Chapter Eighteen

After full daylight had thoroughly firmed up, an unusual coolness came out of the breezy west and among Hayfork’s inveterate loafers—such as that old man with the corncob pipe at the livery barn—this caused some comment and some quickening interest.

Rainstorms were rare upon the desert in midsummer but they were far from unheard of. Sometimes two or three years would pass without a cloud appearing out of the west. Then again a cooling breeze might suddenly start blowing, some dirty old gray cloud banks might build up, and within a few hours there could be a deluge. Just as unpredictably, too, those clouds might float over and dump their water fifty miles away. One never knew, but that didn’t keep Hayfork’s citizens from speculating.

Warfield was freshly bathed, freshly fed, and smoking serenely upon a roadside bench beneath a tree with his hat tipped forward when he first sensed the change in Hayfork and felt that unexpected coolness against his sunburned skin. He pushed back his hat, looked at the sky, saw those far-away drifting dark clouds, and watched them, while around behind him on the opposite side of the tree, but upon the same bench, two old men fell to discussing the probability of a midsummer cloudburst.

Warfield listened, shortly decided that the old men didn’t actually know any more than he, a stranger, did, and sat on with his long legs thrust out, with that blessedly cool breeze pushing against him, and smoked his cigarette to its end.

He was sleepy, not physically tired particularly, just sleepy. He’d napped there on that bench for two hours, or until the little cool wind had awakened him, but he was still sleepy.

Some cowboys loped into town looking pleased. Even their horses seemed to have lost their summertime lethargy now as that wind increased a little, scuffing dust banners out in the roadway. People emerged from stores to scan the sky, turn, and comment to other people.

Warfield watched and softly grinned. Hayfork had a creek and trees and green fields out beyond town. It wasn’t nearly as hot as the northward desert had been, and yet Hayfork’s inhabitants seemed relieved at the prospect of a good cooling rain.

He got up and strolled over to the livery barn to look in on his horse. The old gaffer perched atop his tipped-back chair was still puffing and whittling. He nodded and Warfield nodded back.

Warfield’s thoroughbred was filled up and drowsily standing over a manger of clover hay he hadn’t been able to make much of a dent in. The coolness with its rainy taste and fragrance filled the barn, too.

The daytime hostler walked up, halted, and leaned heavily upon a wire rake.

“Maybe we’re in for a little storm,” he said, eyeing the bay horse. “Sure hope so. Gets so after a while a feller just ain’t got no energy, these hot summer days.”

Warfield turned, saying politely: “Yeah. If it hits that northward road, the thing’ll turn into a quagmire.”

“Right,” agreed the hostler indifferently. “That road’s got no bottom to it. When it gets bad in wintertime, the coaches sometimes can’t make it.”

This mention of stages suddenly struck Warfield. He said sharply: “Any coaches due in here this morning?”

The hostler shook his head. “Not till evening. This time o’ year the stage-line folks try to schedule their runs for dawn and evening. Too hard on horses otherwise, crossing that lousy desert.”

Warfield’s little sudden fear faded away. He sniffed the breeze and looked around. “Anyone care if I flopped down in a stall and took a nap?” he asked.

The hostler said: “Naw. I only wish old Grandpaw Mike would go on home and smoke his danged corncob and do his whittling so’s I could crawl into the hay, too.” The hostler drew himself up to move off. “Take any stall on the left-hand side, mister. I just finished putting in fresh bedding.”

The hostler ambled on up toward the roadway and Warfield waited a moment, watching him, before he turned and started to head for one of those shadowy, cool, and inviting horse stalls.

But as Warfield was moving, a paunchy, short man, wearing a vest with a massive gold watch chain, came briskly into the barn and called out in sharp, authoritative way to the hostler.

“Augie, there’ll be a coach in directly from Fulton. Get ready for it.”

Warfield saw the hostler’s expression turn from its customary heavy, stolid look into a slow grimace of indignation.

“What coach?” demanded the hostler, sounding nettled. “There ain’t no coaches due in here until tonight and you dang’ well know it, Josh.”

The man called Josh puffed up at this insolence. “You do as you’re told,” he growled right back. “There’s a special coach comin’ in and you need to get stalls ready for the horses and be ready to show ’em where to park the rig.”

Augie leaned upon his rake, studied the paunchy man a moment, then said: “All right. No point in getting huffy, Josh. What kind of a special coach?”

But Josh was turning back toward the roadway. All he said was: “Never you mind what kind of a special coach. Just see that you’re ready when it gets here.”

Warfield stood back without moving. A special stage from Fulton meant only one thing to him. Somehow—how wasn’t important—John Trent had managed to leave Fulton, and, in a manner that was much faster than a saddle horse would have been, was now coming to Hayfork.

The livery-barn hostler came trudging along, mumbling to himself, still carrying his steel rake.

Warfield said: “Saddle my horse for me, I’m heading out.”

The hostler stopped dead still and looked at Warfield. It was obvious what he was thinking. Here was a man who’d just complained of being sleepy, so sleepy in fact, he was willing to bed down in a horse stall. And now all of a sudden he was wide awake and itching to ride off. The hostler dropped his eyes, straightened his mouth, turned, and started for Warfield’s horse more disgruntled than ever. Perhaps, had he been less phlegmatic, he’d have had some doubts, some suspicions, but he clearly didn’t have, although Warfield watched for signs of wonderment.

While he stood there in the breezy runway carefully speculating, it came over Warfield that he probably didn’t have much time. If that coach had left Fulton last night, then it must be nearing Hayfork right this minute. He went over and helped the hostler, turned his horse once, stepped up over leather, hooked both booted feet into the buckets, and flipped the man a silver dollar.

“Keep the change,” he said, and rode out of the barn’s runway, leaving the hostler with the first glimmer of pleasantness he’d had upon his face all day.

At the roadway that old man with the corncob pipe paused at his whittling to look up, nod very slightly, and jerk his knife-holding right hand southward. “Not quite forty miles straight on south,” he said distinctly around the pipe. “Good road all the way. You’ll see a pile of stones with a bronze plaque on it … that’s the border. Good luck.”

Warfield stared at the old man, stared at his leathery face and his long, faded eyes. “Thanks,” he murmured.

The old man’s lips softly smiled. “Don’t mention it, cowboy,” he quietly said. “I come this way once myself. But that was almost a half century ago. Still and all, I never felt comfortable gettin’ any farther north o’ the line than this here town.” The old man looked down, resumed his pointless whittling, and puffed on his pipe.

Warfield rode on out, turned right, and passed down through Hayfork, feeling a little regret. He had planned on a longer rest. As he cleared the town’s farthest environs, he philosophically told himself it didn’t matter. He’d rest in Mexico. Rest for a year, maybe. The main thing was that his thoroughbred was rested and strong.

Once, some distance along, he turned and looked back. He thought he saw a banner of dust standing above Hayfork’s main thoroughfare but couldn’t be sure. If it was dust, that probably meant the stage had arrived back there.

Still, he didn’t worry. There were creek willows off on his left, indicating that Hayfork’s little meandering creek ran through this southward country, too, and, moreover, he’d distinctly heard it said that no stages ran during the heat of the day. So his heretofore most pressing problems were no longer problems at all.

He rode until high noon, then halted in a bosque of trees, ate his last can of sardines, had a quiet smoke, and didn’t see a thing up the long length of that northward roadway. The little breeze that had cooled the town was not running this far south, so it was hot, but not nearly as hot as it had been back on the desert. Down here, from time to time, he saw windmills and green fields and fat cattle. He also saw an occasional ranch house, but all this pastoral scenery only relaxed him the more.

He rode along through the warm afternoon, drowsing fitfully from time to time, letting all the tensions of this grueling chase gradually go out, leaving him loose and easy. He figured he’d hit the border around midnight, or a little after.

The hours slipped by, afternoon came with its soft smokiness, and later on dusk began to settle. Once, about 5:00 p.m., Warfield moved off the road to allow a stage to race past, but after that, although he saw ample fresh horse sign as he passed along, he never once encountered another rider.

Night came with its velvety softness. He stopped once at a tin trough to water his horse. Here, the cattle smell was very strong. Here, too, stood a squeakily revolving windmill and off on his left several miles away was a house that he could only make out by its golden-lit windows where a man sat comfortably with his family unaware of the sadness that dragged at Warfield out in the night, as he passed silently by looking at those little squares of good light.

Near midnight he saw more lights, but these flickered from time to time, indicating that they were made by lanterns. He felt the rise of the old wariness at that sight and reined away from the road, but it never once occurred to him that those men down there might be anything but camping travelers or perhaps men out looking for a lost horse, a strayed child, or perhaps night-lighting deer hunters.

Not until he was a good half mile east and within sight of what appeared to be a conical-shaped monument of some kind, did Warfield decide those men were blocking the southward roadway over the line into Mexico. That monument he felt certain was that marker the old man back at Hayfork had told him about. He was well away from it now, on this eastward tangent, but he could see into Mexico beyond that mythical line where those men had their roadblock established.

He kept watching those lanterns out there. They seemed no more than the flicker of fireflies as he progressed steadily southeastward, and, as this distance widened, he thought those men had to be both stupid and careless to have lanterns at a roadblock.

Then he found out they were neither stupid nor careless.

Ahead, a man’s even drawl came up out of the night accompanied by the sharp click of a gun being cocked.

“Hold it, stranger, right where you are!”

The bay horse, as startled as Warfield was, stopped suddenly without any restraining hand to encourage him in this, his little ears pointing dead ahead, his body stiffly motionless.

Three men strolled up. One from straight on. This one had a cocked Winchester in his hands. The other two came up from either side, very efficiently closing Warfield in, and they also had guns in their hands.

Warfield knew instinctively that somehow Marshal Trent was behind this. He could not right then imagine how Trent had accomplished it, and so great was his sudden let-down that he didn’t try to puzzle it out. He just sat there, dumbly gazing at his captors. Less than a thousand feet away lay Mexico!

“Get down, mister,” said that cowboy with the Winchester. “Nothing funny now … you’d only get killed. You see, those fellers over there with the lanterns are listenin’. They know you’re down here, too.”

Warfield swung stiffly to the ground.

The closest man put away his six-gun and peered closely into Warfield’s face. As he did this, one of the others said: “The stage’ll be along pretty quick, Sam, don’t worry about it. If we got the wrong one, he can ride on.” This same man considered Warfield’s horse and shook his head. “Bay thoroughbred. This here’s the man all right.” He stepped up a little. “Is your name Warfield?”

The numbness of defeat so close to victory left Warfield disinclined to say a word, so he only half-heartedly nodded.

The cowboy slowly grinned. “Ever hear of signalin’ with mirrors, Warfield?” he asked. “That’s how we got you. Picked up the signals from town this afternoon. Seems a U.S. federal marshal’s after you.”

Warfield had his answer to how Trent had worked it. Heliograph signals. He fished out his tobacco sack and went to work. As he lit up, one of his captors mumbled something to the others and walked away to the west. Warfield thought this one was going over to tell the men at the fake roadblock Warfield had done exactly as they’d tricked him into doing, and had been captured. He snapped the match and gazed onward over that little intervening distance into Mexico. So near, and yet so far. He swung to gaze at his captors.

“What else did the heliograph tell you besides my name?” he asked.

“That Marshal Trent wants you for murder.”

Warfield exhaled and gently nodded. “Did it tell you how that murder happened?”

His two remaining captors shook their heads, their faces interested. They were typical cowboys of the Southwest, hard, brave, but fair men, and, more often than not, sympathetic men.

“I shot a man who was unarmed in a saloon. Only I didn’t know he was unarmed.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. And the reason I shot him … he said something about Marshal Trent’s wife that was a filthy thing to say, and which was a pure lie.”

The cowboys exchanged a look and one of them shrugged. “What’s so terrible about that?” he asked.

“It was murder,” said Warfield simply. “Would you like to hear what makes it so ironic?”

“Sure.”

“Marshal Trent’s wife is my sister.”

The cowboys looked surprised, then bothered about something. One of them said: “Hell, Warfield, are you tryin’ to tell us this here Marshal Trent’s after you for somethin’ like that?”

Warfield didn’t answer the question. He shoved a hand deep into his trouser pocket, saying: “I was a deputy U.S. marshal. So was the man I shot. That makes a lot of difference.” He drew forth his hand and held it out, palm up. There was a little silver badge lying there with Warfield’s name engraved upon it.

The range riders peered at that badge and slowly looked up again. They had nothing to say for a moment, then one of them put up his .45 and mildly swore as he looked at his companion, saying roughly: “I won’t be a part of anything as lousy as this.”

The other man scratched his head and was slower coming to his decision. He said: “Warfield, you lyin’ to us?”

Warfield handed this man the badge. “Keep it,” he said. “Give it to Marshal Trent when he gets here. I’ll be standing beside my horse just beyond that monument yonder. I won’t run. When Trent gets here, ask him. If I was lyin’ … blaze away.”

Warfield took up his reins and started walking. He didn’t walk fast but neither did he look around, and when he stepped over into Mexico, he did exactly as he’d said he’d do. He stopped by the international marker and waited.

A half hour later Trent arrived with three armed deputy sheriffs in a stage. Warfield still stood there. Trent saw him, saw the marker, too, and when he walked on over, all those range riders converged, asking questions. Trent brushed them aside, went right up to the U.S. side of the marker, and put a long, steady stare upon his brother-in-law. Then Trent pushed out his right hand.

“You win,” he said. “For your sake I’m glad, Troy.”

Warfield shook and dropped Trent’s hand. He softly smiled. “A feller does a lot of thinking on a ride like this, John,” he said. “Someday I’ll come back, then we can sit down and talk.”

“I’d like that,” said Trent, and stepped away as Warfield turned, swung up, and rode slowly down through the darkness deeper into Mexico.

THE END