“I reckon,” McQuarter growled.
“That’s quite all right, Miss,” Six said. “I hope you enjoy your stay in Spanish Flat. Maybe the weather will cheer up some, now that you’re here.”
“Why, thank you for the compliment, Marshal.” The girl curtsied prettily.
McQuarter asked, “You heard anything more about what Cruze has got up his sleeve?”
“No. I came in here to ask you the same question,” Six said.
“Well, I haven’t heard a word out of Cruze, but there’s something else come up that’s damned curious. You heard of a gent calls himself Travis Canaday, maybe?”
“I think so,” Six said. “Texas cattleman, isn’t he?”
“Used to be. I understand Canaday went broke in the drought two summers back, had to sell his outfit. Now I hear he’s bought a little ranch not too far from where Wade Cruze comes from. Outfit called the Warbonnet.”
“And?”
“A rider came through about an hour ago, said Travis Canaday had a big herd of cattle road-branded Warbonnet. Said there were three, maybe four thousand steers in the herd. Said Canaday’s driving that herd here to Spanish Flat to sell it to the Army. Now, what do you think about that?”
“I don’t know,” Six answered. “What do you think about it?”
“Ain’t no other Army cattle buyer in these parts but me,” McQuarter said. “This rider, he said Canaday’s about four, five days out of town with that herd. You figure maybe Canaday and Cruze have gone partners or something?”
“Could be,” Six said, and added privately, I hope so. It would explain a great many things, and it would reduce the Wade Cruze mystery to a harmless, if tasteless, joke. “Suppose I ask Cruze about it.”
“You do that little thing, Marshal,” the cattle buyer said.
The desk clerk appeared, signed the girl in, and came around to pick up her luggage. The girl said good night to Six and went upstairs with her small retinue—the desk clerk and the fat guardian. Six watched until they went out of sight at the top of the stairs. Pretty girl, he thought mildly, and observed that she’d had poor luck in finding a guardian. He had little use for Owen McQuarter—he had the feeling McQuarter was the kind of man who would sell his own mother if he could get a good price for her.
He left the hotel and braved the drizzle as far as the Drover’s Rest, where Wade Cruze was holding court behind a poker table with a half-empty whisky bottle at one elbow.
Unasked, Six drew up a chair and sat. Cruze gave him a shrewd glance; Cruze was a little drunk but there was nothing wrong with his eyesight or his brain. His brown beard pointed straight at Six and chopped open. “Evenin’, Marshal.”
“Travis Canaday’s driving a herd of steers this way, a few days down the trail. You know anything about that?”
“Sure I know about it,” Cruze said. “Take me for an idiot?” He was a tough, irascible little man with a thin-lipped mouth half-hidden behind his whiskers. He shoved the bottle toward Six. “Have a snort. But I ought to warn you, they ain’t puttin’ big enough snakes in this whisky like they used to anymore.”
“No, thanks,” Six said.
Cruze looked at him shrewdly. “Something on your mind?”
“That Warbonnet herd.”
“Warbonnet,” Cruze said, and snorted with contempt “Two-bit greasy sack outfit.”
“I hear he’s driving some cows. A few thousand head.”
“My cows, Marshal.”
“That’s what I wanted to know. You’ve gone partners with Canaday, then?”
“Partners?” Cruze’s eyes fixed themselves on Six. He roared, “Partners? With that moonlighting long-looping ring-tailed son of a bitch Canaday?”
The ring of onlookers was watching with eager fascination, like camp dogs waiting for tossed scraps. Both Six and Cruze ignored them. Six sat back and hitched one arm across the back of the chair; he crossed his legs and turned the cigar in his teeth and said mildly, “I think maybe you’d better spin out the whole yarn now. The joke’s gone far enough.”
“Joke?” Cruze’s eyes mirrored amused innocence. “What joke?”
“Whose herd is that, Cruze?”
“Mine.”
“Then how come you’re not driving it?”
Cruze chuckled. “Maybe I figured Travis Canaday didn’t have nothin’ better to do than drive my herd to market for me.”
“You can do better than that,” Six said.
“Why should I?”
“Because I’m the law talking to you,” Six told him, “and because if I don’t get some answers out of you right away I’m just likely to start leafing through some old law books and find some forgotten misdemeanor I can lock you up for. You and your whole pack of coyotes.”
Cruze’s eyes narrowed down and he eased himself lower in his chair. “Ain’t no need to throw raw meat on the floor, Marshal,” he grumbled. “I’m not hoorawing your town, am I?”
Six explained it to him candidly. “Cruze, I’ll show you how it is. I’ve got to ride herd on this town the way you ride herd on a cattle drive. This steady rain’s got my town as spooky as a trail herd after a long dry. It won’t take much to set off a stampede. If this was another time and another place I might not give two hoots and a holler about your little joke. But right now that’s all it may take to set this town back on its hind legs and baying at the moon. It’s my job to keep the peace and I don’t aim to see anybody killed by stray ammunition.”
He found his cigar had gone out; he held a match to it and squinted at Cruze. “That’s how it is. Now, do you spin the yarn or do I lock you up?”
Cruze squirmed uncomfortably in his chair. He dragged the bottle toward him and hoisted it, belting down a stiff swallow. He coughed and rubbed the back of his sleeve across his bearded mouth. Across the table, Six caught the glance of Cruze’s hard-jawed foreman, Sid Arklin. Arklin was a hard one to read; it was hard to tell what he was thinking. He was no gunman, but he was as tough as any Texan who came down the pike.
Cruze said, “All right, Six, we’ll talk about it. But not here.”
“My office, then.” Six uncrossed his legs and stood. “Coming?”
“Don’t be in such an all-fired hurry.” Cruze reached out and got a good grip on the bottle, stood up and waved his hand in an expansive gesture. “Lead the way.”
Arklin was getting up, but Cruze’s eyes pinned him back down in the chair. “This here’s private, between me and the marshal. You stick around and have yourself some fun.”
“You sure?” Arklin said, frowning.
“Hell, we’ve got to trust this law dog, Sid. You sit tight. I’ll be back. Ready, Marshal?”
Six led the way. The saloon crowd opened to make a path for them. Cruze carried the whisky bottle as if it were made of precious stones. His bantam figure bobbed cockily through the crowd and out the doors. He tugged his sweat-stained hat down, disdaining a raincoat, and fell into step beside Six on the boardwalk. Cruze had to take almost two steps for every one of Six’s long-legged strides. “You’re putting a dent in my drinking time,” he complained.
“Not so’s you’d notice it,” Six replied, glancing at the bottle in Cruze’s fist. They waded across the intersection and tramped down the mud-caked walk to the Marshal’s Office; Six went inside and turned up the lamp. Cruze shut the door, found a safe spot for his bottle on Six’s desk, and dragged up a chair. He sat down, propped his feet on the corner of the desk, and pushed his hat back on his head. He looked around the place with a proprietary air and nodded as if in approval.
“All right,” Six said. “Let’s hear it.”
Three
“Those are my cows Canaday’s drivin’,” Wade Cruze said.
“You already said that.”
“Canaday thinks they aren’t my cows,” Cruze murmured. A glint of deviltry sparkled in his shrewd eyes. “He thinks they’re his cows, free and clear.”
“Go on,” Six said, frowning through the diaphanous blue cloud of cigar
smoke.
“I don’t want word to get around about what I’m fixing to do about Canaday. That’s why I want to keep this private, just you and me and my boys. They all know enough to keep their mouths shut—they drop one word in this town and I’ll have their guts for guitar strings, and they know it. Look, Marshal, I’ll lay it on the line for you. All I want is your word on it that you won’t go sending somebody to warn Travis Canaday what I’m up to. Can I trust you?”
“You’ve got no choice,” Six reminded him. “I told you before, I don’t make deals. No promises. But I’ve never met Canaday and I’ve got no reason to do him any favors unless the law calls for it.”
That didn’t seem to make Wade Cruze too happy. He tried to disguise the fact that he was stalling for time by lowering his boots to the floor and reaching out to grab his whisky bottle; he held it in his lap and levered his legs back up to the desk corner, one at a time, and spent quite a while adjusting one ankle across the other until he was comfortable. Six watched him with bemused patience.
Finally Cruze said, “All right. Just to make you easy in mind. I’ll tell you how it happened. I let Travis Canaday make a damn fool out of me.” His eyes shot up, as if to catch Six nodding in agreement, but Six only watched him evenly.
Cruze said, “My weakness has always been two things—whisky and cards. I’m no drunk, mind you, but I make the mistake of drinking too much when I play cards. I know it’s a mistake and I don’t figure to make the same mistake again, but I made it a few weeks back and Travis Canaday figured he had me beat and crawling. I aim to prove he was wrong.”
“You’re getting pretty windy,” Six suggested mildly. “Come to the point.”
“I got into a card game down in Lochiel. Three local gents and two strangers I didn’t recognize. Reckon I got pretty smashed up with red-eye. Come morning, I woke up and the feller who owned the cantina told me I’d lost a passel to those two card playing strangers—told me I’d signed over my whole cattle herd to pay my losses. I was fit to be tied. I went around checking up. Story I heard was that the two strangers, not being cattlemen, had sold my herd to the first rancher they come across.”
“That being Travis Canaday,” Six murmured.
“You see the picture,” Cruze agreed. “Only I didn’t stop there. I wasn’t satisfied. I kept on checking, and I found out a few things. Sid Arklin went over to Canaday’s place and got to jawing with one or two of Canaday’s cowhands he knows. It seems the same two gambling men had showed up a few days earlier on Canaday’s doorstep, looking for a handout. They didn’t have two pennies between them to rub together. But two days later they get into a card game with me, and they’re bankrolled fit to stuff a grizzly bear. They must’ve had five thousand in greenbacks between them, easy. Now, where d’you suppose they drummed up that kind of stake in two days’ time? I checked some more and found out there hadn’t been any other high-stake card games around the valley.”
“Go on,” Six said.
“The county sheriff down there’s a friend of mine. I got him to send out a few telegrams, making inquiries. Word came back pretty quick. Seems those two card playing strangers’d been run out of two dozen boomtowns for running a shill game. They’re professional cheats. Card sharks. I was cheated out of my herd by two professionals, Marshal—and it was Travis Canaday who hired them to steal my herd at that poker table. Hell, he didn’t ‘buy’ that herd from those two, no more than I could fly to the moon. Canaday was broke when he came into that country and he sure as hell didn’t have enough spare cash lying around to pay for four thousand head of prime two year olds, even at rock-bottom prices. Probably that five thousand in greenbacks was all the money he had in the world. He gave it to the cardsharps in exchange for my cows.”
“You can’t prove that,” Six said.
“That’s where you’re wrong,” Cruze said grimly. “I went after the gamblers. Found them in Nogales and showed them the light of day.”
“At the point of a gun?”
“Sure. How else was I going to do it?” Cruze reached inside his shirt and drew out an oilskin pouch. He untied the drawstring and removed a folded document, opened it and passed it across the desk to Six. “They signed this here confession of the whole thing.”
Six frowned, picked up the document and read it with care. Afterward he handed it back to the cattleman and said, “Why didn’t you go to the sheriff with this?”
“It’d take months to get it through the courts,” Cruze scoffed. “By that time Canaday’d have sold my cows and lit a shuck for other parts with the money. Besides, I figure he’s got a lesson coming.”
“And you’re just the gent to teach it to him?”
“Sure enough.” Cruze chuckled, put the confession away in his pouch and replaced the pouch in his shirt. “I’ve got him by the short hairs, Marshal. I figure to let Travis Canaday have all the trouble and expense of driving a cantankerous herd of bawling cattle all the way up here to Spanish Flat. Hell, why should I wear out my own crew?”
“And when Canaday brings that herd in—then what?”
“Then I wave this confession under his nose and take the herd away from him,” Cruze said bluntly. “I’ve got the legal right to do that, and neither you nor anybody else can keep me from it.”
“Canaday might,” Six muttered. “Ever think of that? Do you really think you can just walk up to him and wave that paper under his nose and expect him to hand the cattle over to you without an argument? If Canaday’s the kind of man who’d hire card cheats to steal your cattle from you, he’s not the kind of man who’s likely to give up without a fight.”
Cruze said in a soft way, “Why do you figure I brought my whole crew and the two hardcases with me, Marshal?”
“Then that’s what it comes down to.” Six got to his feet and planted both hands flat on the desk. “Now you listen hard to this, Cruze, because I only intend to say it once: This town is not a battleground for your private war with Travis Canaday. If you want to get your herd back, you take that confession to the circuit judge and persuade him to give you a court order delivering those cattle over to you. Then you send a rider up to the county seat and have the sheriff serve the court order on Canaday.”
“I ain’t got time for such truck, legal fooforawing and the like. Hell, Canaday’ll have that herd in here in four days and I sure as hell can’t get a court order and find me a sheriff in that length of time. Now you hear me out, Marshal. Those cows are all I’ve got in this world, and at my age I’ll be damned if I’ll go back to breaking horses for six bits a head. If I have to do it I aim to string Travis Canaday up to dry in the sun, but by God I’ll get my cows back, and you can put that in the bank!”
“There’s a legal way to do it, Cruze, and if you don’t take the legal way then it’s your own loss.”
“My way,” Cruze answered stubbornly. “I’ll do it my way, Marshal.”
“Not in my town. I won’t let you do it.”
“Marshal, you can’t stop me. I haven’t broken a single law. I ain’t even spit on the sidewalk!”
Six spoke without moving his lips. “You’ve got short brains, Cruze. You start a gun battle with Travis Canaday and this whole town will come unhinged, and I don’t intend to have that.”
Cruze got up and headed for the door, carrying his bottle. He swigged from it and said, “Any shooting starts, it won’t be me that starts it. It’ll be Canaday.”
“That’s not good enough,” Six said.
“Well, then, you tell me what is good enough?”
“Take your crew out of town. If you’ve got to have it out with Canaday, do it out on the prairie.”
“And stampede that whole herd from here to breakfast?” Cruze snorted. “Like hell I will.” And he swung outside, slamming the door behind him.
Six stared sightlessly at the door. The damnable thing was, there was nothing he could do, not until the trouble actually started. Constrained by his iron-bound sense of duty, he saw no way to stop Cruze. Cr
uze was right: he had not broken a single law.
It might easily take the whole town apart.
The Coronado Springs relay station squatted dismally amid a few stunted gray trees, surrounded by misty leagues of desert flats. Eddie Hanratty arrived at nine-thirty that night, four hours out of Spanish Flat on a sturdy gelding saddle horse, but Eddie Hanratty was no horseman. He had a blunt square head and the striped gray railroad cap he wore did not conceal the tufted thatch of brick-red hair that crowned his pitted face. Eddie Hanratty, it was said, was so Irish that in some lights he appeared to have green hair. Sometime in his checkered past he had been a railroad man, but now—although everybody in the Mogul country knew him by sight—nobody was quite sure what Eddie Hanratty did to justify his existence.
Drenched to the skin, Eddie Hanratty dismounted in the stable barn, loosened the cinches, and trudged across the relay station yard to the main building. It was a sprawl of adobe wings, tacked onto the original square structure at various intervals over the years; the Coronado Springs station had become not only a relay depot for twice-weekly stagecoaches, but also a minor headquarters for surrounding cattle ranches. Part of the place was a gambling saloon with a plank-on-keg bar; and the rest of the building was partitioned off into bug-infested, flyblown rooms for transient guests.
The station lay in a miserable squalor of mud after the continuing drizzle. Eddie Hanratty kicked his boots against the adobe doorjamb, dislodging a crumbling piece of plaster; he gave up in disgust and tramped inside, trailing lumps of mud. The owner of the place, whose name nobody ever remembered, was behind the plank bar serving beer to two stranded vaqueros who were obviously waiting out the rain. Hanratty went over to the bar and said, “Cort Danziger been here lately?”
The innkeeper gave him a bleak look. “Does this look like a boarding house? I don’t keep no register.”
Hanratty plucked a silver dollar out of his jeans and tossed it on the bar. It twirled and rang. He didn’t say anything, but when the innkeeper’s hand began to rise, Hanratty clapped his palm over the silver dollar. “I heard somebody saw Danziger up this way.”
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