saw light reflecting off metal. That, he told himself, would be a carbine leaning in there. But there was no sign of the man who owned that weapon.
It took a little time to get around through the trees to a position where he was close enough to the creek-side undergrowth to pass into it from the forest. After that his course lay defined before him, but it was not an easy one for here he could not advance more than a step at a time. There was no trail, not even a buck run. He therefore had to make very cautious progress in order not to make any noise.
But there was one thing in his favor; all that prickly undergrowth, rank and tangled as it was, stood man-high and it was green so that no limbs cracked or snapped as he gingerly pressed them aside to step ahead toward that unseen place where he’d seen sunlight shining off a gun.
Once his progress was blocked by a chokecherry thicket. Here he tore his shirt getting past, but what annoyed him most was the time consumed working around this mass of twisted, interwoven greenery.
The sun was hot now and that helped. His aches from the earlier fight with Tom Black were lessened by this good heat. In fact, he forgot them entirely as he ultimately came to a little grassy clearing a few feet in diameter, for here he found a trail. This place, from the appearance of crushed grass, was a deer bed, the little pathway leading westerly out of it was obviously the entrance and exit made by whatever animal lived here.
Duncan stepped out into the clearing, shook himself, and carefully straightened up to his full height, attempting to see beyond. On his left lay the little creek and somewhere beyond sight but within hearing was its bubbling source. He passed on over the clearing, started along the trail, and almost at once encountered the little creek. Here he saw tracks where a deer had browsed, drunk, then leaped the creek to wander along through underbrush at the very base of the vertical mountainside. He followed this route briefly, hoping to catch a sighting of that larger clearing farther along where a man’s rifle stood. But in the end he was forced to return to the regular little path because of the green wall growing along the creek.
He had no trouble for several hundred feet. The deer run had been sufficiently used so that the branches and vines on both sides were somewhat broken and chewed off. His advance was swifter now, which pleased him. Also, he thought it very likely that he was quite close to the place where he’d seen that carbine.
He was. In fact he was closer than he thought, for as he gently thrust aside a matting of wilted creepers, out beyond this point there was no more profuse undergrowth at all.
This was the secret place he’d glimpsed from the forest fringe. He carefully eased the creepers back into place, got down flat, pushed his head along with his chin in the dirt, peered ahead, and saw where the creek hurried across this still, golden clearing. He lay for a long time studying the land out there and came to the conclusion that this had once been the home site of an Indian family. The closest large bushes had been stripped of
limbs at the lower levels and higher up some branches had been bent into a latticed network for the drying of hides. Rocks had been laboriously brought to this spot to line the creekbank, containing it so that spring freshets could not make it overflow its normal banks.
There was an upended saddle there in the clearing, but there was no sign of the carbine he’d seen earlier. Neither was there any sign of the man who owned that saddle. However, there were things that caught and held Duncan’s attention—a clean shirt that had been ripped into strips and lying upon some of those creekbank rocks were several cast-aside strips of cloth that had bloodstains on them, obviously dressings from the wounded shoulder of the murderer he was pursuing.
Chapter Seventeen
Duncan’s dilemma was simple. He was, he thought, running out of time. Berryhill would find this place before long. Therefore, he could lie there and await young Parton’s return from wherever he’d gone, or he could step out into that clearing and locate young Parton’s tracks in the spongy earth and go after him.
The latter course greatly increased Duncan’s chances of being seen before he got a chance to see Parton first. It only obliquely concerned him where the missing man now was. There were a dozen logical explanations for his absence and with Marianne and their horses well concealed none of these appeared particularly relevant to Duncan at this time.
Then he heard something or someone coming toward the clearing from southward along the creek. He scarcely breathed while he waited. That unseen moving object halted once where the little creek intersected its pathway, sprang over, and landed down hard. Duncan heard the jangle of spur rowels, and he knew it wasn’t a deer then, it was a man.
He felt for Black’s six-gun, eased it out carefully, pushed it forward but did not cock it. Out of nowhere a flashing ball of bright blue swooped overhead. Duncan, concentrating on the spot across the clearing where his enemy would appear, had no knowledge of this newcomer, not until, its attention caught by the glittering gun in Duncan’s right fist, the blue jay began its shrieking scream of alarm.
At once, across the clearing, all sound ceased. Duncan risked twisting for an upward look. That agitated blue jay was perched in plain sight upon a pine limb, beside itself with excitement. It flicked its tail, bobbed its head up and down in a pointing gesture, and kept up its raucous cries of warning. Duncan, who ordinarily was amused by the antics of these professional, high-country alarmists, wished mightily he could throw a stone at this bird or shoot it. All Duncan did, however, was resume his vigil of the clearing with his back exposed to the overhead view of that squawking bird, and try his best to ignore the creature.
But, whether Duncan’s unseen adversary believed the bird’s warning outcries involved another man or just a forest animal, he still did not continue forward and emerge into the clearing. He would not anyway, Duncan reasoned. This man was a murderer—a killer—and whether he thought perhaps it was only a cub bear that had upset the blue jay or something else as trivial, his instincts would still hold him back, for young Parton was as shy of exposing himself as a mountain lion would have been in his place. They both shared the same instincts now. Both were killers and both knew they were hunted as well as hunters.
Sweat ran into Duncan’s eyes and some of the scratches he’d gotten in passing this far through brambles began to itch. He was tired and hungry and thirsty, too. His nerves were on edge. He had the feeling of being between two great grinding wheels, one was Berryhill’s posse, the other was his compelling necessity to get young Parton alive. He’d almost had Parton, then that feathered interloper had come. Now, he lay there wondering what he must do, for obviously young Parton, with no knowledge that he was also being approached by a downcountry posse, was in no hurry to do anything at all.
Fate made Duncan’s decision for him.
While Duncan had been pondering, young Parton had gotten down on the ground to stare along at ground level into the clearing. He evidently had done this with no actual expectation of seeing another man, for no sooner did he catch the wicked reflection of hot sunlight off Duncan’s readied six-gun, than he let out a startled grunt that carried easily over where Duncan lay. Parton also shook the overhead brush as he whipped backward, reaching for the Winchester he’d leaned there, when he’d gotten belly-down in the mulch.
Duncan saw that brush quiver. Now he knew about where Parton was, but he still held his fire because he had no visible target. This was Duncan’s first mistake.
Parton hastily poked his carbine through, aimed rapidly at that exposed six-gun, and fired. The explosion of the rifle shot in all the otherwise stillness rattled Duncan nearly as badly as did the stinging dirt that was flung into his face from a near miss.
Above those two secreted men the blue jay gave a frantic leap into the air and went flinging away northward, squawking at the top of its voice.
Duncan, with no worthwhile target, nevertheless squeezed off his first shot, aiming only in a general way toward the place where the underbrush had quivered. Then he immediately rolled sideways deeper into the undergrowth, cocked his gun with his right hand, and dug at his irritated eyes with the left hand. He was temporarily unable to see through the shimmer of water that filled both eyes.
Parton fired again. This time, though, the slug whipped through underbrush with a slashing sound. It obviously had been aimed high in the erroneous belief that Duncan might be up on all fours and retreating.
For several minutes Duncan occupied himself with spitting dust and clearing his vision from the effects of that first shot. But even then his eyes did not return to normal for they were irritated.
When Duncan did not return young Parton’s fire, the killer lay silent for a while, but then finally he called out: “Hey over there ... you hit?”
Duncan considered a blistering answer to this but did not offer it. He said nothing. Instead, he put down his gun, raised both hands to his face, wiped away tears, the last residue of that stinging, flinty earth, and blinked until the fog cleared from his vision.
“How bad you hit? you there, across the clearin’ ... you hear me?” Parton called out.
Duncan heard. He considered using a ruse to feint the killer out into the clearing for a good, clean shot. But he scorned this idea. He didn’t want Parton any way but in a fair fight.
Finally he called back. “No, I’m not hit, Parton, but you’re going to be. You’ve got about twenty minutes to make up your mind whether to die with a gun in your hand or give up and walk out into the clearing.”
Parton’s hard laughter sounded. “Twenty minutes is a long time. Why not make it five instead?”
“Because it’ll take twenty minutes for Sheriff Berryhill’s posse to get up here. He’s behind you, Parton, and I’m in front. You don’t stand a chance.”
For a moment Parton made no reply to this, then, sounding a little puzzled, he said: “Hey ... you aren’t that stupid Flying L cowboy, are you? I thought you were him. Just who the hell are you anyway?”
“The name’s Todd Duncan. I’m the fellow they tossed into jail down in Leesville with your pa. I’m the fellow they thought was riding with Swindin when you killed the expressman ... and that traveler.”
Again there was a long pause. “The hell,” breathed the hidden gunman. “I didn’t know they’d gotten anyone. Did they get Swindin, too?”
“He’s dead, Parton. He was dead when they found him southward at a spring on the desert.”
“And my pa?”
The damned old devil ... he let ’em think I was you so you’d have a good long head start.”
This time the pause was shorter, and Parton laughed. “By golly, sounds like we stirred up a hornet’s nest, cowboy,” said the murderer, his voice turning almost genial. “Then how come you’re out of jail if they locked you up ... you get loose?”
“Yeah, I got loose, and I’ve done a heap of hard riding to even things up with you.”
“Yeah it makes sense, Parton, except for one thing. You’re going to clear me with that posse for those two murders you committed.”
Parton turned silent again. This time, though, the interval of stillness ran on so long Duncan thought Parton might be trying to slip up where he could get a good shot. Duncan’s eyes still bothered him but they were no longer watering so much that his vision was impaired. In fact, he could see things more clearly now than before. He turned up onto his side, in this manner presenting the narrowest possible target, and he resumed his motionless vigil with his six-gun concealed from sunlight by hanging leaves.
Parton spoke again, his tone altered a little, sounding not so genial any more, sounding instead a little worried, as though he had digested everything Duncan had told him and had come to some obvious conclusions.
“Duncan? Let’s call it quits. There’s no advantage in this for either of us. What d’you say?”
“I say no. You toss out your guns and walk out into the clearing.”
“You’re a fool, Duncan. Berryhill will get you, too.”
