“If you ever come to Colorado,” I said, “look me up. I’m Shell Tucker.”
“Heard of you,” he said. “They’re beginning to make up songs about you.”
Silver Peak was a town not much more than ten, twelve years old and it was dead already…but nobody believed it, and when you’ve got that kind of faith, who’s to say?
At the saloon three men were sitting on the porch under the overhang, and they watched me ride in. I kept a sharp lookout, but saw no sign of Pony or his horses. I rode up to the saloon and stepped down.
“I’m looking for a man with two horses,” I said, “and the right to own only one of them.”
“He’s gone. And if you take my advice you’ll forget him. He didn’t look to me like he wanted to be found.”
“I need a little grub and a gun,” I told them.
“Mister, this here town is broke. Nobody has anything but what he needs. You ride right along.”
“I got a dollar,” I said.
“That’ll buy you a mite of something. You ride on, boy. We got us a marshal here who don’t cotton to man-hunting.”
“Where is he?”
They pointed out a shack to me and I got back on my horse and rode over there. I got down in front of the shanty and went up the walk.
The man who opened the door was tall, lean, and hard-featured, and he wore a gun as if he knew what it was for. Behind him a woman was putting grub on the table.
“I’m Shell Tucker,” I said, “and I’m hunting a man. I need a gun and a grubstake.”
“Come in.” He turned his head. “Ma, set up another place. This feller looks like he could use it.”
When I sat down at the table the man tipped back in his chair, lit his pipe, and looked me over. “I’m Dean Blaisdell, and I am not long in Silver Peak. This here’s a thankless job that pays enough to keep body and soul together. Now tell me about it.”
So I told the story again, and by this time I’d streamlined it some. He needed only to look at me to see what I’d been through.
“Can’t figure them redskins. Lucky they didn’t take your hair.”
“They’d followed me quite a spell. I guess they thought the country had made me suffer enough.”
“Give you a horse, too? That’s prime. I never knew that to happen, although they always cotton to a man who can take it.
“Tell you what I’ll do. I taken a six-shooter off a man here a couple of months ago. It’s a fine weapon. I’ll let you have it, and ma and me will fix you a bait of grub.
“You’ll need a saddle for that grulla, and there’s one over to the livery stable. The owner pulled out and he just left it…where he was going he said he hoped never to see another.”
We talked of places and people. He was an Arkansawyer, who had lived three years in Texas, had come on west and married the widow of a man killed by the Apaches in Arizona. They had followed one boom after another. “We made a little, but only to tide us over. I was a marshal in Ehrenburg for a few weeks, so they gave me this job.”
His wife poured more coffee. “Heard about you an’ Heseltine,” Blaisdell said. “I seen him once…a dangerous man, I’d say, but he was quiet when he was around my neck of the woods and gave no trouble to anybody.
“Lucky,” he added, “I’d never want to tangle horns with a man like him. I pack a gun and I do my job, but I’ve never drawn a gun on a man in my life, and never saw a gunfight.”
“I have,” his wife said, “and I’d as soon never see another.”
“Ma growed up in Injun country,” Blaisdell explained.
“Never found no good in them,” she said brusquely, “although I’ve known folks who lived among ’em. Their ways simply ain’t Christian.”
“I guess they were reared without any of that teaching,” I suggested. “You’ve got to think of that. Their beliefs are different from ours.”
“They surely are. But the gunfight I saw wasn’t between white men and Indians. It was just some drunken cowboys in the street…at least folks said they was drunk. One of them was a gun-fanner and he done scattered lead all over the neighborhood. I say if men are going to shoot at each other they should shoot straight.”
“That’s the general idea, ma’am,” I said.
“Are you going to kill that Bob Heseltine when you find him? Like the stories say?”
“I don’t want to kill anybody. I just want my money back.”
“He’s likely spent it,” she said. “Money burns a hole in a man’s pocket.”
My dollar was still in my pocket when I rode through Paymaster Canyon into Big Smoky Valley. I’d pulled my stakes from Silver Peak before the sun was in the sky, and by the time I was well out into Big Smoky the sun was setting beyond the Monte Cristo Mountains, so red with their own color as well as the sun that they looked like flames against the sky.
Time and again I turned in my saddle to look back at them. They had a rare beauty, and when the shadows began to creep out from them their ridges were still crested with fire.
Nighttime found me at Montezuma’s Well, with the stars bright overhead. There was a patch of grass there, and a few head of somebody’s cows, and I settled down for the night. The tracks of the two horses were pointing north toward the mountains that loomed up, miles away.
My hands worried me. They were healing, but not fast enough, and I had no rifle. Crossing this bald plain I could be seen for miles, and Pony was too wise an old mountain and desert man not to check his back trail. “Boy,” I said to myself, “when you reach those mountains you better ride loose in the saddle. He’ll surely be staked out and waiting.”
Next morning I was well started before the sun chinned itself on the San Antonios. When I was nooning in the sandy wash where the Peavine seemed to peter out I was at a place where the trails divided. One went northwest toward the Toiyabe Mountains, and it was unmarked by man or beast. The other followed the Big Smoky Valley, and it was covered with tracks. Somebody—four or five or more men—had herded a bunch of cattle up that trail, and only their tracks remained.
Logically, as there were no tracks on the northwest trail, Zale must have taken the northeast branch up the valley, but I didn’t believe it.
If I was running and a tracker was following, what would I do? I’d loose my tracks with that herd of cattle coming along behind, and when I was well along I’d find some hard surface and cut over where I’d leave no tracks to the other trail.
How long would I stay with that northeast trail? Not long. Where he would make his decision, as I was making mine, was at the base of a V, and the two sides spread out rapidly. If he stayed long with the right-hand trail he would lose time getting back to the other.
Or would he think it out the way I was thinking, and figure I’d really aim to make it on the left-hand trail?
I took a chance and started up the left-hand trail toward the mountains. And I found no tracks. I scouted right and left, but I still found none. I’d been fairly outguessed, outsmarted, and left miles behind. Nevertheless, I had to think of a night camp, and for some time I’d been seeing the tracks of antelope or wild burros or horses heading toward a blunt brow that thrust out from the main body of the mountains. There was no trail that I could see leading that way, but the chances of water were good, so I followed the next set of tracks.
The late afternoon was still. High overhead a buzzard circled, but he had no interest in me today.
The shadows were long when I found where the tracks converged at Barrel Spring in a corner of the mountain where there was quiet. I heard a few doves…nothing else.
The water was cold and good. I filled my canteen first…a man never knew when he might have to run, and I wanted a full canteen. Then I drank, and allowed the grulla to drink. He put his nose deep into the water, pulled it out, shook his head with pleasure, and then he drank.
A dim trail came down along the small stream back of the spring. Not liking the look of it, I walked up a short distance, until I found a cove shielded by some brush. I went back and got my horse and picketed it on the grass there, hidden from sight of anything but the buzzard.
Chewing on some jerky, I returned to the spring for another drink, brushed out my tracks in the sand, trying to leave no sign that anyone had been there. Then I went back behind the brush with my horse and bedded down in the soft sand.
Lying there with my pistol at hand, I considered the situation. About a day’s ride to the north—perhaps a day and a half—was the stage route to Salt Lake and points east. There was a town up there, and further along the stage route was Eureka, a booming town of mines, mills, theatres, and saloons.
If Pony had gone up the valley he would be heading for Eureka, or cutting back to Austin…which I thought was the name of the town to the north. If the latter, I had a good chance to cut him off there and get my horse back, and my guns. To say nothing of the money in my saddlebags.
If he rode east…well, I was going that way, anyway.
And so, if I had guessed right, was Bob Heseltine.
Chapter 20
S
OMETHING PRODDED ME in the stomach, and instantly I was awake. I was angry and started to speak, but the shape of that hat against the night warned me.
It was Pony, and he had me again.
“You just set tight, stranger, until I have a look at you—”
I heard a match strike, and my hand beside my blankets closed on a handful of sand. He was leaning forward, his rifle held in his right hand. He would kill me the moment he recognized me. He was just making sure, and…
My hand shot up and let go with the sand in his eyes. He gave a low screech and the match went out, and I swept the rifle muzzle up with the other hand. The gun went off and I was on him, punching and striking hard.
Somehow he lost his grip on his rifle, but we came up fighting. I hit him in the mouth and he staggered, reaching for his hip. I went in fast, punching with both hands, and he never got the gun out. He went down, tried to roll aside, and I kicked, catching him in the belly.
He grunted with pain, but there was no quit in the man. We both were fighting for our lives, and he came up clawing at my eyes. I leaped back, almost tripped over a stone, and suddenly he grabbed up his rifle and was gone into the shadows.
Cursing myself for a fool, I pulled back into the brush, careful to make no sound.
His horses! They had to be close by, and on them were my money, my rifle, my guns.
Swiftly, I turned into the brush, caught up the picket rope of the grulla, and swung to its back. Gun in hand, I rode into the trail, saw the shadow of the horses below, and went down the trail at a run.
The horses stood at the spring, still saddled. I swung into my own saddle on the line-back dun, and leading the other horses, rode up the trail to the north. Behind me I heard a shout, then a shot that missed by yards, and then I was riding away at a good clip.
I now had my own horse back, and I had his horse, saddle, and outfit. Now his turn had come to walk. He had one advantage. He had his rifle…and he was not far from ranches and a town.
All night long I pressed on, switching from horse to horse. I cut across by a dim game trail to Indian Valley, ate a good breakfast from some of Pony’s carefully bought supplies, and then I rode out along the bank of the Reese River, heading north.
He wouldn’t quit, I was sure. I had bested him and he would come after me, and for as murderous a man as he was, he would have no trouble getting a horse. He would simply shoot the first man he saw with one.
My money was still in the saddlebags, and with it a small poke of gold.
Men took a long look at me when I rode into Austin, but I paid no attention. I wanted to take a little time to get a good meal, and went into a restaurant.
The marshal came in, glanced at me sharply, and jerked his head toward the horses outside. “Two saddled horses, mister? You expectin’ a friend?”
“I’m expecting a man, but he’s no friend. Sit down, Marshal, and have some coffee.” When he was seated I asked him if he had ever heard of Pony Zale.
“I’ve heard of him,” he replied shortly. “What about him?”
“I left him afoot last night after he tried to kill me down near Barrel Spring. He’d robbed me and I was hunting him, but he found me asleep in the dark, and didn’t know who I was. We had a tussle, and I lit out. As far as I’m concerned, I’m riding to Colorado as soon as I’ve finished eating.”
“I’ll keep an eye out for him, and you’d better, too. If he comes up Big Smoky he might get ahead of you…that is, if he can lay hands on a horse.”
When I left town at a good clip I headed east. Fifteen miles out I stopped for a breather, put my saddle on the grulla, and started again. All three horses were good stock, mountain-bred and used to long stretches of travel. I wasted no time. I didn’t want to see Pony again, or so much as hear of him.
When I rode into Eureka it was a town ten or twelve years old, and there were eight or nine thousand people there, making a living from mining the lead and silver deposits.
As a town it was wild and woolly and hard to curry above the knees, with a hundred and twenty-five saloons and at least twenty gambling houses, all going full blast. In the past ten years they’d taken about $30,000,000 in silver out of the ground, and a quarter of a million tons of lead. Everybody was making money, and most of them were spending it as fast as they made it.
Stabling the three horses, I got them a bait of oats as well as hay, and then leaving my gear with the hostler I went down the street to a restaurant.
At the long table where I helped myself to mashed potatoes, slabs of beef, and several spoons of beans, I ate and listened to the talk.
“Never seen a man so quick,” a man was saying. “I’ve known Pete for years, and figured he was as good with a gun as a man can be, but he never had a chance.”
“Gun battle?” I asked.
The man turned his head and looked at me. I was a stranger, but he was a talker with a story to tell. “Last night, outside the Bon Ton.
“A stranger, a well-set-up man, rode into town with a blonde woman. Pete, he was feeling his oats a mite and he braced this stranger. The man tried to walk away from him, but Pete yelled after him and reached for his gun. Pete’s killed a couple of men, and he was feelin’ mean. Well, he never got off a shot. This stranger put two bullets into his heart and then just walked off down the street.”