Bowdrie (Louis L'Amour's Lost Treasures)

by Louis L'Amour

  His move was totally unexpected. That he had judged the trap correctly was obvious from the disconcerted expressions on the faces of the men.

  “All right, shuck your guns! Let ’em drop! Right in the street!”

  “Like hell!” It was the bearded killer of the previous day. As he spoke, he stepped quickly aside. Only Bowdrie’s awareness saved him. As the bearded man moved, he caught a glint of sunlight on a gun barrel, and he palmed his gun and fired.

  Two guns boomed with the same report, Bowdrie’s a hair faster. Bowdrie felt the whip of a bullet past his face, but he swung his gun and shot at the bearded man, who was drawing his own pistol. Chick’s bullet broke his arm, and he dropped his gun, backing off.

  The action was so swift the two remaining men were caught by the surprise of the trap’s failure. With a chopping blow from his gun barrel, Bowdrie dropped the nearest man into the dust, then jammed the muzzle of his gun into the third man’s stomach.

  “Shuck ’em! Or I’ll let you have it!”

  Trembling visibly, the third man unbuckled his belt with shaking fingers and let the guns fall. Spinning the man around, Bowdrie lined him up with the other prisoner.

  On the walk, not fifty feet away, was Buffalo Barton with a shotgun. “Didn’t see no call to step in, you handled it so fast.” He glanced at Chick. “A man would think you’d done this afore.”

  “Take ’em down to the jail and throw ’em in. Get a doctor for that wounded one. If they give you any trouble, shoot to kill.”

  Walking across the street, his gun still in his fist, Bowdrie lifted his boot and kicked hard at the old-fashioned lock. It needed three sharp kicks with his boot heel to knock the door open. Then he stepped inside. After a moment the bystanders followed.

  Hank Cordova lay sprawled on the floor, his Winchester lying beside him. The .44 slug had smashed through his throat, breaking his spine. He lay dead in a pool of his own blood.

  Almagre awakened slowly from the shock of the shooting. Wherever men gathered, they were talking of it. The very least many expected was a raid by Bonelli to wipe out the new marshal. Others dissented. “Bonelli won’t want any part of him.”

  The obvious fact was that Bowdrie had seen through the plot to kill him, and Bonelli had lost one of his best men. Three others were in jail, two of them disabled. One had a broken arm, the other a scalp laid open and a very aching head.

  “I’ve seen that marshal somewheres before, but his name was nothing like Tex.”

  Bowdrie walked the streets, noting the horses, studying the people. It was a good town, a booming town with most of the rough stuff taking place on the wrong side of the tracks. They were having a pie supper at the Methodist Church, and two volunteers were painting the school.

  He was not worried about a raid. That was the foolish talk of some alarmist. By now Bonelli would have heard that Cordova was dead and he would be doing some fast thinking. There was a chance that if he were not Martin himself he might surrender the man in exchange for Bowdrie leaving town.

  Down the street, Amy Chapin was talking to Bob Travis. Bowdrie walked back to his desk. His job was not cleaning up boom mining camps but capturing men wanted in Texas. No doubt Hank Cordova would prove to have a long record of cattle theft in Texas, so it had not been a total loss. Still, that was not getting his job done.

  “Saw you talkin’ with that Chapin gal,” Barton commented. “Mighty pretty youngster. Her pa’s got a good spread out yonder, if only Bonelli will let him alone.

  “He was mortgaged pretty heavy, but after he come back from Texas, visitin’ his brother, he was able to pay it off, all eight thousand dollars of it.”

  Chick Bowdrie had been cleaning a gun. He glanced up at Barton. “Chapin was in Texas? Just recently?”

  “Uh-huh. He’s got a brother in Fort Griffin. Jed owed the bank down to Santa Fe, but his brother loaned him money. Now, if he can keep Bonelli off his back he should do something with that ranch.

  “Bonelli wants him out of there, and partly I suspect because that ranch sits right astride Bonelli’s rustlin’ trail from the Panhandle.”

  So Jed Chapin had been to Texas and had returned with money?

  “How about Travis? Has he been out of town lately?”

  “He comes an’ he goes. Nobody knows where, because Bob Travis isn’t a talkin’ man.” He spat. “Shrewd…smart businessman. He owns the general store, the livery stable, the Silver Dollar Saloon, an’ the hotel.”

  “Does he have trouble with Bonelli?”

  “None that I know of. They sort of walk around each other. A fine man, that Travis. A finer one, you never met.”

  Chick Bowdrie walked down to the telegraph office and sent two wires. The operator stared down at them, then watched Bowdrie walk away. His eyes were speculative. Pausing at the corner, Bowdrie started to put his pencil away, and it slipped from his fingers.

  Stooping to pick it up, he saw right before his eyes the unmistakable print of the hoof he had been looking for. To a skilled reader of sign a track once seen is as unmistakable as a signature. And this was the track Bowdrie had followed all the way from Texas. He straightened up, glancing around.

  He stood in front of the general store, where not long before Amy Chapin had sat her horse talking to Bob Travis!

  It was late before Bowdrie left the office. Buffalo Barton, who had been sleeping on a cot in the office, awakened to take over the task of keeping the peace.

  No reply had come to his wires, and he had waited until the office closed. The street was empty, but there were several rigs still tied along the street, and a dozen saddle horses dozed at the hitching rails.

  The streets were brightly lighted, there was a sound of tin-panny music, and up at the Silver Ledge Mine there were lights and sound. His black eyes swept the street, probing shadows, searching, estimating. He started to move down the street, making a last round, when he heard a rider coming from between the buildings.

  It was Bonelli.

  Bowdrie waited, watching. “Tex?” Bonelli spoke softly. “I’m not huntin’ trouble.”

  “What’s on your mind?”

  “Look”—he leaned on the pommel—“I’ve got a nice thing here. Things goin’ my way. You’ve no call to push me. You’re a Texas man, Bowdrie.”

  “You know me?”

  “Took me a while, but I figured it out. Then today I got a tip. You’re huntin’ Wiley Martin.”

  “I’m huntin’ a killer from Pecos. He could be the man.”

  “Suppose you were to find Martin? You’d go back to Texas?”

  Bowdrie hesitated. Bonelli was a tough enough man when faced with average men, most of whom wanted no trouble, but he had no stomach for bucking a really tough man. “If I find the man I want, of course I’ll go back to Texas.”

  “I know where Martin is, and I know who he is.”

  “Who is Martin, then?” His eyes were on Bonelli’s shadowed face. He saw Bonelli’s hand go to his mouth and heard his teeth crunch.

  In a lower tone Bonelli said, “Don’t say where you heard it. I would rather it wasn’t known that I told, but Wiley Martin is Bob Travis!”

  “Thanks. I’ll have a talk with him.”

  “You’ll not take him now?” Disappointment was obvious. “He’s your man! He just got back from Texas!”

  “So did Jed Chapin. So did your man Jeff Erlanger. Maybe you, too, for all I know. I want to talk to Martin. I have some other evidence that will have to tie in.”

  When Bonelli was gone, Bowdrie walked down the dark street. Bob Travis was sitting at his usual table in the Silver Dollar, but Bowdrie did not enter. He had reached the end of the street when he saw a light in the telegraph office again.

  Bowdrie crossed to the railroad-station platform, glanced around, and then pushed the door open and went in. The operator glanced up.
“Any message?” Bowdrie asked.

  The operator hesitated, started to say there was none, trying meanwhile to shuffle some papers to cover another lying there.

  “All right,” Bowdrie said, “let me have it. And after this, don’t be running to Bonelli with stories, or you won’t have a job!”

  “You can’t accuse me of that! Besides,” the operator said, “how would you get messages without me?”

  “I can handle one of those keys as well as you, and from the speed you were sending, I can do a lot better!”

  “You’re an operator?”

  “When necessary. Learned it as a youngster, an’ worked at it a mite. Too confining for me, so I quit.”

  Grudgingly the operator passed messages through the barred window. Bowdrie glanced at one page, then the other. “You know who I am.” His black eyes pinned the operator. “Now destroy the copies.”

  “I can’t! I don’t dare!”

  Bowdrie slapped a hard palm on the window ledge. “You heard me! Destroy them. I will be responsible. And if one word of this gets out, I’ll be back. I’ll take over that key and report to your headquarters just what has been going on here.”

  “Bonelli will pistol-whip me. He threatened it.”

  “Keep your doors locked. If there’s a ruckus, I’ll come running. Anyway, these messages don’t concern Bonelli or you.”

  Chick took the messages and walked back up the dark street, pausing briefly in the light of a window to read the messages again. The first presented no problem.

  Jed Chapin’s brother loaned him eight thousand. All regular. Impossible Chapin could reach Pecos in time.

  The second message left Bowdrie a lot to think about.

  Wiley Martin not wanted in Texas. Wanted in Missouri, Wyoming, and Nebraska for killings on Tom, Bench, and Red Fox. If he’s your man, be careful! His real name Jay Burke. Will not be taken alive.

  Jay Burke. The name was familiar. He was the last survivor of the Saltillo Cattle War that had taken place on both sides of the border. The Burke enemies had been the notorious Fox family of outlaws. The Fox outlaws had killed Jay Burke’s father and destroyed his home. Jay Burke’s pursuit of the outlaws was legend. He had followed them from state to state and killed them where he found them; all were killed in fair stand-up fights.

  Bob Travis still sat at his table when Bowdrie walked into the saloon and seated himself across from him. Erlanger and Bonelli were present, and Bowdrie caught a dark, malicious gleam in Bonelli’s eyes as he sat down.

  His face inscrutable, the gray-eyed man faced Bowdrie, measuring him with careful attention. “You have made a good start on your job, Bowdrie.”

  “You know me, then?”

  “The whole town knows. They also know—” he struck a match and lifted it to his cigarette—“what you’re here for.”

  “Not many of them seem to want to talk,” Bowdrie said.

  Travis’ eyes flickered to Bowdrie’s. “Then somebody has?”

  “Of course.” Chick picked up the deck of cards and shuffled them. “There is always somebody who will.” His eyes strayed to Bonelli, who was trying to conceal his interest.

  “I see.” Travis seemed uncertain, and Bowdrie’s face indicated nothing. Travis, he was thinking, was a dangerous man, which was probably why Bonelli had left him alone.

  On his part, Travis was studying Bowdrie and wondering about the next move. Bowdrie was known as a hard, relentless man, but rumor credited him with many acts of kindness. “What are you going to do?” he asked finally.

  “Ask some questions. Where did you go in Texas?”

  “To a ranch north of Pecos.”

  “Not to Pecos itself?”

  “No. Although I passed within a mile of it.”

  “You rode your gray?”

  “Why, yes, I did. Why? What’s wrong?”

  “I tracked that gray from in front of the Pecos Bank. The man who rode that horse killed two men while robbin’ the bank.”

  Travis was white to the eyes, and Bowdrie reached a careful hand to his shirt pocket to bring forth the message that mentioned Burke. He handed it to Travis.

  Travis glanced at it. “What you have here”—he indicated the message—“is true. You know from what it says here the kind of man I am. No Burke ever robbed a bank. No Burke ever lied. I did not ride into Pecos. I did not rob a bank. I have never killed anyone in Texas.”

  Bonelli was still watching them, but he was frowning now, and impatient. Jeff Erlanger had moved to the bar and was standing with his back to it, glass in hand, watching Bowdrie.

  “Travis, I would like to believe you, but today you talked to Amy Chapin in the street, and the tracks of your horse were the tracks of the horse the killer rode!”

  “What?” He leaned forward. “Man, why didn’t you say so? I rode a gray horse, all right, but not that horse. Today was the first time I’ve ridden him, although he’s been in my corral back of the saloon for the past two months.”

  Bowdrie took the letter from his pocket, the letter addressed to Wiley Martin that had been found outside the bank after the robbery.

  “This letter was dropped by the killer. It is addressed to you.”

  “Yes,” Travis agreed, “that letter came to me. I do not recall seeing it again after receiving it.”

  “About those horses in the corral? Did anybody but you ever ride them?”

  “Half the town did. I kept at least a dozen head there. My own riders rode them when they needed a fresh horse, but so did various people around town, but I can’t imagine anybody actually taking one of them to Texas!”

  Chick shoved back his chair. “Don’t let it bother you, Travis, and just stick that message in your pocket. You aren’t wanted in Texas, and I don’t make arrests for anybody else. There were a few points I wanted to clear up. Now I know the answers.”

  He got to his feet, his eyes sweeping the room.

  Erlanger lounged against the bar, watching him. Bonelli remained at his table, but he seemed uneasy now. Then the door opened and Jed Chapin came in. Buffalo Barton was with him.

  “Tex,” Chapin said, “I’ve got to see you!”

  “Later,” Bowdrie replied. “I’ve some work to do!”

  Bonelli took something in his hand, glanced at it, then tossed it into his mouth.

  “Bonelli, I am a Texas Ranger. I am arresting you for the robbery of the Pecos Bank and the murder of two men there!”

  Bonelli got up. “That’s a lot of hogwash! You’ve got the deadwood on Travis! Or Martin, if he wants to call himself that! You’ve got nothing on me!”

  “You’re wrong, Bonelli. I have all I need, even though you did all you could to implicate Travis, and so rid yourself of the one man you feared. You dropped that letter of Martin’s where it would be found. You rode one of his horses, planning for the trail to lead to him.”

  Bonelli shrugged with apparent indifference. “Prove it! I’ve people will swear I was never out of the state, and you can’t prove I was ever in Texas!”

  “Bonelli, a few days ago I noticed a habit you have. You chew wingscale seeds, like some Zunis do. You’re doing it now. You were chewing them tonight when I talked to you on the street, and you were chewing them when you waited across the street from the bank in Pecos. It isn’t a common habit, Bonelli.”

  “That’s no proof. That’s no proof at all!”

  “It’s enough for me to ask you to take off your shirt, Bonelli. You bathed the dust off your upper body in the trough by the corral in Pecos, and some people there saw the tattoo under your heart. Will that be proof, Bonelli?”

  “I didn’t rob no bank!”

  “Take off your shirt and show us. If you’ve no tattoo, I’ll not only apologize but I’ll stand treat for the house.”

  “All right! I’ll show you! I’ll p
rove you wrong!” His hands went to the buttons on his shirt and dropped to his gun butt.

  The draw was fast, for when his hand went to the buttons it was already moving and within inches of the gun, but Bowdrie had expected it and his gun stabbed flame an instant faster.

  At almost the same instant, Travis fired across the tabletop, smashing Jeff Erlanger against the bar. His knees sagged and he went to the floor, but Bowdrie was watching Bonelli.

  He was still on his feet, his lips twisted in a wry, unhappy grin. “Guess I wasn’t cut out for…for this here game.” He sank to the floor and spilled over on his face.

  Gently Bowdrie turned him over. “I knew it was you,” he muttered. “Had you spotted.”

  “No…no hard feelings?”

  “No hard feelings. I’m only sorry you took the wrong turn in the trail.”

  “Yeah.” Bonelli stared upward into the darkness near the ceiling. “Guess that was it. Had me a little ranch once, in Texas.” He fumbled for words, but though his lips twisted, no sound came.

  Bowdrie stood back, glanced around the room, then walked over to Travis’ table and sat down.

  He glanced at Erlanger’s body, then at Travis. “Thanks,” he said; then he added, “Bonelli gave himself away earlier. He told me I’d know the tracks of Travis’ gray if I saw them, but the only way he could have known I got here by following the gray was by seeing me.

  “For all he could have known, I’d gotten here by trailin’ you, because your trail and his crossed each other now and again. A good tracker can tell a lot by the trail of the man he is followin’. You rode like a man with an easy conscience, but Bonelli spent a lot of time stoppin’ from time to time to look down his back trail, and he kept under cover wherever he could.”

  “That’s what I wanted to tell you about,” Chapin said. “I located a man who saw Bonelli take that gray from the corral.” He looked from Travis to Bowdrie. “Amy’s outside, Tex.”

  Bowdrie went outside. Amy sat in the buckboard. “I’m glad you’re all right,” she said. “Now you know why I couldn’t tell you about Wiley Martin.”