Showdown On the Hogback (1991) (12 page)

The man was moving slowly and studying the ground as he came, although from time to time he paused and searched the area with careful eyes. Kedrick pushed himself up from his chair and taking the Winchester, worked his way along the wall to the next room.

"Connie?" he called softly. There was no reply, and after a minute, he called a second time. Still no answer.

Worried now, he remembered she had said something about going down below to gather some squaw cabbage to add greens to their diet.

Back at the window, he studied the terrain carefully, and then his heart gave a leap, for Connie Duane was gathering squaw cabbage from a niche in the canyon wall, not fifty yards from the unknown rider!

Lifting his rifle, Kedrick checked the range.

It was all of four hundred yards and a downhill shot. Carefully, he sighted on the rider but then relaxed. He was nearer the girl now, and a miss might ricochet and kill the girl, for the canyon wall would throw any bullet he fired back into the canyon itself, and it might even ricochet several times in the close confines.

Yet, somehow, she had to be warned. If the rider saw her tracks, he would find both the girl and the hideout. Suddenly, the ears of his horse came up sharply, and the rider stiffened warily and looked all around. Carefully, Kedrick drew a bead on the man again. He hated to kill an unwarned man, but if necessary he would not hesitate.

Connie was standing straight now and appeared to be listening. Tense in every fiber, Tom Kedrick watched and waited. The two were now within fifty feet of each other, although each was concealed by a corner of rock and some desert growth, including a tall cottonwood and some cedars. Still listening, both stood rigid, and Kedrick touched his lips with the tip of his tongue. His eyes blurred with the strain, and he brushed his hand across them.

The rider was swinging to the ground now, and he had drawn a gun. Warily, he stepped out from his ground-hitched horse. Shifting his eyes to Connie, Tom saw the girl wave, and lifting his hand, he waved back and then lifted the rifle. She waved a vigorous negation with her arm, and he relaxed, waiting.

Now the man was studying tracks in the sandy bottom of the wash, and as he knelt, his eyes riveted upon the ground, a new element entered the picture. A flicker of movement caught the tail of Kedrick's eye, and turning his head he saw Laredo Shad riding into the scene. He glared swiftly at the window and waved his hand. Then he moved
forward
and swung to the ground. From his vantage point Kedrick could hear nothing, but he saw Laredo approach, making heavy going of it in the thick sand, and then, not a dozen yards from the man, he stopped.

He must have spoken, for the strange rider stiffened as if shot and then slowly got to his feet. As he turned, Tom saw his face full in the sunlight.

It was Clauson!

What happened then was too fast for the eye to follow. Somebody must have spoken, but who did not matter. Clauson's gun was drawn, and he started to swing it up. Laredo Shad in a gunman's crouch, flashed his right-hand gun. It sprang clear, froze for a long instant, and then just as Clauson fired, Shad fired-but a split second sooner!

Clauson staggered a step back, and Shad fired again. The outlaw went down slowly, and Laredo walked forward and stripped his gun belts from him.

Then from his horse he took his saddlebags, rifle, and ammunition. Gathering up the dead man and working with Connie's help, they tied him to the saddle and then turned the horse loose with a slap on the hip.

Connie Duane's face was white when she came into the room. "You saw that?" He nodded. "We didn't dare to let him go. If we had, we would all have been dead before noon tomorrow. Now," he said with grim satisfaction, "they'll have something to think about!"

Shad grinned at him when he came in. "I didn't see that gun he had drawed," he
said
ruefully. "Had it la
y
in' along his leg as he was crouched there. Might've got me."

He dropped the saddlebags. "Mite of grub," he said, "an' some shells. I reckon we can use "em even though I brought some. The message got off, an" so did the letter. Fellow over to the telegraph office was askin' a powerful lot of questions. Seems like they've been hearin' about this scrap."

"Good! The more the better. We can stand it, but the company can't. Hear anything?"

"Uh-huh. Somebody from outside the state is startin' a row about Gunter's death. I hear they have you marked for that. That is, the company is sayin' you did it."

Kedrick nodded. "They would try that. Well, in a couple of days I'll be out of this, and then we'll see what can be done. his "You take some time," Shad said dubiously. "That passel of thieves ain't goin' to find us. Although," he said suddenly, "I saw the tracks of that grulla day afore yesterday, an' not far off: his The grulla again!

Two more days drifted by, and Tom Kedrick ventured down the trail and the ladders to the canyon below with Laredo and visited their horses, concealed in a tiny glade not far away. The palouse nickered and trotted toward him, and Kedrick grinned and scratched his chest. "How is it, boy? Ready to go places?"

"He's achin' for it," Shad said. He lighted a smoke and squinted his eyes at Kedrick. "What you aim to do when you do move?"

"Ride around a little. I aim to see Pit Laine, an' then I'm goin' to start huntin' up every mother's son that was in that drygulching. Especially," he added, "Dornie Shaw."

"He's bad," Laredo said quietly. "I never seen it, but you ask Connie. Shaw's chain lightnin'. She seen him kill Bob. his "So one of us dies," Kedrick said quietly.

"I'd go willing enough to take him with me, an' a few others."

"That's it. He's a killer, but the old bull of that woods is Alton Burwick. Believe me, he is. Keith is just right-hand man for him, an' the fall guy if they need one. Burwick's the poison mean one."

With Connie they made their start three days later and rode back trails beyond the rim to the hideout Laine had established. It was Dai Reid himself who stopped them, and his eves lighted up when he saw Kedrick. "Ah, Tom!" His broad face beamed. "Like my own son, you are. We'd heard you were killed dead."

Pit Laine was standing by the fire, and around him on the ground were a dozen men, most of whom Kedrick recognized. They sat up slowly as the three walked into the open space, and Pit turned. It was the first time Kedrick had seen him, and he was surprised.

He was scarcely taller than his sister, but wide in the shoulders and slim in the hips. When he turned, he faced them squarely, and his eyes were sharp and bitter. This was a killing man, Kedrick decided, as dangerous in his own way as that pocket-sized devil Dornie Shaw.

"I'm Kedrick," he said, "and this is Connie Duane. I believe you know Shad."

"We know all of you." Laine watched them, his eyes alert and curious.

Quietly and concisely, he explained, and ended by saying, "So there it is. I've asked this friend of mine to start an investigation into the whole mess and to block the sale until the truth is clear.

Once the sale is blocked and that investigation started, they won't be with us long. They could get away with this only if they could keep it covered up, and they had a fair chance of doing that."

"So we wait and let them run off?" Laine demanded.

"No," Tom Kedrick shook his head decidedly. "We ride into Mustang-all of us.

"They have the mayor and the sheriff, but public opinion is largely on our side.

Furthermore," he said quietly, "we ride in the minute they get the news the sale is blocked.

Once that news is around town, they will have no friends. The bandwagon riders will get off, and fast."

"There'll be shootin'," one old-timer opined.

"Some," Kedrick admitted, "but if I have my way, there'll be more of hanging. There's killers in that town, the bunch that drygulched Steelman and Slagle. The man who killed Bob McLennon is the man I want."

Pit Laine turned. "I want him."

"Sorry, Laine. He killed Bob, an'

Bob was only in town to get a doc for me. You may," he added, "get your chance, anyway."

"I'd like a shot at him my own self," Laredo said quietly, "but somethin' else bothers me.

Who's this grulla rider? Is he one of you?"

Laine shook his head. "No, he's got us wonderin', too."

"Gets around plenty," the old-timer said, "but nobody ever sees him. I reckon he knows this here country better than any of us. He must've been around here for a long time. his "What's he want?" Shad wondered. "That don't figure."

Kedrick shrugged. "I'd like to know." He turned to Dai. "It's good to see you. I was afraid
you'd
had trouble."

"Trouble?" Dai smiled his wide smile.

"It's trouble, you say? All my life there's been trouble. Where man is, there will be trouble to the end of time, if not of one kind, then another. But I take my trouble as it comes, boy."

He drew deeply on his short-stemmed pipe and glanced at the scar around Kedrick's skull.

"Looks like you'd a bit of it yourself. If you'd a less hard skull you'd now be dead."

"I'd not have given a plugged peso for him when I saw him," Laredo said dryly. "The three of them were just lyin' there, bloody an' shot up. We thought for sure they was all dead. This one, he'd a hole through him, low down an' mean, an' that head of his looked like it had been smashed, until we moved him. He was lucky as well as thick skulled."

Morning found Laredo and Kedrick once more in the saddle. Connie Duane had stayed behind with some of the squatters' women. Together, they were pushing on toward Mustang, but taking their time, for they had no desire to be seen or approached by any of the company riders.

"There's nothing much we can do," Kedrick agreed, "but I want to know the lay of the land in town. It's mighty important to be able to figure just what will happen when the news hits the place. Right now, everything is right for them. Alton Burwick and Loren Keith are better off than they ever were.

"Just size it up. They came in here with the land partly held by squatters with a good claim on the land.

That land they managed to get surveyed, and they put in their claim to the best of it, posted the notices, and waited them out. If somebody hadn't seen one of those notices and read it, the whole sale might have gone through and nobody the wiser. Somebody did see it, and trouble started. They had two mighty able men to contend with, Slagle and McLennon.

"Well, both of them are dead now. And Steelman, another possible leader, is dead too.

So far as they are aware, nobody knows anything about the deaths of those men or who caused them. I was the one man they had learned they couldn't depend on, and they think I'm dead. John Gunter brought money into the deal, and he's dead and out of the picture completely.

"A few days more and the sale goes through and the land becomes theirs, and there isn't any organized opposition now. Pit Laine and his group will be named as outlaws and hunted as such, and believe me, " once the land sale goes through, Keith will be hunting them with a posse of killers."

"Yeah," Laredo drawled, "they sure got it sewed up, looks like. But you're forgettin" one thing. You're forgettin' the girl. Connie Duane."

"What about her?"

"Look," Shad said, speaking around his cigarette, "she sloped out of town right after McLennon was killed. They thought she had been talking to you before, and she told "em off in the office, said she was gettin" her money out of it.

All right, so suppose she asks for it and they can't pay? "Suppose," he added, "she begins to talk and tells what she knows, and they must figure it's plenty. She was Gunter's niece, and for all they know he told her more than he did tell her."

"You mean they'll try to get hold of her?"

"What do you think? They'll try to get hold of her, or kill her."

Tom Kedrick's eyes narrowed. "She'll be safe with Laine," he said, but an element of doubt was in his voice. "That's a good crowd."

Shad shrugged. "Maybe. Don't forget that Singer was one of them, but he didn't hesitate to try to kill Sloan or to point him out for Abe Mixus. He was bought off by the company, so maybe there are others."

At that very moment, in the office of the gray stone building, such a man sat opposite Alton Burwick, while Keith sat in a chair against the wall. The man's name was Hirst. His face was sallow, but determined. "I ain't lyin'!" he said flatly. was I rode all night to get here, slippin' out of camp on the quiet. She rode in with that gunman, Laredo Shad, and this Kedrick hombre."

"Kedrick! Alive?" Keith sat forward, his face tense.

"Alive as you or me! Had him most of the hair clipped on one side of his head, an' a bad scar there. He sort of favored his side, too. Oh, he'd been shot all right, but he's ridin' now, believe me!"

The renegade had saved the worst until last.

He smiled grimly at Burwick. "I can use some money, Mr. Burwick," he said, "an' there's more I could tell you."

Burwick stared at him, his eyes glassy hard.

Then he reached into a drawer and threw two gold eagles on the desk. "All right! What can you tell me?" "Kedrick sent a message to some hombre in Washington name of Ransome. He's to block the sale of the land until there's a complete investigation."