“I reckon.” He seemed indifferent to that, too. “Kedrick’ll be the first one. Maybe,” he smiled, “the last one.”
He dug out the makings, glancing around the room, then back at Sue. “You git out. I want to talk to Connie.”
Sue did not move. “You can talk to us both. I like it here.”
As he touched his tongue to the paper his eyes lifted and met hers. They were flat, expressionless. “You heard me,” he said. “I’d hate to treat you rough.”
“You haven’t the nerve!” Sue flashed back. “You know what would happen to you if you laid hands on a woman in this country! You can get away with killing me. But this country won’t stand for having their women bothered—even by a ratty little killer like you!”
Connie Duane was remembering the derringer in her pocket. She lowered her hand to her hip within easy grasp of the gun.
A sudden cannonade sounded, then a scattering of more shots. At that moment Kedrick was finally shooting it out with Fessenden. Dornie Shaw cocked an inquisitive ear toward the sound. “Gettin’ closer,” he said. “I ain’t really in no hurry until Kedrick gets here.”
“You’d better be gone before he does come.” Connie was surprised at the confidence in her voice. “He’s too much for you, and he’s not half frightened like these others are. He’ll kill you, Dornie.”
He stared at her, then chuckled without humor. “Him? Bah! The man doesn’t live who can outdraw Dornie Shaw. I’ve tried ’em all. Fess? He’s supposed to be good, but he don’t fool with Dornie. I’d shoot his ears off.”
Calmly, Connie dropped her right hand into her pocket and clutched the derringer. The feel of it gave her confidence. “You had better go,” she said quietly. “You were not invited here, and we don’t want you.”
He did not move. “Still playin’ it high an’ mighty, are you? You’ve got to get over that. Come on, you’re coming with me.”
“Are you leaving?” Connie’s eyes flashed. “I’ll not ask you again!”
Shaw started to speak, but whatever it was he planned to say never formed into words, for Connie had her hand on the derringer, and she fired from her pocket. Ordinarily, she was a good shot, but had never fired the gun from that position. The first bullet burned a furrow along Dornie Shaw’s ear, notching it at the top. The second shot stung him along the ribs and the third plowed into the table beside him.
With a grunt of surprise, he dove through the door into the hall. Sue was staring at Connie. “Well, I never!” Her eyes dropped to the tiny gun that Connie had now drawn from her pocket. “Dornie Shaw! And with that! Oh, just wait until this gets around!” Her laughter rang out merrily, and despite herself, Connie was laughing, too.
Downstairs near the door, Dornie Shaw clutched his bloody ear. He panted as though he had been running, his face twisting as he stared at his blood. Amazed, he scarcely noticed when Kedrick came up the steps. But as the door pushed open, he saw him. For a fatal instant, he froze. Then he grabbed for his gun, but he had lost his chance. In that split second of hesitation, Kedrick jumped. His right hand grasped Dornie’s gun wrist, and Kedrick swung the gunman bodily around, hurling him into the wall. Shaw’s body hit with a crash and he rebounded into a wicked right to the wind.
Shaw was no fighter with his hands, and the power of that blow would have wrecked many a bigger man. As it was, it knocked every bit of wind from the gunman’s body. Kedrick shoved him back against the wall. “You asked me what I’d do, once, with a faster man. Watch this, Dornie!”
Kedrick lifted his right hand and slapped the gunman across the mouth. Crying with fury, Shaw fought against the bigger man’s grip. Kedrick held him flat against the wall, gripping him by the shirt collar, and slapped him over and back. “Just a cheap killer!” Kedrick said calmly. “Somebody has already bled you a little. I’ll do it for good.”
He dropped a hand to Dornie’s shirt and ripped it wide. “I’m going to ruin you in this country, Dornie. I’m going to show them what you are—a cheap, yellow-bellied killer who terrorizes men better than himself.” He slapped Dornie again, then shoved him into the wall once more and stepped back.
“All right, Shaw! You got your guns! Reach!”
Almost crying with fury, Dornie Shaw grabbed for his guns. As he whipped them free, all his timing wrecked by the events of the past few minutes, Kedrick’s gun crashed and Shaw’s right-hand gun was smashed from his hand. Shaw fired the left-hand gun, but the shot went wild. Kedrick lunged, chopping down with his pistol barrel. The blow smashed Dornie Shaw’s wrist and he dropped the gun with a yelp.
He fell back against the wall, trembling, and staring at his hands. His left wrist was broken; his right thumb was gone. Where it had been, blood was welling.
Roughly, Kedrick grabbed him and shoved him out of the door. He stumbled and fell, but Kedrick jerked him to his feet, unmindful of the gasps of the onlookers, attracted by the sounds of fighting. In the forefront of the crowd were Pit Laine, Dai Reid and Laredo Shad, blinking with astonishment at the sight of the most feared gunman in the country treated like a whipped child.
Shaw’s horse stood nearby, and Kedrick motioned to him. “Get on him—backwards!”
Shaw started to turn and Kedrick lifted his hand and the gunman ducked instinctively. “Get up there! Dai, when he’s up tie his ankles together.”
Dornie Shaw, befuddled by the whipping he had taken, scarcely aware of what was happening, lifted his eyes. Then he saw the grulla tied near the stone house. It was the last straw, his demoralization was complete.
Feared because of his deadly skill with guns and his love of killing for the sake of killing, he had walked a path alone, either avoided by all, or catered to by them. Never in his life had he been manhandled as he had by Tom Kedrick. His belief in himself was shattered.
“Take him through the town.” Kedrick’s voice was harsh. “Show them what a killer looks like. Then fix up that thumb and wrist and turn him loose.”
“Turn him loose?” Shad demanded. “Are you crazy?”
“No, turn him loose. He’ll leave this country so far behind nobody will ever see him again. This is worse than death for him, believe me.” He shrugged. “I’ve seen them before. All they need, that kind, is for somebody to face them once who isn’t afraid. He was fast and accurate with his guns so he developed the idea he was tough.
“Other folks thought the same thing. He wasn’t tough. A tough man has to win and lose. He has to come up after being knocked down, he has to have taken a few beatings, and know what it means to win the hard way.
“Anybody,” he said dryly, “can knock a man down. When you’ve been knocked down at least three times yourself, and then got up and floored the other man, then you can figure you’re a tough hombre. Those smoke poles of Shaw’s greased his path for him. Now he knows what he’s worth.”
The crowd drifted away and Connie Duane was standing in the doorway. Tom Kedrick looked up at her, and suddenly, he smiled. To see her now, standing like this in the doorway, was like lifegiving rain upon the desert, coming in the wake of many heat-filled days.
She came down the step to him, then looked past him at Pit. “Your sister’s upstairs, Pit. You’d better talk to her.”
Laine hesitated; then he said stiffly, “I don’t reckon I want to.”
Laredo Shad drew deep on his cigarette and squinted through the smoke at Laine. “Mind if I do?” he asked. “I like her.”
Pit Laine was astonished. “After this?”
Shad looked at the fire end of his cigarette. “Well,” he said, speaking seriously, “the best cuttin’ horse I ever rode was the hardest to break. Them with lots of git up an’ go to ’em often make the best stock.”
“Then go ahead.” Pit stared after him. Then he said, “Tell her I’ll be along later.”
CHAPTER 16
FOR THREE WEEKS there was no sign of Alton Burwick. He seemed to have vanished into the earth, and riders around the country reported no sign of him.
At the end of that time three men got down from the afternoon stage and were shown to rooms in the St. James. An hour later, while they were at dinner, Captain Tom Kedrick pushed open the door and walked into the dining room. Instantly, one of the men, a tall, immaculate young man whose hair was turning gray at the temples, rose to meet him, hand outstretched. “Tom! Say, this is wonderful! Gentlemen, this is Tom Kedrick, the man I was telling you about. We served together in the War Between the States! Tom—Mr. Edgerton and Mr. Cummings.”
The two men, one a pudgy man with a round, cheerful face, the other as tall as Frederic Ransome and with gray muttonchop whiskers acknowledged the introduction. When Kedrick had seated himself, they began demanding details. Quietly, and as concisely as possible, he told them his own story, beginning with his joining the company in New Orleans.
“And Burwick’s gone?” Edgerton asked. He was the older man with the muttonchop whiskers. “Was he killed?”
“I doubt it, sir,” Kedrick replied. “He simply vanished. The man had a faculty for being out of the way when trouble came. Since he left, with the aid of Miss Duane and her uncle’s papers, we managed to put together most of the facts. However, Burwick’s papers have disappeared, or most of them.”
“Disappeared?” Edgerton asked. “How did that happen?”
“Miss Duane tells me that when she entered the house before the final trouble with Shaw, she passed the office door and the place was undisturbed and the desk all in order. After the crowd had gone and when we returned, somebody had been rifling the desk and the safe.”
“You imply that Burwick returned? That he was there then?”
“He must have been. Connie—Miss Duane—tells me that only he had the combination, and that he kept all the loose ends of the business in his hands.”
Cummings stared hard at Kedrick. “You say this, this Shaw fellow killed Keith? How do we know that you didn’t? You admit to killing Fessenden.”
“I did kill him. In a fair fight before witnesses. I never even saw Keith’s body after he was killed.”
“Who do you think killed John Gunter?” Cummings demanded.
“My guess would be Burwick.”
“I’m glad you’re not accusing Keith of that,” Cummings replied dryly.
“Keith wouldn’t have used a knife,” Kedrick replied quietly, “nor he wouldn’t have attacked him from behind as was obviously the case.”
“This land deal, Kedrick,” Ransome asked. “Where do you stand in it?”
“I? I don’t stand at all. I’m simply not in it.”
Cummings looked up sharply. “You don’t stand to profit from it at all? Not in any way?”
“How could I? I own nothing. I have no holdings, nor claim to any.”
“You said Burwick promised you fifteen per cent?”
“That’s right. But I know now that it was merely to appease me long enough to get me on the spot at Chimney Rock where I was to be killed along with the others. Burwick got me there, then rode off on the pretext that he wanted to look at a mineral ledge.”
“How about this girl? The Duane girl?” Cummings asked sharply. “Does she stand to profit?”
“She will be fortunate to get back her money that her uncle invested.”
“See, Cummings?” Ransome said. “I told you Kedrick was honest. I know the man.”
“I’ll give my opinion on that later, after this investigation is completed. Not now. I want to go over the ground and look into this matter thoroughly. I want to investigate this matter of the disappearance of Alton Burwick, too. I’m not at all satisfied with this situation.”
He glanced down at the notes in his hand, then looked up. “As to that, Kedrick, wasn’t Fessenden a duly elected officer of the law when you shot him? Wasn’t he the sheriff?”
“Elected by a kangaroo election,” Kedrick replied, “where the votes were counted by the two officials who won. If that is a legal election, then he was sheriff.”
“I see. But you do not deny that he had authority?”
“I do deny it.”
CONNIE DUANE WAS awaiting him when he walked back to his table. She smiled as he sat down and listened to his explanation. She frowned thoughtfully. “Cummings? I think there is something in Uncle John’s papers about him. I believe he was acting for them in Washington.”
“That explains a lot then.” Kedrick picked up his coffee cup, then put it down abruptly, for Laredo Shad had come into the room, his face sharp and serious. He glanced around, and sighting Kedrick, hurried toward him, spurs jingling. Kedrick got to his feet. “What’s wrong? What’s happened?”
“Plenty! Sloan was wounded last night and Yellow Butte burned!”
“What?” Kedrick stared.
Shad nodded grimly. “You shouldn’t have turned that rat loose. That Dornie Shaw.”
Kedrick shook his head irritably. “I don’t believe it. He was thoroughly whipped when he left here. I think he ran like a scared rabbit when he left. If he did want revenge, it would be after a few months, not so soon. No, this is somebody else.”
“Who could it be?”
His eyes met Connie’s and she nodded, her eyes frightened. “You know who it could be, Tom. It could be Burwick.”
Of course, that was what he had been thinking. Burwick had bothered him, getting away scot free, dropping off the end of the world into oblivion as he had. Remembering the malignant look in the man’s eyes, Kedrick was even more positive. Burwick had counted on this land deal; he had worked on it longer than any one of them, and it meant more to him.
“Shad,” he said suddenly, “where does that grulla tie in? It keeps turning up, again and again. There’s something more about all this than we’ve ever known, something that goes a lot deeper. Who rides the grulla? Why is it he has never been seen? Why was Dornie so afraid of it?”
“Was he afraid of the grulla?” Shad asked, frowning. “That doesn’t figure.”
“Why doesn’t it? That’s the question now. You know, that last day when I had Shaw thoroughly whipped, he looked up and saw something that scared him, yet something that I think he more than half expected. After he was gone down the street, I looked around, and there was nothing there. Later, I stumbled across the tracks of the grulla mustang. That horse was in front of the house during all the excitement!”
Frederic Ransome came into the room again and walked to their table. “Cummings is going to stir up trouble,” he said, dropping into a chair. “He’s out to get you, Kedrick, and if he can pin the killing of Keith on you, or that of Burwick … He claims your story is an elaborate build-up to cover the murder of all three of the company partners. He can make so much trouble that none of the squatters will get anything out of the land, and nothing for all their work. We’ve got to find Burwick.”
Laredo lit a cigarette. “That’s a tough one,” he said, “but maybe I’ve got a hunch.”
“What?” Kedrick looked up.
“Ever hear Burwick talk about the grulla?”
“No, I can’t say that I did. It was mentioned before him once that I recall, and he didn’t seem interested.”
“Maybe he wasn’t interested because he knowed all about it,” Shad suggested. “That Burwick has me puzzled.”
Connie looked up at him. “You may be right, Laredo, but Pit and Sue Laine were Burwick’s stepchildren and they knew nothing about the horse. The only one who seemed to know anything was Dornie Shaw.”
Tom Kedrick got up. “Well, there’s one thing we can do,” he said. “Laredo, we can scout out the tracks of that horse and trail it down. Pick up an old trail, anything. Then just see where it takes us.”
ON THE THIRD day it began to rain. All week the wind had been chill and cold and clouds had hung low and flat across the sky from horizon to horizon. Hunched in his slicker, Laredo slapped his gloved hands together and swore. “This finishes it!” he said with disgust. “It will wipe out all the trails for us!”
“All old anyway,” Kedrick agreed. “We’ve followed
a dozen here lately, and none of them took us anywhere. All disappeared on rock or were swept away by wind.”
“Escavada’s cabin isn’t far up this canyon,” Shad suggested. “Let’s hit him up for chow. It will be a chance to get warm, anyway.”
“Know him?”
“Stopped in there once. He’s half Spanish, half Ute. Tough old blister, an’ been in this country since before the grass came. He might be able to tell us something.”
The trail into the canyon was slippery and the dull red of the rocks had turned black under the downpour. The rain slanted across the sky in drenching sheets. By the time they reached the stone cabin in the corner of the hills both men and horses were cold, wet and hungry.
Escavada opened the door for them and waved them in. He grinned at them. “Glad to have company,” he said. “Ain’t seen a man for three weeks.”
When they had stripped off their slickers and peeled down to shirts, pants and boots, he put coffee before them and laced it with a strong shot of whisky. “Warm you up,” he said. “Trust you ain’t goin’ out again soon. Whisky’s mighty fine when a body comes in from the cold, but not if he’s goin’ out again. It flushes the skin up, fetches all the heat to the surface, then gives it off into the air. Man freezes mighty quick, drinkin’ whisky.”
“You ever see a grulla mustang around, Escavada?” Laredo asked suddenly, looking up at the old man.
He turned on them, his eyes bright with malicious humor. “You ain’t some of them superstitious kind, be you? Skeered o’ the dark like? An’ ghosts?”
“No,” Kedrick said, “but what’s the tie-up?”
“That grulla. Old story in this here country. Dates back thirty, forty years. Maybe further’n that. Sign of death or misfortune, folks say.”
Laredo looked inquiringly at Kedrick, and Kedrick asked, “You know anything about it? That horse is real enough. We’ve both seen the grulla.”
“So’ve I,” the old man said. He dropped into a chair and grinned at them. His gray hair was sparse, but his eyes were alive and young. “I seen it many times, an’ no misfortune come my way. Not unless you call losin’ my shovel a misfortune.”
Novel 1953 - Showdown At Yellow Butte (v5.0) Page 14