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Rafe

Page 8

by Nelson Nye


  The sun was a ball of blazing fire. Distant mountains were half lost in the haze. The white glare was beginning to cook his face and he frustratedly scrubbed it with the back of a hand. The landscape curled and writhed in the heat, and in all those miles of barren waste the only motion to be glimpsed was the twist of a dust devil blowing itself apart.

  Rafe was not reassured. The emptiness only increased his uneasiness, deepening his sense of isolation. Though he couldn't find a thing, he was convinced he was being followed; it had been gnawing at him for more than an hour. Now he saw a chance to make sure.

  Up ahead about a mile was a long dark ridge, a volcanic spine blown clean of sand and lifting perhaps a dozen feet above the floor. This would give a man cover, and if he cut west behind it and observed proper caution he should be able to come back on his tracks in a circle. It would mean being stuck out here for the night. It would waste a lot of time he wasn't sure he could afford. But he couldn't afford to be drygulched, either, and he was getting damned tired of being played for a fool.

  There was a dip in the terrain just beyond the ragged outcrop and, once out of sight in the trough of this sink, Rafe turned the mare west at a lope, hauling his pack horse along willy-nilly.

  He kept up this pace for almost a mile, watching the lather come out on Bathsheba, watching the dwindling height of the spine. The lowering sun pitched their shadows behind them, and in a far play of pale blues and purples now revealed a low huddle of hills off ahead that he had not previously been even vaguely aware of. He stopped again, peering narrowly, not learning a thing but rather nervously wondering if they were actually hills or piles of drifted sand like the dunes in which he had been found by Bunny's dad. He began to wonder if maybe these weren't the very ones.

  Not that it greatly mattered. Sand can drift considerable distances if a big enough puff of wind gets under it, and the winds out here were freaky for sure. And he might have come farther behind this spine than he'd thought. The ridge was still with him, lower, less rugged, barely shielding him now from the view he'd abandoned.

  With a yank at the lead rope he kneed Bathsheba again into motion. He didn't dare push them any more in this heat with the ground so heavy underfoot; without a horse in this country a man was soon dead. Going forward at a walk he kept one eye peeled for trouble while the other eye probed the mysterious hills which might prove, if he reached them, to be some weird trick of light and shadow, a mirage.

  Suddenly Rafe went stiff in the saddle. A puff of smoke showed above those hills and, while he stared, another, and another. In alarm and fury he swore like a mule skinner as, twisting around, the eyes seeming about to pop from his head, he spied a standing column of smoke in the south.

  It made no difference if these signals were the work of Indians or Spangler. They were talking about him!

  He twisted the lead rope about the horn and kicked Bathsheba into a gallop. It wasn't the smoke he was afraid of, but the person or persons to whom it was sent. They might be riding now to block off both ends, to fix up an ambush that could bury him here!

  He jerked Bathsheba's head around and in the cold sweat of panic stampeded straight south.

  It was the mare that finally brought him to his senses. She abruptly set back on her heels and stopped. The ground dropped off into a lemon and brick-red crisscross of gullies and arroyos, a veritable badlands maybe ten miles across.

  In a maze like that a man could lose not only his pursuers but himself as well. Rafe thought about this, knowing he didn't have much choice. It was only a question of time before, guided by those smokes, they would nab him. Down there the watchers couldn't point him out.

  He took a good look around, fixing marks in his head. Then he threw in the steel and they were on their way. Bathsheba, snorting, showing her distrust, kept trying to hold back, but he forced her down. Slithering, twisting, at times even sliding, they reached the gulch floor in a scramble of rubble. The pack horse coughed in the swirling dust, and the mare, seeming frantic, almost unseated Rafe.

  "Now, here!" he snarled, cuffing her laid-back ears, "you'll go where I say whether you like it or not!" and gave her another jolt with the spurs.

  Bathsheba snorted, fought her head, but when Rafe shook out a length of rope, the mare, who had sampled such persuasion before, abandoned her stand and trotted sullenly ahead. It was hotter than the hinges down at these lower levels; not a breath stirred and what there was smelled like metal coming off a blast furnace.

  Rafe pulled his animals down to a walk. Now that he had managed to drop out of sight those watchers would likely be expecting him to head southeast; they would anyway if they were some of Spangler's crowd, because southeast was the shortest way to reach his father's ranch.

  Rafe looked up. About another hour to sundown. The animals needed rest and he could do with some himself. When the walls twisted around to where the floor was draped in shadow Rafe got off Bathsheba, relieved the gelding of its pack and unsaddled the mare. Next thing he did was dig the carbine out and examine it; it wasn't what he'd asked for but it would serve till he could come onto something better.

  He found the glass and tucked it into his waistband and checked the foodstuffs, flour and beans and salt and sowbelly. He found two boxes of shells and loaded the saddle gun, dropping the rest of the cartridges in his pockets. He checked his belt gun and then sat down with his back to a wall to better consider strategy and figure out his chances.

  They'd be expecting him back. Nobody was in this thing for laughs. What they had going was too profitable and desperate to put up with the risk represented by Rafe. Next time he got in their way they would kill him—or damn well try! Duke, especially.

  It was while he was moodily chomping salt pork that it come over Rafe he might not be giving this guy Spangler his due, might be selling him short. A man who could hold off Alph Chilton like he was, sure wasn't no kind to go stamping your boot at. Spangler would be playing for keeps. Duke was into this up to his eyeballs, but Spangler was the one who'd be passing out the orders, and any guy smart as him would be too shrewd to think a feller who'd taken the beating they'd give Rafe would come charging back by the shortest route. Spangler would think Rafe had learned more caution. The one place they wouldn't be like to look for him now was the part of these badlands closest to the ranch.

  This decided, Rafe got busy. Within five minutes he was on his way, riding with the carbine ready across his knees. The shadows around him had thickened up considerable. Be some pretty tough hombres hanging out around the home place, but he would worry about these when he got to them. The big worry right now was getting out of this maze.

  He kept turning left every time he reached a fork. Twice, going into blind canyons, he was forced to come back. It was full dark now with not much showing but the stars. Rafe reckoned he had come about five miles. It was fairly open here but he kept to a walk, thinking he could better afford time than noise.

  Another hour slipped by, then another thirty minutes. Rafe, by this time jumpy as a cat, began uneasily to wonder if he'd got turned around. Ground underfoot seemed to be still slanting down when, by his calculations, they'd ought to be climbing up out of this. Wall seemed to be pinching in again, too. What few stars he could see failed to offer any notion of which way he was pointed.

  His disquiet grew. The mare, ears flat, moved as though she were trying to step between eggs. Now the ground commenced climbing in a spiraling twist, and there was a lot of cold air coming up through Rafe's pantslegs. In this swirling stillness the drop of each hoof was like a tiny explosion, the skreak and pop of straining leather scratching against Rafe's ears with all the stridence of a yell.

  Bathsheba stopped, both ears jerking forward. Rafe, peering ahead, couldn't see a thing but the goddamn black that was everywhere about them. He could feel the mare tremble. With a shake of the head and a sudden snort she spun on bunched legs and would have frantically bolted if Rafe, hauling hard on the reins, hadn't stopped her. He reined her about and kicked
with one heel.

  Bathsheba squatted. You'd have thought, by grab, there was somebody up there!

  It didn't make sense. This would be the east rim—some part of it; there hadn't been time for them to reach any other. This was the one place Spangler wouldn't be looking for him.

  The mare was blowing like she had rollers in her nose. Catching hold of the lead rope he booted her again. Whickering, she went stiff-legged forward, her evident reluctance rankly steeped in distrust.

  With the lead rope, his carbine and a balky mare to hold onto, Rafe had his hands full but kept going; and now, against the stars, he saw the rim's ragged flip. He could feel the mare stiffening up again.

  He let her stop and got out of the saddle. She stood there, trembling, ears flat against her head. The feel of this place tightened his grip on the carbine. It was too stinking still. Forced to believe he'd miscalculated somewhere he twisted the reins about the pommel so that if trouble was up there she wouldn't get tangled. He let go of the lead rope. With both hands damply clamped to the carbine he started cautiously putting one foot before the other.

  Another three steps would have put his head above the rim when a stone twisted harshly under his boot. A rifle belted flame across the dark a yard above him. Someone viciously cursed. Behind Rafe, with a panicked snort, Bathsheba slammed into the pack horse. Squealing and kicking it was knocked off its feet, the wail of its whimper wildly diving through a space as the mare, in a scramble of hoofs and loose rock, tore off down the backtrail like hell emigrating on cart wheels.

  XI

  With his belly squeezed flat against the wall's rotten rock, Rafe listened to the racketing of rifles being emptied so close he wondered they didn't take the top of his head off. In such a deafening bedlam there wasn't much chance for scuffing the wrinkles out of plans gone to pot. Like some rattlebrained kid he'd come bumbling right into Spangler's trap, and none of the things that were flapping inside him even remotely held out much hope.

  The guns had quieted but their clamor was still caterwauling and tumbling around through the gulches. Left afoot against the face of the cliff, Rafe knew better than to imagine the bugger responsible was about to go off without a good look around.

  His bunch was listening, stretching their ears to lay hold of Rafe's whereabouts. The stillness throbbed like a toothache. Then someone said, "Hell! He's prob'ly piled up down at the bottom with them broncs."

  Spangler growled, "I wouldn't bet on it. That peckerneck's got more lives than a cat! Get some brush stacked along the edge here."

  Boots tramped off, began scuffling around. It was hard for Rafe to stay where he was, never moving a finger, while his carbine got heavier and time inexorably moved nearer to the moment when inevitably they would find him. Yet to move was to bring the whole pack hellity larrup. He scarcely dared breathe with Spangler standing right over him. One false step, one sound....

  With careful pressure, infinitesimally applied, a rounded stone from the wall came loose in his fingers and, with a silent prayer, he tossed it into the black that had swallowed his pack horse. About the time he was ready to burst from held breath, a rattle came up off the rocks far below. Flame came out of the dark above him. The crew came running. "You see him?" Duke cried.

  Spangler, not answering, said, "Get that brush blazin'."

  "Ain't no brush," grumbled one of the other. "Couldn't find—"

  "Get some of that dead grass then."

  "Think you got him?" That was Duke again.

  "We're stayin' right here until we know for damn sure."

  Even if he could have found one Rafe wouldn't have risked plopping another rock down there. He thought of taking off his boots and trying to ease back down the trail, but the hazards looked worse than the risk of remaining; right now they thought he was down there. Boots clomped again. "Brill," Spangler growled, "you and Fentriss light them grass twists. Rest of us'll clobber anything that moves."

  A fine kettle of fish! Rafe reflected, inwardly groaning. His fingers were giving him plenty of hell in this twenty degrees drop in temperature that often, in the thin air at this altitude, came with the bullbats and cricket chirps accompanying full dark. With a jumpy care he passed the carbine from aching right hand to cramped left, flexed the emptied fingers and dug out his belt gun.

  It came to him then, with a crochety wonder, there must be a heap more behind what was happening than anyone so far had seen fit to mention. All this over a bunch of stole broncs! It just didn't seem natural. Not even the land—big as maybe it was, looked important enough to inspire so diverse and deadly an interest on the part of so many incompatible elements. A man's own kin telling him straight to his face—and his only sister who'd run after him barefooted clean to Beckston's Four Corners! And that saloon jasper, Dahl—where did he come in?

  Chilton, the banker, you could understand. Even Duke. But the rest of it.... Rafe, shaking his head, cautiously turned himself around, getting his back against the prods of the wall so that when those buggers started making a sieve of him he might, with luck, take a pair or three along.

  It wasn't so dark now; the rim stood out against a brightening glow; and he braced himself, pistol lifting, belatedly remembering a number of things he had meant to take care of but never got around to; also fleetingly thinking with regret of things he might better never of put his hand to. Wisps of blazing grass came down, twisting and swirling as the fire ate into them, and hats appeared along the lip of the rim, the barrels of rifles with the light skittering off them.

  But there weren't any shots. And Rafe, suddenly trembling, lowered his six-shooter, limp with the shock of execution postponed.

  The why of it was evident, peering up with his mouth open. It wasn't lack of initiative on the part of Spangler's gunnies that found him still on his feet and still breathing; he was alive because sight was forced to travel a straight line. The rim overhung Rafe's placement a good arm's stretch. Even with the burning grass pushing the dark back, the rim's lip concealed him.

  "Where is he?" Duke cried testily. Somebody else growled, "There's his pack horse!" and Spangler said, "He's down there someplace without he's got wings. We'll cover you, Brill. Go take a look."

  It got quiet again. Then Spangler cursed. "Your feet froze, Brill, or is it jest your hearin'?"

  "You think he's under that goddamn horse?"

  "Send the Paiute." That was Duke, brave as hell.

  "All right, White-eye." There was a shifting of feet, but nothing came of it. "Your guts turned to fiddle strings, too?"

  Spangler sounded like he was about fed up, but the breed, apparently, didn't want any part of it. With the grass burnt out the dark looked thicker than a buffalo coat. Spangler's voice, edged with fury, came impatiently through it. "Duke, take Fentriss an' go round the other way. There's enough brush down there—"

  "Not me," Duke snarled. "Who the hell you think you're talkin' to!"

  You could feel the silence like a hand pushing at you. Then saddle leather skreaked, a horse moved off, and Rafe reckoned Spangler had gone himself. This did not greatly ease his tension or noticeably improve the look of his chances. Spangler, when he got into the gulch, would fire the brush, lighting up this trail like a barn afire. If Spangler couldn't see him—knowing Rafe couldn't watch two ways at once—one of those still up there with Duke likely could be induced to come down from above; or they might rush him. Rafe certain sure wouldn't want to wait for that.

  Question was should he go up or down?

  Below he might run into the range boss, above he would face a storm of lead. They must see this, too, and would expect him if he ran to try to get through below. No one but a wall-eyed drunk could hope to get by that bunch around Duke.

  But if he tried to get back down into the roughs he was pretty near bound to be heard. With so much angry lead slashing around it was hard to see how all of it could miss him—and what about Spangler? A crack shot, probably, and knowing this range as Rafe never could. Looked like damned if he did a
nd hell if he didn't.

  Scowling, Rafe got out of his boots, removed their spurs and pushed them deep into his pockets. Looping the boots through his belt by their pull-straps he rebuckled it around him in such a manner the boots were held against his rump where they weren't so apt to go knocking into things. He looked again, long and wistful, in the direction his skewbald mare had bolted. Finally, clamping his jaws, he began gingerly picking his way toward the rim.

  The cold shale-littered trail was hard on his feet. The quiet up on top where the crew stood waiting was even harder to endure, so greatly did the peril of discovery restrict each tentative impulse toward movement; and the strain got worse with every step put behind him.

  He breathed a little freer when a murmured altercation briefly flared, but Duke's angry tones swiftly broke this up, Rafe having gained scarcely more than two yards. He still had about three more to go, and time was running out. If Spangler got his fire started before Rafe could manage to get over the lip, that old sweet chariot was going to swing low.

 

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