by E. R. Slade
When he left, he rode north, joined the stage road to Beavertail, and rode it until he was on ground that didn’t show tracks well. Then he swung in a broad arc across the open desert towards the Calicoes, and then south. He rode into the XBT dooryard in the early hours of the morning. He rubbed down his horse, and went directly to his bedroom, where he opened the envelope.
The account was in Justin’s own scraggly handwriting. It was three pages long, and right to the point. It described how Justin had happened along, thinking to bum something to eat from the cabin’s owner, if there was one, and how he’d overheard angry voices, and then shots, a man screaming as he died.
At this point Tower’s face twisted in irritation. It hadn’t happened that way at all. There hadn’t been any argument. Dolan hadn’t said a word. There hadn’t been time. And he’d died without making a sound. He was alive one second, dead the next. No screaming.
But Justin’s embellishments made a better story, and would be more impressive in court.
He went on reading. Justin told how he’d backed into the bushes when he saw the door open, and three men come barging out. He described the men in great detail, and it was quite plain who he was talking about. He said after the three killers left, he went in to see who had been killed, found the man known as Pete Dolan lying dead in his own blood.
Actually, there was never much blood when a man died instantly, since his heart stopped pumping; but a lot of blood was more impressive and went with the screaming of the dying man.
But Justin was at least frank enough about his own motives. He said straight out that he’d never been good at working for wages in his life, and therefore lived by hunting bounties and rewards of one kind or another. Here he saw a golden opportunity. The way he looked at it was, if the killers wanted to be honest and own up, they could do it at any time, that it wasn’t as if he could stop them. He said all he was doing was making them pay for their sins. He thought what he was doing might even be good for the killers’ souls, and he might be an instrument of God. But, however that was, he realized that, as for himself, his motive was greed and laziness, pure and simple, and he wasn’t going to try to hide it. He wanted money, and so threatened to turn in Tower if he didn’t come across with some.
Tower glowered, fist clenched, at the papers in his hand. It galled him to think some no-good renegade had the nerve to blackmail him over the killing of another worthless no-good like Dolan, who had deserved what he got, and was no better than a rabid dog.
The account went on. Justin said to the reader that the fact that he was reading this meant that Tower or his cronies had lost control and decided to kill the man whose presence kept their guilt always before their eyes and made them—at least Tower—continue to pay for it. Then Justin described exactly where the body had been buried. Tower could picture the very bush, strangely, though he’d only spent a few minutes at the cabin, most of it inside.
“At this moment, reader,” Justin’s scrawl finished, “I am almost certainly lying dead or dying in some ditch or under the open sky in the feerce desert. I don’t say I don’t deserve it for what I done, but don’t let them get away with it. They are killers and awt to be hung.”
Tower grinned with grim pleasure. He crumpled the sheets in his fist, set them in the ashtray and put a stinky to them. They blazed up quickly and then crumpled into ash. He stirred the ashes around, making sure the whole of it was burned, and then slid the watch from the envelope. Now he took out his .45 and checked the load. He spun the cylinder, and snicked the weapon into leather. The left corner of his mouth twitched; his eyes were flint hard.
He left his bedroom and slipped silently down the hall—he didn’t want a scene from Maria messing up the smooth cleanness of his final move. At the door of the bedroom Justin had been using, Tower halted, listening.
He could hear Maria’s long, heavy, sleeping breath coming from her room, but nothing from beyond Justin’s door. He turned the handle, creaked the door open and peered inside.
The bed was neatly made—the wife of the Chinese cook kept house for them without ever missing a detail.
He went to Maria’s door thinking, if he’s in there ...
But he could hear only her breathing.
Not back yet then. He now recalled he hadn’t seen Justin’s dappled pony in the corral when he’d tended his own horse upon arriving. He went out and double-checked, both in the corral and the barn. Justin’s horse was not in either place.
He returned to the living room. Since he was not interested in sleep until the thing was taken care of, he settled into his favorite easy chair, lit a cigar, and began cleaning his guns, taking them out of the rack on the wall one by one.
~*~
At this time, Buckshot Justin was three miles away, jogging his dappled pony easily along through the last of the foothills, humming a tune to himself. Dolan would be a while untangling that trail. Should be plenty of time to spook some information out of Tower about the whereabouts of the holdup money.
~*~
Coe Dolan was twenty miles away, still high in the Calicoes, sleeping fitfully and dreaming about his brother.
Chapter Sixteen
When Buckshot Justin came through the door, Bert Tower shot him through the stomach, and the man began to die.
It was nearly that simple. Of course, there was first a brief space of several seconds as they looked at each other, Tower’s eyes hard and triumphant, his watch in his left palm, as though he’d just been checking the exact time of Justin’s arrival, a cigar jutting up from the left corner of his mouth like the muzzle of a cannon; and Justin’s cold blue eyes going from surprise to understanding.
Then each went for his gun. Justin was fast, but Tower’s lead tore through Justin’s belly before Justin had his gun halfway there. The gun hand faltered, the fingers tightened, then loosened, and the gun clattered on the floor.
Blood pumped from him, his eyes glazed, he put out a hand and stumbled forward, collapsing, his hands going to his gut, and he curled up slowly, breath coming raspy and as if there wasn’t enough air in the room for him. His eyes shut hard, and all his muscles stiffened, and then he relaxed abruptly and his breathing stopped.
Tower’s gun had quit smoking by this time, and he put it away.
“Well, I guess he won’t come tapping on my door nights no more,” Maria’s steady voice said from behind him.
He wheeled around, saw her looking at him with a little sideways smile, arms folded, standing there calm and collected.
“You damned slut,” he said, and backhanded her. “I don’t want to hear you talk like that. No daughter of mine is going to talk like that.”
“I guess I can talk any way I want,” she said, unfazed. “Seeing that I’m a witness.”
Tower stared at her speechless. His own daughter?
“Don’t worry, I don’t want anything much. But you know how I’ve told you I need a bigger allowance.”
He wanted to throttle her, but she was his daughter, and whatever she was she was all he had.
“Go to bed,” he instructed in a flat voice. “We’ll talk it over in the morning.”
“Aren’t you going to do somethin’ about the body?” she asked mildly. She would say no more about the allowance—it was obvious who had won that round.
“Oh, I’ll dump it somewhere,” he said irritably. He wished now it had happened out in the desert someplace, so he could leave the body for the buzzards. But it couldn’t stay there in a pool of blood on the living room floor, true enough.
Footfalls thudded on the porch. Hands had been roused by the gunshot.
He opened the front door and told them, “It’s all over. You can get back to bed.”
They were looking at him questioningly, and one or two started to ask him something, but he cut them off and sent them away.
When he returned to the living room, Maria was not there. But in a moment she reappeared, fully dressed in trousers and cotton shirt, wearing riding boots.
“I don’t want you fouling this up,” she said matter-of-factly. “Like last time.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Oh, it ain’t hard to figure out,” she said. “Justin had something over you. That was real clear. He had you around his little finger, saying yes, Buckshot, no Buckshot, like he wanted. And then there’s this fellow Pete Dolan. Seems he’s disappeared. Well, I wonder what happened to him?” She regarded him with her mouth twisted, hands on her hips. “Sure as I’m standing here, Buckshot Justin saw you shoot Pete Dolan, and he’s been holdin’ you up over it. I’ll tell you, I’m just as glad Justin’s dead. He’d have bled you dry, and that would have been the end of this ranch.”
“You mean you wouldn’t inherit anything because I’d be worth nothing.”
She shrugged.
They wrapped the body in an old horse blanket, and, while Maria scrubbed the floor, he got the thing loaded into a buckboard out back, doing it quietly so as not to disturb the men in the bunkhouse, or the Chinese couple in their little hut around back of the smokehouse. Then Maria came out.
“You wait,” she said. “I’m going to ride Justin’s horse.”
A few minutes later they were headed towards the pass. After about an hour’s ride, they got out shovels and buried Justin well off the trail.
“Now we’ll go on a ways yet,” Maria said, using a stick to smooth the sand where they’d walked and where the horses had been standing.
“What for? You can just turn that horse out here. Hobble it loose. In a while it’ll break free and come home. By that time everybody’ll be up and see it come. If somebody backtracks, it’ll be hard to make out where the hoss come from, especially when they get up onto rocky ground. There’ll be no tellin’ where the body is, or what happened to Justin.”
“If you don’t bother any more than that, it’s a wonder you ain’t had Underwood or Dolan digging up Pete before this. What we want is for it to look like Justin’s headed for other parts. The best thing is for me to ride on over the pass and sell the horse to the first buyer headed somewheres else. That way the tracks keep going, and the horse don’t come back to set off a search. You take the wagon a ways further on, so those tracks turn around somewhere besides here where the body is, and then you go back and you scrub out any wagon tracks between the yard and the trail. That’ll pretty well shut off the chance anybody’ll ever look for the body, or find it if they do look.”
“I guess you got a point,” he muttered. He was irritable and impatient to have to spend so much time and energy on dead meat, yet he could see it was that attitude which had cost him this whole thing to begin with.
So on they went. About two miles further along, on some hard ground, he turned the wagon around, bid goodbye to his daughter, and headed home.
~*~
Maria had good luck getting rid of the horse. Riding down the far side of the pass, as morning was breaking out over the land, she came on a camp. A family in a wagon had had one of their horses come up lame the previous day, and they were glad to buy the dappled pony, even though a saddle horse, for the very reasonable price of fifty dollars. She explained she needed the money badly and didn’t live very far away, when they were doubtful whether it was right to buy a horse from a girl alone in the middle of the wilds.
She refused a ride home and set off walking.
~*~
A squirrel was scolding him from a limb a few feet above his head. He looked up at it, and at the freshness of the very early morning, and wondered where he was and what he was doing here. He felt lazy and as though he’d like to go back and sleep the night all over again, and was closing his eyes when he remembered.
That brought him bolt upright, blinking the sleep out and looking around for his horse. Inside of five minutes Coe had the animal saddled and ready to go.
As he had thought, Buckshot Justin had not bothered to hide his tracks any further, and they were relatively easy to follow, although the terrain caused a few problems.
He’d gone perhaps ten miles by noon, and he expected to do much better from here on, since he’d gained easier ground. He took a short break, let his horse crop in a meadow while he washed in a creek. Then he mounted up and rode quickly on.
He had the XBT ranch buildings in sight around the middle of the afternoon, by the sun, and nudged the dun along quickly, though the animal already sensed the nearness of good grass and oats and was not inclined to dawdle in any case.
It wasn’t long before he could see the trail leading from town to Goat Pass, and on it a lone horseman, riding out from town. He didn’t think too much about it, until he was about to cross the trail and ride for the XBT buildings, and noticed the horseman turning in. Something made Coe halt in the cottonwoods by the stream and wait to see who it was.
As the rider passed within about fifty yards of him, Coe had a flash of recognition: William Whittaker, the card player and fast gun.
Whittaker, dressed to the nines and riding a handsome bay horse, pulled up in the yard and alighted. As he strode to the door, Coe noticed he kept his right hand near the butt of the pearl-handled revolver which was strapped there.
Whittaker knocked, and when the little Chinese woman opened the door, went in.
There was a considerable wait. Outside, things were peaceful. Birds twittered and fussed in the brush, the few horses left in the corral—the men were out riding range—swished their tails as they cropped grass. The hot southwest wind came up the valley, slowed by the uneven ground, sweetened by the lush growth along the stream banks, and stirred the cottonwoods.
The front door opened again, and out came Whittaker, carrying a pair of saddlebags as though they were quite heavy. A man—perhaps Tower—was standing in the doorway. It was not possible at this distance to make out for certain who it was, let alone make out the expression on his face.
Whittaker got on his bay horse, raised a hand to whoever it was, and then rode back towards town.
Coe let him get a good way off, then rode into the yard and dismounted.
The front door opened and Maria propped herself against the post at the top of the porch steps. She was wearing a skirt, if you could call it that, which stopped barely below the knee, a very tight, low cut blouse, and a small self-confident smile.
“Howdy,” he said politely. “Buckshot Justin around?”
Her eyebrows went up. “He left after you and Pa and the deputy did, and ain’t been back since.”
“Guess you just haven’t noticed him around then. His tracks lead right into the dooryard.” He looked over at the corral. He didn’t see any dapples. “Your Pa here?”
“Why don’t you come on inside, cowboy? Make yourself at home.”
He went in, following her twitching hips. He thought again of Lynn. She might not have the figure this girl had, but she sure was more attractive. That was a peculiar thing. Particularly since before meeting Lynn his reaction to Maria would likely have been very different.
“Just sit yourself down,” she said, waving at the easy chairs. “I’ll bring you some coffee.”
“Oh,” he said, was going to refuse, and then thought, what the heck, he could use something. “Black,” he said. “Thanks. When did your father get back here?”
“Last night,” she said, and disappeared into the kitchen.
Presently, she returned. She was carrying a tray on which was a pot of steaming hot coffee and two mugs. There was also a large plate of what looked like expensive chocolates. He somehow doubted that Tower would approve of offering such expensive items to a visitor like Coe Dolan, and he felt a bit uncomfortable.
He felt even more uncomfortable when, after serving out the coffee, Maria sat down on the arm of the chair and crossed her bare white thighs a foot from his nose—she had contrived to make sure the skirt rode well up. She was wearing perfume, too, and not the usual cheap variety, either.
“That was your father I saw in the door as I came in sight of the buildings, wasn’t it?” he
asked. “I’ve got to talk to him, if he isn’t too busy. It’s important.”
“I’m sure it is,” she murmured, “but I’m important too, ain’t I?” She put an arm around his neck and her long black hair fell against his cheek.
He got up, took a couple of steps and turned around. She tossed her hair and her face had hints of anger in it, not well concealed.
“Tell your father I want to see him,” he told her bluntly. “Or I’m going hunting for him.” He hadn’t intended to make it quite so forceful, but it was a measure of the fact that she had him a little off balance.
She tossed her hair again, and got up without a word and left the room. She was gone for several minutes, and he heard doors opening and closing as she went out, and again later on when she and her father came back. He had evidently been in the rear of the house somewhere, or even outside.
Tower was still in the friendly, jovial mood he’d been in when Coe had last seen him. He came across the big living room over the skin rugs holding out his hand, smiling broadly.
“Coe!” he explained. “Any luck?”
“Yes,” Coe told him. He suppressed an impulse to ease the impact of what he was about to say, knowing that impact was all the weapon he had to work with. “The man who was doing the shooting when we arrived was Buckshot Justin, and his tracks lead right into your dooryard. Where is he? I want to talk to him.”
Tower was still holding his hand out. Coe purposely didn’t take it. He just stared at Tower, waiting.
Tower finally lowered his hand, put it on his hip. His friendly smile had glazed over.
“Far as I know, Justin left after we did, and ain’t been back. Are you sure the tracks don’t mix with the ones in the trail to Goat Pass? Maybe he went over the mountains, or more likely, he went into town to get supplies. Could be headed anywhere after that.”
“He came here first, if he did do all that afterward.”
“Well, he didn’t show his nose. Musta skulked around lookin’ to see who was here, I guess. I don’t know. But I ain’t seen him. You, Maria?”