High Desert Read online

  * * * * *

  It was early morning when Morgan swung to the south, put his black across the shoulder of a juniper-covered butte, and looked down into Paradise Valley, with the huddle of buildings that was Irish Bend centering the flat. Beyond the town lay the dirty pool of water that was dignified by the name Paradise Lake. South of it a patch of hay land was a bright emerald in a gray setting. Again, nostalgia struck at Murdo Morgan. He and his father had paused here to blow their horses. Morgan had had his last look at the valley then. Sixteen years ago, but the memory was a bright picture perfectly fitting reality. Rimrock lined the northern part of the valley. Farther east it rose into several jagged ridges known as the Hagerman Hills. They broke off into a series of round buttes forming part of the eastern and all of the southern rim of the valley.

  Clancy’s Turkey Track buildings were directly below Morgan. Far across the valley was the site of the old Morgan place. The sharpest picture of all the memories that had clung in his mind from that day sixteen years ago was the sight of smoke rising from the cabin. Clancy had not waited until they were out of the valley to burn it.

  Morgan turned his eyes to the north. Along that edge of the lake alkali glittered in the morning sunlight like a patch of white frost. Farther north, just under the rimrock, was another white area Broad Clancy had named Alkali Flats.

  Morgan sat his saddle for a long time, bringing every detail back to his mind. Then his thoughts turned to Ed Cole. Cole was a San Francisco man Morgan had met in Colorado years before as a field representative of a land company. After he had secured his option on the wagon road grant, he had looked Cole up and told him he was $100,000 short.

  “I’m working for the Citizens’ Bank now,” Cole said, “and I believe I can wangle the loan for you. As a matter of fact, we had been dickering for the valley ourselves, but we felt the price was a little steep.”

  “I’d be beholden to you,” Morgan said.

  “Not at all, son. A straight business proposition.”

  “Ought to be a good deal for the bank. The valley’s worth five times what I’m asking to borrow.”

  Cole laughed. “You’re an optimist, Murdo. Not many bankers would agree with you.”

  “Why, Ed, that....”

  “I know.” Cole held up a carefully manicured hand. “I’ve been there. It’s good land if it had water on it, and there’s a lot of it, but don’t forget you’ve got Broad Clancy to buck and you’ve got a handful of squatters like Pete Royce there at the lake, and the Carricks below the east rim, who won’t want to move. What’s more, you’re a long way from a railroad. That valley isn’t worth a nickel if you don’t get settlers on it. How are you going to do that?”

  Morgan had an idea, but it was his notion and not Ed Cole’s. Shrugging, he said: “I’ll figure on it.” And he had left Cole’s office.

  III

  For a time, Morgan had waited. Then, when the loan had been approved, he had gone immediately to the office of the Gardner Land Development Company. He had never met Grant Gardner, but he had heard of him, a capitalist who was more interested in using his wealth to develop farm colonies than to make money.

  But Grant Gardner was harder-headed than Morgan had heard he was.

  “I admire your courage, Morgan,” he said frankly, “but I don’t admire your business sense. You’ve put a fortune into that road grant and borrowed a hundred thousand to boot. I know the Citizens’ Bank and how they do business. If you slip when the time comes to pay, you’ll lose your shirt.”

  “I’ve got till October,” Morgan said. “By that time, I’ll have the land sold.”

  Gardner threw up his hands. “Morgan, you’re a lamb among wolves. How are you going to get a thousand families into your Paradise Valley by October?”

  “I figured on your help. I had a wild notion you were the same kind of dreamer my father was. From the time I remember anything, I remember him talking about how land wears out and folks will have to keep moving west. He said we had to plow up new land to support a population that’s growing all the time. He wanted to help the settlers when they came to Paradise Valley, but they didn’t come in time. If I’m wrong about you, Gardner, I’ll have to get a job punching cows ’cause I sure will lose my shirt.”

  For a long time, Gardner sat studying Morgan, pulling steadily on his cigar, fingertips tapping his desk.

  “You’re not wrong about me, Morgan,” he had said then. “I’m a dreamer and a gambler to boot. I’ve taken some long chances on land development, and folks have called me crazy the same as I’m calling you, but I have a conviction that the future of the West lies in agriculture, not the cattle business. We’ve all got some kind of a job to do or we wouldn’t be here. My job is to bring about the settlement of land that can be profitably farmed.”

  “You’re talking my language now,” Morgan had told him.

  Gardner had shaken his head. “Afraid not, Morgan. I can’t see that you’ve got much chance with your wagon road grant. I’ve been successful because I’ve picked my land developments carefully. It strikes me you’ve been carried away by the memory of an idealist father who left you with some fantastic childhood notions.”

  “Maybe that’s right,” Morgan had agreed doggedly, “but I’ve seen men who had enough nerve to take long chances pull off some crazy-looking propositions. I’ll pull this one off if I get the help I need. I’ve got to have a national organization to sell the land. You’ve got it. Would you put Paradise Valley over for ten percent of the sales?”

  Gardner thought about it. Then he nodded. “Yes. I don’t have anything to push at the moment. I’ll give you that much of a boost.”

  “There’s another thing. I’ll sell the bottom land in small tracts, but a farmer needs water to make a living on that kind of acreage. There are some creeks flowing into the lake that run enough water for a thousand families if we had the reservoirs in the hills.”

  “A million dollars?”

  Morgan had shaken his head. “I’m no engineer, but I’d say half of that.”

  “Figure me out of it,” Gardner said flatly. “I’m not that big a gambler.”

  “My idea is to use a lottery to sell the valley,” Morgan went on.

  Gardner laughed shortly. “It can’t be done, Morgan. The laws of the United States forbid it.”

  “I’ll get around that by letting ’em bid on every piece of land after it’s drawn. We’ll have a government man there to see it’s done the way it’s supposed to be.”

  Gardner scratched the end of his nose. “You’ve got more head than I gave you credit for, Morgan. Tell you what I’ll do. I’ll sell the land for you and push the lottery idea. I’ll send a crew to handle the land sale and I’ll be there myself. If you’ve got settlers who’ll buy, and if they’re the kind who’ll work and don’t expect something for nothing, I’ll put in your irrigation project.”

  “That’s all I’m asking,” Morgan said.

  Morgan rose and reached the door before Gardner warned: “Don’t expect any mercy from the Citizens’ Bank or Ed Cole.”

  “I won’t need it. I’ll have the money.”

  “When do you plan the sale?”

  “September First.”

  Gardner nodded approval. “Good. That’s time enough. Keep me informed. I’ll be in Irish Bend before the First of September.”

  So Morgan had taken his black gelding from the livery and ridden north. He thought of the warning Gardner had given him about Cole and the Citizens’ Bank, but it did not worry him. He had known Cole personally for six years, and regarded him as a friend. In any case, the money had been loaned and Murdo Morgan owned the wagon road grant. If Gardner did his selling job, the money would be on hand before October.

  * * * * *

  Now, with his eyes on the valley, a faint premonition of disaster slid along Morgan’s spine like the passage of a cold snake. He
would have to dispossess the nester families or talk them into buying the land they squatted on.

  Broad Clancy was a tougher problem. Yet Morgan held no sympathy for either the nesters or Clancy. They had stubbornly settled on land they had selected regardless whether it was government land open to entry or company property.

  A gray dirt streak of a road cut through the sage from the north rim to Irish Bend and wound on to the south buttes, twisting a little to the west so that it ran directly to a sharp peak rising boldly above the lesser hills. It was Clancy Mountain, and behind it in the high country was Clancy marsh, Turkey Track’s summer range.

  It was poor graze along the north edge of the valley with rock ridges extending like giant fingers southward from the rim. Except for Pete Royce at the lake and the Carricks farther east, the squatters had all located along the north edge of the valley. The bulk of the bottom land was rich with bunchgrass growing among the sage clumps — good graze, an empire worth fighting for.

  Morgan put his black down the steep slope to the valley floor and, keeping north of the Turkey Track buildings, lined directly across the valley to Irish Bend. The sun climbed until it was noon high, rolling back purple shadows that clung tenaciously to the Hagerman Hills to the east. It was a still day, utterly without wind, stiflingly hot for so early in the season.

  Reaching Irish Bend shortly before noon, Morgan stabled his horse. “Treat him right,” he told the hostler. “He’s come a ways.”

  The hostler nodded, tight-lipped, and said nothing, but suspicion was plain to read on his long face. Morgan stepped through the archway. He stood for a moment in the sun’s glare, gray eyes raking the street, a lock of black hair sweat-pasted to his forehead.

  He made his appraisal of the town without hurry, taking his time building his cigarette. He had the pinched-in-the-middle look and the wide shoulders of a man who had spent most of his life in the saddle. His face and hands were tanned a dark mahogany, his clothes and holster and gun butt were black. In many ways, he looked like any of the Turkey Track riders who idled along the street, yet he was a stranger, and therefore set apart.

  Morgan left the stable and moved toward the hotel, passing the Elite Saloon and going on across the intersection made by the town’s single side street. He walked with studied indifference, feeling many eyes watching from the hidden places of the town. Suspicion was here. When his purpose became known, that suspicion would turn to open hostility.

  A tight smile cut at the corners of his lips. He understood this and expected it. A man who has lived with danger as a constant traveling mate develops a feeling that is close to instinct. He was like a dog setting his face toward a wolf pack, bristles up, muscles tensed.

  Irish Bend had been no more than a single store sixteen years ago. Now it was a cow town supported and permitted to exist by the grace of Broad Clancy. When the time came, every hand would be against Murdo Morgan because Clancy willed it so.

  This was the way it had been with Morgan. He had been looked upon with distrust before. It was never pleasant, and it left its mark upon him. There had been the fights, and they, too, had left their marks — the white scar on his left cheek almost hidden under the dust clinging in his black stubble, the welt of a bullet on his left hand.

  This was Paradise Valley, this was the town of Irish Bend, remembered in the well of Morgan’s memory, and yet entirely strange. Here was harbored a wickedness spawned by suspicion, a shadow across the sun. It struck at Morgan from the false-fronted buildings, from the alleys, from the wide, rough street. There was a sort of grim humor about it. Broad Clancy was a small man, but he threw a long, wide shadow.

  The tantalizing smell of cooked food rushed along the street to Morgan. He had not eaten since dawn and he had been conscious of a rumbling emptiness in his stomach for hours.

  He turned into the hotel and immediately stopped. A girl stood behind the desk and Morgan’s first thought was: This is Peg.

  Immediately he knew he was wrong. She was small, perhaps twenty-two or three, with eager blue eyes so dark they were nearly purple. Her hair was as golden as ripe wheat fit for the binder. Her lips were full and red and quick-smiling. No, she wasn’t Peg. That gay, reckless laugh had given him a picture of her, and this girl didn’t fit the picture.

  She motioned to an archway on his left. “There’s the dining room if that’s what you’re looking for.”

  “Thanks. Just couldn’t seem to get my eyes on it.”

  “I noticed that.”

  As he turned through the archway, he heard her laugh follow him, low and throaty. She wasn’t, he thought, displeased.

  There were a few townspeople in the dining room — two settlers with mud caked on their gumboots, and one table of cowmen. They left as Morgan took a seat, and he had only a passing glance at them. One was young and small, one a thick-bodied wedge of a man, the other middle-aged and smaller than the first with a head overly large for his body and the conscious strut of a man who is certain of his position and power.

  Morgan watched him until he disappeared into the lobby. He was Broad Clancy and he fitted Morgan’s memory of him as perfectly as Paradise Valley had.

  Morgan stepped back into the lobby when he finished dinner. He saw with keen pleasure that the girl was still at the desk.

  “I want a room,” he said.

  Nodding, she turned the register for him to sign. A pen and bottle of ink were on the desk, but he didn’t write his name for a moment. To look at her was like taking a deep breath of fresh air after coming out of a tightly closed room.

  He saw things about her he had not seen before — the smooth texture of her skin, the dark tan that could have come only from the long hours under the sun, the freckles on her pert nose, the perfection of her white teeth when she smiled.

  She dipped the pen and handed it to him. “You have to sign your name.”

  “I’m sorry.” He dropped his gaze, not realizing until then how directly he had been staring at her. He scratched his name, gave San Francisco as his home, and laid the pen down. “When you’ve been thirsty for a long time, you just can’t stop drinking when you come to water.”

  Capping the ink bottle, she swung the register back, but she didn’t look at his name for a moment. Her eyes were lifted to his and he saw no suspicion in them. Again, he thought she was not displeased. She did not belong here. She seemed to stand in the sunlight away from Broad Clancy’s shadow.

  Then she looked down at the register as she reached for a key. She froze that way, one hand outstretched, lips parted, and warmth fled from her face.

  “Morgan. Murdo Morgan.” She straightened and gave him a direct look. “I suppose you think you’re a brave man to come back.”

  “I never laid any claim to being a brave man,” he said laconically.

  “Would you admit you’re a fool?”

  “That might come nearer being right.”

  She clutched the edge of the desk, knuckles white. “I don’t think you’re either one. Only the devil would return for revenge.”

  “If you’ll give me my key, I’ll find my room, ma’am. Then maybe you can tell me where Broad Clancy would be.”

  “Do you think I want my father’s blood on my hands?” she asked hotly. “Or do you deny you returned to kill him?”

  “Yes, I’ll deny that. If I kill him, it will be because he forces me.”

  “You’re a liar as well as a devil.” She pointed at the black-butted gun that snugged his hip. “Your brand is easy to read.”

  He placed his big hands, palm down, on the desk and leaned toward her. “Look, Miss....”

  “You were eleven when you left!” she cried. “You’re old enough to remember that my name is Jewell.”

  “Jewell Clancy.” He said the words as if he could not believe they were her name. “I have seen desert flowers, but I didn’t expect to find one here.”

/>   She blushed, but her smile did not return. “You can’t stay here in the valley. Don’t start the fight again.”

  “I don’t intend to start it. I want a room and I want to see your dad.”

  “I remember the day you left. I was in the store when you and your father rode by. I’ll never forget. I’ve thought about it so many times. We’d killed your brothers and you’d lost your home, but you weren’t crying. You were grown up, even then. Let it go at that, Murdo. All the killing you can do will not set right the wrongs we did.”

  “I know that,” he said roughly, “and I’m tired of being called a liar. I didn’t come back to kill your dad.’’

  He saw the pulse beat in her throat, the tremor of her lips. He sensed the struggle that was in her, the desire to believe him battling what her reason told her to believe.

  “Even if you were telling the truth,” she whispered, “Dad won’t believe you. You’ll find him with Short John and Jaggers Flint in the Silver Spur. Flint’s a gunman, Murdo. He’ll kill you. I think Dad hired him as insurance against your return.”

  “Then a lot of things will be settled,” he said lightly, and turned to the door.

  “Don’t go, Murdo!” she called.

  He swung back and had a long look at her. He saw her lips stir and become still. He sensed the rush of emotions that the ghost of a past not dead brought to her.

  “Looks like I’ll have to do without that room,” he said, and left the hotel.

  IV

  Murdo Morgan was a direct man without an ounce of sly cunning in him. It was a mark of Morgan character, the same as the thin nose and high cheek bones had marked Morgan faces. He knew that this meeting with Broad Clancy might decide his future and the future of the valley, and he hurried his steps as if to hasten destiny’s decision.