by Short, Luke;
Will mounted and returned to the trail and turned up it, lifting his hone into a run. There was a chance that other men were ahead, but he determined to risk it. He came over a rise and saw the small campfire by the trail, bedrolls beside it. The camp was empty, and he kept his horse at a dead run through it and stopped only minutes later far beyond to blow his horse and listen. The night was quiet once more, but Will listened with an uneasiness upon him. His idle time was up; Bide’s men were riding the hills, watching the trails already. From now on it was travel hard, keep moving, and forget sleep.
He pressed on, sobered now and alert, moving deeper into the gaunt canyons and steep timber of Indian Ridge. Later in the night then he paused on the canyon rim overlooking the trail down into Cavanaugh’s place. If there was a light in the shack he would see it.
He moved down the steep trail and presently came into the clearing around the shack. He approached it carefully and found it empty, just as he had left it.
He put his horse behind the shack, returned and stretched out on the porch, and presently slept.
He awoke sometime later, dismay in him. He did not move, only listened. And then there came to him the sound of a horse being ridden down the trail, and he knew this had wakened him. A fierce joy was in him, and he came to his feet, peering into the darkness. This was Lottie.
The rider came on and was now abreast of the well. Will listened intently, and then he caught the rustle of cloth and he stepped down and said, “You came, Lottie.”
The rider stopped, and there was no answer. Will halted, and his hand dropped to his gun, in case he had made a mistake.
And then the answer came. “It’s me, Will—Celia.”
Will felt the hope in him die, leaving a sharp, brief bitterness. That was all, and he came up to Celia’s horse. “You’ve seen Lottie.”
“She said she wasn’t coming, Will.”
“I didn’t mean that,” Will said sharply, and then he realized that Celia wouldn’t know what he was talking about. “I only wondered how you found me.”
“Yes, she told me.”
Will silently thought of this. Lottie was gone, and she had not troubled to tell him herself. Will knew that was unfair. They had said everything there was to say long ago, and she had ended it with bitterness and accusation.
Will was suddenly aware that Celia was silent, watching him. He told her to dismount and took her horse and put it with his own.
He went over to Cavanaugh’s woodpile now and picked up some chips and chunks of wood and brought them over close to the porch and built a fire. He watched it come alight, a taciturn expression on his still face, and presently he looked up at Celia, who sat on the edge of the porch. He found her looking at him curiously, uncertainly, like a sober child.
“Would you rather I hadn’t come, Will?”
Will rose and said gently, “I was never more glad to see you,” and his smile was quick, careless.
“Isn’t this fire risky?” she asked.
Will nodded soberly and looked at her and again grinned. “It is.”
Celia laughed suddenly, for the first time in days. She could forget now that she had watched John Evarts buried this morning in the hills behind Hatchet alongside her father, his brother. She was with Will again, and that dry, blunt, truth-telling, humorous part of him hadn’t changed. It was like being home. Will sat beside her now and began to fashion a cigarette. He said idly, “Tell me about Lottie.”
When Celia didn’t answer he looked at her and saw the soberness in her eyes. “I’d rather not,” Celia said slowly.
Will watched her a moment, understanding, and then he looked away. “It doesn’t matter. If she’d come here tonight we’d have ridden over to the reservation and been married. But she didn’t come.”
“What was it, Will?”
“Hatchet.”
Ceila said quietly after a moment, “I think I know how you feel—a little.” When he glanced at her she said, “Sam’s not going to marry me, Will. He told me.”
Will looked at her sharply, an unaccountable gladness in his eyes. It took a moment for him to accept the fact that this gay and courageous daughter of Phil Evarts was not going to marry a man who didn’t deserve her. He studied her dark face, her gray, musing eyes, and he saw no heartbreak there and he said quietly, “Bless him. He finally saw you weren’t good enough for him, did he?”
Celia glanced quickly at him and saw the humor and friendliness in his eyes and understood the meaning behind his words. She nodded, smiling.
Will tossed his unmade cigarette in the fire and said soberly, “I told you, kid. We’re mavericks. This was in the book.”
“For you and Lottie too?”
Will nodded. “That was in the books. I didn’t have the sense to see it.”
“But if it hadn’t been for Hatchet, maybe—”
“It would have been something else and too late, then. She wants it safe.”
Celia, listening, nodded. “Sam does too.”
They looked at each other fully now, and suddenly Will shook his head. “Peace be with them, then.”
They were quiet a moment, both staring at the fire, a closeness between them that did not need speech. Celia said suddenly, in a small voice, “I guess it isn’t wrong to say it now, Will. But when Sam told me I felt as if a door opened.” She looked at him with quiet wonder in her eyes. “I’d been in the dark. I didn’t know it.” She hesitated. “You knew I was, Will, and you didn’t tell me.”
“One man’s opinion,” Will said, smiling gently.
Celia sighed deeply and shook her head. “I’m afraid of him. He believes in the right things and he’s honest, but there’s a wild streak in him, Will. Not a wild streak like yours. I—I can understand yours. You don’t think you’re better than other men; you just think the things you believe are better than what other men believe. But that’s not Sam’s wildness.” She shivered a little. “He thinks he was born in the right. He only believes in himself and he’ll break and smash everything in front of him to prove it to himself. He—he thinks he’s God, almost.”
Will listened, watching her, knowing this was something she had to rid her mind of. Beneath it, now, he saw the shape of fear, and it puzzled him. He said gently, “Sam’s trouble is he hates to take a beating.”
“He hates it most from you,” Celia murmured.
Will shook his head. “From anybody.”
“But most from you,” Celia repeated. “He’s going to kill you, Will. He told me.”
Will didn’t smile. He asked suddenly, “Is that what you’re afraid of, Celia?”
Celia nodded. “That’s why I came, I guess. I didn’t know why I did come—until I said that.”
Will’s glance shuttled to the fire, and he stared at it a long time, his face settling into a tough-shaped somberness. He said gently, “I can promise you one thing, Celia. Sam won’t get a chance to kill me until Hatchet is on its feet again.”
Celia laughed uncertainly. “That’s as good as forever, Will.”
He glanced at her levelly. “I don’t think so.”
“We’ve got two hands, a cook, a cripple, and a foreman on the dodge. Aren’t you just wishing, Will?”
“There’s a way,” Will said quietly. “See what you think of it.”
He rose and got some more wood and threw it on the fire, and afterward he talked long into the night.
Chapter 18
This amused Joe Kneen, and he watched it with a dry and bitter relish. At all hours of the day and night tired riders drifted into town. They would report to Sam and Bide at the Belle Fourche when those two were in, which was seldom, and then cross to the hotel and sleep like dead in the rooms Bide had engaged for them. The town watched and heard stories. There was the one about Will passing two D Cross riders on a trail at night, and they had tracked him up into the Indian Ridge where they found his fire still warm in the mouth of a cave. They had called in help and had spent a futile day beating the brush, and afterw
ard the original two had gone back to their old camp. They found a warm fire, their bedrolls burned, their grub vanished, and a coin left prominently on a rock.
Then there was the time—yesterday, that was—when two riders, their horses lathered, rode into Boundary, each from a different direction, each swearing that they had seen Will Ballard ride through the piece of country they were watching.
Late one night, too, one of Garretson’s hands was brought into Boundary in a spring wagon. He had jumped Will Ballard in the Indigos and, heedless of his employer’s decision that his outfit had no part in this, had tried an ambush. The doctor said he had a good chance to live.
Kneen heard all this at second hand, usually relayed to him by one of the ranchers from under the Ridge, who still sat by and watched. Which was what Kneen was doing, too, this morning, as he had every morning since the shooting of Cavanaugh.
He opened his office around seven-thirty, took care of whatever business the town and county chose to bring to him, and then waited, while out in the hills Bide Marriner and Sam Danfelser drove their men and horses to exhaustion trying to find a man they would kill on sight.
This morning Kneen picked up his mail at the post office and brought it back to the courthouse and was leafing through the new Stockman’s Gazette when Lowell Priest and Red Courteen came into his office. Kneen threw the Gazette on the desk and bid them good morning.
Priest answered him with bare civility. Red Courteen put his shoulder against the wall and watched.
“Kneen,” Priest said truculently, “I was robbed last night.”
“A holdup?” Kneen inquired mildly.
“No. My store. It was broken into sometime in the night.”
Kneen gestured toward a chair and said, “Sit down and tell me about it. What’s gone?”
“Powder,” Priest said curtly.
Kneen tried to suppress a smile, but he was not quite successful. The irritability in Priest’s thin, precise face deepened, and he said sharply, “What’s funny about that, Kneen?”
“Nothing,” Kneen drawled. “I just figured whoever took it couldn’t hide it forever.”
“There’s a sledge and pipe gone too.”
“All right.”
Priest said sharply, “Aren’t you going to have a look?”
“They’re gone, aren’t they?” Kneen drawled. “Somebody pried off that dollar padlock on your lean-to and helped themselves. Isn’t that it?”
Priest just glared at him, and Kneen went on in the same mild, prodding voice, “I told you ten times, Priest, to move that powder or else store it where fire couldn’t get at it. Each time you told me you were moving it next week. Maybe”—his voice was dry, thrusting—“some of your neighbors who didn’t want their stores blown to hell moved it for you.”
Color crept into Priest’s sallow face, and he was silent. Red Courteen moved away from the wall and said mildly, “Maybe you did it yourself, Joe.”
Kneen looked at Courteen for a long, speculative moment and then spat elaborately.
Red’s tough face darkened with anger, and he came over to stand beside Priest. Kneen looked at the storekeeper and said with calculated insolence, “What’s he doing here? A witness?”
“No. He—”
“Then get out of here. Red,” Kneen said with a deceptive mildness, coming out of his chair.
“Wait, Kneen!” Priest said sharply.
Kneen looked at him questioningly, and there was fight in his pale eyes. Priest said, “We’re—uh—business partners. He has a right to be here.”
Kneen said blankly, “In the store?”
“We’re running cattle together,” Priest said uncomfortably. When Kneen kept staring at him Priest said, “I bought out Garretson’s share of that herd, and Red’s running them for me.”
“Where?”
Priest hesitated. “Just east of Garretson’s.”
Which was a mealymouthed way of saying Hatchet, Kneen knew, and he looked from one to the other, and then he said in a tired voice as if to himself, “Oh, the hell with it.” He shouldered past them to the door and stood by it.
“Now get out, you pair of jackals! Get out!” The last words came in a shout.
Priest did not hesitate; he scuttled past him. Red walked with a stiff furious dignity, and Kneen slammed the door viciously on him.
He stood there a moment, so mad he was almost sick, and then he came back to his chair and sank into it. He knew what he should have done. He should have given them just one day to get off Hatchet. But there was Red’s crew to deal with, and there was himself. In disgrace, unable to command help, all he could do was what the lowliest Indian Ridge rancher could do—wait the outcome of the hunt in the hills.
I’ve got to wait, he thought; he tried to make a refrain of it in his mind, but it was drowned in a torrent of inward bitter cursing.
Chapter 19
Will wakened at sunset and raised on his elbows, looking about him. For a long minute he flagged his sleep-drugged mind toward a memory of this place, which was a thick tangle of scrub oak by a stream in the lower slopes of the Indigos. He rose now, quietly as he could, and saw his horse grazing upstream, barely discernible in the fading light.
Rolling his blankets up, he moved toward the stream and knelt by it. The shock of the cold water brought him to wakefulness, and he drank, afterward looking about him again. This place looked like all the others where he had snatched a few hours of daylight sleep and rested his horse. It had taken an effort of will to remember the days, but he was certain that tomorrow morning was the one he had named to Celia.
He drank again, feeling the cold water smother his hunger a little, and then rose and headed for his horse. These last days had fined down his face, which was blurred now by a thick black beard stubble. His leg muscles were iron-hard with saddle-stiffness as he walked, for, except when he stole these occasional hours of deep, exhausted sleep, he had not been out of the saddle.
He pulled up the picket rope, afterward stroking the coat of his black gelding and regarding him critically in the dusk. He was gaunted up, too, but there were no sores yet. Will slapped his rump and then took down his saddle blanket, which he had hung on a branch to dry in the afternoon sun.
Working the bumps out of it so that it would not gall, he rubbed it between his hands to take out the stiffness and afterward saddled up. By deep dusk he was riding again, this time out onto the flats toward the east, beyond Hatchet, to a rendezvous. He found he was not thinking of that, however; his mind kept returning to something he had seen yesterday. That was the day one of Garretson’s hands had shot at him. He’d been riding down a trail to the north, half sleeping in his saddle, his mind drowsing and unawares, when his horse shied. He had been pitched from the saddle just as a gun went off some fifty feet in front of him. The man had come running toward him out of the brush, gun in hand, and Will had shot at him and hit him. Afterward he had carried the man down close to one of Garretson’s line shacks on the flats because he had asked it.
Will had propped him against a tree, feeling only a pity for the man. He had looked around him and said, “You sure Harve will hear my shots?”
“Courteen will,” the man had whispered. “Him and his crew are running cattle over there. They’ll hear you.”
Will had shot into the air and left him. But the knowledge that Priest and Courteen had kept their cattle on Hatchet grass both puzzled and disturbed him. If Lottie had given her father Will’s message, then Priest was either a fool or a brave man. And Will wanted to find out which—after tomorrow.
He rode steadily through the night now, his hunger becoming more and more insistent. The last of his grub had vanished yesterday, and there would be no more until morning.
He passed early in the night behind Hatchet to the south and sometime in the night came close to the seep where the skeleton of Bide’s chuck wagon still lay.
It was just breaking false dawn when he slanted into the shallow valley above Russian Springs and wa
s hailed quietly from the timber.
He rode into the edge of it and saw first the team and spring wagon, and then Jim Young looked up in the darkness, Mel beside him.
Will said, “Got any cooked grub between yon?” and laughed at himself; the sudden sound of his own voice almost startled him as he dismounted.
Jim Young rummaged in the spring wagon and came back with three cold biscuits and a chunk of fried meat. Will wolfed them down, their salty taste more welcome than cake to his palate.
Mel Young said, “They crowdin’ you, Will?”
“Some,” Will said through a mouthful of biscuit.
“They brought that hand of Garretson’s in last night,” Mel said dryly.
Jim Young’s shape materialized beside him. “Your grub’s on your saddle, Will. Here’s the shells. Rifle’s in your scabbard.”
Will took the shells and reached for his tobacco and then checked himself. False dawn was breaking and time was short.
“How long do you figure it will take?” Will asked, then.
Mel said, “This is new for us, Will. We can’t rightly tell.”
“Do a job, that’s all,” Will said. “Take the time you need.” He paused. “How’s Ike?”
“Good. He wanted to come with us.”
Will smiled into the darkness. “And Miss Evarts?”
“She ain’t so good at waitin’, Will,” Jim Young said, and Will had a fleeting picture of Celia, restless and impatient, but not despairing.
“She saw Kneen, did she?”
“That’s right,” Jim Young said.
Then everything was ready to go, and yet Will still lingered. These were the first friendly voices he had heard since Celia had left him at Cavanaugh’s, and he found himself hungry for talk. Yet he had to leave.
