He put on his hat, started for the door. Over his shoulder he said that he wasn’t ready for dinner yet, and that she should go ahead without him.
“I’ll wait for you, Tom. You—are you going very far?”
“Nope. Just stretchin’ my legs a little.”
He closed the door behind him and sauntered out into the prairie. Wrapped in thought he went on, absently taking a cigar from his pocket. The dull rays of the dying sun silvered the sagebrush. Here and there a rabbit treasured this last warmth against the night, or a hunched squirrel dangled its tiny paws like a child before a cooling fire.
Lord frowned and shook his head; kicked irritably at a clod of dirt. Lord vs Lord were at their confusing worst today. You couldn’t tell which was the ornery bastard and which the just and sensible man.
So he wasn’t perfect, nowheres near perfect. Didn’t it follow, then, that he should be very lenient in his judgments? Or wasn’t the very opposite necessary? His imperfections had caused him no end of trouble in the past. Hardly seemed smart to compound his own with another’s. And—and, hell! A fella just naturally wanted someone better than he was. If he couldn’t have someone better, why have anyone? Might as well be one of those mop-pole pipe-liners, who, to quote their own joke, screwed each other and did their own washing.
Well—Lord sighed—the evidence was pretty well in; and it all pointed to a verdict of wait-and-see. And barring some decisive happening, it would have to stand there.
He found a match, started to light his cigar. In the distance there was a dim splat!
Lord didn’t hear the sound. It was too far away, and the wind was blowing against it. He almost missed the second sound, a light thud, and the small kick-up of dust some ten feet in front of him. Almost but not quite.
Continuing to light his cigar, he kept his eyes on the dust puff. The wind blew it away, and he saw what had made it.
A rifle bullet.
21
The four hunters left town around noontime. Buck Harris stayed fairly close to them for a while, until he was sure they had taken the right road (or the wrong one) and the traffic became thin. Then, he dropped far to the rear.
There was no need to watch them. He knew where they were going, and he knew they were in no hurry to get there. They were hunters, ostensibly. So they couldn’t wait too late in the day to leave town. But they’d have plenty of time to kill before their “hunt” began. In the interim, before darkness fell, they’d hole-up off the road. And the logical place to do that was the abandoned drilling well.
Buck loafed along in his old car, taking an occasional look at the speedometer. After a little less than two hours, he turned off into the prairie, followed an angling wash in the land for about a mile. He got out then, taking a pair of binoculars with him.
He took off his hat, climbed up the slope of the wash, and peered over the crest. He’d hit it just about right. He was roughly parallel with the matchstick tower that was the derrick, and the specklike buildings around it.
The binoculars were powerful—one of several pairs belonging to the sheriff’s office. Buck focused them for long-range viewing, and let out a gratified grunt.
They were almost five miles away, but they seemed only a few feet. Lounged behind the bunkhouse, where their car was also hidden, they were sighting and fiddling with their rifles. Smoking and talking, and passing a bottle from hand to hand.
Buck withdrew and returned to his car. He got it back to the road and drove on toward the well. Those four were set for a while. It would be about three hours, at least, before they made a move. He could use the time to get closer to them. He could move up on them, and they—hiding as they were—would never know it.
A few minutes more, and he wheeled off into another wash, stopping, after a hundred yards or so, around a bend. He got out, picked up the binoculars and his rifle, and went on up the wash on foot. Again coming parallel with the bunkhouse, he climbed up to the crest and peered over it.
He frowned, startled. He made minute adjustments in the binoculars and put them to his eyes again. Now, from a visual standpoint, he was right in the middle of the wildcat’s installations. He could look through the bunkhouse windows, through the open door of the toolshed. He could even do a pretty good job of examining the wooded and underbrushed area to the rear of the bunkhouse. Someone might be hiding down there, but why the hell would they do it? And even though they might be hiding—which made no sense whatsoever—they could not have hidden the car.
But the car was gone. It and the four men as well.
Buck slid down the slope away; bewilderedly pondered the riddle.
“Now, let’s see,” he murmured. “I was five miles back the first time I stopped. Could’ve been gunfire and I wouldn’t’ve heard it. Could be somethin’ happened when I was gettin’ back to the road, and I wouldn’t’ve seen it. They were out of sight for twenty-thirty minutes, an’—”
But that still didn’t explain the car. If something had alarmed them into suddenly leaving the lease, they could never have made it without his seeing them. The trail from the road to the well was no highway. They could have got back to the road little faster than he had, and he would certainly have seen them. So…
So it just didn’t make sense.
The car was gone and they were gone. That was the way it was, but it couldn’t be that way! They had to be there on that lease!
Buck knuckled his eyes. He went back up the slope, reset the binoculars and began to move them in a slow arc. Bunkhouse…cook shack…toolshed…pipe racks…belt-house…derrick floor…slush pit…
Buck held on the high-banked oval of ooze, feeling a squeamish twinge at his stomach. Trickles of bubbles poked up through the slimy surface and slowly sank below it. Occasionally, the bubbles combined, spewed upward in a gaseous burp, as though from a giant digesting a sickening feast…
Birds fell into these things. Toads and lizards and snakes were trapped in them. Small game wandered into them, and were gulped down by the slime.
The law required that the pits be filled in when a well was completed or abandoned. But Highlands spent no money unless it had to; and in the far-flung oil fields, enforcement of the law was difficult.
Buck thought grimly that it would serve the bastards right if they fell into one of the stinkin’ things. And then, as he started to swing the glasses away…
“H-Holy God!” he said loudly. “What the…?”
For the giant had swallowed too much, and now he must spew it up for another try.
Almost the whole surface of the pit was in motion, bubbling and burping and rippling. Then, there was a furious upward lunging, and the top of some object came into view. It held there for a moment, and part of the slime slid away from it, and the sun glinted on its metal top, and Buck saw what it was. And then slowly, an inch at a time, it sank back down into the pit. And this time it stayed down.
“Holy God,” said Buck reverently, and it was a prayer.
Now, he knew where the car was. And probably where they were. He also knew, needless to say, that they had not arrived in the pit voluntarily or accidentally. Someone—or several someones—had put them there.
Tom Lord? Nope. Lord wouldn’t be this far from his shack without a car.
It had Buck stumped. But he didn’t intend to remain stumped. Whoever had done that job was still in the vicinity. He—or they—were still in the vicinity; he had to be, even though he couldn’t be seen. And it was just a matter of smokin’ him out.
He started back to his car, trotting awkwardly in his boots, moving as fast as the rocky wash would allow. He thought sickishly of the four men, and despite what they were he felt a little sorry for them. No one ought to die that way. And anyone who would pull a stunt like that—well, they had to be mighty low-down, or just plumb crazy.
He clambered out into the road. He was halfway across it before he caught himself. And, awareness coming to him, he reddened with anger and shame.
How dumb could a fel
la get, anyway? How goldanged dumb could you get?
He’d played it so danged smart. The hunters were behind the bunkhouse, unable to watch the road, so he’d thought no one else could. Hadn’t figured there might be someone else there on the lease, someone hidden off to one side.
Well, the fella had had a cinch. He’d just snaked off to one side of Buck, and then circled around behind him. And good old Buck, seeing no necessity to do otherwise, had thoughtfully left his keys in the car.
The tracks of the vehicle led clearly toward town. Knowing of nothing better to do, Buck trudged wearily after them. He surmised that the hunters’ car had probably been shot half to pieces in the process of killing them. So the killer or killers had another car, and had also disposed of a possible snoop. If he’d been handy, they’d probably have killed him. Since he wasn’t, he’d been left on foot…which was practically as good, for their purposes.
Goldang! thought Buck. Just wait until the fellas hear four people killed right in front of me. My car gettin’ stole…!
In his own way, Buck was a highly intelligent man, but his way was not notable for its speed. Invariably he came up with the right answer. But it took him time to do it.
Thus, for a while, he saw the clarity of the tire tracks as merely insult added to injury. The killers apparently regarded him as so dumb that they’d even driven on the soft shoulders of the road, indicating the direction they’d taken as plainly as a sign.
That was Buck’s first idea: They knew he couldn’t do anything, so they hadn’t bothered to cover up.
Then, after another weary mile or so, the second idea hit him. The trail was blazed one way because they intended going the other! They’d follow the road townwise for several miles, then swing back in a wide circle to the bunkhouse. They’d been holed up around there, in the first place. Whatever their plans were, they’d remain holed up until dark. And naturally they would not head for Big Sands. Not in a car which had obviously come from there, and which might be recognized.
Buck hesitated, took a long look around him. There was a lot of distance between him and the well now. Unless the killers were equipped with binoculars as he was—and that hardly seemed likely—they could no longer see him. And they probably weren’t trying to. It wouldn’t seem necessary, and they’d have other things to do.
Buck crossed the road, to the side opposite the lease. Then, when he was well into the wasteland, he turned west, again moving in the direction of the abandoned wildcat.
Thirst gnawed at him. His feet seemed to be on fire. Like many far-westerners, he customarily shunned walking as a cat shuns water. He was saddle-born and bred, and he had never completely recovered from the notion that the natural function of a foot was to fill a stirrup.
He came parallel with the distant derrick. He went on past it for perhaps another mile, and then he turned back to the road, creeping and crawling for the last hundred yards.
He grasped a strand of the barbed-wire fence; he bent it rapidly, this way and that, until it snapped from the friction-induced heat. He repeated this process, farther up the wire, until it also parted. Then, tossing the resultant strand into the road, he moved on again.
In all, over a distance of less than a mile, six strands went into the dust of the road. Then, bellying down on the prairie, he waited and rested. He also felt a growing need to get some throat in his hands. Never in his life had he mauled a prisoner, but he was going to make an exception in this case. Anyone that would dump four people into a slush pit, and steal a deputy sheriff’s car, was just begging for a maulin’. And they’d sure as hell get it!
It was about sundown, earlier than he had expected, when he heard the throb of his car. It was coming on fast and furious, but Buck wasn’t the least bit worried. Those tires of his had about as much tread to ’em as a one-legged centipede. Any minute now that car would be taking a wild-dive into the ditch. Yes, sir, just any minute…
The minute passed. So did the car. With a rattling and banging of wire, it roared past Buck, the throb of its motor dimming and then dying in the distance.
Buck stood up incredulously. Then, coming to his senses, he raced for the road. No time for fooling around now, for staying in cover. That car just naturally couldn’t go much farther, and he was going to be right nearby when it stopped.
At the road, he sat down and yanked off his boots. He swung them around his neck with his handkerchief, and began to run—after the car which had to stop very soon.
He ran sock-footed until he was out of breath. Then, after a brief pause, he started running again. He stumbled and fell down. He got his second wind, ran on and on. And…on.
He never knew how far he ran, how long. But there suddenly was the car, swimming before his tear-blind eyes as though it were a mirage. There was no one in it—so far as he could see. Whether there was anyone lurking nearby, waiting for him, he didn’t much care. Rather, he would have welcomed the risk for a chance to take a poke at them.
His canvas water bag still swung from a rear-door handle. After a long thirsty drink from it, he checked the car’s tires. Somehow, the barbed wire had got only one of them, the left front. The killers had kept going on it until it ran off the rim and the overheated motor forced them to stop. As to where they had gone.…
Buck readily picked up their sign: two men moving rapidly. They had crossed the ditch, and headed in the general direction of Tom Lord’s shack. They were unaware, apparently, that they might be followed, believing that time would cover their trail for them.
Buck reckoned they were not calling on Tom through any happenstance. He must figure in some kind of plan of theirs; otherwise, they would have switched to the spare tire and kept on going.
Tom would need some help, Buck guessed. But he’d never be able to catch these birds on foot. He’d need the car, and if the keys hadn’t been left in it—
They had been. Something else had also been left in it, too, squeezed awkwardly against the front floorboards. The bullet-riddled body of Sal Onate—so recently a member of the “hunter” foursome. On the floor beneath him was his rifle, all its bullets expended. He had been dead obviously before he was loaded into the car.
Buck unlocked the trunk compartment and hauled out his spare tire. As he set to work feverishly, he asked himself questions; and the answers poured back at him. Sal Onate had been dead when he was brought here. But suppose he had been alive! Suppose he had seen Tom Lord kill his friends, and he’d trailed Tom to his shack seeking revenge. Suppose Tom was shot to death, and Onate—also dead of gun wounds—was found in the vicinity.…
Two men dead as the result of a gun battle: that was the picture which the real killers intended to leave.
To create it, Onate’s body had had to be brought here, and Tom Lord would have to be killed.
22
Tom Lord finished lighting his cigar. He blew out the match, broke it in two and flicked it away.
Puffing comfortably, he looked around the prairie with an air of casual enjoyment. Then, completely unhurried, he turned and sauntered back toward the shack.
The bullet had come from a long way off. It would have been dangerous only with a favorable wind.
Lord entered his lean-to garage. He started his car and drove it around to the rear of the shack. He leaped out, pounded on the shutter until Donna opened it.
“Tom! What in the world—”
He cut her off impatiently. “You drive a car? All right, get out of here and get going. Head for town. Follow the prairie until you get down near the road, and then—”
“But, Tom!”
“Come on! And bring me that rifle and a box of shells!” He made a grab for her as she remained motionless. “Will you move, dammit? Someone took a shot at me just now. If you don’t get out of here fast, you may not be able to!”
“I—I just don’t understand…” She shook her head bewilderedly, eyes wide in her frightened face.
Lord groaned. She was obviously too stunned to move, too shaken t
o escape even if he did haul her through the window and put her in the car.
“Now, listen,” he said tightly. “There’s a killer out there, maybe two. I didn’t have time to make sure. Now I want you to leave here right now—you can still make it all right—and head for town. Tell the sheriff what’s happened, and—”
“But, Tom—w-why? Who are—”
“A couple of Pellino’s boys, I imagine. It doesn’t matter. All that matters is that they’ve come here to kill me, and if you don’t get the hell out of here—”
“But what about you? You’ve got to go with me!”
“Dammit, didn’t you hear what I said? These men are here to—”
Donna said crisply that, of course, she had heard him. He was in danger of being killed. Thus, he must leave with her immediately with no further argument. “And I’ll just leave the rifle here, in case you get any more crazy notions. Now, go on and get in the car, and.…Go on, Tom!”
“Huh-uh.” He shook his head, eyes glinting with anger. “An’ I’m gonna tell you this one more time. Because maybe you heard me, but you didn’t understand me…”
“Of course, I understand. These men want to kill you, and you stand there arguing!”
“I’ve got to stay, dammit! Don’t you have enough principle about you to see that? Anyone who pulls what they’re pulling can’t be left running loose. I’ve got to take care of ’em myself, or hold ’em until the sheriff’s boys get here.”
“Oh, pooh! You do not have to.”
“All right,” Lord said grimly. “Have your own way about it. Just pitch me the rifle and shells, and do what you want to.”
“No!”
He glared at her, breathing heavily. Unflinching, she met his gaze, her lips set in a firm pink line. They stood there inches apart—worlds apart—and he lunged forward suddenly and got her by the shoulders.