Desert of the Damned (6 page)

I
T WAS
heat that fetched Reifel out of the blackness.

He couldn’t seem to get hold of his breath and there was weight against his lungs and a searing pain that he could not get away from.

He imagined some fool had built a fire on his chest. He tried to brush it off. He tried to wriggle out from under it and finally, in desperation, he attempted to roll over, hoping to smother it with his body.

But his body wouldn’t function. His telegraphed demand flew along his nerves with the familiar urgence but nothing came of it. He was like a man in the grip of a nightmare, and then it came to him with the jarring impact of utter conviction that he was paralyzed. It was fright of this notion which clawed his faculties awake.

His jerked-open eyes found night still around him. What he’d imagined to be the roaring of flames was nothing more ominous than wind in the willows. The suffocating sense of heat on his chest was the result of a blanket tossed carelessly across him; but he could not put down the growing feel of urgence, the dire sense of peril which was hemming him in. He lay flat on his back in the full glare of moonlight, exposed as a fish in a bowl of water.

God, but he was thirsty! His throat felt parched as a burned-dry pan. Every pore of his tissues cried out for moisture.

He could not think where he was for a moment or how he could ever have been so brash as to ignore the rudimentary precautions of his trade. Then it all came back in a breath-taking rush — the fight with Turner at the plundered cache, Breen’s attempt to kill him and the subsequent flight which had been stopped at the ford when he’d run into Lafe’s posse.

He remembered then with the numbness of despair the jeering look on Chefs face and the cat-and-mouse way that big man’s questions had been cutting the ground out from under him. He remembered his own mounting sense of frustration as, with each frantic jump, he’d been bogged more deeply in the lies Chet encouraged to put a rope around his neck.

He strained his ears to catch some sound behind the moan of the wind in the willows and the nearby murmur of running water. Where was Chet now? Where were the rest of them? What had happened at this crossing after the weakness of exhaustion had sent him tumbling from the saddle? After Chet’s adroit questions they would hardly have been minded to let the sheriff turn him loose.

He was tied, of course. That was it! Not caring to be bothered with a badly wounded prisoner, and naturally anxious to come up with the rest of the bunch involved in Schmole’s killing, they had tied him up like a turkey for the roasting, thrown a saddle blanket over him and gone on to Paradise. If he could loosen his bonds, if he could get free now….

He listened into the night with a fiercer attention but caught no sound beyond the wind and the water. He stared into the shadows thickly blanketing the willow brake and found no indication that he had not been left alone. Consumed with impatience, with the need to be gone from here, he lay motionless, waiting, wanting to be sure before he made the faintest move.

When he could stand it no longer he tried out his muscles once again to test the ropes. A cold shiver ran through him. He could hardly believe the evidence of his senses when, beneath that covering blanket, he felt his hands move freely. Scarcely daring to breathe he tried his feet and they moved, too.
Why, the fools hadn’t tied him!

He threw off the blanket and came onto an elbow and still nothing happened except that his head started to pound and his chest felt as though a knife embedded there had been suddenly, viciously twisted.

But he did not fall back, he couldn’t afford to give way to weakness. He had to get out of this goddam country before Lafe’s star-packers came back to fetch him. But he would have to go easy, kind of feel his way along. He dared not risk passing out again now.

When his head quit whirling he eased himself over, got his hands and knees under him and gradually, with a great deal of care and considerable grunting, he got himself erect.

He stood there, swaying, his body drenched in cold sweat.

But he felt better now. The sounds from the creek made a very enticing melody and he straightened himself around and took a few steps toward it, his dehydrated body suddenly fire-hot again.

The dark swaying masses of wind bent foliage and the alternate lacings of light and shadow tended to confuse his pounding head and did nothing whatever to make the going less difficult; and the way the goddam ground kept heaving he reckoned he was reeling like a pulque-drunk squaw. But presently he seemed to get his sea legs under him and managed to achieve a kind of whoppyjawed rhythm which permitted him to get a foot down each time the billowing ground surged up.

But he hadn’t gone farther than a handful of paces when the awful craving for water that had hold of him threatened to propel him into a headlong run. He took himself in hand just in time. He had watched men lost on the desert go through this and had no hankering to start scooping up sand under the crazed illusion that he was lapping up water.

He knew he wasn’t yet that bad off but he could see what might happen once he’d thrown himself down to get his face in the water. In his present condition he might never have the strength or the courage to get up.

And time right now was paramount. He must get just as far from this place as he could before Sheriff Lafe and his boys got back. He never doubted for an instant they would come back. They’d be back all right, and if they got to talk with Breen they’d be coming like the devil emigrating on cart wheels. Breen would see to that.

He peered around through the shadows to see if they’d left his horse. He didn’t think even a dimwit like Lafe would be dumb enough to leave a horse here for him, but he had to look anyway. He sure wouldn’t get far without one. It might have been that knowledge which had decided them to leave him here.

Cripes, but he was weak! Every time he stood still his goddam knees got to knocking and the song from that creek just about set him crazy. He thought he might stand it if he could just have one swallow. But, scared to trust himself, he bent his steps toward the willows which was where the horse would be if they had left one anyplace round here.

He prowled the brush for quite a spell and then, abruptly, saw it. His own horse, too — the one he’d got from Turner. He could see the big roan just as plain as he could hear that goddam water. They’d stuck him over in that box elder thicket hard against the south swing of the creek below the crossing.

For an eternity of heartbeats he just stood there wide-eyed, watching. He had some trouble with his breathing and what was left of his strength was just about drained out of him. He caught hold of a willow and clung to it, shaking.

He knew the roan wasn’t there but he hated to admit it. He hated to acknowledge that he was watching a goddam shadow, another hallucination like the fire he’d imagined on his chest. He, wanted to turn his back on the thing just to prove, by God, he had a little sense left. But he just couldn’t do it. He had used up all his will power keeping away from that damned water.

If the moon would hit that thicket right he knew the horse wouldn’t be there, but he’d never seen a finer sight. The proud carriage of that lifted head, the forward prick of listening ears — he could see that horse as plain as life. He even saw the neck come round but knew the wind had done it.

All right. He’d be a friggin fool. He’d go over there and prove it.

He had one foot half lifted when the horse let out a nicker.

Breen, after Reifel’s departure, remained crouched in the stable’s shadows, his gaunt cheeks twisted with an abysmal fury. Naked as Reifel had left him, the night’s growing coldness passed completely unnoticed in the heat of his virus imaginings.

He was a man who could not abide defeat. He got no pleasure from the coup which had taken Reifel’s crack band of stick-up men away from him. This, an integral part of his program from the rough-out, was not enough. His sense of well being was dependent on pride, the very core and mainspring of the man’s warped ego; thus his vanity was outraged by what Ben had done to him. It was unthinkable that Reifel should get away to spread that story.

The two courses of action which Ben had foreseen would recommend themselves to him were examined by Breen and as swiftly discarded. He could wait right here to put the law on Ben’s trail; but the law might not come or it might not catch Ben and, even if it did and swung Ben for him, it might still come back to bite the hand which fed it. It were safer not to have any truck with the law; and the same thing applied to sending the gang after Ben, for that course too might whirl around to unseat him.

Crouched beyond the bar of light spilled into the stable from the open office door, Breen heard Turner pull himself to his feet. He was like that, listening, when his roving stare suddenly focused on the banknotes Ben had left in the doorway.

Breen’s eyes narrowed. A grin crept across his tight-lipped mouth and exultation was a joy inside him.

There was a better way to do this. A much better way.

He stepped over the currency and entered the office, his bare feet traveling the boards without sound. In the lamp’s yellow flare Cy Turner’s bull shape was bent over the desk with its broken arm dangling, its good arm hidden to the elbow in a drawer.

Breen said: “Turner, I want some clothes and a gun.”

Turner lunged around, startled, and broke into a spate of vicious invective when his damaged arm painfully collided with the desk.

“I ain’t got all night,” Breen snarled irascibly. “You must have some duds I can wear around here someplace.”

Only then, it seemed, did the liveryman actually take in Breen’s appearance. He gawped like a fish suddenly yanked out of water.

Breen crossed to a closet and jerked open the door. Rummaging inside he tossed out boots, a pair of checked pants and a shield-fronted shirt. He was clapping a cream colored hat on his head when Turner bleated: “You can’t have
them!
Chrissake, Breen, them’s — ”

Breen came out of the closet with a shell belt and holster. These were handstitched and fancy and the latter was loaded with a pearl-handled pistol. He slid the weapon from leather and hefted its weight. “You’ll get your pay,” he told Turner. “Got any bullets for this thing?”

Turner still held the bottle he had taken from the drawer. The eyes behind his wire-rimmed glasses considered Breen bitterly. “Them’s the….
Watch where you’re pointin’ that — ”

The crash of the shot sent the lamp’s flame scooting to the top of its chimney. With his mouth stretched wide in an unheard yell Turner reeled against the desk, took one staggering step, tried to catch himself and crumpled. The bottle skittered out of his loosening grasp and brought up with a thump against the farthest wall.

Breen worked fast.

With his hard glance raking the room in swift stabs he got into the things he had fetched from the closet. Time had swapped sides and was no longer an ally but Breen didn’t let that fact put his wind up. Every move he made had its own thought-out purpose, its full share of weight in this thing he was building to polish off Ben Reifel.

Finished dressing, he caught up the pistol he had just used on Turner, dumped its loads and spent cartridge case into a pocket, ran a rag through its barrel and, returning it to leather, put it back with its belt on its nail in the closet.

Gathering up the rag and broken pieces of Turner’s knife, he felt his way through the feedroom till he came to the broken window. Raising the sash he thrust his leg across the sill and quickly dropped to the ground. The rag and broken knife he tossed into some bushes. The loads and spent cartridge case he’d shaken from the liveryman’s gun he chucked into the shadows of the yard beyond the fence.

He felt around then until he got hold of the gunbelts and pistol Ben had heaved through the window. Buckling these around him he went back inside and found the gun he had dropped when Reifel’s shot creased his elbow. He wasn’t worried about that wound; it was already clotted. The skin hadn’t hardly been broken.

He paused in the stable to gather up the money Reifel had forced him to disgorge. He stopped again in the lamplit doorway of the office to pick up the currency Ben had left for Cy Turner. That goddam liveryman wasn’t going to need it.

He pulled a couple of calendars off the walls of Cy’s office then went over to the desk and pulled all the papers out of its pigeonholes, scattering them as though he had been searching for something. He dumped the stuff from its drawers and pulled the stuffing from a cushion.

He guessed that ought to hold them.

He moved over to Turner. Being careful to keep the man’s gore off his clothing he lifted Turner’s head and had a look at his eyeballs. Satisfied, he dropped Turner’s head back into the blood and broken glasses, caught up a limp hand and pulled the arm out from under him. Squatting then, Breen used that hand dipped in Turner’s blood to daub Reifel’s name on the dusty floor.

W
HEN
R
EIFEL
heard the roan horse call he froze in his tracks, every nerve end screaming with the dread of impact. Some sixth sense, shared by all hunted creatures, warned of hidden danger until need for flight was like a taste in his mouth.

Yet he crouched there, frantic, and nothing happened. Ears cocked, Bugler watched with an unwavering regard. Like a thing of paint brushed onto canvas the roan horse stood. Like a dog at point. And all the roundabout shadows turned rigid. The wind fell away to a stealthy whisper, the owls quit calling and only the sound of the creek was unchanged.

There were driven hollows beneath Reifel’s cheeks and sweat lay in beads on the backs of his hands. He could scarcely breathe in that unnatural quiet and fear was like a rock in the bottom of his belly. But he would not let himself be stampeded — he
dared
not. All too vivid in his mind was the desperate knowledge of how far he would get in this country afoot. Wounded, feverish, deathly close to exhaustion, trapped and hemmed in as he was by enemies and with every man’s hand raised against him, escape would be impossible without the aid of a horse.

It just didn’t make sense. Bugler didn’t belong in this picture. The sight of him only increased Reifel’s panic.

After what Chet had said the sheriff — regardless of personal opinion — could not have been so foolish as to turn Reifel loose without further questioning. The posse wouldn’t have let him. Afraid to pass up the tip he’d been given he might have pressed on to Paradise to look into that tale of the yellow-eyed gunman — he might even have felt a certain urgence about it and, because of this, left Reifel here to insure speed. But he would never have left him here unguarded with no ropes on him and a horse waiting handy for him to throw a leg over.

No one could be that much of a fool.

Reifel’s glance raked the motionless shadows. He saw no evidence of a guard, nor any evidence either that the horse had been tied. He wasn’t tied now. You could see the reins hanging down from his bridle.

He wondered if it were possible that when he’d pitched from the saddle Bugler had bolted.

It was possible, perhaps, but it didn’t look a heap probable. Lafe’s men would have gone after him. Even if they hadn’t caught him the sheriff wouldn’t have left Ben Reifel unbound. He hadn’t realized, of course, that he had caught the gang’s leader, but after all that chin music Chet had flung around only a moron would have gone off and left him without also leaving someone else around to make damn sure he didn’t pull his freight.

It would have been hard to decide which bothered him the more, the absence of a guard or the presence of Bugler.

Anger heightened the flush of Reifel’s cheeks. None but a dimwit would fool around here when each passing instant might be fetching that posse nearer. Though he’d no way of knowing how long he had been unconscious the length of the shadows proved it had been a whole lot longer than he’d first imagined.

He felt of his bandage and received another jolt when he discovered someone had changed it. Was it possible the sheriff had some obscure purpose that would best be served if the prisoner got away? But that was crazy — even more fantastic than the presence of the roan. The whole deal smelled of trap and his strongest impulse was to flee while he was able.

But he had to have the horse.

The wind was getting up again now and the round-about brush was filled with movement. The hoot of an owl drifted out of the darkness and someway, immeasurably, increased the feel of danger. He dropped a hand to his holster and the smooth cold grip of the long-barreled pistol went a long way toward reviving his confidence. Recollecting he hadn’t reloaded the weapon after that brush with Breen in Turner’s stable he slipped it from leather and, meaning to replace the spent shells with fresh loads, broke it open.

He knew right then he’d got to get the hell out of here.

Like most men accustomed to carrying belt guns it was Ben Reifel’s habit to pack his Colt with the hammer on an empty; this gave him five chances to get in the last word. He’d fired four shots in that argument with Breen. Yet when he shook the cartridge cases into his palm all five of them were empties.

He ran shaking fingers over the loops of his belt but someone had fingered those loops before him. There were no cartridges.

With a muttered curse, wet with sweat, Reifel straightened. His hands were still shaking when he flung the shells away. His eyes were wild. He whirled clear around to search the moon-gilded darkness without seeing anything he hadn’t seen before. The wind-tossed shadows of the willows seemed to laugh at him. He almost screamed in his frustration and then, except for the gnawing pain in his chest, he was cool again, accepting this as part of the price he had to pay for his blundering.

He believed he was beginning to glimpse the shape of this pattern. He’d been partially right. The sheriff had gone with his posse to check Reifel’s story — perhaps he’d even hoped to come up with the man whose encounter had resulted in Reifel’s wound. They could not hope to make good time toting Reifel so, having examined the hole in his chest, they’d felt safe enough in leaving him here, knowing if he’d been lying he could not get very far away without a horse. The roan, of course, must have bolted when he’d fallen. The sheriff evidently wanted to believe Reifel’s story but, in the face of Chet’s suspicions, he had decided to play safe by leaving Ben Reifel with an empty pistol — which he probably wouldn’t discover if he’d been telling the truth.

And now the roan had come back.

Staring at the animal Ben couldn’t quite believe it. It all seemed reasonable except the part about the horse. Ben had gotten this roan from Cy Turner at Paradise and if the horse had really bolted why hadn’t he headed for home?

Reifel growled beneath his breath, not liking any part of it. One thing, however, wasn’t open to question. Once the posse got to Paradise it wouldn’t take the sheriff’s men long to discover he’d been lying — he ought never to have mentioned having seen Bo Breen at Turner’s. They’d probably check with Turner first to find out if Breen had been there and Turner, with that busted arm, would see quick enough how he could even things with Reifel.

Ben started for the roan.

All about the moon-bathed center of that thicket the wind-harried shadows loomed black as a stack of stove lids. He felt an awful reluctance to go anyplace near them. The closer he got the more nervous he became. He wished he had some oats to coax the animal out of there — even a can would have been welcome with a couple of pebbles in it. He dared not lift his voice because he still more than half believed there was a guard around here someplace.

He tried beckoning. He bent down like he was filling a bucket. The gelding whinnied softly but he didn’t come out of the thicket.

With sweat standing out upon his forehead like drops of rain Reifel moved in closer. He had to force himself to take each step and he was into the shadows before he saw it — the dark dull wedge of a Winchester’s stock above the gelding’s saddle.

Reifel shuddered when he saw it. Trap smell almost stifled him. There had been no Winchester on that saddle when he’d left it; Turner hadn’t included any saddle gun with Bugler. His flesh began to writhe and crawl, but he’d gone too far to back out now.

The empty pistol was still in his hand and he made himself keep going. He must have died a thousand deaths while he took those twenty steps through the ink-black shadows that closed in around him. Once, when a wind-fluttered branch brushed his cheek, he almost snarled in his outrage so tight-stretched were his faculties with listening for the click of a pulled-back hammer. He expected each step he took to be his last. It was torture to be throttled to this slow gait when every cringing muscle of his aching body longed to hurl him forward and put an end to this nightmare. He dared not let himself make the least motion which might spook that horse. For no matter how Bugler came to be in this thicket, Reifel knew that unless he could mount him he was done.

But nothing happened. No one sprang from the shadows. No one called on him to halt. He reached the gelding, seized its bridle and commenced to shake so hard he couldn’t get into the saddle and had to cling there, clutching it, until the paroxysm passed. He damned near cried he was so weak but finally, without quite knowing how he did it, he found himself aboard the horse.

He neck-reined Bugler out of the thicket and was paused at its edge, endeavoring to get his bearings when he remembered the scrap of paper — the piece which the drummer had torn from his order book for the black-haired girl of the stage to write her name on. It was an irrelevant thought which had nothing to do with getting Ben Reifel away from that posse; nevertheless it stopped him cold on the creek bank and drove a worried hand into searching his clothing. The hand didn’t find it so he stashed his empty pistol and put the other one to helping. He was in a fine sweat lest he’d forgotten to remove it from the clothes he had drowned in the creek behind Tim Foley’s. He finally found it in the sweatband of his hat.

He had no recollection of putting it there but his head felt so queer he might easily have forgotten as he’d forgotten its existence up until right now. Kind of funny though the way it had got folded….

He smoothed its creases and tried to make out the name but the light, even here in the open, wasn’t strong enough. The first word began with an M but it didn’t look like Mary. Monte, maybe — it had the right number of letters. Funny name for a girl, he thought, kind of scowling.

The scowl was still on his face when he put it away. He got to wondering now if one of those possemen had found it, or maybe that sheriff. Any girl who could write her name on butcher paper — By God, if the sheriff
had
found it…. That might account for a lot that he’d found queer about this deal. If she was all that important, or if her old man was, the sheriff probably knew them. Knew of them anyway. It might have made all the difference. It might account for him being left here unbound without a guard. It might — but he could figure that out later. First things first. The most important thing right now was to get the hell away from here — and he had better be careful not to leave no trail.

With that thought in mind he put Bugler into the creek. The New Mexican border couldn’t be very far away. If he could follow this water south or east and stay in it —

He’d got just that far when a voice barked gruffly: “Hoist your hands an’ come outa that!”

Sometimes when a man has reached the end of his string desperation lends him a strength beyond normal, a courage out of this world, the guts to achieve apparent miracles — but it was not that way with Ben Reifel. When those growled words came at him out of the dark he let out a long breath and let go of the reins, knowing deep inside him this was how he had expected it to end all along.

“Come on — get ’em up. I ain’t figurin’ to be takin’ no chances with you.”

Reifel, signing, raised his hands. But it was hard, bitter hard, to know he had failed so near to victory.

A man stepped out of the blackness of the willows. Moon-glow silvered the gun in his fist. He was one of those who had been with the sheriff and he said with a dangerous edge to his tone, “Climb down off that nag an’ wade over here.”

Reifel shook his head. “Not sure I can make it — ”

“You better get sure then. I’ve seen all your tricks I’ve a mind to. Climb down!”

Sudden hope poured through Reifel. This guy was too tense, his voice was too brittle. Ben Reifel had ridden too often with fear not to know a scared man when he saw one.

He came out of the saddle. The stream was waist deep and the shock of cold water wrung a gasp from his throat. He took a couple of floundering steps, made a frantic grab for the saddle and clung there.

The man on the bank above him swore. “I won’t tell you again — climb outa there!”

“W-w-wait a second,” Reifel gasped through chattering teeth and, transferring his hold to the gelding’s bridle, wheeled the big roan around and waded out at the ford.

The nervous deputy edged up to him warily but when he saw how used up Reifel looked, shivering and shaking in his soaked blue jeans, a sneer crossed his face. “You’re like all of these hard cases. Tougher than hell when you’re stick-in’ up stages an’ a damn sick chicken when you get caught up with. That horse’ll stand, you don’t have t’ hang onto him.”

Reifel let his hand drop away from the bridle. He staggered and the deputy’s gun jumped to focus. “None o’ that,” he snarled. “Get them paws back up over your head!”

Reifel put up his arms. He didn’t look to have strength enough to whip a grown June bug. “You want this shell belt and pistol?”

There was a sneer on the deputy’s face when he said, “What the hell good is a gun without bullets?” He looked at Reifel and sniggered. “Your luck run out when Chet elected to come along with Lafe’s posse. Chet had your number right from the start. Had it all doped out just what you would do an', brother, you done it — clear on down t’ hidin’ your tracks in that water! You’re a cooked goose, mister, an’ you might as well know it.”

“Yeah,” Reifel said, “I can see you an’ Chet sure are cute ones. Tripped me up slick as slobbers. Only thing I can’t seem to get through my hat is why, after Chet had it all doped out, he didn’t want to stick around — ”

“He wanted to all right but the sheriff wouldn’t let him. Lafe’s a reg’lar ol’ woman. Why, if — ”

He broke off, eyes widening, as Reifel swayed on his feet and looked about to collapse. It was a neat little act and well executed but Lafe’s rep was too jumpy to be taken in completely. As Reifel’s arms whipped toward him the man jumped backward, cursing. His gun came up before Reifel could reach him. Flame burst from its barrel.

But the man was too nervous. Even as he fired he got hung up in his spurs. His shot went wild. Fright jammed his faculties. He put everything he had into staying on his feet.

This was all the chance Reifel needed. Sick and weak as he was from loss of blood and exhaustion, vision fogged and senses reeling, he came in as though flung from a catapult and whacked the barrel of his pistol hard against the deputy’s skull. The man’s knees bowed out and he pitched forward into the mud and weeds.