One Notch to Death Read online

  He came back to the Storms with the faraway look in his eyes that comes to a man when he has shorn himself of the company of other men for long periods. He also spoke hesitantly as a man would who seldom used his tongue. He worked a spring cow-hunt with the family and went off again. It became his habit to do this year after year and the family accepted it.

  The only real change that Will noticed in the boy he had grown up with was that now Joe wore a gun on his hip and knew how to use it. White folks didn’t take to a Negro who went armed. But nobody did anything about it because tales drifted in about the men he had killed. Men said that the ‘Storm nigger’ had gone bad. The Storms didn’t seem to think so. They continued to trust him, though Martha complained that he smelled like the mustangs he hunted. He was taciturn and usually uncommunicative, yet he always returned to them. All the boys respected him and learned from him as their uncle Mart had done before them. He was a great favorite with Kate and Melissa and with both girls he was extraordinarily gentle.

  He had ridden up the Kansas trail with them for no other reason than that he was needed. Will knew that he owed his life more than once to his boyhood playmate. Mart knew now as he rode west through the hills that if he wanted a gun to side him that gun was at Joe Widbee’s hip. But that was not what he wanted. Joe had done enough. He was at peace in the hills, coming back to civilization every now and then to sell a string of gentled horses.

  Mart rode through the night and through the first cool hours of the day. When the sun was overhead and the sweat was starting through his shirt, he halted by a mountain freshet and let the dun roll. He and the beasts drank of the crystal clear water, then he hobbled them on good grass and lay down in the shade for a short sleep.

  Years on the owl-hoot had developed in him the capacity of waking when he wished. He allowed himself two hours before he woke, ate a light meal and washed it down with mountain-water. Now he saddled Darky and led Old Stripes and pressed on. He was now in the wildest country imaginable, riding through a tangled mass of brush and scattered boulders, under sweeping timbered slopes, and beyond the massive peaks of the sierras, thrusting their blue and white into the very heavens themselves. It was country enough to awe a man, to bring him down to the reality of his humble level. Here he was no more than an ant on the hand of God.

  He had picked his horses well. Neither were creatures of great beauty, but they would both keep up the mile-eating trot all day. If there was pursuit behind, the men who came after him would need to have good stock under them to overtake him.

  As he rode, he tried to think himself into a more cheerful frame of mind, to convince himself that here he was free as the wind, in good health, with good horses, food on his saddle and not a care in the world. But he didn’t convince himself too well and he could only think of the world he had left behind him. Once more he was a loner. Once more he had stepped into a world where fear and suspicion were the main elements of survival. Friendship could be fatal and trust a death sentence.

  He nooned briefly and changed horses, coming in sight of Joe’s place in the middle of the afternoon. And if he hadn’t known its exact location he would never have found it. Which was typical of Joe.

  It was no more than a single-roomed cabin of logs with a good stone chimney. Joe was rightly proud of his chimneys. The whole place was no larger than was needed to house a bunk, a table and a couple of homemade chairs. It stood near water, on slightly raised ground, well sheltered from the elements by high ground, yet with open space around it so that Joe had a clear field of fire. It was, in short, tucked out of sight in a rincon which one man could hold against an army.

  If Joe was home, he wasn’t in sight. Which was what Mart expected. Joe was somewhere under cover with a rifle pointed at him. So he rode up to the cabin and dismounted, looking over the starve-out that contained a half-dozen raw mustangs. Two of them, he saw, were necked to burros to teach them a few manners till Joe could get to them.

  Mart unsaddled and tied his two horses, hefted saddle and supplies and headed into the cabin. The inside he found as tidy as he expected. There was deer-meat on the table with a knife beside it. Joe was around.

  He walked outside again and there the man was, rifle in hand.

  Joe was a very black, grizzled and tough-looking Negro. His body looked slack and relaxed. He was of medium height and looked as if he only moved fast when he had to. The repeating rifle in his hands was very clean. The ancient Colt’s gun on his right hip was in the same condition.

  ‘Hello, Joe,’ Mart said.

  Joe nodded.

  ‘How you bin, boy?’

  The same age as Will made him, in spite of being an ex-slave, an elder brother. He had shown the same care of Mart as Will. Mart remembered. This was the meanest and, at the same time, the gentlest man he knew.

  It was no use fooling around with him and there was no time to waste.

  ‘I’m on the run again, Joe,’ he said.

  The Negro frowned.

  ‘What foolishness is this?’ he said and headed for the house. ‘Come on in. I reckon you ain’t runnin’ so fast you can’t stop awhile, chew the rag an’ fill your belly.’

  They talked while Joe fried the deer meat. Mart told him everything. When he finished, Joe said: ‘You do like Will says. Ride around the hills a while. This’ll die down in time. If these bastards come after you, leave ’em to ole Joe.’

  Mart said hastily: ‘I’m not askin’ you to come in on this.’

  ‘Nobody said you is,’ Joe snarled. ‘I do what I like.’

  ‘I don’t want any more killin’.’

  ‘There’s other ways of slowin’ a man down without killin’ him,’ Joe told him. ‘An’ I knows ’em all.’

  ‘This is my affair,’ Mart said. ‘I’ll handle it.’

  ‘This is family,’ Joe said.

  That was the closest Mart had ever known him get to sentimentality. It embarrassed Mart a little. They sat at the rickety table and they ate their deer meat. It was good to get some solid food under your belt. They washed it down with black, unsweetened coffee. Mart told Joe of the arrangement to exchange information with Will through him. Joe said that was fine. Then he took Mart outside the cabin and mapped out a route for him, telling him at the start to work his way back a few miles down his own tracks. This would take him almost directly south. He explained that when he reached a certain spot, he must turn west. He, Joe, would wipe out the sign that could indicate to any following men that he had headed for the rincon. Now, as Mart went west he would be in wild, well-watered country. Here was his chance to lose his pursuers for good and all. Mart listened carefully. It was an age-old habit, listening to Joe. The Negro wasn’t a great talker, but when he talked it was to some purpose.

  At the end of it all, Mart shook hands with Joe, switched saddles on his horses and headed south. As soon as he was out of sight, Joe roped a small bay horse and threw a saddle on it. He followed in Mart’s tracks, observing with satisfaction that Mart had done precisely as he had bidden him. When he reached the most southerly point of the trail and saw where Mart had turned west, he himself backtracked a way, dismounted and tied his horse. He now cut himself a piece of brush and started work on wiping out Mart’s tracks, leaving those that came from the east and those that went on into the west. He didn’t hurry and he was thorough.

  When he was satisfied that even an expert tracker could not discover what he had done, he remounted his horse and started east, keeping slightly north and parallel to the course which Mart had held coming in from the east. After a while, he took his horse up onto higher land, dismounted, loosened cinches and sat down to wait.

  Chapter Five

  Some five hours after Mart had ridden off into the hills under cover of darkness, Martha, who was in the yard at the time, called out that she could see two riders on the trail from Broken Spur. Will, who had stayed at home in case any callers should come looking for Mart, came out of the house with his rifle in his hands. He didn’t propose to
start any shooting matches, but a man never knew at a time like this. There was also a chance that one well-placed bullet could save his brother Mart a whole lot of grief later.

  The house stood on slightly raised ground above the most easterly of the two creeks on this side of the valley and, from it he had a good view of almost all the Three Creeks Valley. The two riders were now at a distance of about half a mile. Like all men of that country, he had the ability to recognize men at a distance. He did it by knowing their horses as much as the men. One good look and he was certain that he knew neither of the advancing riders.

  Kate and Melissa came out of the house to see who the newcomers might be. Visitors were not common and they were curious. Kate was now nineteen and her father had to admit that she was a picture. He really couldn’t blame Pete Hasso for mooning over her, even though it was starting to affect his work. Melissa still had her hair down and was, in her father’s opinion, a spoiled pouting little miss. Which didn’t alter the fact that she was a universal favorite with every member of the outfit. They stood now, shading their eyes with their hands against the sun, Kate golden tall and slender, Melissa, smaller and dark, showing the first buds of womanhood.

  ‘Who is it, pa?’ Melissa demanded. She had been in an uneasy mood since she had woken and heard that her Uncle Mart had gone.

  ‘It’s no never mind,’ Will said. ‘Git in the house. You too, Kate. An’ don’t show yourselves.’

  Melissa tried protesting, as she did whenever she was given an order, but Kate turned and shooed her into the house.

  ‘Do you know them?’ Martha asked.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Will they be after Martin?’

  ‘We’ll soon know that,’ Will told her. ‘Into the house with you, woman.’

  ‘You look out for yourself,’ she said.

  Will grunted with irritation. There were too many damned women in this outfit to fuss a man.

  He could see the two riders more clearly now. The one on the roan horse was a young fellow, not much over twenty years of age, built on a slender frame, moving with an easy grace in the saddle. Will did not know how to assess him—he was dressed much as any range rider would be. He wore a belt-gun and there was a rifle under his right leg. His horse was goodish.

  The other man was bigger and older, very broad in the shoulder and slim in the hips. While there was something slightly flamboyant about his companion, this one rode with a sort of sober seriousness. He was dark and bearded, the black of his beard showing against the bright red of his bandanna. His horse was a big black with a vicious eye, but was well under the control of its rider.

  It was this man who spoke as the two riders drew rein in front of the house.

  ‘Howdy.’

  The voice was resonant, seeming to come from deep in the barrel chest.

  Will returned the greeting.

  ‘Is this the Storm place?’ Will said that it was and that he was Will Storm. He asked what he could do for the stranger. The man said: ‘We’re looking for Martin Storm. I reckon you’d be his brother.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  The man kicked his right foot from the stirrup iron and hooked his leg around his saddlehorn.

  ‘Mart around?’

  The question came with careless ease.

  ‘No.’

  The bearded stranger kind of shook his head at that as if to say that it was just like Mart not to be around when he was wanted.

  ‘Expectin’ him?’

  ‘No.’

  The short answers were getting home to him.

  ‘He lives here, don’t he?’ The bearded man was looking around him carelessly. The young man was sitting still in the saddle, very alert. He wasn’t scared, but he was wary.

  Will said: ‘Mart lives where he lights, I reckon. He ain’t here.’

  ‘Where would I find him?’

  ‘Can’t rightly say.’

  Will hadn’t asked them to step down. The bearded man hadn’t missed the breach of etiquette. It was already very plain to him that he and his companion weren’t welcome here.

  ‘Which way’s he go?’

  ‘I don’t know that either.’

  The big stranger unwound his leg from the saddlehorn and put his foot in the stirrup iron. He lifted the lines and said with the smallest of smiles: “Thanks for your help, Storm.’

  ‘You’re welcome. Who shall I say called?’

  The smile spread to a wide grin.

  ‘Let’s keep is a secret and surprise Mart,’ the bearded man said. He neck-reined his horse around and the young man followed his example. Will looked at the young man’s eyes. Then he knew. The boy was a killer. The two of them lifted their horses into a trot and went a few hundred yards south of the house and stopped. They were conferring.

  The young man was saying: ‘Christ, you was soft with him, Dill. You should ought to of gun-whipped the bastard. He’d of talked then.’

  The big man folded his hands on his saddlehorn and sighed softly.

  ‘You never learn, boy,’ he said patiently. ‘I try to teach you, but I might as well save my breath. Maybe Mart was right there in the house with a gun on us. Maybe somebody else was. We didn’t have any way of knowin’. You don’t stop to think, you’ll get yours before your time. And that would be a waste of a whole lot of talent.’

  The boy frowned.

  ‘Well, for crissake, what do we do now?’

  ‘We think. Now, Will Storm expected us. The way he talked showed me that. If he expected us, that means Mart came back here after he killed Pat. That means, if he lit out an’ ain’t hidin’ in the house, he left some sign around. Neither of us is slouches with sign.’

  ‘Where do we start? This is a cow headquarters. The place will be thick with sign all over.’

  ‘If you was high-tailin’ out of here, it’s my guess you’d head south for New Mexico or you’d go west into the mountains. Kansas to the east is wide open. North’d mean he was ridin’ back toward us. My bet is he went west into good cover. So we head into them hills, son, then we ride on a line due north and cut for sign.’

  The boy nodded.

  ‘Let’s git at it, then,’ he said.

  They turned and urged their horses into the west.

  Will watched them go with a sinking feeling inside him. They’d pick up Mart’s trail before nightfall.

  He turned back to the house. Martha and the girls came out and Martha said: ‘Are they the men who were with the man Mart killed?’

  Will didn’t much like talking about that kind of thing in front of his daughters, but he said: ‘They most likely are.’

  Martha looked unhappy.

  ‘When the boys come in,’ she said, ‘maybe some of them could ride after Mart. Maybe they could help.’

  Will frowned.

  ‘Mart rid out because he was dodging that kind of trouble,’ he said. ‘He don’t want any more killin’. He’s in wild country with two good horses. If he can’t shake them two jaspers off nobody can. ‘Sides, he’ll be callin’ in on Joe.’

  ‘Just the same—’ Martha began.

  Will cut her short. ‘Leave it be, woman,’ he said.

  There was work to be done, but Will didn’t saddle a horse. He was unsettled and he mooned about the place like a lost hound-dog, worrying himself about Mart and feeling helpless. He was doing what his brother wanted, but he didn’t like it. He was pacing the yard with a dead cold pipe in his mouth when the boys rode in, his son George and Pete Hasso. They threw their horses into the starve-out, washed up and ate in the silence that was customary at the meal-table. When they were through eating, Will told them what had happened. George, half-steady like his oldest brother, Clay, half-wild like his other brother, Jody, wanted to saddle up and go scouring the hills for the men on Mart’s trail. Will told him to shut his fool head. Pete Hasso, looking at Kate out of the corner of his eye, opined that he’d deem it a privilege if he be allowed to do just that. Will told him he should go right ahead if he wanted his
time and that shut him up.

  Then they heard the horses. George went outside and called: ‘Riders a-comin’.’

  Will joined his son quickly and saw the string of riders coming down the Broken Spur trail in the last light of the day. He squinted and counted them. Ten men all told. Sudden worry shot through him. When he saw the man in the lead, his worry increased.

  This was Burt Ransome, sheriff of the newly constituted county. Not enough folks in these parts to fill a good-sized saloon and they had a county. Enough to make a man laugh. He didn’t have a high opinion of the sheriff, which didn’t hurt Ransome much, for the man had a good opinion of himself. Will recognized a few of the men as Broken Spur riders, one or two he knew rode for outfits to the north. The rest he had never seen before to his knowledge. If this wasn’t a sheriff’s posse, he’d never seen one.

  ‘What do you make of it, pa?’ George asked. ‘They’re after Mart,’ Will said. He could see the way the cards were going to fall and he didn’t like it much. ‘Keep your mouth shut and leave the talkin’ to me.’

  The sheriff rode up with something of a flourish, because the women had come out of the house and he liked to impress women. He took off his hat and bowed to them.

  ‘Evenin’, Mrs. Storm, young ladies. Evenin’, Will.’

  He was a man in his middle thirties and already thickening around the middle. He had suffered a little from the ride and it showed. He was sweating and his face was red.

  ‘Howdy,’ Will said. ‘Light, Burt, an’ welcome.’

  The sheriff stepped down from the saddle. His legs were stiff and he winced when they hurt. The rest of the men stayed in the saddle, watching.