The High Graders

by Louis L'Amour

  He paused on a corner of the street, staring about like a bull entering a bullring, searching for something at which to charge.

  He needed to find the gold cache, and to be able to prevent them removing it when panic set in. His instinct told him the proper thing was to bust right into the middle of things and start things happening. It was a good way to get hurt, but from experience he knew that when a nest of crooks is disturbed they are apt to move without planning, and so make mistakes they might not otherwise make.

  It was for this reason that he had deliberately prodded Wilson Hoyt. Any move the marshal might make at this time would help. Even if he only started asking questions it might be enough.

  While Shevlin stood there, Ben Stowe suddenly appeared in the door of the Nevada House, and Mike Shevlin started toward him, walking swiftly. Stowe turned at the sound of his heels, and Shevlin caught the hard, measuring look. And suddenly Mike felt like old times. He knew that now the waiting was over and he was going into battle. He felt a wild surge of eagerness within him that he had to fight down.

  Stowe was poised and ready for him. Mike saw it even as Stowe spoke. “Hello, Mike.

  How about a drink for old times’ sake?”

  “No time for drinking, Ben.” Mike grinned at him, daringly, challengingly. “I’m going to tear down your playhouse, Ben.”

  Ben Stowe’s expression did not change; he simply said, “Mike, everybody would be happier if you’d just ride on out of here.” Ben reached in his pocket and took out a fat roll of bills.

  “Now, if you’re short of cash—”

  “Remember me? There were always a lot of things more important than money.”

  “Eli Patterson is dead, Mike. If you start opening that up, a lot of people will get hurt.”

  “That’s what I had in mind.”

  “You won’t leave?”

  Ben Stowe was thinking about his plans for Shevlin.

  The trouble was, they might not work fast enough, so he’d have to make other, faster plans.

  “Ben?” Mike spoke quietly, almost gently, so that suddenly every sense in Stowe’s body was alert. “Ben, why don’t you leave?”

  Stowe was startled at the words. He stared sharply, unbelievingly at Shevlin. “Me? Why should I leave?”

  “Think about it, Ben. You and me, we’re not exactly tenderfeet. We’ve both been through the mill. I say, grab it and run. You’ve had everything your way, and you’ve got a lot stashed away, so why not take it and get out? Believe me, Ben, it’s all over.”

  Ben Stowe started to make an angry reply, then hesitated. Shevlin was keyed up, he could see that, and the last thing Stowe wanted was a gun battle. And then he had a shocking sense that Shevlin was right.

  He struck a match and took his time lighting his cigar. He was shocked at the sudden wave of panic that had swept through him.

  Ben Stowe was realist enough to know that the doubt had been lingering there all the time, and Shevlin’s words had just exploded his feeling into desperation. In any such deal as this there was always that feeling that it was too good to last; and that feeling had been building larger and larger in all of them. Only a damned fool could fail to be apprehensive. But Ben Stowe was a hard man; he fought down his panic.

  “You seem to be riding a rough saddle, Mike. What’s your stake in all this?”

  “Give me the man who killed Eli.”

  Stowe shot him a swift glance. “Eli?

  Mike, men have died before, and others have yet to die, so why get worked up over him?”

  He made one last attempt, not to buy Shevlin, but to stall him. “Why not come into the party, Mike? This cake is big enough for all of us.”

  “Give me the man who killed Eli.”

  Stowe drew on his cigar. “Now, I might just do that, Mike,” he said, knowing he could do nothing of the kind. “Give me a couple of days.”

  “Make it twenty-four hours.” Shevlin moved to be off. “But take it from me, Ben, you’d better take what you’ve got and run. Your game’s played out.”

  Abruptly, he walked away. Ben Stowe would be no bargain in a fight. He had always been tough, but he was tougher, colder, and smarter now.

  Somehow he must crack the tight ring that Stowe had built around the enterprise. Once that ring was cracked, once somebody was hit with panic, then the whole thing would fall apart as everybody scrambled for safety with everything they could lay their hands on.

  Mason ... Mason had to be the weak link. Not Gib Gentry, for Gib would dig in his heels and make a fight of it. Nor did Mike wish to tangle with Gib—they had eaten too much dust and alkali together. Crack Mason, and Gentry would get out fast; and after Mason, Stowe would have to make his fight.

  Mike Shevlin was no fool. Pausing briefly on the corner, he knew he was looking at an uncertain future. He was forcing things into the open now, but it was the only way he knew how to act. Let the others play it cosy; he had neither the time nor the patience.

  First, he had to get Laine Tennison out of town before the roof fell in. Even without that, he would have enough trouble taking care of himself.

  Bleakly, he thought of tomorrow, and knew that tomorrow’s sun might not shine upon his face. For he was walking into m trouble than he had ever tackled in his life, and he had no friends. He was alone, as he had always been alone. And he would die alone, die somewhere up a canyon when his shells ran out, or his canteen was empty and his horse dead.

  He had always known that was the way it would be. It was hell, when a man came to think of it. He’d never felt sorry for himself, but right now there wasn’t a soul anywhere in the world who would think of it twice if he was killed. There was nobody who cared; and the odd part of it was, there never had been, as long as he could recall.

  He had brushed aside such thoughts before; what was bringing them to mind now? Was there deep within him a realization of death? Was he really going to pay it out now?

  He had never been in love, and so far as he knew he had never been loved by a woman. Here and there he had known women, some of them with affection, but it had gone no deeper than that. He knew he was a one-woman man, and had always known it; and he shied away now from the face that appeared sharply before his eyes. Not for him. Not for such as he, was a girl like Laine Tennison.

  In the back of his mind there had always been the vague idea that someday he would find the girl he was looking for. He would buy himself a nice little spread, fix it up shipshape and cosy, and maybe they’d have a couple of youngsters. ... He was a hell of a person to have such ideas.

  Mike Shevlin considered the present situation with care. He had really kicked over the applecart, and no mistake. Wilson Hoyt would not sit still. He would at least make inquiries, try to take some steps to avoid trouble. That Ben Stowe would also take steps would be quite in keeping with the man as he remembered him.

  At the livery stable Shevlin got his horse and rode out of town, then circled around and came up behind Dr. Rupert Clagg’s place. There were tall cottonwoods behind the house, rustling their leaves in the faint stir of air.

  Swinging down, he tied his horse well into the deepest shadow of the trees. He must see Laine. He must warn her, and he must get her out of town if possible.

  He moved toward the house and paused by a thick old tree, listening into the night. From the kitchen came the faint clatter of dishes and the momentary sound of a girl’s voice lifted in talk.

  Something stirred in the grass near him, and a moment later a voice spoke. “All right, what do you want?”

  “I want to see Laine Tennison.”

  “Rather late for that, isn’t it? If she knows you and wishes to see you, come around tomorrow.”

  Laine’s voice interrupted. “It is all right, Rupert. I want to see him.”

  Mike Shevlin lifted the latch of the gate and came into the back yard. The light in the kitchen had been blown out, and the rear of the house was dark. He stood uncertainly inside the gate. “All right,” the man’s voi
ce said, “if Miss Tennison wishes to see you.” There was a pause. “I am Dr. Clagg.”

  Shevlin turned his head, listening for any sound of a possible ambush. “Related to Clagg Merriam?” he asked.

  “A distant cousin.”

  “Ah?”

  “Will you come into the house?”

  Mike hesitated, then followed them into the house. They went through the dark kitchen and along a lighted hall into a comfortable living room.

  “Drink?”

  “No, thanks.”

  Dr. Rupert and Mike Shevlin measured each other. “Coffee?” the doctor suggested. “We’re tea drinkers ourselves, but we always have coffee.”

  “I’ll have tea,” Mike said. “I spent a winter one time in a horse camp with an Englishman. I got to like it.”

  Laine had come into the room and Clagg turned to go. “I’ll let you talk,” he said. “I must tell Dottie what’s going on.”

  “You stay.” Shevlin did not mean to speak so abruptly, but he suddenly realized that Clagg was a solid citizen, and a fighting man. “You’d better hear this. You’ll know it all in a day or so, anyway.”

  Dottie came down the stairs and into the room.

  “Ma’am,” Shevlin said, “I’m Mike Shevlin, and all hell’s about to break loose.”

  Chapter 7

  BEN STOWE chewed angrily on his cigar. That damned, gunhandy saddle tramp, drifting in here to ruin everything! Why couldn’t he have stayed in Texas, or wherever he had come from?

  The years bring about many changes in the characters of men. Gib Gentry had always been a careless, rough-and-ready cowhand, never too honest in any dealings, yet a man who was, generally speaking, without malice. He had never stolen anything but cattle, and the West looked with tolerance upon branding loose stock. If a man happened to be so unlucky as to be caught in the act, he would probably be hung or shot, but it was generally understood that any maverick was taking its own chances as long as there was a running iron, a cinch ring, or a twist of barbed wire lying about handy.

  Gib Gentry, who appreciated a good joke, had once made the rounds of a roundup camp and surreptitiously checked all the saddles. Of the forty men present—ranchers, cowhands, and stock inspectors—thirty-one of them had cinch rings on their saddles that showed signs of fire. At the time it caused considerable embarrassment, followed by a run on the nearest harness shops for extra cinch rings, but afterward it became a standing joke on the range.

  In Gentry’s book, high-grading gold was not too far afield from cattle rustling. The gold was in the earth, the fact of discovery was an accident; why shouldn’t he profit as well as the next man? Neither kind of theft disturbed whatever moral code Gib possessed ... either kind was taken for granted, and nothing more thought of it.

  But the murder of Jack Moorman was something else, and Gib had never really gotten over that.

  No ghosts haunted him in the night, and he carried no aura of guilt, visible to himself or others. He simply drank a little more, ate a little more, softened up physically a little faster, and avoided the subject even in his own mind. Whenever the memory of old Jack’s brutal killing came to him he quickly averted his thoughts and tried to think of something else. As there was a very busty young Irish waitress down at the restaurant called The Sump, he found this a relatively easy thing to do.

  Ben Stowe was another kind of man entirely. He, too, was without malice in whatever he had done. He would have laughed at the idea that society owed him a living, or owed him anything. Gentry was reckless, immature, and took what he wanted; Stowe was cold, calculating, intelligent, and thought the law was for damned fools.

  As Gentry had deteriorated, Stowe had grown in evil. As he was cold, so he had become colder; as he was a thinking man, he had become an executive in crime, which he conducted as any business operation should be conducted. He was utterly ruthless.

  He would never murder a man just for the sake of killing. He would never indulge in rape or in casual theft. He would have fallen into few of the categories that fit criminal types. He was simply a totally selfish man with a complete disregard for the rights of others to either life or property, if in some way these rights interfered with his own plans.

  Once his mind was made up, he wasted no time. And his mind was made up now about Mike Shevlin.

  He had planned that Shevlin should die, but he had planned to arrange it to happen in such a way as no blame could attach itself to the town or to anybody in it. There were ways to do such things, and he had used them before. Now there was no time for that.

  Turning on his heel, he walked back to the Nevada House and into the saloon. Red was there, as Stowe had known he would be. Red was never far from people, for he was too much involved in a romance with the sound of his own voice.

  Stowe caught his eyes, and Red came over.

  Stowe bought drinks for both of them.

  “There’s a man out at Boulder Spring,” he said. “You ride out there. Say nothing of this to anybody ... not to anybody at all. You just ride out there and tell him to scratch the first name.”

  When Red was gone, Ben Stowe took his bottle and walked to a corner table. Now he must think. Every move must be planned.

  The ledgers in his office told him just what each mine was taking out, and each was permitted to show a small profit occasionally. There was another book he kept hidden that told of each deposit of gold in the cache.

  Now, like it or not, they were going to have to ship some of the gold to an eastern market. Stowe had made plans for this over a year ago. Gentry would handle the shipment, and it would arrive at the eastern market as though shipped from another mine than this.

  Money was necessary to continue the operation of the plan, and they must have sufficient capital to make a payment on the purchase price of the mine if a deal could be arrived at. It was unfortunate that Mike Shevlin had appeared at this time with his talk of blowing the lid off, but he would be out of the picture within a matter of hours.

  Stowe sat quietly, smoking his cigar and thinking, considering every aspect of the loading of the gold, the route the shipment must take, and its protection on route, without it seeming to be protected.

  The next few days would settle the affair. The shipment, if the timing was to be right, must leave within the next forty-eight hours.

  Only yesterday he had given that list to the man at Boulder Spring, a list of five men to be shot on order, and they were five men carefully selected. He considered that again, wondering if there were others, but he could think of none. All but one of those whose names were on that list would have been shocked to realize that such a thing could be; and not one, Stowe told himself, would suspect it of him. Of them all, Mike Shevlin might guess his own name was there, but none of the others could imagine themselves on such a list.

  Gib Gentry was finishing his third drink at the bar of the Blue Horn Saloon when Red pushed through the doors and came up to the bar beside him.

  Gib had been staring at his image in the mirror without pleasure. All the fun had gone out of things lately, and he might as well face up to the fact that he was no longer a youngster.

  He was nearing forty ... oh, there were a couple of years to go, but a man had to face the fact that he was closing in on it. He owned a stage line with two vehicles and a steady business, and a freight line operating sixteen big wagons, with barns and corrals at each end. He was making money.

  Ben Stowe was his silent partner, but he took no pleasure in that. More and more he had realized in these past few days that after ten years of association with Ben he did not like him, and did not really know him. But to pull out and leave all he owned, and start over at his age—well, that made no sense, either.

  Like many another man in his position, he allowed himself to remain tied to a situation that worried him, and only because of the little property it represented. He brooded while he sat there drinking, and he had just refilled his glass when Red entered the door.

  Irritated, for he
wished to be alone, Gentry said, “You’d better watch your step. You took in too much territory the other day.”

  The taunt had a bite, but Red chuckled, though without humor. “Maybe, but he won’t be pullin’ that on me again ... not him.”

  “He could murder you in any kind of a fight. I know him.”

  Resentment fought with caution, and resentment won for the moment. “He ain’t goin’ to bother me, nor anybody else for that matter. Not any more, he ain’t. He’s had it.”

  Gentry’s glass described a slow circle on the bar. Through his brain, dulled by whiskey, the idea filtered slowly. He started to ask a question, then restrained himself. If he questioned Red, the miner would simply clam up and he would get nothing from him, nothing at all. Yet he had a feeling Red wanted to talk—he wanted to brag about how much he knew.

  “Don’t you go counting on that. Shevlin will be around for a good long spell.”

  Red had some remnants of caution, but he did want to talk and he knew that no one was closer to Ben Stowe than Gentry; so it certainly could do no harm to tell him.

  He downed his drink. “Not after I come back from Boulder Spring, he won’t be. Not for long. He’ll have a day, maybe two or three.”

  Red was guessing, but he had a feeling he wasn’t missing the mark very far. He had seen Shevlin exchange some angry words with Stowe, and after that had come the message. And he knew that Shevlin was causing trouble ... by now everyone in town knew that.

  Suddenly another thought came to Red. Stowe had said, “Scratch the first name.”

  The first name? That implied there was a list, it implied there were more names. If Shevlin’s was the first name on the list, whose were the other names?

  “That Ben,” Red confided, “he’s a cagey one. Always knows what he’s about.”

  Gentry was silent, thinking of Red’s information. So the word was out—Shevlin was to be killed.