by Short, Luke;
Three things happened then. Cole rolled out of his saddle toward Billings; Billings yelled and lunged back, and the gunnie on the buckboard let go with a shot.
The slug missed Cole and hit his horse squarely in the head. Cole, his lunge falling short, knew he would miss Billings, but the pitch of the falling horse added to his momentum as he rocketed out of the saddle; his shoulders slammed into Billings’ knees. Billings went over backward, kicking. Over the racket Cole could hear Juck cursing the frightened mules.
And then both he and Billings were down, almost under the feet of the buckboard’s team. Cole knew that he was screened from the man with the gun for several seconds, and he ducked his head against the awkward drubbing Billings was giving him from flat on his back.
Savagely then Cole pulled himself toward Billings’ head and brought his elbow crushingly into Billings’ face. Billings grunted and put his hands up to his bleeding mouth. Raising his fist like a hammer, Cole pounded it down on Billings’ thick nose. For seconds then the fight was gone out of him. Cole rolled to his knees, yanked Billings up by the slack of his shirt to his knees, bending his arm around behind him, and then hauled him to his feet, facing the gunnie. Cole was behind Billings, shielded by him.
“Go ahead and shoot!” Cole taunted the gunnie.
The man was standing on the bed of the buckboard, reins of the skittish horses in one hand, the gun in the other. And he couldn’t shoot.
Cole said swiftly, “Throw that gun away!”
“Damned if I will!” the man yelled. “Let him go!”
Cole shoved Billings straight at the head of the nearest horse. The smell of blood, the cursing and the violence frightened the horse. He reared back, and the buckboard slewed around, its hind wheel on the edge of the drop.
“Throw that gun behind me!” Cole yelled.
The gunnie took one terrified look at the rear wheel of the buck-board and yelled: “Quit it! I’m goin’ over!” In his fright he had forgotten the gun.
“Throw it over here or I’ll shove you off!” Cole yelled.
The gunnie was licked. He tossed the gun over the horses, and Cole shoved Billings to his knees and lunged for it. He came up with it in his palm. The gunnie had driven the horses up out of danger. And Billings, his nose streaming blood and his eyes watering, came sullenly to his feet, facing Cole. Juck let out a whoop of joy. He was halfway down the chain; all thought of the danger of being kicked vanished at the sight of Cole’s predicament. Now he vaulted to the back of the closest mule and yelled: “Steady, Cole. I’m comin’.”
Cole drawled to Billings, “Want to see how a worm turns, Billings?”
He looked up just in time to see the gunnie vanish over the tail gate of the buckboard and run up the road.
Juck pounded up behind Cole. “Unhitch that team, Juck,” Cole said.
Juck made a fast job of it. Cole said then, “Billings, give him a hand. Take that front wheel. When I count three you heave.”
Juck chuckled, sensing what was going to happen. He took the rear wheel, Billings the front. At the count of three they heaved, and the buckboard made a slow turn on its off wheels, hung there a second on its side, then toppled over the cliff. None of them spoke, waiting the seconds until they heard the crash of the buckboard hundreds of feet below on the rocks.
Cole said, “Now, Juck, we’ll get my dead horse off the same way.”
Billings and Juck rolled Cole’s dead horse off the edge, first taking off the saddle and bridle.
“And now, you loudmouthed joker,” Cole said slowly to Billings, “You’re goin’ to see something. Saddle one of those horses for me. Drive the other up the road ahead of you. You’re goin’ to walk. You’re goin’ to walk clear up to the Glory Hole. We’ll load this wagon and you’re goin’ to ride on top of the load down this road. There’s a chance Juck can’t make it and he’ll lose the load. And if he does you’ll make almost as big a splash as the mules. Now git, mister!”
Keen Billings presented himself at suite 2-B of the Cosmopolitan House at nine o’clock that night weary to exhaustion, his feet blistered, his clothes covered with dust and still not wholly over his fright. He stumbled into Craig Armin’s office, and when Armin came in Billings was sitting in a chair, boots off his bleeding feet, his head hung.
Armin closed the door behind him and surveyed Billings with distaste. “Now what?”
Billings told him what had happened. Cole Armin, Juck and Ted Wallace, not content with beating him up and destroying the buckboard, had walked him to the Glory Hole, then made him ride down atop eighteen tons of ore to the Union Milling, from which place they had made him walk back to town.
“And what do you want of me?” Craig Armin asked dryly when Billings was finished.
Billings’ mouth gaped. He was confounded for the moment. “Why—I thought you’d want to know.”
“What a fool I’ve got for a super!” Armin said scathingly. He walked over to his desk and handed Billings the Piute Enterprise. “Read that!” he said savagely. “And when you’re done with that read this!” He took another paper from his desk top and slapped it on the newspaper that Billings had taken.
Billings first read the newspaper story. It asked, with a successful attempt at sly humor, why Craig Armin had bailed out his competitor from jail after said competitor had robbed his safe. The other paper was Cole’s affidavit, along with the note.
Billings looked up, not knowing what to say.
“And you expect me to cry over your little prank kicking back?” Craig Armin asked in a cold fury. “Why, damn you, Billings, I had this business built up to where I didn’t have to worry! I could forget it! But now you botched up the whole thing. Why did Juck ever leave that yard alive? Why didn’t you get him before he could get to Wallace? Why did you ever fire him in the first place? And why didn’t you tell me all this? What in the name of hell do you think I pay you for?”
“I—I couldn’t see how it’d turn out,” Billings stammered.
“Maybe this will help you see!” Armin raged. “I’m not firing you, Keen. I’m cuttin’ your wages in half! Furthermore, I’m going to sign a contract with the China Boy for a price that Western can’t match! And you—you’ve got to come through with teamsters and guts enough to get that ore down in big wagons!” His face was livid with rage. “I want this Western run out of Piute! We’ll beat their prices if we have to lose money on it! And it’s up to you to get out the stuff! You hear? It’s up to you! You! No more choosing and picking the low mines! We’re goin’ up for ore from the high mines! If I don’t get that China Boy contract—if you can’t swing it—then we’ll wreck Western! I don’t know how, but we’ll do it! You’ll do it, you hear? You!”
He ceased talking, breathing heavily. Then he said in a calm voice, “Get out! You stink!” He walked out of the room, closing the door carefully behind him.
6
Back in his room at one of the more modest of Piute’s hotels, Keen Billings threw himself on his bed. He had a bottle of whisky and a water tumbler in his hands, and he shakily poured himself a half tumbler of liquor and drank it down. He sat there, waiting for the glow to start in his belly, listening to the night sounds of the town outside his window. A cold fury seemed to have frozen his brain. All he could think of at present were Craig Armin’s last words: “Get out. You stink.”
Presently he rose, stripped his shirt off and poured out a basin of water, first taking another drink. He washed, the whole scene in Armin’s suite simmering in his mind. So he was a dog, was he? He’d been running Craig Armin’s dirty errands for three years now, fronting for his shady work, bluffing deputies, buying off the law, using his bully boys and blackmailing when they wouldn’t work. And for all this he was getting his pay cut in half and being driven to suicidal work. For he knew, well as he knew his name, that not a teamster in Monarch’s pay would take a ten-team hitch down from the China Boy unless he did it first. And he couldn’t do it. He couldn’t take that hitch down from the Glory
Hole like Juck had done today, much less from the China Boy. The thought of it put goose-pimples on the skin of rope-muscled shoulders. He was through at the Monarch when he refused that job. And he would refuse. He had to.
He sat down on the bed again, feeling physically better. But anger was having its way with him. He hated that Western crew, every man jack of them, but it was a professional hatred. His hatred for Craig Armin was hot and wicked and overpowering. If he had the nerve he would like to kill him. But he didn’t. Still it was either kill him or get killed himself. Keen Billings cursed with the passion of a maniac, and when he got that out of his system he started to think.
Presently he got up and put on a clean shirt and combed his short black hair. His eyes, when he looked at them in the mirror, were crafty, and he smiled at that. Damned right they were crafty. He had an idea.
He put on a coat, took a last drink, which brought the bottle to a third full, then put the bottle under his pillow. Because he was going where he was he got out his best Stetson.
At the bar of the Cosmopolitan House he took his drink over to an empty table and sat down. His nose felt as big as an apple where Cole Armin had smashed it, but it couldn’t be helped. He kept his eyes on the door, watching the movement of the customers. Presently, as he had hoped, Sheriff Ed Linton walked into the room, looking around him for company. He saw Keen, nodded and pretended to ignore Keen’s beckoning finger.
Keen had to go to the bar and say, “Bring your drink over, Ed. You and me have got medicine to make.”
Cornered thus, Sheriff Linton couldn’t demur, although Keen Billings was not a good man to be seen with. Too rough.
Seated at the corner table, Keen leaned back. “I think you and me ought to pool a little information, Ed.”
“I doubt it,” Sheriff Linton said coldly. He didn’t want to be too familiar with this Billings, and his eyes said so if his words didn’t.
Billings understood him, but he was not one to be snubbed. “You know, I can remember when you were an out-at-the-pants shyster over in Marysville,” Billings drawled. “The boys used to throw you out of the saloon just for fun.”
“Is that what you called me over for?” Sheriff Linton said coldly.
“Hunh-unh. I called you over to talk about money. Big money.”
“How much?” Sheriff Linton asked idly.
“Say a couple hundred thousand.”
Sheriff Linton’s eyes lighted with interest, but it was cautious interest.
“You never saw that much,” he sneered.
“How would you like the Monarch Freighting Company and all of its contracts?” Billings said bluntly.
Linton stared at him for a long moment, many things streaking through his mind. He said only, “Big talk.”
“Okay,” Billings said indifferently. “Go ’way.”
Linton didn’t stir, only looked at Billings. “Go on. I’m listening.”
“So you can tell Craig Armin maybe?”
“I know when to keep my mouth shut. I said go ahead.”
“Armin ain’t so tough,” Billings said quietly. “He can be cracked wide open. He is goin’ to be cracked wide open,” he corrected. “Question is, after he’s cracked who’s going to take his place?”
“The Western?”
Keen Billings said softly, “If we don’t.”
Linton looked around him and hitched his chair closer. “You interest me. Go ahead.”
Billings said, “You want it with the bark on or off?”
“Get to it, man!” Linton said impatiently.
Billings hunched over the table and began to talk in a low voice. “Craig Armin has got his fight up, Ed. He’s out to lick Western any way he can. Tonight he told me he’s goin’ to make another try for that China Boy contract. That shows how much he means business.”
“Can you swing it?”
Billings grinned. “Don’t get ahead of me. I say Craig Armin aims to fight. If he can’t beat Western aboveboard he’ll wreck ’em. That give you any ideas?”
“Not many.”
“It does me. What if I lose this China Boy contract for him? What if we can’t swing it? What if I lose other contracts for him? Can’t get the ore out, and he has to forfeit. What if I lose mules for him—and wagons and men—so that these mines won’t give Monarch any business? And all the time it will look like an accident, like Western was gettin’ rough. What will he do?”
“What will he?”
“I tell you, he’ll fight Western! And when he’s crowded far enough he’ll give me orders to wipe out Wallace and Armin. That’s the way he plays, Ed—beat ’em or kill ’em.”
“I see,” Linton said slowly. “Then what?”
“When Wallace and Armin are dead,” Billings said slowly, “we make him our proposition. He hired Wallace and Cole Armin killed. I’ve got the proof, because my men and me will do it. He robbed Celia Wallace of ten thousand. I’ve got the proof. He blew his own safe to land Ted Wallace in jail. I’ve got the proof, because I blew the safe.”
Linton’s eyes widened, but he said nothing.
“We—you and me—put that up to him,” Billings said grimly, “and then give him his choice. He signs Monarch over to us and clears out of Piute, or we arrest him, jail him and hang him.” Billings leaned back and spread his hands. “What’s simpler? I got the evidence; you got the authority. I tell you, Monarch is ours for the takin’—yours and mine!”
Sheriff Ed Linton’s face was a strange thing to see then. As a politician he had learned to school his emotions, but now naked greed mounted in his eyes. There was first caution, then interest, then dismay, then calculation, then approval, tinged with doubt.
He said slowly, “All right as far as it goes, Keen. But if you pull down Monarch until Craig’ll fight you’ll build up Western at the same time. And when we get Monarch—if I go in with you, I mean—we’ll have a dead horse—not worth a damn.”
“Wrong!” Billings said flatly. “Didn’t I say Craig would tell me to get rough with Western? Don’t worry. I’ll wreck ’em. I’ll whittle ’em down to our size before Craig is crowded into makin’ his play. And then, without Cole Armin or Ted Wallace to run it, we can buy ’em out for drink money.”
“It’s nice if you can do it,” Linton conceded slowly. “But those two are tough hombres.”
“I’ll have someone in their office,” Billings said quickly. “They can’t make a move but what we know it.”
“That,” Linton said dryly, shaking his head, “is the first nonsense you’ve talked, Keen.”
Billings leaned forward eagerly. “Some time ago Monarch had a teamster, name of Pete Burns. Young fella, proud, educated, and he was savin’ money to go to medical school back East. The boys had a grudge agin’ his uppity ways, so they loosened a kingbolt on his wagon. He come down from the Lord Peter with a load and the wagon broke loose. He broke both legs and got gangrene and died. To cover it up I told his sister it was some of Ted Wallace’s work. She hates Wallace more than anything in this world.” He tapped his finger on the table for emphasis. “That gal is beautiful. She’s smart. She also knows how to keep books.”
“I don’t follow you,” Linton said slowly.
“Haven’t you heard that Ted Wallace bought out old Simmons’ lumberyard next to his corral behind the Western office this morning?”
“No. Besides, what’s that got to do with it?”
Billings laughed shortly. “He’ll need a bookkeeper. Letty Burns will be that bookkeeper. And best of all, Craig Armin will pay her to spy for us, because he figures it will help him.”
“A woman?”
“You haven’t seen her or heard her talk. She’ll get the job.” He leaned back in his seat now, surveying the sheriff. “There’s the proposition, Ed—colder than turkey. Between us we can take care of Craig Armin. Our only worry is that Western will have all the contracts when we get Monarch. I say they won’t. I say, with this gal to tip us off to their moves, we can keep them broker than Monar
ch.” He smiled slowly. “Find a hole in that if you can.” He added quietly, “You can’t. Monarch is ours for the takin’.”
Sheriff Linton built a steeple with his fingers and stared at it in heavy concentration. Billings watched his face and saw the greed mount up in his eyes. He had chosen his man with care, for Ed Linton was hungry for money—as hungry as Keen was for revenge. A half-smile played on Sheriff Linton’s face for a long minute, and then his eyes grew skeptical.
“It’s a nice scheme, Keen—but for one thing.”
“What’s wrong with it?”
“You say Craig Armin, before he will take a licking, will kill Cole Armin and Ted Wallace.”
“He will.”
“How do you know he will? There’s a lot of difference between fighting and killing, Keen—a lot of difference. Armin doesn’t strike me as a man who’ll order murder.”
Keen Billings’ smile was slow, wicked. “Ed, just how do you think old man Joyce—the fellow who owned Acme freight—died?”
“Why, his horses spooked on a high mountain road and he fell off the cliff.”
Billings shook his head. “I shot him,” he said simply. “Armin paid me to.”
Linton’s eyes glinted, and he leaned back slowly in his chair. He sized up Keen Billings a long moment, weighing the man, and then he snapped his fingers. “Boy!” he called.
When the bar boy came over Linton said, “I want a look at your wine list.” As the boy went to get it Linton said to Billings, “That’s all I wanted to know, Keen. It’s a deal. And we’ll drink to success in champagne. Because I think we’ve got something here.”
They shook hands, firmly and hard.
7
At the end of his first day’s work behind a ten-span hitch Cole had a deep respect for Juck’s ability. He swung his team up toward the hoppers of the Union Milling and found two wagons ahead of him.
