by Alan David
‘I could take supplies for a week,’ Lobo replied. He considered the situation. ‘It may pay off, sheriff. Especially if Ridge takes off his guards. Page will certainly try something else shortly. He’s got to.’
‘All right.’ Gruber became all action. ‘Take a pack horse and supplies and see how you make out. If you don’t turn up here by next Monday I’ll send a posse to the Big R.’
‘I hope you won’t have to do that. Maybe something will break. Ridge has a lot of gunmen on his payroll, and some of them must know something about what is going on.’
‘Take care,’ Gruber warned. ‘You’ve only got to make one slip and you’ll pay with your life. Someone is playing for high stakes, and human life doesn’t count.’
‘I’ll watch out.’ Lobo walked to the door and paused. ‘I want to have a word with Stella Stadden before I ride out. See you next week.’
Lobo found Stella in her room at the hotel. The girl was packing her things. Her manner towards Lobo was distant.
‘Have you found a man?’ he asked.
‘No. No one will take a chance against Ridge’s gun crew.’
‘When are you riding out?’
‘In an hour. I want to be on my own ground by sunset.’
‘Well I’m riding out shortly. I’ll be gone from town a week. We’ll be starting in the same direction. Mind if I ride part of the way with you?’
‘I don’t mind.’ Her voice lost some of its hardness. ‘I shall never be able to deny you anything after what you’ve done for me. Where are you going?’
‘Out on the range. I want to see which way the wind blows.’
She considered that. Lobo watched her while she packed.
‘You know it won’t be fit for you to stay on your place alone. Supposing some of those bad gunmen turn up?’
‘I’ll get along.’ She spoke bitterly. ‘No one is going to get my place without a fight. I’ll have a gun close to hand every minute of the day and night. I’ll shoot to kill if I have to.’
‘I’m glad to hear that. A man shouldn’t shoot unless he intends to kill, and I guess that goes for a woman too. I’ve got to get a sack of provisions and a pack horse. Let’s say I’ll see you at the stable in an hour.’
‘I’ll be there at four.’
‘See you later then.’ He watched her for a moment and then turned away. She had not spoken, and he wondered how he had rubbed her up the wrong way. He opened the door and turned to her. ‘What’s the matter, Stella? Your manner is like a cold norther in January. What have I done that I should be sorry for?’
‘I’m just thinking how silly you are for trusting that Ginny Ridge. When a man sees a pretty face he forgets all else. But you’ll learn the hard way. The trouble is you’ll probably die before you learn. Don’t trust that girl, Lobo. She’ll bring you nothing but grief.’
Stella walked to him from across the room. Lobo found himself comparing her with Ginny Ridge. Some undefinable emotion tugged at his insides. She stopped within an arm’s length of him, and he looked deeply into her troubled eyes.
‘You’ve done a lot for me, Ben,’ she said softly. ‘I wouldn’t try to sell you a bum steer. I can see that Ginny Ridge has made quite a hit with you. I owe my life to you, and more. I don’t want to see you tricked and done to death. Page will stop at nothing. I thought he was trying to get at you before the court sat this afternoon. I saw him going down the back lots behind the jail.’
‘You saw what?’ For once Lobo was aroused.
‘I saw Buck Page making his way towards the rear of the jail when I was on my way to the court. But I had already seen you going along the sidewalk with your two prisoners.’
‘Come with me,’ Lobo grasped her arm. ‘I want you to say that to Gruber.’ He led her out of the hotel. ‘Our prisoner, the one with the broken arm and leg who was with the riders I killed out at your place, was shot and killed in his cell this afternoon while we were in court. Someone broke a window at the back of the jail and fired a bullet into his head. It looks as if that someone was Buck Page.’
Lobo took the astounded girl into the law office and had her repeat what she had told him. Gruber listened gravely. Olly made some unintelligible ejaculations when she had finished.
‘Well,’ said Gruber. ‘That sounds promising. I’ll send Barr to fetch the undertaker. Olly, go along to Doc Haynes and ask him to meet me at the funeral parlour as soon as he can. I want the bullet out of Kneelson’s head. If we can check it against Page’s gun, and I’m told that those gun experts back East can tell beyond all reasonable doubt which gun fires which bullet, then we may be somewhere on the trail of making a case against Page.’
‘I’ll try and get hold of his six-shooter, but I figure Page will have to be dead before anyone touches the gun he carries in his waistband.’
‘Well I do know he carries a Colt .41, which is an odd calibre in these parts. Most men carry a .38, a .44 or a .45. So we’ll see what sort of a slug the Doc digs out of Kneelson.’
‘I’ll stick around until you know one way or the other,’ Lobo said. ‘If it is a .41 slug do you want me to bring Page in?’
‘Do you think you could without a posse?’ Gruber asked.
‘Probably not alive if at all. But I can find out.’
‘Are you riding out of town?’ Gruber asked.
‘Back to my place.’
‘Well keep a gun handy,’ the sheriff advised.
Lobo had already made up his mind about taking care of Stella, but he did not mention this to Gruber. He and the girl went to order their supplies, then on to the stable to fetch their mounts. After returning to the store and picking up their goods they rode back to the law office. Gruber sat smiling broadly in his wheelchair.
‘We’ve got the slug that killed Kneelson,’ he announced joyfully, ‘and it is a Colt .41.’ He held up a small misshapen slug of lead. ‘This little exhibit can hang Page and free Pommel of the trouble on this range.’
‘Yes. All we’ve got to do now is arrest Page,’ Lobo grinned. ‘I suppose that is my chore?’
‘No.’ Gruber’s face was expressionless. ‘We just want Buck Page in for questioning. We want all the owners of Colt .41 guns. When we are examining his gun he’ll be defenceless, and we can take him alive without bloodshed.’
‘And you want me to ride out to the Big R and tell him to come in, is that it?’ Lobo asked. ‘Having known Page for years, I’d say he would sneer at the law. I’ll arrest him if you like, or try.’
‘I don’t want you to have a warrant on you for Page’s arrest,’ Gruber said. ‘So he won’t be able to resist that.’
‘All right. I’ll see Stella safely back on her home range, then I’ll ride on to Page at the Big R and persuade him to accompany me back here. If he refuses to come do I shoot him?’
‘I don’t want him dead. Try to convince him that I want to talk to every owner of a .41 gun.’
‘That should be easy enough, but Page is cagey. If he does go for his gun I’ll have to shoot it out.’
‘Just see what you can do,’ Gruber said. ‘I don’t have to tell you how to go about it. But be careful. You’re too valuable a lawman to get shot attempting something even a posse would jib at.’
Chapter Ten
LOBO ENJOYED THE long ride with Stella Stadden. The girl gradually warmed to him, swallowing her jealousy as they progressed. Lobo basked in the warmth of her attention.
‘What do you plan on doing when all this trouble is over, Lobo?’
‘I don’t plan anything. I’ve got a feeling my luck will be stretched from here to Pommel if I see the end of this affair. I keep wondering how I came to be mixed up in it at the start.’
‘Why don’t you ride out now? You’ve got nothing to hold you here. You’re not a rancher. You haven’t any other business. You’re perfectly free to go on and shake this dust from your hooves.’
‘That’s true.’ He grinned, and she noticed that he kept looking around to ensure that they were not being appro
ached. ‘But like I said, I don’t cotton to killers. Not only that, staying here as a lawman should help me to cover my tracks. I think I told you that I had a hectic time dodging lawmen a few weeks back. Well this makes a nice change.’
‘Do you ever think about the men you’ve killed?’
‘Sometimes, and I know they deserved killing, so it doesn’t worry me.’
‘Do you think you are fit to judge and condemn them?’
‘They were bad men, killers. They lived by the gun and died by it. It comes to all of us at some time or another. The rights and wrongs of it don’t matter. I could tell you some nasty tales about some of the men I’ve killed.’
‘Do you expect to be killed by a gunman?’
‘That or hunted down by a posse. You see an outlaw can never hope to climb back over the fence. There are only two ways he can redeem himself. He can get a pardon or serve a prison sentence to discharge his debt. Well I’m not likely to get a pardon and I’m certainly not going to spend at least fifteen years in prison if I can help it. I’ll just keep going until I die or get caught.’
‘You’ve got no future to look forward to,’ she said softly.
‘I’ve got a price on my head. That denotes I’ve had a hell of a past. Aren’t we nearing your place now?’
‘Yes. Only another two miles.’
Lobo looked around. It was crowding sunset. Long shafts of red and gold lanced obliquely through the piled up clouds over the western sky, like great fingers grasping the ground, as if the sun was loath to pass on and let the night blanket out the wonderful vista before Lobo’s eyes.
They topped a ridge and reined in. Lobo’s eyes quickly swept across the panorama before him. The ranch buildings in the middle distance looked deserted. Everything was still. The interminable stretch of grass was empty, except to the south, where in the gathering gloom, Lobo could see a sizeable herd of some fifteen hundred steers.
‘Do you run that many cows?’ he asked in surprise. ‘And there are some more over there.’
‘They’re not mine,’ Stella said bitterly. ‘It looks as if Ridge has pulled down his fence and claimed my land.’
‘Well I’ll check on that,’ Lobo said, and the old hardness seeped back into him. ‘Ridge is a longhorn all right, but I can pull him down. Let’s get on to your house and see if anyone is there.’
They rode forward, and Lobo loosened his Colt as they neared the deserted building. But the house was as they had left it on the fateful day they met.
‘I’ll turn your horse loose,’ he said. ‘I figure on riding over to that herd and checking. You stay here in the house, and keep a gun handy.’
‘I’ll get some food going,’ Stella said. ‘Don’t be long.’
‘It’ll be dark before I get back. You’d better have a light in the window for me. I’m not very familiar with this country.’
The sun was now very low in the sky. Lobo set off at a gallop towards the distant herd. He circled the great gathering of steers, but could see no riders. He kept going until, in the deepening gloom, he came upon the posts that marked Ridge’s boundary, and saw that the dreaded barbedwire had been stripped from the fence for more than one hundred yards.
It was too dark for him to look for signs, and he wheeled his mount and rode surely back to the Stadden house. The lighted windows of the cabin were like warm beacons that attracted him instinctively. He felt joy rising up inside him. Stella! His lips formed her name. He sighed. There was something inside him for both Stella and Ginny.
The first stars were twinkling remotely in the deep velvet of the heavens when he rode noisily into the dirt yard. He watered his mount then fed the animal, and turned it into the corral with Stella’s mount. He felt tiredness pull at him when he walked to the house.
Stella had prepared bacon and beans and coffee, and the smell of the cooked food made Lobo aware that he was ravenously hungry. He washed at the pump and his tiredness eased, and when he returned to the kitchen the meal was ready.
‘I should have thought you’d have had no trouble at all getting a hired hand,’ he told her, ‘with cooking like this. I reckon you should have advertised your qualifications. You’d soon have more men on this place than Ridge has on his payroll.’
Stella remained silent. She kept her eyes on her plate while she ate.
‘I can’t see how you’re going to manage,’ Lobo went on. ‘You must have a man here to run things. I feel concerned about this. Like I said. It ain’t fitten that you should be here alone.’
‘But you’re not concerned enough to come and help me,’ she retorted. ‘Maybe you like all this hunting and killing you’re doing.’
‘It’s not like that at all. I’ve never worked a full day as long as I can remember. Hard work and a gunslinger’s hands don’t match. You’re asking a lot of any man who comes here for you. He’ll have to get up at sunrise and toil through all the hours God made. That’s why they made oil lamps, so a man can see to work during the night. If I made a start at it there’s no telling how long I’d stick it. You’d better think about getting a better hombre than me, Stella. I’d likely disappoint you.’
‘I don’t want another man here,’ she told him quietly. ‘If you won’t come I’ll think about selling up here and going back to my father’s folks in Idaho.’
He thought about her father buried in the corral. A thing like that made ground sacred.
‘Why not wait until all this trouble is over before you plan anything. There’s no telling what the outcome will be.’
‘I intend doing that. But it’s going to be lonely here. I shall worry about you. Despite what you say I consider that you joined this fight in the first place because of me. If anything happened to you I would never forgive myself.’
‘Well I shouldn’t be missed. I’m Lobo Johnson the outlaw. I’ll tell you what to do. If I get killed just remember that I’m worth fifteen hundred dollars dead or alive. All you have to do is pack my carcass into the nearest law office and claim the reward. You can always say you shot me yourself.’
‘How ever could you suggest such a thing?’ she chided in horrified tones.
‘Well the money would be handy to you, and it wouldn’t do me any harm if I were dead. You’ve got to be realistic in this world. If anyone else got me they’d soon collect. I’d like to think that my miserable life would do some good after all. Or should I say my death?’
‘I wish you wouldn’t talk like that,’ Stella said. ‘You’re a hard man.’
‘It’s the life I’ve led. I’m suspicious of everyone. I have to be. If anyone tries to do me a good turn I immediately wonder what it is he wants from me. Usually it’s the price on my head.’
‘But there’s a lot of good in you,’ she persisted. ‘What was it that started you on the wrong trail?’
He sat silent for a moment, and she saw his face harden and his eyes glint. She poured more coffee. Lobo looked into the darkness gathered at the window panes, and his thoughts galloped back along the trail of his past.
‘We lived on a small ranch,’ he began slowly. ‘Ma and Pa and my sister Sarah. She was three years older than me. I’ll never forget the day it happened. Pa was fixing a new barn and I was helping. Sarah was in the house with Ma, fixing the midday meal. It was when she screamed that we first knew something was wrong. Pa dropped his hammer, picked up a rifle and ran for the house. I followed, and Pa was halfway between the barn and the house when a bullet took him in the head. I can still hear the smack of the lead driving through his skull. He fell dead without a sound, and I was so close behind I sprawled over him.
‘When I got up a rough looking saddle tramp was coming towards me. He had a gun in his hand. He took me into the house, and there were two of his pards raping my mother and sister. They stayed at our place all that day, and I made a run for it towards sundown, but one of them got me. I’ve got two scars, one in the back where the bullet went in and one in the chest where it came out. They left me for dead, and I’ve often wished sin
ce that I had died. But it wasn’t to be. A passing neighbour found me and took me into town, more dead than alive, and it was a couple of months before I could sit up and take notice. Then I was told that my mother and sister had been murdered by those killers before they rode away.
‘I spent three years living on a neighbouring ranch, and every spare moment I had was spent in speeding my draw and sharpening my gun skill. When I was sixteen I took to the trail. I rode west, south and north, but I never came up with those killers. That’s how I became an outlaw. I joined outlaw bands and rode wild trying to find those killers, but I could never trace them. The West is a mighty large country. I robbed and stole and got a price put on my head. I’ve killed killers every time I’ve come across them, and I still watch for those three men whose faces are painted in my memory.’
‘What a wasted life you’ve led,’ she said softly. ‘And I was thinking that Fate has been cruel to me! Oh, Lobo, you don’t know how much I feel for you.’ Tears sprang to her eyes and her voice trembled. ‘So much is happening, and I feel so helpless. This is my fight but there is not much I can do. It is not your fight and yet you’re in the thick of it. Where will it all end?’
‘Tomorrow I’m going after Buck Page,’ he said suddenly. ‘Stella, I shouldn’t be clouding my mind with other thoughts. I’ve got to concentrate on Page.’
‘How can you face a man not knowing if you are faster or not? Where do you get the courage from?’
‘A man gets used to it,’ he told her. ‘Anyway if I am killed wearing this badge it will prove that I am not an out and out bad man. That thought has been worrying me for some time.’
‘But evidently not enough to make you refrain from doing that last job — the one that supplied you with enough money to go straight. You’re a queer person, Lobo. You’re not very old, are you? I mean, you look much older than I think you are.’
‘How old would you say I am?’
‘About forty-five.’
