the Outlaws Of Mesquite (Ss) (1990) (18 page)

He was madder right then than a wildcat in a swarm of bees, but he wasn't very happy about the spot he was in. Ross Lynch was not yellow, not by a jugful, but I knew there were several things about this setup he didn't like. The presence of Win Dolliver, whom I now knew had joined him by accident, was one of them. Another was the fact that I said I was the Papago Kid. That name meant nothing to him. But if, as I now believed, he had been tipped off that Wat Bell was coming to this ranch, then I had confused the issue enough so that he wasn't sure who I was.

Also, he was no fool. He had seen those two guns, and the guns had seen use. If we cut our dogs loose in this cabin, somebody was going to get hurt besides me. Nobody knew that better than Lynch.

Dolliver smoothed things over. He was a smart hombre, that one. "There's something to what he says, Ross. After all, why should we suspect him? It could just as easily have been me who found Ludlow. I was headed this way when I met you boys.

"We should have looked for those tracks, too. I'm honest to say that I never thought of it." He turned to me. "Did you hit the man you shot at?"

"Burned him, I think. His horse was moving. I held my fire, but it was the best chance I had."

Right then I decided to say nothing about the gun the rider had dropped, but to have a look the first chance I got. That gun might be a clue that would help me ferret out the answer to this deal.

Lynch was getting ready to say something, and I was sure I wouldn't like it. Dolliver interrupted.

"Look, Ross," he said quietly, "don't blame the Kid here for being on the prod. You can't blame him, riding into a deal like this. He certainly could have no reason to shoot Ludlow. Let him come on over to my place with me. I can use a hand for a few days, and when you want to see him, ride over. That will clear this situation up, and I think Papago will agree to work for me. I'll pay him top hand's wages."

"That's good for me," I agreed. "I'm not hunting trouble. I'll do all I can to find that killer, and if you want, I'll try to trail those men for you.

I've ridden trails before," I added, and I pointed this one right at Lynch, "and found out right where they ended."

Lynch didn't like it, but no more than any other man did he have a stomach for gunplay in that close quarters. The presence of Win Dolliver was a big help, and allowed him a chance to back out and save face.

The same questions kept coming into my mind. How had they learned Wat Bell was headed this way? Why had Hugh Taylor told me to ask for Bill Keys on the Tin Cup when it was owned by Ludlow? Who had killed the old man, and why?

Bill Keys was another puzzle. Taylor had said the man could be trusted, but he didn't size up right to me. How good a description did he have of me? Or did he have one at all? Hugh might not have known him so well, and could have been mistaken in trusting him. For one, I was doing no talking until I understood the lay of the land.

Something else had come into my mind that somehow I'd never thought of before. When Hugh Taylor had met me that night and told me of my uncle's murder, and that I was wanted for it, I had thought of little else.

True, I had left town rather suddenly after a quarrel with old Tom Bell, but that he had been murdered on the night I left for Mexico, I'd had no idea until then. Hugh had showed me the reward poster, but had assured me that he didn't believe me guilty. He had investigators working on the crime, and advised me to go away and stay in hiding until he sent for me.

My mind was full of questions. Had my uncle left a will? And to whom had he left two hundred thousand acres of his ranch? And who had killed him?

Bill Keys got up and turned toward the door and my eyes dropped to his gun, absently noting that a chip had been broken from the bone handle, and the break looked recent. Sheriff Ross Lynch and Bates followed him out, and then Dolliver and I. When he rode around the corner of the house, Keys was saddling a horse with which to carry the body into town.

Once around the house, I slid from the saddle and scrambled into the rocks. A hasty look showed me only one thing. The gun was gone!

Win Dolliver looked at me curiously, but said nothing until we were well along the trail to the Tumbling T. It was just six miles, and Dolliver talked pleasantly and easily of the country, the cattle, and the rain. Ludlow had been running only about six hundred head, while he had four times that many. Keys and Bates, holding a ranch in partnership, ran a few head over west.

When we were in sight of his own ranch, Win turned.

"Did you get a good look at those riders? Enough to know them again?"

"No," I admitted, realizing this was the first pointed question he had asked, and wondering what was behind it, "but one of them lost a gun back there. When I looked it was gone."

"Maybe you just didn't find it?"

"No, I saw where it had been. There was a boot track near it."

We didn't say anything more right then because the door opened and a girl stepped out on the porch and I forgot everything I had been thinking and all that had happened.

There is no description for a girl like that. It was simply that this was the girl I had been looking for all my life. It wasn't a matter of eyes nor hair, although hers were beautiful; it was simply that here she was, the girl that was meant for me. She was trimly shaped and neat, and there was quick laughter in her eyes, and there was interest and appraisal, too.

"Mag," Dolliver said, swinging down, "meet the Papago Kid. He's riding through the country and has had a little trouble with Ross Lynch."

"That's nothing against him on the T!" Maggie Dolliver replied with spirit. "You know what I think of Ross!"

Win chuckled. "Everybody should, after the way you told him off" at the last Latigo dance! But what about Howie Taber?"

She flushed, and I didn't miss that. The name struck me, too. "Who did you say?" I asked.

"Taber. He is a partner of Lynch's in a ranch they have out here. At least Taber owns the ranch and Lynch runs the cows when he's not working at being sheriff. Pretty well off, Taber is. And he made quite a play for Maggie when he was out here last."

Maggie made better coffee than Win, I found, and her cookies were wonderful. I listened mostly, and answered a few random questions about Mexico. Then I started in, and asked my first question. "What about Keys? Who is he?"

"Keys?" The question puzzled Dolliver.

"Frankly, I don't like the man. He ranches some with Bates, as I said, and he and Lynch are thicker than thieves. There's a story around that he ran with that horse-stealing outfit down in the Bradshaws, but I wouldn't know how true it is. He's also supposed to be something of a gun hawk. He has killed one man I know of-a drifter in Latigo."

Maggie looked at me curiously; then a thought seemed to occur to her and she turned to Win. "What I can't understand is why anyone would want to kill a nice old man like Uncle Tom Ludlow!"

"It was a mistake," I said, repeating what I had overheard when I rode up on the killers.

"I think they were looking for someone else."

"But who?" Win puzzled. "And why?" "I think," I said deliberately, "they were looking for me. I think they saw a rider at the expected place and shot him, then finished him off to prevent him talking when they found their mistake."

"But who was it they were after?" Maggie demanded.

"Me," I repeated dryly. "I think they wanted me."

Moreover, I told myself, if they had wished to kill me and had failed, they would surely try again. Had they been sure that I was Wat Bell rather than the Papago Kid, they would have insisted I go to town with them, and shot me, "trying to escape" on the way in. As it was, probably Win Dolliver's presence had saved me at first sight.

"Don't take what I said about working too seriously," Win volunteered, after a moment. "My main idea was to get you away from Lynch without a fight. He's tough, and he didn't like you. I could see that. Dangerous as he is, I think you've more to fear from Bill Keys."

Neither of them asked me any questions, nor why I believed it had been me the killers wanted.

Whatever their reason for inviting me here, and I was convinced there was a reason, they asked no questions and offered no information.

Chapter
III

Papago Makes a Hand
.

Nevertheless, I was up at daybreak with the hands, ate breakfast with them and with Win, and rode out to work with them.

Later in the morning when Maggie came out to join us, I overheard him tell her, "Whatever else he may be, Mag, he's a hand. He's done more work than any two of the regular boys."

Maybe it was because these cedar brakes were a pipe after brush-popping down in the Big Bend, where I had worked two years, but I did get a lot done. And maybe because it was good to have a rope in my hands and a cow by the tail instead of only a gun. Yet all the time I worked, my mind was busy, and it didn't like what seemed to be truth.

A lot of loose ends were beginning to find their way to a common point, and I had begun to see that in skipping out of Texas I had made a big mistake. Hugh Taylor, aside from being my cousin, was also my friend, or so I had believed. From anyone but him I would never have taken the advice he had given.

Hugh Taylor had run off from the ranch where we were growing up when he was sixteen, and returned again after four years. After being around a year, he took off again, and returned some months later with money and a silver-mounted saddle. He was bigger than I, and rugged. He was also two years older. A top hand at anything he did, he stood high in my uncle's favor.

Yet I'd worked on at the ranch, never leaving, punching cows, mending fence, riding herd. I had taken two herds north over the trail, and I'd had a gunfight in Abilene, and killed my man.

I wasn't proud of that, and as only a few of the trail hands returned, and they promised not to talk, nobody around the XY knew. Later, when I was down in the Big Bend with a bunch of cattle, we had trouble with Mexican bandits, and I went into their camp, brought back some stolen horses, and did it without firing a shot.

Finally, when I was twenty-four, Uncle Tom and I had a big argument, and I got mad and lit out for Mexico. Crossing the Border, I didn't want to be known as Uncle Tom Bell's nephew, so I called myself the Papago Kid. Riding through Coahuila to Durango, I had several fights, and then, moving up into Sonora, I tied up with old Valverdes and protected his ranch against bandits.

While there I had two more gunfights, one with a Mexican gunman, the other with an American.

Then, after being away two years, I had returned across the Border and the first person I'd met was Hugh. At the time it seemed a stroke of luck, and I remember how startled he was to see me.

"You here, Wat?" he had exclaimed. "Don't you know you're wanted for murder?"

That got me, and in reply to my heated questions, he told me that the night after our quarrel Uncle Tom had been shot and killed, that I was sought as the killer, but a story had returned to the XY that I had been killed by bandits in Mexico.

"Your best bet is to get out of here," he told me. "Ride west to Arizona. I've some friends out there, and in the meantime I'll do what I can to straighten this up."

So my uncle was dead, and they believed I had killed him. I hadn't, but somebody else had, and who was that somebody? Also, what kind of a deal had Hugh sent me into at the Tin Cup? I arrive to find a man murdered, and the sheriff hunting a "Texas outlaw" known as Wat Bell-and knowing exactly where to find him and when.

That last didn't make sense until I began to remember my last stop before getting there. It had been in Lincoln, New Mexico, and I had stopped there with a friend of Hugh Tay-lor's. Now if that friend had wired Sheriff Lynch, and Lynch had done a little figuring as to miles a day, it would not be too hard to arrive at the day of my arrival at the Tin Cup-a sufficiently secluded spot for murder.

Uncle Tom Bell had no relatives anyone knew of but Hugh and myself, so he would naturally leave his two hundred thousand acres to us, and if one of us died, then the other would inherit everything. I didn't like to think that of Hugh, but he had been a little greedy, I remembered, even as a youngster.

A few discreet inquiries around proved that nobody had ever heard of Hugh Taylor, yet Taylor knew people here, and they knew him. I was still studying about that when Mag loped her pony over to where I sat my horse, watching the herd we'd bunched.

"Win tells me you're a hand!" she said, smiling at me. "I hope you decide to stay. He likes you, and it will be lonesome for him after I leave."

That hit me hard. I turned in my saddle. "After you leave? Then you're going away?"

She must have seen something in my face because hers suddenly changed and the smile went out of it. "I ...

I'm going to be married," she said quietly.

That was all. Neither of us had another thing to say right then. For me, she had said it all. If in all the world there was a girl for me, this was the one. I wanted her as I never had wanted anything. But I was just the Papago Kid, and a fugitive from the law.

What she was thinking I have no idea, but she didn't look happy. We just sat there watching the herd until it started to move. There were enough men to handle it and I made no move to follow.