by Elmer Kelton
He paused at the door. “Blow out the lamp, T.C. As far as anybody needs to know, Nichols is still in here.”
The light winked out and T.C. stood on the porch. “You’d think they’d have given up this lynch talk. You never can tell what people are going to do.”
* * *
Just at daybreak they rode up to George Frisco’s little adobe ranch house deep in the dry, thorny stretch of brush country that lay north of the big river. Two dogs came bouncing out, barking and raising cain around the horses’ heels. A couple of the horses shied away and kicked at the dogs.
The old rancher poked his gray head out the door and squinted at the riders. He came out, but kept his gnarled hand on the door until he was satisfied who the visitors were.
“Mutt! Shep!” he shouted at the dogs. “Git away! Git!”
The dogs drew back, still barking to show that they remained on guard.
“Mark Truitt,” old George said. “I couldn’t tell who you were at first, you fellers coming along in front of the sun that way. Get down and come in. The coffee’s still hot, and if there’s not enough, we’ll make some more.”
“Thanks, George. We were hoping you’d ask us.”
He had known the rancher would. In this broad, lonesome country, as seldom as people saw each other, the old man probably would have invited the Rankin brothers themselves in, if they’d happened to come riding by.
He’d already had his breakfast—probably had eaten two hours ago—but he poured fresh coffee for the riders, emptying the pot. He put in a few fresh grounds along with the old, added more water, and set the pot back on the stove. He sliced some bacon and made up biscuits out of a big crock of sourdough.
“No eggs,” he apologized. “I used to keep some chickens, but there weren’t enough of them for me and the coyotes both.”
Truitt was grateful for the coffee after the long night ride. It was strong enough to float a six-shooter, the way an old bachelor ranchman like George usually made it. Living alone like this, most men hated to cook. Breakfast and one other meal usually got them by. They made up the rest on strong black coffee.
George stared at the prisoner, and at the handcuffs that still clamped his wrists. He didn’t ask any questions. Chances were he had the situation about half figured out anyway.
“The election’s over, I reckon,” he said. Truitt smiled wanly. “It’s over. I lost.” George swore softly. “Lost? To that Dalton Krisman? Why, I never thought he’d get more than one vote, and that one his own. People get crazier all the time. That’s why I moved way out here, so I wouldn’t have to put up with a lot of their foolishness.”
He shook his gray head, as if he still couldn’t believe it. “Krisman. Now, ain’t that a joke.” He changed the subject then. “You fellas look as if you had a long ride. Why don’t you stretch out and sleep a while?”
They needed it, Truitt knew. But he glanced at the prisoner.
“Don’t worry about him,” George said pointedly. He pulled a pistol out of a holster hanging on the wall and shoved it into his waistband. “He’s going to take a nap too…”
Nichols hadn’t said much during the whole ride. At first he had been eager, for he had assumed, as T.C. did, that the move was to get him away from a lynch mob. As the hours wore on, he had become more and more worried.
Now, an hour after they had saddled their fresh horses and headed south from George’s adobe house, he asked, “What do you want with me, anyhow?”
“You’re going to take us to the Rankins,” Truitt told him flatly.
Nichols shook his head. “I told you once that I’m not going to do it.”
A chill was in Truitt’s voice. “You’ll do it.”
Mark Truitt had been afraid he might not easily find the place where Chip Tony had died, but now here it was, a big opening in the aimless, endless tangle of mesquite and brush and prickly pear. Ugly, red-necked carrion birds flopped their awkward wings and lifted themselves grudgingly into the air, settling back yonder a ways. Here lay two horses, dead now for several days.
Tony had ridden quietly, drawn apart from the others, his thoughts his own. Now he pulled over to Truitt, a bleakness in his eyes. “Is this the place?”
Mark nodded, and Will said, “Show me where they killed him.”
Will Tony stood there a long while, an angry glaze coming over his eyes. He turned upon Nichols then, danger in the grim set of his jaw.
Sensing trouble brewing, Mark said, “We’d better get moving.”
He led off quickly. Will Tony remounted his horse and fell in behind, looking back over his shoulder.
Even after so many days, the trail was not hard to follow, for the Rankins had not tried to hide it. The river was not far ahead. Beyond it was sanctuary. They had had no reason to hurry, or to worry about pursuit.
The seven riders reached the border in about an hour. Here it was, a broad, muddy river hardly deep enough, in most places, to swim a horse. But it might as well have been an ocean, for it was the national boundary, a legal barrier a lawman did not easily breach.
“Too many times I’ve sat here grinding my teeth,” Truitt told the possemen, “knowing they were right over yonder and not being able to go after them.”
Now he had brushed aside all thought of law. His badge meant nothing across the river, and he was losing it anyway. “The river used to look big,” he said, “but now it looks mighty little. Let’s get across it.”
He splashed out into the muddy water, in the lead. The others strung out behind him. They were far out from the bank before they reached water deep enough to make the horses swim. Within moments the hooves found solid footing again, and the riders were across the river.
Stopping on the far bank to let the horses shake themselves off, Mark Truitt looked back across the river with a strange sense of jubilation. Swimming it had been in a way like striking a long-awaited blow at an old enemy. There was no telling what people would do to him when he got back to Lofton. He’d worry about that some other time. Right now he didn’t care. What mattered was that he had crossed the river.
“Your badge doesn’t mean much now, does it, Mark?” commented Luke Merchant. He’d crossed a river or two himself, in his time. “We’re on our own.”
“We always were,” Mark replied.
He turned to Nichols. “Now comes your part, what we brought you for. You know where the Rankins stay when they’re over here. You’re going to take us to them.”
Nichols tensed. “You might just as well take me back to your jail, Truitt. If I were to tell you, my life wouldn’t be worth a counterfeit Confederate dollar.”
“It won’t be worth more if you don’t.” Truitt’s voice was firm. “We’re going, with or without you. The bargain I offered you still goes. Lead us to the Rankins, and we’ll turn you loose; you’ll have your freedom. If you don’t lead us there, we can’t afford to be tied down to you. We’ll have to get rid of you.” His hand lay on the rope tied to his saddle.
Nichols’s face was pale. His tongue ventured out over dry lips. “It wouldn’t be legal, Sheriff.”
“We stopped being legal when we crossed the river. Make up your mind. Which are you most scared of, the Rankins or us?”
Nichols’s gaze swept over the six men around him, and he found no comfort in the stony faces. Will Tony’s right hand worked the hornstring loose from his saddle. Grimly he began shaking out his rope.
“You say you’ll let me go?” Nichols queried anxiously.
“That’s our agreement,” said Mark. “Your freedom for the Rankins.” Nichols looked at Will Tony once again, watching Will finger the rope. For a moment death brushed him with its cold hand. “All right,” he said weakly, nodding his head. “I’ll take you.”
“Lead out, then,” Mark said firmly. “And just remember this—one wrong move and you’re dead.”
For a time they moved along the trail left by the stolen cattle. There had been no rain to alter it. Wind had scoured away much of the loose sand, but the grou
nd was still visibly scarred. Eventually, however, the tracks were lost in a general scattering of cow trails.
“They turned the cattle loose down here,” Nichols said. “The Rankins have a mighty big herd now, and most of them wear brands from north of the river. The Rankins just about took over this stretch of country around here. Some of the people work for them, and the rest are too scared to put up a fuss.
“When they get a little short of cash they round up a few head and sell them farther west, back over the river. But I imagine the big part of all the cattle they’ve stolen are still right down here, scattered from Cape Cod to Hickory Bend. Edsel has some big notion of being the biggest cowman in northern Mexico someday.”
“What about young Floyd?”
“As long’s he has plenty of whisky and pretty women, he doesn’t care whether school keeps or not.”
Keeping the lead, Mark Truitt stayed in the brush. His eyes searched the skyline for signs of other riders. Above all, they had to get across this dry and baking land without being seen.
Once he spotted a man half a mile to the east, pushing a horse along in a slow lope. Quickly Mark stepped out of the saddle, and signaled the others to do the same.
“Think he’s seen us?” asked Homer Brill.
“He might have seen you,” Joe Franks said, “sticking up there like a telegraph pole.”
“I don’t imagine he saw us,” Mark told them. “We’ve got a good cover of brush. I just wish I knew who he was, and what he’s doing down here.” He turned back to Nichols. “How much farther?”
Nichols shrugged. “We might make it by dark. At the rate we’re going, we’re not getting there very fast.”
“It’s better to stick to the brush and get there slow than break out in the open and have them waiting for us,” Mark replied.
The afternoon sun pressed down on them with all the deadening power that July can have in the dry brush country. Even at a slow trot, the horses sweated heavily. Mark rubbed his sleeve across his face, tasting the salt of perspiration on his lips and the burn of it in his eyes.
It was hotter here even than at Lofton, because the elevation had dropped. Lofton was considered dry country, but here, beyond the river, the annual rainfall was much less than that north of the border. It showed in the stunted brush, the sparse, coarse grass, the thick scattering of pear and cactus. It was outlaw country in every way, Mark thought. Even the land itself seemed forsaken.
Now and then they began running into cattle. The animals were as wild as deer down here in this big open country, where they had to walk a long way to get enough to eat and drink.
“Look there, Luke,” Mark said, pointing to the LS brands on the hips of a bunch of cows, before the cattle clattered away.
Luke Merchant nodded grimly. Many a time, as LS wagon boss, he had counted up the losses after the Rankins cut a swath across his company’s range.
Nichols was tensed up like a man waiting for the hang rope. Mark knew why. If anything went wrong now, if the Rankins should come upon them, they would know Nichols had led the posse here. It wouldn’t go easy with him.
“We’re getting closer,” Nichols said thinly.
“How close?”
“An hour or so, I reckon, at the rate we’re going.”
Mark looked to the west. The sun was not far above the skyline any more. It was losing some of its awful heat. In an hour it would be sundown. He wanted time and light to look the situation over.
“Let’s ride a little faster, then,” he said.
Harley Mills was humming a tuneless something half under his breath, behind Mark. Harley never spoke unless he had to, but that humming was always there. It had never bothered Mark before. Now, in this building tension, it grated on his nerves. Easy now, he told himself. Go easy or you’ll bust a spring.
Working out to the edge of the brush, they came in sight of the Rankin headquarters just before the sun reached the top of the rocky hill off in the west. It was an old adobe-built outfit, and some of the out-buildings were crumbling because of neglect. The only half-decent building left was the main house itself, a square brown structure squatting in the sun amid a loose scatter of mesquites and prickly pear and guajillo brush.
Behind the adobe sat a low-built jacal made of mesquite poles and thatched with the thin, sharp blades of the bear grass. The corrals, of crooked mesquite trunks and branches, leaned one way and the other, needing attention. The only thing resembling a barn was an arbor of mesquite posts, the top piled high with brush for shade. All four sides were open to the scorching winds and the rain, when there was any rain.
“That’s it,” Nichols said with a quiet desperation. “Now I’ve held up my end of the trade. You fellers have to turn me loose.”
Mark said, “We’ll turn you loose, but not just yet. You might decide to redeem yourself by running down there and spoiling everything we set out to do.”
They all dismounted and squatted on the ground to look over the dusty Rankin camp. Luke Merchant pointed. “There are horses in the corral, Mark. It looks as if they’re home.”
Mark nodded. “Somebody is.” He watched a man walk out of the adobe house with a bucket in his hand and dip it into a water barrel, then go back into the house.
“Lupe Aguilar,” said Nichols. “He cooks for the outfit.”
A moment later another man walked out to the corral.
“Shark Fisher,” Nichols whispered. “Edsel Rankin never goes anywhere without him.”
Mark’s voice was tight. “Then the Rankins must be there.”
He studied the building, looking for the best way to get in. There was too much open ground to cross to rush in from here. The Rankins would spot them too soon and would have time to put up a defense. But if they could get in close, and overrun the camp in a matter of seconds …
“Is that arroyo yonder deep enough to hide a horse?”
Nichols nodded. “It’s six feet or so along this end. Floyd Rankin fell in it one night when he was drunk. He almost broke his neck.”
Mark grunted in satisfaction. “Is there any way to get a horse out of it, down there close to the house?”
“The bank’s caved back just below the corrals yonder, where that brush comes in so thick. You could get horses up over it there.”
Mark looked back at the men behind him. “That’s the way, then. We’ll go into the arroyo here in the brush, leading our horses. We’ll stay in it, out of sight, till we get down below the corrals. We’ll mount up then and rush the house before they have time to get ready for us.”
Will Tony broke his somber silence. “Do you want prisoners, Mark?”
“We’ll take them if we can. But remember this—we may never have another chance like this at the Rankins. If we can’t take the Rankins to prison, we don’t want to leave them alive.”
Will Tony’s mouth went flat. “That suits me fine.”
Nichols was trembling. “What about me?”
“We can’t leave you out here. You’ll have to go in with us.”
“But you made me a promise.”
“And we’ll keep it. After this thing is done.”
He motioned the others to follow him. Working carefully through the thinning mesquite, they led their horses until they came at last to the arroyo. They had to hunt awhile to find a place where the banks were caved enough to get the horses down.
Mark moved out in front, six-shooter in his hand, picking his way cautiously along the gravelly bottom of the arroyo. This section was a near stranger to rain. Yet, when it came, it often fell in a violent downpour that sent great sheets of water cascading along to slash and erode the land and leave angry gashes like this red arroyo as a further blight to disfigure the appearance of an already blighted land.
It was almost dark now, and he knew this would be a race against time. He could smell the wood smoke that drifted out from the chimney of the adobe house. They might be eating about now.
There might never be a better time to catch them.
It occurred to him that he hadn’t eaten anything since he had left George Frisco’s place this morning, except for a tin of sardines he had split with Will Tony. But he felt no hunger. The rising excitement took care of that.
He felt his heartbeat quickening. He had been in tight places, but he felt that never before had he been in one as tight as this, or important. He glanced back at the men behind him. Their grim, nervous faces showed they were feeling the sense of strain just as he did.
Scared? Sure, he was scared. He always had been when he got in a situation like this. He had never been ashamed to admit it. But despite the tug of fear, he went on. He always did. And he knew that the men behind would follow him.
They moved carefully up the arroyo, with the air still and close and stifling hot. Occasionally Mark paused to move aside a rock that might make a horse stumble. He wished time and again that he could afford to risk a look out over the top of that bare rim.
A foreboding came to him then, a sense that something would go wrong, or perhaps already had gone wrong. He wanted to dismiss it, but the experience of past years told him to heed. He had to look out over the top now. He found a little niche for a foothold and cautiously raised up.
He saw horsemen sweeping toward the arroyo from out of the cover of brush.
“Look out,” he shouted, “It’s a trap!” He triggered a quick shot at the horsemen.
“Mount up and run!”
It was hopeless to stay here and put up a fight. They would be like quail caught on the ground, hemmed between these narrow red banks.
He heard a sharp cry as a bullet struck one of the possemen. But in the space of two or three seconds every man was in the saddle and spurring back down the arroyo.
Their trap sprung seconds too early, the outlaws pressed in closer. Guns crashed. Red dirt spat from the arroyo rim as bullets dug in. The outlaws were pushing along even with the possemen, keeping up a running fire. The lawmen were firing back, all of them but stocky Joe Franks. He bent low over the horn, clutching a wounded arm. But he was spurring as hard as the rest.
Through the dust and the smoke, Mark glimpsed Edsel Rankin. In desperation he leveled a shot at him, but knew he had missed. He fired at another rider, though, and he didn’t miss. The man toppled from his horse and rolled over the edge into the arroyo, dropping heavily to the gravel floor.
