Will-Joe got slowly to his feet. Reaction grabbed him; he was starting to shake all over. Once the sheriff realized he'd lost the trail, he would (knowing Ulring) swing back and comb this whole area methodically. Moving slowly now and in almost complete silence, Will-Joe slipped into the trees and quartered away into the timber opposite the direction Ulring had gone.
Long before he gave up beating around in the timber, Ulring knew it was hopeless. The kid had gotten clean away. For now. Ulring thought, but I'll find him, by Christ. Yet there was a cold glaze of fear on his mingled fury and bafflement as he headed back for Leggett's.
He'd always gone on the premise that the simplest plans were the best ones, and this particular idea had seemed foolproof. All the details had dovetailed together (in theory) as beautifully as the joints of a hand-crafted chair. The only real work involved had been driving a jag of Cross T cows across to Leggett's range. It had taken him the better part of last night, and he'd had to herd them by moonlight. The rest had been just a matter of figuring. Anse Burris's morning habit of giving his property a lookover had meant that the theft of the cows would be quickly discovered and reported. It had been a dead-sure cinch that Anse, unable to ride a horse any great distance, wouldn't undertake to trail the stolen cattle himself.
Getting Dennis McAllister to accompany him this morning had been the least of Ulring's worries. Making up a deputy's job that Dennis couldn't afford to turn down had merely meant dropping a casual mention to Bethany; the rest had gone slick as grease. There'd be no reason for anyone to doubt the story he'd give out. That they had trailed the Cross T cattle to Leggett's and found them in the timber above the place. When they'd attempted to arrest Leggett, he'd opened fire; the first shot had hit Dennis and killed him instantly. Leaving Ulring no choice but to gun Leggett down…
Coming to the timbered slope above the ranch now, Ulring halted by the brush-broken trail he had made driving the cows here last night. He hunkered down and nudged his Stetson back on his broad sweaty forehead, staring speculatively at the sign. Sure as hell. In addition to the tracks he and Dennis had made, there were fresh prints of an unshod pony.
He hadn't bothered to examine the tracks closely when he and Dennis were following them. Why bother? He'd known exactly where they led. So he hadn't noticed that at some point —maybe only minutes before he and Dennis had come along— someone else had stumbled on the trail and had been curious enough to follow it up.
"That breed bastard," Ulring said aloud. Said it as if he were chewing the words up for taste, slowly and venomously.
He hadn't been afraid often, and the quiet dribble of panic threading his guts now had shaken his cocksureness. His tongue tasted brassy. Steady does it, boy. He pressed the flinty edge of his will against the sensation and felt it ebb away.
All right. The kid knew. Who was he going to tell? Suppose he told the whole damn county—would people believe Frank Ulring or a goddam breed brat?
The startling, uneasy thought touched him that he couldn't be altogether sure of the answer. He, Frank Ulring, owned respect, but it wasn't the same as trust. Too much of the respect he'd engendered had been built on fear. It added a tricky, even precarious element to the situation.
Suppose the kid told his story to someone… anyone who could get it circulating? Not a jot of support for it beyond the kid's naked word; still it could wreck his plan. People liked to talk. And there was already a degree of amused, inevitable speculation about Frank Ulring's out-of-character kindnesses to the McAllisters. People needn't be partial to a breed's word to see that yes, by God, the sheriff had a clear motive for doing what the kid claimed. While Will-Joe Cantrell hadn't a reason that anyone could see for lying.
So it would go: not a shred of proof, nothing a court of law would take seriously. But the talk was bound to reach Bethany. She wouldn't believe it straight off, of course. Yet it wouldn't matter: once a doubt was seeded, it would grow. She'd never shed her widow's weeds for the man touched by that terrifying suspicion. Before she was even his, Bethany would be lost to him for good…
Ulring rose from his haunches and tramped on down the slope, his thoughts seething with the complications that suddenly clotted the sweet-running course he'd set. He halted by the kid's dead horse and appropriated the saddle gun from its scabbard, then continued downslope.
The kid was horseless now, weaponless too… that was one piece of luck. Or was it? Young Will-Joe Cantrell had a horse-breaking camp back in the hills—so they said. Probably he'd have other mounts there, and maybe another gun. Ulring had no idea where the camp was located, but more than one citizen of Spurlock must know. Afoot, it would take Cantrell a good spell to get back there…
Ulring's brain was ticking coolly as he crossed Leggett's yard. He walked past Dennis's sprawled body without glancing at it, halted by the porch and picked up Leggett's Winchester and fired it off once in the air. That, in case anyone thought to check the weapon later, would be the shot that had killed Dennis…
Afterward he roped Leggett's horse out of the brush corral, put on the saddle and slung Leggett's corpse over it. He lashed it tightly in place, then tied Dennis across his mount in like fashion. Mounting then, he rode away from Leggett's, leading the horses with their limp burdens.
He rode easy, not even thinking about the two bodies. All his thoughts had compressed to a hard hot focus on Will-Joe Cantrell.
Slowly he began to grin. Now there was an idea… yes sir, it should do the trick nicely. That breed bastard would never get the chance to tell a soul what he had seen at Leggett's. Not with every damned householder in the county ready to shoot him on sight…
After Will-Joe's first panic had blunted, he had made a wide circle through the timber and had come up on Leggett's place from the side. Getting hold of a gun and a mount were on his mind. There was a horse in Leggett's corral; there was Leggett's rifle on the porch by his body.
Will-Joe worked carefully through a maze of scrub cedar that bordered the outbuildings on the north side of the headquarters, keeping his eyes on the corral. To reach it, he'd have to make a dash across several hundred feet of open yard.
He was ready to try when he saw sun wink off rifle steel high on the east-facing slope above. Ulring was coming back, just emerging from the timber. Will-Joe stayed where he was, hunkered in the dense scrub. He saw Ulring halt by his dead paint and take the rifle, and proceed down the hill. When he rode out fifteen minutes later, taking along the two bodies, he left no horses or rifle behind.
Will-Joe waited a good ten minutes after the timber had swallowed the lawman, then loped across the yard to the house. He climbed the sagging porch and went inside. The interior of Leggett's shanty was a chaos of dirty junk. He made a quick search for weapons, but found nothing except a rusty .45 with a broken firing pin.
Coming outside again, he paused to look at the sticky drying darkness on the porch planks where Leggett's body had lain, also the scuffed dust of the yard where the man shot off his horse had fallen. He dully wondered who that man was: he hadn't recognized him from a distance. Above all, he wondered with a mounting bewilderment what was behind it. Why, after shooting Leggett in cold blood, had Ulring turned his rifle on his own companion?
Will-Joe went slowly across the yard, studying the ground. He did it out of a horse-trapper's instinct, not expecting to find anything of real significance. Then his gaze found something that made him kneel down for a closer inspection. That hoofprint… the two caulks and the shoe built up on the inside. The rider who'd driven off the Cross T cattle had made the same track. But had it been left by Leggett's horse?
A quick suspicion made Will-Joe cross to the corral gate. A glance at the trampled mud of the corral told him that the built-up shoe hadn't been worn by Leggett's animal.
He looked over the yard tracks again, then was sure. It had been Ulring who'd driven off those cattle and hidden them in the timber above Leggett's. But why? To make Leggett out a cow thief? If so, the question only loomed bigger than
ever. Why?
Will-Joe shivered under the hot sun, feeling a cold despondency in his guts. What could he do… and where could he go? Though his camp would no longer be safe, he had to return to it long enough to pick up another horse and a few necessities.
Afterward he'd have to stay on the move, making quick break-up camps, never remaining long in one place.
His escape from Ulring had only gained him a little time. Not enough, he bleakly knew. Not enough by a lifetime. For there was always tomorrow. There might be ten or a hundred fear-haunted tomorrows, but in the end Ulring would find him. And never rest till he did.
For Will-Joe Cantrell was the sole witness to a double murder. And the murderer had an edge that was unbeatable: he was the Sheriff of Grafton County.
Dusty pillars of afternoon shadow stretched across Spurlock's main street as Ulring rode in, leading two horses with grisly burdens. The day's heat still clung to the town like a sultry blanket; just a few people were stirring outside. These abandoned their errands or their loafing, straightening up, staring, as the sheriff jogged past.
Word should get around fast, he thought, aware that he was a little tired, his muscles layered with tension. But his thoughts had a clear smooth-running grain that pleased him. He had all the particulars of his story figured out and no real worry that any of it might provoke questions he couldn't answer.
He turned into the archway of the livery stable. Claude Warhoon was cleaning out stalls. He stopped, his lantern jaw fell, he almost dropped his long-handled shovel.
"Good God A'mighty! What you got there? Is that Dennis?"
Ulring stiffly dismounted in the runway, then walked up and down beside his horse, working the saddle kinks out, flexing his wrists. He said: "Want you to take both these bodies over to Doc Bell's… have to be an autopsy held. Then see you put the horses up."
"Yes, sir."
"After that, round up anyone you can find for a posse… spread the word. Tell 'em to meet over at the Pink Lady. I'll be along in a while."
"Yes, sir. I would sure admire to hear you say what's happened. What do I tell 'em?"
"Tell 'em Sid Leggett and an Injun kid were running off Cross T cows." Ulring began slowly peeling off his buckskin gauntlets. "Tell 'em we tracked 'em down and Dennis McAllister got killed in the line of duty. Sid's dead and the kid escaped and I'll need a posse. Get going."
Claude dropped the shovel and started for the street, his face red with excitement.
"Claude." The youth pulled up and looked at him, and Ulring said patiently, "The bodies first. Doc Bell's. The horses —put 'em up. Then spread the word."
Sheepishly, Claude came back, untied the leadropes of the corpse-bearing horses and led them out to the street.
Leaving the stable, Ulring tramped toward the street's south end and the old saddlemaker's home. Though he'd purchased the place for the McAllisters nearly three years ago, Bethany continued to make him regular payments on it, each month doling out a few dollars from her painfully eked savings. Aside from an occasional mild and token objection, he hadn't remonstrated against her insistence on paying: he understood her granite-edged pride in the matter, though she'd be twenty years paying off at this rate.
A smile flicked Ulring's broad mouth. Would have been that long, he corrected himself: Bethany would no longer be saddled with a scapegrace of a husband who gambled away half her slender earnings. Nor would she have a need for wages very soon. The thought came to him with a cool arrogance that he thought was nicely justified.
Turning up the narrow path, he halted at the door of the old saddle shop and raised his hand to knock, removing his hat first and composing his face gravely. Bethany opened the door. She must have come directly from school; she still wore the prim waist and dark skirt that was her working uniform and which she always changed for a gay frock when she got home.
"Frank… come in."
He stepped into the sala; his spurs rang flintily against the pack-clay floor. Bethany closed the door behind him, her swift glance holding on his face.
"Frank, what is it?"
He bent his head till his chin grooved tight against his throat, then raised his face, feeling only a mild irony at his own histrionics.
"Beth," he said. "Lord God."
"Please!" Her eyes turned darkly intense. "Tell me what's happened."
"It's Dennis… I took him out with me on a job. We tracked some stolen cows… found the thieves. There was gunplay. Dennis caught a bullet."
"Is he—he's not—"
"He's dead, Beth."
She was motionless, her tall body straight and Junoesque. Her usually pale complexion had gone almost bloodless. She stood that way for perhaps ten seconds, then made the small, helpless, uncertain gesture of half-turning toward the door. Ulring stopped her gently, a hand on her arm.
"I have to."
"Don't, Beth."
"I have to see him. Where is he?"
"No. He's at Doc Bell's… but don't go there, Beth. There's no need."
She pressed a palm to her face, shaking her head. When her hand lowered, her fingers had left flushed stipples in the flesh. "No," she whispered. "I don't want to go. Tell me, Frank…"
"Sit down."
He guided her to the settee. When she was seated, he pulled up an old frame-and-rawhide chair facing her and leaned forward in it, elbows on his knees. "The blame is really mine, Beth… it was all my fault. Christ!"
"What do you mean?"
"Anse Burris came in this morning to report a few cows stolen. A petty steal, maybe a dozen head; I figured some lousy squatter had lifted 'em and we'd get 'em back without much of a row. So I asked Dennis if he wanted to come along. It wouldn't be in his usual line of duty, but…"
"Oh yes." She tightly shut her eyes, then opened them. "He'd want to go. Any little charge of excitement that might offer itself…"
"We caught up with the men. There were two." Ulring stared at his big hands clasped loosely before him. "I demanded they surrender. Instead they opened fire. I got one. The other… got Dennis. And then he made it clean away."
"No… no, don't blame yourself, Frank." She gave a slight fierce shake of her head. "How could you know?" Suddenly she buried her face in her hands. "Oh—Dennis. Dennis…"
He let her weep quietly for a minute, then rose to his feet and touched her shoulder. "Beth, if there's anything. Anything at all—"
"No."
She raised her face, touching her eyes with a wisp of cambric kerchief. He watched her struggle for composure and achieve it. The New England bedrock of her nature left damned little room for self-indulgence: a steel of character that was springy, tough, unsparing of self—rich with compassion toward everyone but Bethany McAllister.
"Those men… who were they, Frank?"
Ulring seated himself again, revolving his hat between his hands and eying it solemnly. "Well, it's not easy to say."
"Oh… didn't you recognize them?"
"Didn't mean that. I knew them all right. The man I shot was Sid Leggett. I brought his body in. But he wasn't the one who killed Dennis."
"Frank—if you're holding something back from me, don't."
He gave a slow and heavy nod, lifting his eyes. "All right then. If you want to know about the one who got away, the one who killed your husband—he was a prize pupil of yours."
"A—pupil—of mine?"
"Will-Joe Cantrell."
"No." The pale shock washed back into her face. "Frank, you're mistaken. You must be!"
"No mistake. It was the Cantrell kid." He looked at his hat again. "Dennis and I tracked the Cross T cows into the timber above Leggett's place. Then we rode down to the house. Leggett and the Cantrell kid came out—both toting rifles and acting skittery. That was enough for me. I accused 'em both point-blank. They didn't even try a bluff, just started shooting. The kid got Dennis, I got Leggett, the kid made a run for his horse and broke for the timber. I dropped the horse, but the kid got away in the timber on foot. Searched awhile
, but he'd got away clean as a whistle."
Her hands lay open on her lap. She looked at them a good while, then shook her head very slowly. "I—I just can't believe it of Will-Joe."
Ulring rose and paced a slow circle of the floor; he halted facing her. "I know it isn't easy for you to accept. But how much do you really know about the boy? How much did he ever let you see?"
"I can't believe—to start with—that he's a thief."
Ulring rubbed his jaw and smiled faintly, sadly. "Why, Beth, that's the heart of it. Part Indian, isn't he? It's in the blood."
"Do you truly believe that?"
"I've had experience. Beth, look, Leggett was trash. He was an outcast; so is the kid. They'd figure the same: society owes them something for nothing. So they threw in together for a little cow-lifting."
"I don't know," she whispered. Her hands clenched suddenly together. "Oh, I'm sure it must have happened as you say, Frank. But Will-Joe! … there has to be more behind it, something we don't know—"
A repressed note in her words, her manner, made Ulring feel the full depth of her sick, stunned reaction. Her quiet iron was a deceptive kind of strength: it wouldn't let her give vent to the hysteria that would have relieved another woman. Yet she was more sensitive than most, and the kid had been her favorite of favorites: grafting his lie of Will-Joe's guilt on top of the blow of Dennis's death was nudging her toward a breaking point. Easy on it, he warned himself; give her a little slack.
"Maybe," he said carefully, "it happened this way. Kid must have been jittery to start with. He hadn't been mixed up in anything shady before—nothing we know of. He panicked and started shooting, say just at our horses. Never meant to hit Dennis. Anyway he didn't fire again—just cut and ran."
"Oh… Frank, I'm sure that's how it was! He couldn't have meant to…"
"Whatever the case was, I have to find him and bring him in. It's my duty."
Eye of the Wolf Page 5