Return of the Outlaw (30 page)

“This is none of your affair, Reef,” she responded curtly. “What are you doing out here?”

“I came to take you back, ma’am. We could turn back now and maybe be home before anybody knows you’re gone. That way you won’t get into any trouble.”

“Trouble?” she scoffed. “Why should I get into trouble? Jim is your boss, not mine.”

Reef found himself on unsure footing. He knew she shouldn’t be out here, and he knew the boss would be unhappy about it, but he recognized that what she was saying was true.  Jim didn’t boss Catherine. Nobody did.

“Go home, Reef,
you have no business out here.”

It was clear to Reef that further attempts to reason with her would be fruitless, but he knew he had to do something.

“Rein in, Mrs. Marcellin, please.”

Catherine gave him a look of extreme i
mpatience and reluctantly complied, but when Reef dismounted and began walking toward the buggy, she started forward again at a brisk trot and left him standing there. Reef jumped back into the saddle and soon overtook her, and for a while he rode along beside her, completely at a loss as to what his next course of action should be. At one point he moved in close to the buggy and leaned down, tentatively reaching for the bridle reins, but Catherine rapped him smartly on the back of the hand with her buggy whip, and bestowed upon him her most menacing look, whereupon he immediately forsook this new idea.

Catherine
’s intransigence put Reef in a quandary. He knew he needed to stop her and take her back to the Circle M but he didn’t know how. He couldn’t let her ride on alone, yet he himself had ridden out without orders, and would have to answer to both Hank and Jim on his return. In the end, he resigned himself to the latter, and decided to continue on with Catherine. 

As if sensing his decision, Catherine looked at him and said, “Reef I want you to turn your horse around and go back to the ranch.”

“Can’t do that, ma’am.”

“And why not?
  You shouldn’t have followed me in the first place.”

“I
’m just following orders, Mrs. Marcellin.”

Catherine looked at him skeptically
. “Jim would not have sent you after me alone.”

“No, it wasn
’t exactly like that, ma’am. But we all have orders to be on the lookout for rustlers, and to stop them if we can.”

“So?”

“That horse you’re driving is Circle M stock, and you’re taking him off the Circle M without the owner’s permission. In a way, that makes you a rustler.”

Catherine rolled her eyes. She
looked at Reef for a moment with an expression he tried vainly to interpret, then turned away and gazed thoughtfully at the trail ahead. If she had thought in any way she was placing Reef in danger, she would have turned around and gone back, but she was certain Emil Tannatt would not allow his men to fire on her or anyone who was with her.

When they arrived at th
e Double T headquarters, Tannatt was standing on the porch, having known of their approach for twenty minutes.

Catherine greeted him
and he responded with a nod and said, “What can I do for you, Mrs. Marcellin?” The coldness in his voice was unmistakable.

“I
’ve come to pay a visit.”

“Why?”

“I should think the reason would be obvious.” She turned to Reef and said, “Give me your gun Reef.”

Reef hesitated momentarily, shooti
ng a cautious glance at Tannatt, but he handed his gun to Catherine.

“Now, Mr. Tannatt,” she said
, as she laid the gun on the floorboard of the buggy, “as you can see, we are unarmed and we’ve come for a visit as neighbors sometimes do.”

Tannatt appeared ill at ease, and suddenly seemed uncomfortable with the rifle he was holding. He put it
down and leaned it against the wall. “I don’t wish to be unneighborly,” he said, “but you shouldn’t have come here; it doesn’t seem right to me.”

“
Then it’s fortunate I haven’t come to visit you,” Catherine said. “I’m here to see your wife and I would appreciate it if you would announce me.”

Martha Tannatt appeared in the doorway behind her husband. Stepping past him she said, “Welco
me to my home Mrs. Marcellin, please come in.” Her drawn paleness and the darkness below her eyes attested to her grief, but she had hastily brushed her hair, and she smiled as she spoke. “Thank you for coming: you’re welcome here.”

Emil Tannatt suddenly found words, and they were angry
ones. “No, she isn’t welcome. She’s a Marcellin and no Marcellin is welcome on the Double T. Last night our boy was laid out on that table in there, and this morning we put him under the dirt. Have you already forgot that? And have you forgot it was the Marcellin’s who put him there?”

Catherine
Marcellin looked up at Tannatt, her eyes flashing “Yesterday your boy was killed, so I suppose you’ll have to ride to the Circle M and shoot somebody else’s boy for revenge.”

Tannatt
’s lower lip was quivering as he tried to keep a rein on his emotions. He practically hurled the words at her, “It wouldn’t surprise me one bit!”

Catherine replied, and her voice grew louder
as her words gathered momentum, “And then the Circle M men will have to ride over here and shoot some of you, then you’ll have to ride over and shoot some more of them, then people will start taking sides, and everybody will start shooting everybody else, and as far as I’m concerned you men can ride all around the world having wars, and gunfights, and shooting each other until you’ve all been shot, and then maybe,” she was shouting now, “maybe we women can have a little peace. But meanwhile, Emil Tannatt, I won’t tell you who you can shoot, and by thunder, don’t you dare tell me who I can visit!”

Martha Tannatt had observed the exchange wide-eyed, and was now amazed to see her husband step backward to lean against the house. The expres
sion on his face had changed to one that mingled acceptance of defeat and respect. 

As though she had expected nothing less, Catherine turned to Reef and said
in a calm voice, “Bring those two baskets from the buggy.” To Martha Tannatt she said, “I brought lunch and supper. You shouldn’t have to cook today.” 

Martha smiled sweetly
. “Thank you Catherine, how thoughtful.” And she escorted Catherine into the house past Emil, who had removed his hat.

It was just getting light when Jeff left town, following Fogarty
’s now cold trail. He paused for a moment when he struck the trail of the five Double T riders who had ridden on the Circle M the day before. As he sat on his horse, looking down at the tracks, it seemed strange to him that four of the men who had made them were now dead. Soon the wind would come, or the rain, and the tracks would be gone too. In a short time even the men who made them would be forgotten. It seemed a sad thought to Jeff, and he realized it would have been no different if he had died yesterday. The thought brought to him a sense of insignificance and aloneness, and he thought of Ben Houk’s words of the night before. He tried to disagree with them; life has to be what a man makes it, he told himself. He asked himself what he had made of his own, and he thought of Anne and wondered what he had done to make her stop loving him.

A horsefly
bit him on the back of the hand and interrupted his thoughts. Jeff shifted his attention back to Fogarty’s trail and moved on.

Fogarty h
ad taken great pains to ensure he was not followed. The tracks showed he had stopped frequently, and had, no doubt, turned in the saddle, watching his back trail for long minutes as Jeff had seen him do yesterday.

When Jeff saw where the trail was leading him, he was surprised. The mountains that rimmed this huge
valley were vast and formidable and at the south end of the valley they formed a barrier that was generally considered to be impassable with the exception of a few dangerous trails which could only be negotiated by a man with a sure footed horse and a stout heart. The brakes of the mountain range were a daunting barrier in themselves; a vast unmapped maze of steep-sided canyons and brush-choked draws, they were a cowboy’s nightmare. Jeff could think of no reason why anyone would want to go in there, unless it was to keep from being found. And for that purpose, he could think of no more suitable place.

Fogarty
’s trail led around the base of a huge bluff that jutted out into the center of a narrow canyon. On the far side of the bluff Jeff saw where Fogarty had turned his horse into a small draw and dismounted. Jeff did the same, tying his horse to the same scrubby tree to which Fogarty’s had been tied. He followed the boot prints up the side of the steep hill and on to the top of the bluff. There, behind a low, flat brow of rocks, he saw where Fogarty had lain on his stomach, watching. Even the imprint of the butt of his rifle stock was still visible in the dirt. Scattered around the small area were the brown butts of five cigarettes. Not only was Fogarty a cautious man, he was a patient one as well, and disinclined to allow himself to be followed. How long, Jeff wondered, does it take a man to smoke five cigarettes? Long enough, he knew, for him to have ridden by and been shot off the back of his horse.

He realized
if he hadn’t seen the Double T riders riding toward the Circle M yesterday, or if he had continued on his way rather than riding after them, Fogarty would have killed him. He smiled at the irony of it. In saving Jim Marcellin’s life, he had unwittingly saved his own.

He returned to his horse and got back on th
e trail. Farther up the canyon he discovered why Fogarty had chosen this route. Here, soft dirt gave way to solid rock, and the trail became difficult, and at times nearly impossible to follow. He was always grateful at times like this for the things Amado had taught him.

The terrain was becoming increasingly rugged, and Jeff gained a
grudging respect for Fogarty. The man knew how to hide a trail. But finally, as if satisfied the precautions he had taken were enough, Fogarty had entered a soft grassy area, and from there Jeff had no further difficulty keeping sight of the tracks.

Soon
the tracks led to a trail that showed signs of frequent travel by horses and cattle. Jeff dismounted and walked around, examining all the trail signs. Some were recent and some were as much as a year or two old. There could be only one explanation for all this—rustlers. Honest cattlemen would be moving cattle out of a place like this, not into it. Moreover, Fogarty’s mere presence here bespoke illegal activities. But cattle are no good to rustlers unless they can be sold, and in order to be sold they must be driven to another place. It was common knowledge that there were no useful trails out of the valley at this end. To move cattle to market from here, the rustlers would be forced to cross every major ranch in the valley. Even Rand Fogarty would not be so bold. The chances of escaping detection were zero.

It was well after dark when Jeff finally decided to stop and make camp. He had fol
lowed the well-worn trail deep into the brakes until he decided his horse, now showing signs of fatigue, had had enough for one day. Although he craved a hot meal and some coffee, he refrained from building a fire, not knowing how close he was to the rustler’s camp.

At first light
he was already back in the saddle. Following the trail through these brakes was like following a string through a maze; it twisted and turned and threaded its way through a tangle of deep, sandy-floored canyons and shallow, brush-filled draws, crossing areas of barren rock, dry and inhospitable, and lush green meadows with flowing water and abundant wildlife. It had been slow going yesterday because the trail had been so difficult to follow and he had lost it so many times, but this trail was so well traveled a man could follow it blindfolded, and by midmorning he found himself at what appeared to be its end: a large grassy meadow in a bowl-shaped basin. The grass was cropped short from recent grazing, and the ground was dotted with cattle droppings, some fresh, some dry. Some, he could tell, had lain beneath the snows for at least one season, indicating the basin had been used before this year. “But why would anyone bring cattle to this remote place, and where had they gone to?”

S
omething in the far corner of the basin caught his attention and he put the horse across the meadow at a trot. As he approached the spot, the mystery in his mind was resolved. Here, he saw a narrow cleft in the rock, perhaps ten feet wide. He entered and saw that it immediately widened into a vertical-sided canyon of varying width, the sandy floor of which bore the tracks of cattle and horses. As he penetrated deeper into the canyon the rock walls grew higher and the interior more gloomy. In places the walls bore Indian petroglyphs, which recorded ancient tales and messages he could not interpret.

The floor of the canyon was not always smooth, and at one place there was a sharp break in it, creating a ledge about four feet high. Here, rocks had been piled and logs had been laid on top, and
had been carefully packed in with dirt, creating a ramp. There were places where brush had been cleared away from the passage, and boulders rolled to the side. Someone had gone to a lot of trouble to make this canyon passable. The canyon did not wind like the ones in the brakes, but curved gently to the south for a long way, then abruptly made a sharp bend to the north. Rounding this last turn, Jeff saw an opening and realized he had ridden directly through the mountain.