Hardcase (5 page)

McFee hit him then. He moved quickly, hotly, and there was a lot of solid weight behind the blow. Wallace cakewalked backward off balance until he was brought up against a chair, and then he sat down abruptly on the floor. For a half second he was immobile, and then his hand streaked for his gun. Sheriff Beal dived at him, and so did the man in the chair beside him. They caught him just as the gun was clearing leather, and there was a swift moment of grunting and wrestling, and finally Beal rose with the gun.

Wallace came swiftly to his feet. His face was pale with anger, and little lights danced wickedly in his bleached eyes. There was no inner amusement in them this time as he glared at McFee. His rawhiding had turned on him, and he didn't like it. He said softly, “I'll ruin you for that, McFee! And if I don't ruin you I'll kill you!”

He turned and stalked out of the dining room, and Beal followed him out. The members of the Three Rivers crew closest to their boss got up and followed Beal.

McFee, under the disturbed gaze of Carol and Maitland, who had said nothing during the fight, sat down and picked up his fork. He saw Lacey Thornton writing industriously at another table. He stabbed at some food and then slammed the fork down. He was murdering-mad, and there was no use trying to hide it.

“Eat, Papa,” Carol said weakly.

“Eat, hell!” McFee roared. “I'm goin' up and get a gun and kill that curly wolf!”

The whole dining room heard him. He got out of his chair so abruptly that he tipped over the water pitcher and stalked out of the dining room; Carol and Maitland, a worried look on his face, followed him up the stairs. Already a pair of deputy marshals stood undecided in the door to the dining room, watching them. Lacey Thornton stood beside them, laughing.

In the room Carol grabbed hold of her father's shirt and beat his chest with her small fists. Maitland stood between McFee and the gun on the dresser.

“Dad! Dad! They'll murder you!” Carol cried. “Think a minute! Think!”

“I've thought too long!” McFee growled. “I'm goin' to get it over with.”

“And what will happen to Carol, Bruce?” Maitland said gently. “Think of that, if you won't about killing a man.”

It was that question that hauled McFee up. He stared at Maitland like a man coming out of a trance, but there was still fight in him.

“Dammit, the gall of that damn pirate!” he roared. “Me, throwin' in with that cutthroat of a Dave Coyle when I put up three thousand for his dead-or-alive reward! And now I'm supposed to be workin' for him.”

“I know, I know,” Maitland said gently.

McFee was shouting now, and Carol knew that when he did that the worst was over. Now all she had to say was “Yes, Papa,” to everything he said, and he'd calm down eventually. He stalked to the window now and glared out as if he were trying to blacken the fall sun.

Senator Maitland looked at her, smiled faintly, and shook his head. Carol smiled back weakly. She was thinking of Wallace's accusation. Did they know she had talked to Dave Coyle last night? If her father found that out he would disown her.

If Dave would only keep out of it! He wouldn't, he couldn't, butt in now, after what she'd told him last night. But behind that thought was a creeping fear that he would. He was in town, because just before Wallace had come over to their table she had seen the expression on Sheriff Beal's face.

“O Lord,” she prayed, “get us out of here without Dave Coyle doing anything.”

The celebration had died like a wet firecracker. In the hotel and on the street the word went around that Dave Coyle was in town. Nobody knew where he was, but the straight of it was that he was helping McFee. And since the best way to help McFee was to kill Sholto everybody was uneasy. And Beal, who had counted on passing out cigars and drinks and reminding people what a good sheriff they had, was most uneasy of all.

He proclaimed an immediate search of the hotel. He put a guard at McFee's door and one at Wallace's door. In Sholto's room he put a round dozen of his most trusted men. As for himself, he paced the lobby among the silent members of his posse. They were all recalling stories of Dave Coyle—how the very morning after the night the U.S. commissioner had raised the reward ante on him from three thousand to five thousand dollars Dave Coyle had begged a handout breakfast from the commissioner's cook. While the commissioner ate in the dining room with his wife Dave Coyle had eaten at the kitchen table. Finished, he had thanked the cook, walked into the dining room and thanked the commissioner and his wife, and had gone out the front door.

It was stories like that worried a man and made him jumpy. The hours from one till three were the tough ones. If he could weather them, Sheriff Beal thought, he would be safe, for Sholto would be on the train then. And nothing short of dynamiting a bridge would keep Sholto from reaching Santa Fe.

At two-thirty he sent a man down to see if the train was on time and with orders that it wasn't to leave until his party had boarded it. At ten minutes to three McFee, Carol, and Maitland came down the stairs, paid their bill in silence, and walked out. At five minutes to three, when he heard the train whistle, Beal sent word up to Wallace and Sholto.

The best plan was, he reflected, to put Sholto in the middle of the whole mob of men and walk down to the station, keeping an eye on second-story windows. They left the hotel about three and started the block's walk down to the tracks, and every man there had a gun in his hand, and every second-story window was suspect.

The crowd on the station platform was cleared off ahead of time so that the platform was empty except for the freight agent and his helper and the baggage truck. One truck, the contents of which were to be loaded, stood off to one side, while the other truck was being loaded at the open door of the baggage car. Beal glanced cursorily at the car, then stationed his men at six-foot intervals along the station platform, facing the crowd of townspeople gaping at the whole business. The unloading was finished, and the loading began.

The coffin was the biggest piece of freight on the truck. The black cross burned into its top with a hot iron and the shape of it told the curious what it was, although there were few curious about it now. The crowd was nervous, and there was no talk. If the break came it would come now. The coffin was taken in and placed on the floor in a corner of the seventh car. The rest of the freight and mail was loaded swiftly, and then Sholto, who had been standing in a group inside the warehouse, was hustled out and into the car. Twenty picked men surrounded him and followed him into the baggage car. Sheriff Beal stepped in last. He waved to the train crew, smiled at the crowd outside, and closed the door. The train pulled out, and back in the coach Carol McFee drew the first easy breath in three hours.

Inside the baggage car Beal sat down on the nearest piece of freight and mopped his face with a handkerchief. Nobody would ever know what a relief it was to get that door closed and the train moving. He said to Tate Wallace, “Are those doors locked?”

Tate grinned. “Both the end doors and the side doors. You ain't nervous, are you, Beal?”

“I am,” Beal said. “I'll be nervous until we get over the grade and out of Yellow Jacket County.”

Wallace sneered. “Dave Coyle may take chances, but not them kind of chances. The only way he could stop us now is by blowin' up the train.”

“He won't do that,” Ernie See said dryly. “McFee's on the train.”

Beal shook his head doubtfully and looked at Sholto, who was sitting with his back to the mail racks, where the clerks were sorting out the mail. The other men were scattered in the back end of the car, their rifles leaned against the wall. If Beal was scared they were not, for they were talking and joking among themselves, conversing with the two deputy marshals.

Beal said to Sholto, “You never come closer to havin' a bullet in your back.”

Sholto's face didn't change, didn't show any signs of fear. He said quietly, “I never heard of Dave Coyle shootin' a man in the back. I don't believe it.”

Tate said meagerly, “Nobody's askin' you to believe it, Jim. You just listen.”

Sholto looked up at Wallace, and for a moment a quiet, wicked hatred crept into his eyes. Than it died and he said, “Yes sir, Mr. Wallace.”

Once out of Sabinal the train started the pull up the long grade of the high ridges that spread in a series of half circles around Sabinal to the north. The steady labored breathing of the locomotive could be heard distinctly, and the grade slowed the train's speed. The whole crew had relaxed now and were lounging about the car.

Somebody said, “I got some cards,” and immediately a poker game started on the floor of the car. It was only a matter of minutes before a half dozen of them, seated in a circle on the floor of the car, were playing. The others, with the danger past, relaxed and stood or squatted behind them and watched the progress of the initial hand of stud.

Sheriff Beal and Sholto both stood up and watched. The mail clerks, their backs to the game, stuck to their business of sorting out the mail.

One of the deputy marshals, with aces back to back, turned over his hole card, grinned, and said, “My pot, boys.”

At the same instant Sheriff Beal felt something hard bore into his spine, and a soft voice murmured, “Wrong, boys. It's my pot.”

IV

Every man in the baggage car looked up then. Standing behind and to one side of Sheriff Beal and holding a gun in the Sheriff's back, stood Dave Coyle. There was a cold, jeering light in his eyes. His twisted smile was faint. He looked utterly relaxed and careless, but in his eyes was that unblinking watchfulness that kept every man there immobile.

Dave said, “Sholto, step back beside me.” As he spoke he slipped the sheriff's gun out of its holster, cocked it, and took a step backward. Sholto, hands half raised, stepped back beside Dave. Slowly a deputy marshal put his hands on the floor in readiness to push himself up.

“Quit it,” Dave said mildly. The man sank down on the floor again.

Dave said, “Sheriff, gather up those guns. Don't miss any, or I'm liable to get mad. Take an empty mail sack.”

Beal, his face ashen, took one of the empty mail sacks on the rack and started collecting the guns. The only sound in the car was the clackety-clack of the wheels. Most of these men, for the first time, were beholding Dave Coyle in the flesh, and they did not like what they saw. He stood there, a sneer on his face, cocky, arrogant, his eyes jeering.

His glance finally settled on Wallace, who was watching him warily. They observed each other a long moment, and then Dave said, “You've come a long ways since I saw you last.”

Wallace frowned in puzzlement. “I don't get it,” he said carefully.

Dave said, “You get it, all right. Two years ago in Dodge you were a tinhorn named Wallace Tate—a big wind from Texas. What's your name now?”

Tate Wallace's long face turned a shade darker. He said, “Tate Wallace.”

“Well, well,” Dave sneered.

All the men in the car now were watching Dave and Wallace. Dave said gently, “And you boss the Three Rivers outfit?”

“That's right.”

“You come a long ways for a tinhorn,” Dave said. “Just about as far as you're goin' to come too.”

Ernie See grinned, and Dave looked at him. “What's your trouble?”

“You,” Ernie said.

Beal stopped shoving guns into the mail sack long enough to look up and say to Ernie, “Be careful, you damn fool!”

Dave observed Ernie closely. He saw a plain-looking, pleasant-faced young man with outrage in his brown eyes and a stubborn set to his mouth. “Go ahead,” he said softly.

Ernie said doggedly, “Who do you think you are? You think just because a little killer like you has throwed in with McFee that the law is goin' to fold up in this country?”

There was a moment's utter silence. Half the men there expected to hear a gun go off, and Ernie See would have paid for his rashness.

Dave only sneered. “You simple jug head. Would I help a stuffed Stetson like McFee that's put a price on my head?”

“Then what are you doin' now?” Ernie said hotly.

Dave glanced at Wallace and said coldly, “You tell him.”

“I don't know,” Wallace said.

“If you want Sholto back, buy him back,” Dave sneered. He looked at Ernie. “That suit you?”

Ernie didn't say anything. Beal was finished gathering up the guns now. Dave tilted his head toward the door. “Throw 'em out. Leave the door open.”

Beal pulled the big door back and dumped the sack of guns out the door, then stepped back among the others. Dave waited a moment, his head cocked as if listening to something. The train was gradually picking up speed now, and he knew they were on top of the grade, soon to start the long coast down the other side.

He said curtly to Sholto: “Stand in that door. When you see the horses, jump.”

There was a moment of waiting, during which Sholto peered out the door up the tracks.

Ernie See suddenly blurted out, “How'd you get in here, Coyle?”

“I got mailed in a letter,” Dave jeered.

There was another moment's wait, and then Sholto said, “I see them.”

“Jump.”

Sholto did, and then Dave walked over to the door. The sitting men came to their feet then, and Dave knew they were aching to rush him.

“Anybody feel froggy?” he taunted.

Ernie See said hotly, “You hurt Sholto, and we'll hang you by your thumbs, Coyle!”

“Boo!” Dave sneered. He looked at Tate Wallace. “Get some cash on hand for me.”

Then he leaped through the open door. He hit soft sand, fell, rolled over and over, and came to his feet about ten yards from the train. The coach trailed past, and he saw Carol McFee at the window. She saw him, and for one instant there was surprise and fright on her face. Dave was too wise to wave at her, for other people were watching. He only smiled faintly, and then the coach rattled past.