Bounty Guns (14 page)

Finished with breakfast, Jeff got some hot water from the cook and shaved and changed to a clean shirt. He felt better. Murray was waiting on the bunkhouse steps for orders as Jeff came up to him.

“I'm goin' into town,” Jeff said.

Murray said nothing.

“There's nothin' they can arrest me for.”

“Nobody said there was.”

“All right. I'm goin' in and talk to Ball. He knows Dad didn't kill Shields.” When a look of wariness crept into Murray's eyes, Jeff laughed jeeringly. “Dad won't tell, if that's what's worryin' you.”

“Why should he?” Murray said indifferently. “I done him the biggest favor he's ever got.”

“Yeah. Landed him in jail.”

Murray's gaze whipped up to Jeff. “Maybe killin' a marshal and gettin' Hagen Shields out of the way ain't worth layin' a few days in jail for!”

“All right, all right,” Jeff said pacifically. “Sure it is. Now get the horses. You're goin' in with me.”

Murray rose and went over to the corral, cut out two horses and saddled them, and led them over to the bunkhouse. He and Jeff mounted and headed across the park. The wind off the Vermilions riffled the grass which was just beginning to cure now, and there was the tang of fall in the air. No roundup this year, Jeff was thinking; too many other things to think about.

They entered the timber, riding side by side, passed the ragged edge of it, and were then in the cold gloom of the pines. Jeff raised a hand to button his shirt collar when a voice ripped out of the brush, “Pull up!”

Jeff did, turning his head toward the sound of the voice. There, leaning against the trunk of a pine not ten yards off the side of the road was Cam Shields, and he had a six-gun in his hand.

Jeff knew Cam Shields only as Hagen Shields's son, but there was enough of Hagen in Cam's face to make Jeff shiver. His face turned a little green as he slowly raised his hands. This time the Shieldses had got the drop on him. Murray Seth whispered hoarsely, “I ain't a Bolling, Shields. Remember that.”

Cam laughed. “I don't aim to cut down on you. I just want to talk.”

“T-Talk?” Jeff stammered.

“Hell, I can't ride into your place without gettin' shot out of the saddle.” He paused. “You and me, Bolling, have a lot of things to talk over. As soon as you shuck them guns and throw them on the other side of your pony, you can get down and we'll parley. You too, Seth—only you wait till Jeff's got rid of his guns before you throw yours.”

Jeff wondered if this was simply a ruse to disarm him, then kill him. But whatever it was, he had no other choice. And he didn't intend to make a try for Cam, not with that gun leveled at him. He flipped his guns out into the road, and Murray did the same.

“Now get down and walk over here,” Cam said.

They walked up the low bank, and Cam backed away and stopped, leaving about ten feet between them. Then he lowered his gun and squatted against the base of a pine and cuffed his Stetson back off his narrow forehead.

“Bolling, you and me have been fightin' here for a couple of years. We're still fightin'—only neither one of us is fightin' the right
hombre
.”

Jeff stared at him, puzzled.

“One of us ain't goin' to lick the other,” Cam went on. “We're goin' to get licked, right enough, both of us. Right down to the ground.
But it'll be Tip Woodring that done it!
”

“I thought he was helpin' you,” Jeff said skeptically.

Cam touched the bandage on his arm. “Does that look like it?”

“Hell, I never loved him. What did he do to you?”

“Not only to me,” Cam said bluntly, “to you, too. Last night he tried to frame me for makin' an attempt at your dad's life.”

“Did they get Dad?” Jeff asked swiftly.

Cam shook his head. “But they will.”

Jeff glanced obliquely at Murray Seth, saw the puzzlement in his face, then returned his gaze to Cam. “What happened?”

“I'll tell you first what's
goin
' to happen. They're goin' to corral the whole lot of us, Shieldses and Bollings, and throw us in jail. Then Woodring aims to get a blanket indictment for the old murder of that marshal, ship us over to another district for trial, and hang it on the lot of us.”

“How do you know that?”

“He told Buck. He swapped Buck that information for information about Blackie Mayfell's death,” Cam said gently. “Buck laid the killin' on you, and now Buck helps Woodring till the last Bolling is in jail, then he jumps the country. Woodring lets him.”

Jeff looked at him shrewdly. “Buck never told you that.”

“Not on your life,” Cam said. “Buck told Lucy, even named the date when she was to leave the country. She told me, tellin' me to get out.”

Jeff turned this over in his mind. It seemed likely enough, but still it came from a Shields, the greatest clan of liars in the world. He said, “What did Woodring do to you?”

“I was the next Shields scheduled to get throwed in jail,” Cam said. “Pate, he's last. It all happened last night.” Cam hunkered lower on his haunches, pleased with how well this was going, and took up his story. “First thing that got me suspicionin' was my rifle was took out of my room. There was another left in its place, just like it. Only it wasn't mine. Mine had my initials burned in the stock a long time ago. This one had my initials burned, too, but it was fresh.” He reached around the tree, brought out Buck's carbine, and tossed it to Jeff, who examined it.

“Yeah, that burn is fresh,” Jeff said noncommittally.

It should be,
Cam thought;
it was burned this morning.
He went on. “That got me to wonderin' who could want my rifle. I went in town last night. Buck and Ball was at the saloon. They was talkin' about Dad gettin' killed. Ball turns to me and says, ‘The gent that beefed Hagen didn't swing down from the roof to the window. He forted up on the building across the street. You want to see how he done it?' I said sure. When we went to go out, Buck was already gone, but I didn't think anything of it. We walked up the street, and Ball stops at the sheriff's office long enough to tell Woodring to take the lantern upstairs and talk to Ben because he wanted to show me how Hagen was beefed. We went across the street then to the back of that old assay office. Remember?”

“Yeah. I remember it,” Jeff said slowly.

“All right. We get to the back of it, and Ball says, ‘Climb up there and walk up front and you can look right into the jail.' So I done it. Ball, he never come with me. When I gets set up there, I can see Woodring and Ben Bolling talking through the bars. I'm just ready to come down when a rifle cuts loose from the top of the next building. Somebody—and who else could it be but Buck?—shot into the jail at Ben Bolling. It never hit him, because I heard the slug smack the bars. Woodring kicked out the lantern and started shootin'.” He paused a brief moment. “The funny part of it was,” he said slowly, “he shot at me and hit me. He never shot at Buck.”

He waited a long moment. “I got down off the other side of the roof and high-tailed it away from Ball, who started shootin' at me,” he finished. He looked at them both. “Now what does that look like to you?” Jeff Bolling didn't say anything. Cam said gently, “It looks to me like Buck, on the other roof aimed to kill Ben Bolling, Woodring aimed to kill me, or if he couldn't kill me, Ball was there to get me for Bolling's murder. That would mean Bolling dead, and me dead or arrested.”

“What did you do after that?” Murray Seth asked.

“I rode like hell for the ranch to get a gun and blankets. I told Lucy what happened, and then's when she told me what Buck and Woodring planned.”

He let it go at that, watching them. Jeff looked quizzically at Seth, who returned his glance. Obviously they wanted to talk it over. Cam rose. “I'll tell you what I'll do, Bolling. Where you goin' now?”

“Town.”

“All right, go ahead. Ask Ben what happened last night. If he tells it the way I told it, then ask Woodring what happened. See what he says. I'll be somewhere along this road this afternoon, when you come back. We can make medicine again. That all right?”

“Sure,” Jeff said softly, watching Cam carefully.

Cam said, “There's just one other thing ought to convince you I ain't lyin'. I had a chance to kill you both this mornin'. I didn't. The reason I didn't is because I reckon Woodring to be a bigger enemy of mine—and yours—than all you Bollings put together. Think that over.”

He turned and walked back through the timber. Jeff looked at Murray. “What do you think of that?”

“Well, he never shot us,” Murray said thoughtfully.

In silence they turned and walked back to their horses. Jeff was a little uncertain of the reception he was going to get in town, but he reasoned that if Tip Woodring passed him up before, he would pass him up again. What Cam Shields had just told him served as a prod. He turned it over and over in his mind, discussing it with Murray. Certainly Cam's information about Tip Woodring fitted in with what had already happened. Hagen Shields dead, Ben Bolling arrested, and an attempt already made on his life.

In town, they put up their horses at the feed stable, and Jeff gave a kid a quarter to run up and see who was in the sheriff's office. He returned with the news that Woodring was there alone. Jeff and Murray, confident of their ability to handle anything between them that Tip could give, went up.

Tip rose at their entrance, his face belligerent. His truculence faded, however, as he saw their intentions were peaceable.

“I'd like to see Dad,” Jeff said coldly. “Any law against it?”

“There ain't,” Tip drawled, “but there ought to be.” He put out his hand. “Give me your gun.”

“Think I'm goin' to shoot him?” Jeff asked dryly.

“If you got anything to gain by it, I'm damn sure you would,” Tip said bluntly. “Hand it over. Also, I'm goin' to search you.”

Jeff submitted to his gun being taken and to being searched. He told Murray to stay there, and he went upstairs.

Ben came off the cot at sight of him. His face was worried, and he looked as if he hadn't slept much the night before.

“Jeff, you got to get me out of here,” he said bluntly, after the greeting.

“You're scared.”

“You're damn right I am!” Ben Bolling said bitterly. “I got shot at last night. I tell you, they aim to pay us back for what Murray did to Hagen Shields. I'll get it tonight or tomorrow night, I know!”

“What happened last night?”

Bolling told him. Tip had come up to talk to him. While he was standing there, somebody from the roof across the street took a shot at him.

“What did Woodring do?”

“He kicked out the lantern, shot out the window, then run downstairs and across the street. Back in the alley somewhere, they started shootin' again.”

Jeff said softly, “Is that right? Who was it shot at you?”

“Woodring said it was Cam Shields. He dropped his rifle and his initials were burned on the stock. And he's loose, Jeff. He'll try it again. I tell you, if I don't get out of here, I'm a dead man! You can't guard against a man shootin' through a window!”

Jeff said gently, “You'll be out of here by tomorrow, Dad.”

“How you goin' to do it?”

“I dunno,” Jeff said, his eyes wicked. “Still, I'll get you out.”

Jeff composed his features on his way downstairs. Tip had ordered Murray Seth to stand on the sidewalk outside the door, and from his seat at the desk he kept a watch on him.

Jeff closed the stairway door and said mildly, “Dad says somebody tried to gun him last night.”

Tip nodded coolly. “Pity he was such a rotten shot.”

“Who was it?” Jeff asked, disregarding the jibe.

“Cam Shields,” Tip said. “He forted up on the roof of the assay office and waited until I brought the lantern into the cell block. Then he cut loose.”

Jeff was watching him closely, suspicion slowly hardening into certainty. “Dad said you found the rifle.”

Tip waved to the table. Jeff picked up the rifle stock, turned it over, and saw the initials burned in the wood. The burn was so old that it was almost the color of the scuffed wood. He looked up at Tip. “He don't mind advertisin' he done it, does he?”

“He's not very bright.”

“Like a lot of other folks around here.”

Tip flushed. “All right. But from now on, that window's goin' to be down at night and painted black.”

“I didn't mean that,” Jeff said pointedly.

“We'll get Cam Shields, if that's what you mean.”

“I didn't mean that, either,” Jeff said. He put down the gunstock and walked out, certain as a man could be that Cam Shields had told the truth. A cold and murderous wrath rode him. Once he believed what Cam had told him, he found a thousand things to bolster that belief. He was convinced now that the real enemy of both the Bollings and the Shieldses was Tip Woodring, with Ball a poor second.

He wanted to see Cam Shields now, wanted to see him right away. The ride back to the Three B was swift, a purpose behind it.

At almost the same place in the trail, in midafternoon, Cam Shields stepped out and hailed them. He was still cautious enough to carry an unholstered six-gun, but he did not demand that they drop theirs.

“Well?” he asked.

“You're right,” Jeff said. “I saw your rifle. I heard Dad's story and Woodring's, too.”

Cam couldn't keep the elation out of his eyes, but he only nodded briefly.

“You said you wanted to talk to me again. All right, I'm listenin'.”

“Let's get Woodring out of the way,” Cam said calmly.

“How?”

“That's one reason why I came to you. I haven't any men. You have.”