by Abel Short
And Big Joe knew men well enough anyway to know that Castle would never forgive him for making a fool of him with a shooting iron the way he had. Simply freezing his, Castle's, draw hand to the gun stock.
Stub had gone into one of his untalkative moods again. He sat smoking quirlies down to the coal end and staring off into space, at length he got up and suggested catching some shut-eye.
They toted their sougans back into a little stand of stunted trees in the mouth of the side draw. Stub couldn't seem to get rested right and finally rose and moved off some. A little band of riders went down the valley, their sombrero crowns bobbing briefly against the cold light blue of the sky. It was stiffly chill but without a whisper of wind blowing. It gave Big Joe a pent-in feeling, and he knew his chance of slipping out of that camp simply didn't exist.
He had looked over all the faces he had come across. There had been nobody like Snake Hallin around. He got to thinking about Stub. There was something that didn't fit; Stub was no stranger here. It was then he caught the faint snap of a twig from down near where Stub lay.
Big Joe rolled over and grunted as if mouthing in his sleep, then began to snore regularly. After a couple of minutes, he, slid from the blanket and worked through the grass toward where Stub had tossed his roll. It was empty. Rising, Joe moved out of the trees. Down near the ruins of the old ranch palace a gliding figure crossed an open space, was gone.
After he had gone about fifty yards, leaving the din of the other end of the place further away, Joe caught the slap of a closing door. Light leaked briefly from a side window of Arizona's cottage, was gone as if somebody had pulled the edge of a curtain back. That meant somebody had entered there, the draft disturbing the shade at the window.
He had to be careful moving about the camp. There was always the menace of that Castle. But he got down close to the cottage and eeled over the wreckage of a low dobie wall. The window was open a few inches from the bottom when he finally got hunkered down beneath it. But that was some ten odd minutes later as he had been forced to lie flat in the rank grass while two strolling gents stood and chin-wagged over smokes.
He could catch the low murmur of voices from within. But the words were indistinguishable. Pulling off his hat, he moved up his head. A blanket covered the window on the inside, but there was a slight rent in it. When his eye got opposite it, he could see Arizona, puffing on a cigar, hunched at the table. And across from him, smoking one of the boss' long cigars too, was Stub Lorry.
Stub brought the flat of his hand down on the table. And he lifted his voice. "Jeff, you know how long I been working around Maddox. And I tell you Snake Hallin isn't there! He can't be!"
A moment later came the scrape of a chair. Stub was coming out, Stub who was a spy for Arizona. Big Joe leaped away and was across the wall. Then he realized right down the line it was all open space. He would easily be seen in the clear night. Over to his right was a jutting point of trees from the ruins of the old ranch house. He got into them a second after he heard the door snap closed. A moon edged over the north rim of the valley. Big Joe backed softly deeper into the trees.
There was a swish of brush behind him. He whirled, seizing the butt of the breed holster. Then his eyes made them out in the darkness. Two figures in a little opening in the trees. He lowered the holster tip with the protruding gun nose. The taller one reached for the other, drew it to him. Moonlight sprinkled faintly through the tree tops. Though the smaller one was in a man's rig, Big Joe could see the white face, the flowing black hair. For an instant he wondered if he were going locoed. It was no other than Marie from the Cimarron Gal.
And the tall one with her was beady-eyed Castle. He was stooping to kiss her. Something like an echo from Joe's heart twisted in his throat. The moonglow faded just as he saw her writhe and punch at Castle's chest. Big Joe stepped forward. Wondering. Wondering. She couldn't have ridden out here during the night but—
"Looking for somebody, Ace?"
He turned back. Stub stood just inside the fringe of trees with a couple of unwinking gun bores looking at Joe.
"Lucky at the last moment I saw it was you, Pony," Stub said stiffly.
Big Joe muttered some windy about hearing somebody poking about his bedroll, glimpsing a man fleeing with a knife, and trailing him over this way.
Stub nodded as he holstered. "Some fellas like that don't ever learn not to go poking around in an outlaw camp at night." He meant Big Joe.
When Joe looked over his shoulder, the moonlight had filled the clearing again. But there was nobody there.
CHAPTER 19
A small bunch rode back into camp there next morning. There was a lot of coming and going from Arizona's place. Castle himself seemed to be either going in or coming out the door. But when Joe wandered down to the pony stockade, Castle's dry drawl challenged him.
"Thinking of going somewhere?" the spare man called from the exposed beam pole of a cabin against which he lounged. He was scratching the holster casing that pearl-stocked gun.
"Any objections to a man having a look at his own horse?" Big Joe said, facing him squarely. "If you got 'em, make 'em short!"
A couple of men yipped from the doorway of the Alkali Bar, but Castle only jetted dirt with a yellow expectoration and ambled off.
After the midday meal, the sense of expectation tensed in the whole camp. Something was building; the men knew it. Big Joe wandered about, saying little but watching for a face, a long, sad face, spotted with bloodshot eyes and hairless above them. He had a couple in the bar and saw Boy Casey leaving the General Store as he stepped out. Joe started after him, sensing something familiar about him, but the slim figure in the black trousers turned up to go behind one of the cabins. When he got there, Boy Casey was nowhere in sight.
He came back to the clearing to meet Stub. "Get ready," Stub said. "We're riding. You'll see some real action before dawn, Pony. I ain't been a-windying about Jeff Arizona."
"Mister Arizona, don't you mean?" Joe said.
Stub gave him a blank look.
Within the hour, they were saddled and swinging off down the valley. Some twenty of them. Up front was Arizona on a huge black mare, Castle riding close at his stirrup. Boy Casey was in the party too, Big Joe noted. He and Stub rode along together. And after a while, Stub let it out of the bag.
They were going to raid the settlement on Bloody Man's Creek. It was about a half day's ride from Maddox. "We'll hit it 'long about midnight," he said.
Big Joe tried to figure it as a law officer. The settlement wasn't a very big place. Not rich. No banks. Some houses and stores and a few saloons. "What's there worth a shuck?" he asked.
Stub shrugged. "Well, they'll be plenty of whiskey. A little dinero. And some new women, too." He studied his quirly stub a long moment and it reminded Joe of the cigar Stub had had in his face last night. "Might as well let you in on the rest of it, Pony. Arizona's smarter than that. Scar Ventare'll be there too. He's got a right slick skirt over there and he rides out to see her often. He's due tonight, Arizona learned."
Big Joe tried to put it together in his mind. He didn't know Arizona was feuding with the Ventares, and he couldn't see what value Scar would be to him. But after a cold camp following nightfall for some grub, he savvied. One of the men went around passing out flour sacks; they were crude masks with slits for eyeholes.
It burst on Big Joe Gannon. Flour sack hoods like Silver's pack had worn. He began to guess.
Then the bearded man a few feet off said, "Hell! One time out we wear red masks; 'nother time it's these dang flour sacks. Me, I look like I got snow in my beard for two days after. I'm getting so I'll be ashamed of myself bare-faced!"
Big Joe guffawed with the others, but he saw Arizona's game at last. Jeff Arizona was in on the gun shell and blood game in the Spit for the mysterious stakes. Only he was playing off the Ventares against Silver Linn, lying low in the bush while those two got ripe to spring at each others' throats and kill each other off.
That raid on the Bar Grande while Silver was away. White-hooded riders. Yet Silver had seemed dumbfounded about it when he got back. And the raids on other ranches by red-masked ones that the Ventares had seemed taken aback by. For some time now it had been the slick Arizona. He was bearding the other two factions for a showdown. Then he could step in.
They followed a tortuous stream that gradually broadened after it went through a V-notch in the hills. Then they rounded an elbow of ridge and the quiet settlement lay in a shallow hollow before them.
"Just spread out for the picking," Castle chuckled. He hadn't ridden up beside Arizona since nightfall, the lobo chief leading some yards in front by himself. It had been marked enough to seem like orders.
It was handled with the ease of old practice. They moved down on the town where only the lights in two barrooms gleamed. A handful of men cut over to the Creek to work along the bank. Another bunch broke away to go right down the trail, walking their ponies. Arizona sat scowling up at the moon that kept scudding in and out of cloud fringes. It was warmer this night with a soft breeze that feathered a man's cheek. Joe saw Boy Casey watching that moon too.
Arizona led the main bunch down over the rolling swells of the prairie. In a clump of cottonwoods they dismounted and left the horses.
Big Joe heard Arizona say, "We'll do this job. Then when Duke Ventare takes his gun bunch down to avenge himself on that Linn, we'll swing up and hit the Ventare range and wipe it out. I figure day after tomorrow on that. In the evening."
They spread out in a line as they crept across fields from the cottonwoods behind the settlement. Eeled through fences. Got closer and closer. Big Joe was in the part of the line to take up its station by a long barn. A shot from Arizona's gun would be the signal. Then they and the creek bunch would swing in, slamming away. And just as the settlement rushed into the streets in panic, the riders would smash in from the trail road. It was very pretty, and it was too much for Big Joe to stomach. Not as a John Law. But as a human being.
Decent, peace-loving folk to be cut down; the street to run red. Lives sacrificed and a settlement looted, all to stack the deck for a clever outlaw chief for some damned stake in this game. He had lost contact with Stub. Around him he could hear the hard, short breathing of others as they waited. Then he bellied down and eeled around a corner of the barn. He scuttled past a watering trough and a corn crib. A roused chicken clucked like a woman screaming in the quiet. He went by a little outhouse, expecting a shot in the back any moment.
But he got out in the road. A yell from him to warn the inhabitants would bring the Arizona pack knifing in. He ran down swiftly to the lighted doorway of a bar and breasted the batwings. Filled glasses stood on the counter. A cigar stub smoked away on the lip of it. But there was nobody, not even the bar boss, in sight. He yelled twice and got no answer. Baffled, he leaped out into the road and went to the other barroom.
It was almost identical there. Not a soul in the place though the coal-oil lamps shone brightly and an uncorked bottle sat on the bar. He heard a window edge up cautiously across the street. Thought he caught the gleam of a rifle barrel inside it too. He called, but there was no response. A dog bayed down by the creek, was silent suddenly.
"Who're you looking for?" a voice challenged from the shadows. "And elevate 'em."
Big Joe sprang around in his tracks. From an alley a Colt poked with a spoke of beard about it. "I wanta warn you—"
Jeff Arizona's weapon blasted its signal on the night. Almost at once, as the first shouts of the marauders told of their charge, there were half a dozen gun crashes. Big Joe looked down the alley. He saw an Arizona man crossing a yard and then leap high in the air, throwing his arms wide. In the wan moonlight the cascading blood from his rent chest showed plainly.
From down by the creek there was a fresh rattle of gunfire. Big Joe ran toward it. From the shadows, three townsmen rose, their backs to him. They were meeting the charge of the pack from the water bank. But one of them dropped almost at once as a lucky shot caromed off a tree and clipped his head. The men from the creek piled down the edges of the road. A man from Arizona's own bunch ran out from beside a shed. Joe Gannon's left gun smashed. The man went rolling head over heels into the gutter.
But the thunder of storming hoofs swung around the curve of the road into the settlement. A man pitched from the window of the first house, and the raid was in full swing. The town was ready and making a stand.
The bunch from the creek were driven back once. It was Big Joe who, working along the shadows at the edge of the road, sent them reeling back, two wounded. He swung back in his tracks as men from the prairie bunch began to seep through the sparse but dogged crossfire from the houses. Then a place up the street was blazing at one corner on the ground floor. Two middle-aged men ran out of it, hands up, night shirts flapping over their hastily donned pants. An Arizona rider reined up sliding and calmly drilled them both dead center. The outlaw mob was infuriated by the resistance.
Big Joe blew his sky-piece then completely and lunged down there. He shot the rider, his horse, then blew the man's brains out as he tried to limp away from the downed animal.
"You dirty blasted double—" One of Arizona's own contingent jumped off a porch after having broken his way into the rear of a house. He fired just as Big Joe turned.
"No-no! Not him! No-o-" And Stub flung himself out from behind a tree between Joe and the outlaw. The two bullets took Stub right in the body, bouncing him along the ground. He rolled once onto his back.
Big Joe took two strides and the gun in his holster blasted. The man coming down the steps backed right up then, teetered at the top, then took the whole flight in a dead man's plunge. Joe turned and went to Stub's feeble call. The bat-eared little gent had only seconds left.
"You—you're a badge-packer, ain't you, Pony?"
Big Joe nodded grimly. "Guess that's about it, Stub; I said I was after Hallin."
Stub lifted a hand to his bleeding face. "Thought so, Pony. When you mentioned Toto Grimes as your uncle at Arizona's place… 'Fore that, when I talked 'bout—'bout joining Arizona, you never said nothin' 'bout no—no uncle."
He tried to push out a hand; Big Joe felt like hell.
"I never wanted to double-cross you, Stub."
" 'S all right. We makes our bets and takes our chances. I paid you back for the mudbank at Faley's, anyway, Pony."
"Sure, Stub."
"All right, Pony. Do me one favor."
"Sure, Stub."
"Git back to Maddox sometime and put a hunk of lead into—into Silver Hallin for me—for his killing poor Nick. I—" He sagged back. Big Joe had to kneel to get the rest of his words through the gun crashes. "I couldn't kill him, Pony… Arizona's orders. Arizona figgered maybe Silver might know where the o-oil would be… So-long-g…"
He was gone. Big Joe was starting to reload as he straightened, eyes tightening. He saw the outlaw hand kicking in the front window of a little cabin. The state officer was on him in two strides, had chopped down with a gun barrel. The man flattened, skull crashed like a red-running egg shell.
But it was too late. Even as the stars began to blink out and the grayish tide rolled back the black of night, the lobos were taking over. Another home was a-blaze. The horsemen were swirling in and out, shooting down doors. Castle's pack were dragging men out into the streets. Half berserk, Big Joe launched himself at a trio of killers who had two townsmen backed into one of the barrooms. He sent one of them staggering off with a bullet-shattered leg, nicked another in the shooting arm.
But the third jumped behind a post and chopped Big Joe behind the ear as he plunged by. The lawman staggered through the barroom doors, reeled in his tracks. Spun and then pitched behind the bar counter itself. Unconsciously he rolled under the counter.
Liquid hit him in the face and he tongued his lips greedily. But it wasn't water. It was whiskey. Then he was being jerked to his feet to face Castle's beady eyes. Two men had him by the arms. Castle hit him in the tee
th.
"What the hell?" Big Joe muttered.
"We know how to handle traitors!" Castle spat the words and followed them with spittle. "Bring him along to the boss, boys!"
CHAPTER 20
Jeff Arizona was holding court down in the modest, little office of the former Justice of the Peace. The late justice's corpse was stretched on a Teton pole cot in one of the cells. From up and down the road came the screams and curses of the rioting and revelry. Arizona believed in letting his men have free rein when they took over a town.
"Took a couple hours to find him, Jeff," Big Joe heard Castle saying through a fog. "The double-crossing polecat had rolled under a bar counter to hide. But we dug him out!"
Big Joe felt himself swaying like a drunkard from the effect of that head blow. He tried to focus on the bland mask of Arizona's face. He blinked at another face in the second of the two cells that ran across the back of the room. It belonged to Duke Ventare, not Scar. It looked as if Duke had been around double-crossing his brother with the dame.
"Well?" Arizona said very patiently. Then he motioned for Castle to lower the shade of the east window where the sun was streaming in. "Pull down the door shade too, Cass." He squeezed his eyes closed till it was done.
Big Joe reached for a chair to steady himself Castle, he saw, stood spinning one of his black-butted guns. One of the pair Silver had given him. Then Joe realized where the other was. He had just rammed a couple of shells in it when he saw the trio blasting at the men cornered in the bar. Racing over, he had stuck that gun hurriedly inside his waistband. It was there now. He could feel it beneath his torn shirt that hung out.
"Well?" Arizona said again.
"Well-hell!" Big Joe bit back. But he knew he was trapped, had been caught at it. He scowled at Castle. Beyond him on a bench sat two gunhands. One of them was slim Boy Casey. "One of them damn townsmen surrendered, then jumped in and fetched me a clip when I looked away a moment. Next thing I know this buzzard was hauling me off the floor and calling me a flock of dirty names!"