The Overlanders (12 page)

“Be still!” Sary said, and pushed her horse nearer Grete. She wondered if he truly understood how she felt. She wanted him to; there was only one thing in this world she wanted more. And that was to know how
he
felt, to be convinced that she was important to him. All the rest — the ranch, these horses, meant less than nothing; but she could not put the words in his mouth. “Well, Grete?”

“I’m going on.”

He might have said a lot more, perhaps he should have; but he was seeing some things clearer now. He had finally come face to face with himself and some of his discoveries were starkly disturbing. There was confusion inside him and the shock of broken images, a strange uncomforting humility laced with shards of doubt. He managed to keep this off his face but he could not saddle her or any woman with the responsibility for what he meant to do. “I’m going to try it,” he told Idaho.

A gun jumped into the gaunt man’s hand.

They stared at each other, eyes bright and hard. The quiet had the feel of a watch wound too far.

Sary’s cheeks turned white. She could not breathe. The hammer of the gun came back to full cock. Idaho softly said, “We’ll see…” and Patch, coming up, growled, “What’re we stopped for?”

“Resting the mares,” Grete said through his teeth. “Break out some grub.”

Cook saw the gun then. The lump bobbed in his throat. Sary, coolly knowing what chance she took, exactly backed her horse until her waist was between the gun’s muzzle and Grete’s chest. She said, “He’s not going to shoot,” and made her mouth smile for Patch. “Go along and get supper — and hurry it up, will you?”

She reached out for Grete’s arm, pulling at its stiffness, feeling how furiously angry he’d become. She kept grim hold of him, fearfully turning, compelling him to turn, not giving him a chance to be quixotically foolish which she knew was what he felt bound to do, being a man and filled with purely crazy notions. Better to have him shamed than shot.

She didn’t dare risk a look in Idaho’s direction but she did out of the corners of her eyes catch a glimpse of the ludicrously gaping face of Patch. She got Grete turned around but that was all — she couldn’t get him away from there. He grabbed the dun hard with both knees, anchoring the horse against the pull of her. She stopped too, rather than turn loose of him.

She saw the swollen veins in his neck as he twisted his head to glare over a shoulder. She was suddenly frightened what he might say would trigger the gun in spite of everything. “Go on,” she cried bitterly, “get yourself killed! If your damned pride means —”

“I’ll take care of my pride!” He said gruffly to cook, “When you go back pass the word to the boys to watch sharp for Swallowfork. They’re going to come down on us. First puff of gunsmoke I want the boys running. You got that?”

Patch nodded.

“Never mind the mares. I don’t want no one stopping to swap lead with that bunch. At the first sign of trouble light out and keep going.”

Patch dubiously looked at the girl, then at Idaho. The gunfighter had scowlingly lowered his pistol. In spite of what Sary’s intervention must have done to him he began to show interest. His glance was sharp. “Let me git this straight. You’re wantin’ Crotton’s gunnies to figure the crew’s run out an’ took off for Texas?”

“That’s the general idea.”

Contempt came into the gaunt man’s look. “If I know them rats they’ll sure as hell do it.”

“Not without you let them,” Grete said. “You been shooting off your jaw about Sary’s interests ever since I got into this deal. Put up or shut up.”

The gunfighter’s cheeks showed a rawer red. His mouth tightened. But after a moment he tipped a curt nod and a grin wryly streaked across his scabbed lips. He shoved his gun back in leather. “What do you want ‘em to do?”

Grete wasn’t sure at all how far he could trust the man. His eyes were too guarded to be certainly read. “Take them up the north slope quick as you’re out of Crotton’s sight and wait in the rocks beyond the rim till I come up with you.”

Idaho’s eyes watched him, then shifted to Patch. “What the hell are you waitin’ for?”

“I want a plain order —”

“You got one. Git goin’.”

Cook’s head swung to Grete. “You’re still wantin’ grub?”

“I want to butcher a little time. Might as well be putting it away.”

Patch turned his horse and rode off.

“What about Sary?” the gunfighter asked.

“She stays with the horses.” Grete saw the anger leaping through his cheeks. “She’ll be safe enough. I know this country and I know Crotton’s crew. They’re not going to bother any stranded woman. Crotton, so far as women are concerned…” He caught the skeptical climb of the gaunt man’s brows. “You can take my word for it.”

Idaho’s lip started to lift but he flattened it out when he saw the girl take her hand off Grete’s arm. He picked up his reins, face inscrutable again. “What about the horses?”

“They’re not going to run, the shape their feet are in. Anyway Crotton’s boss, Felix Stroat, ain’t the kind to play hell with a stock of top blood mares. He’ll take care of those e-quines fine as silk.”

“That’s what you’re countin’ on?”

“I’m putting a big stack on it.” Grete wheeled the dun, heading back; Sary, following, appeared now almost as wooden-faced as the gunfighter.

Idaho moved his horse up beside Grete. “This Stroat a particular friend of yours?”

Farraday looked at him coldly and laughed.

“That’s no answer!” the gunfighter snarled.

“If I was about to fall over he’d give me a push.”

Idaho’s stare narrowed down. “Then he’ll be after us with everything he’s got.”

“That’s why I’m dropping the mares. It would go against his grain to let that stock get so much as a hair mussed. Time he wakes up we’re going to be out of this jackpot.” Grete, swinging wide, cut over to say to Rip, “You understand what you’re to do when they hit?”

The man glared at him, finally nodding.

“All right. Go up there a ways where you can see around that bend. Not knowing how far we’ll have got with these mares, they’ll probably be coming right down the canyon. Just before they get within good killing range, let off that rifle and bust for the stock. That’s to suck them down here and to tip off our boys. You’ll have farther to run because you’re going to come pounding straight up to the mares — that’s to make sure they see what we’ve got here.”

“When they comin’?”

“They won’t be far away now. You see the rest of us fading, you let out a yell and come busting right after us. I’ll see that you draw double pay for today.”

“I ain’t drawn
no
pay yet,” Rip scowled. “They been holdin’ it back to make sure we stick.” His look said that wouldn’t stop him if things got rough.

Grete nodded and turned back, throwing a look overhead. It would have done no good to have promised the man more. Loyalty was something you just couldn’t buy. He looked down where the mares were cropping dried grass; in spite of everything, he thought, they made a mighty pretty sight. There were more foals now. He reckoned upwards of fifty. That brought out his tight grin.

Sary had gone on — he caught occasional glimpses of her, moving among the mares and boulders, following Patch along the route toward the drag. Grete saw a thin curl of smoke where the kid was already pulling the packs off the work stock. Idaho was waiting.

Grete slanched another thoughtful squint at the sun, heeled well over, throwing out longer, deeper shadows where rocks stood up in its path. In about another hour this particular stretch was going to be hard to see well in. Crotton would know this. So would Stroat. No telling if the pair were together. Crotton could be home. He could be perambulating about in town where folks could afterwards remember they had seen him.

Idaho said, breaking into Grete’s conjectures, “What’d you mean, ‘time he finally wakes up’?”

“Hmm? Oh — Stroat.” The sun struck up a little flash from Grete’s teeth. “They’ll be looking for us to run these horses up into the mountains to push them onto my claim. They don’t mean to let us — you can understand that. What you don’t know about is Stroat, the way he feels about livestock. So we drop these horses right into his lap; he hasn’t figured on that, it throws his whole schedule off. While he’s playing around with these mares and their foals we’re on our way to Crotton’s headquarters. Time he wakes up he’s got this stock on his hands. He can’t let go of them; he’ll have to split up his crew. We’ll be sitting behind walls time those buggers catch up with us.”

The gunfighter said grudgingly, “All right. You’ve sold it to me. But that don’t change nothin’ else that’s between us.”

The rash of Rip’s rifle flung its cascading echoes across the drive’s stopped sprawl from a hundred different rock faces. Its muzzle burst was a lurid flash through the gloom of piled-up shadows, driving Farraday, the girl, and the bony-faced gunfighter out of the wavering light from Patch’s fire. Those three were alone there, cook and Olds having gone up the line with hot food and java. This seemed to be working out just about the way Grete had figured; and now a wild racket of hoofs drumming toward them from where Rip had triggered the warning sent Grete and Idaho up into leather.

The gunfighter’s yell tore off through the trumpeting call of the stallion and he whirled, holding his mount, as the crew thundered past with every evidence of panic. Grete saw gun flashes blossom where Rip had stood sentinel and saw the man, nearer, twist around to fire back.

Leaning down, Grete hollered at the girl: “Remember! Stay right where you are! Patch some more wood on that fire so they can see you — act trapped, like you can’t find a horse — don’t know where to turn next.” Staring into her white face he had a moment of misgiving; then he pulled back into the saddle. “You’ll be all right,” he said gruffly, and spun the horse to find Rip, forty yards away, lashing his mount straight up the north slope.

Idaho, back of Grete, cut loose without compunction, emptying his rifle, snarling when Rip kept going. The rocks hurled back the racket with a hundred raucous voices and the mares pretty near went crazy; Grete could see their black shapes — some with foals desperately trying to stay at their sides — rushing every which-way, neighing and squealing, some of them kicking. He saw one foal going end over end.

Rip, bent low, suddenly topped out over the rim and muzzle lights winked through the roaring black as Grete, spurring away from the last touch of fireglow, caught up with the gunfighter’s cursing.

“Never mind,” he called; “anyone’s liable to lose their head —”

“Three of ‘em!” Idaho shouted. “Three is all that went by me! Rip makes four — where’s the other?”

“You sure?”

“By God you’ll see!”

Grete, remembering the hating half-defiant way Rip had stared when he’d offered to double the man’s wages, knew the fellow had “rolled his cotton” as they’d have said back in Texas. And now there was another gone. Which of the remainder would show up to be counted? None of them probably if they could manage to get clear.

The gunfighter yelled, “Want to turn up here?”

Grete looked back and couldn’t even find the fire. “All right.” He cut the dun over. Putting him up that sharp incline he thought more than once to hear somebody back of them but didn’t see anything. He was glad he was using a double-girthed hull. Twisting around some of those slabs, the leathers skreaked and popped like pistols.

When they rimmed out he pulled up, peering back. “What’s ailin’ you?” Idaho said. Grete held a hand up. Both of them listened but the men up ahead were making such a clatter going through rocks and brush Grete couldn’t be sure if he heard anything or not. The pitch looked black as a stack of stove lids. Squirming around he found the gleam of the fire, not bright like it had been, a huddle of horsebackers milling about it. He shook his head. “Nerves, I reckon.” It was a concession he normally would not have made.

“Better git on,” the gunfighter said, “‘fore we lose ‘em.”

They struck off through the dark, both horses heaving. They came up with the others. Grete said, “We’ll rest a bit.” He saw the hard set of the gunfighter’s shoulders. “We’re back far enough,” he nodded. “Go ahead.”

Idaho struck a match in cupped palms. Patch’s grumpy scowl came out of the darkness, the Mexican’s steeple-crowned hat, the kid’s face. Idaho’s bitter eyes came around. Patch cursed. “Now you know.”

Grete, sighing said, “He could have been hit,” but none of them believed it. He didn’t himself. Ben wasn’t the kind to be hit. He was a hitter.

“God damn it,” Patch said, “we better give this thing up.”

They sat there a moment. The kid tipped his head back. “Maybe that’s him now.”

They all heard the hoofs of an approaching horse moving erratically toward them. Not cropping grass, Grete thought; there’s somebody on him.

Confused, or trying to be cautious maybe. Could be one of Crotton’s Swallowfork bunch.

Patch slipped a gun out. Barney, next to him, caught Patch’s wrist. “Hold it.”

“Grete…?” a voice called tentatively. Idaho’s face jerked. Behind him Frijoles softly let out his breath.

“Over here — around the rock,” Grete said.

Dark as it was her eyes picked him out.

“Never mind. No point in my staying. Ben’s sold you out.”

Somewhere in the night’s sudden quiet a shod and careless hoof struck rock. Frijoles, looking around nervously, crossed himself. “He’s split them up,” Patch said. “They’re comin’ after us.”

Grete told himself he should have known better than try to brace Swallowfork with this kind of crew — and it wasn’t as though he hadn’t been warned. He hated to be put in the position of promising something he wasn’t going to be able to deliver. He had promised her half of a ranch, and it hacked him.

“They won’t know where we are…” That was Barney, worriedly whispering the hope of at least three of them.

Grete was conscious of Sary’s eyes. “Maybe not,” he said gruffly, “but they’ll know where we’re headed.” It wouldn’t have been quite so mean if the girl had stayed with the horses; that would have forced Stroat to leave dependable men.

He rubbed a damp hand across his thigh, bitterly knowing there was no way of going back, of undoing what was done. He had either to give up the whole deal right here or get these dogs to Swallowfork pronto. And without he wanted a bullet in his back it would have to be their own choice that took them.

You could smell their fright — even the kid was panicked.

In their desperate reflections Crotton’s headquarters was the mouth of the lion. How could he put them into it? How could he convince them their only chance for survival lay in doing the thing least likely to insure it?

Somehow it was the girl — Sary’s continued regard — that shaped the empty gesture he hauled full-blown from the darker recesses of his need. He said, “If one of them stumbles into us now we’ll have no chance at all, that’s sure. I won’t hold you boys — duck out if you’ve a mind to. I won’t say you can get through but you can try. It’s not over a hundred miles to the border. Go ahead. Good luck to you.”

He sat back against the high swell of his cantle as though he had all the time in the world.

He could feel them fidgeting, could see the heavier black of them hanging there, free to go yet afraid to move. It was Patch who asked suspiciously, “And what’ll
you
be doing?”

“What I set out to do,” Grete said — “riding over to Crotton’s ranch.”

“With the girl?”

“If that’s what she wants to do I won’t stop her.”

He had a feeling that Sary saw through what he was up to, that it was one more count against him with her; but she said cool enough, “Of course I’m going with you,” and Idaho said, “You can count me in.”

Barney Olds sighed. “Me, too.”

“Hell,” Patch said then, “what are we waitin’ for?”

But Frijoles, Ben’s man from the start, was still thinking. “Eef they have gone by us —”

“You’re a free agent, Beans,” Grete cut in. “If it’s your notion you’d be better off by yourself then that’s how you ought to play it. I don’t want anyone along who’d rather be somewhere else.”

The skies should have fallen after delivering himself of that one. He felt Idaho’s sharp look but squeezed the dun with his knees, swinging off toward the north at a circumspect walk, not daring to turn his head. Do it right, he told himself. Do it right or you’ll never get there.

At least some of them were coming. He could hear the rasp of leather, a myriad of lesser sounds not exactly definable. In his mind he turned over the words of the Mexican, darkly wondering. If Crotton’s bunch had gone past this might get pretty rough. But, knowing Stroat as he did, he did not consider it too likely. The man was too dogged, too methodically thorough, to risk overrunning his great opportunity. At least a fourth of his crew would have been left with the captured horses if only to make certain Grete had no chance to pull a rabbit out of the hat. Stroat, as Grete’s
segundo
, had had plenty of experience with Grete’s flair for legerdemain. Hollis, to be sure, would have told Crotton’s ramrod of Grete’s order to abandon the mares, but Stroat wasn’t the kind to consider anything a fact without he had personally established it. He’d have the rest of Crotton’s hired toughs spread out, beating the rocks and brush above the rim.

Knowing that any attempt here at haste would prove the surest means of attracting trouble, Grete was holding the pace to an exasperating walk, breaking it up now and again with short pauses — almost, Idaho crossly muttered, as though they were helping Stroat’s Swallowforkers search.

This was the impression Grete was endeavoring to create, for only by such a frustrating device could he find any hope of digging themselves clear. Rip’s flight over the rim in plain hearing of Stroat’s crew, followed by Ben’s defection, had put Crotton’s riders on their trail far too soon for Grete to consider any straight-out dash. The last thing he wanted was to make a race of this trip; he would have to find enough when they got there to get up the field pieces. If he were denied such a margin, Stroat’s superior numbers could be made to tell heavily.

Grete’s party had not gone a quarter of a mile when out of the gloom directly ahead of them somebody cursed. Grete, snapping his quick glance over his shoulder, discovered no one had quit him; but he saw also they had got too closely bunched. His yanked-back look found nothing in front of him to put a gun on. His horse had stopped — so had the rest of them. In this intensity of quiet the metallic sound of Idaho’s leveraction repeater lifting a .44–.40 into firing position was about as restful as a Comanche war cry.

“You goddamn fools!” Stroat’s voice ripped at them. “I told you, Haines —”

Everything appeared to happen at once then. Grete’s eyes found the man and he grabbed at his sixshooter. He bent low over the horn and gouged the dun with his spurs. Idaho’s Henry cracked spitefully — spoke again; but Stroat’s horse was already in motion, flame spitting above the line of its plunge. Someone yelled behind Grete and Stroat disappeared between rocks as Grete triggered futilely and Idaho riddled the night with his rifle. “Come on — come on!” Grete shouted through the uproar, and drove the dun at full speed dead ahead.

Yells and cursing came through the rush of hoofs behind him and he held the big horse to its panicked run for another couple minutes before easing him into a more conservative gallop. The black shapes of the others were coming hard at his heels; then the girl thrust alongside. “We’ve got to stop — Barney’s hurt!”

“He’ll have to wait,” Grete answered.

“Then you’ll have to slow down or he isn’t going to make it.”

Grete, throwing a hand out to warn the rest of them, pulled up.

Patch was holding the kid in his saddle. “Where’d it catch you?”

Olds said, groaning, “In the chest — I’m all blood. You — you fellers go on.”

Grete crowded the dun against the kid’s horse and felt of him. He didn’t need any light. He pulled off Olds’ neckerchief and, folding it for padding, thrust it inside his shirt. Then he got the kid’s belt and strapped the pad in place. “Tie him into his saddle,” he told Frijoles; and Idaho’s rifle began laying flat smashes of sound through the night. Sary cried at Grete: “What good will it do to go to Crotton’s headquarters?”

“We can’t make a stand here!”

“
Seguro,
” growled the Mexican. And Patch said, “We got him anchored.”

Grete led them off through a jumble of boulders, the girl hanging onto the reins of Barney’s horse. There was a renewed burst of firing from Crotton’s outfit. Lead smashed and flattened against the rocks, some of it squealing in wild ricochet. “Sharp pitch here,” Grete warned and dropped from sight, the others following.

Ten minutes later they were climbing again. Grete, dropping back, leaned out to stare at the kid.

“None of it,” Sary said, “is worth that boy’s life!” Grete felt the searching look she threw at him. “Why are we going to Swallowfork?”

“We’re going to Swallowfork because that is where we have to go to put a stop to this.”

“And how do you propose to manage that?”

“Mostly what we do is going to depend on how things shape there. If Crotton’s in town we’ll fire the big house. That’ll reach a long ways in a night black as this one, and it will give us some light. We’ll take over the outbuildings. When Stroat’s bunch comes in we’ll drop what we can of them. What Stroat brings will be hired guns — the Swallowfork hardcases. Hurt those rannies bad enough and what’s left will go straight over the hill.”

“That’s a pretty brutal outlook.”

“What do you suppose Crotton sent Stroat to do? Hand down the Ten Commandments?”

Her face tipped around. “What other people do —”

“Don’t give me that! We’re not dealing with Bible tracts. When you set to fight wolves you’ve got to bite like a wolf bites.”

“And what if they get there before we do?”

“Crotton will give out a story and that will be the end of it. He’ll say it was tough about that woman but…”

Idaho pushed up. “I thought you said —”

“That was back there. Where I told her to stay!”

He lifted the dun into a lope again. They crested a ridge and there were ranch lights ahead of them — Crotton’s headquarters, still a couple of miles off. Now the going was easier, gently rolling. They were out of the rocks and there was no brush here. Grete thought of the kid with a long regret, understanding this ride would be doing him no good and bitterly aware that there was no help for it. More than Grete’s inclination was involved; to have stopped would have been giving death warrants for all of them, and despite the harsh words he’d just flung at the gunfighter Grete did expect to reach the ranch first.

Crotton’s crew, if Crotton was with them, may have by-passed this outfit and be waiting right now, but Grete did not believe this. He was gambling Stroat had charge of that bunch and he was gambling on what he knew of Stroat’s character.

“When we ride in, spread out,” he said over his shoulder. “We’re not like to have any great amount of time. Every move’s got to count. Watch the yard. Those lights don’t signify — they’re always turned up; Leppy, Crotton’s cook, takes care of them. I’ll fire the house. Rest of you scatter. Take cover in the outbuildings.”

Idaho said, brushing alongside once more, “Could be trouble in that house. I’ll go with you.”

Grete slammed a look at him. “Why don’t you say it?”

“Well, by God, I will! I never been sold out but there’s always a first time. Way you’ve set this up it’s got all the earmarks —”

“If it’s a trap,” Grete snarled, “it will close on me, too.”

“That’s what I aim to make sure of. You pick the house for yourself and send the rest of us into them outbuildin’s. For all we know you’ve never quit Crotton — that bunch played around back there one hell of a while!”

Grete was too hacked to say anything to that. He clipped his horse with the steel again, sent him down the last stretch at a headlong gallop, pulling away from the others, so furious mad he would have tackled right then Crotton’s whole crew single-handed.

But he got hold of his temper before he’d gone very far, this innate sense of the fitness of things reluctantly convincing him that, in Idaho’s place, he might have felt the same way. It came to him then if he wasn’t damned careful he might very well be bracing Swallowfork single-handed —

“solo” as they said in this country.

Key to the man was in the gunfighter’s stake and, viewed in that light, he threw a pretty long shadow. He had no stake in what they were doing here. Idaho’s interest was centered in the girl and he was stringing along purely to make sure she didn’t wind up grabbing the burnt end of things.

This didn’t leave Grete much ground to stand on. It reduced his outrage to frying size, left him feeling about as tall as a toothpick. He wondered if this was how Sary saw him.

With mouth sucked in he checked the dun’s lick to let the others come up. Hating this like poison, yet impelled to do it, he declared, facing Idaho squarely: “This don’t change anything that’s between us but I reckon you had some right to say that.”

Grete couldn’t own up that events in these last few hours had managed to turn the whole deal sour on him, that except for the girl he would dropped the damned business, that he was here now mainly to make good if he could on that brag of a ranch which had pulled Sary into it. Stamper’s words, though he didn’t suspect this, had got deeper under his hide than was apparent.

Idaho just stared at him, not saying anything. Grete had not aimed to go so far but now, grinding his pride into doll rags, said, “I’d be considerably favored if you
would
go with me.”

The gunfighter’s suspicion looked to grow progressively stronger. Grete was beginning to get a bit panicky under Idaho’s hard and continuing attention when Sary said impatiently, “This boy’s in a bad way. We’ve got to get him out of that saddle.”

They’d drawn up at the edge of the yard and Grete, checking appearances against remembered knowledge of this place, jerked the girl a stiff nod. “Take care of him, ma’am — Frijoles can help. That boy has sure won his spurs on this trip. You just ride straight into that barn with him.” They were in the deep dark of a bunch of old cottonwoods. “You hole up in the forge shed, Patch — that’s it over there,” he pointed; and brought his glance back to Idaho. “Ready?”

“This place is too quiet.” The man’s tone didn’t like it.

“Cook’s probably lit out. Crew is with Stroat, what he hasn’t split off to look out for those mares.” He threw another look around. “Likely Crotton’s in town.” A horse nickered tentatively from an open-face corral. “Listen —” Patch said, putting a hand out.

The rumor of travel was strong-lifting pulse. “That’s them!” someone cried in a voice turned jumpy with nervous excitement. They all twisted around to stare hard into darkness. “Man, they’re comin’!” cook said.

Grete tipped his head at the gunfighter. “Let’s go.”

They put their horses across the yard, flashing through bars of light from the house’s open windows, the told-off trio striking diagonally toward the barn, Grete and Idaho making for the pillared gallery. Grete saw one dark room facing onto the yard which, thinking back, he was certain had just a moment ago been lighted. Quick fear splintered through the shell of his mind and a warning shout rushed out of his mouth. But the damage was done, his cry too late. The gunfighter’s stare was like a curse as he reeled, missing his grab, and fell out of the saddle.

The gun barked again, cuffing the night with its sound, its muzzle flash striking like a lance from the blackness even as Grete, still gripping his rifle, flung himself off the dun. He struck limp and wildly rolled, saddle gun hugged against his chest, the crazy tightness in his head throwing him onto his feet in a crouching run, driving him across the pounding planks straight at the window.