The Lawbringers 2, page 18
“You want to sit there and argue or get out of here? There’s a horse saddled in the alley across from the side door. Grub in the saddlebags and my mackinaw. I packed your guns and kit.”
“Chico,” said Ben Harmony, “fools are the only ones who get away with the impossible.”
“Fools are the only ones who try.” Clay stepped back. “You coming?”
“We could both end up in Boot Hill with dirt in our faces.”
“You’ll end up there if you don’t go, that’s for sure.”
“Don’t make any funeral arrangements until you’re sure you’ve got a corpse,” said Ben. The familiar grin flashed across his dark face. “All right, Chico. I reckon you only get one shot at life, and I’ll take what’s offered me. I figured somebody’d turn me loose.”
“The old man?”
“Maybe that’s what I was hoping. I’ve been lying here like Lazarus in his open grave, waiting for a savior to show up. I’m obliged to you, Chico.”
“Head southeast to Oak Creek Canyon,” Clay said. “That’ll let you down through the Tonto Rim. From there if you’re smart you’ll cut hell-for-leather for the Mex border.”
“And never be able to come back,” Ben Harmony droned. “Then again, it’s better than dead.” He swung through the open door and gripped Clay, hard, on the arm. “I’m going to shake the world till it hollers uncle, Chico. Look me up sometime.”
“Just take care,” Clay murmured. He hung the lamp back on its nail. They slipped past the office door and down the back stairs. At the door Clay hesitated. “Ben.”
“Yeah?”
“Good luck.”
“What makes you think I ever needed luck?” Ben Harmony reached for Clay’s hand and gripped it in the dark. Clay clamped it hard. Ben said, “Thank you, Chico.”
“Make some sense out of your life,” Clay said.
“Why should life make sense?” Ben chuckled sonorously. “Don’t worry, I don’t expect to be shaking hands with St. Peter for a while yet. Nervous, Chico?”
“No.”
“You may not be, but your knees sure are. Where’s that horse? I’d better cut for it by myself. You stick here till I’m gone.”
“Out the door and straight across to the alley.”
“Let me take your hat.”
Clay removed his hat and found Ben’s hand in the dark. “Here.” He heard Ben latch the door open. A thin line of light appeared; Ben pressed his face against it and searched the street. Clay said, “Write me a letter to let me know you made it.”
“I will.” There was a quick squeeze of Ben’s hand, and then he was through the door. Clay heard the light taps of his running footfalls. There was no outcry. A horse started up and trotted softly away. Clay raked fingers through his hair, counted to one hundred, and stepped out through the door. He rammed his hands into his coat pockets and strolled up the street.
He went into Hannah Early’s and found Hannah at the bar. “Am I too young to buy you a drink?”
“Not if you’re old enough to ask. Are you as lost as you look, Clay?”
He fixed his eyes on the drink that appeared before him. Hannah said, “All people your age are unhappy sometimes. Maybe if you’re lucky it won’t get worse when you get older.”
Clay had difficulty raising the glass to his mouth. Hannah’s big homely face shifted toward him. “Ain’t a good idea to drink whiskey when things are going bad for you.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Do you want to talk about it?”
“Maybe,” he said, “but not to you.”
“You just want to sit there and listen to the tears run down your face.”
“Hannah?”
“What, kid?”
“It’s nothing but a puking trap, and that’s the goddam truth.”
“Relax, kid. You want to get loaded and sleep it off upstairs? Ain’t nobody going to bother you. Want something to eat?”
“I thought you were strictly business.”
“I am. Don’t make no mistake, kid. I think a lot about money. I never sold myself cheap. Yeah, God made me as ugly as He could, and then He hit me in the face with a hammer. Well, then, I wish I’d been born beautiful, I wish somebody could have loved me—I was married once. To a gambler. All I ever did was play solitaire. He went out on the end of a rope.”
He reached for the bottle to refill his glass. A girl came downstairs, giggling. Hannah put her palm on Clay’s bottle and held it down. “You in a tight place, Clay?”
“Maybe.”
“If you figure somebody aims to burn you at the stake, ain’t no need to bring along your own jug of kerosene.”
“I got to get out of here,” Clay said. He left as abruptly as he had come. On the street he stared at the courthouse. It wouldn’t be long before his father finished his last rounds of the night and made a bed check on the jail.
Chapter Twenty
The sheriff’s office filled with men. McAffee came in roaring, with Littlejack on his heels. Clay saw Dinwiddie go in after them. Clay went up the stairs two at a time; he rushed into the office in time to hear McAffee shout, “You’re asking us to swallow a hell of a mouthful.”
Littlejack said, “That deputy doodad don’t guarantee you ain’t a bald-faced liar, Harry.”
“I can’t help that,” Harry Greiff said. “I didn’t see nothing and I didn’t hear nothing.”
McAffee said, “He was let out with a key, Farris. Who else besides you has a key?”
“Nobody.” The sheriff hooked down a rifle and went to his desk. “If you people will get out of the way, I’ll be getting after the prisoner.”
“There’s a norther whipping up,” Dinwiddie said. “You won’t be likely to track anybody through a blizzard, Farris.”
“He’s gone for good,” Littlejack growled. “And you let him loose.”
“I did not let him loose,” the sheriff said. Cords in his face made angry ripples. “He broke out of my jail. No man alive has ever escaped from my custody. Mr. Greiff, saddle our horses. I’ll join you at the stable by the time you’ve got them ready.”
Clay said, “Saddle mine, too, Harry.”
His father glanced at him. “I don’t want any amateur help, boy.”
“I guess you’ve got it whether you want it or not.”
“I think we’ll all go,” said McAffee. “Just to see that you do your duty—sheriff.”
The sheriff said, “What is it you expect to win by that?”
“It’s what we don’t expect to lose,” McAffee answered. “Clyde, go over with Harry and saddle enough horses for a posse. We’ll need a pack horse and food for several days—Dinwiddie, that’s your chore. Move, gentlemen.”
The sheriff said, “I’m still running this office, McAffee. I don’t need a pack of fat old men to slow me down.”
“If any of us slows down, he’ll fall out of the party,” McAffee said. “You can’t keep us from coming, Farris. You’d better accept that and quit wasting time with arguments.”
“Then just stay out of my way.” The sheriff was almost snarling. He yanked open a desk drawer and lifted out a box of rifle ammunition.
Clay went down to the stable with Harry Greiff. Littlejack cut across to his shop to get his gun. Harry Greiff got ropes down. “Ben Harmony’s on the run from your pa’s gun, Clay, and he knows what that means, for certain sure. I guess you can figure out for yourself what he’d likely do to anybody he thought was in his way.”
Clay grunted.
“Keep your head down, then, and don’t pet no stray dogs.”
“All right, Harry.”
The deputy turned up a lamp. “Me and your pa both, they’re likely to tear off our hide in strips, we don’t get Ben back.”
“First we’ve got to catch him,” said Clay.
“Saddle that buckskin. Got good legs. I’ll get your pa’s horse.”
Clay was buckling up the back cinch when Littlejack lumbered inside and pitched in. Clay said, “You see the old man coming?”
“I’m coming,” said Farris Rand, walking into the stable. “And I’ll thank you not to call me the old man. All set, Mr. Greiff?”
“Just about, sir.”
Farris Rand had a full gunnysack in one hand and his rifle in the other. It was the .45-90 long-range buffalo gun. Clay lifted his eyes from the long gun to his father’s face. It was all closed up.
McAffee came marching in, with Lavender right behind him. “Clay?” she said.
Clay drew her aside into a stall. “Why’d you come here?”
“Didn’t you want me to?”
“You’ll catch cold without more clothes on.”
“I’m all right,” she said. She put on a smile. “Be careful—I like you alive.”
“You haven’t seen me dead. How do you know?”
“Don’t joke about it.”
He kissed her mouth. His father’s voice brought him around. “Let’s go, Mr. Greiff.”
Clay came out of the stall. His father was mounted on his horse, stooping to clear the rafters. His coat collar was turned up, and lamplight glittered frostily on the surfaces of his eyes. “I want him found,” the sheriff said, “and I want him taken apart.” He reined his horse out of the stable.
Clay ran to his horse and got up. Lavender stood by the stall partition. He tried to smile at her. Harry Greiff rode by. “Ready, son?”
“I was born ready.”
“Let’s go, then.”
The sheriff’s voice came back from the street: “I’ll give a hundred dollars to the man who finds his tracks.”
Unaccountably, the storm held back. The third morning dawned bitter cold but bright. The previous day’s thaw had hardened by night into a ground-crust that made hard footing for the horses. The progress of the posse had been slow and circuitous.
It was the waiting that put a ragged edge on Clay’s nerves—the waiting and the not knowing whether Ben Harmony was going to make it. There were signs his horse had picked up a limp.
Clay lay against the cold earth with his cheek against the rifle stock. His father crouched behind him and talked under his breath. “He’ll turn up from the creek in a minute. Always shoot on the rise, boy, and make sure of your shot. Never let them suffer.”
The jackrabbit sat back at the creek and looked around. Light streamed through the oaks, its color very rich. Across the sun-spattered stream, the jack turned and humped up the steep bank as if on springs. Clay brought the rifle up and squeezed the trigger.
The jack lost its footing and fell sliding back to the creek. Its big hind legs drummed the earth.
“Good,” his father said. “That’ll provision us for another day.”
His father’s cheeks were barbed with a gray stubble; the untrimmed moustache was ragged and droopy. Clay got his feet under him and went unsteadily down to the stream. He unsheathed his knife, straightened out the rabbit carcass and set to skinning it. He watched his father prowl the hillside.
Clay’s hand was weak with a tremor. He had been without sleep three days—eighty hours of riding, broken only by stops to swap horses at ranches and way stations.
Last night they had lost the spoor. Harry Greiff and the others had split away to circle for tracks. Clay was in no hurry to see them return. The knife worked bluntly; he ripped at the flesh with a weary curse. He saw everything through a drunken film that made nothing seem quite real.
His father came up. “You’re doing a second-rate job of that.”
“So tired I can’t see straight. What do you expect?” Clay tossed hair out of his eyes. “We ought to lay over and get some rest.”
“Ben’s getting no more rest than we are. Don’t you think you can do as well as he can?” His father hunkered down by him, a great rock of a man. “You may break, boy, but I won’t let you quit.”
“Why?”
“Don’t beg, boy. Don’t ever beg.”
Sunlight made a clear stream of color, pearling the creek. Clay flashed his eyes to clear them and began to cut the meat in strips. His father helped knead salt into it. They packed it away and washed their hands in the creek. Racked with sores and half blind in a haze, Clay lay back, too tired to care about the vinegar smell of his own clothes.
His father’s voice rode against him. “What made you think you could get away with it, boy?”
“What?”
“Do you know the penalty for abetting an escape?”
Clay kept his eyes closed. “You’ll have to prove it first.”
“And if I can’t, that makes it right?”
Clay sat up. “Don’t boil over so early or you’ll run out of steam. I’m not in a mood to be preached at, not by you.”
His father said, “Boy, you’re not fit to shine my boots.”
Blinking away the blaze of sunlight, Clay said, “To hell with you.”
The posse rode through the forest. A rider swept in—Harry Greiff, his face glowing in the chill wind. “Picked up tracks going south. He’s gone down through Oak Creek Canyon.”
“Down the Rim,” the sheriff said. “He’s making a run for the border.”
Littlejack said, “That’ll be four days’ ride, even if he had a fresh horse.”
“And plenty of country to lose his tracks in between here and there,” said Harry Greiff.
They rode ahead through a threadbare cover of snow that had trickled down during the noon hour. McAffee, shaking with fatigue, and Dinwiddie with his stovepipe hat crammed down over his ears, rode in the rear without complaint—and without any other sound. Clay was swaying in his saddle. Below, down the steep canyon, the creek made silver loops. The smell of pine resin whirled in streaky currents along this high rim that cut Arizona neatly in two. Bundled in his fleece coat and heavy mittens, Clay felt the bite in the air.
Harry Greiff said, “I come pret’ near getting killed last winter on that trail. Tough enough summertimes. You get ice in the shadows, like to bust a horse’s leg. Watch yourselves.”
Without comment, Farris Rand put his horse over the rim. He leaned far back in the saddle to balance the horse.
Clay let his reins hang loose and gave the horse its head to follow Harry Greiff’s. He clung to the saddle horn with both hands. His eyes slid shut—his mind sputtered and went out.
The horses jogged and jostled. Hairpin switchbacks took them down a two-thousand-foot drop off the Kaibab Plateau, down into desert country—the sprawling flat of monumental red stone mesas that stood on the chilly plain like forgotten remnants on an abandoned battlefield.
His father’s voice weaved across his consciousness. “We’ll change horses at Verde Crossing.”
Greiff said, “He swapped for a palomino at Bannerman’s. Everybody keep an eye out for it.”
Four days of manhunting. Clay swam through the fog of sleeplessness. Small flakes of snow came riding the air currents.
Almost asleep, he heard his father say, “That’s a palomino.”
Clay brought it into focus then—the Verde Crossing station, half a mile across the butte-littered plain. Greiff said, “In the corral.”
Colonel McAffee stirred his horse forward. He had a wadded towel under his rump. “Maybe the Nigra’s still there.”
“Maybe,” said the sheriff. “We’ll leave the horses here. But I may need them in a hurry. Mr. Greiff, you’ll stay with them. If you see my signal, bring them along on the run.”
“Yes, sir.”
They dismounted, stiff in every joint. Clay tested his legs. He was weak behind the knees. They moved from brush to brush, manzanita and creosote and paloverde clumps, with the high dark clouds blacking out shadows. Keen to the possibility of ambush, the sheriff had his rifle in both hands. Clay heard him chamber a cartridge.
They reached a heavy line of greasewood. The sheriff said, “Scared, McAffee? All right, we’re all scared—why shouldn’t we be? But if Ben’s in there, he’s scared, too.”
Clay watched the stir of cook smoke from the way-station chimney. It lost itself in the rolling storm clouds. The station was a low box of a building, rooted firm in the emptiness. The ruts of the Gila Bend-Flagstaff coach road wound up out of the country to the southwest, whimsically called Horse Thief Basin, and continued north into the brush. It was a lonely stretch of bitter country where in the summer the only shade a man could find was his own shadow—and in the winter there was nothing to break a blizzard’s wind.
The wind was rising.
“That’s a palomino, all right,” said Dinwiddie.
“Then cock your gun,” the sheriff muttered. “You’re blocking my view, Clay.”
Clay moved aside to give him a clear field of fire. The sheriff sent his deep-voiced call rolling across the flats: “Horn. Sid Horn.”
Grinding tensions set Clay’s nerves afire. He rubbed one eye and then the other.
“Sid Horn. Come out where I can see you.”
A voice roared from the station. “Who wants Sid Horn?”
“Sheriff Rand.”
A tub-bellied man appeared in the door. “What you doing way out there? Come on in.”
Dinwiddie said, “That gamy son-of-a-bitch.”
Farris Rand said, “I’m looking for an escaped prisoner. Black skin. You got him inside there, Horn?”
“Nobody in here but me, Sheriff.”
“Stand fast, then.” In a lower voice the sheriff said, “Give us cover from here, you two. Clay, you’ll come with me.”
He stepped into the open, rifle across his chest. Clay walked out behind him. He had a firm grip on his gun, but it was not cocked.
Sid Horn was a big, loose man who sagged front and back. He had a thick brutal chin and a polished bald head. He stared at the sheriff with evident dislike. “Well?”
The sheriff said to Clay, “Check that horse, boy.”
“I ain’t seen no black-skin prisoner,” said Horn.
Clay went to the corral. He kept swallowing. The palomino gelding trotted around the corral. Clay waited for it to come close so that he could read the brand. Then he went back to his father.
“Bannerman’s brand, all right.”
