Gunsmoke Masquerade

by Peter Dawson

  “If there was time?” Kelso queried. “Why ain’t there?”

  “Riggs and his hardcases are headed for that meadow below Prenn’s to do a little butchering before they leave the country. Tonight. Right now.”

  Kelso took the cane from his arm and leaned on it, his glance narrowing in proof that he believed at least this much of Streak’s story. “Then I’d better get goin’,” he said, reaching for his lantern.

  “You won’t have time.”

  “But I will. On the way down the street, I spotted someone duckin’ into that alley alongside the Emporium. Unless I’m wrong, it was Bill Paight. I might happen to find him at the hotel callin’ on Laura Dallam. He’s gone sort of sweet on her.”

  “Better hurry!” was the urgent word Streak sent after him as Kelso went out the corridor door.

  * * * * *

  Bill Paight wheeled back into the friendly darkness of the passageway alongside the Emporium, for a moment tense under the threat of having been seen by the Bishop riders on the street. But as they filed past, not looking his way, he relaxed and his homely face was slashed by a cocksure grin. He was wondering, idly, just what Sid Riggs would do if he knew what the darkness of this alleyway held concealed from him. Suddenly Paight’s grin vanished. He saw the gray horse and the man on it, his wrists bound to the horn of the saddle and his boots roped to the cinch. At first he couldn’t believe his eyes. When he was sure it was Streak, Paight’s first involuntary impulse was to reach for his gun. But then his fingers slowly relaxed on the handle of the .45 as he saw Kelso. He might have had his try at freeing Streak but for the presence of the sheriff.

  He knew what he would do. Tom Buchwalter was in town, at the hotel seeing Laura Dallam. It looked as though Streak was headed for jail again. Bill and Buchwalter could do something about that.

  Turning up the walk and keeping to the deep shadows under the awnings, Paight headed for the hotel. Once the shock of having seen Streak a prisoner to Riggs and the sheriff left him, his mind went back to the insistent worry that had brought him on the long ride in here from Prenn’s meadow. Three hours ago, as Fencerail’s crew ate a hasty meal by their supper fire in the meadow where the sheep were being held, Paight had gone up to Buchwalter and asked about Streak. The foreman’s answer had been: “Bill, he’s gone. Nothing else can explain it. I left him up at the pass this morning. He was to follow me down here. That’s the last I’ve seen of him.”

  Bill hadn’t exactly worried about Mathiot. But he had been a little hurt to think that the man would simply drift without letting anyone know he was going or without the thanks they all owed him. And his regret was keen on another score. Momentarily forgetting his one reason for staying in this country, that reason being Laura Dallam, Bill realized that he’d halfway been planning to pack his possibles and side Streak Mathiot whenever Streak left the valley. Fencerail’s trouble was about over and the life of a glorified sheepherder had no appeal for him. He had been unconsciously drawn to this lean tall stranger and the prospect of siding him for a time appealed strongly.

  Then the thought of Laura Dallam jerked to an abrupt halt this trend in his thinking. For the first time in these few days since meeting the girl, Bill asked himself straightforwardly just what his intentions toward her amounted to. In the end, over his second steaming cup of coffee there by the fire in Prenn’s meadow, he reached the sobering realization that he was in love for keeps and that his footloose days might be over. This, of course, providing Laura would have him. And from that moment on he forgot about Streak and thought only of the next time he’d see Laura. He hoped it would be tonight but then knew it wouldn’t be; every man was needed at the camp.

  He was therefore pleasantly surprised when a little while later Buchwalter came over to him and said: “Bill, we’re hitting out for town. Miss Dallam ought to know how things are going.”

  So they had saddled fresh horses and come in here, Bill unusually talkative and light-hearted with the prospect of seeing Laura. Then, as they rode into the upper end of the street, Buchwalter had abruptly jolted him by saying: “I’ll go on alone and see her. You prowl around and keep an eye open for any west-slope men that drift in. We don’t want to buy into any trouble. If any of ’em show, come up to Miss Dallam’s room and tell me.”

  Paight would have argued with anyone else, for he had so far been in on most of the dealings with Pete Dallam’s sister. However, Buchwalter’s mild and gentle way bore no disputing. As foreman, it was probably Buchwalter’s place to carry such important news as this they were bringing tonight. Bill, after all, was nothing but a top hand and could expect no favors. So he kept his mouth shut, glumly taking his post to keep an eye on the street after they’d tied their horses in the alley, and he had watched Buchwalter enter the hotel by the back door.

  Now he had a legitimate reason for going to the hotel. Yet the prospect of seeing Laura was somehow less exciting than it would have been a minute or two ago, for the sight of Streak had sobered him, wiped out the lighter side of his thoughts. He hurried on, the empty street reassuring as he took the verandah steps and went in the lobby door.

  The big downstairs room was deserted. He went up the stairs two steps at a time, the carpeting deadening the sound of his quick footfalls. Because he didn’t want to be seen or heard, he slowed at the top landing and went down along the upper hallway as quietly as he could. Laura’s room was Number 21. He stopped before her door and lifted his hand to knock.

  As his fist was falling, he heard Buchwalter’s voice through the thin panel: “You’ll leave at five in the morning. I’ll have a rig hired to take you down. You’ll be able to make the morning stage.”

  “But why shouldn’t I stay over one more day?” came Laura’s answer, as Bill’s clenched fist froze motionlessly a bare half inch short of knocking.

  “I don’t want you to see Paight.” Buchwalter’s voice had lost its gentle note and was sharp-edged, authoritative. “That was the agreement. You were to follow my orders. Now you have them. You’re also being well paid. A thousand is big money.”

  Bill felt his face go hot in a blend of sudden shame and anger. What agreement was Buchwalter talking about? What was he buying from Laura that would be worth one thousand dollars? How could he be in a position to order her around? He had little time to get his answers, for Laura’s voice sounded again, saying coolly: “I wish now I had never come here, never let you talk me into this.”

  “You wouldn’t like it if I told Paight who you really are, would you?” Buchwalter said smoothly. “Do as I say and he’ll never be any the wiser. After all, Laura, you aren’t the marrying kind. Not with your . . .”

  The sound of heavy uneven steps on the stairs, close below the landing, came to Bill then. As he swung away from the door and made quickly for the dark stairwell at the rear of the long hallway, he realized that he had been so engrossed in hearing what Buchwalter was saying that he had almost failed to hear that other sound announcing the approach of a man up out of the lobby. His thoughts seethed in a bewildered torment as he made the back stairs barely in time to keep from being seen. He stood there listening to the man coming down the hallway, knowing by the broken stride and the tapping of the cane that it was Fred Kelso.

  The sheriff knocked on a door and shortly Bill heard the squeak of hinges as the knock was answered. Then Kelso was saying: “Evenin’, Buchwalter. I didn’t expect to find you. Saw Bill Paight down on the street and figured he was on his way here.”

  “No. Miss Dallam and I had some private matters to discuss,” came Buchwalter’s smooth reply. “I’m saying a temporary good bye to her. She’s decided she must take a short trip back East, now that we’ve accomplished something for her. She won’t even wait to say good bye to her friends but insists she has to take the morning stage out of Agua. Wish you’d help me try and talk her out of leaving in such a hurry.”

  “Now that’s a shame,” Kelso said. “We’ll be sorry to see you go, ma’am, and glad to have you back again. Buc
hwalter, there’s something I want to ask you. Riggs just rode in and brought Kincaid with him. Don’t ask me how they picked him up. Kincaid’s story don’t make much sense, unless you explain something. He’s claimin’ now that he isn’t Kincaid and that you know it. Something about Kincaid bein’ dead and Morg Prenn havin’ caught him in a lie last night. Is he tellin’ the truth?”

  “This is the first I’ve heard of it, Sheriff,” was Buchwalter’s immediate reply. “Of course he may not be Kincaid, as he says. But if he isn’t, I don’t know it.”

  “Then he’s makin’ up that story about Morg knowin’ he was usin’ a fake handle?”

  Buchwalter’s gentle laugh sounded down the hallway. “Sheriff, don’t you know by this time that Kincaid’s about as smooth an article as you’ll ever come across? He’s got a brain as sharp as a razor. He’s the one who thought up the way to get the sheep in. But as for his story of Prenn having caught him up last night, there’s nothing to it. I was with Prenn all night. To my knowledge, he and Kincaid didn’t have a word to say to each other.”

  “It sure beats hell how he had me believin’ him,” Kelso said. “Well, I won’t take up any more of your time. Oh, somethin’ else, Buchwalter. He’s also claimin’ he’s a federal officer. He had a deputy marshal’s badge hid in the heel of his boot. Says he’s in here lookin’ for a partner of his, another federal man that disappeared a couple weeks ago.”

  “Did you ask him how he got the badge?”

  “I did. And I think I know now. Well, don’t worry about it. ’Evenin’, ma’am. Sorry you’re leavin’.”

  “So am I, Sheriff. Good bye,” Laura Dallam said.

  Kelso had taken a few strides back along the hallway when Buchwalter called after him: “Sheriff! It might be a good thing to keep anyone from seeing Kincaid, now that he’s in jail again. He might get outside help again.”

  “Not this time,” came Kelso’s emphatic words. “No one sees him, no one but me. He’s in there to stay.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  Fred Kelso walked the jail alley haltingly, feeling his tiredness again and leaning heavily on the cane as he favored his game leg. Tonight he felt like an old man and this had him worried; there was nothing he dreaded more than growing old. He wondered why he was bothering to come back up here to call Kincaid a liar. He would get little satisfaction out of it, for he had never been a man to take pleasure in recrimination. The truth was that, having suffered several severe setbacks in his first favorable judgment of Kincaid, he was now beginning to look on the man as a curiosity and was interested in finding out what his prisoner would try next. This had become an absorbing battle of wits to the sheriff; he had won this last round and it would bolster his shaken belief in his own judgment to win again.

  He unlocked the door, stepped inside, and groped for the lantern he’d left hanging from a spike in the wall.

  “I should’ve had sense enough to save myself that walk,” he said tartly. “Saw Buchwalter. He made you out a pretty sizable liar, fella.”

  He squinted as he lit a match and touched it to the lantern’s wick, waiting for a reply from Kincaid that didn’t come. As soon as he had the wick adjusted properly, he hobbled on down and stood opposite the door of his prisoner’s cell. He caught the reflection of light from the marshal’s badge that still lay on the floor. It put a smile on his hawkish face.

  “You damn’ near sold me your bill of goods,” he growled. “It’s a wonder I didn’t turn you loose.”

  Only then did Streak step into the light, coming to the front of the cell. He leaned against the barred door indolently, left shoulder to the grating, and blew the ash from the cigarette he was smoking. The fragrance of the tobacco had driven out the dry, musty taint of the air. Streak took a long drag on his smoke, exhaled slowly, and pointed with the cigarette to the head of the corridor the lawman had just left. “Company, Sheriff,” he drawled.

  Kelso’s head came around. He gave a visible start, then lifted his right hand clear of his side when he saw Bill Paight standing, spraddle-legged, his back to the wall on the hinge side of the jail entrance. Paight’s thumbs were hooked in his belt. His long-barreled .45 hung limply from his right hand. The stony expression of his homely face didn’t change as his glance met the sheriff’s.

  “Bill’s got a different story,” Streak went on. “You probably don’t believe it. But be polite and listen anyway. Go ahead, Bill.”

  As Paight began his venomous and bitter indictment of Buchwalter, Streak kept his glance chiefly on the Fencerail man. He and Bill had had only a few words before the lawman’s prompt arrival. But in that brief interval Streak had sensed a shocking change in Bill, a bitterness that he had never suspected could be in the man’s make-up. Now, hearing Bill elaborate on what had happened there in the upper hotel hallway, he knew that the man was deeply hurt and ashamed. Aware for the first time of Bill’s feelings for the girl who had posed as Laura Dallam, Streak saw at once that she was responsible for this sudden change in the man.

  At one point, when Bill spoke of the girl as “that woman,” Streak cut in with a sharp: “Pull in a little, Bill. You may’ve got Buchwalter pegged right. Gents like him can fool you because they act and talk like they’d fit behind a pulpit. But don’t damn the girl just yet. Wait till you have the chance to talk to her yourself. Buchwalter may be holding something over her head and making her do this.”

  “Who said anything about her?” Bill bridled. But when he went on, Streak noticed that he didn’t mention Laura again. The effort of talking seemed to affect Bill as much as violent physical exertion. His face shone with perspiration, although the chill of the night was beginning to be felt in here. He was short of breath when he finished.

  That intensity of his, more than anything else, convinced Fred Kelso. His eyes were wide in bewildered conviction as he looked at Streak. “Maybe I’m gettin’ too old for my job. But danged if I’ve known who to trust.” He let out a long sigh, lifted his shoulders as though shrugging away the fog of unenlightenment just lifted from his thinking, and reached for his keys.

  When the cell door stood open and Streak stepped out to pick up the marshal’s badge, Kelso asked: “What comes next, Mathiot?”

  Streak ran his hand over his cut and swollen lips, considering an answer. Before he could speak, Bill rasped harshly: “You two do what you want. I’m going back there to the hotel.”

  Streak said—“Sure, Bill.”—knowing that nothing would satisfy Paight until he faced Buchwalter. But, as the Fencerail man turned to the door, he added: “Before you nail up his hide, though, hadn’t we ought to think this out?”

  “Think what out?” Bill asked tonelessly, his hand already on the door’s locking bar.

  “First, Buchwalter’s working with someone in this.”

  “Sure. With the girl.”

  “No, someone else. He couldn’t have been the one who made that try at Bishop yesterday on the street, the man on the splay-foot. He wasn’t up in that hide-out today when I got belted over the head. If he had been, I’d have seen his horse. So, whatever he’s after here, he’s got help. Have you stopped to think who it could be, Bill?”

  “No. What does it matter? We know Buchwalter’s the big augur in this . . .”

  “In what?” Streak cut in. “You know two things. First, he’s hired a nice girl to come in here and pose as Pete Dallam’s sister. Next, he’s got a reason for wanting me out of the way or he wouldn’t have lied about what Prenn said last night. But as to why he’s done these things, we’re as far from the answer as we were before we found him out.”

  “He might be after Fencerail,” Kelso pointed out.

  “If he was, wouldn’t he keep that girl here until she could sign over an option or a deed to him? No, that doesn’t hold water. She’s leaving in the morning, leaving for good. So we’ve got to look further for what we’re after. And how can we do that if you go up and measure Buchwalter for a coffin, Bill?”

  Paight’s look was undecided now. St
reak’s words had told, for shortly Bill let his hand drop from the lock bar. “What am I supposed to do,” he drawled flatly, “let him walk out of this with a pat on the back?”

  “No. Whatever play he’s making, he’s only begun it,” Streak told him. “He wanted those sheep in here so bad he could taste it. Now that he’s got this far, let’s see what he does with ’em. For all he knows, I’m in jail, out of his way. He doesn’t like that much, but it’ll have to do . . . since either his plan or that of the jasper he’s working with went sour when Bishop’s crew didn’t finish me off. All right, Bill, let’s give him the rope to tie his own noose with. You’re supposed to be waiting down there on the street for him. Get back there and let on like nothing’s happened. Ask him questions about the girl. Even let on that you’d like to go up a minute and see her. He won’t let you, of course. Ride back out to Prenn’s with him. Meantime, Kelso and I can get up there and maybe throw a surprise into Riggs’s bunch when they ride in . . . if we’re not already too late.”

  Kelso nodded immediate agreement. But Bill seemed hesitant. He said: “There’s one or two things about this I no sabe.”

  “There’s a whole lot I don’t,” Streak said gravely. “I come in here looking for a friend. I forget him and tie up to a sheep outfit because I think they’re being tromped on by a range hog. Now it turns on they’re crooked as a gang of card sharks and this so-called range hog is nothing but a nice gent protecting his rights. I’m no closer to finding out what happened to my partner than I was before I headed in here. I should’ve been looking for Ed the last couple days. Instead, I’ve been figuring ways for sheep to take over a cattle range. Talk about no sabe, I really don’t.”

  “What about your sidekick, Mathiot?” Kelso asked. “Any ideas?”

  Streak shook his head. “Ed had a pretty good think tank. It’s a cinch he isn’t our man on the splay-foot. He wouldn’t choose Bishop without reason and wouldn’t try to bushwhack him if he did. He wouldn’t be the one that slugged me over the head, either. So I get only one answer.”