South of Heaven (17 page)

Of course, he hadn’t always been that way. He’d cared so much—possibly too much—for his wife that when he lost her…

I stopped dead in my tracks.
Lost her how?

He hadn’t said, but suddenly I knew. I was almost positive. To make absolutely sure I would have to talk to someone—but not yet. Not until the very last, the night before payday. Not until it was too late for him to talk.

Meanwhile, there were other things to be done.

I
was wearing my shirt when I rode in from work the next night. I kept it buttoned good and my shirttails tucked in tight, and I was plenty careful how I moved around.

Instead of heading right for the wash bench when I got in, I made like I was going to the latrine, then hustled on out of camp until I reached a certain clump of bushes. I got rid of what I was carrying there, caching it so it couldn’t be seen. The next night I brought in another load, and another one the third night. You’ll understand that they couldn’t be very big loads—not loads at all, in the ordinary sense. But I figured that the three loads would be enough for the job I had to do…
if
I had one to do. If I just wasn’t acting nutty like Four Trey had hinted I did.

I reckoned a gun might have been better, handier and safer and all. But there was just no way I could come by one, and I needed a weapon, so I used what I had.

I had a couple of cigars and a supply of tying twine in the cache. Also two eight-once bottles of jake that I’d coaxed out of the cook.

That was it, then.

And, then, it was the night before payday.

I sidled up to Wingy Warfield as he was setting out basins on the wash bench. He scowled at me, starting to tell me off with his jackass bray, but I shut him up with a five-spot and began talking fast.

“I sure owe you an apology,” I said. “I shouldn’t ever have believed Four Trey when he said you’d been dirty-naming me all over camp. That’s why I was sore, see, an’.…”

“Why, the dirty—! That just ain’t so, Tommy! I—”

“Sssh, not so loud!” I said. “I know it isn’t so, Wingy. He just did it to make trouble between us, because that’s the kind of a guy he is. Now I know you don’t like to talk about people—it just isn’t your way. But I figure you know plenty of dirt about him—”

“Damned right, I do! Why, I been on the boom since—”

“Sure, sure,” I said. “So if you could give me the word, I’d spread it around with everyone, and…not here! He’s a dangerous man, and he’s probably still got friends in camp. And if they saw us talking together…”

“Uh, yeah.” He wet his lips uneasily. “Maybe we better make it outside of camp, huh? After dark.”

“I know just the place,” I said.

H
e hunkered down near me behind the clump of bushes. Jerking his head to an offer of a drink. His voice shaky with fear.

“Uh, I been thinkin’, Tommy. Me’n Four Trey has always been good friends, an’ I, uh, reckon I don’t really know no dirt about him. I sure wouldn’t want to say anything that would hurt his feelin’s or, uh, make him sore at me, so—”

“Sure,” I said. “I kind of feel the same way, Wingy. Why don’t we just have a drink and forget it?”

“I don’t drink, Tommy. You know that. I sure wouldn’t drink no jake if I did.”

I said I sure wouldn’t either. I’d never done it in my life and I was too old to start in. Wingy frowned puzzledly, staring at the bottle in my hand.

“Ain’t that what you’re drinkin’?”

“Of course not,” I said. “It’s one hundred per cent pure Jamaica ginger like it says on the label. See? It’s right there in plain sight.”

“Uh, yeah, but—”

“It’s not jake until you foul it up with juice like the jungle-bums do. Catch me doing a thing like that! No, siree! I just follow the doctor’s advice, and mix it with pure water. Like this, see? That makes it into a medicine, what they call an antiseptic. It kills the deadly germs a guy picks up from handling dirty washbasins and so on.”

He glanced uneasily at his hands; scrubbed them nervously against his pants. I said I’d probably be dead right now of syph or clap if it wasn’t for dosing myself with good old 100 per cent pure Jamaica ginger like the doctors had advised me to.

“There’s an awful lot of dirty diseases going around a big camp, you know. And the guys that have ’em are always the ones that make messes for other people to clean up. They’ll filthy up a wash bench or a basin, and leave it for some poor devil to—uh—well, never mind,” I said. “What kind of germ-killer do you use, Wingy?”

“I, uh, I sort of disremember,” Wingy said. “You mind fixin’ me a drink of that 100 per cent pure Jamaica ginger?”

He didn’t have anything useful to say at first. Just lies, mostly, about how Four Trey cheated at dice and dirty-named people who’d never spoken anything but good of him. Then, when he was near the end of his second bowl of jake and water, he mentioned that Four Trey had been in the pen. I said I’d heard that, but I’d never found out why.

“Well, I’ll just tell you, then!” Wingy took a big slurp of his drink. “Damn, that’s good germ-killer! Best I ever used—
hic!
An’ here’s why Four Trey got sent up. Leastwise, it’s why folks
say
he was sent up. I wouldn’t want you to say I said so, because all I’m sayin’ is what was said t’me, an’ that’s not the same as if I was sayin’ I said, uh—Le’s see, le’s jus’ see. Oh, yeah. He served time for breakin’ and enterin’. That’s it! Breakin’ and enterin’.”

“Aw, come on, Wingy.” I laughed, pretending not to believe him. “Four Trey’s too smart to do anything like that. He sure as hell wouldn’t get himself caught if he did.”

“An’ what if he was drunk, huh? What if he’d been drinkin’ s’long it was runnin’ out of his ears, an’ his brains along with it? What if—
hic, hup!
Gimme another drink of that 100 per cent pure Germaica killer!”

I mixed it very slowly, still pretending not to believe him. Wingy said it was so,
irregardless,
because he’d got it straight from a guy who knew a guy who had a second cousin livin’ in Four Trey’s hometown.

“It was on account of his wife, see? He went haywire after his wife got killed an’ he finally wound up breakin’ and enterin’, like I told you!”

“Lay off,” I laughed. “Now, you’re getting worse and worse. There’s not a woman in the world who could throw Four Trey Whiteside!”

Wingy took the drink from my hands; swallowed a sulky sip of it. He didn’t say anything for a minute or two, and I was afraid I might have pushed him too far. But then he belched, the jake fumes tickling his nose, and he laughed good-naturedly.

“Is kind of stupid, ain’t it? But, anyways, that’s the story. Four Trey an’ her, they’d knowed each other since they was kids, wasn’t much more’n kids when they got married, an when she got killed—
hic!
—well.…”

“Y’know, it just might be true,” I said. “It’s just wild enough to be true. What was her name, anyway?”

“What’s the difference? How’n hell’s anyone gonna know a stupid thing like that?”

“Well, I just supposed it was in the papers—it usually is when someone gets killed—and—”

“Huh-uh! Aw, no, it ain’t! Not unless it’s someone important. Because no one gives a damn, right? You ’r me ’r poor li’l girl gets killed n-nobody ca-ca-cares. Jus’ throw us all inna ditch, you ’n’ me ’n’ poor li’l girl an’—an’—”

He began to cry. I patted him on the back and comforted him, and after a stiff drink he got squared away again.

Four Trey’s wife, he said (just sayin’ what had been said to him) had worked in a factory or a bank, “or somethin’ like that.” It had been held up, and there had been a hell of a big commotion, and when the smoke cleared away and the holdup gang had cleared out, she was dead. Yessir, that poor li’l girl was shot deader’n dead. An’ then Four Trey had started goin’ to pieces, an’ a year or so later he’d got sent up for breakin’ and enterin’.

“Pretty rich, ain’t it?” Wingy glared angrily into his drink. “They can’t catch the fellas that killed his wife—least they never tried no one for it. But they grab him right off f’r breakin’ into a guy’s house when he was too drunk to know better!”

“Hmm,” I said thoughtfully. “I wonder if he ever found out who did it? I mean, he might have been in prison at the same time some of the holdup guys were, and they might have peeped to him without knowin’ who he was.”

“Wha’ ya mean they wouldn’t know?” The jake was making Wingy cross. “Knew his name, didn’t they?”

“But they didn’t know
hers.
It hadn’t gotten any publicity, and there’d never been a trial or—”

“G’dammit, wouldn’t have made no difference, nohow! Couldn’t find out somethin’ that nobody knows, could he? Lotsa shootin’ goin’ on. Big gang o’ guys an’ all shootin’. S-s-soo—
hic!
—couldn’ say which one did it. On’y way t’ make sure of gettin’ the guy’d be to get ’em all.…”

The last sentence was the clincher for me. It took the babbling, drunken meanderings, the gossip of the camp loudmouth—a guy who would climb a tree to lie when he could stand on the ground and be truthful—to tie them into fact.

On’y way t’ make sure of gettin’ the guy’d be to get ’em all.…

Which was just what Four Trey intended to do.

I had been reasonably sure of it before talking to Wingy. I—a guy on the outside—had seen itand if I had then Longie had. And Four Trey must have figured that he would. So why he was going ahead anyway, one man tying into a dozen—all of them armed and waiting for him—

There was no time for puzzling out the riddle. All hell was about to pop, and Carol and Four Trey would be caught right in the big middle of it. And all I could do was be on hand to help them.

Back in camp, the motor of a flatbed roared to life, then the engine of a pickup. They pulled out of camp together, both ostensibly heading for the long run to Matacora. Either one could return with the payroll money, and the gang had no way of knowing which. But I reckoned that that wouldn’t make any problem for Longie Long. He’d know just what to do about it.

Wingy mumbled, “Gimme ’nother drink o’ that…’at…” Then he laughed, tossed his bowl in the air with a “Whoopie!” and went over backwards.

I caught him, eased him down to the ground and pulled his jumper around his shoulders. He began to snore deeply, dead to the world.

I left him there, feeling a little guilty about it, although there was no reason why I should have. He was a boomer, the longest-time boomer around. He’d boomed through every field from Wyoming to West Virginia, from Sweetwater to Seminole. He’d done more sleeping on the ground than he had in bed and he’d been bitten and chewed on by everything that walked or crawled. And I doubted that anything could hurt him short of a two-legged animal with a gun.

T
he night wasn’t dark, and it wasn’t light. It was one of those middling nights, the kind where you can see something if you’re straining to. If you know what you’re looking for and where to look for it. So, careful as the guy was, I saw him.

He was crawling under the row of flatbeds and pickups. Remaining only a minute or so under each one, then moving on to the next one. I don’t know what he could do to them in so short a time, but you could bet he knew exactly what he was doing. Whatever was necessary to knock them out of commission. Cars and trucks were put together a lot simpler in those days, and it was easy to get to a vital spot in their innards.

He crawled out from under the rear of the last vehicle—a flatbed—and kept on crawling until he was well out on the prairie. Then, he stood up and sauntered away in the darkness.

The rest of the gang had already gone ahead of him. He had had to stay behind, unable to do his job until the flatbed and pickup had pulled out for Matacora. And now he was gone to join the others.

I stood up, on the point of trailing him, then decided that the risk wasn’t necessary. The gang would collect at the place where Carol had been camping. They would want to be sure that Four Trey would find them, and that was the only way they could be sure.

I went around the end of camp and headed across the prairie. Straight toward the place where the gang and Carol would be—and maybe Four Trey, by this time. And, then, again I had a change of mind. Because they’d probably be anticipating trouble from camp. If trouble was going to come, it would have to come from there, so they’d be watching for it. Quite likely, they’d be looking for me to blunder in on them, because I sure hadn’t been very smart in the past.

Well, anyway, I thought it over for a minute or two. Then, in place of going straight ahead, I angled off, moving south and a little east and slowly coming around in a wide arc. I couldn’t exactly pinpoint the spot where they were, but I knew it was roughly east of camp and a little over a mile from it. So, by using the camp lights as a guide, it was no great problem to keep my bearings.

The problem was moving. Fast enough, I mean.

I was wearing a little tying-twine harness around my chest, up where I could watch it and get at it. There were six sticks of dynamite in it, all capped, of course, and with fuses as short as I could cut.

With a load like that tied onto you, you don’t hurry so good. Not over rough ground in the dark. With a load like that, the first time you stumble will be the last time, and you’ll travel a lot further and faster than you counted on.

So I had to take it very easy, and I had to take a long detour to where I was going. I was short on time—maybe a lot shorter than I thought. But it was that or nothing, and that’s no choice.

I reached the end of the arc, the point where I would cut sharply to the west. I stooped down low behind a thick growth of sage and struck a match to my cigar. Lighting it so fast that there was the merest flicker of light. On and gone before anyone could be sure he had seen it.

I took a deep puff or two, shielding the glow with my hands. I let the ash grow over the coal, protecting and hiding it. Then, I was ready for the backstretch. Or as ready as I’d ever be.

If the gang was only guarding the other side, I had a chance—and Carol and Four Trey had one. But if they had someone on this side, the rear approach…

And they did.

It was lucky that I was forced to move so carefully, kind of making a chore out of it each time I lifted a foot and set it down in front of the other one. Otherwise I might not have heard it. The soft
chuff-chuff
of a spade.

I crept forward, guided by the sound. Getting in fairly close before I finally saw him. I was moving in still closer when he stabbed the spade into the ground with a sharp
chuff,
leaving it standing upright as he stooped.

He laughed, a mean, teasing laugh. Then his jeering voice drifted to me, speaking to someone on the ground.

“…sorry, honey, but you just hadn’t ought to’ve knowed…little Mexico job we pulled. Them spics…ever…we done it…wouldn’t like us a-tall…”

There was a frantic, smothered sound. Terrified, choked. Suddenly I knew what it was, what was going on.

Carol.
Carol, bound and gagged and about to be buried alive.

He laughed again, spoke to her with mock sympathy. He was goin’ to tuck her in real nice, he said. Real nice an’ cozy. Might be a mite lonesome at first, but pretty soon all sorts of things would be cuddlin’ up to her. Fire ants an’ tumble-bugs, an’ snakes an’—

A real funny guy, you know? He was laughing and having so much fun that I was right on top of him before he knew it. Which was just about the last thing he ever knew.

I swung with my razor-sharp shooter’s knife, just one sweeping slash across his throat. He sagged backwards on his heels, knees buckling, and toppled into the grave he’d dug for her. And that was the end of his laughing and teasing. The end of him.

I spoke to Carol, whispered to her, rather. Letting her know who I was, warning her not to cry out. Then, I got her ungagged and cut her bonds. And then, well, I sort of held her for a minute, and she sort of held me. And she cried a little bit, but just out of happiness and relief. So softly that it couldn’t have been heard.

They had Four Trey, she told me. They’d caught him as he was approaching them. He wasn’t armed—apparently he’d ditched whatever weapons he had when he saw he was going to be caught. But his story (which they didn’t believe, of course) was that he hadn’t been carrying any.

“That’s right, Tommy,” Carol whispered. “He said he’d been meaning to kill them all, but he’d changed his mind. He’d settle for having them give themselves up.”

He’d
settle for it?
He
would? I reckoned they’d got a big laugh out of that.

“Why haven’t they killed him?” I whispered.

“They’re going to, as soon as Longie’s through with him. Longie jokes a lot, and he says there’s plenty of time.”

We whispered together a little longer. Then, I told her to swing wide, like I had, and head for the pipeline camp. She didn’t want to (and, as it turned out, she didn’t). She wanted to stay and try to help. But I got kind of tough about it, so finally she started away in the darkness, and I moved forward again.

I came up on a little rise to see a faint glow ahead of me. The dimmed light of a lantern which seemed to rise up out of the earth. That would be where the car was parked, the low dip in the prairie. Where the gang and Four Trey were. A few yards further along and I could hear them; Longie’s drawled questions and the whoops of laughter as Four Trey answered them.

I paused, running my hands over the dynamite harness, making sure the sticks were all riding good. I cupped my hands around my cigar, and drew the coal alive with a long puff.

The gang’s laughter tapered off into silence. An ominous note came into Longie’s amused drawl.

And then suddenly I was there, as close as I could get to them. Not fifty feet away and looking down on them from above.

Longie was sitting in the tail-end of the housecar, his legs dangling over the side. Four Trey was standing a few feet in front of him, and the others were kind of ringed around him in a half-circle. They were all crowded together, which made my dynamite about as useless as so many sticks of candy. I hesitated, wondering what I’d better do, as Longie spoke again.

“You think I didn’t see through it, Four Trey? You think I didn’t know it was all a setup right from the beginnin’? Why, hell, I almost laughed in their faces! A Square John goin’ crooked just when a smart sheriff turns stupid! A damn fool would’ve knowed it was a trap, an’ I ain’t no fool!”

“You’re not, huh?” Four Trey made a pretense of yawning. “You figure it’s smart to walk into a trap with your eyes open?”

Longie said he sure as hell did, because it wasn’t a trap no more when a man had his eyes open. The law had been tryin’ to trap him and his boys for years, and they’d walked off with the bait every time.

“Only one thing I didn’t know, Four Trey. I wasn’t sure of it, anyways. That was where you fitted into the picture. But when you skipped out, and when I got to thinking back on all those questions you used to ask when we were doin’ time together.…”

“Forget it!” Four Trey cut in on him. “You’re smart and everyone else is stupid. But it still doesn’t change anything. I’ve tipped off the sheriff, and there won’t be any payroll coming through.”

Longie laughed angrily. “Now, I reckon that’s not so, ol’ friend Four Trey. What you told the sheriff was that we wasn’t goin’ to rob the payroll this time. You told him there’d been some kind of hitch, car trouble prob’ly, and we’d have to wait for the next time around. That’s what happened, and don’t tell me it ain’t neither. Because you figured to kill us yourself and you didn’t want no law buttin’ in!”

Four Trey hesitated; nodded. “All right. I changed my mind, but that is what I’d planned. But there still won’t.…”

“Don’t you say it, you lyin’ son-of-a-bitch! They can’t stall the men another payday, an’ the sheriff don’t see no reason to stall. So the money’ll be comin’ through all right. An’ it’ll be on one of the only two things that’s left runnin’. All we got to do is knock out the only truck and the only pickup that comes down the trail, and we’ve got the score made!”

“You’ll never swing it.” Four Trey didn’t sound very convincing. “Pipeline traffic is about all there is out here. What do you think will happen when it’s chopped down to two vehicles?”

“Some tall wonderin’, I reckon. But they’ll be practically here by then. So.…” Longie slid down to the ground. “So that’ll be the end of their wonderin’, and them, too. An’ speakin’ of ending things.…”

He jerked his head, gesturing. The gang began to close in on Four Trey, and then.…

A fist slammed into the back of my neck. I stumbled and went down, and there was a triumphant yell from Doss.

“Got him, Longie! I got the punk!”