Feud On The Mesa (21 page)

The sudden silence was deafening.

Throughout the barroom men were frozen in position, staring, most of them with no inkling any-thing at all was wrong until Rufe’s gun went off. Even the barman, who had been alerted by Rufe’s shout, hadn’t had time to reach for the scatter-gun beneath his countertop, and now it was too late.

Rufe stepped sideways to be well clear of the bar, and faced half around so he could keep most of the patrons, and the bartender, in sight. Not one of them moved a hand, least of all the barman.

An old man, wearing a long coat despite the rising
summer heat, shuffled ahead from shadows along the back wall, and leaned down, staring at Bull Harris. He looked like the Grim Reaper himself, until he put down a hand to touch the ivory-stocked Colt of the dead gunfighter, then he raised up, rubbing his fingers together and said: “Butter. By God he had butter on his fingers. It’s all over the handle of his gun.”

That, then, accounted for Harris’s fatal slip when he was swinging his weapon to bear on Rufe.

No one said a word, but they all watched the old man pick up Harris’s six-gun by the barrel, amble to the bar, and drop it there “Look for yourselves,” he cackled. “Butter, by God!”

From the roadway men were shouting, and Rufe used the small distraction along the bar to hurry outside. There was no sign of either Arlen Chase or Jud, but a lot of men were heading for the saloon to see what that gunshot had been about. Even the men who had found Pete Ruff and Abe Smith in the old shed were deserting their rescued men to hasten forward.

Rufe headed out through the throng, grabbed Ruff’s arm, swore at old Smith, and aimed them in the direction of the jailhouse at a gun-prodded run, expecting any minute for someone to bounce forth from the saloon, yelling for townsmen to stop that man with the gun in his hand.

It did not happen, but, when Rufe was unlocking the jailhouse, a lanky range rider walked out of the saloon and stood there, looking left and right, until he saw Rufe shove the two men into the jailhouse, then the cowboy watched, still without opening his mouth, until Rufe also went inside, then the range man turned back into the saloon to carry the news
that they wouldn’t have to go on a manhunt, at least, because that feller who killed Bull Harris just entered the jailhouse with a couple of other fellows.

Rufe was wringing wet, but calm. He barred the door from inside, snarled for Ruff and Smith to back away, then got the cell-room keys and took his latest prisoners down to lock them into cells, also. Neither man offered so much as a single word of protest. Both of them knew a man primed to kill when they saw one.

Constable Bradshaw yelled at Rufe: “What was the shooting about? What the hell you and your partner done? By God, when we get out of here…!”

“Shut up!” snapped Rufe, glaring past the bars. Homer Bradshaw said no more, but the look of hatred and defiance upon his coarse face was an epitome of malevolence.

It was Matthew Reilly, from a seat upon the bunk in the adjoining cell, looking from Pete Ruff and old Abe Smith to Rufe, who seemed to be more worried than defiant. He did not make a sound, but Pete Ruff did. He peered out at Rufe as though sunlight pained his eyes, and swore.

Rufe ignored them all and returned to the front office, outward bound. He did not get very far. There was an angry crowd marching down the road from the direction of the saloon, some of them brandishing rifles.

Rufe looked around, found the gun rack, picked out a shotgun with a two-foot barrel, checked the breech, snapped the gun closed, and stepped back to the window. He had no intention of hurting any-one. All he wanted was a way out, so that he could find Jud.

On the rear skirts of that angry mob the old man in
the long coat was shuffling along, happy as a clam and grinning from ear to ear. He did not have a gun in sight, but he had a half-empty quart bottle of some-one’s whiskey clutched in one of his mottled talons.

There were range men in the front of the crowd, but it consisted mostly of townsmen in shoes in-stead of boots. The range men halted at the tie rack, in tree shade, looked steadily at the brick wall, and called for Rufe to come out.

Rufe eased the double-barrels around into sight. Someone saw them, squawked like a wounded eagle, and men scattered every which way except for a grizzled, hard-looking old cattleman, and all he did was lean down upon the tie rack flintily staring back. He hardly more than raised his voice when he said: “What the hell you figure to do with that silly thing, cowboy? It don’t have a range of over a hunnert and fifty feet.” He spat, then said: “You better come out of there. So far, you ain’t done nothing that maybe should have been done long ago. Bull Harris’s no loss. But you shoot anyone else, and that’s going Tomake a heap of difference, so you’d better just walk out of there.”

Rufe listened, and pondered, then called back: “I got a better idea, mister,
you
come inside!”

The old stockman chewed, spat, looked left and right where the wary crowd was beginning to creep up again, then he said: “All right, I’ll come inside. But I got to warn you…we got a constable here in Clearwater, and, as soon as folks can find him, he’ll be along to arrest you.”

Rufe stepped to the door, raised the bar, and opened the panel a crack. “Come in,” he called. “And don’t any of you other fellers move!”

The cowman turned, said something gruffly to a
range man nearby, then stepped around the tie rack bound for the jailhouse door.

Rufe pulled the door open a little wider, then slammed it behind the stockman, dropped the bar back into place one handed, and cocked the near barrel of his scatter-gun. “Put your six-gun on the desk,” he ordered.

The old cowman obeyed, and stood a moment looking at the other two guns already lying there. He turned his head. “This here weapon with the initials carved on the butt belongs to Constable Bradshaw.”

Rufe gestured with the shotgun. “Go over yonder and sit down, mister. Yeah, that’s the constable’s gun. He’s locked in a cell.”

The cowman’s jaw sagged. He stared for a moment, then turned and went to a wall bench, and eased down, still looking nonplussed.

Rufe put the scatter-gun atop the desk, also. It looked like a small arsenal with all those loaded weapons lying atop the litter of scattered papers on the desk. He then went to the water bucket, ladled up a dipper full, and deeply drank, with the old range man watching his every move. When he finished and dropped the dipper back into the bucket, he wiped his face with a soiled sleeve, jerked up a chair, swung it, and sat down astraddle the chair facing the cowman.

I
t did not take as long to tell the cowman the en-tire story as it might have, and, by the time the cowman had heard it all, his weathered, craggy features had settled into a fresh series of lines.

His name was Evart Hartman. He was a widower with two grown sons running the cow outfit with him. It had been his sons out there, on either side of him at the tie rack. They were still out there.

Hartman gazed at Rufe, after he knew the entire story, and said: “I hope for your sake you’ve told me the truth.”

Rufe shrugged that off. “Why should it make any difference now? None of you lowland cowmen would do a damned thing to help Elisabeth Cane before.”

The cowman considered that for a moment with-out replying, then he changed the subject. “Got any objection Tome seeing Homer Bradshaw?”

Rufe arose and went for the keys. He had no objections. He did not believe the constable would tell Evart Hartman the truth, but he had no objections to them talking, so he mutely escorted Hartman down into the cell room, and, when Hartman halted out front of the cell and Constable Bradshaw saw him,
the cowman surprised Rufe. He said: “Homer, you always was a cheatin’, underhanded feller.”

Bradshaw sneered. “Why, because I was always a better man than your sons, Evart?”

Hartman’s tough gaze drifted past and came to rest on Matthew Reilly. He wagged his head at Reilly. “I told you last year, Matt. I told you not to get involved with anything Homer worked up. Didn’t I tell you that?”

Matthew Reilly arose from the side of his bunk, came forward, and gripped the bars along the front of the cell. “They was strays, Mister Hartman.”

The cowman gazed stonily at Reilly without speaking, then turned and looked in at Pete Ruff and Abe Smith. He knew Ruff, but not Abe Smith, and all he actually knew of Pete Ruff was that he was range boss for Arlen Chase. He did not speak to Ruff. They looked steadily at one another until old Abe Smith bleated a plea, and Hartman glanced from Ruff to the old
cocinero.

Old Abe Smith bewailed the unkind fate which had landed him there, loudly lamented his complete innocence, and, when Evart Hartman asked him what he did for Chase, Abe told him.

“Cocinero
is all. I swear to you, mister, I never even so much as brang in the saddle stock in the morning. Alls I ever done was the cooking. And they never told me a blessed thing. Never confided in me at all. Alls I did was slave over that gawd-damned cook stove from dawn until dark, and got treated like I was a…. ”

“If you worked on my outfit,” stated Evart Hart-man, breaking across Smith’s running flow of words, “and talked this much, we’d hang you just plumb out of hand.”

Hartman turned for a final face-off with Homer Bradshaw. “I been saying it for years, Homer. You always were an underhanded feller.”

“I’m the law here!” exclaimed Bradshaw, glaring.

Hartman was not very impressed. “I’ll go around town and see about that, now. You been running out o’ rope for a long while, Homer.”

Rufe, who had not said a word, accompanied the old cowman back to the office, locked the cell-room door, and pitched the ring of keys over atop all those weapons on the desk.

“Well?” he said to Hartman.

“Seems Tome someone’s got to find your partner and Arlen Chase,” stated Hartman. “Also seems Tome someone’s got to ride atop the mesa and get Elisabeth Cane’s side of all this.” Hartman fished for his makings and stood, stooped and thoughtful, while Rufe went to the roadway windows and looked out. The crowd was still out there, but its mood had changed, which perhaps was inevitable. No one could stand around in the hot roadway being consistently angry or excited or indignant, whatever had motivated most of those men.

A number of men were idly standing over in front of the general store, talking. Others were southward and northward, but on the same, opposite, side of the road, also idly talking. The men out front, at the tie rack and in the vicinity of it, were mostly stock-men who were so accustomed to the heat they did not appear to be aware of it.

Rufe turned when the old cowman spoke through a thin drift of fragrant smoke.

“Where do you reckon them two went…Chase and your partner?”

Rufe had absolutely no idea. The last he had seen,
Jud had just punched Arlen Chase through the doors of the saloon, and had jumped out behind him. There had been no gunfire, no great shouts by either man, but, of course, there had been the stun-ning aftermath of his shoot-out with Bull Harris to interfere with his own, and everyone else’s concern, about Jud and Arlen Chase.

He told the cowman that, if he could keep the townsmen and those range men out there as well from interfering, he would try and locate his partner. Hartman smoked, and thought, and finally said: “I’ll go with you.” He did not explain why he would do this, and Rufe, eyeing the shrewd older man, felt that he understood. Evart Hartman was not an incautious man. He had seemed entirely convinced by the story Rufe had told him. In the cell room his attitude had reinforced Rufe’s feeling that this was indeed so. On the other hand, Hartman’s offer to accompany Rufe was not based entirely upon a desire to help. He wanted to be along just in case all his partial convictions turned out to be incorrect. He looked like that kind of a man, shrewd, careful, completely and analytically poised.

Rufe went to the desk, picked up Hartman’s weapon, and handed it to him, then he motioned to-ward the door, and Hartman crossed over as he holstered his weapon. When he stood in the doorway, looking out, he spoke to the cowmen at the tie rack, but the moment that jailhouse door had opened, all those other men up and down the roadway, and upon the opposite plank walk, came straight up to listen.

Hartman was brusque. “Homer Bradshaw’s locked in a cell in here, boys, along with Matt Reilly and a couple of Arlen Chase’s men…his range boss is one
of’em. Those rumors we been pickin’ up around town now and then about Chase making trouble for old Amos Cane’s girl atop the mesa been pretty much true. This feller in here with me, Rufe Miller, and his partner, the feller who’s missing along with Arlen Chase, work for Miz Cane. Me and this feller are going to ride out and see if we can’t find his partner and Chase. Someone’d ought to set here in the jailhouse and mind the town, and make certain none of the prisoners in here gets loose.”

Hartman did not ask for volunteers. He pointed over the heads of the men nearest him to a portly, dark-haired man over in front of the general store. “You, Lemuel. You’re head of the town council this year, and you got a clerk in the store to mind the business. You better come over here and ramrod this matter, because, sure as hell, Clearwater don’t have any law at all right now.”

Hartman dropped his arm, watched the distant storekeeper a moment to see whether he would agree, would start across toward the jailhouse, then called to Rufe to come out.

No one said a word. No one more than shuffled his feet a little when Rufe came forth from the jail-house, until he was fully out there on the plank walk, then the old man in the long coat, still clutching someone’s whiskey bottle, reared up from along the north doorways and said: “You sure done a job that’s been a long while finding someone to do it, sonny.” He did not explain, but the assumption was that he had in mind the killing of Bull Harris.

Evart Hartman called to a range man. “Jamie, fetch my horse down to the livery barn, will you?”

He strolled along with Rufe, and, as they entered the shady area out front of the barn, Rufe recognized
a heavy-set, unkempt-looking individual standing in the runway of the barn that he had seen earlier rattling the jailhouse door, then stamping off, cursing, because that door had been locked. It was the livery-man. He greeted Hartman and Rufe with a palpably false smile and turned to pace along with them until Rufe located his horse, then the liveryman offered to do the rigging. Rufe declined, did his own saddling and bridling. Then he leaned across the saddle seat and said: “Hour back, or more, you wanted to get in-side the jailhouse, mister. I saw you up there shaking the door. Why?”