E. Hoffmann Price's War and Western Action

by E. Hoffmann Price

  Epstein came in with a dodger. He masked the lower part of the face, looked at Jed Lathrop’s back, looked at the sheriff, and said, as-though crestfallen, “No, this ain’t right around the eyes, this ain’t the same jail bird, sheriff.” He sighed. “And it gives no reward for us to split.”

  “Mebbe not! But if this son ain’t out of town by noon tomorrow, I’m throwing him in the pokey jest to wait till I can find out where he is wanted, if any. Huh! Didn’t know she has tusks!”

  Jed Lathrop was now scrambling to his knees. Craven repeated his advice about getting out of town. And as the man lurched from the stable, Craven added, “And that goes for your witnesses, too!”

  When the law man left, Barlow let out a long sigh. “Saul, if you hadn’t had that stinker so worried, I couldn’t’ve clipped him, I’d’ve had to shoot it out, and then there’d been the devil to pay. What the blazes are you, toting reward notices? Pinkerton?”

  “Man hunting ain’t my business. But a fellow pushing a cart gets into lonesome places, and he meets all kinds of people—and I lose enough money, without being held up.”

  Barlow chuckled, “I bet you do!”

  Epstein grinned and raised his hat. “But so far,” he said, stroking his gleaming bald head, “I ain’t been scalped. You leaving now? All saddled up?”

  “Just restless, aiming to ride a bit, so I’ll sleep better.”

  “When I was your age, I wouldn’t sleep a wink either, with a race starting in the morning to catch up with such a nice young lady. If you won’t sell me your watch, maybe you will buy a wedding ring—I got a brand new one—wait, I show you!”

  Long before dawn, Barlow was in the saddle; and when the sun reddened the mesquite dotted plain and outlined the iron-purple crags on the horizon, he picked up the ruts left by emigrant wagons. A couple of hours later, he came to the first camp site, which had taken the slow moving oxen a full day to reach. And Alezan stretched her legs, eating up the miles.

  Well past midafternoon, a gentle climb led to a low summit, one side of which was topped by a rocky wall. He had no more than entered the pass when he glimpsed the next water hole.

  The trail swung left, down a narrow valley which for a stretch had grass and a few stunted poplars. Bit by bit, the higher ridges blocked out the wind which had been peppering him with sand. He rode into sweltering calm. Ocatillas, thumb-thick stalks armed with spines half an inch long, found root in the tumbled rocks of a slope which supported no other growth. Each had a crest of red blossoms.

  Barlow looked up and about him from force of habit. The scent of water made Alezan perk up her ears. Out of the oven, and into the coolness—

  Then he noted the stirring of one ocatilla somewhat ahead and well up the wall. The lowering sun’s glare put him at a disadvantage: but that motion, where every thing else was dead still, warned Barlow, and a deceptive patch of shadow seemed to shift a bit.

  There was little enough warning, yet Alezan, sensitive to the moods of which her rider himself was not fully conscious, snorted and made a skittish move. Smoke blossomed from the rocks. Instead of drilling Barlow, the bullet ploughed through the saddle skirt. Coming from a considerable height above him, the angle was such that the slug no more than raked a furrow in the horse’s hide. She reared, and Barlow, half out of the saddle already, and reaching for his carbine, was piled to the rocks.

  Alezan clattered away. Barlow, paralyzed by the fall, rolled helplessly until an outcropping checked him. He was still exposed, with hardly enough cover to protect a jackrabbit. A man came up from cover, rifle in hand.

  Barlow, recovering a little from the crash, got his Colt. He steadied it. The man stepped down out of the worst glare. Barlow fired. The lurker recoiled, stumbled, and lurched downgrade several strides. He won the shelter of a rock and shot again, just as Barlow cut loose.

  The two blasts were simultaneous. Lead screamed and whined. Barlow, however, did not hear the ricochet of his own, or of his enemy’s shot. The glancing slug had dug a long gash which girdled his head. The impact, though cushioned somewhat by the Stetson, nonetheless knocked him out as from a hammer blow, so that he slumped, rolled over his limp gun hand, and across the weapon which had dropped from it.

  * * * *

  The bitter chill of dawn aroused him to thirst and pain. The early light, treacherous lavender gray, found him wondering how he had come to be in a draw, where small pools reached out from beneath the overhang of a dry creek bed. Bit by bit, he recollected the ambush, and realized that as though sleep walking, he had crawled back to the trail from which he had been shot and apparently left for dead. And his enemy had not made such a gross mistake after all.

  Before starting on his half-conscious stumbling, Barlow had holstered his pistol. He still had his hat. It was well jammed down over the inflamed furrow left by the bullet. He knelt to drink and to bathe his eyes. He fell face down in the shallow water. The drenching shocked him to alertness for a moment.

  After tying a piece of shirt tail over the eye injured by chunks of flying rock, he set out to overtake the wagon train, though the easier task of returning to Kearneyville would have been far too much for his strength. The valley soon became a blast furnace. A glimmering of sense told him to turn back toward the water he had left behind. Still out of his head, and getting more so, he worked his way to the emigrant camp site.

  He found among the scattered rubbish a sack from which he shook more than a handful of cornmeal. This he put into one of the tin cans lying about. Presently, he had a mess of mush cooking.

  Elsewhere, he found a bottle and cork. A gob of mush, a quart of water, and the rest depended on his boots. One trouble with a fancy horse: someone was always ready to steal it.

  Barlow moved as in a nightmare. Though making back for Kearneyville, to get a fresh start, he seemed also to be hunting Sally. Every so often, he found her, and talked to her. Most of the time she ignored him, as though she did not hear his voice, or feel the hand which reached for her. And what made it worse, Sally seemed always to be a phantom which would not fill his arms.

  Coyotes yip-yipped, and for a change, they howled eerily. Barlow baked, and then he froze. Sleeping and waking became one continuous confusion. The cornmeal and the water were gone. Buzzards, after long circling, now settled to perch on mesquite and scrubby acacia. Barlow had come within sight of a tinaja, one of the water holes at which the emigrants had camped, when he dropped. It was dusk when someone shook him.

  “Drink only a drop now. Later, it gives soup.”

  And presently, Saul Epstein handed Barlow some jerked beef broth. “I left the morning you did,” the pushcart man explained, “only later. And when I saw the buzzards coming down, I went past the tinaja and here you are. Now I will patch you up where you been shot.”

  “Buy my watch, so I can get myself some sort of critter back in Kearneyville,” Barlow proposed.

  But Epstein wagged his head and countered, “In the morning, that is something to talk about. Not now!”

  CHAPTER III

  One-Man Covered Wagon

  When, after days of hoofing, Barlow finally sighted the dust of the emigrant train, he and Epstein followed in its wake until dusk. Then, leaving his companion well beyond the sight of the herd guards, he left him and made for the fires which outlined the wagon tops.

  Once or twice as Barlow picked his way about the fringe of the camp, a man or woman spoke a civil word of greeting, as to a fellow emigrant not individually recognized in the darkness. For a moment, it was all unreal, doing what he had done so many times before, wandering about in delirium to find Sally. Of a sudden, his being in camp became the foremost wonder of his life, so that he could not believe that it had happened. He choked and his eyes swam, and he leaned against a wagon wheel as though mortally tired, or very drunk.

  Then his eyes focused and his ears heard: and there she was, close at hand. “Sally,�
�� he said, quietly. “I had trouble on the way, but I made it.”

  There was enough reflected firelight to show how little her face changed; it was as though she had known to the minute when he would arrive, and had never doubted that he would rejoin her. “Oh, Pete, I’ve missed you!” She did not raise her voice, or cry out in gladness, lest the others hear and intrude. “What happened?”

  Then they were in each other’s arms, and for awhile, neither spoke. Finally, he repeated, “Trouble on the way. Had to walk most of it.”

  She took his hand, and they went toward the fire where the captain sat. “Mr. Parker, look what I found!”

  Horace Parker got to his feet. “Well, Pete! Where’ve you been?”

  Barlow was busy watching Kirby Swift’s face. He did not expect the segundo to join the others who welcomed him, though largely out of curiosity and by way of following the captain’s example. To nearly every one of the emigrants, Barlow was a stranger whose brief appearance in Kearneyville had been a triviality in a long succession of important events. Meanwhile, Sally had become one of the group: and to the young fellows who had had an eye on her, the newcomer was an intruder.

  Barlow said, directly to Parker but to the others as well, “I took good care of your Alezan, boarded her well, and came from the post each evening to see she was getting her oats. The way she ate up the miles the first days was a sight!” He raised his hat. “Right up till a .45 scratched her, and she reared up just as I was fixing to pile out of the saddle for some skirmishing. This here crease in my head is the second shot the bushwhacker fired, and it saved my life. Knocked me out, and the skunk figured no need coming to finish me off. When I come to, I had a piece of walking to do, and I’ve done it.”

  “What’d you eat?” one demanded, having apparently estimated the days it would take a man afoot to overtake lumbering oxen.

  “Shucks, that was simple! Snared quail at the tinajas, and rattlesnake is mighty tasty when you’re hungry.”

  The women insisted on getting him leftovers from supper, but Barlow shook his head. “Fellow shouldn’t over-eat, when he isn’t used to rich living. Captain, you set me to whatever chores you’ve a mind to in the morning.” He dug into his pockets. “Here’s my watch, and here’s what money I’ve got left. I’ll make up the balance I owe you for losing Alezan, one way or another, soon as I see my chance.”

  “Talk about that when we get to Red Fork, Pete. Right now, you rest up, you look all fagged out and peaked.”

  He sat down, with Sally beside him, and drank coffee, and smoked. Later, when by common consent and weariness, the harmonica player quit competing with the banjo, and the emigrants made for their shake-downs, Barlow laid a hand on Sally’s arm and whispered, “You wait outside for me a minute.”

  He stood aside until Swift was apart from his admiring crowd. Barlow, accosting him, said in a matter of fact tone, “You and I had trouble. Not from the way you and your sidekicks mocked me, but because it looked as if you’d undermined me. Between here and Red Fork I am obligated to get along with you, and you have to get along with me. When we get to where we’re going, there is plenty of time to square our accounts if you think you’ve got something against me. That fair?”

  “I don’t bear you any personal grudge for the blow, though it was a dirty one and without warning,” Swift answered. “But striking me, the segundo, isn’t a personal matter—it was pretty nearly as bad as hitting Mr. Parker. We’re the law and the leaders.”

  “We weren’t on the march, that evening. Anyway you’ve not lost any respect, judging from the way your cronies hang on every word you say. You and I can keep peace till further orders, but your boon companions may not feel that way toward me. I want you to call them off before they start anything.”

  “Meaning,” Swift demanded wrathfully, “I need them to take my part?”

  “I’ll say you must’ve needed someone to do your dirty work! I’ve not said it to anyone else, and I won’t, because I can not prove it. But till my dying day, I’ll be sure you fixed it to have Jed Lathrop try to have me arrested for a horse thief, so I’d lie rotting in jail till Sally lost hope for keeps.”

  “Didn’t you tell everyone you were shot at?”

  “I noticed you looked funny when I told that part of it. The part you had not aimed to have done. I pistol whipped Lathrop after I made him out a liar. And that’s the man who laid for me with a gun. Who else would be lurking in that pass, with no stage, no freight, nothing expected? How would that man know way ahead of time I’d be passing through, excepting he’d been in cahoots with you?”

  “You dare start any such story,” Swift began.

  Barlow cut in, “My story sort of proves itself, don’t it? But you keep your boot lickers off of me, and I’ll save you the trouble of trying to live down a story that’ll prove itself. I’ll work with you as long as you are segundo. Turn my offer down and take your chances on what will happen.”

  Without waiting for an answer, he went to join Sally. Once they had spread a blanket beneath the Parker wagon, and wedged their backs against the spokes of a wheel, she said, “There’s a lot you’ve not told me, Pete. Don’t tell me there wasn’t more to it.”

  “You hush up, honey. This is kissing time, not talking time.”

  In the morning, Barlow set to work yoking and hitching oxen. Swift, riding one of Parker’s fancy horses, made a grand figure as he bossed the job. The lead position, being dust free, was a prize which went by rotation, but before the train got rolling, the captain had to settle a wrangle as to whose turn it was to lead. The loser showed his spirit by refusing to fall in at the rear. He swung out and found his own track, alongside the train.

  * * * *

  Within the hour, a dozen other wagons had pulled out, each bullwhacker bent on dodging dust. When a dry wash was to be crossed, there was a scramble of those from right and left trying to cut in ahead of those still keeping in column. Barlow, trudging along with his bull whip, figured that Saul Epstein had easier going.

  Toward sunset, there was a rush to be first at the water hole. The pool got all fouled and trampled. Later, Barlow said to Sally, “See what I mean? Fretting and wearing themselves out, running their animals extra miles that get them nowhere, and ending up with less time for the critters to graze—this outfit’s not going to Red Fork, it is bound plumb to hell in a hand basket!”

  “Is that why you were looking back, all day?”

  He was not aware he had done anything of the sort, but he answered, “Sure, looking at you, or trying to.”

  “But often it wasn’t in my direction. It was right back-trail.”

  “I deserted afore I got my discharge, and I’m nervous account they may be sending after me.”

  “Don’t you expect me to believe that! What are you expecting to put-over on us?”

  “Being shot from ambush leaves a fellow skittish,” he answered, and realized that whatsover obscure reason he might have, he was undoubtedly expecting more trouble from Lathrop.

  And then it was time for supper. Barlow, joining up with his mess group, was just getting his portion of stewed dried peaches when one of his messmates exclaimed, “Well, can you beat that! One man covered wagon.”

  Saul Epstein had overtaken the emigrants. Several, remembering him from his tinkering, back in Kearneyville, greeted him and made room. But Barlow, aside from bidding him good evening, was casual as though they had never before met. He figured now that however much his pondering on Lathrop’s skullduggery had kept him looking over his shoulder, he had actually been anxious for Epstein to overtake and join the train, as they had arranged.

  “If something is wrong,” the newcomer announced, “Epstein will fix it. Young man, you need some good half soles, you are pretty nearly barefooted, and I give you a special price.”

  CHAPTER IV

  Redheaded Peril

  Like most of the
girls and younger women, Laura Frazer tramped along, picking up brush for the evening fire. She contrived every so often to fall in step with Barlow as he drove Rafe Ainsley’s oxen. For all her apron-load of fuel, Laura managed to slip a couple of molasses cookies into his hand; and for a few strides, the curve of her hip brushed eloquently against him.

  The redheaded girl was slender enough, yet the wind driven calico of her dress clung close enough to make it plain that she was full breasted in a dainty way. She smiled from the shadow of her sunbonnet, and went on, leaving a promise behind her, and an invitation. She went on, easily outpacing the lumbering oxen, and still having time to stoop and pick up brush. Each glimpse of momentarily bared legs fascinated Barlow, mainly because of the smile and the promise she had left with him. He became riled with himself because it became increasingly difficult to keep his eyes and his mind off of Laura, who was by no means the only attractive and well shaped wench the wagon train offered. He did not want to think of her. Sally was plenty for any man to think of, the most exciting female critter he’d ever kissed or looked at: and he resented his response to Laura.

  He resented it because he began to feel awkward whenever he came within reaching distance of Sally. He began studying Sally of an evening, studying her face and her voice and her eyes, looking for her to reveal her awareness of his thoughts, and of the redhead’s attentions. And when he could find nothing of the sort, he was more than ever disturbed, for he felt then that Sally must know and was concealing, pretending to ignore the matter.

  Standing guard at night was different from watching cattle bedded down; oxen ordinarily were not spooky. The purpose of the guard was to keep a lookout for varmints, human or four legged, so when Laura found Barlow sitting on a blanket near the edge of the tinaja, one night, she did not interfere with his duties by joining him.

  “I couldn’t sleep,” she murmured. “I thought I screamed, but I couldn’t have, else someone’d have awakened—oooh, it’s chilly, Pete, let me have a corner of your blanket. I should’ve brought my coat.”