Logan pushed the flat of his left palm against his thigh, feeling the hard outline of the ball-pointed star which was pinned to the inside of his overalls just under the waistband.
The words Deputy United States Marshal were etched on that badge. He had only to flash it in Buckring’s eyes to call this rancher’s bluff.
“No reason why I can’t go to town early and wait for the rest of you,” he said tentatively. “I’m not a prisoner here. I know enough to steer shy of Perris’s office during daylight.”
Buckring waggled his gun. “You couldn’t get past my road guards anyhow. Turn your bronc back in the corral, Logan. My men got orders to shoot anybody who tries to leave the Hole-in-the-Wall today.”
Logan had his bad moment then, rashness crowding his impulses hard. He could turn away, bait Buckring into holstering his gun and then beat him to the draw. He knew that. But such a play would accomplish nothing; it might tear down everything he had risked to build up since accepting John Stagman’s suicide assignment to dig into Duke Perris’s secret activities.
“You win,” Logan said shortly. “I was just getting restless to get that bunkhouse stink out of my nose. It ain’t important.”
Buckring kept his gun in the open until Logan had turned his dun back into the cavvy. Then Buckring returned to the ranch house and stationed himself on his front porch, where he could command a view of the horse corral and all exits from the Hole.
For Cleve Logan, the remainder of this day dragged on paralyzed feet. The riddle of Alva Ames’s motive in making a night ride into these forbidden hills upset the even run of Logan’s thinking, hinting as it did of some unforeseen development in Owlhorn that might concern him.
He wondered briefly if John Stagman had arrived ahead of schedule and that she, believing him to be an outlaw on the dodge, might be trying to warn him. But he put that idea aside as improbable; she had given him no cause to believe that she had him ticketed for an owlhoot rider. So far as he knew he had her full trust and faith.
Suspense began to penetrate the stolid ranks of the poker players from Lewiston when, at the conclusion of a hastily devoured supper, Duke Perris showed up at Buckring’s gate and went inside to confer with his accomplice.
When full dark had come to the Hole-in-the-Wall, it was not actually sunset time. The Washington sky was prematurely blackened by great racks of dust clouds which presaged a storm roaring in off the Columbia basin desert to the north.
Gusts of wind, forerunners of a tempest, scoured the dusty floor of the cavvy corral when Pegleg Cochran and the other Perris henchmen saddled up for their ride to town and their rendezvous with the speculator’s accomplice, U.S. land agent Gus Gulberg.
Logan remained in the bunkhouse, showing no trace of the excitement he felt. He would give Perris and Buckring a ten-minute head start before saddling up for his own departure for Owlhorn; the approaching storm would make it easier to cut through the road guards.
With any kind of luck, he could beat the cavalcade to town and tip off Sheriff Farnick that their trap was ready to spring tonight, catching the principals of this land-grab plot en masse at the poolroom in the Palace Casino.
The arrival of Duke Perris himself at the bunkhouse, however, brought an unexpected change in his plans.
“Saddle up, Cleve,” the promoter ordered. “I’ll need you to file on a dummy homestead to fill in for Blackie Marengo, one of my men who disappeared en route.”
Logan had no choice but to comply; any hesitance on his part could not be explained. Ten minutes later, joining the nervous group of men out in the lane, Logan made the discovery that this ride to Owlhorn would be under heavy guard.
Buckring had drawn six Ringbone cowpunchers from his crew to box in Perris’s fake homesteaders, reminding Logan of a herd of cattle on the trail. For himself, the presence of armed guards would make it difficult to break away from the group even for a few minutes and give him time to enlist Sheriff Farnick’s help tonight.
A high wind, filled with abrasive particles of lava dust scoured off the Rattlesnake Hills beyond the Yakima River, stung the faces of the riders as they followed the section-line road due north. When Owlhorn’s lights appeared through the thickening dust clouds a mile off, Buckring and Perris left the river road and swung along the spurs of the foothills south of the town.
Thus approaching Owlhorn from the rear, Perris gave the order to dismount when they were a city block from the main street and the Palace Casino.
Hitching their mounts to an old-time stake-and-rider fence which bounded the courthouse square, Perris called the riders into a compact bunch, his Ringbone guards circling them at once.
Slipping out of this group and reaching Farnick’s office in the jail was, for the moment, impossible. Logan heard Perris give them their final instructions.
“We’ll enter the Palace from the back. Keep quiet and strike no matches. If any of you happen to be totin’ guns, you’ll surrender them to the house man, that being the local sheriff’s orders for anybody entering the city limit. Stick close together and keep quiet. All right, Buckring. Let’s go.”
Logan felt the weight of the Colt .45 riding his flank and debated whether to discard his gun harness and attempt to hide his six-shooter inside a boot.
He thought, I’m a fool for postponing my talk with Farnick. I didn’t expect things to break so soon.
Perris and Buckring were steering for a lighted window in the pool-hall annex at the rear of Opal Waymire’s gambling-dive. Loose cans and bottles rattled underfoot as they shuffled across the vacant lot.
These hoodlums, awed by the secrecy which surrounded their arrival in Owlhorn, were silent as sheep. Circling them, Logan could hear above the storm’s approaching violence the jingle of spur chains as Ringbone riders, guns out, stood ready to cut any strays back into the herd.
They reached the black shadows behind the Palace and were shielded there from the blast of the approaching storm. The gale howled in weird banshee tones through loose shingles on Owlhorn’s roofs, rattled windows, and bent trees like saplings.
Through the window, Cleve Logan saw two men inside, shooting pool. One was the drummer off the Klickitat stage; the other was Tex Kinevan.
Seeing Kinevan, Logan relaxed. Here was his chance to offset the predicament he found himself in. Once inside, Perris would no doubt order Kinevan and the drummer to leave. A whispered word to Kinevan would tip off Sheriff Vick Farnick that this was the night to strike and nip this land-grab plot in the bud.
Perris was met at the rear door by a white-jacketed pool-room attendant, who spoke briefly to the speculator. Logan heard Perris laugh and hand over a six-gun to the house man. Jubal Buckring, the next man inside, surrendered his .38 Bisley. Logan saw that Buckring was carrying a carpetbag, and deduced that that bag contained his payoff for Perris. The floor man made no attempt to search the contents of that bag for concealed weapons.
“Sheriff’s orders,” the floor man was saying. “Got to enforce his gun-totin’ rule or he’d padlock the house. Your guns, gents.”
Old Pegleg Cochran, first of the Lewistonians to get in out of the night, surrendered an ancient derringer and received a numbered claim check in return.
Stepping into the yellow glare of the big ceiling lamp, Cleve Logan unbuckled his shell belt and handed it over, pocketing his claim check. Behind him, each of the hoodlums was being deftly frisked for any concealed weapons on his person.
Milling around with the others, Logan worked his way toward the corner table where Kinevan and the fat drummer had stopped their game, puzzled by such an influx of customers through the back door.
Across the room, Perris and Buckring had seated themselves on one of the benches flanking the billiard tables. Gus Gulberg, the Federal land agent who would be the key figure in tonight’s conspiracy, was nowhere in the room.
Halting alongside Kinevan, Logan stoked h
is briar and lifted cupped hands to shield his mouth while lighting up. Around his pipestem he put his urgent whisper to the Texan.
“Tonight’s the payoff. In here. Tell the sheriff.”
By no flicker of a facial muscle did Kinevan indicate that any message had reached his ears. He leaned across the pool table to make a shot. Straightening up, he muttered, “Good luck, kid.”
Over in the corner by the door, all was confusion as the Lewiston group hunted out seats, plainly showing the nerve strain they were laboring under. The house man, carrying the guns he had collected in a bucket, stepped along the wall to where Kinevan and the drummer were playing and said courteously:
“Have to refund your dimes on the game, gents. The boss has engaged all the tables for a little tournament.”
Logan took a cue out of a wall rack and was idly chalking it as he saw Kinevan and the drummer follow the house man toward the barroom entrance. Kinevan, tarrying to rack his cue, found his way blocked by the towering figure of Duke Perris.
Down the length of the crowded room, Cleve Logan heard Perris address the Texas cowboy.
“You needn’t leave, friend. This is a sort of reunion of shipmates off the Sacajawea, you might say. I’m putting up a fifty-dollar prize to the winner of our little pool tournament. Stick around and join us.”
Knots of muscle appeared in the corners of Cleve Logan’s cheeks. That’s phony as hell. The wild thought speared through his mind as he saw Kinevan hesitate. Perris is up to something.
“No, thanks, Mister Perris,” Kinevan drawled. “I been playin’ steady since five o’clock. Aim to get myself a snack, of bait and try my luck at rondo-coolo out front. Thanks, anyway.”
Beyond them, the house man shut the barroom door, and Logan distinctly heard the click of a bolt in its socket. He thought, We’re locked in. The back door was blocked by the tall figure of Jubal Buckring, his pale eyes holding a strange malevolence as they met Logan’s.
“Come on, come on, friend Kinevan!” Perris’s hearty boom rang out in this confusion. “The only real competition you’ll have is when Blackie Marengo gets here. He just got to town. This little party is in Blackie’s honor, you might say.”
Cleve Logan’s glance caught Kinevan’s for a panicked interval. Blackie Marengo back in Owlhorn, arisen from a watery grave? Perris might be bluffing, testing the reaction of the two men he had so cleverly disarmed and maneuvered into this trap.
Across half the length of the poolroom, Tex Kinevan’s eyes flashed their message of despair to Logan. If Perris spoke truth, neither of them would leave this room alive.
“You’re staying, Kinevan?” Perris’s voice prompted the Texan.
“All right, Perris,” Kinevan said, his voice even and casual, betraying none of the deadly tension that rode him in this moment. “I’ll challenge you, Cleve Logan. Might as well play out this thing together.”
The Lewiston hoodlums, sensing nothing of the drama which this casual cross talk held, found themselves convenient perches to watch the start of what they seriously supposed to be a pool tournament in the making.
Logan racked the balls, flipped a coin with Kinevan to decide who should break, and had his first try at the cue ball.
Making that shot, Logan dropped three balls in the webbed pockets of the table, bringing a hum of approval from the spectators and a soft comment from Duke Perris which removed any shred of doubt as to the death trap they had entered here tonight.
“That was a nice shot, Marshal. Blackie Marengo couldn’t have done any better.”
Chapter Fifteen
Behind the 8-Ball
For Logan, the “Trig Fetterman” masquerade was over.
By the use of the single word “marshal” just now, Duke Perris had dispelled any doubt as to the truth of Blackie Marengo’s return from the dead.
Kinevan, hearing Perris’s ominous hint, likewise understood. This was a trap, a room they could not hope to leave alive. Their guns, deposited on the backbar rack out front by now, were as inaccessible as the remotest star. The sheriff, unaware of the grim events shaping up in his town tonight, was probably making his first night cruise of the Main Street deadfalls about now. In any case, he would not penetrate the Palace Casino as far as this locked poolroom.
Kinevan felt a renewed admiration for the big rider he called friend, as he saw Cleve Logan lining up his cue between thumb and curled index finger for another combination shot. By no flick of muscle or change of glance had Logan given any sign of having heard Perris brand him for the incognito lawman he was.
During the time it took Logan to finish a run of three more shots, he had thought out this situation and, like Kinevan across the table, saw no way out of it. He was sure from the stare which Jubal Buckring kept on him, steady as a serpent’s, that the Ringbone cattle boss had been warned of his alter-ego role, which made a farce of the Wells-Fargo treasure map he had sketched in Buckring’s office yesterday.
As for Pegleg Cochran and the other derelicts, Logan knew them to be completely innocent of anything extraordinary in the air tonight. Their reason for being here was obvious to Logan. Perris would continue to goad him with repeated references to Marengo’s impending appearance in this room, hoping to bait Logan into attempting some desperation move with a billiard cue or other improvised weapon.
Such an attack would warrant Perris or Buckring to shoot him down in cold blood—Logan was under no illusions as to the fact that the two conspirators carried concealed arms—and the riffraff would make handy witnesses to dispose of any formalities with Sheriff Farnick.
By the same token, neither Perris nor Buckring would be likely to draw a gun and cut either himself or Kinevan down without provocation, before these nerve-taut Idahoans. The immediate course, then, was for the two trapped prisoners to stall along, showing no sign that their nerves were nearing the cracking-point under this intolerable and totally hopeless threat of doom.
When it came time for Kinevan to play, the Texan observed gravely, “This table ain’t level, kid. We’ll switch to the center table, and I’ll spot you the balls you’ve already racked up. Fair enough?”
Perris and Buckring, their own faces beginning to show the pressure they were under, exchanged quick glances. Behind Kinevan’s innocuous proposal lay a definite purpose, Logan knew—by shifting to the central table they would not only be under the big ceiling lamp, the room’s only source of light, but would also be alongside the two windows opening on the side alley.
Kinevan, well aware that his danger was equal to Logan’s, was making this bold and desperate bid to give them a fighting chance to attempt a getaway before gunplay broke loose.
While the two pool players were engaged in changing tables, Duke Perris decided on a change of strategy. Facing his oxlike crew of homestead applicants, he said sharply, “You men get out of here. Buckring, take them into my quarters next door.”
Out of his abysmal ignorance of the true state of affairs, old Pegleg Cochran protested querulously, “Ain’t we go-in’ to have a chanct at that fifty-dollar prize for the best pool playin’, Mister Perris? I’ll take on both o’ them galoots yonder with one hand tied behind my back an’ beat ’em forty ways from the jack—” Cleve Logan saw the unmistakable relief on Jubal Buckring’s face as he unlocked the rear door and stood aside while the men shuffled out-into the wind-ripped night. That open door gave them no advantage; bolting through it, jammed as it was, would be inviting disaster.
Perris’s motive in emptying the poolroom was not difficult to arrive at. Having given up the idea of forcing his two victims to make the first hostile move, Perris was getting rid of the witnesses to what would soon occur in this room.
“Looks like you’re behind the eight ball, don’t it, Marshal?” Perris jeered as the door closed on the last of the toughs. The promoter’s left hand was toying with the golden bullet on his watch chain; the right was deep in
the pocket of his coat, and Logan guessed that he held a derringer there.
Kinevan, making his shot at the black eight ball, glanced up to meet Perris’s level stare. “Game ain’t over till the last ball’s racked,” he said. “You keep an eye on that eight ball, mister. Corner pocket.”
Kinevan made his shot. The cue ball caromed off a cushion, tipped the number fifteen ball into a side pocket, and, responding to the Texan’s deft English, made its curving path across the baize and ivory, clicked on celluloid as the eight ball, timeless symbol of trouble in any man’s language, rifled into the designated corner pocket.
“You called your shot neat enough,” Perris grinned, speaking around his cigar. “Takes steady nerves, Kinevan. We’ll see how you make out with Blackie Marengo, a few minutes from now. He learned the game over at Deer Lodge.”
Kinevan missed his next try, racked his count and moved his cue up to the wooden buttons on the overhead wire to adjust his score.
“I’ll have to give Blackie a handicap,” Logan said, his eyes belying the innocuous words. “Last time I saw him he had a broken arm.”
Finishing his run, Logan racked the balls he had dropped. He thought wildly, How long is Perris going to play this cat and mouse game? He must be waiting for Marengo to show up.
Turning away from the wall rack, neither Kinevan nor Perris was aware that Cleve Logan had concealed the celluloid eight ball in his palm. Approaching Kinevan, Logan saw that his friend was keyed to the breaking-point, his knuckles white as he gripped the maple cue.
Logan knew what was in Kinevan’s mind. The cowhand’s glance flicking toward the nearest of the curtained windows within range of his pool cue telegraphed his intentions. One swipe of the cue could demolish the ceiling lamp over this table, plunge the room into instant blackness. Another swipe of the hardwood butt would smash open a path to get away through that window. And draw Duke Perris’s certain fire.
The Fifth Western Novel Page 13
