by Short, Luke;
“Maybe you didn’t hear me,” Frank drawled, stepping closer to him. “Who paid you to lie?”
The Indian didn’t answer, only looked sullenly at the ground.
Frank hit him then, hit him full in the nose, and Grey Horse sprawled on his back. He came up silently, turned and streaked for where the far tepee had been. Frank took after him. Grey Horse reached the blankets and was fumbling frantically among them when Frank dived on him. The impact sent Grey Horse sprawling out onto the hard-packed ground in front of the tepee that was the lip of the cutbank shore of the Cimarron.
Grey Horse came to his feet then, and he had a knife, and now he faced Frank in a half-crouching attitude, a cunning light in his eyes.
Red sent one warning shot over Grey Horse’s head, and the Indian maneuvered to put Frank between him and Red.
Frank called out over his shoulder, “Don’t hit him, Red. Let me handle him.”
“He’ll stick you, dammit!” Red cried.
“Let him alone,” Frank said.
He walked spraddle-legged toward Grey Horse. When he was close he made a feint with his right hand, and the Indian slashed out with the knife toward his arm.
Quick as thought Frank’s left palm slapped down on the Indian’s wrist and his fingers closed on it. He tried to bring the Indian’s arm up to bend it behind him and got it only shoulder high, and then Grey Horse grappled with him. For a long moment they were locked in struggle, Grey Horse trying to drive the knife down. It was a contest of brute strength, and Grey Horse put his heart into it.
When Grey Horse was straining until his breath came in great grunting gasps Frank half turned and pulled down on his arm and threw his hip into the Indian’s belly. All Grey Horse’s weight and strength were bearing forward, and he pivoted over Frank’s hip, doing a full somersault in the air. Frank held tightly to his wrist, and he heard Grey Horse grunt and then land flat on his back. The knife dropped to the ground from nerveless fingers, and Frank kicked it over the lip of the cutbank.
Grey Horse tried to spring to his feet. He was half up when Frank clipped him solidly across the jaw with a full swing. Grey Horse went down again, almost balancing on the edge of the cutbank. He scrambled to his feet again, trying to dive to one side. Frank’s arcing fist caught him behind the ear and drove him over the cutbank.
Looking over the edge, Frank saw him land on his face in the shallow channel of the Cimarron, ten feet below. Frank leaped. He landed astride the Cheyenne’s back and drove him down into the water. Grey Horse fought with a wild fury and managed to turn over, and that was what Frank wanted. Frank stood upright, Grey Horse lying face up between his legs, and put both hands around Grey Horse’s throat. Then he forced his head under the moiled water, counted five and yanked him up.
Grey Horse was thrashing helplessly, and when he came above the surface he choked and fought futilely at Frank’s hands. Frank let him cough for a moment, then said in Comanche, “Who paid you to lie?”
Grey Horse didn’t answer, and Frank rammed his head down again. This time he held if ten seconds, and Grey Horse came up gagging, his face turning a dark color.
“Talk!” Frank said.
Still Grey Horse wouldn’t speak, and Frank, raging mad, shoved him under again. He held him there until the peak of his struggle was over and then brought him up. This time the Indian’s eyes were glassing over. Frank took both his braids in one hand and held his head and slapped him with the other hand. When Grey Horse’s eyes focused Frank grabbed him by the throat again and shook him.
“Talk, damn you,” he raged, “or you’ll drown this time!”
Grey Horse made a feeble gesture of assent and murmured, “Milabel.”
“Where’d he get the whisky?” Frank demanded.
“Steal ’um Corb cache,” Grey Horse said in English.
Frank flung him into the water and waded out to the bank and climbed it. Red, his face tense, relaxed when he saw Frank come up. And then Red began to curse in relief. He prodded the Indians over to the cutbank and then kicked them off into the Cimarron. Grey Horse was sitting on the bottom, retching into the stream.
Frank got the horses, coiled the ropes and brought the horses over. He and Red mounted and looked down into the channel where the five wet Cheyennes, their faces livid with hatred, were shivering in the cold dawn, and they rode off into the prairie.
“Who was it?” Red asked.
“Milabel. He raided one of Corb’s whisky caches.”
Red was silent a moment, and then he murmured gloomily, “I was afraid of that,” and looked at Frank. “Dammit,” he burst out, “a man can fight that crew of Corb’s hard cases! But how can you fight thirty men?”
Frank looked at him, his eyes grave, and a slow smile broke his face. “There’s a way,” he murmured. “There always is in a three-cornered fight.”
Red scowled, watching Frank closely. “You mean sell out to the highest bidder and then throw in with him to lick the other outfit?”
“Wrong,” Frank said softly. “Get the other two to fightin’, and when they’re both down jump ’em.”
Red grinned. “Fightin’ over what?”
“We can fix that later,” Frank said. “What we got to do now is make sure this is goin’ to be three cornered and not four cornered.”
Red looked puzzled.
“Barnes,” Frank said. “He’s lost five thousand on me, Red. And he’s liable to think he’s been seven kinds of a grass-green fool for takin’ my side. We got to keep him on our side.”
It was well after dark when Frank and Red pulled into the dark shadow of the cottonwood that stood in front of Hopewell Barnes’s house. Red led the way to the porch of the house, where he paused, made sure there were no visitors inside, then stepped up on the porch and knocked softly.
Luvie Barnes came to the door. “Oh, it’s you,” she said, dislike in her voice.
“Us,” Red corrected and brushed past her into the hall. Frank followed him, taking off his hat. Luvie Barnes’s mouth opened in amazement at sight of Frank, and Frank gently closed the door behind her.
When Luvie found her voice she said, “Don’t you know there’s a reward out for your capture?”
“I reckoned there would be.”
“You certainly don’t mind making other people share your risk, do you?” Luvie said, anger creeping into her voice.
“We want to talk to your dad,” Red said.
Luvie’s angry gaze shifted to Red. “I’m surprised at that. We both supposed you’d be on your way to Texas with Dad’s money by now.”
Red’s face colored but he held his tongue. Luvie didn’t bother to ask them into the living room. She paused in the living-room doorway and announced. “Here’s your two jailbirds, Dad, come home to roost.”
Barnes stepped into the hall and did not offer to shake hands. He seemed inclined to be friendly but was not sure whether he should be, in the face of what had happened two nights ago.
Red said bluntly, “Barnes, that money you gave me was stolen out of my room.”
“Where did you hide it?” Luvie asked just as bluntly.
“Luvie!” Barnes said. “Let’s hear what he has to say.”
“That’s all there is to it,” Red said. “It’s gone. I dunno where. My door was locked when I went to sleep and it was locked when I woke up. Still, the money wasn’t there.”
Luvie said sweetly, “Maybe you just didn’t let your right hand know what your left hand was doing.”
Red shifted his feet and didn’t say anything, watching Barnes.
Frank spoke then. “It looks pretty queer, Barnes, but that’s the way it happened. I’ve come to make good, if I can. Your bail money would have been held by the government till my trial, sometime in the fall, and then it would have been returned to you. I’ll have your five thousand dollars by fall.”
“Of course you will,” Luvie said dryly. “You’ll just tell the government not to look, and then you’ll get a job and earn five thousand doll
ars.”
“Confound it!” Barnes burst out. “Let these men talk, Luvie.”
Frank drawled, “I think your daughter has something to say to me in the kitchen, Barnes. I’m ready to go, Miss Barnes.” He stepped over to Luvie, grasped her arm firmly and, in spite of her efforts to free herself, led her to the end of the hall and then into the kitchen, where he closed the door behind them.
Luvie was really angry now, as angry as she had been that morning out at the spread.
“Miss Barnes,” Frank said levelly, “you don’t like me. Not any. Tell me why.”
“Because you’ve taken advantage of a bighearted man,” Luvie said just as evenly. “You’re wild and you’re reckless and you’re a braggart. You’re going down and you’re determined to drag Dad down with you. I won’t let you do it.”
“You mean you’re goin’ to fight me from now on?”
“All I can,” Luvie said.
“I don’t think so,” Frank countered. He was regarding her with thoughtful gray eyes that seemed to bore clean through her.
“Then you don’t know me!” Luvie said defiantly.
“I know something about you,” Frank drawled. “Something you wouldn’t be proud of if it came to your dad’s ears.”
Luvie was suddenly sober. “What?”
Frank said, “There were just four people in the world who knew your dad gave Red that money—your dad, Red, Otey and you.”
“What does that prove?” Luvie asked, her face intent.
“Red didn’t take that money. Otey wouldn’t take any money, ever. Your dad gave Red the money, so he would hardly take it back. Now you figure out the rest of it. I already did, while I was in jail.”
A shadow of concern touched Luvie’s face and then was gone, but not before Frank saw it. She laughed a little shakily. “You mean you think I took the money?”
“I don’t think anything,” Frank murmured. “But I know one thing. You rawhide Red or me any more, lady, and I’m goin’ to take that night clerk out and make him tell who he gave that passkey to. It’s just as easy as that. Think it over.”
Luvie didn’t say anything for a long moment. Then she said without much conviction, “You’re bluffing.”
“Sure, sure,” Frank said quietly. “Only I want your dad to trust me, because he’s my friend. And I’ve had a bellyful of your sharpshootin’. Just remember what I said.”
And Luvie walked out of the kitchen like a chastened child.
Chapter IX
With Barnes’s acceptance of Frank’s note for the five thousand dollars that had disappeared and his assurance that he was still on their side Frank felt he was clear to move now.
He and Red had slept on the prairie south of Darlington that night, and at the first light of day they were up and on their way back to the wagon. They crossed the Canadian above Reno and were breaking out of the shore timber when Frank reined in and pointed off across the prairie. A quarter of a mile away were two heavily loaded tarp-covered freight wagons in tandem. Six teams of horses dragged them at a snail’s pace across the lush greening grass of the prairie. But what interested Frank was the fact that six outriders escorted the wagons, as if they contained a valuable shipment of gold.
“Know ’em?” Frank asked.
Red nodded. “Circle R freightin’ outfit. That’s a mountain hitch, but they’re usin’ tandem so they won’t have to run so many guards.”
Frank’s eyes were musing. “Sure of that?”
“It’s the only outfit that freights that way.” Suddenly Red looked over at him. “Why?”
“Maybe,” Frank said thoughtfully, “this is what we been lookin’ for. It won’t hurt to make sure.”
Red remembered there was a plum thicket several miles on where a man could hide close to the road, and turning back into the timber, they made for it. The thicket turned out to be acres in extent, and some freighter, tired of traveling a mile to cross a barrier some hundred feet wide, had laboriously cleared a road through it. While Red waited with the horses in a swale a quarter of a mile off the road, Frank took up the vigil alone. By midmorning he returned, his clothes torn from the plum briars but a look of restrained excitement on his face.
“It’s the Circle R,” he confirmed. “We’ll just keep ’em in sight this afternoon.”
It was a dreary business, for the pace of the freight outfit was slow. Red calculated in late afternoon that they would camp by the Canadian that night. And when they saw the wagon leave the faint wagon trail later, Red nodded. “They’re headin’ for the upper ford,” he announced. “The lower ford has a bed that can turn into quicksand under a heavy load. I reckon they’re loaded.”
“Tell me more,” Frank said.
“More about what?” Red asked, puzzled at Frank’s curiosity.
“This upper ford. Where is it? How do they cross it?”
Red shook his head, understanding now, and he grinned. “It won’t work, kid. There’s only a smidgin of water runnin’, and they’re more careful crossin’ the river than any other time. While they take off the rough lock on the shore, half the crew crosses to the other side and beats the brush for Corb’s ambush. They aim to—”
“Rough lock?” Frank asked.
“That’s right. They camp up on the bluff, and it’s a steep slope to the river, and they have to rough-lock the wagons.”
“How do you know all this?” Frank asked.
“I used to pick up five dollars now and then ridin’ guard. That is, I did until I threw in with Morg.”
Frank settled back into silence, and Red, knowing something was up, kept his counsel. He was hungry, but he forgot it trying to puzzle out what Frank was thinking.
When darkness settled they could see the pin point of the freighter campfire in the distance. Frank rose from where they had been lying in a sheltering dip in the prairie and said, “I’m goin’ to have a look.”
“You go careful,” Red warned. “It’s in the open, with no trees around it.”
Frank caught his horse and mounted and rode out toward the freight camp. A quarter of a mile away he dismounted and approached on foot. The campfire, he knew, would blind the crew to anyone out of the circle of firelight, but nevertheless he moved cautiously, creeping through the tall grass until he could see the whole layout of the camp. It was a sight he was familiar with. The cook was poking the Dutch oven into the coals. Another hand came out of the darkness up the hill with an armload of driftwood. The freighter was straightening out the harness to be in readiness for the next morning, and the horse wrangler was leading the teams, two at a time, down the slope to drink.
But it was the man working on the wagons who interested Frank. The tandem hitch had been broken and the last wagon hauled up abreast the other. They were on a gentle downslope, their wheels solidly blocked. And one of the crew was making a rough lock of a log, which was thrust through the spokes of the back wheel and lashed solidly to the wagon frame.
Frank took all this in, studying it, then wriggled back into the darkness and made a wide circle upstream to the river. Where the ground fell away he had to move cautiously down the slope.
The ground flattened out at the base of the hill, then ended abruptly at a low cutbank. The river had swung toward this bank and was slowly eating into the hill. But from the noise of the river Frank knew it was traveling over a boulder bed and that this ford had been chosen because of the solid footing. Satisfied, he returned to his horse and rode back to Red after filling his canteen at the river.
They backtracked a mile, found some timber, built their fire, boiled coffee and ate jerky, then doused the fire and lay smoking in the deep grass.
Then Frank told Red what was in his mind. Red listened judicially, and when Frank finished Red said, “What about the guard?”
“I’ll toll him over and slug him. If he won’t come, it won’t work.”
Red only grunted, but Frank knew he agreed.
They waited there in the dark for a couple of hours, then got
their horses. Riding toward the camp now, they could see that the fire had died down. They swung over to the right and left their horses upwind, tied to a picket stake, and then they split up.
Red walked off into the night, starting the circle that would bring him to the other side of the camp. And Frank walked straight toward the camp.
As Red crawled through the grass he could see the guard squatting by the small fire, feeding it sticks of driftwood. Around him was the sleeping crew. Afterward the guard moved back into the darkness and sat down against a wheel of the wagon, his rifle across his knees. He smoked and occasionally moved around, but he never left his rifle and he never came into the circle of firelight unless to replenish the blaze.
Red had waited half an hour now and he wondered if Frank had given up, when he heard a sudden commotion among the horses who were in a rope corral on the other side of the far wagon. The guard listened, and when the commotion died he settled back. As soon as he sat down the commotion started again. There was a snorting and a stomping among the horses that the guard correctly guessed was unnatural. He rose, rounded the end of the wagon and approached the corral. Then Red saw a shadowy figure come around the front of the wagon, drop on all fours and crawl under the wagon.
The guard came back, looked uneasily toward the horses, stirred the fire, then returned to his seat against the wheel.
Red held his breath, watching. There was a blur of motion over there, a muffled sound, and then the guard rolled over on his side. Grinning, Red rose and cautiously circled the fire and came in under the wagon. Frank’s dim shape loomed between him and the fire. Beyond were the blanketed figures of the sleeping crew.
Without a word Red set to work on what they had planned. He took his knife, cut the ropes that bound that rough lock, then helped Frank to noiselessly drag the log through the spokes and lay it aside. They followed the same procedure with the second wagon.
Then they met under the first wagon, and Frank whispered, “Ready?”
“Let her go,” Red murmured. They both went to the front wheels and removed the blocks. The wagon did not move. Then, moving in the dim light, they both put their shoulders to the wheel and pulled on the big spokes. The wagon moved a little, settled, moved again, and then nothing in the world could have stopped it.