Catlow (1963) (10 page)

"The Apaches are the danger," somebody had commented, "when they raid they go in small bands so they have no need to hold to the trails where the water holes are. Why, out there in the desert there are seeps and hidden tanks in the rocks with water a-plenty--a-plenty for six or seven men, maybe even a dozen if the water isn't used too often."

Several clays had passed since Catlow escaped jail, and Cowan had done nothing. It seemed that he had no plans to do anything. And then, suddenly, he was gone.

Cordelia Burton saw Ben on his last day in town. He was standing on the street nearby when she emerged from her father's shop. She hesitated, and regarded him thoughtfully.

He was a remarkably handsome man, when one took time to look at him, and she liked the easy, casual way he handled his tall, lean body. His face was lean, browned by sun and honed by wind, and there was something about his eyes, something that haunted her, but she could not decide what it was. She should have asked Bijah about him, she thought.

He straightened up when he saw her, and removed his hat. His dark brown hair was curly; now it showed distinct reddish tones that she had not seen before.

He fell into step beside her. "I haven't much excuse to walk you home," he said ... "not in broad daylight."

"Do you need an excuse?"

He smiled slightly, and laugh wrinkles at the corners of his eyes broke the gravity of his expression. "No, ma'am, I guess I don't." He glanced at her again. "Have you heard from Bijah?"

"No."

"He's going to be a hard man to take." He paused a moment. "You ever lived on a ranch, ma'am?"

"No ... not exactly. It seems a lonely life."

"Depends ... there's plenty to do. I take kindly to open lands. I like to look far off. Seems like a man's free, whether he is or not."

"You do not think a man can be free?"

"No, ma'am, not exactly. Maybe ... some ways. There's always his duty, duty to folks about him, to his country, to the law ... such-like."

She looked at him thoughtfully, then stood still so she could see his face well. "Ben, you believe in your duty, don't you?"

He shrugged slightly, and squinted his eyes against the sun. It might be that he was embarrassed to speak of such a thing. "Without duty, life don't make any kind of sense, ma'am. If folks are going to live together they have to abide by some kind of rules, and the law is those rules. The law doesn't work against a man, it works for him. Without it, every house would have to be a fortress, and no man or woman would be safe. First time two men got together I expect they started to make laws for living together.

"There's always mavericks who can't or won't ride a straight trail, and the law needs somebody to ride herd on them."

"And you are one of the herders?"

"Sort of." He smiled. "I need some herding myself, time to time."

He looked down at her. "Living on a ranch mightn't be as bad as you think," he said.

At sunup the next morning he was ten miles south of town and riding for the border.

He had a man to take ... two of them, as a matter of fact.

Chapter
Eleven.

Bijah Catlow had entered Mexico and disappeared.

So far as Ben Cowan could discover there had been only four men in the group. One of these, judging by descriptions, was Old Man Merridew, and a second would surely be Rio Bray. As the fourth man was a Mexican, it was probably the soldier who had met Bijah in Tucson.

Whatever Catlow planned could scarcely be done by so small a group, so Ben Cowan loitered about Nogales on both sides of the border, and bought quite a few drinks, and asked quite a few questions. Had there been any other strange gringos in town that night? Gringos who were no longer around?

There had been--two, at least. They had ridden off on the trail toward Magdalena ... a very foolish thing to do, for the Apaches made travel along that trail much too dangerous, except for large, well-armed groups.

To the click of castanets, the rattle of glasses, and the somber singing of a Mexican girl, Ben Cowan leaned on the bar and listened. He bought tequila, and he drank it, but most of the time he made idle talk in his fluent cow-country Spanish--and as always, he listened.

Wherever people gather together, they talk, and often they talk too much. In towns where there is little news and little else but one's surroundings to discuss, they invariably talk too much.

When Ben Cowan rode from Nogales down the Magdalena trail, he rode alone, and soon he picked up the hoofprints left by the horses of Catlow, Bray, and Merridew. He had quickly become familiar with these around Tucson.

Others had left Tucson after them, but he could follow the tracks of Catlow's men with much difficulty. When they seemed to disappear from the trail he turned about and rode back. The trail had been almost obliterated by a herd of goats--undoubtedly not an accident--but soon the goats had turned toward Nogales and the four had ridden on.

Ben Cowan found where they had camped that first night in an arroyo only a few miles southwest of Nogales. Two other riders joined them there, and the party of six rode on.

A half-day's ride farther along, an Indian had joined them, an unmounted Indian. Ben back-trailed that Indian and found where he had waited a couple of hundred yards off the trail, smoking dozens of cigarettes and evidently watching for Catlow. When the party continued on, the Indian trotted beside Catlow's horse.

Now, a man who rides in wild country devotes quite as much time to his back trail as to that ahead, not only because he may be followed, but because he may have to retrace his steps, and the back trail does not look the same to him. Many a traveler has failed to watch his back trail and, turning back, has found nothing familiar in the country over which he has traveled, and becomes lost.

Ben Cowan, who had been holding to low ground for the most part, and riding parallel to the route the others were taking, now discovered that somebody else was following them ... or him. A solitary rider and what appeared to be a black horse.

That lone rider raised no dust, so the chances were that Ben himself raised none, yet the rider must know of his presence, for from time to time his own trail had joined that of Catlow's band.

On the fourth day of riding, Cowan came to several decisions. The first was that the other man trailing them must be Miller; and another was that the Indian trotting beside Catlow must be a Tarahumara, one of a tribe noted for their tremendous faculty for endurance. A Tarahumara who could not run a hundred miles was scarcely worthy of belonging to the tribe-- though as far as that went, the Apaches were great runners and walkers, men who preferred to fight on their feet, rarely on horseback.

Also, Catlow was looking for something in country with which he was not familiar. That Indian, Ben knew, had been brought along for the purpose of leading them to the little-known seeps, water holes, and rock tanks. There were many of those to be found in the desert, but they were rarely used because they were known only to wild things, including a few wild Indians. They held little water, not enough for any but a small party, sometimes scarcely enough for more than one or two men.

But by following such a route Catlow would be able to penetrate deep into Sonora without being seen or questioned. It was a shrewd idea, and it indicated that Catlow had planned better than was his usual method. This was something to be remembered ... Bijah Catlow was thinking, and Bijah was shrewd, with a brilliant imagination. Knowing all the tricks, he was capable of coming up with a few new ones on the spur of the moment.

The route presented an acute problem for Ben Cowan as well. Most of the water holes the men used would be exhausted before he reached them ... in fact, Catlow no doubt depended on that very fact to eliminate pursuit.

That night five more riders joined Catlow. Rather, the five were waiting when Catlow and his men came. This, then, was what he had been looking for, and he had not been exactly sure where their camp would be.

An hour after daybreak Ben Cowan came up to the camp. His canteen had less than a pint of water in it, and his horse was desperate for a drink. And the bottom of the small seep where their camp had been was simply a few feet of drying mud.

There was no question of going on. First, he must have water, for the next water hole might be even worse. With a discarded tin can, Ben dropped to his knees and in a few minutes had scooped out a deep hole in the center of the mud. He worked a little longer, then withdrew to the shade, and settled down to wait.

Water might seep in ... if it did not, he would have to strike out for the main trail and hope that he reached it at a point not too far from water.

He thought Catlow was headed for Hermosillo, but he did not know. Their destination might be Altar, not far off now; or, more likely, Magdalena and its rich mines. He could only find out by staying with Catlow and his band.

It was noon before he allowed his horse to drink, and shadows were gathering before he could fill his canteen. There was no possibility of keeping up with their trail in the dark, but a few hours of daylight remained, and there was the man following him to consider.

If he was still back there, he would come up with this seep in the same condition Ben Cowan had found it in, and he would undoubtedly make camp there. During the night Cowan might elude him.

Ben saddled up and rode out of the hollow where the seep lay, holding to low ground as much as possible, and wary of an ambush. But Miller was no longer first in his mind; he hoped above all to prevent Catlow from carrying out whatever it was he had planned.

He picked up the trail and rode away at a canter, making several quick changes of direction in case his follower was taking a sight at him, or circling to head him off. When darkness finally came, he took a last sight along the line of tracks he followed, lining them up with a mountain peak that would be visible for some time after nightfall. The great risk lay in the party he pursued veering off toward another water hole that lay to the east or west, in which case he would lose them, and the water as well.

He slacked off on the reins, trusting to the horse. The roan was desert- and mountain-bred, accustomed to dry, rocky wastelands, and it would naturally go toward water. Moreover, the horse knew he was following a party of mounted men, and wild horses have been known to follow a scent as well as any hound.

For two hours the roan walked steadily toward the south; when it veered sharply off, he permitted it to go, only pausing from time to time to listen. The slightest noise carries far in the silence of a desert night, and he neither wanted to come on the others unexpectedly, or to betray his own presence by noise.

Suddenly, his horse stopped. Ben gathered the reins, listening into the night. He heard no sound.

They had paused in the deep shadow of a sheer wall of rock that reared up from the desert sand. About him was scattered brush. It was cooler in the shadow of the rock, and he waited, but the roan showed no disposition to move on.

He walked the horse closer to the rock face and dismounted. Judging by the actions of his horse, there was water near, but the roan had not gone up to it, so it was probably beyond reach.

Stripping the rig from the tired animal, he picketed the roan on a small patch of grass, then he dug into his saddlebag for a piece of jerked beef. After a while, when the sky was spangled with stars, he rolled up in his blankets and slept.

Far-off, a coyote howled ... a quail called its question into the night, and above the horse and man the black cliff leaned, somber and stark against the blue-black sky.

He awakened suddenly in the cool dim light just before the dawn. His first glance was to his horse, for the roan was erect, ears up, nostrils flared. Swiftly, Ben was beside the horse, whispering a warning, putting a hand to its nostrils to stifle a whinny.

After a moment of silence he heard the steps of a walking horse. A horse that walked, paused ... then came on again.

Ben Cowan shot a quick glance at his Winchester and gun-belt which lay on his ground-sheet beside the blankets. He wanted those guns desperately, but feared the sounds the move would make, and he did not dare to leave the horse. Something beyond the mere coming of a strange horse seemed to have alarmed the roan.

Suddenly, on a low rise off to his left, he saw the horse. Even as he glimpsed it, the animal let out a questioning whinny. The small breeze was from the strange horse and toward them, but it must have realized the presence of another horse.

The animal came a step nearer ... there was something on its back ... something more than a saddle. A pack? The shape was wrong.

It was a man, slumped down. A man wounded or in trouble of some kind.

Waiting no longer, Ben Cowan stepped quickly to his gun-belt and slung it about his hips, slipping the thong from his six-shooter as he did so.

Then, leaving his own horse, he walked toward the strange animal, talking in a low, friendly tone. The horse took a step or two nearer, hesitant and anxious, as if wanting the presence of a human.

Ben paused, listening. Never unaware of danger, he lived always with the possibility of it, and no amount of easy living would ever take this from him. He was born to it, and was glad of it. He listened, but he heard nothing but the breathing of the horse.