by Abel Short
Castle was deadly cool. He told his story as if to a judge. Once during the fracas he had seen Ace, as he called Big Joe, throw down on one of his own bunch. Later, another man had seen him doing the same thing. That other man was the hombre with the heavy black mustache sitting next to Boy Casey. That was it, simple and clear. He had been finally dropped by the one of the black mustache.
"It's a lie, Cass," Big Joe said, half smiling as if it didn't mean a hoot in Hell to him. "Stub told me about you riding over, said you was out to get the leadership of the bunch and—"
"Damn your lying soul!" Castle shrieked, calm broken. But the chance shot had thrust home.
"Sure. You're making yourself look a heap big trying to bag me. 'Cause I'm probably the only one in the outfit who ever out-gunned you! And I'll go out in the road with you now for a showdown to see who's lying." Big Joe said it lazily.
Castle's lips went loose over his teeth. But then he was grinning sleekly, eyes wetter than ever. "That wouldn't prove nothin'. I'll prove you're a sneaking law packer!"
Big Joe crossed a leg and leaned against the chair. "Now I'll have to kill you soon, Cass."
Castle turned to Arizona. "He said Toto Grimes was his uncle. Knew he played the gueetar and never drank. All right. Was he right or left-handed? Ask him that?"
Arizona found even that amusing as his eyebrows went up. "Well?" He looked at Joe. "Well, Ace?"
Joe got his cue then as Castle moved his head, lifting his chin momentarily. The motion showed the thin white scar on his neck just under his chin. The scar Marie said the man called Smith, who had declared Joe was not Pony Grimes, had had. Castle was "Smith." And he had known all along Big Joe was not who he said he was. That was why he had suspected him. Big Joe smiled.
"Shucks, he was a two-gun man," Big Joe said.
Arizona's eyes went like rocks under an ice sheet then. He smelled himself being tricked. "Outside of guns, pilgrim! How'd he eat? With what hand did he play the gueetar? Tell us that!"
Big Joe smiled. It was over, he knew, and he was going to beat them to the call, had to. "I'll just show you. Now—watch—" His hands came up. Then he plucked the hidden gun from his waistband and shot Castle right through the heart. One shell left in that gun.
He couldn't whirl and give it to Arizona. Black Mustache had been sitting over on the bench with his arms crossed on his chest. He unfolded them to reveal a drawn hogleg. Big Joe let him have it in the head.
He whipped about as Arizona got a shoulder rig almost cleared. Joe slashed at him with his emptied weapon. Arizona threw up his powerful arm to break the blow. But the force of it sent him over the chair and down behind the late peace justice's desk.
Joe leaped on his other weapon that had dropped from the dead Castle's hands. But even as he grabbed it up, the gun uncocked and there was but the click of a hammer on an empty shell. It, too, was unloaded.
Arizona was coming up from back of the desk. He was too smart to bolt into sight, not knowing whether or not Joe was still unarmed. He sent a shot gouging the floor a foot from Joe's head, then ducked down again.
Through the thunder of the reports, Joe caught the small voice. It reminded him of Marie's low-pitched voice somehow. Yet he and Jeff Arizona and Boy Casey were the only living things in that room. The voice said:
"The door! The door—open it!"
He didn't know why he did it, but he reached out with a foot and hooked the shade-drawn office door open. Sunlight like a great beam of glowing, eager color flooded in. Arizona was just coming up from behind the desk. He stood, gun point wavering, seemingly blind. Then he flung an arm before his eyes and cowered back.
Big Joe stepped out into the fresh morning air. The shots had caused practically no attention. There was plenty of gun-popping in the licentious revelry going on. A hand, half drunk, stopped as he waved on the wooden sidewalk. A man in the barroom across the way asked if there was anything wrong.
"Just dealing with a coupla prisoners," Big Joe called back as he walked over to a white picket fence where a few horses were hooked.
He leaped for a stirrup, threw his pants into the hull of the nearest, a pinto. Then he busted the breeze the hell out of there…
He rode into some trees on the edge of Maddox above the river. Big Joe Gannon's eyes were very bitter. There hadn't even been any pursuit out of the Bloody Creek settlement when he pulled up after ten miles of hard riding. He had cut off the trail, taking a path across the hills. After midway he had bought some grub and bedded down at a hoeman's soddy, more dead than alive. A few hours of shut-eye and he had pushed on toward Maddox.
But he knew the trail was over for him. He had come into this country on one single errand, to find Snake Hallin. And he had failed because of his own headlong impetuosity, had failed as a special officer of the state.
Now he was as good as finished here. He was too much of a marked man. That was one of the rules, the unwritten but steel-hard rules, of the special force. When an officer became known without his mission being accomplished, he was to withdraw and turn over the assignment. The great power of the special officers was that they did not pose as lawmen until the arrest was made. That their identity was unknown to the piece of country.
He was too marked anyway. The Ventares were after him, and if Snake Hallin was around, he would get the wind soon enough and stretch horse-belly to parts unknown. It wouldn't long be a secret that a badge-packer had been discovered in the Arizona outfit.
He had only one errand. That was to deal with Silver Linn. It was more than for just tricking him and using him as a dupe. It was more than for the killings of Joe Kellen, the murdered carpenter, and Carrol, the man who had come to avenge him. And Yellow Head probably. Plus his trail pard and God knew how many others, as well as for his other acts of outlawry. For those his instructions were to take the man under arrest alive of possible.
But he was going to kill him. That was his promise to Stub. And he would keep it. Still, he had not found the killer of his brother officer, Harrison Ord, had not forgotten Snake Hallin. He swore once softly and nudged the pinto ahead.
Another horse shaped up in the gloom. "Pony?"
It was Marie, but it wasn't. It was that Boy Casey of the Arizona bunch. He glimpsed the red bandanna beneath the hat. The checkered shirt. Yet it was her voice. Marie's. And she was urging her pony toward his, hands outstretched. And no gun in it.
"I figured you'd head this way," she said simply. "Pony. Or Ace. Or whatever your name is, darling!" Then she leaned and almost toppled from her saddle. And he caught her in his arms as he rode his horse close. She was sobbing a little.
After a few minutes she pushed him away. "Pony, you—you can't go back in there. They've got a reward posted on your head in Maddox. Silver turned against you. Said he flushed you up the trail a few days ago and you admitted you were the leader of the white hood bunch."
"What?"
"Yes, Pony. He claims he wounded you but you got away. It's some new kind of game he's playing."
Big Joe's jaw hardened. "All right. That's enough. You go back now."
"You can't go in, Pony darling! Every man's gun will be against you."
"I told Stub I would." His body was hard against her straining arms. Then he thrust those away. After all, she was in on some kind of game too. Riding with outlaws like Arizona's and… "Go back to the Countess' place. I'll see you there later."
"The Countess has left. The bubble burst. She knows it, so does Silver. That's why I think he's up to some last desperate move."
"The bubble?" Big Joe said, puzzled.
"Yes, the bubble. The oil they were all after. They—the Ventares and the Countess and Silver— and even Arizona. They knew about it."
He held her tight to get the hysteria out of her voice. "Oil?"
She told him the story. Parts of it the Countess herself had let slip to her. There had been supposed to be a vast lake of oil around Maddox, somewhere under the Spit. A geologist had let it drop up in Prescott.
And to most fools it had meant nothing, but those four had gotten the word and understood and come to make the play. The Ventares, buying up the Pothook outfit to locate, and Silver had been the first big ones. But neither of them wanted to start drilling. It would mean a rush for the black gold. Each gambler had fought for control, eager to grab up the whole country and the whole thing for himself.
"The Countess was playing them both off against each other. She used Silver for a fool. She and Scar were engaged to marry afterward. It was she, Pony, who warned Scar that Silver would raid his bank."
Then a few days ago another geologist had passed through. He had been a friend of the one who leaked the news up in Prescott. He told how the latter had been going crazy and was now confined to an asylum. The poor half-crazed devil had gotten his mappings mixed up. The oil was almost a hundred miles to the south of Maddox, and a big Eastern syndicate already had control.
The Countess had departed. "And Silver will be on top after his next play. Pony, darling, you mustn't go in! I beg you—"
He thrust down her arms, not daring to meet her eyes. There was the snapping of guns from Maddox's main street, any brawl. He loosened his own.
"Go back and wait for me at the hotel, Marie. I —I know what you are. But I'll turn in my badge and… you go there and wait…"
He rode off.
CHAPTER 21
He got into the wide roadway that ran back of the Stirrup and the other buildings fronting the street. It was pitch black. He had left his pony behind. He stalked down it, went past the back of the Stirrup. He wanted to get in and warn Shandy and Doc. Then he decided against it.
He moved on. He would stage it like an officer anyway, not sneaking in any back doors. There was an alley that came out across from the bank. He would go around the corner and come in the front and—
There were figures in the alley ahead. Dim blots at first. Over their sombrero tops, in the glow from the coal-oil lamps along the side street, he could see the Ventare men lurking in the shadows around the bank pillars, on the sides. A showdown was expected.
Then that big chunk of greenish moon blossomed through a chink in the clouds. And somebody yelled: "By grab, look!"
The man ahead had turned back and was pointing. It was too late. Even though Big Joe's breed-holstered weapon bit a yellow slash in the night. The man tottered back into the brush, clawing at his throat. And in the alley, now like wan daylight under the moon, Silver Linn roared:
"That's Pony! Get him!"
Big Joe understood even as he slanted flame from his other gun twice and jumped for a tree trunk. Silver had been making his last play. He had hoped to disarm the Ventares by reporting him, Joe, as the leader of the white hoods. And then striking once more at the bank for the loot he had missed before.
Ducking to another tree, Big Joe glided forward. Flame stabbed from his hip at another of the Silver gunhands who was trying to close in. Three yellow-gushing muzzles hosed slugs at Joe. He fired twice as a tree trunk was nicked beside his ear. The ugly Shots Mouger went reeling against a board fence, grabbing at his belly. Something ripped Joe's left arm like the prick of a hot finger. He let it go unheeded. Two of that trio were down and the other was running. And Silver himself leaped from behind a discarded packing crate.
There were two with him. Vaguely, Big Joe knew another gun was spitting with his pair, on his side, a little to the rear. Then there was only Silver Linn himself zigzagging for him. Silver's hat went askew and he brushed it clear. With it flew his carefully combed silver wig. For it was a wig. And Big Joe knew him then. The bald head with the long, dour face. The gap in the jaw where his telltale gold tooth had been removed.
Snake Hallin!
Snake spat an oath, and a bullet. But lead cleaved from Big Joe's breed holster. Snake jumped straight up in the air, hands clawing as if in desperate surrender. The hole between his eyes was clear in the moonlight. And he flopped into the dirt.
"It's him—that murderer we didn't hang—Pony!" The shriek came from behind. And Scar Ventare, leading a pair of trigger slammers in hope of trapping the expected bank raiders from the rear, came running around the bend.
Big Joe's left gun threaded the night once with a flame sliver. He saw muzzle flashes from a tree a little down from his right, that had been in his rear. Then Ventare was on his knees, swaying with the fatal wound in his chest. One of his gunmen was limping off. The other had vanished at a panicky run.
Big Joe was wobbly and the sweat bled from his face. He walked down. He wanted to meet the owner of that other gun. Marie stepped into sight, very pale under the moon.
"I wanted to help you, Pony. I wanted to help—if I could."
He grabbed her and held her hard. "Look, I'm Big Joe Gannon, special state officer. I was here to get the murderer of Harrison Ord—Snake Hallin. I did; now you go back—" He was half mad and terrified for her.
She threw back her head. "And I'm Harrison Ord's sister, Marie Ord. And if you tell me to go back to that hotel again, I'll slap your face, Big Joe! Oh—oh, Harry used to talk about you…"
But she did go back to the hotel and wait. That was after she had explained how she had taken the gun trail herself when they received word her brother had been killed. At first she thought Arizona had done it because Ord had wounded him once. Arizona had sworn to get him for it. She had even wangled her way into the Arizona outfit. At least, posing as a man, she thought she had.
It had been Castle who got her in, vouching for her, and apparently taking her for a man. But he had known, and he had been constantly trying to get her. She had quit the Arizona bunch when the rumor went around that it was Snake Hallin who had killed Ord. And she had come to Maddox and worked in the dance hall trying to cut his sign. Then, in desperation, she had rejoined the Arizona outfit when she couldn't find Hallin.
"That's why I was hoping you were a lawman all the time," she told Joe. "But even when I was convinced you were an outlaw, I—I had to help you because I loved you…"
It was some little time before Big Joe got around to the hotel. He had to talk with Eaton, the General Store man and head of the new-founded Vigilantes. And there were those two brothers, the Slattons, aces at taming tough towns, who had been brought in by Eaton and his committee during Joe's absence.
And then he walked into the hotel lobby. She got up from one of the big settees, dazzling in a white starch simple dress. Big Joe bowed and bumped his wounded arm in the sling.
"Miss Marie Ord," he said a little hoarsely. "I've got some business to attend to. I've got to lead a posse out to the Ventare place to meet one Jeff Arizona, happening to know he will strike there next." He felt a little intoxicated with the way it had all come out. Especially when Shandy Smith and Doc had caught the stage out of town a few hours ago.
She came to him quickly, eyes briefly frighted with fear. "Go up the trail from the Ventare place to meet them, Joe. Catch them before they strike at darkness. In the sunlight. Then you've got Arizona whipped. As a boy his eyes were injured in a fire. He can't stand sunlight." Castle had confided it to her. "That was why I yelled for you to get the door open back at the settlement. The sunlight!"
Big Joe bowed again. "Ma'am, your orders will be obeyed. And when I return, I hope to have the honor to ask you for your hand and—" Then he had her. "Look, Marie. Be waiting in your Sunday best. I'll have a preacher man in tow when I get back, honey!"
Table of Contents
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER 12
CHAPTER 13
CHAPTER 14
CHAPTER 15
CHAPTER 16
CHAPTER 17
CHAPTER 18
CHAPTER 19
CHAPTER 20
CHAPTER 21