Coroner Creek (10 page)

Chris looked curiously at him; his face was placid, content, and Chris wondered. He was reaching down into the flour sack for a cold biscuit to chew on when the shot came. The report of the rifle was flat, sharp, shattering the night stillness. It no sooner registered on Chris' hearing than the coffeepot went kiting off the fire, its spilled water hissing on the coals.

Andy's mouth opened. His hands were still turned to the fire, and he closed his mouth to speak and was rising uncertainly when Chris said quietly, “Don't move, Andy. He just wants to talk to us.”

And he lazily threw Andy a biscuit which Andy caught by reflex. Only then did Chris look up the trail; he sat motionless, thinking,
We start now, maybe
.

There was a long minute of uncertainty, during which neither Andy nor Chris moved. Chris' sorrel, alert and uneasy, snorted twice.

Then from out of the circle of firelight, a man's voice said roughly, “Andy, throw your gun away, and then throw his away.”

Andy looked at Chris, who nodded. Andy rose, circled the fire on the side away from the man out in the dark, and pulled the worn Colt's .44 from the waistband of Chris' levis and tossed it away from him.

Only then did he remember his orders. He pulled his own gun and pitched it after Chris', and then looked worriedly toward the man in the dark. His plain and now troubled face held small beads of sweat on his upper lip. The content was gone, Chris noted.

There was a movement up the trail, and the tall figure of a man stepped into the firelight and paused. He was a young puncher, tall, wearing worn waist overalls and a blue denim jumper, and his rifle was held at ready across his belly. There was the truculence of the occasion in his dark eyes now, and Chris, not moving, knew he had seen him before when the buggy was halted by Ernie.

Andy said resentfully now, “What's got into you, Bill? That ain't no way to act.”

“Shut up, Andy,” Bill said contemptuously. His glance was on Chris now, and they studied each other a quiet moment. Bill said then, “We didn't figure you'd have the nerve to try it.”

Chris said nothing; he tossed his cigarette in the fire.

“Can't you talk?” Bill demanded.

Chris nodded. “Put down your gun and eat,” he said mildly. “I can cut a couple of plugs for the coffeepot.”

A look of wild anger crossed Bill's face, as if he had just heard his manhood questioned. “Stand up!” he ordered.

Chris stood up, facing him, attentive and curious now.

“What the hell are you two doin' this close to Thessaly Canyon?”

Chris looked obliquely at Andy. “We close to Thessaly Canyon?”

Andy flushed deeply and nodded. “I short cut it, I reckon. I never figured they'd meet us like this.”

Chris looked again at Bill; a disgust stirred within him. Andy, his own man, was so thick he couldn't see the necessity for care or caution even yet! He said quietly, with self-derision, “I was coming up to meet my neighbors.”

“You'll meet 'em,” Bill said thinly. “Andy, lead your horse over here to me.”

Andy silently stepped to the edge of the firelight, but Chris noticed that Bill's rifle was not pointed at Andy, it was pointed at him. They knew Andy pretty well, Chris reflected. Andy was the thick-headed, steady fool, the man without fire or temper, who could always be counted out of any fight, the man nobody had to fear.

They left the clearing headed up the trail, Andy afoot and leading, Chris on Andy's horse, and Bill Arnold on Chris' horse. In this narrow, timbered trail, Chris knew he could not make a break for it unless he rode down Andy, and then his chances of breaking free were slim. He resigned himself. In a few minutes, the trail merged with a newly cut wagon road. Here Bill picked up his own horse and, in the breaking dawn, motioned them up the road.

It was full daylight when they smelled the smoke, then entered the clearing. The creek had swung almost to the side of the canyon, and the cut logs for the cabin lay scattered by the creek like matchsticks. Among them was the chuck wagon, and seated on the logs around it were four members of the Rainbow crew. They were smoking their first cigarettes around the dying fire and finishing their coffee.

As Andy rode into the clearing three of the crew came slowly erect, as men do who are puzzled but not alarmed. The fourth man—Ernie Coombs, Chris saw—came up off his log when Chris rode in, and then, when Bill appeared, he dropped his cup and started slowly around the log toward them. The shack, off to the right, Chris saw, had the four walls head high.

Bill called irritably, “How many times does a man have to fire a shot to get help?”

Nobody answered, understanding it was Bill's quiet brag.

“Get down,” Bill said, and Chris dismounted.

Behind Ernie, who was coming toward him, Chris got a glimpse of the broad brown parks among the timber of Thessaly Canyon, and then his attention centered on Ernie as he tried to read the expression in his long face.

Ernie Coombs was grinning faintly as he looked up at Bill. “Where'd you pick 'em up?”

“They built a fire on the trail about a quarter mile below the forks,” Bill said, a quiet scorn in his voice.

Ernie looked first at Andy, and Andy looked at the ground like a child reprimanded by a mere look. Then Ernie's attention shifted to Chris, and he was still smiling. “Come to have a look?”

Chris nodded, saying nothing, not liking the way this was shaping up.

“Take a good long look,” Ernie said quietly. “You won't want to see it again.”

Something in his tone warned the crew. They had been clustered around Ernie; now they scattered, a couple of them drifting behind Chris. Bill reached down for the reins of Chris' sorrel and led him away. Andy, puzzled still, looked from one to the other of the crew.

Ernie said, “You damn tough drifters, you never learn, do you? You been everywhere, you can lick anybody, and you're pretty handy with a six-gun. You can even back down a sheriff once in a while if you find the right sheriff, can't you?” He pulled his gun from its holster and tossed it aside.

Chris saw the anger in Ernie's pale eyes and thought bleakly,
I'm due for a beating
.

He waited until Ernie stepped before him, feet planted wide, and he let Ernie say, “You think you—” before he hit him. Ernie went down and Chris landed on top of him, arms sledging, but it didn't last. Two of the Rainbow hands were on him instantly. They held his arms and wrestled him off Ernie, who scrambled to his feet now, his eyes blazing.

Ernie said, in a shaking voice, “That does it! That'll—”

Ernie ceased talking, his big fists clenched at his sides. He turned his upper body as he looked at Andy West.

“Get on your horse and go home, Nellie,” Ernie said sharply.

Andy glanced at Chris, and there was unbelief in his eyes. Chris thought bleakly,
No witnesses
, but he did not speak to Andy. He had tried Andy and found him useless, and his pride held him silent.

“Look here,” Andy said. “We didn't do nothing. We—”

“Get your horse!” Ernie said savagely.

Andy gave Chris one despairing look and walked quickly to his horse. He mounted him and turned him and rode into the timber without looking back. Bill drifted his horse over to look down the road, and then turned and nodded to Ernie, who was watching him.

“Get a good hold,” Ernie said then to the two men holding Chris.

Chris struggled and Ernie, patient, waited for the two men to wrestle him into submission. Chris stopped presently, breathing hard, his face flushed with the exertion and his gray eyes murderous. Ernie swung then with all the great power of his thick sloping shoulders. Chris saw it coming and turned his head, but Ernie's great sledging blow caught him flush on the jaw hinge. His knees buckled and he sagged in the arms of the two men holding him, dragging them forward to keep their balance.

“Hold him up, hold him up!” Ernie said angrily.

“Hell, he's out,” Stew Shallis panted. He stumbled a little on his fat, short legs, and then tripped and fell, and Chris fell slackly with him.

Ernie's eyes were wild now. He stepped forward and grabbed Chris' shirt and lifted, but the shirt tore away in his fingers.

“Damn him!” Ernie said in a whispered, raging voice. “Tough, cocky gun hand!”

His very inability to hurt Chris more held him frustrated and motionless a moment, and then he said savagely, “Get out of the way!” to the man standing beside Chris. He brushed Stew aside roughly and, grasping Chris under the arms, he dragged him over to a nearby log.

Then he looked up at the watching, silent crew, “Come here, Tip. Come here!”

A plain-faced puncher stepped over to him, and Ernie reached down and lifted Chris' arm so that his right hand lay atop the log. “Hold it that way,” Ernie said.

Tip, bewildered, knelt and held Chris' hand as he was instructed, and when the hand lay flat on the log, Ernie raised his foot and stamped savagely on Chris' hand.

Tip dropped Chris' arm as if it were hot and looked up, and Ernie said wrathfully, “Put it back! Put it back!”

Tip did, and Ernie stamped three more times, the sharp high heel of his boot thudding with a thick muffled sound on Chris' hand and skidding off each time, ripping a great furrow in the skin.

He paused then, his eyes still bright with fury, and looked down at Chris. Then, slowly, he lifted his gaze to the silent sober crew.

Tip stood up, watching Chris' arm slide off the log and flop across his belly. It was bleeding freely now.

Ernie said, “That's the way to treat these tough drifters, break their gun hand. Watch him dog it out of the country now.”

He made it ound as if only bare justice had been done, and it took the crew scarcely a moment to adjust their beliefs to his. They came up and looked at Chris, and Ernie quietly rolled a smoke, not taking his eyes from Chris' face.

“You must have broke his hand,” one man observed. “He never moved.”

“He'll move,” Ernie said grimly. “Throw him in the shack where we can watch him, and then get to work.”

A scalding, formless abasement that he didn't know was anger built up in Andy as he rode down the wagon road. Something was happening back there, something they didn't want him to see, and it was happening to Danning. The very violence of what he tried to imagine sickened Andy for a moment. He didn't try to define his feeling toward Danning, but behind his anger and loyalty now was a deep sense of guilt. Danning had trusted him, and he had blundered them both into a stupid trap. And Danning was taking his medicine. What were they doing to him that they didn't want him to see? Shooting him? Maiming him? In the past few minutes, the world Andy had always shut his eyes to lay naked and fearful before him. He longed for the gun that he carried only because everyone else did, with a passion that made him reach for his empty holster.

And then the thought came to him. Bill Arnold hadn't picked up their guns; they were still at the camp. Andy spurred his horse and went straight to his gun lying in the brown-black humus of pine needles. Turning, he ran back toward his horse, and then hauled up and looked about him. If one gun was good, two were better. He found the second six-gun and rammed it in the waistband of his pants. Mounting now, he turned his horse and again put him at a run up the trail.

At the forks now, he had cunning enough to rein up and plan his course, haste or no haste. He rode on a ways, and when he could hear the clean chunk of ax blows in the air, he pulled off the road and tied his horse to a tree and went on afoot, circling through the timber until he reached the creek.

They were working. What had happened to Chris? Walking as silently as he could, half running when he thought the sound of the chopping would cover the noise he made, he came to the edge of the clearing, and halted some feet back in the timber. He could see the crew now.

Bill Arnold and chunky Stew Shallis had just laid down a log and were still bent over, listening to Tip Henry who stood in the doorway of the half-raised cabin. Ernie and Ed Rossiter were seated on a log, their backs to him. Now they rose and went over to Tip, and Bill and Stew tramped over, too. Was Danning in there?

Andy noted carefully that only Ernie wore his gun. He walked softly toward the camp and, leaving the trees, stepped over the first log as he heard Ernie say loudly, “Like your neighbors, hardcase?”

Andy halted, raised both guns hip high, and said in an angry, choked voice, “The whole lot of you turn around!”

They all turned to look at him now, unmoving in their surprise; Bill Arnold, after a moment's puzzlement, accounted for the guns and said softly, “Well, I'm damned!”

Ernie Coombs said mildly, “Be careful of those things, Andy. They go off.” And he started for Andy, a smile on his long face but a look of caution in his eyes.

Andy tilted one gun a bare half inch and let the hammer off. The slug slapped into the top log of the shack. Ernie stopped cold in his tracks, the smile fading from his face.

“You damn fool!” Ernie said. “We can get a U. S. Marshal on you for that. This is a Government homestead!”

“Bill,” Andy said, “throw Ernie's gun away.”

Bill Arnold was scared, Andy saw, and it gave him a sense of confidence and power as Bill came up beside Coombs and threw Ernie's gun in the grass.

Ernie said thinly, “Go on, go on, get yourself in some real trouble.”

Andy didn't answer him. He circled Ernie and Bill, waved Shallis and Tip and Ed over beside them, and then briefly looked in at the chip-laden, grassy floor of the shack. Chris was on his hands and knees, trying to push himself to his feet. Andy saw his bloody hand, and a hot anger boiled up in him.

“You! Tip and Stew! Help him down to the creek!”

The two came forward and got Chris. As they passed him on the way to the creek, Andy noted Chris' head hung deep on his chest and his lagging directionless step, and he said with the slow-forming decision of a man who seldom has to make one, “I think I'm goin' to shoot you, Ernie.”