The throbbing in his head subsided a little, but it was still painful every time his heart beat and sent blood racing through his brain. He knew now that he had survived being shot. The bullet must have just grazed his head, knocking him out.
Then he remembered that the last thing he’d heard had been the outlaws shooting at Wilbur, and he went cold inside. There was a good chance his old friend was dead. And as the gang’s prisoner, Stovepipe knew he probably didn’t have much time left, either.
He tensed his muscles just enough to determine that his arms and legs were tied. Head wounds tended to bleed a lot, so he was probably a gory mess and they had believed he was dead at first. Discovering that he was still alive, his captors had tied him up and brought him here, wherever here was. Stovepipe figured they wanted to find out if anybody else knew about their hideout. They would question him when he came to, and they wouldn’t be gentle about it.
That was one more good reason to let them think he was unconscious for as long as he could.
A strange noise gradually intruded on his consciousness. It stopped and started, and at first he thought it was just inside his own head, a result of being knocked out, maybe. Then he realized the sounds actually formed a tune.
Somebody was humming the song “Buffalo Gals.”
Stovepipe heard the rasp of a match being struck, then a moment later smelled tobacco smoke from a quirly. Paper rustled. Somebody was standing guard over his supposedly unconscious body, mused Stovepipe, but the fella was distracted. He was humming, smoking, and reading a newspaper, from the sound of it.
Tied hand and foot as he was, Stovepipe couldn’t take advantage of that distraction. But maybe it could come in handy later on, he told himself. If his guard’s attention strayed at just the right moment . . .
A door opened. Heavy footsteps clomped on the floor. Stovepipe heard a chair scrape back quickly. The guard must have stood up. The newspaper rattled as it was put aside.
“He’s still not awake?” asked a harsh, impatient voice.
“The varmint ain’t budged,” came the answer. “Been nary a peep outta him.”
“Jack’s tired of waiting. Get that bucket of water and douse him with it. That’ll bring him around.”
Stovepipe knew he was about to get wet. He told himself to react properly, so they wouldn’t know he’d been conscious before.
“I ain’t sure why we kept him alive,” said the first man. “Anybody stumbles on the hideout, they die. Ain’t that the rule?”
“Jack wants to make sure those two didn’t tell anybody else about this place,” the second man replied, confirming Stovepipe’s hunch.
“I ain’t sure but what we ought to abandon it anyway, since that other fella got away.”
Stovepipe’s heart leaped at those words, but he was careful not to show it.
Anyway, the other man said, “He didn’t get away. As much as he was bleeding, he had to be hit pretty bad. Even if those men the boss sent after him don’t find him, he’s laying out there somewhere in the basin, dead.”
Stovepipe knew they were talking about Wilbur. He wasn’t going to believe that his partner was dead as long as there was a single shred of hope for him to cling to. From what the outlaws had said, he guessed that Wilbur was wounded but had made it back through the tunnel. If that was true, Wilbur would go for help.
All Stovepipe had to do was hang on until it got there.
That determined thought had just gone through his mind when a bucketful of water slapped him in the face, drenching his head. He didn’t have to do much acting as he sputtered and thrashed on the floor. Some of the water had gone up his nose and threatened to choke him.
“Set him up before he drowns,” the second man snapped.
Strong hands gripped Stovepipe’s left arm and shoulder and hauled him upright. He shook his head and blew water out of his nose. It had gotten in his eyes, too, and he blinked to clear his vision.
He was inside a crude cabin, he saw as he glanced around. Two men were with him, the one who had lifted him into a sitting position and another who stood in front of him, thumbs hooked in a gun belt sagging under a prominent gut. This hombre had a jowly face like a bulldog. He scowled as he drew his revolver and pointed it at Stovepipe.
“Cut his feet loose,” the man ordered. “He needs to be able to walk.”
The man who had been standing guard was loose limbed and gangly. He drew a bowie knife from a sheath on his belt and bent over to cut the ropes around Stovepipe’s ankles. With his hands tied behind his back, Stovepipe couldn’t make a try for the knife. He kept his face expressionless, but inside he seethed with frustration because he couldn’t make a play.
When Stovepipe’s feet were loose, the man sheathed the Bowie, went behind him, and grasped him under the arms. He lifted Stovepipe to his feet, which were numb and didn’t want to support him at first. He would have fallen if not for the outlaw’s grip on him.
“Better get your sea legs, old son,” the man told him.
“We’re a long way from the sea,” said Stovepipe.
That brought a chuckle from Bulldog-face. He gestured with the gun he held and said, “Come on.”
Unsteadily, Stovepipe shuffled toward the door. His stride strengthened as feeling flowed back into his legs and feet. Having his arms pulled behind his back and his wrists lashed together made his movements awkward.
Bulldog-face backed through the doorway so he could keep the prisoner covered. As Stovepipe stepped out onto a porch built on the front of the cabin, he looked around and saw sunlight slanting into the canyon from the east. It was early morning, not long after dawn. He had been unconscious all night.
Several other similar structures slapped together out of gray, weathered planks stood nearby. Smoke rose from their stone chimneys. Stovepipe said, “You fellas didn’t build these shacks. They’ve been here awhile.”
“That’s right,” the man agreed. “The way I hear it, there was some sort of religious colony out here at one time. They all went loco. Killed each other, ate each other—hell, I don’t know. But nobody comes around here anymore, so it makes a good place for fellas like us.”
“Rustlers, you mean.”
“The boss didn’t send me over here to jaw with you. Keep moving.”
“Where am I goin’?” asked Stovepipe.
“That biggest cabin right in front of you.”
As Stovepipe walked, his gaze roved over his surroundings, committing details to memory because there was no telling what he might need to know once he got out of here. He was going to get out of here, because he wouldn’t allow himself to consider any other alternative, just like he devoutly believed that Wilbur was still alive somehow.
The cabins were clustered at one end of the cliff-enclosed canyon, with the pond formed by the dammed-up stream at the other end. In between, scattered jags of cattle grazed. Stovepipe had no doubt all the animals were stolen.
The two outlaws followed him, and other members of the gang were sitting on the porches of the cabins, drinking or playing cards or cleaning their guns. They watched the little procession with interest, adding to the impossibility of Stovepipe making any sort of a break right now.
As they approached the largest cabin, a man stepped out onto the porch and waited for them. He was medium sized, with a handsome, arrogant face and thinning fair hair under a thumbed-back brown Stetson. He wore a holstered Colt with the butt cocked forward on his right hip. Several rings glittered on his fingers. He was a bit of a dandy, but that didn’t mean he was any less dangerous.
When Stovepipe reached the foot of the steps, Bulldog-face growled, “That’s far enough.” Stovepipe stopped.
The man on the porch grinned down at him and asked, “Do you know who I am?”
“I’m guessin’ your name’s Jack Rawson,” drawled Stovepipe.
“That’s right. So now you’ve got me at a disadvantage, because I don’t know who you are. All I know is that you’re pretending to be a drifting
cowpoke named Stewart.” Rawson drew his revolver, pointed it at Stovepipe’s face, and eared back the hammer. “So tell me who you really are, mister, and what you’re doing here, or I’ll blow your brains right out the back of your head.”
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
Stovepipe didn’t care for staring down the barrel of the gun, but he kept his face expressionless and his voice calm as he said, “What makes you think I ain’t just a cowhand?”
“Because ever since you and that pard of yours showed up in the basin, you’ve been around every time trouble broke out,” snapped Rawson. “That can’t be a coincidence.”
“Shoot, mister, didn’t you ever hear of plain ol’ bad luck? It seems to follow us around. Take yesterday. Bob Ridgewell, the foreman of the HS Bar, sent me and Wilbur up here to check on that water hole. When we seen it was dry, we took the shovels we brung with us and started diggin’ it out. You can go take a look and see for yourself that I’m tellin’ the truth.”
“Then what brought you through that tunnel?”
“Well, I figured there was an underground stream that’d been feedin’ the water hole, and somethin’ must’ve happened to dry it up. You see, I took a few courses years back when I was a young fella thinkin’ about becomin’ a minin’ engineer, so I know a little about things like that. I wanted to see what had happened to affect the water hole, so I started pokin’ around. When I spotted that tunnel, naturally I was curious.”
“You know what they say about cats and curiosity,” Rawson said with an ugly grin.
“Yeah, I reckon, but I ain’t no feline. Whatever you’re doin’ in here, mister, it ain’t no business o’ mine. Let me go and I’ll ride away and forget ever’thing I saw in here.”
Stovepipe knew the chances of the boss rustler agreeing to that ranged from slim to none, but he wasn’t really trying to convince Rawson to let him go. He was just playing for time, giving Wilbur more of a chance to get back here with the sheriff and a bunch of gun-toting deputies.
Rawson let out a harsh laugh and said, “Let you go? That’s not going to happen, Stewart. But if you cooperate and tell me what I want to know, I’ll see to it that you die quick. Give me trouble and before you cross the divide, you’ll be screaming like you’d been grabbed by a bunch of Apaches.”
Stovepipe didn’t doubt it. But he was going to hang on to the hope that it would never come to that.
“What happened to my pard?” he asked. “Is he all right? I might be more inclined to talk if I knew he ain’t been hurt.”
He didn’t let on that he already knew that wasn’t the case, from the conversation between Bulldog-face and the other man he had overheard earlier.
“Your partner’s dead,” Rawson said flatly. Stovepipe saw his finger tighten on the trigger. “And you will be, too, in another minute if you don’t start talking.”
Getting a bullet through the head wouldn’t accomplish anything. Stovepipe remembered something else he had overheard and made his voice rougher than his usual soft drawl as he said, “All right, damn it. If you want the truth, here it is. It didn’t take long for Wilbur and me to figure out what your game is here, and we wanted in on it.”
“Our game, eh? What do you think that is?”
“You’re after a big cleanup. You’re going to sweep through the whole basin, steal all the cows you haven’t already stole, and drive ’em down to Mexico. I reckon you’ll sell ’em there for enough dinero to spend the rest of your lives south of the border, sippin’ tequila and playin’ with them little brown gals.”
That was, in fact, the theory Stovepipe had come up with originally, before a few other discoveries had put him on a different path. The rustling was still an important part of what was going on in the Tonto Basin, but it wasn’t the endgame as he had supposed it to be at first.
Rawson was still sneering at him, but the outlaw’s gun was a little lower now. He said, “What makes you think you’ve got a right to horn in on that?”
“We can help you,” said Stovepipe. “Or I reckon I can now, since you claim Wilbur’s dead.”
“Why would you want to help us if we killed your partner?”
Stovepipe shrugged and said, “It’s true Wilbur and I rode together for a good spell, but hell, money’s money, ain’t it? And I wouldn’t mind takin’ life easy down in Mexico, neither.”
“And how could you be of any help to us?”
“Well, think about it,” said Stovepipe. “I ride for the HS Bar now. Don’t you reckon it’d be easier to wipe the spread clean if you’ve got somebody on the inside workin’ on your behalf ?”
For the first time, Stovepipe saw a glitter of genuine interest in Rawson’s faded blue eyes. Rawson said, “That doesn’t explain how you got mixed up with Dan Hartford.”
“Now that really was just pure bad luck, like I told you. We saw a fella bein’ chased and figured we ought to give him a hand. Never did like to see an hombre with the odds stacked against him. But once we took cards in that hand, our luck ran out and we wound up on the sheriff’s bad side. It took a while for us to convince him that we weren’t really workin’ with Hartford.”
That story was basically true, which made it even easier for Stovepipe to sound believable as he told it. He went on, “By the time we’d done that, we had figured out what was goin’ on around here and decided we ought to try to cut ourselves a piece o’ the pie. That’s how come we went to work for the HS Bar. It seemed pretty obvious that’s where you fellas’d be movin’ on next.”
“You’ve killed some of my men,” said Rawson. “You think we’re just going to forgive you for that?”
Stovepipe shrugged again and said, “Well, you killed Wilbur, and like I told you, money is money. Comes right down to it, we all do what we got to do to get along, I reckon.”
Rawson frowned and regarded Stovepipe intently as he lowered the gun the rest of the way. After a moment he pouched the iron and ordered, “Granville, you and Deuce take Stewart back to the cabin where you had him before. Keep an eye on him while I think about this.”
“You’re not gonna kill him?” The startled question came from Granville, or Bulldog-face, as Stovepipe had been thinking of him.
“Not just yet. Now, do what I told you.”
“Sure, Jack,” Granville said with a sigh. He motioned to Stovepipe with the gun he still held. “Get moving, you.”
Stovepipe didn’t show how pleased he was with this development as he turned and started trudging back toward the other cabin. He had been playing for time, and he had bought some. That might keep him alive until Wilbur showed up with help.
And if Wilbur didn’t show up—although Stovepipe didn’t like to think about that possibility and had to force himself to do so—wedging his way into the gang might well be the only way he could survive and still have a chance to bust up the scheme.
When they reached the cabin where Stovepipe had regained consciousness, the gangling, loose-limbed Deuce asked, “Are we supposed to tie his legs again?”
“Jack didn’t say for us to,” replied Granville. “He just said to keep an eye on him.” To Stovepipe, the bulldog-faced man added, “Sit down at the table there, and don’t try anything funny. Jack might not like it if we shot you, but if you were trying to get away, I reckon he’d understand.”
Stovepipe lowered himself onto a stool next to the rough-hewn table in the middle of the cabin’s single room. The place had four bunks in it, two on each of the side walls, a fireplace, and some crude shelves where supplies were kept. A coffeepot sat at the edge of the hearth, where a fire had burned down to glowing embers.
Stovepipe nodded toward the pot and said, “If there’s still any coffee in there, I’d plumb admire to have a cup.”
“How could you drink it with your hands tied behind your back?” asked Deuce.
“Well, I reckon you could untie me long enough for that . . .”
“Nix,” said Granville. “We’re taking a big enough chance leaving your legs untied. I’ll be d
amned if I’m gonna have Jack walk in and find you sitting at the table loose and drinking coffee like it’s some sort of blasted party.”
Stovepipe figured that even a cup of coffee in these squalid surroundings would hardly qualify as a party, but he didn’t say anything else. He was just glad he wasn’t bound hand and foot anymore. He could move around a little now if he had to.
Deuce sat down at the far end of the table and picked up the folded newspaper he had tossed aside earlier. When the rustler opened the paper, which came from San Francisco, Stovepipe was able to make out the date, almost six months earlier. People out here on the frontier didn’t care about such things. They were always glad to get any news, even if it was months out of date.
Granville took a tin cup from one of the shelves, went to the fireplace, used a piece of leather to protect his hand, and picked up the coffeepot. He poured some of the thick, black brew into the cup. It appeared to be about the color and consistency of tar, but Stovepipe felt a pang of longing for some of it, anyway.
Granville took a sip, then a grimace twisted his jowly features.
“Blast it, how old is this stuff ?” he asked.
Deuce frowned and said, “I think it was brewed day before yesterday.”
Granville tossed what was in his cup onto the embers, where it sizzled and smoked.
“Well, it’s not fit to drink. Brew some more.”
“I would, but I’m outta Arbuckle’s,” said Deuce. “Kettlebelly might have some he’d let you borrow.”
“Which cabin is his?”
“Two over, toward the lake.”
“I’ll go see about it. You stay here and watch Stewart.”
“Sure,” Deuce agreed without hesitation. He seemed to be the easygoing sort. That didn’t fool Stovepipe into thinking the outlaw was any less dangerous because of that.
Granville took the coffeepot, went out onto the doorstep, and poured out the rest of the contents. Then he set the pot on the hearth again and left the cabin. Rawson might not have liked that if he knew about it, but Stovepipe figured Granville planned on being back before his absence was discovered.
The Range Detectives Page 26