Ride the Man Down (22 page)

“If you can keep it,” Will amended.

“Why shouldn't he be able to keep it?” Lottie asked sharply.

Will glanced at her, quiet astonishment in his eyes. He hesitated and then said bluntly, “Because I've never seen him fight—not even over a dollar.”

Lottie flushed faintly. “Let's get this straight. Are you threatening Dad, Will?”

“Why, yes,” Will said blankly. “That's just what I'm doing.”

Lottie was silent, and she glanced over at her father. A faint smile played about his thin mouth, and his eyes even seemed amused.

Lottie observed wickedly, “He doesn't seem to be afraid of you, Will. Isn't that strange?”

Will's answer was immediate, blunt. “No. He won't do the fighting. Courteen will.”

Will looked at Priest now. “Are you moving?”

“You know what my stand is on this,” Priest said smugly.

Will said contemptuously, “Even Red Courteen doesn't deserve you for a partner, Priest.”

“Will!” Lottie said.

Will turned to look at her, his eyes blazing. “You don't seem to understand this—neither of you. I'm going to drive Courteen off that grass if it means shooting!”

“Like you shot Cavanaugh?” Lottie said hotly.

Will said grimly, “That's my plan,” and looked at Priest.

“I don't think you can do it,” Priest said smugly.

Will put on his Stetson and went over to the back door and unlocked it and stepped out, closing it quietly behind him. Lottie watched him go, her eyes bright with anger and surprise. They were still bright when she turned to her father. “He means that, Dad.”

“I know he does.” Priest looked at her, doubt and irritation in his face. Now that Will was gone without further talk, he felt his confidence evaporating. He put his hands in his pockets and took a turn around the kitchen, and when he looked up Lottie was watching him. He thought he could detect a faint accusation in her eyes.

“Red can take care of himself,” he said sharply.

“Shouldn't he be warned, though?”

Priest just looked at her, indecision in his face.

“Anybody can slip up on a sleeping man and shoot him in the back,” Lottie said scornfully. Her voice turned bitter as she added, “I wouldn't put it past Will to try that, either.”

“You think I should warn Red? I can't get a man at this hour to ride out there.”

“Go yourself,” Lottie suggested quietly. “The store won't miss you for a day.”

Priest gnawed on his lip, standing in the middle of the kitchen. The full impact of this was just reaching him, and he was frightened by the implications Lottie had suggested.

“I'll go,” he said suddenly. “I'll hitch up the buggy now and go out there.” He felt better immediately and he started for the door. Suddenly he paused and turned to Lottie and regarded her speculatively.

“This might be the chance Danfelser and Marriner are looking for,” he suggested. “It might teach Will a lesson.”

He and Lottie looked at each other a long moment, a bond of sympathy between them. Then Lottie said with cold hatred, “I think it might,” and she did not notice how closely her voice resembled her father's.

“I've got to hurry,” Priest said. “Do you think you could slip on a dress and go down to the hotel and find Marriner?”

“I think I could,” Lottie said, her voice cold and angry.

It was only when she was dressed and out on the street that it came to her what this meant. She paused in the dark, taken back a little at the thought that she was putting the pack on the man she once thought she was going to many.

But he's a murderer
, she thought defiantly, and she went on.

The clerk at the hotel was not awake. Lottie looked at the register, found the number of Marriner's room, and went upstairs.

At the door of the room she paused, hearing the murmur of voices inside. She had her hand raised to knock, when again the doubt rose in her mind. She knocked, then, almost angrily.

Bide Marriner opened the door. Beyond him she could see Russ Schultz seated in the open window. Surprise was in Bide's swarthy face. He bowed gallantly and then was at a loss, he could not invite her into his room.

Lottie said breathlessly, “I just wanted to tell you, Mr. Marriner. Will Ballard just left town. He's going to raid Red Courteen's herd over by Garretson's tomorrow.” She hesitated, seeing the excitement blaze in Bide's face. Then a discouraged look supplanted it, and Bide looked at Schultz in the window. “Any of the boys here?”

Schultz shook his head in negation, and Bide turned to Lottie. “Well have to pass it up. I've got to be in town tomorrow and—” He paused, his eyes narrowing. “Say,” he began softly, “I thought you were goin' to marry Will Ballard.”

Lottie did not even try to face that; she fled.

Chapter 21

Bide saw the sun come up with only a few hours of restless sleep behind him. He had learned one thing in those wakeful hours of the night: He did not have the nerves of Sam Danfelser. For Sam had left town last night, confident that Kneen was bluffing. Bide had spent the better part of the night struggling to achieve that same confidence, and this morning he knew he had failed.

He left his room just as full daylight touched the street outside. The porter was mopping out the lobby as Bide came down. Bide ordered him to get the keys to the cigar case from the clerk and went outside into the fresh morning.

Teetering on the edge of the porch, he listened with annoyance to the sound of the birds in morning song, and in his mouth was the gray taste of gathering fear. The air was cool and smelled of the grass on the long reaches of the flats south of town, but Bide did not notice.

The porter came out with his handful of cigars, and Bide lighted one and came down the steps and turned downstreet. A pair of dogs trotted angling across the street and disappeared between two buildings on some business of their own, and afterward the street was empty.

Bide walked slowly, and in his mind was the knowledge that he must come to some decision. If Kneen called a U.S. marshal in here and backed up his investigation that was the end of his own ambitions. That was a conclusion he couldn't avoid, no matter what Sam Danfelser thought. Idly Bide traced the course of these happenings and keenly saw where he had failed. With Kneen on his side the scheme had been flawless. And he had lost Kneen by insisting on the trial of Ray Cavanaugh. If he hadn't been so quick, so sharp, so eager for the short cut, Kneen would be with him today.

His cigar tasted foully, and he threw it away and looked around him. He'd walked down as far as the livery barn.

Gloomily he turned in and tramped down its runway and paused by the corral in back. There were a dozen horses in here, and somehow it soothed him to watch them. He saw his own horse there, the one that Sam had ridden yesterday, and he knew, without having to ride him, that Sam had run the heart out of him. Thought of Sam moved him into deeper gloom. How could Sam be so sure that Joe Kneen was bluffing? With a sudden shrewd insight he guessed that Kneen had come up on Sam's blind side; Sam never believed anybody meant what they said except himself. This thought was not comforting either, and Bide turned away from the corral.

The urgency of this seemed even more insistent to him as he sought the street again and turned up it. In the brief half-hour of his stroll part of the town had come awake. Time was inexorably passing.

The earliest men to rise—the hostlers and the saloon swampers—were at their work. Bide paused and watched a stack of empty beer barrels rise on the sidewalk in front of the Belle Fourche, and on a sudden reckless whim he decided on a drink.

He went into the Belle Fourche and found the bartender with his coat still on. Bide moodily had a whisky, and when it sat heavily on his stomach he had another. But there was no comfort in alcohol this morning; it seemed to drive his deep pessimism into every corner of his body.

He paid up and went out to the steps of the Belle Fourche and stood there, looking at the waking town, and he thought,
I'm up against somethin' that won't move. Joe Kneen means it
. He had a quick image of Phil Evarts laughing at him and he swore bitterly to himself.

Because there was no place else to go now, Bide went over to the hotel and crossed the lobby and entered the dining room. He ordered a big breakfast and surprised himself by eating it, wolfing it.

Russ Schultz came down while he was eating and took a chair opposite him, and they did not talk. Bide watched Schultz's face and saw the unease in it, noticed his lack of appetite.
He knows Kneen isn't bluffin' too
, he thought dismally, and then his appetite was gone.

He lighted another cigar and saw Joe Kneen enter the dining room. He studied Kneen now, seeing him anew, and what he saw was not reassuring. Kneen had a fighter's face; his pale eyes were marble-hard, and there was something uncompromising in his smallest movement.

After several minutes of watching him Bide thought wryly, contemptuously,
I'm gettin' spooked
, and he put down his cigar and rose and went over to Kneen's table.

“Morning, Bide,” Kneen said.

Bide slipped into a chair and folded his arms on the table and said, “Joe, would it make you feel any different if I told you I'd been a damn bullhead?”

“Not any,” Kneen said quietly.

With gloomy fascination Bide watched him sip his coffee. Then Bide spoke again and there was desperation in his voice. “But, Joe, everythin's the way we planned it. You're a good man. You'll be kept on.”

“I know I'm a good man,” Kneen said mildly. “It took me some time to find it out, though.”

Despair crossed Bide's face. He rose and went out of the dining room. Fleetingly he glanced at the lobby clock and he experienced a solid shock. Eight-thirty, it said. Bide had a moment of panic then, and he stood there staring at the clock, unbelieving, and he was thinking,
Where's Sam? He's got to help me
.

He turned toward the stairs then and, mounting them, he stepped aside to let a woman pass. It was Celia Evarts, and Bide looked at her and did not recognize her.

Up in his room he locked the door and went over to the mussed bed and sat on its edge.

This was the way the dream ended, then. What Phil Evarts had left in Will Ballard's hands had somehow become the symbol of a politician's stubbornness. Bib M would remain just another spread, tolerated by Hatchet. Bide rejected that instantly, for in his mind's eye he had seen it otherwise. He had seen Bib M with more land than Phil Evarts ever brought Hatchet; he had seen Bib M not even tolerating Hatchet.

He rose now and went to the window and looked out at the street. He heard a knock on his door and knew it was Schultz and did not answer, and presently Schultz went away. Bide stood there, feeling time pass, his courage naked and at last sufficient.

He looked at his watch now and saw it was a quarter to nine. Turning, he crossed the room and unlocked the door and went downstairs. The clock here said ten minutes to nine.

Bide stepped out into the street and strolled up it and turned east and at the end of the block was in sight of the station.

He walked slowly now, cutting across the road, aware only of the irritating clang in a blacksmith shop off to his right. He crossed the cinder apron at the rear of the station and came around to the platform and put his shoulder against the wall.

His senses were sharp now, and he listened and presently, above the blurred sound of the life of the town, he heard the distant crunch of cinders.

Pushing away from the wall, he started toward the semaphore in front of the telegrapher's window, and he was even with it when Joe Kneen rounded the corner of the station.

Joe's pace slowed a little and he looked keenly at Bide.

He stopped now, almost at the open door into the waiting room, and he said, “Changed your mind, Bide?”

“Don't go in there, Joe,” Bide said softly.

Kneen laughed at him and went in. Bide hurried now. He took the six quick steps that would put him through the door and into the waiting room and then he hauled up, seeing Kneen at the ticket window.

“Joe!” he said sharply, urgently, and Kneen turned to him.

“Don't do it, Joe. Don't do it.”

Kneen watched him a still second and then turned his head and said distinctly, “Earl, I want to send a telegram.”

It broke inside Bide, then. He reached for his gun and pulled it up hurriedly and shot, and he saw Kneen slap both hands sharply on the counter as he was brushed sideways and fell to his knees.

Then he saw Kneen's gun come up and Bide hurried. He shot twice, and then he saw Joe's gun pointing at him, saw it fire.

Something hit him; he had no memory beyond that.

The agent, murmuring, “Lord God!” over and over, came out of his office and hurried around the corner and almost tripped over Kneen.

The sheriff was still kneeling, pressing both hands against his side, and one hand still held his gun.

Kneen said, “Get me up to my room,” in a thin whisper, and Earl did not touch him. He ran through to the door that opened onto the town side of the waiting room and he bawled, “Pedro! Pedro!”

Coming back, he stopped. In his haste he had not seen what was on the floor by the bench.

Bide Marriner lay flat on his back, slid partly under the bench, and the floor under him was stained darkly with more blood than the agent had ever seen.

Earl looked at him and then looked away, his mouth tasting salty. He didn't pause on his way back to Kneen, for Bide Marriner was dead.

Chapter 22

Priest had left his house close to ten o'clock, and by the time he had driven five miles from Boundary on the road north, he knew he had made a mistake. His team settled down into a walk from which he could not rouse them, and he knew then he had driven them too fast. They were a fat pair of bays whose only exercise was a Sunday drive, and he should have known better.