The Sixth Western Novel

by Jackson Gregory

  All the instincts of a man who lives on borrowed time surfaced in Redding as he blew out the lamp on Keaton’s table and stepped to the connecting door, watching through the crack of it as old Keaton, carrying a lighted candle, groped his way through the littered counters of his store to unbolt the street door.

  The candle’s shine revealed a girl waiting on the porch there, a girl dressed in a gray traveling-suit and an aigrette on her hat. A girl whose eyes, even at this distance, held their plain signs of a deep unrest, set in a face that was strikingly attractive.

  “Howdy, ma’am,” Keaton said. “What—”

  The girl’s voice, low-pitched, carried down the room to reach the ears of the man in Keaton’s living-room. “Did a man named Douglas Redding get in with those mustang hunters tonight, Mr. Keaton? I was to meet him here at the post office—it’s terribly urgent—a matter of life or death to me.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  Lavarim Basin Riders

  Keaton knew this girl, knew her need for reassurance; yet it was not his right to betray Redding’s trust. He chose, therefore, the middle road of evasion.

  “Why, Miss Joyce, them mustangers only got in thirty-forty minutes ago. If this Redding hombre shows up, you want me to send him to meet you anywheres?”

  The girl glanced anxiously up and down the street, shrinking from the candlelight as if there was some urgent reason why she should not be seen at Keaton’s door.

  “Tell him—tell him I’ll be stopping overnight at the Foothill House, Room Seven in the new annex.” She reached out to touch his hand with gloved finger tips. “Please, Mr. Keaton, don’t mention to anyone that I’m in town. I had the stage driver drop me off across the bridge, so I could walk in after dark.”

  Keaton’s head bobbed. “Why, now, I’ll sure do that, ma’am.” He coughed. “I’m sorry about the Major, Miss Joyce. A real loss to the Basin.”

  In the back office, Redding heard the words of thanks which this girl choked out, then her departing footsteps as Keaton closed and barred the door. Redding was re-lighting the table lamp when the old man returned.

  “You heard, Doug?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Thought I’d play it safe. How come she knew you were here? Does she know you pack a star?”

  “Never laid eyes on her before. Who is she?”

  “Joyce Melrose. Her dad owned the Crowfoot Ranch over in Lavarim Basin, other side of Cloudcap Pass. He was gulched five—six weeks back. Talk over in the Basin is that Tondro did it.”

  Redding harrowed his memory for some clue as to where he might have crossed Joyce Melrose’s trail.

  “Seems she had a date to meet you here tonight, anyways,” Keaton said. “One thing, I took close notice to see if she might be wearin’ Matt’s lizard ring. She wasn’t. Gloves fit skintight. Thought she might have knowed your brother.”

  Redding reached into his pocket, a hunch striking him. He took out Colonel Regis’s letter and ripped open the envelope.

  “Five gets you fifty,” he said, “Regis is back of her visit tonight.”

  He read his superior’s letter aloud to the old postmaster.

  “Friend Doug: I hope your scout of the Navajadas brings you some trace of your brother. If not, I have a case lined up for you in that part of the country which should fit in with your continued search for Matt’s whereabouts.

  “Briefly: on the 24th of June last, Major Sam Melrose, a director of our Association and a Territorial Legislator, was murdered from ambush. Ownership of his ranch, the Crowfoot, over in Lavarim Basin, passed to his sole living kin, a daughter, Joyce.

  “Major Melrose had left the ranch apparently to pay a visit to the Pedregosa Indian Reservation, northwest of Lavarim Basin, to consult the Agent there regarding the government’s annual contract to supply his Indian wards with beef. When he failed to show up at the Reservation, Joyce instituted a search. Her foreman discovered the Major’s corpse in the lower Navajadas, directly opposite the direction he would have taken to reach the Agency. It is the accepted opinion of the Trailfork sheriff, Val Lennon, as well as others in the Basin, that Major Melrose was ambushed by Blaze Tondro’s rustlers.

  “Miss Melrose has reason to think differently. I have taken the liberty of informing her that you will reach Fort Paloverde not later than the 13th of this month and that she can contact you at Alfred Keaton’s store there. She will supply you with the details of the case which lead her to suspect that Tondro did not kill her father.

  “Inasmuch as your brother was assigned to track down Tondro’s base of operations 18 months ago and has not been seen since, this assignment should interest you. You can contact me through Sheriff Val Lennon at Trailfork.

  “Best of luck to you, and keep me posted. Clayton Regis, President, Territorial SPA.”

  When Redding finished reading, the Paloverde postmaster waggled his head somberly. “A pity,” he remarked dryly, “that you are resigning. It ain’t often a case involves a woman as perty as Joyce Melrose. And both of you bereaved by a border ambush.”

  Redding picked up his cardboard box and crossed the room to take his Stetson from the antler rack. Humor showed through the fatigue ruts on his face as he fitted the chin cord in place.

  “Drop the chief a line by the next mail,” he said, “telling him the Melrose girl and I had our powwow as arranged. She’s in Room Seven, didn’t she say?”

  “In the new annex, yeah. Luck, kid.”

  Stepping out into the alley’s black void, Redding turned left and groped his way to the vacant wagon yard behind the main street buildings and thus made his approach unobserved to the rear of the sprawling two-story Foothill House. It being the only hotel this desert town afforded, booking a room there had already been a part of Redding’s plans. In view of Joyce Melrose’s desire for secrecy, he would drop a note in her letter box to arrange a meeting tomorrow in Keaton’s store.

  He entered the Foothill lobby through a side door, pausing in the shadows of that shabby room until he was certain that the girl was not in sight. With the exception of this lobby, the Foothill’s entire lower floor was given over to a gambling-hall and barroom, from which came the racket of reveling men through portiered double doors beyond the clerk’s desk.

  There was no one on duty at the moment, but there was a crudely lettered sign beside the dog-eared register which said, Take a key and settle up when you leave. Keep key until you check out. Manager.

  Jabbing the rusty nib of a pen into the gummy ink bottle, Redding glanced at the latest entries on the ledger. Jason P. Blackwine, Uvalde, Texas, headed the patrons who had registered under today’s date, the ink still wet from his signing. Blackwine, Redding took pains to note, had booked Room F, upstairs.

  Directly below the mustanger’s name was an entry in a feminine Spencerian: Jeanne Miller, Santa Fe, Room 7, Annex.

  Redding thought, Funny how often an alias has a person’s real initials. He scratched out Douglas Redding, Sage City, on the blue-ruled line directly below Joyce’s and, scanning the available keys on the hook rack, decided against going to the annex wing and scribbled Room B opposite his name.

  He tore a strip of paper from a page in the back of the register, and jotted down a brief note concerning a meeting tomorrow morning at Keaton’s store, and thrust it in Joyce Melrose’s letter box, Number 7. He had not signed the note, knowing that a nosy night clerk might read it. Joyce would know the meaning of it and keep the appointment.

  Taking down the key to Room B, Redding climbed the uncarpeted staircase to a corridor above the gambling-hall, its gloomy length only partially lighted by soot-fouled lamps in wall brackets. Room B was the third door on his left; it gave off a fusty odor of resinous pine boards and moldy bedclothes as he entered, fumbled on a marble-slabbed washstand to find a brass-bowled kerosene lamp, and lighted it.

  His reflection in the blistered mirror above
the stand told its own story of the trail weariness which throbbed in every tissue of his being. There was a touch of gray at his temples which had not been there four months ago, when he had headed for the hills with Jace Blackwine’s mustangers. Worry over Matt had done that, more than the grueling daily chase of the high-country mustang herds.

  He opened a door giving way to an outer balcony, to ventilate the room, and walked over to sit down on the bed, depositing his cardboard box on the greasy blanket beside him.

  Memories crowded him hard. In this same hotel, six months ago, Doug Redding had first seen the message which Matt had sent to Paloverde in care of Alf Keaton. This had been the first news the Association had had from its senior stock detective since Matt Redding had gone into the Navajadas more than a year previously, searching for the rustler roost where the Territory’s most-wanted outlaw, Blaze Tondro, was believed to have his den.

  Turning up the lamp, Redding took his brother’s letter out of the cardboard box. In the envelope with it was a finger ring, fashioned by some goldsmith into the likeness of a whiptail lizard with a tiny seed pearl between its jaws. A loop of rawhide was threaded through the gold band.

  That ring had belonged to Redding’s father. Its exact duplicate had been worn by his mother, and upon their deaths the golden lizard rings had been bequeathed to their sons. In a family of sparse traditions and a Spartan sentimentality, those baubles held a place of high value. Redding had left his ring in Paloverde only because he knew his return was dubious.

  Redding looped the rawhide thong around his neck and tucked the ring under his shirt, next to the skin. Then, with a renewed depression of spirit riding him as he recalled the fruitless search of the past hundred or more days, he unfolded his brother’s letter.

  Although he had memorized its text through a score of previous readings, he held it under the feeble glare of the lamp and read again the last message Matthew Redding had sent to the outside world, this side of eternity.

  Bro Doug:

  I’ve located Tondro’s hideout. Tell Regis. Through the melodramatic but effective method of posing as a man on the dodge and joining his wild bunch.

  It’s on the west slope of the Navajadas, but I wouldn’t have located it in a thousand years working from the outside.

  Meet me at Keaton’s store in Paloverde on the night of the 18th of February and we’ll talk over a showdown with Tondro.

  Am sending this out by way of a girl I want you to meet, as I aim to marry her soon as we have finished this business together. Thought I’d always be a hairy-eared bachelor, didn’t you? But she’s wearing Ma’s lizard ring, so you can see I mean business.

  I’m calling myself Blackie Fletcher on this job just in case Tondro may have heard of us.

  Your bro, Matt.

  Crushing the letter between his palms, Doug Redding drooped chin to chest, trying to crowd out the agony that had deviled him since the Rickaree Kid had led him to the human skeleton, polished by fang and claw and beak, up on Mustang Mesa last night. The skull had had a circular opening in it where a skilled surgeon had done a trepanning operation, insetting a silver coin dated 1846. The half dollar that had indirectly caused the death of Bull McArdle.

  That skeleton gave him the answer to Matt’s failure to meet him here, in Paloverde, the night of February 18th. For two months he had waited for Matt to show up, and then he had jumped at the chance to sign on with Jason Blackwine’s horse hunters, knowing this would give him an opportunity to scour the Navajada wastelands in search of Blaze Tondro’s hideout without attracting undue attention. Except for Matt’s bones, he had nothing to show for his hunt. If Matt had given the location of the robbers’ roost in his letter—but that was something far too dangerous to put in writing. At the time he had sent the message out, Matt must have been supremely confident in the security of his position as a member of Tondro’s rustler band.

  Somehow, Matt’s secret had been betrayed. Doug meant to find out, if it took a lifetime, how and why his brother had met his doom on Mustang Mesa. And the girl who wore his betrothal ring. Did she know? Perhaps at this very hour, perhaps in this very town, Matt’s choice for a helpmeet was grieving for her missing lover.

  * * * *

  Redding had promised himself a shave, as his first luxury upon reaching civilization tonight. He had purposely let his beard grow, to diminish his close physical resemblance to his missing older brother. But the barbershops of the town, even those up at the cavalry post on the bluff, would be closed at this hour. The only thing to do was go down to Colburn’s stable and get his shaving-tools out of his saddlebags.

  Leaving the hotel, Redding reached the livery barn on the edge of town in a matter of minutes. He borrowed a lantern from the game-legged night hostler and went back to the runway between the rows of stalls, searching the pegged saddles there until he located his own high-horned Brazos rig. From an alforja pouch he removed the india-rubber bag containing his shaving-kit and headed back toward the front of the stable.

  He heard two riders hammer across the Rio Coyotero Bridge at a reaching gallop and rein to a halt in front of the barn. The hostler’s face was dimly outlined by the red coal of his cigar as he walked out to take over the reins.

  “You unhitch the Trailfork stage tonight, Joe?” One of the riders put a sharp question to the stableman.

  “Reckon I did, Teague. How’s things in Lavarim Basin?”

  Teague said, “Listen. Was Joyce Melrose on that stage?”

  Doug Redding halted, instinct making him swing the lantern behind him so its beams would not reveal him to the riders out there.

  After a pause, Joe said carefully, “She’s in town, sure enough, but she must have got off the stage on t’other side of the bridge.”

  “Meaning what?”

  “Well,” Joe said, “I seen her walkin’ in half an hour after I’d unhitched. After dark, it was. Struck me funny, Miss Melrose bein’ afoot. Knew she couldn’t have hoofed it over the Pass from Trailfork. So—she must have had the jehu let her off on the t’other side of the river.”

  Redding heard Teague and his companion holding a short council.

  “You haven’t seen us, Joe, understand?” Teague called softly through the dark, as the two riders walked on up-street.

  Redding handed the lantern over to Joe as the hostler led two lather-drenched cow ponies into the ammoniac stench of the barn. A gelding wearing a Crowfoot brand and a big blanco mustang without any visible markings. Crowfoot. That was the Melrose iron.

  “Teague’s on the peck tonight, ain’t he?” Redding chuckled, wiping a match into flame on his Levi’s and touching it to a cigarette. “Any of his damn business if the Melrose girl comes over the Pass?”

  The hostler rolled his cigar across his teeth, studying this stranger for a long moment. Finally he said cautiously, “Would you want the woman you aim to marry to traipse over to a Army town like this one, on her ownsome?”

  Redding grinned, studying the tip of his cigarette, his Stetson brim shielding his eyes from Joe’s inspection.

  “See your point, Joe. Who was that with Teague—one of Crowfoot’s riders?”

  This time the hostler retreated behind his professional code which forbade aimless bandying of trail gossip about his paying customers.

  “Didn’t get a look at him, you having the lantern. Might be a good idea, stranger, if you don’t josh Darkin about the girl if you run acrost him at a bar tonight. He’s a touchy one on that subjeck.”

  Moving outdoors, Redding said, “Obliged, Joe,” and heard the hostler leading the horses toward the stalls.

  He felt a moment’s anger at himself for not having put the lantern on the two riders from Lavarim Basin; now their identities would remain a mystery to him if he rubbed shoulders with them in town tonight.

  One thing for sure, he knew Joyce Melrose was engaged to marry this Darkin Teague or Teague
Darkin, whichever his name was. He recalled how the girl had cautioned the postmaster to let no one know she had visited Paloverde tonight. She had taken elaborate pains to leave the Trailfork stage outside of town, and she had forged a false name—albeit a transparent one—to the Foothill House register.

  Yet this Teague, forking a gelding from Joyce’s own cavvy, knew the girl was in Paloverde tonight. If he knew that much, he might know she had come here to meet a Protective Association detective on business connected with her father’s murder. Why, if Teague was her fiancé, hadn’t he accompanied Joyce over the mountains today?

  That puzzle was nagging Redding’s thoughts when he drew abreast of the Crossed Sabers Saloon and heard the break of gunshots from the deadfall’s barroom put their voice of calamity into this uneasy night.

  The saloon doors burst open to disgorge a jam of men bent on getting away from trouble fast. One shaggy bull-whacker clad in the verminous buckskins of his calling dove bodily through a colored window, picked himself up, shook off the splintered glass shards, and sprinted down the steps in such blind panic that Doug Redding had to jump back to keep from being trampled down.

  The pandemonium in the Crossed Sabers took the form of thudding feet, a percentage girl’s choked-off scream, the recurring crash of splintering furniture.

  A roulette croupier stuck his head out the broken window and bawled into the night, “Fetch the marshal before they tear this place apart! Some troopers have got a Blackwiner cornered in here—the Rickaree Kid.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Bushwhack Bullet

  Redding thought, Why did it have to be the Kid? I’ll have to go in there and side him. He moved over against the saloon porch, out of the path of the barroom exodus. The awning’s shadow shielded him from the guttering flare of the torches.

  This town had been a powder keg since sundown, tensed for the inevitable flare-up between off-duty soldiers from the nearby fort and their hated rivals, Blackwine’s crew.