by Peter Dawson
He was, he judged, still some seven miles short of Anchor. Somewhere east of him, into the wind and close, lay the trail that climbed gradually toward Tom Sommers’s place and, beyond that, led to Anchor. He could get a horse at Sommers’s.
He heard the faint drum of hoofs at almost the exact moment that he saw the faint ribbons of the road’s wheel marks directly ahead and downward over the rim of a high bank. Then a gust of wind brought the sound of voices. They came from downward and to his right. Someone was coming up the trail.
Joe’s first inclination was to call out. His second, the stronger, was to step back into the tree shadows and wait, trusting to luck to identify the riders, for the increasing volume of sound had by now told him that there were several, and he knew that wherever several men gathered there would be at least one or two who wasted no love on him.
A pair of moving shapes came into sight suddenly, almost directly below him, so dense was the darkness. One he made out as a gray horse and its rider; the second man was astride a darker animal. Close behind came three more, then another pair, then a single horseman. As this last lone rider came abreast him, Joe decided to call out.
But at the moment he was about to hail the man, one of the pair directly ahead said distinctly: “How’ll we know this gent Bonnyman after we split up, Sid? You ‘n’ me have never set eyes on him.”
The single rider answered that question, and, when he spoke, Joe recognized Al Corwine’s voice. “He’s about your size, Mel, only bigger through. But don’t worry. You ain’t goin’ to see him. If it was him, he’s hightailed.”
“You reckon it really was him?” the man who had spoken first queried.
“Search me,” Corwine replied. “He’s sure changed a lot if it was. Time was when me and him . . .” A gust of wind whipped away his further words and shortly he was swallowed by the darkness.
The words he had heard had turned Joe rigid, so that he stood for a long moment in the shocked paralysis of complete surprise. And now he remembered the gray colt Bill Lyans had bought shortly before his leaving, five years ago. This was a posse. These men were out looking for him. Lyans was in the lead.
Joe had but a brief moment to weigh the implications behind this realization when other riders passed below, many of them. He stopped counting when their number totaled fifteen, knowing that something momentous and awful had taken place to put so many men on the trail in the beginnings of this unseasonable storm. Then they were gone, and he was left standing there in a futile attempt to fathom the reason for their search. He’d fought Ed Merrill, given him a bad licking. But was that any reason for men to be out searching the country for him? It could be a reason if Ed had died without regaining consciousness. But if that had happened, how could they know he wasn’t on that freight, somewhere far west of Junction by now?
The moan of the wind abruptly eased off, leaving a stillness so complete and empty as to give him an uneasy feeling. It was as though that wild rush of wind had formed the background for a violent upheaval of his very foundations and, now that he was thoroughly shaken, was giving him a brief respite in which to gather strength. He couldn’t think in this strange stillness, couldn’t decide what to do, even to move on down into the trail. He knew that he would have to plan carefully, to find his way out of the country somehow. Or he might yet get to Anchor and to Blaze. Blaze would know what was wrong.
Into the jumble of his thoughts came a sound, the nervous stomping of a horse close below, the irritated expelling of a man’s breath as he muttered: “Whoa, you loco Jughead!” Someone was down there, downtrail, beyond the limits of Joe’s vision. And because there were no other voices, he concluded that the rider was alone.
He started down the steep incline to the trail, digging boot heels into the sandy clay to keep from slipping. At the foot of the slope he wheeled sharply to the right. Within five paces he came within sight of two vague shapes, a horse and a rider out of the saddle. The man was hunched down alongside the horse.
Sensing Joe’s stealthy approach, the animal shied nervously, and the man said irritably: “Stand, blast you!”
Joe could see now that the man was working at a broken stirrup leather. He lifted his gun clear of holster when he was two paces away. Peering hard into the darkness, he tried to be sure of the exact outline of the man’s head against the dark background of the horse. He was reassured at seeing the reins looped over the rider’s arm as he took the final step in.
He struck sharply downward with the .38’s long barrel. The man’s Stetson cushioned the shock nicely. Joe could feel that the blow was expertly struck even before his victim’s outline melted into the shadows toward the ground. The horse reared, but was checked by the taut reins. Joe knelt and unwound the reins from the arm of the unconscious man. He found himself looking down into the face of a man he knew, Sam Thrall, owner of the Emporium in Lodgepole.
An unamused smile was on Joe’s face as he straightened after his brief inspection of Thrall to finish the task the man had nearly completed, the repairing of a broken latigo. The horse was a big black animal with good legs and a light mouth. That much Joe discovered before the horse had taken a dozen prancing steps. This was the kind of horseflesh Joe would have expected Sam Thrall to travel on, high-spirited, probably a good part thoroughbred, the kind of animal the average cowpuncher would give his right arm to own, but rarely did.
A scabbard was laced to the saddle and held a .30-30 carbine. A canvas bag filled with light provisions was tied to the cantle; there was also a poncho, and, as the wind resumed its fitful whine, bringing a stronger spitting of snow now, Joe unlaced the poncho and pulled it on. Reining the black left out of the trail, he headed into the southwest at a steady trot.
He had gone less than fifty rods when he pulled the animal in sharply, only then fully aware that his instinct for self-preservation had automatically started him on a line that would take him around the southward spur of hills and out of this country. He was running again. From what, he had no way of knowing. It was the very thing he had rebelled against when he jumped the train. No, this was even worse, for now he didn’t know what he was running from. And for the second time tonight a strong rebellion and anger was in him. In the next few minutes there was a stiffening of his pride, an unconscious realization that, if he was ever to fight this hang-dog instinct, he would have to fight it now. Just as quickly as he had stopped, he had seen the fallacy of his move and was reining the pony around, heading him north.
He knew this country well, even in pitch-black darkness. Topping the low hill to the west of Sommers’s place, he angled obliquely to the left, farther west, knowing the trail lay half a mile to his right. He put the black into an easy lope, judging that the posse would hold its steady pace and that shortly he could angle back into the trail and ahead of it.
Blaze couldn’t be quite sure of the exact moment the change came over Yace, but it was there, a fading of his first helpless bewilderment and the gathering of a fury that put a cold gleam of defiance in his pale-gray eyes. Had the light been better, had Bill Lyans and these others concentrated more on Yace and less on giving the last gruesome detail of their story, they would have been less emphatic.
Finally the outburst came. Lyans was speaking when Yace cut in on him with an explosive: “Hang it, watch your tongue! Leave Joe out of this!”
“We’re only tellin’ you what happened,” Lyans said defensively.
“You accuse Joe of clubbin’ a man to death with an iron. It’s a lie. Much as I hate his guts, I won’t believe that of him.”
Lyans glanced around at the others for support. None came.
Blaze gave only half his attention to what was said after that, for he was puzzled by this change in Yace, in the cowman’s defending his son now, where four hours ago he had driven him from home a second time. Trying to see what lay behind the old man’s stubbornly defiant attitude, Blaze came to the gradual realization of a truth that had escaped him all these years.
That other
time it had been the same, Yace publicly defending his wild and reckless offspring, while privately making Joe’s life unbearable. Then, having driven Joe into committing a foolhardy act, having forced him to make that attempt at independence, Yace had turned on his son with an awesome intensity. The reason, Blaze knew now for the first time, was that Yace Bonnyman put a higher value on public opinion than he did on understanding. Just now he was confused, hiding behind his natural belligerence until he made up his mind which way the wind blew. Perhaps he really believed what he claimed, that Joe wasn’t capable of coldblooded murder. But stronger than that belief, Blaze knew, was anger at these men for having branded his own flesh and blood with the mark of suspected murder. Yace was being prodded at his most tender spot, his pride, and he rebelled. And Blaze now saw in him not the massive symbol of brute strength and power he had always seemed, but simply an old man, harried and uncertain, more to be pitied than admired.
The foreman’s glance strayed around the big cavernous living room. Even the dozen men grouped here at its far end were lost in its immensity. It was a dreary room where once it had been gay and cheerful. Most of its feminine touches were gone; its high-beamed ceiling sent back hollow echoes of the subdued voices; its somber emptiness was a far cry from those days when Caroline Bonnyman had filled it with countless guests and parties and good times. Like the night we celebrated their twentieth anniversary, Blaze was thinking. Seven cases of champagne and the table saggin’ under all that food. Yace with his arm across Joe’s shoulders, both of them bellowin’ like a pair of tomcats over there by the piano. Couldn’t hear yourself talk for the laughin’ and the music. These days the room, always closed, was a striking symbol of Yace Bonnyman’s last few barren years.
Yet for a brief moment now, as Yace countered a statement of Lyans’s with—“Blast it, he had money! Why would he bust open a safe?”—Blaze had the feeling that the room might once again come awake before a revival of the old carefree days. He was momentarily inclined to think that he had been mistaken, that maybe this time Yace meant what he was saying, that he was with his son once more. They would make an unbeatable pair, come what might. Then, dully, he realized that this was wishful thinking, that Yace was merely keeping a hold on his pride by this defense of Joe, that there could never be a reconciliation between father and son. And it would take that, nothing short of it, to bring alive the haunting memories Blaze always associated with this room.
With an effort, Blaze brought his attention around to what Lyans was saying, hearing: “All right, I’ll go along with you in hopin’ it wasn’t Joe. But who was it?”
Blaze himself was speaking before he quite realized it, wording the first idea that struck him: “Why not check on where Neal Harper was tonight?”
The deputy’s glance narrowed as it came around to Blaze. “What’s Harper got to do with this?” he queried tonelessly.
“He’s out of a job, him and his gun-slick crew, now that Middle Arizona’s saved itself a scrap.”
“So he’s out of a job,” Lyans agreed warily.
“Supposin’ he figured it this way.” Blaze paused a moment to think the thing through. He looked at the others before continuing. “Winter’s on the way and him and his hardcases will be ridin’ the grubline. He’s sore because Vanover can’t pay him fightin’ wages any longer, so he decides to collect what he figures the outfit owes him. He blows open the Acme safe. As he hightails, he runs into Merrill.”
A weighty silence followed his words. It was Yace who finally said: “Now we’re gettin’ somewhere. It’d take a cold-blooded devil like Harper to kill that way. When you do find your man, it’ll turn out to be something like Blaze says, some . . .”
“Hold on!” Lyans cut in. “What about that hatband of Joe’s? We can’t just settle on a man we’d like to see guilty and say he done it.”
“No,” agreed Blaze, “but that hatband don’t prove anything. Joe could have lost it. I’m only tryin’ to point out that there are other angles to look into. You’ll admit Harper’s a possibility. He’s proddy, dangerous as a sidewinder, and probably riled over bein’ fired. He might’ve found the hatband and worked a frame-up around it. All I say is . . . check up on a few like him.”
The eyes of the gathered men left Blaze as the massive door leading out to the portal opened and Shorty Adams, an Anchor crewman, gaunt even in the shapeless loose hang of his poncho, came through it and closed it in a hard slam against the rush of wind. His glance drifted over the group, and then swung to the room’s far end.
“Where’s Sam Thrall?” he queried, frowning.
“Not here,” answered Clark Dunne.
“Then Quinn’s right,” Shorty breathed, and their attention came more sharply to him. “Somethin’ mighty queer’s happened, Lyans. Quinn says Sam dropped back to fix his cinch a mile or so below Sommers’s place. He hadn’t caught up by the time you pulled in here. Couple of minutes ago, Quinn says, he wondered what was slowin’ Sam, so he took a look out the cook shack door to the head of the lane, to see if he was on the way in. Then he seen somethin’ movin’ over by the wagon barn, a rider. He swears it was Sam’s black, the one with the two white stockings. So he calls out. Instead of answerin’, this jasper fades out of sight down by the big corral.”
“Quinn’s spooked over nothin’,” Lyans said. “How’s breakfast comin’?” He had delegated Adams and Quinn to cook a meal for the posse in the absence of the cook, who was somewhere up Porcupine Cañon with the Anchor chuck wagon and crew.
“It’ll be ready in a minute.” Shorty’s face didn’t lose its look of gravity. “You’d better come have a look, Bill. We went over to the shed and found a lot o’ gear and harness layin’ around, and maybe half a bushel of oats scattered on the floor by the bin. That ain’t the way we keep the place, is it, Blaze?”
“Shucks, no,” Yace answered for his foreman. Although he wore only underwear, Levi’s, and boots, having been roused from bed by the posse’s arrival, he was the first to start toward the door.
Following Yace out across the broad portal, Blaze took down the lantern that was hanging on a roof post to light the house’s main entrance. He tilted his head against the frigid bite of the wind and buckled his windbreaker tightly at the neck as he and the others started over to the wagon shed. Beyond the far corner of the house he found it hard to walk against the wind and keep up with Anchor’s shirtless owner, for there it blew in off the mesa with full force. A foot-deep drift of snow had already piled up at the lee corner of the wagon shed, and Blaze was thankful for the relief of stepping in behind that building’s protection. He grunted—“Here, let me.”—when Yace fumbled awkwardly with cold-numbed fingers at the door hasp.
As Shorty Adams had said, the floor below the front rack was strewn with a disorderly array of harness. Across the way, by the grain bin, a couple of scoops of oats lay scattered across the worn planks. But Blaze saw something else, something Shorty hadn’t noticed, before the others came over to the bin, Yace now carrying the lantern. On a high broad shelf over the door to a side lean-to close by were stored an assortment of odds and ends, boxes, trunks, two old battered suitcases, and a few tools. As Yace’s step sounded behind him, Blaze was seeing a chisel handle projecting beyond the shelf’s edge and, directly above it in the shadow along the wall, a freshly gouged mark in the wood. That mark was an arrow pointing upward.
Sight of it made Blaze quickly lower his glance and peer at the spilled oats at his feet. His fervent hope was that no one had seen him staring toward the shelf. Mentally cataloguing what should be up there, he knew instantly that at least one item was missing—Joe’s canvas-jacketed bedroll, stored there since he had left five years ago, was gone.
“Now who in tarnation could have been that sloppy?” he growled. “It wasn’t this way at noon, when I grained our horses, Yace.”
The face of Anchor’s owner was a study in perplexity as the others gathered behind him. “Then Quinn wasn’t seein’ things,” he drawled. “Who could
it have been?” He had lost some of his certainty, and was as mystified as the others. He seemed to feel Bill Lyans’s glance on him and turned. When he caught the studied severity of the deputy’s stare, he asked querulously: “Well, who was it?”
Lyans didn’t answer that, but turned to the others. He spoke quietly, his voice barely audible over the moan of the wind. “A couple of you make a fast circle south. Shorty, you’re good at sign. You and I will swing north. There’s enough snow so that we may be in time to spot his tracks showin’ through to the ground.”
“Whose tracks?” Yace asked, irritable under the deputy’s ignoring of him and his ordering around an Anchor man.
Lyans gave a grunt of disgust. “Joe’s, of course. He’s been here all the time. I’d arrest anyone else who tried to run this kind of a sandy on me, Bonnyman.”
“What kind?” Yace bridled.
“Stallin’ us while Joe made his getaway.”
“Why, you . . .” Yace checked his outburst as the deputy turned his back and headed for the shed’s wide door. The others filed out after him, all but Yace and Blaze.
When they were gone, Blaze drawled: “I’d give my right arm if what he said was true about your helpin’ Joe make a getaway. Only it ain’t.”
“How could it be? I didn’t know he was here.”
“No. If you had, you’d have turned him in.”
Yace’s jaw muscles corded in sullen anger, but he made no reply. He was plainly too baffled to rise to Blaze’s baiting.
“So you’re as sure as they are, eh?” Blaze queried dryly.
“Did I say so? Sure of what?”
“About Joe beefin’ Merrill.”
“He wasn’t on that train, was he?”
Here, indirectly, came the admission Blaze had been after, the admission that Yace Bonnyman thought his son a murderer, that his blustering back there at the house had been only a device to gain him time to make up his mind. Now it was made up. Blaze was suddenly angry, so full of emotion that the lantern’s light wavered before his eyes.
