A Grave for Lassiter (10 page)

They came to a mountain village where a few buildings of unpainted lumber were bunched at the foot of a granite wall. Residents came to stare at them. There was a shaking of heads as they saw the sign Northguard Freight Company painted on the side of the wagon.

“They don't think I'll ever last,” Melody said under her breath. “But I'll show them.” Her voice cracked.

“Spunk is half the battle,” Lassiter said, after they watered the mules and then fed them.

But he knew there was more involved than spunk. There were the matters of finances and equipment. Not to mention competition from Kane Farrell's freight line with its tough crews and new wagons. At any point, Lassiter half-expected to run into one of the Farrell outfits. He'd try to stand them off as best he could if it came to a fight, and he'd see that Melody was unharmed. He didn't expect her to be much of a shot, but with both their rifles they'd have a chance.

However, they met no one on the road except some prospectors, with a string of burros carrying unbelievable loads.

Shortly before dark they rolled into Dexter. Jared Adams, superintendent of the Glory Mine, looked over the bill of lading Melody showed him. He was in the mine office, a small, cluttered building with a steeply slanted roof that discouraged a buildup of winter snows.

“You're some weeks late,” Adams said with a superior smile. He was a large, red-faced man whose great mound of belly was partially concealed by a brown vest. Shirtsleeves were rolled up over soft, pale forearms. He was sprawled in a swivel chair at a rolltop desk. He handed the bill of lading back to Melody.

“We're too late?” she faltered.

“Much.”

Lassiter had been standing in the doorway of the overheated office. He pretended he hadn't heard the super's remark. “I'll need a man or two to help unload the cargo,” he said to Adams.

The man swung around in his swivel chair to sweep Lassiter with a flinty eye. “The cargo is unacceptable because of the delay.”

As Lassiter stepped deeper into the building, his boots thumping on the plank floor, Adams licked his lips.

“Her Uncle Josh died and she's trying to run the company herself,” Lassiter said coldly. “People have been throwing wrenches into the machinery. That's why the delay. So there's no reason for you to try and back out of the agreement.”

Adams regained some of the composure that Lassiter's cold gaze had partially erased. He said that Kane Farrell was bringing what was needed in a few days. “Need I say more?” he finished.

“Yeah, you can whistle up two men to help me unload.”

Melody, her face flaming, cried, “Lassiter, you're only making matters worse. . . .”

Adams whitened.
“Lassiter?
But he's dead. . . .”

“Not very,” Lassiter put in. “You're late getting the news up here in the mountains.”

Without leaving his chair, Adams flung up a window next to to the desk and shouted, “Marsh! I need help!”

“Yessiree!” responded a deep male voice.

“Now there's bound to be trouble,” Melody wailed. “And it was so . . . so unnecessary.”

“Adams here has to learn that when he makes a contract he'd better keep it!”

Melody stood rigid, fingertips at her mouth as she stared out of the windows. “Oh, my God,” she breathed as two big men came at a run from the mine warehouse next door.

The one in the lead had coarse hair the color of straw, was a good four inches taller than Lassiter, and outweighed him by at least sixty pounds. He jerked the door open so violently that it rattled in its hinges.

“You got trouble, Mr. Adams?” he bellowed, looking around. Yellowish eyes were riveted to the slender dark man near the desk.

“Him!”
Adams shouted, pointing a forefinger at Lassiter.

“Let's get him, Clyde,” Marsh yelled over his shoulder to the second man, making it sound no more significant than brushing aside a fly.

Marsh was reaching for a belted gun as his head turned to speak to the large black-haired man lumbering behind him.

Without waiting for the pair to get set, Lassiter lunged. A crushing blow landed on Marsh's jaw. As the man's head snapped back, Lassiter rammed a hard shoulder into his chest. The force of it knocked Marsh backwards into the advancing Clyde. Both men went down. As Marsh struck the slatted boardwalk, his gun was jarred from his hand.

Without losing a step, Lassiter bent down and whipped a fist across Marsh's face. Blood spurted from a smashed nose. Then he turned on Clyde, who was picking himself up from the path that led from office to warehouse.

By then Lassiter's gun was in hand, the hammer cocked back. Clyde Dover, a brawny man in his late twenties, came onto his toes as he stared into the ominous maw of the .44. His jaw dropped.

“Pull your gun,” Lassiter ordered him. “With thumb and forefinger. Put it down on the walk.”

When Dover hesitated, Lassiter said, “If you even look like trouble, you're dead. You hear me, Clyde?”

Dover looked down at Marsh, who was out cold at his feet. Blood ran down Marsh's jaw from the broken nose. Without a word, Dover did as Lassiter had ordered. His gun thumped to the walk.

Keeping an eye on Dover, Lassiter scooped up both weapons by the trigger guards. “Get inside,” he ordered the man, “and drag Marsh in with you.”

Adams stood woodenly beside his desk, his face the color of fresh whitewash. A coil of rope hung by a hook near a window. “Tie Dover's wrists,” Lassiter snapped at Adams. When Adams, with a trembling hand, cut off a length of rope and bound Dover's wrists, Lassiter ordered him to do likewise to the unconscious Jody Marsh.

When the trouble started, Melody had paled and looked like a frightened fawn ready to run to the safety of friendly woods. But now the shock was gradually leaving her face. It was replaced with the faintest of smiles. Her gray eyes actually glowed with excitement.

Four roustabouts had come to the warehouse door, their faces reflecting awe at the speed with which the two big men had been dispatched. None seemed anxious to challenge Lassiter's gun.

“Adams, tell them to unload the wagon,” Lassiter ordered. Then he added wryly, “I don't figure to give them a hand. I've earned a rest, don't you think?”

Melody laughed. The portly Adams swallowed and said, “Yes indeed, you have earned a rest.”

From a window he shouted orders, saying that the four men were to unload the wagon and quickly. When the job was done, Adams paid Melody the price agreed upon weeks before. Paid in cash.

Keeping an eye on the four roustabouts, Lassiter marched Dover and a groggy Marsh to the wagon, where he made them sit on the lowered tailgate. Because his wrists were bound, Marsh had no way to wipe blood from the lower half of his face. “What the hell you figure to do next?” he growled.

Lassiter ignored him and turned to Adams, who seemed to have shriveled from an arrogant overweight mine superintendent to a pale copy of his former self. Now he was just a fat man who was still in shock at the swift and brutal way Lassiter had handled his two bodyguards.

But he did attempt to save face by saying, “You've made a couple of enemies today, Lassiter.”

“Enemies I've already got. From Denver to the Mex border, from the California line to El Paso. Two more don't mean a damn thing.”

Lassiter gave a hard laugh. He untied his horse from the tailgate of the empty wagon where the two men were already seated.

“You drive,” he told Melody as he mounted up. “I'll be keeping an eye open.”

Lassiter watched from the saddle, his Henry rifle across a thigh as a cheerful Melody started back down the mountain.

“Why in hell didn't Adams tell us it was Lassiter?” Marsh muttered. “We'd have come shootin' instead of swingin' our fists.”

Lassiter rode close, which caused Marsh's bloodied face to look apprehensive. “Either one of you ever make a move against Mrs. Vanderson, I'll be on your trail. Once I start after a man I never quit till I get him.”

Both of them seemed impressed.

Lassiter rode fifty yards back up the road to see if Adams might have ignored Lassiter's warning and gotten help either from his mine or the village nearby. But there was no sign of anyone.

When they were about four miles from the mine, Lassiter told Melody to halt the wagon. He ordered the pair off the tailgate. “Now you can walk.”

Clouds had sailed in to darken the sun. A chill wind had come up during the last mile.

“Cut us loose, Lassiter,” Marsh whined as he looked at the ominous sky. Pines rustled in the wind. A large pine cone plopped to the ground and rolled onto the road.

“Just start walking, boys,” Lassiter said. “And if you get any grand ideas about coming after us, I guarantee you'll never see another sunrise.”

Chapter Eleven

As nightfall approached, he found them a campsite, sheltered from the road by a stand of pines. After watering and feeding the mules, and putting his black horse on good grass, he went hunting. All he could bag was a large jack rabbit.

He built a fire and skinned the animal, then broiled the meat on flat stones.

She sat so close to him that he could feel her tremble.

“You're frightened up here, just the two of us,” he said. “Don't be. Nothing's going to hurt you.”

“I'm not afraid as long . . .” She turned and looked at the play of firelight across his strong features. “As long as you're with me,” she concluded in a low voice.

When they had finished eating, she licked grease from her fingers. “Never have I tasted anything as good as that rabbit.” He shrugged. Then she whispered, “May I say something, Lassiter?”

“Sure, go ahead.”

“You were marvelous today. Simply
marvelous.”

“Adams figured to give you trouble. I gave him some instead.”

“That poor man was badly frightened.” Laughter bubbled from her lips. Then she sobered. “I haven't been very nice to you and I'm sorry.”

“It doesn't matter now.”

“For one thing, it was such a shock to see you alive when I thought you were dead. And then there were the things Vance kept saying about you. . . .”

“Such as?”

“That you intended to cheat Uncle Herm.”

“I would never cheat Herm Falconer. Or anybody, for that matter.”

When it started to sprinkle, he got several tarps from the freighter and made a bed for them under the wagon where they'd be out of the rain.

“We better be together tonight,” Lassiter said. “It'll be freezing up here before morning. We'll need the body warmth of both of us.”

Light from the dying fire was reflected in her eyes as she thought about it. Then she gave a deep sigh and said, “I guess it's the only way.”

By the time he pulled off his boots, the rain had turned into a downpour. He lay under the wagon, his back to hers.

“It's no feather bed,” he said over his shoulder, “but it'll have to do.”

She reached back under the tarp for his hand. She gave it a squeeze. “I'd be afraid out here alone. But not with you along.”

“I sleep light. If I hear anything in the night, I'll be ready.”

Then she made an impulsive move. Sitting up under the wagon, she leaned over him. The feel of soft lips against his cheek was surprising. He didn't say anything. But after the hectic experience of the late afternoon, the gesture was most welcome. Turning his head, he met her lips with his own.

For only an instant did it cross his mind that she was another man's wife. Man? A weak-kneed snivelling crybaby. Any guilt he might have felt slid off as easily as water from a greased sheet of iron.

In the morning she avoided his eyes. “I suppose you think I'm awful.”

He kissed her, but she pushed away. “It mustn't happen again,” she said hoarsely, and started to run a comb through her long pale hair. . . .

The story of how Lassiter had handled the two toughs up at the Glory Mine soon spread through the mountains. Mostly it was Melody who would go into detail about how Lassiter had made Dover and Marsh ride on the tailgate of the wagon before turning them loose. Most of the time, when Lassiter was near, she acted as though she was walking three feet off the ground. And her gray eyes would acquire a strange glow.

But Lassiter pretended indifference. He had to remind himself that there were more important things to consider, such as his determination to revive the fortunes of the Northguard Freight Company. He kept waiting for a reply to his letters written to Herm Falconer down at Rimrock.

Later that week Bert Oliver appeared at the company headquarters in Aspen Creek. The lanky former Confederate soldier said that Bluegate buzzed with news that the freight company had taken a turn for the better. Now he wanted to be a part of Lassiter's game to bring down Kane Farrell.

“You're the only man around here with guts enough to stand up to him,” Oliver said gravely in his drawl. “An' I'd like to be with you.”

Lassiter studied him, knowing from the leathery skin and deep eye creases that he must be close to forty or even more. Oliver seemed to sense his hesitation.

“In the war I was a dead shot. My job was to ride rifle guard on the mail wagon. A lot of blue bellies tried to jump me. None of 'em ever made it.”

A grinning Lassiter welcomed him with outstretched hand.

Later in the week, Lassiter recruited three more men who had heard he was hiring. He gave it to them straight. Wages would be tops, but they wouldn't be paid until finances improved. About all Lassiter could promise for the moment were full stomachs.

The men were agreeable. At least they'd eat until the money started rolling in. Jobs in the area were hard to come by until local ranches started hiring extra hands for the spring roundup, which was over a month away.

Business picked up, but it was mostly short hauls. What Lassiter wanted was a big one. It came when Melody was notified by mail that a shipment expected by the Bitterroot Mining Company had arrived via the railroad and was now at Montclair, a week's trip to the north.