Chantry pushed back from the table. “Here’s what I want you to do.” He put a twenty-dollar gold piece on the table. “Get yourself some grub, and then you keep an eye on the herd. You see whatever goes on, but you keep out of sight. If anything happens that you think I ought to know, you get in touch with me. I’ll be riding out from the herd every day.”
“All right.” Bone McCarthy stood up.
“You watch yourself, do you hear?”
The tawny plains swept away in all directions, a gently rolling stretch of grama and buffalo grass with patches of greasewood; over some of the higher levels the plain was dotted with Spanish bayonet, or yucca. Far off, the moving black mass of a small herd of buffalo showed against a brown slope, and in a gully the stark white of scattered bones.
The herd was behind him again and he rode warily, without his rifle, carrying only the bowie knife he carried for work around the camp, or casual use. His eyes swept the horizon, hesitating here and there … but nothing moved.
The dust held no tracks, and when he came up to the river bed he saw that it was dry and cracked into plate-sized slabs of gray mud, baked and crisp.
No water.
Chantry mopped the sweat from his face
and squinted his eyes against the sun. It was mid-afternoon, and the herd had been without water since daybreak … there had been an expectation of water at this place.
French Williams had mentioned casually, in an offhand manner that they would water here. Had he known the creek was dry? Chantry suspected it, but had no way of knowing.
It was twenty miles to the next water, which meant a dry camp tonight, with a parched and restless herd, hard to hold. He glanced at the sun. Had they swung farther west? Williams was pointing the herd now. This morning it had been Koch.
Williams knew far more about the ways of cattle on a drive than Chantry would ever know, and he had driven over this country before … whether by this route or not, Chantry did not know. Undoubtedly the man had a plan of operation, and was not proceeding in a haphazard manner. He was a cool head, seemingly reckless and careless, but Chantry had quickly divined that the gunman was basically cautious.
He scanned the horizon again. Here at the river bank there was a little brush, and further away there were trees. Turning his horse down the dry watercourse, he walked it slowly toward the trees. There might be water down there, some isolated pool where he could at least water his horse.
Even while his senses were alert to the surroundings, he was considering his problem. He now had two assets in Sun Chief and Bone McCarthy, neither of them known to French Williams. But his greatest asset was the fact that French Williams underrated him, considered him a tenderfoot. He on his part was aware that Williams was a dangerous and treacherous adversary. That is, he knew from his own guesses and from what McCarthy had said, and it was enough to make him cautious.
Tall cottonwoods suddenly loomed ahead and the watercourse was so narrow that he could no longer proceed. Ahead of him it narrowed into a rocky channel, impassable for a horse, and fell off sharply into a canyon.
He rode up the bank and into the trees. There, in their dappling shade, he paused to listen.
The cottonwoods rustled, somewhere a crow cawed into the hot afternoon, and then he heard a low murmur, followed by a faint clink, as of metal on metal.
Dismounting, he tied his horse with a slipknot, and walked cautiously forward, moving from tree to tree. Back in the East he had often stalked game in the woods, and he knew how to move quietly.
Suddenly the ground dropped away before him and he was looking into a small, grassy park scattered with cottonwoods, with willows growing along the streambed. Near the edge of the willows two men sprawled lazily near a dying fire. They were too far off to identify them, but he had no need, for their horses were grazing nearby, and one of them was the horse he had ridden out of Las Vegas.
The Talrim boys! Hank and Bud Talrim, who had taken his horse at gun point.
He drew back, and carefully made his way to his horse. Mounting, he rode back the way he had come.
What were the Talrim boys doing here?
Of course, they might have gone anywhere. But they
were escaping from the law, and one would imagine they would keep on running. Instead, they had for some reason circled back and were now here, close by his herd.
Curious, he rode back to the herd, switched his saddle to his other horse, and rode out again. Glancing back, he saw Williams staring after him, but he rode ahead directly east from the herd, cutting for sign. He had gone only three miles when he found it—the tracks of two riders, tracks not many hours old, and one set was the tracks of his own horse.
All right. So they had come up from the south, but that was necessary, for when he had met them they were heading south. He back-tracked them for several miles on a route parallel to the herd. On at least one occasion they had ridden high enough on a low hill to look over and watch the herd.
In itself, that meant nothing. They could have heard the lowing of the cattle and simply come to take a look. On the other hand, it was worth thinking about. Was it simply coincidence?
He had to remember that French Williams had gone to the trouble of locating and hiring Dutch Akin. Had he somehow gotten in touch with the Talrim boys? were they to be his ace in the hole?
They were known murderers … wanted men. Would they kill for hire? They would. They would even kill simply to kill.
He swung his horse from their trail and started back to the drive.
For the first time he found himself wanting a gun. He was a fool, he told himself. With such men as the Talrims one did not reason. One did not sit down and discuss their mutual problems, because there were none. These men were killers.
This was a different land from the East, ruled by a different set of principles. The circumstances and conditions were different; it was a land to which law had not yet come, nor the restraints that society can exercise upon its members.
Heretofore he had been protected, one man of many who were protected by law, by the pressures of society, by fear of retribution. He had not had to fear, for other men stood between him and danger, but here there were no such men. A man was expected to stand on his own feet, to protect himself.
He was realizing how cheap are the principles for which we do not have to fight, how easy it is to establish codes when all the while our freedom to talk had been fought forand bled for by others.
Tom Chantry was no fool. He had won his battle with Dutch Akin by restraint and reason, but he was wise enough to know that neither of these would prevail against such men as the Talrim boys. Reason or restraint would seem weakness to them, and they were the kind to strike quickly when they discovered weakness. They had been quick to take his horse when they discovered he did not carry a gun, and they had shot at him, almost casually, as an afterthought, not caring greatly whether they killed or not.
He looked off in the direction in which his cattle had gone, then touched his spur lightly to his horse’s ribs. He would go back. It was time. There were decisions to be made.
Chapter 8
The cattle moved north with the rising of the sun, stirring the dust across the short-grass prairies, blue grama with occasional patches of little bluestem and curly-leaved sedge, and on some slopes a scattering of prickly pear. The cattle moved slowly, grazing as they walked, and Tom Chantry rode the drag, considering his problem.
Dutch Akin switched horses and rode back to join him, lifting a hand as he passed, hitching his bandana over his nose to keep out the dust.
It was very hot. McKay went by, circling to bring a bunch-quitter back to the drive. When he had driven the steer where he belonged he dropped back, riding beside Chantry.
They had fallen back to be clear of some of the dust and to keep an eye on any laggards that might cut out for the flanks.
“Quite a whippin’ you gave Koch,” McKay commented, “an’ he had it comin’.”