The Fifth Western Novel
Page 2
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MANHUNT WEST, by Walker A. Tompkins
Copyright © 1949 by Walker A. Tompkins.
DEDICATION
For my daughter Susan Joyce
CHAPTER ONE
Fugitive Rider
The broken lava flanks of the canyon radiated the long day’s stored-up heat with all the fury of a bake oven. Through this swelter the big rider put his claybank stallion at a reaching gallop, twisting frequently in saddle to scan his back trail.
Barring him from the open gorge of the Columbia loomed a hedge of chaparral without track or opening, but a fugitive urgency made him spur the stallion into the thicket. Whipping foliage raked the man’s cleft-crown Stetson, slapped his shoulders with a thorny backlash; but a series of bucking plunges put the claybanker into the open for a view of Riverbend’s clustered housetops.
The rider’s body rocked hard against the swellfork pommel as the stallion dug in with skidding hoofs to recoil inches short of the sheer drop-off where a scab-rock ledge overlooked the river settlement.
A twin-stacked river steamer had been discharging freight at Riverbend’s jetty wharf. The faded name plate on the pilothouse branded her as Caleb Rossiter’s dilapidated stern-wheeler Sacajawea, for twenty-odd years the only passenger craft navigating the Columbia and Snake between Celilo Falls and the Lewiston country.
Beyond the packet’s stern wheel, the Columbia River’s turbulent flood moved like a channel of molten asphalt, two hundred yards wide. Its restless surge was paved now with a track of sunset colors, ending at the silhouetted cliffs on the west bank, with the sun a swollen drop of blood balanced on the remote Washington sky line.
As the fugitive rider resettled himself in the stirrups, the Sacajawea’s whistle vented a plume of steam, signaling its intention of resuming the weekly passage to Oregon. The gangplank was being trundled inboard by a pair of deck hands; a previous whistle had warned the passengers back aboard from their brief respite ashore while the crew discharged its weekly consignment of freight on the Riverbend dock.
These bearded passengers, roughly dressed with the look of Idaho backwoodsmen about them, caught sight of the horseman whose shape had appeared so suddenly and so violently on the brushy rimrock behind Riverbend. They heard the big man’s hoarse shout now running toward them across the rooftops.
“Hold her, will you? I got to come aboard.”
There was no mistaking the pressure of near despair which the rider knew as he found his flight blocked by this unexpected barrier. The passengers grouped loosely along the Sacajawea’s Texas railing, sensing a break in the monotony of their passage west, put their full attention on the rider.
They saw the big man turn in his saddle for a last brief study of the canyon which he had followed out of the tawny Washington hills. Dust boiled out of the canyon’s farther reaches, and the running beat of hoofs told the fugitive that John Stagman’s posse would soon break in view.
He turned to rake his glance along the crumbled edge of the scab-rock, finding no break in the crescent of rocks which hemmed the river settlement in its embracing elbow.
Voices murmured excitedly along the steamer’s railing as his audience realized what risks this rider now faced. Squaring his lathered stallion around, the rider nudged its flanks with steel.
The claybanker bunched all four hoofs on the ledge, snorted in protest to its rider’s will, and then made the jump.
A dozen feet of free fall dropped horse and rider to the lava talus which laid its slope to the rear walls of River-bend. Dust rose as the big stallion tobogganed on its haunches down this declivity and pounded up an alley between two saloons at a dead run.
The red disk of the sun dipped from view across the Columbia as the horse reached the wharf ramp, and the rider was bathed in its bloody afterglow as he reined up beside the boxes and bales of freight which the steamer’s crew had unloaded here.
Free of her restraining hawsers, the Sacajawea was drifting clear of the wharfside, her big paddle wheel so far motionless while a wharfinger in a rowboat towed a drift log out of the slack water in the steamer’s path.
The horseman heard bells jangle below decks, but the packet showed no indication of putting back to the wharf. Spotting Caleb Rossiter’s big shape in the wheel-house, the rider directed his second shout toward the skipper. “Let me come aboard! I’ve half killed a horse to make it here in time!”
Rossiter plucked a cigar from his teeth, stuck his head out the wheelhouse window, and bellowed back, “No dice, stranger. Chartered run and full up besides.”
The rider swung out of stirrups, his stilt-heeled boots shedding dust on the wharf stringers. Out of saddle this man loomed taller and rangier than in it—a hard-bitten, sun-weathered man whose face was drawn with the tensions of a hard and grueling ride, near enough for the passengers to read the rising anger in his eyes.
There was ten feet of open water between him and the steamer now. Something akin to desperation tightened the rider’s cheeks as he realized Rossiter intended to shove off without him.
With a swift reach to his pommel, the big man grabbed a coil of pleated lass’ rope, sorted the rawhide coils with a cowhand’s competent fingers, and shook out his loop. He trotted along the wharf stringer to keep pace with the drifting packet’s bow, sizing up the indifferent deck hands who watched his plight.
Using an underarm throw, the rider sent his noose snaking across the gulf of open water, aiming for the big horns of the mooring-cleat at the base of the Sacajawea’s jack staff.
A girl in pink gingham and a straw sailor hat was seated on the rusty cap
stan in the forepeak, apart from the rough-dressed male passengers. She saw the rider’s cast miss the cleat by inches, the noose making its wasted slap on the deck at her feet.
As the slack of the rope started pulling it overside, the girl reached forward impulsively and lifted the noose over the iron prongs of the cleat. A quick grin of thanks softened the rider’s mouth as he dallied his end of the lariat around a tarred piling on the wharfhead.
The bight of heavy leather rope lifted, tautened. The sluggish sternway of Rossiter’s boat, not yet under power, was insufficient to curb this leverage. The prow of the Sacajawea yawed around, her hempen bumpers colliding with the wharf piles.
The lariat snapped like cobweb under the first direct stress of the boat’s mass. But the cowhand timed his jump from the dock, and his hands got their secure purchase on the starboard rail just as the Sacajawea floated clear into the open river.
Spontaneous cheers from the throng lining the deck applauded the rider as he straddled the rail. They had witnessed an audacious thing, and their sympathies were with the rider.
A Riverbend storekeeper on the wharf yelled after the boat, “Hey! How about this saddle horse?”
The claybank’s owner grinned bleakly, waving his hand in a tired gesture.
“All yours, friend!” he called back.
The rider’s chest heaved with exertion under his butternut jumper as he turned to meet the eyes of the young woman in the gingham dress, his hand going automatically to his Stetson brim.
“I thank you, ma’am,” he panted. “You don’t know what your favor means to me. My name’s Cleve Logan.”
The girl was about twenty, he judged, the curves of her body showing through the loose-fitting dress, the evening breeze stirring the rich brunette tresses under the straw sailor. Under his direct gaze, her cheeks took on a livelier color.
“I don’t exactly know why I helped you, Mr. Logan,” she said. “Unless—” Logan’s attention was arrested by a hostile bellow from the region of the pilothouse. He turned to see Caleb Rossiter desert his helm and come swarming down the companionway ladder to the deck level. The riverman’s craggy face was purple with the ruffled arrogance of a man whose whim was law aboard this shabby river craft, a man who had seen that law circumvented.
Reaching the forward rail, Rossiter bawled an order to the deck hands who were lashing down the gangplank. “Stacey! Krumenaker! Throw that cowboy overboard!”
Excitement laid its cutting edge on the unkempt group of passengers on either side of the skipper. They saw Logan’s lips flatten against his teeth as the two burly deck hands, spitting on their palms in anticipation of some fun, stalked toward the man from two angles, trapping him in the narrowing V of the foredeck.
Krumenaker snatched up a handy boat hook and launched himself at Logan, his weapon pushed javelin-fashion ahead of him. Logan side-stepped the thrusting steel point, grabbed the handle with both hands and jerked it toward himself, pulling the big stevedore off balance in a staggering forward lurch.
Krumenaker lost his footing and went down, Logan’s spike-heeled cowboot smashing him in the cheekbone. Blood curtained the man’s startled face as he rolled over into a scupper, leaving Stacey to bore in from the left, brandishing a chunk of firewood.
Swiveling to meet this new threat, Logan whipped the long-handled boat hook upward. The hardwood butt cracked Stacey on the side of the skull with an impact that dropped him, momentarily stunned. Having disposed of Rossiter’s men, Logan reversed the boat hook in his hands and poised its lethal point like a spear, ready to cope with any following attack.
Captain Rossiter had witnessed this brief foray on his main deck with slack-jawed consternation. Rallying out of it, the riverman drew a gun from a holster under his coat and came swinging down the ladder with pure danger in his eyes.
In the act of lifting the gun, Rossiter felt his arm seized. A tall man in a fustian coat and polished Hussar boots had stepped from a stateroom door beside the foot of the ladder and his restraining voice reached Logan now.
“Hold on, Captain. I doubt if that man can swim. Riders rarely do.”
Rossiter shook off the restraining grasp on his sleeve.
“So he can’t swim! He should a thought of that before he laid a rope on my ship.”
The big man shook his head. “Forcing him overboard at gun’s point would leave you open to murder, Captain.”
Caleb Rossiter curbed his temper with a visible effort. He said in a conciliatory tone, “Mebbe I was a mite drastic, Mister Perris.” Then, turning to his groaning deck hands, he dismissed them with, “Let this ride, men. Duke Perris has vouched for this stranger.” His eyes harpooned Logan, giving him the full brunt of their hate. “We’ll settle this business later, my friend.”
The packet was in mid-river now, and Rossiter suddenly remembered his navigational responsibilities. Upstream a few miles the Columbia’s placid run had been shaken by the combined influx of the Yakima and Snake Rivers, making this shoal water’s eddies and crosscurrents a hazard that demanded a pilot’s complete and expert attention.
As Rossiter climbed back to the wheelhouse, Logan stepped over to haul Stacey and Krumenaker to their feet, thrusting the boat hook into both of their hands.
He said, “No hard feelings, buckos,” and turned to meet Duke Perris’s flat stare, saluting his benefactor with a lift of his hand.
Perris dismissed Logan from his attention with the briefest of nods and rounded the corner of the cabin onto the narrow promenade deck, a pair of field glasses swaying from his neckstrap.
As the pitman bars fed power to the paddles and the steamer made its reverse turn into the main channel, a sound of distant, muted gunshots and men’s shouting drew all eyes back toward the Riverbend landing.
Five horsemen had reined up on the wharf, boxing in Cleve Logan’s abandoned stallion. These men were discharging guns and gesticulating in mad pantomime to catch the attention of the Sacajawea as she sheered off downstream.
The sunset glow caught a flash of silver fixed to the shirt of one of the horsemen. Logan saw Duke Perris turn his binoculars toward that scene with a careful interest.
Caleb Rossiter, viewing this confusion on shore, bawled an order down the engineer’s tube, and the hull went abruptly still as the engines halted, letting the packet drift with the current.
Again Rossiter stormed down his companionway and across the deck, shouting to Duke Perris, “This alters things, Mister Perris! ’Less I’m mistaken, that’s a law posse back on the wharf. I figger they want this cowboy. I got my duty here.”
Cleve Logan’s face sharpened abruptly. He moved quickly aft, putting himself under the overhang of the deck, out of Rossiter’s immediate view.
The Sacajawea boasted four cabins, two starboard and two port; between them ran a narrow passageway which Logan figured would lead him below decks or to the sanctuary of the stern.
He stepped into that black passage like a hunted animal in search of a hole, only to find it closed by a bulkhead amidships. As he wheeled, at bay, the entrance of the passage was blocked by Rossiter’s big form.
The ship captain had his .45 palmed, the muzzle trained at Logan in the shadows. At this range he had an easy target.
Rossiter’s challenge lashed at Logan down the black maw of the passageway. “Come out of there with your hands up, or I’ll shoot to kill!”
Chapter Two
Honkytonk Queen
The warning click of Rossiter’s gun hammer was a dry, snapping explosion in Logan’s ears.
He lifted both arms to hat-brim level, thinking, This is working out wrong. I didn’t think the marshal could call back this boat.
He took a step toward the waiting menace of the river-man’s gun, when the stateroom door at his left opened suddenly, and a girl wearing a quilted satin robe pushed herself abruptly between Logan and Rossiter’s gun.
So swiftly had this thing happened that Logan stood frozen by indecision, though he saw Rossiter’s aim falter and noted the confusion which this interruption put on the river captain. Rossiter barked out, “Get out of the way, Miss Waymire.”
The girl cut in with a sharp urgency, “You heard Duke Perris vouch for this man. What more do you want?”
Rossiter’s answering scowl was lost in the gloom of the narrow opening where he stood. Holding a wary eye on Logan—who kept his arms elevated, not tempting Rossiter to a rash move so long as this girl remained in the line of fire—Rossiter said, “But there’s a law posse hailin’ me from the landin’, Opal. I figger this is the man they want.”
Opal Waymire stood her ground. The subtle perfume in her hair laid its heady odor on Logan’s nostrils as he saw the girl move closer to Rossiter, her retort coming with sharpened intensity. “Perris has this boat under charter until you put us ashore at Klickitat, Captain. Leave this man to Perris and me. We’ve lost too much time as it is.”
Rossiter hesitated, his gun lowering, clearly torn between his authority as skipper and whatever responsibility he owed to the man called Duke Perris.
A pent breath escaped from Cleve Logan’s mouth as he saw Rossiter finally wheel and vanish from the companionway.
Opal Waymire turned, showing Logan her full face for the first time, and he saw the tension this scene had put on her cheeks, the panic in her eyes, as she came swiftly back and half pushed him into the open door of Cabin D.
It was stuffy in this cubbyhole, oppressive enough to give Logan the uncanny sensation that he was trapped in a cell of some sort; and he crossed the floor at once as the girl closed the door behind them, to halt beside a porthole.
“You had best wait in here till it gets dark.” Her whisper reached Logan above the resumption of the engines’ throbbing below decks. “You had a tight call there and you’ve got to remember the manhandling you gave Rossiter’s deck hands.”