Coroner Creek (13 page)

“You can't talk to me like that,” Yordy said sullenly.

“Why can't I?”

When Yordy didn't answer, Younger said, “Sunday night at Station. Have your stuff ready and be on the hotel porch.” He nodded and put the spurs to his black horse, and this time he let him run.

CHAPTER IX

Kate usually ate ahead of the crowd at noon so that later she could keep an eye on the two waitresses and act as cashier. She had taken a chair at the table closest the kitchen and was chatting with one of the girls who was finishing setting the tables, when Perry MacElvey came into the dining room.

He walked over to the table where Kate was seated and, because she liked him, she said teasingly, “How is it going, Sheriff?”

“The public hasn't stoned me yet,” Mac said, with quiet self-derision, and gave her one of his rare smiles.

Kate wondered then, as she had wondered in the past, what MacElvey had been and seen and done in his life. He never talked of himself, and all the town knew about him was that he was a city man come west for his health. But there was a history of breeding and ability in him; he was a man, like her father, whom people trusted immediately and turned to for help. And help was given, Kate knew, and that was what puzzled her. How could a man like Mac, generous and kind, work for Younger Miles, whose every move was calculated to serve his own interests? Thinking of that, she remembered what she had been pondering ever since she'd heard of O'Hea's sick leave and Mac's appointment, and she resolved to go ahead with it.

But before she could speak, the first of the diners came through the door. She knew they would, out of courtesy, fill up her table first and she said to Mac, “Where'll you be this afternoon, sheriff? I want some advice.”

Mac looked skeptically at her. “In O'Hea's office. But why would you come to me for advice when your father's a couple of dozen steps away?”

“This is different,” Kate said.

Younger Miles and John Truscott, the thin, worried-looking man who ran the First National Bank, came in first. Miles saw Mac and led the way over to Kate's table, and Kate spoke pleasantly to them both. Younger sat next to her, Truscott next him, and they were served. There was some small talk of the weather and Truscott groused about the dry year, claiming there wasn't enough grass in the world to feed the cattle he'd made loans on this year.

“There'll be a lot of hands turned loose this fall,” Younger said. “No grass, no beef. No beef, no money. No money, no crew.”

Truscott nodded. “I paid Frank Yordy off the other day for Box H. He said some unkind things about the country in general, too.”

“Drunken fool,” Younger murmured. “He's a man with a grudge; he stopped my wife a couple of days ago and said he had some information he wanted to sell me. Some information, mind you, that would hurt Box H.”

He looked around the table, and Trustcott said:

“That's like him.”

Kate, always practical, said, “What did you do?”

“I went out to Briggs' place to tell him to drop that kind of talk or he'd get in trouble. I was curious about what he wanted to sell me, though.”

“Yes,” Kate said, innocently.

Younger looked sharply at her, but there was only interest in her pale brown eyes.

“I finally got it out of him. He had figured out that Danning was all that propped up Box H. Get rid of Danning and the Harms women would quit.”

“And how did he propose to do it?” Kate asked, interested now.

Younger made a wry face. “It seems back of their place there's a trail up onto the bench that cuts through a shale slide.” He looked at Truscott, Kate and MacElvey. “Yordy said it would be very easy to start a shale slide some time when Danning was passing. No evidence—and no Danning.”

Kate put down her fork. “How horrible,” she said, softly.

Younger said bluntly, “I feel that way too, Kate. I told Yordy I'd pass on his suggestion to the sheriff.” He looked at MacElvey. “I'm hereby passing it, Mac. You might warn Danning, too.”

MacElvey nodded, and the conversation changed to other things.

Kate finished, excused herself and went out. She busied herself at the desk, making change, but Yordy's plan to finish Danning kept returning, sickening her with its wanton cruelty. When the last diner had eaten and left, Kate went out into the street to keep her date with MacElvey. She was bareheaded, and sun, touching her hair, gave it little fiery lights of gold.

Abe Wildman, teetering on his heels in front of Melaven's, grinned and said as she came up, “It's a good thing you don't have pigtails, Kate, or they'd have you back in school.”

“You know how to compliment a lady, Abe,” Kate said in her friendly way. “How are you?”

“Fine, lookin' at you. Fine.”

Kate smiled and passed him and walked up the street. She waved to Mrs. Waycross and another woman on the opposite boardwalk who were carrying parasols, and then laughed to herself. She treated the town as her own back yard, she thought, and she tried to remember when she had last thought it necessary to wear a hat or carry a parasol. Passing the high lumberyard fence, she turned into the sheriff's office and passed the first door and entered the second.

Crossing the anteroom, she could see MacElvey seated in O'Hea's old swivel chair reading. He came to his feet when she entered and pulled a chair over for her, facing his own.

“Why don't you open this corridor door and close up that filthy room, now you're sheriff?” Kate asked him.

“It's open. Did you try it?” Mac asked.

Kate laughed at herself and said no, and sat down. Mac sank into the swivel chair again, waiting courteously for her to begin.

“I suppose you've guessed what I wanted to talk to you about,” Kate began. “It's Abbie.”

“I hadn't guessed it,” Mac said. “I might have. You're a good friend of hers, aren't you?”

“Can't a man be punished for selling her liquor?”

Mac shook his head in negation, his green eyes polite, sympathetic.

“Then can't you find who's doing it and threaten him or—or—something?” Kate asked. “This can't go on, Mac.”

“It can if she wants it to,” Mac said quietly. He picked a pencil off the desk and stabbed aimlessly with it at a pile of papers on the desk top. He looked up at her presently and said, “I'm no judge of why she drinks, but she needs liquor. She's got the need, she's got the money, and she's got the cunning. And I'm not the sheriff of her morals, Kate.”

“You make me out a busybody,” Kate said.

“I've got to. It's Younger's and her business, not mine, and, pardon me—not yours.”

“I know. But if I only knew who sold her the liquor.”

Mac shrugged. “What if you did? It's no crime. She could write to any distillery and they'd send her a barrel. Maybe,” he said dryly, “that's what she's done.”

They regarded each other levelly, and Kate could see the stubbornness in the man. She knew she was asking him to meddle, perhaps dangerously, but in a good cause; he had told her he sympathized, but that he refused. Or did he even sympathize? She tried to read what lay behind those quiet green eyes, and she could not, and suddenly the absurdity of her request struck her. She kept forgetting Mac was Younger Miles' man. Like him as she might, she knew he would never cross Younger—and this was crossing Younger.

She gathered her feet under her to rise when the sound of footfalls in the corridor came to them. The corridor door opened immediately and Chris Danning stepped into the room.
It's like him, to try that door
, Kate thought instantly.
He won't do anything like other people do
. She noted first the bandaged hand at his side. It was thick in its splint, hiding the whole hand, except the square finger-tips, and was already slightly soiled.

He stood in the doorway a moment, and then took off his soft, worn hat that looked as if it had been bleached by all the suns of the desert.

There was a cut on his lean, sun-blackened cheek, but his eyes, Kate saw, were the same—the palest of gray, deep-set, with a go-to-hell look in them that was like the flick of a whip to a person beholding them. She had heard about the fight, and she had hoped that Ernie Coombs had altered that look, making it more respectful. He hadn't.

Chris said, unsmilingly, “I'll come back later.”

Kate stood up. “Don't go. I'm just leaving.” She turned to Mac. “Thanks for nothing, Mac. I shouldn't have bothered you.”

Mac almost smiled. “You shouldn't have bothered yourself.”

Kate started for the door, but Danning didn't move out of the way. He said, “I wonder if you'd be my witness, Miss Hardison?”

“Witness? To what?”

Chris' glance shifted to Mac. “You sheriff now?”

“Deputy,” Mac said. “O'Hea's on sick leave. I'm acting in his place.”

“Is Thessaly Canyon open range?” Chris asked.

Mac nodded. “Except for the quarter section Tip Henry's staked out at the mouth of it.”

“I'm moving Box H stuff into it through the upper trail,” Chris said. “I figured I'd tell you.”

Mac was quiet a long moment, and then said, “Rainbow's using it. The practice, I think, is to stay off open range used by another outfit.”

“I'm moving
back
to it,” Chris said slowly. “We used it once, we're using it now. Tell Miles what the practice is; I know already.”

“My friend,” Mac said mildly, “you're headed for trouble. You've given nobody around here cause to love you. This is Miles you're talking about,” he continued, a faint stirring of anger in his voice. “You're a marked man. Yordy is already trying to peddle ways to kill you.”

“That's likely,” Chris agreed calmly. “To Miles, I suppose?”

“Yes, to Miles,” Mac said.

Chris' glance returned now to Kate. “Thank you, Miss Hardison. You might tell your father what I just told MacElvey.”

He stood aside and Kate waved to Mac and went out. Chris stepped out too, closing the door behind him. It would put him on the boardwalk two paces behind her, and Kate decided to wait for him. She was still astonished at what she had just witnessed and the news she had heard, and when he fell into step beside her, she said, “You know, you have a way about you. It's a little bit like a sledge hammer, but I think it works.”

She looked up at him beside her, and for the first time she could remember, he looked as if once, long ago and far, far away, he had known how to smile. A veiled and cautious amusement was in his eyes as he regarded her, but his face was still stem. “It works,” he said quietly.

“That took some courage in a brassy way,” Kate said, reflectively. “So does moving into Thessaly. Are you going to?”

“We did. This morning.”

“But you—Weren't you hurt? Didn't Della bring you in last night?”

Chris only nodded and held up his hand a moment for answer and dropped it.

“What—what happened to you?”

“I broke my hand.”

“All right,” Kate said in exasperation. “You make me ask questions, so I'll ask them. How did it happen?”

“Ernie Coombs stamped on it,” Chris answered.

Kate looked up at him swiftly, but his expression was only polite. “And what did you do to Ernie?”

“I broke his hand,” Chris replied.

Kate halted on the boardwalk, and Chris stopped too. Kate was about to speak, and closed her mouth, and then did speak. “By stamping on it, I'll bet. That's like you. I should have known that.” There was oddly, no censure in her voice.

She turned and began to walk again, and Chris, saying nothing, walked beside her. Kate, much against her judgment, felt a strange and compelling liking for the man at the moment. She remembered their last meeting, when each of them had tried to be as unkind to the other as possible. But to know that he had come out of his second tangle with Rainbow with the same conviction that he, alone, could lick Younger Miles was somewhat magnificent, if foolish. And he had gone about proving it by moving in on Thessaly. She felt now that whether she liked him or not, he was helping Della, and was, therefore, a friend. And if he was to be a sort of friend, then she should help him.

She said now, “MacElvey wasn't lying when he said Yordy hates you and wants to kill you. I heard Miles tell him Yordy's proposition.”

“That's old, and a lot of times it works,” Chris observed idly.

“What is?”

“Warning a man he's in danger from someone else. It can cover a shot in the dark from anyone.”

“Meaning Miles, in this case?” Kate asked quickly.

“That's who I meant.”

They halted on the corner now before Melaven's, and Kate was shaking her head slowly. “I don't believe that. I'm not angry with you for saying it, but I don't believe it. It's just the way you are, the way you think.”

A small frown creased Chris' forehead. He looked at her a long time before he said, “Where's Yordy? Let's ask him if he tried to sell Miles a way to kill me.”

“Let's do,” Kate said promptly, challengingly. “I'm going to prove something either to myself or to you. He's at Briggs', south of town. Let's ride out. I'll be at the livery.”

They parted without speaking and Kate, angry all over again, went straight for the livery stable. While she was waiting for her horse to be saddled, she suddenly realized that she was bareheaded and in street dress. It didn't matter. Some deep exasperation in her wouldn't let her turn back, wouldn't let her hesitate. Where, a few minutes before, she had wanted to help him, she was now out to prove for once and all that this silent, gray-eyed, gray-thinking man full of cynicism and hate, was wrong.

He had come into this country hating them all, more than eager to fight, and only chance had put him on the side of her friends. Yet even as he helped them, he was still eager for trouble, eager to believe nothing but what he saw and said himself. It was that infallibility of his that angered Kate now, that merciless judgment on people, friend or foe, of whom he knew nothing.