The Loner 14, page 1
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It suited Blake Durant to ride alone, but when he came across two men and a woman whose wagon had broken down, he was equally happy to help get them moving again.
The trio were headed for a town called Haven and a fresh start in life. But to reach the town, they first had to cross the desert. Durant was by no means sure they’d make it alone, so he decided to ride with them and make sure they reached their destination.
Even so, the desert came close to killing them all. And when they finally reached Haven, they realized it was no such thing.
That was when Durant found himself in a kill-or-be-killed showdown … and that was when the shooting started!
THE LONER 14: THE TESTAMENT TRAIL
By Sheldon B. Cole
First published by Cleveland Publishing Co. Pty Ltd, New South Wales, Australia
© 2021 by Piccadilly Publishing
First Electronic Edition: December 2021
Names, characters and incidents in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons living or dead is purely coincidental.
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Series Editor: Ben Bridges
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Chapter One – Some I Trust, Some I Don’t
THE LONG GREEN valley down which Blake Durant rode was unrutted by wagon trains. The grass was green and waving, and water was plentiful. For two weeks he had eaten fresh meat daily and had no need to call on his saddlebag provisions for anything but coffee and sugar. So, with the morning sun behind him, he continued to head west, wondering as each lush mile passed by, why settlers had not come and put down roots here. He couldn’t believe that he had chanced on new territory that nobody else had yet discovered. The last town he had left, Crimson Creek, was too large a settlement, peopled by too-ambitious townsfolk for the adventurous and footloose among them not to have come across such fine country.
But, for the moment, Blake Durant wondered and did no more about finding out. The three months before this last couple of weeks had been hard times. Twice in that short space of time he had almost starved to death. Once he had been close to death from gunshot wounds. He had fought as hard as any man had ever been asked to fight, and somehow he’d won out. Now he was sick of fighting, sick of bickering, sick of towns and their built-in troubles. He was alone, going farther west in search of peace. What he left behind he had already forgotten. The immediate past he considered of no consequence, but there was a more distant past that he could not forget, a past in which was a beautiful young woman, now dead. There was also a place that had taken many years to put into shape, and there were friends he kept away from because they were a reminder of what had been and could never be again.
So he drifted on, his trails leading to nowhere in particular, a man without woman or child. He had a horse and a saddle and wanted nothing else. The painful memory was always with him, lightened somewhat when he rode through country like this. At times such as this he could relax, enjoy the peace and let the days slip by, at the same time knowing that soon again the memory, with its searing pain, would return.
He turned out of the valley and into harsher hill country. He rode the whole morning, he and his horse the only living things in all that expanse of dust and distance. He didn’t mind. At noon he struck camp and let his black stallion, Sundown, water and graze. Momentarily, at peace with himself, he allowed his mind to wander. He had been on the lobo trail for four years now, living the kind of life he had always been critical of when other men were concerned.
But he’d become no better than the other drifters. He had no idea where it would end, but he promised himself, on saddling Sundown again, that it would soon end for him. He was running, trying to escape something he couldn’t bring himself to come to grips with. For how long could he do this? Until old age wearied him, and forced him to stop?
Blake Durant climbed onto Sundown. Then, on the brink of a rocky hill, he looked west and saw desert stretching endlessly before him. Turning, he again wondered about this fertile valley which bore no marks of settlers. Desert behind and desert ahead.
He had just put Sundown into a walk, meaning to head into the desert, when a rise of dust to his right attracted his attention. Blake wheeled Sundown around and looked for cover. He saw cottonwoods between himself and the rising dust and headed for them.
Within ten minutes of stopping there in the cover of the trees, he saw two riders coming up the slope towards him. Blake Durant’s hand was in easy reach of his big gun, and his reflexes were tuned up. As always he was ready for what the future held for him, not looking for trouble but always prepared for it.
The riders drew rein a short distance from him and Blake could see them clearly. One was an old man with more than a month’s stubble on his jutting jaw and a face like parchment, the skin drawn so tightly across it that it seemed no flesh lay between the skin and the bones. His eyes were wary, shifting constantly, taking everything in and missing nothing. His hand was clamped on the stock of a rifle jutting from a saddle scabbard. The other was a younger man, no more than twenty-five or six by Durant’s count, nervous, lean, his skin burned by the sun and his clothes sticking to a body bathed in sweat.
Blake let Sundown come out of cover and saw the old man’s rifle lift a little out of the scabbard as his stare went Blake’s way.
None of the three spoke for a long, tense minute; then, with a glance that seemed to order his companion to stay put, the old man rode on. He stopped again only a few yards from Blake and ran a hand over his stubbled jaw.
Blake said, “Is this your property?”
The old man’s face darkened with a frown for a moment, then he straightened in the saddle. “Nope. Ain’t ours. Figured it coulda been yours.”
Blake shook his head. “I’m drifting.”
The old man breathed a deep sigh and signaled for his companion to come up. When he arrived, still looking slightly nervous, the old man said, “Charles Cassidy, out of Memphis. I’m Abe Lennon.”
Blake gave them his name and waited for Lennon to go on. Now that the introductions had been made, Lennon was inclined to ramble, telling Blake how relieved he was. Blake could see that something had been weighing heavily on Lennon’s mind. Lennon said:
“If you’re driftin’, Durant, then you probably don’t know no more about this area than we do, eh?”
“Only that I’ve just come through some of the best country any man could expect to see.”
“Plenty of water, grass, timber, game?” Lennon asked quickly.
“Plenty of everything. But it seems nobody wants it.”
“Orville country,” Lennon said, and breathed a deep sigh of satisfaction. “Cord Orville. We were told about his valley. We were also told to keep to hell off it. You didn’t run into any trouble getting this far?”
“I’ve seen nobody,” Blake said.
Again Lennon looked relieved. “Then from what I’ve heard of Orville and his bunch, you can bless your luck, Durant. But no matter, you’re out of it, eh, and going on?”
Blake looked about him. He was tempted to return to the creek and strike camp, in country like Orville’s a man could survive without problems for months.
“I hadn’t made up my mind when I saw your dust, Lennon. I wanted to know what was ahead, no more.”
Lennon’s old eyes closed to slits and his lips turned back in a sneer. “What’s ahead, Durant, is the way out for you. Cord Orville don’t let anybody cross his range. It’s told that six or seven men have defied his edict to keep off and ain’t been seen since.”
“There’s no fences, no signs, and no homestead,” Blake informed him.
“Guess there ain’t, and I’ve heard that, too. But Orville, he considers himself too big to go about putting up signs and warning trespassers. He owns that country and when he’s good and ready he’ll work it. But meantime he ain’t gonna allow any cattle to water there or eat a blade of his grass. Take my word for it, Durant, you’ve been dead lucky. If you weren’t lucky, you’d be dead.”
Blake gave no reaction whatever to this statement. Sundown fidgeted under him, wanting to be on his way.
“And you?” Blake asked Lennon.
“Us? Well, we’re by-passin’ this section as we’ve been told to, Durant. We got water and grub enough to get us where we’re goin’. We just happened by to see that valley and know we were on the right trail. But from here on it’s just straight ahead, across three days of desert and then to our new home.”
Blake looked past the old-timer and frowned. Three days of travel across desert didn’t bother him unduly. He had been through worse in his time and he expected to go through worse again. But he was interested in the spark in Lennon’s eyes now, the kind of excitement he had seen in a lot of old prospectors’ eyes when they talked of a glory hole or a hidden treasure. A new home?
Blake asked, “Is there another valley like the one I just left, out there for the asking?”
“There sure is, Durant, and maybe better than Orville’s from all reports. Only it ain’t so much a valley a man can lay stake to as a settlement crying out for new people.” Lennon raked out a crumpled piece of newspaper and handed it across to Blake. “Can you read, mister?”
Blake nodded and read the clipping. It turned out to be an advertisement inviting new settlers to a town called Haven. In particular the invitation was issued to anybody wanting to start a freight line in the territory outside the town, but there was also mention of a welcome being given to anybody wanting to start a new business in the town. Blake folded the paper and handed it back. Lennon pocketed it before he said:
“So I’m gonna start that freight line, Durant. I got me a good wagon and a sturdy buckboard which Charles here is driving for me. If you ain’t got no place to go and ain’t one of them thievin’ hellions out to make trouble, I guess it wouldn’t hurt to have you ride along with us, especially as three days of desert could prove just a mite too much for Charles.”
Blake noticed a cloud of embarrassment come over Charles Cassidy’s face. The fact that Lennon, whose speech was fitted to the ruggedness of the frontier, referred to his companion as Charles had its own meaning for Blake Durant. He took closer stock of the young man and noticed that his hands were badly blistered and that shadows of exhaustion were under his tired blue eyes.
“I can make it, Mr. Lennon,” Cassidy put in. “I came this far, didn’t I, and never caused a minute’s delay?”
“Well, maybe you have, young ’un,” said Lennon. “Only I was kinda hopin’ we’d be in Haven by now. But no matter. No sense in killing the horses.”
“Miss Wheeler was the one who slowed us, Mr. Lennon, and you know it. I haven’t caused you one—”
“Sure you haven’t, and you’re learnin’ fast, young ’un,” Lennon said, turning his shrewd gaze onto Durant again. His look travelled over Blake as if trying to see beneath the veneer into the soul of the drifter. He scratched his stubbled jaw, looked again at the lush valley beyond Durant and said, “How are you at fixin’ wagon wheels, Durant?”
Blake shrugged.
“Got us a problem back yonder, Durant,” Lennon went on. “Wagon’s packed high with things, maybe overloaded. I reckon that with an extra man and a stout pole we could hoist it high enough to get the wheel off, fix it, and put it back. I reckon maybe I found the extra man who wouldn’t let folks down in time of trouble, but there’s still the matter of the pole.”
“There’s plenty of timber behind me,” Blake said.
Lennon bit his lip and nodded grimly. “Reckon there is, Durant, but it’s all in Orville’s country.”
“One tree here or there wouldn’t bust him,” Blake said to the old man. “That’s if you are willing to risk being asked about taking it.”
Lennon jerked upright in the saddle. “You ain’t hintin’ I’m scared of Cord Orville, are you, Durant? Hell, I don’t let anybody go about tellin’ me I’m scared of any living man. I’m scared of the dead maybe, ghosts and the like, but not Orville nor anybody else alive.”
Blake gave him a guarded smile. Lennon was the crusty type, hard-cored, possibly honest when it suited him, but likely most able to find an excuse for dishonesty when it suited him. He had met many of his kind and had rarely disliked any of them.
“You’ll have to go back for an axe,” Blake put in.
Lennon grunted something, shot a careful look at Cassidy and then nodded. Cassidy pulled an axe from a saddlebag. Blake grinned at Lennon.
“What’s keeping us then?”
“Nothin’, Durant—’cept maybe my conscience. I don’t like to take what ain’t mine, not even a damned pole when there’s thousands of ’em. But, damn him, Cord Orville wouldn’t miss one, would he?”
“There’s good timber just short of the creek,” Blake said. He turned his horse and motioned for the still-nervous Cassidy to go ahead.
By the time they’d reached the creek where Blake had struck his camp, Lennon had the axe and was out of the saddle, looking about keenly for a suitable tree. When he found one he spat on his hands and swung the axe. When he had trouble withdrawing the axe, Blake slid from the saddle, eased him aside, and worked the axe free. He swung time after time, sending huge chips flying. Finally the tree creaked and slowly began to fall. Cassidy jumped back in alarm but Lennon lounged against another tree, eyeing Durant intently.
He said, “You done some of that before, eh, Durant?”
Blake didn’t answer. The exercise had given him a momentary thrill. He wiped sweat from his brow and waited for the tree to crash down. Then he began to trim off the smaller branches until he had a long pole ready for carting. Meantime, Lennon had fixed ropes to the saddles of his own and Cassidy’s horses and now he tied the trailing ends about the tree trunk. When he had it secured to his liking, he told Cassidy to mount, and going into the saddle himself he worked his horse forward until the slack of the rope was taken up. Blake Durant had already swung onto Sundown and held the axe across the front of the saddle. When Lennon went on, urging Cassidy to keep up, Blake fell in behind. He looked straight ahead, wondering where his trail was leading, curious about the town called Haven and also about a woman named Miss Wheeler, who by all accounts was the third member of this party.
The sunlight was fierce, but as he watched the young woman moving casually across the hard ground, Blake sensed that she was oblivious to the heat of the day and untouched by it. She was lithe and slim. Long black hair framed her face. Soft, finely-shaped lips, parted, displayed the shine of teeth as she turned and welcomed back Lennon and Charles Cassidy. Blake watched for a woman’s natural warmth towards her man, but her look at Cassidy was nothing more than companionable. Then she gazed straight at him, and there was something alive in her eyes that stirred him.
“This here, Miss Wheeler, is Blake Durant, who we found out there strayin’ about. He helped us get the pole and is gonna tack onto us when we push on. But, first, we’d be obliged for some coffee while we work out a way to fix that damned wheel.”
Miss Wheeler still eyed Blake, no hint of shyness in her face. “I’m pleased you came along, Mr. Durant,” she said in a warm voice. “We were at our wits’ end to know what to do. The wagon is so heavily loaded that Mr. Lennon doubted if the three of us could raise it.”
“Woulda worked something out anyway,” Lennon said tersely and after irritably brushing flies away from his face, untied the pole and with Cassidy’s assistance carried it the few yards to where the wagon stood. Blake followed them, inspected the wheel rim and said:
“It can be wired.”
“Only when we get it off, Durant. Rim’s come away near all round,” Lennon told him impatiently. “You ready to help us?”
Blake didn’t bother to answer. He worked the pole up under the wagon and motioned for Cassidy to put his weight under it. Between them they lifted the wagon high enough for Lennon to hammer off the hub and pull the wheel free. Blake stood, powerful arms wrapped about the pole, taking most of the weight on his left shoulder. Lennon, after a worried look at the other two, hurriedly pulled a coil of wire from the inside of the wagon, snapped off a length with a pair of pliers and hastily began to wrap the wire about the rim where the steel runner had come off. Within a minute Cassidy began to feel the strain of the wagon’s weight and said anxiously:
“You gonna be long, Mr. Lennon?”
“Goin’ as fast as I can, young ’un,” Lennon said and went on with his work while Miss Wheeler, who already had a fire going, stood and watched admiringly. She knew that Durant had most of the wagon’s weight, yet there was no evidence in his face that the chore was too much for him. He had impressed her with his confidence and now by his strength.
“Can I help at all?” she asked, and Cassidy checked with Durant to see if she could.
He said, “Only with the coffee, ma’am.”
Miss Wheeler stirred the fire, her interest in Durant personal and frankly appraising. Lennon finally grunted his satisfaction at the job he had done, and after packing thick black grease along the axle, worked the hub onto it, then hammered it tight. He warned Cassidy to let the wagon down gradually, then he put his strength to that of Durant and Cassidy and they lowered the wagon. Lennon then stood back, sweating freely and nodding his thanks Durant’s way.
