Coroner Creek

by Short, Luke;

  At the first door of the corridor she went in, Chris following. It was a big corner living room, comfortable with bright curtains and rugs and furniture worn with use.

  Kate opened the wide door that let out onto the gallery and Chris followed her out.

  The gallery was unroofed and open to the sky, railinged its length, and there were some chairs and a table here. Under the window on a pallet faintly lighted by the lamp inside lay a man who had once been big. Even now he was not thin, but the erosion of age had started. His hair was white, clipped short, like his even mustache, and the sun and the weather had browned his skin deeply and bleached his hair. He had sharp, uncomplaining eyes, and when Kate said, “This is a new one. Walt—Chris Danning,” he smiled and held out a firm brown hand.

  Chris shook hands and Kate’s father said immediately, dryly, “So you’re the hand Ernie Coombs wants for Rainbow? How are you, son?”

  Chris looked soberly at him and said, “You’ve got good ears, Mr. Hardison.”

  “A cripple’s pastime,” Hardison said, without rancor.

  “If you come to see him tomorrow, he’ll know your footsteps before he sees you,” Kate said, and she smiled fondly at her father.

  Hardison said, “I said that about Ernie because I’ve been tryin’ to figure it out since I saw you.” He hesitated. “You don’t look like a Rainbow hand, somehow.”

  “He’s not,” Kate said bluntly. “Mr. Danning beat up Ernie tonight, and Ernie would rather have him with him than against him.”

  Hardison grunted and looked searchingly at Chris, who shifted his feet faintly. “What’ll you do, son?”

  “Likely take it. My stake’s gone.”

  He felt Kate’s glance on him, and could even feel the reproof in it, but he did not look at her.

  “There are other outfits,” Kate said quickly.

  “None that’s offered me a job.”

  “Don’t peck at him,” Hardison said gently to Kate. “A man’s got to get his feet on the ground. How’s Abbie?”

  “Home. Want to go in now?”

  Hardison nodded, and Chris took the head of his pallet, Kate the foot. They carried him through the living room to the small bare bedroom beyond, and Chris was aware that a small anger was riding Kate. He could see it in the set of her wide lips, and he knew that she felt in some obscure way he had betrayed her confidence. She had asked him if he was going to work for Miles, and he’d said no; two hours later, he’d said yes. It troubled him faintly that he couldn’t tell her why he’d changed his mind, and then he thought, with the old selfishness, Why should I care what she thinks?

  He said good night to Walt Hardison and trailed Kate back through the living room to the corridor door. He noticed now for the first time that she was wearing a different dress, a green one with long sleeves and collar edged in a fine line of white lace that made her skin seem faintly golden. The fact that he had even noticed it surprised him, but now it was too late to even look at her; she was standing with the door open, unsmiling.

  “Thank you for both your favors,” she told him, and he waited for that half smile, and it did not come and he went out.

  Kate paused a moment by the closed door, and then walked slowly back into the bedroom.

  “Surly devil,” she said, almost angrily, and glanced over at her father. He winked solemnly, and suddenly she laughed. “All right, Walt. Only he is.”

  “A good many men are.”

  “But when I asked him to help me this afternoon, he seemed so willing. I even asked him if he was going to work for Younger, and when he said he wasn’t I gave Younger a cussing out.”

  “He can change his mind.”

  “Yes, but—” She paused, frowning in concentration, and then she shrugged. “I guess what I’m really mad about is that he went against my advice.”

  She went over to the chest of drawers against the wall, on top of which was a scattering of books, a pair of pipes, and a small size crock with a lid. She picked up one of the pipes, packed it expertly with tobacco from the crock, tamping down the load with a match. Then she put the pipe in her mouth, struck a match and lighted the tobacco, and when the pipe was drawing nicely, she handed it to her father. She retained a little of the smoke in her mouth, and blew it out gently, critically.

  Her father watched her with the faint amusement which this nightly ritual always afforded him.

  Now she sat down on the edge of the pallet, elbows on knees and regarded him thoughtfully. “What’s wrong with him?”

  “Who? Danning?” Her father smoked a moment, and then said, “I dunno. His spirit is deader than my legs. You can see it in his eyes.”

  “They’re ugly. The rest of his face isn’t. He just doesn’t care.”

  “Then why should you?”

  Kate couldn’t answer that, and wished she could.

  CHAPTER III

  Chris ate an early breakfast at a restaurant up the cross street and then cruised the other direction looking for a barbershop. He passed under the gallery of the hotel, and a swamper at the saloon across the street quit sloshing water on the boardwalk while he passed, giving him good morning.

  Beyond, the stores were opening up, and ahead, a clerk sweeping the boardwalk was in a good-natured wrangle with the aproned bartender in the doorway of a saloon across the street. The new sun laid a long shadow behind the clerk, and the dust he stirred raised a bright moted plume at the edge of the walk in the quiet morning air.

  While the barber shaved Chris and cut his hair, the Negro boy carried hot water for his bath in the back room. Chris gave him money and sent the boy out to buy a new shirt, and afterward lay in the steaming water that filled the zinc tub. Presently the boy returned with the shirt, putting it on the chair with his clothes, and said, “Miss Hard’son says you be sure and stop to see her ’fore you go.”

  Chris told him to keep some of the money, and when the boy was gone he sat musing, the soap in his hand, his glance still on the door. Is she afraid I’ll tell the town about Mrs. Miles? he thought irritably, and he was surly and intolerant of anything that could distract him now when nothing must, and he knew he was.

  He dressed, putting on his blue calico shirt, and he combed down his wet hair. Afterward he picked up his gun, opened the loading gate and spun the cylinder, counting the loads. He rammed it in the waistband of his pants and put on his Stetson and went out, settling his score. Outside, the morning traffic of the town was stirring, and he teetered on the edge of the boardwalk and observed it while he rolled and lighted a cigarette, and then turned downstreet again. Nothing remained but to pick up his warbag and ride out to Rainbow, for he had made his decision.

  He passed the big saloon with its corner entrance and paused on the boardwalk to let a pair of riders pass him. Lifting his glance to the hotel gallery across the way he saw Kate Hardison and some other women there, and supposed they were talking to Kate’s father.

  He was standing thus when he heard his name called from behind him. “Danning.”

  It came to him that this was one of Ernie’s crew, and he turned and saw three men standing in the recessed doorway of the saloon. He recognized the man in the middle as Miles’ bookkeeper by his red hair, and his attention shifted to the slight, sallow old man beside him on whose loose, buttonless vest the star of the Sheriff’s office was pinned. And then the third man raised a hand and beckoned, and Chris looked at him.

  The recognition came without shock but with the full weight of conviction, like the massive ridgepole timber of a barn being slipped into place: Stocky, strong, maybe thirty, light curly hair, and dark brown eyes like an Indian’s, with little hoods at the corners. The Apache’s words, through McCune, that he had remembered each day anew. The little folds of flesh on the corner of the upper eyelid were pronounced, giving Younger Miles an air of sleepy benevolence. He had grown a mustache, a silky chestnut color, and it bisected his square face. The hair at his temples was fair; the shape of his body under his black suit was blocky, and y
et he was taller than Chris had pictured him.

  He thought, without any excitement, I could kill him now, but when Miles’ hand dropped to his side, Chris wheeled and came toward him. A cold and evil knowledge that the time and the place were of his naming now made him obey.

  He halted in front of the three, his face impassive, and Younger Miles, sizing him up briefly, said, “I’m Younger Miles. Ernie says you can’t make up your mind about workin’ for me.”

  Chris hesitated, and then said gently, “That’s what I told him.”

  “If I pay a man,” Younger said idly in a low voice, “he’ll be loyal enough to me to shut his mouth. The other kind I don’t trust.”

  “And if you don’t pay him?”

  “We’ll see you to your horse,” Miles said.

  The husband and the father, Chris thought, and he stepped back to look at them, and wild and reckless anger took him. A puncher strolled behind him, turning the corner, and now Chris raised his voice and said to the puncher, “Hold on a minute, friend.”

  The puncher looked over his shoulder, saw he was spoken to, and halted.

  “Do you know Mrs. Miles?” Chris asked.

  The florid-faced puncher looked at Chris and then shuttled his glance to Younger Miles and nodded in hesitant greeting, and said, “Yes.”

  Chris said, “I took her home last night. She was drunk—dead drunk.”

  The puncher’s mouth came open and he looked furtively at Miles and turned and hurried off.

  Chris didn’t see him; he was watching Younger Miles, and the rage in him was hot and he could taste it in his mouth.

  The shock was held in Younger Miles’ eyes a fleeting moment, and then the anger came blazing up. It came far enough that Chris thought, Now it’ll happen, and he backed up another step, waiting.

  Miles’ face had gone gray now with his anger, and yet there was a puzzlement in his eyes too. He waited a long, dragging moment, and then said quietly, “You’ll regret that,” and turned and walked into the saloon.

  Chris turned too, and he was in the street before he heard the voice of the Sheriff rise in tired anger, “Come back here!”

  Chris didn’t even pause. He walked leisurely across the street and traveled under the hotel gallery and went into the hotel. He felt calm and without anger, clean as rain. He waited a moment in the empty lobby to see if the Sheriff would follow him and, when nothing happened, he turned and tramped up the stairs.

  Rounding the turn, he looked up and saw Kate Hardison standing at the landing. He saw the frightened wonder in her eyes as she stood aside, and he halted at the head of the stairs. “The boy said you wanted to see me.”

  “Not any more,” Kate said. She couldn’t keep the shakiness of anger out of her voice now. “How could you do that? How could you?”

  Chris said blankly, “What?”

  “What has Abbie Miles done to you that you’d tell that to the whole town? What has she?” Kate demanded angrily.

  The realization came slowly to him then. He had to reach for it behind his obsession and his recklessness that gripped him still, and he stared at her, and the puzzlement slowly faded from his face.

  “You’re a cruel damned man!” Kate said hotly. “I hope he gets you!”

  She turned her back to him and went out the corridor door that let onto the gallery. When she was gone Chris went down the hall to his room and closed the door behind him.

  He stood there a moment, and slowly took off his hat and threw it on the bed. I could have got him then, but I want him to know why, he thought. And then he acknowledged to himself that he had made a mistake. He should have held his temper and accepted Miles’ ultimatum, which he had planned to accept anyway. And while he mused thus, Kate’s words kept crowding into his mind, “You’re a cruel damned man!”

  He sat on the bed now, hands clasped loosely before his knees, and a strange shame took hold of him. The puncher he’d stopped would repeat the story, and if Kate had heard him from the gallery, so had others. He had not meant to hurt Abbie Miles, but his unthinking recklessness had done so. It came to him then, as it had come to headstrong men before him, that revenge was never completely personal, for other people got hurt, and they were the wrong people.

  But to that thought only his black stubbornness answered, and he rose and looked about him. He would have to move now. Younger Miles was hardly a man to wait, and when the showdown came Chris did not want a town at his back. He wanted country and freedom to move, where the hunter and the hunted were equal.

  He was ramming his few personal belongings into his warbag when the knock came on the door. Kate, he thought, and he went across the room and opened the door.

  There was a girl he had never seen before standing there. She was tall, and wore a divided skirt, calf-skin vest and scuffed work-softened boots. Her low-crowned Stetson was dangling from her hand by its chin strap, and her brown hair was parted at one side and done in a thick club in the back. She had eyes of a deep violet blue, and they studied Chris now with a sober good humor.

  “I heard you from the gallery,” she said. “May I come in?”

  Chris wordlessly opened the door and stepped back, and she walked past him into the room. Her face, Chris noticed as she passed him, had a strange and becoming freshness from the side, a short, straight nose and full lips that were faintly curled at the corners, like a child’s. Her low, rounded cheekbones held a brushing of color.

  She stopped abruptly when she saw his open warbag at the foot of the bed, and she turned and said, “So you’re leaving?”

  Chris only nodded, and the girl looked gravely at him. “Younger Miles is afraid of you, isn’t he?”

  “He’s not used to me,” Chris said dryly.

  “No, he’s afraid. He’s never taken that from any man.”

  Chris didn’t answer; he felt a quickening impatience to be out of here.

  The girl sensed it, for she said, “I won’t keep you long, and I’ll make it plain. I want you to work for me.”

  Chris was shaking his head in negation even before she finished, and he did not know why.

  “So you’re drifting,” the girl said. She sat down on his bed now and studied him carefully a moment. “Stop and think what I’m offering you. If you stay in the open here you’ll be dogged by Rainbow until you make the fight. They can do it, you know, because Younger Miles is Sheriff O’Hea’s son-in-law. How’ll you do it alone?”

  “I hadn’t thought.”

  “It’s time to. You’re fair game when you hit the street.”

  Chris was silent, considering this. He hadn’t thought that far ahead, and yet the girl had outlined his position accurately.

  “Who are you?” he asked finally.

  “Della Harms. Our place is the Box H, out on the Black-bow flats. My mother and I run it with three hands. If you’re touchy about working for women, don’t be. On a steer’s hip our Box H brand may look like a Henhouse, and a lot of people call it that, but it’s run like any man’s ranch.”

  She smiled faintly but Chris didn’t see it. Three men, she had said. That would put something at his back, and that was all he needed. But—what was she after?

  He said, “What’s the trade, Della?”

  “Nobody’s stopped Rainbow yet. I think you might.”

  “Stopped it?” Chris asked curiously.

  “Yes. Stopped Younger Miles. He’s hungry, and he was born hungry, I think. He’s got money, and he’s getting more, just as fast as the hundred deals he’s got on the fire come to a boil. Where money won’t work, he’s got a rough crew, and where the crew won’t work he’s got the still, small voice of the sheriff. It makes the right noise at the right time. It’s hard on the rest of us, and it’s only a year and a half old. I just want to stop it.”

  Chris regarded her curiously, sensing the ambiguity and lightness of her words covered something more serious. “Why you?” he asked.

  “He’s starting with us,” she said soberly. “He’s been slow, but he
’s coming.” She was silent a moment. “Younger wants everything down in black and white. If you can show a deed for anything, he wants to buy it. If you can’t, he offers to share it with you. Say it’s open range we’re talking about, range you’ve used and that custom has made yours. Younger will have a hundred head in ahead of you, because the range is open.” She shrugged. “He’s too big to tangle with, and you haven’t got title anyway. You let him have it.”

  It came to Chris now that Della had just answered something for him, and he recalled the hundred nights when he had planned the death of Younger Miles. It wasn’t to be a clean, swift death. He wanted to repay in kind those three nights of terror that Bess Thornley had lived through at Karnes Canyon before her death. This was his obsession, that those three nights and days when she saw the hopelessness of escape, the wedding that would never take place, the man she was never to have, the children she was never to hold, the years of living that must be telescoped into the lonely, fearful and vanishing minutes before death, must not go unavenged. And now this girl who was watching him so carefully had given him the answer. It had been there all along, so close he hadn’t seen it. Younger Miles had turned renegade and betrayed and killed for money and the things money would bring him, nothing more, so that it was precious to him beyond all else. Strip him of that and you killed his dreams as surely as those three days and nights at Karnes Canyon had killed Bess’ dreams. Only after that was done was it right for Younger Miles to die.

  The decision must have been reflected in his face, for Della Harms said, “You’ll come.”

  Chris nodded. “I’ll draw lightning, Della.”

  “I know that, and I don’t care.” She put out her hand and Chris took it. Della said then, “Throw your stuff in the buckboard out front. We’ll be going as soon as you’re ready.” She went to the door, opened it and paused and turned to look at him, and there was a shrewdness in her eyes as she said, “You haven’t given much of a damn about anything for a long time, have you, Chris?”