Brand Blotters

MacLeod Raine William

Description

The tenderfoot rose from the ledge upon which he had been lying and stretched himself stiffly. The chill of the long night had set him shivering. His bones ached from the pressure of his body upon the rock where he had slept and waked and dozed again with troubled dreams. The sharpness of his hunger made him light-headed. Thirst tortured him. His throat was a lime-kiln, his tongue swollen till it filled his mouth.

Sujets

• Westerns
• Western (genre)
• Western

Informations

• Publié par: Pub One Info
• Date de parution: 23 octobre 2010
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9782819906186
• Langue: English

Extrait

PART I
MELISSY OF THE BAR DOUBLE G
CHAPTER I
A CROSSED TRAIL
The tenderfoot rose from the ledge upon which he hadbeen lying and stretched himself stiffly. The chill of the longnight had set him shivering. His bones ached from the pressure ofhis body upon the rock where he had slept and waked and dozed againwith troubled dreams. The sharpness of his hunger made himlight-headed. Thirst tortured him. His throat was a lime-kiln, histongue swollen till it filled his mouth.
If the night had been bad, he knew the day would bea hundred times worse. Already a gray light was sifting into thehollow of the sky. The vague misty outlines of the mountains weregrowing sharper. Soon from a crotch of them would rise a red hotcannon ball to pour its heat into the parched desert.
He was headed for the Sonora line, for the hillswhere he had heard a man might drop out of sight of thecivilization that had once known him. There were reasons why he hadstarted in a hurry, without a horse or food or a canteen, and thesesame reasons held good why he could not follow beaten tracks. Allyesterday he had traveled without sighting a ranch or meeting ahuman being. But he knew he must get to water soon – if he were toreach it at all.
A light breeze was stirring, and on it there wasborne to him a faint rumble as of thunder. Instantly the man cameto a rigid alertness. Thunder might mean rain, and rain would besalvation. But the sound did not die away. Instead, it deepened toa steady roar, growing every instant louder. His startled glanceswept the cañon that drove like a sword cleft into the hills.Pouring down it, with the rush of a tidal wave, came a wall ofcattle, a thousand backs tossing up and down as the swell of atroubled sea. Though he had never seen one before, the man on thelip of the gulch knew that he was watching a cattle stampede. Underthe impact of the galloping hoofs the ground upon which he stoodquaked.
A cry diverted his attention. From the bed of thesandy wash a man had started up and was running for his life towardthe cañon walls. Before he had taken half a dozen steps theavalanche was upon him, had cut him down, swept over him.
The thud of the hoofs died away. Into the opendesert the stampede had passed. A huddled mass lay motionless onthe sand in the track of the avalanche.
A long ragged breath whistled through the closedlips of the tenderfoot. He ran along the edge of the rock wall tillhe found a descent less sharp, lowered himself by means of juttingquartz and mesquit cropping out from the crevices, and so camethrough a little draw to the cañon.
He dropped on a knee beside the sprawling, huddledfigure. No second glance was needed to see that the man was dead.Life had been trampled out of him almost instantly and his featuresbattered beyond any possible recognition. Unused to scenes ofviolence, the stranger stooping over him felt suddenly sick. Itmade him shudder to remember that if he could have found a way downin the darkness he, too, would have slept in the warm sand of thedry wash. If he had, the fate of this man would have been his.
Under the doubled body was a canteen. The tremblingfingers of the tenderfoot unscrewed the cork. Tipping the vessel,he drank avidly. One swallow, a second, then a few trickling drops.The canteen had been almost empty.
Uncovering, he stood bareheaded before the inertbody and spoke gently in the low, soft voice one instinctively usesin the presence of the dead. "Friend, I couldn't save your life,but your water has saved mine, I reckon. Anyhow, it gives meanother chance to fight for it. I wish I could do something for you... carry a message to your folks and tell them how ithappened."
He dropped down again beside the dead man and rifledthe pockets. In them he found two letters addressed in anilliterate hand to James Diller, Cananea, Sonora, Mexico. An ideaflashed into his brain and for a moment held him motionless whilehe worked it out. Why not? This man was about his size, dressedmuch like him, and so mutilated that identification wasimpossible.
From his own pocket he took a leather bill book anda monogrammed cigarcase. With a sharp stone he scarred the former.The metal case he crushed out of shape beneath the heel of hisboot. Having first taken one twenty dollar yellowback from thewell-padded book, he slipped it and the cigarcase into the innercoat pocket of the dead man. Irregularly in a dozen places hegashed with his knife the derby hat he was wearing, ripped the bandhalf loose, dragged it in the dust, and jumped on it till the hatwas flat as a pancake. Finally he kicked it into the sand a dozenyards away. "The cattle would get it tangled in their hoofs anddrag it that far with them," he surmised.
The soft gray hat of the dead man he himselfappropriated. Again he spoke to the lifeless body, lowering hisvoice to a murmur. "I reckon you wouldn't grudge me this if youknew. I'm up against it. If I get out of these hills alive I'll belucky. But if I do – well, it won't do you any harm to be mistakenfor me, and it will accommodate me mightily. I hate to leave youhere alone, but it's what I've got to do to save myself."
He turned away and plodded up the dry creek bed. * ** * *
The sun was at the meridian when three heavily armedriders drew up at the mouth of the cañon. They fell into therestful, negligent postures of horsemen accustomed to take theirease in the saddle. "Do you figure maybe he's working up to theheadwaters of Dry Sandy?" one suggested.
A squat, bandy-legged man with a face of tannedleather presently answered. "No, Tim, I expect not. The way I sizehim up Mr. Richard Bellamy wouldn't know Dry Sandy from anirrigation ditch. Mr. R. B. hopes he's hittin' the high spots forSonora, but he ain't anyways sure. Right about now he's ridin' thegrub line, unless he's made a strike somewhere."
The third member of the party, a lean,wide-shouldered, sinewy youth, blue silk kerchief knotted looselyaround his neck, broke in with a gesture that swept the sky. "Funnyabout all them buzzards. What are they doing here, sheriff?"
The squat man opened his mouth to answer, but Timtook the word out of his mouth. "Look!" His arm had shot straightout toward the cañon. A coyote was disappearing on the lope."Something lying there in the wash at the bend, Burke."
Sheriff Burke slid his rifle from its scabbard."We'll not take any chances, boys. Spread out far as you can. Tim,ride close to the left wall. You keep along the right one, Flatray.Me, I'll take the center. That's right."
They rode forward cautiously. Once Flatray spoke."By the tracks there has been a lot of cattle down here on the jumprecently." "That's what," Tim agreed.
Flatray swung from his saddle and stooped over thebody lying at the bend of the wash. "Crushed to death in a cattlestampede, looks like," he called to the sheriff. "Search him,Jack," the sheriff ordered.
The young man gave an exclamation of surprise. Hewas standing with a cigarcase in one hand and a billbook in theother. "It's the man we're after – it's Bellamy."
Burke left his horse and came forward. "How do youknow?" "Initials on the cigarcase, R. B. Same monogram on thebillbook."
The sheriff had stooped to pick up a battered hat ashe moved toward the deputy. Now he showed the initials stamped onthe sweat band. "R. B. here, too." "Suit of gray clothes, derbyhat, size and weight about medium. We'll never know about the scaron the eyebrow, but I guess Mr. Bellamy is identified withoutthat." "Must have camped here last night and while he was asleepthe cattle stampeded down the cañon," Tim hazarded. "That guess isas good as any. They ce'tainly stomped the life out of himthorough. Anyhow, Bellamy has met up with his punishment. We'llhave to pack the body back to town, boys," the sheriff toldthem.
Half an hour later the party filed out to thecreosote flats and struck across country toward Mesa. Flatray wasriding pillion behind Tim. His own horse was being used as a packsaddle.
CHAPTER II
BRAND BLOTTING
The tenderfoot, slithering down a hillside of shale,caught at a greasewood bush and waited. The sound of a rifle shothad drifted across the ridge to him. Friend or foe, it made nodifference to him now. He had reached the end of his tether, mustget to water soon or give up the fight.
No second shot broke the stillness. A swiftzigzagged across the cattle trail he was following. Out of a bluesky the Arizona sun still beat down upon a land parched by æons ofdrought, a land still making its brave show of greenness against adun background.
Arrow straight the man made for the hill crest. Weakas a starved puppy, his knees bent under him as he climbed. Downand up again a dozen times, he pushed feverishly forward. All dayhe had been seeing things. Cool lakes had danced on the horizonline before his tortured vision. Strange fancies had passed in andout of his mind. He wondered if this, too, were a delusion. Howlong that stiff ascent took him he never knew, but at last hereached the summit and crept over its cactus-covered shoulder.
He looked into a valley dressed in its young springgarb. Of all deserts this is the loveliest when the early rainshave given rebirth to the hope that stirs within its bosom once ayear. But the tenderfoot saw nothing of its pathetic promise, ofits fragile beauty so soon to be blasted. His sunken eyes swept thescene and found at first only a desert waste in which lay death. "Ilose," he said to himself out loud.
With the words he gave up the long struggle and sankto the ground. For hours he had been exhausted to the limit ofendurance, but the will to live had kept him going. Now the drivingforce within had run down. He would die where he lay.
Another instant, and he was on his feet again eager,palpitant, tremulous. For plainly there had come to him thebleating of a calf.
Moving to the left, he saw rising above the hillbrow a thin curl of smoke. A dozen staggering steps brought him tothe edge of a draw. There i