He drew up, waiting for them. He saw Pete Gaddis’ eyes go to the brand on his horse, and pause there. When they lifted to meet Flint’s, he was shocked by their expression. Gaddis’ face showed white under the weather-beaten skin.
Nancy Kerrigan rode quickly to the wounded man. “Ed! Ed! Is it you?”
“He came to my camp. I did what I could but he’s in a bad way.”
She looked up at Flint and for the first time she realized he was someone she had seen before.
“I know you,” she said. “I…”
“We have never met,” he said brusquely. “You had better see to this man. He will need a doctor.”
The young Mexican rider took the lead rope and started off toward the north, wasting no time. Nancy Kerrigan started to speak, then changed her mind and rode away.
Pete Gaddis lingered. “We heard a shot.”
“Yes.”
Gaddis glanced to the four horses and the men who gathered around the dead man. His eyes returned to the horse and its brand. It was an old brand. And this was an old horse.
“Your voice is familiar. We had a talk once, I believe.”
“Yes.”
“Only then you didn’t have a horse.”
“Didn’t I?”
Gaddis indicated the men gathered below. “They look like Baldwin riders. Did they shoot Ed?”
“He was shot by someone with a high-powered rifle who was slightly above him, and he was on a horse at the time. He was ambushed.”
“How do you figure he was on a horse?”
“Line up the holes in his clothes with the wounds, and you’ll see he had to be, and the only way a man can shoot down on a mounted man is to be up higher — in rocks, maybe. Or on a ridge.”
Gaddis indicated the group below. “Did they jump you?”
Flint glanced at them. “They were working up to it, but I never could see any sense in talking when it’s a shooting matter.” He gathered the reins. “This isn’t my affair, and I wanted no part of it.”
“No matter how it was before,” Gaddis said dryly, “you’d better take another look. It’s your fight now. They’ll make it your fight.”
Flint turned his mare. “Adios,” he said, and rode away.
Pete Gaddis took out the makings and started to build a smoke. He knew it was impossible, and yet it had to be that way.
And after all this time, too.
Chapter 6
He awakened in a cold sweat, awakened suddenly and sharply, chilled through and through, and when he fought himself to a sitting position and crawled from the bunk to the fireplace, his teeth were rattling with cold.
Desperately, his hands shaking, he threw together the materials for a fire. The match flickered briefly and then went out.
Almost crying with cold, he struck another, shielded it in his hands until the flame caught. The yellow tongue reached out, lapped curiously at the pine bark, then, catching hold, it crackled with excitement.
The fire brought weird shadows to the cold walls, shadows that made grotesque thumbs at him, but the cold retreated and warmth came as he crouched before the fire, wrapped in blankets. And then the retching started.
He went outside into the white moonlight and clung to the door post and vomited terribly, and there was blood mingled with the vomit. He clung to the door for a long time, too weak to get back inside, and the sweat dried on his body and the white moon looked down upon the jagged black lava that walled his home.
After a while he staggered back to the fire, replenished it, and dozed before it until day came.
At dawn Flint made the beef broth that seemed better for him than anything else. The pain in his stomach grew less but it did not leave and he rested the day through, reading from a book of poetry.
The horses were accustomed to his presence now. Even Big Red failed to blow his warning. Sometimes they would feed up to within a few feet of him, and the mare was always around, begging for sugar. Today he even teased the stallion into taking sugar. The red horse refused it from his hands but, after he left it on a flat rock, came to get it.
He had no regrets for the shooting. He had wanted to avoid trouble, but they had brought it to him, and they had intended to kill Flynn as well as himself.
The warm sun felt good. He read, dozed, then awakened to read again. There was so much he had always wanted to read…
Later he spaded up a small garden patch, and planted several rows of vegetables, beans, carrots, onions, and potatoes. He might not live to enjoy them, but he might become so weak before he died he could not leave the hideout for more food.
Soon he must go to Alamitos.
Nancy Kerrigan sat at her desk. Flynn was still unconscious and she had no idea whether he had filed the claims or not. But she had started work on the cabins, and one of her hands who had been a farmer would break the ground for crops.
Gaddis was seated nearby. In reply to a question he replied, “No, ma’am, I ain’t seen him since that day and, whoever he is, I figure he wants to be left alone.”
“I have a feeling I have seen him before.”
“Yes, ma’am, he has that look about him. He looks familiar to me, too. My advice is to leave him alone.”
“Why hasn’t he been seen? Where is he?”
“I been puzzling about that. Johnny and me, we tried to trail him.” He took out the makings. “Mind if I smoke, ma’am?” He built a cigarette. At the blacksmith shop somebody was working and the afternoon was made more pleasant by the distant ringing of the hammer. “Lost his trail, and he meant that we should. He drops clean out of sight when he takes a notion.”
“He talks like an educated man.”
“He’s educated, all right. He educated them riders of Port Baldwin’s, too. I hear talk around town, and they say he got that gun out so fast he caught them flat-footed. And once he got it out he didn’t waste no time talking.” Gaddis drew on his cigarette. “Interesting thing. He picked up a package and some mail down to Horse Springs that day.”
“Have you heard his name?”
The crunch of a boot on gravel was Johnny Otero in the office door. “I can tell you that. Sulphur Tom told me. His name is Jim Flint.”
Flint!
Pete Gaddis came half off his chair. So there it was, then. Red Dolan … he must get Dolan a chance to see Flint. It was impossible, though. Flint must have had ten or twelve bullets in him.
“Two of Nugent’s hands quit him,” Johnny volunteered. “Said they weren’t drawing fighting pay and to hell with it.”
“Tom Nugent’s in for trouble, bucking Baldwin. This Baldwin isn’t wasting no time.”
“And Baldwin started. He pushed five thousand head on to Nugent range today.”
Nancy listened, thinking of what she could do if five thousand head were pushed on her range. She was sure that Baldwin had paid the men who squatted on Nugent range, and for the purpose of alienating the squatters and land-seekers coming West. When that got around there would be small sympathy for Tom Nugent.
Yet her thoughts would not remain on the ranch problems or ranch work. She kept remembering the tall young man on the old mare. He had seemed so alone. Long after Johnny and Pete returned to the bunkhouse she sat watching the sunset. He had said so few words, and then had ridden away. She detected some strangeness in Pete’s reaction to him that puzzled her.
It had been a long time since she had thought about a man, but she told herself that she was merely curious. Yet he was good-looking. Even more — strikingly handsome, and without any softness in him. He looked cold, hard… yet was he?
Miles away Jim Flint was watching that same sunset from the hidden pasture. Big Red was feeding close by and seemed glad of the company. He was determined to ride the stallion, but knew his stomach would not stand the pounding of a hard ride, even if he was rider enough to handle such a horse. But there was another and better way. That was with proximity, with gentleness, and casual handling.
His thoughts turned to Nancy Kerrigan. She was the girl he had seen on the tram, but sitting her saddle out there on North Plain, she had seemed even more poised and beautiful.
Yet she was right in the middle of a first class range war where no girl of her years had any right to be. It was lucky she had Gaddis. He was a fighter. He was also a steady man and no fool. Yet how much of a tactician was he?