Chilton nodded. “And what excuse will I give? The son of the man who robbed her family?”
“Just that. You want to atone for what your father did. He was returning to help her; you want to carry on. She’ll listen.” He hesitated, trying his coffee. “Can you use a gun?”
“I have one. A thirty-two Smith & Wesson.” That explained the ammunition.
Bowdrie nodded. “It’s small, but it will have to do. Don’t use it unless you have to.” He explained about Yates, who and what he was. Chilton nodded, offering no comment. In their conversation Chilton had been able to tell him very little, but Bowdrie sat alone over his coffee in the now silent town and pieced that little together with what he knew.
The searchers, old Dan had told his son, had all looked in the Chisos Mountains, and that was the wrong place. This narrowed the distance by more than half. The old trail led from Oak Spring at the foot of the mountains to the Rock Hut at the base of Burro Mesa. I’ll lay two to one it wasn’t cached far from that Rock Hut, he told himself. One thing he decided. If, as he believed, the presence of Chilton at the RM would keep Rad Yates around Rose’s ranch, it would leave him free to hunt down Andy Short. For he no longer had any idea of waiting to be shot at. Now he was going to hunt the hunter.
Finishing his coffee, he got up and walked to the door. Pedro and his spouse had long since retired, so he merely blew out the light and turned the knob. For several minutes he waited, listening to the night sounds in the empty street of Valverde. A sign creaked rustily in the vague wind. A paper brushed along the street. All was still.
Suddenly a horseman appeared at the end of the street and started forward, coming along toward the saloon. Bowdrie stepped through the door and eased it shut behind him. Then he shifted away from the door and stood flat against the building.
The rider reached the marshal’s office near the saloon and drew up. His saddle creaked as he swung down. Chick strained his eyes in the dim light and could see only that this was a big man, vaguely familiar. Taking a careful look around, the man eased his gun in his holster and moved forward, and suddenly Chick knew him. It was the big cowhand from the Bar W! Frowning, Chick waited. This … it simply did not fit. Unless the man had discovered something. Opposite the door of the marshal’s office, the big man paused. The man was in the darker shadow now, away from the gray of the street, and Chick only knew he was there, he could see nothing. A flicker of movement drew Bowdrie’s eyes and suddenly he realized there was another person-man or woman-in the space between the saloon and the office.
Chick Bowdrie, suddenly comprehending, stepped out of the shadow and started forward. Even as he moved he saw the big man, warned by some vague sound, grab frantically for his gun. Another gun boomed heavily between the buildings and the big man staggered, then fell back off the boardwalk. He tried to get up, and a shot nailed him to the spot. Chick tried a fast shot at the darkness whence the gun flashes had come, and a return shot whipped past his face.
Running, he dashed forward, hearing a door slam open and a shouted question. He reached the alleyway and plunged recklessly into it. At the far end of the dark alley a horse and rider lunged suddenly, running away behind the buildings. When Chick reached the spot, the rider was gone … out of sight. Only a drum of running hooves fading in the night.
Breathing hard, he walked back. It was utterly impossible, yet the gunman had somehow outdistanced him. He turned again, looking down the long alley. Rad Yates? It simply could not have been Andy Short. No man of the age he had to be could sprint sixty feet while Chick Bowdrie was covering less than thirty. And yet the man was gone.
Several men were gathered around the body and one had lighted a match to examine him. Pedro came from the back door of the restaurant, stuffing his shirt into too tight jeans. Closer by, Houdon came from his office, buckling his belt. Without doubt the big cowhand had learned something, and he had come to town with it. Someone had followed him, not wanting him alive to repeat what he knew.
Easing away from the circle of talkers around the body, Chick walked back through the alley to where he had seen the horse. Distance was hard to estimate, and the horse might have been right behind the saloon. Yet when he reached the spot, two struck matches revealed nothing.
Not far away was a huge cottonwood, and near it, several smaller trees. It was the logical place. Here Chick found more hoof tracks than he had expected. He also found five cigarette butts. Here a man had waited, at least an hour … for what? This man was here before the big cowhand arrived in town. He must have been here most of the time Chick was in the restaurant. Could he have followed him there? But that did not make sense, because from under the trees the watcher could not have seen the cafe. What, then, had he waited for? And the tracks were those of a horse with shoes worn on the outside.
Houdon was waiting for him when he walked back to the street. The body of the man had been moved. The marshal jerked his head toward the street. “What did Jake want at this time of night?”
Houdon was unshaven and he looked tired and irritable. He stared at Chick and absently scratched his stomach. Briefly, Bowdrie outlined the situation, identifying himself to the marshal for the first time. Nothing seemed to arouse the marshal until Bowdrie mentioned the man who had lurked under the cottonwoods.
“Somebody else,” he said, nodding his big head ponderously. “After me, I betcha. Man makes enemies in this here job.” He looked shrewdly at Bowdrie. “Folks sometimes don’t take kindly to the law.”
“I think,” Chick suggested, “it was Andy Short.”
The scratching fingers paused momentarily. Other than this there was no reaction. Houdon shrugged. “Ain’t from around here, I reckon. You see him, you let me know.”
At daylight Bowdrie was getting a quick cup of coffee and some breakfast at Pedro’s. The fat Mexican leaned his big elbows on the oilcloth-covered table. “You savvy Burro Mesa?” he asked suddenly.
Startled, Bowdrie looked up. Pedro glanced around, yawned widely, and put a stubby finger on a spot on the oilcloth. “Here,” he said, “is the Rock Hut. And here is the trail across the mesa. On the west side is another spring. My compadre, he ride in last night. He say a man camps in the brush near that spring.”
It was high noon when Bowdrie rode the hammerheaded roan into the scrub near Oak Spring. Burro Mesa loomed on the skyline only a short distance ahead. The morning ride had been a long one and both horse and man were tired. Well back in the brush, Bowdrie made a fire of dry sticks that gave off no smoke, and prepared a meal of coffee, bacon, and sourdough flapjacks. He stretched out after eating and lighted a smoke. Above him a pin oak was shelter from the blazing sun. Half-asleep and completely relaxed, some half hour later, he heard a horse approaching.
Instantly he was alert. His hand touched the roan and the horse relaxed slowly. He waited, listening. The horse was coming through the pass from the Chisos. It slowed … a saddle creaked … with a warning signal to the roan, Chick eased himself forward on cat feet. The horse was drinking at the spring, and as he watched, the rider got up from the ground. It was Rose Murray. She wiped the water from her mouth and looked carefully around. What was she doing here? And where were Yates and Chilton? He watched her step into the leather and turn west, then mounted his own horse. Was she involved in the plotting? Or had she come upon some clue? Holding a course that kept him inside the brush, he worked his way along the mountainside in the direction Rose had chosen.
Suddenly he drew up. A horse with shoes badly worn on the outside had come off the mesa from the west. A blade of grass in one of the hoofprints was just springing into place. This could be the mysterious camper in the brush of whom Pedro had told him. Chick Bowdrie followed on, but slowly. He had good reason to know the skill and trickiness of Andy Short. The quiet, gray-faced man in the nondescript clothes, described to him by the hostler, but whom he had never seen.
That the man was a gunman, Bowdrie knew from the Rangers’ Bible-his agency’s file of outlaws. At the edg
e of the pin oaks he drew up, scanned the empty country before him, then moved ahead, alert for trouble. His eyes roved, and suddenly held. The Rock Hut. And two horses standing near a mesquite tree. One was the horse Rose had ridden. The other was the horse he had seen once before, the horse of the mysterious rider. He waited, studying the lay of the land. There was a door, obviously, from the path, leading from the front of the building toward where the horses stood. There was no window on this side, but there was a window behind. A small window.
Swinging down, he moved carefully, closing in. From the window came half-heard voices. “So, you trailed young Radcliff. What a joke! He’s back at your place taking care of Chilton’s greenhorn son.”
The girl spoke, too softly.
“You just sit there, Missy. We’ll figure out …” The man’s voice dissolved into a murmur. Chick started to move closer, then he dropped to his haunches behind a boulder and some brush. A hard-ridden horse was coming down the trail. It was Rad Yates.
Chick moved away then stepped out from the brush as Yates slid his horse to a stop. His face was a study in cold fury. Bowdrie knew how tricky the situation was. “Rad.” He spoke quietly, striving to keep his voice casual and calm on the other man. “Whatever you’re figurin’ on, don’t do it.”
Yates’s head snapped around. Before Rad could speak, he continued, “Think now! You’re clean. Nobody has anything on you. We have plenty on Short. Why butt into something where you’re not wanted? Turn around and ride out of here a free man. Stay, and you become an outlaw.”
The view was so eminently reasonable that Rad Yates hesitated. What Bowdrie said was true. He was still on the right side of the law. If he went ahead, there would be no return trail. But the lure of the gold was strong. “No.” He spoke slowly. “I’ve come too far-waited too long.”
He swung to the ground. As he turned he drew. Whatever he planned failed to materialize. In the instant he swung down, Bowdrie had closed in. As Rad turned, his gun coming up, Bowdrie slapped the gun aside and down and hit him on the chin. It was a short, wicked blow. Yates tottered and stumbled against his horse, the startled bronc moved, and Yates lost his balance and fell. As he hit ground, Bowdrie kicked the gun from his hand. Yates came up fast and Bowdrie was too close to chance a draw. But Yates’s rising lunge met the battering ram of Bowdrie’s rock-hard fist and the bone in Yates’s nose crushed under the impact, showering him with blood. The man was game, and shaking his head, he got up. Bowdrie let him rise, taking time for one quick glance toward the Rock Hut. No sign of life there at all. The idea of Short discovering them frightened him and he stepped in quickly.
For all his size, Rad was no fistfighter. He threw a long swing and Bowdrie went inside with a wicked right to the chin that dropped Yates. Grabbing the man’s gun and taking his rifle, he threw them, whirling, high over the brush. Then he ran for the Hut. He was running on soft ground and he heard voices, then stopped. “How come you knowed about this place?”
“I heard you tell Rad you’d meet him here today. Then I realized this might be the place.” Chick heard the chink of metal on metal. “You’re hard luck, kid, you shouldn’t have come here.” Andy Short came through the door, his hands and pant legs dusted with dirt, dragging a sack. His eyes went wide and he swung up the gun he carried in his right hand, and fired. The shot was too quick, a startled response to the unexpected sight of the Ranger. It missed.
Chick Bowdrie palmed his Colt and fired, but Short had dropped low and the bullet took him through the shoulder. It knocked him around and his second shot missed, and then Bowdrie put two fast bullets into him. Bowdrie stepped back, his dark, Apache-like face grim and lonely. He began to shove out the shells for reloading when from behind him he heard Yates’s voice. But it was a warning, not a threat.
“Bowdrie! Look out!” Chick turned … another rider sat his horse, and he held a four-shot Roper revolving shotgun in his hands. It was Houdon, the marshal. Bowdrie could see Yates, blood still streaming from his nose, and Yates had another cut now-on his skull. But he was not out. Houdon’s face was grizzled and old, his jowls heavy, his small eyes no longer looked dopey or sullen. Now they held amusement, and cunning.
“Killed Andy, did you? Can’t say I’m sorry. Andy there could be right slick with a gun.”
Bowdrie watched the man carefully. Slowly, things began to fit together. “You’re the sixth man,” he said suddenly. “You’re the last survivor of the Chilton gang.”
Houdon did not change expression for a moment, then he chuckled. It was a slow, fat, easy chuckle. “Yep, an’ I’m the one killed Dan. It wasn’t Andy, like you prob’ly figured. I took Andy’s horse from the livery, knowin’ a body could track them shoes. I think that might’ve turned him against me, what d’you think?”
“You were all trying to find the treasure?”
“We were gonna be partners. But now … well, the deal’s off. Knowed I had to move quick when you told me Andy had been layin’ for me back o’ the saloon. “I killed that cowpoke, too. Heard he was huntin’ around up here.”
Bowdrie was thinking. He held his six-shooter and it was still partly loaded. Did Houdon know that? Or did he think because he had pushed out two shells that the gun was empty? But where were the loads? For the life of him, he could not recall. There should be one empty under the hammer, but was it there, or just above the loading gate?
“How’d you get away? I ran right into that alley,” he asked.
Houdon chuckled. “The office is raised up, maybe two feet off the ground. I went under it, up into the trapdoor. I made that so’s I could sweep right out and not have to use no dustpan. Pays to be a lazy bachelor, sometimes.” He nodded at the gold. “Old Dan never guessed when we made that strike at the RM that I’d wind up with it all. He sure didn’t.”
This was the last of the outlaws-what had his name been? Hopper? He had murdered Chilton in cold blood. Had killed two in gunfights, but he was a sure-thing killer, the kind who never gave anyone a break.
Chick Bowdrie smiled suddenly. He was a Ranger and this was his job. He felt the skin drawing tight over his wide cheekbones. He lifted his left hand and moved his hat back on his head. “You know, Hop, I think-“ He threw himself in a wild lunge, low down and straight at the horse!
The startled bronc gave a leap, snorting. The shotgun blasted and dust kicked into Chick’s face. Then he came up to his knees as Houdon fought the frightened horse and swung up his gun. Houdon saw it coming, and left the saddle in a leap of agility surprising in a man of his years. He hit the ground in a crouch and triggered the shotgun, but the muzzle was high and the charge of shot blasted by, high and to the right. Bowdrie’s gun clicked on an empty chamber, then fired, then he threw himself into a roll, came up, and fired again.
Houdon took the shot right along the top of the shotgun. Smashing into his chest. He tried to come up, gasping, and Bowdrie shot into him again. He fell, staring for one awful instant into Bowdrie’s face, and then lay stretched out, choking horribly, his fingers working. Chick Bowdrie turned away and walked to Rose. She stood in the Rock Hut door, her face in her hands. He looked over his shoulder at Rad Yates.
“Can you ride?” Yates got slowly to his feet. His nose was smashed, and the cut on his head still bled.
“I can ride.”
“Then get on your horse and get out of here. Don’t stop until you’re somewhere else.” Rad Yates wiped blood from his face. He started for his horse, then halted. “That Chilton kid … you’ll find him in the smokehouse with a headache. He wasn’t man enough for the job.”
“Beat it,” Bowdrie said. Rad Yates walked his horse away, and after a minute Chick told Rose, “Get your horse. I’ll load up the gold, then follow.”
“There’s blood on it,” she said, dazed.
“Yeah”-Bowdrie’s voice was dry-“but it’ll buy cows.”
KEEP TRAVELIN’, RIDER
When Tack Gentry sighted the weather-beaten buildings of the G Bar, he touched spurs to the buc
kskin and the horse broke into a fast canter that carried the cowhand down the trail and around into the ranch yard. He swung down.
“Hey!” he yelled happily, grinning. “Is that all the welcome I get?”
The door pushed open and a man stepped out on the worn porch. The man had a stubble of beard and a drooping mustache. His blue eyes were small and narrow. “Who are yuh?” he demanded. “And what do yuh want?”
“I’m Tack Gentry!” Tack said. “Where’s Uncle John?”
“I don’t know yuh,” the man said, “and I never heard of no Uncle John. I reckon yuh got onto the wrong spread, youngster.”
“Wrong spread?” Tack laughed. “Quit your funnin’! I helped build that house there, and built the corrals by my lonesome, while Uncle John was sick. Where is everybody?”
The man looked at him carefully and then lifted his eyes to a point beyond Tack. A voice spoke from behind the cowhand. “Reckon yuh been gone a while, ain’t yuh?”
Gentry turned. The man behind him was short, stocky, and blond. He had a wide, flat face, a small, broken nose, and cruel eyes. “Gone? I reckon yes! I’ve been gone most of a year! Went north with a trail herd to Ellsworth, then took me a job as segundo on a herd movin’ to Wyoming.”
Tack stared around, his eyes alert and curious. There was something wrong here, something very wrong. The neatness that had been typical of Uncle John Gentry was gone. The place looked run-down, the porch was untidy, the door hung loose on its hinges, even the horses in the corral were different. “Where’s Uncle John?” Tack demanded again. “Quit stallin’!”
The blond man smiled, his lips parting over broken teeth and a hard, cynical light coming into his eyes. “If yuh mean John Gentry, who used to live on this place, he’s gone. He drawed on the wrong man and got himself killed.”
“What?” Tack’s stomach felt like he had been kicked. He stood there, staring. “He drew on somebody? Uncle John?” Tack shook his head. “That’s impossible! John Gentry was a Quaker. He never lifted a hand in violence against anybody or anything in his life! He never even wore a gun, never owned one.”
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