Coroner Creek (22 page)

“I'm going to get Shallis and Coombs and Arnold. That all right with you?”

O'Hea nodded silently.

“Will you take care of Andy?” He nodded toward the street, and again O'Hea nodded assent. O'Hea was watching him curiously, and now he said, “That bunch will fight. They'll claim it was self-defense and that Leach is lying, and Miles will back 'em.”

“Let him,” Chris said, and went out.

When he hit the street he paused and looked at the canvas-wrapped burden on Andy's horse, which stood uneasily at the tie rail.
I told him to stay
, he thought somberly, and a deep sadness was in him as he remembered Andy's stout defense of him to Della. Andy was dead, but the Rainbow man who killed him would die, too, Chris thought grimly, and as he turned upstreet, he was already considering what lay ahead. He discarded immediately the notion of taking his saddle horse to Rainbow. He was going to bring back three men, and he had no intention of riding herd on them at night when they could break and scatter in three different directions. A buckboard and team would be better. He looked up at the sky, black and starless with its promise of coming rain.

At Melaven's, where a trio of punchers lounged in the doorway of the saloon, he turned the corner and was almost past the saloon when a passing rider called, “Danning?”

Chris stopped. The light from Melaven's lamps only dimly touched the shape of the man who had called. The rider pulled his horse around now and came over to the tie rail. It was the chunky Rainbow hand, Chris saw, one of the men who had been in the office with Miles that afternoon.

“Andy West was killed this afternoon up at Tip Henry's place,” the rider said. “Three of us caught him workin' on Tip's shack, planning to take over. When we jumped him, he pulled a gun on us. It was us or him, and he got it.”

Chris looked carefully at the man's broad, thick-lipped face, and said, “Who are you?”

“Stew Shallis.”

“Get down, Shallis,” Chris said, walking slowly toward the end of the tie rail and corning to a halt beside Shallis' horse.

“What for?”

“I'm arresting you.”

Shallis laughed then, and he spoke loudly now, for the benefit of the loafers in Melaven's door. “I rode all the way in here to tell you what had happened and to give that crazy Andy West a chance to be buried decent. He grabbed for his gun and we beat him to it. If that ain't self-defense, I don't know what is. You ain't arresting me for protectin' myself, and you can tell O'Hea I said so.”

“Get down,” Chris said quietly.

“I'm ridin' out of here, now, and you ain't stopping me.”

He lifted his reins. Chris tucked his shotgun under his arm and put his good hand under the stirrup of Shallis' saddle and heaved.

Shallis, taken unawares, didn't have the length of leg to hug his horse, and he slanted sideways out of the saddle, grabbing wildly at the horn.

He landed heavily in the dust and Chris stepped around the rump of his horse. Shallis rolled over, still on his side and tugged at the gun in his holster. Chris kicked his hand away from it and then reached down and buried his hand in Shallis' kinky hair and dragged him the ten feet into the light from the saloon door. Shallis forgot his gun; he put both hands on Chris' wrist to keep from having his hair pulled out. When Chris had him in the light, he toed Shallis' gun from its holster with his boot and then let go of his hair.

Shallis rolled over on his knees and swung clumsily at Chris' belly, and Chris put a foot on his chest and shoved, and Shallis went over on his back in the dust.

The shotgun hung down from Chris' hand; he didn't even raise it as he said quietly, “You know where you're going. Get up.”

Shallis cursed him, coming to his feet, and Chris didn't move. Shallis' clothes ribboned small streamers of dust into the road as he stood there, squat and spraddle-legged, his back to the men who were watching this from Melaven's door. The rage in him increased now as he saw the uselessness of fighting. He turned and said savagely to the men in the saloon doorway, “You goin' to let him do that to an innocent man?”

Chris didn't move. There was a long silence, and then someone said dryly, “Looks that way, sonny.” There was a murmur of laughter after that and Shallis, cursing bitterly, circled around and picked up his hat and tramped stiff-legged past the saloon toward the sheriff's office.

The first few drops of rain fell now, Chris noticed, as he followed Shallis downstreet past the barber shop and the high fence and closed gates of the lumberyard. He turned him over to O'Hea in the office, and after that he stepped down the corridor and into the cell block, closing the door after him. Leach was sitting on the edge of his cot, still furious, and he watched Chris with a bitter and venomous dislike.

“I've got Shallis out there, Leach,” Chris said. “He'll be put in with you, like Arnold and Coombs when they're caught. When they're tried for Andy's murder, you'll be the only witness against them. If they ever find out you saw it, then it will have to come from you, not from us. If they do, they'll likely kill you and I hope they do.”

Leach cursed him, and Chris went out, passing O'Hea and Shallis in the corridor. He paused in the doorway, watching the slow rain pock the heavy dust of the street and wondering how it would affect his plans.

There was a loose horse, saddled, standing in the middle of the street, and Chris recognized it as Shallis'. The horse had probably followed Shallis down the street. Chris was about to step over and catch the reins when the horse, who saw him, shifted its head faintly and pricked up its ears. It was looking at something barely upstreet, and now it snorted softly.

Curious, Chris watched him, not moving. The horse took a few steps toward the boardwalk, then stopped, still looking in the same direction, and not at Chris.

Chris still held the shotgun in his hand. He stepped cautiously out into the rain and looked toward Melaven's, then glanced at the horse again. The horse was still looking straight ahead of him, in the direction of the lumberyard next door. Chris' glance shifted to the double board gates of the drive. They had been closed when he passed with Shallis; they were ajar now, and the horse, looking for Shallis, was alert to the fact there was somebody behind them.

Chris stepped back into the doorway, considering this. Had Shallis been told off to feel out the ground by Miles, who had every intention of fighting this out if his men were arrested? Chris didn't know, but somebody was waiting behind the gate, and he was going to find out who it was.

He flattened himself against the building and moved onto the boardwalk, and then softly moved downstreet in the opposite direction from the lumberyard. When he came to the bridge over the Coroner, he turned down the alley that followed its bank until he came to the cross alley that passed by the rear of the jail and the lumberyard. The slow rain and the river's rush hushed his footfalls as he tramped back toward the lumberyard.

The fence here in the rear of the yard was high too, the gate shut. He tried to scale the fence, but one-handed he could not; and he turned away to search for something to climb on. When he found it—a sturdy crate by a woodshed across the alley—he moved it against the fence, but not before he carefully pushed his shotgun under the gate.

With the aid of the box, he climbed the wall and dropped to the ground inside the lumberyard which was utterly dark. Retrieving his gun now, he moved in against the piles of stacked lumber and silently worked his way toward the front gate. The rain made a soft plashing murmur on the new boards, which smelled cleanly of pitch.

Presently he came to the last pile of lumber. Beyond, was the lumber company office. Now he could see the dim light from the street through the four-foot gap in the gates. He listened, and presently, from a spot in the gloom against the office, he heard Ernie Coombs' voice whisper curses at Shallis' horse, and another man's voice grunted assent. They were so close it startled him.

He raised the shutgun hip high now, and said in an iron voice, “Walk this way, Ernie. I've got a shotgun on you.”

There were two seconds of silence, and then a pair of shots, one on the heel of the other, blasted the night. Chris saw a movement toward the gate, and he raised his gun, and when the figure driving through the gate was framed in the light, he let go. The man went down as if clubbed, and another figure, this one heavier, crossed the bar of light, heading not for the street but the pile of lumber on the other side of the drive. This would be Ernie, and Chris shot again, and heard his buckshot slap into the stacked boards. He ran now for this stack of lumber, his gun under his arm, his good hand fumbling for fresh shells in his pocket.

He rounded the pile of lumber between it and the fence, and at the other end he saw the bright flame of a six-gun. Ducking back around the pile, he slipped two fresh loads in his gun, and now two more shots came. The top board of the pile boomed hollowly and slithered off the pile, crashing at his feet.

When the noise of it had died, he heard the pounding of running feet, and he knew Ernie was racing for the rear fence. Wheeling now, he ran down the center drive, passing the ghostly stacks of lumber looming above him. He had counted Ernie's shots, and, supposing Ernie had shot first, he had only one or, at best, two cartridges left. Ernie with his crippled hand would have the same trouble loading his gun as Chris did, and Chris was counting on that.

He came to the last stack of lumber, with the rear fence beyond, and he ran around its corner. There was no welcoming shot, and he hauled up, listening. He heard the faint grunt of a man and the scraping and slipping of boots on boards, and he guessed immediately that Ernie was trying to scale the fence.

Chris raised his gun and ran now toward the corner of the lot, peering through the rain into the darkness.

He saw a black bulk against the fence near to the corner, and he hauled up and called, “I've got a sight on your back, Ernie.”

“I quit, damn you! I quit!” Ernie called in an angry, muffled voice. Chris heard him drop to the ground, and then he moved slowly forward.

Ernie stood motionless, his hands shoulder high, his bandage white in the darkness, as Chris approached him. Close now, Chris saw he was hatless, and his heavy breathing was the only sound in the slow rain.

Chris said then, for the second time that night, “You know where you're going. Go on.”

The gate was open when they approached it, and a dozen men were clustered around the fallen man. From out of the gloom behind one of the stacks of lumber, O'Hea emerged, and wordlessly fell in beside Chris.

The crowd parted for the three of them, and Chris hauled up and looked down at the man lying on the ground. It was Bill Arnold. The shot had caught him fair in the back, in a spread of shot that a man's hand could cover, and he was dead.

Ernie had halted, too, and now he looked up at Chris and said thinly, “There's other people got shotguns here, too, Danning.”

O'Hea led the way back to the jail. Chris cleared the corridor of a few curious stragglers, and Ernie stood defiantly impassive while O'Hea opened the cell door. Shallis watched from his cot.

Leach had come off his. Now, as the cell door swung open for Ernie, he snarled, “Keep that damn murderer away from me! I ain't a killer and I won't sleep with a pair of killers. I want a lawyer! I want Mrs. Harms!”

Chris saw Ernie's bleach eyes come alert, and he knew the damage was done. Leach had been warned, and he had not heeded it.

Chris went back into the corridor and persuaded the stragglers that the excitement was over, and then O'Hea came up behind him under the lamp. The old man said, “There's a cot I'll put just inside the door. You get some sleep, son.”

Chris said, “Did you hear Leach?”

“I heard him,” O'Hea said grimly. “That means he'll stay locked up till the trial, along with Ernie and Shallis.”

They bid each other good night, and Chris, wet and tired, stepped out onto the boardwalk. Waycross' store across the street was lighted, which meant that Bill Arnold was being laid out in a back room alongside the man he had helped kill. The thought brought little comfort to Chris. He passed the lumberyard, and had mounted the first step of the outside stairs to his room above the barber shop when he halted.

There was something he had yet to do tonight, something he remembered only now. He went on upstreet now in the warm rain, which had soaked through his shirt. In anticipation of the inevitable mud, Hughie Melaven had had his swamper lay planks across the road at all four corners, and Chris stepped onto the plank that gave onto the boardwalk under the hotel veranda. There was a light in the hotel lobby, and he went in.

Fred Musgrove was standing in a corner of the lobby, talking to Kate as Chris stepped in. Fred ceased talking then, and touched his hat, and went out, passing Chris and bidding him good night. Chris noticed his shirt was wet, and surmised Fred had told Kate of tonight's happenings. He passed a pair of punchers waiting for the northbound stage who were snoring, hats over faces, on one of the big lounges, and went up to Kate.

“I wanted you to know I took your advice today,” he said quietly. “I am O'Hea's deputy.”

Kate smiled faintly. “I think that news has got around by now, Chris,” she said gently, but there was pleasure reflected in her face. She said then, “Why did you take my advice?”

“I've been wondering that. Maybe because you were right about why I am here.”

“You admit that?”

Chris only nodded, and Kate said, “I wish I had known you before this happened to you.”

Chris frowned. “Why would you?”

“Because you're a kind man underneath. It shows through your selfishness once in a while.”

Chris said, with a faint irony, “You seem to know a lot about me, Kate.”