THEY TURNED AND looked at him, their faces expressionless.
“Where’s Polti?” Lance demanded.
One of the men who had been in the street with Polti was at the bar, another sat at a table, his legs stretched out, an expression of contempt on his face. Neither moved, and there was no reply.
“I asked, ‘Where’s Polti?’ ” Lance said, more sharply.
“You won’t get any answers here, mister,” the seated man said, his voice taunting. “When Polti wants you, he’ll come to get you.”
Lance took a quick step toward him, then glimpsed the flicker of triumph in the man’s eyes and half turned his head to catch a glimpse of an upraised bottle, poised for throwing.
The man threw the bottle. Lance’s pistol leaped from his scabbard to his hand and the gun roared. The bottle and fragments scattered.
Holstering his gun, Lance stepped in quickly before the shock of the sudden drawing and firing had reached the men. He caught the man by the shirt front. Jerking him into the punch, he threw his right fist into the man’s belly. The unexpected blow knocked the wind from his body, and Lance shoved him away. Then he uppercut hard to his face, straightening the man up to take a fast left and then a high, hard one. The bottle-thrower hit the floor and rolled over. He did not get up.
The action had come so swiftly that not a single onlooker had moved. Spinning quickly, Lance kicked the outstretched legs of the man seated at the table, swinging his legs over and high. The man came off the chair and hit the floor on his rump with a thud that shook the building.
With no further hesitation, Lance stepped in. As the man gathered himself to rise. Lance kicked him in the face.
“I came in here,” he said gently, “for a little polite conversation. But if you like it this way, you can have it.”
Nobody moved. The first man down was beginning to groan. He tried to push himself up, then slid back to the floor. The man Lance had kicked was on his hands and knees, blood dripping from his nose in big, slow drops.
“You know,” Lance continued, “the word is that you boys like to play rough. Now let me tell you something. You don’t even know the name of the game. This is for babies. But if I have to, I can be rough.”
He turned his head to look at the bartender, a thick-shouldered man who leaned with both big hands on the bar as if he planned to leap over.
“If you want to come over, Bottles,” Lance said, “come on. They can always carry you back, if there’s enough left to carry.”
The bartender hesitated—and didn’t jump. He was not afraid, but if he jumped there would be a moment when he was in the air, and he had seen how fast that pistol broke the bottle. Whether this man would use the pistol or his hands was a question, but the bartender decided he did not want to find out the answer. He stayed where he was.
“Now, once more. Where’s Polti?”
“Apple Canyon,” the bartender replied viciously, “and I hope you find him!”
Lance backed off. Then, seeing Rusty Gates at the door, his hand on his gun, Lance turned and went out, Gates following.
“For a stranger,” Gates said, “you pick up country customs mighty fast.”
“Where’s Apple Canyon?” asked Lance.
“Apple Canyon is a draw that opens into Espada Creek, right close to the border. That’s where Nita Riordan hangs out her sign.”
“Who’s she?”
“Queen of the Border, they call her. Half-Irish, half-Mexican, and all wildcat. She’s the best-looking woman in the southwest and a tiger when she gets started, but she’s only a part of it. The other part is Jaime Brigo. He’s a big Yaqui half-breed who can sling a gun as fast as the Brockmans. He can track like a bloodhound, and he’s as loyal as a St. Bernard. Also, he weighs about two pounds less than a ton of coal.”
“What is Apple Canyon? A town?”
“That it ain’t. Apple Canyon is a saloon, dance hall, and a bunkhouse that’ll sleep forty men. It is also a big barn, some corrals, and half a dozen houses. It is a place where the law never goes, where anybody passing across the border can rest up. And it’s also where Bert Polti hides out when he wants to be alone—or when he’s got some deal on both sides of the border.”
“What’s between here and there?”
Gates shrugged. “A few buzzards, a lot of rattlesnakes, more thick brush than you ever saw, and a scattering of centipedes, tarantulas, and scorpions. Everything that moves will bite or gore you, and everything that grows in the ground has thorns.
“There are trails through the brush, if you know where they are. And if you don’t get lost and die there, you might, and I say might, find Apple Canyon.
“If you find Apple Canyon, you’ll get yourself killed. Everybody down there is a friend to Polti except maybe Jaime Brigo, and nobody is a friend to outsiders, including Jaime Brigo.”
“Tell me about Nita Riordan.”
“First thing, she’s straight … You try to lay a hand on her and you’ll lose the hand—before they kill you. She runs a few thousand head on both sides of the border and nobody … but nobody … steals a cow with her brand.
“She owns and operates Apple Canyon. In her dance hall, she always has three or four girls—for dancing or conversational purposes only—and she operates the bunkhouse as a sort of hotel. And you pay and pay well.
“She can charge what she wants because it’s either that or sleep in the brush. And you drink at her bar or you drink river water.
“Jaime Brigo works for her, and that’s all. If she says ‘Kill him,’ he would. Anybody. He moves like a cat, and nobody wants any part of him.
“She has connections in Mexico City, in Saltillo and Monterey, as well as in Austin. Just what they are, nobody knows—or when she uses them, if ever.”
“What’s she doing in a godforsaken place like that?”
“That, amigo, is anybody’s guess. I have no idea, and I don’t think anybody else does. She’s not a woman you put the question to.”
“What’s her connection with Polti?”
“None, I’d say, except that it’s a convenient station for him. I’ve been there a time or two, and far as I could see, she never even recognized the fact that he was there.”
IT WAS DAYLIGHT when Lance started south, leaving Rusty Gates at the stable staring thoughtfully after him. He rode a trail that roughly followed the Neuces, then swung away toward the west, keeping to thick brush and working his way through it.
From trail to trail he switched, keeping his direction generally south by west, judging by the sun. In the thick brush he saw no one, then came out on the bunch grass levels beyond and rode at a somewhat more rapid gait.
The buckskin was eager to go, and by sundown they had covered more than half the distance to Apple Canyon. Lance slowed his pace then, and at every chance checked his back trail. There was no sign that he had been followed, yet he took no chances. And at a suddenly offered dim trail north, he turned abruptly north, rode a short distance and waited, listening. For some time he listened, but heard no hoofbeats nor other sounds of travel. If anyone was following, it would be dark before they could reach this place, so he walked his horse north, watching for a break in the brush. He found it, rode into open, grass-covered country scattered with prickly pears—some of it towering as high as a man—and rode on, quartering off to the west again and just a bit south.
When the moon came up he found a small creek, rode to a spot under some low-growing trees of a variety strange to him, and there he watered the buckskin, let him have a roll, and then picketed him on the grass. He bedded down there, and slept.
Twice he saw rattlers, but swung wide around them, and once he startled a coyote drinking at a small pool. He saw no man or woman anywhere. Then the brush dwindled away and he rode through more or less open country, riding with watchful eyes over some rough, broken land with the Rio Grande off to the south—far out of sight—but ever present.
In this country it was an omnipresent reality, for it offered escape from the law for both Anglo and Mexican bandits—men who were prepared to commit almost any crime with such a refuge only a fast ride away to the south.
Lance’s thoughts returned to Bert Polti, in an effort to seek some answer to the man’s actions, yet he could find nothing in his memory that might supply a reason. That the man was dangerous, Lance knew. That he was prepared to kill and would kill, Lance also knew. Yet why Polti’s sudden decision to attack him?
Did he somehow represent a danger to Polti? Or to some of the Polti interests? Did Polti know who and what he was? Or surmise something of the kind without knowing? Had Lance somehow been connected to Mort Davis?
The impending sense of danger would not leave him, and he found himself riding more and more slowly despite the impatience of the buckskin, who loved a trail and wanted to go, to get on with the journey.
There were many arroyos now, low cliffs and dry streambeds. There were occasional thickets, open prairies, and patches of prickly pear or mesquite.
The place worried him, as did the events since his arrival at Botalla. There was more here than the smile on Steve Lord’s face, and the sullen anger of the lovely but pampered Tana. There was death here, and the smell of gunpowder. Not the death of bold men facing each other over drawn guns, but the death of the dry-gulchers, the men who lay in wait to ambush and kill.
Was this merely another range war, or was there something else?
Well Lance knew what the threat of barbed wire on the range could do. Cattle ran free now. They were separated and divided at roundups. But there were men here who had no cattle, yet did a bit of branding quietly and, hopefully, without being seen. With fencing, that would end. With fencing, the big cattlemen who could afford to buy wire would fence vast acreages, squeezing out all others. And their fences would be patrolled, as Steele had promised, with men carrying rifles.
It was public land, but who was prepared to enforce it against the big cattlemen?
The small outfits, starved for range, saw their livelihoods threatened, for few small ranches were paying propositions. These outfits were angry, and many would fight back. Yet what might happen was apparent in what had already happened to Joe Wilkins.
The small men had no money to hire gunmen. Many of them had no money for wire. Squeezed off the big range, they would have to graze their cattle on less and less land. And, what was worse, most of them would be closed off from water, and without water, land was of no value.
Fences had been cut. Men rode the range armed and ready, and many a small rancher, although alone and unaided, was still a man to be feared. His gun spoke as loud as that of the big rancher, and often he was a former soldier, Indian fighter, or buffalo hunter—a man to whom battle was no stranger.
It was a time when men shot first and asked questions later. It was a time when Sam Bass and his outlaw gang rode the trails, John Wesley Hardin was running up his list of killings, and when King Fisher, in this very area, had a gang said to number more than five hundred men on both sides of the border. King Fisher, it was said, had chaps made of tiger skin and a sombrero loaded with a silver band, with silver-plated, pearl-handled six-shooters.
There were several hundred known outlaws operating in Texas, and another five hundred known outlaws in New Mexico, not too far to the west. All these men rode with guns. It was the accepted way of settling disputes, recognized as such in the eastern states and in Europe as well.
From the crest of a ridge, Lance looked over what was called Lost Creek Valley and saw the silvery strands of barbed wire stretching away as far as the eye could reach. Yet the Lost Creek country needed less wire than most, for the sheer cliffs along the canyons protected much of it, and there was water. From his vantage point above the valley, Lance could see why they all wanted Lost Creek. The water supply was more than sufficient, and the grass was good. It was prime grazing in any man’s country, a piece of land to be desired and defended.
“I don’t know, Buck,” he said to his horse. “I don’t know about this wire business. It does give the nester a chance to raise a crop, and it gives the rancher a chance to improve the breed. And anybody can see that the longhorn is on the way out.
“You an’ me, Buck, I think we’re on the way out, too. We’re free, and we can go where we want, but we don’t like fences very much. Maybe we’d better ride north for Dakota. Wyoming. Or even Canada or the Argentine.”
It was late evening when the sure-footed mustang turned down a narrow trail among the brush and boulders. This was no honest man’s trail, but Lance knew the nature of the man he rode to see—a man who would never be less than honest, but who would fight to the last for what was rightfully his.
The trail dipped into a hollow several hundred yards across, and when he was halfway across the hollow, Lance saw what he wanted. Dismounting, he led his horse to shelter behind a boulder. Sitting against a rock, he watched the declining sun fall slowly westward, watched the shadows creep up the walls and the sunset splash the cliffs with crimson.…
He must have fallen asleep, for when he awakened the stars were out and Lance judged several hours to have passed.
It was very still, and for a moment he did not move, sitting quietly, listening to the night. It was then that he saw the gleam of starlight on a pistol barrel. It was aimed at him from across a rock. But even as he moved, the pistol’s muzzle flowered with sudden flame. He heard the thunder of the shot; he heard the bullet strike. And in almost the same instant, he was struck a vicious blow from behind and fell forward on his face in the grass. As consciousness faded he seemed to feel something long and sticky on his cheek.…
A long time later he felt a throbbing pain in his skull, as if a thousand tiny men were pounding with red-hot hammers at its shell, pounding and pounding and pounding without cease.
He opened his eyes to a star shining through a crevice in the rock across the hollow, and then he saw something long and dark lying on the ground. Something … like the body of a man.
Painfully, Lance rolled over and got his hands under him. Yet it was several minutes before he mustered the strength to rise, to push himself up from the ground. He found that he had difficulty in bringing his eyes into focus, and he sat with his head leaning on his arms, crossed upon his knees, for what seemed a long, long time.
At last he lowered a hand to the rock at his side. Then another. With difficulty, his head swimming, Lance pulled himself to his feet. Once on his feet, with the flat face of the rock for support, he dropped his hands to feel for his guns. They were still there.
Apparently the body had then been left for dead. Gingerly, Lance’s fingers went to the man’s skull. His hair was matted with blood.
Feeling around on the ground, Lance found the man’s hat and let it hang from his neck by the rawhide chin strap, for his head was too sore and too swollen to permit his wearing it. Feeling his way around the boulder, Lance found Buck waiting patiently. The yellow horse pricked his ears and whinnied softly.
“Sorry, boy,” Lance whispered, “you should’ve been in a stable by now, with plenty of oats.”
When he led the horse from behind the boulder, Lance again saw the dark shape on the ground. He saw more than that, for just beyond was a standing horse.
Gun in hand, for he knew not what awaited him, Lance went over to the body.
By the feeble light of the stars he could yet see the man’s features, and it was the face of no one he knew. Then he saw the white of a bit of paper clutched in the dead man’s hand. He freed it … An envelope.
Squatting, his head pounding with slow, heavy throbs, Lance struck a match. It was a worn envelope. It must have been carried in a man’s pocket. On it was scratched in a painful scrawl:
I was dry-gulched.
Mort needs help bad.
He koodn’t kum.
It was written on the back of a letter addressed to SAM CARTER, LOST CREEK RANCH.
Thrusting the letter into his pocket, Lance mounted and rode down the trail toward the ranch. He was close now, judging by the description he had, yet obviously Mort’s enemies had staked out along the trails to get anyone who might try to come in or out.
He turned from the trail when he saw an opportunity, and let the buckskin scramble up a steep bank to the top. This was open country, but away from the trail. He had been sent a map to indicate his direction and the ranch location. A few added comments from Rusty Gates had helped immeasurably.
Lance was still several miles away when he saw the glow of fire on the horizon, the blaze of burning ranch buildings.
He was too late. A house was burning, and perhaps Mort Davis was already dead.
Suddenly a man ran from the shadows. “Is that you, Joe?” he called.
Lance drew up sharply, waiting. The man came closer. “Joe? What’s the matter?”
The voice was that of one of the men with whom he had fought in the Spur. They recognized each other in the same instant that something fell in the burning house, and the flames leaped up.
With a startled gasp the man lifted his gun, but Lance held his Winchester on him. And without shifting the rifle, Lance squeezed off his shot.
The gun bellowed in the night, and the man pitched forward, clutching his stomach.
“That’s one less, Mort. One less.”
He touched a spur to the buckskin, and rode on, toward the dying fire.