Fight for Powder Valley!

by Brett Halliday

  There was no one to come to his aid, no one to believe him when he told the truth. His own quick temper had brought this upon him, he realized ruefully. Because he had attacked Biloff with his fists that morning, he was a logical suspect when something later happened to the land-company president. Still, it seemed to Pat the man must surely have other enemies in the city. He relaxed and grew calmer as he considered his position. Probably the police were just rounding up all the men in the city known to have a grudge against Biloff.

  He was poised and calm when the wagon clattered into the courtyard by the side of the police building and he was ordered to get out. If he kept his wits about him he felt sure he could convince a fair-minded man of his innocence.

  With a policeman on each side of him, he was ushered through a narrow door and up a dark corridor to a large room at the front of the building. Though it was still sunlight outside, gas lights flickered from a ceiling chandelier. The bare pine floor was scuffed and worn by the dragging feet of thousands of offenders. There was a row of wooden chairs bolted against one wall, and at the opposite side of the room a heavy-jowled man in an untidy uniform sat behind a wide bare desk.

  He scowled at Malloy and said with satisfaction, “Got him, huh?”

  “Yep.” Malloy led Pat Stevens forward to stand in front of the desk. “Just as he was fixing to make his getaway. He started to resist arrest so we had to put the bracelets on him.”

  Pat said, “Now, look here,” but the desk sergeant snarled, “Shut up, you. Wait till you’re spoken to.”

  Pat compressed his lips and stared over the sergeant’s head at a cobwebbed window in the brick wall behind him. The rays of the sun were trying to come through the cobwebs and grime, but were finding it difficult. Pat had a feeling the dismal room had never felt the cleansing warmth of the sun. There was a damp, unhealthy smell in his nostrils, and he caught himself sinking into the apathy of a condemned man.

  The sergeant was chewing on a penholder and writing in a ledger in front of him. He asked, “What’s your right name?”

  “Pat Stevens?”

  He muttered, “Patrick,” and wrote it down. “Middle name?”

  “Just Pat Stevens.” Pat leaned forward over the desk. “You got no right to put me down in that book,” he protested. “What am I charged with? Who says I’ve done anything?”

  “Home address?” grunted the sergeant.

  “Powder Valley. I’ve been up in my room sleeping all afternoon …”

  Without looking up, the sergeant said, “Bring in the witness, Joe.”

  The burly man who stood beside Pat nodded and went into another room. Pat turned his head and saw him coming back with the land salesman whom he had met in Biloff’s office that morning.

  Mr. Schultz was evidently enjoying his importance as principal witness to the crime against the person of his employer. His fat face was flushed with righteous indignation and he stopped in the doorway to dramatically point a pudgy forefinger at Pat Stevens.

  “That’s him,” he declared. “That’s the scoundrel. Tried to murder Mr. Biloff with his two hands this morning after threatening him with blackmail and worse.”

  Pat said to the sergeant, “I’m not denyin’ I had a fight with Biloff this mornin’. But he told the police he wouldn’t swear out a warrant. Shucks, if I’d knowed you wanted me for that …”

  “That’s true.” Schultz bustled forward excitedly. “Mr. Biloff refused to prosecute this ruffian out of the kindness of his heart. A fine repayment he got for his generosity.” He planted himself in front of Pat on his bandy legs. “What have you done with Mr. Biloff? What terrible thing have you done since your accomplice kidnaped him?”

  Pat turned disgustedly to the sergeant. “I wish people would stop yapping an’ tell me what this is all about. What’s this talk about kidnaping?”

  “You’re a cool customer,” the sergeant complimented him. “Damned if you ain’t.” He rocked back in his chair and nodded slowly. “Trying to make out you don’t know nothing about it, hey?”

  Pat said, “I’ve been asleep all afternoon.”

  “Except during the time you were out at Mr. Biloff’s house tying up his coachman and making your plans to kidnap him. You’re not going to claim you were asleep while you were doing that, are you? Ha-ha-ha. Maybe you are at that.”

  “Of course he’s guilty,” Schultz expostulated. “Didn’t the Negro say there was a big man with the one who traded clothes with him? Both of them wearing big hats and boots and Western clothes. There’s no doubt this man planned it all after I foiled his plan to murder Mr. Biloff this morning. Why don’t you make him tell what’s happened to Mr. Biloff? Every minute may be important. Perhaps he’s being tortured this very instant.”

  “We’ll find Biloff. Don’t you worry about that. When the coachman gets over his scare enough so he can talk sensible and come down to identify the prisoner, we’ll have an open-and-shut case. Then we’ll go to work on him,” the sergeant promised grimly.

  “In the meantime, think of the danger Mr. Biloff is in,” Schultz cried.

  “In the meantime, we got no proof this man was mixed up in it,” the sergeant told him sternly. “We’ll hold him on suspicion … that’s the best we can do.”

  “Proof?” screeched Schultz. “What better proof do you want?”

  “We’ll run the police business,” the sergeant told him coldly. “You better run along and sell your farms.”

  “I’ll see a lawyer,” Schultz declared. “I’ll see the judge. I’ll report this incompetence to the papers.”

  The sergeant said, “Go on. No one’s stopping you.”

  Mr. Schultz went out, breathing hard and muttering loudly.

  “Now,” said Pat, “can I have the straight of this?”

  The desk sergeant fixed him with a cold eye. “Don’t go getting any idea you’re in the clear. You look guilty as hell from where I sit. But I don’t like no one telling me how to run my business.”

  “You said something about a Negro coachman identifyin’ me,” Pat protested. “The sooner he don’t do it the sooner you’ll turn me loose.”

  “I’ve got a man out there now trying to talk to him. The poor shine was scared so he couldn’t hardly talk when you and your friend threw down on him with your guns.”

  Pat squinted at the sergeant. He said, “It won’t hurt to tell me what happened, will it?”

  “I don’t think I’ll be telling you anything you don’t know, so I guess it won’t hurt,” the sergeant agreed.

  He gave Pat a graphic account of Schultz’s story of the actual kidnaping of Judson Biloff. “Last trace we had of the surrey it was going south hell-bent towards Littleton with your black-up pal in the driver’s seat waving his gun and shooting in the air to get people out of his way. But he never got to Littleton. Turned off somewhere. You feel like telling us about it?”

  Pat shook his head stubbornly. “I was asleep in bed when that was happening.”

  The sergeant nodded amiably. “We sent a man out to Mr. Biloff’s house and he found Jake, the coachman, tied up in the stable dressed in a puncher’s blue jeans and a flannel shirt. He was too scared to tell a straight story, but raved about a big man and little one … both dressed like you are … that ganged up on him and stole his uniform. The little one put it on and blacked up his face and drove off to kidnap Mr. Biloff. The darky don’t know where the big fellow went … back to the Oxford Hotel to pretend to be asleep, I reckon.”

  Pat pounded the desk with his manacled hands. “I don’t know anything about it. Take me out to the Negro and he’ll tell you I ain’t the man.”

  “Well, now …” The sergeant rubbed his blunt chin and considered the request.

  Pat straightened up as he waited for the sergeant’s answer. He glanced at the window in front of him, and his tall body stiffened.

  Framed by the cobwebs and dimly discernible through the accumulated dirt on the glass, he glimpsed a terrifying face with a single eye that star
ed directly into his.

  It was Ezra, crouched close to the window and watching the scene inside the room with intense interest.

  The big red-headed man screwed his whiskered face up into a grin of encouragement when he knew that Pat saw him.

  Pat shook his head violently, lifted his wrists to let Ezra see the shiny handcuffs and to discourage him from doing anything rash.

  Pat saw it all, now. Sam and Ezra must have followed him to Denver, learned somehow of his failure to budge Biloff by argument, and taken matters into their own hands.

  The crazy, damn fools! Still, he felt a grudging surge of admiration for them. They had planned a slick trick, all right. And it had worked thus far. Only a couple of wild fools would have dared to kidnap an important financier from in front of his downtown office. From the beginning, this fear had lurked in the background of Pat’s thoughts. It had sounded like something only Sam and Ezra could dream up.

  Ezra moved away from the window. Pat realized that his face was bathed with cold sweat. He prayed that Ezra would slip on away unobserved. Things might work out yet, if Ezra would use some common sense.

  With a start, he realized that the sergeant was speaking, “I guess that’s a fair enough thing to ask, Stevens. If you’re guilty, the Negro will say so … and if you’re not the man, well, we don’t want to hold you. You take him, Malloy …”

  He was interrupted by the entrance of a trim young officer who burst in excitedly, “Hey, Sarge. I’ve got a description of those men. A good one that ought to be worth something.”

  “You been talking to that coachman, eh?” the sergeant asked.

  “Yes, sir. I fed him a big drink of brandy and got him so he could talk straight again. The smaller man was about his size, dark complexion, crooked nose, black eyes.…”

  “How about the big fellow?” the sergeant demanded. “He’s the one I’m interested in right now. You get anything definite on him?”

  “You bet I did. Plenty. He won’t be hard to recognize. From the way Jake describes him, he’s really big. Damn near a giant. Red hair and red whiskers. Got a scarred face and only one eye …”

  The dismayed expression on the sergeant’s face stopped the eager young policeman. The sergeant looked at Malloy and repeated, “Red hair … one eye.” He shrugged, smiled at Pat Stevens for the first time. “Looks like that clears you, Mister. Sorry we made a mistake, but you can see how things were.”

  “Sure. No hard feelin’s,” Pat assured him. He wanted desperately to get away from that room and try to reach Ezra outside. He turned to Malloy, holding out his arms, “I reckon you’ve got the key to these dinguses?”

  The sergeant nodded to Malloy. “Unlock the tinware. We’ve got nothing to hold him on.”

  Malloy took a small flat key from his pocket. He inserted it in the left cuff and released the spring lock. The jaws sprang open and slid off Pat’s left wrist.

  A loud commotion in the hallway drew their attention. Pat groaned aloud as the door burst open to admit the huge figure of Ezra brandishing a cocked .45. He was hatless and his red hair caught the light from the gas jets overhead. His one eye gleamed menacingly around the room as he boomed, “First man moves gets a chunk of lead in his belly.”

  13

  The young officer retreated, staring at Ezra with bugging eyes. He muttered, “Red hair and one eye. Jehosaphat! That’s him.”

  Malloy was bent half over by Pat’s side. He took in the situation with one darting glance, then dived behind the sergeant’s desk, going for his gun.

  Ezra threw lead at Malloy to prove his threat had been wholly serious. The slug nicked a corner of the desk, missing Malloy by an inch.

  Pat dived sideways on top of Malloy with the handcuffs still dangling from his right wrist. He got hold of the policeman’s revolver and wrested it from his grip, arose from behind the desk to see that Ezra had the other two officers covered.

  But there were excited shouts and the sound of pounding feet outside the office, reinforcements attracted by the loud explosion of Ezra’s gun.

  Pat leaped forward toward the outer door, panting, “C’mon, Ezra. We got to get out fast.”

  Ezra hesitated a moment, then lumbered after him.

  Two uniformed men were coming through the door as Pat and Ezra burst out. They shouted an alarm and tugged at their service revolvers. Pat struck one a flailing blow with the handcuff swinging from his wrist, and Ezra simply ran over the other one, trampling him to the courtyard.

  Pat half-turned as he ran and threw two bullets back at the door through which they had just emerged. He aimed high to avoid killing a policeman, and the bullets struck the door casing, a grim warning to those inside the office to stay inside.

  They crossed the courtyard to an alley and were hidden from the police station by a high stone wall. Pat stuck Malloy’s gun out of sight in his waistband and told Ezra to do likewise. Then he hid his right hand deep in the pocket of his leather jacket, cramming the dangling cuff inside, out of sight.

  At the end of the alley they came out into a narrow street in the wholesale district crowded with vans and loaded wagons. There were shouts of pursuit turning into the alley behind them.

  Pat grabbed Ezra’s arm and steered his big companion to the loading platform at the rear of one of the buildings. A brawny Irishman was trundling wooden cases from the interior of the building onto a wagon fitted with high sideboards. He grinned widely at the two fugitives as blue-coated pursuers burst out of the alley. He grunted, “Into the wagon with you and lay flat.”

  They leaped over the tailboard and crouched on the floor out of sight. The Irishman phlegmatically trundled his heavy cases forward and started piling them on the floor of the wagon behind Pat and Ezra.

  Two policemen ran up, shouting excitedly, “Have you seen two men running this way? They’re dangerous criminals.”

  He shook his head, spat over the side of the wagon to show his disdain of uniformed authority. He rumbled, “Dangerous criminals, be they? The likes of that I’ve not seen this day.”

  The two policemen hesitated an instant, then trotted on to continue the search. Their rescuer grinned down at the two men from Powder Valley and winked knowingly with a broad grin.

  “Bad cess to the coppers, say I? Do they think Mike Clancy is a man to help them in their dirty worrk?” He continued to pile the cases up behind Pat and Ezra, forming a waist-high barricade to hide them effectually as long as they kept their heads down.

  “Dangerous criminals, is it?” Clancy muttered. “Two that’ve had a nip too much would be my guess.”

  “We’re strangers in Denver,” Pat told him. “The police have got us mixed up with a couple of other fellows. All we want is a chance to get out of town.”

  Clancy nodded. “And that chance you’ll get,” he told them cheerily. “’Tis little love I have for the blue-coats. Keep yourselves down and stay quiet till I finish my loading job. I’ll drive you away safe and no one the wiser.”

  He pushed his hand-truck back into the building for another load of cases and Pat and Ezra settled themselves as comfortably as they could in the narrow space between tiers of boxes.

  Ezra drew in a huge sigh of relief and grinned down at Pat. He rumbled hoarsely, “I ain’t had time to say howdy, Mr. Stevens. Who’d thought we’d meet up in Denver like this?”

  Pat hissed, “Shut up. There’ll be more police nosing around outside. They’ll hang us both at sundown if they catch us now.”

  Ezra nodded happily and settled back against the sideboards. He was thoroughly proud of the manner in which he had rescued Pat, without in the least understanding that his violent entrance into the police station had actually been the worst thing that could possibly have happened to his partner.

  While Clancy loaded more wooden cases into the wagon behind them, Pat drew his right hand from his pocket and looked down hopefully at the dangling cuff.

  Ezra’s inopportune appearance had come just as Malloy unsnapped the left cuff. The
key had still been inserted in the lock when Malloy dived away from his side. But Pat’s heart sank when he saw the key was no longer there. It had evidently been lost while they made their dash for freedom. Though his hands were no longer locked together, the incriminating links were still securely locked to his right wrist. If Ezra had only delayed another thirty seconds, Malloy would have had the other cuff also unlocked. But there was no use worrying about that now. Ezra was happy in the belief that his bold action had saved Pat from the hands of the police. There was no use taking that satisfaction away from the big man.

  When Mike Clancy finished loading the wagon and put up the tailgate, he came around and climbed up on the high spring seat in front. He spoke to his two passengers over his shoulder without turning his head, “Here we go. There’s cops watching on every street corner around here. Keep down and keep quiet.”

  He shouted to his team of draft horses and the heavily loaded wagon rolled away. Pat and Ezra kept down and kept quiet. They didn’t bother to ask where they were going. Any place away from the vicinity of the police station was all right with them.

  It took the draft team a long time to get the heavy wagon to its destination. Pat and Ezra were stiff and sore from the bumping ride on the wooden floor when Clancy finally shouted, “Whoa,” and turned his head to grin down at them.

  “You’re all right, now. No cops around here.”

  Pat pulled himself up and saw they were in the railroad yards, with the loaded wagon drawn up by the open door of a box-car on an isolated siding.

  The Irishman jumped down and went around to the back of the wagon, saying briskly, “You can help me load this stuff if you’re a mind to. It’s due to leave town at six o’clock.”

  “Where to?” Pat jumped down lithely while Ezra clambered over the side behind him.

  “This stuff’s going to Pueblo. A rush order that’s got to get out tonight.” Clancy grinned at the handcuff dangling from Pat’s wrist. “A desprit crimnal, eh? And maybe you are at that.”