The Man From Laramie

by T. T. Flynn

  Vic Hansbro slouched massively in the saddle, ignoring Kate. His bearded mouth, still slightly puffy from the fight with Will Lockhart, gave Barbara a quick, odd satisfaction. She had an unlady-like wish she could have witnessed that bloody, savage brawl.

  Hansbro’s harsh politeness was directed at her.

  “Ma’am, I hear you’re marryin’ Frank Darrah.”

  “Yes, Mr. Hansbro,” Barbara said politely.

  His stare rested on her for a long moment before he said briefly, “Darrah’s gettin’ a pretty wife.” He rode on.

  Kate said with the same bristle, “ ’Twas a skunk! Wait’ll I get that Lockhart man workin’ for me! We’ll run Hansbro an’ Alec Waggoman back in their burrows.”

  Barbara’s laugh came then. “Kate, do you really think you can hire Lockhart?”

  “Watch me,” promised Kate vigorously. “Why d’you think I want Andy Vandiger?” Then Kate smiled grimly at Barbara’s puzzled look. “Ain’t you heard Lockhart’s jailed in Roxton Springs for killin’ a man with a knife?”

  “Why, Kate, I can’t believe it!” slipped from Barbara instinctively and vehemently. Then at Kate’s askance look, Barbara blushed.

  Kate smiled grimly. “I don’t figure Lockhart’s the knifin’ kind, either. But he’s sure partial to trouble. An’ this time it’s real trouble. Wait’ll I start coaxing through his jail bars with a writ from Andy Vandiger in my hand.”

  “But would Judge Vandiger—”

  “For me, Andy Vandiger will,” said Kate with amiable assurance. “Want to come along to Roxton an’ watch me turn the screws on Lockhart?”

  Barbara refused hastily, and stood there watching Kate stride toward McGrath’s Bar. At the moment, Barbara was ready to believe Will Lockhart’s smiling stubbornness would have small chance against Big Kate Canaday’s vigorous determination.

  Then as she turned to go on, Barbara saw that Vic Hansbro had left his roan horse at Frank Darrah’s tie rail and had entered the store. To avoid further talk with the man, Barbara walked across the street to the post office. And there, from Aaron Sadler, the postmaster, Barbara heard the details of Lockhart’s trouble in Roxton Springs, brought by a drummer not half an hour ago.

  In Darrah’s store, McGuire was politely regretful across the hardware counter to Vic Hansbro. “Mr. Darrah’s not back yet.”

  This was Hansbro’s third visit in two days, asking for Frank Darrah. McGuire stood thoughtfully as Hansbro stalked out.

  Farther back in the same aisle, Jubal Kirby, leaning against the counter edge, asked mildly, “Why’s Hansbro in a sweat to see Darrah?”

  “Business, I suppose; we sell Barb a lot,” McGuire answered carelessly. “Sell more, though, when Waggoman’s away.”

  Jubal’s head cocked slightly with interest. “Why more when Alec’s away?”

  “Hansbro runs the ranch then,” said McGuire absently. “Seems like he’d rather trade here.”

  Three minutes later McGuire was thankful he hadn’t said more to Jubal. Frank Darrah walked in from the back alley, looking dusty, tired, and short-tempered. He ignored McGuire and started into the office, and swung around frowning when McGuire called to him.

  “Hansbro just left. He was in yesterday and this morning, too, wanting you.”

  “What does he want?” Frank snapped.

  “Hansbro didn’t say.”

  “Well, find him and tell him I’m here.”

  Frank shouldered on into the office, and closed the door and dropped tiredly into the desk chair. For some moments he sat motionless, not bothering to remove his dusty, narrow-brimmed hat. Finally he yanked open a bottom drawer of the roll-top desk and lifted out a quart whisky bottle.

  Frank looked at the bottle a moment before tilting it up and gulping from it straight. He put the uncorked bottle on the desk and sat feeling the raw whisky cut the edge of weariness. Finally a slow and satisfied smile touched the corners of Frank’s mouth. There was always a way when a man was sure enough of himself. Frank Darrah had never killed a man before, but it had been surprisingly simple and quick, reaching an almost exalted satisfaction in knowing Chris Boldt had found Frank Darrah a coolly dangerous man to threaten. Dangerous—

  Frank sat motionless, reflecting on the word. He had never considered himself a dangerous man—and he was dangerous. He was cool and keen, in the prime of life, and Barbara Kirby was lovely, and all the best years of life were opening ahead. Frank reached for the bottle again, and then turned his head, listening to heavy familiar steps scuffing back through the store to the office.

  A final hasty swallow and Frank returned the bottle to the drawer. He was sitting in cool expectancy when Vic Hansbro stalked into the office.

  “Shut the door,” Frank directed. “What’s on your mind, Vic?”

  Chapter Fourteen

  “Dave Waggoman’s on my mind,” Vic Hansbro growled. He dropped heavily to the chair beside the desk and worried the edge of his coarse, square-cut black beard with thick-fingers.

  A smell of horses and corrals and sweat came off the man. Hansbro had a bearlike massiveness, almost animal-like, which Frank found faintly offensive now. There was a new kind of sullenness in the huge man’s complaint.

  “Alec raised hell over that trouble with Lockhart at the salt lakes.”

  “What about Dave?”

  “He’s turned on us,” Hansbro said almost plaintively and more sullenly. “Told me in so many words he don’t give a damn if Alec hears about them beeves you bought cheap for army contracts.”

  “Turned on me?” Frank said coldly. “How could he? I merely bought what Barb sold. Get that through your head, Hansbro. That’s all I know.”

  “You paid cash an’ understood it was on the quiet.”

  Frank glanced quickly at the closed office door. “Not so loud, you fool!”

  “Let the damn’ town hear if you’re so lily-white, Darrah. You knew prime beef wouldn’t go on the ranch books at that price. It’ll all be Dave’s money some day, so Dave took a little ahead of time for his own use.”

  “Then,” advised Frank coldly, “let Dave explain it to his father. I merely bought what you offered.”

  “Dave’d get out of it. Dave’ll still get Barb when Alec’s gone, and he knows it. I handled the selling as a favor to Dave.”

  “Tell me what happened,” Frank suggested.

  It poured out of Hansbro bitterly. Alec Waggoman had warned Hansbro to control Dave’s wild ways; Dave had defied Hansbro. And now, more clearly, Frank understood Alec Waggoman, Dave Waggoman, and Vic Hansbro. And the thought when it came was so subtle, so insidious that its bald, chill logic prickled along Frank’s nerves.

  Yesterday Frank Darrah would have turned hastily away from the tempting, almost dazzling idea. He would have been afraid. But this was today, after last night—after Chris Boldt—

  Very carefully, very casually, smiling a little, Frank commented lightly, “Vic, it sounds as if you’re damned if you do and damned if you don’t. Too bad I’m not Alec Waggoman; we could get along. Have a drink.”

  “Wish you was Alec then,” Hansbro growled, taking the bottle and tilting it to his mouth. When he lowered the bottle, Hansbro stared at it for a long moment before muttering absently, “Wouldn’t your wife own Barb if anything happened to Dave?”

  “I never thought of it that way; Barbara probably would,” Frank agreed casually and then his long, slow breath came. Hansbro’s ponderous mind had taken the oblique suggestion and built on it instinctively. And now Vic Hansbro would always believe his own sly and scheming thought had shaped what would logically follow.

  “Alec won’t live forever,” Hansbro muttered slowly. “Ain’t anyone can tell what’ll happen to Dave, the way he goes lookin’ for trouble.” Hans-bro stared narrowly at Frank with new interest. “You sure might own Barb one day.”

  Frank laughed. “Then you’d be foreman for life, Vic. But Waggoman is healthy and Dave is young. Don’t count on it.”

  Hansbro lifted th
e bottle and drank again, and ran his tongue slowly over his bruised lips. “Suppose Alec hears about them beeves you bought cheap and quiet?”

  Frank shrugged. “If Alec Waggoman asks me, I’ll tell him what I bought—what I paid. I can’t afford to cover up for Dave’s tricky schemes.”

  Vic Hansbro stood up slowly. He was, Frank thought distrustfully, a black-bearded brute of a man. He watched with a kind of hopeful fascination as Hansbro stood in scowling silence, thinking.

  “You meant that?” Hansbro asked slowly.

  “Meant what?”

  “You’d have me run Barb for you?”

  “I said so, didn’t I? Who’d do it better, Vic? My present business affairs take all my time and attention.” Frank leaned back in the chair. His chuckle put the idea in amusing perspective. “But, Vic—I don’t own Barb. And there’s mighty small chance I ever will. Don’t start spending any salary you’ll ever get from me.”

  Hansbro stared down at Frank, the beard hiding his expression. “I ain’t counting on anything,” Hansbro said finally. “But you made a promise I’ll bring up if the time comes you can do it.” Hansbro turned and stalked out, forgetting to close the door.

  Frank sat motionless, staring at the empty doorway. A deep roil of new excitement and heady hope was stirring in him. Would it really happen? Would Hansbro’s black thoughts goad him into making certain Frank Darrah would control Barb? Frank’s new heady conviction had small doubt that it would happen quickly now. He sat speculating on whether it would be Alec Waggoman first, or Dave first—or both together.

  Barbara Kirby’s gay voice in the store brought Frank to his feet and out of the office. McGuire, smiling fatuously, was serving Barbara at the notions counter. Frank’s own pulses quickened. In the simple white suit, Barbara had never looked more young and gay, more provocative and completely desirable.

  Barbara’s greeting was pleased. “Why, Frank! I didn’t know you were back!”

  “McGuire could have said so,” was Frank’s annoyed reminder to McGuire’s bland glance.

  Barbara studied the assortment of rickrack braid on the counter. “Ten yards of the narrow black,” she decided. Her sobering interest returned to Frank. “Was that man Boldt drunk when he was murdered in Roxton Springs last night?”

  “So they’re talking about that here?” Frank tried to say indifferently. His throat had tightened and dried; he could feel the quickening thud of his heart. “I suppose he was drunk. Why?”

  A small frown creased Barbara’s smooth forehead. “I can’t understand it. Did you see Lockhart after he was arrested?”

  Frank stared. “So Lockhart did it?” he said after a moment. “I left Roxton before daybreak and hadn’t heard.”

  “Do you think Lockhart is guilty?”

  “The sheriff must think so,” Frank said coolly now. A kind of satisfied spite made him add, “Lockhart seems to make trouble everywhere he goes. This time it was bad—stabbing a man in the back and finishing him off in the throat after Boldt was on the ground.”

  “Did he do that?” was Barbara’s shocked question.

  McGuire, wrapping the black braid, reminded calmly, “Lockhart’s fists were enough to stop Hansbro. He don’t seem the throat-cutting kind.”

  Frank’s anger at McGuire was completely unreasonable. He managed to hold it to a cold, “The trial will decide that.”

  Barbara started to say it mattered greatly whether Kate Canaday succeeded in hiring a cold-blooded killer as her foreman. But McGuire’s calm conviction was oddly reassuring. Barbara took her small package and gave McGuire an innocently speculative look. “I’d guess you didn’t sleep well last night, Mr. McGuire.”

  McGuire’s stare was startled. Then his twinkling comprehension studied her. “Was Mrs. Dillon countin’ snores on me?”

  Barbara’s chuckle admitted nothing. Frank went to the door with her, and when Frank turned back, he was curt with McGuire. “I’ll be out until closing time.” His dislike of McGuire was virulent now.

  A new clerk would be hired as soon as possible, Frank decided. But at the moment a great bone-weariness from lack of rest all last night desperately needed a little sleep. And he could sleep peacefully now, Frank thought, with Lockhart safely jailed in Roxton Springs and Vic Hansbro riding back to Barb in a black, thoughtful mood. The future had never been brighter. Frank smiled leanly as he wondered what Lockhart’s thoughts were now, in Roxton jail.

  A lemon-yellow finger of the setting sun threaded the iron bars of Will Lockhart’s cell window as the jail door creaked open.

  Will heard Ira, the lank deputy, speak with surprising politeness. “This way, ma’am.”

  “You sure ain’t keepin’ a canary cage,” was the vigorous, amiable voice Will heard next. Kate Canaday’s broad, sun-reddened face advanced to the cell bars and peered through at him. “An’ this ain’t a canary,” Kate decided. “It’s got whiskers. If it was bald, I’d say it was a buzzard.”

  Will chuckled. This was the first breezy humor in a bleak night and day.

  “Prisoner, ma’am, or visitor?” Will inquired.

  “The sheriff may feel like lockin’ me up before I leave. Half-Moon still needs a he-man foreman. Want it now, Lockhart?”

  “No.”

  “Y’ ain’t the first one to bite a helping hand,” said Kate amiably. She loomed there beyond the bars, a large, muscular, determined woman with a small black hat of battered straw trimmed with red cherries carelessly riding her iron-gray pompadour.

  “One bite’s all you git on me, young man,” warned Kate cheerfully. She was hauling on a buckskin thong around her neck, bringing up a fat gold watch from her formidable bosom.

  “A stranger who’d steal Barb salt, beat up a kindly man like Vic Hansbro, an’ cut a throat here in Roxton Springs would try to duck honest work,” Kate stated blandly. She was squinting at the watch, and she dropped it back into the capacious depths below her wind-burned throat. “In ten minutes, I’m headin’ home, Lockhart. Maybe you ain’t heard Judge Andy Vandiger’ll be gone several weeks. This is your last chance to get out.”

  “Have you seen the judge?” Will inquired narrowly. He was thinking now of the scant hope offered by his lawyer. Two visits from Charley Yuill had brought small comfort. The final knife slash which had opened Chris Boldt’s throat had offended even hardened Roxton Springs, Charley had pessimistically admitted.

  “Yep,” said Kate briskly. “Seen him in Coronado.” From her sagging canvas brush jacket, Kate fished a folded document and held it up. “Ain’t this a purty? Judge Andy signed it. Lets you out in my care until this knifin’ is cleared up. Puts you back in if I say so.” Kate beamed fondly at the document. “Be a cryin’ shame to burn it. You got less’n eight minutes left.”

  Will smiled in wry exasperation. All the long, dragging day he had expected some officer from Fort Roxton to appear, checking on this Will Lockhart who was suspected of cold-blooded killing. Lieutenant Evans, Will had little doubt, would avidly investigate such a report. And Charley Yuill had brought disturbing news.

  Last night a loaded freight wagon had rolled quietly away from Darrah’s ware house. Charley’s guess matched Will’s guess. The rifles from New Orleans had been in the ware house, and had been hastily, furtively moved. But where? Charley was out of town now, searching.

  “Five minutes, Lockhart.”

  Will asked narrowly, “Would you really burn that writ?”

  “Wait an’ see.”

  “You are,” Will said calmly, “a hard-hearted, selfish, scheming old woman.”

  “An’ ugly, too,” Kate Canaday reminded cheerfully. “I git nightmares thinkin’ I’ll be softhearted.”

  They eyed each other through the bars. Will’s shrug, finally, was resigned. “All right—get me out of here.”

  Kate’s chuckle came then.

  “Y’ had me sweatin’, too. Now the Waggomans’ll sweat. An’ Vic Hansbro. Let’s get home to Half-Moon.”

  She was, Will thought, as his t
rotting horse followed Kate Canaday’s topless old buggy out of town, an amazing woman. He smiled faintly at remembrance of Sheriff Johnson’s reluctant, irritated compliance with the writ.

  Kate’s buggy had carried him to the Mogollon Corrals for his horse. He had left a note for Charley Yuill at Charley’s hotel. He knew now that Darrah had checked out of the Riverside Hotel about an hour after Darrah had been in the Gem Café.

  All during that talk in the café, Darrah must have known a wagon was loading at his ware-house, known he was leaving town at once. Thinking of it, Will had a frustrating sense of failure. He had been neatly outmaneuvered while the rifles had been moved on, possibly toward the reservation country.

  One small hope remained. If anyone could track the wagon, Charley could. Will was grateful now for Charley Yuill.

  Night rolled purple, then moonless black over the wooded hills they were threading. Stars frosted the sky. Coyote clamor drifted on the wind and the lean, running hounds around Kate’s buggy growled challenge. Will finally shook his horse to a faster trot and sided the buggy and lifted his voice in studied bluntness.

  “Miss Canaday, I’m a stranger—not even a cattleman. I’m no good to you.”

  Her reply was amiable from the open buggy seat.

  “You whipped Hansbro. You ain’t kindly toward Barb. That’ll do me.”

  “I’ve no quarrel with Barb. Waggoman paid me. And I’ve business of my own waiting.”

  “Nothin’ to stop you ridin’ off now.”

  “I promised to go to Half-Moon.”

  Kate’s chuckle held grim satisfaction. “I told Judge Vandiger you’d keep a promise. Just between us, did you knife that feller?”

  “No.”

  “Didn’t think you did,” said Kate genially. “This’ll spoil your sleep: I outbluffed you. I’da got you out, anyway.” Then Kate’s shrewd guess came through the starlight. “You ain’t a wagon freighter. Ain’t got the hands or the talk. Your business concern Barb?”