Desert of the Damned (10 page)

Flat as the desert miles he said, “Let’s hear your proposition.”

“You’ll hear the proposition after you’ve given me your promise.”

“What promise?”

“Your promise to take on this job of work in exchange for the governor’s pardon.”

“You’ve got that.”

“I ain’t heard you say it.”

Reifel scowled. Reifel swore. But in the end, because of Breen, he said it.

Mossman got up. “Are we shaking hands on it?”

“You’d shake the hand of a crook?”

“There are crooks and
crooks.
I’ll shake your hand, Curly. And I’ll wish you luck.”

“Well … I reckon you figure that will bind me.”

“I feel sure it will, Curly.” Once again Burt Mossman put out his hand.

Reifel said without moving, “All right, Ranger, I’ll shake with you — after I’ve seen you put my name on that pardon.”

Mossman eyed him a moment. Then, going back to his chair, he got pen and ink from a drawer and, glancing up, volunteered, “‘Curly Ben’ won’t mean very much on this paper without it’s used as an alias after your right one. Mind spellin’ it for me?”

Reifel spelled out his name and watched Mossman’s pen make tracks across the one blank line on the pardon. Then he held out his hand and the boss Ranger grabbed it, afterwards stepping back; but Reifel kept his hand out.

Burt Mossman chuckled. “I’m not that dumb, Reifel. You get this pardon when you’ve done the job, and not until then. So you might’s well set down; it’s going to take awhile to post you.”

“What about my gun?”

Mossman returned it. “Now here’s the deal,” he said quietly. “Here’s what you’ve got to do….”

He spoke for several minutes while Reifel’s scowl grew steadily blacker until suddenly, with a curse, Reifel sprang from his chair. “To hell with your job! You can stick that pardon — ”

“Now just a minute,” Mossman frowned. “You gave me your word — ”

“To hell with it!”

Mossman glanced at him sharply. “Very well,” he said coldly. “Write your
own
ticket then but don’t cry if you get hurt!”

G
ERT
K
AVANAUGH
, that morning, was strangely, unaccountably depressed and restless. Despite every buffeting her early years had known she would generally wake up in a mood, faith renewed, to tackle whatever the day might unfold, serenely confident that where there is trust there must also be fulfillment. This belief had sustained her through all manner of trying times, yet it could not help her now. Face to face with the inevitability which each new encroachment of Devil Iron forced upon her, she lay staring into a future which loomed black as the deep-piled shadows concealing the bareness of a room which held no touch of femininity.

Through half the night she had bitterly struggled to find some way out of this present predicament which did not depend on Curly Ben’s help; but even the one possibility which she had finally turned up required the man for a springboard. She had not been entirely frank with him. She had not told him that already she had approached Diamond X with her Oak Ridge proposal and had been turned down. The boss of the outfit hadn’t wanted any part of a fight with the politically powerful Nate Lamtrill. He preferred to go out of business with his health unimpaired.

Whatever his reason it wasn’t fear, she thought, which had moved Curly Ben to react so unfavorably. Though he had been up and around for the most of yesterday’s daylight hours he had remained remote, continually avoiding her as though determined to preclude any further discussion of a subject in which he refused to be interested.

But she could, if she would, use him anyway.

She had only to apprise Seeb Dawson of Ben’s whereabouts and the reward being offered for his apprehension would be hers to throw into this fight against Lamtrill. While five hundred dollars might not go very far it would certainly enable her to hire a few hardcases. Lamtrill’s whole strategy was based on his ability to crush opposition before it got rolling. He controlled local law. He hired three tough crews, one of which was used primarily to discourage opposition. It was very effective and the main reason, really, why Diamond X refused to help her. But it was not, she thought, indestructible. If she could damage its efficiency, or defy Nate Lamtrill in spite of it, she believed enough other people in this region would side her to kick up enough uproar that the governor would be forced to look into matters down here.

Gert was not entirely selfish in this ambition to start a range war. She
did
love Boxed Y very passionately and wholeheartedly. She hated the thought of seeing the great ranch broken up. Another facet bringing pressure was Lamtrill’s daughter, Marta May. All her life Gert Kavanaugh had had to scringe and scrape to make ends meet while Marta May — a spoiled brat if Gert had ever seen one — had been the darling of the countryside. She had gone to Eastern schools, she had clothes and beaux and a string of fine horses and more money to spend than she knew what to do with.

She attracted men as glued paper draws flies. Young Jules Acktine, who was reading law with the County Prosecutor, had used to call on Gert a lot until it occurred to Marta May she might find it rather amusing to have him panting with the rest of the dopes who danced whenever she jerked the strings. Gert, though at first wildly furious, had finally managed to persuade herself that Jules was a lot like Seeb Dawson’s beagle — anyone’s dog who would call him.

Despite her resentment of anything and everyone connected with the Lamtrill name, the strongest urge back of Gert’s decision to buck Devil Iron — even to the extremity of hurling Boxed Y into the chaos and gunsmoke of an open war with Lamtrill — came from her desire to rehabilitate Rod Kavanaugh. She had tried many things and was finally convinced that nothing short of very extreme measures would ever reawaken her father’s pride and self respect.

She had no guarantee that these would. But if something terrible enough should happen she thought at least that he would quit spending all his time in that rocker. And if he could once be pushed into striking back at something….

She scrubbed her knuckles into her eyes and got up. Her room was darkly filled with night’s shadows and the eerie groan of the wind in the trees assured her that daylight was still some while off but, hastily throwing a wrap around her shoulders, she made her way to Ben’s room and softly knocked on the door.

She knew that this was madness but something stronger than logic made her feel impelled to talk with him. He might still refuse to help her but she had to make this final appeal; she had a hunch that when she faced him the right words would come — the very fact that she would come to him in such a place at such an hour should convince him that her need was great.

She knocked again, more firmly.

Somehow she knew that he would understand. Callous he might be — even brutal, but confidence marked his every gesture. Experience shaped the set of his cheeks and endowed him with a greater wisdom than looked from the eyes of other men she knew. In some inexplicable fashion she had found reassurance in his presence at Boxed Y. Always, until yesterday, he had shown her a quiet deference that, like his soft drawl, was strangely comforting. She liked to watch the white flash of his teeth in the smile which sometimes, rather fleetingly, curved his grim lips. He was like another man then — one she was sure she would like to know better.

With a growing impatience she rapped again. She had imagined that Ben would be a very light sleeper.

She listened intently but could not hear him breathing. Suddenly frightened she caught hold of the latch and pushed the door open.

He was not in his bed — she could see that much; and her eyes swept the room, still without finding him. His clothes were gone from the chair; his gunbelt and stetson were not where they had been. She put a hand to her throat. She heard her heart pounding wildly.

The sheets still held the shape of his body but they were no longer warm. The dent in the pillow was not warm either but it made a crackly sound when she touched it. She swept it aside and her hand found the paper.

With an infinite slowness, filled with fury, Ben Reifel came around and walked back to the table. He put the flats of his hands very carefully upon it. “I don’t get this,” he said. “You mean you’re turnin’ me loose?”

“You can walk out that door any time you’ve a mind to.”

Reifel studied him, scowling. “What proof you got I won’t go straight to Lamtrill?”

“If you’re the kind of cur who’d go back on his word you probably will.”

“And you’d let me?”

Mossman grinned. “I don’t think you’ll do it.”

Huskily, Ben Reifel swore. He was gone in the following moment, the rattle and bang of his horse’s hoofs striking loud against the slammed-shut door.

• • •

Marta May, immaculately garbed in the latest of equestrienne toggery, caught the sound of fast travel coming up the far side of the rise just before her and wrinkled her nose in an expression of disgust. Who but a strong silent dumb-bell in chaps would go tearing up a ridge like hell wouldn’t have him in the middle of a morning as hot as this?

She pulled her black gelding to the side of the road hoping the dust of his passage might not entirely engulf her. She was in something of a hurry herself this morning, having promised Jules Acktine she would meet him in Dry Bottom at eleven o’clock sharp. If her father hadn’t felt that he might sometime come in handy she would have sent Jules packing. In words of one syllable. His stuffy uninteresting notions about courting were almost as stupid as his boorish insistence on punctuality. But today she must humor him lest he keep her too long and thus cut too short the expected pleasure she counted on having this afternoon with Kid Badger.

The approaching rider, as he crested the ridge, abruptly caught sight of her and drew his blue roan down into a canter. When he’d closed the interval to about fifty yards he slowed his mount further and came on at a walk. When he was close enough to make out her features she saw his eyes narrow, afterwards considering her with a bold approval, with the frank admiration which most men’s eyes showed her — and with one other thing which she could not quite fathom.

He wasn’t bad looking in a hard-twisted way. He had a bold black-eyed stare, wide lips and high cheekbones. His saturnine face was streaked with dust and his clothes, freshly patched, showed a deal of hard usage. The scuffed toes of the boots in his oxbow stirrups and the unbrushed ragged look of his hat proclaimed him a drifter probably riding the grubline.

She would have passed on without speaking had he not put his horse across her path, suddenly smiling, and asked her the way to the Lamtrill outfit.

She waved a languid hand in the direction she had come from. “You can’t miss it,” she said with her most cultured accent, “but if you’re looking for work you’re just wasting your time. Devil Iron isn’t hiring range bums.”

“That so?” His eyes narrowed. “What kind
are
they hirin’?”

“Not
your
kind,” she said with her chin up, and reined her horse around him with a contemptuous smile.

• • •

Gert Kavanaugh was hanging out the family wash when Reifel rode into the yard at two-thirty. She wheeled around when she heard him and her cheeks went white. A sudden sharp joy looked out of her eyes and was instantly hidden behind the stony-faced stare with which she bent to her basket, completely ignoring him.

Reifel, shoving back his hat, crooked a leg round the horn and got out the makings. “Pretty hot for this time of the year,” he opined, but she gave no evidence of hearing.

He lit his smoke, puffed a moment and sighed. “Guess mebbe that prediction was a little hasty. Does seem kinda chilly now I get around to noticin’. Got a extra pair of mittens or a mackinaw you could lend me?”

She lifted a pair of flour-sack panties, shook them out above the basket and, only then seeming to realize what she had in her hands, went beet-red but angrily hung them up anyway.

Reifel pitched away his butt and carefully climbed down out of the saddle. He let a groan slide past his unclenched teeth and grinned when it whipped her head around.

More color rushed up from Gert Kavanaugh’s throat and she said without beating around any bushes: “If you’re working for Devil Iron what are you doing here?”

“Where did you dig up that notion?”

“Perhaps it came from that paper with Marta May’s name on it — the one you left under your pillow!”

“So that’s what’s stickin’ in your craw,” Reifel scowled. “Do you want me to work for you or don’t you?”

Gert’s shape went still. She watched him in the silence of pure astonishment, but the suspicion aroused by that hated name would not so easily be put out of mind and, with brown eyes flashing, she cried at him fiercely: “Did Lamtrill put you up to coming back here?”

“Look,” Reifel said — “I don’t even know the guy. Never clapped eyes on him — ”

“You know his daughter!”

“So what if I do? I came back here to help you hang onto this ranch — ”

“All who believe that can stand on their heads!” She slammed a look at him scornfully. “You weren’t busting no buckles to get me helped yesterday! Not even when I offered — ”

“That was yesterday.”

“So you done a pile of thinking. During the night you got so damn anxious to help me you got up out of bed and snaked off before daylight!”

Her laugh made a short mirthless sound in the stillness. She flung the yellow hair back out of her eyes. “I’m not an idiot, Curly. Something happened after you left — ”

“That’s right.” Reifel slapped at his leg with a fold of the reins. “I got to thinkin’ about you. I reckon I just couldn’t stand bein’ away — ”

“With Marta May’s name folded under your pillow?” Contempt pulled the red lips away from her teeth. “Did that bitch talk you into this?”

Reifel swore at her, outraged. He half fetched up a hand as though minded to strike her, but he let it fall. He wheeled and reached for the horn. “To bell with it then! If you don’t want my help — ”

“But I
do
, and I’ll take it — no matter what brought you back. But we might’s well get this straight right now: First time I catch you selling me short I’m going to cut you down like I would a snake.”

She meant it, too.

Reifel pulled himself into the saddle, watched the deep brown of her eyes turn black. Though she reckoned he was quitting she would not beg, would not take back a single word which she had flung at him. She stood, chin up and with her eyes bleak as millstones, bitterly ready to watch him ride off.

She had guts all right. She would pull her full share of the load in double harness — but it sure as hell wasn’t going to be with Ben Reifel! They were too much alike and what Ben wanted was culture — the influence and prestige a proper background could give him. Marta May was his dish and, though he was still feeling graveled by her cavalier treatment, he was determined as ever that he would finally run his brand on her.

It had been wholly on her account that he had balked at the chore with which Burt Mossman had saddled him. Gathering dirt on her father had not at first seemed to him a very good method for winning her hand. But after that meeting on the trail this morning his notions had undergone considerable revisement. It would need a firm hand to bring her kind to heel and, while Mossman had not figured to have him promote any range war, it looked to him now like backing Gert’s hand would be the right way to play this.

He said to Gert gruffly, “How much money are you gettin’ from that lease?”

“I won’t be getting any. Diamond X turned me down — ”

“They sidin’ Lamtrill?”

“No — just keeping out of it.”

“Well, there’s others you can go to — ”

“The small-spread outfits haven’t got any money; they’re just hunkered around waiting for Lamtrill’s gundogs to move them out. Cog Wheel has money but the manager, Bill Pryor, would rather cut his right hand off than draw one breath that would benefit a Kavanaugh; and the absentee owners — ”

“Didn’t you tell me they would sell?”