Guns Of the Timberlands (1955) (8 page)

Clay drew thoughtfully on his cigarette. Now that it had come, he realized he had more than half expected just this. He could not pay his hands without money, and he owed Kesterson over at the store. Kesterson was friendly, but a sharp businessman.

"Wheeler," he protested quietly, "I'll pay every cent, you know that. We'll win--we simply can't lose. He can't even get on the plateau."

"You sure?"

"He knows I own the Gap. I also own The Notch." Clay took off his hat and turned it in his hands. "Sooner or later this was bound to come. I made sure my range was protected, and you can be sure that I thought of everything."

Noble Wheeler shifted his heavy body. So he owned The Notch? Wheeler wanted to ask a question, but decided against it. He had his own ambitions in regard to Deep Creek, but they must wait. But he was surprised and irritated that Bell had shown the forethought to buy those two pieces and so control fifty thousand acres of range.

The thought worried him. What else did Bell know? Or would he guess?

"I'd like to help you," he said, putting on a helpless air, "but money is tight and I've got some loans coming due. Sorry, Clay."

At the store, Kesterson filled his order without comment. As he stacked the groceries he started to speak, hesitated, and said nothing.

Once more in the saddle, Clay headed for the station. Behind him a lumberjack yelled, "Better grab a train while you're able, cowhand!"

Somebody else gave vent to a raucous yell, and it was followed by jeers and catcalls. Clay rode steadily on, his face a mask. When he dismounted at the station he noticed that the lumberjacks were bunching together and following.

He went into the station with rapid strides. "Jim! Bell. Can I talk to you?"

Jim Narrows rolled the curtain away from the wicket and looked out. "Howdy, Clay. What can I do for you?"

"Get me about a dozen cars. I want to ship cattle."

Narrows was embarrassed. "Sorry, Clay. I can't get 'em." He leaned toward Bell. "Betwixt you an' me, we got orders to ship no cattle for you. Comes from higher up. Looks like they're fishin' for that lumber contract."

"I see . . . thanks, Jim."

He hesitated, staring out the door. So they had blocked him there, too. Devitt thought of everything. The circle was drawing tighter.

"Clay."

He turned back to Narrows.

"There was a wire sent about Monty Brown."

"Devitt?"

"No." Narrows leaned closer. "It was Wheeler."

Clay Bell stared at the station master. "Wheeler sent it?"

"His very own self."

Bell turned away. "Thanks, Jim. Do you a favor some day."

He walked outside and stopped abruptly. One of the lumberjacks had untied the palouse and mounted it, and a dozen others made a tight cordon between himself and the horse. They stood staring at him and grinning. He recognized the situation and understood it. Here was real trouble.

They were out to get him now. If he drew a gun he might kill one man, but he could not kill them all. The men he faced knew that and were prepared to gamble. A flicker of movement caught the tail of his eye, a movement from the open door of a barn hayloft.

The flicker of movement had been sunlight on a rifle barrel.

Chapter
8

Bell took his time. He was a tall, serene man at this moment, showing no sign of nerves or hesitation, merely a man studying a situation and seeking a way out. At least twenty of the burly lumberjacks stood around. A few showed malice, some merely rough good humor, but all were waiting to see what he would do.

His eyes strayed down the street, flickering past the loft door where he had detected movement. There was nothing to be seen, but he was not fooled. The unknown marksman was in position and ready. The shot had to come at the right time, when its origin would not be obvious.

This was an old story to Clay. He dropped his cigarette into the dust and shifted his position slightly. It put a man between himself and that loft door.

He glanced at the appalousa, restive under the strange rider, then at the men around him.

"You boys sure like to gang up on a man, don't you?" He drawled his words, smiling a little, his manner casual. "What's the matter? Afraid to fight one man at a time?"

A big man shouldered his way to the front of the crowd. "I'll fight you, now or--"

Clay's fist smashed his lips even as he spoke. Then he crossed a right and the thud of his fist was like the butt end of an axe striking a log. The lumberjack fell flat on his face and instantly, Bell whistled.

The appalousa whirled and lunged through the crowd toward Bell, scattering lumberjacks in every direction. The rider sawed on the bit, and the palouse tossed his head, then stuck it between his legs and kicked out wickedly. He took a stiff-legged hop and ducked his head again and the jack went over his head into the dirt.

As the horse spun, Bell grabbed the pommel and swung to the saddle, shucking his Colt as his toe kicked into the stirrup. He tilted it and blasted a shot at the loft door even as the rifle spoke. He heard the whip of the bullet past his ear, but his own bullet had scored. The man in the loft let go his rifle and lunged to his feet, holding his wounded arm. Bell fired again, and the man leaned far out from the door and then hit the dust of the street on his face, falling like a sack of meal.

Clay Bell put his horse into the street and went down the main drag at a pounding run. A lumberjack ran from the Tinker House to see what had happened and Bell threw a shot into the planks at his feet. The man dove at the door, clawing for the latch.

Then Bell was outside of town and his horse was running free. The last thing he saw as he went out of town on a hard gallop was Colleen Riley. She had come out on the upstairs porch of the hotel and stared after him.

A half-mile out of town he slowed the horse to a canter, then to a walk.

Now the full force of those arrayed against him was making itself felt. Noble Wheeler was without doubt the man behind Devitt, the source of Devitt's information, and perhaps the reason why he had chosen to get his timber from the Deep Creek forest.

No loan was to be had and he could ship no cattle. He was broke, flat broke.

He held the only two known routes into Deep Creek, but the enemy held the whip hand. Kesterson might continue to sell him supplies but it would mean a gun battle to get them. He was encircled and they could draw the noose tighter. It was small consolation that they could scarcely starve him out as long as he had beef.

One man was dead. Bell knew his own shooting well enough to know he had killed the unknown drygulcher who fired from the loft door.

His first shot had disarmed the man, his second had killed him. This was war--war to the death. Devitt had made that obvious in the brutal attack on Garry and Jones. And now in this attempt to kill him from ambush.

Bell could have spared the man in the loft, but only to give him another chance. And in this battle there were to be no second chances for anyone.

Jud Devitt had prepared his ground well, and it was equally obvious that he intended to use the forces of the law whenever possible. The old shooting in which Montana Brown had engaged had long ago been dropped without a charge being filed. No jury would convict him now, but he could be arrested and held for trial, and to resist arrest would be to play right into Devitt's hands. Clay had no doubt the warrant would be served by a posse made up of Devitt's own men.

Drawing up at the crest of a low hill, he scanned his back trail. It was growing late, and the sun was already behind the mountain. The softness of desert evening was settling over the mesquite country, and he sat his horse a minute, studying the terrain with a careful eye. At no time would he be safe, but there was nothing on the trail, no dust, no movement.

The palouse, restless for home, moved off of his own volition, and Clay let him go. The air was cooler now with the sudden coolness of a desert sundown. The pastels of evening gathered in changing color along the far off hills. The sky held a lone star, and somewhere a coyote yapped shrilly.

Before him the dark mass of the mountain loomed, bare rock, tufted with vegetation in the draws and canyons, and showing the darkness of forest on its higher slopes. A distant sound, foreign to the evening, caught his ears: he drew up sharply against the black of a clump of brush, listening.

The night was silent . . . no sound . . . only cool air, refreshing as a drink of clear, cold water. He drew it deep into his lungs, touched with the faint scent of sage. The palouse moved on, and slowly his hand came away from his gun butt.

Each clump of mesquite or juniper now was a spot of darkness. The floor of the desert was gray . . . more stars blossomed in the clear field of the sky. His horse walked on, and suddenly, there was a flicker of darker shadow among the mesquite clumps and metal clicked.

Clay threw himself flat along the horse just as something struck him a wicked blow on the shoulder. He grabbed wildly at the saddle horn and clutched it with a drowning man's grip. There was another shot, and he was struck again, and he seemed to go tumbling forward, over and over into soft, velvety darkness, but his fingers clung to the one real thing in all this nightmare . . . the saddle horn. With all his will, his fingers shut down on it and held.

Through a heaving, roaring blackness he felt himself plunging ahead. Behind him there was another sharp, splitting crack . . . then no other sound.

Clay Bell fought his way back to consciousness into the sunlight. He lay flat on his back, half under a tree, and the sky beyond the tree was blue and flecked with fleecy clouds. He could hear his horse cropping grass near by, and he lay very still, afraid to move, trying to locate himself.

He had been to Tinkersville. That much was clear. There had been trouble there, but he'd ridden safely from the town. He scowled over that, puzzling at what else might have happened and where he might be now. Evening . . . it had been cool and pleasant . . . he had been riding. Then it all came back, clear and sharp. He had been ambushed, drygulched. Yet how could that be? The burro trail toward which he had been headed was unknown in the valley, and it was unlikely that any of Jud Devitt's crew could have happened upon it.

Now pain made itself felt. It was his right shoulder. He rolled over carefully, using his left hand, pushing up to a sitting position. Carefully, turning his head on a stiff neck, he looked around.

He was among the ghost buildings of Cave Creek. Somehow his will must have kept his grip on that saddle horn until he reached here. Assurance of safety must have let his subconscious relax that death grip, and he had fallen. His mouth and throat were parched and there was no strength in him. Using his left hand, he pulled himself the dozen yards to the mountain stream and drank deep. Then, working with his left hand, he ripped the shirt over his wounds. Two bullets had hit him. One had skidded off the shoulder muscle, ripping the deltoid. This wound was scarcely more than a graze. The other had gone through his shoulder below the collarbone.

Carefully, not to start the bleeding again, he bathed both wounds in cold water. It was a slow, painstaking job, and when it was finished he lay back on the grass, panting heavily. His thoughts were muggy and he could not seem to bring them to any focus. Undoubtedly he had lost much blood. For a long while he lay on his back staring up at the sky.

A distant sound of firing brought him out of it. He struggled to his feet and started toward the palouse, but his weakness was too great. Something hooked over his boot toe and he fell, sprawling upon the ground.

When his eyes opened again it was sunset and the air was cool. He lay there against the grass, his shoulder on fire and his head humming. A long time later, while he was listening to the water running over the stones, he heard in his memory the sound of firing. Clay lifted his head to listen, but heard no sound. He remembered then that he heard the firing hours ago, before noon.

He lay back upon the grass. There had been trouble and he had not been there to help. He rolled over and got to his knees, crawling again to the stream where he could drink long and deep of the cold water. His thirst seemed without end . . . and he remembered from somewhere that thirst usually accompanied loss of blood The memory of those shots blasting out of the darkness returned. Probably not Jud Devitt . . . how could the contractor have known of the old trail? But there was no reason for anyone being near this point unless to wait for him. Who in town would know that he used this trail? Or that the trail existed?

His head throbbed heavily and his shoulder flamed, but he sat up and tried to assay his position. Nothing in the situation was favorable except that he was alive. He had no way of knowing what had happened at the Gap, nor at The Notch. The shooting had to come from the latter place--he was still too far to hear firing from Emigrant Gap.

In his present condition he was no good to anyone. On the other hand, there was not a chance in a million that anyone would ride this way unless one of his own men came looking for him. The first thing would be to check his weapons to make sure he was prepared to defend himself, get the saddle off the palouse, and to dress his wounds, somehow.

He was on the bank of the stream with the nearest building not twenty yards off. It was the sagging frame structure of what had, by the faded sign, once been the town's saloon. Across the street was an assay office, and farther down were other buildings, all of frame or log construction.