Part 9 (2/2)
”You're his friends, ain't you? And wasn't Blaze in here this afternoon lookin' for you?”
”Was he?”
”He was.” Thrall shook a finger at Clark. ”Watch your step, Dunne.” He glared at Clark and, turning, went out of the dining room.
Clark lingered over his last cup of coffee, considering the inference to Thrall's remarks. He decided finally that nothing in what the man had said could influence the thing he had set out to do. He was sorry he hadn't been able to see Blaze this afternoon. The redhead might have had something important to tell him. What that could be, beyond the fact that Blaze had possibly been up to Hoelseker's cabin this morning and found it deserted, Clark didn't know.
Paying for his meal, Clark left the hotel, crossing the street to the Emporium. He went to the back end of the store, stopping at the counter alongside the wire cage with the window placarded Post Office. Behind the counter a clerk in thick-lensed spectacles sat on a stool.
”'Evenin', Brad,” Clark said. ”Any mail for me?”
”Ought to be. You ain't been in for a couple days.” The clerk stared near-sightedly at Clark, left his stool, and stepped behind the wicket, turning his back as he reached into the rack of pigeonholed compartments making up the far side of the cage. A similar rack occupied the side of the cage nearest Clark.
Glancing quickly behind him and up toward the store's front, Clark made sure that no one was watching him. While the clerk's back was still turned, he took the torn piece of envelope from his pocket, reached around the end of the cage, and thrust it in the pigeonhole numbered 4. That compartment, he knew, was for Acme's mail.
By the time the near-sighted clerk faced around, Clark was leaning idly on the counter, well out of reach of the cage.
”You made a good haul tonight,” Brad said, handing a thick packet of letters across.
Clark thanked him and left the store.
A good half hour later, Sam Thrall burst in through the door of Lyans's jail office. He was out of breath and red in the face. Half a dozen men, Clark among them, were there with the deputy. Thrall tried to speak, couldn't get his breath, and instead tossed a sc.r.a.p of paper onto the desk before Lyans.
”What's ailin' you, Sam?” the lawman asked, picking up the paper.
”Read it!” Thrall managed to gasp.
Lyans looked at the paper and straightened suddenly in his chair, his face losing color. He glanced quickly up at the store owner, asking tonelessly: ”Where'd you find this?”
”Acme's mailbox.”
”Who found it?”
”Brad.” Thrall wiped his perspiring face. ”Vanover got his mail right after the train come in at noon. So the box should've been empty. Brad always takes a pretty careful look at things before he closes up the cage. He found this just now as he was lockin' up for the night.”
”What is it, Bill?” one of the others asked.
Lyans handed the sc.r.a.p of paper to the speaker, not saying anything.
They all gathered about the man. Clark, looking over his shoulder, read his own crudely penciled message: Vanover: Have Lyans call off his dogs, or you don't get the girl back.
Bonnyman For the interval it would have taken a man to draw in a slow breath and as slowly exhale, no one spoke. Then Clark gave a toneless laugh.
”What's so funny?” Lyans growled.
”Nothing. Only Joe Bonnyman didn't write that.”
”Yeah? How come you're so sure?”
Clark hesitated, as though lost for an explanation. At length he said lamely: ”It just isn't like Joe. He'd never lay a finger on a woman. He . . .”
”He clubbed Merrill to death!” Sam Thrall cut in. ”He meant to do the same to me! Why the h.e.l.l wouldn't he do this?”
The man to whom Lyans had given the note looked at Clark, and there was open hostility in his eyes. ”Sam's right, Dunne. Joe and me used to get on pretty well, and up to now I ain't been sure about him. Right now I am. If it ever comes to hangin', I'll take the job of springin' the trap out from under him!”
An angry murmur of agreement came from the others. Then, seeing Clark properly silenced, their attention came back to Lyans.
The deputy knew it was being left to him to make a decision. From the deadly serious expression on his face, it was obvious that he was weighing all the possibilities. Finally he stood up, reaching around to take his sh.e.l.l belt and holstered gun from the back of the chair. As he cinched the weapon to his waist, he said: ”We'll go see Vanover. But we'll do it on the quiet, just in case Bonnyman's here in town watchin' us. Split up when you go out and let on like you're goin' home. Half an hour from now meet a mile out the trail.” His glance rested briefly on Clark. ”You needn't come along, Clark.”
Rustlers Work at Night.
That late afternoon saw Charley Staples's main Singletree s.h.i.+pping herd, along with 150 head of Anchor steers, bunched far and near the mesa's edge in the triangle formed by the confluence of the Troublesome and the Porcupine. Sherman, the Anchor straw boss, took a look at the swollen waters of the two creeks, at the white water, racing into the mouth of Rainbow Gorge close ahead, and opined: ”I'll let the seat o' my pants take root right here before I try a-crossin' through that water, Charley.”
An hour ago Staples had come up with the herd to see what luck his crew was having. He had already made his decision, which coincided with the Anchor man's. But, because he was an owner, he pretended to give the matter more careful deliberation, especially in view of the fact that tomorrow a thirty-car freight was due on the siding ten miles west of Lodgepole to take his first beef s.h.i.+pment.
He glanced off south to the head of the gorge. Rainbow was little better than a mile long, but even with the Troublesome at its lowest, the waters foamed along the steeply dropping and rocky bed of the gorge with a swiftness neither man nor animal could stand against. From a certain angle at the foot of the rim, where the deep notch emptied out onto the flats 400 feet below, a man could most always see a rainbow thrown up by the water spray along about sunset.
Noticing where Staples was looking, Sherman said: ”Wonder what that'd do to a critter that got swept into it?”
”Ground beef and bone meal,” was Staples's spa.r.s.e but eloquent answer. He turned in the saddle and looked out across the mesa, along the line of the Troublesome.
Again the Anchor man read his mind. ”There ain't even footin' for a horse, Charley. I know. I tried it and didn't think I'd get out alive. Horse is still bloated with all the water he swallowed.”
Staples nodded, reining around and speaking to his men as he went away: ”You boys are due for some sleep. There's plenty of gra.s.s and water here, and these critters won't drift overnight. If I was you, I'd get back to the layout.”
Which advice his men and Sherman acted upon at once. By nightfall, Singletree's cook was back in his shack at headquarters and serving up a meal for nine men.
From a high point in the timber above the mesa, Mike Saygar observed all this across a distance of some three miles. He saw the dark smear of the herd drift into the wedge of land between the two creeks, saw it pause there, and then, along about dusk, spread out and away from the creeks. Before the light completely failed him, he spotted a chuck wagon going in along the trail leading to Staples's spread, two miles to the east. and nestling close in to the hills, out of sight.
An hour later, Saygar drifted in on the fire before the lean-to close to a pine-topped knoll along the Troublesome at almost the exact center of Aspen Basin. He could see no one around the fire, so, as he approached, he called: ”All right, you rannies! It's me.” Whitey and Pecos, and, finally, Chuck Reibel drifted in out of the shadows. Pecos hunkered down by the fire and pulled a Dutch oven out of the coals with a forked stick, putting a half-gallon coffee pot in its place.
”Come and get it,” he drawled, tilting the lid from the oven.
Mike Saygar liked to eat. Tonight, as usual, he relished the meal Pecos had prepared, an onion-and-tomato-flavored beef stew. Along with this there was pan bread and coffee. As he wolfed down his heaping plateful of the stew, the rustler chief listened idly to the talk of his men that was concerned chiefly with the minor sensation they had created in town this morning in taking out their homestead papers.
Saygar rarely spoke when he ate. But once, when Whitey turned to him and queried-”What's all this addin' up to, boss?”-he took pains to answer carefully: ”A nice stake for us, if we work it right. What we're doin' tonight ought to split the ranchers and the cattle company again. Each outfit'll think we're workin' for the other. If they don't start usin' their guns after this, we'll give 'em even a better reason for it.”
Whitey's look was still skeptical. Presently he drawled: ”The thing that's itchin' me is Dunne. What's he gettin' out of it?”
”Don't be nosy, feller,” Saygar said quietly.
Whitey's look turned sullen, but he was through with his questions. After that they ate in silence.
When Pecos returned from the creek after sand-was.h.i.+ng their tin cups and plates, Saygar said without preliminary: ”Let's go.”
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