Coroner Creek (21 page)

Accordingly, he set about notching the logs that were scattered about, swinging the big double-bitted ax with an easy strength. He had worked only a few minutes when he discovered that the six-gun rammed in the waistband of his jeans got in his way. Taking it out, he laid it on a log, and immediately decided it wouldn't be of much use to him there if he had to use it in a hurry. Thinking it over a moment, he compromised. He went over to his pack and brought out his rifle, which he tilted against a near-by log. Mentally, he resolved to always be working close to one or the other, and then he set about his work again.

As he worked now, he became absorbed in it, taking a solid, nameless pleasure in watching the ax bite deeply and accurately into the logs and sending big heavy chips flying as if impelled from a gun. He moved from one log to another, notching only one end now before measuring, and the big muscles of his shoulder began to loosen, and he sweat. There was nothing in his mind except a deep contentment.

He was swinging long, crisp downstrokes on one of the few dry logs when the feeling came to him that he was being watched. It came suddenly, inexplicably, and he looked up.

There was Ernie Coombs standing some ten feet away regarding him with those cold and humorless bleach eyes. Stew Shallis stood beside him. Andy wiped his forehead with his sleeve, pushed his hat back on his head, and used that moment to turn his head so he could glance at his rifle.

Bill Arnold was standing where the rifle had stood, and he had it in his hand. Andy knew his six-gun was behind him and he wondered if someone had that, too, but he didn't turn. He was caught cold. He dropped his arm slowly and Ernie Coombs said, “Finishin' it for Henhouse?”

There was something baleful and ugly in Ernie's tone, as if all he wanted was proof.

Andy sized up the three men carefully, and he felt a cold fear touch him inside. He'd been caught red-handed in something that was really important to them.

Slowly, he tried to marshal the facts in his favor that Leach and Della had spoken this morning, and now he had less faith in them than he had had then.

“It's Tip Henry's place, and he's run out,” Andy said.

“And he told you to take over,” Bill Arnold jibed angrily.

“He never told anybody to take over,” Andy said doggedly. “First one here gets it.”

Ernie said quietly, ominously, “I watched you scare Tip off and take over the canyon. And now you steal a half-built shack we threw up and figure to move us off. Try it, startin' now.”

He moved toward Andy, reaching with his left hand for the gun in its holster at his side. Andy knew dismally this was it, and he also knew he was going down fighting. He wheeled and ran for the log behind him on which he had laid his six-gun.

It wasn't there. They'd got that, too.

In the fleeting part of a second, Andy understood he had been crowded into going for a gun that wasn't there, so that they were blameless.

He heard the first shot and tried to stop running; he was giving up. The second shot he didn't hear. Something hit him and all sound, all sight, all will, all thought ribboned off thinly and stopped, and he came to rest with his face in the grass.

CHAPTER XVII

Kate took a last look around the kitchen, saw everything was in order and blew out the lamp. Moving into the dining room, she walked over to blow out the lamp, above the long center table, and in passing she shoved two chairs back into place. The act of doing so reminded her of something and she paused, looking again at the two chairs. Yes, this was where she and Chris had sat this morning when they talked.

She blew out the lamp, wondering now what had prompted her to do what she'd done this morning. There was little enough self-deception in her that she knew she had wanted Chris Danning to stay here. She'd acted like any woman afraid of losing her man, and he angered and baffled her.

Fred Musgrove and Abe Wildman, from Ed Lavendar's outfit, were yawning in the lobby chairs, and Kate spoke to them and went upstairs, through the dark parlor, and out onto the veranda roof.

Walt was in his chair, and Kate pulled another beside him, saying, “I thought Abbie and her father were with you.”

“They quit me for a cribbage game,” Walt said quietly, and then he added, “Funny what self-respect will do for a man, Sam looks better already.”

“You couldn't see him,” Kate said.

“I could feel it. It's in his voice and what he talks about, and the way he talks to Abbie.”

Kate didn't answer. She was staring quietly at the half-dark street. Presently, Walt said, “It'll rain soon. I can smell it.”

Kate didn't answer, and Walt was silent too. The minutes passed, and Kate stirred restlessly and was quiet again. Suddenly she said, “Why didn't he thank me, Walt? Or even tell me?”

“He doesn't like to be beholden to anybody, I reckon.” Walt looked at her. “This is Danning we're talking about, isn't it? You didn't mention any name.”

Kate laughed softly at herself, and Walt said, “What put it into your head to send him to Sam?”

“I didn't want to see him go,” Kate said honestly. “Don't ask me why; because I don't know. A week ago I wanted him chased out of town.”

“You want to get even with Miles for the way he's treated Abbie, maybe.”

“Yes, but that wasn't it.”

“Then you like him.”

“Yes,” Kate agreed, looking at him. “I do. Why?”

“He's a surly devil,” Walt observed.

“And rude and insolent and untactful and thankless, yet I like him.”

“You feel sorry for him. It's him alone against Miles.”

“Feel sorry for him?” Kate echoed. “Sorry like I do for a grizzly bear. He'll kill Miles. I'm sure of that.”

“Ah,” Walt said. “If you've seen that, then quit liking him, Katie. As long as a man's got a grudge, he's no good. He'll trample people, and he's too selfish to know he's doing it. He'll hurt you.”

“But you like him. You said so,” Kate countered.

Walt said gently, “I'm not a girl. It doesn't hurt me when he doesn't thank me when he should. Or when he doesn't tell me his business. Or when what I say goes against what he thinks, and he says so.”

Kate had no answer for that, but she thought about it. It was as close as Walt ever came to advising her, and he was dead serious about it, and she supposed he was right.

“If they don't tame by themselves, Katie, you can't tame 'em. And now I'd like a pipe, please.”

Kate sat still a rebellious and chastened moment, and then rose. She looked down into the street as she turned, and something down there caught her attention and held it. It was a small man on the ridden horse leading another horse, and over the back of the second horse was a canvas-wrapped bundle. A pair of boots hung below the canvas, and the general shape of the bulk was unmistakable.

She leaned forward and looked closely and when she was sure it was Leach Conover she called, “Who is it, Leach?”

Leach looked up. “Andy West,” he said, and he turned the corner and went up the street to the sheriff's office.

After supper Chris got a solitary drink at Melaven's and watched the faro game for an hour, and afterward went back to the sheriff's office. Lighting the lamp, he took off his hat and threw it in one of the chairs and sank slowly into O'Hea's chair. He was going to have to see Kate tonight and acknowledge his debt to her for this new job, but he was putting it off. The way she read him today, heart, soul and mind, still troubled him.

Painstakingly, he rolled a cigarette and lighted it, watched the blue smoke hanging motionless in the still lamp-lit air, and a strange discouragement was on him. He knew why. This morning, he had thought this would end today, and it had not, and he was no nearer the end. He had even got a room over the barbershop this afternoon; he was here for a while. He wondered, almost furtively, what he would do after he had killed Miles, and he did not know. He had never thought beyond that point because he had never wanted to, and yet tonight he wondered for idle minutes.

Purposely, then, with a feeling of guilt, he thought of Bess, reaching back in his mind for the place in his fantasy where he had left her. But it was no good tonight either. Memory, he reflected bitterly, was a fragilé thing, perishable as all things are perishable, and he hated it.

He heard footsteps in the corridor, and presently the anteroom door was opened and Leach Conover stepped in. Leach's clean wash-faded levis and shirt had spots of blood on them. His bitter eyes held a quick surprise as he saw Chris in O'Hea's chair, and he said sourly, “Where's O'Hea?”

“Sleeping, likely. What do you want of him?”

“Why should I tell you?” Leach demanded truculently.

“I'm his deputy.”

Leach thought about this a long moment, then shrugged. “Andy's shot. I got him outside on his horse, dead.”

Chris felt a sickening wrench deep within him, and he sat there motionless, looking at Leach, understanding this only with difficulty. Leach, however, started in with the dreary story of Box H's decision to occupy Tip's homestead, of his parting from Andy, and of his own approach to Thessaly. He had heard the shots, dismounted, crawled through the timber, and seen Stew Shallis, Ernie Coombs and Bill Arnold standing over Andy. They had put down Andy's rifle and six-gun, which they, strangely, had possession of, on separate logs and departed. Andy had been shot in the back. O'Hea, roused by Kate, came in during Leach's story, and silently took a chair and listened.

When Leach finished, Chris' gray eyes were cold with hatred.

He said then, “Did you have a gun on you, Leach?”

Leach eyed him warily. “I did, but I wasn't takin' on any three men.”

“No,” Chris said, and all his contempt for Leach was in that one word. There was something else he wanted answered, and he voiced it now. “Whose idea was it to move into Tip's place?”

Leach regarded him carefully. “All of us. We had more right there than Rainbow, now that Tip was gone.”

“Who gave the order?”

“Mrs. Harms.”

“How'd she know Tip was gone?”

“I told her. You told us this morning.”

“So it was your idea?” Chris murmured.

“You said they were gone. How'd I know they'd come back?”

A feeling of gray hopelessness touched Chris then, and he looked at O'Hea. “Have we got a jail?”

“Yes. Back end.” O'Hea was puzzled.

Chris rose. “Show me.”

O'Hea stood up and walked past Leach into the anteroom. Chris motioned Leach to go ahead, but Leach was suspicious. “Where we goin'?”

“You're going to be locked up where you can't hurt anybody else,” Chris said, walking toward him.

Leach made a grab for the gun in his belt and Chris simply leaned against his slight body, pinning him to the door. He put his left hand swiftly over the hammer of Leach's half-drawn gun and twisted the gun out of Leach's hand. It was done quickly, contemptuously, easily.

O'Hea had stopped in the anteroom. Now Chris shoved Leach at him and said mildly, “Lead the way, O'Hea.”

Leach snarled over his shoulder, “You can't do it, you damn drifter! I'll have Mrs. Harms get a lawyer that'll run you out of the country!”

Chris didn't answer. Each time Leach would stop in the corridor to curse him, Chris would shove him gently along. O'Hea lighted a lamp down the corridor and then opened the door at the end of the corridor and lighted the lamp in the big room beyond. The jail itself was a large room, running the width of the building, with three barred windows close to its high ceiling. A third of the length of the room there were bars running from the floor to a heavy ceiling beam, and there was a barred door in the middle which stood open. It reflected a crude but effective blacksmithing job. There was only the one big cell, which held four cots along the wall.

Chris, with O'Hea watching, shoved Leach into the cell and locked the door with the key O'Hea extended. Leach was still cursing shrilly as Chris and O'Hea stepped out into the corridor.

Chris tramped back into the office and picked up his hat. He felt O'Hea watching him, and now O'Hea, waiting for an opportunity, said mildly, “You can't do that, Chris. What's he in there for?”

“I told him,” Chris said grimly. “He's got a man killed, and he lost those two women six thousand dollars, all in a couple of days. I've got to talk to Della. He can't stay on.”

“But he's in jail,” O'Hea pointed out.

“He was a witness to a murder, wasn't he? Can't you hold a man on that?”

O'Hea said he could, and only then did Chris realize he was still holding Leach's gun in his hand. He tossed it toward the table, where it landed and skidded off, falling to the floor underneath. He went over to the table and knelt and picked up the gun, and then he saw, within reach, the sheet of MacElvey's paper that he had neglected this afternoon. He picked it up, and as soon as he had it he saw it was a folded sheet of paper, unlike MacElvey's stuff. Unfolding it, he read in printed letters which he knew instantly had been used to disguise the handwriting: “Miles is moving in on Tip Henry's homestead.” It was unsigned. Chris, behind his anger, made an effort to pull his mind back to this. Somebody close enough to Miles to know his plans had shoved the note under the door, probably when the office was locked for the supper hour. He puzzled at it a moment, knowing only one thing, that there was a traitor in Miles' crew. The information wasn't of any value now, but if Andy West hadn't been killed, it would have been. Chris folded the note and put it in his pocket while O'Hea, seated now, watched him.

Chris rifled through the gear on the table and turned up an unopened box of shotgun shells, buckshot load. He rammed a handful of them in his pocket, and then tramped over to the gun rack and took down a double-barreled shotgun. He looked at O'Hea now.