Shadow on the Trail Page 10

  “Well, I can’t remember Jesse ever speaking bad of you,” replied Wade, choosing his words.

  “Blanco, Billy has just come over from Lincoln,” said Jesse, hurriedly. “His outfit killed Sheriff Baker an’ some deputies. Thet cattle war will be fought to the bitter end. Billy says he’s heahed of you an’ he wants to talk to you. He didn’t confide in me about what he heahed. But I’m worried. All I’ll say is this. If Billy the Kid is yore pard you can bet yore life on him.”

  “Hold on, Jesse,” rejoined the desperado as Evans turned to. leave. “It’s all right with me for you to hear what I’ve got to say if it’s all right with him.”

  “Stay, Jesse,” said Wade, soberly. He sensed incredible events Like the fox long out of hearing of the hounds he vibrated to a distant bay.

  “You call yourself Blanco?” queried Billy the Kid.

  “No. That name was given me because I happened to say I’d come from the head of the Blanco River,” explained Wade.

  “Jesse, he’s the man, sure as shootin’,” declared the outlaw, turning to his friend.

  “I reckon. Go ahaid an’ get it off yore chest.”

  “But your right name is Holden—Wade Holden—an’ you’re the last of a gang of bank robbers?”

  “I don’t admit that,” flashed Wade, shocked to the core of his being. He felt the blood recede from his face, leaving it cold.

  “You needn’t. But if you’re really Holden, I’m your friend an’ so is Jesse.”

  “All right . . . I’m—Holden,” admitted Wade, hoarsely, his voice breaking.

  “There’s a bunch of Texas Rangers at Chisum’s. They’re huntin’ you. They’ll be ridin’ out to meet Jesse soon as word arrives at Seven Rivers thet he’s down from the hills.”

  “Yes, an’ thet word will get there pronto,” interposed Jesse, grimly.

  “Holden, here’s how I found this out,” went on Billy the Kid, as evenly and matter-of-factly as if it did not send shuddering death to Wade’s hopes. “Lately I got acquainted with a Texan named Blue. Footloose, an’ wantin’ to get in with us. He trailed with some hombres I have no use for. Well, this Blue is the man who connected Chisum’s new gunman, Blanco, with Wade Holden. I reckon range talk drifted to his ears an’ some rider who’d seen you at Chisum’s described you to him. I don’t know thet he tipped you off to the rangers. But Chisum would do thet. He’ll stand for rustlers, an’ even hoss thieves, so long as they ain’t known to ride for him. Chisum an’ I split long ago. He was against an Englishman named Tunstan who was my friend. Thet Lincoln County outfit murdered Tunstan. I’ve killed some of them. An’ I’ll kill Chisum before they kill me.”

  “But the rangers?—How’d you hear about them?” queried Wade.

  “Just by accident. Run into Bud Slatten on the trail. He stayed at Chisum’s last night. Bud’s a good friend of Jesse’s. We used to ride together. He told me all the news.”

  “Did he say what company of Texas Rangers?”

  “No.”

  “Or who was the captain?”

  “Bud didn’t name him. Called him a red-faced, loudmouthed old geezer.”

  “Mahaffey? . . . My God!” muttered Wade.

  “What’s it mean if they get you?” asked Billy the Kid.

  “Bullets or the pen—for life.”

  “I savvy it’d be bullets,” put in Jesse Evans, darkly. His regard for Wade spoke there in bitter certainty.

  “Blanco,” went on Billy the Kid, as if to bury that other name. “Throw in with me. Come out in the open. I’ve got as sweet a bunch of men as ever pulled a gun. We’ll drag the rangers into this Lincoln County War. They’re an ornery houndin’ outfit—these Texas rangers. An’ by Gawd, this bunch won’t go home with their man! . . . Shake with Billy the Kid on thet deal.”

  “Thank you—Billy,” gasped Wade, sick and distraught. “It’s good of you—to take me in with you—to offer to fight for me. . . . Let me think. . . . God knows—they’ll get me. Ride the man down! That’s their motto. . . . Oh, I always knew. . . . I never forgot. . . . Why not go out in the open? Fight it out!”

  “Thet’s the talk, Blanco. Come on. Put her thar,” sang out Billy the Kid, his voice terrible in its ruthlessness; and once more he held out that slim deadly little hand.

  Wade faced an appalling temptation. He seemed to be falling from a precipice. The suddenness of this peril to his freedom and life left him devoid of power to reason.

  “Hold on, Billy, damn yore pictures,” spoke out Jesse, just as ringingly. “This boy has got a chance yet. It’s just hard luck he was found out. He must have been driven to whatever he did thet put them vultures on his scent. Let’s help him, instead of makin’ it shore death.”

  “Blanco, do you want to fight or run?” asked the young ruffian who had killed more than one man for each year of his life.

  “I want to fight. . . . But—but—” cried Wade, fiercely.

  Jesse Evans must have read Wade’s soul.

  “There’s yore hoss, Blanco,” he shouted, as if inspired, his eyes bright, his clutch like steel. “Fork him an’ ride till hell freezes over.

  A shrill whistle came from the dark group of horsemen on the river bank.

  “Hey, Billy. Bunch of riders comin’ up the trail.”

  “How far?”

  “Three—mebbe four miles.”

  “Who are they?”

  “Don’t know. They’re not cowboys or Injuns.”

  “Blanco, it’s your rangers. Ride! . . . If I ever meet Blue again I’ll bore him. Good-by,” said the outlaw.

  Jesse ran with Wade to where his horse was tethered near the thicket. Wade darted in to fetch his pack and coat. These Jesse helped tie on the saddle, and all the time he talked as swiftly as his fingers flew.

  “Keep to the river bottom till you get over thet rise of ground. Then take the direction of the trail, but keep off it, on the grass. Ride—but save yore hoss. Keep on, but dodge Lincoln. . . . There! . . . I’ll lie like a trooper to them rangers. I’ll hold them—throw them off. . . . Ride, pard, ride!”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  WADE raced his horse through the cottonwoods, but he looked back. With the old instinctive action his excitement increased to terror. There was hot wild blood in him that yearned to halt him, his back to a tree, to deal these hounds of the law death for death j but always a stronger power, neither physical nor primitive made him a coward.

  He raced on through the sunflowers, under the trees, and he looked back. Jesse Evans and Billy the Kid stood watching. They waved to him. Billy’s gang of dark riders gazed the other way, then rode down the bank into the river. When Wade looked again they were all out of sight.

  His powerful horse ran easily, over the sand patches and through the grass. Once Wade saw dust far down the Old Trail and he thought he would hate the sight of yellow dust clouds all his days. At length he came to the end of the cottonwood growth where the land began a gentle rise except along the river. Wade rode up high enough to peep over the treetops and halted to look.

  Presently over a distant ridge swept a band of horsemen, three abreast, riding in an orderly column. If they had been twice as far away he would have recognized them as Texas Rangers. They rode as if backed by law and justice.

  Wade urged his steed, plunging down the slope to the river-bank, and here he turned to the left and kept to the grass. Eleven thousand cattle had worked down the river that day. His tracks would be lost like needles in a haystack. Gradually the terror left him. And he thought that he should never have waxed forgetful and secure. He would never grow so soft again. The sudden shock, when Billy the Kid told him that the rangers were there, had been a dreadful and devastating thing. For the moment it had robbed him of manhood and left him sick, nerveless, frantic. Even now he had to fight to win back cold grim defiance.

  He came to where the river spread out in shallow sheets over wide sandy bars, and that place he remembered was where Jesse’s herd had first come down to water. A rise of ground h
id the long cottonwood grove and the range beyond. Wade rode off the trail, and keeping it in sight he set his horse to a steady lope.

  After a few more miles he looked back to find that the ridge was out of sight. He breathed freely again. Jesse Evans had detained the rangers. They would probably camp there that night or ride back to Seven Rivers. What a narrow shave! And he owed his life to Billy the Kid—the most notorious and ruthless outlaw of the time. Wade would always remember that youth, the something inimical about him, the way he packed his gun, the cool quiet quality of his voice, the marvelous eyes.

  The old trapper gave Wade a shrewd understanding look, not unkindly.

  “Wal, I’m goin’ up in the mountains to my cabin an’ put in a winter trappin’.”

  “How do you make out? Any money in it?”

  “Not any more. Used to be like diggin’ gold. I’ve seen them days. An’ tradin’ with the Injuns. Thet was good business till the caravans drove the redskins to war.”

  “Do you get snowed up?” asked Wade, curiously.

  “Wal, I should say. Thet’s when I like it, after the crust freezes. Then I travel on snowshoes. Ever try thet, cowboy?”

  “No. I’d sure like to.”

  “You’re a clear-eyed chap. Come along an’ spend the winter with me.”

  “What!”

  “Come along with me. There’ll be fine elk an’ bear huntin’ for a month.”

  “By heaven! . . . Does any one ever come to your cabin?”

  “Never hev yet. It’s high up an* hard to reach.”

  “But say, you don’t know me,” protested Wade, white-faced and tense at the idea. “I might be—be Billy the Kid—or some train— robber—or desperado.”

  “You might be, but you ain’t. . . . I had a son once—way back across the big river. If he’d lived he’d been about your age now. . . . What say, young fellar?”

  “I’ll go. I’ll work without wages. . . . But what’ll I do with my horse?”

  “Turn him loose up hyar a ways. There’s a valley where deer an’ elk winter. I can cache your saddle.”

  “Trapper, you’re a Godsend! I’ll take you up. . . . I swear you’ll never be sorry.”

  Once again some unlooked-for dispensation had come between Wade Holden and hate, fear, desperation, perhaps evil. High above the foothills, in a sheltered mountain valley, the old trapper led him to a little log cabin with a huge yellow stone fireplace.

  It took two days to climb up on foot. Wade worried about his tracks. As if in answer to his unconscious prayer the snow fell and they were as if they had never been. All his suddenly returning horror vanished over night.

  With the wild eagerness of a boy who had yearned for such adventure, Wade entered into this life in heartfelt gratitude and joy. He chopped down trees and sawed and split wood; he hunted the game that was working down from the heights; he hung up a winter’s supply of bear and elk meat and venison and wild turkeys. This meat froze into a perfect state of preservation. After weeks of toil, Wade worked himself into lean hard condition, capable of exertion and endurance he had not before possessed.

  Then the snow fell in earnest and the mountain fastness was locked in until spring. A crust that would bear the weight of a man soon formed. The trapper began to ply his trade. He taught Wade to travel on snowshoes, to bait traps and skin out the valuable furs.

  The solemn white days, cold and nipping, with frost like diamonds crackling in the air, passed as if by magic. Time might as well have stood still. At night, when the day’s toil was past and the good supper enjoyed, Wade would sit before the blazing logs and listen to the trapper’s tales of the early days. Then, snug in his bed of furs, he would lie awake and listen to the roar of the winter wind or the piercing silence of the wilderness, or the mournful wail of wolves.

  Spring came. Wade followed the old trapper down out of the mountains. His horse was gone. Wade walked like the mountaineer he had become, and at Santa Fe bade his friend good-by. Wade felt himself a changed man, if not in heart, surely in appearance. He had let his beard grow and when he first looked into a mirror he did not recognize himself. The beard concealed the lean hardness of his face. His intention had been to shave it off. But it was a mask. He had a barber trim it and then he thought he resembled an Englishman he had seen once. The beard had a tinge of gold that went well with his steel-blue eyes. Then he was struck by a look in his eyes that recalled Billy the Kid. Well, indeed, would it be to hide those eyes under a broad-brimmed sombrero.

  Wade took the stage for Taos where he stayed a day, interested in the quaint Mexican village. Then he proceeded to Lamy, which was on the railroad. Albuquerque, with its colorful Mexican and Indian life, its idle tranquil Cays, held him for a while. He became acquainted with a trader who had a post at Shiprock. Wade accompanied him and took a job in the post. It was far out in the desert. He learned to like the soft-voiced Navajos. He did so well for the trader that he was sent out to buy blankets, wool, sheepskins from the Indians. And then it seemed to Wade that he had found his niche. He grew to love the desert with its dust storms, its vast levels of sage and greasewood, its purple and red-walled horizons. But the winter changed his mind. The icy wind blew everlastingly.

  In the spring Wade drifted west. Always he traveled toward the setting sun. He became a sheepherder for a rancher at Mariposa and held that job all summer, sharing the work with a Mexican. They drove their flock up on the cool plateaus. Wade had his old gun practice on jack rabbits and coyotes, sometimes on wolves and lions. In the fall they drove the increased flock back to Mariposa.

  Wade spent the winter working in a lumber camp in the White Mountains, close to the Arizona line. The job was hard, the fare poor, the lumberjacks not to his liking. Another spring found him across the line in the territory that for years had lured him on. It was not disappointing, but different from the picture in his mind’s eye. Timbered mountains alternated with sage ranges, clear cold rushing streams criss-crossed the country. Wade traveled from one cattle ranch to another, sometimes getting a job for a while, sometimes only a meal. When he rode into White River Ranch he thought surely this beautiful place must be the one of his dreams come true. He got work as a cowboy. But it developed at length that the owner of the Triple Bar was a Mormon and all Wade’s riding comrades were Mormons. He liked them despite their proselyting, and they liked him or they would never have tried to make him a Mormon.

  All went well until the rancher’s buxom daughter began to make eyes at Wade. It was so obvious that he could not fail to see. Then the shyer he grew, the more he avoided the spoiled girl, the stranger became her infatuation. That precipitated the jealousy of a former favored suitor. Soon the day came when Wade once more rode away.

  And as Wade penetrated this amazing Arizona land he knew that somewhere in its vast area he would find his place. He was not in a hurry. That old fear had lulled—he never looked back any more—and the erring past had faded as the months passed by. He drifted ever westward and as another winter drew near, sheered to the south where the sun shone warm. Cow camps, sheep camps, lonesome hamlets all the way to Tucson held him for a day or a week, according to their interest for him. He tried odd jobs in Tucson and passed the winter there.

  Tombstone was in its heyday. Wade journeyed there. The gold fever was thick as dust over this mining-town center. It was full of gamblers, thieves, lewd women, adventurers, cowboys, travelers, besides the horde of miners. The humming town fascinated Wade. He tried his hand at mining. He was unusually lucky. Every place he touched yielded gold. He struck a small rich vein from which he gleaned several thousand dollars’ worth of gold dust, This incurred the envy of a neighboring miner who advanced a prior right to the claim. Wade went to work in the Bird Cage, a notorious place where the populace of Tombstone flocked for entertainment, for drink and faro. Here Wade’s good looks and kindness won the interest of a pretty dancer. Gossip had it that she was the property of a gambler called Monte. Wade felt sorry for her, but took no advantage of her
interest in him. The gambler beat the girl. That unleashed the devil in Wade. Before a crowd in the gambling hall, he called the card sharp every vile name common to the West, threw the cards and chips in his face, drove him to draw his gun and killed him in the act.

  Once again Wade was a marked man, but in a different way. He was patted on the back for killing Monte, and as that individual had been reputed to be swift on the draw, the duel brought Wade the old sobriquet of gunman. Wyatt Earp, Tombstone’s most noted exponent of gunplay, witnessed the encounter between Wade and Monte.

  “Texas gunman,” he pronounced. “I don’t care for any of his game.”

  So in the wildest town on the Arizona frontier, Wade, who had traveled under his middle name of Brandon, his mother’s name, became known as Tex Brandon. And would-be killers, long-haired seekers for notoriety, drunken cowboys, and thin-lipped hangers-on of the gambling hells, placed Wade in the unenviable position of defending himself openly as well as from being waylaid dark. He crippled three men before he was forced to kill another. Friends Wade had made in Tombstone enjoyed his distinction and the gambler’s girl made the most of his championship. But Wade grew distrustful of his position there and its trend. One spring day when the bloom was on the sage he rode away.

  Southern Arizona proved too hot for Wade in summer. He headed north and day by day the heat tempered, the desert bloomed, the dim hazy walls beyond the horizon took shape and color. He spent summer and fall in the Tonto Basin and loved that wild valley of black timber and crystal brooks most of all regions of Arizona. But the Pleasant Valley War between sheepmen who were rustlers and cattlemen who were backwoodsmen was about to break out, and that conflict invited any stranger to depart.