Desert of the Damned by Nelson Nye Page B

and signal smokes, that scrinch-eyed old crock hadn’t been talking just to hear his head rattle.
    It was the damndest spread he had ever put up at. He never heard anyone laugh around the place and more than half the time the crew sat around playing cards and whittling — what time, that is, they weren’t fiddling with their guns. He could see the bunkhouse any time he wanted to peer through the cheesecloth covering the window that was right beside his bed, and if that bunch ever did any saddle slicking it was a cinch it wasn’t being done in the daytime.
    The whole setup was enough to worry any man who had an itch to reform. Near as he could figure there were only six hands yet that outsized bunkhouse could have stowed away thirty without crowding anyone. The crew looked more like guys who were riding the grubline than they did the forty-a-month kind who punched cattle. Except for one thing — range bums mostly never bothered with guns. These birds were weighted down plenty.
    A lot of gents, Reifel figured, would consider this layout had all the earmarks of a spread on the rustle. He hadn’t made up his own mind yet but he’d no doubt whatever it was headed for gunsmoke. There was that kind of tightness hanging in the air.
    Towards the end of the second week it began to get on his nerves. Especially the girl. She never said very much but time and again he had caught her watching him. He could almost hear the wheels going round. She was wondering if it was time yet to fetch up his indebtedness.
    And there was another funny thing. The old man spent most of his time on the porch. Probably with a bottle. Swigging his guts away in that creaking rocker. He never did a lick of work. He never swapped any talk with that bunch at the bunkhouse. He never spoke to the girl that he wasn’t complaining. She didn’t pay much attention. He paid none at all to her.
    Her name was Gert Kavanaugh. She wasn’t hard on the eyes. She had taffy-colored hair. Her voice was all right; though it was deep and kind of husky it didn’t hurt your ears. Her red lips could quicken in a mighty fetching smile and he liked the way her firm young breasts poked out the fronts of the shirts she wore. He often wondered how she’d look in a dress and sometimes, during his more unguarded moments, he would even get to wondering how she’d be in a bed. But she was pretty weak tea if a man was minded to compare her to that black-haired filly who had been on the stage.
    It was during the late afternoon of his tenth day at Boxed Y, that Reifel’s curiosity finally prodded him to action. There was nobody around — nor hadn’t been since noon — except the old man interminably creaking his goddam rocker.
    Reifel got himself up and, slipping out of the bed, went catfooting over to the chair where his clothes were. He stood listening a moment. Satisfied that whiskers was going to keep on rocking he picked up his belt and got the gun from his holster. He broke open the weapon and extracted the paper from the barrel where he had hidden it.
    Marta May Lamtrill.
    Even her name had the ring of class.
    That was one thing about the genuine article — you could tell it every time. He remembered the blue eyes behind the black lashes. The red lips. The regal gestures and the just-so way she had of carrying herself. Everything about her — even to his untutored eyes — proclaimed the earmarks of a Lady.
    Marta May Lamtrill.
    It made him wonder, by God, if he dared look so high. First he’d have to find her and that might take a deal of doing. A lot harder than that would be the making of her acquaintance. He reckoned that would take a heap of maneuvering because a girl like her with all that refinement wasn’t going to take up with every guy that took a shine to her. Half the multimillionaires in the East were probably dogging her; but it was the thought of her old man that really got Ben down. By the tell of that drummer he was powerful big stuff and it was