CHRIS PROPPED HIMSELF up on one elbow and nodded with the resignation of exhaustion. “How’d you come on me?”
“Figured you’d try to sneak back through us. When you started that hullabaloo, I knew that was the way you planned it. You and I think pretty much alike, kid brother. I knew you’d head for the valley, so when daylight came along, I just posted myself on the highest spot of ground I could find and waited for you to ride into sight.”
“Smart,” Chris commented.
“Uh-huh. All right. You ready to ride back to jail?”
“You’d be better off killing me. In jail, I can still talk.”
“What of it?”
“I had a nice conversation with Carson Denver last night. I mean night before last, I guess it was.”
“Good for you,” Boyd said. “What’s that supposed to make me do, fly into a jealous rage?”
“You’re holding the gun,” Chris observed. “I guess you can make the jokes if you want to.
“What about Carson Denver?”
A peal of thunder broke across the mountains, shattering the morning. Chris propped his back against the tree and said, “Denver told me who he’s been working for.”
“Did he, now?”
“He admitted that he and Pete Ramirez were the ones who bushwhacked me—three times all told. It was Ramirez who killed Santee and Anse Fuller.” Chris paused and looked Boyd in the eye. “On your orders, brother Boyd.”
“Hogwash.”
“I had a gun on him,” Chris said. “He had no reason to lie.” But just then the thought occurred to him: he had been holding an empty gun on Denver, and Denver had known it. Sudden indecision furrowed his brow.
Boyd said, “You came into this valley primed to tear me apart, Chris, and you’ve been doing your damnedest ever since. It’s all backfired on you, through no fault of mine. I don’t know if you killed Santee, in fact I kind of doubt it, but the evidence is there, and you’re going to stand trial for it. For that, and breaking jail, and for stealing a couple of horses, and shooting another one last night. I’ve had about enough of your wild stunts. It’s about time you paid the tab.”
“That’s a laugh, coming from you.”
“Hold on a minute—”
“You ordered Santee shot because you wanted the money back, the cash you’d paid him for his ranch. Then, you ordered Anse Fuller shot because you thought Anse knew too much. Who are you to—”
“Damn it,” Boyd roared, “I didn’t kill anybody, and I didn’t hire anybody killed. What the hell do you think I am? Sure, I bought Santee’s outfit. I paid him for it, and that was that. I’m no killer—you ought to know that.”
Chris looked at him strangely. When he spoke, his ‘words were uttered slowly, half-reluctantly:
“The damnable thing is, all at once I believe you.”
“It’s about time,” Boyd said, glowering. “If you hadn’t rammed around like a clumsy bull, blinded by your half-baked opinions of me, maybe we’d all have got to the bottom of this mess a long time ago.”
“You may be right,” Chris murmured with a troubled frown. For suddenly, with an all but audible click, the pieces suddenly had fallen into place, and the picture was almost complete, He said, “Boyd, give me ten minutes before you drag me in. Listen to what I’ve got to say.”
“I’m interested,” Boyd said. “Go ahead.”
Then Chris talked. It was in the nature of thinking aloud. He went right back to the beginning.
The whole thing had to be an ingenious device of someone behind the scenes, someone who stood to gain by the breakup of the McLean clan. Denver and Ramirez had planted the brand-blotched cowhide on Chris in order to make him suspicious of Boyd. Then they had shot his horse to get him mad. When he had come riding away from the Concho after his fight with Boyd, they must have thought he was giving it up, leaving the valley—and they had beat him senseless, to arouse his wrath again and make him stay and fight.
At the same time, they had kidnapped Anse Fuller and purposely allowed him to overhear their conversation—conversation to the effect that they were Concho hands working for Boyd. Later, they must have killed Anse in fear he had found something out, and Chris thought he knew what that was.
“As he was dying, Anse said something to Johanna. She couldn’t figure it out, and neither could I at the time. He said something about old man’ and ‘poisoned,’ and told Johanna to tell me about it. It could only have meant one thing, since Anse wasn’t poisoned. He must have meant our father. I’ll bet an arm if we have an autopsy performed on Rafe it will prove he was poisoned.”
This revelation rocked Boyd back on his heels, but he said nothing; his eyes glowed brightly.
Chris went on:
Santee was killed by Ramirez or Denver or both. Denver claimed it was Ramirez, but naturally he would say that. Santee was murdered partly for the money he carried and partly to convince Chris that Boyd was actually trying to gobble up the valley by nefarious means—an idea that had been carefully planted and nurtured in his head. Ford Cooke had been suspicious, but only that; he had warned Chris to go carefully, but Chris hadn’t listened to him. “If I’d paid attention to Ford, we might not be in this mess,” Chris admitted ruefully. “I went off as if my suspicions were already proven.”
“Go on,” Boyd said, his eyes narrowed.
The Santee killing was supposed to be framed onto Chris, but in such a way that Chris himself would think Boyd guilty of the murder. When Anse had been killed, mostly to shut him up about Rafe’s having been poisoned and not having died, as supposed, of a heart attack—when Anse had been killed, it had also served as a goad to induce Chris to break jail and, presumably, go gunning for Boyd.
By that time, fortunately, Chris had developed enough sense to go after Ramirez and Denver, seeking proof before he went after Boyd. If he had challenged Boyd, as the killers had planned, Chris—by far the better gunman—would kill Boyd, and then be hanged for two murders: Santee’s and Boyd’s.
“It would have been a good way to get rid of both of us.” Chris said.
Boyd was deep in thought. “It makes a lot of sense,” he admitted.
“It’s the only way to fit it all together without forcing the pieces.”
Boyd was only half-convinced. “I don’t know,” he said. “You might still be wrong. The way you’ve got it outlined, the fellow pulling the strings has to be somebody who’ll benefit with both you and me out of the way. That pretty nearly puts the finger on Mark Cavanagh.”
“Maybe,” Chris said.
Boyd said, “I’m married to Mark’s daughter. If both of us die, Vera inherits the Concho. It’d make a good opportunity for Mark to join up his outfit to the Concho. It’d make him a little emperor. But I don’t see Mark in that picture. He’s too much bluff, not enough cunning.”
Jagged fingers of lightning sizzled across the drizzling sky; thunder clapped deafeningly. The rain began to come down in sheets.
Oblivious of the drenching, Chris said, “I’m not accusing Cavanagh yet, Boyd. I’ve jumped to too many conclusions lately. But we can prove it one way or another.”
“How?”
“Catch Carson Denver or Pete Ramirez. Make them talk—and do it with a loaded gun this time.”
“That’s easier said than done.”
“It’s the only hope we’re got.”
“It’ll be a tough nut to crack, especially with you on the run.”
Chris grinned. “You mean you’re not locking me up?”
“Maybe. Give me time to make up my mind.”
Chris said, “Listen. I’ll give you my word to sit tight while you round up a crew and run down Pete Ramirez. He shouldn’t be hard to find. He figures he’s in the clear. I saw him last night up in the hills with your posse. He expected to be at Bald Mountain around sunup with eight men.”
Slashing blades of rain separated the two men. Boyd stepped forward, handing Chris’ guns back to him. “All right, Chris, I’ll take your word you won’t budge from this spot until I come back—unless the posse comes too close. In that case, try to meet me at midnight in my room at the Concho. Nobody’d go looking for you there.”
“Agreed,” Chris said.
Standing in the driving rain, the two brothers shook hands, their eyes meeting.
There was nothing to do but suffer the rain. He kept his horse – actually Pablo Ortiz’s horse – saddled and ready to go, in case the posse flushed him; he paced the drenched earth, sat down against a tree, tipped his hat forward, and drowsed fitfully through the long, wet morning.
Around noon, the rain slacked off to a steady gray drizzle again, though lightning bolts still ripped over the mountains. Chris finished the last of the smoked bacon in Ortiz’s saddlebags and wished he had a cigarette.
Restlessness drove him to his feet again, and he paced the length of the grove for forty minutes, or thereabouts, until he caught sight of a rider coming up the sloping canyon—a single slim figure, now visible, now invisible in the rain.
He ran back to get his rifle, brought it forward, and posted himself by the base of a tree where he had a good command of the canyon floor. Here, he waited while the horseman advanced through the falling mist of raindrops.
The rider came close enough for recognition, and with puzzled bafflement, Chris walked out of the trees, exposing himself, letting his rifle hang from the crook of his arm. He raised his hand to attract the rider’s attention and saw the horse swivel toward him and lift to a gallop.
Johanna dismounted by him with a broad, gentle smile of relief. “Chris!”
“What the devil are you doing here?”
“I’ve been riding around these hills for the last twenty-four hours, hoping you’d spot me.”
“What for?”
“I just want to help, Chris,” she said in a disappointed tone. Then her expression brightened. “I’ve got food, and cigarettes, and an extra poncho. You must be soaked through.”
He laughed, letting all the pent-up tautness come out in his laughter. “You’re a peach, Johanna,” he told her, leading her into the grove.
Well-fed for the first time in days, he sat back sheltering a cigarette in his cupped hand. Rainwater runneled from the trough of his hat brim; his poncho flowed around him, glistening. The girl sat across from him with a long face. “We buried my father yesterday morning.”
“I know who killed him,” Chris said. “Boyd’s gone after him.” He proceeded to tell Johanna the whole sordid story.
When he had finished, Johanna said, “At least there’s one good thing in all this. You and Boyd have found each other again.”
“I guess we’ve both grown up some in the past couple of weeks,” he observed.
“So have I, Chris,” she said. “Look at me.”
He looked, and liked what he saw. “Why, Johanna, I—” She smiled, the wise smile of a grown woman. “I told you how I felt when I was fifteen,” she murmured. “Nothing’s changed, Chris.”
“What about Ford Cooke? You had a crush on him.”
“That was a long time ago,” she said. “Besides, he’s got other interests now. Your old girlfriend, for one.”
“You mean Vera?”
“I’ve seen them together several times.”
A thoughtful frown descended across Chris’ face, but not for long. Ortiz’s horse, with its sensitive nostrils, had picked up something: it whickered, and on that signal Chris shot bolt upright, grabbing his rifle. “Hold still,” he told the girl in a hardened tone of authority.
He ran skidding down the slippery slope until he could see out through the edge of the trees.
They were coming, eight or ten of them in a tight-packed bunch—headed right toward him, and not ten minutes away. He stood watching for a brief instant. His jaw crept forward to lie in a long, grim line.
Johanna came up behind him. Seeing the crowd, she understood at once. She said calmly, “Give me your hat, Chris.”
“What?”
She reached up to take the hat off his head. Piling her hair up unceremoniously, she put the hat on. “I’m taking your horse,” she said over her shoulder. “I’ll draw them off.” Slicker flapping, she ran back into the trees.
“Wait a minute, you crazy little—” He ran after her, but by the time he’ reached the center of the grove, she was already asaddle.
“Get out the back way, Chris,” she said. Wheeling the horse, she drummed away at a dead run.
Chris ran to her horse, intending to go after her; but the cinches were loosened, and by the time he had them drawn up tight, the crowd had begun to bay like a pack of hunting dogs: they had sighted the fugitive.
He mounted up, swearing softly, and rode out of the trees in time to see the posse thunder past, hot on Johanna’s heels. Fortunately, no one was shooting.
Chris was about to draw his rifle and fire a shot to draw the posse away from her, when he saw the girl tear off her hat. Her hair blossomed and flew in the wind, and the posse drew rein, milling in frustrated confusion.
With his head start assured, Chris faded back into the hills and proceeded to lose himself in the wilderness.