by Frank Bonham
“Don’t go up there, Troy,” he said. “Jackson’s bunch is in front of the hotel. McCard, Roth, and about a dozen others. Joe Wiley and Bill Thorne, too, by God.”
“What are they doing?”
“Just blockin’ traffic. But nobody better go up unless everybody goes up.” He grunted. “What the hell are we going to do about Gil?”
“Get him out,” Troy said shortly. “Hear anything about Doyle?”
“Doc Watkins was leaving when I went by. Bad news. He says he’ll make it if the hole you put in him don’t infect.”
“How bad is he?”
The old rancher’s eyes soured. “Meaning no discredit, Troy, but you shore bungled that job. You had five feet eight of Doyle to shoot at, and you put one hole down low on his thigh. You didn’t even shatter the bone, Watkins says. He says Jackson’s going to move him out to the ranch.”
From where Troy stood, a little wedge of Front Street was visible. A man drove a buggy past, the horse trotting smartly. He could see no one on the walk. The trigger was set and people were standing back. A note of complaint entered the colonel’s voice.
“How are we going to get him out with them perching here like buzzards in a tree?”
“We’ll have to move them out first.”
“That sounds like a good trick,” Edwards scoffed. “Can I watch you do it?”
“Today,” Troy promised. “What if we all took off for the mountains about noon? Roth would probably figure we’d gone back to finish up on his gang. He’d demand protection from Jackson and he’d get it. Jackson would have to take most of his bunch out to follow us. As soon as it was dark, Gil could leave.”
“Might serve,” Edwards said.
“Got to serve. About noon, why don’t you start the boys for the mountains?”
“What about you?”
“I’ll rustle some good horses and stick around town. Somebody’s got to go with Gil.”
Edwards considered, nodded, and then his eyes grew melancholy. “It ain’t the town I used to know, Troy. There’s more trash around than men.”
“It seems that way sometimes. But the air will clear. Tell the boys to think it over. Meantime I’ve got a man to see.”
As he moved on, the colonel called: “Who’s that?”
“Jim Jackson,” Troy said. “I had an appointment with him last night, but we didn’t get together.”
Reaching Front Street, he saw the group before the hotel. Except here, the street was bleakly empty. Red Roth sat on the hitch rack talking to Owen McCard, who leaned against the rail beside him, his back to Troy. A clot of men blocked the hotel door. On a bench against the broken-plastered wall, Saddler’s men, Wiley and Thorne, were present but set apart like poor relations of Jackson’s crew. Troy wondered at their being included at all.
Roth saw him and touched McCard’s arm. The range boss looked around, lean and hard. Then he turned back to speak to a cowpuncher who strolled into the hotel. There was not much rashness left in Troy Cameron after his gunman’s years. But he had daylight and witnesses in his favor, and the very recent encounter with Tom Doyle. He did not know how Doyle had told it, but a few would realize Troy simply carried a faster gun.
With his left hand in his pocket, right hand free, he started for the hotel. They had all turned to watch. He stopped near the hitch rack. Roth’s eyes were bloodshot and ugly, and the jaws he had not shaved for three days were rough with rusty gray stubble. McCard’s face was cool and cautious.
“Is Jackson inside?” Troy asked them.
Roth looked at McCard. “Is he?”
“Not as I know,” McCard said blandly.
Troy walked past them. In the group before the door he saw Mike Saddler. Troy stared at him, astonished by the contradiction of Saddler’s presence. He was conscious of every man’s slow wheeling like a compass needle to watch him. No aisle opened through the group of tight-mouthed men blocking the door. Troy said, “Excuse me, boys,” and waited an instant. When a way did not open, he pushed a cowboy aside and walked into the group. The man swore and turned on him. But he stayed where Troy had pushed him, and Saddler, who still blocked the entrance, moved aside with sober features.
The lobby was smoky with warmth. Two beef buyers sat in one corner with out-of-town newspapers before their faces. An Anvil cowpuncher came from the hall to the back rooms, saw Troy, and stopped short.
“Is he coming out?” Troy asked him.
“Yeah,” the man said. He walked outside.
In a moment a door closed and a man could be heard moving toward the lobby. Jackson came through the doorway, hard eyed, big as a legend, neatly dressed in his dark corduroy coat and black-and-gray striped trousers tucked into black stovepipe boots. His Stetson rode the side of his head. He would never lose that masculine, battering-ram vigor, thought Troy. Men would always get out of his way. But there was an edge to him that was unfamiliar, a haggardness in his eyes. He crossed the small room to Troy and planted himself, stiff-mouthed and silent.
“We were going to have a talk last night,” Troy reminded him.
“Yes,” Jackson agreed. “But you saw fit to bushwhack my ramrod before I got there. I was going to look you up afterward, but Serena stopped me. If I’d found you, I’d have killed you.”
He meant it. The violence was still in him, but it had compressed to a bitter, controlled force.
“Because of Doyle?” Troy asked him. “I could have killed him. He knows that.”
“You had the drop on him. He was waiting for me when you jumped him.”
Peering deep into the tawny eyes, Troy said: “Croft told me it was you I was to meet. But I found Doyle there instead … with a gun in his hand.”
“No,” Jackson said. “Doyle’s gun was in his holster. Yours was in your hand. I wanted Doyle to hear what went on when we talked. I sent a man to find him, and he got there before I did. And you came Injuning along and jumped him. I’m moving Doyle to my ranch this morning. You can try to stop him if you want.”
“Out of town,” Troy said, “is a good place for Doyle. There aren’t so many corners for him to coyote around.” He eyed Jackson in slow speculation. At last he said: “Once I had a fight with Mike Saddler over you. I claimed, if we gave you time, we could work out a compromise. You see, I thought I was a pretty good judge of men. Was I that wrong about you?”
“You were if you thought you could chouse me around like a yearling calf,” Jackson said. “I offered a compromise and you didn’t take it.”
“A compromise that included starvation.”
Jackson glanced beyond him at the crowd of men on the boardwalk. He settled his Stetson. “Maybe you’ve got time to kill. I haven’t. The offer I made before is still good. But any deal we make now will start with your surrendering Gil Becket.”
“It’s no deal, then.”
“Adios,” Jackson said. He gave Troy a glance and a nod, tucked his hands in his pockets, and strolled from the lobby. There was something absolutely final about it. Jackson had taken a course involving murder and lynching. It was the course a desperate man set himself, not a confident one. But it was final.
XVIII
Last night they had left their horses at Francisco’s Livery Stable, across the alley from the hotel. Troy decided to make sure of horses for himself and Gil. He walked down the hall to the rear. In one of the rooms he could hear men talking—Tom Doyle and another man. He passed Serena’s room and wished he could talk to her, but she would want assurance that everything was going to work out fine, and how could he give her that?
As he stepped into the alley, he was touched by the old caution that had kept him alive in a dangerous trade. The cold lay heavily in the alley. He glanced each way before he crossed. Within the barn it seemed colder. Horses stood in the stalls, pulling down hay from slatted cribs. While he was looking at his own horse, Pete Smeaton, th
e stableman, came from a tack room. His real name was Stevenson Smeaton, but for some reason he liked the name of Pete.
“Leavin’?” he asked Troy. His eyes sharpened with interest. He was dying to ask about the shooting. Smeaton was a spare, sandy-haired man with long sideburns and a rapid manner of speech.
“Not yet.” He supposed Smeaton was reliable. Defiance men gave Francisco’s barn all their trade when they were in town. But this was a no-limit game. “Some of these horses need shoeing, Pete. Can you get to it this morning?”
“Which ones?”
He looked the horses over and told him which to shoe. “We’ll need them by three o’clock.”
A door banged across the alley. Ed Mattson, the hotelkeeper, put his head in the door. “Pete, get Miss Jackson’s buggy ready!”
“Keeps a man busy.” Pete sighed as Mattson vanished. He took a lead rope from a peg. Suddenly he grinned at Troy. “What about Doyle, Troy? How’d it go?”
Troy smiled. “Went fine.” He walked with him to the black crossbar buggy that belonged to the Jacksons. He had decided this was a sign either from Serena or the fates. He was supposed to wait.
“Did he throw down on you?” Smeaton asked eagerly.
“Pete, a man hardly knows what happened, after it’s over,” Troy told him.
Pete backed the buggy horse into the traces. “Well, I guess what I mean—”
“You mean,” Troy supplied, “am I faster than Tom Doyle? No. I was just readier.”
In a few minutes a girl’s voice called into the dusk of the barn: “Pete? I’m ready.”
“I’ll take it,” Troy said to the liveryman.
Pete opened the alley doors and he drove out. Serena stood in the thin winter light with a dark cape over her shoulders. Seeing Troy, she gasped. Then she smiled in quick pleasure and let Smeaton help her into the buggy. Troy spread the blanket over her lap and tucked it about her legs. Staring straight ahead, he said: “Where to, ma’am?”
“To … oh, anywhere, Troy, so we’re together.”
He decided to put the time doubly to use. There was a rear door to the church that passed through the back wall of the plaza. His plan was to go after Gil through that door tonight. He wanted to be sure of the ground first, since it would be dark when he brought the horses around.
As he drove, he reached over to take her hand. It felt small and cold.
“Do you know where I’d really like to go?” the girl said. “Away. To California. To Albuquerque. But away from here.”
“So would I,” Troy admitted.
“Then why don’t you?” she asked suddenly.
Troy shrugged. “Loyalty, I suppose.”
“To a man who murdered someone in a raid you didn’t approve of?”
“I was in on it, whether I approved or not. So I can’t quit
Gil now.”
He rounded a corner and they rolled down an aisle of chinaberry trees, their withered, dime-size leaves whirling into the air behind the buggy.
“Particularly,” Serena said thoughtfully, “when he has such a pretty sister. Did you have a pleasant evening with her?”
“McCard”—Troy sighed.—“has a busy mouth.”
“Owen told Father, and of course Father told me. But if it hadn’t been Owen, it would have been someone else. You can’t keep a secret like changing girls in a town this size.”
Troy stopped the buggy. Taking her by the shoulders, he made her face him. “I change horses,” he said. “I change my politics. But I don’t believe in changing girls when I’ve got a good one.”
Suddenly Serena pressed her face against his shoulder. “I’m losing you,” she whispered. “I’m losing you to her, and I don’t know why.”
“Serena, her brother’s in trouble. Isn’t it natural we should have been talking about it?”
“Did she send for you? Or did you go to her?”
Troy sighed. “She was waiting for me across from the Pima. She was worried about Gil.”
Serena’s head raised. “Then she’d heard Dad trying to make me tell where he was hidden.”
“She couldn’t help hearing. Naturally she was worried.”
And it was odd that this same fear had been with him since last night. He could not say why, but he was afraid that Jackson, the tension in Frontera—something would break Serena down and cause her to inform on Gil.
“I knew she was listening,” she said haughtily. “I told Dad to lower his voice, but it’s something he’s never learned. Sometimes I’m proud that he hasn’t. If he has something to say, he says it.”
“One way or another,” Troy said dryly.
“What do you mean? You mean Tom Doyle, don’t you?” she accused. “You think he was there to kill you.”
“Possible,” he said.
He swung the horses down the road following the back wall of the plaza, where two ruts had been cut by a generation of ox carts and wagons. Along this road he would ride one horse and lead Gil’s and an extra tonight.
Serena said: “Aren’t you afraid someone will see you here and guess where Gil is?”
He found himself unwilling to trust her with their plans. She had saved Gil, yet now he was afraid to trust her.
“I’m not going to stop,” he said. “I thought he might make a sign that he’s all right.”
They passed the door in the wall. Above, the belfry of the church mounted low and blocky as a watchtower. The boarded-up arches gave no indication that a man was hiding there. They passed, the buggy came to the far end of the wall, and Troy turned toward Front Street.
“You’ll try to get him out soon?” Serena asked.
“As soon as your father calls off his bird dogs.” When they reached the corner, he got out.
“Back streets,” she sighed. “How long will we be meeting on them, Troy?”
“Not much longer,” he promised.
She gazed at him with a faint smile. “McCard seemed to think you were kissing her.”
“McCard will have to be straightened out sometime,” Troy said brusquely.
She kept looking into his eyes. “But you did kiss her after he left. Do you know how I know? I heard her singing to herself when she came back to her room. For a woman who was worried about her brother, that was very odd behavior, wasn’t it?”
Troy said hopelessly: “I don’t know. Since it has something to do with women, I wouldn’t even guess.”
XIX
All morning Fran had stayed in her room. She was afraid to go to Gil, afraid not to. She had come fifteen hundred miles and seen him only for a few frightening hours. She had heard Serena Jackson talking with her father again this morning, and Jackson had been rough and cavalier with the girl. Troy thought she would hold out against him. Fran was certain she would not.
About noon she decided to look for Troy again. It embarrassed her to be following him about. She wished he would come looking for her. But since he hadn’t, she would have to go to him, because Gil must be moved. Then she heard men in the hallway. She stood perfectly still while they came to her door and halted, talking low. But a door across the hall opened and Jackson’s voice said gruffly: “Ready to travel, Tom?”
Doyle muttered something. “Come on, then,” Jackson told him. Then he spoke to someone else. “That’s her room yonder. You’d better produce, mister.”
Jackson and Doyle left. The other man walked slowly to Serena’s door and rapped. Fran heard the springs of Serena’s cot stir as she got up. After a moment of silence Serena said, “Dad?” and the door squeaked open. Fran heard Serena gasp. “You had no right coming without permission. Will you please take your foot away from the door?”
With a twist of humor in his voice Mike Saddler said: “What is this … a ladies’ dormitory? I’ve got permission, Miss Serena. Your daddy sent me.”
“That’s a li
e,” Serena said.
“No, ma’am. I’ll come in, if you don’t care.”
Fran stood in the middle of her room, wondering what she should do. She heard a sharp scuffle and the closing of the door. “Now,” Saddler was saying, “just settle down to listening to me. Do you own those Defiance Mountains notes?”
“Who told you I did?”
“Your father. Nate Croft and I bought in with him last night. Now we need the notes so we can go ahead with our plans.”
Serena gave a small laugh. “That is the most preposterous lie I ever heard. My father wouldn’t sell a square inch of Anvil to you. I thought you understood that the day he whipped you.”
“Yes, ma’am.” You could hear the grin in his voice. “But last night I whipped him. Talked Nate into either paying off all those notes you hold, so your father’d be blocked, or buying in with him and we’d all go ahead together. We let Jackson make his own pick. Here’s the paper he signed.”
There was a silence. When Serena spoke again her voice sounded weaker. “What if I refuse to sign the notes over to you?”
“Let’s not talk about refusing. Let’s talk about signing. Otherwise we’ll be talking about bankruptcy and a lot of other things neither of us would want to happen.”
“What other things?”
“Well, like lynching.”
Fran slumped onto the cot, staring at the wall.
“Where does lynching come into it?”
“It’s all sort of mixed up together.” A match scratched and gave its tiny sputter. Saddler sounded complacent. “You see, even after you give us the notes, you’ll still have to give us that murderer. Because Roth won’t cut trees while Becket’s running around loose. Bad example, you see. And we’ll get him. No doubt about it.”
“You were Gil’s friend,” Serena said huskily.
“I’m still his friend. If Roth takes him, he hangs from the ridgepole of a hay barn. If your daddy and I take him, he goes to jail. That puts a ring in Roth’s nose, so’s he has to fill the contract. And maybe Gil will get off with jail. So how about it?”
