Big Bend Page 6

  Ramsey got to his feet. He went to a pannier, fished inside it, took out a box of cartridges, and tossed them to Concho, who caught them deftly. “Load up,” he said. “I’ll be packing the animals.”

  Concho took his own pistol from his waistband and began pushing cartridges through the loading gate. “We’re all a bunch of goddam fools,” he grumbled, “and none of us’ll come outa this goddam desert alive.” He snapped the loading gate shut and spun the cylinder, then thrust the Colt back into his waistband. His eyes met those of Ramsey and challenged him. “Mister Man,” he said harshly, “you better remember one thing. If anything happens to Miss Nora on accounta you, you’ll pay for it. You hear?”

  “I hear,” said Ramsey coolly, and he turned away, whistling up the horses.

  Chapter Six

  The Santiagos, as Ramsey’s map showed and Concho verified, were pierced by two small gaps. The most northerly one, Persimmon Gap, was the main route into the Big Bend country; through it, the old Comanche war trail from the Panhandle to Mexico had passed, and now there was a travesty of a wagon road. Ramsey and Concho agreed that they dare not use it, though the rustlers had almost arrogantly swung the horses around that way. Instead, Concho led them farther to the southeast, across shimmering flats of creosote and cactus, to where a dry stream-bed pierced the barrier ridges through a gap called Dog Canyon. There might be lookouts here, too, but they had to cross the Santiagos somewhere, and it was a chance they had to take.

  The mountains were, of course, farther away than they had looked; out here, everything was. By noon, they still had not reached Dog Canyon, and the mid-May heat had become almost unbearable. The horses were drenched with sweat, and so were their riders. Concho rode ahead; then came Nora Stewart, and Ramsey brought up the rear, leading the one heavily burdened pack horse. He was beginning to be concerned about Nora Stewart. He had given her Gibson Girl and the only saddle; he and Concho rode with makeshift pads. But it was obvious that the days she had already spent in the desert had brought the woman almost to the end of her strength, and this journey in the worst part of the heat was sapping the rest of it. She rode with head down and shoulders slumped, and there were times when she swayed so violently in the saddle that it seemed she would fall. Then he would push his mount quickly up alongside hers; and she would straighten up and give him an enigmatic, defiant look, as if she refused to betray weakness or cry for consideration because of her sex.

  Sometimes Concho would twist in the saddle and catch Ramsey riding alongside her. Then the Negro’s hooded eyes would flare again with that lambent hatred; Ramsey had it diagnosed now, and knew it was jealousy; and when he would let his mount drop back, he would look from Nora to Concho thoughtfully.

  At last, they reached the mouth of the canyon. The stream-bed ran fairly close to its right wall, which was really the toe of a harsh and barren mountain, and the shade of the towering rock was blessed. They had not gone far into the gap when Concho reined in and swung down. Ground-hitching the horse, he strode back to give Nora a hand down from the saddle. Then he turned to Ramsey.

  “We got to hold up,” he said defiantly, as if waiting for Ramsey to contradict him. “Me and this lady walked all last night; she ain’t had no sleep since yesterday. Besides, these ain’t desert horses; they got a lotta lard to bake out, still. We’ll stay here ’til sunset.”

  “I can go on,” Nora Stewart protested. “I can—”

  “’Til sunset,” Concho repeated with determination. “We got maybe forty miles more to go, roundabout, ’til we git within range of where they’ll stop with the herd. And we might bump into somebody we gotta run from most anytime. Might as well pace ourselves so these hawses are fresh.” He unrolled the blankets from behind her saddle and spread them on the sand. “You lay down here,” he said to Nora in a gentle voice; and he helped her out of the brush-jacket and folded it into a pillow for her.

  Nora protested no more. She stretched out on the blankets and closed her eyes. Her hair fanned out over the blanket, and her breasts rose and fell beneath the clinging, sweat-dampened shirt. Ramsey’s gaze was drawn to her; then he was aware of Concho’s presence. He turned, to face savagery in a stare.

  But all Concho said was, “We better give these hawses a little drink.”

  Using his Stetson for a pail, Ramsey gave each of the animals about a pint. As Concho replugged the goatskin, the Negro said: “We got to watch our water. This is the tail end of the dry season, and there’s damn little down here that ain’t dried up.”

  Ramsey squinted at the slice of brassy sky he could see above the canyon walls. There was no promise of rain anywhere in it; and that, he reflected, was probably just as well. At least the danger of flash floods was eliminated. When rain came down here, nothing trapped it or held it back. Pouring off every barren slope and down every naked sheet of rock, by the time it hit the dry stream-beds, more often than not it had mounted into a thundering wall of water. Here in a place like this canyon, a rain thirty miles away could send a flood roaring at them without warning. And that, he thought, was typical of this damned country. Either too much or not enough—and either way, you could die from it.

  Concho threw himself down on the sand in a shady place. “I gotta have a little bit of sleep, too. But we’re where we oughta keep a lookout now. You slept last night—why don’t you go down to the south end of the canyon, keep your eyes open? I’ll be down in a coupla hours and relieve you.”

  Ramsey hesitated, resentment at taking orders from Concho rising. Then he shrugged; the Negro was right. He picked up a canteen and his field glasses and mounted Gibson Girl. Behind him, Concho was already stretched out and snoring.

  It was a quarter of a mile to the mouth of the canyon. There, Ramsey ground-reined the horse in the shade and moved out beyond the canyon walls into the protection of a cluster of boulders, some of them higher than his head. Climbing up on one, he stretched out flat and scanned the vast expanse of territory before him with the glasses.

  It was an awesome sight. Sun glittered off the cactus-choked flats. Humps of sand, gravel, and talus, their flanks bare of all but the harshest vegetation, mountains, mesas, draws and arroyos—as far as the eye could see, all jumbled together in a stark, forbidding, sun-blasted, senseless mixture. And dominating it all, on the southern horizon, the shimmering, purplish, saw-toothed bulk of the Chisos range. It was, Ramsey thought, hell’s own country if there ever was one, a place designed by the devil for his private use. But sometimes he leased it out to favorites—Comanches, Apaches, and now Mexican bandits and horse-thieves.

  Looking at that great, hostile jungle of eroded and merciless terrain, Ramsey understood all at once why Concho had thought him a fool. For one man to brag that he would go alone into such a place and wrest, single-handed, half a hundred horses from the grip of a dozen or more desperate men—that was purest loud-mouthed idiocy. More than that. It was suicide. Ramsey saw that now, and his courage faltered.

  And yet, he thought, as he swept it all with the glasses and saw nothing more suspicious than a circling hawk, he had no alternative. Partly it was the kind of man he was; he tried to wrong no one and he would not tolerate being wronged himself. But even more than that, it was lack of any other anchor to life. Without wife, children, friends, he had invested himself totally in those Morgans. They were a part of him—a part that it was utterly necessary for him to get back. But how he would do it—? He had no idea, and it took an effort to fight back a wave of despair. I’ll worry about that when the time comes, he told himself; but it was not a satisfactory answer.

  Satisfied that the way in front of them was clear, he slid off the rock and found, gratefully, a pool of shade. There he sprawled and tried not to think. But that was impossible, too; somehow, a vision of Nora Stewart kept coming into his mind. Who was she, anyhow, and how had a woman like her wound up on a shirt-tail ranch deep in the heart of the badlands? And Concho, that huge, hostile, protective, rawboned black giant. What was his relationship to her? Co
ncho was playing more than the role of loyal servant. Let it ride, he told himself fiercely; let it ride.

  To break the train of thought, he climbed back up on the rock, scanned the terrain again, found nothing, and slid down. That set the pattern for the next two hours, while Gibson Girl, hot, hungry, and thirsty, jingled her bit chains impatiently.

  Then she raised her head, ears pricked, and looked back down the canyon. There was the scrape of shod hoof on rock, and as Ramsey jumped to his feet, hand on his Colt, Concho rode around a turn in the canyon on a gelding. He came up, swung down, and gave Ramsey an inquiring look. “All clear?”

  “Nothin’ movin’ that I can see.”

  Concho grunted. “Sheep Kelly’s men like Apaches used to be. It when you can’t see nothin’ they most likely to be around. Well, you want some rest, go git it. I’ll take over.” He allowed himself a sardonic grin. “Okay, Mister Man, you done seen what’s out there, what kinda hell’s half-acre we got to ride through to find them damned horses of yourn. What you think of it?”

  “Rough country,” Ramsey said.

  “You damn right. And I’m gonna tell you again, you ain’t got a Chinaman’s chance in it. Maybe if you was a professional, you could do it. But you ain’t nothin’ but a rancher.”

  Ramsey’s eyes narrowed. “A professional what?”

  “Fightin’ man,” Concho said.

  “You think you’re one?”

  Concho’s grin widened, though still ugly. “Listen, mister, I started out sixteen years ago, Tenth Cavalry in Cuba. Then I fought in the ring for better’n two years, New York, Chicago. But got tired of cities, drifted on down to Mexico, hired out in a private army a silver mine kept. But had some trouble, killed a man, then I took off, met up with Pancho Villa. Rode with his bunch a while, but got fed up with Mexico. Come back to the States, Baton Rouge. A spell there, and then we come to Texas—”

  “We,” said Ramsey quickly. “Baton Rouge where you met Nora Stewart?”

  Concho’s eyes went strangely flat, his mocking grin vanished. “Me and th’ Stewarts come from Baton Rouge to Big Bend,” he said. “Yeah.” He turned away, brusquely. “You better git on down the canyon.”

  Ramsey stared at the broad back for a moment. Then, wordlessly, he swung up on the gelding, leaving Concho, Gibson Girl, the rifle in the saddle scabbard and the glasses slung over the horn.

  Nora Stewart was awake when Ramsey rode up. She had sponged the day’s covering of dust off her face, had combed her hair, and she had a smokeless fire going, beans cooking and bacon sizzling. “Everything all right?” she asked Ramsey as he swung down.

  “So far,” he said.

  “I thought I’d cook for us while it was still light. We won’t dare risk a fire after dark.”

  Ramsey strode over to the fire. “Why don’t you get some more rest? I’ll take care of this.”

  She shook her head. “Cooking’s woman’s work. As long as I’m here, I’ll take care of it. Besides ... it’s good for my nerves. It’s ... something ordinary, familiar.” She shook her head. “Maybe you don’t know what I mean.”

  “I reckon I do,” Ramsey said. He accepted the cup of coffee she passed to him. “You’ve been through a lot this past couple of weeks, haven’t you? I’m beginning to feel rotten about swinging you back out into the desert again.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” she said, crouched before the fire, not looking at him. “It’s worth it if it’ll help me pay off those lynchers from North Wells. Don’t worry about me. I ... I’m tougher than I look.” She paused. “The main thing,” she said presently, “is for you not to get yourself killed. You won’t be any use to us in North Wells dead.”

  “I’m not going to get killed,” said Ramsey. “But I’m going to get my horses back.”

  She stood up, hands on hips, and looked at him. “You are a stubborn man,” she said.

  “They’re all I got.”

  She was silent for a moment. Then she said, questioningly, “A man as old as you? What about wife, family?”

  Ramsey shook his head.

  “Yes,” she said, after a pause. “You’d have to be a lone wolf, wouldn’t you? To start out on something like this with no help.” She turned back to the fire and lifted bacon from the pan and spread it on a clean rock. “Why didn’t you ride with that first, big bunch from North Wells? As far as that goes, if you go back there with us and take our part against them, won’t you ruin yourself with those people?”

  “I don’t care about those people,” Ramsey said, “and they don’t care about me. Nobody back there would shed a tear if I didn’t come out of this desert at all.”

  Slicing more bacon, she said, “That’s a strange way to be—to live in a town like that for a long time and not have any friends.”

  Ramsey hesitated. He disliked talking about his personal affairs with anyone. And yet—Almost against his will, he found himself offering explanations.

  “It’s something that started years back,” he said. “Right after the war.” He meant the Civil War. “My dad was from Pennsylvania. He was just a kid when he joined the Union cavalry, toward the tail end of the fighting. But when the war was done with, he stayed in the Army. They sent him down here to Texas with the troops that occupied the South.” Ramsey hesitated. “He was a lieutenant,” he finished. “A white officer in an outfit that was all-Negro.”

  “Good heavens,” Nora said with complete understanding. “A Yankee soldier in a Negro outfit? No wonder they hated him.”

  “They’re still just as bitter today as they were then. Anyhow, he fell in love with this country—and with my mother. He took his discharge down here, bought some land, and settled down. He wanted to just mix in with the community; he liked these people—but, of course, they weren’t about to have it.” Ramsey’s voice harshened. “When he married my mother, her family disowned her. They never spoke to her again as long as they lived.”

  “Oh, that must have been terrible,” Nora said.

  “It was,” Ramsey said grimly. “If my old man’d had any sense, he would have given up and moved back North. But he was stubborn; he stayed on. But until the day my parents died, the people around North Wells treated ’em like lepers.”

  “And they treat you the same way?”

  “I was born here,” Sam Ramsey said. “I raise and train the best horses in this part of the country and I pay my bills on time. It’s a little easier for me, but not much. These folks have got a long memory. I don’t give a damn, though. I don’t want any more to do with them than they want to do with me. When I was a boy growin’ up, we learned to get along without ’em, to depend on ourselves. And I don’t think I’ll ever forgive ’em for the way they treated my mother—” He drank the rest of the coffee quickly, though it was scalding hot. “They go their way and I go mine, and we leave it like that.”

  “I see,” Nora said.

  Ramsey rolled a cigarette. “Anyhow,” he said, “that’s my story. What’s yours? How’d you come to be on a desert ranch with your husband? This is a God-forsaken place for anybody to bring a woman to.”

  “I liked it here,” she said. “Away from everybody. It’s big and empty and ... and clean. Or it was, until Sheep Kelly drifted in.”

  “Where are you from originally?”

  She hesitated. Then she said, “I came here from Baton Rouge.” As if to forestall further questioning, she suddenly became furiously busy at the fire. Then she turned, holding out a tin plate. “Here’s your supper,” she said.

  He looked up at her. The freshening breeze whipped wisps of chestnut hair about her ears and molded shirt and leather skirt briefly to her body. She stood above him straight and proud and yet somehow vulnerable, a woman who could endure and yet remain a woman. Something stirred within him, something new and strange. He took the plate. “Thanks,” he said. Now there were more questions than ever in his mind, but he knew she did not want to hear them and suddenly he realized that he did not want to ask them. He ate quickly and with co
mplete preoccupation, and then he stood up. “That was good,” he said. “I’ll go send Concho back for his.”

  Twilight came to this country in an explosion of color—yellow, red, blue, purple. The immensity of the sky flamed, and sand and rock reflected it back; as light ebbed, soft and velvety shadows filled the space it left. As Concho and Ramsey packed the horses, the upper parts of the canyon rims blazed and glowed and then began to fade.

  “Night travel’s always best in this country,” Concho said. “Leastways this time of year. Even if you ain’t worried about somebody shootin’ you.” He finished his hitch and tucked the end of the rope under. “We oughta make Tornillo Creek by midnight. Then we go down to—” He broke off.

  Ramsey pulled tight on a lash rope and looked up. Concho had stepped back from the animal, was standing very straight, tense, his head cocked on one side. His hand was on the butt of his gun. He looked like some giant wild beast tasting the air for any scent of enemy.

  “What’s wrong?” Ramsey asked, suddenly alarmed.

  Concho made a silencing motion. Then Ramsey heard it, too. It was only a faint clink—steel against rock. But he recognized it—a shod horse coming. His hand swooped down and jerked his own Colt, and at the same instant, he and Concho both made protective moves toward Nora. Concho got there first, and his big hand pushed her down. “Take cover, honey,” he rasped. To Ramsey: “Git that saddle gun. Somebody coming.”

  Ramsey wheeled toward Gibson Girl, reaching for the sheathed carbine. Then the laugh rang out above them.

  It was bold, loud, mocking. And just as his hand hit the stock of the weapon it ended. A harsh voice shouted down. “Mister, touch that gun and you’re dead!”

  Ramsey froze, swiveling his head. Two hundred feet up, on the canyon’s rim, he saw the silhouetted head and shoulders of a man sheltered behind an outcropping; and the dying light glinted off the barrel of a Springfield, pointed down toward them with a perfect field of fire.