the Key-Lock Man (1965) (2 page)

Chesney and Johnny had been saddle partners on the old Squaw Mountain roundups, and when Chesney drove his small herd into this part of the country, Johnny had come along to see him through, then located a place of his own and stayed on.

Johnny Webb had been a daredevil and a hellion, but he was well liked for all of that. He laughed a lot, played practical jokes, and was ready to break a horse for anybody just for the hell of it. He was fast with a gun, and no man was likely to beat him in a fair, stand-up shooting.

When Neill had come into the country, he had quickly realized the kind of community he had entered and he built solid friendships. There was a lot he did not know about the West, for back in Ohio he had been a farmer, but he was catching on fast. When they invited him to be a posse member he knew he had been accepted and was one of them. It was an honor to ride beside such men into what might become a shooting affair.

Neill stared at the tracks of the big buckskin and felt a queer sensation when he realized the rider of that horse might soon be dead, hung by the neck, and
Neil's
own hand would be on that rope.

He had never killed a man-not even an Indian-nor seen one killed. He was probably the only man in the group of whom that could be said.

Now Johnny Webb was gone, Johnny with his laughter and his jokes, brightening more than one day's work on the range. And Neill was feeling guilty at remembering that he had never really liked Johnny, and that there had been strain between them when Neill first came into this part of the country. It was only after Chesney accepted him, and after Johnny apparently realized that Neill was not a potential rival that a sort of friendship developed.

Johnny might have been a little overanxious with that gun, Neill thought, but he deserved something better than a shot in the back.

"He's afoot," Chesney said suddenly, "leadin' his horse."

"He's a big man," Hardin said, "and he figures to give us a long chase."

"His horse has gone lame, maybe,"

McAlpin suggested.

"No, that horse doesn't limp. He's just a canny one, that's all."

A mile fell behind them, and then another mile.

The deep dust gave way to a parched dry plain of desert sand. Hardin indicated a couple of flecks on the sand-crust where something had spilled. "Water," he said.

"He'll need that water," Neill said. "He'd best go easy with it."

"Bet you a dollar he was wipin' out his horse's nostrils," Chesney said. "Dust interferes with a horse's breathing, and a man could kill a horse, runnin' him on this flat."

The man they pursued was not running his horse, but if they caught up with him, he would have to run.

Neill mopped his brow, and wiped the sweatband of his hat. He thought of his wife and the milk she kept in a stone jug in the well. It would taste almighty good about now.

Suddenly he looked at the sun. It had been on the left, but now it was on the right, for the trail had swerved sharply. Hardin, who was riding point, swore.

Riding up beside him, the men found themselves looking into a draw that cracked the desert's face only a few rods away. There was a place where a horse had been tethered, and a bit of white fluttered from a rock.

Chesney rode down into the draw to pick it up, and they heard him swear again. Scrambling his horse back up the draw, he passed the paper to Hardin.

It looked like a leaf torn from a tally book. On it a message was scrawled.

That was a fair shootin anyway six ain't nowhars enuf. go fetch more men. man on the gray better titen his cinch or heel have him a sore backed hoss.

The note was unsigned.

"Why, the low-livin' skunk!" Short spoke half under his breath. "Not forty yards off, and him with a rifle."

Neill, his face flushed with anger, was tightening his cinch. Nobody appeared to notice him; they were as embarrassed as he was himself. The note was an insult to all of them, even if the advice was good. They were angry men, but they were frightened men, too. It gave them an eerie feeling to realize that the man they were hunting had been lying within easy range, close enough to kill one or more of them before they could either attack or take shelter.

The man was playing Injun with them, and they did not like it. Their dignity was offended, but more than that, they realized they had been grossly negligent. They had taken it for granted the man was out there in front of them, running.

"Fair shootin', hell!" McAlpin said.

"Right in the back!"

They went ahead now with increased caution. Their quarry had circled about and allowed them to pass, and he might be watching close by even now. Until this moment they had been the hunters; now they felt that they themselves were hunted.

Deliberately, the man they sought was using every trick to make pursuit more difficult. The note had the effect of slowing them to the slowest of walks.

They must pause, circle each place of possible ambush, proceed with utmost watchfulness. Each time they took these precautions they found nothing, yet each time they might have been met with a bullet.

Now the trail took them into the bottom of a wash where the fitful puffs of wind they had met occasionally on the flat desert were gone. The wash was an oven, its floors and walls reflecting savage heat.

They seemed to be riding through flames that seared and burned. Eyes smarting from the salt of their sweat, skin itching from the dust that caked the stubble on their jaws, they clung to the trail. As they went along, Hardin studied each wall with care, searching for some point at which their man might have escaped.

Suddenly the wash turned into an apron of sand that went down into the vast basin of a dry lake, white with alkali. Yet the lake was not entirely dry, for in the center was a sheet of water, the result of recent rains. The dead water was heavy with alkali.

The man called Key-Lock had ridden his horse into the water. The tracks were there, and they stared at them, blinking the sweat from their eyes.

"He daren't ride across that," Hardin commented.

"Out there in the middle it would be too deep, and he could bog down."

Their party split, three circling the lake in either direction, seeking tracks. They had gone only a few hundred yards when Neill glanced back to see Chesney's uplifted arm, calling them back. He had found where the horse and rider had left the water.

The ruse was a simple one, but it was a delaying tactic that gave advantage to the pursued.

Neill felt his anger rising. The man was playing them, playing them like fish on a line.

In the beginning Neill had hoped to have it over and be back at the ranch tonight, but as the hours went by it had become obvious that their chase was not to prove so easy. The time consumed, even their choice of a camp, would not be left to them. It would be dictated by the man they hunted. He knew where he would go, and when, while they did not know and could not know. It was clear now that his intent was to discourage them. Deliberately, he was choosing the roughest country, the worst trails.

The line of hoof prints veered sharply to the left, pointing through thick brush toward the shoulder of the mountain.

"Where the devil's he goin'?" Chesney demanded irritably. "This doesn't make sense."

No one answered him. Strung out in single file, they rode on, sagging with weariness. Suddenly Kimmel, who was in the lead now, pulled up short.

Before them a thread of water trickled from the rocks into a basin of stones.

"I'll be damned for a coyote!" Hardin exclaimed. "I never knew this was here."

Kimmel swung down, and the others followed. "I can use a drink," he said. Indicating the small stone basin, he added, "Somebody put in a sight of work here. This hasn't been built long."

Hardin had been scouting around, studying the tracks, old and new. All were made by the same horse and the same man. "Fixed it himself. Wonder how he located it in the first place?"

"Looks to me like he knows this country," Short said.

Hardin chuckled, eyes glinting with a hard humor.

"We hooked onto a real old he-coon, boys.

This one's from the high timber. Now, we know it takes no time for a man and a horse to drink, but it takes a while for six horses and six men to drink. That little basin will need time to refill before we can all water up."

"He ain't missed a trick," Kimmel said.

"D'you think he'll stand and make a fight of it?" McAlpin asked.

"He'll fight," Chesney said. "This one will fight, and I hope he does."

Hardin shot him a glance. "You read that sign like I do?" he asked quietly. "If you do, you know what's comin'."

Neill put his tongue to dry lips. He looked from one to the other. A change had come over them now, and fear touched him with cold fingers.

This man was sure of himself. He had told them it was a fair shooting, but that note had been a warning if anything ever was. The fact that he could have had them within easy range told them what he might have done.

He could have shot them like fish in a barrel, but when he chose to fight he would choose his ground, and theirs.

Neill was no coward, but when he thought about his wife alone on the ranch, he felt sick. He might die today, and she could never make it alone.

She would have to give up the ranch, and all their plans together. She would have to go back to her folks, and would have to sell everything to raise money for the trip. How long since he had seen any cash money?

By now the glare had faded and softened. The desert sunset bathed the land in a pastel radiance mingled with fingers of shadow. Out on the desert, a quail called. Another, somewhere to their right, replied.

We could quit, Neill thought. We could quit now before it's too late.

But he did not speak this thought aloud, nor would any of the others, even if they thought it. Something had been started, and they must carry it through. The law must not be flouted, the sinful must pay for their sins.

"It's like he had a goddam string on us,"

Chesney complained.

From the beginning the hunted man had been in command, from the beginning he had led them on. Most escaping men think only of escape; they do not make plans for the pursuers. This man should have been running scared, he should have been hunting a hole somewhere, but he was doing no such thing. He was desert-wise, and he was in no hurry. He was borrowing time when he felt it necessary, but he was choosing his own course and his own gait.

Into the minds of each man crept an uneasy thought: Sooner or later he would have them where he wanted them, and then what? How many would die?

But now their pride was involved, their pride as well as their code, and their code said that for a life taken as Johnny's had been, a life must be paid.

Neill's thoughts turned again to his wife. She would be feeding the baby now, wondering where he was, and keeping the food warm. None of them had expected this to be anything but a short chase, with perhaps a brief gun battle at the end.

Regretfully, Neill realized that now it might be a week before he got home-if he ever did.

The TRAIL THEY followed led across starkly eroded foothills dotted with clumps of cedar and Spanish bayonet. It was a weird and broken land where long fingers of black lava stretched out toward the dry lake they had left behind. Ahead of them rose a low mesa.

The Key-Lock man was in no hurry, and he traveled like an Indian, taking the longest route if it was the easiest on his horse. Each of the pursuers was worried by this in his secret mind. What could lie before this man that gave him such confidence?

Chesney topped out on the mesa and drew up to give his horse a breather, and they all gathered about him, studying the country. Hard-working men, they had been held to their own range by the demands of water and cattle, and the need to get something started; none of them had ever ridden so far to the north as this.

"Hardin, what do you think he's got in his mind?"

Chesney asked. "So far's I know, there's nothin' off where he's bound. Just nothin' at all."

"He can't go west. . . the canyon's thataway, and without wings he couldn't go any further." Hardin rinsed his mouth with a meager gulp of water, then swallowed it. was We don't think there's anything up there, but maybe he knows different." He hung the canteen carefully on the saddle horn.

"We've sure bought ourselves an old hecoon, and he ain't goin' to be took easy."

"Took, hell!" Chesney exploded. "I'll see the man hang! I'll see him hang before ever I ride into Freedom again!"

Chesney meant just what he said, and it showed in each line of his hard-boned face. A good friend, he was a bitter, unrelenting enemy. And the man called Key-Lock had killed his best friend.

Neill was puzzled by his own feelings. He knew the need for law and order, and where no official law existed the citizens themselves were responsible, unless they wished to live in complete anarchy. He accepted the logic of the idea, but held no enthusiasm for the immediate situation. Like many another man, he preferred going about his own affairs, sitting at supper with his wife, smelling the good cooking smells, feeling the slow comfort of evening, the welcome release of the bed that awaited.