Trouble at the Redstone (Leisure Western)

by John D. Nesbitt

  He turned around to see Blanche standing on the other side of the sorrel horse with both hands together on the seat of the saddle. She held a dark pistol, a .38 from the looks of it, with the hammer back.

  “Stand over there,” she said, “and don’t think of touching your gun.” She came around the hindquarters of the horse and kept the pistol trained on Will. “And you, dearie,” she said to Pearl, “stand over here on my left. Don’t try anything foolish, or your friend the snoop gets a hole in him.”

  Will found his voice. “You might want to be careful about what you do here. The sheriff’s on his way.”

  Her face turned down in an expression of contempt. “You shit and fall back in it. I suppose the governor’s comin’ with him.”

  “Don’t believe me if you don’t want to, but where do you think Jim Calvert went?”

  Blanche hesitated and glanced at the doorway. Will held still and tried to keep his eyes off Pearl, who was moving around to Blanche’s left.

  Will spoke again. “Make it easy on yourself.”

  “Easy? Nothin’s easy. Especially for you, Mr. Snoop.” Then Blanche’s face fell and she turned her head ever so slightly to the left. Pearl held a small pistol against the front of Blanche’s ear, below the temple.

  “Let him have the gun,” Pearl said. “Just remember what you said about me a minute ago.”

  Pearl’s hand holding the pistol followed Blanche’s head as the older woman turned and relaxed the gun in her hand. Will stepped forward, took the revolver, and eased the hammer down.

  “Thanks, Pearl,” he said. “I think Blanche will cooperate now.”

  As the young woman lowered her pistol, Will caught a view of it. It was a small, black-handled .32, the kind that some men used for a hideout gun in a boot or pocket.

  “Where did you get that?” he asked.

  “Ben gave it to me.”

  “Good. I think you’d better hang on to it. Now I suggest you go back to the kitchen and stay there until things are over.” He tried to guess what time it was. Maybe nine o’clock, maybe later. He wondered what was taking Jim Calvert so long, and he wondered how soon Earl Ingram would be back. The fat was in the fire now, though, and he couldn’t sit around and wait.

  Holding Blanche’s .38 pointed toward the floor, he spun the cylinder and saw all six chambers were loaded. He poked out one cartridge, let the hammer down on the empty cylinder, and slipped the loose cartridge into his pants pocket. Then he shifted the .38 to his left hand and tucked it into his belt as his right hand rested on the handle of his .45.

  “You and I can go now, Blanche.”

  She gave him a sour look. “Where?”

  “I want you to take me to Al Vetch.”

  “Sure,” she said, though her voice had a quaver to it. “He’ll know what to do with the likes of you.”

  “Let’s go, then. Pearl, as soon as we get started, you can go across to the kitchen.”

  With that, he took hold of Blanche’s upper arm, and the two of them stepped out into the daylight and started walking toward the stone house. At the edge of his vision he saw Pearl cross the yard and go into the cookshack.

  Blanche, meanwhile, had not run out of steam. “You think you’re smart, mister, forcin’ me to take you there. But I’ll tell you, it’s a good way to get hurt.”

  “I’m not forcin’ you. I’m just holdin’ on so you don’t get there too far ahead of me. If you’d rather, we can go sit in the kitchen till the sheriff gets here. Either way, no one has to get hurt.”

  They marched up to the solid wood door that was on the right side of the little house. Blanche gave it a couple of raps.

  “It’s me,” she said.

  Will heard the scrape of a chair, followed by the turning of a latch, and the door opened halfway. A gravelly voice said, “I didn’t expect you back so soon, Puss.”

  Will guessed the man was standing to one side of the doorway, as he himself was, and could see only the woman. She had a petulant look on her face, and her voice had an irritated tone as she spoke out.

  “Al, he’s right behind—”

  Will crossed in back of her, turning her to face the opening, and with his left shoulder he pushed the door inward, out of the man’s hand. Then he pushed Blanche into the room, released her, and got the drop on Al Vetch.

  “Hold it there,” he said, before taking a full view of the man. The first thing he looked for was a gun, and he was glad to see that the man did not have one in either hand and was not even wearing his gun belt. Then he saw something that almost made him dizzy.

  As he focused on the man’s features, he felt a prickly sensation, a crawling chill, up the center of his back and neck and through his scalp. It was the chill he would expect if he had opened a lady’s hat-box and had seen the head of a snake rise out of it. The man was not wearing a hat, and his hair was ridged down to give his head the appearance of a bullet. That unfamiliar feature aside, Will recognized the hard, thickening face and the eyes full of contempt. It was the man from the card game in Enfield, the man who had taken a dislike to him and had caused him to be thrown in jail. Will felt as if he suddenly had much more on his hands than he had bargained for.

  “Who the hell are you?” asked the man. “And what are you doin’ bargin’ in here like this?” His eyes wandered, no doubt looking for an opportunity to change the layout.

  “I’m Will Dryden. I would think you would remember seein’ me once or twice.”

  “When was the first time?”

  Will kept his eyes roving from the man’s eyes to his hands and back to his eyes. “In Enfield. Less than a month ago.”

  The brows raised in an expression of casual disregard. “I don’t remember you.”

  “Maybe it doesn’t matter.”

  “When was the second time?”

  “Last Sunday, on the edge of town near the livery stable.”

  “Oh, was that you? I should have put a bullet through you.”

  “Why didn’t you?”

  “It wasn’t the plan.” Vetch narrowed his eyes. “Oh, yeah. I remember you. In the card game.” He turned his head a quarter turn and gave a sarcastic smile. “Is that why you came here?”

  “Yeah. I wanted to know why you beat me up.”

  “Because I didn’t like you, that’s why. If I’d known you were the same guy the other night, I would have laughed at you.”

  “It’s not too late.”

  “Of course it isn’t.” He turned to Blanche and held his hands out to each side. “Can you believe this? He’s the same chump that—”

  “Get around straight and hold your hands where I can see them.”

  Vetch frowned and gave a dark, sideways look. “Don’t come in and boss me around, or I’ll make you the cabin boy.” He took a step toward Blanche. “Don’t you think he’d make a good—”

  “Turn around!”

  “Oh, go tell someone who’ll listen.”

  Vetch waved his left hand, then dove in front of Blanche, whose figure blocked Will’s vision for a second. Vetch came up on the other side of her with a six-gun in his hand. The dark eyes searched for a spot to place his shot, but Will had taken two steps aside and was bringing up his gun. Vetch whirled, swung his left hand to push Blanche out of the way, and was bringing his gun around when Will shot him in the chest. Vetch’s gun waved and jerked, and a shot splintered the door. Will held the gun on the man where he had landed and now sat on the floor. Vetch had it in him to fight till the end. Although his eyes held a vacant, faraway expression, he raised the gun and had his finger on the trigger. Will shot him off-center between the chest and the shoulder, and as he fell backward his gun clattered on the floor.

  Will stood back, waiting to be sure Al Vetch did not move again. At that moment Blanche rose from the cot where she had been thrown, and screaming for help, she bolted through the open door. Will raised his gun but did not see any point in stopping her that way, so he let her go.

  With a backward glance at
the body on the floor, Will moved to the edge of the doorway and peered out. Blanche had taken off like a runaway horse and was more than halfway to the cookshack, screaming as she ran.

  Now things were a mess, way out of his control, as if he had tossed his rope at a calf and had caught a grizzly. He didn’t know when Calvert was coming back, and he knew that if he stepped out of the little house, Donovan or one of the others could fill him with lead. If he didn’t get out, they could come and get him.

  He gazed at the dead man on the floor. So this was what it came to. He liked to think that this was the consequence of a certain way of life, but he knew better. If it happened to Ben Forrester, it could happen to him, Will Dryden, just as well as to Al Vetch.

  Chapter Fourteen

  As Will put two new cartridges into the cylinder of his six-gun, he took stock of Vetch’s hideout. The stone house was a one-room building, sparsely furnished. Against the back wall lay the cot with a rumpled gray blanket. About a yard out from the left wall, a chair stood behind a table, while the table itself was littered with dirty plates and bowls. A lard pail and a gallon jug sat on the floor below the table. Against the right wall, two wooden crates, one on top of another, served as a rack for the man’s saddle. A bridle was slung on the pommel, and the butt of a rifle stuck out of a scabbard.

  Will figured he could use the rifle if necessary, just as he could use Vetch’s pistol or Blanche’s. He didn’t like that line of thought, though. If it came to being pinned down in here, all the ammunition in the room might give him twenty minutes.

  He found Vetch’s gun belt on the floor. He imagined it had been on the end of the cot when Vetch made a dive for it. Seeing that the dead man’s cartridges were .45’s just like his, he took out all fifteen and put them in his left pants pocket. He preferred to leave the pistol on the floor where it had fallen.

  Next he went to the saddle and pulled the rifle partway out of the scabbard. It was a bolt-action Spencer, which he didn’t care for, so he slipped it back into its boot.

  He rested his hand on the grip of Blanche’s pistol, and as he reviewed things in his mind, he remembered he had a .38 cartridge in with all the .45’s. Just another minute, he thought, to keep from making a mistake. He reached deep into his pocket and dug out a handful of shells, and he found the shiny .38 with the dark bullet. He plucked it out, put it in his right pocket, and poured the .45’s back into his left.

  He looked out the door again. Nothing stirred. He felt as if he had been in this room way too long. Donovan could be hiding inside his front door with a rifle, or one of the others could have come back by now. He didn’t like being in a room with only one door. They could come right in and get him if they had the nerve.

  He surveyed the empty ranch yard again. The best place to be, he figured, was the cookshack. It had a front door and a back one, and it commanded a good view. He also needed to find out whether Blanche or Pearl had the upper hand. If Blanche had gotten the little pistol from Pearl, the trouble could start all over again.

  He set his plan. He would zigzag across the hard-packed yard, in full daylight, and hope no one could draw down on him well enough as he moved. One more look. He pulled out the .38 from his belt so that it wouldn’t jab him and he would have a gun in his hand. Ready. And he made a break for it.

  Running in a crouch with the pistol in his right hand, he expected at every step to feel a bullet slam into him. Every few steps he lifted his head to be sure he was still on course. Finally he reached the cookshack, with no sounds all the way except his own labored footfalls and breathing.

  The door opened as he turned the knob and pushed, and he came to a stop right inside. A man sat at the mess table facing the door, a man with his hat removed and his hair pressed down. At first Will thought it was Al Vetch again, but as his eyes adjusted to the unlit interior, he saw that it was Earl Ingram. The man had his hands together on the table, and he smiled as he spoke in a calm, smooth voice.

  “Well, hello, Will. You’re back early, aren’t you?”

  Will held the .38 level but not pointed right at the foreman. “So are you.”

  “I never left. I’ve been waiting all this time for you. I knew you didn’t want to work by yourself today, and I figured you would come back.”

  “Where’s Blanche?”

  Ingram tipped his head toward the kitchen. “She’s in there, makin’ biscuits.”

  Will listened but heard nothing at all. “Where’s Pearl?”

  “Why, she’s helping mea sure the flour.” Ingram smiled again. “What’s the matter, Will? Are you worried about that girl? Or do you want her for yourself?”

  “You know what’s up.”

  Ingram slowly shook his head. “No, I don’t. You’ll have to tell me.”

  “Maybe you could tell me.”

  “About what?” Ingram raised his eyebrows in an expression of innocence.

  “About Marie.”

  “Marie was my little sister. She died of the whooping cough when she was ten. I don’t know why you want to mention her.”

  “Or Bill Parnell. What was he, your little brother?”

  “Well, I think someone has been tellin’ you things and has got you worked up. Listenin’ to someone like Stegman could get you in trouble.”

  “I got it from Bill Parnell himself.”

  Ingram’s mouth and mustache made a circle. “Oh? Did you?”

  “Yes, I did. Yesterday.”

  “I see. Was he having a cup of tea with your homesteader friend?”

  From Ingram’s breezy tone, Will could tell the foreman thought he was bluffing. “No,” said Will. “I found him out at the quarry, lying on his back.”

  Ingram’s face stiffened, but he kept up his own game. “No one wants to work anymore. Look at you—and Jim, for all I know.”

  Will did not answer the comment about Jim. Rather, he was watching Ingram’s shoulders, which had started to twitch as if the man was getting ready to make a move.

  “Stand up,” said Will, pointing the gun right at him.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean stand up, and keep your hands together in front of you.”

  “What for?”

  “So I can take your gun and hold you as a murder suspect until the sheriff gets here.”

  Ingram gave a forced laugh. “We all joke a lot, don’t we? A newcomer wouldn’t know when we were serious and when we weren’t.”

  Will thumbed back the hammer on the .38. “I mean it. Stand up. I think you know where I just came from, and we’re all done jokin’.”

  Ingram held his hands at waist level but not quite together as he rose from his seat. The gun belt and dark-handled six-shooter came into view. He seemed to waver in his balance, and rather than step over the bench, he edged backward against it. The bench hit the floor with a knock and a thump, which made Will flinch.

  At that moment, Ingram pointed at the kitchen and hollered, “Look out!”

  By reflex, Will jerked his gun toward the kitchen doorway, and seeing nothing, he came back around to Ingram.

  The man had drawn his six-gun and had brought it up so that Will could see the open end of the muzzle.

  Will pulled the trigger, and a red spot appeared on Ingram’s clean gray shirt. The foreman lifted his .45 and lowered it, trying to steady his aim, and Will put a bullet through the brown wool vest. The man fell back and to his right, and the bench rattled as he hit the floor.

  Will shifted the .38 to his left hand, wondering whether to put the remaining shell in it or not to bother with the gun at all. Taking soft steps to the kitchen, he peeked in to make sure no one was there. After a quick search he found the flour bin and pulled it open. It was about three-quarters full. With the wooden scoop he made a temporary grave for the .38 and covered it over.

  At the doorway to the eating area he paused, craning his neck. Ingram lay with his arm outstretched and his gun a yard away. He was a tight one to the last card, all right. Will wondered how long he had
been sitting here—he could have come in through either door while Pearl was talking in the barn or while Will was in the stone house. Will’s glance fell on Ingram’s hat, which lay brim down on the table. On a hunch, he walked over and lifted the hat. There lay the little .32, which gave Will an idea of whether Pearl still had the upper hand.

  He pondered what to do with the pistol. At first he thought of covering it with the hat again, but he didn’t like the idea of it falling into the wrong hands. He set the hat aside and lifted the .32 with his left hand. He carried it to the kitchen, where he found an open burlap sack of beans. With a shove he buried the gun, then smoothed the dry beans over the surface.

  At the doorway again, with his hand on the grip of his .45, he paused to think about what he needed to do next. He assumed Blanche had strong-armed Pearl, and he imagined they had gone to the ranch house, but he wasn’t sure of the best way to approach it.

  As he stood pondering, staring at Ingram’s hat on the table, the back door of the cookshack burst open, and Max Aden jumped in with his gun drawn. When he landed he hopped to the right, then swept the room with his deep-set eyes and his pistol moving together. He looked as fierce and intent as a hawk. It was evident that he was having to let his vision adjust after being out in the bright daylight, and he probably did not expect to find his man at the kitchen doorway. When he came around that far he gave a wider target than before, but still not a big one.

  Will had his .45 in position and shot once, twice, three times. Aden’s left shoulder jerked back, but he still held his gun up and fired. The shot whistled through the doorway to Will’s right and pinged through a pot on the kitchen wall. Before the man could shoot again, Will bore down and put a shot dead center below the loose red neckerchief. Aden snapped back, and his large-brimmed hat fell in the doorway and rolled outside.

  Keeping the man covered, Will stepped around the end of the long table. Aden lay about five feet from Ingram, the two of them more similar than Will had ever seen them in life. One difference was that instead of a mustache, Aden had a seam of blood between his lips.