The E.R. Slade Western Omnibus No.1

by E. R. Slade

  Tower could hear the beat of hooves very close now. All this had to be done very quickly.

  “After the service,” he prompted Turner.

  “He and Maria got in the buckboard and went home. He never went to see no lawyer.”

  “If you’re lying to me, I’ll kill you,” Tower warned.

  “Why should I lie?” Turner looked and sounded harried.

  Tower left Turner and crossed the trail, drawing fire but ignoring it, to where Frank was hunkered down behind the bole of a tree.

  “I thought I heard Pole talkin’ to somebody,” Frank said, after getting over the initial shock of seeing Tower here. He placed a couple of answering shots.

  “Who was the lawyer Justin went to see?”

  “He didn’t. He just went to church.”

  Tower decided they were telling the truth. He knew everything they could tell him. There was no further need for them to be around as a risk.

  Tower backed off two steps and Frank just stared up the barrel of Tower’s .45.

  “What?” he started to ask, and it was as far as he got.

  “See you in hell,” Tower said without any particular feeling, and pulled the trigger, blowing away a good portion of Frank’s head.

  Tower recrossed to Turner, hearing shouts from Underwood and Dolan, approaching from behind Justin.

  “What was ...?” Turner asked, then stopped, jaw dropping as he looked into Tower’s pistol barrel.

  “Go like a man and don’t scream,” Tower said laconically, and killed him with one shot through the heart.

  Tower backed away, found his horse, and got aboard, riding off along the shortcut trail.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Coe leaped from his horse and dove for the cover of the trees as the nearest of the gunmen began shooting at him. He fired back and shifted position. By this time the fellow shooting at him had stopped and in the explosion-hammered air, over the ringing in his ears, Coe heard brush shaking and pebbles rolling. Underwood, who had followed into the trees on Coe’s heels, was now at his elbow. He said, “Gettin’ away,” softly, and left cover to grab his horse and quiet it.

  Coe emerged from the trees also and stood still, listening. He heard nothing. He got on his dun and led the way in the direction he thought he’d last heard sound from. They wound up jammed in a thicket and had to back out.

  There had been no more gunfire. Of the three guns, maybe four, only one had been on this side, so far as he could tell. That might mean Turner and Gordon were among those on the other side, if they were here at all. Who could tell, maybe it was somebody else’s war altogether.

  “Let’s circle around, see who’s on the other side,” Underwood suggested in a low voice.

  “I was thinking the same thing. What’s the best way, do you think?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe uphill of the trail. Better position, if it comes to more shooting and we’re in it.”

  They proceeded to pick their way carefully through the thickets and around the outcroppings, and in a short while they were looking down at the dim outline of the trail from an opening in some jumbled rocks.

  Coe drew up and pointed. Underwood followed the direction with his eyes and nodded. They dismounted and crept carefully down to the edge of the trail.

  Coe knelt by Turner a moment, feeling for a pulse, fairly sure it was useless even before he did it. Then they looked around a bit, found Frank Gordon with part of his head missing, and Underwood said, “Aw, now,” and rubbed his eyes.

  “Too late,” Coe said. He gestured futilely with a hand, let it fall loosely at his side. “I guess we’re just too late.”

  ~*~

  They spent some time thrashing around in the undergrowth hoping to flush out the other gunman, or men, but got nothing for their trouble but a lot of scratches and twigs in the eye. They quit when Tower appeared.

  “Just where the hell’ve you been?” Underwood demanded shortly. The killings had shaken him and had irritated him as well.

  “Got lost,” Tower said. “I got off on some other trail. Took me a while to get straightened out where I was, and I still don’t know how I got here, exactly. What happened? I don’t hear no more shooting.”

  Coe told him what they’d found.

  Tower whistled. “Who’s the other gunman, you think, the one you flushed?” he asked, as they went along the trail to look at the bodies again.

  “I don’t know,” Underwood said. “Got no way of tellin’.”

  “Maybe it was somebody they tried stealing horses from,” Coe suggested. “We only found one of their horses.”

  Tower looked over the bodies, and then puffed out a long breath. “They was good men, workin’ for me. Funny, it don’t hardly seem likely somehow they was crooks, but now we’ll never know for sure just what they was up to.”

  “They ran for some reason,” Coe pointed out. “Assault in the form they assaulted me doesn’t amount to a whole lot of a charge in these parts. I can’t see where they’d be worried much about it. A couple of days to cool off is the way that’s usually treated, unless somebody dies out of it. They were thinking the arrest was for something else, something a lot more serious. Like holding up the stage, maybe murder.”

  “Killing your brother,” Tower said. “You keep sayin’ that. But, as I say, I just can’t figure ’em that way; but then you never know, and I could be wrong. I guess all we can do is get some sleep. In the morning we’ll have to take these bodies back to town.”

  “Tomorrow in daylight we ought to see if we can tell more about what happened,” Coe said. “Whoever shot them did it up close. A lot closer than the fellow we flushed was sitting. You’ve got to be inside a couple of feet or so to blow away the side of man’s head like that.”

  “Well, we can tell more in the morning, like you said,” Tower said easily. “I vote we go back and get some sleep.”

  “We’ll never find our camp in the dark,” Underwood said. “At least I won’t.”

  “It’d be easier, and maybe smarter, too, to sack out right here on the ground,” Coe said. “In case somebody comes back.”

  “I think I could find the camp,” Tower said. “But you’re probably right we ought to stay here. It ain’t that cold we really need our rolls.”

  Coe tried to make out Tower’s face in the darkness. What he could see of it told him very little. The facts, and the contradictions, told him more. Here was a man who claimed he’d gotten lost by getting off a broad trail the horses were following mostly on their own, who said very confidently that he thought he could get them back to their camp. A man who said he wasn’t even sure how he’d gotten here. Tower was much more relaxed of a sudden. The deaths of his hands seemed to take away his edginess, make him want to go peacefully to sleep. He sounded like he was feeling easy with his companions for the first time.

  Coe went back to thinking about the two dead men. They had been his lead. Now they were gone, what did he have?

  Damn little. But he still had to find out what had happened to Pete.

  Ought to just figure Pete’d bought himself trouble he deserved and forget him, he told himself, tired of all this.

  But Coe knew his conscience would never let him rest until he knew exactly what had happened to Pete—and if somebody had killed him, seen that the killer was caught.

  He lay down in the trees not too far from the dead men, hearing the shifting of the others as they tried to get comfortable, propped his head on his saddle, and turned the thing over and over in his mind, until senseless things began to make sense, and he was asleep.

  ~*~

  Buckshot Justin waited until the three men had stopped running around like ants on a kicked-over hill, and he could hear the snores. Then he stepped out of the narrow little crevice in the rock into which he’d backed his horse, and listened intently to be sure of what he was hearing. He adjusted his Stetson and led his horse carefully away giving the three sleeping men a wide berth.

  He checked on the two bodie
s, just to be certain they were bodies, though from what he’d heard of the conversations between Dolan, Tower and Underwood he hadn’t much doubt. He searched pockets, found nothing of any interest to him, and then went off north along the trail, leading his horse slowly and with care, until he was fairly sure ordinary riding would not be heard, and then swung aboard and cantered away.

  He rode for perhaps a mile, and then found a handy little sheltered spot off the trail to picket his horse and spread his roll. He built a smoke, a luxury he hadn’t allowed himself since setting out on this trip, and enjoyed it right to the last puff. Then he turned in, smiling, fairly sure it was Tower who’d gotten the two runners. Old Tower had some savvy, anyway.

  In the morning, Friday now, Coe remembered, he and Underwood were up at the crack of dawn. Tower seemed more sound asleep than Coe had seen him before. He and Underwood each went off hunting, and Underwood came back with another turkey. The sun was getting warm by this time, and Tower had a fire going.

  “Wish we had some coffee,” he said. “But I guess we’ll be tastin’ it soon enough now.”

  Underwood handed the bird to Coe. “I shot it, you clean it.”

  They didn’t say much while Coe readied the bird, and Tower cooked it. Coe kept watching Tower, trying to figure him out. It was clear enough that Tower was a changed man. He was downright cheerful and friendly. Underwood was in a fouler temper than before, but even so he couldn’t manage to pick a fight with Tower, who treated him with friendly understanding. Coe realized that if this was all he’d seen of Tower, he would have had a hard time believing anything evil of him. He seemed completely open and friendly and ready to help. The image of the best sort of rancher, a man who cared about his friends and his community, and was always ready to lend a hand to anyone in trouble. Was this his usual way? If so, Coe could understand why Underwood was reluctant to think he was mixed up in anything crooked.

  “Good bird,” Coe commented, as they bit into their portions. “Mighty tasty.”

  “Nice of you to come across another turkey,” Tower told Underwood. “A lot better than a rabbit.”

  “Wish we hadn’t lost that damned venison to that damned cat,” Underwood grunted.

  They ate a while. Then Coe said, “Those two were my lead. With them dead the only thing left for me to do is hunt the one who killed them. It isn’t much, but it’s all there is, as far as I can see. It’s got me puzzled who did it, too. It must have been that fourth gun we heard, because the other man, who was shooting at them from a distance, never got near enough to them, before they were silenced, to do it. So there’s somebody else, looks like. Anyway, I don’t know about you two, but I’m going to stay around and hunt the killer.”

  “I cain’t hang around here no more,” Underwood said shortly. “I’ve got a town to look after.”

  “That place, lively as it is, must have had a high old time with you away,” Tower said. “It’ll be a mess to clean up, most likely. If you need any help, I’ll be glad to lend some. Personally.”

  “I can handle it,” Underwood snapped.

  Coe helped them load the bodies onto the one horse they’d found. It was a gruesome and unpleasant job, but it didn’t dampen Tower’s spirits. They took a few minutes to look for tracks, but most of the ground was rocky, and tracks were few and far between, and inconclusive, at least in the immediate area.

  “Well, we’re ready to light out for town, I guess,” Tower said, checking the ropes tying the bodies onto the horse.

  Underwood said nothing at all, as he got aboard his horse and led the way off north along the trail.

  Coe watched them out of sight, and then began exploring the area very thoroughly.

  What he had told Underwood and Tower didn’t reveal all of his thinking. He’d kept quiet his strong suspicion that Tower had killed his two hands. It was the most likely explanation, and fit all the known facts perfectly. Tower getting “lost” during the time it had happened; the fourth gun, when otherwise there had been only three, the drastic change in Tower’s attitude.

  The reason Coe had not confronted Tower with his suspicions was that it seemed absolutely futile. Tower would play the hard-done-by, good-natured friend, and nothing would be accomplished besides warning Tower that he was suspected. Better let him think he was in the clear until some other things Coe had on his mind could be followed up on.

  One of these other things was that he figured the man who had managed to get away was more than just some fellow the escapees had tried to steal a horse from. It was Coe’s guess that the man was connected with the stage holdup, and with Tower in some way, and had either been told by Tower to come out here and help hunt down and kill the men, or had come on his own, because he had an interest in the thing. And the man Coe thought most likely to fit this mold was Buckshot Justin.

  However, since he could not be sure it was Justin, or that, if it was Justin, he would return to the XBT, Coe had elected to stay behind hunting him down. But as he searched the ground around the section of the trail where the shooting had occurred in ever-widening circles, the lack of evidence was not encouraging.

  ~*~

  Bert Tower hadn’t even realized he was jauntily whistling a tune until Underwood’s irritated voice told him to cut it out.

  “You sure are tetchy, Sam. There ain’t no need.”

  “I got three murders on my hands, one the sheriff, and ninety-six thousand dollars worth of gold missing, and I’m riding into a town that’ll be in a commotion like the fire pits in hell, and you say there ain’t no need for me to be tetchy. How you talk. What’s got into you, Bert? How come these boys of yours turnin’ up dead makes you so dad-blamed happy?”

  “That don’t make me happy, but havin’ the whole thing settled one way or the other does.”

  “Ain’t nothin’ settled.”

  “Well, if Dolan’s right, and they did hold up the stage, then it is all settled, because what can you do? You cain’t arrest ’em, or question ’em, or hang ’em. If they buried the gold someplace, it ain’t likely you’ll ever find it, or anybody else.”

  “Well, that’s so. But you keep sayin’ you don’t think they could have had anythin’ to do with it.”

  “I say that, and I mean it. But just the same, the facts speak for themselves, and maybe Dolan’s right that there’s a better reason why they run off than an assault charge. It do seem likely. And from what I know of them boys, I never would have figured them to run off, never would have figured there’d be any reason they would. But the fact is, I was wrong. So what I think about them don’t mean much, maybe.”

  “I didn’t think they’d run, either,” Underwood said tentatively. “That’s why I didn’t put a gun on them. Besides, I never had to point a gun at any man I called a friend before.”

  “Hell, is that what’s eatin’ you, Sam? Don’t let it. You done the same’s I woulda done.”

  Underwood hunched his shoulders up and down, as though he was loosening up and getting rid of a burden. He sat up a little straighter.

  “Look, Bert,” Underwood said, “there’s something I got to ask you. I’m going to ask it straight out, man to man, and I want you to answer straight out, the truth.”

  He looked sidelong at Tower, and Tower wondered what the man had on his mind.

  “Dolan seems to think you’re mixed up in this thing somehow, that you’re involved in what happened to his brother, and this holdup business. I gotta know, honest and straight, is there any truth in it at all?”

  Underwood didn’t do more than take a glance at him, and then look off ahead as though interested in something important out there.

  “Sam, I could take offense that an old friend like you would even ask a question like that, but I won’t. You’re just doin’ your job the best you can, and things ain’t easy right now, and it ain’t too clear just what has been going on. After all, if Turner and Gordon could be mixed up in it, why, most anybody could be, even Bert Tower. The answer is no, I ain’t mixed up in any
of it. I never even met this brother of Coe Dolan’s, Pete was it? And what do I need to hold up stages for, when I got a fine ranch to do for me? You know my place makes the most money of about any in the Territory, for the investment. It’s good range, good water in any kind of season, in good years and bad, and all you got to do is look at the place to know I’m prosperin’. Do I look like a man that’s needin’ to hold up stages to make ends meet?”

  “I’m sorry I asked,” Underwood said, sounding miserable. “I should know better than that. But it’s like you said. I just can’t figure anything now. Nothing is plain and clear.”

  The conversation drifted from there into fruitless speculations about where Turner and Gordon might have stashed the gold, if they had held up the stage. Tower kept up his end, but his mind was full of his own plans for when they reached town.

  The thing that had him over the hump and riding easy down the far side was that he figured it was all but over for Justin. And once Justin was out of the way, Coe Dolan could look for his brother to his heart’s content, and there wouldn’t be a damned thing to worry about. He could even offer to help Dolan.

  The thing was, he’d figured out Justin’s scheme. Of course Justin hadn’t gone to see the lawyer at his home or office, because he was smart enough to see that he’d be followed on any trip to town. All that was necessary was for him to be seen in good health by the lawyer. They wouldn’t have to speak to each other. So, the arrangement must be that as long as the lawyer saw him in church every Sunday, all was well.

  That made it simple. He knew Elton, who represented mining interests and was usually in on big land deals, was a devout Catholic, and was always in church on Sunday. Elton was the man to try. It could still be one of the other six lawyers in town, but he was quite sure none of them was a churchgoer, and unlikely to become one for the fee Justin would pay him to hold onto a sealed document. Also, Elton would be a good choice from Justin’s point of view because he was known as a very ethical man, and wouldn’t be likely to open the thing to see what was in it until his instructions told him to. His account of how the evidence came into his hands would be believed, if it came to that.