Marauders' Moon (22 page)

“Didn't, you say?” Webb asked.

“Didn't. He was different then. He would have gagged at a murder like any other decent man. Some folks, his enemies, claimed he did it. I claimed he didn't, and the day after the trial, when Wake was convicted and sentenced to six years in the Federal pen, I took a sack of jerky and saddled my horse and went out to do some detectin' myself. I aimed to find the man that murdered this nester.” He added quietly, “I'd have done that for Wake's wife.”

“Did you find him?”

“I lost his trail in Mexico City,” Buck said. “I come back, then. When I got home, I found that my kin had got stampeded when Wake was jailed, and they tried to save the money they had loaned him. They got a quick foreclosure on his spread and threw his wife—Lola—out. Folks said she was goin' to have a baby.”

Webb said, “You fixed that up.”

“I tried, God knows I tried,” Buck said bitterly. “I horsewhipped the man responsible. And then I spent the next five years tryin' to find her, and make it good. I never did find her. Afterward I learned she slaved away in a little border cantina owned by a Mex and lost her health—and later her life.”

“And that's what started Bannister?”

“Yes. He blamed me. He always had. When he got out of jail, he was a killer. He sent for his kin. They were outlaws, to a man. They raided my herds, all our herds, killin' night-herders, stampedin' cattle, shootin' in the back, burnin'. It got so a man would ride out of town after a drink, and they'd never see him again. I pulled out, then, and come up here.”

“To Wintering?”

“Yes. The Dollar brand was mine. Wake Bannister and all his kin followed me. I was married then. I had a boy, just big enough to fork a gentle pony. He used to ride with me, and when I'd let him, he'd ride with the men. He used to like one hand especially, a line rider. He'd go out and ride line with him and camp with him.”

Buck's voice had gradually taken on a hard timbre, but he went on doggedly. “Bannister had just started raidin' my herds then. He raided one one night and stampeded a whole herd over an open camp—the camp my boy was sleepin' in. We found the body of the line rider. It was tromped, but not so bad you couldn't see where he'd been shot in the back. So we knew they'd got to him before they drove the cattle over him.”

Webb said gently, “But your boy?”

“What could a kid do?” Tolleston said bitterly. “He climbed a tree, a cedar. The tree was tromped into splinters.”

“How did you find that out?” Webb asked.

He could not see Buck Tolleston look at him, but he could almost feel it.

“Because the minute before I killed the man who helped stampede the herd, the man who shot my line rider, he told me he saw the boy climb it, so the boy could have been saved. He died claimin' Bannister never give the order. I know different.”

Webb said nothing.

“It almost killed my wife. It did, after Martha was born. That's what Wake wanted.”

They rode in silence for a long while. Webb finally said, “Maybe it's better Martha doesn't know it.”

“That's what I figured,” Buck said quietly. “Now, I'm not so sure. The trouble is, she don't know she ever had a brother. Maybe it's better.”

“Maybe it is.”

Tolleston did not speak again until they reached Wagon Mound. Then he said to Webb, “You won't believe this when you see it,” and Webb thought he seemed calmer. His voice was less harsh than Webb had ever heard it, and Webb wondered if Buck Tolleston had been storing this up within him for all these years. Tonight he had unbent enough to ask advice, like a bewildered old man. Webb felt sorry for him, and understood many things that otherwise he never would have.

There were a few scattered campfires visible in Wagon Mound. As they rode through the town, Webb saw that already some of the ruins were being cleared away. Several tent communities had already been thrown up, but Buck passed these and headed for the four corners. There, where the sheriff's office used to be, was a tent. It was dark inside and Buck did not call out.

They dismounted and Buck went in alone. In a few seconds a lamp was lighted and Buck opened the fly to bid Webb and Chuck enter.

Wardecker was just pulling on his trousers. He smiled and Webb put out a hand.

“Howdy, son.”

“Hello, sheriff.”

Wardecker said, “Now, Buck, just what is it you want me to do?”

Buck began by telling him the news of the railroad coming in. Wardecker heard it out in blank amazement, but Buck talked on. Forgetting to put on his boots, Wardecker listened, while Webb prompted Buck every so often. When Buck was finished Wardecker swiveled his gaze to Webb.

“Cousins, if this is true, I reckon nothin' we can do for you would show you how we felt. But if it ain't, then lynchin's too good for you.” He smiled under his ragged mustache, and Webb knew that the sheriff wanted to believe, along with Buck, but that a hard-bought pessimism prevented their belief.

“I reckon I know where this agent'll be,” Wardecker said. “Iron Hat has started a tent hotel down by his windmill. Yesterday a keg of whisky come up on the stage, so I reckon there'll be a game on tonight. You wait here.”

He got Webb's description of Bogardus. Added to the fact that he had seen Bogardus himself, Webb had been careful to get a full and clear description of the man from Mitch.

Wardecker hobbled out into the night and headed up street for Iron Hat's tent camp. He could see the fire burning brightly in front of the row of tents where the windmill tower used to stand. Most of the tents were lighted, and from one, as Wardecker drew closer, he would hear the hum of voices, the clatter of poker chips, and the slap of cards. Over the door of this tent was a crudely lettered cardboard sign announcing that this was the
O. K. Saloon
.

Wardecker pulled up the flap and hobbled inside, a scowl on his face. Iron Hat, his green derby riding back on his ears, was dealing a game of poker with five other men. Behind him a barrel of whisky sat in the tent corner. Across the back a board had been laid on two empty barrels for a crude bar. Iron Hat was the barkeep and the house man all in one, and he seemed to be enjoying himself.

At Wardecker's entrance, Iron Hat glanced up.

“Well, well,” he growled. “Ain't you old folks afraid of the night air? Didn't you hear the curfew?”

Wardecker didn't smile. He swung across the room to the bar.

“Pour me out a bottle of that poison, Iron Hat. And give me a shot now.”

Iron Hat asked, “Toothache?”

Wardecker nodded. “Hurry it up. I'm damned if I think the top of my head'll stay on long enough to let you pour it.”

So far, Wardecker had not even glanced at the poker game. Now a player volunteered, “Try tobacco, Will. It fixes mine.”

Wardecker shook his head and looked at the man. “I'd rather have the toothache.”

Iron Hat set the drink out and Wardecker gulped it down. Then, still scowling, he leaned on the bar to wait for Iron Hat to fill a bottle. He knew all the men here except one. Without settling his gaze on him for more than a second, Wardecker discovered that Webb's description fitted this man to a nicety. Wardecker said over his shoulder to Iron Hat, “Give me another, Iron Hat, and set up the house. I think this is easin' off.”

Iron Hat poured drinks all around as Wardecker engaged in small talk with one of the poker players. As Iron Hat dealt out the drinks, he gestured to the stranger.

“This is Clay Bogardus, Will.” And to Bogardus, he said, “If that stuff curdles in the glass, it's because Wardecker bought a round. Me, if I didn't know the whisky, I wouldn't drink it. I'd think there was somethin' phony.” Then he gestured to Wardecker, smiling a little. “That's the sheriff, Will Wardecker. Don't ask, ‘Sheriff of what?' because it's mainly a dozen tents and a lot of grass. He's the man that set fire to the town. He was too lazy to sheriff it.”

Wardecker was used to the mild rawhiding he received from Iron Hat, and he usually gave as good as he took. But tonight he did not want to appear convivial. He nodded casually to Bogardus and picked up his bottle, saying to Iron Hat, “Well, my toothache's gone. So are my teeth, I reckon, after that drink. Good night, boys.”

He swung out through the fly and hobbled off into the night. Back in his own tent, he set the whisky down and looked at Buck.

“The man is Bogardus, and he tallies up with the description.”

Buck said, “Then we ride for Hasker. You better come later, Wardecker—let us ride out first.”

They waited on the edge of town until Wardecker joined them. The sheriff, in spite of his lame leg, sat a horse as well as the next man, and he carried his crutch rammed in the saddle boot. They headed west. Although Buck had not said as much, Webb knew that they believed him now and that he was one of them.

They arrived at the Chain Link just as the east was graying. The buildings were situated at the far end of a box canyon, whose high walls gave it and the corrals ample shelter from the weather. The entrance to the box Canyon was narrow, but the canyon itself widened out as they went deeper into it.

By the dim morning light Webb could see that the Chain Link had once been an impressive place, if a man was to judge by the area covered with blackened ashes. The house itself had gone the same way as Tolleston's. It had been a spacious one-story stone affair under spreading trees, but now it was a black, roofless, windowless hulk. Off against the side of the canyon was the long adobe bunk house, typical of these ranches. Its roof was still on, and a thick streamer of smoke was issuing from the cook-shack chimney. Dim lights could be seen at the end of the bunk house itself.

A shadowy figure challenged them from the awninged porch of the bunk house, and Wardecker answered, “It's me, Frank. We want to see Lou.”

“More trouble?” the man asked, walking up to their horses, holding his rifle slack in his hand.

“No, but I reckon there will be. How is Lou?”

“Doin' good. He's asleep, I reckon. You want to wake him?”

“Yes. This is important, Frank.”

“Get down and come on,” the foreman said.

They walked down the long awninged porch to its far end.

“He's sleepin' in his office, now,” Frank said. He opened the door and walked in, the others following.

Hasker wakened to ask who it was, and Frank said, “Company, Lou. Plenty of it.”

“Light the lamp,” Hasker said.

As the match flared up and the lamp was lighted, Webb made out a man lying in a bed against the far corner. He was a redhead, hardly older than Webb himself, but his face was beard-stubbled and drawn, pale against the lamplight. He raised himself up on an elbow and blinked at the room, then he smiled.

“Howdy, boys. What's the party?”

Wardecker said, “How you feel, Lou? Wide awake enough to listen close?”

“Sure.” He spoke to his foreman. “Tell Mose to rustle up some food, Frank, in a hurry.”

“No time, Lou,” Buck put in.

“He's got coffee made, sure. Tell him to bring that in, Frank.”

The foreman went out and Buck introduced Webb to Hasker. They shook hands, Hasker surveying Webb with a quizzical expression on his face.

Wardecker saw it and said, “Yes, that's Webb, the prisoner. Listen to what he's got to say.”

So for the third time that night, Webb told his story. He told it from the beginning, and did not even stop when the cook brought in a huge pot of coffee and tin cups. The rest of them did not drink either, for they were listening, too.

As the story unfolded, Hasker sat up, and his eyes never left Webb's face. Occasionally he asked a question, but mostly he listened and there was growing incredulity on his face as Webb progressed and finished.

Webb sat back when he was done, and let Hasker ask all the questions he wanted.

Finally Hasker turned to Wardecker. “You say you saw this man Bogardus, Will? He's in town now?”

“Yes, and if what Cousins says is true, he'll be huntin' me up some time this mornin'.”

Hasker looked over at Webb. “That sounds true,” he said slowly. “I don't know you, don't know anything about you, but it sounds like Bannister.” He smiled a little at Buck. “And he was right, Buck. I'd made up my mind to sell and pull out.”

“You would have sold for seventy thousand?”

“Gladly.”

Hasker told Frank, a heavy-set, middle-aged man with bowed legs and a leathery tough face, to pour out the coffee. He did, and they drank in silence, then lighted up pipes and cigarettes.

Hasker settled back against the wall. “Well, we've got him finagled now, boys. What'll we do with him?”

Webb set his coffee cup down on the table and swung his chair to the floor. “Wait a minute,” he said quietly, looking at them all. “I'd like to know one thing before you start to talk. I want to hear you say it.”

“What's that?” Buck asked.

“I want to know if you believe what I've told. If you don't, I want you to say so, and I'll ride out of here today. But if you do, I want you to tell me. I want to know another thing, too.”

Buck spoke for himself. “I believe you, Cousins. I believe every damned word of it.” The others seconded him. “What's the other thing?”

“I want you to listen to one thing I've got to say,” Webb went on. “It's come to me in the last half hour that you've got a way to nail Bannister down—nail him and skin him. I wondered if you want to hear it.”

“Shoot.”

So Webb told them, and they listened.

When he was finished, Buck Tolleston cleared his throat. “It couldn't be neater,” he said flatly. “I'm for it, and I'm for it all the way. All it takes is some careful work on your part, Wardecker. Cousins will do his part. He can't help it.”