Dead Freight for Piute

by Short, Luke;

  They were scarcely seated in the rich deep chairs when Craig Armin came in. He was dressed in evening clothes, a wholly commanding man. He looked from Cole to Juck and back again and then said, “Well?” curtly, impatiently.

  Cole came to his feet and said, “I’m plumb sorry about that robbery tonight, Craig, but I’m afraid you got the wrong man arrested.”

  Craig Armin shook his head. “The sheriff doesn’t think so. Wallace made threats against me tonight, then robbed my safe.”

  “It’s too bad,” Cole sympathized. “Still, I think you better bail Wallace out.”

  “Bail Wallace out? Are you crazy?” Armin asked sharply.

  Cole said obliquely, “Is Sheriff Linton in there?”

  “Why—yes. He just got back from locking Wallace up.” Armin smiled dryly. “And you want me to tell Linton to free him? You’re a damned fool, my boy.”

  “Not free him,” Cole said doggedly. “Just bail him out. Because if you don’t bail him out Juck has a story to tell to the sheriff about a stage robbery.”

  Craig looked at Juck, understanding, and smiled faintly. “You like the idea of going to jail, Juck?”

  “I’m all set for it.” Juck grinned. “I’m gettin’ paid to go. How about you? You all set for it?”

  Craig’s face changed slightly. “Nonsense! We both of us don’t want to go.”

  “But Juck don’t mind,” Cole said softly. “He’s willin’. All he’s got to do is talk.”

  “I’ll deny it!” Craig said sharply. “My word carries some weight.”

  “The only trouble with that is that you can’t lie the numbers off bank notes,” Cole lied calmly. “For instance, Miss Wallace had a one-hundred-dollar bank note, number A-177B34. Her bank wrote the number down back in Illinois. It is stolen from her by Juck, who admits it. It is returned to me by you. And she has it now. How did you get it unless Juck gave it to you?”

  Craig Armin’s face was tense. “That’s bluff!”

  “Not bluff,” Cole said, “because your scheme didn’t work, Craig. It would have worked if your pet sheriff had grabbed the money tonight and give it back to you. But he didn’t. I’ve got the money and the bank notes.” He turned toward the door and had his hand on the knob when he said, “I’ll get the sheriff.”

  Craig Armin didn’t move. He said, “Juck, I’ll give you a thousand dollars to skip the country.”

  “To hell with you,” Juck said promptly.

  “Wait!” Armin said; then to Cole, “What’s your price, Cole?”

  “Bail Ted Wallace out.”

  “But, dammit, he’s my competitor! How’ll it look? He robbed my safe!”

  “So he is. It’s too bad.” Cole smiled faintly at the rage and anger on Craig Armin’s face. “You made one bad mistake, Craig. You figured Juck wouldn’t want to go to jail and you were safe. I’ll pay him to go to jail, just so he can drag you in too.”

  Craig Armin only glared at him.

  “Understand,” Cole said. “I’m not asking Linton to drop the charges. Linton wouldn’t free him, because you played your hand too good. You couldn’t make Linton free him without giving away your part in the robbery. But bail will get him out. Just put it on the line.”

  “You’ve got bail money!” Armin snapped. “Use it!”

  “That money can’t be spared, Craig. It’s going for new wagons and mules so we can run you out of the country.” He paused, grinning. “Well?”

  Craig Armin’s gaze sharpened. “We?” he echoed.

  “I’m with Western—a partner,” Cole said mildly.

  Craig Armin’s face settled into cold fury. He said slowly, “I’m willing to let bygones be bygones, Cole. Forget this nonsense, you and Juck, and come over to Monarch. We’ll lick every freighting outfit in sight, and you’ll have more money than you can spend.”

  Cole said, “I’ll stay where I am, I reckon. I like the smell of my new partner considerable better than I do yours, Craig. And Juck likes his new boss better. We’re goin’ to have some fun, it looks like. We’re goin’ to see how far we can run you out of Piute.” He grinned. “Now you aim to bail Wallace out?”

  Without a word Craig Armin went to the door and Cole held it open for him. There was a look of savage hatred in Craig Armin’s handsome face. He had been bested twice today by a cow hand from Texas, and he did not like it. But he was heading for Sheriff Linton right now and with bail money.

  5

  Cole did not enjoy his night’s sleep in the hayloft of McFee’s Livery Stable, but Juck didn’t seem to mind. It had been necessary, however, because Cole was sure of one thing. Craig Armin, to wipe out the constant threat of having to answer for a stage robbery, would not rest until Juck—the man who could convict him—was dead. And Cole proposed to checkmate him as soon as possible.

  Once the town was awake Cole left Juck in the loft, and without visiting the Wallaces he hunted up the most down-at-the-heels law office he could find. The firm of Chas. Beedle, Att’ny at Law, was located in a tent at the edge of town, one of a dozen such which housed the cheapest red-liquor joints in Piute.

  Mr. Chas. Beedle had to be wakened from a drunken stupor. His office furniture consisted of a cot furnished with dirty blankets, a framed diploma, a stack of leather-covered law books and two jugs of his neighbor’s best liquor. He was fat, unshaven and merry and didn’t at all mind being wakened by Cole. Cole stated his business, and pen and paper were brought out. Cole dictated what he wanted drawn up into an affidavit. Leaving a blank space for the names, which Cole did not mention, the affidavit stated that Juck had robbed the stage at Craig Armin’s request, had turned over the ten thousand dollars to Craig Armin and had been paid off with a bottle of whisky. Dates, times and such were as accurate as Cole could make them. He waited until Mr. Beedle, who showed no curiosity at all, had it copied out in the proper legal language and then waited some more for a duplicate. This was important. Afterward Cole paid him, bought him a drink at the neighboring tent saloon and went back for Juck.

  Together they stepped into a hardware store next to the feed stable where there was a notary public. Both copies were filled in with the names and witnessed and notarized. Afterward Cole called for a sheet of paper and wrote a note. It was addressed to Craig Armin. It said:

  In case you took a sudden dislike to Juck I am sending you this. It is a copy of the original affidavit, which is in the bank. As long as Juck stays healthy it will stay there. If anything happens to him I’ll show it to the right people.

  COLE ARMIN

  He put the affidavit in an envelope and paid a boy a dollar to deliver it to Craig Armin’s suite. After that, breathing easier, he sent Juck off to get the cached money and headed upstreet for the Western Freight Company offices—his office, he suddenly realized.

  It was a bright day, and yesterday’s heat seemed still to cling to the dust of the busy street. For the first time since he had arrived he took a close look at the town. From now on this was his town, and it would make him or break him. In a month men would be nodding to him with a respect shown an equal or else laughing at him. He liked the idea somehow. It appealed to the stubborn streak in him, and when he turned into the compound of Western Freight he was smiling.

  The compound was deserted of all wagons except one. Cole climbed the steps and knocked on the door of the Wallaces’ living quarters, and Celia opened the door.

  An involuntary cry of delight and relief escaped her, and then she smiled and he went in. Ted Wallace, stripped to the waist, was shaving, the small mirror propped up in the window. He said, grinning, “Hi, boy,” and looked at Celia. “Satisfied?” he asked.

  “Of course,” Celia said. Color crept into her face, and she looked prettier than ever.

  Cole wore a look of puzzlement, and Ted explained: “Sis has been in a stew half the night and all morning. About you, Cole. She was afraid something had happened to you.”

  “Well, he didn’t come back here,” Celia protested. She was still blushing and Te
d grinned at her, then said to Cole, “I told her any man who could jump out a window with ten thousand dollars, dodge the sheriff and talk Craig Armin into goin’ my bail—well, nothin’ could happen to him.”

  “He bailed you out then?” Cole asked.

  Ted nodded and his smile faded a little. “Bailed out, for five thousand. My trial’s next month. In that time,” he said slowly, “I’ve got to find proof that I didn’t blow his safe. There’s one way to do that. Just run him out of the country. And now,” he asked finally, “how did you swing it?”

  Cole sat down and told them what argument he had used to persuade Craig Armin to go Ted’s bail and what he had done that morning to keep Juck alive. By the time he was finished Juck came in with the money, and then Celia called breakfast for them.

  Ted put on a black suit and came out just as they were finishing. “Juck,” he said, “you know a good ore wagon when you see one. And, Cole, you know good mules. This morning you and Juck buy four big wagons, tandem, and eighty mules. The Acme Freight outfit will be glad to get rid of ’em. Me, I’m goin’ over to the Cosmopolitan House to see Huggins.” To Cole he explained: “He’s manager of the Glory Hole mine. He can’t get enough ore out because the mine is too high for the big wagons. Monarch won’t use them on that road. They’re scared. This afternoon, Juck, you’re goin’ to haul eighteen tons of ore in one load down from the Glory Hole to Union Milling. If you get down without a broken neck, smashed wagons and twenty dead mules we’ve got the contract.”

  “I’ll do it,” Juck said and grinned through his thick lips. “When I git down with that I’ll take the same hitch down from the China Boy.”

  “What is this China Boy?” Cole asked.

  Ted shook his head and laughed ruefully. “It’s a mine the end of the world, higher than the sky, and the birds are scared to perch on the road to it. If we get the Glory Hole contract we’re goin’ after that.”

  “One thing at a time,” Juck said, and Ted laughed then.

  Ted turned to Celia. “Sis, I’ve even got a job for you. Go over to Simmons and buy out his lumberyard and his ground this mornin’. Western’s gettin’ a new wagon yard too. I’ll be ready to sign the papers this noon.” He looked at Cole. “That all right with you, partner? Here goes our ten thousand.”

  Cole grinned. “It’s all right with me,” he agreed. “I don’t savvy it much, but I’m for it.” As a partner in a freighting business Cole found he had a lot to learn about it.

  There were several roads out of Piute—rough, sandy and rocky—but only one of them went very far. That led over the Sierras and into California, while the rest led to the mines high up on the shoulders of the Sierra Negras. Most of the mines in the Piute field had been forced by the location of the gold-and silver-bearing ore strata to pitch on the craggy heights a thousand feet above the flats.

  Cole and Ted, riding in front of the high-sided ore wagons in tandem that Juck was driving, looked at them now. To their left were the mountains, scarcely timbered on this eastern slope, sharp and black and frowning. They rose in almost sheer, dipping, tilting, rearing ramparts beyond the town, challenging the ingenuity of the mine founders in getting their mine buildings to even stay put on the steep slope. Cole pointed them out, one by one, tiny clusters of corrugated-roofed buildings with a long heap of tailings smeared below them.

  To Cole’s right, out on the flats, were the reduction mills. In the still, hot desert out here the boom of their stamps kept the air pulsing. Seven of them lay sprawled in huge red buildings across the face of the rolling rocky waste below the town. Here was the problem laid out for any man to see. It was to get the most ore in the least number of trips for the least amount of money down that two-thousand-foot drop to the reduction mills. A railroad, still new to the West in this year, 1873, could not do it, so mules had to. And the man who had the wagons and the courage to keep that ore moving had his hand on the throat of the Piute field.

  When the road turned toward the mountains Juck shaded his eyes and peered up. The narrow road, crawling in switch-backs up the face of the slope, was shared by three mines, the Elfin, the Swampscott Girl and the Glory Hole, one above the other, the Glory Hole highest of all. Since the road was a one-way affair a system of signals had been devised. When a loaded wagon pulled into the narrow opening beside the Elfin building a huge red flag, visible to the freighters on the flats, was hung out. It meant that a wagon was on its way down, and until it was on the flats no up traffic was allowed. When Juck looked there was no red flag.

  At the foot of the lifting road Ted said to Cole, “You go on up with Juck. I’m headin’ over for the Union Milling to see about some more mules. I’ll catch up with you before you get to the Glory Hole.” He pulled his horse aside and then added, “Go ahead of Juck, and you’ll be out of the dust.”

  Cole waved and rode on. He spurred his horse, pulled past Juck who was cursing out his half-broken mules for the long haul, and then he was on the road. It lifted in a sharp grade, clinging to the face of the black rock. Soon it made a switchback, and to Cole’s inexperienced eye it seemed an impossible space for two big wagons in tandem to negotiate. The road lifted steadily, making countless switchbacks. And now it was high, with the sheer drop to the canyon below an ever-present threat. The road had been blasted out of living rock at an enormous cost of time and powder, but when Cole came to one switchback he reflected that both more time and more powder should have been expended on it. It was narrow and sudden, and one slip would send a team hurtling down six hundred feet to annihilation on the rocks below. He rode past it and then turned in his saddle to see how Juck would negotiate it.

  Juck’s lead team swung wide, almost to the cliff’s edge, and then the others came on, nimbly skipping the taut chain as it crowded into the wall. And then the swing team came in sight, pulling straight for the edge, and finally the wheel team, with Juck mounted on the off mule. He held his mule close to the edge, watching the stub of the tongue, and then suddenly the wagon came in sight. Its hub missed the rocks by two feet, and Cole grinned at his own concern. Juck had done it without a pause.

  Cole swiveled his head back to look up the trail, and there, forty feet ahead of him, halted on the trail, was a new buckboard pulled by a team of horses.

  Cole reined up, the rumble of the empty wagons swelling behind him, and he saw who was in the buckboard. It was Keen Billings and another man.

  Keen Billings had his gun drawn and pointed at Cole.

  The rumble of the ore wagons stopped and Cole could hear the heavy breathing of the lead mules behind him, and then Juck clamped the brakes on. Keen Billings was grinning, his big muscular jowls knotted in a smile.

  “Hullo, Nephew,” Keen drawled. “Funny place to meet, ain’t it?”

  Juck’s voice lifted in the following silence. “Keen, back that damn team up and clear out of here! Where was your flag?”

  Keen handed his gun to the other man and dismounted on the wall side of the road; the space between the buckboard and the drop side of the road was too narrow for comfort. He walked past his team and stopped in front of Cole.

  “So you’re the hard-case freighters who aim to freight the Glory Hole stuff with a ten-team hitch, eh?”

  Cole folded his arms and leaned on the saddle horn. “That’s right.”

  “You need practice, maybe,” Keen said, laughter in his eyes.

  “That’s why we’re here.”

  “All right. Practice backin’ that hitch down to the flats. You listenin’, Juck?”

  Juck was. He yelled, “Damn you, Keen, you can’t do that! There’s a clause in every contract Craig Armin has got that says if he don’t obey flag signals the contract is void!”

  “That’s right,” Keen said smoothly, “Only read it again. It don’t mention any buckboards, does it? Maybe you didn’t notice. I’m drivin’ a buckboard, not an ore wagon.”

  “We got right of way over that!”

  “Take it if you can,” Billings retorted. He laughed dee
p in his throat. “This ought to be good. Go on back to the flats, Juck. I’d like to see it done.”

  The situation was clear enough to Cole. Juck couldn’t come up to back any play Cole might make. If Juck dismounted and tried to walk on the off side of his spans one shot from the gunnie in the buckboard would frighten the mules and Juck would go over. If he tried to walk between them or on the cliff side that same shot would get him kicked to death by the mules. Keen Billings knew it, too, and he was enjoying it. Juck was helpless back there, cursing in his impotence. Cole had to do something and do it quickly, and he could think of nothing except stalling.

  “Look, Billings,” Cole said swiftly. “A couple of hundred dollars ought to make you change your mind.”

  “A thousand wouldn’t,” Keen Billings said, laughing. “Go ahead and sweat blood for a while. I’d like to see it.”

  Cole drew out a sack of tobacco from his shirt pocket and rolled a smoke, watching Keen. He cursed himself for having come along without a gun. And he wondered what would happen if he would sink spurs in his horse. Nothing, probably, except the horse would rear up and Keen would back off. But what if there were some way to get the horse to lunge into Keen, surprising him?

  He lighted and took a deep drag from his cigarette, and he thought he had it.

  Keen was grinning at him, and Juck was silent, too concerned to curse.

  “I might raise the ante above a thousand,” Cole drawled. He extended his sack of tobacco lazily. “Smoke? It’s a peace-pipe smoke, Billings.”

  “Not from you it ain’t,” Billings said curtly. “No, thanks.”

  Cole still held the sack of tobacco out and said, smiling a little, “The Indians scalp a man for turnin’ down the peace pipe. Don’t go against your luck.”

  Gently he pulled his horse around so it was quartering to Billings.

  Billings was laughing. “I ain’t an Indian, Nephew. I don’t smoke with you not ever.”

  “Okay,” Cole said and started to pocket his tobacco. At the same time, fighting the distaste for the job, he crushed his burning cigarette into the shoulder of his horse. The horse’s instinctive reaction, as he guessed it would be, was to shy away from the pain. And that meant that he lunged forward and sideways, into Keen Billings.