Savage Range (21 page)

He wheeled to face Cope. “What time is the preliminary hearing set for?”

“Eleven o'clock. In ten minutes.”

“Got the bail?”

“Five thousand, right in my pocket.”

Jim swore darkly and resumed his pacing. Cope left, and the place was silent. Ben Beauchamp was in Cope's bed sleeping. Jim tried to quiet his racing brain by guessing at Bonsell's plans. If Bonsell robbed the bank, it would be at night. Tonight? Maybe, maybe not. He'd be there to see, anyway.

Even the thought of Bonsell brought red murder to his mind. Why not slip out tonight, wait for Bonsell or hunt him down and kill him? No, his judgment told him that was poor planning. Bonsell must be caught with the goods, and the capture must prove that Mary was innocent of Buckner's murder, must prove her title to the grant, and prove his own innocence. But how could it all be done? He didn't know.

He paced the floor, clenching his fists till his knuckles were white. His pipe tasted foul, and he put it away without smoking. And he sat there, boiling—and helpless.

Chapter Sixteen:
OLD ENEMIES
—
NEW PARTNERS

Bonsell was undecided about two or three things, but they would work themselves out. After he left Mary, he arranged for Buckner's burial which would be in the afternoon. After the arrangements, he and Warren left the hardware store, in the back of which were the undertaking parlors.

On the street, Warren said, “I'm much obliged for givin' me an alibi for last night.”

Bonsell murmured, “
Por nada
—for nothing. No use givin' Haynes a chance to rawhide you when I could keep him from it, was there?”

Warren said no. He rolled a smoke and lighted it and then observed, “The funny part of it is, I had the chance to murder him and you had the motive to.” He looked at Bonsell. “We weren't together last night. Neither one of us knows whether the other one did it.”

“What motive would I have had?” Bonsell asked.

“You double-crossed him on that false corner, didn't you? When he saw you, he would have fired you.”

“So that's what he was goin' to see me about?” Bonsell murmured. “Well, well. How'd he spot that?”

“Scoville took him to see it.”

“Scoville's dead.”

“Prob'ly wasn't his name.”

Bonsell smiled. “No, and I can tell you his name. It was Jim Wade. Remember me writin' the boss about the way I hung that squatter trouble on Wade?”

“Yeah, I got the letter here.”

“Read it careful, then. I told you he broke jail and disappeared. Last week one of my riders spotted that false corner, and a man workin' on it. It was Wade, and he drove Wade off.” Bonsell laughed. “Did Wade send for Buckner?”

“Wrote him a letter.”

“And Buckner talked to him before he talked to me?”

Warren nodded, watching Bonsell carefully. Bonsell only shook his head and said in a tone of injury, “Now why didn't he come to me right off? Pardee could have told him the whole story.”

“You knew it, then?”

“Knew it! It's in the letter that's waitin' for Buckner in Sante Fe now,” Bonsell lied. “Could I tell him about it any faster? I wrote as soon as I went over and saw it for myself.”

Warren was silent a long moment, teetering on the edge of the boardwalk. “That's mighty queer,” he said, at last.

“What is?”

“Why, yesterday, I'd of sworn you was guilty of tryin' to double-cross Buckner. I reckon I acted sort of short last night.”

“I didn't notice it if you did,” Bonsell said blandly.

“Well, and now you tell me this mornin' what it's all about. And it sounds so damn simple, I'm wondering why both me and Buckner got up on our hind legs.”

Bonsell nodded thoughtfully. “If he'd only talked to me first. He ought to know I'd never try and get away with a thing like that, even if he didn't trust me. Wade, I reckon, hoped he'd do just that. Wade was trying to break our partnership.”

“I can see that now.”

“Too bad Buckner couldn't.”

Warren dropped his cigarette. “Who killed Buckner, Bonsell?”

Bonsell scowled thoughtfully. “I dunno. What happened out there at the corner?”

Warren told him. When he was finished Bonsell snapped his fingers. “Then you never saw Wade go back to town?”

“No.”

“How do you know he wasn't followin' you?”

“Maybe he was.”

“And when he saw Buckner ride into town instead of high-tailin' it to me, he thought Buckner wasn't goin' to do anything about it. He saw where his plan didn't work. But he still aimed to square things with the Excelsior. So he sneaked up to Buckner's room, knowin' you'd be gone, because he'd seen you go.”

“But what about draggin' that girl into it?”

“She's a Buckner, ain't she? He don't know anything about the girl's fight with Buckner.”

Warren thought this over a moment, then said, “So it's Wade?”

“Who else could it be?”

“Well, I'm damned,” Warren said.

Bonsell left him that way, saying he'd meet him around town. Walking over to the bank, he smiled to himself at Warren's gullibility. Maybe he could use the man.

At the bank, Bonsell asked for Charles Mitchell, the president. He wanted to straighten out Buckner's affairs, he said, and close the Excelsior account. It took a little time, and all the time he was there he was examining the bank, its locks, its windows, its bars, its vault. Nothing escaped him, for his was a practiced eye. He saw the single rack of safety boxes against the left wall. They were steel boxes, labeled and locked. He didn't inquire if Buckner had a safety-deposit box, because it was too risky. He simply gave the name of the Sante Fe bank where Buckner's will was, and left.

He ate at the Exchange House dining-room at a table by himself. The talk was all of Buckner's murder, but he gave no opinions.

After dinner, he loafed around the plaza. Soon he saw Will-John Cruver go into the Freighter's Pleasure. He followed him and saw him standing at the bar. There were only a few men in the saloon, and those were either playing in the game of poker or watching it. Cope wasn't around.

Bonsell called for a whisky and saw in the bar mirror that Cruver was regarding him without any tear at all. The bartender brought the bottle and glass to Bonsell, then retired to his newspaper at the end of the bar. If he was surprised at seeing the heads of two warring factions drinking quietly at the same bar, he did not show it.

Presently, Bonsell turned his head and said quietly, “Haven't seen you around much, Will-John. Where you been?”

“Buryin' people,” Cruver answered.

Bonsell smiled a little and said, “Now that the war's over, we can buy each other a drink, can't we?”

Cruver said, “Who said it was over?”

“You aimin' to carry it on by yourself?”

“Don't know but what I will,” Cruver said.

Bonsell slapped a half dollar on the counter and said softly, “We might talk it over downstreet.”

He paid up and went out. Cruver followed him after a half minute's interval. Bonsell headed for the Mexican cantina off the plaza. It was a low adobe affair of a single room that was cool in the midday sun.

He was sitting at a table when Cruver walked in and took a chair opposite him. Bonsell called in Spanish for a bottle of whisky and two glasses, and then poured the drinks.

“Well, it looks sort of tough for us both,” Bonsell announced.

“You out of your job?”

Bonsell nodded. “The Buckner girl will take over in a little while and she can't use me. You, either.”

“I don't know about that,” Cruver drawled.

“Make no mistake,” Bonsell went on. “She's the rightful heir. All the fightin' done around here will be you against the U.S. marshal.”

Cruver shrugged.

“I hate to leave the place without takin' a little somethin' with me,” Bonsell murmured.

Cruver's crafty eyes narrowed. “Like what?”

“Money.”

“Where'll you get it?”

“Where most people put it.”

“The bank, hunh?”

Bonsell shrugged. “Ever bust a bank? Know anything about it?”

Cruver shook his head.

“This one's easy,” Bonsell said. “I happen to know that Buckner deposited twenty thousand in it the day he got here.”

Cruver's eyes lighted up.

“But you ain't interested,” Bonsell went on. “You're goin' to stick here and fight, you said.”

“Not if I can get out with money.”

Bonsell smiled suddenly. “You can. I need another man.”

It didn't seem peculiar to either of them that they should throw together. After all, Bonsell's status was that of a paid fighting man, and Cruver had been illegally holding land that did not belong to him. Underneath they were of the same stripe, Bonsell with the brains, the quickness, Cruver with the strength and the stubbornness. It occurred to both of them that they were admirable partners, and that they were wasting their time fighting each other. Bonsell named the meeting-place and left. Cruver stayed long enough to finish the bottle of whisky, reflecting on his great good fortune.

Buckner's funeral was a hurried affair. A hired buck-board was the hearse, and Germany Kling, a pious sort of man, offered to officiate. Link Haynes, Kling, Bonsell, and Warren were the only ones attending. It was significant that Harvey Buckner, who had been friendless in life, had only a hired preacher, a suspicious lawman, and two hired gunmen to put him to rest.

Afterward, Kling and Haynes rode home in the buck-board, and Warren and Bonsell went to their horses. The Spanish gravedigger was already at his work.

“What do you aim to do now?” Bonsell asked Warren.

“Ride.”

“Want to bust a bank before we leave?” Bonsell asked casually. There was no use mincing words; Warren was a man like himself.

Warren regarded him soberly. “Is it worth it?”

“I dunno. Cope coins money in that place of his. He uses this bank. That alone ought to be worth it.”

Warren agreed, much as he would have agreed to a drink in the nearest saloon.

“Then get your war bag. Stop in at Haynes's office, tell him you're ridin', then hit the trail. Tonight we'll meet.” He named the place. At the plaza, they shook hands in public and parted, and Warren went on to the sheriff's office.

Bonsell watched him go, a wicked smile on his face. Two fools, Warren and Cruver.

Chapter Seventeen:
“COME AND GET ME!”

As soon as dark came, Jim, Scoville, and Ben slipped out to the edge of town where they got the horses Scoville had left there. Once mounted, they sought the alleys and without any difficulty achieved the one that ran past the rear of the bank. Scoville then took the horses, went up the alley with them, and tied them at the hitchrail that ran alongside the sheriff's office.

When he came back, Jim had chosen their hiding-places. One was in the shed directly back of the bank. That was Scoville's and Ben's place. His own was immediately behind the board fence adjoining the shed.

Jim judged that while Bonsell would have preferred many hours of darkness in which to get away after the robbery, he could not risk an attempt early in the evening. The robbery would take place after the town had emptied, and while it was asleep. Nevertheless, Jim could not take the risk of missing him.

They squatted inside the shed to wait, and the hours dragged by. None of them said much, Jim Wade least of all. He had known anger before, but the sight of Mary Buckner when she came to Cope's rooms, smiling but lost and afraid, had done something to him. He felt like a machine now, intent on only one thing—to punish Bonsell for hurting her. It was a different kind of anger, a cool one, a killing one, the kind a man experienced when he saw a man reach for a gun and knew that he himself must reach faster and shoot straighter. A man couldn't afford a hot anger then, and Jim Wade couldn't now.

Toward midnight the noises of the town ceased. That meant the stores were closing, and that people had sought their homes.

But it was closer to one o'clock when Ben, on watch, whispered, “Here comes a bunch of riders.”

Jim went to the door and counted them, then motioned Ben back to latch the door from the inside. He himself slipped behind the fence, and waited until they approached. There were three of them, and they were not talking.

He heard them stop not twenty feet from him, and a man's voice, Bonsell's, said finally, “Well, here she is, gents.”

“Back door and window have got bars over 'em, ain't they?” a strange voice asked.

“Unh-hunh. So's the front.” That was Cruver's voice. Cruver and Bonsell together! That didn't make sense. On second thought, it did, too, for they were alike in many ways, apt to pool their resources once they quit fighting each other.

“Don't worry about that,” Bonsell said quietly. “There's a roof on the place, ain't there?”

“That what you brought the crowbar for?” Cruver asked.

“You watch. Here. Take these tow-sacks and the dynamite. And, for God's sake, be careful of it.”

They dismounted, leading their horses close behind the bank and tethering them at the bars of the window.

There was a lot of quiet business that Jim could hear but not see. The proximity of their horses to the rear door meant that they were not going to blow through the rear entrance, at least.

And then Jim saw them on the roof. So Bonsell had spotted the skylights as the weakest place! But once they achieved the ridge of the bank's roof, they went no farther.

Cruver said querulously, “What you goin' to do, Bonsell? Cut a hole in the damn thing?”

“You wait,” Bonsell said. The first thing he did was rip away the tar paper on the roof. There were three layers of it, and he peeled it off quickly. Then he said, “Yeah, just what I thought. The roof is like any other buildin'.” He turned to Cruver. “Why try to tear an iron bar out when all you got to do is pry off a board?”