A Grave for Lassiter

by Loren Zane Grey

  Adams regained some of the composure that Lassiter’s cold gaze had partially erased. He said that Kane Farrell was bringing what was needed in a few days. “Need I say more?” he finished.

  “Yeah, you can whistle up two men to help me unload.”

  Melody, her face flaming, cried, “Lassiter, you’re only making matters worse. . . .”

  Adams whitened. “Lassiter? But he’s dead. . . .”

  “Not very,” Lassiter put in. “You’re late getting the news up here in the mountains.”

  Without leaving his chair, Adams flung up a window next to to the desk and shouted, “Marsh! I need help!”

  “Yessiree!” responded a deep male voice.

  “Now there’s bound to be trouble,” Melody wailed. “And it was so . . . so unnecessary.”

  “Adams here has to learn that when he makes a contract he’d better keep it!”

  Melody stood rigid, fingertips at her mouth as she stared out of the windows. “Oh, my God,” she breathed as two big men came at a run from the mine warehouse next door.

  The one in the lead had coarse hair the color of straw, was a good four inches taller than Lassiter, and outweighed him by at least sixty pounds. He jerked the door open so violently that it rattled in its hinges.

  “You got trouble, Mr. Adams?” he bellowed, looking around. Yellowish eyes were riveted to the slender dark man near the desk.

  “Him!” Adams shouted, pointing a forefinger at Lassiter.

  “Let’s get him, Clyde,” Marsh yelled over his shoulder to the second man, making it sound no more significant than brushing aside a fly.

  Marsh was reaching for a belted gun as his head turned to speak to the large black-haired man lumbering behind him.

  Without waiting for the pair to get set, Lassiter lunged. A crushing blow landed on Marsh’s jaw. As the man’s head snapped back, Lassiter rammed a hard shoulder into his chest. The force of it knocked Marsh backwards into the advancing Clyde. Both men went down. As Marsh struck the slatted boardwalk, his gun was jarred from his hand.

  Without losing a step, Lassiter bent down and whipped a fist across Marsh’s face. Blood spurted from a smashed nose. Then he turned on Clyde, who was picking himself up from the path that led from office to warehouse.

  By then Lassiter’s gun was in hand, the hammer cocked back. Clyde Dover, a brawny man in his late twenties, came onto his toes as he stared into the ominous maw of the .44. His jaw dropped.

  “Pull your gun,” Lassiter ordered him. “With thumb and forefinger. Put it down on the walk.”

  When Dover hesitated, Lassiter said, “If you even look like trouble, you’re dead. You hear me, Clyde?”

  Dover looked down at Marsh, who was out cold at his feet. Blood ran down Marsh’s jaw from the broken nose. Without a word, Dover did as Lassiter had ordered. His gun thumped to the walk.

  Keeping an eye on Dover, Lassiter scooped up both weapons by the trigger guards. “Get inside,” he ordered the man, “and drag Marsh in with you.”

  Adams stood woodenly beside his desk, his face the color of fresh whitewash. A coil of rope hung by a hook near a window. “Tie Dover’s wrists,” Lassiter snapped at Adams. When Adams, with a trembling hand, cut off a length of rope and bound Dover’s wrists, Lassiter ordered him to do likewise to the unconscious Jody Marsh.

  When the trouble started, Melody had paled and looked like a frightened fawn ready to run to the safety of friendly woods. But now the shock was gradually leaving her face. It was replaced with the faintest of smiles. Her gray eyes actually glowed with excitement.

  Four roustabouts had come to the warehouse door, their faces reflecting awe at the speed with which the two big men had been dispatched. None seemed anxious to challenge Lassiter’s gun.

  “Adams, tell them to unload the wagon,” Lassiter ordered. Then he added wryly, “I don’t figure to give them a hand. I’ve earned a rest, don’t you think?”

  Melody laughed. The portly Adams swallowed and said, “Yes indeed, you have earned a rest.”

  From a window he shouted orders, saying that the four men were to unload the wagon and quickly. When the job was done, Adams paid Melody the price agreed upon weeks before. Paid in cash.

  Keeping an eye on the four roustabouts, Lassiter marched Dover and a groggy Marsh to the wagon, where he made them sit on the lowered tailgate. Because his wrists were bound, Marsh had no way to wipe blood from the lower half of his face. “What the hell you figure to do next?” he growled.

  Lassiter ignored him and turned to Adams, who seemed to have shriveled from an arrogant overweight mine superintendent to a pale copy of his former self. Now he was just a fat man who was still in shock at the swift and brutal way Lassiter had handled his two bodyguards.

  But he did attempt to save face by saying, “You’ve made a couple of enemies today, Lassiter.”

  “Enemies I’ve already got. From Denver to the Mex border, from the California line to El Paso. Two more don’t mean a damn thing.”

  Lassiter gave a hard laugh. He untied his horse from the tailgate of the empty wagon where the two men were already seated.

  “You drive,” he told Melody as he mounted up. “I’ll be keeping an eye open.”

  Lassiter watched from the saddle, his Henry rifle across a thigh as a cheerful Melody started back down the mountain.

  “Why in hell didn’t Adams tell us it was Lassiter?” Marsh muttered. “We’d have come shootin’ instead of swingin’ our fists.”

  Lassiter rode close, which caused Marsh’s bloodied face to look apprehensive. “Either one of you ever make a move against Mrs. Vanderson, I’ll be on your trail. Once I start after a man I never quit till I get him.”

  Both of them seemed impressed.

  Lassiter rode fifty yards back up the road to see if Adams might have ignored Lassiter’s warning and gotten help either from his mine or the village nearby. But there was no sign of anyone.

  When they were about four miles from the mine, Lassiter told Melody to halt the wagon. He ordered the pair off the tailgate. “Now you can walk.”

  Clouds had sailed in to darken the sun. A chill wind had come up during the last mile.

  “Cut us loose, Lassiter,” Marsh whined as he looked at the ominous sky. Pines rustled in the wind. A large pine cone plopped to the ground and rolled onto the road.

  “Just start walking, boys,” Lassiter said. “And if you get any grand ideas about coming after us, I guarantee you’ll never see another sunrise.”

  Chapter Eleven

  As nightfall approached, he found them a campsite, sheltered from the road by a stand of pines. After watering and feeding the mules, and putting his black horse on good grass, he went hunting. All he could bag was a large jack rabbit.

  He built a fire and skinned the animal, then broiled the meat on flat stones.

  She sat so close to him that he could feel her tremble.

  “You’re frightened up here, just the two of us,” he said. “Don’t be. Nothing’s going to hurt you.”

  “I’m not afraid as long . . .” She turned and looked at the play of firelight across his strong features. “As long as you’re with me,” she concluded in a low voice.

  When they had finished eating, she licked grease from her fingers. “Never have I tasted anything as good as that rabbit.” He shrugged. Then she whispered, “May I say something, Lassiter?”

  “Sure, go ahead.”

  “You were marvelous today. Simply marvelous.”

  “Adams figured to give you trouble. I gave him some instead.”

  “That poor man was badly frightened.” Laughter bubbled from her lips. Then she sobered. “I haven’t been very nice to you and I’m sorry.”

  “It doesn’t matter now.”

  “For one thing, it was such a shock to see you alive when I thought you were dead. And then there were the things Vance kept saying about you. . . .”

  “Such as?”

  “That you intended to cheat Uncle Herm.”
/>   “I would never cheat Herm Falconer. Or anybody, for that matter.”

  When it started to sprinkle, he got several tarps from the freighter and made a bed for them under the wagon where they’d be out of the rain.

  “We better be together tonight,” Lassiter said. “It’ll be freezing up here before morning. We’ll need the body warmth of both of us.”

  Light from the dying fire was reflected in her eyes as she thought about it. Then she gave a deep sigh and said, “I guess it’s the only way.”

  By the time he pulled off his boots, the rain had turned into a downpour. He lay under the wagon, his back to hers.

  “It’s no feather bed,” he said over his shoulder, “but it’ll have to do.”

  She reached back under the tarp for his hand. She gave it a squeeze. “I’d be afraid out here alone. But not with you along.”

  “I sleep light. If I hear anything in the night, I’ll be ready.”

  Then she made an impulsive move. Sitting up under the wagon, she leaned over him. The feel of soft lips against his cheek was surprising. He didn’t say anything. But after the hectic experience of the late afternoon, the gesture was most welcome. Turning his head, he met her lips with his own.

  For only an instant did it cross his mind that she was another man’s wife. Man? A weak-kneed snivelling crybaby. Any guilt he might have felt slid off as easily as water from a greased sheet of iron.

  In the morning she avoided his eyes. “I suppose you think I’m awful.”

  He kissed her, but she pushed away. “It mustn’t happen again,” she said hoarsely, and started to run a comb through her long pale hair. . . .

  The story of how Lassiter had handled the two toughs up at the Glory Mine soon spread through the mountains. Mostly it was Melody who would go into detail about how Lassiter had made Dover and Marsh ride on the tailgate of the wagon before turning them loose. Most of the time, when Lassiter was near, she acted as though she was walking three feet off the ground. And her gray eyes would acquire a strange glow.

  But Lassiter pretended indifference. He had to remind himself that there were more important things to consider, such as his determination to revive the fortunes of the Northguard Freight Company. He kept waiting for a reply to his letters written to Herm Falconer down at Rimrock.

  Later that week Bert Oliver appeared at the company headquarters in Aspen Creek. The lanky former Confederate soldier said that Bluegate buzzed with news that the freight company had taken a turn for the better. Now he wanted to be a part of Lassiter’s game to bring down Kane Farrell.

  “You’re the only man around here with guts enough to stand up to him,” Oliver said gravely in his drawl. “An’ I’d like to be with you.”

  Lassiter studied him, knowing from the leathery skin and deep eye creases that he must be close to forty or even more. Oliver seemed to sense his hesitation.

  “In the war I was a dead shot. My job was to ride rifle guard on the mail wagon. A lot of blue bellies tried to jump me. None of ’em ever made it.”

  A grinning Lassiter welcomed him with outstretched hand.

  Later in the week, Lassiter recruited three more men who had heard he was hiring. He gave it to them straight. Wages would be tops, but they wouldn’t be paid until finances improved. About all Lassiter could promise for the moment were full stomachs.

  The men were agreeable. At least they’d eat until the money started rolling in. Jobs in the area were hard to come by until local ranches started hiring extra hands for the spring roundup, which was over a month away.

  Business picked up, but it was mostly short hauls. What Lassiter wanted was a big one. It came when Melody was notified by mail that a shipment expected by the Bitterroot Mining Company had arrived via the railroad and was now at Montclair, a week’s trip to the north.

  That same day Lassiter rode into the mountains for a talk with Saul Betancourt, superintendent of the Bitterroot Mine, who had been waiting since the previous fall for equipment that would enable him to start the construction of a smelter.

  Betancourt, a lean man in high-laced boots and wearing a heavy jacket, greeted Lassiter gravely. “I heard about the trouble you gave Adams over at the Glory Mine. He’s a pompous ass. I guess you taught him a lesson.”

  Betancourt listened to what Lassiter had to say about the shipment up at Montclair. Then he sighed and ran a hand over short-cropped brown hair. “I more or less promised the business to Farrell.”

  But Lassiter argued the case for Northguard. And when he had finished, Betancourt said, “I agree with everything you say. Sure I realize that Farrell is undercutting your price to drive Northguard out of business.”

  “If that happens,” Lassiter put in, “freight rates will go high as the moon. He’ll not only be top dog in these parts, but the only dog.”

  “And he’ll have every mining company in a box,” Betancourt added.

  “In a box with the lid nailed down.”

  Betancourt thought about it. They were in his spacious office with its wall maps and surveying equipment. A window overlooked a new tunnel that a crew of men were digging into the side of a mountain.

  “Lassiter, do you think you can handle the shipment?”

  “I’ve got good men. We’ll handle it.”

  For a moment Betancourt studied the rugged looking man with the penetrating blue eyes. Then a broad grin broke across his brown face. “Tell you the truth, I’ve been hesitant about Farrell. A gent with his rep as a cardsharp is apt to deal off the bottom of the deck in business matters as well.”

  “I wouldn’t trust him any further than I could see a scorpion’s shadow.”

  Betancourt laughed, then pursed his lips and fingered the brass-framed spectacles that rested on his button nose. “I thought for a time the railroad might run a spur line down here. But no chance of that now, I understand. And I do want to get that smelter built.”

  “You keep the stuff you need for the smelter coming to Montclair. We’ll see that you get fast delivery up here at Bitterroot.”

  “I’ve a hunch you won’t let Farrell push you around.”

  “It may not be easy,” Lassiter admitted. “But here in the West, what is?”

  Lassiter was just entering Aspen Creek the next morning when he saw a blooded roan at the rail in front of Northguard headquarters. Lassiter dismounted next to the splendid animal. It bore a fine saddle with KF etched in the saddle skirt.

  He heard voices coming from the office. First Melody’s then Kane Farrell’s, through a partially opened window.

  “. . . and I think the offer is fair enough,” Farrell was saying smoothly.”

  “I suppose it is from your standpoint.” Melody sat at the table that was used as a desk, nervously shuffling some papers. Farrell stood before her, hands behind his back. He was half-turned so that Lassiter could see the classic profile.

  “I’m sure you understand by now that running a freight line is no business for a female.”

  Through the window Lassiter saw Melody’s chin come up and for a moment thought Farrell had said the wrong thing. He was surprised to see Melody’s shoulders slump, as if the fight had gone out of her.

  “I . . . I do dread violence,” she said in a voice so low it barely carried to the window.

  “I’ve only given you a few facts, Mrs. Vanderson. The innocent will suffer if this foolish feud is allowed to continue.”

  “I’m thinking of Dad Hornbeck wounded. And Lord knows how many others before it’s over.”

  “As I explained, there are always those on the fringe who would shoot an old man like Hornbeck. Just to try and cut themselves a piece of cake, so to speak.”

  “An old man like that, shot for no reason,” she said in despair.

  “That’s the way those things happen. Who knows who may be next? As I said earlier, perhaps even Lassiter.”

  She bit her lips. “Oh, no. . . .”

  “He’s lived a charmed life. But a lot of men want to see him dead.”

>   “A horrible way to live, with that threat hanging over his head.”

  “He’d be better off to go deep into Mexico and live out his days. He’ll last longer than he will around here.”

  “You really think so?”

  Farrell nodded and drew a sheet of paper from the inside pocket of a knee-length leather coat. His breeches were fawn colored. The only blemish to his attire were some specks of mud around the built-up heels of his dark brown boots.

  “If you’ll just sign this agreement, Mrs. Vanderson. Your freight line in exchange for my Bank draft of four thousand dollars. Which I say is quite fair, under the circumstances.”

  The sound of the door opening caused Farrell to turn his head. His green eyes narrowed at the sight of Lassiter. He gave a curt nod of recognition.

  “I understood from the villagers that you were to be gone at least three days,” Farrell said through lips thinned from pressure.

  “You are back early,” Melody said. Then, “Mr. Farrell has offered to buy me out. . . .”

  “So I heard.” Lassiter kept his eyes on the dandified Farrell. “Business up the mountain didn’t take as long as I figured.” He closed the door.

  “What do you think I should do, Lassiter?” Melody asked in a tight voice.

  “Take his offer, if you want. Maybe consider yourself lucky. Then you can head back east where you belong.”

  That caused her to straighten up in the chair, shoulders squared, mouth set in a stubborn line. “You mean just . . . just quit?” Then she struck the desktop with a small fist, making the inkwell jump. “Well, for your information, I intend to fight for what is right.”

  Lassiter gave a fierce smile. “Glad to hear you say that.”

  An angry flush darkened Farrell’s cheeks. “I suggest you pay my offer careful consideration, Mrs. Vanderson. Don’t let Lassiter’s presence sway you.”

  “It was my decision,” Melody said firmly. “Lassiter had nothing to do with it.” Her voice no longer wavered, indicating a woman unable to make up her own mind.