by Nelson Nye
Brownwater, climbing down off the gate, muttered, "Cook's pulled out," and the old man's staring eyes flopped around like a couple of hounds that had overshot the trail. "He's gone for Duke and Spangler," Luce said, again catching hold of Brownwater's arm.
Bender's eyes found her face; and Bunny, speaking out when nobody else would, told him bluntly, "They've been off chasing your heir—your son, Rafe."
The craggy head came around in a wild, lost look, the groping eyes trying to find her. Ineffably sad, he said, "You're mistaken. Rafe was killed in the war—"
"That's what they want you to think! He's back from the war. They've been out there all night trying to catch him and kill him. It's what I came here to tell you. But Luce was afraid; Duke said if she crossed him he'd turn her over to Spangler—ask Brownwater there. He'll tell you! They intend for Duke to come into this property—"
"It's his right," Bender said.
"Rafe was your first son; it should go to Rafe!" Bunny cried. "He's right here with you now—"
"Stop!" Bender's voice was the squawk of an eagle. The blind eyes turned fierce. "Is there nothing you Yankees won't do! Chilton claiming I've mortgaged this place! You Pikes trying to foist an imposter—I told your father when he came here the first time Rafe was killed in the war."
"But he wasn't! He's here! Not ten steps away from you. Say something, Rafe!"
Rafe licked dry lips. "That's right, Pa. I'm here."
For an agony of time Bender stood like a stone. It got so quiet in the courtyard if you had closed your eyes you'd have sworn the place was empty. The sun's lifting face yellowly brightened the west wall and the chirping of birds came sweet and clear, yet no one moved. The trembling lips of the patriarch, firming, cried, "That's the voice of the one who was out here before!"
"Certainly. Rafe," Bunny said. "Don't you know your son's voice?"
"Be still," Bender said, his tone curt with scorn. "Rafe's was never so deep—"
"You're remembering a boy; he's a grown man now."
Luce, coloring, said, "It is Rafe, Pa."
The staring eyes came about. "You said it wasn't, before."
"I know. God forgive me." Her pleading look went to Rafe, shy and shamed.
"She was scared," Rafe said. "I don't hold it against her." He pushed the gun into his belt. "This son that you say is dead—did he have any mark by which you might know him? Somethin', I mean, that—"
"Of course! The mole," Luce said. "You remember the mole, Pa."
Brownwater said, "We ain't got much time," but he might as well not have spoken for all the notice Rafe gave. He was watching Bender.
Hope had come into the old man's face. Though the doubt still showed, there was a surging excitement in the turn of his head. "I remember it well. Put my hand on it, boy."
Rafe shrugged out of his shirt. He walked over to Bender. He said, faintly grinning, "Which side was it on?"
Bender stiffened. "Was under his right arm, just above the elbow."
Rafe reached out the arm. "All right. Put your hand on it. Then tell me Rafe's dead."
Brownwater, back on the gate, softly swore. "There's a dust out there. We better git whackin'."
Bender, with his hand on the mole, was saying "Boy! Boy!" sounding all choked up, his other arm tugging Rafe hard and fierce. Great tears brimmed and spilled unheeded down his wrinkled cheeks; the girls were weeping also. Brownwater, disgusted, caught hold of Rafe and shook him. "I don't want t' break nothin' up, but if you ain't fixin' t' be a dead hero you better give some mind t' how we're to git outa here."
Seeming at last to get through to him, Rafe, giving the old man a final squeeze, disengaged himself, and, stepping back, said with his own eyes smarting, "Bill, you get the horses. We'll—"
"What horses!" The fat puncher, cramming a fresh chew into him, worked his jaws, spat grimly and growled, "You seen them pens! Only nags in sight is the ones we come in on. How far you figure we'd git on them?"
Luce knuckled her eyes. "There's four of you. That's two to a mount, and Rafe—"
"I'm stayin' right here."
"Don't be a boob!" Bunny flared, glaring at him. "If you're going to stay we may as well all stay! Now get that silly grin off your face and, while Luce packs some grub—"
"No time fer that," Brownwater cut in. "That bunch ain't scarcely five minutes away."
"These walls are thick," Luce said. "Why run? We've got food and water."
While the rest were considering, eying each other, Brownwater said, "Food can run out, and when our guns is shot dry what do we use? Time ain't goin' to be no help to us." He put his meaningful stare on Bender.
"You're right," Bunny sighed. "Get that gate open. I'll not be a minute." Whirling, ducking the well curb, she ran off through the pepper tree's green ferny lace, reappearing moments later tugging a big roan horse whose reins she thrust hurried into Rafe's hands. "You take Roanie—he's freshest. I'll get up with your father." Brownwater, dragging open the portal with Luce's nervous help, shouted, "Never mind us—they're goin' t' take after you! Look for us where you lost the skewbald. Git goin'!"
Rafe, still reluctant, and showing it, climbed aboard Bunny's horse, meaning to argue this further. While his weight was yet on the stirrup, the big puncher, yelling, fetched the blue roan a clip with his hat. The horse took off like a bat out of Carlsbad, the swearing Rafe becoming too busy trying to stay with him to have any breath or time left for gab.
Off to his left as he sailed through the gate a bedlam of furious shouts went up, but he hadn't any attention he could spare them, either. When he got his seat firmly sunk in the saddle and had found his other stirrup he sneaked a quick look and gave the roan back his head. There was six or eight of them pouring in the steel and laying on the leather in a frantic attempt to cut him off before he could pass that tangle of pens.
But all the shouting and shooting only increased the roan's fright. Pinning back his ears he really stretched out and his few hours of rest began to pay off. He tore past the pens in a wild burst of speed. Slowly but surely he began pulling away, opening up his lead a little more with every stride.
The pursuit quit firing but they kept on coming, falling farther behind, painly determined not to quit until they had to. Duke had never given a damn about horseflesh. Rafe guessed Spangler was riled enough to chew carpet tacks. They would kill him, all right, if they ever glommed onto him.
It was obvious now it would not be today. Some of their crew had already pulled up and the most of the others were strung out half a mile. Only Spangler and Duke, on the best of their horses, were still in the race, still spurring and quirting with the fury of frustration; Rafe, with a laugh, gleefully pictured their faces.
He grew sober in a hurry when the rhythm of the roan's hard run commenced to falter. Rafe switched him into a gallop, then a lope. When the ride continued rough he dropped him into a jog. The reaching lunge of his breath was like a bellows. Greatly concerned—even worried, now—Rafe peered behind and, a mile away, saw the pair still after him, indomitable as death.
He was afraid for his lead to ease the horse any further. If they again managed to get within saddle gun range they would probably drop off, do their level best to nail him. He kept the roan going, talking to him now, pleading with him, coaxing, promising oats and turnip greens, anything and everything that came into his head. The lather, on chest and flanks, showed like soap, and Rafe could no longer doubt the horse was limping.
With bitterness he pulled up and jumped down, reaching for the scabbarded rifle. Then he stared, stared again. The day had considerably advanced, the sun being presently almost straight over head in the full powers of its strength, but astonishingly, and in spite of this brilliance, he could find no sign of Spangler or Duke. If they hadn't given up they had at least dropped out of sight.
Rafe picked up the roan's feet. When he got to the off front hoof he found the trouble. A sharp, three-cornered stone had tightly wedged in the frog. While it wasn't by any means a c
ase for shooting, it was a cinch the roan would carry him no farther, not without Rafe irreparably ruining him.
Rafe dug the stone out. The animal would be of no use for several days. Rafe scowled about, trying to find some landmark that would fix his location. But this was all new country to him. Unknown. Haired over with last year's yellow grass it gently rolled toward a blue blur of hills back over his left shoulder which might be the ones that hid his father's headquarters. Where was the old man now? And the girls? Had Brownwater got them out of there?
Rafe's scowl deepened. Since he wasn't able to see any cattle it seemed a likely assumption he was probably still on Gourd and Vine range. And if those hills hid the ranch—he couldn't see any others close enough to matter—the rendezvous where he'd lost Bathsheba must be some place west, how far he had no notion. But a powerful long way for a man to have to go in high-heeled boots.
He picked up the reins, clucked to the roan and started walking.
The horse didn't balk but after an hour of increasing heat Rafe stopped to pull off the saddle and blanket; then with handfuls of grass he rubbed the roan down. Retrieving the rifle, he looked a long time at the saddle before abandoning it; he caught up the canteen, filled his hat with the tepid water and let the horse drink. Taking up the reins once more, he again moved west.
One thing he hoped more than anything else: that, at least, he was headed in the right direction. It wasn't himself he was worried about as much as it was the Old Man and the girls. If Duke and Spangler came onto them now things could get pretty sticky.
The sun heeled lower, the sharpening shadows dancing farther behind. Like romping dogs, Rafe wearily thought as, at ever-widening intervals, his reddened eyes sought the backtrail. His swollen feet ached miserably, then it got so they didn't seem part of him any more, more like something tied on he had to pull against his will. This got him thinking of horses, and he began to consider getting back on the roan. But this unaccountably clashed with some unexplainable ingrained concept he could neither unravel nor shake the shame out of; it surely did gravel him. "What the hell's a horse for!" He heard himself shouting like some zany old fool. He also discovered he had finally quit sweating, and this scared him into some semblance of sanity.
He quit walking to think, but all he could think of was getting off his blistered feet. The only sensible answer was right behind him. He twisted his head and took a furious look. Abruptly—to make sure he bested temptation—he peeled the roan's bridle and pitched it away. When his eyes wouldn't leave it, he stomped the tooled leather out of sight in the sand.
Then he set off again.
Peering into the orange blaze of the sun he couldn't find the hills he'd picked out for steerage. The blue hills of home. The wistful sound of it made him curse. He thought of getting out of his boots, abandoning them, like the saddle and the bridle and the emptied canteen. His feet were so swollen he couldn't get the boots off. He couldn't bear to cut them so he went stumbling on.
The hills swam into his thinking again. He made a dogged search and saw them grayly back of him, away off to the south. He had to wrestle this around a while before he got the sense of it, before he was able to realize he must have come farther than he'd been minded to suppose. He hopefully reflected he was probably not more than a couple of miles off his goal—that eastern drop to the floor of the roughs where he'd lost Bathsheba and where Brownwater Bill had said they would meet. Not even the astonishing discovery of the crazy staggering look of his tracks was able entirely to eradicate the notion.
He could be very near. This was rough-looking country filled with swirls of fluted sand, the very convolutions of which might tend to hide from a man afoot any sign of the drop-off until he reached its brink. He began to look for the churned-up area where he'd made his fight and, with Brownwater's help, had escaped from the crew.
He couldn't find even one hoofprint, but in this surge of restored confidence refused to be shaken. Wind could have done that. He floundered on, topping ridge after ridge, his burning eyes encountering nothing but the mauve look of more sand ahead with the sun squatting on it like a disc of molten copper. He wouldn't let himself believe he was lost, not even when outcrops of rock began occasionally to show like broken ribs among the dunes.
Once, remembering the roan, he took another backward look, but the horse was gone, vanished in the immensity of darkening desolation. The air was still furnace hot. His throat was cotton dry. A terrible thirst began to plague him, cutting through all other miseries.
The sun's face was half-buried when he dragged the chin off his chest to go staggering on with his tatters of hope. In its failing light something clutched at his shins. He thought the land fell away until he felt the grate of sand between his teeth and realized it was only himself that had fallen. God, what luxury to be perfectly still! The blessed peace of resignation—but resignation was surrender. Another name for death.
He struggled onto an elbow, scowling back at the tangled look of his legs and the outcrop of rotten rock that had spilled him. With a sense of outrage he said: "Son of a—!" and stopped, jaw sagging, his eyes about ready to pop from his head.
He clawed onto his knees and scrabbled back to the rock. When at last he stood up he was shaking all over. Like a man half asleep his fixed stare quartered the land. He had no remembrance of picking anything up but a chunk of the rock was in his hand. The rifle he'd been carrying was completely forgotten when he faced west again to go stumbling on.
It was almost full night when he came out on the rimrock and saw the dark gulf of the badlands below. Nothing stirred down there. No sound came up. The cliff-hung trail where he'd lost Bathsheba might be north of him or south. It was nobody's guess, and too stinking black to tell if the ground was scuffed or not.
Out of desperation he did a crazy thing. From a creosote bush he stripped an armful of branches, packed them back to the edge of the rim and put a match to them. It was a calculated risk. He had known the moment he found the bush he was in the wrong place, because where he had tangled with the Bender crew there had been no wood—they had had to use grass; and there was no grass here, only a few stunted bushes.
With a fascinated, more-than-half-defiant dread, he watched flames leap from the resinous branches, orange and blue, the explosive colors of grease. On this bare lip they could be seen for miles. Would they fetch Spangler's gunhawks or Brownwater Bill?
XIV
They found him all right.
This fat wood burned fast. He had to scurry about in the jump of his shadow, pulling up more bushes or see the blaze die before he got any good from it. When he ran out of the finger-thin branches the fire burned down to a bed of bright coals. But he kept on moving, around and around the still-red eye of it, knowing the need to make sure he was seen.
Spangler, Duke and company, if they saw and had managed to get hold of fresh mounts, would investigate whether he showed himself or not; but Brownwater, having Bender and the girls on his mind, would likely prove more cautious. He would have to see Rafe before he'd risk coming in. So Rafe kept tramping, half out of his head with the wear and the strain of it and scared, by God, the man would run anyway.
He was afraid even to think what he would do if Bill did. In his present shape, afoot, without water and half starved besides, armed only with a belt gun and so dang bone-weary he could scarcely stand up, he'd have no more chance than a June frost in hell's kitchen.
He heard the strike of shod hoofs on stone, and whirled, stumbling away from the coals, snatching his pistol as he plunged into the blackness.
"That you, Rafe?"
It came up from below, Rafe almost collapsing in the shock of relief. It had to be Brownwater—nobody else wheezed like that.
An unreasoning anger rushed tumultuously through him, all he had undergone feeding this fury as he pictured Bill lallygaggin' with the girls, comfortable and safe as a frolic of church mice. Filled with it he growled, "Get 'em on up here an' hurry it up!"
The shod hoofs, g
oing away, squandered no time in stealth. Rafe dropped, utterly spent, yet too feverishly filled with the whirl of his emotions to take any rest from it. He was up again pacing, when in the enfolding grip of deep quiet, hoofs pocked the night somewhere off to the left. One of the approaching animals nickered, and he came around, staring, on stiffening hips, certain even in the thick of this black there were more than two horses. He listened, canted forward, mouth open, heart thudding.
"It's only us," Bunny said, so calm he could have shouted. "Bill found your mare, and most of the grub that went off with your pack horse. Why don't you build that fire up a little?"
Why didn't he go stick his goddamn head in it! Rafe said, furious, "We're headin' for town—"
"Town!" Brownwater bleated like a scalded pig. "Gawd a'mighty! Sun cooked your brains, boy?" and Luce cried bitterly, "Alph Chilton—"
