Radigan (1958) (17 page)

And here he had lived.

Coming upon the place quite by accident, Radigan had immediately seen its value as a haven of refuge if the Utes caused trouble, and had supplied it with utensils, stored food and ammunition, and had, over the years, brought in a plentiful supply of firewood. The smokehole used by the previous occupant he had improved by a chimney from the crude fireplace, and the smoke issued from the top of the mesa through the roots and then the branches of a gnarled and ancient cedar.
These served to dispel the smoke until it was scarcely visible a few yards away.

This was the first and best of the caches of supplies he had planted.

As the fire grew, the cave warmed up and Radigan rolled out of bed and dressed swiftly.

Child followed.

"How about that trail north?" Radigan asked suddenly.
"Figure a man could get through to Loma Coyote?"

"When do you want me to start?"

"Not you-me." Radigan walked to the deep-set window and peered out. The approach to the cave was up a winding slide that was just short of being too steep for a horse to make it, and from below gave no hint of a means of access to the mesa's top. The window allowed a view down the slide for much of the distance. "You stay here, and I'll go," Radigan said.

"Those boys know me," Child protested.

"Pike knows me. So does Cade. The others can get acquaint ed. Anyway, it wouldn't do for me to stay here with Gretchen." "Afraid?"

"Me?" Radigan stared at her, then grinned. "No, I'm not afraid, but you ought to be. There's no telling what might happen if we were left here alone."

"Nothing would happen," she replied, "unless I wanted it to.

Radigan measured her with cool eyes. "Now maybe that's so, and again maybe it isn't.

Don't offer me any challenges."

He went into the outer cave where the horses were and fed them. He glanced at the hay-not much left, but there was a good bait of corn left, and there was a chance they could ride it out on what they had. There was food enough, that was sure. And ammunition enough to wage the Battle of Gettysburg all over again.

He saddled up, and went back for his blanket roll and saddlebags. Gretchen was up and had coffee on, and they sat down around the fire.

"About time somebody had a look at those cattle for San Antonio way," Child suggested.

"I could do that."

Radigan looked over at Gretchen. "That means you'd be here alone. Could you make out?"

"I could." She added a slice of beef to his plate. "I would be all right, and if anybody found the place, I'd be able to stand them off."

"The snow's gone from the slide," Child said, "and we can get out without leaving any trail, so you'll be all right. I can't figure any way they could find you up here."

When he had led the horse to the opening of the cave, Radigan walked back to meet Gretchen. He took the last packet of food she gave him and thrust it down in his saddle bags. "You be careful," she warned.

He turned and looked down at her. Somehow, despite the cold and discomfort of their days, she had continued to keep herself attractive, and now looking down into her eyes, he felt her concern. "You do the same," he said, "and don't you go out of the cave unless you go on top of the mesa, and if you do that, keep well back from the sides. And whatever you do, don't cook at night."

"You told me that. At night you can smell the food cooking." "That's right. A wood fire don't matter so much because it could come from their own fireplace, but the smell of food is going to make them mighty curious."

I won't."

He stepped into the saddle. Her fingers lingered on his sleeve. "You be careful," she repeated.

He glanced at her again, and was startled to see tears in her eyes. He looked hastily away. Now why would she be crying? There was no accounting for women, and it wasn't as if he was a relative or anything. He walked the horse the last few steps out of the cave and then started down the slide. It was steep, but a horse could make it.

At the end he drew up and listened, but there was no sound.

He reached the bottom, glanced each way, then put his horse across the open and into the trees. He was visible for no more than two minutes and, once under cover of the pines, he turned in his saddle and watched John Child across the open. Then they both waited, unmoving, watching all around them for several minutes. Finally, Child said, "I guess we made it."

Radigan nodded. Reluctantly, he turned his horse and headed down through the trees. It was not right to leave a girl alone like that, alone for days on end, and probably scared. Although Gretchen was less afraid than any woman he had ever known ... not one word of complaint through all of this, and never once when she shirked her work. In cold and snow, everywhere, she had held up her end of the work and the riding.

Where the Cache Creek trail met with the easy way to Valle San Antonio, they parted.

John Child looked twice his size in the heavy buffalo coat. He drew up, the steam from his breath making a plume in the still, cold air. "You be careful, Toni," Child said. "All those boys up there aren't friendly."

"All right."

"You watch especial for Swiss Jack Burns. He's a gunman from over Kansas way. Fancies himself."

"Yeah?" Radigan grinned. "With Loren Pike over there he's probably dead by now."

He gathered his reins. "Loren, he never was much given to let be. Fact is, he's a right impatient man, sometimes."

Radigan picked out the broad shoulder of Cerro Jarocito to the north. East of there was a spring and it was only about six miles to that spring. Call it seven to be sure. Then three or four miles over to Coyote Creek and about six or seven miles north to Loma Coyote. It was a good eighteen miles, any way you looked at it, and cold riding. Five or six hours if he was lucky, and no telling how much if lie was not lucky.

He was riding a dapple gray, a good horse that would weigh all of twelve hundred pounds and one who knew how to travel in snow and over icy trails.

The wind was from the north, the sky was slate gray and promising snow, a promise Radigan did not want fulfilled. The trail had not been traveled since the storm, and at places the snow had crusted hard. By noon, when lie should have had ten miles behind him he doubted if he had come more than six, for several times he had gone out of his way to skirt drifts of snow, and once had gotten himself tangled in a thick growth of lodgepole, and had to ride more than a mile to get out of it, and two more miles before lie found his way back to the trail. He was swearing when he found it and the dapple was agreeing with him, shaking its head with disgust.

He had watered the horse at the spring, and when they reached Coyote Creek the water was frozen over at several places, which made crossing difficult, for the ice was not strong enough to bear the weight. The wind blew cold down the canyon from the north, stiffening Radigan's face and making his hands numb.

It was late dusk when he came down out of the canyon and rode across the bench and into the town.

The narrow street was as still as the day the earth was born, still and cold in the last light of day, with lights showing in the Ramble House, and across the street at the Utah Saloon. The only other light showed at an eating place, a light that showed from beyond a fly-specked window.

Loma Coyote was not much as towns went, and as towns went, Loma Coyote would someday go. It was a stopping place for drifters, a cooling-off place for men wanted by the law and who had found other places too hot for comfort. There was nothing going on at Loma Coyote that anybody could mention, a couple of miners who worked dismal prospect holes in the nearby mountains but did most of their drilling without a single-jack at the walnut bar of the Utah Saloon.

The population rarely exceeded thirty persons, all but three or four of them male.

Once the population had leaped overnight to a surprising fifty-six, but that was during a Ute war when prospectors and trappers fled the hills for the doubtful security of Loma Coyote.

They were silent men, accustomed to loneliness, and the combination of too much company and too much of Loma Coyote's own brand of whisky had led to results somewhat less than surprising. By daybreak of the second day the population had decreased to fifty-three, and there were three bodies lying in an empty shed awaiting a spring thaw for burial.

By the sixth morning the population was almost back to normal, for one by one the newcomers decided the Utes were less to be feared than the population and whisky of Loma Coyote.

At the far end of the street was a huge, drafty old structure that could only be a barn, and a lantern hung outside over a scarcely legible sign that indicated the premises were a livery stable.

In the front of the building was a dark little room in which a stove glowed cherry-red but there was no other light.

Out of the gloom a voice called. "Hay a-plenty, an' he'p yourself. Corn if you're a might to, but that'll be four-bits
extra
."

"That's a lot of money."

"Take it or leave it, but you stick your lunch-hooks into my corn bin without I say and you'll catch yourself a death of cold, because I'll open your belly with a shotgun."

The old man came out of the "office" carrying a sawed-off shotgun, and he held up a lantern, peering at Radigan. "Man can't be too careful, that's what I always say.

You're un-titled to feed your hoss here, but them as wants corn I figure can pay for corn, because most likely they're running from something."

"I'm not running, old man. I'm looking for a friend of mine. His name is Loren Pike."

"Never heard of him. No memory for names. I figger names don't cut much ice, this here country. Man changes his name 'bout as often as he changes his address, and with most folks hereabout, that's mighty often."

"I own a ranch south of here. The name's Radigan."

He peered at Radigan again. "Maybe you own a ranch, maybe you don't, an' iffen you do, maybe you won't own it long. Not what I hear folks say."

"I own it, and a year from now, ten years from now I'll still own it." Radigan stripped the saddle from the dapple. "And if I have any trouble from you I'll ride back up here and burn this flea cage around your dirty ears."

The old man drew back. "Now what kind of talk is that? Ain't I puttin' your hoss up for you? Didn't I say he'p yourself to corn? Didn't IF The old man looked at him shrewdly. "Why, you might be the man John Child works for?"

"Child works for me."

"All right. I'll rub your horse down, and I'll give him a bait of corn. And if you're lookin' for any newcomer you might try the Utah or the Ramble. Most folks favor one or the other. On'y my advice to you is to get out of town. Sleep in the haymow if you're a might to, but stay shut of those places. Swiss Jack is full of trouble tonight."

Tom Radigan walked to the door, ducked his head against the cold wind and walked down to the eating house. He opened the door and stepped in, accompanied by a few blown flakes. A big, hard-faced woman stood behind the counter and shoved coffee over to him. "You can eat," she said, "but if you're lookin' for anything else, it ain't to be had. Not tonight, anyway. "

"I want to eat. "

She looked at him. "Yes, I reckon you would. Be an hour for you get any notions, I'd say, get the cold out of you then, and you'll be looking for something else.

Takes a while for the cold to get out of a man's muscles. I've got three girls here, one sixteen and two nineteen, and I can handle more business than the three of them-and better."

"I'll settle for a thick steak."

"You'll take b'ar meat, an' like it. We ain't had any cow meat around here since the storm. Fellers drive it up from the south of here, but the trails are closed."

Radigan ate in silence while the big woman talked on, apparently neither listening to his occasional comments nor caring if he listened to her stream of conversation.

When he had eaten he tossed a dollar on the counter and she handed him three quarters in change. He took a last gulp of scalding coffee and got up, shoving out into the cold. "Don't you come the high and mighty on me!" she called after him. "You'll be back!"

He crossed the street, following a beaten path, to the Utah Saloon.

It was a bar no more than ten feet long and of hand-hewn planks, and the man behind it was nearly as tall as the bar was long. Two men leaned on the bar and several others sat around at tables. They all looked up when he came in, and, seeing he was a stranger, looked again.

"Whisky," he said, "or whatever you serve by that name." The big man leaned over the bar. "You don't like our drinkin'? Then you can do without."

"Give it to me. I don't know whether I like it or not." "You'll decide or you won't get it."

"All right! I like it." Radigan glanced around at the others.
They returned his gaze solemnly, and he said, "If these gentlemen like the whisky, I'll buy."

The big bartender turned again. "Now see here, stranger.

That's again you've throwed a doubt on my liquor. I don't like it.

"See?" Radigan grinned at the others. "He admits he doesn't like it himself."