THIS WAS A harsh land; these were tragic times.
The wind howled down off the peaks, carrying flakes of snow.
“Watch that, son,” said Menendez, grinning narrowly at young Tom as he walked past. “Don’t stand in my way.”
“There’s two halves to a road,” young Tom said angrily. “You don’t have to take yours in the middle. You can walk around.”
“When you cast my size shadow,” Menendez said, “I’ll walk around.” His grin widened as he deliberately stepped aside and walked slowly around the kid. Young Tom pivoted on the balls of his feet, keeping Menendez continuously in front of him. Menendez laughed at him.
Jack Holliday had watched silently; now he said, “Cut that out, Menendez. We’ve got better things to do.”
“Sure,” said Menendez, still grinning. “Sure.”
“I mean it,” Holliday warned. “Come on—get saddled.”
The fourth outlaw, Bill, drifted into the camp, and Holliday watched them saddle their hardy animals under the lowering sky. They mounted up and at one point Menendez’ eyes rested thoughtfully on Holliday’s injured arm, which the bearded outlaw was still favoring. Menendez smiled softly and settled comfortably in the saddle. Holliday put his eyes on Menendez for a flat moment and abruptly said, “Menendez, you ride ahead.”
Menendez shrugged and whirled his horse out of the clearing. The others followed closely. Bunched tight, they ran through the trees, down off the mountain slope and across a long ridge that carried them lower, at an easy pitch to the canyon bottom. Setting up a loud echoing clatter, they galloped through the gorge with a heavy wind whipping their collars about their faces. An angling side canyon chuted them through a series of looping switchbacks to the flat floor of a narrow valley; they drummed across and entered a heavy stand of timber, which they followed through its full length of some three miles until it brought them to the edge of the main road going east out of Mule Canyon.
The stage rattled up through Wolf Pass, going slowly on the slippery roadbed and the high slant of the hill, the mules kicking up a steady struggling gait. On the box, the shotgun guard gripped his rifle and tried to burn away the thin mist of rain with his searching eyes.
“Jeremy,” the driver said, “I don’t know but what we ought to turn back. This is goin’ to hit pretty quick now.” The storm advanced across the sky, a marching phalanx of black thunderheads and rolling thunder.
Jeremy said, “We can make O’Boyle’s station all right.”
A rifle shot came from the rocks above the road; before its echoes died, the shotgun guard, Jeremy, was face-down across the dashboard, his arms hanging free. The driver raised his whip; a voice came from ahead of him in the strange noon-night, saying easily: “Leave them lay, driver.” A muffled figure dropped to the top of the coach from an overhang on the trail; the bandit pulled four heavy boxes from the boot and tossed them one by one to the ground. One of them split open. A second man came out of the swirling half-dark and called, “All right, all passengers—outside. Hurry it up, I ain’t waitin’ on no tea party.”
The coach’s only passenger stepped out: a young blond dude in a gray suit and derby hat. The taller outlaw came up to him, snatched away the dude’s hat, and held it upside down. “Put it in here. Watch, money, ring, whatever you got.”
Suddenly the young man began to weep. He sat down in the thin crust of snow and cried, Menendez’ voice cut harshly through the mist: “Jesus Christ.” Menendez shot the young dude three times through the chest.
Holliday dropped the overturned hat and said, “Goddam it, you had no call to do that!” He went to the pack horse and began tying the bullion boxes aboard the animal. He called, “Get out of here, driver.”
“I want to put those bodies on board.”
“Then be quick about it.” Holliday mounted his horse and took the pack animal’s lead-rope; he said, “Let’s get the hell out of here,” and rode into the storm.
In the swirling mist of snow, Phil Mercy battered his way along the tent streets. He was talking to himself: It’s my curse, my mind is too damned realistic. He had just passed the graveyard on Apache Hill and the sight of those snow-drifted mounds had unnerved him. He saw them, the men, dying, and their dreams with them: big dreams, little dreams, it made no difference. Every man was sand, and eventually the tide came that washed him away from shore. Mercy saw his own grave in the cemetery.
The cold knife of the wind slashed across his lowered face. He fought the breasting force of the storm and found his way to the California, and went inside; the place was full of refugees from the snowstorm. Someone shouted testily: “Shut that Goddamn door, you fool.” Mercy wheeled and put his weight against the door and got it shut against the wind.
The room had the dank smell of wet clothes and close, stove-heated air; the atmosphere was slightly steamy. Someone said, “What time is it?”
“Six.”
“Christ Almighty.”
Mercy squeezed through to the bar. The doors and windows were shut; the tent-roof flapped like an angry bird, making the lamps flicker violently. Matthew Ruarke came out of the crowd and bellied to the bar alongside Phil Mercy; Ruarke said, “I’d like to talk to you.”
Without awaiting an answer, Ruarke went back toward his office. Mercy frowned after the man’s back. He said to the bartender, “A bottle of sour mash,” and paid for it with almost the last of his money.
When the bottle arrived, Mercy studied the half-open door of the back office. In a moment he shrugged and went that way. Someone bumped into him and he almost dropped the bottle; he swung with a vicious curse, but the man had gone on and didn’t hear him. Mercy went into the office and elbowed the door shut. “Well?”
“Sit down,” Ruarke said in a smooth voice. He sat behind his desk, under a picture of battle.
“A social visit?”
“No,” said Ruarke. “Maybe an offer.”
“I don’t want to deal cards,” Mercy said.
“Not that.”
“I might not be too sociable on anything else. Leroy works for you.”
“Unfortunately,” Ruarke agreed. “But Leroy didn’t jump you on my orders.”
“He’s your pet dog. It’s your responsibility to keep him on a leash.”
“All right, all right,” Ruarke said irritably. “Maybe I owe you something for that. He knocked you around pretty badly, did he?”
“I couldn’t move for two days.”
Ruarke was obviously trying not to smile. He reached into a desk drawer and took out a small poke. He weighed it experimentally in his hand and tossed it to the corner of the desk. Mercy picked it up.
Ruarke said, “That ought to be five or six ounces—maybe a couple of hundred dollars. Think that’ll compensate for your injuries?”
“If you think I’m too proud to take it,” Mercy said, “then you’re wrong.” He put the gold poke in his pocket.
“You’re not pulling much gold out of that claim of yours, are you?”
Mercy shrugged. He said, “I don’t know if I’d like working for you.”
“If I were in your place I might feel the same. But I’m not in your place. I can use you.”
“There are plenty of stronger backs than mine in this camp.”
“Mindless ones,” Ruarke said.
Something made Mercy say, “No, thanks, Ruarke. I haven’t slipped far enough yet. You’d better keep your job for a while.” He turned and walked out of the office.
The storm rushed past, and was gone by nine o’clock, at which time Shelby Long came out on the porch of Calhoun’s Hilltop saloon and fired up his pipe. The air was cold and a little damp, but it was fresh after the soggy interior of the saloon.
The night was deep and still. Voices from the saloon ran through it in an easy murmur. Bundled in a man’s mackinaw, Catherine Goodfellow emerged from the dark and climbed the stairs. Shelby Long moved into a window’s shaft of light. The girl turned toward him. “Why, hello, Shelby.”
“Howdy yourself.”
“I like the smell of your pipe.”
He inclined his head courteously; humor sparkled in his eyes. He said, “This is no night for you to be out, is it?”
“The storm’s gone,” she said. She looked at him with conjecture. “You ought to have a girl, Shelby.”
“I got one. Down in El Paso. Soon as I build up my stake I’ll fetch her.”
“What’s her name?” Catherine asked.
“Lucy,” he said, and the way he spoke the name made Catherine smile.
She said, “I’d like to see your partner, if he’s around.”
“I’ll fetch him.” Shelby Long started toward the door.
“No, that’s all right. It’s cold out here—I’ll go inside.”
Long frowned at her. “Ain’t exactly the proper place for a lady.”
She said, “You ought to know me better than that, Shelby. I’m headstrong, remember?” She smiled coyly and went to the door and waited for him to open it.
“This ain’t fittin’,” Shelby Long grumbled, but he opened the big storm door and pushed one of the batwings aside so that she could go in. As soon as she entered the great room, a silence cut through the crowd like an abrupt intake of breath. She ignored it; she walked straight-backed across the length of the saloon to the back door, and latched it open without knocking.
Calhoun was alone in the room, sitting in a chair by the stove with a cigarette that had grown a tall ash, half forgotten. He looked up and a mixture of expressions crossed his craggy face—pleasure, surprise, but something withheld, some reservation. He said, “Well, well.”
She closed the door behind her. Immediately voices started up in the saloon, louder than before; it made her smile. She said, “I’ve always liked breaking the rules.”
He was on his feet. “Take a chair.”
“Perhaps there isn’t time.”
“What’s your hurry?”
“I came to find out about that Mexican,” she said. “The one who tried to set the place on fire.”
“How’d you hear about him?”
“Phil Mercy told me this morning. He was afraid you were planning to torture the man.”
A slow smile changed his expression. “I didn’t know Phil had that much compassion in him.”
“It was just a passing impulse to be a good Samaritan, I think. What about the Mexican, Sam?”
“What about him?” he replied.
“Have you done anything to him?”
“Nothing much.”
She shook her head in exasperation. “Phil wanted me to come down this afternoon and try to talk you out of whatever you had in mind. I told him it was no use. But I kept remembering that man you shot the day our stagecoach was held up. You could have killed him but you didn’t. I haven’t figured you out at all—the way you talked to Matthew Ruarke that night changed my whole picture of you.”
“That’s simple,” he said. “Sometimes it’s smart to talk a bigger brand of ruthlessness than you own. It didn’t hurt anybody to throw a scare into Ruarke—if that’s what I did. I tend to doubt it had much effect. He’s just as tough as the next man.”
“What happened to the Mexican, Sam?”
“I threatened to tie him up outside in the freeze-up. I let him have all day to think about frostbite and gangrene. He came around. He told me what I wanted to know, and I let him go—told him if I ever saw him in this part of the country again I’d hang him. I think he believed me.”
“What did he tell you?”
“Nothing that helped very much,” Calhoun said. “He was hired by Jack Holliday.”
“The outlaw? I didn’t know he was in Mule Canyon.”
“He isn’t, far as I can find out. But he’s somewhere around here, in the hills. My guess is it’s Holliday who’s been raising all the rumpus with bullion shipments. He highgraded another shipment this afternoon—killed the shotgun guard and a passenger, some young dude.”
Catherine’s breath caught in her throat. She said in a low tone, “Do you know his name?”
“Who?”
“The passenger who was killed.”
“They identified him by his papers,” Calhoun said. “I heard the name but I guess I’ve forgotten it. Why?”
“Was it James Latimore?”
“I think it was.”
She pressed her hands to her temples. “Oh, God,” she whispered. She moved toward the door like a groping blind man.
Calhoun got there ahead of her and put his hands on her shoulders. “What is it?”
“I sent that boy to his death,” she said hollowly.
“Well, hell, you can’t take the blame for that. How could you have known—”
“Let me go, Sam,” she said, and rushed out.
Shelby Long drove up out of the gulch and along the ridge until it groined into a higher mountain, whereupon he put the wagon perhaps a quarter-mile farther through the new snow before he pulled up and ground-hitched the mules. He took down the axe and wedge and began to cut a trench into the trunk of a lone aspen that stood on the slope; its white bark cracked and chipped off and rolled back under the jarring of blows. With the slice half through, he put the wedge in it and went around the far side, and then paused, his eyes on a slope across the narrow valley. Something disturbed the brush over there, whipping it back, pushing through. Soon a rider appeared on the edge of the bushes and ran steadily along the slope at a high speed, angling downward in Shelby Long’s general direction. The running horse kicked up small flurries of snow which hung in the air for some time before sinking back to earth. Shelby Long frowned and stood motionless while the horseman continued to the bottom and came running up the near side, not sparing his horse. When the rider came within fifty yards the Texan stepped out from behind the tree.
The rider, startled, hauled his horse in and laid a heavy-browed glance on Shelby Long. The rider was dark and gaunt; he wore a ragged beard and his cheekbones, showing through, were covered by a bare, hard-stretched parchment. The emaciation of the man arrested Shelby Long for a moment. “Where’s the hurry, friend?”
The rider’s lips curled back and he jerked on the reins and wordlessly wheeled his horse around Shelby Long, continuing at a hard gallop until he crossed a far ridge. That was odd to Shelby Long, as town was in the other direction; for a while before he resumed chopping, he kept his speculative glance on the point where the horseman had disappeared.
Menendez only reluctantly let his horse slow when he saw that it was lathered and panting. It took him another two hours to pick a trail back through the barrens, and find a ford to cross the upper reaches of the Horn. He then continued around the tip of a ridge and dropped down into the timber, and offsaddled in Holliday’s camp. Holliday came out of the cabin and cast an eye at Menendez’ lathered horse. “Are you preparin’ to eat that animal or do you plan to ride it again?”
Menendez narrowed his lids. “In a hurry,” he said.
“I guess you were,” Holliday observed caustically. “I guess you were.”
“I met Vinnie Warner on the trail. He let it drop that Jacob Boone got real dead sometime this morning. Strangled to death.”
Holliday showed no surprise; all he said was, “That’s a hell of an excuse to kill a horse. Rub him down good.”
Menendez frowned. He might not have had too good an intelligence but he had a streak in him compounded of shrewd stubbornness and cruelty; he said, “I wouldn’t trust Ruarke any too far, Jack. Jacob Boone was one split too many, so Ruarke maybe sent Leroy to take care of him. Who knows we’re not next?”
“Doubtful,” said Holliday. “Ruarke needs us. He’s got no reason to cross us just now. What he’s got to worry about is us crossin’ him. We’ve got the gold.”
“Yeah,” Menendez said, “we do, don’t we?” He unstrapped the cinch and began rubbing the horse down with the soiled blanket.
The door opened and shut again before Stacy Donovan could swivel around to see who had entered. Caught by surprise and unwilling to admit it, he turned slowly in the chair until he was facing the door, and only then lifted his eyes. “Afternoon, Matt,” he said, and leaned back in the chair.
Matthew Ruarke moved forward and sat down. “I suppose you heard about Jake?”
“Yes.”
“Unfortunate, wasn’t it? Some drunk must have rolled him.”
“Sure,” Stacy Donovan said. He smoothed back his silky gray hair. “A crying shame,” he added.
Ruarke said, “We are about through, Stacy.”
Donovan didn’t know just how to take that, and so he kept the smile on his face and said, “Do you mean we, Matt—or me?”
Ruarke looked at him, and Donovan sat up straighter in the chair. Donovan said levelly, “Matt, there’s one thing that may not be clear between us. I’m no Jacob Boone. And I am not your man. I’m your partner, no less than that. You don’t give orders to me any more than I give them to you.”
“Take it easy,” said Matthew Ruarke. He made a small gesture with his hand. “You and I are alike—we’re both after the same thing and we don’t make excuses for ourselves. But you have much less to fight with than I do and if a showdown ever came you’d have no chance. There is that difference between us, Stacy.”
“If it came to that,” Donovan replied, “I have a gun under this desk that I could use right now.”
“That’s bluff. You’ve got no gun.” Ruarke was smiling easily.
“Maybe. Don’t count on it.”
“I wasn’t threatening,” Ruarke said. “The plain fact is I’m stronger than you, Stacy. But that’s not my reason for coming by, and I don’t propose to quibble all afternoon over whether you’ll shoot me or not. I’ve got enough trouble without worrying about you—and I hope I don’t have to worry about you.” Ruarke smiled blandly, indicating that he did very definitely worry about Donovan but didn’t dare show it.
Donovan raised his hands from beneath the desk. He was holding a cigar in his left hand and now held a match to it. Matthew Ruarke’s smile broadened; he said, “I thought so.”
“Get down to business, Matt.”
“Last night Price Goodfellow’s mine foreman was in my place. He was pretty drunk and he let some things slip. It looks as though Goodfellow and some of the others are preparing to form a vigilance committee. You know what that means. If they get me, they’ll get you. Just so long as you want this little treasure-island of ours to stay above water, you’re going to have to stick tighter to me than a corset. I want no trouble from you, Stacy.”
“I don’t see your worry,” Donovan said imperturbably. “There aren’t enough backbones in this town to start a ladies’ aid movement.”
“You’d be surprised, I think.”
“I’ll handle my end,” Donovan said. “What do you intend to do about the vigilantes, if it comes about?”
“I’ll handle it,” Ruarke said, and left as abruptly as he had come.
Donovan leaned back, closing his eyes and frowning, wondering just what had been Ruarke’s real reason for coming here. And then he thought he had it; and without mystery, he felt a little safer, and allowed himself to relax fully in the seat.