Текст книги "Warlock"

Автор книги: Oakley Hall

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“Abe didn’t have anything to do with it! God damn it, Bud, there is not another man but my own brother I’d let say a thing like that about Abe! Damn, you are wrong! Damn, I don’t know how you turned so fast. You have got so damned holier-than-anybody because of us rustling a few old mossy-horns they never get around to rounding up even, they have got so many down at Hacienda Puerto. And a few sons-of-bitching greasers killed.” Billy’s voice ceased abruptly.

“Did they get to be sons-of-bitching greasers when they came after their stock, Billy? And got shot down by a bunch dressed like Apaches – and worse than Apaches. Is that when they got to be sons of bitches?”

Billy didn’t answer, and Gannon leaned against the wall too, and looked up at the cold stars, shivering in the wind that had come up. A newspaper rolled slow and ghostly across the street and flattened itself against the wall beyond Billy.

Billy said in a low voice, “Listen, Bud, you don’t want to get Abe thinking you have gone over to Blaisedell’s side against him.”

“Why not?” he said quickly.

“Well, you couldn’t blame Abe for being down on somebody that’s trying to throw him!”

Billy would not see, he knew. There had never been any use arguing with Billy. He laughed a little and said, “I was thinking how Daddy told me once I was to watch out for you. But I guess it got so you had to watch out for me – with Jack anyhow. That wasn’t the only time I thought he’d drink my blood, but for you.”

He reached over and slapped Billy’s shoulder, awkwardly, and Billy punched him in the ribs. “ Thatson of a bitch. I hate that dirty, cold-hearted, mean son of a bitch. I’d drink his blood, but it would probably poison a toad.” He went on in a rush. “Christ, Bud, Christ, how things get muckered up! Why, here we are– I mean, there is never going to be any real trouble between you and me, is there, Bud? It seems like we had trouble enough when I was a pup.”

“I guess we didn’t have enough,” he said, and tried to laugh again. Billy’s fist punched into his ribs again; then Billy stepped away from him, to stand flat and faceless against the lights up the street.

“Well, see you, damn it all, Bud.”

“See you, Billy,” he said wearily.

Billy backed up another step. He seemed about to speak again, but he did not, and turned and walked up Southend toward the Row.

Gannon did not watch him go, but moved slowly over toward the boardwalk that ran along before the saloons and gambling houses. It was time he took a turn around Warlock. Carl did not leave the jail much on Saturday nights.

10. MORGAN DOUBLES HIS BETS

I

STRIPPED to the waist, Morgan was leaning over the basin with his face close to the mirror and the razor sliding smoothly over his cheek, when there was a knock on the alley door.

“Who is that?”

“It’s Phin Jiggs, Morgan. Ed sent me down from Bright’s.”

He dropped the razor into the soapy water, went around the desk to the alley door, and slid the bolt back. Jiggs, who did odd jobs for Ed Hamilton who had been Morgan’s partner for a time in Texas and now had a place in Bright’s City, slipped inside, caked with dust from head to foot except for the part of his face his bandanna had covered. His eyes were muddy around inflamed whites, and there were sweat-tracks on his forehead and cheeks. He swiped at his face with his neckerchief.

“Ed said you might be pleased to know there is a woman named Kate Dollar coming down here.”

He stared at Jiggs. At least he was pleased to knowshe was coming.

“She put her name down as Mrs. Cletus at the Jim Bright Hotel there,” Jiggs said. “But Ed said to tell you it was Kate Dollar, all right.”

“Mrs. Cletus?” he said, and felt stupid as he watched Jiggs nod. He turned uncertainly and went back to the basin, where he fished the razor out of the water. Mrs. Cletus. “Did you see her?” he asked, and stared at his face in the mirror.

“I saw her. Tall woman. Black hair and eyes and a fair-sized nose. About as tall as you, I’d say.”

He nodded and raised the razor to his cheek again. Mrs. Cletus. Pleased. “She is on the stage now,” Jiggs said. The stage would come in a little after four; Jiggs had ridden through the Bucksaws, instead of going around them as the stage had to do.

“Anybody with her?” he asked casually.

“I guess it is this Cletus she was down as Missus of.”

He contemplated the razor with which he might have removed an ear to hear that, while Jiggs continued. “He is a big feller. Heavy-set with a kind of chewed-up looking face. They was down as Mr. and Mrs. Pat Cletus at the hotel there, Ed said to tell you.”

Morgan sighed, and his mind began to function again. It was no ghost; she had found kin of some kind, a brother maybe. God damn you, Kate, he thought, without anger. He should have known she would not let it alone. In the mirror he saw Jiggs staring up at the painting over the door.

“Handsome woman,” Jiggs said. It was not clear whether he was talking about the nude in the painting, or Kate.

“How many on the stage?”

“There’s four of them. Her and him and a drummer, and the little sawed-off from the bank down here.”

Money in the box then, he thought. He finished shaving, rinsed the lather from his face, and toweled it dry. He slipped his money belt up where he could get to it and drew out a hundred dollars in greenbacks, which he gave to Jiggs.

“Oh, my!” Jiggs said, in awe.

“Forget about the whole thing and tell Ed thanks. Going right back?”

“Well, I—”

“Surely, I guess you might as well. You know Basine’s place, out on the north end of town? Tell him to give you a fresh horse. He’ll be there still if you hurry.”

Jiggs stuffed the money down into his jeans pocket. “Well, thanks, Morgan! Ed said you’d be pleased to hear it.”

“Pleased,” he said. When Jiggs had gone he put on his shirt, whistling softly to himself. He opened the door; the Glass Slipper was empty still, and a barkeep was dispiritedly sweeping Saturday night’s clutter along in front of the bar.

“Go find Murch,” he called, and went back to his desk and poured himself a larger portion of whisky than usual. He raised it before him, squinting up at the painting of the woman over the tilted flat plane of the liquor. “Here’s to you, Kate,” he whispered. “Did you find one after all that had the guts to come after him? You damned bitch,” he said, and drained the glass. Then he remembered that Calhoun and Benner, Friendly and Billy Gannon had been in town last night, and he laughed out loud at this continuing evidence of his luck.

II

Two hours later he was five miles out of Warlock on the Bright’s City road, riding slowly, not hurrying. He was hot and uncomfortable with jeans on beneath his trousers, and a canvas jacket was tied in an inconspicuous bundle behind the saddle. A few torn bits of cloud floated in the sky, and their shadows moved swiftly across the yellowish-red earth and the sparse, bristling patches of brush. His horse flung her head back and danced sideways as a tarantula scurried across the stage tracks, heavy-bodied and tan-furred in the dust.

Now he kept off the stage road on the hard-packed earth, and, fifty yards from the rim, dismounted, ground-tied his horse, and went the rest of the way on foot. He grinned as he watched the column of dust moving east along the valley bottom. He could see the riders, two of them, very small in the distance below him. Crouching on his heels beside a staghorn cactus he watched them threading their way through one of the mesquite thickets that grew in patches over the valley bottom, until they were out of sight. The dust they had been raising also ceased. They had stopped at Road Agent Rock, a stony ridge through which the stage road threaded its way before starting up the long grade from the valley floor.

Presently he saw another plume of dust; horse and rider appeared, gradually enlarging, coming up the slope toward him. It was Murch, whom he’d sent up the valley. He stood up and waved his hat. Murch’s horse was blowing and heaving as he spurred up the last steep piece. Murch dismounted, sweating and dusty in shotgun chaps and a flannel shirt.

“It is Benner and Calhoun,” he said, mouthing the words over a cheekful of tobacco. His left eye studied Morgan’s face, his right roving toward the flanks of the Bucksaws. “Them and the other two went on down toward Pablo a couple of miles in the malapai. Then they split, and Billy and Luke went on down valley, and these two come around up here.”

“Now what do you suppose they are up to?”

“Couldn’t guess,” Murch said.

“Well, if I were you I would get on back to town quick where everybody could see me. In case the Bright’s City stage runs into trouble. You wouldn’t want to get taken for a road agent.”

“No,” Murch said, and spat.

“Let me have the Winchester.”

Murch drew it from the saddle boot and handed it to him, mounted, and started back along the stage road at a fast trot. He looked like a gallon jug in the saddle.

Morgan walked back to his horse, remounted, and, leaving the stage road, headed east to meet the lower slopes of the Bucksaws. He crossed the first ridge and swung downhill in the barren canyon behind it. To his right now was the upper end of the rock outcrop that slanted like the edge of a long, curved knife to the valley floor.

He tied his horse in a mesquite thicket, removed his suit, and in jeans and the canvas jacket, a bandanna tied around his neck and Winchester in hand, scrambled up the ridge. Just on the other side of it, hidden by the crest, he began to work his way down.

Once he stopped to rest, breathing deeply of the clear air, and looked about him. He could see the valley for many miles east from here, with the cloud shadows moving across it. He could make out the cut of the stage road through the low brush for a long distance too. He felt a growing excitement. He accepted it with reluctance at first, cynically, but more and more fully as he made his way on down the ridge. He chuckled to himself from time to time, and paused more often to breath great sucks of the sweet air and gaze out on the colors of the valley. His senses felt alive, as they had not for a long time; he felt unburdened, young, and larking, but still the dark cynicism in himself kept careful watch, nagging and sneering at him. Once, as he edged his way around a steep rock, he whispered, “Well, Clay, I have never crawled on my belly for any other man.”

Finally he heard the sound of voices, and he crawled to the crest of the ridge, where, hidden between two rocks, he could look down to the west side. The stage road cut in close to the ridge below him, swung to the right through a narrow defile, and angled to the left again. He could see the two of them not fifty yards away.

They were sitting on a low ledge just beyond the defile, which was called Road Agent Rock – it was said that so many stages had been stopped there that Buck Slavin had had to send out a crew to fill the rut made by the dropping strongboxes. They were in the full sun and Pony had his hat off and was mopping his face with a blue bandanna. Their horses weren’t in sight.

“Just like the bitching coach to run late today,” one of them said. The words came to him clearly. He edged the Winchester up beside him, and rested his cheek against the warm stock.

From time to time Calhoun would move into the defile to gaze east along the stage road. Then Benner, a head shorter, would go. They muttered back and forth. Once they both went out together. They sat and quarreled in the sun. Then Calhoun went out to look for the stage.

“Here it comes!” he cried, and ran back. They both tied neckerchiefs over their faces and jammed their hats down to their ears. They arranged themselves on either side of the stage road just beyond the cleft in the rock, facing each other tense and motionless like firedogs of unequal size.

Morgan glanced back to see the dust the stage was raising; it would be ten minutes yet. He watched an ant edging its way along the perpendicular side of one of the rocks that concealed him. It was carrying something white many times its own size. He watched the ant struggling; often it almost fell, but it never let go of its burden.

He whispered to it, “When you get home you’ll find it wasn’t worth the trouble, you damned fool!”

At last he heard the stage, the squeal of wheels, the whip crack and shout from the driver. It occurred to him suddenly that Kate was there, not a hundred yards away. He heard a steel rim scrape on rock. The lead team came into his field of vision, then the coach itself, Foss holding the reins with a boot up on the brake, Hutchinson, the messenger, with one hand braced behind him for balance and the shotgun ready in the other, leaning forward to try to see around the bend.

“Pull up and reach!” Calhoun bellowed, and fired into the air. Pony leaped out before the leaders, who bucked and plunged sideways. Hutchinson half rose as Pony ran around toward him, a six-shooter in either hand; Calhoun laid the Winchester on Foss.

“Throw it down, God damn you!” Pony shrilled, and Hutchinson pitched the shotgun away from him.

“Box down!” Calhoun said.

Foss had his hands raised shoulder-high, his foot on the brake, his eyes squinted against the sun. Hutchinson dragged the strongbox out. Morgan heard him grunt as he lifted and dropped it at Calhoun’s feet.

“Let’s see what the passengers got,” Calhoun said. He flung the door open, and jumped back with his rifle leveled. Pony dragged the box away from the coach.

Morgan eased his own Winchester forward a little and grimaced as the sun caught fire along the barrel. He framed the door of the coach in the cleft of the rear sight, and gently raised the front sight blade beneath it. The blade danced, suddenly, as he saw Kate’s face sharply outlined in the window. A man in a black hat squeezed out the door and dropped lightly to the ground, raising his hands.

Morgan stared at the man’s face down his sights. It was a Cletus clearly enough, a tougher, meaner, harder version of Bob Cletus; he felt a weakening run through him and tensed his body against it as though he were clenching a fist. He lowered the sights to the man’s shirt front. Kate appeared, a white hand on the door frame, her head bent down so that her hat hid her face.

He stroked the trigger. The rifle jarred in his hands; the coach was obscured in smoke. Ragged and shrill through the crash of the Winchester came the scream, and through the smoke he saw Cletus pitch forward with his broad-brimmed hat rolling free like a cartwheel. A Colt fell from his outstretched hand. Kate jerked back inside the coach. One of the leaders bucked up, hoofs boxing the air, and there was a chorus of yells. Then suddenly the coach was moving, and Foss was thrown back hard upon the seat. Hutchinson ducked down and turned, and, a Colt appearing in his hand, fired at Pony – smoke drifting from the muzzle an instant before the sound of the report. Calhoun raised his rifle and fired, levered and fired again, and Hutchinson slumped. Now Foss was standing and his long whip cracked out alongside the leaders. The stage fled, the door slamming open and shut and Kate’s face showing once again in the window as the coach ran out of Morgan’s view, with a loose tarpaulin flapping over the boot.

Calhoun fired again, and then he and Benner stood gazing after the coach. Presently Pony went over to where Cletus lay, and, thrusting at his shoulder with a boot, turned him on his back. Neither of them glanced up to where Morgan lay hidden. They bickered over Cletus’s body for a while, went through his pockets, and then Pony went out of sight at a run. He reappeared, leading the horses. In a flurry of activity they raised and lashed the strongbox to the saddle of one, mounted, and started down the valley at speed.

Morgan sighed. The sun felt very warm on his back; his face was wet. He rose, stretched, untied the bandanna and wiped his face with it, staring down at the body sprawled on the ground below him, boots twisted together, arms outstretched and the glisten of red on the white shirt front. He felt the excitement slipping away.

He leaned on one of the rocks that had concealed him, and watched the high, tan plume run down the valley. Now he could also see the coach rolling slowly up the long grade toward the rim – the driver still standing and his whip arm working mechanically. Then he looked down at the dead man again. He wondered where Kate had had to go to find him.

“Damn you, Kate,” he said aloud. “Why can’t you leave a thing alone? It is done.” He said it as though he were pleading with her, but half-humorously; it caught in his throat. “It is done,” he said again, as though saying it could make it so.

Finally he turned away from the man he had killed. He made his way without haste back along the ridge and down the canyon where he had tied his horse. He buried the Winchester and the canvas jacket, and, in his black broadcloth, rode back along the stage road to Warlock. Before he reached town he cut over to the north side, where he left the horse in Basine’s little corral, and walked to the Glass Slipper.

As he entered through the alley he saw Lew Taliaferro’s dark, mole-spotted face watching him from the alley door of the Lucky Dollar. He tipped his hat and grinned, and would have spoken, but Taliaferro’s face disappeared and the door closed. He was still grinning when he went in through the back door of the Glass Slipper, and stripped off his dusty clothes and began to wash. But he should, he thought, have been more careful, especially since Taliaferro was down one faro dealer named Wax to him. Still, he knew, his luck was good. His luck would stand as long as he believed in it.

11. MAIN STREET

THE Bright’s City coach turned into Main Street with its body swinging far over on the thoroughbraces, the team running scared, and the coach sucking a whirlwind of dust behind it. It came fast down the street with the driver yelling, the popper of the whip snapping out alongside the lead team, and the shotgun messenger swaying on his seat with a hand clasped to his shoulder.

Schroeder, walking along before the Glass Slipper, stopped and stared. Then he spat his chew of tobacco into the street and vaulted the rail, coming down hard in the dust with his knees buckling. He cupped his hands to his mouth and shouted at Chick Hasty, who was standing in his dirty canvas apron before Goodpasture’s store, “Chick! Get the posse together! Get Pike!”

Hasty went around the corner toward the Acme Corral at a run. “ The Doc!” Foss, the driver, yelled, standing now as he set the brake. The coach skidded and slowed, and came to a stop before the Assay Office, the lathered, muddy horses crowding and shifting together. Foss leaped down, and, with Schroeder’s assistance, helped down Hutchinson, whose sleeve was soaked with blood. They sat him on the rail; holding him, Foss said, “Threw down on us at Road Agent Rock. Shot a passenger, and the team took out, so we run for it.”

A crowd began to collect, men running up from all directions. Old Man Parsons halted his team of mules at the corner of Southend Street and Carl yelled at him, “Old Man, you are deputized. We are going out instanter!”

“One of them was Pony Benner, I hope to spit!” Hutchinson said, leaning limply against a post. The doctor came up, panting, his valise slapping against his leg as he ran; he and Sam Brown helped Hutchinson into the Assay Office.

The door of the coach opened and the pale face of a drummer appeared, his sidewhiskers standing out like the fur of a scared cat. He descended, followed by Pusey, the bank clerk, and they both turned to hand a woman down. She looked like a sporting woman, in her fancy clothes, but she did not carry herself like one, and the men on the boardwalk greeted her politely. Her face was chalk white beneath a hat covered with black cherries. Her eyes were black, her nose long and straight, her mouth reddened with rouge. There was a crescent-shaped court-plaster beauty mark at the corner of her mouth.

“The little one was Pony, all right,” Foss said to Schroeder.

“Two of them,” little Pusey broke in. “They got the strongbox.”

“More than two,” Foss said. “Couple up on top the ridge. It was one of them killed that big feller.”

“I only saw two,” the drummer said.

“There were three,” the woman said. She looked at Schroeder’s star, and up into his face with her hard black eyes. Her face was stiff with shock. “There was one on top of the ridge.”

“Shot what big feller?” Schroeder said to Foss.

“Passenger that was with this lady here,” Foss said. “We had to leave him lay, for the team took out wild when he got shot. He was dead, miss,” he said, apologetically. “You going after them, Carl?”

“Surely am,” Schroeder said.

“Went down valley. We could see them raising dust coming up the grade to town.”

John Gannon forced his way in through the crowd. There was a lull in the excited talk around them.

“Stage got run, Johnny,” Schroeder said. “Hutch shot and a passenger killed and still out there at Road Agent Rock.”

“Pony and Calhoun and Friendly and Billy Gannon,” someone in the crowd said. “Headed out of here like they was going back to Pablo, and went up valley to agent the coach instead.”

“By God if it wasn’t!”

Gannon licked his lips. He looked from Foss to Schroeder with his deep-set eyes in his bone-thin face. “Are we going after them, Carl?”

“Well, I thought maybe I’d ask you to ride out after that passenger.” Gannon flushed, and Schroeder went on quickly, his voice loud in the hush. “What was his name? Anybody know?”

Everyone looked at the woman, who said, “I think it was Cletus.”

“Thought I heard you calling him Pat, ma’am,” the drummer said politely. The woman did not reply.

“What’d they kill him for?” someone asked.

“He drawed, looked like,” Foss said.

“Fool thing to do,” Schroeder said.

The woman said, “He didn’t draw till he’d been shot.”

Tim French and Chick Hasty, mounted, came into Main Street. Then Peter Bacon appeared, leading an extra horse, and, a moment later, Pike Skinner, Buchanan, and Phlater. Each of them had a rifle in his saddle boot, and Pike Skinner had belts of rifle and shotgun cartridges slung over his saddlehorn, and a shotgun hanging from a saddle strap. Old Owen Parsons came after them in a hurry, on a rat-tailed bay, his hat brim blown back flat against the crown.

“Come on, Carl!” Skinner shouted.

“You go bring the dead one in, Johnny,” Schroeder said. “And watch things here.” He clapped Gannon on the shoulder. Buck Slavin came through the crowd crying, “Foss! God damn it, Foss!”

“Out of my way fellows,” Schroeder said. The crowd parted before him as he hurried out into the street to mount the extra horse.

“Looks like one we’re after’s Billy,” Tim French said.

“Maybe,” Schroeder said. “Chick, you ride out with Johnny and track back down valley after them. So we’ll have that squarer in court this time. Watch for them shedding the strongbox, too.”

Hasty nodded, and Schroeder surveyed the others. He grinned suddenly. “Well, boys,” he said. “We will ride to hit the river low down, and try to head them.”

They all nodded. Schroeder set his spurs and his horse leaped forward. The posse fell in behind him and went out of Warlock at a fast trot. There were cheers from the crowd standing around the dusty coach in Main Street.