Hardcase (16 page)

“This is as far as I go,” he murmured. “I'll wait and see if they free you, McFee.” He looked at the tie rail in front of Tim King's Keno Parlor. It was jammed with horses. Through the big front window he could see a section of the bar. And there, back to the window, was Tate Wallace. Dave looked at Sholto. Sholto had seen Wallace, too, and his face was a little pale.

McFee said impatiently, “Let's go, Sholto.”

Sholto put his horse in motion and rode beside McFee up the street. He was watching Wallace through the saloon window. They were just angling across the street to the sheriff's office when Sholto reined up.

“I'm not goin' in, McFee,” he said stubbornly.

“Not going—” McFee's voice died, then he said, “But dammit, man, you've got to! I'll hang for your murder if you don't!”

“No,” Sholto said shortly. “It's either you or me that will hang. It might as well be you.”

“What do you—?”

“I mean Wallace is in town now,” Sholto said swiftly. “He blackmailed me into witnessin' that deed. He was holdin' my wife a prisoner there at the Three Rivers to make sure I didn't run out on him. But Coyle has got my wife hid. Wallace ain't got anything to make me come back, so he'll tell.”

“Tell what?”

“That he saw me kill a man,” Sholto said evenly. “I killed him, all right. I was drunk and mad and I shot him, and they can hang me for it. And Wallace has told Beal.”

“How do you know?”

“He didn't come after me when Usher had me, did he? No. He knows now that if he can't hold Lily any more I'll light a shuck the first chance I get. So he'll tell Beal. He's told him. He's here. And I'll stand trial.” He pulled his horse around. “Sorry, McFee, but I got my own hide to think of.”

“Wait a minute!” McFee ordered. Clumsily, then, he pulled out a gun and leveled it at Sholto. “I'm not hanging for any man, not even—”

Crash!

A six-gun bellowed from somewhere, and Sholto was driven over the saddle horn and fell into the road on his face, his shirt in back welling crimson blood.

XIV

On the heel of the report McFee's horse began to pitch. In terror it arched its back and started to buck in a circle. Men began to pour out of King's Keno Parlor.

About the tumult Dave yelled: “Run for it, McFee!”

Then someone opened up with a six-gun from the opposite sidewalk, someone who had recognized Dave's voice. Another shot hammered out. Dave yanked his horse around, leaned over its neck, and roweled him savagely, heading out of town. What had happened? Somebody planted up on the roof of Badey's store had shot Sholto! Dave had seen the gun flash. And there was McFee, a gun in his hand, threatening Sholto, who seemed as if he was aiming to ride off. McFee was in for it now. And all Dave could do was run to keep from getting the same thing. Already he heard horses pounding down the road behind him.

Back in town Ernie See and Sheriff Beal had been the first out the door of the sheriff's office. Ernie took the scene in at a glance as he vaulted the tie rail. McFee's terrified horse went into a savage sunfish, and McFee flew out of the saddle. He landed on his shoulder, and Ernie dived on top of him. He wrestled the gun out of his hand, and when he stood up Beal was leaning over Sholto. Men were running toward them from the saloons, and still others were swinging into the saddle and heading out of town.

Beal looked up from Sholto and said to Ernie, “He's dead!”

Slowly McFee hauled himself to his feet, looking dazed. Beal said wickedly, “That hangs you, McFee—hangs you higher'n any kite ever flown!”

“But I didn't shoot him!” McFee cried.

Beal said, “Give me that gun you took from him, Ernie.” Ernie gave it to him, and Beal spun the cylinder. There was one cartridge shot. Beal smelled the barrel and said evenly, “One empty, and there's a powder smell. How about that, McFee?”

There was a murmuring of the men surrounding them, and McFee looked helplessly at them. “But I didn't do it, I tell you! I only had a gun in my hand! He wouldn't come in!”

“By God, we ought to string him up!” one man in the crowd said.

Ernie said to McFee, “If you're smart you'll keep your mouth shut!”

“Get him inside,” Beal ordered.

Ernie, his hand on McFee's arm, broke the crowd and took McFee into the sheriff's office, through it, and into the cell block and the cell. Beal, with a half-dozen select citizens, followed.

McFee looked dazed. It had all happened too fast.

Beal, from the other side of the door, said, “What happened?”

“I was bringin' Sholto in here to prove to you I never killed him—me and Dave Coyle, that is. Dave stayed downstreet and left me to bring him in. Sholto balked just in front of the office. I pulled a gun on him and told him to come along. Then come a shot, and my horse started to pitch. That's all I know.”

Beal said sarcastically, “Beautiful. A good little Injun spirit aimed the gun and pulled the trigger, I suppose.”

“But I didn't kill him!”

“Who did? Dave Coyle? Sholto's back was to both of you,” Beal said slyly.

McFee stared at him, his hard dislike for Dave forming into suspicion and then into certainty. He hadn't shot Sholto himself. There was nobody else on the street except Dave. The shot had come from somewhere down there. Dave had given him that gun, taken from a dead guard at the mine. Dave hated him and had said so. Suddenly it came to him, clear as crystal. Before, when they were in jail, Dave was accused of killing Sholto at McFee's orders. But by getting Sholto safe, then planting him with McFee in front of the sheriffs office, and men shooting him, the blame for Sholto's murder would be settled for once and all—on McFee's head. It was that easy, that cynical, that slick. McFee's eyes focused on Beal, and he was not even clever enough to dissimulate.

“Yes!” he bawled. “Coyle shot him! He was the only one who would shoot him!”

Ernie said in angry and withering disgust, “How I'd love you for a pardner, McFee.”

McFee was excited now. The truth had fully dawned on him, and he set out to spread it with a bullheaded passion.

“But I tell you, Coyle's framin' me! He killed Sholto! He put Sholto up to stallin' at the last minute so's I'd draw a gun! I tell you, Coyle did it!”

Ernie See was really angry. He hated Dave Coyle with a hatred that was all-consuming, but he hated a disloyal man more. But above and beyond that, he was puzzled. This didn't make sense. Why would McFee bring Sholto, on whose recognition he would go free, up to the very doorstep of the sheriff's office and then shoot him? The answer was he wouldn't. No sane man would. And the story of Dave Coyle shooting him was too farfetched to be worth any consideration. McFee had jumped at Beal's bait like the simple fool he was. But that left the question unanswered. Who shot Sholto?

Beal was saying heatedly, “If you ask me, McFee, it was somethin' you and that damn hellion planned beforehand! That's his idea of fun, and yours, too, I reckon. If your horse hadn't pitched you'd be ridin' off with Coyle now and laughin' at what you'd done! Damn you!” he added with savage anger. “You ain't even fit to stretch a rope!”

Beal turned then and said to the others, “Get me ten men that'll make good deputies to guard him. I'm goin' to sleep them right here in the cell block. This time he won't get away.”

He named four men to watch McFee, then tramped out into the office, Ernie behind him. Beal yanked down a rifle from the wall rack and then he looked at Ernie, anger and bewilderment in his face.

“What's this country comin' to?” he asked seriously. “When that can happen things is pretty bad.”

Ernie said quietly, “McFee didn't shoot Sholto.”

Beal's movement in taking the gun down was arrested. He was immobile a second, then he said, “You think Coyle did?”

“I don't think either of 'em did,” Ernie said bluntly.

Beal just stared at him in voiceless amazement.

“Harve, when I took that gun from McFee it was cold. It hadn't been shot.”

“It was warm when you give it to me,” Beal countered angrily.

“I held it by the barrel.”

They glared at each other, and Beal said, “You sayin' Coyle shot him?”

“No.”

“And McFee didn't either?”

“McFee didn't shoot him, and Coyle didn't either,” Ernie said stubbornly.

Beal's mouth formed a grim line. He went over to the desk and laid the gun on it and put his hands on his hips. “Ernie,” he began quietly, “it ain't no secret to me that you're a bull-headed, openhanded gent. But by God, when you try to tell me that a man dies of spontaneous combustion or somethin', you're also crazy as hell! You're crazier than hell!” He ran a hand through his hair and made a hopeless, angry gesture. “Goddlemighty, I think I'm goin' crazy myself!”

One of McFee's guards opened the corridor door then and said, “McFee says if you want to catch Coyle go out to his place, the Bib M. He's sure Coyle will head for there.”

Beal said crisply, “Get goin', Ernie. He'll have shook that gang by now in the dark. Pick 'em up and ride hell for leather for the Bib M.”

Ernie tramped out, his face sullen and angry—and baffled.

XV

It was not hard to shake the posse. Dave cut off to the west, once he was out of town, rode a quarter of a mile, cut back toward town, and rode completely around it, coming up so close to the rear of the posse he could hear them arguing. They were on the ground, lighting matches, trying to pick his tracks out of a tangle of others on the flats.

Dave made a wide circle of them then and headed west. He didn't know why he was going this way, except that it led to the Corazon and safety.

All this had stunned him, and for a moment he reined up, wondering if he should go back to town and hunt down the bushwacker. But how could he? All he had had to do was climb down off Badey's roof and mingle with the crowd. He urged his horse on and tried to think.

Whoever shot Sholto knew that Sholto was being brought in. The only people who knew that were Will Usher, who could have guessed it, and Carol, who was told it in McFee's note to her. Whom had Carol told? Until he knew he was at sea, just guessing. Will Usher might have killed Sholto, but what would he gain? Nothing, no money, no prestige, no pardon, nothing. The secret lay with the note to Carol and whom she had told. Dave put the spurs to his horse then, realizing that McFee would depend on him to learn this from Carol. He didn't know how long it would take Sheriff Beal to worm this from McFee and head for the Bib M himself, but he guessed it wouldn't take long.

It was a long ride, and he was dog-tired. His horse was tired, too, but this was one time he couldn't spare the leather. He took off across country, taking his direction from the high cold stars. He had never felt lonelier, more puzzled, more defeated in his life. And more stubborn. For it was plain to him that this would be a fight to the finish now. Whoever risked that shot was willing to risk his life to win. And what puzzled him more than all else was that Wallace, the man who would be most interested in seeing McFee saddled with a murder, was visible through the window of King's Keno Parlor when the shooting occurred. It didn't make sense, but it did make an airtight, sealed, and delivered frame-up for Bruce McFee.

The Bib M was dark when he rode into the valley before it, and he drew a deep breath of relief. He rode into the yard, was about to tie his horse at the tie rail, and then thought better of it. He led the horse around to the woodshed in back and tied it there, then came around to the front door and knocked and tugged at the bell rope.

A lamp was lighted upstairs, and he heard soft footsteps on the gallery above him.

“Who is it?” Carol asked softly.

“Me.”

“Dave Coyle? What do you want?” There was an undercurrent of hostility and anxiety in her voice already.

Dave said, “Come down here.”

Carol went inside and came downstairs and opened the door. She faced him in a gray wrapper bound about her, and her hair was braided in two long ropes down her back. Her face was soft and pink, sleep still in it.

She said immediately, “Where's Dad?”

“In jail.”

Carol took that without a word, but she was hating him when she looked at him. “And you're free,” she said angrily. “I guess I should have expected that. How did they catch him?”

Dave told her about the happenings in town. When he told her of Sholto a look of pain supplanted the anger in her face, but she said nothing. When he was finished he waited for her to ask questions, but she only said softly, “Poor Lily.”

“Your dad never killed him,” Dave said. “He didn't shoot.”

Carol said scathingly, “Do you think I have to be told that? What's more to the point is did you kill him?”

Dave said patiently, “No.”

“Then I guess that's all I want to know about it,” Carol said bitterly. “I'm glad you've come. I have a proposition to make to you.”

Dave didn't say anything, only watched her, the lamplight making his cheekbones seem flat and high, his eyes deep.

“I'll sign over half my inheritance to you if you'll leave the country,” Carol said wearily. “Once upon a time, before you came here, we only had a simple court fight to win. Now Dad has to face a murder trial.” She made a grimace of disgust. “Oh, can't you see that we don't want you, that you can't help us, that we hate you! Leave us alone! Why do we have to suffer you too? On account of a foolish girl's mistake in writing you?”

Two spots of color burned deeply in Dave's cheekbones. She had a right to say that, only he hated her for saying it. At that moment he hated the whole McFee family, and only his stubbornness kept him from walking out into the night.