Collection 1983 - Law Of The Desert Born (v5.0) Page 7

  “Meanin’?” The big man’s hand lay on his thigh.

  “Meanin’ anything you like.” Morton was a Tennessee mountain man before he came west, and gun talk was not strange to him. “You call it your ownself.” The long rifle was pointed between the big man’s eyes, and Morton was building a cigarette with his hands only inches away from the trigger.

  “Forget it!” Benson interrupted. “What you two got to fight about? Blackie, this here’s Jim Morton. He’s lion hunter for the Lazy S.”

  Blackie’s mind underwent a rapid readjustment. This tall, lazy stranger wasn’t the soft-headed drink of water he had thought him, for everybody knew about Morton. A dead shot with rifle and pistol, he was known to favor the former, even in fairly close combat. He had been known to go up trees after mountain lions, and once, when three hardcase rustlers had tried to steal his horses, the three had ended up in Boot Hill.

  “How about it, Jim?” Chuck asked. “You know Nat. Where’d you think he’d be?”

  Morton squinted and drew on his cigarette. “Ain’t no figurin’ him. I know him, an’ I’ve hunted along of him. He’s almighty knowin’ when it comes to wild country. Moves like a cat an’ got eyes like a turkey buzzard.” He glanced at Chuck. “What’s he done? I heard some talk down to the Slash Five, but nobody seemed to have it clear.”

  “Stage robbed yestiddy. Pete Daley of the Diamond D was ridin’ it, an’ he swore the robber was Nat. When they went to arrest him, Nat shot the sheriff.”

  “Kill him?”

  “No. But he’s bad off, an’ like to die. Nat only fired once, an’ the bullet took Larrabee too high.”

  “Don’t sound reasonable,” Morton said slowly. “Nat ain’t one to miss somethin’ he aims to kill. You say Pete Daley was there?”

  “Yeah. He’s the on’y one saw it.”

  “How about this robber? Was he masked?”

  “Uh-huh, an’ packin’ a Winchester .44 an’ two tied-down guns. Big black-haired man, the driver said. He didn’t know Bodine, but Pete identified him.”

  Morton eyed Benson. “I shouldn’t wonder,” he said, and Chuck flushed.

  Each knew what the other was thinking. Pete Daly had never liked Bodine. Nat married the girl Pete wanted, even though it was generally figured Pete never had a look-in with her, anyway, but Daley had worn his hatred like a badge ever since. Mary Callahan had been a pretty girl, but a quiet one, and Daley had been sure he’d win her.

  But Bodine had come down from the hills and changed all that. He was a tall man with broad shoulders, dark hair, and a quiet face. He was a good-looking man, even a handsome man, some said. Men liked him, and women too, but the men liked him best because he left their women alone. That was more than could be said for Daley, who lacked Bodine’s good looks but made up for it with money.

  Bodine had bought a place near town and drilled a good well. He seemed to have money, and that puzzled people, so hints began to get around that he had been rustling as well as robbing stages. There were those, like Jim Morton, who believed most of the stories were started by Daley, but no matter where they originated, they got around.

  Hanging Bodine for killing the sheriff—the fact that he was still alive was overlooked and considered merely a technical question, anyway—was the problem before the posse. It was a self-elected posse, inspired to some extent by Daley and given a semiofficial status by the presence of Burt Stoval, Larrabee’s jailer.

  Yet, to hang a man, he must first be caught, and Bodine had lost himself in that broken, rugged country known as Powder Basin. It was a region of some ten square miles backed against an even rougher and uglier patch of waterless desert, but the basin was bad enough itself.

  Fractured with gorges and humped with fir-clad hogbacks, it was a maze where the juniper region merged into the fir and spruce and where the canyons were liberally overgrown with manzanita. There were at least two cliff dwellings in the area and a ghost mining town of some dozen ramshackle structures, tumbled in and wind worried.

  “All I can say,” Morton said finally, “is that I don’t envy those who corner him—when they do and if they do.”

  Blackie wanted no issue with Morton, yet he was still sore. He looked up. “What do you mean, if we do? We’ll get him!”

  Morton took his cigarette from his lips. “Want a suggestion, friend? When he’s cornered, don’t you be the one to go in after him.”

  FOUR HOURS LATER, when the sun was moving toward noon, the net had been drawn tighter, and Nat Bodine lay on his stomach in the sparse grass on the crest of a hogback and studied the terrain below.

  There were many hiding places, but the last thing he wanted was to be cornered and forced to fight it out. Until the last moment, he wanted freedom of movement.

  Among the searchers were friends of his, men with whom he rode and hunted, men he had admired and liked. Now they believed him wrong; they believed him a killer, and they were hunting him down.

  They were searching the canyons with care, so he had chosen the last spot they would examine, a bald hill with only the foot-high grass for cover. His vantage point was excellent, and he had watched with appreciation the care with which they searched the canyon below him.

  Bodine scooped another handful of dust and rubbed it along his rifle barrel. He knew how far a glint of sunlight from a Winchester can be seen, and men in that posse were Indian fighters and hunters.

  No matter how he considered it, his chances were slim. He was a better woodsman than any of them, unless it was Jim Morton. Yet that was not enough. He was going to need food and water. Sooner or later, they would get the bright idea of watching the water holes, and after that.…

  It was almost twenty-four hours since he had eaten, and he would soon have to refill his canteen.

  Pete Daley was behind this, of course. Trust Pete not to tell the true story of what happened. Pete had accused him of the holdup right to his face when they had met him on the street. The accusation had been sudden, and Nat’s reply had been prompt. He’d called Daley a liar, and Daley moved a hand for his gun. The sheriff sprang to stop them and took Nat’s bullet. The people who rushed to the scene saw only the sheriff on the ground, Daley with no gun drawn and Nat gripping his six-shooter. Yet it was not that of which he thought now. He thought of Mary.

  What would she be thinking now? They had been married so short a time and had been happy despite the fact that he was still learning how to live in civilization and with a woman. It was a mighty different thing, living with a girl like Mary.

  Did she doubt him now? Would she, too, believe he had held up the stage and then killed the sheriff? As he lay in the grass, he could find nothing on which to build hope.

  Hemmed in on three sides, with the waterless mountains and desert behind him, the end seemed inevitable. Thoughtfully, he shook his canteen. It was nearly empty. Only a little water sloshed weakly in the bottom. Yet he must last the afternoon through, and by night he could try the water hole at Mesquite Springs, no more than a half mile away.

  The sun was hot, and he lay very still, knowing that only the faint breeze should stir the grass where he lay if he were not to be seen.

  Below him, he heard men’s voices and from time to time could distinguish a word or even sentence. They were cursing the heat, but their search was not relaxed. Twice men mounted the hill and passed near him. One man stopped for several minutes, not more than a dozen yards away, but Nat held himself still and waited. Finally, the man moved on, mopping sweat from his face. When the sun was gone, he wormed his way off the crest and into the manzanita. It took him over an hour to get within striking distance of Mesquite Springs. He stopped just in time. His nostrils caught the faint fragrance of tobacco smoke.

  Lying in the darkness, he listened, and after a moment heard a stone rattle, then the faint chink of metal on stone.

  When he was far enough away, he got to his feet and worked his way through the night toward Stone Cup, a spring two miles beyond. He moved more warily now, knowing
they were watching the water holes.

  The stars were out, sharp and clear, when he snaked his way through the reeds toward the cup. Deliberately, he chose the route where the overflow from the Stone Cup kept the earth soggy and high grown with reeds and dank grass. There would be no chance of a watcher waiting there on the wet ground, nor would the wet grass rustle. He moved close, but there, too, men waited.

  He lay still in the darkness, listening. Soon he picked out three men, two back in the shadows of the rock shelf, one over under the brush but not more than four feet from the small pool’s edge.

  There was no chance to get a canteen filled there, for the watchers were too wide-awake. Yet he might manage a drink.

  He slid his knife from his pocket and opened it carefully. He cut several reeds, allowing no sound. When he had them cut, he joined them and reached them toward the water. Lying on his stomach within only a few feet of the pool and no farther from the nearest watcher, he sucked on the reeds until the water started flowing. He drank for a long time, then drank again, the trickle doing little, at first, to assuage his thrist. After a while, he felt better.

  He started to withdraw the reeds, then grinned and let them lay. With care, he worked his way back from the cup and got to his feet. His shirt was muddy and wet, and with the wind against his body, he felt almost cold. With the water holes watched, there would be no chance to fill his canteen, and the day would be blazing hot. There might be an unwatched hole, but the chance of that was slight, and if he spent the night in fruitless search of water, he would exhaust his strength and lose the sleep he needed. Returning like a deer to a resting place near a ridge, he bedded down in a clump of manzanita. His rifle cradled in his arm, he was almost instantly asleep.

  Dawn was breaking when he awakened, and his nostrils caught a whiff of wood smoke. His pursuers were at their breakfasts. By now they would have found his reeds, and he grinned at the thought of their anger at having had him so near without knowing. Morton, he reflected, would appreciate that. Yet they would all know he was short of water.

  Worming his way through the brush, he found a trail that followed just below the crest and moved steadily along in the partial shade, angling toward a towering hogback.

  Later, from well up on the hogback, he saw three horsemen walking their animals down the ridge where he had rested the previous day. Two more were working up a canyon, and wherever he looked, they seemed to be closing in. He abandoned the canteen, for it banged against brush and could be heard too easily. He moved back, going from one cluster of boulders to another, then pausing short of the ridge itself.

  The only route that lay open was behind him, into the desert, and that way they were sure he would not go. The hogback on which he lay was the highest ground in miles, and before him the jagged scars of three canyons running off the hogback stretched their ugly length into the rocky, brush-blanketed terrain. Up those three canyons, groups of searchers were working. Another group had cut down from the north and come between him and the desert ghost town.

  The far-flung skirmishing line was well disposed, and Nat could find it in himself to admire their skill. These were his brand of men, and they understood their task. Knowing them as he did, he knew how relentless they could be. The country behind him was open. It would not be open long. They were sure he would fight it out rather than risk dying of thirst in the desert. They were wrong.

  Nat Bodine learned that himself, suddenly. Had he been asked, he would have accepted their solution, yet now he saw that he could not give up.

  The desert was the true Powder Basin. The Indians had called it the Place of No Water, and he had explored deep into it in past years and found nothing. While the distance across was less than twenty miles, a man must travel twice that or more, up and down and around, if he would cross it, and his sense of direction must be perfect. Yet, with water and time, a man might cross it.

  But Nat Bodine had neither. Moreover, if he went into the desert, they would soon send word and have men waiting on the other side. He was fairly trapped, and yet he knew that he would die in that waste alone before he surrendered to be lynched. Nor could he hope to fight off this posse for long. Carefully, he got to his feet and worked his way to the crest. Behind him lay the vast red maw of the desert. He nestled among the boulders and watched the men below. They were coming carefully, still several yards away. Cradling his Winchester against his cheek, he drew a bead on a rock ahead of the nearest man and fired.

  Instantly, the searchers vanished. Where a dozen men had been in sight, there was nobody now. He chuckled. “That made ’em eat dirt!” he said. “Now they won’t be so anxious.”

  The crossing of the crest was dangerous, but he made it and hesitated there, surveying the scene before him. Far away to the horizon stretched the desert. Before him, the mountain broke sharply away in a series of sheer precipices and ragged chasms, and he scowled as he stared down at them, for it seemed no descent could be possible from there.

  CHUCK BENSON AND Jim Morton crouched in the lee of a stone wall and stared up at the ridge from which the shot had come. “He didn’t shoot to kill,” Morton said, “or he’d have had one of us. He’s that good.”

  “What’s on his mind?” Benson demanded. “He’s stuck now. I know that ridge, an’ the only way down is the way he went up.”

  “Let’s move in,” Blackie protested. “There’s cover enough.”

  “You don’t know Nat. He’s never caught until you see him down. I know the man. He’ll climb cliffs that would stop a hossfly.”

  Pete Daley and Burt Stoval moved up to join them, peering at the ridge before them through the concealing leaves. The ridge was a gigantic hogback almost a thousand feet higher than the plateau on which they waited. On the far side, it fell away to the desert, dropping almost two thousand feet in no more than two hundred yards, and most of the drop in broken cliffs.

  Daley’s eyes were hard with satisfaction. “We got him now!” he said triumphantly. “He’ll never get off that ridge! We’ve only to wait a little, then move in on him. He’s out of water, too!”

  Morton looked with distaste at Daley. “You seem powerful anxious to get him, Pete. Maybe the sheriff ain’t dead yet. Maybe he won’t die. Maybe his story of the shootin’ will be different.”

  Daley turned on Morton, his dislike evident. “Your opinion’s of no account, Morton. I was there, and I saw it. As for Larrabee, if he ain’t dead, he soon will be. If you don’t like this job, why don’t you leave?”

  Jim Morton stroked his chin calmly. “Because I aim to be here if you get Bodine,” he said, “an’ I personally figure to see he gets a fair shake. Furthermore, Daley, I’m not beholdin’ to you, no way, an’ I ain’t scared of you. Howsoever, I figure you’ve got a long way to go before you get Bodine.”

  HIGH ON THE ridge, flat on his stomach among the rocks, Bodine was not so sure. He mopped sweat from his brow and studied again the broken cliff beneath him. There seemed to be a vaguely possible route, but at the thought of it, his mouth turned dry and his stomach, empty.

  A certain bulge in the rock looked as though it might afford handholds, although some of the rock was loose, and he couldn’t see below the bulge where it might become smooth. Once over that projection, getting back would be difficult if not impossible. Nevertheless, he determined to try.

  Using his belt for a rifle strap, he slung the Winchester over his back, then turned his face to the rock and slid feet first over the bulge, feeling with his toes for a hold. If he fell from here, he could not drop less than two hundred feet, although close in there was a narrow ledge only sixty feet down.

  Using simple pull holds and working down with his feet, Bodine got well out over the bulge. Taking a good grip, he turned his head and searched the rock below him. On his left, the rock was cracked deeply, with the portion of the face to which he clung projecting several inches farther into space than the other side of the crack. Shifting his left foot carefully, he stepped into the crack, which afford
ed a good jam hold. Shifting his left hand, he took a pull grip, pulling away from himself with the left fingers until he could swing his body to the left and get a grip on the edge of the crack with his right fingers. Then, lying back, his feet braced against the projecting far edge of the crack and pulling toward himself with his hands, he worked his way down, step by step and grip by grip, for all of twenty feet. There the crack widened into a chimney, far too wide to be climbed with a lie back, its inner sides slick and smooth from the scouring action of wind and water.

  Working his way into the chimney, he braced his feet against one wall and his back against the other, and by pushing against the two walls and shifting his feet carefully, he worked his way down until he was well past the sixty-foot ledge. The chimney ended in a small cavernlike hollow in the rock, and he sat there, catching his breath.

  Nat ran his fingers through his hair and mopped sweat from his brow. Anyway—he grinned at the thought—they wouldn’t follow him down here!

  Carefully, he studied the cliff below him, then to the right and left. To escape his present position, he must make a traverse of the rock face, working his way gradually down. For all of forty feet of climb, he would be exposed to a dangerous fall or to a shot from above if they had dared the ridge. Yet there were precarious handholds and some inch-wide ledges for his feet.

  When he had his breath, he moved out, clinging to the rock face and carefully working across it and down. Sliding down a steep slab, he crawled out on a knife-edge ridge of rock and, straddling it, worked his way along until he could climb down a farther face, hand over hand. Landing on a wide ledge, he stood there, his chest heaving, staring back up at the ridge. No one was yet in sight, and there was a chance that he was making good his escape. At the same time, his mouth was dry, and the effort expended in descending had increased his thirst. Unslinging his rifle, he completed the descent without trouble, emerging at last upon the desert below.