Coroner Creek (16 page)

“I know, I know,” Kate said gently. “I believe you.”

They regarded each other in the darkness for a moment, and then Chris turned back, and Kate fell in beside him.

The rage was still in him, but it was a rage at himself. He had let Miles surprise him, and that was stupid. He should have trusted his ability to handle his six-gun lefthanded. If his one lucky shot hadn't hit Miles' horse and pitched both him and his gun into the dust, he would have been cornered. His hand throbbed with every beat of his heart and he lifted it against his chest, the pain of it driving all else from his mind.

Kate halted in the oblong of lamplight. It was not an unfilled oblong now, for Bije Fulton stood framed in the doorway behind.

“Who's shootin'?” he demanded.

“Put a light on this dead horse out here and you'll know,” Kate answered tartly.

When she turned to look up at Chris the fear and the worry in her face had not yet vanished. “I think we both ought to see Walt now. Are you coming with me?”

Chris thought of that, and he knew, fool or not, he'd proved his point tonight. He said, “Yes,” and looked longingly back at the timber.

Younger stood at the edge of the timber until Kate and Danning had ridden out, and still he stood there, in the grip of angry indecision. He had made one serious mistake tonight, and he did not want to make another one by moving too soon.

Yordy, of course, had sold him out, and in discovering it he had lost his head and shot at Danning. The whole set-up was plain to him now. Kate Hardison had been placed where she could hear him and see him, and she would carry her tale of how he had planned to kill Yordy back to town and use it against him. That much was certain; that much was serious, because if she hadn't had the whole story from Yordy, she wouldn't have been here.

He saw Bije come out of the barroom carrying a lantern, and walk over to the downed horse. Bije would identify it and corroborate Kate's story.
It can't be helped
, he thought grimly, and left the timber, walking slowly toward the hotel.

The whole way of his life here would be changed now, he thought soberly, and his recklessness tonight was responsible. He thought narrowly then of what it would mean to him materially, and he decided it would not mean much. If he got the Sulinam mines contract tomorrow, he could buy out the town. Even if he didn't, Truscott was involved with the bank's money and his own money in so many affairs with Miles that he couldn't afford to lift a finger against him. No, his money and investments were safe. It was the intangible things, though, the slow accretion of respect from people, the chance of a lawful acquisition of power that he had lost forever tonight, and, thinking of this, he hated Danning with a murderous passion. He thought again now,
What does he want? Who is he?

Bije, lantern held high over his head, was still regarding the horse. He heard Miles' approach and lowered the lantern and looked in Miles' direction.

When he recognized him, Bije grunted. He gestured helplessly to the horse, and said, “He's dead. What do you want done with him?”

“Anything you damn please,” Younger said flatly. “I want a horse, Bije. I'll send him back tomorrow.”

“All right,” Bije said. “Only, look. If you and him was fightin' over her, she don't come here any more. You tell her I run a decent place.”

Younger swore at him then, and Bije, not much surprised, put the lantern down and said, “Get your own damn horse, you sorehead,” and tramped slowly into the barroom.

Younger got his saddle off his dead black, picked up the lantern, and went over to the corral. There was a bay and a chestnut inside, and he caught and saddled the bay, afterwards blowing out Bije's lamp and hanging it on the corral pole.

Stepping into the saddle, he still did not spur his horse, but sat there motionless. Again he speculated on the probable effect of tonight's happenings when news of it got out, and again he could not see how he could come out of it with his reputation unhurt. Oddly, now, he remembered Danning's words to O'Hea that Mac had repeated: “Tell him to work it rough and in the open. He knows how.”

He touched spurs to his horse now, heading down the canyon for Rainbow. Yes, he knew how, and he would work it rough. And soon.

CHAPTER XI

Yordy's fright was pretty well gone by the time he was deep in timber. He'd spent most of Saturday night drinking with Joe Briggs and giving mysterious reasons for his sudden exodus, meanwhile haggling interminably over the sale of his string of horses and his effects, which were still at the hotel and which Joe had never seen and did not really want to buy.

They came to an agreement a couple hours before dawn and Yordy took Joe's one hundred and forty-three dollars and rode out, swaying in the saddle, a propertyless man.

He reached the foothills east of Box H at midmorning, Sunday. Following the old logging road which was Box H's east boundary, noon found him in the foothills, sober, half sick and in need of sleep. He pulled off the road and slept for a couple of hours, and in midafternoon began his journey again and presently reached timber.

The urgency of his departure, now that he was sober, seemed exaggerated, and he was acutely aware that in some indefinable way he had been swindled. A few days ago he had had a job, a steady salary, four good horses and the clutter of stuff, some of it valuable, that any man collects. A few days after that, he had all this and the promise of five hundred dollars, too. And now, at the moment, he had his horse, and the clothes on his back, the few in his bedroll, his gun, and one hundred and forty dollars. It was a sorry showing for five years of sweat and toil, he concluded.

When night came, he made his lonely camp off the logging road, and to demonstrate to himself his contempt for danger, and his desperation, he boldly built a big fire and cooked his grub. Afterwards, over a bitter cigar that must have been dry the day it was made, he gave himself over to self-pity and recrimination. With any luck at all, he might now be sitting on the porch at Station waiting for Miles to hand him his five hundred dollars.

Between cursing himself for his cowardice and justifying it to himself, he finally concluded that the two Harms women at Henhouse were basically responsible for his position now. Danning was directly responsible, he supposed, but Della had thrown over her foreman of five years for this tough stranger.

He threw away his cigar and lay down, wishing savagely that Miles might have paid him the money, fired the canyon, and then been caught. It would have paid Miles off in the coin he deserved, and it would have paid the Harms women off, too. He was idly studying the gloomy pattern the pines made against the star glitter when the thought hit him.

He sat bolt upright, and for long minutes he calculated the risks. Hell, there weren't any—or if there were, he'd soon know, and in time to run.

Swiftly now, he set about breaking camp. He lashed up his bedroll, caught and saddled his horse which was close on picket, and stamped out his fire. Mounting, he backtracked a ways and found the trail that took him west into the heart of Box H range. The stars said it was close to ten o'clock when he looked at them now.

Leach was watching those same stars, and he had been doing so for a sleepless hour. The cold biscuits and steaks he had eaten tonight in deference to Danning's request not to build a fire sat like a handful of river pebbles in his stomach. When it came time to make up his bed tonight, he had discovered that all the pine trees handy had had their lower branches lopped off months ago to build the brush fence beside him. He had no ax and it was dark, so he could not cut pine boughs for his bed, and he had rolled up in his blanket in the grass.

Each small hump gouged his old bones, and Leach lay sleepless, imagining endless tomorrows of stiffness and perhaps rheumatism. He was too old for this kind of thing—under the kind of foreman the Harms women now had. A troublemaker and a driver, Danning was, suspecting trouble where it didn't exist. Did anyone who knew this country and its people think for a moment that Younger Miles or any Rainbow hand was going to steal these cattle? Where would he hide them, after he'd left a trail for a blind man to read?

Sleep would not come. The thought of the bunkhouse, with a level bunk and a soft hay-filled mattress, tormented him for minutes on end. A smoke might help, he thought, and he was already sitting up reaching for the sack of dust in his shirt pocket when he remembered Danning's injunction: No fire. He cursed bitterly and lay back on his saddle, which, covered with his jumper, made his unsatisfactory pillow. A simmering, crochety resentment came over him now. It was a fact: when you got old, you were discarded—unless you stuck up for your rights.

Leach fanned his anger by naming those rights over in his mind, and in the midst of naming them, he felt the thing run over his blankets. He jumped out of his blankets, fighting blindly to get away from whatever it was. Then he calmed down and swore bitterly.

Probably only a mouse. But dammit, if he'd been allowed to build a fire, which would have kept things away from him, and been allowed to get some sleep so he wouldn't know if they ran over his blanket or not, he wouldn't be this jumpy.

That does it!
he thought savagely. He stood there, mad, fed up, mutinous. The thought of the long ride back to the bunkhouse wasn't inviting. And then he thought of the line shack back in the Salt Meadow a quarter mile below. The shack had a bunk and a roof and a stove, and he could hear the bawling of any cattle that anybody tried to run out of Falls Canyon tonight in time to do something about it.

He scrambled around in the dark for his gear, his decision reinforced by the new difficulty of finding his stuff in the dark. Finally, he rolled his blankets and lugged his saddle down to his horse, mounted, and rode off. He was mad at himself now for not having thought of the shack sooner.

Yordy approached the canyon by the upper trail around the rim. He rode without any special caution, since he could explain his presence here to anybody except Miles, and Miles was sitting on the porch at Station waiting for him, he hoped. Coming down the steep trail that let out onto the flat at the mouth of the canyon, he turned toward the brush fence.

When he came to where the fence should be, he dismounted and walked over and felt the dry brush of it crackle under foot. He moved toward the creek and clear across the canyon, and then returned, satisfied the brush fence was still unbroken. If the cattle had been moved, the fence wouldn't have been replaced.

He paused a moment now, tasting the perfection of his plan. Danning would swear Miles did it and Miles would deny it. If they were both so anxious to fight, there was the opportunity. And the Harms women could work out that loan from the bank for as long as they cared to. It would still be there years from now.

He lighted his match and touched it to the dry brush. The flame guttered indecisively only a moment and then caught, and the dry needles burned with almost explosive force.

Yordy was so surprised at the violence of the fire that he was panicked for a moment, and moved to his horse. He mounted and watched the fire move swiftly along the piled brush, its flames a good ten feet high. Before it all caught, the grass of the canyon behind it started to burn with a sharp dry crackle, shooting sparks into the night.

Satisfied, Yordy put his horse up the trail and, from a vantage point close to the rim, he watched it take hold and spread. The sun-cured grass of last season underneath the dry stuff of this year burned savagely, popping and shooting sparks like exploding coals. A solid wall of flame, five and six feet high moved slowly up the canyon, fed by the natural draft of warm air from the flats moving up through the timber and up the canyon.

When it was alight from canyon wall to canyon wall, a great shaft of sparks rose into the night. Yordy had wanted to see it trap the cattle, but now he was frightened of what he had started. This might turn into a forest fire if some of these drifting sparks landed in the right place, he thought. If that were the case, he wanted to be over the mountains, and he rode purposefully for the creek above the falls, where he could pick up a trail over the peaks.

The fire burned slowly, thoroughly. Where it held back in one place for a tree, breaking the line of flame, it soon caught on again on the other side and the ragged line of flame marched on unbroken. The cattle moved away from it, at first slowly, then, as they saw each other and spread the panic among themselves, more swiftly, pausing occasionally to turn and stare at it.

It took a long time for the noise of the fire to penetrate Leach's consciousness. When it did, he dressed and rode up to the canyon, and the fire by now was three quarters of the distance from the mouth. Leach's horse balked at approaching the first dead steer. Leach fought him halfheartedly, for the smoke and ashes were making him cough. He moved back into an elder thicket and got a drink, holding carefully to the reins of his horse, and before he mounted he stood motionless, thinking of the implications of this.

He never told me it was fire he was afraid of or I'd have stayed
, Leach thought bleakly. That satisfied him and justified his action in his own mind, but he knew behind thought that he'd have to leave now. He could never work for Danning after this.

Toward the upper end, he started coming across the cattle. They were scattered in pairs or singly among the glowing coals in the fire's wake. He rode on among them, coughing, and when he saw that not one steer remained alive, he turned and followed the creek out of the canyon.

CHAPTER XII

There was a lamp alight in the house when Younger got back from Station, but the bunkhouse was dark. Nevertheless, after he turned Bije's horse into the corral, Younger went over to the bunkhouse and woke Ernie and, squatting beside his bunk in the darkness, told him of the fight with Danning. Tomorrow, Younger said, he wanted Ernie to take three or four of the crew into town early. If trouble came, over what had happened tonight, they would be ready.