Gunsmoke Justice (8 page)

D
AVE
A
RDEN
put his horse behind the Sawhorse Saloon and went inside by the rear door. At the top of the stairs he followed the route Biddle had taken earlier that morning and went into the room that overlooked the street.

Ike Quarles was there, in conversation with the tall, slatbuilt Keinlan seated at a desk. Arden thumbed his hat back from his yellow hair and jerked his head at Keinlan.

“Blow, Keinlan,” Quarles said. The tall man got up and, without looking at Arden, walked from the room. Arden took a seat on the sofa and rolled himself a cigarette.

Quarles said, “Well?”

“Jordan went to work for June this morning.”

“She’s going to fight, then?”

Arden drew deeply on his cigarette and let the smoke come out in a slow cloud. “That’s what he was hired for. He’s off checking boundaries now.”

“What does that mean to me?”

Arden was a cautious man in some ways, but he knew when the time for carefulness was at an end. “He’ll see Pine Canyon. I told him it was Grant graze before. He might want to get it back for Split S.”

“He’ll play hell,” Quarles said. He stirred and went to the chair where the other man had been sitting. There was a humidor of cigars on the top of the desk, and he chose one, leaning back to light it. “There’s three men in the line shack all the time.”

“Jordan don’t look like the kind to let three men stop him if he wants something,” Arden remarked. He watched Quarles narrowly, waiting for a flash of expression that would tell him he had struck the right note. “We’re not ready to move yet, but I can’t hold him long.”

Quarles savored the cigar as if this was no concern at all to him. “What if he does put Grant beef back on it? It won’t be there long.”

“That’s your affair then. Yours and Biddle’s,” Arden said. “Give that kind an inch and he’ll take a mile — ten miles.” He looked away. “I can order him to stay away, but there’s no good reason why I should.”

He was watching Quarles again and saw the flicker in the fat man’s eyes. “Except he might get killed.”

“And you wouldn’t want that?” Arden asked softly.

“I wouldn’t want to be connected with it just yet.” Quarles laid the cigar on the edge of a copper plate. “I’m within the law. I intend to stay that way as long as I can.”

He wanted to be a big man, Arden knew. He wanted to have the respect of people as well as power over them. It was a natural enough want. He had craved it for himself a long while.

“Just thought I’d warn you,” he told Quarles. I’ll do what I can to’ keep him quiet.” He pulled a heavy silver watch from his pocket and studied it. He wanted to see Faith before she got too busy in dinner preparations at the restaurant. He got up.

Pulling down his hat, he started out the door. Quarles watched him, an odd smile forming on his heavy mouth.

When the door had shut and Arden’s footsteps faded out, Quarles went to the window and looked down into the street. In a few minutes he saw Arden come back with his horse and tie it before the restaurant door. He went to the hall.

“Keinlan!” he bawled.

The tall man came back in and took his place again at the desk. “If you like my cigars so well, buy yourself a box,” he said.

“You’ll be glad to furnish me with cigars for life when we’re done,” Quarles told him. He took a turn about the room, his hands clasped behind his back, and came to a stop before the desk.

“Arden’s acting edgy,” he said. The blank look on Keinlan’s face irritated him, and he made a gesture of impatience. “Arden is mighty anxious to get rid of this Jordan.”

“Aren’t you?”

“Not that anxious. Not so quick. I want you to find out why.”

“How?”

“The same way you find out other things. Get Arden drunk.” Quarles’ tones were sharp. “I want to know, that’s all.”

“I’ll see,” Keinlan said cautiously.

“Arden might have some ideas of his own,” Quarles said. “I think he’s working for me. I want to know if he thinks so, too.” He finished his cigar, dropped the butt on the copper plate, and lay down on the sofa. “Now be quiet. I want to sleep.”

Keinlan sat silent for some time, staring at a stain on the bare board floor just beyond the desk. “By God,” he muttered after a while, “who does know what Arden might be doing on his own?”

Quarles made no answer. He was breathing deeply and steadily, his massive chest and stomach rising and falling in a slow, regular rhythm. Keinlan got up and went out, not bothering to be quiet about it.

• • •

When Arden went in, the restaurant was empty except for a lone man drinking coffee. He was the gambler from the Sawhorse, and Arden nodded to him as he went to the far end of the counter. He took a stool, and when Faith came out he offered her his warm smile.

She was not responsive but brought him a cup of coffee and set the sugar and cream before him. They did not speak until the gambler left, and then Arden said:

“Something bothering you?”

Her smile was forced.

“Him?” he asked, indicating the man who had gone out. “You so ashamed of the way we feel that you hide it before other people?”

He was always putting her on the defensive, Faith thought, and she shook her head. “Just upset, I guess, Dave. About June.” His look demanded further explanation, and she rushed on, not wanting to tell him of the true weight on her mind. “She was in yesterday and she’s worried.”

“So am I,” Arden said. “Don’t you think we’re doing all we can?” He saw that his roughness had pushed her a little too far. She was a spirited woman, and he could sense when he had ruffled her more than she would stand. Rising, he went to her and put his arm around her shoulder.

“I’m worried, too, Faith,” he said soothingly. “But we’ve got two new men to work with now. That helps.”

“You’ve seen him then?”

“Who, Jordan?” He stepped back from her. “He went to work for us today.”

Faith probed him, hoping to find out what she wanted to know. “And you agree to his way of doing things?”

Arden’s quick mind understood what was worrying her. She had seen Jordan and realized the potential danger of his pushing them into a fight before they were ready. He saw, too, the opportunity in this.

“No,” he said, “I don’t agree. He’s in too big a hurry.”

“He’s a fighter,” Faith said.

Arden caught her up. “And I’m not. That’s what you mean?”

“I didn’t think you were,” Faith said. She spoke honestly, questioning aloud. “But how can I know? How much do I know about you, Dave? Two years is a short time.”

“Long enough when you know you’re in love,” he said.

His charm reached out and touched her. She tried to draw back from it; she wanted to think clearly now, to explain herself. But he was close, and she could feel his smile as tender as a kiss.

“Love is so many things,” she said haltingly. “Just how do you feel about — about June’s troubles? I don’t really know. And you know everything about me.”

Arden said, “June’s troubles are my troubles.” He saw that it was no answer, and added, “I’m glad for Jordan’s help, but he’s a hurrying kind of man, and we aren’t ready yet for hurry. I only hope he’ll keep out of trouble long enough to be of some use to us. Is that answer enough, Faith?”

There was his smile again, hopeful and a little pleading now, asking her not to force him into a sudden decision that he might regret, asking her to let him use his own judgment. The smile was like strong words in her mind.

Her fingers reached out and traced a path down his cheek. “That’ll do. It’s answer enough,” she said. Drawing back, she picked up his coffee cup and went to refill it. She was glad when the door slammed and the first of the early eaters came in for his meal. The need for hurry now gave her an excuse to postpone her worrying.

And with others around it was somehow easier to be with Dave. When they were alone, she often felt a vague sense of discomfort, as if his charm lay between them instead of drawing them together. When she did want to think, to analyze, it was always there. She fought against this. Once you were married to a man, you were alone with him a good deal of the time. Wanting other people around was no way to be.

Arden stayed on, eating when the dinner rush was about over, and lingering over more coffee. There were questions he wanted to ask about Jordan, hoping Faith or McFee had learned more about the man, but as yet he had had no opportunity.

He tested Faith’s mood carefully when the restaurant had emptied, and he felt her withdrawal. Realizing that this was no time to probe her on the subject of Jordan, he gave her a fleeting kiss and left.

He went first to the sheriff’s office and laid his gun on the desk. “Like to forget this,” he said amiably.

McFee took it, grunting. His glance at Arden was curious.

Arden looked coolly back at the old man. He said, “Jordan’s working for us, and Faith has no cause to worry. I think maybe I can keep him cool until we’re ready.”

“See that you do,” McFee said shortly. “June Grant’s in no position to give Quarles an excuse to jump on her right now.”

Leaving the sheriff, Arden walked to the mercantile and consulted Eph Myers about the supplies that had been ordered. They should be in before a week was up, he was told, along with the mower parts he asked for. Arden was not perturbed by the slowness of delivery. Freight shipments here were a hit-and-miss proposition, often depending on Myers’ going and getting the things he sold. If a man wanted things in a hurry, Myers always said, he’d better leave Sawhorse Valley and move closer to the sources of supply.

Arden paused on the board walk outside. He felt a growing irritation at Quarles. He had come today actually to see Quarles, using the talk with Myers only as an excuse. But he had got little satisfaction and no specific orders. Putting his plan into operation without coordination from Quarles was a thing he hesitated to do. For the present, he thought, it was best to work wholly with the other man. Later, when the end was closer, he could chance stepping out on his own.

Even so, he decided, it would be a good things to check on Pine Canyon and work out his plan to use it. He was not satisfied, but it was the best he could do, knowing Quarles was not a man to be rushed. He mounted his horse and turned toward the edge of the Split S graze.

• • •

Returning from Coe’s place, Brad and Olaf passed near Olafs homestead. Brad went on, though it was getting late, following a direct line from Olafs holdings westward. He had an idea that he wanted to check.

Stopping on the edge of the timber where Olaf had blazed trees to mark his west line, Brad pointed a long finger. “You see what I do?” he asked.

Olaf relaxed a little on his horse and peered in the direction Brad indicated. “Yah,” he replied in a puzzled voice. “Creek.”

Running along a flat between Olafs timber and a rocky bluff was a deep-gullied creek. There was not much water in it, but the height of the sides and the width of the bottom told a plain story. As Brad pieced it out, at one time a lot of water had come down here.

Brad pointed again. “The other side of that bluff is Quarks’ reservoir.” He saw the lack of comprehension on Olaf’s broad face. “I’ll bet,” Brad added, “this is why Quarles tried to run you out of the country. You’re too close to his water system for comfort.”

Understanding and excitement crossed Olaf’s countenance. “One day I run my line,” he said. “A man with a gun stopped me.”

Brad listened attentively as Olaf described the incident, and then he followed up the line of blazed trees northward. The ridges angled slightly here, and within a hundred yards the trees ended in a jumble of giant boulders. The deep-bedded creek had swung away from them, but here it had swung back so that the homestead line cut cross it. They kept going, following the creek bed in a long curve as the horses picked their way carefully over the rocks. Finally, Olaf pointed to a stake. “Corner,” he said.

Brad looked back, trying to sight due south. Because of the great masses of rock and a hill in the way, they had come the last two hundred yards in an arc rather than along the line. But, drawing the line with his eye back to the point where they had left it, he saw where the trouble lay.

He turned to Olaf with a wide grin. “No wonder a man with a gun turned you back. Your west line cuts right down the middle of that meadow where Quarles starts the water into his reservoir. He wants you out of the country for good!”

“Yah?” Olaf questioned.

“Sure,” Brad said excitedly. “You got no more right to all the water than he has. But once you file that homestead and come back to prove it up, you can keep him off there. You could fill in his ditch and turn the feeder creeks back where they belong.” He paused. “How’d you run that line, Olaf?”

“Compass,” Olaf said.

Brad remembered that Olaf had been mate on a sailing ship. If he knew navigation, he would know how to run a simple line like this. “That,” he said, “clears up a lot of things.”

He worked the horses down to the meadow, and tried to get an approximate position there as to where Olaf’s line ran. He had about figured out that Olaf owned the east third of the meadow, when the sound of a hoof on rock jerked his head up.

In a moment, two riders burst through the lower end of the meadow, pushed across the place heavy with seepage, and headed straight for him and Olaf. Brad recognized the great bulk of Ike Quarles, and with him was Newt. When they got within speaking distance, Brad had his rifle in plain sight across his saddle horn.

“The drifter!” Quarles said.

“I’m about through drifting,” Brad said slowly. “I was thinking about taking up a homestead.”

Quarles sat very still in the saddle, both hands clenching the reins tightly. Newt, at his side, stirred. But a low word from Quarles held him back.

“Not here you don’t,” Quarles said.

Brad had made his statement as much to get a rise out of Quarles as anything else. Now he saw the possibilities of his own talk. “Why not?” he demanded. “It’s government land. Why, I could drain this meadow, and both me and Olaf would have some mighty good hayfields.”