The Overlanders

by Nelson Nye

  “Packs are going to leave deeper sign,” he told Barney Olds, pointing out the difference. “I want you to keep Miz’ Hollis’ bunch back, run them right over our tracks all the way. Been with her long?”

  The kid shrugged, staring off into nothing until Grete said, “Queer kind of crew to fetch along with a horse drive… Reckon they worked for her husband and she didn’t have the heart —”

  Barney Olds said scornfully, “Tate wouldn’t of give these scrubs the time of day!” There was the heat of indignant anger in the look he slanched around him. “Never had no crew since I been with him; took every cent he could get his hands on to keep that sorry goddamn Ben —”

  The kid quit, got red and glared resentfully at Grete. “I better git at my work,” he said and walked at a horseman’s saddle-cramped stride to a white-stockinged sorrel draped over its reins.

  Farraday, swinging up, waved a hand and Sary started the held band of mares. If she hadn’t hired this crew it must have been Ben. It was something to think about.

  “Take over, kid.” He nodded when Sary came up, and waved her on. “Make sure they’re all barefoot,” he said, and cut after her. “Where’s Rip?” he asked, pulling the dun in beside her.

  She waved a hand. “On that bay, riding drag.”

  “Takes most of his nourishment out of a bottle.” At Grete’s tightening lips she said defensively, “There wasn’t much time. Ben did the best he could.”

  There was a blend of things in this girl that troubled Farraday, considering her out of the corner of his eye; a wound-up tightness and hunger, some unsatisfied need, that could take them into dangerous places — as it was taking them now. While he was still pondering this, grown irritable and dissatisfied, she said, “You’ll not be at all surprised, I think, to learn you’re driving stolen stock. You probably guessed as much when you named the terms. My acceptance told you how desperate I was.”

  “But not why,” he said, liking her better for the admission.

  “A woman’s reputation is more brittle than a man’s.” She seemed to study this a while. “Don’t think I’m crying after mine; what I’ve done I did with my eyes open. It’s just…” Her voice turned small. “It would be intolerable to discover I had traded it for nothing.”

  He could understand that. He might be sharing the same intolerance if it turned out he’d thrown up a good thing without acquiring the ground he’d quit Crotton to file on. “You’ve got to go through with it.”

  “I intended to,” she nodded. Now she looked at him squarely. “It’s not the law I’m afraid of — it’s this crew. They’ve got it rigged to take over once we get to Arizona.”

  “It figures,” Grete said, and scrubbed a hand along his jaw. “I’ll take care of that.” He flashed a sudden smile. “And who’ll take care of me?”

  She said in damned grim earnest, “One man I can probably handle. And it will surely be you if it looks like I’m headed for the short end of this stick.”

  FIVE

  Grete put in a long day.

  He kept flankers out — “Just like the goddamn Army!” cook testily grumbled — and pushed the stock until even Sary protested. “They’ll be nothing but skin and bones!”

  “But they’ll still be ours,” Grete reminded her curtly, and rode on ahead again, making sure their route led through plenty of horse sign. The wild stock in this country kept the grass chewed down to where there practically wasn’t any. It hurt him to see the pinched look of these Shilohs but it would hurt a lot worse to have Curly Bill grab them, and he kept reddened eyes constantly prowling the horizons, searching for riders or the glint of equipment, detouring places that looked built for an ambush.

  Around three o’clock he rode back past the drag to make careful scout of the back trail. Near as he could figure, since abandoning the wagons, they had come about twenty miles, twenty long and dusty miles which — considering this trek had originated in Texas and had just stumbled out of the Jornada when he had come up with it — was about all a man could look to get out of them without he was willing to risk grave losses. A cavalry patrol, even accompanied by wagons, could rock off a regular four miles an hour, but cavalry was grain-fed, toughened to it, and carried along by gaiting with fifteen-minute periods for rest. Twenty miles for this bunch was humping and Grete expected, before going into night camp, to chalk up another five.

  He wanted, if he could, to get clean away from the region where French’s boss would start hunting them. For hunt he would — Grete was positive of that. Curly Bill was a bold man, and deadly, a wastelands pirate in the shieldfronted shirt and rollbrim hat of the cowhand, a man who stole cattle by the entire herd and would go a long way to get hold of good horses which, in his kind of business, were an emphasized must.

  Grete studied the spread-out folds of ground wave by wave without picking up any sign of pursuit. In all that vast stretch of earth and sky there was nothing to arouse suspicion except the lack of it. Bill’s marauders, like Apaches, were seldom seen before they struck. Grete sat fifteen minutes inspecting various dust devils before putting them down to the antics of random air currents. And even then he was not satisfied. He would like to have had a glass on that country. Curly Bill around town might be a jovial sort of hail-fellow-well-met — an impression he deliberately cultivated; but found on a trail he was strictly business with no more compunctions than you’d find in a tiger. He raided army posts for remounts, killed prospectors and Mexican smugglers with impunity, stuck up stages, and occasionally sacked a bank. Not that you could prove it — Bill wasn’t the kind to leave proof laying around.

  Farraday wheeled the dun, more nagged by worry than he was willing to admit. While he lallygagged here the boys up ahead could be riding into a trap.

  Not Idaho, he decided. That casehardened scrub was too wide between the horns to ride into anything he couldn’t see through. Or was he?

  Grete thought back to that business of yesterday, the way that cat-fingered son had jumped him, but Sary had probably been back of that; you couldn’t tell what a galoot would do where a woman had got herself mixed into it. Packing a grass rope and forking a hull girthed front and flank, there was a look of Texas about the fellow; but there were Texas men in Bill’s bunch too and this sidewinding saddle stiff might be one of them.

  Farraday was about to swing into a lope when a piece of scuffed ground came under his eye, turning him back for a more careful look. His mouth tightened when he found what he’d seen to be exactly what he had figured it to be — the print of a shod hoof freshly made.

  And there were others, equally fresh, up ahead, and more of them back of him like a trail of dropped sticks.

  Farraday’s eyes slimmed flintily. One of his own crew was leaving this sign. It wasn’t scrabbled in with these barefoot tracks but laid on top of them. He said, “That goddamn kid!”

  He dug hooks in the dun. But after the first quarter-mile the jarring pound of the pace began to shake holes through the blindness of temper and he let the horse drop back into a walk. Olds was only a boy with a boy’s harum-scarum feather-headedness….

  But this wasn’t the way he remembered the kid — a boy, yes, but one trying to fill the boots of a man. Barney would never have forgotten to pull the iron off his mount. Was this deliberate then?

  What other notion could a man put upon it? Those tracks hadn’t got here by accident.

  Grete’s half-shut eyes scrinched thoughtfully. He’d detached those mares from the rest of the band in an attempt to avoid what he now was confronted with. It had to be the kid; to have done as directed — to handle the mares at all — Barney Olds would have had to keep them ahead of him. It had to be the kid’s horse.

  Staring after that curtain of shimmering dust, Grete was sure no outsider could be putting down tracks between himself and those mares. There was, right here, no place a strange rider could hide — he would have to be in sight of either Grete or Barney Olds.

  Hating this, Farraday looked around again but there w
asn’t a brush patch larger than a pig, no concealment at all for a man on a horse. Or for a riderless horse. Sick with revulsion, outraged, furious, Grete put the gelding into a run. This wasn’t a chore that putting off would take care of it. It was a question of survival and he had to act for all of them.

  A hundred yards short of the drag he pulled rein to loosen and resettle the big gun at his hip. A man didn’t like to throw down on a kid but a small snake could kill you just as certain as a big one, and this was treachery. On second thought he withdrew the gun and rode with it cocked across the pommel of his saddle.

  Through the dust he caught blurred glimpses of the mares and now he saw the rider, hunched over and nursing the cant of a rifle. Holding the dun to a walk he put him into their tracks and the gelding’s longer stride began to overhaul Olds. It wasn’t being heard Grete was scared of but of the kid twisting around and, suddenly discovering him, being stampeded into clawing for his trigger. It could happen that way.

  But it didn’t. The mares had just rimmed the brow of a rock-strewn ridge when something turned the fellow and their glances briefly locked across that gray powdery swirl of churned-up dust. There wasn’t fifty feet between them. Both men were startled. It would have been difficult to say which was the more surprised, French or Farraday. French whipped up the rifle. Flame popped out of its mouth like a snake’s tongue. A mushroom of smoke swirled against the dust. Flame came out of it and, finally, the racket.

  The fool was firing too fast, banking on luck or sheer speed to get the job done. Farraday’s eyes were polished granite. Without flurry or fluster he got the man in his sights and squeezed off one shot. The sudden plunging whirl of French’s horse saved the man, yet even so the slug smashed into him, spilling him, screaming, out of the saddle.

  Grete saw the mares tearing off like a twister, the shapes of spurring riders plummeting toward him from two directions, but the core of his attention remained unwaveringly on French who still had hold of his mount by one rein and was trying to get onto his feet against the tug of it. The man had lost his rifle but he still had a pistol and Grete expected him to go for it.

  The riders pounded up and Ben Hollis, shouting furiously, demanded to be told what Farraday thought he was trying to pull off here. Grete saw Sary and the kid and back of them another man staring with big eyes while his yellow snags of teeth worried the cork out of a bottle.

  “Irv took first shot,” Grete said. “Let him explain it.”

  French was white-faced above the blood on his shirt and was shaking like a dog caught out in a blue norther. He said in a quavery outraged voice, “I never even fired at all!”

  Grete had started to shove the pistol back in his holster but now, scanning their faces, changed his mind and kept hold of it. “Maybe,” he said scornfully, “I just imagined the whole thing.”

  French fumbled the gun from his hip and with an affronted look held it out to the girl. Sary held up the barrel and sniffed and shook her head, too shocked to speak.

  “Not that,” Grete said. “He was using a rifle.”

  They all looked at French’s horse. “What rifle?” Ben said.

  “It’s around here somewhere. He must have let go of it when he went out of the saddle.”

  Ben, the kid helping, scuffed around in the dust, his thoughts very plain when he gave over to stand peering up at Grete blackly. “Why would he shoot at you?”

  Sary got down, still holding French’s pistol, and went over to the man, telling the kid to fetch water — “and Rip’s bottle,” she added.

  But Ben wasn’t leaving it there. “Why would he shoot at you, Farraday? If you’ve anything to say you’d better get at it.”

  Grete said in cold contempt, “I caught him leaving sign for his friends. When he saw I was onto him he grabbed up that rifle.”

  “What kind of sign?” Idaho asked, face expressionless.

  Farraday waved his left hand. “Look around.”

  Idaho, considering him, presently nodded, “Kid, take a look,” he said. Sary got through with her first aid on French and gave back what was left in the bottle to its owner. The fellow held it up to the light, took a swig and drove home the cork. The kid, who had been prowling with a plain and growing bewilderment, now looked past the sneering Ben to say to Grete, “What kind of sign?”

  “Shod hoofs,” Grete said, tightening his grip on the pistol.

  The kid shook his head. “You better show me where.”

  Cold warning slapped through Grete like a hatpin, narrowing his stare, touching off all the alarms he had so carefully buried in a growing disquiet. He said through the frozen mask of his fears, “You’d better look, Sary. Go back a ways where they haven’t boogered up the ground.”

  Her glance was uncomfortably remindful of the searching look he had got from the gunfighter but she moved away, following Olds without comment. Ben’s hateful stare, grown rank with distrust, unwinkingly watched through the layers of silence that were like walls of stone going up around Farraday.

  Grete said, “Somebody better keep an eye on those Shilohs.”

  “Patch is out there. So is Frijoles.” Idaho, turning his horse, sat apart with an ox-like patience while they waited for the girl and Barney Olds to return. The fellow with the bottle rasped beard-stubbled cheeks had peered around with bleary eyes that seemed to have a hard time focusing. His stomach rumbled and a belch came out of him and French crawled into his saddle with a groan.

  “How bad is it, Irv?” That was Ben. His eyes watched Farraday with the steadiness of a cat’s.

  “I’ll live through it,” French muttered; and then Sary was back with her glance like two holes hacked through winter ice.

  Farraday knew without asking she hadn’t found anything. “You didn’t go far enough.”

  Ben’s eyes were ugly. “If there was tracks she’d of found them.”

  This appeared to be in line with what the rest of them were thinking. “Pick up the feet of his horse,” Grete said doggedly.

  French sneered when she came over but offered no objections. Sary lifted the animal’s feet one by one, displaying its hoofs. Grete, recalling his earlier conviction, said, “Try Barney’s,” but the result was the same. The hoofs of both horses showed where nails had been pulled but there were no shoes in evidence.

  Rip took another gurgling snort from his bottle, rammed the butt of it down the side of his coat and, imaging it safe in his pocket, let go. The bottle shattered on a stone, its trickle of whisky staining the dirt. He hiccuped and said with a drunk’s owlish gravity: “How unsearchable are His judgments, how inscrutable His ways.”

  Nobody laughed. They were all watching Grete and he reckoned by their looks he might as well argue with the shadow of death as try to carry this business any further. “Let’s get this drive moving.” He waved them away with the barrel of his pistol. “We’ve got another four miles to put under our belts and we’ll do it if we have to trail half the night!”

  Ben wanted to make something more of the shooting but, finding no encouragement, rode after the others.

  “Sary —” Grete called, but she paid no attention. French went off with the rest of them but the kid, after a bit, swung around and came back. He looked uncertain, a little worried. “If you want to crawl my frame…”

  “Forget it,” Grete said, his bleak stare following Sary.

  But the kid wasn’t built that way. “If I’d stayed back here like you told me —”

  “Let’s get these mares moving. What’s done is done. Crying over spilled milk ain’t going to butter no parsnips.”

  The kid pulled his mouth together but the knowledge of his part in what had happened back there was a thing his conscience couldn’t let be, even if the boss did choose to ignore it. He kept covertly eyeing the granite look of Grete’s face and, after they’d gone about a quarter-mile, blurted, “I’d be glad to go back an’ look again for that rifle.”

  Farraday glanced at him sharply, then shrugged. “Suit yourself.” />
  He heard the kid turn his horse, fading away in the dust which, back here, was like riding through a bowlful of smoke. These mares had been on the trail long enough that a man didn’t have to keep taking off after one. They’d have followed the stallion anyway. Normally the only problem a crew would have on a drive like this was keeping the boss horse headed where you wanted the band to go. The big problems here were strickly two-legged ones. The composition of the crew. The proximity of outlaws.

  Farraday knew Ben hadn’t half looked for that rifle. He couldn’t see that it would make any great amount of difference whether Barney came back with the gun or not; be pretty hard now to tie it to French. His mount’s shoes were likely tucked away in Irv’s pockets. He’d been pretty damned cute any way you wanted to look at it.

  Grete was scowling at the hair between the dun’s ears, still thinking about it, when Idaho, coming up through the dust, cut his horse in beside him. “Where you figurin’ to camp?”

  “Don’t know,” Grete said. “We’ve got malpais ahead. I’d like —”

  “How far ahead?”

  Grete shrugged again.

  “We ought to hole up while we can see what the chances are.”

  Farraday scowled at him. “Pick your own place,” he said. “I figure you and me have got no fuss that can’t wait.”

  “My notion, too.” Staring at Grete, Idaho seemed to be trying to make up his mind to something. He finally brought out four shoes from the slicker strapped back of his cantle. “I’ve got nails if you need ‘em.”

  Grete took the shoes and looked a long while at the barred one. Then his glance bit at Idaho. “How’d you get them?”