Feud On The Mesa (18 page)

Jud dismounted and disappeared inside the old building. While he was gone, Pete Ruff started another cigarette, but Rufe told him to throw it away. They did not need a lighted torch to alert any possible wakening townsmen. Ruff obeyed, then smiled more broadly as Jud returned, knocking dust and cobwebs off himself. “There ain’t a place around here you can hide us,” Ruff said.

Jud came over, looked at Ruff, and also smiled. Without explaining the smile, he gestured for the prisoners to dismount. He was still smiling when he drew his gun to herd them into the old carriage house. Rufe kept watch and said nothing, but once they were inside, the weak, ghostly light filtering through the sagging, ancient roof showed a large, earthen-floored, trash-littered vacant space. Rufe wrinkled his nose; there was a strong smell of sour mash inside the old building.

Jud herded his captives to the center of the room, then ordered them to halt, stepped around in front, heaved mightily, and a dusted-over, heavy wooden trap door came up, for the second time. Earlier Jud had almost fallen, when he’d snagged a boot toe in the ring latch.

Pete Ruff stopped smiling and leaned to look straight down. Abe Smith made a slight strangling sound in his throat. Rufe came forward also to look down. This was where that smell of sour mash was
coming from. Someone, at one time, had manufactured whiskey down in that hole.

Jud dropped a match to see how deep the dugout was. Then, satisfied, he told Pete Ruff to climb down in there. Ruff turned in quick, hard hostility and Jud cocked his Colt.

Ruff went to the edge, shoved his legs over, peered down, reversed himself, gripping the edge, and let his body hang to its full limit, then let go. The hole was about ten or twelve feet deep, and as dark inside as any such hole would have been. Pete Ruff landed hard, and cursed as he got painfully up to his feet. They could see his lifted face.

Abe Smith bitterly complained. He even asked for one of the lariats off a saddle outside. Jud gruffly ordered him to descend as Ruff had done, and, al-though old Abe cried out that his bones were too brittle, that he was an old, helpless, innocent, completely uninvolved individual, he nonetheless sat upon the edge exactly as the range boss had previously done, groaning all the while, swung around, and dropped down. His landing was perfect; in fact, although he almost fell, he managed not to by bumping into Ruff. Then he looked up piteously

“Don’t close the lid,” he pleaded. “I told you…I won’t try to rouse nobody, only don’t close the damned lid. A feller could suffercate down in here.”

Jud leaned to lift the lid. As he raised it, he ignored Smith and spoke directly to the range boss: “You start hollering and raise the town, mister, and you’ll trade this hole for another one around here somewhere…wherever their graveyard is. You’ve done your part…now keep out of it until we come back for you.”

He lowered the lid with Abe Smith’s quavering
lamentations becoming muted to whisper strength through the heavy wooden cover.

Jud looked over at Rufe. “Someone’s sure on our side tonight.”

Rufe’s reply was neutral about that. “How did you find it?”

“Damned near broke my foot catching it in the ring.” Jud led the way back to the horses. They led the AC animals quietly down a back alley until they came to the public corrals, off-saddled them, turned them in, flung the saddlery in some shadows where it would probably not be found and stolen, then they went in search of some hay. This proved easier to find than Jud’s bootleg whiskey hole. There were several loose stacks out back of a livery barn. They helped themselves, forked feed to the AC animals, then took their own horses around to the main roadway, climbed aboard, and casually rode on down to where a pair of lanterns hanging outside a whitewashed log building indicated the location of Clearwater’s livery barn.

There was supposed to be a night man around, but they did not find him even though they looked in the harness room, the feed room, even a little office scented with horse sweat.

In the end, they cared for their own animals, and by then the paleness over against the eastern rims was steadily widening along toward sunrise. It would still be another hour or so before the sun actually appeared, but now that scent they had detected earlier, of cook stove coals, was beginning to get stronger, which meant that the housewives of Clearwater were firing up to cook breakfast.

They walked back out front, and nearly fell over a small, wiry old man who was coming sleepily in
from where he had been sleeping in a hay wagon. He was rubbing his eyes and did not see either Rufe or Jud until they side-stepped to avoid the collision. Then he dropped his fists and blinked in surprise.

Rufe grinned at him. “You need some coffee, part-ner,” he said, and the startled night man agreed with a big yawn, followed by a strong nod of his head.

“Sure do. How come you fellers up so blasted early?”

“Light sleepers,” stated Rufe. “You the night-hawk?”

“Yeah,” mumbled the small, sinewy, elfin-like hostler. “Come on down to the harness room and I’ll fire up the stove for coffee.” He looked around. “Where’d you leave your animals?”

“Already stalled and fed,” replied Rufe, turning with Jud to follow the older man. They needed in-formation about Clearwater and, next to a bartender, the best source in any town was either a liveryman or one of his hostlers.

The livery barn hostler’s repeated yawnings inspired a reaction in Jud. Before they entered the harness room, he had yawned three times.

The night man kept up a running fire of mumbled conversation as he lit a lamp, hung it from an over-head nail, then shaved kindling into a small castiron stove, and, when he had that appliance crackling, busied himself with making a fresh pot of coffee.

He really did not require answers to most of his questions. Nor did he usually wait for an answer be-fore going on to the next question, or on a tangent of robust swearing at either the coffee pot or the stove.

When he finally turned, though, everything ordered the way he felt that it should be, his small,
keen eyes made a steady study of the larger, younger men. They looked exactly like what he thought they were—commonplace range riders. There was no reason for them to look otherwise, that is exactly what they were—except, perhaps, to the folks back in the Gila Valley, and also except to some men chained up in Elisabeth Cane’s log barn, and down in someone’s old bootleg whiskey hide-out, much nearer than the Cane log barn.

Jud offered openers by saying Clearwater appeared to be a fine town. The hostler pursed his lips, pinched down his eyes, and heavily pondered for a moment before replying to the effect that, yes, Clearwater was a good enough place to live, but it had its drawbacks.

Jud thought all towns had drawbacks, which the hostler assented was highly probable, although, since he’d been raised in Kansas during the troubles, and had afterward spent most of his life on the south desert, or as far north as Denver, but no farther, he really could not make a sweeping judgment about
all
towns.

Jud smiled. Every town had at least one—men like this, usually undersize, coarse-featured, in this man’s case goat-eyed, meaning one blue eye, one green or brown eye, very ignorant and ungrammatical, but convinced they were very clever and knowledgeable.

There was one advantage. These people equated knowing other folks’ business, with being intelligent. If they could discourse loftily on the affairs of others, making purest gossip out of it, they thought that amounted to being intelligent. Rufe and Jud knew this hostler’s type of individual, and, without having really to exert much effort, they coaxed him
to discussing his fellow citizens. The town constable, for example, a rather large man, in his prime, whose name was Homer Bradshaw, and of whom his enemies said he had been a much better black-smith than he was now a peace officer.

The nighthawk repeated that tale, Tomake Jud and Rufe smile. They dutifully smiled. He then mentioned some of the personal facts about Homer Bradshaw, ending up with a comment Jud and Rufe remembered. He said: “Him and a couple other fellers been pickin’ up cattle off the desert the past year, and doin’ right well with’em. Seems they’re strays that been wanderin’ loose ever since Indians wiped out a train of settlers six, eight years back. Of course, that’s plumb legal, but folks been complainin’ a little that Homer’s spent more time out of town than in town this past year, and they don’t like payin’ his wages if he ain’t around to earn’em.”

Rufe, taking his cue from the way the hostler recounted his story, sympathized with the irate townsmen, saying: “That’s plumb right. Folks need protection, not some lawman who’s tryin’ to get rich instead of minding his business. Incidentally, where does Homer peddle these strays he catches?”

The hostler was unsure. “Mexico, I think, but maybe not, because that’s a far drive southward. I don’t rightly know.”

“Are they branded animals?”

“Oh, yeah!” exclaimed the hostler. “I only seen a couple of the horses…saddle stock it was. The brand was sort of blurry, and they was across a corral from me. I couldn’t make it out. Homer don’t corral his gather in the holding pens below town.” The hostler grinned about this. “I wouldn’t, neither, in his boots, with folks half mad at me for catching
them strays. I think he drives’em south, down into the desert somewhere. Maybe he delivers’em to buyers down there.”

The hostler slid to his feet and went to the stove where the coffee was finally boiling merrily away, and outside in the barn’s chilly runway that corpse-gray predawn light was turning gradually toward a blushing, soft shade of pink.

Rufe rolled a cigarette, lit it, and ran a thoughtful hand over his beard-stubbled face. When the hostler finally filled three cups of not-bad java, Rufe asked him a question.

“Is Homer a friend of a cowman named Arlen Chase?”

The night man slyly winked. “You want to know what I figure…in secret, of course? I figure it was Mister Chase told Homer about them strays.”

Rufe affected surprise. “No! Why would Mister Chase do that?”

“Dunno,” stated the hostler, “but I can tell you this much. Them critters come off the north and east ranges below Cane’s Mesa, and the only cowman up in that country is Mister Chase. He knows every damned animal that’s abroad up there. You can bet your hat Mister Chase seen them strays.”

“Well, hell,” interjected Jud skeptically, “why wouldn’t he take them for himself?”

The hostler laughed down his nose at Jud. “Mister Chase, cowboy, is a mighty powerful feller. He don’t need no one’s ownerless strays. Not by a damned sight. Mister Chase is a feller everyone hereabouts respects all to hell.”

Rufe drank his coffee, looked out to watch dawn arrive, then thanked the hostler for his coffee and his interesting conversation, and was ready to
move forth into the new day He only had one more question.

“What’s the name of one of those fellers who work the strays with Homer?”

“Matthew Reilly,” replied the hostler. “Sure you boys wouldn’t want another cup? This here’s the best java I ever made.”

T
he café man was watering down the roadway out front of his establishment when Rufe and Jud ambled up. He flung the water, twisting his body as he did this, so that the bucket load would be sent forth in a high arch and cover more ground. Then he turned back and, seeing two faded range men watching, said: “You’d be surprised how many damned people in this world don’t have any more manners’n lope up a dusty road through the center of town in summertime. Well, come on in, fellers…I got something for breakfast you damned seldom get any more. Antelope steaks. Set there at the counter while I rassle it up. I’ll be back with the coffee directly.”

They sat at the counter, looked back out into the chilly, faint-lighted dawn roadway, saw a few indications that Clearwater was coming to life, then faced forward as their coffee arrived. Rufe let the cup sit there, but Jud had no objection to this café man’s coffee atop the hostler’s coffee. Jud rolled a smoke as he slouched at the counter with his coffee.

“We better find Matthew Reilly,” he murmured.

Rufe sighed. “I expect so. But, hell, we’re not down here to clean up Clearwater.”

Jud conceded that. “True enough. How else can
we get anyone locked up? If their town constable is runnin’ off Elisabeth’s livestock, then he’s hand-in-glove with Arlen Chase, and we can’t do a damned thing about Chase until we take care of their damned town marshal, can we?”

Rufe sighed again. This was precisely what he had been thinking when he’d first sighed, and he did not like the implications. So far, they’d had a lot of luck. So far, too, they’d had their special advantage—no one knew who they were or what they were up to— but taking on a town constable in his own town with them being total strangers….

The café man brought their breakfasts, and, as a stocky, sleepy-looking range man walked in out of the cold roadway, the café man glanced up, then said: “’Morning, Matthew. Set down. I’ll fetch your breakfast in a minute.”

Rufe and Jud raised their eyes. Matthew was a young man, powerfully put together, sandy-headed and gray-eyed. He went to the bench and eased down, scratched himself, then yawned mightily.

The name was common enough, and, except for the fact that this particular Matthew fit the description of a range man, Rufe and Jud might not have been interested. As it was, they ate slowly and in silence, and had a second cup of java, and even smoked afterward to pass time until Matthew was finished. As he arose to count out coins, Rufe and Jud did the same. They then followed Matthew out into the roadway, which had a few pedestrians here and there, men heading for their jobs around town, merchants getting ready for the new day, and, as Matthew paused to resettle the hat atop his head, Rufe and Jud stepped up on each side casually, as
though they were all old friends, and asked what his last name was.

The stocky man looked from Rufe to Jud before answering. “Reilly Matt Reilly Who are you fellers?”

Jud pointed to a wall bench up the plank walk out front of a shop. “Walk up there and set, Matt. We’re just a couple of fellers that’d like a few words with you.”