by Lauran Paine
Ladd agreed. “We’ll need good stock, no question about it, but they’ve got it around Paso. Down at the livery barn, maybe, or in the sheds around town. We can take care of that, too, after dark when most folks’ll be eating supper.”
Walt smiled encouragingly. He had been favoring Ladd Buckner right from the start, and now, when it seemed that Cass was going to adopt Ladd’s scheme for getting them out of their predicament, Walt not only felt vindicated, he was also showing by his broad smile that he felt that way.
Abner was sulking and he was bored. The prospect of dying in this mean little village did not appear to trouble him, probably because Abner, who was a totally depthless individual, never considered death as being applicable to him. Death only arrived to snuff out the life of others. And Abner was patently a person who required movement, change, action. Being cooped up in the log jailhouse of a place called Paso brought out his latent restlessness. He probably would have paced, if he’d thought of it or if his partners would have tolerated it. As it was, he leaned upon the wall looking mercilessly at the others and occasionally leaning down to look out of the window. It was one of the times that he was doing this, squinting into the sunshine out in the roadway, that he suddenly said: “There is something going on up at the saloon.”
Cass walked over and so did Walt, but when the older outlaw would also have leaned to look out, with his back to the room, Cass growled at him, so Walt shrugged and turned fully to face the hostages.
After a moment of watching and looking, the outlaw leader straightened around, frowning in Brennan’s direction. “Take a look,” he commanded, “and tell me what it’s all about.”
The lawman walked over and swung slightly to one side in order to be able to see northward in the roadway. After a moment he stepped back, straightening up. “Looks like one of the cow outfits just rode in . . . something like that.”
Cass eyed the lawman. “Can you go up there and find out?”
Brennan said: “Sure, why couldn’t I?”
“You was worried a while back about folks knowing you were hiding us in here.”
Brennan jutted his jaw. “Harrison there would tell folks, if he got out of here . . . when he gets out of here. But right now they wouldn’t know anything. At least I can’t see how they’d know anything.”
Cass nodded. “Go up and nose around, but be careful. It’s too darned quiet out there, it seems to me. Pick up all the information you can.”
Abner went over to hold the door open and to say: “Constable, ask about them damned Indians. Find out if they’re likely to be into them mountains back there.”
As Brennan stepped outside, he nodded his head as though he were agreeing with the youngest killer’s interest in marauding broncos, but his eyes were moving swiftly left and right along the empty roadway, too, so perhaps his nodding was simply perfunctory.
Walt turned to Ladd Buckner with an expression of confidence. “We could take that son-of-a-bitch with us for a shield,” he said. “I never could abide folks who wear badges, not even crooked ones.”
Harrison glanced at Walt, then turned his attention back to Cass and Abner over along the front wall watching Brennan’s progress on a diagonal course up the roadway. If Harrison was entertaining some notion of perhaps jumping Walt and trying to get Walt’s weapon before Abner and Cass turned around, he had to abandon the idea. Cass abruptly turned to look at the others, then to sigh and walk around to ease down at the lawman’s desk and lean back in quiet thought.
There was still a long time before nightfall. Like it or not, for all of them there were a number of long hours yet to be waited out. Cass addressed the cowman. He seemed to have developed a grudging respect for Harrison, perhaps because the cowman had not once been cowed by Cass’s evil disposition or menacing attitude. “You figure we’d make it going off with Buckner into the mountains?” Cass asked, and the range cattleman shifted his attention to the outlaw leader but for a long while he seemed to be considering his reply. Eventually he said: “Yeah, I figure you could make it. I know I could . . . providin’ I could safely get into the forest cover back there. It’s a hell of a big chunk of territory.”
“And as soon as we’re gone, you’ll tell everyone where we went,” said Cass.
This time the range cowman smiled. “Sure, that’d be natural, wouldn’t it? Trouble is, mister, without Brennan there’s no law in Paso to recruit a posse, and, if folks hear that you’re the same bunch who shot up Piñon and killed some people, I sort of doubt that anyone could get up a posse. Folks usually figure that, if something don’t harm them, why then it’s got to be someone else’s problem, not theirs.”
Cass said no more for a while. He did not seem convinced by Harrison’s logic. After all, Cass had already used up two of his lives and only had one life left. Those were the circumstances that made cautious men of a great many outlaws. If things turned out as Harrison thought they might, that would be fine. If they didn’t turn out that way . . .
Abner, speaking from the front window, caught everyone’s attention: “Brennan’s coming back. Looks like no one suspected nothing when they was talkin’ to him up there.” Abner moved clear of the window and started to form a cigarette.
Ladd Buckner could feel his stomach tightening again exactly as it had when Brennan had returned to the jailhouse the first time. One thing Ladd suspected was that his friends from Piñon were deeply involved in whatever was occurring out there. If Brennan even suspected anything about this, Ladd had no illusions about his own fate.
When the heavy footfalls sounded outside, Abner leaned to haul the door inward and to look through smoke as Lewis Brennan walked inside, faintly scowling. He faced Cass to make his report.
“It’s range men from both sides of the road, east and west. There’s one hell of a band of broncos raising Cain all around us.” He shot Ladd a brief look, then returned his full attention to Cass. “Even back yonder in the lousy mountains.”
Walt and Abner straightened up to stare at the constable. Walt in particular had been putting considerable store in their chances of escaping by way of the rearward mountains. Now, he and Abner stared at the lawman.
Brennan did not look very happy either. “The damned Army,” he muttered, “drags its butt all over the territory where there aren’t no ragheads, and as usual the civilians got to take the bull by the horns.”
“That’s what all the palavering is about, up at the saloon?” asked Cass, and, when Brennan inclined his head, Cass rocked forward and leaned both elbows atop the cluttered desk. “Damned good thing they don’t have a telegraph here,” he dryly said to Walt and Abner, “otherwise by now someone would have telegraphed for the Army.”
“The hell with the Army,” growled Abner. “That’s the least of our worries. Just how do we get out of this damned place?”
“Exactly like we figured to do it,” stated Cass, smiling flintily at the younger man. “We’ll take our chances with the ragheads up in the mountains. My guess is that, if Buckner’s any good at all as a guide, he won’t lead us anywhere near a raghead camp. And the reason he won’t is because his own darned head will roll if he does. If the ragheads don’t waste him, I will.” Cass smiled over in Ladd’s direction. “What you got to say to that?”
Ladd answered wryly: “Not a hell of a lot. You’re right. I don’t want to die any more’n the rest of you do.”
A man rode slowly up past the jailhouse on a large chestnut horse, his hat tugged low and his shoulders lightly powdered with travel dust. He headed up toward a number of range men and townsmen out front of the saloon in the bright sunlight around one of the tie racks. As Abner leaned to watch, the stranger turned in, stepped off, and, while he was beating dust from his clothing, he spoke in an indistinguishable monotone that seemed to be having a very impressive effect upon his listeners. No one said a word while this stranger was speaking. Afterward, though, there were a number of men with questions, and someone stepped forth to take the reins of the stranger’s
horse, and also to point southward across the road in the direction of the jailhouse. Abner said: “Hell, he’s bein’ sent down here.” Abner hauled around looking at Cass. “We better lock these bastards into the cells, otherwise this stranger’s going to suspect something.”
Cass was not excited. “Why lock them up? We’re all just having a war council in here, is all. The feller’s a stranger, isn’t he? Then how would he know we’re not plumb legitimate?” Cass motioned. “Take the bar off the door so’s he can enter.”
Ladd agreed with Cass’s logic rather than with the reasoning of Abner, but, when the door finally opened and the stranger walked in to nod around at them all, Ladd’s breath stopped in his gullet. The stranger was Joe Reilly!
Lew Brennan, looking more hostile than amiable, said: “What’s on your mind, friend?”
Reilly turned a surprised look upon the lawman. He gave the impression of a man who had expected a different kind of greeting. “What’s on my mind,” Reilly answered curtly, “isn’t givin’ me the headache I figure it’s going to give you, Constable. There is a rampaging band of Apaches plumb around your town, and from what I seen up the stage road behind this place, I’d say they’re waiting for nightfall to fire you, then shoot your folks down by the light of their own burning buildings.” Reilly gestured with one thick arm. “I was just telling this to some fellers over in front of the saloon and they sure as hell verified for me that there’s Indians raidin’ all around through here.”
Reilly removed his hat and beat more dust from his trousers. Harrison, the saturnine range cattleman, sat staring steadily at Joe Reilly, but he was the only one. As far as Ladd could determine, Reilly’s statement, not Reilly the man, had made a deep impression.
Cass stood up from the desk and swore with feeling. Lew Brennan looked ready to slam a big fist into the wall behind him. Abner and Walt turned from Reilly to Cass, but he ignored them completely and paced the room, brows knitted. Twice he stopped to look up the roadway toward the front of the saloon where those townsmen and range men were still clustered in grave conversation. Finally Cass said: “All right, we got to stay, then. That’s all there is to it.” He turned to Joe Reilly. “Where did you ride from, mister, when you come over here?”
Reilly said: “Piñon, a place south through the . . .”
“God dammit, I know where Piñon is!” exclaimed the outlaw, and gestured. “Abner, take his damned gun and push him over against the wall with the others.”
XIV
Joe Reilly did not resist when he was herded over toward the rear wall, but he gave an excellent imitation of a man who felt indignant over being treated this way when he had gone out of his way to warn of impending Indian trouble. He finally shook clear of Abner and turned fully to face the youthful killer, and to say: “Constable, just what in the hell is the meaning of this? I’m a legitimate traveler on my way through and . . .”
“Oh, shut up,” growled Lewis Brennan. He made it sound enormously disgusted, as though Joe Reilly were the least of his worries, at least the most unimportant of his recent worries.
It was Cass who turned and faced Reilly as he said: “When you was over in Piñon, mister, had they made up a manhuntin’ posse to go looking for the fellers who shot up their town and raided their bank?”
“No,” said Joe Reilly, staring closely at Cass. “Their lawman was killed in that . . .” Joe let his voice trail off into silence, and he continued to stare at Cass. When he eventually shifted his attention to the only other armed men in the room excluding the lawman, he said: “You three fellers . . . ?”
No one answered him and Ladd wanted to kick Joe in the shins. Reilly knew perfectly well who Cass, Walt, and Abner were. Going through this moment of mock astonishment was making a nervous wreck of Ladd Buckner.
Walt, who had been silent up to now, gazed a trifle doubtingly at Joe Reilly: “Mister, if those ragheads are all around this town and you was up in the pass yonder . . . how’n hell did you get through and past them to get down here without them cutting you down?”
Reilly smiled. “I saw them,” he explained. “I saw them first, and that’s nine-tenths of any battle, amigo. Once I could see how they were strung out, I only had to make darned certain they didn’t look over their shoulders and see me. Then I rode off the roadway and came down through the trees . . . praying every blasted step of the way. It was easy, but by God, mister, I could have died fifty times before I got in among the buildings.”
Walt accepted that, probably because it sounded plausible enough. He strolled to the front wall, leaned, and looked out, shook his head, and said: “That’s quite a herd of men up in front of the saloon. Why don’t they just rig out and get their weapons, and ride out there? If a man can keep ragheads out of the rocks and timber and gullies, he can thin ’em out without much trouble.”
Abner sneered: “You and General Custer.”
Gradually the men in the jailhouse office lost interest in their latest associate, the man from Piñon, and this allowed Joe to edge over until he was leaning against the same wall Ladd was also leaning against. Joe turned and said: “You got some tobacco, friend?” When Ladd passed over his sack and papers, Reilly methodically went to work.
From a very great distance there came the unmistakable echo of gunshots. It sounded as though there were both carbines and handguns out there. Abner ran through the back of the jailhouse to locate a window and look out there toward the west. Lew Brennan shook his head. “He can’t see nothing from back there. There’s only one window and it’s eight feet from the floor in a cell.”
Reilly leaned to return the papers and tobacco sack. “There are no Indians,” he whispered swiftly. “It’s a scheme to get them out of here.” That was all he had time to say as Abner returned, gun in hand as though expecting the Apaches to burst into the jailhouse.
“It was back in them lousy foothills,” Abner reported a trifle breathlessly. “You was right, Cass, we das’n’t bust out of here tonight and try to make it up into the mountains.”
Harrison arose from the chair he had been occupying for a long while and stretched, then turned to gaze from Buckner to Reilly, and smile. He was still the least anxious individual in the log building. For Ladd, the little bit of information Reilly had been able to give him was enough to convince him that his suspicion about his friends from Piñon being involved in whatever was happening outside the log walls of the Paso jailhouse was correct. But that skimpy information had also aroused a lot more curiosity than it had allayed. Cass, speaking again to Lew Brennan, interrupted Ladd’s thoughts.
“What the hell will they do?”
Brennan looked up. “The townsfolk? How would I know?”
As though this were someone’s cue, a couple of men from across the road walked over and paused out front to argue a little, then one of them raised a hand as though to knock on the office door, and Cass jerked his head for Brennan to go to the door.
When the lawman pulled back the door and looked out, one of those townsmen said: “Lew, we got a meeting called for fifteen minutes from now over at the saloon. They said we’d better let you know.”
Brennan scowled. “What kind of a meeting?”
“Well, damn it,” exclaimed the other townsman, looking and sounding aggravated, “what kind of a meeting would folks call when their town’s surrounded by a bunch of lousy reservation jumpers? A defense meeting, that’s what kind!”
Brennan grumbled and began closing the door. Both those townsmen turned back in the direction of the general store, and Cass, with a bright light in his eye, said something hopeful for the first time in several hours.
“I think we got a way out of here,” he said, and turned. Everyone was staring at him. He saw this, beckoned Walt and Abner to one side, and whispered to them.
Ladd used this moment to hiss a question at Reilly: “Is there a plan?”
Reilly whispered back. “Yes. Get everyone out of here.”
“How?”
But before Re
illy could risk answering, the three outlaws were ending their little conference. Abner and Walt also looked relieved and hopeful for the first time in hours.
Lew Brennan seemed to be descending deeper into apathy as time passed. When Cass told him it would shortly be time to attend that meeting, Brennan snarled a reply. “There’s not a damned thing I can do over there except to advise ’em to either try and bring in troops or try to recruit the range men, then go Indian huntin’. I can darned well tell you one thing. If they put off settling up with those ragheads until after dark, they won’t be able to keep them from sneakin’ in and firin’ the place. If there’s one thing ragheads are right good at, it’s sneakin’ around in the dark.”
“Then go tell them that,” urged Cass, and went to open the door for Lew Brennan.
Brennan frowned. “They can’t get out onto the range to recruit those cow outfits,” he said protestingly. “You heard it . . . the ragheads are completely around us.”
Cass accepted this the same way and still held the door. “All right, tell them that, but go attend their meeting.”
Cass gestured for Brennan to leave. Ladd guessed this was part of whatever scheme Cass had come up with. He did not want the lawman in the jailhouse. That didn’t make much sense, but then Ladd had spent the entire morning thus far listening to things that hadn’t made much sense. Brennan stalked out and Cass closed the door behind him.
Reilly leaned and whispered: “One less. Did you ever see one of these log buildings burn?”
Ladd turned and stared, but he had no opportunity to do more than that because Cass called his name.
“Buckner! You know this country so good and you’re so sure you can elude the ragheads . . . you ready to go?”
Ladd did not have to pretend to be surprised. “In this damned daylight?”
Cass smiled. “Right now, in this damned daylight. The town’s scairt to death over the raghead scare, and somewhere out yonder the Apaches are lying in wait. Well, if we can get out of this jailhouse and over close to the foothills, when dusk falls we’d ought to have good horses and a fair chance of making it.” Cass pointed. “It was that traveler gave me the idea. Look at him! Hell, if someone like that can slip through past the Indians, so can we.”
