by Lauran Paine
Then Simon Terry made a short remark and Ladd was enlightened a little on this topic. The blacksmith said: “Never had enough water down there. Dig wells all the time and never get more than a trough full a day out of each well.”
All the other blandishments in the world would not make up for that kind of a fault. Ladd rode along alternately watching the town shape up below him, and also watching for the sun to appear over in the hazy-blurred east. They were cold and beard-stubbled from being in the saddle all night. They were also rumpled and somewhat red-eyed and doggedly bleak and rugged in their general appearance. If someone saw them riding along like this, at such an ungodly hour armed to the teeth and scarcely more than grunting back and forth as they came down closer to the rear of the town at the foot of the pass, it would be almost impossible to consider them as anything other than renegades of the same variety as the men they were pursuing.
Dr. Orcutt alone could make some claim to respectability because of his frock coat and his curly-brimmed derby hat, but as they progressed these adjuncts of a civilized existence became less and less respectable in appearance, and by the time they were coming down across the last mile or so toward Paso, down where the trail flattened out for an agreeable change, Dr. Orcutt more nearly resembled a raffish, sly, and conniving gambler, or perhaps a peddler of paste diamonds or water-divining rods, than a genuine physician and surgeon.
Ladd Buckner looked at his companions when the light got better and decided to himself that if the people of Paso had any reason to be suspicious of strangers, he and his associates were going to become targets of some hard and probably hostile looks. It also troubled him a little that the lawman of Paso might be a badge-toting renegade. After all, the men from Piñon were shortly going to be entering this individual’s bailiwick only four in number, seeking three proven murderers and bandits, and, if the town marshal chose to resent the interference of the men from Piñon . . .
Joe Reilly straightened a little in the saddle and called their attention ahead down the roadway where a stagecoach had just wheeled clear of the Paso station to head up into the pass. “Morning coach bound for Piñon,” he said. The way he made that announcement set his companions to eyeing the oncoming vehicle as though it might be their last best opportunity to send back word to Piñon of their whereabouts.
Then Ladd put their position into perspective by saying: “You string out across the road to stop this stage, gents, looking as mean and dirty and gun handy as we look in this lousy gray light, and that gun guard up there is going to start shooting as sure as I’m a foot tall. We look more like highwaymen than posse men.”
The stage came on, without slackening pace, and both the men upon the high seat reached for weapons that they balanced across their laps. They had indeed seen the four horsemen from Piñon and had indeed turned very wary of their presence upon the road so early in the day, armed as they were. Then the stage swept past without anyone on either side waving, which was customary, and Dr. Orcutt twisted to look after the coach as his horse headed back for the center of the road again in the thin dawn dust. Dr. Orcutt had never been stared at in quite that way before. It was both a revelation to him, and a distinct discomfort.
Finally they came down behind the town and smelled breakfast fires in the making, which reminded them that they as well as their horses had been without food for a very long while. All night long in fact. Nor did it help arrest this realization that, as they passed down through several crooked little back byways, they could distinctly smell meat and potatoes frying and coffee boiling.
Paso was still only partially stirring when they walked their horses into the yard of the combination horse trader and liveryman, dismounted wordlessly, and handed over their reins to the round-eyed night hawk who was about to go off duty. They said nothing to the night hawk, who was suddenly very wide-awake, and he said nothing to them. Up the road a man with an ample paunch stepped forth and hurled a dishpan of greasy wash-water out into the center of the roadway, then retreated back into his place of business, which had the legend Café emblazoned across one wavery glass window.
Simon Terry led off as usual, this time making a beeline for that beanery. The sun still had not appeared over in the hazy east.
IX
The café man looked as askance at his odd assortment of very early diners as that worried night hawk had looked at the same crew out front of the Paso livery barn. But the café man was older, more scarred and worldly, and therefore less likely to open his mouth either in front of those four men, or behind their backs. He differed again from the night hawk; as soon as the liveryman showed up along with his day man, the night hawk fled up in the direction of the constable’s office in the ugly little functional log building up at the extreme north end of town. Otherwise, Paso did not notice or record the arrival in town of a massively powerful dark, fully-bearded individual whose silent lips were almost completely hidden by his black beard, or his companion upon the café man’s bench who was wearing a shoved-back little gray derby hat that at one time had been an epitome of frontier elegance but that now had a dent in front where it had connected with a low tree limb in the dark of the previous night, and another dent in the back where it had struck the road after falling from Enos Orcutt’s head when the tree limb had made its connection.
The other two, Joe Reilly and Ladd Buckner, also differed. In fact there was almost nothing those four men seemed to have in common as they sat in strong silence, eating like wolves, except that each one of them was heavily armed and each one of them had evidently been in the saddle all night. The café man concentrated upon filling them up and keeping the coffee coming. He did not open his mouth unless he was spoken to, and he did not stare. He, too, had at one time many years ago arrived in Paso like this, except that he had come down from the north and the posse men who had hunted high and low for him had been told a deliberate lie by a Mexican shepherd, and had ridden off to the east into the mountains on a wild-goose chase. That had been twenty-one years ago, and unless they had finally given up the pursuit in disgust to return homeward, by now they probably were walking their horses across the underside of the earth somewhere, but, wherever they were, the café man had done well in Paso and proposed to continue to do well in Paso—by seeing nothing, knowing nothing, and above all else by saying nothing. Even when Joe Reilly asked about the town constable the only retort he got was when the café man leaned down, peered over Reilly’s head out his fly-specked roadway window, then grunted and pointed in the direction of a burly, graying man strolling along upon the opposite plank walk in the direction of his log jailhouse.
“That’s him,” announced the café man. “Constable Lewis Brennan.” Then the café man became very busy gathering up empty plates and cups.
The men from Piñon went out front just as the first rays of sunlight appeared over in the distant west up along some night-shrouded high peaks, creating an effect of breathtakingly soft beauty. They saw only that daylight was coming as Ladd Buckner, who had been turning their situation over and over in his head, offered a suggestion: “Four of us beard this crooked constable, and it’ll be like a bunch of ducks in a rain barrel if he decides to be troublesome. You three circulate around town, apart from each other so’s it won’t look so much like we’re invadin’ this place, and I’ll go see the constable.” He looked around as though anticipating an argument. None came, so he finished it: “I’ll walk down the roadway here, to the livery barn, out in plain sight when I’ve finished with the constable. You watch, and meet me down there for our next palaver.” Again he looked around. “Someone know better?”
Even Joe Reilly shook his head. Ordinarily Joe would have had something to say. Already Joe had sought out and located the local saloon.
They split up. Two men watched this, the café man behind them in his place of business, who was very interested but who would never to his dying day say that he had seen anything out front this morning, and the weasel-faced little wispy livery barn night hawk, wh
o would, on the opposite side of the same coin, never stop talking about this affair and his part in it as long as he lived.
Ladd rolled a cigarette upon the far side of the roadway and wagged his head a little. This situation was exactly like the one he had been involved with almost nine years ago in a place only slightly larger than Paso where he had been sent ahead by the outlaw crew he was riding with to reconnoiter the town. That time, all hell had busted loose, too. He lit up, blew smoke, and tried to guess what was going to happen in this place a half hour or so from now, for while there was no bank in Paso, and the town itself was still more drowsy than awake, cow country communities had an ability suddenly to awaken with guns in all the fists on both sides of a roadway in the twinkling of an eye.
He turned and paced up to the log jailhouse, opened the door, and nodded to the round-faced, lion-maned, coarse-featured man who looked up from behind a littered desk. “’Morning, Constable,” he said, and offered a little crooked smile.
The constable nodded, put aside the paper he’d been reading, and gestured toward a wired-together old chair. “’Morning. Have a seat. Care for some coffee?”
Ladd had drunk his daily allotment over at the café and said so as he sat down, then he said: “I come north over the hills last night, Constable.”
Constable Lewis Brennan had pale, stone-steady blue eyes and they did not leave Ladd’s face. “Is that a fact?” he said in a tone of complete disinterest. “In the saddle all night, then?”
Ladd nodded. “All night. I and some friends were down at a place called Piñon. We . . . got sort of separated down there. My friends were coming up here to Paso. We talked a little about that before we got down there to Piñon.”
Constable Brennan pursed his lips in a slight expression of impatience. “What’s your name?” he asked.
“Smith. Just plain old Jack Smith.”
“Well, plain old Jack Smith,” commented the burly lawman, “if you got something particular to say, I wish to hell you’d say it, because I ain’t had breakfast yet and I don’t do very well on an empty gut.”
“Three riders, Constable, coming down over those mountains in a kind of a hurry. Originally there were six of us.”
Lewis Brennan’s eyes began to mirror caution. “Three left? What happened over in Piñon?”
Ladd leaned to tramp his smoked-down cigarette into the rough floor planking and answered while he was still bending over with his face averted: “The whole god-damned town turned out to welcome us, Constable Brennan.” Ladd jumped his eyes back to the lawman’s face. “You curious about me knowing your name? My friends and I heard it a long ways from here. We heard that you kept a decent town at Paso, where folks in need of a little lay-over would be plumb safe.”
Lewis Brennan’s unwavering gaze showed the same shades of caution as he made a quiet long assessment of Ladd Buckner, and finally said: “Well, Mister Smith, every town’s got places where men can sort of lay-over and be safe, and in every one of those towns I was ever in it was also sort of expensive to get that kind of privacy.”
Ladd smiled without a shred of mirth. “Sure. Well, we got a canvas sack full of money down at the Piñon bank, Mister Brennan. My share is in that sack. You name your price and point me in the right direction, and I’ll get the money for you.”
Lewis Brennan sat a long while in total silence without so much as changing his facial expression, then, about when Ladd had almost decided Brennan might not speak again at all, he very quietly said: “Turn around, Jack Smith.”
It was the tone not the words that conveyed the sense of deadly peril. Ladd straightened in the old chair, then slowly turned.
There was a small cell-room door over across the room, heavily reinforced with strap steel and massive round-headed big black bolts. Wood or not, it would have taken a cannon to have demolished that door, but it wasn’t the door that held Ladd Buckner almost breathless; it was the trio of men standing over there, hatless and in their stocking feet as though they might have just been roused from a nap in the dingy cells behind them. Each man had a six-gun pointed squarely at Ladd Buckner.
Lewis Brennan said: “Gents, who is he?”
A venomous-looking man with perpetually squinted eyes and a bluish wound for a mouth said: “Damned if I know, Brennan. I never seen the bastard before. But you’d better disarm him, just in case he’s one of them fellers that little runt from the livery barn was in here talking about a few minutes ago.”
Brennan made no move to arise from behind his desk. “Disarm him yourself,” he told the vicious-looking man, then sat there watching as another of those three men swore and walked over to yank away Ladd’s holstered Colt.
At the same time this man, younger than the other two but just as deadly in the eyes, gently shoved Ladd’s own gun barrel into his neck at the side, and slowly cocked it as he said: “Start explaining, mister, and you lie just once . . .” He shoved the cold gun barrel harder into Ladd’s neck muscles.
The third man in stocking feet suddenly said: “Hey, wait a minute. I know this feller. I saw him plenty of times up north. Give me a minute and his name’ll come back.”
The man with the cocked gun pressing into flesh said—“He don’t have no minute.”—and shoved the gun again, making Ladd lean to get away from most of the pressure.
The older outlaw snarled. “Stop playing like you’re some kind of lousy executioner and just be quiet for a minute.” He stared steadily at Ladd, and finally cursed with feeling because he could not remember the name. “But god dammit, I know that face. That’s him all right.”
The first man to speak turned a little. “That’s who?” he asked impatiently. “Where did you see him before?”
“At Canon City,” said the older outlaw. “He was learning saddle and harness making the same as me, but he was in the bunch that went over in the afternoon. I seen him dozens of times when we passed on the way . . . God dammit, Buckner! That’s it. His name is Buckner and he was in for robbing stages.”
“Banks,” said Ladd, holding his head to one side. “Not stages, banks.”
The younger man eased off with his pistol barrel a little and looked for instruction to the other older man in the cell-room doorway. That individual put up his Colt and folded his arms while he steadily stared at Ladd.
“Why?” he eventually said, “did you come in here and try that cock-and-bull story on Lew Brennan?”
Ladd risked raising a hand to shove the gun barrel still farther from his neck. The venomous-eyed young outlaw allowed his weapon to be pushed gently away. He in fact even stepped back a little, then passed around toward the corner of Lew Brennan’s desk to hoist himself up a little and perch there.
Ladd improvised but he did not overplay it. “I was in the Piñon saloon when you hit that damned bank down there. I saw what happened, and, as soon as I could decently get shed of that town, I tried to catch up to you.”
“Wait a minute,” interrupted the Paso lawman. “Who else come up with you?”
Ladd scowled. “No one. I met some fellers striking their camp back up the mountains a few miles just ahead of daybreak, had some coffee with them, and rode on down with them. They’re freighters on their way up to Denver. At least that’s what they said, and I can tell you for a fact they sure as hell aren’t range men. One of them even wears a derby hat.”
“Never mind that crap,” growled the outlaw with the folded arms over in the cell-room doorway. “Why did you try to catch up to us?”
Ladd let his gaze waver slightly. “You got a sack full of money down there in Piñon,” he said. “I heard the barman down there telling folks you got nine thousand dollars.”
Lew Brennan’s pale eyes suddenly jumped from Ladd to the outlaw over in the doorway. The outlaw reddened slightly, then shrugged. “All right, we got nine thousand, Lew.”
“You told me four thousand,” snarled the lawman. “You louse, you gave me ten percent of four thousand.”
“You’ll get the rest of it di
rectly,” soothed the red-faced outlaw, and looked unhappily at Ladd Buckner. “Damn you anyway. What did you figure to do . . . catch us in our blankets last night and cut our throats and take the sack of money?”
“No,” replied Ladd. “I was going to offer to guide you into the westerly mountains where no posse or no one else could find you. For a fee, of course.”
X
The youngest of those three outlaws who was still sitting upon the edge of Brennan’s desk appeared to have a change of attitude. Earlier, he had seemed perfectly willing to blow Ladd Buckner’s head off with Ladd’s own gun; now, as he listened and looked, he appeared to be favorably impressed with Ladd’s offer to help the outlaws escape.
“There’s a hell of a lot of mountains in back of this place,” he told the pair of older outlaws across the room. “We’d be foolish to try and keep to the damned roadway.”
The bleak-eyed man who was in age between the youngest outlaw and the older one snarled his reply: “Yeah, and you’d take this feller at face value and tomorrow morning you’d be dead as hell out there somewhere, and cleaned out down to your socks.”
The oldest outlaw ignored both his companions, as though this kind of bickering was routine between them. He said: “Hey, Buckner, you remember a feller named Reston up there in Canon City? Whatever become of him? We was . . .”
“For Christ’s sake,” snarled the leader of these men, the outlaw who was still standing over there in the cell-room doorway with both arms folded across his chest, “don’t either one of you have a lick of sense? Brennan, we got to find out about those freighters he come down here with.”
The constable nodded. “That’ll be easy enough. They’re likely still around and their horses are down at the livery barn. I’ll go look around a little.” Brennan swung his attention back to Ladd Buckner. “You got guts,” he said, sounding neither hostile nor commendatory. “If you lied, Jack Smith or whatever your name is, you’re as good as dead.”