Desert of the Damned (3 page)

He got unsnarled from his thinking and settled down to the business in hand. There wasn’t anyone going to catch him if he kept his head. All he wanted of fate right now was to get his share of that cached mazuma, a change of garb and Cy’s roan gelding, and he would be plumb ready to help the law hunt.

He felt better for the notion, more like his old self, and much of the strain he’d been under went out of him. He put his mind to his riding with a closer attention. He wasn’t too familiar with this part of the mountains, always before coming in from the west. But he shouldn’t be too far off from it now.

Paradise. About as far-fetched a monicker as a fellow could chance on for this boom camp thrown up in Silver Creek Canyon from the stuff pulled out of Curly Bill’s old stronghold. The perverse streak in this country cropping out again. Wide open, Paradise had been for several months a kind of unofficial rendezvous for much of the Territory’s non-conformist element and was made up, mostly, of hon-keytonks and brothels whose whiskered proprietors would have gladly served the devil so long as he packed hard cash in his pockets.

The moon was up when Reifel quit the timber and, coming down a long spur, he saw its shine reflected in a creek off there below him. Farther out he saw, behind its stubble of live oak and juniper, the wide stony mesa which was all that was left of Galeyville after the packrats and movers had done with it. Stark and black in the west towered the bulk of the Cherrycows, solemn, forbidding, majestic.

He approached the creek through a tangle of ash and sycamore spooky with shadows and, except for the gurgle and swish of the water, quiet as a tomb. The pungent smell of wet earth came to him and then he was splashing his way through the stream, pausing a moment to let his horse drink sparingly, pulling its head up after three or four swallows. Bucky wanted more but Reifel kneed him out of it.

Straight ahead in the moonlight he could see the remains of John Galey’s old smelter, little left of it now but a few scraps of tin and a red-rusted mass of unlovely machinery.

As he rode on into the trough of the canyon he caught occasional snatches of sound, mostly gunfire, which proved he was headed in the right direction. Hardly ever did thirty minutes go by in that boisterous place without some brand of six-shooter music, most of it the result of exuberant spirits but all of it careless and some of it deadly — particularly if you didn’t happen to duck quick enough.

Soon he could see the scattered lights of the town. He debated whether it were better to ride boldly into the place, have a couple drinks and then get on with his business, or to try to get the job done without being seen. That last would take a bit of maneuvering and he finally decided he couldn’t spare the time. He was known around here as “Curly Ben", a two-bottle man who dealt in horses, was “hell with the heifers” and a bad man to cross. The last had got about when he had pistol-whipped Tatron for dealing a hand which had turned up five aces.

But Tatron was gone and there was no real reason why he should waste time slinking through a camp of this sort where every third man had heard the owl hoot. It was not too likely that any law would come here. Ranger law, maybe, but no lesser kind — and, even if it did, he should be long gone by that time.

He hadn’t yet decided which direction he would travel. There were more than plenty of choices. He could, for instance, keep right on going northwest through these mountains; or straight north, for that matter. He could cut south through Apache into the San Bernardino or southwest to Pirtleville or on into Bisbee which was hardly a whoop and a good-sized holler from Naco on the border. A lot would depend on what he learned about that girl who “could write her name on butcher paper and get enough cash to buy up half this country.” He reckoned it would give a guy a pretty important feeling to know that he was able to do a thing like that.

He shook his head. Probably more than half bull — one of that drummer’s windies. But that girl had plenty of style, all right. She had more damn style than an ace-full on kings and, barring acts of God and other like misfortunes, he had already made his mind up that him and her were going to meet again.

He passed Bud Fuller’s, garish with lanterns, and flung up a hand at staring Jim Johnson as he guided the buckskin around a spring wagon and noticed Jack Dall’s was packed to the batwings. Something pulled his glance back to the man on the wagon — tall, rawboned and tobacco-chewing — and he heard wrangling voices drifting out of Gerdy Nell’s.

Across the way, in front of Slemson’s, two inebriated miners were having a fist fight and through the open door of the barber shop he could see Bowring Benson getting his whiskers scraped off.

Reining Bucky around to the back of Nick Babcock’s he unloosened the cinches and left him on grounded reins in the sycamores. It tugged him to part like this with old Bucky but a rope round his neck would tug a lot worse.

He started to go through Babcock’s and then changed his mind. Turning away from the door he moved into the mouth of the trash littered alley that ran between Nick’s and the Lone Star Mercantile, steering a careful and roundabout way through the glint of cans and broken bottles. He couldn’t think why he was suddenly so edgy or what obscure instinct so strongly urged stealth. The feeling got worse. He had to fight back an impulse to panic.

The street when he reached it showed no lessening of traffic. Rumbling ore wagons lurched heavily toward him through a lemon fog of risen dust that hung hat high across the fronts of the buildings. Skylarking riders whirled hilariously through it yip-yip-yipping like a bunch of coyotes and, in front of the barber shop with hatbrims touching, a number of maudlin range hands were lugubriously extolling the fate of Little Joe. Stamping boots and the high wail of fiddles provided competition from the next-door dancehall and two gents at a hitch rack were savagely swearing as Reifel strode past on his way to Cy Turner’s.

Cy had his business back of Carradine’s brothel where the gulch widened out beyond the Mercer Hotel. The Frenchman’s building with its tall false front and the sycamore tops spread romantically above it shut away the corrals and vast mound of baled hay in an impenetrable murk of black shadows which gave the lantern-hung entrance, when he came in sight of it, the stark unreality of the backdrops used in the Mare’s Nest theater.

Paused in the gloom at the east side of Carradine’s he examined his surroundings with a narrowed stare. About to roll up a smoke he let tobacco and paper flutter out of his hand. He could discern no movement, no least bit of motion. This appearance of desertion might be customary and harmless but he could not bring himself to like it. All his nerves cried out their distrust of this stillness. He’d be a goldfish swimming in a glass of water the minute he stepped into the light of that lantern.

Yet what else could he do?

He could damn well get out of here. He could cross off his share of that cash they had hidden and climb on a bronc and bust a breeze for the border. He could sure as hell do that.

But even as this occurred to him he knew he wasn’t going to. Three thousand dollars was three thousand dollars and he wasn’t going to leave it for any bastard like Breen!

All this while he had been motionless, listening. Now his stare probed the blackness beyond the reach of the lantern. There wasn’t any sway or any give to that blackness and there was no other way he could get into Cy’s feedroom save through that lighted doorway. A high board fence closed off the back of these stables. A man could get over it but not without noise.

He could feel suspense taking hold of his muscles. He could almost wish he hadn’t ever come back here. But waiting was no good to him. Time was running out and he had better get to riding.

He said goodbye to caution and made directly for the entrance. Irrelevant fragments of thought crossed his mind in the moments it took him to reach the bright circle. Then the lantern light grabbed him and all the flesh on his bones cringed in dread expectation.

But the silence held. No gun spat flame from the roundabout blackness. No blade reached hungrily out of the shadows. He passed into the stable like a man on stilts and then his knees started shaking. The whole place whirled and he seemed to be swimming through a sea of cold sweat and he caught hold of a stanchion and clung to it, panting, until reaction let go of him.

It was hardly a moment though it seemed like eternity. Then a horse whickered softly and he felt starch in his legs again. Dragging the back of a hand across bristly cheeks he straightened his shoulders and got away from the post. It was then that he noticed the thin crack of light underneath the door that let into Cy’s office. He hung fire awhile, listening, but he caught no sound of voices, only the faint occasional rustle of paper.

He loosened the gun in his holster, stole forward three paces and flung open the door.

Turner looked up over the top of his spectacles from a weeks-old copy of the
Tombstone Epitaph.
“Hi,” he said, and went back to his reading.

Reifel let go of his bottled breath, stepped into the room and kicked the door shut behind him. In the lamp’s yellow glow he showed the careless confidence of a man who has known his full share of trouble. “Cy,” he said, “I want to buy that horse.”

“What hoss you taken a fancy to, Ben?” Turner asked with his glance still combing the paper.

“That blaze-faced roan you been settin’ such store by.”

“Old Bugler?” Cy frowned.

“Name your price,” Reifel said. “I’ll want a rig to go with him and a saddle gun, likewise.”

Turner put down his paper. His rheumy eyes looked more shrewd now. “I ain’t exactly cravin’ to part with that critter. An’ good saddles is scarce. What’s the matter with your own rig?”

“Poker ain’t my game,” Reifel sighed. “You want to sell the horse or don’t you?”

“No I don’t, but I will if you want him bad enough. Bugler cost me two hundred. If you want to give me six I’ll chuck in the gun an’ gear.”

“Get the gear and put it on him. I want him ready to travel inside of five minutes.”

Turner stared at him dourly. Without remark he got out of his chair and limped from the office. He got the lantern off its hook and tramped away toward the rear; and not until he’d left the barn did Reifel stir from the office.

Then he rolled his tail off the desk in a hurry.

Slipping into the feedroom, he cautiously felt his way between the piles of sacked grain until he found a lesser blackness in the wall ahead of him. This was the east window in the ell behind the office. No danger of it squeaking for they had taken care of that one time while Turner had been feeding his tapeworm.

Pulling out the stops he raised the lower sash. Thrusting a leg across the sill he listened for a moment then dropped quickly to the ground. It was blacker out here than the gut that held Jonah, but off to the left he could sense the solid bulk of the high board fence. He didn’t need any light to get at that money.

Dropping to his knees underneath that raised window he started clawing at the dirt with his rope-scarred fingers. It came away pretty easy. In no time at all his fingers found the bottom of the eight-by-eight foundation. He moved enough additional dirt to allow himself some leeway. Then, flat on his stomach, he reached his right arm up under the foundation and felt around with his hand on the musty ground behind it. He felt a long time but he didn’t find the money.

T
HERE WAS
in Ben Reifel the sudden leap of a wicked fury.

Muscle ridged the cant of his jaw and his mouth was tight across clenched teeth as he thought of all that wasted riding and remembered the smugness in Breen’s yellow stare.

He cursed as he pushed himself erect. He kicked the dirt back into the hole and started once more to twist up a smoke but again let the makings fall from lax fingers. There was a name for the kind of a guy Breen was but calling him one wasn’t going to change anything.

He thrust a leg across the sill and pulled the tired rest of him into the room after it, quietly shutting the cob-webbed window. He’d have given a pretty to have known just when Breen had helped himself to that getaway money. And if it was Breen who had dropped the guard. Because if Breen had done both….

He swore again and went back to Cy’s lamp-lighted office, wondering what he was going to do now for money. He slumped a hip on the desk and heard Cy’s boots come dragging their rowels across the barn floor and the heavier clip-clop stride of the horse. He caught the soft exhalation of the animal’s breath, the slap of dropped reins as Cy hung up the lantern; and was no more certain than he’d been in the first place.

His mind was still prowling when Turner rejoined him.

“All set,” Turner grunted.

Reifel said, “Yeah,” and reshuffled his thinking. He knew what he ought to do, all right. But every time he got fixed to do it he’d remember some goddam copybook maxim and see Schmole’s body going down between the wheelers.

He sure couldn’t stand any more fox passes.

He could say, of course, that he had changed his mind but it was no good telling Cy Turner he was strapped. Cy wasn’t interested in deals involving credit.

There were other horses in this camp but he had geared his plans on Bugler. He wanted the blue roan’s speed and endurance. He wasn’t minded to take off on no horse that was like to play out in the middle of some desert. He thought, with his scowling eyes stabbing Turner, that some guys made things powerful hard on a feller that was trying to turn over a new leaf.

He took his hip off the desk and started for Turner.

Big Cy never budged. Built like a blacksmith he remained where he was, completely filling the doorway. “Where’s the money?” he said bluntly.

“Anything wrong with my word?” Reifel snarled.

“I can’t feed your word to a bunch of starvin’ horses. It takes hard cash to run a livery in this place.”

Reifel had to pull up or run into the bastard. He felt like a bronc with four feet in a slick place; and all the while, back of everything else, the shape of that posse was growing bigger and bigger.

“You’re lookin’ down my throat,” he said dustily. “I had some dough cached out beneath the floor of your feedroom. But it ain’t there now and I ain’t got that much on me. I can give you a note or I can write you a — ”

“Ben,” Turner said, “you’re tearin’ my heart out.”

Reifel’s hands started shaking and he cried, hoarse with outrage: “I thought, by God, I was a friend of yours, Turner!”

“I like the kind of friends I can put in my wallet. Now quit fooling around. You gonna take that hoss or ain’t you?”

Reifel said, “You’re goddam right I’m goin’ to take that horse,” and put four knuckles against the flat of Cy’s jaw. All the weight of his temper was behind that fist and a slackness broke all across Cy’s features, but he had sold Cy short. The man didn’t go down; he settled his chin down in between the guard of his shoulders and came for Reifel with a grin of pure joy.

The guy was strong as a bull. He flexed his knees and suddenly sprang and the one cool edge of Ben’s mind grayly told him he’d misjudged Cy again because for all his bulk the man wasn’t slow. He wasn’t slow and he wasn’t clumsy and he had room for just one thing in his thinking.

Ben tried to duck. He tried to swing himself clear before those massive fists reached him but he didn’t quite make it. Turner slammed terrifically into him. Reifel’s head struck the wall and pinwheeling lights blazed a star-spangled trail before his wide-open eyes, lights exploding like rockets against a whirling blackness. Turner’s fists were like sledges hammering the sides of his skull in. He knew he couldn’t take much more and stay upright — already his knees were commencing to wabble. Blinded and helpless and hardly more than half conscious he still had the sense to try to catch at Cy’s shirt-front, but the man slipped away from him.

He could hear the loud in-and-out rush of Cy’s breathing and in that moment’s respite the blackness lifted a little and he saw Turner gathering his weight to jump in again. He dropped just as Cy’s pressured feet left the floor and the hostler, tripping over him, crashed into the wall.

Reifel dizzily got up. As Turner, shaking his head, pried himself off the floor Reifel flung himself forward. He knocked Turner’s arm aside and smashed the burly stableman full in the face. His knuckles tore through the man’s splintering teeth and he felt the sharp stumps peel three dribbles of skin back but he kept right on slugging till the sight of that face threatened to bring up his breakfast.

As he staggered back Turner lunged to his feet, eyes the color of murder and both fists swinging. Reifel ducked that first blow but the next one landed with the force of a pile-driver. He got tangled in his spurs and banged into the desk.

Twisting his head he saw Turner coming. He jabbed out his right leg and struck Turner in the thigh, whirling him around, but the stableman was onto him before he could get clear. Twice Turner hit him before his knee found Cy’s groin. He heard Cy cry out and saw his shape reel away and he shook his head and shoved clear of the desk.

He had no time to get set before Turner was onto him. He felt Turner’s fist crack into his belly. Then a million lights exploded in his brain and the next thing he realized he was flat on his back goggling up at the roof boards. But the tail of his eye caught the leap of Cy’s shadow and he flung himself over and away just in time. Turner’s spike-heeled boots struck the floor where his head had been and Ben, twisting round, yanked the feet out from under him.

Turner came down hard. But his vitality was frightening. With the shirt half torn off him he came crawling at Ben, eyes bright with a wicked malevolence. Strange sounds clogged the wheeze of his breathing. Bloody saliva drooled from his mouth and swung from his chin like a scarlet thread. It was nearly too late when Ben saw the knife.

Swift as he was that swipe almost got him. The blade sheared his shirt and went into the floor. Before its owner could jerk it free Reifel caught that outstretched arm in both hands. Giving the grip all the strength he could muster he commenced inexorably to twist Turner’s arm.

The man’s eyes bugged out. Sweat gleamed through the pulpy shine of his face. He tried to squirm himself around to relieve the pressure but Ben went with him. Turner savagely rammed a knee at his crotch and Ben, eluding it, twisted harder.

Pain tore a wild cry out of Cy’s throat. The veins on his temples swelled almost to bursting. Again and again he tried to break that hold. The fingers of his free hand gouged for Ben’s eyes and, when that didn’t work, tried to tear his right ear off.

Ben exerted more pressure. The snapping of the bone was like a miniature explosion, plain even above the labored sobs of their panting.

Reifel loosed him then and staggered erect. He put a foot on the knife and snapped it too. Turner tried to get up but he couldn’t quite make it. A knee buckled under him and he moaned when his weight fell across the broken arm.

Reifel stared, morosely scowling, and went over by the desk and picked up the pistol which had jounced from his holster. He hung onto the desk till the room quit whirling and then carefully straightened. He started, with the gun swinging forgotten from his hand, toward the door.

But he stopped when he reached it, remembering something. He said with a glance backflung across his shoulder, “You’ll be paid for that bronc — you hear me, Turner? What you got just now was only a patch to what you’ll collect if you start yowlin’ horse thief.”

An enormous weariness lay heavily upon him and he sagged against the doorframe. He had to summon the will to move again. Every muscle felt as though it had been dragged through a knothole.

He turned into the stable, the change in light making him wary of his footing. It was almost as bad as coming in from outside and he stood still a moment, waiting for his eyes to get used to this gloom, inhaling the pungence of dung and racked hay. One small sound came out of the darkness, and the whicker of a horse; and then remembrance of Schmole and the law’s aroused anger moved him into the light of the lantern-hung entrance.

He saw the roan where it stood with its reins round a sycamore ten feet away and something, in his mind, did not seem as it should be. He tried to dredge up the sounds Cy had made coming out here and recalled in that moment the definite slap of dropped reins.
Cy hadn’t tied the horse.

Reifel flung himself backward, trying to get himself out of the reach of that lantern. He made his move too late and in the wrong direction. Flame burst out of the darkness behind him and something crashed into him, flinging him around and then slamming him roughly against the planks of the flooring.

He lay grotesquely still with both eyes open, half in sight and half in shadow, one outflung arm and the hand at the end of it licked by the smoky glow of the lantern. He lay with a leg doubled awkwardly under him while the acrid stench of burnt powder grew rank and the report of that shot struck the roundabout walls and dribbled its clamor away in gray whispers.

He lay with his face wholly covered by darkness. He tried to make out where the drygulcher crouched but the shadowy places, crossed by that one streak of light from the office, loomed entirely too black to reveal any lurker.

The leg twisted under him commenced to cramp. The cramp set up an intolerable anguish yet he dared not move by the faintest fraction lest a second report from that unseen gun do what the first had failed to accomplish.

Out of sight in the office Cy Turner groaned. So it hadn’t been Turner who had triggered that pistol.

Reifel felt like groaning himself. Mighty like it. The hole in his chest was commencing to throb now, to burn like the bite of a white-hot iron. His leg was still stuck full of pins and needles and he drearily wondered how much blood he was losing. Would he lose too much to be able to ride before this damned vinegarroon stepped from the shadows?

A cold wave of nausea suddenly gripped him. He had to exert every ounce of his willpower to keep from retching. The shirt on his back felt clammy with sweat. And he closed his eyes against the swirl of the shadows and heard Turner move in the office, heard him moan again. It sounded like the bastard was trying to get up.

The drygulcher must have choused up the same notion. Worried perhaps lest he be identified or fearing to find himself caught in a crossfire, under cover of Turner’s commotions he moved; and Reifel saw the black crook of an elbow limned against the office light.

Relief howled a jubilant strength through his arteries. The gun-weighted hand stretched before him in darkness made a half inch bend at the wrist and tipped upward. The big gun rocked against Ben’s palm.

The shape in the shadows loosed one high screech. Booted feet sent wild clatter winging into the uproar and Ben didn’t have to see the man now. He drove his shots at the ghost blur of motion that was frantically making toward the feedroom window. Three times his pistol ripped a trail through the darkness and the final explosion trapped the shape in mid-stride.

It went down without sound in the thunderous pounding.

Ben lurched erect. He ducked across to the window. With gun still in hand he rasped a match on his levis and in the stick’s yellow flare Breen’s eyes stared back at him.

They were ugly, wild-rolling and white rimmed with fright. They caught the cold wink of the flame on Ben’s gun barrel and his lips peeled back in a whimpering snarl.

“God, Ben — don’t do it!” he bleated. “I wouldn’t hev no more chance’n a gopher! Hell,” he whined, “I come here t’ help you — you wouldn’t throw down on your own pardner, would you?”

“What’d you do with it?”

Breen cringed away. He started shaking all over. His eyes skittered round like the eyes of a coyote, and that’s what he was. It was what he had been all the time, Ben reflected, only now he was a cornered one. The things he had concealed weren’t quite so well hidden. Hell, he wasn’t even hurt! The only mark on him was that crease across the elbow.

Reifel’s lips curled contemptuously. Then his match flickered out and he scratched another. “Get up on your hind legs.”

From the fact that he was still alive perhaps, Breen picked up a little courage. A tinge of color crept into his cheeks and with his baleful glance watching Ben’s gun warily he got onto his feet.

“Now get over in the light from that door where I can see you.”

Breen glowered. “You tryin’ to make me stand round till I bleed to death?”

“You’ll bleed all right if you don’t get over there.”

Still muttering profanely Breen did as ordered.

“Now what did you do with that money?” Reifel said.

“Why …” Breen’s eyes met Ben’s straightly, “we done like you told us an’ divvied — ”

“You know what money I’m talking about!”

“Ben, as God’s my witness — ”

“Quick,” Ben said, tipping up his gun barrel.

“I — I — Honest, Ben, I — it’s right here in my pockets,” Breen whined, cringing away again. “I wasn’t fixin’ to try an’ run off with it. I seen that goddam Turner snoopin’ round an' — ”

“Never mind lying. Just shell out my share and be quick about it.”

Breen’s eyes juned around but he dug a roll of bills from a pocket and, with his face turned sullen again, began counting. “Three thousand’s my share,” Ben reminded, “and I want every dollar I got comin'.”

Turner groaned in the office but Reifel paid no attention. He remained in the shadows where he could watch both Breen and the approach from the street though the barn’s open entrance. Gunplay was nothing to get worked up about in this camp but there was always the chance some fool wouldn’t know that.