Ride the Man Down (18 page)

“He did, by God! And I'll kill him for it!” He looked around with a hard and bitter arrogance. “And when I do, I won't need any of you yellow-bellies to hold him for me!”

He roughly pushed his way through the half circle of men and tramped out, his step booming heavily on the saloon floor. There was a long moment of silence as these men looked at each other in surprise.

Bide picked his shell belt off the bar and strapped it on and said, “The more of us there are, the quicker the job's done. Let's go.”

He strode through the crowd which was breaking up and paused on the steps. Sam was just stepping into the saddle, and Bide walked over to him and stood by him.

“That ain't any way to get up a bunch,” he said, mild accusation in his voice.

“They wouldn't come out anyhow,” Sam said shortly.

“I know, but we need 'em behind us. What do—?”

“Damn it, Bide, what are we waiting for?” Sam's voice overrode Bide's in its quivering wrath.

Bide regarded him in utter surprise, and then he said placatingly, “What are we?” and turned to his horse.

Celia, dismounting in front of the courthouse, saw the posse pass, headed south. Afterward she went to Kneen's office and, finding the door open, knocked on the jamb and stepped inside.

She surprised Kneen sitting with his feet on the desk, staring dreamily at the wall. He came to his feet hurriedly, but his face for a moment held the sadness of his thoughts. He pulled up a chair for her and then sat down again, and she noticed that in some way he had changed since she last saw him. He was at once less worried and sadder than she remembered him, and she smiled at him. “I didn't think you'd be with them.”

“Bide?” Kneen smiled faintly. “No. That's their own idea, I'm afraid.”

Celia said, “I heard about it from—from Sam. Not much. Can you tell me how it happened?”

In his tired voice Kneen told her of the message he had sent to Will by Jim Young and told her why too. His story of the shooting was factual, emotionless, and he watched her closely as he told it. At the finish of it Celia said gently, “They blame you, too, don't they?”

Kneen nodded and grimaced wryly. “There's nothing they can do about it.”

“What happens now?” Celia asked.

Kneen said soberly, “I wish I knew. I'm only sure of one thing.” He shook his head. “I can't help you now. The town's against me. They call it murder. Bide and Sam have taken over the duties of my office, and they can do pretty much what they like.”

“Will's left.”

“On the dodge, I reckon,” Kneen said bitterly. “I haven't heard that the new sheriffs have put a price on his head, but that'll come.”

Celia was motionless, and Kneen said quietly, “This is none of my business, Celia. But can't you talk to Sam?”

“I'm no more to Sam now than any other girl,” Celia answered.

Kneen's gaze dropped, and Celia stood up. “There's just one thing more I wanted to ask you. I want you to tell me the truth and forget Will's worked for us all this time.” At Kneen's nod she asked earnestly, watching him with narrow attention. “In your heart do you think Will did wrong?”

Kneen said immediately, “No. It was the only way.”

Celia smiled. “That makes three of us,” she said and bid him good-by and went out.

At her horse Celia knew she hadn't asked the questions of Kneen that she wanted to, and she realized miserably that he couldn't have answered them if she had. One of them had been answered when she saw the posse riding out this morning, and she knew Will had escaped them yesterday. The other one—how long he could dodge them—probably nobody could answer, and yet she had to know.

She had dismounted in front of Priest's Emporium before she realized the significance of what she was about to do. Priest was one of Hatchet's enemies now. Celia thought about it a moment and then sensibly decided to go in.

Priest, however, thought differently. When he saw her enter he promptly found an errand in the rear of the store. Celia made her few purchases and went out, but the memory of Priest disturbed her. And thinking of him, she thought of Lottie, and the thought was so startling that she halted in the middle of the sidewalk. Then she mounted and put her horse downstreet until she was almost to the edge of the town. She could see the schoolyard now, with the children romping at morning recess.

Celia went on and dismounted in the yard and saw Lottie Priest interrupt her play with the smallest children to stare at her. Celia's resolution almost failed her now that, she was here, but she went on toward Lottie, saying hello to the children she knew.

Lottie came over to her, wearing a dark coat thrown over her shoulders.
She's pretty
, Celia thought, and she forgave the coolness in Lottie's eyes as Lottie spoke to her.

“Can't we—?” Celia looked at the children ringed around watching them. Lottie shooed the children off and led the way into the schoolroom. It was bright and tidy like Lottie herself, Celia thought as she followed Lottie up front and took the chair Lottie offered her.

Lottie sat behind her desk, and Celia had a fleeting moment of discomfort. She had known Lottie for years; they had been to the same dances and knew the same men, and yet Lottie was a town girl, Celia a cattleman's daughter, and their lives were not alike. There was little in common between them, except Will, and Celia was uncomfortably aware of that now. She found nothing to talk about now except what she had come for, and it was like her not to hesitate.

“I wondered if you know where Will is?” Celia asked. “I knew he would see you first if he could.”

“Yes, he saw me,” Lottie said in a kind of toneless, pleasant voice. “He said he'd be at Cavanaugh's shack under Indian Ridge night after next.”

“Is he—was he all right when you saw him?”

Lottie's eyes were cool with dislike, and she said in the same neutral voice, “He wasn't hurt.”

Celia had learned everything she wanted, and yet parting like this wasn't right. This was the girl Will was going to marry, and she herself was Will's friend. Will seldom mentioned Lottie, but Celia had sensed long ago that he and Lottie were not agreed on Hatchet's course. But Will was in trouble now, and it seemed to Celia that anyone who was Will's friend now should deserve Lottie's friendliness too. And it was not here.

Celia said in a kindly voice, “Don't worry about him, Lottie. It will all come out somehow.”

“Those are fine words,” Lottie said with quiet bitterness. “They don't happen to mean anything, though.”

“You don't believe Will can be caught, do you?”

“Doesn't he deserve to be?” Lottie countered. “He murdered a man.”

Celia said quietly, “You want him to be, you mean?”

“You know it's not what I mean,” Lottie said quickly. “The harm is done—to him. Catching him doesn't count.”

“I think you're wrong,” Celia said quietly.

Lottie's eyes were bright with fleeting anger. “I know you do. You and Will have always thought alike when Hatchet has something to gain.”

Celia looked at her curiously, pitying her, not wholly understanding her either. She saw something then that she had not suspected before, and she said almost with astonishment, “You hate me, Lottie. I never understood that before. You do, don't you?”

“Only because you're part of Hatchet,” Lottie said in quiet bitterness. “You—all of you—have turned Will into something he isn't—until now he can murder a man.”

“Sam says Will changed me,” Celia murmured.

“Maybe Sam's right. You're both the same kind, whoever was changed.”

Celia, regarding her gravely, murmured, “That's the nicest thing I've had said of me.”

She stood up now, but Lottie did not move. “I'd hate to have it said of me,” Lottie said with quiet passion.

“Lottie!” Celia's voice was appalled. “Do you know what you're saying?”

“Yes.”

There was a defiant and bitter disillusion in Lottie's eyes for a moment, and then she stood up too. “Go up and see him,” she said in that toneless, pleasant voice. “Will you tell him something for me when you go?”

Celia nodded mutely.

“Tell him I'm not coming up. He'll understand. Just tell him that.”

Chapter 17

From the hills above Bib M Will watched Bide's ranch outfit come awake to a spring morning. He saw the first fire lighted, the pair of horse wranglers leave in the half-light to bring in the horses, and, remembering Bide's impatience, he smiled. Bide had missed him yesterday by the narrowest of margins. Two minutes later and Will's horse would have been turned into the corral, leaving him afoot for Bide to corner. Celia had prevented that, and again Will wondered what had happened there afterward. Bide had always been a little afraid of all the Evarts, but in anger he was dangerous. Sam, whatever he thought of Celia's actions, would have held Bide in check, though, and that was Will's lone comfort.

The house on the ugly bald hill below him slowly took shape in the increasing light, and Will, shivering a little, settled back in patience. He had traveled most of the night to reach the spot back in the Salt Hills where he had spent two cold wakeful hours trying to sleep until he moved again before dawn.

Bide's crew lived and ate in the big house with him, and they all left it at the same time for the corral below when breakfast was finished. Each carried a bedroll. Will counted them and judged that Bide had pulled some of his crew from the herd at Russian Springs. They saddled up and moved off in pairs leafing down the valley, until the last man, putting his horse into a lope to catch up with the others, was away. Then they bunched and rode out smartly, Bide and Russ Schultz heading them, and Will turned his attention to the house.

He shifted farther down the slope, so that the porch was brought in his line of vision, and waited, watchful. Nothing stirred around Bib M, and presently Will came down the slope to the rear of the house and quietly skirted it and came onto the porch.

Again he stopped to listen and heard nothing and went through the nearest door, which was open. This was the L that contained the bunk room. Its dark closeness held a litter of clothes and gear and smelled of leather and sweat and wool. Will moved silently, alertly, through the room to a connecting door and stood in it, looking at the clean long table here and beyond it into the kitchen lean-to, which was also deserted. That left another room, and he went over and peered into Bide's office and, seeing it empty, came back into the lean-to that was the kitchen. The cook, apparently, had been the last man to leave, for the lean-to was cleaned up as if the crew expected to be gone some time.

Will went through the supplies stacked in a corner shelf and found food he wanted. He had to hunt some time for a coffeepot small enough to carry, but he found a battered one without a top that had seen hard service. Afterward he went back to the bunk room and found a pair of tattered blankets. His own outfit had been in the wagon with the coffin when Bide surprised him, and last night he had been too proud to ask anything of Lottie.

Before he left Will laid a coin on Bide's desk in payment. He was certain Bide would not miss these things or be curious about the money, but leaving it gave him an obscure satisfaction.

Later, at full sunup, he found his horse and put him south toward D Cross. There were things he wanted to see now before the hunt got close to him, and this might be his last chance.

He clung to the trails threading the open timber of the Salt, Hills most of that day until he was far south of Six X, and then he swung down through the foothills and camped that night on the edge of the flats. He could risk a fire for another night, he judged. He ate Bib M grub and afterward, a blanket wrapped around him against the chill that was still in the spring night, heard the train from Boundary hooting for the grade way station far to the south of him.

He chucked a stick on the fire now and, with the sound still in his ears, remembered the times he had heard it before, always feeling the pull it had for every fiddle-footed man. The pull was not there for him tonight, and he felt the irony of it. Tonight, for the first time in years, he was free to drift, and no man would blame him. Always before there was Lottie to hold him. But in these last days that hold had loosened and fallen away. He knew it was gone and he did not understand fully how it came about, but he knew that he would wait out tomorrow night at Cavanaugh's shack with only a faint hope in him and find himself alone at daylight. A man lost most things that way, not by a violent wrenching, but by a slow dissolution. Hatchet had faded that way, and now Lottie was lost to him the same way, and when it had started he did not, know. His mind and his heart had been closing against Lottie, and hers had been closing against him until the course of their lives hung on a show of their obstinacy. The thought of it had the power to make him sad, but that was all. Lottie was gone, and he was free to drift, and yet he did not want to.

Somewhere back in the hills a coyote with her pups paused to shout at the stars, and Will laughed, his mood shattered. Rising, he went out to move his picket pin and put his horse on new grass and afterward came back and moved his blankets away from the fire and rolled into them.

Before he slept his thoughts drifted back to Hatchet and to Celia. Hers was the gray duty of burying John Evarts and he tried to picture it and failed. There was Sam to ease that for her, but afterward what was there for her? Sam was against her and against him, and yet she was trying to keep them both. She could not, Will knew, and he accepted the fact that someday, maybe soon, too, she would tell him to go. He did not think of that, because of all his thoughts, this was the least welcome. Presently he slept.

Long before there was light in the sky Will was riding again, this time north, edging away from the Salt Hills onto the range of Six X.