Rider on the Buckskin

by Peter Dawson

  There was a steadiness and a good-naturedness about this man that was like a tonic to Kate Bond now. And in genuine gratefulness she impulsively asked: “Is there anything at all I can do to help? I know this country above as well as I know the yard at the house. If you’re.…”

  His expression underwent a change as she spoke. He was frowning, avoiding her glance.

  She asked: “What is it?”

  Rivers seemed all at once ill at ease. He stooped and tossed several lengths of wood onto the fire, and afterward peered down the trail as though studying Pleasants and the two others who were now but faint blurred shadows behind the hazy curtain of the falling snow.

  Finally he looked around at her. “Wonder if I hadn’t ought to get down there and see your lawman, like I started out to?”

  Kate Bond felt her face grow hot, and was instantly ashamed of suggesting what she had. It occurred to her then that even her brief acquaintance with this man should have given her the insight to anticipate his doing exactly what he was proposing to do, face out this trouble instead of running from it.

  She covered her confusion as well as she could, asking: “You know what you’ll run into, don’t you?”

  Rivers shrugged sparely. “Maybe it won’t be as rough as you think. I met Echols in town yesterday. Except for being a bit grouchy, he seemed the right kind.”

  “They don’t come any finer than Jim Echols.” She thought of something then that aroused a faint worry in her. “But you can’t go back down the way you came, along this trail. Pleasants may be expecting that. He could be waiting for you.”

  “Then I’ll cut off to the south.”

  She frowned in thought a deliberate moment. Then: “You’re welcome to come on home with me. Fred will want to know about this. Fred’s my brother. And he’ll probably want to go into town to see Jim about this. Why not come with us?”

  He nodded. “Sounds like sense.”

  She was much relieved, and also unaccountably pleased at the prospect. “Good,” she said. Then, over a slightly awkward pause, she added: “You know half my name. The other half is Bond.”

  “Kate Bond.” Rivers nodded. “I’m Frank Rivers.”

  She thought she detected a faint nervousness in the way he looked at her, as though he expected some reaction at the mention of his name. But then, as he turned away down the slope toward the mare and the buckskin, he drawled: “Be right with you.” His manner was once more unruffled, easy-going.

  * * * * *

  The gentle rain falling across the valley had turned to snow shortly before dawn this morning. And now at ten o’clock the clean whiteness lay fetlock-deep to the horses traveling Ute Springs’ streets, contrasting strangely and brilliantly with the gold and orange background of frosted cottonwoods and poplars that hadn’t yet shed their leaves.

  Jim Echols stared solemnly upon this scene from the window of his small office on the ground floor of the ugly brick courthouse, acutely aware of the three men behind him in the room waiting for his answer to a question Lute Pleasants had just put to him. The Beavertail man’s testiness over the past ten minutes had roused in Echols a strong measure of that same annoyance he had felt yesterday during their argument, although he was trying to keep a rein on his temper now in the knowledge that Sam Cauble’s violent death gave Pleasants good reason for being out of sorts.

  Echols was trying to decide something, whether or not to mention his encounter with Rivers yesterday, whether or not to tell Pleasants that the man was a pardoned convict. And as he debated the wisdom of further infuriating Pleasants, his glance was absent-mindedly following the progress of a buckboard along the snowy street beyond the window.

  The rig drew even with the hotel, and abruptly the sheriff’s interest quickened as he saw Lola Ames, the hotel owner’s daughter, standing on the building’s broad verandah. Lola was without a coat and wore a shawl over her shoulders and corn-colored hair. She had evidently been sweeping the porch’s edge and now stood, leaning against the railing talking to a woman on the walk below.

  Even at this distance her small, narrow-waisted figure was a sight to take a man’s eye, and it had its effect on Echols, stirring him as always.

  “Well, Echols, how about it?”

  The querulous words intruded harshly upon the sheriff’s pleasantly straying thoughts, so that, when he swung around and answered, his tone for the first time betrayed his annoyance. “Give a man time to decide.”

  “Decide what?” Pleasants wanted to know.

  “Whether we round up some men, go up there, and chouse around in this storm looking for him. Or whether I go down to the depot and have Bert get on the wire. Up above we couldn’t spot our man if he was fifty feet away. But we can ask to have the hill trails covered on the far side from Bend and Hilltown. Even as far north as Eagle if you want.”

  “Why don’t we do both?”

  Jim Echols shrugged. Though not particularly enthusiastic over the idea, he answered: “Suits me. How many men would you say we need?”

  “Twenty, thirty anyway.”

  The lawman sighed, still convinced that any riding in this weather would be a sheer waste of time. Nevertheless he said—“All right, give me a minute to figure this out.”—and half turned toward the window again.

  As he glanced back out onto the street, he was once more debating the advantages to be gained from telling Pleasants about Rivers. It halfway angered him that he wanted somehow to protect Rivers until he knew more about this affair. He was positive that if he did tell Pleasants what he knew, the man would take it as proof that Rivers was guilty without question. Equally as important was the fact that, if Pleasants was to learn that Echols had yesterday afternoon mentioned Cauble to Rivers as being lame, then there would be no living with the man.

  Pleasants was the kind to nurse a grievance, to magnify it. If he once got it fixed in his mind that Echols had even accidentally been in any way responsible for the killing, he would never forget it. And the lawman had no relish for laying the foundations for such bad feeling.

  Suddenly out there on the street Echols was really seeing something he had been staring at sightlessly for the past several seconds. Three riders had passed the hotel intersection and were now turning into the rail adjoining the one where Pleasants and his men had tied their horses. The rider in the lead, dark maroon coat heavily powdered at the shoulders with snow, was Kate Bond. Fred Bond closely followed his sister, riding alongside a tall man on a buckskin, leading a pack animal.

  Echols’s hawkish face went loose with amazement and disbelief as he recognized that third horseman. He stood a moment in a complete paralysis of surprise. Then, turning abruptly from the window, he stepped to the hallway door, saying unceremoniously: “Stick around, I’ll be right back.”

  The raw air bit sharply into him as he came down the courthouse steps and onto the packed snow of the walk. Coatless and hatless as he was, his appearance caught the immediate attention of Kate and Fred Bond, and of Frank Rivers.

  He stopped halfway across the walk, his glance shuttling briefly from Rivers to Fred Bond. “Thanks for bringing him in, Fred.”

  “Don’t thank me. It was his idea.”

  Bond’s words brought the sheriff his second hard surprise of the past half minute. Scarcely able to take in the meaning of what he had heard, he stepped on across to within arm’s reach of the buckskin’s head and, resting the heel of his right hand on the handle of the gun riding his thigh, said tonelessly: “You’ve got one hell of a lot of explaining to do.”

  “Which is why I’m here, Sheriff.”

  Rivers took in Echols’s wary stance and swung down out of the saddle, thinking: Easy does it. Don’t give him a chance to get sore.

  He had no way of knowing that the past ten minutes of talking with Pleasants was in large measure responsible for the lawman’s testy manner, so like yesterday during their meeting on the street. All he did know was that Echols seemed chronically ill-tempered and unreasonable, and he found hi
mself almost wishing he had taken his chances on riding over the pass before dawn instead of deciding to come down here.

  Because he saw it as being very important that he do everything he could to ease the sheriff’s suspicion of him, he now reached in under his coat and unbuckled his shell belt, then stepped across to hand it and the holstered Colt over the rail close to the man.

  “Want the rifle, too?” he asked.

  “You just stay set. I’ll get it.”

  His move had surprised Echols, whose tone sounded a trifle more conciliatory now. The sheriff took the heavy belt and gun from the rail as Rivers was tying the buckskin, then moved on out to draw the Winchester from its sheath. And Fred Bond, having seen and heard all this, came onto the walk to join Rivers, tilting his head to indicate the three Beavertail horses tied nearby.

  “Pleasants in there, Jim?” At Echols’s answering nod, he went on: “In that case you’ve heard only one side of this.” He was a slight man a full head shorter than Rivers, and his thin and handsome face showed a strong trace of that same sensitiveness Rivers had noticed earlier in his sister. He was five years older than Kate, twenty-six, and he had known Jim Echols most of his life, so that now his blunt words lost their sting as he added: “You’re grown up enough to know what a sore-head Pleasants is. He’s given you the wrong slant on this. What’re you trying to do with Rivers here, make him a …?”

  “He’ll have his chance to tell his side of it,” the lawman cut in.

  Kate Bond came across to stand beside her brother now. She caught Echols’s eye as he started back to the walk and her expression was worried, faintly alarmed as she asked: “Why are you arresting him, Jim?”

  “Didn’t say I was, Kate … not yet anyway.”

  For the first time it seemed to Rivers that the lawman might perhaps be going to listen to reason. And as he followed Kate and her brother into the courthouse hallway, Echols close behind him, he experienced his first faint hope that he hadn’t made a bad mistake in returning to Ute Springs.

  Following Kate Bond into the office, he first glimpsed the two Beavertail crewmen who had been at his camp with Pleasants this morning. Then as he came through the doorway he found Lute Pleasants standing alongside the room’s single window to his right.

  The Beavertail owner’s stony glance settled on him and didn’t stray. “Did you serve that warrant, Sheriff?”

  “Not yet.” The lawman closed the door, stepped around Rivers and over to his desk, laying the rifle and the holstered .44 on it. “But maybe I will before we’re through.”

  “Maybe? What’s to stop you from doing it now?”

  “We’ll listen to what he has to say first.” The sheriff glanced at Pleasants’s two men. “Room’s crowded, boys. You two wait outside.”

  “They stay where they are,” Pleasants at once insisted.

  This past quarter hour had left Jim Echols with his nerves slightly frayed. And now his irritation once again got the best of him. “This is the sheriff’s office, Pleasants. I’m the sheriff, remember? I say they get out.”

  The sultry anger showing in Pleasants’s dark eyes brightened momentarily as he returned Echols’s bridling stare. But then he gave a grudging nod, whereupon Harry and Ben stepped around Kate, who had taken off her coat and was standing with her back to the stove. Neither man so much as glanced at Rivers as they came past him and went out into the hallway.

  Fred Bond had no sooner closed the door after them than Jim Echols eased down into his chair behind the desk, picked up Rivers’s Winchester, and began levering the shells from its magazine. Pleasants watched him empty it, leave the action open, and hold it to the window’s light as he looked down the barrel.

  “Clean. Some dust there at the muzzle,” the lawman finally remarked, offering Pleasants the weapon.

  Pleasants examined the rifle only cursorily, afterward saying—“Look over his other iron.”—as he laid the Winchester on the desk.

  A weighty silence lay across the room as Echols punched the shells from the Colt, removed its pin, and rolled out the cylinder. After holding it to the light, he handed it across to the Beavertail man, dryly commenting: “More dust.”

  Once again Pleasants spent little time in his examination. Handing the .44 back to Echols, he said flatly: “Now let’s hear this trumped-up story.”

  The sheriff glanced obliquely up at Rivers. “Go ahead, tell it, Rivers.”

  “Rivers?”

  Pleasants’s involuntary exclamation was soft-spoken. His expression took on a fleeting, hard alertness. But then he quickly recovered from his astonishment and added with the same truculence as before: “So that’s what they call you. Well, let’s hear what you’ve got to say. And make it the truth.”

  Frank Rivers had been trying to puzzle out what lay behind Jim Echols’s stern but fair approach to this matter. The lawman was being more reasonable now than he had been five minutes ago on the street, and far more reasonable than he had been yesterday.

  Unable to fathom this change in the sheriff, his attention had a moment ago strayed to Kate Bond, so that he didn’t witness the brief change in Pleasants’s manner. The man’s words meant nothing to him beyond the fact of Pleasants’s being only mildly curious on hearing his name.

  This was the first time he had seen Kate Bond when she wasn’t wearing the bulky wool coat. Back at Anchor she had changed from her work clothes and was now wearing a blue print shirtwaist and a black wool riding skirt, divided so that she had ridden man-fashion on the way down to town.

  She was, he saw, a tall and slender girl with a natural grace and poise. Her upper body was gently rounded and the narrow-waisted, bulky skirt failed to hide the slim line of her hips. The light from the lamp on the sheriff’s desk laid reddish highlights across her hair. And her eyes just now, intercepting his look, smiled at him as though she wanted to put him at ease and lend encouragement.

  He put aside his strong awareness of her, looking across at Echols to say: “What I have isn’t much. This man Cauble rode in on my camp sometime after three this morning. I was building up the fire and he caught me flat-footed. He held a rifle on me while he combed me over for cutting his fence. He said.…”

  “Which you damn’ well did cut!” Pleasants brusquely interjected.

  “Let’s let him finish.” Jim Echols’s tone was strangely unruffled. “Go ahead, Rivers. What happened then?”

  “Cauble claimed I was working for Anchor, which was the first time I’d ever heard of the outfit. He was working himself up to taking me back down with him when this shot came from up the trail.”

  “What proof’s he got of all that, Echols?”

  “This much, Lute,” Kate Bond quietly inserted. “Old Wade heard the shot, got to worrying about it, and came up to the house to waken Fred. That was at three-thirty, exactly.”

  “Go on, Rivers,” Echols said matter-of-factly.

  “That’s about it.” Rivers thought back, shortly adding: “Except that when it got light, I loaded him onto his jughead and was all set to bring him back down here when company arrived.”

  “How do we know he wasn’t set to pack Sam up into the hills and bury him?” Pleasants wanted to know.

  His barbed question fanned alive a flare of anger in Rivers. And before the sheriff could speak, Rivers drawled: “If I’d cut your friend down, why would I hang around? Between when he was shot and the time you hit my camp, I could’ve been over the pass with my tracks snowed over and your man planted so deep no one would ever find him, as you say.”

  For some seconds a tense silence lay across the room, the only sound being the gentle sighing of the stove. Echols was blandly eyeing Pleasants, waiting for some comment and, oddly enough, faintly smiling.

  At length Pleasants’s jaw tightened and he stated tonelessly: “Sam Cauble’s dead, Sheriff. My fence is cut. Add the two together and what answer do you come up with?”

  “You tell me.”

  “Just one. Anchor hired this hardcase to cut fence. Sa
m had the bad luck to stumble across him last.…”

  “That’s a damned lie.”

  Fred Bond, who had so far kept his strict silence, spoke softly but in deadly seriousness. Hearing what he had from this ordinarily mild-spoken man, Jim Echols instantly straightened in his chair to say: “Here now. Cool off, both of you.” He came up out of his chair then. “I know how you feel, Pleasants. But look at the facts. There’s no sign of Rivers having used these irons lately. Cauble’s hadn’t been fired, either. Rivers didn’t run when he could have. More than that, he came down here on his own hook. He.…”

  “What was he doing up there above my fence last night?”

  “Now maybe I can just answer that,” Echols replied. “It so happens I ran into him here in town yesterday afternoon and had a few words with him. At the time he mentioned going over the hills by way of the old trail. He was just on his way through.”

  For the first time now Pleasants seemed unsure of himself. “Why didn’t you tell me all this before?”

  “Why should I?” the lawman countered. “But think this over. If Anchor had hired him to cut fence, then he’d have kept clear of me, wouldn’t he?”

  He waited for Pleasants to argue this and, when the man didn’t, stated with a definite finality: “He’s to be at the inquest this afternoon and let a jury listen to his story. If nothing new turns up, then as far as I’m concerned he’s free as the breeze.”

  Lute Pleasants didn’t like this and there was fire in his dark eyes now. “If he didn’t kill Sam, who did?”

  “Wish I knew, Pleasants. One day I will, and that’s a promise.”

  The Beavertail man glanced at Rivers. “Did you see anyone else at all up there?”

  “Only your man.”

  Pleasants’s bafflement and stubborn indignation were very convincing as he eyed the sheriff and nodded to indicate Rivers. “I told you how he braced us up there, dared us to take him. You’ve got your killer right here in front of you.”

  “There you go, running off at the mouth again.” Rivers’s flat drawl came hard on the heels of the other’s testy words. “Someday it’ll get you into real trouble. Like it almost did up there this morning.”