the Key-Lock Man (1965) (5 page)

Neerland turned his eyes on her. "Try?"

"You would try, I am sure, and then I would kill you."

There was silence in the room. Something in the way she spoke told everyone present that she meant exactly what she said.

Though she continued to look at Neerland, her words were for the man in the buckskin hunting jacket. "I am a stranger to your country, and I have never known hardship, but for a man who would love me and be gentle, I would face anything. You, Mr.

Neerland, are not that man."

The stranger straightened from the bar and swept off his hat. "Ma'am," he said quietly, "if you'll ride with me in the morning, there's a sky pilot-a minister-about sixty miles west. I should be most honored."

Across the room their eyes met and held for a long moment of silence, and then she said, "I will ride with you, sir. I will ride beside you in the morning."

Neerland started to speak, then was silent, and turning abruptly away, he went outside.

The station manager returned his shotgun to its place under the bar. "You've got a good woman there, mister," he said. "Give her time to know the country."

Suddenly embarrassed, the Key-Lock man crossed the room to her, and the others turned away, granting them what little privacy the room allowed.

"I am going into new land," he said. "I have no ranch, no home. I am going to a place I know, a place where a man can build."

"All right."

"You have your things with you?"

"Yes." She gestured to the pile in the corner.

Surreptitiously the eyes of the women followed her hand's movement. "It is too much, I am afraid."

The Key-Lock man looked at the expensive valise, the small trunk, the other things. "We will manage," he said.

That WAS GOOD advice," he said, as they rode westward. His eyes were on the trail before them.

"To give you time to know the country."

He gave her time, and she needed it, for everything was strange. There was nothing here that in any way resembled the life she had known, that in any way reflected what she had been. These stark and lonely mountains were not like the mountains of her own beloved north country.

"Give them time, too," he said, "and they become a part of you."

He had bought three extra pack mules for her things alone, as many as for their whole outfit. But he had not complained, and he had packed her things with care.

"You may throw them out if you wish," she had said.

"What they represent is behind me."

"They are yours," he replied gently. "It is good to have familiar things with you."

They were married in a quiet ceremony in a bare desert town. The minister was a quiet man, and a sincere one, and he was part of this land, too. And that night they slept side by side, but not together.

When they rode on again next morning, she noticed that again and again he turned to look behind him.

"You expect someone?" she asked.

"In this country? But you must always expect someone or something."

The long riding tired her but it did not sap her strength, and after the third day she was no longer even tired.

She had known enough of camping to appreciate his skill, and she came to realize that no move was wasted, that nothing was left to chance, that all of his constant awareness was so much a part of him that he no longer even thought of it.

On the fourth night he looked across the fire at her. "Some day there will be a visitor," he said.

She waited, for she had never been given to unnecessary words.

"Neerland," he said.

With sudden fear, she knew he was right. She had almost forgotten Neerland. He was not far behind them, only a few days away, but all her feelings, all her thoughts, all her own awareness had been given to this country and this man. And she was coming to know him.

"You have not asked where we will go," he said.

"I go with you."

He added a few sticks to the small fire. "It is a place where no one comes, only the Navajos sometimes."

"They are Indians?"

He nodded. "Long ago, perhaps several hundred years ago, there were other Indians there. In the cliffs they built houses that are still there. After a long time they went away, I do not know why."

"What will you do there?"

"Run some cattle, when I can afford them.

Build a place of my own-a place for us."

He talked of this, and of the land toward which they rode.

He talked easily, and well. She, who had known so many men of education, men adept with words, saw that he, too, knew their uses.

He seemed to understand what she was thinking, but he said nothing of himself; he only said, "Don't misunderstand the men you meet. Many are uneducated in your way, but they know much else. They have an education that fits them for living here. There will be others who may have traveled widely ... I hunted buffalo with a man who attended Gottingen University, and I soldiered with a graduate of the Sorbonne. Yet both of them talked "western," using all the easy phrases, the rough talk of the cow camps."

Later, when they had left the trail that went west and were weaving their way north into the wild land of desert and canyon, she asked, "Do you think he will find us?"

"Sooner or later," he answered.

How long ago had that been? Weeks now, but she had forgotten time. In this place it seemed a meaningless thing.

Now SHE STOOD beside the water and dried herself on a piece of torn blanket that she used for a towel, and then she dressed herself, taking her time.

Close beside her was the Winchester he had given her.

"Can you shoot?" he had asked her.

"Yes," she had said. Then after a minute she had added, "Do not be afraid. I shall not shoot until I see what I am to hit, and when I shoot, I shall hit what I am shooting at."

Two days later he had ridden away.

He had paused at the last. "If anything happens to me that I cannot return, ride out of here and ride west. It is a long way, but stay on the trail until you see the sign for Prescott."

"All right," she said. And then she lifted her blue eyes to his. "How long shall I wait?"

"Two weeks, at least. I could almost crawl it in that time."

He had been gone for fifteen days. So time meant something after all.

HESNEY DREW UP to study the country.

Behind them lay the gigantic wall of cliffs through which they had ridden the evening before. To the north the ridge stretched away as far as the eye could follow, and on the east of it, where they now were, the rugged country was dotted with cedar. To the south, beyond more cedar breaks, lay miles of sand dunes.

"You suppose he could have doubled back and gone north along the cliffs?" Short asked.

"Not unless he knows another way through that wall,"

Hardin replied; "and if he did he left no tracks. I scouted for sign first thing after daybreak."

Neill waited, enjoying the warmth of the morning sun. He had slept badly, even tired as he was, for he had too few blankets for the cold night, and he kept worrying about his wife.

This was lonesome country. Since daybreak they had seen nothing that lived except a lone buzzard, prospecting them for future attention.

Kimmel drew up beside Neill and dug into his pocket for his plug tobacco, sized it up, and bit off a small chew. "Beats me," he said, "what a man would want to live in this country for.

Especially if he's got a woman."

"She'll be Navajo," Short speculated.

"He's got him a squaw."

To the frontier way of thinking, nobody was lower than a squawman . . . and such men were not to be trusted. Not that anybody would trust a back-shooter, anyway.

Their suspicions had mounted as they rode north.

They looked narrowly at the hills. It seemed unlikely that an honest man would hide out so far from other people.

"He might be a Mormon," McAlpin suggested. "Looks like he's ridin' right into Utah."

"If he is, we might as well turn ourselves right around and head for home. We'll be running right into a war. Anyway, ain't there some Mormon or other runnin' Lee's Ferry?"

"Was," Hardin agreed, "but I think he left the country. Too lonesome for him."

They waited upon the decision that would be made by Hardin and Chesney. Finally Hardin spoke.

"Bill, we've got to gamble. We've got small chance to pick up that man's trail. I mean, he's like an Indian, and he knows this country.

It might take us days to find it, even if we ever did. If he headed south into the sand dunes, we've lost him. There's stretches down there where the sand never stops moving, and the past couple of days there's been a wind-not much, but enough to cover any tracks."

"How do you mean . . . gamble?"

"We've got to guess where he's headed for, and light out and run, try to beat him to it."

"And if we guess wrong?"

"Then we've lost him. We'll have to go back home and wait for him."

"Could be a damn' long wait," Kimmel replied. "I figure he kept on going northeast. If he was a Mormon he wouldn't have come south; he'd have gone north into Mormon country when he wanted supplies.

"And if he was a squawman he'd be apt to go east toward the New Mexican villages and the Santa Fe country. You take my word for it, that Key-Lock man lives right around here, right in this country. Although," he added grimly, "it's a damned big country!"

Bill Chesney made up his mind. "We'll head for the Crossin' of the Fathers. If he ain't there, or doesn't show up soon, we'll drop back downstream to Lee's Ferry. I can't see him in this country, Kim. He's a no-good drifter ... a man would have to have sand in his craw to live around here."

"If he hadn't any when he got here,"

Neill commented, "he'd get it mighty soon by living here."

Chesney led off, circling back to a dim trail they had seen earlier, a trail passed by when they had seen no tracks.

Now their travel was swift. But when they reached the Crossing on the following day, they found no tracks there. Scouting upstream and down, they found much evidence of the high water resulting from a sudden rain several weeks back, but they found no tracks made since that time.

"We've lost him," McAlpin said. "He's got off, scotfree."

"Not by a damn' sight!" Chesney said. "He ain't never goin' to get off!"

"Well," Hardin said, "that may be so, Bill, and it may not. One thing I know: if we don't high-tail it down to Lee's Ferry and get us some grub we won't live long enough to find him."

"I'm for that," Short agreed.

So, though he grumbled, Chesney led the way south, in a line with the river, but back far enough from it to avoid its twisting course. Hardin glanced back at the looming bulk of Navajo Mountain. "From up there," he said, "a man could see just about all over this country."

The KEY-LOCK MAN, who lay flat on a rock near the crest of Navajo Mountain, trained his field glasses on the distant riders. One by one he counted them ... six men. It was the posse, all right, and they were heading south for Lee's Ferry.

Undoubtedly they would buy supplies there; but how long could they remain away from their own crops, their own cattle?

He dared not watch them any longer. That they had lost his trail was obvious, and they would have trouble finding it, but he was overdue back home where Kristina waited for him, and she knew little of this land. He was a good thirty miles from there, by the way he must ride.

He went back down the steep, dangerous trail to War God Spring and refilled his canteen. Again he allowed his horse to drink.

Once off the mountain, he rode southeast along the plateau. It was good going for the first twelve miles, until he reached the breaks of Piute Mountain, and by that time the sun was painting the mountains with lavish reds and cresting the ridges with gold.

The big horse was weary, and he himself was as tired as man could be, but he pushed on through the rough country until he came to the fork of the trail. This was the way he had come, and it would be easier, although longer, to push on south. But he feared to leave tracks that searchers might find, so he swung again toward the north, and by moonrise he was skirting Tall Mountain.

Slowing to a walk, he looked for the turn-off that would take him along the canyon that cut deep into Skeleton Mesa. He could not go through-if a way existed, he had not found it-but must head the canyon and then double back.

Thinking of the trail off the mesa near the cliff houses, he broke into a cold sweat. No doubt the trail had been a good one hundreds of years before when the mysterious Indians had used it, but erosion and slides had left it a chancy thing even by daylight.

The night was more than half gone when at last he drew rein at the lip of the cliff trail and felt the coolness rising from the pools below, and heard the distant sound of the waterfalls.

He put a gentle hand on the horse's neck.