the Outlaws Of Mesquite (Ss) (1990) (14 page)

The spring is in a plain, but the country is rough and broken, and the ground slopes off a little into a sort of hollow. The pozo is in the bottom. At noon, on the second day after I figured Larik Feist would have left them, I was sitting back in the brush with my field glasses and a rifle.

He was more than an hour late getting to the pozo, but I was taking it easy back in a tall clump of cholla and mesquite when I heard his horse. It was hot-a still, blazing noon in the desert when he drew up at the water hole. Lifting my Winchester, I put a bullet into the sand at his feet. He jerked around and jumped for his rifle, but as he lifted it, I smashed two shots at the stock and he dropped it as if it was hot. The stock was splintered. He stood stock-still, his hands lifted.

Getting to my feet, I walked down the hill.

Once he made a motion as if to go for his gun, but I fired the rifle from the hip and grooved the leather of his holster. When I stepped into the open we were thirty yards apart.

His face was flushed with heat and fury, and he glared at me, the hatred a living thing in his eyes. "You, is it? I might have guessed."

"What kept you so long, Feist?" I said.

"I've been waiting for you."

"How'd you get here? How'd you know I'd be coming this way?"

"Simple." I smiled at him, taking my time.

Then I let him have it, about the map I had, how the Lost Village was not lost, and how there was no mine at all there, and no gold, and never had been.

"So you knew all the time?" It made him furious to think that. "Now what are you going to do?"

"Take you in. I wired Tucson about you. They are checking with other places. You'll be wanted some place." My rifle tilted a little. "Drop your gun belts," I told him. "Or, if you feel lucky, try to draw."

Gingerly, he moved his hands to his belt buckle, and unfastening it, he let the belt drop. Then, stepping carefully, he moved away. I closed in and picked up the belt, then shucked shells from the gun, and stuck the belt and gun in my seaaddle-bag. Then I spoke again to Larik Feist: "Now get ready to travel, fellow."

Three days later I rode into town with Larik Feist tied to his saddle. He had made one break to escape, and had taken a NO REST FOR THE WICKED bad beating. His eyes were swollen shut and his beard matted with blood and sand. He looked like he had been dragged through a lava bed on his face.

There was nobody in sight. Soon a few people, mostly women, came to the doors to watch.

Luke Fair strolled out finally. I handed him the pouch containing the money I'd recovered.

"Where's everybody? Did you find "em?"

Fair grinned at me. "Found 'em just like you said, afoot and out of water. He'd stolen their horses and canteens, but I rounded up the horses that he'd turned loose, and we started back."

"But where are they?"

He chuckled. "Mining," he said. "Working one of the richest ledges I ever saw. We started back, but about ten miles below the border, Powers sits down for a rest and crumbles a piece of rotten quartz, and it was fairly alive with gold. So they all staked claims an" they all figure that they're going to get rich."

He started to walk toward the bank, then stopped.

"Maria's in town," he said.

When I'd jailed Feist, I thought about it.

Suddenly, I knew what I was doing. The law could have Feist and they could have their marshal's job.

Maria opened the door for me, and she'd never looked prettier. Some of it was last-minute fixin'-I could easily see that.

My badge was in my hand. "Give that to your dad," I said. "He and Powers wanted a new marshal-now they can get him."

"But they were angry, Lou!" she protested. "They weren't thinking!"

"Be the same way next time. Feist is in jail. You can turn him over to the law, or hang him, or let him rot there, or turn him loose, for all of me."

Maria looked at me. She didn't know what to say. She was pretty and she knew it, but suddenly that meant nothing at all to me and she saw it. And believe me, it was the only thing she had, the only weapon and the only asset. I could see that then, which I couldn't see before.

"Where are you going?" she asked, hesitantly.

My horse was standing there and I stepped into the saddle.

"Why," I said, "I've been setting here since I was a kid talking to folks who'd been places.

Once I made a trip to Tombstone, but this time, I'm really traveling. I'm going clear to Tucson!"

So I rode out of town, and I never looked back.

Not once.

*

That Pack
saddle Affair
Author's Note:

One of the things you didn't do in the West was bother a woman. It rarely happened.

Women were scarce and valued accordingly. A lot of men grew up reading the novels of Sir Walter Scott and they adopted the author's notions of chivalry. There are many, many accounts in diaries and elsewhere of women traveling back and forth across the West alone and never being disturbed in the least.

If a woman got off a stage at a stage-stop to get something to eat, and a man didn't get up to give her a place at the table, somebody else knocked him off the seat so she could be seated. You couldn't even bump into a woman walking in the street without somebody knocking you into the ground for it.

Women were treated with great respect and this was universal all over the frontier. It was one thing you didn't transgress.

*

Red
Clanahan, a massive man with huge shoulders and a wide-jawed face, was no longer in a hurry. The energetic posse which had clung so persistently to his trail had been left behind on the Pecos. Their horses had played out and two of them were carrying double.

Red had pushed on to Lincoln, where he'd swapped his sorrel for a long-legged, deep-chested black with three white stockings. Then with only time out for a quick meal and a changing of saddles, he'd headed west for the Rio Grande and beyond it, the forks of the Gila.

Packsaddle Stage Station was a long, low building of adobe, an equally long, low stable, and two pole corrals. There was a stack of last year's hay and a fenced-in pasture where several stage horses grazed, placid in the warm morning sun.

Three saddled horses stood three-legged at the hitch-rail, and a drowsy Mexican, already warming up for his siesta, sat in the shade alongside the building.

Slipping the thongs from his pistol butt, Clanahan rode down the last hundred yards to the station and dismounted at the trough. Keeping his horse between himself and the station, he loosened the cinch a little and then led the horse to a patch of grass in the shade alongside the trail. Only then did he start for the station.

A narrow-shouldered man with a thin wolf's face had come from the stage station and was watching him.

He wore a gun butt forward in a right-side holster, which might be used for either the left or right hand.

"Come down the trail?" he asked, his narrow eyes taking in Clanahan with cool attention.

"Part way. Came down from the Forks and across the Flat."

"Stage is late." The tall man still watched him.

"Wondered if you'd seen it?"

"No." Clanahan walked on by and opened the station door. It was cool and shadowed inside. There were several tables, chairs, and a twenty-foot bar at which two men lounged, talking to the barkeep. Another man sat at a table in the farthest corner. Both the men at the bar looked rough and trail-wise.

Red Clanahan moved to the end of the bar and stopped there where he could watch all the men and the door as well. "Rye," he said, when the bartender glanced his way.

As he waited, he rested his big hands on the bar and managed a glance toward the silent man in the corner. The man just sat there with his hands clasped loosely on the table, unmoving. He wore a hat that left only his mouth and chin visible at this distance and in this light. He wore a string tie and a frock coat.

There was a situation here that Red could not fathom, but he realized he had walked into something happening or about to happen-probably connected with the arrival of the stage.

The man from outside came back in. His hips were wider than his shoulders and the holster gave him a peculiarly lopsided appearance.

Red Clanahan had a shock of red hair and a red-brown face with cold green eyes above high, flat cheekbones. Once seen, he was not easily forgotten, for he was six feet three and weighed an easy two hundred and thirty pounds. And there were places where he was not only known, but wanted.

There was a matter of some cattle over in Texas.

Red's father had died while he was away, and when he returned he found that the three thousand head his father had tallied, shortly before his death, had mysteriously been absorbed by two larger herds. With no legal channels of recovery open to him, Red had chosen illegal methods, and one thing had led to another.

Red Clanahan was high on the list of men wanted in Texas.

He finished his drink and had another. Then he looked over at the bartender. "How about some grub?"

The bartender was a big man, too, with a round face and two chins but small, twinkling eyes and a bald head. He removed his cigar and nodded. "When the stage comes in- "most any time."

The two men turned to look at him. Then the tall man looked around at the bartender. "Feed him now, Tom. Maybe he wants to ride on."

Red glanced up, his cold green eyes on the speaker. "I can wait," he said coolly.

One of the other men turned. He was short and thickset, with a scar on his jaw. "Maybe we don't want you to wait," he said.

Red Clanahan looked into the smaller man's eyes for a long, slow minute. "I don't give a royal damn what you want," he said quietly.

"Whatever you boys are cookin", don't get it in my way or I'll bust up your playhouse."

He reached for the bottle and drew it nearer as the short man started toward him. "Listen, you-was He came one step too close and Red Clanahan hit him across the mouth with the back of his big hand. The blow seemed no more than a gesture but it knocked the shorter man sprawling across the room, his lips a bloody pulp.

Red met the gaze of the other men without moving or turning a hair. "Want in?" he said. "I'm not huntin' trouble but maybe you're askin' for it."

The tall man with the narrow shoulders looked ugly.

"You swing a wide loop, stranger. Perhaps you're cuttin' into something too big for you."

"I doubt it."

His cool assurance worried Ebb Fallen. They had a job to do, and starting a fight with this stranger was no way to do it. Who was the man? Fallon stared at him, trying to remember. He was somebody, no doubt about that.

Shorty Taber got up slowly from the floor. Still dazed, he touched his fingers to his crushed lips and stared at the blood. Pure hatred was in his eyes as he looked up at Clanahan.

"I'll kill you for that," Taber said.

Red Clanahan reached for the bottle and filled his glass.

"Better stick to punchin' cows," he said. "Quit goin' around pickin' fights with strangers. You'll live longer."

Taber glared at him and his right hand dropped a fraction. Red was looking at him, still holding the bottle. "Don't try it," he warned. "I could take a drink and shoot both your ears off before you cleared leather."

Taber hesitated, then turned and walked to his friends. They whispered among themselves for a few minutes while the bartender polished a glass. Through it all, the man at the table had not moved. In the brief silence there was a distant pounding of hoofs and a rattle of wheels.

Instantly, two of the three turned to the door. The third stepped back and dropped into a chair near the wall, but facing the door. The bartender looked nervously at Red Clanahan. "We'll serve grub when the passengers arrive," he said. "They change teams here."

The stage drew up out front and then the door opened. Two men and a woman came in, and then a girl. She was slender and tall, with large violet eyes. She looked quickly toward the bar. Then her eyes touched fleetingly on Red's face, and she went on to the table and seated herself there.

Obviously, she was disturbed.

Red Clanahan saw her eyes go to the third of the three riders, the fattish man who had remained indoors. Red happened to turn his head slightly and was shocked by the expression on the bartender's face.

He was dead-white and his brow was beaded with sweat.

The passengers ate quietly. Finally the driver came in, had a drink, and turned. "Rolling!" he called. "Let's go!"

All got to their feet, and as they did, Ebb Fallen walked to the door, standing where the passengers had to brush him to get by. The girl was last to leave. As she turned to the door, the man at the nearby table got up.

"All right, Ebb," he said, "tell "em to roll it."

He moved toward the girl. "My name's Porter, ma'am. You'd best sit down."

"But I've got to get on the stage!" she protested indignantly. "I can't stay."