The Overlanders

by Nelson Nye

  There was sweat on Grete’s cheeks. With no waste of motion he stripped the belt from the man and lashed both wrists behind him. He caught up the man’s shirt and worked the rancher’s feet down into the sleeves, afterwards buttoning it all the way up. He stuffed the fellow’s socks into his mouth and bound them in place with the rancher’s dusty neckerchief. Satisfied then that he had done all he could, he quit the house, pulling the door shut after him, and got into the saddle.

  At the gate of the corral where the fillies were penned he leaned down and yanked loose the top pair of rails. He took these with him off to the side, there letting go of them. “Hup, there — hup, hup!” he shouted, swinging his rope.

  They went round the pen once showing fright and bewilderment; then, ears laid back, they rose like hunters, sailing over the remaining rails as though this were something they did every day. A snap of Grete’s rope sent them scampering up the trail. Not until he glimpsed the red eye of the fire through a crosshatch of branches did Grete draw a full breath to curse the brother he had not found.

  He didn’t have to guess what the fellow was up to; he’d be scorching the sand getting word to Curly Bill. Even if the pair were truly bona fide ranchers they would feel this obligation — which was something he ought to have thought about sooner. Nobody ranched a country tucked away as this without some kind of a tie-up with wild ones.

  A few more of these fool blunders and he’d be coyote bait! He was bone-weary, sure; but tiredness was no alibi. If a man couldn’t keep his wits awake he’d no business getting mixed up with the kind of a crew Ben had hired for that girl. Grete swore again, bitterly.

  He watched the fillies take off in the direction of the band and impatiently, testily, rubbed his aching eyes. The stars glittered coldly above dark jumbles of lava rock. The crew wasn’t going to take kindly to any move order. Those riding herd would be looking to catch some sleep and…

  Ben must have been watching for him. Grete was skirting the taller growth about the spring when Hollis came out of a shift of firelit shadows. “Wait —” he called.

  Grete looked at him sharply, then got out of the saddle. He staggered a little, catching himself, aware of the peril of allowing it to become obvious how near he was to being out on his feet. He sloshed the reins at the man, too engrossed with the effort of trying to seem natural to notice that Hollis had been already reaching. “It’s time to get moving.”

  “Couple of gents here,” Ben said. “Maybe you better see them. I’ve an idea it might change some of your plans.”

  “What gents?” Grete stared blankly.

  “Didn’t mention their names — seemed to act like you’d know. They’re over at the fire thawing out with some java.”

  Time was riding Grete hard and he was traveling in that half-land between sleep and waking or he’d have been more concerned. He swung away from the man. “Get those mares started out of here.” He forced a way through the brush, each stride taking its toll of strength and energy. There was hardly any feeling in his legs, just solid weight. It was like boggy ground clutching his boots each time he moved them.

  He pushed into the open, seeing the swirl of black shapes about the fire. He seemed to have a little trouble focusing, objects taking form as through a pitted glass. He managed to pick out Patch and the girl; he heard the grumble of cook’s voice. Sombreroed Frijoles was off to one side, a little beyond Sary, firelight winking off the drilled peso of his chin strap; one of the new pair, with a tin cup in his hand, was facing this way. Grete had never seen either one of them before.

  As he came nearer, the girl heard him and turned, mouth opening, but one of the strangers said quickly, “That’s all right — I’ll tell him.” The fellow’s hair was so blond it looked white in this light, like the hair of an albino; and the fire struck a flash from the front of his shirt as he moved to toss his emptied cup at cook’s wreck pan. Only the cup wasn’t empty.

  Farraday saw the brief splash of spilled coffee, stupidly wondering why the man hadn’t drunk it. He shoved a glance at the other man. Small cold eyes in a rock-hard face. A gash for a mouth and great hammy hands that, without regard for anything but trouble, were spread above the bulges of a pair of thonged-down leathers.

  Farraday quit moving. “You boys looking for me?”

  “If your name’s Farraday, we are.”

  “Make it quick. We’re pulling out.”

  The towhead grinned, showing teeth that had a lot of high-priced gold pounded into them. His sidekick said, “You’re wanted in connection with the death of Irv French. You figure to come peaceable or tied belly-down?”

  Grete turned completely still. He looked a long time at them, every tendon in his body stiffly, painfully alert. He scraped a hand across his cheeks. “You must have got hold of that by carrier pigeon. The guy ain’t even stiff.”

  The towhead grinned. “We been trailin’ —”

  Farraday said contemptuously, “Where’d you leave your lanterns?”

  “We’ve had enough gab,” the bald-faced one said. “Turn loose of that belt.”

  Both men had badges. Though he had his own ideas about it, Grete didn’t care where the badges had come from. He couldn’t afford to let them take him and he was in no condition to put up a fight. He didn’t reckon the crew would lift so much as a finger but he was wrong about that. While he stood there balancing his chances Ben said behind him: “You’ve lost your brass collar. Let go of it, buster.”

  Grete could tell by the pinched look of Sary’s face Ben Hollis had a gun on him. The fellow wouldn’t be needing much of an excuse to make it talk.

  The thought left Grete with an irascible frustrated sense of inevitability, a conviction this venture had been doomed from the start. “When a man beds down among wild animals I guess he oughtn’t to complain if he collects a few teeth marks.” He unbuckled the belt and felt the holstered weight of the Colt drop down his leg.

  Ben said unctuously, “All right, gents, he’s your coon. Take him.”

  NINE

  Grete sighed bitterly as the two men, grinning, stepped away from the fire. “We’d have got him anyway,” the towhead chuckled, “but your help won’t be forgotten, fella. You might even come in for a piece of the reward.”

  “A man expects no reward for doing his bounden duty,” Ben said loftily. “I’ve had my eye on this jasper ever since he tied onto this drive as trail boss. Just make sure he don’t come back on us. We got trouble enough without —”

  “He won’t be back,” Stone Face said, palming a pistol.

  Grete didn’t think so either as he stood woodenly watching their approach. These were Curly Bill men; everything about the pair lent credence to this conviction. They had smelled of the chaparral as far away as he could see them.

  “Just a minute,” Sary called. “I’m not guaranteeing one blessed thing but you two better stop right there.”

  “Sary —” Ben cried, sounding frantic, “keep out of this!”

  She’d got the .44 out of her holster while the pair had been closing on Grete and now, having put their backs to her, both star-packers, frozen, were at a distinct disadvantage. It was like a problem in chess with every available piece irrevocably anchored.

  If these truly were deputies they dared not turn their guns on a woman. And, far as that went, they dared not anyway for neither one of them, stopped flat-footed, was in any position to invite a general shoot-out. This crew was too scattered, too uncertain a quantity. The only thing, Grete knew, either stranger could be sure of was if guns started popping they’d be right in the thick of it.

  Grete was in no better shape and his need was infinitely greater. They could pinch in their hands and sweat out another deal but Grete, if he could not extricate himself, was done for. He knew what he could expect once they got him away from the rest of this outfit. Yet he hung there, wound tight, unable to get off the horns of his dilemma.

  He wanted, bad as ever in his life he’d wanted anything, to dive for the gun in th
at belt he’d let go of. But if he did, and Ben was ready, the man could cut him in two before his hand ever touched it.

  The Mexican took the chance away from him. While Farraday stood rooted, Frijoles, stalking her like a cat, came behind the girl and, catching both arms within the circle of his own, jammed them tight against her hips, swinging her away from the strangers as he did so. Grete saw it all and couldn’t open his mouth.

  She could still have fired but nobody gave a damn; she no longer had it in her power to do anything more drastic than scuff up the landscape. Both strangers had jumped for Grete with their guns out the moment they realized her advantage was gone.

  In an outburst of shame for the fears which had immobilized him Grete attempted, in exhaustion’s fettered fashion, to fight them off. A blow from Ben’s gun barrel drove him to his knees. He was trapped in a nightmare of flashing fists and flying boots vaguely glimpsed through bursts of brilliant light, of blows that came out of nowhere until, battered insensible, he was no longer aware of anything.

  • • •

  The gabble of contentious voice sounds faded. The rhythmic shriek of leather warped protestingly against dry leather, the occasional tinkling of bit chains or the ching of a rowel striking other equipment took its place in the halt-world of hell Grete awoke to. Damp ground smells and horse sweat came up through the groan of his gun-hammered bones and his throbbing head felt big as a washtub; but this also passed. For a space everything was blackly silent and peaceful.

  It was the jolt of the hip-shaken saddle grinding nauseously against the bruised muscles of his stomach that roused him finally to consciousness of his predicament and whereabouts in the peril of a threat achieved. He was traveling belly-down just as that rock-faced son had promised he would and the horse didn’t care how much skin the brush took. The horse wouldn’t care if Grete’s head smashed into a rock!

  He tried to work his navel off the hump but had no purchase from which to maneuver. The saddle was his anchor, it might soon be the last memory anyone would have of him — this picture of it toting him like a sack of grain to oblivion.

  His head was splitting, throbbing almost unbelievably with every squeeze of his heart. There was a roar in his ears from all the blood pumped into them. The burn and bind at wrists and ankles convinced him that it would be his last ride. They didn’t have to waste any lead on him. Just turn him loose on this pot-gutted cow, let out a few whoops at some appropriate interval, and geography and nature would combine to take care of him. Not nicely, perhaps, but permanently.

  He twisted his head and found a brightness behind him, presently recognizing this for cook’s fire receding through a forest of branches. When he discovered that, lying with his butt above his elbows, this gleam was below him, he knew the two strangers were heading for the pass.

  He guessed the backs of his knees must be sprung beyond redemption. His feet were chunks of ice almost totally divorced from him, his hands filled with pins and needles. He tried doubling his fists to force some slack from the ropes; nothing gave except his patience. Whoever had tied these knots was an expert.

  He guessed the voices he had heard must have come from the outfit, arguing. He drew little hope from this, since if they’d been of a mind to do anything they wouldn’t have let Towhead and his two-gun friend load him onto this horse in the first place.

  He might as well face it. He’d get no help from them. Ben was well satisfied to so easily have got shed of him; the Mexican, by his own act, was proved Ben’s man. The drunken Rip cared for nothing but his everlasting bottle. Cook hadn’t bothered to lift a finger.

  There was the girl, of course, and Idaho. Sary wouldn’t find a second chance — not with Ben back in place as Julius Caesar of this drive. Idaho was probably still with the horses.

  He didn’t know why he kept thinking of Idaho unless he could dredge up no other hope. The gunfighter had little cause to care what happened to him; his face was still scarred with the marks of Grete’s fists, his head ugly with scabs from the wreck of that bucket Grete had broken against it. He’d been prepared to tolerate Grete for the girl’s sake, had made the exact extent of that tolerance plain. It had no conceivable bearing on Grete’s present situation.

  Grete dropped his glance to the skitter and blur on the ground passing under him. The footing was becoming noticeably rough. The breathing of the horses was a series of reaching grunts, the shod hoofs of the pair ahead rattling sharply against increasing contact with malpais, every sound growing larger. By these things Grete knew they’d entered the canyon and were climbing toward the pass. It was much darker here. Looking back he could no longer detect any sign of the camp. Not even the brightness which had marked cook’s fire.

  It was time for sober reflection, for lastminute adjustments of outmoded conceptions. Grete felt the walls closing in. Indescribably depressed, he listened to the wailing of a coyote on some close-by outcrop. He hardly realized for a moment that his horse had quit moving. Half strangled by hard-breathing excitement a voice said, “Let go of that rope an’ sit tight in them saddles.”

  “Barney!” Grete choked.

  • • •

  After the badge-packers quit camp with Farraday roped belly-down to a horse confiscated from one of their work teams, Frijoles let go of the girl, jumping back with an alacrity which in other times might have dragged a smile from her. Now she hardly noticed. Sheathing the pistol he had kept her from using, she walked across to where burly Ben was bent over a bed roll he’d just heaved down by the fire.

  “You’ve got to go after him. Get Idaho and Rip. Take the whole crew if…”She stopped, eyes widening. Ben Hollis was laughing at her.

  There was something at once smug and cruel in his face as he straightened and tipped back, sardonically regarding her. Standing there, teetering a little on his boot heels, he saw the satisfaction that had hold of him like new wine. A boldness, fire-bright, was possessively rounding the beads of his eyes as they ogled her breasts — almost, she thought, going furiously hot, as though they were bare with his hands wrapped around them.

  Her skin crawled. How often had he fondled her like this without her knowing? She felt unclean from the things that ran through his face and then, her own stiffening, she put away this ugliness and brought her will like iron staves about her feelings. “Patch!” she said. When no sound came she twisted to look at him, mouth squeezing into a bitter line.

  Cook, stirring uncomfortably, pulled his shoulders together, staring back at her grumpily, not opening his mouth.

  “Idaho will go,” she said, and silence thick as fog came down. She saw Ben’s grin and started for her horse. But the man was too quick, coming solidly in front of her. “He’s bought and paid for — like the rest of this crew. Hereafter we’re doing things my way, whether you like it or whether you don’t.”

  She went up on her toes lashing out at him, cracking him across both cheeks with all her strength, the sound of the leathers loud as pistol shots. He caught her roughly against the great barrel of his chest, smothering her struggles, tearing the quirt off her wrist and furiously breaking it. The stripes stood out like a brand across his face as he flung her away from him.

  “You little slut!” he shouted, towering over her. He half-lifted a boot as though to bash in her ribs but some saner thought caught him and he stepped back, eyes ugly. “By God you’ll crawl for that!” He was shaking all over with the wildness of his passion. “Get to your blankets!” he yelled, clenching his fists. He looked half-crazy in the flickering flames.

  Cook scrubbed one hip with the flat of his hand, staring woodenly at her as she got up and stumbled off. Rip squirmed over in his bed and got his bottle. The Mexican’s eyes flickered like black coals beneath his hat but Ben was not a man to cross right then. They kept their mouths shut.

  Ben glared around a moment. “We pull out of here at daylight,” he said, slamming into his saddle.

  In her blankets Sary shivered uncontrollably. The cold got into her bones and ac
hed and wherever her whirling thoughts tried to turn the man was there, towering over her, blocking every hole of escape she uncovered. If only, she thought, she could have hung onto Farraday… In the morning she would have to find a chance to talk with Idaho. He was her only hope now. She could not stand against Ben alone.

  She heard him ride off, heard the cook and Frijoles mumbling under their breaths, then exhaustion claimed her. She was just falling into an uneasy doze when the dull clop-clop of hoofs came down through the trees to fetch the camp into wakefulness. She heard cook’s smothered curse and the Mexican’s “Quien es?” as, throwing back their blankets, they got half up, Frijoles drawing his sixshooter with his head jutting toward to peer into the dark.

  She hadn’t realized she’d been holding her breath until she heard Farraday’s long, solid voice break through the muted cadence of hoof falls.

  “Patch,” he said, “rout out the crew.”

  TEN

  Cook began banging on a pan with his pistol.

  She watched the head of Grete’s horse come out of the oaks. A second black shape coasted in behind Farraday, their elongated shadows tumbling over the ground as the animals came past the dying glow of the fire. She heard Barney’s laugh, an irrepressible excitement quavering through his voice as he replied to some question the Mexican had asked. Now hoofs were coming at a lope from the holding ground. Patch dumped a load of dead branches on the fire and climbing flames flung a shower of sparks against the crushed-crystal glitter of faraway stars. Orange light drove back the solid dark and Ben’s big shape appeared, followed by Idaho: Ben, catching sight of Grete, reined up so suddenly the gunfighter’s horse stumbled heavily into him.