Hardcase (21 page)

Ernie said suddenly, “That's funny.”

“What is?” Wallace asked, suspicion in his voice.

Beal rammed his elbow in Ernie's stomach, but Ernie went on blandly, “I seen Sholto's writin' once. It didn't look like that.”

Beal turned on him, his eyes imploring. But Ernie didn't even look at him. He watched Wallace, whose face had settled into hard, deep lines.

He kept his hot gaze on Ernie and said, “You sayin' Sholto's signature is a forgery?”

“I'm tellin' you what I saw,” Ernie said easily.

Beal was too scared to say anything. Wallace suddenly turned and said, “Marty, reach in the barrel where the dishes are. There's a pack of letters on top.” He turned to Ernie. “Lily Sholto quit my place so sudden she didn't take her stuff with her. Mrs. Babson sent these letters along.”

Marty handed Ernie down a package of letters. “These are from Jim Sholto to his wife,” he said meagerly. “Look at the signature.”

Beal untied the package, took a letter out, turned it over, and compared its signature with the one on the deed. They matched absolutely.

He said viciously to Ernie, “Take a look, hardhead!”

Ernie did. Then he said innocently, “Why, sure. They're the same.”

“Satisfied, Sheriff?” Wallace asked dryly.

“I always was,” Beal said bitterly. “It's him that wasn't.”

“Oh, I'm satisfied,” Ernie said. “Much obliged.”

“And I can move in?” Wallace asked Beal.

“Go ahead. The place is yours. Come on, Ernie.”

He and Ernie walked over to their horses. Ernie suddenly stopped, snapped his fingers, and said, “I forgot my shell belt.” He had taken it off and draped it over a chair back when they were helping load trunks. Whistling, he went back into the house. They heard his whistle fading, then growing stronger. He came out again, strapping on his shell belt. He and Beal got on their horses, waved to the crew, and rode out. As soon as they were out of earshot Beal said bitterly, “What you got to say for yourself?”

“Nothin',” Ernie said blandly.

“What if those signatures hadn't matched?” Beal said, anger in his voice. “We'd of got in one hell of an argument!”

“That's a fact,” Ernie agreed. “They did, though. I can't figure it out!”

Beal looked at him a long time, and then he shook his head. “Sometimes I dunno,” he murmured glumly. “Sometimes I think I'll put a gun in my mouth and pull the trigger. It's a hell of a lot quicker than lettin' a dumb deputy do it, and it ain't half the worry.”

Outwardly Ernie looked injured and remained silent. Inwardly he was laughing. He had given Sheriff Beal one of the most uncomfortable ten minutes of his life. That was just for fun. The other wasn't. Because that deed was at the Bib M now, and somewhere inside the house Dave Coyle said he would be hidden.

Ernie didn't know for sure, but he was willing to bet that Dave was in there.

When Beal and Ernie had ridden away Wallace picked the box up, instructed a rider to drive the wagon around to the rear, told Marty Cord and Usher to follow him, and they went into the house. The cook walked straight through to the kitchen, but the others paused at the door of the living room and looked around them. Wallace, whose idea of elegance was a saloon with a tile floor, looked at the rugs, the furniture, the piano from St. Louis, the heavy pink glass lamps, and the curtains. He whistled in awe and then made a wry face. Marty Cord wasn't impressed. Will Usher was, although his face didn't show it. The three of them looked at all the downstairs rooms, then went upstairs to the bedrooms. When they came to Carol's room Wallace stepped on the threshold and goggled. There was a fluffy counterpane on the bed; the white curtains were starched stiffly, and there was a lingering scent of lavender in the room.

“Well, well,” Wallace drawled. He walked over to the bed, picked up the counterpane, looked at it, then ripped it in half and dropped it on the floor. Next he went to the ornate marble-topped dresser. He raised the iron box and crashed it down on the marble, cracking it. Then he threw the box into the big mirror above the dresser. Methodically he went around the room, yanking down the pictures and putting his foot through them. Then he looked up at Will and Marty, and Marty grinned.

“Get this muck out of here,” Wallace said. “It looks like a honky-tonk.”

“I wish it was,” Marty said. He grinned slyly. “You got all the fixin's, boss. Why don't we move some gals out here?”

Wallace laughed. “You like the smell so good, Marty, you can have the place. Me, I'll take somethin' without the perfume. Tell the boys to take over.” He looked again at the room. “Anything they don't like they can throw out the window.”

He caught Will Usher looking at him with something like dismay in his face. Wallace grinned wolfishly. “You don't like it, dude?”

Will caught himself in time. “I was just wonderin',” Will drawled, grinning, “how we'd get that bed out the window.”

Wallace laughed again. This was his hour, and he was in a rare good mood. The Bib M was his, and he set about immediately to pull it down to the level of a cheap hotel lobby. He took McFee's room for himself, the room on a rear corner. It was small, barren of rugs, and a rickety old bed, a heavy dresser, and a chair made up the furniture. He sent Will and Marty up to look over the attic and search the rest of the house, and then he remembered he still carried the iron box.

Suddenly aware that it was heavy, he walked over to the dresser and grabbed the handle of a drawer and pulled. It didn't budge. He set the box on top and tried both hands. Still the drawer wouldn't budge. He kicked it savagely, strode out into the hall, and bawled, “Get that chest up here!”

There was no answer. Marty and Will were on the roof. Swearing, Wallace picked up the box and went downstairs.

The attic, which Marty and Will had searched, was small and empty. A short ladder rose to the trap door in the roof. Will went up, lifted the door, looked at the roof, then stepped down.

Marty was watching him, chewing deliberately and delicately on a cud of tobacco. When Will stepped down off the ladder Marty said, “I ain't had a chance to talk with you alone since you joined up.”

“That's right,” Will said, wondering what was coming. He didn't like the tough set to Marty's jaw.

“What are you doin' here?” Marty asked.

Will said blandly, “Didn't Tate tell you?”

“So it's ‘Tate' now,” Marty mocked. “No, he didn't tell me.”

“You better ask him.”

“I'm askin' you,” Marty said slowly, quiet menace in his voice. “I pay off this crew, and so far I ain't had any instructions to pay you off. You look like a joker to me, mister.”

Will smiled contemptuously and hooked his thumbs in his belt. “Cord,” he drawled, “you're dirty and you're dumb. Maybe Wallace hired me so he'd have someone to talk to besides an ape like you.”

Marty flushed and straightened up. “Did he hire you, though?”

Will grinned faintly. “I told you to ask him—or are you afraid you'll get your teeth kicked down your throat?” He paused, amusement in his eyes, as he watched Marty. Then he said, “Before you decide to put a slug in my back, though, you better make sure what it'll get you.”

Marty spat without turning his head. The tobacco plopped on Will's boots, but he pretended not to notice it. “Just remember one thing,” Marty drawled. “I'm roddin' this spread—both spreads. Tomorrow I aim to have Wallace tell you that.”

“Afraid of your job?” Will taunted.

“No, but I reckon you better be afraid of it,” Marty said. He turned and went down to the second floor. It was a warning and plain enough, and Will smiled faintly at Marty's back. It was apparent that he wasn't liked here, only tolerated, because Wallace had passed out the word. That was all he wanted, all he needed.

Before the cook called supper the house was overrun with the crew. At first they approached it gingerly, but after supper a poker game started in the living room. Soon there were cigarette butts burning the rugs. Someone had tipped his chair back into a glass-covered bookcase. A vase served as a spittoon, but soon it was abandoned altogether. Bedrolls were thrown on the bedroom floor; riders rested on the beds with their spurs on; rifles were stacked on the hall hatrack, and there was a familiar smell of unwashed bodies, horses, leather, whisky, and tobacco smoke. Wallace took over the dining room for his office, and Bib M had changed hands.

Along toward midnight the crew broke up, and some of the riders drifted off to bed. The droning voices of the two men on watch out by the front tie rail were interrupted by the curses of the men playing poker. Wallace still held a hand in the game, and Will Usher was playing too. The upper story had settled into quiet.

It was then that the heavy dresser in Wallace's room moved out from the wall and Dave crawled stiffly from where he had been hiding all day. The noise Lily Sholto had heard that morning had been Dave carefully kicking out the bottoms of the dresser drawers and the back of the dresser. One stick, nailed to the back of the front panel of all the drawers, insured their being kept closed. Its weight and size insured against its being moved. And in that space Dave had waited, listening, trying to pick up something of what was happening since morning.

He stretched, flexing his muscles, and then went to the open door and looked out in the hall. All the other doors were closed, so the crew could sleep. Softly, then, Dave started down the stairs, wondering if Ernie had failed him. The stairs were carpeted, and he made no noise. The card game went on with desultory talk interrupting the silence. Dave listened until he distinguished Will Usher's voice and Tate Wallace's.

Afterward he moved softly down the dark hall to the door that let on to the kitchen. The door was shut. Dave opened it, then softly struck a match and looked down the hall. The game was going on without interruption. Then Dave set about his business.

When the door was closed there was a space on the jamb to which the hinges were fastened that was hidden. When it was opened this space was suddenly revealed, as when a book is opened. And in this space, just below the hinge, was firmly written in pencil in Ernie's handwriting: “It's in a locked iron box 6 × 9. Will.”

Dave blew out the match and pondered. An iron box, six inches by nine inches, contained the deed. That box could be anywhere, buried or hidden, but it was Dave's guess that it was not. He had heard Wallace come in the room where he was hidden, try the dresser drawer, then bawl, “Get that chest up here.” It seemed reasonable enough that the iron box was in the chest. Anyway, he was sure of one thing. Two men, directed by Wallace, had delivered something heavy into Wallace's room that evening. Wallace had ordered them out, then had deposited something in the chest.

Dave softly made his way back to the stairs. Still, from the door into the living room, the talk of the card players drifted out. He went back into Wallace's room, closed the door softly, and struck a match. There was Wallace's saddle thrown on the floor against the wall and beside it a stout chest. The match died, and Dave struck another and went over to look at the chest. It was made of oak, ironbound, and its lock was a heavy padlock. Dave's heart sank as he saw it. When the match died he tried to lift one end of the chest. He could move it, but it was heavy.

He sat down on it and thought a moment. If he got the chest to the window and dropped it the noise it would make would wake the dead. Even then the chest wouldn't break and open. That was out. He couldn't burn it, because it would take half the night, and he would be discovered. That was out too. There was only one thing left, and that was to shoot the padlock off. That would bring the whole swarm of them down on his neck. Wallace's crew, Ernie had said, numbered over a dozen. They would cut him to doll rags before he got to the stairs. For the stairs were the only way out. For if he went out the window he would leave unfinished a little piece of business that he was determined to carry out, a piece of business that, if it went right, would straighten accounts with Will Usher for good and all.

For a long moment he sat there in the dark, his face bleak and bitter. For the first time in his life he took into account the possibility of being killed. He wasn't afraid; he just wanted to live to see this thing settled. And then the bitterness passed, and he knew what he was going to do.

His chances would improve a dozenfold if he could keep some of Wallace's men out of the fight, and he thought he could. Remembering Wallace's saddle thrown on the floor, he knelt down and fumbled around. Yes, there was his rope. Dave untied it and took it with him to the door again and glanced out in the hallway. Everything was quiet. A raw snore from one of the rooms across the hall melted in with the slow talk from the card game below.

Dave went into the hall and passed the closed door across the way from Wallace's room. The other two bedroom doors faced each other across the hall. Dave looked at them and noticed that they swung in. The remaining door was the half-glassed one that opened on to the gallery. It swung into the hall, he noticed. That was a weakness, but he'd have to count on the sleepy thickness of these men and their unfamiliarity with the house.

He bolted this gallery door, making a wry face as he did so. All they would have to do would be to climb out of their bedroom windows onto the gallery, break the glass, reach in and unbolt the door, and be on top of him. But he had to take the chance.

Next he took the rope and ran it through the grip on the thumb latch of one bedroom door, then threaded it through the grip on the opposite door. He pulled the rope tight, stretching it across the corridor. Each would be pulling against the other when he tried to open the door. It was a far more effective lock than a bar and bolt.

He came back down the hall then and put his ear to the remaining door. The snores were coming from there—a pair of them. He hoped gloomily that there were only two men there.