by Short, Luke;
Tom Gore climbed the stairs of the Stockmen’s House and turned right. He passed the room he had rented, walked the full length of the corridor, and opened the door which led onto a set of wooden fire-escape stairs. He went down the steps to the dark street, and entered the alley that ran behind the hotel. He followed this as far as Pemberton’s, and then reaching Grant Street, he moved on toward the lantern-lit feed stable. Glancing in the office, he saw the hostler asleep on the cot. He returned to the archway, took down a lantern, and went back to where his horse, a big-barreled grey, was stalled. After saddling up, he took the lantern, led his horse down the centerway, and hung the lantern back on its peg. Then he mounted and rode north up Grant Street. When he was well away from the depot, he crossed the tracks, and settled down for the long ride.
By midnight he was deep in the big timber of the Gabriels, letting his grey have its head to find the cattle trails. The handle of the Dipper told him it was close to two o’clock when he came through the high pass and started down the west slope of the Gabriels. He had pushed his grey to its limit, but that was the way it had to be. Shortly he picked up Concho Creek and followed it down until he heard the familiar sound of distant falling water. He left the creek then, and after putting his horse south through the timber for a mile, he turned west again.
He knew that on his right was the five-hundred-foot-deep, sheer-walled canyon whose sides only a fool would try to negotiate in daylight, and only a drunken idiot bent on suicide would attempt at night. This was the head of the canyon six miles long and ten miles wide that housed the Reverse B’s range owned by the Bartholomew brothers. Its only access was a narrow entrance at the western end, where two men, given the ammunition, could hold off an army.
Less than two hours later, Gore, by the light of the thin moon, picked up the cleft in the canyon walls through which Concho Creek, quieter now, made its way west. He was in the notch when he heard a voice from above call out roughly, “Sing out down there!”
“Tom Gore. That you, Jim?”
“That’s me.” A pause; then, “Anybody lookin’ for me, Tom?”
“Nobody but me. Come down to the house.”
“Right away.”
Gore rode through the narrow notch in the canyon wall and saw immediately ahead of him the corral and outbuildings of the Reverse B. Beyond them was the low log bunkhouse where the crew of seven slept. Beyond that was the one-story log ranch house with its sod roof.
Gore let his horse drink, and afterwards rode through the lane between the corral and outbuildings past the bunkhouse, and saw Jim Fears waiting for him in the moonlight before the cabins.
Gore reined in and looked down at Fears. He was a stocky, broad-shouldered man of medium height wearing an ancient sheepskin coat that was buttonless. A rifle trailed down from his right hand.
“Go roust out Sam and Farney, Jim.”
“Trouble?”
“You might call it that,” Gore said dryly. Fears turned and went toward the cabin. Gore saw the grindstone down by the creek and he moved his horse over to it, dismounted, and tied it to the grindstone’s seat.
When he went back to the cabin, whose door Fears had left open, Gore saw that a lamp had been lighted inside. The room he stepped into held a deal table with a bench on either side of it. Aside from a small black stove whose coals Fears was stoking, the room held miscellaneous gear that should have been stored in a barn. Sacks of oats, cases of cartridges, bridles, axes, and shovels littered the room.
Fears hefted the coffee pot and, satisfied it contained enough coffee to warm up, took four tin cups from the shelf beside the stove and moved over to the table. He was a man in his thirties, his skin as swarthy as an Indian’s, with straight black hair to match. His pale green eyes, however, proclaimed him a black Irishman.
Farney Bartholomew now came through the door from the other room tightening his belt. He was shirtless, and his long-sleeved undershirt was grey with grime. He was a heavy-bodied, powerful man of forty, with a full, straw-colored mustache and a bald head that was strikingly white over his tanned face. “Why you night-riding, Tom?” Farney asked.
“Wait for Sam,” Gore said.
As he spoke, Sam Bartholomew came in from the other room. He was some ten years younger than Farney, taller, and with a full shock of tousled blond hair. The only similarity between the two brothers was their close-set grey eyes. “Something come up, Tom?” Sam asked.
Gore slacked onto a bench and the two brothers sat down on the other one. Fears stood by the stove waiting for the coffee to warm.
“Had a talk with Russ Dickey tonight, and it’s a good thing I did,” Gore began. He told how he had made up the bit about writing Braden’s folks in order to find out what Dickey was up to. What Dickey had told him was more than he’d bargained for. He told of Schell’s telegraphing Dickey where the old-timer who had talked with Fears on the depot platform got off the train. Dickey, along with Sophie Barrick, who could identify the old-timer, and Traf Kinnard were planning to start a search for the old man, beginning this morning.
When he had finished he turned his head and said to Fears, “They’re claiming that old boy saw you and talked to you, Jim. That right?”
Fears nodded. “The train was starting to move and he asked me what the trouble was. I told him Braden had had a heart attack and I was headin’ for the doctor. He never went over to Braden. He started trotting down the track to catch the caboose.”
“Would you know him if you saw him again?”
“Sure. Anywhere.”
“Well, that’ll make six people hunting him—you three, and Russ, Sophie Barrick, and Traf. And we better get to him first.” Still looking at Fears, Gore said, “If you’d know him again, he’d know you.”
Sam said, “So we find him. What do we do with him?”
“Leave him dead,” Gore said coldly.
Farney stroked his mustache thoughtfully and said, “Hell, it would be easier to hide Jim than find that old coot.”
“No. Jim’s no good to us on the dodge, and now’s when we need him the most.”
“Why now?” Sam asked.
“That ought to be plain to all of you,” Gore said. “With Braden dead, the Bar B will be all tied up in his estate. We can come close to cleaning it out before the lawyers get around to asking for a head tally. So we keep Jim and find the old man.”
“How you figure to?” Sam asked.
“Why, he don’t know anybody wants him. He won’t be covering his trail. It ought to be simple.”
“Simple? Like how?”
“Well, if he got off at Kean’s Ferry, he’s got only two ways to go. He came from the south, and he didn’t want to go north or he’d have stayed on that train, wouldn’t he?”
The two brothers nodded. Gore continued, “That leaves east and west. East runs out of range and into farming country. And he had a prospecting outfit. The only gold’s to the west.”
“In a hell of a lot of country,” Farney added.
Gore said curtly, “Not if we get on it right away, Farney. Hell, the road west from Kean’s Ferry is a stage road. And it’s a mean, steep one. There’s relay stations on it that are a lot closer together than they used to be out on the plains. Cut north from here and you’ll pick up the station in the pass in a day’s ride. See if the old boy’s passed there on the stage or horseback or afoot. If he ain’t, then head down for the next relay station east. Find out where they saw him last and he’ll be between there and the last station you asked at.”
“What if he don’t stay on the stage road?” Fears asked.
“He’ll leave sign. He’s not hidin’, I tell you.”
Sam said, “Well, I hope you can pick it up, Tom.”
“Me? I’m not going with you,” Gore said. “Matter of fact, I’m pulling out right now.”
The other three looked at each other, and then Sam said in a reasonable tone of voice, “If this is so damn important, Tom, why ain’t you sidin’ us?”
Gore said dryly, “Braden’s being buried at two o’clock today. It won’t look right to anybody if I’m not there. Especially when his lawyers show up later. I’ve got to make it look like I’ve took over all Bar B business until there’s a new owner.”
“Do we tell the boys where we’re going, and why?”
“Not a damn word,” Gore said flatly. “If I can get out of here without they see me, it’ll be even better. Now, one of you get me a fresh horse—not branded Reverse B’s.”
He stood up. “Don’t miss on this one, boys,” he said soberly. “This is for the jackpot.”
6
All the streams on the east slope of the Gabriels made up the Reach River and before Great Western built the railroad John Kean, besides running the relay station for the stage line, had operated a ferry across the wide Reach. After the railroad was built seven years ago, the stage line, rather than compete with the railroad for passenger and freight to New Hope and beyond, made Kean’s Ferry its terminus. The railroad, anxious for the east-west passenger and freight business, had built a bridge across the Reach. The small community that grew up there on both its banks was still called Kean’s Ferry.
It was late afternoon when Traf, Sophie, and Dickey rode across the bridge, a pack horse trailing Traf. At the one-story frame hotel they halted for Sophie to dismount and for her saddle bag to be lifted off. After she had gone into the River House, Traf gave Dickey the reins of her horse, mounted, and together with the two led horses they headed for the feed stable down the street. Before they turned into the stable’s wide doorway Traf noted that the office of the Pacific & Eastern Stage Lines was immediately across the street.
They unsaddled and arranged for the feeding of their horses, and after that they left the stable, warbags over their shoulders. Just beyond the archway Dickey said, “Want to bet I can’t drink a gallon of beer in that hotel barroom?”
“Get started on it then, Russ. I’ll catch up with you.”
Dickey nodded and started off alone. Traf cut across the street and went through the open door of the stage office. Behind its high counter on the right were a couple of desks, and a heavy, middle-aged woman was working at a ledger at one of them.
When Traf halted at the counter she stood up and came up to him. Traf asked, “You been here all day, ma’am?”
“Since six this morning, except for dinner.”
“When does your westbound stage leave?”
“Nine in the morning. You want a ticket on it?”
She started to pull out the drawer under the counter but Traf said, “No. I’m only after information. Did an old codger with white hair and a white beard take the morning stage? He’d be wearing Indian moccasins.”
“No. There was a woman with two children and a duded-up whiskey drummer—that was all.”
Traf thanked her, shouldered his warbag, and stepped outside and halted. No luck there, he thought. There was no sense in going back to the depot across the bridge and asking if the agent had sold the old boy a ticket. The old-timer had already been on a free ride if he wanted to take it. But Schell’s telegram said he got off here. Maybe he was still in town, Traf thought. And if he was, where was he likely to stay? He could probably find out from whoever was at the desk in the River House.
The evening horse traffic was light and Traf angled across the road headed for the hotel when a thought came to him. He veered left and went back to the stable and moved through the open door of the office. It was a small and dirty cubicle holding a cot, a rickety desk, and a barrel stove. An old man dressed in the dirty clothes of a ranch hand had his booted feet on the desk, and as Traf halted and looked at him, the man leaned over and sent a mouthful of tobacco juice into the cuspidor beside his chair.
Traf said, “Would your stable handle teams for the stage relay?”
“We do that.”
“Do you trade and sell horses too?”
“Sure. But you got a horse out in the corral.”
“When’d you sell your last horse?”
The old man frowned. “Last week maybe. Why?”
“When’d you sell your last mule?”
“This morning.”
“Would it be to an old man with white hair and beard?”
“That’s him.”
“You must have given him a bill of sale. Who’d you make it out to?”
“A. Caskie. C-a-s-k-i-e. You know him?”
“No, but I’m looking for him. Know where he was headed?”
“Never said. He loaded his gear on the scrawniest mule, saddled the other one, and headed up the pass road.”
“What’s he do?”
“He had a prospectin’ outfit. But he knew his mules. I tried to saw off a couple of mean ones on him, but he passed them up for the two he took.”
Traf thanked him and went out. On his way to the River House he let himself feel a cautious satisfaction, but only that. He had Caskie’s name and he knew he was headed west. It was a start, and it had come quickly. At the River House he registered, went down the left corridor, and found his room.
There he stripped off his shirt and washed. As he was toweling himself, he was thinking of the long day he had spent with his two companions. Sophie had no use for Dickey, and hadn’t bothered to hide it. Dickey, on his part, had started out in a sour and sullen mood. Before they were a mile from Indian Bend he had stated his opinion that they had taken on an impossible chore and were sure to fail. Sophie, Traf suspected, agreed with Dickey, but she did not voice her agreement. Her conversations with Traf had been brief and as impersonal as she could make them. Understandably, she was trying to show him that she had no warmth of feeling toward him, and only sympathized with this undertaking. The old affection she had once shown him was gone, and in its place was mere politeness.
As he shrugged into his shirt, Traf thought what an incongruous trio they were—Dickey, skeptical and resenting what he was doing; and Sophie, disliking Dickey and quietly hating the man who had refused to marry her. He, in turn, could not look at Sophie without thinking of what might have been if there were no Maud Barrick. Dickey, not even worthy of contempt, was a necessary nuisance. It was fair to say that each of them disliked the other two, Traf thought.
He went down the corridor and cut across the dimly lit lobby, which held only three chairs and a sofa, a spitoon beside each chair, as well as one at either end of the sofa.
Sophie was seated on the sofa, her hands folded in the lap of her divided skirt. She had changed out of the long-sleeved man’s shirt she had worn earlier into a gay-colored Mexican blouse. As he passed her, Traf said, “I’ll be back in a minute.”
He went toward the entrance to the saloon. The small bar lay to the right between the main-street and side-street doors. Two men were playing pinochle at one of the two card tables, and there were three men at the bar besides Dickey. The overhead lamps were already lit against the lowering dusk.
Instead of going up to Dickey, Traf put the three men between himself and Dickey and asked the bartender for a double whiskey with some water in it. Having received and paid for it, he picked up the glass and walked back to the lobby.
Sitting down beside Sophie, he held out the glass of whiskey and said, “Drink some of it, Sophie. You look a little tired.”
Sophie glanced at the middle-aged clerk behind the desk across the lobby who was watching them.
She said in a low voice, “You shouldn’t be drinking in the lobby, Traf. I shouldn’t either, because a woman doesn’t drink in public.”
Traf nodded. “Well, if that’s what your mother told you, it must be so. She’s always right.”
He was taking a drink of the whiskey when Sophie said, “He’s watching you.”
Traf held the glass away from his mouth. “All right, come in the saloon with me, because I’m going to have this drink.” He paused and grinned faintly. “Or if you feel that strongly about it, then pretend you don’t know me.”
“I don’t feel any way about it,” Sophie
said angrily. “If you want to, go get a bottle.”
At that, Traf drained his glass, rose, and said, “I might just do that.”
“Traf, don’t. Why do we have to quarrel?”
“Because you were taught to, Sophie.” He moved across the lobby, entered the saloon, and put the glass down on the bar. Then he went back to Sophie. “Do you want to eat now?”
“Yes, I’m hungry. But shouldn’t we wait for Dickey?”
“I don’t know about you, but I never eat at the table with a dog. Let’s go.”
Sophie stood up and together they walked past the desk and into the hotel dining room, which held half a dozen diners, all men. To Sophie’s surprise, Traf seated her, and she wondered why she was surprised at this attention. Had she been away from him so long that she’d forgotten he had tolerable, even good manners, when he wanted to show them? And then she reminded herself of the resolve she had made last night before sleep came to her. She was going to treat Traf civilly, and that was all. What she was doing was for poor Anthony Braden, not for Traf Kinnard. He was out of her life now, and would stay out.
The menu chalked in large letters on the blackboard hanging on the side wall told them they had no choice of what they would eat. Simple. It was to be beef stew.
The half-dozen tables in the room were covered with red-and-white checked tablecloths, and Sophie said conversationally, “This room must look pretty good to a tired stage traveler.”
Traf looked around him and nodded absently. The waitress brought their food and they ate in a silence that grew heavier and heavier. Traf was preoccupied with his own thoughts, and although Sophie had been taught that it was up to the woman to make table conversation, she’d be hanged if she’d even try. She covertly studied Traf’s saturnine good looks, and then made herself pay attention to the plate of food before her. She recalled that more than once today she had seen that look on Traf’s face. Was it simply that he didn’t like the company he was with or the chore he was on? There was something about Traf, perhaps his single-mindedness, that put a small fear in people, herself included.
Traf’s voice interrupted her thoughts. “The man we’re looking for, Sophie, is named A. Caskie. Found that out at the stable.”
