by E. R. Slade
“Which hoss?” Then, squinting at him, “Oh, it’s you. No, you cain’t hev yer hoss. I awready ’xplained that.”
“Well, I’m taking him, just the same,” Ben said. “The choice you have to make is whether you want to be paid or not.”
“You take them hosses, I’ll tell the marshal and he’ll be after you. Hoss thieves is shot on sight hereabouts.”
“Are they,” Ben said, backing his pony out of the stall. “Then you’re lucky I’m not going to enforce that rule in your case. As for Clauson, that depends on whether he wants to make an issue of it. He just said in a public meeting that he’d let me have my horse and leave. If he’s good for his word, I’m happy to let bygones be bygones.”
“He never told me nothin’ ’bout you takin’ them hosses.”
“You go see him about it, if you want to. I’m leaving. Now do you want to be paid or not?”
“I ain’t takin’ no money and gittin’ on the wrong side the marshal. No indeedy.”
“Suit yourself,” Ben said and went out leading his pony.
“Thought I’d find you here.” There stood Clauson, just outside the door. He had Nancy by the arm. Her horse wasn’t saddled so Ben guessed the man had been on hand long enough to have overheard most of his conversation with the liveryman.
“Come for my horse,” Ben said, just as though he’d expected to see Clauson. “Like we talked about in the meeting. You got my rifle with you, or do we have to go back to your office for it?”
“You don’t own a rifle, Gordon. Saddle up and get out of here.”
Ben had put the bridles on both horses before leading them out. Now he dropped the reins of his pony over the top rail of the corral fence and picked up the saddle for Nancy’s horse.
“That ain’t your saddle, Gordon. Maybe you can’t see too good in the dark.”
Ben put the saddle on Nancy’s horse. “I know what saddle it is,” he said. “Miss Bailey doesn’t like riding bareback, far as I know.”
“Miss Bailey ain’t going anywhere,” Clauson said, irritation starting to show.
“Miss Bailey,” Ben said, “didn’t you say you were going with me?”
“I did, Mr. Gordon.”
“You heard the lady,” Ben said, tightening the cinch.
“You didn’t hear me,” Clauson said, his voice starting to get that sound that made you think of an iron tire on broken glass. “The lady stays here.”
Ben swung up his own saddle before saying anything more, tightened the cinch. Then he turned suddenly on Clauson and roared in his face, “Let go of her!”
Clauson was startled just enough that Nancy was able to yank free and quickly turn her horse between herself and Clauson.
But the mare’s head was where he could reach out and grab the bridle.
“You got the count of ten to get out of my sight,” Clauson said.
Nancy swung into her saddle, tried to turn the mare, but the horse just stood there since Clauson had hold.
Ben was estimating where to land a solid blow to Clauson’s jaw when inside the livery building behind he heard footsteps, and they didn’t sound like the liveryman’s either.
It was the stranger, now standing in the open back doorway. “Clauson,” he said, in a voice that slithered like a snake sliding through dry leaves. “I got business with you.”
“In a minute,” Clauson snapped back irritably.
“Right now. In the street.”
“What the ...”
“Now, Clauson.” The stranger’s tone was soft but it had iron in it.
“You don’t order me around,” Clauson said. “You got a thing you want to settle, we’ll settle it. But I’m in the middle of something. Now clear off.”
“You want to fall into a manure pile when you die?” the stranger asked with the merest hint of amusement.
“You better be careful who you threaten, stranger. I’ll make you eat that manure pile.”
The stranger laughed. A dry, unpleasant sound like working rusty hinges back and forth to loosen them. “You couldn’t make a pig root in a manure pile.”
“You got a horse, stranger?”
“Not in this town.”
“Then you got five minutes to get one and get out. I see you after that, you’ll be headed for boot hill on a shutter.”
“You can keep your five minutes, far as I’m concerned. I don’t care if I kill you here and now. But there’s folks looking forward to watching you die. You wouldn’t want to disappoint them, would you? I’ll be in the street, waiting.”
“What are you talking about, people want to see me die? Who wants to see me die?”
“A man here named Buddy Winston had some friends.”
“You’re telling me you’ve been hired to kill me?” Clauson sounded amazed.
“They wanted the best, and here I am.”
“How much did they pay you?”
“The price on your head is two hundred dollars, dead or driven off for good.”
“Two hundred dollars. You cheap hired slime. It’ll cost ’em a lot more than that before I’m through.”
“I think I’d shoot you just for the pleasure of it.”
“You’ll get your one-way trip to boot hill in a few minutes. Now clear off.”
An evil smile slowly spread across the stranger’s face. “You’re yellow, ain’t you?” he said as though he’d just made an enjoyable discovery.
That pushed Clauson over the edge. “You take that girl with you, I’ll kill you,” he snapped over his shoulder to Ben as he stalked through the door from which the stranger had just disappeared.
Ben swung into the saddle, and away they flew into the night, riding along behind the buildings the short distance to the western end of town, there they got onto the main road.
They pulled up to see if they were being chased. The stranger was standing in the middle of the muddy street with Clauson maybe twenty paces nearer, facing him. Spectators were hurrying into saloons or into dark doorways.
“You want to draw down on me, go ahead,” Clauson roared. “Well?”
The stranger just stood there.
“Maybe you’re all talk. Is that it?” Clauson taunted.
“People want you dead or out of town for good,” the stranger called back. “As for me, I want the pleasure of putting a bullet through your heart, but I’m duty bound to make you a formal offer on behalf of the friends of Buddy Winston. You take off your tin star, and your brother’s tin star, and the two of you leave. And you don’t come back. Not ever. You forfeit all your property but you keep your lives. If you accept this deal, you have five minutes to get out of town.” He chuckled and added, “Five minutes, no more.”
“If you want to draw down on me, go ahead. Otherwise, you’re the one that’s got five minutes to leave town. After that, I’ll shoot you if you draw or not.”
“You are refusing the deal?”
“I don’t make deals with scum. And there’ll be some people around here pay for hiring a killer to come into this town and threaten me. Any of you don’t want that, better convince your hired gun to apologize on your behalf.”
There was a longish silence. None of the spectators said a word.
“Don’t seem you got any takers,” said the stranger.
“One last chance to call him off,” bellowed Clauson in a flat, professional tone.
All of a sudden, it happened. Only one shot was fired, though both pistols were out.
There was a glint off metal, a pistol falling into the mud, and then only Clauson standing.
“Go,” Ben said to Nancy, and they set off at a gallop.
When he glanced over his shoulder, there was Clauson running for the livery.
Next time he checked, Clauson was on a big horse coming after them full tilt.
Chapter Ten
It was a dark night. Once away from town, it was hard to see the trail. Running horses in conditions like this was a bad idea under normal circumstances since you didn’t
know what hole your mount might step in.
But these weren’t normal circumstances. They sailed along at a full gallop for fifteen minutes or so, then both horses, especially Nancy’s mare, needed a break so they slowed to a walk.
That didn’t last long, however, because in only a minute or two they could hear Clauson coming, still full out.
They spurred on and at first seemed to gain on Clauson, but then he held even.
“His horse has got to tire sometime,” Ben said.
But every time they tried to give the horses a break, it was only a minute or so before they decided they couldn’t afford to.
Ben sensed a heavy wall of trees above them to the right of the trail and he had an idea.
“Follow me,” he said, and turned his pony up the bank. Where the trail had been off-and-on muddy, the bank was dry and solid under the horses’ feet. They rode up under the trees some distance and Ben called a halt.
“Quiet, now,” he said in a soft voice. He had his gun out, ready.
Here came Clauson, roaring by. He didn’t slow down. The drumming of hooves started to fade.
Ben sucked in a long, shaky breath and put his gun away.
“Where do we go now?” Nancy asked, in a low, uneven voice.
“Back to town,” he said. “We’ve got to have our supplies, for one thing.”
“But he’ll be coming back. Maybe we should find somewhere to hide, or just keep riding.”
“A week is a long time without food, Miss Bailey.”
“You could kill something to eat.”
“There’s not a lot of game around these parts, I’ve found. And I’d need my rifle. Hard to get close enough to shoot much with a pistol. We won’t want to be taking time for hunting in any case.”
“I don’t want to go back.”
“I don’t blame you. Neither do I until I see you safe somewhere. But that’s where our supplies are. There’s something else. If we ride on we’ll leave at least some trail, especially in mud. If we can convince Clauson we’ve eluded him and gotten away, we’ll buy ourselves some time—at least until he notices I’ve gotten my gun back. He’ll probably give up fairly quickly tonight, but try again in daylight. So we shouldn’t leave town until tomorrow night.”
“But suppose he figures out we’ve come back before we want him to? Where are we going to hide the horses?”
“That’s a good question. We’ll have to think of something.”
“But if we just wait for him to go back to town, why couldn’t we keep going tonight? We’d have a long head start on him then.”
“But no supplies, remember? And I want my rifle back.”
“Is your rifle so important?”
“Could mean the difference between life and death. So could the supplies. But we will wait here for him to give up and go back because—listen, here he comes.”
On came a rider, walking his horse. Ben got off his own horse and, gun drawn, slipped closer to the trail, counting on the dark to keep him invisible.
From behind a tree he watched for the first sign of motion in the darkness. He wanted to know it really was Clauson returning and not somebody else.
When the hoof falls were just a few yards away he thought he could make out a looming sort of moving shape. The rider did not slow down, went past. Just after, Ben stepped quickly closer to the trail and stared hard into the dark trying but failing to make out who the rider might be.
The rider pulled to a stop and Ben’s heart jammed, pounding, up his throat. He held the pistol aimed.
Whoever it was sat his horse silently, evidently listening. Ben remembered the horses nickering the night Nancy came to find him and sweat broke out on his forehead, worrying it might happen now.
He stared into the night, thought he could make out a darker than dark shape, but there was no way he could say for sure whether this was Clauson or not. Suppose the other came toward him? Should he shoot? Suppose it wasn’t Clauson?
“Git along, then,” the rider said, irritably.
Clauson. And he was going away, back to town.
Ben lowered the gun, wiped his palm on his pant leg, felt the sweat drying on his brow and temples cold in the chilly night air. He went up the bank to Nancy.
“That was him,” he whispered.
“I don’t want to go back, Mr. Gordon. I wish we could think of another way.”
“Well, we aren’t going back quite yet. We don’t want him to ride out here tomorrow morning and see the tracks up the bank and how we went straight back to town. We want him to see how we eluded him and then kept going. There’s a stony place maybe an hour further on where we can turn around without leaving an obvious trail. It’s near the railroad tracks, but not too near, as I recall. We’ll ride back along the railroad bed, where our tracks won’t be so obvious.”
They found the rocky place a little nearer than Ben had recalled, and then picked their way over hard ground to the railroad bed. Along the sides of the bed the ground was hard and dry. A expert tracker would probably have no trouble following, but Ben had a feeling that Clauson was not the kind of man likely to know how to do that.
“I still don’t like it, Mr. Gordon. I keep seeing him shoot down that gunfighter, over and over in my mind. I don’t want that to happen to you.”
“Neither do I,” Ben said. “It’s that I’m trying to avoid.”
“But it was so quick. Did you see how quick it was, Mr. Gordon?”
“I saw.”
“How would you ever be able to win a fight with a man like that?”
“I’m not as fast as either one of them, if that’s what you’re asking.”
“Oh, Mr. Gordon, I didn’t mean ...”
“To insult me? Don’t worry about it. I’ve never held myself out to anybody as a gunfighter.”
“I’m sorry, Mr. Gordon. I shouldn’t be questioning your judgment.”
“I’m sorry, too, Miss Bailey. I promised I was going to get you your property back, and so far I haven’t delivered.”
“I don’t care anymore about the store or the money. What I care about now is that you don’t get killed by that man. I don’t know what I’d do if ...” Her voice thickened.
“Well, then, we’re even,” he said. “Because I’d never forgive myself if he ever got his hands on you.”
They rode the rest of the way in silence.
Fred Sikes’ livery was about halfway along the main street, and he had property beyond the tracks as well as a livery building on the street. The tracks ran close to the rear of the building, which left him little room for a corral between, so his corral was beyond. Ben had noticed before that way out past the corral there was a broken-down shed. He didn’t know if it was empty or jammed full of hay or junk or what, but it was the only place he could think of to hide the horses.
When they came opposite Sikes’, Ben led the way to this little building and dismounted. The building turned out to be empty. Evidently it had once been a small horse barn, with a couple of stalls, and had since been converted to hay storage. But this being spring there were only scraps of hay left in it.
They put their horses in the stalls and scrounged a little hay out of the corners to feed them and hid the saddles.
“Let’s hope nobody comes here,” Ben said. “I see the horses in the corral get fed at the other end near the tracks where there are a couple of bales of screwed hay.”
“Maybe we should stay here ourselves,” she suggested.
“I was trying to decide whether it would be better if you were here with me or at the Ryans’. So far, nobody has made any connection between you or me and them. You might think one more night would be fairly safe.”
“Wherever we are, we shouldn’t be separated, Mr. Gordon. That’s the way I feel.”
“I’m hoping to get a chance to go after my rifle. It won’t make much sense for you to come then, and if you are here, you’ll be alone. At least at the Ryans’ there’ll be somebody else with you.”
�
�But you’re not going to try to get your rifle tonight, are you?”
“Probably not. The best bet will be to wait for Clauson to ride out on our trail tomorrow morning and hope Kid Clauson gets busy drinking in a saloon early. I hear he often does that. Then I will have the marshal’s office to myself.”
“Let’s stay right here and decide what to do in the morning.”
“If you can get along without the amenities. We don’t even have any water here.”
“I will get along just fine, Mr. Gordon.”
They climbed into the mow and lay down in some old dusty hay in the rear, out of sight of anyone who might come through the door.
Ben had been sure he wouldn’t sleep, but exhaustion caught up with him. He woke to Nancy shaking him tentatively by the shoulder.
“Mr. Gordon?”
He jolted upright, aware that it was bright daylight outside the dusty window high in the gable end.
“I think somebody’s outside,” she said softly.
He’d set his Remington next to him last night, and now he picked it up and scooted as quietly as he could toward the front edge of the mow.
“Hmmm,” came an unfamiliar voice from outside. Then one of the doors creaked open. “Be derned,” said the voice.
Ben was now where he could see the old man with the cane standing stooped in the doorway, mustache drooping. He was looking in perplexity at their horses.
Ben made a decision and spoke, “You Fred Sikes?” he asked.
The old man’s eyes widened and his mouth opened and he looked this way, then that, then finally up. “Oh, it’s you, is it,” he said, but Ben didn’t know whether he meant he recognized him or not.
“Hope you don’t mind us borrowing your barn,” Ben said. “We’re in a kind of a bind and need to stay out of sight until tonight. Happy to pay you for the keep.”
“Why, is that you, Miss Bailey?” the old fellow asked, squinting up at her. She now knelt next to Ben.
“It is,” she said, appearing mortified, which puzzled Ben until he thought a moment.
“It’s not what you might think,” Ben told the man. “I’m trying to keep her out of Ike Clauson’s clutches.”