Law Of the Desert Born (Ss) (1984)

by L'amour, Louis

  There were six men in the little cavalcade at the base of the cliff, searching for tracks. The rider found them there. Jim Morton calmly sitting his horse and watching with interested eyes but lending no aid to the men who tracked his friend, and there were Pete Daley, Blackie, Chuck Benson, and Burt Stoval. Farther along were other groups of riders.

  The man worked a hard-ridden horse, and he was yelling before he reached them. He raced up and slid his horse to a stop, gasping, “Call it off! It wasn’t him!” “What?” Daley burst out. “What did you say?”

  “I said .. . it wa’n’t Bodine! We got our outlaw this mornin’ out east of town! Mary Bodine spotted a man hidin’ in the brush below Wenzel’s place, an’ she come down to town. It was him, all right. He had the loot on him, an’ the stage driver identified him!”

  Pete Daley stared, his little eyes tightening. “What about the sheriff?” he demanded.

  “He’s pullin’ through.” The rider stared at Daley. “He said it was his fault he got shot. His an’ your’n. He said if you’d kept your fool mouth shut, nothin’ would have happened, an’ that he was another fool for not lettin’ you get leaded down like you deserved!”

  Daley’s face flushed, and he looked around angrily like a man badly treated. “All right, Benson. We’ll go home.”

  “Wait a minute.” Jim Morton crossed his hands on the saddle horn. “What about Nat? He’s out there in the desert, an’ he thinks he’s still a hunted man. He’s got no water. Far’s we know, he may be dead by now.”

  Daley’s face was hard. “He’ll make out. My time’s too valuable to chase around in the desert after a no-account hunter.”

  “It wasn’t too valuable. When you had an excuse to kill him,” Morton said flatly.

  “I’ll ride with you, Morton,” Benson offered.

  Daley turned on him, his face dark. “You do an’ you’ll hunt you a job!”

  Benson spat. “I quit workin’ for you ten minutes ago. I never did like coyotes.”

  He sat his horse, staring hard at Daley, waiting to see if he would draw, but the rancher ‘merely stared back until his eyes fell. He turned his horse.

  If I were you,” Morton suggested, “I’d sell out an’ get out. This country don’t cotton to your type, Pete.” Morton started his horse. Who’s comin’?”

  -We all are.” It was Blackie who spoke. “But we better fly some white. I don’t want that salty Injun shootin’ at me!”

  It was near sundown of the second day of their search and the fourth since the holdup, when they found him. Benson had a shirt tied to his rifle barrel, and they took turns carrying it.

  They had given up hope the day before, knowing he was out of water and knowing the country he was in. The cavalcade of riders was almost abreast of a shoulder of sandstone outcropping when a voice spoke out of the rocks. “You huntin’ me?”

  Jim Morton felt relief flood through him. Huntin’ you peaceful,” he said. They got their outlaw, an’ Larrabee owes you no grudge.”

  His face burned red from the desert sun, his eyes squinting at them, Nat Bodine swung his long body down over the rocks. Glad to hear that,” he said. “I was some worried about Mary.”

  -She’s all right.” Morton stared at him. What did you do for water?”

  -Found some. Neatest tinaja in all this desert.”

  The men swung down, and Benson almost stepped on a small, red-spotted toad.

  -Watch that, Chuck. That’s the boy who saved m); life.” “That toad?” Blackie was incredulous. How d’ you mean?”

  “That kind of toad never gets far from water. You only find them near some permanent seepage or spring. I was all in, down on my hands and knees, when I heard him cheeping.

  “It’s a noise like a cricket, and I’d been hearing it some time before I remembered that a Yaqui had told me about these frogs. I hunted and found him, so I knew there had to be water close by. I’d followed the bees for a day and a half, always this way, and then I lost them. While I was studyin’ the lay of the land, I saw another bee, an’ then another. All headin’ for this bunch of sand rock. But it was the toad that stopped me.”

  They had a horse for him, and he mounted up. Blackie stared at him. “You better thank that Morton,” he said dryly. “He was the only one was sure you were in the clear.”

  “No, there was another,” Morton said. “Mary was sure. She said you were no outlaw and that you’d live. She said you’d live through anything.” Morton bit off a chew, then glanced again at Nat. “They were wonderin’ where you make your money, Nat.”

  “Me?” Bodine looked up, grinning. “Minin’ turquoise. I found me a place where the Indians worked. I been cuttin’ it out an’ shippin’ it East.” He stooped and picked up the toad, and put him carefully in the saddlebag.

  “That toad,” he said emphatically, “goes home to Mary an’ me. Otir place is green an’ mighty pretty, an’ right on the edge of the desert, but with plenty of water. This toad has got him a good home from here on, and I mean a good homer

  *

  Author’s Note:

  THE TONTO BASIN

  Bounded on the north by the 2,000-foot Mogollon Rim, (pronounced Muggy Own by westerners), the Tonto Basin is a green and lovely area of pine forest, grassy meadows, running streams, and occasional springs. To the old-timers, much of what was referred to as the Tonto Basin actually lay outside of it, but it served to specify the locality.

  It was the scene of several Indian battles, including those General Crook led against the Apaches, but it is better known for the Tonto Basin War between the Tewksberry and Graham factions. This is often referred to as a war between cattlemen and sheepmen, and certainly that was one element involved, but the Grahams and Tewksberrys had trouble before sheep entered the picture. The number of people killed varies with the information available to the teller, but probably twenty-six men were killed during the war, and more likely twice that number. The father of the Blevins boys disappeared during the fighting and was probably killed. At one point, the fighting became so bitter that if a man saw a stranger, he shot him. The idea was that if he wasn’t on my side, he had to be on the other or he wouldn’t be there. Tom Horn was briefly involved. Zane Grey had a cabin in the Basin.

  *

  RIDE, YOU TONTO RAIDERS!

  The Seventh Man.

  The rain, which had been falling steadily for three days, had turned the ti-ail into a sloppy river of mud. Peering through the slanting downpour, Mathurin Sabre cursed himself for the quixotic notion that impelled him to take this special trail to the home of the man that he had gunned down.

  Nothing good could come of it, he reflected, yet the thought that the young widow and child might need the money he was carrying had started him upon the long ride from El Paso to the Mogolions. Certainly, neither the bartender nor the hangers-on in the saloon could have been entrusted with that money, and nobody was taking that dangerous ride to the Tonto Basin for fun. Matt Sabre was no trouble hunter. At various times, he had been many things, most of them associated with violence. By birth and inclination, he was a western man, although much of his adult life had been lived far from his native country. He had been a buffalo hunter, a prospector, and for a short time, a two-gun marshal of a tough cattle town. It was his stubborn refusal either to back up or back down that kept him in constant hot water.

  Yet some of his trouble derived from something more than that. It stemmed from a dark and bitter drive toward violence—a drive that lay deep within him. He was aware of this drive and held it in restraint, but at times it welled up, and he went smashing into trouble.—a big, rugged, and dangerous man who fought like a Viking gone berserk, except that he fought coldly and shrewdly.

  He was a tall man, heavier than he appeared, and his lean, dark face had a slightly patrician look with high cheekbones and green eyes. His eyes were usually quiet and reserved. He had a natural affinity for horses and weapons. He understood them, and they understood him. It had been love of a good horse that
brought him to his first act of violence.

  He had been buffalo hunting with his uncle and had interfered with another hunter who was beating his horse. At sixteen, a buffalo hunter was a man and expected to stand as one. Matt Sabre stood his ground and shot it out, killing his first man. Had it rested there, all would have been well, but two of the dead man’s friends had come hunting Sabre. Failing to find him, they had beaten his ailing uncle and stolen the horses. Matt Sabre trailed them to Mobeetie and killed them both in the street, taking his horses home.

  Then he left the country, to prospect in Mexico, fight a revolution in Central America, and join the Foreign Legion in Morocco, from which he deserted after two years. Returning to Texas, he drove a trail herd up to Dodge, then took a job as marshal of a town. Six months later, in El Paso, he became engaged in an altercation with Billy Curtin, and Curtin called him a liar and went for his gun.

  With that incredible speed that was so much a part of him, Matt drew his gun and fired. Curtin hit the floor. An hour later, he was summoned to the dying man’s hotel room.

  Billy Curtin, his dark, tumbled hair against a folded blanket, his face drawn and deathly white, was dying. They told him outside the door that Curtin might live an hour or even two. He could not live longer.

  Tall, straight, and quiet, Sabre walked into the room and stood by the dying man’s bed. Curtin held a packet wrapped in oilskin. “Five thousand dollars,” he whispered. Take it to my wife—to Jenny, on the Pivotrock, in the Mogollons. She’s in—in—trouble.”

  It was a curious thing that this dying man should place a trust in the hands of the man who had killed him. Sabre stared down at him, frowning a little.

  “Why me?” he asked. “You trust me with this? And why should I do it?”

  “You-you’re a gentleman. I trust-you help her, will you? I-I was a hot-headed fool. Worried—impatient. It wasn’t your fault.”

  The reckless light was gone from the blue eyes, and the light that remained was fading.

  “I’ll do it, Curtin. You’ve my word-you’ve got the word of Matt Sabre.”

  For an instant, then, the blue eyes blazed wide and sharp with knowledge. “You—Sabre?”

  Matt nodded, but the light had faded, and Billy Curtin had bunched his herd.

  It had been a rough and bitter trip, but there was little farther to go. West of El Paso there had been a brush with marauding Apaches. In Silver City,-two strangely familiar riders had followed him into a saloon and started a brawl. Yet Matt was too wise in the ways of thieves to be caught by so obvious a trick, and he had slipped away in the darkness after shooting out the light.

  The roan slipped now on the muddy trail, scrambled up and moved on through the trees. Suddenly, in the rain-darkened dusk, there was one light, then another.

  “Yellowjacket,” Matt said with a sigh of relief. “That means a good bed for us, boy. A good bed and a good feed.”

  Yellowjacket was a jumping-off place. It was a stage station and a saloon, a livery stable and a ramshackle hotel. It was a cluster of ‘dobe residences and some false-fronted stores. It bunched its buildings in a corner of Copper Creek.

  It was Galusha Reed’s town, and Reed owned the Yellowjacket Saloon and the Rincon Mine. Sid Trumbull was town marshal, and he ran the place for Reed. Wherever Reed rode, Tony Sikes was close by, and there were some who said that Reed in turn was owned by Prince McCarran, who owned the big PM brand in the Tonto Basin country.

  Matt Sabre stabled his horse and turned to the slope-shouldered liveryman. “Give him a bait of corn. Another in the morning.”

  “Corn?” Simpson shook his head. “We’ve no corn.” You have corn for the freighters’ stock and corn for the stage horses. Give my horse corn.”

  Sabre had a sharp ring of authority in his voice, and before he realized it, Simpson was giving the big roan his corn. He thought about it and stared after Sabre. The tall rider was walking away, a light, long step, easy and free, on the balls of his feet. And he carried two guns, low hung and tied down.

  Simpson stared, then shrugged. “A bad one,” he muttered. “Wish he’d kill Sid Trumbull!”

  Matt Sabre pushed into the door of the Yellowjacket and dropped his saddlebags to the floor. Then he strode to the bar. “What have you got, . man? Anything but rye?”

  “What’s the matter? Ain’t rye good enough for you?” Hobbs was sore himself. No man should work so many hours on feet like his.

  “Have you brandy? Or some Irish whisky?”

  Hobbs stared. “Mister, where do you think you are? New York?”

  “That’s all right, Hobbs. I like a man who knows what he likes. Give him some of my cognac.”

  Matt Sabre turned and glanced at the speaker. He was a tall man, immaculate in black broadcloth, with blond hair slightly wavy and a rosy complexion. He might have been thirty or older. He wore a pistol on his left side, high up.

  “Thanks,” Sabre said briefly. “There’s nothing better than cognac on a wet night.”

  “My name is McCarran. I run the PM outfit, east of here. Northeast, to be exact.”

  Sabre nodded. “My name is Sabre. I run no outfit, but I’m looking for one. Where’s the Pivotrock?”

  He was a good poker player, men said. His eyes were fast from using guns, and so he saw the sudden glint and the quick caution in Prince McCarran’s eyes.

  “The Pivotrock? Why, that’s a stream over in the Mogollons. There’s an outfit over there, all right? A one-horse affair. Why do you ask?”

  Sabre cut him off short. Business with them.”

  “I see. Well, you’ll find it a lonely ride. There’s trouble up that way now, some sort of a cattle war.” Matt Sabre tasted his drink. It was good cognac. In fact, it was the best, and he had found none west of New Orleans.

  McCarran, his name was. He knew something, too. Curtin had asked him to help his widow. Was the Pivotrock outfit in the war? He decided against asking McCarran, and they talked quietly of the rain and of cattle, then of cognac. “You never acquired a taste for cognac in the West. May I ask where?”

  “Paris,” Sabre replied, “Marseilles, Fez, and Marrakesh.”

  “You’ve been around, then. Well, that’s not uncommon.” The blond man pointed toward a heavy-shouldered young man who slept with his head on his arms. “See that chap? Calls himself Camp Gordon. He’s a Cambridge man, quotes the classics when he’s drunk-which is over half the time—and is one of the best cowhands in the country when he’s sober.

  “Keys over there, playing the piano, studied in Weimar. He knew Strauss, in Vienna, before he wrote ‘The Blue Danube.’ There’s all sorts of men in the West, from belted earls and remittance men to vagabond scum from all corners of the world. They are here a few weeks, and they talk the lingo like veterans. Some of the biggest ranches in the West are owned by Englishmen.”

  Prince McCarran talked to him a few minutes longer, but he learned nothing. Sabre was not evasive, . But somehow he gave out no information about himself or his mission. McCarran walked away very thoughtfully. Later, after Matt Sabre was gone, Sid Trumbull came in.

  “Sabre?” Trumbull shook his head. “Never heard of him. Keys might know. He knows about ever’body. What’s he want on the Pivotrock?”

  Lying on his back in bed, Matt Sabre stared up into the darkness and listened to the rain on the window and on the roof. It rattled hard, skeleton fingers against the glass, and he turned restlessly in his bed, frowning as he recalled that quick, guarded expression in the eyes of Prince McCarran.

  Who was McCarran, and what did he know? Had Curtin’s request that he help his wife been merely the natural request of a dying man, or had he felt that there was a definite need of help? Was something wrong here?

  He went to sleep vowing to deliver the money and ride away. Yet even as his eyes closed the last time, he knew he would not do it if there was trouble.

  It was still raining, but no longer pouring, when he awakened. He dressed swiftly and checked his guns, his mind taki
ng up his problems where they had been left the previous night.

  Camp Gordon, his face puffy from too much drinking and too sound a sleep, staggered down the stairs after him. He grinned woefully at Sabre. “I guess I really hung one on last night,” he said. “What I need is to get out of town.”

  They ate breakfast together, and Gordon’s eyes sharpened suddenly at Matt’s query of directions to the Pivotrock. “You’ll not want to go there, man. Since’ Curtin ran out they’ve got their backs to the wall. They are through! Leave it to Galusha Reed for that.”

  “What’s the trouble?”

  “Reed claims title to the Pivotrock. Bill Curt-in’s old man bought it from a Mex who had it from a land grant. Then he made a deal with the Apaches, which seemed to cinch . His title. Trouble was, Galusha Reed shows up with a prior claim. He says Fernandez had no grant. That his man Sonoma had a prior one. Old Man Curtin was killed when he fell from his buckboard, and young Billy couldn’t stand the gaff. He blew town after Tony Sikes buffaloed him.”

  “What about his wife?”

  Gordon shook his head, then shrugged. Doubt and worry struggled on his face. “She’s a fine girl, Jenny Curtin is. The salt of the earth. It’s too bad Curtin hadn’t a tenth of her nerve. She’ll stick, and she swears she’ll fight.” “Has she any men?”

  “Two. An old man who was with her father-in-law and a half-breed Apache they call Rado. It used to be Silerado.”

  Thinking it over, Sabre decided there was much left to be explained. Where had the five thousand dollars come from? Had Billy really run out, or had he gone away to get money to put up a battle? And how did he get it?

  -I’m going out.” Sabre got to his feet. “I’ll have a talk with her.”

  -Don’t take a job there. She hasn’t a chancel” Gordon said grimly. You’d do well to stay away.”

  -I like fights when one side doesn’t have a chance,” Matt replied lightly. Maybe I will ask for a job. A man’s got to die sometime, and what better time than fighting when the odds are against him?”