Desert Death-Song Read online

  “Two or three most likely,” Kimmel commented. The men stared at the paper then looked back into the wash. The sand showed a trail, but cattle had walked here, too. It would make the going a little slower.

  Neill, his face flushed and his ears red, was tightening his saddle girth. The others avoided his eyes. The insult to him, even if the advice was good, was an insult to them all. Their jaws tightened. The squatter was playing Indian with them, and none of them liked it.

  “Fair shootin’, yeah!” Sutter exploded. “Right in the back!”

  The trail led down the wash now, and it was slower going. The occasional puffs of wind they had left on the desert above were gone and the heat in the bottom of the wash was ovenlike. They rode into it, almost seeming to push their way through flames that seared. Sweat dripped into their eyes until they smarted, and trickled in tiny rivulets through their dust-caked beards, making their faces itch maddeningly.

  The wash spilled out into a wide, flat bed of sand left by the rains of bygone years, and the tracks were plainer now. Neill tightened his bandanna and rode on, sodden with heat and weariness. The trail seemed deliberately to lead them into the worst regions, for now he was riding straight toward an alkali lake that loomed ahead.

  At the edge of the water, the trail vanished. Lock had ridden right into the lake. They drew up and stared at it, unbelieving.

  “He can’t cross,” Hardin stated flatly. “That’s deep out to the middle. Durned treacherous, too. A horse could get bogged down mighty easy.”

  They skirted the lake, taking it carefully, three going one way, and three the other. Finally, glancing back, Neill caught sight of Kesney’s uplifted arm.

  “They found it,” he said, “let’s go back.” Yet as he rode he was thinking what they all knew. This was a delay, for Lock knew they would have to scout the shores both ways to find his trail, and there would be a delay while the last three rejoined the first. A small thing, but in such a chase it was important.

  “Why not ride right on to the ranch?” Short suggested.

  “We might,” Hardin speculated. “On the other hand he might fool us an’ never go nigh it. Then we could lose him.”

  The trail became easier, for now Lock was heading straight into the mountains.

  “Where’s he goin’?” Kesney demanded irritably. “This don’t make sense, nohow!”

  There was no reply, the horsemen stretching out in single file, riding up the draw into the mountains. Suddenly Kimmel, who was now in the lead, drew up. Before him a thread of water trickled from the rock and spilled into a basin of stones.

  “Huh!” Hardin stared. “I never knowed about this spring afore. Might’s well have a drink.” He swung down.

  They all got down and Neill rolled a smoke.

  “Somebody sure fixed her up nice,” he said. “That wall of stone makin’ that basin ain’t so old.”

  “No, it ain’t.”

  Short watched them drink and grinned.

  “He’s a fox, right enough. He’s an old ladino, this one. A reg’lar mossy horn. It don’t take no time for one man to drink, an’ one hoss. But here we got six men an’ six horses to drink an’ we lose more time.”

  “You think he really planned it that way?” Neill was skeptical.

  Hardin looked around at him. “Sure. This Lock knows his way around.”

  When they were riding on, Neill thought about that. Lock was shrewd. He was desert wise. And he was leading them a chase. If not even Hardin knew of this spring, and he had been twenty years in the Spring Valley country, then Lock must know a good deal about the country. Of course, this range of mountains was singularly desolate, and there was nothing in them to draw a man.

  So they knew this about their quarry. He was a man wise in the ways of desert and trail, and one who knew the country. Also, Neill reflected, it was probable he had built that basin himself. Nobody lived over this way but Lock, for now it was not far to the Sorenson place.

  Now they climbed a single horse trail across the starkly eroded foothills, sprinkled with clumps of Joshua and Spanish bayonet. It was a weird and broken land, where long fingers of black lava stretched down the hills and out into the desert as though clawing toward the alkali lake they had left behind. The trail mounted steadily and a little breeze touched their cheeks. Neill lifted his hand and wiped dust from his brow and it came away in flakes, plastered by sweat.

  The trail doubled and changed, now across the rock face of the burnt red sandstone, then into the lava itself, skirting hills where the exposed ledges mounted in layers like a vast cake of many colors. Then the way dipped down, and they wound among huge boulders, smooth as so many water-worn pebbles. Neill sagged in the saddle, for the hours were growing long, and the trail showed no sign of ending.

  “Lucky he ain’t waitin’ to shoot,” Kimmel commented, voicing the first remark in over an hour. “He could pick us off like flies.”

  As if in reply to his comment, there was an angry whine above them, and then the crack of a rifle.

  As one man they scattered for shelter, whipping rifles from their scabbards, for all but two had replaced them when they reached the lake. Hardin swore, and Kimmel wormed his way to a better view of the country ahead.

  Short had left the saddle in his scramble for shelter, and his horse stood in the open, the canteen making a large lump behind the saddle. Suddenly the horse leaped to solid thud of a striking bullet, and then followed the crack of the rifle, echoing over the mountainside.

  Short swore viciously. “If he killed that horse … !” But the horse, while shifting nervously, seemed uninjured.

  “Hey!” Kesney yelled. “He shot your canteen!”

  It was true enough. Water was pouring onto the ground, and swearing, Short started to get up. Sutter grabbed his arm.

  “Hold it! If he could get that canteen, he could get you!”

  They waited, and the trickle of water slowed, then faded to a drip. All of them stared angrily at the unrewarding rocks ahead of them. One canteen the less. Still they had all filled up at the spring and should have enough. Uncomfortably, however, they realized that the object of their chase, the man called Chat Lock, knew where he was taking them, and he had not emptied that canteen by chance. Now they understood the nature of the man they followed. He did nothing without object.

  Lying on the sand or rocks they waited, peering ahead.

  “He’s probably ridin’ off now!” Sutter braked.

  Nobody showed any disposition to move. The idea appealed to none of them, for the shot into the canteen showed plainly enough the man they followed was no child with a rifle. Kimmel finally put his hat on a rifle muzzle and lifted it. There was no response. Then he tried sticking it around a corner.

  Nothing happened, and he withdrew it. Almost at once, a shot hit the trail not far from where the hat had been. The indication was plain. Lock was warning them not only that he was still there, but that he was not to be fooled by so obvious a trick.

  They waited, and Hardin suddenly slid over a rock and began a flanking movement. He crawled, and they waited, watching his progress. The cover he had was good, and he could crawl almost to where the hidden marksman must be. Finally, he disappeared from their sight and they waited. Neill tasted the water in his canteen, and dozed.

  At last they heard a long yell, and looking up, they saw Hardin standing on a rock far up the trail, waving them on. Mounting, they led Hardin’s horse and rode on up the trail. He met them at the trail side, and his eyes were angry.

  “Gone!” he said, thrusting out a hard palm. In it lay three brass cartridge shells. “Found ’em standing up in a line on a rock. An’ look here.” He pointed, and they stared down at the trail where he indicated. A neat arrow made of stones pointed down the trail ahead of them, and scratched on the face of the sand stone above it were the words: FOLLER THE SIGNS.

  Kesney jerked his hat from his head and hurled it to the ground.

  “Why, that dirty … !” He stopped, beside
himself with anger. The contempt of the man they pursued was obvious. He was making fools of them, deliberately teasing them, indicating his trail as to a child or a tenderfoot.

  “That ratty back-shootin’ killer!” Short said. “I’ll take pleasure in usin’ a rope on him! Thinks he’s smart!”

  They started on, and the horse ahead of them left a plain trail, but a quarter of a mile further along, three dried pieces of mesquite had been laid in the trail to form another arrow.

  Neill stared at it. This was becoming a personal matter now. He was deliberately playing with them, and he must know how that would set with men such as Kimmel and Hardin. It was a deliberate challenge, more, it was a sign of the utmost contempt.

  The vast emptiness of the basin they skirted now was becoming lost in the misty purple light of late afternoon. On the right, the wall of the mountain grew steeper and turned a deeper red. The burnt red of the earlier hours was now a bright rust red, and here and there long fingers of quartz shot their white arrows down into the face of the cliff.

  They all saw the next message, but all read and averted their eyes. It was written on a blank face of the cliff. First, there was an arrow, pointing ahead, and then the words, SHADE, SO’S YOU DON’T GET SUNSTROK.

  They rode on, and for several miles as the shadows drew down, they followed the markers their quarry left at intervals along the trail. All six of the men were tired and beaten. Their horses moved slowly, and the desert air was growing chill. It had been a long chase.

  Suddenly, Kimmel and Kesney, who rode side by side, reined in. A small wall or rock was across the trail, and an arrow pointed downward into a deep cleft.

  “What do you think, Hardin? He could pick us off man by man.”

  Hardin studied the situation with misgivings, and hesitated, lighting a smoke.

  “He ain’t done it yet.”

  Neill’s remark fell into the still air like a rock into a calm pool of water. As the rings of ripples spread wider into the thoughts of the other five, he waited.

  Lock could have killed one or two of them, perhaps all of them by now. Why had he not? Was he waiting for darkness and an easy getaway? Or was he leading them into a trap?

  “The devil with it!” Hardin exclaimed impatiently. He wheeled his horse and pistol in hand, started down into the narrow rift in the dark. One by one, they followed. The darkness closed around them, and the air was damp and chill. They rode on, and then the trail mounted steeply toward a grayness ahead of them, and they came out in a small basin. Ahead of them they heard a trickle of running water and saw the darkness of trees.

  Cautiously they approached. Suddenly, they saw the light of a fire. Hardin drew up sharply and slid from his horse. The others followed. In a widening circle, they crept toward the fire. Kesney was the first to reach it, and the sound of his swearing rent the stillness and shattered it like thin glass. They swarmed in around him.

  The fire was built close and beside a small running stream, and nearby was a neat pile of dry sticks. On a paper, laid out carefully on a rock, was a small mound of coffee, and another of sugar. Nobody said anything for a minute, staring at the fire and the coffee. The taunt was obvious, and they were bitter men. It was bad enough to have a stranger make such fools of them on a trail, to treat them like tenderfeet, but to prepare a camp for them… .

  “I’ll be cussed if I will!” Short said violently. “I’ll go sleep on the desert first!”

  “Well—” Hardin was philosophical. “Might’s well make the most of it. We can’t trail him at night, no way.”

  Kimmel had dug a coffee pot out of his pack and was getting water from the stream which flowed from a basin just above their camp. Several of the others began to dig out grub, and Kesney sat down glumly, staring into the fire. He started to pick a stick of the pile left for them, then jerked his hand as though he had seen a snake and getting up, he stalked back into the trees, and after a minute, he returned.

  Sutter was looking around, and suddenly he spoke. “Boys, I know this place! Only I never knew about that crack in the wall. This here’s the Mormon Well!”

  Hardin sat up and looked around. “Durned if it ain’t,” he said. “I ain’t been in here for six or seven years.”

  Sutter squatted on his haunches. “Look!” He was excited and eager. “Here’s Mormon Well, where we are. Right over here to the northwest there’s an old saw mill an’ a tank just above it. I’ll bet a side of beef that durned killer is holed up for the night in that sawmill!”

  Kesney, who had taken most to heart the taunting of the man they pursued, was on his knees staring at the diagram drawn in the damp sand. He was nodding thoughtfully.

  “He’s right! He sure is. I remembered that old mill! I holed up there one time in a bad storm. Spent two days in it. If that sidewinder stays there tonight, we can get him!”

  As they ate, they talked over their plan. Travelling over the rugged mountains ahead of them was almost impossible in the darkness, and besides, even if Lock could go the night without stopping, his horse could not. The buckskin must have rest. Moreover, with all the time Lock had been losing along the trail, he could not be far ahead. It stood to reason that he must have planned just this, for them to stop here, and to hole up in the sawmill himself.

  “We’d better surprise him,” Hardin suggested. “That sawmill is heavy timber an’ a man in there with a rifle an’ plenty of ammunition could stand us off for a week.”

  “Has he got plenty?”

  “Sure he has,” Neill told them. “I was in the Bon Ton when he bought his stuff. He’s got grub and he’s got plenty of .44’s. They do for either his Colt or his Winchester.”

  Unspoken as yet, but present in the mind of each man, was a growing respect for their quarry, a respect and an element of doubt. Would such a man as this shoot another in the back? The evidence against him was plain enough, or seemed plain enough.

  Yet beyond the respect there was something else, for it was no longer simply a matter of justice to be done, but a personal thing. Each of them felt in some measure that his reputation was at stake. It had not been enough for Lock to leave an obvious trail, but he must leave markers, the sort to be used for any tenderfoot. There were men in this group who could trail a woodtick through a pine forest.

  “Well,” Kimmel said reluctantly, and somewhat grimly, “he left us good coffee, anyway!”

  They tried the coffee, and agreed. Few things in this world are so comforting and so warming to the heart as hot coffee on a chilly night over a campfire when the day has been long and weary. They drank, and they relaxed. And as they relaxed, the seeds of doubt began to sprout and put forth branches of speculation.

  “He could have got more’n one of us today,” Sutter hazarded. “This one is brush wise.”

  “I’ll pull that rope on him!” Short stated positively. “No man makes a fool out of me!” But in his voice there was something lacking.

  “You know,” Kesney suggested, “if he knows these hills like he seems to, an’ if he really wanted to lose us, we’d have to burn the stump and sift the ashes before we found him!”

  There was no reply. Hardin drew back and eased the leg of his pants away from the skin, for the cloth had grown too hot for comfort.

  Short tossed a stick from the neat pile into the fire.

  “That mill ain’t so far away,” he suggested, “shall we give her a try?

  “Later.” Hardin leaned back against a log and yawned. “She’s been a hard day.”

  “Both them bullets go in Johnny’s back?”

  The question moved among them like a ghost. Short stirred uneasily, and Kesney looked up and glared around. “Sure they did! Didn’t they, Hardin?”

  “Sure.” He paused thoughtfully. “Well, no. One of them was under his left arm. Right between the ribs. Looked like a heart shot to me. The other one went through near his spine.”

  “The heck with it!” Kesney declared. “No slick, rustlin’ squatter can come into this country and
shoot one of our boys! He was shot in the back, an’ I seen both holes. Johnny got that one nigh the spine, an’ he must have turned and tried to draw, then got that bullet through the heart!”

  Nobody had seen it. Neill remembered that, and the thought rankled. Were they doing an injustice? He felt like a traitor at the thought, but secretly he had acquired a strong tinge of respect for the man they followed.

  The fire flickered and the shadows danced a slow, rhythmic quadrille against the dark background of trees. He peeled bark from the log beside him and fed it into the fire. It caught, sparked brightly, and popped once or twice. Hardin leaned over and pushed the coffee pot nearer the coals. Kesney checked the loads in his Winchester.

  “How far to that saw mill, Hardin?”

  “About six miles, the way we go.”

  “Let’s get started.” Short got to his feet and brushed off the sand. “I want to get home. Got my boys buildin’ fence. You either keep a close watch or they are off gal hootin’ over the hills.”

  They tightened their saddle girths, doused the fire, and mounted up. With Hardin in the lead once more, they moved off into the darkness.

  Neill brought up the rear. It was damp and chill among the cliffs, and felt like the inside of a cavern. Overhead the stars were very bright. Mary was going to be worried, for he was never home so late. Nor did he like leaving her alone. He wanted to be home, eating a warm supper and going to bed in the old four poster with the patchwork quilt Mary’s grandmother made, pulled over him. What enthusiasm he had had for the chase was gone. The warm fire, the coffee, his own weariness, and the growing respect for Lock had changed him.

  Now they all knew he was not the manner of man they had supposed. Justice can be a harsh taskmaster, but Western men know their kind, and the lines were strongly drawn. When you have slept beside a man on the trail, worked with him, and with others like him, you come to know your kind. In the trail of the man Chat Lock, each rider of the posse was seeing the sort of man he knew, the sort he could respect. The thought was nagging and unsubstantial, but each of them felt a growing doubt, even Short and Kesney who were most obdurate and resentful.