The Lawbringers 2, page 19
There was no point in lying about it.
His father said, “We’ll have a look around inside, then.”
“I told you, Sheriff, he ain’t here.” Sid Horn spoke with a prairie twang. He smiled falsely. “Ain’t seen you since the last flash flood. Where you been keepin’ yourself?”
“Where’s my prisoner, Sid?”
“How in hell should I know?”
“He’s been here.”
“Has he?”
Farris Rand shouldered the fat man aside and went into the station. Startled, Clay lifted his rifle defensively. “Go in ahead of me, Mr. Horn.”
“What the hell is this, anyway?” Horn shuffled inside ahead of Clay.
When they went in, the sheriff was coming from the back of the place. “Not here,” he said. “All right, Sid. Let’s hear about it.”
“Hear what?”
“I’m listening.”
“I just don’t recollect anybody being around this way lately, Sheriff.”
The sheriff said, “You annoy me a little, Sid.”
“Hell, you know my policy. I mind my own business. Ain’t no other way to get along in these parts. If I was to start tellin’ everything I know, my life wouldn’t be worth cow dung.”
“I’m overriding your policy, Sid. The prisoner broke out of my jail.”
“Think of that.”
“Where is he, Sid?”
“I don’t know nothing now that I didn’t know the last time you asked that question.”
The sheriff had a poker stare. “You’re a liar.”
Horn said nervously, “I know. I’ve always been a liar.”
The sheriff lunged forward. The barrel of the .45-90 sank three inches into Horn’s belly. Horn backpedaled and grabbed his stomach, making sick noises. The sheriff said, “I want answers, and I’m beginning not to care how I get them.”
Sid Horn’s mouth opened and closed. “No.”
The sheriff whacked him with a sharp, raking swipe of the rifle’s front sight. It laid Horn’s cheek open: he brought his hand away bloody.
“Goddam you, Sheriff. He was here. Swapped that palomino for a pinto gelding of mine.”
“How much of a jump has he got?”
“Five, six hours maybe.”
“All right. I’ll forget you said anything.”
“You do that.”
“We’ll trade you for fresh horses,” the sheriff said. “Return exchange on our way back. Send that palomino back to Bannerman’s ranch. I’ll see that you get evened up for it.”
“You damn well better.”
The sheriff went toward the door. “Which way did he head, Sid? And don’t lie to me.”
“Due south.”
Harry Greiff brought up the tired horses, and they moved saddles to Horn’s relay string. McAffee marched up to the sheriff, rubbed his rump, and said, “Know what’s riding on this, don’t you?”
“I know it as well as you do,” the sheriff said.
“Election’s one week from today,” McAffee said. He scratched the tufted stubble on his cheek. “If you’ve got the Nigra back in jail by next Tuesday, you’ll get reelected. If you haven’t—” and he let it hang in the air.
Dinwiddie, listening on the fringes, finished for him: “If you haven’t, Farris, I wouldn’t give too much for your future in politics.” He tried to make a joke of it, but his face was wan.
The sheriff ignored both of them. He spoke to Harry Greiff.
“We’ve got a norther coming up, Mr. Greiff. We’ll try to cover as much ground as we can before it catches us. The prisoner has a six-hour head start. We’ll try to pick up his tracks south of here.”
Harry Greiff tugged a cinch up. He grunted while he spoke. “That’s mighty open country out there to get caught in, sir.”
“It’s only October,” the sheriff said. “I don’t expect it to be much of a blizzard. It may be enough to make the prisoner take shelter, in which case we’ll have a chance to close the gap between us. All set?”
“Yes, sir.” Harry Greiff handed a pair of reins to the sheriff.
As always, the sheriff disregarded the unauthorized members of the posse. From the start, he had acted as if they weren’t there. Clay had to invest great effort into tugging himself up onto the saddle. He spurred his horse to catch up with his father and the deputy. Behind him, McAffee and Dinwiddie milled around, trying to get on their horses. Temporarily revived, Clay urged the horse to a canter. In the station doorway Sid Horn watched them go. He had a towel against his face.
Harry Greiff moved ahead, prowling a rapid arc for prints. Clay’s father reined back and said, “I’ll only say this once, so listen to it. I had a feeling Ben was inside the station. He wasn’t, but that’s not what troubles me. It occurred to me that you were behind me with a gun—and I didn’t trust you, boy. I can’t have that. You’ll turn your guns over to Mr. Greiff immediately, and you’ll consider yourself under arrest. I’m holding myself accountable for your custody until we get home.”
“Arrest? What for?”
“You and I both know there was only one person alive who could have let Ben out of jail with a key.”
“Maybe he picked the lock,” Clay suggested.
“If I’m wrong, I’ll apologize when you prove it to my satisfaction.”
“Guilty until proved innocent, hey?”
“Just don’t get behind me, boy,” his father said bleakly. “I wish to God I knew whose side you were on.”
They were riding into a gathering midafternoon twilight. Tall lances of cloud shot forward from the unrolling crest of the storm. A chill sensation ruffled Clay’s flesh. He bound his hat down around his ears with his bandanna, and he said, “If you had any brains, you’d know what side I’m on. I’m on your side, whether you know it or not. You are my father, aren’t you?”
“Sometimes I’m not even sure of that anymore,” the sheriff said.
“You should have let him go yourself. You wanted to. Ben wanted you to. We all wanted you to.”
His father said, “The law doesn’t make allowances for what a man wants to do, Clay,” and pulled his horse away.
They covered two miles of ground, and a strange feeling rolled through Clay. The air was still. The crunching of the horses’ feet was much louder than it should have been. Clay buckled on his oilskin rain slicker over the heavy coat. Harry Greiff had his rifle and revolver; Clay was weighted down by less impedimenta than the rest of them. Shaggy and surly, McAffee and Dinwiddie rode a little behind him, loosely straddling their horses and huddling against the cold. Out ahead, the two gray manhunters drummed on at a steady canter, covering stretched-out figure eights. The sheriff had found the tracks.
Dinwiddie said, “God must have had it in for this country. Christ, you’d think he’d get tired of chasing after his own pointed finger. I hanker for a soft bed and a warm fire and something I can get my teeth into.”
“He’ll never abandon the search,” said McAffee. “The man’s choking to death in the embrace of his ambition.”
The sheriff called a halt and dismounted to scan the ground afoot. When the others caught up, he said, “Turned southwest here. He probably aimed for those buttes when he saw the storm coming up. It may be he’ll take shelter from the wind there.”
The buttes, just visible through the dark swirl of air, stood a good eighteen or twenty miles distant across the desert.
“He won’t travel in a storm,” the sheriff said, “not down here. He doesn’t know the country.”
McAffee said, “Shriveled guts and saddle sores. We’re all used up, Farris. Can’t fight our way through a blizzard—too damned exhausted. We’d better lay over and wait it out. He won’t gain any ground on us.”
“Nor us on him,” the sheriff said. “We’ll proceed.”
McAffee unbuckled his saddlebag and brought forth his bottle of John Vale. Clay had watched him deplete several bottles. The supply seemed endless. McAffee said, “You’d ride us all into the ground to save your chance in this election, wouldn’t you?”
“You’re the one who wants to be sheriff,” Farris Rand said. “Still liking the idea, McAffee?” He turned to his horse and settled his boot in the stirrup. “Turn back if you want to. You can still make Sid Horn’s before the storm breaks.” He lifted himself astride the horse and gigged it away.
Sometime in the next half hour Clyde Littlejack came bouncing along. Clay hadn’t even noticed his absence, but when he thought about it, he realized he hadn’t seen Littlejack for several hours. The farrier had the carcass of a whitetail doe sprawled across the packhorse saddle.
The sheriff looked back. “You make a hell of a manhunter, Clyde.”
“We’ve all got to eat.” Fatigue had subdued Littlejack’s bellicosity.
“Or don’t you get hungry, either?” said Dinwiddie, who was beginning to display awe at the sheriff’s monumental, unflagging endurance.
Overhead, the forming darkness pressed down. Clay’s feet and exposed face felt the blades of the cold. The height of the jagged clouds told of a tremendous wind rushing forward. Dust devils appeared vaguely in the distance. Behind them marched a spreading darkness. The last of the day drained out of the sky: within an hour the wind’s reverberation was a trembling, charging echo. It was like the distant drumming of a herd in full stampede.
The first touch of the wind disturbed the horses and put them into a nervous trot. The sheriff kept an uneasy watch on the black storm boiling ahead.
They closed within five miles of the buttes. The churning force rushed upon them, all wild crying and oblivion; Clay heard the roar of the norther in full fury. Pressure seized him. It shook him on the saddle. It was a great voice howling. Slashing blades of snow and hail battered him. The sheriff and Harry Greiff herded them all together, and the sheriff tied a rope from bridle to bridle, linking them all together. The thrust of the wind made them angle sharply to stay on course. Clay scraped forming frost from his jaw and saw the moisture of his breath steaming swiftly away.
The time came when he could no longer see the ground at the horse’s feet. What had been blackness became a swirl of white. His legs began to numb. He kicked them against the stirrups: the tingling that ran up his knees was almost pleasant. He huddled inside his clothes and batted his gloved hands together.
Something whacked his thigh. A hand reached up and tugged his sleeve. He bent down.
It was his father. “Get down and walk.” The wind ripped the words away.
He climbed down and fixed his fist to the horse’s headstall. His legs were all but unfeeling. His nose was stiff, cheeks raw, ears throbbing.
He battled forward against the wind, against panic. Going in circles. Maybe we’re going in circles. Does a blind man feel like this? Jesus—Jesus.
The wind knocked him flat against the horse. The horse danced back. He leaned forty degrees into the wind and kept moving, tugged by the rope that disappeared ahead toward Harry Greiff’s horse. His legs were wooden stalks by now, but it was his ears that really hurt. He took off one glove with his teeth and got his hand under his hat to rub his ears, one at a time. They began to burn.
The wind slacked. He believed he could see the misty shape of a horse ahead of him. They plodded another ten yards, and he recognized Harry Greiff’s square back beyond that horse. In patchy glimpses he could make out his father.
The sheriff kept moving until the air was almost clear. He called a halt under the cliff of the butte.
They gathered around in a knot, striking each other’s coats, puffing up clouds of snow. The sheriff said, “Don’t sit down—don’t quit moving. All of you stay put here. Mr. Greiff, you and I will scout the base of this mesa.”
McAffee said, “For God’s sake, have a rest, Farris.”
“He may be within a hundred feet of us right this minute,” said the sheriff. He slogged into the gloom with the deputy on his heels. Greiff stripped off his glove and lifted his revolver.
Afraid, Clay stood rooted for only a moment. He broke out of his tracks and went after them.
Chapter Twenty-One
They found no one.
The storm moved on as quickly as it had come. Sundown brought the last of the snowfall, though the wind kept on, strong enough to chill Clay through.
The sheriff assembled a council of war. McAffee was the first to speak. “We’re dead on our feet, Farris—and so are you. Even if the Nigra stumbled into our midst right now, none of us would be able to hold him. Not even you. We’ve got to rest.”
Harry Greiff said, “We can’t find tracks now anyway, sir.”
Clyde Littlejack was off in the dark somewhere; his howl came roaring forward.
“What the hell?” Clay said, spinning.
They set out at a run.
A cross of boards stood driven casually into the ground, right at the base of the cliff where the wind could not tear it up. Littlejack was kneeling down. He cupped a lighted match and played it across the face of the marker. There was a knife-scratched legend:
SHERIFF RAND 1841—1896
The sheriff’s moustache was limp in the damp wind. He looked somber and tragic. The look he gave the loose weary men around him was disgusted. Harry Greiff regarded him glumly.
“All right,” the sheriff said, without feeling. “I’ll get him, Mr. Greiff. I always do.”
Clay said, “Goddam it, he’s your—”
“Shut up!” For a moment Clay believed his father was going to strike him. Then the sheriff dropped his arm. “That boy wiped his feet on me, Clay.”
Harry Greiff ripped up the cross. He broke it across his knee and hurled the pieces into the night.
Farris Rand said, “Get mounted.”
McAffee blinked. “Now?”
“Now. He can’t travel in mud without leaving tracks. It’s our chance to get him. Move!”
McAffee began to protest. Harry Greiff turned on him and began to bark like a master sergeant.
Clay had watched his father’s face grow emptier day by day.
They camped without a fire and waited for dawn. Clay sank his teeth into the raw fresh venison. He almost gagged. With his portion half-eaten, he slumped back. Sleep struck him like a club.
There was rain. It woke him; daylight filtered weakly through the cold drizzle. His father was already mounted. Clay cinched up and cantered after him; the others straggled across a mile of desert.
From a ridge line they spotted a red-painted stagecoach pulled by four Kentucky mules. Half an hour later they stopped at the Council Springs crossroads store. The storekeeper had not seen a passing horseman, but the tracks went by there, only an hour old.
The trail of the single-shod horse led them south by southwest. Near noon it crossed the Prescott coach road. The drizzle started and stopped by fits, not laying down enough moisture to erase tracks. Heavier gray clouds scudded forward, cutting off the sun.
In thick, high grass Harry Greiff halted and stepped down to examine the ground where the pursued horse had wandered across a bare ant hill.
“Tracks been meandering,” said Greiff. “Thought it was curious. Look here.” He stood up, dusted his hands, and surveyed the horizons. “Something wrong, sir. These tracks ain’t deep enough.”
Farris Rand unsheathed his field glasses and raised them to his eyes. He swept the southward desert with slow care.
Harry Greiff said, “From the look of this, that horse has got no rider on him.”
“I see it,” the sheriff said. The field glasses steadied. “Grazing with the saddle still on him.”
“Huh?” said Clyde Littlejack.
Clay said, “What?”
Harry Greiff pushed his hat back. “Reckon he dismounted at the coach road and slapped the horse on.”
Dinwiddie said, “That’d take a lot of nerve.”
“He’s got a lot of nerve,” said the sheriff. “He knows we’re tight behind him. He decided to risk it, that’s all.”
“I don’t get it,” Clay said. “It doesn’t add up.”
Harry Greiff said, “He drove the horse away and waited in the road for somebody to come by and pick him up.”
“Somebody? Somebody who?”
“Who knows. Maybe he boarded that stagecoach we saw.” McAffee said, “But that coach was headed north.”
“He might have done that,” the sheriff observed, “just to throw us off the scent. With a little more luck he’d have had us waste half the day down here with our noses to the ground.”
It took them twenty minutes to backtrack to the coach road. The sheriff and his deputy dismounted to inspect the earth. After a while Harry Greiff straightened up with a grunt. “Deep boot prints here, sir. He squatted for a while, waiting.”
Dinwiddie said, “He could have gone either way. Too much traffic in those ruts—they’d swallow up any tracks.”
“To be sure,” said the sheriff. He went back to his horse and climbed up. “If he went south, he’d have had to walk. There hasn’t been a southbound coach along today. If he went north, then he’s on that coach we passed.”
Greiff said, “He’s just shrewd enough to walk on south and lay back off the road somewhere down in those hills.” Littlejack said, “He’d get a lot farther on the stage.”
The sheriff was considering it. Colonel McAffee said, “Just for the sake of argument—”
“Which I don’t need at all right now.”
“—let’s say he did take the stagecoach. Where does that put him? Prescott? Your telegram’s in the sheriff’s office there. The Nigra’s too easy to recognize. He wouldn’t take that chance.”
Harry Greiff said, “He could have gotten off the stage any place between here and Prescott.”
The sheriff spoke slowly. “He’s on the run. He’s scared. His first instinct will be to put miles behind him.”
McAffee said, “Counted the ifs in that, Farris? It’s a long shot.”
“It’s the only shot we’ve got. I’d suggest we shoot it.”
Ben was not on the coach, had never been on it, had not been seen by the driver. It was late afternoon by then, but Farris Rand spoke calmly. “All right. He’s gained eight hours, but he has no horse and it will take him a day’s walking to reach the nearest ranch. We’re going after him.”
His father said, “We’ll have a look around inside, then.”
“I told you, Sheriff, he ain’t here.” Sid Horn spoke with a prairie twang. He smiled falsely. “Ain’t seen you since the last flash flood. Where you been keepin’ yourself?”
“Where’s my prisoner, Sid?”
“How in hell should I know?”
“He’s been here.”
“Has he?”
Farris Rand shouldered the fat man aside and went into the station. Startled, Clay lifted his rifle defensively. “Go in ahead of me, Mr. Horn.”
“What the hell is this, anyway?” Horn shuffled inside ahead of Clay.
When they went in, the sheriff was coming from the back of the place. “Not here,” he said. “All right, Sid. Let’s hear about it.”
“Hear what?”
“I’m listening.”
“I just don’t recollect anybody being around this way lately, Sheriff.”
The sheriff said, “You annoy me a little, Sid.”
“Hell, you know my policy. I mind my own business. Ain’t no other way to get along in these parts. If I was to start tellin’ everything I know, my life wouldn’t be worth cow dung.”
“I’m overriding your policy, Sid. The prisoner broke out of my jail.”
“Think of that.”
“Where is he, Sid?”
“I don’t know nothing now that I didn’t know the last time you asked that question.”
The sheriff had a poker stare. “You’re a liar.”
Horn said nervously, “I know. I’ve always been a liar.”
The sheriff lunged forward. The barrel of the .45-90 sank three inches into Horn’s belly. Horn backpedaled and grabbed his stomach, making sick noises. The sheriff said, “I want answers, and I’m beginning not to care how I get them.”
Sid Horn’s mouth opened and closed. “No.”
The sheriff whacked him with a sharp, raking swipe of the rifle’s front sight. It laid Horn’s cheek open: he brought his hand away bloody.
“Goddam you, Sheriff. He was here. Swapped that palomino for a pinto gelding of mine.”
“How much of a jump has he got?”
“Five, six hours maybe.”
“All right. I’ll forget you said anything.”
“You do that.”
“We’ll trade you for fresh horses,” the sheriff said. “Return exchange on our way back. Send that palomino back to Bannerman’s ranch. I’ll see that you get evened up for it.”
“You damn well better.”
The sheriff went toward the door. “Which way did he head, Sid? And don’t lie to me.”
“Due south.”
Harry Greiff brought up the tired horses, and they moved saddles to Horn’s relay string. McAffee marched up to the sheriff, rubbed his rump, and said, “Know what’s riding on this, don’t you?”
“I know it as well as you do,” the sheriff said.
“Election’s one week from today,” McAffee said. He scratched the tufted stubble on his cheek. “If you’ve got the Nigra back in jail by next Tuesday, you’ll get reelected. If you haven’t—” and he let it hang in the air.
Dinwiddie, listening on the fringes, finished for him: “If you haven’t, Farris, I wouldn’t give too much for your future in politics.” He tried to make a joke of it, but his face was wan.
The sheriff ignored both of them. He spoke to Harry Greiff.
“We’ve got a norther coming up, Mr. Greiff. We’ll try to cover as much ground as we can before it catches us. The prisoner has a six-hour head start. We’ll try to pick up his tracks south of here.”
Harry Greiff tugged a cinch up. He grunted while he spoke. “That’s mighty open country out there to get caught in, sir.”
“It’s only October,” the sheriff said. “I don’t expect it to be much of a blizzard. It may be enough to make the prisoner take shelter, in which case we’ll have a chance to close the gap between us. All set?”
“Yes, sir.” Harry Greiff handed a pair of reins to the sheriff.
As always, the sheriff disregarded the unauthorized members of the posse. From the start, he had acted as if they weren’t there. Clay had to invest great effort into tugging himself up onto the saddle. He spurred his horse to catch up with his father and the deputy. Behind him, McAffee and Dinwiddie milled around, trying to get on their horses. Temporarily revived, Clay urged the horse to a canter. In the station doorway Sid Horn watched them go. He had a towel against his face.
Harry Greiff moved ahead, prowling a rapid arc for prints. Clay’s father reined back and said, “I’ll only say this once, so listen to it. I had a feeling Ben was inside the station. He wasn’t, but that’s not what troubles me. It occurred to me that you were behind me with a gun—and I didn’t trust you, boy. I can’t have that. You’ll turn your guns over to Mr. Greiff immediately, and you’ll consider yourself under arrest. I’m holding myself accountable for your custody until we get home.”
“Arrest? What for?”
“You and I both know there was only one person alive who could have let Ben out of jail with a key.”
“Maybe he picked the lock,” Clay suggested.
“If I’m wrong, I’ll apologize when you prove it to my satisfaction.”
“Guilty until proved innocent, hey?”
“Just don’t get behind me, boy,” his father said bleakly. “I wish to God I knew whose side you were on.”
They were riding into a gathering midafternoon twilight. Tall lances of cloud shot forward from the unrolling crest of the storm. A chill sensation ruffled Clay’s flesh. He bound his hat down around his ears with his bandanna, and he said, “If you had any brains, you’d know what side I’m on. I’m on your side, whether you know it or not. You are my father, aren’t you?”
“Sometimes I’m not even sure of that anymore,” the sheriff said.
“You should have let him go yourself. You wanted to. Ben wanted you to. We all wanted you to.”
His father said, “The law doesn’t make allowances for what a man wants to do, Clay,” and pulled his horse away.
They covered two miles of ground, and a strange feeling rolled through Clay. The air was still. The crunching of the horses’ feet was much louder than it should have been. Clay buckled on his oilskin rain slicker over the heavy coat. Harry Greiff had his rifle and revolver; Clay was weighted down by less impedimenta than the rest of them. Shaggy and surly, McAffee and Dinwiddie rode a little behind him, loosely straddling their horses and huddling against the cold. Out ahead, the two gray manhunters drummed on at a steady canter, covering stretched-out figure eights. The sheriff had found the tracks.
Dinwiddie said, “God must have had it in for this country. Christ, you’d think he’d get tired of chasing after his own pointed finger. I hanker for a soft bed and a warm fire and something I can get my teeth into.”
“He’ll never abandon the search,” said McAffee. “The man’s choking to death in the embrace of his ambition.”
The sheriff called a halt and dismounted to scan the ground afoot. When the others caught up, he said, “Turned southwest here. He probably aimed for those buttes when he saw the storm coming up. It may be he’ll take shelter from the wind there.”
The buttes, just visible through the dark swirl of air, stood a good eighteen or twenty miles distant across the desert.
“He won’t travel in a storm,” the sheriff said, “not down here. He doesn’t know the country.”
McAffee said, “Shriveled guts and saddle sores. We’re all used up, Farris. Can’t fight our way through a blizzard—too damned exhausted. We’d better lay over and wait it out. He won’t gain any ground on us.”
“Nor us on him,” the sheriff said. “We’ll proceed.”
McAffee unbuckled his saddlebag and brought forth his bottle of John Vale. Clay had watched him deplete several bottles. The supply seemed endless. McAffee said, “You’d ride us all into the ground to save your chance in this election, wouldn’t you?”
“You’re the one who wants to be sheriff,” Farris Rand said. “Still liking the idea, McAffee?” He turned to his horse and settled his boot in the stirrup. “Turn back if you want to. You can still make Sid Horn’s before the storm breaks.” He lifted himself astride the horse and gigged it away.
Sometime in the next half hour Clyde Littlejack came bouncing along. Clay hadn’t even noticed his absence, but when he thought about it, he realized he hadn’t seen Littlejack for several hours. The farrier had the carcass of a whitetail doe sprawled across the packhorse saddle.
The sheriff looked back. “You make a hell of a manhunter, Clyde.”
“We’ve all got to eat.” Fatigue had subdued Littlejack’s bellicosity.
“Or don’t you get hungry, either?” said Dinwiddie, who was beginning to display awe at the sheriff’s monumental, unflagging endurance.
Overhead, the forming darkness pressed down. Clay’s feet and exposed face felt the blades of the cold. The height of the jagged clouds told of a tremendous wind rushing forward. Dust devils appeared vaguely in the distance. Behind them marched a spreading darkness. The last of the day drained out of the sky: within an hour the wind’s reverberation was a trembling, charging echo. It was like the distant drumming of a herd in full stampede.
The first touch of the wind disturbed the horses and put them into a nervous trot. The sheriff kept an uneasy watch on the black storm boiling ahead.
They closed within five miles of the buttes. The churning force rushed upon them, all wild crying and oblivion; Clay heard the roar of the norther in full fury. Pressure seized him. It shook him on the saddle. It was a great voice howling. Slashing blades of snow and hail battered him. The sheriff and Harry Greiff herded them all together, and the sheriff tied a rope from bridle to bridle, linking them all together. The thrust of the wind made them angle sharply to stay on course. Clay scraped forming frost from his jaw and saw the moisture of his breath steaming swiftly away.
The time came when he could no longer see the ground at the horse’s feet. What had been blackness became a swirl of white. His legs began to numb. He kicked them against the stirrups: the tingling that ran up his knees was almost pleasant. He huddled inside his clothes and batted his gloved hands together.
Something whacked his thigh. A hand reached up and tugged his sleeve. He bent down.
It was his father. “Get down and walk.” The wind ripped the words away.
He climbed down and fixed his fist to the horse’s headstall. His legs were all but unfeeling. His nose was stiff, cheeks raw, ears throbbing.
He battled forward against the wind, against panic. Going in circles. Maybe we’re going in circles. Does a blind man feel like this? Jesus—Jesus.
The wind knocked him flat against the horse. The horse danced back. He leaned forty degrees into the wind and kept moving, tugged by the rope that disappeared ahead toward Harry Greiff’s horse. His legs were wooden stalks by now, but it was his ears that really hurt. He took off one glove with his teeth and got his hand under his hat to rub his ears, one at a time. They began to burn.
The wind slacked. He believed he could see the misty shape of a horse ahead of him. They plodded another ten yards, and he recognized Harry Greiff’s square back beyond that horse. In patchy glimpses he could make out his father.
The sheriff kept moving until the air was almost clear. He called a halt under the cliff of the butte.
They gathered around in a knot, striking each other’s coats, puffing up clouds of snow. The sheriff said, “Don’t sit down—don’t quit moving. All of you stay put here. Mr. Greiff, you and I will scout the base of this mesa.”
McAffee said, “For God’s sake, have a rest, Farris.”
“He may be within a hundred feet of us right this minute,” said the sheriff. He slogged into the gloom with the deputy on his heels. Greiff stripped off his glove and lifted his revolver.
Afraid, Clay stood rooted for only a moment. He broke out of his tracks and went after them.
Chapter Twenty-One
They found no one.
The storm moved on as quickly as it had come. Sundown brought the last of the snowfall, though the wind kept on, strong enough to chill Clay through.
The sheriff assembled a council of war. McAffee was the first to speak. “We’re dead on our feet, Farris—and so are you. Even if the Nigra stumbled into our midst right now, none of us would be able to hold him. Not even you. We’ve got to rest.”
Harry Greiff said, “We can’t find tracks now anyway, sir.”
Clyde Littlejack was off in the dark somewhere; his howl came roaring forward.
“What the hell?” Clay said, spinning.
They set out at a run.
A cross of boards stood driven casually into the ground, right at the base of the cliff where the wind could not tear it up. Littlejack was kneeling down. He cupped a lighted match and played it across the face of the marker. There was a knife-scratched legend:
SHERIFF RAND 1841—1896
The sheriff’s moustache was limp in the damp wind. He looked somber and tragic. The look he gave the loose weary men around him was disgusted. Harry Greiff regarded him glumly.
“All right,” the sheriff said, without feeling. “I’ll get him, Mr. Greiff. I always do.”
Clay said, “Goddam it, he’s your—”
“Shut up!” For a moment Clay believed his father was going to strike him. Then the sheriff dropped his arm. “That boy wiped his feet on me, Clay.”
Harry Greiff ripped up the cross. He broke it across his knee and hurled the pieces into the night.
Farris Rand said, “Get mounted.”
McAffee blinked. “Now?”
“Now. He can’t travel in mud without leaving tracks. It’s our chance to get him. Move!”
McAffee began to protest. Harry Greiff turned on him and began to bark like a master sergeant.
Clay had watched his father’s face grow emptier day by day.
They camped without a fire and waited for dawn. Clay sank his teeth into the raw fresh venison. He almost gagged. With his portion half-eaten, he slumped back. Sleep struck him like a club.
There was rain. It woke him; daylight filtered weakly through the cold drizzle. His father was already mounted. Clay cinched up and cantered after him; the others straggled across a mile of desert.
From a ridge line they spotted a red-painted stagecoach pulled by four Kentucky mules. Half an hour later they stopped at the Council Springs crossroads store. The storekeeper had not seen a passing horseman, but the tracks went by there, only an hour old.
The trail of the single-shod horse led them south by southwest. Near noon it crossed the Prescott coach road. The drizzle started and stopped by fits, not laying down enough moisture to erase tracks. Heavier gray clouds scudded forward, cutting off the sun.
In thick, high grass Harry Greiff halted and stepped down to examine the ground where the pursued horse had wandered across a bare ant hill.
“Tracks been meandering,” said Greiff. “Thought it was curious. Look here.” He stood up, dusted his hands, and surveyed the horizons. “Something wrong, sir. These tracks ain’t deep enough.”
Farris Rand unsheathed his field glasses and raised them to his eyes. He swept the southward desert with slow care.
Harry Greiff said, “From the look of this, that horse has got no rider on him.”
“I see it,” the sheriff said. The field glasses steadied. “Grazing with the saddle still on him.”
“Huh?” said Clyde Littlejack.
Clay said, “What?”
Harry Greiff pushed his hat back. “Reckon he dismounted at the coach road and slapped the horse on.”
Dinwiddie said, “That’d take a lot of nerve.”
“He’s got a lot of nerve,” said the sheriff. “He knows we’re tight behind him. He decided to risk it, that’s all.”
“I don’t get it,” Clay said. “It doesn’t add up.”
Harry Greiff said, “He drove the horse away and waited in the road for somebody to come by and pick him up.”
“Somebody? Somebody who?”
“Who knows. Maybe he boarded that stagecoach we saw.” McAffee said, “But that coach was headed north.”
“He might have done that,” the sheriff observed, “just to throw us off the scent. With a little more luck he’d have had us waste half the day down here with our noses to the ground.”
It took them twenty minutes to backtrack to the coach road. The sheriff and his deputy dismounted to inspect the earth. After a while Harry Greiff straightened up with a grunt. “Deep boot prints here, sir. He squatted for a while, waiting.”
Dinwiddie said, “He could have gone either way. Too much traffic in those ruts—they’d swallow up any tracks.”
“To be sure,” said the sheriff. He went back to his horse and climbed up. “If he went south, he’d have had to walk. There hasn’t been a southbound coach along today. If he went north, then he’s on that coach we passed.”
Greiff said, “He’s just shrewd enough to walk on south and lay back off the road somewhere down in those hills.” Littlejack said, “He’d get a lot farther on the stage.”
The sheriff was considering it. Colonel McAffee said, “Just for the sake of argument—”
“Which I don’t need at all right now.”
“—let’s say he did take the stagecoach. Where does that put him? Prescott? Your telegram’s in the sheriff’s office there. The Nigra’s too easy to recognize. He wouldn’t take that chance.”
Harry Greiff said, “He could have gotten off the stage any place between here and Prescott.”
The sheriff spoke slowly. “He’s on the run. He’s scared. His first instinct will be to put miles behind him.”
McAffee said, “Counted the ifs in that, Farris? It’s a long shot.”
“It’s the only shot we’ve got. I’d suggest we shoot it.”
Ben was not on the coach, had never been on it, had not been seen by the driver. It was late afternoon by then, but Farris Rand spoke calmly. “All right. He’s gained eight hours, but he has no horse and it will take him a day’s walking to reach the nearest ranch. We’re going after him.”
