The High Hander

XI XI Persia sat primly at the secretary which stood in a corner of her parlor. She frowned, checked her addition. It was nice to have bank accounts in three different towns, but she wished that just once they would total as much as she had expected. The town was busier than it had ever been and on paper she was making a good deal of money; but it was all going to pay off Mr. Jay. She shifted her chair to face Sam as he came into the room. He regarded her as placidly as ever through his lenses, but she knew him so well that she could sense a mild urgency about him. "Mr. Jay is in my office," he said shortly. "Oh?" Mr. Jay never visited the townhouse unless his business was very urgent indeed. "Sam, is anything wrong?" Sam moved his head negatively. "He has some instructions he wants to give you personally. It's a simple matter, but he wants it done just right." They went at once to the office. Mr. Jay sprang up to take Persia's hand in both of his. "Charming! More charming than ever!" he said, throwing his head back to look her over. His alert little eyes danced and his beard framed a smile as he devoted a second or two to looking charmed. He led her to a chair as Sam slid into another. Mr. Jay stood between them, hands clasped behind his back. He glanced from one to the other and drew in his breath noisily. "There are two men upstairs in Sam's rooms that I don't want seen around town. They have been riding all night and are hungry. Now—" Mr. Jay paused to smile crisply at Persia—"I want you to feed them. Have your maid throw together a meal; soup, ham and eggs, left-overs—anything that can be prepared quickly. You might say that Sam has some old friends visiting him, something like that. Then you or Sam take the food up to them—not the maid. In the meantime, Pinky Bronklin will bring a bag of supplies here. These two men will take it and leave. Their horses are tied out back." Persia smiled faintly. "Aren't you going to tell me what nefarious connivance I'm a party to?" "Oh, it's underhanded," Mr. Jay said, "completely underhanded. If I were suspected of being connected with it, my career would be finished. But you'll guess it anyway, in the light of future developments; so you might as well know now. Ben Vickers' big boiler reached Ellensburg yesterday. He had a crew and a huge wagon waiting for it, so I expect that by this time it's on the road. I—well, there's going to be an accident." "I wish now I hadn't asked," Persia said. "No one will be hurt, I hope." "I certainly hope not." "I don't like this, Mr. Jay." "Of course not. I don't like it either." "Does Vickers know the boiler's arrived?" Sam asked. "Not yet, I think," Mr. Jay said. "My information is that his messenger was delayed. I dare say that he will get word, though, before the day is out. And I dare say he will send Mr. Tesno down there at once." Finding no comfort in the solitude of his room, Tesno left the hotel and strolled aimlessly up the street. His big Raymond watch showed only a little after eleven. He would wait till noon, he decided, before dropping in on Persia. He stopped at the new tobacco store and bought a handful of cigars. Lighting one, he sauntered past the livery barn and up the slope behind it. Most of the timber had been logged off here, and brush and ferns were already claiming the ground. Finding a degree of solace in the faint warmth of the sun, he pulled himself up on a stump and found he had a view that drew him out of himself. It was a cloudless day, and the range jutted its ragged vertebrae into a sky as blue as a mountain lake. Below him, the town seemed a naked, ugly fungus sprung newly from the earth. The camp, almost hidden by pines, was less intrusive. Beyond the gulch, above it, the crisp black arch of the tunnel scarred Runaway Mountain. Here it all is , he thought, spread out in front of me. I've either got to become a part of it or get the hell out. He tried to plan what he would say to Persia. He would tell her flatly that the time had come for the gamblers to go, he guessed. He would ask her to have Madrid clear them out, all of them. If she stalled or refused—well, he would do it himself. Or resign. The townhouse lay off to his left, and he found himself staring at it, thinking that she was in there somewhere, wondering what she did with her mornings. He watched two men come out of the back of the far part of the building, each carrying a small bundle. At this distance he could tell little about them except that they must have come up from the cattle country east of the mountains. One wore woolly chaps. Both wore Stetsons and walked with the peculiar swagger of men in high-heeled boots. They disappeared behind one of the outbuildings, and when they came into sight again, they were mounted on horses. He watched them ride eastward out of the gulch. He supposed they had come to sell beef or hay, or on some such business, and he quickly forgot them. When his watch read almost noon, he started downhill, avoiding the street and heading for the townhouse. Persia answered his knock, smiling when she saw him. It wasn't the polite and pretty company smile now but a special one, personal and tender, an eager doorway closed quickly behind him as she came into his arms. "I'm glad you came," she said. She drew him into the parlor. "It's been a bad morning." "I heard about the accident," she said. She detached herself from him and sat down on the sofa, crossing her long legs and smoothing her skirt over them. "Is there anything anyone can do?" "Not for the dead men." Her eyes touched him warily. She said, "For you then? You ought to get your mind off it." "No," he said. "I ought to think about it. I ought to think a great deal about it." She nodded slowly, frowning. He seized the back of a chair and leaned over it moodily. After a moment, she said, "I've been wishing all morning you'd drop by. Jack, it's such a beautiful day. Could we—I suppose it isn't a good idea, but couldn't we pack a lunch and have a picnic? I know a spot where there's a creek and a little waterfall. We'd be a million miles away from everything." "It sounds fine," he said. "We'll have to sort of sneak away," she said. "I wouldn't want Sam to know. He'd want to come, too, I'm afraid." It was after sunset when they came back into the gulch along a forgotten skid road. They reached the kitchen door of the townhouse at a remarkable moment when the entire sky was aglow, burning scarlet beyond the bleak western peaks and cooling down to a grayish pink in the east as night seeped into it. The buildings of the town, the trees, the earth itself were suspended in a pinkish haze. Persia caught Tesno's hand and halted him. "It's almost frightening!" she said. "It gives you the feeling something strange is about to happen." He knew what she meant, but he grinned and said artlessly, "It will be a clear day tomorrow." Stella was at the back door then, saying dinner was ready and going stale. Sam Lester met them in the kitchen. He gave Persia a questioning look and turned to Tesno. "Vickers is in there," Sam said, jerking his head toward the parlor. "He's been combing the town for you. He finally learned from Stella that you'd gone off somewhere with a basket of food—she didn't know where. He's been camped in there ever since." Tesno found Ben dozing in a chair. He leaped to his feet wild-eyed when he heard his name. "The boiler's on it's way up here!" Ben said. "It will move fast enough until the road hits the mountains, and I expect it's damn near to Cle Elum by now. If you ride all night, you can be there by dawn. Where in the merry hell have you been?" "Picnic," Tesno said. "You could leave word where I could find you." "I've been trying to think things out, Ben. I've decided to quit." Ben clapped a hand to his forehead. "Not now! Not with that boiler down there!" "You could send somebody else." "This job might need special talent, Jack. It just might be a dirty one." Ben fell silent as Persia and Sam came into the room. He nodded curtly at Persia. Suddenly he gestured violently and continued. "The thing arrived yesterday. I had a crew standing by to unload it and start it up here. A man left at once to bring me the news—should have been here before daylight this morning. But he was overtaken by a pair of toughs who beat him up, tied him to a tree, shot his horse. He worked loose and walked eight miles in the middle of the night to a ragcamp, where he borrowed another horse. He didn't get here till well after noon." "You think they did this just to delay the news?" "Seems like it. And when you remember that phoney telegram—well, that boiler needs you down there alongside of it, night and day, a gun in your hands." "All right," Tesno said. "I'll chaperone the boiler for you. After that...." "We'll see, we'll see," Ben said quickly. "Once I get that thing up here and the compressors working, life ought to be a little easier for everybody. I've got your blue roan saddled and waiting outside. You can start right now." "Not till he's had something to eat!" Persia said. She stepped up and grasped Tesno's arm possessively. Ben grunted. "Just so he's at Cle Elum by daylight." He located his hat, clamped it on his head, and headed for the door. Sam Lester went with him. "Actually," Persia said, "I think that man is mad. Sit down and have a drink, Jack. I'll have Stella get dinner on the table. Sam has already eaten." "I'll have to hurry," Tesno said. "Maybe...." "Nonsense. Sam has work to do, and I refuse to be left alone. Not tonight, Jack." XII The first dozen miles lay in relatively flat sagebrush country. The twelve-man, thirty-horse boiler-hauling outfit covered them the first day, reaching the first real grade at dusk and halting there to spend the night and give the boss time to figure out what he was going to do in the morning. He was a glary-eyed man named Rejack, who treated his horses with a kindness rare among teamsters and was consequently considered a simpleton by his crew. His problem was to get his huge wagon over a bridge almost exactly as wide as its wheel spread and then up a road with hairpins in it so sharp and steep that the top-heavy load was almost sure to overturn. He finally decided that it couldn't be done. The only chance was to ford the creek and pull the wagon straight up the hillside with block and tackle. Shortly after sun-up, the crew dragged it across the creek without too much trouble. Rejack then anchored his pulley block on a big cedar, put six men on the wagon tongue to steer, and had ten span of horses hitched to pull down-grade as the wagon moved up. He inspected the teams, the rope, the lashings on the boiler and finally gave the order to start. The wagon moved along nicely for the first hundred feet. Then a man walked out of a clump of trees with a shotgun, aimed at the rope from four feet away, and fired both barrels. The wagon reversed its direction so suddenly that the man walking near the rear of it with a wheel block had time only to toss it and jump. The wheel missed it. The wagon hurtled down the hillside, skidded sideways, made one complete roll, stopped abruptly in the creek, and collapsed under its load like a berry box. In the confusion, the man with the shotgun had disappeared into the pines. Some of the crew considered going after him but were promptly discouraged when a rifle cut loose from somewhere above, its bullets ricocheting through the brush between them and the trees. It was plain to everybody that the saboteur had a partner up there covering him. Rejack took off his hat, scratched his head, and reacted to catastrophe with casual acceptance that the crew later recounted with hilarity. "If that isn't one hell of a way to cut a rope!" he grumbled. "Did any of the buckshot hit the horses?" The rifleman fired three rapid shots, obviously not trying to hit anybody, and called it a day. Rejack jounced down the slope to inspect the damage, followed by most of the crew. As far as anybody could tell, the boiler, for a wonder, wasn't even scratched. The wagon was beyond repair. Rejack sat down on the creek bank to figure out what to do next. It was midmorning and Tesno was five miles above Cle Elum when he met the rider on his way to report the disaster to Vickers. Tesno would have passed with a nod and greeting, but the other recognized him and stopped to pour out the story. "The boiler isn't damaged?" Tesno demanded. "Sound as a dollar," the hard-faced little teamster said. "The boss started back to Ellensburg to try and scare up another wagon big enough to haul the damn thing. In the meantime it's setting in a crick about a mile and a half below Cle Elum." "Somebody's guarding it?" "Well, yes. The boss ordered a four-man guard on it, but there didn't seem much sense in that since there was only one gun in the whole outfit. So one man's there now. The rest went on up to Cle Elum." "All right," Tesno said. "Now the first thing you tell Ben is that the boiler is in good shape. That might save him from apoplexy. Then tell him I said not to worry. I'll get the thing up to him." Guilt welled up in him as he jogged on down the road. If he had left Tunneltown when Ben wanted him to—or even immediately after dinner—he would have been on the scene when calamity struck. With a little luck, he might have prevented it. At least, he would have bagged the hooligan who severed the rope. Cle Elum consisted of a sawmill, a pond full of logs, and one of the temporary camps Ben Vickers had set up here and there along his supply line. Tesno passed without stopping and rode on to the scene of the wreck. Here he found the guard sitting against a tree sound asleep—a sixteen-year-old kid armed with an ancient revolver with two shells in it. He jerked the boy to his feet and shoved him toward the boiler. "You keep your eye on that thing every minute," he snapped. After questioning the kid about what had happened, he made a quick scout through the pines and found where the vandal had tied his horse. Following the hoofprints upgrade, he soon came to a place where they were joined by another set. The two riders had headed straight into the timbered hills without so much as a deer trail to guide them. Apparently, they were men who knew the country well. He rode back to Cle Elum then, where he found the boiler crew lounging around the mess tent, sipping coffee and playing poker. "Holiday's over," he announced. "We'll go down there and get the boiler ready to load when the wagon arrives. We'll need about twenty horses to drag it out of the creek." "Morning will be time enough," a bull-necked, bullet-headed freighter growled, clutching his poker hand close to his stomach. "You were sent down here to guard that damn teakettle, not to give orders. Rejack left me in charge, and I say you can go hang yourself. Where in the black damnation were you when those rascals surprised us, anyhow?" Tesno remarked that he was in no mood to quibble. Placing the sole of his boot against the edge of the table, he kicked it into the man's stomach, got an armlock on him, and pitched him out of the tent on his face. The crew laughed uneasily and drifted off toward the corral to get harness on the horses. After several hours of preparatory work, they maneuvered the boiler out of the creek on logs that had been peeled and greased. When they had skidded it onto two logs set along the bank like rails, they dug a cut under one end of these for the wagon to back into when it arrived. It was dark when they finished. In the meantime, Tesno borrowed a Winchester from the camp 'general' at Cle Elum and another from the mill owner. He also found a Klickitat mill hand who knew the country and whom he set off on horseback to trail the saboteurs. When the digging was finished and the boiler ready to load, Tesno announced that they would camp on the spot. He divided the men into pairs and assigned them to watches. "Just don't get jumpy and shoot each other," he said, handing the rifles to the men on the first watch. "If you see or hear anything unusual, let me know. I'll be within calling distance all night." Supper consisted of stew made of bacon, jerky, onions, and potatoes, chased by black coffee. When he had wolfed his down, he settled himself at one end of the boiler with a blanket over his shoulder and his own rifle beside him. From time to time, he rose to check on the guards, but mostly he sat and smoked, dozing very little. He was restless and uncomfortable, his supper heavy in his stomach, and his thoughts were like a windblown deck of cards he tried to sort out and put in order. He looked back at his life, at the callousness of it, the probing out of human weakness that could be turned to his advantage, the careful building of a reputation among the contractors. What had he been seeking all these years? Money? A stake that would buy and stock a ranch? Of course. But there had been more to it than that. There had been the satisfaction of seeing steel push into the wilderness. Even if he sometimes had doubts about the true importance of the railroad, it had been something a man could give his life to. It was the giving that had been important. And now it was not important. Not since that long-ago night in May when he had interrupted Persia Parker's dinner. Gray-green eyes, a soft voice, an eager smile, a lithe body—these were Persia. But what else was she? And in this black and lonely time with his back against the cold bulge of a boiler that was a key piece in a wild game of steel and gold, he dared to doubt the thing he wanted most. To doubt in order to prove. He had to know. There had been a nervousness in her last night, he thought. She had smiled even more often than usual, had touched him at every opportunity, as she had stubbornly insisted that he stay with her. She had known about the boiler, of course; she had been there when Ben told him of its arrival. But could she have known earlier—before the picnic? No , he told himself, it wasn't like that. It couldn't have been.... A voice rang out in the blackness, a challenge, and another answered bluntly. Tesno was on his feet, working the lever of his rifle. Two figures up in the liquid forest night—one of the guards with his gun on the Klickitat mill hand. "It's all right," Tesno said to the guard. "Go back to your post." The Indian, who answered to the name of Muckamuck Charlie, gave his report in a mixture of reservation English and Chinook jargon. "Them son-of-a-gun cooley over mountain. Split up. One come back to hooihut . Nika till. You got whisky?" "One of them circled back to the road?" Tesno said, trying to get it straight. "Damn right. Maybe go by here, take look. Halo nika money. You pay now?" "Where did the other one go?" " Halo chako. Him wait. By and by come together. Go to tenas house ipsoot in woods." Charlie made a gesture toward the southwest. "Four-five mile." As near as Tesno could make it out, one of the men—no doubt the one who had shown himself—had waited while the other rode up the road like any honest traveler, passing the boiler to see how much damage had been done. This could have happened soon after the smash-up, likely as not while that sleepy kid was on guard. Then the pair had joined up again and ridden to a cabin hidden in the woods four or five miles away. "They're at the cabin, tenas house , now?" "I listen," Charlie said. "They make sleep noises. I smell whisky." "Can you take me there? Right now?" Charlie grunted. "You pay now. Two dollar. We go tenas house , you pay more." Tesno drew two silver dollars from his pocket and passed them over. "Two more when you take me to the cabin." Charlie studied the coins in his palm. " Nika till. I sleep now. Eat. Drink some whisky. Pretty soon daylight. We go then." "We go right now," Tesno said. As it turned out, they were delayed by the arrival of Rejack, who came rumbling up the road with a new freight wagon as Tesno was saddling his horse. He inspected the boiler and then backed the wagon into the cut by lantern light before he unhitched the team. "We'll be loaded and moving by sun-up," he said, looking pleased. "No," Tesno said. "Load, but don't start the boiler up that grade till I get back. Those rascals know it wasn't damaged, and if I should happen to miss them, they might try the same stunt all over again." XIII Dawn crept into the world drearily and then lavishly as they made a slow and sinuous ride through tangled gulches and trailless forest, up horse-crippling grades and down shale-slippery slopes. After a good hour of this roundabout traveling, Muckamuck Charlie halted at the foot of a rounded, thickly timbered hill. He sniffed the air and announced that the tenas house , the cabin, was on the far side of this. "Them son-of-a-gun wake up," he said, sniffing again. "Cook breakfast. When we gonna eat?" As they wound up through the trees, Tesno, too, could smell smoke. When they were over the crest, had tied the horses and were proceeding on foot, it was visible, lying in motionless layers among the pines. "Fire out now," Charlie said. They were within a few yards of the cabin before Tesno saw it through the foliage, a ten-by-twelve log shack set into the hillside. It was weathered and saggy-roofed, built by some trapper or prospector heaven knew how many years ago. Charlie drew Tesno behind a tree, pointed a finger at the ground as an indication that he was to wait, and angled off on a scout. After a few minutes he walked around the end of the cabin, eating a biscuit with a piece of raw bacon draped over it. "Them son-of-a-gun wake up early. Go 'way," he said. The air in the dark interior of the cabin was still warm from a fire in the crumbling clay fireplace. It had been doused with water but was still smoking faintly. The occupants couldn't have left more than a few minutes earlier. Gear and supplies piled along the walls indicated that they expected to be back. Charlie led the way down the hillside to a little open place where they had picketed their horses. After circling around and studying several old sets of tracks, he announced that he had found the fresh one. As he and Charlie strode upgrade toward their own horses, Tesno grew increasingly anxious. This pair of hooligans knew that the boiler wasn't damaged. It stood to reason that they would make another try at it. He said as much to Charlie. "You keep on their trail, Charlie. Try to get a look at 'em. I'll be with the boiler. If they come anywhere near it, you let me know. You got all that?" "Two dollar," Charlie said. "Five dollar, Charlie. Five dollar, you stay with 'em till I catch 'em." Rejack had the tackle rigged, the teams hitched, and was impatient to begin the haul. Tesno had him wait till he had scouted out the pine clusters that dotted the lower part of the hillside, then told him to go ahead. The wagon groaned and inched upward. Two men walked behind it now, swinging a squared timber on ropes between them. They held this close behind the wheels so that they had only to drop it to block them. Rifle in hand, Tesno took a position where he could cover the rope on both sides of the tackle blocks. Slowly, protestingly, the great wagon and its monstrous load crept up to the anchor tree and was lashed to it. Rejack had already chosen the course for the second leg of the ascent and had had brush and saplings cleared away. This would be a longer haul than the first. There were two or three trees that the men on the tongue would have to guide the wagon around, and the slope was uneven, mottled with rock outcroppings. Moreover, the forest pressed in from both sides before claiming the top of the hill entirely, just beyond the place where the wagon would rejoin the road. "If they'd waited yesterday and hit us up here, there wouldn't be enough left of the boiler to hold a drink of water," Rejack said. Tesno scouted the trees as best he could. But this was deep woods. A wary man could easily avoid being seen or heard among the maze of trunks growing out of carpetlike duff. Again, the long double file of horses pulled slowly down the mountainside and the wagon groaned upward. It had climbed barely twenty yards when Muckamuck Charlie appeared below, working his horse zigzag up the slope. Tesno yelled for the team to halt and the men behind the wagon to block its wheels. Charlie slid off his winded horse. "Them son-of-a-gun close by," he grunted. "They watch." "Where?" Tesno demanded. They moved a few steps into the woods. Charlie pointed to a little butte that rose out of the pines half a mile to the west. Its face was sheer rock cliff, but it could well have a sloping approach on its far side. "They go up there," Charlie grunted. " Halo chako. Wait. Watch. By and by one go 'way. Come down here someplace. One stay." Tesno squinted thoughtfully up at the butte. "You get a look at 'em, Charlie?" "Damn right. Jim Palma. Cultus no good son-of-a-gun." "You know 'em?" "Know one," Charley said with stubborn serenity. "Jim Palma. Stomp Umatilla boy down to Selah, one-two year ago. Boy die. Don't know other one." Rejack came trotting through the trees and demanded to know what was going on. "Maybe we ought to back the thing down, lash it to that cedar," he said when Tesno had explained. Tesno considered this, then shook his head. "Go ahead with the haul. Let them make their try. Just be sure those boys with the wheel block are on their toes. If—" A rifle shot rang out from the butte, not much louder than a finger snap, and a ricochet screamed its weird song above them. "Damn fool," Rejack muttered. "He's giving us a warning. I don't get it." The rifle cracked again, and now a horse whinnied, plunged in his harness, went down. "My god," Rejack gasped. "He's shooting at the horses!" He dashed out of the woods, waving his arms and yelling to get the team to cover. As he did so, another shot sounded, and another horse plunged and went down. Tesno studied the butte, estimating that its top was at least six hundred yards away. Even at that range, it didn't take an expert to hit a twenty-horse team. As he watched, a man stepped into sight at the very brink of the cliff, fired a quick shot which hit nothing, and disappeared into brush and scrub timber. "Jim Palma," Muckamuck Charlie grunted. "He didn't have to show himself," Tesno muttered. He began to understand the plan now. Another shot rang out. A horse screamed and started to buck, a brilliant red streak across his rump. Rejack barked orders and waved his arms as teamsters jumped around frantically, trying to quiet down the horses and unhook the harness of those that were down. The men who had been posted on the wagon tongue to steer now were streaking up the slope to help with the animals. Jim Palma could sit up there and pot horses till confusion reigned completely, Tesno thought. But of course, the man had an additional purpose. He meant to draw whoever was guarding the boiler up there after him to give his partner a chance to strike. He stepped into the open to fire a quick shot again now. And this time Tesno was ready for him with his rifle rested against the trunk of a tree. He aimed and fired. Palma faded from sight. "You gottem!" Muckamuck Charlie said. "I doubt it," Tesno said. "Not at this distance. But he knows we've seen him. Let's go, Charlie." He hurried down to his horse, mounted, and joined Charlie at the road. They rode down it a few yards and were out of sight of the butte. "You keep after him," Tesno said, waving Charlie on as he reined off the road. "I'll maybe catch up to you later." Palma's partner would certainly have been watching, would have seen them leave and would assume they had been decoyed after Palma. He would make his move now—any second, Tesno thought as he worked his horse up through a stand of trees toward the suspended wagon. When he came to more open ground, he dismounted and continued afoot. Within a hundred yards of the wagon he knelt in brush cover. He waited, wondering why Palma's partner didn't make his play. Then he realized that the man would wait for the horses to be unhitched and moved to cover so the rope would have only the weight of a doubletree at its end. There would be only the wheel block to deal with. The shooting from the butte came rapidly now, badly aimed. The crew frantically untangled harness and ran the horses into the woods in pairs. Tesno kept his eyes on the wagon. Only the wheel blockers were left with it, and they were standing together watching the pandemonium above them. A man was suddenly crossing the hillside a few yards from the rear of the wagon. He was a lean, quick-moving man in woolly chaps, and he carried a shotgun. His appearance was so sudden that he could only have been lying in the brush there, not far above Tesno. He barked something at the pair near the rear of the wagon, covering them with the shotgun as they turned. He gestured with the gun toward the wheel block. The men hesitated, then one stooped to remove it. "Hold it!" Tesno yelled. "Drop the gun!" He fired as the man whirled toward him. A sickening weakness seized him as the man flounced and the shotgun discharged wildly at the sky. The boiler-wrecker rose on his toes and pitched forward on his face. The man who had stooped over the wheel block straightened without touching it. Tesno walked swiftly up the hillside, reaching the scene as the crewmen rolled the body on its back. "He was dead when he hit the ground," one of them said weakly. Tesno studied the gaping, vacant face, the blood-stained denim shirt, the shaggy, stained chaps. Here was the end of a life. However shabby, there must have been good in it somewhere, he thought, and regret seized him like a sickness. Yet he hid it, denied it, and as men gathered round he said roughly, "Anybody know him?" Nobody did. Tesno continued to stare, frowning. The limp, long-legged form stirred a slippery memory that he couldn't quite get hold of. A bullet rang dully against the boiler, spattering harmlessly against the heavy iron. An instant later, the bark of the distant rifle reached them. Tesno motioned to the men to move around the boiler so it would shield them from the rifleman. As he did so, another bullet made a little explosion of dust two yards below him. He turned his eyes toward the butte and said, "He saw what happened. He's out for blood now." Rejack bustled up, red-faced and wild-eyed with anger. He took a quick look at the dead man and seemed to grow calmer. He said, "We can't hitch up till that murdering devil stops shooting. Aren't you going after him?" "I think I know where he'll head for," Tesno said. "I can get there first, I guess. Maybe I can take this one alive." He strode down-grade to his horse and headed over the hill in the direction of the hidden cabin. He followed the same course he and Charlie had taken that morning, annoyed at its tedious winding and thinking that there might be a shorter way. When he was near the cabin, he hid his horse well back in the woods and approached on foot. Everything was just as he had left it. He closed the door behind him and sat down to wait, rifle on his knees. His lack of sleep caught up with him now, and several times in the space of a few minutes he got up to stretch and move about to ward off drowsiness. He couldn't get the dead man out of his mind. He was reasonably sure he had never seen the face before; yet something about that figure sprawled out on the hillside nagged him. His eye fell on two canvas bags of supplies resting against the wall. And it all came to him then. Two bags of supplies. Two men. One in woolly chaps. The dead man and Jim Palma were the pair he had seen come out of the back of the townhouse two days ago! It seemed a long guess, on the face of it; yet he was sure. All right , he told himself. They came out of the far end of the building, the office end. That means that Sam Lester is involved, not Persia. But why Sam? What did he have to gain by wrecking Ben Vickers' boiler? A little longer life for the town, no doubt. But Persia would profit by that as much as Sam. And it was after the men had left that she had suggested a picnic.... There was the soft sound of hoofs outside. He rose and moved quietly to one side of the door. A saddle creaked as a man dismounted. The door was pushed quietly open. "You here, Boss?" Muckamuck Charlie asked. Tesno groaned and stepped forward. "Where's Palma?" he demanded. Charlie stepped into the cabin, looking past Tesno at the canvas bags. " Cooley tenas house. Come this way. See you elip siah . Far ahead. Watch. You come to cabin. Him go 'way." Charlie pushed past and began to rummage in the bags. He extracted a can of beans and held it up admiringly. "Bullet hittum," he said. "Hit who?" "Jim Palma. You shoot. Hittum." "I couldn't have," Tesno said. "He went right on shooting at the horses." " Pil-pil. Him bleed. Maybe just scratchum. You catch other one?" "He's dead." Charlie nodded approvingly. He produced a hunting knife from somewhere under his coat and jabbed the blade into the can of beans. He pried back the metal untidily, poured out a handful of beans and tasted them. He drew another can out of the bag and shoved it into a coat pocket. "We'll go after Palma," Tesno said. "You find trail?" "Damn right," Charlie said. Eating beans as he rode, Charlie found the trail a few minutes later. It wound down one gulch and up another, over the spur of a mountain and back through still another gulch. "Where's he headed, Charlie," Tesno asked finally. "No place. Him know country. Work into mountains. Maybe by and by go back to tenas house , get food." A little later the tracks led into a shallow creek and disappeared. After several minutes of scouting, Charlie announced that Palma had gone upstream. "Him know we follow," he said. "Maybe wait, shoot you." Tesno nodded. There were a dozen places for an ambush every way you looked. He grinned. "Maybe miss me. Hit Charlie." For the first time since Tesno had known him, Charlie grinned. " Cultus he-he ," he said, reining upstream along the bank. "Bad joke." Tesno laughed and followed, grateful for the luck that had provided his guide. Here in this brutal and majestic wilderness the ten thousand years between white civilization and savagery had no meaning. He and Charlie were just two hunters, friends now, following a trail. It was going to be a rough one, but Muckamuck Charlie would do to ride it with. XIV Pinky Bronklin unlocked the door of the storeroom on the second floor of the Pink Lady, lighted a candle, and went in. Pushing a wooden box close to a tier of cluttered shelves, he climbed up to examine an array of bottles on the top one; carbolic acid, cough syrup, Dr. Partrey's Male Restorative and Blood Tonic, toothache remedy, Princess Cleopatra's Egyptian Love Stimulant, iodine, linament.... He selected a small blue bottle without a label, uncorked it, sniffed it. Holding it delicately in his crab-claw of a hand, he dribbled two drops into a shot glass. Two drops was the dose. It would hit quick, put a man out for hours. Pinky tipped the bottle again and added three more. Climbing down from the box, he inserted the shot glass into one of the special pockets sewn to the back of his bartender's apron. There were two of these, a small one inside a larger one. The small one was just the size of the doped glass and held it upright. You took a glass from the back bar and pretended to polish it on the apron. What you really did was drop it into the large pocket and bring out the doctored glass. Pinky snuffed the candle, locked the storeroom door, and went back down to the bar. It was the busiest part of the night with a fair crowd at the bar and a nice little business at the tables. Pinky motioned to the other two bartenders to move down and began to work the back end of the bar. After a few minutes, Pete Madrid came in and had a drink. As usual, he didn't pay. "You sure he'll come in?" Madrid asked, keeping his voice down. "No, I'm not sure," Pinky said irritably. "How can I be sure? But he almost always does. You got that crazy Willie out of the way?" "Gave him the night off." "Only thing is, Mr. O. might go to the Big Barrel. They serve him in there in spite of Willie told 'em not to." Madrid pursed his lips thoughtfully. "I'll drop in there," he said. "I'll see that they give him a couple of drinks and then cut him off. That'll bring him over here." Pinky's eyes followed Madrid as he sauntered to the door, his blue silk shirt shimmering in the lamplight, his fingers touching the ivory handle of his low-slung gun with every step. A dangerous man to have for an enemy, Pinky thought—and maybe dangerous to have for a friend, too. Not what you'd call a bright man, he was sure of his ability to kill, and of not much else. He needed somebody else to do his thinking for him, even about small matters, and so far he had seemed to realize this. God help us if he ever starts thinking for himself , Pinky mused. Half an hour later, Keef O'Hara showed up, and Pinky sighed inwardly. He didn't much like what he was going to do to O'Hara; but Mr. Jay wanted it done, and it would be. O'Hara came directly to Pinky's end of the bar. "Slip me a pint, ye black scoundrel," he said, "before Deputy Willie catches up to me." "I hear Willie's off duty tonight," Pinky said. O'Hara must have visited the Big Barrel first, he thought. The big Irishman had had a drink or two. "Willie off duty?" O'Hara looked alarmed. "First time that's happened." Pinky took a glass off the back bar and appeared to polish it on his apron. "It's a night to celebrate," he said. He made the switch and set the glass in front of O'Hara, along with a bottle. O'Hara looked uncertainly at the table in a far corner where he usually did his drinking. "Sure, if I've got the sense God gave geese, I'll walk out this minute while I've still got the use of my legs. Give me that pint, Pinky m'lad, and I'll be gone. With Willie off duty, I don't trust myself in this den of iniquity." Pinky looked under the bar and shook his head. "I got no pints out here. Have to get one from the back room. Sit yourself down, Mr. O'Hara, and I'll bring it to you." As he left the bar, he saw with relief that O'Hara was filling the glass. He entered the small downstairs storeroom and watched from its dark interior as the Irishman sloughed down the drink and then another. O'Hara looked vacantly around the saloon, started for a table, and just barely made it. He sat for a few seconds with his head in his hands, then slumped forward with his face against the tabletop. Pinky returned to the bar with a pint of whisky in hand. Nobody was paying any particular attention to O'Hara. Pinky gave him a glance and stowed the pint under the bar. "I guess he ain't going to need that," he said loudly. He busied himself with the customers, apparently giving no more thought to the unconscious O'Hara. After a few minutes, he consulted a watch that lay on the back bar. "Fifteen minutes to closing time, gents," he announced, chuckling. "Official closing time, that is. I reckon we'll run a bit over tonight." There was a low cheer of approval from the customers in the immediate vicinity. Pinky stared past them at O'Hara, making a little show of it. "Still here," he muttered and walked around the end of the bar. He shook O'Hara, spoke to him, shook him again. Finally, he gestured to a couple of the men who were watching. "Give me a hand, boys, and we'll tote him upstairs to my room, lay him on my bed." The bystanders set down their glasses and came over. Pinky helped them lug two hundred pounds of sagging Irishman up the narrow stairway. They took him to the large room that served Pinky as living quarters and laid him on the bed. Pinky lighted a lamp, turned it low. He muttered something about the need for air and opened a window wide. "He's a nice gentleman," Pinky said. "Just drinks too much sometimes." "He sure musta took on a hell of a load this time," one of the assistants said. "He don't even move." "He'll sleep it off," Pinky said. He herded the men back downstairs and bought them a drink, secure in the knowledge that O'Hara wouldn't move for hours. Whisky Willie woke and sat erect, panicked by the thought that he should be on the job. Then he remembered that Madrid had told him to take the night off, and he sank back with a sigh. A sixteen-hour night shift caught up with you, all right. You could doze a bit in the marshal's office between rounds, but that kind of sleep didn't do a man much good. Now, however, sleep failed to return. His room was above the stage office, smack in the middle of town, and the sounds of the saloons drifted up through his window. He consulted his watch and saw that it was after closing time. Peeved, he went to the window and leaned out. All the saloons were still showing lights. The piano in the Pink Lady was jangling merrily. Well, he decided, he wasn't going to make a fuss about it. He would close the window and.... His train of thought was interrupted by the sight of the mule at the Big Barrel hitching rack. O'Hara was down there, somewhere. He would be soused to the gills by this time, no doubt. Somebody had to see that he got back to the job. Willie dressed quickly and went down to the street. O'Hara wasn't in the Big Barrel, although a bartender said he had been in earlier. Willie gave orders to close up and crossed the street to the Pink Lady. As he pushed through the batwings, Madrid came clumping up the boardwalk and called to him. "What the hell?" he said, following Willie inside. "I gave you the night off so you could catch up on sleep." "I'm l-looking for Mr. O'Hara," Willie said. "That whisky-head engineer? I'll keep an eye out for him. You get your tail into bed." Willie surveyed the line at the Pink Lady bar. O'Hara wasn't there. He wasn't at any of the tables. Willie turned and walked into the street. Madrid ambled up to the bar and beckoned to Pinky. "You better close up, pronto." Willie checked the Silver Slipper and then the Western Star. O'Hara was at neither one. Pausing in the shadows, he watched Madrid saunter down the street to his office. Willie had a growing conviction that something was wrong and that the marshal knew what it was. The Pink Lady was closing, and little knots of men straggled out of it, making their way to other saloons or toward the road back to camp. Willie stopped several men and asked if they had seen O'Hara. Finally, he found one who had. "Hell, he's at the Pink Lady," the man said. "He passed out in there. Bronklin and some others carried him upstairs." By the time Willie reached the Pink Lady it was locked and dark. He rattled the door and got no response. He made his way round in back and had no better luck at the door there. There was a light in an upstairs room, and the window was wide open. Willie cupped his hands to his mouth to call but something warned him not to. He ran back to the street, crossing it to the Big Barrel, where O'Hara's mule still stood at the hitch rail. He untied the animal, mounted, and rode back to the alley behind the Pink Lady. Shadows crossing the lighted window told him that somebody was moving around up there. Gently, he worked the mule close to the wall, directly under the window. He carefully knelt and then stood in the saddle. This brought the windowsill within reach. He grasped it, and as quietly as possible he pulled himself up. When the last customer was out of the Pink Lady and the bartenders were washing glasses and tidying up, Pinky checked in the dealers. Each brought his cash in a canvas bag, which Pinky stowed into the heavy safe under the back end of the bar. First thing in the morning, Sam Lester would be in to count up. Pinky unbarred the heavy front door to let the dealers and bartenders out, then he swung this closed behind the batwings and slid the bar into place. Alone now, he returned to the bar, tipped up a bottle and took a long drink. He picked up a lamp, the last light in the place, and trudged up to his room. Keef O'Hara was breathing raspingly. He hadn't moved an inch, and Pinky chuckled softly at the potency of those knockout drops. Setting down the lamp, he moved to the end of the bed and took off O'Hara's shoes. This was a perfectly natural thing to do for a drunk you were taking care of, he assured himself. If the drunk happened to get crazy ideas in the night and wander around and fall out a window and be found with no shoes, well, nobody could criticize the man who had tried to make him comfortable. Pinky edged around to the side of the bed and rolled O'Hara off it on his face. Dragging so big a man to the window and stuffing him through it was going to be heavy work, but he guessed he could manage it. First, though, there was the other matter to be taken care of. A man falling from a second story window might injure himself quite a bit, but you couldn't quite count on it. "I don't want him killed," Mr. Jay had said. "There's no need for that. But I want him knocked off that job. Vickers' doctor isn't equipped to deal with anything complicated and he ships bad cases off to the Ellensburg hospital. That's where I want O'Hara to go." Mr. Jay had gone on to explain that it would take weeks for Ben Vickers to find another man who knew how to set up a compressed-air operation properly. Well, you had to hand it to Mr. Jay for seeing a thing through. Soon as he got word that his hired hooligans had failed to wreck the boiler, he had come up with this plan to knock O'Hara off the job. A smart, smooth operator, Mr. Jay. A good star to hitch your wagon to. Only Pinky wished he hadn't looked so tired and upset.... Pinky made a trip to the storeroom and came back with a two-foot length of iron pipe. He bent over O'Hara's feet, feeling the bones around the ankles. It wouldn't take much of a blow to break some of these. Two broken ankles plus any injuries that might be caused by the fall ought to put O'Hara in that Ellensburg hospital for a good long time. Probably be a good thing for the man, too, when you came to think about it. Keep him off the booze. Pinky slipped his claw of a hand under one of O'Hara's heels and lifted the foot. He raised the pipe over his head, and he about jumped out of his skin as a voice rang out behind him. "Hold it, you b-bastard!" Whisky Willie had one leg over the windowsill. Pinky flung the length of pipe. He flung it backhanded and it caught Willie on the shoulder as he dived into the room, falling flat. The pipe crashed to the floor and rolled toward Pinky, who scrambled after it. Willie reached a chair, flung it against Pinky's shins, and bounced to his feet. Pinky stumbled forward, reached for the pipe. Before he could get his balance, Willie was on him, knocking the pipe aside and aiming a blow at Pinky's head with the only weapon he carried. The bottle of lemon pop caught Pinky neatly behind the ear and dropped him like a bundle of rags. XV Judge Badger, who kept the general store and acted as town magistrate on the side, was tall, bespectacled, and busy-browed. He gave the impression of being a thoughtful and scholarly man, which he was not. He was, however, reasonably honest. Consequently, as Mr. Jay pointed out to Pete Madrid, he was not to be trusted. He was to be managed rather than conspired with. This morning he entered the small townhouse courtroom and took his seat with great dignity. He surveyed the half dozen persons present and addressed himself to the marshal. "Pete, what in tunket is this all about?" "The marshal's office is guilty of an embarrassing mistake," Madrid said, reciting the words as if he had memorized them carefully. "As you know, I have an inexperienced deputy. Last night he...." "If you made a mistake why don't you correct it?" the judge demanded. "Why waste the time of this court?" Madrid pointed at Willie with his thumb. "Because this mule-head won't admit it. He insists on this hearing." The judge turned sternly to Willie. "I want P-Pinky B-Bronklin ch-charged and t-tried," Willie said. "Charged with what?" Willie told what had happened the night before. The judge asked a question or two and then told Pinky to tell his side of it. Protesting that he was in this trouble because of his kindness to a drunk, Pinky rattled off a remarkable story. When he went up to his room after closing the saloon, he said, he had forgotten about O'Hara's being there. He had maybe had a nip too much himself, he admitted, and he had been given a scare by something or somebody crawling around in the dark. He had grabbed a length of pipe which happened to be handy and had cautiously approached the crawler, who was now lying still. Just then Willie had come through the window. "There were t-two l-lamps burning in that room," Willie put in. "You're a liar!" Pinky said. "Now, now, now!" Judge Badger said. "We won't have any more of that." "You're another," Willie said. The judge struck an angry blow with the wooden nutcracker he used for a gavel. He appraised Willie witheringly, then he asked quietly if Willie had any concrete evidence that a crime had been committed, and if so, what it was. Willie had brought Vickers' doctor to the courtroom, and he now stepped forward and said that in his opinion O'Hara who was too sick to appear, had been drugged. He couldn't say for sure what the drug was. The judge asked a few more questions and then pointed out that there was no evidence that the drug had been administered in the Pink Lady and no grounds for a charge against Pinky. "Howsoever," he said, "surreptitious administration of drugs is a serious offense, and this court directs the marshal's office to further investigate this matter with a view to discovery of guilty party or parties. Upon presentation of evidence that will warrant a bill of indictment, this court will order the arrest of said guilty party and he will be taken to Ellensburg and the matter will be prosecuted in district court." Willie left the courtroom with anger a seething molten pressure in him. He trudged toward the main street beside the doctor. "The marshal cooked your goose at the very beginning when he told the judge you'd made a mistake," the doctor said. "If he'd backed you up, the judge might have agreed to a charge." "I kn-know," Willie said bitterly. "They're all in together." Pinky and the marshal reached the street ahead of them, Pinky angling off toward the Pink Lady and Madrid going into the hotel. It was the second time that morning that he had visited the hotel. Willie went to his room and stretched out on the bed. After a few minutes, Madrid barged in without knocking. Willie didn't move from the bed. "All right, cowboy," Madrid said. "I'll take that badge." Willie unpinned it and handed it over. Madrid stuffed it into the pocket of his bright blue shirt. "You're all in together," Willie said. "You're a b-bunch of crooks in together." "Now don't get me mad," Madrid said. "You're getting out of this lucky. Get over and get your pay from Sam Lester. Then get your tail out of town. Today." Willie said nothing. Madrid glared and said, "Do you understand that? Today." Willie nodded. "If you aren't gone by dark, you'll get hurt. Hurt bad." Madrid turned on his heel and went out. After a while Willie got up, walked to the townhouse, and knocked on the door of Sam Lester's office. Sam seemed to be expecting him. He plunked a little pile of gold and silver on his desk. "Sixty-six dollars," he said. "That includes a full day's pay for today. Sign this, please." While Willie was signing the receipt, Sam added a double eagle to the pile of money. "I understand you're leaving town," he said. "This is for traveling expenses." Willie silently pocketed the money. He left the building and walked around back to Persia's kitchen. Stella was dividing a batch of bread dough into loaves and putting it into pans. He asked if Miss Persia was in, and Stella said she was in the parlor. Willie found her seated at the secretary. "I been f-fired," he said. "I'm sorry," Persia said. "But there's nothing I can do, Willie. You made a serious mistake." "You're in it, t-too! You're all in t-together!" "Would you like a letter of recommendation?" Persia said. "I'd be glad to give you one. It might help you get another job." "I hoped you'd l-listen to my s-side of the s-story," Willie said. "Willie, you accused a member of the town council of a serious crime without one speck of evidence. I'm sure it was an honest mistake, but...." Willie put his back to her and walked out. Stella offered him a cup of coffee and a piece of pie, and he ate silently, thanked her, and left. He marched straight across town and took the road to Vickers' camp.

Related documents

• 'hands'#951910
• Kleine Händerungen | Little Handlings (excerpts)#952619
• The Beggar's Purse: A Fairy Tale of Familiar Finance#51887
• The Wheel O' Fortune#35182
• Reconciling Rigor and Intuition#719682