West Of Dodge (Ss) (1996) (12 page)

Opening the door, he stepped outside into the cold.

The sky was clearing off, and there was a red glow in the east that told him dawn was only minutes away. Facing the barn, Hurley strode toward it. Inside his coat he held his .44, the gun concealed, the hand warmed by contact with his body.

At the barn door he stopped.

There was snow on the door, snow around it. No sign that it had been disturbed since he left it the night before. Unlatching the door he swung it wide, and pulling the .44 from under his coat, he stepped quickly into the barn.

It was, he thought as he took the step, a melodramatic, obvious thing to do. And perfectly foolish, of course, for as he entered the darkness of the barn, he was silhouetted against the snow outside. ... He moved quickly to one side.

Nothing happened.

From stall to stall he went, and there was no one there. He put his pistol back in its holster and went about feeding and watering the stock. When he had finished, he came out and closed the door behind him. He stood for a minute in the still, cold air watching his breath, and he remembered how long he had been tortured by doubt, how long he had watched the barn, fearing the Talbots might be there.

Was all fear like that? Was it all, or most of it, just imagination? Was Benton right, after all, and the way to meet fear was head-on?

He walked back to the house. On the steps he paused to stomp the snow from his boots. As he did so the door swept open and Benton stood there with a leveled rifle.

Only the rifle was held steady against the doorjamb, and it was pointed past his head at the ranch yard behind him.

Hurley looked up and saw the grim look on the old man's face, saw the old man had dragged himself from bed to cover him while he fed the stock. But he saw much more. Benton was looking past him and Benton said, "Hold it! Hold it right there!"

Hurley knew death then. He knew the Talbots were behind him, and he knew there were four of them, and he knew he was fairly caught.

But he was calm.

That, of all things, was the most astonishing. There were, he knew in that moment, worse things than death, and there were few things worse than fear itself.

He turned slowly. "If s my fight, Benton," he said. "You get back in bed."

He stepped down off the step. He was scared. He was really scared, and yet somehow it was not as bad as he had expected. He looked at the four shivering men on their horses, and he smiled. "Are you boys looking for me?" he asked.

They hesitated . . . they were cold and shaky from having spent the night in whatever pitiful shelter had been available out on the prairie. And this man had beaten Jake to the draw, and that bullet had gone dead center. It was one thing to chase down a running man, another to face a man who was ready to fight.

"Jake Talbot was riding a horse stolen from me," Hurley spoke loud in the still air. "When I asked him about it he went for his gun. He asked for it and he got it. Now if you boys have anything to say, have at it."

Joe Talbot looked him over more carefully. They had figured they had him on the run, but he did not look scared now. Not none at all.

They could get him; they were four guns to one. Or two if that old man with the rifle declared himself in, but that fool Hurley, he might just get one of them, or even two while they were killing him. They had taken this ride to kill a man, not to be killed themselves, and each one had deep within him the feeling that the first one to pull a gun would be the one to die.

Silence hung in the still, cold air. A horse stamped a hoof impatiently.

"Jake must have bought that horse off a thief," Joe Tal-bot said, at last. "We don't know anything about it."

It was a retreat, and Hurley was wise enough to recognize it. He took a step nearer to them. "You have that horse back at my place Monday morning," he said, "and we'll call it quits. Understand?"

They did not like it. They knew what was happening to them and they did not like it at all. After this there could be no more tough talk--folks simply wouldn't pay any attention. They were being backed down and they knew it, but no one of them wanted to be the man to die.

"No need for neighbors to fight," Joe Talbot said. "We didn't have the straight of it."

Joe Talbot made the move, finally, but it was to turn his horse toward the gate. And when he turned, the others turned with him.

"Talbot?"

Joe turned his head carefully to look at Hurley. "Stop by Anderson's and ask him to feed my stock, will you? I've got to take care of my friend here. He's got a broken leg."

At the gate one of . The Talbots got down from the saddle and closed the gate carefully, then they rode off, together. It looked like they were not very talkative.

"Hurley?" It was Benton. "Come inside and close the door! You're freezin' the place up! Besides, I want some breakfast."

Hurley stomped his feet again and stepped up in the doorway. He glanced back at the sky. The clouds were blowing off to the north and the sun had already started the icicles dripping. One thing you could say for this country, it didn't take long to clear up.

*

That Man from
the Bitter
Sands
.

When Speke came at last to water, he was two days beyond death. His cracked lips rustled like tissue paper when they moved, trying to shape a thought. The skin of his face, long burned to a desert brown, had now taken on a patina of crimson.

Yet his mind was awake, and alive within him was a spirit that even the desert could not defeat. Without doubt Ross and Floren believed him dead, and this pleased him, stirring a wry sense of humor.

The chirping of birds told him of water before he saw it.

His stumbling, almost hypnotic walk ceased, and swaying upon his feet, he turned his head slowly upon his stiff neck.

The basin remained unchanged, only now he had reached the very bottom of the vast depression, and a jagged knife's edge of rocks, an upthrust from a not too ancient fracture, loomed off to his right.

He had seen a dozen such along the line of travel, yet there was a difference. The faint, grayish green of the desert vegetation here took on a somewhat deeper green. Yet without the birds he might not have noticed. There was water near.

Through the heat-engendered haze in his skull there flickered grim humor. Floren and Ross thought they had taken from him all that promised survival when they had also taken his gold. They had robbed him of weapons, tools, canteen, food, and water. They had left him nothing.

Better than anyone else he had known what lay before him. After they had gone he had worked to free himself, but when he had succeeded he did not move away. He waited quietly in the shadow of the ledge, gutted of its small hoard of gold. Only when the sun was down did he move, and then he stepped out with a long, space-eating stride, walking away into that vast wasteland, shadowed with evening.

They had left him two things they did not realize would matter. They had seemed but bits of debris in the looted camp: a prospector's gold pan and a storm square from his canvas groundsheet.

Before it grew too dark to travel he had walked eight miles. Stopping then, he scooped a shallow hole in the sand and placed in it the gold pan. Over it he stretched the canvas, and above that he built a small pile of large stones. When his dew trap was complete he lay down to sleep.

Scarcely a spoon of water rewarded the effort, yet he swallowed it and was grateful. Before the sun topped the ridge he had three more miles behind him. Near two boulders he stopped and made a sun shade of a ruined cedar in the space between the boulders. He crawled into this island of coolness and lay down.

Midafternoon of the second day he found a barrel cactus, and cutting off the top he squeezed some water from the whitish green pulp. On the second and third nights he also built his dew traps, and each time got a little water. When he first heard the birds he thought he was losing his reason, yet turning toward the serrated ridge, he stumbled on. At its base, among some desert willows, was a small pool some four feet across . . . but lying in it was a dead coyote.

Swaying drunkenly, he stared hollow-eyed at the dead coyote and the poisoned water. He could go no further, he knew. He must drink, yet, in his weakened state, a case of dysentery would surely kill him. It was not in him to yield, and too well he knew the ways of the wild country and the lessons it taught.

The will that had carried him more than forty miles across the desert moved him then. He dragged the remains of the dead coyote from the water. Then he gathered sticks and built a fire. When he had a small heap of charcoal, he scooped up some water with the gold pan. He covered the water until it was two inches thick with charcoal. Then he stoked his fire and waited. Soon the water was boiling.

The desert night drew darkness around him. The firelight flickered on the rock wall and upon the fragile bows of the willow, and the smoke drifted and lost itself in the night. Sparks flew upward and vanished.

With a flat stick, he skimmed off the thick scum of charcoal and coagulated impurities. Then he added more charcoal and the water continued to boil. A second time he skimmed it, and only then did he put some aside to cool.

The very presence of water seemed to help. His brain cleared and he thought. He was now halfway across the vast bowl of desert. He was walking toward a place he knew, a ranch with a well of cool, clear water, and a man who would lend him a horse. A horse and a gun.

Louis L'Amour
/ SS9 2

I Forcing himself to ignore the water, he leaned back against the rocks. His lips rustled together and his tongue felt like a dry stick. He closed his achitg eyes and waited out the minutes, listening like a prisoner, to the faint trickle of water into the pool.

When an hour had passed, he allowed himself his first drink. Dipping up a little of the water he took some in his mouth and held it there, feeling the coolness bringing life back to the starved, shrunken tissues. Slowly he let the water trickle down his throat, feeling the delightful coolness all through him. Even that tiny swallow seemed to reach into every part of his body.

He bathed his lips and face then, taking his time, and finally allowing himself another swallow of the water. Finding in the rock a natural basin that was almost a foot across he used it as a mold, and with a rounded stone he carefully pounded his prospecting pan down into it, forcing the pan into a shape more like that of a bucket. Returning to the fire he boiled more water with charcoal, then poured it into the basin in the rock, repeating the process with his newly made pail. Adding a few more bits of charcoal, he lay back on the ground and was almost at once asleep, knowing that with the dawn the water would be clear and sweet.

Long ago he had established a pattern of awakening, and despite his exhaustion he was stirring long before dawn. It was cold when he opened his eyes, and his body was chilled with the cold of the desert night. Hurriedly, he built a fire and let its warmth permeate his entire being. Then he drank, and after awhile, drank again. Then he turned to the desert.

A fleshy-fruited yucca grew near the water hole and he picked some of the long pods. He ate one of them raw, then roasted the others with some bulbs of the sego lily. When he had eaten these he took a thin, flat sheet of sandstone and began to dip water from the hole. Despite the little water there was, it took him more than an hour to empty the hole.

From time to time he paused to rest. Once, still having his tobacco, he rolled a smoke. He would need no more water than that in his bucket, but if others came along they would not know of the coyote and the poisoned spring. He did not know if his actions would help, but a water hole was a precious thing, to be safeguarded by all who passed.

When the hole was emptied he scraped the bottom with his flat stone, throwing out huge chunks of the mud. He then enlarged the opening through which the water flowed, still only a mere trickle, and finally sat down to eat more of the pods and bulbs, and to drink more water.

Water slowly trickled back into the hole. By night it would be full, and rested, he would start on with the first shadows.

Three days later, he was mounted on a horse. In the scabbard on his borrowed saddle was a Winchester, and thrust into his waistband was a battered but capable Colt.

They had insisted he remain and rest, but Speke would have none of it. Floren and Ross had taken his gold and he had been abandoned to die, yet it was with no thought of actual revenge that he returned to the desert. Nor did -he blame his sufferings upon the two thieves whom he had taken into his camp when they had been half dead from thirst. The sufferings he had endured he accepted, as he accepted so much else as a part of life in the desert, yet the gold they had taken was his, and he intended to get it back.

Speke was not a big man but he was tough. The years and the desert had melted away any softness he might have had, and left behind a hard core of that rawhide resilience that the desert demands. Never a gunman, he had used weapons as a soldier in the Apache wars, as a buffalo hunter, and in his own private skirmishes with desert Mohaves or Pimas.

He needed no blueprint to read the plan in the minds of Floren and Ross. They would go first to Tucson.