by Lauran Paine
The Kid swung back toward the girl. “I don’t know why, Miss Dodge, but every time I try to talk to you there’s trouble.” His voice was calm and his smokegray eyes were mildly puzzled. “I’m sorry about this”—he jutted his chin toward the inert form of Beale—“but you’re a witness that I didn’t start it.” Seeing that the girl was listening and looking at him in silence, he took another plunge. “I wish you’d let me help you. I’ve been around things like this before an’ maybe I could do some good. At any rate, I’d sure like to try.”
For the first time since he’d known her, her voice wasn’t ringing with pure contempt when she spoke. “And if I agreed, what would your pay be?”
He admired her common sense and couldn’t help but smile a little lopsidedly. “Nothin’, ma’am. I don’t want your money. Just agree to let me sleep in the bunkhouse an’ eat with the other D-Back-To-Back men, that’s all.”
Her eyes went to the gently stirring form of Jeff Beale. “Help him up and we’ll talk about it.”
Beale stood on wobbly legs and ran an exploratory hand over his bruised jaw. He was listening to Toma Dodge, but his squinted eyes were thoughtfully on the blank, unsmiling face of the Vermilion Kid. Finally he nodded. “All right, Toma, if that’s what you want, we’ll try it, but…” The brown eyes were perplexed and Beale shook his head. “Hell, I don’t know. I guess we can try him out, anyway.”
The Kid rode back to Holbrook, stuffed his scanty gear into his saddlebags, paid his bill at the Royal House, and returned to the D-Back-To-Back. When he was putting up his horse, three cowboys sauntered over to the corral and watched him in impassive silence. He nodded, and the riders nodded back. The Kid had been a cowboy once and he knew what the men were doing. They were appraising him—evaluating his appearance, his tack and his horse; from these things they would deduce his status among them.
Apparently the silent judgment was favorable because he was gradually included in the men’s jokes and hazing until, after two days on the ranch, the Vermilion Kid was more at home than he had been in many years. Jeff Beale introduced him to the men. At the sound of his name, there was a startled, awkward silence that, strangely enough, Beale himself filled in with casual talk until the riders got over their furtive stares and sudden silence.
For two days the Kid worked the cattle with the men. He saw neither Toma Dodge nor Beale, except in the early morning when the foreman would line out the work. The Kid was anxious to work on the murder, and the evening of the third day he went up to the house. Toma admitted him to a huge old parlor with a roaring fire in a massive, smoked-over old stone fireplace. He recognized the ancient trappings of the old frontier on the walls. Indian trophies hung droopily among old tintype pictures and the comfortable old leather furniture was typical of an earlier day on the frontier. The Kid held his hat selfconsciously in his hand and turned it by the brim in slow, nervous convolutions as he spoke. “Miss Dodge, it sort of seems to me like we’re wastin’ a lot of good time.”
The girl nodded, her eyes on the colorful Navajo rugs. “I know, it seems like that to me, too, but Jeff is nosing around in Holbrook and doesn’t want you to do anything until he’s chased down some ideas he has about Dad’s murder.”
The Kid frowned. His answer was dryly matter-of-fact. “Well, while Beale’s lookin’ around, a lot of water can pass under the bridge.”
The beautiful eyes came up with a decisive upsweep of the head. “I know it, Kid. You can start out on your own tomorrow, only…”
“Only…what?”
“Only don’t let Jeff know what you’re doing. He’ll be angry if he knows I let you start your investigation.”
The Kid’s eyebrows came together over his steady gray eyes. “Miss Dodge, this here’s likely to be a long drawn-out an’ dangerous little chore. Don’t you think we ought to start out by trustin’ each other?”
“What do you mean?” Her face colored a little.
“Well, if Beale doesn’t know what I’m up to, it’ll make a lot of unnecessary hard feelings, won’t it?”
Toma Dodge stood up and looked at the fireplace. The Kid felt a sudden little tug at his heartstrings as he studied her profile. She was so small and helplesslooking, yet so much a woman, the kind of a woman a man needed. “I don’t know what to say.”
The Kid guessed, correctly, that her father’s sudden demise had projected her into a role of responsibility that was altogether foreign, and a little frightening, to her. He got up and went over beside her, his hat gripped tightly in his hands. There was a half-wistful, half-truculent look on his face.
“All right, Miss Dodge. I’ll keep out of Beale’s way. We’ll do it your way, but frankly I don’t think it’s too good an idea.”
She turned toward him. For a wild second her eyes locked with his and a strong electric current passed between them. The Kid turned away in confusion and, mumbling excuses, left the house. Outside, the stars were clear and brittle. He rolled and smoked a cigarette in the warm, velvety shadows of the corrals. He didn’t think it would ever happen, but it had; he was in love.
Chapter Three
At daybreak, the Vermilion Kid had saddled up and ridden out of the D-Back-To-Back ranch yard. The air was cool without being cold and the land was lazily stirring to life. Here and there a hustling rabbit was out searching for dew-drenched young shoots and garrulous, sleepy birds made slight noises at his passing. Holbrook was just coming to life when the Kid rode in. He left his horse at the livery stable. The bleary-eyed hostler smiled at him through a foul fog of sickening breath. “Sure nice to see you again.”
The Kid raised his eyebrows. He had forgotten tipping the man so lavishly, besides, his mind was on a small, oval face with violet eyes. He smiled vacantly, said nothing, and walked slowly out of the barn. He was almost to the street when the hostler came weaving up to him. “Say, I was wonderin’ if you’d he’p me move a horse?”
“Move one? Hell, can’t you lead him?”
“No, y’see, this here critter’s dyin’ from a bullet wound an’ he’s down.”
The Kid understood. The animal was down, weak and dying, and the hostler wanted to turn him over so his body weight would be on the off legs for a while; just in case he ever got up again, the legs wouldn’t be too numb to operate. He walked back, helped the hostler turn the horse, straightened up, and was dusting off his hands when he saw the hip brand. D-Back-To-Back.
“Where’d you get this horse?”
“He come staggerin’ in here the night Dodge was killed. ’Twas his horse, so the sheriff says.”
The Kid studied the bullet holes with compressed lips, then walked from the barn. He went to the Royal House and had an early breakfast. The dining room was vacant and he ate slowly, turning Dodge’s murder over in his mind.
The day was well along and the Kid had decided to have a talk with Sheriff Dugan. He was approaching the sheriff’s office when he saw Dugan and Jeff Beale standing in the shade of the portico, watching him come forward. The Kid felt an uneasy suspicion at the silent, intent way they watched him approach, but shook it off. He was almost in front of the two men when his wary eye, trained from youth to be alert, caught the slight drop of Beale’s right shoulder. The Kid halted, legs apart, surprised but not unprepared.
There was a long, tense silence, then Emmett Dugan, still motionless, spoke: “Don’t go for it, Kid.”
“No? Why not?”
“’Cause I want to talk to you, an’ a killin’ won’t help you any right now.”
“All right, Sheriff, tell Beale to shove his hands deep in his pockets.”
Dugan turned to the D-Back-To-Back foreman. “Do like he says, Jeff.”
Beale hesitated, still staring, wide-eyed, at the Kid.
“Come on, Jeff, gun play won’t settle nothin’…not yet, anyway.”
Beale shoved his balled-up fists reluctantly into his pockets, and the Kid approached warily until he was even with the two men. Dugan jerked a thumb toward his office, but the Ki
d slowly shook his head.
“Let’s do our talkin’ right here, Sheriff. I sort of like the fresh air this mornin’.”
Dugan regarded the gunman for a long, doleful moment, then shrugged. “Kid, where was you the night Dodge got killed?”
“Early in the evenin’ I was at the First Chance, later I went to bed in my room at the Royal House.”
“Got any proof that you were abed?”
The Kid snorted. “Hardly, Sheriff. I make it a habit to sleep alone.”
Dugan and Beale exchanged a significant glance, which the Kid saw. He puckered up his eyebrows and looked from one to the other. “Just what in hell have you two hombres got on your minds?”
Dugan spoke slowly, in a measured voice devoid of inflections, as if he was reciting a story. “Dodge was killed an’ robbed. We got reason to suspect you done it. If you got proof you didn’t, then we gotta hunt further afield. But if you ain’t got proof, then I’m goin’ to hold you for a while.”
The Kid’s right shoulder sagged perceptibly and his eyes narrowed. He shook his head slowly. “No, Sheriff, I didn’t kill or rob Dodge, an’ you’re not goin’ to hold me, either.” His voice was almost gentle, and Beale looked at Dugan accusingly, hands still rammed into his pants pockets.
Dugan shifted his weight a little and frowned. “If you’re innocent, Kid, you got nothin’ to worry about. Better give me your gun.”
“No good, Sheriff. I don’t know what kind of a deal is cooked up here, but I’m not goin’ to walk into a noose to help it along.”
There was a long moment of silence as Dugan’s flinty eyes washed over the Kid. He knew the Kid’s reputation with a gun, but Emmett Dugan had a job and a duty to perform, and his complete lack of imagination saw only the course he must pursue. He shook his head slowly and his face set in hard, uncompromising lines. “I’m warnin’ you, Kid, you got no choice.”
“You’re wrong, Sheriff”—the voice was very gentle now—“I got a pretty good choice.”
Dugan almost sighed. The Kid saw his eyes widen a fraction of an inch. That was all he needed. Two explosions rocked the still, lazy atmosphere of Holbrook. There was a second of awful suspense, then twice more the coughing roar of a .45 blasted the silence. Dugan was cursing in a low, deadly monotone and sagged against the front of his office, holding a scarlet rag of torn shirt over his ribs and Jeff Beale, outgunned from scratch, was writhing in the dust of the roadway, a bullet through the hip. The Vermilion Kid was untouched and crouched low with his lips pressed back flat over his teeth.
Holbrook’s citizens were prudent folk. They loved to revel in the recounting of gunfights, but they reasoned, logically enough, that in order to pass on the stories, it was a necessary requisite that one stay alive. In order to accomplish this, they stayed out of sight until the fight was over. Thus it was that the Vermilion Kid strolled away from the scene of carnage, retrieved his horse from the suddenly sobered hostler at the livery barn, and rode easily out of town in a long, mile-eating lope.
That night the Kid sat on a juniper-studded knoll that overlooked the D-Back-To-Back ranch house. The watery, faint light of the clear, cold stars and the weak moon, made shadows of the coming and going riders below. He knew that Toma Dodge had heard, by now, of his shooting scrape. He wondered what she thought of him, in light of his recent blunder. The Kid thoughtfully chewed a straw as the night hours drifted by. Finally, when the last lights had died out over the ranch, he carefully removed his spurs and made a cautious, laborious descent to the gloomy buildings of the ranch. The Kid got to the house without much trouble. The riders were sawing wood after the day’s excitement. The Kid forced a window with determined effort, slid through the opening, only to feel the cold, menacing barrel of a six-gun in his belly. He exhaled slowly and tried to pierce the gloom.
“Don’t move.” It was Toma’s voice.
The Kid froze but felt a surge of relief at the same time. At any rate, it wasn’t Dugan or Beale. “Miss Dodge…?”
“Be quiet. I should’ve known better than to trust you. I…”
“Doggone it, hold on a minute, will you? I didn’t have a chance…”
The voice of the girl was as firm as the gun barrel. “No, of course you didn’t. Oh, what a fool I was to believe in you. Jeff Beale suspected you from the start, and, when he found the bullet in Dad’s horse, he and Sheriff Dugan stole one of your bullets and they matched. I ought to kill you right now. You’re nothing but a cold-blooded murderer.”
All the time she was talking, the Kid was trying to piece something together. He listened to her angry voice drone into the darkness without hearing much of what she said, then it came to him in a flash. He started to move and the gun barrel, momentarily forgotten, pressed deeper. He pulled backward instinctively and interrupted the flood of vituperation.
“Wait a minute, will you? Hold it a second.” Her voice died away gradually, begrudgingly, and the Kid tried to see the violet eyes, but he couldn’t. “Did you say Beale found a bullet in your paw’s horse?”
“Yes. He dug it out this afternoon, after you shot him.” Her voice held a full measure of sarcastic triumph in it. “He wasn’t so badly shot up that Doc Carter didn’t patch him up enough to go on digging up facts to hang you with.”
The Kid’s funny bone had been rubbed. He nodded soberly, lugubriously. “Yeah, I’m sure of it, ma’am, especially since I didn’t shoot to kill…but just hold off pullin’ that trigger for one second, will you?”
“Well?”
“Look, Toma…”
“Miss Dodge!”
“Uh, yeah, Toma…uh, Miss Dodge, honey. Your dad’s horse was shot through the chest sort of between the shoulders an’ the chest. The bullet went in on the left side. There’s a hole to show where it entered, an’ on the right side there’s a hole to show where it come out. Now, listen, Toma…”
“Miss Dodge!”
“Uh, yeah, Toma, now listen. How in…uh, heck…could Beale dig the bullet out of your paw’s horse, when the slug went in one side an’ come out the other side? In other words, ma’am, there couldn’t have been any slug in that there critter to dig out.”
The girl was silent and the Kid felt the pressure on the gun barrel lessen slightly. She was silent so long that the Kid felt uneasy. “You didn’t happen to see the horse, did you?”
“No.”
“Was Sheriff Dugan here this evenin’?”
“Yes.”
“Look, Toma”—there was pointed pause but she didn’t take it up—“do me a favor, will you?” “What?”
“Go to Holbrook tomorrow mornin’ an’ look at that there horse.”
“Yes, I intend to…but not as a favor to you.”
The gunbarrel had dropped quite a bit and the Kid wanted to smile.
“Well, then, can I go now?”
“Why did you come here tonight?”
“To talk to you, to tell you how I was forced to make that gun play or get locked up, an’ I don’t want to get locked up just yet. I’ve got a couple of ideas I want to try out. Can I go now?”
The gun was at her side now, dangling from a white, small hand. Out of place and slightly ridiculous. She tried to see his eyes in the darkness. “You haven’t discovered anything, then?”
The Kid gingerly let one leg out of the window as he answered. “Yes, ma’am, I discovered one thing. ’Course, it’s got no bearin’ that I can see on the murder, but still it’s awful important to me.”
“What is it?”
“That I’m in love with you.”
He was gone over the windowsill before she could recover from the surprise and shock. The faint rustle of his boot heels in the geranium bed softly blended into the night and Toma Dodge sank into a rocker and let the gun drop to the floor. She let her wan, worried face follow the shadowy figure that faded into the gloom as the Vermilion Kid fled through the night, back to his patiently grazing big black horse on the little knoll.
Chapter Four
The Ki
d was in his element now and there were few better at it. He was on the dodge. There were handbills tacked to the trees along the Holbrook road and on the fronts of buildings in town. He hid with the almost nonchalant casualness of an old hand on the owlhoot trail. Once he even slipped into Holbrook. He flattened against the walls of the livery barn and buttonholed the startled hostler.
“Listen, pardner, I want you to tell me somethin’.”
The hostler recognized him and relaxed a little. He hadn’t forgotten that $20 gold piece. “Sure, Kid, what is it?”
“Was Beale alone when he dug a slug out of Dodge’s horse?”
“Well, I don’t know what he done to the horse, ’cause they sent me away…”
“Who were they?”
“Oh, Les Tallant…the hombre who owns this here barn…an’ Jeff Beale. They was messin’ around that wounded horse, an’, when I come up, Tallant told me to beat it. I don’t know what they done to the poor critter after I left.”
“How is the horse?”
“’Sfunny thing, by golly, but the dang’ critter got up all by hisself today. ’Pears to be gettin’ better.”
“One more thing, pardner. Were Tallant an’ Dodge friends?”
The hostler shrugged a little. “No, I wouldn’t call ’em exactly friends. Y’see, Tallant’s hell to gamble, an’, near as I can figger out, old man Dodge set him up in this here livery barn with a big loan. Les’s been gamblin’ pretty heavy, an’ once I heard ’em cussin’ at each other in the office. ’Course, I wasn’t eavesdroppin’, y’understand…”
“’Course not, I understand.” If there was a tinge of amused sarcasm in the Kid’s voice, the hostler didn’t get it.
“Anyway, like I was sayin’, they was hollerin’ at one another an’ Dodge tol’ Les, if he didn’t keep his word on the note, they’d have some trouble.”
