Dead Freight for Piute

by Short, Luke;

  “I didn’t think it would take you this long to get here,” he said as he shook hands with them.

  Ted grinned and said, “We came up to weep over the Monarch’s hard luck.”

  “Don’t laugh,” Girard warned them good-humoredly. “I’ve got a hunch you’ll be in the same spot.”

  “Well, that’s what we came for,” Ted said. “We’re goin’ to try it day after tomorrow. Ten wagons, twenty-ton load and two trips, sunrise to dark.”

  Girard shook his head. “I hope you make it. I really do. Because if you do then my directors will quit hounding me to get the ore moved and let me alone.”

  “Have you got the ore there ready to load?” Cole asked.

  Girard nodded and said dryly, “The same ore I had ready to load on the Monarch wagons this mornin’—minus eighteen tons.”

  “Then have a crew there early day after tomorrow,” Ted said, “because we’ll swing it, Girard.”

  They talked a moment longer and then left. At the door Girard wished them good luck as they went.

  Going down the hall, Cole was figuring. Day after tomorrow they would be up at three, so that they would hit the China Boy road at daybreak. The last of the wagons, working on night shift at the Lord Peter, could be left at the mill and be checked by the mill’s blacksmith soon afterward. The mules would already be fed and rested. Tomorrow, then, would be the day to pick the drivers and get them ready to go.

  They were at the stair well, and Cole stepped aside to let Ted go first. Ted went ahead, and Cole took the first step.

  And then something rammed into Cole’s back that sent him kiting into Ted, slamming into him with every ounce of his hundred and seventy-five pounds.

  The force of that blow never gave them a chance to catch their balance. Cole grabbed wildly for the rail and missed. The force of Cole’s impact into Ted had bowed Ted’s back, and then he fell sprawling on his face down the steep steps. His momentum pin-wheeled his body in a slow arc and he crashed onto the floor below with an impact that shook the stairs. And Cole, helplessly following, fell on him a moment later.

  It was Cole who moved first, dragging himself to his knees, head hung, gagging for breath. Ted was lying on his face, motionless. Someone attracted by the racket had come out of a nearby room, and he and Cole reached Ted at the same time.

  Cole, still half stunned from the fall, turned Ted over. Ted was unconscious, Cole saw, through a haze of pain, and then noticed that when Ted was turned his right leg lay at an awkward angle.

  The stranger put it into words. “Handle him easy. His leg’s broken.”

  8

  By the time they had carried Ted over to the rooms above the office both Sheriff Linton and the doctor had arrived. Cole shooed the curious out of the room and then went back into the bedroom, where Celia was waiting while the doctor examined Ted. Sheriff Linton, always tactful, was in the kitchen conversing with Letty Burns in low tones. The doctor, a small, dry man with a professorial beard and a racking case of hiccoughs, straightened up and told Celia, “I think it’s just concussion from the fall. Skull isn’t fractured. And, of course, a broken leg.” He turned to Cole. “I’ll need splints.” And he described them, hiccoughing as he talked.

  Celia, tight-lipped and wide-eyed, looked at Cole from the other side of the cot, and there was pure misery in her eyes. There was nothing Cole could say to her, and he turned and went down into the compound, crossed the alley into the wagon yard and went over to a pile of lumber.

  When he stooped to pick up the boards he felt a sudden and painful twinge in his shoulder. He had been afraid of that, and he cursed soundlessly. Since the fall his left arm had been numb, and something in the back of his mind had told him not to try and use the arm for a while. He flexed his fingers and found he could move them. It was all right then, and he went back up the stairs, his face set against the quiet, constant pain in his shoulder.

  Both Celia and Cole helped the doctor set the leg, and Ted only stirred fitfully under the pain. When it was finished the doctor left, and Celia and Cole went out into the kitchen where Letty and Sheriff Linton were.

  Letty Burns came over and said, “Is there anything I can do, Celia?”

  Celia only smiled and said there wasn’t, and Letty Burns thanked her and said good night. As she was going out she said, “I suppose you won’t want me to start work tomorrow, Mr. Armin?”

  “Yes,” Cole said. “Good night.” Letty Burns went out, leaving Sheriff Linton with them. Cole and Sheriff Linton regarded each other like two wary dogs, each remembering the other night, of Cole’s escape with the money.

  “I’ll only take a moment,” Linton said briskly. “Armin, how did Wallace happen to fall?”

  “I was at the top of the stairs, and Ted was ahead of me. Somebody—I didn’t see anyone or hear anybody—kicked me in the back. I slammed into Ted and we both fell down the stairs. Ted broke my fall, or I’d have a broken leg, too, I reckon.”

  “I see,” Sheriff Linton said, considering, plucking his lower lip. “Any motive for anybody doing it?”

  Cole’s sober eyes held Sheriff Linton’s for a long moment. “Does anyone in this man’s town need a motive for committin’ any crime, Sheriff?”

  Sheriff Linton flushed. “There is a lawless element here, I grant you. But we do our best.”

  “When it suits you,” Cole said quietly.

  He and Sheriff Linton regarded each other carefully. There was a cold and wicked anger in Cole’s gray eyes, and in the sheriff’s there was a searching, resentful curiosity.

  “Very well,” Sheriff Linton said meagerly. “I don’t do anything if you won’t co-operate.”

  “I’ll co-operate,” Cole murmured. “Lord knows, it’s plain enough to every man in the street by now what happened. The Monarch wanted the China Boy contract. They couldn’t cut the mustard. Now we got the wagons and enough teamsters we aimed to try it. All of a sudden Wallace is shoved downstairs and his leg is broken.” He didn’t smile then. “By a strange coincidence, Sheriff, Ted Wallace is one of our best teamsters. Now you go on from there.”

  “You’re implying,” Sheriff Linton said, “that Monarch was interested in keeping Ted Wallace from making the try?”

  “Not implyin’; I’m tellin’ you.”

  Celia watched his face. The muscles along his jawline were standing out, and there was a kind of downbearing anger in his eye that was still under control.

  “Nonsense,” Sheriff Linton said in his best manner. From him this one word was the ultimate in ridicule.

  “That’s all, Sheriff, except one thing,” Cole drawled. “Western Freight has got a job to do, and we aim to do it. But when we get that job done there’s goin’ to be trouble. I keep a tally book in the back of my mind. It’s addin’ up. Tell Monarch that.”

  “You’ll answer for any trouble that starts then,” Linton said crisply.

  “Starts, hell. I’ll finish it!”

  Linton lounged erect, bowed stiffly to Celia and left the house. They could hear his measured footsteps as he descended the outside stairs.

  Celia said then, “You’ve made him angry, Cole.”

  Cole’s sultry gaze shifted to her, and slowly the anger in his gray eyes died. “I reckon,” was all he said.

  Celia went in to look at Ted, and Cole remained where he was, leaning against the cold stove, his eyes soberly musing. This had him baffled, this town, its law, its politics. He could understand Sheriff Linton’s reluctance in refusing to handle anything as hot as the arrest of Craig Armin for stage robbery. Any sheriff anywhere would feel the same. He could also understand, though not approve, of the sheriff’s glib acceptance of Craig Armin’s story that the safe was blown by Ted Wallace, a logical suspect. But this tonight, the sheriff’s refusal to believe any wrong of the Monarch, was the tip-off. It told Cole that he could never expect help, only hindrance, from the sheriff’s office, and that in the end this would be a matter for cold steel and hot lead to settle, with Sheriff Linton again
st him.

  And that thought placed the situation squarely before him. The Western Freight Company was now his responsibility. It was in the thick of a fight, expanding, crowding its luck, taking risks and bucking long odds—and Ted Wallace, the man who knew it and could pull it through, was flat on his back and would be for a long time. And he, Cole Armin, with no experience except an ability to read a man carefully and then act accordingly, was left to take up the reins. He couldn’t even back out, for there was Celia to consider. But couldn’t he? Wasn’t that better than bluffing and losing in the long run?

  Cole tramped slowly into Ted’s bedroom. Ted was sleeping now, and Celia pulled the covers up to his shoulders. Then she leaned her back against the wall, hands behind her, and raised her glance to Cole.

  “What will we do, Cole?” she asked.

  Cole was ashamed of what he had come in there to say to her. He never said it. Something in Celia Wallace’s face stopped him. It was the look of trust that was in her eyes, and it told him better than words that she was putting all she had in his hands. He was a humble man really, but he forgot that when he studied her.

  “Do?” he echoed, and his voice was low, strong, confident. “We’ll do what we aimed to do all along, Celia. Tomorrow Ted will be able to talk. He can run the business from his bed, and I’ll see his orders carried out. As for the China Boy trial—well, Ted never claimed he was the best teamster in Piute, did he?”

  “No,” Celia said slowly.

  “Then we’ll hire the best. And I’ll ride herd on him with a gun in his ear if I have to.”

  Celia laughed then, but her laugh was quavery, and Cole knew that she was close to breaking. He added, with more confidence then he felt, “You get Ted well, Celia. I’ll take care of Western.”

  But it was two long hours after he was in bed before he slept. He stared at the ceiling, beating his brains for a way out. He knew so little about this business, so damned little! Were there other good teamsters? Could they be trusted? Would Girard back out when he found Ted was flat on his back?

  A thousand questions such as these finally put him to sleep.

  Sheriff Linton left the Wallaces, still smarting under Cole Armin’s threat—for it was a threat. But behind his irritation was a wholehearted disgust for Keen Billings, his partner. Why had Keen risked such a fool trick as this affair in the hotel? It was clumsy and risky and it might have killed both Cole Armin and Ted Wallace, the two people most necessary to their plan.

  Sheriff Linton went over to the Cosmopolitan House bar. Keen Billings wasn’t there. Patiently, then, he started the round of the saloons. In half an hour he found Keen. He was playing poker in one of the back rooms of Womack’s Keno Parlor. When Billings saw Linton open the door he excused himself without having to be asked and joined the sheriff in the corridor under the gallery of the saloon.

  “Come out in back,” Linton said brusquely.

  Together they sought the alley behind the saloon. Once in the darkness and alone, Sheriff Linton turned on Billings.

  “What kind of a ham-fisted play are you pulling off, Keen?” Linton asked hotly.

  “Me?” Keen said just as hotly. “I was aimin’ to ask you the same thing. What did it get us?”

  For a moment Sheriff Linton’s surprise made him speechless. Then he said, “I’m talking about shovin’ Ted Wallace down the stairs.”

  “So am I! Why’d you do it?”

  “Why did I do it? I didn’t, you fool!”

  Of one accord they moved together into the rectangle of light shining from one of the saloon’s back rooms. Once there, they looked at each other carefully. There was surprise and protest on both their faces.

  “Wait a minute,” Linton said. “You mean to tell me you weren’t up there on the third flood inside that end room? You didn’t shove Armin?”

  “So help me,” Keen swore, “I ain’t been out of that chair in there all night, Ed. Ask the boys.”

  “And I was at the faro table in the Cosmopolitan House when it happened,” Linton said slowly. “I can prove that too.”

  They were speechless for a moment, and then Keen framed the question: “Then who did shove them?”

  Linton shrugged, watching him. “I know one thing though. Both of them might have been killed by that fall. And where would we be if they were?” The suspicion was not wholly gone from his face.

  “We’d be plumb out of luck,” Keen said sulkily. There was suspicion on his face too. “You damn well better get to work on that, Linton. That come close to costin’ us.”

  “I intend to.”

  There was a long pause, during which neither of them voiced his doubts of the other. They were each suspecting a double cross of some kind on the part of the other, but one thing confounded them: how could this accident help either of them?

  Keen Billings spoke first, maybe because suspicion died first in him. “All right. You didn’t do it, and I didn’t do it. But it’s done.” He paused. “It comes to me, Ed, that maybe it helped us after all.”

  “How?”

  “Ted Wallace had been to see Girard, hadn’t he, about tryin’ for the China Boy contract tomorrow or the day after?”

  “Yes. That’s what Girard said.”

  “And Ted’s got to drive one of the teams. He’s got ten wagons and maybe nine good teamsters—no more.”

  “Well?”

  “That fall put Wallace out. He’ll need another teamster.”

  “Then he’ll get one.”

  “But what if he can’t get one?” Keen murmured.

  After a moment’s pause Linton smiled and shook his head. “But there are lots of free teamsters in Piute, Keen.”

  “But if there ain’t?”

  “Then Western can’t even make a try for the contract. But you can’t buy every teamster off.”

  Keen Billings’ eyes were musing. He smiled slowly and said, “Not without money, no. But Craig Armin has the money. And he’ll put it up to see Western lose that contract.” He waved easily. “So long, Ed.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “I got an idea, Ed. I’ll hunt you up tonight if it works.” His face grew a little bit hard then. “You just do your sheriffin’ and let me worry about this.”

  They parted there, Keen Billings heading down the alley, Sheriff Linton going into the saloon. But in the back of both their minds the seed of doubt had been placed. Could he trust his partner? And if he could, then who shoved Ted Wallace down those stairs? And that led them both to ask another question.

  Was there somebody else in on this? Who was it then, and what did he want out of it?

  9

  Juck was sitting on the bottom step of the stairs at daylight when Cole, having already breakfasted while Ted and Celia slept, came out.

  Juck was dressed in clean clothes for once, his thick chest straining the buttons on his red calico shirt. When Cole came to a halt beside him Juck said gloomily, “I heard. He’s all right, ain’t he?”

  Cole nodded grimly. “Juck, this is up to you and me now. Girard will have the ore ready tomorrow. We’ve got the wagons. How many teamsters?”

  Juck said promptly. “Nine. No more, with Ted out.”

  “But can’t you find another? What about the crew on day shift?”

  Juck shook his head. “We’re just breakin’ ’em in, Cole. Like you. They’re good boys on small wagons but not for this job.”

  “Isn’t there a teamster in town you could hire, say for a bonus for this job and a month’s wages until Ted is up?”

  “I dunno,” Juck said skeptically. “We can sure as hell try. We got a whole day to find a good man.”

  “Then come on.”

  This early the streets of Piute held less people than at other times. Smoke lay in a thin blanket above the town, fogging the air of the cloudless desert sky, for the day shift of mines started at six and this was the smoke from breakfast fires. The stores were not open yet, but the saloons were still going and the sounds of carousing inside
were just as strong and just as dreary as they had been at midnight. Only the faro barker had retired, with no more prey in sight.

  Juck headed for the Desert Dust first, saying that the boys driving day shift always came in at this hour for their eye openers.

  The lamps of the Desert Dust were still going, and there might have been thirty customers, all with dinner pails, lining the bar. Juck looked at the crowd critically and then bellied roughly up to the bar, poking his neighbor in the back. “Where’s all the boys?” he asked him.

  For answer the teamster pointed to a blackboard leaned against the backbar. On it was chalked the legend:

  All teamsters wanting work at $8.00 a

  day report at Monarch offices at 3 A.M.

  Juck spelled it out slowly and then looked at Cole. Craig Armin had outsmarted them once again. Then Juck yelled to the barkeep. “Harry, how many of the boys went out with Monarch?”

  “Any damn man that knowed the front end of a mule from the hind end,” Harry said.

  “Joe Humphries?”

  “He went.”

  “Arch Masters?”

  “Gone.”

  Juck called off a dozen names, and they all had gone. Finally Juck growled, “Gimme a bottle and two glasses. I got to think.”

  He took the bottle and glasses over to the table, and Cole sat down beside him. Cole refused a drink; Juck took two, prodded his hat off his head and stared out the window. Cole felt helpless, for this was Juck’s play. Presently Juck gave him a name. Cole wrote it down. He wrote down more names, and when Juck confessed that that was all he or anybody else could think of Cole looked at the list. There were ten names.

  “Mind you,” Juck said, “I kin git you men who can cuss a mule. But they’d puke the first time they looked at that drop off the China Boy road. I’m talkin’ about teamsters, not hired drivers for livery rigs.”

  They split up the list, got horses at the wagon yard and went their separate ways. Cole’s way took him up to the Six Aces mine, to two boardinghouses, one of which had moved, to the back room of a barbershop, to two saloons, to a tent at the edge of town, to three gambling joints, back to a barbershop and out to the Sierra Negras stamp mill. By noon he had canceled every name off his list. Two of the men on his list had taken the Monarch offer; one was sick; one had moved over the mountains, and the other had picked up a job on the California run the night before. Still it wasn’t hopeless, for Juck had his half the list.