E. Hoffmann Price's War and Western Action

by E. Hoffmann Price

  For the next few days, he tended strictly to business, scouting around the vast Diamond C spread, ready for a clash with beef thieves. The coming of the railroad to Paso Del Norte had started a boom; hundreds of pilgrims, gamblers, dance-hall women, business men and railroad contractors had poured into town, and all the new­comers needed steak—principally, it seemed, from the Diamond C herd.

  Brand inspectors, supposedly, were scrutinizing each hide at the slaughterhouses, checking them against bills of sale. But the in­spectors were either drunk, blind, or bribed. And old man Crane was madder than a hornet. His line riders had made no progress. Thus Slim’s father was in the saddle, stalking thieves as he once had tracked down marauding Comanches.

  “Way I figger it out,” the old man said, pointing, “is that they’re fixing to turn a trick over yonder. Judgin’ from old wagon tracks, and the lay of the land, it’s got to be.”

  “Why’n’t y’all put our riders over there, then?”

  Crane spat, shook his grizzled head. “Son,” he said, patting the stock of “Jezebel”, his buffalo gun, “when I tends to varmints, I tends to ’em. Jails ain’t wuth a damn! Less company, the better. Now, you ride over that-away, up through that gulch.”

  Stealthily, with muffled hoofs and curb chain to silence his ad­vance, Slim went up the gulch. The full moon cast black shadows, but in the open, the shooting would be good, if it came to that. He hoped it wouldn’t. It had been bad enough when Madge’s dad had just missed stopping a hatful of .45s, that day when the first fence had been destroyed.

  He rather wondered why Madge had continued meeting him. She probably reckoned he’d saved her life, or something. Then, because he’d indirectly called her old man a thief, she’d gone hog wild. Wom­en are sure as hell funny critters.

  When Slim heard vague sounds some distance ahead he crept for­ward on foot, his Winchester ready. If he got the drop on them, a killing might be avoided. His father would not shoot unarmed men, not even thieves. The old man liked to startle them into go­ing for a gun, which was pretty nearly always fatal—for the other fellow.

  Slim wondered if his dad’s skill was what it had been, thirty years ago. A man couldn’t keep that up forever. Not even a good one. He was vaguely worried. A premoni­tion urged him to hurry, and to hell with noise.

  A wagon was just discernible in the shadows of a grove, out there in the open. The very silence was ominous. Slim squatted, straining his eyes to outwit the treacherous blend of shadow and blue-white glare. A twig crackled. Someone whispered, “There’s the old son of a—! Yonder—”

  The thunderous boom of a buffa­lo gun cut into that. A horse screamed, wood splintered, and wagon tires rattled over the rocky outcropping as the team bolted.

  Then Slim went wild. It would take the old man just a split second to shove another cartridge into “Jezebel”, but three rifles were crackling, and Crane, enraged by his bad shot, was roaring more loudly than his .60 caliber gun.

  Slim raked the flame-stabbed shadows with his Winchester. A man yelled. The kid’s gun jammed. He drew his Colt and charged, cursing as he fired.

  The silence in his father’s quar­ter froze him. They’d killed him! A man broke from the shadows. He doubled up, cut down by a pair of slugs. Then Jezebel’s blast drowned every other sound.

  The old man bobbed up from cover, a .45 in each hand. But two men escaped his wrath. They reached their saddle mounts, and galloped hell bent. When father and son met at the overturned wagon, they found only one raider, his own blood mingled with that of three butchered beeves.

  “Had ye worried, heh?” old man Crane chuckled.

  “Gosh, pap, you sure did!” Slim was shaking all over.

  Then he felt sick. His mouth sagged, and the gun fell from his hands. His father, striking a match, was kneeling beside the dead man, and sombrely shaking his head. “By God,” he mourned, “I shore am gittin’ old. Wan’t old Jezebel that got this jasper, after all. Yes, sir, I’m shore gittin’ old, when all I kin hit is a pore, helpless hoss.” He looked up, sharply. “Whut in tunket? Ain’t you never seen blood afore!”

  “Ug—uh—” Slim choked, gulped. His face was gray green in the moon glow. “That’s—um—that’s the—nester. Herb Daley—”

  “Mighty nice, son.” The old man rubbed his hands together. “Smok­ing out a double action varmint. Though it’s too bad, him having a daughter.”

  He scrutinized the wagon and the horses. He was saying, “Brands blotted out, so’s they kain’t be traced. ’Tain’t Daley’s rig.”

  Slim went to get his horse. When he returned, he said, “I been think­ing mebbe I could go to Paso del Norte and find out who’s behind this crooked stuff. It’s a cinch Daley ain’t the head man, and we didn’t ketch no one to question.”

  “By gravey!” This after a mo­ment of pondering. “That’s right. Arter daylight, when I kin study the sign, I’ll tell you what size jasper to look fer, and what kind of hosses they was riding.”

  That would be an open book to an old scout. Slim nodded, then said, “Pappy, why’n’t you tell the sheriff and the coroner you done this yourself? Thattaway, won’t nobody suspect me, if anyone hears I’m going to Paso del Norte. Be­ing as these yere are your critters, on your spread, ain’t no one going to as much as axe you a cross ques­tion.”

  Old man Crane straightened up. He appreciated modesty in a young squirt. “They allus lowed you was a easy going jasper and none too dang smart, nohow.” He slapped his thigh, chuckled. “I allus looked dumb too, when I was your age. Which fooled a lot of folks. You go right now, and I’ll write you to Paso del Norte, telling you what all I larned.”

  That helped. “Good God,” the kid told himself, later that night, “I’d ruther be shot than face Madge. And onct I help pappy outen this mess, I ain’t never com­ing back.”

  Then his face hardened, and looked older, years older, than it had an hour ago. Even if Madge never learned he had fired the fatal shot, she’d still hate him for his father’s sake…

  * * * *

  All the hard cases in the southwest had come to Paso del Norte. Longhaired trappers in buckskin, frock coated gamblers, waddies in faded levis, all busy with their own pursuits; and none, as far as Slim Crane could tell, with an eye for him.

  As the sun dipped lower, Slim saw the women who had flocked to town. They leaned from windows, beckoning and smiling; they lounged in doorways, clad only in kimonos whose thin fabric and loosely gathered folds seconded the wearer’s brazen invitation.

  Somewhere in hell roaring Paso del Norte, Crane expected to get a direct lead to the beef thieves. His father had mailed him descriptions of the fugitives who had survived the melee at the Diamond C. Hoof-prints, bits of hair rubbed off on trees, human hair in the sweatband of a hat lost in flight; boot prints, and the length of strides, all these built up the picture. A short, heavy man whose feet were cramped by new, tight boots, had ridden a grullo; a long legged, red haired man with a slight limp had escaped on a strawberry roan with one defective shoe.

  From one saloon to the next, Slim hunted the pair. Appealing to the law was useless. The beef contractors, the railroad builders, the slaughter house operators were hand in hand. Unless he found overwhelming evidence, he had not a chance.

  The only way was to catch the thieves with Diamond C hides in their possession. That would justi­fy cutting them down in their tracks; a frontier jury would ac­quit him.

  “And to hell with the jedge and his whereas-nevertheless-buts!” Slim told himself, as back prudent­ly planted against the wall in the corner, his biting glance covered the smoke filled barroom.

  One thing Slim had not over­looked; though leaving Arroyo Rojo by night, he could not hope to have reached Paso del Norte un­heralded. Two fugitives had rid­den ahead of him. Thus, his back was to a wall.

  Slim watched the dancers whirl­ing about the rough-hewn floor, and the g
irls who hustled drinks to the tables along the further wall. They were trim wenches, fresh and shapely; too subtle to wear short skirts. Slim had seen that type in the saloons of Arroyo Rojo, and they seemed downright indecent. But these girls stirred his blood.

  Before Slim realized it, he drew a slow, deep breath. The glass in his fingers spilled little drops of whiskey. He shook his head, as if to clear it of dizziness. When a blonde girl with hair that was more silver than yellow came lithely toward him, he could not avoid her glance. Nor did he want to, when he smelled her perfume and heard her voice.

  She seemed almost shy, like Madge, the first time they met by moonlight, and she nervously fin­gered a concha on his vest.

  “I wonder if you’d not take a table, over there.” She gestured. “We could drink together.” She looked up, and hesitancy blossomed into a smile. “Wouldn’t it be fun, pretending we’re old friends? I’m…well…a newcomer, and it’s awfully hard, playing up to these tough customers. I never realized it would be like this.”

  A tall man with a drooping black mustache stood in the corner, arms folded. He nodded as he watched her accost Slim. This was the pro­prietor. The girl flashed him a glance as Slim followed her.

  Then he saw a red haired man, long legged and limping a little. Slim remembered his father’s de­scription. He wondered if the cowpuncher had a strawberry roan outside.

  “Listen, Sally,” he whispered, as they approached the table in the corner, “I’m waiting for a fellow, and I can’t see much, from here.”

  A waiter was bringing the drinks Sally had ordered before leaving the bar. One glass, Slim realized, would be cold tea, but he didn’t care.

  The tall redhead’s face went sour, then black when his glance shifted toward Sally. The blonde shrank, caught Slim’s arm. Her hip would have brushed him, but for the holster tied to his thigh.

  The redhead moved swiftly, de­spite his game leg. He spat and wrathfully said, “Well, you towhaired tramp, I guess he’s hand­some, huh?”

  Slim did not want to quarrel and make himself conspicuous; his job was to follow the lame man, “Now, look-ee here, pardner.” He raised his left hand in a placating gesture; Sally still clung to his right arm. “That ain’t no way to talk to a lady.”

  “Please do go away, Randy,” Sally implored.

  Between them, they only man­aged to get him hostile.

  “Why, you long legged son of a—”

  The music had stopped, and Randy’s voice filled the entire place. Sally cried out, and Slim thrust her away from him. That move was enough to start Randy for his gun.

  He was quick, but he delayed a little, to give Slim a chance to get shed of Sally. This was from over-confidence, and the desire to make it clear that he had not drawn first. His face made that all very plain; Slim knew that this man had moved in for a kill.

  So did everyone else. Men were scrambling, and girls were diving for cover.

  Randy’s eyes suddenly bugged out, and his jaw sagged. That was when Slim snapped, “Drop it, you polecat!”

  The gun in his left hand enforced that. Randy, too intent on timing the kid’s right hand reach for the holster at his right hip, had missed the Colt which Crane had flashed from the waist band of his pants.

  Randy’s smoke pole chunked to the sawdust, Men and women be­gan breathing again, murmuring; it seemed almost funny, that sur­prised gunner’s gaping mouth and popping eyes.

  But what followed capped a good start. As he holstered his Colt, Slim closed in with his free fist. Randy was cold on his feet, and he had no time to lower his hands to defend himself. He crumpled, cracked his head on a cuspidor, and lay there, not even kicking.

  The spectators shook their heads. A bouncer said, “Shucks, Randy won’t know his own name fer a couple days.” This was as they hauled him to the rear, his scalp deeply gashed.

  Slim said to Sally, “M’am, I’m pow’ful sorry, but I can’t tarry and drink with you.”

  He went to the street. A straw­berry roan was hitched at the rack. By the saloon lights, he could plain­ly see the hoof prints: half the near front shoe was missing.

  “That gent was fixing to kill me,” Slim reasoned, and with cer­tainty. “But ain’t nobody around here that’s got ground for thinking I know it.”

  Randy’s studied attempt to make Slim draw first indicated that the law was biting into this tough town’s hide. Self-defense had to be pretty clearly proved. So, as he headed for his hotel, he chuckled and said to himself, “Nothing to do now but see I don’t get myself shot in the back. And whilst Mistah Randy is trying to recollect what his right name is, there’s a chanct of finding his pardner.”

  Once in his room, he thrust his gun under his pillow, and be­gan unbuckling his spurs. He was thinking, “Mebbe if I fixed myself up like a Mexican, I’d have a better chanct of sneaking up on Randy’s pardner.”

  Winning a few gunfights would not expose the chief of the cattle thieves; that would only block the trail. He sat there, thinking it over; he recollected that Sally knew Randy by name…

  A furtive tapping at the door brought him to his feet before he removed his boots. A feminine voice whispered, “It’s me. Sally.”

  He let her in, and replaced his gun when he saw she was alone.

  “Oh, I’m in a terrible predica­ment,” she breathlessly began, a hand on his arm.

  Sally still wore her blue satin gown. Lamplight reached down in­to her low cut bodice to model the loveliest curves. A backward move as his boot closed the door behind her. She let go his arm when he offered her the only chair in the room. When he seated himself on the bed, Sally resumed, “I’ve been robbed—I mean, someone went through my room—over at the Buckhead Saloon—I’d just saved up enough to pay my fare home—”

  “Ma’am, I sure would admire to help you.” Slim was touched by her distress, “But I’m dang nigh busted. If ten bucks’d help—”

  “Oh, but it’s worse than that!” She buried her face in her hands, and her white shoulders for a mo­ment were shaken by sobs. As Slim seated himself on the arm of the chair and stroked her head, Sally went on, “I married a man—who advertised—he was a wealthy rancher—”

  “What? A gal like you, looking for matrumonyal advertising jas­pers? That jest ain’t reasonable.”

  “But I lived in Cross Plains. Everyone that amounted to any­thing left town, except those that got killed in feuds.”

  He began to catch the point: a lovely girl, one of the many extra women in a town depopulated by adventure and the interminable quarrels of the post oak country, had snapped at the first prospect.

  “Uh—what’s wrong with your—um…mail order husband?”

  “He’s a drunken bum. He’s one-eyed, and positively filthy! Most of the time, he’s in jail. I told him I’d pay his fine and give him a hun­dred dollars in cash if he’d promise to leave town and never look at me again!”

  Slim, touched to the heart, tried to offer a consoling arm. The chair nearly upset, and in the scramble, Sally ended on his knee. She clung to him, curled up in his arms like a kitten. “Gol dang it, m’am,” he gasped, “in another second, I’ll be busting right out crying myself. But where in tunket I can get the money—onless mebbe I win myself a reward—” He was thinking fast. “For nailing rustlers or road agents or something.”

  “Oh, you’re wonderful!” Her generous kiss made him realize he had really discovered something. “Slim, if you can just keep an eye on things and protect me until I can save up some more money—”

  Sally was built to arouse protec­tive instincts, and her voice en­couraged such emotions. That suf­ficed to start a reckless exchange of kisses; and the fact that her father’s thievery and violent death had erected an impassable barrier between Madge and Slim clinched things… He turned the lamp low.

  But Slim was surprised when the door slammed open, and Sally screamed, clawed her
self out of his arms. “Oh, my God! That’s him!”

  One of the men revealed by the hall light was the proprietor of the Buckhead Saloon. Slim scarcely more than noted his black mustache and twisted mouth and craggy jaw. It was the drunk at the threshold who held his atten­tion.

  So this was Sally’s husband, strangely released from jail? A chinless, one-eyed beanpole whose weak mouth twitched and slob­bered tobacco juice as he screeched, “You dirty—Sally, you lousy stinking—!”

  Sally cried, “Look out, he’ll shoot,” and flung herself clear across the room, legs for a moment twinkling as she vanished in a flurry of silken slip and streaming blonde hair.

  But Slim hardly heard that. A fellow hears nothing when a .45 is weaving into line with his gizzard. The drunk lurched a pace. Slim had no time to debate. His hand came from beneath the pillow. The drunk was slow and fumbling. Sally’s boss made a move toward his hip.

  Slim cut loose, and the room shuddered from the rolling blasts of his Colt. The drunk’s hammer thumb slipped, and he dropped with a cold gun. Men were tramp­ing and shouting down the hall. They had been attracted by the two who had barged through the lobby, hunting trouble.

  Sally’s boss did not shoot or even draw. But a deputy marshal was advancing behind drawn guns. Slim knew that that hard bitten specimen would never back down; they’d kill each other.

  “Hist ’em, bub!” His icy eyes covered everything; the dead man, the disheveled girl who came from cover, crying out that it was not Slim’s fault. “Mebbe ’twarn’t his fault, defending hisself,” the law allowed. “But smoking out a gent that’s pertecting the sanctity of his home is downright murder, m’am, and yo’re a disgrace to yore sex, yuh shameless hussy. Mr. Kenyon bails the pore feller outen jail, and look whut you was doing!”

  Sally’s boss was smiling con­tentedly, and stroking his mus­tache. That told Slim a lot. The blonde had not deliberately be­trayed him; she had been no more than a cog in the machine. And the marshal was bona fide; also he was stubborn in his notions on a hus­band’s rights.