The Fifth Western Novel

by Walter A. Tompkins

  Perris & Co. Land Development Office

  See us for Choice Town Lots

  Buy Now and Grow Up With the

  Newest City in Washington!

  Another land office was farther along the street, this one carrying the official approval of the United States Government. The name Gus Gulberg, U.S. Land Agent in gold leaf which caught the sunrise glare told Logan that that official would be in charge of handling the opening-day rush of landseekers when the Indian strip was opened to settlement.

  Going downstairs, Logan breakfasted in the hotel dining-room and was stepping out onto the corner of the long street-floor gallery when the sound of a trotting team and rumbling wheels brought him swinging around to watch the arrival of a dust-covered Wells-Fargo stagecoach just pulling into town from Satus Pass.

  The red Concord jounced on its leathern thorough braces as the driver tooled his four Morgans around the street intersection at a dramatic gallop and braked to a halt in front of the express depot occupying the corner diagonally away from Logan’s position on the Pioneer House porch.

  Easing himself into one of the hotel’s ramshackle Morris chairs, Logan watched the passengers alight from the morning stage with interest, knowing the coach had made connection with the river steamer Sacajawea yesterday.

  First to alight was Duke Perris, his head covered with a flat-crowned coffee-colored Stetson. Perris gave his arm to Opal Waymire, decked out in a plum-colored suit and ostrich-plumed hat which would be the secret envy of Owlhorn’s womenfolk.

  This pair headed straight up the street and turned off the plank walk to unlock the doors of the Palace Casino.

  Next off the stage was the Reverend Jebediah Ames and Alva. Above the blowing of the team Logan heard the girl’s voice questioning a hostler. “We’ll live at the Methodist parsonage. Could you tell us—”

  Toke Grossett left the stage by the far door and stepped around to the rear boot where the tender was unloading an assortment of portmanteaus, alligator bandboxes, a camelback trunk, and the large steamer trunk which Logan recognized as Opal’s.

  Perris’s bodyguard picked up hand luggage apparently belonging to his employer and new mistress at the Palace and, thus loaded, headed up the street toward the deadfall.

  The remaining passengers to leave the stage were a portly drummer in a flashy checkered suit, and the lanky cowpuncher from the Sacajawea’s passenger list, Tex Kinevan. A faint smile warmed Logan’s mouth as he saw Kinevan climb on top of the stage to get his bedroll and sacked saddle. Sodbuster he might become, but he carried his cowboy accouterments with him.

  “Which accounts for everybody but Perris’s twenty-odd toughs off the river boat,” Logan mused aloud. “Funny at least three-four of that bunch didn’t make the trip on top of the stage.”

  Logan filled and lit his pipe, watching hostlers change teams on the stage, seeing a new driver run the Concord farther down the street and halt in front of a mercantile store where a man wearing a canvas apron and green eye-shade, presumably Owlhorn’s postmaster, was waiting to receive the mail sacks off the Klickitat stage.

  Tex Kinevan shouldered his soogan roll and, lugging his saddle sack, sized up the Pioneer House as the only hotel in Owlhorn and came diagonally across the intersection to climb the porch steps immediately in front of Logan.

  These two exchanged the briefest of looks, neither betraying the slightest recognition of the other; and Kinevan passed on into the lobby.

  Acting on pure impulse, Logan left the hotel porch and crossed the street to where Alva and the stage tender were sorting out baggage. The tender was saying, “Our church is up yander on the hill, ma’am, an’ the parsonage is that little shack in the corner of the churchyard. I’m afraid it’s perty run down. The Lord’s works don’t exactly thrive in this burg.”

  Jebediah Ames, his scarred face aglow with anticipation as he found himself at the scene of his new pastorate, said eagerly, “Wherever people assemble in the name of God, our Father comes. The disrepair of His house is of secondary importance. If we could hire a porter to carry my sister’s trunk—” Logan cleared his throat, bringing Alva wheeling around to face him. He saw her face light up and take on fresh color at sight of him.

  “At your service, Miss Ames,” Logan said, stooping to hoist her camelback trunk to his shoulder. “Howdy, Reverend. I left the boat and beat you here by a short cut over the hills.”

  It was a steep climb to the church, which occupied the shoulder of a hogback overlooking Owlhorn from the south, and Logan was aware from Alva’s animated enthusiasm as she described the sorry-looking place in glowing terms that she was almost grateful that her brother’s affliction prevented him from realizing the shabbiness of the church and parsonage which was to be the scene of his future endeavors.

  The parsonage door was aslant on one hinge, and most of its windows had lost their glass to the flung stones of boyish vandals. But the house lost its tawdriness under the magic of Alva’s fluent descriptive powers, and Cleve Logan, feeling somehow unworthy in their presence, left them as soon as he had deposited their baggage indoors.

  Returning to the Pioneer House, Logan went at once to the lobby and consulted the register. Tex Kinevan had been assigned Room 8 on the upper floor. The clerk on duty was not the squint-eyed oldster of last night. To him Logan put a casual question.

  “This is cow country, ain’t it?”

  The clerk was a sour and disillusioned man. “It was cow country,” he grumbled, “but what it’ll be when this land rush starts, God only knows.”

  Logan grinned, sensing the bitterness of this man who, having found snug haven in Owlhorn for his sunset years, obviously was galled by the prospect of range war which would disturb the even tenor of the town’s life.

  “I’m looking for a spot to rent my rope,” Logan went on conversationally. “Nothing like a hotel man for sizing up a new range. Know of any outfits hiring riders hereabouts?”

  The clerk fixed his watery gray eyes on Logan.

  “That depends,” he said mysteriously. “The cattle outfits back in the hills are prob’ly lookin’ for men who know more about usin’ a gun than a ketch rope. That fit you?”

  Logan shrugged. “Cowmen digging in to hold off the hoe men, is that it?”

  The clerk waggled his bald head. “That’s about how it’ll stack up, stranger. Can’t blame big outfits like Ringbone an’ Lazy Ladder for hatin’ to see Uncle Sam turn their Injun lease over to barbwire-stringin’.”

  “Ringbone,” Logan said thoughtfully. “That’ll be Jubal Buckring’s outfit. Ringbone packs a lot of weight in this country, don’t it?”

  The clerk made a vague gesture.

  “Owlhorn County,” he said flatly, “is Ringbone. Buckring runs eighty percent of the beef in these hills. Yeah, stranger, if you’re lookin’ for a ridin’ job where you’ll have to burn powder, I’d advise you to brace Jube Buckring. His headquarters are over in the Hole-in-the-Wall eight miles east o’ town. I hear he’s hirin’ more riders than he needs for ranchin’ purposes these days. I leave you to guess why.”

  Logan thanked his informant and made his way upstairs. Passing the door of his own room, he reached Room 8, thumped the door, and heard Tex Kinevan’s gruff, “Come in.”

  Glancing up and down the narrow hall, Logan stepped into a shabby cubicle furnished like his own room with a straw-ticked bunk, a dresser with a water pitcher and basin on its marble top, a coal-oil lamp, and a cardboard sign tacked conspicuously over the row of coat hooks.

  CHECK YOUR GUNS AT THE DESK

  No Firearms Allowed Within Limits of Owlhorn.

  By Order of Vick Farnick, Sheriff.

  This Means You!

  Tex Kinevan was busy unpacking his war sack as Logan entered.

  “You saw who got off the stage,” Kinevan said, without preliminary greeting. “Satisfied?”

  Logan
leaned his shoulder against the peeled wallpaper.

  “Perris’s crew waiting for the next stage, you mean?”

  Kinevan poured water into the cracked basin and started brushing up a lather in the soap dish.

  “That’s what I thought you’d be askin’, Slim. No. Perris herded those hardcases of his off the river boat and up to a livery stable at Klickitat. A passle of saddle hosses was waitin’ for ’em. They stampeded into the Pass ahead of the stage. We ate their dust for twenty mile.”

  Logan scratched his cheek with the bit of his pipe. “Well, they must have cut off the Pass road somewhere during the night,” he said. “They haven’t showed up here.”

  Kinevan worked soapsuds into his bristles.

  “I watched the road for sign,” he said, picking up his razor. “This side of the summit six, seven miles, I saw where they turned off, headin’ east along a road that snaked off into the hills. There was enough moon for me to read a sign at the corner. It said, ‘Ringbone Ranch, 11 Mile.’ That what you wanted to know?”

  Silence ran its course for a long interval while Cleve Logan pondered this information.

  “Good boy, Tex. Jube Buckring is hiring gunmen, I hear. That’s what puzzles me. None of those barflies Perris picked up in Idaho have any cow savvy. But they don’t have the look of gun slingers, either.”

  Kinevan’s razor was having slow going over his wiry jowls. Pausing to strop his blade, the lean Texan commented, “Whatever Perris is up to, son, I’d make a guess he’s supplyin’ this Ringbone with gun-toters. Don’t add up any other way. But those wart hawgs we seen on the river boat—they don’t stack up to the breed o’ cap burners we produce in Texas by a damn sight.”

  Logan got up to leave.

  “I’m obliged,” he said. He paused as a thought struck him. “You’re hanging around town until the government land office opens up Monday, I take it. How much time you need to scout the valley and pick out your homestead?”

  Kinevan shrugged. “A day’s ride should attend to that chore. I want something facing the river.”

  “You and about a thousand others.” Logan grinned. “Kid, I got one more favor to ask of you.”

  Kinevan eyed Logan in the mirror above the wash-stand, his hand poised with razor on cheek.

  “Name it, Slim. I’m in your debt ever since that tight you hauled me out of in the Bighorn country. Maybe I can help you, I got a hunch you’ll need help, seein’ as how you’re mixed up with Duke Perris.”

  Logan laughed softly, then went dead serious. “Forget the bygones, son. You don’t owe me a thing. Now here’s the deal—”

  * * * *

  Ten minutes later Cleve Logan left the hotel and went around back to the stable to saddle his dun. He returned to the main street, leading his horse, in time to see the big figure of Perris’s right-hand man, Toke Grossett, leading a horse out of the archway of a livery barn alongside the stage depot.

  The stable tender’s voice carried through the crisp morning quiet to arrest Logan’s attention.

  “Foller that road east, mister, and you’ll reach Buckring’s ranch eight-nine mile back in the hills. Watch fer signs p’intin’ to the Hole-in-the-Wall.”

  Grossett mounted, spurred into a lope, and headed out of town toward the full glare of the sun.

  Giving Grosset time to get out of sight, Logan stepped into saddle and turned his dun in the same direction, his mind fully made up as to his next move.

  In that moment he caught sight of Duke Perris’s tall figure striding along the boardwalk from the Palace Casino. Remembering Perris’s admonition to contact him only under cover of darkness, Logan sat his horse to give the land promoter his opportunity to pass along any instructions.

  Perris had seen him; Logan saw the big man in the black coat break his stride, as if debating whether to cross the street in his direction.

  At that moment a blur of movement in the tail of his eye pulled Logan’s attention around to the door of the county jail. Coming down the steps was a stooped, gray-mustached oldster who wore a ball-pointed star on one gallus strap. A heavy six-gun put a sag in the shelf belt which looped his scrawny middle.

  Heading straight for Logan, the sheriff called out, “Wait up a second. Your name Cleve Logan?”

  Logan flicked a glance at Duke Perris, who had paused in front of the jail office. He saw Perris’s stiffened attitude as the promoter watched the lawman come to a halt alongside Logan’s stirrup.

  “You read a man’s brand pretty fast,” Logan said evasively. “What if I say yes?”

  “My business to check up on strangers who disregard the rules I lay down in this town,” the oldster said brusquely. “I’m Vick Farnick, sheriff of the county.” Excitement throbbed in Logan’s pulse as he stared down at this rawboned lawman, reading neither hostility nor cordiality in Farnick’s narrowed gaze. Over by the brick jail, Duke Perris waited and watched with unbroken attention.

  “I rode into town last night,” Logan drawled in the mildest of voices, “and turned in early. I haven’t had too much to drink or otherwise kicked over the traces that I know of. What rule have I disregarded?”

  Farnick slapped a big palm on Logan’s thigh.

  “You’re packin’ a gun. With this land boom comin’ up, I’ve decided to enforce a no-gun-totin’ rule inside the limits of this town. There was a sign tacked up in your hotel room to that effect—check your hardware with the clerk. Which you failed to do.”

  A faint grin curled Logan’s lips. Beyond the sheriff he saw Duke Perris relax visibly.

  “I get it. You read my name in the hotel register.”

  Farnick nodded. “My practice with all strangers,” he admitted. “If you’re passin’ through, all right. If you’re stayin’ out the week, I’ll thank you to check your irons at my office. That way, no temptation to make trouble if you pick up a fight in some barroom. All right?”

  Logan picked up his reins.

  “A wise idea, dehorning the gents who might hanker to paint your town red,” he agreed affably. Then, lifting his voice to make sure it carried to Duke Perris, he went on. “Fact is, Sheriff, I’m headin’ over to the Ringbone ranch this morning. No rule against a man being heeled when he rides into those hills, is there?”

  Farnick waved an arthritic hand in dismissal.

  “I’d be foolish to think I could make that rule stick for the whole county,” the sheriff said. “Wish I could. Spare this valley a lot of bloodshed in the days to come. Well, keep your nose clean, Logan.”

  With which admonition the Owlhorn sheriff turned on his heel and headed back to the jailhouse, where Duke Perris had turned into Farnick’s office. From the doorway Logan saw Perris’s slight nod of understanding.

  Curveting his dun saddler out into midstreet, Cleve Logan headed east along the road which Toke Grossett was taking to Jube Buckring’s place in the Hole-in-the-Wall.

  Chapter Eight

  To Kill a Man

  The bitter, dry smell of dust marking Toke Grossett’s passage out of the valley bottom into the sage-gray Horse Heaven Hills was in Cleve Logan’s nostrils during the entire two-hour ride from Owlhorn.

  Twice, topping a ridge, he caught sight of Duke Perris’s bodyguard jogging along the wagon road which led to Buckring’s headquarters in the Hole-in-the-Wall.

  It was oppressively hot, even for May, and his own sweat seeped into the half-healed cut which Blackie Marengo’s knife had made on his chest.

  Five miles out of Owlhorn the road turned abruptly south into the heart of the hills, following a section line. From this last vantage point overlooking the valley, a long training in trouble caused Logan to rein up for a look at his back trail; and he spotted a feather of golden dust marking another rider following him up this road.

  He thought instantly of Sheriff Vick Farnick, but dismissed that idea from his head. If the Owlhorn lawman
, knowing his name, had wanted to hold him for any reason, Farnick had had his chance back in town.

  Riding on into the sun-parched creases of the Horse Heavens, Logan followed the cuts and fills of the road between wire fences hedged with last year’s tumbleweeds.

  The long, undulating grade led him to a rock-toothed hogback where a lone pine tree marked a summit. Here he had a vista of the infinity that stretched across the Yakima Valley, with the low-lying Rattlesnake Hills doing their sun dance to northward and the glitter of the Cascades’ snow-crusted peaks limned sharply in the intense sunlight far to the west.

  Passing the summit pine tree, Cleve Logan found himself in the heart of a sparsely timbered pocket which formed an oasis of sorts to break the monotony of these bleak Washington uplands.

  Below him loomed whitewashed corral fences making an ordered pattern on the flats. A row of poplars flanked a lane leading to barns and a rambling California-style ranch house, half hidden under towering green box elders.

  This, then, was Ringbone’s Hole-in-the-Wall; the citadel and throne of Jubal Buckring, owner of the cattle kingdom which dominated these hills. This was the solidly dug-in headquarters of the Territory’s largest cattle domain, hidden away in this lost corner of an arid and untamed land.

  Spurring into a canter down the steep road, Logan was met by a chorus of barking ranch mongrels, loping out to meet him. The ranch appeared deserted until he reached the bottom of the pocket; then he heard a blacksmith’s maul making its metallic music on an anvil somewhere, and the rattle of a cook’s pots and pans in a cookhouse off across an apple orchard.

  Surrounded by yapping dogs, Logan cuffed down his Stetson brim and passed into the poplar-fringed lane, flanking the neat stock corrals. Ringbone horses grazed in a twenty-acre alfalfa pasture beyond Buckring’s imposing ranch house; the farther hills were mottled sporadically with Ringbone cattle, fattening on the bunch grass, appearing like insects at this distance.

  Logan’s flesh crawled with the thought that at this moment his arrival might be witnessed down the barrels of hidden rifles; he fully expected to hear the crash of gunshot and to see a warning slug kick up dust in front of his horse.