Ride the Man Down (8 page)

A hundred feet from the horse the feeling of certainty came to him. This was John Evarts' chestnut gelding, and he had lost his saddle.

Riding closer, Will reined up, and a reluctant cold dread was in him. This was what had been in the back of his mind all day. The chestnut stood there with his head up, looking incuriously at him. Will took bleak note of the direction the cattle had grazed, which was from the west. Somewhere off this side of the seep the horse had fallen in with the cattle.

The choice was here, and although Will already knew what he would do there was a certain formality in announcing it. He started off south now, headed for Boundary.

The town had taken up its evening life again, now that calf branding was over. In six years Will had learned the pattern well enough, so that, seeing the number of ponies ranked in front of the Belle Fourche were thinning out, he rode past them and turned the corner and pulled in at the courthouse on the side street. He tied his horse at the hitch rail and afterward he tramped across to Joe Kneen's office.

The courthouse was small and new, and Kneen's office was in a basement corner at ground level. It was dark now, but Will went inside and lighted the lamp and slacked into Kneen's chair, facing the locked desk. Though the building was new, this room contrived to seem used and already stale, and its floor was scummed with the tramped-in mud of the street.

Will was idly studying the reward dodgers on the wall when he heard footsteps approaching and came out of his chair.

Joe Kneen stepped in then and, seeing Will, he hauled up abruptly. Kneen's bony face was still, his eyes reflecting a sudden caution, and when Will nodded Kneen came on into the room, saying, “I wondered when you'd stop in to see me, Will.”

“Did you? Why?”

Kneen's bland gambler's eyes regarded Will briefly, and then he shook his head. “I don't want to quarrel with you, Will, but there's nothing I can do. Phil took that range from Bide, and Bide took it backer's open range, and the biggest man keeps it.”

He went over to a chair in front of the desk and sat down.

Will drawled, “I got a hunch, Joe, you're going to be sorry you ever wanted to be sheriff.”

“Why?” Kneen said sharply. “Is that a threat, Will?”

“Maybe.” Will paused. “John Evarts hasn't shown up since yesterday. I found his horse this afternoon north of Russian Springs. Without a saddle.”

Kneen's face came suddenly alert.

Will went on gently, “You better find him, Joe. I'll give you two days before I settle this my own way.”

Kneen said sharply, “Now wait, Will!”

“Two days,” Will repeated.

He wheeled and started out the door, and Kneen said, “Will.” There was a mildness, a kind of resignation in his voice that checked Will and made him turn.

Kneen came out of his chair slowly and faced him, an earnestness about him that Will couldn't deny.

“Dammit, Will, I liked John Evarts.”

Will relented a little. “That's all I know, Joe. He gathered up some of Ray Cavanaugh's stuff that was on our range yesterday and sent the boys back with it and he headed for Kennedy's place.”

“Kennedy's?”

“I don't know why. Kennedy says he wasn't there. All sign is washed out. I rode through the hills this afternoon and came on his horse feeding with Bide's cattle.”

Kneen chewed his lip nervously, staring at the doorway past Will. “Maybe he was set afoot or dragged.”

“Do you think he was, Joe?”

Kneen shook his head and said quietly, “No.”

Will waited. Kneen sighed and turned away. He walked down the room, and when he came back he paused before Will. “You likely thought a lot of things about me, Will. Did you ever believe I like murder, though?”

Will shook his head in negation.

“Then give a man a chance,” Kneen pleaded. “Bide ain't a killer.”

“Some of his friends are then.”

Kneen made a loose, helpless gesture with his hand. “But two days ain't any time, Will.”

Will's voice was almost cold, brutal. “You watched this build up, Joe. You could have stopped it any time, but you figured Hatchet might bluff down. It's too late for me to wait, Joe—way too late.”

Kneen's eyes were bitter as he listened, and Will knew Kneen was already regretting his part in this. But Kneen had gambled that Hatchet would die without trouble, and Will had no pity for him. He said, “Two days,” and stepped out into the night.

He put his horse into the main street, and now the thing that had been in the back of his mind since afternoon was immediate and distasteful. At home Celia would be waiting for this news, and he found a reluctance in himself to face her. It wasn't that she could blame him in any way, for she wouldn't; but to face her each night, seeing her hope die bit by bit, was what he hated. For he knew, without knowing why, that John Evarts wouldn't come back.

The smell of chill earth and wet wood was still in the spring air tonight, and it made Will oddly restless. He passed the Belle Fourche and across and up the street saw the lamp still burning in Priest's Emporium. Remembering with what tolerant humor the town accepted Lowell Priest's ceaseless and patient search for money, Will noticed that all the other stores were closed. Only Lottie's father, on the off-chance that some carousing ranch hand might remember his list and want accommodation, kept his store open at this hour. Thinking of Lottie now made him realize that she would not be moved by John Evarts' disappearance. She was outside of Hatcher, except where it touched him; and even then she did not understand his feeling for it.

Passing the store now, Will saw Priest seated at his desk in the balcony over the rear of the store. He reined up, suddenly struck by a thought that held him motionless a moment. Why should he go back to Hatchet and wait but these two days? The news of John's disappearance would serve to momentarily check the men who were moving in on Hatchet, while off in the hills somewhere was locked the mystery of where John Evarts had gone.

Will pulled over to the tie rail, dismounted, and went into Priest's store, his mind made up.

Priest, alert to the entrance of any customer, came down the stairs and approached Will between the neatly stacked counters. The smell of leather and cloth and kerosene was pleasant, and oddly Will thought of Priest as smelling of these same three staples.

Lottie's father was a thin, precise man with a sallow face that was polite and humorless. A thin pleasure was there now as he said, “You're riding late, Will.”

“I want grub for a couple of days and a blanket,” Will said. He followed Priest back to the grocery counter, and Priest said over his shoulder, “How're things at Hatchet?”

Will felt a faint annoyance, since Priest did not distinguish between the affairs of Hatchet and any other ranch. It was his stock greeting and held a wry humor at the moment which provoked Will into saying, “It's falling to pieces nicely, thanks.”

Priest nodded absently and went about his business, and perhaps a minute later he straightened up. “What did you say, Will?” he asked blankly.

Will smiled and shook his head. “How's Lottie?”

“You're too late to see her,” Priest said, a faint reproof in his voice. “She said something about wanting to see you.”

“I'll be gone a couple of days.”

Priest rounded up bacon and coffee and a small pot and a pair of blankets. Will rolled his provisions into the blanket while Priest watched him, a mild disapproval in his eyes.

“You'll miss the dance Saturday,” Priest said.

“So I will.”

When he finished he glanced up to see Priest regarding him speculatively. “Will,” Priest began, “I heard about a nice proposition this morning. A fellow wants someone to go in with him on shares running cattle.”

“There's money in it,” Will conceded, lifting his bedroll off the counter.

“A reliable fellow from over in the Indigos,” Priest went on. “Wants to stock some new range quick.”

Will looked swiftly at him, mention of the Indigos yanking him alert. The outfits in the Indigos were safe friends of Hatchet, all of them.

“In the Indigos?” Will murmured.

Priest nodded, his face bland and watchful. “Like I said,” Priest went on carefully, “it sound like a nice proposition. This fellow says there's not much risk. I wondered what you thought.”

A sudden wild anger smoldered in Will's eyes and then faded, and he drawled mildly, “If money's to be made there you might's well make some yourself, is that it?”

“That's what I figured.”

Will murmured, “How big a risk do you think it is?”

“Not big,” Priest said slowly. “How big do you?”

“Right now, not very big.”

Priest smiled faintly. “Thank you, Will.”

When Will had left, Priest, smiling faintly with satisfaction, went up to his desk, drew out a piece of paper, and wrote a short note. He looked at the clock then, which said eleven, Rising, he put the note in his pocket and set about closing the store.

After locking, the door he stepped out into the dark street and crossed it to the Belle Fourche.

Inside at the back there were a few scattered games of cards going on. Priest nodded gravely to the men standing at the bar and then paused and surveyed the cardplayers.

He saw the man he wanted, a hand from Harve Garretson's place out in the Indigos.

He went up to the players, interrupted the game long enough to give the note to Garretson's hand, and then left the Belle Fourche, nodding a grave good night to the bartender as he departed.

It had been a good day, a very good day, he reflected as he set out for home.

Chapter 6

The shock was still upon Joe Kneen as he rode out to Bib M next morning. He left the main road that skirted the Salt Hills a little after nine and took the wagon road lifting among the foothills to Bide Marriner's place. The breakfast he had bolted earlier was still heavy in his stomach, but that did not account entirely for the mild nausea he felt. John Evarts was probably dead, and this little scheme of Bide's that he had abetted, if not aided, was out of hand.

Kneen regretted bitterly that he had allowed things to come to this. John Evarts was too good a man to die alone in the brush at the hands of some riffraff from under Indian Ridge, and for that Kneen was genuinely sorry. Long ago, in moments of self-searching, Joe Kneen had read himself aright. He was a man born to work for other men, but only so long as his tolerant conscience approved. And it had never approved of murder.

Bib M, approaching it from this side, was a raw-looking place to Kneen. The L-shaped long house and porch squatted atop a low, bald knob barren of trees. Below it was an unlovely scattering of barns and corrals and sheds, a windmill thrusting its gaunt tower above them. It looked like a womanless place, Kneen thought, as he rode up to it.

Bide came out onto the porch in his shirt sleeves and put, his shoulder against a porch post and watched Kneen climb the grade. He had found time to shave since, roundup, and his swarthy face looked thinner, his black eyes brighter than ever.

He watched Kneen's gaunt, big-boned figure labor up the slope and he called, “Ride him up, Joe. That's what I do.”

Kneen grunted as he came up and sat down on the edge of the porch.

“You're out early,” Marriner said.

Kneen looked up at him, his pale eyes troubled. “Know anything about John Evarts, Bide?”

Bide grunted. “I found out I don't know anythin' about him. Why?”

“He's gone. They found his horse out there above Russian Springs yesterday afternoon.”

Bide looked at him blankly. “Gone? Where?”

“If you had a man disappear and his horse turned up without the saddle what would you think?”

Bide didn't answer for a moment, and then he said bluntly, “I'd think he was lyin' out in the brush somewhere with a shot in his back.”

“I think that's where Evarts is.”

Marriner stepped down off the low porch and sat beside Kneen. He scooped up a handful of gravel and sifted it slowly through his fingers and presently said without looking at Kneen, “That why you're out here?”

“Partly.”

“I'm a damn fool, maybe, but not that kind of a one, Joe. You ought to know that.”

“I do. But what about your men?”

“Go ask 'em. They're all out by Russian Springs except Russ. He left for Ten Mile this mornin'.”

Kneen stared gloomily out into the blue haze over the flats below, not knowing how to go about this and yet certain he should do something. He said gloomily, “Will Ballard will wait just two days before he cuts loose.”

“On me,” Bide said, and Kneen nodded. Bide said bitterly, “What about them little ten-cow outfits back under the Ridge?”

“Who put 'em onto Hatchet?” Kneen countered.

Marriner's dark eyes were hot now as he regarded Kneen. “Wait a minute,” he said slowly. “Who told me to go ahead with this?”

“I didn't figure on murder,” Kneen said grimly.

“You ain't, with me. I got nothin' to do with Evarts' disappearance, Joe, and I don't figure to. I got a job and I'm goin' to do it.”

“You're going to stay put until I find Evarts,” Kneen said flatly. He came to his feet now, and so did Marriner. Kneen topped Marriner by a head, and this fact alone seemed to anger Bide. He spoke hotly, arrogantly, “Joe, you try to stop me now and I'll run over you too.”

“You'll stop until I find Evarts. I mean that, Bide.” Kneen nodded curtly, and without speaking again he started down the hill.

“Joe! Joe!” Bide called.

Kneen halted and looked back at him.

“Whose man are you, Joe?” Bide called angrily. “I want to know.”

“Why, damn you, Bide, I'm my own!” Kneen shouted.

He walked down to his horse and mounted without looking back. Marriner, his fury touched by a strange uneasiness, watched him go and knew the first faint stirrings of doubt.