Brand of the Hunted Read online

  ‘You reckon there might be trouble during the night?’ asked Jessup quietly.

  ‘Could be.’ Neil nodded. ‘This isn’t the best place to make camp with gunslingers like Sherman’s men around. They’ll have found those three men back there by now and soon they’ll come looking for revenge.’

  The big man was silent for a moment, pondering on the other’s words. Then he shifted himself in his saddle.

  ‘Just what kind of a man is this Jesse Sherman?’ he asked, staring off into the darkness that lay all about them.

  There was a quick glance from Neil.

  ‘He’s ruthless, determined. Came out here just after the finish of the war. They say he came from somewhere up north, but nobody knows much about him. Built up a cattle empire from almost nothing; and a man has to be ruthless to do a thing like that. He knows that sooner or later there’ll be nesters moving in, that the Government will break up the big stretches of land, and he’s determined to resist that with every means at his command. And if that means bringing in every gunslinger and killer this side of the Rio Grande, then he’ll do it. He’ll offer them safety so long as they stay on his land and obey the orders he gives. They do all of the killing for him and make sure that nobody tries to settle on the land, or even to cross it as we’re doing now.

  ‘In return, he keeps them from the law. They don’t have to keep on runnin’ and driftin’ from state to state, always one jump ahead of a United States Marshal.’

  Jackson mused on that for some time, then nodded his great head.

  ‘And Neil Roberts — what kind of a man is he?’

  Neil hesitated for the barest fraction of a second, almost as if caught off balance by the question. Then he shrugged his shoulders nonchalantly.

  ‘Sometimes I discover myself wondering about him,’ he said soberly. ‘Wonder why he does what he does. Why he kills as he does — and where he’s really going. Then again, I wonder if he’ll ever get there, wherever it is.’

  There was a loud bellow of a laugh from Jackson. He gave a quick nod.

  ‘Like I said when we first met, Roberts — I like you. And after what happened on that hill back there, I’m glad that you’re with us and not against us.’

  Behind them where the fires were dying slowly, there was a faint snicker of a horse, a sudden movement, then silence once more.

  Neil continued to sit tall and straight in the saddle, staring around him, eyes probing the darkness, looking for any faint shadow or a vaguely seen cloud of dust in the distance; ears straining to pick up the faint thunder of horses moving over the flat prairie, but there was nothing, and gradually he forced himself to relax.

  He had figured that if Sherman’s men had found the bodies of their three companions up there on the hill, perhaps ten, twelve miles to the east, they would follow the easily seen trail of the wagon train and attack after dark, when they would have the advantage of surprise. The fact that there was no sign of them worried him more than if they had swung in from the east and ridden down on the sleeping train, guns blazing. He rode on, circling the wagons in the darkness, the cold seeping through into his bones.

  2. Danger at Noon

  Morning, and the train moved out of camp, rolled on to the west. It was hard driving for the men and women on the wagons, hard, monotonous and mean. The dust of the hard ground, lifted by the ploughing hooves of the horses, hung thick and white in the air, worked its way into the folds of the skin, itching and irritating, gummed up the lips and burned the eyes so that it was impossible to see properly at the end of the first hour.

  Already the heat pressure was rising swiftly, but this time, Neil noticed there was something different about the sun. It no longer shone brilliantly in the east. Instead, there seemed to be a dullish, eye-searing haze surrounding it, a haze that spread up from the horizon, thickening as the minutes dragged themselves into hours. The air was utterly still and windless, an expectant calm that began to eat at his nerves as he rode the edge of the trail.

  The sky in front of them now carried an answering glaze as if the blue polish of the sky had been scoured and braided, giving it a curiously threatening look. He turned his horse, rode in closer to the wagon and their straining teams.

  At the rear of the train, where the dust hung thickest in the air, he rode alongside the wagon, eyes slitted against the sickening glare. There was a woman riding on the tongue, holding the reins tightly in her hands, and beside her a boy of perhaps eleven or twelve, freckle-faced, bright-eyed. Neil noticed the way they kept flicking their glance towards the heavens, knew that they, too, had noticed the storm that was brewing down there close to the horizon, that they were as worried about it as he himself.

  Virginia Millais and her son Johnny had, according to Jackson, joined the train at Boston, were going west to join her husband in California. It was a long and hard journey for a woman and a boy, he reflected, as he rode alongside the wagon, watching the way in which the woman handled the team, noticing the rifle cradled in the boy’s arms.

  He leaned forward with one arm resting on the rope-burned pommel while the woman turned and eyed him with a faintly apprehensive smile on her lips. She gestured to the south-west.

  ‘What do you think that means, Mister Roberts?’ she asked quietly.

  ‘Trouble, I’m afraid,’ he answered slowly. ‘There’s a storm coming up, Ma’am, a bad one. I reckon it ought to hit us around noon at the rate it’s travelling. We may be lucky and get only the fringe of it, but that’s going to be bad.’

  ‘It looks ominous.’

  ‘Dust storm,’ nodded Neil musingly. ‘Often blows up in these parts at this time of the year. Better make certain that you keep the canvas tightly closed or you’ll spend the rest of the journey trying to get rid of the sand in there. It will help, too, to keep your faces covered with kerchiefs, or you’ll find it difficult to breathe when it does hit us.’

  They nodded.

  ‘Do you intend to stop the train when it comes?’

  Neil shook his head. ‘Won’t do any good to stop, Ma’am. We’ll just keep them moving. That way we’ll get through it quicker. But whatever happens, make sure that you keep up with the others. If you drop behind and lose sight of the wagon in front of you, you’ll be lost in minutes, and when the storm blows itself out we may never find you.’

  He spurred his mount, rode swiftly along the line of wagons, giving the same warning, the same advice, to each of the drivers, making sure that they understood, sitting his sorrel while they tied down the canvas. He doubted if any of them had been through a real dust storm before, if any of them really knew what it was like, those millions of swirling yellow grains, hurled by a shrieking, howling wind that blew endlessly and with a terrible force, cutting into a man’s body, making it almost impossible for him to move forward against it, even if he bent himself into the wind. It would be almost as bad for the animals. They, too, would be forced to keep moving into it. He threw a wary eye in the direction of the approaching storm, felt a wave of apprehension go through him.

  An hour passed. Still the storm had not reached them, the air hung heavy and oppressive, with the stillness that came before the storm.

  Neil reached the head of the train where Jackson sat huge and square on the tongue of the wagon, a bull of a man, the hands that held the reins heavy across the backs, with black hairs along the wrist that glistened in the diffuse sunlight.

  ‘I’ve told them all to close it up,’ Neil said tightly. ‘We’re going to get that storm in less than an hour now, and it won’t be easy to see when it does hit us. I don’t want to lose any wagons.’

  It was almost as if the other hadn’t heard the words. His eyes looked due west, reaching out over the flatlands to where the mountains lifted sheer towards the sky on the horizon. But now they did not stand out clearly as they had on previous days, their outline etched darkly against the blue heavens. Now it was difficult to see them at all. Occasionally it was just possible to glimpse a tall peak that thrust itself up
out of the flatness of the plains. Then it would be lost again as the dust storm blotted it out completely, erasing it as if some painter had come along and made some swift strikes with his brush, wiping it off the broad canvas.

  In spite of the fact that he knew what to expect, that he had ridden storms such as this before, Neil felt himself tensing in the saddle as the curtain of yellow-white haze swept closer. Now it was so near that it was possible to see it moving, to see the strangely intermingled draperies that formed within its diffuse boundaries; rather like the sheets of dark rain that could be seen whenever the summer thunderstorms rolled in over the mountains, but more subtle and ominous.

  The wind began to rise, plucking a little at the sleeves of his jacket, lifting the sand and dust from the ground all about them, hurling it over the plain in a faint sheet of yellow.

  At their backs the sun had climbed higher into the darkening sky, but although it was now virtually at its zenith and the heat pressure lay on everything like the press of some hot, invisible hand, it was difficult to see the sun clearly. It was hidden now behind the thickening cloud of sand that came sweeping in from the far horizons. It was a long silence that clung about the wagon train now as it rumbled slowly forward at a snail-like pace, the wheels creaking and groaning, the axles grinding, the occasional slap of the reins against the rumps of the horses. The silence was made even more ominous and pronounced by the faint but rising shriek of the strengthening wind. Neil rode back along the train strung out over nearly half a mile of prairie, urging them to close up, shouting his warnings now at the top of his voice to make himself heard above the sickening howl of the wind in his ears.

  The storm was on them with a suddenness that took everyone by surprise. One moment it seemed to be hanging back, lying low on the western horizon; the next it had closed in on them from all sides, blinding, searing the flesh wherever it was exposed, clogging the mouth and nostrils, making eyes useless, the countless millions of irritating grains working their way into the folds of the skin, into the necks and sleeves of tunics and dresses, finding its way into a million crevices along the wagons. The horses stumbled forward, weary animals, moving into that terrible yellow wall of sand and dust.

  Head lowered, his bandana over the lower half of his face, eyes narrowed to mere slits, trying desperately to draw pure air into his aching lungs, Neil rode up and down the entire length of the train, keeping it in motion, knowing inwardly with a sick certainty that the moment one of those wagons stopped, or got itself bogged down in the drifting sand, they were finished. He would have to call a halt then, and at the moment that was the last thing he wanted to do. So long as he could keep them moving forward, it lessened the time they would be in the middle of that terrible storm.

  How long it would take to blow itself out he did not know. Sometimes they lasted for less than an hour, at others they could blow for the best part of a day. The ground was as level as a table, and there were no hills where they could shelter while the storm blew itself out around them.

  The racing yellow cloud snapped across the last sliver of blue-grey sky and the sun was blotted out entirely now so that they moved in a strange and frightening half-world of dimness and discomfort. There was a terrible savagery in that storm as if nature were daring men to defy her, to put their strength against hers. Primitive and raw, the dust storm swept along the whole length of the train, a solid blanket of grains hurled by the wind. It was old to him, having experienced it before, but still frightening. The wind was a roaring thunder in his ears, blotting out all other sound. He fought to keep his head lifted, pushed his sight as far as possible into the yellowness that surrounded him. Less than ten feet away he could just make out the canvas top of the nearest wagon, swaying from side to side as the driver, crouched down low on the tongue, urged the horses forward as fast as they could go. But already they had slowed to a crawl and nothing on earth, Neil knew, would encourage them to go any faster now. He tried to see the wagon directly ahead, could see nothing at first, then barely made out the vaguely seen shape that appeared and then vanished tantalisingly between great gusts of dust.

  It was going to be very difficult, if not utterly impossible for them to keep together. He knew that with a sudden certainty and felt a sharp sense of loss at the back of his mind, tightening the muscles of his ribs.

  Turning his mount, he rode back along the trail. The wind was now at his back, he was riding with the storm, able to breathe just a little more easily. He passed four wagons, glimpsed the men and women huddled down on the seats, holding on for grim death as they humped and swayed from side to side, the fear-crazed horses hauling savagely on the reins so that it was all the men could do to keep them in check.

  Neil felt the sickness in the pit of his stomach growing as he made his way to the very end of the train. He passed the last but one wagon, then pushed his way forward, eyes peering under the lowered black brows, searching for any sign of the last wagon in the train, for Virginia Millais and her son. He picked his way forward slowly and carefully. It was out of the question to try to pick up the sound of the wagon above the high-pitched shriek of the wind in his ears. He had to rely on seeing it through that whirling, sweeping wall of yellow.

  The minutes lengthened and still there was no sign of the wagon. Was it possible that he himself had worked his way off the trail, that he was moving around in a circle, unable to orientate himself? Had he passed within a few yards of it and yet not seen it, not even known of its presence there?

  He turned his head in every direction, trying to make out anything that moved, a sense of terrible urgency riding him now. He knew that he had to find that wagon within the next five minutes or the chances were that he might never find it again. There was no sign that the storm was abating, blowing itself out; the wind still blew with a fierceness that snatched away his breath, and there was no let-up in the fury of the storm.

  Four minutes later, when he was on the point of giving up, of turning his sorrel back into the teeth of the storm, trying to search in another direction, he caught a fragmentary glimpse of something dark, something only vaguely seen on his right. Swinging the head of the sorrel towards it, he kicked in his spurs, felt the horse bound under him, feet sliding a little in the loose sand underfoot.

  A moment later the unmistakable shape of the wagon materialised out of the yellow gloom, directly in front of him. He could just see the figure of the woman, her face swathed in a broad handkerchief, still gripping the reins. The wheels were barely moving, the two horses straining clumsily and awkwardly.

  Scarcely pausing to think, Neil turned his stud, brought the sorrel alongside the wagon, then slid out of the saddle, coming up beside the woman in a single, smooth movement. He took the reins from her as she moved, unresisting, further along the seat. There was no sign of the boy and Neil guessed that he had taken shelter from the storm inside the wagon.

  A moment while Neil’s hand flicked the long whip against the hides of the horses, a moment while they seemed to hesitate. Then they strained forward and the wagon began to roll more quickly, edging its way in the direction Neil judged the rest of the wagon train to be.

  It was quite impossible to see the trail, impossible to guess if they were headed in the right direction. All he could do at that moment was to keep the horses moving into the storm, trust that the wind had not changed direction, and that the rest of the train was still doing the same. There were so many things which could go wrong, he knew, and the chances were great that once the storm lifted they would find themselves isolated, with no sign of the wagon train.

  ‘Where in God’s name are the others?’ called the woman. ‘We lost sight of them just after the storm began.’

  ‘They’ll be just up ahead,’ he shouted reassuringly, trying to look confident in spite of the growing sense of uneasiness in him. ‘All we can do now is ride out the storm, wait for it to die down. Then we’ll join the others. They won’t be able to make very good time, either.’

  ‘I told Jo
hnny to stay back there, out of the way.’

  She leaned forward a little, only the slits of her eyes showing over the kerchief.

  Slowly they moved into the heart of the gigantic storm that swept over the wide, stretching distances of the plain, the sky darkened, the triumphant sound of the wind a harsh, endless shriek in the ears, the rustling of millions of individual grains of sand grinding along the wagon, tearing at the canvas, threatening to rip it into shreds. Even the ground underfoot seemed to be sliding and shaking as if the sea were rippling about them, long waves moving in and then vanishing behind the wagon. It was an incredible thing, a frightening thing, nature gone wild and turned insane.

  The long minutes passed, still the storm blew about them in its full and awesome fury. Neil found it becoming more difficult to breathe, and every breath that he did take burned like fire in his aching lungs, pounded in his throat and chest.

  No sight of the other wagons in the train, no distant sound in their ears for all lesser sounds were blotted out by the terrible shriek of the wind, the grating of the sand on the metal and canvas of the wagon. It was impossible even to talk, for the words were torn from their lips and tossed into the yellow haze.

  Out of the corner of his vision, Neil saw the woman’s face, lowered against the whirling dust, tight with fear and apprehension. He could guess at the thoughts that must have been passing through her mind at that moment. They were lost. They did not even know if they were still on the trail. There were no landmarks they could see, and it was as if they were utterly isolated in that tremendous, howling wilderness of yellow dust and alkali.

  ‘What can we do now?’ The woman turned and shouted the words in his ear, bending close so that he might hear her.

  He shook his head. ‘Nothing for the moment. We’ll just have to ride out the storm and hope we can pick up the others once it blows itself out. Maybe it would be easier for you inside. I’ll call you if I need you.’