The Fifth Western Novel

by Walter A. Tompkins

Before the rancher’s bellow of pain and fear could leave his lips, Logan had his right arm up under Buckring’s chin, the angle of his elbow cutting off the man’s windpipe.

  The chair skidded back on its casters as Logan dragged Buckring down to his knees, so that the big rancher’s body lay against his own as a shield from Toke Grossett’s bullets.

  With the same movement Logan reached across the desk and grabbed one of the polished bronze horns of the steer-head statue containing the clock.

  All this had transpired between the measured ticks of that timepiece, a move so desperately contrived and so rashly executed that Toke Grossett’s gun had not yet dipped down to cover Logan.

  The heavy bronze statue had a sharp-cornered base made to order as a bludgeon. Sweeping the statue off the desk, Logan felt Buckring’s first struggle of resistance wilt as the bronze base clubbed his silver-haired skull with a sodden impact.

  Jube Buckring’s lax, senseless weight dragged Logan out of the chair. Blood was gushing from the penpoint which skewered the rancher’s nostril like a miniature arrow; the big man was out cold, his huge frame forming its barrier between Logan and Grossett’s leveled revolver.

  Down on his knees, his right arm still holding its throttling pressure on Buckring’s throat, Logan reached under the rancher’s coat lapel and found the Bisley .38 holstered under Buckring’s armpit, where he had noted it this morning.

  Toke Grossett’s .45 made its ear-smashing concussion in the confined room as Perris’s man charged away from the door in the first offensive movement he had managed since breaking the chains of paralysis which had gripped him.

  He aimed his shot at Logan’s half-seen head. The bullet brushed Buckring’s white locks and the violent air-whip of its passage was a physical sting across Logan’s cheek as the slug smashed into the mahogany desk behind him.

  Toke Grossett was chopping his weapon down for a following shot which Logan knew would come without regard for whether or not it smashed through Jubal Buckring on its way to his target. This had become a primitive situation, to kill or be killed.

  As he jerked Buckring’s short-barreled Bisley out of holster, Logan felt the front sight snag on the lining of Buckring’s coat. The garment’s fabric made its tent outside the gun barrel as Logan squeezed trigger in the shaved instant of time left before Grossett’s lunge carried him close enough for a sure shot.

  The exploding .38 thrust Logan’s hand back against the ranchman’s chest, under the coat. The impact of the Bisley slug checked Grossett’s forward motion, froze the thumb which was about to trip Grossett’s heavy gun prong.

  A gout of bright blood welled from the bullet hole punched at an upward angle through the bridge of Toke Grossett’s nose.

  The satanic face was shocked for eternity into a surprised mask as life’s brilliance fled from his bottle-green eyes, and Grossett stood there, dead on his feet, the bullet’s momentum canceling the forward rush of his body.

  Then Grossett’s knees unhinged, and he fell, twisting in a half-turn, his shoulder striking Buckring’s inert bulk and rolling sideways to the floor.

  Only then did Cleve Logan release his strangle hold on Buckring’s neck. He came slowly to his feet, leaving the smoking Bisley inside the rancher’s coat.

  The smell of scorched cloth blended with the biting fumes of smoke gases which eddied in milky layers in the Ringbone office, these clouds stirring slightly as Cleve Logan stepped over the unconscious form of Jubal Buckring and stood looking down at Grossett’s corpse.

  Logan reached down and grabbed Grossett’s belt, hauling him away from Buckring’s grotesquely slumped body propped against the tipped-over office chair. The clock was still ticking like a heartbeat inside the bronze steer head, the base of which held the bright crimson smudge of Buckring’s blood. Its dial registered an elapse of only twenty seconds since Logan had jabbed Buckring with the penholder.

  Retrieving his own gun from Grossett’s waistband, Logan recovered his Stetson and shell belt. Unlocking the door, he stood for a moment, staring through the shifting shapes of the gunpowder clouds, regarding the still figures by the desk.

  Buckring was beginning to rally, his breath coming in stertorous gusts. Logan saw no point in being in this office when the rancher came to and discovered the fate of his accomplice. One thing was obvious—despite Perris’s strict orders to the contrary, Logan could not remain at Ringbone.

  Leaving the ranch house at a leisurely walk, Logan went directly to the cavvy corral and cut his dun out of, the bunch. From the sod bunkhouse, Perris’s tatterdemalion crew glanced up from their gambling, giving no particular thought to Cleve Logan’s departure from the Hole-in-the-Wall.

  Their ears had not picked up the muted concussion of gunfire issuing from Buckring’s office.

  Chapter Eleven

  Alva Ames’s Story

  A horse and rider waited motionless as rock images in the shade of the sky-lined pine which marked the outer rampart of the Hole-in-the-Wall.

  Sensing this might be a Ringbone rider posted on sentry duty to watch the ranch road to Owlhorn, Cleve Logan lifted his gun from holster and held the Colt in readiness behind his pommel as he put the dun up the last steep tilt of wagon ruts leading out of Buckring’s hidden pocket.

  The feeling of trouble waiting for him here laid its sharp edge against Logan as he saw the silhouetted rider touch spurs to horseflesh and move out into the beating sunshine to block the road ahead of him.

  Then Logan felt the relief of anticlimax as he recognized the slim shape of Alva Ames. He holstered the .45 and touched his Stetson as he rode up, a grin twisting his mouth as he put his greeting in the form of a warning.

  “You shouldn’t be gallivanting around these hills alone, ma’am. Especially this week. Ringbone riders are touchy about strangers trespassing their range.”

  Alva’s smile faded as Logan reined up alongside her. “I have always fancied that I could take care of myself in this man’s world,” she said archly. “If you’re riding back to town could you stand my company?”

  Logan twisted around for a final look at Ringbone. He saw no sign of pursuit there, nor did he expect any. He turned back to the girl.

  “It’s a good idea in more ways than one,” he said. “How come you’re so far from civilization?”

  They put their horses into an easy canter down the ribbon of road. It was the first time Logan had seen the girl on horseback, and he noted that she rode with the careless ease of a woman with considerable experience in the saddle.

  She was dressed in a split buckskin skirt for the occasion; a farmer’s straw hat, obviously purchased in some Owlhorn store, was tilted at a rakish angle off her glossy black hair.

  “Just getting some air,” she told him. “Jeb found a homesteader’s wife who was a Methodist deaconess back in Ohio or somewhere, and she’s introducing him to future members of his flock.”

  She paused a moment, then said in a harsher tone, “Owlhorn depresses me, Cleve, although I almost feel disloyal to my brother in mentioning it. It’s a place I’ll want to get away from as often as possible, I’m afraid.”

  Logan detected an undercurrent of disillusion in her voice and, unable to account for that, answered, “What were you expecting to find out on the frontier?”

  She turned her head toward him, and he read the real unease, the growing doubt in her eyes.

  “I wouldn’t let Jeb know how I feel, of course. But this is not a happy country, Cleve. It’s torn with greed and rivalry and the promise of trouble to come. After only one day in town, I’ve been able to see that.”

  They traveled another mile before Alva spoke again. “The people are afraid, Cleve. Even the homesteaders, who should be hopeful—you can see fear behind that hope. You won’t deny that. Otherwise you wouldn’t have told me it was dangerous to ride these hills alone.”

  Logan pulled down to a t
rot, remembering that he could not approach Owlhorn until darkness. Elis eyes swept the gray twisting road ahead, studying the tawny creases of the surrounding hillslopes with eyes alert for trouble sign. This was Ringbone country, and until it was behind him he would not feel otherwise.

  “The sodbusters must know they’ll have to fight to hold their new homes until law and order comes in,” the man said carefully. “Cattlemen know that every quarter section of valley bottom that’s fenced in brings the day closer when they’ll find themselves pushed back into these desert hills. Any homesteader who isn’t a blind fool has surely taken that into account before coming here.”

  He felt a rising hostility in the girl’s sideward glance.

  “You’re a cowman,” she said accusatively. “I saw you leaving Jubal Buckring’s ranch. Are you one of the riders who will help terrorize those innocent women and children in the valley?”

  He returned her look thoughtfully, feeling the pressure of restrictions which hemmed in his every word, his every act, knowing the impossibility of telling this girl the things she wanted to hear from him.

  “The land office opens in four days,” he said. “I do not expect to be in this country the day after that. Does that sound like I’ve joined Buckring?”

  Something like relief touched the girl’s face as they reined up to let their horses blow at the top of the last ridge overlooking Owlhorn Valley and the green trace of Rawhide Creek.

  In the distance they could see the glimmer of sunshine on the white hoods of the homesteaders’ wagons, the silver sparkle of the shallow river, and the haze of dust and smoke which obscured the ugly aspects of Owlhorn.

  “You are a person of strange contradictions, Cleve Logan,” she said. “On the Sacajawea I took you to be a man in a hurry to get somewhere, and that was what impelled me to help you when your lasso missed its mark. I could not bear to see you miss that boat because of Rossiter’s nasty temper. When you met the Klickitat stage yesterday I was glad to see you, glad that Owlhorn was your destination as well as mine. Now you say you are leaving it behind. Doesn’t the other side of the hill ever bore you, Cleve?”

  He filled and lit his pipe, a habit of his to cover up his thoughts, and sat with one knee hooked over the saddle horn, the sun’s bright flash on the backstrap of his gun drawing the girl’s eye toward that weapon.

  “Do I flatter myself that you’d be sorry to see me head over the hill, Alva?”

  The question, bluntly phrased, brought the color to the girl’s cheeks.

  “If—if you mistook my interest for cheap flirtation, Cleve, that would make me sorry.”

  He divined a certain pathos back of her statement and he permitted himself a careful comment. “You’re young and uncommonly pretty for a frontier woman, Alva. Back along the trail you’ve probably had many a man panting to marry you. What holds you back?”

  She sat her saddle stiffly, staring straight ahead.

  “A man hurt you sometime, some place?” he pressed her, circling the edges of her reserve.

  Her voice came softly, “I have never been in love, if that’s what you mean. I—I can’t allow myself to be.” The fragrance of his tobacco wafted to her, and he knew that his nearness touched her, knew that behind her defensive front this girl was capable of deep emotions.

  “I think I know,” he said. “Your brother. May I ask what caused his affliction? Was he born blind?”

  She shook her head. “No. It happened when I was a baby. Dad was a circuit rider in the Alder Gulch mines in Montana, during the rush of ’67. One night a pair of claim jumpers shot Dad and ransacked our cabin, hunting for gold dust. They thought Dad was a prospector. When they couldn’t find as much as a nugget, they set fire to the cabin.”

  Alva sucked a deep breath into her lungs, her eyes hardening under the pressure of old memories, long covered up.

  “Jeb was a boy of eight then. He came back from town and found the cabin in flames. He went inside, wrapped my crib blanket about me, and got me out somehow. But the flames disfigured his face and destroyed his eyesight. Since then I have been the only eyes Jeb has had.”

  She shook herself out of her mood and managed a smile as they resumed their ride out of the foothills.

  “That was twenty years ago,” she said. “Jeb educated himself at a seminary and was ordained only this spring in Lewiston. This Owlhorn church is his first parish. We were lucky to find a board of deacons who would hire a blind minister.”

  They talked of other things during the last lap of their ride along the Rawhide. Not until they were nearing the outermost of the homesteaders’ camps along the river east of Owlhorn did Alva Ames comment on the land rush.

  “You met this man Duke Perris on the Sacajawea,” she said. “What do you make of him, Cleve?”

  “What do you mean?”

  She shrugged, a frown cutting the smooth surface of her brow. “Well, so many of these homesteaders are flocking to that land office of his, Cleve, turning over their precious savings to buy lots which Perris is selling in Owlhorn. I don’t like it. He’s telling them that in ten years Owlhorn will be the metropolis of the Territory, more important than Seattle or Spokane. That isn’t true. Owlhorn will never be anything more than a dot on the map.”

  Logan was noncommittal. “Perhaps the homesteaders are afraid there won’t be enough donation claims to go around, the way families are flocking in. Maybe they’d rather speculate with town lots from Perris & Company than be left with nothing.”

  Circling the south edge of the town they rode directly to the church and dismounted. The vestibule doors were hooked back to ventilate the building and inside they had a glimpse of Jebediah Ames, busy dusting off the worn pews.

  “Jeb’s so very happy, knowing he will pull his own weight from now on,” Alva mused, her eyes moist. “All these years he has felt dependent on me for so much. It isn’t a good thing for a man to be a prisoner, Cleve, not even to a sister who loves him more dearly than anything else on earth.”

  Logan put a hand on the girl’s shoulder, feeling the urgency of his own emotions.

  “Jeb’s obligation to you is no less important to him than yours is to the brother who saved your life in infancy,” he said gently. “I’d like to be around when he releases you to pursue your own happiness, Alva. The man who catches your eye will be rich beyond measure, believe me.”

  He stepped back into stirrups and, the spell broken between them, a harsh note entered his voice as he prepared to ride out of the churchyard.

  “I want you to promise me on your honor that you’ll take no more joy rides alone on Ringbone range, Alva. This country isn’t tame enough for that yet.”

  Standing on the church steps, Alva Ames solemnly lifted her right hand.

  “I promise.” She laughed. “No more rides alone.”

  He put his horse down the hill then, his destination the livery back of the Pioneer House. This ride out from Ringbone had, for the time being, crowded his own tangled destiny out of his head; but he knew it was imperative that he break the news of Toke Grossett’s death to Perris before some rider from Buckring’s ranch beat him to it.

  Later, from the window of his bedroom, he saw the impossibility of contacting Perris in his land office. The place was crowded with homesteaders, as Alva had said, eager to spend their scanty funds for Owlhorn building sites.

  He waited until darkness had come again to the valley before going downstairs to eat supper. He saw the lights blossom in the Palace Casino, and the windows of Perris’s office go dark.

  His meal finished, Logan walked into the darkness of a moonless night, crossing the street to the Palace. At the moment of his entrance through the batwings, the packed house was relatively hushed, listening to Opal Waymire sing a bawdy song to the accompaniment of a Negro pianist.

  She was dressed in a low-cut scarlet gown ablaze with sequins. Her voice had a throa
ty, sexual quality which was surprisingly good for a honkytonk singer. During the storm of applause and boot-stomping which followed her number, Logan moved through the crowded place and satisfied himself that Duke Perris was not in the barroom.

  Opal caught his eye, and he could not mistake the invitation in her motion toward the door of her private office. He shook his head, sending his regrets across that smoke-fouled room, and pushed out through the slatted half-door into the night.

  The girl’s voice was lifted in another plaintive melody when he reached the alley which separated the Palace from Duke Perris’s land office. The front of that building was dark, but pinholes of light streamed through the green shades of windows in the back of the building where Perris had his living-quarters.

  Logan moved down the alley and rounded the corner just as the back door opened to throw its spreading glare of lamplight across the weeds of the back lot.

  A pompous-looking man with turkey-wattle jowls and a corpulent figure clad in a long-skirted claw-hammer coat stepped out of Perris’s room, his profile turned to Logan as he faded back into the deep shadow alongside the clapboard wall.

  “You sure this thing is foolproof, Duke?” the fat man spoke timorously around one of Perris’s expensive cheroots. “A man in my official position, you know—subject to Federal investigation—it behooves me to watch my step.”

  Perris’s deep voice reassured his visitor from the doorway, out of Logan’s sight. “With Stagman disposed of we can’t miss, Gulberg. You have the papers ready tomorrow night, and I’ll have the buyers lined up. I wish you’d change your mind and handle this out at Buckring’s place.”

  Gulberg shook his triple chins in hearty negation.

  “Every move I make is watched by these nesters, you understand. To be seen heading toward Ringbone would prejudice my security. Good night, my friend.”

  The door closed, and in the following blackness Logan heard Gulberg grope his way through the shadows within inches of where Logan stood. The fat man smelled of pomade and cheap whisky, and his breath wheezed asthmatically as he cut up the alley flanking the Palace.