The Loner 26, page 4
“Don’t have to add up any way, Durant. Could be Duke surprised them and brought them here then sat and gloated over what he was going to do to them. Made sure they suffered before he killed ’em.”
Tully’s eyes gleamed with satisfaction at his explanation. Durant considered the explanation could have some merit, but he kept this opinion to himself. He in no way wanted to boost the young man’s confidence.
“I’m moving on,” Durant said.
“I’ll tag along with you,” Tully said.
Durant looked bleakly at him then swung into the saddle. Tully was about to swing into the saddle when Durant said;
“I ride alone.”
“Didn’t know you owned this patch of dirt,” Tully mused, looking around him.
Durant had to smile at that.
“Let’s see how good you really are, Durant,” Tully said, settling himself in the saddle. “I gotta admit you’re dynamite with your fists and you’re pretty damn slick with a gun. Let’s see if you can lose me on a horse.”
Durant let Sundown pick his way down to the creekbank, then followed it for a hundred yards, before he suddenly heeled the stallion into a run.
Sundown, completely refreshed from the stopover in town, charged into the shallow water and crossed in huge bounds.
On the other bank, Durant didn’t bother turning to check to see if Tully was following. He kept the stallion going up the steep slope at the gallop, across a short plateau of hard ground, then along a narrow ridgeline. In ten minutes he swung off the ridge and hid in behind a clump of trees.
When Tully rode desperately off the ridge a few minutes later, Durant leaned forward in the saddle and put a hand over Sundown’s nostrils.
The stallion stood quietly when the other horse tore past the trees, ears pricked.
Durant waited ten minutes then returned to the creek and rode the water through to sunrise ...
Chapter Four – Devil’s Pupil
DURANT DIDN’T FLINCH when a stick snapped behind him. He added coffee to the boiling pot on his fire then turned three slices of bacon in his pan.
“After such a hard night, you’ll welcome a cup of coffee,” he said.
Jud Tully stepped out of the brush and scowled at Durant’s back.
“It was because of the night that you got away from me, Durant.”
Durant shook his head but still didn’t turn to acknowledge the lanky young cowboy.
“You should have allowed for the dark then. I would have.”
Durant rose after forking the bacon from the pan and adding it to the beans on his tin plate. He walked across the small clearing and sat down on a flat rock. Only then did Tully notice the rifle propped up against the rock while Durant’s gun lay on another rock, away from the fire.
“Help yourself to a mug of coffee,” Durant said. “Sorry, but I’m fresh out of beans and bacon.”
Tully scowled at him for a long time while Durant ate, then snarled;
“You ain’t goin’ to be no help to me anyway, Durant. You wouldn’t have your heart in it.”
“And you’ll suffer if you don’t make allowances for Sabien’s cunning. I could have shot you down when you tore past me last night. I didn’t... but you can bet Duke Sabien will.”
Color rose in Tully’s gaunt cheeks and he slapped his side in a show of irritation.
“I’ll make it, you’ll see,” he declared.
Durant kept on eating and when he’d finished his breakfast he washed the plate and pan in the creek, rinsed them clean and returned them to his saddlebags. Then he poured another mug of coffee and handed it to Tully.
Tully tasted it and blurted out once he could speak;
“Shit... this is ...”
“Out here you can’t be choosy,” Durant told him. “You have to take things as they come. It will be same way hunting a man like Duke Sabien. If you’ve any hope of succeeding, you have to play the game Sabien’s way. Tough and hard.”
Tully sipped the coffee again and found it no more to his liking. Then he sat down away from Durant and watched him make up a smoke.
“Ilsa’s mighty obliged for what you did for her, Durant,” he said finally.
“She told me,” Durant answered dully.
“She’s a mighty fine woman. It ain’t right she should suffer so much, and damn near all the time.”
“You taken with her, Jud?” Durant asked him, sipping his coffee before he put his smoke to his lips.
Tully’s face went red and he quickly looked away.
“That ain’t none of your business, mister,” he growled.
“Suit yourself.”
Durant lit his smoke and relaxed, drawing smoke deep into his lungs.
Tully studied him sourly—knowing he needed the man.
And he meant to get him on his side, come what may, short of begging him.
“Gene and Ilsa weren’t all that happy, Durant, not like they pretended to be.”
Durant stared silently back at him.
“I mean ... they was married but they didn’t live like married folks.”
Durant could see the young man was going to make a long story of it. Then he said;
“What you’re trying to say is that they didn’t sleep together ... right?”
Tully gaped at Durant then put his mug on the ground and stood up. He sighed then continued on in a quieter, more guarded tone;
“Well, I guess you could say that. Weren’t that way from the beginning though. Gene told me himself how it happened. He got kicked by a horse in the you-know-what when he was shoeing it. The damn hoof hit him fair and square.” He pursed his lips, looked skywards as if trying to hold back a smile. “He was laid up for a month and even when he could get about, he had to walk bandy-legged. And he sure enough couldn’t do what a married man’s supposed to do with his wife ...”
Durant nodded in understanding and Tully looked relieved. He then went on more eagerly;
“Not long after it happened I came along lookin’ for work and the three of us hit it off like old friends.”
“You telling me you did what Gene Brand was unable to do...?”
Tully’s eyes blazed with anger. “The hell I am. What kind of people do you think we are in these parts? I was Gene’s friend and Ilsa didn’t mind me workin’ the place. Gene had no argument against it either. By hell, Ilsa is about the finest and purest woman God ever put on this earth. You say different and you’ll have to answer to me.”
Durant shrugged took another pull on his smoke and flicked it aside. Standing, he heeled the smoke into the dust and walked over to Sundown.
Back in the saddle, he looked down on Tully, who had kicked dust over the fire and was heading back to his horse.
“Go back to her, Jud. She needs you now more than ever. And judging by what you’ve just told me, Gene wouldn’t want it any other way. In time the hurt will lessen and maybe one day you two can get together and you could give her the happiness you say she deserves.”
Tully eyed him heavily.
“There ain’t ever been anythin’ like that between us, Durant. I swear it.”
“You stayed there because you wanted to make a living. Gene wanted you around, too. And obviously Ilsa didn’t tire of your company ...”
“She ain’t said nothin’ to me on that score.”
“Women don’t always spell out their feelings, Jud. They have subtle ways of letting a man know that.”
“You know about women, too, Durant?”
“A little,” Durant told him, moving Sundown to the edge of the brush. “Ilsa strikes me as a fine, upstanding woman, Jud. And a sensitive one, too. So get your thinking straight and go on back. Duke Sabien is a killer and if you are added to his tally, it won’t help Ilsa in any way.”
“Sabien killed Ilsa’s husband,” Tully insisted.
“Ilsa will accept her husband’s death in time. But will she be able to accept your death, too?”
Tully looked bleakly over his backtrail. Then he stared ahead, along the trail Duke Sabien had taken. Suddenly, he straightened in the saddle and said;
“You ain’t goin’ to help, are you, Durant?”
“Told you before ... it’s none of my business.”
“Not even for the money I offered you?”
“I’m refusing because of your offer, Jud.”
Tully brought his horse around savagely and drove his heels hard against the animal’s ribs.
The rangy mare lunged into stride and disappeared down the trail Duke Sabien had taken.
Durant waited until the hoofbeats had died then, against his better judgment, he heeled Sundown down the same trail, cursing himself for being such a fool.
Heat came down through the timber like air fanned over a furnace. Underfoot, dead branches and leaves crackled so loudly the sound all but drowned out all other noises. Overhead, the sky was a shimmering blue and completely cloudless ...
Durant had no trouble following Jud Tully’s trail.
He thought a great deal about the young man, caught up in a situation, which until the death of Gene Brand, must have been more painful than anything he’d experienced so far. To be constantly in the company of a woman he secretly wanted, yet bound by the friendship of the woman’s impotent husband, Tully had proved himself either a fool or a man of compassion.
How it would end, Durant couldn’t even begin to guess. In Tully’s boots, he wasn’t sure what he would do. He only knew that if Tully’s love for Ilsa Brand was as great as his own had been for Louise, no one could get him to change his mind ...
Close on noon, he worked Sundown to higher country in the hope that he could catch a glimpse of the young man. If he did, he meant only to trail him so he could keep an eye on him. Back of his mind was the thought that Duke Sabien would by then be a long way ahead.
Sabien would also be careful to wipe out his tracks—then disappear into an emptiness where he wouldn’t be found. If the man were true to form, in another year he would show himself.
Stopping on a ridge, Durant looked out into the heat-seared distance. The country ahead was little more than a barren wasteland. There was little vegetation and what there was stood gray and brown—testimony to what life was there would be lived in lonely desolation.
He began to make his way down, wondering if the town Sabien had mentioned really did exist or if it was just another of the killer’s lies.
Silently he accepted that it was most probably the latter.
Keen to find out if he were right, he worked Sundown down a shaley slope where the going became easier until finally he reached a long stretch that could only mark the beginning of a desert.
There, half-buried in the sand and reflecting the sun back at him, was a used rifle shell.
Durant slipped from the saddle, picked it up and studied it. It told him little because the heat of the sand could keep the shell warm till nightfall.
He eyed the wasteland ahead of him again. He’d heard no shot and seen no movement from his vantage point. And the absence of tracks suggested that a great deal of time had passed since whoever had fired that single shot.
He got back into the saddle, checked his gun, re-holstered it and rode on.
He wondered how Jud Tully had got so far in front of him, even allowing for Sundown’s leisurely pace.
Could it be that Tully had sighted his quarry?
Durant was ready to discount this possibility when he sighted a black speck in the distance.
He put Sundown into a run.
Within minutes he was closing in on that speck, which had grown into the shape of a horse. The horse was laying motionless, its hindquarters half-buried in the sand, its head, shoulders and forelegs out of sight down the far slope of the dune.
Durant came out of the saddle and found the dune was the last stretch of desert before the sand gave way to windswept rocky terrain, which in turn led to brush-dotted, rugged slopes.
The mare was dead, carrying a wound in its belly and a bullet hole in its head. There was clear evidence that the horse had thrashed about in its final death throes before somebody had mercifully put it out of its misery.
Durant climbed back on Sundown and headed on across the rocks and up a steep slope. There was enough cover for man and horse here, but suddenly the brush ended and Durant saw the man, laying face down in the dirt.
The man was Jud Tully.
Tully’s red-streaked eyes opened as Durant grabbed his canteen and stepped down.
He turned Tully onto his back and saw the bloodstain, cradled his head in his lap, moistened his lips then bathed his face with his yellow bandanna. Five minutes went by and Tully still hadn’t regained full consciousness.
Durant left him to check the country for a hundred yards around them, before he found the tracks of a man and a horse, going straight on ahead into the high country. He followed the tracks for a mile before they died at the bank of a creek.
He drew rein and listened but heard nothing, so he retraced his steps back to Tully to find the young man laying on his stomach again, his fingers digging into the hard ground. Durant turned him over again to find Tully had been laying in a pool of his own blood. When Tully finally opened his eyes, he stared blankly up at Durant.
“I found your horse,” Durant explained. “She’d been shot.”
Tully nodded weakly.
“Who did it?”
Tully’s lips moved but no sound came out as Durant stripped away the lower part of his shirt to reveal a gaping wound in his stomach. He washed the blood away with the rest of the water in his canteen then noticed Tully staring intently at him.
“It’s bad, Jud … real bad.”
Tully’s hand fastened weakly around Durant’s wrist.
“S-Sabien,” he muttered.
“You sure?”
Tully nodded and Durant gave him another drink from his other canteen then went back to cleansing the wound. He then tore a strip from Tully’s shirt and made a passable job of bandaging the wound.
Tully’s grip became stronger and he said;
“He was ... waiting for me. He s-shot my mare then he blasted me ...”
Durant waited for more but Tully closed his eyes and his breathing became rapid. Durant bathed Tully’s forehead until the young man began to breathe more steadily and looked up at him.
“Can you tell me more?” Durant asked.
After taking a deep breath, Tully coughed up blood but managed to croak;
“I stayed down an’ held my breath.”
“He must have thought you were dead.”
“He poked me with his rifle barrel but ... I didn’t ... move a finger. Then he rode off.”
Durant let him regain more strength then helped him into a more comfortable position. Tully winced with the pain but when he spoke again his voice was stronger.
“My mare was in pain so I ...” He shook his head, and continued, “Must have passed out after that.”
Durant stood and looked ahead to the trail Sabien had taken. If he left Tully to go search for the man, he knew the young man would surely die. He scrubbed the back of his neck, knowing he was duty bound to stay—like it or not.
“I’ll try to get you back home,” he said. “There you can get the proper treatment.”
Tully scowled and shook his head. “Go after Sabien,” he said. “What happens to me won’t matter.”
“It does to me,” Durant told him. “Just as I’m sure it does to Ilsa Brand.”
Tully’s eyes brightened at that but just as quickly they faded and his head fell onto his chest.
Durant went quickly to his side and felt for a pulse, smiled when he felt a steady rhythm. Then he lifted Tully from the ground and sat him across his saddle then climbed onto Sundown’s back and headed for Dryden.
Zee Weaver was stacking glasses on the shelf behind his bar when Durant walked in through the batwings. The place was empty and dark, the front window having been boarded up until new glass could be brought in to replace the shattered window. Weaver gave Durant one look then filled a glass on the counter.
“I’m not here for a drink, Zee,” Durant said, striding to the bar. “I’ve got Jud Tully outside.”
Weaver turned and frowned.
“Dead or alive?”
“What are you expecting me to say, Zee?” Durant shot back at him.
Weaver’s stare narrowed. “Now wait a minute, Durant. Talk like that ain’t goin’ to ...”
“He’s a wet-behind-the-ears kid,” Durant snapped. “And nobody in this town tried to stop him. What sort of people are you, anyway?”
Weaver put a glass down and snapped back angrily;
“Lay off, Durant. Tully’s goin’ on nineteen and is a man who had his own reasons for doin’ what he did.”
“His reasons were loyalty to a dead man and his wife that saw him take on a job he could never handle.”
Weaver wiped cold sweat from his face.
“Jud’s a fine boy with a good future. But in some ways his stubbornness could be mistaken for stupidity. He knew all about Duke Sabien and what his chances were.”
“His chances were nil and you knew it,” Durant said tightly. “So what this town did was let him ride off to his death.”
“So he’s ... dead?”
“Close enough to it,” Durant told him. “Now, all I want from you is to tell me where the sawbones is and help me get him there.”
Weaver nodded eagerly.
“We’ll get him to Doc Downey and see he’s given the best care...”
Durant was no longer listening. He was back outside and Weaver joined him in the street and pointed.
“House with the light on.”
Durant led the way along the street and at the gate into the yard he made Weaver help him get Jud’s body off the horse. Together they carried Jud up onto the porch.
At their knock, the front door opened and a plump, round-faced man waved them inside without a word.
They laid Jud on a table in a back room as Doc Downey examined the wound then hurried away to scrub his hands. While he was toweling them dry he said;
