Dead Freight for Piute

by Short, Luke;

  The big teamster lunged up and turned around. There was recognition as well as anger in his eyes as he saw Cole.

  “Well, well,” Cole drawled, stepping back and surveying him. “The big brave bandit. I figured I’d run across you.”

  The big man’s eyes flicked to Craig Armin, who had hauled up beside Cole.

  “What’s this, Juck?” Craig Armin snapped.

  “Search me,” the big man said carefully. “He’s lookin’ for a fight.”

  “I’m gettin’ one,” Cole said. He shucked off his coat into the dust, threw his hat after it and said to Craig Armin without looking at him, “This moose stuck up the stage I was on last night and took ten thousand dollars from a girl passenger.”

  “Wait a minute!” Craig said quickly. “That can be explained and we’ll—”

  “Too late,” Cole said. He swung a hook deep into Juck’s belly, and when the big man folded he smashed a right into his jaw that sent him skidding in the dust on his back.

  “Wait!” Craig Armin cried.

  But Juck was up. The teamsters, used to and liking fights, came running from all directions, forming a loose circle around the three of them. Juck rushed then, a growl in his throat, and Craig Armin fell back, cursing softly. The drive of Juck’s rush drove Cole back into the crowd, but he kept his feet, smashing down on Juck’s exposed neck. He twisted then and Juck lost his balance and fell. The crowd backed up.

  Cole waited until Juck was barely erect, and then he waded in, his arms pumping great slashing blows into Juck’s face. He had the choice of staying away from Juck and cutting him up or never letting him get set. He chose the latter.

  Juck’s nose was pumping blood now, and he looked dazed. His powerful arms flailed, but he couldn’t get set for a blow. Time and again, feet stomping into the hard-packed dirt, Cole drove blow after blow in his face, forcing him off balance, and when Juck raised his thick arms to guard his face Cole smashed his fist wrist-deep into his big belly.

  One of Juck’s blows caught Cole on the ear, and he went down. Juck was alert enough to make his rush then. Cole rolled sideways and tripped him, and they both came up at the same time, facing each other. Juck swung wildly, and Cole ducked, planting his feet. Juck swung again, and again Cole ducked, but when Juck’s last blow went sizzling by Cole hit him. There was every ounce of well-balanced weight that Cole could muster behind that blow, and when it landed on Juck’s shelving jaw Cole felt the shock of it past his shoulder and in his backbone.

  Juck’s knees buckled immediately and he fell flat on his face, lying immobile. Some good-humored cheers lifted from the men, and then Cole caught sight of Craig Armin and Keen Billings. Their faces were grave, alert, and Craig Armin walked up to him.

  “A good start,” he said approvingly. “Come in the office now and clean up.”

  “Oh no,” Cole said meagerly. He didn’t say anything for a moment while he got his breath. “That gunnie is comin’ to the sheriff’s office with me.”

  Keen Billings quickly lifted his voice into a harsh bawl. “Back to work, every man jack of you! Step lively, boys! Break it up!”

  Craig Armin waited until the men had drifted off out of earshot, and then he said in a low, impatient voice, “Don’t be a damned fool, boy. What’s it to you if Juck is jailed?”

  “Nothin’ to me,” Cole said. “It’s somethin’ to that girl.”

  “What girl?”

  “Celia Wallace.”

  Craig Armin looked steadily at Cole. “Don’t be simple! That girl is the sister of your competitor, Ted Wallace. If she gets that ten thousand back they’ll worry the very hell out of you!”

  “So you did have her robbed?” Cole murmured softly.

  Craig Armin’s gaze held his for a long moment, and Craig said, “I did. What of it?”

  Cole stooped over Juck and quickly drew Juck’s gun and held it slack in his hand, his eyes on Keen Billings, who had been watching this.

  “What of it?” Cole said gently. “Nothin’. It just happens to be robbery, that’s all. I’m takin’ Juck to jail. The whole story will get out then, and we’ll see what of it.”

  “You won’t do that,” Craig Armin said quietly.

  “Back off, Keen!” Cole said sharply. “Before you do, shuck that gun. I’m goin’ to pick Juck up, and if a man makes a move to stop me I’ll shoot him!”

  “Wait!” Craig Armin said.

  “I’ve waited too damn long!” Cole answered savagely. “This outfit stinks! I thought so when I first saw it. Now I’m sure of it!”

  He pointed his gun at Keen Billings, and Billings flipped his gun into the dust and backed off, his eyes wary. Craig Armin’s face was a study. His eyes were bright with fury, his lean face pale. He was calculating his chances, and when Cole grabbed Juck by the shirt collar and started to drag him toward the gate Craig Armin said quietly, “All right. You can stop.”

  “What for?” Cole said.

  “What’s your price? The ten thousand?”

  Cole straightened up, his gun in front of him. He thought a moment, then nodded slowly. “That’s it, right to the penny. Go get it, or I take Juck to the sheriff.”

  Without another word Craig Armin turned and went back into the office. Keen Billings stared at Cole a long moment and then smiled crookedly. “You’re goin’ to be awful sorry for this—awful sorry.”

  “Who’ll make me sorry?” Cole asked.

  Billings’ face was dark with anger, but he controlled it. “He’ll have your hide nailed on the wall in damn short order, mister. You’d better light a shuck tonight, while you still can.”

  Cole smiled faintly and dug Juck with his toe. “I got a hunch we’ll tangle pretty quick, Billings. I’m goin’ to do a better job on you.”

  Craig Armin came out of the office then and stalked up to them. He extended a sack to Cole.

  “Have Billings count it out,” Cole said.

  Craig made a sign and Billings came over. He counted the money out in the dust. There was five thousand in fifty-dollar gold pieces, and the rest was in big bank notes. Craig Armin, his face impassive, watched until Billings had finished and handed the sack to Cole. Then he eyed Cole and said softly, “I’m afraid you’ve made a mistake, Cole. You’ll live to regret it—regret it bitterly.”

  Cole said, “I’ll live. That’s one thing. And that’s more than I can say for the first one of your hard cases that gets in my way, Craig. Remember that when you start feelin’ salty.”

  He nodded and backed off toward the gate under the curious eyes of the indifferent teamsters. Billings and Craig Armin watched him go, disappearing quickly behind the high board fence.

  Then Craig Armin said softly, wickedly, not even looking at Billings, “The fool. Get him, Keen. And no holds barred. Run him out of the country!”

  3

  Since there were over a million ounces of gold and silver taken from some twenty mines stretched along the bare shoulders of the Sierra Negras above Piute each year, it was reasonable to suppose that the mine managers would demand adequate protection from the law. They had, and they got it in the form of Sheriff Ed Linton. Aside from the mines, however, there were several thousand miners and the hangers-on of a boom camp that made up Piute. There were Mexicans, Welshmen, Irish, Germans, Poles and Swedes, and nobody could expect them to mix without trouble. Consequently the sheriff’s office was a large affair, and its active work was done by three hard-working deputies.

  Sheriff Linton himself was not a peace officer in the true sense of the word. He was a politician, alert to the fact that the man who administered the law in Piute to the satisfaction of a handful of millionaires was a man who might go far in Territorial politics. His office was properly a twelve-by-fourteen cubbyhole in the busiest block of the main street. In reality it was the lobby of the Cosmopolitan House, the big four-story brick hotel that loomed above the rest of the town in elegant snobbishness. In its suites, in its barroom, in its dining room or in the sumptuous offices of the reduction mills
and mines Sheriff Linton could generally be found, drinking, scheming, backslapping, promising and fawning. He was well dressed, dapper and discreet. Nowhere on his well-tailored person could be found a gun or a star. He was indistinguishable from the many rich men—mine promoters, stock riggers, mine managers, mine lawyers, reduction-mill superintendents and mine supply men—who lined the elegant mahogany bar of the Cosmopolitan House this very evening.

  It was quiet in the barroom, for there was no music, no girls and no crowd. The gambling—for the highest stakes in Piute—was done in an adjoining room. This barroom, with its deep leather cushions on the seats that lined the walls, was for drinking only—drinking and scheming. Men moved slowly, talked in low voices, smoked excellent cigars, drank the best liquor and devised ways to take more money from the patient Sierra Negras and their own stockholders.

  Sheriff Ed Linton was at a table for four, listening politely to a very bad story being told by a newly arrived lawyer from Frisco, when a boy stopped at his shoulder.

  “Yes?” Sheriff Linton said. He had a thin, alert face that was bisected by a full and well-kept black mustache. He was forty-five, perhaps, and affected an oversize ascot tie. He was as neat as new stovepipe and fully aware of it.

  “Gentleman to see you, sir,” the Negro boy told him.

  “Send him in.”

  “There’s a lady with him, sir. Out in the lobby.”

  Now Sheriff Ed Linton had learned the politician’s first lesson: see everybody, listen to everybody and then use horse sense. He rose, excused himself and followed the boy out into the spacious red-carpeted lobby. It was more noisy out here, for mere glass windows could not shut out the brawling racket of the town’s night life that flowed by on the streets outside.

  The boy led him under the big crystal chandelier and across the lobby to a lounge in a corner and Sheriff Linton saw Ted Wallace and a rather beautiful girl rise to greet him. The disappointment over Ted Wallace, who was a relatively unimportant person in Piute, was canceled out by the presence of the girl. Sheriff Linton put on his best smile, shook hands with Ted Wallace and then was introduced to Wallace’s sister, Celia.

  Erect, Ted Wallace was a carelessly dressed man in corduroy coat and levis. He was inches taller than his sister, and his hair was the same blond color. Only it was carelessly combed and wild, like the look on his long-jawed face. He might have been thirty, but the anger on his tanned face was the anger of a twelve-year-old.

  “I’ve been trying to get you for two hours!” Ted Wallace said brusquely. “I want to report a robbery!”

  Sheriff Linton nodded politely. “Take it to my chief deputy, Wallace. He’s done some remarkable recovery of stolen articles.”

  “I’m not takin’ this to any deputy,” Ted Wallace said grimly. “I’m bringin’ it to you, Linton. Layin’ it on your lap. My sister was robbed of ten thousand dollars up in the pass last night. The stage was held up. I also know who did the job!”

  The sheriff’s eyes widened. “Too bad,” he said, glancing at Celia. Her face was flushed with excitement as she watched Ted. “Now you say you know the robber?”

  “Not the robber. The man who set him up to it.” He paused. “It was Craig Armin who planned it and paid men to do it.”

  “Nonsense!” Sheriff Linton said immediately.

  “That money,” Ted went on implacably, “was for my freightin’ business. It meant the difference between success and failure. I wrote to my sister for the money, and she answered, saying she was going to bring it out. She named the day and the amount.”

  “How do you suppose Armin knew that?” Sheriff Linton said, polite derision in his voice.

  “I’m comin’ to that. Those thug teamsters of his know every driver that carries mail into this town. My guess is that they bribed the mail drivers to open the sacks and run through the mail and read everything that was addressed to me. I know that”—Wallace’s voice was really angry now—“because that letter from Sis had been opened. But when I got it it was too late to tell her to change her plans. She was robbed—and by Armin’s men!”

  “Prove it.”

  “Craig Armin’s nephew, Cole Armin, was on the stage!”

  “Proving exactly what?”

  “That he was keeping an eye on her, pointing her out to the gunnies his uncle sent!”

  “It’s a neat theory,” Linton admitted. “Proof’s a different matter.”

  “Then get it!”

  Linton smiled faintly. “Wallace, Craig Armin is a big name in this town. I can’t accuse him of something like that without proof.”

  “Then get proof!” Wallace said curtly.

  Linton inclined his head politely. “I’ll try, I’ll promise you that. It’s only fair to state, however, that I don’t believe he did it. Even if he did you couldn’t get a jury to convict him. And chances are he’d turn around and sue you for false arrest and win his suit and ruin you.” He shook his head. “Just between us, you’d better forget it. Don’t ever fight a buzz saw.”

  “You mean you won’t do anything about it?” Celia asked angrily.

  Linton bowed. “On the contrary, I’ll have my men work on it. I’m merely telling you what will happen. It’s unfortunate, but it’s so.”

  Ted Wallace glared at him, the anger of impotence in his face. Then he said quickly, “I’m not going to let you forget this, Linton. I’ll be in your office three times a day. I’ll turn this town upside down and shake it before I’ll take that! Tell Craig Armin that! I’ll get that money back if I have to blow up Monarch’s safe!”

  Linton bowed again. Ted Wallace took Celia by the arm and stalked out of the lobby. Behind them Sheriff Linton smiled crookedly, shrugged and reached in his pocket for a cigar on the way back to the bar. Such foolishness.

  Out in the street, jammed in the river of humanity that flowed down the sidewalk, Ted Wallace strode protectingly beside his sister. He said suddenly, “I’ll give him a week, and then I’ll hold up the Monarch office and blow the safe!”

  “Ted!” Celia cried. She looked up at him, and his face was grim. “They’d know!”

  “Sure they’d know. Let ’em prove it though.”

  “But they could! Sheriff Linton was amused tonight. But if you hold up the Monarch he won’t be amused any longer. He’d arrest you and the business would fall away and you’d lose everything you’ve done while you rotted in jail!”

  “I will anyway.”

  “Oh, Ted. Isn’t there any other way?”

  “Not when you’re fightin’ pirates,” Ted said gloomily.

  They didn’t talk after that. The office of the Western Freight Company—Ted Wallace’s young and lusty freighting outfit—was on the main street, wedged between two stores. It was a narrow single room, originally built for an assay office. Behind it, wedged up tight against the back wall between it and the alley, was the wagon yard. It wasn’t much, and when all the wagons were in—six in number—it was jammed. Across the alley in a fenced-in lot were the stables, the corral and the blacksmith shop. Above the office, in three small rooms, were Ted Wallace’s quarters. To get to them it was necessary to walk down the alley and through the wagon yard and climb a shaky set of stairs.

  It all looked mean and shoestring to Celia as she threaded her way through the high wagons in the yard, holding her skirts against her to keep the grease of the wheel hubs from smearing her. She knew it represented more money than was evident, but it was disheartening. Ted lived like an Indian, seldom slept, and then with one eye cocked to the safety of his wagons below his window. Given money, the money she had brought out with her, it might have been another story. But now it was hopeless. “Don’t fight a buzz saw,” Sheriff Linton had said. It was true, but she mustn’t let Ted know. He must find that out for himself, find it out the hard way—by taking his licking. In the meantime she’d try and make these three inadequate rooms into a home of sorts for him.

  When she mounted the stairs she found she was weary. Too much had happened, and i
t was all bewildering. Nothing counted here but violence and threats. Everything here was as harsh as the desert that started below the town and stretched out into a terrible fawn infinity.

  She opened the door, her head hung with weariness and disappointment. Suddenly, a few steps into the room, a pair of boots came into her circle of vision. She started a little and looked up.

  Cole Armin, still unshaven, with a livid bruise showing on his cheek beneath the beard stubble, was standing there with his hat in his hand.

  “What are you—Ted, that’s the man! Cole Armin!”

  “I see him,” Ted Wallace said softly. He shut the door behind him, and the three of them looked at each other. There was amusement in Cole Armin’s face, but he said nothing.

  Ted Wallace moved around the table in the middle of the room, pulling off his battered hat. “I’m goin’ to have the pleasure of unscrewing the head of one of these Armins anyway,” he said quietly.

  Cole Armin smiled then. He made a gesture with his hat toward the table on which lay the canvas sack Craig Armin had given him. “Look that over before you swarm,” he said mildly.

  Celia went up to it, hefted it, caught the hint of what was in it and then swiftly untied the neck of the sack and dumped out its contents on the table.

  She stared at it, motionless, and Ted Wallace came over slowly to gaze at it.

  “The money,” Celia whispered. “My money.” She looked up at Cole Armin. “You—you’re giving it back?”

  Cole nodded. Celia stared at him and then at Ted, and then she ran around the table into Ted’s arms. “Ted! Ted! It’s our money! Don’t you understand! Our money!” She shook him by the shoulders in her excitement and joy.

  “I understand,” Ted said slowly. He looked over her shoulder at Cole, his gaze puzzled and suspicious. “I understand that part of it. I still don’t understand why you brought it back.” There was the faintest suggestion of suspicion in his tone.

  “I promised your sister I would,” Cole said simply.

  Celia turned to him then, her eyes still bright with excitement. “Did—did your uncle do it for you?”