by Lauran Paine
Rufe nodded. “Thanks.” He turned and walked out into the roadway, looking southward across the road, and saw Jud just entering the general store.
There was more traffic now, both in the roadway and along both plank walks. In fact, Rufe was delayed in reaching the general store because of the traffic. Over across the road a heavy-set, raffish-looking man was rattling the jailhouse front doorway Rufe saw this, and also saw the stranger turn away with a curse and go stamping along in the direction of the livery barn.
Rufe entered the general store, looked over the heads of half a dozen browsing women until he caught sight of his partner, then worked his way along as far as the steel goods section where Jud had just finished speaking with a man wearing alpaca sleeve protectors up to his elbows. As the store-keeper walked briskly in pursuit of a customer, Jud saw Rufe coming, and relaxed against a pistol case, shoved back his hat, and looked forlorn.
“They’re not in town,” he said before Rufe had stopped moving. “Nobody’s seen’em. Sure as hell they’ve headed back to the mesa.”
Rufe gestured. “Down a couple of doors…in the abstract office.”
Jud straightened up without a word and followed his partner back out into the bustling roadway. Southward, the first shop was a bakery; the second store front had gold letters arched across a window which announced that it was the Abstract Office.
Jud studied the window, the lettering upon it, the front door, which was closed, then looked quizzically at Rufe. “You sure they’re inside?”
“The harness maker saw them enter,” Rufe explained, and pointed. “I’ll go stand down there, south of the place, and, when they come out, you try to get him to hire you on…and cut him loose from Harris like we figured.”
Jud nodded, hitched at his trousers, waited until Rufe was down the walkway a short distance where he would be in a position to flank Harris and Chase if shooting erupted, then Jud stepped up close to the bakery’s front and started rolling a smoke.
People came and went, and so did the time. Jud had his cigarette half smoked, ready to drop and trample underfoot, before the door of the abstract office opened. He held his cigarette poised to drop, watching intently. A tall, raw-boned, granite-jawed woman with iron-gray hair and a choker-type neckline to her white blouse stepped out and closed the door, looked up and down the plank walk as though she were seeking a challenge, then she turned northward and, with her formidable jaw tilted like the bow of a battleship, marched past Jud without looking at him, and kept right on marching.
Rufe glanced into the busy roadway, glanced at the sun, which was coming close to the rooftops finally, and eventually looked up where Jud was standing—and got a high shrug from his partner, which indicated that Jud was willing to wait a bit longer, but which also indicated he thought they were wasting more time.
Rufe was beginning to think this was so when the office door opened again. This time five men walked out. Bull Harris was identifiable by his black beard and the way he was dressed and wore his ivory-stocked Colt. Arlen Chase was also identifiable be-cause one of the other men, older, heavy-set, wearing a vest and holding a pen in one hand, was very earnestly speaking, using Chase’s name now and then. But the other men were completely unexpected. It had not crossed either Jud’s or Rufe’s mind that Chase and Harris would not come out together, just the pair of them.
Jud leaned and watched, and did not make any move at all when Chase and Harris, along with two of the other men, broke off the discussion in the doorway, and started walking northward, like the woman, without looking left and right.
Bull Harris was silent. Arlen Chase was also silent, most of the time, but the pair of men with him were leaning and talking, one on each side of Arlen Chase, as though their lives depended upon explaining something to him.
The cavalcade passed; Jud glanced down at Rufe with an ironic little smile, and the partners strolled to a meeting out front of the abstract office where they stood and watched Chase and Harris head for the saloon, still with those other two men flanking them.
XIII
The sun was now over the eastern rooftops of Clearwater. The few remaining, diluted shadows vanished in a twinkling. Those heavy clouds that had been overhead the afternoon and night before were distantly visible here and there, torn to shreds by the high wind that had ripped them apart the previous night. The last threat of rainfall was gone.
Rufe, studying the saloon in the midday sun, was not aware of the heavens at all. Neither was Jud, who had a hunch about those two men who had accompanied Chase and Harris to the saloon from the abstract office.
“Land peddlers, or maybe they got a ranch they’re trying to work off on him.”
The purpose of those men did not interest Rufe. His concern had to do with how much longer they would be at the bar with Arlen Chase. He said—“Hell.”—in deep disgust, and straightened up. “Let’s go get a beer.”
They went up to the saloon, entered, found about a dozen or fifteen other men already lined up for a noonday drink or two, and took a position at the lower end of the bar, watching the men at the upper end, which included Chase and Bull Harris.
The gunfighter acted bored. He had a thick sandwich in one hand and a tall, sticky glass of amber beer in front of him atop the bar. He was looking out over the room. His piercing, sweeping glance reached down as far as the lowest end of the bar, paused only momentarily upon a pair of faded cow-boys down there, who looked as run-of-the-mill as it was possible for range riders to look, and swept elsewhere.
Eventually Chase turned upon the pair of fast-talking men and spoke tersely. Afterward, the two strangers pulled away from the bar, exchanged a few more words with Chase, then departed.
Rufe sighed and nudged his partner. Jud let the strangers get completely out of the saloon before he stepped back and started up the room.
Rufe made some hard calculations. Jud would have to get Chase outside, out into the roadway, without Harris trailing along, before anything could be accomplished.
But Rufe decided Harris would probably drift right along with them, and with a firm conviction that he was not going to allow this to happen, if he could possibly prevent it, he picked up his beer glass and also shuffled up in the direction of the upper end of the bar, except that he turned in midway, just below the food dishes, and leaned there.
Jud made his approach casually. Rufe saw Chase look around as Jud addressed him. Harris, too, looked around, but Harris had already made his assessment of Jud, the worn-looking, down-and-out range rider, and Harris turned back to the bar to hoist his beer glass and drink.
Chase listened to Jud. Rufe saw the cowman’s harsh brutish profile relax as he listened, the heavy mouth begin to tilt slightly with condescension, with scorn, and finally Chase gave a short answer to Jud, and Rufe’s partner smiled. Evidently the cow-man had either agreed to hire Jud, or offered that kind of encouragement. Jud then spoke again, and this time Chase finished his drink, and turned away from the bar—and Rufe held his breath.
Chase was going to walk out of the saloon with Jud. Harris looked around, eyed the pair of men a moment, then turned back to finish his beer. Rufe’s right hand sank gently down to his hip holster. He braced himself to keep Harris inside—then the gun-fighter casually reached for another pair of bread slices and went to work making another sandwich, while Chase and Jud crossed the room.
It was going to work!
Rufe forced himself to turn very gradually, very indifferently, to watch the pair of men heading for the door.
Outside, someone let off a high yelp. Several other loud voices suddenly erupted too. Rufe could feel perspiration popping out beneath his shirt. Bull Harris, half-made sandwich in one hand, twisted to look toward the door. So did just about everyone else inside the saloon.
Arlen Chase took two swift strides, grabbed the doors, and shoved through, then stopped dead in his tracks. Rufe could not see much past the cowman’s frame, but he saw enough. Several excited men were leading a pair of filth
y, limping, utterly bedraggled men down the center of the roadway. Rufe recognized them both. Ruff and Abe Smith!
Rufe felt like swearing. Evidently Jud had recognized the rescued prisoners from the bootleg hole, too, because, without warning, he suddenly reached and gave Arlen Chase a violent punch, knocking him out through the doors and into the roadway.
Rufe was turning when he saw Bull Harris drop his sandwich and suddenly whip around to lunge clear of the bar to face Jud. Rufe stepped away and called.
“Harris!”
The gunfighter whirled, struck instantly by the menace in that shout. Somewhat southward, behind Rufe, two quick-thinking men, lunging frantically to be out of the line of Harris’s fire, knocked over two chairs and a table.
Harris was reaching for his gun as he whirled on Rufe. No one could fault Bull Harris’s draw. Rufe was already drawing when he shouted, and, although his Colt was clear of leather and tilting into position, the gunfighter’s weapon was coming around to bear even faster—then Harris’s Colt with its shiny ivory handle slipped in his palm, just as Rufe fired.
Bull Harris was knocked half around by solid impact. He fell against an iron stove, knocking it away from the stovepipe. Soot billowed around as the gun-fighter went down and rolled half under a card table.
The sudden silence was deafening.
Throughout the barroom men were frozen in position, staring, most of them with no inkling any-thing at all was wrong until Rufe’s gun went off. Even the barman, who had been alerted by Rufe’s shout, hadn’t had time to reach for the scatter-gun beneath his countertop, and now it was too late.
Rufe stepped sideways to be well clear of the bar, and faced half around so he could keep most of the patrons, and the bartender, in sight. Not one of them moved a hand, least of all the barman.
An old man, wearing a long coat despite the rising summer heat, shuffled ahead from shadows along the back wall, and leaned down, staring at Bull Harris. He looked like the Grim Reaper himself, until he put down a hand to touch the ivory-stocked Colt of the dead gunfighter, then he raised up, rubbing his fingers together and said: “Butter. By God he had butter on his fingers. It’s all over the handle of his gun.”
That, then, accounted for Harris’s fatal slip when he was swinging his weapon to bear on Rufe.
No one said a word, but they all watched the old man pick up Harris’s six-gun by the barrel, amble to the bar, and drop it there “Look for yourselves,” he cackled. “Butter, by God!”
From the roadway men were shouting, and Rufe used the small distraction along the bar to hurry outside. There was no sign of either Arlen Chase or Jud, but a lot of men were heading for the saloon to see what that gunshot had been about. Even the men who had found Pete Ruff and Abe Smith in the old shed were deserting their rescued men to hasten forward.
Rufe headed out through the throng, grabbed Ruff’s arm, swore at old Smith, and aimed them in the direction of the jailhouse at a gun-prodded run, expecting any minute for someone to bounce forth from the saloon, yelling for townsmen to stop that man with the gun in his hand.
It did not happen, but, when Rufe was unlocking the jailhouse, a lanky range rider walked out of the saloon and stood there, looking left and right, until he saw Rufe shove the two men into the jailhouse, then the cowboy watched, still without opening his mouth, until Rufe also went inside, then the range man turned back into the saloon to carry the news that they wouldn’t have to go on a manhunt, at least, because that feller who killed Bull Harris just entered the jailhouse with a couple of other fellows.
Rufe was wringing wet, but calm. He barred the door from inside, snarled for Ruff and Smith to back away, then got the cell-room keys and took his latest prisoners down to lock them into cells, also. Neither man offered so much as a single word of protest. Both of them knew a man primed to kill when they saw one.
Constable Bradshaw yelled at Rufe: “What was the shooting about? What the hell you and your partner done? By God, when we get out of here…!”
“Shut up!” snapped Rufe, glaring past the bars. Homer Bradshaw said no more, but the look of hatred and defiance upon his coarse face was an epitome of malevolence.
It was Matthew Reilly, from a seat upon the bunk in the adjoining cell, looking from Pete Ruff and old Abe Smith to Rufe, who seemed to be more worried than defiant. He did not make a sound, but Pete Ruff did. He peered out at Rufe as though sunlight pained his eyes, and swore.
Rufe ignored them all and returned to the front office, outward bound. He did not get very far. There was an angry crowd marching down the road from the direction of the saloon, some of them brandishing rifles.
Rufe looked around, found the gun rack, picked out a shotgun with a two-foot barrel, checked the breech, snapped the gun closed, and stepped back to the window. He had no intention of hurting any-one. All he wanted was a way out, so that he could find Jud.
On the rear skirts of that angry mob the old man in the long coat was shuffling along, happy as a clam and grinning from ear to ear. He did not have a gun in sight, but he had a half-empty quart bottle of some-one’s whiskey clutched in one of his mottled talons.
There were range men in the front of the crowd, but it consisted mostly of townsmen in shoes in-stead of boots. The range men halted at the tie rack, in tree shade, looked steadily at the brick wall, and called for Rufe to come out.
Rufe eased the double-barrels around into sight. Someone saw them, squawked like a wounded eagle, and men scattered every which way except for a grizzled, hard-looking old cattleman, and all he did was lean down upon the tie rack flintily staring back. He hardly more than raised his voice when he said: “What the hell you figure to do with that silly thing, cowboy? It don’t have a range of over a hunnert and fifty feet.” He spat, then said: “You better come out of there. So far, you ain’t done nothing that maybe should have been done long ago. Bull Harris’s no loss. But you shoot anyone else, and that’s going Tomake a heap of difference, so you’d better just walk out of there.”
Rufe listened, and pondered, then called back: “I got a better idea, mister, you come inside!”
The old stockman chewed, spat, looked left and right where the wary crowd was beginning to creep up again, then he said: “All right, I’ll come inside. But I got to warn you…we got a constable here in Clearwater, and, as soon as folks can find him, he’ll be along to arrest you.”
Rufe stepped to the door, raised the bar, and opened the panel a crack. “Come in,” he called. “And don’t any of you other fellers move!”
The cowman turned, said something gruffly to a range man nearby, then stepped around the tie rack bound for the jailhouse door.
Rufe pulled the door open a little wider, then slammed it behind the stockman, dropped the bar back into place one handed, and cocked the near barrel of his scatter-gun. “Put your six-gun on the desk,” he ordered.
The old cowman obeyed, and stood a moment looking at the other two guns already lying there. He turned his head. “This here weapon with the initials carved on the butt belongs to Constable Bradshaw.”
Rufe gestured with the shotgun. “Go over yonder and sit down, mister. Yeah, that’s the constable’s gun. He’s locked in a cell.”
The cowman’s jaw sagged. He stared for a moment, then turned and went to a wall bench, and eased down, still looking nonplussed.
Rufe put the scatter-gun atop the desk, also. It looked like a small arsenal with all those loaded weapons lying atop the litter of scattered papers on the desk. He then went to the water bucket, ladled up a dipper full, and deeply drank, with the old range man watching his every move. When he finished and dropped the dipper back into the bucket, he wiped his face with a soiled sleeve, jerked up a chair, swung it, and sat down astraddle the chair facing the cowman.
XIV
It did not take as long to tell the cowman the en-tire story as it might have, and, by the time the cowman had heard it all, his weathered, craggy features had settled into a fresh series of lines.
&n
bsp; His name was Evart Hartman. He was a widower with two grown sons running the cow outfit with him. It had been his sons out there, on either side of him at the tie rack. They were still out there.
Hartman gazed at Rufe, after he knew the entire story, and said: “I hope for your sake you’ve told me the truth.”
Rufe shrugged that off. “Why should it make any difference now? None of you lowland cowmen would do a damned thing to help Elisabeth Cane before.”
The cowman considered that for a moment with-out replying, then he changed the subject. “Got any objection Tome seeing Homer Bradshaw?”
Rufe arose and went for the keys. He had no objections. He did not believe the constable would tell Evart Hartman the truth, but he had no objections to them talking, so he mutely escorted Hartman down into the cell room, and, when Hartman halted out front of the cell and Constable Bradshaw saw him, the cowman surprised Rufe. He said: “Homer, you always was a cheatin’, underhanded feller.”
Bradshaw sneered. “Why, because I was always a better man than your sons, Evart?”
Hartman’s tough gaze drifted past and came to rest on Matthew Reilly. He wagged his head at Reilly. “I told you last year, Matt. I told you not to get involved with anything Homer worked up. Didn’t I tell you that?”
Matthew Reilly arose from the side of his bunk, came forward, and gripped the bars along the front of the cell. “They was strays, Mister Hartman.”
The cowman gazed stonily at Reilly without speaking, then turned and looked in at Pete Ruff and Abe Smith. He knew Ruff, but not Abe Smith, and all he actually knew of Pete Ruff was that he was range boss for Arlen Chase. He did not speak to Ruff. They looked steadily at one another until old Abe Smith bleated a plea, and Hartman glanced from Ruff to the old cocinero.
Old Abe Smith bewailed the unkind fate which had landed him there, loudly lamented his complete innocence, and, when Evart Hartman asked him what he did for Chase, Abe told him.
“Cocinero is all. I swear to you, mister, I never even so much as brang in the saddle stock in the morning. Alls I ever done was the cooking. And they never told me a blessed thing. Never confided in me at all. Alls I did was slave over that gawd-damned cook stove from dawn until dark, and got treated like I was a…. ”
