L'Amour, Louis - SSC 31 Read online

  The Navajo had told him how his people once had been pursued by Apaches, and had led the whole Apache war party into the Sink. There they had been caught by darkness, and none were ever seen again according to the Indian’s story.

  Shad stumbled then and fell. Dust lifted thickly about him, clogging his nostrils. Slowly, like a groggy fighter, he got his knees under him, and using his rifle for a staff, pushed himself to his feet. He started on, driven by some blind, brute desire for life. When he fell again, he could feel rocks under his hands. He pulled himself up. He climbed the steep, winding path toward the Window in the Rock. Below the far corner of the Window was the Nest. And in the Nest, there was water. Or so the Navajo had told him.

  When he was halfway up the trail, he turned and looked back over the Sink. Far away, he could see the dust clouds. Four of them. One larger than the others. Probably there were two men together.

  “Still coming,” he muttered grimly, “and Lopez leading them!”

  Lopez, damn his soul! The little devil had guts, though; you had to give him that. Suddenly, Marone found himself almost wishing Lopez would win through. The man was like a wolf. A killer wolf. But he had guts. And it wasn’t just the honest men who had built up this country to what it was today. Maybe, without the killers and rustlers and badmen, the West would never have been won so soon.

  Shad Marone remembered some of them: wild, dangerous men, who went into country where nobody else dared venture. They killed and robbed to live, but they stayed there. It took iron men for that: men like Lopez, who was a mongrel of the Santa Fe Trail. Lopez had drunk water from a buffalo track many a time.

  Well, so have I, Shad told himself. Shad Marone took out his six-shooter and wiped it free of dust. Only then did he start up the trail. He found the Nest, a hollow among the rocks, sheltered from the wind. The Window loomed above him now, immense, gigantic. Shad stumbled, running, into the Nest. He dropped his rifle and lunged for the water hole, throwing himself on the ground to drink.

  Then he stared, unbelieving. Empty! The earth was dry and parched where the water had been, but only cracked earth remained. He couldn’t believe it. It couldn’t be! It couldn’t …

  Marone came to his feet, glaring wildly about. His eyes were red-rimmed, his face heat-flushed above the black whiskers, now filmed with gray dust. He tried to laugh. Lopez dying down below there, he dying up here! The hard men of the West, the tough men! He sneered at himself. Both of them now would die, he at the water hole, Lopez down there in the cloying, clogging dust!

  He shook his head. Through the flame-sheathed torment of his brain, there came a cool ray of sanity. There had been water here. The Indian had been right. The cracked earth showed that. But where? Perhaps a dry season… .

  But no; it had not been a dry season. Certainly no dryer than any other year at this time. He stared across the place where the pool had been. Rocks and a few rock cedar and some heaped-up rocks from a small slide. He stumbled across and began clawing at the rocks, pulling, tearing. Suddenly, a trickle of water burst through! He got hold of one big rock and in a mad frenzy, tore it from its place. The water shot through then, so suddenly he was knocked to his knees.

  He scrambled out of the depression, splashing in the water. Then, lying on his face, he drank, long and greedily. Finally, he rolled away and lay still, panting. Dimly, he was conscious of the wind blowing. He crawled to the water again and bathed his face, washing away the dirt and grime. Then, careful as always, he filled his canteen from the fresh water bubbling up from the spring. If he only had some coffee….

  But he’d left his food in his saddlebags. Well, Madge would be all right now. He could go back to her. After this, they wouldn’t bother him. He would take her away. They would go to the Blue Mountains in Oregon. He had always liked that country.

  The wind was blowing more heavily now, and he could smell the dust. That Navajo hadn’t lied. It would be hell down in the Sink. He was above it now and almost a mile away. He stared down into the darkness, wondering how far Lopez had been able to get. The others didn’t matter; they were weak sisters who lived on the strength of better men. If they didn’t die there, they would die elsewhere, and the West could spare them. He got to his feet. Lopez would hate to die.

  The ranch he had built so carefully in a piece of the wildest, roughest country was going good. It took a man with guts to settle where he had and make it pay. Shad Marone rubbed the stubble on his jaw

  “That last thirty head of his cows I rustled for him brought the best price I ever got!” he remembered thoughtfully. “Too bad there ain’t more like him!”

  Well, after this night, there would be one less. There wouldn’t be any thing to guide Lopez down there now. A man caught in a thick whirlpool of dust would have no landmarks; there would be nothing to get him out except blind instinct. The Navajos had been clever, leading the Apaches into a trap like that. Odd, that Lopez’s mother had been an Apache, too.

  Just the same, Marone thought, he had nerve. He’d shot his way up from the bottom until he had one of the best ranches. Shad Marone began to pick up some dead cedar. He gathered some needles for kindling and in a few minutes had a fire going. Marone took another drink. Somehow, he felt restless. He got up and walked to the edge of the Nest. How far had Lopez come? Suppose … Marone gripped his pistol. Suddenly, he started down the mountain.

  “The hell with it!” he muttered. A stone rattled. Shad Marone froze, gun in hand. Lopez, a gray shadow, weaving in the vague light from the cliff, had a gun in his hand. For a full minute, they stared at each other.

  Marone spoke first. “Looks like a dead heat,” he said.

  Lopez said, “How’d you know about that water hole?”

  “Navajo told me,” Shad replied, watching Lopez like a cat. “You don’t look so bad,” he added. “Have a full canteen?”

  “No. I’d have been a goner. But my mother was an Apache. A bunch of them got caught in the Sink once. That never happened twice to no Apache. They found this water hole then, and one down below. I made the one below, an’ then I was finished. She was a dry hole. But then water began to run in from a crack in the rock.”

  “Yeah?” Marone looked at him again. “You got any coffee?”

  “Sure.”

  “Well,” Shad said as he holstered his gun, “I’ve got a fire.”

  THE TOWN NO GUNS COULD TAME

  Chapter One

  Town Tamer Wanted!

  The miner called Perry stepped from the bucket and leaned his pick and shovel against a boulder. He was a big man with broad shoulders and narrow hips. Despite the wet, clinging diggin’ clothes, he moved with the ease and freedom of a big cat. His greenish eyes turned toward Doc Greenley, banker, postmaster, and saloon man of Basin City, who was talking with the other townsmen. Perry’s head and arms were bare, and the woolen undershirt failed to cover the mighty muscles that rippled along his back and shoulders.

  One of the men, noting the powerful arms and the strong neck, turned and said something to the others. They nodded, together. “Hey, Perry,” Doc Greenley called, “drift over here, will you? Me and these two gents want to make a proposition to you.”

  Casually, Perry picked up the spare pick handle leaning against the boulder and walked over, his wet clothes sloshing as he moved. He stopped when he reached the trio, and his eyes studied them, coldly penetrating. The three men shifted uneasily.

  “Go ahead with it, then,” Perry said shortly.

  “It’s like this,” Doc explained. “Buff McCarty”-he nodded toward the larger of his two companions-“and Wade Manning, here, and myself have been worried about the rough element from the mines. They seem to be taking over the town. No respectable citizen or their womenfolks are safe. And as for the holdups that have been raising hell with us businessmen. …”

  Doc Greenley mopped his brow with a fresh bandanna handkerchief, letting the sentence go unfinished. “We want you to help us, Perry,” the heavyset, honest-faced McCarty put in. “Mann
ing, here, runs the freight line and I have the general supply outfit. We’re all substantial citizens and need a man of your type for town marshal.”

  “As soon as I heard you were here, I told the boys you were just the man for us,” Greenley put in eagerly.

  Perry’s green eyes narrowed thoughtfully. “I see.” His gaze shifted from Doc Greenley, the most prominent and wealthiest man there, to the stolid McCarty, and then to the young townsman, Wade Manning. He smiled a little. “The town fathers, out in force, eh?” He glanced at Wade, looking at him thoughtfully. “But where’s Rafe Landon, owner of the Sluice Box Bar?”

  “Rafe Landon?” Doc Greenley’s eyes glinted. “Why, his bar is the hangout for this tough crowd! In fact, we have reason to suspect-“

  “Better let Perry form his own suspicions, Doc,” Wade Manning interrupted. “I’m not at all sure about Rafe.”

  “You may not be,” Greenley snapped, “but I am! Perry, I’m convinced that Landon is the ringleader of the whole kit an’ caboodle of the killers and renegades we’re trying to clean out!”

  “Why,” Perry said suddenly, “do you choose this particular time to pick a marshal? There must be a reason.”

  “There is,’ Wade Manning agreed. “You probably know about the volume of gold production here. Anyway, Doc has better than two hundred thousand in his big vault now. I have about half that much. There’s a rumor around of a plot to loot the stage of the whole load.”

  “It’s Landon,” Greenley said, “that’s who it is! An’ do you know what I think?” He looked from one to the other, pulling excitedly at his ear lobe. “I think Rafe Landon is none other than Clip Haynes, the toughest, coldest gunman who ever pulled a trigger!”

  Perry’s eyes narrowed. “I heard he was down in Arizona.

  “But I happen to know,’ Greenley said sharply, “that Clip Haynes headed this way-with the ten thousand he got from that stage job near Goldroad!”

  Perry looked at Doc thoughtfully. “Maybe so. It could be that way, all right.” He glanced at Buff McCarty, who was watching him from his small blue eyes. “Sure, I’ll take the job! I’ll ride in tonight, by the canyon trail.”

  The three men walked to their horses, and Perry turned abruptly back to the mine office to draw his time. The moon was rising when the man called Perry swung onto his horse and took the canyon trail for Basin City. The big black stepped out swiftly, and the man lounged in the saddle, his eyes narrowed with thought. He rode with the ease of one long accustomed to the saddle, and almost without thinking kept to the shadows along the road, guiding his horse neatly so as to render it almost invisible in the dim light.

  From the black, flat-crowned hat tied under his chin with a rawhide thong to the hand-tooled cowman’s boots, his costume offered nothing that would catch the glint of light or prevent him from merging indistinguishably with his background. Even the two big guns with their polished wooden butts, tied down and ready for use, harmonized perfectly with his somber dress.

  The trail dipped through canyons and wound around lofty mesas, and once he forded a small stream. Shortly after, riding through a maze of gigantic boulders, he reined in sharply. His keen ear had detected a sudden sound. Even as he came to a halt he heard the hard rattle of hooves from a running horse somewhere on the trail ahead, and almost at the same instant, the sharp spang of a high-powered rifle.

  Soundlessly, he slid from the saddle, and even before his feet touched the sand of the trail, his guns were gripped in his big hands. Tensely, he ran forward, staying in the soft sand where his feet made no noise. Suddenly, dead ahead of him and just around a huge boulder, a pistol roared.

  He jerked to a halt, and eased around the rock. A black figure of a man was on its knees in the road. Just as the man looked around, the rifle up on the mountainside crashed again, and the kneeling figure spilled over on its face. Perry’s gun roared at the flash of the rifle, and roared again as a bullet whipped by his ear. The rifle fired once more, and Perry felt his hat jerk on his head as he emptied his gun at the concealed marksman.

  There was no reply. Cautiously Perry lifted his head, then began to inch toward the dark figure sprawled in the road before him. A match flared suddenly up on the hillside, and Perry started to fire, then held it. The man might think him dead, and his present position was too open to take a chance. As he reached the body, the rattle of a horse’s hooves faded rapidly into the distance.

  Perry’s lips set grimly. Then he got to his knees and lifted the body. It was a boy-an attractive, fair-haired youngster. He had been shot twice, once through the body, and once through the head. Perry started to rise.

  “Hold it!’ The voice was that of a woman, but it was cold and even. “One move and I’ll shoot!” She was standing at one side of the road with a pistol aimed at Perry’s belt line. Even in the moonlight she was lovely. Perry held perfectly still, riveted to the position as much by her beauty as by the gun she held so steadily. “You murderer!” she said, her voice low with contempt. “Stand up, and keep your hands high!”

  He put the boy gently back on the ground and got to his feet. “I’m afraid you’re mistaken, miss,” he said. “I didn’t kill this boy.”

  “Don’t make yourself a liar as well as a killer!” she exclaimed. “Didn’t I hear you shooting? Haven’t I eyes?”

  “While you’re holding me here,” he said gently, “the real killer is making his getaway. If you’ll put down that gun, I’ll explain.”

  “Explain?” There was just a hint of hysteria in her voice. “After you’ve killed my brother?”

  “Your brother?” he was startled now. “Why, I didn’t-“ Her voice trembled, but the gun was unrelenting. “You didn’t know, I suppose, that you killed Wade Manning?” Her disbelief was evident in her tone.

  “Wade Manning?” he stepped forward. “Why, this isn’t Wade Manning!”

  “Not-not Wade?” her voice was incredulous. “But who is it then?” He stepped back. “Take a look, Miss Manning. I don’t know many people around here. I met your brother today at the Indian Creek Diggin’s. He’s a sight older than this poor youngster.”

  She dropped to her knees beside the boy. Then she looked up. “Why, this is young Tommy McCarty! What in the world can he be doing out here tonight?”

  “Any relation to Buff McCarty?” he asked quickly.

  “His son.” Her eyes misted with tears. “Oh, this is awful! We-we came over the trail from Salt Lake together, his folks and mine!”

  He took her by the shoulders. “Listen, Miss Manning. I don’t like to butt in, you knowin’ the lad an’ all, but your brother came out here to see me today. He wanted me to be marshal here in Basin City. I took the job, so I guess this is the first part right here.”

  She drew back, aghast. “Then you-you’re Clip Haynesl” It was his turn to be startled now.

  “Who told you that?” he demanded. Things were moving a little too fast. “Who knew I was Clip Haynes?”

  “Wade. He recognized you today. The others don’t know. He wanted to see you tonight about something. He said it would take a man like you to handle the law job here.”

  Frowning thoughtfully, he caught up the boy’s horse, grazing nearby, and lashed the body to the saddle. Then he mounted the big black, and the girl swung up on her pinto. Silently they took the trail for Basin City. Despite the fact that she seemed to have accepted him, he could sense the suspicion that held her aloof. The fact remained that she had found him kneeling over the body, six-gun in hand. He could scarcely blame her. After all, he was not a simple miner named Perry. He was Clip Haynes-a notorious gunman with a blood price on his head.

  “Who’d profit by this boy’s death?” he asked suddenly. “Does he have any enemies?”

  “Tommy McCarty?’ her voice was incredulous. “Goodness no! He was just sixteen, and there wasn’t a finer boy in Peace Valley. Everyone liked him.”

  Carefully, he explained all that had happened, conscious of her skepticism and of the fact that she rode
warily, with one hand on her pistol.

  “But who’d want to kill Tommy?” she exclaimed. “And why go to all that trouble? He rides alone to the claim every morning.”

  Except for the glaring lights of Rafe Landon’s Sluice Box Bar and Doc Greenley’s High-Stake Palace, the main street of the town was in darkness. But even before they reined in at the hitching rail of the High-Stake, the body had been seen, and a crowd gathered.

  They were a sullen, hard-bitten crew of miners, gamblers, freighters, and drifters that follow gold camps. They crowded around shouting questions. Then suddenly Wade Manning pushed through, followed by Buff McCarty. One glance, and the big man’s face went white.

  “Tommy!” his voice was agonized, and he sprang forward to lift the body from the saddle. He stared down into the boy’s white, bloodstained face. When he looked up his placid features were set in hard, desperate lines.

  “Who did this?” he demanded. With the crowd staring, Clip quietly told his story, helped by a word here and there from the girl, Ruth Manning. When the story was ended, Clip found himself ringed by a circle of hard, hostile eyes.

  “Then,” Buff McCarty said ominously, “you didn’t see this feller up on the hill, eh? And Ruth didn’t either. How do I know you didn’t kill Tommy?”

  “Yeah,” a big man with a broken nose said loudly. “This stranger’s yarn sounds fishy to me. The gal finds you all a standin’ over the McCarty kid with a gun, an’-“

  “Shut up, Porter!” Manning interrupted. “Let’s hear him out.”

  “Why should I shoot the boy?” Clip protested. “I never saw the kid before. I don’t shoot strangers.”

  “You say you heard shots, then rode up to him.” Buff rested his big hands on his hips, his eyes hard. “Did anybody but you an’ Ruth come nigh him?”

  “Not a soul!” Clip said positively.

  “Then,” Buffs voice was harshly triumphant, “how d’ you account for this?” He lifted an empty leather poke, shaking it in Haynes’s face. “That there poke held three thousand dollars when my boy left town!”