Return of the Outlaw (43 page)

Twenty minutes after they left, the midday silence was rent by a deafening blast. They looked back and saw smoke and dust coming out of the windows on the side of the
house visible to them. Not understanding what was happening, they started to run.

The crew had used dynamite in the early summer to blow up a beaver dam
, miles upstream, and to fell a cottonwood tree Stewart, for some reason obscure to them, but known to Fogarty, had taken a disliking to. Carefully packed in a box, in a corner of one of the sheds, Virgil found the sticks that had not been used.

They strapped the dynamite to the safe and lit the fuse. The blast demolished a wall and part of the roof of the house. It blew out most of the windows and tore the front door from its hinges. Stewart
’s safe, however, remained remarkably intact. After the smoke cleared, the two would-be safe crackers gazed in disgust at the object of their failed effort.

“Thought you s
aid you knew how to blow a safe,” said McDaniel.

Virgil looked away, “Must be making them different these days.”

“That’s an old safe, what are you talking about?”

Virgil lifted his chin,
“Well, I’m no different than any other man; I like to tell a story now and again, just for fun.”

“You
’ve never blown a safe?”

“Well . . .
no.”

“Ever seen
anybody blow one?”

“Not exactly.”

McDaniel shook his head and swore. He was pensive for a moment then he said, “What we need is the combination.”

Virgil
gave a sarcastic whistle, “Whoo, that’s some mighty good thinkin’. I never would’ve thought of that.” His voice dropped in tone, “Anyhow, Stewart’s the only one that knows it.”

“It
’s got to be written down somewhere. Nobody trusts their memory that much. You forget your combination and it’s the same as dropping your money down a deep hole. You know where it is, but you can’t get to it.”

They ransacked Stewart
’s office, hurriedly going through papers and drawers, but found nothing. Virgil was about to turn his attentions to an oak wardrobe behind the desk, when, on an impulse, McDaniel overturned the desk. On the underside, written in pencil, was a sequence of numbers.

While there were no T.
S. hands near enough to the ranch headquarters to hear the blast, it did not go entirely unnoticed: Jeff heard the sound and recognizing it as a man-made detonation, decided to investigate. There were no clouds in the sky, but had there been, he would not have confused this sound with the sound of thunder. It was not followed by the successive drum rolls nature provides her own atmospheric detonations, but was a single, deep boom that punched a hole in the hot midday stillness like a cannon—and Jeff was well-acquainted with the sound of cannon. 

He rode to an open bluff, which commanded a view of the ranch buildings, and climbed up, reaching the top roughly half an hour after hearing the blast. If he had gotten there five
minutes earlier, he would have seen the two safe-crackers, mounted on the best horses they could catch, leave the yard on the run with two loaded pack animals in tow.

As it was, the buildings seemed deserted. No smoke rose from the metal
stove pipe of the cookshack or from the kitchen chimney. The handful of animals that remained in the corrals had recovered from their fright and stood immobile, heads down, made lazy by the heat. Some of the thousands of shards of broken glass lying on the porches and the ground around the house caught sunlight and reflected it in his direction, increasing the mystery of the situation. It could be a trap, he thought, but as a trap, it just didn’t add up. The explosion, the absence of people: none of it made sense. He knew it was risky, but he decided to investigate.

He
rode up to the front porch of the house, unchallenged. The front door had been blown off, the windows were nonexistent; the silence was eerie and oppressive. Before dismounting he decided to check the outbuildings. He did so and found no one present except Luke Stratton, who was in the bunkhouse, deep in an alcoholic sleep, surrounded by empty bottles of the whiskey he was using to kill the pain from his shattered arm. Even the cookshack was deserted.

Jeff entered the house through the back door, which
hung crookedly from one hinge. The leather soles of his boots crunched on the broken glass that lay scattered on the porch. With his gun drawn he made a quick, but thorough search, and satisfied he was alone, went back outside to check for signs of anyone approaching. From the saddle of his horse he climbed a shed roof and made a quick circle. There was no one in sight, no hints of dust in the air. He returned to the house and went directly to Stewart’s office. The room was relatively unscathed by the blast—the door having been shut, but it had been ransacked. Jeff began rummaging through drawers and papers, hoping to find a phony deed or bill of sale or some other forged document by which he could prove the takeover of the ranch had not been a legal transaction. He searched carefully, sorting through the scattered papers that littered the floor. Finding nothing that interested him, he turned to the wardrobe behind the desk. Here, he discovered, was where Stewart kept his ample supply of cigars and whiskey along with miscellaneous personal items.

On one shelf
he found a box which he took down and set on the floor. The top-most contents were a small pearl handled hide-out pistol and a pair of brass knuckles. Beneath these were some books whose titles showed them to be of no interest to him, but when they were removed he discovered at the very bottom of the box, a large family Bible with the name, “Stockwell,” carefully and artistically penned on the front cover. Disappointed, Jeff’s first thought was to re-pack the box and put it back on the shelf, but on an impulse he lifted the Bible and thumbed the pages. It opened automatically to a page where a piece of folded paper had been inserted. He removed the paper and saw recorded on the open pages of the old Bible, the Stockwell family tree; names and dates, all penned in a beautiful flowing hand. Jeff laughed hollowly at the thought of a thief and a murderer like Tom Stewart owning a Bible. “He should’ve read it,” he muttered. He unfolded the piece of paper that had been inserted in the Bible and stared at it for a moment in disbelief. It wasn’t a deed or a bill of sale or a forged document of any kind.

It was something better.

When Fogarty and his men returned to the ranch that afternoon, they found Stewart sitting on the porch with a rifle across his knees. The two men who had accompanied him to town were stationed at opposite ends of the porch, as if expecting trouble. The place was as silent as it had been when Jeff had ridden in and out.

Fogarty took a quick glance around. “What happened?” He demanded.

“Look’s like Virgil cleaned us out,” responded Stewart.

“Dynamite?”

Stewart nodded then added, “He had some help.”

“Havens?”

“Who else could it be?”

Fogarty
’s features darkened. “Did you check the tracks?”

“
There were tracks, but I couldn’t make anything out of them; they didn’t make sense to me.”

Fogarty l
ooked at Stewart contemptuously. “You couldn’t track an elephant through a snow drift.”

If Stewart took offense at
this comment he did not show it. He merely tilted his head up at Fogarty and said, “You check ‘em then.”

Fogarty now regretted
that he and his men had ridden directly up to the house. Undoubtedly they had obliterated some of the information that had been left in the dirt there, or at least what Stewart hadn’t already wiped out prior to their arrival. He checked for tracks, but finding it impossible to distinguish the ones he sought from those that had been laid down before and after, he finally gave up.

There was something deeply
foreboding here, and the gunman felt it. It was as if the ranch was dead, but no one had recognized it yet. The sun was wheeling over the mountains to the west and the sounds of the men’s voices coming from the bunkhouse were subdued: as if they were feeling the same thing he was. He moved across the yard to where Stewart sat.

“Did they get all the money?

Stewart’s face was grim. He nodded.

“It doesn
’t make sense,” said Fogarty. “It couldn’t have been Havens.”

Stewart glanced up at him sharply an
d raised his eyebrows. “Why not? He’s our worst enemy.”

“That
’s just it: he doesn’t want money, he wants the ranch back, and he wants revenge.”

“Yo
u talk like you know him pretty well for a man you only met once.”

“I know his kind, Stewart. I know what he wants, and I know what he
’ll do and what he won’t do.”

Stewart, making no acknowledgment
, turned away. After a space of silence Fogarty asked, “So what now?”

“We
’ll do what we did last time: put out a reward; maybe hire some bounty hunters.”

Fogarty looked at the ground and shook his head. “They won
’t get him.”

“Him or them?”
Stewart asked pointedly.

“You mean Lopez?
You really believe he’s alive?”

After a moment
’s hesitation Stewart replied, “No, but we never saw a body.”  Secretly Stewart was unsure and he very much wanted to know if Amado Lopez was dead or alive. He was a man who was accustomed to having enemies, but he had learned to deal with those enemies by learning about them, uncovering their weaknesses and using those weaknesses to bring them down or subjugate them to his needs and purposes. He did not know how to deal with a man who may or may not even be alive.

“Anyway,” Fogarty stated, “him or them, makes no difference. We put out a reward they
’ll just fog out of here like they did last time.”

“At least they
’ll be gone,” asserted Stewart. “Too many things are going on right now. Most of my men are up north and I’m trying to get established up there and still hold things together down here. I can’t do all that and carry on a war at the same time. In another six months we’ll have more men, more land, more influence. Havens and Lopez won’t be able to touch us with an army then. I’m going to do whatever I can to buy us those six months.”

“How?
You said they cleaned us out.”

“I got some more from Deering today.” Stewart did not mention the
amount, nor did he intend to—Fogarty was still just an employee. He said, “It’s enough to buy Tannatt’s and Marcellin’s spreads, and have some left over. The men will have to wait to get paid until we sell some more cattle.”

It was a quiet night
and Ollie Shepard had been out. When he came back to the livery, he was surprised to find a strange horse standing just inside the door, saddled and with the bridle reins tied to Ollie’s favorite chair. He checked the brand and found it to be one he did not recognize. It was a good-looking horse though, a buckskin, and he was giving it his professional appraisal when a voice came from the hayloft.

“He
’s a sight better horse than these bangtails you rent out.”

Ollie
’s head shot up and he saw a man sitting on the edge of the hayloft, his face in the shadows and his feet dangling in the air. Ollie didn’t need to see the face to know who it was. The voice was familiar enough. A broad grin spread across his wrinkled features.

“You wouldn
’t dare talk to me like that if you weren’t sittin’ up there out of reach.”

“You
’re right,” Jeff conceded with a pleased chuckle, “aside from that, is it safe to come down?”

Acting casual,
Ollie sauntered to the front of the runway, and scanned the street in both directions. It was late and there was little activity on this end of town. Stepping back inside he said, “Come on down.”

Jeff descended the wooden ladder.

Ollie stepped over and gave him a quick embrace then stepped back, embarrassed by this show of emotion. “I never knew what happened to you,” he said. “You were just gone.”

“Had to for a
while.”

“I know it.
It was the best thing. Hear about Amado and Dan?”

“I heard,” Jeff murmured bitterly. “I
’m surprised they didn’t get you too.”

“I ha
ng close to town, and Stewart’s pretty careful about how he handles things.”

The old man paused and shook his head, “It was a sorry day when those two rode into town. It was bad enough seeing them take over the Rafter 8, but now they
practically own the whole range—the sheriff included in the package. Nobody can touch ‘em.

“I can,” Jeff said, and he held out the piece of paper he had taken from Stewart
’s Bible.

Shepard unfolded an
d read it, and his eyes narrowed. He smiled.

“I
’m going to need you to help me with this,” Jeff said.