Coroner Creek (23 page)

“Good men go wrong the same way,” Kate said quietly. “I know all about you I need to know, except the beginning. I even know the end.”

Chris looked at her a long moment. “And what is the end?”

“You'll kill him:”

Chris said nothing, and Kate, watching him closely, said with a sudden intuitiveness. “It's beyond that that's troubling you, is it? I don't know that, Chris. You'll have to get it over with and see.” She waited for him to speak, and when he did not she said, “Good night,” and left him.

He went on back downstreet and climbed the stairs to his bare room, which held only an iron bedstead, a washstand and a chair.

Stripping off his shirt, he changed to a fresh one, and then, sitting on the edge of his bed, he painstakingly rolled four cigarettes and put them on the chair which held the lamp by his bed; and all the time Kate's words were running through his mind, troubling him. How had she guessed he was wondering what lay beyond the death of Miles for him, when he had not known himself that he was wondering. Yet he had been. Suddenly the thought came to him,
Maybe I want to be free of this
, and the fact that he had even thought it shamed him.

He lighted his cigarette and lay back on the bed, and now, again, he turned his thoughts purposely to Bess. He found himself, without wanting to, comparing Bess with Kate. The two were alike in only a few things; not in looks, not in voice, not in figure. Bess was taller—or was she? He tried hard to remember, and could not, and a slow helpless bafflement came to him. How was it he could forget the thing he had sworn never to forget, even if he lived forever? And the thought came to him then,
Maybe you're beginning to want to forget them, They're part of a ghost, aren't they?

He lay there, denying, this to himself until he slept, the first cigarette cold in his fingers.

CHAPTER XVIII

The rain still held, slow and steady, when Mac crossed the bridge over the brawling Coroner into Rainbow around midday. The house, it seemed, was cold and deserted, and the cluster of hands in the bunkhouse doorway told MacElvey that Miles was not home yet from the tie-camp. The leaderless crew greeted him as he dismounted, and one of them took his horse while the others questioned him. He told them of Bill Arnold's death, and of the arrest of Ernie and Shallis, and when he was finished they looked to him for leadership. He counseled them to wait for Miles.

A half hour later, with the crew milling and yarning behind him in the bunkhouse, Mac was standing in the doorway, listening idly to the Coroner. The runoff from the creeks had deepened its roar, and occasionally he could hear the rumble of the boulders rolling along the bottom. He was standing thus when he heard the sound of hoofbeats on the plank bridge and looked up to see Miles, riding his black, come off the bridge.

Mac stepped out into the mire of the lot and crossed it and was waiting under the tree by the picket fence as Younger, bulky in his slicker, rode up and dismounted. His square face was ruddy, his mustache wet, and now his expression was one of concern as he stepped out of the saddle. “Anything wrong, Mac?”

MacElvey told him of the death of Andy, the arrest of Shallis and of Danning's shooting of Arnold and capture of Ernie. As he talked, the crew began to drift across through the rain to them, but Younger paid them no attention. Mac was watching Miles' face as he told him of the conversation with Ernie this morning, in which Ernie said he was sure that Leach Conover had been a witness to the shooting of Andy West.

Younger was only smiling faintly, and his dark eyes held an angry amusement as Mac finished. “So O'Hea's got them in his jail, has he?” he observed mildly. He thought a moment, and then turned to a pair of the crew standing in the rain near by. “Arch, ride in and hitch up the big freight wagon. Three teams. Have it in the alley behind the store.… Saul, you go in with him. Cruise around town and find Danning and keep an eye on him. Take Ed with you, and send him back to me at the store when you locate him. The rest of you drift into town in pairs, so you'll be on hand. This time,” he added grimly, “we get Danning.”

A half hour later, with the three men preceding them, Mac and Younger left for town. Younger, strangely, was full of talk, none of it about Danning. Brush had started to move the road crew to Petrie this morning. Flanders had been sent on last night to Moorehouse to dispatch the telegrams. Things were rolling, Younger said. Danning, Mac thought, might have already been dead, for all the concern Younger showed.

As they passed the turnoff to Box H they saw a rider approaching. It was Della Harms, Younger said, and she dropped in a quarter mile behind them, taking the road to town.

The street was mired in mud as they reined up in front of the store in late afternoon, and it was still raining. Mac took the reins of Younger's horse and rode across the street and through the runway of the livery and turned the horses over to the hostler. When he turned to tramp back through the runway, he saw the slickered figure of Chris Danning, back to him, standing just inside the big doorway out of the rain. Danning was looking downstreet, and when he heard Mac he turned.

His gray eyes were cold and speculative, Mac saw, and Mac nodded and received a curt nod in return. As he passed him, Mac said in a low voice, not looking at him, “They're after you, friend. Watch yourself.”

He kept on, crossing the deep mud to the store and went inside. Younger, a clerk said, was out on the loading platform in the rear. Mac stepped out the back door onto the sheltered loading platform. The big high-sided freight wagon, with its hitch of three teams, was pulled alongside the platform, and Younger was heaving a length of logging chain into the bed as Mac stepped out. Arch Morley, on the seat, was watching him with a puzzled expression. Ed Rossiter was looking on, too, and now Younger turned to him. “Go get horses for Ernie and Stew.”

He saw Mac and grinned faintly, almost mischievously, and then said to Arch, “Pull around the block, Arch, and come in the alley behind the Masonic Hall.”

Arch looked mystified, but he cursed the six wet horses into movement. Younger waited until he'd pulled past, then vaulted down into the mud and started up the alley, which made a right-angled turn at the juncture of Miles' store and Melaven's saloon. Passing the open gates of the lumber yard, he looked in, remembering Mac's account of the fight here last night. Beyond, there was a crate against the fence which partially blocked the alley, and he moved it against a shed opposite. Afterward, he waited in the rain for Arch, whistling thinly, his back against the jail wall.

Presently Arch turned into the alley and pulled up where Younger signalled him to stop. Younger got the chain from the wagon bed and looped one end of it around the wagon's heavy rear axle where it met the main brace. Now, with the hook end of the chain in hand, he climbed onto the tall rear wheel and then onto the high sideboard of the wagon, and Arch watched him, still mystified. At this height Younger was level with the barred jail window. Playing out the chain until there was a foot of it extending from his hand, he slashed at the glass in the window, and it broke with a musical jingle.

Younger spoke into the jail, then. “Stand away, boys. You'll be out in a minute.”

He looped the chain around the three bars and pulled the hook end back to him and hooked it in one of the links. Then he stepped down into the wagon bed, swung up beside Arch, and took the reins. Bracing his feet, he slashed savagely at the wheel horses and whistled shrilly.

The horses bolted, and Younger looked around just in time to see the chain rise out of the mud and tauten. There was a savage wrench and the back end of the wagon skidded around; then there was a splintering crash as the bars pulled out, taking six feet of the studding and siding of the building with them. The whole tangle of iron bars, window frame, two-by-four studding and shreds of the board siding landed in the alley with a crash and was dragged along by the chain.

Younger didn't even wait to fight the horses quiet. He flung the reins to Arch and vaulted to the alley, slipping and falling and quickly regaining his feet.

Ernie Coombs was first out. He dropped the five feet to the alley, cradling his bandaged hand against his side, and ran toward Younger. Shallis followed him.

Ernie's bruised face was grinning, but there was something else there too. He halted by Younger and said, “Give me your gun, Younger.”

“What for?”

“It ain't your neck,” Ernie said sharply. “Give it to me.”

Younger handed him his gun, and while he was doing it, he looked up to see Leach jump from the gaping hole to the alley, slip in the mud, regain his feet, and start to run in the opposite direction up the alley toward the Coroner.

Ernie palmed up the gun and took after him. He ran until he was almost even with Leach, then raised the gun and fired. Leach went flat on his face in the mud of the alley, and even at this distance Younger could hear the breath driven from him. Ernie stood over him a second, then tramped back. Younger noticed his pale hair was already beginning to mat with the slow rain, and when Ernie handed him the gun, Younger said, “No witnesses this time, eh?”

“That's right,” Ernie said quietly.

Shallis was looking at Leach, and he said nothing.

They unhooked the chain and climbed in the wagon and Arch drove down the alley, turned at the loading platform and pulled up.

Ed was waiting there with two saddled horses, and Mac, silent and watchful, stood just out of the rain. Younger vaulted out of the wagon and, handing six-guns to Ernie and Shallis, said to Mac, “Where is he?”

Ed said, “Saul says he's talkin' to Della Harms in the livery door.”

“All right,” Younger said grimly. “Ernie, you take Ed and circle around and come in past Melaven's. Stew, you take Saul and go down the alley and come in below him. I'll take him from the store side.”

Ernie stepped into the saddle and then reined up his horse and said to all of them, “Wait a minute. He likes a shotgun so damn good.” He looked at Mac. “Mac, get me a Greener and shells. Buckshot. Will you?”

Mac went back into the store and walked across it to the gun counter. Stooping, he reached below the counter and brought up a box of brass-cased shells, which he broke out. He laid two of them on the counter, took a knife from his pocket, and, in plain sight of a waiting customer, he dug out the wadding of the two shells and emptied the buckshot into his pocket. Afterward, he slipped the two shells into the gun, said to the customer, “Be with you in a minute,” and went out the rear door with the gun.

He handed Ernie the gun, and Ernie said, “Where are the shells?”

“In there. I loaded it. Do you want more?”

Ernie clumsily half broke the gun with his left hand until he saw the rims of the two loads.

Younger said with a savage impatience, “Two's enough to kill him. You can't load it with that crippled hand anyway!”

Ernie snapped the breech shut, and shoved the shotgun in the saddle scabbard. “Ready,” he said, and his horse was moving.

Chris watched MacElvey until he disappeared in the store, and then he thought,
He wrote the note
. Here, then, was Miles' traitor, and Chris knew the warning was real.

He looked downstreet then, his glance again on Della. From the hotel veranda, he had seen her on the edge of town, and remembering his errand, had come up to the livery.

She was wearing a man's oversize slicker, and when she dismounted just inside the door and said, “Hello, Chris,” almost shyly, she seemed somehow appealing. The rain had brought a high color to her cheeks, and her broad-brimmed Stetson was dark with the rain. She smiled uncertainly at him, as if she were not quite sure of his friendship now, and said, “I hear you're O'Hea's new deputy.” When he nodded, she said soberly, “Then it was you Leach saw? I sent him in last night, and he isn't home yet.”

“Leach,” Chris said quietly, “is in jail.

Della looked searchingly at him, and he regarded her levelly. “Why?” Della asked. “He didn't kill Andy.”

“Not in the way you mean. He killed him by talking your mother into jumping Tip Henry's homestead.” He paused. “I've put him away until I could talk to you.”

Della said quietly, “Why don't you blame me for sending Andy up there? I made him go.”

“Leach started it, and he's to blame,” Chris said grimly. “Get rid of him, Della.”

Della unaccountably turned her back to him and put her hand to her eyes. It took Chris a moment to realize she was crying, and he stood there baffled, sorry for her, knowing there was nothing he could do to help her. She was a girl without iron, without stability, impetuous one moment, sorry for what her impetuosity had cost in the next. There was no comfort he could give her, and he said nothing. Suddenly, above the muffled sound of her sobbing, he heard a shot from a six-gun. It came from somewhere behind the buildings in the opposite block, and he supposed some puncher, full of whisky and the boredom of the long rain, was easing his feelings.

And Della cried, softly, heartbrokenly, still holding the reins of her wet chestnut. It was minutes before Chris, taciturnly regarding the street, heard her say, “Chris, will you come back?”

He turned and looked at her, surprising a look of naked longing in her eyes that shocked him. He moved his head once in negation. “I can't, Della.”

“Is it because of what I said?” Della asked swiftly. “I was wrong, Chris. I've been judging you as if you were the man I talked to the first day. You aren't. Won't you come back?”

Chris looked levelly at her. “It wouldn't work, Della.”

She nodded and silently stroked the nose of her horse. Presently, she said in a musing voice, “I'm growing up I guess. Nothing will be the same again. I used to love Leach. Yordy was funny, and a grand and dashing gent. And I used to tease Andy to make him blush. I was mean to him, like kids can be mean to a dog they know won't bite them.”