Riding for the Brand (Ss) (1986) (33 page)

"Yuh won't get back there"... He said in a dead, flat voice. "Yuh done it, all right, but yuh'll never play the hero in Pahute, because I'm goin' to kill yuh!"

"Like yuh killed Dixie and Chuck?" Challenged Steve. "Yuh did, yuh know. Yuh started that landslide and the Mohaves."

Hitson made no reply. He merely stood there, a huge bull of a man, his frosty eyes bright and hard under the corn-silk eyebrows.

Suddenly his hand swept down.

When Steve had first sighted the man, he had lowered the sack of gold to the street. Now he swept his coat back and grabbed for his own gun. He was no gunfighter, and the glimpse of flash- ing speed from Hitson made something go sick within him, but his gun came up and he fired.

Hitson's gun was already flaming, and even as Steve pulled the trigger on his own gun, a bullet from Hitson's pistol knocked the Smith and Wesson spinning into the dust! Steve sprang back and heard the hard, dry laugh of triumph from Jake Hitson's throat.

"Now I'll kill yuh"... Hitson yelled.

The killer's eyes were cold as he lifted the pistol, but even as it came level, Steve hurled himself to his knees and jerked out the four barreled Braendlin.

Hitson swung the gun down on him, but startled by Steve's movement, he swung too fast and shot too fast. The bullet ripped through the top of Mehan's shoulder tugging hard at the heavy coat. Then Steve fired. He fired once, twice, three times, and then heaved himself erect and stepped to one side, holding his last shot ready, his eyes careful.

Hitson stood stock-still, his eyes puzzled.

Blood was trickling from his throat, and there was a slowly spreading blot of blood on his white shirt. He tried to speak, but when he opened his mouth, blood frothed there and he started to back up, frowning.

He stumbled and fell. Slowly he rolled over on his face in the street. Blood turned the gravel crimson, and rain darkened the coat on his back.

Only then did Steve Mehan look up. Pink Egan, his face cold, had a gun leveled at Hitson's companion. "You beat it"... Pink said. "You get goin'!"

"Shore"... The man backed away, staring at Hitson's body. "Shore, I'm gone! I don't want no trouble! I just come along, I his The small man in black came out of the express office.

"Got here just in time"... He said. "I'm the purser from the steamer. Got nearly a thousand out of that bank, the last anybody will get."... He smiled at Mehan. "Won another thousand on your ride. I bet on you and got two to one."... He chuckled. "Of course, I knew we had soldiers to put ashore at two places coming north, and that helped. I'm a sporting man, myself."

He clinked the gold in his sack and smiled, twitching his mustache with a white finger.

"Up to a point"... He added, smiling again.

"Only up to a point!"

*

Author's Note:

WEST IS WHERE THE HEART IS

John Howard Payne, who wrote "Home, Sweet Home"... In 1823 as part of an opera called Clari, The Maid of Milan, planned to write a "History of the Cherokees."... Although he collected many notes the work was never completed.

Payne was both a playwright and an actor, born in New York in 1791 he attended college for three years and made his debut as an actor in 1809, becoming one of the most popular actors in America. Later he lived and worked in England where he piled up huge debts and found his way into debtor's prison. He wrote Romulus, The Shepherd King, collaborating with Washington Irving. Later he was American consul in Tunis, where he died in 1852.

He was briefly imprisoned with John Ross, Chief of the Cherokees, when Ross was fighting the removal of the Cherokees to Indian Territory.

Aside from his interest in the Cherokees and his efforts to aid them, Payne was associated with the West only in so far as his song, "Home, Sweet Home"... Was for many years one of the most popular songs in the West.

It was one of the songs often sung in my own home.

*

Where the Heart Is.

Jim London lay face down in the dry prairie grass, his body pressed tightly against the ground. Heat, starvation and exhaustion had taken a toll of his lean, powerful body, and although light-headed from their accumulative effects, he still grasped the fact that to survive he must not be seen.

Hot sun blazed upon his back, and in his nostrils was the stale, sour smell of clothes and body long unwashed. Behind him lay days of dodging Comanche war parties and sleeping on the bare ground behind rocks or under bushes. He was without weapons or food, and it had been nine hours since he had tasted water, and that was only dew he had licked from leaves.

The screams of the dying rang in his ears, amid the sounds of occasional shots and the shouts and war cries of the Indians. From a hill almost five miles away he had spotted the white canvas tops of the Conestoga wagons and had taken a course that would intercept them. And then, in the last few minutes before he could reach their help, the Comanches had hit the wagon train.

From the way the attack went, a number of the Indians must have been bedded down in the tall grass, keeping out of sight, and then when the a less-than Rather train was passing, they sprang for the drivers of the teams. The strategy was perfect, for there was then no chance of the wagon train making its circle. The lead wagons did swing, but two other teamsters were dead and another was fighting for his life, and their wagons could not be turned. The two lead wagons found themselves isolated from the last four and were hit hard by at least twenty Indians. The wagon whose driver was fighting turned over in the tall grass at the edge of a ditch, and the driver was killed.

Within twenty minutes after the beginning of the attack, the fighting was over and the wagons looted, and the Indians were riding away, leaving behind them only dead and butchered oxen, the scalped and mutilated bodies of the drivers, and the women who were killed or who had killed themselves.

Yet Jim London did not move. This was not his first crossing of the plains or his first encounter with Indians. He had fought Comanches before, as well as Kiowas, Apaches, Sioux, and Cheyenne.

Born on the Oregon Trail he had later been a teamster on the Santa Fe. He knew better than to move now. He knew that an Indian or two might come back to look for more loot.

The smoke of the burning wagons bit at his nostrils, yet he waited. An hour had passed before he let himself move, and then it was only to inch to the top of the hill, where from behind a tuft of bunch grass he surveyed the scene before No living thing stirred near the wagons. Slow tendrils of smoke lifted from blackened timbers and wheel spokes. Bodies lay scattered about, grotesque in attitudes of tortured death. For a long time he studied the scene below, and the surrounding hills. And then he crawled over the skyline and slithered downhill through the grass, making no more visible disturbance than a snake or a coyote.

This was not the first such wagon train he had come upon, and he knew there was every chance that he would find food among the ruins as well as water, perhaps even overlooked weapons. Indians looted hastily and took the more obvious things, usually scattering food and wasting what they could not easily carry away.

Home was still more than two hundred miles away and the wife he had not seen in four years would be waiting for him. In his heart, he knew she would be waiting. During the war the others had scoffed at him.

"Why, Jim, you say yourself she don't even know where you're at! She probably figures you're dead! No woman can be expected to wait that long! Not for a man she never hears of and when she's in a good country for men and a bad one for women!"

"She'll wait. I know Jane."

"No man knows a woman that well. No man could. You say yourself you come east with a wagon train in sixty-one. Now it's sixty-four. You been in the war, you been wounded, you ain't been home, nor heard from her, nor she from you. Worst of all, she was left on a piece of ground with only a cabin built, no ground broke, no close-up neighbors. I'll tell you, Jim, you're crazy! Come go to Mexico with us!"

"No"... He said stubbornly. "I'll go home.

I'll go back to Jane. I come east after some fixings for her, after some stock for the ranch, and I'll go home with what I set out after."

"You got any young'uns?" The big sergeant was skeptical.

"Nope. I sure ain't, but I wish I did.

Only"... He added, "maybe I have. Jane, she was expecting, but had a time to go when I left. I only figured to be gone four months."

"And you been gone four years?" The sergeant shook his head. "Forget her, Jim, and come with us. Nobody would deny she was a good woman.

From what you tell of her, she sure was, but she's been alone and no doubt figures you're dead.

She'll be married again, maybe with a family."

Jim London had shaken his head. "I never took up with no other woman, and Jane wouldn't take up with any other man. I'm going home."

He made a good start. He had saved nearly every dime of pay, and he did some shrewd buying and trading when the war was over. He started west with a small but good train, and he had two wagons with six head of mules to the wagon, knowing the mules would sell better in New Mexico than would oxen. He had six cows and a yearling bull, some pigs, chickens, and utensils. He was a proud man when he looked over his outfit, and he hired two boys with the train to help him with the extra wagon and the stock.

Comanches hit them before they were well started. They killed two men, and one woman and stampeded some stock. The wagon train continued, and at forks of Little Creek they struck again in force this time, and only Jim London came out of it alive. All his outfit was gone, and he escaped without weapons, food, or water.

He lay flat in the grass at the edge of the burned spot. Again he studied the hills, and then he eased forward and got to his feet. The nearest wagon was upright, and smoke was still rising from it. The wheels were partly burned, the box badly charred, and the interior smoking. It was still too hot to touch.

He crouched near the front wheel and studied the situation, avoiding the bodies. No weapons were in sight, but he had scarcely expected any.

There had been nine wagons. The lead wagons were thirty or forty yards off, and the three wagons whose drivers had been attacked were bunched in the middle with one overturned. The last four, near one of which he was crouched, had burned further than the others.

Suddenly he saw a dead horse lying at one side with a canteen tied to the saddle. He crossed to it at once, and tearing the canteen loose, he rinsed his mouth with water. Gripping himself tight against drinking, he rinsed his mouth again and moistened his cracked lips. Only then did he let a mere swallow trickle down his parched throat.

Resolutely he put the canteen down in the shade and went through the saddle pockets. It was a treasure trove. He found a good-sized chunk of almost iron-hard brown sugar, a half dozen biscuits, a chunk of jerky wrapped in paper, and a new plug of chewing tobacco.

Putting these things with the canteen, he unfastened the slicker from behind the saddle and added that to the pile.

Wagon by wagon he searched, always alert to the surrounding country and at times leaving the wagons to observe the plain from a hilltop. It was quite dark before he was finished. Then he took his first good drink, for he had allowed himself only nips during the remainder of the day. He took his drink and then ate a biscuit, and chewed a piece of the jerky. With his hunting knife he shaved a little of the plug tobacco and made a cigarette by rolling it in paper, the way the Mexicans did.

Every instinct warned him to be away from the place by daylight, and as much as he disliked leaving the bodies as they were, he knew it would be folly to bury them. If the Indians passed that way again, they would find them buried and would immediately be on his trail.

Crawling along the edge of the taller grass near the depression where the wagon had tipped over, he stopped suddenly. Here in the ground near the edge of the grass was a boot print!

His fingers found it, and then felt carefully. It had been made by a running man, either large or heavily laden. Feeling his way along the tracks, London stopped again, for this time his hand had come in contact with a boot. He shook it, but there was no move or response. Crawling nearer he touched the man's hand. It was cold as marble in the damp night air.

Moving his hand again, he struck canvas.

Feeling along it he found it was a long canvas sack. Evidently the dead man had grabbed this sack from the wagon and dashed for the shelter of the ditch or hollow. Apparently he had been struck by a bullet and killed, but feeling again of the body, London's hand came in contact with a belt gun. So the Comanches had not found him!

Stripping the belt and gun from the dead man, London swung it around his own hips, and then checked the gun. It was fully loaded, and so were the cartridge loops in the belt.

Something stirred in the grass, and instantly he froze, sliding out his hunting knife. He waited for several minutes, and then he heard it again.

Something alive lay here in the grass with him!

A Comanche? No Indian likes to fight at night, and he had seen no Indians anywhere near when darkness fell. No, if anything lived near him now it must be something, man or animal, from the wagon train. For a long time he lay still, thinking it over, and then he took a chance. Yet from his experience the chance was not a long one.