He had gone almost a hundred yards when he saw the woman.
He crouched low to the sandy ground and crawled under the full branches of a pine, watching the woman almost thirty yards away. She was sitting on something just off the ground, her back resting against the smoothness of a birch tree.
He was approaching her from the rear and could see only part of her head and shoulder resting against the tree trunk. The brush near her cut off the lower part of her body, but there was something strange about her position-her immobility, the way her shoulder was thrown back so tightly against the roundness of the birch. Street had the feeling she was dead. Time would tell.
He lay motionless under the thick foliage and waited, the Winchester in front of him. And Simon Street had his thoughts. You never get used to the sight of a white woman after an Apache has finished with her. An hour later, a week later, a dozen years later, the picture will flash in your memory, vivid, stark naked of hazy forgetfulness.
And the form of the Apache will be there, too, close like the smothering reek of a hot animal, though you may have never seen him. Then you will be sick if you are the kind. Street wasn"t the kind, but he didn"t look forward to approaching the woman.
After almost a half hour he again began to work his way toward the woman. In that length of time he had not moved. Nor had the woman. If she was dead, the Apache would probably be gone. But that was guessing, and when you guess, you take a chance.
He crawled all the way, slowly, a foot at a time, until he was directly behind the birch. Then he reached up, his hand sliding along the white bark, and touched her shoulder lightly.
Amelia Darck jumped to her feet and turned in the motion. Her face was powder white, her eyes wide, startled; but when she saw the scout the color seemed to creep through her cheeks and her mouth broke into a fragile smile.
"You"re late, Mr. Street. I"ve waited a good many hours."
The scout was momentarily stunned. He knew his face bore a foolish expression, but there was nothing he could do about it.
The woman"s face regained its composure quickly and once again she was the colonel"s lady. Though there was a drawn look and a darker shadow about the eyes that could not be wiped away with a polite smile.
Then Street saw the Apache. He was lying belly down in the short gra.s.s, close behind Mrs. Darck. Street took a step to her side and saw the handle of the skinning knife sticking straight up from the Apache"s back. The cotton shirt was deep crimson in a wide smear around the knife handle.
He looked at her again with the foolish look still on his face.
"Mr. Street, I"ve been sitting up all night with a dead Indian and I"m almost past patience. Would you kindly take me to my husband."
He looked again at the Apache and then to the woman. Disbelief in his eyes. He started to say something, but Amelia Darck went on.
"I"ve lived out here most of my life, Mr. Street, as you know. I heard Apache war drums long before I attended my first cotillion, but I have hardly reached the point where I have to take an Apache for a lover."
Simon Street saw a thousand troops and a hundred scouts in the field. Then he looked at the slender woman walking briskly up the grade.
6.
Law of the Hunted Ones.
Original t.i.tle: Outlaw Pa.s.s Western Story Magazine, Western Story Magazine, December 1952 December 1952
Chapter One.
PATMAN SAW IT first. The sudden flash of sun on metal; then, on the steepness of the hillside, it was a splinter of a gleam that hung unmoving amidst the confusion of jagged rock and brush. Just a dull gleam now that meant nothing, but the first metallic flash had been enough for Virgil Patman.
He exhaled slowly, dropping his eyes from the gleam up on the slanting wall, and let his gaze drift up ahead through the narrowness, the way it would naturally. But his fists remained tight around the reins. He muttered to himself, "You d.a.m.n fool." Cover was behind, a hundred feet or more, and a rifle can do a lot of pecking in a hundred feet.
The boy doesn"t see it, he thought. Else he would have been shooting by now. And then other words followed in his mind. Why do you think the boy"s any dumber than you are?
He shifted his hip in the saddle and turned his head halfway around. Dave Fallis was a few paces behind him and to the side. He was looking at his hands on the flat dinner-plate saddle horn, deep in thought.
Patman drew tobacco and paper from his side coat pocket and held his mount in until the boy came abreast of him.
"Don"t look up too quick and don"t make a sudden move," Patman said. He pa.s.sed the paper along the tip of his tongue, then shaped it expertly in his bony, freckly fingers. He wasn"t looking at the boy, but he could sense his head come up fast. "What did I just tell you?"
He struck a match and held it to the brown paper cigarette. His eyes were on the match and he half-mumbled with the cigarette in his mouth, "Dave, hold on to your nerve. There"s a rifle pointing at us. Maybe two hundred feet ahead and almost to the top of the slope." He handed the makings across. "Build yourself one like it was Sunday afternoon on the front porch."
Their horses moved at a slow walk close to the left side that was smooth rock and almost straight up. Here, and as far as you could see ahead, the right side slanted steeply up, gravel, rock and brush thrown violently together, to finally climb into dense pines overhead. Here and there the pines straggled down the slope. Patman watched the boy put the twisted cigarette between his lips and light it, the hand steady, up close to his face.
"When you get a chance," Patman said, "look about halfway up the slope, just this side of that hollow. You"ll see a dab of yellow that"s p.r.i.c.kly pear, then go above to that rock jam and tell me what you see."
Fallis pulled his hat closer to his eyes and looked up-canyon before dragging his gaze to the slope. His face registered nothing, not even a squint with the hat brim resting on his eyebrows. A hard-boned face, tight through the cheeks and red-brown from the sun, but young and with a good mouth that looked as if it smiled most of the time, though it wasn"t smiling now. His gaze lowered to the pa.s.s and he drew on the cigarette.
"Something shining up there, but I don"t make out what it is," he said.
"It"s a rifle, all right. We"ll take for granted somebody"s behind it."
"Indian?"
"Not if the piece is so clean it shines," Patman answered. "Just keep going, and watch me. We"ll gamble that it"s a white man-and gamble that he acts like one."
Fallis tried to keep his voice even. "What if he just shoots?" The question was hoa.r.s.e with excitement. Maybetheboy"snota.s.scaredasIam, Maybetheboy"snota.s.scaredasIam, Patman thought. Patman thought. You get old and take too You get old and take too oung and too eager to be afraid. Y d.a.m.n much time doing what kept you alive when you were young. Why keep thinking of him, he thought, he thought, you got a hide too, you know. you got a hide too, you know.
Patman answered, "If he shoots, we"ll know where we stand and you can do the first thing that comes to your mind."
"Then I might let go at you," Fallis smiled, "for leading us into this jackpot."
Patman"s narrow face looked stone-hard with its sad smile beneath the full mustache. "If you want to make jokes," he said, "go find someone else."
"What"re we going to do, Virg?" Fallis was dead serious. It made his face look tough when he didn"t smile, with the heavy cheekbones and the hard jawline beneath.
"We don"t have a h.e.l.l of a lot of choices," Patman said. "If we kick into a run or turn too fast, we"re likely to get a bullet. You don"t want to take a chance on that gent up there being the nervous type. And if we just start shooting, we haven"t got anything to hide behind when he shoots back."
He heard the boy say, "We can get behind our horses."
He answered him, "I"d just as soon get shot as have to walk home. You got any objections to just going on like we don"t know he"s there?"
Fallis shook his head, swallowing. "Anything you say, Virg. Probably he"s just out hunting turkeys. . . ." He dropped behind the older man as they edged along the smooth rock of the canyon wall until there was ten feet between their horses.
THEY RODE STIFF-BACKED, from habit, yet with an easy looseness of head and arms that described an absence of tension. Part of it was natural, again habit, and part was each trying to convince the other that he wasn"t afraid. Patman and Fallis were good for each other. They had learned it through campaigning.
Now, with the tightness in their bellies, they waited for the sound. The clop of their horses" hooves had a dull ring in the awful silence. They waited for another sound.
Both men were half expecting the heavy report of a rifle. They steeled themselves against the worst that could happen, because anything else would take care of itself. The sound of the loose rock glanc ing down the slope was startling, like a warning to jerk their heads to the side and up the slanting wall.
The man was standing in the spot where Patman had pointed, his rifle at aim, so that all they could see was the rifle below the hat. No face.
"Don"t move a finger, or you"re dead!" The voice was full and clear. The man lowered the rifle and called, "Sit still while I come down."
He turned and picked his way over the scattered rock, finally half sliding into the hollow that was behind his position. The hollow fell less steeply to the canyon floor with natural rock footholds and gnarled brush stumps to hold on to.
For a moment the man"s head disappeared from view, then was there again just as suddenly. He hesitated, watching the two men below him and fifty feet back up the trail. Then he disappeared again into a deeper section of the descent.
Dave Fallis" hand darted to the holster at his hip.
"Hold onto yourself!" Patman"s whisper was a growl in his heavy mustache. His eyes flicked to the hollow. "He"s not alone! You think he"d go out of sight if he was by himself!"
The boy"s hand slid back to the saddle horn while his eyes traveled over the heights above him. Only the hot breeze moved the brush clumps.
The man moved toward them on the trail ahead with short, bowlegged steps, his face lowered close to the upraised rifle. When he was a dozen steps from Patman"s horse, his head came up and he shouted, "All right!" to the heights behind them. Fallis heard Patman mumble, "I"ll be d.a.m.ned," looking at the man with the rifle.
"Hey, Rondo!" Patman was grinning his sad smile down at the short, bowlegged man with the rifle. "What you got here, a toll you collect from anybody who goes by?" Patman laughed out, with a ring of relief to the laugh. "I saw you a ways back. Your toll box was shining in the sun." He went on laughing and put his hand in his side coat pocket.
The rifle came up full on his chest. "Keep your hand in sight!" The man"s voice cut sharply.
Patman looked at him surprised. "What"s the matter with you, Rondo? It"s me. Virg Patman." His arm swung to his side. "This here"s Dave Fallis. We rode together in the Third for the past five years."
Rondo"s heavy-whiskered face stared back, the deep lines unmoving as if they had been cut into stone. The rifle was steady on Patman"s chest.
"What the h.e.l.l"s the matter with you!" Patman repeated. "Remember me bringing you your bait for sixty days at Thomas?"
Rondo"s beard separated when his mouth opened slightly. "You were on the outside, if I remember correctly."
Patman swore with a gruff howl. "You talk like I pa.s.sed sentence! You d.a.m.n fool, what do you think a Corporal of the Guard is-a judge?" His head turned to Fallis. "This bent-legged waddie shoots a reservation Indian, gets sixty days, then blames it on me. You remember him in the lock-up?"
"No. I guess-"
"That"s right," Patman cut in. "That was before your time."
Rondo looked past the two men.
"That wasn"t before my time." The voice came from behind the two men.
HE WAS SQUATTING on a hump that jutted out from the slope, just above their heads and a dozen or so feet behind them, and he looked as if he"d been sitting there all the time. When he looked at him, Fallis thought of a scavenger bird perched on the bloated roundness of a carca.s.s.
It was his head and the thinness of his frame that gave that impression. His dark hair was cropped close to his skull, brushed forward low on his forehead and coming to a slight point above his eyebrows. The thin hair pointed down, as did the ends of a shadowy mustache that was just starting to grow, lengthening the line of his face, a face that was sallow complexioned and squinting against the brightness of the afternoon.
He jumped easily from the hump, his arms outstretched and a pistol in each hand, though he wore only one holster on his hip.
Fallis watched him open-mouthed. He wore a faded undershirt and pants tucked into knee-high boots. A string of red cotton was knotted tight to his throat above the opening of the undershirt. And with it all, the yellowish death"s-head of a face. Fallis watched because he couldn"t take his eyes from the man. There was a compelling arrogance about his movements and the way he held his head that made Fallis stare at him. And even with the shabbiness of his dress, it stood out. It was there in the way he held his pistols. Fallis pictured a saber-slashing captain of cavalry. Then he saw a black-bearded buccaneer.
"I remember when Rondo was in the lock-up at Fort Thomas." His voice was crisp, but low and he extra-s.p.a.ced his words. "That was a good spell before you rode me to Yuma, wasn"t it?"
Patman shook his head. The surprise had already left his face. He shook his head wearily as if it was all way above him. He said, "If you got any more men up there that I policed, get "em down and let me hear it all at once." He shook his head again. "This is a real day of surprises. I can"t say I ever expected to see you again, De Sana."
"Then what are you doing here?" The voice was cold-clear, but fell off at the end of the question as if he had already made up his mind why they were there.
Patman saw it right away.
It took Fallis a little longer because he had to fill in, but he understood now, looking at De Sana and then to Patman.
Patman"s voice was a note higher. "You think we"re looking for you?"
"I said," De Sana repeated, "then what are you doing here?"
"h.e.l.l, we"re not tracking you! We were mustered out last week. We"re pointing toward West Texas for a range job, or else sign for contract buffalo hunters."
De Sana stared, but didn"t speak. His hands, with the revolving pistols, hung at his sides.
"What do I care if you broke out of the Territory prison?" Patman shouted it, then seemed to relax, to calm himself. "Listen," he said, "we"re both mustered out. Dave here has got one hitch in, and I"ve got more years behind me than I like to remember. But we"re out now and what the army does is its own d.a.m.n business. And what you do is your business. I can forget you like that." He snapped his fingers. " "Cause you don"t mean a thing to me. And that dust-eatin" train ride from Willc.o.x to Yuma, I can forget that too, "cause I didn"t enjoy it any more than you did even if you thought then you weren"t going to make the return trip. You"re as bad as Rondo here. You think "cause I was train guard it was my fault you got sent to Yuma. Listen. I treated you square. There were some troopers would have kicked your face in just on principle."
De Sana moistened his lower lip with his tongue, idly, thinking about the past and the future at the same time. A man has to believe in something, no matter what he is. He looked at the two men on the horses and felt the weight of the pistols in his hands. There was the easy way. He looked at them watching him uneasily, waiting for him to make a move.
"Going after a range job, huh?" he said almost inaudibly. "That"s right. Or else hunt buffalo. They say the railroad"s paying top rate, too," Patman added. "How do I know," De Sana said slowly, "you won"t get to the next sheriff"s office and start yelling wolf." Patman was silent as his fingers moved over his jaw. "I guess you"ll have to take my word that I"ve got a bad memory," he said finally. "What kind of memory has your friend got?" De Sana said, looking hard at Dave Fallis.
"You got the biggest pistols he ever saw," Patman answered.
Rondo mounted behind Patman and pointed the way up the narrow draw that climbed from the main trail about a quarter of a mile up. It branched from the pa.s.s, twisting as it climbed, but more decidedly bearing an angle back in the direction from which they had come. Rondo had laughed out at Patman"s last words. The tension was off now. Since De Sana had accepted the two men, Rondo would too, and went even a step further, talking about hospitality and coffee and words like this calls for a celebration, even though the words were lost on the other three men. The words had no meaning but they filled in and lessened the tension.
Chapter Two.
DE SANA WAS still standing in the pa.s.s when they left, but when Fallis looked back he saw the outlaw making his way up the hollow.
When the draw reached the end of its climb they were at the top of the ridge, looking down directly to the place where they had held up. Here, the pines were thick, but farther off they scattered and thinned again as they began to stretch toward higher, rockier ground.
De Sana was standing among the trees waiting for them. He turned before they reached him and led the way through the pines. Fallis looked around curiously, feeling the uneasiness that had come over him since meeting De Sana. Then, as he looked ahead, the hut wasn"t fifty feet away.
It was a low structure, flat-roofed and windowless, with rough, uneven logs c.h.i.n.ked in with adobe mud. On one side was a lean-to where the cooking was done. A girl was hanging strips of meat from the low ceiling when they came out of the pines, and as they approached she turned with a hand on her hip, smoothing a stray wisp of hair with the other.
She watched them with open curiosity, as a small child stares at the mystery of a strange person. There was a delicateness of face and body that accentuated this, that made her look more childlike in her open sensitivity. De Sana glanced at her and she dropped her eyes and turned back to the jerked meat.
"Put the coffee on," De Sana called to her. She nodded her head without turning around. "Rondo, you take care of the mounts and get back to your nest."
Rondo opened his mouth to say something but thought better of it and tried to make his face look natural when he took the reins from the two men and led the horses across the small clearing to the corral, part of which could be seen through the pines a little way off. A three-sided lean-to squatted at one end of the small, fenced area.
"That"s Rondo"s," De Sana pointed to the shelter. Walking to the cabin he called to the girl again. This time she did not shake her head. Fallis thought perhaps the shoulders tensed in the faded gray dress. Still, she didn"t turn around or even answer him.