Riding for the Brand (Ss) (1986) (21 page)

When he went over the next rise I turned my horse down the hill. Even before I rode up, I knew who the dead man was. I could see his horse lying in the cactus off to one side, and only one man in that country rode a bay with a white splash on the shoulder. It was Sheriff Todd.

There was a sign around, but I didn't need more than a glance at it to tell me what had happened.

Sheriff Todd had run into the Piute unexpectedlike and caught him flat-footed with stolen stock, the first time he had ever had that chance. Only from the look of it, Todd had been caught flat-footed himself. His gun was out, but unfired, and he had been shot twice in the stomach.

Lookin' down at that body, I felt something change inside me. I knowed right then, no matter how the nester come out, I was goin' to foller on my own hook. For Sheriff Todd was still alive when he hit the ground, and that Piute had bent over him, put a pistol to the side of his head, and blowed half his head off! There were powder burns around that hole in his temple where the bullet went in. It had been coldblooded murder.

Swinging a leg over that gelding, I was startin' off when I happened to think of a gun, and turned back and recovered the one Sheriff Todd had worn. I also got his saddle gun out of the scabbard and started off, trailin' the nester.

From now on the sign was bad. The Piute knowed he was up against it now. He was takin' time to blot his tracks, and if it hadn't been for Morley, I'd never have trailed him half as far as I did.

We hadn't gone more than a few miles further before I saw something that turned me plumb cold inside. The Piute had turned off at the Big Joshua and was headin' down the trail toward Rice Flats!

That scared me, because Rice Flats was where my girl lived down there in a cabin with her kid brother and her ma, and they had lived there alone ever since her dad fell asleep and tumbled off his spring wagon into the canyon. The Piute had been nosin' around the flats long enough to scare Julie some, but I reckon it was the sheriff who had kept him away.

Now Sheriff Todd was gone, and the Piute knowed he was on the dodge from here on. He would know that killin' Sheriff Todd was the last straw, and he'd have to get clean out of the country. Knowin' that, he'd know he might's well get hung for one thing as another.

As my gelding was a right fast horse, I started him movin' then. I jacked a shell into the chamber of the sheriff's carbine and I wasn't thinkin' much about the nester. Yet by the time I got to the cabin on the flats, I knowed I was too late.

My steel-dust came into the yard at a dead run and I hit the dust and went for that house like a saddle tramp for a chuck wagon. I busted inside and took a quick look around. Ma Frank was lyin' on the bed with a big gash in her scalp, but she was conscious.

"Don't mind me"... She said. "Go after that Injun! He has taken out with Julie on her black!"

"What about you?" I asked, although goodness knows I was wantin' nothin' more than to be out and after Julie.

""Brose'll be back right soon. He rid over to Elmer's after some side meat."

'Brose was short for Ambrose, her fourteenyear-old boy, so knowin" he'd be back, I swung a leg over that saddle and headed out for the hills.

My steel-dust knowed somethin' was in the wind and he hustled his hocks for those hills like he was headin' home from a trail drive.

The Piute had Julie and he was a killin' man, a killin' man who knowed he was up the crick without a paddle now, and if he was got alive he'd be rope meat for sure. No man ever bothered a woman or killed a man as well liked in that country as Sheriff Todd without ridin' under a cottonwood limb. Me, I'm a plumb peaceable sort of hand, but when I seen the sheriff back there I got my dander up. Now that Piute had stole my girl, I was a wild man.

Ever see that country out toward the White Hills? God must have been cleanin' up the last details of the job when He made that country, and just dumped a lot of the slag and wastin's down in a lot of careless heaps. Ninety percent of that country stands on end, and what doesn't stand on end is dryer than a salt desert and hotter than a bronc on a hot rock.

The Piute knowed every inch of it, and he was showin' us all he knowed. We went down across a sunbaked flat where weird dust devils danced like crazy in a world where there was nothin' but heat and dust and misery for man and beast. No cactus there, not even salt grass or yeso.

Nothin' growed there, and the little winds that stirred along the dusty levels made you think of snakes glidin' along the ground.

My gelding slowed to a walk an' we plodded on, and somewhere miles ahead, beyond the wall of sun dancin' heat waves, there was a column of dust, a thin, smoky trail where the nester rode ahead of me. Right then, I began to have a sight of respect for that long-legged yellow horse he was ridin' because he kept on goin' an' even gained ground on my steel-dust.

Finally we got out of that hell's valley and took a trail along the rusty edge of some broken rock, windin' higher toward some sawtooth ridges that gnawed at the sky like starvin' coyotes in a dry season. That trail hung like an eyebrow to the face of the cliff we skirted, an' twice, away up ahead, I heard shots. I knowed they was shots from the Piute, because I'd seen that carbine the nester carried. It was a Spencer .56.

Never seen one? Mister, all they lack is wheels!

A caliber .56 with a bore like a cannon, and, them shootin' soft-nosed lead bullets. What they do to a man ain't pretty, like you'll know. I knowed well enough it wasn't the nester shootin' because when you unlimber a Spencer .56 she has a bellow like a mad bull in a rock canyon.

Sundown came and then the night, an' little breezes picked up and blew cool and pleasant down from the hills. Stop? There was no time for stoppin'. I knew my gelding would stand anything the Piute's horse would, and I knowed by the shootin' that the Piute knowed the nester was on his trail. He wasn't goin' to get nary a chance to cool his heels with that nester tailin' him down them draws and across the bunch-grass levels.

The Piute? I wasn't worried so much about Julie now. He might kill her, but that I doubted as long as he had a prayer of gettin' away with her. He was goin' to have to keep movin' or shoot it out.

The longer I rode, the more respect I got for Bin Morley. He stuck to that Piute's trail like a cocklebur to a sheep, and that yellow horse of his just kept his head down and kept moseyin' along those trails like he was born to "em, and he probably was.

The stars came out and then the moon lifted, and they kept on goin". My steel-dust was I beginnin' to drag his heels, and so I knowed the end was comin'. At that, it was "most mornin" before it did come.

How far we'd come or where we were I had no idea. All I knew was that up ahead of me was the Piute with my girl, and I wanted a shot at him.

Nobody needed to tell me I was no hand to tie in a gun battle with the Piute with him holdin' a sixgun.

He was too slick a hand for me.

Then all of a sudden as the sky was turnin' gray and the hills were losin' their shadows, I rounded a clump of cottonwoods and there was that yellow horse, standin' three footed, croppin' absently at the first green grass in miles.

The nester was nowhere in sight, but I swung down and with the carbine in hand, started down through the trees, catfootin' in along with no idea what I might see or where they could have gone. Then all of a sudden I come out on the edge of a cliff and looked down at a cabin in a grassy basin, maybe a hundred feet below and a good four hundred yards away.

Standin' in front of that cabin were two horses.

My face was pretty pale, an' my stomach felt sick, but I headed for the trail down, when I heard a scream. It was Julie!

Then, in front of the cabin, I heard a yell, and that durned nester stepped right out in plain sight and started walking up to the cabin, and he wasn't more than thirty yards away from it.

That fool nester knowed he was askin' for it.

The Piute might have shot from behind the door jamb or from a window, but maybe the nester figured I was behind him and he might draw him out for my fire. Or maybe he figured his comin' out in the open would make him leave the girl alone. Whatever his reason, it worked. The Piute stepped outside the door.

Me? I was standin' up there like a fool, just a-gawkin', while there, right in front of my eyes, the Piute was goin' to kill a man. Or was he?

He was playin' big Injun right then. Maybe he figured Julie was watchin' or maybe he thought the nester would scare. Mister, that nester wouldn't scare a copper cent.

The Piute swaggered about a dozen steps out from the cabin and stood there, his thumbs in his belt, sneerin'. The nester, he just moseyed along kind of ladylike, carryin' his old Spencer in his right hand like he'd plumb forgot about his hand gun.

Then, like it was on a stage, I seen it happen.

That Piute went for his guns and the nester swung up his Spencer. There was two shots then a third.

It's a wonder I didn't break my neck gettin' down that trail, but when I run up, the Piute was lyin' there on his back with his eyes glazin' over.

I took one look an' then turned away, and you can call me a pie-eatin' tenderfoot, but I was sick as I could be. Mister, did you ever see a man who'd been hit by two soft-nosed .56 caliber bullets? In the stummick?

Bin Morley come out with Julie, and I straightened up an' she run over to me and began askin' how Ma was. She wasn't hurt none, as the nester got there just in time.

We took the horses back, and then I fell behind with the nester. I jerked my head toward the Piute's body.

"You goin' to bury him?" I asked.

He looked at me like he thought I was soft in the head.

"What fur? He picked the place hisself, didn't he?"

We mounted up.

"Besides"... He said, "I've done lost two whole days as it is, and gettin' behind on my work ain't goin' to help none."... He was stuffin' something in his slicker on the back of his horse.

"What's that?" I asked.

"A ham"... He said grimly, "a whole ham. I brung it clean from Tucson, an' that durned Piute stole it off me. Right out of my cabin.

Ma, she was out pickin' berries when it happened."

"You mean"... I said, "you trailed the Piute clean over here just for a ham?"

"Mister"... The nester spat, "you durned right I did! Why Ma and me ain't et no hawg meat since we left Missoury, comin' three year ago!"

The steel-dust started to catch up with Julie's pony, but I heard the nester sayin', "Never was no hand to eat beef, nohow. Too durned stringy.

Gets in my teeth!"

*

Author's Note:

From the beginning it was imperative that men marching west shoot well. Surgeon John Gale, of the Missouri Expedition in 1819 tells of training given to the soldiers on the western march. They were firing ball cartridges.

"Those who hit a circle of three inches diameter offhand at fifty yards three times in six are raised from the awkward squad to second class.

Those who hit the same mark at one hundred yards three times in six are raised to first class.

They make rapid improvement. There are but few who are not in the first class."

*

Barney Takes a Hand.

Blinding white sun simmered above the thick, flourlike dust of the road, and the ragged mesquite beside the trail was gray with that same dust. Between the ranch and the distant purple hills, there was nothing but endless flats and sagebrush, dusty and dancing with heat waves.

Tess Bayeux stood in the doorway and shaded her eyes against the sun. The road was empty, empty to the horizon beyond which lay the little cow town of Black Mesa.

With a little sigh of hopelessness, she turned away. It was too soon. Even if Rex Tilden had received her note and decided to come, he could never come so quickly.

After an hour, during which she forced herself not to look even once, she returned to the door.

The road was still empty, only white dust and heat. Then her eyes turned the other way, and she looked out across the desert, out to where the road dwindled off to a miserable trail into the badlands where nothing lived. For an instant then, she thought the heat played tricks with her eyes, for between her and the distant cliffs was a tiny figure.

Struck by curiosity, she stood in the doorway, watching. She was a slender girl with a pert, impudent little nose above a friendly mouth and lips that laughed when her eyes did.

She was still there, much later, when the figure took shape and became a man. The man wore no hat. His shaggy black hair was white with dust, his heavy woolen shirt was open at the neck, and his hairy chest was also dusty.

The man's face was unshaven, and his jaw was I heavy, almost brutal under the beard and dust.

The jeans he wore were strange to the cow country, and his feet wore the ragged remains of what had been sneakers. His jeans were belted with a wide leather belt, curiously carved.

He wore no gun.

Several times the man staggered, and finally, m when he turned from the road and stopped at the II gate, he grasped the top with his big hands and f bar stared at Tess Bayeux.