Desert of the Damned (13 page)

He hunted through Pryor’s desk without finding the papers the man was supposed to have had ready to complete Cog Wheel’s purchase. He sat there awhile and then went through Pryor’s pants pockets, and then he cursed the girl bitterly and went back and sat down.

It was hard for him to believe that such a girl could play the wanton — that behind her demure looks there schemed the soul of a common harpy; yet he realized this was so. He felt cheated. In some inexplicable way he felt dirtied and for two cents, by God, he would have climbed on a horse and built a dust for the border.

He got up, half minded to do it anyway. Then he remembered his deal with Burt Mossman, and cursed him too.

He caught up the boot which had come loose from the other, stamped it on and went out, morosely headed for the corral in which he’d seen the two horses. But partway there he pulled up, his mind gone to Gert again, reluctantly recognizing the debt he still owed her.

“Women!” he said and, expelling his breath in a disgruntled snort, he turned around and went back.

W
HEN
Pryor’s crew rode in about an hour after daylight Reifel was standing on the verandah with a lever action Winchester suggestively cuddled in the crook of an elbow.

Somebody noticed him. The crew swung over. They sat with unexpressive upturned faces while Reifel explained that the place had changed hands.

“Where’s Pryor?”

“He’s inside feelin’ kind of banged up at the moment. Run into one of these porch posts an’ fell down the steps.”

“You mind if we see him?”

“File right in.”

Several of the older hands looked dubious. One grizzled old buck with a baked-brown skin said, “What’s the idea of that rifle?”

“Not to tell you no lies,” Reifel mentioned, “we’re about halfway expectin’ a delegation from Devil Iron.”

The crew took quick looks at each other. Reifel stretched a hard grin across the gleam of his teeth. “Seems like this Lamtrill got wind what was cookin'. He sent us over a rep to look out for his interests but this party, not carin’ for the way we was handlin’ the deal, cut stick with the deed so we’ve had to hatch up another.”

Several of the crew shifted round in their saddles. Baked Brown said, “Where’s this guy at now?”

“Gone home to fix up a few fireworks probably.”

One of the younger men slogged some spit through his teeth. He said with a hard defiance in his look, “We ain’t wantin’ no trouble with Devil Iron.”

“That’s all right,” Reifel said. “We don’t figure to work no hardship on no one. After you’ve witnessed Pryor’s signature if you want to duck out you can do it.”

“Who said anything about duckin’ out?” Baked Brown inquired.

Looking at the others Reifel’s lip curled. They were staring as though the oldster had taken leave of his senses.

“When we get your monickers down on that paper,” he said, “one of you tough guys can drive Pryor to town and the rest of you can go anywhere you’ve a mind to. What’s your handle?” he said to the old one.

“Black.”

“All right, Black, let’s get this thing rolling.”

After the man driving Pryor had set off and the rest of the outfit, packing their warbags, had gone off down the road with the bulk of their wages, Black waved a hand about the room and grinned. “Musta been quite a party.”

Reifel said without smiling, “Not a patch to what’s coming. Let’s get that straight right now.”

His glance probed Black’s face, trying to read what was back of it. Despite the man’s age — and he must have been at least fifty — there was a conditioned toughness about his look which had not been acquired in any game of penny ante. At one time or another he’d probably been a top hand but some past misfortune had taken a leg off and the experience was still resting sour on his stomach. It showed in the lines graven into his cheeks, in the hard crusty edge of his saturnine stare.

“You needn’t fret about me,” he advised Reifel gruffly. “I been prowlin’ these hills for a fortnight or two an’ the backs of my ears has got pretty well dried. If you’re figurin’ to brace Devil Iron — ”

“And what gives you that notion?”

The old buck chuckled. “That crowd’ll be on your neck whether you want ’em or not. They had Bill Pryor eatin’ out of a skillet, but you’re someone else — they won’t be takin’ any chances. In this country, Mister, them that ain’t for Nate Lamtrill is almighty likely to be figured ag’in’ him.”

“I expect you know all about him — ”

“Him an’ all his works. Devil Iron,” Black said, slapping his peg, “give me this.” He nodded. “An’ I’ll tell you somethin’ else. They’re layin’ pipe right now to smash your next-door neighbor — which’ll be no news to you seein’ as how you’ve just come from there.”

“You seem,” Reifel said, “to know a powerful lot.”

Those crusty old eyes never wavered a fraction. “I manage to keep in touch,” Black said. “Two weeks ago Wednesday when you rode into that spread I happened to be per-ambulatin’ round, so I seen you. I was in the Seven of Hearts when you an’ young Mossman took a lease on the back room. Thinks I to myself, there is somethin’ dang peculiar about the chief of Murphy’s Rangers coopin’ up with a feller you’d expect him to be huntin'. So when you left that place I took up your trail.”

“It occurs to me that I been nursin’ a viper.”

“There’s a lot in what you say,” the old coot conceded. “It all depends on where you stand. If you’re figurin’ to help them Kavanaughs I’m with you all the way. If you ain’t … by God you better fill your hand.”

He meant it, too. He meant every bit of it. He had his guts all braced to reach for his pistol.

Reifel said, “I am,” and put his hand out.

Black didn’t touch it. “Actions,” he said, “speak louder than words,” and they looked at each other for awhile, extremely silent, each of them doing a considerable amount of thinking.

Then Reifel nodded. “I guess that’s so. Where do you reckon we better start?”

“It ain’t for me to tell you how to run your business. But I’ll say this: When Lamtrill hears what Pryor has done this ain’t goin’ to be no place to rest up at.”

“We could always give him something else to think about.”

“Like maybe burnin’ some of his buildin’s? Like maybe cuttin’ a bunch of his wire? Is that what you’ve got in your mind, Mister Reifel?”

“Anything wrong with it?”

“Not if you can do it.”

“I was thinkin',” Reifel said, “of ridin’ over to Bear Flats.” Black nodded. “I’ll ride with you.”

“I won’t need any help. Devil Iron, from what I’ve been told, has a camp some place between here and Cochise. It would bother Lamtrill more if, while I’m movin’ his crew off that land they’ve just grabbed, you went over to this camp and — ”

“You ever hear of two gents called Damon an’ Pythias?”

“What the hell has Greek mythology got to do with — ”

“Them two fellers was just like bacon an’ eggs,” Black said, grinning — “Allus seen together, if you get what I mean.”

Reifel scowled. “All right,” he growled finally. “Go rope me a horse while — ”

“I sure hate to confess it,” Black said with a chuckle, “but ropin’s one thing I never learned how to do. Maybe, if I watch you, I’ll make out to catch the hang of it.”

• • •

A long ride through the mountains without any breakfast was not, Reifel decided, to be particularly recommended to persons convalescing from a bad siege of lead poisoning — and especially if the rider had very recently been on sparring terms with Pryor. “This the place?” he asked when Black came back from a trip into oak brush fringing the crest ahead of them.

“Have a look,” Black said, climbing into his saddle; and they rode forward together, pausing where the brush commenced to thin on the farther side.

By the lakeside below them, comfortably cool in the shade of giant cottonwoods, the corrals and squat cabin of Boxed Y’s former linecamp presented a scene of leisurely activity. Clean around the west side of the lake, and heading north, five lines of barbed wire stretched gleaming on new posts, and there were several mounds of posts stacked beside a loaded wagon. But though the sun was already a good two hours high a thin spiral of smoke still curled from the cabin’s chimney and, over by the corrals, several men garbed as range hands had just fetched their gear in the process of saddling up.

“About two hundred yards,” Black estimated. “Good enough range for a guy standin’ back of a Winchester.”

“I don’t get my ducks on the roost,” Reifel said. “We’ll go down — ”

“Not me,” Black grinned. “I’ll watch from here.”

“If you’re afraid — ”

“How’d you guess it?”

Reifel stared at him scornfully. “Okay,” he said thinly. “If you’re goin’ to stay here you might as well keep me covered.”

“That thought,” Black said, “had occurred to me.”

Reifel’s stare suddenly sharpened. “Is that supposed to mean something?”

“What do
you
think?”

“For a guy on my payroll I think you act damn peculiar. Whose side are you on?”

“Gert Kavanaugh’s side. An’ you had better remember it.”

Reifel picked up his reins and put his horse through the trees.

They went down the grassy talus-littered slope at an easy jog until they came to a place where fallen rock had piled up. The going grew rapidly more difficult to negotiate so that, by the time they debouched onto the level of the campsite, they were riding a miniature avalanche. Naturally they were heard.

A fellow in an apron that must have come from a slaughterhouse put his head out the door of the cabin, glanced mildly curious in the direction of Reifel, and went back to the clatter of his pots and pans. None of those by the corrals even bothered to look up. For men engaged in spearheading a land steal this bunch appeared singularly immune to the possibilities of company. Either, Reifel thought, they must be mighty naive or almighty certain they weren’t going to be bothered.

Upon closer inspection he didn’t think they were naive.

He had to call three times before the cook, grumbling blasphemies, came to the door to find out what he wanted. “Step over to the corrals,” Reifel said, “and make it snappy. I’ve got a message from headquarters which concerns this whole crew.”

The cook muttered something obscene and wiped his dirty hands on his dirtier apron. Since it might have looked too suspicious for Reifel to have waited, he twisted up a smoke and walked his horse toward the rest of them.

There were five men saddling and they acted like they had all day to get the job done. All of them but one were obviously thirty dollar punchers; the exception was the boss. He wasn’t dressed any better but there were other things about him which indicated authority. He was tall, rawboned and gangling. The bottom of his holster was tied about his leg and his gun was packed butt forward for a lefthand draw. He passed a cursory glance over Reifel and continued the business of getting his mount ready.

The cook sauntered up still scowling. Reifel took a long drag at his quirley, sent the butt pinwheeling into the dust beside the southpaw. The man’s shape stiffened. His red face came around framing eyes bright as knifeblades.

“I guess,” Reifel drawled, “you got a little mixed up.”

“So — ? An’ what gives you that notion?”

“You don’t look like a Kavanaugh hand to me.”

A couple of the watching cowpunchers snickered. The skin turned dark above the southpaw’s collar. Eyes turning narrow he came two steps nearer.

The cook suddenly blurted: “Hey! I thought you said — ”

“That’s awright, Baldy.” The southpaw’s words slithered through the cook’s snakily. “I’ll handle this.”

His opaque eyes dug into Reifel’s. “So you don’t think I look like a Kavanaugh hand. I’d be surprised if I did. Sug Kavanaugh, mister, ain’t got no hands.”

“He might have a few friends.”

The southpaw laughed, some of the others laughing with him. Then his glance angled round to catch the brand on Reifel’s horse and his brows pulled his forehead into sharp corrugations. “Since when did Bill Pryor buy into this deal?”

“Pryor’s out. I’m runnin’ Cog Wheel.”

Southpaw’s right hand took a chew to his mouth. “An’ what’s that to me?”

“Just this,” Reifel said. “You been stringin’ your wire on the wrong chunk of range. Get it rolled, yank those posts and shove back where you came from.”

Southpaw spat. “I got news for you, mister. That wire’s here to stay. An’ them posts. An’ us likewise. If that don’t suit your book fill your hand —
is that clear enough?”

Black anger silently swept Reifel’s cheeks and his long high shape reared stiff in the saddle. He had talked too long. Without shifting his look from the southpaw’s face he understood how completely his deceptive crew had outslicked him. Two or three casual movements had put the pair who’d laughed first entirely too close on his left and the cook, moving up, was almost hidden on his right. One man he could no longer account for at all.

If he pulled his gun now he’d be caught in a cross-fire.

The killer eyes of the southpaw were bright with malevolence. “So you ain’t carin’ for gunsmoke.” His lips curled back across tobacco stained snags. “If you don’t fill your hand inside of three seconds I’m goin’ to have these boys beat the hell out of you. I’ll have ’em break both your knees an’ both your arms at the elbow. After I’ve whittled you down to where you’ll know spit from bullshit I’m goin’ to have you tied under the belly of that horse — ”

One high yell tore through the man’s words. From the brush-fringed rim of the bluff back of Reifel a Winchester’s voice started pounding up the echoes. Something flopped on the ground like a chicken with its head off. One of the pair beside Reifel spun around and sprawled headlong, and the southpaw’s eyes were like two holes in white cheese. His mouth stretched wide in a soundless yell as Reifel’s bullet smashed him backwards. The gun fell out of his fist and he came onto his knees coughing blood with his head down while the three unhit men dived into the striking, kicking tangle of horses. Only one of them managed to get into a saddle. One went down and was dragged with a foot caught in stirrup. The third man’s head was stove in by a hoof. The only one who got clear was the man in the saddle and there was blood on the back of his shirt when he vanished.

The Cog Wheel horse wasn’t used to gunfire. With his head down between his stiff-braced front legs he was bucking round in a circle with back hoofs flying. It took every ounce of Reifel’s strength to get that buried head up and six or eight further crowhopping jumps before he’d got the horse calmed to where it would stand without bolting.

He looked around then, sweating face twisted as his glance passed over those buckled shapes, rope-scarred hands fiercely clutched to the horn. With glistening cheeks gone livid and the skin stretched tight across the muscles of his stomach he sat there and shook like a man with ague. Wave after gut-wrenching wave of nausea racked him with the terrible knowledge that a gun in his hand had taken a man’s life.

Hoofs crunched gravel and Black, on his horse with that murderous Winchester couched across his knees, growled, “It’s too damn bad we didn’t get that other one — hell’s fire! You hit?”