But she was not on the depot platform when the train rolled in and Cato dropped off on the opposite side to the platform, moving swiftly down the cars and right up to the front of the train and around the locomotive. He saw the fireman, engineer and conductor talking with the stationmaster and figured they were likely reporting the shooting. He didn’t aim to get delayed by explanations and slipped across behind the telegraph shack with his warbag and ducked down a narrow lane behind the depot and found himself in a freight yard, amongst stacked cases and lumber and railroad ties. That suited him. It was dusk and, keeping to the deep shadows, he made his way out of the depot yard and onto the street that led down to Main and the orange lights of the town’s buildings.
The fact that the girl hadn’t met the train didn’t mean she wasn’t in with the men who had tried to kill him, anymore than it would have meant for sure that she was in the know if she had been there when the train rolled in. Now he had the job of finding her, but he figured it oughtn’t be too hard. Nurses weren’t common in frontier towns; usually it was the doctor’s wife or daughter who handled the nursing chores.
He was right: everyone seemed to know Marnie Hendry and he had no trouble in getting directions to her small cabin out near the north edge of town. He walked out there with his warbag over his left shoulder, smelling fresh paint and turpentine as he approached. The small white picket fence had been newly painted, and so had the chocolate brown door beyond the arched rose arbor. Seemed she was planning on settling-in, which seemed to fit in with what he had learned in town. She had come here to be nurse for Dr. Bryant, whose wife had died some months ago and left him with no one to handle the nursing chores. He was getting old and couldn’t manage everything himself. Seemed that Marnie had been the only applicant, but she knew her job and Bryant was mighty pleased with her. Those in town who had had need of her services also had praise for her.
But Cato aimed to play it safe and when she opened the door to his knock, eventually recognized him in the light of the lantern she held, and asked him in, Cato stepped warily and kept his right hand close to the butt of the Manstopper. He sat down in the sparsely furnished parlor.
“I hope to get some better furniture after a while, when I have more money,” the girl told him. “Can I get you some coffee? Something to eat, Mr. Cato?”
“I’ve eaten, thanks,” he said shortly, looking at her somewhat coldly.
The girl frowned. “Is there anything wrong?”
“Reckon there should be?” he countered.
“I—I don’t know. I get the feeling that you’re all—tense—and that you’re—well—probing me ... The look in your eyes isn’t exactly the friendliest, Mr. Cato.” Her manner became abruptly brisk. “Why are you here, anyway?”
Cato looked at her soberly for a long minute, then sighed as he sat back in the easy chair. “Hell, I don’t really know, Miss Hendry …”
“You might as well call me Marnie. Everyone else does.”
“Yeah, okay, Marnie ... Look, you know who I am and what I do. You know Yancey is an Enforcer too. Well, that head-wound is givin’ him a heap of trouble and he’s lost his memory, don’t know any of his old friends, or even his own name …”
Compassion showed on her face. “I felt he was suffering concussion by his actions ...”
“Well, to cut things short, I’ve taken over his assignment and, well ... I sort of wanted to make sure that you didn’t go lookin’ for him on that train, that you met him just the way you said.”
“Well, of course I did!” she said indignantly and he swiftly held up a hand.
“Sure, I guess so ... your story checks out. But I’m kind of edgy. Couple of hombres tried to kill me on the train coming down here and—”
“And you thought I had something to do with that?”
“Ease up now! If you’d been following Yancey you could have ... Since hittin’ town, though, I’ve heard nothin’ but good words about you, Marnie, and I guess I have to take a chance, sometime, so …”
“Well, thank you for very little, Mr. Cato!” the girl said angrily, standing up. “I’m surprised you didn’t have your gun out and cocked when I opened the door!”
He smiled a little sheepishly. “I thought of it … But I did keep my hand on the butt.”
Her face tightened even more and then she saw the funny side of it and relaxed, sitting down again, shaking her head slowly. “I suppose I shouldn’t blame you. But it is rather annoying when your intentions are well-meant.”
“Yeah, sorry about the whole thing. Part of my job, though. Only way a man can stay alive sometimes. I figured that maybe Yancey might’ve said something that could be of help.”
Marnie frowned. “Like what? He didn’t really say much at all.” She smiled faintly. “When I think about it, he was probably just as suspicious of my motives as you, possibly more so.”
“Could be. Well, did he say where he was headed?”
“Timbertop ... Because I said there was plenty of time for him to have a rest and then we saw the gunfight on the mountain and ... the wreck followed.”
“He bought a ticket all the way to Timbertop,” Cato said slowly, “but the ticket seller on the Bent’s Junction railroad depot recalled him askin’ about what towns the train passed through. He kind of got the impression that Yancey aimed to stop at one or maybe more of ’em. Maybe just to check ’em out; maybe because of some information he’d picked up.” He slammed a fist down into the palm of his other hand. “Damn, but I wish Yancey could remember!”
She studied his face closely. “He’s obviously a good friend,” she said quietly.
“The best. We been through a lot together ... Can’t help but feel to blame for him bein’ the way he is.”
Marnie was surprised. “How can you think that? You said the head-wound was causing the trouble.”
“Now, it is. But it mightn’t have been so bad if he hadn’t been banged about in that train wreck ... and that was my fault for not goin’ it alone like I should have!”
He frowned as the girl shook her head slowly. “I don’t agree with you, Mr. Cato. I saw Yancey on the train. He was in distress; he was seeing double; he was pale, his eyes looked glazed and one pupil was larger than the other ... These are all definite signs of concussion, especially with the intense headache he complained of. I don’t think he received any further injuries in that train smash. I think he would have finished up with amnesia if the train had brought him safely here or to Timbertop or wherever he was going.”
Cato studied her face and saw that she meant it. He made a helpless gesture. “You could be right. Doesn't stop me feelin’ kind of guilty, though …”
“And so you’re going to finish your friend’s assignment for him, come hell or high water, and avenge him by killing the men who are involved?”
“Something like that,” he said crisply.
“And you think that’ll help him?”
“It’ll help me!”
Her eyes were intent on him and he saw the curiosity there and knew she had never met anyone like him before: a man prepared to risk his life and kill for friendship.
What surprised him most was that he saw sudden understanding come into her eyes and when she offered to put him up in the cabin’s spare room for the duration of his stay in Concho, he knew he was right. She wanted to observe his actions at close quarters.
That was all right by Cato. It was a long time since he’d had a woman as young and beautiful as Marnie Hendry interested in him for any reason!
Six – One Right, One Wrong
The girl had not yet furnished her cabin fully and Cato had to spread his blankets on a mattress on the floor of the spare room. It suited him; he had slept in far worse places. But there was not much give in the fiber mattress itself, laid over bare boards and he figured, after waking several times, that he might have been more comfortable out on the ground where he could have at least dug a hole for his hip. Or maybe the small sofa in the parlor might give him mo
re comfort, even if he had to sleep with his legs curled up all night.
In any case, he stuck it for several hours, tossing and turning, trying to get comfortable but not achieving this state. Finally he reckoned he would move into the parlor and take over the sofa for the night.
He groped around in the darkness—there was little light spilling through the one window—and picked up his blankets and boots: it was an old habit to keep his boots handy with his gunrig wherever he slept. He was a man who sometimes had to be up and running fast with only a split second between sleep and full wakefulness and a pair of boots ready to slip on made all the difference.
He didn’t want to disturb the girl and padded across the room silently in his stockinged feet, blankets bundled under one arm, gunrig and boots in his free hand. Cato groped his way down the short passage, past Marnie’s bedroom, to the beaded curtains that hung across the doorway to the kitchen. Crossing this room—lit by a faint glow from the banked fire in the wood stove—Cato dropped a blanket, muttered a curse and stooped to pick it up. As he straightened, he was looking directly at the rear door and there was a gap between the door edge and the frame. He froze as he saw a flare of flame through the crack.
He let the rest of the blankets fall to the floor and swiftly buckled his gunrig around his waist. Keeping an eye on the crack, seeing the glow of a fire of some sort out there, he pulled on his boots and moved across to the door, gun in hand. The Enforcer put his eye to the crack between the door edge and the frame and sucked down a sharp breath.
Outside in the yard, he could see the silhouettes of two men as they huddled around two pinecone torches, fanning the flames to life. He didn’t hesitate. He fumbled at the door latch and swore as it jammed. He had to strain against the panel to free the latch tongue and it came loose with a rush, clattering. By the time he had wrenched the door open and dropped to one knee, the men had let the torches fall and were running into the darkness across the yard.
Cato fired at a dark shape, knew instantly he had missed when he heard the lead clang off an old iron wagon tire hanging over the fence palings. Two guns spat death at him from the darkness and bullets chewed splinters from the edge of the doorway as he launched himself through and sprawled full length in the dirt of the yard. The Manstopper roared twice in quick succession and he heard a man grunt as lead thumped into him out there in the darkness. Only one gun replied now, but it was a deadly shot and kicked gravel into Cato’s face, stinging his eyes. He rolled to the side as the gun blasted again and lead slammed into the ground where he had been a moment before.
Boots rattled against the palings of the fence and he knew that one of the men was climbing over. He spun around so that he had a ground-level view, hoping to spot the man’s silhouette against the stars. But the man went over low and Cato missed seeing him. The other man, wounded, triggered three wild shots and Cato turned his gun towards the flashes and dropped hammer. He heard the man’s body thud back to the ground and then he was up and running forward, gun cocked and ready to shoot into the man again, but there was no more movement.
Cato reached the fence, stumbling and skidding to hands and knees, as he heard a horse start up and race away on the far side. Cato swore, not able to see a gate. He leapt at the tall palings, hooking an arm over the top, swinging up his leg and hanging there, catching a glimpse of a rider moving away fast, hunched in leather. Hanging there precariously, Cato swung his right hand over and triggered a wild shot, knowing he had little hope of hitting the rider. The horse continued on and, just before turning out of the lane, the rider hipped and blasted his last two shots back in Cato’s direction.
Cato dropped back to the yard and snapped his gun up but relaxed when he saw it was only Marnie Hendry running across the yard in her nightgown. He kicked against the man he had downed and scraped a vesta into flame, kneeling swiftly.
The girl halted and he heard her gasp. He shook out the vesta flame immediately. The dead man wasn’t a pretty sight: one of the bullets had hit him in the face. Cato straightened and looked into the girl’s face, seeing a lantern glowing at the window of the house next door.
“Looks like I guessed right, anyway,” Cato said. “I came to the right place when I came to Concho ... Two hombres on the train tried to nail me, now two more tried to burn your cabin down …”
“Heavens! There’s no law here, John. The sheriff has to come from Timbertop.”
“To hell with that. I’ll handle it myself. You got a horse?”
“No. You’re not going after them?”
“One hombre vamoosed. I aim to track him down. You go back inside. I’ll handle things, Marnie.”
Her fingers dug into his arm. “John ... I’m—I’m scared.”
“You’ll be all right. It’s me they want. And I’ll be right out where they can get at me. I want to draw ’em out into the open.”
The girl started to protest again but Cato didn’t have time to argue and he bundled her back inside hurriedly. By that time, neighbors had arrived to see what all the shooting was about and Cato identified himself, ordered two men to take the dead man down to the undertakers and commandeered a horse from another man. He was riding before dawn, heading out in the direction he had heard the fleeing gunman take.
But he didn’t know this country, only had a general idea of it from maps. As he recalled, behind Concho, the trails ran across the flats and all converged on the rising range known as the Indian Hills. He was sure this was where the man was headed: he reckoned he wouldn’t hang around town. A stranger would be too noticeable in a town like Concho and, anyway, most likely he had only been hired to set fire to the girl’s house and then quit this neck of the woods.
So Cato rode for the hills along the dark trail, dismounted when he came to the foothills and made a cold camp until sunup. Then he examined the trail and his hunch paid off: he had no trouble picking up the tracks left by the fleeing horse, fresh and deep and plain as a pointing arrow.
But, after an hour’s riding, by which time he was deep into the range, surrounded by heavy timber and boulder-shot slopes, the tracks had petered out. Or, not so much petered out as they had been covered. The man had calmed down apparently after his first panicky flight and had taken time to cover his trail. But he hadn’t been good enough. Though his tracks had been obliterated fairly well along the actual trail, he had neglected to do a thorough job where he had left the trail and started into the timber. It was just a faint curve of a horseshoe in the loose earth, scooped up into a small pile by the horse slipping and scrabbling for a foothold. In the slant of the early sun, it was easy for an experienced tracker like Cato to see. It pointed the way the killer had taken and Cato moved ahead on foot, leading his mount, rifle in hand. He knelt occasionally to examine an overturned rock with the dark patch where it had rested in the earth showing plainly, not yet dried by the sun. It didn’t mean that he was all that close behind the killer as the timber was thick and not much sunlight penetrated in that part. Just the same, he wasn’t all that far behind and he wondered about that, for the man had had a good lead.
When he came to long streaks in the earth on the other side of the slope, he knew why. The man hadn’t tried to cover them: to do so would have meant leaving sign that was even easier to discern than the original. But the marks told Cato something he hadn’t suspected until now. The horse had been hit by one of his bullets. There was a couple of faint smears of brownish blood to confirm this. It probably wasn’t a bad wound, but with the rider pushing it hard and into rugged, rising country like this, the wound was beginning to tell on the animal.
Cato hoped the man would keep climbing and not strike out across the face of the slope or even go downhill. That way he might stand a chance of overhauling him.
It occurred to him, too, that the man didn’t seem, to be fleeing wildly any longer. There was a direction to his tracks: he knew where he was going. Maybe there was a pass through the hills that Cato didn’t know about. Maybe he was aiming to rendezvous wit
h a pard ... in which case, Cato had better start keeping an eye out for trouble. But he somehow didn’t think this was it. There was no particular reason, just his hunch, that the killer was on the run, making for someplace to hole up. He might turn and fight like a cornered rat when he reached it, of course, or he might simply go to earth and hope that he had thrown Cato …
He came out onto a cleared grassy slope and he moved up and down, within the line of trees, crouching, squinting, trying to get the sunlight in the right position so he could see where the horse had made passage across. Faint shadows and hollows marked the path taken by the killer and it seemed to lead towards a ledge with a great pile of boulders at one end.
Even as Cato saw this he smelled the faint tang of woodsmoke in the air and froze. He couldn’t believe that the man he was trailing would be loco enough to stop and build a campfire! Crouching, he looked around slowly, trying to discern any hazy updraught of smoke against the pale blue of the sky, but there was nothing. His nostrils distended as he sniffed again. It wasn’t a ‘live’ smell; more like the lingering dankness of smoke from a fire that had been doused with water ... or coffee dregs!
Yes, a definite odor of coffee dregs, and he knew damn well his man hadn’t had time to stop, build a fire, brew coffee, drink some, and then use the dregs to extinguish the fire. But a man who was waiting for the two men to return after setting fire to the girl’s house in Concho could have done those things …
He had guessed wrongly. Cato knew that even before the rifle whiplashed from that boulder clump and put a bullet cleanly through the head of his horse. The animal reared and crashed over onto its side, sliding and skidding away, legs kicking in a final convulsion. Cato threw himself sideways and back, rolling, desperately for the cover of a tree. Bullets followed his movement, kicking up dirt and grass and stones, finally ripping a long line of bark off the trunk of the tree just above his head.
It had been a bad guess, all right. Not only was there a man with a rifle up on that ledge, well-protected by the boulders, but there was another man slightly downslope, behind a deadfall, catching him in a crossfire. If they had waited just a little longer, until he had moved away from the line of trees, they would have had him cold. But someone had gotten impatient and opened fire just a mite too soon, while he was still able to use the trees for cover.
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