Jornado (An E.R. Slade Western

by E. R. Slade

  The man Clint was to shoot against, known as Blur Barnham for the way his hand was reputed to move when going for his gun—so Clint had heard—was a tall, lanky fellow with a flowing mane of hair and a calm smile. He worried Clint more than a man with flashy guns and polished boots might have. It seemed likely that this Barnham might be damned good with his Colt.

  The group halted under some big oak trees that overspread the trail south of town. The sun was getting mighty low in the west now, throwing long shadows.

  “Well, Mr. Evans,” Barnham said politely, “what kind of shootin’ you mostly go in for? I think I saw a fly land on a tree down there, but I ain’t sure.”

  Clint laughed wildly, and stepped sideways a couple of feet as though to catch his balance.

  “Somebody make a bull’s-eye on that tree,” an officious fellow directed, indicating an oak thirty yards away. “Don’t make it too big.”

  A man went down to it and with his knife cut out a small piece of bark. Then he came back. “See it?” he asked.

  “Go ahead,” Barnham invited.

  “No, señor, you go ahead,” Clint said, bowing low, and making everybody laugh.

  Felipe was a consummate actor. He began to step back and forth from one leg to the other, as though having second thoughts. He kept watching Clint out of the corner of his eye. This helped keep the smiles on the men’s faces.

  Barnham drew very slowly and deliberately and fired.

  “Go ahead, Evans,” the officious man said.

  “Oh no,” Clint said. “Shumbody she if the bullet hit the tree. If it’s in the bullsh-eye, I’ll drop mine in on top and you’ll never ... you’ll tell ... you’ll never tell if there’s one or two bullets in it!”

  A general guffaw went through the group, but one man did trot down to see. He came back with the news that the bullet was dead center the bull’s-eye.

  Clint squinted hard at the tree, leaning forward slightly and squeezing up his eyes as though staring into the desert sun. Then he pulled his pistol, managing to do it awkwardly, held it out with both hands and sighted carefully, still squinting fiercely. He made sure he was aiming at the wrong tree.

  Men nudged each other. Clint took a deep breath, closed his eyes and turned his head away.

  Then he staggered and lost his aim. He caught his balance and then went through the whole performance again, this time at another tree, still not the one the target was on. Again he got to the point of shooting and, while everyone involuntarily held his breath, he staggered and lost his aim.

  Now, wondering if he was overdoing it, he glanced around at the faces, but saw only suppressed laughter and turned back to survey the trees, pistol dangling loosely in one hand.

  “Felipe,” he said in a heavy stage whisper.

  Felipe stepped closer.

  “Which tree is it, Felipe?” he asked.

  “Oh, señor,” Felipe moaned. “It is that one.” And he pointed, partially hiding the pointing from the crowd.

  Clint raised the pistol again, this time without apparently aiming at all, and fired.

  When they went to examine the tree, they still saw only the one hole, and they began demanding the horses and burros, talking about who would be the best man to sell them to in order to get the highest price.

  “Señores,” Felipe protested. “Please, señores, dig in thee hole, señores.”

  After a certain amount of debate, it was done, and everybody went silent for a moment when two bullets were found in the hole, one of top of the other.

  Then there were whistles and ejaculations of surprise. Then calls for another round. Clint meanwhile stowed his gun with an elaborate flourish and peered down his nose at Blur Barnham.

  “Howshat fer shootin’, Blue Barroom?”

  “The name is Blur Barnham,” Barnham said with just a slight edge of annoyance in his tone. Over the general hubbub he demanded, “Anybody got something to throw?”

  “We’ll throw rocks,” the officious man said. “Unless they’re too small to hit,” he added, baiting them.

  “If I can see it, I can hit it,” Barnham said curtly. “Toss away.”

  “Ready then?” the man asked, and when he threw up a fist-sized rock, Barnham drew and shattered it with a bullet.

  “Your turn, Evans,” the thrower said, and everybody jostled for a view and held their breath again.

  The rock went up, then started down, while Clint just looked at it as though fascinated. It was four or five feet from the ground before he drew. The rock exploded into fragments. There was a collective sigh of amazement and disappointment.

  “Two rocks,” Barnham said tersely. He was a competitive type, that was plain. The rocks were thrown and he got them both. Two more were thrown, and Clint staggered around until they were a few feet off the ground, then shattered them.

  “Three rocks,” Barnham said, reloading his pistol. Clint reloaded too, making out to be clumsy about it. Barnham got his rocks, but had to use four bullets to do it. All eyes turned to Clint. There was no nudging or jostling now.

  Clint got his three with just three bullets, and then drilled the other three bullets into the largest of the fragments before they hit the ground. Then he doubled over with apparently drunken laughter.

  Chapter Eleven

  After liverying their horses, Clint and Felipe got a couple of rooms in the best hotel in town. Then they ate meals in separate restaurants and returned to Clint’s room. Splitting the take in half, they wound up with something over fifty dollars apiece.

  “Cleent, that was the most funny thing,” Felipe said, as he had said several times now. “It is still much in my mind how they looked when we took their money! They just could not believe it!”

  “Worked like a charm,” Clint admitted. “I was worried. I thought sure Barnham was better than he turned out to be. He had the look of it. I guess we were lucky.” He paused. “Looky, Felipe, where do we go now, hunting Dixon?”

  Felipe rubbed his chubby hands together. “Señor, I have said that Dixon is in this town. But I do not think he is after all. But do not fear, there are people I can ask. We will find the señor Dixon, Cleent, do not fear. But I will not know where to look until I ask certain friends.”

  Clint nodded, wondering whether to believe Felipe or not. He decided that for now there was nothing better to do but see what Felipe would turn up.

  “Cleent, we have money. I am very thirsty. I think I will look for some fun.”

  “After last night? That wasn’t enough for you?”

  “That was last night. This is today, señor.”

  Felipe went out. Clint decided not to try to stop him. It would not fit in well with his plans. When he was sure that Felipe was out of the hotel, he went along to Felipe’s room and jiggered the door lock with his knife. For about an hour he searched the room, but at last gave it up. The Griego money was just not there.

  He decided that he would wait until Felipe returned drunk, and then would check his clothes. It was as important to find out if Felipe was telling the truth about not having the money as it was to get the money itself. The fifty some odd dollars he had left of the money he’d made today took the edge off the need to get the Griego money away from Felipe. In fact, the more he thought about it, the more he suspected Felipe was telling the truth and it had been one of the señoritas who had stolen it.

  Clint had not quarreled with Felipe’s assertion that he hadn’t been paid anything by Valenzuela, intending to locate the evidence to refute that later, and maybe corner Felipe into talking more about Dixon. But now, thinking about it, it seemed hard to believe that Felipe would not have at least bought meals and livery for them if he had any money. He could always explain that the money had come from Valenzuela, whether it had or not. Even Felipe wasn’t that much of a hoarder of money.

  But the main reason he was inclined to believe Felipe was that he thought of him as a friend. They had been through a lot together. Even the misleading Felipe had done didn’t seem too ba
d in retrospect. After all, Felipe was related to Valenzuela, lowdown scoundrel that the bandit was, and Clint kept thinking about Felipe’s family living in the brush hut. Could you blame the man for getting money anywhere he could? Valenzuela, at least sometimes, paid him for his help, and what man in Felipe’s position would pass it up? Clint also thought of how he himself had treated Felipe from the beginning. It had been an invitation to Felipe to lie and steal.

  Smiling still at the smoothness with which he and Felipe had won money today, Clint was feeling so mellow and friendly towards Felipe that he began to think Felipe probably deserved the money he’d taken from Griego’s man more than he, Clint, did. Clint thought he might not take that money from Felipe, even if he found it on him. And then he began to wonder what business it was of his to go searching Felipe’s room and his clothes, and after a short while, Clint got into bed and went to sleep, dreaming peacefully of pretty señoritas dancing. The burros were finally gone from his dreams.

  ~*~

  He woke up, however, in a very different mood, thinking about Miguel being shot. He could still mentally hear the shots being fired, see Miguel jerking three times before slumping against the rope bindings. The image mingled with the image of his wife lying dead and battered in the woods, and though it was not yet light, he couldn’t get back to sleep.

  He got out of bed and went for a walk along the mostly empty, quiet Main Street of Oak Creek. The rumble of ore pouring out of the mines continued, and there were still the cries of a few teamsters and the creak of a few ore wagons, but that was about all. The air was still, cool, and the trees hulked over the town against a barely lightening sky full of stars that seemed to have lost the mystery of night.

  For something to do, Clint went along to the livery to look in on the horses and burros. He lit a lantern hanging on a hook inside the door and walked onto the main floor of the barn.

  “What the ...” he began, then stopped.

  The horses and burros were gone.

  “The thieving, conniving Mexican tortilla chili pepper bean head,” Clint muttered, double-checking to be sure the animals hadn’t simply been moved to different stalls—they hadn’t.

  Even took my horse, Clint brooded. Hadn’t the common decency to leave a man his horse. That called for hanging, by the law. It would be too good for the chili pepper.

  Clint roused out the liveryman, who was not pleased by the disturbing of his sleep. He was a short, wiry little man with cynical eyes. He rolled off his corn-shuck tick and demanded what the hell Clint wanted.

  “I want a horse, a fast horse, and a saddle.”

  “Rent or buy?”

  “Buy ... no, rent,” he changed his mind, remembering the shortness of his funds. A good horse would likely cost more than fifty dollars, even without a saddle. And he would need supplies for a couple of days at least.

  The liveryman drove a hard bargain and Clint had to part with all but two dollars of his money to get the horse and saddle and two days’ supply of beans and sourdough. Clint couldn’t wait for the business section of town to open up to buy food, so paid dearly for stocks from the liveryman’s own larder.

  “I want that horse back in four days,” the liveryman reminded him sharply from the doorway. “One day longer and I send the sheriff after you for horse thieving.”

  Clint rode south out of town hell-for-leather. It was his guess Felipe had left town just as soon as he left the hotel saying he was going drinking. That gave him eight or nine hours head start. Clint had no way of knowing for sure which way Felipe had gone, but he doubted Felipe would have more business at Valenzuela’s, and it seemed likely that he figured he had a pretty good haul for one trip and was heading home. So, Clint set out into the desert going south, pushing the horse along at a good clip, aware that once the sun came up and the heat began to shimmer over the landscape, the horse wouldn’t be able to keep it up.

  This was a desperate kind of gamble. He had bought two days of traveling time south to catch up with Felipe. The desert was huge and Felipe knew it well while Clint did not. And then there were the Mescaleros. Of course, it was true that Felipe was vulnerable, having such an array of horses and burros. Yet, Clint had a suspicion that Felipe would manage somehow. He might fear Indians, but he could fool Indians, if anybody could.

  Clint knew that if he got pinned down at any time during the next four days, he would have the sheriff after him and a charge of horse thieving would hang over his head. With the desert full of Mescaleros, the possibility was not remote. The way Clint preferred to look at it was, if he got pinned down, and was overdue, a posse of armed men would be along to side him against the Indians.

  As dawn stretched across the land, Clint began searching the horizon in all directions constantly, watching for both Felipe and Indians. He had seen nothing by noon, and gave the horse a short break to crop a patch of grass and drink some water from his hat. Clint took a sip himself and then swung up and dug in his heels.

  The heat of the day was almost enough to make Clint stop for a longer break, but the knowledge that Felipe might do that made Clint press on. He figured it was his chance to do some catching up.

  By nightfall he had still seen no sign of Felipe, but then he’d seen no sign of Indians either, and so he called it even and halted for a two hour rest. He ate a small amount, about half a meal, and let the horse crop such grass as there was. He decided that with the burros Felipe stood no chance of moving much more than half as quickly as a man on a good horse could, and likely a good deal less. So, Clint figured, if he pushed on after the moon came up, for at least a few hours, he ought to be somewhere near as far into the desert as Felipe, and in the morning there might be something to see.

  Clint carried out this plan, and in the morning rode up onto the top of a slight rise to take a long and careful look around the horizon. He had the feeling he was being watched, for all it seemed plain that he was alone in this piece of country. Not a sign of burros or horses or Indians or anything but mesquite and cactus as far as he could see across the sand in any direction.

  Unfortunately he had no way to tell if he was paralleling Felipe or had not yet caught up with him—or had passed him somewhere. Clint debated a while, and then decided he would ride southeast, then southwest in a zigzag motion, stopping on high points to take a look.

  By noon, the horse, which he’d run pretty hard for the conditions, was slowing down and losing interest. Clint had still seen nothing. There remained, however, the persistent feeling that eyes were watching him. The Mescaleros worried him. He couldn’t imagine they didn’t know he was here. What were they waiting for? Clint took to snapping his head around to look behind him suddenly as he rode on his zigzag course all afternoon. But he never saw anything.

  That evening as darkness fell, Clint became irritable. It was plain he had failed. And who could tell what it would cost in excitement and bloodshed to get back to town. And once he got there, all he could do would be get a job of some kind to make money so he could buy a horse and supplies and plenty of ammunition. Then he would ride south and find Felipe’s hut and, he hoped, Felipe. This was going to come out of Felipe’s hide.

  In the morning, Clint reluctantly started back for Oak Creek. About midway through the morning, Clint brought up short and listened.

  After a moment, he shook his head and nudged his horse on. But then he heard it again—definitely shooting.

  He rode on cautiously, unwilling to ride into the middle of a fight with Indians, if that was what it was.

  From the top of the next rise he saw Mescaleros riding in and out of gun smoke, which lay thickly over a mesquite thicket—and from the thicket came the unmistakable braying of burros.

  There was no reason they had to be Felipe’s burros, but Clint was sure they were just the same. He had half a mind to get back down off the rise and wait for the shooting to stop, and the Indians to take what they wanted and leave. And then see if Felipe was the victim, and whether he was dead or alive.

>   But for some reason Clint didn’t do that. Instead, like a fool, he rode down on the doings with his Winchester in hand. He pulled up when within handy range, slammed the rifle to his shoulder and began knocking Indians loose of their saddles.

  This surprised them considerably, and things got confused among them and they began whirling their horses and riding off in all directions. From the smoke surrounding the mesquite thicket a rifle snapped at them energetically. Somebody was still very much alive in there.

  Now the Indians began to understand what had happened, and in a rage they came whooping and yelling up the slight rise at him, firing off volleys of shots. Clint had the advantage of them, since he didn’t have to shoot from the back of a galloping horse, and he dropped about half of them before they got two thirds the distance to him.

  The other half, perhaps on signal, suddenly whirled and rode off east across the desert in a cloud of dust, the gun in the thicket still scolding them, although they were quickly out of reasonable range.

  As the smoke cleared, Clint rode down on the thicket, Winchester butt-down on his thigh, barrel aimed at the sky.

  “Howdy, Fats,” he said. “Little brisk this morning?”

  “Oh, Señor Cleent! You have saved my life a second time! How can I ever repay you, Señor Cleent, for all you have done for me?”

  “You can start by taking your clothes off,” Clint said reasonably, dropping the Winchester so it pointed at Felipe’s midsection.

  “Señor, I do not understand this thing you ask me to do. Nevertheless it is unnecessary to point the gun at me, Cleent. I will do as you ask without the insult of a threat of a bullet.”

  “Quit flapping your lip and drop your drawers.”

  Felipe looked nervous. But he did as he was asked.

  “Now toss your clothes up here.”

  Clint went through them, and found two things which interested him: money, and Pepita’s letter to her father. Clint tossed down the clothes.