Desert Death-Song Read online

  “What?” Daley burst out. “What did you say?”

  “I said … it wa’n’t Bodine! We got our outlaw this mornin’ out east of town! Mary Bodine spotted a man hidin’ in the brush below Wenzel’s place, an’ she come down to town. It was him, all right. He had the loot on him, an’ the stage driver identified him!”

  Pete Daley stared, his little eyes tightening. “What about the sheriff?” he demanded.

  “He’s pullin’ through.” The rider stared at Daley. “He said it was his fault he got shot. His an’ your’n. He said if you’d kept your fool mouth shut nothin’ would have happened, an’ that he was a another fool for not lettin’ you get leaded down like you deserved!”

  Daley’s face flushed, and he looked around angrily like a man badly treated. “All right, Benson. We’ll go home.”

  “Wait a minute.” Jim Morton crossed his hands on the saddle horn. “What about Nat? He’s out there in the desert an’ he thinks he’s still a hunted man. He’s got no water. Far’s we know, he may be dead by now.”

  Daley’s face was hard. “He’ll make out. My time’s too valuable to chase around in the desert after a no-account hunter.”

  “It wasn’t too valuable when you had an excuse to kill him,” Morton said flatly.

  “I’ll ride with you, Morton,” Benson offered.

  Daley turned on him, his face dark. “You do an’ you’ll hunt you a job!”

  Benson spat. “I quit workin’ for you ten minutes ago. I never did like coyotes.”

  He sat his horse, staring hard at Daley, waiting to see if he would draw, but the rancher merely stared back until his eyes fell. He turned his horse.

  “If I were you,” Morton suggested, “I’d sell out an’ get out. This country don’t cotton to your type, Pete.”

  Morton started his horse. “Who’s comin’?”

  “We all are.” It was Blackie who spoke. “But we better fly some white. I don’t want that salty Injun shootin’ at me!”

  It was near sundown of the second day of their search and the fourth since the holdup, that they found him. Benson had a shirt tied to his rifle barrel, and they took turns carrying it.

  They had given up hope the day before, knowing he was out of water, and knowing the country he was in.

  The cavalcade of riders were almost abreast of a shoulder of sandstone outcropping when a voice spoke out of the rocks. “You huntin’ me?”

  Jim Morton felt relief flood through him. “Huntin’ you peaceful,” he said. “They got their outlaw, an’ Larrabee owes you no grudge.”

  His face burned red from the desert sun, his eyes squinting at them, Nat Bodine swung his long body down over the rocks. “Glad to hear that,” he said. “I was some worried about Mary.” “She’s all right.” Morton stared at him. “What did you do for water?”

  “Found some. Neatest tinaja in all this desert.”

  The men swung down and Benson almost stepped on a small, red spotted toad.

  “Watch that, Chuck. That’s the boy who saved my life.” “That toad?” Blackie was incredulous. “How d’ you mean?” “That kind of toad never gets far from water. You only find them near some permanent seepage or spring. I was all in, down on my hands and knees, when I heard him cheeping.

  “It’s a noise like a cricket, and I’d been hearing it sometime before I remembered that a Yaqui had told me about these frogs. I hunted, and found him, so I knew there had to be water close by. I’d followed the bees for a day and a half, always this way, and then I lost them. While I was studyin’ the lay of the land, I saw another bee, an’ then another. All headin’ for this bunch of sand rock. But it was the toad that stopped me.”

  They had a horse for him, and he mounted up. Blackie stared at him. “You better thank that Morton,” he said dryly. “He was the only one was sure you were in the clear.”

  “No, there was another,” Morton said. “Mary was sure. She said you were no outlaw, and that you’d live. She said you’d live through anything.” Morton bit off a chew, then glanced again at Nat. “They were wonderin’ where you make your money, Nat.”

  “Me?” Bodine looked up, grinning. “Minin’ turquoise. I found me a place where the Indians worked. I been cuttin’ it out an’ shippin’ it east.” He stooped and picked up the toad, and put him carefully in the saddlebag.

  “That toad,” he said emphatically, “goes home to Mary an’ me. Our place is green an’ mighty purty, an’ right on the edge of the desert, but with plenty of water. This toad has got him a good home from here on, and I mean a good home!”

  RIDING FOR THE BRAND

  CHAPTER ONE: The Lone Wrecked Wagon

  He had been watching the covered wagon for more than an hour. There was no movement, no sound. The bodies of two of the animals that had drawn the wagon lay in the grass, plainly visible. Farther away, almost two miles, stood a lone buffalo bull, black against the gray distance.

  Nothing moved near the wagon, but Jed Ashbury had lived too long in Indian country to risk his scalp on appearances, and an Indian could lie ghost-still for hours on end. He had no intention of taking a chance, stark naked, and without weapons.

  Two days before he had been stripped to the hide by Indians and forced to run the gauntlet, but he had run better than they had dreamed, and had escaped with only a few minor wounds.

  Now, miles away, he had reached the limit of his endurance. Despite little water, and less food, he was still in good traveling shape except for his feet. They were lacerated and swollen, and caked with dried blood.

  Finally, he started to move warily, taking advantage of every bit of cover, and moving steadily nearer the wagon. When he was no more than fifty feet away he settled in the grass and studied the situation.

  Here was the scene of an attack. Evidently the wagon had been alone, and the bodies of two men and a woman lay stretched on the prairie.

  Clothing, papers, and cooking utensils were scattered, evidence of hasty looting. Yet Jed saw relief for himself. Whatever the dreams of these people, they were finished now, another sacrifice to the westward march of empire. And they would not begrudge him the things he needed.

  Rising, he moved cautiously up to the wagon, a tall, powerfully muscled young man, unshaven and untrimmed.

  He avoided the bodies. Oddly, they were not mutilated, which was unusual. The men still wore their boots, and as a last resort, he would take a pair of them. First, he must look over the wagon.

  Whatever Indians had looted the wagon had done so hurriedly. The wagon was in the wildest state of confusion, but in the bottom of a big trunk he found a fine black broadcloth suit. Also a new pair of handworked leather boots, a woolen shirt, and several white shirts.

  “Somebody’s Sunday-go-to-meetin’ clothes,” he muttered. “Hadn’t better try them boots now, the way my feet’s swole.”

  He found some clean underwear, and got into the clothes, pulling on the woolen shirt. When he was dressed he got water from a half-empty barrel and bathed his feet, then bandaged them with strips of clean white cloth torn from a freshly laundered dress.

  His feet felt better then, and as the boots were a size larger than he wore, he tried them. There was some discomfort, but he decided to wear them.

  With a shovel that was tied to the side of the wagon he dug a shallow grave, laid the three bodies in it side by side, covered them, and said a hasty prayer. Then he returned to the wagon. The savages had made only a hasty search, and there might be something they had overlooked that would help him.

  There were some legal papers, a will, and a handful of letters. He put these aside over a poncho he found, then spotted a sewing basket. Remembering his grandmother’s habits, he emptied out the needles and thread aind sewing. In the bottom was a large sealed envelope.

  Ripping it open, he gave a grunt of satisfaction. Wrapped in carefully folded tissue paper were twenty twenty-dollar gold pieces. He pocketed them, then delved deeper into the trunk. At the bottom were some carefully folded clothes. The In
dians had not gone this deep.

  Several times he returned to the end of the wagon for a careful survey of the prairie, but it remained empty and still.

  Then, in the very bottom of the trunk, he struck pay dirt. He found a steel box and, with a pick that was strapped to the wagon, he broke it open. Inside it, in some folded cloth, was a magnificent set of pistols. They were silver-plated and beautifully engraved, with pearl stocks and black leather holsters and belt, inlaid with mother of pearl. What was more to the point, there were several boxes of shells!

  Grinning, he strapped on the guns, then filled the loops of the belt with shells, and pocketed a box of loose cartridges. The remaining two boxes he placed on the poncho.

  In another fold of the cloth was a pearl-handled knife of beautifully tempered steel—a Spanish fighting knife, and a splendid piece of work. He slung the scabbard around his neck, the hilt just below his collar. Then he packed two white shirts, a string tie, and the black broadcloth coat in a bundle. He wrapped the poncho around it, and slung it over his shoulder.

  In an inside pocket of the coat he had stowed the papers and letters he had found, while in his hip pocket he stuffed a small, leather-bound book that had been among the scattered contents of the wagon. He read little, but knew the value of a good book.

  He had had three years of intermittent schooling, and had learned to read and write, and to solve sums, if not too intricate.

  There had been no hat around the wagon, but he could do without one. What he needed now was a good horse.

  There had been a canteen, and he had filled that, and slung it over his shoulder. Also, in his pack, he had put a tin cup and some coffee that had been spilled on the ground. He glanced at the sun, and started out.

  Jed Asbury was accustomed to fending for himself. That there could be anything wrong in appropriating what he had found never entered his head. Likely it would not have entered the head of any man, at that time when life was short and hard, and one lived as best one might. Nor did one man begrudge another what he needed.

  Jed had been born on an Ohio farm, but when his parents had died when he was only ten years old, he had been sent to a crabbed old uncle in a Maine fishing village. For three years his uncle had worked him like a slave, then he had gone out to the banks with a fishing boat, but on its return to New Bedford Jed Asbury had abandoned the boat, his uncle, and deep sea fishing.

  He had walked to Boston, and then by devious methods, got to Philadelphia. He had run errands, worked in a mill, and finally got a job as a printer’s devil in a small shop. He had grown to like a man who came there often, a quiet man with black hair and large gray eyes, his head curiously wide across the temples. The man wrote stories and literary criticism for some magazines, and occasionally loaned Jed books to read. His name was Edgar Poe, and he was reported to be the foster son of John Allan, the Virginia millionaire.

  When Jed left the print shop he had shipped on a windjammer and sailed around the Horn. From San Francisco he had gone to Australia for a year in the gold fields, then to South Africa, and finally back to New York. He had been twenty then, and a big young man, over six feet tall and hardened by the life he had lived. He had gone West on a river boat, then down the Mississippi to Natchez and New Orleans.

  In New Orleans an Englishman named Jem Mace had taught him to box. Until then all the fighting he had known had been learned the hard way. From New Orleans he had gone to Havana, to Brazil, and back to the States. In Natchez he caught a card shark cheating and both had gone for their guns. Jed Asbury had been the quickest and the gambler had died. Jed got a river boat out of town a few minutes ahead of the gambler’s irate friends, and left it in St. Louis.

  On a Missouri river boat he had gone to Fort Benton, then overland to Bannack, where he had joined a wagon train to Laramie, then gone on to Dodge.

  In Tascosa he had run into a brother of the dead gambler and two friends, and in the battle that followed, had come out with a bullet in the leg. He had killed one of his enemies and wounded the other two. He had left town for Santa Fe.

  He had been twenty-four, weighing almost two hundred pounds, and known much about the iniquities of the world. As a bull whacker he made one roundtrip to Council Bluffs then started out with a wagon train to Cheyenne. The Comanches had interfered, and he had been the sole survivor.

  He knew approximately where he was now—somewhere south and west of Dodge, but closer to Santa Fe than to the Kansas trail town. However, not far away was the trail that led north from Tascosa, and he headed that way. Along the creek bottoms there might be stray cattle, and at least he could eat until a trail herd came along.

  It was hot, and his feet hurt. Yet he kept going, shifting his burden from shoulder to shoulder.

  On the morning of the third day he caught sight of a trail herd, headed for Kansas. As he walked toward the herd, two of the three riders riding point swung to meet him.

  One was a lean, red-faced man with a yellowed mustache and a gleam of quizzical humor in his blue eyes. The other was a stocky, friendly rider on a paint horse.

  “Howdy!” the older man said pleasantly. “Out for a mornin’ stroll?”

  “Sort of,” Jed agreed, and noticed their curious glance at his new broadcloth suit. “Reckon it ain’t entirely my choosin’, though. I was bullwhackin’ with a wagontrain out of Santa Fe for Cheyenne, and run smack into the Comanches.”

  Briefly, he explained.

  The old man nodded. “Reckon yuh’ll want a hoss,” he said. “Ever do any ridin’?”

  “A mite. Yuh need a hand?”

  “Shore do. Forty a month and all yuh can eat!”

  “The coffee’s tumble!” the short rider said, grinning. “That dough wrangler we’ve got never could learn to make coffee that didn’t taste like strong lye!”

  CHAPTER TWO: Casa Grande

  Wearing some borrowed jeans, and with his broadcloth packed away, Jed Asbury got out the papers he had found the moment he was alone. With narrowed eyes he read the first letter he opened:

  Dear Michael:

  When you get this you will know George is dead. He was thrown from a horse near Willow Springs last week, and died next day. The home ranch comprises 60,000 acres, and the other ranches twice that. This is to be yours, or your heirs if you have married since we last heard from you, if you or the heirs reach the place within one year of Georges death. If you do not reach here on time, it will fall to the next of kin, and you may remember what Walt is like, from the letters.

  Naturally, we hope you will come at once for all of us know what it would be if Walt came here. You should be around twenty-six now, and able to handle Walt, but be careful. He is dangerous, and has killed several men around Noveno.

  Things are in good shape, but there is bad trouble impending with Besovi, a neighbor of ours. The least thing might start a cattle war, and ifWalt takes over, that will happen. Also, those of us who have lived here so long will be thrown out. Can you come quickly?

  Tony Costa

  The letter was addressed to “Michael Latch, St. Louis, Mo.” Thoughtfully, Jed folded the letter, then glanced through the others. He learned much, yet little.

  Michael Latch had been the nephew of George Baca, a half-American, half-Spanish rancher who owned a huge hacienda in California. Neither Baca nor Tony Costa had ever seen Michael. Nor had the man known as Walt, who seemed to be the son of George’s half-brother.

  The will was that of Michael’s father, Thomas Latch, the deed was to a small California ranch.

  From other papers, and an unmailed letter, Jed learned that the younger of the two men he had buried was Michael Latch. The man and woman had been two friends of Michael’s—Randy and May Kenner. There was also a mention in the letter of a girl named Arden who had accompanied them.

  “Them Indians must have taken that girl with ’em,” Jed thought.

  He considered trying to find her, but dismissed the idea as impractical. Looking for a needle in a haystack would at least be a
local job; searching for the girl captured by a roving band of Indians could cover a couple of thousand square miles.

  Then he had another idea.

  Michael Latch was dead. A vast estate awaited him—a fine, comfortable life, a constructive life which young Latch would have loved. Now the estate would fall to Walt, whoever he was— unless he, Jed Asbury, took the name of Michael Latch and claimed the estate!

  The old man who was his new boss rode in from a ride around the herd. He glanced at Jed, squatting near the fire.

  “Say, stranger,” he said, “what did yuh say your name was?”

  Only for an instant did Jed hesitate. “Latch,” he said quietly. “Mike Latch… .”

  Warm sunlight lay upon the hacienda at Casa Grande. The hounds sprawling in drowsy peace under the smoke trees scarcely opened their eyes when a tall stranger turned his horse in at the gate. Many strangers came to Casa Grande, and the uncertainty that hung over the vast ranch had not reached the dogs.

  Tony Costa straightened his lean frame from the door where he leaned and studied the stranger from under an eye-shielded hand.

  “Senorita,” he said softly, “someone comes!”

  “Is it Walt?” Sharp, quick heels sounded on the stone-flagged floor. “If he comes, what will we do? Oh, if Michael were only here.”

  “Today is the last day,” Costa said gloomily.

  “Look!” The girl grasped his sleeve. “Turning in the gate behind him! That’s Walt Seever!”

  “Two of his boys with him,” Tony agreed. “We will have trouble if we try to stop him, senorita. He would never lose the ranch to a woman.”

  The stranger on the black horse swung down at the steps. He wore a flat-crowned black hat and a black broadcloth suit. His boots were almost new and hand-tooled, but when the girl’s eyes dropped to the guns, she caught her breath.

  “Tony!” she gasped. “The guns!”

  The young man came up the steps, swept off his hat, and bowed. She looked at him, her eyes curious and alert.