Part 6 (1/2)

Keech had stopped five steps above, his head at ceiling level. He said in that same trembling voice: ”You can't get away with anything with me, Joe!”

”No one's tryin' to.” Joe lifted his hands outward. ”You've got my iron. All I want is information . . . and a smoke while you give it to me.” Again slowly, so that his gesture wouldn't be mistaken, he pulled his poncho aside and took a sack of tobacco from a pocket of his vest.

Keech stiffened until Joe had completed his move, then visibly relaxed. The clerk even lowered his gun as he bridled: ”What information? You know how you gave it to Merrill as well as I do.”

”Yeah. Shot him in the back, didn't I?”

”Like blazes you did! You clubbed him over the head with the b.u.t.t of a gun!” Keech was watching his prisoner's hands as they sifted tobacco out onto a wheat-straw paper.

”Now that's interestin',” drawled Joe. ”Where'd it happen?”

”In the alley behind the Land Office. You know as well as . . .” Keech broke off as Joe clumsily dropped the sack of tobacco close in to the bottom step of the stairs.

Joe grinned sheepishly. ”Shakin' like a leaf,” he declared, and stooped over to retrieve his tobacco.

”You ought to be shakin',” Keech began. ”Anyone who'd . . .”

He got no further. For, instead of reaching for the tobacco sack, both of Joe's hands had closed on the loose end of the stair runner. He lunged erect, throwing all his weight against the long piece of carpeting. The tacks holding it pulled away easily. Before Keech could lift his gun, his footing was gone out from under him. He was falling frontward, hands outstretched to break his fall.

At the last moment he knew what was coming and cried out shrilly. The slam of Joe's fist striking the side of his jaw cut off his cry. He struck heavily, his chest across the edge of the bottom step, rolling onto his back. Joe had relieved him of both guns before he completed that roll.

Thrusting his own weapon into his holster, the other through the belt of his pants, Joe looked upward along the stairs, checking the impulse to go up there and confront Jean Vanover. Thus thinking of her, it surprised him a little when he saw her standing there, a lithe, erect shape only faintly visible against the darkness of the stair head.

A good-natured grin slashed his face as he drawled: ”Better luck next time.” When she made no answer, he said tauntingly: ”Now whose face is red?”

”Poor Keech.” Her low voice came down to him. ”You needn't have hit him so hard.”

”You should be screamin',” Joe told her.

He could barely make out that she shook her head. ”No. It seems I made a mistake. You'd better go now. Someone's coming down the hall.”

He pivoted around and headed toward the door as he heard the m.u.f.fled tread of stockinged feet echoing down from that upper hallway. Going along between the buildings to Thrall's black, he wondered at the change in Jean Vanover. What had made her decide she'd made a mistake? Then he ceased wondering under the urgency of leaving this town as quickly as he could.

He was able to make out shadowy shapes through the swirling snow as he rode out of the head of the pa.s.sageway, turning away from the hotel and up street. Knowing he was safe until someone in the hotel gave the alarm, he put down the impulse to kick the black into a run.

Through the grayness Joe saw a man trudging down the awninged walk, collar turned high about his ears, head down, hands in pockets. He held the horse in a slow trot, lifting a hand to the man as be pa.s.sed. He smiled thinly as the man answered his wave. Farther along, he took the dogleg in the street and came abreast the big cottonwoods fronting the yards of the first houses; not all the leaves had left the trees yet, mute testimony to this storm's unseasonableness. He let the horse have its head and felt the animal's strong lunge into a run. Once again he found himself envying Thrall, the owner of the horse. The black had traveled some thirty miles tonight, and still had a lot left.

Joe rode hard and fast for an hour. When he judged he was half a mile or so short of Sommers's place, at the edge of the mesa, he left the trail angling directly north toward the shrouded hills. By that time the upcurling brim of his Stetston was filled flat by blown snow, and the wind howled with the same fierce intensity. But now it was warmer and lighter, and an occasional easing of the pall around him would give him a brief walled-in glimpse of a short reach of country. During one of those let-ups he got his exact bearing from a half mile distant spur of timber that he recognized. He swung off toward it, knowing that to follow its farther edge would shortly put him on the Troublesome.

He was faintly irritated by the knowledge that he was riding his own range, or land that had once been his, but was now Middle Arizona's. This brought alive again the sting of last night's welcome, of seeing Yace and of the fight with Ed Merrill. Merrill dead! For the first time Joe took in the full significance of the thing of which he stood accused. He could feel little regret over the man's fate. But his curiosity was alive now as to how they had come to fasten the murder on him. He had fought Merrill last night, yes, but what evidence had put Lyans and every able-bodied townsman out on the hunt for him? Only suspicion? No, he knew it couldn't be that. Bill Lyans wasn't a man to jump at conclusions; moreover, Joe remembered Bill as having been more tolerant toward him than the others five years ago. So it followed that the deputy must have some evidence that pointed directly to him, evidence that would have started inquiries. Clark had been in town and would have mentioned his leaving by the late freight. A wire to Junction would have brought the answer that he wasn't on the freight.

It fitted neatly, all the circ.u.mstantial evidence that last night had built against him-his fight with Merrill making him naturally suspect, the unknown evidence that had put Lyans on his trail, his leaving the freight. Now two more details would strengthen suspicion against him-his having gun-whipped Thrall and stolen the horse, and his encounter with Keech at the hotel. In another hour or two the word of his having been to Lodgepole would be out, and the hunt would he intensified.

He was lucky. The storm would hamper the posse while aiding him. He even stood a good chance of leaving the country if he chose, for rarely could he see more than 100 yards, and it would be a simple matter to avoid the trails that would surely be blocked by Lyans's posse men. But Joe put down that thought forcibly, and for a weightier reason than the one prompting him to leave the train last night. If he left now, with this murder on his head, he would spend the rest of his life as an outlaw. Merrill's family had influence. They would hound him for years.

So once again running was out. Instead, he'd head for the Broad Arrow cabin as he'd first planned, there to await Blaze, or maybe Clark. Between them, they should be able to work out a few leads that would eventually put them on the trail of whoever had killed Ed Merrill. And perhaps, just perhaps, that same trail would lead to a final security for Joe Bonnyman in this country.

By mid-morning Joe was well above the back edge of the mesa, high along Porcupine Caon. Once he glimpsed two riders pus.h.i.+ng a small bunch of cattle downcaon. He saw them barely in time to keep from being discovered. Turning off into the tall cedars, he waited while the riders pa.s.sed. As he neared the head of Porcupine, close to the lower edge of broad Aspen Basin, he pa.s.sed a cabin, with its sod-roofed barn and single corral, that was new to him. By the time he struck the basin the snow was falling heavily again, the wind had slacked off, and he decided to ride straight across the six-mile width of the bowl-like depression.

He made that distance without once being able to see farther than half a dozen rods, following the twisting line of the Troublesome, rather than chancing losing direction by the more direct way of riding point. He knew he was across when the trees closed in on either side. Shortly he came to the crumbling embankment of the old abandoned stage road that led over Baldy Pa.s.s and eventually to Junction. Lyans would have put a man or two up near the pa.s.s to watch the road, Joe knew, and his face took on amus.e.m.e.nt at thought of the miserable hours they and the rest would spend today looking for him.

He had impulsively decided on the Broad Arrow cabin as a temporary refuge back at Anchor, intending only to find some spot where he could meet Blaze without being discovered. Now that he considered it more deliberately, the cabin seemed perfect for a permanent hide-out. Bill Lyans would reason that a man being hunted for murder would take the quickest way out of the country. That ruled out a search along the upper Troublesome, for that tangled wooded country came to a dead-end against the precipitous foot of Baldy, the highest peak within sight of Lodgepole, and had but one outlet, that one downward as far as the stage road. So for the time being, the homestead cabin that had witnessed Hoelseker's last struggle against this upper country's bitter winters seemed the safest possible spot to Joe.

Ten stiff-climbing miles along the streambed took him into the aspen belt. The snow had stopped falling, but there was enough wind to sift over Joe's tracks. And now the steep-walled gorge that flanked the stream widened and there was an occasional small meadow, its lush emerald gra.s.s white-blanketed, edged by copper-leaved scrub oak thickets and the faded gold background of the aspens. Joe recognized a landmark, the mast-like finger of a lightning-killed pine centering one of those small glades. Directly beyond, he entered a thick stand of majestic blue juniper. Hoelseker's cabin should be at the far edge of the next meadow.

He sighted the cabin through the trees, and at once his curiosity came alive, and wariness was in him as he took in certain details. The roof was newly sodded, and the clear wall of the small barn, its top logs rotted and broken as he remembered it, showed fresh-peeled poles below the roof line. The corral, which had recently been rebuilt, had three horses in it. Someone had taken over Hoelseker's homestead.

A keen regret struck Joe as he reined the black around. At that moment a voice drawled, close to him: ”Go right on in, stranger.”

Joe's glance came around and took in a spare-framed man leaning idly against the trunk of a juniper twenty feet away. A Winchester was cradled carelessly under the man's arm, yet Joe had the feeling that the weapon could cover him before he had the chance to reach for his own. Then he saw how ridiculous it was to suspect the man of anything but friendliness. News that a posse was out looking for a killer couldn't possibly have traveled to this isolated spot.

So his lean face took on a smile and he drawled: ”I was figurin' to spend the night. Didn't know anyone was livin' here.”

The man considered this, his gaunted face remaining impa.s.sive. Finally he put a question: ”Lose your way?”

Joe nodded. ”Until about an hour ago. This seemed closer than town. Some storm, eh?”

”Yeah.” His face impa.s.sive, the man motioned with the rifle's barrel toward the cabin. ”Go on in.”

Joe decided again that the rifle was intended as no threat. He turned the black and headed out of the trees, sitting sideways in the saddle and looking back at the man who followed. ”Been livin' here long?” he queried.

”A month maybe.”

Joe hadn't expected that answer. Spring would be the time for a family to move into a hill layout like this, with four months in which to raise a garden, gather hay, and get ready for the winter. His respect for the man had a quick let-down.

”Hoelseker didn't have much luck up here,” he remarked.

”Who's Hoelseker?”

The question had a note of unfriendliness Joe didn't miss. He decided that the man was irritable at having to extend common range courtesy, the never turning away of a stranger who was in need of shelter. He wondered what he would find in the cabin. A woman, children? Would they take money for a meal and a night's shelter?

He came up on the cabin and started angling down toward the corral, when the man's voice sounded from behind, harshly now: ”Never mind that! We'll go in first.”

Coming out of the saddle, Joe gave the man a steady glance that was answered by one of suspicion, near hostility. He heard the cabin door open, and turned. Standing in the doorway was a man more broad than tall, a man who at first looked fat, but wasn't. His bulky frame was barrel-chested and gave hint of a hard-muscled compactness. His round face was set in an enigmatic half smile, and he wore a gun low along a thick thigh.

His eyes pa.s.sed over Joe and went to the man beyond. ”Well, Chuck?”

”Don't ask me, Mike,” the man with the rifle replied. ”Claims he's lost.”

Mike's glance now came back to Joe and remained on him. Two other men came into view beyond the doorway. Abruptly Joe knew that this must be Mike Saygar, the rustler.

”Get his iron,” Saygar said tersely.

Joe went rigid, then instantly ruled out any chance of drawing his gun. Chuck's rifle was now halfway lifted to shoulder, nicely covering him. Saygar's hand, as he spoke, had lifted to rest easily on the handle of his Colt.

As Chuck stepped in behind him and lifted his .45 from the holster, Joe asked quietly: ”What is this?”