Talley nodded, picked up his hat, and left the room.
Two gun-wolves he bossed were waiting for him in the lobby. He jerked his head at them, and they followed him outside.
“I’ve got a job for the two of you,” he said. “That hotel clerk, Spivey, needs to be taken care of. Grab him, take him out of town somewhere, and make sure nobody finds him.”
One of the men grinned. “Not unless it’s a buzzard or a coyote, eh, Judd?”
Talley shook his head and repeated, “Nobody. I want him planted good and proper.”
The hardcase who had spoken shrugged. “Sure. We understand.”
“Do we do it now?” the other man asked.
“Yeah.” Talley told the two killers where to find Spivey. “Remember, keep it quiet while you’re here in town.”
The men nodded and drifted off into the night on their mission of murder.
The varmints never looked back. No reason for them to. They thought they had the whole town buffaloed.
They never saw the lean, dark shape slipping through the shadows behind them.
Preacher had been counting on Colin Ferguson to tell him where to find the hotel clerk, Spivey. Obviously, judging by the blood he’d found in Ferguson’s office, something bad had happened to the man. Preacher wanted to get to the bottom of that, but his job was to grab Spivey, the man who could start breaking up the murder frame around Matt.
Spivey clerked at the Sierra House. Under the circumstances, Preacher supposed that would be the best place to start looking for him.
Luck had brought him to the alley beside the hotel when the towering gunman and his two pards had stepped into the street. Preacher had seen the big man earlier, when he and Smoke had rescued Matt from the hanging. He knew from talking to Matt since, the man was Judd Talley, Longacre’s segundo and probably the one who had really killed that girl.
Preacher could have picked them off then and there and been done with it, but before he could draw his guns, he heard Talley say something about Spivey. The old mountain man wasn’t close enough to make out all the words, but unless there was some other Spivey in town, they were talking about the man Preacher wanted to find.
After a minute, Talley and the other two men split up. Talley started across the street toward one of the saloons, while the two gunnies walked off like they were setting out on some sort of mission. Preacher knew he had to play a hunch.
He followed them.
It was easy enough, since that possibility never occurred to them. The trail led to a shabby little house on the edge of town. No lights burned in the windows, but the two gunmen went to the door anyway. One of them pounded on it.
A moment later, Preacher saw a faint glow inside the house. Somebody had lit a candle or a lamp. The door swung open, spilling out enough light to reveal the two hardened killers waiting on the porch. As he crouched nearby in the shadows, Preacher heard a gasp of surprise from the man who had opened the door. The man tried to slam it, but one of the intruders shoved it back.
“Are you Spivey?” he demanded.
“I . . . I . . . What do you want? I haven’t done anything. Leave me alone—”
Lamplight reflected off cold steel as one of the men shoved a gun barrel up under the man’s chin. “Blast it, answer the question! Are you Spivey?”
“Yes, I—”
“You’re comin’ with us, then,” the gunman growled.
He stepped back, still covering Spivey, while the other man reached for the terrified hotel clerk, who wore a nightshirt and peered at them through round spectacles.
Preacher’s keen brain knew why Talley had sent those men to Spivey’s house. Longacre had decided the hotel clerk needed to be shut up permanently, to make sure he could never reveal his part in the scheme to blame Virginia Barry’s murder on Matt.
The old mountain man’s arm lifted, went back, shot forward again. More steel flickered through the night. The razor-sharp blade of Preacher’s Bowie knife, thrown with such force, buried its entire eight inches in the back of the man trying to grab Spivey. The gunnie made a low, keening noise and lurched forward to collapse at Spivey’s feet.
Preacher had kept moving when the knife left his hand. As the second gunman turned toward his fallen comrade in surprise, Preacher palmed out one of the Remingtons, reversed it quickly, and struck with all the strength of his whipcord frame behind the blow. The butt of the heavy revolver crashed against the gunman’s head, the man’s skull giving way under the impact. The gunman went down as heavily as his partner had.
The violence lasted barely longer than the blink of an eye. Spivey still stood in the doorway in his nightshirt, looking frightened and confused. Preacher flipped the Remington around again so he gripped the butt and said, “Joe Spivey? The clerk at the Sierra House?”
“Y-yes. Who—”
Preacher didn’t let him go on. He rapped Spivey on the head, using the Remington’s barrel, hitting him just hard enough to knock him out for a few minutes. Spivey collapsed next to the bodies of the two men who had intended to kidnap and kill him.
“You don’t know it, son,” Preacher muttered, “but I just done you a heck of a favor. And you’re gonna pay it back.”
He pouched the iron and bent to grasp the shirts of the dead men. One by one he dragged them into Spivey’s house, then blew out the lamp the clerk had lit a few minutes earlier and closed the door. Reaching down, he got his arms around Spivey and lifted him, draping the unconscious form over his shoulder. It was a good thing Spivey was a skinny cuss, Preacher thought as he hoofed it out of town toward the trees where he had left Horse.
Smoke and Matt had stretched out on the buffalo robes in the lodge Chief Walking Hawk had provided for them, and although they had dozed off, both men slept lightly as a matter of habit. They woke up fully alert, as the village’s dogs started raising a commotion. When they sat up, each man held a gun.
“You reckon Preacher’s back already?” Matt asked.
“Possible, but it doesn’t seem likely.” Smoke sprang lithely to his feet. “Maybe we’d better have a look.”
When he pushed aside the hide flap over the lodge’s entrance and stepped out with Matt following closely behind him, Smoke saw several of the Paute warriors coming toward him. A few fires still burned in the village, casting a dim glow over the scene.
The warriors had a white man with them. A couple of them held his arms and forced him along. Walking Hawk followed behind them. Smoke’s eyes narrowed as he studied the stranger. He didn’t recall ever seeing the man before, but the man’s hard features and the low-slung holster on his hip—now empty since he had been disarmed by his captors—identified him as a gunman. Probably one of Longacre’s men, Smoke thought.
Walking Hawk stepped around the prisoner and said to Smoke, “This man was captured by our sentries as he rode toward the village. He says he has a message for Matt Jensen and his friends.”
Smoke moved closer to the man, who had stopped struggling against the warriors. “Better speak up and make it quick, amigo,” Smoke advised. “I think my friends here would enjoy having a little sport with you.”
The implied threat of torture at the hands of the Paiutes made the man’s jaw tighten, but he didn’t give in to his fear. “I got a message for Matt Jensen.”
Matt stepped up. “Talk.”
“If you want to see that pretty redheaded Ferguson gal and her uncle again, you better come with me, all three of you.”
Matt’s gun came up level with the prisoner’s face. He eared back the hammer. “What did you say?”
The man swallowed hard. “We got Ferguson and the gal. You come with me, we’ll turn ’em loose. If you don’t . . .”
He didn’t finish the threat, but Smoke and Matt both knew what he meant. The barrel of Matt’s gun trembled a little as Matt struggled to control his anger.
“Blowing his brains out won’t help us any, Matt,” Smoke said quietly.
“They tried using Maureen as a hostage bef
ore, Smoke. She was terrified then. It’s got to be even worse on her now, since they’ve got her uncle, too.”
“Yeah, but we’ll get them away from Longacre’s men, don’t worry,” Smoke assured him.
After a moment, Matt slowly lowered his gun and stepped back. “What are we going to do?”
Smoke looked at the prisoner. “You know where they’re being held, don’t you?”
“You can’t make me talk,” the man replied stubbornly.
Smoke laughed. “You really believe that, friend? Take a look around.”
The hardcase glanced from side to side at the pitiless faces of the Paiutes who surrounded him. “You can’t kill me,” he blustered. “If I don’t come back by morning, and if you’re not with me, Ferguson and the girl will die. You can count on that.”
“Nobody’s going to kill you,” Smoke said.
“You’ll just wish you were dead,” Matt added.
Chief Walking Hawk nodded in solemn agreement.
The gunman stared back at them defiantly, and after another moment, Smoke shrugged. “All right, Chief.”
Walking Hawk made a curt gesture to his men. They started to drag the prisoner away, and his resolve broke. Cracked right in two, in fact. “Wait! Wait, for God’s sake! I’ll tell you where they’re being held.”
“Figured you might,” Smoke drawled.
“But you can’t kill me,” the man continued. “You’ll need me to get in there. Otherwise they’ll just kill the prisoners.”
“Don’t worry, you’re coming with us,” Matt told him. “And if anything happens to Maureen and Mr. Ferguson, I can promise you one thing, mister . . . You’ll be the next one to die.”
An hour or so later, Preacher arrived back at the Paiute village with a pale and frightened Joseph Spivey. He pushed the hotel clerk into the lodge where Smoke and Matt were staying. They had rekindled the fire in the center of the lodge since it looked like they wouldn’t be getting much sleep the rest of the night. As soon as Spivey saw Matt in the flickering light from the flames, his eyes got wider and more panic-stricken.
“Please, Mr. Jensen, don’t kill me,” he babbled. “I had to lie at the trial, I just had to. Talley would have . . . He threatened to do terrible things if I didn’t—”
Matt lifted a hand to stop him. “Take it easy, Spivey. I know Longacre and Talley forced you to lie about what happened. What we want you to do is tell the truth to the authorities.”
“What authorities?” Spivey asked. “Sheriff Sanger is too afraid of Longacre and Talley to do anything against them.”
Smoke said, “As soon as we take care of another little chore, we’re going to head for Carson City, Spivey, and you’re coming with us. If we can reach the governor, he can start getting to the bottom of this mess.”
“I don’t know. I don’t know.” Spivey looked like he wanted to be sick. “Talley will kill me if I talk—”
Preacher leaned closer to the clerk and said with a grin, “Who do think is more loco, son? Talley . . . or me? You better think hard about your answer.”
Spivey lifted his hands and ran his fingers through his lank, tangled hair. “Oh, God. Maybe . . . maybe if I told the captain of that cavalry troop, he could have the soldiers protect me from Longacre’s men.”
Smoke took a quick step closer to Spivey. “What cavalry troop?” he asked sharply.
“They rode in late this afternoon,” Spivey said. “I don’t know how many soldiers. A lot, though. A hundred or more.”
Smoke, Matt, and Preacher glanced at each other. Matt said, “You reckon Longacre got his partners in the Ring to have those troopers sent in?”
Smoke nodded. “I’d say it’s pretty likely. It wouldn’t surprise me a bit if the Ring’s influence stretches all the way to the War Department.”
“Dadgum it!” Preacher said. “You mean we got to fight soldiers, too, and not just Longacre’s gunnies?”
Smoke rubbed his chin as he thought. “Maybe not. The Indian Ring may be responsible for sending those troops here, but that doesn’t mean their commanding officer is taking orders from Longacre’s friends. If we could get to him and talk to him without Longacre being around, we might be able to convince him we’re telling the truth.”
“I can still do a lot of things,” Preacher said, “but sneakin’ into an army camp and carryin’ off the fella in charge probably ain’t one of ’em. When I was younger, maybe . . .”
Spivey said, “You won’t be able to get to Captain McKee. Now that I think about it, when I was eating supper in the hotel dining room before I went home, I heard rumors that the cavalry is riding out here in the morning to move these savages off this land.”
“Blast it!” Matt said. “This just keeps getting worse. Longacre’s got us blocked at every turn, especially as long as he has Maureen and her uncle as hostages.”
“Wait a dadblamed minute,” Preacher said. “I ain’t heard about that part of it.”
Quickly, Smoke and Matt filled him in on what they had learned from the man who delivered Longacre’s message. “There’s only one way to ride up to that cave where Maureen and her uncle are being held,” Smoke concluded. “If all three of us, along with Longacre’s man, don’t show up there tomorrow morning, the prisoners will be killed.”
“But you ain’t gonna let that happen,” Preacher said. “You got some plan, Smoke, I know you do.”
“Maybe”—Smoke nodded—“but from the sound of it, the cavalry’s liable to attack Walking Hawk’s people about the same time we’re trying to rescue Maureen and Mr. Ferguson.”
“We can’t be in two places at the same time,” Matt said.
Smoke thought about it for a moment. “We’ll see about that.”
Chapter 32
As the sun rose the next morning, four men rode along Big Bear Wash where it twisted into the hills. Smoke and Matt flanked Longacre’s gunman, whose name, they had discovered, was Grady Malone. The fourth figure, who brought up the rear, rode the rangy gray stallion called Horse and wore buckskins, along with a broad-brimmed felt hat adorned with an eagle feather that was pulled down to shield his features.
The face under that hat was the coppery, hawklike visage of one of Walking Hawk’s warriors, a man named Pine Tree.
He was dressed like Preacher and rode Preacher’s horse, and Smoke and Matt hoped that, from a distance, it would convince Longacre’s hired killers that the old mountain man was with them.
Actually, Preacher was back at the Paiute village. It was his job to keep Spivey safe, stall the cavalry, and prevent a battle from starting before Smoke and Matt could rescue Maureen and Ferguson and return with them to the village.
“That’s all you want me to do?” Preacher had asked caustically when Smoke laid out the plan the night before. “Why don’t you ask me if I can flap my dang arms and fly to the moon, too?”
“If anybody could do that, I figure it would be you, Preacher,” Smoke had said with a smile.
Now he glanced over at Malone, who held the reins fairly naturally. Anybody watching them wouldn’t be able to tell the gunman’s feet were tied together under the horse’s belly. The pistol that rode in Malone’s holster was an old, rusty cap-and-ball revolver that hadn’t worked for years. One of the old men had taken it off a dead soldier after a Paiute skirmish with the army two decades earlier. Malone’s gun, a well-cared-for Colt .44, was tucked behind Matt’s belt, since his holster was somewhere in Sanger’s office back in Halltown.
“Use your head and you just might come out of this alive,” Smoke told the gunman.
Malone’s face wore a bleak look. “I don’t think so. Once the three of you are dead, Talley will kill me for telling you where we’re going.”
“You were supposed to bring us here anyway,” Matt pointed out. “What’s the difference if you told us?”
“You wouldn’t know about the riflemen hidden on both sides of the gap that leads to the cave.”
“You think we wouldn’t have guessed as soon as
we saw the layout?” Smoke asked. “This isn’t the first trap we’ve ridden into on purpose.”
Malone’s voice was surly as he replied, “Yeah, well, Talley’ll kill me anyway, just out of sheer meanness if for no other reason. I just know it.”
“You may be right,” Matt said. “After all, Talley cut that poor girl’s throat without a second thought, didn’t he?”
Malone’s eyes flicked toward Matt, but he quickly looked down again and muttered, “I don’t know nothin’ about that.”
Smoke nodded toward the hills ahead of them. “That’s the gap you were talking about?”
Malone lifted his head to check the terrain. “Yeah, that’s it. The cave’s in the base of the ridge just past it, on the left.”
Smoke studied the rugged landscape they were approaching. Two ridges angled toward each other to form a rough V with a small opening at the base where they didn’t quite come together. The gap was about twelve feet wide and fifty feet long, with steep sides that rose maybe thirty feet before dropping back a little and then climbing still higher. The setbacks on both sides of the gap were littered with boulders and smaller rocks, providing cover for the riflemen who were hidden there, three on each side according to Malone. They were supposed to let Malone and the others ride into the gap, then open fire when Malone suddenly spurred ahead.
Smoke glanced up. Longacre’s men would be watching their intended victims approach, not looking above them.
At least, that’s what Smoke and Matt were counting on.
They were only a couple hundred yards from the gap. The sun was up, flooding the landscape with reddish-gold light. It was going to be a beautiful day—for those who survived the next few minutes.
Malone suddenly said, “For God’s sake, why didn’t you just ride away after you stopped the hanging in Helltown? You were free and clear of all this. Why didn’t you just keep going instead of staying to fight Longacre?”
“Because somebody’s got to stop folks like him who think they can just take anything because they want it,” Matt said.
The Family Jensen Page 24
