The Fifth Western Novel

by Walter A. Tompkins

  “Dammit, all you can see is legs!” said Young Jeff.

  Bill Morgan’s deep-throated voice was saying complacently: “If any of you boys hanker to start shootin’—well, just start shootin’. Me, I’m ready.”

  “Legs make damn good targets,” said Still Jeff. “Get ’em in the knees. They sort of buckle down then.”

  “I get you, old timer,” grunted Young Jeff. “Then they squat down and you shoot for their livers! Foxy gadget, Jeff.”

  “Used to come in handy,” sighed a reminiscent Still Jeff. He sounded sentimental about it. Well, it was a contraption he and old Red Shirt Bill Morgan had thought out when they were young and—Shucks.

  Perhaps Bill Morgan had seen them, perhaps not, since his eyes were on the room in front of him and since the two had entered so stealthily. At any rate what he said was, “Make up your minds, boys. You can step up to the bar and have all the drinks you want, provided you pay for ’em. Or you can get free, all the lead most jaspers hanker for. Only let’s not waste time.”

  A voice spoke up roughly.

  “Keep your shirt on, Bill. It ain’t you we want. We’re lookin’ for Young Cody. An’ we’re takin’ Warbuck’s daughter home to him. Do we do it peaceful—Or?”

  “It’s ‘Or,’” said Bill Morgan. “Young Jeff ain’t here. As for Arlene Warbuck, well she’s of age, full grown an’ knows her own mind, an’ she ain’t a-goin’.”

  The voice which had spoken once spoke up again, sharp and full of threat. Young Jeff recognized it now: That was Tod Jones speaking, one of Warbuck’s young hellers who, because he was that sort, had naturally stepped along into the late Rick Voorhees’ boots.

  Still Jeff spoke up then, and to the point.

  “Get out of here, every one of you damn weak-minded hellions,” he said, “or I’ll shoot your legs off!”

  Somebody with an itching finger, let off a shot—and like a flash old Red Shirt Bill Morgan answered it with his rifle, then ducked down behind the bar.

  “I’d clean forgot that old shootin’ slot under the bar,” he grunted. “It always was a damnfool idea anyhow.”

  One shot calls for another in most games in life, and now a fusillade was poured into the bar behind which the attackers knew that their prey hid themselves. Only they did not know of old Still Jeff’s panel, and they hadn’t altogether caught the full meaning in his words when he had warned them about their legs. But now, in less time than it takes a falling pine cone to strike the ground, they learned.

  A low-aimed blast raked through their midst. Tod Jones went flopping down, shot through the knee, Andy Coppler went dancing crazily about with a sizeable knick in his shin bone, and half a dozen others were blistered in their lower extremities. A howl of mingled pain and rage went up from them; they couldn’t see what they were shooting at, they couldn’t locate that damned crevice that belched bullets; they could only rake an already splintered bar with their futile shots.

  Old Red Shirt Bill Morgan, feeling young again, thank God, roared out in joyous and resonant thunder, as shoulder to shoulder with Still Jeff he shoved his rifle through the slot, “Come and get it, boys! Come and get it! There’s plenty here for all that’s looking for it, an’ you boys stepped up an’ asked for it, didn’t you? Me an’ another ol’—Me an Young Jeff Cody is a-squattin’ here, shoulder to shoulder like we used—like we’d ought to be, an’ all you gents ha got to do is come take it! Zowie! It’s a good ol’-fashioned sound, to hear the bones breakin’! Want some more? Step up, gents. Come an’ get it!”

  They didn’t want it; not any piece of it. They were fighting men at that, most of them pretty upstanding fighting men. But they didn’t like fighting something they couldn’t see. Admitted that there were a score of them—twenty-one by Red Shirt Bill’s count—against only three still it remained that they couldn’t glimpse hide nor hair of a single one of those three, and their legs began to prickle with goose feathers. Tod Jones yelled wildly, “Hold it, Bill! Hold it! We got all we want. Pull down Bill!”

  For answer old Red Shirt Bill, taking his chances and taking them valiantly, rose up and looked across the top of his end of the bar and laid his rifle down—still keeping it handy.

  “You boys want drinks?” he said mildly. “If so, step up an’ put your money down. If it ain’t so, get out and make room for them that spends their money free.”

  “I’m damned,” muttered Young Jeff. And Still Jeff having leisure now, reached into a hip pocket for a plug o Star cut chewing tobacco.

  “We’ll drop in some other time, Bill,” said Tod Jones “Not thirsty today.”

  “Take your maimed an’ crippled along with you,” snorted Bill Morgan. “Don’t have to hurry back unless you crave some more.”

  “We’ll be back,” said Jones, and out they went, all the Warbuck men—and several of them went limpingly or else were carried. And for a second time Young Jeff remarked and there was a hint of reverence in his tones, “I’m damned.”

  Except for the Warbuck contingent there were not more than six or eight men in the room. These went out too; in fact, most of them had already gone and precipitately, a couple through the nearest convenient window, having nothing to do with this byplay, wishing only to be somewhere else. So when, following the precedent established by old Red Shirt Bill, both the Jeff’s stood up, they had only an empty room to confront them.

  “Looks sort of like we’d run ourselves out of business,” sighed old Still Jeff. He looked at his son and shook his graying head. “I can’t even take off time for a bite of lunch, it seems,” he said.

  Red Shirt Bill said to Young Jeff—pointedly to Young Jeff—in the voice of an old bull ready to burst through the pasture fence, “Kid, there’s a job open, an’ you better take it. You see, I own half of this hotel, like I own anyhow half of everything that’s worth ownin’ in Pay Dirt Town. Well, I can’t be aroun’ twenty-fours hours every day, can I? There ought to be a man that a man can trust, a—what you might call a third man. He could stack up the money taken in, split it two ways, an’ see I didn’t get cheated.—Hell, he could split it three ways, fur’s I’m concerned, and drag down his own third for his trouble—an’ at that I’d be savin’ money!”

  Young Jeff had to laugh. He said, “Let’s go look outside, to see whether they’re riding out of town or hanging around.”

  “Oh, they’re ridin’, all right,” said old Bill. “You an’ me, Kid, the two of us, we scared ’em off.”

  One might have expected at least a snort from Still Jeff. All he did was curl up the ends of his spreading mustache.

  They looked outside. The Warbuck boys were off in a cloud of dust. The trio came back to the bar. Bill Morgan and Still Jeff went behind it, set their rifles down out of sight but handy, and reached automatically for their bar towels.

  “What’ll you have, Kid?” said Bill Morgan. “Drink hearty. It’s on the house.”

  And Still Jeff, too, invited, though he didn’t say a word. But he did set a bottle out first and cock up his brows crookedly.

  “On the house, Jeff?” Young Jeff said to Still Jeff.

  Still Jeff hunched up his shoulders. They said for him, “Why not?”

  Young Jeff said, “Make it a shot of whisky, Jeff.” And to old Bill he said, “Make it a shot of whisky, Bill.”

  The two bottles were set forth. He poured two brimming glasses. Then, taking them with right and left hand, he crossed his arms, so that the liquor which had come from Still Jeff was brought over under Bill Morgan’s nose, and the liquor that had come from old Bill’s bottle was shoved along under Still Jeff’s.

  “Drink hearty you boys,” said Young Jeff. “Remember, it’s on the house!”

  This time even Red Shirt Bill held his tongue. The two old men behind the bar used their towels, mopping up. As it happened, both brimming whisky glasses went toppling over into the discard, their contents s
pilled. But Young Jeff had not waited to see. He was out of the room, going long-stridedly, and was half way through the lobby before the glasses clinked where they hit. He ran up the creaking old stairway, headed straight to the room that had been Arlene’s when last he was here, and rapped like one not to be denied.

  “Missee Ah Lee,” he called. “Allee samee you come along qlickee. Me ketchee job fo’ Missee Ah Lee!”

  Her door was flung wide open when he was half way along to the second Ah Lee. She looked out at him with eyes—Well, maybe they weren’t as big as saucers. But, to Jeff anyhow, they were pretty big eyes and wonderful to look into. Looking into them was like looking into deep forest pools on a hot summer day.

  “Jeff! I heard the shots—Tell me—”

  “Sure I’ll tell you,” said Jeff, and caught her hand. “Come on the run. You’ve got a bang-up job. You’re bookkeeper, chief clerk, head accountant, general manager and official dove of peace of the Pay Dirt Hotel. And you get anyhow a third cut of the gate receipts, just for keeping the figures straight—and I don’t mean yours, ’cause it’s too curvy!—and for keeping Jeff and Bill from poisoning each other. All’s well, the boys from Long Valley that looked in to start something have started home, and you’re the queen of the roost. You can make a bonfire any darn minute you please with all the old duds you don’t want to wear any more. And if you want any more highfalutin’ titles, you can call yourself Third Assistant Bartender.”

  “But—but—but, Jeff—”

  “We shot ’em in the legs and they hobbled home,” said Jeff, and ran down stairs.

  By the time he got back into the barroom he found the place filled. The shots fired there had filled all Halcyon with a din and a menace and an invitation to come running to see what it was all about. Hangers-around-town, hoping that any minute the lid of secrecy would blow off and that it would become common knowledge where the new gold strike had been made, accepted any untoward circumstance as something that might lead them along the way. Why should men be trying to kill one another? Because of gold! Well, that was a reasonable enough explanation. So all those within earshot had come running.

  “Wh—wh—what?” the anxious ones asked. But they were just city-dwellers, crude and ignorant, tenderfeet and callow, men to be disposed with by old timers like Still Jeff and Red Shirt Bill Morgan with the flick of a damp bar towel.

  But there was one man, an outsider and a newcomer, just now engaging Bill Morgan in talk, who was not so off-handedly brushed aside. He was a thin, almost cadaverous looking man of around fifty, with a scraggly, brown Van Dyck beard dusted with ash gray, a nearly bald head and a pair of furtive yet penetrating dark eyes. He was well dressed in a gray suit that looked new and expensive, but the suit hadn’t been pressed any too recently and his shirt was dingy and altogether he looked seedy. As Jeff came in this new arrival in Halcyon was asking questions of old Bill Morgan.

  “Mr. Warbuck here?” was what Jeff first heard.

  Red Shirt Bill answered with a curt, “No,” but kept looking curiously at the questioner.

  “There used to be an old woman named Amanda Grayle,” said the stranger. “Live here yet?”

  “I got you now,” grunted Bill. “Thought there was somethin’ kind of familiar about you. You’re Sharpe, that’s who you are. Doc Sharpe that went away all of a sudden pretty nearly twenty year ago and ain’t been back.”

  The man didn’t look particularly pleased to be recognized; and for a minute perhaps he was thinking of the advisability of telling Morgan he was mistaken. Then he shrugged and said sourly, “Yes, I’m Dr. Sharpe. I didn’t suppose you’d know me. I’ve changed a bit in those twenty years. Give me another drink. And tell me about the old woman; I’d sort of like to see her. She was a patient of mine once, you know. Where does she live now?”

  “She lives where she always did live,” said Red Shirt Bill, and withdrew the bottle he had been about to set forth. “And you don’t get any more drinks off’n me. Get t’hell out of here.”

  “Look here, Morgan! What’s the matter with you?” Dr. Sharpe slammed his money down; he seemed to be amply supplied. “I can pay—”

  “Scat,” said Bill. “I don’t like you, I never did—an’ if you ever stick your weasel mug in here again I’ll throw you out by the scruff of your neck. Now beat it!”

  “Why, damn you!” cried Sharpe.

  Old Bill leaned across the bar and with open hand slapped the man’s face so hard that its blow sounded like a pistol shot. Sharpe went staggering backward, nearly fell, pulled himself up and slid a hand down to his hip. Bill Morgan with a quick sweep of his arm caught up his rifle; he laid it across the bar—and Sharpe, muttering angrily, went out.

  All this had been taken in by Young Jeff. “Doc Sharpe.” Name and title stuck in his mind, puzzling him. He had heard them before somewhere. And there was the reference to twenty years ago, the mention made of Warbuck and of the old woman of Witch Woman’s Hollow—It came to him in a flash. The name, “Doc Sharpe,” had been spoken that night when Warbuck shot Jim Ogden; Ogden had said something about “twenty years ago—when your daughter was born,” and that “Doc Sharpe has got something on you, like old lady Grayle.” And Jim Ogden had said, “I got a notion what it is, too.” And now, here was Doc Sharpe—and old Bill Morgan, not a man given to squeamishness, had denied him a drink in the Pay Dirt and had all but kicked him out.

  Then, for some obscure reason or for no reason at all or for a whole hatful of reasons all jumbled up, Young Jeff Cody flew into a towering rage; as they put it in and around Halcyon, he got mad clean through.

  “I’m getting pretty damn sick of all this,” he growled inwardly, taking no one but Young Jeff Cody into his confidence but feeling ready to talk to the wide world. “Here’s Bart Warbuck, a crook and a killer and a gold-trimmed bully raising merry hell with all of us, ruining a lot of ranchers that are the cream of the earth, trying to bully-rag his own daughter, trying to burn me down—and he walks on his heels. And here’s a flock of bloodsuckers, the old Witch Woman and this snake Doc Sharpe and maybe Jim Ogden, that have got the goods on him and could pull him down in two shakes. And here’s me, Jeff Cody, and I don’t even know what it’s all about! Old Bill and Jeff could tell me part of it; Jim Ogden could tell me a thing or two; that old woman and Sharpe could spill the whole story. And, dammit, they’re going to!”

  Now was no time at all to talk to Bill Morgan; it might, however, be a good time for a talk with Doc Sharpe. What was it Jim Ogden had said that night to Warbuck? Something like, “You’d have strangled your daughter the night she was born, but—” Already Sharpe had made his exit, on his way no doubt to talk over old times with Amanda Grayle. Young Jeff, ready to do something about a mess which was getting altogether too thick, hurried out in Sharpe’s wake. But the man was already out of sight. Jeff heard the beat of hoofs not far off but rapidly receding and went to the corner of the porch and to a place where he could see through the trees; someone riding a black horse, barely glimpsed as he swerved around a clump of young pines, was headed up-valley. Sharpe, he supposed.

  Then a girl, looking tiny in her newfangled riding habit atop a big raw-boned nag, came into town and into his view, and in another moment he was looking up into the pink-flushed face of Chrystine Ward, the little school teacher from Deer Valley.

  “Oh, Jeff!” she gasped. “Jeff!”

  “Hello, Chrystine,” he said. “You look like—Here! What’s all this!”

  She spilled out of the saddle and into his arms. If he hadn’t been quick to catch her she would have gone sprawling to the ground. She clung to him and began to whimper.

  “Jeff! Jeff! I’m s-scared to d-death. Oh, Jeff!”

  “Now what?” said Jeff. Her arms were around his neck; he pulled them free and stood her down on the ground and stared at her wonderingly. “What bit you, Chrystine?”

  “Wh-where is Arlene Warbuck
? Is she here? I’ve got to see her.”

  “She’s upstairs. But what’s it all about? You look like the devil had been chasing you.”

  “He is!” moaned the girl. “I’ve been working for Bart Warbuck, Jeff, ever since I came here. I’ve been a—a dirty little spy, that’s what I’ve been. Oh, lots of the boys would ride by and tell me things; even you used to. Remember?” she asked almost wistfully. “And I’d tell Bart Warbuck; that’s why he got me the school. And then—well, I found out too much, maybe! Anyhow I—I’m afraid of him, Jeff.”

  “You’d better be,” he grunted back at her. And then asked, “What about Arlene?”

  “I’ve got to tell her—” She broke free then, left her horse where it was, forgetting all about it, and ran up the steps and into the hotel. Jeff tied the horse at the hitching rail. Then he went up into his own saddle and headed up the valley, the way he was pretty sure Doc Sharpe had gone.

  Chapter Thirteen

  There wasn’t in Young Jeff Cody’s makeup any of the material of which eavesdroppers are made; he had no hankering for an eye at a keyhole or an ear plastered against a wall. He estimated that he had already through force of circumstance, done about all the surreptitious listening-in that he cared to do. But he did want to know what might lie between the newly arrived Sharpe and the old Witch Woman.

  As he rode into Witch Woman’s Hollow he dipped down into a place dank and gloomy even at midday in springtime. It was very quiet here; even the birds would not frequent it until the hottest days of summer, and the breeze found trouble getting in, and the only sound was the hushed ripple of the thin stream running darkly over its slippery stones on its way to Wandering River. He turned into the grassy path so lightly sketched across the depression, a way little trod, and glimpsed the dull walls of the old woman’s hut. He saw also the black horse tethered to a white dead tree near the door. Dismounting, finding the door unlocked, he opened it without knocking and went in.