As Wolf walked out, he glanced back at Slade. “Leave the son of a bitch there. You need a spittoon this end of the bar.”
Less than five minutes later, after a surly encounter with Abe Forbush at the livery, Wolf was back on his black, riding out of Willow Bend, a delighted gleam in his one eye.
As Blackmann rode in through the gate beside Josh, he saw Lassiter start across the yard toward him from the stable. Lassiter’s face was streaked with sweat, his hat brim and vest covered with a fine patina of trail dust.
Blackmann dismounted in front of the ranch house and waited for Lassiter to reach him. “Well, what is it? You just get back from town?”
Lassiter grinned. He was hugely pleased. “That’s right. I just got back. Too bad I didn’t get in a little sooner. That Caulder was in ahead of me this morning and he just kind of run wild—like a bear in a pea patch.”
Blackmann dropped his reins over the tie rail and moved around his horse to face Lassiter. “Now just what did he do?”
“He went wild, that’s what he did, John.”
“Damn it! Give me details!”
“Well, I had to piece it together.”
Josh smiled at the foreman. “Well, then. Piece it together, Lassiter. Then tell us.”
Lassiter pulled himself up to his full height, considered a moment, then told them what he knew of Caulder’s argument with Obermeyer and Gibson, ending with his account of Caulder’s handling of the sheriff. When he had finished, Blackmann looked at Josh.
“Looks like the Double B is getting desperate, Josh.” He grinned. “Even though you’ve been busy giving back all their cattle.” Blackmann was obviously pleased.
Lassiter spoke up eagerly. “They must be hurtin’, John. I guess they need supplies real bad.”
Josh shook his head. “That just don’t sound right to me. Wolf Caulder doesn’t strike me as a man who’d go wild like that.”
“What makes him so different from the rest of us?” Lassiter wanted to know. “We got Double B by the short hair and he knows it. He probably thought he could buffalo Obermeyer or Gibson. When he found he couldn’t, he blew his cork. Sounds perfectly logical to me.”
But Blackmann was watching his son carefully. “You don’t like it, Josh?”
Josh shrugged. “I was at their place last night, don’t forget. It didn’t seem to me they were all this close to desperation—Wolf Caulder, especially.”
Blackmann nodded. “Maybe. But like Lassiter says, we have got them by the short hair.” He looked at Lassiter. “Was Dundee drinking when Caulder took him?”
Lassiter grinned. “Dundee hasn’t taken a drop since you gave him the word.”
Blackmann nodded emphatically. “Good.”
He started into the house, turned to watch Josh leading his horse toward the stable, frowned, then continued on into the cool interior. He found Juanita in the kitchen and told her he was hungry and to bring something up to his study. As he left the kitchen and started up the stairs to his room, he found himself troubled by what Josh had told him.
Damn it! Wolf Caulder was no ordinary antagonist. Josh was right. He had the balls of a rogue bull, but he was a cool one—a cold one.
Coming to a quick decision, he moved back down the stairs and out onto the verandah. Lassiter was gone. Then he saw the kid leaving his bunkhouse, his six-gun gleaming in his hand as he polished it with an oily cloth.
“Hey, Kid!” he called.
The kid hustled across the sun-drenched yard, anxious to please. “Yes, sir, Mr. Blackmann,” he said. “Anything you want?”
“I want you to saddle up the best horse you can find and ride into Willow Bend. I want you to tell Dundee that I expect him to keep his eye on Obermeyer night and day. Night and day. You got that, Kid?”
The boy’s cold eyes gleamed in his pale face. He nodded quickly. “I got it, sir.”
“You tell Dundee if he lets Obermeyer get away with anything, he’ll have you to contend with.” Blackmann grinned at the kid. “Think you can remember to tell him that?”
“Sure, Mr. Blackmann,” the kid said, smiling. “I can tell him that, all right.”
“Then get to it. When you get back, come see me. I’ll want a report on Dundee’s condition.”
The boy turned and hurried off across the yard toward the stable, his buffalo coat billowing out behind him. Blackmann shook his head. He would never be able to figure out how the kid could stand wearing that enormous coat in this heat. The funny thing was, the kid didn’t sweat. He seemed cold all the time.
Blackmann turned and went back inside and met Juanita hurrying up the stairs to his room with a tray containing a pot of coffee, rolls and an inch thick slice of beef. Pleased, he followed after her up the stairs. He was famished.
Three nights later, under a moon that ducked in and out behind fast moving clouds, Wolf and Ben rode into Willow Bend after circling above the town carefully, keeping to the shade of the cottonwoods that lined Willow Creek. It was close to three in the morning when they finally dismounted behind Obermeyer’s warehouse.
Obermeyer was waiting—and, to Wolf’s surprise, so was Helen Obermeyer. The Murphy wagon was almost completely loaded and it did not take long for Wolf and Ben to complete the business. In less than an hour they were coaxing the mules silently out of town, their horses tied to the rear of the wagon.
Behind them they left Obermeyer trussed in the warehouse in back of his store, a gag tied around his mouth, Helen on her way back to her house. She would not discover her father’s absence from the house until that morning when she would hurry into the warehouse and find him—and the two small sacks of gold coins left beside Obermeyer. In her excitement she would rush into the street for help from passing townsmen, who would verify the robbery and the payment.
That was the plan.
Dundee stirred groggily, then snapped himself awake, panic clutching at his vitals. Daylight was streaming in through the window of his office. By the slant of it, he could tell it was almost a half hour after sunup. The empty bottle of whiskey on his desk stared back at him accusingly. He had just been going to take one snifter!
Hastily he dropped the empty bottle into a bottom drawer and slammed the drawer shut. Rubbing his face fiercely, he pushed himself to his feet and looked out the window. The town was just beginning to stir. Abe Forbush was leading one of the horses back from the trough in front of his livery.
Dundee went to the door and pulled it open and stood in the bright, still-cool sunshine. It was going to be another scorcher. The panic within him subsided. No one would know about the bottle, about last night. The kid was back at the Snake Bar. And Obermeyer was most likely just getting up and there was nothing—absolutely nothing—to worry about. He still could not understand what it was that had prompted Blackmann to send the kid in the other day to tell him to increase his surveillance of Obermeyer, to make it round-the-clock. What was he expecting Obermeyer to do anyway? It was crazy—plumb crazy. A waste of Dundee’s time.
Then Dundee thought of the kid and stirred uneasily in the doorway. Perhaps he’d better step next door to Obermeyer’s store and look in, then check out the warehouse and make sure that damn barbed wire was still in there. Of course it would be. It was not going anywhere. Caulder hadn’t returned to town and Obermeyer, like Gibson, was in Blackmann’s pocket.
In a few steps Dundee was beside Obermeyer’s. He looked through the window of the locked door, saw nothing, then walked through the alley to the rear of the store and around to the warehouse loading platform. He frowned.
There were fresh wheel tracks in the alley, deep ones from a Murphy wagon’s iron-rimmed wheels. A wagon had been loaded during the night and driven away! Dundee felt suddenly sick as he scrambled up onto the loading platform and pushed through the door beside it.
Obermeyer was sitting with his back to a sack of grain, his knees drawn up and his ankles bound, his hands trussed behind him. Around his mouth a bandanna had been tied. Obermeyer’s eyes were ope
n, staring up at Dundee. And beside the man sat two bags of coins.
In that instant Dundee knew what had happened and why Blackmann had sent the kid in with word to watch Obermeyer more closely. Blackmann had suspected that Obermeyer might try something like this—a fake robbery. Dundee did not need to look around to know that all the barbed wire and the fence posts were gone.
Again Dundee thought of the kid—and what he had promised if Dundee failed Blackmann in this matter. In a sudden, despairing rage Dundee strode close to the still bound merchant and began striking down at him with the barrel of his six-gun. The kid would be after him, and it was Obermeyer’s fault! The thought increased the fury he felt and Dundee redoubled the force of his blows as he struck Obermeyer about the face and head. Gouts of blood began spouting from the man’s shattered nose and from rents in his cheeks and neck. Then, under the force of Dundee’s blows, Obermeyer’s head swung forward, the bandanna slipping from around his mouth.
“Helen!” he cried. “Helen!”
Frantic that the man’s call might bring witnesses to his beating, Dundee struck straight down upon the man’s head with all the terrible force he could muster. The skull gave sickeningly under Dundee’s revolver barrel—and Dundee pulled back in sudden realization of what he had done.
Obermeyer pitched forward, still bound hand and foot, as a great dark gob of blood welled from the top of the man’s head. Then Obermeyer’s legs began to twitch convulsively. Still backing up, Dundee caught sight for the second time of the two small bags of gold. He stepped forward swiftly and keeping his eyes averted from the bleeding, still-convulsing piece of flesh beside them, he snatched up both sacks and tucked them under his gunbelt.
Then he turned and hurried from the warehouse, back down the alley and around to his office. As he slumped into his chair he thought at once of how much he needed a drink. He pulled out the bottle he had emptied that night; but he had truly emptied it. Then he thought of the money. He dumped the contents of both bags onto his desk and knew suddenly what he would do—the only thing left for him to do.
With this money as a stake, he would shake the dust of this town and perhaps make it as far as Mexico, where he might buy himself a little spread. Why not? He counted the money a second time. Yes, it was more than he had been able to save in a lifetime of petty cow town jobs.
But first he needed that drink. The Palace might be open this early. Slade liked to clean up the place in the cool early hours of the morning.
After that he’d be long gone—far from Blackmann and the kid, especially the kid ...
Eight
Wolf was manhandling the last of the wire bales, lifting them off the wagon and rolling them in under the loose hay in the feed barn. Pike—unable to give a hand because of his still fresh wound—was keeping Wolf company. The man was in a nostalgic mood and was telling Wolf about the last great herd of buffalo he had seen years before.
“ ... an’ so we was coming south from Edmonton with a Red River cart-train. We was just north of the Big Bow when we run into this herd. As near as we can figure there’s a couple of million of them critters. It’s spring and the calves was so plentiful we’d have to stop every now and then just to pry them from between the spokes. They just kept blockin’ the wheels.”
Wolf paused to mop the sweat off his face with his bandanna. “That so?” he said, starting back to the wagon for the last wire bale. Glancing out the barn door, he saw the sparkling green of the wet grass caught in the full flood of bright sunlight. His throat was dry and he needed a drink of water from the kitchen pump. But he didn’t want to interrupt Pike’s story. “Must have been quite a few at that,” he said to Pike as he reached out for the wire. “The big herds were gone by the time I rode north.”
“Well,” said Pike, “it’s a funny thing. Disappearin’ seemed to be something them critters could do real easy. It was pure surprise how quick one of them big herds could quit a country. You’d travel for days in sight of ’em, and wake up some morning and it’d look like they plumb disappeared from the face of the earth. You’d ride for ten days without seeing hide or hair of them. Whether they walked or run I never knowed, but from the looks of it, you’d swear they flew.”
Wolf was in the act of pulling a loose shock of hay over this last spool of wire, when he heard the shot. He straightened and looked at Pike. Pike had heard it too. The old man hurried to the barn entrance, Wolf on his heels.
Ben, waving his rifle, was racing toward them from the cottonwoods where he had been stationed. “A rider’s coming!” he called. “He’s coming right on!”
As Ben slid to a stop beside them, Wolf asked, “Did you fire at him?”
“Just over his head, like you told me.”
Wolf nodded and moved quickly to the main gate to see who it was, his six-gun out and ready in his hand. Ben and Wolf slipped up beside him. Ben poked his rifle through the poles.
And then the rider was in plain sight, slipping past the cottonwoods and Wolf saw who it was: Helen Obermeyer. She was wearing Levi’s, a white silk blouse, and a black, floppy sombrero, her golden hair streaming out behind her as she rode.
“Put your rifle down,” Wolf said, as he holstered his own weapon. “It’s Helen Obermeyer.”
Wolf pushed open the main gate and stood by it, waiting. As Helen neared him he saw that all the beauty had been washed from her face; it was bone-stark with grief. And she rode like the last survivor out of hell.
He reached up and caught the bridle of her horse as she pulled to a sliding halt just inside the gate. Turning back, he helped her down from the saddle. The woman collapsed forward into his arms, sobbing—great, racking sobs that shook Wolf almost as much as they shook her.
At last she had quieted enough so that he could push her away from him and look into her face. “What is it, Helen? What happened?”
“My father ... murdered! The money gone ... beaten, terribly! I found him ...!”
By this time Betsy was with them. Before Helen could say any more, Betsy pulled her away from them and helped her toward the cabin.
Wolf watched them go for a moment, then turned to Ben. “Saddle my black, will you, Ben?”
The boy nodded and set off for the stable on a run.
By the time Wolf reached the outskirts of Willow Bend two hours later, it was pretty clear in his mind what had happened to Obermeyer.
Dundee was Blackmann’s man. It seemed clear to Wolf that Dundee must have been told to keep an eye on Obermeyer; when the sheriff found Obermeyer as Wolf had left him, Dundee must have realized how he had been tricked and killed Obermeyer in a rage and taken the money. What the man would do now, Wolf could only guess. His best bet—since he had not served Blackmann very well and was now a richer man by several hundred dollars—was to light out for healthier country if, that is, he could tear himself away from The Palace’s bar.
Wolf could not keep thinking of the hell poor Helen had lived through that morning. As he had pieced it together from her broken account, it seemed she had found her father’s beaten corpse in the warehouse that morning and saw that the money was gone. She ran next door to the sheriff’s office, found it empty, then ran to Slade Hamner at The Palace, the only man in Willow Bend she trusted.
When she burst into the Palace she found the sheriff drinking at the bar with Slade serving him, one of the sacks of gold coins open before him on the counter.
In that instant she realized that it was the sheriff who had found Obermeyer bound hand and foot, beaten him to death, and taken the money. The sight of the murderer of her father drinking so casually at the bar with Slade sent her into a panic. There seemed nowhere to go, no one she could trust—and then she thought of Wolf and the Double B. With a cry she flung herself back out of The Palace and went for her horse ...
As Wolf entered Willow Bend he saw knots of townspeople gathered in front of stores. The activity of the place seemed to have come to a standstill. Merchants with aprons, a barber with his blade, barkeeps, bankers w
ere all standing around in front of their places of business talking in excited groups. As Wolf rode slowly down Main Street past the hotel, he saw the groups grow silent and felt the weight of their eyes on him. Though Helen had told no one what she had found that morning, the death of Ross Obermeyer was no longer a secret.
And remembering Wolf’s last visit to Willow Bend, more than one of those townsmen watching were coming to a rapid conclusion. The Double B had stolen the wire it had ordered from Obermeyer’s warehouse and beaten Obermeyer to death when he discovered Wolf and tried to stop him.
Wolf dismounted in front of The Palace. Slade appeared in the doorway, his shotgun leveled at Wolf.
Wolf dropped the reins of his horse over the hitching rail and walked up onto the boardwalk in front of The Palace. He ignored the shotgun in Slade’s hands.
“I want Dundee,” he said to Slade. “Where is he?”
Slade frowned. “Dundee?”
“That’s right. Where is he?”
“Why do you want him, Caulder? He should be looking for you.”
“He should, but he ain’t. Now where can I find him?”
Slade let his shotgun drop, still frowning. “He rode out of town a good hour ago.”
“His own horse?”
“Yes.”
“Which direction did he take?”
“I don’t know. I’m not sure.”
“Was it in the direction of Snake Bar?”
“No, I don’t believe it was at that. Caulder, what’s this all about. You think it was Dundee killed Obermeyer?”
“I understand he was in here first thing this morning swilling down whiskey and he was paying for it in gold coin. Am I right?”
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