The Fifth Western Novel

by Walter A. Tompkins

  Perris’s eyes had never left Logan since this exchange of talk had begun. They shifted now to Toke Grossett, who stood against the inner door as if barring that exit.

  “I think,” Perris said finally, “that you are lying about going to the Horse Heaven country, my friend. I think you boarded this boat in such dramatic fashion because it was your only possible chance to avoid a shoot-out with that law posse.”

  Logan’s face froze into an inscrutable mask.

  “You look like a cowhand,” Perris went on. “Perhaps one with a gun to hire. I doubt if that gun you carry bears any notches on its butt. That is the mark of a braggart or a depraved killer. You are neither. In short, as I said before, I believe you are a man I could use.”

  The dottle was beginning to fry in the bottom of Logan’s pipe. He used that as an excuse to step over to the outer door, to knock the refuse from his briar outside its porthole. While he was doing that Logan saw that the door was locked. Grossett barred the inner corridor door. This, then, was a trap, should Perris decide to spring it.

  “How can I haul your wagon,” he said, turning to face this pair, “when you haven’t told me what kind of harness I’ll be wearing?”

  Perris said slowly, “We are heading for the town of Owlhorn. By we, I mean myself, Toke Grossett here, and the twenty-eight men you saw on board—all of whom are in my hire. Owlhorn will be wide open for months to come after this land rush opens. A boom town would be a welcome sanctuary, I should think, to a man on the dodge.” Logan returned to the wicker chair.

  “Inferring,” he challenged, “that I am on the dodge?”

  Perris leaned forward. “Does the name of U.S. Marshal John Stagman mean anything to you, Logan?”

  That question was like a thunderbolt bursting without warning on a cloudless day. Perris, watching intently for Logan’s reaction, saw surprise lay its sharp edge on Logan, catching him off guard.

  Recovering from this brief lapse in the guard of mystery he had kept about himself, Logan said frankly, “Stagman? Well, yes. He was the marshal who missed this boat at Riverbend.”

  Something like approval seemed to touch the surface of the muddy pools that were Perris’s eyes. He got to his feet, extending a hand to Logan for the first time.

  “I’m offering you a job, Logan, because I think you are the right man to handle what I have in mind,” he said. “I’ll give you overnight to decide whether you want to work for me. The nature of that job will be explained after you make a decision.”

  Over the handshake, Cleve Logan revolved Perris’s cryptic words in his mind, knowing this land promoter had left the most important things unsaid. In a way, he was using his knowledge of Marshal Stagman as a lever to blackmail Logan into accepting his blind offer for a job on his own terms.

  “Right now,” Logan grinned, “I’m too ganted out to talk over any deals. If you’ll call off your watchdog yonder I’ll be on my way to whatever passes for a cook shack on this barge.”

  Perris’s eye made its signal to Toke Grossett, who moved away from the door.

  “You’ll find the galley aft,” Perris said. “And I suggest you arrange with Rossiter for the rent of a deck hammock. The quarters below decks are hotter than the hubs of hell.”

  Cleve Logan stepped into the passageway, and the sound of his spurred boots rounded the cabin and passed along the promenade deck. As his footfalls trailed off, Grossett and Perris faced each other for a long, calculating moment.

  “Well,” Perris said finally, “what do you make of him?”

  The bodyguard shrugged. “A tough man. I’d say he’s killed his man for breakfast more than once, boss.”

  “Of course he’s tough,” Perris snapped. “The thing is, have you got him pegged? Why would John Stagman be chasing this Cleve Logan with a big posse?”

  Grossett reached up on the top bunk and dragged down a pair of tooled leather saddlebags. Unbuckling one of them, he revealed a fat dossier of cardboard placards, sheaves of wanted notices filched from various post-office bulletin boards during his travels, and envelopes thick with newspaper clippings, each meticulously labeled with dates and geographical locations.

  Toke Grossett had made manhunting a cold science, a business proposition. His saddlebags contained more up to-date information about the West’s legion of warned men than many a sheriff’s files.

  Thumbing through the reward dodgers, catalogued alphabetically by states and territories, Grossett studied several before selecting one which covered the information he was after. Without speaking, Grossett handed it to Perris.

  The blazer carried no photograph, only bold red type:

  $2,000 Reward!

  Will be paid in hand by Wells Fargo Express for information leading to the capture of “Trig’ Fetter man former Wyoming cowhand, convicted of looting one of the Company’s stages between Bannack City and Virginia City, Montana Territory, of a $50,000 bullion shipment in October, 1886.

  Escaped from road gang of Territorial Penitentiary at Deer Lodge in April, 1887. Believed headed west toward Idaho or Oregon.

  Description: aged 32, height 6 ft. 1 in., weight 180. Black hair, blue eyes.

  Officers are advised that Fetterman should, if possible, be captured alive, inasmuch as he has not yet revealed where he cached bullion. If apprehended, wire your local sheriff.

  (signed) John Stagman,

  United States Marshal.

  Perris handed the dodger back. “It could be the same man,” the speculator mused, excitement putting its flash in his eyes. “Trig Fetterman broke out of prison last April. This is May. The manhunt is being pushed west. And the description jibes with this Cleve Logan.”

  Grossett blinked complacently, sure of his wisdom and his talents for spotting hunted men.

  “We can easy enough find out if Logan is Fetterman or not,” he said. “Blackie Marengo’s on your payroll.”

  Perris nodded. “Yes. Marengo shot his way out of the same penitentiary a week before I hired him at Lewiston, didn’t he? Marengo should know a fellow convict by sight.”

  Perris jabbed a fresh cigar between his teeth and took a turn around the cabin.

  “Bring Marengo here,” he ordered Grossett, “without telling him what I’m after. It’s barely possible even as sordid a character as Blackie might lie to protect another convict.”

  Grossett restored his saddlebags carefully to the upper bunk and stepped out of Cabin A into the humid dusk. A thought halted him then, and he stuck his head in the door to put his slitted and evil eyes on Perris.

  “Suppose I figgered this wrong,” he said, “and it turns out Logan ain’t this Fetterman. What then?”

  Perris’s thumb and forefinger polished the shiny gold bullet on his watch chain in his habitual mannerism.

  “I can still use a known enemy of Stagman’s,” he said. “When I’m finished with Logan, he’s your meat, Toke. He has the air of a man with a bounty on his scalp.”

  Chapter Four

  Out of the Past

  Following the narrow promenade deck which hugged the Sacajawea’s beam amidships, Cleve Logan worked his way to the stern deckhouse, jammed now with the triple-decked hammocks of Rossiter’s overcrowded passenger list.

  A blended odor of onions and coffee and rancid bacon grease guided him to the after section of the deckhouse which was the galley and, according to a tarnished name plate above the door, was the packet’s dining-salon.

  He paused at this door, savoring the smells and noises of the night. The Sacajawea’s paddle wheel was idling, for this nocturnal run of the treacherous Columbia was a rare thing for even as experienced a riverman as Rossiter to attempt.

  The mysterious urgency behind Duke Perris’s chartering this packet to reach his destination was no doubt behind Rossiter’s departure from his usual practice of tying up at a handy bar after sundown.

  But
this was late spring, and the Columbia was at flood crest from the melting snows at its source, and Rossiter had two decades’ knowledge of the shifting channels.

  The afterdeck was crowded with men playing poker and dice games on spread-out blankets by lantern light, each game attracting its knot of Lewiston riffraff whom Duke Perris, for reasons unknown, had on his payroll bound for the Owlhorn land rush.

  Logan tarried at the galley door, upwind from the faintly nauseous odors of that place, and let his nostrils enjoy the aromatic smells of the Washington hills gliding past under the stars, like shadows rather than the solid substance of rearing granite scarps.

  Logan gave the loosely formed groups of gambling men his close attention, deducing that crew and passengers had already eaten their last meal of the day; and it was with some relief that he stepped into the dining-salon to see only one man at the galley counter stools, his back to the door.

  A ponderous Chinese, gleaming with sweat, emerged from the galley proper and took Logan’s order, moisture streaming down his jowls and dripping onto the grimy oilcloth where he placed a plate and tinplate silverware.

  Logan was stirring sugar into the steaming coffee which the chef placed before him when the man in the blue hickory shirt and tipped-back Stetson at the far end of the counter looked around, studied Logan’s profile for a short interval, and then drawled in a voice that carried the soft overtones of Dixie, “Be damned if it ain’t Big Slim! I thought you were holed up somewhere in the Blue Mountain country, kid.”

  The soft-voiced greeting brought Logan spinning around on his stool, startled enough to slosh scalding coffee over his fingers. His glance raked the other man’s weather-bronzed face and faintly stubbled jaw.

  “Tex Kinevan!” Logan addressed this man out of his obscure past, reaching out to meet the other’s extended hand over the vacant stools between them. “It’s a small world, you old mossy-horn!”

  Kinevan slid his dishes over to the stool next to Logan’s, old memories putting a glow on his features.

  “Nice to see you after these years since Wyomin’, Slim. What brings you on this stinkin’ tub?”

  Something in Logan’s look caused Tex Kinevan to draw back, knowing he had said the wrong thing.

  “I ain’t glad to see you, Tex. You never saw me before, understand that? You never saw me before.”

  Kinevan grinned, abashed by this low-voiced outburst.

  “Sure, sure,” he said hastily, and bent over his half-finished steak as the cook waddled in with a bowl of greasy soup for Logan. “I never laid eyes on you, kid.”

  Logan broke soggy crackers into the soup and tasted the unsavory fluid with a wry grimace.

  “You one of Duke Perris’s flunkies, Tex?”

  Without bending his head toward the big rider, Kinevan answered, “Hell, no. That bunch of barflies and saloon thugs? I booked passage at Starbuck on this boat a couple weeks before Perris bought up the space. If I got to eat slop I won’t do it with those hawgs out on deck.”

  They were silent until the Chinese replaced Logan’s soup bowl with a plate of fried spuds, eggs, and ham.

  “Still riding for thirty a month and found, Tex?” Logan wanted to know.

  “That’s behind me, Slim. Heard of the Indian lands Uncle Sam is openin’ for homesteadin’ in the Horse Heavens come June first? I aim to file on a quarter section of bottomland on Rawhide River and sink myself some roots. Can you imagine me a sodbuster?”

  They had their little laugh over the picture of this old-time bronc buster plodding behind plow handles; and after a considerable silence, during which they put away the Chinese’s tasteless grub, Tex Kinevan ventured to give voice to the curiosity that needled him.

  “What rooted you out of your Blue Mountain hideaway, kid?”

  Logan swung his gaze off the cook’s broad back, busy cleaning his griddle, and decided to trust Kinevan with an honest answer.

  “A marshal named John Stagman,” he said, “showed up at my front gate a couple weeks ago. I—”

  Logan broke off as Toke Grossett poked his head into the galley at that moment, put his brief attention on the two men eating at the counter, and then passed on toward the stern deck.

  * * * *

  Grossett found the man he was hunting for in a poker game which was going full blast on a spread-out blanket, under the glow of the Sacajawea’s port running light.

  “Duke wants to see you in his cabin, Blackie.”

  Blackie Marengo, his square brute face still carrying the recent pallor he had picked up on a rockpile behind the gray penitentiary walls at Deer Lodge, glanced up to scan Perris’s bodyguard with impatience, pulling his thick lips off tobacco-stained snags of teeth.

  “He can wait till I finish this hand, Toke,” the escaped convict snapped. “I got my pile ridin’ in this pot.”

  Grossett nodded, squatting down to size up the game. Poker was life itself to Grossett, and he caught the dealer’s nod and fished in his Rob Roy shirt for a roll of greenbacks, intending to take Blackie Marengo’s place when he left.

  * * * *

  Back in the galley salon, Logan dropped a silver dollar on the counter and got off the stool, leaning over Tex Kinevan as he reached for the jar of toothpicks.

  “That’s the way my cards lay,” Logan said. “Reckon you’re the only man living I’d tell my story to. You can see why I don’t want anybody on this steamer knowing we’re friends.”

  Kinevan regarded his slab of pie gloomily, then eyed his old friend under the curled brim of his Stetson, considerably disturbed by the things Logan had confided in him.

  “Sure, sure. A man in your position can’t play it too safe. I wouldn’t bet a plugged nickel on you bein’ alive this time next week, though.”

  Logan left the deckhouse, his jaded weariness assuaged by this first food he had had since daybreak, back in the Touchet Hills. That meal had been gulped down in saddle.

  He crossed to the starboard promenade deck, squinting up at the dim glow of the binnacle light in the pilothouse where Caleb Rossiter’s big shape was crouched behind the wheel, eyes boring into the black mystery of the river gorge ahead.

  He glanced at the boiling tide of the river alongside the hull and knew he was trapped aboard the Sacajawea; even an experienced swimmer would be lost trying to buck those twisting currents to reach the near bank, and Cleve Logan had a rider’s natural dread of water.

  Shouldering past the dangling hammocks, some of them sagged by the bulk of sleepers who had turned in early, Logan was reminded of what Duke Perris had told him about seeing the skipper and renting a hammock for the night.

  He thought of Perris’s mysterious offer of a job, and knew he would be ten times a reckless fool to accept it sight unseen; and again he felt the trapped feeling of being a man whose destiny had gotten out of control, forcing him into being a pawn for whatever Perris might have in mind for him.

  The natural run of his thoughts brought him to Opal Waymire, and what the honkytonk girl had told him about Alva Ames.

  Save for their brief exchange of words at the moment of his leaping from the Riverbend dock to the bow of this packet, Logan had had no other contact with the girl in pink gingham. Opal had said she occupied the cabin next to D, and Logan found himself heading that way now.

  He paused at the outer door of Alva’s stateroom, hearing the girl’s voice inside. She was reading aloud from the Psalms, and at intervals Logan heard a man’s voice break into the reading to comment on some phase of Scriptural interpretation.

  That would be Alva’s brother, most likely; the man of God who, knowing Owlhorn would shortly become the devil’s playground, was headed for that boom camp to carry the Gospel to its sinners.

  Logan reached a fist toward the door with the intention of knocking, but realized that Alva Ames’s brother was at prayer, and that this would be an awkward time to i
nvade their privacy.

  He turned away, packing his pipe thoughtfully, his mind dwelling on the brand of courage it took to be a preacher in a Godless land. He plumbed his jumper pocket for a match and was shielding his face from the wind while he lighted his pipe when he heard the scrape of a man’s boots moving up the narrow deckway behind him.

  Logan turned into the wind, still holding the match over his pipe bowl, and was watching the formless shape of the approaching man when that individual crossed the bar of lamplight from Opal’s cabin.

  Sight of that bald nutshell head and bull neck was a physical shock to Logan as, for the second time aboard the Sacajawea tonight, he found himself facing someone out of his past. He told himself this could not be; but he had to be sure and so he spoke a name softly at the looming bulk before him. “Marengo?”

  The big shape halted as if he had struck an invisible wall and fell back a step, taking his close-up look at Cleve Logan’s face, dim but plain enough in the reflected lamplight from the Ameses’ porthole.

  Blackie Marengo’s jaw sagged to expose his dirty snags of teeth. Pure shock was limned in the convict’s blocky features as he lurched back still another step, the point of his shoulder rubbing the cabin wall, recognition bulging his bloodshot eyeballs.

  “By God, it’s Cleve Logan!”

  The words ground out of the depths of Blackie Marengo’s chest like a mutter of thunder far back in some mountain canyon. He added in a softer tone, “I been hopin’ our trails would cross.”

  In that instant Logan knew with blinding surety that this man intended to kill him. It was written in the sudden clamp of Marengo’s teeth, in the furtive way his hand poised at the open lapels of his coat.

  Marengo had lost none of his festering hate since that day, two years back, when these two had faced the warden of Montana’s penitentiary.

  There was no time for preliminaries between these two, meeting so unexpectedly and at such short range. Like bear and bull trapped in the game pit, they lunged at each other, Logan concentrating on seizing the hand Marengo had stabbed under his coat.