“Will you please stay out of the street?” she demanded icily.
Lance looked at her steadily. Red-gold hair blew in the wind, and her eyes were an amazingly deep blue. She was beautiful, not merely pretty, and there was in her eyes the haughty disdain of a queen who reprimands a clumsy subject.
“Pretty,” he drawled slowly, “pretty, but plumb spoiled. Could be quite a lady, too,” he added regretfully. Then he smiled and removed his hat. “Sorry, ma’am. If you’ll let me know when you expect to use the street for a racetrack, I’ll keep out of the way. I’ll do my best to keep everybody else out of the way, too.”
He turned as if to go, but her voice halted him.
“Wait!”
She took a couple of quick turns with the lines, jumped to the street, and marched up to him. Her eyes were arrogant and her nostrils tight with anger. “Did you mean to insinuate that I wasn’t a lady?” she demanded. She held her horsewhip in her right hand, and he could see she intended to use it.
He smiled again. “I did,” he said quietly. “You see, ma’am, it takes more than just beauty and a little money to make a lady. A lady is thoughtful of other people. A lady don’t go racing around running people down with a buckboard, and, when she does come close, she comes back and apologizes.”
Her eyes grew darker and darker and he could see the coldness of fury in them. “You,” she snapped contemptuously, “a common cowpuncher, trying to tell me how to be a lady!”
She drew back the whip and struck furiously, but he was expecting it, and without even shifting his feet he threw up an arm and blocked the blow of the whip with his forearm. Then he dropped his hand over and grasped the whip. With a quick twist he jerked it from her hands.
The movement tilted her off balance and she fell forward into his arms. He caught her, looked down into her upturned face, into her eyes blazing with astonishment and frustrated anger, and at her parted lips. He smiled. “I’d kiss you,” he drawled, “and you look invitin’, and most like it would be a lot of fun, but I won’t. You spirited kind kiss much better if you come and ask for it.”
“Ask?” She tore herself free from him, trembling from head to foot. “I’d never kiss you if you were the last man alive.”
“No, ma’am, I reckon not. You’d be standin’ in line waitin’, standin’ away back.”
A hard voice behind Lance stopped him short.
“Seems like you’re takin’ in a lot of territory around here, stranger. I’d like to ask you a few questions.”
Lance turned slowly, careful to hold his hands away from his guns.
The thin-faced man was standing close by, his thumbs hooked in his belt. Two of the other men had spread out, one right and one left. The third man was out of sight, had circled behind him probably, or was across the buckboard from him.
“Let’s have the questions,” he replied calmly. “I’m right curious myself.”
“I want to know,” the man demanded, his eyes narrow and ugly, “where you was day before yesterday.”
Lance was puzzled. “The day before yesterday? I was ridin’ a good many miles from here. Why?”
“You got witnesses?” the thin man sneered. “You better have.”
“What you gettin’ at?” Lance demanded.
“I s’pose you claim you never heard of Joe Wilkins?”
Several men had gathered around now. Lance could hear them muttering among themselves at the mention of that name.
“What do you mean?” Lance asked. “Who is Joe Wilkins?”
“He was killed on Lost Creek trail the day before yesterday,” the fellow snapped. “You was on that trail then, and there’s them that think you done him in. You deny it?”
“Deny it?” Lance stared at the man, his eyes watchful. “Why, I never heard of Joe Wilkins, haven’t any reason to kill him. ’Course, I haven’t seen him.”
“They found Wilkins,” the thin man went on, his cruel eyes fastened on Lance, “drilled between the eyes. Shot with a six-gun. You was on that road, and he’d been carryin’ money. You robbed him.”
Lance watched the man steadily. There was something more behind this bald accusation than appeared on the surface. Either an effort was being made to force him to make a break so they could kill him, or the effort was to discredit him. If he made a flat denial, it would be considered that he was calling the fellow a liar, and probably would mean a shootout. Lance chuckled carelessly. “How’d you know I was on Lost Creek trail?”
“I seen you,” the man declared.
“Then,” Lance said gently, “you were on the trail, too. Or you were off it, because I didn’t see you. If you were off the trail, you were hiding, and, if so, why? Did you kill this Wilkins?”
The man’s eyes narrowed to slits, and suddenly Lance sensed a hint of panic in them. They had expected him to say something to invite a fight. Instead, he had turned the accusation on his accuser.
“No! I didn’t kill him!” the man declared. “He was my friend!”
“Never noticed you bein’ so friendly with him, Polti,” a big farmer declared. “If you was, I don’t think he knowed it.”
“You shut up,” Polti, the thin man, snapped, his eyes blazing. “I’ll do the talkin’ here.”
“You talked enough,” Lance replied calmly, “to make somebody right suspicious. Why are you so durned anxious to pin this killin’ on a stranger?”
“You killed Wilkins,” Polti growled harshly, and triumph shone in his eyes. “Somebody search his saddlebags! You all knew Wilkins had him some gold dust he used to carry around. I bet we’ll find it.”
“You seem right shore,” Lance suggested. “Did you put it in my bag while I was in the Trail House? I saw you slippin’ out.”
“Tryin’ to get out of it?” Polti sneered. “Well, you won’t. I’m goin’ to search them bags here and now.”
Lance was very still, and his green eyes turned hard and cold. “No,” he said flatly. “If anybody searches them bags, it won’t be you, and it’ll be done in the presence of witnesses.”
“I’ll search ’em!” Polti snapped. “Now!”
He wheeled, but before he could take even one step, Lance moved. He grabbed the thin man and spun him around. With a whining cry of fury, Polti went for his gun, but his hand never reached the holster. Lance’s left hit Polti’s chin with a crack like that of a blacksnake whip, and Polti sagged. A left and a right smashed him down, bleeding from the mouth.
“This don’t look so good for you, stranger,” the big farmer stated fearlessly. “Let’s look at them bags.”
“Right,” Lance replied quietly. “An honest man ain’t got anything to fear, they say, but it wouldn’t surprise me none to find the dust there.”
Watching him closely, the crowd, augmented now by a dozen more, followed him to his horse. Suddenly he stopped.
“No,” he said, “a man might palm it if it’s small.” He turned to the girl who had driven the buckboard, and who now stood nearby. “Ma’am, my apologies for our earlier difficulty, and will you go through the bags for me?”
Her eyes snapped. “With pleasure! And hope I find the evidence!”
She removed the articles from the saddlebags one by one. They were few enough. Two boxes of .45 ammunition, one of rifle ammunition, some cleaning materials, and a few odds and ends of rawhide.
As she drew the packet of pictures out, one of them slipped from the packet and fell to the ground. The girl stopped quickly and retrieved it, glancing curiously at the picture of an elderly woman with a face of quiet dignity and poise. For an instant she glanced at Lance, then looked away.
“There is no gold here,” she said quietly. “None at all.”
“Well,” Lance said, and turned, “I guess…”
Polti was gone.
“Puts you in the clear, stranger,” the big farmer said. “I wonder where it leaves Polti?”
“Mebbe he’d’ve tried to slip it into the saddlebag when he searched it,” somebody suggested. “Wou
ldn’t put it past him.”
Lance glanced at the speaker. “That implies he has the gold dust. If he has, he probably killed Wilkins.”
Nobody spoke, and Lance glanced from one to the other. A few men at the rear of the crowd began to sidle away. Finally the big farmer looked up.
“Well, nobody is goin’ to say Jack Pickett lacks nerve,” he said, “but I ain’t goin’ to tackle Polti and them gun-slick hombres he trails with. It’s like askin’ for it.”
The crowd dwindled, and Lance turned to find the golden-haired girl still standing there.
“I’m still not sure,” she said coldly. “You could have buried it.”
He grinned. “That’s right, ma’am, I could have.”
He turned and walked away. The girl stared after him, her brows knit.
Lance led the buckskin slowly down the street to the livery stable. He walked because he wanted to think, and he thought well on his feet. This thing had a lot of angles. Polti was mean and cruel. The man was obviously a killer who would stop at nothing. For some reason he had deliberately started out to frame Lance. Why, there seemed no reason. He might, of course, know why he had come to Live Oak and the town of Botalla.
In the livery stable Lance was rubbing down the buckskin when he heard a voice speak from the darkness of a stall behind him.
“Busy little feller, ain’t you?”
The speaker stepped out of the stall into the light. He wore a battered hat, patched jeans, and a hickory shirt. Yet the guns on his hips looked business-like. Powerfully built, he had brick-red hair, and a glint of humor in his sardonic blue eyes.
“Name of Gates,” he said. “They call me Rusty.”
“I’m Lance.”
The eyes of the stranger in Botalla took in the cowpuncher with quick intelligence. This man was rugged and capable. He looked as if he would do to ride the river with.
“So I heard.” Rusty began making a smoke. Then he looked up, grinning. “Like I say, you’re busy. You invite Steve Lord to a shootin’ party, then sidestep and let him off easy. A lot of people are askin’ why. They want to know if you’ve throwed in with Chet Lord. They want to know if you was scared out. Then you tangle with that wildcat, Tana Steele…”
“Webb Steele’s daughter? I thought so. Noticed the name of Tana Steele on a package in the buckboard.”
“Yeah. That’s her, and trouble on wheels, pard. She’ll never forgive, and, before she’s through, she’ll make you eat your words. She never quits.”
“What do you know about this hombre, Polti?” asked Lance.
“Bert Polti? He’s a sidewinder. Always has money, never does nothin’. He’s plumb bad, an’ plenty fast with that shootin’ iron.”
“He hangs out at the Spur?”
“Mostly. Him and them pards of his…Joe Daniels, Skimp Ellis, and Henry Bates. They’re bad, all of them, and the bartender at the Spur is tough as a boot.”
Lance started for the door. Rusty stared after him for an instant, then shrugged.
“Well,” he said, “I’m buyin’ a ticket. This is one ride I want to take.” And he swung along after Lance.
Lance walked up on the boardwalk and shoved open the batwing doors of the Spur. Bert Polti had been looking for trouble, and now Lance was. Slow to anger, it mounted in him now like a tide, the memory of those small, vicious eyes and the tenseness of the man as he stood, set to make a kill.
Never a troublemaker, Lance had always resented being bullied, nevertheless, and he resented seeing others pushed around. It was this, as much as a debt to pay, that had brought him to Botalla. There was as yet no tangible clue to what the trouble here was all about. He had only Steve Lord’s version, one that seemingly ignored the rights of Mort Davis. Yet now Polti was buying in. Polti had deliberately tried to frame him with a killing. Lance hadn’t a doubt but that Polti had planned to plant gold dust in his saddlebags.
Chapter III
A half dozen men were loitering about the bar when Lance walked in, turned, and looked around.
“Where’s Polti?” he demanded.
One of the men he had seen talking to Polti was sitting at a table nearby, another stood at the bar.
There was no reply. “I said,” Lance repeated sharply, “where’s Polti?”
“You won’t find out nothin’ here, stranger,” the seated man drawled, his tone insulting. “When Polti wants you, he’ll get you.”
Lance took a quick step toward him and, catching a flicker of triumph in the man’s eye, wheeled to see an upraised bottle aimed at his head. Before the man who held it could throw, Lance’s gun fairly leaped from its holster. It roared and the shot caught the bottle just as it left the man’s hand.
Liquor flew in all directions, and the man sprang back, splattered by it.
Holstering his gun, Lance stepped in and caught the man by the shirt and jerked him around. Instantly the fellow swung. Turning him loose, Lance hooked a short left to the chin, then stabbed two fast jabs to the face. He feinted, and threw a high hard right. The fellow went down and rolled over on the floor.
Without a second’s warning, Lance whirled around and grabbed the wrist of the man at the chair, spun him around, and hurled him to the floor.
“All right!” he snapped. “Talk, or take a beatin’! Where’s Polti?”
“The devil with you!” Lance’s latest victim snarled. “I’ll kill you!”
Then Lance had him off the floor, slammed him against the bar, and proceeded to slap and backhand him seven times so fast the eye could scarcely follow. His grip was like iron, and before that strength the man against the bar felt impotent and helpless.
“Talk, cuss you!” Lance barked, and slapped him again. The man’s head bobbed with the force of the blow. “I’m not talkin’ for fun!” Lance said. “I want an answer!”
“Apple Cañon,” the man muttered surlily, “and I hope he kills you.”
Lance slammed him to the floor alongside the first man, then spun on his heel, and walked out. As he came through the door, he saw Rusty Gates standing outside, hand on his gun. Gates grinned.
“Didn’t take long,” he said dryly. “You operate pretty fast, pardner.”
“Where’s Apple Cañon?” Lance demanded.
“Well,” Gates said, and rolled his quid of chewing in his jaws, “Apple Cañon is almost due south of here, down close to the border. That’s where Nita Riordan hangs out.”
“Who’s she?” Lance wanted to know.
“Queen of the Border, they call her. Half Irish, half Mexican, and all dynamite. The best-looking woman in the Southwest, and a tiger when she gets started. But it ain’t her you want to watch. It’s Brigo. Jaime Brigo is a big Yaqui half-breed who can sling a gun as fast as the Brockmans, track like a bloodhound, and is loyal as a Saint Bernard. Also, he weighs about two pounds less than a ton of coal.”
“What’s the place like…a town?”
“No. A bar, a bunkhouse, and three or four houses. It’s a hangout for outlaws. And, feller, it ain’t no place for a man t’go lookin’ for Bert Polti. That’s his bailiwick.”
Lance saddled Buck, his buckskin, and headed south, leaving Rusty at the stable, staring thoughtfully after him. The day was beginning to fade now, and he could see the sun grow larger as it slid away toward the western mountains. There was still heat. It would not be tempered until after the sun was gone, until the long shadows came to make the plains cool.
The bunch grass levels were dotted with mesquite and clumps of prickly pear, and Lance rode on through them, letting the buckskin have his head on the narrow winding trail. Prairie dog towns were all about, but they disappeared as the rocks grew closer. Once he saw a rattler, and there were always buzzards, circling on slow, majestic wings above the waste below.
When he had gone no more than two miles, he left the trail and started cross-country, still thinking of Polti. He did not trust this man. He began to dig and pry in his memory, trying to uncover some clue as to Polti’s actions. But more
and more it became apparent that the secret of all the trouble lay in something he did not know.
The dim trail he had taken when he left the main trail to Apple Cañon was lifting now, skirting the low hills, steadily winding higher and higher. The story that he was going to Apple Cañon was a good one. It would cover up what he actually intended to do. And soon he would go to Apple Cañon.
Polti was dangerous. He knew that. Nor did he underrate the two men he had beaten up in the Spur. Their kind were coyotes who would follow a man for months for a chance to pull him down.
There was menace in this country, an impending sense of danger that would not leave him. There was more here than met the eyes, more than the smile on tall, handsome Steve Lord’s face, more than the sullen anger of the lovely, pampered Tana. There was death here, death and the acrid smell of gunpowder.
What did they know? What was behind the message he had received that had brought him here? Was it just another range war, or was it more?
Yet anyone who had lived in Texas through the Taylor and Sutton feud knew that range war could be deadly. And in Texas these days men rode with awareness. The wire was stirring up old feelings, old animosities. The big ranches were all stringing wire now. The smaller ranches were doing likewise. Starved for range for their herds, and pinched down to small areas, they saw extinction facing them if they did not fight. And they had neither the wealth to hire gunmen, nor the strength to fight without them unless they banded together.
Joe Wilkins, who Lance had learned was a nester, had been slain. The mention of his name and the quick surge of feeling had been enough to indicate that submerged fires burned here, and close to the surface. Any little spark might touch off an explosion that would light a thousand fires along the border, and turn it into an inferno of gunsmoke. Men were all carrying guns. They were carrying spare ammunition, too. They were ready, one and all. They rode the range, or rode fence with rifles across their saddle bows, and their keen eyes searched every clump of mesquite or prickly pear. Joe Wilkins had died, fences had been cut, and the ugly shape of war was lifting its head.
Kilkenny 02 - A Man Called Trent (v5.0) Page 2