At noon, well back in the scattered pi@nions, he unsaddled, watered his horse at a seep, made coffee, and ate a couple of dry biscuits.
Slowly, the tension left him. The smell of the pi@nons and juniper, the coolness and quiet of the day, the slow circling of far-off buzzards, the cloud shadows on the hills began to soak into his being and left him rested and at peace. When he mounted up and started on once more, he was at one with the land.
His first desire had been to get away from Las Vegas, but now that he was away he knew his best bet would have been to ride north toward Mora and thence to Cimarron, where there would be a lot of cattle.
He reached the Santa Fe Trail again near Glorieta, skirted Santa Fe, and took the trail for Taos. The way he had left Las Vegas rankled. He did not like being considered a coward, and he did not believe he was one, but a good many people would believe so.
But that was behind him. Once in Cimarron, he would buy the cattle, drive them to the railhead, and within a few hours after that he would be on his way back to Doris.
Doris …
He took his time. He camped when the mood was
on him, and rode on again when he grew restless; when possible, he avoided the main trail.
He was somewhere south of E-Town when he heard the horse. It was coming fast, and he pulled over to be out of the way.
The horse was a blaze-faced roan, and it was carrying double. The riders pulled up when they saw him.
“Howdy there, stranger! Comin’ fer?”
“Santa Fe,” he replied.
They were young, rough-looking, and one man had a
bandaged arm.
“See many folks on the trail?”
“Nobody.”
“You’ll likely see some. By this time there’s
a-plenty of folks headin’ our way. We was in a shootin’ back yonder in Elizabethtown. Hank got himself winged and got his hoss kilt right under him. Good hoss, too.”
“Bud,” Hank said, “you notice somethin’ peculiar? This gent ain’t wearin’ no gun.”
“Rough country,” Bud commented. “If’n I was you, mister, I’d wear a gun. You never know who you’ll meet up with.”
Chantry shrugged. “I don’t wear a gun. If you’ll pardon my saying so, I think guns lead to trouble.”
“You hear that, Bud? He ain’t wearin’ no gun.”
“Maybe guns do lead to trouble,” Bud said seriously, “but they’s times when not wearin’ one will.” Suddenly he held a pistol. “Git down off that hoss, mister.”
“Now see here! I—“
“You git down off that hoss or I’ll shoot you off, an’ I ain’t goin’ to tell you again.”
Hank was grinning at him, his lean, unshaven face taunting. “He’ll do it, too, stranger. Bud here’s kilt four men. He’s one up on me.”
“There’s no need for this,” Chantry said.
“I’ve done you no harm.”
He felt the sting of the nicked ear and then heard the blast of the pistol, although probably everything happened at once—the stab of flame, the report, the flash of pain from his ear.
“Mister, I ain’t a-talkin’ just to hear the wind blow. You git down.”
Slowly, carefully, Tom Chantry swung down from his horse. Inwardly he was seething, but he was frightened, too. The man had meant to kill him.
Hank quickly dropped from his seat in back of Bud and swung up on Chantry’s horse.
With a wild, derisive yell they rode off, and he stood in the trail staring after them.
The place where they had come upon him was among scattered trees, but before him the country opened wide. It was high, lonely country, and ice still lay in the lake beside the trail. As far as he could see there was nothing—no house, no animal, no man. But he was alive. Had he been wearing a gun they might have killed him … or he might have killed one of them.
An hour later he was still alone, still in wide, open country, but he seemed to be a little nearer the mountains that rimmed the high basin.
That man had not missed by intention. He had wanted to kill. He had meant to kill. It was a shocking thing, an unreal thing. Chantry had held no weapon, had made no threatening gesture, and yet the men who had stolen his horse and his outfit would have killed him … and could have.
Would they have robbed him had he been armed? His mind refused to acknowledge the thought, but there was that doubt, that uncertainty. Had he been armed they might have tried to get the drop on him, to take his gun, and then rob him.
Suddenly he saw a thin, distant spiral of dust. It drew nearer and nearer, dissolved into a dozen hard-riding men. They drew up, the dust swirling around them.
“Did you see two men?” one of them asked.
“Two men on one horse?”
“They are on two horses now. They stole mine at gun point.”
“You mean you let ‘em have it? Those were the Talrim boys … they murdered a man back yonder, and it ain’t the first.”
“I had no choice. I wasn’t armed.”
They stared at him. The bearded man shrugged.
“This here’s no country to travel without a weapon.” He turned in his saddle. “Tell you what you do.” He pointed. “Over the hill yonder—maybe three miles—there’s a shack and a corral. You’ll find a couple of horses there.
“You take one of them and ride on to Cimarron. Leave a note on the table in there … that’s the Andress cabin and the old man will understand. You can leave the horse for him in Cimarron, or just turn him loose. He’ll go home.”
And then they were gone, and he was alone on the road, with the dust of the posse drifting around him.
It was coming on to sundown when he reached the Andress cabin and caught up one of the horses he found there. There was no saddle, but he had ridden bareback before this. He twisted a hackamore from some rope and mounted up.
Then, remembering the note, he swung down, tied the horse, and went inside the cabin. It was still and bare—a table, two chairs, a bunk in a corner, a few dog-eared magazines, and some old books. It was neat, everything was in its place.
He sat down and, searching in vain for paper, finally took an envelope from his pocket and scratched a brief note on the back with a pencil he carried. He weighted the note down with a silver dollar to pay for the use of the horse, pulled the door shut after him, mounted again, and rode out on the trail to Cimarron.
His face itched and, putting up a hand, he found there was dried blood from the nicked ear. He rubbed it away, then felt gingerly of the ear. The bleeding had stopped, but the ear was very tender. Moistening his handkerchief at his lips, he carefully wiped the dried blood away from the ear.
That had been a narrow escape. It was pure luck that the shot had not killed him, and pure whim on the part of Bud Talrim that he had not fired a second shot to better effect.
Tom Chantry shuddered … it was the same sudden reaction one has that usually draws the remark, “Somebody just stepped on your grave.”
He might have been dead, and he might have been robbed, leaving no identification, with nothing to tell who he was or why he was here. It was appalling to consider how close he had come to an utterly useless death and a nameless grave. Back home nobody would ever have known what happened to him.
He made his decision then. He was going to get out of this country, and he was going to get out by the first stage, the very first train. He was going back east and he was going to stay there and live in a civilized community.
Since the shocking death of his father there had been no violence in his life. He had grown up first in a small New England village, going to school, fishing along the streams, hunting rabbits, squirrels, and then deer. He had gone to church, and had taken for granted the well-dressed, quiet-talking people, the neat streets, the well-ordered little town.
He had been aware of the town officials, the local constable, and the talk of courts and trials. He knew the town had a jail, although it was rarely occupied by more than an occasional drunk. Later, in New York, the police had been more obvious. There were fire companies, and workmen to repair damage to the streets.
With these memories in his mind, he had also been conscious now for several minutes of the drum of a horse’s hoofs on the trail behind him. He turned to see a rider on a bay horse—the very bay he had seen in the Andress corral when he caught up the horse he was riding. The rider was a tall, straight old man with a white mustache and clear blue eyes.