The Sixth Western Novel

by Jackson Gregory

  In his stunned confusion, Shay did not move towards the door, but straight towards the big plate-glass window. He could not have seen the glass because he did not stop until he bumped into it. He rubbed his hands over it, as though blindly trying to identify it. Then in a kind of panic, he picked up a chair, crashed it through the glass and stepped out onto the sidewalk and started running.

  There was a chorus of groans of relief from pent-up nervous tension in the room, and an awed voice exclaimed, “Good God Almighty!”

  There wasn’t any talk for a long moment, and then Tudery said, “We ought to catch him, Jim, if he killed Sterling.”

  “No. I’m not ready for that yet.”

  Tudery looked puzzled. “But if he killed Ah—”

  “I need him to lead me to the man that hired him.”

  “I thought you said you knew who it was.”

  “I did. But I didn’t say I could prove it.”

  Doc Tudery grinned. “Sure.” Then, “All right, boys, line up and name it. It’s on the house for the rest of the evening.”

  Woodbine said, “Lend me a wet bar towel, Doc. And make up a bill for the damage. I’ll take care of it.”

  Tudery handed him a towel, and when Woodbine had wiped the blood off his face, Tudery said, “How about a drink, Jim?”

  “I haven’t got time,” Woodbine answered. “And if Bob Burnham comes in, tell him I’ll see him later.” He turned to the gun-hands who were lining up at the bar. “You fellows better turn in early tonight,” he said. “We’re going to start fencing in the morning.” Then he turned and left the saloon, went down to the livery stable and got his horse and rode out of town. As the tightness seeped from him the pains came. The muscles of his body regained their sensitivity and with it began the reaction to the terrible punishment they had undergone. His face was bruised, and began throbbing. There were places on his ribs that hurt at every jolt of the horse’s bouncing, and it was a task to keep his arms from dropping at his sides.

  He had taken an awful beating, and it would have been worse if he had depended on his bare fists from the beginning of the fight. He speculated on this; no matter how right he may have been, rightness would not have been an armor against Shay’s superior animal strength or brutality.

  This had not been a boxing match to establish the superiority of one man over another, but had been part of Woodbine’s design to prove that Shay was a murderer and to drive a wedge between him and the man who had instigated the murder. And though it was not to his taste, Woodbine felt justified in using the means he had used to whip Shay into a mental condition in which he would make some mistake which would clearly establish the guilt of the man behind him.

  Even though Shay had finally run out on the fight, Woodbine was somewhat disappointed in the way it had ended, for he knew that Shay had not been completely whipped, had not as yet revealed anything damaging to himself or anybody else, and was still a dangerous man running loose. Woodbine could only hope that by planting the idea in Shay’s mind that he knew who the other party was, he had sowed the seeds of discord between them.

  It was late when he got home, and he did not wake Jess Hardracker up, but went to bed quickly. He had had a long day and a busy one. He had tried to get help, and found that he was going to get none, but he had also learned some things, and he had started a brew which he hoped would boil up into trouble for Noble Fry.

  Now as he reviewed the day’s happenings his mind went to Virginia Sterling, and here it stopped. What had happened between them? He pondered this for a long time, and went to sleep with the problem still on his mind, the problem of the man who had just as soon marry a wildcat, and the girl who had just as soon kiss a cactus.

  CHAPTER 8

  The Pot Begins to Boil

  When Moody Shay escaped from Woodbine’s punishment he set his horse in the direction of Noble Fry’s ranch. He was a battered hulk of a man who had taken enough punishment to have killed two or three men of normal build, and now the reaction was setting in. His bodily pains were great, but transcending these were the things that festered in his mind and drove him on to further action despite the crying need of his body for rest and healment of his wounds. Humiliation, rage and fear boiled up in the man and poisoned such judgment as he had.

  He had been whipped and driven out of town by a man smaller than himself, and this humiliation could never be wiped out except with the death of Woodbine. His rage at Noble Fry was even greater. He had done a job of murder for Fry, and he now interpreted Woodbine’s statement before the fight to mean that Fry had sold him out. He had heard Woodbine reveal the facts of the murder to people in the town and, knowing the townsmen’s regard for old Ab Sterling, and the summary justice they would even now be preparing for him, he was in terror of the hangman’s noose.

  These three passions drove Moody Shay to form his simple plans as he rode. He had to get money from Fry, then punish Fry for informing on him, then go into hiding from the posse he knew would be looking for him.

  It was midnight when he reached Fry’s ranch-house and shouted at its darkened walls. When Fry had answered his call, and he had identified himself, Fry lighted a lamp and let him in the door.

  In the littered living-room, Noble Fry stood in his pants and undershirt and looked at the beaten Shay, and saw instantly that there was something seriously wrong. He sat down at his desk, pushed a bottle of whiskey across to Shay, and said, “Well, what damned fool trick have you been up to now?”

  Shay sat down across the desk, poured a tin cup half full of the liquor and downed it before answering.

  “I’ve got to get out of here for a while, and I’ve got to have some money. I’d better take the whole thousand, because I might not be back for a while.”

  “What are you talking about?” Fry snapped. “Talk sense.”

  “This is sense. The lid’s off. The whole town knows now that you hired me to kill Sterling. They’ll have a posse after me any time, and I’m not sticking around to stretch a rope for them.”

  “You’re a fool!” Fry snapped. “How could they know about that deal—unless you told them? Did you get drunk and spout off at the mouth? Who beat you up?”

  Moody Shay picked up the bottle and drank directly from it. “Look here, I ain’t got no time to sit and beat around the bush with you. Everybody in town knows about it now. Woodbine went to my place and stole my gun, and he had the bullet they found in Ab. He’s done turned it all over to a committee. Him and me had a little set-to, and I come off without being able to get my gun back. Now I want the money for that job so I can get out of the country for a while.”

  Noble Fry tapped his tin cup on his desk impatiently while he reviewed this bad news. After a pause he said, “You’re just upset now. Thinking you killed Ab and proving it are two different things. After all, nobody saw you do it, so it’s just your word against his.”

  “Don’t tell me that,” Shay answered angrily. “It ain’t over six hours since you told me my word against them kind of people wasn’t worth a damn. Now you’re saying just the opposite. I ain’t staying to find out which is right. I’m pulling out, and I want my money—right now, this minute.”

  “Well, now,” Noble Fry stalled, “remember, that wasn’t the deal. I told you I’d pay you after I got hold of all that river-bottom land. That’s a little ways off yet, and in the meantime I haven’t got enough cash to pay you off right now.”

  Shay’s swollen face went black. “You don’t think you’re gonna get out of paying me, do you?” he asked sharply.

  Fry raised a conciliatory hand. “Of course not. Take it easy. I’m going to pay you.”

  “You’re going to pay me now! You’re paying those gun-hands in cash, and you’re going to pay me, too.”

  “I just can’t do that now, Shay. I simply haven’t got the cash to keep those men here long enough to finish the job, and give you a thous
and as well. But I’ll give it to you as soon as I get this deal in the bag. You know I wouldn’t try to cheat a friend.”

  “Sure,” Shay answered. “You’d pay somebody to shoot a friend in the back, but you wouldn’t cheat the man that did the job for you. It’s great to be a honest and respectable man, ain’t it, Fry?”

  “You’re just upset. Let’s take another angle for a minute. How did Woodbine say he knew I was the one that engineered that killing?”

  There was little of Moody Shay’s eyes showing now under their swelling, but they took on a sudden canny look, when he saw that Noble Fry was worried about his own safety.

  “You’ve been able to figger all the angles,” he countered. “You figger that one.”

  “That’s no attitude to take,” Fry persisted. “Like you say, we’re both in this together. If I’m going to have to figure a way to clear us both, I’ve got to know what we’ve got to buck up against. What did Woodbine say?”

  “How about my money?” Shay countered. “Then we’ll go into that.” He had Fry over a barrel now, and he intended to keep him there.

  “About Woodbine,” Fry said. “He knows too much. We can’t afford to have him around where he can talk out of turn, can we? You owe him for that licking he gave you—”

  “Who said he gave me a licking? He’s just as bunged up as I am.”

  “If he’s still alive, I doubt it,” Fry said. “But it looks like you’d better plan to see that he doesn’t do any more talking.”

  “So you want me to do another job without paying me for the first one, huh? How about my money, Fry?”

  Fry shook his head. “You can’t scare me, Moody. I told you when I’d pay you, and that’s when I’m going to do it. Now get on out of here before they come here looking for you.”

  Moody Shay picked up the whiskey bottle by the neck, put his other hand on the desk and raised the bottle over his head.

  “Don’t be foolish,” Fry said. He had lifted a gun out of the drawer of his desk, and the muzzle of it was pointed at Moody Shay’s face. “You know I could kill you and turn you over to that posse you say is being formed, and they’d thank me for it.”

  Moody Shay let the bottle waver, then took it in his other hand and drank from it and set it on the table. Some of the self-confidence that Woodbine had beat out of him was gone for all time. Moody Shay would never be the same man again.

  “That’s more like it,” Fry purred. “Now tell me, what does Woodbine know for sure about me?”

  “I don’t know,” Shay admitted, “but he knows all right.”

  “That’s not much help.” Fry toyed with the cylinder of his pistol thoughtfully. “Try to use your brains now, Moody. We’ve got to work together, not against each other. You know—I just thought of something—Woodbine might be just guessing. How could he prove what he said?”

  “I ain’t waiting to find out,” Shay said. “I’m going to clear out for a while. Anyway, till my face gets all healed up and I can come back and get a crack at Woodbine. I’ll get him if it’s the last thing I do. If you had just a little money—I’m flat broke, and I’ve got to live till things clear up.”

  “That’s more like it,” Fry smiled. “I can give you a couple of hundred on account. You take a little trip till things cool down, then slip back and we’ll figure out things. All right?”

  “Maybe that’s better,” Moody admitted. He picked up the bottle and poured some more of the liquor into his cup.

  Fry spun his swivel chair around facing the small iron safe in the corner, and spun the dial back and forth, then swung the iron door open and unlocked a smaller iron door to a pigeon-hole in the safe’s interior.

  Moody Shay stood up, gripped the whiskey bottle tightly by the neck and brought it down on the back of Noble Fry’s head. Fry slid out of his seat and lay between the desk and the safe with blood running out of his scalp.

  Shay stepped around the desk and found a package of currency in the pigeon-hole, riffled through it and stuffed it into his pocket. Not having stopped to get his pistol when he left the Rattlesnake Bar through the plate-glass window, he picked up Fry’s weapon, examined the cylinder, and stuffed it into his waistband.

  He stood over Fry, looking down at him through his puffed eyes, and said, “I’d ought to pound your head to a pulp, but I reckon it’d be better if you was to live a little longer. Maybe them good people of Ashfork will be satisfied to see your neck in a noose, seein’s they won’t get a chance at mine.”

  He kicked the still form of Fry in the ribs, took another drink from the bottle, and went out and got on his horse.

  It was some time later when Moody Shay pulled up into the clearing of Hugh Ambler’s house and shouted until Ambler showed up at the door with his pants and gun on, and no light in the house behind him.

  “What do you want this time of night?” Ambler asked irritably.

  Shay slid off his horse and said, “Sit down. I had to see you in a hurry.”

  They both sat on the trunk of a felled oak, and Ambler waited. Shay turned his story over in his mind, checking on it, then laid it before the taciturn man.

  “I just had a little go-round with Woodbine over in town, and I’ve got to make tracks for a while. I’m going to need a little money to carry me on, and seein’s I done quite a bit of work for you, it ought to be I could get some from you. Say about a thousand dollars.”

  Ambler slid off the log, walked a couple of paces, kicking the ground with his boot toe and turning this over in his mind. He took his time about it, and then asked:

  “How come you have to duck out just on account of a little scrap? Did you kill him?”

  “No, but he happened to run into something that might not do me no good if he told it around.”

  “Meaning he found the body, or something?”

  “What body? I ain’t killed nobody.”

  Ambler said, “You’re not talking to these fools around here when you’re talking to me, Shay. Did Woodbine discover that you’d shot Ab Sterling?”

  “Me? Shot Ab Sterling? You’re crazy!”

  “But that’s what Woodbine discovered, ain’t it?”

  “Well,” Shay admitted. “He figgered he had evidence I did, but I didn’t do it. Still, there’s people that might believe I did.”

  “Like me, for instance,” Hugh Ambler said softly.

  “You mean you’d take Woodbine’s word for a charge like that?”

  “No,” Ambler said, “but it just happens I saw you kill him.”

  “When?”

  “I get around, Shay. I just happened to be interested in what Fry and Woodbine and Sterling were doing up there at the head of the creek that day, so I kind of kept ’em in sight. I’m not criticizing you, understand, for killing Sterling. I was just mentioning it so we’d understand each other. Now what was on your mind?”

  Moody Shay told himself that he ought to pull his gun and kill Ambler, but there were three things that held him back. He wanted money from Ambler, Ambler had a gun and might be able to draw quicker, and then, something of his old disregard for danger had gone out of him. He felt this new fear, and was angry with himself for recognizing it, but none the less he had to face the fact that it had come to him. He could not quite risk facing Ambler’s gun, and knowing this fear, he had to relinquish the mastery of the situation to Hugh Ambler.

  “All right, you know what you know, then,” he admitted grudgingly. “So I’ve got to fade out for a while, and I’ve got to have money to do it. I’ve helped you drive enough sleeping beef off this range to have a thousand dollars’ worth of help coming from you.”

  Hugh Ambler said, “So you decided that you’d blackmail me out of a thousand dollars before you pulled your stakes. Why didn’t you get it from Fry?”

  “He don’t owe me nothing.”

  “Hold him up, like you’re trying to
do me. After all, you shot Sterling for him, didn’t you?”

  “What makes you think that?”

  “Look, my friend, you’re just like everybody else on this range. You don’t think I’ve got either eyes or brains in my head. You could take a stick and draw a map of this range on the ground, and you could know the men around here, and with those facts you can tell just what each one of them can be expected to do. I know as much about what Noble Fry is trying to do as he does.”

  “Then why don’t you beat him to it?” Moody Shay asked. It was dawning on him that he had not given this Ambler man credit for nearly as much sense as he should have.

  Ambler chuckled. “There’s an easier way for a smart man to handle it. Let him go on and furnish the fireworks. He’ll do the dirty work, and get the blame. Then when he’s finished, I’ll come along and take over. Simple, ain’t it, Moody?”

  There was a touch of boastfulness in Ambler’s voice, and also a hint of cordiality which pleased Shay, in the light of his new respect for Ambler’s brains.

  “You got something there,” Shay admitted.

  “Now about that money,” Ambler said. “I haven’t got but a few dollars cash on me, but I’ve got an idea of how I can help you. That is, if you’ve got sense enough to recognize a good thing when you see it. I’m going to be top man around here after Fry makes his little play, and I’d have something good for a man with your guts and savvy.”

  Shay thought this over a moment. If he hadn’t killed Fry with that blow to the head, this would be a good way to deal him some more misery, and since he still believed that Fry had sold him out for the purpose of evading payment for his killing job, this appealed to him. He wished he’d realized before that it was Ambler who was going to be the big buck around here.

  “What did you have in mind?” he asked Ambler.

  “I’ve got about forty head of short yearlings up in that box canyon, that I want driven over to Deerlick. You’ve handled as many as twenty-five at a time; do you think you could push forty over the mountains by yourself? The drive would keep you out of sight while your face healed up, and you could hide out at the Deerlick place till I sent you word that the coast was clear around here. Then you could come back and help me cash in on Fry’s work. In the meantime, if Ashfork felt like hanging somebody, they’d take it out on Fry maybe, and save us taking care of him. Anyway, we could clean up anybody that was left that was dangerous to you, and Fry would get the blame for that. How does it sound to you?”