Gunsmoke Masquerade

by Peter Dawson

  “He’s dead?” Kelso said quietly.

  Streak nodded. The look on his face softened that on Paight’s, who was quick to say: “What I’ve got to settle with Buchwalter can wait.” He pulled back the lock bar and opened the door. “See you gents later. In case you want to find me tonight or in the morning, I’ll be at the needle rock up the Squaw. The main branch is over its banks and Buchwalter wants to blow the rock out of the other channel as soon as he can. He’s sending me up there with a case of dynamite right after we get back to Prenn’s camp.”

  “Remember, Bill,” Streak cautioned, “you still think Tom Buchwalter’s about the finest, whitest, kindest old gent that ever lived.”

  “Sure. He’s got a halo bigger’n a wagon wheel hanging over his head. And what looks like shoulder bones sticking out under his coat is wings sprouting.” Bill’s answer eased Streak’s worry. The rash grin that slashed the man’s broad, freckled face as he went out was even better.

  As the door closed on him, Kelso turned to Streak and eyed him closely. “You don’t look like you’re in such good shape to ride very far tonight,” he said. “Better let me get some help and go by myself.”

  “You don’t think I’d miss this, do you?” Streak managed a smile. He wasn’t feeling any too good, but, in comparison to the skull-bursting throb that had been in his head at Crescent B, the dull ache there now was a keen relief. He added: “You’ll have to hunt me up a cutter and some shells somewhere. Our friend on the splay-foot must’ve taken a liking to mine.”

  “You can take your pick down at the office,” was Kelso’s answer. He limped to the door. There he hesitated, turning to Streak again. “It won’t do much good to say I’m sorry about this, Mathiot,” he muttered. “But I sure as hell am. I misfired on you from the beginnin’.”

  “And if I hadn’t thought you were a Bishop man, you’d have known about me that first night.” Streak’s swollen lips made his smile a little crooked. “We both made wrong guesses. But that’s over with. From now on out, it’ll be different.”

  Fred Kelso was no longer tired and depressed. He knew that the night might bring added violence. Still, he wasn’t uncertain any more. He’d seen this Streak Mathiot operate and he couldn’t put down the hunch that things were due to make a turn for the better.

  * * * * *

  Laura listened at the door of her room till the sound of Tom Buchwalter’s deliberate tread faded down the stairway. Then she reached for her coat that hung over the back of a chair, threw it about her shoulders, and went out into the hallway and down into the lobby. She was taking a chance, she knew, for she had had a taste of Buchwalter’s explosive anger tonight and wouldn’t soon forget it. Still, it was worth running the risk of that anger again if she could catch only so much as a glimpse of Bill Paight. She hadn’t known Bill was in town until Kelso mentioned having seen him down on the street. Knowing he had come in with Buchwalter and would probably be leaving with him now, Laura cast aside all caution and went out onto the verandah.

  As the minutes passed without sight of the man she loved, a feeling of hopelessness and depression settled over her. Finally she caught the sound of ponies going out the alley in back of the hotel, and with the fading of that sound, her heart seemed to stop beating, for she knew that those distance-muted echoes might be the last link between her and Bill Paight. Buchwalter would naturally have entered the town furtively after the day’s happenings and it was reasonable to suppose that he and Bill would leave the same way.

  She drew the coat more tightly about her shoulders and took a chair at the shadowed end of the verandah, despair strong in her. Tomorrow’s dawn would see her gone forever from this country. She could never hope to come back to it, for sooner or later the treachery of her being here and posing as Pete Dallam’s sister would be discovered. To think that Bill would one day perhaps hate and loathe the memory of her was the hardest of all to take. That thought lay behind her not having touched the ten crisp hundred-dollar bills Tom Buchwalter had so casually tossed onto her bed up there in her room. She needed the money badly. Yet the thought of taking it seemed dishonorable. For it had come to represent the betrayal of the one man she had ever deeply cared for.

  Her disappointment at not having caught a farewell glimpse of Bill eased. Wasn’t it better to remember him as she had last seen him, before this shadow of her treachery loomed between them? Then, she had been able to answer his smiles and his warm glance with a genuine emotion that was unspoiled with such bitterness as she had felt tonight. Even yesterday she had put off facing the final reckoning, never dreaming that it loomed so close. And now, so suddenly that it still brought up a constriction in her throat, she had come to the realization that she was in love, deeply and sincerely, that the price she was paying for having earned Buchwalter’s money was too high.

  She became so engrossed in trying to discover a way to avert her personal tragedy that she wasn’t aware of the two men coming up the walk until they had stopped below her beyond the verandah rail. Only when Streak touched the brim of the battered Stetson the sheriff had loaned him and said—“Evenin’, Miss Dallam.”—was she prodded from her deep and miserable absorption.

  She didn’t know Streak. But she did know Kelso. His being here brought up a strong fear in her; what she was afraid of she couldn’t have explained, yet she definitely was just that.

  Streak didn’t wait for her to answer but went on: “We hear you’re leaving in the morning, ma’am.”

  Now she remembered that Buchwalter had told Kelso she was going. She replied—“Yes, I am.”—not knowing what else to say.

  “You’re catching the morning stage out of Agua?” Streak asked.

  She nodded. “I’m sorry to be going. But something urgent has come up back East where I’ve been living. I must go back there for a few weeks.” She managed this explanation with effort, at the last moment remembering what Buchwalter had told her to say.

  “Now that’s a shame,” Streak drawled. “Bill Paight will be plenty put out that you didn’t wait to say good bye to him.”

  Laura felt her face go hot. “I wanted to see Bill before I left,” she said truthfully. “But it wasn’t possible. Tell him I’ll be back soon.”

  “If you could only stay over a day in Agua, maybe we could fix it so you could see Bill,” Streak said. “I’m seeing him, sometime tomorrow. If he knew you’d be down there, he’d likely kill a horse getting to see you. He might not turn up until late at night, but he’d make it some way.”

  “Would you . . . would you tell him I’ll be waiting?”

  She had spoken impulsively, before she quite realized what she was saying. She was about to correct herself, to tell this pleasant-spoken stranger that there was a reason why she had to leave at once, when he said heartily: “Would I? Be glad to. That’ll please Bill. Good night, ma’am.”

  And before Laura could summon the courage to tell him that she had spoken too hastily, that she could never see Bill again, and that she had lied about coming back, Streak and Kelso were going on up the walk. She wanted to call out after them. Still, she didn’t. And in another moment they were out of sight as they turned into the big maw of the livery barn’s runway door above.

  “Wonder if we did right?” Kelso asked, as he and Streak took down the lantern hanging by the door of the empty office and started back toward the stalls.

  “She’s running from something. That’s sure. Whatever it is, it’s better that she and Bill have the chance to talk it out face to face than her leaving and his hating himself for ever liking her. Say, we better get a move on.”

  Streak’s Fencerail gray had disappeared with Riggs and his men. Kelso found another horse in a back stall, a close-coupled bay with a white star on its forehead. He also pointed out Streak’s own saddle hanging horn-roped with several others in the narrow aisle by the lot door, drawling: “Plenty’s happened since you forked that hull comin’ here. Maybe things’ll come a little straighter when you’re settin’ it again.”r />
  Once out of the corral lot behind the barn, Kelso astride his own horse, they quickly put the lights of the town behind, the sheriff striking at once into the northward hills, riding point for Prenn’s meadow. Even with his game leg, Kelso showed himself to be quite expert in the saddle. Only once, as they stopped to breathe their horses halfway up the rocky and timbered shoulder of a steep ridge, did they take time out for talk.

  It was the sheriff who said worriedly: “I’d sure like more to go on in this mess. This jasper with the splay-foot, for one thing. What’s he gettin’ out of this? And who is he?”

  “I’ve got a notion,” was Streak’s reply. He was building a smoke and didn’t look at Kelso as he spoke. “But I’ll keep it to myself until I know for sure.”

  The lawman frowned, trying to study Streak’s expression in the darkness and unable to see much. “You really mean that?” he asked. “You know who he is?”

  “There’s only one answer, if I’ve got it figured right,” was all Streak would say.

  When they went on, Streak was thankful that the lawman had checked his curiosity. There were things he would have liked to ask Kelso and any further urging might have broken down his resolve to keep his suspicions to himself. But he would have to do exactly that, for only a day perhaps, or maybe for much longer. If he could but get another look at the cañon hide-out, have an uninterrupted quarter hour in which to examine it, he would be sure. Until he made his careful inspection of it, there was no point in airing his theories and throwing another complication in the way of the men who were fighting to bring peace to this country. Paight had enough troubles of his own, Frank Bishop had his, and Kelso would need proof before he could act. The proof, Streak felt, was there at the hide-out if he could only spot it. But, before he could look for it, there was other work to be done.

  Kelso was traveling fast, probably realizing what a long start he had given Riggs and his men. In something under an hour after they started, the thin light of a moon relieved the total obscurity of the night. Much of their going was through timber that was heavy with undergrowth. From the way they rode, never swinging far wide of the direction Streak had taken from the start as they left town, invariably coming on the few fences near their corners, the lawman showed flawless judgment and an intimate acquaintance with the country. Streak doubted that Riggs’s bunch had traveled nearly as fast, and, as the miles dropped behind, he began feeling easier about the Crescent B foreman’s threat made back there at Bishop’s bunkhouse.

  “We’re close now,” Kelso announced finally as he trotted his pony onto a trail marked by an occasional blaze on a tree.

  “What happens when we get there?”

  “We can at least put ’em on their guard. They can throw some men over west and north and . . .”

  Abruptly he stopped speaking. The sound of his voice was taken up by the distance-thinned pound of guns, fast-timed, angry. It held on insistently instead of breaking off and Kelso listened for a good half minute before lifting his heels and spurring his pony to a full run along the trail. Streak followed and over the pound of the gelding’s hoofs caught the continuing echoes of gun thunder.

  Suddenly the trees thinned and they were at the lower edge of a wide-climbing meadow. Streak pulled alongside the sheriff as the latter lifted an arm and pointed northward. “There’s the camp!” Kelso called. Looking off there, Streak caught the pinpointed light of a fire. Then he saw what looked like a cloud shadow dropping down off the far western edge of the meadow. He couldn’t understand it, for a quick glance above showed him that the sky had cleared in the past hour; it was cloudless and star-sprinkled. All at once a muted low rumble came across to them and with that sound Kelso reined his horse to an abrupt halt. Streak listened beside him as the sound swelled in the still air, broken only occasionally now by the sound of a single shot.

  “I don’t get it,” Kelso said tonelessly.

  “It’s a stampede.”

  “Sheep wouldn’t run that way. Come on! Let’s get across there.”

  “You go. I stay here. Remember, I’m supposed to be in jail. We’d better let ’em keep on thinking I am.”

  “Where’ll I meet you?” Kelso asked quickly.

  “Up the cañon. I’ll swing off there and wait. Bring Paight along if you can.”

  The sound of Kelso’s going was drowned out by that growing thunder from up the meadow. It was an eerie sound, one Streak couldn’t define. As he sat waiting, that shadow in the moonlit distance of the upper meadow began slowly moving, growing in outline. There was no reason for its being there that Streak could see. It and the indefinable sound that came from up there gave him a feeling of strange awe, almost fear, so that he wanted to turn and ride into the shelter of the nearby trees.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Riggs signaled a halt as he reached the margin of the timber high along the western border of Morgan Prenn’s big meadow. Letting the others come up on him, the ex-Bishop foreman carefully inspected what lay ahead. The waning moon laid a feeble and ghostly light across the broad open reach of grass that tilted gradually downward to the bed of the now dry fork of the Squaw and climbed gently beyond to give the meadow a deep saucer-like formation. The far-off and constant blatting of sheep was a noise that grated on Riggs’s hearing and screwed his face into an expression of deep disgust.

  He looked longest at the distant pinpoint of rosy light that marked the campfire of the west-slope crews. That fire was close to the creek at almost the exact center of the meadow. To this side of it and beyond, splotched patterns of massed gray shapes showed against the darker shadow of the grass. Riggs judged that most of the sheep were down out of the main cañon.

  Pinto Sanders, coming up on him, said sparsely and acidly: “Good thing there’s a wind at our backs.”

  Riggs faced the cook. “Ever hear of stampedin’ sheep, Pinto?”

  “No. They’re too dumb to run much.”

  “Think we can shoot enough to make much of a dent in ’em?” The question was barbed. Pinto had so far kept silent on whatever idea he had, and Riggs now faced the prospect of their having made this ride for practically nothing.

  “No, I wasn’t thinkin’ of wastin’ much lead,” was Pinto’s calm rejoinder. He appeared to be looking north, up the meadow toward the timber there.

  Luke Black spoke from behind, his sarcasm biting: “Just take your time lettin’ us in on this, Pinto. We got all night.”

  Pinto ignored the jibe, lifting an arm and indicating the direction in which he’d been looking. “We ought to find ’em off there somewheres.”

  “Find who?” Riggs said, his patience worn thin.

  “Prenn’s cattle.”

  “What about ’em?”

  “He ain’t had time to move ’em far,” Pinto told him. “And we do know they’ll stampede.”

  “What good’ll that do? It’ll cost Prenn only a few extra days’ work roundin’ ’em up.”

  “You come along,” Pinto said, reining on ahead. “It’s goin’ to cost him a damn’ sight more’n that!”

  They had to be satisfied with this cryptic statement as they lined out behind Pinto through the trees. Had he been anyone else, they would have let him go on alone.

  It was better than a mile to the head of the meadow and in covering that distance Pinto didn’t once leave the trees. The rest caught his wariness and were careful to ride silently, skirting windfalls and brush. When he made the second halt at the edge of the timber high on a hill shoulder, looking down across a westward slanting pocket that cut back into the trees from the head of the meadow, they had before their eyes evidence of the shrewdness of Pinto’s guess. Down there, dotting the open ground, was Prenn’s herd of cattle. Riggs privately estimated their number to be close to a hundred and fifty. Still, he couldn’t see where this was leading them.

  “All this chasin’ ain’t savin’ our horses much,” he said bluntly.

  Once again, the intensity of Pinto’s concentration on his own private reven
ge made him overlook this barbed comment. He said quietly: “I didn’t want to tell you till I got you here. Thought you might not go in on it. But here’s what we can do. There’s likely a man down there somewhere ridin’ the mouth of this pocket, keepin’ them critters penned in. We can forget him. All but two of us can get up at the far end and open up at the proper time with our irons. The two we leave down here ride out into the grass a ways and steer the herd when it busts out of here. From there on, things ought to take care of themselves.”

  For a brief moment, these men were silent under the surprise of seeing how simply but completely Pinto Sanders had planned wholesale destruction of the sheep band. It was Luke Black who finally breathed: “Holy smokes, Pinto, this is more’n we bargained on. I thought we was goin’ to shoot up their camp and cut down a few woollies, but this . . .”

  “If you’ve turned chicken, beat it, Black,” Pinto said flatly.

  Black started to protest, but Riggs cut him off with a sharp: “Lay off, you two! Who cares how much hell we bust loose here tonight? We’ll be on our way out in another half hour. Luke, you and Belden get out there in the meadow. When these critters bust out, swing ’em straight across at that fire. Stay with ’em all the way. We’ll meet right here afterward and light out for Agua. Snyder’ll rent us some horses and we’ll get fresh relays at the stage corrals crossin’ the desert. We’ll catch a train out of Johnsville before they can get any word out. If we do this right, they’ll remember us as long as they live.”

  “One thing more,” Pinto said. “They’ll know who did this. Don’t lay your sights on a man. They’re better off alive and fumin’ over this than they are dead and puttin’ a price on our heads.”

  Riggs heard the cook out, then reined aside and started down into the pocket. Black and Belden swung back through the trees, the former telling the nearest rider as he left: “Give us time to get set.”