The Sixth Western Novel

by Jackson Gregory

  Reilly hammered on Cannoyer’s door until he heard the old man’s grumble and the slide of the bolt. Milo arced a match and Reilly thrust against the door, pushing Cannoyer back and stepping inside.

  Milo came over with the light. Reilly closed the door. Cannoyer looked from one to the other and said, “What the devil is this, fellas? A little devilment with an old man?”

  “I’m lookin’ for one of your friends,” Reilly said. “Loving.”

  Cannoyer spread his age-wrinkled hands. His long underwear sagged at the knees and behind. “Friend?” He smiled, showing gaps in his teeth. “You got it all wrong, Reilly. He’s no friend of mine. Why, I hardly know the fella. I’m not a drinkin’ man, you know.”

  “You a loanin’ man?” Reilly asked.

  Cannoyer laughed as if this were a joke that he would get later. “What have I got to loan, Reilly? I’m a poor man. Everybody knows old Ben ain’t got nothin’.”

  “You got a forty-eighty-two Winchester,” Reilly said. “Elmer Loving took a shot at me with it tonight.”

  “Why—why,” Cannoyer said. “You’re teasin’ me, Reilly. Why would I do such a thing if I had such a thing?”

  Reilly spoke to Milo without turning his head. “Find the gun.”

  Milo began a systematic search of the room while Cannoyer stood there in his underwear, the lantern making a splashy, thin light in the room. “Reilly,” he said, “you know I ain’t got nothin’. What you doin’ this to old Ben for?”

  “Shut your mouth, old Ben,” Reilly said. “Look in the tick, Milo. Tear it apart.”

  “That’s my bed!” Cannoyer said in a high voice and made a lunge toward Milo. Reilly tripped him with an outthrust foot and the old man sprawled on the floor.

  Milo threw the straw mattress on the floor and pulled it apart. He began to scatter straw. Then Reilly raised the lantern and said, “Hold it, kid.” He walked around Cannoyer, who still huddled on the floor, and picked up the Winchester that was used for a bed slat.

  Reilly worked the lever and spun an empty onto the floor. Cannoyer watched the slightly bottlenecked cartridge roll in ever increasing circles. He reminded Reilly of a small boy watching his first top spin.

  “Suppose you tell me about it now,” Reilly said.

  Cannoyer sat there shaking his head slowly. Fear showed in his eyes and around the pinched ends of his lips.

  “I’ll tell you then,” Reilly said. “Burk was supposed to do the job, but he didn’t make it. Horgan told Elmer to do it with a gun, so he used your rifle. Ain’t that right, Ben?”

  Cannoyer said, “What you goin’ to do, Reilly?”

  “Shoot you!” Reilly snorted. “Go get our horses, kid.”

  Milo went out immediately. Cannoyer began to hunch himself along the floor until he came to the wall. He stayed there, his eyes never leaving Reilly’s face. The scrawny arms that braced his body began to tremble slightly.

  “What’s inside you, old man? Hate? Who do you hate and why? What does it get you, Ben—money? What’s money to a dead man?” Reilly’s voice was barely stronger than a whisper, but Cannoyer read grave things in it.

  “Elmer asked me for the loan of it,” Cannoyer said at last. “He said he’d take good care of it. I guess he brought it back when I was outside some place. Hell, Reilly, I wouldn’t have let him have it if I’d known he was going to shoot at a man.”

  “I’ll bet you wouldn’t,” Reilly said, and listened. Milo was leading the horses into the yard. “Where’s Elmer now?”

  “How would I know?”

  “I heard you loaned him a horse too,” Reilly said, and was surprised at how good his guess had been. Cannoyer’s face fell. He nodded, his head sagging forward.

  “An hour ago. He rode out. Didn’t say when he was coming back.”

  “All right,” Reilly told him. “I’m going after him, but I’m comin’ back, Ben. Be gone when I get here.”

  Cannoyer said, “Now wait a minute—” but Reilly was walking toward the door.

  He turned there and speared Ben Cannoyer with a glance. “Remember what I said, Ben. Be gone.”

  Reilly swung into the saddle. Milo mounted with him and they walked their horses to the edge of town. Reilly stopped there. At the east end, the glow had widened somewhat and the faint sound of voices rose and faded on the night wind. The other shanties had caught and somehow he was both saddened and pleased. He did not like the thought of putting the Mexican and the two drifters out in the night, but there would be no shacks there in case Tess Isham made good her threat.

  He didn’t think she would, but he couldn’t be sure. She was a stubborn woman when she set her mind to it and she had been hurt. Reilly wished he knew of some way to ease that for her, but times had changed, along with values, and he could do no more now.

  He tried to remember Sally as she had looked in the lamplight, the last of her clothes around her ankles, but somehow the picture wouldn’t focus. He could see Tess Isham’s face clearly, and this puzzled him, for she had always been in his mind much the same as a pesky younger sister.

  Milo’s voice pulled his mind away from his thoughts. “We goin’ to sit here all night?”

  “No,” Reilly said. “Let’s go find ourselves a man.”

  “Where?”

  “Just guessin’ now, mind you, but Horgan was in on this and Horgan’s in with Winehaven. Elmer used to work for Winehaven.” He nodded. “Let’s go see what California looks like, kid.”

  He lifted his horse into a trot. It wasn’t an easy pace, but a horse could cover miles that way and be fresh the next day.

  Reilly meant to take care of the horse. He had a long way to go and he wanted to be damned sure he got there.

  CHAPTER 9

  Milo Bucks was a tough young man, saddle-pounded since his sixth birthday, but he felt a strong inclination to lag behind, for Reilly Meyers did not bend to fatigue, nor slacken his pace. For three hours they rode northward through climbing land, pushing through brush and dried creek beds. Finally Reilly came to a stream and paused, allowing his horse to drink. He did not dismount and when Bucks moved to swing off, Reilly said, “No time for that,” and rode out again.

  They were high and in timbered land when the dawn bloomed beyond the stony summits. A dark stubble tinted Reilly’s cheeks and his good eye was bloodshot, but still he pushed on.

  The top edge of the sun showed itself and they passed between lanes of pines. A rabbit left the roadside thicket in a bound, sky-hopping, and Reilly’s horse shied violently, wheeling around. But he controlled the horse and started off again.

  Reilly angled off a sharp rise and pointed to a town below. Bucks didn’t see much there—one street and half a dozen buildings.

  “We’ll get a meal there,” Reilly said. They rolled their coats and tied them behind their saddles. They approached the end of the street. A saloon stood on the corner, a rooming house across from it. They dismounted and went into the rooming house.

  A fat woman waddled down the hall, drying her hands on her apron. “Can we get a meal here?”

  The woman let her eyes travel over Reilly’s battered face and the dust that clung like a mantle on his shoulders. Milo Bucks shifted his feet self-consciously when she looked at him.

  “Fifty cents apiece,” the woman said. “Pay now.”

  Reilly gave her a dollar and followed her into the warm kitchen. She placed a steaming pot of coffee on the table and they sat down, letting warmth soak into them. Surprisingly, the riding had loosened Reilly’s muscles to the point where he no longer ached every time he moved.

  The woman fried beef steak and hotcakes, along with a dozen eggs. She put the food on the table and went out the back door. Reilly and Bucks ate in silence. A few minutes later, they were rolling cigarettes and having their third cup of coffee.

  The back door opened and the woman came i
n, followed by a slat-lean man with drooping mustaches. He came up to the table and said, “I don’t recollect seein’ you around here before.”

  “You never have,” Reilly said.

  “Where you fellas from?”

  Reilly gave him a level stare. “That’s not your business, mister.”

  “I reckon l got a right to ask,” he said. “I’m a deputy sheriff in these parts. You fellas don’t look right to me.”

  “We’re all right,” Reilly said. “Now just leave us alone.”

  “Your horses look rode out,” the deputy said. “Been travelin’ all night?” Bucks glanced at Reilly and this exchange cemented something in the man’s mind.

  He pulled a gun from beneath his coat.

  “Reckon I’ll just hold you two boys here a couple days until I get a line on you.”

  “Put that away,” Reilly said softly. “You’re buying into somethin’, mister.”

  “I know my way around,” the deputy said. “Can tell a hardcase when I see one. Now you two just raise your hands. Myrtle, you sashay around the other side and lift their pistols.”

  “I’d guess we’d better give up,” Reilly said resignedly, and glanced at Milo. He lifted his coffee cup halfway to his lips and then threw it into the deputy’s face. The man yelped and stepped back and Reilly hit him, a chopping blow that drove him halfway across the room.

  The long barreled gun hit the floor and Reilly scooped it up. Milo left his chair and stood facing the fat woman. Her face was pale and her jaws jiggled slightly.

  “Now nobody’s goin’ to get hurt,” Reilly said, and watched the deputy as he struggled to his feet, massaging a sore jaw. He dipped two fingers into his pocket and laid three silver dollars on the table. “Gather a fryin’ pan and a little grub,” he told Milo.

  Milo put bacon and pan, flour, salt and three cans of beans in a flour sack. Crossing to the doorway, he halted until Reilly joined him. “Now behave yourselves,” Reilly said, and went out.

  He threw the deputy’s gun on the roof, heard it skid along until it caught in the eave, then mounted.

  They rode slowly from the one street town, lifting their horses into a trot as soon as the last buildings passed behind them.

  Late that afternoon Reilly turned east, rode on a few miles and then camped high in the rocks where water rippled over round stones and the odor of the forest was ancient and musky. He took the flour sack of grub, cooked a hasty meal, and then lay down in the squaw carpet, his head on his saddle.

  The horses were hobbled and grazing a few yards away.

  They slept for nearly four hours. Reilly woke first, nudging Milo awake. Night was not far away. Already a grayness was thickening.

  “Let’s go,” Reilly said. They saddled up, and after a last drink at the mountain stream they rode away, pushing toward a high pass, to the west.

  Night slowed them, and all around, great forests loomed darkly and animals made snapping noises as they broke brush getting out of the way. Twice deer scudded down the trail ahead of them and from a bramble thicket a black bear snorted at the horse scent, then ambled off on stiff hind legs.

  Milo said, “Hell, we must have got ahead of him by this time.”

  “No,” Reilly said. “Elmer’s pushing his horse.”

  At dawn they reached the summit of the Sierra Nevada range. California lay beyond. Reilly sat his horse, his shoulders rounded with fatigue. His face felt better and the puffiness had receded somewhat. He turned the horse and skirted the ridge for two hours. Then he pointed.

  In an elongated valley below lay a cluster of buildings and wide expanses of corrals, all interlocking with blocking gates and chutes leading into the huge tin barn near one corner. Smoke rolled from a tall stack and the rank mixed odor of cooking meat and manure and dust hung in the air.

  “Winehaven’s,” Reilly said. “We’ll have a look around.”

  They rode slowly off the mountainside. They had to go two miles over rough terrain. Crossing a small edge of the valley, Reilly studied the buildings carefully.

  The slaughtering chute was near the north side of the hiding and stripping plant. A man stood on an overhead platform, a big man with a ten pound sledge in his hands. Two helpers hazed steers into the long chute and as they passed beneath the man on the platform, his sledge crushed their frontal lobes, dropping them in their tracks.

  Another slaughterer, armed with a long knife, stuck the steers and fastened a rope around their forefeet. From within the building, a steam engine huffed, turning a conveyor belt that resembled a seamless chain. Someone fastened a hook between rope and belt and the steer was dragged away, slowly, inexorably, toward the gutting shack where more men waited.

  In the still mountain air the thunk of the slaughterer’s sledge, the muffled laboring of the steam engine, and the rattle of conveyor chains made foreign sounds. And in the air there was that stench.

  Reilly moved to the left side of the big building where cattle were bunched together. “Stay here,” he told Milo, and dismounted. He ducked between the bars and began to work his way afoot through the herd. A man could do that with Herefords, and live to tell about it.

  A man came out of the side door and saw Milo sitting there. Reilly caught this and worked his way back to the outside. He was stepping through the bars when Indian Jim came up, a seven-shot Spencer in his hands.

  “What the hell are you doin’ around here?” he asked. A mouse showed under his left eye where Milo’s fist had struck. He hefted the Spencer, but had too much sense to point it at anyone.

  “Winehaven around?”

  “No,” Jim said sullenly. “Get the hell out of here now.”

  “We’ll see Loving then,” Reilly said. “It don’t make much difference to me.”

  “Loving ain’t here either,” Indian Jim said. He shifted the big fifty caliber a little and Reilly nodded at it.

  “Be careful with it now.”

  Indian Jim stopped moving the rifle around.

  Without taking his eyes from Indian Jim, Reilly said, “Look around for Loving’s horse, Milo. He’s stable branded, Flying C.”

  “I said, get out of here.” Indian Jim’s face darkened beneath his flop-brimmed hat. He wore faded jeans and a dark corduroy jacket. A belt of silver disks held it together.

  Milo took an experimental step away. Reilly’s stare held the half-breed motionless. Reilly said, “You’re actin’ suspicious as hell, Jim. What would we want to hurt Elmer for?”

  “Damned if I know,” Jim said. “We had trouble with you once and Winehaven don’t want you snoopin’ around.”

  “When we find Elmer and have a talk with him, we’ll leave.” Reilly smiled. “You sure made damn good time leavin’ town the other night. Was you in a hurry to tell Winehaven that Burk didn’t make it and that Loving was goin’ to do the job?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Ben Cannoyer loaned Loving the rifle,” Reilly said smoothly. “A forty-eighty-two Winchester. We went to Ben’s stable and had a look at it.”

  Indian Jim licked his lips and turned his head as Milo Bucks came back.

  Milo said, “There’s a horse with that brand in the barn. He here?”

  “He’s here,” Reilly said. “Hand him over, Jim!”

  Jim said, “Damned if I will!” and whipped the Spencer up to his shoulder.

  Reilly sensed the man’s move and ducked under the barrel as the carbine coughed. Echoes woke in the hills. He rammed Jim in the pit of the stomach with his elbow, driving wind from the man, then wrested the rifle away and stunned him with his fist.

  Jim staggered, hurt, and Reilly sledged him again, dropping him. Picking up the Spencer, Reilly tossed it in the grass by the holding corral. He motioned toward the far corner of the slaughtering shed.

  “Take the horses and wait there. I’m g
oing inside.”

  “Two can do that better,” Bucks said.

  “Do as I tell you,” Reilly snapped, and trotted toward the side door Indian Jim had come out of.

  Inside, the building was damp and dark and stinking. He passed through the packing section where men turned from their steam tubs to stare at him. Along one wall, a canning line tinned beef, the cooked meat passing along on a slow moving belt.

  Reilly went through the building and into a warehouse section. On his right, heavy insulated doors indicated a cold storage section. He opened a door. Steers hung in double rows and the blocks of ice were piled high with sawdust covering them. There was no one in there and Reilly closed the door.

  On the other side, the skinning and stripping section added to the ripe odor. The pile of guts lay man-high at the base of a long chute and flies droned thick and busy.

  Reilly passed this to the outside where the slaughtering went on. He climbed upon the top rail of a chute to look around, and on the far side of the corral he saw a man duck under the bars.

  He cursed and leaped into the pens while Elmer Loving dodged among the restless steers. The ground here had been cut to dust by thousands of hooves and churned with the manure until the stench was almost overpowering.

  From across the backs of the steers, a gun popped. Loving wheeled and Reilly came on, his own gun out now. The noise started the steers to milling but Reilly battled his way through, trying to close with Loving. Sixty yards separated them when Loving climbed to the top rail, trying to break clear.

  Sighting quickly, Reilly fired. Loving paused, straddling the fence. His back arched and then he fell forward, his foot hooking the between rails. His leg snapped as he fell.

  Using his gun as a club, Reilly battered his way through the herd and vaulted the corral. Loving lay moaning on the ground, a wide stain spreading around his hip. His right leg lay bent at an awkward angle below the knee.

  The man clawed for his gun, but Reilly kicked it away and kneeled. “You played a poor hand,” he said. “Who’s behind it, Elmer?”

  “My leg,” Loving said faintly. His eyes rolled wildly and color left his face as shock began to work him over. “My leg’s broke.”