Free Desert of the Damned by Nelson Nye Page A

anyplace round here.
    He prowled the brush for quite a spell and then, abruptly, saw it. His own horse, too — the one he’d got from Turner. He could see the big roan just as plain as he could hear that goddam water. They’d stuck him over in that box elder thicket hard against the south swing of the creek below the crossing.
    For an eternity of heartbeats he just stood there wide-eyed, watching. He had some trouble with his breathing and what was left of his strength was just about drained out of him. He caught hold of a willow and clung to it, shaking.
    He knew the roan wasn’t there but he hated to admit it. He hated to acknowledge that he was watching a goddam shadow, another hallucination like the fire he’d imagined on his chest. He, wanted to turn his back on the thing just to prove, by God, he had a little sense left. But he just couldn’t do it. He had used up all his will power keeping away from that damned water.
    If the moon would hit that thicket right he knew the horse wouldn’t be there, but he’d never seen a finer sight. The proud carriage of that lifted head, the forward prick of listening ears — he could see that horse as plain as life. He even saw the neck come round but knew the wind had done it.
    All right. He’d be a friggin fool. He’d go over there and prove it.
    He had one foot half lifted when the horse let out a nicker.
    Breen, after Reifel’s departure, remained crouched in the stable’s shadows, his gaunt cheeks twisted with an abysmal fury. Naked as Reifel had left him, the night’s growing coldness passed completely unnoticed in the heat of his virus imaginings.
    He was a man who could not abide defeat. He got no pleasure from the coup which had taken Reifel’s crack band of stick-up men away from him. This, an integral part of his program from the rough-out, was not enough. His sense of well being was dependent on pride, the very core and mainspring of the man’s warped ego; thus his vanity was outraged by what Ben had done to him. It was unthinkable that Reifel should get away to spread that story.
    The two courses of action which Ben had foreseen would recommend themselves to him were examined by Breen and as swiftly discarded. He could wait right here to put the law on Ben’s trail; but the law might not come or it might not catch Ben and, even if it did and swung Ben for him, it might still come back to bite the hand which fed it. It were safer not to have any truck with the law; and the same thing applied to sending the gang after Ben, for that course too might whirl around to unseat him.
    Crouched beyond the bar of light spilled into the stable from the open office door, Breen heard Turner pull himself to his feet. He was like that, listening, when his roving stare suddenly focused on the banknotes Ben had left in the doorway.
    Breen’s eyes narrowed. A grin crept across his tight-lipped mouth and exultation was a joy inside him.
    There was a better way to do this. A much better way.
    He stepped over the currency and entered the office, his bare feet traveling the boards without sound. In the lamp’s yellow flare Cy Turner’s bull shape was bent over the desk with its broken arm dangling, its good arm hidden to the elbow in a drawer.
    Breen said: “Turner, I want some clothes and a gun.”
    Turner lunged around, startled, and broke into a spate of vicious invective when his damaged arm painfully collided with the desk.
    “I ain’t got all night,” Breen snarled irascibly. “You must have some duds I can wear around here someplace.”
    Only then, it seemed, did the liveryman actually take in Breen’s appearance. He gawped like a fish suddenly yanked out of water.
    Breen crossed to a closet and jerked open the door. Rummaging inside he tossed out boots, a pair of checked pants and a shield-fronted shirt. He was clapping a cream colored hat on his head when Turner bleated: “You can’t have
them!
Chrissake, Breen, them’s — ”
    Breen came out of the closet