As he rode to the south, the lights of the town grew small, the singing of fiddles became threadlike whispers of sound, the laughter of drunken cowhands dissolved in the night. Soon the town and its sounds had disappeared and a blanket of silence enveloped the prairie.
A vague uneasiness mounted within him as he rode deeper into the darkness.
But in the bigness of the night, details did not seem important, and he soon put uncertainty behind him and rode at ease. Nathan had not forgotten him—that was the important thing. Nathan's strong hand could still reach him and comfort him, even from Mexico.
Jeff could almost imagine that Nate himself was waiting for him somewhere to the south, in the darkness, and he urged the claybank to a quicker gait. He let himself smile as he remembered Nathan throwing back his head, holding the world at bay with the violence in his eyes— and for a little while he forgot to be angry and loosened the band of hate that squeezed his brain.
It was almost sunup when Jeff approached the forks. The lip of the eastern prairie seemed etched in blood and the sky became a skillful blend of brilliant blues and subtle grays. Suddenly a great orange sun appeared and the prairie blazed as though with fire.
In this new light Jeff paused for a moment and studied his backtrail; then he nudged the claybank through a thicket of salt cedar, crossed the dry bed of Little River and headed north.
This was a raw, red country of eroded clay and dwarfed trees and sage, as barren as the floor of a dried ocean. Not many men would pass this way, not even drifters.
Soon Jeff saw the weathered outline of an abandoned shack, a sorry affair of sod and scrub oak logs with the roof half gone, the chimney crumbling. Cautiously now, he eased the claybank forward. Suddenly the doorway of the shack was filled with the thick-set form of a man.
“Somerson?” Jeff called.
“Who wants to know?”
“Jefferson Blaine. Nate Blaine's my father.”
Somerson stepped through the doorway, a snub-nosed carbine on his hip at the ready. “Who sent you?”
“A man called Fay. Milan Fay.”
Somerson laughed and slung the carbine in the crook of his arm. “I would of knowed you anyway, kid; you've got the Blaine mark stamped all over you. Tie your animal to a brush and climb down.”
Somerson waited by the corner of the shack as Jeff left the claybank in a thicket of blackjack. He held out a big hand as Jeff came up to him. “By hell, you're Nate all over again. I'm proud to shake hands with you, son; that business of turnin' the posse just about saved this dirty neck of mine!”
Jeff studied the man quietly, his hand smothered in Somerson's bearlike fist. “I didn't know who they were after,” he said.
Somerson laughed again. “No matter. It showed clear enough whose side you're on, and that's good enough for Bill Somerson. Yes sir, you're Nate Blaine all over again. Come on in and we'll have breakfast.”
Somerson turned abruptly and lunged back through the doorway. Jeff followed him inside and was hit by the pungent smell of frying salt pork. The shack itself had the powdery smell of bleached bones about it; the dirt floor had grown up in weeds which had been tramped down. A small smokeless fire of carefully selected hardwood was going in the fireplace, where fat pork sizzled in an iron skillet.
Jeff turned his attention on Somerson, who was turning the meat with the point of his pocket knife. He saw a florid man in his early forties, bulging and heavy with hard fat; his long, pale hair was as fine as silk, flowing and drifting about his head with every slight breeze within the shack.
Jeff squatted beside the fireplace, putting his back against the sod wall. “The man called Fay said you had a message for me.”
“That's right.” Somerson opened a can of hardtack and dumped the rocklike biscuits onto a saddle blanket. From a scant store of provisions in the comer of the shack, he found some coffee. “Me and Nate rode for the same bunch down in Chihuahua. When he heard I was headed back this way, he wanted me to look you up.” He poured coffee into the hardtack can and added water from a canteen. “This ain't much of a way to live,” he said blandly, putting the can on the fire to boil. “But I figure to do better before long. Is that fat marshal still lookin' for me?”
“Elec Blasingame doesn't give up easily.”
The outlaw laughed. “He'll never find me here. Wouldn't do him any good if he did; I'm out of his county.”
“I wouldn't count too much on that,” Jeff said. “Elec's just a town marshal; doesn't have any legal authority outside the limits of Plainsville. But that didn't stop him from bringing a posse after you before.”
Somerson frowned. “I thought you didn't like lawdogs.”
“I don't, but it would be a mistake not to give Elec his due. Once he gets his teeth into something, he's hard to break loose.”
Somerson rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “That might be a good thing to know. But I was talkin' about your pa, not the marshal.” He busied himself with the pork, not looking at Jeff. “I guess you know Nate had a little trouble over in the New Mexico country. He's got an idea the government marshal would like to get his hands on him; that's why he's stickin' below the Border. Your pa'd like to see you, son.”
Jeff felt his heart hammering. “When?”
“Pretty soon, I guess. I can take you south when the time comes—but first Nate wants you to do him a favor— a big one.” Somerson set the skillet off the fire, and now he turned his eyes directly on Jeff. “I'll tell you the truth, kid. Your pa's pretty hot about the way they tried to railroad him in this town. He said he wants you to settle the score for him. Nate Blaine wants that town of yours turned upside down and shook till its teeth rattles. You understand?”
Jeff heard his own breath whistle between his teeth. It didn't sound like Nate, putting his work on somebody else. “He said that?”
Somerson stared at him. “Would I have a reason to he to you?”
“No. I guess not.”
“And hasn't Nate got plenty of right to his hate?”
“Yes. Both of us have.”
“Now you sound like your pa!” the outlaw grinned. He speared a piece of fat pork with his knife, clamped it between two pieces of hardtack and began eating. “Help yourself,” he said, nodding. “You know, I rode a long piece out of my way just to see you, kid. But I told Nate I'd look you up, and I don't go back on my word.”
“You still haven't given me the message.”
“Don't be in such a hurry; I'm just gettin' to it. We'll have to go back a way to get at the beginning. Me and Nate were ridin' together for this reb general on the other side of the Border, and that's how I came to find out how they railroaded him up here.”
“He told you?”
“That, and plenty more. The more he thought about it the madder he got, I guess, and a man like Nate can get pretty mad in five years' time. Now, it was a bank job they tried to stick him with, wasn't it?”