by E. R. Slade
Coe pushed through to the bar, bellied up and said he’d take a beer—and had Pete Dolan been in lately?
The greasy-aproned fat man behind the bar shook his head. “Not since two days ago.”
“I’m Coe Dolan, his brother. Leave word where I could find him?”
“Yeah, he said you’d be along. He said to tell you he’s staying at the Big Time Hotel. That’s just three doors north.”
“Obliged.” Coe turned his back to the bar, leaned his elbows on it and surveyed the barroom. You couldn’t hear anything but mining talk, and a man might think to listen to it that there was no richer place on earth than Killer Ledge and its mines. Though it might strike you odd how nobody much seemed to have cash enough on hand to buy a decent set of clothes or even a square meal, or a drink—as the “square meal” mostly turned out to be.
Finishing his beer, Coe left the saloon and went along up the board sidewalk to the Big Time Hotel, which occupied a rickety little building with bullet holes in the door jamb. A brawny man gone to gray and flab sat behind the desk cleaning a pistol.
“No credit,” he said, peering into the barrel.
“Pete Dolan around?”
The fellow looked at him appraisingly. “Who’re you?”
“Coe Dolan. His brother.”
“Ain’t been here for two days.”
“Where’d he go?”
“Don’t know, but he left some stuff.”
“What?”
“Ratty carpetbag, razor, strop, extra clothes. If you’re his brother, you can take ’em. Ain’t no good to me.” The flabby man got up, laying the pistol on the desk, and stepped for a moment into a back room. He emerged with the carpetbag and put it on the desk.
Coe glanced at the desk man, then went through the bag. Aside from what the man had already mentioned, there were a couple of packs of cards—marked if Coe knew his brother—and a little bottle of blue liquid, for when Pete did doctoring. Just colored spirits, but he always claimed it was a special medicinal made up just for what ailed you.
“You don’t figure he’s comin’ back?”
The fat man shrugged. “He ain’t been around. He never said where he was going, but it don’t look to me like he planned on being more’n the day. Ain’t paid for his room past that day, either. That’s why I took the liberty. Left his razor, as you see.”
“You think something’s happened to him.”
The fat man shrugged again, didn’t say anything.
“I think so, too. Pete didn’t have all that much he could afford to leave things behind. You hang onto this a while longer. And give me a room. I’ll be back.”
A few minutes later, he stepped into the sheriff’s office. A long-legged deputy was slouched back in his chair, feet on the desk, a handful of handbills held up eight inches before his face.
“’ello,” the deputy said, and dropped the handbills to his lap, revealing a hawk nose and apparently nearsighted eyes. He peered at Coe as though trying to see him well enough to tell if he knew him.
“Howdy. Handle’s Coe Dolan. Brother’s disappeared, name of Pete Dolan. You seen anything of him, or heard anything?”
The deputy appeared to consider, running a long-fingered hand over his chin. “I can’t say I’ve heard that name. What’s he look like?”
“Kind of short, blue eyes, light brown hair, underweight, full of talk. I don’t like to run down my own brother, but he was always working an angle. He might have been selling worthless stock, or cheating at cards. I got a letter from Pete saying he had something big on, and that he wanted me in on it. I don’t know what it was. I never planned on going in with him—I’m a cowpoke myself—but he’s my brother just the same, and since I was passing up this way anyhow, I figured I’d stop and shoot the breeze a little. But he’s been missing two days.”
The deputy shook his head. “I don’t call to mind nobody that could be your brother. But then, they’s a plenty of them kinds of gents around these parts. Don’t nobody have a dime. But they all make out to have feet in the richest strike in the west, if only they could sell enough of it to get a start on minin’ it.”
“Well, if you find him, I’m at the Big Time Hotel. That’s where he was staying.”
“If he’s like you say he is, he could have easy crossed somebody and that somebody punched him full of holes.”
“That’s what I’m afraid of.”
Coe Dolan spent some time that evening drifting from bar to bar trying to hear something that would give him an idea of what had happened to his brother, but had no luck at all. He went back to the Big Time Hotel tired and ready for bed. Anything might have happened to Pete. Pete sometimes put away a good deal of red-eye, and he could have fallen down a set of back stairs or off a roof or down a well, or over a cut bank, or just onto his head in such a way that he busted his neck. It might be tomorrow, or it might be weeks before anybody found out what had happened to him. Coe couldn’t afford to hang around that long. He didn’t have a big enough stake. And he wanted to go fishing.
Still, Pete was his brother, and it wouldn’t set right with his conscience to go off not knowing what the story was.
Coe stumbled yawning up the creaky stairs—there was nobody at the desk. He found the room he’d been given, and went in.
The knotted fist caught him hard in the belly, and he doubled over, eyes watering with the pain and loss of breath.
Chapter Three
Coe pitched forward onto the floor and rolled, gasping, hearing boots trampling around him. He felt like he’d fallen off the fence into a pen full of tetchy longhorns.
Hands grabbed at him. He had his breath back and rolled lithely to his feet, going for his gun. But it wasn’t there, had fallen out somewhere on the floor. He couldn’t see too much in the dark, but then neither could the men after him.
There were two of them. He slugged one in the chest, aiming for the belly, and blinked at a blow to the head from the other fellow.
Coe swung again, calculating on chin this time, but got a forearm. Something went over with a crash—the battered chest of drawers.
Coe lowered his head and bulled for the door, but hit something solid as a stone cliff face. Hands got him by the shoulders, pushed him back hard so he shattered plaster in the wall and creaked the flimsy framing.
Dizzy, he slumped down, aware of the hands groping for him, getting him by the shirt and dragging him up.
“A light, Frank,” a deep voice said.
When the lamp was going, Coe squinted against it and through his haze at the two men.
The one referred to as Frank, holding the lamp, was short, thickset, and had small, watery eyes, like a pig watching a man out to catch him. The fellow holding him up against the wall was a skinny, tall man who you wouldn’t think had it in him to be so hard-bellied and strong-armed. His eyes were wide and sober.
“You got a reason for this?” Coe asked.
“Time for you to get on your horse and ride,” the tall man said. “You ain’t wanted hereabouts.”
Coe’s head throbbed, but he could see straight, and his knees obeyed commands once more. The tall man let him stand, then backed off a step, watching him carefully.
“Who is it doesn’t want me here? Why?”
“That ain’t no never-mind to you. Just skedaddle.”
Coe debated going at them again. His pistol had slid across the floor and lay almost under the bed. If he made a dive for it ...
He decided not to. His legs weren’t all that reliable yet. If he fouled up, these two would get more exercise, and he might not wake up until sometime tomorrow, out in a wash somewhere.
“If I don’t?” he asked.
“You won’t see morning alive,” the one called Frank said. “Me an’ Pole here’ll see to it.”
Coe rubbed the back of his head where it had crushed wall plaster. There was a lump raised. What he needed was sleep, not trouble. If it made Pole and Frank feel better, he’d as soon sleep under the stars.
<
br /> They followed him quietly downstairs and along to the livery. He took along the carpetbag belonging to his brother, and Pole gave him his gun, unloaded. They watched while he saddled and bridled his cow pony and climbed aboard. Pole slapped the animal’s flank.
“There’s many a place that’s more healthy for you Dolans than Killer Ledge,” Frank said.
Coe rode north, then northwest, found a quiet, peaceful little clump of cottonwoods on a creek bank, and laid out his bedroll. His head felt like somebody was trying to drive a railroad spike through it. He sprawled in his roll and closed his eyes.
~*~
Dawn found him splashing water in his face from the stream. He felt quite a bit better. The swelling was down slightly. The pain was only a dull throb he could mostly ignore. He got out Pete’s razor and stropped it while stream water heated in a pot. Birds flitted in the brush. The morning sun threw a glow over the land, made even the desert look promising and welcoming. He shaved and put the razor away, and got ready to leave.
For some reason, Frank and Pole wanted him away from there, and it had to do with his brother—Frank had referred to Killer Ledge as not being healthy for “you Dolans.” Had they killed Pete? If they had, why?
One thing was clear: Frank and Pole were the best lead he had. Last night before they showed up, he hadn’t had any idea at all what he could do besides just wait around and hope Pete—or his body—would appear. But it was plain Frank and Pole knew things. Why else would they want him out of town? The thing now was to ask them some questions.
He rode into Killer Ledge wary as an old maverick bull, hand resting easy on his thigh, handy to his shooting iron. Nobody came out to stop him or challenge him. He pulled up in front of the Dizzy Lizzy and went inside.
The place was practically empty, and it stank of last night’s revelry. There were a couple of diehard bums propping up the bar and arguing desultorily about who owed who a chaw of tobacco. There was a different man behind the bar. He was old and bent and looked like a broken down old mountain man from days long gone.
“Looking for a couple of gents,” Coe said. “Frank and Pole. Frank’s a squatty kind, the other’s almost a foot taller than me.”
“Yep,” the old man nodded. “Work for Bert Tower, over on the XBT.”
“Where’s that?”
“Ranch buildings are northwest of here, partway into the foothills in Freemont Valley. You ride west about five or six miles, then start northwest, and you’re riding up the valley. There ain’t but the one valley that amounts to anything.”
“Much obliged.”
Coe went and hunted up the deputy.
“I was attacked last night, driven out of town,” he said. “Two XBT men called Frank and Pole. Know them?”
“Sure I know them.” The deputy was drinking coffee. He acted like he was half awake, until Coe mentioned the names. Then he looked up sharply, with the cup partway to his lips. “You say they did what?”
“Laid for me in my hotel room. Beat my head against the wall until I couldn’t see straight, and then sent me packing. Said if I came back, they’d see I didn’t live till morning. I bedded down out along the creek in some cottonwoods.”
“And now you’re back in town.” The deputy sipped coffee, looked up with a twitch of grin on his lips. “I take it you warn’t too worried about them.”
“Sure I’m worried about them. But something’s happened to my brother. I figure they could know what. One of them said this town wasn’t healthy for us Dolans.”
“You’re certain it was Frank and Pole?”
“Short fat fellow with squinty bad eyes, tall skinny rail strong as a longhorn steer.”
The deputy nodded, looking into his steaming mug of coffee.
“Funny,” he said, “I know both them boys right well. Both of ’em’s hardworking, peaceable types. I used to ramrod the XBT a few years back. Those two was there then. I didn’t want no better men. It don’t hardly figure they’d be mixed up with somebody like your brother, or be laying for you in your room.” He looked keenly at Coe, challenging him to say something to explain the discrepancy.
“Well, all I know is what happened. I came to ask you to side me when I ride out to the XBT. Maybe they got a good reason, or maybe they’re scared of something, or maybe something else. But I aim to locate them and find out. It’ll go much better with you along.”
The deputy’s mouth twitched sideways in mild irritation. “This better turn out to be fact, Dolan. If it ain’t, I’m goin’ to run you out of town.”
~*~
“Where you from, Dolan?” the deputy asked as they rode along.
“Originally from Connecticut. But me and Pete were only four or five years old then. Pa moved out to New Mexico for his health, then was killed by Indians. Pete and me lit out. I was twelve, he was thirteen. Pete got hooked up with an old geezer from Tennessee who sold patent medicines. A rancher took me in. Nice enough folks. I left when I was twenty to punch cattle for another spread. I been drifting around ever since. Pete, he never took to work much, I guess. He’d rather spend his time trying to find ways to live high off the hog without sweating for it. I reckon that old Tennessee Tupper learned Pete a trick or two with cards and in other ways. I run into Pete every now and then. He writes letters when he thinks he’s got a good thing going. Always wants me to come in with him. Half the time, the whole thing’s fallen through by the time I get there anyway, but even when he’s still working a ‘lode,’ as he likes to call it, I never could see getting mixed up in it. Maybe that rancher’s God-fearing ways left their mark, I guess.”
“Huh,” was all the deputy said, as if he didn’t believe it really.
“You got a handle?”
“Sam Underwood.”
“You all the law there is in Killer Ledge?”
Underwood looked at him, chewing on a stalk of grass he’d pulled somewhere.
“No. Mulberry’s the sheriff. But he’s out huntin’ road agents. I reckon he’ll be back by ’n’ by.”
~*~
It was not too long after noon when they raised the ranch buildings. An old poke working on a saddle in the shade of a big cottonwood told them that most all the boys were with the boss over on the northwest ranges, building some stock pens.
Coe and the deputy stopped and ate an offered lunch with the old hand, in the empty bunkhouse.
“Some of the boys go to town last night?” Underwood asked.
The old hand eyed Underwood with his clear greenish eyes, his leathery cheeks flopping like old boot tops as he munched.
“There been some trouble, has there?” he asked.
“In a way of speakin’.”
“Yeah, couple of ’em went. Frank Gordon and Pole Turner. Didn’t get in till near dawn. They shore was bleary-eyed this mornin’!” He grinned slowly showing a scattering of nicotine-stained teeth and a mash of food. His eyes were watchful and unblinking, but ready to laugh, as though they were all in on a joke on somebody and waiting for him to find it out.
“That so?” Underwood said noncommittally, and forked beans.
“They say anything to anybody what they did in town?” Coe asked.
“No. They was more closemouthed than dogs that’s wise to porkypines and lookin’ at another.” The old hand boomed out in a long laugh that shook the building, and slapped his knee two or three times.
A while later, as they left the ranch buildings behind, Coe said, “They were in town, anyway.”
“That don’t prove anythin’.” Underwood was curt.
They rode up and down bigger and bigger hills for about an hour, and then looked down a thick-grassed slope and saw a bunch of men driving stakes and splitting rails. Some others were coming over the brow of the far hill towing limber, straight fir poles.
Underwood led the way down, tugging rein beside a beefy man astride a big gray gelding. The man seemed surprised to see Underwood, and for a moment Coe thought he saw fear in the dark eyes. But then the moment was
past and the beefy man greeted them heartily, grinning.
“How d’you like my new brandin’ corrals, Sam? Think they’ll hold anything?”
“Not for long, Bert,” Underwood returned, also grinning. “Unless you’re running milk cows these days.”
“Long way to haul poles, so we’re making do as light as we can. But you know damn well I don’t run milk cows. What’s on your mind, Sam? Lookin’ for votes? You got mine. Most of the boys here, too, I guess. Old Mulberry’s okay, but he’s getting ready for pasture. You ought to be able to lick him easy, come the next election.”
“That ain’t what I’m here about,” Underwood said uncomfortably. “Wonder if we could talk to a couple of your boys. Frank Gordon, Pole Turner.”
Coe was sure he saw something move behind Bert Tower’s eyes, like a fox cornered in the shadows of a chicken house.
“They done something?”
“Just like to ask ’em a couple of questions.”
“Go ahead.” He waved at the men pulling poles down the hill. “Coming along now.”
They rode to meet the men, and Underwood held Gordon and Turner back while the others went on. The two men eyed Coe in different ways. Turner glanced at him distantly, as though Coe Dolan was a complete stranger who meant nothing to him whatever, while Gordon’s little eyes darted all around, looking for a way out.