"So-long," grunted the marshal, shaking hands. "You got a fairly long ride ahead of you, but you could have waited till you got home before you had yore hoss shod in front."
"Not goin' home," replied the sheriff. "Not right away, anyhow."
"I kinda suspicioned that when you went to th' blacksmith," said the marshal. "Well, good luck."
"Same to you," responded the sheriff, grinning widely, and then strode away in the night, heading for the steadily increasing noise and the patches of yellow lamplight straggling through grimy windows. The town was, indeed, awake.
He pushed open the first swinging doors that he came to and entered the "Palace," the doors squeaking softly behind him. The long, narrow room was crowded, the bar almost hidden by the line-up along it. In the far, left-hand corner of the room a stud poker game was under way, a limit game, it seemed, for small stakes; but stud poker is like a modern, high-powered rifle, making up for an apologetic caliber by the pressure behind it. A three-card monte spread came next, and was heavily patronized; and next to that was a faro layout, with its dealer, its case-keeper, and its eager devotees. A man had a better chance at faro than at any other set game.
"An' what's yourn?" asked a husky, unpleasant voice from the right-hand wall.
Corson slowly turned and glanced along the line-up, his eyes flashing to a narrow space between two men, and behind that, the ugly face of the bartender.
"Nothin', right now," he answered, and again looked slowly and deliberately around the room.
He saw that three men at the faro table had pushed back, pocketing their chips, to become carelessly interested in himself. He smiled understandingly. Other players eagerly took the vacated places before the table and the game was not interrupted.
He had never seen these three men before. One of them had shifty eyes; but the other two suffered from the opposite complaint, and stared steadily and belligerently at him. That, decided the sheriff, was one way to start a fight; and a good way, since it was a silent challenge, and put the responsibility of direct action upon the person stared at. In his capacity as a peace officer it was his duty to show resentment slowly, if he could, and not to set the pace in rowdyism. His job was to stop brawls rather than to start them, but at times he found his patience sorely tried. He moved forward, heading for the stud-horse game, ignoring the three ex-farobank players. There would be plenty of time for the development of trouble, and it suited him to follow a lead rather than to make one. In this manner he might possibly learn the identity of the three sharpshooters of Crooked Creek.
The next man to deal gathered up the cards, looked the sheriff in the eye, sneered, shrugged his shoulders, and deftly shuffled. The play went on. Corson leaned against the wall, the end wall, near the corner, from where the whole room lay under his eyes. His left side was against the wall, his right free and unhampered. While he knew none of these men, there was no doubt that many knew him, or at least what he represented. He allowed himself to speculate a little.
It was not just a question of being a peace officer, he reflected, that lay back of this silent hostility. The marshal was a peace officer, and appeared to be well liked, taking him at his own word. It was, perhaps, purely a question of jurisdiction. That of the marshal was narrow, concerned only with what went on in the town itself; that of the sheriff was county-wide. Hostility, more often than not, is founded upon something definite. He let his thoughts run on in logical sequence, and again felt the vagueness, the tenuousness of the things which were engaging his official interest.
He heard a short, sharp laugh, and glanced at the three ex-farobank players, and found three pairs of eyes upon him; and then but two pairs, as the shifty-eyed person looked quickly away. Before anything could come from it, there was a stir along the bar, and a stud-horse player grunted with satisfaction. Other actors were about to step upon the stage.
"We'll have some action now," said the stud-horse player, looking at the swinging doors.
Four men had come in, the first a step ahead of the other three; and the three were shoulder to shoulder, figurative chips lying on their shoulders. They walked with a swagger that announced them to be somebody; and somebody was right: They were Black Jack Meadows's boys, and before them importantly strode their father. Men turned from the bar to nod friendly greetings, and the players at the various tables nodded, waved, or spoke. To an observant observer all this had a meaning.
Black Jack moved steadily on toward the stud-horse game, acknowledging the friendly and sometimes obsequious greetings. He glanced at Corson, still standing near the corner, and looked away again without showing more than casual interest. Black Jack was no mind reader. At the table a chair scraped as a player pushed back and stood up, waiting for Black Jack to take it. Taken it was, and Black Jack slowly seated himself, shoved his hands down into his pockets, and brought them up brimming with bright yellow coins. He pushed the money on the table in front of him and looked around the little circle.
"Same limit an' table stakes?" he mildly inquired, and was satisfied by the answering nods. The three ex-farobank players grinned and sat up a little straighter.
Corson was looking upon a metamorphosis: a caterpillar of poverty who had suddenly become a butterfly of affluence. Remittance man from the East, eh? A few scrub cattle on the high, ridge range, which were good for, in the words of the marshal, tobacco money? If that were so, then Black Jack's tobacco came high. The sheriff saw the deference surrounding the owner of a worthless brand, the three sons acting as a bodyguard standing solidly and silently behind their father. It was a piece of ridiculous, cheap theatricalism, and it was all he could do to keep from loosing a burst of laughter; but he kept it back, held his face expressionless and his eyes cold and blank.
There was a terse, muttered sentence at the studhorse table, and Corson saw Black Jack's eyes shift quickly to himself. The three sons stiffened a little, and had small interest, thereafter, in the rest of the room. For a long moment Black Jack studied the face of the man near the corner and then, making a one-handed gesture of contempt, gave his attention to the game; but his bodyguard had no thought for the game. Here and there throughout the room there were subdued sighs of relief or regret, and the play got under way again.
In the opinion of those in the room the sheriff had been in a damned tight place; and perhaps, even now, the past tense was not the proper one. In more than one mind was the thought that, no matter how poor the sheriff's judgment had been in visiting Bentley, and this one building in particular, there was nothing at all the matter with his nerve; and the men who thought in this way felt a sudden friendliness for the owner of the JC ranch. The majority of those present had no affiliations with Black Jack, and were just the ordinary, common run of customers, and they warmed toward the young man who stood alone near the corner, with his back, physically speaking, to the wall. He might not be without friends if it came to a test.
Corson studiously watched the stud-horse play for several deals, and then moved slowly toward the three-card monte spread, nodded in reply to the dealer's nod, and idly wandered on again. He loitered for a few moments near the faro table, pushed close enough to it to make two small bets, which he lost, and then walked slowly up the room and stopped before the bar. He found a vacant space and filled it.
"I'll have that drink now, with you," he said to the man behind the counter.
The bartender smiled broadly. Now that he knew his customer's identity he was a little more friendly. Corson's reputation was well established.
"Got somethin' special," he confided, and reached under the bar. "Johnny Walker, straight from England. They made a mistake in my last order. Want to try it?"
Corson smiled and nodded. In contrast to the common run of the liquor obtainable in that part of the country, this was like a bouquet of flowers. He put down the glass and smiled again.
"That's shore liquor," he said. "You got a right lively little town. I'm glad I stayed over for th' night. What else is there to see?"
"Yes," answered the sheriff. "I been servin' writs. It's all paper work, these days. I never was a great hand to kill a good hoss, so I'll lay over an' finish my ridin' tomorrow. Well, see you later, mebby."
"Have one with me before you go," invited the counter man.
"Reckon I will. I allus preferred rye, but that liquor's right fine. Here's good health, an' a long life."
"She goes both ways," said the counter man, downing his teaspoonful.
The sheriff pushed away from the bar, nodded to the line-up, and walked slowly toward the swinging doors, ignoring the rear of the room. Behind him was silence. The doors swung gently after him, gently squeaking. The tension in the room was high.
A lone voice, sounding loud in the quiet, stated a fact querulously:
"Them damn' hinges oughta be iled!"
CHAPTER XI
BLACK JACK MEADOWS'S eyes left the swinging doors and gazed abstractedly at the table in front of him; and then, as if making up his mind suddenly, he shifted in his chair, turned his head, and glanced at the three ex-farobank players. He jerked it sideways, in the direction of the swinging doors, and faced around again to watch the cards as they began to fall.
Outside the building, Corson moved a little closer to the side-wall window he had been looking through, careful to keep out of the rays of light streaming through it. He pressed against the wall and listened intently, finding that he could hear fairly well, until the general noise in the room resumed its regular level. Over his head heavy roof beams jutted out beyond the adobe wall, and just behind him stood a great freight wagon, its seat even with the top of his head.
One of the ex-farobank players stood up casually and stretched. He slowly glanced at the bar, around the room, and down at his companions, as if trying to make up his mind as to his next move. Two long, slow steps took him close to Black Jack's side, and he leaned over the player.
"You mean th' sheriff?" he asked in a sibilant whisper. At that instant there occurred one of those strange silences which sometimes happen in a noisy crowd. The whisper carried well throughout the room, and even out of the window. Whispers are tricky, their sibilance often betraying them. This one, stabbing like a blade through the sudden silence, made the speaker start.
"Shut yore damn' face!" snapped Black Jack furiously, his face growing blacker. "Do as yo're told, an' don't ask questions!"
"Shore; all right!" muttered the henchman, and moved hastily back to his friends. He looked down at them and tried to smile. "I was up 'most all night," he said. "So I'm buyin' a round an' turnin' in."
His companions arose eagerly and followed him to the bar, watching Black Jack out of the corners of their eyes. Their backs felt twitchy with Black Jack and his three boys behind them. They downed the liquor at a gulp, forgot to make it three rounds and all square, and swung toward the door. The leader yawned and stretched again, stretched with luxurious enthusiasm, to make good his pretense. The shifty-eyed man laughed at him. At this moment, outside the building, the sheriff stepped on the hub of a front wheel, then on the tire and then on the seat. His upraised hands gripped one of the roof beams, tightened under the sudden strain, and then loosened as his lean stomach rested on the timber. He jerked suddenly, twitched sideways, and in another moment he was on the roof, his bare head resting on the top of the wall.
The shifty-eyed man glanced at both of his companions, and then he looked back at the leader.
"Turn in, if you want to," he said. The art of dissimulation is a delicate one, and is more often bungled than not; overemphasis is fatal to it. "You look like you need to, but not me. I'm goin' down to Pete's. Where you goin'?" he asked the third man, loudly enough for his voice to register throughout the room and to make Black Jack suddenly squirm.
"With you, I reckon," came the grunted answer, and the doors swung shut behind them; but once outside, sleepiness, casualness, and indolence went out of them like gas out of a pricked balloon.
They stepped swiftly out of the little patch of illumination made by the lamps inside, and slid around the corner for a brief consultation. They well knew the danger of three men hunting one man in the dark, the ever-present hesitation caused by the fear of shooting each other, while the hunted could pull trigger, safe in the knowledge that he was not menacing an ally. This danger was especially true if the three men separated, and to do this job quickly and well, they had to separate.
Number One stated that he would take the other side of the street and the western part of the town, and he audibly hoped that they would be more successful this time than they had been in their long-range shooting out at the old adobe ruins.
Number Two was assigned the eastern half of the town, while Number Three, the shifty-eyed, was to choose a vantage point covering the hotel entrance and, once there, was to lie low and do no moving around.
Number One passed away from the wagon wheel he had been leaning against and led the way from the premises, choosing to cross the street at a point remote from the Palace. They moved past the lamp-lighted windows, heading for the rear of the building, and then turned the corner and were lost to sight.
Corson pushed his head out past the wall and looked down at the wagon, and in another moment he was hanging from the roof beam, feeling with a foot for the seat. He found it, let his weight rest on it, and then got to the ground. He could have remained up on the roof in perfect safety until daylight, but after what he had just heard he preferred to let himself be found, providing he could direct the finding. Some of the mystery had been removed from that long-range shooting on the Iron Springs trail.
He turned abruptly, slowly crossed the street, and melted into the deeper darkness along the wall of the building which faced the Palace. This wall was a blank one. He dropped to his knees and then lay prone, at right angles to the adobe, his feet almost touching it. By merely turning his head his arc of vision was a full half-circle, and the rest of the circle was blanked by the wall. No one could move along that wall, from either end, or along the street at his right, without being seen by him. And then he realized, as he weighed the situation, that a man moving along behind the buildings on his side of the street might be able to pick him out against the faint light of the thoroughfare, where lighted windows lessened the darkness.
The thought itself took less time than the words which express it, and the action which it caused was prompt and swift. He arose, ran along the wall, and reached the corral behind it, where he dropped down, full length, against its front side. Every plainsman knows that a man lying prone against the earth can see much better at night than a man standing up; and everyone knows that movement will be detected where immobility will not.
Very few nights in that part of the cattle country were pitch black, for the stars were seldom masked by clouds; and starlight, to eyes grown accustomed to it, will reveal movements at quite some distance. What movement there would be, would by necessity be done by the hunters, and not by the hunted.
The sheriff smiled. All along he had been bothered by the vagueness which had lain like a blanket over the problems he was trying to solve; now it began to look as if the blanket would be lifted, or at least one corner of it turned back. And it was well to know the identities of the long-range snipers; but how they had crossed Crooked Creek without leaving signs of their movements was something to challenge him. Very likely they went farther down than he did before they crossed it; or farther up, past the point where he had entered it. That was of no moment now.
Youth, courage, and imagination put a premium upon action; and he, possessing all three, waited eagerly for the game to begin. Here was a situation where shooting from the waist, without sighting, might easily prove its value to the last possible measure. Darkness does not bother a pointing finger, if the target can be seen, although it may well hide not only the sigh
ts on a gun, but the barrel as well. The sheriff seldom used a belt gun in any other manner.
Number One, having drifted through the saloons, stores, and gambling halls on his allotted side of the street without finding the man he was seeking, drifted down to a specified place on the far end of the thoroughfare to hear from his companions; and one of these, having looked through the buildings on his own side of the street, loafed up to the appointed spot, spoke tersely to his friend, received a terse answer, and then, to his surprise, saw Number Three approaching. Number Three felt lonesome. He had, he said, questioned the hotel clerk and looked into the corral and stable behind the building. The sheriff had not turned in, or showed up, and his horse was in its stall, and well worth stealing, if it wasn't so risky.
"You keep yore eyes plumb onto that hotel," warned Number Two. "You missed him twice at long range," he reproved. "Now let's see what you can do, close up."
"Yeah?" inquired Number Three, with a sneer. "We was givin' him a hint, more'n anythin' else; though, of course, if we had got him, it would been a lot better. You both missed him, too, out there near th' old tradin' post, so you needn't put on no damn' airs."
"Which is only half as much as you did, seein' that you shot twice," countered Number One with unassailable logic. Twice one is two. He scratched his head, thinking deeply, which was simply a continuation of what he had been doing since he had left the light, laughter, and safety of the Palace. "He's wary, wary as a coyote. He's shore holed up som'ers, an' now we got to dig him out."
"Yeah?" asked Number Two with a rising voice. He was no digger. "You mean that we got to go pokin' around in th' dark, lookin' for a feller that's taken to cover, an' can shoot like th' hammers of hell?"
"Shore. He don't know that we're lookin' for him, does he?" answered Number Three with suspicious eagerness. His own assignment called for lying low, holed up, instead of moving around like a blithe idiot for a two-gun expert to practise on. He felt a sudden liking for the vicinity of the hotel.
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