“Has anybody ever tried to buy you out?” Bowdrie asked casually.
“You might say that. Jackson Kegley wanted to buy it from me, and for that matter, so did old man Bates. Then some of Kegley’s boys made a pass at running me off the place a few years back. We sort of discouraged ’em. Mig an’ me, we shoot too straight.”
The coffee was good, so Bowdrie sat and talked awhile. The two were hard men, no doubt about that, but competent. Nobody in his right mind would try to drive them off a place situated like this. Bowdrie knew their kind. He had ridden with them, worked cattle with them. Left alone, they would be no trouble to anyone.
Neither of these men shaped up like a murderer. They would kill, but only in a fight where both sides were armed and where they believed themselves in the right.
The idea persisted that the bank cashier had been shot deliberately, and for a reason. But what reason?
Bowdrie was not taking Roway’s word for it as far as the paint horse went, but he did not have to. He already had some thoughts about that, and an idea was beginning to take shape that might provide an answer.
It was a long ride back to Morales, and Bowdrie had time to think. The sun was hot, but up in the high country where he was, the breeze was pleasant. Bowdrie took his time. Riding horseback had always been conducive to thinking, and now he turned over in his mind each one of the elements. When he arrived at a point where he could overlook the town, he drew rein.
Morales, what there was of it, lay spread out below him like a map, and there are few things better than a map for getting the right perspective.
The paint horse was too obvious. Rip Coker had put that into words very quickly, but Bowdrie had been quick to see it himself. To ride such a horse in a robbery meant that a man was insane or he was trying to point a finger of suspicion at its owner.
“What I want to know, Hammerhead,” he said to the roan, “is how that fifth bandit got away. More than likely, if he rode around behind the Rest an’ took to the woods, he had to come this way to keep from sight. He had to know a trail leading him up to the breaks of this plateau without using the main trail.”
For two hours he scouted the rim, returning to town finally with the realization that there was no way to reach the top without taking the main trail in full sight of the town.
“And if he didn’t use the main trail, he just never left town at all!”
Several men were running toward the bank as he rode into the street. Dropping from the saddle, Bowdrie tied his horse and went swiftly in the direction of the others. Hearing someone coming up behind him, he turned to see Jackson Kegley. “What’s happened?” Kegley asked.
“Don’t know,” Chick said.
When they rounded the corner of the bank, they saw a small knot of men standing at the rear of the bank. Bowdrie glanced at Kegley. His face was flushed and he was breathing harder than what a fast walk should cause. A bad heart, maybe?
Bob Singer was there, his features taut and strained. “It’s Joel Bates. He’s been knifed.”
Chick stepped through the crowd. He looked down at the banker’s son. A good-looking boy, a handsome boy, and well-made. Too young to die with a knife in the back.
“Anybody see what happened?” Chick asked.
Rip Coker was rolling a smoke. “He was investigatin’ this here robbery. I reckon he got too close.”
“I found him,” Henry Plank said. He was a small man, bald, with a fringe of reddish hair. “I come through here a lot, going to Big Jim’s barn. He was lyin’ just like you see him, on his chest, head turned sidewise, and a knife in his back.”
“When did you come through here last?” Bowdrie asked. “I mean, before you found the body?”
“About an hour ago. He wasn’t lyin’ there then. I walked right over that spot.”
Chick squatted on his heels beside the body. The knife was still in the wound, an ordinary hunting knife of a kind commonly used. There probably were as many such knives in town as there were men. This one was rusty. Probably an old knife somebody had picked up. He bent closer, lifting the dead man’s hand. In the grain of the flesh there were tiny bits of white. His hand looked much as it would if he had gripped a not-quite-dry paintbrush.
Bowdrie stood up, thinking. Joel Bates’s body was cold, and in this weather it would not lose heat very fast. Bowdrie was guessing that Joel Bates had been dead for considerably more than an hour, but if so, where had the body been?
Big Jim, stunned by grief and shock, stood nearby. Only that morning Bowdrie had heard Bates speak with pride of his son, the son who now lay cold and dead.
Chick Bowdrie was suddenly angry. He turned to face the group.
“The man who killed this boy is in this crowd. He is the same man who engineered the bank robbery. I know why he did it and I have a very good hunch who he is, and I’m going to see him hang if it is the last thing I do!”
Turning sharply, he walked away, still angry. Perhaps he had been foolish to say what he’d said, and this was no time for anger, yet when he saw that fine-looking young man lying there…
He walked back toward the barn and entered. It was cool and quiet in there, and sunlight fell through a few cracks in the boards. There were three horses in the stalls and there were stacks of hay. At one side of the old barn was a buckboard. Chick was following a hunch now, and quickly, methodically, he began to search. His success was immediate—a pot of white paint hidden under sacks and piled hay.
“Found somethin’?”
Bowdrie glanced up, a queer chill flowing through him. So engrossed had he been in his search that he had failed to hear the man enter. His carelessness angered him. It was Bob Singer.
“Yeah,” Bowdrie said, “I’ve found something, all right.”
Gingerly he lifted the pot with his left hand, turning it slowly. On one side was a clear imprint of a thumb, a thumbprint with a peculiar ropy scar across it.
“Yes, I’ve found something. This is the paint that was used to paint a horse to look like Roway’s skewbald.”
“Paint a hoss? You’ve got to be crazy!”
Several men had followed them into the barn and were listening.
“Somebody,” Bowdrie said, “figured on stickin’ Roway with this robbery. He painted a horse to look like Roway’s.”
“And left the paint can here?” Singer said. “It must have been young Bates himself.”
“It wasn’t young Bates. You see…”—Bowdrie looked at Singer—“I’ve known that horse was painted from the first. He stamped his feet and some paint fell off into the dust up in front of the Rest. Young Joel must’ve figured out the same thing. Either that horse was painted here or young Joel found that bucket of paint and brought it here to hide.
“The man who painted that horse followed him here and knifed him. He left him in the barn until there was nobody around, then carried him out here, because he did not want anybody nosin’ around the barn.”
“Hell,” Singer scoffed, “that bandit is nowhere around Morales now. He got away and he’s kept goin’.”
“No,” Chick said, the dimplelike scar under his cheekbone seeming to deepen, “that bandit never even left town.”
“What?” Singer’s tone was hoarse. “What d’you mean?”
“I mean, Singer,” Bowdrie said, “that you were the man on that paint horse. You were the man who murdered Joel Bates. You’ve got a scar on the ball of your thumb, which I noticed earlier, and that thumbprint is on this can of paint!”
“Why, you…!”
Singer’s hand clasped his gun butt. Bowdrie’s gun boomed in the close confines of the barn, and Singer’s gun slipped from nerveless fingers.
“Singer!” Plank gasped. “Who would have thought it was him? But who are the others? The other four?”
“Five,” Bowdrie said. “Five!”
“Five?” Bates had come into the barn again. “You mean there was another man in on this?”
“Yeah.” Bowdrie’s eyes shifted from face to face and back. Lingering on Bates, then moving on to Kegley and Mig Barnes, who had just come in. “There was another. There was the man who planned the whole affair.”
He walked to the door, and some of the others lifted Singer’s body and carried it out.
Jackson Kegley looked over at Bowdrie. “Singer was supposed to be good with a gun.”
There was no expression on Bowdrie’s hawklike face. “It ain’t the ones like Singer a man has to watch. It’s the ones who will shoot you in the back. Like the man,” he added, “who killed Lem Pullitt!”
“What d’you mean by that? Pullitt was shot—”
“Lem Pullitt was shot in the back, and not by one of the three in the bank.”
It was long after dark when Bowdrie returned to the street. He had gone to his room in the Rest and had taken a brief nap. From boyhood he had slept when there was opportunity and eaten when he found time. He had taken time to shave and change his shirt, thinking all the while. The ways of dishonest men were never as clever as they assumed, and the solving of a crime was usually just a painstaking job of establishing motives and putting together odds and ends of information. Criminals suffered from two very serious faults. They believed everybody else was stupid, and the criminal himself was always optimistic as to his chances of success.
The idea that men stole because they were poor or hungry was nonsense. Men or women stole because they wanted more, and wanted it without working for it. They stole to have money to flash around, to spend on liquor, women, or clothes. They stole because they wanted more faster.
Walking into the Chuck Wagon, Bowdrie took a seat at the far end of the table where he could face the room. The killer of Pullitt was somewhere around, and he was the one who had the most to lose.
Bates was not in the Wagon, nor was Kegley, but Henry Plank was, and a number of punchers in off the range. One by one he singled out their faces, and there were one or two whom he recognized. As the thin, worn man who waited on the tables came to him to take his order, Bowdrie asked, “Who’s the big man with the red beard? And the dark, heavy one with the black hair on his chest?”
“Red Hammill, who rides for Big Jim Bates. Ben Bowyer used to ride for Kegley, but he rides for Bates now. They ain’t tenderfeet.”
“No,” Bowdrie agreed, “Hammill rode in the Lincoln County War, and Bowyer’s from up in the Territory.”
Rip Coker threaded his way through the tables to where Bowdrie sat. “Watch your step, Ranger. There’s something cookin’, and my guess is it’s your scalp.”
“Thanks. Where do you stand?”
“I liked Lem. He staked me to grub when I first come to town.”
Without having any evidence, Bowdrie was almost positive Hammill and Bowyer had been involved in the holdup. Both men were listed as wanted in the Rangers’ bible, both had been involved in such crimes before this. As wanted men they were subject to arrest in any event, but Bowdrie was concentrating on the present crime. Or crimes, for now another murder was involved.
There had been others. Was Coker one of them? He doubted it, because the man seemed sincere and also there had been obvious enmity between Coker and Singer, who had been involved.
Who was the man behind it? Who had planned and engineered the holdup? He believed he knew, but was he right?
Bates opened the door and stepped into the room. His eyes found Bowdrie and he crossed the room to him.
“I guess my bank will hold together for a while. I am selling some cattle to Kegley, and that will tide me over.”
“You gettin’ a good price?”
Bates winced. “Not really. He was planning to stock blooded cattle, but he’s buyin’ mine instead. Sort of a favor.”
Chick Bowdrie got up suddenly. “Coker,” he whispered, “get Bates out of here, fast!”
He thought he had caught a signal from Hammill to Bowyer, and he was sure they planned to kill him tonight. There had been an appearance of planned movement in the way they came in, the seats they chose, the moves they made. He hoped his sudden move would force a change of plan or at least throw their present plans out of kilter.
“I’m hittin’ the hay,” he said, to Coker, speaking loud enough to be heard. He started for the door.
He stepped through the swinging doors, turned toward the Rest, then circled out into the street beyond the light from the door and windows and flattened against the wall of the stage station.
Almost at once the doors spread and Red Hammill stepped out, followed by Bowyer. “Where’d he go?” Red spoke over his shoulder. “He sure ducked out of sight mighty quick!”
“Bates is still inside,” Bowyer said, “an’ Rip Coker is with him.”
“It’s that Ranger I want,” Hammill said. “I think he knew me. Maybe you, too. Let’s go up to the Rest.”
They started for the Rest, walking fast. Bowdrie sprinted across to the blacksmith shop. Hammill turned sharply, too late to detect the movement.
“You hear somethin’?” he asked Bowyer. “Sounded like somebody runnin’!”
“Lookin’ for me, Red?” Bowdrie asked.
Red Hammill was a man of action. His pistol flashed and a slug buried itself in the water trough. Bowdrie sprinted for the next building, and both men turned at the sound.
Chick yelled at them, “Come on, you two! Let’s step into the street and finish this!”
“Like that, is it?” The voice came from close on his right. Mig Barnes!
Bowdrie fired, heard a muffled curse, but it did not sound like a wounded man.
A movement from behind him turned his head. Now they had him boxed. But who was the other one? Was it Roway?
He backed against the wall. The door was locked. On tiptoes he made it to the edge of the building, holding to the deepest shadow. He saw a dim shape rise up and the gleam of a pistol barrel. Who the devil was that?
A new voice, muffled, spoke up. “You’re close, Tex! Give it to him!”
The shadow with the pistol raised up, the pistol lifting, and Bowdrie fired. “You’re on the wrong side, mister!” he said, and ducked down the alley between the buildings, circled the buildings on the run, and stepped to the street just as Bowyer, easily recognized from his build, started across it. His bullet knocked the man to his knees. Red Hammill fired in reply, and a shot burned close to Chick, who was flattened in a shallow doorway.
He started to move, and his toe touched something. A small chunk of wood. Picking it up, he tossed it against the wall of the livery stable. It landed with a thud, and three lances of flame darted. Instantly Chick fired, heard a grunt, then the sound of a falling body. A bullet stung his face with splinters and he dropped flat and wormed his way forward, then stopped, thumbed shells into his right-hand gun, and waited.
Tex was out of it, whoever he was. Bowyer had been hit, too. Chick thought he had hit Bowyer twice.
He waited, but there was no sound. He had an idea this was not to their taste, while street fighting was an old story to him. What he wished now was to know the origin of that muffled voice. There had been an effort to disguise the tone.
He was sure his guess was right. They intended to kill Bates, too. Maybe that was where…
He came to his feet and went into the saloon with a lunge. There was no shot.
The men in the room were flattened against the walls, apparently unaware of how little protection they offered. Bates, his red face gone pale, eyes wide, stood against the bar. Rip Coker stood in the corner not far away, a gun in his hand. Red Hammill stood just inside the back door and Mig Barnes was a dozen feet to the right of the door.
Why his dive into the room hadn’t started the shooting, he could not guess, unless it was the alert Coker standin
g ready with a gun.
Hammill and Barnes were men to be reckoned with, but where was Roway?
The back door opened suddenly and Jackson Kegley came in, taking a quick glance around the room.
“Bates!” Bowdrie directed. “Walk to the front door and don’t get in front of my gun. Quick!”
Hammill’s hand started, then froze. Bates stumbled from the room, and Bowdrie’s attention shifted to Kegley.
“Just the man we needed,” Bowdrie said. “You were the one who killed Lem Pullitt. You stood in an upstairs bedroom of the Rancher’s Rest and shot him when his back was to the window.”
“That’s a lie!”
“Why play games?” Mig Barnes said. “We got ’em dead to rights. Me, I want that long-jawed Coker myself.”
“You can have him!” Coker said, and Mig Barnes went for his gun.
In an instant the room was laced with a deadly crossfire of shooting. Rip Coker opened up with both guns and Chick Bowdrie let Hammill have his first shot, knocking the big redhead back against the bar.
Kegley was working his way along the wall, trying to get behind Bowdrie. As Hammill pushed himself away from the bar, Bowdrie fired into him twice. Switching to Kegley, he fired; then his gun clicked on an empty chamber. He dropped the gun into a holster and opened up with the left-hand gun.
Kegley fired and Bowdrie felt the shock of the bullet, but he was going in fast. He swung his right fist and knocked the bigger man to the floor. He fell to his knees, then staggered up as Kegley lunged to his feet, covered with blood. Bowdrie fired again and saw the big man slide down the wall to the floor.
Bowdrie’s knees were weak and he began to stagger, then fell over to the floor.
When he fought back to consciousness, Rip Coker was beside him. Rip had a red streak along the side of his face and there was blood on his shirt. Bates, Henry Plank, and Tom Roway were all there.
“We’ve been workin’ it out just like I think you had it figured,” Henry said. “Kegley wanted a loan and got Bates to have the money in the bank. He killed Lem, just like you said.
“Kegley wanted to break Bates. He wanted the bank himself, and Bates’s range as well. He planned to get Tom Roway in trouble so he could take over that ranch and run Bates’s cattle on it.
Bowdrie (Louis L'Amour's Lost Treasures) Page 4