Savage Range (19 page)

But wait! If he could get Buckner's charter before killing him, maybe he could make a deal with Mary Buckner. With that charter, she could get the Ulibarri acres. But would she need it? Was there anybody besides himself, those squatters now vanished, and Mary Buckner herself who knew that Buckner was her uncle and not her father? With Buckner dead, couldn't she simply step in as the sole heir to her so called father's estate and claim the Ulibarri grant without a charter? She could. Very well, then, he must fix it so that the true story would come out, that the Buckner in this room was her uncle, not her father. Once that was done, she would have need of the charter, for Harvey Buckner's will would dispose of the grant to charity. To get the grant, she must produce evidence that it belonged to her, not him. Very well, he must first get the charter. After that, he must break the story of the true relationship between Mary and Harvey Buckner. And then the way would be cleared for the sale of the charter to Mary Buckner.

He considered all this in silence, while Harvey Buckner regarded him with some curiosity.

“No more questions?” Buckner asked.

“No.”

“Then get out. I'd like to sleep.”

Still Bonsell thought. Finally he thought he had the plan. It would be risky, but it was worth trying. He was in a position of having to create a market for something he wanted to sell. Good.

He rose slowly, and the grin on his face was sheepish. “I've thought it all out,” he told Buckner. “I'm licked. I haven't got a chance.” He paused, smiling amiably now. “You know, I never thought you were that smart, Buckner.”

“Most people don't,” Buckner said modestly.

“You trimmed me in royal style.”

“Didn't I?”

Bonsell scratched his head. “Funny, I ought to be sore as hell about it. I'm not.”

“I wondered why you didn't blow up.”

“It's so neat, I feel like a kid,” Bonsell explained. “I thought I was a growed man. I'm not. I'm just a sucker, a pretty rosy one, too.”

Buckner grinned. “Yes, pretty rosy.”

“Well, I'll hit the trail. I just wanted you to know that it's the slickest thing I ever saw pulled, just from one crook to another.”

Buckner laughed, and so did Bonsell.

“Thanks,” Buckner said.

Bonsell slowly put out his hand. “Well, so long, Buckner. You're a better man than any I ever met.”

Buckner smiled and put out his hand, too. Bonsell took it. “No hard feelings?” Buckner asked.

Bonsell yanked on Buckner's hand, drawing the arm tight, and then slugged him with his left fist, driving it hard into the temple. Buckner had no time to duck. The blow fell like a sledge, and he sprawled out on the bed, unconscious.

Bonsell worked carefully. He took a pillow, slipped off the pillowcase, drew his gun, placed the pillow on Buckner's chest, buried the muzzle of his gun in the pillow, and fired it. The sound was muffled, hardly audible.

He slapped out the fire that started in the pillow and then slipped the pillow back in the pillowcase. He wanted this to be a neat job.

Looking over at Buckner, he saw the man was dead. Arranging the pillow on the bed again, he came over to the door and listened. There was not a sound in the corridor.

The rest of his movements were leisurely. He searched through Buckner's clothes until he found a pencil and a piece of paper. He wrote on the paper:
Meet me in the lobby at once if you want to find out about Harvey Buckner.

That done, he turned the light dim, stepped out into the corridor, and walked down it to the corner room.

He tapped on the door and said softly, “Miss Buckner. Miss Buckner.”

At the fourth try, a sleepy voice said, “Yes?”

“Gent downstairs left a note. I'll shove it under the door.”

He did, and went swiftly back to Buckner's room. In five minutes he heard Mary Buckner pass on her way downstairs.

He slipped out in the corridor and into her room. The lamp was lighted. He picked a crumpled handkerchief from her dresser, then tore a strip of cloth out of a dressing-gown thrown over the foot of her bed.

Back in Buckner's room he listened until Mary came back upstairs. The clerk was with her, and he heard them talking in the corridor. Presently the clerk went downstairs.

Turning up the lamp, Bonsell arranged things the way he wanted them. He put the strip of cloth in Buckner's hand. He dropped the handkerchief under the chair. He took Buckner's gun, a Colt .45 with scarred cedar handles identical to his own, and exchanged them, placing the gun on the bed.

With one last look about him, he turned the lamp dim, opened the window, and drew his gun.

Pointing it at the sky, he fired once, then closed the window, dropped to the ground, and ran for his horse.

Slowly, then, he rode out of town, just as a lamp was lighted in one of the hotel rooms where the shot had been heard.

Chapter Fifteen:
“
HE
'
S BUSTED BANKS BEFORE
.”

Mary Buckner was not yet asleep when she heard the shot. Like everyone else in the hotel, she was startled by it. Rising and throwing her wrapper about her, she wondered if the shot had any connection with that mysterious note she had just received. She was still angry over having had to dress and go down to the lobby, only to be told that she must have been dreaming, that nobody was waiting for her.

She peered out into the corridor, to find all the other doors open. A horse trader, galluses trailing down his legs, had pulled on his pants over his nightshirt and was standing in the middle of the hall, scratching his head when the clerk mounted the stairs.

Several others trailed out of their rooms, asking, “What happened?”

The horse trader answered them all with a “Damfino,” and said to the clerk, “A shot woke us up.”

“Was it here in the building?”

“Sure sounded like it. On that side of the building.”

The clerk looked at the doors. They were all open, with persons standing in them, except one, and that was the door to Buckner's room. Mary came out and joined the others, her curiosity whetted.

The horse trader noticed the closed door and went over and knocked on it. There was no answer, and he asked the clerk, “Who's in there?”

“I'll have to look at the register.”

“Hell, I don't aim to call him by his name,” the horse trader growled. He pounded on the door. “Hey, open up if you're there!” Still no answer.

“Try the door,” the clerk suggested.

The horse trader opened it, and the others crowded toward it. There lay Buckner dead on the bed. At sight of him the horse trader whistled and entered the room. The others shoved in behind him. Mary, since nobody had spoken a word, came up to the door last. The watchers were so scattered that she could see Buckner's form lying on the bed.

The sight of him made her gasp, attracting the horse trader's attention. He turned to Buckner, lifted the strip of cloth from his hand and looked at Mary. “Well, well,” he said slowly.

He came across the room, put the cloth against Mary's dressing-gown, and said nothing, only looked at her.

It took Mary a full second to understand what he was doing, and then the color flushed out of her face.

“Do you know this man?” the horse trader asked curiously, pointing to Buckner.

“Y—Yes.”

That was all there was to it. The clerk got the sheriff. The sheriff got Cope. When they got there, Mary was crying on the chair under which the horse trader had already found the handkerchief. A sheet was thrown over Buckner.

Cope stormed in, his face dark with fury, and Mary rushed to his arms. His first words were matter-of-fact ones. He told her to go dress. His next were addressed to the morbid watchers, and he told them to get the hell out of there.

His next move was to go over and look at Buckner.

“How'd you find him?” he asked the horse trader. He was told. Immediately he went down to Mary's room and came back with the dressing-gown. It was Sheriff Link Haynes who found where the piece was torn out.

Cope said, “I don't believe it.”

“You got eyes, ain't you?” the horse trader said.

“Mister,” Cope said in a voice filled with quiet menace, “I raised that girl.”

“Looks like you done a damn poor job of it,” the horse trader opined.

Cope was on him in a second. It took Sheriff Haynes and two others to get Cope off, and the horse trader slunk out of the room, nursing a bloody nose.

When the sheriff, Cope, and the clerk were alone again, Cope said to Haynes, “Well, what are you goin' to do?”

Haynes said quietly, “That's her father, isn't it?”

Cope nodded.

“And they've fought?”

“Who said so?”

“She told Kling the other day that she didn't know or care about her father. She was huffy.”

“What does that prove?” Cope snarled.

“Take it easy,” Haynes said. “It proves they weren't friendly.”

“Does it prove she killed him?”

“She was awake five minutes before. She came down to the clerk with a cock-and-bull story. She didn't like her father. A piece of her clothes was found in his hand. Her handkerchief was found under the chair. What am I supposed to believe, if I won't believe my eyes?”

“I tell you she didn't do it!” Cope said angrily.

“Then who did?”

“I don't know. But she didn't!”

Haynes looked at Cope a long time. “All right, Cope, that's what you say. But I've talked to men who saw Buckner in Sante Fe years back. He told them that he thought his daughter was crazy, and that sometimes he was afraid of her. If all those things don't add to one thing, then I can't count.”

“But she's a girl!”

“A girl can shoot a gun, can't she?”

Cope was wordless. What was there to say, except to blindly reiterate his belief that Mary Buckner was innocent?

Haynes listened and didn't comment until Cope was through. Then he said, “I don't know why she shot him, Cope. Maybe he got rough. Maybe he threatened her. Maybe she shot him in self-defense. I dunno why she did, but it looks like she shot him. And I got to arrest her.”

“Jail her?”

Cope exploded again at Haynes's nod, but Mary's entrance cut him short. Then Haynes began to question her. He was finished by daylight, and not once during those hours did she change her story. No, she didn't like her father. Yes, she knew he was here. No, she hadn't talked to him. No, she didn't kill him. No, she didn't know how the cloth got in his hands. She showed Haynes the note that was stuck under her door in the night. Haynes looked skeptical. If it was true, then it was only Buckner's ruse to get her out of bed to come to his room. And she shot him; there was no doubt about it.

The upshot was that Mary had breakfast in the hotel dining-room and afterward was taken to the new jail. Cope was furious, but Link Haynes was as stubborn as a weak man could be. The Excelsior outfit, the Buckners and Bonsell, the squatters and their rights—all of these he was heartily sick of. Reports had been sifting through to him of fights between Bonsell and the squatters. He couldn't find the truth anywhere. Everybody was lying. When he accosted Cruver on the street and asked him about the reports, Cruver told him to mind his own damn business. There was nothing a man could go against, only rumors.

But he could get his teeth into this. And like all indecisive men, when he made up his mind, he had made it up for good. Mary Buckner hadn't ever asked his help. He didn't know why she was here, only he supposed it was something to do with the Excelsior, some trouble she was going to straighten out with her father. Well, she had gone too far.

Mary went docilely into the cell while Cope stirred up the town with his wrath. Strangely enough, he found it divided in sentiment. There were many who never liked Buckner, and who remembered that story Mary Buckner had tried to spread about her father's death. They didn't like her either. They didn't like the Buckners' uppish ways. They thought Haynes was justified in holding her.

At eight o'clock, the mail was distributed, and Link Haynes, sick of Cope's rowing, walked over alone to get his mail at the post office. He came back considerably faster than he went, and entered the new cell block without any ceremony. He would not let Cope come in with him.

“Miss Buckner,” he began, “I got a letter in the mail this mornin' about you.”

“What about me?”

Haynes looked wise. “James Buckner wasn't your father. He wasn't James Buckner. He was your uncle Harvey, posin' as your father. That was the cause of the fight. That's why you murdered him.”

Mary Buckner's wan face, for the first time, wore a look of uneasiness, and Link Haynes knew that the writer of this anonymous letter had been right.

In the absence of Cope, he started a gentle bullying, but he soon abandoned it. He didn't need it. Mary had given herself away. The look of guilt on her face was interpreted by Haynes as a confession. To right that impression, Mary told him that James Buckner was Harvey Buckner, and that the letter had been correct. That only strengthened Haynes's belief that she had committed the murder. He hated to think as pretty a girl as this would murder her father. An uncle made it easier. It also made a neater case for him. She wouldn't tell him how it happened that Harvey Buckner owned the Ulibarri acres, while she was left penniless by her father, but he surmised that James Buckner had disinherited his daughter. That gave a motive for the killing. He wanted to know about James Buckner, too, but again Mary would tell him nothing. The only confession that ever passed her lips was the fact that the Buckner who had been killed was her uncle.

Haynes came away from that session a little puzzled, but confident that he was on the right track. As for holding a woman, wasn't she a murderer? Maybe a jury wouldn't convict her, but he would have done his duty in bringing her to trial.