Hardcase

by Short, Luke;

  “Damn you! Come and get me! I’ll kill every horse here if you do.” He sent another shot at Dave that went over his head.

  There was a long silence. Dave couldn’t shoot for fear of hitting the horses, which they needed. And Will Usher knew it.

  Suddenly Will bawled, “I’ll make a deal, Dave! Give me a horse and let me out of here and I won’t shoot the horses.”

  McFee yelled from the house, “Take him up on it, Dave! There’s a man guardin’ the canyon below! We can’t get out afoot!”

  Dave said, “Nothin’ doin’, Will. I wouldn’t trust you. You’d fort up out there and send that man for a posse in Wagon Mound.” He paused. “I’m comin’ over, Will.”

  “Wait a minute!” Will cried, real terror in his voice. “I’ll ride out with you, Dave! I’ll pull that man away and take him with me!”

  “I’m comin’ after you, Will!”

  “Dave! Dave! Listen, you need the horses, and I’ll kill ’em all if you start over here! Listen to me! I’ll give myself up if you’ll give me your word you’ll turn me loose at the mouth of the canyon. I’ll get you by my man!”

  McFee bawled, “Dave, you fool! Take him up!”

  Dave cursed bitterly. There was McFee howling like an old woman because he was afraid to be afoot in a country where a posse was likely to ride him down. And now Will Usher, because McFee was afraid, would go free. For one stubborn moment Dave told himself McFee could be damned, but he knew he couldn’t let Will kill the horses. What was he doing this for? To get Sholto back and McFee free of his charges. Will Usher would have to wait.

  Usher bawled; “Give me your word, Davey, and I’ll take you out of here!”

  Dave dropped his rifle in disgust. This was twice he’d missed Will Usher. He said shortly, “Come on out. You’ve got it.”

  XIII

  Will Usher walked out from behind the horses, smiling broadly. He had no fear of being killed now, for Dave Coyle’s word, to lawman or outlaw, was never broken. He walked over to Dave, his handsome face smiling. Somewhere in the turmoil he had lost his hat, but he was still wearing his dusty frock coat and his soiled gloves.

  “Well, well, Davey,” he said wryly. “I thought I had a place here that was Coyle-proof.”

  “You’ll never have one, Will,” Dave said. “When I get through with this business I’m goin’ to spend a little time on you.”

  They looked at each other a moment, Will Usher’s face troubled, his eyes angry. He looked like a gambler who had tried to fill a bobtail straight and was both surprised and angry that he hadn’t. Dave Coyle looked disappointed too—and grim.

  McFee, now that the shooting was over, tramped out of the mill shed, Sholto behind him. Dave looked at McFee and, remembering that McFee, instead of warning him of the man inside the shack waiting for him, had stood there with his hands in the air, said sardonically, “I don’t know what I’d do without a fightin’ partner like you, McFee.”

  McFee’s face was a brick red. “I’m not a gun-fightin’ man,” he said.

  “Why mention gun fightin’?” Dave sneered. “Here.” He handed McFee his gun. If he says boo just hold tight and maybe it won’t fall out of your hand.”

  Dave went back into the mill shed. The man behind the door had shot his partner, and they were both lying dead across the sill. Dave went on through the office to a smaller one and found what he was looking for. The watchman had been bound and gagged and was lying on the floor. Dave untied him.

  Afterward he went out to the horses. Usher and McFee mounted first, and Dave swung up alongside of Sholto’s horse.

  “I’ve got your wife safe,” Dave said to Sholto. “You don’t have to go back to Wallace now. We’re showin’ you to Beal so he’ll free McFee, and then you can ride out.”

  Sholto’s eyes lighted up with a faint hope, and he said, “Thanks.”

  “You let me get past you that night at the line camp. I pay back my debts.”

  They rode out of the canyon. Will Usher called down his guard, who was forted up on the canyon slope, and Dave disarmed him and gave him the extra horse.

  At the mouth of the canyon Will Usher said, “I’ll leave you here, Davey boy,” and grinned at him.

  Dave shifted in his saddle and regarded Usher with speculation in his eyes. “Aim to high-tail it, Will?”

  Usher laughed. “I don’t reckon. You know why, Davey? Because I think they’ll nail your hide to the wall before you’re through here. I aim to help ’em.”

  Dave nodded agreeably. “Stick around. It’ll save me trouble huntin’ you.”

  Usher laughed, waved agreeably, and headed down the road toward Wagon Mound. Dave and McFee and Sholto cut through the timber, rounding the base of the Corazon, and headed for Yellow Jacket.

  It was a long ride and a hard one, and Dave hurried. He wanted more than anything else at this moment to get McFee off his hands. Once that was done, once it was proved to Carol that he was willing to help her father, he would be free to work on what was important. Sholto, after all, was a minor matter, a nuisance, a by-product of the court fight. What was important was the identity of the man behind Tate Wallace.

  Darkness caught them far out on the flats west of Yellow Jacket. A chill night wind riding the earth bit into them and gave its warning of winter soon to come. It seemed to Dave, looking over at Sholto and McFee with their shoulders hunched against the cold, that all of them would be glad to part company. McFee was sulky, not even cheered by the prospect of his freedom. Sholto was more quiet than any man Dave had seen. He seemed to be considering something, keeping his own counsel. The three of them were like strangers, not even wanting to speak to each other.

  When they were finally in sight of the lights of Yellow Jacket, Dave said grimly, “Well, we’ll part company pretty quick. What do you aim to do then, McFee?”

  “Take up the fight where you interrupted it,” McFee said bitterly. ‘That is, if Sholto goes back to Wallace and intends to swear he was witness to the deed.”

  Dave said to Sholto, “Will you?”

  “I don’t know,” Sholto said. “I got to think.”

  They picked up the road south of town, and now the lights of the town were distinct up ahead. They passed the first houses on the outskirts of town, and Dave peered through the darkness at Sholto. Would he show himself to Beal, then vanish? Or would he hunt up Wallace again? Dave didn’t know and didn’t care. But he did know that if he were in McFee’s boots he would be talking, pleading, threatening, or buying him off. Instead McFee was sulkily watching Sholto.

  They passed into the business section now, and ahead were the lights of the saloons. The sheriff’s office was lighted also, Dave saw. When he came to the middle block of the town, where old Badey’s store threw out its light into the street, he reined up.

  “This is as far as I go,” he murmured. “I’ll wait and see if they free you, McFee.” He looked at the tie rail in front of Tim King’s Keno Parlor. It was jammed with horses. Through the big front window he could see a section of the bar. And there, back to the window, was Tate Wallace. Dave looked at Sholto. Sholto had seen Wallace, too, and his face was a little pale.

  McFee said impatiently, “Let’s go, Sholto.”

  Sholto put his horse in motion and rode beside McFee up the street. He was watching Wallace through the saloon window. They were just angling across the street to the sheriff’s office when Sholto reined up.

  “I’m not goin’ in, McFee,” he said stubbornly.

  “Not going—” McFee’s voice died, then he said, “But dammit, man, you’ve got to! I’ll hang for your murder if you don’t!”

  “No,” Sholto said shortly. “It’s either you or me that will hang. It might as well be you.”

  “What do you—?”

  “I mean Wallace is in town now,” Sholto said swiftly. “He blackmailed me into witnessin’ that deed. He was holdin’ my wife a prisoner there at the Three Rivers to make sure I didn’t run out on him. But Coyle has got my wife hid
. Wallace ain’t got anything to make me come back, so he’ll tell.”

  “Tell what?”

  “That he saw me kill a man,” Sholto said evenly. “I killed him, all right. I was drunk and mad and I shot him, and they can hang me for it. And Wallace has told Beal.”

  “How do you know?”

  “He didn’t come after me when Usher had me, did he? No. He knows now that if he can’t hold Lily any more I’ll light a shuck the first chance I get. So he’ll tell Beal. He’s told him. He’s here. And I’ll stand trial.” He pulled his horse around. “Sorry, McFee, but I got my own hide to think of.”

  “Wait a minute!” McFee ordered. Clumsily, then, he pulled out a gun and leveled it at Sholto. “I’m not hanging for any man, not even—”

  Crash!

  A six-gun bellowed from somewhere, and Sholto was driven over the saddle horn and fell into the road on his face, his shirt in back welling crimson blood.

  XIV

  On the heel of the report McFee’s horse began to pitch. In terror it arched its back and started to buck in a circle. Men began to pour out of King’s Keno Parlor.

  About the tumult Dave yelled: “Run for it, McFee!”

  Then someone opened up with a six-gun from the opposite sidewalk, someone who had recognized Dave’s voice. Another shot hammered out. Dave yanked his horse around, leaned over its neck, and roweled him savagely, heading out of town. What had happened? Somebody planted up on the roof of Badey’s store had shot Sholto! Dave had seen the gun flash. And there was McFee, a gun in his hand, threatening Sholto, who seemed as if he was aiming to ride off. McFee was in for it now. And all Dave could do was run to keep from getting the same thing. Already he heard horses pounding down the road behind him.

  Back in town Ernie See and Sheriff Beal had been the first out the door of the sheriff’s office. Ernie took the scene in at a glance as he vaulted the tie rail. McFee’s terrified horse went into a savage sunfish, and McFee flew out of the saddle. He landed on his shoulder, and Ernie dived on top of him. He wrestled the gun out of his hand, and when he stood up Beal was leaning over Sholto. Men were running toward them from the saloons, and still others were swinging into the saddle and heading out of town.

  Beal looked up from Sholto and said to Ernie, “He’s dead!”

  Slowly McFee hauled himself to his feet, looking dazed. Beal said wickedly, “That hangs you, McFee—hangs you higher’n any kite ever flown!”

  “But I didn’t shoot him!” McFee cried.

  Beal said, “Give me that gun you took from him, Ernie.” Ernie gave it to him, and Beal spun the cylinder. There was one cartridge shot. Beal smelled the barrel and said evenly, “One empty, and there’s a powder smell. How about that, McFee?”

  There was a murmuring of the men surrounding them, and McFee looked helplessly at them. “But I didn’t do it, I tell you! I only had a gun in my hand! He wouldn’t come in!”

  “By God, we ought to string him up!” one man in the crowd said.

  Ernie said to McFee, “If you’re smart you’ll keep your mouth shut!”

  “Get him inside,” Beal ordered.

  Ernie, his hand on McFee’s arm, broke the crowd and took McFee into the sheriff’s office, through it, and into the cell block and the cell. Beal, with a half-dozen select citizens, followed.

  McFee looked dazed. It had all happened too fast.

  Beal, from the other side of the door, said, “What happened?”

  “I was bringin’ Sholto in here to prove to you I never killed him—me and Dave Coyle, that is. Dave stayed downstreet and left me to bring him in. Sholto balked just in front of the office. I pulled a gun on him and told him to come along. Then come a shot, and my horse started to pitch. That’s all I know.”

  Beal said sarcastically, “Beautiful. A good little Injun spirit aimed the gun and pulled the trigger, I suppose.”

  “But I didn’t kill him!”

  “Who did? Dave Coyle? Sholto’s back was to both of you,” Beal said slyly.

  McFee stared at him, his hard dislike for Dave forming into suspicion and then into certainty. He hadn’t shot Sholto himself. There was nobody else on the street except Dave. The shot had come from somewhere down there. Dave had given him that gun, taken from a dead guard at the mine. Dave hated him and had said so. Suddenly it came to him, clear as crystal. Before, when they were in jail, Dave was accused of killing Sholto at McFee’s orders. But by getting Sholto safe, then planting him with McFee in front of the sheriffs office, and men shooting him, the blame for Sholto’s murder would be settled for once and all—on McFee’s head. It was that easy, that cynical, that slick. McFee’s eyes focused on Beal, and he was not even clever enough to dissimulate.

  “Yes!” he bawled. “Coyle shot him! He was the only one who would shoot him!”

  Ernie said in angry and withering disgust, “How I’d love you for a pardner, McFee.”

  McFee was excited now. The truth had fully dawned on him, and he set out to spread it with a bullheaded passion.

  “But I tell you, Coyle’s framin’ me! He killed Sholto! He put Sholto up to stallin’ at the last minute so’s I’d draw a gun! I tell you, Coyle did it!”

  Ernie See was really angry. He hated Dave Coyle with a hatred that was all-consuming, but he hated a disloyal man more. But above and beyond that, he was puzzled. This didn’t make sense. Why would McFee bring Sholto, on whose recognition he would go free, up to the very doorstep of the sheriff’s office and then shoot him? The answer was he wouldn’t. No sane man would. And the story of Dave Coyle shooting him was too farfetched to be worth any consideration. McFee had jumped at Beal’s bait like the simple fool he was. But that left the question unanswered. Who shot Sholto?

  Beal was saying heatedly, “If you ask me, McFee, it was somethin’ you and that damn hellion planned beforehand! That’s his idea of fun, and yours, too, I reckon. If your horse hadn’t pitched you’d be ridin’ off with Coyle now and laughin’ at what you’d done! Damn you!” he added with savage anger. “You ain’t even fit to stretch a rope!”

  Beal turned then and said to the others, “Get me ten men that’ll make good deputies to guard him. I’m goin’ to sleep them right here in the cell block. This time he won’t get away.”

  He named four men to watch McFee, then tramped out into the office, Ernie behind him. Beal yanked down a rifle from the wall rack and then he looked at Ernie, anger and bewilderment in his face.

  “What’s this country comin’ to?” he asked seriously. “When that can happen things is pretty bad.”

  Ernie said quietly, “McFee didn’t shoot Sholto.”

  Beal’s movement in taking the gun down was arrested. He was immobile a second, then he said, “You think Coyle did?”

  “I don’t think either of ’em did,” Ernie said bluntly.

  Beal just stared at him in voiceless amazement.

  “Harve, when I took that gun from McFee it was cold. It hadn’t been shot.”

  “It was warm when you give it to me,” Beal countered angrily.

  “I held it by the barrel.”

  They glared at each other, and Beal said, “You sayin’ Coyle shot him?”

  “No.”

  “And McFee didn’t either?”

  “McFee didn’t shoot him, and Coyle didn’t either,” Ernie said stubbornly.

  Beal’s mouth formed a grim line. He went over to the desk and laid the gun on it and put his hands on his hips. “Ernie,” he began quietly, “it ain’t no secret to me that you’re a bullheaded, openhanded gent. But by God, when you try to tell me that a man dies of spontaneous combustion or somethin’, you’re also crazy as hell! You’re crazier than hell!” He ran a hand through his hair and made a hopeless, angry gesture. “Goddlemighty, I think I’m goin’ crazy myself!”

  One of McFee’s guards opened the corridor door then and said, “McFee says if you want to catch Coyle go out to his place, the Bib M. He’s sure Coyle will head for there.”

  Beal said crisply,
“Get goin’, Ernie. He’ll have shook that gang by now in the dark. Pick ’em up and ride hell for leather for the Bib M.”

  Ernie tramped out, his face sullen and angry—and baffled.

  XV

  It was not hard to shake the posse. Dave cut off to the west, once he was out of town, rode a quarter of a mile, cut back toward town, and rode completely around it, coming up so close to the rear of the posse he could hear them arguing. They were on the ground, lighting matches, trying to pick his tracks out of a tangle of others on the flats.

  Dave made a wide circle of them then and headed west. He didn’t know why he was going this way, except that it led to the Corazon and safety.

  All this had stunned him, and for a moment he reined up, wondering if he should go back to town and hunt down the bushwacker. But how could he? All he had had to do was climb down off Badey’s roof and mingle with the crowd. He urged his horse on and tried to think.

  Whoever shot Sholto knew that Sholto was being brought in. The only people who knew that were Will Usher, who could have guessed it, and Carol, who was told it in McFee’s note to her. Whom had Carol told? Until he knew he was at sea, just guessing. Will Usher might have killed Sholto, but what would he gain? Nothing, no money, no prestige, no pardon, nothing. The secret lay with the note to Carol and whom she had told. Dave put the spurs to his horse then, realizing that McFee would depend on him to learn this from Carol. He didn’t know how long it would take Sheriff Beal to worm this from McFee and head for the Bib M himself, but he guessed it wouldn’t take long.

  It was a long ride, and he was dog-tired. His horse was tired, too, but this was one time he couldn’t spare the leather. He took off across country, taking his direction from the high cold stars. He had never felt lonelier, more puzzled, more defeated in his life. And more stubborn. For it was plain to him that this would be a fight to the finish now. Whoever risked that shot was willing to risk his life to win. And what puzzled him more than all else was that Wallace, the man who would be most interested in seeing McFee saddled with a murder, was visible through the window of King’s Keno Parlor when the shooting occurred. It didn’t make sense, but it did make an airtight, sealed, and delivered frame-up for Bruce McFee.