Hardcase (14 page)

“What are you doing here?” she asked angrily.

“We aim to search the house,” Beal said grimly. “Don't you scream or raise a fuss, Miss McFee.”

Carol's heart sank. Hadn't this new girl said her father had gone? She was sure she had. She looked at Lily, and Lily's face seemed serene. Assured by it, Carol's panic vanished, and in its place came anger. What right had they to hound her even to her own house? And with Lacey Thornton too.

Maitland said sharply, “Let's see your warrant, Beal.”

Beal's innocent-looking face got a little hard. “My face is my warrant, Maitland. If it don't suit you, sue me.” He looked at Carol. “You take me upstairs, Miss McFee. Have your girl take Ernie through the lower rooms. And you just walk ahead, please, in case your dad wants to act salty with a gun.”

“I won't!” Carol said.

“You better,” Beal said gently. “I've never locked up a woman yet, but there's a first time for everything.”

Carol, uncertain and angry and a little afraid, looked to Maitland for help.

“You don't have to do it, Carol, but you'll probably keep them from looting the place if you stay by them.”

Beal flushed. “That's somethin' I'm not liable to forget next election, Senator.”

“Which reminds me that you have an election coming up also,” Maitland said with gentle irony. “Even Stephen, eh?”

Beal grunted and waved Carol on. She put the letter down on the table, then said to Lily, “Show them the downstairs, Lily,” and went ahead of Beal up the stairs.

Lily said to Ernie, “If you'll come this way I'll show you.”

Ernie had been looking at her for a long time, wondering where he had seen her before. Then he said abruptly, “I know you. You're the girl that asked me in town when Wallace was goin' out to his place.”

Lily's face was impassive. “Yes. You didn't tell me.”

“Changed jobs?” Ernie asked curiously.

Lily only nodded and said, “Do you want to come along?”

Ernie could take a hint. She didn't want to talk about herself. He said, “Sure,” and followed her. He liked her looks this time even better than he had last time, but that wedding ring troubled him. He wished vaguely she wasn't wearing it. Maitland and Lacey Thornton tagged behind as he went into the living room and began to look around.

For a half-hour after that there followed a systematic search of the house from basement to attic, Thornton helping, Maitland watching. There was a confusion of doors slamming, of walls being tapped, of furniture moved, of beds poked under and barrels upended. At the end of the search they met in the hall again.

“I hope you're satisfied,” Carol said hotly.

Ernie flushed uncomfortably. “Well, we got to look at it from the side of the law.”

“The next time you come,” Maitland said grimly, “you'd better have a warrant, my friends. Because even lawmen are fair game for a shotgun, if they haven't got a warrant.”

Carol looked at Lacey Thornton and her lip curled in contempt. “And since when have you been a lawman?” she asked.

“I deputized him,” Beal put in uncomfortably.

“Is that in return for the favor of putting up five thousand dollars for the capture of my father?” Carol asked.

Beal squirmed. “All right. We're doin' our best.”

“Then get out of this house!” Carol cried. “If I ever see any of you around here again I'll take down Dad's shotgun. And you, Lacey Thornton! I'll have Dad horsewhip you in public the next time you see him!”

“That'll be pretty hard to do if he's in a coffin,” Ernie said angrily.

The three of them stalked out, and Lily Sholto, who had remained silent all through this, closed the door after them.

Carol sank into the nearest chair and looked at Maitland for a long moment. Then she said miserably, “Isn't there any way to stop this, Uncle Dan?”

Maitland smiled his tired smile. “This is just the beginning, Carol. Try and be calm.”

Carol did. She leaned back in the chair and closed her eyes and relaxed. Forget them, she thought. Be thankful Dad wasn't here when they came. What had she been doing before they came? Oh, the letter, of course.

She opened her eyes and looked at the table where she had put the letter.

It wasn't there!

For one short second she stared at the table, then jumped up.

“The letter!” she cried. She looked at Lily. “Have you got it?”

Lily looked startled. “You put it on the table, miss.”

“But it's gone!” Carol cried. She looked in consternation at Maitland, who was staring goggle-eyed at the table. “You left it there?” he asked blankly.

“Yes! And they took it!”

She ran for the door, threw it open, and went out into the night. She couldn't see or hear anything. It was too late!

She came back in the house and said swiftly to Lily, “Do you know what was in it?”

“No, miss,” Lily said. “Mr. Coyle told me not to tell you anything or talk about myself. The letter would tell you all you should know.”

Carol looked bleakly at Maitland. “Oh, Uncle Dan! What if Dad told where he was hiding?” She was near tears.

Maitland came over and took her in his arms, and Carol sobbed wildly on his chest. Maitland stroked her hair and said softly, “Don't look at the dark side so much, my dear. There, there.”

XII

It lacked an hour of dawn when McFee and Dave approached the spot where the sawmill road joined the Wagon Mound road. McFee was dog-tired and sleepy and hungry and saddle-stiff, and he wished Dave would stop that gentle off-key whistling. During that day and night they had scrapped with Wallace, delivered Lily Sholto at the home ranch, and then had ridden on here. More than anything else, McFee wanted a bed, some hot food, and some quiet. Dave Coyle seemed to want nothing.

“All right,” Dave said, turning in the saddle. “You know ‘O Susanna'? Ride up the road whistlin' it.”

“Me?” McFee said and added hastily, “Oh no. I'm no good at foolin' anybody.”

“Who said you had to?” Dave asked coldly.

“But if they see it's me and not the messenger they'll hit for the brush!”

Dave said patiently, “When they stop you tell them you want to ransom Sholto yourself and take him in to Sheriff Beal.”

“But they'll want to know how I found out about this whistlin' business,” McFee objected.

“Sure they will. They'll want to know so bad they'll take you to Usher so he can beat it out of you.”

McFee didn't say anything for a moment. “What'll you do?”

“I'll follow you,” Dave said, still patiently.

McFee said suddenly, “Coyle, I don't like this. We're walkin' into a bunch of killers. We can't hope to get out of there alive with Sholto.”

Dave said jeeringly, “All right. Let's ride in to Wagon Mound and get a posse up.”

McFee said stubbornly, “But this is suicide!”

Dave shifted faintly in his saddle, his arrogant gaze on McFee in the dark. “I dunno why I bother with you,” he said softly. “I don't reckon I will any longer.” He pulled his horse around, as if to ride away.

“Wait a minute,” McFee said hastily. Dave stopped, watching him. McFee rubbed his face with the palm of his hand. “I'm tired,” he said quietly.

“Sure you are,” Dave jeered. “You got a price on your head by now, I reckon. Nobody'll let you rest. You eat on the run and sleep on your gun and you'll wear out a saddle before it's over. But it's what I been doin' for years. Remember that the next time you raise the ante on me by three thousand dollars.”

McFee said wearily, “Quit it.”

“You're yellow,” Dave said calmly. “Take that bank account and that spread away from you and you're an ordinary old cow poke—only not so good.”

McFee's chin came up. “You're a liar!”

“Then what are you waitin' for?” Dave countered.

McFee picked up the reins off the horn and looked through the darkness at Dave, his eyes savage and harried and beaten.

“One more day,” he said, “and then this will be over. I told Carol in that note I left that we'd have Sholto into Yellow Jacket tonight.” He smiled wickedly. “Just picture me tonight, Coyle. I'll sleep in a bed. I'll eat a good dinner. I'll have a cigar and a paper to read. And you—you'll be hidin' out in the brush, jumpin' every time a rat steps on a leaf. You'll be eatin' jerky and ridin' all day and wonderin' when somebody will cut down on you from the next ridge. And don't you worry. I'll have an extra three thousand on your head, just to keep you movin'.”

Dave smiled faintly. “It scares me to death. Are you goin' out there, or am I goin' to ride off?”

“I'll go,” McFee gibed wearily. “I'm the one that takes all the risks, while you, the brave gunman, stays hid.”

“That's right. Only when we get in the tight spot there at Usher's camp, remember who gets you out.”

McFee didn't say anything, only pulled his horse out of the trees onto the road and vanished into the darkness. Dave slipped out of the saddle and tied his horse. He set out on foot now in the darkness, listening for the sound of McFee up ahead.

Presently, as McFee passed the sawmill road, he began to whistle. It was a thin, flat, woebegone whistle, but the tune was recognizable. Dave let him get a ways ahead, and then he followed him, walking in the deep noise-muffling dust of the road.

Suddenly he heard a man's voice call out, and McFee's whistling stopped.

Dave froze, listening.

“Bart?” the sleepy voice called.

“It's Bruce McFee,” McFee answered. “I want to buy Sholto back.”

There was a long wait, and then a voice said sharply, “Stick 'em up, McFee. There's three of us here!”

“All right.” At least McFee's voice didn't sound panicky, and Dave thought maybe the older man would carry it through.

“Now what do you want?” a rough voice said.

“I told you. I want to pay Sholto's ransom and take him back to Beal, so I can get out from under this murder charge.”

“Who told you to whistle that tune?”

“What does it matter?”

“Plenty, mister. Where's your little playmate?”

“I shook him,” McFee said dryly. “No, not exactly that. He just rode off and let me get myself out of this jam the best way I could.”

There was a long silence, and then a voice said, “You'll come with us.”

There was a sound of horses approaching him, and Dave faded back into the timber, thinking the riders would turn off on the old mill road. But they passed the turnoff, and Dave was suddenly aware that they were coming toward him, heading up into the mountains above Wagon Mound. Remembering his horse across the road and the likelihood of it whickering when it smelled these horses, Dave crouched low in the road and ran across it and moved swiftly toward his horse. He reached it, clapped a hand over its nose, and then listened while the riders passed him.

So Will Usher wasn't hiding out close to here, then? Will was too smart and wary to risk holding Sholto close to these pickup men for Wallace to surround with his crew. If Dave knew him Usher would be hidden many miles from here.

He squatted on the ground now, shivering a little in the coming dawn, wondering if McFee would be tough enough to hold out under Will Usher's questioning until he got there. Dave thought he would because he had so much at stake. He rolled a cigarette, went out to the road, listened, heard nothing, then lighted his cigarette, held the lighted match low, squatted, and studied the tracks in the road. The twenty minutes he had spent at the Bib M putting a double cleat on a shoe of McFee's horse had been worth it, for the print was plain enough to anyone looking for it. McFee hadn't even known he did it, so there was no chance of his giving it away.

When in half an hour or so it became light enough to track, Dave set out after them, heading toward the mountains. In an hour he picked up a road. As the day grew brighter he looked around him uneasily. He was heading into a narrow canyon whose sides were steep, and he knew this road. It led into a dead-end box canyon in a deep fold of the mountain where the Southern Belle mine was located.

He pulled up and looked ahead, puzzled. There was no turnoff on this road, so Will would have to be at the Southern Belle. It was a small mine, with a reduction mill and shack on the valley floor. The mine itself was behind the reduction mill far up on an almost vertical slope. The ore was sent to the reduction mill below in buckets on a cable.

But the Southern Belle was supposed to be working now! Yet it couldn't be, if Will Usher was hidden out there. He had picked a perfect spot to hide, where nobody except the mine crew went. And the valley was so narrow, its sides so steep, that nobody could get in without being seen.

So this was where Sholto was, Dave thought bitterly. He might as well have been locked in a safe. It might have been possible to try the road at night, but in the daytime it was impossible. One lookout could keep an army from coming in.

Dave looked at the road again and made certain that the tracks of McFee's horse led into canyon. Then he dismounted and looked about him. The rough shoulders of the mountains reared up on either side of the road, bleak and forbidding. The mine lay two miles up the road, as he remembered it.

For a long moment he stood there looking at it, baffled. And then, his mind made up as to what he had to do, he turned to his horse and went through the old ritual. He loosened the cinch, slipped the bit, tied up the stirrups, and then, before he drove the horse off, untied the lariat and looped it over his shoulder.

Afterward he left the road and started toward the mountains. In half boots it was cruel punishment to climb these rocks, but he set about it grimly, making his slow way up the face of the mountain. Soon the morning sun started to beat down on the rocks and the steep slope was an inferno. Sweat soaked his shirt and rolled off his face, and still he climbed, pausing only when he was gagging for breath. His main worry now was that McFee, seeing how hopeless it was for anyone to follow him, would quit on him and fail to play out his bluff. Time was slipping by, and each minute made it harder for McFee to string out his story. Dave thought of Will Usher's gunnies, tough, hard, and skeptical. If they doubted McFee they would beat him up on suspicion.