“Red Hammill, who rides for Big Jim Bates. Ben Bowyer used to ride for Kegley, but he rides for Bates now. They ain’t tenderfeet.”
“No,” Bowdrie agreed, “Hammill rode in the Lincoln County War, and Bowyer’s from up in the Territory.”
Rip Coker threaded his way through the tables to where Bowdrie sat. “Watch your step, Ranger. There’s something cookin’, and my guess is it’s your scalp.”
“Thanks. Where do you stand?”
“I liked Lem. He staked me to grub when I first come to town.”
Without having any evidence, Bowdrie was almost positive Hammill and Bowyer had been involved in the hold-up. Both men were listed as wanted in the Rangers’ bible, both had been involved in such crimes before this. As wanted men they were subject to arrest in any event, but Bowdrie was concentrating on the present crime. Or crimes, for now another murder was involved.
There had been others. Was Coker one of them? He doubted it, because the man seemed sincere and also there had been obvious enmity between Coker and Singer, who had been involved.
Who was the man behind it? Who had planned and engineered the hold-up? He believed he knew, but was he right?
Bates opened the door and stepped into the room. His eyes found Bowdrie and he crossed the room to him.
“I guess my bank will hold together for a while. I am selling some cattle to Kegley, and that will tide me over.”
“You gettin’ a good price?”
Bates winced. “Not really. He was planning to stock blooded cattle, but he’s buyin’ mine instead. Sort of a favor.”
Chick Bowdrie got up suddenly. “Coker,” he whispered, “get Bates out of here, fast!”
He thought he had caught a signal from Hammill to Bowyer, and he was sure they planned to kill him tonight. There had been an appearance of planned movement in the way they came in, the seats they chose, the moves they made. He hoped his sudden move would force a change of plan or at least throw their present plans out of kilter.
“I’m hittin’ the hay,” he said to Coker, speaking loud enough to be heard. He started for the door.
He stepped through the swinging doors, turned toward the Rest, then circled out into the street beyond the light from the door and windows and flattened against the wall of the stage station.
Almost at once the doors spread and Red Hammill stepped out, followed by Bowyer. “Where’d he go?” Red spoke over his shoulder. “He sure ducked out of sight mighty quick!”
“Bates is still inside,” Bowyer said, “an’ Rip Coker is with him.”
“It’s that Ranger I want,” Hammill said. “I think he knew me. Maybe you, too. Let’s go up to the Rest.”
They started for the Rest, walking fast. Bowdrie sprinted across to the blacksmith shop. Hammill turned sharply, too late to detect the movement.
“You hear somethin’?” he asked Bowyer. “Sounded like somebody runnin’!”
“Lookin’ for me, Red?” Bowdrie asked.
Red Hammill was a man of action. His pistol flashed and a slug buried itself in the water trough. Bowdrie sprinted for the next building, and both men turned at the sound.
Chick yelled at them, “Come on, you two! Let’s step into the street and finish this!”
“Like that, is it?” The voice came from close on his right. Mig Barnes!
Bowdrie fired, heard a muffled curse, but it did not sound like a wounded man.
A movement from behind him turned his head. Now they had him boxed. But who was the other one? Was it Roway?
He backed against the wall. The door was locked. On tiptoes he made it to the edge of the building, holding to the deepest shadow. He saw a dim shape rise up and the gleam of a pistol barrel. Who the devil was that?
A new voice, muffled, spoke up. “You’re close, Tex! Give it to him!”
The shadow with the pistol raised up, the pistol lifting, and Bowdrie fired. “You’re on the wrong side, mister!” he said, and ducked down the alley between the buildings, circled the buildings on the run, and stepped to the street just as Bowyer, easily recognized from his build, started across it. His bullet knocked the man to his knees. Red Hammill fired in reply, and a shot burned close to Chick, who was flattened in a shallow doorway.
He started to move, and his toe touched something. A small chunk of wood. Picking it up, he tossed it against the wall of the livery stable. It landed with a thud, and three lances of flame darted. Instantly Chick fired, heard a grunt, then the sound of a falling body. A bullet stung his face with splinters and he dropped flat and wormed his way forward, then stopped, thumbed shells into his right-hand gun, and waited.
Tex was out of it, whoever he was. Bowyer had been hit, too. Chick thought he had hit Bowyer twice.
He waited, but there was no sound. He had an idea this was not to their taste, while street fighting was an old story to him. What he wished now was to know the origin of that muffled voice. There had been an effort to disguise the tone.
He was sure his guess was right. They intended to kill Bates, too. Maybe that was where …
He came to his feet and went into the saloon with a lunge. There was no shot.
The men in the room were flattened against the walls, apparently unaware of how little protection they offered. Bates, his red face gone pale, eyes wide, stood against the bar. Rip Coker stood in the corner not far away, a gun in his hand. Red Hammill stood just inside the back door and Mig Barnes was a dozen feet to the right of the door.
Why his dive into the room hadn’t started the shooting, he could not guess, unless it was the alert Coker standing ready with a gun.
Hammill and Barnes were men to be reckoned with, but where was Roway?
The back door opened suddenly and Jackson Kegley came in, taking a quick glance around the room.
“Bates!” Bowdrie directed. “Walk to the front door and don’t get in front of my gun. Quick!”
Hammill’s hand started, then froze. Bates stumbled from the room, and Bowdrie’s attention shifted to Kegley.
“Just the man we needed,” Bowdrie said. “You were the one who killed Lem Pullitt. You stood in an upstairs bedroom of the Rancher’s Rest and shot him when his back was to the window.”
“That’s a lie!”
“Why play games?” Mig Barnes said. “We got ’em dead to rights. Me, I want that long-jawed Coker myself.”
“You can have him!” Coker said, and Mig Barnes went for his gun.
In an instant the room was laced with a deadly crossfire of shooting. Rip Coker opened up with both guns and Chick Bowdrie let Hammill have his first shot, knocking the big redhead back against the bar.
Kegley was working his way along the wall, trying to get behind Bowdrie. As Hammill pushed himself away from the bar, Bowdrie fired into him twice. Switching to Kegley, he fired; then his gun clicked on an empty chamber. He dropped the gun into a holster and opened up with the left-hand gun.
Kegley fired and Bowdrie felt the shock of the bullet, but he was going in fast. He swung his right fist and knocked the bigger man to the floor. He fell to his knees, then staggered up as Kegley lunged to his feet, covered with blood. Bowdrie fired again and saw the big man slide down the wall to the floor.
Bowdrie’s knees were weak and he began to stagger, then fell over to the floor.
When he fought back to consciousness, Rip Coker was beside him. Rip had a red streak along the side of his face and there was blood on his shirt. Bates, Henry Plank, and Tom Roway were all there.
“We’ve been workin’ it out just like I think you had it figured,” Henry said. “Kegley wanted a loan and got Bates to have the money in the bank. He killed Lem, just like you said.
“Kegley wanted to break Bates. He wanted the bank himself, and Bates’s range as well. He planned to get Tom Roway in trouble so he could take over that ranch and run Bates’s cattle on it.
“Mig Barnes apparently sold out to Kegley, but Lem Pullitt guessed what was in Kegley’s mind, because he could see no reason Kegl
ey would need a loan. Kegley was afraid Lem would talk Bates out of loaning him the money. Kegley hated Lem because Lem was not afraid of him and was suspicious of his motives.”
“After you was out to my place,” Roway said, “I got to thinkin’. I’d seen Barnes ride off by himself a time or two and found where he’d been meetin’ Tex and Bowyer. I figured out what was goin’ on, so I mounted up an’ came on in.”
Coker helped Bowdrie to his feet. “You’re in bad shape, Bowdrie. You lost some blood and you’d best lay up for a couple of days.”
“Coker,” Bowdrie said, “you should be a Ranger. If ever a man was built for the job, you are!”
“I am a Ranger.” Coker chuckled, pleased with his comment. “Just from another company. I was trailin’ Red Hammill.”
Chick Bowdrie lay back on the bed and listened to the retreating footsteps of Coker, Plank, and Bates. He stared up at the ceiling, alone again. Seemed he was alone most of the time, but that was the way it had always been for him, since he was a youngster.
Now, if he could just find a place like Tom Roway had …
Bowdrie Rides a Coyote Trail
Only a moment before, Chick Bowdrie had been dozing in the saddle, weary from the long miles behind; then a sudden tensing of muscles of the hammerheaded roan brought him out of it.
Pulling the black flat-crowned hat lower over his eyes, he studied the terrain with the eyes of a man who looked that he might live. His legs, sensitive to every reaction of the horse he rode, had warned him. If he needed more, he had only to look at the roan’s ears, tipped forward now, and the flaring nostrils. Whatever it was, the roan did not like it.
Soft-footing it along the dusty trail, he approached the grove of trees with wary attention. He let his right hand drop back to loosen the thong that held his six-gun in place on the long rides. There was no change in expression on the dark, Apache-like face except that the scar under his right cheekbone seemed to deepen and his eyes grew more intent.
The trail he followed led along the base of a rocky ridge scattered with trees and boulders broken off from the crest of the ridge and toppled down the slope. The strawberry roan, stepping daintily, walked into the trees.
“Hold it, boy.” He spoke gently as he brought the horse to a stand. A few yards away lay the sprawled figure of a man.
He sat his horse, his eyes sweeping the area with the attention of one who knows he may have to testify in court and would certainly have to file an account of his discovery.
The man beside the trail was dead. No examination was required to demonstrate that. No man could take a bullet where he had taken this one without dying. Also, he was lying on his back with the sun in his eyes.
No tracks showed near the body except those of the dead man’s horse, which stood nearby. From the size of the hole in the dead man’s chest, the bullet had gone in from behind. Bowdrie turned in the saddle, measuring the distance, and his eyes found a large brush-covered boulder some fifty yards away.
The killer had not taken any chances. Chick still sat his horse. The killer had been smart to take no risks, as the man on the ground was no pilgrim. His was a good-looking face but one showing grim strength and the seasoning of many suns and the winds from long trails. He also wore two guns, and there were not many who did.
Bowdrie walked his horse closer, careful to disturb no tracks. He noted the chain loops hanging from the strap button of the dead man’s spurs, looking from them to the horse, taking in the ornate Santa Barbara bit and the elaborate hand-tooled tapaderos that hooded his stirrups.
“California,” Bowdrie said aloud. “He came a long way to get killed.”
Dismounting, he walked over to the horse. It shied a bit, but when he spoke it hesitated, then reached for him with its nose, cautious but friendly.
“Your rider,” Chick told himself, “must have been all right. You certainly haven’t been abused.”
He scratched the horse on the neck, his eyes taking in all the details. The rawhide riata suspended from a loop near the pommel attracted his attention.
“Eighty or eighty-five feet, I’ll bet! I’ve heard of ropes like that. California, you were a hand!”
Texas riders stuck to hair ropes thirty-five to forty feet long and they worked close to a steer before making a toss. It needed an artist to handle such a rope, but he had heard talk of the California vaqueros who used ropes this long.
Walking over to the dead man, he went through his pockets. Dust was heavy on the man’s clothing. He showed evidence, as did his horse, of riding far and fast. The horse was a tall black, heavier than most Texas cow horses, and was obviously well-bred and carefully trained. He was a horse who could stand long miles of hard riding, and by the looks of him he had done just that.
“Riding to see somebody,” Chick guessed, “because from the look of you, you never ran from anything.”
Making a neat pack of the man’s pocket belongings, Chick tucked them into a hip pocket. Then he took the dead man’s guns and hung them from his saddle horn.
The nearest town was too far away to carry a body, and there would be coyotes.
“I mean the four-legged kind.” Bowdrie, like many a long riding man, often talked to himself. “You’ve already run into the two-legged kind.”
He found a shallow place where the ground was not too hard, dug it out a little with a stick, and laid the body neatly in the trough he hollowed. Covering the rider’s face with his vest, Chick scraped dirt over him, caved more from the bank above, then piled on juniper boughs and rocks.
When he swung to the saddle again he was leading the black horse. Starting away, he took a route that led past the brush-covered boulder.
A minute and painstaking examination told him little. He was about to leave when he saw the place where the killer’s horse had been tethered. Something caught his eye and he studied the rough side of the rock, scowling thoughtfully.
The horse had waited for some time, judging by the hoof marks, and evidently had tried to scratch himself on the rock.
Bowdrie gathered several tiny fragments of wood from the rough surface. Dry and hard on one side, they were fresh and unweathered on the other. Carefully he picked off several of the bits of wood, scarcely more than shreds, and put them in a cigarette paper.
Hours later, when the shadows reached out over the little town of Hacker, Chick Bowdrie ambled the roan down the town’s dusty main street to the livery stable. The black trotted behind.
Sitting in a chair tipped back against the outer wall of a saloon was a man who watched his arrival with some attention. As Bowdrie pulled up at the livery stable the man turned his head and apparently spoke to someone inside. A moment later the doors pushed wide and a man in a white hat stepped out and looked to where Bowdrie was stepping down from his horse.
Stabling the horses, Chick rubbed them down with care, fed and watered them himself. A stable-hand, chewing methodically, strolled over and watched without comment.
“Come far?” he asked, finally.
“Quite a piece. What’s doin’ around town?”
“Nothin’ much.” The hostler looked at Chick’s lean, hard face and the two guns. “Huntin’ a job?”
“Could be.”
“Herman an’ Howells are hirin’. If a man’s handy with a six-shooter it won’t hurt none.”
“There’s two sides to a fight. What about the other?”
“Jack Darcy. Pitchfork outfit. Young sprout, but he ain’t hirin’ gunhands. He’s got no money.”
The stable-hand’s eyes went to the black. “You usually carry two horses?”
“It’s handy sometimes.” Chick straightened and his black eyes looked into the stable-hand’s blue eyes. “You askin’ for yourself or gettin’ news for somebody?”
“Just askin’.” He indicated the black horse. “You look to be a Texas man but that ain’t no Texas outfit.”
Chick smiled. “That’ll give you something to keep you from sleepin’ too sound. Somethin’ to
think about, Rainy.”
Astonished, the stable-hand stared at him. “How’d you know my name?”
“Pays a man to keep his eyes open, Rainy,” Chick replied. “When I rode up, you were diggin’ tobacco out of your pouch. Your name’s burned on it.”
The stable-hand was embarrassed. “Why, sure! I forget sometimes it’s there.”
Bowdrie walked up the street, estimating the town. Quiet, weather-beaten, and wind-blasted, a few horses at the hitching rails, a stray dog or two, and a half-dozen saloons, a few stores. Only the saloons, a café, and the hotel showed lights in a town deceptively dead. He had seen many such towns before. A wrong word and they could explode into action.
The killing on the trail and the fact that at least one outfit was hiring gunhands meant there was more than was easily visible.
After booking a room at the two-story frame hotel, he went to the café. Ordering, he sat at a long wooden table and ate in silence. The slatternly woman who served him manifested no interest in the silent, leather-faced young man with the twin guns. She had seen them come and go and helped prepare a few for burial after they were gone.
He ate thoughtfully, turning over in his mind the problem that brought him here. Somewhere in the town of Hacker was a cow-stealing killer known as Carl Dyson. He was wanted in Texas for murder. Chick Bowdrie had been working out the man’s carefully concealed trail for nearly a month.
He was sitting over his coffee when Rainy came in, slumping into a seat across the table. He had no more expression than Bowdrie. Picking up the pot, he poured a cup of coffee, black and strong.
“Couple of gents lookin’ your gear over,” he said without looking up. “Figured you might like to know. One of them is Russ Peters, a gunhand for the H&H outfit. The other was Murray Roberts, who ramrods for the H&H.”
“Thanks.” Chick pushed back from the table. “Where do they hang out?”
“Wagon Wheel Saloon, mostly. A couple of sidewinders, mister. Better watch yourself.” Rainy’s range-wise eyes dropped to the guns in their worn holsters as the stranger went out the door. “Or,” he added, “maybe they’d better watch out!”
The Chick Bowdrie Short Stories Bundle Page 4
