Ramrod

by Short, Luke;

  Frank’s thick eyebrows lifted and he said slowly, “Yeah. It might make a difference to Virg.”

  “So I figured,” Burch said. He leaned back in his chair expanding under the warmth of liquor. “Funny thing. I seen Rose Leland ride out on a livery horse, and I got to thinkin’ it was a queer time for a ride. Ain’t it, now?”

  Frank nodded silently, and Burch looked over at Red to see if his story was being appreciated. Red, too, was attentive.

  “So I waited until Doc Parkinson left her place and went back to his office, so, thinks I, ‘Somethin’s happened to Curley.’ Well, I just went down to Rose’s and walked in her place.”

  “Walked in?” Red echoed.

  Burch smiled slyly. “Most folks have only got one door key and I figured Rose likely took hers, leavin’ Doc without one.” He spread his hands out. “Well, there was Curley, dead.”

  Frank said, “Crew’s still away, isn’t he?”

  “Oh, sure,” Burch said.

  Frank took a slow turn around the room and paused before Burch’s chair. “Had anything to eat, Burch?”

  “No, thank you. Wouldn’t care for any. I could take another drink of that liquor, though.”

  “Help yourself,” Frank said. “Better put up here tonight.”

  Burch declined the offer, poured himself another drink, received Frank’s thanks, and was escorted to his horse.

  They watched him ride out into the night, and then Frank said, “I better tell Virg to move.”

  Red didn’t speak immediately. When he did, his words did not seem relevant. “Who’d Rose ride out to tell, Frank?”

  Frank puzzled a moment as to what he meant, and then said, “Connie likely.”

  “Nash, more likely,” Red countered.

  Frank thought of that, immediately angry, and said, “Then Virg better clear out of here now,” and he started off toward the bunkhouse.

  “Wait, Frank!” Red called, and walked over to him. Frank could see Red’s face in the half-light from the window, and it was oddly excited.

  “How bad you want Dave Nash?” he asked in a low voice.

  Frank grunted. “Bad enough to get him,” he said simply.

  “It’s right in your hand, and clean as a whistle,” Red said, and when Frank did not answer, Red said, “We tell Virg about Curley now and he can beat Dave Nash out of the country, can’t he?” Frank nodded and Red went on, “Suppose we don’t tell Virg until daylight.”

  “Nash’ll pick him up, follow him and get him.”

  “And if we steer Virg to a spot where we got a man, we get Nash.”

  Frank smiled slowly into the night, and Red held his silence. Frank said, “They had a shoot-out, hunh?”

  “That’s what,” Red declared. “He’s mine, Frank.”

  “Take him.”

  13

  Connie went back into the kitchen, and as she cleaned up the dishes and stacked them for Josefa she thought of what had passed there on the porch. As she worked, her movements became slower, and presently ceased entirely, and she stared at the sink, her thoughts sharp and curious and suddenly resentful. It was odd that Rose Leland had ridden clear out here to bring word of Curley’s death, when she might have sent out someone from the livery. And something had passed out there on the porch between Dave, Bill and Rose Leland that she did not understand. And now that she thought of it, it was odd, too, that Curley had been taken to Rose’s place. At the time, she had thought it Jim Crew’s idea, and of course it was, but there was something beyond that. Dave was close to Rose, and she had not known it, and the discovery now was oddly sobering.

  Finishing her work swiftly, she blew out the lamp in the kitchen and moved out onto the porch and down it until she came to the door of the dark bunk room.

  Here she paused and called softly, “Bill.”

  Bill’s answer was immediate. “Comin’.”

  In a few moments he came to the door and Connie turned and walked up the porch, so she would not disturb the others, Bill at her heels. She halted then and faced Bill and said, “Where’s Dave going, Bill?”

  Bill hesitated and then said evasively, “Didn’t he tell you?”

  “No.”

  “After Virg Lea.”

  Connie accepted this with faint surprise and no shock. After all, Dave had said he would take care of this in his own way, and now his own way was apparent to her. He had waited for Curley’s death, which was the clear justification for this. Or was it?

  “What will Jim Crew do?” she asked them.

  “Nothin’.”

  “But no matter how much Lea deserves it, it’ll be us who got him.”

  “No,” Bill said slowly. “That don’t count, Connie. Anybody that’d do what Virg done to Curley is a dead man. Crew don’t care. He’d shoot Virg himself, except he’s the sheriff. I wish I could.”

  “I see,” Connie said slowly. “Good night, Bill.”

  She stepped off the porch and strolled toward the corral in the night, and as she walked she found a slow resentment building up inside her. Dave had told Rose of his plans to go after Lea, of course, or she would not have brought out the word of Curley’s death. And he had not bothered to tell her, his employer. When Connie thought about that, her pride was touched. It wasn’t that she cared if Dave knew other women, she told herself; it just galled her to think that another woman knew more of his plans for 66 than she herself did.

  Men, she thought with a sudden contempt, were strange and inconsistent in many ways. Here, for example, was Dave keeping Bill Schell under vigilance in case Jim Crew turned up evidence that Bill had killed Ed Burma unfairly. And now he had ridden out to get Virg Lea, and would kill him.

  In one instance it was wrong to kill a man, in the other it was right and had the sheriff’s tacit sanction. It was grotesque, Connie thought resentfully.

  She stopped at the horse trough and idly dipped her fingers in the cool water. Her thoughts kept returning to Jim Crew. Their whole lives, she thought resentfully, were dedicated to trying to crowd the other side into a move that would forfeit Jim Crew’s help. Dave thought so, and apparently Ivey thought so, so it must be true. Connie tried to be contemptuous of Crew, then. He was an old man, aloof, almost unfriendly, and his office was a sinecure. And then she remembered her father’s stories of Crew, and the respect all men accorded him, and she knew there was a reason behind it.

  Then there must be some way to force Frank Ivey into the wrong, so that Crew would be with 66 irrevocably. There must be a way, and she had to find it, because that was what would win for her.

  Slowly, then, it came to her. At first it was just a faint whispering of thought, and then it held on and grew, and she let her hand rest motionless in the water. The full implication of it came to her and for minutes she stood there, searching for a fault in it. She could not. It was a wild gamble, and if it worked, 66 was on top. Beyond that it was her own idea, which neither Dave nor Rose Leland nor any other outsider would share.

  For perhaps ten minutes she walked back and forth in front of the horse trough, and finally looked up toward the house. She saw the dim coal of Bill Schell’s cigarette up there, and she turned toward it.

  When she was close to the porch, she called softly, “Bill, come with me.”

  The cigarette arced out into the night and Bill approached her silently, and she turned now and walked over to the wagon shed. The spring wagon was still out, and she seated herself on the tongue and was silent so long Bill shifted his feet restlessly, trying to see her in the dark. She felt a kinship to Bill now, and recklessness in his talk and his very posture was reassuring.

  “Bill,” she said finally, “how far can I trust Tom and Bailey?”

  “Not far,” Bill said dryly. “They come here for a crack at Ivey, and that’s all.”

  “This is a crack at Ivey—one Dave must never, never know about.”

  “That’s different. They’ll be all right.”

  “I’ve got to be very sure it’s me they’r
e loyal to, not Dave.”

  “If you can show ’em a way to hurt Frank Ivey, you could nail ’em to them barn logs,” Bill said solemnly.

  And Connie, believing him, told him her plan.

  14

  At first light of day Dave moved his horse back deeper into the foothills timber and shucked out of his slicker, which he had worn during the cold night vigil. He unsaddled and put his chestnut out on picket in the thin light of morning, and then knelt and tied his slicker on his saddle. Rising then, he flailed his arms across his chest a dozen times until he was warm against the chill of dawn, and afterwards built a smoke, listening idly to the shrill morning song of the birds.

  His smoke tasted strong and bit into his lungs with a pleasant harshness. He shook out his match and rubbed the burnt end between his fingers, and then moved toward the shoulder of the ridge on his right.

  He came up behind a tree and moved slowly around it and sank to his heels beside it, looking off at the steep timbered slope and flats beyond. The shape of the country was now plain, and he saw the far side of the canyon which marked the entrance into Bell, saw the faint V of the wagon roads meeting at its mouth to ribbon up the canyon out of sight.

  He was patient now, but he was also curious. Doc Parkinson had promised Rose only a two-hour start. It seemed to him someone around Signal friendly to Frank Ivey would have brought out word of Curley’s death before now. Frank Ivey was no fool, either; he would tell Virg Lea to drift, and unless Lea was senseless he could read the future. Jim Crew would pick him up and Ivey wouldn’t lift a finger to help him, so there was nothing to do but get out of the country while there was still time. And he had not passed here tonight.

  Dave knew there was no other way out of Bell’s headquarters place except through this canyon. He sat now against the tree and finished his cigarette, and afterwards his patience was steady and he watched the country below take on shape and substance as the dawn turned into day.

  The sun crawled swiftly down the slope and touched him with no warmth and finally was on the flats, and then he saw the two riders come out of the mouth of the canyon. He watched them, not moving, noting the pack horse with them, and saw that one of these men was Lea. He rolled another smoke and finished it, while the two horsemen, striking straight east, finally disappeared over the roll of the flats. Lea, then, was heading east off the Bench into the Breaks, since if he went out through the Federals there was the likelihood of meeting up with Crew, who could guess the reason for him being there. The presence of the second man puzzled him. It wouldn’t be a partner or a friend, since a man who would do what Lea did to Curley was not the breed of man who made friends. Beyond that, no man would side Lea now. It was too dangerous. It might be that Frank Ivey, in acknowledgment of a debt to Lea, had supplied a companion to guarantee safe-conduct as far as the Breaks. Dave rose and went back to his horse and saddled up, his mind running carefully over this. He must watch the second man and account for him before he moved in.

  In the saddle, he put his horse along the foothills toward the south until he was a safe distance away from Bell’s canyon, and then cut east across the Bench. An hour later, he saw from the Ridge the three pinpoints of dark color barely distinguishable from the tawny rolling grasslands, still heading east, and he went on.

  Now, however, he kept well to the south, heading for the nearest jutting of timber on the Bench’s east boundary, and he traveled steadily, taking advantage of the cover he could find. He knew Lea and his companion would pause on the edge of the timber for a long look over their back trail, and he was willing to sacrifice distance for the security of the timber.

  He reached it some hours later, and without pausing sought and found a cattle trail that took him northeast again. He rode steadily, sitting slack and somnolent in the saddle, and he had no taste for this chore. But it was one that had to be done, and that custom had put upon him, just as it had allowed him to tell Crew of his intentions, and allowed Ivey to disclaim the deed that made it necessary.

  Sometime in the middle afternoon he came upon a trail that held to the east and he reined up short of it and dismounted to study it. There were three sets of tracks, and he memorized them each, and gave special attention to the shoe marks of the pack horse, which were over the others because he would be led through the timber.

  Afterwards, Dave moved east, not crossing the trail, and came back to it now and then, always careful of his approach. He was brought up by the abrupt falling away of the land and the timber thinning out. He saw ahead of him and below through the sparse trees the beginning of the Breaks, a stretch of dun-colored and sterile clay dunes and rubble monuments.

  Here he sat long in the saddle, his feet out of the stirrups, studying the shape of this country ahead. The Breaks were new to him, and yet there was a pattern in Lea’s flight if a man could read it. The land drained imperceptibly to the south, and that way lay the dry country of the Mormon Sinks. Lea would avoid the settlement to the north, and head for the lonesome places to the south until he was well away from here, so Dave judged his course accordingly.

  To follow Lea’s trail was out of the question; the Breaks were too barren of cover, the trails too tortuous and the whole country lent itself to ambush. Too, his horse would leave a plain track in the soft clay for any man to read whose caution prompted him to circle back on his trail.

  Dave found a way off the Rim a mile below where he came in sight of the Breaks, and was soon deep in its tangled stillness. Once in the early afternoon, he cut sharply east, following the rocky bed of a stream until he came upon the place where the trail crossed. The tracks were there, bearing steadily south; he crossed the trail, now, trusting to the rocks of the stream bed to hide his tracks, and again swung south.

  As the sun heeled over, this bleak country around him began to take on color and cast fantastic shadows across the ravines and canyons. After the heat of the middle day had eased off somewhat, the birds began to fly again, and now Dave watched them. A hawk cruising high off in the west dipped a wing and came down to look at something far ahead of Dave and, satisfied, wheeled off incuriously. As the shadows lengthened, Dave began to see a pattern in the flight of the occasional birds to the southwest, and he judged there was water there, and put his horse in that direction. The trails of the smaller animals, as fixed in their habits as man, confirmed this presently, for they too paralleled the flight of the birds.

  Dave pulled sharply west, then, wanting another look at the trail. When he found it, he dismounted and studied it, and saw immediately that one rider was missing. Kneeling there, his curiosity sharpened. The second rider might have turned back, or he might have only dropped back to scout the back trail, or he might even have lagged behind in order to approach the water from another direction and protect the first man.

  Dave made a quick decision then. He put his horse on the trail and went back, watching the trail carefully. At last he came upon the spot where the second rider had parted from Lea. Dave followed his tracks long enough to make sure he was headed home, and then he again turned south, and knew that Lea was ahead of him at water, camped alone.

  Now he kept to the soft clay, moving south in the beginning dusk, and presently, with nothing except instinct prompting him, he dismounted, ground-haltered his horse and set out afoot.

  The land soon started to fall away, and Dave cut to the right, walking carefully. He climbed a steep slope after several minutes, and from its eminence he could see several hundred yards ahead. There he could make out the soft shape of clay dunes, but between himself and these dunes was a depression. This, Dave judged, was the water hole.

  He moved more carefully now, keeping right, and when he saw the last small ridge ahead of him, he bent over and crawled up its side and took off his Stetson. He did not move, only listened, and presently he caught the unmistakable sound of a horse stamping flies.

  He moved up, and looked over. The land lay in the shape of a large saucer; in the very center of the depression was an oval
pool of water, its surface reflecting the bright blue of the high sky. There were two horses picketed side by side to the right of the pool, facing away from it, a bedroll and saddles at their heads.

  And by the water’s edge knelt a man. His hat lay beside him, and he was in the act of stripping off his shirt. The flesh of his broad back gleamed whitely in the dusk as his shirt peeled off. It was Lea.

  Dave unbuttoned the flap of his holster, rising, and stepped over the lip of the ridge and walked slowly down toward the man. One of the horses turned to eye him, and he made no attempt at stealth.

  He saw Lea’s hand move out to drop the shirt, and then it paused, and his head came up as he listened.

  Dave halted and said, “Get on your feet,” and his voice was oddly loud in the dusk.

  Lea swiveled his head then and the two men looked at each other, and Lea’s hand let go of the shirt, and it fell soundlessly.

  Dave waited, giving him time to crowd his nerve into the one desperate try they both knew he must make. The fear and the despair were in Lea’s long face, and he knelt there, watchful, making no move.

  Dave said, “I won’t tell you again. Get on your feet.”

  He saw the muscles in Lea’s right shoulder jerk suddenly, and Dave reached down for his gun. Lea flung himself sideways, toward Dave, and landed on his belly, grunting, and his gun swung around dragging in the gravel at the bottom of its arc, and he fired hurriedly, desperately. Dave sighted along his lifting gun and pulled too high, and again Lea shot, and now along the sight Dave saw Lea’s legs, and then his back, and then his shoulders, and he fired.

  The sound of his own gun was the only thing he had heard. He saw Lea’s body jar, and the man fought almost to his knees, and then pitched heavily on his face, and where his neck met his shoulders the stain welled out and down into the sand.

  One of the horses snorted uneasily, and then it was quiet, and Dave walked over to Lea and stood above him. He was oddly aware now of his own heart pounding, and of the still-heightened awareness of his senses, so that Lea’s body, in the dusk, seemed visibly to deflate inside the relaxing muscles.