Читать книгу Blood on the Range - Eli Colter - Страница 5

TEN minutes later, approaching the buildings in the graying morning, Gage Hardin crossed sun-baked land and over a rocky terrain so burned from the shimmer of the desert heat that even the yuccas and the stunted junipers appeared rocks themselves. And the nearer he came to his destination the harder his heart grew within him, the greater his determination.

All through his ride he had tried with might and main to put thoughts of Lonny Pope from him, but the picture of the laughing-eyed waddy persisted. He could hear his voice as he had so often heard it, raised in some lilt of the range. And Mary—

Mary’s cabin—he could see it. Made of logs that kept out the heat of summer and the cold of winter. The corral, just big enough for her few head of horses, the hitch-rack outside her gate, the little flower garden she had made; and the trees through which the sun streamed in the spring and summer, and which could sparkle so with frost in the winter when all was warm and cozy inside. The small living room she had made home, where they always sat together before the red-hot pot-bellied stove, dreaming their dreams of the days to come, while he held her hand.

He could see that room as plainly as though it were thrown on a screen before him. Friendly, low-ceilinged, speaking so eloquently of a woman’s touch, with the geraniums in the windows, the snowy white curtains. Somewhere Mary had got hold of a buffalo robe which she used for a rug—and how he used to laugh at her because she had hung flintlock guns and rifles on her walls. And Indian blankets. She had said it was the touch of the frontier, since she had come out here to make it her home and meant always to be a ranch girl.

The thoughts were bittersweet to Gage Hardin. How much they had planned, and now . . . Where was Mary now? Mary with her corn-silk hair, her cheeks like ocatilla blooms, her eyes like the sky at morning—

With such pictures before his mind’s eye, it seemed an eternity before Hardin could traverse the space to the buildings sprawled at the edge of the desert. In fact it was less than thirty minutes. Hardin had made good time, far better time than had he headed straight into the desert. And this way he would have a chance.

Riding straight to the largest of the buildings, the ranch house, he dismounted and left his sweat-lathered, hard-ridden horse standing ground-hitched in the yard. Spurs jingling, he strode up to the front of the house, climbed the porch steps and knocked on the front door.

A third knock was necessary to bring response from within and his impatience grew. He was again lifting his fist for a thunderous pounding when he at last heard someone stir, then saw a light appear in a window at his left, obviously a bedroom. He watched the light being lifted and borne from room to room until it shone finally through the window beside the door at which he had knocked.

There was a rattling of a bar inside, then the door opened. It disclosed an elderly man with a short gray beard and a long gray night shirt that flapped around spindled legs. The gray man held the lamp high and peered outward with sharp gray eyes that gleamed under jutting, bushy gray eyebrows.

A gleam of approval came into the keen eyes, though, as he sized up Gage Hardin; a look that held a certain amount of admiration as he took in Hardin’s big, broad-shouldered form, his six feet three of height, his inscrutable steely eyes and the sweep of dark hair beneath the dusty sombrero.

There was no mistaking Hardin’s brand and earmarks to any man of the range, either desert or mountain-bred. He was a range rider of the top-hand brand, saddle-marked and weather-hardened, sun-browned and toughened until sinews were whipcord. A man who could take care of himself in any spot, but whom any well-meaning hombre need never fear.

“How jer do,” the old man said, in a voice that quavered a little, though in spite of his age it was plain that he was strong and range-hardened himself. The gray eyes continued to sweep Hardin with a penetrating scrutiny of inquiry. “What can I do for you this time o’ night—or mebbe I should say mornin’. Ain’t lost on the desert, are ye?”

“No, I’m not lost,” Hardin said quickly. “But I’d like to speak to you, if you don’t mind. Hope you’ll excuse me bustin’ in so early like this. You’re Mr. Hoaley, aren’t you?”

“Correct.” The old man nodded his shaggy head. “Shark Hoaley. Guess everybody knows me all right. The one man fool enough to run horses on this desert. Was you looking for me? If you was, you’ve come to the right place. Come on in and rest yourself while I find some pants.”

Gage Hardin shook his head. “No, thanks,” he said. “I’m in kind of a hurry. Yes, you’re the man I was looking for. So I’ll come right down to business here. I want to rent a desert-bred horse.”

“Rent one?” The heavy brows were raised in amazement. “Who ever heard tell of the like! I reckon you had better come in a minute.”

Hardin shrugged and stepped into the room, which proved to be a combination kitchen and living room. Hoaley set the lamp down on the nearby kitchen table and turned to survey Hardin with a frown. It was as if he were revising his first quick scrutiny of the young rancher.

“I don’t rent horses,” the old man said tersely. “I run ’em and sell ’em. But you can borrow one if you’ve got any real good use for it, and can tell me what it is and who you are.”

“I’ll explain as much as I can,” the tall young rancher said, with a touch of growing impatience. “It’s for you to judge how badly I need one of your horses and whether I can have it or not. I am Gage Hardin, from Great Lost Valley, in the mountains to the north. I guess you know the place. It’s an isolated district, only a few ranches there; only four of ’em to be exact. All of us have been annoyed for some time by a group of badmen who have moved in among us, bandits and rustlers who have been posing as honest cattlemen, and have been using their own ranch as a base of operations.

“They’ve been mostly giving their attention to me and my Circle Crossbar spread. They have set fire to my haystacks, poisoned what water springs they could, and that isn’t half. Last thing they’ve done is to butcher my cattle instead of rustling them, and now a day or two ago, they ran off and butchered my best drove of saddle-stock breeders. At least one of their outfit did—and then he got out of the Valley in a hurry. I had plenty of proof, from the boys of my own outfit who saw it, without being near enough to do anything about it, so I hightailed after the horse butcher.

“I trailed him to this desert. Less than an hour ago my partner in the Crossbar overtook me, to tell me that this same outfit had just killed one of my best men—a young bucko I looked on as a brother—and had taken the girl I am going to marry. Naturally I have to return with all possible speed to attend to that matter, as you can see, and more than ever I’ve got to take back with me the man I’ve come to get. I haven’t caught sight of him yet, but I’ve gone far enough to know he’s headed for the Devil’s Dance Floor—and he’s on a mountain-bred horse!”

“That’s enough,” old Hoaley said, cutting in before Gage Hardin could say any more. “I reckon I know why you want a desert-bred horse now. That’s the only kind I’ve got. Come along.”

The old man had been slipping into some clothes and pulling on boots as Hardin talked. Now he motioned to the rancher and Hardin followed him out of the house through the back door. From a peg on the wall just outside the kitchen door, Hoaley took down a lantern, lighted it, and led the way toward the barn.

Halfway across the yard, he turned as he saw the bulk of Hardin’s winded horse standing ground-hitched, and stopped a second, motioning toward it.

“That your mount there?” he asked, then chortled a little. “Asking fool question, ain’t I? I suppose it must be. I didn’t leave none there my ownself.”

“Yes, that’s mine,” Hardin told him. “Chaser, his name is. My own best mount. One of the finest horses bred in the mountains. And one of the fastest—on hard ground. But on desert sand, and tired as he is—”

“You reckon this fellow you’re chasin’ wouldn’t have had time to stop and get a desert-bred horse for himself anywhere?” the old man asked quickly but Hardin shook his head.

“It would scarcely be a matter of time,” he said, “though I’m pretty sure he hasn’t had such a chance.” He paused, waiting for Hoaley to slide back the ponderous door. “It’s a matter of ignorance with him, Mr. Hoaley. He doesn’t know what hard riding through the desert can do to a mountain horse. He’s always lived in the mountains—and his one idea right now is to get away as quick as he can, which he thinks he can do because he’s on a good fast horse.

“Anyway, I don’t believe he knows just what he is up against or what I’ll do when I find him, because he doesn’t know, as I know now, that he has been made to look responsible for everything by others who think they’ll get away with anything after I’ve found this one. All he knows is that he was told to get me as far away from home as possible, and maybe he doesn’t even know why—as I told you—because he doesn’t know what’s happened in the Valley since he left there after butchering my horses. The main thing now is that I’m the one who has to make speed.”

“Well, we’ll see that you make it,” the old man promised grimly.

He stepped into the barn and Hardin followed him. Old Hoaley walked on a short distance in the silence that was broken only by the restless stamping of the hoofs of stalled horses disturbed. He stopped, reached up and hung the lantern on a nail driven into the wall a couple of feet above his head. It threw a dim yellow glow over the barn floor and the stalls.

“Your man,” he said to Hardin, “is headed for a bad break if he doesn’t want you to catch him, riding into the Devil’s Dance Floor on a mountain horse that’s already done a heap of traveling, if I get you right. That’s the meanest piece of desert in this part of the country, Hardin, and I reckon I know ’em all. But don’t let that bother you . . . See this old plug here?” He gestured toward a stall opposite the spot where he and Hardin were standing. “His name’s Scotch. Maybe you don’t think he’s much on looks, but him and the desert are blood brothers, I’m thinking.”

In the stall was a horse that at a glance Gage Hardin could see was as notably bred to the desert as Chaser had been bred to the hills. Where Chaser was long and thin, lean in flank and wide in barrel, Scotch was thick-muscled, round-bodied, deep in the barrel. Where Chaser’s hoofs were high, definitely ovate, habituated to rock, hard ground and steep slopes which he could climb like a mountain goat, Scotch’s hoofs were wide-splayed, almost as round as a plate, fashioned by habit to combat shifting sand. Through them he could drift along as a man on snow-shoes travels along the hard or soft-piled snow.

“Scotch will take you to the Devil’s Dance Floor, Hardin,” Hoaley said. “He’ll see you through any desert ever made, and be ready to start all over again when you get where you’re going.”

He reached for a saddle hanging on the wall, but Gage Hardin quickly interposed:

“Never mind. I have my own saddle.”

Hoaley grinned toothlessly. “Hmmph!” he snorted. “I was beginning to think you knew the desert. But you don’t know it so damn well, hey? That big stock saddle of yours is too heavy for desert going, man. You have to travel light when you’re hitting it across the sands. Now you listen here. If you want to make time, I’ll fit you out and see that you make it. Just you leave it all to me. First thing—take off them heavy woollies. You don’t want them kind of chaps here. This here is what we wear on the desert. While I’m saddling up, get into ’em, son.”

From the wall a little way beyond he took down a pair of heavy bullhide “chinks.” Desert chaps. In general construction they were much like the ordinary chaps to which Gage Hardin was accustomed, belted at the waist like other chaparajos. But they were cut in much narrower lines and, containing no back piece, were held in place along thigh and shin by the straps fitted across the back of the leg. Hoaley tossed them to Hardin.

“Put ’em on,” he repeated. “You’ll right soon find out why. They’re lighter, you understand.” The old man removed a bridle from another peg as he spoke. “They protect your legs from the cactus better. Them woollies would get all snarled up in them stickers before you could say Jack Robinson.”

Just twenty-one minutes from the time he had rapped at Hoaley’s front door, Hardin stood in the yard at the side of the docile, saddled and bridled Scotch. Chaser was already in a stall in the barn, busy with a much needed feeding, and with Hoaley’s promise of a rub-down. Hoaley was standing at Scotch’s head now, as Hardin swung into the unfamiliar saddle.

“I’m leaving Chaser and my rig here as security, Mr. Hoaley,” he told the old horse runner. “If I don’t make it back, he’s yours. If I do come back, I’ll pay you for the use of Scotch.”

“I want no pay of any sort,” Hoaley snorted, and retreated a pace from the horse’s head, glaring up at the tall rider. “You just come back, that’s all. That’s pay enough. And remember there’s no water fit to drink anywhere on that desert! You will have to make them canteens I gave you last you there and back—wherever you catch up with your lobo. Be sparing of the water yourself, and don’t give Scotch much. He ain’t used to it. Just give him enough to keep him going. Laws, sometimes I begin to think that little horse’s ma must have been some kin to a camel!”

“I’ll remember,” Hardin promised grimly, though fully realizing that the old man’s words were meant to cheer him up on his journey. “Well, good night, Mr. Hoaley. Maybe I can do something in return some day. You’ve just got to call on me.”

“Good night, son.” Hoaley took one swift step toward the mounted man and laid a hand on the bridle rein. “Listen, Gage Hardin. I’m an old man, and maybe I’ve seen a few things in the world you haven’t had a chance to learn yet. But there’s one thing: I have always held that a man who was afraid to throw in his last chip was a mighty poor gambler. Anyways when everything else he’s got is in the pot. And we’re all gamblers, Hardin—one way or another, though maybe some of us kind of hesitate to admit it. The fellows who buck the game hard enough—all the way through—are the ones that win. That’s all. I’ll be seeing you.”

The roan stretched his legs and threw out his big splayed feet. The sand showered behind him. Man and horse were gone, down the face of the desert—

To those who are not worthy of her favors and who cross her grim borders, the desert ruthlessly and relentlessly deals death, for there is no patience in her soul for either weaklings or those who will not stop to learn her moods and cater to her whims. But to those few who love her, she can give with tenderness and generosity. To such men—men like old Shark Hoaley, she can give of her rich secrets, her beauty, and sometimes the gold that men hold dear.

And so was Gage Hardin girded as he set out on his quest, by the advice of a man who knew and had traveled his desert, who loved it. Men might have called Shark Hoaley a desert rat, but that would have been because they did not know. In fact, he was one of the world’s strong, who had learned from Nature, who had learned to live alone, by his own strength. And it was the feeling of that added strength that was in Gage Hardin’s veins as he set out grimly through forests of gaunt cacti, through rolling dune wastes, weirdly sculptured in the dawning day.

Soon there would be a brassy glare that would burn his eyeballs—he knew it. Heat waves would billow up stiflingly. Deep sand would try to ensnare even Scotch’s splayed hoofs.

But none of it mattered. His eyes were set straight ahead. And in his heart was one grim purpose—to catch Rood Vandover and bring him back, thereby bringing nearer the justice for which he had vainly fought for nine years.