Desert of the Damned (11 page)

“I guess they’d sell quick enough if they could get cash money. All they’re interested in is raising cattle and right now their range won’t even raise weeds — but they won’t sell out for any twenty-four hundred.”

“You shouldn’t judge the size of a man’s bankroll by what you find when you go through his pockets. I guess,” Reifel said, grinning down at her toughly, “they would sell quick enough if someone showed them ten thousand.”

A startled thought disturbed her breasts and Reifel’s eyes glinted boldly. “I thought you knew all about me — ’Curly Ben, the big robber from the Faraway Hills.’ Thought you were fixin’ to turn me in?”

Color flamed through her cheeks and as swiftly went out of them. With a sudden forward lunge she whipped the gun from his belt and gave him a bird’s-eye view down the barrel. “Perhaps it’s not too late yet.”

T
HE BRASH
glint of her eyes above those taunting red lips framed a message Ben Reifel wasn’t bothering to unravel. His attention had gone to where her unfastened shirtfront in that tipped-forward posture revealed an excellent view of her lush left breast. This exposure would have come about naturally in that leap she’d made to get hold of his pistol, and he reckoned it probably had until he realized she was watching him. She held his eyes with her own while, without any sign of hurry or embarrassment, she brought up her free hand and refastened the buttons.

She hung onto his eyes for a couple more heartbeats and then she said, holding his gun out, “I guess you’d better go while you’re able.”

He wiped the sweat off his face and shoved the gun in its holster. She was a lot slicker dish than he had ever imagined and when he had collected enough spit to speak he still couldn’t find the right words for the music.

He watched her move nearer. She seemed to float rather than walk and he found something tremendously disturbing in the nearness of her movements. They recalled to his mind a dance step he had seen put on by a gypsy in only one garment. She excited him incredibly and his heart pounded madly when she suddenly leaned closer with her slender fingers coming up to touch his knee.

He was convinced in his own mind she was putting on an act, and he clamped his legs more tightly about the blue roan’s barrel, fiercely determined not to let her witchery sway him. He was willing — even anxious now — to help her, but he intended that help to be on his own terms; yet he found this hard to keep in mind with the blood slogging through his veins like a mill-race.

She took her hand away. “Quit looking at me that way.”

Reifel said abruptly: “How much cash would I have to give you to get title to the sections this outfit holds in Cochise County?”

She frowned at her hands then ran the hands through her hair. “What makes you think we’d be interested in such a sale?”

There was an edge to her tone and though her eyes were half shut he could tell she was riled again. He said, “You can’t hire a gun crew without money can you?”

“You’re not interested in my problems. You’re like all the rest of them — that damned Marta May has got you wrapped around her finger. Take what you came for and ride your horse out of this.”

She held out the paper he’d left under his pillow.

Reifel took it and thrust it away in a pocket. He was surprised and confused. He didn’t know what to say to her. Marta May was the one he wanted, all right, but he was not forgetting his talk with that Ranger.

What Mossman wanted in exchange for his pardon was enough dirt on Lamtrill for the law to get at him. As things stood right now he was neck deep in clover and had every appearance of intending to remain there. He was a big noise politically and had bought up so many of the public officials it was impossible to get a true bill brought against him. The governor — continually under pressure from Lamtrill’s machine — had called in his Ranger boss and told him to get busy.

“Everything we have fought for is in danger of being jeopardized by that conniving banker and his mealy-mouthed satellites. I want that fellow exposed to the electorate for the ruthless crook he has turned out to be. I can stand the ridicule his crowd have heaped upon me but I cannot stand and
will not stand
for what he is trying to do to this Territory! I may lose the election but if it’s the last thing I do I mean to have the satisfaction of seeing him behind bars!”

This was the chore the governor had given Mossman and the Ranger, in turn, had passed it on to Ben Reifel.

“It ain’t going to be easy. Every crook on Lamtrill’s payroll will dig in to save him, knowing if he gets jailed they’ll be jailed along with him. But you can do it. You are wanted for murder and that should stand you in good with him. Find out his weaknesses. Work on them. Maneuver him into a jam where he will show his true colors and that pardon is yours.”

So this was why Ben Reifel had come back to Boxed Y. He might be a damned crook but he wasn’t no Judas and he wasn’t about to become one. He wanted that pardon for more reasons than one; he wanted to help the governor and he wanted to go straight. But he could not eat a man’s salt and betray him.

After leaving Burt Mossman he had started for Lamtrill’s thinking that a look at the man might suggest some line of action he could work on. But after meeting Marta May he had thought of something which might work out better all around if he could cut it.

What he had recalled was Gert’s determination to put up a fight against the Devil Iron’s encroachments. Mossman, of course, would never countenance a range war — but hell, he wouldn’t have to. One was already in the making and, by backing Gert’s hand, he could pay off his obligation to her and provide the crooked banker with a chance to dig his own grave.

It was the best thing he could hit on and it pleased his sense of humor. All he’d have to do would be to provide enough opposition to excite Nate Lamtrill into some overt action like a show of force and then raise the ante until Devil Iron went hog wild and they — Burt Mossman’s Rangers — would have Brother Lamtrill where the hair was short.

He didn’t see how he could fit this in with paying court to Lamtrill’s daughter but he reckoned, when the time came, he’d be able to iron it out. Folks on opposite sides of the fence had got hitched up before, he reflected. What had been done once could be done again; but first things first in the order of their importance.

With that reward out for him, and the gang probably blaming him for getting away with the hoard cached under Cy Turner’s floor, he was going to have to work fast if he aimed to keep on living. He had no damned time to beat around any bushes.

“Just make me whatever you figure’s a fair price,” he said, “and — if it don’t come too high — I’ll take all of this outfit that’s below Graham County — includin’ Bear Flats.”

One hand crept to her throat. Her mouth showed surprise across the edges of her teeth. “You’d pay for Bear Flats knowing Lamtrill has grabbed all that land and the lake?”

“I’ll take care of Lamtrill — that’s what you want, ain’t it?”

She looked at him coldly.

“What’s the matter?” he growled. “You been wantin’ help, ain’t you?”

“I don’t think I want yours.”

Reifel stared. “Why the hell don’t you make up your mind? You’ve done everything you could think of — ”

“Not everything,” she said. “I was ready last night to sleep with you but when I got to your room you were already gone. With all your belongings except that paper. I saw then what a fool I had been — ”

“But you didn’t quit trying!”

“No. I needed help too bad — ”

“And you still need it.” Reifel grinned.

“I don’t need yours. You can go back to Marta May and tell her I can manage to make out without you. You can tell her that while you were getting her father’s orders my old man was laying pipe too, and that he’s hired a man who will furnish the kind of a crew we need to move Devil Iron right back where it came from.”

She said in sudden anger, “Turn around and have a look at him. I think I’ll collect that reward after all.”

R
EIFEL’S
mind worked fast when he was faced with trouble and he knew by Gert’s look that he was faced with it now.

Much which had puzzled him in the girl’s talk and actions was suddenly made clear. She had known she would have to have help to buck Lamtrill. She knew her father had made some kind of deal with a stranger but she’d no means of knowing if the man would come through. Because she hadn’t dared put any trust in the arrangement Reifel’s return — despite the name she had found hidden under his pillow — had inclined her to use him until she’d seen this man riding in at the gate.

Ben was a smart enough man to find irony in the situation, the irony of Mossman’s plans being scuppered by a chit of a girl who had everything to gain by merely letting them go through.

He knew better than to whirl. He took his calculated time in picking up the gelding’s reins. He took plenty of time in turning the horse, being careful with his hands and holding them where the man could see them.

He had expected the fellow to have a gun focused on him and he hadn’t expected to know him. Strangely enough he was wrong on both counts; but the strangest thing about the whole business was the look on the other man’s face when he saw Reifel.

He commenced to shake like a man with the palsy. His eyes scuttered round like quail hunting shelter and he couldn’t seem to get the mouth back over his teeth.

“Howdy, Crowdy,” Reifel drawled with an appearance of inspecting some new variety of varmint. “Imagine finding you here.”

Crowdy managed a parched grin but his teeth clacked together like castanets and his eyes showed a deal too much of their whites to be natural in a man glad to see an old crony.

“So you’re the new broom that’s going to work all these wonders — the new Boxed Y gun boss who’s goin’ to fetch in a wild bunch that will chase Nate Lamtrill all the way back to Willcox…. Well, they say every dog has his day — even a cur dog.”

Reifel smiled, bland with guile. “How’s the rest of your outfit? How’s Bo Breen and Snake Frenston and all those other bold louts who helped you dry gulch a deputy U. S. marshal?”

“That’s a lie,” whispered Crowdy, white with fright and fury. “I never had nothin’ to do with that!”

“You were there when he died — that’s all the law cares about.”

“I didn’t do it though — God damn it, you
know
I never did it! You’re the only guy they saw! You was the only one with his gun out — ”

“Sure. Curly Ben — that’s me,” Reifel said — “the trigger-happy bastard that rubbed out Cy Turner. And what do you know about that deal, Crowdy?”

The lanky Texican’s eyes glittered wickedly. “You can bet, by God, we ain’t fergittin’ it!” A gust of rage ripped out of his black-jowled jaws and he snarled through bared teeth, “There’s a hereafter fer guys that doublecross their own pardners!”

“I hope so,” Ben told him. “Expect we’ll find out in the next three-four days — I’m helpin’ you boys throw that fight at Nate Lamtrill.”

Change rushed through the Texican’s stare, and a shadow moved over his cheeks like doubt. Abruptly his face turned a fish-belly white and he lurched back a step, crying hoarsely: “You’re
what?”

“Nothing wrong with your hearin'. I said I’m helpin’ you birds throw that fight at Nate Lamtrill. Be like old times, us workin’ together — ”

Crowdy’s curse plowed uncaringly through Reifel’s words and his shape twisted round and he cried out at Gert in a half-strangled voice: “You hirin’ this marshal-killer over my head?”

Gert’s glance flashed from one to the other of them worriedly. Her breasts were stirred by the depths of her feelings and she hesitated, uncertain of Reifel and uncertain of herself. There was pleading in her look and when he gave no sign he could see her pride throw up a wall between them. Her red lips moved and she said, “No!” reluctantly.

Reifel took up the slack in his reins, smiling thinly. He said in the face of Crowdy’s smug triumph, “That’s all right. She doesn’t have to. But — whether she likes it or not — she will count me for an ally or she will wish, by God, she’d never heard of Ben Reifel.”

Crowdy licked at his lips. “For a guy on the dodge you talk mighty large — ”

“The Cog Wheel, Crowdy, ain’t no chickenspit outfit.”

“What’s Cog Wheel got to do with this deal?”

“Just this:
I
‘m Cog Wheel — now go back and tell that to Kid Badger and Lamtrill!”

In the sudden tight quiet which descended on the yard Reifel fished out the makings and put a cigarette together. He stuck the cylinder between his lips and rasped a match on his levis, eyeing Crowdy across the blaze. When the tobacco took fire he snapped the match in two and dropped it.

Gert whispered, “You’ve bought Cog Wheel?”

“It’s a goddam bluff!” Crowdy shouted. “He’s tryin’ to break up the deal your ol’ man — ”

“You want to bet on that, Crowdy?”

“Never mind,” Crowdy snarled, “you ain’t runnin’ no sandy — ”

“Wait!” Gert said dustily. “I want the truth from you, Curly. Is that how come you slid out of here this morning? Is that where you went? To make a deal with Bill Pryor?”

Reifel’s eyes never wavered from the gangling shape of Crowdy. The mood of the Texican was written on his face, distrustful and aroused, frantic almost to the brink of violence. A swollen vein made a wriggly blue track across his left temple and his bony shoulders were hunched forward and rigid.

Continuing to watch him Reifel said to the girl, “I haven’t put any cash on the barrel-head — ”

“Nor you won’t!” blared Crowdy, and made a grab at his gun butt which he managed to curtail a couple inches short of touching it.

Reifel laughed in his face. His eyes were like agate. “Go ahead, you four-flushin’ coyote,” he said. “Wrap your paw around that iron and we’ll settle this right now.”

Crowdy moistened his lips again but crouched frozen, immobile, glaring back with hating eyes.

Reifel spat the butt of his smoke away and gave the girl a flash of his teeth. “As I was sayin', I haven’t signed any papers with Pryor but I’m going over there as soon as I’m through here. With me ownin’ Cog Wheel — ”

“Have you bothered to consider that Pryor might not sell?”

“He’ll sell,” Reifel said. “And if you’ll give me a deed to those Cochise holdings I’ll engage to occupy Bear Flats — ”

“We never patented Bear Flats.”

“You’ve had squatter’s rights, haven’t you?”

“What good are those if we couldn’t hold onto it? You know Lamtrill’s fencing — ”

‘Til take care of that. All I’m wantin’ from you is some kind of conveyance. A quitclaim deed’ll give me all the authority — ”

“You’ll have to take that up with my foreman.”

“You mean this Texican?”

Crowdy squirmed under the saturnine look Reifel gave him but the girl didn’t notice. She was looking at Reifel. “He seems to know you a great deal better than I do, and if he doesn’t trust you — ”

Reifel spat contemptuously. “You’ve picked a mighty weak reed if you’re figuring to do any leaning on him.”

Gert’s eyes gleamed and she said to the Texican, “Did you have anything to do with killing a marshal?”

“Not
me,”
Crowdy told her loudly. “I never had nothin’ to do with that a-tall. Me an’ some friends happened to be ridin’ by when this guy st — ”

“The friends you were counting on to help us fight Lamtrill?”

Crowdy thought a bit and nodded. “That’s right,” he said. “We was too far off to do anything about it, but we seen this guy stick up the El Paso stage. There was a deputy U. S. marshal aboard an’ all of a sudden we see him pitch off the box — ”

“Make it good,” Reifel jeered.

“You mean,” Gert said, “Curly shot him?”

“You’re goddam right he shot him — an’ that ain’t all! He was knockin’ around with a tough crowd at Paradise. They had a bunch of loot buried under the floor of Turner’s stable. One night a coupla weeks ago the whole haul gets gobbled an’ they find Turner dead on the floor with a hole in his head you could drive a six-horse hitch through! But this doublecrossin’ dingo pulled his freight too quick — Turner lived long enough to write his name in the dust.”

“Yeah,” Reifel grinned — “with a broken fist!”

There was loathing in Gert’s face and other things not quite readable. Her horrified voice said, “Ben! Is this true?”

“You better ask your foreman,” Reifel said. “And while you’re at it you better ask him if it isn’t also true he gets his orders from Kid Badger, one of the hirelings of the man you’ve hired him to go up against.”

“That’s a goddam lie!” Crowdy shouted.

Reifel picked up his reins. “If you change your mind,” he said to the girl, “let me know and I’ll see what I can do about Lamtrill — but don’t come after me as long as this scissorsbill is on your payroll.”

Turning his back on the pair of them he rode through the gate and headed for Cog Wheel across the sunburnt range.

He had the play pegged pretty well in his mind, having gathered as soon as he recognized Crowdy that Mossman was probably right in thinking Breen Kid Badger. The latter, according to the Ranger, had been carrying on some pretty slick depredations in this Sunset Valley until a few months ago, running off stock and sometimes raiding across the border. A lot of things were made clear if Breen was Kid Badger, including the man’s reason for showing up at Paradise. Badger couldn’t have operated here unless he had some tie-up with Lamtrill. Suppose for some reason Lamtrill had need of some more tough characters — and, in view of Gert’s attitude, he might very well — in his campaign against Boxed Y — have preferred to use men who were not known locally. If some friend in the Cherrycows had happened to mention Ben Reifel’s crowd to him, the banker could have made up his mind to import them if only for the purpose of confusing the issue. It might not have suited his book to hire them; from what Reifel had gathered it would have been more in keeping with Lamtrill’s style to have sent Kid Badger in to do just what Bo Breen had done.

Breen had displaced Ben. If the death of that deputy marshal hadn’t rid the gang of Reifel, the subsequent plunder of the gang’s buried lucre in combination with Reifel’s name scrawled in blood on Turner’s floor would have done the job anyway.

Nor was this all. There was something balefully significant in Crowdy’s arrival at Boxed Y at a time when the Kavanaughs so desperately needed help to stand off Lamtrill. It was much too pat to be any chance coincidence and, to Reifel’s mind at least, it indicated a tie-up between Bo Breen and Badger; it also smacked of collusion between Kid Badger and the region’s boss, Nate Lamtrill.

Crowdy was not likely to have turned up here alone. He had, in fact, admitted as much when he’d agreed to furnish Boxed Y with a crew — and, again, when he had named his crew as the friends who had seen Reifel stick up that stage.

It all fell together into a beautiful pattern, a pattern designed to smash Boxed Y — a pattern that could do it unless Ben interfered.

That much he saw clearly, and several other things as well. Burt Mossman had given him a job to do and he could do it with much less risk to himself by letting the Kavanaughs solve their own problems. All Mossman wanted was enough dirt on Lamtrill for the law to get at him, and he could probably get that by wringing a few mouthfuls of truth from Kid Badger.

That the Kid might not find it convenient to cooperate did not even remotely occur to him; he was not concerned with this aspect of the matter because, even with his thoughts prowling over these things, he was grudgingly aware that he could not save his neck at the expense of one who had — however mistakenly — befriended him. That she’d had her own reasons for taking him in had become all too amply apparent. But she had helped him. She had helped him against her own father’s advice at a time when he’d used up the last of his strength. He could not turn his back on that knowledge now.

He rode without hurry, the picture of these things so completely engrossing him that much of his habitual caution was forgotten.

He saw the shadows turn darker as the lowering sun fell behind the Rincons. He realized the meandering approach of late evening and the stillness which came with it and the scorched smell of trapped heat which he found beneath the trees. But his awareness of these was the awareness of a miner who sees the formations which enclose the elusive vein without any interest in their actual significance.

He could recapture every shading of Gert Kavanaugh’s strong features but only in the haziest fashion was he able to recall the remembered appeal of the girl he’d determined to make his wife.

This angered him and he bitterly cursed Gert’s peculiar ability to intrude on his thinking. She had set herself deliberately to trap him with her woman’s wiles, to trade him one bare look at her flesh in exchange for the gun she hoped he would throw between her ranch and Lamtrill’s greed. What kind of girl would do a thing like that? Not the girl in the stage — not Marta May who was sweet and chaste as a prairie rose.

Somewhere back of the oak fringed hills a coyote’s wail increased immeasurably Reifel’s sense of aloneness. A faint wind whispered through the manzanita and the seed pods rustling on a yucca’s dried stalk seemed someway to epitomize the story of his life. He said, “A man carries with him his fortune — and his fate.”

Bugler let out a sigh and the white-barred wings of a night-hawk flashed out of a juniper’s dark green foliage and he found a kind of symbolism in that. All the waste of his talents unfolded before him like a desert that reached from horizon to horizon; and he remembered the look of Gert’s face as she asked, “Have you ever in your life done one single thing which — even for the tiniest instant — did not hold out the promise of some personal advantage?”

He could see now how his decision to go straight had not been the result of any desire for right living. He’d been moved by the dictates of caution, by anxiety arising from the fear he might be called upon to foot the price of past follies. His sudden urge to reform, while sincere enough in all conscience, had sprung from a realization that crooks and thieves could not exist in any society which desired their destruction, that their nefarious schemes and lawless activities were manifestations of tolerance amounting practically to indifference on the part of the people who provided their spoils.