West Of Dodge (Ss) (1996) (17 page)

"Who owns it now?"

"Heirs to old Jim Pollock. His granddaughter was named in the will, but she dropped out of sight a few years back, and if s believed she died back east somewhere. If she doesn't show up in a few weeks it goes to Len Mason, and after that to Hugo Naley."

Beaure knew them both by sight, and Naley a little better than that. Mason lived in a small shack over on the Clearwater. He had been a prospecting partner of Jim Pollock's when the latter first came west. Hugo Naley was foreman of the Slash Five. The granddaughter's name, Tebbets informed him, was Nora Rand.

If he explained to Tebbets what he had overheard, Tebbets would advise him, and rightly, that it was none of his business and to stay out of it. Still, the old man might be able to help.

That girl had no business going out there alone, and he was not going to stand by and see her do it. He remembered Hugo Naley from the roundup. He was a burly, deep-voiced man with an arrogant, hard-heeled way about him, and the punchers had him down as a bad man to cross.

There was a jingle of bells in the street and Beaure turned quickly to look from the window, a fact not lost on Abram Tebbets. In the lights that fell from windows to the snow, Beaure saw it was a cutter containing two people. Beaure went down the stairs two steps at a time.

Abram Tebbets stepped past his chair into the living room of his apartment, and glanced from the window in time to see the cutter and its two passengers disappearing into the snow along the river road. At the distance and in the vague light there was no possibility of making them out. The horses and rig looked like one belonging to the livery barn.

The wind moaned under the eaves and snow swirled in the now empty street. It was a bad night to be out . . . Beaure Hatch was going into the livery stable.

Sighing, Tebbets put aside his pipe and shouldered into his buffalo coat. That Beaure was thinking of buying a place was logical--it was a thought that came to many cowhands, and Beaure was more canny than the average. That he had saved any money at his wages was ridiculous.

Crossing to the Metropole, Tebbets ordered a drink. "Has Len Mason been in?"

"Len? Ain't seen him in a week or more. And not likely in this storm."

Beaure Hatch was a quiet young cowpuncher and not inclined to go off on tangents. Tebbets tossed off half his whiskey and scowled at the glass.

"Suppose everybody will be staying out of'town, and don't know as I blame them."

"Naley was in from the Five. He didn't stay long."

Hugo Naley . . . scowling, Tebbets crossed to watch the checker game. Dickerson was the station agent, and he had played checkers in the Metropole every night for years.

"Quiet," he replied to Tebbets's question. "No passengers today, and only three last night. A couple of hands returning from Denver and some girl ... a pretty little thing."

The big red horse Beaure rented from the livery stable had no liking for the storm, yet he forged ahead into the snow, evidently hopeful of a good bait of corn and a warm barn at the end of the trip.

The wind was stronger once clear of the town. Here and there it had swept the road free of snow, but there were drifts. The cutter had a good start and was making time. Beaure took out his muffler and tied it around his hat and under his chin, and with his collar around his ears, he could keep fairly warm.

After awhile he dismounted and led the horse. His feet tingled with the cold that was in them. Only where the cutter went through a large drift were there visible tracks. Suppose they didn't go to the Pollock place at all? Try as he might, Beaure could not think of an alternative along this road.

Beaure wiped the red horse's eyes free of the snow that had gathered on his lids. It was bitter cold, and night had turned to solid blackness through which the wind howled and the blown snow snapped at the skin like tiny needles.

If Hugo Naley was planning to do away with the girl-- and Beaure could think of no other reason for his lies--then he had chosen a perfect time. The girl would have been seen at the station and at the hotel, but it was unlikely anybody would think of her again.

She had taken her belongings, and nobody would have seen them leave town in this storm. If the girl never came back, who would there be to know?

But how could Naley hope to profit? Len Mason was due to inherit before Naley. Unless something happened to Mason, too. Living alone as he did, it might be weeks before anyone knew. Mason was nearly eighty, and he lived far out of town on a lonely part of the range. A number of times his friends had tried to get him to move to town. The girl was supposedly dead, and Mason's death would surprise no one.

There was no question of seeing any more. The snow was swirling all around, and all sense of direction was lost. He must have been traveling a couple of hours, and during the first hour he had made good time. He could be no more than ten miles from Carson Crossing now, which would put him in the midst of a broad plain. Roughly a mile ahead would be the first of the timber. If he could get into that timber, the trail would be well defined by the trees themselves.

He put the wind on his left side and pointed the horse straight ahead, keeping the wind against the left side of his face. Suddenly they were floundering among the drifts at the edge of the woods, and Beaure recognized a huge old lightning-struck cottonwood, and knew he was less than a mile from the Pollock house. Turning into the wind, he rode along the edge of the timber. He had not kept to the trail, but despite the storm had made good time. Through a break in the storm he glimpsed a dark bulk ahead, and turned his horse into the trees.

Here the blowing snow was less, the fury of the wind was cut down, and there were places where he found relatively little snow.

Beaure drew up, snuggling his cheek against the sheepskin collar. Now that he was here he had no idea what he meant to do or could do. Had they arrived? He saw no light.

Thrusting his hand inside the coat he felt for his six-gun, touching the butt lightly. He also had his Winchester in the scabbard with an old bandanna tied around it to keep the snow out. He had no desire to go up against Hugo Naley, yet he surely couldn't allow anything to happen to that girl.

He sat in his saddle looking toward the Pollock house, and suddenly he began to feel foolish. Suppose he was wrong? Suppose Hugo had fixed the house up? Even had a fire going?

He peered through the snow. There was no smell of smoke, but in this wind it would be hard to tell.

There was a large stone stable, but that would be the very place Naley would head for. However, there was an old adobe out back where cowhands occasionally kept their horses and slept themselves when in the vicinity. It was back from the house, but it was tight, and there might even be a little hay.

Keeping under cover of the trees, Beaure Hatch rode north until he could cut across to the adobe. He opened the door and led his horse inside.

Suddenly, it was very still. He struck a match and looked around. The small building was dark and still. There was hay heaped in a corner, and there were four stalls in the small building. He led his horse into a stall, loosened the cinch, and put hay into the manger.

He took a handful of hay and rubbed his horse dry, and then peered out toward the house. No light was visible.

Suppose they had not even come here? Suppose Naley had taken her to his own place? He was owner of a small spread over at the head of Brush Canyon. No sooner had the idea occurred to Beaure than it was dismissed, for in this weather such a trip was not to be considered.

He had been aware of a peculiar smell for several minutes, and now he struck another match and looked slowly around. He walked to the next stall and peered in. Nothing. Nor was there anything in any of the other stalls. Nevertheless, he did smell something, and suddenly he knew what it -it was fresh earth. was He went quickly to the corner of the old barn where a door opened into the old lean-to behind it. This was the only place he had not looked.

Opening the door, he stepped in, and struck a match. Before him gaped a hole. It was six feet long, and all of six feet deep, and it was freshly dug. The top layers of frozen earth had been hacked away with a mattock, which stood nearby, alongside the shovel. And Beaure needed no second glance to recognize them. They were the tools he had often seen on Len Mason's place. In fact, he had borrowed that shovel several times to help dig steers out of bogs, scooping mud away from their legs before pulling them out with a rope. He knew the scarred handle, the red spot on the end that Mason put on his tools to mark them against theft.

The match burned down to his fingers and he dropped it into the grave, for grave it was ... or was intended to be.

He walked back through the darkness to the window and peered out at the snow-blanketed house. While he waited here, murder could be done.

But what about Len Mason? Was he in on it, too?

He shucked his gun and checked it, wetting his cold lips with his tongue. No getting around it, he was scared. He had never faced any man with a gun. He had never used a gun for anything but potshots at rabbits, and once he had killed a rabid coyote.

Thrusting the pistol back into its holster, h'e buttoned his coat and went out into the storm, closing the door behind him.

The wind tore at his coat, lashed his face with hard driven particles. The snow was more than knee deep in the ranch yard as he plodded across it to the wall of the house. He had never been inside and had no idea whether it was advisable ... or even how to get in.

He started around the house, then stopped. Dimly he could see the big barn, and a darker square showed through the white. The big door had been opened! Closed now, but the snow that had been blown against the boards had fallen off as it was moved.

A stir of sound came from within the old house. Turning swiftly, Beaure ran around to the back. The old slanting cellar door was partly broken, and he lifted it against the weight of snow and went down the steep steps into the cellar.

Above him the floor creaked. Feeling his way in the unfamiliar darkness, he found the steps and crept up them. Carefully, he tried the door that led into the house. It was unlocked, but stuck tight by dampness.

"I was warned not to come here."

"You're a liar--Who could warn you?"

"A cowboy ... he overheard us through the partition. He has the room next to mine, and he told me this place had been closed for years."

"Do you take me for a fool? In the first place, cowhands don't stay in hotels. When in town they sleep in the livery stable."

Beaure could hear sticks breaking. Hugo Naley was making a fire. If he was going to kill her, why was he waiting? And why build a fire at all?

He shivered, answering his question with his own bitter chill. His fingers were stiff and his face raw from the cold outside. He tried to warm his face in his hands, then realized he would need warm, pliable fingers to handle a gun, and thrust both hands inside his coat.

"Nobody knows you are alive, Nora, and they haven't kept a guest register at that hotel for years. Now if you had stopped at the Metropole, I'd have been in trouble."

The breaking of sticks continued. He was stomping on heavier sticks to break them, and Beaure thought he might time his pushing of the" door with one of these attempts, but there was no rhythm to them and he was afraid to try.

"If you got outside you'd just die in the snow," Naley was saying, "so you'd better be satisfied. You ain't been treated rough, and I don't aim to treat you so. Once I get this place all to myself I can have women, all the women I want . . . Anyway, you're too skinny for my taste."

Beaure was angered. She was not skinny! Fact was, she was a mighty shapely little filly--willowy, maybe, but not skinny.

He heard a scrape of a boot and the snap of a clasp knife opening. Nora screamed, and Beaure lunged against the door.

It gave suddenly under his weight, and he stumbled into the room and fell to his knees. He grabbed at the fastenings of his coat, and hearing the click of a gun hammer he looked up into the round muzzle of Hugo Naley's pistol.

"Well . . . you're Hatch, ain't you? What are you doing here?" Without taking his gun off Beaure, Hugo Naley folded his knife closed and stowed it in his pocket.

Beaure got to his feet very carefully. Nora was unwinding a freshly cut rope that had bound her wrists, her eyes were wide and frightened. He must look almighty foolish, falling into a room that way, and he wasn't cutting much figure as a rescuer. "Waiting for the Dutchman," he said. "I was hunting up some wood, figured to build me a fire and warm up until he got here. Reilly sent the Dutchman and me to work cattle out of Smoky Draw t>efore they get buried."

Beaure was amazed at himself. The lie made more sense than anything he had done so far, and it had come to his lips very naturally. It was just plausible enough to be true.

Naley's pistol was steady. "Reilly told me he was letting most of the Seventy-Seven hands go," he said.

Beaure had no idea what to do. Saying he had a chance, what was there he could do unless he could get his gun out?

He would have no chance in a fight with Hugo. Around the Seventy-Seven chuck wagon they said Hugo Naley was a mean man in a fight, and Beaure had not fought since that scrap with the mule skinner in Gillette, Wyoming, three years ago. Naley would outweigh him by forty pounds.