Collection 2008 - Big Medicine (v5.0)

by Louis L'Amour

  “No. Shad went back there and dug three graves. He buried the other two, and then filled in the third grave and put a marker over it with your name on it.”

  “Good!” Kedrick was satisfied. He looked up at the girl. “And how do you get out here and back without them becoming curious?”

  She flushed slightly. “I haven’t been back, Tom. I stayed here with you. There was no chance of going back and forth. I just left everything and came away.”

  “How long before I can be up?”

  “Not long, if you rest. And you’ve talked enough now.”

  Kedrick turned over the whole situation in his mind. There could be no more than a few days before the sale of the land would come off, and, if there was one thing that mattered, it was that the company not be permitted to profit from their crookedness. As he lay there resting, a plan began to form in his mind, and the details supplied themselves one by one as he considered it.

  His guns hung on a nail driven into the wall close to his hand. His duffel, which he had brought away from the St. James, lay in the corner. It was almost dark before he completed his planning, and, when Laredo came in, he was ready for him.

  “Cimarron?” Shad shook his head. “Bloomfield would be nearer. How’s that?”

  “Good!” Kedrick agreed. “Make it fast.”

  “That ain’t worryin’ me,” Laredo said, rolling his tobacco in his jaws. “They’ve been mighty suspicious lately. Suppose they trail this place down while I’m gone?”

  “We’ll have to chance that. Here’s the message. Hurry it up!”

  The sun was bright in the room when Connie came through the door with his breakfast. She turned, and her face went white. “Oh, you’re up!”

  He grinned shakily. “That’s right. I’ve laid abed long enough. How long has it been?”

  “Almost two weeks,” she told him, “but you mustn’t stand up. Sit down and rest.”

  There was a place by a window where he had a good view of the trail below. At his request Connie brought the Winchester to him, and her own rifle. He cleaned them both, oiled them carefully, and placed them beside his window. Then he checked his guns and returned them to their holsters, digging the two Walch Navy pistols from his duffel and checking them, also.

  Thoughtfully he considered. It was late to do anything now, but it was a wonder he had not thought of Ransome before. No more able legislator existed in Washington than Frederic Ransome, and the two had been brother officers in the War Between the States as well as friends in France during the Franco-Prussian War when Ransome had been there as an observer. If anybody could block the sale to the company, he could, even on such short notice. His tele gram would be followed by a letter supplying all the details, and with that to go on Ransome might get something done. He was a popular and able young senator with good connections and an affable manner. Moreover, he was an excellent strategist. It would make all the difference in this situation.

  The cliff-dwelling was built well back from the face of the cliff, and evidently constructed with an eye toward concealment as well as defense. They had called this, Connie told him, Thieving Rock long before the white man appeared, and the Indians who lived here had been notorious thieves. There was a spring, so water was not a worry, and there were supplies enough for immediate purposes.

  Two days dragged slowly by, and on the morning of the third Kedrick was resuming his station by the window when he saw a rider coming into the narrow cañon below. The man was moving slowly and studying the ground as he came, although from time to time he paused and searched the area with careful eyes. Kedrick pushed himself up from his chair and, taking the Winchester, worked his way along the wall to the next room.

  “Connie,” he called softly. There was no reply, and after a minute he called a second time. Still no answer.

  Worried now, he remembered she had said something about going down below to gather some squaw cabbage to add greens to their diet.

  Back at the window, he studied the terrain carefully, and then his heart gave a leap, for Connie Duane was gathering squaw cabbage from a niche in the cañon wall, not fifty yards from the unknown rider!

  Lifting his rifle, Kedrick checked the range. It was all of four hundred yards and a downhill shot. Carefully he sighted on the rider, then relaxed. He was nearer the girl now, and a miss might ricochet and kill Connie, for the cañon wall would throw any bullet he fired back into the cañon itself and it might even ricochet several times in the close confines.

  Yet, somehow, she had to be warned. If the rider saw her tracks, he would find both the girl and the hide out. Suddenly the ears of his horse came up sharply, and the rider stiffened warily and looked all around. Carefully Kedrick drew a bead on the man again. He hated to kill an unwarned man, but if necessary he would not hesitate.

  Connie was standing straight now and appeared to be listening. Tense in every fiber, Tom Kedrick watched and waited. The two were now within fifty feet of each other, although each was concealed by a corner of rock and some desert growth including a tall cottonwood and some cedars.

  Still listening, both stood rigidly, and Kedrick touched his lips with the tip of his tongue. His eyes blurred with the strain, and he brushed his hand across them.

  The rider was swinging to the ground now, and he had drawn a gun. Warily he stepped out from his ground-hitched horse. Shifting his eyes to Connie, Tom saw the girl wave, and, lifting his hand, he waved back, then lifted the rifle. She waved a vigorous negation with her arm, and he relaxed, waiting.

  Now the man was studying tracks in the sandy bottom of the wash, and, as he knelt, his eyes riveted upon the ground, a new element entered the picture. A flicker of movement caught the tail of Kedrick’s eye, and, turning his head, he saw Laredo Shad riding into the scene. He glanced swiftly at the window and waved his hand. Then he moved forward and swung to the ground.

  From his vantage point Kedrick could hear nothing, but he saw Laredo approach, making heavy going of it in the thick sand, and then, not a dozen yards from the man, he stopped. He must have spoken, for the strange rider stiffened as if shot, then slowly got to his feet. As he turned, Tom saw his face fully in the sunlight. It was Clauson!

  What happened then was too fast for the eye to follow. Somebody must have spoken, but who did not matter. Clauson’s gun was drawn, and he started to swing it up. Laredo Shad in a gunman’s crouch flashed his right-hand gun. It sprang clear, froze for a long instant, and then just as Clauson fired, Shad fired—but a split second sooner!

  Clauson staggered a step back, and Shad fired again. The outlaw went down slowly, and Laredo walked forward and stripped his gun belts from him, then from his horse he took his saddlebags, rifle, and ammunition. Gathering up the dead man, and, working with Connie’s help, they tied him to the saddle, and then turned the horse loose with a slap on the hip.

  Connie Duane’s face was white when she came into the room. “You saw that?”

  He nodded. “We didn’t dare to let him go. If we had, we would all have been dead before noon tomorrow. Now”—he said with grim satisfaction—“they have something to think about!”

  Shad grinned at him when he came in. “I didn’t see that gun he had drawed,” he said ruefully. “Had it layin’ along his leg as he was crouched there. Might’ve got me.”

  He dropped the saddlebags. “Mite of grub,” he said, “an’ some shells. I reckon we can use ’em even though we have some. The message got off, an’ so did the letter. Feller over to the telegraph office was askin’ a powerful lot of questions. Seems like they’ve been hearin’ about this scrap.”

  “Good! The more the better. We can stand it, but the company can’t. Hear anything?”

  “Uhn-huh. Somebody from outside the state is startin’ a row about Gunter’s death. I hear they have you marked for that. That is, the company is sayin’ you did it.”

  Kedrick nodded. “They would try that. Well, in a couple of days I’ll be out of here and then we’ll see what can be done.”
<
br />   “You take some time,” Shad said dubiously. “That passel o’ thieves ain’t goin’ to find us. Although,” he said suddenly, “I saw the tracks of that grulla day afore yestiddy, an’ not far off.”

  The grulla again!

  Two more days drifted by, and Tom Kedrick ventured down the trail and the ladders to the cañon below with Laredo and visited their horses concealed in a tiny glade not far away. The Appaloosa nickered and trotted toward him, and Kedrick grinned and scratched his chest. “How’s it, boy? Ready to go places?”

  “He’s askin’ for it,” Shad said. He lighted a smoke and squinted his eyes at Kedrick. “What do you aim to do when you do move?”

  “Ride around a little. I aim to see Pit Laine, an’ then I’m goin’ to start hunting up every mother’s son that was in that dry-gulching. Especially,” he added, “Dornie Shaw.”

  “He’s bad,” Laredo said quietly. “I nevah seen it, but you ask Connie. Shaw’s chain lightnin’. She seen him kill Bob.”

  “So one of us dies,” Kedrick said quietly. “I’d go willing enough to take him with me, an’ a few others.”

  “That’s it. He’s a killer, but the old bull o’ that woods is Alton Burwick, believe me, he is. Keith is just right-hand man for him, an’ the fall guy if they need one. Burwick’s the pizen-mean one.”

  With Connie they made their start three days later, and rode back trails beyond the rim to the hide out Laine had established. It was Dai Reid himself who stopped them, and his eyes lighted up when he saw Kedrick.

  “Ah, Tom!” His broad face beamed. “Like my own son, you are. We’d heard you were kilt dead.”

  Pit Laine was standing by the fire, and around him on the ground were a dozen men, most of whom Kedrick recognized. They sat up slowly as the three walked into the open space, and Pit turned. It was the first time Kedrick had seen him, and he was surprised. He was scarcely taller than his sister, but wide in the shoulders and slim in the hips. When he turned, he faced them squarely, and his eyes were sharp and bitter. This was a killing man, Kedrick decided, as dangerous in his own way as that pocketsize devil, Dornie Shaw.

  “I’m Kedrick,” he said, “and this is Connie Duane. I believe you know Shad.”

  “We know all of you.” Laine watched them, his eyes alert and curious.

  Quietly and concisely, Kedrick explained, and ended by saying: “So there it is. I’ve asked this friend of mine to start an investigation into the whole mess, and to block the sale until the truth is clear. Once the sale is blocked and that investigation started, they won’t be with us long. They could get away with this only if they could keep it covered up, and they had a fair chance of doing that.”

  “So we wait and let them run off?” Laine demanded.

  “No.” Tom Kedrick shook his head decidedly. “We ride into Mustang…all of us. They have the mayor and the sheriff, but public opinion is largely on our side. Furthermore,” he said quietly, “we ride in the minute they get the news the sale is blocked. Once that news is around town, they will have no friends. The band wagon riders will get off, and fast.”

  “There’ll be shootin’,” one told-timer opined. “Some,” Kedrick admitted, “but, if I have my way, there’ll be more of hanging. There’s killers in that town, the bunch that dry-gulched Steelman and Slagle. The man who killed Bob McLennon is the man I want.”

  Pit Laine turned. “I want him.”

  “Sorry, Laine. He killed Bob, an’ Bob was only in town to get a doc for me. You may,” he added, “get your chance, anyway.”

  “I’d like a shot at him my ownself,” Laredo said quietly, “but somethin’ else bothers me. Who’s this grulla rider? Is he one of you?”

  “Gets around plenty,” the old-timer said, “but nobody ever sees him. I reckon he knows this here country better’n any of us. He must’ve been aroun’ here for a long time.”

  “What’s he want?” Shad wondered. “That don’t figure.”

  Kedrick shrugged. “I’d like to know.” He turned to Dai. “It’s good to see you. I was afraid you’d had trouble.”

  “Trouble?” Dai smiled his wide smile. “It’s trouble, you say? All my life there’s been trouble, and where man is, there will be trouble to the end of time, if not of one kind, then another. But I take my trouble as it comes, bye.” He drew deeply on his short-stemmed pipe and glanced at the scar around Kedrick’s skull. “Looks like you’d a bit of it yourself. If you’d a less hard skull, you’d now be dead.”

  “I’d not have given a plugged peso for him when I saw him,” Laredo said dryly. “The three of them lyin’ there, bloody an’ shot up. We thought for sure they was all dead. This one, he’d a hole through him, low down an’ mean, an’ that head of his looked like it had been smashed until we moved him. He was lucky as well as thick-skulled.”

  Morning found Laredo and Kedrick once more in the saddle. Connie Duane had stayed behind with some of the squatters’ women. Together the two men were pushing on toward Mustang, but taking their time, for they had no desire to be seen or approached by any of the company riders.

  “There’s nothing much we can do,” Kedrick agreed, “but I want to know the lay of the land in town. It’s mighty important to be able to figure just what will happen when the news hits the place. Right now, everything is right for them. Alton Burwick and Loren Keith are better off than they ever were. Just size it up. They came in here with the land partly held by squatters, with a good claim on the land. That land they managed to get surveyed and they put in their claim to the best of it, posted the notices, and waited them out. If somebody hadn’t seen one of those notices and read it, the whole sale might have gone through and nobody the wiser. Somebody did see it, and trouble started. They had two mighty able men to contend with, Slagle and McLennon. Well, both of them are dead now. And Steelman, another possible leader, is dead, too. So far as they are aware, nobody knows anything about the deaths of those men or who caused them. I was the one man they had learned they couldn’t depend on, and they think I’m dead. John Gunter brought money into the deal, and he’s dead and out of the picture completely. A few days more and the sale goes through, the land becomes theirs, and there isn’t any organized opposition now. Pit Laine and his group will be named as outlaws, and hunted as such, and, believe me, once the land sale goes through, Keith will be hunting them with a posse of killers.”

  “Yeah,” Laredo drawled, “they sure got it sewed up, looks like. But you’re forgettin’ one thing. You’re forgettin’ the girl, Connie Duane.”

  “What about her?”

  “Look,” Shad said, speaking around his cigarette, “she sloped out of town, right after McLennon was killed. They thought she had been talking to you before, and she told ’em off in the office, said she was getting’ her money out of it. All right, so suppose she asks for it, and they can’t pay? Suppose,” he added, “she begins to talk and tells what she knows, and they must figure it’s plenty. She was Gunter’s niece, and for all they knew he told her more than he did tell her.”

  “You mean they’ll try to get hold of her?” “What do you think? They’ll try to get hold of her, or kill her.”

  Tom Kedrick’s eyes narrowed. “She’ll be safe with Laine,” he said, but an element of doubt was in his voice. “That’s a good crowd.”

  Shad shrugged. “Maybe. Don’t forget that Singer was one of them, but he didn’t hesitate to try to kill Sloan, or to point him out for Abe Mixus. He was bought off by the company, so maybe there are others.”

  At that very moment, in the office of the gray stone building, such a man sat opposite Alton Burwick, while Keith sat in a chair against the wall. The man’s name was Hirst. His face was sallow, but determined. “I ain’t lyin’!” he said flatly. “I rode all night to git here, slippin’ out o’ camp on the quiet. She rode in with that gunman, Laredo Shad, and this Kedrick hombre.”

  “Kedrick! Alive?” Keith sat forward, his face tense.

  “Alive as you or me! Had him most of the hair clipped o
n one side of his head, an’ a bad scar there. He sort of favored his side, too. Oh, he’d been shot all right, but he’s ridin’ now, believe me!”

  The renegade had saved the worse until last. He smiled grimly at Burwick. “I can use some money, Mister Burwick,” he said, “an’ there’s more I could tell you.”

  Burwick stared at him, his eyes glassy hard, then reached into a drawer and threw two gold eagles on the desk. “All right! What can you tell me?”

  “Kedrick sent a message to some hombre in Washington name of Ransome. He’s to block the sale of the land until there’s a complete investigation.”

  “What?”

  Keith came to his feet, his face ashen. This was beyond his calculations. When the idea had first been brought to his attention, it had seemed a very simple, easy way to turn a fast profit. He had excellent connections in Washington through his military career, and with Burwick managing things on the other end and Gunter with the money, it seemed impossible to beat it. He was sure to net a handsome profit, clear his business with Gunter and Burwick, then return East and live quietly on the profits. That it was a crooked deal did not disturb him, but that his friends in the East might learn of it!

  “Ransome!” His voice was shocked. “Of all people!”

  Frederic Ransome had served with him in the war, and their mutual relationship had been something less than friendly. There had been that episode by the bridge. He flushed at the thought of it, but Ransome knew, and Ransome would use it as a basis for judgment. Kedrick had no way of knowing just how fortunate his choice of Ransome had been.

  “That does it!” He got to his feet. “Ransome will bust this wide open, and love it!”

  He was frightened, and Burwick could see it. He sat there, his gross body filling the chair, wearing the same soiled shirt. His eyes followed Keith with irritation and contempt. Was Keith going bad on him now?