King Colt

by Short, Luke;

  “I’ll stick,” the speaker sneered. “We ain’t worried much about your gettin’ in. Even if you do, we ain’t exactly frettin’.”

  Johnny said, “Saturday night, I may start to worry you.” He indicated the dead puncher. “Any of you know him?”

  None of them did. They had seen him, they said, but they didn’t think he worked here or was known except to maybe a few barkeeps.

  “Just a harmless pilgrim,” Johnnly drawled dryly. “Like so many rannies I could name around here. In a couple of weeks maybe these pilgrims will decide it’s a little safer to ride on through Cosmos.” And with that he left them to hunt up a teamster who would deliver the corpse to the coroner.

  When that was finished, he went down to the hotel. In his pocket were the letters—and they were the ones he had been expecting today from the ten ranchers he had consulted. In them would be the names of all the undesirables the honest ranchers wanted run out of the county. Obviously somebody knew what these letters contained and wanted to destroy them.

  Nora wasn’t at the Cosmos House, but Johnny went into the deserted dining-room, shut the door behind him, and pulled up a chair, spreading his letters on the table.

  He opened all eight of them, for two of the ranchers were not represented. The lists were all printed, giving no clue to their writers.

  With a stub of pencil and a sheet of paper, Johnny tabulated the names, and when he was finished, he sat back in his chair, amazement in his face.

  “So Major Fitz heads the list!” he murmured. “Well, I’ll be whupped! I’ll be double, triple hog-whupped!”

  It didn’t make sense, yet there was the evidence. Six of the eight ranchers put Major Fitz’s name at the head of their lists. Johnny pulled out a sack of tobacco and thoughtfully rolled a smoke. He’d got more than he bargained for here, but what did it mean? Originally, he had wanted to give these men a chance to express their honest beliefs without having to present inadequate proof and explanations. But Major Fitz? In cow country, no company outfit is ever loved, but to accuse the manager of the Bar 33 of rustling beef was another matter. Of course they would seize this opportunity of telling it, for they wouldn’t dare say so in public. And it couldn’t be one man’s grudge; too many had hit on Fitz’s name.

  He heard the door open and he swept the lists into one pile as Nora stepped into the room. She looked at him accusingly as she walked over to him, peeling off her coat.

  “Hiding something?”

  Johnny only grinned, and then, on that chance that two heads might be better than one, he decided to tell her. “Remember that scheme I told you about—having the honest ranchers send in the names of the bad hombres?” Nora nodded. “Guess who’s the most unwanted jasper in this county.”

  “Johnny Hendry,” Nora said, and then became serious. “Who?”

  “Major Fitz.”

  Nora’s face fell. “Let’s see.” When she’d looked over the lists, she put them down and said flatly, “Honest ranchers, nothing! Who all did you go to, Johnny? The bums and cattle thieves?”

  “Ten men you like.”

  “But I like Major Fitz!”

  “So do I. What do you make of it?”

  Nora said hotly, “I just think it goes to show that some men will do mean and underhanded things if they don’t have to sign their names to them!”

  Thoughtfully, Johnny struck a match and touched off the lists and shoved them in the fireplace. “Mebbeso,” he said slowly, but he couldn’t help thinking about that puncher who had attempted to steal the letters. Had he been sent by Major Fitz, who might have guessed that his name would lead the list of undesirables? Johnny didn’t know. “But whatever it is,” he told Nora, “it’s a secret between us.”

  Chapter Six: GOLD SHIPMENT

  Hank Brender was clear out beyond the fourth corral when the Bar 33 triangle clanged for breakfast, so that he was the last man to the cookshack. As he entered he felt, without being able to pin it down, that a subtle change came over his fellow punchers. The talk didn’t stop, the usual number started to ride him about not being hungry, but he had the uncomfortable impression that the subject of conversation had been suddenly switched, and that the cameraderie was forced. This wasn’t the first time he had noticed it, and it made him feel an outsider.

  Sitting down, he noticed a stranger at the table, and like all these strangers lately—men who rode the grub line and could not be refused a meal—this one was shifty-eyed, furtive, and silent. Nobody knew him, or said they didn’t, but Hank had the feeling that they did. Somehow, things were different lately. Hands never stayed here long any more, and there wasn’t that old loyalty to the Bar 33 that used to make it a pleasant and secure place to work.

  As Hank sat down, Major Fitz rapped his tin cup with his knife, and the table fell silent.

  “No work today, boys,” the major announced. “As you all know, this is election day. As soon as you’ve finished the work around the place, you can ride into town. Blake, at the bank, will pay you at two, not a minute before. If you haven’t all voted before that time, you’d better not let me find it out.” He paused, and glared around the table at his men. “And if you don’t get down there—all of you—before you see a pay check or any whisky, and vote for Johnny Hendry, you needn’t bother to come back here. Understand that?”

  They did. The talk turned to the election, and although there was a long ticket of offices, nobody discussed anything but the election of the sheriff. Hank listened closely, but he could not hear one dissenter from the major’s opinion. Johnny Hendry was liked here, it seemed.

  After breakfast, as Hank stood outside the cookshack rolling a toothpick in his mouth, Major Fitz and Carmody, the foreman, came up.

  “Hank, I’ve got a favor to ask of you,” Major Fitz said bluntly.

  When Hank inclined his head, the major said, “I picked you because you’re the steadiest hand here and probably won’t feel this is such a burden. The rest of the men are anxious to get to town and vote and start drinking. It won’t matter to you if you’re an hour or so late, will it?”

  Hank said no.

  “Well, Art Bodan rode past that north pasture last night on his way home and he said there was a hundred foot of fence down. He rode around and made sure the horses were pushed up to the far end, but he couldn’t fix it because he didn’t have any tools. Would you mind ridin’ out today and stringin’ that wire back?”

  “Not a bit,” Hank said obligingly. He was a little surprised at the politeness of the major’s request, since he usually didn’t ask a man to do a thing; he simply ordered him.

  Carmody, the foreman, said, “Better get goin’ now, Hank. The boys can clear up the work here in short order.”

  Hank went over to the bunkhouse to get a pair of heavy gloves. No one else was in the place. Prompted by something he could not immediately define, Hank tucked a pair of glasses in his hip pocket and went out to saddle up. When he had his wire wrapped in gunny sack and slung over the saddle horn, and the hammer and some staples, he mounted and rode south up the ridge. Once over it, he turned sharply and headed for some trees that saddled the ridge. Dismounting, he worked his way up the hump and bellied down in some brush, training his glasses back on the ranch house not a half mile away.

  Out in the yard, the whole crew was gathered listening to Major Fitz. Something stirred Hank’s anger at the sight. It was as if Major Fitz didn’t want him to be in on this parley. And suddenly Hank knew that he had been sent on this errand so that the major would be rid of him. Passionately Hank wanted to hear what was being said by Major Fitz down there. The hardcase stranger stood at the major’s right, listening. Then the gathering broke up, and Major Fitz joined the stranger, and they both walked toward the trim white house.

  Hank drew back into the brush and squatted on his haunches, rolling and lighting a smoke. He was an even-tempered sort, but for the first time in his life he felt sulky. He cuffed the battered Stetson back off his forehead and thoughtfully pulled the lo
ck of gray-shot hair that licked down on his forehead. He’d worked under Major Fitz longer than any man down there—twice as long as Carmody had worked for him. And now they thought they had to send him away so they could talk among themselves. But why? Funny things were going on down there and had been for a year—secret things that a man could only guess at.

  He smoked his cigarette down until it burned his fingers and then he dropped it and stepped on it, his homely face set in a stubborn cast. That fence up there could go straight to hell as far as he was concerned. He was going to get at the bottom of this.

  Back in the brush, he trained his glasses on the house and kept them there. Presently the stranger came out alone, went to the corral, snaked out his horse, and saddled up and rode north, toward town.

  Hank didn’t waste a minute. Back to his pony, he cached the wire and tools and swung down along the ridge west until it petered out.

  Riding an arroyo bottom, he swung north, keeping out of sight until finally he was a mile or so away from the house, and then he cut back to the road. The tracks of the stranger’s horse showed plainly in the dust of the road. He followed them at a leisurely pace. Just before the road topped the ridge south of town, the tracks turned off to the left. This time, Hank used more caution. The tracking was difficult in this broken and rocky terrain, but he saw that the man was keeping to this side of the ridge until he was below the town. Hank dismounted then and went ahead, carefully scanning the broken country ahead of him.

  Rounding a jut of rock, he saw the man’s horse ground-haltered by a screening piñon. He drew back, circled wide, and crawled up on a small, flat-topped butte. There, on the lip of the ridge under a piñon, the man was bellied down watching something below. Hank shifted his position until he also could look into the canyon.

  Below them, in the bottom of the canyon below the town, lay the stamp mill. Hank watched it for a few moments, his face puzzled.

  Suddenly, he saw a flash of reflected sun, and then he understood that someone was signaling to the stranger.

  Tip Rogers, superintendent of the Esmerella mine, was at work a little early on election day, so as to be at the shaft mouth when the night shift came off duty. The men of this shift he called into the big freighting-shed and told them to wait a minute. The day shift of miners was just collecting at the shaft mouth, and he told these men to come into the freighting-shed, too. Once they were all collected, Tip mounted a piling and looked them over. He was a young, high-shouldered man with crisp, curly brown hair, dressed in breeches and lace boots and with an engaging, serious face that was more sober than usual today. These men were his seniors, most of them, and he did not like the task set him, but he cleared his throat and raised his hand.

  “What I’ve got to say is mighty short,” he told them. “If Baily Blue is elected sheriff of this county again, the Esmerella will have to shut down. I don’t have to tell you that means you’ll lose your jobs.”

  “How come that, Tip?” one of the miners asked.

  “Because the insurance companies are asking such high rates to insure our bullion shipments that we can’t make any money. And if we can’t insure the stuff, we’ll be cleaned out in a couple of months. And if we’re cleaned out you won’t have any employer to work for any more—no pay checks. That’s simple enough, isn’t it?”

  The miners looked at each other. A voice carried over their murmur. “First time I ever knowed a outfit to make its workers vote the way it said.”

  Tip nodded. “We don’t like it, either, Bill, but that’s how things stand. Unless there’s a law-and-order sheriff put in here, we can’t operate. We’re not tellin’ you how you have to vote. We’re just saying that if you want to keep your jobs, you’ll have to help put Johnny Hendry in office.”

  “You think he’ll clean it up?”

  Tip’s jaw muscles corded a little. “You really want to know what I think? I don’t think he will. I don’t think he can. But he’s the only hope we’ve got. Get behind him and give him a try.” Then he told them that the day shift would get two hours above ground at noon to vote, and dismissed them.

  Inside the Esmerella office, he passed the door of Sammons, the manager, and went into his own neat cubbyhole. He drew some papers from his desk, put them in his pocket, and went outside to a saddled horse waiting at the tie rail.

  His ride into town was slow and thoughtful. The streets of Cosmos were in an uproar, and there was much drinking already at this early hour. Tip looked at the scene contemptuously, and picked his way down the thronged street to the Cosmos hotel.

  In the dining-room, Nora was serving the late breakfasters, and among them was Johnny Hendry. Tip scowled, but Nora smiled and waved him over to where she stood talking with Johnny.

  “Sit down, Tip,” Johnny invited, and Tip did, ordering his breakfast. He and Johnny regarded each other with a wary neutrality, for when Johnny wasn’t with Nora, Tip usually was. But Tip knew that hard-faced, grinning Johnny had the inside track with her and he resented it with all the heat his good manners allowed him to show—which wasn’t much.

  “You don’t seem worried about the election,” Tip observed as Johnny went on with his breakfast.

  “I’ll win it. Why shouldn’t I?” Johnny countered arrogantly.

  “What if you do? Do you think you’ll be able to clean up the place?”

  Johnny looked at him swiftly. “I do. You don’t, do you?”

  “No.”

  “Want to bet?”

  “Sure,” Tip said, smiling crookedly. “What?”

  Johnny laid down his fork and stared at Tip with speculative interest. “What is it you think I can’t handle?”

  “You won’t calm down these hardcases, let alone drive ’em out. You won’t solve the rustling or the robberies or the murders any more than you did under Blue.”

  “You think I can expect trouble soon, then?” Johnny murmured innocently.

  “Right away,” Tip said flatly.

  Nora came back now with Tip’s breakfast and sat down at the third chair. Johnny said to her, “Tip thinks I can expect trouble right away after I’m elected.” He looked at Tip grinning. “How soon?”

  “If you’re elected, you’ll get it tonight or tomorrow.”

  Johnny grinned broadly now. “And you’re willin’ to bet I can’t handle it? Furthermore, you’re willin’ to bet I can’t solve all this stuff that Blue don’t pay any attention to?”

  “That’s right.”

  Johnny leaned back and drawled, “Nora tells me as soon as you heard about this election dance Monday night, you asked her to go.”

  “I did,” Tip admitted, and looked down at Nora. “You’re going with me, aren’t you?”

  “You asked me first,” Nora said.

  Johnny cut in. “Are you willin’ to bet the chance to take Nora to the dance that I can’t handle any trouble that comes up between now and Monday?”

  “Sure,” Tip said flatly. “But I already had the date. That’s what I’m putting up. What are you putting up?”

  “My resignation,” Johnny replied, eying Tip steadily.

  Tip leaned forward in his chair and said, “You’re crazy, Hendry. Even I wouldn’t expect you to put that up for a stake.”

  “It’s up,” Johnny murmured, and rose, looking down at Nora. “I’ll leave you love birds to yourselves,” he said, grinning. “Me, I’m goin’ out and elect myself. I’ll see you Monday night, honey,” he said to Nora, and laughed at Tip’s glare of anger.

  Tip regarding Johnny’s receding back with a wry expression. “Some day, somebody’s going to work that cocky puncher over,” he growled.

  Nora giggled. “It’ll take a good man.”

  “But look!” Tip protested. “His stepfather was killed only a few days ago. You’d think he’d be a little more considerate of his memory, quiet down a little, and stop his swaggering. Instead, you wouldn’t ever know he’d had any hard luck. You’d—”

  “Stop that!” Nora said sharply. “Johnny
loved Pick! But does he have to go around moaning in public to prove he’s sorrowing?” Nora’s eyes were dancing with anger. “Everything he thinks or does now is planned to help in getting Pick’s killer. Don’t criticize something you don’t know anything about, Tip Rogers!”

  Tip smiled a little. “All right, I’m wrong. But don’t scratch my eyes out.”

  Nora flushed a little, and her eyes lost their anger. She even smiled forgivingly. “All right, Tip, but don’t ever try to knock Johnny to me. He’s all right.”

  “I suppose he is,” Tip agreed wryly. “I might even like him if he didn’t like you so much.”

  When Tip was finished eating, he went out to his horse again, mounted, and rode west out of town toward the stamp mill. Approaching it, he could hear the earth-shaking thunder of the stamps as they crushed the ore in the reduction process. The mill itself was a series of red-painted, corrugated-tin-roofed sheds tipping up the slope of the canyon side. The offices were down in the valley bottom at the very end of the building. A dozen ore freighters waited their turn at the scales and hoppers, and the place buzzed with activity. Tip saw a bent old prospector drive his buckboard onto the weighing-platform. He had a half-dozen sacks of ore in the back of his buckboard. Tip smiled a little as he regarded the man. Then he stepped into the building and was shown into the manager’s office.

  Kinder, an officious, sandy-haired little man, greeted him, and they shook hands. Kinder had been watching out the window, and now he returned to it.

  “His outfit is pretty clever, isn’t it?” he said to Tip.

  “Is he the one?” Tip asked, laughing. “I thought he was an old desert rat.”

  “Here he comes now,” Kinder said.

  In a few moments, the prospector was ushered into Kinder’s office, and Kinder shook his hand and indicated Tip. “Reese, this is Tip Rogers, the Esmerella super.” To Tip he said, “Believe it or not, this is Reese, your insurance man. He doesn’t look like an insurance man, but he is—in more ways than one.”