Coroner Creek

by Short, Luke;

  A half hour later, with the three men preceding them, Mac and Younger left for town. Younger, strangely, was full of talk, none of it about Danning. Brush had started to move the road crew to Petrie this morning. Flanders had been sent on last night to Moorehouse to dispatch the telegrams. Things were rolling, Younger said. Danning, Mac thought, might have already been dead, for all the concern Younger showed.

  As they passed the turnoff to Box H they saw a rider approaching. It was Della Harms, Younger said, and she dropped in a quarter mile behind them, taking the road to town.

  The street was mired in mud as they reined up in front of the store in late afternoon, and it was still raining. Mac took the reins of Younger’s horse and rode across the street and through the runway of the livery and turned the horses over to the hostler. When he turned to tramp back through the runway, he saw the slickered figure of Chris Danning, back to him, standing just inside the big doorway out of the rain. Danning was looking downstreet, and when he heard Mac he turned.

  His gray eyes were cold and speculative, Mac saw, and Mac nodded and received a curt nod in return. As he passed him, Mac said in a low voice, not looking at him, “They’re after you, friend. Watch yourself.”

  He kept on, crossing the deep mud to the store and went inside. Younger, a clerk said, was out on the loading platform in the rear. Mac stepped out the back door onto the sheltered loading platform. The big high-sided freight wagon, with its hitch of three teams, was pulled alongside the platform, and Younger was heaving a length of logging chain into the bed as Mac stepped out. Arch Morley, on the seat, was watching him with a puzzled expression. Ed Rossiter was looking on, too, and now Younger turned to him. “Go get horses for Ernie and Stew.”

  He saw Mac and grinned faintly, almost mischievously, and then said to Arch, “Pull around the block, Arch, and come in the alley behind the Masonic Hall.”

  Arch looked mystified, but he cursed the six wet horses into movement. Younger waited until he’d pulled past, then vaulted down into the mud and started up the alley, which made a right-angled turn at the juncture of Miles’ store and Melaven’s saloon. Passing the open gates of the lumber yard, he looked in, remembering Mac’s account of the fight here last night. Beyond, there was a crate against the fence which partially blocked the alley, and he moved it against a shed opposite. Afterward, he waited in the rain for Arch, whistling thinly, his back against the jail wall.

  Presently Arch turned into the alley and pulled up where Younger signalled him to stop. Younger got the chain from the wagon bed and looped one end of it around the wagon’s heavy rear axle where it met the main brace. Now, with the hook end of the chain in hand, he climbed onto the tall rear wheel and then onto the high sideboard of the wagon, and Arch watched him, still mystified. At this height Younger was level with the barred jail window. Playing out the chain until there was a foot of it extending from his hand, he slashed at the glass in the window, and it broke with a musical jingle.

  Younger spoke into the jail, then. “Stand away, boys. You’ll be out in a minute.”

  He looped the chain around the three bars and pulled the hook end back to him and hooked it in one of the links. Then he stepped down into the wagon bed, swung up beside Arch, and took the reins. Bracing his feet, he slashed savagely at the wheel horses and whistled shrilly.

  The horses bolted, and Younger looked around just in time to see the chain rise out of the mud and tauten. There was a savage wrench and the back end of the wagon skidded around; then there was a splintering crash as the bars pulled out, taking six feet of the studding and siding of the building with them. The whole tangle of iron bars, window frame, two-by-four studding and shreds of the board siding landed in the alley with a crash and was dragged along by the chain.

  Younger didn’t even wait to fight the horses quiet. He flung the reins to Arch and vaulted to the alley, slipping and falling and quickly regaining his feet.

  Ernie Coombs was first out. He dropped the five feet to the alley, cradling his bandaged hand against his side, and ran toward Younger. Shallis followed him.

  Ernie’s bruised face was grinning, but there was something else there too. He halted by Younger and said, “Give me your gun, Younger.”

  “What for?”

  “It ain’t your neck,” Ernie said sharply. “Give it to me.”

  Younger handed him his gun, and while he was doing it, he looked up to see Leach jump from the gaping hole to the alley, slip in the mud, regain his feet, and start to run in the opposite direction up the alley toward the Coroner.

  Ernie palmed up the gun and took after him. He ran until he was almost even with Leach, then raised the gun and fired. Leach went flat on his face in the mud of the alley, and even at this distance Younger could hear the breath driven from him. Ernie stood over him a second, then tramped back. Younger noticed his pale hair was already beginning to mat with the slow rain, and when Ernie handed him the gun, Younger said, “No witnesses this time, eh?”

  “That’s right,” Ernie said quietly.

  Shallis was looking at Leach, and he said nothing.

  They unhooked the chain and climbed in the wagon and Arch drove down the alley, turned at the loading platform and pulled up.

  Ed was waiting there with two saddled horses, and Mac, silent and watchful, stood just out of the rain. Younger vaulted out of the wagon and, handing six-guns to Ernie and Shallis, said to Mac, “Where is he?”

  Ed said, “Saul says he’s talkin’ to Della Harms in the livery door.”

  “All right,” Younger said grimly. “Ernie, you take Ed and circle around and come in past Melaven’s. Stew, you take Saul and go down the alley and come in below him. I’ll take him from the store side.”

  Ernie stepped into the saddle and then reined up his horse and said to all of them, “Wait a minute. He likes a shotgun so damn good.” He looked at Mac. “Mac, get me a Greener and shells. Buckshot. Will you?”

  Mac went back into the store and walked across it to the gun counter. Stooping, he reached below the counter and brought up a box of brass-cased shells, which he broke out. He laid two of them on the counter, took a knife from his pocket, and, in plain sight of a waiting customer, he dug out the wadding of the two shells and emptied the buckshot into his pocket. Afterward, he slipped the two shells into the gun, said to the customer, “Be with you in a minute,” and went out the rear door with the gun.

  He handed Ernie the gun, and Ernie said, “Where are the shells?”

  “In there. I loaded it. Do you want more?”

  Ernie clumsily half broke the gun with his left hand until he saw the rims of the two loads.

  Younger said with a savage impatience, “Two’s enough to kill him. You can’t load it with that crippled hand anyway!”

  Ernie snapped the breech shut, and shoved the shotgun in the saddle scabbard. “Ready,” he said, and his horse was moving.

  Chris watched MacElvey until he disappeared in the store, and then he thought, He wrote the note. Here, then, was Miles’ traitor, and Chris knew the warning was real.

  He looked downstreet then, his glance again on Della. From the hotel veranda, he had seen her on the edge of town, and remembering his errand, had come up to the livery.

  She was wearing a man’s oversize slicker, and when she dismounted just inside the door and said, “Hello, Chris,” almost shyly, she seemed somehow appealing. The rain had brought a high color to her cheeks, and her broad-brimmed Stetson was dark with the rain. She smiled uncertainly at him, as if she were not quite sure of his friendship now, and said, “I hear you’re O’Hea’s new deputy.” When he nodded, she said soberly, “Then it was you Leach saw? I sent him in last night, and he isn’t home yet.”

  “Leach,” Chris said quietly, “is in jail.

  Della looked searchingly at him, and he regarded her levelly. “Why?” Della asked. “He didn’t kill Andy.”

  “Not in the way you mean. He killed him by talking your mother into jumping Tip Henry’s homestead.�
� He paused. “I’ve put him away until I could talk to you.”

  Della said quietly, “Why don’t you blame me for sending Andy up there? I made him go.”

  “Leach started it, and he’s to blame,” Chris said grimly. “Get rid of him, Della.”

  Della unaccountably turned her back to him and put her hand to her eyes. It took Chris a moment to realize she was crying, and he stood there baffled, sorry for her, knowing there was nothing he could do to help her. She was a girl without iron, without stability, impetuous one moment, sorry for what her impetuosity had cost in the next. There was no comfort he could give her, and he said nothing. Suddenly, above the muffled sound of her sobbing, he heard a shot from a six-gun. It came from somewhere behind the buildings in the opposite block, and he supposed some puncher, full of whisky and the boredom of the long rain, was easing his feelings.

  And Della cried, softly, heartbrokenly, still holding the reins of her wet chestnut. It was minutes before Chris, taciturnly regarding the street, heard her say, “Chris, will you come back?”

  He turned and looked at her, surprising a look of naked longing in her eyes that shocked him. He moved his head once in negation. “I can’t, Della.”

  “Is it because of what I said?” Della asked swiftly. “I was wrong, Chris. I’ve been judging you as if you were the man I talked to the first day. You aren’t. Won’t you come back?”

  Chris looked levelly at her. “It wouldn’t work, Della.”

  She nodded and silently stroked the nose of her horse. Presently, she said in a musing voice, “I’m growing up I guess. Nothing will be the same again. I used to love Leach. Yordy was funny, and a grand and dashing gent. And I used to tease Andy to make him blush. I was mean to him, like kids can be mean to a dog they know won’t bite them.”

  Chris wasn’t listening now; he had seen Younger Miles come out of the store and look upstreet, then downstreet. Something in his manner made Chris look downstreet too. He saw Stew Shallis and another rider coming down the street, watching the livery. Looking upstreet he saw Ernie Coombs and a strange rider at the intersection, and he knew that Miles had got them out of jail, and that this was it. Even as his glance shuttled back to the store, he saw Miles vaulting down the steps, clawing at the gun in his belt.

  Chris moved, then. He shoved Della roughly out of the way behind the big sliding door, and grabbed the reins of her horse and vaulted into the saddle. Miles shot first, and Chris heard his shot hit the planks and ricochet in a singing whine out the rear door. He pulled Della’s chestnut around and, leaning over its neck, he roweled him down the livery runway toward the rear door, and heard Miles’ voice, wild with wrath, yelling, “Cut him off! Cut him off!”

  Chris passed the corral in back, hearing a horse thundering into the entrance of the livery, and he pulled his gun and swerved left into the alley, heading instinctively in the direction of the Blackbows.

  He had gone only a few yards down the alley when Shallis cut into the alley dead ahead of him. He saw Chris and tried to pull up his horse, and raised his gun. Chris shot twice, and saw the horse, already in a rear, take the hit and go over backwards, and then he swerved right between two sheds, just as the rider behind him opened up. He was in the back yard of a mean little shack, and he cut angling across its greasy, rain-pooled mud. The chestnut stumbled on the slippery boardwalk bisecting the yard and recovered, and then Chris saw the clothesline ahead of him. He ducked flat on the back of his horse and the line raked his back, and then he put his horse in between two houses just as a second shot slammed into the wall of the far house. Swerving the chestnut to keep from running into a child’s wagon, he cut across the front yard and was in the street, which petered out onto the flats ahead.

  He looked behind him now, and saw it was Ernie Coombs, still bareheaded, who was behind him, close, and he turned and raised his gun and shot. With his left hand and on horseback, his shooting was wild, and he missed, and he could almost see the expression of cold ferocity on Ernie’s face as his horse hit the street now and took after him.

  His chestnut was in a dead gallop, and when they had left the edge of town and were on the muddy flats, Chris knew the chestnut couldn’t take it. Looking back, he saw three riders strung out far behind Ernie who was gaining on him. The chestnut, Chris knew, had been ridden from Box H today, and would play out soon.

  As if to punctuate his thought, he heard Ernie shoot. Chris turned in the saddle, and tried again, and again his shooting was bad; and only after that did he realize that his gun was empty.

  He tried, fumblingly, to reload, reins over his injured hand, body bent low in the saddle. But he could not fumble the shells from his shell belt, and when he did finally, he could not with one hand force them in the loading gate.

  He looked back now and saw that Ernie had pulled a shotgun or rifle from the saddle scabbard, and Chris knew with a gray and hateful certainty that he was cornered unless he could load his gun.

  Looking ahead in the fading light of dusk, he made out the distant bulk of Briggs’ place. If he could make that, and contrive to dodge in the tangle of those corrals for the few precious moments it would take to load his gun, he might make it.

  CHAPTER XIX

  Younger’s black, which he hauled from the livery corral and mounted bareback in his haste to take part in the chase, quit on him a mile out on the flats. He simply slacked into a walk and then stopped, and only quivered when Younger raked him with his spurs in a fury of impatience. The horse had carried him from the tie camp to Triumph today, and he could not work more. It took Younger only a moment to acknowledge this, and he let the black blow a few moments, and then turned back to town, his temper ugly and wild. As he came up to the livery stable and dismounted he saw a knot of onlookers gathered at the big livery door, and O’Hea was among them. They were standing just out of the rain.

  Younger swung down and flipped his reins to the hostler and O’Hea said quietly, “Come along, Younger. You’re under arrest.”

  Younger stood motionless in the rain, looking over the small crowd. He counted eight Rainbow hands among them, and then he looked at O’Hea.

  “What did I do now?”

  “Broke Ernie and Shallis out of jail.”

  “So where do you put me until you get it fixed?” Younger asked mockingly. He looked the crowd over now, his eyes bold and unafraid, and then he glanced at O’Hea. “Any offense is bailable, short of murder, according to your sheriff’s book, isn’t it?”

  O’Hea nodded.

  “Then figure out what you want from me and get the bail from Truscott,” Younger said bluntly. “I’m busy and you always know where to find me.”

  He turned his back to O’Hea and, with a magnificent disdain, started across the muddy road. A half dozen Rainbow hands broke from the crowd and followed him, and O’Hea, helpless, watched him go.

  On the steps of the store Younger paused and turned to his men. “Arch, you hang around the livery. Maybe Ernie and the boys will miss Danning and he’ll come back.”

  He went on in the store now, his slicker dripping a thin line of water down the aisle. The lamps were already lighted against the gloom of early evening, and Younger went on back to the office.

  Mac was engaged in conversation with a small scholarly-looking man of middle age whom Younger recognized as Travis, the surveyor he had hired.

  They stopped talking at Younger’s entrance, and rose, and Younger, halting, said in a puzzled voice to Travis, “I thought Mac sent you to Petrie.”

  “I just rode in from Petrie, Mr. Miles,” Travis said coldly. “There’s been a mistake made somewhere along the line. Mr. MacElvey gave me to understand that you people were low bidders on that freight contract, and that I was to start the road survey immediately.”

  “That’s right,” Younger said. He was shucking out of his slicker.

  “Then you’d better see Mr. Coe at Petrie. He’s under the impression Farnum Brothers were low bidders. So are they. Their road crew is there, and the
surveyors are already at work.”

  “Farnum Brothers?” Younger echoed blankly. “You say you saw Coe?” He let his slicker fall to the floor.

  “I did.”

  “What did Coe say?” Younger demanded slowly.

  “I told you. Farnum Brothers were low bidders. The contract was signed yesterday by Mr. Hardy, Sulinam’s treasurer. I saw a copy of the contract.”

  Younger stared blankly at MacElvey, who shrugged. Younger strode over to the safe, pulled open the door and squatted long enough to unlock a drawer and pull out a letter. He came back, handed it to Travis, saying, “What does that read like to you?”

  Travis read the letter. “A forgery,” he said simply. “Hardy isn’t east. He’s in Coe’s office probably at this very moment. That’s not Coe’s signature. Do you know it?”

  “His signature? No,” Miles said. “Do you, Mac?”

  “No.”

  Travis put the letter on the desk, saying, “Farnum Brothers bid was some thirteen cents a ton less than your figure. I saw that, too.”

  Miles only stared at him with complete bafflement. He started to say something and did not, and he licked the corners of his lips slowly, looking at Travis.

  “Somebody,” Travis observed, “has played a very unfortunate trick on you, Mr. Miles. I can imagine your feelings. Nevertheless, I was somewhat inconvenienced myself. I—”

  “Pay him,” Younger said softly to Mac.

  Mac asked the figure and Travis mentioned it, and Mac wrote out the check. Travis put out his hand to Miles, who was staring out the window, and Miles roused himself with an effort and shook hands. Then he stared again at the window as Travis went out.

  A clerk came in and said, “I’ll go to supper now, Mr. MacElvey,” and Mac nodded and the clerk went out, closing the door behind him.

  Mac went over to the letter and picked it up, and then he said quietly, “You better get a man over to Moorehouse with telegrams of cancellation, Younger. Save what you can.”