Dark Angel Riding Page 3

  ‘See you got a cut-out for your trigger finger in that holster of yours.’

  ‘You’re an observant man,’ was all Dancer said, pulling the boots off of his saddle-weary feet.

  ‘I guess you’ll survive out here longer than most,’ Foley said, curling up again in his blanket, turning his back to Dancer.

  ‘What do you mean?’ John asked.

  ‘Nothing,’ the muffled voice from beneath the blanket said. ‘You’ve already seen how matters stand around here. If you’ve hired on, knowing that, I suppose you’re willing to stay.’

  ‘But you wouldn’t recommend it?’

  ‘Mister, I don’t recommend what people should do. But if I had your youth and a good horse, I’d consider slapping spurs to it.’ He sat up abruptly and without glancing again at Dancer turned down the lantern wick until the pale, smoky light it cast fizzled to golden sparks and then was extinguished by the chill desert night, leaving John Dancer to lie back on his cot, hands behind his head and wonder what he had gotten himself into this time.

  THREE

  With the first glow of morning light John Dancer dressed and walked to the door of the bunkhouse. Foley had left a pot of hot coffee on the iron stove and John held a tin cup in his hand as he peered out into the brilliant morning. Flat rays of gold pierced the spreading oak trees. Dust motes danced densely through these. A flight of doves winged toward water as the dawn lost its color and the sky paled. A yellow dog, its tail curled between its legs, slunk toward the bunkhouse, looked up at John with mistrustful brown eyes and scurried away.

  Dancer had no idea where Foley had gone, nor where anyone else on the ranch might be. First things first. He collected his saddlebags and went out, tugging his hat lower. Whatever job they had in mind for him this day, he would need Washoe and so he walked toward the barn, his boots kicking up little puffs of dust. He startled a cottontail in his passing, and the small rabbit launched itself into a zigzagging run through the willow brush that fronted the river.

  Inside the barn it was still cool and shadowed, horse-smelling. Three ponies stood there now, watching his approach with pricked ears. He had no idea whose animals these were, where their riders might be.

  Whistling under his breath, he curried Washoe’s gunmetal-colored coat, spread his striped blanket over the horse’s broad back and hoisted the saddle. He cinched down the twin straps on the Texas-rigged saddle, took bridle and bit from a rusty nail on the wall of the barn and slipped Washoe into his working gear.

  Before leading the horse out into the brilliant morning sunlight, he double-checked the cinches. Now and then he still ran across a man who asked him why he used a double-cinched Texas-style saddle when it was twice as much trouble. All Dancer could do was to reply with a smile, figuring the man had never roped a 1000-pound steer running at full speed. It was almost funny to watch a man lasso a cow, throw a dally around his pommel and see the single cinch break. The wide-eyed look on his face as he flew up into the air still seated on his saddle. Almost … if it wasn’t happening to you.

  Dancer swung open the heavy barn door and went out into the grassless yard.

  Cassandra Blythe was there, sitting on the seat of a surrey drawn by a leggy red roan with a coat so bright it looked as if it had been burnished. He noticed the Rafter B brand on the animal’s smooth flank. Dancer started toward her, leading Washoe.

  ‘ ’Morning, Mrs Blythe. I was about to come looking for you, for someone to tell me what they wanted me to do this morning.’

  Cassandra Blythe’s eyes were shadowed by the wide brim of a yellow straw hat, but they were clear and direct. ‘You’ll be escorting me to Potrero this morning,’ she said, gathering up the reins which had been looped around the brake handle.

  ‘What’s that?’ he asked.

  ‘The nearest thing we have to a town out here,’ she answered. ‘You won’t be of much use on the round-up right now, not knowing the boundaries or the lie of the land. Jared and Charley have ridden back out to the line camps. So you are my bodyguard for the day, John.’

  ‘All right,’ he said equably, swinging aboard Washoe. Traveling in the company of this petite blonde woman was surely a better prospect than the stink and dust of gathering a trail herd. ‘Are you expecting trouble of some kind?’

  ‘Lately you can’t be sure around here,’ she answered. Glancing at him once more, she snapped the reins and the roan started out of the yard, moving briskly. In silence they passed through the oak grove, angling away from the river out onto the desert. Far ahead a long row of low sawtooth mountains stood huddled in shadows against the blue-white sky. Dancer took them for the Panamint Range judging by what Ned French had described to him. Slowing her high-stepping roan horse slightly, Cassie said to Dancer:

  ‘You don’t ask many questions, do you?’

  ‘As few as possible, if it’s not my business.’ He had slowed Washoe to match the gait of the roan, and they crossed the desert which was dotted with greasewood and occasional thorny mesquite side by side. The conversation was as easy as if they had been seated on a settee in her parlor.

  ‘I do want you to keep your eyes open,’ she said, looking briefly fearful.

  ‘I intend to, Mrs Blythe.’

  ‘Call me Cassie. Everyone else does,’ she instructed, and Dancer nodded. ‘What I must do this morning,’ Cassie explained, ‘is see that my husband’s will is placed into probate.’ She glanced at the small reticule on the black leather seat beside her. Presumably the purse contained legal documents. ‘Lord knows what LaFrance and Garner and that Pinetree bunch might get up to now that Aaron is dead. The ranch is mine!’ she said with unexpected heat. ‘It will remain so. I also have the deed granting water rights to the Rafter B with me. That is to be notarized and locked up in the bank’s safe.

  ‘Without the water I have nothing,’ she said, looking across the wide, pale land. ‘This desert country is useless without it. You could buy a hundred acres for a nickel, but what good would it do you? Land in itself is without value – it’s what the land produces that gives it its worth.’

  After that short outburst, she fell silent for miles, deftly guiding the rangy red roan across the rock-strewn country, dipping down into an arroyo and scrambling up the far side until they encountered what appeared to be a wagon trail. There Cassie slowed her horse to a walk, apparently believing that they were no longer in imminent danger. John Dancer had seen no one in the distances as they had proceeded. Once a slinking coyote, and the high-soaring silhouette of a red-tailed hawk, but nothing else living.

  Cresting a low, slate-colored rise strewn with larger rocks and scattered thickets of nopal cactus, Dancer now saw a small, slovenly-planned town. Situated in a white desert valley where, here and there, grew poor patches of grass and a few oaks and sycamores crowded together just beyond the rough collection of weather-beaten structures. Dancer guessed that there was a stream flowing there, perhaps an extension of the river that snaked its way across the Rafter B land.

  The day was dry, the wind fitful as they trailed into the ramshackle town. A few horses and mules stood listlessly at hitch rails in front of places of business, mostly they stood as if hip shot, their weight on three legs as they dozed, moving only to twitch their ears or tails if the flies were biting.

  Dancer continued to be alert. That was what he was being paid for, after all, but he saw scarcely a man on the street. The road itself was roughly graded, washboarded from usage. The store fronts on the south-facing buildings were already faded by the desert sun, many of the painted legends nearly illegible despite the fact that Potrero couldn’t have been built more than twenty years earlier. Two poorly dressed boys sat in a narrow strip of hot shadow between two buildings, playing mumbletypeg while their mixed-breed black dog lay watching. The dog started to rise to its feet as they passed, decided against it and sat again. It was too much trouble to bark, it seemed, and so it simply yawned as they traveled on.

  ‘Delightful place, isn’t it?’ Cassandra Blythe sai
d, her pretty mouth drawn down.

  ‘Where are we going?’ Dancer asked.

  ‘The bank is on our right just ahead,’ she said, gesturing toward it. ‘It’s the only building that doesn’t look as if a strong wind would take it down.’

  John Dancer peered into the brilliant sunlight, seeing the low adobe-block building. There were bars on its windows as if it were a jail, and in fact the building next door was the town marshal’s office as an awning-sheltered hanging plank sign proclaimed. Cassie halted her horse and, shaking her head, stepped from the surrey with Dancer’s assistance. Dancer tied the roan loosely to the rail and left Washoe standing ground-hitched. The well-trained gray would never break his imaginary tethers.

  ‘The marshal’s office first,’ Cassie Blythe said. ‘I have to report the murder of…’ and then she broke down. Bowing her head, she pulled a lace-fringed handkerchief from her reticule and held it to her eyes. ‘Report my husband’s death. Also Marshal Bingham will have to witness the execution of Aaron’s will.’ She paused. With a humorless laugh, she told John Dancer. ‘He’ll have to swear to the banker that he recognizes me as the true wife and heir of Aaron Blythe. …’

  She broke down again briefly before straightening her small shoulders and adding with understandable bitterness: ‘These laws! They won’t let a person live in peace, or die in peace.’

  ‘Do you want me to stay with you?’ Dancer asked.

  ‘Only if Bingham isn’t here. I trust the marshal to keep me safe until the will has been notarized and filed.’

  Marshal Bingham was in his office, they discovered, after stepping up onto the sagging gray wood of the plankwalk and in through the open door of the jail. He was a beefy, florid man in shirtsleeves who rose from behind his desk, warm in his welcome of Cassie, frowning at the sight of the tall man accompanying her. After a few words of welcome, Bingham sat again, his eyes fixed on Dancer as if John were a man he had encountered somewhere, at some time, but was unable at the moment to draw up from his memory.

  Cassie, invited to sit opposite the marshal, placed her reticule on the desk. Her yellow straw hat she kept pinned to her hair. This was a day to conduct business, and she was determined to appear businesslike. Before taking the offered seat, she drew John Dancer briefly aside and told him: ‘I don’t know how long this will take. If you could water my horse and wait somewhere…?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘You might want to buy yourself a beer in the saloon,’ Cassie said. ‘I can let you have. …’ she started to retrieve her purse, but Dancer stopped her.

  ‘I’ve got some change in my jeans, Mrs Blythe. Take care of your affairs. I’ll be waiting somewhere nearby when you’re ready to return to the Rafter B.’

  The temperature outside was climbing steadily. Dancer paused to remove his hat, wipe his shirt cuff across his perspiring forehead before gathering Washoe’s reins and leading the gray up the street toward the nearest saloon where it would at least be shady and the beer, if not cold, would be wet.

  There was a sullen atmosphere about the place when Dancer stepped in through the batwing doors of the nameless saloon. It was as silent as a tomb with a dozen or so men in range clothes scattered about, drinking silently as if they found nothing amusing in their desert world. A desultory three-handed game of poker was being dealt at one of the round tables set beside a corner window. The dealer glanced up as Dancer entered, showed no interest and resumed dealing the greasy cards.

  At the barrel-top bar itself stood three men in a row, obviously more interested in Dancer’s arrival. The man at the furthest end of the puncheon bar wore a flowered-silk vest beneath a town-suit coat. He had cold dark eyes, a strong profile, a narrow nose set off by a thin, neatly trimmed mustache. His companions glanced up in unison as John sauntered toward the bar and ordered a beer. One of these was a fat man with sunken eyes penned in by flesh. He wore an old twill suit, perhaps in imitation of his better-dressed friend.

  The third man was a gunhand. There was no doubt in John Dancer’s mind what the profession of the tall, whiskered, bitter-looking man was. He wore shabby clothes, but his gun was worn low, meticulously cared for. His eyes observed without being obvious. All three of these had a patent interest in Dancer.

  The bartender was narrow, short, an oddly Oriental cast to his features. He served Dancer a mug of beer which proved to be green, tepid, sawdusty tasting, and then backed away into a storeroom behind the bar.

  After a muttered exchange of words between the three men at the other end of the bar, the taller, roughly dressed man eased toward John Dancer, his beer mug – Dancer noticed – held in his left hand while his holster rode on his right leg.

  ‘I don’t know you,’ the stranger said in that way that passes for inquisitiveness, but is also an indirect challenge in isolated communities – especially if there is trouble in the air.

  ‘No, I guess you don’t,’ Dancer said, half-turning his back to the bar. He smiled at the stranger but it was not an especially friendly expression.

  ‘What’s your name?’ the gunman asked in a carefully chosen tone. Across his shoulder, Dancer could see the two men wearing town suits watch as their dog growled at the newcomer in their neighborhood.

  ‘You can call me John,’ Dancer said quietly. He sipped at his beer and then placed the mug firmly aside.

  ‘I’m Wes Carroll. Heard of me?’

  ‘No. I don’t get up this way much,’ Dancer answered.

  ‘Mind if I ask you why you’re here now?’ Wes Carroll asked.

  ‘No,’ Dancer said without embellishment.

  The gunman began to show a little irritation. He placed his own mug on the counter. ‘You haven’t got an answer for me?’

  ‘Not one you’d like, nor one I feel in a mood to share.’

  Wes began to study his man more closely, and Dancer saw a flash of indecision float through his eyes. Wes, apparently, was the bulldog in this town and he didn’t like stray curs. Yet he was wondering if his initial assessment of this strange mongrel’s unwillingness to bite had been wrong. There was silent goading from the two men behind Wes Carroll; his owners urging him on to a dogfight, and so Wes continued:

  ‘This is Pinetree range, Pinetree’s town. You smell like Rafter B to me. Somebody bring you up here to do a job, maybe?’

  ‘Nobody brings me anywhere,’ Dancer said carefully. ‘But I am here. Leave it at that.’ Wes Carroll’s eyes had changed expression again. He stood hunched forward a yard from John Dancer, indecisive and suddenly cautious. He had run off many would-be ranch hands who had come looking for work on the Rafter B. There was something different about this one. He could feel LaFrance and Luke Garner goading him on silently, knew that his reputation and employment depended on how he handled these small matters for his Pinetree bosses, but he suddenly had no liking for the way his opponent was studying him, watching his hands and eyes, his own hand now lazily resting near that polished holster with its cut-out.

  John … Wes Carroll’s mind rushed through his catalogued memories. There were a thousand men named John in Nevada. He could be anyone. But the cold blue eyes of the stranger indicated that he was someone special, someone Wes should know.

  Dancer shot wildly through Wes Carroll’s mind, and at the same moment, in near-panic he scrambled to draw his Colt against the Alamogordo gunman.

  He was far too slow. Despite his bluster, Wes Carroll, a big frog in a small pond, had never faced off against a skilled duelist. In slow motion, it seemed, he felt his gunhand drop clumsily to his holster, paw at the Colt riding there. At the same time he saw, from the corner of his eye, men scattering, tables overturning, poker chips scattering across the plank floor of the saloon. That and the oil-smooth draw of the curly-haired man in front of him, the twitch of the wrist which brought John Dancer’s Peacemaker up into firing position, the thumb only seeming to graze across the hammer of the big blue-steel revolver as Dancer cocked his single-action Colt and fired.

  There was the double ro
ar of the two pistols – Wes Carroll’s discharging into the floor, Dancer’s sending a spinning lead projectile into Carroll’s heart, stopping it. Wes was only briefly aware of the futility of it all, entering a gunfight to please his masters for a few dollars. Then he was no longer aware of anything at all as he pitched face forward onto the barroom floor.

  ‘Murder!’ someone yelled. It was LaFrance, the man in the fancy vest. ‘Get the marshal! Murder’s been done here.’

  The fat man with him, Luke Garner, had eased out of the line of fire and seemed content to stay hidden. ‘You all saw it!’ LaFrance continued, waving his arms wildly. In the corner the poker-players were setting up their table again, scraping strewn chips and cards from the floor. Solitary drinkers at other tables tugged their hats lower and stared into their whiskey glasses.

  LaFrance said loudly, ‘I’ll see justice done!’ There was dead silence in the bar room; only the slap of cards whispering through the low, dark room. It seemed that Wes Carroll had been mistaken. This was not entirely Pinetree range, not its private town.

  Wes Carroll lay slumped on the floor like a bloody rag doll. John Dancer backed away from the scene carefully, not knowing what mood might strike the saloon patrons. His hat was tilted back, his Colt leveled in the direction of LaFrance and Garner. Dancer had decided that he did not much care for Nevada.

  In a moment he came to like it less.

  The mustached man with the Winchester in his hands shouldered his way into the barroom and said with authority:

  ‘You can drop that gun, stranger, or die where you stand!’

  FOUR

  Dancer carefully placed his revolver down on the scarred surface of the barrel-top bar and raised his hands. The man with the snappy vest, Victor LaFrance, was the first to speak.