by L. P. Holmes
“I do business in the front office. These are my private living quarters. You got no right to bust in here uninvited.”
Bruce looked at the gripsack. “Going someplace, maybe?”
“If I am,” Edmunds retorted, “that’s my business and none of yours.”
“That’s where you’re wrong, Edmunds,” snapped Pete Martin. “Your business is our business, right now. Where’s Jason Spelle?”
Edmunds’ shiftiness grew. “How would I know?” he muttered sulkily. “I’m not Spelle’s keeper.”
“Maybe not,” put in Pat Donovan. “But I’m remembering that you and Spelle were always pretty thick, and that he generally hung around the Land Office a lot when he was in town.”
“That still don’t mean anything to me,” Edmunds said. He made as if to shut the gripsack, but Bruce Martell was there first, shoving him aside.
“Just for the hell of it,” said Bruce coldly, “I’m going to take a look.”
He began emptying the gripsack on the bunk. Edmunds shrilled at him. “Damn you, Martell … keep your paws off my things. You got no right—”
“This day I’m making a lot of things my right. Ah! What’s this?”
It was a canvas sack, folded and tied around a fairly thick wad of something jammed into the bottom of the sack. Bruce loosened the tie, opened the sack, upended it, and shook it. A solid wad of currency fell from it, scattered on the bunk. Only a casual glance was enough to tell that here were several thousands of dollars.
“Edmunds,” said Bruce, “you travel well-heeled.”
One of the bills, a twenty, missed the bunk and fluttered to the floor. Sam Otten moved to pick it up. He stiffened, stared at what he held. His eyes went hard and spots of color leaped into his face. Bruce, noting this, asked sharply. “What’s the matter, Sam?”
Otten answered slowly, as though weighing every word, weighing them as if he realized that on every one of them might mean a man’s life.
“I could be mistaken, understand … or it could be coincidence. As you know, Jake Hendee was a neighbor of mine. He had an extra plow that I could use. I made a deal with him and bought it, paying sixty dollars for it. I paid him with three twenty dollar bills. Before I paid him, we both worked at cleaning some axle grease off the share of the plow. And when I paid him, I got a smear of grease on one of the bills. I was willing to dig up another, but Jake said a little grease wouldn’t hurt the value of the bill. So he took it. And … well …!”
Otten held up the bill and the dark stain of grease on it was plain to all. Pat Donovan said, “There’s all kinds of grease, Sam … but I know axle grease and the smell of it. I sell enough of it, so I ought to know. Let’s see that.”
Donovan took the bill, looked closely at the stain, smelled it. “Axle grease, right enough,” he said curtly.
Had Cashel Edmunds kept his mouth shut, they would still have had nothing concrete against him. For in a land of wagonmen there could be plenty of grease-stained currency floating around. But a great and terrifying fear was surging in Edmunds, rattling and confusing him.
“Sure, I got that bill from Hendee,” he blustered, sweat beginning to bead his face. “I remember it. It was part of his recording and filing fee.”
Sam Otten’s stubborn jaw pushed out. “Edmunds, you’re lying. Jake Hendee had done his recording and filing a good week before I bought the plow from him. You’ve either talked too much or not enough.”
“Right,” growled Pete Martin. “And if that bill was paid you for a recording and filing fee, why is it here in your private gripsack, instead of in the safe in the office out front? Who are you working for, anyhow … the government or yourself?”
“You forget, gentlemen,” put in Bruce with biting sarcasm, “that Mister Edmunds has all the earmarks of making ready for a hurried and extensive journey … somewhere.”
“He’ll make an extensive journey, all right,” exploded Pete Martin. “All we have to do is see to it that this little story reaches the street and the settler men along it. In which case Mister Edmunds would take a very long journey, and his last one, on the end of a rope. Bruce, I think the logic of your reasoning is sound. We’ve run into something.”
Desperation flared in Edmunds’ eyes. He made a dive for the end of the bunk, grappled under the blankets, and was coming up with a snub-nosed gun when Bruce pounced on him. Bruce tore the gun away from him, slammed him against the wall of the room so violently the whole building shook.
“Edmunds,” Bruce rasped. “You better talk and talk fast. And straight. Where’s Jason Spelle?”
Cashel Edmunds was of weaker fiber than they dreamed. He went all to pieces suddenly. He began to curse wildly, and he was cursing Jason Spelle. When this tempest ran out of him he was panting and sweating and pallid.
“Spelle,” he gulped. “That damned Spelle. He’s crazy … stark crazy, I tell you … since that beating you gave him. I told him to go slow. I told him I wanted no part of his doings … and he threatened to kill me. Sure I was with him … up to a certain point. I was with him against the Rocking A. We had a deal there … to bust Hack Asbell and take over ourselves. With enough settlers hating Rocking A and backing our hand, we figured to be able to do that. But this other stuff—this killing and robbing—that was Spelle’s and Horgan’s idea. Spelle and Horgan’s gang did all that. I’ve never moved a step out of this town since the land rush began. You can’t tie me in with the killings.”
“Yet,” reminded Bruce remorselessly, “we find some of the money taken from a murdered man in your possession. How do you explain that, Edmunds?”
Edmunds dropped to the end of the bunk, shaking. The terror of the man came out of him like an odor, offensive and disgusting. Pete Martin would have said something, but a jerk of Bruce’s head kept him silent.
“We’ll say you had no actual hand in those raids, Edmunds,” Bruce said sternly. “We’ll say that because of that, there’s a thin chance of you getting off with a whole skin, even though you’re a slimy, low-lived, conniving skunk. But you win that chance only, if you tell me what I mainly want to know. Spelle and Horgan and the rest of those raiders … they must have a hideout somewhere. All right, Edmunds … where?”
Edmunds clasped his hands, twisting them. “I don’t know, for sure. That’s God’s truth, Martell. But I’ve heard some talk about a place called Loco Mono Creek. East, somewhere.”
“Ha!” exclaimed Pat Donovan. “There is such a place. Loco Mono … Crazy Monkey Creek. I’ve heard of it. Some of your Rocking A men should know about it, Bruce.”
Bruce turned to the door. “Then it’s time to be moving. I leave this rat to you men. Do as you want with him. Only remember … he did talk.”
“He’ll be here when you get back, Bruce,” boomed Pete Martin. “This is the concern of every decent man in Indio Basin. And we’ll let them decide. It will be a fair trial, with all angles weighed. Good luck.”
Rocking A was still waiting down in front of the store. They looked at Bruce inquiringly as he stepped into his saddle.
“A creek,” said Bruce. “Loco Mono Creek. Where is it?”
“East,” answered Carp Bastion. “A good fifteen miles. Where Hayfork River runs through some badlands. Loco Mono Creek comes into the river there. What about it?”
“We’re riding for it, Carp. Somewhere around there is the hangout of them we want.”
Chapter Twenty
They rode steadily but not too fast. Fifteen miles was fifteen miles, and there was no telling exactly what lay at the end of them—perhaps the need of a reserve of strength and speed in their horses. On these a great deal could depend. And so they kept a pace that covered ground reasonably well, but which did not drag too much from their mounts.
They passed settler camps on their way, but they rode wide around these. With the word of what had taken place the previous night spreading ac
ross the basin, there was no telling when some enraged settler might go berserk and start sniping with a rifle at any man or group of men sitting saddles.
But as the miles dropped behind, settler camps grew fewer and fewer until finally the run of the surrounding country lay empty of any sign of them. Moving up beside Bruce, Carp Bastion explained why.
“Hungry land we’re gettin’ into, Bruce. Notice how thin the grass is here? This stretch of land is one part of Indio Basin that ain’t worth a damn. In the old days, when we run cattle in the basin, you couldn’t keep ’em on this grass. There’s nothin’ to it. And them sodbusters don’t want no part of this land, either. This is the edge of the badlands country. Pretty soon there’ll be low ridges pushing up, rocky and worthless and just takin’ up good space. Them ridges run every which way. Hayfork River cuts right through the middle of ’em, and Loco Mono Crick drops in from the north about halfway along. Now that I’ve started to think about it, I don’t know of a place within a hundred miles where a bunch of wild ones could have a hideout camp and run less chance of being found. A smart one must have picked it.”
Sure, mused Bruce, a smart one. Like Jason Spelle. Who didn’t overlook a single angle, except the most important one of all—and that was that other men could think, could add and subtract, could judge cause and effect, weigh motives, and apply logic. It was, he thought with grim satisfaction, a failing common to the crooked mind, this illusion that only they, the crooked ones, were smart—that and their overlooking the fact that in every chain there would be one link weaker than all the rest, and that sometimes this link could be broken, as Cashel Edmunds had broken. Well, the answer to it all was not too far away.
The land began to take on a persistent upward slope, gradual and long-running. The rolling smoothness gave way to shallow gulches, twisting and winding. In one of these, deep enough to hide a horseman, Bruce drew rein, began building a smoke.
“We don’t know a damned thing of what we may find, if anything,” he said. “It won’t do to go barging around in a bunch. We’re not an army. Chances are, they could outnumber us. Unless they’re stupider than I think, they’ll have guards out. We get spotted, we can ride right into a tight that’ll get us all shot out of our saddles. From here on in it’s slow and careful. So far, I haven’t seen a single hoof mark leading into this country. And that’s what I want to find, a trail of some sort, with sign on it to read. Might as well light down right here and talk this over.”
This they did, hunkering on their boot heels. Butte Allen drawled, “All the way from town I’ve been thinking, Bruce. About if Loco Mono is the country that gang hangs out in, then they must have a certain way in and out that they favor. I don’t think it would be from the west side. It’s good land on the west side, with plenty of settler camps scattered around. These settlers would be sure to hear horses pounding by at night, which would be a tip-off. So, it stands to reason the raiders would use some other way, either somewhere along here at the middle, or around at the east end of the roughs. As you say, we’ve seen no bronco sign around here, so that leaves the east end as our most likely chance of finding what we want. What do you think?”
“I think smooth headwork, Butte. The raiders know they can’t ride without leaving sign, but they can also make that sign look like it’s heading somewhere it ain’t. Like if they were to break straight east, pretty well south of Hayfork River, it could look like they were coming in and out from clear back at War Lance Creek, where the jump-off started. But once they get far enough east, they could then cut north and come around into these roughs. Was I heading a gang like that, I’d probably figure that should be the safe angle.”
Carp Bastion, restless, impatient, said, “Let’s get down that way and have a look.”
“No,” said Bruce. “We stay right here until dusk. Then we move. Only we don’t go in by the way we figure the raiders do. That’s the side they’ll be guarding. So we come in from the west. How do you figure we stand here? Are we as far along as where Loco Mono Creek comes into the river?”
Both Carp and Butte shook their heads. “I’d say that, were we to hit due north from here, we’d hit the river a good two miles west of Loco Mono,” said Carp.
“Two, maybe three,” agreed Butte.
“Fine,” said Bruce. “Come dusk, we cut straight for the river, then work down it to Loco Mono. And we’ll see what we see. Might as well unsaddle, boys. Here’s where we wait for sundown.”
“Huh!” grunted Carp. “We wait until dark and do locate the camp, by that time they’ll be out on another raid, and that’ll leave us holding the sack.”
“I don’t think so,” differed Bruce. “I doubt they’d raid again tonight. They’ll know they left a hornet’s nest behind ’em from last night. From now on, for a time at least, settlers will be sleeping plenty light and ready to shoot at the first sound of a horse. The raiders know that. I think they’ll figure to let things quiet down a little before hitting again. And if we find their camp and it’s empty, we’ll just lie around and wait for them to come back. Keep your shirt on, Carp. Riding wild and blind can do us more harm than good.”
So that was the way it was. They unsaddled and lounged the hours away.
“Should have brought some grub along,” grumbled Carp once. “Just that cup of java we got outside of this mornin’ is damn thin daylong fare for a healthy man. I’m hungry enough to eat a snake.
“I ain’t thinking about anything else but getting somebody in that gang over the sights of a gun,” said Rowdy Turner. “I want to see him fold over and kick. Damn a whelp who murders men in the dark. I wonder how that sodbuster, Carling, is making out?”
Bruce, stretched flat on his back, hat over his eyes to shield out the pale autumn sun, was wondering the same thing. And wondering about Tracy and Aunt Lucy. He wondered if he’d ever get the sound of Tracy’s racking grief out of his ears, or forget the look of Aunt Lucy as she crouched alone beside her wounded husband, gently stroking the blankets covering him. He knew just how Rowdy Turner felt, knew the same raw hunger for vengeance. Given the right break, he told himself savagely, he’d lay a terrible lesson this night for all raiders and outlaws to study for a long time to come.
He wondered why he seemed fated to things of this sort. Rawhide, Ravensdale—now Indio Basin. Back there it had been behind a badge. Out here the badge was missing, but the purpose and the need were the same. Maybe it wasn’t fate at all. Maybe it was something inside himself, something that rose up inside him and challenged him to action. Carp Bastion was no more impatient to get about this business than he was himself. But brains, he knew, had won more fights than gunfire. Common sense said to hold this thing off until dark. So that was the way it would be.
The sun arched and fell away, sliding toward a sunset of blazing color. Shadows began to pile up in these shallow gulches. Haze settled down like chill, powder-blue smoke. Bruce got his saddle and went over to his horse.
They lined away in single file up the gulch. Ahead, in the far distance, the Lodestones piled up, blue-black and cold-looking. When the gulch funneled up to a ridge point, Bruce looked west and saw—just a faint spark across the miles—a settler fire begin to glow.
Full dark pushed dusk out of the way rapidly. It was slow going for the Rocking A crew. Carp hadn’t exaggerated when he said this would be rough and broken country. It was knobbed and ridged, pitching up and down steeply. One moment Bruce and his men would be up on some star-touched ridge. Then they would be riding through some velvet-black gulch. They circled some points, sent their horses, grunting and scrambling, over others. But always the way was north.
Abruptly the air took on a damp smell, the smell of the river. They found a break in a low rimrock, went slithering down the slide of talus below. Here was a low, narrow benchland, with the river water hissing softly over a riffle, threading a mass of scrub willow.
Now they turned east. They rode slowly, taut an
d tall in their saddles, every sense stretched and alert. This bench they were on followed the river steadily, guarded by the low rim. In places it narrowed to only a few yards, in others the rim swooped back to lay the freedom of comparatively spacious flats. In one place where the bench narrowed, Bruce Martell reined in and left his saddle. And then, crouched low and shielding the faint light of a match behind his hat, searched the width of the bench. Nowhere was its thin grass trampled, or the earth gouged by the hooves of horses. There was no trail here.
They went on, and now Butte Allen moved up beside Bruce. He pointed a long arm. Ahead and on the far side of the river loomed the dark mass of a humpback ridge, running down out of the Lodestone foothills from the north.
“On the far side of that ridge … Loco Mono Crick,” he murmured. “If those hombres are around, we ought to know it pretty quick.”
They eased ahead. Bruce listened so intently a singing sound set up in his ears, maybe the whine of his own pulse. But it wasn’t by sound or sight that the warning came. It came through another sense. Bruce caught a whiff of wood smoke.
He reined in again. He murmured orders in the softest of voices. He stepped out of the saddle and slid his rifle from its scabbard. The rest followed suit. He ordered Card Wilcox to stay with the horses, to that quiet cowboy’s huge disgust. They took off their spurs, hung them on saddle horns. Then they went on, following that scent of wood smoke drifting along the river.
Here the pressure of the rim on the south and the down-thrusting snout of the ridge on the north crowded the channel of the river to a narrowness that built up a foaming rapid, filling the night with chill spray and a solid, booming voice that muted everything of lesser extent.
Bruce and his men made the most of this welcome overtone of rumbling waters. They felt their way past spray-wet boulders and splashed, boot deep, through the water between. As abruptly as this gorge had narrowed, it spread wide again into a willow-mottled flat. Here the smell of wood smoke was very strong, and here, glowing through a masking line of willow, loomed the crimson of a fire. And from somewhere beyond came the stamp of a weary horse.