by E. R. Slade
“Oh yes, he was owner, but ...”
“Ain’t this a good deed?”
“Yes, so far as I know, but ...”
“And that is his signature on the bill of sale, ain’t it?”
“It certainly looks like it, but ...”
“Then the store belongs to me, fair and square. Don’t it.”
“No, it doesn’t. The sale wasn’t legal because there’s a lien on the property. The ...”
“What lien?” Buck asked sharply.
“That’s what I’m trying to tell you but you keep interrupting. The Church Building Committee lien. You see, the Building Committee, of which I am the chairman, entrusted Mr. Skeetland with funds collected by way of contributions. It seemed a wise move since he has the best safe in town. And all went well until Snake Ed McFee held up Skeetland. He took the entire contents of the safe—all that was negotiable, at any rate. It was mostly in coin. Unfortunately, neither Marshal Olinger nor the county sheriff will do anything about the holdup, which undoubtedly was instigated by the cattlemen. Our only option is to get satisfaction from Skeetland. We’ve been negotiating with him about recovery.”
Buck moistened his lips, gripped the edge of the counter. “How much did you lose?” he asked in as cool a tone as he could manage.
“Nine thousand eight hundred thirty dollars.”
Buck winced. His hat seemed to be wearing at his brow and he set it on the back of his head.
“You say Snake Ed took the money in a holdup—you sure about this?”
“Oh yes. He did it in broad daylight. There were witnesses. But he’s the cattlemen’s man and runs wild.”
“Seems to me Snake Ed’s the man to go after, if he’s got your money.”
“Who’s going to take it back from him? Probably he doesn’t have it anymore anyway. It’ll be in the Stock Growers’ Association bank account in Cheyenne. There’s no prospect of getting it returned. The only thing left for us to do is take the store in satisfaction of the debt. If you want your money back, I’d suggest catching up with Skeetland. I’m afraid you’ve been taken, mister. I don’t like to think the building of our church will cost an innocent man so much, and I don’t like to see Skeetland get away with this, so I’ll ride with you.”
Buck turned it over in his mind a few times, trying to find the flaw.
“I want to see the lien.”
“I have it right here—I was coming to continue negotiations with Skeetland, hoping to settle the matter in a mutually satisfactory way.” He handed it to Buck. “But I’d suggest we ride while we talk.”
It certainly looked like a legitimate lien, but Buck was beginning to realize how little he knew about such things.
“I guess we’d better see what Skeetland says about this,” Buck said. “I’ll get my horse.”
~*~
“I never introduced myself,” said the Church Building Committee chairman as they climbed into their saddles in front of the livery. “Oliver Hastings,” he said, edging his mount nearer and holding out his hand. “That dry goods store across the street is mine.”
Buck shook the offered hand, repeating his own name, trying not to let his growing annoyance show.
“Which way did Skeetland go?” Hastings asked.
“South.”
“Must be headed for Casper. I’ve heard the trains have started to run there, but I don’t know the schedule offhand. If his train pulls out ahead of us we may never catch up with him.”
“Does he really have a sick wife back East?”
“He has a wife back somewhere, but I don’t know if she’s sick. I never heard of it.”
Buck was having trouble with the Maxwell temper. He tried to think clearly and reasonably about the thing, consider his options, think of how things must look from Hastings’ point of view. Not to mention the point of view of those who had given money for the church. But he was damned if he could see why he ought to tolerate any half-assed law that was going to take Wyoming Hardware away from him because of something Snake Ed had done.
Evidently his anger showed. When they slowed down to walk their horses after half an hour at almost a dead run, Hastings said, “No use to get mad yet. We’ve still got a chance to catch up with him.”
They had passed quite a number of homesteads on their way out town, seen land being plowed, barns being built, stock pens and fences being erected; now they left the creek and went onto open range amongst the bones left over from the big die-up.
“Not many cows on the range this year,” Hastings said. “I’ll bet the cattlemen will be a long time recovering.”
“Finished my outfit.”
“Did it.”
Perhaps it was just Buck’s mood but he thought Hastings was gloating.
“They say the range was overstocked,” Hastings said.
Buck didn’t want to talk about it, feeling he had been as much to blame as everybody else. He and Tar should have sold off a lot of stock that fall, however low the price, after such a dry summer. They’d known enough to discuss it, but not enough to do it. Trouble was, the country was so big you got to thinking there was no limit to the cattle you could run. Well, winter before last had ended that notion. They had tried to hang on for another year, but luck ran against them and Tar had decided to quit.
Buck was uncommunicative so Hastings gave up efforts at conversation. On they rode. Then, as the sun was drawing near the horizon, Buck noticed something ahead.
“That’s a man on the ground,” he said.
It turned out to be Skeetland, with a bullet hole just above his left ear. No sign of his horse.
“Guess you ain’t going to be doing no more negotiating with him,” Buck said, squatting beside the body. Skeetland wore an old Colt Navy percussion pistol, which remained in its holster. Buck pulled it out, noted that it was fully loaded, caps in place.
“Well, this is too bad,” Hastings said, sounding genuinely sorry. “Skeetland was sometimes a little sharp in his dealings—but hell, we all are one time or another.”
“Whoever did him in caught him off guard.” Buck was searching Skeetland’s pockets, knowing pretty well what wouldn’t be there—it wasn’t.
“Your money gone?” asked Hastings. He was still aboard his horse.
“Gone all right.”
“Snake Ed. I’d bet a twenty dollar gold piece. And headed for Casper to either turn it over to the cattlemen, or maybe just spend it on a high old time. Look, Mr. Maxwell, I have to get back. Got a store to run, things to do. My advice is, ride on to Casper and see if you can find Snake Ed while he still has your money.”
Until this point, Buck had managed to rein in his temper sufficiently to maintain an even, reasonable tone in his conversation. But looking up at Hastings now all he could see was a self-satisfied, soft-handed man who thought himself pious because he was chairman of a committee to build a church, but who had other things to do when it came to facing an obstacle like Snake Ed McFee.
“Appears McFee takes the gimp right out of you,” Buck observed.
Hastings’ face darkened. “Just what is it you’re implying, Maxwell?”
“Seems to me if some of you folks in town made more of a point of standing up to men like McFee you wouldn’t have had your church money stole.”
“Mr. Maxwell, I resent the implications of what you’re saying. I rode out with you to try to help you get your money back. I didn’t have to do that. This is your thanks?”
“Obliged for your help,” Buck said. “Let’s load Skeetland on behind you.”
“That’s not a good idea at all. Lord can’t stand the smell of blood. You can see how much work I have trying to hold him here. I’ll send out Dunderland—that’s the undertaker—to get Skeetland.”
“No need of that,” Buck said. “I’ll bring him.” He slung Skeetland’s body behind his saddle.
“So you’re not going after Snake Ed.”
“Nope.”
“Guess I’m not the only one he takes the
gimp out of.”
“In case you ain’t remembering, I’ve got interests in High Plains. I ain’t planning to be off on a wild goose chase while you’re taking my store away from me.”
“You really would be better advised to try to recover your money, Mr. Maxwell. The Building Committee has no choice but to take the store. It was put up as surety.”
“Hastings, I worked eighteen years for the money to buy that store. I made it the hard way, punching cows. I burned in the summer and froze in the winter, worked for weeks on end with two or three hours’ sleep a night, fought Indians, and sometimes had to shoot it out with rustlers.
“Now, you get this straight, Hastings. Wyoming Hardware didn’t come to me easy. Don’t figure on my lettin’ it go easy. You catch my meaning’?”
“If you’re threatening me, Maxwell, it won’t work. The decision isn’t mine, it’s the Committee’s. I’m only telling you what they’ll do. I’m sorry about your life savings, and I feel a bit responsible for not watching what Skeetland was up to a little closer, but the fact remains that the lien exists and that makes the store ours. I tell you again that the best bet is to go after Snake Ed.”
“I guess you got different rules in town than out on the range,” Buck said. “I’ll go by them as much as I can. But any rule that says you can hold me up for everything I own because of something somebody else done ain’t worth a mouthful of ashes, by my lights.”
“I’m sorry you take that attitude, Mr. Maxwell. I’m afraid it will cost you not only your savings but perhaps even your future.”
Buck said no more. When they found they were negotiating from the wrong end of a Colt .45—and with a man who knew how to use it—they’d back off.
Chapter Three
It was nearly midnight by the time they rode into High Plains. Hastings, with one last admonition to go after Snake Ed, went home. Buck couldn’t raise the undertaker, nor could he find Marshal Olinger, so he left Skeetland’s body in front of the coffin shop door, took care of his horse, and went back to his hardware store. All seemed well. There was a couch in the office, and having no other lodgings, he lay down there. He’d had no supper, but was too riled to be hungry.
Or sleepy, either, it turned out. After tossing and turning for an hour in the dark, he got up and went pacing around the store, trying to lay out a sensible plan of action. By something after two in the morning he finally felt tired enough to go back to the couch where he slept fitfully until the first gray light of dawn.
It was Sunday. He put on his hat and went out locking the store after himself. Some distance down the street he found a feed bin called Hilda’s. A lot of empty rough tables, an old man sitting at one down the other end near the stove, a very stout woman tending a huge pan of bacon and eggs.
“You Hilda?” Buck asked, coming near. The stove felt good in the chill of early morning and he stepped close to warm himself.
“Who else?” she said in a surly tone, barely giving him a glance. Then in a loud voice she said, “Jenny? Get your lazy ass outa bed. We got customers. Jenny! Confound the girl. She’d be better off a whore, the hours she keeps.”
Jenny failed to appear or even make any sound and Hilda went on grumbling and muttering to herself. Buck waited for a pause, then asked if any of the bacon and eggs were for sale.
“Well, I ain’t fryin’ ’em to feed to the hogs!” she said, as though deeply insulted.
A couple more men appeared, sat at one or another of the tables quietly. Feeling well enough warmed, Buck went and sat down also. In a minute or so Hilda slapped half the contents of a large frying pan onto one plate, half onto another, and plunked them before Buck and the old man. Then she went back to the stove, hollering again for Jenny.
“Wonder what’s happened to her helper?” Buck said, to open a conversation with the man at his elbow, a gaunt fellow of about thirty who looked like a cowpoke down on his luck.
“Huh?” The man seemed caught off guard. “Oh, you mean Jenny?” He scratched the stubble on his chin with a hand that shook slightly. “She’s dead more’n a year now. Hilda’s got a little strange since, but she still can cook good.”
“I didn’t have any idea. I just got to town yesterday.”
“It ’uz too bad about Jenny. She got mixed up with Snake Ed McFee.”
“Snake Ed? Tell me about it.”
“Well, Snake Ed used to come here and got to looking at Jenny—and Jenny was worth lookin’ at, you know. Anyway, pretty soon they was thick as could be and Jenny thought she had Snake Ed all to herself. Well, course she didn’t, not Snake Ed. So sooner or later it had to happen she’d see him with a saloon girl, and Jenny had a hot temper and got after Snake Ed about it, right out in the street. And she slapped his face, too. That made him mad, and next morning Jenny’s body turned up in a pile of hoss shit behind the livery, a pretty battered up sorry sight. Hilda was always a little odd about things, but seeing Jenny that way pushed her over the edge.”
“McFee seems to be a general all around no-good, from what I’m hearing. Why hasn’t somebody had enough of him by now?”
“Where you from, mister?”
“Bighorn country.”
“Well, Snake Ed’s mean, but the big cattlemen like him, pay him to keep the rustlers thinned out. He does that, all right, but he ain’t too discriminatin’ as to who’s a rustler and who’s just somebody he don’t happen to feel like lookin’ at that minute.”
“We never needed his type to keep the rustlers off our range. I’d like to know what kind of cattlemen would keep Snake Ed on the payroll. It don’t square with the men I know.”
“Well, the kinds that lives in Cheyenne has lots of money and lives like kings, but they don’t only go look at their ranches except in the summertime. Lots of big money from England and Yourope running cattle.”
“I’ve heard that.”
The bacon and eggs went down easily and he had seconds, then paid up and left. The undertaker had opened his shop and was setting out sample coffins for display.
“You Dunderland?”
“I am.”
“Found Skeetland?” Buck asked him.
The undertaker was a wiry little man with an eye which automatically traveled over Buck’s big frame as though measuring him for a coffin. He said, “So that was you. Who’s going to pay?”
Buck was tempted to say Hastings would, but thought better of it. “I will. I bought his store. Buck Maxwell’s the handle.”
“Right, Mr. Maxwell. I’ll take twenty-five dollars for the job, payable in advance.”
Buck dug out his much-reduced sack of savings, gave the undertaker the money in coin. Dunderland eyed him doubtfully, tested the coins by biting them, then shoved them into a pocket.
“Coffin’s extra,” he said. “Pick one out.”
Buck’s eyes narrowed. “I ain’t paying for extras. I noticed a beat old trunk in the back room of my store. That’ll do fine.”
Muscles in the undertaker’s cheeks tightened. “You don’t want to do that,” he said. “If I haul Skeetland through town in an old trunk you’ll never hear the end of it. A simple pine coffin’s only fifteen dollars.”
“Tell you what. I’ll give you ten for the coffin, five for a hole in the ground, five for the ride in your hearse, and five for a headboard. That’s fair—that’s more than fair. I could probably find a man to dig the grave for fifty cents.”
“Mr. Maxwell, I have regular set prices for what I do. Either you want me to do the funeral or you don’t.”
“Course I want you to do it, or I wouldn’t be here. But I can afford just so much. If twenty-five dollars don’t pay for a coffin I’ll bring over the trunk. It don’t bother me any what kind of a box Skeetland’s remains rot away in. Be back in ten minutes.” Buck turned away.
“Wait a minute, Mr. Maxwell,” the undertaker said, and Buck stopped, a faint smile on his lips—the first since Hastings had walked into his store yesterday.
Buck turned where he was—half int
o the muddy street—made the undertaker come to him.
“I do have a coffin that I believe would fit Mr. Skeetland. It was made for someone else, but he didn’t die and has since moved away. I could let you have that for, say, five dollars?”
“That’s still five dollars more than the trunk,” Buck pointed out. “I’ll just go and get it.” And he started to turn away again.
“Mr. Maxwell, wait a moment. Come into my shop. I have another idea.”
Over his shoulder, Buck asked, “Less expensive than the trunk?”
“Perhaps,” Dunderland said, his voice getting smooth, oily, soothing. “Just step into my shop where we can talk business in more comfort.”
Buck followed Dunderland into the somewhat dim interior, which smelled rather pleasantly of freshly worked pine. A couple of coffins were under construction on sawhorses.
“Here’s what I can do for you. I’ll put Skeetland into this coffin I was just telling you about, and I’ll make arrangements for burial and for the preacher, but I’ll omit the customary viewing announcement and visiting hours. We’ll proceed straight to the funeral proper.”
“For twenty-five dollars?”
The undertaker hesitated—it was plain he felt he’d been bested in the deal. “For twenty-five dollars,” he said.
“Well, that saves me lugging the trunk over here. It’s a deal. But be sure to let Olinger have a look before you go ahead with the funeral.”
“How about two o’clock tomorrow afternoon?”
“Fine with me.”
Buck stepped back outside and nearly ran into a woman about to come into the shop.
“Excuse me,” she said, and stepped back.
“Ma’am,” he said, automatically lifting his hat. Then he recognized her as the woman whose husband had been shot yesterday by Snake Ed. “How are you this morning, ma’am?” he asked.
“Very well, thank you,” she said firmly, but not too convincingly.
“You were right about Olinger. Have you thought of trying the county sheriff?”
“It wouldn’t do any good. I’ll be leaving by noon today. I have come to get my husband’s body.”