DUST raised up in clouds and settled in a thinning golden fog as the last of the steers lowed and trotted past the ranch on Ghost Creek. Doc Lantry waited only to see that the boys pushed them on toward the Owl Creek Mountains and then swinging his pony back, rode in to hitch it at the ranch corral and walk toward the dugout.
The Sundance Kid waited there, fiddling with a dead cigarette, a frown on that good-looking thin face that could turn so sullen. Doc saw him, but he affected nonchalance. The Kid wouldn’t let him get away without a brush.
He said: “Look here, Lantry. That stuff was drove off right here in the Basin, wasn’t it?”
“Yeh. But don’t worry—I broke the trail.”
“Yuh was with the boys all the time, was yuh?” Lantry assented gruffly.
The Kid spoke in a wintry voice that carried a biting flick. “Yuh planned the raid yore self, too, I gather.... Don’t scowl at me like that, Lantry! What did Santee tell yuh about layin’ off here near the hide-out?”
Doc’s gusty wrath exploded into nervous fragments of words. The hell with Santee! He was gone, wasn’t he? Let him give orders and ride off—and see where it got him! Didn’t this place belong to Doc himself? ... Well?
If it was wholesale challenge that Lantry flung out, the Kid accepted it. As Doc attempted to walk past him into the dugout with a morose independence, Logan’s thin, iron fingers whirled him back sharply. The lowering face he found thrust into his own was hawk-like.
“Don’t try that with me, Lantry!” the dead level voice bit out. “I know Santee can shrug an’ pass off yore damned orneryness, but I ain’t good at it! From here on out yuh can mutter an’ glare all yuh please—but you do as yore told. That means keep yore paws out of the rustlin’ an’ let Santee decide what’s to be run off. Savvy?”
Doc began to fume, all the skin visible above his rumpled open collar turning a lobster red.
The Kid cut him off: “I know how yuh feel, mister! But git this: it’s eat crow now or lead later! An’ if you’ll have yore lead now, I daresay I can square myself with Reb. Do yuh git it?”
Lantry got it. What was more, he saw Santee’s hand all too plainly behind it all. They were trying to oust him from the Bunch; they had ousted him, they were making him the goat all around. Without the interference of the flaxen-haired one it would never have happened. Doc cursed the day he had fallen for Reb’s treacherous smile. It was a laugh that that one didn’t know what he was doing, as Doc had once thought—he knew!
But Doc didn’t laugh. This ceaseless iteration of his curse was driving him crazy. Crazy with rage.
“I got to walk shy—an’ act quick,” he told himself, sweating, as soon as he was alone. “Santee’s been watchin’ me an’ now he’s got the Kid doin’ it.” He cursed feverishly as he realized that he didn’t know what minute he was under surveillance. It made him stealthy, suspicious as a coyote, venomous as a snake.
He rode into the Owl Creeks to get away from Logan and to make sure the stolen bunch of steers had gone its appointed way. But the boys didn’t have much to say to him when he caught up; he thought they looked at him funny. He gave up and rode back to Ghost Creek in a savage temper.
The Sundance Kid rode away the next morning on business of his own, and after that Lantry breathed easier. But not for long. Two different times during that afternoon he thought he got a glimpse of some skulker watching the ranch.
“Dammit, I’ll put a stop to this!” he raged under his breath, the second time it occurred.
Swinging into the saddle, he was ready for anything. He knew he ran the risk of sudden attack the moment he smoked out the man who was shadowing him. But his hand was clammy with desire for the six-gun grip; he was sick with determination.
Heading at a run for the spot where he had last got a flash of the skulker, he rode on past, topped a crest and then, out of sight, followed an eroded gully which circled around to a point on his back trail. There he waited, crowded into concealment, ready.
He was not kept long in suspense. Within the minute a cautious advance could be heard, the dull clink of hoofs on soil. It lit a flame in Lantry. His temples pounded. So they had a man on his trail, did they? By God, he’d let them find the fellow dead! That would bring them up short.
The trail led down the cut bank into the gully, across at an angle, and up a little path to the other side. Lantry crouched, dismounted, under the over-hang. His six-gun was out, his thumb white on the hammer. His lips were drawn back from the tobacco-stained teeth in a vulpine snarl. When his pursuer’s pony slid down into the gully on bunched hoofs, Lantry reached out to yank down the curb-chain, thrusting his gun up. As the pony stamped, the two men exchanged leaping glances, looks clashing like flint on steel.
Doc’s jaw dropped. The man was no member of the Wild Bunch at all. It was Ike Lucas, chased out of this country months ago by a grim-lipped posse. He looked as if he had been on the dodge ever since. His stubble was long, his hair unkempt, his clothes ragged and weather stained. Just now he was taut with petrifying surprise, his low brow knotted in anticipation of violence.
Lantry’s eyes were opaque with uncertainty but his harsh voice grated:
“Whut’re yuh doin’ here, Lucas?”
A change swept over Ike, like flooding relief.
“Gawd!” he gasped. “I thought yuh was—someone else.”
There was too much surprise here for it to be insincere. It increased Doc’s lingering doubt of the man’s object. That Lucas was not one of Sundance Kid’s crowd disjointed all his expectations. For the moment he didn’t know what to think. He did not relax his vigilance.
“Yuh was trailin’ me!” he charged. “Whut fer?”
Lucas expostulated: “I wasn’t layin’ fer yuh, Doc, honest! I was after—” He stopped, sucking in his breath as if his tongue had betrayed him.
Doc’s eyes narrowed. “Yuh was after Reb Santee, wasn’t yuh?”
Lucas’s startled look was acquiescence enough.
“Figgerin’ to knock ’im off?” Doc went on inexorably.
“No! I—I wanted to take it out of his hide, fer what he done to me an’ Stony. That’s all, Doc, I swear!” Lucas’s words were hurried, nervous, persuasive.
Doc was not deceived. Ike thought he was on Reb’s side—that he would tell Reb, perhaps get him killed if he didn’t do it himself. Ike was at bottom a coward, he knew. In the same instant, another side of Lantry’s brain leaped in calculation. He saw his great chance. He could use Lucas. Ike was the perfect engine of revenge—a man who hated Santee! Doc didn’t even have to prime him. All he had to do was help, see to it that Ike got his chance.
All this flashed through Doc’s mind in a second. He heard himself saying: “Yuh don’t have to lie to me, Ike. I know how a man can hate Santee! It’s all right....”
There was a good deal more of this, cunningly put, for Lucas was cagy, his fear of Reb Santee was genuine, as strong as his hatred. Lantry played on him as upon an instrument. Even after he was convinced that they saw eye to eye, however, Lucas still could not understand why Doc had not taken his own revenge before this.
“Never mind,” Lantry told him. “It’ll all come to yuh in time, Ike. I’d be marked, can’t yuh see that? I got a place here I don’t want to ride away from—the Wild Bunch would crack down on me in a hurry.” He waggled his head shrewdly.
“How ’bout me?” Ike queried suspiciously.
“Nobody knows yo’re here but me,” Lantry pointed out. “Yuh can do yore job an’ drag it, an’ who’ll be the wiser? Whut’s more, I’ll see that yuh have all yuh need, an’ a little stake to start away with.”
They talked it over from all angles. Lucas finally agreed to stick around until Santee returned—he was at Lander just now—and shoot him down. It was decided that the only safe and sure means was for Ike to bushwhack his man from cover. Flame leaped in his eye as he spoke of it. Lantry didn’t know whether to trust him or not; but whatever doubts he had of Lucas’s nerve, there could be none concerning the validity of his intentions.
“In the meantime, yuh better hole up an’ lay low,” Doc advised smoothly. “I’ll let yuh know when Santee gits back.”
“Where’ll I go—up to our old place in the Owl Creeks?”
“God, no!” Lantry didn’t want the Wild Bunch to so much as dream of Lucas’s presence yet—though there was some hazy hope in his crafty brain that he could manage to have these deadly men bring down the dry-gulcher later on, and thus clear himself of any suspicion of complicity. They’d see it all quick enough: the story of Reb’s dealings with Lucas and Tapper had got around.
Doc told Ike of a remote hide-out in the hills, warned him to go there at once and remain, and started him off towards it forthwith.
“Wait,” was his parting word; “yuh got a damn good rifle, ain’t yuh? ... Okay. I’ll bring a box of shells; but Ike, yuh better know now, yuh won’t have time to use more’n one of ’em!”
“Don’t worry!” Lucas’s eyes were wicked. “I’ll do the trick slick an’ clean, the fust whack. What I want the exter shells fer is what comes after.”
There was a sinister note in this not easily to be mistaken. In a way, Lucas was conveying a warning and a promise. There was to be no dirty work beyond what they had carefully planned. He well knew the hornet’s nest the slaying of Reb Santee would stir up, and he was preparing for it.
Lantry was quick to read the danger to his own plans. It made him wary. At the same time it answered his question of Ike’s efficiency. The man was a mad wolf now. He said nothing, nodding carelessly, hoping Lucas would not too soon awaken from the false security of bitter hate which Doc himself had induced.
Without further words they parted, Lucas to strike back into the hills with the alert caution of a wild thing; Lantry to return to Ghost Creek, savagely content.
“Now we’ll see where mister Reb gits off,” he nodded grimly to the empty, peaceful and embracing range as he rode.