by Short, Luke;
Bolling did, while Tip slipped his lariat off the horn. Then viciously he swung the coiled rope across the rump of his chestnut. The horse stampeded out into the night, and Tip cut the other horse across the rump. He went off in another direction.
A man yelled, “There they go!” and fired at the horses. Tip, his gun in Bolling’s back again, said, “Get in the wagon shed!”
Bolling hesitated for a moment, then opened the door, the hot smell of dust and grease and leather drifting out. Bolling tripped over a wagon tongue, and Tip shoved him against the wall, ramming the gun in his midriff. “You make a move and I’ll let this off.”
“You wild damn fool!” Bolling whispered savagely. “You won’t get away with it!”
Tip shoved the gun harder, and Bolling didn’t speak. Tip could hear his labored breathing. Outside, men were yelling. Tip heard one pound past the shed, stop, and then yell wildly, “He’s wired it.”
“Try the other gate!” Jeff Bolling shouted. The light from a lantern showed under the door and then vanished. Someone was cursing in a vicious, level monotone. Off by the cookshack, somebody was shooting.
Tip backed against the wall, his gun still in Bolling’s side, and wondered if he would get away with it.
The crack under the door showed the lantern light again. Suddenly somebody wrenched the door open, and the lantern glow lighted up the shed. Tip had only the briefest glance at the interior, but he knew what had happened. A half-dozen saddles straddled a pole against the opposite wall, and these men had come for them.
Jeff Bolling, gun in one hand, preceded the man with the lantern into the shed. He heard Tip’s movement, stopped short, wheeled, and saw Tip and Ben Bolling. Only now, Tip had Ben Bolling in front of him, the gun rammed in Bolling’s back.
Jeff’s eyes glinted like an animal’s in that light. His gun was leveled at Ben.
“This is the payoff,” he said thickly. “Step out from behind him.”
“Back up,” Tip countered. “Damn you, back out of here or I’ll shoot!”
Tip shoved Ben a step ahead of him, and Jeff backed up. Tip went on, and Jeff backed clear of the door and out into the yard, his eyes wild with murder.
Tip put his back against the side of the shed, hauling Ben close in front of him. Four riders, motionless and staring at him, all with guns drawn, watched Jeff Bolling for a signal.
Tip said in an iron voice, “Pull a horse out of there and saddle him, you with that lantern. Put it down!”
He shot once at the man’s feet. The man leaped aside, swinging up his gun, and Jeff raised a hand. “Give him one,” Jeff said softly. The rider put down the lantern and backed into the corral gate. The horse was saddled and led out.
Jeff was watching, his gun leveled, and Tip listened intently for anyone approaching from around the corner of the wagon shed.
The rider led the horse over to Tip and then Tip said, his voice wicked with warning, “Back against the corral poles, the lot of you!”
“Hell with you!” Jeff Bolling cried. “Try to make it if you can!”
Tip shot again, and his slug whipped through Jeff’s boot top and kicked dust against the lantern.
“I’ve got one shot left here, Bolling,” Tip said wickedly. “I’ll give you two seconds to move.”
Jeff, cursing hysterically, backed away, and so did the others, until their backs were against the corral poles. This was going to break in a moment, Tip knew, and he would have to act fast.
He shoved Ben ahead of him, grabbed the reins of the horse, and turned him around. “Get up!” Tip ordered. “Leave that left stirrup free!”
The horse was between Tip and Jeff. Ben, cursing with rage, swung into the saddle. Tip put his left foot in the stirrup, grabbed the horn with his left hand, swung up, and with his free boot raked the horse’s flank. The horse lunged forward with his double and lopsided burden, plunging for the corner of the woodshed. Tip snapped his last shot at the lantern, and saw it kick over and go out, just as Jeff yelled, “After him!”
They rounded the corner of the wagon shed. A man afoot, racing around the corner, was knocked spinning by the horse, and then they were in darkness.
Ben Bolling, who had counted Tip’s shots, too, now swung his free arm at Tip. Tip lifted his gun, brought it down in across Bolling’s head and shoved. Bolling slacked out of the saddle and fell. Tip heard him hit the ground with a grunt, then his thick voice rose in the cry, “Over here! Over here!”
Tip swung his right leg over the saddle now, just as the first shots from the wagon shed searched for him in the dark. He rounded the corner of the house now, crouched low over the horn, ramming fresh loads in his gun. Racing past the gallery, he flogged the horse with the reins, until the pony stretched out in a terrified run. Tip slipped out of the saddle then, hit the grass, fell, rolled, and came to a stop against the corner of the porch.
He rose, stumbled, caught himself, and ran for the shelter of the porch, flattening against the wall, just as three riders boiled past him. He heard one man yell, “That horse is windbroke! Ride him down!”
Tip hugged the wall, and five more riders cut around the corner, and then there was a silence.
Tip peered around the corner, saw nothing, and then ran back toward the wagon shed, his mind clouded with a fury that did not let him know that his leg was hurting. It was only when he fell and struggled up again that he knew he was hurt, and then he didn’t care. Ben Bolling, as he had seen, was not among those six riders—and Ben Bolling was under arrest.
He pounded around the corner of the wagon shed to find the lantern guttering in the same spot. And Ben Bolling, alone, was closing the corral gate. One whole side of him was a smear of dust.
When he saw Tip he stopped, as if he were not going to believe his eyes, and then his mouth opened with wordless cursing. Tip grabbed him by his open vest and shook him, and said wildly, “You’re comin’ with me, Bolling. Now get two horses out here. If they come back before you’re through, I’ll gun you, so help me, and shoot my way clear.”
Bolling gave up then. He brought out two horses, put bridles on them, and then, Tip, in an agony of waiting, said, “Never mind the saddles. Get on.”
He swung up after Bolling. He was waiting for his horse to pitch, but Bolling was too beaten to have thought of giving him a salty horse.
Tip cut Bolling’s horse across the rump, and they angled off toward the cookshack. The cook, standing in the doorway, saw them, dodged inside, and they pounded past him. Seconds later, his rifle hammered futilely into the night.
Tip held to a gallop, hugging the flank of Bolling’s pony, until they made the timber. Then he pulled up and listened, holding the bridle of Bolling’s horse. Far off to the north, a racket of gunfire drifted to him.
He turned to Bolling and said mildly, “It’ll be just twice as hard to break you out of where you’re goin’. Now, get on.”
CHAPTER 8
“Where’d you hear that?” Buck demanded of Pate at dinner next day.
“Clem Dockstader,” Pate said, his eyes bugging. “It’s all over town. He brung him in last night, they said. Ben Bolling looked like he’d been drug through a rifle barrel backward.”
“And he’s in jail now?” Buck asked.
When Pate nodded, Buck looked up at Lucy, who had stopped her serving long enough to listen to Pate’s story.
“On what charge?” Lucy asked.
“Killin’ Uncle Haig.”
Cam Shields, already finished, tilted back in his chair and sucked on a toothpick, his eyes sleepy-looking and at the same time watchful. “He couldn’t of killed Haig,” Cam drawled. “He was right here when Haig was shot.”
“What do you care?” Buck asked. “He’s in jail, that’s the main thing.”
“No, it ain’t the main thing,” Cam said irritably. “If Ball can throw them Bollings in jail on a bogus charge, it’s a leddy-mortal cinch he can throw us Shieldses in, too, if he notions it.”
Buck put down his fork. �
�The Shieldses aren’t doin’ anything that they could be put in jail for, Cam. You better get that through your head.”
Lucy put in, looking at Cam, “Ben Bolling tried to burn us out and kill us. Don’t you think that’s enough to jail him for?”
“I ain’t talkin’ about what Ben Bolling done,” Cam said, his narrow face stubborn. “I’m talkin’ about what he didn’t do. And he never killed Haig.”
“He done just as bad!” Pate said hotly. His mop of tow hair lay in an unruly wing over his forehead, partially covering one eye. Cam reached over and mussed Pate’s hair and grinned. “All right, younker. Don’t take my hide off.”
Pate didn’t like to be treated like a ten-year-old, and he subsided in sullen silence. Buck assigned the work for the afternoon, then went out. Presently he rode into town. Pate went out to the corral to saddle up, and Cam followed him. The timbers of the barn were still smoldering. Cam’s face was thoughtful as he leaned on the corral poles, watching Pate snake out a new horse for the afternoon riding. When, on the first cast, Pate laid a loop over his pony, Cam said, “You’re better at that than I am, Pate.”
Pate flushed with pleasure, knowing it was true. He was an all around better hand than Cam was, only Buck had forbidden him to carry a gun of any sort, or even discuss the Bollings with anybody. Buck was an old woman in some ways, Pate thought, but he was a lot more of a man than Cam.
He threw his saddle on the gelding under Cam’s watchful gaze.
“Did you see Ben Bolling, Pate?”
“Hunh-unh. Ball wouldn’t let me in.”
“Was he marked up, did you hear?”
Pate said idly, “I never heard.”
“Of course, them lawmen would half kill Haig before they throwed him in jail, but not a Bolling. He’s too high and mighty to touch.”
Pate ceased work. “Come to think of it, they just said Ben was dirty, like he’d been wrassled around.”
“Haig wasn’t dirty,” Cam said grimly, “he was bloody. He was a Shields, though, and there’s a difference.”
Pate looked at him. “You mean, they beat up Uncle Haig before they throwed him in jail, just because he was one of us?”
“That’s what I mean,” Cam said, a spurious bitterness in his voice. “That-there sheriff’s office is fightin’ for the Bollings, and doin’ it legal, too.”
“I don’t see that,” Pate said, his interest roused now.
“You don’t see no Bollings dead, do you?” Cam challenged. “You don’t see no buildings of theirs burned down.”
“But Ben Bolling is in jail.”
“He’ll go free,” Cam scoffed. “Why, they ain’t even holdin’ him on a charge that will hold water, and Tip Woodring knows it.” He shook his head. “That’s just a front. They’re tryin’ to make it look to Buck like they was goin’ to be fair. Fair!” he snorted contemptuously.
“You think they won’t hold Ben?”
“How can they? All Jeff Bolling or Murray Seth has got to do is swear Ben was with them, and he’ll walk out of that jail. Haig went out of it a dead man.”
Pate knew that was so, and he felt sudden anger. This morning, he had thought Tip Woodring a pretty fine hombre, but when Cam pointed out a few things it looked a little different. Ben Bolling wasn’t hurt, and he’d been arrested on a charge that they’d have to free him on. Pate knew that because he’d seen Ben Bolling here the night of the fight. Uncle Haig was arrested and died in jail. Ben Bolling, a far more guilty man in Pate’s eyes, would walk out of jail a free man.
Cam, watching Pate shrewdly, said, “That’s what gravels a man, Pate. Here this old Ben Bolling has killed half our family and tried to burn us out. No worse man was ever met. Even his girl won’t stay around him. He’s a killer with a plumb black heart. And he’s goin’ free.”
Pate said hotly, “Somebody ought to shoot him!”
“Sure they should,” Cam agreed, adding, “They shot Haig in jail, didn’t they?”
Pate suddenly thought of something, and looked swiftly at Cam. Cam wasn’t looking at him; he was drawing circles in the dust with the toe of his boot. Pate was glad Cam hadn’t seen him then, because Cam sometimes had a pretty good idea of what a man was thinking, without having to be told.
Pate turned back to his cinching, and Cam looked up. “Look here, Pate,” Cam said. “If Ben Bolling gets out of jail, the chances are he’s goin’ on the warpath again. And you ain’t carryin’ a gun.”
“Buck said not to,” Pate murmured sullenly.
“What would you do if you met some of them Bollings, or one of the Dennis outfit this afternoon?”
“Run, I reckon.”
“And what if they run you down?”
Pate bit his lip. “Nothin’.”
Cam lifted out his six-gun and offered it to Pate. “Here, you better carry this.”
Pate looked at it longingly and then away. “No, Buck said not to.”
“Buck ain’t got good sense,” Cam said. He let a little of his real contempt for Buck slip into his voice, and that was a mistake. Pate looked up sharply.
“Who said he ain’t?”
“I never meant that, really,” Cam said hurriedly. “I meant, he don’t understand that you’re in danger.”
Pate said firmly, “If he thought I was in danger, he’d tell me to carry a gun. If you want me to carry one, you better ask Buck. He’s the Big Augur around here now, Cam, not you.”
The spell was broken now, and Cam could see he had lost. He watched Pate ride away, and his lip was curled in contempt. He almost had him there for a while, almost convinced him that Ben Bolling needed killing. Somehow, this gave Cam a feeling of power, and he smiled to himself. He saw where he’d made his mistake. If he’d approached it from another angle, like Pate would be doing Buck a favor and probably save his life if he did to Ben Bolling what the Bollings did to Hagen, then Pate would have been primed to kill. But, no, he’d muffed it.
He turned toward the house, walking slowly. He was a fool to try and bring any of his cousins in on this. They hadn’t liked Hagen Shields, simply because Hagen was a better man than Buck. So they couldn’t be expected to feel the way he did about Hagen’s death. The idea that had come to him when he listened to Pate’s news this noon was suddenly more than an idea. It was a resolve that had been sidetracked for a moment out there in the corral, but now it was back, hard and shining and implacable.
Lucy watched him go through the kitchen to his bedroom and return with a rifle. She said, “You aren’t riding off the place, are you, Cam?”
“Oh, no,” Cam said easily. “I saw some deer sign over across the cienega yesterday. I think I’ll make a try for them.” He went out.
Lynn Mayfell and Anna Bolling cooked their first supper in their new rooms above the Inquirer. Originally the rooms had been leased by two lawyers attracted to Hagen by reports of the feud and the possible lawsuits that would follow. But there were no lawsuits in this feud, and after the lawyers had got a bellyful of waiting for clients that never came in, they drifted away.
The supper dishes were stacked, and Lynn and Anna were working on curtains that would afford them some privacy this night. The big table in their front room was covered with material and they were sewing industriously, chatting, when they heard slow footsteps on the outside stairway. Lynn went to the door and found Tip Woodring climbing the stairs at a snail’s pace. His leg was stiffened by bandages, for among all the wild shots thrown his way last night at the Three B, one had hit him in the thigh. It was a clean wound, but one that was painfully sore and stiff.
But whatever pity Lynn had felt for him had vanished this afternoon when he announced that he was making them a visit tonight, and that the reason for that visit was to question Anna Bolling about Blackie Mayfell. Lynn was all for waiting, saying that in her own good time Anna Bolling would tell her of discovering Blackie. Tip, goaded by impatience, had refused. The only way they’d learned what little they did know was by demanding it and getting it, wasn’t i
t? This, of course, led to argument which grew heated and ended in a quarrel. All Tip would promise was that he wouldn’t give Lynn’s identity away. Lynn had left him, her face flushed with anger, and wondering if she were turning into a shrew. The number of times she had talked to Tip Woodring without being infuriated by something he said or did could be counted on one hand. It worked the other way, too. Her very presence seemed to inspire Tip with a cross-grained deviltry. But Lynn didn’t care what he thought of her, as long as she knew her quarreling stemmed from the fact that she was trying to discover the murderer of her father.
Tip stepped inside and said, “Evenin’,” to Anna and nodded a little coolly to Lynn.
Tip said to Anna, “I’m sorry I had to do that to your father, Anna.”
“Don’t be sorry, Tip. You had to do it. Sit down, please,” Anna said. Tip hobbled over to a chair and settled into it, putting his hat on the floor.
Lynn thought angrily, He’s mealy-mouthed. He knows he’s going to bully her, and starts it out by being polite.
But as soon as Tip was seated, he said, “Anna, this is going to be a tough night for you. I’ve got a hunch you’ll be sorry I came, mighty sorry.”
Lynn didn’t know why, but she felt relieved at that, and rather proud of Tip, although she wouldn’t admit it to herself. “I’ll go finish the dishes,” she said.
“You’ll do nothing of the sort,” Tip said. “You’ll stay here. Anna will need your help. When I get too rough, you can tell me to call off the dogs.” He grinned in a friendly way, and Anna, bewildered, looked at Lynn for help. Lynn shrugged.
“What are you trying to tell me?” Anna said.
Tip looked at her troubled face. It was a strong face, not beautiful, but there was character in it. She looked like a girl who had met trouble face to face, and Tip felt ashamed that he was going to make her face it again. He pulled out his pipe, packed it, lighted it, and said, “It’s about Blackie Mayfell, Anna.”
Something like terror passed fleetingly over Anna’s face, and Tip felt a pity for her. He hardened himself, however, and went on. “Blackie Mayfell was killed on Three B land. We know that.”
