Return of the Outlaw (45 page)

They circled the house once and
then rode up to the front door, dismounted and entered. Luke heard the three pairs of boots tramping around, going from room to room and finally climbing the stairs. When they came to Stewart’s office the big man who was in front stood in the doorway and held his pistol on Luke, eyeing the drunken man suspiciously.

“He
’s gone,” said Luke, in answer to the obvious, but unasked question.

“Who
’s gone?”

“I suppose you
was lookin’ for Abe Lincoln.”

“Where
’d he go?” the big man demanded.

Luke
’s face assumed a studious look, and in mock seriousness he replied, “Haven’t you heard? Somebody shot him in the head.” Luke leaned his head back and took a swig of the amber liquid, then suddenly spewed it out into the air in a great, bellowing laugh of delayed appreciation of his own humor.

The big man turned in disgust
, and followed by his two companions, walked down the stairs and out the door to where the horses were tied. On the ride back to town he wished he had taken one of the bottles of whiskey he had seen on the closet shelf. At least the long ride wouldn’t have been for nothing.

After picking up the wanted posters from Ollie Shepard, Jeff spent a long night disseminating them throughout the entire region, tacking them to houses, barns, sheds, gates, fence posts, trees, bushes and
wagons, and even—against Ollie Shepard’s strong advice—inside the town itself. He went as far south and west as Mexican Town and as far north and east as the T.S. ranch headquarters, under the sleeping nose of the man whose name appeared on the poster. In fact the first poster he distributed was the one he had slipped under Tom Stewart’s front door. A couple of hours before dawn his horse threw a shoe and Jeff was forced to walk several miles to town where he awakened a sleepy Ollie Shepard to replace the shoe.

This delay caused him to arrive at his lookout point after Stewart an
d Fogarty had left. He knew that by now every bold man in the area would be hoping to be the one to capture Tom Stewart, but he doubted anyone had the nerve to stand up to Rand Fogarty and the rest of the band of outlaws and cut-throats that worked for Stewart.

Jeff had been wat
ching for a little over an hour when he saw three men approaching the ranch. He observed them through a pair of field glasses, borrowed from Ollie, and took note of their faces and their habits. They were hard-looking, cautious men, apparently not locals—drifters probably, who saw an opportunity to make some fast money and were willing to take some risks for it. He saw them ride into the yard, circle the house and check all the outbuildings, then go into the house. He saw them come out a short time later and ride away, back toward town. This told Jeff all he needed to know.

“Time to go home,” he muttered to himself.

When Jeff rode into the yard, Luke Stratton was just coming out of the house, obviously drunk. Jeff watched the man’s face, looking for a reaction. Anger flared briefly in Luke’s eyes then vanished. He staggered over to one of the barrel chairs on the porch and sat down.

“Welcome home, Havens; drinks and cigars are on the house.” He gave a high pitched
, drunken cackle, set the bottle down on the porch beside him and patted his bandaged arm. “No hard feelings; I would’ve done the same to you . . . worse. You’ll be evictin’ me, I suppose.”

“
Uh-huh. Can you ride?”

“Wouldn
’t stay where I wasn’t wanted even if I couldn’t.”

“I
’ll saddle you a horse. Show me your saddle.”

Jeff followed Luke to the tack shed
where the outlaw indicated a saddle and bridle he claimed were his. “I’ll take that big bay standin’ over by the trough, he’s mine.” Luke said, pointing in the direction of the horse corral.

“You
’ll take what I give you.” Jeff went to the corral and liked the looks of the bay and decided to keep him. He knew Luke was lying anyway. He selected a horse which, compared to the others in the corral was about average, and saddled it. He led it around to the bunkhouse where Luke was trying with one hand to roll up his few belongings in a blanket.

Jeff took over the chore, and
when finished, tied the blanket roll on behind the saddle and then helped Luke up onto the horse. Luke pulled one of Stewart’s cigars out of his shirt and thumbed a match to light it. “You runnin’ me clear out of the country?” He spoke casually, but behind the words was a serious concern for his own well-being: they both knew he wasn’t well enough to ride far.

“Just off my ranch,” responded Jeff, levelly. “Go to town, get a room, stay a while and mend, but don
’t ever come back here.”

“Wish
’t I hadn’t come the first time,” Luke muttered, and started his horse forward. After a few paces he stopped and turned in the saddle. I was just wonderin’, Havens; when you shot me, was you aiming for my arm or . . . ?”

“I was aiming for your
heart. I missed.”

Luke eyed him for a moment,
nodded his head and started the horse toward town at a slow, gentle walk.”

When Luke
was gone, Jeff switched his saddle from his own weary horse to the big bay Luke had been partial to. He rubbed his horse down and watered it and put a hackamore on it with a long lead rope. He pushed all the livestock out of the corrals and climbed up on the bay. Leading his buckskin, he drove the other horses several miles to the north, allowing them to scatter along the way. He could round them up later. Stewart’s riders would be back, and they would have to leave. When they did, he wanted them to take only the horses they were riding. His own horse he hobbled and left in a large meadow with a spring running through it.

H
e rode back to the ranch, ever cautious and alert, knowing he had increased his own risk of capture by setting the bounty hunters on Stewart. Hopefully the three men who had dared to come to the ranch would, by now, have gotten the word out that Stewart was gone, thereby decreasing Jeff’s risk of an accidental encounter with someone who was searching for Stewart.

Returning to the ranch
, he spent a couple of hours going through the house and the outbuildings, moving anything of value that Stewart’s men might decide to take, and loading it all onto the spring wagon. He drove the wagon out into the desert and left it. When he was done he covered the tracks as well as he could. Anyone who was really looking would find it, but Jeff doubted Stewart’s men would take the time. These tasks accomplished, he realized he was famished. 

He went to the cookshack and prepared himself a quick
cold meal. Before he rode out he tacked up a copy of the wanted poster on the front door of the house, and one on the door of the bunk house. He left the yard by way of the main trail, mingling his tracks with those of all the others there. Arriving back at his look-out point, he tethered the bay and climbed to the top of the bluff. He took a deep swig from his canteen and settled in to wait. 

The sun was making its descent to
ward the dark bulk of the mountain front when Stewart’s men rode back in, the two groups having encountered each other on the way in. Jeff watched with Ollie’s field glasses as the men rode in, showing by their immediate hesitation that they were aware things were not right. He saw them discover the wanted poster and become aware of its import. A hasty conference was held in the yard and the men scattered, some mounted, some on foot, checking the corrals and the buildings. He could see the anger in their movements from the realization of how they had been betrayed. Another conference was held in front of the house, some of the men shouting and gesticulating as they spoke, and their voices carried to him.

As he watched, a gradual acceptance of the situation seemed to settle over the group. Men began breaking off, some going to the cookshack, some to the bunkhouse,
some into the main house. Less than a half hour later, having loaded up their possessions and as much food as they could carry without pack animals, the group rode out, heading north, as Jeff had expected they would.

It was over
, and now Jeff was not sure what to do. His mood turned to depression as the sense of anti-climax which had been hovering nearby all day overtook him. He wondered why men do the things they do, and why they need land, and money, and power. He thought of what Stewart had wanted, what he had killed for, and it all seemed to him to be a pointless waste. He tried to be glad it was over, but for the moment he felt nothing. 

Jeff had no way of knowing what Stewart and Fogarty were planning. He assumed they would head north to their hideout at the rustler
’s pass. He also believed that at least some of Stewart’s hired men would also go there. He would send a telegram to Sheriff Beeman, informing him of Tom Stewart’s true identity and advising him that he could expect the man, along with Rand Fogarty and some of his hired guns, at the pass within a few days.

For some reas
on that he didn’t understand, Jeff had no desire to go after Stewart and Fogarty, though he had sworn to kill them. The curious lack of emotion he was experiencing seemed to have robbed him of his anger and hatred. There had been too many deaths already, and the thought of more killing left him cold.

The sun was going down when he mounted the bay and rode
to the ranch house. There was no life there now; even the animals were gone. The glassless, darkened windows of the house were like hollow eyes of death. He didn’t go in, seeing no point to it, but sat on the porch for a long time, thinking. Somehow it seemed necessary for his mind to go back to the beginning and rehearse all of the events in the order they had occurred, trying, perhaps to make himself believe it was really over. After a while, though he fought against it, his thoughts turned to Anne, and he knew this place would always bring her memory back to him.

H
e thought of Amado, and of his grandfather: the men who had built this ranch. Jeff had finished what Amado had started, and by virtue of this fact he felt as close to his old friend at this moment as he ever had when Amado was alive. He felt that somehow, in some measure, he had repaid a debt. He arose and walked out into the darkness, the sound of his bootsteps ringing loud through the eerie silence. He mounted the bay and rode out, stopping once to turn around and look at the house. It lay alone and silent in the dark, like a raped woman, and he was not sure he would ever come back here.

Stewart and
Fogarty hid out in a deep wash not far from town, escaping from the sun in the hollow of a cutbank. Both men were still angry, and for several hours they spoke little. Finally Fogarty said, “Well what’s your plan?”

“There are two things I
’m leaving this valley with,” vowed Stewart. “More money than I’m packing right now, and my daughter.”

“By herself?”
Fogarty asked, and there was a significance to the question that was not lost on Stewart.

“No, she
’s too small, she still needs her mother. We’ll take Anne along and stay somewhere out of the way until the baby’s old enough. Maybe even build a cabin up at the pass.”

“
Then what?”

“What do you think,” replied Stew
art. “Anne can never be trusted: she’d always try to get away; to give us away.”

Fogarty said, “
Then you don’t care what happens to her?” In the killer’s voice could be heard an evil hunger, which almost made even Stewart shudder.

“Yes, Rand, you can have her,” Stewart murmured. He could think of no more fitting punishment for Anne
’s betrayal of him than the things Fogarty would do to her before he killed her.

The daylight hours dragged
, and boredom was a hard thing to bear. Even when night came, the waiting continued until it was late enough to do what they had planned. Finally it was time, and they saddled their horses and rode the short distance to the outskirts of town. Marking a small clump of trees as the spot where they would reunite in an hour or less, they separated, each with his specific job to do.

When he arrived at the small, austere house where Willard Deering and his wife lived, Fogarty dismounted and crept silently up to the door. He stood there for several minutes, peering th
rough a gap in the curtains, observing Deering and his wife in the front room.

Mrs. Deering was sitting on a settee
, knitting placidly, oblivious to her husband’s private hell. Willard sat in depressed silence in a wingback chair, his legs outstretched, his head on his chest. He was ruined and he knew it. By the time he had gone to work that morning, the news of the wanted posters was all over town. No one knew who had distributed them, though there was a good deal of speculation and debate on the matter. Deering cared not at all who had done the deed. Whoever it was had merely given him an early realization of his mistake and a foreknowledge of his ruination.

Mrs. Deeri
ng yawned, put down her knitting, said something to Willard, which he did not acknowledge, and left the room. Willard’s worry-racked mind was exhausted. He leaned his head forward and placed a hand on his brow, silently weeping. Outside, Fogarty tapped lightly on the glass of the door. Deering rose slowly and walked over. When the door opened Fogarty pushed his way through, putting the muzzle of his revolver against Deering’s head.