“You got a horse?” I asked him.
“Yes.���
“Use him, then, or sell him and take the stage. Your game is closed as of now.”
He looked up at me, and I saw his eyelids tighten, the comers of his mouth grow white. He wanted to draw, and he had killed men.
But John Lang had tried it, and John Lang was dead.
“It’ll be different with you.” I spoke quietly, but there was no mercy in me for the man who had killed a miner and would have shot into him as he lay on the floor.
“I’ll take your gun away and make you dig your own grave.”
He looked at me, his face whiter than I had believed a man’s face could be. And then his hands started to shake and there was a glisten of sweat on his brow and upper lip. He got up. Shakily, and then he walked quickly from the room.
We were keeping our ears open as we worked the town over, but there was no word of Lisa anywhere.
Then one night a man lurched up to me on the street.
He was acting drunk, but he was cold sober when he spoke. “Heard you asking about a girl named Liza Hetrick. You take a look at that place of Billings’ up the canyon.”
I grabbed him. “She out there?”
“Word to the wise,” he said hoarsely. “You take a look.”
Chapter 13
BEN BILLINGS’ canyon place was six miles out. It was a winding mountain trail, and I took it fast. The gray had been eating his head off and was ready to go, even in that cold. And it was pushing right close to zero.
It was night when I started, the stars so bright they hurt, the night clear and brittle, the snow crunching underfoot and scintillating with a million tiny brilliants. I liked the look of it, liked it fine. Only I wasn’t thinking of snow, I was thinking of Liza.
Once I had the gray warmed up a little, I kept him at a fast walk. I didn’t want him working up a sweat on a cold night.
Aside from my Smith & Wesson pistols and my rifle, I was carrying a sawed-off shotgun from the marshal’s office. It was one of those Colt revolving shotguns that fire four shots. That one I had slung under the buffalo coat that hung to my knees.
One .44 was thrust down into my waistband where I could draw it without pushing the coat back. But I wasn’t figuring on it too much.
Leaving the trail when I sighted a light up ahead, I turned off into the trees. When I had walked my horse close, I could see through the top of the window, and there was a woman sitting with her back to me, sitting in a rocker. She was a young woman and the hair was the right color.
It looked mighty peaceful, mighty quiet. But when a man has lived as I’d lived, he begins to mistrust the looks of things. He gets cautious, if you know what I mean. And me, I didn’t like the look of that frost on the window. There wasn’t enough of it.
A body who was a mite suspicious might believe just enough had been scraped away so a man could see in, so he could see just what he was supposed to see.
Getting down from my horse, I walked away through the snow. There was a window on the north side, too.
It was frosted to within an inch of the top. So right then I did some fast thinking.
A man going into a tight corner would first investigate the stable, and be mighty careful about it. A man would approach the door only after he was sure the girl was alone.
So I did investigate the stable. There were two horses in it, which meant nothing, because the rig I’d seen outside was a cutter for a two-horse team. There was some harness there, but there was no dampness on the horses , and no snow anywhere in that stable. There were no recent tracks near the stable or the house. But I was getting an idea.
From the window I could see a door, maybe to the kitchen. But I couldn’t see anything that was on this side of the entrance. If a man entered and was suspicious, he would watch that kitchen door.
If this was a trap, it was a good one laid by smart men who knew what they were doing, and who knew the sort of man I was. But I hadn’t come out all that way just to ride back. Anyway, I always believed in taking the bull by the horns.
So I opened the door and stepped in without knocking, but I didn’t just step over the threshold and stop.
I ducked low and jumped four feet into the room, then spun a chair around and faced the corner I couldn’t see from the outside.
It was covered with a red blanket that reached to the floor.
The girl had got up and backed off, her face strained and pale. And she was no more Liza than I was.
“Better close the door, ma’am. Liable to get cold in here.”
She hesitated, and put out a hand to steady herself. She was dressed like a ranch woman, but her face was painted , and anybody could tell what she was.
Where I stood, anybody behind that blanket could not see me. If I’d stepped through that door and stopped, I’d have been a sitting duck, but now whoever was there would have to move out from behind that blanket. Nor was I in range from the kitchen door, and as soon as I spoke, I moved.
Walking carefully, the girl crossed and closed the door.
The fact that my coming was no surprise, or even the manner of my coming, showed me I had been expected.
“Know anything about a girl named Liza Hetrick?”
“No… . No, I never heard of her.”
“Who owns this house?”
“Why, I rent it from Mr. Billings.”
My eyes never left that curtain and she could see them.
She was getting more and more nervous.
By now I’d moved until I had that old sheet-iron stove between me and the curtain. It was a hot stove, and it stood on legs more than a foot high, bringing it more than chest-high on me, and it was wider than me. It was good protection.
The way I stood, only my right side was free of that stove. And that was where my gun hung.
“You behind the curtain,” I said. “Come out.”
There was no move, no sound.
“You’re a crazy fool!” The girl’s voice was a little too shrill. “Nobody’s back there!”
“All right,” I said, “pick up that poker.”
She hesitated, then picked it up. “Now lift it shoulder—high and take a full swing with both hands,” I said, “and hit that blanket.”
“No!” She jerked back, frightened. Then she caught herself. “Why should I do that?”
“Do it!”
She touched her lips with her tongue and drew back.
“No,” she said, “I won’t!”
“All right,” I said loudly, “I’ll shoot into it with a shotgun.”
With sudden triumph she cried out, “He hasn’t got a shotgun! He’s lying!”
She didn’t say, “You haven’t got a shotgun,” as she would have done if she’d been speaking to me, so I knew she spoke for the benefit of whoever was concealed in the house.
And right then that kitchen door slammed open and a man stepped in and said, “Now, Joe!” and he shot.
Only the trouble was, I had my right hand inside my coat. There was a slit inside the pocket of my buffalo coat that enabled me to grasp the gun at my belt or the shotgun, and my coat was unbuttoned.
The shotgun was suspended by a strap inside my coat and that kitchen door grated on a little sand, a scarcely perceptible sound, and I stepped around the stove and shot into the blanket, shot twice, fast as I could pull the trigger. A bullet rang like a bell against the sheet-iron stove, and then I turned and shot past the stove at the man standing in the door to the kitchen.
It was fast, like the wink of an eye. Three shots gone in the fifth part of a second, maybe. And two men dead.
The man in the kitchen door had taken his in the belt. The man behind the blanket had fallen forward, pulling the red blanket down with him. One charge of buckshot had caught him in the face and one in the chest.
There was an acrid smell of gunpowder, and then the sound was gone and the room was empty and I could hear the clock ticking and the sobs of the girl. Something wa
s stinging my arm. Looking down, I was surprised to see blood there.
The girl had drawn back into the corner and was staring at the dead men with horror on her face. I didn’t feel sorry for her. She helped set that trap, and she played along with them all the way.
One of them was Lang’s deputy, the one I’d ordered out of town. The other was a loafer I’d seen around Billings’ saloon.
Me I stood there, looking down at those two men. “Six,” I said. “Six and seven.”
“What?” she stared at me.
“Nothing,” I said, “only you’d better get into town. I don’t want you.”
You’ll let me go?”
“Sure,” I said. “I expect you did what you were told to do.”
She seemed dazed. She picked up her coat and a woolen muffler, her eyes avoiding the bodies. I helped her on with her coat. “You’ll beat him,” she said. “He didn’t think you were so smart.”
“Hope so,” I said.
She wrapped the muffler around her head and tied it under her chin.
“Who is this Liza Hetrick? Are you in love with her?”
“Me? Ma’am, she was a child when I saw her last, but pretty. I guess I was only a kid myself. I … I liked her. And her folks were like my own.”
“Ben knows something. I know he does. He talks about her as if he does.” She paused. “I hope you find her.”
“If she’s here, where would she be?”
“One of the places in town. Any one of them. Ben owns them all.”
She rode back to town with me and I took her to the stage station when the stage was there and put her on it.
As she got in, two men started for their horses: “You,” I said. “Get back inside.”
“What?”
The shotgun came out from under my coat and they almost tore the door down getting in.
Right there I stayed until that stage was well out of town and making fast time on the hard-packed snow. I walked to the marshal’s office then, and Mustang threw down his cigarette as I came in. “You’re a trouble to a man,” he said dryly. “I been worried.”
So I told him what happened.
“Figured it,” he said. “Until a few minutes ago they had four men across the street. My guess is they were to come in fast once they knew you were dead.”
He had two shotguns lying on the desk and a sawed-off Henry rifle.
They would have needed more than four men to come in that door with Mustang behind those guns. I’d seen some tough men, but Mustang was born with the bark on. And there was no rabbit in him.
And that night, without further delay, we started a shakedown of the houses in Alta. We started at the first one and worked our way down the street. We embarrassed some folks and frightened others, but house by house we shook the places down. We found nobody held against her will. We found nothing that gave us a lead.
But we gave that town a going over it would never forget, and we started a few people traveling. There was a red-haired man who objected, but Mustang kicked him downstairs and knocked him into the street.
Two weeks passed slowly, but they were weeks of comparative peace. We arrested a couple of men for knife fights, and Mustang caught in action a holdup man who in a misguided moment tried to shoot it out. It was a mistake.
After that, things settled down fast. The town took a second look at the situation and women began to do more shopping than they had done before, and the tough boys sang mighty small. The honest people liked it and the crooks didn’t have any choice. Billings came and went about his business and avoided us.
“Too quiet,” Mustang said, and I agreed with him.
By the end of February the town had had the most peaceful month in its short history. Murdock came down to see us and told us he was pleased, but even he was wondering how long it would last.
Liza was always on my mind, but I was trying to think it out now. Billings was not a man one could frighten or force into talking. Whatever he might know he did not plan to tell. Yet something had to break.
Meanwhile, we had been checking. The marshal previous to John Lang had been murdered. He had been shot in the back of the head at close range.
John Lang had not then been in town. He had been sent for and promised the job of marshal. We found the letter in the safe, where it had been left through some oversight. The letter was signed “T. J. Farris.”
There was nobody in town by that name.
Yet whoever had wtitten that letter had been known to John Lang. John Lang had known him well enough to come all the way from Texas to take the job. Lang had believed him… .
Moreover, whoever wrote that letter had been mighty sure he could do what he wanted in town.
Ben Billings was careful. He was never out of our sight.
Yet I couldn’t forget what that girl had said. Billings knew something about Liza.
We watched him as he went about his business. He did not ride out of town. He was careful, mighty careful.
He never stayed anyplace very long.
He was worried, too. He must have known that we knew he was guilty of arranging that plot to kill me, but we had done nothing. And that bothered him.
Business was good. The mines were shipping ore. Everybody seemed happy … except me.
Mustang, he was always on the prowl. He would take his horse and ride away, and he would return just in time to take his shift. We had rounded up two more deputies to handle the day shift, which was usually quiet. They were local men, a tough old ex-soldier named Riley and a miner with a bad lung named Schaumberg.
One night I was standing alone on the street and just about to move on when somebody spoke to me from the shadows.
“Don’t make a wrong move. Don’t try to see who I am. My life wouldn’t be worth a plug penny. But look down Lang’s back trail.”
“Thanks.”
“All right.” The man in the darkness chuckled. “Worth it to see Billings moppin’ the floor!”
Footsteps retreated down a narrow alleyway, and I stood quiet until they were gone. Me, I was pretty sure it had been the gambler with the smile.
We wrote some letters, Mustang and me. We wrote letters to Denver and Cheyenne, because we knew Lang had been both places. We found out he had been in Cimarron and Tascosa. And in Cimarron he had been associated with a gambler known as Ben Blake.
Ben Blake … Ben Billings. And the description s fitted. The trouble was, that was all. We couldn’t tie anybody to them. And nobody in Denver, Cimarron, Tascosa, or Cheyenne knew anything about them, or about anybody known as Farris.
Mustang and me, we sat in the office one night. I t was coming on for spring and a soft wind was blowing.
I had been around town all day and was getting restless, or maybe it was just the wind.
Mustang, he tipped back in his chair, that long narrow face of his looking uncommon thoughtful. He slid his hat back on his head, showing that cowlick of blond hair.
“You sure was on your own mighty young,” he said suddenly. “Wonder you got away from them Indians.”
“I had a fast home. Old Blue.
“Gave him to Liza, didn’t you?”
“Well, sort of. She was to ride him.”
Mustang rolled him a smoke and when it was lit he said thoughtfully, “You set store by that kid. Maybe she set some by you, too. You’re a good-lookin’ galoot. All the womenfolks in town say you’re handsome. I reckon they could be right. Now, such a girl as that, not seeing many men, she might be so dumb as to fall for you.”
“Not much chance.”
“S’posin’ she did. She have anything to remember you by?”
“Not that I know of.”
“Except Old Blue.”
“He’s prob’ly dead. Old, anyway. And most of the horses were stolen.”
Mustang drew deep on his cigarette, and looked superior-like. “Not him,” he said. “I seen him today.”
Chapter 14
COME DAYLIGHT, we rode out there, ready
for trouble.
Really loaded for bear.
If what Mustang figured was true, Liza would take care of that horse. If she cared a mite about me, she would keep Old Blue close to her.
Mustang, he was a shrewd one. He set around with a poker face most of the time, but he used that head of his, and he reasoned mighty well.
He got to thinking about that girl and that ranch. He reasoned she would keep Old Blue up close to the house. In the stable, prob’ly. He reasoned Old Blue wouldn’t get stolen for that reason. Besides, he was mighty old, and no horse thief would want a gelding who was getting along in years.
“Something else,” Mustang said. “Whoever this T. J. Farris is, he knows who you are.”
“I figure.”
“I mean he knows plenty about you. He’s gone to some trouble to find out. He even knows things I don’t know about you.”
“How’s that?”
“You’ll see. He’s been huntin’ along your back trail. Maybe to find something to scare you with.”
This ranch was a little outfit back in the hills, not far from town, but out of the way. A nice little ranch with pole corrals and rail fences and some good meadowland.
There were some stacks of hay put up, and I could see some berries trimmed and up on a fence, like. She was a mighty nice place.
We came riding up mighty slow. Mustang, he had scouted the place, and he had talked to the man who owned it. Or said he owned it. Only now it might be a trap.
Sure enough, Old Blue was there. He still had on his winter coat and looked mighty rough, but it made a lump come in my throat to see him. Why, he must be fourteen years old, maybe older.
Right then, outlaws or no outlaws, trap or none, I wasn’t passing up Old Blue. I swung down and went over to the fence.
“Blue,” I said. “Good Old Blue!”
His head came up and his ears pricked. He came toward the fence, then stopped, looking at me. “Blue, you old sidewinder! Blue!”
Then I reckon I shed some tears. I reckon I did. In front of Roberts and all. With maybe guns trained on me.’
But this was Old Blue, the horse that had come across the plains with us, the horse my pap rode, the horse that carried me that lonely crying time after Pap was killed.
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