“Black stallion?” Lasting growled.
Ben showed surprise. “Why, yeah, big frisky fellow, long stride.”
Lasting grunted his thanks and turned as Blake said, “Ragnall, alias Ringo Nyall.”
Lasting’s lips tightened. “Seems like.”
“The girl came from Cheyenne and so did Nyall,” Blake said. “Forty thousand dollars’ worth of gold bullion is being toted through your territory, Lasting. How would you carry gold that heavy?”
Lasting scowled. “Buckboard.”
Blake turned into the yard at the end of the foyer and looked north. Joining him, Lasting said, “Sure seems to fit, don’t it? Nyall needed somebody to get a buckboard out here to him. So he fixed it for his woman to come and bring it. Meantime he’s likely hidden the bullion someplace. Now they’ll get it, stash it in the buckboard and kick their dust in our eyes.” He swore savagely and punched the overhang post. “Damn it, the woman’s in on it all the way through.”
Blake shook his head. “I don’t think so. I talked to her. She has family problems, needs money. As far as she knows, Zeb Ragnall is a miner who struck it rich. I doubt if she’s ever heard of Ringo Nyall.”
Lasting looked unconvinced. “Think what you like, Durant. Do what you like, too, because I reckon you’re cleared.”
“You’ll need a posse,” Blake said. “While you’re getting it, I’ll saddle up my horse and head out. My trail and theirs shouldn’t be too hard to follow.”
Lasting’s scowl darkened. “How come it’s your business, Durant? By hell, why should you buy in? Figure there’s bounty at the end of it?”
“I’m worried about the girl. If this Ringo Nyall is only half the hellion you seem to think he is—”
“Hellion and worse, Durant! Ringo Nyall’s about the scummiest damn jasper who ever threw a leg over a horse. Got a price on his head—robbery and murder.”
“Then Miss Grant is in trouble, isn’t she, Lasting? And time’s short. I’ll see you ... if you ever catch up.”
Blake stepped into the yard and Lasting snapped, “Now hold on. I don’t know as how I like you buttin’ in. You want to come along, you can offer yourself for posse work.”
Blake kept walking. At the yard gate he looked back. “If you run into Isaac Madie, best tell him what you’ve found out. Madie and his boys could come in right handy if you corner Nyall.”
Blake used the back street to dodge the Madies, suspecting that another meeting with them would be of no advantage to him whatever. He reached the stable a few minutes later and saddled up Sundown. As he mounted the big black he heard shouting in the street. Then men were running towards the stable.
Blake hit Sundown into a run and the night swallowed him up as he left Glory Creek behind.
Four – Crowded Trail
“What you reckon’s goin’ on, Pa?” Mark Madie asked the big man.
Isaac gave him no reply as he watched the men gathering outside the jailhouse. Luke was reclining against a store wall, pulling on his bottom lip and cursing his father under his breath for putting a welt over his right eye and bruising his left cheekbone. He swore he would cut out on his own just as soon as an opportunity presented itself.
“Find your brother and get your horses,” Isaac said finally. “Be quick about it.”
But even as the two brothers began to move away, John came running across the street from the end of town. He tripped over something in the dust, fell headlong, scrambled to his feet and raced full pelt towards his father and brothers.
Pulling up breathless, he gasped, “Pa, that Durant just rode out.”
“I’m his keeper?” Isaac growled, twisting away to escape the odor coming from his youngest son’s grubby body.
John frowned, unable to comprehend his father’s meaning. Then, giving it up, he went on, “Seen him go with the sheriff into the rooming house, Pa. They talked to the clerk. I got real close and heard everything they said.”
Isaac sighed mightily, glanced again at the men gathering outside the jailhouse, and snapped, “What did your sneak ears hear, boy?”
“The clerk, he said Miss Grant went off with a man riding a black horse, and she drove a buckboard. Mr. Durant, he said this was proof that Ragnall was Ringo Nyall.”
“Nyall?” Isaac grabbed his son and pulled him close. John’s shoulder stopped short of the big man’s chest and he was forced to strain his neck to look up. “You tellin’ me, boy, that there’s talk of that scum Nyall bein’ in these parts?”
John nodded, his head hitting his father’s shirt buttons, and his running nose leaving a smear on the big man’s shirt.
“Gone off with Miss Grant, Pa. Mr. Durant and the sheriff said was him who killed Matthew, robbed all that gold, and come here to marry Miss Grant. I come back as fast as I could, Pa, after I sorted it all out proper so I wouldn’t make no mistake. I come fast, Pa, but I took my time all the same, not wantin’ to tell you wrong.”
Isaac pushed him away and growled at Luke and Mark, “Ain’t you got them horses yet?”
The two brothers hurried off. John, eyes gleaming with satisfaction, stood on the boardwalk’s edge looking at his father expectantly. When Isaac ignored him, he said, “I did good, didn’t I, Pa?”
Isaac’s frowning face turned to John, who wiped his running nose on his sleeve and grinned stupidly. A grunt came from Isaac Madie as he kicked the feet from under his son. He went off as a startled cry came from the falling John. Walking down the street, Isaac looked towards the sky, closed his eyes and grumbled into the night, “If it be possible, let this cup pass from me. And let not my will, but Thine be done.”
Blake Durant kept Sundown running. The big black, responding strongly, soon put miles behind Lasting’s posse and Isaac Madie. If there was anybody he did not want cluttering up the range at the moment it was the big Bible basher, Madie and his three meddling sons.
Slowing Sundown, Durant topped a rise and stared across the wide, moon-raked prairie. For as far as he could see there was emptiness. And through the emptiness ran buckboard tracks, with the hoofmarks of a horse beside. Blake Durant gave Sundown a short breather, then set him into a steady canter until he saw the silver run of the river before him. Having come by this route to Glory Creek, Durant knew there was a bridge which crossed the deep river into the Badlands. It was dead country laid waste by seasonal droughts, and occupied by only itinerants and laze-abouts, men whose ambitions had been razed by failure.
Ten minutes later he reached the river, winding away to the south, a broad silver carpet whose surface was deceptively smooth. Below that surface he knew that hundreds of years of turmoil lay, snags shifting with the fast-running current, eddying pools through which even Sundown could not make progress. It was the kind of river a man would try to cross only in an extreme emergency.
But the bridge was there, made of strong planks, supported by huge pilings driven deep into the river bottom.
He rubbed Sundown’s sweat-flecked shoulder and reined him in the direction of the bridge, hardly a quarter-mile away. Sundown, pleased to be held down to a walk, strode out freely as Blake followed the buckboard and single horse tracks which led straight for the bridge. He didn’t know how much time he had made up on Ringo Nyall and Angela Grant, but he was confident that Sundown would catch up with them before morning.
Durant was within two hundred yards of the bridge when an explosion disturbed the peace of the night. Drawing rein, Blake saw the red flash, then timber was flying, huge chunks of seasoned lumber turning over and over in the clear moonlit air. Sundown shifted under him but Blake quietened him, swearing under his breath. It was not until the timber, rocks and mud had stopped falling that he saw the hunched-over figure of a man running along the opposite bank. Blake drew his gun, but even as he moved Sundown forward he knew a shot would be a waste of time. The figure disappeared from sight, then Blake heard the grind of buckboard wheels on hard ground. Moments later he saw the buckboard leave the cover of a clump of cottonwoods, a h
orse racing at its side.
Blake reached the river bank and drew rein. The bridge had lost its middle and both ends were no more than a twisted mess of splintered timber and shattered supports. A length of two-inch-thick cable wire was twisted around one ground bearer.
Blake muttered an oath as he studied the river. The water was running faster than it had when he came through the day before. He looked to the other bank; the buckboard and the rider were out of sight. Blade edged Sundown along the muddy bank. The only safe crossing was about fifteen miles further north. He headed Sundown that way. Nyall had gained a break on him, but with the girl and the buckboard to worry about on the desert, Blake was not too concerned about making up that lost time. When he finally caught up with Ringo Nyall, he’d have one more reason for taking the sass out of him.
Angela Grant slowed the buckboard up the rise, then suddenly drew the horses to a halt. In the wake of the buckboard, the big, haggard-faced rider swung wide and wheeled back. For a moment his eyes were filled with viciousness, but when Angela turned to look at him, his expression softened.
“What is it?” he asked.
Angela shook her head. “I’m not sure, Mr. Ragnall. I just feel I shouldn’t go on, not knowing what all this is about.”
“What all what is about, Angela?” Ragnall asked.
She looked back over the country they had come across. “The bridge,” she said. “Why did you blow it up?”
He moved closer to the buckboard and swept his hat to the back of his head. The moonlight gleamed down on his lean but handsome features. There was a boyishness about him that Angela found attractive. Zeb Ragnall’s letters had impressed her with their sincerity and she had been willing, after much personal debate, to give herself to this man offering kindness for the sake of her ailing brother. And when Zeb Ragnall had turned out to be so presentable, she could hardly believe her good fortune.
“I had to blow the bridge,” he said. “I’ve worked hard for what I’ve got.”
“I don’t understand,” she said. “People must need that bridge to get into and out of Glory Creek. Surely—”
“I gave thought to them, sure,” Ragnall answered. “And I feel mighty disturbed for them. It ain’t my way to hurt anybody.”
“Then why do it, Mr. Ragnall?”
“Be better if you called me Zeb, Angela. But like I said back in Glory Creek, I’m not expecting you to throw yourself at me. We’ll give ourselves plenty of time to know each other. Still, we’ve got to start somewhere, haven’t we?”
Angela blushed. Then, clasping her hands on her lap, she said more quietly, “All right, Zeb. But please explain to me about the bridge. I want to understand you, to trust you. And I want so much for this to work out, for my brother’s sake.”
Zeb Ragnall stared into the night, head tilted to one side as if listening for expected sounds. Finally he spoke:
“Got me a lot of gold stashed away, Angela. I guess when a man gets something for the first time in his life, he just can’t keep his mouth shut. He’s got to tell somebody, to prove how darned smart he’s been.” He turned his gaze to her, then his eyes roamed down her body and she felt a sudden urge to cover her bosom with her hands. But then he sighed and glanced away.
“I’ve been real lonely, Angela. A man heads into the hills, searches, digs, hopes. Maybe twice a year he goes to town and has some comforts. But, for the most of it, it’s sleeping on the ground, bustin’ up his hands with diggin’, and breakin’ his back, day after day, in all kinds of weather. Loneliness is about all a man ever gets.”
Angela felt sympathy rising within her. “Why did you do it then?”
He smiled shyly at her, then looked away again and his face tightened. “Why? Guess I asked myself that a thousand times in the last five years. But I kept thinking of the day when somethin’ would break my way. And one rainy mornin’, there it was. My future for the takin’—gold, enough of it for a man to set himself up proper, to get himself somebody to love, to beat off the loneliness with another person who might come to love him one day ...”
Ragnall looked back at Angela and his eyes were moist. “You’re beautiful. I didn’t have the nerve to tell you that before, but I wanted to. Soon as I met you in your room, I told myself, ‘Zeb Ragnall, if you ever done anythin’ smart in your life, putting that advertisement in the Cheyenne paper sure was it.’”
He smiled and Angela blushed. When she looked down at her hands, Ragnall went on:
“On the way to the bridge, I kept thinkin’ of all the people I told about my gold. And I remembered how many of ’em looked at me like they wanted to slit my guts open. I thought, too, of what you could mean to me, how I could get for you the things you want, how I could help your brother get well again and come out and join us. Lots of things I thought of, just lookin’ at you, seein’ how well you drove the buggy, how sure of yourself you were. So I decided to blow up the bridge and put all those hardcase jaspers behind me. I couldn’t take any risks, not with everything I’ve worked for right within my reach.”
Angela reached out and put her hand on his wrist. “I’m sorry, Zeb. I didn’t understand.”
He took in a deep breath. “Those men you told me about, Angela—they were after our gold. I had to blow up the bridge—for your sake.”
She picked up the reins. Then, with a shy smile, she said, “Shall we go on, Zeb?”
He grinned and pulled his hat back to his forehead. Turning his horse, he let out a whoop of joy, put his horse into a run and led the way off the slope and down into the desert country. He rode in front now so she couldn’t see his face, and he was glad that the hoof beats drowned out the laughter which he couldn’t control. He liked the look of her. She had spirit, too, and by hell, he’d have her. Once she got a taste of comfortable living, the rest would be easy. But he’d have to be careful not to let her know that while he was checking out the Cheyenne office of the Wells Fargo Company, he’d seen her on the street with her crippled brother. He couldn’t let her discover that, even before he had his hands on the gold bullion, he’d decided to have her as his woman.
Zeb Ragnall rode hard into the night, giving only a passing thought to the big man on the black stallion who’d dogged their trail to the bridge. Well, that dodger couldn’t follow them now.
Isaac Madie was tired. He was sweating more than he ever had, even in the height of the summer down on his own place. Here the wind was so hot and dry it cracked his skin. But he kept his complaints to himself because his sons watched him as they rode, wondering, he knew, what the hell he was up to.
Isaac Madie had no intention of telling them a single damn thing. So he pushed the big white stallion along, sorry only that he hadn’t been able to give the animal more rest in Glory Creek. But things had gone wrong from the very beginning. Ragnall. Miss Grant. Ringo Nyall. Blake Durant. That damned, interfering, nosy lawman. And his boys, making fools of themselves as usual ...
He wiped the sweat off his brow and patted the Bible in his coat pocket. He wondered why such an honest, decent, God-fearing man should suffer so much torment.
Mark and Luke rode at his side but John was still behind the last rise, the wind forcing him to cling desperately to the shallow neck of his bony nag. When John finally reached them his eyes were misty and sweat ran down his terribly lean face. He kept away from his father, still unsure why the old man had kicked the feet from under him in town. But then John had never understood much of what his father did.
“You figurin’ to slow us down, boy?” Isaac said sullenly.
John shook his head and worked uncomfortably about in the saddle. “Pa, I come as fast as I could, but you was beltin’ along too much for me. My horse, she ain’t half—”
“Horse is fine. Broke it in myself when you was scratchin around and snivellin’. You aim to claim, boy, that I don’t know how to break a horse proper?”
John’s sweat glistened in the moonlight. He looked to his brothers for support but didn’t even get a grunt.
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“Pa, I wouldn’t say nothin’ like that. Ain’t nothin’ you can’t do better’n any man alive. It’s just—”
“Get ahead, boy—slow down and I’ll run right over you. Move, now! We got a killer to find to wring the evil out of.” Isaac’s fiery glance went to his other two sons. “Same for you two heathens. Keep your mind on the trail and keep thinkin’ of only one thing—your brother’s killer up front of us, ridin’ with the wages of sin in his buckboard and a branded woman sittin’ beside him, the scars of her transgressions there for all to see and be disgusted with.”
Isaac pushed John in the back and the lean little youth almost fell from the saddle. But with desperate speed he righted himself, aided by the immobility of the slump-backed, frail-legged range poke. Getting the mare into motion, John hurried her along as fast as she could go. Mark and Luke loped along in his wake, with the fiery-eyed Isaac bringing up the rear. Isaac kept mumbling to himself all the way down to the river. Then, when he saw the bridge down and the river running too fast to cross, he sat rigidly in his saddle and pointed an accusing finger at the ground.
“The work of the devil!” he exclaimed.
His sons sat their horses silently behind him, watching the wild torrent rush through the distorted remains of the old bridge. Isaac moved forward, inspecting the ground. The night wind whipped against his broad deep chest but he paid it no heed. His interest was only in the single set of tracks cutting along the muddy bank for several hundred yards before they broke onto firmer ground and headed due north. Halting his stallion, Isaac let out a weary growl and said:
“The buckboard went across and Nyall followed it. But Durant came upon these troubled waters too late. Knowing him for the man he is, we’ll take our guidance from him. But when we come upon him, none of us will be fooled by the manners of the man. The greed for gold is in all men not nurtured by the true wisdom of the Good Book. We’ll go on.”
The Loner 1 Page 4
