The Trail to Crazy Man Read online

  “Drop my guns?” Ducrow chuckled. “You’d actually take me in, too! You’re too soft, Bastian. You’d never make the boss man old Ben Curry was. He would never even’ve said yes or no. He would have seen me and gone to blastin’! You got a sight to learn, youngster. Too bad you ain’t goin’ to live long enough to learn it.”

  Ducrow lifted one hand carelessly and wiped it across the tobacco-stained stubble of his beard. His right hand swept down for his gun even as his left touched his face. His gun came up, spouting flame.

  Mike Bastian palmed his gun and momentarily held it rigid. Then he fired.

  Ducrow winced like he had been slugged in the chest, and then he lifted on his tiptoes. His gun came level again. “You’re … fast,” he gasped. “Devilish fast.”

  He fired, and then Mike triggered his gun once more. The second shot spun Ducrow around and he fell, face down, at the edge of the fire.

  Dru came running, her rifle in her hand, but when she saw Mike still standing, she dropped the rifle and ran to him. “Oh, Mike!” she sobbed. “I was so frightened! I thought you were killed!”

  Julie started to rise, and then fell headlong in a faint. Dru rushed to her side.

  Mike Bastian absently thumbed shells into his gun and stared down at the fallen man. He had killed a third man. Suddenly, and profoundly, he wished with all his heart he would never have to kill another.

  He holstered his weapon and, gathering up the dead man, carried him away from the fire. He would bury him here, in Peach Meadow Cañon.

  XI

  Sunlight lay upon the empty street of the settlement in Toadstool Cañon when Mike Bastian, his rifle crosswise on his saddle, rode slowly into the lower end of the town.

  Beside him, sitting straight in her saddle, rode Dru Ragan. Julie had stayed at the ranch, but Dru had flatly refused. Ben Curry was her father, and she was going to him, outlaw camp or not.

  If Dave Lenaker had arrived, Mike thought, he was quiet enough, for there was no sound. No horses stood at the hitch rails, and the doors of the saloon were wide open.

  Something fluttered on the ground, and Mike looked at it quickly. It was a torn bit of cloth on a man’s body. The man was a stranger. Dru noticed it and her face paled.

  His rifle at ready, Mike rode on, eyes shifting from side to side. A man’s wrist lay in sight across a window sill, his pistol on the porch outside. There was blood on the stoop of another house.

  “There’s been a fight,” Mike said, “and a bad one. You’d better get set for the worst.”

  Dru said nothing, but her mouth held firm. At the last building, the mess hall, a man lay dead in a doorway. They rode on, and then drew up at the foot of the stone steps, and dismounted. Mike shoved his rifle back in the saddle scabbard and loosened his six-guns.

  “Let’s go,” he said.

  The wide verandah was empty and still, but when he stepped into the huge living room, he stopped in amazement. Five men sat about a table playing cards.

  Ben Curry’s head came up and he waved at them. “Come on in, Mike!” he called. “Who’s that with you? Dru, by all that’s holy!”

  Doc Sawyer, Roundy, Garlin, and Colley were there. Garlin’s head was bandaged, and Colley had one foot stretched out, stiff and straight, as did Ben Curry. But all were smiling.

  Dru ran to her father and fell on her knees beside him.

  “Oh, Dad!” she cried. “We were so scared!”

  “What happened here?” Mike demanded. “Don’t sit there grinning! Did Dave Lenaker come?”

  “He sure did, and what do you think?” Doc said. “It was Rigger Molina got him! Rigger got to Weaver and found out Perrin had double-crossed him before he ever pulled the job. He discovered that Perrin had lied about the guards, so he rushed back. When he found out that Ben was crippled and that Kerb Perrin had run out, he waited for Lenaker himself.

  “He was wonderful, Mike,” Doc continued. “I never saw anything like it! He paced the verandah out there like a bear in a cage, swearing and waiting for Lenaker. Muttered … ‘Leave you in the lurch, will they? I’ll show ’em! Lenaker thinks he can gun you down because you’re gettin’ old, does he? Well, killer I may be, but I can kill him!’ And he did, Mike. They shot it out in the street down there. Dave Lenaker, as slim and tall as you, and that great bear of a Molina.

  “Lenaker beat him to the draw,” Doc went on. “He got two bullets into the Rigger, but Molina wouldn’t go down. He stood there, spraddle-legged, in the street and shot until both guns were empty. Lenaker kept shooting and must have hit Molina five times, but when he went down, Rigger walked over to him and spat in his face. ‘That’s for double-crossers!’ he said. He was magnificent!”

  “They fooled me, Mike,” Roundy said. “I seen trouble a-comin’ an’ figured I’d better get to old Ben. I never figured they’d slip in behind you like they done. Then the news of Lenaker comin’ got me. I knowed him an’ was afraid of him, so I figured in order to save Ben Curry I’d get down the road and dry-gulch him. Never killed a gunslinger like him in my life, Mike, but I was sure aimin’ to. But he got by me on another trail. After Molina killed Lenaker, his boys and some of them from here started after the gold they’d figured was in this house.”

  “Doc here,” Garlin said, “is some fighter. I didn’t know he had it in him.”

  “Roundy, Doc, Garlin, an’ me,” Colley said, “we sided Ben Curry. It was a swell scrap while it lasted. Garlin got one through his scalp, and I got two bullets in the leg. Aside from that, we came out all right.”

  Briefly, then, Mike explained all that had transpired, how he had killed Perrin, and then had trailed Ducrow to Peach Meadow Cañon and the fight there.

  “Where’s the gang?” he demanded now. “All gone?”

  “All the live ones.” Ben Curry nodded grimly. “There’s a few won’t go anywhere. Funny, the only man who ever fooled me was Rigger Molina. I never knew the man was that loyal, yet he stood by me when I was in no shape to fight Lenaker. Took that fight right off my hands. He soaked up lead like a sponge soaks water.”

  Ben Curry looked quickly at Dru. “So you know you’re the daughter of an outlaw? Well, I’m sorry, Dru. I never aimed for you to know. I was gettin’ shet of this business and planned to settle down on a ranch with your mother and live out the rest of my days plumb peaceful.”

  “Why don’t you?” Dru demanded.

  He looked at her, his admiring eyes taking in her slim, well-rounded figure. “You reckon she’ll have me?” he asked. “She looked a sight like you when she was younger, Dru.”

  “Of course, she’ll have you. She doesn’t know … or didn’t know until Julie told her. But I think she guessed. I knew. I saw you talking with some men once, and later heard they were outlaws, and then I began hearing about Ben Curry.”

  Curry looked thoughtfully from Dru to Mike.

  “Is there something between you two? Or am I an old fool?”

  Mike flushed and kept his eyes away from Dru.

  “He’s a fine man, Dru,” Doc Sawyer said. “And well educated, if I do say so … who taught him all he knows.”

  “All he knows!” Roundy stared at Doc with contempt. “Book larnin’! Where would that gal be but for what I told him? How to read sign, how to foller a trail? Where would she be?”

  Mike took Dru out to the verandah then.

  “I can read sign, all right,” he said, “but I’m no hand at reading the trail to a woman’s heart. You would have to help me, Dru.”

  She laughed softly, and her eyes were bright as she slipped her arm through his. “Why, Mike, you’ve been blazing a trail over and back and up again, ever since I met you in the street at Weaver.” Suddenly she sobered. “Mike, let’s get some cattle and go back to Peach Meadow Cañon. You said you could make a better trail in, and it would be a wonderful place. Just you and I and …”

  “
Sure,” he said. “In Peach Meadow Cañon.”

  Roundy craned his head toward the door, and then he chuckled.

  “That youngster,” he said. “He may not know all the trails, but he sure gets where he’s goin’. He sure does!”

  The Trail to Crazy Man

  I

  In the dark, odorous forecastle a big man with wide shoulders sat at a scarred mess table, his feet spread to brace himself against the roll of the ship. A brass hurricane lantern, its light turned low, swung from a beam overhead, and in the vague light the big man studied a worn and sweat-stained chart. There was no sound in the forecastle but the distant rustle of the bow wash about the hull, the lazy creak of the square rigger’s timbers, a few snores from sleeping men, and the hoarse, rasping breath of a man who was dying in the lower bunk.

  The big man who bent over the chart wore a slipover jersey with alternate red and white stripes, a broad leather belt with a brass buckle, and coarse jeans. On his feet were woven leather sandals of soft, much-oiled leather. His hair was shaggy and uncut, but he was clean-shaven except for a mustache and burnsides. The chart he studied showed the coast of northern California. He marked a point on it with the tip of his knife, then checked the time with a heavy gold watch. After a swift calculation, he folded the chart and replaced it in an oilskin packet with other papers, and tucked the packet under his jersey above his belt.

  Rising, he stood for an instant, canting to the roll of the ship, staring down at the white-haired man in the lower bunk. There was that about the big man to make him stand out in any crowd. He was a man born to command, not only because of his splendid physique and the strength of his character, but because of his personality. He knelt beside the bunk and touched the dying man’s wrist. The pulse was feeble. Rafe Caradec crouched there, waiting, watching, thinking.

  In a few hours at most, possibly even in a few minutes, this man would die. In the long year at sea his health had broken down under forced labor and constant beatings, and this last one had broken him up internally. When Charles Rodney was dead he, Rafe Caradec, would do what he must.

  The ship rolled slightly, and the older man sighed and his lids opened suddenly. For a moment he stared upward into the ill-smelling darkness, then his head turned. He saw the big man crouched beside him. He smiled. His hand fumbled for Rafe’s.

  “Yuh … yuh’ve got the papers? Yuh won’t forget?”

  “I won’t forget.”

  “Yuh must be careful.”

  “I know.”

  “See my wife, Carol. Explain to her that I didn’t run away, that I wasn’t afraid. Tell her I had the money, was comin’ back. I’m worried about the mortgage I paid. I don’t trust Barkow.” Then the man lay silently, breathing deeply, hoarsely. For the first time in three days he was conscious and aware. “Take care of ’em, Rafe,” he continued, rising up slightly. “I’ve got to trust yuh! Yuh’re the only chance I have! Dyin’ ain’t bad, except for them. And to think … a whole year has gone by. Anything may have happened.”

  “You’d better rest,” Rafe said gently.

  “It’s late for that. He’s done me in this time. Why did this happen to me, Rafe? To us?”

  Caradec shrugged his powerful shoulders. “I don’t know. No reason, I guess. We were just there at the wrong time. We took a drink we shouldn’t have taken.”

  The old man’s voice lowered. “Yuh’re goin’ to try … tonight?”

  Rafe smiled then. “Try? Tonight we’re goin’ ashore, Rodney. This is our only chance. I’m goin’ to see the captain first.”

  Rodney smiled, and lay back, his face a shade whiter, his breathing more gentle.

  A year they had been together, a brutal, ugly, awful year of labor, blood, and bitterness. It had begun, that year, one night in San Francisco in Hongkong Bohl’s place on the Barbary Coast. Rafe Caradec was just back from Central America with a pocketful of money, his latest revolution cleaned up, and the proceeds in his pocket, and some of it in the bank. The months just past had been jungle months, dripping jungle, fever-ridden and stifling with heat and humidity. It had been a period of raids and battles, but finally it was over, and Rafe had taken his payment in cash and moved on. He had been on the town, making up for lost time—Rafe Caradec, gambler, soldier of fortune, wanderer of the far places.

  Somewhere along the route that night he had met Charles Rodney, a sun-browned cattleman who had come to San Francisco to raise money for his ranch in Wyoming. They had had a couple of drinks and dropped in at Hongkong Bohl’s dive. They’d had a drink there, too, and, when they awakened, it had been to the slow, long roll of the sea and the brutal voice of Bully Borger, skipper of the Mary S. Rafe had cursed himself for a tenderfoot and a fool. To have been shanghaied like any drunken farmer! He had shrugged it off, knowing the uselessness of resistance. After all, it was not his first trip to sea. Rodney had been wild. He had rushed to the captain and demanded to be put ashore, and Bully Borger had knocked him down and booted him senseless while the mate stood by with a pistol. That had happened twice more until Rodney returned to work almost a cripple, and frantic with worry over his wife and daughter.

  As always, the crew had split into cliques. One of these consisted of Rafe, Rodney, Roy Penn, Rock Mullaney, and Tex Brisco. Penn had been a law student and occasional prospector. Mullaney was an able-bodied seaman, hardrock miner, and cowhand. They had been shanghaied in San Francisco in the same lot with Rafe and Rodney. Tex Brisco was a Texas cowhand who had been shanghaied from a waterfront dive in Galveston where he had gone to look at the sea.

  Finding a friend in Rafe, Rodney had told him the whole story of his coming to Wyoming with his wife and daughter, of what drought and Indians had done to his herd, and how finally he had mortgaged his ranch to a man named Barkow. Rustlers had invaded the country, and he had lost cattle. Finally reaching the end of his rope, he had gone to San Francisco to get a loan from an old friend. In San Francisco, surprisingly, he had met Barkow and some others, and paid off the mortgage. A few hours later, wandering into Hongkong Bohl’s place, which had been recommended to him by Barkow’s friends, he had been doped, robbed, and shanghaied.

  When the ship returned to San Francisco after a year, Rodney had demanded to be put ashore, and Borger had laughed at him. Then Charles Rodney had tackled the big man again, and that time the beating had been final. With Rodney dying, the Mary S. had finished her loading and slipped out of port so he could be conveniently “lost at sea.”

  The cattleman’s breathing had grown gentler, and Rafe leaned his head on the edge of the bunk, dozing. Rodney had given him the deed to the ranch, a deed that gave him half a share, the other half belonging to Rodney’s wife and daughter. Caradec had promised to save the ranch if he possibly could. Rodney had also given him Barkow’s signed receipt for the money.

  * * * * *

  Rafe’s head came up with a jerk. How long he had slept he did not know. He stiffened as he glanced at Charles Rodney. The hoarse, rasping breath was gone; the even, gentle breath was no more. Rodney was dead.

  For an instant, Rafe held the old man’s wrist, then drew the blanket over Rodney’s face. Abruptly then, he got up. A quick glance at his watch told him they had only a few minutes until they would sight Cape Mendocino. Grabbing a small bag of things off the upper bunk, he turned quickly to the companionway.

  Two big feet and two hairy ankles were visible on the top step. They moved, and step by step a man came down the ladder. He was a big man, bigger than Rafe, and his small, cruel eyes stared at him, then at Rodney’s bunk.

  “Dead?”

  “Yes.”

  The big man rubbed a fist along his unshaven jowl. He grinned at Rafe. “I heerd him speak aboot the ranch. It could be a nice thing, that. I heerd aboot them ranches. Money in ’em.” His eyes brightened with cupidity and cunning. “We share an’ share alike, eh?”

  “No.” Caradec’s voice was fl
at. “The deed is made out to his daughter and me. His wife is to share, also. I aim to keep nothin’ for myself.”

  The big man chuckled hoarsely. “I can see that,” he said. “Josh Briggs is no fool, Caradec! You’re intendin’ to get it all for yourself. I want mine.” He leaned on the hand rail of the ladder. “We can have a nice thing, Caradec. They said there was trouble over there, huh? I guess we can handle any trouble, an’ make some ourselves.”

  “The Rodneys get it all,” Rafe said. “Stand aside. I’m in a hurry.”

  Briggs’ face was ugly. “Don’t get high an’ mighty with me!” he said roughly. “Unless you split even with me, you don’t get away. I know aboot the boat you’ve got ready. I can stop you there, or here.”

  Rafe Caradec knew the futility of words. There are some natures to whom only violence is an argument. His left hand shot up suddenly, his stiffened fingers and thumb making a V that caught Briggs where his jawbone joined his throat. The blow was short, vicious, unexpected. Briggs’ head jerked back, and Rafe hooked short and hard with his right, then followed through with a smashing elbow that flattened Briggs’ nose and showered him with blood.

  Rafe dropped his bag, then struck, left and right to the body, then left and right to the chin. The last two blows cracked like pistol shots. Josh Briggs hit the foot of the ladder in a heap, rolled over, and lay still, his head partly under the table. Rafe picked up his bag and went up the ladder without so much as a backward glance.

  II

  On the dark deck Rafe Caradec moved aft along the starboard side. A shadow moved out from the mainmast.

  “You ready?”

  “Ready, Rock.”

  Two more men got up from the darkness near the foot of the mast, and all four hauled the boat from its place and got it to the side.

  “This the right place?” Penn asked.

  “Almost.” Caradec straightened. “Get her ready. I’m going to call on the Old Man.”