Collection 1990 - Grub Line Rider (v5.0) Page 7

  Clambering down the slide, he walked along the bottom. Working his way among the boulders, he made his way toward the shimmering basin that marked the extreme low level of the desert. Here, dancing with heat waves and seeming from a distance to be a vast blue lake, was one of those dry lakes that collect the muddy run-off from the mountains. Yet, as he drew closer, he discovered he had been mistaken in his hope that it was a playa of the dry type. Wells sunk in the dry type of playa often produce fresh cool water, and occasionally at shallow depths. This, however, was a pasty, water-surfaced salinas, and water found there would be salty and worse than none at all. Moreover, there was danger that he might break through the crust beneath the dry, powdery dust and into the slime below.

  The playa was such that it demanded a wide detour from his path, and the heat there was even more intense than on the mountain. Walking steadily, dust rising at each footfall, Bodine turned left along the desert, skirting the playa. Beyond it, he could see the edge of a rocky escarpment, and this rocky ledge stretched for miles toward the far mountain range bordering the desert.

  Yet the escarpment must be attained as soon as possible, for knowing as he was in desert ways and lore, Nat understood in such terrain there was always a possibility of stumbling on one of those desert tanks, or tinajas, which contain the purest water any wanderer of the dry lands could hope to find. Yet he knew how difficult these were to find, for hollowed by some sudden cascade or scooped by wind, they are often filled to the brim with gravel or sand and must be scooped out to obtain the water in the bottom.

  Nat Bodine paused, shading his eyes toward the end of the playa. It was not much farther. His mouth was powder dry now, and he could swallow only with an effort.

  He was no longer perspiring. He walked as in a daze, concerned only with escaping the basin of the playa, and it was with relief that he stumbled over a stone and fell headlong. Clumsily he got to his feet, blinking away the dust and pushing on through the rocks. He crawled to the top of the escarpment through a deep crack in the rock, and then walked on over the dark surface.

  It was some ancient flow of lava, crumbling to ruin now, with here and there a broken blister of it. In each of them, he searched for water, but they were dry. At this hour, he would see no coyote, but he watched for tracks, knowing the wary and wily desert wolves knew where water could be found.

  The horizon seemed no nearer, nor had the peaks begun to show their lines of age or the shapes into which the wind had carved them. Yet the sun was lower now, its rays level and blasting as the searing flames of a furnace. Bodine plodded on, walking toward the night, hoping for it, praying for it. Once he paused abruptly at a thin whine of sound across the sun-blasted air.

  Waiting, he listened, searching the air about him with eyes suddenly alert, but he did not hear the sound again for several minutes, and, when he did hear it, there was no mistaking it. His eyes caught the dark movement, striking straight away from him on a course diagonal with his own.

  A bee!

  Nat changed his course abruptly, choosing a landmark on a line with the course of the bee, and then followed on. Minutes later, he saw a second bee, and altered his course to conform with it. The direction was almost the same, and he knew that water could be found by watching converging lines of bees. He could afford to miss no chance, and he noted the bees were flying deeper into the desert, not away from it.

  Darkness found him suddenly. At the moment, the horizon range had grown darker, its crest tinted with old rose and gold, slashed with the deep fire of crimson, and then it was night, and a coyote was yapping myriad calls at the stars.

  In the coolness, he might make many miles by pushing on, and he might also miss his only chance at water. He hesitated; then his weariness conformed with his judgment, and he slumped down against a boulder and dropped his chin on his chest. The coyote voiced a shrill complaint then, satisfied with the echo against the rocks, ceased his yapping and began to hunt. He scented the man smell and skirted wide around, going about his business.

  V

  There were six men in the little cavalcade at the base of the cliff, searching for tracks. The rider found them there. Jim Morton calmly sitting his horse and watching with interested eyes but lending no aid to the men who tracked his friend, and there were Pete Daley, Blackie, Chuck Benson, and Burt Stoval. Farther along were other groups of riders.

  A man worked a hard-ridden horse toward them, and he was yelling before he arrived. He raced up and slid his horse to a stop, gasping: “Call it off! It wasn’t him!”

  “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 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 hold-up, when 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 was 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 some time 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 pretty, 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.”

  One Last Gun Notch

  I

  Morgan Clyde studied his face in the mirror. It was an even-featured, pleasant face. Neither the nose nor jaw was too blunt or too long. Now, after his morning shave, his jaw was still faintly blue through the deep tan, and the bronze curls above his face made him look several years younger than his thirty-five.

  Carefully he knotted the black string tie on the soft gray shirt, and then slipped on his coat. When he donned the black, flat-crowned hat, he was ready. His appearance was perfect, with just a shade of studied carelessness. For ten years now, Morgan Clyde’s morning shave and dressing had been a ritual from which he never deviated.

  He slid the two guns from their holsters and checked them carefully. First the right, then the left. On the butt of the right-hand gun there were nine filed notches. On the left, three. He glanced at them thoughtfully, remembering.

  That first notch had been for Red Bridges. That was the year they had run his cattle off. Bridges had come out to the claim when Clyde was away, cut his fence down, run his cattle off, and shot his wife down in cold blood.

  Thoughtfully Morgan Clyde looked back into the mirror. He had changed. In his mind’s eye he could see that tall, loose-limbed young man with the bronze hair and boyish face. He had been quiet, peace-loving, content with his wife, his homestead, and his few cattle. He had a gift for gun handling, but never thought of it. That is, not until that visit by Bridges.

  Returning home with a haunch of antelope across his saddle, he had found his wife and the smoking ruins of his home. He did not have to be told. Bridges had warned him to move, or else. Within him something had burst, and for an instant his eyes were blind with blood. When the moment had passed, he had changed.

  He had known, then, what to do. He should have gone to the governor with his story, or to the U.S. marshal. And he could have gone. But there was something red and ugly inside him that had not been there before. He had swung aboard a little paint pony and headed for Peavey’s Mill.

  The town’s one street had been quiet, dusty. The townspeople knew what had happened, because it had been happening to all homesteaders. Never for a moment did they expect any reaction. Red Bridges was too well known. He had killed too many times.

  Then Morgan Clyde rode down the street on his paint pony, saw Bridges, and slid to the ground. Somebody yelled, and Bridges turned. He looked at Morgan Clyde’s young, awkward length and laughed. But his hand dropped swiftly for his gun.

  But something happened. Morgan Clyde’s gun swung up first, spouting fire, and his two shots centered over Bridges’s heart. The big man’s fingers loosened, and the gun slid into the dust. Little whorls rose slowly from where it landed. Then, his face puzzled, his left hand fumbling at his breast, Red Bridges wilted.

  He could have stopped there. Now, Morgan Clyde knew that. He could have stopped there, and should have stopped. He could have ridden from town and been left alone. But he knew Bridges was a tool, and the man who used the tool was Erik Pendleton in the bank. Bridges had been a gunman; Pendleton was not.

  The banker looked up from his desk and saw death. It was no mistake. Clyde had walked up the steps, around the teller’s cage, and opened the door of Pendleton’s office.

  The banker opened his mouth to talk, and Morgan Clyde shot him. He had deserved it.

  The posse lost him west of the Brazos, and he rode on west into a cattle war. He was wanted then and no longer cared. The banker hadn’t rated a notch, but the three men he killed in the streets of Fort Sumner he counted, and the man he shot west of Gallup.

  There had been trouble in St. George, and then in Virginia City. After that, he had a reputation.

  Morgan Clyde turned and stared at the huge old grandfather’s clock. It remained his only permanent possession. It had come over from Scotland years ago, and his family had carried it westward when they went to Ohio, and later to Illinois, and then to Texas. He had intended sending for it when the homestead was going right, and everything was settled. To Diana and himself it had been a symbol of home, of stability.

  What could have started him remembering all that? The past, he had decided long ago, was best forgotten.

  II

  He rode the big black down the street toward Sherman’s office. He knew what was coming. He had been taking money for a long time from men of Sherman’s stripe. Men who needed what force could give them but had nothing of force in themselves.

  Sherman had several gunmen on his payroll. He kept them hating one another and grew fat on their hatred. Tom Cool was there, and the Earle brothers. Tough and vicious, all of them.

  Perhaps it was the case this morning that had started him thinking. Well, that damned fool nester should have known better than to settle on that Red Basin land. It was Sherman’s best grazing land, even if he didn’t own it. But a kid like that couldn’t buck Sherman. The man was a fool to think he could.

  The thought of that other young nester came into his mind. He dismissed it with an impatient jerk of his head.

  The Earle brothers, Vic and Will, were sitting in the bar as he passed through. The two big men looked up, hate in their eyes.

  Sherman was sitting behind the desk in his office and he looked up, smiling, when Morgan Clyde came in. “Sit down, Morg,” he said cheerfully. He leaned back in his chair and put his fingertips together. “Well, this is it. When we get this Hallam taken care of, the rest of the nesters will see we mean business. We can have that range clean by spring, an’ that means I’ll be running the biggest herd west of the Staked Plains.”

  Tom Cool was sitting in a chair tilted against the wall. He had a thin, hatchet face and narrow eyes. He was rolling a smoke now, and he glanced up as his tongue touched the edge of the yellow paper.

  “You got the stomach for it, Morg?” he asked dryly. “Or would you rather I handle this one? I hear you was a nester once yourself.”

  Morgan Clyde glanced around casually, one brow lifting. “You handle my work?” He looked his contempt. “Cool, you might handle this job. It’s just a cold-blooded killing, and more in your line. I’m used to men with guns in their hands.”

  Cool’s eyes narrowed dangerously. “Yeah?” His voice was a hoarse whisper. “I can fill mine fast enough, Clyde, any time you want to unlimber.”

  “I don’t shoot sitting pigeons,” Morgan said quietly.

  “Why, you.…” Tom Cool’s eyes flared with hatred, and his hand dropped away from the cigarette in a streak for his gun.

  Morgan Clyde filled his hand without more than a hint of movement. Before a shot could crash, Sherman’s voice cut through the hot tension of the moment with an edge that turned both their heads toward the leader. There was a gun in his hand.

  Queerly Morgan was shocked. He had never thought of Sherman as a fast man with a gun, and he knew that Cool felt the same. Sherman a gunman! It put a new complexion on a lot of things
. Clyde glanced at Tom Cool and saw the man’s hand coming away from his gun. There had been an instant when both of them could have died. If not by their own guns, by Sherman’s. Neither had been watching him.

  “You boys better settle down,” Sherman said, leaning back in his swivel chair. “Any shooting that’s done in my outfit will be done by me.”

  He looked up at Clyde, and there was something very much like triumph in his eyes. “You’re getting slow, Morg,” Sherman said. “I could have killed you before you got your gun out.” “Maybe.”

  Sherman shrugged. “You go see this Hallam, Clyde. I want him killed, see? An’ the house burned. What happens to his wife is no business of yours. I got other plans.” He grinned, revealing broken teeth. “Yeah, I got other plans for her.”

  Clyde spun on his heel and walked outside. He was just about to swing into the saddle when Tom Cool drifted up. Cool spoke lowly and out the corner of his mouth. “Did you see that, Morg? Did you see the way he got that gun into action? That gent’s poison. Why’s he been keepin’ that from us? Somethin’ around here smells to high heaven.” He took his belt up a notch. “Morg, let’s move in on him together. Let’s take this over. There’s goin’ to be a fortune out there in that valley. You got a head on you. You take care of the business, an’ I’ll handle the rough stuff. Let’s take Sherman out of there. He’s framin’ to queer both of us.”

  Morgan Clyde swung into the saddle. “No sale, Tom,” he said quietly. “Riding our trail, we ride alone. Anyway, I’m not the type to sell out or double-deal. When I’m through with Sherman, I’ll tell him so to his face.”

  “He’ll kill you!”

  Clyde smiled wearily. “Maybe.”

  He turned his horse and rode away. So Sherman was a gunman.

  Tom Cool was right, there was something very wrong about that. The man hired his fighting done, rarely carried a weapon, and no one had ever suspected he might be fast. That was a powerful weapon in the hands of a double-crosser. A man who was lightning with a gun and unsuspected.