Marauders' Moon (5 page)

“Now you know that ain't true,” Webb said mildly, but positively.

McCaslon turned. “I reckon I do,” he said, and started for the house. Ahead of them they saw the front door open and a figure step inside. McCaslon grunted.

CHAPTER FIVE

They entered the office at the side of the house. It was a small cubbyhole affair holding an untidy desk, a pile of boots and slickers and rifles in inspired disarray.

McCaslon had to shove a stack of magazines out of the way to gain entrance. The far door, opening onto the rest of the house, was open.

McCaslon said, “Wait here,” took off his hat, and walked through the far door. Webb could hear voices, one of them a woman's, and it spoke curtly. Presently McCaslon loomed up in the doorway and said, “Come along.” His face had an uneasy, harassed look about it.

Webb followed him into a passage which led onto a large room, furnished in a style outmoded years before. All the furniture, Webb guessed, had been freighted out in Conestoga wagons. By the big coal-oil lamp resting on the table in the center of the room Webb could see a girl sitting in a deep leather chair beside the fireplace, which held a bed of red coals. Tolleston was standing over her, and he raised his head to glance at Webb, then returned his gaze to the girl.

“Answer me,” he said sharply.

There was no reply. McCaslon cleared his throat.

“We'll wait in the office, Buck.”

“You'll wait right here!” Buck said bluntly, and added. “You used to dandle her on your knee, Mac. You've licked her more than once. But she's a little above tellin' things to people now. Wants privacy.” He addressed the girl mockingly. “Well, you've got it. Now, will you tell me where you've been?”

The girl rose and stared coolly at Webb and McCaslon. She was almost the height of her father, dressed in clothes similar to his. Her mass of tawny, wind-blown hair lay in a loose knot at the base of her neck. Her full mouth was set firmly, and there was more than a hint of her father in the line of her jaw. Webb thought she would smile at McCaslon; she almost did, and then apparently decided it was no time for it.

“If that's all, dad, I'll go,” she said quietly.

Tolleston snorted. “Mrs. Partridge is waitin' in the kitchen, keepin' your food warm. This is the second time this week she's had to do that.”

“How many times has she waited supper for you this week?” she asked him mockingly.

“What's that got to do with it?” Tolleston snapped. “When I'm late, it's for a reason. And I can ride this range in safety because I carry a gun.”

The girl was not looking at him now; she was watching Webb, a mixture of friendliness and curiosity in her voice. She said to Mac, “Did you come in to talk to dad, Mac?”

Mac nodded. To her father she said, “You might introduce your guest to me, dad, instead of combing me over.”

“He's no guest,” Tolleston said grimly. “He's a jailbird. You ride all over Heaven knows where with trash like him runnin' loose in the county. For Pete's sake, girl, can't you see it? And you won't tell me where you go?”

For answer she leaned over and kissed her father, then left the room, glancing strangely at Webb as she went.

Tolleston growled something in his throat and yanked out his tobacco sack. He rolled a smoke swiftly, lighted it, and stood on the hearth, teetering on his heels, looking at the floor.

McCaslon cleared his throat and Buck looked up, then said, “Oh! Sit down.”

It was a long minute before Tolleston spoke, and when he did he talked swiftly to Mac.

“I want a man sent over to this man's country—or what he claims is his country—to check up on his story. Who can you spare?”

Mac thought a moment and said, “Regan, I reckon.”

“Go get him. Bring another man along that you can spare for a couple of days, too. Better make it Budrow.”

Mac went out and returned with Stoop and the innocent-looking man. Webb did not know which was Regan until Tolleston said, “Listen careful to this, Regan.”

“Sure,” Stoop said.

Tolleston addressed Webb. “Tell him where this place is you claim to come from. Tell him who you worked for, and for how long; who you claim to know; who your friends claim to be.”

Webb told him he came from over in Big Joe County; that he worked for the Double Pitchfork; that he was breaking out horses for Henry Warren; that his friends were almost anyone in the county-seat town who would talk.

When he was finished, Buck said to Stoop, “You got that? All right, get some grub from Charley and light out.”

“Tonight?”

“Yes. Now.”

Stoop went out. The chunky man fiddled with his Stetson until Tolleston said a little less sharply, “Sit down, Budrow. This'll take time.”

Then Tolleston, talking to Budrow, again reviewed the bank robbery in town that morning and the part Webb had played in it. Webb noticed that Tolleston remembered and related everything, even down to Iron Hat Petty's bit of dubious evidence.

“Now, Budrow, what I want you to do is this,” Tolleston said. “I want you to ride down to Bull Foot.”

McCaslon leaned forward, his mouth open to speak, but Buck did not even glance at him.

“You've never been down there, and to the best of my memory, no Wintering man has ever seen you since you've been in this country, has he?”

Budrow scowled. “No, I don't reckon so. I come over the mountains from the west, and this is the first spread I made. It took a couple of months for you to feed me up, and I ain't been to Wagon Mound only three, four times.”

“Yes. So you won't be known. We'll hair brand a horse for you so your brand won't give you away. You'll travel tonight and put into Bull Foot tomorrow from the south. I want you to hang around Bull Foot, in the saloons, dance halls, gamblin' layouts, and such. Talk to anyone that'll talk—even the sheriff. And keep your eyes open. What I want is this—any kind of proof you can get that this bank robbery in Wagon Mount was planned by that Wintering crew. I don't care how long it takes. Get a job with an outfit if you have to. If you see anybody spendin' more money than usual, find out where it came from. Be inquisitive, act dumb, get drunk, pick up with saloon bums. Do anything that'll get you this information. And when you get it, ride back to me with it.”

McCaslon said slowly, “Buck, that's liable to take a man a year. Is it worth it, just so's you can put a noose on this man's neck?” He jerked a thumb at Webb.

“That isn't all of it, Mac,” Tolleston slowly replied. “I like to see justice done, and I aim to see Cousins gets justice. But more than that, I think it'll mean a toe-hold that'll give us a chance to smash that Wintering crowd for good and all.”

“How?”

Tolleston's eyes focused on Mac. “How?” he said gently. “This way. Maybe I got a longer memory than most of you. Maybe I haven't, but it seems like I'm the only man here that can remember the day we picked up and left our range over there in Wintering to start all over again up here. I never forget it. It's with me all the time, Mac—that and the picture of that Bannister outfit hootin' at us from the hills as we drove our stuff off.” His voice was grave, measured, more impersonal than Webb had heard it before, and therefore, he guessed, richer in meaning than any other words Tolleston had spoken.

“I remember it, Mac. I live for the day when I'll pay off that score. But I can't do it without men—and I haven't got them.”

“The whole country remembers it, Buck. All us old-timers, anyway.”

“But not like me and you,” Tolleston said swiftly. “They, remember it, but they don't get fightin' mad over it. They've worked up new places here, had families and built up their herds. Men like Will Wardecker, who fought Wake Bannister like a wildcat and had his horse shot out from under him by one of Wake's crew. He was crippled for life by that fall. But does he remember it? Hell, no! He says, ‘Let's live in peace.' There's others like him. As long as they're let alone they won't fight.” He smiled narrowly now, and in his eyes was the light of a single wild idea. “Now they've lost their money in this bank robbery. They're cleaned out, and they'll be mad.” He paused to isolate what he was about to say.

“Then if I can prove that the Wintering outfit—the Bannisters and that crowd of rabble—was behind this hold-up, I'll have what I want. An army—a hog-wild, blood-hungry army. And once I get it on the move, I'll have Bull Foot in ashes and Wintering County only a memory.”

Mac sighed and nodded. Webb watched them both, trying to understand the depths of their hatred. He thought he could, for this was a private feud only on a bigger scale, and the success of feuds that left families decimated, a country ravaged, lay in a single man's ability to enlist scores under his banner. But to the injustice of it, the bloody cruelty of its course, Buck Tolleston was blind.

Right now he tried to roll another cigarette, and his fingers were trembling so that he dropped the paper in disgust. Taking a deep breath to steady himself, he said to Budrow:

“That's what I want from you, Budrow. It'll be dangerous. If you're caught you're a dead man. They won't feel kind over having a deputy shot on the doorstep of our sheriff's office, no matter if the man was a crook and was running with their own bought outlaws. I'd do this myself if I could get away with it, but I can't. And I'm not making you. Do it if you like.”

“I'll do it,” Budrow said bluntly, and rose.

“Good,” Tolleston said briefly. “Sharpen up a knife. I'll be out in a moment and we'll change that Broken Arrow brand to a Double Diamond Bar.” To Mac he said, “Give him a hand, Mac.” He turned to Webb. “You stay here.”

When the other two had gone, Tolleston sat down. He seemed to have forgotten that Webb was in the room, except that occasionally he would turn his head to regard Webb with something like curiosity. Finally he rose and walked over to the hearth and put his back to the now-dead coals.

“That girl was my daughter, Martha,” he said apropos of nothing.

Webb did not reply, waiting.

“You told me this afternoon you could do almost any work around a ranch, didn't you?”

Webb nodded.

“And probably like doin' it?”

“That's why I'm punchin' cows and breakin' horses instead of counter jumpin'.”

“And you'd rather stick up banks than do either,” Tolleston said quietly. Webb did not bother to reply to this.

“Well, since you like to work on a spread, I don't aim to let you,” Tolleston went on calmly. “I've got another job for you.”

When Webb still said nothing, Tolleston went on: “My girl rides away from the spread two or three times a week. She's gone all day. I want to know where she goes.”

“You want me to spy on her?” Webb asked scornfully.

“Yes. Spy on her,” Tolleston echoed, as if he were not ashamed of the word.

“And if I don't?”

“Mrs. Partridge has a fruit cellar out behind the house. It hasn't got a window. I've got a pair of leg-irons around somewhere. Make your choice, and Wardecker be damned.”

“You've made it for me.”

“I thought so. And in case you have any fancy notions about breakin' away from me and headin' out of the country, I've got another piece of good news.”

Webb watched him.

“I fired a man last year for ridin' his horses until he ruined 'em. I've got a wind-broke sorrel of his out in the pasture that I aimed to pension. He'll be yours. He can't travel over a slow trot.”

Webb grinned in spite of himself.

“That leaves only one possibility,” Tolleston said slowly. “You might overtake Martha and want her horse. She wouldn't give him to you. She'd fight.” Tolleston paused. “As crooked a man as you appear to be, I still don't think you'd hit a woman. And you'd have to if you got that horse.”

“Coming from you, that's almost a compliment, Tolleston,” Webb observed.

“It is,” Buck agreed bluntly. “Now, give us a hand with this horse outside.”

At the horse corral, three riders were just dismounting, talking to Mac and Budrow as they removed the saddles from their tired horses. They were the three Broken Arrow hands who had been in the posse.

Talk ceased as Tolleston and Webb approached.

“Well?” Tolleston demanded.

“Never saw anything but their dust,” one of the weary hands said. “They crossed over into Wintering on the road. We followed 'em to the mouth of Wailing Canyon, and then some line rider up on the rim started throwin' shots at us.”

“Did you smoke him out?”

“Sure. But they was gone by the time we did.”

“Still goin' south?”

“Uh-huh.”

Tolleston turned his head and looked steadily at Webb. “Well, well,” he said mildly, meaningly.

CHAPTER SIX

Mitch Budrow stopped in Wagon Mound—so named because of the tall butte shaped somewhat like a Conestoga wagon which lay to the west—and passed the time of night with the hostler at the O. K. corral. He wanted to be seen. Then he mounted and rode south out of town, but as soon as he was out of sight he angled west off the road and lifted his horse into a stiff trot. He held this southwesterly course most of the night, so that, had he been observed by a man who knew the country, Mitch's claim that he was heading for Bull Foot would not have been believed. But Mitch would never have claimed it, for he had never intended going there.

It was still night when he crossed the county line. He observed the occasion without a trace of relief or apprehension, for Mitch Budrow held no illusions about the part he was playing. He would probably get it in the back some day, no matter what county he happened to be riding through, and he reflected without rancor that, although there are strange ways of paying back debts, this was the strangest.