Clifton Adams - Boomer

And Turk Valois said, with a kind of amused bitterness, “Because he loves you, Rhea. A man does some crazy things when he's in love—I ought to know!”

Grant turned sharply to look at the runner's face, but Valois had already wheeled and was walking stiffly toward the dugout. As if from a great distance he heard Rhea's voice, the words strangely stiff and awkward. “Joe, it's true, isn't it?”

“Who knows why a man does such things?” And with cold deliberateness he said, “Good-by, Rhea.”

“Joe, listen to me! You can't run from Dagget; he'll catch you, no matter where you go. Give yourself up. When the well comes in we'll have the money to hire the best lawyers in the Territory.”

He looked at her as though he had never seen her before. “No, thanks, Rhea. I'd rather look after myself.”

“It's Lloyd, isn't it? That's why you're angry. I'll fire him, I'll put him off the lease!”

Even in his woodenness he was puzzled. Why was she so concerned? He was through; just one short jump ahead of the law and prison. He couldn't possibly be of any use to her now.

He could only wonder what kind of trick it was this time, what more did she want of him? He became aware of the cold, and the slashing wind that whipped through the grasses of the draws and the naked thickets of blackjack, and he pulled himself deeper into his windbreaker and fastened the collar with thick fingers. He said again, “Good-by, Rhea,” and turned to go.

But she grabbed his sleeve. “What do I have to say to make you understand?”

“Nothing, Rhea. You'll get what you want, with a little luck; all the money you'll ever want. Your gun shark will protect you from Farley, and Valois will protect you from the gun shark. It's a nice arrangement, isn't it?”

“Valois!” she hissed. “I don't want his protection!” “Then fire him. But you'll find that Lloyd won't be so easy to deal with.”

Suddenly the fight seemed to go out of her. “What can I say? Once I thought I wanted money more than anything in the world; money and revenge. I wanted security, a place to five that didn't reek of oil; I was tired to death of living in the ground like a wolf, and I wanted to five like a woman. Is there anything wrong with that?”

Grant said nothing.

“I love you, Joe.”

He could not believe her.

“From the very first I think I loved you, but I wouldn't admit it, even to myself.”

He looked past her, to where Valois was waiting against the side of the dugout. Then he turned and walked away. And when he turned to look back, she was no longer there.

So this, he thought, is the way it ends. Filled with doubt and roaring emptiness, he tramped down to the thicket where the gelding was tied. Valois came toward him, calling out as Grant was about to step into the stirrup.

“Where do you aim to go from here?”

Grant shrugged. For the moment he didn't care what trail he took or where it led him.

“Dagget's going to be fit to kill when we turn him loose,” the runner said. “We won't be able to hold him long. We can lie to him, tell him that you kept us at gun point so we couldn't untie him. Even so, we've got to let him go pretty soon.”

Grant climbed heavily to the saddle. “Give me a few minutes, and then...” He shrugged, and hauled the gelding around to the north.

“Just a minute,” Valois called. “Dagget's going to be a wild man when he starts after you this time. He'll burn up the telegraph wires—within a few hours the borders will be watched so a coyote couldn't slip through.”

“That's a chance I'll have to take.”

“But I thought of something. A few months ago I stumbled onto an old dugout about five miles up Slush Creek. It's dug into the creek bank and grown over with weeds, built years ago by one of Payne's boomers, I guess. Far as I know I'm the only one that knows about it. It might do as a hideout. It would beat trying to cross a border crawling with U. S. marshals!”

Grant scowled. “Maybe. But I couldn't keep my horse, and I'd need supplies.”

“Let the horse go; more than likely he'll come back to Sabo, which won't tell Dagget a thing. I can bring you supplies and another horse later.”

“I'm not asking you to get mixed up in this any more than you already are.”

Valois grinned. “I'm already in it as far as I can get.”

Grant hesitated only a moment. “I guess I didn't expect this much help. A fool doesn't deserve it, but...” He lifted a hand in a solemn gesture of friendship. “Thanks. I'll be looking for the squatter's place as I head north.”

He put iron to the big gelding, and the black wheeled and settled to an easy lope to the north. When they reached the gentle incline that sloped gently up to the rim of the basin, he turned briefly in the saddle and saw Valois still standing there, and he saw Rhea standing straight as an arrow beside the bunkhouse, but he was a long way off by then and couldn't see what her face was like. And he wanted to lift a hand to her, to indicate with some small gesture that he had not asked it to end this way, but his male pride lay hard and cold inside him, and he turned bleakly and raked the gelding with blunted spurs.

Time sped now; he had never known it to pass so quickly. He ticked off the seconds and minutes in his mind and forced himself to hold the big black to an easy lope. Minutes counted now; time was the lone sheer thread that held him to freedom, and it was running out at an appalling rate. Five minutes he had—possibly ten—and then Rhea and Valois would be forced to let Dagget go. Even so, they would have trouble enough explaining the delay to the marshal.

To avoid attention and suspicion, he kept to the well-traveled freight trail as long as he dared... but the minutes were flying by. At last he hauled the gelding around and peered down once again on that lacy wilderness of derricks where an endless, twisted chain of wagons crawled like black ants over the frozen prairie. And he could see the slanted roofs and flapping canvas of Sabo, and far to the west the endless chain of wagons disappeared on the horizon where Kiefer lay. But the thing that he was looking for was somewhere else, on the other side of Slush Creek. And he came suddenly erect in his saddle and a faint, fleeting grin split his face as he saw the tiny figure of Turk Valois flogging the marshal's horse. His taut nerves relaxed and he sat easy in the saddle, watching the animal bolt for the lower reaches of the frozen stream.

Valois thought of everything! And he had guts, risking Dagget's wrath to buy more time for the escape. Grant shook his head in vague bewilderment and wondered how Rhea could doubt a man like that.

The pale winter sun was falling behind the rolling brown lulls to the west when Grant came upon the ancient dugout that Valois had mentioned. He would not have seen it if the runner hadn't pinpointed the place for him, for it was dug into the side of the claybank and years of slow erosion had brought the earth down on top of it, making it shapeless and inconspicuous. And the covering of earth had grown up with grass and tall weeds, and not even the sagging stockade door was visible to a casual searching, hidden as it was behind a spearlike thicket of mullein.

Grant hesitated for one long moment on the opposite bank. Somewhere behind him Dagget was raging. Already the telegraph would be sending out its staccato warning and U. S. marshals and state law officers would be gathering on the borders to head him off.

To run or hide—the decision had to be made quickly. If he stayed here he would have to let the gelding go, for the animal would be a dead giveaway when Dagget's men came through this way. And they would come through soon enough.

He didn't like the idea of being afoot in the middle of the Creek Nation, without provisions, literally trusting his life to a man who owed him nothing. Yet, the dugout, if not warm, would at least keep him from freezing. And it was unlikely that Dagget would expect to find him in a place like this.