The Lawbringers 4

by Brian Garfield

  “You do,” Andrews said, “and you’ll be starting yourself a range war. Keep that in mind when you get ready to light your torches. I never stole a pound of your beef.”

  “Sure,” Lutz said. Sarcasm was lost in the weight of his rumble. “My cows have all got a blight, while yours drop four calves apiece.”

  “Gentlemen,” Elias chided them. The toothpick protruded at a jaunty angle from his mouth corner. “You won’t have to worry so much about losing stock, Señor Lutz. Not after this storm. Half your herd will be wind-drifted or froze to death, I think.”

  Lutz stared silently at him, hating him for the reminder. Elias’ young one-armed partner puffed complacently on the brown-paper cigarette, watching everything with quick-eyed interest and a sour kind of humor.

  Elias said conversationally, “How about you, old man? You look like a mountain man to me-—maybe you’re the fellow with the buffalo rifle, eh? Maybe the deputy had something on you, viejo.”

  The old man did not seem to hear him; it was the girl whose eyes snapped angrily toward Elias. But the old man, whose jaws steadily chewed an imaginary cud of tobacco, presently looked up and said in a half-cracked voice, “Think whatever you want. It don’t hurt me none.”

  “Maybe it was Lutz,” said Mitch Andrews. He had his fist wrapped sturdily around a new bottle he had taken off the shelf. He had not yet opened it; it stood before him as a challenge, as if he were fighting the temptation to uncork it. He said, with a sour downturn of his glance toward the bottle, “Dusted any varmints lately, Lutz? Somebody took a shot at my brother a few days back.”

  “You’d have a tough time proving that, sodbuster. I don’t fight from ambush.”

  “Well, now,” Andrew said softly, “that’s real reassuring.” He wrapped both hands around the bottle, leaning forward behind the bar on his elbows. Lamplight glistened on his bald spot. “Sure,” he said. “You had as much cause as anybody to shoot that deputy, Lutz.”

  “Amigos.” Elias said somnolently, “this is getting nobody noplace. After the storm blows over, you can all arrest each other and haul each other down to the calaboso. Meantime let’s try and keep the peace, eh?”

  “Somehow,” Lutz said to him, “you don’t look much like a peacemaker to me.”

  The toothpick moved and Elias grinned. He made no other answer. When he turned the knife in his hand, light rippled wickedly along the polished blade.

  CHAPTER X

  DECIDING THAT HE would learn nothing further of value by eavesdropping, Jim Brand finally turned away from the closed door through which he had been listening and went back carrying the lantern past the headless chicken and second doorway into the stable runway. Holding the lantern high, he looked around.

  The tall, rangy black would be Elias’ horse; the bay in the stall beside it would be Billy’s McCasford’s. Of the other drowsy horses, the huge deep-barreled claybank was probably Wayne Lutz’s, and the other two nondescript sorrels would belong to Michaela and her father.

  Then of course there was the dead calico and there was the deputy.

  Brand put the lamp down and stooped grunting to drag the deputy into an empty stall. The dead man’s flesh was turquoise in hue; his face seemed gaunt in death. Brand turned back into the runway and began a systematic search that was hurried only by the chill of the room.

  There was the warm smell of horses but still the walls were none too thick, the norther raged wailing outside, and Brand had not brought his coat. All he wore were his gray flannel shirt and black vest, over long-handled underwear, and gambler’s striped broadcloth trousers sleeved over the tops of his boots.

  A soft scratching racket in a stall corner sent Brand’s arm back, fingertips touching his gun butt; he stood motionless, peering into that shadow until low to the ground a shape waddled forward.

  It was a long-tailed roadrunner, a dusty gray bird with color around its eyes and a curled topnotch. It stood peering at him, unblinking and unruffled, with its long, slightly curved beak tilted at a quizzical angle. It was a big bird, probably two feet from beak to tailfeathers.

  “How’d you get in here?” Brand said.

  The roadrunner, made suspicious by his voice, hopped back into the darkness. Brand allowed himself a small lopsided grin. Amid all the suspicion of this day, the road-runner’s silent presence seemed to provide a rare touch of amiable companionship.

  He found two things of interest in his search. One was Armando Elias’ saddle, which was black and ornamented with large silver conchos. The thing that held Brand’s interest was the lack of saddlebags. From the shape of the dry patch along either skirt of the saddle, Brand knew that there had been saddlebags on the rig. Where were they now? What was in them? His search failed to produce them.

  The second thing he discovered was a pair of spurs, cast into a corner. Long-roweled California spurs. He recalled the tracks of little holes by the deputy’s body where he had found it, and picked up one spur thoughtfully, trying in his memory to match its long pointed rowels with the spacing and size of the holes he had seen. As well as he could remember, they matched. But of course there was no way of telling who had discarded them here.

  When he was leaving, boosted by the cold, the roadrunner came out into the aisle and stared at him. Lamplight glimmered against its eyes. Brand felt a likeness to the bird, a kindred feeling—both of them were on the drift, both caught up in this mountain shelter by the ravages of the great storm.

  He smiled at the big bird and continued on his way through the tackshed. When he reached the door, he paused a moment to listen. The only audible conversation was a murmured dialogue between Elias and McCasford; he could not make out their words. He swung the door open and pushed his bantam, trim figure into the warmth of the big room.

  Old Manning’s grizzled head swiveled. There was a restless, clear gleam in his glance. He said with a perceptiveness beyond his appearance, “Get yourself an earful, young fella?”

  “Sure,” Brand said.

  “Do you much good?”

  “No.”

  “Didn’t find any buffalo rifles out there, did you?” Wayne Lutz said.

  “No,” Brand said again.

  “Didn’t figure you would,” old Manning said with a satisfied look.

  Brand closed the door behind him and swept the room with wary eyes. The Mexican sat scrawled loosely, long arms hanging indolently, the toothpick jutting out of his narrow, sinister face. Nearby, the smoke of a cigarette rose in a thin obscuring furl before the one-armed youth’s countenance. The others simply glared at each other, except for the old man, who had withdrawn into his shell again and was now untouched by all of it.

  The girl stood by the fireplace looking down. Firelight modeled her features; she was not even looking at Brand, but he felt her strong power of attraction, her silent and unwilled ability to excite the male impulses.

  He looked away and said, “If nobody’s got anything to say, I’ll just have a look around the rest of the place.”

  “Search all you want,” Lutz said in a disgusted tone.

  The old man’s head turned; lucidity seemed to blink on and off in him like a gas-fed lamp. He said, “It ain’t up to you to give orders in my house, Lutz.”

  “No offense, old-timer,” Lutz said soothingly, and Brand immediately wondered why Lutz should show courtesy to old Manning when all he showed the rest of them was blunt arrogance.

  “Go ahead, Lutz,” Mitch Andrews said. “Read ’em the bill of rights.”

  “Shut up,” Lutz said.

  “I can see,” Elias said in his gentle slur, “that you two won’t be happy until you beat each other to pulps. Why don’t you just have at each other right away and get it over with, eh?”

  Andrews’ threatening rheumy gaze fastened on Lutz. “You try anything, you big bastard, and I’ll bust this bottle over your head.”

  Irritated by the constant badgering between Lutz and Andrews, Brand ignored their continued threats and counterthreats, and strode ac
ross the long room to the foot of the staircase, and started up.

  When his foot reached the sixth step, he whirled abruptly, hand near his gun butt, rapidly sweeping the room.

  Lutz was watching Andrews with a deadly malicious glance. Andrews, ignoring him, was working the cork out of the bottle with his teeth, apparently having lost in his battle to leave it alone. The old man and Billy McCasford were occupied with their own thoughts; and Elias was grinning upward at Brand. The long-bladed knife was turning in his hand as another man might idly rotate a pencil. “Nervous, amigos?”

  “Careful,” Brand said.

  At that moment the girl, Michaela, turned away from the fireplace with an expression that was angry and at the same time jaded, and said, “All of you make me sick.” She turned toward the stairs and climbed briskly past Brand without giving him a glance.

  A little startled, Brand stood where he was until her footsteps receded down the hall overhead. Then he went on up to the landing.

  The building’s second floor was divided evenly down its length by a narrow corridor, doorways on either side at periodic intervals. He stopped at the first door and depressed the latch with his thumb, and pushed the door open against a resistance of warped wood and dust.

  A dank, musty smell came out at him. He struck a match and took down a wall lantern, and carried it with him. This first room was vacant except for a five-year collection of gathered dust on floor and sill. The window was boarded up. No furniture broke up the cubicle’s stark square lines. A thick, tangled cobweb hung in the corner above the doorway. Brand gave the room only a cursory glance, then closed the door and crossed the hall and opened that door.

  It, too, was vacant and filthy. He went on down the hall past two more rooms of exactly the same description, and finally came to a fifth door which had no dust on the latch. Here, uncertain, he lifted his knuckles and rapped.

  When Michaela opened the door he said, “Mind if I paw around your room?”

  Her eyes flashed but she stepped aside and said mockingly, “Help yourself.”

  He did. What struck him most about the room’s contents was that he found precious little of feminine nature. There was one calico dress; all the other outfits were flannel shirts, Levi’s and butternut trousers, like the pair she had on now. There were moccasins and boots, coarse men’s underwear, one broken-ended hair-comb, and the usual furniture of a rustic bedroom. He found no weapon. When he was finished he stood by the bed, half-unwilling to meet her glance; but there was no accusation in her eyes, only what seemed to be a purposeful, enforced boredom.

  She said, “All through?”

  “I reckon,” he drawled. But when he moved, his toe at the foot of the cot moved something that creaked, and he stopped dead still, frowning. The girl’s expression suddenly became guardedly noncommittal. Brand glanced at her and knelt by the edge of the bed to look at the floor. When he touched one board, it moved.

  “Well,” he said. “Well. What have we got?” He worked a clasp knife out of his pocket, looked up at the girl, and saw naked malice in her eyes. Her hand had lifted to the hilt of the skinning knife with which she had attacked him earlier. “Don’t try it again,” he said softly, and used his own knife to pry between the boards.

  It took little effort to lift the loose floorboard; but what he found in the opening beneath was not a rifle.

  Leather sacks, each about the size of a fist, bloated and bulging. He lifted one and hefted it in his hand. “Gold pokes,” he said, and opened it to be sure. The dull yellow hue of fine, high-grade gold dust met his inspection.

  Balancing the poke on his open palm, he looked up at the girl’s glaring eyes. “This makes you pretty rich. What have you got here, eight or nine thousand dollars?”

  “Just about,” she said. “You sure turned out to be a nosy son of a bitch, didn’t you?”

  “I’m just trying to keep my skin whole.”

  “What do you plan to do with the gold?”

  “Leave it here,” he said, putting the poke back and carefully replacing the loose board. “It’s not my gold.”

  “My,” she said, “how honest you turned all of a sudden.”

  He stood up. “If you don’t trust me, you can hide it somewhere else after I’m gone.”

  There was a curious look on her face that suggested she was half-willing to believe him, but still made cynical enough by knowledge of men to distrust him on principle. It struck a nerve of bitterness in him and he recognized in her feelings against him the same kind of experience that made him so suspicious of women. “Maybe,” he murmured, “maybe we’re two of a kind, you and me.”

  “Maybe we are,” she said, and he was surprised by the gentleness of her reply. “But all that means is I hate myself as much as I hate you.”

  “A good beginning,” he said drily. And then impulse drove him forward, drawing her into the circle of his arms.

  He saw nothing he could recognize in her eyes; he dropped his mouth over her lips and felt the warm moistness of her kiss and for a moment there was the hard pressure of her arms lifted to his back, the arching of her body as it fitted itself against him, the savageness of her kiss that had hating and loving and respect and contempt in it—and then she drove him back and stood dragging her hand across her lips, breathing hard and watching him with bleak attention. That was when he saw the knife in her hand.

  He said dourly, “Why didn’t you use it?”

  “I wish I knew.”

  “Maybe you just don’t hate me enough. Maybe you don’t care enough.”

  “Maybe,” she said. “Get out of here and let me alone, will you?”

  Something back in his mind told him it should not be left this way; he stepped stubbornly forward, taking the knife from her unresisting hand, and pulled her to him once more, bending her far back and seizing her kiss almost as a prize of war.

  This time she offered him neither resistance nor surrender, but only coolness. Brought all the way down by her indifference, he stepped away and matched her dismal state.

  She said, “Do you think either one of us is any good for the other?”

  No answers came to him.

  She said, “I hate your guts, Jim Brand. You’ve ruined the whole thing.”

  “What whole thing?”

  She shook her head. He met her glance, reversed the knife in his hand and held it toward her. She looked at the knife as though it was unfamiliar; presently her hand closed on it and she put it immediately away in its sheath. Then she said quietly, “My life used to mean something.”

  “Mine never meant anything,” he answered, and turned toward the door. Michaela’s voice stopped him:

  “Does it mean anything now?”

  “Maybe.” He palmed the latch.

  CHAPTER XI

  IT CAME TO him, standing in the cold bleak hallway, that his search was senseless. It was hardly likely he would find a buffalo gun here, and even if he did, he would have no proof of its ownership.

  The corridor was dim and musty; the taste of the girl was still on his lips and the smell of her hair in his nostrils. He felt disorganized by what had just transpired; all his values, negative as they might have been, were shaken.

  The man who had killed the deputy and ambushed him once might try again. But it now appeared that the only way of finding out that man’s identity would be to take the risk of waiting for him to make his next attempt. Still, Brand had a distaste for leaving any job uncompleted, and so in a glum uncertain mood he crossed the hah and opened the last door.

  A match in his upraised hand revealed a furnished room. Probably the old man’s, he decided. He lit the table lamp; it cast unsteady shadows. Here there were a wood-frame cot, a fragile three-legged table, a washbasin and stand and water pitcher, a faded lithograph on the wall, a worn rug, a couple of sagging carpetbags and in one corner a littler of miscellaneous objects much like the accumulation of pack-rat junk on the floor below.

  Brand shut the door and went across the room
to paw through that pile. He found everything from chicken feathers to an old, yellowed map of Rifle Gap as it had been in its heyday. There were leather straps and buckles, an iron pot, a dented rusty canteen, assorted empty bottles, a full jar of horse liniment, rawhide piggin’ strings, and an old shell belt and holster.

  And one other thing. A long-barreled, .50-70 caliber ’86 Winchester rifle.

  He thought he had something with that discovery, until closer inspection proved that the rifle could not possibly have been fired in months. Dust coated the oil inside the bore and on the moving parts of the action. There was no sulphur smell to it, but only the musty odor of old oil. Disgustedly, he put down the rifle and stood up.

  He was turning toward the door when his perceptive ears picked up the muffled tramp of feet ascending the stairs at the far end of the corridor. Alert but uncertain, he blew out the lamp and put his back flat against the front wall of the room beside the door, lifting his gun silently out of leather.

  The footsteps, very heavy, came tramping down the hall, increasing in volume. Brand’s fist whitened on the gun butt. Then, close by, out in the corridor, the boots halted and he heard the sharp, peremptory rapping of knuckles on a door.

  The girl’s voice answered. “Who’s that?”

  “I want to talk to you.” It was Wayne Lutz’s rumbling voice. Jim Brand frowned in the dark, puzzled.

  The door clicked open, squeaking a little on old hinges. Michaela said, with no warmth in her tone, “What do you want?”

  “Where’s Brand?”

  “How would I know?”

  “He’s prowling around somewhere up here,” Lutz said. “Let me in a minute.”

  “What for?”

  “Jesus,” Lutz said. “You’re not scared of me, are you? I won’t bite.”