the Outlaws Of Mesquite (Ss) (1990) (4 page)

"Flowers?" The Cactus Kid stared at her gloomily. "Now it's flowers! Girls sure do beat me! Where in this country would a man find flowers?"

His wave at the surrounding country where their picnic lunch was spread was expressive and definite. "Look at it! Ain't been a drop of rainfall in four months, and you know it! Scarcely a blade of grass that's even part green! Worst drought in years, and you want flowers!"

"If you loved me you'd get them!" Her voice was positive and brooked no argument. "If a man really loves a girl he can do anything!"

Her blue eyes flashed at him, and their beauty shook him anew. "Nesselrode, if you love me ... to was "Sssh!" he pleaded, glancing panic-stricken around. "If anybody heard that name they'd hooraw me out of the country. Call me Clay, or Kid, or anything but Nesselrode!"

"It's your name, isn't it? Nesselrode Clay.

I see nothing wrong with it, nothing at all!

Furthermore"-she was not to be diverted-"if you love me you'll get me some flowers! I told the girls you were giving me flowers and they laughed at me!

They did. They said there were no flowers closer than California, this time of year."

The Cactus Kid rolled a smoke and stared at it with dark disgust. Women! He snorted.

What they could think of! Jenny could think of things nobody else would dream of. That came of reading so many books, all romances and the like. Made her look for a man on a white charger who would do great feats to win her love.

Not that he wouldn't. Why right now, instead of being on a picnic with Jenny, he ought to be out with the posse chasing the Herring boys. There were three of them, and all were gun-slick and tough. They had stopped the U. P. train on a grade about fifteen miles from here, killed the express messenger and the fireman.

They had looted the safe of forty thousand dollars in gold and bills. There was a reward on them, a thousand apiece for Benny and Joe, and four thousand for Red.

With the money he could buy some cows and stock that little ranch he was planning on. He could set up a home for a girl like Jenny to be proud of, and with his know-how about cows they could soon be well off. But no, instead of hunting for the Herrings, she wanted him to go hunt flowers!

"It's little enough to do for me," she persisted. "All you think of is running around shooting people in the stomach! You ought to be ashamed, Nesselrode!"

He winced and started to speak, but his voice was lost in the storm of words.

"If you don't bring me some flowers for my birthday, Nesselrode, I'll never speak to you again! Never!"

"Aw, honey!" he protested. "Don't be like that!

The sheriff asked me particular to go along and hunt for the Herrings. The boys'
ll
think I'm scared!"

"Nesselrode Clay! You listen to me! If you don't get me those flowers, I never want to see you again! And don't you be shooting anybody, either! Every time you go to do something for me you get into trouble, shooting somebody in the stomach!"

Jenny Simms was five feet one inch of dark-haired loveliness and fire. Almost, sometimes, the Cactus Kid wished there were less of the fire.

At other times, he welcomed it.

The fact that she was the prettiest girl in four counties, that her five feet one inch was firm, shapely, and trim as a two-year-old filly, all conspired to make the Kid cringe at the thought of losing her. He was, unfortunately, in love, and the male animal in love is an abject creature when faced by the tyranny of his beloved.

At the time he should be firm, he is weak. At the time he should have been getting her accustomed to driving in harness he was so much in love that he was letting her get the bit in her teeth.

The Cactus Kid, five feet seven inches of solid muscle and bone, curly-haired and given to smiling with a charm all his own, was the most sought-after young man around. At the moment, nobody would have guessed. Nor would they have guessed that the black-holstered, walnut-stocked .44's hanging just now on his saddle were considered by some to be the fastest and deadliest guns in the Rocky Mountain country.

"All right," he said weakly, "I'll get your flowers. Come hell or high water, I'll get "em!" He gave her his hands and helped her up from the flat rock where she was sitting.

Away from the flashing beauty of Jenny's eyes, he was no longer so confident. Flowers! There wasn't a water hole in fifteen miles that wasn't merely cracked earth and gray mud. The streams had stopped running two months ago. Cattle were dying, all that hadn't been hurriedly sold off, and the leaves on the trees had turned crisp and brown around the edges.

Flowers! He scowled thoughtfully. The Widow Finnegan had a garden, and usually there were flowers in bloom. Now maybe ...

The piebald gelding with the pink nose and pink-rimmed eyes was a fast horse on the road, and it moved fast now, going through the hills toward the Slash Five and the Widow Finnegan's elm-shaded yard.

Yet long before he reached it he could see that even the elms looked parched and bare.

The Widow Finnegan was five feet ten and one hundred and eighty pounds of Irishwoman and she met him at the gate.

"Not here!" She looked about as approachable as a bulldog with a fresh bone. "Not here you don't be gettin" no flowers, Kid!"

"Why, I ..." His voice trailed away under the pale blue of her glaring eyes.

"There'll be no soft-soapin' me, nayther!" the Widow Finnegan said sharply. "I know the likes of you, Cactus Kid! Full of blarney an' honey-tongued as a thrush! But I know all about the flowers ye'll be wantin', an' there's few enough left, an' them withered!"

"You ... heard of it?" he asked.

"Heard of it? An' hasn't that colleen o' yours been sayin' all aboot that ye were bringin' her flowers for her birthday! Flowers enough to decorate the rooms with? Flowers in this country where a body is that lucky to find a green blade of grass?"

He glanced thoughtfully at the fence around the small patch of flowers, most of them looking very sick from the hot winds and no rain. She caught his look, and flared.

"No, ye don't! I'm not to be fooled by the likes of ye, Cactus Kid! Ye come back here at night an' every hand on the Slash Five will be digging rock salt out of your southern exposure!

An' it's not just talkin' I am!"

A half-dozen men loafed in the High Card Saloon and they all looked up when he shouldered through the door.

"Rye!" he said.

"What's the matter?" Old Man Hawkins leered at him. "Ain't you after the Herrings? Or have they got you buffaloed too?"

The Cactus Kid looked at him with an unfrly eye. "Got to get some flowers for Jenny," he said lamely, "and she's fussing about me getting into shooting scrapes."

"S the way with women," the barkeep said philosophically. "Fall for a man, then set out to change him. Soon's they got him changed they don't like him no more. Never seen it to fail, Kid."

"Speakin" of flowers," Sumner suggested, "I hear tell there's a gent over to Escalante that orders "em shipped in."

"Be all dried up," the barkeep objected.

"Jenny
'll
want fresh flowers."

"Ain't goin' to find none!" Old Man Hawkins said cheerfully. "Might's well give up, Kid, an' hightail it after the Herrings. You would at least git some money if you got them ... if you got "em."

The Cactus Kid stared malevolently at his unoffending drink. Meanwhile he tried to arrange his thoughts into some sort of order. Now, flowers. Where would a man be apt to find flowers? Nowhere on the flatland, that was sure. The grass was dried up or the season wrong for any kind he knew of.

A man got up and walked to the bar and stopped beside the Kid. He was a big old man wearing a greasy buckskin shirt.

"I'm Ned Hayes," he said, "prospector.

Heard you talkin' about flowers. You'll find plenty in the Blue Mountains. Ain't no drought up thataway. Country shore is green an' purty."

"Thanks." The Kid straightened up, suddenly filled with hope. Then he hesitated, remembering Jenny's admonition about fighting. "Ain't any trouble down thataway, is there? I sure aim to keep out of it this trip."

Hayes chuckled. "Why, man, you won't see a living soul! Nobody ever goes down there "cept maybe a drifting Injun. Robbers" Roost is some north, but they never git down so far. No, you won't see a soul, but you better pack extra grub. There's game, but you won't find no cattleman an' nary a sheep camp. I never seen nobody."

The eight peaks of the mountain group were black against the sky when the Cactus Kid's first day on the trail was ending. This was rough, wild, wind-worried and sun-scorched country, all new to him. Its wild and majestic beauty was lonely as a plateau on the moon, and water was scarce. He pushed on, remembering that Ned Hayes had said there was no drought in the Blues and not wanting to pitch dry camp out on the escarpment.

"Grassy on the east slopes, Kid," Hayes had added. "What yuh'll want to do is to cross the Divide. That is, go over the ridge to the west slope, and there you'll find the greenest forest you ever saw, rushing mountain streams, an' a passel of wild flowers of all kinds and shapes."

All day he had seen no track of horse or man, not even the unshod track of an Indian pony. It was eerie, lonely country and the Kid found himself glancing uneasily over his shoulder and staring in awed wonder at the eight peaks. The mountains were new to him, and they comprised a large section of country, all of sixteen miles long and about ten across.

The piebald was climbing now, and he bent to it with a will. The Kid had stumbled upon the semblance of a trail, an ancient Indian route, probably not used in centuries. It was marked at intervals by small piles of stones such as used to mark their trails in the deserts farther west.

The horse liked it. He could smell the rich, nutritious grass, and was ducking his head for an occasional mouthful. He had no idea where this strange master of his was taking him, but it looked like horse country. Grouse flew up from under his feet, and once a couple of black-tailed deer darted away from his movement, then stopped not a dozen yards away to study him.

Before him the hills showed a notch that seemed to offer a pass to the farther side, and the Cactus Kid swung his horse that way. Then he reined in sharply and stared at the ground.

Three hard-ridden horses had cut in sharply from the north, then swung toward the same cut in the hills that he was heading for. And the trail was fresh!

"What do' you know?" the Cactus Kid muttered.

"Riders in this country! Well, nothing like company!"

Yet he rode more warily, for well he knew that riders in such an area might be on the dodge.

North and west of here was a district in the canyons already becoming famous as Robbers' Roost, and strange bands of horses or cattle occasionally drifted through the country, herded by hard-eyed riders who kept their own counsel and avoided trails.

Chapter
II

A Red Herring
.

Shadows were gathering into black pools in the canyons when he finally saw the notch in the hills deepen into a real opening. The piebald, weary as he was, walked now with his ears cocked forward, and once the Cactus Kid was quite sure he smelled dust in the air.

Despite the heat of the day, the evening grew chill and the night would be cold. The atmosphere was thin here, and the altitude high, yet he wanted to go over the pass before he bedded down. His eyes and ears were alert for sight or sound of the riders who preceded him, but he heard nothing, saw nothing.

At last he rode into the deep shadows of an aspen grove and, hearing water, pushed toward it. Here, on the banks of a small stream, he found a hollow.

He built a fire, carefully shielded, and picketed his horse. After a brief supper and coffee, he rolled in his blanket and poncho and slept the night through.

He awoke to find his fire only the soft gray of wood ashes, the sky of the same shade and texture. Chilled, he threw off his blankets and built a fire of mountain mahogany, young pine, and branches broken from the dead lower limbs of the aspen.

Soon the fire was crackling and he had water on.

The morning was still and cold. Below him the tops of trees were like islands in the mist rising from the forest, a thick fog like the smoke of leaf fires. The air was damp and the smoke held low, but the hungry tongues of the fire ate rapidly at the dry branches. In a matter of minutes there was the smell of coffee and of beef frying.

Several times he walked away from the task of preparing breakfast to look out through the woods beyond the hollow in which he was camped. Without any reason, he felt uneasy and his mind kept returning to the three riders. No honest men would be in this country unless they were passing through, and there were easier routes to the east and north. He thought of the Herrings but dismissed it at once. They were east of here and by now the posse probably had them.

His breakfast over, he led the piebald to water, but the horse refused to drink from the cold stream. Quickly he saddled up, then mounted. The black-and-white horse pitched a few times in a casual, disinterested way, more as a matter of form than of conviction. The Kid moved out.