the High Graders (1965) (16 page)

Read the High Graders (1965) Online

Authors: Louis L'amour

BOOK: the High Graders (1965)
2.6Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub

And now Shevlin had brought Clagg Merria m into the picture. Hoyt hated to think Merriam wa s involved, yet in the back of his mind he must hav e sensed it all the time. His surprise had bee n purely vocal ... within himself he had felt n o such surprise. A man could not move around such a small town without knowing a great deal that was not on th e surface.

"All right, Mike," Hoyt said at last , "I'll see what I can do."

He looked up with sudden discouragement.

"Hell, Mike, what's a man to do? I f igured this was my place to roost. I thought I'
d dug myself in for life."

"Maybe you have. Look at it this way , Hoyt. You straighten up this mess, straighten ou t the town, and with no more fuss than necessary, and you may b e home. They may want you to stay."

Wilson Hoyt nodded slowly, doubtfully.

As Shevlin walked out, Hoyt stared bleakl y across the street at nothing at all.

Ben Stowe pushed the heavy ledgers away from hi m and pulled open the drawer where he kept hi s cigars. He selected one, bit off the end, an d lit up. Then he sat back and put his fee t up on his desk, inhaling deeply. He exhale d the smoke slowly and stared out of the window toward th e mountains.

Clagg Merriam was right. They would have to shi p some gold. Their working capital was finished. Withou t cash from somewhere, they could buy up no more gold; an d when they stopped buying they would lose control , once and for all. When gold was shipped from the tow n through business channels, questions would be asked, me n would come flooding in.

The deals for the mines must be closed at once , but there had been no response from Sa n Francisco since his last offer. were the y investigating? And if so, who?

Clagg Merriam, he knew, was worried abou t Laine Tennison, the pretty girl over at th e Doc's place. ... Well, Lon Court woul d take care of that.

Ben Stowe scowled with irritation. That damne d Gentry! He would have to go riding out just when Cour t was expecting Mike Shevlin. Ben was not in th e least disturbed by Gentry's death, for the time had bee n appointed ... but he had needed him to handle th e gold shipment first.

With Gib Gentry dead, all his nicel y arranged setup was spoiled. Moreover, wh o did he know who could be trusted with that much gold?

Above all, trusted not to talk, and trusted no t to let it be taken away from him?

He could handle it himself, but the town needed a tight rein right now, and he dared not be away. An d most important, the offer might come from the min e owners, and he must act promptly.

Who, then, could he get?

Wilson Hoyt would be perfect, but Hoy t had been acting strange the past few days, an d Ben Stowe hesitated to approach him. Hoyt , he felt, was an honest man, or he seeme d to be, but he had always been a man who kept hi s eyes strictly on the job, and did not worr y about anything outside it.

Mike Shevlin ...

Ridiculous as the idea was, Ben kept comin g back to it, for Mike had the guts to deliver tha t gold, come hell and high water; and Mik e wouldn't talk. Of all the men he knew, Mik e Shevlin was the best man to handle that gold.

The trouble was, Mike was bucking him.

Ben Stowe glanced at the gathering ash on hi s cigar. Carefully, he assayed all he kne w of Mike Shevlin. He had been a tough kid , handy with a gun, and not above driving off a few cow s once in a while. He had balked at outrigh t robbery when the rest of them went into x; but that, Be n decided, was mostly because Mike had just wante d to drift--he just wanted to get out and see mor e country.

Ben had heard a lot of the conflicting storie s about Mike Shevlin. He had been mixed up i n some cattle wars, in some gunfighting, and he ha d ridden the side of the law a time or two. Tha t needn't mean a thing, for Ben knew of severa l outlaws who had been town marshals, and good ones.

He had never really liked Mike Shevlin, bu t this was not the time for that. Suppose ... just suppos e ... that he made an offer? Gib's piece o f action, for instance?

There were not many who could turn their backs on a quarter of a million dollars. Of course , Shevlin would never live to collect, no more tha n Gib Gentry would have.

What fool would give up money of that kind whe n he could keep it for himself?

But one other thing worried him. Ra y Hollister was still out there, and Hollister had to die.

Chapter
13

Where was Ray Hollister now? Three men wer e thinking about that.

Mike Shevlin, riding back to the claim in th e canyon, was asking himself that question. Ben Stowe, in hi s office, was worrying about the same thing; an d Wilson Hoyt, turning his mind from hi s recent words with Shevlin, thought again of Hollister.

Not one of them believed he was through. Mik e Shevlin, riding warily, and well off the trail , knew that Ray Hollister would never be abl e to convince himself he was through in Rafter. The thought o f going elsewhere would not occur to him, or if it did , it would be dismissed.

Like many another man, he was committed to the hom e grounds. He could not bring himself to move, although al l the world offered a fresh start--notew ranges, ne w towns, places where he was unknown, and where hi s abilities might have made a place for him.

Right now Hollister was sitting beside a fire i n a remote spot among the bare hills. He wa s alone except for Babcock, and Babcock wa s for the first time looking on his boss with some doubt.

Only a part of his doubt was the result of hi s conversation with Shevlin in the stable. His loyaltie s were deep-seated, and he hesitated, feelin g uncertain for the first time in years.

"Where the hell is Wink?" Hollister said , looking up.

"He'll be along."

Winkler had gone down to the Three Seven s to pick up some grub. They had nothing to eat an d he knew the cook there. Winkler would have to b e careful, for there would be no friendly feeling for them a t the Three Sevens. Nor at any of the othe r ranches, for that matter.

Ray Hollister looked haggard, his face wa s drawn, his eyes deep sunken. "Bab," h e said, "they've got to move the gold. And if the y try to move it, we can get it."

Babcock straightened his thin frame and wen t over to the nearby brush to pick up sticks for th e fire.

"If we can get that gold," Hollister wen t on, "we'll have them where the hair's short."

"How'll they move it?" asked Babcock.

"Gentry's freight outfit. That was why he wa s set up that way."

Babcock had squatted on his heels to pic k up the sticks, but now he turned his scrawn y neck and looked back at Hollister. "That'
s good figurin'. How'd you know that?"

"I know plenty."

Babcock came back to the fire and added som e of the fuel to it. Then he squatted down beside it.

Ray Hollister had forgotten, for the time being, tha t Babcock knew nothing of his previou s arrangements with Ben Stowe. He was thinking alou d rather than planning; and weariness as well as th e defeats of the past days had dulled his senses.

Babcock had room for two loyalties an d no more, and he believed them to be one and the same.

He was loyal to Hollister, and he was loyal to th e cattle business. He had grown up aroun d cattle, had worked cattle since he was a child, an d had never considered anything else. The discovery o f gold at Rafter was a personal affront. H
e disliked the miners, disliked the camp followers, an d most of all he disliked the dirty machinery and th e pound of the compressor. When the mines began usin g great quantities of water and returning some of i t muddy and filthy, he was deeply angered.

He had known of the firm of Hollister an d Evans, but he had believed it to be a land an d investment operation. He had largely ignored it , for Ray was always going off on some new scheme, bu t he always came back when the scheme proved to b e a swindle or a fool notion. While Ra y Hollister took off on his other activities , Babcock was minding the cattle.

After the water was polluted, it had been necessar y to drive the cattle back from the stream where they ha d always watered, something it was not easy to do. The onl y other water was too far away for the good of the stock , and the grass there was poor. He could have use d Hollister's help then, for they were short-handed; s everal of the newer boys had gone off prospectin g ... as if they knew anything about finding gold!

With the hands that remained Babcock had pushed th e cattle back from the water with only a few lost , and there had been a time when he had been up to hi s ears in work far on the other side of the range.

Anyway, Babcock himself had never been much of a hand for raising hell in town.

Now, Babcock's mind had not let go o f Ray Hollister's comment on why Gentry ha d been set up that way. Of course, he thought, i t was something a man might guess at, or figur e out. He looked across the fire at Hollister , considering him thoughtfully, and remembering wha t Shevlin had said.

He was a man slow to arrive at an y conclusion, and he was taking great care in tryin g to think this matter out. But as he considered it, littl e bits and pieces of half-forgotten conversation s returned to mind.

"They've got to move it!"

Hollister exclaimed again suddenly. "The y daren't take a chance on running short of cash , or being caught with the gold." He looke d shrewdly at Babcock. "Bab, we could have a piece of money out of this."

"I'm no thief." Babcock spok e irritably, for he did not like to have his thinkin g interrupted. "That money ain't mine."

"It's not theirs, either," Hollister protested , and then added, more slyly, "Without that money thos e mines won't operate long."

That made a kind of sense, Babcoc k agreed. "It would be guarded," he suggested.

Hollister dismissed that with a wave of the hand. "O
f course it would. But we'd have surprise on ou r side, and that counts for a lot." He paused.

"We'd need a couple of good men, aside from yo u and Wink and me.

"There's Halloran ... and John Sande."

Yes, they were good men. Ray Holliste r considered the route the gold would be likel y to take. Understanding the problem, as probabl y nobody else did quite so well, he knew th e gold must go east. On the west coast th e channels of finance were narrow, and there would be to o much chance of talk. California was filled wit h rumors upon rumors, everybody was agog fo r discoveries, and the slightest suggestion of gol d appearing from a new source would set off a rush.

Such an amount of gold as this might be more easil y handled if it could be shipped to the East.

One by one he went over the routes in his mind , and one by one he eliminated them until only tw o were left, and of these one was very doubtful.

Winkler rode in before midnight. He sa t down on a rock and listened to Hollister'
s plan. "All right," he said, "count on me.

... What about Halloran and Sande?"

"They'll go," Babcock said.

Suspicion was not a normal attitude fo r Babcock. He was a man who did his job , whatever it was, did it simply and directly , and with no nonsense, nor did he allow an y nonsense from anyone else.

The handling of cattle was not only his job, it wa s his vocation; it was the biggest part of his life, an d aside from the problems of cattle, nothing had eve r seemed important for any length of time. He wa s always concerned with range conditions, wate r supplies, noxious weeds, and the amoun t of beef that could be packed on a steer's frame.

From the hour of rising, usually before sunup , until dusk or after, he lived, breathed, an d thought cattle. If Babcock ever dreamed, it wa s only of greener pastures, clearer water, and a short drive to market. He had never taken tim e out to consider Ray Hollister as anything but a boss who permitted him freedom in the job h e knew best; but now the ugly thought was growing in hi m that Hollister might actually have been involved wit h Ben Stowe.

The arrival of Jess Winkler had interrupte d his thoughts. He had a sort of respect for th e wolfer, but had never liked him, for, as is often th e case, the hunter had taken on some of th e qualities of the creature he hunted. Winkle r could not approach anything--a strange camp, a house, a person, or an idea--without circlin g warily and sniffing the breeze from every angle. H
e was a man with the suspicions of a wolf. He ha d trapped, so he feared traps.

Winkler had held a rough affection for Ev e Bancroft, but he had considered her to o notional, too feminine. He did not trus t Hollister, and he also did not trust Babcock , nor anybody else he could think of at th e present time. He was a hard old man whos e rifle was an extension of himself.

It had not yet occurred to him that his stake in th e game had gone with the death of Eve Bancroft. Th e idea of taking gold away from the mining outfi t appealed to him, and gave direction to his days , at least for a little while.

Two days later, Halloran and Joh n Sande rode in, and as Babcock had promised , they were ready. Winkler would ride in to town to nos e about and see what he could discover. The others, afte r some discussion, decided upon a rendezvous a t Boulder Spring. It was close enough to Rafter, ha d good grass and water, and yet was out of the way.

Other books

Mutual Hatred - Love Game by Houston, Ruth
The Corpse Wore Pasties by Porkpie, Jonny
The Licence of War by Claire Letemendia
Exposure by Caia Fox
Spirit of the Wolves by Dorothy Hearst
Gunsmoke for McAllister by Matt Chisholm
A Wreath for Rivera by Ngaio Marsh
The Beauty Queen of Jerusalem by Sarit Yishai-Levi
Silent Dances by A. C. Crispin, Kathleen O'Malley