Yet Carmody was well aware that he walked a tightrope. After the Mayflower affair, he had become a target for every fast gun in the West. The man who shot Michael Carmody would have attained fame indeed. So Carmody lived on his nerves and, when it was safe, he drank too much. He reckoned he would catch the Kid, then he would retire from the law business. But even that, he knew, might not remove him from danger. Even after retirement his name would still be known and he would still be a target for ambitious young gunmen. A man’s ambition could drive him into some dangerous spots. Carmody was not a happy man. He had a great many acquaintances, no friends. No woman would marry him. Who would take on a potential dead man? There was only one woman he knew of who regarded him kindly. And that was a Mexican woman down on the Border. He put her from his mind as he rode along the trail heading north after the Kid. She had loved him and he knew, though he denied it to himself, that he had loved her. He wasn’t going to make a marriage to a Popish Mexican. He wanted to marry white and get to the top.
That was the way his mind worked.
On the second day, he came on a Basque sheepherder. The man didn’t speak much English. The questioning was slow and Carmody had to use the patience which he had a large quantity of. Finally, he learned that the man had seen three men. One seemed sick and had been dragged in a travois behind a black horse. A black horse? Carmody pounced on that fact. The Kid always rode a black horse when one was available. Where were they headed? The man pointed with the under part of his hand. Northwest. The other men, had he had a good look at the other men? Sure. One of them was black. Black? Carmody was taken aback. The Kid riding in company with a Negra? Strange. He hated blacks. Still, he was wounded. Maybe he didn’t have much choice. Carmody gave the sheepherder some tobacco for his trouble and took up the trail he had pointed out.
He searched for some time for the trail and finally came on it. The twin lines made in the soil by the travois poles were unmistakable. This time the Kid had left a trail a fool could follow. He must be hurt bad. Carmody smiled to himself.
A day later, he did the opposite. He sat his horse and cursed the air purple. The sign died out on him. He was in the foothills and had reached water. The tracks stopped at the water’s edge. The water came no higher than the stirrup irons, so he rode his horse across and inspected the far side. Nothing. He didn’t give up, of course. The men had gone up or down stream. It would take time to find their tracks again, but he would do it. He searched the creek banks for two days and was finally forced to give up. It was then he cursed. Those boys with the Kid certainly knew their business.
He camped and made himself coffee, smoked a stogie and thought. If he couldn’t trail the men physically, he would have to do it mentally. What he had to decide was the game they were playing. Were they trying bluff or double bluff? The obvious place for them to be heading was the hills. High mountains were safe hideouts for men on the run. He wondered again and again who the men with the Kid were. They were pretty smart, that he knew for sure. So had they bluffed him and were they headed for the plains? He reasoned that these men had been hidden in the hills before they rescued the Kid. If they had a hideout, they would return to it. It was a gamble they had to take.
He pushed on into the hills. One day’s travel and he had another piece of luck. He came on an old and lone prospector. The old man hadn’t spoken to a human soul in months and he was busting to talk. Carmody camped with him and let him talk. After an hour or two he learned that two nights back the old man had been unable to sleep and had sat on the hillside smoking his pipe. It was then that he had seen the men. Two men on horses and a litter slung between two horses. Carmody could have laughed aloud in his triumph. Could the old man show him the spot where he had seen these men? Sure thing. Could he describe the men? That he couldn’t. How much could a man see in the moonlight?
The following day, the old gold seeker led Carmody some five miles north-west and there plain to see were the tracks of three horses and a mule. Carmody thanked the old man, gave him some tobacco and went on his way. Excitement started to mount now.
He saw himself taking the Kid in, alive, chained for trial. When he had done that, men would forget once and for all that he had ever been a lawbreaker himself. He would have wiped the slate clean.
He laughed out loud and touched spurs to his horse.
Five minutes later, he sobered.
A thought had come to him.
The Basque had said that one of the men had been black. The cold finger of dread stroked Carmody’s spine. It wasn’t possible. He didn’t want to face the truth. But memory of the dodgers back in his office in Arkhold City came back to him clearly. There was only one Negra he knew ran with outlaws of the Kid’s magnitude. That was Cuzie Ben. The Negra was dangerous enough, but it was the other name memory coupled him with that froze the blood in Carmody’s veins. Sam Spur.
No, his common sense told him, it couldn’t be. Yet he knew for sure that Spur had taken up with Ben when the Texas Rangers had been after them both on the Cimarron Strip.
He stopped his horse and almost turned back.
Then he thought: I broke the Mayflower gang single-handed. There were some tough eggs among them. The toughest. Billy Doonan was as fast as Spur, any day. Men said. What if he put paid to all three? It wasn’t impossible. They had hidden their tracks well. They would feel safe now, unaware that he was on their trail.
By God, he’d do it.
He lifted the lines and went on. The world would talk of this when he accomplished it.
Chapter Three
By the time they reached the cabin, the Kid was sitting up and taking notice. He didn’t speak, not even when they carried him into the cabin and placed him on a bunk. Spur thought he looked like a cornered animal. It wasn’t difficult to see why men fought shy of his company. One look at him was enough to see that he was poison.
While Ben put up the horses in the starve-out and then started to prepare a meal, Spur attended to the boy. He wouldn’t get any thanks for it, but he did it just the same. He took a look at the wound and didn’t like it at all. The boy watched him impassively with those deadly eyes.
Spur said: “It ain’t good. I’ll do what I can to save the leg.”
The implication was a terrible one. A man didn’t ride a horse with one leg.
The Kid blinked. Once.
“You’re tryin’ to scare me,” he said. “I don’t scare.”
But he was scared and Spur could see he was.
Spur said: “If you ain’t scared, you’re a fool. An’ I don’t reckon you’re a fool.”
There was a fine smell of frying steak in the cabin. Cuzie Ben was living up to his name. Ben had been a cook to more outfits than he cared to remember, the bullying lord of the cooking pot. He was one of those men who could make something from nothing in the food line. His bear-sign were superb. Spur appreciated the fact that he lived with a master. While Ben was with him, he lived high off the hog.
Spur finished putting a clean dressing on the Kid’s wound, Ben forked three man-size steaks onto plates, put two on the table and took one to the Kid.
“Take it away,” the Kid said. “I ain’t hungry.”
“You eat,” Ben ordered. “You don’ eat, you die. An’ I don’t want no dead man on my hands.”
The Kid’s eyes slitted.
“You heard me,” he said, “I told you to take it away.”
“Don’t waste it on him,” Spur said. “I can use it.”
They sat at the table and ate. Talking stopped. They didn’t speak until the food was gone. They pushed back their plates, sighed with contentment and belched luxuriously.
Spur stood up.
“I’ll take a ride.”
Ben looked at him. He knew what was in Spur’s mind. He’d had the same feeling. They weren’t alone in this part of the hills. Neither knew where the feeling came from. They only knew that it was there.
Spur went out and caught up a bay gelding, threw his saddle on and ro
de off south. Ben cleaned up, checked there weren’t any firearms within reach of the Kid and went outside to finish braiding a rope. He was proud of his rope making.
Spur returned toward sunset. His horse was tired and Ben knew that he had been a long way. He tried to read what had happened from his partner’s face, but he could not. Spur put the gelding into the starve-out and walked to the cabin. He squatted near Ben and built a smoke. The Negro didn’t ask the question in his mind. Spur would tell him when he was ready.
“We got a visitor,” he said finally.
“See him?”
“No. Found his sign on the edge of Big Park. He’s lookin’ for us, I reckon.”
Spur smoked in silence for a few minutes.
“Play safe,” Ben said. “Don’t let’s sleep in the cabin tonight.”
“I was thinkin’ the same thing.”
“We head out like we was goin’ on a trip. Then head back quiet-like.”
“All right.”
They stood up and Ben coiled the rope. They went into the cabin and Spur said to the Kid: “We’re headin’ out tonight.” He couldn’t tell if the boy was startled by his words or not. You couldn’t tell anything from that wooden face and those deadly eyes. The Kid swallowed a couple of times.
“You goin’ for good?” he asked at last.
“Maybe,” said Spur. “¿Quién sabe?”
The Kid pulled himself up in the bunk.
“What goes?” he demanded. “You goin’ to leave me a gun?”
“No gun,” said Spur. “If’n we come back I don’t fancy a bullet in the back.”
“I ain’t never been without a gun,” the Kid said. “Christ, you wouldn’t treat a dog like this. You give me a gun, Spur. Hear?”
Spur looked at him.
“No gun,” he said again.
The Kid lost his head and raved.
“You can’t do this to me. I’m a sittin’ duck without a gun. You know who I am. I’m the Cimarron Kid. Anybody could come lookin’ for me.”
Spur said: “Maybe they’re lookin’ for you right now. That’s why we’re lightin’ a shuck.”
The Kid almost screamed at him, but neither Spur nor Ben paid him any heed. They continued to prepare a small amount of supplies for a short trip, walked out of the cabin and caught up their horses. As they rode away they could hear the Kid screaming after them. Ben laughed.
They rode with great caution, their rifles across their saddlebows. They knew that if there was a man nosing around these hills, he could be near. Maybe he was after the Kid and maybe he was after them. Either way he was a danger while they couldn’t see him.
They headed south, not worrying about silence, but both very wary, ready for a stir of movement among the rocks or the trees, ready to snap a shot off.
They rode about five miles, down off the hillside and into the valley, so they could be seen. Finally, Spur drew rein and said: “This is far enough, I reckon. You take the west side of the hill, Ben, work your way around and come in quiet from the north. I’ll go along the ridge and come on the cabin from the ridge.”
“All right,” said Ben and they parted company.
Ben was lost to sight in a couple of minutes. Spur started his mare up the ridge, using the timber as cover. He didn’t hurry now. He worked his way slowly up to the crest, then went along the side of the ridge away from the cabin. Full dark came down on him, but he wasn’t worried, for the ground was known to him. When he was near the cabin, he turned the mare down the ridge, going east, came to a shallow dell and tied his horse. Then, rifle in hand, he worked his way on foot up the ridge, over the crest and halfway down the further side. There was good cover here and he used it.
Hunkering down, he leaned his rifle against a rock and settled down for a long wait. He wore his coat, for the night would be chill. He pulled some tobacco from a pocket and shoved it into one cheek.
He thought: If he reckons we’re all in the cabin, he’ll come at dawn most likely.
Though there was no telling, of course. Whoever it was might scout the lay of the land tonight. He dozed a little and woke. Listening, he reckoned it was some night creature that had roused him. He stayed awake for an hour, the dark shape of the cabin below him, the door within rifle shot. Then he dozed lightly again.
He awoke with the dawn and stayed awake, lifting his rifle and laying it across his knees. But nothing happened. The only things that stirred were the horses in the corral. Maybe it was a false alarm, but he didn’t think so. He stayed where he was for another hour. When nothing happened then, he returned to his horse and rode down to the cabin.
The Kid was awake, glaring over the side of the bunk at him.
“I thought you lit out,” he snarled.
Spur smiled.
He started breakfast with the Kid watching him from sullen suspicious eyes. After a while Cuzie Ben rode up and took over cooking.
“Man,” he said, solemn-faced, “if’n you shoot like you cooks, you sure be dead.”
Spur went outside to gaze down the valley. It was a thing he did often for pleasure, but now he looked for the sign of movement. He stayed there till Ben yelled that if he didn’t come and get it he’d throw it away. He went inside and found the Kid wolfing down breakfast. Spur sat at the table and ate fast. When he was through, he told Ben he was going riding, saddled the mare and rode out.
The Kid said: “That Spur, he sure is edgy.”
“Ain’t he?” Ben said non-committedly. He washed the dishes and went outside. A short while after the Kid heard him ride off. Spur had gone south. Ben went north.
The boy’s curiosity and apprehension was aroused. Both Spur and the Negro were wanted men, so all this to-ing and fro-ing could only mean that they were worried about being found here. If there were men coming after those two, that meant the Kid was in danger. Good at looking after Number One was the Kid. That was why he had stayed alive through a great many harrowing experiences. They had taken him once and put him in a New Mexican calaboose in chains once and he didn’t mean that to happen again. He’d had to shoot his way out of that one. He’d wounded two men and killed a third to do that.
Gingerly, he pushed his legs over the side of the bunk. It hurt his wounded leg like hell to do that. When he tried to stand up, he fell over. That hurt his leg again and he spat out curses like a cornered lynx. He could have wept in rage and frustration. He hauled himself up by grabbing the side of the bunk and stood there on one leg, gritting his teeth with pain.
If only he could reach that corral and grab himself a horse. He’d ride out of here and hide out in the hills. He started hopping around the cabin on one leg, searching for a gun. The pain in his wounded leg was excruciating, but he bore it. He didn’t find a gun, but he came on Ben’s butcher’s knife. This, he decided, would have to do. Spur and the Negro would come back separately and he’d carve the first one to enter that door. Then he’d have a gun. Killing the second one to arrive would be child’s play. He’d have the first one’s gun.
He laughed to himself. He had killed his first man with a knife. A Mexican down in El Paso who had spat on him. He’d been fifteen at the time.
He hopped back to the bunk and arranged the blankets so that it looked as if he had drawn them up high over his head and slept. After that he put the knife in his belt, worked a chair to a position behind the door and sat down. He might have a long wait.
He had a long wait.
He grew hungry and tired sitting there and realized with a pang of fear that he was too weak physically to be sitting upright in a chair for so long. He started to worry that he would be too weak to carry out his attack if he had to stay there much longer.
However, after what seemed to be an eternity, he heard a faint sound. He had almost fallen asleep and was startled by a slight noise right outside the door.
Could it be an animal? he asked himself.
There was a stealthy softness about it that chilled him. Had Spur or Ben crept back to spy on him? Did they suspec
t something? Suddenly, he was scared by what he was doing. He could get himself killed. Both Spur and Ben were top men in the outlaw business. Neither of them were fools. Could he outsmart two such men?
Hell, he thought, wasn’t he the Cimarron Kid? He could handle anything on two or four legs. As soon as one of those punks came in through that doorway and closed the door behind him, he was dead.
He stiffened and held the knife ready.
The latch was being raised.
Slowly the door opened on its rawhide hinges. He could hear a man breathing heavily.
They seemed to stand there for an age, the man and him, with nothing more than the crude door between them, one of them within a few inches of a bloody death. The Kid found that he was shaking violently. His teeth were chattering so loudly that he was sure the man could hear them.
God damn him, why didn’t he shut the door?
He was startled out of his wits when the door was slammed violently. He began to lunge forward with the knife and stopped himself just in time. He was looking into the black eye of a cocked gun.
Chapter Four
“Why, kid,” the man said, stepping back away from that knife, just in case the boy was crazy enough to try and use it, “this is an unexpected pleasure.”
The Kid lowered the knife.
He thought his trembling would shake him to bits. He was cold as ice all over.
“Carmody,” he said and knew that he faced defeat. He knew that he also faced death if he looked at the sheriff wrong.
Carmody was showing his teeth, laughing the tension out of him. He was a man surprised at himself, surprised that he had once again lived up to the legend that the newspapers had created about him. He had the notorious Cimarron Kid under his gun. He had alone done what a score of men had tried together in the past. His breath was taken away by his own audacity.
The Cimarron Kid (A Sam Spur Western Book 5) Page 2
