by Nelson Nye
Grete said to Idaho, “Get those mares lined out for the pass right away.”
No one moved. Idaho, curbing his fretful mount, turned his stare enigmatically on Hollis. Every eye in camp swung around to Ben now and this pressure, piling up, put the stain of outrage on the man’s beefy cheeks. Even Farraday, though in the dark as to the why of it, understood the decision all were waiting for was Ben’s. Grete’s own nerves, worn thin by the turmoil of these last several hours, boiled up a wicked impatience that sharpened the lines graved into his face and, pushed by the threat of Curly Bill’s intentions which would be expedited now, he cried at Ben harshly, “Tuck tail or drag iron!”
The roundabout faces grew pinched and stiff and Ben’s eyes hated all of them, shifting the blame for the bind he was caught in, absolving himself as he had done all his life. His face turned hungry with the lust to kill but his hand wouldn’t move from its white hold on the saddle. He shook his head, cheeks poisonously bloated, eyeing first Idaho then, furiously, Grete. “What happened out there?”
It was Barney Olds’ excitement-choked voice that, trembling with remembrance, said, “He killed that gunslick — cracked his skull with one of the fellow’s own guns. But the towhead got away. We figure he’s gone to fetch help.”
• • •
“Curly Bill help,” Grete said; and Ben’s lips pushed out in a sullen pout. He peered at Grete, caught by indecision; but Sary, closely watching, found a shorter word for it. The man couldn’t even find enough wind for bluster. He wrenched his fist from its clutch of the pommel and cut his horse through the blackness in the direction of the stock.
Idaho dragged his own horse around as the group broke up, Frijoles running for his mount. Cook, with his face warped to an even sourer cast, began cantankerously assembling supplies and culinary gear for packing. Idaho rode after Ben, the chin-strapped Mexican following. “Give Patch a hand, Olds,” Farraday said, and went over to Sary where she stood at the edge of firelight. She lowered the pistol that was wet from her grip, thrusting it back of her, but not before Grete had glimpsed its metal gleam.
He stopped before her, discovering again how squarely defined her shoulders were, how straight her chin, how level her glance. He nodded toward the hand she held behind her, saying “Thanks,” and continued to regard her with a long and thoughtful attention. It was in his mind to reveal the truth about that “ranch” she expected to share in, but he could not quite bring the words out. Instead he said, pretty gruff with his tone, “What do you hope to get out of this?”
She gave him back a look cool as his own. “A little security… and peace.” Always his face, when he looked at her, seemed to hold a kind of speculative reserve; it was a way he had of holding his lips as if he were not quite sure how to take her. These last hours had been hard on him; he looked like a saddle bum and a small edge of doubt crept into her thinking. Idaho’s judgment ran through her head: He’ll use you as long as it suits his ends then find him some prettier, younger woman. It kept her guard up. It made her distrust the lift of heart his nearness gave her.
Some knowledge, Farraday thought, steadily watching, hard-won and grim as death, had driven her in upon herself, forsaking the girl she might have been. Her hands, square-knuckled and strong, were used to work and, like the rest of her, capable beyond a woman’s normal expectations. She was as near self-reliant as any girl he had met and, while he was not certain he favored so much character, he admitted that she would grow on a man. It was her silence, all the secrets behind it, which took hold of his interest — the mystery of her, he thought, detesting this. The still, strong acceptance of all she had been through, all she had seen; the indomitable will to survive which had brought her here with these stolen mares. These were the factors and her woman’s body, combined with the tantalizing things he could guess at, which had built up the feelings he had about her.
“You think those two were Curly Bill men?”
“We’ll find out.”
His face seemed thinner, gaunt and sagging with fatigue. “Where,” she asked, “did the one who got away go?”
“Through the pass.”
“That’s where we’re going?”
“We haven’t got much choice,” he shrugged. “It’s that or wait for Bill’s main bunch.” He loosed a shortbreathing laugh. “One of that pair at the ranch has lit out. They’ll be coming up now from both sides of these hills.”
He was a man ridden down to muscle and bone. She said without censure, “Some of the mares are pretty sore-footed.”
“There’s not much more of this. We’ll be out of these rocks in a couple of hours if we can stay clear of trouble.”
She could face facts. “You don’t think we will.” She watched his hands make an empty gesture.
“Somewhere,” he said grimly, “we’ll run into that bunch. Those badge-toters were scouts sent out to get a line on us. French simply provided a touch of luck they hadn’t been looking for. When that towhead gets back they’ll set up a trail block — probably send somebody off to find Bill. I want to hit them before Bill has time to come up.”
Her eyes searched his face. “I think you know by now how much dependence you can place on this crew.”
“They’ll fight. For their lives.” He said, suddenly sharp, “Even a rat will do that!”
“Leaving Idaho out, that’s what you’re dealing with — rats. At the first whiff of trouble — real trouble — they’ll run.”
“Work stock’s packed,” Patch called from the shadows. “What about some mares for the rest of this stuff?”
“You’ll have to let it go.” Grete tipped his head, listening. “Mares are going into the pass now. You and Barney get started.”
“They’ll run,” Sary repeated.
Farraday scowled. “Not this time they won’t.” He turned back for his horse, finding hers waiting beside it. Moon was pretty far down. Cook threw the rest of the coffee into the fire; dark closed around them while he anchored the pot to one of his saddle strings. They could see each other, that was about all. “Let’s go,” Grete said, and they swung into their saddles.
• • •
Near dawn they came into even rougher country. These past two hours had been anything but easy. The black lava rock was gone. This was a region of steep slants and gravel grown to greasewood. Occasionally cedars lifted gnarled branches against the paling stars. Riding the drag, along with Patch, the pack horses, and Barney Olds, Sary began to breathe easier in spite of the roughness of their travel; she began to hope Grete had been wrong about Bill.
Now and again they dipped into dry washes and plowed through deep sand until rocks or brush forced them out into sight with a clatter of scrambling hoofs as they climbed. Sometimes dust like a swirling fog closed the view, flour-thick and abrasive, until a downdraft of air from cooler heights returned blurred vision.
Farraday, up at the front now riding point, scanned the terrain closely in the brightening light, studying each lingering tatter of shadow hovering like smoke beneath paloverde and cat-claw, strengthening pitahaya columns and the low-lying studdings of mescal and Spanish bayonet. Behind such cover Bill’s men could be, tawny wolves of the chaparral more deadly than Apaches.
There was no security in this land. It was a country of violence filled with wildness and terror, with deceptive sleepiness, the rip and blast of gunfire. Nothing was quite as it looked — nor so mild. It scoured the softness out of a man.
But the thought of her would not leave him. Beset as he was by the flight of time, harried by worries about Crotton and the ever-present dangers surrounding this drive, there was scant room in his itinerary for this kind of thing; yet she was clearer in his head than Swallowfork. He never had to turn to see her. Bright in memory was the way she had of holding herself, still and straight, when she looked at him, the light breaking across the sorrel surface of her hair. He remembered too well, he knew bitterly. This was what lay in the back of every man’s head — the picture of some woman.
>
It was now gray day with the last of the shadow pockets breaking up, funneling away in misty stringers as morning advanced with the strides of a giant. The air turned colder with a sparkle of frost, sending the crew hunching into their windbreakers, this swift building up of light bringing out in sharpest focus every scarp and scallop of the ragged rims. Grete, standing up in his stirrups, peered around till his glance picked out Idaho. “Bring them on!” He swung a hurrying arm.
He pulled off to the side to let them pass, narrowing his eyes against the churned-up dust, irascibly swearing. Crotton by this time could have that meadow so commanded with guns the devil himself would be hard put to find toe-room. This was just one of the things gnawing Grete; another was the fellow who’d taken Grete’s place with Crotton — a man whose memory might cause more trouble than all of Swallowfork’s gunslingers. And Sary, Grete thought bitterly, had been right about these mares. Most of them already were showing sore-footed. They would have to lay over at Willcox. Someone would be sure to carry word to Crotton.
Bays, buckskins, sorrels, and roans, with a scattering of grays and blacks, stumbled past, pushed by the calls of the rope-swinging riders. They were traveling a natural trough through these hills, twisting and turning enough to break a snake’s back. Now their dust would be flung up like a flag. He cursed that too.
Suddenly the sun was knifing into their backs, hurling its golden flood over everything, driving their shadows grotesquely ahead, miles long where they crossed a straight open. At once the chill faded. In an hour it was hot, with discarded jackets slung back of their cantles, sweat darkening the salt-rimed stains beneath armpits, lathering like soap on the flanks of the horses. Grete’s weren’t the only eyes watching the rimrocks.
The morning wore on. They nooned by a stream that was thick with willow and hackberry, wolfing down the cold food passed around by Patch, more than one of them grousing the lack of hot coffee. It was on Grete’s orders that no fire was kindled. He closed his eyes for a moment to ease the burn and, drugged by exhaustion, slept for two hours.
He awoke to find Sary’s hand on his shoulder, stared at her stupidly, then sighted his shadow. He sprang up with a curse. Everyone else in camp was asleep. “God damn it,” he snarled, “we got no time for foolishness —”
“You had to have rest.”
“We could have woke up in hell!”
“I stayed awake. I’ve had more sleep than the rest of you.” She saw the narrow-eyed way he was scowling into the west; he’d discovered the dust. “Wild horses,” she said, and lifted a hand toward the stud. “Danny knows. We saw them crossing that saddle —”
The stallion’s sudden trumpeting brought Idaho, bleary-eyed, out of the hackberries. The man hitched his gun up. The quick look he threw around cut the dust and swirled back. She saw the tightening about his jaw and mouth. Farraday nodded. “Get those fools on their feet.”
“It’s only horses,” Sary said. “The stud —”
“Horses sure,” Idaho grumbled.
“And something pushing them,” Farraday said. His tone was dry as snapping sticks. The girl stared uneasily from one to the other. “I saw them crossing that saddle —”
“You can’t see them now. Wild stock don’t travel like that without they’re pushed. Those horses are running.”
Idaho’s shout brought the men off the ground. “Put those mares in the creek —”
“Too late for that. They know we’re here.” Grete frowned at the canyon walls. “We can’t climb out this side of that saddle; if we get that far there won’t be no point to it. Bowie’s not over five miles right now. Bunch the stock. We’ll make a run for it.”
ELEVEN
Here where they’d nooned, the walls of the canyon, perhaps a hundred yards apart, ran straight for an approximate quarter of a mile. At this point, dropping, they swung north in a series of twisting convolutions, then went angling south in a kind of battered crescent as they converged on the saddle, or low notch, the girl had mentioned. There, in Grete’s recollection, they fell away entirely to form the table-flat bench which could be seen from here. The abrasive haze his eyes were focused on hung directly over the very gut of the passage where the pinched-in walls stood scarcely twenty feet apart. Grete, reviewing these facts, sat motionless. The crew was mounted, the mares were bunched, a sullen quiet came out of the way these scowling men sat waiting for orders.
Still Farraday watched the yellow creep of that dust drift nearer. It was barely a mile away, say a mile and a half if you were counting the bends. Bill’s understrappers, if Grete had the right of this, were using those broncs to mask their approach. Gauging pace by the dust, he decided they’d be burning powder within the next hour. Very possibly sooner.
Like a general Grete’s look went over the ground. A poor spot for defense and, without memory lied, nothing better to be found this side of the gut. Little cover, no shelter, no good chance for an ambush. But they didn’t have to sit and wait for Bill’s wolves…
“Come on,” he said, throwing up an arm; but Ben kicked his grulla out in front of Grete, stopping him. “Man, you sure ain’t figurin’ to go meet that bunch —”
“Why not?”
The girl’s chunky brother-in-law looked at him aghast. “God’s galluses, Farraday! If that’s Curly Bill’s bunch you might’s well shoot us down like dogs!”
“You got a better suggestion?”
“I say, by God, let’s get outa here —”
“Afoot? You can’t take a horse out of this canyon short of that saddle —”
“We can go back the way we come —”
“Go ahead if you’ve got the stomach for it. One of that pair at the ranch pulled out last night. If he’s done what I figure, you’ll find yourself faced with some more of Bill’s wolves. Way I see it they’re closing in from both ends.” Grete’s look swept the rest of them. “You can die like a rat in their trap or you can fight. I’m electing to fight,” he said, and picked up his reins.
There was a kind of bleak quiet while all hands stared at Idaho. You couldn’t tell what went on behind those raw-red cheeks still scuffed and scabbed with the marks of Grete’s fists and the bucket Grete had broken against the man’s bony head. The gunfighter’s shrewd, part-closed eyes touched Sary, then moved unreadably at Grete. “You’re the boss. Give your orders.”
Grete didn’t know if he was relieved or more worried, but this was no time to be unraveling riddles. “They know we’re in front of them but maybe not how far. We’re in no position to try any traps but we can, if we go at this right, throw those damn broncs right back in their laps. With this drive coming down on them hellity-larrup they’re going to have to drag cotton and dig for the tules. Short of that saddle, they’ll have no chance to pull up and make a fight of it — not if we hit them right. If we push these mares hard enough we ought to be onto them before they can get set.”
Idaho, studying that, finally nodded. “They won’t see our dust. But it’s like to be hell with the clapper off when this drive smashes into them wild ones.”
“We’re going to have to chance that. We’ll lose stock, but if we bring them up slow Bill’s boys will empty some saddles. There’ll be enough powder burnt when we come onto that bench. Shoot all you want, keep the mares bunched if you can, but once you’re in the open don’t stop,” he said grimly, “or you won’t ever leave there.”
He slanched a last look around, raised an arm, and the crew, shaking ropes out, got the mares on the go. Dust boiled up in a pounding of hoof sound. The mares broke into a run, gathering speed. They rocked into the first twirl of the wriggles and twists. They were slowed by the turns, whooped ahead by the yelling. Right and left they weaved, scraping rock, crowding, jostling, shrilly squealing, swapping leads in perfect unison and, heckled by the shouts and ropes, filling the passage like a wall of water.
Sweat dripped off the men, darkened and lathered the coats of the horses. Racket came off the walls like bedlam, echo piling on echo until the s
tock went crazy with it. The eyes of the mares wildly rolled in their sockets as they broke out of the twists and poured into the narrowing hoop of the crescent.
Neither side knew where the other was now. They met head-on in full career, shock reaching back into the drag of both outfits. Screams and terror jammed the passage. The batter of sound was constant. Dust boiled up until the way was choked with it. Thick as a pea-soup fog it billowed, strangling, blinding, wave on wave, pulsating, oscillating, eddying and whirling until a man could hardly find the horse between his legs.
But the drive, Grete realized, had never quite stopped. It had staggered and slowed, but the weight of momentum, of close-packed numbers, was pushing it irresistibly on through the dust and the high thin screams of mangled flesh. Now the crew was firing over the heads of the drag, stampeding the pack animals into the crush. The pace picked up — Grete could see the packs jouncing. The whole drive began to run. Sun came through in shining tatters and lances until presently, vaguely, like something glimpsed through sanded glass, Grete could see the far shapes of frantic horsemen quirting.
The crew saw them, too, at once unlimbering their rifles. This firing and yelling, the steady pressure of sound driven back and forth and redoubled by echo, drove the mares into headlong flight. Up front Curly Bill’s desperate men were flogging their mounts in a panic. Grete saw two go down, one horse briefly rising like a stick thrown out of a log jam. A yell sheared thinly through the uproar and was gone.
Now he saw the bench opening out in front of them, saw the outlaws madly spurring to quit the bench at either side. One fellow, arms and legs pitched out grotesquely, bounced off his horse backwards, mouth stretched wide in an unheard yell. Another man, with a blue coat flapping round him, clutched his chest, all control of his mount abandoned. Bill’s men were too busy trying to save themselves from being run down to have any time or thought for their weapons. Grete saw Ike Clanton’s chalk-white face and the whiskered mat of Jim Hughes’ cheeks behind a fist-shaken carbine. Then they were past, rifles popping back of them, the mares stringing out in a dash across the open, the crew spurring up on either flank, trying to close them up into threes or fours so that when they reached the bench’s far end they could funnel them into the black slot of the canyon. Grete could see the gash with its red-yellow walls where the trail found passage through these tumbled hills.
