Part 13 (2/2)

As he stepped in at the deep, wide doorway Howard's hat was low-drawn, its brim shading his eyes, and he was ready to step swiftly to right or left, to spring forward or back, to shoot quickly if shooting were in the cards. But he knew upon the moment that Courtot was not here. At the bar were his own men ranged up thirstily; they saw him and called to him and had no warning to give. So he pa.s.sed on down the long room until he stopped at a little table where three men sat. One of them, a thick, squat fellow with a florid face and small mean eyes, looked up at him and glowered.

'Where's Courtot, Yates?' asked Howard coolly.

Yates stared and finally shrugged.

'Left town day before yesterday,' he replied shortly.

'So he was here? I heard he wanted to see me. Know which way he has gone?'

Yates studied him keenly. Then again he lifted his ponderous shoulders.

'He was looking for you,' he said, his meaning clear in the hardness of his eyes. 'And, if you want to know, he's up Las Palmas way.'

'That happens to be lucky,' Alan told him, turning away. 'I'm going up there now to look at some calves in French Valley. If I happen to miss him and you see him you can tell him for me that I'm ready to talk with him any time.'

He went out in dead silence. Many eyes followed him, many eyes which when his tall form had pa.s.sed through the door came back to other eyes narrowed and thoughtful. For Alan Howard was well known here in San Juan, and never before had a man of them seen him wearing a gun at his hip. There were bets offered and taken before he was half-way to the stable. His own men, hearing, were thoughtful and said nothing. All except Bandy O'Neil, who smashed his big fist on the bar and stared angrily into the florid face of Yates and cried out loudly that Jim Courtot was a card sharp and a crook and that Jim Courtot's friends were as Jim Courtot. Yates for the third time shrugged his thick shoulders. But his look was like a knife clas.h.i.+ng with the cowboy's.

Though it was dusk when he resaddled and Las Palmas was twenty-five miles away, Howard's impatience hastened him on. It appeared that Courtot had made up his mind and, further, was publis.h.i.+ng the fact across a wide sweep of country. Then there was no going back for him and Courtot, and like a man borne along in a swift current which offered rapids ahead, he was afire to get them behind him. If Courtot were still in Las Palmas he would find him to-night.

But again, at the end of a tedious ride, he learned that the man he sought had come and gone. No one knew just where, but at the one lodging-house which the little settlement possessed, it was hinted that Courtot had headed still further north, perhaps to Los Robles. Howard went to bed that night wondering what it was that impelled the gambler to this hurried travelling across the land. Was it something that lured and beckoned? Was it something that drove and hara.s.sed? His last thoughts were of the tracks he had seen by a dead calf and of the tale Sandy Weaver had told.

Early the next morning he rode out to French Valley for a look at Tony Vaca's calves. They proved to be about what he had expected of them, close to a hundred, of mixed breeding, but for the most part good beef-making stock in fair condition and all under a year old. Vaca was short of pasture this year, hence, he declared, forced to sell at a bargain. Howard nodded gravely, considered briefly, and in ten minutes bought the herd, agreeing to take them at ten per cent. less than Tony's bargain price provided they were delivered in Desert Valley within a week.

Now all of his business of buying and selling was done and there remained but to go home or to look further for Courtot. He rode back into Las Palmas and breakfasted at the lunch counter. There he learned that Courtot had probably gone on up to Quigley, another twenty-five miles to the north-east. And, very largely because of the geographical location of Quigley, Howard decided on the instant to continue at least that far his quest. For, coming the way he had from his ranch, he had described a wide arc, almost a semicircle, and by the same trail, should he retrace it, was a hundred and fifty miles from Desert Valley.

But, if he went on to Quigley, a mining-town in the bare mountains, he would be at the mouth of Quigley Pa.s.s, which led to a little-used trail through the mountains and almost in a straight line across the arm of the desert known locally as the Bad Lands. Though he had never crossed these weary, empty miles, and though there were no towns and few water-holes within their blistered scope, Howard judged that he could save close to fifty miles of the return trip. So he slipped his foot into the stirrup and swung out toward Quigley, hopeful of finding Courtot and confident of a short cut home.

Chapter XII

The Desert Supreme

Considerably to his surprise Howard found absolutely no trace of Courtot in Quigley. He inquired at the pool room, at the restaurant, at the stable. No one had seen the gambler for several months. It struck the cattleman as strange that a man should have ridden out of Las Palmas, taking the Quigley trail, and not have come to Quigley.

Where else could a man go? On the west lay the desert, on the east the Lava Mountains and beyond the desert again, and it was a far call to any settlement or habitation. Even the sheepmen did not come up this way; only the Quigley mines brought men here, and yet Courtot had not come to Quigley.

'He turned out somewhere,' mused Howard, 'the Lord knows what for or where. But it's his business, and I'm going home.'

He gave his horse an hour in the stable while he himself made ready for his short cut across the Bad Lands. The preparations were simple; at the store he bought a small pack of provisions, enough to last him three or four days at a pinch and in case of accidents; he filled his canteen; he spent half an hour with the grizzled old storekeeper, who in his time had been a prospector and who knew the country hereabouts as only an old prospector could know it. On a bit of wrapping-paper the old fellow sketched a trail map that indicated the start through the Pa.s.s, the general direction and the chief landmarks, the approximate mileage and--here he was very exact and accompanied his sketch with full verbal instructions--the few water-holes.

'You can make it all right, Al,' he said when Howard slipped the paper into his vest pocket. 'It's no trick for a man like you. But I wouldn't send a tenderfoot in there, not unless I wanted to make him over into a dead tenderfoot. And, mind you, every year some of them water-holes dries up; the only ones you can count on for sure are the ones I've marked with a double ring that way. So long.'

'So long,' said Alan, and went for his horse.

The forenoon was well advanced when he rode into the mouth of the narrow pa.s.s which gives access, above the mines, into the Lava Mountains and through them into the Bad Lands. In twenty minutes he had entered a country entirely new to him. He looked about him with interested eyes. Never, he thought as he pushed forward, had he known until now the look of utter desolation. The mountain flanks were strewn with black blocks and boulders of broken lava and were already incredibly hot; underfoot was parched earth upon which it seemed that not even the hardiest of desert gra.s.ses cared to grow; yonder the Bad Lands stretched endlessly before him, blistering mounds of rock, wind-drifted stretches of burning sand, dry gulches and gorges which one's wildest imagining could not fill with rus.h.i.+ng waters. Here and there were growing things, but they were grey with desert dust and looked dead, greasewood dwarfed and wind-twisted, iron-fanged cacti snarling at the clear hot sky and casting no more shade than lean poles.

'A man won't find his trail all cluttered up with folks in here,'

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