Desert of the Damned (9 page)

“It could be done,” Reifel nodded. “But not by no woman. The kind of wolves you need wouldn’t take orders from a petticoat — ”

“That’s where you come in.”

Reifel looked at her. “Not me,” he said.

Her chin came up. “You’re not afraid of it, are you?”

A cold amusement looked out of his stare. “No,” he said, “I’m not afraid of it.”

She bit her lips. She was a good looking girl with her shape turned slim and tall by the shadows. There was a kind of wistful gravity about her and she sat perfectly still, tipped forward a little, as though she hoped beyond hope that he would say something more.

When he didn’t she pulled up her shoulders. There wasn’t much breath in her voice when she said, “You really mean that, don’t you? You’re not scared. You just don’t give a damn. You’d let a woman save your life, let her risk whatever might come of hiding you. Then, when you’re given a chance to repay that, you’d climb on your horse and ride off through the hills. Do you feel as proud as you look, Mister Reifel?”

Reifel scowled, reddening a little. This sharp-tongued filly could get under a man’s hide. But what the hell? It wasn’t nothing but words. He tried to ignore them. He tried to stare her down and couldn’t do that, either.

“All right,” he flared, “I’m a lousy bastard — but what kind of woman would throw it in my face?”

“A desperate one,” she answered quietly. “A woman who is too full of memories, Ben. A woman who would rather die inch by inch than let herself be shoved around by a range hog. Does that sound too farfetched? Does it seem too unreasonable that I should love my home?”

“Is that any reason I should get myself mixed up in a range war? In a goddam fracas that ain’t none of my makin’?”

“It would be a terrible world,” she said, slow and thoughtful, “if everyone in it thought of no one but himself.”

“You’re a fine one to talk! Who the hell are you thinkin’ of? Not me, that’s a cinch!”

She considered him earnestly as though trying to make him out. There was no anger in her eyes, only a kind of wistful sadness.

“Tell me something. Have you ever in your life done anything for someone else? Just one single thing which — even for the tiniest instant — has not held out the promise of some personal advantage?”

“Sermons!” he jeered. “So now you give me sermons! Well, the answer hasn’t changed. You do a damn good job of baitin’ your hook but I ain’t stickin’ out my neck to save this spread for someone else!”

She amazed him by smiling as though she were pleased with his thorough selfishness. It fetched him up short, and even shorter when she said, “Name your own price then. Would you do it for half?”

He stared at her, baffled, half believing she had a screw loose. It didn’t make sense that she would go to such lengths to hang onto this outfit and, afterwards, be willing to chop the place in half.

“What the hell are you up to?” he snarled at her gruffly.

“I’m not sure you’d understand yet, Ben. I’m not anxious to turn men against each other or to bring gunfighters storming into this country — I
hate
blood and violence. I’ve always believed in turning the other cheek but I’ve learned a few things in the last couple of years. I’ve learned you have to fight fire with fire and guns with more guns. That’s ugly — I despise it. But I’m not going to let Lamtrill gobble Boxed Y without doing everything I can to hang onto it — ”

“Even if you have to give a half of it away?”

“Even to giving half of it away,” she nodded. “You didn’t get that bullet in your chest around here. You aren’t known in this country — you could help Boxed Y a lot.” She considered him openly. “There’s a reckless look about you that’s convincing. Lamtrill would hire you — ”

“I may be a skunk,” Reifel cut in grimly, “but I sure as hell ain’t that kind of varmint.”

She flushed. “Forget that,” she said, putting a hand on his arm. “Be Boxed Y’s ramrod and hire me the kind of crew I need to keep him off. Then, if he persists, we can strike back in kind.”

“Yeah,” he said. “Lovely. But you still haven’t told me what you’ve got up your sleeve.”

“I’m trying to save this ranch.”

“Sure. I get that. But
why?”
He stared at her shrewdly. “A man might resent Lamtrill shovin’ him around. But you ain’t a man. And nothing you’ve said to me yet adds up without there’s somethin’ else back of it you ain’t let me in on. I wasn’t born yesterday. A girl don’t go to makin’ widders an’ orphans without she’s got more reason than a handful of buildin’s. Not your kind of girl.”

They looked at each other for a while without speaking.

“You’re right,” Gert Kavanaugh admitted. “My wanting to save the ranch is only part of it. After awhile, if you stay — ”

“You can skip the rest,” Reifel told her. “I ain’t stayin’. Go ahead and get your Kid Badgers if you want to but don’t count on me. I’m getting out of this deal just as quick as I can fling on some clothes.”

Gert Kavanaugh’s eyes stared back at him unwinking. She got up off the bed and her shirt, suddenly tight, showed the full shape of her tumultuous breathing. “You rode into this spread dead beat and you know it. You came here for help and without question you got it. Now you’re going to find I can be as tough as you are.” Her right hand jumped and disclosed a leveled pistol. “You’ve a score to pay here and you’re not leaving till you’ve paid it.”

Reifel laughed in her face. “You’ve misread the sign.”

He threw back the sheet and his feet thumped the floor. He got hold of his boots, yanked them on and stood up, too mad to care that she was seeing him in his drawers.

He sloshed on his hat and picked his pants off the bed and got into them, glowering, and flung on his shirt. He was reaching for his shell belt when she said with her eyes banging bitterly into him: “You’d do it, too, wouldn’t you! Walk right out of here same as you’d quit a parlor house — only I don’t think you will! I think the law will have something to say about where
Curly Ben
goes when he quits the Boxed Y!”

Reifel’s muscles jammed and left him rooted, locked in his tracks. He made a crouched and taciturn off-balance shape in that stretched-thin quiet. His eyes, bright between their narrowed lids, searched her face with an intolerant anger. Then the planes of his cheeks subtly altered. A sardonic amusement crept into his glance and he said, derisively, “So the handbills are out and you’re figurin’ to sit pat on back-to-back aces. Well, it won’t wash, sister. All you’ve got is a busted flush.”

“We’ll see,” she said, chin up and eyes flashing. “You won’t look so tough with a rope around your neck!”

“That’s for sure,” Reifel snorted, “but you left school too soon. You’ve toted the figures but the answers you got ain’t the ones in the book. You’ve forgot there are others who can read as well as you can.”

“Oh?” she said, and stared at him sharply. He noticed how the line of her shirt flared upward to reveal the full shape of her firm young breasts; and he was suddenly astonished, very conscious of her nearness and, strangely, embarrassed.

“Meaning what?” she said with a man’s directness.

He tried to close his mind to this new awareness and refused to acknowledge what he read in her eyes. “That hiding me is one thing and using me something else again. Minute you put me into circulation to ram through this fight you’re cooking up with Lamtrill, other people around here are going to come up with the same answer you got. When they do you’re licked. Lamtrill will send the law after me and they’ll take you too for aidin’ an’ abettin’.”

He buckled on his belt and put a hand out for his pistol.

She surrendered it to him, watching him in silence as he thrust it in its sheath. Almost he could feel sorry for her; she had made a good try and it wasn’t her fault he had been too smart to fall for it. He wondered what she’d do if he suddenly grabbed and kissed her. He grinned at her smugly and was communing with this impulse, boldly admiring the balanced swing of her body, when she rudely jolted him back to reality.

“You haven’t seen those dodgers. The thing that ties you up with Curly Ben is the hole that bullet plowed into your chest, and who else but me could ever know that you are packing it?”

She flung the half-laughing words back over her shoulder as she went through the door. She wasn’t admitting he could be a free agent. She was pretty darn sure he wouldn’t run out on her now.

But she was wrong. He did. He left the next night.

R
EIFEL FELT
pretty slick when he slipped out of the house, made his way to the barn and got a saddle on the roan without making enough noise to bring a whinny from the cavvy. A long half hour of slow and circuitous riding brought the rolling hogbacks of the Winchesters into view and gave him sufficient confidence to put Turner’s rangy roan to a lope. He aimed to miss Dry Bottom and catch the Lordsburg road at Cochise. There he proposed to change horses and again at Pearce and afterwards, by way of Elfrida and McNeal, cut south to Douglas where he would get a new outfit and perhaps drop in for a visit at his bank.

If Gert had gone through his pockets, such an expedition might very well have considerable to do with her too obvious anxiety to enlist his aid on behalf of Boxed Y. He was pretty well heeled, having all that money he had taken from Breen save the six hundred bucks he’d left Turner for the roan. Twenty-four hundred simoleons in the pockets of a wounded saddle tramp would go a long ways towards interesting a girl who was scrambling to save a busted cow outfit.

And Gert was plenty cute. She could sure crank out the chin music and he acknowledged to himself that if he hadn’t run across black-haired Marta May first she would probably have succeeded in talking him around. She was stacked up proper with plenty of bulge in all the right places but — compared to Marta May — she had no more chance than a prairie dog running a race with a greyhound.

Marta May was CLASS. She had everything that Gert could show plus culture and refinement. Nor did he consider it any drawback that her old man owned a couple of banks and was well on the way toward annexing two counties.

Lamtrill probably had other plans for her but now that he knew more about her old man Reifel felt no cause for worry on that score. He had been involved with crooks before and dealing with Lamtrill should be like playing poker. Marta May’s autograph ought to be good for any damn raise her old man felt like making.

He must have covered ten miles before he thought of that paper. The thought brought a cold sweat out on his cheeks and he pulled up, frantic, and snatched out his pistol. His hands shook like a drenched dog in a norther. But he finally got it open, snapped a bead on a star and took a squint through the barrel. One look was enough. He ought, by God, to be bored for the simples. He had left that damn paper under his pillow and if he didn’t go back Gert would have it by morning.

He didn’t have to ask himself what Gert could do with it. She wasn’t no fool!

He had left the Boxed Y in a roundabout fashion calculated to mislead anyone who sought to trail him into thinking he’d been aiming for the Pineleno Mountains. He had held to that direction until a series of bare ledges had given him the chance to swing first east then sharply south. It hadn’t mattered then that this had consumed considerable time.

But now it mattered plenty for he had no more time to waste. In much less than a couple of hours it was going to be broad daylight and it would be chewing it pretty goddam fine to go traipsing back there now and get away without detection. He didn’t want no more arguments with Gert and she was generally up at the first crack of dawn.

But he had to have that paper and that was all there was to it. He needed it to strengthen his own hand with Lamtrill. He certainly couldn’t afford to have it fall into Gert’s possession. It wasn’t Lamtrill he was worrying about — he was scared of what it would do to Gert if she found it under his pillow. She’d go up in smoke if she thought, by God, he was quitting Boxed Y to throw in with Lamtrill. She’d be wild enough to put the law on his trail….

He didn’t wait any longer. He sent the roan west at a good fast clip, determined to pick up the Dry Bottom trail — the shortest way to Boxed Y that he knew of. He cut into it ten minutes later and followed it northwest without any easing of Bugler’s pace. The roan was strong and full of oats and willing. In less than an hour he sighted the Kavanaugh ranch cutoff through the oakbrush and juniper. An ancient live oak grew beside the rutted wagon tracks and a weathered board nailed across its trunk had what looked like the Kavanaugh brand burned into it. It was, all right, but Reifel had to make sure. Riding closer he lifted a match in cupped palm — and that was when he caught sight of the handbill.

$500 REWARD, it was headed. But the part that really stopped him read:
Wanted for the murder and robbery of Cy Turner.

He stared at the thing until the match burned his fingers, and he still couldn’t get it. If the name had been
Schmole
he could have savvied the burro; but Turner —
shoot fire!
All Ben had done had been to bust the guy’s arm.

He was reaching to tear the sheet off the tree when a voice drawled quietly: “This is Burt Mossman talkin’. I got you covered like a tent. If you don’t want to find yourself under a lily, let go of them reins an’ make a grab for the stars.”

Burt Mossman!

That tore it.

Reifel hoisted his hands.

He would sooner have argued with the whole U. S. Cavalry than have waggled one whisker with that jigger on his tail.

Burt Mossman.
Oh, Nellie!

A
RIZONA
in ’91 was the wildest region of the entire West. In the decade since the death of Billy the Kid its 114,000 square miles had become the last outpost for all those persons which progress had driven from more civilized places. Its rock-ribbed mountains were crammed with precious minerals, its rolling ranges belly-deep in grass. The silence of its sun-scorched deserts could swallow a man without a trace.

It was the cowman’s paradise, the miner’s mother lode, the bandit’s Valhalla. It bred and gave nourishment to a tumultuous breed of swaggering, swearing, sombreroed centaurs who acknowledged no law save that one forged from steel which they packed on their hips in tied-down holsters. Until lately this product of Mr. Colt’s ingenuity had been all the credentials its denizens found need for; a handy article used both as passport and court of last appeal.

It was final arbiter of many a man’s destiny. It spoke with a vast authority. But in the hands of the average user it no longer provided that measure of security which men in this country had come to depend on.

The telling blow had been struck when Governor Murphy, with little fanfare or warning, hired their range boss away from the Hashknife outfit to put the fear of God on a more solid footing than the local array of owlhooters permitted. This gentleman had done wonders for the Aztec Land and Cattle Company and the governor thought he should be able to work up some kind of organization which would be equally efficacious on behalf of the Territory. This man, said to have cut his teeth on the butt of his daddy’s sixshooter, was Burton C. Mossman. He was hell on rats and in eleven short months, with the aid of thirteen men, had succeeded in making them scarcer than hen’s teeth in well over two thirds of the governor’s jurisdiction. He was Captain of the Rangers and the most legendary lawman in the West of that day.

• • •

“Well,” Mossman said, “what’s it going to be?”

Reifel, facing him across a table in the smoky back room of a Dry Bottom bar, angrily answered, “You don’t give me much choice.”

“Any choice at all is more than you deserve.”

“But I’ve told you,” Reifel growled, “I never killed that bastard. All I did was break his damn arm — there was nothing else ailin’ him when I pulled my freight. Hell, you’ve said your own self he wrote my name with his right hand! How in God’s name
could
he? I’ve told you twenty times that’s the arm I broke!”

“Yeah, you’ve told me,” Mossman nodded, “but the report I got said nothing about any busted arm.” He looked at Ben sharply. “You’ve got a pretty tough name in the Cherrycows. But I’ll say this for you — up until right now I never heard of you killin’ anybody.”

Reifel grunted.

Mossman said, “How’d you happen to get to wrangling with this feller?”

“We had a little argument over a horse I was buying. That roan outside.”

“Got a bill of sale for it?”

Reifel shook his head.

“How long you known that feller Breen up at Paradise?”

Reifel looked at him carefully. “Not very long.”

“Ever heard of him bein’ called ‘Kid’ or ‘Badger’?”

Reifel’s eyes jumped wide open. Then, abruptly, he snorted. “You’ve got your trails crossed someplace. Breen’s just a two-bit four-flushin’ piker who might snatch the pennies off a dead man’s eyes but — ”

“One of my boys trailed Badger into those mountains. His description fits Breen.”

“Then why’n’t he grab him?”

“Maybe he will. He’d lost the trail last I heard. I got Breen’s description from the sheriff up there. Funny thing about that. It seems this Breen has pulled out. Hasn’t shown his face since a guy on a buckskin horse took the Crown King payroll off the El Paso stage.”

Reifel met Mossman’s stare and lacked a whole lot of liking it. Suddenly his eyes were like bright buffed bits of gun steel and the Ranger’s cheeks were too bland by far.

Reifel remembered the lies he had told Lafe’s posse; and the only good thing he could think of right then was the lucky way he had blundered in coming away from Boxed Y without that damned paper. Sheriff Lafe must have known of it. So why hadn’t Mossman searched him? What kind of slick game was this Ranger playing?

He kept his mouth shut and Mossman, continuing to watch him, said: “According to you all you did was to break Turner’s arm. Why have you been hiding out? Why’d you run in the first place?”

“I didn’t run,” Reifel growled. “I ain’t
been
hiding out.”

“You’ve been at Boxed Y for two weeks.”

“So what? I been flat on my back in a bed!” Reifel told him. “Where the hell did you think I’d be with a hole like that — ”

“That’s the point,” Mossman smiled. “You wouldn’t have covered more’n a hundred miles with a hole like that without you’d damn good reason. I’d like to know what that reason was.”

Reifel kept his lip buttoned.

“Did you expect to be framed for the murder of Turner?”

“Since I didn’t know Turner was going to be murdered how could I expect to be framed for it?”

“Why did you get out of the Cherrycows? You told Lafe you was working for the Rocking Arrow but that outfit never heard of you, feller.” Mossman tugged one of the ends of his mustache. “That’s a pretty good horse you bought off Turner. Must have set you back plenty. He’s no run-of-the-mill cowhorse. He’s a gambler’s horse — the kind a man would want if he was figuring to make a quick getaway. Too, it seems kind of odd that you would hang around Paradise for five or six months and then suddenly pull out on the same night Breen did. The same night that smelter payroll was lifted.”

It was coming now. Reifel braced himself and tried not to cringe from the little cold something that was climbing up his spine.

“You told the sheriff the guy who shot you was on a buckskin horse. You said he had yellow eyes. According to Lafe this guy Breen has yellow eyes. Another coincidence?”

When Reifel didn’t answer the boss Ranger said, “There’s some kind of connection between you and Breen. Why don’t you talk? If Breen put that slug in you why don’t you say so?”

Reifel wondered himself why he didn’t. It was a cinch it was Breen who had knocked off Turner. No one else would have dipped Turner’s hand in that blood to have written Ben Reifel’s name on the floor. That was just the kind of thing Breen would think of because, in addition to putting the law on Ben’s trail, it would convince the gang Ben had plundered the cache. Not one of those bastards would ever doubt he had done it and they would gun him on sight, which was what Breen wanted.

Ben kept his mouth shut. He had told enough lies. Those yarns he had spun for the sheriff had convinced this Ranger that Breen was the man on the buckskin horse. If he admitted to Mossman that Breen had shot him the law would want to know why, and it would want to know too why he hadn’t told the sheriff it was Breen in the first place. And if he told the whole truth he would only be swapping the witch for the devil. Any guy connected with that damned stage robbery would swing sure as shooting if the law could prove it.

Mossman drummed his fingers on the table top softly. He didn’t look much older than Reifel and might have seemed to have been cut from an identical pattern. Each had a certain jauntiness of demeanor, a kind of chilled-lightning stare which could be very disconcerting to the recipients of their attention. Mossman was wirier and half a head taller. But about them both was that same cat-quick litheness, that same grace of motion, the same hard competence and paucity of expression. Products of their age, each reflected his environment and the habit of his thinking in his own particular fashion. They were very human men, quick to anger and brash to recklessness, but there was greater control in the set of Mossman’s lips — a kind of dedication, a singleness of purpose which Ben Reifel’s did not show. And there was the key to the essential difference in their characters. Burt Mossman believed in the laws of the land; Ben Reifel believed laws were made for the morons and that it was all right to break them if you didn’t get caught.

He was a lot less sure of that now than he had been. His experience with Breen had given him cause for a lot of hard thinking. He was willing to admit that he might have been wrong. He had had the right hunch when he’d decided to go straight only, like Black Jack Ketchum, he had waited overlong and done one job too many.

Something of this thinking was in his tone when he said, “I ain’t never cried out of anything yet and I’m not about to start now. If you’re offerin’ me an easement to spill my guts you’re wastin’ your time. I didn’t kill Turner but if you think I did go ahead and take me in.”

“It’s not a question of what I think but of seeing justice done,” Mossman answered. “I
think
you were lying when you told the sheriff you were shot by a man on a buckskin horse. I don’t think Breen was ever on that horse, but I think he knows who was and I think you know it, too. I think the both of you know who was riding it when that payroll was lifted and I think
you
think Breen killed that marshal.

“But that’s enough about thinking. Thoughts don’t cut much ice in this country. It’s actions that make the wheels go round, and I’m not askin’ you to rat about anyone. When I want ratting done I’ll hire me some rats.”

He hitched his chair closer, leaned forward across the table with his narrowed eyes very bright and very earnest. “I’m willin’ to believe you didn’t kill Turner. I’m willin’ to believe that you would like to go straight — that, given the chance, you
would
go straight. If I put a pardon in your hand — if I give you a clean slate — will you bind yourself to do my bidding — to do
anything
I ask of you?”

Reifel stared at him, stunned.

Mossman repeated it.

Reifel’s tongue licked dry lips. His eyes searched the Ranger’s face incredulously. “My God, Mossman — you don’t
mean
that, do you?”

“Certainly I mean it. I’m up against a tough deal and I need help bad. I will clear you, Curly, if you’ll do what I ask.”

They looked into each other’s eyes and in the Ranger’s Reifel found honesty, assurance. Twice he tried to speak before he could bend his mouth around the words. And then, before he could frame them, doubt got into his mind with its poison. He had ridden the owlhoot for too long a time to have any real belief left in anything.

His eyes turned ugly and he kicked back his chair. “What kind of a fool do you take me for?”

Mossman’s eyes never wavered. “If I take you for a fool it will be your own fault. This deal is on the level.”

“Yeah? And how long will this pardon be good for? For just a couple of months until the next election? Until I’ve got your chestnuts raked out of the fire? You ain’t kiddin’ me, Ranger! The only pardon I’ll get — ”

“You can read, can’t you?” Mossman asked curtly. He took a leather case from his pocket, poked around in it a moment and extracted a paper which he slid across the table. “Read that.”

It was a pardon, all right, bearing the governor’s own signature and stamped with the official seal of the Territory. Hope leaped in Ben’s eyes and when he’d quit reading Burt Mossman said, “It lacks only your name. Your name will be put on it when you’ve done what I’ll ask you.”

Reifel’s knees felt like rubber. His mind couldn’t grasp it. “And what will it cover?” he asked in a voice that trembled in spite of him.

“It will cover everything you’ve done up to now — except murder. I’ll go to bat for you on Turner. If you’ve told me the truth I’ll see that it’s proved. If the coroner’s report shows a broken right arm you’ll get your chance to start over.”

“And if it don’t?”

Mossman’s grin showed the gleam of white teeth. “If it don’t, by God I’ll have the guy dug up! Now what do you say? Will you shake on it, Curly?”

Reifel, about to grasp the Ranger’s hand, drew back. He was suddenly recalling there were conditions to be met, that this coveted pardon would have to be earned. Suspicion turned his voice as grimly bleak as his stare.

“Before we lock hands I better hear the rest of it.”

“You don’t get it on that basis. The governor’s on a spot. As you’ve already pointed out, there’s an election coming up. Murphy has been steppin’ on too many guys’ toes. There’s a lot of hostility to the Rangers in this country and it isn’t all coming from the places you’d expect it.”

He met Reifel’s look straightly. “The governor isn’t dishing out immunity for nothing. What you’ve got to do won’t be by any figuring easy. You’ll live in constant danger. You may be shot. You might be killed. You’ll get no public thanks or credit. But if you come through on this job you’ll get your pardon, Curly. You won’t be asked to account for that long green in your pockets, or for that money you’ve got in the Douglas bank. You won’t be questioned about those Crown King payrolls, or your connection with Breen, Snake Frenston and Crowdy.”

Reifel was amazed at the extent of Mossman’s knowledge. Alarm chased cold chills up his back and fear for a moment almost paralyzed his thinking. But then his wits started working and he saw that — in part, at least — Burt Mossman must be guessing. It was not at all likely, if these things could be proved against him, they’d be offering him a pardon. This made him feel a little more confident until Mossman said, “Well, what’s it to be? Will you take the job or won’t you?”

“I don’t know yet what you’re wanting me to do. I ain’t about to buy no pig in a poke — ”

“You’ll buy this one,” Mossman said, “unless you want to be swung for the murder of that Paradise liveryman.”

Reifel’s eyes were like jet. “You’d
frame
me?”

Mossman grinned without mirth. “If you didn’t kill Turner you’re already framed. It’s a hard world, Curly. You might as well face it. I got a tough job to do and if I can’t do it one way I’ll have to do it another. For my money you’re a crook and not deservin’ of anything. But if you want to play ball I’ll do what I can for you — fill in this pardon an’ turn you loose for a fresh start.”

Reifel glared at him, furious. But he was trapped and he knew it. Trapped by that same one job too many which had sent Black Jack Ketchum to hell via the rope route. He didn’t blame Mossman who had a tough row to hoe; he blamed Bo Breen who had put this frame around him and if he could have got to Breen then he would have killed him without compunction.