Opal, then, and not Blackie Marengo, had been the unseen stalker who had pursued them from Fort Rim-rock. To buck Opal’s cold drop now meant sure death for Alva Ames. That knowledge brought Cleve Logan’s hands away from his reins, holding them high.
“Hold your trigger, Opal,” Logan said heavily. “You’ve dealt yourself all the aces here.”
Opal’s lips moved tautly, “Step down, Cleve. I want you to unlock Duke’s handcuffs.”
Twisting around in her saddle to meet Logan’s eye, Alva Ames knew that the man had no choice in this catastrophic situation. She read the full measure of Logan’s despair as he slid backward off the dun’s rump, Opal’s rifle following him.
“Unbuckle your gun belt,” the honkytonk girl continued in her listless monotone.
The Ballard had swung back to cover Alva now; and Logan, knowing the nervous pressure Opal was under, made no delay in removing his Colt harness and tossing it into the brush.
Duke Perris, in the act of dismounting, said sharply to Opal, “Don’t shoot Logan yet. He got rid of Buckring’s carpetbag farther down the canyon.”
Perris held out his shackled arms as Logan got the sheriff’s key from his pocket and unlocked his prisoner’s handcuffs.
As soon as he was free Perris snatched the heavy irons from Logan’s grasp and notched them on the lawman’s wrists. Removing the key from one of the cuffs, Perris hurled it far out through the trees.
“You’ll not be needing that key.” Perris laughed, stepping over to Alva’s horse and reaching up to remove the girl’s gun from its holster on her saddle fender. “Climb down, Alva.”
The girl dismounted stiffly, moving like a sleeper in the coils of a nightmare. She was well aware, even as was Logan, that Opal Waymire’s circling around in front of them to trap them here could have but one outcome-doom for both of them.
“See why I stashed your loot like I did, Perris?” Logan said bitterly, as the speculator thrust the muzzle of Alva’s gun into his belly. “Pull that trigger and you lose everything you had at stake in Owlhorn. So you won’t shoot, will you, Duke?”
Perris stepped back, leaving Opal to keep Logan under the point-blank menace of her carbine.
Turning, Perris hefted the .44 in his hand and swung it inches from Alva’s midriff.
“Tell me where you cached that bag, Logan,” Perris ordered in a venomous whisper, “or I’ll drop this girl in her tracks. It’s up to you.”
It was Opal Waymire who broke the following silence.
“No, Duke. You couldn’t kill a woman.”
Perris’s heated face turned a shade darker, to match the crusted bloodstains on his gashed scalp.
“This is no time for sentimentality, Opal. It was Alva who brought about my capture at the fort last night. Do you think I’d leave Alva Ames behind with her knowing I killed Logan? With her knowing I shot her brother?”
Logan saw the shock and frustration cross Alva’s face at this cold-blooded confession of Jebediah’s bushwhacking.
“All right, Duke,” Logan cut in hoarsely, seeing Perris’s trigger finger whitening at the knuckle joint. “I’m ready to bargain with you. I’ll take you to where I buried Jubal Buckring’s carpetbag on condition that you leave Alva free to ride out of here. Wherever you and Opal will go, you’ll never leave a trail Alva could follow.”
Crafty changes occurred in Perris’s eyes as he pondered this proposition. Finally he turned to Opal.
“I’ll take up Logan on that offer,” he said. “Get his rope off the saddle yonder and tie Alva to that spruce snag yonder. When the carpetbag is in our hands, we can ride back here and set her afoot. We’ll be in Oregon before she can reach the sheriff in Owlhorn with her story.”
Opal Waymire swung out of stirrups, cradled her rifle under one arm, and walked over to Logan’s horse, taking down the coil of lass’ rope from the pommel. Logan saw by the stricken gravity in the girl’s face that she sensed the underlying treachery back of Perris’s quick acceptance of Logan’s terms.
Once Buckring’s money was in their hands, Perris would return to this lonely spot and put a bullet through Alva’s trussed-up body. Even Opal Waymire did not have enough influence over this desperate and ruthless man to prevent him from destroying this sole remaining witness to his perfidy.
If Alva suspected her danger, she gave no sign of it as she walked over to a lightning-charred spruce snag and let Opal truss her to the tree, her arms surrounding the silver trunk.
When Opal had finished Duke Perris walked over to check Alva’s bonds. Then he mounted the girl’s pinto, gesturing with his gun for Cleve Logan to mount.
When Logan was in saddle Perris spurred forward and stooped to grab the dun’s reins.
Sitting there, boxed in by his two captors, Cleve Logan flexed his manacled hands and spoke softly to Alva.
“I’m a bit late in telling you this, Alva, but my love is yours and has been ever since you helped me board the Sacajawea that time. In case I don’t get back to put it a little better.”
Alva’s choked reply was lost under the abrasive scrape of hoofs as Duke Perris, leading Logan’s dun, headed off down the winding canyon trail, Opal Waymire bringing up the rear.
Watching that cavalcade vanish around the coulee’s bend, Alva Ames knew then that she would never see Cleve Logan alive this side of eternity; his declaration of love for her had been his farewell, his requiem for what would never be.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Opal’s Choice
As they reached the ford where they had made their brief camp, Duke Perris reined around in saddle to break the silence of their ride. “You didn’t go far from here to hide that carpetbag, Logan. If you think you can double-cross me this late in the game—”
Logan shook his head. “I cached it over on the other bank,” he said heavily. “Do you think I’d buck this thing out with Alva’s life at forfeit?”
Relief showed on the hard lines of Duke Perris’s jaw as they headed across the ripples of the Rawhide and reined up at the edge of the little clearing where the drowned remains of the trapper’s campfire made a gray smudge on the dirt.
Logan dismounted here, the sunlight flashing on the nickeled bracelets at his wrists. Opal Waymire remained in saddle, the Ballard .54 balanced across her pommel, as Duke Perris stepped down from Alva’s pinto and lifted his six-gun.
“Lead off,” he ordered. “You understand, Logan, even after Buckring’s money is in my hands there’s no way out for you?”
Logan’s shoulders lifted and fell, indicative of his own abandoned hopes.
Turning to Opal, the deputy marshal said bleakly, “I’m depending on you to make sure Alva isn’t left up there to starve.”
He saw Opal nod, but he knew from the tragic line of her mouth that she was under no illusions as to how events would run after Logan had been added to the list of Perris’s victims. To Duke Perris, Opal was just another woman to love and abandon; if Perris had made up his mind to murder Alva Ames, nothing she could do would prevent that treachery.
Logan plodded out into the center of the campground area and stood staring around at the mottled smudges of old campfires. He walked over to one, studying it carefully, and then touched it with a boot toe.
“The carpetbag is down there, buried a foot under those ashes, Perris.”
Perris came forward warily, staring at the ashes, noting where they had been fanned out smooth by a waved hat-brim, obliterating the stippled formation which a recent rain had put on the surrounding earth.
“You aim to kill me,” Logan went on, “so go ahead with it. What are you waiting for?”
Perris looked up, his eyes aglitter.
“You think I’d shoot first and do my treasure hunting afterward? I’m not that dense a fool, Logan. No. I’ll make sure you’ve given me the right information.”
Logan stood th
ere, his jaw slumped on his chest. Behind him he heard Opal spurring her horse closer.
Duke Perris got down on his knees, laying the cocked six-gun carefully to one side. His nugget watch chain dangled down from his chest, the gold-bullet ornament swaying like a pendulum, its dazzling spears of light twinkling on the gray ashes.
“If the bag isn’t buried here,” Perris said, “I won’t waste time arguing with you, Logan. There’s a few Indian tricks to make a man loosen his tongue.”
Logan grunted. “I know that, knowing you. Go ahead and dig. I have nothing to gain by stalling you with a wrong steer.”
Perris brushed aside the charcoal and stubs of firewood and cowchips to thrust his hooked fingers into the powdery ashes, digging like a spaniel after a marrowbone.
A grin broke the strained absorption of Perris’s face as he came to the ground level and knew by the broken clods that Logan had not lied, that a hole had been dug through the hardpan recently.
Dust and ashes fumed up to cloud Perris’s sweating cheeks as he pawed deeper into that loose earth, fingernails scratching aside ashes and dirt, his senses tingling from the anticipation of uncovering the treasure-laden carpetbag.
Opal Waymire watched from saddle, sharing the outlaw’s mounting excitement.
It came without warning—a geysering burst of loose earth and white ashes, timed with a metallic clang as if some buried spring had exploded under the campfire’s remains.
A bellow of blended pain and fear came from Duke Perris as he lurched up on his knees, to reveal the notched iron jaws of a Number Four wolf trap clamped deep in the flesh of his left hand, midway between wrist and knuckles, the heavy metal teeth sunk cruelly into bone and tendon. Connected to that heavy trap was a short length of chain fastened to an iron peg driven deep in the ground.
Overcome as he was by surprise and the agony of his mangled hand, Duke Perris was aware of Logan’s trick, and his right hand moved by pure reflex toward the gun he had laid to one side in handy reach for emergency.
Logan’s shadow was a fast-moving blur as, timed with the trap’s violent jump out of the loose earth which had buried it, he launched himself in a dive at Duke Perris, ignoring the threat of Opal Waymire’s waiting gun at his back.
Handicapped by the steel fetters on his wrist, Logan knew he had no chance to beat Perris’s reach for the gun. His spike-heeled cowboot stamped the outlaw’s fingers in the act of coiling around the rubber-stocked butt of that weapon, a following kick sending the six-shooter skidding off to one side.
With a bull-like roar springing from deep in his lungs, Perris came half to his feet, only to be jerked to his knees by the snapped tautness of the trap’s chain.
He saw Opal lifting her rifle to cover Logan, and Perris’s shout came with a frenzied appeal, “Shoot, Opal, damn you!”
For a long instant Opal Waymire held Logan’s back in her sights as the deputy threw himself clear of Perris and made his pounce for the six-gun. But her finger was frozen on the trigger as she saw Logan’s manacled hands scoop up the Colt and whirl like an animal at bay.
Perris’s free hand made its stabbing motion to the flared top of one of his Hussar bootlegs and came out with a short-barreled .41 derringer, a hide-out weapon which Logan, in his haste to leave Fort Rimrock in the darkness of last night, had failed to discover.
Logan saw eternity yawning in the big bore of that derringer as he brought up his clumsily-grasped Colt and snapped the gun-hammer.
Simultaneously with the roar of the .44 in Logan’s hands a spurt of flame flicked from Perris’s tiny weapon, but the lethal slug hit the dirt between Logan’s wide-spread legs.
A fount of blood spurted from the bullet hole which was punched through Duke Perris’s throat. That blood showered down over his dusty fustian coat and ran down the node of his watch chain to drip off the gold-bullet luck piece during the full twenty seconds Perris remained in his half-erect posture.
Death’s close approach was glazing Perris’s eyes as he pulled Opal Waymire’s face into focus.
“You had your chance and let Logan live,” Perris said with a ghastly exhalation. “I didn’t know that’s how the cards lay.”
Opal Waymire let the big Ballard carbine drop to the ground as she saw Duke Perris topple sidewise and lie still. She leaped from saddle and ran to Perris’s side, cradling the man’s bloodstained head against the soft swell of her breast.
She was crooning softly, rocking the man’s head slowly in her arms as a mother might comfort a child, when Perris’s body jerked in its final paroxysm and lay lax against her.
Not until he had his proof that life was extinct in the man who had been the object of his manhunt west did Cleve Logan tip his six-gun toward the sky and ease down the knurled hammer.
He knew Opal Waymire’s acute need to be left alone in this moment of communion with the man whose life she could easily have saved, but had not. But there was something he had to know, and he put his question in the quietest voice.
“Is Marengo with you, Opal?”
She looked up, something infinitely lovely showing through the sagging tissues of her cheeks. “No, Cleve. I found Blackie dead, below the mesa at Fort Rimrock. Your bullet had gone clean through him.”
He whispered “So,” and felt no regrets.
Sensing the depths of the woman’s grief and dawning self-condemnation, realizing something of the poignant reason which lay behind the break she had given him, Logan walked over to pick up the girl’s rifle and continued on across this campground to halt beside the still-wet ashes of the campfire which the old trapper had drowned this morning.
He stooped to dig in the ashes there, and brought to light Jubal Buckring’s carpetbag.
He hung the bag on the dun’s saddle horn and turned to where Opal Waymire knelt, sobbing openly as she pressed a cheek against the dead man’s temple, a beringed hand gently stroking Perris’s stubbled chin.
Logan said nothing until he had put a boot heel on the wolf trap and freed Perris’s dead hand from its clamping jaws.
“What Perris didn’t know,” he said gently, “was that I watched that trapper set his traps under several of these campfires around here. It’s an old trick trappers use, knowing wild animals will invariably dig around a campfire in search of garbage.”
Through flooding eyes, Opal Waymire watched Logan empty her rifle and return it to its scabbard under her saddle skirt. Glancing down at his braceleted hands, he said bleakly, “If the sheriff hasn’t got a duplicate key to these irons I’ll have to visit a blacksmith when I get back to town.”
Opal Waymire reverently lowered Perris’s head to the ground, turning to look at Logan with eyes wholly devoid of emotion.
“At least,” she said, “you’ll have one prisoner to turn over to John Stagman tonight.”
Logan shook his head, drawing a flicker of incredulity from the dead, lost depths of Opal Waymire’s eyes.
“I reckon not, Opal,” he said gently. “Losing the man you loved is punishment you’ll carry always. Let’s say I’m squaring my debt to you. I realize what it meant for you to hold your fire just now.”
The girl turned back, running her fingers through Perris’s short-cropped hair. Without looking up she said, “Tell Alva not to think too harshly of me, Cleve. My last wish is for your happiness together. You see, I love you, Cleve.”
In the act of mounting, Logan was caught and held by the intonation in Opal Waymire’s words. The morbid finality of her tone caused Logan to walk over to her horse, checking the contents of the gunny sacks lashed behind her cantle.
He found a loaded Remington .45 and jacked it open, spilled five cartridges into his hand, and made certain no other ammunition of that caliber was in the sacks.
Then, as an afterthought, he removed the cylinder and threw it far out into Rawhide Creek. Opal Waymire’s eyes followed the arc of the gun’s cylin
der, marking with a bright calculation the silvery geyser it made where it hit the ford.
“I’ll tell Alva,” he said, lifting his Stetson to the girl who waited beside Duke Perris. “So long, Opal. I’m sorry the way things worked out for you.”
He caught the trailing reins of Alva’s paint horse and rode away crossing the Rawhide ford and disappearing into the farther trees, leaving Opal alone with her grief.
Long after the sound of Cleve Logan’s departure had faded down-canyon, Opal Waymire sat beside the dead man, her eyes fixed with a macabre fascination on the gold cartridge which Duke Perris had worn as a luck charm as long as she had known him.
Getting to her feet, Opal Waymire moved like a person in a drugged trance, over to her horse. She found the dismantled Remington revolver where Logan had left it in a gunny sack, and, hugging the gun to her, ran across the campground to wade into the Rawhide’s platinum ripples.
Sunlight picked out the furbished blue-steel surfaces of the Remington’s cylinder lying under a foot of water on the pebbly bed. She retrieved it, wiped it dry on the hem of her riding-habit and fitted it back into the gun’s frame.
Returning to where Duke Perris lay, she knelt and, with fingers which held no slightest suggestion of tremor, removed the clip which attached Duke Perris’s luck charm to the blood-sticky watch chain.
She slipped the golden bullet into a chamber of the Remington’s cylinder, saw the cartridge case seat its flange snugly under the firing-pin.
All the pathos and tenderness which this woman had ever known for this man who had used her so selfishly through the years of their lives together stormed to the surface of Opal’s heart as she pressed the gun’s muzzle under her left breast.
She looked into Perris’s dead face and moved her lips in a soundless whisper.
“We belong together, Duke. We’ll always be together—”
* * * *
Cleve Logan was putting his horse around the last bend of the rocky trail through the conifers when the single muffled crash of a gunshot followed him down the cliff-walled gulch.
The Fifth Western Novel Page 19