E. Hoffmann Price's War and Western Action
Page 51
It looked like a hanging. At the very best, more years in the juzgado than any man could endure. Sally was paper white, wide eyed; she made inarticulate sounds as she swayed, uncertain on her feet. Slim wondered when she would collapse, or burst out with insane laughter.
The marshal was coming forward, one gun now holstered, so that he could search his prisoner. There was no help for this. Slim saw a man approach Sally’s boss, Burt Kenyon.
Kenyon started, cursed, whirled from the scene. That brief distraction left Slim wondering what had happened. A gun blast shook him. Flame from the marshal’s Colt set his shirt afire. Glass had spattered. Kerosene fumes thickened the air. The lawman was buckling at the knees.
Slim could not put these details into their natural sequence. Things had happened too quickly, and he was already in motion. Sally was slamming the door, bolting it, screaming, “Run, darling! Before he gets on his feet!”
She had snatched the lamp from its bracket and smashed it across the marshal’s head. Slim picked up his gun and bolted for the window. Men were yelling in the hall. Sally cried, “They can’t hang me for this! Run, you fool!”
The door was splintering. The bolt was yielding.
* * * *
Slim landed in the alley. They could not do much or anything to a woman who had become hysterical. Sally’s laughter was clear above the uproar in his room. And before the alarm could spread, he was forking his unsaddled horse.
He was well out of Paso del Norte before a posse combed the town. But Slim Crane’s mission was blown all to hell. Whether a warrant would follow him was another question. He’d better talk it over with his father. That urge drove him toward Arroyo Rojo, the town he had resolved to quit. And quit it he would; he’d get a fresh horse, some money, and his dad’s blessing, then head for New Mexico before Madge could ever curse him for being in on her father’s death.
As he rode, he wondered what news had startled Burt Kenyon.
Then, hearing hoof beats far behind him, he had no further time for thought. How in tunket could a posse have picked the trail so surely and quickly! With his start, that was all wrong.
Someone might have guessed his next move. Certainly, his identity must have been blazoned all over Paso del Norte.
Slim, however, outwitted his pursuers. His horse, unburdened by a saddle, carried less weight. So he gained for a while, then doubled back; from cover, he watched them swoop past him.
“Dang funny, only four of ’em!” He shook his head, frowned. “And that damn’ sure of where I’m going, they ain’t bothering to track me!”
He mulled that over. He could not get the full significance. However, his best guess led him toward home, though along a short cut. It was a toss up whether he’d get there before or after the posse. Still, that really made little difference, so that they did not meet.
“Just as long as I can put a bug in pappy’s ear. If Kenyon ain’t in the beef business, I’m a polecat’s uncle!”
When he reached the Diamond C spread, after swinging wide of Arroyo Rojo, it lacked less than an hour of dawn. The cook was not stirring about, nor was anyone snoring in the bunkhouse. Slim guessed that the riders, including his father, were out patrolling the range. That made it bad. He did not know whether to go out to find them, or stay and wait.
A horse whinnied. Even in the gloom, Slim could plainly enough discern the silvery mane and tail of a palomino at the hitching post; and the Diamond C had no animal of that coloring in its entire string. Then he noted the glow of light from a side window. Something was dead wrong. Whoever the stranger might be, there should have been some sound of conversation, and dominated by his father’s voice.
But Slim’s unwary approach had given warning. As a window rattled up, he flung himself from his mount and landed behind the grindstone. A woman cried, “Stay right where you are, or I’ll shoot!”
Madge Daley was at the sill, ready to slide to the ground and get to her palomino; though only Slim would have recognized her in the shadows that blotted out all but the white blurr of face and throat. It seemed that the desire to escape without recognition had spurred her to that desperate outburst; her voice was tense and tremulous.
She was the last person on earth he wanted to see. He wondered whether, vengeance bent, she had come to assassinate his father. Finally, he contrived to croak, “Madge—what the blazes—what you doing here?”
“Slim!” She choked, and there was a metallic gleam as she lowered a pistol. “Good God, I thought—I’ve got to get out of here before your father gets back—don’t ever tell anyone—dad would kill me!”
She was scarcely coherent. Slim vaulted to the sill. “Get back in. I’m alone. What’s wrong?”
For a moment she clung to him, trembling and groping for words. Then she tugged at his arm, urging him to the lighted room. She said, “Slim, I’m so ashamed. I don’t know what to say. But that—” She gestured toward the table, “That’ll prove—but don’t ever tell dad!”
She did not seem to know her father was dead. He regarded her disheveled hair, the torn blouse that trailed in tatters, exposing a good deal more than she realized. But as she hid her face on his shoulder, Slim’s eyes popped out of his head.
On the table were bills of sale, which he recognized from their legal appearance. There were a dozen squares of rawhide, cut from as many freshly peeled hides. Each piece had the Diamond C brand!
“When we quarreled that night,” she went on, haltingly, “I was furious. But the next night—oh, I hate to say it, but I learned that dad was beefing your cattle. To get even for that fence you cut. And for good measure—well, I realized why he’d bought me so many nice things, so suddenly. So I left, Wednesday night. To steal evidence, in Paso del Norte. I tricked a watchman there, and—”
She flushed, grimaced wryly. But Slim didn’t notice that. He was too busy with his thoughts. While her father faced fatal bullets on the Diamond C, Madge had been in Paso del Norte, on the prowl. Slim demanded, “You mean you was fixing to sell your own pappy to the law! Why—” He thrust her from him. “Why—you damned low-down—”
“Slim, don’t look at me that way! Don’t you understand, I came to throw this stuff in through a window. But no one was in. So I put it here, where he’d find it. There’s nothing against father, only against Burt Kenyon. A politician, beef contractor, saloon owner.”
“Oh.” Slim understood. “Trying to save your pappy, huh!”
“More than that! Trying to get him out of crookedness and revenge. I’d begun to see the cattleman’s side of it.”
Then Slim’s misery returned a hundredfold. Madge was honest to the core, and brave as they made them. And he had killed her father. He didn’t know what to say or do. Even if it never leaked out, he could not face her. The glow in her eyes burned him when she went on, “You and I can make peace between our parents, can’t we, Slim? I hated you for what you said, but it set me thinking.”
“Sit down, honey,” he muttered, sinking into a chair.
“I can’t. I’ve got to get home to dad. I’ll lie out of it, somehow, so he won’t suspect, right away, what I did.”
“I’ll ride with you.” Slim could not evade the issue, or let her go to an empty cabin, to wait until the news reached her. “I got—uh—a heap—to tell you.”
She regarded his drawn face. She sensed something was dreadfully wrong, and apprehension gripped her. “Slim, what is it? Tell me now. Right here!”
But Slim had no chance to explain. A rifle blast and the shattering of glass were sounds prolonged by Madge’s scream. His side went numb. He did not realize that the distortion of the pane had spoiled the marksman’s aim. Other slugs thudded against the heavy walls, and sprayed the room with flying splinters.
As he went for his .45, Madge snatched a poker and swept the lamp from the table. It crashed in the fireplace. S
he smothered the blazing kerosene with cushions from the lounge. Slim steadied his pistol barrel on the sill to squeeze lead at the tongues of flame that spurted from the woodpile and from the corner of the barn.
When the fusillade slowed down to futile sniping, Madge crept to Slim’s side and said, “We can slip out the other side. There’s only four shooting at us.”
“We can’t,” he muttered. “They got my hoss and yourn. It’s too close to dawn, anyway. We’d not get far.”
A man shouted from the murky shadows, “Throw out those papers, and we’ll go away.”
Slim leveled the Winchester Madge had located. As he did so, he thought, “Gawd, if I had dad’s buffler gun, I’d bust hell outen the grindstone that son is hiding behind.” He fired, heard the futile whine of a ricochet slug, then a mocking laugh.
“Don’t be silly, you young fool. Throw out the bills of sale. We know exactly what she stole. We trailed her, and you.”
“Come in and get ’em,” Slim challenged, wrathful at having ridden into a trap. The enemy had craftily lurked to learn the entire sense of that baffling alliance they thought it was.
There was a furtive stirring outside, but gloom still protected the besiegers. Slim did not realize what was in the wind until he smelled burning hay. Flames first yellowed, then reddened the gaping door of the barn.
Dry as it was, it would go up like gunpowder. Worse than that, the first gray of dawn brightened the open ground. If he or Madge tried to make a break on foot, they would be hunted down.
The barn was smartly ablaze. Choking fumes billowed in through the broken window. Gusts of furnace heat lashed the besieged. At any moment, Slim expected the shingles to catch afire over his head. And the flames would now expose him, whichever direction he tried for flight.
“Honey,” he choked, catching her hand, “you try slipping out yonder whilst I go out, shooting, tother way. You got a chanct!”
“I won’t,” she said. “It’s my father’s fault all this is happening. If you’re killed, I’ll feel like a murderer, and he’ll be one!”
That whipped Slim to desperation. He caught her shoulder, shook her violently. “You damn little fool, get out! Your pappy’s dead. I shot him the night you was in Paso del Norte. I didn’t know ’twas him that was beefing our critters, but I kilt him!”
Horror widened her eyes. He repeated, “I kilt him. Now git out; you got no call to stick with me. Git, you fool, I’m going out a-shooting!”
He had found and loaded a second .45. Gun in each hand, he bounded toward the side furthest from the fire. He had thrust the evidence in his shirt. Grimly he saw that his death would still nail Kenyon. The’d not search his riddled carcass; they’d assume the evidence had gone up in smoke. But when the old man found him, they’d be sunk, the bastards!
Though four men had circled to await his break, regardless of direction, he still caught them momentarily off guard. His long legs seemed to cover yards at a stretch as he zigzagged, ducked, guns blazing for an instant, then silent during another bound. The enemy fired as they concentrated to cut off his flight.
Lead whipped past him. One of the raiders jerked back, and lurched into the open. Then Slim caught a glimpse of big Burt Kenyon. He shifted, spraying lead. He missed, and a hammer impact from the other flank made him spin, numb and helpless; his guns would not work any more.
Kenyon shouted, “Where’s the girl? You, Hubbell! Doran!”
“Watch it!” someone howled above the roaring flames.
Kenyon ducked. Somewhere, Madge screamed, but no one heard. Pounding hoofs shook the ground. Slim, recovering a little, saw two riders charging hell bent. His old man and Whitey Harris, a cowpuncher, had been attracted by the flames. They could not have distinguished pistol shots from the crackle of blazing wood, tinder-dry.
They were riding into a trap. Slim tried to yell, tried to shoot. God, wouldn’t they see it was more than just a fire!
Kenyon, thinking Slim finished, was turning his fire on old man Crane. Hubbell’s gun was dancing. The two riders piled from their saddles, pulling iron as they dropped; but the roll of the ground was their only cover. The raiders’ slugs kicked up spurts of dust. Answering fire whistled over Slim’s head; the buffalo gun was roaring.
Then Slim cocked his gun with his teeth. He yelled a challenge, and as Kenyon jerked up, the kid’s .45 did its work. And the smack of a Winchester, tying into the roar of the Colt, cleared the deck.
Madge, coming out of the house, flung the rifle on the ground.
“It was empty,” she cried, “and I fumbled the shells till the last second. Why didn’t you wait?”
Slim, staggering toward his father, hailed Whitey Harris. The cowpuncher, wounded by that first volley, was clawing a red splash on his chest.
“We seen the blaze,” he choked.
Madge caught him as he sagged. He thrust her aside.
“Look to Dad Crane, he’s damn neart finished.”
Slim knew that, even before Whitey spoke. The old man forced a grin, tried to speak, then slumped in a heap. Madge, now at Slim’s side, caught his arm.
“Are you hurt bad? What can I do?”
The kid’s drawn face twitched.
“Fix Whitey. I just got a rib knocked loose and my shoulder drilled. And what the hell you doing here? I told you—I told you what I’d gone and done. Get out, I can’t stand looking at you. You know what I done!”
“I know.” Her lovely face was pained and weary. Tears gleamed in her eyes, and cut white paths through the dust and smoke stain of her cheeks. She shook her head, very slowly. “First I couldn’t believe you. Then I went wild, but when I got the gun loaded—Slim, I couldn’t hate you enough, so I fired at them, instead.”
“Uh—what!” He couldn’t believe all the implications.
“No,” she solemnly went on. “All this, tonight, is what my father’s pardners led him into, using his resentment for their own gains. Look what you’ve lost—from our fault—”
Slim scratched his battered head. “Honey, you forgiving me, you mean!”
“You didn’t do it on purpose, and he was in the wrong. You and I can’t carry on a feud. We’ve no relatives to keep it up.”
Something told Slim that some day she could smile at him, and that she would. His own grief left him too numb for hatreds, and perhaps she felt that way, too.
“Honey,” he finally said, “you can’t fight a woman, so the feud’s off, if you see things thataway. Orphants ought to stick together.”
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