Shadow on the Land (25 page)

“Then Jepson either has to shoot or quit.”

“That's the way I see it. Here's what we did. The Deshutes Railway gets running rights over the twelve miles on the east side where we had each other tied up. Besides that, they get free use of our bridge over Crooked River and running powers to a point five hundred feet south of Redmond. On the other hand, they will convey to us at cost a right of way through the Smith place, and grant permission for the overhead crossing at Celilo. They also let us have, for a consideration, the necessary right of way between the mouth of the Deschutes and Celilo.”

Lee stared thoughtfully at Porter for a time. “That puts a new slant on things,” he said. “If there's any building across the desert, I guess we'll do it.”

“That's right.” Porter looked at Lee sharply. “What are you driving at?”

“I can promise you one thing about Jepson,” Lee answered. “He won't pack up his valise and move out. He's figured all the time he could make us tangle with the Harriman people, and this agreement won't change his mind. It may bring him into the open, but it won't stop him.”

Porter rose. He pushed a palm of a hand across his long, sober face, and shook his head. “It's your job to stop him, Lee,” he said, and left the hotel.

For a long time Lee sat beside the window in his room, smoking and thinking about what Porter had told him. From what he knew now he couldn't begin to anticipate Jepson's next move, but he was certain of one thing: the little man was possessed of an inordinate pride that would keep him from quitting as long as life was in him.

A sharp knock brought Lee out of his chair and across the room, one hand clutching gun butt. Opening the door, he saw that it was the night clerk.

“A feller just rode up, came in, and gave me this.” The clerk handed a sealed envelope to Lee. “Laid a dollar on the desk and told me to give it to you
pronto
.”

Lee took the envelope. He said—“Thanks.”—and tossed the clerk another dollar.

The envelope contained a single sheet of paper. Written in the same fine hand that had brought Lee to the Quinn house that snowy December day were the words:

I told you that you were a sucker for the right bait, Dawes. We've got Quinn in the old Calder house. You think you're tough enough to get him out by yourself, and you'll walk into our guns just like I said you would.

Quickly Lee slid into his coat, shoved his gun into his waistband, and, stepping into the next room, woke Highpockets. The tall man yawned, and came completely awake when Lee said: “Get your gun, pard. We're winding it up tonight.”

“I'll put on my pants first.” Highpockets threw back the covers. “What's up?”

Lee told him about the note. Highpockets made no comment until he was dressed and reaching for his coat. Then, glancing obliquely at Lee, he said: “I ain't one to duck a fight, son, but I also ain't one to start looking for hot lead if it ain't plumb necessary. Now it looks to me like we'd be downright foolish to walk into their guns like Jepson says.”

“Then we're foolish. Let's roll.”

“You oughta let the sheriff know,” Highpockets said doggedly.

“You think we'd better ride over to Prineville, get the sheriff out of bed, and have him tell us to go to hell because we woke him up. Come on.”

Highpockets held his silence until they were in his car and headed north from Madras. Then he asked: “You reckon Jepson's really got Quinn?”

“He wouldn't have written that note if he didn't. He's full of tricks, but he don't bluff.”

The car raced on through the sagebrush, the rimrock a black line against the dark sky, bright stars making their distant and ineffectual light. Highpockets cleared his throat. “We've been through a pile of fighting since that time you sided me in Shaniko, but I never went into a ruckus blind. What in the name of Goshen are we up to?”

“We're going to put an end to Jepson's cussedness.”

“Stop the car in front of the Calder place, walk in, and get shot to ribbons? I ain't in favor of it, Lee.”

“It won't work that way. Jepson's tricky and he knows we know it, so he'll expect us to take the long way around and try to out-trick him. We'll go at it the short way, and I think we'll fool him.”

“Maybe you've even got it figured out why he made this play,” Highpockets said sarcastically.

“I think I have. There's only one way he can figure. He knows that if a railroad goes across the desert, it'll be ours and not a Harriman line. He knows we won't even come close to Jepson City. So he doesn't have any choice but to go back to the people's railroad, which will go through his town.”

“That's a dead pigeon.”

“It goes on the ballot,” Lee reminded him. “A lot of things could happen between now and fall that would start the voters thinking about it.”

“Like what?”

“Suppose we don't build south of Bend. Or don't build across the desert. He can say we've only done half a job. You told me yourself he's built up his own political connections.”

“That's right,” Highpockets admitted, “but what's that got to do with getting you and Quinn out here?”

“We'll find out,” Lee answered.

* * * * *

The Calder place lay close to the Deschutes Railway grade, a two story farmhouse that had been deserted, since it stood beside a ridge that had been pierced by a deep cut because of the blasting. Lee had seen the house from the road, and had noticed how the windows had been shredded by flying rocks. He thought about it now, fixing every detail in his mind. He asked: “Have you been inside the Calder house?”

“Yep. Big living room across the front, kitchen behind it, and a couple of bedrooms off to the side. More bedrooms upstairs.”

They came within sight of the house, the windows along the front making pinpoints of light. The rest of the house was dark. “Ain't it funny they'd have a light in the front room?” Highpockets asked.

“Damned funny. Can you drive in close, so I can hit the porch in one jump?”

“Sure. Ain't nothing to stop me. Now, are you aiming to tell me what we're gonna do?”

“You'll make a wide swing in front of the house, slow down like you figured on stopping, and then speed up. They'll think you got scared and decided to go on. I'll hit the porch in front of the second window. You stop after you get past the house. Stay in the car and keep your eyes open for anybody they've got hid out.”

Highpockets groaned. “I don't want to miss the whole shebang.”

“You won't. Jepson'll have a man or two in the yard, and, if you don't get 'em, they'll get me. Plugging me in the back would be as easy as shooting pigeons in a haymow.”

“Risky business,” Highpockets grumbled.

“Jepson told me in his store, that time, he knew the kind of bait I'd take. I wouldn't turn this down in a million years . . . the way he threw it at me.”

“Dad-burned idiot.”

“That light is the trap. They'll figure on me dodging the light and sneaking around to the back. That's where they'll be all set to burn me down. The last thing they'll expect me to do is to bust into that lighted room.”

Highpockets sighed gustily. “Your dad-burned pride will make a corpse out of you, but I hope you're right, son. I hope you are.”

They swung off the road toward the house, headlights throwing a weird brightness upon the sagebrush. Lee's gun was in his hand, the door held open, as Highpockets swung wide in front of the house and made a quick turn, the wheels almost touching the edge of the porch. Lee jumped, crossed to the window in two strides, and glimpsed the fat, bald man he had seen in the Jepson City store. A single lamp was on a box in the center of the room, the light shining through a smoky chimney and leaving the corners of the room in murky darkness.

An open door on the far wall led, Lee guessed, into the kitchen. The fat man had called through it, and was turning just as Lee touched the porch. He saw Lee at the window, and lifted his gun and fired, the bullet breathing through the glassless window. Lee shot him. As the fat man fell, Lee shoved a leg through the window. It was then he saw Mike Quinn, face down on the floor a few feet beyond the lamp.

Lee paused in the window, stunned for an instant into immobility. A fury rose in him, a fury that sent a red wave rushing across his brain and caused him to cry out involuntarily: “Quinn's dead.”

A gun sounded from the blackness of the yard, the bullet splintering a board six inches from Lee's head. He heard Highpockets's answering shot. He came on into the room, eyes raking the shadows for movement and finding none.

Outside, the firing had stopped. A man's heavy, running steps sounded in the back of the house. Lee fired through the door into the kitchen. The rhythm of the steps was broken. Boston Bull stumbled into the room, carried by the impetus of his run, hands outstretched as if to catch himself. He fell headlong, a loose, heavy weight, the house shaking with the impact of his big body. His gun had dropped from his hand, and he had come on past it. Now he saw the fat man's gun, and picked it up. Still lying flat, he whipped the revolver into position, and dropped it as Lee's second shot took life from him.

These fast-paced seconds had caught Jepson's men off guard because Lee had not reacted to plan. Two were dead, and Lee could reasonably assume that Highpockets had taken care of a third outside. But Jepson was still alive.

Lee shot out the light, knowing that the advantage surprise had given him was gone now. The blackness was intense. For a time there was no sound. The smell of powder smoke was sharply pungent. Lee remained still, letting the long minutes pull out one behind the other. Jepson would break sooner or later. He'd know by now that Bull was dead, and panic would begin to have its way with him.

Then it came, the faint
creak
of a floor board, and mingled with the slowly receding smell of powder smoke was the foul reek of Jepson's cigar.

“You alive, Dawes?” Jepson called.

Lee made no answer. Jepson had not come into the front room. He was a man, Lee thought, of no great physical courage, but he had reached a point from which there could be no retreat. Now, having reached this place, he would be possessed by the kind of last-ditch daring that comes to a man when he has no choice but to go on.

“You're smart, Dawes!” Jepson called. “You didn't tackle this job like we thought you would.”

The little man's voice was drawn wire-thin. He was silent again, and time ran on. Lee, shoulders pressed against the wall, could hear no sound but his own breathing.

“Damn you, Dawes!” Jepson screamed. “Where are you?”

It was time now, Lee thought. He answered: “Waiting for you to come in, Jepson.”

Lee stepped swiftly away from his position along the wall. As he moved, Jepson began shooting, raking the room with a wild, reckless fire. Lee dropped flat, lank body pressed against the floor. A bullet sliced through his coat, opening a bloody gash along his back. There had been six shots spread the length of the room. Lee came to his feet, and went flat again, for Jepson had another gun. He was firing more wildly than before, as if panic were pulling his trigger finger, one shot coming hard upon the heels of the one before.

Jepson had placed his shots at about the spot where Lee had stood when he had spoken. Lee circled quickly now, holding to the inside wall, and, when he thought Jepson had fired the last shell, he drove through the doorway, his own gun speaking.

It was the cigar that gave Jepson's position away, the glow of it a small red dot in the kitchen's blackness. Lee's first shot missed, the second fetched a long-drawn, gurgling sigh from Jepson. Lee held his fire then, sliding away from the door, and there was silence when Jepson's labored breathing stopped.

Presently, after the minutes had told Lee the danger was gone, he lighted a match. In the small flare he saw Jepson's high-boned face, round eyes staring upward in death's blankness. And he seemed to Lee in that moment to be a strangely inoffensive and futile little man.

Lee stumbled out of the house, breathing his lungs full of fresh air, feeling the release from the evil that had gripped this place. He called from the porch: “You all right, Highpockets?”

“Right as rain,” the tall man answered. “You hurt?”

“A scratch along my back is all.”

“Jepson?”

“Dead. I guess he'd smoked a cigar so long he forgot about having one in his mouth. Come here and give me a hand with Mike.”

But Mike Quinn was not dead. He stared up at Lee in the light of the match Lee had struck, pale lips holding a small smile. “I came around in time to hear what you said,” he whispered. “Funny Jepson going like that. Guess he wasn't so smart. He figured on making it look like you and me had plugged each other. Still thought he'd get the railroads to fighting. Reckon he died thinking it. Claimed he still believed in the people's railroad, but he was going to get you and me out of the way first. Said nothing he planned would work as long as you were alive. You had him worried, Lee.”

Lee was on his knees beside Quinn, relief rushing through him, muscles weak with released tension. “How bad you hit, fella?”

“Not bad enough to die. I'm not going to die till I see that sign on Wall Street in Bend that says ‘Dawes and Quinn, General Contractors.' I've got to live that long for Michael O'Brien.”

Highpockets had found a lamp and lighted it. Lee, searching quickly, found a bullet hole high in Quinn's chest, another in his left shoulder. He asked: “What were you doing out here?”

“Coming after you.” The small grin was on Quinn's lips again. “Got a message you were in trouble, but, hell, I should have stayed in town. You aren't worth coming out here after.”

“Crank up your car, Highpockets!” Lee called. “I'll get this ornery, no-good pardner of mine into your back seat. I'm afraid he's going to live.”