He got up and began splitting wood with slow, methodical strokes, but his mind wasn’t on his work. He kept thinking of Laurie, alone in her bed. She’d be waking up soon and Jane would have to go to her. So, sick with a baffling sense of futility, he told himself he would do nothing. Like Jane, he would wait.
Chapter Nineteen
Neal realized he had made a mistake the instant he was in the open, with bullets kicking up geysers of dirt all around him. A slug sliced through his pants just above the knee and raised a painful welt along his thigh. Another cut through his left boot above his ankle. Then, halfway to the top, he dived headlong to one side, gaining the protection of a low ridge of rock.
He lay on his belly, sucking in great gulps of air. Both Joe Rolfe and Doc Santee had opened up from the other side of the road, Rolfe nearly to the top of the ridge, Santee about halfway up. Now the firing stopped.
The sun was almost down; the light was thinning rapidly. Neal wondered if that was the reason he was alive. Darley had been shooting against the setting sun. Perhaps the slanting rays had blinded him. Or he may have been worried by the burst of fire from Rolfe and Santee’s guns. Or he might be a bad shot who just couldn’t do any better.
The minutes dragged by, with Neal hugging the downhill side of the rock. He was so close to where Darley had forted up that the promoter was bound to score a hit if Neal made a standing target. He couldn’t raise his head to see exactly where Darley was hiding, or if there was a weakness in his position.
All Neal could do was to lie here with his nose in the dirt and curse himself for an impulsive action that had put him into this jam. He was not going to be of any help to either Jane or Laurie if he got himself killed out here on Horse Ridge. But that line of thinking did not bring him any comfort. He had to know about Shelton. He had got this far with nothing more than a scratch. Maybe he could go all the way next time.
One moment he’d been telling himself he was damned lucky to be alive and he’d been a fool, the next moment he knew he couldn’t go on lying here. Fool or not, he had to do something. He tried to hold himself back, tried to assure himself that Rolfe and Santee were working around on the other side of Darley and they’d have the man boxed. Logic was one thing, but lying here and thinking about what might be happening to Jane and Laurie was another.
Carefully he wormed his way to the end of the ledge, and, pulling his gun, reared back the hammer. He eased his gun around the rock and threw a quick shot in Darley’s general direction, then jerked his hand back.
Darley answered the shot immediately, his bullet kicking up dust a few inches from where Neal’s hand had been. Rolfe and Santee cut loose again. Neal couldn’t pinpoint their positions, but, judging from the sound of the firing, he was convinced they had not moved up.
Neal cursed, a closed fist pounding the dirt. They were stuck. One man had them pinned down. Neal called: “Throw out your rifle, Darley! I’m coming up after you.”
“Come ahead,” Darley said, “but I’m not throwing out my rifle.”
Neal glanced at the sun. Time he was moving in. It would be dark soon, and Darley would make a break for it then. That was a chance Neal refused to take. If he lunged into the open again, he’d get it. Darley would expect him to show up from the side he’d just fired from. If he went the other way, he’d have a better chance, with Darley a poor shot and having slow reactions.
Slow reactions! Neal considered that a moment, thinking of the way the man had fought the day before in his office. He wasn’t a driver. He’d landed one good punch, but he hadn’t followed up.
This was the only angle he could think of, the best bet for escape from what was an untenable position. Quickly Neal slid his hand back to the end of the ledge, pulled himself up on one hand and his knees as high as he could without exposing the hump of his back, and fired.
He came upright like a jack-in-the-box, whirled, and dived toward another ledge farther up the hill and closer to the road. Darley fired as Neal had been sure he would, and fired again just as Neal gained his new position, the bullet striking a corner of the rock and screaming through space.
“Joe!” Neal called. “Can you hear me?”
“Yeah, I can hear you,” Rolfe answered.
“Doc?”
“Over here,” Santee answered. “I just picked up another ten feet. We’ve got him hipped.”
“Hold on,” Rolfe cut in. “No use getting shot up. I think the bastard’s hit.”
“I can’t wait any longer!” Neal shouted. “I’m the closest. I’m going after him.”
“We’ll all move when you do,” Santee said. “Can you see where he is?”
“No,” Neal said, “but we’ve got him from three sides. One of us ought to be able to see him.”
“He’s down in a hole,” Santee said. “Rocks all around him, but I don’t have far to go before I can look down at him.”
“Come ahead!” Darley screamed. “I’ll get Clark, you God-damned sons-of . . .”
Darley never finished his sentence. Rolfe came running in along the lip of the rim. Darley, his attention on Neal, didn’t see him until he fired, and in that same instant Neal and Santee charged Darley’s position, Neal angling slightly to the right and Santee crossing the road and coming in from the opposite direction.
Rolfe had the longest way to come. He was zigzagging, bending low, shooting steadily as he ran. Darley fired at him, and that gave Neal the small advantage of time he needed. He was the closest. Before Darley could turn his gun on him, Neal took a long jump to the top of one of the rocks that hid Darley. He fired and missed, and Darley threw a shot just as Santee cut loose; the doctor’s bullet raked Darley along the side. It was enough to throw him off.
Darley had the one chance at Neal and missed, but this time Neal didn’t miss. He caught Darley in the chest, knocking him against the rock behind him. His feet slid out from under him and he sat down, his gun dropping from his hand.
“Got him!” Neal called.
He saw Fay Darley, lying on her back in the bottom of the hole, her hands and feet tied, a dark streak of dried blood on her forehead and down one side of her face.
“Cut me loose, Neal,” Fay said. “He slugged me with a gun barrel and tied me up.”
Neal holstered his gun and, jerking out his pocket knife, cut the ropes that held the woman.
Darley wasn’t dead, but he was going fast. Neal whirled on him, demanding: “Where is Shelton?”
“Go to hell,” Darley said.
Santee jumped down into the hole beside Neal and, squatting beside the wounded man, opened his shirt and shook his head. “You’re finished, Darley. You better talk.”
Darley, who had never been a brave man, died like one. He said again—“Go to hell.”—and fell sideways, blood trickling down his chin.
Neal helped Fay to her feet. She leaned against a rock, her eyes shut. She put a hand to her forehead, muttering: “My God, my head feels like he’s still hitting me.”
Rolfe holstered his gun and, climbing to the top of the rock, held down his hand to her. She opened her eyes, and took his hand. Neal gave her a boost out of the hole with Rolfe pulling on her hand, then she stood beside Rolfe, swaying uncertainly until Neal scrambled up beside her and put an arm around her. Rolfe slid off the other side of the rock and helped her down.
“What happened?” Neal said. “Where’s Shelton?”
“In town.” Fay’s knees gave and she sat down, her back against the rock. “We’ve got the money. It’s in the saddlebags.” She motioned toward a clump of junipers where their horses were tied. “We were headed for the lakes. Shelton was going to meet us there. I didn’t know why he stayed in town until after we left.”
Neal glanced at Santee, who had climbed out of the hole and was watching, then at Rolfe, who was holding a wadded-up bandanna against a bullet gash in his left arm.
Rolfe said impatiently: “All right, tell us about it.”
“Are you going to arrest me?” Fay asked.<
br />
“You’re damned right,” Rolfe said.
“On what charge?”
“I don’t know, but I’ll throw you into the cooler for something. Go on now, tell us what happened.”
“I tried to help,” she said. “I wanted you to catch us. I couldn’t let Shelton go ahead with what he’d planned. After we left town, I saw Manion and I shot at him. He went after you, didn’t he?”
“That’s right,” Rolfe said.
Fay Darley was not the woman Neal had seen in town that morning, or beside the river the day before. She was dirty, her hair disheveled, her face contorted with pain, but for the first time he sensed a quality in her that had been missing before. Compassion. Or mercy. He wasn’t sure. Perhaps humility.
“Jud took you for Shelton,” Neal said.
“I was riding Shelton’s horse,” she said. “That was why. He was a long ways off. I don’t think Shelton intended to meet us at the lakes. He wanted us out of town, thinking Rolfe would chase us. This whole swindle was Shelton’s idea in the beginning, but I don’t think the money was what he wanted any of the time.”
“What did he want?” Neal asked.
“Those notes,” she went on as if she hadn’t heard the question. “He wanted to hurt you. I thought they were a bluff. It’s like I said yesterday. They were trying to get you out of town so they wouldn’t have any trouble with Stacey. They even put Ruggles on you. He was supposed to wound you. That way you’d be home in bed. Shelton wanted you there so he could kill you. He’s a crazy man, Neal. I knew it all the time. Or I should have. He’s the only man I ever met who didn’t care anything about me. I was like another man to him.”
“Who is he?”
“I don’t know,” Fay said. “Darley met him in Arizona. Darley’s always been a promoter of some kind. Or a con man working the mining camps. Shelton told him about this country . . . the lakes and the high desert . . . and convinced him he could make a fortune here. That’s why he came. At least that’s what Darley and I thought, but Shelton had something else in his head. I didn’t know what it was, and I don’t believe Darley did until the other day. He told me on the way out. I couldn’t stand it. When we got here, we stopped to rest our horses. We were on the ground and I shot him in the leg. He slugged me and tied me up. He said he was going to fight it out. He said you men would kill him if you could, and he’d bled too much to make a hard ride.”
“Fay”—Neal knelt beside her—“what did he tell you?”
She looked at him, trying to smile. “Funny, isn’t it?” she said in a low voice. “Most of the things I said to you weren’t lies. I didn’t think you’d believe them, but I knew they planned to kill you and I wanted to keep them from doing it.” She looked up at Rolfe. “Will it help any? What I did? Darley might have gone clear to the lakes. You might have lost him.”
“Sure, it’ll help,” Rolfe said.
Neal took her hands. “Fay, what did Darley tell you?”
She put her head against the rock and closed her eyes. “Shelton’s nursing a grudge against you. He has been for eight years. He planned this to get revenge. Turn everybody against you. Hang you maybe. Injure your family. Anything to make you suffer. Even take it out on your little girl. When I heard that, I knew I had to stop Darley. I thought I could ride back and warn you, but he wasn’t going to take any chances . . .”
She opened her eyes. Neal was gone, running down the slope toward Redman.
Rolfe called: “Wait, Neal! You’ll need help!”
Santee said: “Let him go, Joe. This is a job he’ll want to do himself.”
Chapter Twenty
As Neal ran down the slope to his horse, he remembered how it had been that time, stepping out of Olly Earl’s hardware store and shooting the Shelly gang to pieces, with only Ed Shelly escaping. But Tuck Shelton could not be Ed Shelly. Joe Rolfe had proved that to Neal’s satisfaction. Now Fay said Shelton had nursed a grudge against him for eight years, so Shelton must, in some way, be tied up with the Shelly outfit.
Neal swung into the saddle and cracked steel to Redman. Fay said Shelton was a crazy man. She was right. No one but a crazy man would want to injure Laurie. Neal had told himself that repeatedly from the moment he’d received the second note saying Neal’s wife and girl would pay for the murder of Ed Shelly’s father and brother.
Only Henry Abel stood between Laurie and Shelton. He would be no match for a maniac. Then Neal realized he had spurred Redman until the horse was in a hard run. He pulled the gelding down to a slower pace. If he killed the animal between here and town, he’d be on foot, at least until Rolfe and Santee caught up with him, and they would be slowed by having to take care of a sick woman and leading a horse with a dead man tied across the saddle.
Dusk settled down, then darkness, the last scarlet trace of the sunset dying above the Cascades. To Neal Clark, with this driving sense of urgency in him, the town seemed as far away as ever. As he rode, the fear grew in him that no matter how long it took him or what he did, he would be too late.
Neal nearly killed Redman that night. He would rein the horse down, then, before he realized it, he’d have him running again. During the long ride to town, he was vaguely aware of the beat of hoofs against the sandy soil of the road, of the slack shapes of the junipers as they flashed by, of the stars overhead, of the wind rushing down from the high peaks of the Cascades that penetrated into the vary marrow of his bones.
He was aware of these things, but they did not form a conscious pattern. Only time mattered. Redman’s life was not important as long as the horse stayed on his feet long enough to get to town. Neal’s own life was nothing unless he could barter it for Laurie’s. And Jane’s. But he had no idea how he could manage it. He couldn’t even guess what he would find when he got home.
So he rode, the hours and miles falling behind, and hope that had been in him when he’d left Horse Ridge began to fade until it was no hope at all. When at last he reined his lathered, heaving horse to a stop in front of his house, he saw that there were lights in Laurie’s room and in the parlor.
Cold logic told Neal that a sensible man would have done whatever he intended to do and been on his way hours ago, but now he saw the lights and hope blazed high in him again. There would be no light in Laurie’s room unless she was all right, he thought.
Neal dismounted and crossed the yard to the porch, moving as silently as he could. He turned the knob, opened the front door, and stepped inside. Closing the door, he drew his gun and eased along the hall to the parlor, the floor squeaking under his feet. He had forgotten about the squeaky boards.
He should have gone around to the back. Too late. The parlor door was open and light fell through it into the hall; he could not go past the door without being seen, if Shelton was in the parlor. But Shelton might be anywhere in the house, even up in Laurie’s room with a gun pointed at her head.
So Neal waited, hearing no sound except the ticking of the clock on the mantel, waited while sweat dripped down his face. After his wild ride, plagued by a thousand fears, impelled by his compulsive urge to find out what had happened, he was caught here in his hall.
Then he heard Shelton’s even-toned, monotonous voice: “Come in, Mister Clark, with your hands up, unless you want your banker killed.”
For a moment Neal couldn’t move. This was not what he had expected. Shelton was in the parlor, so he must have known Neal was in the house and he had let him stand there, finding pleasure in the torment of uncertainty that he knew was plaguing Neal. The paralysis passed. He had no way of knowing whether Henry Abel was under the man’s gun or not, but he couldn’t take any chances. He slipped the gun under his waistband and walked through the door, his hands high.
Abel sat on the couch, his hands folded on his lap, and in the lamplight his face was shiny with beads of sweat. Shelton stood in the fringe of light, his gun lined on Abel. He did not indicate by even a slight movement of his head that he had seen Neal come in.
“That’s fine, Mi
ster Clark,” Shelton said, emphasizing the mister. “I expected obedience from an intelligent man like you. Now lay your gun on the table. Draw up a chair and sit down. If you try to shoot me, I’ll kill you and your banker, and everyone else in the house.”
“Laurie?” Neal asked.
“She’s all right,” Abel said.
“So far,” Shelton added significantly. “She’s in her room. Her mother’s with her. As a matter of fact, Mister Clark, we’ve had a real good evening. I was sorry to hear you ride up.”
So he’d known the instant Neal had dismounted in front of the house. It wouldn’t have made any difference if he had come in through the back door. Probably it was locked anyhow. He hesitated, wondering if he had any chance to get his gun into action before Shelton killed him. A slim one, he thought, but it meant throwing Abel’s life away, and he couldn’t do that. Not yet, so he obeyed Shelton’s orders, slowly drawing his gun from holster and laying it on the table. Then he sat down.
“I rode my horse harder than I should have,” Neal said. “I’d like for Henry to go out and take care of him.”
“A cowman first, a banker second,” Shelton said. “All right, Abel, you do that. Rub the horse down. He’s a good animal. We’ve got to take care of him. I’ll need him before morning.”
Slowly Shelton turned so his gun covered Neal. Abel rose, glancing at Neal as if trying to read his mind. Here was their chance, Neal thought, and Abel would take advantage of it. He could move the ladder that leaned against the back of the house and put it to Laurie’s window. They could escape, Laurie and Jane. Neal was a hostage, but that didn’t make any difference. He was a dead man anyway.
Neal nodded and Abel started toward the dining room. He reached it just as Shelton said: “Go out through the front door, banker, and lead the horse around the house. Leave the back door locked.”
The Man from Yesterday Page 14
