Gunman by Lauran Paine

Author:Lauran Paine [PAINE, LAURAN]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781428506558
Publisher: Dorchester Publishing Co., Inc.
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Seven

From the JM down past Welton to the neighborhood of Tanque Wells was sixty miles. A long ride at any time without a change of horses, but in the darkness it was even longer. Ray was cautious only as he skirted around Welton; afterward, he pushed the buckskin horse as hard as prudence dictated, conscious that he would also have to rely on the tough and ugly animal to bring him back to the mountains again.

He had only two advantages over the man he sought. He knew where Duncan Holt would be, in a general way at any rate, while Holt would not know where Ray was, and the second advantage was that he rode only at night, using the darkness as his friend and ally.

Dawn of the first day out found him deep in the eroded desert country between Welton and Tanque Wells. He made for another water hole, not as large or pop u lar as the Tanque, which suited him perfectly, and there he hobbled the buckskin to graze upon sparse bunch grass while he slept. The blasting midday sun awakened him with its pitiless burning. He washed, drank deeply, took his carbine, and walked out as far as a barren rise to study the country ahead and behind. There was no sign of movement in any direction. He ate some beans, smoked a cigarette, and waited with that peculiar depth of Indian-like indifference to the passage of time he had acquired at Yuma Prison for the sun to set.

He also thought, and the thing that kept returning to puzzle him was Grace Fenwick’s refusal to take him back to her father. Had she been fearful for him or had she been afraid that what he had told her was the truth, and considered him less important than the truth about Mort Salter and her father?

There could be no answer, he knew, until he talked again with her, but this did not hold out any promise of pleasure; he was, without thinking of it in that light, again viewing her as he might have considered a man. She was dangerous to him, and, while he acknowledged to himself that she was beautiful, this was no part of what existed between them.

The sun eventually dropped westerly in a reddening way, sending burnished banners dagger-like across the sky. Shadows crept out from beneath chaparral bushes and rocks, short and fat at first, then drawing out longer, thinner, as the light of day faded still more, and over everything was the strong, acrid desert scent, the yielding up by the earth of a great, silent sigh as the heat lessened, a time of hush and blessedness and coming coolness redolent with an odor of creosote bush, of peyote, and cooling rocks. It was as pleasant to a man who had not smelled it as the stronger fragrance of the uplands, equally as missing from his life for the past five years.

He was in no hurry and therefore lingered a

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