The Fifth Western Novel

by Walter A. Tompkins

  Through the porthole Cleve Logan saw the Sacajawea respond to the thrust of her paddle wheels, swinging away from the direction of Riverbend and resuming her interrupted course toward the broken lava bluffs opposite Wallula, where the river began its westward loop into the deepening gorge which separated Washington Territory from the plateau of Oregon.

  Relief softened Logan’s lips, and tension flowed out of him for the first time since he had left the heat-punished maw of the canyon he had followed out of the hills to Riverbend.

  He swung around from the porthole to see Opal Waymire slump down on the stateroom’s lower berth, showing her reaction to the pressure of that episode with Rossiter. She gestured him toward a wicker chair which formed the only other furniture in the cramped cabin.

  “Sit down, stranger. You’ll find a bottle of brandy on the stand yonder. We could both use a drink.”

  Logan ignored her invitation for the moment, searching the dusk outside the porthole for whatever danger it held for him. A man’s solid outline stood against a deck stanchion within reach of his arm; and Logan recognized that silhouette as Duke Perris, still covering Riverbend with his field glasses.

  Without glancing around, Perris moved out of sight up the narrow strip of promenade deck. Being a man schooled to detect trouble if it shaped up against him, Logan felt no sensation of warning where Perris was concerned; he remembered that he was very much in that man’s debt, and that Perris had enough authority on this river packet to countermand the order of her skipper.

  Cool twilight wind ruffled the black hair lying close to Logan’s temples as he finally removed his gray Stetson and scaled it on top of a steamer trunk shoved against the bulkhead opposite the berth where Opal Waymire sat watching him through half-closed, feline eyes.

  The glow of sunset from the river surface outside put pulsing highlights on the bony planes of his cheeks, limning the stony profile of his jaw and nose.

  He turned then to face Opal Waymire, smiled apologetically, and spoke for the first time. “Thanks. I need a bracer at that. It’s been a long day.”

  Logan seated himself in the wicker chair, holding that posture for a moment as might a very weary man relaxing for the first time in too long a while.

  The tautness eased from his long legs, encased in bibless Levis and star boots. He was aware of the close attention which showed through Opal Waymire’s catlike intentness; she saw in him a man who had the ability to take advantage of the shortest interval of ease between periods of stress, relaxing as a wild animal relaxes, completely and utterly. But under that release was the alertness of a man who knew that clanger lay like a tangible thing all about him, like a swimmer trapped in a whirlpool.

  The girl’s slightly oblique eyes were appraising him. She judged this stranger out of the Washington hill country to be around thirty. She got an impression of great strength and reserve energy in him as he shrugged out of his jumper, exposing a work-softened hickory shirt that was plastered to the contours of his chest, soaked with sweat.

  Free of his coat, Logan revealed for the first time since boarding the Sacajawea that his waist was girdled by a cartridge belt and that a Colt filled a holster that was snugged down with thongs to his right leg.

  Sight of that big gun drew a comment from Opal Waymire. “So you faced Rossiter’s toughs out on deck without letting them know you were armed. I think I like that, Mister—”

  “The name,” he said wearily, “is Cleve Logan. And I am in your debt. Accept my belated thanks.”

  He reached for the brandy bottle on the stand as he spoke; a grin broke the gravity of his face as he poured drinks into a pair of cheap tumblers.

  Leaning forward from the berth to accept the glass he extended to her, the girl said wryly, “Don’t thank me, Logan. It was Duke’s name that really brought Rossiter to heel.”

  Some mutual sentimentality made them click glass rims before they drank tentative sips of the brandy. As Logan shut his eyes to savor the costly liquor appreciatively on his tongue, Opal Waymire continued. “Cleve Logan. A nice name. Virile. Your real one?”

  He grinned. “It will do. About this man Perris—whenever he says ‘frog’ around here, somebody hops and hops fast. Who is he that he cuts such a wide swath?”

  She considered her reply for a moment.

  “Duke Perris chartered the Sacajawea for this run out of Lewiston. His weight is the one thing you could not have bucked, Logan. He must have had good reasons of his own to allow you to remain aboard. I can hardly imagine him grieving if you had been chucked overboard to drown back there at Riverbend.”

  Logan glanced toward the porthole again, giving every indication of a man who was no longer relaxed, who knew that in case trouble broke this cabin would be little short of a trap.

  “Perris didn’t cause you to face a gun in my behalf, Opal.”

  The girl shook her head, eyeing him across the rim of her lifted glass, her look holding a coquettish approval.

  “You give me too much credit. When Rossiter was cornering you outside, Duke stepped to that porthole yonder and told me to horn in.” She paused, considering him gravely. “You see, Duke had his field glasses on those riders at the Riverbend dock. He recognized the leader of that posse that was chasing you, Logan. United States Marshal John Stagman—an old enemy of Duke’s.”

  Logan’s eyes masked the shock this news must have caused him. The brandy was beginning to take its hold on his belly, and he reminded himself to go easy before it played tricks with his tongue.

  “In that case,” he said, “there’s no use in denying I was a couple of jumps ahead of a law posse. But this Duke Perris—what’s he got against John Stagman?”

  Twilight was thickening out on the river, deeper because the Sacajawea was running close inshore under the loom of the Wallula cliffs. But there was light enough to show Logan that this girl regretted having spoken too freely before him; the guilt on her face was more important to him than the seductive modeling of her full breasts under the quilted robe, or the milky whiteness of a discreetly exposed ankle.

  She was well into her twenties, he was thinking, but she had brushed against the rough edges of life on some corner of the frontier, and Logan believed that this woman had left innocence and her girlhood illusions somewhere a long way back on whatever trail had brought her to this time and this place.

  “Duke Perris,” she broke the silence, “calls himself a speculator. He deals in mineral rights and homestead lands on a big scale. At the moment, Perris, like everyone else on this dirty scow, is heading for Owlhorn, over in the Cascade foothills.”

  Logan’s face was dipped down, his hands encircling his brandy glass, warming the bouquet of the rare French drink. He gave no sign that he had noticed her evasion of his original question regarding Duke Perris’s past relationships with the U. S marshal.

  Emptying his glass, he fished in his pocket for a red tobacco tin and a briar pipe. Packing it, he remarked casually, “Owlhorn. That’s where the big land rush is coming up in the Horse Heaven Hills. Where the government is opening some Indian lands for settlement.”

  The girl took a silver case from a pocket of her robe, extracted a black Mexican cigarette from it, and took her light from the same match Logan held over his pipe bowl.

  “That’s right, Logan. Owlhorn’s land boom will be the biggest, wildest thing that ever hit Washington Territory.”

  Logan grinned. “I can hardly picture you as a homesteader’s wife. Or does Owlhorn offer other opportunities for a beautiful and ambitious woman?”

  She ignored his pretty phrase. “I ran a gambling-house in Lewiston,” she said frankly. “I was a percentage girl when I met Duke Perris. Now I’m heading for Owlhorn to open up the town’s biggest casino—as Duke’s partner.”

  Logan was veiled behind tobacco smoke for a long time. Finally he said, “I don’t know this Washington country any too w
ell. But it strikes me that Perris is taking a mighty roundabout way to reach Owlhorn by river boat. He should have left the boat up at Pasco and taken the Yakima stage overland to the Horse Heavens.”

  Opal Waymire’s reply came quickly, betraying her concern over this turn of the conversation. “Don’t try to figure this thing out, Logan. You’ll be asking for trouble if you do. Everything about this river passage is dangerous. Don’t speak to anyone else about Perris’s method of getting to Owlhorn.”

  Logan got to his feet, knowing he had tarried too long in this cabin already.

  “So Perris has reasons of his own for entering Owlhorn through the back door,” he commented, and knew by the answering stiffness in Opal’s face that his shot in the dark had struck home. “Well, as you say, it’s none of my affair. I’ll be getting out on deck. I owe some thanks to someone else for helping me shake off that posse.”

  The girl’s blue eyes changed expression instantly. “I know,” she said. “Alva Ames. The girl who grabbed your rope. She’s booked Cabin C, next to this one.”

  Logan retrieved his coat and hat and donned them. Stepping to the door, he mused thoughtfully, “Alva Ames. A short and pretty name for a short and pretty girl. One of your honkytonk dancers, perhaps?”

  Opal Waymire laughed with a faint irony which further piqued his interest. She said, “Hardly. Alva keeps house for her brother, who is going to be Owlhorn’s sky pilot. Lord knows he chose fertile soil for his sin-busting.”

  Hand on doorknob, Logan grinned down at her, wondering if he had heard a faint note of wistful envy in her comments about Alva Ames.

  “I’ve heard considerable about this Owlhorn land rush,” he said. “Maybe I’ll drop in at your casino one day—quien sabe?”

  “Owlhorn will be a town without law for some time to come, Logan,” she said. “A good place for a man to hide out.”

  “You strike me,” he said irrelevantly, “as a girl I’d enjoy knowing better, Opal.”

  She stood up, close beside him. Perhaps it was the brandy taking its insidious hold on his blood; perhaps it was the nearness of this woman’s sensual, worldly beauty reacting on a lonely man’s pent-up hungers for the softer way of life he had missed. But he found himself reaching out to circle her body with his free arm, pulling her close, and he saw her lift her mouth to meet the crushing demand of his own.

  They were like that when the doorknob twisted under Logan’s other hand, and the door opened as they were snatching themselves apart.

  The whiskery face of Caleb Rossiter appeared in the doorway, his bloodshot eyes rummaging this love-making he had interrupted with a busy awareness.

  “Duke Perris wants to see you in Cabin A, stranger,” the riverman said. “He ain’t one to be kept waitin’ by a saddle bum.”

  As he withdrew, the steamer captain said to Opal, “Lucky I opened this door just now, Opal. You forgettin’ you’re Duke Perris’s woman?”

  Chapter Three

  $2,000 Reward!

  Logan slammed the door angrily as Rossiter ducked his head back. “It was a foolish thing to do,” he apologized.

  Opal Waymire’s face told him nothing. “It was a good luck kiss, nothing more. You’ll need luck before you get off this boat. Perris’s favors come high.”

  He started to open the door again but she caught his wrist. “Wait.” Her strained whisper reached him above the creaking of woodwork. “One thing you should know. Toke Grossett will be waiting in Cabin A with Duke. Grossett is the man you must watch.”

  Logan buttoned his jumper carefully, concealing his gun. “Am I supposed to know Toke Grossett?”

  “A man in your position should know him for what he is. Duke has lots of enemies, and Grossett is his bodyguard. But he is more than that—he is a professional bounty hunter, Cleve. Wanted men—if they have rewards posted for their capture, at least—are cold turkey to Grossett.”

  Logan’s eyes considered her in the half-dark for a moment, thinking over her warning, wondering at her motives. He left her like that, stepping out into the black passageway between the port and starboard cabins. The sour smell of whisky in the darkness told him that Rossiter was lingering close by.

  “I owe you my fare, skipper,” he let Rossiter know he was aware of the riverman’s presence. “How much to your next stop?”

  Match light bloomed in the murk as Rossiter lit a cheroot, his predatory eyes screwed together behind cupped fingers. “Perris paid your fare as far as Klickitat Landing. You can settle with him.”

  Rossiter preceded him out of the passageway, indicated the door of Perris’s cabin with a gesture of his glowing cigar butt, and disappeared up the ladder.

  A fanwise shred of light streamed from the shuttered porthole in the door of Perris’s cabin, and above the constant organ tone of the river wind vibrating the smokestack guy rods Logan could hear muted voices inside.

  Even as he knuckled the door panel, Logan felt old animal instincts stir inside him, sorting the hair roots on his neck with chill fingers. A man accustomed to danger, Logan was closely attuned to its nearness; and danger’s acid taste lay curdled on his tongue now, its tocsin beating out a warning somewhere deep in his head.

  The door was opened by a gaunt giant in moleskin pants and a Rob Roy plaid shirt. His face was a skull sheathed under a leathery mask and bisected by a formidable gray scimitar of mustache, tobacco-stained at the fringes.

  Meeting the drilling, somehow hostile stare of this man, Logan ticketed him as Toke Grossett, of whom Opal Waymire had warned him.

  Logan stepped over the threshold coaming and shifted to one side at once, putting his back to the wall in the timeless gesture of a hunted man. His gaze shifted from Grossett to the long figure of Duke Perris, sprawled on a lower bunk with his back propped up with pillows.

  Neither man spoke. At close range, Duke Perris was as tall as Logan, an even six feet. His bullet head was covered with close-cropped red hair like fine rusty wire on a curry brush, with sideburns unbarbered and nearly of Dundreary length. He had the ruddy skin of a full-blooded, lusty man, his cheeks sprinkled with freckles like flakes of tobacco. At forty or thereabouts, Perris had the worldly ease of a man used to authority, sure of his power, and ruthless in its wielding to gain such ends as suited him.

  These appraisals Logan made in his first careful search of Perris’s face. So far the man had not turned to look his way; he seemed engrossed with polishing a watch charm attached to the nugget chain looped across his marseilles vest, an ornament made of a .45 cartridge case set with a golden bullet.

  “Rossiter says you shelled up my passage money, Perris.” Logan broke the silence. “What do I owe you?”

  Perris swung his long legs off the bunk, his brown eyes turning a muddy stare on Logan.

  “Forget the fare,” Perris said. “You actually owe me more than money can measure, I believe. You’d have sunk like a rock if those deck wallopers had chucked you overboard.”

  Logan unbuttoned his jumper and flipped back the tails to get a buckskin poke from his hip pocket. In so doing Perris’s sharp eye spotted the toe of a black gun holster riding Logan’s right thigh.

  Logan extracted a gold piece from the poke and flipped it toward Perris, throwing a question with it, “Why didn’t you let them try throwing me into the river?”

  “Because,” Perris shot back at once, “I think you are a man I can find use for.”

  “And you wanted to put me under obligation to you?”

  “Exactly.”

  From his station by the doorway Toke Grossett commented glumly, “Blunt questions, blunt answers. Well, you two know where you stand quick enough.”

  Perris motioned Logan toward a chair, a wicker piece identical to the one in Opal’s cabin. Taking a seat, Logan found himself comparing Duke Perris to a professional gambler. Their habiliments were the same—high-polished Hussar boots, expensively
cut fustian Prince Albert, the gaudy watch chain with its gold-bullet luck piece. And, according to Opal Waymire, a gambler was what Perris was—a gambler who used land and legal finesse in lieu of cards and poker chips.

  “You know my name.” Perris broke the following silence. “What’s yours?”

  Logan fished in his coat for pipe and tobacco, all this while feeling the pure menace which this smoky, oppressively warm cabin held for him. He was aware that behind this speculator’s blunt courtesy lay a purpose which he might, or might not, reveal when this verbal sparring was over.

  “Cleve Logan.”

  Perris let his glance stray over to Toke Grossett.

  “You wear a gun, Logan.”

  After he got his pipe drawing well, Logan flipped his match out the open porthole across the cabin and drawled, “So do you, Perris. In an armpit rig your coat doesn’t quite hide. So what? A common enough custom of the times.”

  Perris inclined his cropped red head thoughtfully. “So. The point I am making is that you did not choose to use that gun on the thugs Rossiter sent to heave you overboard.”

  Logan’s ice-blue gaze taunted Perris with half-lidded, obscure amusement.

  “I make a habit,” he said, “of saving my ammunition for more important game.”

  Perris’s long, sensitive fingers were fiddling with the gold-bullet watch charm.

  “You were in a great hurry to board the Sacajawea this evening,” Perris came to brass tacks at last. “It must have been pretty important to make you leave a prime stallion and an expensive saddle behind you on the wharf.”

  Logan took his time about answering, knowing this was the key to Perris’s ordering him here for an interview.

  “I’m headed,” he said, “for the Horse Heaven Hills.”

  Perris sat down on the berth and laced his fingers across an updrawn knee. “You don’t look like a homesteader, Logan.”

  “I’m not. The way I figure it is that the Horse Heavens have been cattle range for a long time. The ranchers running cattle on those hills won’t cotton to the prospect of the government bringing in an army of hoe men to string barbed wire and plow up the sod. I think I can find a job on one of those outfits before the fireworks start.”