Ride Tall, Hang High

by Chet Cunningham

  Chapter THIRTEEN

  It was three days and seven small towns later that they had another report of Deeds Conover. The sheriff at Burnt Oak said he had been through there the day before, sniffed through the Wanteds and then asked about a local who used to be a bounty man.

  "Do you remember who the local man was, Sheriff?" Willy Boy asked?

  "Sure, Josh Lenton. He’s a boot and shoe man now. Makes some of the best boots I’ve ever worn. Got a little shop down the street about six doors. "

  Willy Boy talked to Josh.

  "Yep, Deeds was here. I never was a friend of that man, but I knew him. Even worked with him on one case and we split the reward, but never again. I told him so. He’s mostiy just roaming around, trying to find some­thing to work on. Used to be we’d go to a judge or sheriff and get a Wanted and go out after that man. Deeds isn’t working that way now. "

  "Any idea where he went?"

  "Said he was going to the hotel. Reckon he’s still there. I know he ordered three girls from the Lucky Lady Saloon for the night. He might be up by now since it’s almost noon. "

  "Thanks, Josh. When I need some new boots, I’ll come back and get them from you. "

  Willy Boy walked out of the store and directly to the hotel.

  "Checked out?" the room clerk said with surprise. "Oh, no, not Mr. Conover. He said he’d probably be here for a week. He’s up in room 301. That’s in the comer on the third floor. "

  Willy Boy thanked him and went up the stairs quietly. There was no one in the hall on the third floor and Willy Boy put his ear to room 301 and listened. All he heard were giggles and a man growling some words he couldn’t understand.

  Willy Boy wished he had one of the sawed off shotguns. All he had was his .45 with five shots. That would have to do. He stepped back from the door against the far hall wall, drew the .45, took two steps and jumped at the door with all his 130 pounds of weight behind his boot.

  It landed on the door right beside the door handle and popped open the lock, smashing the door inward until it slammed against the wall. Willy Boy nearly fell but kept his feet. He jumped inside the room and saw nak­ed bodies entangled on the big bed.

  A man’s face lifted from the tangle and stared at him.

  "What the hell are you doing?" the man roared.

  There was no mistake, it was Deeds Conover, the same man who had shotgunned his father.

  "Deeds Conover?" Willy Boy demanded, the .45 leveled at the man’s head from six feet away.

  "Maybe, maybe not, so what?"

  Willy Boy stared at the crooked face, with one eye slightly lower than the other, the jaw that sagged a little to the same side as if someone had mashed in half of his face a little. Dangerous dark eyes stared out at him. The man had black hair and a heavy beard showing stubble.

  "You’re Deeds Conover all right. I saw you shotgun my Pa over in Missouri three years ago, and right now I’m gonna kill you. "

  He fired just as Conover dove back into the mass of naked arms, legs, torsos, and three women’s frightened faces.

  "Get out of here, ladies, or you’re dead!" Willy Boy shouted.

  One squirmed off the bed on one side and a second one on the other side, but the man held fast to the third one covering most of his naked body.

  "You wouldn’t shoot an innocent woman!" the man shouted.

  "Damn right I will, gladly!" Willy Boy screamed at him. He fired again, grazing the man’s shoulder over the bare shoulder of the woman.

  The woman screamed. The two girls who had jumped off the bed grabbed clothes and rushed out of the room into the hall.

  "Now, calm down, whoever you are," the man said. "You’ve made a mistake. I’m not that man you’re looking for. "

  Willy Boy found a hairy leg unprotected and he fired again, the slug boring through the man’s calf and he bellowed in pain.

  Then in a surprise move the man surged upward and threw the naked woman at Willy Boy. She hit him in the chest, knocking him backwards. He dropped his gun and the women fell on top of him as the man jumped up, kicked Willy twice in the side, grabbed his pants and ran out of the room.

  By the time Willy Boy got untangled from the nude woman and found his gun, Deeds Conover was gone out of the hall. He tried doors along the way. Most were locked, two were empty. In another one a woman screamed at him. He ran down to the second floor and checked the empty rooms, but Deeds Conover didn’t seem to be around.

  He went back to the man’s room. The last woman had dressed and hurried out. He found the man’s gear. In one shirt pocket was a letter addressed to Deeds Conover, General Delivery, Dodge, Kansas. He had the right man.

  But he let him get away. He went over every item that Conover owned in the room. He found only a .44 pistol, an 1868 Springfield rifle, and a purse with $20 in it. He took the weapons and the purse and sat in an empty room halfway down the hall with the door barely cracked open so he could watch the room Conover had used.

  Conover would not leave his bag of clothes and weapons and head out of town. By midnight, Willy Boy considered that he may have misjudged Deeds Conover.

  He checked at the livery stable and found that Mr. Conover had paid his bill and ridden out about three that afternoon. He headed east, but that was no real test of his continuing direction.

  Willy Boy found his crew, roused them out of bed, got Johnny Joe from a poker game and the Professor from a brothel and they rode east. By sun up they had covered more than 20 miles. They had not seen a campfire, smelled an unhoused smoke, or seen a single traveler.

  It had been a fool’s ride, Willy Boy knew. But he had to do something. They found a brushy area near the main road and camped out of sight. One man stood guard watching for the sight of a lone man on a sorrel. The livery stable man had told him it was a sorrel and easy to spot.

  "We must have come past him in the night," Willy Boy said.

  Three lone riders came along the road, but none of them could be Conover. One was past 60, the other two were kids of 15.

  By noon, Willy Boy decided they were still behind him. They rode hard for the next town, Wagon Bend. It was on a curve of a fair sized river.

  The town marshal said he hadn’t seen anyone asking about wanted posters for two months.

  The next town was smaller but there a man had looked through the wanted posters. He gave his name as Harry Charles, but he fit Conover’s description.

  "Yep, left here about two hours ago. I didn’t exactly believe him as we talked. He headed out of town to the west. I was curious enough to walk down to the edge of the hardware store and I saw him make a circle around the town and get back on the road going east. Next town is eight miles away. "

  They rode again, rumbling along at six miles to the hour in a jolting lope that was good for the horses, but not the best for the men. If they rode four hours at six miles an hour they should catch him if he was two hours ahead riding at four miles an hour.

  It should have worked out that way, but Deeds Conover stopped in the town of Moorville to buy some trail food and gear. He was in that town when Willy Boy left the previous one. Conover spent nearly an hour having dinner and buying food and pots to use on his travels.

  With that element thrown in, Willy Boy and his gang caught up with Deeds Conover about three that after­noon. They saw him a quarter-of-a-mile ahead, the white mane and tail of his horse easy to spot against the reddish brown color of the sorrel. Willy Boy and Eagle took off at a gallop after him.

  The other horses were not as fast and the two led them by 100 yards after a brief stint. Deeds must have been watching his back trail because he at once spurred his horse off the road into a field and near a small stream with lots of brush and trees along it. He vanished into the trees, and Willy Boy and Eagle thundered along to where he entered the woods and charged after him.

  Eagle held up his hand and they both stopped. Ahead they could hear brush cracking and branches breaking.

  "I’ll go outside in the clear area and ride ahea
d of him and wait for him," Eagle shouted. Willy Boy nodded and rode forward, his sawed off shotgun up and ready, both barrels loaded.

  He went slower than he wanted to, but caution held him back. He didn’t want to ride into an ambush, but he had to keep pushing Conover forward.

  The cat and mouse game lasted for half an hour before Willy Boy sighted the bounty hunter. It was one of those little bluffs that come out of nowhere, that rises up on the plains suddenly like a festering pimple on the thigh of a beautiful woman.

  The soil must have been special because every inch of that little hillock was swarmed over with trees and brush, with choke cherries and crab apples and wild berries.

  Deeds Conover sat on his horse near the top of the 50 foot slope and fired a rifle. The slug sang through the air three feet from Willy Boy and he jolted the mount behind some cottonwoods and out of sight.

  Willy Boy peered around the last tree and saw Conover working higher on the lump of land and behind the heavy cover. Willy Boy heard a sound behind him and whirled around scratching for his revolver, but it was Eagle on foot.

  "I saw him. He’s good. You ride like hell around to the far side of the hill. Must be some kind of a trail over there. I’m going up on foot. He’s waiting for one of us to come up on horseback. I can slip through the low brush and he’ll never see me. I’ll drive him down into your gunsights. "

  Willy Boy watched Eagle. "Don’t you dare kill the guy. Wound him if you want to, but he’s my meat!"

  "I got the message a long time ago, white eyes. Now move. I’ll need your distraction to help me get across that skimpy cover out there. "

  Willy Boy rode hard then, charging from cover to cover. Once he heard a rifle shot but it was far in back of him. He found the curve of the hill less than 50 yards down and a small tributary creek angled that way so he could stay in adequate cover. Soon he was almost direcdy behind where he had first seen the bounty hunter.

  There had been no more shots. Willy Boy checked the chamber of his Henry, filled up the magazine and then sat on his horse near a good sized oak tree and

  waited.

  Eagle took his time getting across the sparse cover area, but once into the heavier growth, he hurried, then stopped and listened. Twice he heard a horse snorting. He was being asked to do something he didn’t want to do, like climb a steep bank.

  Eagle jogged up the slope, not breaking a branch. He moved from cover to cover like a morning fog. When he was halfway up, he stopped and listened again. He could hear the horse blowing.

  Close. He moved cautiously now, easing forward. Around the next small growth of hickory brush, he could see the horse, but not the man.

  He moved again and the horse vanished. It had taken some steps down the hill. It didn’t want to negotiate the steep downward climb. Eagle hurried then and got to the top where he saw the hoofprints in an open space. Then 30 yards below he saw the bounty hunter riding down the hill.

  Eagle lifted the rifle. He should kill him. But to Willy Boy the man’s death wasn’t important, it was how he died that counted. Eagle shifted his sights to the man’s right shoulder and squeezed off the round.

  The crack of the Henry echoed through the hills and was followed with a scream of pain. Conover didn’t slam off the saddle, Eagle gave him credit for that. The bounty hunter jolted foward, kept his seat and threw both arms around the frightened horse’s neck and hung on as he slipped into heavy cover and out of sight.

  "Damaged package coming down the hill," Eagle shouted into the clear afternoon air.

  Eagle worked down the trail left by the horse. It had taken the path of gentle descent and here and there he cut across the switchbacks and came to the bottom but found no horse. He looked around, then ran into the brush until he came to the small creek.

  The big horse Conover was riding went across the creek and on east. Where was Willy Boy?

  There was no chance Eagle could catch the bounty hunter on foot. His own horse was a quarter of a mile away.

  Where was Willy Boy?

  "Willy Boy! Where are you? Willy Boy?"

  Eagle felt a cold anger seeping into his brain. Some­thing had happened to their leader. He ran down the creek to where it joined the other one and soon picked up a set of hoofprints heading toward him. Eagle turned around and began tracking the prints. They had to be Willy Boy’s horse.

  The prints bent around the edge of the little hill and followed the creek that branched off around the hill. It meandered a little and then entered some heavy brush. He saw the horse grazing 20 yards ahead. To the left, below a big oak with low hanging branches, he found Willy Boy. He was stretched out as if he were sleeping, his long gun on the ground six feet away.

  Eagle ran and dropped to his knees beside the youth. He was breathing, he had a heartbeat. Eagle looked at him again. On the side of his head in the hairline was a knot the size of a chicken egg. Eagle grinned and went to the creek and wet his bandana and brought it back. He put it on Willy Boy’s forehead.

  "What the hell?" he asked.

  Willy Boy tried to sit up but fell back quickly. He blinked, then found Eagle and slowly his eyes focused.

  "Eagle, what happened?"

  "Don’t know, small white eye. My guess is that you rode ahead when you were looking away and smacked into an oak limb. You hear me shoot the bounty hunter?""Yeah. And then you yelled something about a package. I saw Conover hugging his horse’s neck and the horse charging down the hill. I needed a better firing spot. "

  "And clobbered yourself on that oak branch right back there. I put a rifle round into Conover’s shoulder. He’ll be hurting for a long time. But by now he’s half a mile away and riding until he puts that horse down and dead. ""Let’s go after him," Willy Boy said. "Got to get him before he slips away again. "

  "You want to go?" Eagle asked.

  "Yes. "

  "Try to sit up. "

  Willy Boy pushed himself up, but his eyes went wide and he gasped and fell over to one side. He groaned and eased over on his back. "Damnit to hell, guess I ain’t going anywhere for a while. "

  "Old Indian practice: never ride horse with big knot on your skull. Seeing it’s almost dusk, we might as well camp right here. "