Coroner Creek (15 page)

Chris left the trail and cut west through the timber, and in late afternoon he came to the approaches to Thessaly Canyon. He was going to pay Tip Henry the call he had promised him.

He wondered what move Miles had made upon discovering Box H beef in the canyon. Coming out of the thinning timber, he found himself on the east rim close to the mouth. He pulled his horse close to the rim rock and looked about him, trying to locate himself.

The shack lay almost directly across the canyon from him, and the chuck wagon was gone, he saw. There were two saddled horses grazing, bridles slipped, in the grass on this side of the stream. A man and a woman were sitting on a log in the only spot of sun left in the clearing, and the man was not Tip Henry.

Chris recognized MacElvey immediately; his hat was off and his fiery hair was plain to see. It took him a little longer to recognize Abbie Miles, and when he did, he pondered this strange meeting here. It interested him only a moment, and then he put his horse along the rim and presently took a trail down into the canyon, speculating at the absence of Henry and the chuck wagon.

He rode aimlessly now, and when he was satisfied that the Box H beef was here and undisturbed, he turned back and followed the stream. Approaching the shack now, he saw only one horse grazing. Abbie Miles was sitting alone on the same log, her hat dangling idly by its chin strap from her fingers. She did not see him until her horse whickered.

Chris was close to her then, and he wanted the wagon road at the far edge of the clearing. He put his horse across the stream, and then touched his hat and said, “Afternoon, Mrs. Miles.”

Abbie looked curiously at him and said, “Good afternoon, Mr. Danning. It is Mr. Danning, isn't it?”

Chris reined up and nodded, and said in a neutral voice, “It's a pleasant spot, isn't it?”

Abbie said dryly, with the faintest of smiles, “Ernie Coombs doesn't think so.”

“He's a hard man to please,” Chris murmured.

Abbie smiled openly then. “Are you going to finish the shack?”

“This is homesteaded land, and I am not the homesteader.”

“Then you haven't heard,” Abbie said, and laughed softly.

Chris watched her, curious now.

“Tip has quit. He's afraid of you, Mr. Danning, so he asked for his time and rode out.”

The import of this news came to Chris only a moment later, and he said gravely, “That won't please your husband, Mrs. Miles. Neither would your telling me about it.”

“I very seldom please my husband,” Abbie replied calmly, “or even try to.”

Chris said then, “I have been meaning to ask you something, Mrs. Miles, but I haven't seen you. I wanted to ask your pardon for my discourtesy to you.”

Abbie studied him in silence. He could tell she knew he was referring to what he had said of her to Yordy there at Melaven's, and she seemed grateful that he had been no more specific. She nodded and said softly, “You are pardoned, although it was your right.”

“That is no one's right,” Chris said, and lifted his reins.

“You knew Younger before, didn't you?” Abbie said suddenly, and she was watching carefully for a sign of assent in his face.

“No, ma'm.”

“I thought that might explain some things,” Abbie said. “Good day, Mr. Danning.”

As he touched his hat, Chris noticed for the first time the pair of saddlebags that lay at her feet. A flap of one was partly open; the necks of two bottles of whisky, grass stuffed between them, protruded.

Abbie saw his glance and looked down and fastened the flap, and then she said quietly, “It's still your right, you see, Mr. Danning.”

“Good day,” Chris said, and he rode on through the clearing to the wagon road.

So MacElvey was her source of whisky, Chris reflected; that accounted for the meeting he had witnessed earlier, and he thought closely of this. MacElvey's motive for supplying Abbie Miles with liquor baffled him, and he pondered it as he left the road and took the trail up the far side of the canyon.

In another hour he had put it out of his mind. It was twilight in the timber now and he rode steadily. He had been idling this afternoon, moving slowly in the direction of Station; now his pace was steady as he worked west. He chose each trail that would carry him into higher reaches of the Blackbows, and just before full dark he came out on the wagon road that led over the pass. He turned down it, knowing he was too high, and there was still light in the sky when he rode into Station.

A big two-story log house, its narrow veranda flush with the road, stood in a clearing across the road from a half dozen sagging barns and sheds. This was the old stage station antedating Triumph. The bar which was advertised by the weathered sign across the veranda reading HOTEL AND BAR, was patronized by almost every traveler too many miles from the next drink, and as Chris dismounted, the lamp in the bar was lighted.

The hotel, Chris guessed, was probably used only when the snow of the pass blocked travel. In the dusk, it had the color and appearance of an old and worn-out place quietly rotting away in the weather.

Taking his carbine from its boot, he speculated a moment as to whether he should hide his sorrel. Miles had told Yordy to have his stuff ready waiting. Miles, if there were no horse visible, might become suspicious and shy off, so that Hardison's man could not identify him.

Chris left the sorrel haltered to the veranda railing and climbed the sagging steps. He wondered if Hardison's man were here yet. The boards of the porch creaked as he crossed them, and before going into the bar he leaned his carbine against a weather-grayed chair by the door.

The bar across the rear wall was deserted, and the lamp on the bar top was smoking. The door that opened into the adjoining room was open, and Chris heard the sounds of a lamp being taken down and lighted.

He crossed to the bar and turned down the lampwick, and as he did so he heard the soft murmured “Thank you” of a woman's voice from the next room. The voice was oddly hushed, somehow familiar to him, but since this was unlikely, he dismissed it and leaned both elbows on the bar and scrubbed his cheek idly with the palm of his hand.

A man came into the room behind him, then, nudging the door half closed, and said, “Be right with you, son.”

Bije Fulton was a fat and cheerless man who appeared as if he had been surprised halfway through dressing himself. His feet slapped softly in the pair of congress gaiters he wore, and his suspenders were trailing down behind his wide stern. He was too fat to wear a belt and his suspenders probably chafed his shoulders, Chris thought. He wore a collarless shirt of alternate red and white striped material, and his round and heavy face, needing a shave, had the fretful expression of a man who is too slow and knows it. He came around the bar and placed the lamp in its wall bracket and looked at Chris.

“Whisky,” Chris said.

Bije put a bottle and glass in front of Chris and said, “Count your own drinks, two bits apiece. I got to eat.”

He padded out the door in the back wall at the end of the bar and Chris poured his drink and downed it.

He heard the door behind him swing open, and looked over his shoulder, and there was Kate Hardison. The glass was still in his hand. He put it down and walked over to her and said, “Why did they bring you up here?”

“I came by myself,” Kate said.

“Your father sent you?”

“Who else was there to send?”

Kate's question held him silent. Whom had he expected? One of the commissioners who was either a friend of Miles or business partner, and who could not be trusted not to tip off Miles beforehand? Or a townsman awed by Miles' power and money?

Kate said then, “Walt said I'd seen part of it, even started part of it. It was up to me to see it through.”

A woman!
Chris thought grimly, and then immediately,
Why not?
He looked beyond her into the bare parlor and said, “You'll have to stay in there, with the lamp out.”

“I've got a room upstairs. I can see the road and hear him too. I'll go up there.”

Chris nodded assent. She was to be trusted, and that's all he really cared about. There was one more thing he wanted to make sure of, and he asked, “What about the fat man?”

“Bije? He's his own man.”

Kate was wearing a dark riding habit with divided skirt, which made her look even slighter than usual. A momentary curiosity stirred in Chris now. She didn't like this, didn't want to believe it, didn't want to be here, and yet she had come. Some of the friendliness he felt for her at that moment must have been communicated to Kate, for she smiled faintly and said, “I can give you some advice if you're going to sit on the veranda and wait for him. Cover your bandage. He can see it in the dark.”

She turned then and left him, and Chris tramped thoughtfully to the porch and got his jumper that was tied behind his saddle. That was good advice, but why did she care?

He came back to the porch and pulled the chair away from the door, placing it in deep black shadow, and sat down. Leaning his carbine against the wall beside him, he relaxed in his chair, first wrapping the jumper about his bandage.

It was full dark now and the lamp threw an oblong of light down the steps and into the dust. Across the way in the corral a pair of horses quarreled and squealed and were silent again, and the silence of the night settled. Chris turned his head away from the lamplight so that his eyes would adjust themselves to the darkness. He was ready, and Hardison's witness was ready. Chris anticipated this with a slow and wicked relish, for up to now he had been patient, placing Della's welfare ahead of his own business, as he had promised. This now was his own personal affair; his obligations had been served.

The fat man, Bije, rattled the stove somewhere deep in the house, and on the heel of this noise Chris heard the first faint dust-muffled footfalls of a horse approaching from down the road. He reached for his carbine and laid it across the arms of his chair, the butt to the left side, for it would be from the left side he must shoot if trouble came.

A rider presently loomed indistinctly in the darkness, black against the gray of the road. He came on a ways and reined up, as if surveying the building, and Chris thought,
He's looking to see if Yordy's set to go
, and he came out of his chair and stepped back against the wall as the rider put his horse in motion again. The rider came boldly on and then, some thirty feet from the veranda, he reined up and his voice came quietly, “That you, Frank?”

It was Younger Miles speaking.

Chris said softly, “Frank couldn't come,” and watched Miles' body stiffen to attention in the saddle.

“Who's that? Speak up!” Miles said sharply.

“Yordy's run out on you, Miles,” Chris said. “Anything you'd like to take up with me about Falls Canyon?” He moved slowly to one side as he finished.

The swiftness of the shot surprised him. He heard the slug smash into the chair, and as he raised his carbine he thought:
He had his gun in his hand waiting for Yordy to answer
.

He shot too soon, clumsily, getting no real sight from his left shoulder, and already Miles had shot again. Chris' shot hit; he heard it, and then Miles' horse screamed. Miles' third shot boomed into the veranda roof and then Chris heard the heavy earth-shaking sound of Miles' horse going down, while he was trying savagely and clumsily to lever a shell into his carbine with his left hand. He could not, and the sense of urgency was wild within him. He looked up and saw Miles come to his knees in the oblong of lamp-lit dust where his horse had pitched him as it went down. Miles crawled on his knees now, frantically beating the dust for the gun he had dropped.

Chris forgot his carbine then. He put his hand out on the rail to vault it and only when his weight was in motion did he realize he had used his injured hand to support himself. The savage racking pain of it shocked up his shoulder and he tried to take the weight from his hand and his body crashed into the rail. A tearing sound of wood accompanied his fall as the rail gave way. He landed heavily on his side in the road, his carbine still in his hand. Coming to his knees, trying desperately, awkwardly to lever in the shell, he saw Miles rise, in the shaft of light from the saloon lamp. His hands were empty. He looked once, his face twisted with fury, in Chris' direction and heard the shell in Chris' carbine finally slip home. He ran, then, out into the night. Chris lifted his gun, sighting through the shaft of light, and he could see nothing, and rose to his feet, running, too, and crossed the lamp-lit oblong of ground.

The touch of light had destroyed his vision too. Cursing, he halted and raised his gun. He had to rest the gun on the back of his right wrist, and even as he shot at the sound of Miles' running rather than at his dim, blurred figure, he knew it was useless. He ran on, now, and he heard Kate's sharp cry. “Chris! Chris!” from the porch and paid it no attention, concentrating now on the fumbling way he was levering in another cartridge as he ran.

Rounding the corner of a shed, he halted, listening. Off in the timber now, he heard the crashing of brush, and behind that sound the swift pounding of Kate running toward him. He raised his gun again and lowered it, and a great sigh of disappointment came from him.

Kate reached him now and grabbed his arm and swung him around with the slight weight of her.

“Chris, don't follow him!” Kate begged.

The wild voice of Miles came from the timber then. “Next time I'll hold onto my gun, Danning!”

Chris half started for him, and then hauled up and looked bleakly at the carbine in his hand. He heard Kate say from beside him, “Are you hit?”

“No. Neither is he,” Chris said bitterly. He looked at her now, and she let go his arm. “Are you sure of it now?” he asked in the same bitter voice. “He had the gun in his hand, waiting for Yordy to sing out.”