Showdown On the Hogback (1991) (10 page)

Tom Kedrick nodded toward the street.

"Well, Colonel," he said, "you'd better start thinking about that unless you want to stretch hemp. That bunch is sore."

Keith stared at them nervously and then nodded and hurried away toward headquarters. Shad watched him go and turned toward Kedrick. "You know, we're sort of tied in with the company, an' I don't aim to hang for "em. Let's light a shuck out of here an" stick in the hills a few days!"

"Can't. I've got to make that meeting with Burwick. But you might get out of town, anyway.

Scout around and see what you can find of Coff and them-if they really left the country or not. Meet me at Chimney Rock about five tomorrow evening-make it later, about sundown."

Leaving Shad, Kedrick hurried to his room in the St. James and bundled his gear together. He carried it down to the livery stable and saddled the palouse. When that was done, staying off the main street, he headed for headquarters. Yet it was Connie Duane he wanted to see, and not Burwick or Keith.

There was no sign of any of them. Gunter was not around, and Burwick and Keith seemed to have vanished.

Idling in the
office
, Tom heard a slight movement upstairs. He called out. Feet hurried along the floor above him, and then Connie was at the stair head. "Yes?" Recognizing him she hurried down. "Is something wrong?"

Swiftly, he explained, holding nothing back.

"Nothing may come of it, although it wouldn't take much to start it, and they all know that the company's gunmen are mostly out of town. Burwick, Keith, and your uncle must have lit out."

"Uncle John hasn't been around all day.

I saw him at breakfast, and then he disappeared."

"I'll look around. Do you have a gun?" He shook his head then. "Don't much think you'll need it, most of them like you around here, and you've been pretty outspoken. But stay close to your room.

The lid's going to blow off."

He turned away, but she called to him, and he turned again when he reached the door. "Tom?" He seemed to see pleading in her eyes. "Be careful, Tom."

Their eyes held for a long moment, and then he nodded. "I will-if I can."

He went out and paused on the steps. Burwick and Keith might get out of the way, but whatever else Gunter might be, he was scarcely the man to leave his niece behind at a time of danger. Puzzled that he should be thus inconsistent, Kedrick paused and looked around him. The back street was bare and empty. The white powdery dust lay thickly and had sifted into the foliage of the trees and shrubs.

Kedrick hitched his guns into place and walked slowly around the house. The stable lay behind it, but it was usually filled with horses. Now it seemed empty. He strode back, his spurs jingling a little and tiny puffs of dust rising from his boots as he walked.

Once, nearly to the stable, he paused by a water trough and listened for noise from the town. It was quiet, altogether too quiet. He hesitated, worrying about Connie again, but then went on and into the wide door that gave entrance to the shadowed coolness of the stable.

The stalls were empty, all save one. He walked back, then paused. The chestnut was Gunter's horse, and his saddle lay nearby. Could he be somewhere around town? Kedrick considered that and then dismissed it. He removed his hat, wiped the band with his kerchief, then replaced it. His face was unusually thoughtful, and he walked to the far end of the stable, examining every stall as he walked back.

Nothing.

Puzzled, he stepped out into the bright glare of the sun and heard no sound anywhere. He squinted his eyes around and then saw the ramshackle old building that had done duty for a stable before the present large one had been built. He stared at it and then turned in that direction. He had taken scarcely a step when he heard a rattle of hoofs. He swung swiftly around, half crouched, his hands wide.

Then he straightened. Sue Laine slid from her horse and ran to him. "Oh, I've found you, Tom!" she cried, catching him by the arms. "Tom, don't go to that meeting tomorrow. There's going to be trouble!"

"You mean, McLennon s framed something?"

"McLennon?" For an instant she was startled.

"Oh, no! Not Mac!" Her expression changed.

"Come home with me, Tom. Please do! Let them have this out and get it over with! Come home with me!"

"Why all this sudden worry about me?" He was sincerely puzzled. "We've only met once, and we seem to have different ideas about things."

"Don't stand here and argue! Tom, I mustn't be seen talking to you-not by either side. Come with me and get away from here until this is all over. I've seen Dornie, and he hates you, Tom! He hates you."

"He does, does he?" He patted her arm.

"Run along home now. I've things to do here."

"Oh?" Her eyes hardened a little. "Is it that woman? That Duane girl? I've heard all about her, how beautiful she is, how-how she what kind of girl is she?"

"She's a lovely person," he said gravely.

"You'd like her, Sue."

Sue stiffened. "Would I? I wonder how much you know about women, Tom? Or do you know anything about them? I could never like Connie Duane!" She shook his arm. "Come, if you're coming. I just heard this last night, and I can't-I won't see this happen."

"What? What's going to happen?"

She stamped her foot with impatience. "Oh, you fool, you! They plan to kill you, Tom! Now, come on!"

"Not now," he said quietly, "I've got to get this fight settled first. Then maybe I'll ride your way. Now run along, I've got to look around."

Impatiently, she turned and walked to her horse. In the saddle she glanced back at him.

"If you change your mind-"

"Not now," he repeated.

"Then be careful. Be careful, Tom."

He watched her go and then happened to glance toward the house. Connie Duane stood in the window, looking down at him, but as he looked up, she turned sharply away. He started for the house, but then hesitated. There was nothing he could say now, nothing that would have any effect or do any good at all. He started toward the front of the house again and then stopped. On an impulse he turned and walked swiftly back to the little old building and caught the latch. The door was weathered and gray. It creaked on rusty hinges and opened rheumatically. Inside, there was the musty odor of decay. Kedrick stood there for a minute watching the sunlight filter through the cobwebbed window and fall in a faint square upon the ancient straw that littered the earthen floor. Then he stepped forward, peering around the corner of the nearest stall.

John Gunter lay sprawled upon his face, his head pillowed upon one forearm, the back of his shirt covered with a dark, wide stain. Kedrick knelt beside him.

Connie's uncle had been stabbed in the back.

Three powerful blows from the look of the wounds, had been struck
downward evidently
while he sat at a desk or table.

He had been dead for several hours.

Chapter
9

Alton Burwick, for all his weight, sat his saddle easily and rode well. His horse was a blood bay, tall and long limbed. He walked it alongside Tom Kedrick's palouse, and from time to time he spurred it to a trot and. then eased down. On this morning, Burwick wore an ancient gray felt hat, torn at the flat crown, and a soiled neckerchief that concealed the greasy shirt collar.

His shirt bulged over his belt, and he wore one gun, too high on his hip for easy use. His whiskers seemed to have neither grown nor been clipped.

They were still a rough stubble of dirty mixed gray.

Yet he seemed unusually genial this morning.

"Great country, Kedrick! Country for a man to live in! If this deal goes through, you should get yourself a ranch. I aim to."

"Not a bad idea." Kedrick rode with his right hand dangling. "I was talking about that yesterday, with Connie Duane. his The smile vanished from Burwick's face. "You talked to her yesterday? What time?"

"Afternoon." Kedrick let his voice become casual, yet he was alert to the change in Burwick's voice. Had Burwick murdered Gunter? Or had it been one of the squatters? With things as they were, it would be difficult or impossible to find out. "We had a long talk. She's a fine girl."

Burwick said nothing, but his lips tightened. The red
canyon
walls lifted high above them, for along here they were nearly five hundred feet above the bottom of Salt Creek. There was but little farther to go, he knew, and he was puzzled by Burwick's increased watchfulness. The man might suspect treachery, but he had said nothing to imply anything of the kind. Tom's mind reverted to Sue's warning of the previous day-they intended to kill him-but who were "they"? She had not been specific in her warning, except to say that he should not keep this rendezvous today. Kedrick turned the idea over in his mind, wondering if she were deliberately trying to prevent a settlement or if she knew something and was genuinely worried. Pit Laine, her gunslinging brother, was one element in the situation he could not estimate. Laine had not been mentioned in any of the discussions. He seemed always just
beyond
reach, just out of sight, yet definitely in the background, as was the mysterious rider of the mouse-colored horse. That whole story seemed fantastic, but Kedrick did not think Sue was inclined to fall for tall stories.

The canyon of Salt Creek widened out, and several branch canyons opened into it. They left the creek bed and rode closer together to the towering cliffs, now all of seven hundred feet above the trail.
They
were heading south, and Burwick, mopping his sweaty face from time to time with a dirty handkerchief, was no longer talking.

Kedrick pushed back his hat and rolled a smoke. He had never seen Burwick so jittery before, and he was puzzled. Deliberately, he had said nothing to any of the company about Gunter, although he had arranged. with some of the townspeople to have the body moved. Tom was afraid it might precipitate the very trouble he was trying to end, and bring the fight into open battle. Moreover, he was not at all sure of why Gunter had been killed or who had done it.

That it could be retaliation for Singer's death was an answer to be considered, but it might have been done by either Keith or Burwick.

He drew up suddenly, for a horse had left recent tracks coming in alone from the northwest.

Burwick followed his eyes, studying the tracks.

"I've seen those tracks before," Tom Kedrick said. "Now whose horse is that?" "We better step it up," Burwick said, impatiently. "They'll be there before us."

They pushed on into the bright, still morning.

The sky overhead was a vast blue dome scattered with fleecy puffballs of clouds, like bolls of cotton on the surface of a lake of pure blue.

The red cliffs towered high on their left, and the valley on their right swept away in a vast, gently rolling panorama. Glancing off over this sagebrush-dotted valley, Tom knew that lost in the blue haze some seven or eight miles away was Malpais Arroyo and Sue Laine.

Was she there this morning? Or was she riding somewhere?

She was strangely attractive, that slim, dark-haired, dark-eyed girl with her lovely skin, soft despite the desert sun and desert wind. She had come to him, riding all that distance to bring him a warning of danger. Why? Was it simply that she feared for him? Was she in love with him? He dismissed that idea instantly, but continued to wonder. She was, despite her beauty, a hard, calculating little girl, hating the country around and wanting only to be free of it.

Heat waves danced out over the bottomland, and shadows gathered under the red wall. A dust devil lifted and danced weirdly across the desert and then lost itself among the thick antelope brush and the catclaw. Tom Kedrick mopped his brow and swung his horse farther east, the tall spire of Chimney Rock lifting in the distance, its heavier-shouldered companion looming beside and beyond it.

"Look!" Burwick's voice held a note of triumph. "There they come!" To the south, and still three or four miles off, they could see two riders heading toward Chimney Rock. At this distance
they could
not be distinguished, but their destination was obvious.

"Now that's fine!" Burwick beamed. "They'll be here right on time! Say"-he glanced at his heavy gold watch"... Tell you what. You'll be there a shade before them, so what say you wait for them while I have me a look at a ledge up in the canyon?"

In the shadow of the rock, Kedrick swung down.

There was a small pool of water there. He let the palouse drink and ground hitched him deeper in the shade, near some grass. Then he walked back and dropping to the ground lit a smoke. He could see the two riders nearing now. One was on a fast-stepping chestnut, the other a dappled gray.

They
rode up and swung down. The first man was Pete Slagle, the second a stranger whom Kedrick had not seen before. "Where's McLennon?" he asked. "He'll be along. He hadn't come in from the ranch, so I came on with Steelman here. He's a good man, an" anything he says goes with all of us. BAT be along later, though, if you have to have his word."

"Burwick came. He's over lookin' at a ledge he saw in the canyon over there."