The Guns of Hanging Lake

by Short, Luke;

  “Well, she won’t be alone with me this time,” Traf said. “If I should find the old boy and he didn’t want to come in, I couldn’t make him. Russ Dickey can, so he’ll go with us.”

  “You’ll watch Russ? I don’t trust him.”

  “Ever so carefully,” Traf said dryly. He turned to Sophie. “Will you go?”

  “You heard mother say I could.”

  “Yes,” Traf said, and he managed to get an irony in that one word that was lost on the two women. “Now what about Benjy’s hotel in Kansas City?”

  “It’s the Grand Prairie,” Sophie said.

  “All right, I’ll stop by early tomorrow morning. Take plenty of blankets and warm clothes, Sophie. We don’t know where we’ll be.”

  “You’ve forgotten one thing,” Mrs. Barrick said coldly. “Anthony’s funeral is at two o’clock.”

  “And you’ll attend for us,” Traf said firmly.

  “Why is time such an element?” Mrs. Barrick asked. “Surely you can wait until he’s buried.”

  “Maud, you’ve been mighty generous in letting Sophie come with me. Now don’t spoil it. Every hour we’re delayed, the old man is farther away. Surely you can see that.”

  “He’s probably drinking in some saloon.”

  “Maybe, but we can’t count on it. I’d like to start the minute we get word from Benjy, even if it’s midnight. But I think Sophie needs her rest.” He moved back to the chair he’d been sitting in, picked up his hat from the floor, and said to Sophie, “We’ll take a pack horse, Sophie, but travel light, just in case the old man is afoot and will need a horse. I’ll be here before daylight.”

  He moved toward the door and halted by Mrs. Barrick’s chair. “I’ll take care of her, Maud. Don’t worry.”

  Sophie followed him out of the room and down the hall to the outside door. As he opened it, Sophie said, “Traf, one more question. You’ve got a cut on your face and there’s dried blood on your knuckles. Have you been in a fight?”

  Traf nodded. “With Dickey.”

  Sophie’s eyes widened. “He didn’t want to come along?”

  “No, I may have to fight him again over that. I reckoned it was a name I called him that opened the ball.”

  “What was it?”

  Traf told her, and she winced. Then she said, “That should make him very pleasant company.”

  “His company never was very pleasant. See you tomorrow.”

  4

  Once mounted, Traf rode down the lane and turned his horse back toward Indian Bend. The sun was nearly down as he rode into town and he went directly to the depot. Len Stapp, his iron spectacles perched on his dough-colored face, looked up when Traf came to the counter. He rose, saying, “What can I do for you, Traf?”

  “A couple of things, Len. Tell me, do all Great Western trains have a number?”

  Stapp took the pipe out of his mouth, and his smile at Traf’s question revealed teeth so yellow-stained they verged on being brown. “Of course. How else could we keep track of ’em?”

  “Then you’ve got the number that took on water around midnight?”

  “Sixteen,” Len said promptly.

  Traf nodded. “Benjy Schell is on it. Can I get a message to him?”

  “Is it important?”

  “It’ll be signed Russ Dickey, deputy sheriff.”

  “No trouble, once I locate it. What’s the message, Traf?”

  “Give me a pencil and I’ll write it out, Len.”

  Stapp took the pencil from behind his ear and laid it and a piece of paper on the counter. Traf wrote: “IF YOU KNOW, TELEGRAPH ME THE NAME OF THE OLD DRUNK YOU AND SOPHIE BARRICK RODE WITH IN THE CABOOSE AND WHERE HE LEFT THE TRAIN. SIGNED, RUSS DICKEY, DEPUTY SHERIFF, RITCHEY COUNTY.”

  Stapp read the message and looked up. “Dickey hunting him?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then he’s looking for a place to start, is that it?”

  “That’s it, Len. How long will it take you to find your train?”

  “Not too long. I’ll go down the line until I find out where sixteen hasn’t passed yet, then send your message. It’ll likely have to be a flag stop. Say a couple of hours at the outside.”

  Traf straightened up. “Len, I want that same message sent to Benjamin Schell at the Grand Prairie Hotel in Kansas City.”

  Stapp nodded and both men turned, Stapp heading for his telegraph key and Traf for Russ Dickey.

  Traf led his horse across the road to the side street by the hotel, and went toward the mean, rain-gutted adobe building that served as the sheriff’s office and temporary jail, and as Dickey’s one-room living quarters. Leaving his horse at the hotel tie-rail, he crossed the street and tried the door of Dickey’s office and found it unlocked. Inside, against the back wall and close to the Grant Street window was a rickety roll-top desk. A locked gun rack holding carbons and shotguns, also on the rear wall, was divided by a last year’s calendar from a dozen reward dodgers tacked to the wall. Dickey’s padded swivel chair facing the desk had holes in the seat and back that were leaking stuffing.

  Traf turned and went through the open corridor that led to the single-cell jail, where there was an iron cot with a blanket for a mattress. Beyond the cell was a door half ajar, and Traf went up to it and pushed it fully open. There, on a cot against the far wall, Dickey lay snoring.

  Traf moved past the small cook-stove and water bucket on the sink counter and came up to Dickey. He shook him roughly, and when Dickey opened his eyes, Traf said, “I want to talk to you, Russ. Get yourself awake and come out to the office.”

  As Traf turned away, Dickey swore at him sleepily. Back in the office, Traf sat in the straight chair beside Dickey’s desk, pushed his Stetson back off his forehead, and stretched his legs out straight. He heard Dickey sloshing water and blowing and sputtering at the sink; moments afterwards Dickey’s heavy footfall approached.

  He halted in the doorway, his red hair awry, his jowly face a little lopsided where he had taken Traf’s final blow. He began truculently, “Well, well. Instead of me hunting you, you hunt me. Can’t wait to get locked up, seems like. I got more charges against you—”

  “Shut up, Russ,” Traf cut in, and when Dickey stared at him in disbelieving anger, he added, “Come over and sit down.”

  Dickey held up a key that had been hidden in his big fist, and with his other hand he quickly lifted out his gun from its holster. “We can talk in the cell,” he said. “Get on your feet.”

  “No, I like it here.”

  Dickey took a couple of steps toward him and halted. “Oh, you’ve come to say you’re sorry, huh? You’ve come to beg or bargain, huh?”

  “I won’t beg but I’ll bargain,” Traf said quietly. “Put that damn gun away and sit down.”

  Dickey came forward another two steps. “Put your gun on my desk,” he said, “real careful and with your left hand.”

  Lazily, Traf obliged him. Dickey went to his desk and moved the gun out of reach, then holstered his own. He slacked his heavy body into the chair, eyed Traf belligerently, and said, “What’s the deal?”

  “I haven’t had a chance to tell you, Russ, but I just signed your name to a couple of telegraph messages over at the depot.”

  Dickey stared at him, and then smiled unpleasantly. “That’s another charge to add to the others. Keep talking. No, tell me first who you telegraphed to.”

  Traf told him of the two messages Len Stapp had probably dispatched by now, and finished by saying, “It’s only what you should have done yourself about five hours back.”

  Dickey’s eyes grew hard as he listened. “So you’re running the sheriff’s office here now?”

  “If I have to,” Traf said evenly. “Don’t talk, Russ. All you’re doing is slowing this down.”

  “Slowing what down?”

  “Well, for one thing, me trying to get a few facts into that thick head of yours.”

  “Let’s see how thick it is. Go ahead and talk.”

  Traf told him the
n of riding out to Bucksaw to ask Sophie Barrick how to reach Benjy Schell and of learning that Sophie had ridden in the caboose with the old boy who either was the knifer or had talked to the knifer last midnight. He emphasized that Sophie Barrick was the only one free of obligations who could recognize and identify the old man. Dickey listened carefully as Traf told him of Maud Barrick’s permission for Sophie to accompany him. Dickey was quick enough to put what Traf told him of the Barrick women together with the telegram.

  “So when Benjy tells you where he got off the train, you and Sophie will try and pick up his trail?”

  “There’ll be a third one along,” Traf said, and paused. “You, Russ.”

  Slowly Dickey straightened up in his chair. “What the hell are you talking about? I can’t leave here on some loco scheme like that.”

  “Suppose Sophie and I together find the old coot. We ask him to come back and he says the hell with that. He doesn’t want to. All right, who but the law can make him come back?”

  “That’s easy,” Dickey said. He leaned forward, opened the second drawer of his desk, lifted something out, and tossed it on the desk top close to Traf. “Show that badge to him. He’ll come alone.”

  “Not good enough, Russ. Your presence, like the jury summons says, is required.”

  “Is it, now?” Dickey asked sardonically. “Who requires it? Not you, by God!”

  “No, not me. Mrs. Barrick. Her condition is that you go with Sophie and me.”

  “She doesn’t trust you with Sophie?”

  “No.”

  “Can’t blame her, with a daughter that pretty. Still that cuts no ice with me, Traf. I ain’t going.”

  “Then your head is even thicker than I thought. What will Sheriff Vance say when I tell him the old boy got away because you wouldn’t get off your butt? After all, Braden was murdered almost on your doorstep.”

  Dickey said angrily, “Vance will back me up.”

  “But will he? What will Vance tell the U.S. Commissioner and his marshals when Washington orders them to question him?”

  Dickey looked blankly at him. “Washington? What’s Washington got to do with it?”

  Traf leaned forward. “Listen carefully, Russ. You’re an Irishman and we all know a good Irishman hates every Englishman.”

  “You’re damned right.”

  “But the people in Washington aren’t all Irishmen. Try to get it through your head that Anthony Braden is the son of Lord Lockhaven. When word reaches England, you can bet the British Ambassador in Washington will get instructions to investigate the murder. He’ll go to the State Department and to both our Senators, and then teetotal hell will break loose. There’ll be a flock of marshals on Vance’s neck; and believe me, Vance will have to buck it to you. And what does he find? That you wouldn’t stir a finger to find Braden’s killer.”

  Dickey asked suspiciously, “How do you know this’ll happen?”

  “Why, just south of the spread I worked on up north were some big spreads, all English-owned. You get in trouble with them and you’re in trouble with U.S. Government. No matter where an Englishman lives, Russ, he’s always a British citizen and his government never forgets it.”

  “I don’t believe it,” Dickey said flatly.

  “You ought to believe it, Russ. They’ve shot and hung a few Irishmen, haven’t they?”

  “That’s different.”

  “No different. A British citizen has been killed here. They’ll ask us to find out why, and who did it. So get ready for your marshal, Russ. And you better start looking for another job like this job, where you don’t have to work.”

  He paused, watching Dickey’s sullen face, and then he added innocently, “I don’t really think they could put you in jail, Russ, so don’t worry about that. But after this stink I don’t think Vance will be sheriff any more.”

  Dickey slowly swiveled his chair until he was looking out the window by the desk, and Traf knew that his words had got to him. Traf guessed he was weighing his job against missing a few nights in a saloon.

  Traf said quietly then, “I don’t think anybody will tell the marshal why we had a fight this afternoon. Your name is signed to those two telegraph messages. And as far as I’m concerned, hunting down the old-timer was your idea. You asked me to come along because Mrs. Barrick didn’t want Sophie camping out alone with a man. If we find the old man, Russ, you’ll be a hero. Even if he can’t help us.”

  Russ swung his chair around and grinned faintly. “That’s right, it was my idea, wasn’t it?”

  “Absolutely.” Traf got up, reached across the desk, picked up his gun and holstered it. Then he started for the door.

  Dickey rose now, too, and said, “Let’s you and me get a drink and some supper.”

  Traf halted and regarded Dickey thoughtfully, contempt plain on his face. “No. I’ll be seeing too much of you anyway in the next few days. Why should I start taking my beating before I have to?”

  Dickey first looked surprised, then angry, and he said, “By God, you’re getting to sound more and more like your old man used to sound. Just plain feisty.”

  “Thank you, Russ. I’ll come by later and we’ll go see if you’ve heard from Benjy Schell.”

  Traf went back to his horse and rode him down to the feed stable, where he left orders to grain him. Then he came back to the hotel for supper. It was dark when he again crossed the street and headed for Dickey’s lamplit office.

  Dickey must have heard the door close, for he came out of his room immediately. He was still chewing his food and he gave Traf a baleful glance before he lifted his hat from a nail on the front wall. Neither man spoke.

  Dickey went out first, and he and Traf angled across the now dark street past a few ponies at the tie-rail and went into the depot.

  “You take over,” Traf said.

  Dickey nodded and moved to the window. The sounder was rattling away while Len Stapp wrote. They waited until the clacking stopped, and then Len, who had already seen them, picked up a piece of paper from the desk and came over, saying, “Caught him at Buffalo Junction.”

  He laid the message on the counter and both Dickey and Traf read it. “NO NAME. GOT OFF AT KEAN’S FERRY. SCHELL.”

  Dickey folded and pocketed the message and was turning to go when Stapp said, “I got some money coming, Russ.”

  Dickey looked at Traf, who was already at the door. Dickey paid up and then followed Traf. He found him standing outside in the darkness.

  “We’ll pick you up at a little after daylight, Russ,” Traf said.

  “Yeah,” Dickey said sullenly and moved past him, heading for the hotel bar. He watched Traf cut over to the feed stable, where a lighted lantern hung in the archway, and he cursed softly. The big cocky bastard had not only beat him up, and then talked him into coming along with him, but he had stuck him for the price of the two messages to Schell. Of course, that was legitimate expense money, but the thought that Kinnard had sent the messages on his own galled Dickey.

  And that wasn’t all. Kinnard seemed to think he was the deputy sheriff in charge of this Braden investigation. It was, Dickey figured, a wild-goose chase at best. They didn’t even know who they were looking for. When they came to the inevitable dead end, he’d call off the search. Without him, Kinnard was helpless. And the hell with what the marshal thought. He could prove he’d made a try at the impossible.

  It was a slow night in the saloon, Dickey observed as he entered. A dozen or so men were bellied up to the bar, and as Dickey walked past the first pair, nodding to them, he was alert for any sign or gesture of ridicule. The first man that opened his mouth would get a fist in the face, Dickey promised himself.

  At the far end of the bar stood Tom Gore, Braden’s foreman, bottle and glass before him. Dickey, for some reason, was surprised at his presence here. He moved up to him and said, “What you hanging around town for, Tom?”

  Gore, watching Dickey in the mirror, said, “Well, there’s a funeral tomorrow I reckon I ought to show
up at.”

  “That’s right, I forgot.”

  “I was just over to your place. I want to talk with you. Get yourself a glass and let’s sit down.”

  Dickey asked the bartender for a glass and some cigars, and when he had received and paid for them, he and Gore moved over to the rear table where they had sat earlier. After seating himself, Gore poured their drinks and they both lit up cigars. Gore had a deceptively lazy way of moving in everything he did, but Dickey had watched him in a fight once and Gore had been quick as a snake with his fists and feet.

  As Gore pushed Dickey’s glass over to him, Dickey said, “Something bothering you, Tom?”

  Tom looked at him with those pale eyes and said, “Nothing at all, Russ.” He leaned back and regarded his drink. “I wrote a letter this afternoon to Braden’s folks. I didn’t mail it yet because I wanted to tell them what’s being done about finding Braden’s killer.” Now he looked at Dickey. “What is?”

  Dickey took a sip of his drink and frowned importantly. “Plenty, Tom.”

  He proceeded to appropriate to himself all of Traf’s actions of that afternoon, from a visit to the Barricks to the sending of the telegrams to Benjy Schell and receiving Benjy’s reply. He finished by saying, “I’ve just come from the depot, Tom. Benjy’s answer said the old-timer left the train at Kean’s Ferry. That’s where we pick up his trail.”

  Tom nodded thoughtfully and said, “You’ve been plenty busy.”

  “Well, it’s only my job,” Dickey said modestly. He took a deep drink; then, feeling its burning warmth in his stomach, he thought how beautifully the story had gone. To put the frosting on this fictional piece of cake, he added, “I don’t mind telling you I hate Kinnard’s guts, but he’s the one Mrs. Barrick named. I got to go along with it.”

  “Well, like you said, it’s your job,” Gore said.

  He finished his drink and then said, “You’ve given me what I wanted, Russ. I reckon I better go up and finish off that letter.” He rose. “Keep the bottle. It’s paid for. And thanks, Russ.”

  Russ watched him go through the lobby door and turn left for the stairs.

  5