Tabor Evans (11 page)

"I don't recall offering to take on the job," Steed said.

"Shut up, Steed," Floyd snapped. "Mckee was our partner. It's only right to see he's put away proper."

Bobby had been as silent as everyone else during the meal; he'd let his eyes follow every move made by Floyd and Steed, and was obviously doing his best to follow whatever example they set. Now the young outlaw asked Floyd, "How come you didn't say anything about me? If I'm in with you and Steed, I guess I can do my share too."

"Of course you can, Bobby," Steed assured him. He stood up and began preparing the dishpan. Yazoo took another drink.

Belle turned to Longarm and said, "There's a cabin vacant, the one on the far end, past Steed and Bobby's and the one where Mckee was staying with Floyd. I guess you can have it, provided you don't mind sharing it with Taylor when he gets here."

"I'd be better off there than sharing with Floyd," Longarm said, straight-faced.

"I can fix you up a shakedown here in the house, if you'd rather," Belle suggested. "It'd just be a pallet over against the wall there, though."

"Be glad to have you bunk with me up at the stillhouse, Windy," Yazoo offered. His voice was slurred and he had trouble focusing his eyes. "We could talk about old times."

"Now, Windy doesn't want to stay up there," Belle told Yazoo. "The smell of that mash would keep him from sleeping." She smiled at Longarm as she spoke.

"I'll settle for the cabin," Longarm said. He'd decided it was time to establish the fact that he hadn't come looking for charity. He took out the drawstring pouch Gower had given him, and spilled some of the coins from it to the tabletop. Belle's eyes widened, and so did Yazoo's, at the sight of the gold pieces.

Longarm went on, "You said your going rate's five dollars a day, Belle. I don't know how long I'm going to be around, so suppose I just pay you for two or three days. If I stay longer, I'll pony up with it when this has been used up." He shoved an eagle and a half eagle along the table to Belle, and gathered the remaining coins into the pouch.

"You didn't need to pay anything at all right now, Windy," Belle said. She picked up the gold pieces, however. "Your credit's good here."

Longarm stood up. "I don't reckon you set a night guard, do you?"

"Why should I?" Belle asked. "Oh, if we're looking for trouble, we'll keep watch at night. But there's no reason to, otherwise."

"Good," he said. "Well, I'll mosey on down and settle in, then, before it gets too dark to see."

"There's a lamp in the cabin," Starr volunteered. "And a water bucket. You've seen where the well is, I guess."

"Sure. I'll get along fine, Sam. I'm used to looking out for myself." Longarm started for the door. "I'll see you at breakfast, I guess. Right now, a bed's going to look pretty good. I rode a long ways, these last few days."

He went on outside and started for the barn, where his horse was still hitched to the pole. Before he'd gotten well off the porch, Belle called to him. She came up to him when he stopped and turned around.

"Don't be too quick with your gun if you hear somebody walking around after dark. I usually take a little stroll before I go to bed, walk down to the bluff and look at the river in the moonlight, or just go around making sure everything's all right."

"I see." Longarm saw only too well. "All right, Belle. I'D be careful."

"You do that. Because if you hear anybody, it'll just be me. I always like to be sure my guests are comfortable." She paused and added in a suggestive whisper, "Comfortable, and well-cared-for, too. I'll see you later, then."

Longarm stood looking at Belle's back as she walked to the house.

CHAPTER 7

In the fading light that trickled through the paneless window and the open door, Longarm surveyed the interior of the cabin. It was tiny, but its very bareness made it look larger than it was.

A pair of narrow bunks were attached to opposite walls at one end; they were bare except for thin mattresses, and the straw with which the mattresses were stuffed protruded here and there through holes in the ticking. The bunks had no Pillows. At the other end of the bleak, uninviting room stood the inevitable monkey stove, a low sheet-iron oval fed through a door in one end, with a single pothole on its top for cooking. A table and two chairs completed the furnishings, An oil lamp stood on the table, and the water bucket Sam Starr had mentioned was behind the stove.

Longarm studied the window. It had no outside shutters, and its location, high in the end wall between the two bunks, made both of them vulnerable. Anybody tall enough to stick a gun through the window could rain bullets on either bunk while the thick timber walls protected him from return fire.

You better sit down and do a little bit of thinking about this mess you walked into, old son, Longarm told himself.

He lighted the lamp, just in case anybody in the house glanced down that way, took the partly full bottle of Maryland rye and his gun-cleaning kit from his saddlebags, and went back into the cabin. As an afterthought, he went back out and fixed in his mind the locations of the cabins occupied by Floyd, Steed, and Bobby. Neither of them was more than a dozen yards away. Back in the cabin, he leaned back in the sturdier of its two straight chairs, lighted a cheroot, and let a swallow of rye trickle down his throat.

If I aim to sleep on one of them bunks tonight, he thought, chances are I just might not wake up tomorrow morning. Not with Floyd doing everything but coming right out and saying he figures to cut me down first chance he gets.

He took another conservative sip of the whiskey, and began to clean his Colt. And then there's Belle, his thoughts ran on. She's made it right plain she's got plans to drop in during the night, and that's one lady I got to be one hell of a lot hornier than I am right now to give stud service to. Except, if I aim to stay here until I dig out what Floyd's cooking up, I can't afford to make her mad and have her hand me my walking papers.

Before considering the alternatives to a night in the cabin, Longarm had another swallow of the rye. After the corn squeezings he'd had before supper, he needed the sharp bite of the rye to clear his throat. Then he carefully reloaded his revolver and holstered it.

Now, I could go sleep up at the stillhouse, but it's a toss-up which smells worse, Yazoo or the barrels of corn mash he's bound to have fermenting up there.

There's the main house, but if Belle's taken a notion to come crawl in with me, she'd be likely to do it there, even with Sam asleep in the next room.

The thing for you to do, old son, is bunk in the barn. Good clean hay's going to smell better than either one of them mattresses. If anybody comes prowling, chances are one of the horses'll nicker. If Belle don't find me here, she'll likely figure I decided to sleep out in case Floyd might take a notion to pay me back during the night for shooting Mckee.

Having made up his mind, Longarm saw no need to hurry. He sat quietly until he'd finished his cigar; there'd be no smoking during the night in the barn, with the hay he'd glimpsed piled high along one wall ready to go up in flames if touched by a match or an unextinguished cigar butt. It was fully dark when he blew out the lamp and led his horse back to the barn. Moving quietly, he led the hammerhead bay into the barn and tethered it, then went to stand at one corner of the house. There was no need to get very close, or strain his ears, to hear the conversation going on inside. Floyd was saying, "God damn it, Yazoo, think harder! You got to remember where you seen this Windy fellow before!"

"I've tried all I got the power to." Yazoo's voice was tired and his words slurred. "I told you twenty times, it could've been just about anyplace. I tossed the names of a lot of places at him, but he didn't remember, either."

"Now listen, Yazoo," Steed began, but Yazoo had apparently had enough questioning.

"No, Steed. I ain't flogging my brain for you men another minute. Not tonight, at least. I got a batch of mash cooking, and I'm going up and stir it good, and then I'm going to bed."

Longarm stepped back into the shadow of the barn while Yazoo staggered across the narrow porch, managed to navigate the steps without falling down them, and started weaving toward the grove of trees in which the illegal still stood.

Belle's voice broke the silence next. "Why are you so set on finding out about Windy, Floyd? He seems all right to me. And I'm like Yazoo; I've got a feeling I've seen him before. Maybe when I was riding with Jim Reed down in Texas, or somewhere else."

Steed grumbled, "He's with us now, Belle, and if we're his own kind, how come he don't open up more?"

"Because he's careful!" Belle snapped.

"Just the same, he ought to open up a little bit more. Hell, he could be anybody, for all we know!" Floyd grumbled.

"Yeah." This was Bobby's light voice. "How do we know he's all right, Belle?"

"Because I've got a feeling he is!" Belle said curtly.

"That ain't good enough for me," Floyd retorted. "I want him to give us names and tell us about places." Belle said, "Now, Floyd, if you were on the prod, you wouldn't be going around telling everybody you're Floyd Sharpless, and there's reward money posted for you in St. Joe and Springville and wherever else you've been tagged with a job."

"I guess not," Floyd admitted reluctantly. "But I knew Mckee better than anybody else. We never did hold back a thing from each other, after we commenced traveling together, And I never heard him say a word about having a standing grudge with a man that fits Windy's looks."

Steed's tough voice rumbled, "That don't signify, Floyd. Mckee might've kept quiet about something like that, especially if he tangled with Windy and come off sucking a hind tit."

"He might have," Floyd agreed, with doubt in his voice.

"Not likely, though, Steed. Well, I'm going to set myself to find out. And maybe I won't even wait to find out before I even my score with him."

"I don't see you've got a score to even with him, Floyd," Sam Starr said. "It was Mckee's grudge, not yours."

"I got a right to make it mine if I feel like it," Floyd replied.

"Sure, but I'd watch myself if I was you," Starr said. "Belle and me saw that ruckus, remember. Mckee had his gun half out before Windy drew. And then Windy moved faster than any man I ever saw. He shot straight, too; you saw where the slug went."

"I can take care of myself," Floyd retorted. "All of you just remember, stand aside if trouble starts between me and Windy."

"From the way Windy was holding back, if trouble starts between you and him it will be your idea," Belle said. "Remember, Floyd, I don't allow my guests to fight each other--fists, knives, or guns."

"All right, Belle, I'll try not to push," Floyd promised. "But if anything does get going, I'll damn sure finish it."

There was a scraping of chair legs on the bare wooden floor of the house. Once again, Longarm stepped back into the blackness under the barn's overhanging roof. He couldn't see Floyd, Steed, and Bobby until they'd gotten a few steps from the house, but he could hear them.

Floyd said, "All that digging's made my back ache. I was sort of figuring we could all set down and figure out how we could handle everything without Mckee, but I don't feel like it."

"I just as soon put it off till Taylor gets here," Steed replied. "All I want to do right now is go drop in my bunk."

"Yeah. Me too," Bobby said.

Longarm shook his head at the youth's echoing of Steed. He'd seen the likes of Bobby before--a youngster taken in by the stories of glamorous outlaw lives. He'd seen such youngsters try to capture some of the glamor by joining forces with older, more experienced men, and come up against hard reality. Out of every ten, five gave up and went straight. Out of the other five, one or two survived.

A few more steps took the trio out of earshot. Longarm went into the barn. His eyes had grown accustomed to the darkness now, and he could see what he was doing. The horses and mules were standing quietly. Two or three of the horses nickered, but that was all. He spotted the low loft that filled about a third of the end of the barn farthest from the house. Cleat steps, on one of the posts supporting the rooftree, led up to the loft. Longarm climbed up and found that the loft had just about enough hay in it to make the foundation for a bed. He scraped the hay into a rectangle and spread his bedroll on it. After folding his coat for a pillow and arranging his vest as a pad for his Colt, Longarm stretched out and relaxed as well as he could without taking off his boots. Tonight he thought he'd be better off wearing them than shedding them.

It had been a long day and, in spite of his booted feet, sleep came to him quickly.

Longarm wasn't sure which roused him, the broken rhythm of hooves or the faint call for help. He heard both at the same time and snapped awake, slid his Colt out of its holster, and sat up in bed in the same easy movement.

He listened consciously as soon as he recognized the source of the noises that had awakened him. Neither the irregular hoofbeats nor the cries were close at hand. He stood up and put on his gunbelt, climbed down the cleat steps to the barn floor, and stepped outside. Here the sounds were louder. They seemed to be coming from behind the house.

Longarm walked fast, following the noises to their source. There was no moon, just starglow in a cloudless sky. He strained his vision through the darkness when he'd cleared the corner of the house. Perhaps a hundred yards away he could make out movement. He walked toward the shapeless black form, and slowly it took shape: a horse and rider. There was something wrong with the configuration of the rider, and the horse had gone lame in its off-hind foot.