Novel 1954 - Utah Blaine (As Jim Mayo) (v5.0) (14 page)

But the moment passed and he went on outside into the dark street. The lights from the saloon made rectangles on the street. He saw the darkness of the print shop down the street where Ralston Forbes waited with his printing press. Forbes was not through…what would he run off next? The stark courage of those handbills blasting Nevers and Fox was something he could admire. Forbes had nerve.

He shook his head wearily and pushed open the door to the saloon. A man turned from the bar to look at him. It was Hinkelmann, who owned the general store. As Otten moved up beside him, Hink asked, “Ben, what do you make of all this? How’s it goin’ to turn out? I can’t figure who’s right an’ who’s wrong.”

“Well,” Ben Otten agreed, “I’ve thought about it myself.” He ordered his drink. “I’ve known Nevers a long time. Always treated me all right.”

“Yes,” Hink agreed reluctantly, “that’s right.”

“He pays his bills, an’ I guess it rankled to see an outsider, a man with Blaine’s reputation, come in here and grab off the richest ranch in the place. Although,” he added, “Blaine may be in the right…if he and this lawyer aren’t in cahoots. After all, Rink killed Neal, but who put him up to it?”

“He’s workin’ for Nevers,” Hinkelmann suggested uneasily.

“Uh-huh, but you never know about a man like that. Offer them the cash an’…sometimes I’ve wondered just how hard they were tryin’ to find Blaine. Doesn’t seem reasonable one man could stay on the loose so long.”

They talked some more, and after awhile, Otten left. On the steps he paused. Well, he had started it. There was still time to draw back…but deep within him he knew there was no time. Not any more. He was fresh out of time.

L
ONELY IN HER cabin on the river, Angie turned restlessly, wide-eyed and sleepless in her bed. Somewhere out there in the night her man was riding…wounded…bleeding…alone.

Her man?

Yes. Staring up into the darkness she acknowledged that to herself. He was her man, come what may, if he died out there alone; if he was killed in some hot, dusty street; if he rode off and found some other woman—he was still her man. In her heart he was her man. There was no other and there could be no other and she had felt it deep within her from that moment under the sycamores when first they talked together.

She turned again and the sheets whispered to her body and she could not sleep. Outside the leaves rustled and she got up, lighting her light and slipping her feet into slippers. In her robe she went to the stove and rekindled the fire and made coffee. Where was he? Where out there in the blackness was the man she loved?

Stories traveled swiftly in the range country and she knew all that anyone knew. She knew of the killing of Lud Fuller, of the bitter, brief struggle that preceded it and how Blaine had ridden, shooting and slashing like a madman, through the very middle of Rink Witter’s killers. She had heard of Rink’s smashed nose, heard of the man screaming his rage and hatred, and of how slowly Blaine would die when he got him.

She had also heard that Utah Blaine was wounded. They had followed him part of the way by the drops of blood. He had been shot, but he had escaped. Had she known where he was, she would have gone to him. Had she had any idea…but it was best to remain here. He knew she was here, and here she would stay, waiting for him to come to her. And so he might come.

In the morning she would ride over to the 46 and get the dun stallion. She would bring that powerful black-faced horse back here, and she would feed him well, grain him well, against the time that Blaine would come for him.

At long last she returned to bed and she slept, and in the night the rains came and thunder muttered in the long canyons, grumbling over the stones and in the deep hollows of the night.

During the day she worked hard and steadily, trying to keep occupied and not to think. She cleaned the house, cleaned every room, dusted, swept, mopped, washed dishes that had been washed and never used. She wanted to sew but when sewing she would think and thinking was something she wanted to avoid. She prepared food, put coffee out where he could find it easily if he came, and banked the fire. Then she put on her slicker and saddling her own horse, started for the 46.

She might have trouble there, but the old hands had drifted away and probably nobody would be there. She would get the dun and bring him back. She would also leave a note, somewhere where only he would be apt to find it.

The rain fell in sheets, beating the ground hard. It was not far to the 46, but the trail was slippery and she held her mare down to a walk. Rain dripped from her hat brim and her horse grew dark with it. From each rise she stopped and studied the country. The tops of the mountains were lost in gray cloud that held itself low over the hills. The gullies all ran with water and caused her to swing around to use the safest crossings.

When she saw the 46 she was startled to see a horse standing there. Even as she saw it, a man in a slicker came from the stable and led the horse inside. From the distance she could not recognize him.

Her heart began to pound. She hesitated. No one must realize that she was friendly with Blaine, and it would not do for anyone to know that she had taken the dun to her place. They would watch her at once if they did know.

Keeping to the timber, she skirted the ranch at a distance, never out of sight, watching the stable to see who would emerge. Whoever it was must soon come out and go to the house. In her mind she saw him stripping the saddle off and rubbing the water from the horse. It would be soon now, very soon.

She drew up under a huge old tree that offered some shelter from the rain. The lightning had stopped and the thunder rumbled far away over the canyons back of Hardscrabble and Whiterock. She watched, smelling the fresh forest smells enhanced by rain and feeling the beat of occasional big drops on her hat and shoulders. Nothing happened, and then she saw the man come from the barn. Careful to leave no footprints, he kept to hard ground or rocks as he moved toward the house. There was no way to tell who it was or whether the man carried himself as if wounded.

The dun was standing with the other horses in the corral, tails to the rain, heads down. If that man had been Blaine she wanted desperately to see him. If it was not Blaine, she did not want to be seen but did want to get the dun out of the corral and away. Instinctively she knew that when Blaine could he would come to her. And when he did come she wanted his horse ready for him.

Whoever the man was, he would be watching the trail; so she started her horse and worked a precarious way down the mountain’s side through the trees.

Leaving her own horse she slipped down to the side of a big empty freight wagon. Then from behind it, she moved to the stable’s back. Through the window her eyes searched until they located the horse. Disappointment hit hard. Although she could not see the brand, the horse was certainly not the big stallion that Utah Blaine was reported to be riding.

The gate to the corral faced the house. There was no use trying to get the dun out that way. If she could only take down the bars to the corral…They were tied in place by iron-hard rawhide. She dug in her pocket for a knife and at the same time she called.

The dun’s head came up, ears pricked. Then curiously he walked across to her. She spoke to him gently and he put his nose toward her inquisitively, yet when she reached a hand for him he shied, rolling his eyes. She had seen Blaine feed him a piece of bread and had come prepared, hoping it would establish them on good terms. She took out the bread and fed it to him. He took it eagerly, touching it tentatively with his lips, then jerking it from her hand.

With careful hands she stroked his wet neck, then got a hackamore on him. Knife in hand she started to saw at the rawhide thongs.

“I wouldn’t,” a soft voice said, “do that!”

She turned quickly, frightened and wide-eyed. Standing just behind her, gun in hand, was Lee Fox! His big eyes burned curiously as they stared at her over the bulging cheekbones of his hard, cadaverous face; the eyes of a man who was not mentally normal.

Chapter 16

T
HE BLACK GELDING was sorely puzzled. There was a rider in the saddle but he was riding strangely and there was no guiding hand on the reins. It was the black’s instinct to return home, but the rider had started in this direction and so the horse continued on. As it walked memories began to return. Three years before it had known this country. As it sensed the familiarity of the country, its step quickened.

The memory of the black was good. This way had once been home. Maybe the rider wanted to go back. The gelding found its way through a canyon and found a vague trail leading up country between the mesa on the north and the stream that flowed from the springs.

Utah Blaine opened his eyes. His body was numb with pain and stiff from the pounding of rain. He straightened up and stared. Lightning flashed and showed him why the horse had stopped. On the right was a deep wash, roaring with flood; on the left there was the towering wall of a mesa with only a short, steep slope of talus. Directly in the trail was a huge boulder and the debris that had accompanied it in the slide.

His head throbbed and his hands were numb, and the rawhide binding his wrists to the pommel had cut into the skin. Fumbling with the knots, he got his hands loose and guided the horse forward. The narrow space between the boulder and the trail worried the gelding and it dabbed with a tentative hoof, then drew back, not liking it. “All right, old timer, we’ll try the other side.”

On the left was the steep slope of talus, yet at Blaine’s word the horse scrambled up and around. Suddenly there was a grinding roar from above them. Frightened, the gelding lunged and Blaine, only half conscious, slid from the saddle. In some half instinctive manner he kicked loose from the stirrups and fell soddenly into the trail.

The deafening roar of the slide thundered in his ears, stones cascaded over him and then dirt and dust. He started to rise, but a stone thudded against his skull and he fell back. The dirt and dust settled, and then as if impelled by the slide, the rain roared from the sky, pelting the trail like angry hail. The black gelding, beyond the slide, waited apprehensively. The trail bothered it, and after a few minutes it started away. Behind in the trail the wounded man lay still, half-buried in mud and dirt.

W
HEN THE RAIN pelting his face brought him out of it he turned over. Then he got to his knees, pain stabbing him. His head throbbed, and he was caked with mud and dirt. Staggering, he got over the barrier of the second slide. There was no sign of his horse and he walked on, falling and getting up, lunging into bushes, and finally crawling under a huge tree and lying there—sprawled out on the needles, more dead than alive.

There was no dawn, just a sickly yellow through the gray clouds. The black pines etched themselves against the sky, bending their graceful tops eastward. The big drops fell, and the wind prowled restlessly in the tops of the pines. Utah Blaine opened his eyes again, his face pressed to the sodden needles beneath the trees.

Rolling over, he sat up. His wound had bled again and his shirt was stuck to his side with dried blood. His head throbbed and his hair was full of blood and mud. There was a cut on his head where the stone had struck him. He felt for his guns and found them, held in place by the rawhide thongs he wore when riding.

Gingerly his fingers touched the cut and the lump surrounding it. The stone had hit him quite a belt. He struggled to get his feet under him and by clinging to the tree, hauled himself erect. His head spun like a huge top and there was a dull roaring inside his skull. Clinging to the tree, he looked around. There was no sign of the black horse.

He braced himself, then tried a step and managed to stay erect. There was a stream not far away and he made his way to the edge of it. For the time being there was no rain and he dug under a fallen log and peeled some bark from its dry side. Then he found a few leaves that were dry and a handful of grass. The lower and smaller limbs on the trees, scarcely more than large twigs, were dead and dry. These he broke off and soon he had a fire going.

When he had the flames going good he made a pot of bark and dipped up water. Then he propped the makeshift pot on a couple of stones to boil. His side was one raw, red-hot glow of agony, his head throbbed, and his body was stiff and sore. Removing his handkerchief from his neck he dried it over the fire. Then he took out his right-hand gun and cleaned it with care, wiping off all the shells. By the time that was finished, the gun returned to the holster, the water was boiling.

Soaking the bandage off the wound, he studied it as best he could. The bullet had gone through the flesh of his side just above the right hip bone, but it did not appear to have struck anything vital. His knowledge of anatomy was rusty at best. All he knew was that he had lost plenty of blood. The wound looked angry and inflamed. He began to examine the shrubs and brush close about and all he could find was the
yerba del pescado
, a plant with leaves dark on the upper side and almost white on the lower. Nearby, fortunately, he found its medicinal mate, the
yerba de San Pedro
. He ran his fingers through the leaves beneath them and found some that were partly dry. These he crushed together and placed on the wound after he had carefully bathed it. Then he rearranged the bandages as well as he could and felt better.

The sky was still somber, and he lay back, relaxing and resting. After a few minutes he put out his fire, cleaned his second gun, and got to his feet. How far he could go he did not know, but he was unsafe where he was. If the black returned home they would immediately back-track the gelding.

The mesa towering south of him would have to be Deadman, if he had kept on his course. There was no hope of escaping from the canyon now. Not with his present weakness. He would have to continue on. Walking on stones, he worked his way slowly and with many rests up along the canyon. He had to rest every fifty yards or so. But despite that, he covered some distance, his eyes always alert for a cave or other place he could use for a hideout.