The Man From Nowhere

Chapter 22

Eddie Oates took in the scene with a single appalled glance.

Near a narrow creek stood the burned-out remains of Darlene McWilliams’ wagon. But what drew Oates’ attention were the two men hanging from a cottonwood branch, their bodies gently swaying in the breeze.

He led the paint out of the trees and walked to the creek.

As he drew closer he recognized the hanged men. They were the two gunmen who had fled the fight at the ridge. Both had been badly beaten before they were strung up as their swollen, bruised faces testified.

Oates looked up at the bodies, remembering the hanging of the Hart brothers back in Alma. But the brothers hadn’t been beaten like this. The older of the hanged McWilliams men had been battered so severely, one of his eyes hung on his cheekbone

Mash Halleck had begun to take his revenge, starting with the men who had abandoned his son.

At that moment, Oates knew he could expect no mercy from the Hallecks and could expect even worse torture. Both dead men had recognized him at the ridge and no doubt had spilled the beans to Mash, perhaps trying to bargain for their lives.

Leaving the mustang, Oates stepped over to the wagon. The treasure box was gone. The money sacks were probably now in the saddlebags of Darlene and her brother.

Had she tried to stop the hanging? Oates doubted that. Darlene was a cold, ambitious woman and the deaths of two of her hired hands would mean nothing to her.

Carefully, Oates scouted the area. There were no horse tracks beyond the creek and it was plain that Darlene and her riders had turned back at this point. Heading where? Oates hoped it was all the way back to the rustled herd, but somehow he doubted that.

Suddenly he was fearful for Stella and the others. If they’d left the mesa, even for a minute . . .

Oates ran to the paint and swung into the saddle, filled with a sense of panicked urgency.

Something was wrong, very wrong. He could sense it.

The day was dying as Oates headed back toward the mesa.

Only when he left the trees and rode across open ground was he aware of the enormous breadth of the sky. Shooting stars were falling to earth in a constant trail of sparks, and Oates thought that if he held his breath and was quiet enough, he’d hear them thump onto the grass and lie there, smoking like cinders.

Around him as he urged the paint forward at a trot, coyotes were talking in the darkness and once an owl swooped over his head and vanished among the moon-struck pines like a gray ghost.

There was an eerie, ethereal cast to the night and Oates felt he was being watched by eyes hidden in the trees that, full of moonlight, gleamed like opals.

He wiped damp palms on his pants, thinking of ha’ants and boogermen. Oates forced himself to smile. Fear has a way of making the wolf bigger than he is and it quickly changes the man back to the boy.

He had no reason to fear the night . . . only the all-too-mortal humans who stalked its caves of darkness.

The mesa revealed itself as a massive, hulking shape that blacked out a galaxy of stars. The moon bathed the land in silver light, but created shadows everywhere.

It took Oates ten frustrating minutes to find the faint thread of the switchback game trail, but once he did, the sure-footed mustang climbed willingly enough.

He reached the summit, let his stunned eyes read the scene before him, then swung out of the saddle and tried to piece together the disaster that had befallen his companions.

A blackened, burned-out cedar was his first clue. The tree had been set ablaze, accidentally it seemed, because the ashes of the small fire that could have caused it lay close to the trunk.

The blazing tree would have been a fiery beacon that would have been seen for miles. Had it attracted the attention of Darlene McWilliams and her riders?

Oates looked around and the flutter of something white caught his attention.

A sheet of paper had been pinned down by a rock. Next to it, wrapped in a scrap of cloth, were meat and bread. Oates made a sandwich and as he chewed, he held the paper up to the bright moonlight. Only one word had been scrawled on the paper: HEARTBREAK.

But under that, Sammy Tatum had made a quick sketch that showed five riders on a pine-edged trail.

Five riders!

Oates looked more closely. The three women were obvious, sitting their saddles with their skirts tucked up over the knees. But there were two men. One was Sammy, riding like a sack of grain, the other a tall man on a horse that the boy had shaded black.

The mystery man had seen the blazing tree and had persuaded the others to leave the mesa, probably pointing out that if he’d seen the fire, so might Darlene McWilliams.

They were now headed for Heartbreak, wherever that might be.

Oates finished the sandwich, then realized he was dog tired. He told himself that any decision he might make could wait until he had some sleep.

He led the paint to the patch of bunchgrass, loosened the girth, then stretched out on the bare rock and slept. The night closed around him and the smiling moon blanketed him in white light.

The dawning daylight woke Eddie Oates.

He rose to his feet and worked out the kinks in his back, grimacing. The mustang was grazing, though there was little grass left. But the little horse was used to making do and doing without and seemed none the worse for wear.

“Wish I could say the same thing about myself,” Oates groaned, rubbing at a persistent knot in the small of his back.

To the east, the sun had not yet risen above the mountains, but it was already doing its best to banish the night. The lemon sky was tied up with red ribbons and the topmost peaks and ridges of the shadowed Gila glowed with a halo of gold.

Stretching, Oates stepped to the edge of the mesa and his brown eyes studied the country below. There was no movement, no sound.

His immediate concern was not with Stella Spinner and the others. Whoever the mysterious rider was, he was good with a gun as he’d proven at the siege of the cave and later on the ridge. They were safer with the tall man on the black horse than they’d be with him.

As for Darlene McWilliams, she’d been hurt. She’d lost men and was still missing five thousand dollars of her money. But, thinking of old Jacob Yearly, Oates decided she had not been hurt enough.

Suddenly a plan came to him.

It was time to take the fight to Darlene, by a roundabout means certainly, but it might just work.

Of course, the plan hinged on his living long enough. And that was a mighty uncertain thing.

Oates tightened the cinch on the paint and mounted. He was wishful for coffee, a gallon maybe, hot and strong and sweet as sin, but he had none of that and dismissed the thought from his mind.

Where he was going there was plenty of coffee—if a man survived long enough to drink it.