King Colt

by Short, Luke;

  “Knowing anything about minin’ and assayin’?” Hugo asked by way of conversation.

  “Never saw a place like this before,” Lemrath said. Hugo glanced at Lemrath’s hands. They were not soft, but neither were they the horny hands of a man who has swung a pick all his life. Hugo was certain he was a cowman, not a prospector, and that puzzled him all the more.

  Hugo put down his last notation, Silica—006, and glanced over the faked assay report. Then he looked up at Lemrath and said carefully, “You have a mighty good thing here, friend.”

  He was observing Lemrath closely, but he could see no sign of excitement or exultation. Lemrath’s face changed not at all. He simply said, “That’s good.”

  “Take a look yourself,” Hugo said, and gave him the paper.

  The assay, of course, had been doctored up to make the gold content of the ore look phenomenal. Lemrath glanced at the paper and nodded imperturbably. Folding it, he held it in his hand. Hugo was confounded. Was this the way a man greeted fortune?

  To cover up his confusion, Hugo said, “If there’s much of that ore around, I’d advise you to keep it quiet. That’ll start a rush anywhere, any time.”

  “I reckon that’s right,” Lemrath said idly.

  Hugo’s intentions began to falter. If this man was a crook, dishonest, then Hugo was willing to admit that he did not know an honest man when he saw one. And Hugo was a shrewd judge of character. Then something else occurred to him. This plan of his and Johnny Hendry’s risked a reputation for honesty that had taken him a lifetime to build. Once the news got out that he had faked an assay, his business and name would be ruined. He wouldn’t have minded if he saw a chance to catch a crook and a killer, but Lemrath was definitely neither. The whole thing puzzled and angered Hugo. He said impulsively, “You’ve filed on your claim, of course.”

  “No.”

  “Don’t you know where it is?”

  “I got a paper that shows it,” Lemrath said quietly.

  Hugo was more bewildered than ever. He said, “You mean you’ve never been to your location?”

  “No.”

  Hugo took a deep breath of relief and walked over to confront Lemrath. “Do you mind if I stick my nose in business that doesn’t concern me?”

  Lemrath regarded the spare, gray-haired man before him with mild concern. “Why—go ahead,” he said.

  Hugo said, “The man who registers the claim this ore was taken from will brand himself a murderer. And he’ll be killed.”

  Slowly Lemrath came to his feet. “A murderer?”

  “Yes. Because the real owner of this claim was murdered, and the location papers were stolen from him before he had a chance to file. Naturally, the only man who would file on that claim is the man who killed the rightful owner.”

  Lemrath regarded Hugo with blank surprise. “You know where the claim is, then?”

  Hugo told him about the volcanic breccia. “That stuff could only come from one place, the place Pick Hendry was working. And there’s volcanic breccia in your sample. Figure it out for yourself.”

  Deliberately, Lemrath drew out his pipe and packed it and sucked the blue smoke into his lungs while Hugo watched him closely.

  “I’ll tell you how it was,” Lemrath said slowly. “I’m a rancher down in the next county. I’ve been havin’ hard luck. My wife died, my place burned down, and my kid is sick. Then a man rode up to my tent a week or so ago and offered me five hundred dollars if I’d bring this ore to you, have it assayed, and then register the claim. I jumped at the chance.”

  “Did you know his name?”

  “No.”

  “Remember his looks?”

  “No. He looked like a saddle tramp. Hadn’t shaved, his clothes were dirty, and he looked shifty—but that didn’t matter. I needed the money.”

  “How much did he give you then?”

  “Two hundred.” Lemrath smiled a little. “It just about saved my life, too. I squared up with the doc, got a nurse, and got help to rebuild my shack.”.

  Hugo nodded. He could understand that, and he believed the man’s story because it jibed with what he had already observed. “What did this jasper say to you?” Hugo persisted.

  “Nothin’, except what I told you. And he said I wasn’t to make any fuss at all about registerin’ the claim.”

  “So you’ve got the location papers on you?”

  Lemrath patted his pocket. “Right here.”

  “Are you going to register it, knowing what you do about the claim?”

  “I reckon,” Lemrath said slowly. “I don’t see how that’d change things much, and that’s what I was paid to do.”

  “Do you mind showing me the location papers?” Hugo asked mildly. “I’d give plenty of money to see them—not, understand, because I want the gold, but because I want to locate the place where I can find Pick Hendry’s killer.”

  Lemrath took his pipe from his mouth and scowled. “That wouldn’t be livin’ up to my word, because I promised to keep this quiet.”

  Hugo said coldly, “You’re workin’ for a murderer,” and let his hand move toward the drawer where he kept his gun. He was going to see this through.

  Lemrath did not answer for a moment. He studied Hugo and then scowled down at his pipe. Finally, he said, “Tell you what I’ll do. The claim-recording office closes at eight, don’t it? It’s a few minutes to eight now. We’ll both go over, and I’ll register the claim. You can copy it down from the book and find out what you want to know. And that way, I’ll be keepin’ my word to the man who paid me. That all right?”

  “It’s perfect,” Hugo said, relieved, and reached for his hat. Lemrath folded up the assay report and tucked it in his pocket.

  The claim-recording office was a small shack at the very end of the town. Hugo and Lemrath hurried, for it was within a few minutes of eight o’clock, the closing-time. They could see the lamps of the office still lighted. Stepping off the boardwalk, they went past a dark warehouse.

  Hugo felt a gathering excitement in him.

  He turned to Lemrath and said, “Friend, when you’ve registered this, you’d better—”

  Crash!

  The bellow of a shotgun pounded right beside Hugo, and he saw Lemrath driven down on his face. Whirling, Hugo turned just in time to see the dark figure of a man leap from the corner of the warehouse. And then something rapped down over Hugo’s skull and a blanket of stars blossomed and burst in his head. He didn’t even remember falling.

  When he regained consciousness, he was lying on his own bed in the back room of the assay office. His head ached abominably, and it was a long time before he could focus his eyes on the figure beside him. When he did, he saw the sturdy figure of Baily Blue.

  “Well, well,” Blue drawled. “For a minute, I thought they’d done it, Hugo.”

  “Is Lemrath dead?” Hugo murmured.

  “A hole shot through him as big as a washtub,” Blue said cheerfully. “Who was it?”

  “Did you search him?”

  “Sure.”

  “Find anything on him—any papers?”

  “Not a thing,” Blue said. “Not even a cigarette paper. His pockets were turned inside out.”

  Sick at heart, Hugo turned his face to the wall. The location papers were gone before he’d had a chance to see them. The claim would never be filed now, or if it was, he would never be able to identify it as the one containing the volcanic breccia. The only sure thing was that, since the faked assay report was stolen, too, the claim would be worked. But that would be meager consolation to Johnny Hendry.

  Hugo heard Baily go out. He lay there a long time and finally, when his headache calmed down a little, he struggled out of bed and fixed himself something to eat. He’d nearly finished when he heard the back door open and, turning to look, found Johnny Hendry standing there.

  Hugo plunged into the story of Lemrath’s murder. Johnny listened to it with an increasingly morose face. When Hugo was finished, Johnny tilted back in the extra chai
r, rolled a smoke, and lighted it.

  “Well,” he observed to no one in particular, “it seems when I take a beatin’, I take a good one. What is there to do now?”

  And Hugo, who had asked himself that same question, didn’t answer, because he couldn’t.

  Chapter Twelve: THE FINEST MAN IN THE COUNTY

  Major Fitz’s office reflected, as did everything else in this clean, white house, a military neatness. It held a roll-top desk, a safe, three chairs, and a book-shelf filled mostly with copies of the Stockman’s Gazette.

  Major Fitz was there examining a small ledger. Before he took it out of the safe, he carefully pulled down the blinds and locked the door. He didn’t spend much time over the ledger, for he knew its contents almost by heart. When he was finished and had the ledger back in the safe again, he allowed himself a thin smile of satisfaction. Then, because he was waiting for someone, and idle time always hung heavy on his hands, he pulled out some back issues of the Gazette and leafed nervously through them, glancing often at the wall clock.

  He waited almost twenty minutes before he heard a soft knock on the outside door, and he crossed the room to open it. Carmody stepped in, followed by a smaller man, a puncher. The look on this man’s face made Major Fitz frown. “Well?” he said.

  “It went all right,” Carmody said in a businesslike tone, following Fitz across to his desk. He laid down two sheets of paper, which Fitz picked up after he sat down at his desk.

  “Did he get to the claim recorder’s?” Fitz asked.

  “We left him stretched out almost on the steps of it,” Carmody said.

  Fitz looked at one of the papers and handed it to the puncher. “That’s the same location paper, isn’t it, Barney?”

  The puncher came over and glanced at the paper. “Sure, that’s the one I give him.”

  Fitz, his hands trembling ever so slightly, deliberately opened the other paper, which was Hugo’s falsified assay report. He read it swiftly, and Carmody heard him sigh a little.

  Carmody said, “What is it?”

  “Better than I had hoped for,” Fitz said softly. He stared at the paper a long moment, then raised his eyes to Barney. “Barney, you did a good job. I thought maybe old Pick was onto something, but I never dreamed it would be this good.”

  “I did,” Barney said, his voice bragging and arrogant. “I could tell by the way he acted up there in the Calicoes when we was followin’ him. When a man’s got a strike, everything he does gives him away—even an old tough jasper like him.”

  “Well, he had a strike, all right,” Fitz said dryly. “Describe this canyon to me again.”

  Barney did. He obviously knew something about minerals and mining. He described the dike at some length, guessed at its probable length and depth, while Major Fitz took careful notes.

  “How many claims would it need to cover it?” Fitz asked, looking up from his writing.

  “Six would blanket it.”

  “You’re sure Pick didn’t register it before he was killed?”

  “I looked through the register this mornin’,” Barney asserted. “There ain’t a thing registered in that canyon, not a thing.”

  “How do you explain all his test pits?”

  “Why, Pick was like any other prospector. He dug around, puttin’ in a lot of pits and gettin’ no color at all, or maybe just a little. He didn’t go deep enough. There wasn’t no sense in payin’ good money to locate a worthless claim. On the other hand, he might have knowed that the gold was there, or somewhere close. He wanted to make sure of the best claims before he recorded anything. That’s natural enough, ain’t it?”

  “I suppose,” Fitz said, rising. “Well, Barney, you’ve earned a nice cut out of this. One of those claims—the best one in fact—will be yours.”

  “It ought to be,” Barney bragged. “If it hadn’t been for me, you wouldn’t ’ve known anything about it.”

  “That’s right,” Fitz said. “Good night, boys.”

  Barney turned to the door and went out, Carmody swinging in behind him. As Carmody was about to step out, he shuttled his gaze to Fitz, and it was questioning. Imperceptibly Fitz nodded, and Carmody closed the door.

  Major Fitz stood utterly still, his hand traveling to the breast pocket of his coat, from which peeped the tips of five cigars. He drew one out, his head cocked as if listening, and bit the end off it. Striking a match, he held the flame to the tip of the cigar, just as the muffled explosion of a gunshot sounded out in the night. Major Fitz paused long enough for the corners of his mouth to turn up in a slight smile, and then he lighted his cigar.

  He was sitting at the desk when Carmody returned. “Where do you want him?” Carmody asked quietly.

  “I don’t care. Get rid of him on your way over to Warms. Did the boys wake up?”

  “I told them I shot at a dog nosin’ around the corrals.” Slowly Carmody walked over to Fitz’s desk and looked down at him, his slack face thoughtful and grave. “I didn’t like that much, Fitz,” he murmured.

  “Did you want him getting drunk in Cosmos and babbling the whole thing?” Fitz inquired.

  “It isn’t Barney. He’d ’ve got it in the back sooner or later.” Carmody paused, his face still grave, his eyes meditative. “It’s you, Fitz. When you’re through with a man, you throw him away—like you’ll throw that cigar butt away.”

  “I don’t deny it.”

  “I wonder if—” Carmody’s voice died, and his face settled into an unpleasant hardness. Leaning both hands on the desk, he put his face close to Fitz’s. “Don’t try it with me, Fitz. I’m a careful man.”

  “Hoke, you’re a fool!” Fitz said angrily. “You’ve been with me almost since I took over the Bar 33. We’ve built ourselves a nice stake by trusting each other. If your cut doesn’t suit you, say so. If you want to pull out of here, saddle up and ride out—only I’d hate to see you go.”

  Carmody straightened up. “I’ll stick,” he said briefly. “I just wanted to make sure.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Sure as a man can be when he’s runnin’ with a man like you,” Carmody murmured. “What do you want me to do about Westfall over in Warms?”

  Fitz indicated the papers before him. “Take those over and tell him what I want. He’s to take his crew to the canyon and put up his monuments. Then he’ll go down and file on these six claims, buy his supplies, and start work. Once he’s operating, I’ll expect to see his books once a month. The expense funds, all cash, have been deposited in the Warms bank. If he ever mentions my name, either in public or private, tell him what he may expect.” Here Fitz smiled thinly. “Also, you might impress upon him what he’s to expect if I even suspect that his books are crooked. Have you got all that?”

  “Sure, but he’s honest, right enough.” Carmody cuffed his Stetson off his forehead and drew out his sack of tobacco dust. Fitz relighted his cigar and sat scowling at his desk.

  Presently, as they both smoked in silence, the old feeling of close camaraderie returned. But Fitz was drumming on the desk with his fingers.

  Then he said abruptly, “You know, Hoke, there’s only one thing in all this business that I can’t explain.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Barney and Tohill were sent to follow old Picket-Stake Hendry. Barney comes back with the news that Pick has been shot, blown off the rim. By whom? Presumably Lee Tohill. But where is Tohill?”

  Carmody studied his cigarette. “My guess has always been that Pick Hendry tagged him, and that he died up there.”

  “But we searched the country.”

  “No man can cover that country like it should be covered. Besides, a man that’s shot bad ain’t so careful about directions.”

  “But how could Pick shoot him when he got a load of buckshot right in the face?”

  “Maybe Pick got first shot at Tohill.”

  “That could be,” Fitz said. “However, my mind’s not at rest on that point. Where is Tohill? If I knew that, I’d feel a lot be
tter.”

  “What difference does it make?” Carmody said. “You’ve got the location papers. And they’re the true ones, because they’re in Pick Hendry’s own handwritin’. If they weren’t, maybe you could accuse Barney and Tohill of double-crossin’ you, of fakin’ the location papers, and keepin’ the real ones Pick had with him. But you can’t do that. That handwritin’ checked.”

  “So it did,” Fitz said quietly. “Well, get along, Hoke. And good luck.”

  When Carmody was gone, Major Fitz rose and blew out the light. On the way back to his room, he let the memory of this evening filter through his mind, and it gave him pleasure. Once he had something tangible like this gold mine, he would be fixed for life. It pleased him, too, to recall how neatly he was cleaning up all the evidence that pointed to him. Pick had found the claim, and he was dead. Lemrath was dead, for Fitz had not wanted the claim recorded; he had only wanted the assay. And Barney was dead, too, now. That left only himself and Carmody—and Westfall, a legitimate mining man. Sooner or later Carmody and Westfall would go the way of the others.

  It was all working smoothly. Soon no one could touch his back trail. And in a short time, he would be a man of wealth and power, not just a salaried manager of a cow outfit. Yes, life was good. But to Barney, slacked over the saddle of a horse out in the night, he did not give a thought. That was over.

  Next morning Major Fitz rode into Cosmos. He went first to several stores and ordered supplies. Major Fitz had a gift for making storekeepers talk. They valued his advice as well as his trade, and he gave both impartially.

  Standing with legs outspread, big sombrero on the back of his head, duck coat over his singlet, he was talking to Bledsoe about Johnny Hendry in the Miners’ Emporium when he caught sight of Nora at another counter. He left Bledsoe and walked over to Nora, who greeted him with gravity, taking his hand. The major’s foxy face was carefully gloomy.

  “I’ve heard about this deal they shoved off on Johnny. What’s behind it?” he asked bluntly.

  “A frame-up,” Nora answered simply.

  “Of course, but whose?”

  “Baily Blue found the gun.”