High Desert

by Wayne D. Overholser

  Gramp lurched toward the shack. “That wasn’t no Wagon Wheel bunch, I’m thinking. The light was sure thin, but that front hombre rode plumb tall in the saddle. Just like Buck Deeter.”

  It could have been Deeter and his neighbors, circling the house and riding north to make Craft think it was a band of Wagon Wheel men. If Craft had brought the story to Jim in town, it would have set the law against Wagon Wheel. That was exactly what the Poverty Flat cowmen would want. Deeter had said: We aim to get good graze. This was one way to do it, and all of them, Jim and Biddle and the Poverty Flat bunch, had heard Stub, brash and rebellious and trying to hold the tag end of Wyatt glory, call out: We started to move Ernie Craft and we will move him.

  Gramp asked: “You reckon that was Deeter, Jim?”

  “Might have been,” Jim grunted.

  Craft had gone into the shack and lighted the lamp. He appeared in the doorway, a stooped, gentle man who showed in his weather-stained face and knob-jointed fingers the result of his long struggle against a reluctant nature. He said: “Come in, and I’ll warm up the coffee.” He stopped, eyes fixed on a motionless bulk in the fringe of light that washed past him from the lamp on the table. “Jim, we got one of ’em.”

  Jim had already seen it. He strode past Gramp and, kneeling beside the body, turned it over. Stub Wyatt! Gramp and Craft had followed him, and Craft, knowing how Jim felt toward Kitsie, said: “It was me that got him. Reckon it’d be justifiable homicide, wouldn’t it?”

  Jim had picked up the boy’s wrist. He dropped it and, rising, faced Craft. “No, it’s murder, Ernie. Stub must have died several hours ago. He wasn’t shot by either one of us.”

  “But how in hell...?” Gramp began.

  “We’ll find out. Ernie, harness up and take the body into town. Come on, Gramp. We’ve got riding to do.”

  Kitsie was the only Wyatt left, and Zane Biddle had said he’d go out to Wagon Wheel that night. Honey Nolan was there and if she could make her claim of marriage stick, she would become the sole heir, once Kitsie was out of the way. Jim, thinking of this in one terrible moment of insight, shouted: “Damn you, Gramp, you’ll give me the evidence I want or I’ll cut it out of you!”

  Gramp, shocked by the violence that was in Jim Hallet, laid a hand on his gun butt, and muttered in a voice too low for Jim to hear: “You’d better not try, bucko. You’d better not try.”

  At midnight, Jim and Gramp Tatum rode into the Wagon Wheel Ranch yard. The only light was in the long front room that, except for a small corner walled off for Latigo’s office, ran the full width of the house. It was a rambling, two-story building made of pine lumber hauled from the Blue Mountains to the north. Latigo had allowed it was the finest house in the valley, and it undoubtedly was, although Zane Biddle had bragged he was going to build a stone house that would make a bigger shine than Latigo’s.

  Dismounting, Jim racked his horse at the pole in front of the tall, close-growing poplars and said: “Come on.” He strode across the trodden, packed earth of the yard. Gramp followed, slowly and cautiously, eyes probing the shadows.

  X

  The front door was open, for the night still held evidence of the day’s heat. Jim, looking in, saw Kitsie sitting on the divan, Zane Biddle beside her, leaning forward and talking in a soft, persuasive voice. Honey Nolan sat facing them, head back as if she were asleep, high breasts lifting and dropping with her breathing.

  A tension that had been gathering in Jim from the time he’d left Craft’s place broke in relief when he saw Kitsie. He stepped up on the porch and crossed it, spurs jingling. Kitsie jumped up and started toward the door when Jim appeared in it, a square-shouldered, lanky man, gaze sweeping the room, hand held close to gun butt.

  Kitsie stopped, wide-eyed. She said: “Jim.” Just the one word, and he couldn’t tell by the way she said it what was in her mind.

  Biddle stood beside the divan, irritated and trying not to show it. He said pointedly: “I thought your duties would keep you in town, Hallet.”

  “My duties take me wherever I think there’s going to be trouble,” Jim murmured. “Anybody else here, Kitsie?”

  “No. Nobody, but Ling. The boys went to town, and Stub got angry at me and rode off.”

  “Stub’s dead,” Jim said.

  Kitsie flinched as if she’d been struck, but she didn’t move and she didn’t cry. Honey Nolan reared up and shook her head. “What kind of a wild country is this?” she demanded.

  “Wild enough,” Jim said. “You’ll get used to it if you live.”

  “I won’t live long if I stay here!” she cried. “I never saw anything like it.”

  “Didn’t your friend who brought you here tell you what you were in for?” Jim asked.

  “What friend?”

  Biddle coughed. “Latigo would not tell her, Hallet. You should know that.”

  “It’s been a right peaceful country,” Jim murmured. “Till today. You accept Biddle’s proposal, Kitsie?”

  “Did you have to come here tonight, Jim?” she asked.

  “I know. You had your own ideas about how to handle her.” He jabbed a finger at Honey Nolan. “It would have worked, I reckon, except you didn’t count on him.” He motioned to Biddle. “Everybody gone. Stub shot. You’re the only Wyatt left, Kitsie. If he marries you, he wins. If you won’t have him, you’ll die. In that case, he still wins because he’s got little Honey all trained for the job.”

  Kitsie kept her feet long enough to reach the divan. She dropped, her control giving way all at once. She leaned back, her face ivory white. Jim saw that she was close to fainting, but he had to keep pushing. Deeter and Vinton and their bunch might come, and this job had to be done first.

  “You don’t make yourself plain, Hallet,” Biddle said tonelessly, “but if I understand your inference, I shall see Deeter in the morning. We will not have your kind as sheriff in this county.”

  Jim half turned toward the door, still watching Biddle. He said: “Gramp, get in here.”

  Gramp Tatum came reluctantly into the room and sidled along the wall. “He made me come, Mister Biddle, but I didn’t tell him nothing. No, sir.”

  “Shut up, you drunken fool!” Biddle shrilled. “You don’t know anything to tell him.”

  “He knows plenty, Biddle. Let’s get our cards out where we can see them. We’ll start with you. You’re a soft-bellied little gent who wants to be big, but you don’t know how. You had money enough to start your bank, but you needed Latigo’s business. Latigo being what he was, you did your share of the kowtowing, but all the time it was festering up inside of you until you were damned near loco.”

  “Shut up!” Biddle cried. “Shut up and get out. You can’t talk to me....”

  “I am talking, fatty. You didn’t kill Latigo or Boone, but you’ll go to jail for attempted fraud. Might be, when Gramp gets done, you’ll hang along with Deeter and Vinton.”

  “Nobody would believe a broken-down old sot like Tatum,” Biddle squealed. “Not against me.”

  “You see what he thinks of you, Gramp?” Jim swung to face the old man. “A broken-down old sot. That’s why he handed you them twenty silver dollars. He knew you had that gun. So did Deeter. They knew Latigo would come across the street from the bank. They knew mighty close to when, because I’d left the Bonanza to fetch him. They wanted Boone, too, so one of them got into the alley. Caught him in the hotel, I reckon, when he left Kitsie’s room.”

  “Theory!” Biddle howled. “All theory. You don’t hang men on theories, Hallet. You’re talking big now, but it’ll be different when Deeter shows up.”

  “You’re wrong on that, too, Biddle. I’ll arrest Deeter for Latigo’s murder or I’ll kill him. Right now, I’m after something else. That woman.” He threw a hand out toward Honey Nolan. “She was your idea, wasn’t she? You knew what Deeter aimed to do, didn’t you? At first, you thought you’d play it saf
e, since Boone wanted Kitsie to marry you. Then Deeter came to you with his idea. You saw that was better, so you fetched in this floozie.”

  “Deeter will be along...,” Biddle began.

  “You reckon you’ll be alive to know about it?” Jim motioned to Gramp. “You never thought about it, but you did the same to Gramp that Latigo did to you, stomping on him like he was a rag to wipe your feet on. Only you didn’t know Gramp had a little man left in him. Enough to fill you full of lead. That’s why I gave him that iron. Look at him, Biddle. He knows why you did it. Twenty dollars to get drunk on so he’d go to sleep in the alley and Vinton could get his gun and shoot Boone. Then he’d hang. You thought he was just a broken-down old sot, but you’re wrong. When he testifies in court who gave him....”

  Jim had to keep talking, keep pressing. He had to work Gramp into admitting it was Biddle who had given him the $20. Now he got what he wanted, but not in the way he expected, for it was Biddle who broke. He grabbed for his gun, shouting: “He won’t testify against me!”

  Gramp tried to pull his gun, but it stuck in the holster. If Jim had not drawn and fired, shooting Biddle’s gun out of his hand, Gramp Tatum would have died.

  When the last echo of the shot had faded, Jim asked: “Now you see, Gramp?”

  The old man stood backed against the wall, knowledge of what Biddle had aimed to do breaking into his whiskey-fogged mind. “Sure, and damned if I know why I should save his hide when he aimed to drill me. He gave me the twenty dollars, but I didn’t know....”

  “All right, Gramp.” Jim motioned with his gun at Biddle. “Now, Mister Banker, there’s just one chance to save your neck.”

  Biddle, left hand clasping his bullet-grazed right, said in a trembling voice: “Your guesses are good, Hallet. Deeter was the one. He killed Latigo. Shot from one of the Bonanza rooms. Vinton caught Boone in the hotel lobby, told him Latigo was in the alley and wanted to see him. After he got him behind the hotel, he shoved Tatum’s gun against him and held him until he heard Deeter shoot. Then he let him have it.”

  “What was Deeter getting at?”

  “Wagon Wheel cattle. It was the biggest rustling job I ever heard of. When I married Kitsie, or got hold of Wagon Wheel through Honey, I was to pull off the Wagon Wheel riders. Deeter and Vinton aimed to push the herd south to the railroad.”

  “Two couldn’t handle that big a job.”

  “Deeter knew a bunch that was hiding out over on Snake River. They were going to help him.”

  “Who is Deeter?”

  “Wiley Coe.”

  Jim had heard of Wiley Coe, bank robber, con man, and gunman who was wanted in the Colorado mining camps for a dozen crimes.

  “Biddle, I can’t make any promises, but I’ll do what I can to keep you out of the pen. When this is over....”

  “They’re coming, Jim!” Gramp Tatum called.

  Jim listened. Horses were close. Deeter and the Poverty Flat men, or Wagon Wheel buckaroos returning from town. Kitsie rose and came toward Jim. He turned his eyes to her and tried to smile. This was the test against Buck Deeter. If Jim Hallet died before the outlaw’s gun, everything he had done would be lost.

  “I’m all right, Jim,” Kitsie said. “I’ll see that neither Biddle nor the woman bother you.”

  She was all Wyatt now, tempered steel, but lovely in a way that only Latigo of the Wyatt men had had eyes to appreciate, and with an honest sense of justice sharing her pride that none of the men had had.

  “I’ll count on that,” Jim said.

  He stepped quickly through the door and into the shadows. There he waited, gun riding loosely in its holster, thinking he was a fool to give two killers an even break on the draw when they had murdered Latigo and Boone Wyatt. Still, it was the way he would play it because he was that kind of man.

  He had heard of Wiley Coe, the same as he had heard of Soapy Smith or Butch Cassidy. Coe was a combination of the two, perhaps with a streak of Billy the Kid, for neither Smith nor Cassidy was a killer, and Coe was.

  They were there then, riding boldly into the streak of light washing out through the open door, none suspecting that anything was wrong.

  “Biddle?” Deeter called. “You get your answer?”

  Jim stepped into the light. “Yes, he got his answer, Buck, and I got mine. I’m arresting you for the murder of Latigo Wyatt. Vinton, I’m arresting you for the murder of Boone Wyatt. Get down and put your hands up.”

  “What the hell, Jim?” Lippy Ord said. “You can’t do that after the way the Wyatts have treated us.”

  “I’ve got nothing against you boys,” Jim said flatly. “Stay out of it. You know who killed Latigo and Boone, and if I’ve got you pegged right, you’re ashamed of it. The part I can’t understand is Stub....”

  “That was a fair fight,” Ord said quickly. “He pulled first. Vinton had to shoot him. We was this side of Craft’s place when we met up with him. He was on the prod....”

  “All right, Lippy. You can forget Stub, but you can’t forget how Latigo was killed.”

  Neither Deeter nor Vinton had moved in his saddle. Both were staring at Jim. Vinton, pressed by the smoldering bitterness that was always in him, was ready to make his try, but Deeter, smarter than Vinton, was playing for time and feeling Jim out. He was smiling, white teeth bright in the light, swarthy face masking the pressure of the emotions in him.

  He said: “I thought it was understood that Boone shot Latigo.”

  “It was the way you wanted it understood,” Jim said. “Lippy, get this straight. I’m not defending the Wyatts for what they’ve done. Like I said in the Bonanza, you boys had plenty of cause to holler. From now on it’s a different deal. I’ll guarantee that because I know Kitsie isn’t like her dad and granddad. You won’t get pushed around. Wagon Wheel beef will stay on this side of the deadline, and the bank won’t get tough on you because Biddle won’t be in the bank.”

  Kitsie, standing in the doorway with a gun lined on Biddle, said: “That’s right, Mister Ord.”

  Deeter had straightened, dark eyes probing Jim. He asked: “What’s that about Biddle, Sheriff?”

  “He won’t be in the bank. He’s played your game, and it didn’t work.”

  “Jim, I don’t like it,” Lippy Ord broke in. “You can’t arrest Deeter until you’ve got more than words to use on him. He’s county commissioner. His Staircase is the biggest spread on the Flat....”

  “I know all that,” Jim cut in, “but what you don’t know is that he bought Staircase so he’d have a place to hide out. Then he sent for Vinton and began cooking up this game, taking advantage of how you boys felt about Wagon Wheel. If we don’t hang him, Colorado will. His real name is Wiley Coe.”

  It came with suddenness that did not entirely surprise Jim, for when he showed Deeter that he knew who he was, the man had no choice. Deeter was as fast as the Yellowby boy had said, and Jim, making his choice, threw his first shot at him. The hard and bitter years that lay behind Jim had forced gun speed upon him. It had saved his life before and it saved it now. His shot came before Deeter’s by an unmeasurable part of a second. The outlaw folded, dropping his gun and grabbing the horn. Then his grip gave way, and he slid out of leather, dead before he hit the ground.

  Jim turned his gun to Vinton, but time had run out for him. The gunman got in one shot, the slug clubbing Jim in the chest and knocking the breath from him and taking him off his feet. He heard other shooting before he lost consciousness, tried to tilt his gun upward again, but he couldn’t see. Then the guns were silent, and voices came softly from across a vast distance, and Jim Hallet was drifting out into that great unknown. The last words that came to him were Kitsie’s: “Ride for the doctor, Lippy. We have so little time.”

  XI

  Lamp light hurting his eyes. Voices held low. The medico’s cool orders: “More bandages...more hot water. Move that lamp a little. Get
out of here, Lippy. Pull that blind, Kitsie. He’ll be all right. Let him sleep....”

  Kitsie was sitting beside his bed when he was fully aware of things again, gaunt face dark against the pillow, stubble a rough fringe on his face. When his eyes locked with hers, she smiled, and something came alive in him that had been dead.

  “You did a miracle on Gramp Tatum,” she said. “He was the one who got Vinton. He’s a new man. He wants a job to get the whiskey worked out of him. I’ve put him on.”

  “That’s fine,” he murmured, knowing it was more than that. The Wyatt men would have done nothing of the kind. It was a portent of the future.

  Suddenly she reached forward and took his hand. “I was wrong in leaving you that day in Nell’s place. I thought I’d save your life by breaking it up between us, but I didn’t know how strong you were.”

  “Lucky, maybe,” he said.

  She shook her head. “No, it was strength and courage. It took that to tell me what you did that day. I’ve thought about it so much since. You said the ranch had become a god to the Wyatt men. I had never realized it, but that was exactly what it was.”

  He closed his eyes, for he was thinking of what he had called the fence between them. She was rich, and he was a poorly paid lawman. Stub had called it right when he’d said: “She ain’t used to starving, tin-star.”

  His fists clenched. Jaw muscles corded.

  “I can’t stay here. Loving you like I do, and you owning Wagon Wheel....”

  “Why must a man be such a fool?” she cried. “Jim, Jim, I need your love. I need your strength and your courage if I’m to run Wagon Wheel. I need you. There is no fence between us. I’ve pulled it down.”

  “Don’t pull it down,” he breathed. “I’ll step over it.”

  “Nell has made the wedding dress, Jim. She’ll bake the cake whenever you say.”

  That was it, the last wire on the fence. He looked into her face, the blue eyes, the red lips with the smile that told him so much, the red-gold hair vibrant with life under the bright morning sun that laid its glory upon her.