Conagher (1969) (15 page)

He glanced at the man who lay sprawle d in the doorway. He had never seen hi m before. He had never seen any of thes e men, but three of them rode Ladder Fiv e horses.

After making sure there were no mor e weapons, he threw their coats to them.

Then he gave a look around the cabin , keeping the men in his line of fire.

There was a sack of canned goods , several slabs of bacon, and a sack of flour.

He gathered them up and carried the m outside away from the door; then he wen t inside and kicked the coals from the fir e out into the room, and quickly steppe d out. In a moment the cabin had caugh t fire.

What in hell you tryin' to do ?
Th e one who yelled at Conagher was a blackjawe d man with a deep scar over one eye.

This here place has been a hide-out fo r thieves long enough. I'm burnin' it out .

What about our outfits ?

The hell with you! You were fre e enough to steal ST cows. Get your outfit s where you got your orders .

Smoke will kill you for this/' th e black-jawed man said , if I don't do i t first .

You open your mouth again until I tel l you to , Conagher said mildly , an d you'll have a scar over the other eye .

He pointed to another of the men .
Yo u saddle up for all of you, and be fast about it .

When the horses were saddled he tol d them to get on their horses and ride out.

The sheriff in the Plaza is just a-waitin'
f or you , he lied , so your best bet i s east .

East? There ain't a town or place fo r fifty miles !

Tough, ain't it? Well, that's the life of i an outlaw. You never know what's goin' t o happen next. As a matter of fact, there's a couple of sta ge stations, but I'd fight sh y of them, i f I were you. All of them kno w that brand you ride for .

He gathe
red up their guns as they rod e out and put t hem in a sack, then he put th e supplie s into another sack and loade d them on the dead man's horse.

Then he rode out, starting south , driving the cattle.

When the small herd came down th e slope back of the Teale cabin, Evie , followed by Ruthie and Laban, came ou t to watch. The cattle gathered at the wate r hole and at the trough, and he rode up t o the cabin. He swung down and took th e bag of supplies from the back of the horse.

Here's a couple of slabs of bacon, Mrs.

Teale, and you can split the canned good s with me, and the coffee. You divide it up.

I'll take one third to get me into th e Plaza .

This is very nice of you, Mr.

Conagher, but I am afraid we can't pay?

Didn't ask you to. These here supplie s were the wages of sin, ma'am, an' th e woebegone sinners who pursued th e path of Satan have seen the error of thei r ways. You take that grub and be glad .

He drew a six-shooter from the sack.

You keep this, too, you might have us e for it .

What happened, Mr. Conagher ?

Nothing to speak of. Those sinner s came upon evil times, but if they're wis e they are headed east now, and makin' goo d time .

He looked at her .
You got any of tha t soup left, Mrs. Teale? I'm a right hungr y man .

After he had eaten, watching the roa d through the windows, just in case, h e looked at Laban .
Boy, how'd you like t o make a couple of dollars and a free ride o n the stage ?

Laban glanced at Evie .
Well, sir, I'
d like it. But what would I have to do ?

Help me drive this herd to the Plaza.

I'll pay you two or three dollars and you r fare back on the stage .

Is it all right, ma? Can I go ?

Yes. Yes, you can. You'll take goo d care of him, Mr. Conagher ?

Likely he'll take care of me. That's a fine, strong boy, Mrs. Teale, and he'l l make a good hand .

When they reached the Plaza the y bunched the cattle at the stockyards an d put them in a pen.

At the livery stable the hostler looke d sharply at the Ladder Five brand on th e horse that Laban rode .
Now, see here?
h e began.

You see here
, Conagher said .
I'
m leavin' that horse for any Ladder Fiv e rustler to pick up. And you can tell the m that was the way I put it. The rider ain'
t likely to show up to claim it, and if he doe s you can go down to the saloon and tel l those loafers you've seen a real honest-toAbe-Lincol n ghost .

You penned some cattle .

Those are ST cows and I'm an ST
r ider, and in a few minutes I'm going t o sell those cattle, give the buyer a bill o f sale, and take a receipt. I'll be damned i f I'll drive them all the way back to th e ranch in this weather. Money is a whole lo t easier to carry .

Conagher and Laban went across to th e saloon, which like all such saloons was a club house, an exchange for trail information, an auction or sales room, o r whatever. At the door Conagher paused , glanced around, and saw Mahler sittin g across the room. He walked in, and said t o Laban , You keep shy of me until w e leave. A saloon is no place for a boy, bu t we've got business to do .

At the bar a squarely built man in a leather coat was watching them. Mahle r looked up, his face stiffening into har d lines as he recognized Conagher.

Conagher approached the man at th e bar .
Are you torn Webb ?

I am
.

I ride for the ST. I've got twentyseve n head of good stock down at the pen s I'd like to sell. I'll give you a bill of sal e and I'll want a receipt .

Webb hesitated .
I can use the cattle.

But isn't this an odd time to sell ?

This here
, Conagher spoke roughly , and not quietly , is recovered stolen stock.

It's too far a piece to drive it back to th e outfit .

Kris Mahler sat very still, starin g into his beer glass. His face was drawn an d cold. Conagher pointedly ignore d him.

What happened
?
somebody asked.

Conagher shrugged. His sheepskin coa t was unbuttoned and his gun hand wa s warm enough, warm as it would ever be.

He did not want a shooting, but he jus t didn't care. He had ridden too far in th e cold, he had been caused some roug h work, and weariness had eaten into ever y bone and sinew.

Trailed the cattle to a shack north o f Mrs. Teale's place. I recovered the cattle , burned the shack, and drove the stoc k here .

You trailed them? In this snow ?

Conagher looked at the speaker and sai d quietly , I trailed 'em. Happens I kne w about that shack, so when I lost the trail I knew they'd probably have to hole u p there .

Nobody spoke for a few minutes, an d then Webb said , I'll walk over and look a t the cattle .

Any idea who the men were ?
one ma n asked.

Well, they were ridin' Ladder Fiv e horses , Conagher said.

Kris Mahler shoved back his chair an d got up. For a moment he stood, hand s resting on the table, staring down. The n he turned abruptly and strode from th e room.

WITH the coming of spring th e wind blew cold and raw acros s the brown plains. Evie looke d at the stock with fear in her eyes, fo r both horses and cattle were painfull y thin. The past months had been hard.

Bitter cold and frozen snow kept even th e horses from finding grass beneath th e snow's surface. Unless there was gras s soon she would lose the few calves sh e had.

But there was no sign of green. It wa s the time when the sun should be warmin g the soil, it was the time for rains, but ther e was neither sun nor rain.

The food that had been left her b y Conagher more than two months ago wa s gone. The stage had stopped once, with a broken wheel to be mended, and fortunatel y there had been enough food the n to feed the passengers. She had a littl e money from that, but she hesitated to tr y the long trip to the Plaza with the horses i n their present condition.

And both of the children were thin.

Laban had shot a couple of squirrels, bu t there was scarcely a bit of meat on either , and now they were in serious trouble. Th e flour was gone, the sugar was gone. Wit h the last of the bacon grease she had frie d slices of bread for the children.

She knew she should kill one of th e calves, but she had never butchered a n animal and had not the slightest idea o f how to go about it. Moreover, she hated t o lose even one of her small herd. But it ha d come to that.

Twice she had planned to flag down th e stage and get McCloud or Logan to brin g her something from town, but each tim e she had missed the stage. This mornin g she was going out early, to be waitin g beside the road when it came.

Much of the carefully hoarded mone y from feeding the stage passengers wa s already spent. She had needed a coat fo r Laban and mittens for all of them.

Far to the south Conagher saddled up an d rode out. He had seen nothing of Parnell , and believed the lot of them had, fo r the time at least, left the country. Ther e had been stage holdups on the roa d into Tucson, there had been others o n the Black Canyon trail between Phoeni x and Prescott. There had been a blood y attempt on the stage in the mountain s near the Colorado, on the road to Hardyville.

Conagher swung wide now, checkin g for grass. There was none. Melting sno w had frozen, and the stock could not brea k through. He opened up several wate r holes, found in a sheltered canyon som e stock that was doing well, and then saw a patch of green up a canyon he had neve r entered.

He turned and started up the canyon , hoping to find grass. He had gone no mor e than half a mile when suddenly he saw, of f to one side, dirt churned by the hoofs o f shod horses. It was fresh ... it ha d probably happened that morning. H
e swung his horse just an instant before th e bullet struck.

He felt the slam of a bullet into his bac k and heard the report of the rifle as h e toppled from the saddle. He fell, struc k the ground on his shoulder, and rolle d over. His horse went dashing on, and h e knew instantly that they would be dow n here after him.

Fortunately he had carried his rifle i n his right hand, hoping for a shot at a dee r or antelope.

He caught the rifle up from the ground , and even as he heard a thundering o f hoofs, he rolled over a slab of rock and sli d a dozen feet to the bottom, where h e crawled into a hole made by one roc k toppled against another.

He scrambled through here quickly an d down a steep dry watercourse, where h e saw an opening and ducked into it. It wa s only a small space between rocks.

Behind him he heard a shout .
He'
s wounded, Smoke! We got him !

For the first time he remembered tha t he had been knocked from the saddle by a shot. He was wounded then, and ther e must have been some blood. No doubt h e was numbed from the shock, which mean t that it would not be long before he woul d feel the pain, and perhaps would not b e able to go any farther.

Before him was a tilted slab of roc k shaped like a rooster's comb. He would b e exposed on the face of it, but they wer e still out of sight around the corner, an d there was a way a man might go where th e face of the rock met the talus slope that fel l away for several hundred feet. Grippin g his rifle, he started to run. In an instant hi s brief respite was gone and the wound wa s throbbing with pain.

But he made it halfway along, an d suddenly saw a place where two slabs o f rock overlapped. The opening, which wa s V-shaped, was filled with stiff, wiry brus h covered with thorns.

He had no choice. He could hear the m coming, and once they rounded the roc k back there he would be a clear target , caught against the face of the rock, a targe t that could scarcely be missed, in a plac e where there was no shelter. He dived a t the stiff brush, fighting frantically to ge t past it.

Luckily, he had thrown himself on to p of the brush, so he was squirming over i t rather than trying to get through, whic h would have been almost impossible. H
e squirmed and scrambled, his breat h coming in hoarse gasps of mingled pai n and fear. Then he got hold of a larg e branch, and swung himself over into th e space beyond, where he fell panting to th e ground.

He lay there, stunned, his breath stil l coming raggedly, and for several minute s he could scarcely think.

When he looked around, he foun d himself in a sort of natural cup within a cluster of ragged peaks. It looked almos t like a volcanic crater, though it was not.

There was not more than an acre o f ground in the bottom of the hollow, with a thick covering of green grass. Against on e wall there were some trees, and he coul d hear water rippling.

Painfully, he crawled across the littl e basin to the stream. The water was clea r and cold.

He drank, and then lay on the groun d beside the stream, where he must hav e passed out. When he awoke he was ver y cold, the sun had gone, and it was almos t dark.

Despite the cold, he lay there trying t o quiet the chattering of his teeth. H
e listened but he heard nothing. Using th e rifle as a crutch, he pushed himself up an d half staggered, half fell into the edge of th e trees.