Play a Lone Hand

by Short, Luke;

  “You still want that newspaper?” he asked.

  Giff’s heart gave a leap of excitement. “Have you got it? The April seventeenth issue of last year?”

  The puncher nodded, “Good as. My old pappy found a copy.”

  “Where is it?”

  “Why—home,” the puncher said. A crooked grin broke the surface of his unshaven face. “You don’t think I’d bring it with me. There’s three Torreon hands watching the lobby now.”

  Giff said, “Then they know you are here, don’t they?”

  The puncher shook his head. “Not me. I took a look into the lobby and then come up the back way.”

  Cass’s prediction had been fairly accurate, Giff thought. People were afraid to approach Welling, knowing Sebree would be watching him. Giff regarded the man before him in silent judgment. He did not like the looks of the puncher; he was needlessly dirty and was uneasy under Giff’s close examination. But this was no time for judgment. If the man had the paper that was all that was necessary. “Where do you live?”

  “Florence Creek, four miles west.”

  Giff hesitated, a wariness he could not define making him reluctant to move. He said presently, “Welling advertised for the paper. Why didn’t you hunt him out?”

  The puncher was shaking his head before Giff had finished, “Huh-uh. He’d get drunk and tell Sebree who sold him the paper.”

  “What’s Sebree got to do with it?” Giff prodded.

  Again the puncher’s sly grin came and vanished, “It’s all over town that something in this paper will mean jail for Sebree. Isn’t that right?”

  Giff didn’t answer. He asked abruptly, “What’s on the front page of that issue?”

  “Besides April 17, 1882? I don’t know; I didn’t look.”

  This was the time to act and yet Giff did not move toward his shirt. The man’s answers were reasonable enough. It was only his appearance that Giff mistrusted. What should he look like? he asked himself in sudden disgust. The man had the paper he wanted.

  He moved over and picked up his shirt and climbed into it, then pulled on his boots. The puncher, suddenly uninterested in him, had moved to the door and had his ear to it, listening. The man’s transparent fear of discovery was somehow reassuring.

  Giff picked up his hat and considered his next move. It would be dangerous to take out a livery horse, since undoubtedly the livery was being watched too. He surprised the puncher regarding him with an alert curiosity. “I brought a horse, if that’s what’s worrying you,” the man said. “He’s tied at the edge of town.”

  A kind of balkiness he realized was foolish made Giff want to probe further; this was what he had suffered and sweated and fought for, yet when it was offered to him he had to examine it like he would a horse that seemed too much of a bargain. Wanting more time, he asked irrelevantly, “What makes you think I won’t tell Sebree you sold me the paper?”

  “You don’t know my name, and you won’t. I don’t even live on Florence Creek. You’ll wait for me at a crossroads outside of town. I’ll get the paper and give it to you when you give me the money.”

  Good man, Giff thought, and his suspicion died. He asked, “Down the back way?”

  The puncher nodded. “Suit yourself, but I think that’s best.”

  Giff signaled him to open the door. The man palmed it open slowly and took a long look up and down the hall before he stepped out. Giff patted his hip pocket and felt the wallet containing the government’s fifty dollars that Welling had given him.

  He moved out into the hall, closed the door gently behind him and followed the puncher down the dim-lit corridor. At a cross passage the man turned left, and Giff saw the door of the fire escape still open. The puncher halted and said, “That stair rail is loose. Better keep close to the building.” Then he vanished into the night.

  Giff stepped outside and felt for the first step. Once he found it, he followed the man’s advice and began the descent of the steps. Slowly his eyes accustomed themselves to the pitch black night; a diffused light from town barely illuminated the puncher’s figure as he hit the alley, paused a moment to make sure Giff was following, then walked around the corner of the hotel, headed for the alley mouth.

  Unconsciously Giff hurried the last few steps and took the corner at a half run. He saw the waiting men too late and knew he was trapped. The gun barrel aimed and moving for his head in a down falling arc was too swift to dodge. He felt only a blinding pain and then nothing.

  6

  When the stage pulled out of Taltal in a thunder across the bridge, Bentham turned back into the deserted bar. He glanced at the Mexican woman cleaning up the last of the dishes from the big trestle table in the dining room and then went on to the bar to take care of his own small chores.

  This was the night he was going. He had given it much thought and had concluded the way to do it was quietly, without letting Sarita know he was leaving. As he rinsed out the glasses and put them on the back bar, he realized this was the last time he would do it. In another hour, as soon as Sarita was asleep, he would take a horse from the corral and leave, heading first for Taos and then south to the border. He was unused to horses and the ride to Taos was not an enjoyable prospect for him but the stage was too open, and he had rejected it.

  He busied himself about the bar counting out all its and the hotel’s cash and pocketing it. If Dixon had given him more time, he could have quietly sold every building, all the stock and every stick of furniture on the place. As it was, he thought sourly, he was leaving only with pocket money.

  When he heard the Mexican woman close the back door on her way home, he moved over and blew the overhead kerosene lamps out. He wanted no late customers tonight. Picking up the lamp from the dining room table, he tramped upstairs and down the corridor to his sparsely furnished room.

  From under his bed he drew out a folded duffel bag. For a neat man the prospect of putting clean clothes into a sack to be tied behind his saddle was not a pleasing one, but even he knew a suitcase was too awkward to handle on horseback. He set about packing his few belongings into his duffel bag. It was a leisurely process and occasionally he paused and looked out the window into the night. The big building was utterly quiet, save for an occasional creak of the roof timbers cooling off from the day’s sun.

  Oddly and against his will he felt a reluctance to leave this place. Such as it was, it had been his home for two years. Its quiet had never palled on him and he supposed that was because he was getting to be an old man. The thought that again he would have to make his meager living in a world of younger men was almost frightening. The border towns were best, even if they were poorer. His age and the fact that he was an American would be in his favor among the illiterate, hard-drinking Mexican gamblers. It wasn’t much to look forward to, he admitted wryly to himself, but it could be a living if he was careful. Anything was worth it, as long as Sebree got what was coming to him.

  He was standing before his bureau drawer trying to choose five shirts from the dozen and a half lying before him when he heard above the clatter of the creek the sound of a trotting team and the rattle of iron tires on the rough canyon road downstream. Quickly he moved to the lamp and blew it out. Then he came back to the window and stared out into the dark. Presently, he distinguished the sound of two other horses besides the team. They made a tremendous racket as they crossed the bridge and pulled up in front of the saloon where, screened by the black night, they halted.

  Someone bawled, “Bentham! Bentham!” in an irritable voice and he recognized with a sudden feeling of guilt the voice of Traff. Had Sebree discovered his treason already? He thought carefully and because his whole life had been a gamble, he gambled now. Poking his head out the window, he called, “What is it?”

  “Open up! Get some light in the place!” Traff’s voice still held a truculence.

  Bentham struck a match, pulled out his handkerchief to hold the still hot chimney, lit the lamp and went downstairs with it. Placing it on the bar, h
e unlocked the saloon door, then came back and lit the overhead lamps.

  Outside, there was a grunting commotion and the stamping of heavy boots on the porch which he could not understand until Traff came through the door. Three men followed him carrying the body of a fourth man between them. Bentham, with a small sense of shock, barely recognized Traff at first, although his squat thick body could not be mistaken for anyone else’s. It was his face that was different; the whole right side of it was swollen and purple and his eyes, bleared and pain-racked, were barely open. He looked, Bentham thought, as if he had fallen headfirst down a mine shaft.

  Traff said in a rough voice, “Dump him on the floor,” and walked straight for the bar, saying, “Whiskey, Bentham; hurry it up.”

  But Bentham stood motionless, regarding the man the Torreon hands slacked to the floor.

  It was Dixon, dirty, bloody and bound.

  For long seconds Bentham looked at him, trying to still the panic rising within him. This was the man in whose hands he had placed his very life. As Bentham moved over to the bar, he was certain that Dixon had not betrayed him, else Traff’s greeting would have been different. His still, contained face was expressionless as he set a bottle and shot glass in front of Traff but his pulse was pounding.

  Traff irritably pushed the shot glass aside and said, “Give me a water glass.”

  Bentham took one from the back bar and watched Traff half fill it with whiskey and gulp it down.

  When Traff had recovered his breath, Bentham said, “What happened to you?”

  “I’ve about a yard of bailing wire holding a broken jaw together,” Traff said sourly. “It hurts to talk, so don’t ask questions.”

  He wheeled from the bar and went over to the three Torreon hands standing over Dixon. Bentham briefly examined the three and knew that this was trouble. Two of them were young and wild-faced men, barely older than boys. They were the kind of reckless, tough trash that Sebree paid well and kept in Torreon’s most isolated line camps, men who were good for just two things—for night riding that left dead men in its wake and for protection against retaliation for their night riding.

  Traff said, “Stand him up.” A man grabbed each of Dixon’s arms and hauled him to his feet, facing Traff. Blood and dust matted Dixon’s hair and he had a sick whiteness about his mouth. The hatred in his dark eyes, however, was a shining thing that chilled Bentham.

  Without so much as a word of warning, Traff spread his feet and savagely drove his fisted hand into Dixon’s belly.

  Dixon jackknifed and Traff, moving in to him, lifted a knee into Dixon’s face. It was quick and final. Dixon slumped to the floor and lay motionless. Traff regarded him thoughtfully, then kicked him in the head. Dixon did not move, and the three Torreon hands watched Traff with a kind of disinterested curiosity to see if more would follow.

  Traff turned and beckoned Bentham to him. If it was coming at all, it would be now, Bentham knew; but he moved up to Traff with total unconcern in his face.

  “You got an attic in this place?” Traff asked. When Bentham said he did, Traff said, “Show me.”

  Bentham led the way upstairs. At the far end of the corridor was a trap door in the ceiling. Access to it was by way of a ladder raised to the ceiling by sash weight and pulley. Bentham pulled the ladder down and while Traff held it, he climbed up and lifted the trap door back into the attic. Traff climbed up behind him and thumbed a match alight, looking about him. The pitch of the roof was steep against the heavy mountain snows so that the attic was roomy; it had no windows and only the small holes under the heavy-ridge timber provided ventilation. A few planks were stretched across the joists and on them were two trunks, both open, a stack of empty bushel baskets, a rusted axe and two shuck mattresses soiled beyond use.

  Traff grunted, walked the planks to the trunks, looked in to make sure they were empty, picked up the axe and then the match died. The close, stifling heat of the room almost gagged Bentham. Traff struck another match and then motioned Bentham to precede him down the ladder. Once in the corridor, Traff leaned the axe against the wall and said, “That’ll do.”

  “It’ll fry him in the daytime,” Bentham said quietly.

  “Good.” Again Traff thumbed Bentham into motion. Sarita, who was standing in the doorway of her room, a blanket around her, looking at them, vanished silently, closing the door behind her. Neither Traff nor Bentham indicated that he had noticed her.

  Down in the saloon once more, Traff asked for a lantern. When Bentham brought one from the kitchen, Traff directed the three men to carry Dixon to the attic, and he followed their unsteady progress up the stairs and up the ladder. Bentham lagged behind, watching, his mind in a turmoil of conjecture.

  Before the three men had descended from the attic, Traff opened the door of the closest room, went inside and came out with a straight-backed chair which he set in the corridor at the foot of the ladder and against the wall. When the three Torreon hands were once more in the corridor, Traff gave his directions.

  “One of you sleep; the other sit in that chair. If he gets out of there, you’re dead, both of you.” Traff beckoned the third man and then walked down the hall to confront Bentham. “I’m going. Feed them, and him too.” He said over his shoulder, “Come on, Barney,” went on down the stairs and out of the saloon.

  Descending the steps, Bentham heard the buckboard and one saddle horse move across the bridge and down the canyon.

  He locked the saloon door and then moved over to one of the tables, drew out a chair and slowly sat down. Tiredly, almost stupidly, he stared at the walls of the room; but his thoughts were in a wild and jumbled tangle.

  I’m trapped, he thought bleakly. He couldn’t leave now without arousing suspicion, and surely under further beating Dixon would talk. His own treason would be part of that talk. With a galling bitterness he recalled his previous judgment of Dixon as the man who would down Sebree. What insane impulse had prompted him to confess to Dixon his hatred of Sebree that night? And why had he thought that Dixon, only an ordinarily tough but lucky man, was something special? There was nothing special about him tonight as he lay bloody and helpless and beaten.

  Drawn by the magnet of self-pity, his thoughts returned to his own predicament. He couldn’t leave here and he couldn’t stay. The only thing he could do was sit tight, play out his hand and hope to dodge what was coming. Rising with a sigh, he blew out the lights and went upstairs toward uneasy sleep.

  Next morning Sarita greeted him in the kitchen with a kind of cautious neutrality. When the cook was in the dining room, Sarita asked, “What went on last night?”

  Bentham shrugged, “My orders are to feed them.”

  “Two of them?”

  Bentham eyed her coldly, “Dixon’s locked in the attic.”

  Sarita held his gaze a moment, then looked away. She’s Grady’s all right, he thought. She’s even scared to ask questions.

  He hung around the dining room until Sarita came out with a loaded tray. Intercepting her as she headed for the stairs, he said, “Put a pitcher of water on that,” and took the tray. When she had fetched the water, he carried the tray upstairs and down the corridor.

  One of the Torreon hands, ringed by a circle of ashes and cigarette butts, sat with his chair tilted back against the wall. At Bentham’s approach, he rose and said, “I’ll take that to him.”

  Bentham eyed him coldly, “Get out of the way, son.”

  The young puncher backed up a step but he was not giving away, Bentham knew. He only wanted room for anything that could happen.

  Bentham took a chance then. He said dryly, “I knew Sebree when you had to climb a fence to get on a pony. Now get out of my way and pull that ladder down.”

  The younger man said softly, “Pull it down yourself, Pop.” But he went back to his chair.

  Bentham set the tray on the floor, pulled the ladder down, held it with his foot and ascended to the attic. The light here was dim and he could barely make out the form of Dixon lying
on the shuck mattress. Walking over to him, he halted and said, “Are you awake?” in a low voice.

  “Put it down,” Dixon whispered hoarsely.

  As Bentham knelt to put the tray beside him, Dixon said in the same soft bitter voice, “You got a gun on you?”

  “No.”

  “How many down there?”

  “Four,” Bentham lied.

  “Bring me a gun next trip.”

  “What does he know about me?” Bentham asked.

  “Nothing,” Dixon whispered. “Don’t worry. Just get me a gun.”

  Bentham rose and looked down at him for long seconds, “Are you too hurt to handle one?”

  “I’ll handle it. Just get it to me.”

  Bentham said all right and turned and descended through the trap door. To the puncher seated below, he said in passing, “Wake your friend and then one of you come down to breakfast.”

  He did not go downstairs, but went to his corner room and softly closed the door. It was only rarely that Bentham smoked, but now he went over to his dresser, took from its top drawer a sack of tobacco and neatly rolled a thin cigarette and lighted it. Then he sank into the rocking-chair, put his feet on the bed and stared thoughtfully at the wall. This was his moment of choice. He could get a gun to Dixon with no difficulty. But should I? he wondered. His whole future lay in how he would answer that question.

  Suppose he got the gun to him. Dixon could kill one of his guards for certain, and with any luck, the other; but what Dixon would do afterward was what was deeply troubling Bentham. If he read Dixon’s character rightly, Dixon would make a try for Sebree. It would be a wild, reckless and deadly try. But will it work in time to save my hide?

  For long minutes Bentham considered this with a dismal foreknowledge of what his answer would be. He was a gambler by profession, he reflected, and he should be expert in assessing odds. What were Dixon’s chances of success? About forty to one, he thought.