“Which don’t mean you still can’t get your fool heads blowed off!” growled Morg, eager for the kill.
Asa glanced at him and nodded slowly, “That’s gospel.”
“We get the idea,” Cato said, mouth swollen and cut, one eye blackened. “But what the hell do you want with us?”
“I’ll ask you the same question,” Asa Purdy countered.
“Hell, you know why we’re here!” Cato snapped. “Dolores Dysart.”
Purdy nodded slowly. “I thought as much.” He looked steadily at Bannerman. “You really believe we pulled that raid and kidnapped the girl?”
“We wondered about certain things,” Yancey confessed.
“Such as?”
“Discrepancies, like the stinkin’ buckskins, metal stirrup irons, the coldblooded killings, manglin’ the lawman after gunnin’ him down. It just didn’t sound like your bunch, Purdy.”
Asa Purdy squatted down abruptly, still holding his rifle one-handed, butt to ground, for support.
“You’re right, Enforcer. It weren’t us. It was someone else trying to throw the blame. Why, I don’t know. Maybe because I’ve tangled with some of Dysart’s men when we’ve wide looped a few of his beeves. I dunno, don’t much care. Thing is, they’ve given me a bad name for callousness. I don’t go in for kidnapping. Money means little here. Sure, we steal it when we want to, for various reasons that I don’t propose to enter into now, Bannerman. But I wouldn’t have much use for $100,000.”
Yancey flicked his eyes to Morg. “How about him?”
Morg’s moccasin-clad foot took Yancey on the side of the jaw and knocked him flat to the ground. The man towered above him, mouth twisted, but he made no attempt to harm him further. Asa hadn’t moved.
“You asked for that,” he told the dazed Yancey quietly. “Morg does what I tell him. And the others. We’ve got our own rules here. I’m elected leader. If ever the rest don’t figure I’m leadin’ ’em the way they want, then I’ll be voted out and someone else’ll move up. It hasn’t happened in fifteen years so I guess they’re happy enough.” He stood slowly, adding, “And I’ve never given any orders that Dolores Dysart was to be kidnapped.”
Yancey and Cato exchanged glances. The smaller Enforcer shrugged and Yancey turned back to Purdy.
“I guess we’ll go along with that. We had to check.”
“Stuck your necks out doin’ it,” Morgan said.
“Had to be done.”
“You were pretty smart to find your way here,” Asa said. “How’d you do it?”
“Someone walked out of here once and remembered that canyon,” Yancey replied.
Morgan cursed as his father shot him a swift glance. “Goddamn Frenchy ’breed!”
“You’re mighty good to get this far, just the same,” Asa Purdy allowed and there was respect in his voice. He paused and drew down a deep breath. “But it’s as far as you go and all for nothin’.”
“Not for nothing,” Yancey told him.
“It is. You know now we didn’t snatch the Dysart woman. You can forget the whole thing from now on. We’ll take care of it in our own way.”
Yancey tensed. “What’s that mean?”
“What I said. Leave it to us. We’re the ones been blamed and set up. We’re the ones who’ll square it away. Just keep out of our way, Enforcers. For next time we meet, it’ll be over smoking guns. Savvy?”
Yancey looked around, up a treed slope, and caught sight of log cabins and sod huts, cattle, goats, a splash of color that could have been a woman’s dress. Wood smoke hung thinly over the clearing where they lay. He was likely the first lawman ever to set foot in the Buckskinners’ hole-in-the-wall.
But he wondered if he would live to tell of it? Asa sounded like he was willing to turn him and Cato loose, but Yancey was suspicious of Morgan. The man had a killer look to him and he was uneasy with lawmen here, still alive and kicking.
“What happens to us?” he asked suddenly.
“Come dark, we’ll turn you loose,” Asa Purdy said and Morgan tensed but said nothing, though his black eyes slitted. “You’ll be taken into the hills, a long ways from here, blindfolded and tied up. You’ll manage to get loose somehow and then you’ll have to walk out of here. You’ll have your weapons so you won’t starve, if I know your reputations ...”
“Judas, Pa,” cut in Morg, “you ain’t givin’ ’em their guns?”
Asa flicked him a steady glance. “I am. They’ll be unloaded when we leave them, but they’ll have ammunition in their belts and saddlebags from the horses we shot.”
Morg spat, swearing. “Hell! You’re makin’ it too damn easy!”
“You ever hear of any man walking out of these ranges in under a week? At best? Course not. Most never make it. They get themselves lost. These two won’t though. They’ll get out and tell Dukes we didn’t do it and that we don’t kill just for the hell of it. Some of us don’t leastways ... Won’t matter by then, though. We ought to’ve cleared it up ourselves.”
Yancey snapped his head up. “You got a lead then?”
Asa smiled faintly. “We have our sources. I might add that you’re a long, long way from solving the mystery, Bannerman. A long, long way off.”
He smiled enigmatically as Yancey and Cato frowned and then Asa turned to his son.
“Morg, do this right, boy,” he said, addressing the man in this manner although Morg was in his thirties. “You know where to leave ’em. And how. I don’t want to hear about any ‘accidents’. These two’ve got to get out of here in one piece. The whole community’s safety depends on it. Now you remember that, boy.” Morg flushed but nodded silently, looking down at the Enforcers.
“I’ll take care of ’em, Pa,” he said and Yancey felt uneasy at the man’s tone.
It seemed to promise more than the words implied.
“But we haven’t heard anything at all from them since they left Houston!”
Kate Dukes thumped her small fist down on the edge of her father’s desk and was immediately sorry at her display of frustrated anger for she saw the pain it brought to her father’s already gray, gaunt features.
Kate hurried around to his chair and slipped her arms about the old man, resting her face against his silver hair.
“Oh, Pa, I’m sorry! But I’m so—so terribly worried about Yancey and Johnny.”
The governor patted her hands where they were clasped on his chest.
“I know, daughter, I know,” he said huskily. “I have to tell you I’m worried myself, now that we haven’t had some word. But I keep telling myself that the Anvils are largely unknown and they could simply be lost or having a difficult time finding a trail.”
“They wouldn’t have stayed in there this long, Pa, if they hadn’t found any sign at all. Yancey’s not like that. If he can’t pick up sign, he’s not too proud to come back and engage an Indian tracker. But neither he nor Johnny have shown up anywhere around Houston or at any of the ranches in the region.”
Dukes nodded. “I’m sending Rangers,” he said quietly. “A troop is preparing to move into the Anvils now. I didn’t want to resort to this, in case it stirs up the Buckskinners so that if they do have our friends captive—”
He let his voice trail away as he saw Kate pale.
“I don’t really think that’s the case, Kate,” he added swiftly, but he knew he hadn’t convinced her.
“If they are prisoners of Asa Purdy and his men and Rangers show up in the hills, they could well be killed, Pa.”
He patted her hands again. “Not likely. But I have to send someone to look for them.”
“I could go.”
“Now we both know that’s a ridiculous suggestion!”
Kate started to give him an argument but closed her mouth and nodded gently. “Yes, of course it is. I guess sending in Rangers is the only way. But I’m going to Houston, Pa. I have to be there when news—whatever it is—comes in.”
Dukes smiled. “I’ve already arranged for a ticket on the nigh
t train for you. Don’t worry. I’ll be all right, Kate. Doc Boles says I’m improving.”
Kate looked down at him. “You’d improve a lot faster if Borden Dysart didn’t keep bothering you.”
“He’s not bothering me, child. I owe him a favor. It’s my duty to help him. And he’s managed to get a postponement for paying the ransom for another week.”
“How did he manage that? He must have been in contact with the kidnappers!”
“They dropped off another birch bark note. He simply left his note, saying he hadn’t yet had time to get the money, in the place they asked him to leave the ransom. Another piece of bark was delivered and it said he had one more week and that was the limit. They also sent a lock of Dolores Dysart’s hair and her wedding ring. They promised that next time it will be an ear.”
Kate shuddered. She looked down steadily at her father. “Just what sort of hold does Dysart have over you?”
The governor snapped his head up. “Hold? Who said he has a hold over me? I’m merely returning a favor, squaring an old debt.”
Kate pressed his hand firmly and smiled faintly.
“Pa, you don’t have to lie to me. It’s obvious Dysart is more or less bullying you into helping him. You repay favors with much more enthusiasm as a rule.”
He waved it aside irritably. “Rubbish! You’re imagining things. Or maybe you aren’t... Maybe it’s just that I don’t much care for the man and it kind of galls me to be obligated to him.”
Kate slowly shook her head. “No, if that was the case, you’d be happy to have the chance of getting out of his debt. I feel there’s something else, something that’s eating at you and not helping your condition one little bit! I wish you’d tell me what it is.”
He stared up at her for a spell and then shrugged.
“It doesn’t matter. It’ll be forgotten soon. As soon as I give Dysart all the help I can to get his wife back.”
Kate made an exasperated motion and placed a hand on her hip, face angry.
“Tell me—just what is this with Dysart and his wife? Does he really care for her enough to raise the ransom money and pay it if there’s no other way? Or is he hoping Yancey and Cato can locate her and get her back so that he doesn’t have to pay out the money? Is he concerned for her? Or the money, Pa? I think you know the man well enough to tell me.”
Dukes started to shake his head negatively and then looked up, his eyes haunted.
“It’s true I know him well enough to answer you, Kate. In fact, I know Borden Dysart much better than I really want to.”
He gestured tiredly to the chair across his desk.
“Sit down, daughter. I have to tell someone and I think you’re probably the best person to hear about my—indiscretion—”
Her mouth turned down, a frown creasing her brow, Kate went slowly around the desk and dropped into the chair, looking expectantly at her father.
There was someone out there. Yancey was sure of it and he signed to Cato to freeze. The smaller Enforcer did so instantly, crouching by a fallen tree, rifle in hands, looking quizzically at his pard through the dim light.
Yancey sank to one knee behind the thick trunk of a tree, slowly and silently working the lever of his own rifle. He pointed to the right, in thicker timber. Cato cocked an ear, frowning, concentrating his attention over there. Slowly, he nodded, agreeing that someone was there.
Ahead of them, the timber thinned and they would be in open country in the next few paces. Then it would be a clear run to the Houston trail. It had taken them several days to get this far from the place where Morgan Purdy had left them tied up in the foothills of the Anvils. They had lived off the land all the way, even made an attempt to find their way back to the Buckskinners’ camp but gave up because of the nature of the rugged hills they had been dumped in. Now they were almost on the home-run, for once they hit the trail to Houston it wouldn’t take long to get back to the town.
But it seemed as if someone was stalking them, had other ideas about them returning safely.
Cato nodded again as Yancey silently pointed to the fallen tree and made a ‘down’ motion with his hand. Cato sank from sight behind the trunk. Yancey made a run from his tree to the next, a distance of several feet. Nothing happened. He pressed against the tree, expecting a bullet to scream off the bark, but there was nothing. The big Enforcer frowned, beginning to wonder if he had imagined that sound in the dimness of the forest.
He figured maybe it could be one of the mountain men, likely Morg Purdy. The man wanted to kill them both, that had been obvious back at the Buckskinners’ camp. Asa had said ‘no’ and Morg had obeyed. But here, on the edge of the Houston trail, maybe he figured he could get away with killing the Enforcers. If their bodies were found here, backshot, pockets rifled, no one would think too much about it. The same thing had happened to a hundred other men over the years.
Maybe—just maybe—Morg figured he could get away with it and his father wouldn’t know he had had a hand in it.
Anyway, someone was stalking them, Yancey was sure of that now as he heard another small sound there, like a twig snapping. Then, just as his straining ears picked up a faint tinkling, a shot blasted and he ducked as pieces of bark rained down on his hunched shoulders and pattered onto his hat brim.
The first shot was followed swiftly by another, and two more ricocheted from Cato’s tree trunk. Yancey knew right away he wasn’t up against mountain men. They were Winchesters doing the shooting and that faint tinkling he had heard had sounded like a spur rowel.
What in hell had they run into, he wondered. Maybe they had trespassed onto some cattle spread. But as far as he knew there were no ranch lines out this close to the trail. Two more bullets raked his shelter and then a man’s voice bellowed:
“We’ve got you pinned down! We’re behind you, too! Throw down your guns and walk out with hands up!”
“Who says so?” retorted Cato.
A volley of lead raked the log where he hunkered down and bark sprayed like water. Before the echoes of the gunfire died away, the man’s voice bawled again:
“Just do like you’re told!”
“Okay, Johnny,” Yancey called quietly across the timber. “Let’s do like the man says.”
Yancey stepped out from behind his tree, warily, holding his rifle one-handed, both arms raised. Cato appeared gradually from behind his fallen tree, holding his rifle the same way. They just stood there after the initial moves. There was silence for a spell. Their nerves were tensed, ready to send them leaping for cover if need be. Then they heard rustlings and twigs crackling underfoot as the mystery men moved in on them.
The first man appeared behind Cato, not much more than a shadow, staying close to a big cottonwood, rifle covering the small Enforcer. Another man appeared further to the right. Then a rifle barrel pressed against Yancey’s spine and he stiffened. He whirled instantly, the movement blurred it was so fast, flinging his rifle from him. He had been holding the trigger depressed, the hammer spur under his thumb. Now as he flung the rifle and released both these things, the hammer fell on the firing pin, driving it into the cartridge in the breech. The rifle exploded in mid-air, the shot wild, but the noise startling the hell out of the three men. Cato threw his rifle at the same time and it, too, exploded in mid-air, taking the men off guard.
Yancey’s left elbow smashed the rifle barrel aside and his right hand palmed up the six-gun which he smashed into the wide-eyed face of the man standing before him.
Cato went down onto one knee and the big Manstopper came out of the forward-tilted holster with blurring speed. It blasted the first man down in his tracks before he could even tighten his finger on the rifle’s trigger. The second man managed to get his Winchester up to his shoulder when Cato’s lead took him in the side. The man grunted and was flung back. He hit a tree, bounced off, losing his grip on the rifle. As he lunged after it, Cato stood and stomped a boot down onto his hand. The man grimaced and froze as the smoking gun barrel pointed between his e
yes.
Yancey stood, looking around warily, six-gun cocked. It seemed there had only been the three men. He glanced at Cato, saw his friend had the situation in hand, and knelt beside the one he had knocked unconscious, going through his pockets. In a moment, he stood up, cursing as he read a small square of paper.
“Good grief, Johnny! This one’s a Ranger!”
Cato stiffened and snapped his gaze down to the man at his feet. Through his grimacing pain the man nodded.
“Were all goddamn Rangers!”
“Well, why the hell didn’t you call out and say so?” demanded Cato angrily, stepping off the man’s wrist. He moved to the other man he had shot and knelt briefly. He turned a savage face to the wounded man. “You just got your pard killed by bein’ tight-lipped!”
“Then you’re in trouble, feller!” the Ranger groaned.
“The hell I am!” Cato snapped. “You hombres are s’posed to call out who you are when you jump someone the way you did.”
“How would you know?” gritted the Ranger.
Cato knelt and twisted his fingers in the man’s hair, thrusting his face close. “Because I’m John Cato, one of Dukes’ Enforcers, you loco fool!”
The man blinked. His mouth worked and no sound came at first. Finally, “Hell! We—we was lookin’ for you!”
“Well, you found us, mister,” Yancey said grimly, walking across. It wasn’t the first time Rangers or other lawmen had been killed by their own kind, but that didn’t make it sit any easier.
Or any worse, for the matter of that. It was a stupid business, entirely the Rangers’ fault for not announcing who they were. There was nothing they could do about the dead man, but maybe the other two had learned some kind of a lesson.
“There’s a whole damn troop of us scourin’ the foothills, lookin’ for you,” the wounded man said. “You fellers with them beards and clothes in rags didn’t look like they described you.”
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