Coroner Creek (5 page)

Chris regarded her curiously, sensing the ambiguity and lightness of her words covered something more serious. “Why you?” he asked.

“He's starting with us,” she said soberly. “He's been slow, but he's coming.” She was silent a moment. “Younger wants everything down in black and white. If you can show a deed for anything, he wants to buy it. If you can't, he offers to share it with you. Say it's open range we're talking about, range you've used and that custom has made yours. Younger will have a hundred head in ahead of you, because the range is open.” She shrugged. “He's too big to tangle with, and you haven't got title anyway. You let him have it.”

It came to Chris now that Della had just answered something for him, and he recalled the hundred nights when he had planned the death of Younger Miles. It wasn't to be a clean, swift death. He wanted to repay in kind those three nights of terror that Bess Thornley had lived through at Karnes Canyon before her death. This was his obsession, that those three nights and days when she saw the hopelessness of escape, the wedding that would never take place, the man she was never to have, the children she was never to hold, the years of living that must be telescoped into the lonely, fearful and vanishing minutes before death, must not go unavenged. And now this girl who was watching him so carefully had given him the answer. It had been there all along, so close he hadn't seen it. Younger Miles had turned renegade and betrayed and killed for money and the things money would bring him, nothing more, so that it was precious to him beyond all else. Strip him of that and you killed his dreams as surely as those three days and nights at Karnes Canyon had killed Bess' dreams. Only after that was done was it right for Younger Miles to die.

The decision must have been reflected in his face, for Della Harms said, “You'll come.”

Chris nodded. “I'll draw lightning, Della.”

“I know that, and I don't care.” She put out her hand and Chris took it. Della said then, “Throw your stuff in the buckboard out front. We'll be going as soon as you're ready.” She went to the door, opened it and paused and turned to look at him, and there was a shrewdness in her eyes as she said, “You haven't given much of a damn about anything for a long time, have you, Chris?”

“No.”

“You'll have to start. You'll have to care about Box H, because it's our life.”

“I've always worked for my pay, Della.”

She nodded and went out, and he put the last of his belongings in his warbag, slung it over his shoulder and tramped downstairs. Kate Hardison was behind the desk, apparently waiting for him, and he laid a coin on the counter and received his change, all in silence. As he stooped to pick up his warbag again, Kate asked, “Are you going to work for Della and her mother?”

Chris nodded. “That why you sent the boy to get me?”

“That's why,” Kate said in an unfriendly voice. “I'm sorry now I did. I would think you'd see why it won't work too.”

“Last night,” Chris said tonelessly, “you didn't want me to work for Rainbow. Now you don't want me to work for Box H. What would suit you?”

“If you'd ride on through,” Kate said flatly.

They regarded each other with something close to dislike in their eyes, and then Chris said, “A man never lacks for advice from you, does he?”

That touched her; she leaned both elbows on the counter and inclined her head. “I'll take that, if I can give this. Have you stopped to think what you're bringing Della and her mother?”

“Younger Miles? He's decided that already, Della said.”

“But not the way they'll get it with you there.”

“That's a risk I named and she accepted.”

“And that doesn't lessen it,” Kate said immediately. And she added with an open malice, “You have a talent for using completely helpless women, haven't you?”

“Did I use you, or help you?”

Kate blushed deeply, and straightened up. “I've thanked you for that but I won't again. Good-by.”

CHAPTER IV

Ernie Coombs came out of the timber along the upper trail above Rainbow around eight o'clock that morning. He'd already taken a look at the line shack his men were throwing up in Thessaly Canyon and had dropped off some salt in the Aspen meadows. Now he gave his big bay its head and let it pick its own footing down the steep trail that came into the ranch at the end of the horse pasture. Ernie felt a driving man's satisfaction in getting a lot done while the day was young, but this satisfaction was tempered somewhat as he looked down at Rainbow.

The name, he thought, was a mockery. Tucked away in this narrow canyon, the sun hadn't touched it yet, and Ernie, who'd been riding in the sun a couple of hours, hunched his heavy shoulders with expectant chill. The big new two-story frame house below him, almost square and freshly shingled and painted white, looked cold and far too grand, and it vaguely affronted Ernie's practical mind. It lay almost on the bank of hurrying Coroner Creek, leaving room only for a narrow yard before it abutted the steep side of the timbered mountain. Up the narrow valley from it and still on this side of the creek lay the solid log ranch buildings and corrals, and these pleased Ernie more. The new bridge, its peeled timbers still yellow, spanned the river between the house and the outbuildings, and even at this three hundred feet above the house Ernie could hear the din of the river.

He came off the trail at the pasture gate and, hearing a rhythmic pounding at the blacksmith shop, put his horse across the grassless barn lot and reined up at the weathered, sloping-roofed shed.

Arch Oatman stopped hammering on the wagon felloe and looked up at the big foreman.

“She up yet?” Ernie said.

“Ain't asked.”

“Then quit the racket,” Ernie said flatly. “A bear couldn't sleep through that.”

Arch was a tall, morose-looking puncher, but docile enough; he put down his sledge, spat, and, as he tucked in the tail of his sun-faded shirt, observed with a disarming mildness, “You'd sleep through a fire if you went to bed with the load she did. So would I.”

A faint anger fanned in Ernie's bleach eyes, and then vanished immediately. How could you keep a crew respectful if they were asked to carry the boss' wife home dead drunk? He said, “I know, but take it easy. Where's Younger?”

“Town.”

Ernie grunted and put his horse toward the bridge. He regarded the fantastic gingerbread house on his right now with a hard disapproval as he crossed the bridge and picked up the road on the opposite bank of the Coroner and turned toward Triumph. The thought of that pretty woman there and her drunkenness both outraged and baffled him, for Ernie was a simple man, tough and direct as a boyhood on the trail drives and in trail towns could make him. Abbie Miles was a rich man's wife, with a paid housekeeper and cook, a “good woman.” Yet “good women” didn't drink themselves drunk, and that fact tormented Ernie, tarnishing the pride he had in everything Rainbow. He had a lot of respect for Younger, but, it was tempered with a private reservation. A real man wouldn't put up with that.

Soon he was out of the shadow of the mountain so that the sun came cheerfully through the foothill pines and presently, leaving the Coroner, he dropped down onto the grass flats before Triumph.

On this straight stretch of road the sun was dazzling, the day already warm. Ernie peeled his jumper off his sloping, powerful shoulders and tied it to the cantle, and looked off to the sun-drenched reaches of the flats abutting the Blackbows to the east. Then ahead of him he saw the buckboard and the two horses, one with rider, approaching. It wasn't long before he identified the buckboard as belonging to Della Harms and minutes later, when he'd passed the wagon road that turned off to the Coroner and Box H beyond, he recognized the rider as the drifter he'd tangled with last night.

For a moment he couldn't associate the drifter with Della Harms, and then it came to him. The drifter was leading the pack horse, so he was likely headed over the Blackbows through the valley of the Coroner. He'd leave Della Harms at the turnoff and head up the valley to camp up in the high timber tonight or else put up at Bige Fulton's Hotel at Station. Tomorrow he'd be over the pass and out of the country, a man who'd been braced, and chose to drift rather than work.

Ernie sat arrogantly in the saddle as he approached them, as befitted the foreman of Rainbow. The drifter was riding next the off horse; Ernie unsmilingly touched his hat to Della Harms, and then his gaze shuttled to the drifter. He felt again, as he had felt last night when he looked into the gray eyes of this man, a faint uneasiness; he nodded and thought,
You may be tough, brother, but we put you on the run
, and when he was past them he settled a little more slackly in the saddle.

Triumph was astir now, and Ernie put his horse in at the tie rail in front of the store and dismounted stiffly. He tramped down the store's main aisle to the office at the rear where MacElvey was seated at a roll-top desk by the window, his head, with its fiery thatch of red hair, bent over some papers.

Ernie leaned against the doorjamb and rammed both thumbs in the waistband of his pants. There was a faint scorn in his bleach eyes as he regarded the crowded and untidy office that was MacElvey's and Miles' domain. For MacElvey himself, however, Ernie had a cautious respect he seldom accorded counter jumpers. Mac was young, perhaps thirty, always carefully dressed, almost frail, but there was a sardonic tinge to his speech and in his lean face and green eyes that Ernie was wary of. Eight months ago MacElvey had stepped off a westbound stage, a tired-looking man with a dry and constant cough. He'd asked Miles for a job as clerk. After Miles bought out McKeogh, Mac had taken over the management of the store and was keeping Rainbow's books too. Truscott, at the bank, wanted him, but MacElvey was content here because Miles, knowing a good manager when he saw one, paid him more than Truscott could.

“Where's the boss, Mac?” Ernie greeted him.

MacElvey looked up. He was in shirt sleeves, but his vest was neatly buttoned, his cuffs rolled midway up his lean, freckled forearms. He glanced at Ernie and said dryly, “Looking for you.”

“Anything special?”

MacElvey rose and took his coat from the back of the chair and shrugged it on, saying, “Ever hear of a man named Danning?”

“No.”

“He's that drifter you stopped last night.” He looked at Ernie, his eyes gently mocking, and Ernie felt a premonition of trouble. Mac told him what had happened this morning, and a slow wrath stirred in Ernie.

“If I'd known that, I'd have herded him back to town. I just passed him on the south road, heading out of the country.”

“Heading for Box H,” MacElvey corrected dryly. “Della Harms took him on.”

Ernie straightened up and said, “Where's Younger?”

“With O'Hea. O'Hea saw it, too. Miles wants us, so come along.”

“O'Hea,” Ernie said grimly, a bottomless contempt in the word.

They left the store, heading upstreet and turning right at Melaven's saloon. Several people on the street spoke to MacElvey who returned their greetings courteously but unsmilingly. Beyond Bell's barbershop there was a gap in the boardwalk for the drive through the high board fence into Shufeldt's lumberyard, and beyond was the Masonic Hall, a two-story frame building whose upper floor was the town's social center. The ground floor, with a center entrance between two big windows, like most of the stores in town, was the Hardison County Courthouse. It was the monument to the dislike of a county only one generation old for the necessities of law.

The first door down the corridor on the left was nailed shut; the second opened onto a small waiting room which held a half-dozen wired barrel chairs. The yellowed calendar illustrations on the wall, the cold stove in its sandbox, the flyblown single window, unwashed in years, reminded most callers on official business of a hostler's cubbyhole in a livery stable.

Ernie, leading the way, walked through this room toward the door in the front wall, which was closed. He didn't knock, but opened the door and stepped in, and MacElvey followed him, closing the door behind him.

This was a large room, and what would ordinarily have been the show window was painted an opaque white more than half its height. This formed the front wall of the office, and to its right against the wall was an ancient rolltop desk. Sheriff O'Hea sat in the swivel chair before it, his feet cocked up on the lower drawer of the desk, which he had pulled out for a footrest. He looked over his shoulder at Ernie and MacElvey, and his sallow, jowly face with its watery blue eyes—the face of a sick and unhappy spaniel—did not alter its expression.

Ernie didn't even look at him. His glance settled on Younger Miles, who was half seated on the table pushed against the closed corridor door.

Miles said, “You meet him, Ernie?” and Ernie replied grimly, “Yeah. I didn't know,” and moved over to one of the three chairs against the back wall. He put his legs out straight and shoved his hat off his forehead, waiting.

Mac put his shoulder against the wall by the door and said nothing.

Younger came to his feet and rammed his hands in his hip pockets and came over to O'Hea. Hatless now, so that his fine light hair, short and curly, disclosed the blocky shape of his head, he seemed a young man striving for the solidity and drabness of middle-age prosperity. His suit was dark, well cut, his boots gleaming, but he could no more have hidden his strength and alertness than a little girl can hide her age by dressing in her mother's clothes. His chest was deep, his back wide and massive, and his hands had the wide meaty spread at the palms of a man who has labored with his full strength. His mustache did not fully hide his straight mouth, and his hooded eyes, as he paused and looked down at O'Hea now, were bright and searching and black as tar, with the shiny opaque surface of tar too. His face, browned from the sun, held a spot of color at each heavy cheekbone.