Wyoming Hardware (An E. R. Slade Western Book 3)

by E. R. Slade

  “Town’s across the river,” he told her. “Wade over and hide somewhere. I’m going across later this evening and I’ll try to find out when the next train is.”

  “I’ll be all wet,” she said. “And that’ll make me cold. Can’t I ride with you?”

  “Thought you didn’t like to ride.”

  “I can if I have you to hang onto.”

  “All right,” he said wearily. “Go downstream out of sight and wait. I’ll be along when I can.”

  Once supper was over Buck crossed the Platte, rode south a couple of hundred yards, then forded back across.

  “I thought you weren’t comin’,” she complained as she climbed up behind him.

  As they started into the river she hung on for dear life, then kept holding on that way even once they were safe on the other bank.

  The brand new town of Casper consisted of two rows of intermingled tents and false fronts. There were cowhands in town, their horses at hitch rails. Buck halted at the east end.

  “I don’t see any place likely here,” he said. “Let’s go look around the railroad station. Assuming there is one.”

  “Couldn’t we stay in a hotel? We’ll just say I’m Mrs. Maxwell. It would be a lot more comfortable.”

  “Can’t do that. I have to get back to my cows.”

  “Are you scared of Snake Ed’s threats?” she asked, nearly a taunt. When he didn’t respond, she asked in a different tone, “Do you think he followed us?”

  “No. But there may be other problems in this town. You can find yourself a hotel if you want to, but it’s taking a risk. Anybody who sees you is somebody could tell Snake about it.”

  “If we took a room in a hotel together, nobody would pay any attention to me.”

  “I doubt that,” Buck murmured, trying to ignore the warmth of her pressed against him.

  “Don’t you want me to pay you back for rescuing me?”

  “You will when you tell me who Snake Ed works for, and what’s happened to the money he stole.”

  “We’ll have all night to talk about it in comfort if we stay in a hotel.”

  “I think you ought to put safety above comfort for one night. But suit yourself. You want to get down here, or shall we go see if there’s someplace around the railroad station to hide? What do you want to do?”

  “If I sleep on the ground my dress will get all dirty and I won’t look much like a lady getting on the train. Everybody will know what I am.” She was getting her resentful tone.

  “It ain’t your clothes that makes you what you are,” he said.

  She was silent for a bit; then she pulled close to him, put her head against the back of his shoulder, and began sobbing.

  “Never mind,” he said uncomfortably. “I didn’t mean nothing by it.”

  She tightened her grip. “I don’t care where I sleep,” she sobbed. “It don’t matter at all.”

  ~*~

  There being no likely place around the railroad depot, Buck found her a way into the rear of a livery stable. The owner lived in a tent nearby, but by going along the other side of a makeshift corral they could get in and out fairly easily. He settled her in a remote corner of the hayloft, long-faced and silent, and went back to the depot to read the posted train schedule.

  “Ten thirty-five in the morning,” he told her when he returned. “If I were you I’d stay right here. Do you have a watch?”

  “No.” As though she didn’t care if she did or didn’t.

  “Then I’ll come get you. But I’ll bring you something to eat before that and we’ll talk. All right?”

  She didn’t say anything.

  “You’re welcome,” he said, and left.

  ~*~

  “How’re things in town?” Payson asked.

  “Hard to say.”

  Payson gave him a look as though he suspected something.

  The hell with it if he did. This was going to wind up in a gunfight sooner or later anyway. Probably should have been doing things Payson’s way right along.

  Nobody showed up to bother them that night and once everybody had had breakfast Buck led the wagons across the river to find the carload of machinery, leaving Payson watching the cows.

  Buck signed for the shipment, the station agent broke the seal, and they rolled open the doors.

  “Now looky there!” one of the farmers exclaimed.

  The dazzle of so much new equipment made them eager as small boys in a toyshop. Work-gnarled hands caressed iron wheels and smooth wooden parts. Then they took firm hold and rolled, slid, or carried the stuff into the wagons.,

  “I’ll be back,” Buck said.

  With a ticket to Cheyenne, some buttered corn bread, and a dipper of water, Buck went to the livery stable. He paused at the bottom of the ladder listening to the low murmur of indistinguishable voices coming from the other end of the building. Then he climbed into the loft.

  Laurie was asleep, her dress twisted around awkwardly. The proud magnificence of her business assets was hard to miss. For a moment he half wished he’d stayed the night with her— until a vivid memory of Mary Ellen’s presence reminded him what a real woman was.

  What would she think of Laurie? Would she look down on her? Hate her? Be happy to see her leave town? Or would she sympathize with her?

  Would she think well of him if she knew he was helping Laurie escape Snake Ed? Would she think he had made use of Laurie’s services?

  If she thought he had, would that finish him in her eyes for good?

  There was so much he didn’t know about her. And as things looked now, he never would.

  Laurie stirred, stretched luxuriously, then opened her eyes into a slight unsurprised smile as though she’d known he was there all along.

  “Morning,” he said.

  For answer she stretched again, in a calculatedly provocative way, letting out a deep sigh.

  “I’ve got your ticket,” he said.

  “Mmmm—mmmmmmmm. Come sit with me.”

  “I’d have brought you coffee but I was afraid somebody might smell it,” he said, holding out the cornbread and water, still standing.

  “Cornbread!” she said suddenly. “I love cornbread. You’re saving my life, do you know that?”

  “Why do you think Snake was going to kill you?”

  “He just would have. Sooner or later. That’s what happened to all the others.”

  “No special reason?”

  “Oh, sit! I’m hungry.”

  He squatted, just near enough to hand her the corn bread and water. She put them down with the dispatch of a cowhand.

  “You were going to say?” he asked.

  “Where’s the ticket? Did you bring it?”

  When he handed it to her she examined it so carefully he guessed she probably couldn’t read.

  “That will take you as far as Cheyenne,” he said.

  She nodded.

  “You’re in Casper. You’ve got your ticket. Tell me about Snake Ed.”

  Her face grew long. “What do you want to know?”

  “What he does with the money he steals.”

  She frowned. “He don’t really tell me very much. But I think he takes it here to a man he works for.”

  “What’s his name?”

  “Paul Fosdick.”

  “What do you know about Fosdick? Who does he work for?”

  She looked surprised. “The cattlemen.”

  “What cattlemen?”

  “Why, all of them, I guess.”

  “You mean the Stock Growers’ Association?”

  “That’s the cattlemen, ain’t it?”

  “This is important. Think about it. Does Snake talk about the Stock Growers’ Association or just the cattlemen?”

  “He never talks that much to me at all. He’s got something else on his mind, mostly.” Her brow furrowed sourly.

  “So you can’t remember whether he ever talks about the Stock Growers’ Association?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t think s
o. He just talks about how the sodbusters is all rustlers and varmints and how they got to be cleaned out of the country.”

  “Does this fellow Fosdick live here in Casper?”

  “I guess so.”

  “Where would I find him?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Don’t know if he does anything besides boss Snake Ed?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Is there anything else you can tell me about Snake Ed? Does he have any family other than his nephew?”

  “No.”

  “All he does is hunt rustlers for the cattlemen?”

  “That’s all I ever heard about.”

  “Is he ever broke?”

  “Not really.”

  “How much money have you seen him with?”

  “I never see his money. He pays Kate.”

  “Then Kate pays you?”

  “Yes—what’s that?”

  The ladder at the other end of the loft was creaking. Laurie scooted close to Buck, buried her face in his shoulder.

  Over the hill of hay appeared a burly, bearded man.

  “I thought I heard something,” the man said. “Get outa there. You want to fool with your whore, mister, you do it in somebody else’s hayloft. Now git.”

  “I don’t take to men calling my sister a whore,” Buck said. “You can’t spare room in your hayloft for a grieving widow woman until the ten thirty-five train leaves we won’t trouble you any longer. Come on, Bessie.”

  The liveryman stood frowning, his hands on his hips.

  Laurie started sobbing.

  “Yeah, well, if that’s all it is,” the fellow said uncertainly. “I get these cowhands up here all the time. Toss their smokes into the hay. I’m lucky this place ain’t burned flat.”

  “I don’t smoke,” Buck said. “I can guarantee we won’t burn your barn down.”

  “All right,” said the liveryman. “But only until that train pulls in. After that, you git.” He turned around and climbed over the pile out of sight. They could hear him tossing down some hay, then going down the ladder.

  Laurie pulled herself closer, nuzzling his neck.

  “Don’t you want me?” she murmured. When he didn’t react, she undid the top button of his shirt, slid her hand in to finger the hair on his chest. “I’m pretty good, you know.”

  Buck pushed her away.

  “Thank you kindly for the offer, ma’am,” he said. “But it ain’t right.” He stood up.

  She determinedly started to undo her dress. “Snake Ed will never know,” she said. “If that’s what you’re scared of.”

  “That’s not it,” Buck said, turning to leave. “I’ll be back at about ten fifteen.”

  “Buck,” she called after him, a little panicky. “Don’t leave me alone. Stay with me.”

  “Can’t,” he said, careful not to look around.

  It wasn’t until he was outside walking away from the rear of the building and heard her calling to the liveryman that it occurred to him that what she was after was a grubstake.

  Chapter Eighteen

  When Buck arrived at the yards of the Stock Exchange, the first man he saw was a pinch-faced fellow going from cow to cow in a holding pen. A brand inspector.

  “Empty looking stockyards,” Buck said.

  “Ain’t going to be much more to ship this year than last. Not that anybody ever shipped from here before.” The brand inspector drew on his hand-rolled cigarette, squinting at Buck through the smoke.

  “Buyer around?” Buck asked.

  The brand inspector sized him up.

  “Took a little claim somewhere, did you?”

  “Not really. That fellow over there the owner?” Near another pen fifty feet away a stout man in broadcloth chewed on a cigar and pondered some cows. He fitted the description given by a cowhand Buck had inquired of in one of the saloons. He was not wearing a gun.

  “Can’t sell nothin’ ain’t in the brand book, you know,” said the brand inspector.

  Buck merely nodded, walked along the pens to the stout man.

  “Handy having the railroad closer,” Buck observed.

  “Closer but no cheaper,” said the stout man gruffly.

  “Your name Paul Fosdick?”

  The stout man eyed him. “That’s right.”

  “Own the Stock Exchange?”

  “That’s right.”

  “I’m looking to sell a few head.”

  “How few?” The wrinkles around the cigar made it look as though it had grown in Fosdick’s mouth.

  “Forty-one head. Pretty good shape.”

  “Where?”

  “Down along the river on the other side.”

  “You drive ’em over, I’ll take a look.”

  “All right,” Buck said. “What pen should I use?”

  “Don’t matter.”

  Buck rode across the river, found the cattle grazing peacefully and Payson playing a Jew’s harp.

  “Time to move ‘em,” Buck said. “This is where we find out if I’ve been blackballed.”

  They hazed the cattle into the river and over to the stockyards, the brand inspector watching wordlessly, hands on his hips. Fosdick took the cigar out of his mouth to say, “I never knowed there was a ranch in this Territory punching played-out milk cows.”

  “These here are better looking animals than what you’ve got in the pens already,” Buck countered. He and Payson herded the cattle into the nearest pen and closed the gate. The brand inspector crushed out a butt on the ground and went in to look them over.

  “I’ll give you nine dollars a head for them,” Fosdick said. “That’s it.”

  “I never heard of Box TC,” the brand inspector said, climbing out of the pen. “But I’ll go look in the book.” He went off toward a little building sixty yards away with the word “office” over the door.

  “I had in mind something nearer fifteen,” Buck said. “I thought I’d drive more down here from time to time. But I won’t bother for nine dollars.”

  “They’re just milk cows. They ain’t beef, not really. Channel Island stock, a lot of what you got—no good for beef. If you got some beef I’ll think about fifteen, but not for these.”

  “Maybe I’d best find a different buyer,” Buck said, and made as if to turn away.

  “Not in this town you won’t.”

  “I don’t care if I sell them in this town,” Buck said.

  “I do see a couple I might give you as much as eleven fifty for.” ’em

  “I might take twelve fifty a head for the lot to save driving someplace else, but otherwise I’m not interested.”

  “You won’t get a better price than I’m offering. And you’ll have to drive to Cheyenne to get anything at all.”

  “Maybe, maybe not. All I know is that these are better than the usual run this spring, and the way I hear, prices are running two or three dollars a hundred. There ain’t a cow in there less than six hundred pounds, and most of ’em are over seven hundred. By my figuring I should be getting no less than twelve, and probably more like fifteen. And that’s losing money.”

  “Not for yellow-carcass milk cows. Nobody wants them. And I don’t see nothing over six fifty.”

  The brand inspector came out of the office, but he went around the corner and disappeared. Buck didn’t like the look of that.

  “They ain’t more than two or three in there with any Channel Island blood,” Buck protested, mostly to keep the conversation going. “And I still say they look better than what you got here already.”

  “Who says I paid the sort of money you’re talking about for those?”

  “What are you, trying to put the stock growers out of business? You won’t have any stock to buy if you don’t pay more than that.”

  “Well, it ain’t my fault. I got shipping charges to think of. The confounded railroad keeps hikin’ the rates. And the price in Chicago ain’t anything to get excited about these days. You may be right we’ll all be out of business if this kee
ps up because there ain’t nobody but the railroad makes any money at these prices.”

  Payson nudged Buck, but Buck had already seen them. Coming around the corner of the office with the brand inspector was Sheriff Markham. Fosdick noticed, too, and they stood waiting with no more conversation.

  The brand inspector pointed at the stock when the two men approached, and the sheriff glanced into the pen, nodded, and faced Buck, thick knots forming in his cheeks just under his eyes.

  “I’m confiscating this stock for the Association,” said the brand inspector. “Box TC is a rustler brand.”

  “How much you want?” Fosdick asked the brand inspector, not even glancing at Buck.

  “Seven fifty,” the brand inspector said, without hesitation.

  And equally without hesitation out came Fosdick’s wallet.

  “Nobody confiscates any stock of mine,” Buck said, feeling the anger rising in him like a gully washer. He quelled the next thing he wanted to say and instead, with an effort, said, “Look, Fosdick, maybe you’ve heard of me. I bought Wyoming Hardware in High Plains. This stock is what I had to take in trade because of an agreement with the Church Committee. Have you heard about that?”

  “I don’t know nothin’ about no church committee,” Fosdick said.

  “I’m interested in a deal. You return the money Snake got in the holdup and I’ll get out of the cattle trading business.” Buck had trouble keeping the coldness out of his tone. He knew this wasn’t going to work and he didn’t give a damn.

  “What the hell’re you talkin’ about?”

  “Snake Ed works for you. That makes you responsible for the holdup.”

  “Snake Ed? I wouldn’t hire scum like that to shovel shit. Not that he’s the kind to hunt work.” It was hard to doubt the scorn in Fosdick’s voice.

  “I was told he works for you,” Buck said, watching Fosdick carefully—Fosdick was counting cattle. “But if he don’t, I guess you won’t mind when I shoot him.”

  “I don’t give a damn what you do to him, rustler. I don’t care what he does to you, either. Now, clear off. Your business is done here.” Fosdick turned to the brand inspector, started counting bills into his hand.