“All right, here’s the thing,” Buckhorn said. “If I make it into whatever Riley’s operation is—if I infiltrate it, to use one of Menlo’s words—then it’s not likely I’ll start out with the freedom to just come and go as I please. There’s bound to be a sort of ‘proving out’ period for me to show I can truly be trusted.”
“Sounds reasonable.”
“So I’m looking for some kind of pipeline in case I need to get word in or out while I’m under that kind of close scrutiny. That means I came to you looking for an idea on how I can do that.”
Obie made a kind of groaning sound.
“Turns out I was wrong about needin’ a jolt from this bottle. You just hit me with a bigger jolt than I wanted.”
“I’ve got a hunch you can handle it.”
“Yeah? What if I say nuts to you and your hunch? What makes you think I got any ideas on how to set up anything like this ‘pipeline’ you’re wantin’?”
Buckhorn pinned him with a penetrating gaze.
“Like I said before, I don’t think there’s much of anything that goes on in these parts that you don’t know at least a piece of.”
“And what do you reckon a whole lot of pieces gets a fella?”
“Maybe more than you think. Maybe more than you’re willing to take a chance on trying to put together.”
Obie poured some more whiskey and said, “Since you showed up, that ain’t hardly been a problem. You take enough chances so that anybody hangin’ around you is apt to get their share and then some rubbed off. And now the ranger sticks his nose in, proddin’ you along with more risky notions.”
Each man raised his cup and took a drink.
Buckhorn gave it several beats before he finally asked, “Well? Anything percolating in that ornery old brain of yours? Any ideas come to mind I might be able to use?”
“Even if something does, I ain’t yet heard me say that I’m willin’ to hand it over.”
“What do you want—for me to say ‘pretty please’?”
A strange expression—part sad, part wistful and faraway—settled briefly over Obie’s face.
“What I want,” he murmured, “is for things to settle down and be good—as good as they ever can be with Boss Gus gone—for the Circle D again.”
“You may not approve of my methods,” Buckhorn replied, also speaking in a somewhat lowered voice, “but I’d say what you want and I want puts us working toward the same purpose.”
Obie started to raise his cup again, but then paused and put it back down. Expelling a gust of air, he said, “Sure. O’ course it does. For a moment there, after you walloped me with that ‘undercover’ business, I guess I sort of forgot.”
“I hope you keep remembering.”
Obie gave a quick, faint nod, as if to himself.
“I will. Now, here’s about the only thing I can think of, at least for a start, that might give you something on the order of that ‘pipeline’ you’re wantin’ to set up . . .”
CHAPTER 25
“A Missouri mule named Sylvester and a chuck wagon cook called Slim Bob. That’s all you got for a safety net?”
“That’s what I’ve got,” said Buckhorn, striking a more positive chord in response to Lyle Menlo’s meager assessment of what Buckhorn and Obie had come up with as far as a pipeline in and out of the Riley ranch. “Unless you have something better.”
“No, afraid I don’t,” admitted the old ranger. “We’re puttin’ this together on the fly, remember?”
“Oh, I remember. All too well. We’re also putting my neck on the line on the fly. Remember that part?”
The two men were sitting on the ground before a crackling fire in another of Menlo’s outlying night camps. It was full dark now, under a clear sky liberally sprinkled with stars but only a thin slice of moon.
“Okay, let me see if I got this straight,” said Menlo as he puffed on a crusty briar pipe. “This Slim Bob is the cook for the wrangler crew at the Slash-Double R run by Milt Riley, Dan’s brother. Dan has supposedly thrown in with Milt since he got booted from the Circle D, though he never seems to be around whenever anybody stops by.”
“That’s the size of it,” Buckhorn said. “And just for the record, I had some time to kill earlier, after you and I parted at the hogback and before I went to see Obie, so I used it to do some reconnoitering of the Slash-Double R from a nearby hill. I spotted who I took to be Milt Riley, from a description provided by Obie. But nary a sign of Dan—or his daughter Eve or Jeff Danvers, either.”
Menlo sent a cloud of pipe smoke rolling up into the still air and said, “Gettin’ back to this Slim Bob . . . According to Obie, who’s also usually in attendance, every Wednesday night Bob saddles his mule and rides to join a handful of other old-timers from the area in a weekly poker game held at the home of a former stagecoach jehu by the name of Barstow.
“He lives alone in a shack in the hills somewhere between the Circle D and the Slash-Double R. Gets by on some hogs and chickens he raises, and a smidgen of prospecting he does farther up in the hills.
“And then, on Saturdays after dishin’ out breakfast, Bob hitches Sylvester to a buckboard and goes into Barkley to stock up on supplies. So, providin’ you wangle your way in with Dan Riley like we’re hopin’, those will be your only two outlets for gettin’ messages in or out. With the help of Obie.”
“That’s right,” said Buckhorn, nodding. His hawkish features were made even starker by the shifting pattern of light and shadows thrown by the fire. “Slim Bob won’t have any idea he’s doing the transporting back and forth. I’m thinking I can cut a thin slice in the mule’s bridle big enough to fit in a tightly folded piece of paper that nobody would spot unless they know to go digging for it. By that means, Obie can get word in to me if and when he wants to and I can send a message out to him—and you, if it’s something he needs to pass along.”
“Making it an outlet you could only use twice a week.”
“It’s the best we’ve got for right now,” said Buckhorn. “Besides, how long do you figure this is gonna take to play out.”
“It should go pretty quick if you’re able to convince Riley there’s a trap waitin’ for anybody plannin’ to try and rustle that fresh herd in the meadow. If he does have something in the works, like Micah Danvers and most everybody expects, and he reveals it for certain by holdin’ off on account of your warning—well, that oughta nail the can to his tail once and for all and give me all I need to haul him in. If it turns out he don’t know what the hell you’re even talkin’ about, though . . . then we got a whole different kettle of fish to boil. Unless another gang of rustlers is obliging enough to show up and ride into the trap we’ll have set.”
Buckhorn grunted.
“Yeah, that’ll be the day.”
Menlo eyed him through a curl of smoke.
“Stranger things have been known to happen.”
Buckhorn felt the weight of those eyes on him and said, “You’re pulling my leg. Right?”
“Maybe just a little. It so happens, though, that Kirby Peck, the young ranger who took a stab at this case ahead of me, wrote in the notes he left that he was startin’ to wonder if there might not be two rustler gangs at work in this general area.”
“You think he might have seriously been onto something?”
“Not necessarily. Not at first anyway. But it’s got around to occurrin’ to me that a whole bunch of people—including none other than your Mrs. Danvers—sure have got their minds made up that Dan Riley is the nasty hombre behind practically every bad deed that happens hereabouts. There’s been other outlawry in the general area, too, you know—rustling raids on other spreads, even a few stagecoach and bank robberies. Could be grounds for what they call ‘misdirection.’ Mighty handy for another party lookin’ to pull a foul deed here and there to get away with it a lot easier and hardly even be noticed when all eyes are busy lookin’ elsewhere.”
Buckhorn’s face bunched into a scowl.
“Now w
ait just a minute. I hope you aren’t saying you suspect Pamela Danvers of—”
Menlo cut him short, saying, “The only person I have reason to suspect—and that’s mainly because I’ve had his name force-fed to me practically from the minute I set foot in town, which is sorta the whole point I’m trying to make—is Dan Riley. All I’m sayin’ is maybe it’s time to take a step back and cast a little wider look around. Still include Riley in the view, but not quite so exclusively.”
“I guess what you’re saying makes sense,” said Buckhorn, feeling the tightness ease out of his shoulders. “And it doesn’t change a thing for the short term, this plan for me to try and get in with Dan.”
“Not at all.”
“Because the other part of all this, aside from the rustling,” Buckhorn reminded the ranger, “is for me to also try and get a line on what happened to Jeff Danvers, not to mention Riley’s daughter Eve.”
“You know where I stand on that,” Menlo reminded right back. “If harm has been done or you turn up evidence of kidnapping, I naturally will get involved. But I didn’t come here to mount an investigation into a couple of missing lovebirds. My main focus remains gettin’ to the bottom of and puttin’ a stop to the rustling. Just so we’re clear on that.”
“We’re clear,” Buckhorn said. Then added, “Long as that also includes you understanding what my main focus is, and not getting in the way of me doing what I have to for the sake of that.”
CHAPTER 26
After sharing Menlo’s campsite for the night, the ranger and the gunman rose and parted ways shortly after daybreak.
Buckhorn rode toward the Slash-Double R under a sky that, for the time being, was clear and bright, stretching from the eastern sunrise.
But off to the northwest, a smudge above the ragged horizon was rapidly thickening and darkening into an ominous cloud bank that appeared to threaten rain by midday. Intermittent gusts of cool air stabbing ahead of the thunderhead only served to heighten the sense of an oncoming storm.
Before approaching the main buildings of the ranch itself, Buckhorn once more paid a visit to the hilltop from which he’d done some reconnoitering the previous afternoon. Tying Sarge on the back slope of the hill, he ascended to the crest where he stretched out on his belly and raised a powerful set of field glasses to his eyes.
The layout below was pretty standard for a ranch of any size. Main house; outbuildings and corrals; a bunkhouse and grub shack. It wasn’t arranged in a V pattern like the Circle D ranch headquarters, and the latter was notably larger, but otherwise there were many similarities. The main house here at the Slash-Double R was showing some age and wear, though still kept up quite well, and there was a newer-looking addition jutting off one corner that Buckhorn guessed might be an accommodation marking when Dan Riley and his daughter had come aboard.
When Buckhorn had taken his look-see yesterday, most everyone was scattered to handle the day’s chores, so there hadn’t been much activity to observe. This morning it was different. It was still early enough so that some of the hands were working around the headquarters. Two men were shoeing horses over by an open-fronted building with an anvil and a glowing forge inside. Another was rubbing on liniment and otherwise tending to a sleek roan that appeared to have come up lame.
Buckhorn even caught sight of a tall, skinny gent in a stained white apron—who had to be none other than Slim Bob—throwing a tubful of kitchen scraps out one end of the grub shack. A handful of chickens and a pair of spotted shoats came scrambling to fight over the offering.
On the front porch of the house, Buckhorn again spotted Milt Riley sitting in a sturdy rocking chair enjoying a cup of coffee in the company of a trim, handsome, butterscotch-haired woman who had to be his wife Larraine. He knew, from Obie, that Milt and Larraine also had a daughter just a little older than Eve. Buckhorn couldn’t recall her name, not that it really mattered. Particularly since he saw no sign of her, or of Eve or Jeff Danvers, as far as that went.
And no Dan Riley, either.
Buckhorn calculated that when Milt finished the private bit of leisure time with his wife, he likely would rise out of his chair, come down off the porch, and join his crew, prodding them into whatever work was in store for the day. Buckhorn further reckoned that if he waited for brother Dan to show up, he might be there until the approaching storm washed him away or the blizzards of winter rolled in.
So if he was going to get the ball rolling, it looked like his best bet would be to start it with Milt. And, if he meant to do that while the man was right there handy, he’d best quit looking and start doing.
Another of those cold prestorm gusts came rolling up over the crest just as Buckhorn lowered the binoculars and started to push himself away before rising to his feet and descending back down the slope. Amidst the low moan of the cold gust and the whisper of dust granules that carried with it, a voice spoke clear and sharp.
“Hold it right there, mister. Stay on your belly, like the snake you are, and keep your hands right where I can see ’em—in plain sight and empty.”
Inwardly, Buckhorn cursed himself. What the hell was wrong with him lately? What was allowing him to be distracted to the point where would-be ambushers were able to get close enough to fire their first shot before he was aware they were anywhere near?
Or almost as bad, for both Obie and Menlo to have been able to observe him testing his Colt and target practicing the other day without him having any idea either one was there. And now, yet again, he’d let someone sneak up on him—not only that but, judging by the voice, the someone was a female!
“And in case you’re not inclined to take orders from a gal,” the voice added, as if reading his mind, “then you might like to know that I have a Winchester aimed square at you. You might also like to know that I’m a darn good shot. But even if I wasn’t, I could hardly miss blowing your spine in two from this close, no matter how bad I was.”
“Actually,” said Buckhorn, his face so close to the ground that his breath puffed up miniature dust clouds when he spoke, “I wouldn’t like to know any of those things because I’d rather not be in a position where I need to know ’em.”
“Then you ought not be trespassing where you’re not wanted and crawling on the ground like a rattlesnake or a lizard to spy on folks!”
Before Buckhorn could make another reply, the Winchester behind him roared and a chunk of ground less than a foot from his left hand kicked into the air as a slug tore into it.
A wild thought streaked through Buckhorn’s brain. Could it be that the girl was not the markswoman she claimed and she’d shot at him and missed?
Before that possibility could sink in, there came the sound of another round being levered into the firing chamber followed instantly by the Winchester being triggered again. This time a slug tore into the ground close to his right hand. Buckhorn dug his fingers clawlike into the earth and refused to jerk his arm away. The rifle spoke again and a third round sizzled just above Buckhorn’s head to bury itself into the ground only inches ahead of his face.
The gun went silent. And only then did Buckhorn fully realize what had just happened. The girl had issued a warning signal, three rapid-fire shots, to those below. At the same time, by planting the slugs so closely around him, she had demonstrated to Buckhorn that she could just as easily have riddled him with lead.
To confirm his realization, Buckhorn was able to lift his face slightly and see, even without the binoculars, a sudden swarm of activity down among the buildings of the Slash-Double R ranch headquarters. Milt Riley had bounded off the porch and was trotting toward his men who were jabbering excitedly and pointing upward toward where Buckhorn was flattened on the ground.
“Long as you’re willing to keep holdin’ still, I’m willing to not shoot you,” said the female voice behind him. “But we’re going to have visitors in a few minutes and I can’t make no promises for them.”
* * *
“Judging by the bowler hat and the Indian look to him,
he’s got to be the hired gun we heard about Pamela Danvers bringing in,” said the girl—who’d introduced herself, while they were awaiting the arrival of the others, as Milt’s daughter Josephine. “I was out for an early ride before the day turns stormy, wanting to run some more of the rough off that new mare we just broke in,” she went on, explaining to her father and the two wranglers who’d come along with him to the top of the hill. “I was pushing her hard across some high ground off to the south when I happened to catch a glint of sunlight off this jasper’s field glasses as he was squirming into position.”
“Why didn’t you hightail it back to the ranch and fetch me and some of the boys right away,” her father demanded, “instead of sneaking in on this owlhoot alone? You could have got yourself hurt.”
“I did all right, though, didn’t I?” There was a smugness to the tone of Josephine’s reply. “Before he had a clue I was behind him, I got close enough to slap that silly hat off his head if I’d wanted to. I was afraid if I rode down to warn you he was lurking up here, he’d be looking on and sniff out what I was up to. Then he’d’ve had the chance to get away before anybody could circle around on him.”
“I didn’t come here to turn tail and run,” said Buckhorn, from where he still lay on the ground. “I came here to talk.”
“Talk, you say?”
Milt Riley stepped around in front of him. Buckhorn cranked his head back and lifted his face to get a better look at the man. He wasn’t overly tall, but massive through the chest and shoulders. Big, thick-fingered hands gripped a Winchester Yellowboy like it was a twig. He glared down at Buckhorn with green eyes set deep in a broad, fleshy face bracketed by thick sideburns the color of old rust. It was a face that looked like it could be as quick to humor as it was to anger. But the latter was definitely holding court at the moment.
“You got some fancy way of strikin’ up a conversation from atop a far-off hill? Is that how you set out to have a talk with somebody?”
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