Play a Lone Hand

by Short, Luke;

  Giff didn’t wait for any more. He turned and headed south, climbing up and out of the depression. He had walked perhaps fifty yards when Welling called, “Hold on! I’ll come with you.”

  Giff waited. When Welling caught up with him, he started out again without speaking. He knew Welling had no heart for this, and that Fiske’s tacit approval of Giff’s move had pushed him to his reluctant decision. Giff’s instinct now was to send him back, even though he had taunted him into coming. But he would not do it, he knew; for he had spoken the truth when he told Welling the whole countryside would know before night that the Land Office Special Agent was a sorry man who could be pushed and crowded and eventually neutralized. Oddly, Giff cared about that, and he knew what he was about to do had to be done if Welling’s investigation were not to collapse.

  Since they were both wearing cowman’s half boots, Giff anticipated complaints from Welling during the long afternoon. But the fitful wind pressing at their backs, pushing down the grass ahead of them in uneven rhythm across the limitless plains, made talk difficult and Welling held stubbornly to silence. By unspoken agreement they gave occasional bands of cattle a wide detour, since a man afoot was considered legitimate game by these half wild beeves. Once in late afternoon they saw far ahead of them a pair of riders heading in the direction of Torreon. At Giff’s command, Welling flattened out alongside him in the grass until the riders were out of sight.

  They saw the first trees of Torreon far distant in the early evening. As they drew closer, Giff saw that Torreon headquarters was built in the shallow timbered valley of a wide stream. The house itself was set in a park of rolling lawn and isolated tremendous cottonwoods. It was built of huge timbers, the main part, three stories high, flanked by long wings of stone construction. The carriage house and stables separated the big house from the working part of the ranch.

  Beyond them was a long single-story adobe which Giff decided was the combination cookshack and bunkhouse. It was set in a grassless area of scuffed and hard-packed ground that stretched to the tangle of barns, sheds and pole corrals to the east. The first lamps, lighted against the twilight, were burning in the big house. As Giff listened, he could hear the cook’s triangle summoning the ranch hands to supper, and at this distance, he could make out men moving from the barns and corrals toward the isolated cookshack.

  He saw Welling was watching him with an expression of helplessness and distaste on his face. In order to reach the cookshack without alarming the main house, they would have to make a wide half-circle and Giff picked out his point of approach before he started out. A half hour later, they halted at the corner of a big wagon shed after crossing the horse pasture to the east of the ranch buildings. Giff was waiting for a ranch dog to pick them up in the twilight, but it seemed their coming had gone unnoticed except by a scattering of incurious horses in the pasture.

  Ahead of him and across a wide expanse of barn lot, he could see the cookshack, its door open. Lamps were lighted inside and he could even see one rider, his back to the door, industriously attacking his supper. He sensed Welling’s aching uneasiness, but he ignored him as he set out for the cookshack.

  Welling caught up with him and said hurriedly in a low voice, “I don’t like this. They’ll all be in there. What do you want me to do?”

  “You’ve got a gun. Stand them off,” Giff said. As an afterthought, he drew his own gun and wordlessly passed it over to Welling. He did not want to look at the man, and he had a dismal conviction that Welling wouldn’t back up his play.

  This was gone from his mind when he took the one step up to the cookshack door, moved across the sill and halted. There were perhaps fifteen men at the big table which was not nearly full, and only a few of them faced the door; the majority had their backs to the door and were seated near the kitchen end of the table.

  Almost immediately Giff spotted the tough hungry-looking rider who had set them afoot; he was seated two places from the kitchen door and had his head inches above his plate, wolfing his food. Giff’s brief sidelong glance at Welling revealed him standing, both guns leveled, in the doorway with a kind of scared determination in his posture.

  Then one of the riders glanced up and saw them. He half rose as Giff said in an iron voice, “Sit down!”

  His sudden command, startling in the silence, turned the heads of every crew member toward him. The hungry-looking rider looked up, fork raised halfway to his mouth. Giff took two running steps toward the table, put a foot on the bench, and dived across the table at him. The man already had one leg over the bench and was rising when Giff crashed into him. The rider went over on his side, Giff on top of him, his legs dragging the tin plate of bread off the table. Its clank followed the crash of the two bodies on the floor by seconds.

  The men facing Welling scrambled off the bench, out of the way, as Giff and the rider came erect at the same moment.

  The rider backed up a step to get set, but Giff was on him. With the tactics of a standard barroom brawler, the man lowered his head, his arms windmilling, and tried to charge. Giff’s hook to his face was so swift and vicious that, still moving forward, the man was half turned by the blow and his upper body sprawled on the table.

  The rider’s hand closed on a heavy stoneware platter and he came off the table with it in his hand in a backhanded sweeping side swipe. Giff saw it too late to evade it; he raised his elbow and ducked his head against it as the platter hit his forearm and caromed off it into the wall. He could hear the shouts of the crew now. Since he was still fighting only one man, he supposed that Welling was successfully standing off the others. How long he could continue to do so, Giff didn’t know, and he thought, Make it quick.

  Now that the rider had named his own kind of fight, Giff moved in against him, lifting his knee into the rider’s belly. The man’s grunt could be heard above every sound in the room. He wrapped both arms around Giff’s midriff, clinging desperately to him while he fought for breath. Giff stepped back, braced himself, and with a savage wrench of his upper body, broke the man’s grip. Then he heaved the rider away from him upright, and swung. The blow straightened the rider totally erect. Giff got one brief glance at the man’s tortured face before he smashed his fist into it. The rider back-pedaled, fighting for balance, through the door leading into the kitchen. He grabbed wildly at the door frame but his momentum tore his hold loose.

  Dimly, Giff heard the roar of the crew, followed by the crash of a gun shot and Welling’s voice in a wild yell, “Stand away from him!”

  On the heel of Welling’s yell, the rider crashed to the floor. Giff lunged at him, doubling his knees under him, and landed heavily on the rider’s chest. He heard the wind driven from his lungs in a great tortured sigh. Giff had rolled off the rider and was on his knees. Now he crawled back to him, balled up the man’s shirt in his fist and rose, yanking the rider erect. Balancing him, he swung with all his might at the man’s face. He saw him teeter backward, hit the corner of the big stove, spin around drunkenly, and fall face first into the wall which held a rack of iron skillets. The force of his body crashing into the wall jarred the skillets off their hooks and they rained down on his unconscious form as it slumped to the floor.

  Giff stumbled to the nearest wall and leaned against it, dragging great gusts of air into his heaving lungs. He was aware that his back was exposed and he wheeled as fast as he could, expecting the crew to ignore Welling and rush him. Instead, he saw that Welling had moved around the table and into the kitchen doorway and, back to him, was still holding them off. Unsteadily, Giff shouldered past Welling and confronted the Torreon crew. He reached out and took one of Welling’s guns and pointed it at the nearest Torreon hand. “You come out with me and saddle up three horses,” Giff said. “The rest of you stay set.”

  The rider looked first at the gun, then at Giff’s hard face, then turned to go out. The crew broke for him. Gun leveled at the man’s back, Giff followed. Suddenly, the man halted so abruptly that Giff bumped into him; he was looking acro
ss the room and Giff looked too. In the bunkhouse doorway stood a woman.

  She was perhaps forty, Giff judged, although her thin autocratic face held a pain-ravaged sternness that made her seem older. Under her right arm was a crutch on which she leaned, her upper body half twisted into it. Her dress was a dead black color and long-sleeved. Her hair, of an auburn color, was so thick as to be almost unruly and she wore it off her neck, coiled carelessly on top of her head. “Who was shooting?” she demanded coldly.

  Giff stepped from behind the rider. “I was,” he said. “I’ll probably shoot again, too.”

  The woman looked levelly at him and said, “I forbid you to. There is no gunfire allowed at Torreon. Any man who works here should know that.”

  Giff’s voice was dry. “I don’t work here, and unless I get three horses saddled right now, you’ll likely hear more shooting.”

  The woman frowned, “Who are you?”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Giff said flatly. “A couple of Torreon hands set three of us afoot this afternoon. I’ve come for our horses. Since they’re not here, I’ll take three of yours.”

  “You’re working for the Land Office.” It was a statement, rather than a question and Giff nodded. “I’m Mrs. Sebree. Please come to the house with me.”

  Giff said quietly, “As soon as I have our horses.”

  Mrs. Sebree said to the crew, “Where are they?”

  There was a moment of silence and then a man cleared his throat and said, “Tied to the west gate.”

  “Get them. Meanwhile give this man as many of our horses as you drove away.” Without further words Mrs. Sebree turned and stepped out into the evening. Welling warily circled the table, his gun held at his side, and Giff started after him. He saw his hat on the floor and said flatly to the closest man, “Pick it up.” The man obeyed and handed it to him, and afterward he holstered the gun, circled the table and went out.

  Mrs. Sebree was waiting outside for them. She asked, “Which one of you is the special agent?”

  Welling cleared his throat and said, “I am, Mrs. Sebree.” Already his voice held its old note of affability.

  Mrs. Sebree said, “Then you’ll want to stay here and make sure your horses are satisfactory. There won’t be any more trouble, I assure you. Mr. Dixon, please come with me.”

  It was not quite rudeness, but her point was plain enough. It was Giff she wanted to see, not Welling, and he was excused. She turned then and walked toward the carriage house. Surprisingly, she moved at a normal pace in spite of her limp, and Giff walked beside her in silence. Passing the carriage house, they achieved a gravel driveway. Here Mrs. Sebree rested a moment and Giff unsuccessfully tried to read her thoughts in the lowering darkness. Mrs. Sebree asked abruptly, “Did I hurt that man’s feelings?”

  “Everyone hurts his feelings.”

  Mrs. Sebree laughed quietly and started off up the drive toward the big house. At the wide steps of the main house, Giff held out his arm to her. She said, “Thank you, but I do this by myself.”

  Once on the long veranda, she turned toward a cluster of chairs, halted before one, slipped the crutch from under her arm and sat down. She indicated the chair next to her and Giff, removing his hat, also sat down.

  She said, “I would offer you supper but I don’t think you are in the mood to accept it from Torreon.”

  “No, ma’am.”

  Mrs. Sebree leaned forward, “Tell me, what is it you plan for us?”

  “No, ma’am.”

  Mrs. Sebree was silent a long moment. “You’re the man who clouted Gus Traff with the bottle, aren’t you?”

  Giff said he was. He felt a stiff wariness in talking with this woman. His skinned knuckles were smarting now, and the bones in his hands ached. He felt both irritable and impatient, and only an uneasy politeness kept him seated. The woman might have been holding him for Sebree to punish, or she might only have an invalid’s unspoken need for dominating a well person. Giff didn’t know which, but instinct told him that he should be out of here, and soon.

  Mrs. Sebree said abruptly, “I have been trying for the last ten days to think of how I could help the government trap Grady. I don’t think there is any way.”

  The strangeness of her words held Giff mute. He wondered if he had understood her. She had spoken as casually as if she were discussing the weather. Then he picked the flaw in her statement. “Ten days?” he asked. “The special agent hasn’t been here that long.”

  “Perhaps I should have said, ever since I heard an agent was coming.” She hesitated. “Grady’s guilty, you know; so is Deyo and so is Kearie. So, too, are all the men behind Torreon, from Senator Warrenrode down through Modesto Salazar to that sniveling old Judge Arnold. It touches some of the biggest names in the Territory.”

  “Strange you should say so,” Giff murmured.

  “Why strange? I’m an honest person and no honest person likes Grady.”

  “Does he discuss business with you?”

  “None of it. All I know is what I pick up. Such as, for instance, the reward notice for last year’s April seventeenth issue of the Free Press. I can guess why that is valuable to you.”

  Giff said nothing.

  “You’ll never find it, of course. Perry Albers had it, didn’t he?”

  Still Giff said nothing.

  Mrs. Sebree said bitterly, “I suppose it’s difficult for you to trust me.”

  Giff moved uneasily in his chair but did not speak. There was nothing for him to say.

  Mrs. Sebree went on, “Maybe there’s something I could tell you. I don’t know if it’s worth anything. There’s a stage stop on the way to Taos called Taltal. It’s up in the mountains. Grady keeps a girl up there and her name is Mrs. Bentham. Maybe she could help you.”

  Giff considered this. “But would she?”

  “Of course, any woman who ever had anything to do with Grady turns on him willingly. I think it’s time she did.”

  Giff stood up. “I’ll remember that. Thank you. Good night, Mrs. Sebree.”

  He turned and had taken a step when Mrs. Sebree said, “There’s something else you might be interested in. Grady is afraid of Mary Kincheon. Now, good night, Mr. Dixon.”

  4

  When Sheriff Edwards mounted the balcony which held the business office of his store, it was midmorning. He spoke pleasantly to Arthur Miles, his bookkeeper, who was seated on the high stool before the slanted desk that held an open ledger. Miles was a dry frail man, past middle age and, because he had gambled away the business that Edwards took over from him, he was deeply sensitive to Edwards’ treatment of him. The sheriff knew this and he made it a point to be unfailingly kind and courteous with the man.

  With the county work, much of which rested in the hands of his deputies, out of the way for the day, Edwards looked over the balcony rail at the bulging shelves and counters and felt at home. The sheriff’s duty was a chore he did not relish; he was a merchant down to his very bones.

  By the time Edwards was ready to sit down at his desk, Miles had already left a stack of invoices on top of it and returned to his desk. Edwards seated himself and immediately saw the copy of the Free Press which he had abandoned the night before when he closed the store. His curiosity of last night was still with him. He bent down and again read the reward notice for a copy of the April seventeenth Free Press and again speculated on its meaning. He supposed it had something to do with the land office records and their publication, but just why any printed matter of public knowledge was worth fifty dollars to Welling he did not understand.

  He was certain that in the store’s files was a copy of the April seventeenth Free Press of last year. As a careful businessman, he kept a copy of all the store’s advertising in the Free Press and of their dodgers and throwaways. This system was several years old and it served as a general price index for the products of all the merchants in the town. It both amused and instructed him to see how the cost of goods fluctuated over the years.

  The April
seventeenth issue of a year ago was undoubtedly stacked away neatly in a corner of the basement set aside for old records, but before he dug out that certain issue and produced it for Welling, he must know to what uses it would be put. He considered that only simple caution, for he was remembering the perjured evidence which Dixon, a land office employee, had retracted under oath at the hearing. Grady Sebree and Torreon were involved in this investigation in some manner, Edwards felt. Before risking possible offense to them, Edwards intended to learn just how they were involved. He would ask Welling today, he thought—and then he remembered that Welling, Fiske and Dixon were all out on a resurvey of some Torreon holdings. It would have to wait.

  He was aware with a mild irritation that Miles was standing behind his chair. He detested the silent, furtive way in which Miles moved, and had often thought of belling the cat by giving Miles all the keys to the store and insisting that he wear them on a watch chain across his shabby vest.

  “Have you gone over those invoices, Mr. Edwards?” Miles asked. He never referred to Edwards’ title of sheriff. An elected county official in Miles’s book was something beneath his recognition.

  Edwards reached for the invoices and said, “No, Arthur, I’m late on everything this morning,” and he promptly forgot the files of the Free Press.

  Arthur Miles, however, did not. He too had seen the reward item in yesterday’s paper, and it had been in his mind half the night and all of the morning. Because Edwards entrusted the filing of all records to him, it was natural that he should remember the basement files—and the fifty dollars reward made it impossible for him to forget it. He was aware of Edwards’ interest in it too, and as he worked that morning, he wondered if his employer would speak of it. Sometimes in the late morning Edwards put the newspaper containing the reward notice in the filing drawer, and Miles breathed easier. He was reasonably certain that Edwards, busy with store affairs and with outside interests, had either forgotten it or would forget it.

  During the noon hour, Miles, who got off at one o’clock for his midday meal, was relatively alone in the store. One of the clerks, always the youngest, remained downstairs while he the oldest, he thought bitterly, kept watch over the records so that no pricing mistakes could happen.