Bull McArdle stiffened. He laid the pack of cards down carefully and came to his feet, a towering giant of a man, his legs thick as oak boles in his apron chaps.
“By Gawd, Redding, are you sayin’ I cold-decked you?”
Redding was up now, showing a side of his easy-going nature these mustangers had never guessed existed.
“If the boot fits, Bull, haul it on. I got the top hand, so far. I don’t aim to have no tinhorn euchre me out of it.”
Jace Blackwine came ponderously to his feet to stand between the belligerents, speaking with the tolerant amusement of a boss who had anticipated trouble long before this as the nerves of his tough crew were rubbed raw by the grueling weeks of the hunt behind them, making them edgy and spoiling for fight.
“Come off, now, boys! What the hell, the pot don’t amount to a hill of frijoles. We’ll deal over an’—”
“Damn the pot!” Redding chewed out. “I’d call McArdle for a slick-fingered crook even if we were playing for toothpicks.”
The camp comedian, Old Boney the cook, sang out jocularly, “Why droop a horn this time, Doug? We all know McArdle monkeys with the cards ever’ time he deals. Hell—”
But the thing had gone beyond the limits of a mere flare-up of tempers between two men who hated each other’s guts. Redding had made his challenge, and McArdle had seized it, chuckling deep in his throat as he unbuckled his double shell belts and dumped them onto the blanket.
Spitting on his fists, McArdle thundered gleefully, “Unlimber your hardware, Redding, and we’ll see if you got what it takes to finish this play you’ve started.”
Redding’s cold gaze was oblivious to the scrambling withdrawal of his fellow hunters. Without haste he unbuckled his cartridge harness and tossed it on the blanket, matched Peacemaker .45s in basket-woven holsters.
Blackwine and his mustangers had automatically formed a ring to fence in this arena. There was little doubt in any of their minds how this fight would go. McArdle outweighed Redding by a margin of eighty pounds; the Bull had a long record of gouged-out eyeballs and stomped guts behind him, schooled as he was in the ruthless art of barroom brawling, abiding by no decent rules of combat, giving no quarter and expecting none.
No man knew much about Redding, on the other hand. He had been an unobtrusive member of the expedition all summer, friendly but never speaking of his past. With guns, Redding might have a chance with the slow-moving McArdle; in a bare-fisted brawl, he was foredoomed to being chopped into a bloody ruin, maybe killed, at the least crippled by McArdle’s murderous boots and sledgehammer fists.
Redding lifted his palms to wipe them on his calfhide vest. McArdle chose that instant to charge, head down like the bull he resembled. Men yelled in dismay, then in excitement, as they saw Redding side-step his gargantuan opponent’s rush and clip the bigger man hard to the left ear, a blow that made McArdle gasp and shake his head dazedly as he wheeled to follow his nimble-footed adversary.
Roaring like a hurt grizzly, McArdle lunged at Redding, not trying to slug him this time but bent on overpowering the lighter-built man in one of his bone-crushing hugs. Redding met the attack with a stinging uppercut that pulped McArdle’s bulbous nose and sent a spray of crimson juices flying. Retreating to let McArdle’s charge exhaust itself, his fists cocked to hammer another punch at the big mustanger when he could get McArdle off balance, Redding’s left spur caught a mesquite root underfoot, and he felt himself falling.
He hit the ground on his back, the hunters’ roar of dismay in his ears. He knew this bad break could cost him his eyes, if not his life; before he could roll clear, McArdle’s two hundred and fifty pounds of bone and gristle avalanched on him in a flying tackle.
Desperation was in Redding. Already McArdle’s great thighs straddled his belly, and McArdle’s trap-like fingers, clawing at his eyes, locked around his right ear.
With the pure malevolent gusto of his kind, McArdle slapped his right hand to his belt, and his fist came up with the torchlight winking off the whetted steel of a ten-inch bowie.
Redding saw the blade come to the top of its arc directly above his head, knew there was no escaping the downward stabbing thrust that would impale his throat to the ground.
The crack of a gunshot ripped through the pound of blood in Redding’s ears. He saw McArdle’s leonine head rock back to the shock of a point-blank bullet riving his temples. The knife dropped impotently from the mustanger’s fingers to land on Redding’s shirt.
Gun smoke drifted across the campground to put its acrid bite in Redding’s nostrils as he rolled out from under McArdle’s toppling bulk and came to his feet, gasping air into his lungs.
He saw the horror in the frozen postures of Blackwine and his men, ringing this scene about; all were staring at the twitching corpse of the Bull, spilling his brain tissue into the boot-trampled dirt.
Redding glanced around in time to see the tail end of the Rickaree Kid’s gesture of holstering his smoking gun. A stub of cigarette waggled on the mule packer’s lower lip as he drawled, “McArdle had the thing won without goin’ for a sticker. Any of you got any objections?”
Old Boney broke the following silence. “Reckon not, Kid. The Bull had it coming.”
Redding stalked over to the rumpled blanket and picked up his shell belts and bolstered guns.
Jace Blackwine remarked irrelevantly, “The pot’s yourn, Redding. We’ll bury Bull mañana.” Redding squatted down to pick up the 1846 half dollar from the litter of chips. Looking around, he saw the Rickaree Kid heading into the darkness to see after his pack mules for the night. Redding followed him, overtaking the Kid out of earshot of the others.
“Reckon I’m in your debt, son.”
“Forget it, Doug. Never had any use for McArdle, nohow.”
Redding said, “That skeleton you found. Any chance of you taking me to it?”
The Rickaree Kid’s cigarette coal glowed to the suction of his draw, illumining the quizzical expression on his cheeks.
“Sure. I had a hunch you had your reasons for callin’ the Bull. What was it?”
Redding hesitated imperceptibly. “I’m no mustanger, Kid. I signed on with Blackwine to see if I could cut the sign of a brother of mine who was lost in these Navajadas. A doctor over in Taos removed some bone from his skull after a drunk Indian bashed him with the flat of a tomahawk. The medico plugged up the hole with a lucky piece my brother carried—a half dollar minted in ’forty-six, the year he was born.”
The Rickaree Kid made a soundless whistle with his lips. “We can make it over to the Mesa and back,” he said, “before Jace breaks camp in the mornin’.”
Doug Redding’s voice carried a husky note as he said, “Be with you as soon as I can roust up a shovel, Kid. The least I can do is give my brother a decent burial.”
CHAPTER TWO
Range Detective
Sundown of the following day tempered the punishing heat which rolled off the eastern desert to pool against the Navajada’s foot slopes. Day’s end brought welcome promise of relief to Fort Paloverde’s garrison and the squalid cow town which lay between the railroad and the Rio Coyotero.
That promise of twilight peace was rudely breached by a sudden break of hoofbeats topping the ridge above the river. A dozen shaggy riders, hazing fifty head of wild mustangs hitched two abreast of a long rope, showed briefly against the flaming sky line and then dipped down the purple slope at a dead run.
Above the snare-drum roll of pounding hoofs came a banging of guns and rowdy yelling, shrill as Apache war whoops. Paloverde knew by these violent signs that Jace Blackwine and his tough crew of mustangers were back from a summer of scouring the lofty mesas and canyons for wild horses; and the townspeople braced themselves for the shock of their arrival with dismay or anticipation, depending on individual memories of Blackwine’s hellraising visits.
Doug Redding brought up th
e drags with the Rickaree Kid’s string of pack mules, not sharing the exuberance of the Kid and the other horse hunters, the hungers they had built up over this period of weeks away from their last taste of whisky or the softness of a woman.
Topping the rise with the slow-plodding mules, Redding saw Blackwine swerve off the Rio Coyotero Bridge at a gallop on his grulla, leading his whooping cavalcade through the yawning gates of a holding corral. He would be glad to see the last of this rowdy bunch.
The riders were crowding around Blackwine’s buckskin-clad figure by the corral gates, waiting to draw the pay slips which they could cash at any deadfall or brothel in town, when the squat shape of Dorf Chessman, Marshal of Paloverde, came across the street from the nearby jail-house, his star catching the sundown glint like a bloody eye.
Chessman wore a truculent look as he elbowed through the press of bearded roughnecks to confront Jace Blackwine. He was a lawman soured by past experiences with these mustangers, and he aimed to move in fast tonight and nip a riot in the bud.
“I’m toleratin’ no trouble in town tonight, Jace,” the marshal warned the dusty crew collectively. “Ever’ summer you come in out of the hills loaded to the neck with bad intentions and itchin’ to see how much hell you can raise. By God, I won’t have you turn my town into another shambles like last time.”
The Rickaree Kid gave Chessman a boisterous shove which staggered the frog-built marshal. Chessman slapped his low-slung gun and eyed the rambunctious mule skinner with an oldster’s hard effort to curb his temper against the horseplay he had suffered. But to arrest the Kid would be risky, at these odds.
“Don’t git on the peck, Marshal,” the Kid jeered. “We’ve worked like hell for the doubtful privilege of leavin’ our pay in your flea-bit town. Don’t douse our happy spirits this way!”
Chessman ignored the Kid. “You all been warned,” he ground out doggedly. “I’ll jail the first mustanger who shoots out a window light tonight. And I’ll hold Blackwine personally responsible for any fights you men pick with a soldier. The commandant over at the fort has got a belly full of you hellions jumpin’ ever’ uniformed trooper you ketch with a girl on his arm. One wrong move tonight and I’ll declare this town closed to you from here till who laid the chunk, savvy that?”
The marshal had beat a retreat, and Blackwine had paid off his men before Doug Redding hazed the Kid’s mules across the Rio Coyotero Bridge and into the corral.
“I’ll send a man over to unpack them jacks,” Blackwine said, as Redding closed the gates and led his roan over. “Here’s your pay check, includin’ bonus.”
Redding muttered his thanks and pocketed the voucher.
“Rest of the bunch have signed up for my next hunt, except you,” Blackwine said, pocketing his pay book and running splayed fingers through the whiskers which hung like a red flag from his blocky jaw. “We’re heading north Sunday a week. Gives you plenty of time to hell around and buck the tiger.”
Redding started leading his horse toward the street entering town, Blackwine falling in step beside him.
“You’ll ride out without me next hunt, boss.”
“Pay don’t suit you?”
Redding shrugged. “I signed on with you to get a stake. I’ve got it. I’ll be drifting.”
No more was said as Redding reached the odorous archway of Colburn’s livery barn and led his horse inside, turning the roan over to a game-legged hostler for grooming and graining. Coming back outside, Redding was faintly annoyed to find big Jace Blackwine still waiting for him.
“You’re my ace hunter, Redding. Hate to see you bust away to nurse a fiddlefoot. Tell you what. I’ll pay—”
“No dice, Jace, but thanks.” He started walking toward the bright lights in mid-town.
Blackwine followed him, arguing persistently. “Doug, you’re a hard man to figger. Never talk much. But I had you spotted as havin’ joined up with me for some other reason besides ketchin’ the wild ones for pay. You got something up your sleeve. That brawl with Bull McArdle—there was more to it than met the eye. Plus you and the Kid bein’ away from camp all night.”
A frown cut its quick crease between Redding’s brows. “I told you I was after quick money, Jace. Let it ride.”
Blackwine said, “If you’re on the dodge, it’s no skin offen my nose. Is Redding your real brand? Seems like you remind me of somebody I’ve run across sometime—”
Redding thought, Shave off my beard and you’d spot me for some kin of Matt’s? It irritated him that this nosy buckskinner was skirting the edges of his secret, closer than Blackwine could know. “Quit tagging me like a hungry mongrel, Blackwine. You want to see the baptism certificate of every hand you hire?”
Blackwine dropped back, watching Redding strike up the canyon of false-fronted buildings through the latticing bars of lamplight which spilled from honky-tonk windows to stain the silver street’s thick dust.
At the corner of Main and Agave, Redding put his back to a porch post of the Crossed Sabers Saloon and built himself a smoke. He waited there until he saw Jace Blackwine shoulder into the saloon to start his evening’s spree.
Unfired cigarette sloping from his underlip, Redding moved out into the flow of foot traffic, rubbing shoulders with chap-clad punchers with the desert’s white soda dusting their clothes. A blue-coated corporal from the military post up on the bluff side-stepped Redding with an underbreath curse, catching this man’s horse smell; it pointed up what Redding already knew of the deep-rooted hostility the Army felt toward any Blackwiner.
A heady whiff of cheap perfume from a promenading harlot touched his nose, reminding Redding of how long he had lived in a world without women. That thought was brooding in him when he turned into the inky gut of an alley, between a wagonwright’s shop and Alfred Keaton’s store and post office, and knocked at a door of the latter building where lamplight leaked over the threshold.
As if this was a rendezvous long planned for and awaited, Alf Keaton himself opened the door, hand outstretched in welcome. The old postmaster’s face held its question as Redding stepped into the redolent warmth of the room and slumped into a barrel chair, at once letting the fatigue of this long day’s trek out of the hills seep from his muscles.
“Find any trace of him, Doug?” Keaton spoke with the apologetic tone of a man who knew he should wait for news.
Redding nodded. “I buried his bones last night, Alf. Above timber line, a place they call Mustang Mesa. Shot from behind. The skull had Matt’s 1846 half dollar in it, so I know there’s no mistake.”
Keaton’s long-jawed face showed its shock, the anticlimax that meant the end of long hoping for these two. He gestured toward an oilcloth-covered table where steaming food was set out.
“Knew you’d be in tonight,” Keaton said. “Tomorrow is Blackwine’s deadline with the fort’s purchasing agent.”
Watching Doug Redding attack his food, Keaton read the heavy toll this summer had taken. Redding’s hickory shirt, plastered stiff with stale sweat and trail grime, hung loose over his leaned-down frame, and his big-boned wrists and bearded face were a shade more brown than they had been the last time these two had met in this room.
Redding’s bullhide chaps bore a new webwork of scuffings from cactus and jagged rock. His Coffeyville boots were due for repair, their spike heels filed to nubs by the abrasion of a hundred nameless canyons and creek beds in the high country.
“I’m sorry, son,” Keaton said. “No sign of Blaze Tondro’s hideout anywhere near this Mustang Mesa where you found Matt?”
Redding paused to pour a third cup of coffee. “There ain’t a canyon or a bench in a fifty-mile radius of that grave that I haven’t fine-toothed, Alf. Ridin’ solo most of the time. If Tondro holes up in that locality, I muffed my chance of finding it. But I will.”
The old postmaster stepped out of this room which served as his living-quarters and went to th
e front of the store to rummage inside his safe. He brought back a cardboard box which Doug Redding had left with him four months ago.
“I got a letter from Colonel Regis here,” Keaton said, handing Redding a brown envelope gobbed with sealing wax. “Come last week, registered.”
Redding, his appetite satisfied, pushed back his chair and readied for the cardboard box Keaton had put beside his plate. From it he drew a dog-eared envelope and a ball-pointed silver star, etched with the words, Detective Stockmen’s Protective Association.
A sardonic grin touched the corners of Redding’s mouth as he flipped the law badge back into the box. “Regis is either assigning me to a new case,” he drawled, “or telling me to turn in my star. That’s what I’m doing. As of now, Alf, I cease to be a range detective.”
Keaton blinked. “Meaning you’ve writ off Matt’s murder as a closed case?”
“I’ll locate his bushwhacker if it takes me the rest of my life, Alf. But on my own. Colonel Regis wouldn’t let me waste any more of the SPA’s time on this job. But Tondro’s den is up in those mountains somewhere. I’ll find it.”
Keaton tongued his cheek thoughtfully, wanting to give this hard-bitten man some advice but not knowing how to go about it. Redding was twenty-nine; he had worn a star since he was twenty, like his brother Matt and his father before him.
“Doug,” the postmaster coughed, “there wasn’t a saltier range dick alive than your brother Matt. He disappeared into them hills eighteen months ago, trying to track down Tondro’s rustler hideout. He failed. I hate to see you buck a hopeless th—” The sound of the store’s front door rattling under someone’s urgent pounding cut Keaton off. The desperate urgency of that knocking put a sudden suspicion in Keaton’s eyes.
“Anybody know you’re in town?” he asked. “Anybody that knows you’re a star toter, that is?”
Redding said, “Go see who it is. It won’t concern me.”
When Keaton left the room, all show of ease left Doug Redding. He had been playing a chancy game these past months, where death was the price of a misstep, for Blackwine’s crew numbered more than one man who, like Bull McArdle, would consider a John Law fair target for a shot in the back.
The Sixth Western Novel Page 24