The E.R. Slade Western Omnibus No.1

by E. R. Slade

  So, all there was left to do was find a way to get into Elton’s office safe. Tower decided he would do this job personally. If he hired it done, the fact might return to haunt him, and he’d be right back where he started—or rather, worse off. The hired thief might well open and read Justin’s account, and then he’d be in that man’s hands, the way he was in Justin’s.

  “Easy does it, Bert,” Underwood said. “Hard on the horses.”

  Tower realized he’d been unconsciously nudging more and more speed into his mount, so much so that Underwood, leading the animal carrying the bodies, had been having trouble keeping up.

  Chapter Fifteen

  By noon, Coe had found the shortcut trail, and fairly well established in his own mind that Tower had used it to get behind the escapees, and after shooting them had used it to circle back and ride down the main trail, as though catching up after getting lost.

  Coe had been left the remains of the turkey, and he cleaned that up for lunch. Then he went to check more carefully into another thing he’d found: the place where he thought Justin might have hidden with his horse while they searched in the night.

  In the crevice in the rocks he found horse dung, and a couple of horse hairs, one reddish brown, the other white.

  He went back to the trail and speculated which way Justin might have gone. So much depended on the exact relationship he had with Tower, and how much which of them was involved in what. He had so little in the way of facts to go on.

  He ended up taking a guess. He estimated that Justin wouldn’t likely feel a necessity to make for the border. He almost certainly knew that the two men were dead. That was evidently what he’d come out here to make sure of himself. But he hadn’t ended up actually doing the killing. Why would he feel forced to leave? And if he didn’t leave, where else would he go but the XBT?

  Therefore, Coe set off to examine the trail going north.

  ~*~

  The town looked and sounded like a battle zone. The street was littered with trash and shell casings, and the facades of a couple of the saloons—the Fine and Dandy and the Dizzy Lizzy—were splintered with bullet holes. The undertaker’s buckboard held four coffins, nailed closed.

  There was a difference in the people on the street. There were fewer women and children than usual, and those there were didn’t amble along looking in shop windows, but hurried fearfully about what was probably essential business. The older and less stalwart of the men, such as shopkeepers and businessmen, were less in evidence, and the ones that did appear on the street were also about their business in a hurry. The only people who didn’t seem bothered by the dangers of walking the street in a lawless town were the drunks, the drifters, the deadbeats, a few cowhands, the mining stock hustlers, the gunfighters and men who fancied themselves gunfighters, and those who were taking this opportunity while the law was elsewhere to even up scores and settle differences of opinion and finalize disagreements with knives, fists and firearms, mostly firearms.

  When he and Underwood rode in, Tower could hear gunfire in two different places in town. There was a lot of shouting, and partway up the street people were exploding away from a saloon’s batwings as somebody came hurtling out under the influence of the saloonkeeper’s buckshot. After the man had slumped into stillness, those nearby crowded around closely, and jostled each other for a look.

  “Get these over to Pritchard,” Underwood said irritably, indicating the corpses they’d hauled in, now loaded with flies. “I’ve got work to do.”

  Tower led the horseload of dead meat over to the undertaker’s. Pritchard was just climbing up onto the seat of his coffin-loaded buckboard.

  “Where’d they come from?” Pritchard demanded. He was a short, grizzled little man with gray-flecked black whiskers, a bottle always settled comfortably in his belt—when it wasn’t to his lips—and an irascible manner.

  “Them’s two of my hands, got kilt up in the mountains. Pole Turner, Frank Gordon. The deputy wants you to lay ’em out. I’ll pay. Give ’em decent coffins.”

  “By God, Tower,” Pritchard rasped, “you could keep two men like me in business. You havin’ a war out to the XBT or somethin’?” He fixed Tower with a burning fierce glare.

  “Nothin’ like that. Just some trouble with thieves and lowlifes. Deputy thinks these two might have held up the stage, but he ain’t sure. He’s got plenty to keep him busy for a while I guess. I’ll just leave this here horseload of meat hitched at your rail. I got to go help the deputy with his town. Who all have you got there?”

  “What, them?” Pritchard waved his whiskey bottle at the pine boxes on his wagon, and then took a swig. “Them’s just nobodies got themselves kilt one way or t’other. One’s called Jake, and there’s Harry and Ezra and Zeke. Don’t know but Zeke’s last name, which they tell me is Conners. I never get there till it’s all over. And so all I see is how the man died, not why. Unless he’s got a friend or relative payin’ for the funeral, I don’t mostly get the last name. If it’s on the town, like these fellows, might as well be Injuns for all I know about ‘em. The priest or that drunk of a minister’ll mumble over ’em some, but if you want my opinion it won’t do no good. They was just drifters and deadbeats anyway, probably every one kilt his share of folks in his time. They’ll burn, is my opinion.” He took another swig and slapped the reins on his tired old team, and they ambled off down the street, the buckboard creaking.

  Tower caught up with Underwood at the sheriff’s office, where Underwood was just collaring a couple of sulky-looking miners into jail.

  “You want to deputize me, I’ll help,” he said to Underwood.

  “All right.”

  Underwood opened the desk drawer, fished out a badge and tossed it to him. “You know how to wear it, and what goes with it,” he said, and led the way out the door.

  Twice in the process of getting the town calmed down and the rowdies jailed Tower passed the door of Elton’s office. He could see Elton sitting behind his desk inside both times, looking important while he talked to clients. Behind him stood the safe, a squat solid little box bolted to the floor. The door of it was closed.

  He spent a lot of time that day trying to figure out how to get into the safe. At first he thought he would try going in to talk to Elton as though on business—discuss buying that section on his southern border that used to be the Triple R before it went broke and was bought up by a land company Elton represented. He would try to get Elton to open the safe on some pretense, and then attempt to get him busy with his back turned or out of the office, when he would then be able to go through the contents of it. But the trouble was, he knew Elton to be a very careful man, besides an honest one, and it would be difficult to get him to leave anyone alone in the office with the safe open.

  After puzzling it over for most of the afternoon, he gave the idea up totally and decided the best thing would be to wait for dark. He would break in and steal the whole safe, and open it later at his leisure. Doing it that way had one other advantage: it made it a lot less clear who had done the theft and why, since plenty would be missing besides the obscure sealed envelope being held for a renegade. And with so much already to think about, the theft should get the most cursory kind of investigation by Underwood, shouldn’t it? —in fact, he might even delegate it to Deputy Tower.

  ~*~

  The light was nearly gone by the time Coe finally untangled the snarl of Justin’s trail. The man was an expert at throwing off pursuit.

  He’d located fairly easily the spot where Justin had made camp about a mile north along the trail from the place where the killings had occurred. He found more horsehairs, both reddish-brown and white, and also tan, and he found the hip hollow where Justin had slept. The trail was easy to follow from there for about half a mile, where it disappeared on a section of ledge. I took an hour to discover that Justin had jumped his horse down a seven-foot step to another ledge, and then waded half a mile across a pond to a large area of bare rock, and from there had ridden up
a stony incline leaving a total of two scuff marks.

  Coe picked up the faint trail again at the top of the ridge, and paused there to breathe his horse, get the lay of the land, and ponder why Justin was working so hard to be difficult to follow. None the wiser, he followed the tracks west up the rear of the ridge to a point where the tracks simply stopped, then he worked back to where the doubling back stopped. It was next to a copse, into which Justin had evidently jumped his horse, and then from there jumped from bare piece of rock to bare piece of rock down a very steep incline to another pond, which he stayed in until it became a trickle of a stream, which he followed for five more miles down the most slick and dangerous slides and falls, all the way to the ravine at the bottom, where there was another pond.

  The tracks finally emerged clear and strong on needled ground after climbing a tricky jumble of rocks on the far shore of the pond. It was at this point that darkness fell.

  Coe was weary, but satisfied that he still had the trail. He thought that Justin would probably leave his tricky shenanigans at this and make for the ranch from here, or wherever he was going. Coe determined that in the morning he would set off first thing on the trail, and it was his guess that the track would lead into the XBT dooryard by mid afternoon at the latest. It had finally occurred to him that Justin might have been as interested in buying time as in throwing off pursuit. But buying time for what? Settling things with Tower?

  ~*~

  The sun set on a much more peaceable town than it had risen over. You couldn’t say that everything was exactly back to normal, since one saloon had closed for repairs, and there were still two killers loose somewhere. But they might have left town sometime earlier, and would probably be gone by morning in any case. The town could begin recuperating now, and the old topics of conversation, like whether to build the new school at the north or the south end of town, could go on as before.

  Tower and Underwood ate supper at the Estes, who kept talking about how glad they were that everything was quieted down, and decent folks could go out in the street without being shot. Estes was full of his own tale of going along to the Emporium in the middle of town, and how close he’d come to getting killed by stray bullets from a gunfight. The event had impressed him greatly. Tower thought he was a sniveling easterner who hadn’t any business out here, but he didn’t say so. He was busy keeping up his good image as the public-spirited citizen who was on hand to help the deputy clean up a town gone wild. He might need people thinking well of him yet, if folks started talking too much about the killings that had been associated with him or his ranch.

  Finally the meal was over and he stood up.

  “Guess I’d better be getting on for home,” he said. “Mighty good meal, Ma’am.”

  “Thank you,” Mrs. Estes said, glowing. “Are you sure you have to leave so soon? Why don’t you just stay and relax, go home in the morning? We have an extra room.”

  “No thanks. I’ve been away too long as it is.”

  “I’ve got to keep the lid on, I guess,” Underwood said. “If I don’t make a point of being out and around with my eyes peeled, they’ll likely think I’ve left town again, or I’m too tired to stay up and have gone to bed.”

  They both went out, and Tower handed over the deputy badge.

  “You’ve got it now. Don’t hesitate to ask if you need help again.”

  “Thanks, Bert,” Underwood said and went off up the street. Tower let him get lost in the dark and the bustle and hustle, and then went along to the building Elton’s office was in, found it dark and locked. Upon checking, he discovered a side window that opened on an alley. It, too, was locked, but when there wasn’t anybody nearby to hear he smashed the glass, and after carefully removing the shards all around the opening, climbed in.

  Once inside, he listened a while, to see if anyone had noticed anything, but the distant tinkle of pianos, occasional shouts of laughter and anger went on as before. People sometimes went by outside the windows, but the curtains were drawn and there was almost no light at all inside the office.

  He first went and tried the handle of the safe, found it locked of course, and then examined the bolts holding the safe to the floor. He would need a wrench. Then the question was going to be how to get it out of here. It was not very large as safes went, but it was large enough to be very heavy for one man to maneuver around, much less carry out in his arms.

  He found the rear door led into the inner office, and then another door led from there into a hallway, which in turn ended at a rear door to the building. This door he was able to unlock with a key that hung on a nail just inside and to the left of it. The area behind the building was bare dirt, and beyond lay the open desert, with scrub growth mere shadows in the moonlight. He went out and looked around. The neighboring buildings were dark and silent.

  Tower scratched his chin, and then hiked along the rears of the buildings until he came to the blacksmith’s shop, where he found the back door opened easily. He hunted through the tool boxes, trying not to clank the heavy iron tools too loudly, until he came up with three different wrenches, one of which he thought would fit. He also took a ten pound sledge, and stuck a couple of cold chisels in a back pocket. Then he caught sight of a pair of short cedar-post offcuts in a corner, which the blacksmith might perhaps use as chocks when working on wagons and buckboards. With these under his left arm, and the wrenches and sledge in his right hand, he returned to the lawyer’s office and set to work with the wrenches on the nuts of the bolts holding the safe to the floor. It wasn’t long before he had them all off and the safe loose.

  He experimented with the weight of the safe by tipping it. The thing was plenty heavy all right, but he’d manage. He laid the two cedar rounds about a foot apart on the floor next to the safe, and then carefully let the thing down onto them on its side. Inside things clattered faintly. If there was gold in the safe, so much the better, since that would create a strong motive for this robbery.

  The safe rolled without too much effort on the two rollers. As one emerged from the rear, he moved it under the front, and thus got the safe to the rear door without incident or hard work. He tipped it end over end down the two steps to the ground, and then closed the door and looked around.

  All was quiet. Nobody noticing what he was up to. Nobody had seen him at all since he left the street to go into the alley and through the window into the lawyer’s office.

  He managed to get to the livery without being seen, and slipped his horse out leaving payment on an empty hogshead that did for a desk in the livery office. Leading his mount, he circled around well away from town until he was at the rear of the lawyer’s. Here he backed his horse up to the safe, threw a loop around it, and set his spurs.

  It was hard going this way, and after twenty yards or so, he pulled up. Behind the neighboring lumber yard there was a pile of split and battered old boards. He chose one that was fairly wide and returned to the safe. After some effort he got the safe on top of the board, onto which he tied the end of his manila. With the other end around his saddle pommel, he once again set his spurs. This time it was easier going, and with a few rest stops, during which he sweated in the desert cool night listening for pursuit, he reached a point near a mile from town, where the sounds of it were quite faint and indistinct.

  He let his lathered mount crop the sparse grass among the cactuses while he bent over the safe with the cold chisel and sledge. The safe was nothing special. It was old, for one thing, and the hinges were worn. Elton had probably had it since starting his practice thirty or more years before, and never thought of replacing it because he’d come to take it for granted. Tower had it open in ten minutes.

  There was indeed gold in the safe, three small sacks of coins. There were various envelopes of papers, such as deeds, wills, and powers of attorney. Tower shuffled through them by match light, until he found a plain brown envelope with the words, “Justin. To be opened in the event of his death or disappearance.” It was sealed in two places. One se
al had his initials marked in it crudely by hand. The other was the lawyer’s own neat seal, with his initials and a few words in some foreign language, Latin probably, around the edge.

  Tower hefted it, felt the form of his watch inside, and lifted his Stetson to wipe his brow, grinning in the dark.

  The question was, what should he take, and what should he leave behind?

  Bert Tower surveyed the array of papers and valuables he’d removed from the safe. If he took only the envelope of interest to him, it would be plain that the thief was connected in some way with Justin. Justin might talk himself—if he got the chance—or perhaps not. But the lawyer surely would. This he’d already thought out, and as a result had planned to remove all or part of the contents of the safe.

  Yet, taking along deeds and powers of attorney and who knew what else would surely set off a massive search, if not by Underwood, then by the involved citizens themselves. A vigilante kind of effort. A lot of money and power was tied up in Elton’s practice, and making off with the instruments of that power would be sure to stir up a hornet’s nest, a problem he didn’t need. And killing Elton would only make the problem worse.

  So instead, he ended up leaving behind all the papers, and doing without the possible theft motives they implied, and just took the gold. That made the motive plain and clear. If one envelope from the papers was missing, well, that might be expected, what with the papers left scattered around on the ground helter-skelter. Underwood and everyone else would assume the robbery was for the gold, and though that might be lumped in with the holdups, it still didn’t tell Underwood who had done the job.

  Of course, if the thefts were all thought to be the work of one gang, it would remove suspicion from Turner and Gordon. That might be good or bad, depending on various things, but Tower figured that take it all around, making the theft appear to be motivated by the gold was by far the best bet.