by Short, Luke;
“What have I done?” Connie asked.
“Nothin’—I hope,” Bill said bitterly. “Didn’t Rose tell you you’d likely be watched?”
“But I had to see Dave.”
“See him dead?” Bill gibed.
Connie’s voice turned sharp then, and she said, “Don’t talk to me that way, Bill. I won’t take it.”
“All right,” Bill said wearily. “Get down. It’s already done.”
Bill handed her down, and Connie smoothed out her skirt and murmured, “How is he, Bill?”
“Weak as a kitten,” Bill answered grimly. “Three-four more days of lyin’ around and he’d be right enough to ride out of here.”
The implied criticism flicked Connie’s temper, and again she said with anger, “What was I supposed to do, not knowing if he was dead or alive?”
“The same thing Rose is doin’,” Bill retorted. “Wait.”
Connie sighed. “All right, Bill. Only I wasn’t followed. I was careful.”
Bill said nothing now, and Connie asked in a low voice, “Does he know about the stampede?”
“Not from me.”
Connie put her hand on Bill’s arm. “Oh, help me, Bill! I’m trying to make up for that any way I can.”
Bill asked oddly, “Think you can, Connie?”
“No,” Connie said quietly. “I’m not proud of it, and I won’t have him know it, Bill. I feel about it the way you must feel about killing Ed Burma.”
Bill was silent a long while, and then he said, “You’re guessin’, Connie. You don’t know.”
“I know,” Connie said calmly. “That’s my secret, Bill, the way the stampede is yours.”
Bill said dryly, “That sounds like a deal.”
“It was meant to.”
Bill smiled into the darkness and said wryly, “You’re tougher than a boot, Connie.”
“No, I just know what I want.”
“Dave?”
“Yes.”
“Peace be with you,” Bill said dryly. “With him, too. I’ll keep your damned secret. Now come along.”
At the head of the tunnel Bill said, “I’m goin’ to take a look around, Connie. Better get the fire goin’ now, so it will be burned out by daylight.”
Connie murmured something, and went through the brush into the tunnel head, and Bill heard Dave’s startled exclamation as he wakened, followed by Connie’s answer.
He tramped down canyon now, walking as silently as an Indian in the night. There was a feeling of uneasiness with him now that he could not entirely still. Connie had been a fool to try this, and unless her luck was fantastic, she had been followed. Some Bell hand was bound to pick up her trail; Ivey was not fool enough to let her go unwatched. He wondered bitterly, then, how much time they had. Dave was still too weak to travel.
Bill thought of Connie then, and smiled faintly. A kind of simple tolerance graced Bill Schell’s dealings with everyone, so that he wasn’t severely critical of Connie even now. She had made a mistake, and she sensed this mistake, if it became known, might rob her of the man she wanted. That was natural enough, and Bill, who had made his mistakes, too, didn’t blame her for that. Only, it was shabby. Dave Nash deserved better than that from Connie, just as he deserved better than the glib lie about Ed Burma’s death from him. There was a strange kind of integrity in Bill that made him see this, and it explained why he had stuck by Dave until now. He was, in an obscure way he himself didn’t realize, trying to atone for that mistake. Connie, though, was not, and Bill did not like it.
The inky blackness of night was lifting a little now, and in the east the stars began to fade. Bill came to the canyon mouth, and waited there, listening for anyone on Connie’s back trail. Satisfied, he turned back now, and then the sound came to him. It was a gunshot.
It was downslope a couple of miles, and Bill stood there, rooted, listening to its echo battering up through the timber, a cold misery stirring in him. And now he heard the answering shot far to the north.
This was it, he knew. They’d picked up Connie somewhere, trailed her long enough to learn she was not going to Relief, and now they were gathering.
He turned back up the canyon at a jog trot, a deep disgust and anger riding him. Connie had risked them all on a selfish whim, and she’d lost. She would lose Dave, too, unless they were lucky.
He arrived at the tunnel and found Dave, blankets wrapped about him, sitting up. He took a careful, searching look at Dave, seeing his pallor and the listlessness of his movements, and he cursed silently.
Connie was kneeling by the fire over a pan of steaks, and Bill said, “Get some food in you while I saddle up. Ivey’s after us.”
Connie whirled and came to her feet, and Bill glared at her with a cold malice and said, “Happy now?” and brushed past her toward the horses.
Dave said, “How close?”
“Couple of miles down,” Bill said. “He’s callin’ together his bunch. But we better be out of here before daylight.”
He didn’t wait for Dave to answer, but went on back to the horses. Saddling up, he thought narrowly of this, and knew a dismal feeling of impotence. Dave wasn’t in shape to dodge anybody. They’d wear him down in a day, and then it would be over. In some way he must pull them off Dave, must give Dave time to get out of here.
He led the horses out into the chill morning, and then came back into the drift. Meat and coffee were waiting for him; he took the coffee and looked up at Dave, and saw the tough, taciturn cast of his face.
Bill said, “I feel mean enough to hit anybody that argues with me. I’m boss.” He looked at Connie and saw the fear, ugly and sick, in her eyes, and his glance shuttled to Dave. “You’re takin’ Connie’s horse, Dave. Connie and me are headin’ out of here together, cuttin’ up toward the pass. You’re headin’ south, just as fast as you can ride.”
“You’ll run into them,” Dave said.
“We’ll split before we do. Connie won’t get in on it. And I ain’t worried about myself. I never saw the man yet that could get through these hills fast enough to catch me.”
Dave didn’t answer, and Bill went on in his harsh voice. “I figure when Ivey sees two pair of tracks, neither one of ’em Connie’s horse, he’ll figure it’s you and me lightin’ out. Those are the ones he’ll follow.”
Dave said flatly, “I won’t do it, Bill.”
“What other way is there? I tell you, he can’t get me, and he don’t want Connie. And I can pull him off you for a day. What other way is there?” he repeated.
Dave couldn’t answer. Bill stood up and threw his coffee grounds in the fire and dropped his cup. “No time to argue, kid. Just do it my way for once.”
He walked around to Dave and helped him to his feet. It was frightening to Bill, knowing what lay ahead, to see the big man’s weakness. He could feel Dave shake, and he saw the sweat on his forehead which his battered Stetson could not hide in the forelight. More than that, he saw the implacable stubbornness in Dave’s eyes, and knew Dave had no illusions about this either.
They walked out to the horses, which were standing in the first graying light of true dawn. Dave’s left arm hung straight and useless at his side, and his bandaged shoulder bulked a little under his coat. Connie was frightened too, and she turned away to Dave’s horse as Bill and Dave halted beside her own.
Dave looked at the horse and then at Bill, and said with a grim humor, “If I ever get on him, I’ll have to stay.”
Bill laced his fingers together and Dave put his boot in them, and Bill hoisted. There was no strength in Dave, Bill saw then. He had to fight to take his weight up, and he fell heavily into the saddle as his breath whistled thinly through his teeth. He sat there a moment, eyes closed, and Bill swiftly rolled a cigarette and handed it to him and lighted it for him.
They looked at each other in the half-light, then, and Dave said quietly, “Keep her out of it, Bill. Whatever happens, keep her out of it.”
Bill said impatiently, “I’m goin’ to
run away from her, I tell you. Hell, I’m headin’ out of the country and drawin’ Ivey with me.”
Dave put out his hand and murmured, “Luck.”
Bill took it and grinned, and Connie rode up beside them then.
Bill said dryly, “Connie, I want you to hear this, too.” He looked up at Dave. “Me and George braced Burma, Dave. I got him cold. I ain’t sorry, either.”
Dave nodded and said slowly, “I figured you did.”
Bill grinned, and looked over at Connie in the half-light, and there was a contempt for her in his eyes which she did not see, but felt. He would keep her secret, his words seemed to say, but he would not be blackmailed into keeping it. And to prove it, he was telling his own guilt.
He said dryly, “Ready, Connie,” and went over to his horse.
Connie looked at Dave then and said bitterly, “I never do anything right, do I?”
“Nobody does, except Ivey,” Dave observed.
“But look what I’ve done,” Connie said miserably. “I came up to help you, and now I’ve put the whole pack of them on your trail.”
Dave said gently, “It’d have to come some time, Connie. What I’ll remember is that you came.”
“Remember when, Dave—when you’re out of the country?”
“You want me to go?” Dave asked.
“I want you well. I’ll wait, Dave. I’ll wait forever, if you say you’ll be back.”
“I promise that, Connie,” Dave murmured gently.
At the mouth of the canyon they parted in silence in the bare light of dawn, Dave going south, Bill and Connie north.
24
Dave clung to the trails, working south in the timber, and he rode steadily without any attempt to cover his trail. But before midmorning, he knew he could not keep this up. There was nothing wrong with him except he was weak as water, and more than anything in the world he wanted to pick a spot in the sun and lie down and sleep for a week. He seemed to be sunk in a gray apathy that increased hourly, and he believed he knew its cause. It went against the pride in him to skulk out of this country like a kicked dog. Connie’s plans were wrecked and Jim Crew was dead, and Bill Schell was on the dodge and Rose’s courage had bought him only a brief rest before a beaten escape.
He came to a meadow in the timber and crossed it, feeling the sun on his back, and suddenly he knew running wouldn’t settle anything now. If Bill was buying him time to escape, then he could use that time to go back. And then he knew with a sick certainty that he could not do it. His body would not do it. It would fail him, as it was failing him now, and he would have to swallow his pride and husband his strength until he was out of reach of Frank Ivey. But he would come back, just as he promised Connie.
At the far end of the meadow he put his horse up a sharp, almost bald ridge among the timber, and the climb seemed to needle muscles he had not used, and the ache in his shoulder started again. He reined up on the ridge, and considered now. The only way left him was to the south. If he kept to these trails, riding steadily, he could work across the Federals where they leveled off far beyond the Bench, and he could pick up food and a change of horses at the south end of the reservation. That was what he must do.
His glance dragged across the tops of the trees and raked the meadow, and he knew he was looking at this for the last time. And then abruptly, he came awake. A lone horseman at a comfortable jog was following his trail across the deep grass of the meadow.
A hard awareness shocked him into action now, and the morning sun suddenly took on a sharp brightness to him as he put his horse hurriedly over the ridge and now into the deep timber, breaking away from the trail. He thought about the man behind him, wondering if he had seen him. He doubted it; there was something about the leisurely, open way he was following him that indicated he thought this was Connie ahead of him. Ivey had probably given strict orders for her to be watched, but not molested.
He concentrated now on covering his trail, but he went at it with a kind of fatalism he himself was aware of. To do a job of covering a trail, he must pick the rough spots, and he knew bleakly that he couldn’t do it well. He was certain of this when, in midday, he put his horse down a sharp bank into a rocky wash. As his horse, stiff-legged, slid down the bank, Dave gripped the saddle with his knees and could not hold. He went over the horn and threw his good arm around his horse’s neck to save himself from falling. In the wash, he spoke soothingly to the horse, and then worked his way back into the saddle, and now he knew a gray despair. If his horse hadn’t been thoroughly gentled, he would have been pitched off. Likewise, if he were driven into any kind of a run for safety, he couldn’t stick in the saddle. He faced this quietly, as he worked on down the wash. There was one thing left to do, and that was pick a spot for a stand, and get this over with.
He regarded the banks of the wash carefully now, feeling his shirt wet with a sweat that was not from the midday sun. He rounded a bend in the wash and picked out a spot to his right where a brush-tangled coulee came into the wash, and paused to study it and then the screening timber that came down almost to the lip of the bank. That would do.
He rode oh down the wash some hundred feet, and looked back. It was a straight stretch here, which was what he wanted too. He dismounted heavily and tied his horse to a root, without any attempt to hide him, and then retraced his steps to the coulee.
Once there, he walked up it, fighting his way through the tangle of brush, pausing often to rest, and then he cut over into the stand of pine. Here he sat down, gently hauling his arm around so that it lay comfortable on his lap. He drew his gun and put it beside him, and then sat down to listen and watch. The drowsy hum of the summer afternoon, rank with the scent of the pines, seemed to isolate him now, and he picked out the individual sounds.
He had a wait of perhaps a half hour, and then he heard the unmistakable ring of a horse’s shoe on the stones of the wash. He gripped his gun now and came to his knees, and the sound came closer, and presently Jess Moore’s slight figure, hunched in the saddle, came into sight around the bend in the wash.
He was looking ahead of him, and he suddenly yanked his horse up with an abruptness that almost made the horse rear.
He had seen Connie’s horse tied down the stream bed. Dave knew what was coming next. Moore turned his head to study the banks of the wash, the other side first. And then his glance shuttled to the side Dave was in, traveling slowly. He had his gun in his hand by now. At last his glance passed Dave, and then came back to him, and for a brief second the two of them looked at each other.
Dave said, “Here I am, Jess.”
Moore’s gun was already lifting, and its roar shattered the afternoon stillness. At the same time, Moore had wheeled his horse, and as Dave sighted he saw the horse cross his sights, and it was too late to stop. He fired, and the horse went down heavily, and Moore sailed over his head and was lost to sight behind the bend of the wash.
Dave came to his feet now and crashed down into the coulee, and fought his way through the brush on the other side, and came out on the lip of the bank hoping to cut Moore off.
Suddenly the bank underneath him gave way, and he leaped back, but too late. The whole overhanging shelf, eaten away by floods, caved, and he fell heavily, pitched forward on his face into the rough stream bed.
The shock of his landing was simultaneous with Moore’s shot, which was close enough to deafen him. Dave rolled over, heedless of his shoulder, and came to his knees, facing around. He leaned unconsciously on his left arm, and it gave way, and as he fell he saw Moore, hugging the steep bank, shoot again. Dave fell on his side now, his gun straight out ahead, and now he lifted it and shot twice.
His second shot caught Jess in the side, slamming him up against the bank so hard that a small avalanche of dirt started falling, and then its thin sound was lost as Moore fell heavily on his face.
Dave came to his knees now, and the old aching throb was back in his shoulder. He reached his hand inside his coat and found he could not get it i
nside for the gun he was holding, and he holstered it.
Then, still kneeling, his breath held tight against the pain, he reached in and felt the bandage wet again. He drew his hand out and stared at the thin smear of scarlet on it, and then he heard the shots. They came from below, very faint in the still afternoon. They were shots in answer to his and Moore’s.
A kind of dread came to him then. He had traded Jess Moore for another man, who would be warned and would call more help. The urgency now was something bright and sharp, and he stumbled to his feet and skirted Jess’s horse and went down the wash as fast as he could walk.
It took him a good two minutes to get on his horse. He achieved it by pulling his body across the saddle and then, regardless of pain, working his leg across and pushing himself straight.
Afterward, he pulled out of the wash and cut directly back toward the mountains, in the opposite direction from which the shots had come. It didn’t matter that he didn’t want to go that way; time enough after dark to sift down through his pursuers and shake them. For he knew with a calm certainty that he could stick this out today, but not tomorrow, and that he was going back to make the day count.
When they came to the pass road, Bill Schell pulled up short of it and waited for Connie to come alongside. When she did, he pointed to it and said, “There it is, Connie. Get in the middle of it and ride slow and head for Signal. You’ll get picked up in an hour.”
“Where are you going?” Connie asked.
Bill shrugged and looked at her and said, “I’ll work on ahead.”
“Why don’t you head for the reservation?”
Bill smiled wryly. “This road is the first thing they’d bottle up.” He pulled his horse out of the way, and made a mocking gesture for her to precede him.
“Wait, Bill,” Connie said. Her blue-green eyes were wide and sober, and she looked at Bill searchingly. “You don’t like anything about me, do you?”
“You’re all right,” Bill murmured, with a kind of raffish humor in his eyes. “You’re like a horse or a dog or a man or any other woman. Once I understand you, you’re all right.”
