the Trail to Seven Pines (1972) (12 page)

It was here. He had been fairly called, and he knew it was up to him now. His mind told him he must draw, but no command ran along his muscles to the waiting fingers; no hammer was thumbed. Tense, he waited, his mouth dry.

And then it happened.

Duck Bale sprang the trap that Frazer had set for himself with his own quarrelsome pushing of this stranger. Duck Bale, who was harmless enough in his day, but smart too. Duck sighed.

It was a long, gusty sigh, and Bud Frazer knew what it meant. Bale had given him up; Bale had decided he would not draw, that there would be no shooting here. Through the mind of Frazer there now went a series of fleeting pictures. Of Bale crowding him, of Bale no longer avoiding trouble, of Bale repeating the account of what happened here, of how this man had taken the prodding of Bud Frazer, then called him, given him his chance. Frazer knew what they said about him. He knew he was a man avoided, if not feared. The very certainty that he would fight had built his reputation, and now this Red River Regan had called him.

There was no way out. Grim with determination, he grabbed for his gun. Yet even as he grabbed, a wild fearfulness came up in his throat, choking him with panic. His hand grasped the gun, and flame stabbed suddenly, from the hand of the man before him. Frazer had stepped back off the chair as he drew, and now he fell forward, striking the corner of it and falling to the floor, the chair across him.

Hopalong glanced once at Bale, who was staring at him, his face a picture of amazement.

Duck Bale had seen the best of them, and just now he had seen a gun leap to a man's hand in the fastest, smoothest draw he had ever seen! He had seen Bud Frazer, no mean hand with a gun himself, shot down with never a chance even to clear his holster!

Red River Regan was looking at him, and in those icy blue eyes there was a question.

"He had his chance. He asked for it."

Bale nodded. "He-he was a trouble hunter. Always on the prod."

Cassidy saw he now had an excuse to leave and grasped it. "I think," he said, "I'd better puff out of here and see the boss. He isn't goin' to like this."

Bale nodded. 'Tes. You better see him. He maybe won't mind so much as you figure.

Especially as he's got you, and you're faster than Frazer."

Hopalong thumbed a shell into the empty chamber and stepped out the door. Crossing to Topper, he swung into the saddle. Bale turned back at once, and Hopalong immediately turned and went up the canyon toward the empty house and the rock slide. To be caught coming out of here was not part of his plan.

At the same time he knew that the challenge was thrown now. The outlaws would have to kill him or leave the country, for he knew their hideout. Within a matter of minutes after they heard of this they would know who he was. Well, he had always crowded his luck; he would crowd it some more.

The white horse scrambled up the slide, and at the top Hopalong let him take a blow.

Then he mounted and drifted.

Seven Pines was rocking and rolling. This was payday at the mines, and the boys were in to throw a wing-ding and were well into it before the weary gelding walked up to the livery stable. The saloons were crowded to the doors, and the street rang with shouts and rough singing. At least three pianos jangled along the street, and now and again the rasp of a fiddle would sound through the hoarse voices. Occasionally there was a gunshot, but nobody even looked around to see if it had been fired from pure devilry, fun, or with deadly purpose. Seven Pines, like Bodie and many another western town, was proud of its reputation for producing "a man for breakfast" every morning.

Pony Harper leaned against the end of the bar and studied the crowd with cold, watchful eyes. Tonight he would make money, but a bullet could ruin one of the tinkling new chandeliers, and he wanted to save them if he could. The chips clicked, cards riffled, and the roulette wheel rattled as it turned away fortunes on every spin.

Gray should have been here by now. It was time they got busy, and this was the best time in the world to announce a gold strike with the room full of half-drunken miners.

Harper smiled coldly, contemptuously. It would serve Harrington right and kill two birds with one stone. The mine would have to shut down for lack of help, and the rush to the scene of the strike would easily cover their own find of gold.

That had been a smart idea: to start a fake gold strike, to plant a little gold around where it could be found, and then to work a vein of their own and produce a lot of gold-gold stolen from Harrington's mine!

Gold was gold, and once out of that bar, nobody could identify it. They would make their own bar, stamp it with their own name, and even if Harrington grew suspicious, which he wouldn't, there would be no way to prove anything.

A man had come in the door, a tall, cold young man with calm eyes, a young man in ragged digger's clothes, but who wore two belted guns. Pony Harper's brow creased.

The man was a stranger-and then he knew!

The man was Ben Lock.

Jesse had talked a lot about Ben. Jesse had been gun-slick and everybody knew it, but the younger Lock had always bragged about how much better his brother was. After one look at this man, slim as a rapier, edged and pointed for death, Harper knew this was a man who would, having a purpose, never deviate there from.

Harper left his post at the end of the bar and sauntered around, working his way through the crowd to Lock's side. The young man did not look around. "Welcome to Seven Pines, young feller!" Pony greeted him. "Stranger, aren't you?"

"No, I'm not." The voice was low and cold.

"Sorry," Harper said easily. "Didn't mean to offend you. If there's any way I can help you, just let me know."

Lock looked around, and their eyes met. Pony Harper suddenly was very glad this young man was unaware of certain things. "Where can I find Hopalong Cassidy?" Ben Lock asked.

Harper felt a leap of triumph go through him. "Cassidy?" He raised his brows. "You mean that feller who happened to show up after the stage robbery? Why, he's workin' out at the Rockin' R. Took a gunman's job."

"Is he in town tonight?"

"Perhaps. Haven't seen him." Harper was cautious. "My name is Harper. I own this place."

The young man measured him without changing expression. "My name is Lock," the young man replied. "I had a brother who lived here."

"Jesse. I knew him well. A fine feller!"

Ben Lock looked at Harper for a long minute. "He didn't say the same about you."

Pony Harper was nettled. The attitude of Ben Lock irritated him, and it offended his sense of importance. Accustomed as he was of late to being accorded some deference and respect, he did not like it that this cold-eyed young man drifted into town and seemed to care nothing at all about him or about what he might feel. It was something of this same attitude, although in a much more casual, easygoing sense, that had always made Harper dislike Jesse so intensely. The two young men were alike in that; they walked with a cold confidence in themselves, which was irritating to such a self-important man as Harper.

"That's too bad!" he exploded. "He had no reason to dislike me! And who was he to set himself up as a judge of anybody?" The contempt was thick in Harper's voice, but instantly the big man was sorry he had given rein to his feelings. The animosity in his voice and attitude was now obvious enough. Yet Harper was a man who had little respect for the intelligence of others, and he did not believe this young man would long remain his enemy if he handled the situation right.

"Oh!" He waved an airy hand. "Forget it! I was mighty sorry about him gettin' shot like that, mighty sorry, and so were we all. Fact is"-and here he established an alibi for himself"Harrington, the sheriff, and I were among the first on the scene.

We rode up together. Met this Cassidy feller on the trail, hightailin' for town.

He told us your brother was alive, but when we got there he was dead. We heard no shot from the time Cassidy joined us," he added.

"You think Cassidy killed him?" Lock demanded abruptly.

Harper's eyes grew small behind their thick lids. "I didn't say that, and I'm not goin' to say it. Hopalong showed up and we rode back and your brother was dead. Seemed funny that Cassidy should be there so quick-like after it happened. And Thacker,"

Harper added, "was killed by a gunfighter. He was mighty slick himself, but the man who downed him was a whole lot faster."

"I see." Lock put his glass down on the bar. "I think," he said evenly, his eyes narrow and chill, "I'll have me a talk with this Hopalong Cassidy!"

"You won't have to wait." Harper's voice was hoarse with satisfaction. "There he stands in the doorway!"

Ben Lock turned and faced the man named as one of the most famous gunfighters on the cattle trails. The man who was, as Hickok had been, a living legend. He looked across the crowded tables, across the noisy room, to see cold, observant blue eyes, firm chin, and a bronzed, handsome face looking from under the wide brim of a black sombrero. Two tied-down guns with white handles, two guns whose use had made their wearer one of the most feared and respected men of his time. Lock stepped back from the bar into a clear space. He looked down the bar toward the door and said distinctly, "Cassidy, I want to talk to you!"

Chapter
7

Shadow of the Noose
.

Briefly Hopalong studied the tall young man, then nodded. "Why, sure! You want to talk right here or elsewhere?"

Ben Lock walked toward the black-garbed gunfighter, noting the steady blue eyes, watchful and dangerous, yet also recognizing at once that Cassidy was not on the prod. Ready for trouble, he would accept it but would not force it. "Most anywhere,"

Lock said. "They tell me you were the last man to talk to my brother."

"That's right." The knowledge of who the stranger was served to relax Hopalong, who, despite the rumors, anticipated no trouble with Lock. "He was wounded badly but alive when I left him to hunt a doctor. Somebody shot him while I was
gone.

While versions of the story had been told around town, | there had been a half dozen of them and no two alike. Moreover,
some of these stories had been broadcast with an aim to discredit Cassidy and make him seem a suspicious person. His clear statement to the brother of the murdered man was uttered deliberately and for its effect upon th
ose rumors. "It isn't likely
, he added, "that I'd have said he was alive if I had known he was? dead. Nobody knew but what he was killed outright durin' the holdup."

This comment carried the ring of authenticity and reason. Several heads nodded, and Pony Harper saw with irritation that what he had hoped for from the meeting between Lock and Cassidy was not to be. At least not on this occasion. As the two walked to a table Pony Harper stared after them, wishing he could overhear their conversation.

He was standing at his usual place at the long bar when Duck Bale came in.

Harper was the first to see him, and his brow puckered slightly. The second man to recognize the outlaw was Hopalong Cassidy, and he was instantly alert.

The outlaw walked directly to the bar and ordered a drink. Once his eyes seemed to drift down the bar, but at whom he looked Hopalong could not see, nor if any signal passed between them. If Bale was aware of Hopalong's presence he gave no indication of it. Meanwhile, Cassidy sketched briefly his actions before the holdup and for the first time told of the riders he had seen and of their tracks.

"I never mentioned that to anybody but you," he said. "And I located their hideout."

Without identifying any of the outlaws or the location of the hideout, Hopalong recounted his experiences of the past two days. Lock was impressed by the evident sincerity of the black-garbed gunfighter, and what little doubt he had was gradually lost. Whoever had killed his brother, he decided, it certainly was not this man.

Before dawn Hopalong Cassidy rolled out of a makeshift bunk in the hayloft of the Seven Pines Livery and headed out of town toward the Rocking R. Topper moved out fast in the cool morning air and Hopalong was back at the ranch in time for breakfast and to meet Shorty Montana out at the corrals. Shorty glanced around at him, grinning. "You sure weren't a-woofin' when you said there was plenty to do here! There are lots of cows in those draws east of the Antelopes."

"Keep your eyes open," Hopalong advised. "You'll be workin' that country with Tex and the Kid. Don't start trouble, but don't take any lip from anybody, either. If you see any 3 G stock, start it driftin' east"

Dusark came from the bunkhouse, walking with a swagger. His manner was belligerent.

Hoppy's cold eyes surveyed him briefly, then passed on. Joe Hartley, he had noticed, was a serious fellow, and a good hand when away from Dusark. "Joe, you work with Frenchy today. Drift your stock north and make the gather at Mandalay Springs. The same for you hombres workin' the Haystack."

"What about me?" Dusark wanted to know.

"You'll be with me, Dan. We'll head over toward Rosebud."

Something flickered on the big man's face. "I been workin' with Joe," he protested.

"We're doin' fine together."