Marauders' Moon (7 page)

Bannister grunted. Meeker opened the door, but Bannister stopped him. This time his speech was a little more subdued than usual.

“When did Britt pull in last night?” Bannister asked.

“Close to two.”

“Been out with that girl again?”

“I reckon,” Meeker said noncommittally. “His pony was carryin' some of that clay from the west side of the Broken Arrow range on his fetlocks.”

Bannister nodded, and Meeker went out. Mitch was waiting outside and stepped in at Meeker's invitation. He sat in the same chair and held his Stetson in his blunt hands, his attitude much like an attentive pupil.

Bannister said mildly, “Tonight you go back to Tolleston and tell him that you saw two of these Montana hardcases drinking in a back room of the Melodian with Hugo Meeker today.”

Mitch nodded.

“That's all,” Bannister said. “Go on over to the store and tell Mooney to give you his back room and sleep till dark.” He looked at Mitch thoughtfully. “Any curiosity?” he asked.

Mitch quickly shook his head. There was none of the old impudence in his eyes.

“When you come back next time, I want to know when Tolleston is planning to raid Bull Foot, what route he aims to travel, how many men he aims to bring along, and who they are. Can you do it?”

Mitch nodded. “Mac will know, and he'll talk to me. I'll get word to you.”

“All right.” Bannister turned away. “I'm sending your mother a check for a thousand dollars tonight.”

Mitch's eyes looked uneasy. “Thanks,” he said, then: “How is she?”

“She started a little store with that last check I sent.” He smiled meagerly. “Each letter she wants to know more about her boy who died a hero saving my trail herd from rustlers.”

Mitch flushed. “I'm obliged, sir. I'd rather have her think that than know the truth.”

“I daresay she'd prefer it, too,” Bannister said dryly. “By the way, that U. S. marshal from Tucson is still corresponding with me over you. The woman's murder has never been solved—naturally. It seems he'd heard you were headed for this basin.”

Mitch waited humbly.

“I'm having a hard time convincing him he's wrong.”

Mitch's eyes were filled with a gratitude that Bannister had seen only in dogs, and he turned away in disgust. He couldn't help hating weak men. Even a woman killer was less despicable if he retained his spirit and pride. But ever since the day Hugo Meeker had found Mitch Budrow gaunt and starved and sick and delirious in his mean fugitive's camp up over the Frying Pans, Bannister had never seen him show spirit. He had gladly consented to act as a spy in Tolleston's home ranch; had even shown an amazing resourcefulness when he wandered into a Broken Arrow line camp and collapsed. He had been taken by Tolleston's hands to the home ranch, and in time had easily found a place there. More than once he had given Bannister valuable information, but Bannister despised him. He even despised the petty blackmail necessary to insure Mitch's loyalty.

He was barely civil now. “Come back when you've got what I asked.”

Mitch left quietly, cowed to the very core of him.

In a few minutes Bannister rose and went over to the blacksmith shop. He said to Symonds, “Some of the boys will be bringing their ponies in for shoeing, Symonds. I want you to look their feet over carefully.”

“Startin' when?”

“This morning.”

To Symonds this meant only one thing. There would be considerable riding on rock. And the only considerable expanse of rock around these parts lay over in San Patricio County.

“All right,” he said. It was none of his business.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Tolleston had his horse saddled by the time the hands were finished breakfast. He stopped Mac and Webb, and told Webb his duties; they were all simple, all petty, all pointedly trivial, designed to keep him within sight of the house. While two of the hands cut and hauled cedar poles from the hills, Webb was to set the anchor posts for a new corral. He was to clean the old feed corral, then patch the roof on the cookshack, then do some needed blacksmithing on wagon tires. All the jobs, Tolleston had emphasized, would place him in clear view of the horse corral, where Martha Tolleston's pony was. If Webb saw her take her horse out, he was to take the blaze-face sorrel from the corral and follow her. With these instructions given, Tolleston left for town, and Webb set about work under Mac's watchful eye.

In mid-afternoon, as he was pitching dirt on the bunk-house roof, he saw Martha Tolleston leave the house. She was dressed in an outfit of deep brown, a divided skirt, blouse to match, man's Stetson, and boots. He waited until she had saddled her horse and ridden off west, then went over and threw his loop over the sorrel, Mac coming to watch. The horse was docile, and even though he had been on grass for months, did not offer a show of spirit.

Saddling him, Webb was angry at the man who had ruined him, for the horse had lines that argued speed and bottom and fight.

Once out of sight of the house, Webb reined up and considered. Right now, for the first time, he was free of Mac's prying watchfulness. He had a poor horse under him. He had no canteen, no gun, no food. He was remembering everything that Wardecker had told him about the trouble of getting out of this country. To hell with Wardecker. He would try it.

North looked best, the mountains lowest. He would try it there.

He lifted his horse into a lope, but inside of a mile knew he would have to ease up. The horse was blowing hard. Then, to make up for his slow time, he headed for the closest rock he could see. Here, at any rate, they would have a hard time trailing him. He had not been on his way twenty minutes, when he looked back. He saw a rider following him, stopping occasionally to pick up his track.

Webb spurred his horse on, cursing. In another quarter mile, he had to stop. The horse was heaving violently, useless to him as a mount.

Cursing bitterly, Webb waited. Presently the rider came into sight. It was Mac. He rode up to the waiting Webb and pulled up.

“I figured you'd try that. You don't believe a rock's hard till you butt your head against it, eh?”

Webb grinned suddenly. “You can't shoot a man for tryin'.”

“Can't I?” Mac said grimly. “I can and I will.” He gestured to Webb's horse. “It'll take that nag just nine hours to make the closest foothills. I know, because I've tried her. If you're gone more than three hours this afternoon, I aim to come after you. And next time I do,” he said quietly, grimly, “you won't like the place you end up in.” He motioned with his arm. “Now git back there and pick up her trail. And remember what I told you.”

Webb wheeled his horse and rode back, Mac a dozen paces behind him. When he came to the tracks of Martha's horse, he turned and followed them. Mac did not even bother to watch him go. The cocksureness of the man made Webb angry. He felt like a small child who has been told what he can and cannot do, and who gets caught the first time he makes a misstep.

Grudgingly, then, he turned his attention to business. He would have a better chance of not being seen if he took the direction in which Martha was traveling, then circled wide of it and came back every mile or so to pick it up again. Traveling this way, he began to think about Martha Tolleston. Buck had never said it, but Webb was certain that he suspected her of meeting a man. And Webb found himself anxious to see the man she was afraid for her father to meet.

At every rise he dismounted and scanned the country ahead for a sign of the girl, keeping hidden himself. He was entering more broken country now, a land of shallow canyons and rock and sandstone rubble and clay, eroded by wind and water.

Her tracks, when he next picked them up, turned more to the north, where the land sloped up to a bench and the canyons were deeper. Webb went cautiously now, for she was traveling the bed of a crooked arroyo, and the next bend he rounded, he might stumble upon her.

Where he saw this arroyo fork into a larger one, he pulled up. Whoever would meet her would doubtless come up this arroyo, since this would be the only comfortable travel here, and if two sets of tracks should be seen in the sand, there was a chance he might be discovered.

Backtracking a quarter of a mile, he dismounted, left his horse where it was off the trail and screened by brush, and set off on foot. Once on the bank of the arroyo, he traveled it carefully, keeping hidden. He had walked less than three hundred yards when he saw below him the girl seated on a rock close to the far bank of the arroyo. Her horse was ground-haltered in the shade, and she seemed to be waiting for someone.

Webb thought of what Buck Tolleston had said about taking her horse. Of course she would fight—or would she now?

If he were to go down and say, “Miss Tolleston, your old man is havin' me spy on you. I don't want to. If you'll give me your horse, I'll ride off and never bother you again,” would she do it? He didn't know, but he was willing to try.

He was just ready to hoist himself out of the brush when he heard a whistle far down the arroyo. That would be the man she was going to meet. Webb sank back, disgusted. He knew she would not give him her horse once he had seen the man she was meeting. And then it occurred to Webb that, if he were close to where she was, he might contrive to steal one of their horses.

He backed away, traveled up the arroyo a few hundred yards, crossed it, and came down the far bank. His approach to the spot where Martha was sitting was careful, quiet, and in the last fifty yards of it, which he crawled on his hands and knees, he heard the whistle again, and this time closer. At last he settled himself behind a thick clump of mesquite on the arroyo's rim. Here, he figured, he could hear enough to know if they strolled away from the horses or not.

Presently Webb heard the soft
hush, hush
of a horse traveling in sand. Then he heard a man's voice call out, “Hello, Marty.”

For some unaccountable reason, Webb disliked the voice the minute he heard it. Martha answered quietly, “Hello, Britt.”

“Been waiting long?”

“Not long.”

A pause as saddle leather creaked. “The reason I was late is that I think the old man's having me followed. I doubled back and waited today.”

“Was he?”

“Not today.”

Another pause, and then Martha said swiftly, “Please don't, Britt. You've been nice. Don't get sticky.”

The man laughed shortly. “If I haven't it hasn't been because I never wanted to, Marty. You know how I've felt about you.”

There was a long pause then, and then Martha said quietly, “I know.”

“And you've never returned it?”

“How could I, Britt?” Her voice was almost hard with bitterness. “What chance have I had to know you, to see how you live, what it would be like to be together, who your friends are—oh, everything! We've met only when we could sneak away, and then we almost talk in whispers for fear of being overheard. I hate it, Britt!”

“You know how we can fix that, Marty. Get your horse and we'll ride down to Bull Foot and be married by tomorrow morning.”

Marty laughed shortly. “Do you think your father would let it stand that way? Do you think mine would?”

“I don't reckon they'd have much-to say about it.”

“Don't you? Well, I do. I know them—both of them. They'd rather see us dead than have a Tolleston married to a Bannister.”

Webb's jaw sagged in surprise. The man Martha was meeting was Britt Bannister of the family that was anathema to Buck Tolleston!

But Martha went on. “No, Britt. That won't settle it. Before we could ever have any peace together, this senseless feud has to be settled. We couldn't pick up and leave what we've grown up with, and still be happy. That skeleton is too big to lock in any closet.”

“The world's big, Marty,” Britt said. “We could try.”

“But some day my father is going to kill yours, or yours is going to kill mine! How would we feel then?”

Britt said nothing.

“And instead of feeling better, I think it's getting worse.”

“How do you mean?” Britt asked quickly.

“Remember our promise. We were never to tell secrets, never to be disloyal.” She hesitated. “But haven't you noticed it, Britt?”

“Maybe I have, now that you mention it,” Britt said slowly. “Let me think back.”

Webb wanted to see this man, and determined to. Taking off his Stetson, he inched his way forward, hugging the ground, until his head was at the very edge of the arroyo bank. Then slowly he raised himself on his elbows and peered over the edge.

There, sitting on the ground beside Martha, was a man about Webb's age. His hat lay in the sand beside him, so that Webb could get a glimpse of his face. Below sleek black hair his face was much the same as his father's, although Webb did not know that. His eyes were the same blue, without the chill in them, and the nose was as fine and sharp. Only the chin was a little less firm, and his smile was much more ready.

“Remember the time we first met, Britt,” Martha said. “You were eight and I—”

She never finished, for the bank on which Webb was resting caved in with a gentle rumble and Webb, still on his belly, coasted down the bank and pulled up at the bottom in a fog of dust. He looked up to find himself staring into the gun of Britt Bannister.

Picking himself up, Webb murmured, “Now I might have known that,” and grinned. Martha stood beside Britt, and the surprise was just washing out of her face, giving way to anger.

“And just who are you?” Britt asked coldly.

Webb jerked his head toward Martha. “She'll tell you.”

“He's a county prisoner dad brought home last night. I think he was implicated in the Wagon Mound hold-up.”

Britt's eyes changed a little.

“Escaping? After a horse?”

“I got one, thanks,” Webb said, still grinning. “No. This was the first job Tolleston set me to.”