Travis

by T. T. Flynn

  “No, ma’am,” he said briefly.

  “Where can I find him?”

  Estimating her shrewdly, Quist pondered the question. “Clay,” he said finally, “rode outta town.” And when Patricia impatiently demanded, “Where?” Quist thought that over, also. “I ain’t exactly sure, ma’am.”

  “When will he be back?”

  “Clay didn’t rightly know hisself.” Quist’s stare searched her face. “Somethin’ wrong?”

  “I don’t know.” Her question wrenched at him. “Were you ever a coachman?”

  Quist said: “Now ain’t that a funny question.”

  “A coachman in San Francisco?”

  “Some folks,” said Quist vaguely, “get queer ideers. ’Way off there now, in San Francisco.”

  Tightly Patricia demanded: “Were you there when a man escaped from a bank by bluffing with a pipe in his pocket? Like this pipe of Clay Mara’s?”

  Quist’s stare narrowed on the pipe that Patricia took from her jacket pocket. His muscular hand reached quickly for the pipe. His manner hardened.

  “You’ve said plenty, young lady. Now say the rest. How’d you know all this?”

  Now all her doubts vanished. The surge of Patricia’s fear turned into anger as her greenish-blue eyes rested on the big, startled Howie Quist. “Missus Strance,” said Patricia coldly, “gave a clipping from a San Francisco newspaper to Roger Travis. It told how the two men escaped after one of them tried to cash a draft against an account in the name of R. Travis.”

  Quist’s harsh question whipped back. “Has Travis seen this pipe?”

  “Not yet.”

  “What’s Travis think about Clay Mara an’ me?”

  “He thinks you both work for Gid Markham. What are you two men doing here?”

  A slight sheen of perspiration was coming on Quist’s forehead. “We was driftin’, headin’ for Santa Fe when we met old man Bell an’ helped him with his horse herd.”

  “A likely story.” Patricia’s straw sombrero barely topped his wide shoulder. The braided barbijo straps brushed her flushed cheeks as she angrily warned: “Stop covering for this man, Mara. I can find him. You might as well tell me!”

  “Now, ma’am . . .”

  “Don’t ‘ma’am’ me! Where is he?”

  “Take days to find him, maybe.” Quist was visibly perspiring. “Let be till I can find Clay. Take my word for it, ma’am.”

  “I wouldn’t,” said Patricia, “take your word that the sun shines. And I’ve no intention of waiting. I’ll find the man!”

  Quist stared at her apprehensively. “How’ll you find him?” he asked.

  “I’m going to Dorothy Strance with all this miserable business,” said Patricia recklessly. “Both of us know this country and everyone in it. Mara can’t stay out of sight long.”

  “Women.” It was close to a groan. “Ain’t no use bein’ a wildcat. You aim to drag Travis into it?”

  “Whatever I decide!” said Patricia hotly, and she walked quickly away to find Dot Strance, leaving Quist mute, sweating, and glowering in indecision after her.

  * * * * *

  In mushy blue twilight, Ira Bell rode down a winding cattle trail over black lava outcroppings. The old man had a gnome-like look as he hunched on the rough-coated, wiry mustang bought cheaply in Soledad. Clay lifted his voice. “No water for fifteen miles. We camping dry tonight?”

  Over his shoulder, Bell said in unconcern: “They’s water for them as know where to look. Them as don’t know, stays dry. Country’s like that.”

  They rode finally into a long swale with a spring-fed water hole at the upper end. With a blanket apiece, food in their saddlebags, a frying pan, small coffeepot, tin cups, they camped well.

  Deer watered in the swale. Coyotes clamored in the distance as Clay lay, staring up at the spattered stars, thinking of Travis. Anticipation of the end was in him now. And, during the forenoon of the next day, it filled him when they arrived, finally, at the small placita of Piedras.

  Immense old cottonwoods ringed the settlement. A lumbering cart with wheels of tree-trunk rounds rimmed with iron bands creaked past behind six diminutive mouse-colored burros. Dogs barked. Women with faces covered to bright, curious eyes with the black shawls called rebozos watched them ride between the low adobe huts into a small, bare plaza. Men called greetings in Spanish to Ira Bell.

  “Knowed some of them since they was shirt-bare kids a-beggin’ for them little brown-sugar cones called pilóncillo I usta buy ’em,” said Ira Bell, grinning. “They’re close-mouthed with strangers, but they’ll talk t’me.”

  A small adobe store of sorts across the plaza had a short, sagging hitch rack and a narrow portal holding upended boxes. Men were walking toward them as they dismounted before the store.

  Ira Bell called in Spanish, “Gregorio! ¿Qué pasa? Juanito! ¿Cómo ’sta?” and to Clay: “Somethin’ up here!”

  “Look!” said Clay. Howie Quist was emerging from the store.

  “Knowed he wouldn’t lay around Soledad,” Ira Bell said, and walked to meet his Piedras friends.

  Piedras was where Howie was to have joined them later on. Howie came off the store portal with relief on his broad face and concern in his question. “You had any trouble yet?”

  Clay’s welcoming grin was wry. “Trouble now, with you on our hands. Told you to get strong before you left town.”

  “That redheaded widow an’ the Kilgore gal,” Howie blurted, “is fixin’ to throw you to Travis!” And, as Clay’s face tightened, Howie gave Clay the pipe and grimly recounted his talk with Patricia Kilgore. “I been waitin’ here since yesterday, not knowin’ where to find you two, or if Travis’d get you first.”

  “That widow,” said Clay softly. His rueful, remembering smile came. “She evidently knew about the South Bay Bank the other morning when I lighted my pipe in her yard. No wonder she jabbed at me about San Francisco. Howie, never trust a red-headed woman.”

  “Any woman,” said Howie dismally. “A taffy-haired gal done me dirt.”

  Intently Clay asked: “Patricia Kilgore said Travis had seen the clipping . . . but hadn’t seen my pipe?”

  “She was breathin’ blue fire an’ threats,” said Howie glumly. “She lit out for the widder, meanin’ to find you, get hold of Travis, too, an’ no tellin’ what.”

  Ira Bell had been shaking hands and talking with the darkfeatured men of the placita. Gestures and blurts of liquid Spanish were rapid as the men walked out of the plaza with Ira.

  Howie said: “This place has been buzzin’ all mornin’. Yesterday they was friendly. Today they been treatin’ me like a robber bee who snuck in the hive. I been wonderin’ if Travis or the Kilgores is back of it.”

  “Ira will find out,” Clay said. He rolled a smoke slowly and stood in frowning intentness. And, a little later, when Ira Bell returned alone, they both waited expectantly.

  “Let’s get goin’,” said Ira briefly. He held silence until Howie got his horse from behind the store and they were riding out of the small plaza. “I talked to a feller who had a bullet in his leg,” Ira said then. “Tried to water his hoss at sunup over on Mesa Blanca. Homesteaders without wimmen or kids was fencin’ land around the water. They shot his leg afore he got away.”

  Alertly Clay said: “Homesteaders without women?”

  “Uhn-huh. They’s been surveyin’ in these parts, too, quiet-like. Piedras folks paid no mind, figurin’ ’twas Markham business.”

  “Is this Mesa Blanca on Markham land?”

  “Yep. Men rode quick to tell Gid.”

  Frowning, Clay said: “What made homesteaders think they could dig in on Markham land?”

  Ira Bell shrugged as he swung his rough-coated mustang into a dirt lane skirting small irrigated fields. “It ain’t legal-like, Gid’s land. It’s open land.”

  “I thought Missus Markham inherited Spanish grant land, and Amos Markham added to it,” Clay said quickly.

  “Connie’s land wasn’t great shucks,
” said Ira carelessly. “Amos spread over free range that nobody wanted them days. Matt Kilgore done the same, although Matt bought up water rights when he could.”

  Ruefully Clay said: “Start thinking from the wrong facts, and you come out all wrong. I thought all this was owned land.”

  “The feller who can hold it uses it,” Ira said. “There ain’t water, hardly, for cattle, let alone crops. Connie Markham understood these Piedras folks. They was satisfied for Amos to spread all around. But strangers now, fencin’ off, shootin’ . . .”

  Clay mused with growing conviction: “Ten, fifteen miles and more between water. Own the land legally around the water, and the free land everywhere else is useless to others.” And, when Ira nodded agreement, Clay said narrowly: “You’re sure the Markhams claim this Mesa Blanca water?”

  “They’ve used it twenty-five year an’ more.”

  “How far from here?”

  “Coupla hours.”

  Clay made a quick decision. “I need to see who’s fencing that water. Lead off.”

  “You got shot at fer me. My turn, I reckon.” Bell looked resigned as he swung the mustang off the dirt lane away from the last of the small, irrigated fields.

  Less than two hours later the sun was almost straight up when they dropped off pine-dotted uplands into a tangle of ridges and draws where chokeberry bushes grew. They climbed out of a draw, threaded brush and lichen-spotted rocks, and glimpsed open country ahead. In a rock-rimmed pocket spilling down at the far end, Bell pulled up. His wrinkled face was calm.

  “We’ll be clost, quick now, sneakin’ on ’em from cover.”

  Clay jacked a shell into his carbine. “I’ll have my look alone.” He walked the cat-footed black gelding on out of the pocket, twisting down through rocks and brush into a grassy bay from which he looked over a wide, rolling mesa.

  Howie and Ira Bell had followed him. Clay motioned them back, dismounted, and advanced on foot. At his right a rocky finger ridge reached out a hundred yards. When he cleared the ridge, the spring-fed water hole was on to the right not two hundred yards distant. A wagon was there. Four men were setting fence posts. And the man who looked up and sighted Clay’s solitary figure yelled warning. All four men dived for rifles they had close on the ground.

  The first man who faced Clay bawled: “A water right is filed here, legal an’ regular! No business of any Markham man! Get goin’!”

  The man at the left, swinging fast, bringing up his carbine, bawled: “Use them raafles!”

  It was the burly Doyle, and Clay’s great grin of satisfaction—and relief, too—had nothing to do with the gunfire suddenly on him. He dropped flat as Doyle shot. The thin wail of the bullet close overhead was blotted by the breaching report of Clay’s carbine firing back. And by the gunshots of Doyle’s companions, and guns opening up behind Clay.

  When the swift flurry of shots died away, Doyle and the other three men had gone to earth, also. Behind Clay, Howie’s exasperated protest lifted: “You ride two hours here to get your head shot off?”

  “Had enough, Howie? Keep ’em down!” Clay called over a shoulder.

  Howie fired. The guns at the water hole drove angry shots back. Clay scrambled up, dodging, running for the shelter of the finger ridge. Howie and Ira Bell hugged rocks and pumped shots at the water hole to cover his run. Clay pulled up, grinning, panting in the sheltered pocket where he had started.

  Sourly Howie called: “Ain’t it fun?”

  “Get out of here!” Clay ordered. Their horses were there, and, when the three of them were riding back up through the rock-rimmed pocket, Clay called to Ira Bell: “How far to the Kilgore house?”

  “Couple more hours.”

  “Make it fast,” Clay directed. And to Howie, Clay called jubilantly: “Like I thought, Travis has cut his own ground out from under him! I’ve got him now, Howie!”

  XX

  The high, hard humor was still in Clay when they pulled the sweating horses to a brief walk across a sun-drenched, high country meadow. Howie, riding at Clay’s left, speculated: “I wonder if any other Markham water holes is bein’ fenced?”

  At Clay’s right, Ira Bell said calmly: “Gid’ll run ’em all out fast.”

  “He’ll try,” Clay said, “and he’ll get the surprise of his life. You heard the man yell that a water right had been filed. Those men were at the Kilgore Ranch when I was there, which is what I wanted to make sure. Travis is moving in on Gid Markham with the law behind him and a big gun crew to back the law.”

  Bell’s sunken eyes looked over uncertainly. “Heerd you say in Soledad that Matt Kilgore promised Connie Markham no more trouble, ever.”

  “Travis didn’t say so. He’s half owner of Kilgore’s ranch now.”

  Hunched on the rough-coated mustang, Bell pushed black kerchief folds up over his face in a tired gesture. The old man’s words had a kind of unbelieving wonder. “If Gid’s water holes is fenced off, then Gid’ll have to pull everything he owns outta the country quick. Thirty years here . . . an’ finished in days!”

  Levelly Clay said: “It’s started now.”

  “Then sure as cats jump blue rats, Gid’ll kill Matt Kilgore like Amos planned all along,” said Ira Bell in slow dismay.

  Clay said sharply: “In Soledad the other day, old man, you held back about Amos Markham and Matt Kilgore, didn’t you? Now what’s the real truth?”

  Intently Clay watched a clouding, back-reaching look enter Bell’s tired eyes. “The night Gid was born,” Bell said simply, “I was waitin’ in the house with Amos. We both heerd Connie cry out Matt’s name.” Clay’s soft whistle did not stop Bell’s reluctant words. “Hell jumped black in Amos. Fierce, he asked me how clost Matt an’ Connie really was afore Matt got married sudden, and Connie married Amos hasty right after.”

  Carefully Clay said: “Well, how close?”

  “Amos wronged a proud little lady who only cried out lonely an’ helpless fer the man she really loved,” said Bell’s tired voice. “An’ it nailed her to a cross she never got loose from. Amos was wild that night. He got out his Bible an’ told me his own name of Amos meant a feller who had a burden to bear. An’ Matthew meant a gift from the Lord. It made proof to Amos right there his suspicions was Bible fact.”

  “And Amos planned . . . ?” prodded Clay intently.

  Slowly Bell said: “That night Amos, black an’ bitter, named the baby boy Gideon. Said it meant a killer. An’ I watched him raise Gid to hate Matt Kilgore enough to kill Matt someday.”

  “The man,” Clay said in short distaste, “was black crazy. Does Matt Kilgore know this?”

  “Nope . . . Connie does. Thirty year she lived with it, proud an’ silent.” Bell stared at the ground. “Today Amos’ll be happy.”

  Clay halted his walking horse. His slow smile considered Howie and Ira Bell, who reined up, also.

  “Today we’ll make Amos Markham real unhappy while he roasts,” Clay promised. “Matt Kilgore isn’t fencing Markham water holes. Doyle wouldn’t ever be working for Kilgore. Travis is doing this . . . and it’s cutting Travis loose from Kilgore. Makes Travis my man now.”

  Howie dubiously said: “Could be wrong.”

  “My guess, my risk,” said Clay, still smiling. He felt that way now, anticipating and confident as he weighed Howie and Bell. This last hard riding had sapped both men. “Both of you are too tuckered for more hard riding. Old man, point me the straight way to the Kilgore house. You two come on easy.” He cut off Howie’s protest. “Might need you later, Howie. Don’t give out on me now.” Grumbling, Howie reluctantly subsided.

  And, nearly an hour later, when Clay rode his sweating, blowing horse into the big yard behind the Kilgore house, he saw that all the wagons were gone. The armed crew had departed. Two horses were in the nearest corral, and Clay touched his gun holster as he rode to the back of the house.

  He was dismounting when Widow Strance appeared in the kitchen doorway. Clay’s hand left his holster, and his tightening humor took in h
er plain riding skirt and jacket.

  “Still prying around, ma’am?” Her smooth cheeks flushed. Clay grinned. “Matt Kilgore here?”

  “No.”

  “Travis then?”

  “Nor Travis,” said Dorothy Strance so coldly that Clay laughed and brought out the pipe that Howie had given him.

  “I’ll help you print it now, ma’am. I’m the one who walked out of the South Bay Bank.”

  Her reply was biting: “I know what to print. It will be headed . . . ‘The Thief From San Francisco’!”

  “That,” Clay said, “should pop your lady readers’ eyes.”

  “I knew you meant trouble,” said Dorothy Strance with open dislike. “But I didn’t suspect you must have come to help Roger Travis and Matt Kilgore in the boldest steal Socorro County has ever known!”

  Clay’s stare went quizzical before his wry grin slowly came. “I told you in Soledad, ma’am, that a prying young lady would get her foot in her pretty mouth.” Her color deepened and Clay drawled: “I’ll let it stay in your mouth. Where’s Miss Kilgore?”

  “Patricia is riding to find her father. He should have been back by now. He has a visitor. Missus Markham is here.”

  Clay stopped smiling. “I’ll wait for Kilgore,” he said quietly. He led the froth-flecked black gelding toward the log watering trough and heard the kitchen door close with force behind him.

  While the gelding drank, Clay checked his revolver and carbine for what was surely coming, and coming swiftly now. He carefully reset the saddle. After rolling a smoke, he strolled restlessly about the deserted yard.

  Some time later, when he sighted the solitary rider coming leisurely, he guessed that Patricia had missed her father. Matt Kilgore obviously was unaware of the visitors in the house.

  Clay strolled to the kitchen door. Kilgore’s creased, keen smile estimated him as the man rode up. “Come for that pipe, Mara?” Before Clay could answer, the door opened. Kilgore blurted, “Connie!” and swung quickly off the horse.

  For the moment Clay forgot all else. Consuela Markham ignored him as she came out into the warm sunlight. Slender in her black serge riding habit, the small-boned, proud oval of her face was pale as she spoke to Matt Kilgore.