The Overlanders (7 page)

Grete sighed bitterly as the two men, grinning, stepped away from the fire. “We’d have got him anyway,” the towhead chuckled, “but your help won’t be forgotten, fella. You might even come in for a piece of the reward.”

“A man expects no reward for doing his bounden duty,” Ben said loftily. “I’ve had my eye on this jasper ever since he tied onto this drive as trail boss. Just make sure he don’t come back on us. We got trouble enough without —”

“He won’t be back,” Stone Face said, palming a pistol.

Grete didn’t think so either as he stood woodenly watching their approach. These were Curly Bill men; everything about the pair lent credence to this conviction. They had smelled of the chaparral as far away as he could see them.

“Just a minute,” Sary called. “I’m not guaranteeing one blessed thing but you two better stop right there.”

“Sary —” Ben cried, sounding frantic, “keep out of this!”

She’d got the .44 out of her holster while the pair had been closing on Grete and now, having put their backs to her, both star-packers, frozen, were at a distinct disadvantage. It was like a problem in chess with every available piece irrevocably anchored.

If these truly were deputies they dared not turn their guns on a woman. And, far as that went, they dared not anyway for neither one of them, stopped flat-footed, was in any position to invite a general shoot-out. This crew was too scattered, too uncertain a quantity. The only thing, Grete knew, either stranger could be sure of was if guns started popping they’d be right in the thick of it.

Grete was in no better shape and his need was infinitely greater. They could pinch in their hands and sweat out another deal but Grete, if he could not extricate himself, was done for. He knew what he could expect once they got him away from the rest of this outfit. Yet he hung there, wound tight, unable to get off the horns of his dilemma.

He wanted, bad as ever in his life he’d wanted anything, to dive for the gun in that belt he’d let go of. But if he did, and Ben was ready, the man could cut him in two before his hand ever touched it.

The Mexican took the chance away from him. While Farraday stood rooted, Frijoles, stalking her like a cat, came behind the girl and, catching both arms within the circle of his own, jammed them tight against her hips, swinging her away from the strangers as he did so. Grete saw it all and couldn’t open his mouth.

She could still have fired but nobody gave a damn; she no longer had it in her power to do anything more drastic than scuff up the landscape. Both strangers had jumped for Grete with their guns out the moment they realized her advantage was gone.

In an outburst of shame for the fears which had immobilized him Grete attempted, in exhaustion’s fettered fashion, to fight them off. A blow from Ben’s gun barrel drove him to his knees. He was trapped in a nightmare of flashing fists and flying boots vaguely glimpsed through bursts of brilliant light, of blows that came out of nowhere until, battered insensible, he was no longer aware of anything.

• • •

The gabble of contentious voice sounds faded. The rhythmic shriek of leather warped protestingly against dry leather, the occasional tinkling of bit chains or the
ching
of a rowel striking other equipment took its place in the halt-world of hell Grete awoke to. Damp ground smells and horse sweat came up through the groan of his gun-hammered bones and his throbbing head felt big as a washtub; but this also passed. For a space everything was blackly silent and peaceful.

It was the jolt of the hip-shaken saddle grinding nauseously against the bruised muscles of his stomach that roused him finally to consciousness of his predicament and whereabouts in the peril of a threat achieved. He was traveling belly-down just as that rock-faced son had promised he would and the horse didn’t care how much skin the brush took. The horse wouldn’t care if Grete’s head smashed into a rock!

He tried to work his navel off the hump but had no purchase from which to maneuver. The saddle was his anchor, it might soon be the last memory anyone would have of him — this picture of it toting him like a sack of grain to oblivion.

His head was splitting, throbbing almost unbelievably with every squeeze of his heart. There was a roar in his ears from all the blood pumped into them. The burn and bind at wrists and ankles convinced him that it would be his last ride. They didn’t have to waste any lead on him. Just turn him loose on this pot-gutted cow, let out a few whoops at some appropriate interval, and geography and nature would combine to take care of him. Not nicely, perhaps, but permanently.

He twisted his head and found a brightness behind him, presently recognizing this for cook’s fire receding through a forest of branches. When he discovered that, lying with his butt above his elbows, this gleam was below him, he knew the two strangers were heading for the pass.

He guessed the backs of his knees must be sprung beyond redemption. His feet were chunks of ice almost totally divorced from him, his hands filled with pins and needles. He tried doubling his fists to force some slack from the ropes; nothing gave except his patience. Whoever had tied these knots was an expert.

He guessed the voices he had heard must have come from the outfit, arguing. He drew little hope from this, since if they’d been of a mind to do anything they wouldn’t have let Towhead and his two-gun friend load him onto this horse in the first place.

He might as well face it. He’d get no help from them. Ben was well satisfied to so easily have got shed of him; the Mexican, by his own act, was proved Ben’s man. The drunken Rip cared for nothing but his everlasting bottle. Cook hadn’t bothered to lift a finger.

There was the girl, of course, and Idaho. Sary wouldn’t find a second chance — not with Ben back in place as Julius Caesar of this drive. Idaho was probably still with the horses.

He didn’t know why he kept thinking of Idaho unless he could dredge up no other hope. The gunfighter had little cause to care what happened to him; his face was still scarred with the marks of Grete’s fists, his head ugly with scabs from the wreck of that bucket Grete had broken against it. He’d been prepared to tolerate Grete for the girl’s sake, had made the exact extent of that tolerance plain. It had no conceivable bearing on Grete’s present situation.

Grete dropped his glance to the skitter and blur on the ground passing under him. The footing was becoming noticeably rough. The breathing of the horses was a series of reaching grunts, the shod hoofs of the pair ahead rattling sharply against increasing contact with malpais, every sound growing larger. By these things Grete knew they’d entered the canyon and were climbing toward the pass. It was much darker here. Looking back he could no longer detect any sign of the camp. Not even the brightness which had marked cook’s fire.

It was time for sober reflection, for lastminute adjustments of outmoded conceptions. Grete felt the walls closing in. Indescribably depressed, he listened to the wailing of a coyote on some close-by outcrop. He hardly realized for a moment that his horse had quit moving. Half strangled by hard-breathing excitement a voice said, “Let go of that rope an’ sit tight in them saddles.”

“Barney!” Grete choked.

• • •

After the badge-packers quit camp with Farraday roped belly-down to a horse confiscated from one of their work teams, Frijoles let go of the girl, jumping back with an alacrity which in other times might have dragged a smile from her. Now she hardly noticed. Sheathing the pistol he had kept her from using, she walked across to where burly Ben was bent over a bed roll he’d just heaved down by the fire.

“You’ve got to go after him. Get Idaho and Rip. Take the whole crew if…”She stopped, eyes widening. Ben Hollis was laughing at her.

There was something at once smug and cruel in his face as he straightened and tipped back, sardonically regarding her. Standing there, teetering a little on his boot heels, he saw the satisfaction that had hold of him like new wine. A boldness, fire-bright, was possessively rounding the beads of his eyes as they ogled her breasts — almost, she thought, going furiously hot, as though they were bare with his hands wrapped around them.

Her skin crawled. How often had he fondled her like this without her knowing? She felt unclean from the things that ran through his face and then, her own stiffening, she put away this ugliness and brought her will like iron staves about her feelings. “Patch!” she said. When no sound came she twisted to look at him, mouth squeezing into a bitter line.

Cook, stirring uncomfortably, pulled his shoulders together, staring back at her grumpily, not opening his mouth.

“Idaho will go,” she said, and silence thick as fog came down. She saw Ben’s grin and started for her horse. But the man was too quick, coming solidly in front of her. “He’s bought and paid for — like the rest of this crew. Hereafter we’re doing things my way, whether you like it or whether you don’t.”

She went up on her toes lashing out at him, cracking him across both cheeks with all her strength, the sound of the leathers loud as pistol shots. He caught her roughly against the great barrel of his chest, smothering her struggles, tearing the quirt off her wrist and furiously breaking it. The stripes stood out like a brand across his face as he flung her away from him.

“You little slut!” he shouted, towering over her. He half-lifted a boot as though to bash in her ribs but some saner thought caught him and he stepped back, eyes ugly. “By God you’ll crawl for that!” He was shaking all over with the wildness of his passion. “Get to your blankets!” he yelled, clenching his fists. He looked half-crazy in the flickering flames.

Cook scrubbed one hip with the flat of his hand, staring woodenly at her as she got up and stumbled off. Rip squirmed over in his bed and got his bottle. The Mexican’s eyes flickered like black coals beneath his hat but Ben was not a man to cross right then. They kept their mouths shut.

Ben glared around a moment. “We pull out of here at daylight,” he said, slamming into his saddle.

In her blankets Sary shivered uncontrollably. The cold got into her bones and ached and wherever her whirling thoughts tried to turn the man was there, towering over her, blocking every hole of escape she uncovered. If only, she thought, she could have hung onto Farraday… In the morning she would have to find a chance to talk with Idaho. He was her only hope now. She could not stand against Ben alone.

She heard him ride off, heard the cook and Frijoles mumbling under their breaths, then exhaustion claimed her. She was just falling into an uneasy doze when the dull clop-clop of hoofs came down through the trees to fetch the camp into wakefulness. She heard cook’s smothered curse and the Mexican’s “
Quien es?
” as, throwing back their blankets, they got half up, Frijoles drawing his sixshooter with his head jutting toward to peer into the dark.

She hadn’t realized she’d been holding her breath until she heard Farraday’s long, solid voice break through the muted cadence of hoof falls.

“Patch,” he said, “rout out the crew.”

Cook began banging on a pan with his pistol.

She watched the head of Grete’s horse come out of the oaks. A second black shape coasted in behind Farraday, their elongated shadows tumbling over the ground as the animals came past the dying glow of the fire. She heard Barney’s laugh, an irrepressible excitement quavering through his voice as he replied to some question the Mexican had asked. Now hoofs were coming at a lope from the holding ground. Patch dumped a load of dead branches on the fire and climbing flames flung a shower of sparks against the crushed-crystal glitter of faraway stars. Orange light drove back the solid dark and Ben’s big shape appeared, followed by Idaho: Ben, catching sight of Grete, reined up so suddenly the gunfighter’s horse stumbled heavily into him.

Grete said to Idaho, “Get those mares lined out for the pass right away.”

No one moved. Idaho, curbing his fretful mount, turned his stare enigmatically on Hollis. Every eye in camp swung around to Ben now and this pressure, piling up, put the stain of outrage on the man’s beefy cheeks. Even Farraday, though in the dark as to the why of it, understood the decision all were waiting for was Ben’s. Grete’s own nerves, worn thin by the turmoil of these last several hours, boiled up a wicked impatience that sharpened the lines graved into his face and, pushed by the threat of Curly Bill’s intentions which would be expedited now, he cried at Ben harshly, “Tuck tail or drag iron!”

The roundabout faces grew pinched and stiff and Ben’s eyes hated all of them, shifting the blame for the bind he was caught in, absolving himself as he had done all his life. His face turned hungry with the lust to kill but his hand wouldn’t move from its white hold on the saddle. He shook his head, cheeks poisonously bloated, eyeing first Idaho then, furiously, Grete. “What happened out there?”

It was Barney Olds’ excitement-choked voice that, trembling with remembrance, said, “He killed that gunslick — cracked his skull with one of the fellow’s own guns. But the towhead got away. We figure he’s gone to fetch help.”

• • •

“Curly Bill help,” Grete said; and Ben’s lips pushed out in a sullen pout. He peered at Grete, caught by indecision; but Sary, closely watching, found a shorter word for it. The man couldn’t even find enough wind for bluster. He wrenched his fist from its clutch of the pommel and cut his horse through the blackness in the direction of the stock.

Idaho dragged his own horse around as the group broke up, Frijoles running for his mount. Cook, with his face warped to an even sourer cast, began cantankerously assembling supplies and culinary gear for packing. Idaho rode after Ben, the chin-strapped Mexican following. “Give Patch a hand, Olds,” Farraday said, and went over to Sary where she stood at the edge of firelight. She lowered the pistol that was wet from her grip, thrusting it back of her, but not before Grete had glimpsed its metal gleam.

He stopped before her, discovering again how squarely defined her shoulders were, how straight her chin, how level her glance. He nodded toward the hand she held behind her, saying “Thanks,” and continued to regard her with a long and thoughtful attention. It was in his mind to reveal the truth about that “ranch” she expected to share in, but he could not quite bring the words out. Instead he said, pretty gruff with his tone, “What do you hope to get out of this?”

She gave him back a look cool as his own. “A little security… and peace.” Always his face, when he looked at her, seemed to hold a kind of speculative reserve; it was a way he had of holding his lips as if he were not quite sure how to take her. These last hours had been hard on him; he looked like a saddle bum and a small edge of doubt crept into her thinking. Idaho’s judgment ran through her head:
He’ll use you as long as it suits his ends then find him some prettier, younger woman
. It kept her guard up. It made her distrust the lift of heart his nearness gave her.

Some knowledge, Farraday thought, steadily watching, hard-won and grim as death, had driven her in upon herself, forsaking the girl she might have been. Her hands, square-knuckled and strong, were used to work and, like the rest of her, capable beyond a woman’s normal expectations. She was as near self-reliant as any girl he had met and, while he was not certain he favored so much character, he admitted that she would grow on a man. It was her silence, all the secrets behind it, which took hold of his interest — the mystery of her, he thought, detesting this. The still, strong acceptance of all she had been through, all she had seen; the indomitable will to survive which had brought her here with these stolen mares. These were the factors and her woman’s body, combined with the tantalizing things he could guess at, which had built up the feelings he had about her.

“You think those two were Curly Bill men?”

“We’ll find out.”

His face seemed thinner, gaunt and sagging with fatigue. “Where,” she asked, “did the one who got away go?”

“Through the pass.”

“That’s where we’re going?”

“We haven’t got much choice,” he shrugged. “It’s that or wait for Bill’s main bunch.” He loosed a shortbreathing laugh. “One of that pair at the ranch has lit out. They’ll be coming up now from both sides of these hills.”

He was a man ridden down to muscle and bone. She said without censure, “Some of the mares are pretty sore-footed.”

“There’s not much more of this. We’ll be out of these rocks in a couple of hours if we can stay clear of trouble.”

She could face facts. “You don’t think we will.” She watched his hands make an empty gesture.

“Somewhere,” he said grimly, “we’ll run into that bunch. Those badge-toters were scouts sent out to get a line on us. French simply provided a touch of luck they hadn’t been looking for. When that towhead gets back they’ll set up a trail block — probably send somebody off to find Bill. I want to hit them before Bill has time to come up.”

Her eyes searched his face. “I think you know by now how much dependence you can place on this crew.”

“They’ll fight. For their lives.” He said, suddenly sharp, “Even a rat will do that!”

“Leaving Idaho out, that’s what you’re dealing with — rats. At the first whiff of trouble — real trouble — they’ll run.”

“Work stock’s packed,” Patch called from the shadows. “What about some mares for the rest of this stuff?”

“You’ll have to let it go.” Grete tipped his head, listening. “Mares are going into the pass now. You and Barney get started.”

“They’ll run,” Sary repeated.

Farraday scowled. “Not this time they won’t.” He turned back for his horse, finding hers waiting beside it. Moon was pretty far down. Cook threw the rest of the coffee into the fire; dark closed around them while he anchored the pot to one of his saddle strings. They could see each other, that was about all. “Let’s go,” Grete said, and they swung into their saddles.

• • •

Near dawn they came into even rougher country. These past two hours had been anything but easy. The black lava rock was gone. This was a region of steep slants and gravel grown to greasewood. Occasionally cedars lifted gnarled branches against the paling stars. Riding the drag, along with Patch, the pack horses, and Barney Olds, Sary began to breathe easier in spite of the roughness of their travel; she began to hope Grete had been wrong about Bill.

Now and again they dipped into dry washes and plowed through deep sand until rocks or brush forced them out into sight with a clatter of scrambling hoofs as they climbed. Sometimes dust like a swirling fog closed the view, flour-thick and abrasive, until a downdraft of air from cooler heights returned blurred vision.

Farraday, up at the front now riding point, scanned the terrain closely in the brightening light, studying each lingering tatter of shadow hovering like smoke beneath paloverde and cat-claw, strengthening pitahaya columns and the low-lying studdings of mescal and Spanish bayonet. Behind such cover Bill’s men could be, tawny wolves of the chaparral more deadly than Apaches.

There was no security in this land. It was a country of violence filled with wildness and terror, with deceptive sleepiness, the rip and blast of gunfire. Nothing was quite as it looked — nor so mild. It scoured the softness out of a man.

But the thought of her would not leave him. Beset as he was by the flight of time, harried by worries about Crotton and the ever-present dangers surrounding this drive, there was scant room in his itinerary for this kind of thing; yet she was clearer in his head than Swallowfork. He never had to turn to see her. Bright in memory was the way she had of holding herself, still and straight, when she looked at him, the light breaking across the sorrel surface of her hair. He remembered too well, he knew bitterly. This was what lay in the back of every man’s head — the picture of some woman.

It was now gray day with the last of the shadow pockets breaking up, funneling away in misty stringers as morning advanced with the strides of a giant. The air turned colder with a sparkle of frost, sending the crew hunching into their windbreakers, this swift building up of light bringing out in sharpest focus every scarp and scallop of the ragged rims. Grete, standing up in his stirrups, peered around till his glance picked out Idaho. “Bring them on!” He swung a hurrying arm.

He pulled off to the side to let them pass, narrowing his eyes against the churned-up dust, irascibly swearing. Crotton by this time could have that meadow so commanded with guns the devil himself would be hard put to find toe-room. This was just one of the things gnawing Grete; another was the fellow who’d taken Grete’s place with Crotton — a man whose memory might cause more trouble than all of Swallowfork’s gunslingers. And Sary, Grete thought bitterly, had been right about these mares. Most of them already were showing sore-footed. They would have to lay over at Willcox. Someone would be sure to carry word to Crotton.

Bays, buckskins, sorrels, and roans, with a scattering of grays and blacks, stumbled past, pushed by the calls of the rope-swinging riders. They were traveling a natural trough through these hills, twisting and turning enough to break a snake’s back. Now their dust would be flung up like a flag. He cursed that too.

Suddenly the sun was knifing into their backs, hurling its golden flood over everything, driving their shadows grotesquely ahead, miles long where they crossed a straight open. At once the chill faded. In an hour it was hot, with discarded jackets slung back of their cantles, sweat darkening the salt-rimed stains beneath armpits, lathering like soap on the flanks of the horses. Grete’s weren’t the only eyes watching the rimrocks.

The morning wore on. They nooned by a stream that was thick with willow and hackberry, wolfing down the cold food passed around by Patch, more than one of them grousing the lack of hot coffee. It was on Grete’s orders that no fire was kindled. He closed his eyes for a moment to ease the burn and, drugged by exhaustion, slept for two hours.

He awoke to find Sary’s hand on his shoulder, stared at her stupidly, then sighted his shadow. He sprang up with a curse. Everyone else in camp was asleep. “God damn it,” he snarled, “we got no time for foolishness —”

“You had to have rest.”

“We could have woke up in hell!”

“I stayed awake. I’ve had more sleep than the rest of you.” She saw the narrow-eyed way he was scowling into the west; he’d discovered the dust. “Wild horses,” she said, and lifted a hand toward the stud. “Danny knows. We saw them crossing that saddle —”

The stallion’s sudden trumpeting brought Idaho, bleary-eyed, out of the hackberries. The man hitched his gun up. The quick look he threw around cut the dust and swirled back. She saw the tightening about his jaw and mouth. Farraday nodded. “Get those fools on their feet.”

“It’s only horses,” Sary said. “The stud —”

“Horses sure,” Idaho grumbled.

“And something pushing them,” Farraday said. His tone was dry as snapping sticks. The girl stared uneasily from one to the other. “I saw them crossing that saddle —”

“You can’t see them now. Wild stock don’t travel like that without they’re pushed. Those horses are running.”

Idaho’s shout brought the men off the ground. “Put those mares in the creek —”

“Too late for that. They know we’re here.” Grete frowned at the canyon walls. “We can’t climb out this side of that saddle; if we get that far there won’t be no point to it. Bowie’s not over five miles right now. Bunch the stock. We’ll make a run for it.”