The Smoking Iron

by Brett Halliday

  “I’m ready to make a deal with you tonight,” Pat pressed him. “After I look ’em over, you can start driving them upriver an’ get ’em out of danger if they’re what you say. But I won’t pay more’n twenty dollars a head.”

  “It’s robbery,” Boxley frowned.

  “I tol’ you I was lookin’ for a bargain.”

  “All right. If you’ll make the deal tonight. I want to get them started out of here,” Boxley sighed.

  The lights of Boracho were beginning to show up in front of them. Boxley pointed them out and said, “I’ll stop there and pick up some trail riders. Might as well get the herd started after you look them over.”

  They were trotting into the little town of Boracho. Half a dozen adobe buildings on Main Street showed lighted windows. Boxley pulled up in front of a cantina and said, “I’ll go in here. Won’t be but a minute.” He swung off and went in without inviting them to follow him.

  Ezra looked at Pat and said reflectively, “So yo’re gonna buy four hundred head of stuff at twenty dollars a head? Me, I ain’t very good at riggers, but seems to me, like that adds up to a lot of money. An’ since when have you been keepin’ money in a El Paso bank that you can draw on? What kind of doggone monkey bizniss you up to, Pat?”

  Pat grinned and said, “This is what they call high finance in the city. Where one slicker out-slickers another slicker.” He slid out of the saddle. “Let’s go in an’ get us a drink.”

  Ezra gladly accepted that suggestion and followed him into the saloon.

  Boxley stood at the bar talking to two whiskered men in rough clothing. He looked up with a frown of annoyance when he saw his two companions coming in the door. He pulled away from the bar, saying something in a low tone to the men, and they followed him to the back of the room. The bartender was a halfbreed, wearing an undershirt and dirty white pants. There were three other Americans in the saloon and one Mexican grouped together at the other end of the bar. They watched Pat and Ezra come in, but said nothing as the two men bellied up to the bar.

  “Got any American whisky?” Pat asked.

  “Sí señor. One dollar for the drink.”

  Pat said, “Better make it a big drink for that,” He clanked two silver dollars on the bar, turned casually and looked back toward Boxley in the rear.

  Boxley had a worried look on his face. He appeared to be questioning the two men sharply. He glanced up and saw that Pat and Ezra were having a drink, then nodded to one of the men, took his arm and went out a rear door with him. The other man sauntered up to the group at the end of the bar and said something in a low voice, nodding his head at Pat and Ezra.

  “Thought we might find Dusty in here,” Pat said out of the side of his mouth. “I noticed a Katie hawse outside. That’s what he rode across on.”

  Ezra said, “He ain’t in here,” and turned his attention to his drink.

  Pat picked his glass up and studied it a minute. In a low voice, he muttered, “I’d shore like to know where Lon ducked out to. Wish you’d start up a fracas so I could slip out without bein’ noticed particular.”

  Ezra tossed his drink down and beamed at Pat. “I’d admire to do that. Ain’t had no fun since we started this trip.”

  He sidled around Pat and stared pugnaciously at the other men. “What’s that I heered one of you fellers say?” he demanded loudly.

  They all looked at him in surprise.

  Pat grabbed his arm and begged loudly, “Don’t start no trouble, Ezra. Come on out in the cool.”

  Ezra shook his hand off angrily. “One of them fellers jest insulted us. I heered him plain. I’m gonna bust his head wide open.” He started toward them, big fists swinging like pendulums.

  Pat said hastily, “Suit yoreself. I ain’t stayin’ for no fire-works.” He backed toward the front door and out. He paused long enough to see Ezra shaking his fist at the group. They were grinning at the one-eyed man with the good-natured tolerance of sober men for a drunkard.

  Pat turned away from the door and trotted noiselessly along the side of the building. Light came from a small window set high in the wall near the back end of the saloon.

  Pat heard voices coming from inside as he reached the window. He pressed against the mud wall underneath and listened.

  He heard Dusty’s voice saying angrily, “But I tell you I ain’t him. My name’s Dusty Morgan an’ I can prove it if you’ll let me outta here.”

  There was a low murmur that sounded like Boxley.

  Then Dusty again, “I know all about that. Shore, he was wearin’ my clothes. I traded with him … after he got killed. I wanted them to think he was me. There was a posse after me for killin’ the Marfa sheriff. Whoever held up the stage knows he was named Ben Thurston. He hollered out his name just before they blasted him.”

  A loud screech of pain sounded from the front part of the saloon. Then the crash of a chair against the wall and an infuriated bellow from Ezra.

  Pat heard feet running out from the room inside, heard an inner door slam shut.

  He reached up and caught the sill with his fingertips, pulled himself up for a quick look inside the room. Dusty was stretched out on the floor bound tightly with a rope. He didn’t see Pat peering in.

  The sound of a loud brawl was gaining volume in the front. Rising above all the other noises was Ezra’s voice whooping it up happily as he obeyed Pat’s order to create a disturbance.

  Pat dropped back to the ground and sprinted around to the front door. Boxley and the man who had gone out with him re-entered from the rear just as Pat burst into the front.

  There was a rolling mass of fighting men on the floor, with Ezra in the middle of it. One figure already lay limply aside, and another man stumbled out of the melee holding his wrist as Pat ran in.

  The man with Boxley pulled his gun and ran toward the group rolling on the floor. He tried to get a bead on Ezra but found it difficult because they constantly shifted positions.

  Pat ran forward, shouting at the top of his lungs, “Ezra! Stop it! Ezra!”

  The tangle of men suddenly disintegrated with one man flying in one direction and another man in another. Ezra got to his feet with a deprecatory grin. “I didn’t mean no harm, Pat. I was jest sort of funnin’.”

  Pat grabbed his arm and gave him a shove toward the door. “Get outside an’ sober up.” He turned to Boxley. “I’m sorry. He gets fightin’ drunk every so often.”

  The men who had unwisely engaged in battle with him were gathering themselves up and counting the damage. The Mexican was out cold on the floor with a broken jaw, but the Americans were only scratched and battered.

  “Forget it,” Boxley told them impatiently when they began muttering threats of reprisal. “We’ve got work to do. I want you boys to round up all my Star Boxed Cross stuff an’ get ’em ready to move up the river toward El Paso. This man is buyin’ ’em from me … delivery on the other side of the river.

  “You stay here, Thad,” he told a hulking man with piggish eyes and an undershot jaw. “Take care of Pedro and see he gets his jaw bandaged. An’ … take care of everything else too.” He jerked his head toward the rear.

  Thad nodded and limped over to squat down by the unconscious Mexican.

  “Rest of you come with me,” Boxley said shortly, and strode out of the cantina.

  Pat let them precede him. He got on his horse slowly and let them ride ahead with Boxley while Ezra fell in with him behind them.

  The big man’s clothing was torn and his scarred face was streaked with blood, but there was still a joyous light in his single eye. “How’d I do?” he demanded happily.

  “I didn’t tell you to start a massacre,” Pat told him. “You could of argued, couldn’t you?”

  “Fightin’s more fun. But I only got one good wallop at the Mex ’fore the others jumped me. It was purty good while it lasted. What’d you find out?”

  Pat held his horse back so that they would remain out of earshot of the others. He told Ezra what he had seen an
d heard in the back room of the cantina.

  “They got him tied up there, an,’ you went off an’ left him?” Ezra demanded indignantly.

  “That’s right. I think he’s safe enough until Boxley finds out for sure who he is. And I want to get the cattle moving up the river.”

  “How do you figure Boxley? What’s his game?”

  “It looks plain enough,” Pat snorted. “He’s been havin’ his men pretend to help Katie while she was bein’ smuggled poor so she’d give in an’ sell the ranch or maybe even marry him. He’s scared of havin’ anyone help her out, for fear she’ll change her mind. That’s why he’s keepin’ Dusty tied up. Till he’s shore who he really is or that it’s too late for Katie to change her mind.”

  The group ahead of them had stopped to go through a pasture gate. They were in the low foothills behind Boracho, in pretty good grazing country. The moon and stars were giving enough light to distinguish things fairly well.

  Boxley reined back beside Pat and Ezra as the others rode through the gate.

  “This is the pasture they’re in,” he told them. “We’ll stay here and let them drive ’em out past us. You can look ’em over an’ make a count. Is that fair enough?”

  “Fair enough,” Pat agreed. “You get on t’other side of the gate, Ezra, an’ keep tally with me. That way, we’ll be somewhere near right.”

  Boxley pulled aside with Pat. “It won’t take ’em long to start ’em coming,” he muttered. “This is a little pasture, an’ they’re so fat they’re easy drove.”

  Pat rolled a cigarette while they waited. He could hear the riders farther up in the hills, could hear an occasional shout as they started the split hoofs moving toward the gate.

  It wasn’t long before the vanguard of the herd showed up in the moonlight, a confused mass of broad-backed white-faces, bawling at each other at being wakened from their sleep, trotting and shoving to get through the narrow gate.

  Boxley hadn’t lied about the shape they were in. They were the fattest bunch of stuff Pat had ever seen on hoof in his life. And each was branded with the Star Boxed Cross which Boxley had described to them.

  Pat didn’t have any more time for thinking. He was plenty busy trying to make a tally on the fat cattle crowding through the gate in the moonlight. It takes an old hand at the business to make a correct count of a herd like that. It isn’t really a matter of counting each separate head that passes. You sort of let your subconscious mind take hold, and you find a total rolling up in your mind after you’ve done it long enough. An expert at the business, Pat kept his eye on the moving mass of broad backs in front of him and let his instinct do the adding.

  The herd began to thin out after a time. The riders were whooping it up behind the stragglers, pushing them forward to form a compact herd with the others.

  As the last ones went through the gate, Lon Boxley directed the herders, “Turn them upriver and keep ’em movin’. I’ll send a chuck wagon an’ more riders from my ranch across the river to catch up with you by morning and make up a regular trail outfit.” And he asked Pat, “What did you make it?”

  Pat said, “My tally is three hundred and sixty-eight,” He raised his voice to get Ezra’s attention, “How many did you get?”

  “Three hundred seventy-one,” Ezra called back, reining across to them.

  “That’s close enough,” Boxley said with satisfaction. “My count was three seventy-two.”

  “We’ll call it three seventy,” Pat said.

  “That’s a heap of money even at twenty dollars,” Ezra argued aloud.

  “Yep.” Pat Stevens sounded very cheerful about it, as though it wouldn’t hurt his non-existent El Paso bank account at all. “I calculate that’s about …” He paused to make a slow mental calculation … “about seven thousand an’ four hundred dollars all told.”

  “That’s what I make it,” Boxley agreed. He got off his horse to close the gate. “I’ll give you the Mexican’s name that the draft is to be made out in when we get back to my ranch.”

  He remounted and the three men started riding slowly toward Boracho in the rear of the herd that was being turned upriver.

  16

  When they had reached the outskirts of the town again, Boxley pulled up his horse and said, “I’ve got to stop here an’ see about getting in touch with my Mexican partner. It may take me some time. Why don’t you ride on back to my ranch an’ bed down for the night? That jug of tequila is still waitin’ to be finished off.”

  Pat said, “Sure. Don’t worry about us. Go ahead an’ tend to yore business. We know the road back to the X L ranch.”

  They rode on into town and Boxley stopped at the same cantina they had visited not more than an hour previously. He said, “I’ll be seeing you,” in a cordial tone and turned his horse in to the hitching rail, now holding only two saddled horses. One of them was the Katie horse which Dusty had tied there that afternoon.

  When Pat kept on down the street, Ezra asked angrily, “Are you goin’ off an’ leave Dusty there all tied up in the back room? By Gawd, Pat, I’m beginnin’ to wonder what in hell yo’re up to. Never knowed you to back away from a showdown before. Not even with a tough hombre that carried his gun holstered the wrong way.”

  Pat said, “Let Boxley get inside. There’s gonna be a showdown all right.” He stopped his horse and glanced back over his shoulder, drew in a deep breath and said, “All right. We’ll ride back now. Got thirsty for a drink an’ changed our minds.” He swung his horse around. “Think yore gun can take care of that other fellow Boxley left behind?” he asked casually.

  “Leave him to me.”

  “That’s what I figure on doin’,” Pat told him calmly. “Let me do the talkin’, but be ready to back me up.”

  They stopped at the hitchrack and dismounted. Boxley whirled around from in front of the bar with a grunt of surprise when the door opened and the two men walked in. He and Thad and the bartender were the only occupants of the room.

  “Thought you were headed across the river,” he grunted, narrowing his eyes at them.

  Pat grinned and said, “Ezra decided it was too long a ride at night without another drink in his belly.” They went up to the bar and he ordered, “Set out yore bottle of American whisky. Maybe Mr. Boxley an’ his friend will join us in a drink.”

  Boxley said, “Thanks,” with a sort of a snarl in the word, and the big whiskered man beside him nodded.

  Pat waited until all four glasses were full. He picked his up and took a reflective sip, turned and drooped his left elbow on the bar so he faced Boxley. His posture was disarmingly relaxed, but it didn’t fool Ezra any. It was the surest danger signal he knew. He had seen Pat Stevens plenty of times just before he swung his guns into action. That relaxed posture was a sign of iron nerves and strong muscles. It was designed to throw his opponent off guard to gain that fraction of a second advantage that is all any gunman needs.

  Ezra picked up his own drink and stepped off to the side a couple of paces, to a point of vantage where he could see past Pat and Boxley and watch Thad Thompson’s gun hand. Neither Boxley nor Thad paid any attention to him.

  “You’ve been runnin’ a smart deal, Boxley,” Pat’s voice was soft, almost purring. “Yessir.” He took a reflective sip of whisky. “You’ve shore pulled the wool over a lot of people’s eyes.”

  Boxley hesitated. The tip of his tongue came out to wet his lips. He set his swollen purpled jaw tightly and didn’t say anything.

  “Like, for instance, workin’ it to get hold of the Katie,” Pat went on. His voice sounded warm with genuine admiration. “Sendin’ yore riders over to pretend they was helpin’ while all the time they was lettin’ the smugglin’ go on. That was plumb smart. It kep’ Miss Katie from callin’ in any gun hands of her own an’ put her in a hole where she’s finally ready to sell out to you.”

  Boxley smiled, showing his teeth. He accepted Pat’s words at face value. “She’s not selling out. I’m gettin’ the Katie for nothing. Only go
t to marry her. And that’s something no man would consider a chore.”

  “That so?” Pat’s eyes widened. “Congratulations.”

  Boxley said, “Thanks,” with something like a smirk.

  “Yessir,” Pat went on, “I bet you was plenty worried when she told you about the letter she’d wrote to her daddy’s ol’ friend in Colorado. Maybe you knew Tom Thurston back in the old days?”

  “That was before my time,” Boxley growled. “I’ve heard about him though. How do you know all about it?” he went on suspiciously.

  “We stopped off at the Katie for supper tonight. If you knew about Tom Thurston you must of been plenty worried,” Pat chuckled. “An’ when Miss Katie told you Tom’s boy was comin’ by stage you didn’t know how bad a gun fighter he’d turn out to be, did you? If he was like his daddy, might be he’d be pretty bad medicine for you to buck.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Boxley said thickly. “I’ve got private business here …”

  “You’ve got private business here with me.” Pat’s voice remained low and steady, but the softness had disappeared from it. “You thought it’d be safest to hold that stage up an’ not let Ben Thurston ever get to Hermosa. An’ that’s what you did.”

  “You’re crazy. I don’t know anything about the stage holdup.”

  “That’s the only way it can be, Boxley. You were the only one knew Ben Thurston was due. And the holdup was staged just to kill him. Soon as he rose up out of the overturned stage an’ yelled out his name yore men let him have it. An’ then they rode off without even looting the bodies.”

  “How do you know …?” Boxley stopped. “All of it’s a damned lie.”

  “None of it’s a lie. You know it ain’t because you know that’s the way it happened.”

  “All right,” Boxley said suddenly. “You’ve got no kick coming. You came to the Big Bend lookin’ for a bargain in stock. You’ve got it. If you rile me up, the deal’s off. And you stand to lose plenty of money if you lose that herd.”

  Pat nodded. His lips smiled thinly while his gray eyes bored into Boxley’s face. “It’s a sure enough bargain,” he agreed. “Most times that Katie stock would bring three times what I’m payin’ in the open market.”