Travis

by T. T. Flynn

  Clay’s startled glance brought her laughter. Wry and rejecting, Clay said: “Travis is all I’m thinking about.”

  Sobering, she said: “And the man may kill you.”

  The thought had its weight as Clay remembered the wide-shouldered, aggressive man whose flinty stare had challenged him in the Kilgore kitchen. They rode in silence until Consuela Markham said: “This is the straight way to Cow Springs, one of the last water holes on my land. Travis must be there.”

  Clay spurred his horse on.

  Ridges cut by draws lay north of them when Consuela Markham’s small black-gloved hand pointed that way. Her still-young face flashed humor at him again. “You see, already?”

  Clay saw, and ruefully wished this was not happening now. No mistaking the small straw sombrero and slim figure riding to intercept them. There was a chance, Clay hoped, that Patricia Kilgore would have some news for them. The fast, quirted run of her horse suggested that she must have.

  XXII

  Travis yanked his hat brim down against the glare of the hot yellow sun as he rode west with Grady Doyle. His long face was impassive, but the strain inside him tightened into driving anger. Only hours left now to save the future. His impatience to corner the stranger named Clay Mara drove him faster until Doyle called a warning.

  “These horses won’t last, runnin’ like this!”

  Travis pulled down the pace.

  They were threading timbered hills, and rode by a cinder cone some hundreds of feet high, covered with a scrub growth and pine almost to the top. They skirted lava sheets and finally a lava flow, raw, dark, and baking in the hot afternoon sunlight as the flow swung left into a winding valley between timbered ridges. Travis led the way beside the flow, thinking of what he had to do. It was simple enough. Get rid of the stranger named Mara, kill the fellow before Patricia and Matt Kilgore saw him again.

  Doyle said: “I knowed a man who gave a posse the slip by crossing lava. Only he run into glass lava. It cut the hoofs off his hoss and nigh the boots off his feet when he walked out. He never went near lava again.”

  Travis made no comment. He was reminding himself that he owned half the Kilgore Ranch now. He had all the money and the journal and papers of Roger Travis. He was like a son to Matt Kilgore. Once Mara was dead, everything could be smoothed over. Armed men were hunting Mara. Travis knew that after he reached the Kilgore house, he could keep Mara away from Patricia and Matt with a gun. He felt increasingly confident as he eyed the lava flow bulking ten feet and higher at their right.

  “The Piedras wagon ruts cross this flow about three miles ahead,” Travis said. “We’ll cross there. Then you ride to that line cabin and see if your men are back.”

  “And then what?” Doyle countered.

  “Find Mara and shoot him,” said Travis curtly. “And you can stay drunk for months on what it’s worth to you.”

  Some minutes later he pulled up sharply, looking back, listening. Doyle swung his horse, listening, too. Spaced gunshots, three shots, like a signal, were reaching across the tumbled lava flow and echoing between the timbered ridges siding the half-mile-wide valley. Travis caught binoculars from the leather case on his saddle. Two more shots echoed again as he focused on the opposite ridge. He held his voice level as he lowered the glasses.

  “Signaling me. Get on to the line cabin. I’ll wait here.”

  Doyle’s swollen eye still squinted as he stared curiously. “Who is it?”

  “Get going! This is my business!”

  Not until Doyle rode on did Travis swing his horse back up the valley. Matt Kilgore also carried binoculars, and Matt had sighted them from the opposite ridge and signaled. Travis wanted no witnesses now, certainly not Grady Doyle.

  At the only spot in some distance where the side of the lava flow was broken down, he dismounted and lit a cigar, and bent the dead match absently between his fingers as he waited.

  Matt Kilgore had to lead his horse across the lava. The hesitant strike of shod hoofs on the gas-pocked rock finally became audible. Then Matt’s broad-chested figure with vest sagging open as usual appeared at the edge of the lava.

  “I almost didn’t hear you!” Travis called.

  Matt said nothing. With care, he led his horse along the lava edge, and then, slipping and clashing, down the broken side of the flow. The stern look on his face increased the strain in Travis as Matt dropped the reins and spoke harshly. “I heerd you’d gone to Cow Springs. Who’n hell told you to fence Markham water?”

  Guardedly Travis asked: “Have you seen Patricia?”

  He felt confident again when Matt said: “Ain’t seen her today.” Stern temper backed Matt’s measured words. “Gid Markham’s mother was waitin’ at the house for me. Who give you any go-ahead to fence Markham water holes?”

  “Matt, it was the only thing to do,” Travis said reasonably. “My lawyer, Jim Rapburn, examined the records in the County Treasurer’s office in Socorro and found that the Markhams had no color of title to most of what they claim. Rapburn located the land they’ve paid taxes on and hold title to. I’ve had surveys run and found the land that is open. Men are filing on the good water now and will sell to us later.”

  Flatly Matt said: “We never planned to take any Markham holdings.”

  With mild injury, Travis said: “I planned it for all of us, Matt. For you, Patricia, and me. Sort of a surprise.”

  Matt’s stern temper softened as he pulled off his hat and shoved fingers through his shock of gray hair. “Son, you oughta told me. Now it’s an all-fired mess.”

  Travis was earnest. “The Markhams never were friends.”

  “They ain’t been,” Matt agreed. After a moment, he added: “I guess you can’t be blamed too much.”

  Travis relaxed further. The bond between Matt and himself was as strong as ever. He could handle Matt. “I thought it would please you,” he said.

  “Son, it just don’t. Connie Markham owns most of that ranch now. I give Connie my promise there’d be no more trouble. We got to get the men off her land quick.”

  “I’ve planned too carefully for that,” said Travis calmly.

  Matt’s stare was quizzical. “Now ain’t that a hell of an argument?” he said. He turned to his horse and mounted, and from the saddle spoke calmly. “Son, I’ve always given orders in this family. And I always keep my word. I gave Connie Markham my promise there won’t be trouble again between our families.”

  Smiling, Travis reminded: “I made no promise.”

  Matt’s rope-scarred hand tilted his hat against the sun, giving him a vigorous, younger look. “Young fellers fulla beans an’ ideas is bound to make mistakes,” he said with blunt coolness. “Like you hirin’ that horse thief Doyle and then lettin’ him go. And now this grabbin’ at Connie Markham’s land.” A flat roughness entered Matt’s tone. “But when a lady looks me in the face and says in cold truth I’ve lied to her, the mistakes get hobbled and throwed damn’ quick.”

  Matt’s stubbornness drove Travis into scorn. “That old woman should have tried being friendly years ago!”

  “Old woman?” Matt said. He sat motionlessly in the saddle, the knotted reins forgotten in his hand as he looked above Travis’s head into distance and memories. “A lot of years,” Matt said under his breath. “But she’ll never be old.” His creased face hardened in a way Travis had never seen in Matt before. “Hear me,” Matt said. “Every man off Markham land quick!”

  In thinning temper, Travis reminded: “I’m half owner, Matt. Stop talking like I’m a wet-eared brat.”

  “Ain’t you actin’ like one?” cried Matt harshly. “Hear me again! I’m half owner, too. And I’m runnin’ this family like I’ve always done. Now I’m takin’ charge of this mess. I’ll get the men off Connie Markham’s land. And after this I’ll decide what we do.”

  “Matt!” It broke thickly from Travis at the old man who was suddenly rock-hard, inflexible, like a complete stranger. “I like you, Matt. But don’t block me like this. I know what I
’m doing. Let me handle everything.” In a kind of breaking fury as the future faced disaster from Matt’s stubbornness, Travis cried at him: “Matt! Don’t make me!”

  “I’ll always make you do the right thing,” said Matt sternly.

  And Travis realized the truth now. Matt Kilgore was the sort of man who would listen closely to Mara’s story. Matt was a stern, just man who would investigate Patricia’s suspicions. Matt never could be handled. With wild temper, knowing suddenly that this was the only way, Travis caught for his gun. And the stricken knowledge of what was coming filled Matt’s eyes.

  Matt half choked: “An’ I thought I had a son!” His hand wrenched desperately at the reins.

  The words hit Travis like a blow, reminding him of how close he had become to Matt. He hesitated, cocked gun in his hand while the enormity of what he was doing made his hand tremble uncontrollably. Matt’s half-rearing horse was whirling at him and Travis numbly followed instinct—it was either Matt or disaster. Travis jumped back from the horse and fired blindly, twice, at the tall old man. Matt pitched out of the saddle.

  Travis stood in shock, staring at the sprawled, oddly shrunken figure on the ground. Matt’s hat had fallen off. The seed heads of the tawny wild bunch grass brushed Matt’s head, making his shock of hair suddenly seem white and lifeless.

  “Matt,” Travis said thickly. He holstered the smoking gun and spoke louder. “Matt! Why’d you make me, Matt?” And, as Travis turned, almost running to his horse, the last words he would ever hear from Matt were ringing in his ears: I thought I had a son.

  Travis spurred down the valley without looking back, riding into empty loneliness. He had destroyed something, Travis vaguely sensed, that he would never have again. Once more he was alone. Now only he mattered, and the future he had planned. To secure that, he had to destroy Clay Mara, and do it swiftly.

  Riding fast down the twisting valley, with the sullen flow of black lava close at his right and brush-dotted ridge slope at his left, Travis swore with new anger as he sighted Grady Doyle’s burly figure spurring back to meet him.

  Doyle’s warning was urgent: “They’s a bunch of riders comin’ from Piedras way. Too many to be our men. Bound to be Markham men.”

  A flash of jeering knowledge touched Travis. Driven by the furious urge to destroy Mara, he had scattered his own crew so widely that they could be no help now against a Markham bunch. Travis forced himself to be calm. “Did they see you?”

  “I don’t think so,” Doyle said. “But quick now they’ll hit the lava back there, where they can look this way an’ see us.” A twisted grin touched Doyle’s mouth as he looked past Travis. “I heerd shots. Whyn’t you kill his hoss, too?”

  Shock again struck Travis when he looked back up the valley. Matt’s gray horse was skirting the lava in a trot after him. The looped reins dropping from Matt’s hand had snagged on the saddle horn, and the frightened horse had left the dead for the living. A wildly improbable thought struck Travis that Matt must still be on the horse, following him.

  “How close are the men?” Travis demanded.

  “Too close! Ain’t time to fool with that hoss. Me, I’m gettin’ out of sight fast!”

  Doyle swung his horse to the ridge slope and spurred up toward the first brush and screening trees. Travis hesitated and followed. The brush slapped at his legs and he fought the feeling of loneliness. On the crest of the ridge, among screening trees, he wheeled his horse alongside Grady Doyle who had pulled up.

  In silence they waited watchfully, looking down, while three riders came fast along the valley from the Piedras road and pulled up beside Matt Kilgore’s horse. Gid Markham was one of them. He led the men on up the valley, taking Matt’s horse.

  Doyle spoke under his breath: “They mean to find out what happened.”

  “Then they can explain it,” said Travis. The thought had come at first sight of Markham. When Matt’s body was brought in, Gid Markham would be blamed. Who would believe differently? Markham and his crew had been hunting Matt with guns and rage—and now they had him dead as they had planned.

  “Wasn’t that Kilgore’s gray hoss?” Doyle muttered uneasily.

  “You didn’t see any gray horse,” said Travis evenly. “You don’t know anything.”

  Grady Doyle turned a furtive glance. He moistened his lips and nodded.

  Travis said: “We’ll cross the Piedras road behind Markham’s crew, and circle south around them.” And mildly he added: “Lead off. I’ll follow you.”

  The unease that struck Grady Doyle was visible. “No need,” Doyle muttered. “I’ll side you.” And, as he swung his horse, Doyle watched Travis from the corner of his eye.

  They rode down the far side of the ridge that way, side by side, each aware of the other now. But, for the time being, Travis was careless about it. He was thinking that, with Matt’s death fastened on Gid Markham, luck was finally running with him. Only Patricia was left. She would be alone and grieving, and could be handled easily enough now.

  * * * * *

  Clay held his horse waiting beside Consuela Markham’s horse while Patricia brought her lathered roan to a swinging halt alongside them.

  “Who are you?” her tight voice threw at him.

  Mildly Clay answered: “I guess I’m the man you seem to think I am.”

  “Dick’s partner?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you kill Dick?” She was pale.

  “That,” continued Clay calmly, “is foolish. It happened about like you’ve heard. Only I went off the trail, too.”

  She was still unbelieving. “Which finger of Dick’s left hand was missing?”

  Clay’s chuckle came. “Dick had all his fingers. You know it.”

  Still Patricia watched him. “Once,” her tight voice said, “you watched the sun rise, and you said something to the person who was with you . . .”

  Clay’s gaze cooled. “In Wyoming one morning,” he said evenly, “my wife and I watched the sun rise. I told her that she was my sun, never setting, and I wrote it in my journal that night. You’ve been rummaging like a pack rat in my private life, also, I see.”

  Patricia’s suspicions drained away, leaving her face young and defenseless and miserable. “I remembered that Dick’s last letter said his partner had gray eyes and brown hair. Roger didn’t have them, and in his room I found the journal and read it. I was afraid.”

  After a moment the small, sad edge of Clay’s smile came. “Forgiven,” he said. “Does Travis suspect that you know all this?”

  Tightness entered Patricia’s voice again. “I found Roger at Cow Springs. He denied everything, of course. But now he’ll be desperate. Is Dad at the house?”

  Clay looked at Consuela Markham. Abrupt fear was in her eyes. Clay said: “Well”—the ominous tone of the word deepened Patricia’s pallor—“it had to come.” He was swinging his horse and talking to Consuela Markham at the same time. “You two will hamper me, ma’am. On the way back to the house, you can tell Patricia how it is.”

  Her barest nod agreed. Clay lifted the black gelding’s trot into a long-striding run on the faint trail Matt Kilgore’s horse had made.

  When the country roughened and Kilgore’s trail pitched down a timbered slope to a sullen flow of black lava almost filling the floor of a small valley, Clay softly whistled. A man like Matt Kilgore who knew the country could have found a better way than crossing this treacherous lava. But Matt had crossed.

  Clay followed, leading the gelding clashing up the broken edge of the lava. On the tumbled surface of the flow, dust had lodged in crevices and depressions, and weeds, grass, scrubby brush, and small trees had rooted. The shod hoofs of Kilgore’s horse had left marks that Clay followed, leading the cautiously stepping black gelding. When Clay finally glanced back, he abruptly halted. Through shimmering heat waves over the lava, the woman who was leading a horse after him looked slender and composed. The hot sun caught challenging red tints under her plain straw hat, and Clay waited in quiet tempe
r.

  When she reached him, he reminded: “I told you to stay back at the Kilgore house!”

  Dorothy Strance tucked in a hair end. “I don’t get out a newspaper, Mister Mara, by waiting in someone’s house while important things are happening.”

  “This matter isn’t for a woman!”

  Her glance was cool. “I’ve told you, Mister Mara, that I do what I please and print what I please. When the Beacon publishes this story, it intends to say exactly who the thief from San Francisco is. And what happens to him.”

  “The Beacon,” said Clay shortly, “should be paddled and locked in her office.”

  The Beacon flushed. “I wouldn’t attempt it, Mister Mara. Go about your business. I’ll attend to mine.”

  “Keep back then, out of the way, where you’ll be safe.”

  Clay moved on in some frustration, aware that the Beacon, calm and redheaded, was not far behind. He was not a hundred yards from the edge of the lava flow when he heard a voice ahead.

  XXIII

  Clay turned back and caught the carbine from the saddle boot and advanced quietly. At the edge of the flow, he said: “Easy there!” And not one of the three men below him moved after sighting the carbine. In quiet anger, Clay said: “Well, Markham, so you finally did it?”

  Gid Markham, kneeling down there beside Matt Kilgore’s body, looked up with visible regret. “I found his horse down the valley and backtracked to this,” he said shortly.

  The quick steps of Dorothy Strance brought her to the body. “Gid! Gid! What have you done?” she said brokenly.

  Markham stood up, anger darkening his thin face. “The man got what he asked for, Dot. I only wish I’d done it.”

  “You wish!” she cried. “Gid, send your men out of earshot, or you’ll regret it!”

  As the two men moved back to the waiting horses, Clay listened intently to Dorothy Strance.

  “Someone, Gid, should clear the dead cats and black thinking out of your mind. You’re proud of the way you hate the Kilgores, aren’t you?”