Novel 1965 - The High Graders (v5.0)

by Louis L'Amour

  Somebody, Gentry had never known who, must have mortgaged everything he owned to put up the cash to buy the gold from the stores, an operation handled by Stowe himself. Only Stowe, his unknown backer, Ray Hollister, and Gentry himself knew the setup.

  Ben Stowe had been hot to have Hollister hunted down and killed; then it would surely be Gentry’s turn. After that, who would be the next target in the shooting gallery?

  CHAPTER 8

  THE SOFT DESERT night, dark beneath the stars, seemed still, yet it was a night of restlessness, a night of movement.

  Ben Stowe had returned to his desk, irritable at the necessity for rearranging plans because of Mike Shevlin, but not actually worried by it. Within an hour Lon Court would have his message, and the message called for immediate action.

  In his room in the jail building, Wilson Hoyt lay awake. He had made his final rounds, and all had been in order, yet his instinct warned him that behind the soft darkness and the quiet, trouble stirred.

  Throughout his life he had ridden on the side of the law. Of course, in every community where he had held office there were certain things he was expected to overlook, because the town gave its tacit consent to them. There had been towns where men carried guns because it was the thing to do; there were other towns, in more thickly settled communities, where guns were not allowed to be carried, and in those towns he had forbidden strangers to carry them within the city limits.

  His role, as he saw it, was not to take care of morals but to keep the peace. In a life on the frontier he had come to accept rough living by rough men, and he interfered only when such a way of living threatened the peace of the town and its citizens. He was here to prevent disorderly conduct, within reason, to prevent theft or murder, and to punish the offenders if such things were attempted or carried out. Here, the town had accepted high-grading as a fact of its community life, so he had done the same.

  He had been warned that a man named Ray Hollister would come to town one day and try to cause trouble, and he had been told that Hollister was a dangerous man. Wilson Hoyt had checked the records and the memories of Hollister and had found this to be true. The man was undoubtedly a trouble-maker.

  But now this man Shevlin had appeared in town and had laid it on the line for him. Wilson Hoyt knew that the time had come when he must take a stand.

  Trouble was surely here. It was being brought about by high-grading, and the peace of his town, quiet until now, was to be ripped apart. Shevlin had given him a choice, and Wilson Hoyt lay awake this night, trying to make up his mind what to do—and how to do it.

  His instinct, and his better judgment too, told him that the thing to do was to end the high-grading and deliver the gold to its owners. He would, of course, promptly be fired, but that did not especially disturb him. He had been hunting a job when he had found this one. He could look for one again.

  AS HOYT LAY on his cot trying to make up his mind, Ben Stowe chewed on a dead cigar; and at Dr. Rupert Clagg’s, Mike Shevlin was sitting down at a table with the doctor, his wife and daughter, and Laine Tennison.

  Not many miles away, Red was arriving at Boulder Spring with a message for Lon Court; and Gib Gentry, wishing to warn his friend, was taking the trail to Burt Parry’s claim.

  Ben Stowe foresaw no interruption in his plans that could last more than a few days. Shevlin was a dangerous obstacle, but Lon Court would remove that obstacle smoothly and efficiently. Ray Hollister was somewhere around, but the ranches of his friends were watched day and night, and when he was located he would be picked up.

  But even as he sat alone in his office, Ben Stowe had no way of knowing that there was a meeting at the Three Sevens.

  The ranch house was ablaze with lights, and Hollister was there, seated at the head of the table. Eve Bancroft was watching him with admiring eyes; Babcock loitered at the back of the room. The others at the table were ranchers or their foremen, and they were listening to Hollister.

  On the rugged slope of the mountain, half a mile or more away, Ben Stowe’s watcher lay sprawled on his back staring at the stars with wide-open, unblinking eyes. There was little about him that resembled anything human, for he had been roped and dragged for two miles along the rough mountain through broken lava and cactus, bunch grass and cat-claw. Ray Hollister had done the dragging, then had shaken loose his loop and ridden away. Babcock, more merciful, had paused by the man who looked up at him, ruined beyond recovery, but still conscious. “That draggin’ wasn’t my idea,” Babcock said, and fired the bullet that put the dying man beyond misery.

  The riders at the Three Sevens all wore guns. On their horses there were Winchesters. They had come prepared to attack the monster that was destroying their cattle business. They would blow up the mine and drive out Ben Stowe and his crew; then the ranchers’ water would be pure again, their business would once more be the focal occupation of the Rafter country.

  They were, on the whole, honest, forthright men, protecting their livelihood by the only means they knew, protecting, as they believed, their range land from destruction. They were men born to a life of violence, men who did not approve of violence but who had been led to its use by a fanatic, a fanatic who was also an envious, embittered man, fighting tooth and nail for a position in the world that nothing fitted him to hold.

  DR. RUPERT CLAGG faced Mike Shevlin across the table, over their teacups. Dottie and Laine sat with them.

  Dr. Clagg, who had seen others like Mike Shevlin in many places in the West, knew what a force such a man could be. On his occasional journeys back to the East, he had become impatient with those who spoke with tolerant smiles of the West, or of what they referred to as “the western myth.” Back of every myth there is a stern, harsh reality shaped by men and women of truly heroic mold. Those soft-bellied ones who come later find it easy to refer to things beyond their own grasp as myth; but the men Dr. Clagg had known were men who created myth every day of their lives, usually without any consciousness of doing so, but quite often with awareness that they were experiencing a life that was extraordinary.

  Dr. Clagg had been in Dodge when the twenty-eight buffalo hunters who made the fight at Adobe Walls against more than a thousand Indians, returned from their fight. He was familiar, as were all western men, with the escape of John Coulter from the Blackfoot Indians, a run compared to which the run from the battlefield of Marathon pales to insignificance. He knew the story of Hugh Glass and the grizzly; the story of the ride of Portugee Phillips through a raging blizzard and thousands of Indians to bring help to Fort Phil Kearny; and he knew well the story of the Alamo.

  The stuff of which such myths are made was born every day in the West, but at the moment of birth they were not myth; they were hard reality, the very stuff of life itself.

  Dr. Rupert Clagg, who was more of such a man as these than he himself realized, recognized another in Mike Shevlin.

  “I’m sorry to be so blunt,” Shevlin said, “but there’s no other way of putting it. Ma’am,”—he turned to Laine—“I want you to leave town. I want you out of here on the first stage in the morning, at the latest, but I’d prefer that you’d let me drive you out in a buckboard before daybreak.”

  “It’s as serious as that?” Clagg asked.

  Mike Shevlin outlined the situation as he saw it. He told them what he had done about both Ben Stowe and Wilson Hoyt.

  “And the gold?” asked the doctor. “You still don’t know where it is?”

  “No. I’ve got a hunch, but it doesn’t shape up to much. Only I think they’ll make a break to get it out of here. I think they will figure it had better go now, for they may not get another chance any time soon. And they won’t.”

  “I will not go.” Laine Tennison spoke firmly. “I have business here, and I refuse to be run out of town. I shall stay right here and see it through.”

  “Now listen—” Mike began.

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Shevlin.” She smiled suddenly. “I think you knew all the time that I wouldn’t go, althoug
h I know you had to try… . No, I shall stay.”

  She glanced at his cup. “Mr. Shevlin, you aren’t drinking your tea.”

  He gulped it down, burning his mouth a little, and wanted to swear, but refrained.

  “You do not know who is in this with Stowe?” Clagg asked.

  “I have an idea.”

  “Clagg Merriam?”

  Shevlin looked hard at Dr. Rupert. “That’s who I had in mind.”

  “So had I,” Clagg said, and added, “My remote cousin has always been well off. But I know he has been strapped for money for some time now, and he is not the man to mortgage anything unless the return promises to be more than adequate.”

  For a few minutes, nobody spoke. They sipped their tea in silence, and then Laine said, “Mr. Shevlin, I am afraid I am going to discharge you.”

  “Why?”

  “You mustn’t risk your life for me.”

  He grinned at her. “Ma’am, you’ve made a mistake. I am not risking it for you, but for ten per cent of half a million dollars, and for Eli Patterson.” His eyes twinkled. “Although I’d say if I was planning on risking my life for anybody, you’d be about the prettiest reason I could find.”

  Laine flushed, but she was not to be turned aside. “A foolish reason, Mr. Shevlin. A girl would want a live man, not a dead one.”

  “We have simple feelings out here, Miss Tennison,” Shevlin said. “We’re not a complicated folk. If a man wants to be bad or mean out here in the West, there’s not much to stop him if he’s big enough and tough enough to get away with it.

  “On the other hand, if a man is honest it is because he wants to be. It isn’t like back east, where there’s the law and all. Out here there’s mighty little gray, it is black or white, because there’s no restraint, not even much in the way of public opinion—except as to cowardice or the value of a man’s word.

  “And when it comes to a fight, a man can’t walk away from it if he’s made it his fight. Not and continue to live in the West. You would want a live man, I’m sure, but you’d also want one who lived up to what he believed. Ma’am, I think this here is my fight now, just as much as it’s yours, and I don’t want a dime of your pay.”

  He got up and took up his hat. “I’m going out there now and build the biggest fire anybody ever built. I’m going to bust everything wide open and scatter the pieces so far Mr. Ben Stowe will never be able to put them together again.

  “I’m not a smart man, Miss Tennison, so I’m going to charge in, head down and swinging. You just keep out of the way.”

  Brazos was dozing in his chair when Shevlin came up to the door of the stable. Startled, the old hostler stared up at him.

  “You see Gib Gentry? He started out your way, a-huntin’ you.”

  “I didn’t go out there.” Shevlin glanced up the dark street, then stepped into the stable, away from the light. He had left his horse a few yards up the street in the shadows.

  “Brazos, where does Mason live?” he asked.

  Brazos looked at him slowly, carefully, then indicated an alley across the street. “About a hundred yards back of that alley, in a long shack with three windows on this side. You can’t miss it.”

  “Thanks,” Shevlin stepped outside.

  “He won’t be alone,” Brazos spoke after him. “Deek Taylor will be with him.” Deek Taylor was a tough man, a very tough man.

  Mike Shevlin mounted his horse and rode across the street and up the alley. He stopped near the long cabin and got down. He went up to the door and tried it. It did not open, so he put a shoulder against it and smashed in.

  “Who the hell is that?” Mason’s voice said sleepily.

  Shevlin stood to the right of the door, listening. He had heard a sharp cessation of breathing somewhere ahead of him. “Strike a light,” he said. “I want to talk.”

  But at the same moment he struck a match himself, and saw a coal-oil lamp on the table before him. Lifting the still warm chimney, he touched the match to the wick. Mason had his head lifted and was blinking at him.

  Shevlin looked toward the other occupied bunk. Deek Taylor, a lean, lantern-jawed man with hard eyes, was there and he was looking at Shevlin with no pleasure.

  “I’m talking to him,” Shevlin said, jerking a thumb at Mason. “Are you in this or out of it?”

  “Well, now, that depends.”

  “Not a damn’ bit, it doesn’t. You speak up now. If you’re in it, you can have a belly full. If you’re out of it, you keep your trap shut and lie quiet and you won’t get hurt.”

  “Hurt?” Taylor swung his legs to the floor. “Well, now—”

  As his feet hit the floor, Mike Shevlin grabbed the front of his long-johns and jerked him up out of the bunk. As he jerked, he swung a rock-hard fist. Taylor tried to straighten up, he tried to turn, but the fist smashed him on the jaw, and again in the face, then jerked him back to meet the punches. A hard slug in the belly pushed him into a corner.

  “If you’re smart,” Shevlin said, “you’ll lie quiet and hope I forget about you.”

  He turned toward Mason. The gambler was staring, white-faced, and wide awake now. “Say, who the hell—?” And then Shevlin’s face was in the light, and for the first time Mason saw who the visitor was.

  “Mike! Mike Shevlin!”

  “Sure.” Mike dropped on the edge of Taylor’s bunk, glancing once toward the man with the bloody face who lay sprawled in the corner. “You should have known I’d be back, Mase. Now you tell me: Who killed Eli Patterson?”

  Mason had picked up the stub of a cigar and he tried to strike a match to it, but the match broke. He tried again, his hand shaking. Mason had never been a brave man.

  “Now, Mike, you know I—”

  “Mase,” Shevlin said quietly, “you saw what just happened to Taylor. I’d have to work you over a damn’ sight worse, and I haven’t got time. Tell me who killed Eli, and then you can ride.”

  He struck a match and held it to Mason’s cigar.

  “Gentry,” Mason began, “he—”

  “Gentry took the blame, and he lied. Now you tell me who he lied for. You tell me, Mase, and you’ve got a running start.” He gestured toward the street. “You got any idea what’s going on out there tonight?” he went on. “Hollister’s back. He’s got the ranchers with him. They’ll come in and they’ll get hell shot out of them, but Stowe will get hurt, too. Then Hoyt and me, we’ll pick up the pieces.”

  He wished it would be that easy. Ray Hollister’s timing was always bad, and it would be this time too. And Hoyt might not make up his mind fast enough, which would leave somebody in the middle holding a handful of deuces.

  And that somebody would be Mike Shevlin.

  CHAPTER 9

  MASON HESITATED, HIS lips trembling. He remembered Mike Shevlin, but this was a different man from the one he had known. This Mike Shevlin was bigger, stronger, tougher. He was a man of decision, and Mason had just had an object lesson in that. What Taylor might have done had he gotten into action was not the question, for he had been put out of action swiftly and efficiently. And Mason was no Deek Taylor.

  He thought of his horse. It was close by, in the stable only a few yards back of the house. The pickings had been good, and he had been wise enough to keep his take cached near the town, for he had always known there would be a time for running, just as there always had been before this. And the time had come now. Only he had been a long time in Rafter, and he wanted to stay. They had protected him here because he had protected them.

  “Mike,” he protested, “you got to believe this. I don’t know.”

  “Don’t give me that.”

  “Honest to God, Mike! They needed a witness, and I was paid to swear that Gentry did it.”

  “Who paid you?”

  “Mike, you aren’t going to believe this, but it was Gib. It was Gentry himself.”

  Shevlin glanced over at Taylor. The man was moaning, and was clutching what was apparently a broken jaw. Mike’s eyes returned to Ma
son.

  “So?”

  “That’s all I know—I swear it, Mike! Gentry paid me.”

  “And you’ve no idea?”

  Mason hesitated, and then he shrugged. “Mike, I swear that’s all I know.”

  “Ben didn’t do it?”

  “No, not Ben. At least, I don’t think it was Ben. Not that he’d hesitate. Gentry didn’t do it either. Gentry was close to Ben, so there for a while I figured …

  “But the last thing they wanted was any kind of an investigation. They wanted the whole thing cleared up, whitewashed and off the boards. Figure it for yourself, if somebody came in and started asking questions, somebody might slip up and the whole shooting match would go down the drain.

  “That there Ben—I never knew he had it in him. He worked almighty fast, and you never saw things handled like that.”

  Mason’s confidence was returning. “Mike, what’s going to happen? You say Hollister’s back and about to blow things up? Well, who takes over when the shooting’s finished?”

  He started to get up. “Mike, why not you and me? I know how these things work, and—”

  Shevlin looked at him coldly. “How much do you know? You haven’t told me anything yet.” He paused. “Where’s the gold?”

  Mason glanced at him slyly. “Now, there’s a good question. Where is the gold? There hasn’t been an ounce leave this town, you can bank on that.”

  Mike Shevlin was listening beyond the house, his ears attuned to street movement. Was tonight the night?

  “If you know anything, talk.” Shevlin spoke shortly. He was wasting his time here. Hell might break loose at any moment.

  “How about our deal?” Mason persisted. “How about—”

  “No deal. You talk now, or by God, I’ll—”

  He grabbed Mason by the shirt front and jerked him to his feet. Then he shoved him against the wall near the door with force enough to shake the house. He started for him, and Mason threw up both hands.

  “Don’t hit me, for God’s sake, Mike!”

  “Then talk!”