War on the Cimarron (16 page)

Corb's greeting was amiable enough, as one partner to another. Milabel said, “I want to talk to you.”

Corb said to the man beside him, “Drag it, Rob,” and then invited Milabel to share the buckboard seat. This casual meeting between two sworn enemies was remarked by most of the onlookers, but Milabel and Corb were oblivious to their stares.

Milabel pulled out a sack of dust and rolled a smoke with his huge fists and, after lighting it, said, “Puckett says all right.”

“Good,” Corb grunted. “We'll see the agent after the issue. I'll put up five hundred of that. We're partners, ain't we?”

Milabel nodded and they fell silent. Corb resumed his study of a young puncher he had been watching for the past few minutes. The puncher was alone, seated cross-legged on the ground, the reins of his horse trailing behind him. He was dressed in ragged clothes, and the expression on his face was proud, a little bit wary and somewhat resentful as he watched the issue.

Corb pointed him out to Milabel and said, “Seen him before?”

Milabel studied him carefully a moment and said, “That's one of Christian's crew.”

“I thought so,” Corb murmured. He was remembering last night. He had not seen this puncher around the wagon when he had talked to Frank. And now the kid looked footloose. Corb's idea suddenly turned to a hunch, and he murmured, “That kid may be worth talkin' to.”

Milabel looked at him, puzzled.

“I'll be back,” Corb said. He stepped out of the buckboard and strolled over to where Beach was sitting. He stopped beside him, and Beach looked up at him. Corb nodded coolly and murmured, “No payday, kid?”

Beach said, “What's it to you?” in a surly voice and looked away.

“Nothin'. You look out at the pants, is all. Christian findin' it tough to meet his pay roll?”

“Drag it,” Beach said.

Corb chuckled. “Sure. I never rammed money down any man's throat.” He walked back to the buckboard and sat down again. Below on the slope a wild pair of Cheyenne bucks tried to turn their steer up the slope and into the cavalry troop. They had almost succeeded before a hard-bitten lieutenant, aware that trouble was brewing, pulled out a gun and killed the steer just as it was heading directly for his men. The Indians shouted angrily and shook their fists at the officer, and he laughed at them.

Presently Beach got up and led his horse over closer to Corb's buckboard. He covertly studied Milabel and Corb, but they ignored him. He kept edging closer to the buckboard, and at last, with an appearance of nonchalance, he drifted over to stand beside Corb.

“Them damn Indians is goin' to get in trouble,” he observed to Corb, and Corb nodded gravely. He was going to allow a man his pride, and Beach, at that moment, needed his pride pretty badly.

Beach cleared his throat and said softly, “What did you mean over there when you said you wouldn't ram money down my throat? What money?”

Corb said bluntly, “I changed my mind. Milabel says you're still workin' for Christian.”

“I was workin' for him,” Beach said bitterly. “I ain't now.”

“Have a tangle?” Corb asked.

Beach sneered. “Got sick of hidin'. I pulled out.”

“Lookin' for work?”

“Depends.”

Corb shrugged, “Riding'?”

“There ain't much money in that,” Beach said, watching him closely. “I can get a ridin' job with a dozen outfits.”

Corb rubbed his hands together and considered Beach closely. “I think you and me are talkin' about the same thing. Do you want me to say it or do you want to?”

“You say it,” Beach murmured.

“I am goin' to run Frank Christian out of the Nations or kill him,” Corb said. “It occurs to me that maybe you can help me.”

“I reckon I can,” Beach said. He was remembering Frank's words to him that morning at the stampede, fighting words. No man was going to get away with calling him a sheepherder's pup, not any man.

Corb said, “There'll be a ‘dead or alive' reward on Christian's head pretty soon. I'll help you collect it and give you the men to do it. How does that sound?”

Beach hesitated, now that the proposition was put to him so bluntly. He looked at the pair of them on the buckboard seat. Milabel's face didn't bother to hide his contempt, and in Corb's eyes was a sort of irony that looked to Beach as if it were partly doubt.

He said as casually as he could, “Sounds like money to me.”

“Can you find him?” Corb asked thinly. “Remember, he's on the dodge now and wild as a deer.”

Beach considered this, dragging the toe of his worn boot through the grass and staring at it. Suddenly his boot ceased moving, and he looked up at Corb. “You ain't particular where this shoot-up takes place, are you?”

“No. It'll be legal.”

Beach smiled wickedly. “Sure, I can find him for you.”

Luvie Barnes came out of the sutler's store at the garrison in midafternoon and nodded to the men on the porch. They tipped their hats to her, and she got her horse at the tie rail, mounted and rode out toward home, a package under her arm. She was halfway down the slope to the river when she heard a horse behind her.

When it pulled alongside her and a voice said, “Afternoon, Miss Barnes,” Luvie turned in her saddle to see Scott Corb riding beside her. Luvie was impressed by Corb, not by his appearance as much as by the memory of her father's tales of him. She said, “Good afternoon,” with respect.

Corb commented on the weather and gossiped a moment about the garrison, but he was not long in coming to the point, and it was done in an unusually blunt fashion.

“Miss Barnes,” he said finally, “I'm goin' to tell you some things and I want your opinion of 'em.”

“Of what, Mr. Corb?”

“Last night my riders and myself were held up on Paymaster Creek by two men. A fight resulted, and four of my men are dead this morning. Several days ago a Circle R herd on the north fork was stampeded and a rider shot down in cold blood—by those same two men. It's got to the place now where no rider is safe in this country with those two men loose.” He looked at Luvie. “You know who those two men are?”

“No,” Luvie said in a small voice.

“Frank Christian and Red Shibe,” Corb said.

“No!” Luvie said quickly. “I don't believe that!”

“You've got to believe it,” Corb said, “because you can't dodge a fact.”

“And you want my opinion on what?”

“How to catch 'em.”

Luvie shook her head, her blue eyes troubled. “But I haven't any. How are any criminals caught—if they are criminals?”

“You doubt it?”

“Petty criminals, maybe, and troublemakers. But Frank Christian isn't a murderer.”

“You know him, then?”

“I've—seen him, yes.”

“At your house?”

Luvie looked sharply at him. “Yes. Why are you so interested?”

“Because you're goin' to help us catch him,” Corb said.

Luvie pulled her horse up, her face surprised and angry. “I am? Even if I could, I wouldn't, Mr. Corb! What ever gave you the idea I'd help you?”

“I had a hunch,” Corb said, “that you are more or less interested in your dad stayin' in the beef-contractin' business.”

“I am,” Luvie said slowly. Her eyes were frightened, and Corb saw it.

He made a swift gesture of dismissal with his hand. “Miss Barnes, I don't like to do this. But you'd better know some facts. Frank Christian is trying to kill me, ruin me. He's committed a dozen crimes that he could be arrested for, and against other people besides me. I have a way with these Indians, and if I give them the word they can make trouble for your dad. And if you don't want trouble for your dad, then you'll help me arrest Frank Christian.” He smiled faintly. “It's not as if I asked you to commit a crime. I'm asking you to help the law.”

“But I don't know where Frank is.”

“Edith Fairing does. She can find him for you.”

“Then why don't you go to her?”

“Because,” Corb said, “she won't do it. And you've got to—unless you're willing to ruin your father.”

Luvie didn't say anything for a long moment, watching Corb. This is what she had been afraid of since the very first, what she had warned her father against. And now that it was here she felt only an anger against Frank Christian. But much as she hated him, she couldn't turn him over to the law to be tried for murder.

Corb was shrewd enough so that it wasn't hard for him to imagine what she was thinking, and he saw it was time for him to act.

“Miss Barnes,” he said gently, “nobody likes to be known as an informer, least of all a lady like you. But let me ask you some questions. Did you know that there are at least a thousand outlaws in the Nations and that most of them are wanted for murder?”

“Yes.”

“And did you know that neither the Indians nor the army nor the agency have made any attempt to bring them to justice?”

“Yes.”

“Then why should the army or the Indians or myself want to bring Frank Christian to trial for murder?”

“But you just said—”

“I said he was
guilty
of murder,” Corb said flatly. “If he's caught he won't be tried for murder. He'll be tried for whisky peddling. He'll get out on bond, be tried in Kansas and fined about the price of his bond. There'll be no mention of murder. We're only trying to get him out of the way and fine him.” He smiled genially. “Now does that make my blackmail seem pretty reasonable?”

“Are you telling me the truth, Mr. Corb?”

“There's one way to find out,” Corb said. “Look around you. In the post office, in Murphy's Hotel. There's reward dodgers for Christian all over the post and the agency. They want him for jail break, not murder. They're not ‘dead or alive' dodgers, Miss Barnes.”

“But they will be if I don't help you catch him?”

Corb nodded.

“And Dad will have trouble with the Indians if I don't help you?”

Again Corb nodded. Luvie didn't say anything, and Corb went on. “I've been by your house often. You don't have a lamp in the front window. The night Frank Christian comes, in answer to the note you send him through Edith Fairing, you put the lamp in the window. I'll have a man watching. Frank will be arrested then by an army detail. I'll have a man watching for a week, starting tonight.” He touched his hat and bid her good-by and pulled his horse around.

In Darlington Luvie turned off on the street that Edith Fairing lived on.

Chapter XIV

It was close to six o'clock the next night when the fever broke and Corb's rider opened his eyes. Frank and Red were standing over him, watching him, and Frank said, “Want a drink?”

The man nodded, and Frank went over to the seep with a cup. They were camped scarcely two miles from the burned wagon, for Corb's rider had fainted dead away after they put him on a horse.

Frank and Red had stayed with him the whole day while Otey rode into the garrison during the afternoon for advice from the army surgeon. It had been a day of uneasiness, and they took turns sleeping, for both Red and Frank believed Corb's attack of last night would be followed by a man hunt today of the combined crews of Corb and Milabel.

Frank was giving the wounded man a drink when Otey rode into the thicket where they were hiding.

Otey threw down a bottle of medicine and looked at the rider. “How you feelin'?”

“Bad.”

“That's good,” Otey said. He gestured to the bottle. “I filled it with rattlesnake poison, just in case you don't die.”

Red grinned at him, but Otey didn't grin back. For the first time since they had hit the Nations Otey was without work. He had watched while Red and Frank pulled them deeper and deeper into trouble, and now, when fighting was necessary for life, they were saddled with this bum of Corb's, who was better off dead.

Otey sat down and looked at the long slanting sun and contemplated the prospect of a cold supper. He reached in his pocket for his tobacco, and when he pulled it out a piece of folded paper came with it.

Otey picked it up and extended it to Frank. “I almost forgot. Edith Fairing give me that at the agency.”

Frank opened it and read it and said to Red, “It's from Luvie Barnes. She says her father's in trouble.”

“Who ain't?” Otey said.

“What kind of trouble?” Red asked.

Frank shrugged, staring at the note. He wished he knew himself. It must be bad trouble if Barnes would call on him, for Barnes knew he couldn't be much help. He folded the note and tucked it in his pocket, and his glance settled on the wounded man. He realized immediately that Otey shouldn't have mentioned either Edith's or Luvie's name. He said quietly, “You're likely to hear a lot of things, mister, that your boss would like to hear. Only when you're fit to ride we're shovin' you out of the country.”

“That's the best news I've heard,” the wounded man said wryly. He was a Texas man, short, lean and with a pockmarked, unshaven face whose pallor made his beard stubble seem also blue.

Frank rose and said to Red, “Well, I reckon we better go see what it is.”

The wounded man cut in. “You know the handwritin' of this Barnes girl?”

Frank scowled at him. “What's it to you?”

“It's nothin' to me. It might be to you. Corb could toll you into a bushwhack with a note.”

“Not this note!” Red cut in almost angrily. “Edith Fairing gave it to Otey.”

“All right, all right,” the wounded man said. “I'm just tryin' to help you.”

Frank said softly, “What's your name, mister?”

“Call me Gus.”

“Thanks for the tip, Gus,” Frank said. “It's one to remember.” He frowned. “I don't savvy it, though. What's it gettin' you to help us?”