by Les Weil
"What time?" said Hat Henderson, quick, sharp. "About dark."
"Which way'd they go?"
"Quit it, Hat," said Cal Brennan. He sighed, looking down at his boot toes. "Mac's after 'em. Well on the way by now. He's a good man. We're pressed for time anyways. An' Lon's makin' it. Seems to be gettin' better." He sighed again. "I don't like it any more'n you do, Hat. But we got work to do."
* * *
More days drifted over the big land and the sun dropped behind the ragged edging of mountains to the west, leaving a vast splendor across the sky, and Sheriff MacKnight, big and tired and dusty on a solid big-muscled roan, rode in along the wagon trace. Men were unsaddling in the first corral and others were scrubbing faces and hands at several basins on the bench along the front of the bunkhouse. Cal Brennan sat at one end of the bench watching the big man approach.
Slowly Sheriff MacKnight rode over and dismounted. He was aware of others gathering around but he looked only at Cal Brennan. "Don't take this too hard, Cal," he said. "I did my damndest. Almost had them twice but Garcia's got too many primos scattered south that'd hide them and find them fresh hosses. Lost them over in the Mogollons. Way out of my territory anyway and Jaeger over there had his hands full with his own troubles. You know that country. Nothing to do but quit. For now."
Sheriff MacKnight took off his hat and wiped a dusty hand across his forehead and put the hat on again. "I'll see about getting a reward posted," he said. "And there's something else. Young Hall died today about the time I got back. Kind of sudden. Internal hemorrhage the doc said. He managed to talk some near the finish. Said to tell you he was sorry he flubbed it, he should of rode them down."
Sheriff MacKnight was aware of the tense silence surrounding him. He looked unwaveringly at Cal Brennan. "I got to know how you're taking it, Cal."
Cal Brennan sat still, very still, head down. One hand moved slowly, rubbing over a knee. "I guess we got to leave it as unfinished business," he said. He raised his head. "For now. But if you get wind of 'em, we'll be counting on you to let us know."
"Yes," said Sheriff MacKnight. "I figured that." He sighed heavily. "And one thing more. He said to give Chavez this."
Sheriff MacKnight reached in a pocket and took out a battered gold watch.
* * *
In the lamplit interior of the cookhouse ten men sat on wooden benches along a big plank table. They ate in uneasy silence, uninterested in the food, but intent on it. The only sounds were the small scrapings of forks and spoons and the soft hissing of the big old coffeepot on the stove.
"Goddamn it!" said Monte Walsh. "I could of made a real bronc rider out of that kid!" He looked around, face flushed, angry, and saw that no one was interested in the statement and no one was looking at him. He lowered his head, intent on his own plate.
And outside, on the bench along the front of the bunkhouse, sat Dobe Chavez, staring into the darkening dimness of the big land, a battered old watch clenched in one hand.
* * *
Darkness and the clean breathing silence of night lay soft and serene over the clustered buildings and corrals. Not a light showed anywhere. The small thuddings of footsteps floated from the long low barn and a figure appeared in the doorway carrying something. It moved along the front of the building and to the first corral and in through the gate.
From the doorstep of the bunkhouse rose another figure, big, slope-shouldered, and moved silently on bootless socked feet toward the corral. Another, shorter, square-built, detached itself from the deep shadow beside the doorway and followed. The first figure came back through the gate leading a saddled horse.
"Nobody's pushing you, Dobe," said Hat Henderson.
"Ees my blame," said Dobe Chavez. "He geeve me the leetle clock to say eet ees right weeth heem. Eet ees not right weeth me."
"When you know something," said Chet Rollins, "send word. We'll be waiting."
* * *
More days and their nights drifted over the big land and a slim compact swarthy-skinned black-mustached man on a small neat stocky bay rode through the great distances, avoiding the few far scattered towns, stopping at remote dwindled remains of old Spanish villages and even more remote small ranchos, squatting by fires at lonely sheep camps where the land rose rugged and forbidding into the Mogollons, and he talked in soft fluent Spanish and some of those with whom he talked remembered carefully what he said and were ready should the occasion come to talk in their turn.
And one evening a sheepherder bedded his flock at a fresh camp up a lonesome box canyon and left his two dogs in charge and walked seven miles in the cloaking starlit darkness before moonrise to a cabin in the lower levels to speak to a man there. And the man there, when the first had left to walk back, mounted bareback on a burro and rode nine miles by a trail twisting through sharply ridged country to a small group of adobe houses and outbuildings where a few families raised a few sparse crops with water from a small stream trickling out of the hills behind and knocked gently on the door of one of the houses and spoke to the man clad only in shirt and ragged underdrawers who opened the door. And in the early light of morning this man harnessed a shaggy heavy-bagged mare to an ancient wagon and drove, with the mare's colt trotting beside her, eleven miles to a small crossroad settlement for a few not much needed supplies and a mile out of the settlement, before going on in, he turned off the little traveled road for a time to follow an old wagon trace and stop for a few moments by an old jacal with the remains of a tiny corral beside it in which stood a small neat stocky bay.
And late the next afternoon, when the sun out of sight below the ragged edging of mountains to the west was framing them in deep glow of color and the men of the Slash Y were jogging in by ones and twos from the day's work, Jose Gonzales on a scrawny pinto waited in the shadows of an arroyo watching for his man and saw him and moved up out of the arroyo waving his old high-crowned hat and stopped to wait again and Hat Henderson loped to him and talked briefly with him and Jose dismounted to make marks on the ground and explain them in his broken English and mounted again and dropped into the arroyo moving away and Hat rode on in to the ranch buildings, quiet, thoughtful.
And in the late dark silence of night over the big land three men led three horses out of the first corral, a big rangy bay and a thick-necked black and a deep-chested leggy dun.
"Maybe we ought to send word to Mac," said Chet Rollins.
"The hell with Mac," said Hat Henderson.
"How about Cal?" said Monte Walsh.
"The hell with him too," said Hat. "He's getting old."
* * *
Late afternoon again and four men, quiet, saying little, rode up between the sharp hogback ridges where the land rose rugged and forbidding into the Mogollons. They worked up and up into the timbered belt, tiny figures seeming lost in the immensity of rising rock and sudden stretches of high open grassland between vast patches of pine forest. Late dusk and they came to the entrance to a lonesome box canyon and
three of them waited while the fourth rode in and after a while returned and the four rode in and on circling past the indistinct blotch of many sheep bedded and two dogs that stood stiff-legged, ruffs rising, but making no sound, watching them pass, and on to the one flicker of flame in the deepening darkness that was the embers of a small fire and the figure of a man hunched beside it. They unsaddled and picketed the horses and sat for a while by the embers, saying little, and they took rolled blankets from behind the cantles of the saddles and spread these on the ground and lay in them looking up at the clean depth of sky and the soft shimmer of the late moon sliding silently over the high rock of the canyon walls.
In the grayness of the suggestion of light before dawn five men moved out of the canyon, on foot, four of them leading horses. The fifth, nondescript in patched odd-assorted clothes, walking in worn heavy shoes tied around his ankles with cord, led the way, twisting up the jagged steep slope of the left rim of the canyon to top out on a level area near its head. He stopped and the othe
rs with him and he pointed out and down over the craggy immensity dropping away southeastward and he spoke softly in Spanish. He turned away to start down the steep jagged slope.
"Tell him, Dobe," said Hat Henderson, "thanks. Thanks for the Slash Y. And he hasn't seen us and we haven't seen him."
* * *
Early morning sunlight penetrated only in small patches through the tall silent trees and tangled underbrush. The cabin, one-roomed, dirt-floored, set in a cleft of immense tumbled rock, almost back against the cliff wall climbing behind, was well screened. Only a faint trail led from the door winding down a few hundred feet through thick relatively new growth under the great trees that had survived a longago fire and to the trickle of a tiny stream angling past. To the left of the cabin in a small corral made of ropes strung between trees were two horses, gaunt scrub mountain ponies. A third of a mile away, to the right along the mountain face and down, hidden in a ravine, were four horses, rein-tied to sturdy brush. Back by the cabin where the faint trail led up from the tiny stream into the cleft of tumbled rock four men moved quietly through the thick growth.
A man appeared in the cabin doorway, big and heavy and freckled with the edge of some kind of dirtied bandage around his left shoulder and under the armpit showing above his shirt collar, carrying a bucket in his right hand. He looked out all around and yawned and started down the faint trail.
"Benton!" came the voice of Hat Henderson. "We got you covered!"
The man jumped, startled, and turned toward the direction of the voice, dropping the bucket and clawing at the gun in the holster by his side. He fired once, twice, and whirled, running back toward the cabin, and shots sounded out of the brush and he staggered and fell and hitched himself around, up on his left elbow, and fired again and more shots sounded and he dropped the gun and clutched at his body and rolled over on his back, limp and still.
Monte Walsh, long-legged, lean energy driving, was at the doorway of the cabin, gun in hand, peering in, and Dobe Chavez followed, one leap behind.
They turned back. "Empty," said Monte. They moved to where Hat Henderson and Chet Rollins stood looking down at the limp body.
"One," said Hat. "It's still unfinished."
Off to the left several hundred feet, lost in the tangle of growth between, a twig snapped, a small sound distinct in the stillness. They whirled and scattered, tearing leftward through the impeding brush. It was Chet Rollins who called. The others gathered by him. They looked down at the blanket lying in a small hollowed place among the bushes.
"Garcia," said Dobe Chavez, softly, bitterly. "He ees like the wolf."
"He's afoot," said Hat Henderson. "Monte, get the hosses. Chet, find if there's a shovel anywheres around the place. Dobe, let those ponies loose, we can't leave 'em penned here, while I see if there's anything we can chew on."
* * *
Noon and four men, leading horses, worked their slow way along and down the great jagged timber-clogged face of the mountain into the foothills, following the boot tracks found in the isolated soft spots. Miles back and up in the cleft of immense tumbled rocks the cabin rested in its own surrounding stillness, a pile of stones marking a lonely new grave.
They came to a half-mile stretch of slide rock and stopped briefly, baffled, and worked below and around it and found where the boot tracks led off again.
"Jeeeesus!" said Hat Henderson. "Hosses ain't much use in this country. But he's moving down. Once in the open an' we'll close in fast."
"I theenk," said Dobe Chavez, softly, bitterly, "Garcia he know what eet ees he do."
Early afternoon and they were mounted, moving faster now, well down, following over spring-greened grassland that rolled gently between strips of treed hollows. The boot tracks led straight, long-spaced as in running, with no attempt at concealment. The general level of the land rose with a seeming emptiness beyond and they topped what had been the horizon and there below, mile into mile like a great dark frozen sea stretched the cinder-black expanse of a long ago lava flow. Hard, brittle, caved and creviced, humped and broken with scant vegetation and that only in the great cracks like carved canyons streaking the surface, it reared in dark menace across the distances ahead.
They sat slumped in saddles staring out over it. "Jeeesus!" said Hat Henderson. "We couldn't trail an elephant out there. Half an hour an' the hosses'd be lame. Dobe, does he know this country?"
"Si," said Dobe Chavez, softly, bitterly. "Eet ees hees country."
They sat slumped in saddles. "Hopeless," said Hat Henderson. "He can hole there long as he wants. Come out when and where he wants. An' likely this time he won't stop till he's south of the border." Hat sighed. "Well, anyways, we did half of a good job. As Cal said, I guess we got to leave it still unfinished business. Dobe, can you lead us anywheres we can get a real meal before we start back to the ranch?"
* * *
Early morning again and the first light sliding over the long levels shone in soft luminous gold on an open-end shed beside a small sagging corral and behind a small adobe house. The sun edged up, clearing the horizon, and the clean golden light soaked pink-tinged into the side wall of the house and the door of the house opened and a small elderly swarthy man came out, limping on a bent leg, and went to the well a short distance to one side. He lifted the bucket with its limp rope tied to the handle and let it drop with a small splash into the well. He pulled the bucket up and went with it back to the house.
In the open-end shed a man lying on a blanket laid over straw on the ground that was the floor opened his eyes. He pushed to his feet, lean, hard-muscled, stretching like a lazy youngish animal. He looked at the other figures lying asleep on their own blankets on the straw. Two. He frowned and stepped out of the shed and looked over at the corral. Three horses. A big rangy bay and a thick-necked black and a deepchested leggy dun. He reached into the shed with one foot to nudge the leg of the big slope-shouldered man to the left.
"Hey, Hat," said Monte Walsh. "Where the hell's Dobe?"
* * *
And more days drifted over the big land and merged into weeks and three men had returned to the Slash Y, saying little and that straight to the point and going no further than the ranch itself, and men rode off repping at roundups and rode back bringing Slash Y strays and all of them rode out combing the range, selecting thin but fast-fattening four-yearold steers in a big herd to be delivered northeastward at Las Vegas. Late afternoon sun slanted down on busy preparations, gear being checked, horses being shod, the chuck wagon loaded.
One by one the men of the Slash Y stopped what they were doing, standing silent, looking out past the first corral and the other beyond into the far southland.
And out of the seeming limitless distances stretching two hundred and more miles to the border came a small bay, no longer neat and stocky but mud-caked and hollow-flanked, and the man in the saddle was thinned and dirt-stained and his black mustache was ragged fading into the stubble of days on his face and along one cheek was a raw red scabbing furrow that could have been cut by a bullet. Moving stiffly, he swung down and let the tired horse stand.
"Eees feeneesh," said Dobe Chavez and moved on to the bunkhouse and pulled off his worn boots and lay down on the third bunk on the right.
* * *
"Don't ask me to explain anything. I don't understand them. The men around here. Particularly the cowboy variety. I've been waiting on them in this store ever since a doctor sentenced me to time in this high dry country for my health two years ago next month. But I'll never understand them. They'll make it a killing fight over a nickel if they think maybe there's a chance they might be getting cheated and the next thing they'll be throwing away everything they have on something silly that takes their fancy. They'll kill a horse in the line of work and slam-bang cattle around and never even bat an eye. They'll watch a man be thrown sky high and come down to break a leg or worse and they'll laugh themselves sick at him being so clumsy before they bother to pick him up. They'll throw their ropes at anyt
hing that moves and almost choke to death just to see if they can run it down and tie it. They think it fun to watch a dogfight or a cockfight or any kind of fight. The bloodier the better. And then, like as not, they'll be all broken up, almost to blubbering like babies, if some little mangy pup or stray cat they have around gets hurt.
"Here's an example of what I mean. Happened earlier this year. Out at the Slash Y. I'm told that's a tough outfit that goes its own way and won't stand for interference from anybody. The way some of them behave in town here doesn't disprove that any. I've heard stories of things when they were first establishing their range I wouldn't dare repeat. Now listen to this. A big wolf out of the mountains was picking off some of their calves. I understand it even got a colt or two. They'd been hunting it and trying to trap it and they couldn't get it. Too smart for them I guess. Finally they brought in a man from up north somewhere, a professional trapper I suppose he was. And he had trouble too but he finally got it. After he tried other things he tried this. He caught a rabbit and kept it alive and tied it up by a hind leg so it could just reach the ground with its front legs. Hid some traps around. Idea was that the wolf would see or scent the rabbit and the rabbit would jump and thrash around and the wolf would be so busy leaping at it he would stumble into a trap. And it worked. The wolf got the rabbit but a trap got the wolf. You'd think those men would have cheered that trapper. He'd outsmarted that wolf. He'd done what they couldn't do. But as soon as they heard about it they turned on him just like that. Wouldn't speak to him. Just gave him the cold shoulder until he was paid and was gone. I asked one of them why. All he said was and I remember it exactly: `That wasn't no way to treat a rabbit and it a little old cottontail too.' "
