Gunsmoke Justice (12 page)

“I’m not the law in the valley,” McFee answered. “He can do what he wants out of town.”

Brad had half expected this, yet it sickened him. He jerked his head. “Go on and ride,” he said. “Go tell Biddle and Quarles.” His voice sharpened. “But the next time you touch Split S beef or put your foot in Pine Canyon I start shooting.”

The thin-faced man started to laugh, saw Brad’s face, and swallowed back the sound. He led the others out; they mounted and rode hard going north. Brad turned from the doorway to the sheriff.

“Thanks for the help, McFee.”

“I ain’t the law in the valley and — ”

“The valley’s bigger than the town,” Brad said. “When Quarles has swallowed everything there, this place won’t be a good bite. Remember that.”

McFee sat down, trembling. “Get the hell out of my office!” he ordered.

I
N THE MORNING
Arden took the team and spring wagon and headed for town. He had seen no sign of Jordan, nor heard any repercussions of the night before. Quarles’ men might have caught Jordan and Hegstrom, he thought, but his hopes were not high. Jordan was too clever a man to be easily trapped.

The worry over what had happened and what could come of it lay heavy on his mind. That, coupled with the rustling of the Split S beef by Biddle, ate into him steadily as he rode along. When he paused and looked across at Quarles’ and Biddle’s fields he felt no better. They were done with haymaking there. The great stacks stood solid and rich, waiting for winter.

Close around him was the yellow Split S hay, and the sight of it put a bitter taste in his mouth. He was all too aware of the position Quarles had placed him in. Should Quarles decide to throw against him, Arden knew he would be squeezed out with no recourse. Even if June went under and he got his opportunity to take over, without hay he would be no better off than she. If Quarles chose not to let him have winterfeed, where was he?

The idea of it grew stronger, nourished by Quarles’ attitude of last night. By the time Arden reached town he had worked himself into a mood of sullen revengefulness. Leaving the team behind the Sawhorse Saloon, he went first to the store and got his machinery, and after that stopped briefly to speak to Faith. Then he walked deliberately up the stairs to Keinlan’s office. He went in without knocking.

He was ready for a showdown talk with Quarles, and when he found only Keinlan in the office it took him a moment to adjust to the situation. Keinlan regarded him in silence, studying Arden’s dark scowl.

“Something eating you?” Keinlan asked pleasantly.

“I want to see Quarles.”

“Not here yet,” Keinlan said. He measured his man and decided that this was the time. “Have a drink,” he said without joviality.

Arden’s suspicion showed. “Since when you getting so friendly?” he demanded in a surly tone.

Keinlan took one of his cigars and rustled it between his long fingers. “You come in here looking for Quarles and on the prod,” he answered. His drooping eyelids shut out anything Arden might want to see. “That makes you what some would call a kindred spirit.”

The suspicion stayed openly on Arden’s face. He had never liked this man because he had never really known him. Keinlan was just a flickering character who moved in and out of his saloon; Arden had never been able to pin him down. He only knew that when a man was down and out Keinlan usually had a hand in helping him. But outside of that he had no clues to the mind of the saloon owner.

Now Arden said, “My business with Quarles is private.”

“Sure,” Keinlan agreed easily. “Nobody knows about it but you and him and me.” He paused and added dryly, “And most of the Double Q hands.”

Arden’s baffled anger started to twist toward this man who was obviously goading him. And then he stopped it. Thoughtfully, he took a chair and shaped a cigarette. Keinlan wasn’t talking just to hear his own words, Arden suspected. There was meaning here if he could get at it.

“Say what you’re trying to,” he ordered. Touching a match to his cigarette, he sucked smoke in deeply. His eyes watched Keinlan over the top of the flame, but there was nothing in that long drooping face to give him a hint of what went on behind it.

“Quarles is starting to move,” Keinlan said. He laid down his unlit cigar and pressed the tips of his fingers together. “He’s got it figured to get rid of the ones in his way before he goes up against the Split S.”

“Split S is nothing,” Arden said curtly.

“Not even with Jordan there now?” Keinlan countered. He saw Arden’s surprised expression. “Sure,” he went on, “what’s between you and Quarles is your private business. Only Quarles was in last night telling me what happened.”

“Why?” Arden demanded. He was no longer making much effort to hide his feelings from Keinlan. His wonder over all this was plain.

“Quarles thinks you’re up to something,” Keinlan said blandly. “He wants me to find out what it is.”

Arden took a deep drag from his cigarette; his hand shook noticeably. “Why?” he demanded again.

“I told you, Quarles figured on getting rid of the ones in his way,” Keinlan answered. His half-shut eyes flickered. He was a patient man; he had waited a long time for what was soon to come.

“But I’m with him,” Arden cried. “I’m not against him.” He got to his feet, his anger forgotten in a rush of fear. In that moment he could see what he had schemed for being drawn away from him, inch by tantalizing inch. “Him and me — ”

Keinlan’s voice was smooth. “He don’t trust you, Arden. You’re smart, maybe too smart for him. He’s afraid of that.”

The smooth talk went over Arden, easing his fright and giving him a chance to think again. Once more his suspicion returned, directed at Keinlan. “You’re his man. Why tell me this?”

“I’m my own man,” Keinlan said, “Quarles thinks I’m his man. He thinks you are, too.”

Arden sat down again, his breathing heavy. “You haven’t said anything yet.”

“Quarles wants Split S,” Keinlan told him. “He and Biddle figure on having everything worth having on the west side, including your two-bit piece. When that’s swallowed, they’ll be too big to hold and they’ll go east.”

“I was to get Split S,” Arden said furiously. “That was in the deal.”

“So it was,” Keinlan murmured, and his smile made a point of it.

Arden flung his cigarette angrily toward a spittoon and immediately began to roll another. He sat hunched over, smoking fitfully, turning Keinlan’s words over, letting them work into his mind. The more he thought about them, the more sense they made. Particularly after last night.

He straightened up and dropped the second cigarette after the first one. “Bring out that drink,” he said.

Keinlan was careful, apparently matching Arden drink for drink. But he knew his own capacity, and he knew how to make another man think he was taking on as big a load or bigger. He did little talking until the contents of the bottle were well along toward the bottom.

Arden’s breathing had become heavy. His thirst, fed by injured anger, was consuming him. He was not a heavy drinking man except when pressures grew too great for him. Usually he was too much aware of his weakness toward liquor, and he stayed carefully away from more than one or two Saturday night glasses.

Keinlan saw the liquor sweat on Arden’s forehead and he moved in, still cautiously. “Quarles figures on getting you in a tight place and then you’ll have to work for him and get nothing for it.”

Arden wiped at his forehead. “I’ve got more savvy than Quarles. Let him think it. When the squeeze comes, he’ll get caught, not me.”

“That’s right,” Keinlan said. “You play it right and that’s the way it’ll be.” He lifted the bottle and poured Arden a shot with exaggerated care.

Arden drank and mulled it over. He drank again, and finally he burst out, “So he thinks he’ll get me before I get him!”

“He counts on it.” Keinlan was willing to wait, to play this along until it came out of Arden of his own free will. It was not long. Arden began to see Keinlan in a new light. Here was a man he had misjudged. Here was a friend when one was needed. Keinlan would help him outwit Quarles. And help him get rid of this new threat to his plans — Jordan. Keinlan could see Arden’s ideas forming, and he dropped just enough of the right words to make them come.

“Jordan’s dangerous, too,” Arden said. “Maybe it was just luck that he happened to go to Quarles’ last night, and maybe he figured it out. I don’t know.”

“That doesn’t matter,” Keinlan said. “What does matter is the fact that he went and saw you there.”

“I can straighten it out with June Grant,” Arden said. “But it don’t make things any easier.”

“Not for you, maybe,” Keinlan said. “But it makes things easier for Quarles.”

Something in the tone of his voice brought Arden’s head up with a jerk. He focused his eyes carefully on the saloon owner. “What do you mean?”

“See what Quarles would do?” Keinlan asked. “Now he can have Jordan killed and you blamed for it. If anybody was to question it, he could point out that Jordan was accusing you of trying to hurt the Split S. Or maybe he’ll have you killed and Jordan blamed. He could give the same reasons. One way or the other, you’d be done, Arden.”

“He won’t get a chance,” Arden said hotly. “Damn him!”

“That’s right,” Keinlan agreed. “We’ll get him.” He made a deliberate hiccoughing sound. “You and me.”

Suspicion came back to Arden. “What you getting out of it?”

“My half,” Keinlan said. “You take the upper end of the valley. “I’ll take this end and the town. And plenty of water.”

Arden thought it over. He reached for the whisky bottle. “A deal!” he said. He poured himself a drink and downed it. Keinlan waited for it to hit him, and when it did Keinlan caught him as he fell forward, soddenly asleep, and dragged him to the couch.

Smiling, Keinlan went downstairs to wait for Quarles.

• • •

Together Brad and Olaf went into the restaurant after leaving the sheriff’s office. It was between dinner and supper, but seeing it open reminded Brad that he had had no meal since breakfast. “Eat while we can now,” he advised Olaf. “We may get caught short for time.”

Olaf was only too willing to eat, and they took places at the counter. Faith served them, but with none of the friendliness she had shown the day before. Brad wore his gun openly and he saw that she was looking at it.

“There’s no teeth in the sheriff’s law any more,” he said flatly.

Her coolness crystallized into open contempt. “So now you’re strong enough to flout an old man, too,” she said. Her voice sharpened. “I was in back of the office just a little while ago and heard what you tried to do.” The contempt roughened, riding over him. “You can’t be satisfied with causing June Grant trouble before she’s ready; you try to cause it in town, too.”

Brad studied her for a quiet moment. Her eyes met his and she did not look away. Whatever this was that had a grip on her, he saw that she believed in it completely.

“Arden’s been talking to you,” he said in a tone of sudden understanding.

Faith tossed her head. “He has. This morning.”

“Ah,” Brad said, “that’s your mistake, then.”

“Mistake?” she cried. “Is it a mistake to know that you’re trying to use Dave and June to settle your grudge against Quarles? And trying to use my uncle for the same purpose?”

Brad could not fathom this girl. It seemed that there was no pleasing her. And yet, in a way, he could not put the blame on her. Arden was a smooth man with his tongue, and he had been shrewd enough to turn to his own advantage the fact that he had been caught at Quarles’ place. Brad had liked Faith McFee since their first meeting, and it dug into him to see her taken in by Arden.

“When I came here,” he said to her now, “I had no fight with Quarles. I have reason enough now, but it was through you and your uncle I got into this. June Grant asked for help, and we’re trying to give it to her.” He met her gaze with cold anger showing in his eyes. “Do you think we came back just for Ike Quarles? I could ride in and shoot him and go if that was all.”

As he looked at her, her eyes faltered and slid away. She was an honest person with herself as a rule and she could not deny that these things he said were true. Yet she had to put her trust in something — and Arden had said otherwise.

“Dave told me — ” she began.

Brad got up and laid a coin on the counter, his lips clamped tight to hold back the scathing words waiting there. At the door he turned. “If the sheriff wants to press his law, I’ll be at the One-Shot.”

She picked up the plates. “Do your own taunting,” she said coldly. When the door had slammed she walked away, dropping the plates in a deep pan. She stood with her hands in the soapy water, feeling the throb of anger slowly diminishing at her temples.

“Brutal,” she whispered. But was his way the wrong way? Without consciously trying, she found herself making a comparison between Brad and Dave Arden. The result brought a flush to her cheeks, and with a sudden tightening of her full mouth she tore her mind from the subject. An idea came, lingering until she was forced to recognize it. She would have to talk to Dave again. This morning he had been hurried and quick. Perhaps there was more than she had sensed in his words.

O
N THE SHORT RIDE
to the One-Shot, Brad studied the town and found it quiet. Those few people on the street were marked in their disinterest toward him and Olaf. It would have amused him before, but now he realized that in this neutrality there was meaning. His return was understood as a challenge to Quarles, and there were none who dared side openly with one or the other.

“They’ll wait until they can smell the wind,” he said to Olaf, “and then they’ll run to get behind it.”

He did not see Keinlan, who had watched him from the time he had first come until now. If he had, it would not have worried him; he knew nothing of the man.

It was Doc Stebbins Brad sought, and he located him in his office at the rear of the saloon. He was finishing a sleep and there was puffiness on his usually cheerful face. But there was none of the friendliness that Brad had expected.

“Professional visit or otherwise?” the Doc asked.

“You wanted to see me,” Brad reminded him.

“You took long enough,” Doc Stebbins answered. He shook himself like a dog coming out of water. “You took too long.”

Brad dropped to the edge of an ancient sofa and shaped a cigarette. “So,” he said when it was finished, “there’s no help here, either.”

“You’re rushing things,” the Doc said irritably.

He had heard, too, Brad realized. He said, “Five weeks — six? However many I’ve been here.” His voice was level. “Split S hay is dried out. Split S beef has been rustled. I found three hundred prime steers today. I’m hurrying things.”

“Split S isn’t ready to fight,” the Doc objected. “What have you got? June’s three hands are useless. That leaves Arden and you two. What is that against Quarles?”

Brad was weary of hearing this refrain, of seeing the way these people were acting. He would have given his help had they not asked for it. The fact that they did ask made him think they should give some in return. But one hint that it was time to move and they all crawled toward their holes. Too often he had seen apathy or fear let a man like Quarles get a grip on a whole county.

“Arden was with Quarles last night,” Brad said. This was a thing he had not intended to tell, but since Arden had already said it himself, he saw no reason to keep quiet any longer.

“Faith told me,” the Doc said. “Arden spoke to her this morning. He was trying to deal with Quarles. He was close to getting somewhere before you busted it up.”

“That’s the way of it,” Brad agreed, but his smile was bitter and caustic. “Did he also say he had been to Quarles more than the once? Olaf saw him riding there this spring.”

Doc Stebbins rubbed his hand over a bristly chin. “That could mean a number of things,” he said thoughtfully.

Brad realized impatiently that the Doc was not even going to try to understand. He stood up, “I’ll get no help here, I see.”

“Not until June is ready,” Doc Stebbins said. “We can’t risk turning Quarles on her yet. If it’s not already too late,” he added heavily.

“You won’t help, but you’ll hinder me,” Brad said.

“Which is saying well help Quarles,” the Doc rejoined heatedly. His face was beginning to redden wtih anger. “We’ll not do that, either.”

“Then,” Brad asked, “why is Quarles trying to get Parker out of here?” If he could get nothing else, he might get those last bits of information he had not yet gathered.

“He’s smart. And,” Doc Stebbins said, “before Parker came, Quarles was courting June Grant.” Even in anger there was a quick note in his voice. “Or courting her grassland. She wasn’t encouraging him but, even so, he got the idea that Parker was at fault. It hurt his pride.”

Brad could understand more about Ike Quarles now. “His pride is that deep, then?”

“That deep,” the Doc agreed.

Brad went to the door. “One more thing and then you can go back to your sleeping. Where does Quarles come when he’s in town?”

“The Sawhorse,” Doc Stebbins answered. As the door opened he added, “So now you — ”

“Think what you like,” Brad retorted, and left. With Olaf following in silence, he rode to the Sawhorse, tied in front, and went inside.

It was a dim place, musty with the smell of stale beer and of men who worked more than they washed. Ike Quarles was standing at the bar, drinking beer and talking to a thin man Brad did not know. The few loafers in the room silenced their talk, and Quarles turned to see who had come in.

Brad’s voice was quiet but loud enough to carry. “I moved your beef out of Pine Canyon today,” he told Quarles. “I put Split S stock in.”

Quarles stood very still. The fingers wrapped around his beer glass grew white with his effort at control. The tall man beside him moved quietly aside and went around behind the bar.

“And I’m going up to homestead that meadow now,” Brad went on. His tone was flat but the taunt in his words was obvious.

Quarles’ breathing was heavy. His big, flabby body stirred as he moved a step forward. Then he stepped back and stood still again. “You can come here with a gun and talk like that,” he said.

“Wear yours next time,” Brad answered. “MeFee won’t stop you.” He turned, pushing open the batwing doors, and stepped to the board walk. Anger was still prodding him. He knew the feeling and he knew, too, the danger in the recklessness such anger always brought. At the moment his indignation was no greater with Quarles than with the people of the town.

As they rode back toward the Split S, however, he began to work it over in his mind. In a measure he could understand the townspeople. He could not agree with them, and his contempt was not lessened even though he saw their position plainly enough. Had he been a man of less determination, he would have given up the desire that brought him here and ridden on. But no matter how McFee acted, no matter how any of them acted, he had promised to help June Grant, and he intended to finish what he had started. He had never been a man to turn off a trail once he had begun to follow it.

It was for that reason he had first decided to go through with the homesteading plan. Since talking with Faith and the Doc he had found other, more immediate reasons. He had offered a challenge openly to Quarles. If it did not draw the man out, the town and the valley would know soon enough, and Quarles would be the one to walk softly.

Quarles would know this, too, Brad realized, and there would be little waiting now before the Double Q was ordered to hit him.

At the Split S, Brad found no one but June Grant. He spoke plainly, as he had the day before. “This morning we moved your beef into Pine Canyon,” he told her. “There were three hundred head at Biddle’s.”

She seemed bewildered and uncertain, and Brad knew that Arden had got to her, too. “You’re afraid that Quarles will come,” he said.

“I’m sick of waiting,” she said. “But–”

“But,” he finished for her, “you have to trust me or Arden. It can’t be both any more.”

“I’ve known Dave for two years,” she said. There was pleading in her voice, and indecision as well.

“And me for maybe a month,” he said. “We’ll ride now.”

She put out a hand. “Please. I don’t know what to do.”

“I do,” Brad said. “I’m going to homestead that meadow where Quarles has his water. I already told him, so he’ll waste himself on me instead of coming here.”

“You’re doing it to keep him away from here?”

“Partly,” Brad answered. “The rest is for myself. I want the land.”

She looked at him as if only the last part of what he had said registered with her. “Oh.”

Brad went out and hitched the team to the wagon, tying their saddle horses behind. He and Olaf were starting down the road when June Grant came out. He said, “I’d be obliged if you’d tell Parker I’d like to see him.”

“I will,” she said. The indecision was still with her.

“If,” he added, “we’re all still alive.” Tipping his hat, he started the team again.

It was growing late when he finally got them through the forest and up to Olafs old cabin. He saw that Newt had been shrewd enough to leave it standing to give the impression Brad and Olaf had ridden out. The pack horse had been taken, Brad supposed, to Double Q or had been destroyed. At the moment it made no difference; there were other things to be concerned with.

Getting down, Brad went inside and found the cabin completely empty. It was as he had expected. They had cleaned out everything. He took a lantern from the supplies in the wagon, and with its light walked to where he had first started shooting at Newt. He found what he sought nearly buried in forest duff. It was his bone-handled  .44, and the familiar weight on his leg was a good feeling.

“We’ll drive this stuff as close to the meadow as we can,” he told Olaf, “and pack it in the rest of the way.”

There was still a little light when they left the trees, but it was all used up long before they had finished the job. They had to leave the wagon a good quarter of a mile from the meadow and, using the team as pack horses, move their goods in that way. With the last of the daylight Brad found a ledge on the east wall enclosing the meadow, and he chose this place for a camp. It was not too good but a shallow overhang offered some protection and it was up out of the soggy bottom.

He arranged their supplies in front of the overhang in the manner of a low wall. The guns and ammunition he put where they could be reached easily. Olaf cut firewood while he finished the task, and then they ate a quick meal. Brad had put out the fire as soon as the meal was cooked and they sat in the dark, listening to the water sounds from the meadow below.

“You get some sleep,” he told Olaf. “We’ll take turns watching.”

“Yah,” Olaf said stolidly, and crawled into his blankets at the back of the overhang.

This waiting was a thing Brad did not like, yet he saw no way around it. Without a force of men he could do no good attacking the Double Q and that, without open provocation, was not his way had he the men. He could only draw Quarles out and strike and draw him out again. Sooner or later, he knew, Quarles would grow too weak to fight — or he would win quickly by the sheer weight of numbers.