Crouched by the crack in the store wall, Neech saw the Texan hurrying past. A few moments later, while the din of shooting increased in volume, he spotted his target. Austin’s face was pressed to the bars. He was staring out, no doubt curious as to the cause of the gunfire, and unwittingly playing into Neech’s hands. Neech squinted along the slender barrel of the Lynch & Varley, took careful aim, and squeezed the trigger. Austin’s face dropped out of sight, but not before the killer had noted the ugly blotch between the eyes.
For Neech, the rest was easy. He retreated to the rear window and, for the second time that day, checked the back alley. Nobody in sight. He climbed out quickly, lowered the window and, at a leisurely pace, made his way to the rear entrance of the Lucky Chance.
Within the law office, the atmosphere was charged with tension. The street door had been locked and barred and Loomis’s desk hauled across to be propped against the knob. The filing cabinet and two chairs provided cover for Loomis and his deputy, who were positioned by the open front window. Both grasped shotguns. Larry stood directly behind them, staring out. Grim-faced, Loomis conceded:
“You weren’t foolin’, Valentine. That really is a lynch-party!”
“Sure enough,” nodded Larry. “But don’t get trigger-happy. We might still talk ’em out of it.”
“Hey, runt!” It was Stretch, calling to them from the porch. “I did my best, but ...”
“You did fine, big feller,” Larry assured him.
“Better bring him in, Valentine,” muttered the sheriff. The Bar A men had arrived and were converging on the porch. With both hands gun-filled, Stretch was positioning himself atop the steps. Larry grinned wryly, and told the lawmen:
“Us Texans always work together. You two can guard this window.”
He clambered through the window and moved forward to stand beside the taller Texan. From the side of his mouth, Stretch remarked:
“Quite a passel of ’em.”
“Ain’t it the truth?” grunted Larry.
“We could get our fool heads blowed off,” Stretch opined.
Larry started his cocked Colt moving in a half-arc to cover the advancing riders. His shouted warning rose high above the angry muttering and won him the full attention of his challengers.
“That’s far enough, boys!”
“We got no quarrel with you, Texas!” yelled Byatt. “You wanta risk your hide—protectin’ a skunk like Austin?”
“It’s you we’re protectin’,” drawled Larry. “If we let you past, you’ll surely hang for murder—and you know it.” Some of the punchers had dismounted. Some still sat their horses. All brandished cocked .45s, and the tension was real and thick and pungent. A hush had descended upon the area fronting the law office. The faces of Loomis and Kellogg, dimly visible beyond the front window, showed pallid and hazy. There was a ragged edge to the sheriff’s voice, as he added his warning to Larry’s.
“Austin ain’t even indicted yet. It’s a mite early for a hangrope!”
“Austin,” grated Byatt, “is gonna get what’s comin’ to him—here and now!”
“Hutch and me,” called Loomis, “are squatting behind a couple cocked scatterguns. Use your head, Byatt! You got any notion what’ll happen—if we have to shoot at you?”
“Two shotguns and three Colts, boys,” growled Larry. “We could hurt you in the worst way—as if you didn’t know.”
Urgent footsteps broke the silence that followed Larry’s words. Stretch threw a wary glance to his left as a figure materialized out of the gloom and made for the law office steps. It was Hattie Alden, obviously nervous, but determined too. Byatt called to her. She didn’t answer, until she had climbed the steps and was standing beside Larry.
“I’m here to stay!” she snapped. “If you men defy the law, you defy Bar A—and everything we stand for!”
“Move away, Miss Hattie,” said Larry. “I told you to stay clear of this hassle.”
“No!” she breathed. “There’s a reputation at stake here. My father’s reputation for fair dealing. No Alden rider was ever involved in a lynch-riot.”
“Ain’t you galoots ashamed?” For a wonder, this well-timed rebuke was voiced by Deputy Kellogg. “It’s a sad day for Bar A when a sprig of a girl has to risk her life to talk sense to you!”
“No use arguin’ with ’em, Hutch,” muttered Loomis. “You’ll only make ’em madder.”
“Somebody has to do somethin’,” opined Kellogg.
“They’ll be comin’,” Loomis worriedly asserted. “Ain’t a thing can stop ’em. Not talk, nor bullets nor the nerve of young Hattie. Tell you what, Hutch. You better rig some kinda barricade outside Austin’s cell, in case they get past them Texans and bust right in here.”
Kellogg toted his shotgun to the cellblock entrance, unlocked it and retreated into the corridor. On the porch, Larry and Stretch shifted positions so as to shield Hattie with their bodies. Byatt and his companions were teetering on the tightrope between hesitation and disaster.
Byatt made to move forward, and Larry was actually drawing a bead on him, when Clem Alden arrived. The rancher rode down Main at a hard gallop and didn’t lessen speed when he reached his assembled employees. There was a wild scatter and the disorder continued, while Alden hustled his animal to the law office steps. He had spotted his daughter, and his face was livid with rage. As he reined up, he called to her:
“Get the heck out of here, child! What in tarnation are you trying to do?”
“I’m only trying to help, Dad,” she cried. “Trying to stop these men from doing something they’ll regret.”
“The hell with you, Byatt!” roared Alden. “You too, Symes—O’Hanlon—Blaine—all of you! I tried to reason with you before, and you wouldn’t listen! Now I’m making it a challenge!” He dismounted quickly, hurried up the steps and planted himself beside Larry. “You want Austin? All right! You have to come through me! And I’ll fire the first man that ...!”
He broke off abruptly. Kellogg was raising the alarm, his voice loud enough for all to hear. They saw his face beside Loomis’s at the front window.
“Austin’s dead! I just now found him in his cell—with a bullet in his head!”
“It’s a trick!” accused Byatt.
Larry threw a glance over his shoulder. Through clenched teeth, he growled a query.
“This is for sure, Deputy?”
“Come see for yourself!” offered Kellogg.
“I wanta see!” insisted Byatt.
“You’ll see, mister!” scowled Larry. “With your own two eyes, you’ll see!”
He descended the steps and advanced on Byatt. The puncher wavered, licked his lips and began raising his Colt, but Larry’s advance ended in a flying leap. He closed with Byatt, wrested his six-gun from his grasp and flung it to the ground, then spun him and seized him by left arm and shirt-collar.
“Now march!” growled Larry.
He prodded Byatt to the steps and up to the porch. Kellogg raised the bar, unlocked and opened the front door. Into the office they hurried, and across to the cellblock doorway. Kellogg stayed by the street door. Loomis fell in behind Larry and the puncher, as they entered the cellblock. There could be no doubt about Austin. He lay twisted, his legs on the bunk, the upper part of his body on the cell floor. One eye was wide open and unseeing. A third of his face was obscured by congealed blood. Loomis cursed long and loud, and declared:
“I don’t understand it! I just don’t savvy how it could happen!”
“Only one way it could be done,” muttered Larry. “Somebody took a shot at him through the window.”
“You can’t blame us for this!” panted Byatt. “Wasn’t any of us in that side alley.”
“I guess you’re satisfied now, huh, Byatt?” scowled Loomis. “Maybe you didn’t trigger the shot, but you made it possible! You gave this sneak-killer all the cover he needed!”
Larry released his grip on Byatt, and curtly told him: “Go pass the word to your lynch-happy pards—th
en get out of town. And I hope Alden fires every man-jack of you.”
Byatt, after a last sober glance at the dead man, turned on his heel and trudged back to the office. From the street doorway, he called to his cohorts.
“It’s for sure, boys. Somebody gunned Austin—and he’s as dead as he’ll ever be.”
The cowpokes traded wondering glances. Alden, the first to recover his composure, began barking orders, and the men of Bar A finally obeyed. Within minutes the area was cleared. The cowpokes were riding out, and the rancher was ordering his daughter to fetch her horse. Glaring at the Texans, he asserted:
“This is what happens when a gentle-raised woman throws in with a couple of trouble-shooters. Damn you, Valentine, she could’ve died in this ruckus!”
“Alden,” frowned Larry, “there’s only one way she could’ve stopped a bullet. Over my dead body—and Stretch’s.”
“We didn’t invite her to buy in,” Stretch grimly assured Alden.
“It was entirely my own idea,” declared Hattie.
“Go fetch your horse,” snapped Alden.
He turned his back on the Texans, descended the steps and took the rein of his own horse. In bitter mood, Larry returned to the office. Kellogg had restored the furniture to its normal position and was now leaving to summon the doctor and the undertaker. Loomis was still cursing.
“Why?” Loomis repeated, over and over. “That’s what I can’t understand. Why was Austin put away? Who’d want to kill him—when he was already locked up tight ...?”
“You ready to listen to a little hoss-sense?” asked Larry.
“If you think you can make sense of this crazy deal ...” shrugged Loomis.
“It couldn’t have been a sniper in the side alley. Too risky. He’d have to climb up to the window to draw a bead on Austin and, with Main Street full of hell-raisin’ cowpokes, somebody’d be bound to spot him.”
“All right, all right ...” Loomis gestured wildly. “So tell me how it was done!”
“What’s next door—on that side?” demanded Larry.
“The old Sheldon store,” frowned Loomis. "It’s empty.”
“The killer had to stake out somewhere,” shrugged Larry. “Why not an empty store? Fetch a lamp, Sheriff. We’ll go take a look.”
Doc Drew arrived with the undertaker in tow. As they moved into the cellblock, Loomis tossed his key ring to the medico and told him:
“I want the bullet.”
The sheriff then seized an oil-lamp and followed the Texans from the office. They stood in the side alley a while, checking the distance separating the window of the death cell from the next building in line. Stretch raised his eyes to the store roof, and suggested:
“From up there, maybe.”
“Maybe,” frowned Larry. “But I don’t think so. Too sharp an angle for a sure shot. More likely he was inside the old store.”
“Nobody’s been inside the old Sheldon place in a month of Sundays,” argued Loomis.
“Bueno,” grunted Larry. “Ought to be plenty dust in there, which means it’ll be easy to find track of the killer.” He moved around to the front of the building and nodded to the door. Loomis and Stretch joined him there. The lawman tried the knob, shook his head dubiously.
“I dunno who’d have the key, and we can’t just—hey!” He yelled a protest, as Larry swung a hard kick at the door. With the woodwork creaking and its unoiled hinges squealing, the door swung inward. Stretch grinned mildly. Larry crooked a finger at the indignant lawman, and said: “Tag us with the lamp.”
They moved into the deserted store, with Loomis’s lamp filling the place with yellow light. Almost immediately they spotted the footprints—an easy chore, thanks to the thick dust covering the floor. The marks told their own simple story, revealing the position held by the killer beside the crack in the wall. Larry peered through that crack, then invited Loomis to do likewise.
“Clear enough for you now?” he challenged. “From here, he could easily draw a bead on the window.”
“And,” frowned Stretch, “that gunhawk was bound to show his face—what with all the ruckus out front. He’d get curious.”
“He got curious all right,” nodded Larry. “And his curiosity cost him his life.”
They followed the footprints to the rear window.
“Two sets,” Loomis excitedly announced. “There were two of ’em.”
“Two of ’em,” mused Larry. “Or maybe just the one hombre.”
“You mean he tried it twice?” prodded Loomis.
“Could be,” shrugged Larry. “And second time lucky.” He opened the rear window, thrust his head and shoulders through and scanned the back alley.
“That’s it, I guess,” sighed Loomis. “We’ll find hunnerds of foot-tracks out there. No hope of trailin’ the jasper that gunned Austin.”
“I still say,” frowned Larry, as he drew his head in, “the ambush wasn’t all Austin’s idea.”
“I didn’t believe you before,” muttered Loomis. “But now, I’m thinkin’ there’s somethin’ in what you say.”
“There has to be a reason for every murder,” said Larry, “and I reckon we know the reason for this one. Somebody hired Austin to kill Weaver, He wasn’t countin’ on Austin gettin’ himself arrested, and he was afeared Austin might talk a deal with the law.”
“What you say makes sense,” Loomis admitted, “only it don’t help me one little bit. You give me a reason for somebody killin’ Austin—but how about Weaver?”
They quit the disused store. In the mouth of the alley, the boss-lawman paused to light a cigar, and to complain, “This job’s gettin’ too big for me. Too much happenin’ too fast. I’ll have to start checkin’ now, checkin’ on every jasper that was acquainted with Pike Austin. Likely won’t get any sleep tonight. And, come tomorrow, I gotta organize that consarned land-rush.”
“Sure,” grunted Larry. “Things are tough all over.”
“Never thought I’d be thankin’ you hombres for buttin’ in,” frowned Loomis. “Gotta admit me and Hutch couldn’t have held off them hotheads, if you hadn’t bought in.”
“There’ll be no more lynchers plaguin’ you,” scowled Larry. “Nobody wants to lynch a dead man.”
His blood was boiling and his mind seething with queries, as he sauntered along to the Brazos barn with Stretch.
He had never doubted Austin’s complicity in the murder of Del Weaver, and he had assumed that, under clever interrogation, Austin could be forced into a corner, forced to tell everything he knew—including the names of his accomplices. Who were those accomplices? Probably, Murch and Wilson. But, for his money, none of these three had actually devised the ambush. There was a question of motive—still shrouded in mystery.
They socialized with Brazos a while, discussing the two killings over a bottle of whiskey. When, a short time later, they climbed to the hayloft, Stretch was ready for sleep. A natural condition for the taller trouble-shooter. Larry envied his partner, as he lay in the hay and waited in vain for slumber.
Meanwhile, Lew Neech’s office was looking more than somewhat overcrowded. The door was locked and Bale was on duty in the corridor, to ensure that no customers ventured up to the gallery to overhear a snatch of damning conversation. There was a balcony beyond, the window so, as an extra precaution, Johnny Murch was perched on the window-ledge. Also present were Cole Wilson and five other hard-faced rogues recruited from the seedier quarters of this fast-growing community.
Having disposed of Austin, Neech was feeling supremely sure of himself, and confident that tomorrow’s big event would result in his gaining control of the coveted acres of Carew Canyon. He said as much now, but gave no hint of his ultimate aim, beyond asserting:
“I want that canyon—every inch of it—for my own good reasons. I’m willing to pay for your stakes, as soon as you’ve dug them into Carew Canyon land, and you’ve agreed to my price. So now we come to our last parlay before the race. For a starter, how about all those rigs lined
up outside town?”
“Some of ’em were guarded too close for us to reach,” Murch told him. “Most of ’em we’ve fixed. They’ll roll maybe halfway to the canyon, and then ...” He chuckled softly, “trouble—for the waddy on the seat.”
“And you don’t have to fret about the horses,” drawled Wilson, “seein’ as how you rented the fastest mounts in this here territory.”
“Fourteen in all,” Neech reminded him. “Don’t forget we’ve planted four spares along the route. You know where to find them.”
“Sure,” nodded Wilson. “But there’s still a chance somebody’ll get lucky. What happens if we ain’t the first to hit the canyon?”
“Don’t worry,” grinned Neech. “I know the sheriff’s whole plan for supervising the race, so I know how we can win. There’ll be only one official waiting at the canyon. Deputy Kellogg. He’ll ride out at sun-up and take up his position on the high ground above the south gate.”
“Well, hell,” protested Wilson, “what happens if we have to get rough with some sodbusters—right there where Kellogg can see us?”
“What Kellogg won’t see,” retorted Neech, “can’t hurt us. And that will be your chore, Wilson. You’ll ride out there before sunrise, stake out and wait for Kellogg. Get behind him and, as soon as the first riders show, you fix him so he’ll see exactly nothing. You know what I mean?”
“Why, sure.” Wilson patted the butt of his Colt, grinned a knowing grin. “One wallop from this—and Kellogg’ll sleep for an hour.”
“If we have to tangle with any sodbusters at the south gate,” frowned Murch, “you can bet they’ll run whinin’ to the sheriff. How about that?”
“It’ll be their word against ours,” drawled Neech. “With Kellogg out of action, there’ll be no official witness to whatever we have to do.”
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