The Western Megapack - 25 Classic Western Stories

by Various Writers

  Epstein shrugged. “So? I scared him to death. He don’t need a pain killer.”

  Now Epstein knew why Ballard had been afraid: having sent a renegade to get Indians to ambush Hurley, the man naturally had shrunk from going into the trap. His proposal to trail the mule-stealers suggested he hoped to deal with his accomplices, and get back enough animals to get him out of his own snare.

  When Epstein rejoined the others, he was wondering about Garlock’s black bag; but they were wrangling about the best way out of their predicament. Hurley was saying, “The further we’d chase those varmints up into the piñons, the more advantage they’d have on us. And getting Garlock to Panamint comes first. This poker-faced jigger from nowhere got shot and riddled, fighting in the open, whilst the rest of us scrunched down behind cover. So we’re hoofing, and toting him in Saul’s wagon, to give him his chance.”

  Epstein gave Emily the bottle of laudanum. “He will soon be conscious. Give him a spoonful, no more.”

  Then Epstein got Garlock’s keys and hunted for the satchel. The shifting of the cargo had locked it among the boxes, so he could not release it except after prying with a pick-axe handle. He opened the bag, and when he saw the sheaves of currency and Government bonds, he said to himself, “No wonder he fought the fire to keep this from burning when he couldn’t get it out.”

  After locking the bag, he got down the shadowed side of the wagon. The water tank had been bullet-riddled. The barrel had been nearly emptied to fight the fire. But both canteens were full.

  Hurley said, “With nothing but water and a bit of grub to tote, I can move twice as fast as when we’re shoving the cart. Let me hoof it to Panamint, and hire one of those carry-alls with fast horses. You can wait here, if water holds out, or you can head south. If I can gain no more’n a day, it’s worth the gamble. Garlock drew the Injuns’ fire and sort of saved our hides, and I owe him any chance I can win for him by gaining time.”

  He stuffed his pockets with jerked beef and slung a canteen from his shoulder. “Head due south,” he repeated. “You’ll cut the wagon track from Bakersfield or else I’ll be meeting you with fast-stepping horses.”

  Toward evening, Garlock began muttering and mumbling.

  “Saul, hadn’t you better give him some more laudanum?” Ballard asked.

  “If it gets on your nerves hearing him, get away and I’ll sit out your turn.”

  “No, no, that’s not it!”

  Whereupon Epstein went to grab dead mesquite for the fire. When he had stacked up a heap, he let Emily help cook supper. “What do you want?” he asked her. “Wait here, where the water is not so good, or move on, and gain a day that way? If you sleep till moonrise, can you walk another stretch, like we’ve already covered?”

  “Walk it or drop from trying,” she answered, smiling away her weariness.

  “Then we move tonight. Hey, Lucky! Supper is ready.”

  Ballard ate as though swallowing blotting paper. Finally Epstein asked, “How is the patient?”

  “Resting. But I’m afraid he’ll be hard to handle when the fever gets bad. He’s got something on his mind.”

  “Right now, you better get some rest before we move on. I’ll watch.”

  * * * *

  When the night chill bit into Epstein’s bones so deeply he quit cat-napping, he knew it was time to strike out. After throwing wood on the coals, he shouted, “Coffee! Wake up!”

  Emily answered. Ballard did not. The blankets he had kicked aside were a dozen yards from the small circle of camp activity. Snatching a blazing brand, Epstein went over to the undisturbed ground—and saw footprints leading north.

  When Emily joined him, Epstein said, “Lucky went back the way we came.”

  “But why, Saul? Good lord, why?”

  Instead of answering, Saul said, “Hold the light,” and went to kneel beside Garlock. He raised the man’s eyelids, looked at the pupils, and asked, “How much laudanum did you give him?”

  “Saul, you know I didn’t give him any.”

  “Somebody did. The pupils of the eyes—they are like pin points, see? And the pale lips.”

  “Do you suppose Lucky made a mistake, and then realized what he’d done, and then got scared?”

  “If you made an honest mistake, would you run from Saul Epstein?”

  “Oh, this is crazy, crazy, crazy! We can’t go off and leave Lucky, so we’ll have to wait now,”

  “Maybe that is why he went away, just to make us wait,” Epstein said. “You go back to sleep. But first, let me show you this man’s watch. It is interesting. I looked at it some time ago. How do you read the initials on the case?”

  “Why, J. G., of course—no, J. C. Maybe it’s an heirloom.”

  “Let me open the back and show you. Here, see the engraving inside.”

  She read, “From the Directors of the First National Bank of Independence. Kansas, to Joash Carson, June 15, 1848-June 15, 1873. Well Done, Thou Good and Faithful Servant.”

  Epstein said, “Now, less than a year after he finished being a good and faithful teller or cashier he shows up in Nevada being an engineer. Is he making some kind of deal with Lucky?”

  “I don’t know. But if they did have any plans, I think Lucky ought to be on the look-out for crooked work.”

  “So? Now watch this.” He reached inside his shirt and brought out a bundle wrapped in a red bandanna. Opening it, he displayed high denomination currency, United States bonds and other negotiable securities. “Count this. You are a witness that this is how much he had.”

  With trembling hands, she counted the gold certificates, and the bonds. She exclaimed, “There’s over $200,000 here!”

  “Keep it until we meet the law. You fix it up inside your dress, so it don’t make bulges. Nobody must know, so there won’t be trouble between Lucky and Ben. Don’t tell anybody you’ve got it. No matter what happens.”

  * * * *

  Shortly after dawn, Ballard stumbled into camp. He had Garlock’s satchel. He asked, “How’s Jubal? He muttered so much about his bag, I was afraid he’d get up while we were dozing and start back for it.”

  “That makes you a Good Samaritan,” Epstein said. “But now we can’t move on—not before you have rested.” A few hours of rest, then Epstein aroused him, saying, “Time to shove.”

  They plodded through the blinding glare. Epstein would not halt until at last Emily protested, “Saul, Lucky is ready to drop.”

  They stopped. Epstein bent over Garlock.

  “This man, whoever he was, has taken a shortcut. Pick up rocks, while I dig.”

  When he had dug a shallow trench, he took Garlock’s watch, purse, keys and pistol, putting them in a compartment of his tool chest. After letting Garlock down into the trench and filling the grave, he reached for the pushbar, and they tramped on. Ballard cursed him. Epstein said, “Walking back was foolish. What good was a satchel to a dying man?”

  After three more cruel hours, Emily clung to him. “Saul, I can’t go another step.”

  Epstein picked her up bodily, and set her into the cart. “Then ride. And have a drink. The last, until I find water.”

  Ballard jerked along like a mechanical toy. When they got to a fringe of ironwood trees, he sprawled face down in the shade.

  There was water. Epstein drew some from the pool.

  * * * *

  Later, while Ballard still lay in an exhaustion which made him seem lifeless, Hurley drove up with a carryall.

  “Oh, Ben!” Emily cried, kissing him hungrily.

  Ballard seemed half numbed by the fierce punishment. His eyes, however, were unnaturally bright. When he aroused himself, his words and gestures were jerky. Hurley listened to an account of what had happened and then asked, “Saul, what was that name in Garlock’s watch?”

  “Read it,” Epstein answered, after getting the watch and the other things. “A bank man all his life until last year, and all of a sudden he becomes an engineer.” As he spoke, Epstein dipped into the satchel an
d brought out a packet of hundred dollar gold certificates. “No wonder he worried. Here’s more!”

  Ballard came to life. “He said he was Garlock,” the watch says he used to be Carson. What’ll we do with his property?”

  “We turn this over to the law,” Epstein remarked.

  “That’s crazy!” Ballard flared. “Money is money, and nobody knows who this man really was. Ben, you and Emily were hurt badly in the bank crash. We can call this salvage. You’re crazy not to do it! What the devil has Epstein got to say?”

  Epstein gave him a biting glance. “Maybe the desert. plays this cockeyed trick to give you back what, you lost.”

  “Saul,” Hurley persisted, “you’re entitled to a cut.”

  Epstein’s eyes became more emphatic. “I want none. For you folks, maybe it is different. Anyway, I don’t know the law, and I won’t take chances.”

  “I’m not looking a gift hoss in the mouth!” Hurley declared “Dip in, Lucky!”

  Ballard dug eagerly into the bag. His face changed when, clawing again, he came up with socks, a shirt, a necktie. Hurley exclaimed, as he eyed the pile, “Something like thirty thousand bucks! Nice divvy.”

  “Thirty thousand?” Ballard echoed, dazedly. “Nice divvy?”

  Epstein said, “Ben, I’ll tend to the horses. You sit down. You’re winning again. Enjoy it.”

  He had the horses unhitched, and was busy grooming the long-legged sorrel when Ballard came up. The animals were some yards from camp, and Hurley and Emily were busy beside the fire.

  Ballard said, in an ominous voice, “You’re foxy, Epstein, pretending you wouldn’t touch that money, and spouting that stuff about surrendering it to the law. You took most of it. Make a good story.”

  “What do you mean?” Epstein countered. “You walked to get the satchel. I didn’t. If something is missing, you took it. Anyhow. How do you know something is missing?”

  “He told me how much he had. There’s $200,000 missing.”

  “I don’t have it. And let me tell you something. I said, don’t give him more laudanum, and you gave it. His eyes showed it. Hey, Ben! He says—”

  But Hurley was too much interested in Emily to hear; and Ballard cut in, “You lying son, what’s that you dropped over there?”

  He gestured toward something on the ground, and went for his gun. Emily cried out. Ben, belatedly aroused, shouted, “Hold it!”

  Guns blazed, one-two. Hurley, on his feet, lowered his weapon. Epstein looked through swirling smoke at Ballard, who was down and twitching.

  THE TRAIL TRAP, by T.W. Ford

  Two shots rattled out on the sharp frosty night so fast it sounded as if a man were fanning the hammer. After a brief pause, there was another, a single one, and a man’s pain-torn curse floating after it. The sounds came from down beyond the bridge at the bottom of the hill from Lusker. The boot heels of a staggering man thudded on the bridge itself. Then there were two more gun reports, the second muffled as if by distance. The quiet of the night flowed back over the wounds the explosions had made in it.

  The last echo died out, and the wind chased a piece of brown paper down the hill.

  The door of the jailhouse slammed behind Little Joe Bodie. He was tucking his nightshirt inside his batwing chaps as he ran, toting a gunbelt with two filled holsters in his free hand. The moon that had been playing hide-and-go-seek with the drifting cloud racks all night poked through and showed his coal-black hair and slim bony body. He called something back to the jailer as he turned into the alkali-coated road. Then, sombrero bouncing on his shoulders as it hung by the chin strap, he legged it down the hill toward the bridge.

  Doors were jerked open and voices called along the road. A couple of figures, shadowy as the moon was blanketed again, swung in behind Little Joe. He pulled up short as he got to the near end of the bridge over Burnt Wagon Creek, listening. From down the trail came the faint beat of horsehoofs, blurred by the wind. They were moving southward. Little Joe saw the figure sprawled at the other end of the plank bridge, upper part of the body hidden in the undergrowth on the creek bank.

  Little Joe Bodie, deputy marshal of Lusker, called out to the fallen man once, then advanced when he got no answer. He got to the gleaming black boots and saw the bloodstains on the road. They started about ten feet beyond the end of the bridge and ran back toward it after wavering boot tracks. Little Joe read the signs: a badly wounded man stumbling backward. Then he turned and parted the bushes over the rest of the body. The icy-hued moon slid into view again and showed the white ruffled shirt of the body on its back in the bushes.

  Even before he bent to see the face over which the black flat-topped sombrero had slid, Little Joe knew then. It was Solitaire Tice, boss of the gambling hell, The Lucky Deuce. Solitaire lay very still, eyes staring straight up blankly. A wisp of smoke still curled up from the .45 gripped in his hand. Even as the deputy looked, the wind poked open his black frock coat and revealed the wet blood on his white shirt. It looked like a slow mushrooming ruby.

  Going to a knee, Little Joe bent over the shot man. He was just in time to catch his final gasp. Froth bubbled around his torn-back mouth, and the crimson spread no further on his shirt front; he was dead.

  The story was plain. Solitaire had closed up his gambling joint and had been en route home to the little place he had across the creek. Somebody had waylaid and gunned him. Acting on a hunch, Little Joe pulled gently at the body and rolled it onto its side a moment. He was right. There was a bullet hole, red-ringed, in the back of the coat over the left shoulder. Solitaire had been nailed from behind before he died.

  The pair who had followed him down the hill from town came up. One was a gray-bearded man pulling his coat over big bare shoulders as he stopped. He was Ab Murdock who ran the General Store.

  “Somebody got Solitaire,” Joe Bodie said.

  Murdock swore softly and bent over the body. A deeply religious man who always read a passage from the Bible when some poor devil was put to rest on Lusker’s Boot Hill, he pulled off his hat when he stood up. “Solitaire was a good man. Gawd have mercy on his soul. . . . And the dirty sidewinder who gave it to him pumped in the finishing shot pointblank. They’s powder burns on his shirt front.”

  Little Joe nodded; he had seen them. He was already moving carefully up the edge of the road, looking for tracks. There were some boot prints from behind a big dead pine trunk that stood at the trail side. But in the soft wet dirt they were squashy and shapeless, telling little.

  “Did he say anything afore he died, Bodie?” the man with Murdock called.

  Little Joe gave no answer as he moved around a bend in the trail leading away from the town. When he returned some minutes later, a small bunch of sleepy-eyed half-dressed folks had gathered. From a house up on the top of the hill a baby squalled. All the talking stopped abruptly and the eyes shifted to Joe. The same question was in every one. Hank Ellard, big, wire-tough law marshal of the town, was away on the trail of a horse thief. He, Little Joe Bodie, was the law itself here now.

  “Well, what’re you aiming to do, Joe?” one man called harshly. Joe Bodie didn’t need to be told he was one of those who had voted against him at the last election. The Haig brothers who ran the ramshackle hotel stepped forward. One said, “We all knew Solitaire Tice and respected him. We demand something be done. If the law cain’t handle it itself—”

  Another man thrust a bony finger at Little Joe who nervously toed the wet earth. It had rained earlier that night. “Well, Bodie, do you wear that purty badge for anything?” It was plain they had little confidence in him. He himself wished like blazes Ellard was on hand.

  “Found some fresh hoof marks up around the bend where a pony was left waiting outta sight,” Little Joe said quietly. They pushed around him, jabbering and wanting to know if he was waiting for the killer to walk smack into his jail and give himself up. Joe Bodie gestured mildly up the hill. “Waiting for my pony that’s coming now,” he said. The jailer was leading the bay mare down t
he road as Little Joe had called to him to do when he ran out of the jailhouse.

  Murdock came running out the alley from beside the General Store with a saddled-up horse. He yelled he was coming along. An old man in the party at the bridge grabbed Little Joe’s bridle reins as the latter swung into the hull.

  “Better wait till a few more of the boys join you, Bodie,” the man said. “This might turn out to be a man’s job. . . .”

  They pushed harder through the night as the moon got clear of the dissipating clouds to remain out, Little Joe Bodie and the five-man posse at his back. Joe Bodie knew he himself was on trial. There had been a heap of opposition to his candidacy as deputy marshal, and plenty of angry astonishment when he was elected. More than one citizen of Lusker had been waiting for the first test of the retiring dry-voiced undersized deputy. That test had come.

  They came to the fork where the smaller division of the trail branched westward toward the flat-topped line of hills. The fresh hoof prints were even clearer in the mud of the little-used fork. Little Joe loosened his Colts in the scabbards nervously. One of the men said if they gave the killer a catching there was no need to take him any further than the handiest cottonwood limb. The words sent a cold shock down the deputy’s spine.

  The track wound through the dome-like hills with their sparse fringe of second-growth pine. They began to climb as the newly bared stars waned overhead. A rifle bullet droned past Little Joe’s sombrero up in the front of the column. And the spang-g of a Winchester’s bark followed it. There was another crash on the graying night and bullet lead went screeching off a boulder inches from Ab Murdock’s stirrup. The six hastily scrambled from saddles and sought cover.

  “It come from that little rock ledge up there by the lightning-split pine,” one of the men called.

  * * * *

  Down behind a clump of brush, Little Joe Bodie steadied the rifle he had pulled from the saddle boot as he jumped clear. Then he propped his hat on a piece of dried stick and pushed it out into sight. He wasn’t kept waiting. There was the zing of a slug and a hole gaped into the crown of his Stetson. Little Joe’s rifle answered the shot, blasting twice at where he had caught the muzzle froth up above. One of his bullets sent powdered stone spraying in a cloud from the outcropping ledge.