Shadow on the Land

by Wayne D. Overholser

  He had that naked sense again as if she were exploring the secret places of his mind, measuring him, searching out and weighing the losses and gains that might come to her from this side bet.

  Her voice came low and husky, and without conviction: “I don’t think this is the night, Lee.”

  She said nothing about propriety. It was an old game, and one that Lee Dawes played exceedingly well. He took her hands, warm and long-fingered and magnetic with the urge of life. “I told you in Madras that we were the same kind of people, and you knew it as well as I did. I’ve played the cat-and-mouse game because that was the way you liked it.”

  “And now you’re done playing.” She laughed softly. “I warned you, Lee. I’m bad for you.”

  “It would be a hard life without some of the things that are bad for us,” he said.

  “That night in Madras you said something about a fair trade. What do you have to offer?”

  “We have something to offer each other,” he said quickly, and drew her into his arms.

  She was passive for a moment, and then her lips became greedy with the hunger he evoked; her arms came up to fold around his neck, and a wildness was in them both. There was satisfaction here, and shock ran along his nerves and warmed him and told him this girl held all the promise he had felt from the first moment he had seen her.

  She drew her lips from his, but remained in his arms for a time, her long body molded against his. “Lock the door, Lee,” she said softly.

  * * * * *

  In another room down the hall from Deborah’s, Cyrus Jepson stood at the window pulling fiercely on his cigar, its glow bright red in the dusk. “Hasn’t he come out of her room yet?” he asked.

  Boston Bull opened the door a crack. “No, he ain’t,” he said in his thick voice. “What the hell you worrying about? You wanted her to pump him, didn’t you?”

  “Not at too great a price.” Jepson chewed on his cigar, his eyes unseeingly fixed on the street. “She wouldn’t let me in her room.”

  “It’s business with you. She’s got to work on Dawes different.”

  “I know.” He stood in silence, a little man with a great pride that had been hurt. Then: “It hasn’t been just business on my side, and Deborah knows that. It will be different when we finish with the town site.”

  “We’ll never pull any big money out of that town site if we don’t get rid of Dawes,” Bull said hoarsely. “You ain’t smart on that like you are on most things.”

  “I’m smart enough not to let my feelings throw my judgment out of line. I hate Dawes as much as you do.” He paused, thinking of Lee in Deborah’s room, and added: “More. But that isn’t the point. So far Dawes has had the devil’s own luck. Luck doesn’t run that way forever, Bull.”

  “There’s no luck about a slug in the guts,” Bull said doggedly. “Wouldn’t be tough from the rimrock. No evidence to bring ’em to us.”

  “There are some things you will never understand, Bull, and the results of direct and obvious action is one of them.” He took the cigar from his mouth and, holding it out of the window, carefully fingered the ash from it. “We killed Herb Racine because he’d have smashed us if he’d lived. We had no choice. This time we do. The hatred between Quinn and Dawes will grow. Deborah will see to that. She’s poison in a man’s veins, Bull. I know. And I know what she will do to men like those two. I’m convinced that the only way to do this job is to continue with the tactics we’ve been following. Once we bring these companies into direct conflict, we’ll have no trouble keeping it going.” He replaced the cigar and reflectively chewed on it for a time. “Our next step is to work those Austrians up about their beef. You’d better have a talk with Franz before he leaves town. A hundred dollars should be enough.”

  “Damn it,” Bull said angrily, “I don’t see no sense in this pussyfooting.”

  “If we come to the place where we have to kill him, we’ll fix it so he’ll walk into it. A killing needs as much finesse as you have to use in handling a difficult woman, but we’ll not kill until we have to. Understand that, Bull. One smart killing is relatively safe. Two, no. Even more than a year apart as these are, there are some people who would talk and that would set the smart ones to thinking.”

  “So you use that fin- . . . fin- . . .”

  “Finesse.”

  “Whatever it is, you’d better use some tomorrow on Deborah, ’cause Dawes has been in there a hell of a long time.”

  In a sudden gust of anger, Jepson tore the cigar from his mouth and threw it into the street. He wheeled away from the window, and said sharply: “We’ll go to bed. The waiting will do us no good. And perhaps you’re right. A well-aimed bullet in a man’s guts would finish his luck.”

  “Yeah,” Bull agreed. “It would for a fact.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  Deborah turned, and regarded Lee sleepily as he pulled on his coat. The sun had cleared the eastern hills along the John Day, and was casting a rectangular crimson pattern on the bed. Deborah’s hair, framing her face in sheer black, made a striking contrast with the white pillow.

  “Trying to sneak out?” she asked.

  “Got to hurry,” he said.

  “Where to?”

  “Trail Crossing,” he told her, and immediately cursed himself for a fool. Still, if the men were ready to move, no harm would come from her knowing. “A fair trade?”

  “It will help.” She was smiling a little, her body long and softly curved under the covers. “No kiss?”

  “I’ve got an extra one.” He sat down on the bed, a finger twisting a strand of her hair around it. “Who tried to pull off that dynamite party?”

  “I don’t know,” she answered, meeting his eyes squarely.

  He shrugged. “All right. Be stubborn.” He kissed her then, and came to his feet. “I won’t be gone more than a day or two. You’ll be here?”

  “Yes, but will you come back? No lies now.”

  “You bet I’ll be back.” He grinned. “And no more door locking.”

  “No more door locking.”

  He picked up his hat and, moving to the door, stood looking at her, storing in his mind this picture and stirred by it. “Good bye,” he said, and stepped into the hall.

  * * * * *

  They left Shaniko that morning for Trail Crossing, thirty men with four horse teams. Moving at a fast pace, they covered the fifty-three miles in what was something of a record for the rough roads they had to travel. Pulling up at the rim of the Crooked River gorge at 2:00 the next morning, they found no Harriman camp in sight. The race had been won, apparently without opposition. Lee was both relieved and irritated; relieved because he had held his Winchester in his hands all day while he rode the rough, fast-traveling wagon, eyes warily on the rimrock; irritated because nothing had happened, and he felt that if he had stayed in Shaniko, he might have the evidence he sought.

  * * * * *

  “Are we going to bridge here?” Lee asked the next morning as he stood on the rim, looking across at the jutting rock on the other side and then down at the stream four hundred feet below, which seemed at this distance to be little more than a rivulet.

  “They tell me it’s the best spot on the gorge,” the foreman answered, “and they’re fixing to throw a bridge across here that’ll be the second highest one in the world.”

  “I’ll take the Deschutes cañon,” Lee said. “At least a man wouldn’t fall straight down.”

  “You’d bounce just once if you fell off here.” The foreman jabbed an expressive thumb toward the river. “Just once.”

  Highpockets and Lee were back in Shaniko that evening, and as Lee came into the lobby of the Columbia Southern, the clerk called: “A telegram for you, Mister Dawes!”

  Lee opened it, thinking it was probably Stevens needling him again about the Racine property or Porter giving instructions for another job. It was from neither, and disappointment washed through Lee as he read it.

  I had to leave for The Dalles. Will meet you a
t the Moro Hotel a week from tonight. Deborah.

  Lee crumpled the telegram into his pocket, feeling an unpleasant flatness of spirit. He had not realized how much he had been looking forward to seeing Deborah again, how much his dreams had been built around her. He felt a momentary stab of doubt. Had she left because she knew he was coming back? Then the doubt fled. If that had been the case, she wouldn’t have bothered sending the telegram.

  Lee had his supper and, stopping at the desk, asked: “Is Jepson here?”

  “Left on this morning’s train,” the clerk answered.

  “Thanks,” Lee said, and stepped into the street, and moved along it to a saloon.

  Lee shoved his way to the bar. He saw Mike Quinn a dozen paces along the mahogany from him, and a small grin struck at the corners of his mouth. He had taken Quinn’s girls from him more times than Quinn had successfully poached on him, but somehow this was different. There had been no woman back over the years like Deborah Haig. Not for him, and, judging from the warning the big Irishman had given him in Madras, Mike Quinn’s feelings were the same. He thought about that warning, and his grin widened. He’d like to see Quinn’s face when he heard that Deborah was Lee Dawes’s woman, and not Mike Quinn’s.

  The saloon was packed with the same strange and motley crowd that had been pouring through Shaniko all summer, but there was here, tonight, a greater proportion of railroad men than Lee had seen before, some of them teamsters in town for the night, but most of them laborers on their way to the camps in the cañon. There was a great deal of railroad talk, the bulk of it coming from the farmers and stockmen, and Lee noted with satisfaction that the general run of it held Hill responsible for the present activity in the cañon.

  “Ed Harriman just couldn’t sit back and see Hill come in here,” a grizzled sheepman said.

  “Two railroads instead of one,” a red-faced homesteader said, “and it suits me. I’m aiming to raise wheat, and I ain’t particular which one does my hauling. Mebbe they’ll get to arguing, and get the freight rates down.”

  “Like hell,” a Bend locator cut in. “They won’t be doing no cheap hauling, friend, but Hill’s your man. I say everybody ought to boycott the Harriman outfit. I lived in Bend too long to ever give him any business.”

  Lee watched Mike Quinn wheel away from the bar, saw his cheeks darken as patience ran out of him. He pushed men away from him until he faced the locator. “Of all the damned fools,” he bellowed, “some of you idiots win top prize! Where do you think this state would be if it wasn’t for Edward Harriman? You’d be shipping every damned product you raised by freight wagon across the Rockies or by boat around the Horn like your ancestors did.”

  The locator’s laugh was sour. “Seems to me Mister Harriman forgot all about Oregon being in the United States. Ever hear of the Harriman Fence, friend?”

  “It doesn’t mean a thing,” Quinn said grimly. “Harriman would have built in here regardless of the Hill line or the people’s movement. Now we’re in a hell of a scrap because Hill couldn’t sit back and see somebody else make any money.”

  Anger stirred in Lee Dawes. Stepping away from the bar, he moved toward Quinn, who was facing the mahogany again and pouring himself a drink. Lee said softly: “You bet on the wrong railroad, Quinn.” Quinn apparently had not seen him come into the saloon, for he turned now, surprise and then antagonism flowing across his craggy face. Remembering the way Deborah had greeted Quinn at The Dalles, Lee let his anger prod him into saying: “And you’ve got a way of betting on the wrong woman, Mike.”

  Quinn held a filled whiskey glass in his hand. For one stiff-muscled moment he stood that way, the whiskey glass in front of him, while suppressed violence brought a twitch to the corners of his mouth. That violence exploded without warning, and he tossed the glass away and lunged at Lee, hard-driving fists seeking Lee’s lean face.

  Lee dropped back with Quinn’s rush, long experience with the big Irishman telling him how the man fought. As if by conscious direction, the crowd in the saloon fell away from covering them. In that first quick retreat, Lee caught the blurred faces of some of the men at the bar—the locator, the homesteader, and others. Then Lee glimpsed the knobby features of Boston Bull, heard his thick tongued words: “Kill him, Quinn.”

  Lee was moving back again, and he lost Bull’s voice in the crowd’s roar.

  Always before it had been Lee’s way to let Quinn wear himself down. When the keen edge was gone from Quinn and he was short of breath, Lee would stand and fight and batter Quinn into submission. It was not that way now, for patience was not in Lee Dawes this night. In the back of his mind, memory was a red-hot prod stirring him to fury. Mike Quinn had met Deborah before Lee had. They had traveled together, and he wondered if it had been Quinn who had sent Deborah to The Dalles.

  These were the thoughts in Lee’s mind that brought him to a pitch of fury he had never felt before in any of his fights with Quinn. He backed away only until the first violence had gone from Quinn, and then he stood his ground, trading blows with the Irishman, the meaty impact of fists on flesh running the length of the room—that and the breathing of men the only sounds in the saloon. Lee brought a fist to Quinn’s kidney, took a blow into his hard stomach muscles, and answered with a right to the side of Quinn’s face, a savage, turning fist that snapped the Irishman’s head back. He was hurt. It was there in the sick look that swept his craggy face. Bringing his fists up, he lowered his head and came at Lee as if to butt him in the stomach, a maneuver Lee had never seen him use before.

  “You’ve forgotten how to fight, Mike,” Lee taunted as he wheeled aside. “You’re getting old. Too old for a pretty woman.”

  Quinn had no breath to waste in talk. He went on past Lee, carried by the impetus of his charge, and Lee was on him again, sledging him on the head. But Quinn was not as nearly out on his feet as Lee had guessed. He whirled unexpectedly, hands outstretched, and dived for Lee’s legs. Lee went down with him, kicking and twisting and trying to get free, but he was unable to bring a punch through to Quinn’s body.

  Lee rolled away, Quinn after him, reaching for him and trying to get his big hands on him. A weakness was crawling into Lee. Somewhere back along these past minutes he had been hit more times and absorbed more punishment than he realized. He came to his feet with Quinn, battered the Irishman’s face with a looping right, and carried the fight to Quinn, knowing Quinn was hurt, and feeling his own need for ending it.

  Quinn backed away, and Lee rushed at him just as a man’s foot snapped out from the circle, caught Lee’s ankle, and dropped him. In that same instant Quinn, electing to stand his ground, drove a vicious right upward that caught Lee’s unprotected chin. A million rockets exploded in Lee’s head, setting up their red lights in his brain, and, when his lank body hit the floor, it lay without motion.

  Lee came to minutes later with somebody sloshing water over him, and with Highpockets shouting in a high, strained voice: “If I ever get my hands on that dad-burned Bull, I’ll fix him so his own mama would throw him to the hogs!”

  It made no sense to Lee. Not for a time. He got to his knees, the men before him turning as if they were on a red-streaked merry-go-round. He slashed out with a fist.

  “Take it easy, son,” Highpockets said. “Ain’t nobody around here you want to fight. Quinn and Bull are both gone.”

  Lee came to his feet and lurched to the bar. He poured a drink, and, as he drank it, memory came crowding back into his aching head. Running a hand over his bruised face, he looked at the blood, and wiped it against his pants. “What about Bull?” he asked.

  “He tripped you,” the locator said. “You had Quinn damned near out, and you were going after him when Bull tripped you. You just fell into Quinn’s fist.”

  “I’ve been fighting him most of my life,” Lee muttered, “and he never knocked me out before.”

  “No credit to him,” Highpockets said angrily.

  “He didn’t look very proud of himself,” the locator said. “He t
old Bull plenty.”

  Lee felt gingerly of the back of his head. “Is it all on?”

  “All there,” Highpockets said.

  “Guess I’d better go to bed.” Lee took another drink, and reeled back to the hotel.

  * * * * *

  Lee’s head still held a steady, dull ache when he stepped down from the train at Grass Valley the next morning. His left eye was blue and puffy and nearly closed, one corner of his mouth was swollen, and a gash ran along his right cheek. But when he saw Quinn on the street, he managed a grin. The Irishman’s face was in worse condition than his own.

  “Go on over to the office,” Lee told Highpockets.

  Lee moved slowly along the street until he met Quinn, sourness at the method of his defeat still rankling in him. He said sharply: “I figured you’d duck when you saw me, Mike. Took two of you to lick me last night.”

  “For which I’m apologizing,” Quinn said with quick sincerity. “You were crowding me, and I had that punch on the way when you started to fall. Damn it, Lee, I just couldn’t stop it.”

  This was the nearest thing to an apology Lee had ever heard Quinn give any man. He said shortly: “It’s all right, Mike. Guess we’ll have to get off by ourselves and finish it in our own way.”

  “Now that’s over, I’ve got something else I want to say. We’ve got about all we can stomach, Dawes. If you keep up these sneak tricks, there’s going to be the damnedest fight in the cañon you ever saw.”

  “What’s biting you now?” Lee demanded.

  Quinn shoved his hands far into his pockets. “I kicked the other day about somebody stirring our men up. Now it’s rattlesnakes. Somebody got a hundred or more and dropped ’em in our camps. Scared hell out of them Italian boys, and a lot of ’em quit.”

  “We didn’t have anything to do with it, Mike. I tell you it’s somebody else who wants us to tangle with each other.”

  “Somebody else?” Quinn sneered. “And who would it be but you?”

  Lee hesitated, knowing Quinn would not believe him but thinking the other should know. He said: “It’s Jepson, but he’s been too slick so far to get anything nailed onto him.”