The Sixth Western Novel

by Jackson Gregory

  “Not a Chinaman’s. Hey, Bill—”

  But Sudden Bill Dorn was no longer with him.

  CHAPTER VIII

  Mike Bundy lost not a single unnecessary moment turning back to Palm Valley Ranch, he had brought two led saddle horses with him up from Nacional, and riding a fresh mount which he had no thought of sparing he was out of camp and on his way ten minutes before Bill Dorn heard what Duke Jones had to tell him.

  When at the end of the ride he came down stiffly out of the saddle his horse stood with legs trembling, its nose almost brushing the ground. There was a light in the house Bundy started toward it, his big roweled spurs clanking. Two figures rose up out of the shadows to block his way.

  “Hey there,” said a voice. “Who’re you? What do you want?”

  Bundy snapped, “That you, Smith? That you, Fontana? What in hell are you doing out here? Where’s the girl? Inside?”

  “Yes, she’s in there,” said Smith.

  “If you two had a grain of sense between you,” stormed Bundy, “she would be on her way to the border. Get your horses ready; you’re riding with her in two shakes.”

  He started on toward the steps, but Smith’s voice stopped him. “She’s got company,” said Smith. “That’s why we’re leavin’ her be for a spell. Its bad luck killin’ sheriffs, Bundy. Me, I know.”

  “You mean MacArthur is here?”

  “Seguro for sure,” said Fontana, and one guessed from his voice that his lip was lifted after the snarling fashion he had, so that his teeth showed. “Thees sheriff, she’s gettin’ pretty damn nosey, Señor. Bad luck to keel?” He spat audibly and you knew that he shrugged.

  Already Mike Bundy was rapping for entrance. A voice called out heartily, “Come along in,” and Bundy entered to find Sheriff MacArthur sitting alone in the living room, his boot heels up on a bench before a small blaze in the fireplace, his hands clasped behind his head, the stub of a cigar turning slowly in the corner of his mouth.

  “Hello, MacArthur,” said Bundy curtly. “What are you doing here?”

  “Hello, Bundy,” said MacArthur. “Take your spurs off and make yourself at home.”

  “I am at home! Maybe you didn’t know? Well, this place is mine now.”

  “Nice place,” said MacArthur.

  “Maybe you saw my sign nailed to the door.” Bundy’s eyes bored into him. “The sign isn’t there now.”

  “Maybe that’s it,” said the sheriff, and used the toe of one boot to point. “I noticed a while ago some words printed on a piece of cardboard; burnt, mostly, now though.”

  “There’s a girl here,” said Bundy. “She is here, isn’t she?”

  “What girl?” asked MacArthur.

  “A cheap scrap of calico who calls herself Lorna Kent; she says she’s old lady Kent’s niece. She’s the girl, by the way, who killed One Eye Perez last night. You might take her in, MacArthur, and hand her over to the Mexican authorities.”

  MacArthur shrugged. “Me, I’ve got plenty jobs of my own without working for the boys on the other side the line. I’m still sort of puzzled about the sudden taking off of Jake Fanning—not that he didn’t need the same. Haven’t any ideas on that, have you, Bundy?”

  “No. And I don’t give a damn about it one way or the other. Where’s that dance hall filly?”

  “Squat and rest your bones,” invited the sheriff. “And tell me how you know this girl killed One Eye? She don’t look much like a killer.”

  “Smith and Fontana saw her shoot through the window and plug him in the back of the head.”

  “Where were you?” asked the sheriff. He tossed his cigar stub into the fire where it should have gone long before and started building himself a cigarette.

  “I’d just got into town. I didn’t see it.”

  “And then you and that hot-head, Bill Dorn, had what you might call an interrupted fist fight. You didn’t have any gun on you, did you?”

  “I don’t always carry a gun,” said Bundy. “What about it?”

  “Nothing. Say, here’s something funny! Bill Dorn didn’t have any gun on him this afternoon; I met him on the trail and he showed me. It was because he wanted it known he wasn’t out gunning for you any longer. And your not carrying hardware last night—well, it showed folks, I guess, that anyhow it wasn’t you that shot One Eye.”

  Bundy’s jaw hardened and his steely eyes blazed dangerously. “Put a name to it, MacArthur, if you’ve got anything to say!”

  “Nary a word,” said the sheriff pleasantly. “I was just thinking.”

  Bundy moved to cross the room toward a closed door.

  MacArthur pulled his feet down from the bench.

  “Where are you going?” he asked, suddenly businesslike.

  “If that girl is here—”

  “Wait a shake. I heard what was on that sign. Whose place is this now, no joshing, Bundy? Yours or the girl’s?”

  “It’s mine. And in my own house I go where I please, open what doors I want open, even if I have to smash ’em off their hinges. Is that clear?”

  “It ought to be. But wait a shake again. If this place is yours out and out you must have bought it, or anyhow got a deed to it. If so, you’ve got the deed in your pocket or somewhere, or you’ve placed it on record. There seems to be a sort of mix-up about this, Bundy. Any objection to putting me straight?”

  Bundy came back slowly and stood leaning against the chimney. The scowl remained on his brows while he spoke deliberately.

  “When I say that Palm Ranch belongs to me I mean it. No; I didn’t buy it and I haven’t any deed. But I loaned the old woman a lot of money on it; it’s mortgaged to me for twice as much as anyone on earth would ever pay; she’s dead intestate; there are no heirs, for she was a widow all alone in the world. This little snip that calls herself Lorna Kent is a nervy little fake, and I’ll soon show that. So the place is as good as mine, and I mean to protect my interests. It’s a way I have, MacArthur,” he ended drily.

  “I thought it might be something like that. But how come, Bundy, that you loaned twice as much as the place would be worth to anyone else?”

  “Suppose you figure that out for yourself? Maybe I just got soft-hearted all of a sudden! Maybe my reason is my own particular business. And now, sheriff or no sheriff, to hell with your questions, MacArthur.”

  “Sure,” said the sheriff. “Sure.” He lighted the cigarette he had rolled so carefully. Then over his shoulder he called toward the closed door: “Better come along in, Miss Lorna. There’s a gent here to see you.”

  The door opened instantly and Lorna came in and with her came old Cap’n Jinks, his leathery face puckered, his bright eyes harboring their habitual look of roguishness. He was first to speak, chirping cheerily: “Why hello, Bundy! Ain’t run off an’ left them fellers to steal all your new gold, have you?”

  Bundy ignored him, his attention fully given to the girl. There was a first flick of fear in her eyes as they rested on his face which, despite its handsome blondness, was just now like a pleasant landscape made ominous by shadowing black clouds. That glint of fear in her eyes went as swiftly as it had come. She stiffened her slight figure and walked to the bench at the fire, sitting close to the sheriff.

  In a flash too the scowl fled from Bundy’s face; he stared at her in a strangely intent sort of way. His brows went up, his eyes opened wide and then over his face played an expression not in the least hard to read, one which certainly would not have displeased most girls. Bundy, in surprised admiration, was paying her beauty full tribute.

  After Cap’n Jinks’ words died away there had been an utter silence so far as human tongues were concerned, only the faint crackle of the fire and the sudden, startling hoot of an owl nearby ruffling the stillness. Then suddenly Bundy spoke out:

  “I never really saw you until now! Why didn’t somebody tell me? There was never
a girl like you! You kill a man, murdering him in cold blood, shooting him in the back?” He laughed at that. “They’re fools or liars to say so. And if you tell me you are really Lorna Kent and Mrs. Kent’s niece, by the Lord I believe you!”

  Lorna bestowed on him a rather superior smile; her lips remained unparted, but the corners came up ever so slightly.

  “Then I’m not just a soiled scrap of calico after all? Not just a little dance hall—what was it?—oh, yes; a dance hall filly! No little—let me see—no little snip that calls herself Lorna Kent? You’re being terribly kind to me, you know, Mr. Bundy!”

  If she counted on upsetting his aplomb she failed utterly. He put back his head and laughed heartily. Then he said, grown sober again: “Forgive me please, Miss Kent. I tell you I hadn’t had a good look at you. I take back every word and I crave your pardon. I thought—No. I won’t say what I thought or I’ll have to apologize again. You see, I listened to Hank Smith and Mex Fontana, and I’m hanged if I know whether they’re bigger fools than liars or vice versa.”

  “You ain’t makin’ love to her, be you, Bundy?” cackled old Jinks. “Soun’s kinder like it, an’ I don’t think the moon’s up yet. Besides which you’n her ain’t all alone in a hammick swingin’ under the pa’m trees.”

  Bundy only chuckled good-humoredly. To Lorna he said quite pleasantly: “Shall we talk this thing out in friendly fashion, Miss Kent? I am afraid that I’ve done you an injustice. I want to make amends if you’ll let me. And also,” and he smiled disarmingly, “I admit that I’m pretty keen on acquiring this property. Suppose we discuss the entire proposition?”

  “I’m not at all sure that I’d care to dispose of Palm Ranch,” said Lorna. She had to fight with herself to remain frozen toward him; the man was disturbingly fascinating, somehow, a bold, piratical devil whose sheer arrogant assurance carried him far. “I simply fell in love with the place the instant I saw it.”

  He nodded his understanding; he said quite soberly: “Love at first sight, eh? Well, the thing is possible; I know that.” He remembered his spurs, removed them and then drew a chair up to the hearth, sitting opposite her. “I hope, even against my own interests, that you can keep your ranch, Miss Kent. But can you? Pardon the intrusion, but this is apt to turn into a business talk before we are through. Can you raise twenty thousand dollars to take up the mortgage which I hold? And if you can raise that amount do you deem it wise to sink it in this desert ranch?”

  Lorna gasped. “Twenty thousand dollars? Mercy! I didn’t know there was that much money!”

  MacArthur, looking puzzled, broke into the conversation. “You don’t mean, Bundy, that you advanced twenty thousand dollars on this outfit?”

  “I had my reasons,” said Bundy. His attitude was that of a man suddenly determined to be frank. “You know, MacArthur, for it is certainly no secret, that over a period of years I have been gathering in lands. Some I have bought, some I have taken in on mortgages. Have you ever taken the trouble to check my various holdings and note their strategic values? Of course you haven’t and no one else has. If you took a map of this part of the world and blocked out on it all those lands which I now control in one way and another, I think you’d open your eyes. Pretty soon if anyone wants water, and that’s what everyone has to have hereabouts or go to the wall, he’ll have to come talk with Mike Bundy, and damned little good his talk is going to do him.”

  He cocked up his brows at Lorna and smiled his engaging, quizzical smile. “You’ll forgive an occasional damn, Miss Kent?” Then, stern faced as he again fronted MacArthur, he continued: “You’d find, working over that map of yours, that I was in position to own outright or to control, without the trouble and expense of ownership, a tract approximately fifty miles square. It’s a small empire, Mr. MacArthur, and I’m by way of becoming a small emperor, and not so damned small at that! Now with a gold strike falling into my hands in the Blue Smokes—” He broke off there dramatically; he extended a forceful muscular hand, the fingers open. Slowly he closed the fingers, at the end clenching them tight.

  Lorna was swift to see his vision; her own eyes caught fire.

  “It’s big,” she said. “Tremendous.”

  “So am I,” said Bundy quietly, and those clear, bold eyes of his challenged her to convict him of being a braggart.

  “And this ranch—”

  “What with its location and, most of all, its water,” returned Bundy sounding franker, were that possible, than ever, “it is of considerable value to my project. I won’t say it’s essential; it would be bad business on my part, wouldn’t it, to say to its owner that Las Palmas Rancho was a necessity to the forwarding of my plan? But it’s worth a good twenty thousand to me; yes, more; and it isn’t worth that to anyone else. And now you know why I advanced that sum and why I consider this ranch as good as mine.”

  “You were pretty sure you’d get the ranch?” said MacArthur. And he added sharply, “What did Mrs. Kent want with all that money?”

  “She invested it. With me. It went into a separate venture which I am sorry to say failed. She made her bet the same as I did; she lost every cent, the same as I lost the money I put in with hers. One can’t win every time, you know.”

  “That’s a fact a good many folks has learned recent,” put in old Cap’n Jinks, and demonstrated that on occasion he could look dreamily innocent as a full-fed cat.

  No one knew better the trick of ignoring a man in whom he wasn’t interested than Bundy. He had been speaking to the sheriff; now he turned direct to Lorna Kent.

  “I did not know that your aunt had any relatives living,” he said. “That’s why I was so cocksure of already being as good as owner here. If you inherit this property, Miss Kent, you also inherit a mortgage of twenty thousand dollars. Do you have the slightest idea of redeeming Palm Ranch at that figure?”

  Lorna looked helpless. She hadn’t twenty thousand dollars; she hadn’t twenty cents.

  “You will of course,” said Bundy, “take time to think it over. Also I hope you’ll advise with your friends. The place isn’t worth anything like that amount of money to anyone on earth but me. Just the same I’ll make you a proposition. I’ll give you five thousand right now for your interest as it may appear in your aunt’s ranch.”

  Lorna gasped. She simply couldn’t help it. To her, five thousand was a fortune! What couldn’t she do with it? A trip to Europe even, and money left over to do all sorts of Wild and lovely things. But after the involuntary intake of air she said shrewdly: “But you don’t even know that I do inherit! You don’t even know that I am her niece at all!”

  “I am reputed to be something of a gambler, Miss Kent,” said Bundy smilingly. “And if you will just give me your word that you are Lorna Kent—it’s a lovely name!—and that you are Mrs. Kent’s niece and sole heiress, why I wouldn’t consider it a gamble at all. As a matter of fact, with your big eyes looking at me like that, I rather think that I’d believe you if you told me that you’d found the moon where it had fallen down a well and that it was made of green cheese!”

  “I’ll consider your offer, Mr. Bundy,” said Lorna, as sober as a judge. “I’ll advise with my friends, as you recommend; my new friends,” and a quick smile touched her lips as she laid her hand on the sheriff’s arm and from him glanced at Cap’n Jinks. “When you come again I’ll let you know.”

  She hesitated there and looked searchingly at Bundy. She began to fear that perhaps she had been doing him injustice. Ruthless in business matters he might be, a man who drove his way along mercilessly to some golden goal of his own; yet she sensed that all captains of industry were like that perforce, and she realized that at the same time they might remain warmly human, real and understandable and likable. Certainly it seemed that Mike Bundy was being fair with her.

  He sat there watching her, almost yet not quite smiling, sensing on his part that she had not altogether finished, patiently awaiting her
final word.

  “Thank you, Mr. Bundy,” was what she said, feeling his personality like an enveloping warmth about her. “We misunderstood each other, didn’t we? I’m glad that’s over.”

  “That’s great!” cried Bundy and stood up and put out his hand to her. She slipped hers into his; she had never before thought that she had a tiny hand, but now it felt infinitely small in his. “And I’m glad we’re not closing any deal tonight; I’ll have an excuse to come back, won’t I? And if at any time I can be of service—”

  It was just then that Bill Dorn arrived. They heard the rush of hoofs where he pulled his horse in at the front steps, and Bundy broke off short. Dorn had had no such luck as Bundy, with his fresh horse at his command, and, unwilling to ride his blue roan thirty miles after already having ridden it sixty since morning, had to cast about for some other, unfatigued animal. One of the boys from Antelope Valley supplied his need, and thus he arrived this short time after Bundy’s coming. He didn’t stop to knock; he flung the door open and came hurrying in, a look of concern on his face. That look passed swiftly when he saw that both MacArthur and old Jinks were here.

  But Lorna saw that first look and guessed what caused it; she rose and went impulsively to greet him.

  “I’m so glad you’ve come back, Bill,” she said. He seemed like an old friend she had known all her life. Well, they had begun their acquaintance last night quarreling! That sort of thing ripened friendship like a warm wind from the south!

  “I wasn’t sure that MacArthur was here,” said Dorn. “I wasn’t even altogether sure that the Cap’n had stayed with you. I came as soon as I learned that Mike Bundy’s killers were headed this way.”

  “Hero stuff!” laughed Bundy. He hitched up his belt, making a point of drawing attention to his loosely holstered gun. “By the way, I see you’re toting a gun again, Bill. Not for me, is it?”

  “No,” said Bill Dorn crisply. “That’s out, Bundy, as I told you. It just happened that I knew Smith and Fontana were here.”