Shadow on the Land

by Wayne D. Overholser

  Standing there at the desk, Lee debated it with himself, thinking of a dozen reasons why he should stay and none why he should go on. The desire to see Deborah again was a burning flame in him, but he reserved decision until after he’d eaten. Turning left, he crossed the lobby to the dining room. He had just started to eat when the little man with whom he had talked at Biggs came in and sat down at his table.

  “It struck me I failed to introduce myself,” the man said, a smile breaking across his high-boned, rosy face. “I’m Cyrus P. Jepson. Perhaps you’ve heard of the Jepson City town site east of Bend.”

  “Don’t believe I have,” Lee said. “I’m Lee Dawes, but you know that by now.”

  Jepson gave his order and, drawing a cigar from his pocket, slipped it into his mouth. “Why, yes, Hanna told me your name. I presume you’re going on south.”

  “That’s right.” This was another deliberate contact, and Lee wondered if it had grown out of the man’s conversation on the train with Hanna.

  “A fine country around Bend,” Jepson said, blowing out a long plume of smoke. “Get the sagebrush off and the water on it, and it’ll grow anything. Bend will be a town of ten thousand people when the railroad reaches it, and I sincerely believe that my own town will rival it when the railroad is built across the desert.”

  “You think a line will be built east from Bend?”

  Jepson took the cigar from his mouth, large eyes pinned on Lee. “Why, yes. It has to, if the products destined for the big Eastern markets are to be shipped by the shortest route to that market.”

  The waitress had brought Jepson’s plate, but the little man did not touch it. He was watching Lee, studying his lean face, the set of his square jaw, and he seemed to find it hard to make up his mind about something. Finally he said: “You’ve heard of the people’s railroad?”

  Lee nodded as he reached for the bread. Cyrus Jepson was tipping his hand, and Lee, not wanting to frighten the man into silence, merely said: “I hear it’s to go on the ballot.”

  “That’s right. Big men are behind it, Dawes, men like C.E.S. Wood. A bill was passed by the legislature providing for the people to vote on a proposed constitutional amendment. If passed, it will authorize the construction of publicly owned railroads, and it will be passed because the big railroad men have forgotten Oregon too long.”

  “We’ll have two railroads into central Oregon before long,” Lee pointed out.

  “Promises,” Jepson scoffed. “Nothing more, and they’re being made to defeat this measure. Besides, this isn’t the route a railroad should follow. What we need is an east-west road crossing the Cascades from the Willamette Valley, perhaps Salem, and running across the state to Vale. Through Jepson City, Mister Dawes.”

  “I see,” Lee said amiably. John F. Stevens had mentioned a third interest. He had spoken of tricks that did not square with the customary actions of the Harriman people. Here, across the table from Lee, might well be this third party who wanted neither Hill nor Harriman to build into central Oregon. “What are you getting at?”

  “A special agent for a railroad outfit has influence, but he runs big risks for a small salary. To an outsider, it doesn’t look smart.”

  Lee scooted back his chair. He said gently, a gentleness that would have warned a man who knew him better: “So I might make a little money for myself by selling out the Oregon Trunk to a man who stands to profit by the people’s railroad. Is that what you’re saying, Jepson?”

  “You put things bluntly, Mister Dawes,” Jepson murmured.

  Lee rose. “In other words, you figure you’ll snarl up both outfits, so they’ll withdraw and leave you to swing the people’s railroad any direction you want. It’s no good, Jepson. Outfits the size of Hill’s and Harriman’s don’t quit like that.”

  Jepson had placed both hands palm down on the table. He said: “There are a few tricks you haven’t seen, Dawes. And there is such a thing as a railroad serving the people. That’s not a popular doctrine, but it’s the way I believe.” Jepson’s smile was soft, almost cherubic. “I propose to remove the shadow that is falling across our bright land.”

  “You’ll have to have taller boot heels than you’re wearing now,” Lee said, and left the dining room.

  For a time Lee stood on the sidewalk, watching the flow of the crowd, pulling so fiercely on his pipe that the smoke burned his tongue. It was nearly dark now, with the last light of a dying sun leaving the cold, wind-touched earth. Lee felt tension grow in him. There was more to this game than he had thought.

  Jepson had put no direct offer into words; yet a bribe was there for the taking. He thought of Hanna, and of Jepson’s influence with her, and a scowl furrowed his forehead. Her property was vital, then, to three parties instead of two. She was probably in Shaniko waiting for the stage. He’d be on that stage with her, and he’d have an opportunity to talk. If she would talk! In either case, it was not the time to talk business. Not while she was angry with him, and before he had a chance to play the ace he was counting on so much.

  Another idea had been building in Lee’s mind. If she would not sell, he could buy the property around her, box her in, keep her from selling to someone else. Jepson had mentioned a few tricks Lee hadn’t seen. All right, there were some tricks Jepson and Mike Quinn hadn’t seen. Lee Dawes had a checkbook, and John Stevens had said the sky was the limit.

  Lee had to go on tonight. Reluctant as he was to miss seeing Deborah tomorrow, he had to be at Hanna’s place in the morning, to see her neighbors as soon as possible. If necessary, he’d buy every ranch between Madras and Crooked River.

  A man hurried out of the alley behind the hotel, and came down the street toward Lee. “Mister, ain’t that your little black dog tied back there in the alley?” he called.

  “Yes. Why?”

  “You don’t have no dog. That’s all. Ken Villard’s big bulldog came along and chewed hell out of him.”

  Panic seized Lee. Now he didn’t have any ace to play. He wheeled past the man, racing in long strides into the alley. It was dark, and he couldn’t remember hearing the racket of a dogfight. Maybe the man was wrong. Maybe it wasn’t Willie. Maybe . . .

  “Over here!” a man called. “Right here against this wall.”

  That was all Lee knew, for something fell on him, consciousness went out of him, and he spilled forward.

  Chapter Four

  There were brittle, dangerous thoughts in Lee Dawes’s mind as the black fog rolled away, incoherent and vague impressions stirring a numbed brain. His body was cold. His head ached. He felt the impress of damp earth under him, and it was as if a wet sponge was mopping his face. He heard the run of talk from the street, a man’s whistle, the clatter of dishes from the nearby hotel kitchen. A whine beat against his ears, then he discovered Willie over him, and realized that the sponge was the dog’s tongue on his face.

  For a time Lee sat with his back against the hotel wall, an arm around the dog to reassure him, trying to make sense from what had happened, and failing. Cigar-smoking, poetry-making little Cyrus P. Jepson had made his try at bribery with, it seemed, an effective substitute in mind.

  Recalling that the stage was to leave at 8:00 p.m., Lee scrambled to his feet, stood still until the nausea passed, then untied the dog and led him out of the alley and into the lobby. “The stage gone yet?” he asked.

  The clerk nodded, pointing to the big wall clock that showed a quarter past eight. “Rolled out on time,” he said.

  It had to be Jepson—and perhaps Hanna Racine. For some reason they had wanted to keep him off that stage. Lee left the hotel and drifted along the street, a sour humiliation in him. He’d be in Shaniko until the next stage left, regardless of the decision he’d made.

  Telling Willie to stay outside, Lee stepped into a saloon, and loitered over a drink, bitterness and acid washing through him. He stood at the bar for a time, thinking of ways to checkmate the move, and finding none that offered much promise.

  The low roof of the sal
oon dropped until it seemed almost to touch the barman’s oily, slick-haired head. There were two tables along the inside wall, occupied but silent except for an occasional murmur of talk, the whisper of shuffled cards, the click of poker chips. A man shoved back his chair, leaned toward the spittoon, and spat. These things Lee noted absently, making a faint curtain of motion and sound in the back of his mind. Then the din of angry controversy broke across his thoughts, and he looked along the bar.

  “You hombres are too dad-burned big for your britches, Bull.”

  A tall, angry man stood there, a bottle of soda pop in his hands, a man whose tallness and too-small clothes gave him a grotesque appearance. His hairy wrists hung well below his coat sleeves; his pants legs were high above bony ankles. He pulled at his black beard, raised a hand to tug at a sailboat ear, and the badgered fury in his narrowed eyes showed that he was close to the exploding point.

  Four men made a half circle around him. Freighters, Lee guessed. The man the tall one watched and called Bull was both thick and broad of body, and there was about his knobby face a thoroughly ugly look, a savage appetite for cruelty.

  “You sure look dangerous, Highpockets,” Bull said in a feigned tone of fright. “Hell, you don’t need to get mad just because I said the stage line was getting so hard up for drivers they put a giraffe on the box.”

  “He’s a camel, Bull,” another said. “Don’t drink for seven days, and then goes after sarsaparilla like he was dying of thirst.”

  “Forty-rod would singe his whiskers,” a third one jeered.

  Lee had seen this pattern build into savage fighting more than once in frontier towns like Shaniko; sometimes merely for crude amusement, but often for a more deadly purpose. Even if the tall one was a good fighting man, he would not last long against these odds.

  The lanky Highpockets set his bottle carefully on the bar. He regarded his tormenters for a moment with level eyes, and suddenly broke into action so swiftly that he caught the others flat-footed. Seizing two men by their shirt collars, he shoved them hard against the big man and, as suddenly reversing the order, jerked them in the opposite direction and sent them spinning to the floor.

  It was a display of disdainful nerve and great strength that reached Lee, and instantly enlisted his sympathy with the tall man. Then Bull bellowed—“You’re gonna get all you asked for, you damned beanpole!”— and something clicked in Lee. It was the same voice he had heard in the alley the instant before he had been slugged.

  Lee peeled off his coat and tossed it on the bar, just as Bull drove a fist at Highpockets and the other three closed in on him. Lee grabbed the first man by the shoulder, pulled him around, and drove a short, turning fist squarely to his exposed jaw. It was a knockout punch, the man going down in a curling drop.

  There was a mêlée around Lee, then, as men scrambled away from the card tables. For all of Highpockets’s stringiness, he was a good man to fight beside. He drove Bull back, spun, and, whipping a fist into a man’s stomach, blasted the wind from him and knocked him cold with a second punch.

  In a matter of seconds the fight changed complexion entirely, with Lee finding himself facing Bull and trading brain-jarring punches with him, while Highpockets battered the remaining freighter across the saloon in a fast retreat.

  A card table went over, chips spilling and rolling across the floor. A spittoon slid against the bar with a dull bong. The barman, eyeing the fight with jaded interest, said sourly: “That damned Boston Bull is just bound to kick up a fight.”

  There were no rules in Boston Bull’s fighting code. He came in fast, only to be rocked back on his heels when Lee’s fist in his stomach brought air gushing from his lungs. He went back, dropping the attack until breath was in him again. Lee bore in after him, feinting, shifting, trying for his head, but he found no hole in the big man’s defense. Then, without warning, Bull reversed his tactics, and charged forward, great hands outstretched.

  Lee refused to give ground. The freighter tried to knee him in the crotch and, failing in that maneuver, drove a thumb at Lee’s right eye. Lee turned his head, took the prodding thumb on his temple, and felt anger spurt through the pain. They were together now, straining, neither able to get in an effective blow, and Lee, bent by the other’s greater weight, brought his head upward against the big man’s chin.

  There was a click of teeth, and blood streamed down the freighter’s sweating chin as the tip of his tongue was sheared off. It was barroom fighting, wicked and ruthless, and Lee Dawes thrilled to it, all the bitterness he had felt from the moment he’d seen Mike Quinn at The Dalles now finding expression in every blow he smashed into Boston Bull’s big body.

  A heel ground against Lee’s left foot. Pain shot up his leg. Shifting weight to his right leg, he forced Bull back against the bar, heard a grunt and a choked oath. Then he got his forearm against the man’s windpipe, and heaved, the steady, hard pressure turning Bull’s knobby face first red and then white while his fists beat at Lee with no more than a faint sting in them.

  “You got him!” Highpockets yelled. “Bust his neck, partner. Kick him in the belly. He ain’t never been licked in Shaniko before. Go on . . . !”

  “He ain’t out yet, skinny,” another man cut in.

  Lee stepped back, and with his weight released, the freighter bounced forward, bloody chin exposed. There was a sharp, wicked crack that ran the length of the room as Lee’s fist met that chin, and there was a new champion in Shaniko. Boston Bull sprawled full out, a great, motionless bulk, his face a patchwork of mottled bruises.

  Lee ran a sleeve across his forehead, heard the barman say: “You boys have had your fun. Go on now. Drift.”

  Boston Bull’s three companions were on their feet again, not quite believing what they saw, the desire for revenge a bright wickedness in their eyes. Lee pulled into his coat and moved toward the door. Following, Highpockets stopped him on the sidewalk and offered his hand.

  “I’m Highpockets Magoon. Sure glad to know you, and thanks.”

  “Lee Dawes.” He gave the tall man’s hand a hard grip, their eyes locking. “You’re long as a wash line, friend, but you don’t fight like one.”

  Highpockets grinned with the compliment. “You’re sure a fighting man from a way back yourself.” He sobered. “That Boston Bull is a bad one, Mister Dawes. He won’t forget this. Don’t never turn your back to him or his outfit if you meet up with them again.”

  “What was the ruckus over?”

  Highpockets thrust bony hands into his pants pockets, and chuckled. “Nothing. That is, nothing to speak of. They wanted some fun, and I’m a good one to hooraw. I don’t smoke. I don’t chew. I don’t gamble. I don’t drink nothing but soda pop.”

  “You’re a stage driver?”

  Highpockets nodded. “Yeah, but I’m getting a week off, starting today.”

  There was a full moon in the black sky, webbed over with a tattered cloud. Its thin light spilled into the streets, glinting on the puddled water standing in the wheel ruts, building deeper recesses of shadow in the darkness. It was characteristic of Shaniko that the racket of the saloon fight had failed to draw a crowd of the curious. Save for the lighted windows and a man’s drunken singing farther along the block, the town seemed empty.

  “Is there any way to get to Madras tonight?” Lee asked.

  “Well, now, they got some of them automobiles around, but they’re all off somewhere. Hanna Racine got one soon as she hopped off the train, and went foggin’ home. Reckon there’s no way of getting to Madras in a hurry, but there is slow. You wait here.” Highpockets wheeled away and went down the street in long strides.

  Lee stared after the tall man. So Hanna had been in a big enough hurry to hire an automobile to get home. Cyrus Jepson had been determined to keep Lee off the stage. And Boston Bull had a hand in it. There was some satisfaction in knowing that Bull had paid for his part. It would be a long day before he would get whiskey past that mutilated tongue, and even a longer one before his foul-mo
uthed cursing would return to its former efficiency. Standing here on the boardwalk, Lee thought swiftly of this night’s happenings. He still could not see the design of its strange pattern, but one thing was clear. Hanna had been in a tremendous hurry, and the realization of that fact raised a new sense of urgency in Lee.

  A small dog raced across an intersection down the street, and in response to Lee’s sharp whistle Willie bounded up. Lee crossed to the hotel to get his grips, and a few minutes later Highpockets pulled up with a team of bays hitched to a buggy. He called: “Climb in, mister, and hang on!”

  The light, spirited team left Shaniko on the run, the buggy swaying and rattling over the rough road. The lights of the town dropped quickly behind, and they raced on into the pit-black night.

  “I’m putting you to a lot of trouble, Highpockets,” Lee said. “You can name your own price when we get to Madras.”

  “No price, mister, after what you done for me. Now don’t get the notion I’m nosey, but you’ve got railroad written all over you. Hill or Harriman?”

  “Oregon Trunk. Beyond that your guess is as good as mine.” Lee paused, and then asked: “You know a big Irishman named Mike Quinn?”

  “You bet. Saw him just this morning when I brought the stage in. Him and that dark-haired filly he’s been running with was in one of them steam autos, stuck in Cow Cañon. I pulled ’em out. The crazy galoot said they’d drove all night getting here from The Dalles. Crossed the river on Free Bridge, and I’ll bet they got a dad-burned good shaking up. Him and the girl ride the stage a lot, together and separate, which is how come I give him a hand.”

  Again Lee had the feeling of being the end man in a game of crack-the-whip. He clenched his big fists, recalling the subtle way Deborah Haig had felt him out about John Stevens. It was likely, he thought sourly, that she had reported what little she had learned to Quinn, and it had been enough to start him on a wild night chase across rough, broken country. They were hours ahead of him, and so was Hanna Racine, and Lee was looking more and more like a blundering fool.