Dead Man’s Cañon

by Paine, Lauran; Burns, Traber;

  Claude’s bushy brows lifted, his eyes puckered. “Bríon …?”

  Clayton shrugged. “I don’t know who else, do you?”

  Claude turned without answering, gazed back where men were beginning to cluster around the dead man out in the roadway, then let all his pent up breath out in a long sigh. “No,” he said, “I don’t know who else’d be behind it.” He lifted his shoulders. “All right, son, let’s go get the other three.”

  They started across the roadway on a diagonal course heading toward the Oasis. People watched, drawing back, from the looks on their faces. There was a lot of bafflement in Springville about events lately, but one thing was clear enough—Clayton and Sheriff Rainey had that look on their faces, so now wouldn’t be a very good time to accost either of them for answers to questions.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Jack Mather was waiting in his doorway with a cluster of local range men and townsmen around him. “They’re gone,” gasped Jack, still badly shaken by what had come within a hair’s breadth of being the end of Claude Rainey. “When one of ’em saw Arch kill their friend out there in the roadway, he run over, said something, and the three of ’em ran out my back door into the alleyway.”

  Claude went through to look, but there was no sign of anyone out back. When he returned, Arch was waiting for him at the bar, grim-lipped and bleak-looking. Cowmen were pushing up all around, but Arch was ignoring them.

  Old Newt Douglas came walking in looking smoky-eyed and high-headed. When he spotted Claude and Arch, he strode on over, slapped his hat down atop the bar, and growled at Mather for drinks. Douglas then turned, looked down his long nose in a sternly reproving manner at the men clustering around, and when these began to wander off, Newt said, “I don’t understand, Claude, why you?”

  “That’s not so hard to understand,” stated Clayton. “With the law out of the way, Bríon’s new variety of killers would pretty much have things their own way in Springville. But they aren’t after the sheriff.”

  Claude nodded without commenting, and when his drink came, he dropped it straight down and thumped the bar with the empty glass for a refill. Finally he said, “Arch, let’s take a walk down and look in that blasted hole we dug last night.”

  Arch was surprised. “What for?”

  Claude shrugged and turned to go. Clayton at once also departed, and moments later, not comprehending exactly, Newt Douglas ambled along in their wake with three of his hard-eyed range riders.

  When they reached that place in the road where the killing had occurred not long before, the body was gone, and shortly thereafter, passing Barney Whitsun’s front door, the physician they’d taken Newt Douglas’ men to the previous night after the fight at the lower end of town, stepped forth and nearly collided with Sheriff Rainey.

  The doctor recovered at once, eyed Claude with total equanimity, and held up a package he was carrying. “Formaldehyde,” he said dryly. “Do you want the dead Mexicans embalmed, too, Sheriff? The cost will be an extra two dollars per corpse.”

  Claude glared, stepped around and went on again. Near the lower end of town, he said under his breath, “Someday I’m going to punch him right on the nose. He always acts like I make these things happen.”

  They also found that the dead vaqueros had been carted off, which was evidently what had prompted the physician’s gallows humor.

  Inside the old jacal they went up to the excavation and looked in. While they were at it, the liveryman strolled over to look with astonishment at the neat hole and scratch his head as he said, “It sort of got my curiosity up, seeing folks slipping in and out over here so I figured I’d have a look for myself. Sheriff, for a grave it’s near deep enough, but ain’t it a mite short?”

  Claude looked at Arch Clayton. “This is how lies get spread,” he said, and turned away without explaining, went back to the doorway, and faced the room from there, fixing the puzzled liveryman with a cold and piercing look.

  “Who else was over here today?” he growled.

  “Well, I dunno exactly,” came the liveryman’s reply. “It was just some fellers on horseback. They went poking and looking into five or six of these old mud houses, then when they come to this one, they spent a little more time here than at the other places. Then they mounted up and rode off again.”

  “How many?” asked Claude.

  “Four, Sheriff. Strangers to me. Tough-looking crew, too, if you was to ask.”

  “And after they left here, they rode north up the roadway toward Jack’s saloon?”

  The liveryman nodded, cast another puzzled look down into what he thought was a mighty short grave, and wandered back outside, heading toward his place of business.

  Clayton, strolling outside, too, said, “Well, there are only three of them now, Sheriff, but I reckon there wouldn’t even have to be that many, would there?”

  “Nope, son, there sure wouldn’t. It’d only take one man to head out where Bríon’s hiding and tell him there’s a hole in the floor of this jacal.”

  “And,” said Newton Douglas, joining the other two outside, “the fireworks will start.”

  They went back up toward the café. Men, and women also, turned to gaze after them as they strode past. That made Claude vinegary again. He said to Arch Clayton, “Son, you’re going to be famous as the man who killed a gunfighter to save my life.”

  “He’ll be doing right good, Claude,” put in Douglas, “if he manages to save his own life, after this.” When the other two halted outside the café, Douglas shook his head and said, “I’ll be up at the Oasis when you’re finished. I’ll pass the word we might have visitors tonight. All right, Claude?”

  “Good idea, Newt.”

  Archer Clayton and the sheriff ate in dogged silence. There were only two other patrons in the place, and they were at tables across the room nowhere near the counter, so Claude could speak normally when he said, “He can’t try that again and he knows it. That doesn’t leave him a whale of a lot of room for maneuvering.”

  Clayton thought otherwise. “It leaves him plenty of ground, Sheriff, and for ambushing folks right in town, he’s got the best friend of all. It’ll be dark directly.”

  They left the café, went down to see how the prisoner was making out, and found the Mexican sitting like an Indian, both legs crossed under him, on his wall bunk. He was briefly impassive and silent, but when the gringos turned their backs on him he arose, leaned upon the bars, and asked in a quietly dignified and diffident way what had happened when he’d heard gunshots a while back.

  “Your boss lost another gunfighter,” said Claude gruffly. “Only this time he wasn’t a Mex, he was a border gunman from our side of the line. That satisfy you, amigo?”

  The Mexican broadly grinned. “It satisfies me very much,” he said in Spanish. “But I think, jefe, you can’t kill them all, and he will keep on sending them until sooner or later …”

  “Yeah,” growled Claude. “Go back to sleep, Pancho.”

  They had a smoke, privately reflecting upon what the prisoner had just said. He was perfectly right; sooner or later, since Claude, even with Arch Clayton’s help, couldn’t shoot them down as fast as Fernando Bríon could hire them and send them into Springville to get the sheriff, there was going to be a vacancy in the legal department of Apache County.

  Claude fished out the US deputy marshal’s badge Arch had left with him earlier, and tossed it over to the younger man. “Wear it or pocket it,” he said. “It won’t make much difference. Bríon knows you well enough by sight, and that badge isn’t going to make him harder to live with or easier, either, for that matter, where you’re concerned.”

  Barney Whitsun walked in with sweat dripping and with his holstered six-gun belted low. “The fellers are wondering,” he said to Claude Rainey. “What do we do now … just wait?”

  Claude gazed upon the merchant with softening features. “
I reckon that’s about the size of it, Barney. You want to remember that if we boil out of town, even with thirty or forty men, we probably wouldn’t see anything but their dust, and we just might be doing exactly what he’s hoping we’ll do, so he can storm into Springville, shoot every fourth or fifth person, dynamite your safe, and make off with the cache.”

  Whitsun took it differently when Sheriff Rainey laid it out cold for him like that, than either Claude or Arch would have thought. He merely signified understanding with one birdlike inclination of his head, then started out as he said, “We’ll be up there waiting. Newt’s keeping his men in town and Jack’s rounding up a few more willing souls because we figured it out. Bríon’s still got about fifteen of his Mexicans, as well as them three gunslingers, and that makes a right sizable army for these parts.”

  Arch grinned when Barney was gone. Claude came very close to grinning back. He thumbed back his hat and said, “Not the bravest in the world, but brave enough.”

  Arch thought a moment, then said, “It’s a solid town, Sheriff. Solid enough folks. That ten thousand lying over there in his safe, Sheriff, I’ll donate. It cost the best friend a man ever had in his life. Whatever you do with it, do it in my partner’s name. All right?”

  Claude said that was fine with him. He then explained about the white-painted schoolhouse he’d had in the back of his mind, and all the while the black, fatalistic eyes of their Mexican prisoner looked out at them. Finally the Mexican said, “Señores, I would like the answer to only one question … do you hang me or shoot me?”

  Claude turned, stonily regarded the prisoner for a moment before answering, then said, “Not enough evidence against you, paisano, to do either, I reckon. But unless you’re almighty lucky, you’ll sure be gray as a badger before you get out of prison. This isn’t Mexico. We don’t make you turn your back then blow the top out of your skull.”

  The prisoner said without so much as the flicker of an eyelash, “Gracias … thank you … señores. There are many times in a man’s life when he is ashamed of himself. For me, this is one of them. I have been in here thinking. It is not very often a man’s solitary memories make him like himself any the better. Today and last night I don’t like myself at all.”

  “What’s this all about?” asked Arch Clayton. “You a preacher of some kind down around Rosario?”

  The Mexican looked momentarily astonished, then he broke into a huge grin of appreciation of some vastly private joke. “Far from that, caballeros,” he retorted in soft Spanish. “I have been many things, mostly a guerilla soldier for my patrón, but there are two things I’ve never been: a priest or a murderer.”

  “That might help a little at your trial,” said Claude, and started to turn his back. The Mexican began speaking again, to hold Sheriff Rainey’s attention.

  “Don Fernando will attack this town, señor.”

  “How do you know that?” Claude demanded.

  “Señor, I know my patrón. I’ve been with him in a hundred raids. I know how he thinks and what he is waiting for right this minute. True, he will hire gringos pistoleros such as the one you killed outside this afternoon, but that will only be to while away the time in small things to keep busy. He will sit out there in his camp and send Mexican vaqueros back down by Rosario to round up all his retainers. Then he will come into your town like a scourge … like a whirlwind … Señor Jefe. He will kill and burn and pillage. And believe me for what I say is the very truth, señores … he will get that gold.”

  Very gradually Claude eased back in his chair, staring hard over at his prisoner. He didn’t say a word for a long while, but eventually, as Arch Clayton stood up and gazed out into the shadowy roadway, mantled now by the shades of dusk, he said, speaking Spanish as the prisoner had also done, “We’ll see, vaquero, we will see how your fine Don Fernando Bríon comes out, if he tries that. This is Springville, not Rosario or some other Mexican village.”

  The prisoner shrugged. “A man can only do so much from behind bars, jefe. I have warned you. It is all I can do for you.” He turned, went back to his bunk, and sat down again.

  Clayton stood in the doorway, looking thoughtful. Up the road near the Oasis some riders were dismounting out in the roadway. At the opposite end of town, the liveryman was standing on a rickety box, touching fire to the wicks in his door-side lamps. Otherwise, Springville was readying itself for the end of another day. “Sheriff,” Clayton said without looking around into the office, “he’s had since yesterday, providing he really did send south for more vaqueros. And providing they’ll come … which I reckon they will, if he hints at a bonus in gold … they ought to be heading right up Dead Man’s Cañon about now.”

  “Providing,” growled Sheriff Rainey, getting to his feet, giving his hat brim a hard tug downward, “he’s ready, he just might attack tonight, is that what you’re saying?”

  “That’s it, Sheriff, in a nutshell.”

  Rainey walked out, locked his jailhouse door from the outside, and considered the empty, quiet roadway all around. “Suppertime,” he murmured. “I wish I was standing here tomorrow night instead of tonight, Archer. Then I’d know I’d have lived through it. Well, hell, let’s amble on up to the Oasis, hoist a couple, and spread the glad tidings. Nothing like glad tidings to keep fellows wide-awake on a night like this one’s going to be.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  Claude had an idea and acted upon it without consulting Clayton or anyone else, as was his natural way. He sent one of Newt Douglas’ men southeastward over to the heights looking down into Dead Man’s Cañon, with instructions to spy on anyone over there, but not to let them see him, and under no circumstances to try and wage any one-man war.

  After that he told the hushed men in Mather’s saloon what he thought might happen this night. He also told them why he considered it likely.

  “That Mex prisoner we’ve got is having little prickles of conscience for some reason, maybe because I told him he’d be tried in court instead of taken out in the alley and shot, the way he’d have done to any of us if positions were reversed. Anyway, he says Bríon’ll attack Springville as soon as his cowboys show up, and I’d say we’d be foolish not to take heed.”

  Barney Whitsun, sitting at a table, squirmed on his chair. He perhaps had most to lose if a real fight developed—not just his life, but his inventory as well. But Barney said nothing.

  There were fifteen of them, mostly range men, but with a few townsmen, too, like Barney and Mather and Hank Smith, the horseshoer. They had drinks and talked among themselves, now and then calling a question over to Claude or Arch Clayton who stood at the bar glumly with Newton Douglas. There was plenty of resolve, particularly in the range men whose very existence was built around crises and violence.

  Newt’s cowboy didn’t return to town until well after dark. His news was electrifying, and again the Oasis, usually both noisy and full of shifting movement, turned very still and very silent.

  “They wasn’t in the cañon,” related the spy. “They was out of it to the northwest. But all the same that’s the way they come, right up Dead Man’s Cañon.”

  “How many?” asked the cowboy’s employer.

  “Fair sized mob of ’em, Newt. I’d guess ’em to number maybe twenty men.”

  “Was Bríon with ’em?”

  “Not that I could see, and I particular watched for that fancy saddle of his. Nope, these were fresh ones, all Mexicans, all rigged out for war. They even had a couple scouts out front. ’Course. I come in behind ’em.”

  For ten seconds no one said anything. Mather set up a free drink for the scout and leaned heavily across his bar, eyeing Claude Rainey. “Twenty more,” he murmured in that deep-down voice of his. “Claude, by my calculations that gives Bríon just about forty men, counting his Yankee gunslingers.”

  “I can add,” growled the sheriff, and faced the room. “We’re going to need twice as many men
as we’ve got,” he told the others in a strong voice. “I don’t figure there’d be much sense in trying to raise that many from the outlying ranches. Sending maybe five or ten of you out to fetch ’em to town would only weaken us here, and in the meantime, while you boys were gone, Bríon might come. So, we’ll have to round ’em up right here in town.” He gestured toward the door. “Spread out, boys, see what you can come up with. Get ’em from their supper tables or out of bed, but get ’em!”

  Barney Whitsun added his two bits worth to that. “You can tell them this here is their town, too. If those Mexicans take this place, their women and kids’ll suffer, and more’n likely they’ll have their houses and stores burned down around ’em.”

  There was a raw, grating sound as men pushed back chairs to arise and wordlessly, gravely stamp on out of the saloon. Only three or four remained. Claude rapped the bar top and Jack went for a bottle and some glasses that he set up where Newt, Arch, and Claude Rainey were standing. He poured them all drinks and then one for himself. He half lifted his glass and said, “Here’s to hell, boys, may the stay there be as pleasant as the way there.”

  No one smiled.

  Newton Douglas asked what Claude was thinking, and the lawman gave his answer bluntly. “If we had enough men to run that devil down, I’d be for hitting him before he hit us. I’d a sight rather peck at him beyond Springville than let him get in among the buildings and maybe set a fire.”

  Clayton and Douglas thought on that. Eventually Clayton said, “He won’t figure there are more than maybe fifteen of us, Claude, so if we detached maybe ten men to make it look like they were a posse out hunting him …”

  “You can’t hoodwink that one,” muttered Rainey. “He’d bypass the decoys and still hit the town.”

  “Agreed,” exclaimed Arch calmly. “That’s exactly the point. The rest of us would be watching for him, and waiting, with guns and plenty of shells.” Clayton paused to lend emphasis to his final sentence. “Stop him cold before he reached town, out on the range.”