Collection 1989 - Long Ride Home (v5.0) (5 page)

Matty looked up sharply. “You throwin' that at me? I'm the only one livin' here who ain't related to her!”

“I figured a girl pretty as Hazel would have men comin' some distance to see her, although I did allow it might be you, Matty.”

“Of course, more than one man shot Farrow,” Fox contributed.

“I don't need he'p in my killin's,” Matty said flatly.

Kim Sartain shrugged. “Just figurin'. Well, I reckon I'll turn in.” He got to his feet. “I expect Farrow must have spent a lot of time here,” he dropped the comment easily, “seein' he was sweet on Hazel.”

“How could he?” Hazel demanded, getting to her feet. “He was an express rider. He only had two minutes to change in, and it rarely took him that long.”

“Yeah? Well, I reckoned maybe he found a way.” All eyes were on Kim now. “If I was sweet on a girl,
I'd
find a way.”

“Such as what?” Ollie demanded.

“Oh, maybe a shortcut through those mountains. Yeah, that would be it. Something that would give me extra time.”

Matty leaned back in his chair, and suddenly he was smiling, but it was not a nice smile. Verne was staring at Sartain, his eyes murderous. Het was poker-faced, but Ollie was suddenly sweating.

“Well,” Kim said, “good night all. You comin', Bud?”

Outside, Bud mopped his face. “You
crazy
? Stickin' it to 'em that way?”

A shadow moved near the window curtain and Kim heard the door open softly. “The way I figure it,” he said loudly, “whoever killed that rider knew something about that gold that was stolen. I figure it must be cached around here somewhere, in the hills, maybe. It was stolen near here and whoever stole it probably didn't take it far. We better have us a look.”

They crossed the street to the saloon and entered. A moment later Het came in behind them. “You fellers want a drink?” he asked genially. “Might's well have one. Makes a feller warm to go to bed on.”

“Don't mind if we do,” Kim replied, “an' you have one with us.”

“Sure.” Het got out the bottle and glasses. He seemed to be searching for words. “Reckon,” he said finally, “you know I heerd what you said about huntin' that there gold. I wouldn't, if'n I was you. Fact is, you two ain't makin' no friends around here. We uns mind our own affairs an' figure others should do likewise.”

Kim grinned and lifted his glass. “Gold is anybody's business, amigo. It's yours if you find it, ours if we find it. Here's to the gold and whoever finds it, and here's to the hot place for the others!”

They tossed off their drinks and the old man filled the glasses again. “All right,” he said, almost sadly. “Don't say you weren't warned. I reckon it's on your head now, but as long as you're lookin', I'll tell you. There is a shortcut.”

“Yeah?” Kim Sartain's face was straight and his lips stiff.

“Uh huh. It's an old Paiute trail. Easy goin' all the way, but known to few around here. I reckon it was me put Farrow up to it. He was sweet on Hazel, so it was me told him. I aimed to he'p the boy.”

“Thanks.” Kim Sartain lifted his glass to the old man. “See you tomorrow?”

Het Morse's Adam's apple bobbed and his eyes looked queer. “I reckon you will.”

Upstairs in their room Sartain closed the door and propped a chair under the knob. Bud Fox threw his hat on a peg. “Now I wonder why he told us that?”

In the dim light from the lamp Kim's strongly boned face was thrown into sharp relief, his cheekbones hard and gleaming, his cheeks hollow from darkness. “You know mighty well why he told us. So we'd go there. What better place to kill snoopers than on an unknown trail where nobody but buzzards would find them?”

Bud absorbed that, his freckled face strangely pale. He pulled off a boot and rubbed his socked foot. Then he looked up. “What we goin' to do, Kim?”

“Us?” Kim chuckled softly, warmly, and with real humor. “Why, Bud, you wouldn't disappoint 'em, would you? We're goin', of course!”

CHAPTER 6

T
HE MORNING SUN lay warm upon the quiet hills, and the cicadas that hummed in the greasewood seemed drowsily content. Between the knees of Kim Sartain the Appaloosa stepped out gaily, head bobbing, knees lifting, stepping as if to unheard music. And Kim Sartain sat erect in the saddle, a dark blue shirt tucked into gray wool trousers which were tucked into black, hand-tooled boots with large Mexican spurs. Kim Sartain rode coolly, and with a smile on his lips.

The mountains seemed split asunder before him, and where the sunlight fell upon the gigantic crack, the shadows lay before him, and he rode down into darkness with a hand on his thigh and a loose and ready gun inches from his hand. There was no sound, there was no movement. A mile, and the crack widened, then opened into a wide green valley across which the track of the ancient Paiute trail left a gray-white streak among the tumbled boulders and broken ledges. There was a sound of running water, and a freshness in the air, and at the fording of the stream, Kim Sartain swung down, allowing his horse to drink.

There were trees at the base of a big-as-a-house boulder, and from the shelter of these boulders stepped Matty Brown.

He stepped into the bright sunlight and stood there, and Kim Sartain saw him. And Matty Brown took another step forward and said, speaking clearly, “I reckon that gun rep o' yours is all talk, Sartain!
Let's see!
”

His right hand slapped down fast and the gun came up smoothly and his first shot blasted harmlessly off into the vast blue sky, and then Matty turned halfway around and fell, rolling over slowly with blood staining his shirtfront and the emptiness in his eyes staring up at the emptiness in the sky, and Kim Sartain's .44 Russian lifted a little tendril of smoke toward the sky. And then Kim saw Het Morse step from the brush, with Ollie off to his right, and Verne Stecher spoke from behind him.

“Matty,” Stecher said, “he allus did figure hisself faster than he was. He wanted to have his try, so we let him. Now you, snooper, we plant you here.”

“Hey, where's your partner?” Ollie suddenly demanded. The big man was perspiring profusely. Only Het was quiet, negligent, almost lazy; that old man, was poison wicked.

Bud's voice floated above them. “I'm right up here, Ollie. S'pose you drop your guns!”

Ollie's head jerked and fear showed on his face, stark fear. Where the voice came from he did not know, but it might have been a dozen places. Kim Sartain could feel the panic in him but his own eyes did not waver from Het's.

“Guess we better drop 'em, Pop.” Ollie's voice shook. “They got us.”

The old man's voice was frosty with contempt. “We're three to two. They got nothin'. Let Verne get that other'n. We'll take Sartain.”

“No!” Ollie's fear was strident in his voice. The death of Matty Brown, the body lying there, had put fear all through him. “No! Don't—!”

Kim saw it coming an instant before Het squeezed off his shot, and he fired, smashing two quick ones at Het. He saw the old man jerk sharply, heard the whine of the bullet past his own head, and then he fired again, throwing himself to the right to one knee, the other leg stretched far out. Then he swung his gun to Ollie. Other guns were smashing around him, and a shot kicked dirt into his mouth and eyes. Momentarily blinded, he rolled over, lost hold on his gun and clawed at his eyes. Something tugged at his shirt and he grabbed for his left-hand gun and came up shooting. Old Het was half behind a rock and had his gun resting on it.

Kim lunged to his feet and ran directly at the old man, hearing the hard bark of a pistol and the shrill whine of a rifle bullet, and then he skidded to a halt and dropped his gun on Het. Het tried to lift his own six-shooter from the rock as Kim fired. Dust lifted from the old man's shirt and the bullet smashed him to the ground and he lost hold on his gun.

And then the shooting was past, and Kim glanced swiftly around. Bud was near the boulder where he had waited for the ambush, and Ollie was down, and Stecher was stretched at full length, hands empty.

Kim looked down at Het. The oldster's eyes were open and he was grinning. “Tough!” he whispered. “I told Matty you was tough! He wouldn't listen to…to an…to an old man…

“Ollie,” he whispered, “no guts. If I'd o' spawned the likes o' you…!” His voice trailed away and he panted hoarsely.

“Het,” Kim squatted beside him, “the Law sent us down here. The United States Government. That gold was rightly theirs, Het. You're goin' out, and you don't want to rob the Government, do you, Het?”

“Gover'ment?” He fumbled at the word with loose lips. He flopped his hand, trying to point, at the boulder where they had waited. “Cave…under that boulder…”

His words trailed weakly away and he panted hoarsely for a few minutes, and then Kim Sartain saw a buzzard mirrored in the old man's eyes, and looking up, he saw the buzzard high overhead, and looking down, he saw that Het Morse was dead.

Bud Fox walked up slowly, his freckles showing against the gray of his face. “Never liked this killin' business,” he said. “I ain't got the stomach for it.” He looked up at Kim. “Reckon you pegged it right when you had me come on ahead.”

“An' you picked the right spot to wait,” Kim agreed dryly.

“It was the only one, actually.” Bud Fox looked around. “Reckon we can load that gold on their horses. You goin' to stop by for that Jeanie girl?”

“Why, sure!” Kim whistled and watched the Appaloosa come toward him. “We'll take her to Carson. I reckon any debt she owed has been liquidated right here.” Then he said soberly, “I was sure the first day we rode in. Behind the bottles on the back bar I saw an awl an' a leather-worker's needle. They opened the stitching on those pouches while Farrow was sparkin' Hazel. They got the information thataway, then put the letters back and stitched 'em up again.”

Behind them they left three mounds of earth and a cross marking the grave of Het Morse. “He was a tough old man,” Bud Fox said gloomily.

Kim Sartain looked at the trail ahead where the sunlight lay. A cicada lifted its thin whine from the brush along the trail. Kim removed his hat and mopped his brow. “He sure was,” he said.

THAT TRIGGERNOMETRY TENDERFOOT

I
T WAS SHORTLY after daybreak when the stage from Cottonwood rolled to a stop before the wide veranda of the Ewing Ranch house. Jim Carey hauled back on the lines to stop the dusty, champing horses. Taking a turn around the brake handle, he climbed down from the seat.

A grin twisted his lips under the brushy mustache as he went up the steps. He pulled open the door and thrust his head inside. “Hey, Frank!” he yelled. “Yuh t' home?”

“Sure thing!” A deep voice boomed in the hallway. “Come on back here, Jim!”

Jim Carey hitched his six-shooter to a more comfortable position and strode back to the long room where Frank Ewing sat at the breakfast table.

“I brung the new schoolma'am out,” he said slowly, his eyes gleaming with ironic humor as the heads of the cowhands came up, and their eyes brightened with interest.

“Good thing!” Ewing bellowed. His softest tone could be heard over twenty acres. “The boys are rarin' t' see her! So's Claire! I reckon we can bed her down with Claire so's they can talk all they're a mind to!”

Jim Carey picked up the coffee cup Ma Ewing placed for him. “Don't reckon yuh will, Frank,” he said. “Wouldn't be quite fittin'.”

“What?” Ewing rared back in his chair. “Yuh mean this here Boston female is so high an' mighty she figgers she's too good for my daughter? Why…!”

“It ain't thet,” Jim's grin spread all over his red face, “on'y the new schoohna'am ain't a she, she's a he!”

“What?”

Frank Ewing's bellow caused deer to lift their startled heads in the brakes of the Rampart, ten miles away. The cowhands stiffened, their faces stricken with disappointment and horror, a horror that stemmed from the realization that anything wearing pants could actually teach school.

“Sure thing!” Jim was chuckling now. “She's a he! He's waitin' outside now!”

“Well!” Ma Ewing put her hands on her wide hips, “yuh took long enough t' tell us! Fetch the pore critter in! Don't leave him standin' out there by hisself!”

Carey got up, still chuckling at the stupefied expressions on the faces of the cowhands and walked to the door. “Hey, you! Come on in an' set for chuck! Reckon,” he added, glancing around, “I'll be rollin'. No time t' dally.”

He hesitated, grinning. “Reckon yuh boys'll be right gentle with him. He's plumb new t' the West! Wanted t' git off and pet one o' them ornery longhorns up the pass!”

Stretch Magoon's long, homely face was bland with innocence. “Wal, now! I calls that right touchin'! I reckon we'll have t' give him a chance t' pat of Humpy!”

The cowhands broke into a chuckle and even Claire found herself smiling at the idea. Then, at the approaching footsteps in the hall they all looked up expectantly.

The new schoolma'am stepped shyly into the door carrying a carpetbag in one hand, a hard black hat in the other.

He wore a black suit, stiff with newness, and a high white collar. His hair was dark and wavy, his eyes blue and without guile. His face was pink and white with a scattering of freckles over the nose.

He was smiling now, and there was something boyish and friendly about him. Claire sat up a little straighter, stirred by a new and perplexing curiosity.

“Come in an' set,” Ma Ewing declared heartily. “You're jest in time for breakfast!”

“My name's Vance Brady,” he suggested. “They call me Van.”