HIS HAND TOUCHED his face. He was unshaved, of course, but there was a strong jaw, high cheekbones. There was quite a lot of money in his pockets, from what source he had no idea, and there were the letters and the legal document which he had not had the privacy to examine.
The buckboard had started off across the valley, but when it reached a sandy wash it descended into it, and turned at right angles. The going was slower in the wash, but Jonas thought they could not be seen because of the high banks.
There was no talking. Each of the occupants of the buckboard seemed busy with his or her own thoughts, and it provided time for Jonas to assay his position.
He knew he was a hunted man, hunted either by the law or by some individual with power. The fact that Ben Janish, whom he assumed to be an outlaw and a gunman, had been hired to kill him made it seem doubtful that it was the law that was seeking him. That such a man as Ben Janish seemed to be had been hired to do it made him assume that he was known as a dangerous man.
He now had three days’ growth of beard on his face and letting it grow might be a good idea. It might help to conceal his features from people who knew him, at least until he knew them.
Several times they stopped to rest the horses, then went on. It was late afternoon when they drew up at a small seep and got down stiffly, stretching and brushing away some of the accumulated dust.
Arch Billing helped Fan Davidge down, and she went to a rock at the water’s edge and dipped up water in a small tin cup and drank.
Rimes began putting together a small fire, and then, taking the gear from the buckboard, he made coffee.
Jonas sat on a rock apart from the others. The air was cool, and shadows began to gather in the hollows along the face of the hills. He heard a quail call…a quail, or an Indian? There was no echo, no aftersound, and he knew it was no Indian.
How did he know that? Apparently it was only his name, his history, the actualities of his life that were missing. The habits, the instincts, the ingrained reactions remained with him.
Fan Davidge glanced at him, faintly curious. Men usually wanted to talk to her, but this one held himself aloof. He had a sort of innate dignity, and he did not seem like the others.
He was lean, but broad-shouldered, and altogether puzzling, resembling perhaps a scholar more than a western man; when he moved it was with the grace of a cat.
She watched J. B. Nobody knew more of what was going on than Rimes did. He had offered no explanation except to say the man’s name was Jonas. Now he was crossing over to where Jonas was sitting.
Rimes spoke in a low tone, but the night was clear, and in the desert sound carries easily. She could just barely distinguish the words.
“If you want to light a shuck I can get you a horse.”
“I’ll come along.”
“Look, if Janish is there—”
“Then I’ll have some answers, won’t I?”
“Mister, I don’t know you, but I cotton to you. I don’t like to see you get your tail in a crack.”
There was no reply, and after a little while Rimes said, “Don’t you think I don’t know why you’re taking this chance, but you’ll waste your time.”
“I had a feeling she was in trouble.”
Rimes was silent for a moment. “Leave it lay. You’d just get yourself in a corner.”
“I just got out of one.”
“You’re not out of it yet. Not by a long shot. If I only knew—”
“But you don’t, and neither do I.”
“Well,” Rimes said after another pause, “there’s two or three you’d better fight shy of. Dave Cherry…he’s trouble. So’s John Lang. And there will be others, so watch your step.”
His head ached and he was tired, and he continued to hold himself aloof. He thought of the coming night, and was conscious of the faintest sounds, of the smells of coffee, of bacon frying, of burning cedar, and of sagebrush. He got up and walked off a few feet, feeling sick and empty, surrounded by unknown dangers.
A light step sounded behind him. It was Fan Davidge. “Please…you have been hurt,” she said. “You had better drink this.” She handed him a cup of coffee.
“Thank you.” He looked straight into her eyes and liked what he saw there. He took the cup, and when she remained with him he said, “Don’t let me keep you from your supper.”
“You should eat, too.”
But neither moved, and finally he said, “I like the twilight, but there is little of it in the desert.”
“Who are you, Jonas? What are you?” she asked.
“I do not know.” He looked at her over his cup. “I am afraid that what I am is not something to be proud of, but I do not know.”
“What does that mean?”
He touched his wound. “That…since that I cannot remember. All I know is that somebody tried to kill me.”
“You don’t know who it was?”
“It was Ben Janish, but I don’t know why.”
“Ben Janish! But then you mustn’t come to the ranch! He might be there even now.”
He shrugged. “A man will do what he must.”
“But that’s crazy! I mean…”
“There are two reasons, I guess. I had nowhere to go, and Rimes suggested the ranch. And then there was you.”
“Me?”
“You looked to be in trouble.”
She glanced at him. “You have troubles enough of your own.”
Then she added, “I own the Rafter D.”
Rafter D! Suddenly it was as if a shaft of light had stabbed into the darkness of his brain. He knew that brand…from where? How?
A thought formed in his consciousness. Four to be killed...four men and a woman.
Killed? By whom? And for what reason?
“You didn’t know you were going to the Rafter D?” she asked.
“I didn’t ask.”
They walked back to the fire, and he refilled his cup and accepted a plate of food. The ache in his head had dulled, and the stiffness seemed to be leaving his muscles, but he still felt tired and on edge. The others sat about talking in a desultory fashion. They seemed to be waiting for somebody, or something.
He knew what was bothering him. He was afraid. Not of any man or men, but of discovering who and what he was. He would have liked just to walk off into the night and leave it all behind…all but Fan Davidge.
He did not want to leave her, and for that he felt that he was a fool, a double-dyed fool to be falling in love—if that was what it was—with a girl he scarcely knew and who was spoken for by the most dangerous man around. Why did that not worry him?
He went to the seep and rinsed his dishes, and replaced them in the buckboard. Arch Billing was standing near the horses, smoking his pipe. Rimes was dozing.
Jonas heard the faintest whisper of sound…listened…heard it again.
“Somebody is coming,” he said.
Rimes opened his eyes, listened, then said, “I hear them.”
There were two mounted men and they came up to the edge of the firelight. He could see little of their faces, but the firelight played on the horses’ legs and shoulders, and he saw that one of the men wore Mexican spurs.
“Who’s he?” the man asked, glancing at Jonas.
“On the dodge,” Billing replied. “He came in with J. B.”
Rimes stepped into the light. “Law was after him back yonder.”
“I don’t like it. I don’t like him.” The speaker was a big, rawboned man with a sandy walrus mustache.
“I don’t give a damn what you like.” The words came from Rimes. “I haven’t asked you for anything, and there isn’t anything you can give me.”
The man on the horse seemed shocked, and his features stiffened. “The rest of you get into the buckboard and get started,” he said. “We’ll leave this gent right here.”
“Now, see here, Lang,” Rimes said. “I—”
“Thanks, J. B.,” Jonas interrupted. He felt suddenly cold inside, and welling up within him was an ugly feeling. “Nobody needs to speak for me. If Lang wants to make an issue of it he can die here as easy as later.”
John Lang was suddenly wary. For the first time he looked straight at the stranger. For a city dude, this one was pushing too hard. There had been rumors of hired killers being sent among the outlaws simply to kill.
“Nobody said anything about dying but you, mister,” Lang said. “I just said we were going to leave you here. We don’t know you.”
“I don’t know you, either, but I am willing to come along.”
“Nevertheless, we leave you.”
“No.”
It was Fan who spoke, quietly but sternly. “This man has been injured. He needs rest and care. He is coming to the ranch with us.”
Lang hesitated. He was a crafty man as well as a dangerous one, and he quickly saw this as an easy way out of a bad situation. After all, if need be they could always be rid of him.
“Certainly, ma’am. Whatever you say goes.” He turned his horse and, followed by the other rider, disappeared into the darkness.
Fan started to get into the buckboard, and Jonas took her elbow, helping her in. She glanced at him, surprised, and said, “Thank you.”
Billing took up the reins. Rimes tossed the last of their gear under the seat and got in. “You sure about this?” he asked.
The man who called himself Jonas shrugged. “I’m sure.”
“You could have got yourself shot back there.”
“I suppose.”
“You sure don’t seem worried.”
“Why should I be? I’m wearing a gun, too.”
Rimes had nothing more to say, and the buckboard was rolling, teetering over rocks, dipping down through a wash, emerging to wind a precarious way among gigantic boulders. The stars were out, the night was colder. Jonas hunched a blanket around his shoulders, eased his gun into a more favorable position, and dozed.
Twice they passed through small bunches of cattle. The only brand he glimpsed was a Rafter D. Once they went through a tiny stream, no more than a trickle of water.
Ahead of them, after they had traveled for some time, he heard John Lang call out: “It’s all right, Charlie. It’s the buckboard. We’re bringin’ in Rimes and a stranger. Says his name is Jonas.”
“Just so’s it ain’t Jonah. But he better be advised. It’s a whole lot easier to get in than to get out.”
When Jonas helped Fan Davidge down she whispered to him, “Thank you…and be careful.”
Rimes came up to him. “We’ll go to the bunkhouse.”
“Not yet,” Jonas said.
Rimes paused, waiting for him to say more.
“What kind of place is this? Miss Davidge doesn’t seem the kind who’d run an outlaw hangout.”
“She doesn’t run it. She just owns the ranch. Her pa built this ranch and turned it into a money-making outfit, but he was investing in other things, got rich, and went back East.
“He was an easterner, anyway, and he got to dealing with those railroaders and bankers back there. For a time he was a mighty well-off man, and used to come out every so often, then he came up short financially and died of a heart attack. Fan, she came back here to all that was left.
“Arch Billing ran the place for her pa when he was east, and Arch had rustler trouble. Friend of mine named Montana rode for him. Monty was a good hand, but not above holding up a stage or two if things looked right. He knew all the boys on the outlaw trail.
“Montana went to Arch and suggested he had some friends who could handle his rustler problem. Well, Arch knew they were outlaws, but they were also good cowhands when they wanted to work at it. They needed a place where they could lay low for a while, and Arch needed help with his rustler problem, so he took them on.
“Well,” Rimes went on, “I was one of them. We just rode back to that rustler hideout and laid down the law. We told them the Rafter D was friendly to us and we’d take it most unthoughtful if any more cattle showed up missing.
“Well, those rustlers were small potatoes, and they wanted no truck with the kind of shooting we would do, so they laid off. That day to this there’s been no rustling of Rafter D stock.
“The thing was,” he continued, “the first of us were mostly cowhands who’d got into trouble through brainless skyhootin’ around. My first holdup was when I was seventeen—a bunch of us figured it would be smart to stop a train and pick up some drinking money.
“Well, we did it. We made the conductor give us twenty dollars and we were going to ride off and leave it at that. Then some wise jasper sticks his head out of a car and let go with a pistol. He hit Jim Slade, a friend of mine, gut-shot him. And I shot back, mad and not thinking, and I drilled that man through the skull.
“Nobody had figured on that. Nobody had thought it was anything but a lark; then all of a sudden it wasn’t fun any more. Jim was dying, and that man I’d shot was a Wells Fargo agent….I’ve been riding the outlaw trail ever since.”
He lit his pipe. “The others were much the same sort, there at first, and we did far more punching of cows than riding the outlaw trail. This was home to us. No law came around, and we kept a good lookout. Arch knew what we were, but he ignored it, and then this other bunch came riding in.”
“Ben Janish?”
“Him, Dave Cherry, John Lang, and some others. They’d held up a Denver & Rio Grande train and needed a hideout. We didn’t want their kind around, but we figured they’d pull out, and they did. Trouble was, they came back.
“Arch had this tough hand I was speaking about, the one we called Montana, and he braced Ben—told him they’d have to hightail it out of there. Ben laughed at him, taunted him, and Monty went for his gun. Well, he never cleared leather before he had two holes right in the heart. Then Ben told us he figured to stay, and there wasn’t a thing we could do about it.
“Fan’s pa was alive then, and I know Arch wrote him about it, but Davidge died soon after, and that was an end to it.”
“And then Miss Davidge came home?”
“That’s right. Arch didn’t like it, her being here with them, but there wasn’t anything he could do about it. Whenever they ride off on a job they leave somebody here, and then Ben Janish let everybody know he figured to marry Fan so’s he could tie up the ranch for good. And Ben let Fan know that if she tried to get away he’d kill Arch.”
“Doesn’t Fan Davidge have any family?”
“I’ve heard she has an uncle or a cousin, or maybe both. One of them lives down El Paso way, but they never cottoned to the old man, nor he to them, and they’ve never showed up. The uncle worked for Davidge in his office back East for a while, I hear. I wouldn’t know anything about that.”
Rimes seemed to have talked all he intended to, and he went with Jonas into the bunkhouse. There were bunks for at least twenty men, about seven of which seemed to be occupied. When Jonas followed Rimes into the room John Lang was standing before the fireplace, facing them.
There were two other men in the room with him, one a sour-looking older man with thin white hair and olive skin. His eyes were black and shrewd. The other man, big, heavy-shouldered, and lantern-jawed, had a shock of blond hair.
It was this man who looked at Jonas. “I’ve seen you before,” he said.
Jonas merely glanced at him, then picked up a worn magazine, and began to leaf through it.
“You!” The blond man pointed a stiff finger. “I’m talkin’ to you.”
Jonas looked up, let seconds go by while their eyes held, and then he said, “I heard you make some sort of a comment. I was not aware that it required an answer.”
“I said I’ve seen you before.”
Jonas knew trouble when he saw it coming, and he knew there were times when it was better to face it than avoid it.
“I don’t recall seeing you, but I am sure that if I had I would remember the smell.”
For an instant there was silence. Jonas had spoken so casually, in such an ordinary tone, that for a moment his words failed to register.
“What was that you said?”
“You seem to want trouble, so I decided to make it easy for you. I said you smelled—like a skunk.”
Jonas was still half reclining on the bunk, and the blond man bent over, reaching for him. Jonas’s left hand caught the sleeve on the reaching arm and jerked the man forward and off balance. The magazine, suddenly rolled tight, smashed upward, catching the attacker on the Adam’s apple.
With a shove, Jonas threw the man off to the floor, where he rolled over, gasping and retching.
Jonas glanced at him, then opened the magazine, and began to read.