Desert of the Damned (17 page)

He had quite a shack here, more than ninety feet long. Of a bastard Spanish style of construction, it was unusually ornate for this country and time — it even had a sun deck built above its open gallery, and a man was on it watching him, a guard posted there with a rifle. There’d be others, no doubt, posted round that dark yard, but he held his horse to its wide-open gait, flogging it over the hard-packed earth like hell wouldn’t have him.

Flinging wild looks behind him, with its last ounce of run he drove his horse through the gate and pointed it up the dark shrub-bordered lane which turned past the house’s broad gallery. He was playing the faithful courier now for that wart of a man peering down from the sun deck and any others of Lamtrill’s bleach-eyed crew who might be watching his coming with lifted guns.

But the foam-flecked horse abruptly fell apart under him and he flung his feet from the stirrups and rolled, gun in hand, to come staggering upright twenty strides from the house.
“Quien es?”
cried the fellow who was perched on the rooftop, and “What’s up?” called another anxious voice from the shadows. And he could hear men running across the yard behind the house.

“El patron!”
he muttered.
“El patron — ”
he gasped, breathless, and then with chin burrowed into his chest to hide his features he went lurching toward the gallery like a man bad hurt.

Twenty strides — sixty steps no matter how you took them — was a long way to go with that rataplan rumble of hoofs in your brain and the running boots thumping the ground all around. Lanterns bobbed among the willows and the night was hoarse with shouting but Reifel, still in motion, at a shambling run did the best he was able to get onto that gallery and lose himself in the mile-deep shadows that congregated blackly beneath its overhanging roof.

He came within an ace of making it. He had but ten feet to go when he heard the door skreak and saw it flung open, spilling a bright wedge of light across the gallery’s plank floor, across the lane as well and even into the salt cedars that flanked the lane’s far side. He stood trapped in a frozen silence that was no wider and no longer than that damned blaze of light streaming round Lamtrill’s shape where he stood in the doorway with Breen’s bulging eyes staring over his shoulder.

“You brash fool,” Lamtrill shouted, “you’re going to swing this time ‘f I have to yank the rope myself!”

“Where is she?” Reifel said, and Breen shook loose of his fright. He pulled new breath deep into his lungs and sent his yell sailing over the yard: “Drop that feller!” and ducked behind Lamtrill, dragging frantic at his guns.

The man on the roof tried to cut Reifel down and one of Ben’s slugs slammed him screaming through the railing. At the yard’s far side there was a sudden burst of firing and from the direction of the gate a Winchester began to lay flat crashes of sound against the roundabout buildings. A strangling horse coughed twice and a nearer gun exploded, the airlash of that bullet whining past Ben’s hatless head.

And then he was whirling, flinging himself sideways to get away from Breen’s pistols and diving forward, doubled over, to get out of that light. He saw Lamtrill stagger and shot the still-good leg from under him and Breen, white with fright, ducked out of sight behind the door-frame. From the darkness, yards behind him, Reifel heard a man yell: “Mossman!” but he gave it no attention. Intent on finding Gert he jumped Lamtrill’s groaning shape and flung himself headlong into the room. Breen’s gun roared twice from a doorway at the left, both of those shots missing Reifel by inches. The door was slammed shut as the hammer of Reifel’s gun punched into an empty shell.

He flung the useless gun away, quartered back and snatched up Lamtrill’s. Without bothering to reach for the knob of the door he kicked it open, went through crouched low and dived for another directly across from it. This one was thrown open before he reached it and he fired on the instant, hearing Crowdy’s terrified yell in the darkness, then the clatter of glass as Crowdy jumped through a window.

Reifel struck a match and its flame showed a bedroom but there was no one in it except himself. Somewhere he’d got off Breen’s track — or had he? Wouldn’t Breen have shoved Crowdy into Ben’s bullets just as he had tried to shove Lamtrill into them? He was a slink, a twister, the sort who — if the chance came up — would even hide behind a woman; and there was Ben’s dilemma. He had no idea whereabouts in this house a mind like Lamtrill’s would have had Gert hidden. All he could be sure of was that Breen would know, that Breen would use her if he could to buy or shoot his way out and that, if pressed too hard, the man was capable of almost anything.

This house was built with the living-room at its center and a somewhat larger wing leading off at either side. That left only one more room at this end. The door was beyond that bed over there and likely opened into Lamtrill’s office. Was Breen in there now and was Gert in there with him or had he slipped out into the night and departed?

Ben Reifel didn’t know. He was scared almost to move a hand lest whatever he tried should imperil Gert’s safety. The odds looked bad any way he eyed them. But he had to do something.

He killed the match. He took off his boots with an infinite care. He approached the door warily with Lamtrill’s gun lifted and paused two feet from it, listening intently. There were still a few random shouts outside but the guns had quit and in this uneasy quiet he reached a hand toward the knob. He did not quite touch it. Something warned him Bo Breen was behind that door.

He put the hand out again, his forward-stretched fingertips lightly brushing the door’s half-inch panel. Breen’s tense whisper came instantly at him: “That you in there, Ben?”

Reifel held himself completely still, hating the man yet terribly afraid to explode another cartridge. Gert might be in there — probably was — and who could control a shot fired blindly?

Perhaps the quiet worried Breen, perhaps he got rattled. A board groaned under his moving weight and jounced a panicky curse from his throat and crazily then, throwing care to the winds, he crossed the room at a lumbering run.

Reifel, crouched on his haunches, flung open the door but froze in his tracks when Breen’s voice cried: “Come one step further’n I’ll bash in her head!”

He’d do it, too. He was that kind of bastard.

“What do you want?” Reifel said at last.

“I want out,” Breen growled. “Burt Mossman’s outside — I heard somebody call him. You go tell that damn Ranger to call off his crowd. Tell him I’ve got Sug Kavanaugh’s brat an’ he either gets out of here fast or I bump her! You got that?”

“I’ve got it.”

“There’s a haystack out back. Put a match to it, bucko, so I can see them guys leave. When they’ve gone, fetch two horses to the back of this office an’ then stand in the light where I can get a good look at you.”

“What about the girl?”

“I’ll drop her off at the border. Now put your gun on the floor an’ get goin'.”

A lot of desperate thoughts flashed through Reifel’s mind but he didn’t dare try them with a skunk of this stripe. He put his gun on the floor with his mouth twisted bitterly and then stood erect, prepared to do as Breen ordered. But even as he straightened a pair of lifted lanterns flung their light through the windows and exposed Breen crouched behind the desk, entirely alone.

Mossman said: “All right, Badger. Drop your guns and come out of that.”

• • •

One of Mossman’s men told Reifel he would find Gert in the kitchen, and he did. Old Black was with her, chafing the circulation back into her rope-scarred arms. Ben said, “I’ll take care of that now,” and the old man, chuckling, went out to help Mossman.

A constraint fell between them then and Reifel, uneasy, said, “That guy seems to think a whole lot of you.”

“Yes. He was Dad’s wagon boss. In the old days.” She rubbed her wrists, not bothering to glance at him; and he stood there awkwardly, finding it hard to put his thoughts into words, looking what he was in that sweat-streaked shirt with the ingrained dust lying black in its creases. He didn’t much blame her for being riled the way he’d treated her, turning down cold every offer she’d made him.

He finally said a little stiffly, “I’m turnin’ back that money I’ve got banked at Douglas an’ Deming. Mossman is goin’ to sell Cog Wheel for me an’ apply whatever it brings to easin’ the folks who’ve been hurt by that bank run. I don’t figure a man could go very straight on crooked money. Do you?”

“I hadn’t thought of it.”

“Well, that’s my stand. I reckon you know the kind of guy I’ve been … a pretty bad lot … but if you’re willin’ to believe I’m on the right track, that from here on out I’m for the straight an’ narrow — ”

“Haven’t you got the wrong girl?”

“I know what I’m doin'. I’ve come a long way to put my rope on you an’ I’d sure hate to have to take no for an answer — ”

“Have you got every bit of that girl out of your head?”

“That’s as far as she got — my head,” Reifel scowled. “She never got near the part I’m offerin’ you.”

“On that understanding,” Gert said, “I’ll take it.”

THE END

This edition published by
Prologue Books
a division of F+W Media, Inc.
10151 Carver Road, Suite 200
Blue Ash, Ohio 45242
www.prologuebooks.com

Copyright © 1952 by Nelson Nye. Copyright © renewed 1980 by Nelson Nye. Published
by arrangement with Golden West Literary Agency. All rights reserved.

Cover Images ©
www.123rf.com

This is a work of fiction.

Names, characters, corporations, institutions, organizations, events, or locales in this novel are either the product of the author’s imagination or, if real, used fictitiously. The resemblance of any character to actual persons (living or dead) is entirely coincidental.

ISBN 10: 1-4405-4904-4
ISBN 13: 978-1-4405-4904-5
eISBN 10: 1-4405-4902-8
eISBN 13: 978-1-4405-4902-1