Collection 1983 - Law Of The Desert Born (v5.0) Read online

  Heat lifted against his face in a stifling wave. Loosening the buttons of his shirt, he pushed back his hat and stared up at the towering height of the mountain, and even as he looked up, he saw men appear on the ridge. Lifting his hat, he waved to them.

  BENSON WAS THE first man on that ridge, and involuntarily he drew back from the edge of the cliff, catching his breath at the awful depth below. Pete Daley, Burt Stoval, and Jim Morton moved up beside him, and then the others. It was Morton who spotted Bodine first.

  “What did I tell you?” he snapped. “He’s down there on the desert!”

  Daley’s face hardened. “Why, the dirty—”

  Benson stared. “You got to hand it to him!” he said. “I’d sooner chance a shootout with all of us than try that alone.”

  A bearded man on their left spat and swore softly. “Well, boys, this does it! I’m quittin! No man that game deserves to hang! I’d say, let him go!”

  Pete Daley turned angrily but changed his mind when he saw the big man and the way he wore his gun. Pete was no fool. Some men could be bullied, and it was a wise man who knew which and when. “I’m not quitting,” he said flatly. “Let’s get the boys, Chuck. We’ll get our horses and be around there in a couple of hours. He won’t get far on foot.”

  NAT BODINE TURNED and started off into the desert with a long swinging stride. His skin felt hot, and the air was close and stifling, yet his only chance was to get across this stretch and work into the hills at a point where they could not find him.

  All this time, Mary was in the back of his mind, her presence always near, always alive. Where was she now? And what was she doing? Had she been told?

  Nat Bodine had emerged upon the desert at the mouth of a boulder-strewn canyon slashed deep into the rocky flank of the mountain itself. From the mouth of the canyon there extended a wide fan of rock, coarse gravel, sand and salt silt flushed down from the mountain by torrential rains. On his right, the edge of the fan of sand was broken by the deep scar of another wash, cut at some later date when the water had found some crevice in the rock to give it an unexpected hold. It was toward this wash that Bodine walked.

  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 runoff 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.

  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.

  The man worked a hard-ridden horse, and he was yelling before he reached them. 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.

&nbs
p; 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, 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!”

  AUTHOR’S NOTE:

  THE TONTO BASIN

  BOUNDED ON THE north by the 2,000-foot Mogollon Rim (pronounced Muggy Own by westerners), the Tonto Basin is a green and lovely area of pine forest, grassy meadows, running streams, and occasional springs. To the old-timers, much of what was referred to as the Tonto Basin actually lay outside of it, but it served to specify the locality.

  It was the scene of several Indian battles, including those General Crook led against the Apaches, but it is better known for the Tonto Basin War between the Tewksberry and Graham factions.

  This is often referred to as a war between cattlemen and sheepmen, and certainly that was one element involved, but the Grahams and Tewksberrys had trouble before sheep entered the picture. The number of people killed varies with the information available to the teller, but probably twenty-six men were killed during the war, and more likely twice that number. The father of the Blevins boys disappeared during the fighting and was probably killed. At one point, the fighting became so bitter that if a man saw a stranger, he shot him. The idea was that if he wasn’t on my side, he had to be on the other or he wouldn’t be there. Tom Horn was briefly involved.

  Zane Grey had a cabin in the Basin.

  RIDE, YOU TONTO RAIDERS!

  THE SEVENTH MAN

  The rain, which had been falling steadily for three days, had turned the trail into a sloppy river of mud. Peering through the slanting downpour, Mathurin Sabre cursed himself for the quixotic notion that impelled him to take this special trail to the home of the man that he had gunned down.

  Nothing good could come of it, he reflected, yet the thought that the young widow and child might need the money he was carrying had started him upon the long ride from El Paso to the Mogollons. Certainly, neither the bartender nor the hangers-on in the saloon could have been entrusted with that money, and nobody was taking that dangerous ride to the Tonto Basin for fun.

  Matt Sabre was no trouble hunter. At various times, he had been many things, most of them associated with violence. By birth and inclination, he was a western man, although much of his adult life had been lived far from his native country. He had been a buffalo hunter, a prospector, and for a short time, a two-gun marshal of a tough cattle town. It was his stubborn refusal either to back up or back down that kept him in constant hot water.

  Yet some of his trouble derived from something more than that. It stemmed from a dark and bitter drive toward violence—a drive that lay deep within him. He was aware of this drive and held it in restraint, but at times it welled up, and he went smashing into trouble—a big, rugged, and dangerous man who fought like a Viking gone berserk, except that he fought coldly and shrewdly.

  He was a tall man, heavier than he appeared, and his lean, dark face had a slightly patrician look with high cheekbones and green eyes. His eyes were usually quiet and reserved. He had a natural affinity for horses and weapons. He understood them, and they understood him. It had been love of a good horse that brought him to his first act of violence.

  He had been buffalo hunting with his uncle and had interfered with another hunter who was beating his horse. At sixteen, a buffalo hunter was a man and expected to stand as one. Matt Sabre stood his ground and shot it out, killing his first man. Had it rested there, all would have been well, but two of the dead man’s friends had come hunting Sabre. Failing to find him, they had beaten his ailing uncle and stolen the horses. Matt Sabre trailed them to Mobeetie and killed them both in the street, taking his horses home.

  Then he left the country, to prospect in Mexico, fight a revolution in Central America, and join the Foreign Legion in Morocco, from which he deserted after two years. Returning to Texas, he drove a trail herd up to Dodge, then took a job as marshal of a town. Six months later, in El Paso, he became engaged in an altercation with Billy Curtin, and Curtin called him a liar and went for his gun.

  With that incredible speed that was so much a part of him, Matt drew his gun and fired. Curtin hit the floor. An hour later, he was summoned to the dying man’s hotel room.

  Billy Curtin, his dark, tumbled hair against a folded blanket, his face drawn and deathly white, was dying. They told him outside the door that Curtin might live an hour or even two. He could not live longer.

  Tall, straight, and quiet, Sabre walked into the room and stood by the dying man’s bed. Curtin held a packet wrapped in oilskin. “Five thousand dollars,” he whispered. “Take it to my wife—to Jenny, on the Pivotrock, in the Mogollons. She’s in—in—trouble.”

  It was a curious thing that this dying man should place a trust in the hands of the man who had killed him. Sabre stared down at him, frowning a little.

  “Why me?” he asked. “You trust me with this? A
nd why should I do it?”

  “You—you’re a gentleman. I trust—you help her, will you? I—I was a hot—headed fool. Worried—impatient. It wasn’t your fault.”

  The reckless light was gone from the blue eyes, and the light that remained was fading.

  “I’ll do it, Curtin. You’ve my word—you’ve got the word of Matt Sabre.”

  For an instant, then, the blue eyes blazed wide and sharp with knowledge. “You—Sabre?”

  Matt nodded, but the light had faded, and Billy Curtin had bunched his herd.

  IT HAD BEEN a rough and bitter trip, but there was little farther to go. West of El Paso there had been a brush with marauding Apaches. In Silver City, two strangely familiar riders had followed him into a saloon and started a brawl. Yet Matt was too wise in the ways of thieves to be caught by so obvious a trick, and he had slipped away in the darkness after shooting out the light.

  The roan slipped now on the muddy trail, scrambled up and moved on through the trees. Suddenly, in the rain-darkened dusk, there was one light, then another.

  “Yellowjacket,” Matt said with a sigh of relief. “That means a good bed for us, boy. A good bed and a good feed.”

  Yellowjacket was a jumping-off place. It was a stage station and a saloon, a livery stable and a ramshackle hotel. It was a cluster of ’dobe residences and some false-fronted stores. It bunched its buildings in a corner of Copper Creek.

  It was Galusha Reed’s town, and Reed owned the Yellowjacket Saloon and the Rincon Mine. Sid Trumbull was town marshal, and he ran the place for Reed. Wherever Reed rode, Tony Sikes was close by, and there were some who said that Reed in turn was owned by Prince McCarran, who owned the big PM brand in the Tonto Basin country.

  Matt Sabre stabled his horse and turned to the slope-shouldered liveryman. “Give him a bait of corn. Another in the morning.”