Honey stood beside the buggy, paralyzed by fright. Zane Biddle, backing toward the hotel, showed concern, but Kitsie’s face mirrored only contempt.
“It’s funny how brave you are, Deeter, now that Granddad’s gone. We won’t bother Ernie Craft, but Stub was right about one thing. This valley is too small for you and Wagon Wheel. Get in, Missus Wyatt.”
Jim took Honey’s arm and helped her into the buggy. They wheeled away, Kitsie’s horse tied behind. When they were gone, Jim moved warily toward Deeter, saying: “This morning I figured you boys had a lot on your side, but I reckon I was wrong. The Wyatt’s don’t look like angels, but I never knew one of them to dry-gulch a man. When I find out which one of you did it, I’ll get him.”
Deeter swung his dark eyes to Biddle and then brought them to Jim, his bold, confident smile on his lips. “You won’t last long, tin-star. With Latigo gone, Wagon Wheel will fall apart, and we’ll move in. Poverty Flat, one hunk of bunchgrass for a cow. Hell,” he said, and spit into the dust, “we aim to get some good graze.” He swung away, saying: “Let’s ride, boys.”
The Poverty Flat men mounted and left town in a rolling cloud of dust. Jim, staring after them, thought how much this day had changed everything. The Wyatts had sowed their seed and reaped a harvest of lead. He turned to Biddle who was watching him thoughtfully through narrowed eyes.
“A banker’s neck will stretch same as a cowman’s,” Jim murmured, and, stepping around him, went into the hotel.
VIII
It was late afternoon with long shadows slanting across the dust strip, and it was cooler. This was the first moment Jim had had to relax since he had faced Boone Wyatt that morning, and he remembered he had not eaten, except for a slim breakfast shortly after sunup. He turned into the hotel dining room and ordered a steak.
“Jim.” A quavering shout washed in from the street. “Jim, where the hell are you?”
The front legs of Jim’s chair came down hard against the floor. It was Gramp Tatum. Jim rose and tapped on the window. Gramp saw him and lurched through the lobby into the dining room. His beard was matted with dirt and filth, and he stank of the cheap whiskey he had drunk that morning.
“Jim. My gun.” He held out the old cap-and-ball revolver Jim had seen that morning. “It’s been fired. Three times.”
Jim took the gun, staring at Gramp and not understanding until the old man swallowed and pointed a shaking finger down the street. “Boone Wyatt. Shot three times, but I didn’t do it. So help me, Jim, I didn’t do it.”
“Where’d you find Boone?”
“I didn’t find him.” Gramp gripped Jim’s arm. “It was Lucky. In the storeroom back of the Bonanza. Hidden behind some beer barrels. Jim, I tell you I didn’t do it.”
Jim slid the gun into his waistband, saying: “Come on.” They left the dining room.
Gramp had to run to keep up, repeating over and over that he didn’t do it. Jim said nothing more until he reached the saloon. The barman, Lucky Donovan, motioned to Jim when he came in and led the way to the storeroom. There, wedged between the walls and some beer barrels, lay Boone Wyatt with three bullet holes in his chest.
“I didn’t touch him,” Donovan said.
Boone’s gun, Jim saw, was in his holster. There was a window opening on the alley, but there were so many tracks in the dust that none meant anything.
“I didn’t hear no shooting, except when they got Latigo,” Donovan offered.
Jim nodded, saying nothing, but he remembered that there had been three more shots that morning after he had dragged Latigo to the walk. Gramp Tatum stood in the doorway, trembling and chattering that he didn’t do it.
“Shut up,” Donovan said.
Gramp lowered his tone but kept on muttering.
“The window opens easily,” Jim said thoughtfully. “Somebody could have shoved him through and then crawled in and dragged him over here.”
“I don’t pay much attention to that window,” Donovan said. “Fact is, I don’t come back here much. He could have laid there till I smelled him, but I happened to bust a lamp chimney, and the only extra one I had was in here.”
Jim pushed past Gramp into the saloon. “Who bought your drinks this morning?”
“I...I bought ’em myself.”
“You couldn’t have got that drunk on the dollar I gave you,” Jim said patiently.
“I couldn’t shoot straight enough to kill him,” Gramp quavered.
“You could at that distance,” Jim said. “Boone was shot close up, judging by the powder burns. Now, who paid for your whiskey?”
Gramp began to tremble. “I...I disremember.”
Jim glanced at Donovan, but the barman shook his head. “Nobody gave him anything that I saw after he came in. He had a fistful of silver dollars and he was showing that gun around and swearing he was gonna get Latigo and Boone.”
“All right,” Jim said. “You’re going to jail, Gramp. You’re going to stay locked up till you remember who bought your whiskey. Lucky, go tell Doc Horton he’s got another carcass.”
But Gramp wouldn’t say anything after the cell door had closed on him, except to repeat: “I didn’t do it. Don’t you believe me, Jim?”
“I’ll believe you when you tell me who bought your whiskey. You’re a blabber, Gramp. You duck around and look in windows and listen at keyholes. Then you sell what you’ve learned.”
“I don’t neither!” Gramp howled.
“Then how come you told Boone me and Kitsie were at Nell Craft’s place?”
Gramp gripped the bars with his gnarled hands, bearded face pressed against them. “Aw, Jim, I had to have a drink. I got a dollar out of Boone. Bowing and scraping just like everybody’s done for years. I didn’t know I was gonna get twenty dollars from....” He stopped and began to tremble. “I’m just a born liar. You can’t believe anything I say.”
“I told you they hang old men for murder.”
“He won’t let me hang. He’s got money. I didn’t plug Boone nohow.” Gramp rattled the bars. “Let me out.”
Jim walked away and went back to the dining room. He ate the steak he had ordered, thinking about Boone Wyatt’s murder. Kitsie had called the turn when she had said they had no reason to kill Latigo without killing Boone.
It had been set up skillfully with much thought and careful planning. Jim was supposed to think that Boone had killed his father and that Gramp Tatum had shot Boone. Gramp was a safe victim for everybody. He was a washed-up whiskey bum. If Jim didn’t see it that way, a dry-gulcher’s slug could take care of him, and Buck Deeter, as county commissioner, could wangle the appointment of a new sheriff who would call the case settled.
It was dusk when Jim stepped out of the dining room to the hotel porch. He shaped a smoke and lighted it, the match flame throwing a quick red light across his face. Another thought had come to him, a thought that jabbed him with a sharp edge of fear. If Stub and Kitsie were dead, the Wyatts would be finished, and Jim knew there were no other heirs.
A brief crimson glory painted the western sky. Then the sun was gone and the color faded. A dry wind, strong with the smell of sage, touched Jim and rattled the hotel sign above his head. Then he heard a horse and he stepped into the street, hand on gun belt, and watched horse and rider take shape. It was, he saw with surprise, the Yellowby boy, and he was hanging to the horn as if he were wounded.
“Doc,” Jim cried, “come here!”
“I’m all right,” said Yellowby as he reined up. His head and chest dropped lower against the horn, and Jim, stepping to him, steadied him in the saddle. It was then that he saw the dark stain on the boy’s shirt.
“Who done it, Bud?”
“Deeter. He’s bad with a gun, Jim. Been acting damned pious, thinking you wouldn’t catch on, and wanting to fool Latigo, but he’s twice as bad as Vinton. They’re gonna hit Ernie Craft’s place to
night and salivate him. They want you to think Wagon Wheel done it.”
Yellowby fainted then, sliding off the saddle into Jim’s arms. Doc Horton was there, saying: “Bring him to my office. I’ll go light a lamp.”
Another man who had come into the street at Jim’s call gave him a hand, and they carried Yellowby to the medico’s office.
“He’ll be all right,” Horton said after a quick look. “Slug caught him a little high to finish him. Lost a lot of blood, though.”
Yellowby’s eyes came open. “Jim.”
“Here.” Jim came close to the cot.
“I ain’t plumb yellow,” the boy said. “I saw you was calling it right today in the Bonanza. I blabbed, and Deeter would have got me. I got boogered and I had to make a run for it.” He swallowed, fists clenched. “After I got out of town, I thought how it left you. I came back, aiming to give you a hand, but I ran into Deeter. My horse is faster’n his, or I wouldn’t have got here.”
“What happened when Latigo was shot?”
“I don’t know for sure. We was having this poker game when suddenly Vinton jumped up and said he had business outside, but I was supposed to tell you he didn’t leave the room. Deeter says he had business, too. He says to open the door into the saloon and watch for you. They pulled out, and I stayed there, watching. Then I heard the shooting. Pretty soon they came back, and we started playing again.”
“Where was the shooting?”
“One of the guns sounded like it was upstairs, maybe in one of them rooms facing the street. Other one was in the alley.”
“Thanks, Bud.”
Jim stepped into the street, knowing that he had to get to Ernie Craft’s place, but at the same time realizing how long the odds were against him. Stub Wyatt was entirely unpredictable. He had shouted in what had been a mere show of bravado that Wagon Wheel would move Ernie Craft off his place. Kitsie had said they would leave him alone, but whether she could handle Stub after she got home was a question.
The bulk of the Wagon Wheel hands were in the high country with the cattle. Some would come to town to let their collective wolf loose, but there were a few older men, largely pensioners, who stayed around the ranch. Stub could use them against Craft if they’d follow him, but the real danger, as Jim saw it, came from Deeter and Vinton and the Poverty Flat boys. There was no telling what would happen if Deeter elected to move against Wagon Wheel after they had attacked Ernie Craft.
Jim saddled his horse, thinking of this and finding only one possible chance to stop Deeter. Lippy Ord and most of the Poverty Flat cowmen were good men, misled by Deeter but fundamentally sound. If he could break Ord and the rest from Deeter.... It was only a wild hope. Deeter had fooled Latigo and he had fooled Jim. There was little chance, then, that Ord and the rest could be kept from going all the way with Deeter. Then Jim thought of Gramp Tatum. Smiling grimly, Jim saddled another horse and went back to the jail.
Gramp was sleeping when Jim came along the corridor with a lighted lamp. He stirred uneasily and sat up. “What’s biting you?” he asked truculently. “I tell you and I’ll keep telling you, I didn’t kill Boone.”
“I know.” Jim unlocked the door. “I’m letting you out, a sort of parole, you might call it.”
Gramp followed Jim back to the office, staring at him suspiciously. Jim picked up the old cap-and-ball pistol he had taken from Gramp, shook his head, and laid it down.
“You know, Gramp, they tell me you used to be a pretty good man. That was before I got here. Since I been in the valley, you’ve just been a no-good bum, a barfly mooching drinks off anybody you could. You’d crawl, belly down, like a whipped pup.”
“Now you lookee here,” Gramp began, “you ain’t got no call....”
“Gramp, how’d you like to be a man again?”
Some of the truculence went out of the oldster’s face. He bowed his head, gnarled hands gripping the edge of Jim’s desk. “Too late, son. I’m a crawling thing that ought to git under a rock and stay there.”
Jim took down a gun belt from the wall and handed it to Gramp. “Try it on. That’s a good iron in the holster. A Thirty-Eight. Be about right for you. Beat the old relic you’ve been toting.”
Gramp extended a trembling hand. “What’s this about?” He buckled the belt around him, pulled the gun and hefted it, and slid it back.
“You know Ernie Craft?”
“A damned good man,” Gramp said, as if by some miracle he had suddenly become Jim’s equal in toughness.
Jim turned to the door to hide his grin. He had gambled that, far inside Gramp Tatum, there was a spark of his old pride. He stepped to the saddle and said: “Let’s ride, Gramp.”
IX
They rode directly south from town, following the road to Wagon Wheel until they climbed a ridge. This long finger of rock that extended nearly across the valley was, according to the law Latigo had laid down years ago, the deadline. The Poverty Flat cowmen could use the grass to the north, that to the south was Wagon Wheel’s. Actually it was as Lippy Ord had said in the Bonanza that morning. Nothing was said if Wyatt cattle drifted north, but the heavens were pulled down on the man whose stock was found south of the deadline.
Swinging west, they followed the ridge for a mile. It was fully dark now, the lights of the town lost behind a swell in the sage flat. A wafer moon showed above the eastern hills; stars freckled a black sky, beacons to troubled men filled with hungers and dreams and sorrows. The lights of Wagon Wheel glittered to the south, and Jim’s mind turned to Kitsie as it did much of the time. Hers was a sorrow drowning the dreams, but because she was a Wyatt she would hug her sorrow to herself and no one could comfort her.
The ridge broke off sharply, and they angled down the steep slope to the bowl-like valley where Ernie Craft had settled beside a small spring. A light showed in the tar-paper shack, and Jim breathed a long, relieved sigh.
He said: “Ernie’s all right.”
“What’d you figure was wrong?” Gramp asked. “Think the Wyatts would beef him?”
“Or Buck Deeter,” Jim slapped the words at him. “He wants the Wyatts wiped out, so it’d be fine to get Ernie’s killing laid on them. The hell of it is, you’re helping him. He got you worked up by telling you what a bunch of skunks the Wyatts are. Then he gives you a fistful of silver....”
“It wasn’t Deeter!” Gramp cried. “It was....” He caught himself and swore bitterly. “You’re pretty cute, Jim, but it didn’t work.”
“You’re a damned fool,” Jim flung out. “I need your say-so to bust them and you’re too scared to talk.”
“I know which side of my bread the butter’s on,” Gramp mumbled.
They had reached the bottom of Craft’s valley when the thunder of hoofs from the south came to them.
“Wagon Wheel!” Jim yelled. “Damn that crazy kid Stub. Come on, Gramp.” He cracked steel to his horse, heading directly toward Craft’s shack. He called: “Blow out your light, Ernie!”
The light went out. Jim reined up, and, swinging down, gave the animal a slap on the rump. “It’s Jim Hallet, Ernie!”
Gramp pulled up and dismounted stiffly, cursing his sore muscles. He grumbled: “What’n hell did you bring me on this joy ride for? I won’t be able to sit for a month.”
“It ain’t a joy ride,” Jim said. “Get your horse out of here. Ernie, got your cutter?”
“I’ve got my Thirty-Thirty,” the nester said. “Who’s coming?”
“You guess.”
They stood in front of the shack for a moment, listening, until Gramp came back. Then Craft said: “I reckon Boone’s making his promise good.”
“It’d be Stub,” Jim said, and told him quickly what had happened. “I figured Deeter and the Poverty Flat boys would be paying you a visit, but they wouldn’t come from that direction.”
The horses were close now, ten or more, Jim guess
ed from the sound. They were racing across the valley floor in a hard run toward the shack.
“Inside,” Jim said.
The thin walls of the shack gave poor shelter, but there was no time to find anything better. Jim lunged through the door and, turning to the window, smashed the glass out with his gun barrel and eared back the hammer. Craft had dropped on his belly in the doorway, and Gramp Tatum had disappeared.
The attackers were almost to the shack before the first gun sounded. Then they all cut loose at once. Lead rapped into the wall beside the window. Other bullets snapped through the open door to splinter the opposite wall. Some tore through the boards and screamed across the room. Craft’s Winchester was blazing now, but Jim held his fire until they were close.
He thought they would pull up in front of the cabin and rush, for they would expect no one but Craft, and he was a notoriously poor shot, but instead they split around the shack and kept on. Jim pulled trigger twice. Then they were gone, and the sudden silence squeezed against Jim, strange and stifling after the shooting.
“They’ve gone,” Craft breathed. “How do you figure it, Jim? Ain’t like no Wyatt outfit to quit that easy.”
“No,” Jim agreed. “Where’s Gramp?”
“Lit a shuck, I guess,” Craft said sourly. “What’d you bring that old barfly along for?”
“To see if he’d whiskey-drowned all the man that was in him.” Jim stepped past Craft and went outside. The beat of hoofs could be heard to the north. Then they died, and the night stillness pressed in around them again.
“Jim.” It was Gramp Tatum, hiding in the sagebrush past the house. “You there?”
“I’m here,” Jim growled. “Thanks for your help, Gramp.”
“You don’t need to be sore ’cause I was too smart to get penned up in a shack that wouldn’t do no good against a kid with a bean-shooter. I figured they’d get down and fog. Then a gun outside might do some good.”
“All right,” Jim said testily. “Come in.”
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