from the Listening Hills (Ss) (2004) (5 page)

Together they caught up the buckskin and led him back to the corral. "They'll raise Old Nick when they find out I rode this horse!" Deke said worriedly.

"Forget it. I know them." He dug into his pocket--"An' here's your twenty bucks, son. Good luck!"

"Thanks," Deke said, gripping the twenty and staring at it with unbelieving eyes. "Man, that's the fastest money I ever made!"

Carson studied him. "You ride mighty well, son. Ever do any ridin' in a rodeo?"

Deke looked up, hesitated, then shook his head. "Not exactly," he replied. "I'd better beat it. I've got a lot of work to do an' I want to go up to town for a little bit!"

Tim Carson watched him go, glanced toward the place where his niece had been watching, and seeing she was gone, he turned toward the office with purposeful strides. "It's him!" he said grimly. "I'd bet money it's the same kid!"

DEKE MURPHY WALKED down the town's dusty, banner-hung street and turned into a general store. "I want to buy a new pair of Levi's," he said, "an' a shirt, a good shirt!"

A half an hour later, with the new clothes on and a good meal under his belt, he walked back to the corrals. It would soon be time for the parade down the main street that would end at the rodeo grounds, and then the Grand Entry Parade that would open the show. He would have much to do.

In his pocket were three dollars and some change, but he felt better. Still a far cry from the glamorous clothes of the rodeo stars, his were at least neat, and he looked much better than in the shabby clothes he had been wearing, too redolent of the stable, and slept in too many times.

There was a job to do here, and he had to get on with it. He shook his head over his dislike of Bill Bly. It would never do to have trouble with him. All he knew was horses and cattle, and if he made an enemy of Bly he would be blackballed around every rodeo in the country. And he wanted very much to stick close to rodeos. The man he was looking for was somewhere around them, and if he looked long enough, somehow he would find him. Wherever the man was, he still wore the brand Deke Murphy had given him.

TIM CARSON WATCHED him return to his job in the new clothes and studied him through careful eyes. The build was similar. The kid was lean and rugged, muscular, but not big. He carried himself well and moved well. It could be the same one.

Bill Bly watched his horse being saddled for him and then turned to greet Carol as she walked up. "Hello, Bill." She smiled up at him. "Say, it's lucky that kid didn't take you up on your bet this morning. Uncle Tim offered him twenty dollars to ride the buckskin, and the kid rode him--scratched him high, wide, and handsome!"

Bly's brows tightened a little. "He did? Well, good for him!" His words were affable, but there was none of that in his mood. Deke had irritated him, and he did not like being irritated. Moreover, he had decided that Deke was a loudmouth and he disliked being proved wrong.

Another idea struck him. "Why did your uncle do that?"

"Oh, there's no accounting for Uncle Tim! He's liable to do anything! But it isn't that this time: he's interested in this fellow, I can see it. He was watching him like a cat all the time."

"I wonder why?" Bly remarked absently. He was thinking of how he would look in the parade with this girl beside him. Old Curly Bell's only child--not a bad idea, marrying her.

"I don't know," Carol said, "but Uncle Tim's funny. He used to be a United States marshal, you know. Over in Nevada."

Bly turned abruptly. "In Nevada, you say?" He caught himself. "You'd never suspect it. He seems so quiet."

"I know, but he's that way. He's still angry, and has been for the past three years over that gold shipment robbery."

"Oh, yes! I recall something about it, I think. The bandits held up a train and got away with two hundred thousand dollars in freshly minted gold, wasn't that it?"

"I guess so. Uncle Tim believes that gold is still intact and has never been used, that it is cached somewhere."

"But he's not even an officer anymore, is he?"

"No, but that doesn't matter to Uncle Tim. In fact, I've heard him say more than once that he believed the thieves would come back, that the gold was hidden someplace not too far from here, in the mountains."

"You think that's why he's interested in this Murphy kid? One of the bandits was supposed to be no more than a boy. He was the one who killed the messenger."

"Oh, no!" The protest was sharp, dismayed. For some reason the idea frightened and disturbed Carol. It had not occurred to her before that such might be the reason for her uncle's interest in Deke Murphy.

Carol Bell would not have admitted her interest in Deke Murphy even to herself. In fact, she was scarcely aware of that interest, yet she remembered what he had practically told her uncle, that Deke had not wanted to be shown up as being broke in front of her.

She was a thoroughly aware young lady, and had seen his eyes follow her from place to place, and his interest pleased her. Moreover, hecould ride. She had seen him ride, and she was enough of a rider herself to know that he would compare favorably with many of the contest hands.

IN THE OFFICE, after calling his wire through to the telegraph office, Tim Carson turned to Tack Hobson. "Hobby," he said, "you know that Shadow horse? How many shows has he been in and where were they?"

"Funny you should ask that," Hobson remarked, "but he's never been ridden by anybody, an' he's shown in just four rodeos...all of them in prisons."

"I see. Was the Highbinder in any of these shows?"

"One of them. He was ridden once by a convict." Hobson stoked his pipe. "Reason I said it was funny you should ask is that you're the second man who asked that question. Bill Bly was in here, just a few minutes ago. He wanted to know the same thing."

DEKE MURPHY HAD no idea just how he was to find his man, or exactly what he would do when he found him. From the moment he had been released from prison that had been his one idea. He had been framed and framed badly, and had done two years for a crime in which he had no part.

It had been a dark night when he had ridden up from his last camp near Singing Mountain, a tough and lonely kid, eager only to escape from his home in the Robber's Roost country and to find an honest job. Riding since he could first remember, he had lived a lonely life back in the breaks with his mother and his stepfather.

His stepfather had been a kindly man around home, and despite the fact that he was a rustler, had been a good father and a good husband, yet Deke's mother had reared him to be an honest man, and had made him promise that when he was old enough he would leave the Roost behind and start out on his own. His mother had died of pneumonia, alone and unattended except by himself, and his stepfather had been killed in a gunfight shortly after. Deke, true to his promise, had left the Roost behind.

He rode for a ranch in Utah, then one in Nevada, and started down the country looking to get himself as far from the Roost as possible. Leaving Singing Mountain, broke and without food, he had come upon an outlaw camp on the site of Sand Springs.

Three men had loafed by the fire. Deke knew all three, and about only one of them could he say anything good. Frank Wales had been a friend of his father's, an outlaw, but a man of some decency. Jerry Haskell and Cass Kubela he knew mostly by reputation but their reputation wasn't anything his mother would have approved of.

"Hey," Kubela had said, sitting up, "how about the kid? When we take the next shipment he could be the fifth man."

Wales glanced at him. "The kid's no outlaw," he said. "Leave him out of this!"

Jerry Haskell was a lean, dry whip of a man with a saturnine expression in his black eyes. He had killed two men that Deke knew about. "He's in now," he said, "he knows us an' he's seen us. Whether he likes it or not, he's in."

"I'm in nothing!" Deke had said hotly. "I'm ridin' through. Figured I might get me a bait of grub, then ride on. I ain't seen nothin', don't know nothin'!"

At Wales' invitation, he ate, eager only to finish and get away. That the three were waiting for their leader to get back, he knew. That they had just committed a robbery and were planning the holdup of a shipment from the mines, he soon learned. He knew Wales was his only friend here, but the older man would not dare go against the two seasoned outlaws. Cass Kubela had killed more than one man. A short, tough fellow with narrow eyes and big hands, he was even more dangerous than Haskell. Of the three here, Wales was without doubt the weakest link.

When he had eaten he rose to go, but Kubela motioned to him to sit down. "Stick around, kid," he advised, and the suggestion had been an order. Deke Murphy, his heart pounding, had sat down. The shotgun lying across Kubela's knees added emphasis to the command.

Later, when he had dozed off, he opened his eyes enough to know the fourth man had returned. He overheard a few words. "His old man was a weak sister," someone was saying, "the kid's ma preached to him. I say we can't trust him."

Wales' protest was overruled, but then the fourth man spoke. "Keep him for now, we can use him. Get some sleep and we'll move out early....They may still be on my trail."

Although he waited and listened, Deke heard no more, and somewhere along the trail of his waiting, he fell asleep again. He awakened to a confusion of shots, and for one startled instant, he stared around wildly, then grabbed his boots and tugging them on, made a break for his horse.

Another man, a big man, came charging up, and he too grabbed at Deke's horse. "That's my horse!" Deke protested.

The man turned half around, but in the darkness Deke Murphy could not see his face. "Shut up, you fool!" he snapped, and he slashed viciously at Deke with the barrel of his gun.

It caught the boy a glancing blow across the skull and lights exploded in his brain. As he started to go down, he grabbed out and got a hand in the edge of the big man's pocket. He jerked and the pocket ripped, and the man toppled back to the ground. He sprang up and aimed a vicious kick at the boy's head, but Deke lunged to his feet and struck out hard. The blow landed, and Deke followed it in. His unknown antagonist smashed up with his right, and then the gun bellowed, fired by their struggles. With a curse of panic the man flung him off and sprang into the saddle. There was a rattle of hoofs and he was gone!

An instant later a half-dozen men charged down on Deke. He was surrounded, searched, and taken away. Later, tried and convicted, he was sentenced to five years in the penitentiary for a holdup that had been committed the previous day. His stepfather's record was known. He admitted his acquaintance with all the robbers but one, and his denials that he had any part in the holdup were laughed out of consideration.

The man he sought was the leader of the band, the man who had stolen his horse and left him to be captured and sentenced to prison. His sole clue was a comment made by Kubela on that memorable night when half awake he heard them talking. Kubela had said, "The boss can ride, alright! He's a top contest hand!" And it was that boss who had left him for the law, and while the posse was making him a prisoner, the actual outlaws escaped.

Frank Wales, the only man who could have testified to his actual connection with the robbers, was now dead. He had escaped only to be killed near the ghost town of Hamilton two years before, resisting arrest.

TIM CARSON SAUNTERED down to the chutes and stopped near chute three where Deke Murphy was working. "You should be riding in this show, kid. There's some good prizes!"

"You know I'm broke," Deke said sullenly. "How could I enter?"

"Suppose I paid your entry fees?" Carson persisted. "Would you ride?"

"You're darn tootin' I would!" Deke said. His eyes followed the leaders of the Grand Parade, looking enviously at Bill Bly riding beside Carol Bell. The girl's eyes happened to turn his way, and she smiled. Deke felt his heart leap. "You loan me that money, mister! I'll pay you back out of my winnin's!"

Carson watched the parade thoughtfully, and for a minute or two he did not speak. Then he said, "You're entered, Murphy. I already paid your fees. You're entered in every event, take what you want of them!"

Deke stared, his eyes incredulous. "You mean, you--" He hesitated, uncertain what to say.

"I like to see a kid get his chance," Carson said, "an' that in particular when he's had bad breaks. You get on out there, let's see you bust 'em wide open!"

An hour later, hurrying up to Tim Carson's place by the chute, Carol caught his arm. "Uncle Tim! Did you enter that boy in the rodeo? Did you?"

Carson smiled gravely. "I sure did, honey, an' if you want to gamble I'll bet you he puts Bly in the shade!"

Carol said nothing, her eyes following the young rider who was saddling the roping horse Carson had provided for him. "Uncle Tim, do you think he is one of those men who robbed that two hundred thousand dollars?"

Carson took the pipe from his mouth. "Now where'd you get that idea? An' whoever told you it was two hundred thousand?"

"Bill did, but I got the idea from you. You've never let that old crime rest. I know it still bothers you."

"It does at that." Carson returned his pipe to his teeth. "Carol, I hate crooks. I also hate like poison anyone who'll let an innocent man do his time. You asked me if I thought Deke was one of them, an' I'll tell you: Iknow he wasn't. But he's been in prison for it, an' I've a hunch he's huntin' the man who led that holdup--a man we know as Jud Kynell, one of the old bunch that hung out at the Roost."