Bounty Guns (2 page)

“Isn't the U.S. Marshal's office working on that?”

“Not the way I'm going to work on it,” Rig Holman drawled. “I don't give a damn if the marshal's office finds Mayfell's killer—so long as I find him first. I don't even give a damn what they do to him—after I find him.”

“I don't get it,” Tip said, after a puzzled pause.

“I want my investment back,” Holman said quietly. “I'll let somebody else settle the justice end of it.”

“Investment back from who?”

“Blackie's killer.”

“How do you know he can pay it?”

“Because whoever killed Blackie Mayfell killed him for one thing—the gold Blackie turned up. The killer has got that gold now, and I'll take my thirty-five thousand of it.”

Tip's eyes narrowed a little. “Maybe he isn't the kind who'd hand it over to you.”

Holman's smile was quick, shrewd. “You think a minute and you'll see why he'll hand it over to me.”

It didn't take Tip that long. He said, “I get it. He'll either turn it over to you or you'll turn him over to the law.”

“You will,” Holman corrected. “That is, if you take the proposition. There's ten thousand in it for you, if you turn up the killer and bring back thirty-five thousand to me. There's the deal—face up. Is it quick and dirty?”

Tip said softly, “But why pick on me? You never saw me before in your life. How do you know I wouldn't light a shuck once I had your money?”

Holman only laughed and said, “When you hear the rest of it, you may understand. Do you know where Blackie was killed?”

“Not the spot.”

“Ten miles from the town of Hagen.” He paused. “That town is right in the dead center of that old Shields-Bolling feud.”

Tip whistled in low exclamation, and Holman went on. “That war has killed a U.S. Marshal who tried to stop it, four of the Shieldses, and three of the Bollings. And Blackie Mayfell, maybe.”

“I've heard of that feud. You think they got him?”

“I don't think. I'm just telling you.” Holman nodded toward the barroom. “A few minutes ago you walked into my bar, in a strange town. You didn't know the name of a man in this town. Still, you had brains enough to size up the marshal and comb him over. You were quick enough to see what he would do, and do it before he could. You were quick enough to handle his deputy in the same way. You were tough enough to choose that whole gang. And you were honest enough to pay for two drinks—neither of which you drank—before you came in here.” He paused. “I'm a gambler, Woodring. I go by little things. You suit me.”

Tip, scowling, rose and walked to the window. The lamps of Forks were lighted against the dusk, and still he did not see them. He was thinking of only one thing. That ten thousand dollars would buy him a spread up in the short-grass country where a man didn't have to drink out of cow tracks, where he didn't have to save for seven years to buy a small herd of beef that could be wiped out in one drouth. He thought of that day when he'd left the south country. Seven years of hard work could be seen from the doorway of his shack—seen and smelled, for the cattle were dead, their bellies bloated, their legs in the air, scattered from the draw to the windmill, which was only pumping air. He had shot the last of them, thrown the key away, ridden to town, collected hide money, and set out for the short-grass country on a gaunted horse. Seven years of it.

He studied the reflection of Rig Holman in the window, watching him. The man had been honest, had warned him of the Shields-Bolling country he would ride into. Tip saw him open a drawer of the desk and lay something on top of the desk. Tip turned, curious.

Holman was watching him. He pointed to a canvas sack and said, “There's three thousand of it right there, if it will help you make up your mind. It's yours now, and will be, luck or no luck. What about it?”

Tip looked at the money and then at Holman and then down at his cracked boots, and he thought,
Why not?

He discovered that he had not only thought it, but that he said it aloud, and decided immediately that he had made up his mind.

“You're a gambler, too, I see,” was all Rig Holman said.

CHAPTER 2

Forks was the only town on the Big River bench, and the Vermilions, shouldering out of the distant west, were too high, too remote, too impassable to figure in its life. A wagon road started west from Forks, but as it divided at each ranch it became dimmer until, pressed against the steep shoulders of the Vermilion range, it existed only long enough to accommodate the mill in the big timber. Beyond and above that, it shrank into a trail, where a few small scattered bands of cattle made their way to and from the mountain pastures. Above that, it was nothing, and Tip Woodring, pressing into the boulder fields of the peaks in a drizzling early-morning rain, had only his instinct and a few game trails to follow. Hunkered down in his slicker, the rain channeling off his Stetson he reflected that this was an appropriate introduction to the country. Noon found him twisting through the boulder-shot canyons of the high peaks, leading his horse sometimes, other times feeling his slow way forward and watching for the fall of ground which would announce that he was on the other side.

It came later, and with it a driving rain. Once through the boulder field and into the sparse growth just below timber line, he took the first trail that offered a way to the shelter of the big timber below. Somehow, this west slope of the mountains was different, more forbidding. It was as if the bitter quarrel between the Shieldses and the Bollings, whose country this was, had laid its stern mantle over this slope.

Tip recalled what he had heard of this feud, remembering that the men who came out of this country did not like to talk about it. Years ago, the Shieldses and Bollings, coming onto the tight mountain meadows of the Vermilions' west slope, had settled there, sharing what land they needed equably. Soon their large families attracted a store and other settlers and the beginnings of Hagen town. The cause of the fight was lost in the bitter past; a slurring word at a dance by one of the Bollings when a Shields sweetheart was showing too much favor to a townsman. A fight that night resulted in the death of one of the Bolling boys. It was avenged within the week, this time on the Shields girl's father. Soon, since these families were Texans out of Mississippi, the cousins and uncles and other kin drifted in, making the fight their own. No sheriff could speak his mind safely, no jury could convict, no marshal could get any help. It was a country of suspicion, of unfriendliness, of shots in the dark, of secret funerals, of corrosive hatred, and of sudden death.

At dusk, the trail between the dripping pines dipped sharply, the trees broke away, and below him Tip could see the dark gash of a valley. Down it, where it widened enough, lay a town, its few scattered lights winking in the rain of settling dark.

Tip put his horse onto the valley road, feeling a curiosity edged with sudden wariness. Only a handful of the dark bulking buildings were lighted. At the four corners, he made out the dim lamplit lobby of a shabby hotel and, beyond it, the lighted emptiness of a saloon whose windows were painted white halfway up. He looked across the street then, and in the shadow of a dark doorway he saw two figures flat against the door. They were watching the saloon, and again, riding abreast and past it, Tip settled his attention there. On either side of the door, two men were waiting. A third, at the very edge of the window, was standing on tiptoe, peering into the saloon. Quizzically, Tip's glance traveled to the lamplit interior. Being on horseback, he could see over the white stripe.

Save for one man, elbows on the bar, facing the door that was the entrance from the hotel lobby, the saloon was deserted. Even the bartender was gone. The whitewashed, flyspecked walls, hung with faded calendars, the two empty tables against the back wall, the greasy mirror behind the bar, all stood out in sudden relief. The man lounging there seemed unaware of any interest in him.

At the sound of Tip's horse, the man at the window turned his head, glanced briefly and futilely at the horseman, and then faded back into the dark against the wall. He heard this man say to one by the door, “You better try the lobby again.” It was a low voice, drawling, but with an iron undertone of command.

Tip felt a kind of cold and distant wrath inside him, but it did not speak in a voice as loud as caution. It was none of his business, whatever this crew wanted. He went on past a store, also lighted enough for a man to read its sign:
Sig's Neutral Elite.
That brought a faint smile from Tip. Beyond that store was a high board fence, and then the feed barn, proclaimed by its black and yawning arch.

Tip rode into the dark archway and dismounted, and found that he was in the midst of a group of men. They parted for him, silent, and he made his way past four saddled horses toward a lantern on the floor. By its light, a man was saddling a fifth horse. He looked briefly, unenthusiastically, at Tip and said, “Take any stall.”

Tip unsaddled, running his hand over his weary chestnut, pressing the water off his hide in dripping rivulets. He rubbed him dry with a towsack, listening. The hostler, leaving the lantern where it was, went forward leading the horse. He came back just as Tip unstrapped his thin war bag from the cantle, and did not look at Tip.

Tip listened, waiting for voices that did not come, then picked up his war bag and said to the hostler, saddling a sixth horse, “Grain him.”

“All right.”

Tip tramped down the centerway, swerving for the restless horses. Again these men, watching the street, parted for him without a word, closing their ranks behind him as he stepped out onto the boardwalk dappled with rain. Something was about to happen here, he reflected.

Far down the street a light went out, and that was all. The man at the corner of the saloon's window did not speak as Tip passed. He seemed to be looking upstreet. At the saloon door, there was only one man now. Tip hesitated, came to a sudden decision, and put a hand on the doorknob. The man spoke immediately and courteously. “I wouldn't go in there.”

Tip shoved the door open six inches. The light from the saloon lamp suddenly blossomed through the crack, and Tip saw the face of the man who spoke to him. It was a young face, wild and strained, the face of a boy in his teens.

Tip said quietly, “I want a drink, that's all,” waited a moment for the kid to answer, then stepped inside and closed the door behind him.

He understood it now, looking at the man at the bar. This man was drunk, very drunk, and he held a six-gun in his hand. He was dressed in wet range clothes that had pooled the floor with dark spots. He was stocky, young, and square and tough-looking, with a sagging, good-humored face whose dark eyes were struggling to focus. The gun in his hand came up, halted, and was steady enough.

Tip said again, quietly, “I want a drink, that's all.” He waited a moment, and when the man didn't speak, Tip walked on. He went behind the bar, removed his slicker, took down a bottle of whisky, and filled a glass, all under the undecided gaze of the stranger.

Then, from the lobby door, came the iron voice he had heard before. “Buck, come here.”

The puncher whirled, pointing his gun at the oblong of dim light, and saw nothing. He laughed softly, drunkenly, to himself.

A new sound came to Tip then, the sound that in these last months he had learned to hate. It was the sound of many horses running.

The man in the lobby yelled, “Get down, Buck!”

The window glass crashed, slivering at its outer edge. A gun barrel poked through, aimed at the ceiling, and exploded. The overhead lamp whipped out. For one brief second, Tip held the whisky glass in his hand, watching the lobby door. The light there went out, too, but Buck's unmoving figure was still framed in it. Tip whipped up his gun and in a wide, clouting arc, he aimed the barrel of it at Buck. He felt it hit, heard Buck slump to the floor, and then he melted behind the bar. A man shouted then, out on the street, and the blast of a shotgun sent a section of the saloon window jangling to the floor. Three shots hammered out from across the street, on top of the second blast from the shotgun. Its load boomed into the bar, rocking it. A wild fire of shots started to pour in from the street. By the orange gun flashes, Tip could see a mad tangle of horses out there in the mud. He heard a man yell wildly, and then the pounding of feet from the lobby. Suddenly, in the far corner of the barroom, from beside the gaping window, two guns opened up toward the street. A horse screamed, and then the whole tangle outside seemed to dissolve in the sound of running horses.

Tip lay there on the floor behind the bar, letting the silence settle around him again.

He heard a man say softly, “Buck,” and when Buck did not answer, the man stepped through the broken window. Somebody sloshed through the mud, hit the boardwalk running, and said, “Did they get him?”

“Go through the lobby and get that rider. Where's Pate?”

“Here,” the kid answered.

“Come in here with me. Be sure before you shoot.”

Tip rose slowly, backing out from behind the bar, putting his back to the wall.

“Buck,” someone called again. Tip could see him, framed in the broken window.

“He's all right,” Tip said quietly.

The man shot then at the direction of his voice.

Anger flicked up and died, and Tip moved stealthily along the wall, feeling his way. Suddenly he put his hand on somebody's slicker sleeve, and the arm yanked away violently.

In a kind of blind panic Tip swung then, and he felt his fist settle in the hollow of a throat. He heard the throttled cry, the crash of a table tipping over, a body hit the floor.

A voice said from the middle of the room, “Have you got him, Cam?”

Tip said wickedly, “Damn you, I'm holding a gun on you and I can see you! I want out of here! Buck's all right!”