No one said a word. No one more than shuffled his feet a little when Rufe came forth from the jail-house, until he was fully out there on the plank walk, then the old man in the long coat, still clutching someone’s whiskey bottle, reared up from along the north doorways and said: “You sure done a job that’s been a long while finding someone to do it, sonny.” He did not explain, but the assumption was that he had in mind the killing of Bull Harris.
Evart Hartman called to a range man. “Jamie, fetch my horse down to the livery barn, will you?”
He strolled along with Rufe, and, as they entered the shady area out front of the barn, Rufe recognized a heavy-set, unkempt-looking individual standing in the runway of the barn that he had seen earlier rattling the jailhouse door, then stamping off, cursing, because that door had been locked. It was the livery-man. He greeted Hartman and Rufe with a palpably false smile and turned to pace along with them until Rufe located his horse, then the liveryman offered to do the rigging. Rufe declined, did his own saddling and bridling. Then he leaned across the saddle seat and said: “Hour back, or more, you wanted to get in-side the jailhouse, mister. I saw you up there shaking the door. Why?”
The liveryman’s coarse, florid features creased up into a smile that nearly completely obscured small, porcine eyes. “Just lookin’ for old Homer. Me and him usually share a cup of coffee in the morning. Been doin’ that for years, me an’ old Homer.”
Rufe had a feeling about the liveryman, but he neither knew the man personally nor had anything except that small feeling, so he scooped up reins and led his horse out front.
They did not have to wait long. When Hartman’s animal arrived, the cowboy who brought it looked closely at Rufe, but spoke to the old cowman. “You know what you’re doing, Pa?”
Hartman smiled for the first time. “No,” he told the young cowboy, “but that don’t have Tomean much. Mostly, in my lifetime, I’ve been doing things I wasn’t sure about.” His eye turned kindly. “You send your brother back to mind the ranch. You and the other boys hang around town until this here is settled, and don’t fret about me.”
For Rufe, the mystery of Jud’s disappearance seemed to be a case of pursuit. It had seemed to be that ever since Rufe’s last glimpse of his partner, lunging out through the saloon doorway behind Arlen Chase.
He knew that neither Jud nor Chase had fired a shot, because, thus far today, there had only been one gunshot around town—the one that had resulted in the death of Bull Harris. He also knew that Chase had the advantage of being familiar with Clearwater, while Jud was not. Also, Chase was familiar with the desert cow range on all sides of Clearwater.
Rufe led the way up the alley behind the livery barn, located the shed where he and Jud had put Ruff and Chase’s
Hartman knew the hole. He said that just about everyone else in the countryside knew about it, and remembered the old-timer who had at one time made some of the finest whiskey in the entire territory down in that hole.
But neither Chase nor Jud was there.
Hartman, it turned out, was also very knowledgeable about the town. They made a very thorough and painstaking search of it—without turning up any sign of either Rufe’s partner or Arlen Chase.
Hartman shook his head about this. “They ain’t here. No way under the sun for’em to be here, and us not have found them this morning.”
Rufe considered, and decided that, if Jud had pur-sued Chase out of Clearwater, the most logical route for Chase to have taken would have been back in the direction of his camp atop of Cane’s Mesa, because he would believe he had men up there to reinforce him.
There was another consideration. Whoever that had been hours earlier Rufe and Jud had seen coming down off the mesa in bright sunlight should by now be fairly well along on their way to town— which should put them between Chase, pursued by Jud, and the top of the mesa.
He explained all this to Evart Hartman. The cow-man stoically listened, then turned and without a word led off back up toward the northwesterly desert beyond Clearwater, tipping down his hat, now that the full heat of hot daytime was over the land, and even a wide hat brim did not help a lot, because brilliant sunshine bounced up off millions of mica particles in the soil and sand, but the hat brim was better than no protection at all as they rode to the edge of town, then headed forth into the desert.
Rufe sashayed back and forth, but, as Evart Hart-man pointed out, there were always fresh-shod horse tracks this close to Clearwater. Unless Jud’s animal had very unusual shoes, his tracks would be indistinguishable from all those other tracks, and Hartman was correct.
Rufe was anxious without being actually very worried. Jud was a man who a harsh existence had formed to survive under almost all adverse conditions, but particularly under the variety of conditions he was now involved in.
What puzzled Rufe was where Jud could have gone in his pursuit of Arlen Chase, and, most of all, it puzzled him that there had been no gunfire.
Of course, by now the pursuit could have put Jud and Arlen Chase a considerable distance from town, by now there could be gunshots, and no one would hear them in Clearwater.
XV
Evart Hartman knew the countryside they were traversing even though he had never run his cattle this far west. He also recalled meetings with Amos Cane, and recounted a few of them as they rode upcountry When Rufe chided him for doing nothing about conditions on the mesa, Hartman did not deny that he had heard talk around town; what he
Of course, Rufe could have pursued this, could have shredded that argument to pieces, but right at the moment he needed Evart Hartman, and he did not care a damn about the things folks should have done.
They were a considerable distance from town. The buildings and rooftops were still abundantly discernible, but sounds were deadened by the distance, when Rufe made another wide pass from west to east, seeking fresh trails, and this time he found promising sign. Even the old cowman studied it with interest, and afterward raised his head to gaze up along the bluff faces toward the top out of Cane’s Mesa.
“I expect we should have figured Arlen’d do that. Only place he figures to find friends.”
Rufe had already considered this, and he had also considered something else—up ahead, there had been someone coming down off the mesa. Before Chase could race up there, he was going to encounter those other people.
The encounter evidently occurred while Rufe and Hartman were discussing the chances of Chase’s reaching his cow camp with Jud on his trail. Suddenly, up ahead some distance, several men shouted indignant, but wholly indistinguishable, words. Rufe did not wait; he gigged his horse, and reined back and forth through the underbrush. Evart Hart-man, some little distance rearward, loped ahead, too, but with caution, and also with a six-gun in his right fist.
They did not find the horsemen until someone up ahead heard them coming, and bellowed for his companions to get down, to get to cover.
Rufe halted in a long slide when he heard that outcry. He knew that voice. It belonged to horse-killing Charley Fenwick!
While Rufe puzzled over that, Evart Hartman walked his horse on up the last 100 feet, still holding his balanced pistol, looking ahead through the man-high underbrush, and said: “Seen anyone up there?”
Rufe hadn’t. He was in the act of dismounting when someone up ahead through the underbrush hoorawed a loose horse. It was an old ruse, and, while it had undeniable benefits, it failed this morning simply because the hoorawed horse and the men who had sent it stampeding through the underbrush to stir up anyone who might be out there sent the horse in the wrong direction. They sent it stampeding due southward, while Rufe and Evart Hartman were not only more westerly, but they also happened to be almost as far northward as the hid-den men with Charley Fenwick were—although neither Rufe nor Hartman knew that this was true, until that loose horse
