That’ll be Gus Gulberg, ran the thought through Logan’s head. For a Federal land agent in charge of homesteads, Mister Gulberg is keeping strange company tonight.
Logan waited for five minutes before he stepped up on the porch and rattled Perris’s doorknob surreptitiously. A moment later the door opened a crack and revealed the promoter’s head.
“Oh, Logan,” Perris said gruffly. Then, his voice taking on an edge of quick anger, “What are you doing in town? Didn’t I give you explicit orders to remain at Buckring’s till I sent for you?”
Before Logan could answer Perris blew out his wall lamp and Logan heard the door hinges squeak as Perris joined him on the tiny stoop.
“I had to leave Ringbone in a hurry,” Logan drawled.
Perris sucked in a breath. “Why? Sheriff trail you out there?”
Logan laughed softly. “Nothing that simple. Grossett and Buckring sucked me into a trap and threw their guns on me. Seems they got the idea I could turn over a $50,000 Wells-Fargo cache to them. Without your knowledge, by the way.”
Perris digested Logan’s report at considerable length.
“I’m riding out to Ringbone tonight, Cleve. I’ll rake Grossett over the coals for you. I ordered him to lay off you.”
Logan laughed again. “That won’t be necessary, Perris. I left Grossett with a chunk of lead in his noggin. And Buckring asleep with a sore head. I’m here to see how this affects our deal.”
In the darkness Logan kept his hand on gun butt, not being sure of how Perris would take the news of his lieutenant’s death. After a moment he heard Perris release a whistling breath.
“Meet me on the outskirts of town in ten minutes,” Perris said. “If Buckring’s story jibes with yours, we’ll write off Grossett as a good riddance. Bounty hunters usually get tangled in their own rope.”
Logan stepped noiselessly off the porch, his exact position thereby concealed from the promoter. His whisper came as deadly as a snake’s hiss from the darkness. “Perris, if you got any notions about riding out of town with me and pulling a double cross to square up for Grossett—”
Perris answered quickly, urgently, “No, Logan. Damn it, I trust you. I’ve got to. It’s just that I’m riding out to Ringbone myself—and I want to keep you away from Owlhorn until I send word that John Stagman has arrived.”
Chapter Twelve
“I Ain’t a Ghost”
Twice on the eight-mile ride to the Hole-in-the-Wall, invisible sentinels challenged Cleve Logan and Duke Perris from coverts in the roadside’s darkness.
Buckring, starting tonight, had put a double cordon of guards along the boundary of his ranch abutting the former Indian lands which would be flung open to public settlement. These guards, Logan surmised, had their orders to warn off any homesteader who had ideas of staking out his claim in advance of Gus Gulberg’s official opening of the land office.
The alacrity with which the Ringbone sentries granted Perris safe passage behind this curtain of waiting guns gave Logan fresh proof of the authority Duke Perris wielded over Ringbone, pointed up the speculator’s mysterious reasons for being in this country.
The surreptitious way Perris had smuggled nearly thirty accomplices to the Horse Heaven country, his vague references to a big deal with Jubal Buckring—these things obviously went beyond any mere sales-promotion campaign for building sites in Owlhorn proper. Perris was playing for high stakes, stakes important enough to call for the murder of the Federal lawman who would be assigned to keep law and order in Owlhorn when the land rush opened. Logan had a hunch that this ride to Ringbone tonight would prove the key to the mysterious and sinister undercover doings beyond these brooding hills, something which would affect the destinies of every man, woman, and child in Owlhorn Valley for generations to come.
Ranch lights formed their sporadic pattern down in the sooty Hole-in-the-Wall where Ringbone’s citadel crouched like a spider at the hub of its web. Perris sent his halloo running ahead as they came within Winchester range of the ranch buildings, and the drum-roll of their mounts’ hoofs set up the inevitable clamor of barking dogs which, in turn, started coyotes baying in the remoter hills like echoes.
Perris pulled over to the bunkhouse where his Idaho henchmen were being kept under cover. His shout brought old Pegleg Cochran to the door. Beyond the oldster Logan had a view of the poker games still in progress.
“All the men here, Cochran?” Perris demanded. “Good. Break up those games and have the tables cleared off. Tell the others I’m laying my cards on the table tonight. You’ll find out what you were brought over here to accomplish.”
Cochran’s respectful, “Us-uns was gittin’ all-powerful curious tuh see yore hole card, Mister Perris,” followed the two riders as they rode on down the poplar-bordered lane toward the lighted windows of the ranch house.
Jubal Buckring’s big shape appeared briefly in the open doorway as Perris and Logan reined up at the picket gate. The lamplight put a halo on his white hair, showed the bandage around his skull and the white gleam of a patch of plaster on his nose. He held a lever-action carbine in his hands.
“Jube, I’ve got Cleve Logan with me,” Perris warned the big rancher. “Put down that .30-30 and come out here.”
Buckring, one of the most powerful men in the Territory, and whose word was absolute law on the Ringbone, leaned his rifle against the wall and hastened down the gravel path as if he were Perris’s slave.
“You know Toke Grossett’s lyin’ dead out in my feed shed?” Buckring demanded as he reached the gate.
“I know all about that,” Duke Perris snapped. “What beats me, Jube, is why you stooped to play for a penny-ante side bet when we’ve got sky-high stakes in the main pot.”
Buckring shifted uneasily before the speculator’s anger, completely dominated by the overwhelming personality facing him.
“I thought the gold was worth going after,” Buckring mumbled. “My cut of the deal would have helped pay you off, Duke.”
Perris spat out an oath. “Logan’s job is to handle that U.S. marshal, which makes him a damn sight more valuable to you than any Wells-Fargo box he may have hid. How far do you think we would get with this land grab if John Stagman was sitting by Gus Gulberg’s elbow when the land office opens?”
The Ringbone boss made a gesture of surrender.
“All right, Duke. Call off your dogs. I’ve got men who could have handled Stagman as well as Logan here, but that’s water over the dam.”
Perris motioned for Logan to dismount.
“Let’s get over to the bunkhouse,” he said, hitching his own horse to the picket fence alongside Logan’s dun. “Everything’s shaping up okay, Jube. I sealed our bargain with Gulberg tonight. He agreed to everything except coming out here to your place. So far as I can see nothing stands between Ringbone and your toehold along the Rawhide.”
Cleve Logan walked behind the two conspirators as they headed toward the lighted soddy. Suspense put its electric tingle through every fiber of Logan’s being as he gave his sharpest attention to the cryptic remarks Perris was making.
He knew with a keen prescience that tonight would see Perris exposing his hole card for the first time. The men whom Perris had gathered together over two hundred miles from Lewiston’s saloons and gambling-dives were mere pawns in whatever game Perris and Buckring were playing. This bunkhouse conference would see the ringleaders make their first move of that game, probably the result of months of secret scheming.
The bunkhouse was oppressive with the mingled stench of sweat and tobacco smoke and whisky reek. The collection of riffraff had cleared off their poker tables in the middle of the room and had banked themselves in tiers along the double-decked sleeping-bunks.
Logan moved unobtrusively to the shadows behind the rusty Franklin stove as he saw Pegleg Cochran draw up barrel chairs for Perris and Buckring. From his pocket Perris dr
ew out a bundle which, when unfolded, proved to be a large blueprint of the Horse Heaven Hills and the valley of the Rawhide. The portion of country coming under the provisions of the new Homestead Law had been outlined in red, marked in quarter sections like a big checkerboard. That land, Logan noticed, was roughly bisected by the meandering course of the Rawhide.
“All right, men,” Perris said briskly, pausing to light up a cigar. “Up to now you’ve been kept in ignorance as to why I brought you here, promising you $200 cash and return boat tickets to Lewiston. The work you’ll do to earn your pay is simple, but Mr. Buckring and I can afford no slip-ups. Any man who wants to back out of this deal, sing out now.”
Logan’s glance flicked around the half-circle. He saw suspense on some faces, curiosity on others; but the intellectual plane of these men was scaled down to the level of dumb brutes. The promise of Perris’s gold was the cement which bonded these derelicts together, the only hold Perris had on their loyalty.
“All right,” Perris went on, weighting down the corners of the map. “This paper is a government survey of the portions of the Yakima Indian Reservation which are to be opened as public domain at eight o’clock Monday morning.”
The bearded faces bent forward, beady eyes watching the movements of Perris’s forefinger with a stolid attention, like children over their depth in a schoolroom discussion.
“The basic idea is this,” Perris went on. “If this strip of homesteadable land between Buckring’s north fence and the Rawhide River falls into the hands of homesteaders, it means Ringbone is cut off forever from its source of water and from access to the Indian land it leases for summer graze across the river. Each of these squares represents one section of land, one square mile. Each section comprises four homesteads. You can all see Mr. Buckring’s desire to get title to an unbroken strip of land fronting the river for approximately fifteen miles east of Owlhorn, that being Ringbone’s dimension.”
Cleve Logan felt the hard thump of his heart jarring him to his boot heels. Perris had lifted a corner of the veil now, but his words so far meant little to his audience.
But Logan grasped the full significance of this monstrous thing Perris was engineering. It was to be a land grab on a scale without precedent in Washington Territory, a wholesale theft of public land which would accrue to Ringbone’s profit at the expense of uncounted homesteaders now waiting innocently at Owlhorn for the land office to give them their chance at future homesites.
“I’m just an ignorant boozehound, Mister Perris,” spoke up the one-legged Cochran. “But I don’t savvy where me an’ the boys you hired in Lewiston fit in on this deal. You didn’t fetch us over here to make homesteaders out of us, did yuh?”
Perris flicked ash from his cheroot, sizing up his audience to make sure they had their thorough attention on what he was about to tell them.
“I’m coming to that, Cochran. Tomorrow night, Mr. Buckring will escort you men to Owlhorn under cover of darkness. We will meet in the back of the Palace Casino, where the government land agent will be on hand with the necessary legal documents to file homestead claims on thirty quarter sections facing the Rawhide.”
Perris jabbed a forefinger on his map.
“Each of these river-front homesteads is numbered,” he went on. “I’m assigning a numbered quarter section to each of you. All you’ve got to do is memorize that number so that when Gulberg calls your number, you can step forward and sign the papers he will provide.”
Logan mopped the moisture from his brow. The deal was clear enough for even these simpletons to understand. Perris had imported dummy homesteaders to lay claim to contiguous land forming a fifteen-mile-long strip between Ringbone’s north fence and the Rawhide River. The choicest land in Owlhorn Valley would thus pass under Jubal Buckring’s indirect control.
“Hold on a second,” put in Pegleg Cochran. “I don’t know shucks about law, but when you file on a homestead you got to prove up on yore claim for a year afore you git title, don’t you? Speakin’ for myself, I don’t cotton to spend a hull year bustin’ sod, not at my age.”
Jubal Buckring entered the discussion for the first time. The rancher’s patience with these simpletons was wearing thin, and when he spoke it was with a waspish anger.
“As soon as you numbskulls get your John Henry on Gulberg’s papers you’ll be comin’ back here,” Buckring explained. “You’ll head back to the Columbia River with the steamer tickets Perris will give you tomorrow night and go back where you came from. You’ll collect the rest of your pay from Perris’s agent in Lewiston. That’s all you got to do.”
Cochran stroked his carrot-colored beard nervously. “You’ll git the papers, Mister Buckring,” the oldster said, “but it seems to me the law will ketch up with us an’ want to find out why we ain’t livin’ on our homesteads.” Perris stood up, waving Cochran into silence.
“All details have been attended to and are none of your concern, Pegleg!” he snapped. “The law doesn’t know any of you from Adam, which is why I went out of the Territory to round you up. Mr. Buckring will have his own men to throw up shacks and make a pretense of proving up on those thirty homesteads. The papers will be predated by Mr. Gulberg at the land office, and if anybody investigates, Gulberg will swear you men were the first inline when the land rush opened Monday.”
Cleve Logan’s brain was swirling as he listened to Perris assigning homestead numbers to each man, at the same time jotting that man’s name on his map.
Bits of this jigsaw puzzle were falling into shape now. Tomorrow night was three days in advance of the official opening of the land office. Gus Gulberg, no doubt, had pocketed a fat bribe from Perris in return for his co-operation in this legal skullduggery. He hesitated to guess what price Jubal Buckring was paying Perris for accomplishing this land grab. The sum would probably run into six figures. Perris’s price for saving Ringbone’s future. With the water front boundary sewed up in the name of dummy homesteaders in Buckring’s employ, the cattle king’s position in these hills would be impregnable.
Behind the steady drone of voices in the stuffy bunk-house, Logan was thinking of the homesteader families camped down on the outskirts of Owlhorn tonight, ignorant of this theft of land. He thought of Tex Kinevan, who had his eye on one of those very river-front quarter sections which Gus Gulberg would prematurely record in the name of one of Perris’s fake claimants.
Only one man stood between Ringbone’s illegal seizure of the river-front strip—United States Marshal John Stagman. That obstacle Perris had guaranteed to pay $5,000 to remove.
Rolling up the map, the conference finished, Perris stepped over to where Cleve Logan stood behind the stove.
“You’ll keep under cover here on the ranch,” Perris said. “Buckring won’t bother you. I believe you understand now why it is so important that Stagman’s murder cannot be traced to my organization or to any Ringbone rider.”
* * * *
Half an hour later Duke Perris rode out of the Hole-in-the-Wall. Reaching Owlhorn, the promoter stabled his horse and then made his way to Opal Waymire’s saloon, admitting himself to the girl’s private office in the rear of the building by means of his duplicate key.
He was startled to find Opal Waymire seated on a divan there with a gorilla-built man in a plucked beaver coat and a brand new hat of the Mormon variety. The man’s right arm reclined in a dirty flour-sack sling, splinted from elbow to wrist.
For a moment, Perris stood staring at the ruffian Opal was entertaining, his eyes wide in disbelief. Finally he choked out in a hoarse whisper, “Blackie Marengo! I thought you drowned in the Columbia.”
Marengo’s features wrinkled in a grin.
“I ain’t no ghost, boss. I would ’a’ drowned, ifn a Digger Indian hadn’t hauled me into his dugout, right after I fell off o’ the boat. It taken me this long to git here. Hoofed it as far as Winegarten’s wood camp an’ stole myself a hoss there.
”
Perris continued to stare at Marengo as if he were seeing an apparition. In the background Opal Waymire was standing motionless, her eyes haunted, terror-stricken. “Duke,” she said, “Blackie has terrible news.”
“What’s up?” Perris demanded. “What news?”
Marengo poured himself a generous shot of bourbon from a bottle on Opal’s table.
“Your gal friend tells me,” Marengo said smugly, “that Cleve Logan is a convict I run into at Deer Lodge. Well, it was Cleve Logan who busted my wing an’ chucked me into the river the other night. I ran into him after Grossett told me to go to your cabin.”
Perris clutched a chair back for support. “Trig Fetterman threw you overboard? Why?”
Marengo’s countenance twisted sardonically.
“Trig Fetterman, hell! Cleve Logan is the man who put me in the penitentiary for rustlin’ cattle, boss. He ain’t no more Trig Fetterman than I am. He wears John Stagman’s collar, always has. Cleve Logan is a deputy United States marshal!”
Chapter Thirteen
Trap for a Lawman
The room wheeled dizzily around Duke Perris, a blur in which the white face of Opal Waymire and the anvil-jawed visage of Blackie Marengo alone stood out in sharp focus.
It was the first time in the better than ten years that Opal had known this cold-blooded man that she had ever seen anything jar loose his iron grip on his reflexes. As Perris sagged onto the divan, the girl jerked the whisky bottle out of Marengo’s fist and poured Perris a stiff drink.
“Here,” she whispered, thrusting the glass into Perris’s shaking hand. “We’ve let a John Law spy slip into our own camp, Duke. What are we going to do?”
Perris downed the stinging liquor at a gulp, felt its heat put a grip on his nerves.
“Cleve Logan wears a star,” he muttered thickly. “Are you certain of that, Blackie?”
Marengo settled himself on the sofa. His face wore a complacent grin.
“Certain? Hell, yes. Ain’t I just told you he was the deputy who sent me to the rockpile? Last time I seen Cleve Logan was in the warden’s office when I was swappin’ my name for a number. I told Logan then I’d kill him next time our trails crossed. And I put my mark on his hide the other night on the boat. Logan was John Stagman’s right-hand man over in Wyoming for years. I’m telling you straight, boss.”
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