Death Rides Alone (8 page)

Luke rode for about another quarter of a mile before he came to a place where the slope on the far side of the ridge was gentle enough to descend. He knew Tyler must have gone this way, and the few hoofprints his keen eyes were able to spot confirmed that. He turned the gray and started down after the fugitive.

They hadn't gone very far when the trees thinned out enough for Luke to be able to see out into the basin at the bottom of the slope. He spotted the rapidly moving shape of Tyler mounted on the paint.

Tyler was headed north, the direction he didn't want to go, but Luke could see some badlands in the distance and he figured Tyler thought he could lose any pursuit in there and cut either east or west, depending on the terrain.

Of course, at this point Tyler didn't know what had happened back there on the ridge. As far as he knew, the gray had broken a leg ... or Luke had broken his neck. Tyler couldn't be sure anybody was even after him.

But he rode like the wind in case somebody was.

Luke thought about pulling his Winchester from its sheath and trying a long shot but discarded the idea. Tyler was almost a mile away. If Luke had had one of those Sharps Big Fifties like the buffalo hunters used, he might have given it a try, especially since he had the advantage in height.

It would take a miracle to hit Tyler with a Winchester from this distance, though, and he figured he had already used up his share of those today when the gray turned out to be uninjured.

Luke heeled the horse into motion again. Tyler was getting farther away with each passing second . . .

* * *

The basin was several miles wide. Tyler was halfway across it by the time Luke reached the bottom of the ridge. He urged the gray into a run, knowing that the odds of him being able to catch Tyler before the fugitive reached the badlands were small. He was going to give it a try anyway, if he could manage it without riding the gray into the ground.

Luke knew he couldn't afford to do that, either. Out here, a man afoot was often as good as dead.

The gray responded gallantly, stretching out its long legs as it flashed across the ground. Luke leaned forward in the saddle and tried to keep his eyes on Tyler. The basin wasn't absolutely flat; it rose and fell in places, and from time to time Tyler would ride into a depression and drop out of Luke's sight, only to pop back up again a moment or two later.

Tyler was running the paint at a full-out gallop and probably had been ever since he'd reached the bottom of the ridge. It was true that the pony had been able to rest for a day in the stable at Bent Creek, but before that had been more than a week of hard riding. Luke could only hope that his gray had more reserves of strength right now than Tyler's paint could muster.

That seemed to be the case, as the gap between them began to shrink. Not by much, at first, but as the chase went on, Luke could tell the paint was faltering more and more. He closed in, but only a few hundred yards were left before Tyler reached the badlands. If he made it to that area of twisting, brush-choked gullies, spiny ridges, and towering spires of rock, there would be a lot of places for the fugitive to hide.

Luke knew he was close enough now that he could have tried a rifle shot, but he didn't want to kill Tyler. Sure, if he delivered Tyler's corpse to Sheriff Axtell in White Fork, there was a chance Axtell would pay the bounty and that would be that.

But there was also a chance Axtell would try to kill him, figuring that Tyler might have told him the story about Spence Douglas being the person who had actually murdered Rachel Montgomery.

That all depended on whether or not Tyler had told him the truth, Luke realized. If Tyler really
had
killed the girl, then Luke was in no danger. He could kill Tyler, take his body to White Fork, collect the reward, and move on.

But if Tyler was right . . . if Spence really was the killer . . . Axtell wouldn't want to risk that story getting out, and the only way to insure that would be to get rid of Luke, too.

There was simply no way to be sure.

So again, it all came down to Luke's nagging desire to discover the truth. The best way to do that was to bring Tyler in alive . . . and then see what happened.

Tyler had almost reached the edge of the badlands when the paint stumbled. If his hands had been free, he might have been able to tighten up on the reins and help the pony regain its balance.

With the cuffs on his wrists and his hands behind his back, however, all he could do was the same thing Luke had done a short time earlier. He jerked his feet out of the stirrups and leaned to the side, rolling out of the saddle as the paint went down.

Even from a distance, Luke could see how hard Tyler slammed into the ground when he landed. The young man's momentum made him roll over several times before he came to a stop on his belly. Luke hoped that Tyler hadn't broken his damned fool neck with this attempted getaway stunt.

The gray thundered up to the fallen man. Several yards away, the paint had already stood up. Luke bit back a curse as he saw the way the animal was favoring one leg. If that leg was broken, then Tyler deserved a swift kick in the rear for dooming such a gallant little horse.

Tyler still hadn't moved. Luke swung down and let the gray's reins dangle. The gray wouldn't go anywhere. Luke drew his right-hand Remington as he strode over to Tyler.

“Get up, you young idiot!” he said.

Tyler didn't respond. Luke studied him closely. The fugitive's head seemed to be at a normal angle on his shoulders, so he hadn't broken his neck. His back rose and fell, so he was still breathing. More than likely, the hard landing when he toppled off the horse had stunned him.

Luke hooked a boot toe under Tyler's right shoulder and rolled him onto his back. That position put more pressure on Tyler's arms and shoulder sockets, and the pain roused him. He let out a groan as his eyes blinked rapidly and then stayed open.

“What the hell were you trying to do?” Luke asked.

Tyler groaned again, then said, “And you call
me
an idiot. I was trying to get away.”

“With your hands cuffed behind your back?”

“I figured . . . I could worry about that later. Get me up, Jensen. It hurts like hell . . . laying here like this.”

With a disgusted look on his face, Luke holstered the revolver and went around behind Tyler.

“Don't you try to kick me or anything else,” he warned. “If you give me any more trouble, I'm going to wallop you with a gun butt, tie you facedown over your saddle, and take you back to White Fork that way.”

“My horse . . . is he . . . ?”

“I don't know. He could have a broken leg. I hope you're satisfied with yourself.”

Luke got hold of Tyler under the arms and lifted him, then set him on his feet. Tyler swayed and might have fallen if Luke hadn't grasped an arm to steady him. He picked up Tyler's hat and slapped it roughly on the prisoner's head.

“Anything broken or ruptured?” he asked.

“I . . . I don't think so. I just kind of got the wind knocked out of me.”

“Then just stand there and don't move while I check on your horse.”

Luke went over to the pony, talking quietly and reassuringly as he approached. The paint was a little walleyed, but he didn't try to shy away as Luke snagged the reins. He checked the right foreleg, which was the one the pony was favoring, running his hands over the leg with an expert's touch.

“Is he all right?” Tyler asked, sounding genuinely worried. “Is it broken?”

“I don't
think
so,” Luke said. “He's liable to be pretty lame for a few days, though.”

“Thank God.”

“And no thanks to
you
,” Luke snapped. “You're the one who risked all of our lives by trying to get away.”

Anger flashed in Tyler's eyes. He said, “Well, what would you have done, Jensen? My life's hanging by a thread! My only real chance was to get as far away from White Fork as I could, and now you're dead set on taking me back there!”

“I told you that I'd get you there safely and see to it that you get a fair trial.”

“Oh, sure, I'm supposed to take the word of a bounty hunter that he'll do his best for me! Men like you don't give a damn about anything except money! You don't care about the truth.”

“It just so happens that I do,” Luke said.

“Yeah? Then why wouldn't you ever say that you believed me when I told you what happened?”

“
That's
why you damned near killed both of us and our horses? Because your feelings were hurt when I didn't tell you I believed you?”

Tyler glared at him and said, “Have you ever been accused of something you didn't do, Jensen?”

“As a matter of fact, I have. More than once.”

“And you knew everybody would just figure you were lying about it, because of who you are?”

“You're the one who keeps calling me a bounty hunter, like it's some sort of obscenity,” Luke pointed out. “If you're asking do I know what it's like to have people look down their noses at me, then the answer is yes. Hell, yes.”

That brutal honesty seemed to embarrass Tyler a little. He frowned and looked down at the ground.

“I didn't mean for anybody to get hurt,” he muttered. “I was just scared and wanted to get away.”

“As far away from White Fork as possible, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Do you actually believe that would have done you any good?” Luke asked. “Think about it for a minute. Axtell has already got wanted posters out across Montana and Wyoming, and probably in Idaho, too, for all I know. Maybe over in Dakota Territory as well. And those posters will spread out until they can be found from the Rio Grande to the Milk River. No matter where you went, Tyler, you'd still be a fugitive.”

“A lot of outlaws lie low and never get caught. Hell, I might have even made it to Mexico.”

Luke shook his head and said, “That might stop the law, but it wouldn't mean anything to a man like Manfred Douglas. If he's afraid that you can put his son's neck in a noose, he's not going to stop at anything to prevent that. The regular bounty won't be enough. He'll hire men to find you. Trackers. Killers. And then one of these days, no matter where you go, somebody will walk up behind you and put a bullet in your back. Or you'll step out into a street and a rifle shot from a hundred yards away will blow your brains out.
That's
the kind of life you have to look forward to if you try to run and hide.”

“What do you think I ought to do, then?” Tyler asked in a challenging tone.

“Go back and fight. Make sure all the honest people in White Fork know what really happened. You
did
say there are still some honest people there, didn't you?”

“Yeah,” Tyler said, frowning. “Judge Keller's a good man. He's his own man, too. Douglas never bought and paid for him, although I reckon he tried, and he knows he can't afford to have the judge killed. Judge Keller's one of the founders of White Fork. Been in that part of the country longer than almost anybody else. Folks wouldn't stand for it if anything happened to him.”

“There you go,” Luke said. “Present your case to Judge Keller, and let the hand play out. That's your only chance to have a real life again.”

“To do that, I have to make it to White Fork alive.”

“Leave that to me,” Luke said. “And if you try anything else . . . maybe I'll just shoot you in both legs. You can still testify in court, whether you can walk or not.”

The basin was almost bare of vegetation. Clumps of hardy grass were the only things that grew here. Luke didn't want to venture into the badlands while Tyler's horse was lame, so even though it galled him to be going backward instead of forward, they turned around and started across the basin toward the ridge.

Luke made Tyler walk, saying, “You're the one who lamed that pony. The unfortunate beast shouldn't have to carry your weight until his leg is better.”

“You mean we're just gonna make camp and
stay
here?”

“That's right. For a day or two, anyway.”

Tyler shook his head and said, “We'll be sitting ducks for Axtell and his deputies.”

“Let me worry about that.”

“You'd damned well
better
worry. Your skin is on the line, too, you know. Now that I've told you the truth, you're a danger to Spence Douglas just like I am.”

Luke was walking, too, since the gray also needed a chance to rest. He held the reins of both horses. Like most Westerners, he didn't care for walking instead of riding, but sometimes there was no other choice.

“See, you've got me roped in on your problems so I don't have any choice but to keep you safe,” he told Tyler. “The truth has to come out, one way or the other.”

“Unless both of us are dead. Then it'll be buried right along with us.”

“Maybe you should tell me what that proof is you have of Spence's guilt.”

“Not hardly. That's my ace in the hole. As long as I've got it, I have something to bargain with if I have to.”

“Do Spence and his father
know
you have it?”

Tyler frowned.

“Well . . . I'm not sure. They might. On the other hand, they might not.”

“Talking to you is rather infuriating.”

“Well, then, let's trudge along in silence, why don't we?” Tyler suggested.

Luke was fine with that.

It took almost an hour for them to walk back across the basin with Luke leading the two horses. When they reached the base of the ridge, Luke found a clearing in some brush and trees and picketed the animals there. He unsaddled them while Tyler sat on a slab of rock that had tumbled down the ridge at some point in the distant past.

“If you took these handcuffs off of me, you could put me to work,” the young man said.

Luke gave him a disbelieving look.

“You tried to escape not much more than an hour ago, came damn close to killing me and my horse in the process, and you're already pestering me again to get out of those cuffs?”

“I'm just sayin', you're having to do all the chores. You take care of the horses, you do all the cooking and anything else that comes up. Doesn't seem fair.”

“If I started worrying about whether or not life is fair, I wouldn't have time for anything else,” Luke said. “Just sit there and pipe down.”

“You're the boss.”

Luke gave each of the horses a good rubdown, then poured water from one of the canteens into his hat and let them drink. He needed to find a spring or a creek, he thought. He and Tyler had enough water for the time being, but they would have to replenish their supply before too much longer.

He built a small fire, put coffee on to boil, and broke out a small pot and a bag of beans. Since they were going to be here for a while, there would be time to soak and cook the beans instead of having to get by on bacon and biscuits and canned peaches and tomatoes. He might even rig some snares, he thought, and see if he could catch a rabbit or a prairie chicken. Some fresh meat would be nice.

“Might as well sit back and enjoy it,” Luke told Tyler. “We've got all the comforts of home.”

* * *

Later that afternoon, after they'd eaten their midday meal, Luke fetched his rope from his saddle, looped it around Tyler's torso, and then tied it securely around the trunk of a small pine tree.

“Why in blazes are you doing that?” Tyler asked as he glared at Luke.

“Because I aim to do a little scouting, and I don't want you to wander off, or even to be
tempted
to wander off.”

“Where would I go, out here in the middle of nowhere, with my hands cuffed behind my back?”

“That question didn't seem to bother you earlier, when you nearly killed me and my horse.”

“You keep bringing that up. You're both all right.”

“No thanks to you,” Luke said. He picked up his Winchester. “Just sit there and keep your mouth shut. If anyone's prowling around who might wish you harm, you'd be a fool to start yelling and attract their attention.” He smiled. “And let's face it, Tyler . . . right now, it's very likely I'm the only one out here who actually
does
have your best interests at heart.”

“Yeah, yeah, I suppose so. Maybe I'll take a nap.”

“That's a good idea.”

Luke left the camp on foot and headed along the base of the ridge, exploring through the brush and the small, scrubby pines. He thought he might find a spring, and sure enough he did, half a mile from the campsite. The water bubbled out of a cleft in some rocks and formed a small pool at their base.

It would have been nice if the spring was closer. Of course, he could move the camp over here, he thought, but he didn't really want to do that. The cover wasn't as good. The brush and the trees were thick enough around the spot where he'd left Tyler that they wouldn't be spotted easily.

Luke had brought a couple of the mostly empty canteens with him. He filled them and slung them back over his shoulder by their straps. He could bring the others later and fill them, then top them off again whenever he and Tyler were ready to move on.

Or rather, when the horses were ready to move on, he thought. Tyler would never be ready. Even after everything he had told the young man about the miserable life of a fugitive, Luke figured that Tyler still didn't want to go back to White Fork.

While he was looking for a spring and then filling the canteens, he had remained alert, listening for the sound of horses or anything else that might represent a possible threat. Other than a few birds flitting around and some small animals rustling in the brush, he hadn't heard anything. He and Tyler might as well be the only human beings for a hundred miles or more, Luke thought, and that was just the way he wanted it for now.

He heard snoring as he approached the camp, and when he stepped into the clearing he saw that Tyler had made good on that comment about taking a nap. The young man had his back against the tree trunk, his head down with his hat brim shading his face, and his legs stretched out in front of him, crossed casually at the ankles. As always, there was no sign of a guilty conscience plaguing Judd Tyler's slumber.

Luke checked the horses, found that they were grazing peacefully, and set the canteens aside. He reached into one of his saddlebags and pulled a small, leather-bound volume of poetry and short stories by Edgar Allan Poe. Settling down in a comfortable spot on the ground, he took advantage of the relative peace and quiet and began to read.

* * *

The rest of that day and the next two were more of the same. Luke read and slept while Tyler alternated between sleeping and complaining.

“Damn it, can't we at least play cards or something?” Tyler asked on the second afternoon. “Anything to pass the time.”

“That would require turning you loose, and I'm not going to do that,” Luke said as he rested his back against a tree trunk. He had finished the slim volume of Poe and was rereading one of his favorites, the
Meditations
of Marcus Aurelius.

“Well, then . . . how about reading whatever that book is out loud?”

Luke raised an eyebrow and said, “I'm not sure you'd enjoy it very much.”

“It's some kind of story, isn't it?”

“Not exactly. It's a volume of philosophy written by Marcus Aurelius.”

Tyler shook his head and said, “Don't reckon I've heard of him.”

“He was one of the emperors of Rome during the second century.”

“Long time ago, huh?”

“Seventeen hundred years or so.”

“They fought a lot of wars back then, right? With swords and spears and stuff?”

“And stuff,” Luke said dryly.

“I saw a picture in a book once of a thing called a chariot. Kind of like a buckboard, only those old fellas stood up on it and used it for fighting. Looked like it might be fun to race around in one of those things. Any chariots in that book you're reading?”

Luke tried not to sigh in exasperation. He said, “No, this is a collection of Marcus's thoughts about stoic philosophy.”

“Don't know what that is,” Tyler said with a shake of his head. “I don't recall ever hearing anything about it, so why don't you explain it to me?”

“It's about how everything in the universe is connected, and how the trials and tribulations of this earth are temporary. Marcus says that we ought to do the best we can with the things that we can control, and let everything else take its natural course without worrying too much about it.”

“Sounds kind of like preachers I've heard. They always like to talk about how everything's gonna work out all right in the end if you just believe hard enough. You say this fella was a king instead of a sky pilot?”

“Emperor,” Luke said. “Of the Roman Empire.”

“Well, if it's all right with you and Marcus, I'm gonna keep on worrying. When you've got a bunch of polecats who want you dead, you'd be a damn fool not to.”

Luke didn't say anything, but he thought that while Marcus Aurelius had had to deal with all sorts of trouble during his reign, he'd never been saddled with anybody like Judd Tyler.

* * *

The next morning after breakfast, Luke led both horses around and studied their gaits, then decided it would be all right to move on as long as he didn't set too fast a pace and they stopped frequently to let the mounts rest.

“I'm going to refill these canteens, and then we'll get started again,” he told Tyler.

“I'll be glad to get moving,” the prisoner said. “I don't like just sittin' around doing nothing.”

“At least you were able to catch up on your sleep,” Luke told him.

“Well, yeah, there's that.”

Luke picked up his Winchester, slung the two canteens over his shoulder, and started walking toward the spring.

He still didn't hear anything out of the ordinary, although when he looked across the basin he thought he saw a tendril of gray smoke climbing into the morning sky from the hills on the other side of the badlands. Somebody probably had a camp over there, but that didn't mean it was anybody who was looking for him and Tyler.

Of course, it didn't mean they
weren't
searching for the two of them, either.

Luke filled the canteens. As he walked back toward the camp, he heard something that made him pause and frown. It took him a moment to realize that Tyler was singing again, the same sad ballad of lost love that countless cowboys had crooned to sleeping herds as they rode nighthawk.

Luke shook his head and started on, then stopped again. This time his muscles tensed and his hands tightened on the Winchester. A few days earlier, when Tyler had started singing Luke had asked him if he was trying to signal somebody.

Was it possible that Tyler remembered that conversation and was trying to signal him now? The only kind of signal Tyler would be sending was a warning.

Luke didn't have to think about it for more than a second.

He levered a round into the Winchester's chamber, then turned and began climbing the slope, catfooting through the brush and making as little sound as possible. He worked his way around until he was above the camp and then eased down toward it.

The singing stopped abruptly. Luke heard the ugly sound of something, either a fist or a gun, striking flesh.

“I've had enough of that,” a harsh voice said. “You can't carry a tune worth a damn, boy.”

“But I told you,” Tyler said, “Luke's used to me singing. That's how I pass the time, since I can't do much of anything else while I'm handcuffed and roped to a tree. If he doesn't hear me singing, he's liable to figure something's wrong.”

Another man said, “Yeah, Dave, we don't want Jensen to figure out we're waitin' for him. I've heard that he's a pretty tough
hombre
.”

“He's a damn bounty hunter,” the man called Dave muttered. “I'm not afraid of him.”

“Bein' careful doesn't mean you're afraid.”

“All right, blast it.” Luke heard the familiar sound of a gun's hammer being ratcheted back. “Go ahead and sing, Tyler. But if you try anything tricky, the first bullet's goin' right through that brain of yours!”