Gunsmoke Justice (5 page)

I
T WAS THE
sound of metal striking metal that awoke him. The man outside was tapping the gun barrel gently against the bars.

“In there. You in there, Jordan.”

So his name had got about already, Brad thought. Through McFee, he supposed. He answered cautiously, “Go on talking.”

The voice was one that Brad did not recognize. It was thick, as if the owner were trying to disguise it. “I like the way you shoot,” the man outside said.

“And what I shoot at?” Brad countered. He lay still, unable to move without attracting attention, and knowing that he was an excellent target from the window. Besides, he wanted to see where the other was taking this talk.

There was a brief, hard laugh. “I come to talk business. You want a job?”

Brad’s mind worked swiftly. There was something wrong here. Although he did not remember Jim Parker’s voice well, he felt sure this was not Parker. If it had been, he would have given his name, and certainly he wouldn’t have to slip up here in the night On the other hand, a man with the capacity for hatred Ike Quarles had shown was not the kind to turn benevolent and send a man to him with an offer for work. He decided to carry this on awhile longer to see what he could learn.

“I might be,” Brad answered.

The man’s voice dropped even lower. “There’s gunhand wages for a good man. Hundred and found.”

This again was the old story to Brad. He had taken a gunhand job once in Colorado. And though he had sympathized with the man who hired him, it had not given him any liking for the work. Killing was a hard thing to stomach, though at times he knew there was no other way. A certain kind of snake understood but one law — a bullet in the brisket.

“I wasn’t thinking of that kind of work,” he said carefully.

There was a moment’s pause. Then: “A man that makes as fine a target as you do right now ain’t got much choice, Jordan.”

On the other side of the room Olaf had stopped snoring. Brad could hear the soft sounds of his feet touching the floor. Olaf was in complete darkness and, to cover the noises he made, Brad spoke louder.

“That’s blunt enough for any man,” he admitted. “And it don’t leave much choice.” His voice stopped as he made out Olaf’s bulk beneath the window. He said suddenly, “But if you tried to shoot me, it — ”

A surprised howl of pain rose and Brad broke off talking. Olaf made a grunting sound. Moonlight fell on his hand, showing it wrapped around the gunman’s wrist. Olaf gave a hard jerk and dragged an arm through the bars until a shoulder stopped it. The gun clattered to the floor of the cell. Outside saddle leather creaked as the man shifted weight in agony.

Brad laughed softly. “Now let’s talk business.” He got off the cot and came nearer the window. The sill was only breast-high to him and he could see out quite easily. Olaf now had both hands on the man’s arm and was applying a steady pressure that threatened to break a bone over the edge of the sill.

Brad had never seen the man before. He had a thin, scoop-shaped face with a dark mustache drooping over narrow lips. Sweat was running down his face and dripping from his angular jawbone despite the chill of the night.

“Maybe,” Brad said amusedly, “the sheriff would like to know about this gun toting in his town.”

The man swore lividly. Brad was surprised at the reaction he had got. Either the people in this valley paid more respect to McFee’s law than he had supposed, or this man just didn’t want what he was doing known.

“Tell him to quit, damn it! He’s breaking my arm,” the man gasped.

“I don’t mind if he does,” Brad said.

“I’ll give you a better deal,” the other panted. “Hundred fifty and found, Jordan. You’ll be bought out of here and get two months’ wages in advance.”

“Who’re you talking for?” Brad wanted to know.

“That’s my business,” the man said evasively.

Brad smiled thinly. “Pull harder, Olaf.”

There was a low, agonized curse as Olaf applied more pressure. “Parker,” he managed to say. “He needs help.”

“I know he does,” Brad agreed. “Harder, Olaf.”

The man’s head jerked convulsively and his free hand lifted, then fell back. “Me, damn you! Nick Biddle.”

“Ease up, Olaf,” Brad said. The man’s sigh ran out of him and Olaf relaxed the pressure but kept his grip. “Three hundred dollars won’t buy much,” Brad told him. He added slyly, “Now I was thinking about getting me a piece of land here. This is fine-looking country. How much land will three hundred buy?”

“I’ll give you land. All you want.”

“Ah,” Brad said, “some of that green hay meadow, maybe? And water to keep it that way?”

The man was silent, his small eyes studying Brad with a new respect. “Water,” he said. His laugh was short and harsh. “Yeh, there’ll be water aplenty.”

“That’s the kind of talk I like to hear,” Brad remarked. “A man that can promise me water from a dry river.” His voice had a silky tone the other could not fail to catch. “Or maybe you make the water some way?”

The man cursed again. “You got your choice, Jordan. Work for me or — ”

“Or the land I get is likely to be six feet over my head,” Brad interrupted. “I heard that lingo before.” He turned from the window and went to the cell door. So far their voices had not been raised, even in anger, but now he lifted his to a ringing shout.

“Sheriff! McFee!”

There was no answer from inside, but a startled Swedish cussword from behind spun him around. Moonlight glinted on a knife blade slashing down, Olaf’s grip came loose and the man pulled his hand back through the bars. Brad made the window in two long strides, scooping the gun from the floor as he moved.

Olaf stood to one side, holding one wrist with his fingers. Brad thumbed the hammer on the gun and then let his arm fall. The man had ridden too fast around the corner of the building for him to get any kind of shot at all.

“Danged fool trick,” Brad muttered. “I should have known that kind would carry steel. Let’s see it, Olaf.”

He struck a match and Olaf obediently extended his arm. The wound was superficial, a slashing cut where his right wrist joined the hand. It bled freely, but Brad could see that it was more painful than dangerous.

He handed Olaf a few more matches. “Keep ’em lit,” he said, and reached into his pocket. He brought out a bandanna, clean but for a thin layer of dust that had sifted over it. Shaking it thoroughly, he made a tight wrapping on Olaf’s wrist. “The bleeding won’t last.”

Olaf returned the rest of the matches. “He fooled me,” he said disgustedly. “What did he want, Brad?”

Brad told him. “And that sheriff is off sleeping somewhere,” he added. “I never saw a lawman yet that was where he was needed.”

Olaf wriggled his wrist and watched blood slide in slow drops to the floor. “What do we do now?”

“We drift,” was the answer. Brad’s grin was cold in the darkness. “I’ve seen his kind before, and you don’t set and wait for him twice. He talked this time, but next time he’ll shoot first and talk later.”

He made a cigarette and lit it. The match glowed against his lean face, bringing out his brooding expression. He said slowly, “I made too good a guess, Olaf. There’s something plenty wrong here. Something to do with water.” He nodded, as if agreeing with himself. “It’s about time for you to do that strongman trick so we can get out of here.”

He went to the window and grasped the bars but, hard-muscled as he was, he could not budge them. Olaf pushed him aside and wrapped both hands around the bars. He gave a deep grunt and twisted, throwing his shoulders into the work.

Flecks of dust and wood splinters rose in the moonlight. There was a tearing sound and the end bar wiggled in its socket. Olaf applied more pressure. Brad could see the pain stretching his mouth tight. Sweat ran down Olaf’s forehead and mixed with the blood oozing from his wrist.

“Let it go,” Brad said. He was afraid Olaf would do some real damage to his wrist.

Olafs answer was another grunt and a final, twisting wrench that jerked two bars completely loose at the bottom. After that it was simple. When the bars were free Brad laid them on one of the cots and helped Olaf through the window. He scraped but, by turning his shoulders, he managed it. When he thudded to the ground, Brad hoisted himself up and wriggled through. Olaf’s big arms were there to let him down gently.

They stood a minute, listening to the night sounds, and then Brad led the way around the building to the street. He kept in shadow, slipping along quietly, his ears tuned for the sound of a rider coming back.

But it was silent. The street was dark. A faint line of light over the eastern mountains warned him of coming daylight. Nodding to Olaf, he started up the middle of the street, his footfalls muffled by the deep dust.

Olaf spoke. “You want the horses, Brad?”

“I want the sheriff,” Brad said. “I’ve got a little business to settle before we leave town.”

“Here,” Olaf said, and led the way. They went between the mercantile and the restaurant to reach the alley. Brad saw a fair-sized building attached to the rear of the restaurant. Across from it was the barn where he had watched the sheriff put their horses. “He lives here,” Olaf told him.

Brad was glad Olaf was not a man to waste words. Sometimes, it was true, the big sailor used almost too few but, as he told Brad, he had learned his “good English” on a British ship, and so he was easy enough to understand.

Brad took the “here” to mean the house rather than the barn, and he approached the one door. Lifting his fist, he rapped hard on the panel. There was no answer and he rapped again, using the butt of Nick Biddle’s gun this time. Somewhere inside, feet hit the floor and a sleepy voice grumbled. Brad kept on rapping, a faint smile on his mouth.

The door was flung open and the sheriff peered out into the darkness. Brad said, “I came to check a gun, sheriff.”

“At this time of night?” McFee asked. He sounded half asleep.

“You got a sign says to check my gun,” Brad went on. He fought to keep the laughter out of his voice. Obviously, the sheriff hadn’t yet recognized him.

“Wait until morning,” McFee growled.

“All right,” Brad said indifferently. “Where do I sleep? I’m not spending any more time in that cell.”

“I don’t care where you sleep.” McFee started to shut the door when Brad’s words made sense. He came awake in a hurry. “Wait! Wait right there.” He disappeared for a moment and returned, holding a lighted lamp. He held it higher, letting the light fall on Brad and Olaf.

“Jailbreak! She got you out. I told her — ”

“Who?” Brad said, hurriedly. “Whoever
she
is, you’ve got it wrong. We walked out and no one helped us.”

The sheriffs voice was heavy with suspicion. “And then just came here to me?”

“Why,” Brad said innocently, “I figured I had to check this gun.”

McFee growled and jerked the gun from Brad’s hand. “Get on in here,” he said. “I don’t know what your game is, Jordan, but I aim to find out quick.”

Brad and Olaf stepped into the room. It was small but pleasantly furnished. Brad took a chair near the big center table and tried not to laugh at the sight of McFee in a too-short nightshirt.

But when he spoke, the desire to laugh was gone. He told the sheriff what had happened, leaving out nothing. When he was done, McFee’s gaze was more thoughtful than he had seen it till now.

“She was right,” the sheriff said. “You ain’t Quarles’ kind.”

“What has Quarles to do with it?”

“Nick Biddle is his bootlicker,” McFee answered shortly. He turned and put the lamplight on Olafs crude bandage. Blood still seeped slowly from a tag end of it.

“That might be worse’n you thought,” he said. “I’ll get Doc Stebbins for it.”

“All right,” Brad said. “You say this Biddle works for Quarles?”

“No. He thinks he works with Quarles,” the sheriff explained. “His spread lays next to Quarles’ coming south, between the Double Q and June Grant’s Split S. But Quarles has plenty men working for him. You’re the first drifter I’ve heard turn him down.”

“Maybe I’m looking for a different thing,” Brad said.

“Work, wages, gold — it’s all the same.”

“No,” Brad said. The sheriff was friendlier than he had ever expected to find him. Now Brad tried to explain some of the feelings bottled inside him.

“Land and peace aren’t the same,” he said. “I want a place where a man can build and keep on building. A man has to have something to tie to.” He realized that he was failing in trying to express this to the sheriff, and he fell silent.

McFee seemed to understand, though, at least a part of Brad’s feeling. He said slowly, “Build and keep on building. That’s what Quarles is doing — but he don’t want anybody else to do it. Not here.” His shrewd eyes measured Brad thoughtfully. “Maybe that’s why your kind fights him. He’s got what you want.”

Brad could feel the suspicion in the old man’s voice. Once more he realized he was up against one of the things that had plagued him for so long. Others could not seem to understand a man’s desiring to have something for himself and only for himself. They always thought that once he started growing he wanted to keep on, and get what was theirs, too.

He was close to making an enemy out of McFee, he thought, just as he had in other places with other men.

N
ICK
B
IDDLE
rode hard around the corner of the jail using his left arm mostly, because the right was still sore and bruised from handling. He rode without thinking, saving his strength to get free of Jordan and the gun he held.

The horse carried him on across the street and between the Sawhorse Saloon and the dingy hotel, almost to the river. Here he drew up and calmed his breath, listening.

There was no sound of pursuit. Except for a few late frogs croaking, there was little noise at all. He turned the horse and rode back to a small building set behind the saloon. He got to the ground, looped the reins over a handy post, and went to the door at the back of the saloon.

Opening it quietly, he went up a flight of bare stairs to a hall. It was dark, and he cursed as he stumbled over a loose board. Lighting a match with his left hand, he walked on and turned into a door near the front. There was a couch stretched along one wall, and he flopped onto it, laying his bruised arm across his chest.

With daylight he rose, yawning, and retraced his steps to the patient horse. Shivering against the chill of the air, he mounted and rode hard along the river until he was well above town. Then he put the horse to the narrowed road and kept going. The road to his own place branched off shortly, crossing the river at a ford and winding toward the western hills. But this he ignored, keeping straight until the timbered north slopes of the valley were in clear view. Here a road branched west, and he followed it over a bridge, through green fenced fields and up to a squat house on a knoll.

This was Quarles’ Double Q. And already a half-dozen hands were stirring out of the bunkhouse, gathered at the horse trough to wash. Biddle ignored them and went up to the front porch and into the parlor. Quarles was there, standing by a stove lighted to take off the morning cold of this country.

“Well?”

“That Swede like to broke my arm,” Biddle said.

“And got your gun,” Quarles observed, looking at the empty holster. “So you didn’t hire Jordan.”

“I didn’t get him.” Biddle was surly and hungry. “Breakfast ready?”

“Coffee.” Quarles raised his deep voice, and a Chinese cook stepped into the room. Quarles gave the order and settled closer to the stove. He carefully refrained from saying more until Biddle had the coffee in his hand and a cigarette made.

“Find out anything?” Quarles wanted to know. “What he came for?”

Biddle laughed shortly. “Land. Land and water.” He repeated what had been said.

Quarles listened intently, measuring Brad’s words, seeking a meaning in them. “She might have brought him in from outside,” he said finally.

“And then let him go to jail?”

“To throw us off,” Quarles said. He was a suspicious man by nature; he followed the thoughts of others as if they were his own. “Or maybe she didn’t tell the sheriff. I hear she was around his office after Jordan got locked up.”

“You think, then, she’s ready to fight?” Biddle asked.

Quarles’ reply was interrupted by the beat of hoofs. He went to a window and peered out. “Here comes Arden now,” he said. “He’ll know.”

The man who came in was lean and young. His face, under a cap of yellow hair, looked innocent until his eyes were noticed. They were small and set close to his thin nose. There were something quick and sly in their blue depths that had more than once held another man back from rashness.

“We were talking about your boss, Dave,” Quarles said.

Arden’s smile was practiced. “June? She’s howling at McFee for putting some cowboy in jail.” He laughed out loud, directing it at Quarles. “And just because he took a shot at you yesterday.”

“I lost my head,” Quarles admitted. “It won’t happen again.” The stove was glowing red now, and he took a turn away from it. “Biddle here tangled with Jordan and his side-kick, too.” He told Arden about it.

Arden listened attentively. He said, “You act spooked about him, Quarles.”

“Ike thinks your boss might have brought him in,” Biddle explained.

Arden started to shake his head, but stopped. “Could be,” he said after a moment. “She don’t tell me everything she does.”

“She’s ready to fight, maybe?” Biddle went on.

Quarles let him ask the questions and contented himself with watching Arden. Biddle he knew well — as well as a man could know another in six years. With him there was nothing to worry about. He was plainly and openly but one thing — a man who wanted all he could get, and who was willing to do what he must to get it. But Quarles knew Arden less completely. In two years their relationship had stayed on a business basis.

That Quarles could understand, since June Grant was not to know that her foreman rode to the Double Q for his instructions. But even so, in two years Quarles felt he should know better what was in Arden’s mind. At times Arden gave him the impression that he thought he was bossing Quarles, instead of its being the other way around. Quarles stayed careful with Arden; he needed the foreman. But if Arden should get ideas too big for himself, the need would be less than the danger.

Always Quarles had wanted one thing from life. And now that it was in sight, at the very tips of his stretching fingers, he was not ready to let anyone move in and stop him. He had not spent his years in this valley to see a fool’s greed bury his plans.

All this moved rapidly through his mind as he listened to the talk between Biddle and Arden. Arden said, “She’s said nothing to me about fighting. But she’s getting restless. She can’t afford to lose this year’s hay crop. Not with a record drop of calves to feed come winter.”

Biddle said meaningly, “Maybe she won’t have no stock to feed come winter.”

“Let that alone,” Arden flared angrily. “If any brand gets slapped on her stuff, it’ll be mine, not the Double Q or yours.”

“We’ve talked that out before,” Quarles broke in. “It’ll keep. It’s this Jordan I want to know about.”

Arden put out his hands. “I said I don’t know.” His eyes were small and cold. “But if a man like to broke my arm or shot at me and I thought he was moving in on me, I know what I’d do.”

“So you would,” Quarles said. “But the town knows he shot at me.”

Arden stood up and rolled a cigarette, dropping the flakes of tobacco carelessly on the carpet. “Get a man to give him a poker game or an argument in the saloon. That’s one way.”

“?’ll take care of it,” Quarles said heavily. “Now, what’d you come for today?”

“To tell you she was getting restless again,” Arden answered.

“You’re a fool,” Quarles told him. “What if you were seen coming here?”

“I’ve been known to look for strays before,” Arden said without rancor. He smiled a thin smile at Quarles and stepped to the door. “First, I’d see to this Jordan.” He put a hand on the latch. “Don’t slow down now, Quarles. Only a sucker goes backward once he’s got up full speed.”

“I’ll handle it,” Quarles said. “You take care of your end.”

“It needs a month or more for that. Just you be ready when the time comes.” Arden opened the door and stepped onto the veranda.

Quarles waited until his horse’s steps faded out of earshot. He said testily to Biddle, “He’s pushing now. I don’t like a man that pushes.”

“We need him,” Biddle said. “That Parker made more trouble than you figured.”

“I’ll see to Parker, too.” Quarles heard the clang of the bell as the cook put in the call to chow. He started for the dining room, then turned to look back at Biddle.

“Next time you run against Jordan, make sure you finish what you start.”