The Desperate Deputy of Cougar Hill (6 page)

A gun butt drove against the crown of his hat and slid off the side of his head. Pain drove through him in a fiery burst. A second blow caught him on the point of the shoulder. He staggered forward and went to his knees.

The man behind him grunted and caught him by the arms. Cameron was jerked to his feet and held there. He shook his head in an attempt to clear the mist from his eyes, but he could manage only the faintest of blurred outlines. Now the man at the gate opened and shut it and came quickly forward to stop in front of Cameron.

Even through the daze of pain filling his head, Cameron knew what to expect. He had been mousetrapped by one of the oldest tricks — allowing his attention to be turned one way while an assailant came against him from another direction. He had let his guard down after the soft months here and now he was going to pay the price.

While the man behind held him helpless, the man in front was going to whip. him. With fists or gun barrel, it didn’t matter. As long as the pain gripped him in an icy paralysis, he had no choice but to take his beating.

A fist lashed out, splitting the skin over his cheekbone. His head jerked to the side. Jarring knuckles against his temple snapped him back. Then man in front grunted with pleasure and stepped forward. He began cutting at Cameron’s face, twisting his knuckles with each blow. The shock cleared Cameron’s head and he felt a slight surge of strength through his muscles. At the same time, he found that he could see again.

The man in front was in dark clothing, with a dark handkerchief drawn up to cover him to the eyes. With his hat pulled low over his forehead, he was only a dark bulk in the greater darkness of the alley. But now Cameron could see the movement of his fists and he managed to lean away so that two vicious blows cut air at the side of his head.

The man grunted again, but with less pleasure this time, and drove hard knuckles into Cameron’s midriff. Cameron gasped as if he had lost his wind and sagged in the gripping hands holding him from behind. He felt the faintest relaxation of the fingers digging into his biceps, and he surged upward, driving from the knees, throwing himself forward with his head lowered, at the same time twisting his body to wrench his arms free.

The man behind him swore thickly. Cameron’s head caught the assailant in front at chest level and forced him back. Cameron kept his legs driving, his torso swinging. His arms came free and he wrapped them around the man giving ground. The one behind clawed wildly at Cameron’s back. The three men went into the dust together, Cameron on top of one and under the other.

For a moment he thought he had a chance to work free. But the blood dripping into his eyes blinded him and an elbow slashing against his windpipe cost him the last of his breath. He struggled feebly as he was rolled onto his back and then onto his face and finally pulled again to his feet. He could hear both men panting now, but still neither one spoke.

A boot toe drove out and caught his kneecap, sending a wave of pain and nausea through him. The hands holding his arms let loose and he plunged forward, reaching. Two hands clasped into a single huge fist lashed down against the back of his neck, sending his face toward the thick dust of the alley. As he fell he reached out blindly. His fingers caught cloth, ripped, came loose and he stretched his length in the dirt. He could feel a small bit of the cloth still in his fingers and he clenched his fist, thinking foolishly, flannel, as if he had made an important discovery.

A foot found his ribs, forcing him onto his back. Another foot, boot-heel jabbing, came straight down, grinding into his belly. He felt something give inside and he retched up the last of his wind.

Suddenly a quiet voice from the entrance to the lane between the buildings slipped through the cooling night air, stopping the sounds of the men maneuvering around Cameron. “Leave him alone.”

The voice was light, cold, sardonic. “This is a gun I’m holding — so back off. And keep your hands high!”

Still Cameron’s assailants said nothing. He could hear their feet carry them away from him and he listened until the sounds faded and there was only thick silence. Then he felt hands, impersonal, neither cruel nor gentle, pull him to his feet. The hands went away and Cameron dropped to his knees.

“Stay there,” the man said. “I’ll get the kid out of the livery to help you.”

He started away and now his voice and the way he moved in the darkness registered on Cameron. This was Sax Larabee.

Sax Larabee had rescued him from a beating that could have meant his death! Why? To put Cameron in his debt? More likely on impulse, Cameron thought, recalling Sax Larabee’s unpredictable ways. Another time in the same circumstances he might stand by and watch a man hammered on until he died.

Cameron heard Larabee’s bootsoles whisper over the drying grass in the lane. Then that sound was gone. Time disappeared. He was conscious only of pain and of the necessity to make an effort to keep breathing. Then he became aware of light and noise. Hands touched him and lantern light bit harshly at his eyes.

Tod Purcell swore. “Roy, who did it? Roy …?”

“Get me a bucket of water,” Cameron said through battered lips. When the water came, he plunged his head into it. He reared back, snorting, and pulled off his hat. “Dump it over me.”

The cold deluge gave him strength enough to get to his feet. With Tod’s help, he walked into the livery. He located the horse trough and went head first into it. When he came out, he was able to stand on his feet without help.

“That’s a crazy thing to do,” Tod said.

“A man knocked me into a cold river once,” Cameron said thickly. “He had me beat about as bad as I am now. That water gave me juice enough to climb up the bank and whip him.” Surprise crossed his bruised and still bleeding features as his knees gave way and he sat heavily on the edge of the horse trough.

“Or maybe I wasn’t beat quite so bad that other time,” he muttered.

“You set still,” Tod ordered. “I’ll get some help and carry you home.”

Cameron had a room at the Widow Crotty’s. He thought of the way she would fuss around him, forcibly mother him if he should be bedridden. “No,” he said quickly, “help me to the doctor’s place. That extra room he calls a hospital is empty right now. I’ll stay there tonight and be fine by morning.” He forced himself to his feet and started to walk, giving Tod no choice but to come up fast and help him.

“And listen,” Cameron said, his voice faint, “when you get back here, take a lantern and go to McTigue’s gate. Look around real close. See if you can find anything — the way you found those pricklebush leaves on Larabee’s horse. Anything at all that looks out of place by the gate. And then go where you found me in the alley. See if you can locate a little piece of cloth. Flannel I think. I tore it off one of the pair that worked me over.”

“All right,” Tod said. “Now you shut up. Save your strength for walking.”

It was a block and a half to the doctor’s house. Cameron remembered only part of the walk. Later Tod told him he mover slower and slower until he was barely going at all when he reached the doctor’s porch. Cameron remembered none of that; he recalled only the feel of the splintery wood when he fell on his face at the doctor’s front door. After that there was only the darkness, warm and empty of pain.

T
OD
P
URCELL
had a run of late business at the livery and it was well toward daylight before he had a chance to search the alley.

Footprints and scuffmarks in the alley dirt told plainly where Cameron’s two attackers had stood waiting and where the fight had taken place. It was there, between McTigue’s fence on the east and the rear of the Hay and Feed on the west, that Tod found the scrap of flannel Cameron had spoken about.

He expected to find little else and he was about to turn away when light from his lantern picked up a bright reflection. Squatting, Tod pushed his finger lightly in the fine dirt. A fleck of gold-colored metal appeared. Another. Then a third.

“Fool’s gold!” he breathed in surprise.

He probed further, both in the center of the alley where the fight had taken place and at the sides, where Cameron’s attackers had waited. When he left, he had a small mound of the glittering pyrites in his palm. In the livery office, he shook them into one of McTigue’s business envelopes. He laid the scrap of flannel on the desk beside the envelope and stared down thoughtfully.

The flannel was plainly a pocket front. It was from a dark red shirt that needed washing badly. And, Tod thought, it shouldn’t be too hard to trace. But it was the fool’s gold that excited him. He knew there were no pyrites close to town. When he had been younger, he made quite a collection of the mineral, carrying it in a poke the way the miners carried their gold, pretending he had made a big strike.

He recalled now that the only two good sources for fool’s gold were the mines on the benchland back of Cameron’s spread, and some long abandoned tunnels up in the high-mountain country that blocked off the south end of the valley. And the finest place of all had been that mine in the box canyon a short way up from Rafe Arker’s place — the one where the Dondee brothers were working now.

Fool’s gold and pricklebush leaves — both from the hill country where Rafe Arker and the Dondees lived! And just as the pricklebush leaves had attached themselves to a horse, so could the fool’s gold have worked into men’s boots and dropped off there in the alley.

Not Rafe, Tod decided. He had seen Joe Farley pack the big man into a buckboard and haul him home as much dead as alive that night of his fight with Cameron. The Dondees then? He shook his head. He knew too little about them to say. Come daylight, he’d get the flannel and the envelope to Cameron and let him decide what they meant.

The day man showed up late, and by the time Tod got to Doctor Draper’s house, the town was beginning to stir with life. His knock brought the doctor himself to the door.

“I got to see Roy,” Tod said earnestly. “It’s real important.”

“Come back about this time tomorrow,” the doctor said. “He might be awake by then.” He frowned. “The rap on the head he took hurt him worse than I thought last night.”

His words jolted Tod. Somehow he had come to think of Roy Cameron as indestructible. He walked slowly away, trying to understand what this meant. He was crossing the main street, going toward Jenny’s café, when he saw Sax Larabee step from the hotel lobby and stroll south toward the livery barn. “Business on Sunday too?” he thought wonderingly. Stopping, he watched Larabee.

Larabee disappeared into the livery barn. Moments later he appeared on the bay horse he had come to favor. He walked the horse slowly south.

Tod hurried into the café to find Jenny getting ready for the morning customers. She served him pie and coffee and while he gulped it down, he told her what he had learned.

“The doctor said Roy would be all right in a few days — a few days!” Jenny exclaimed. “Why should anyone beat him so badly? And especially those Dondee brothers — if they were the ones.”

Tod showed her the pyrites. “It sure looks like they was the ones in the alley.” He frowned. “That stranger, Larabee, was there too — lucky for Roy. But I sure don’t trust him much more’n I do the Dondees. He went riding south this morning again. I’d like to know why he always goes to the same place if he’s so interested in looking at mining properties.”

“There are lots of mines on the bench,” Jenny pointed out.

“There ain’t many places where pricklebush leaves grow,” Tod argued. “And every time Larabee comes back, he brings some with him.” He stopped eating and talking long enough to scribble a note on a leaf from Jenny’s account pad. He put the pyrites and the flannel and the note in the envelope and pushed it across the counter. “I’m going to ride after that Larabee right now and see where he goes,” he said. “If Roy comes to before I get back, give him these and tell him what I said.”

“I don’t think …” Jenny began, and stopped. Tod’s expression told her that nothing she could say would change his plans. She turned away and began to wrap some food for him.

“Just be careful, Tod. If the Dondees did ambush Roy last night, they’re nobody to fool with. And remember that Rafe lives down that way.” She thrust a package of bread and cold beef toward him. “Even if it means being late to work tonight, you come here as soon as you get back!”

“Roy taught me how to track,” Tod said. “I won’t get in no trouble.” He slid off the stool. “But I won’t be coming back. I fixed it with McTigue so I can start working for Obed tomorrow. Unless I find out something Roy ought to know right away, I’ll ride on west.”

Taking the food, he hurried out. Larabee would be well down the valley now, but Tod wasn’t concerned. He was sure he knew where the man was heading and that he could find him quickly enough. At the livery, he saddled his paint pony, stored the food in his saddle bags, added a canteen of water, and slipped his varmint rifle into the boot.

He took his time on the trail, letting the paint warm up well before he let it run. He slowed the horse before topping each rise, not wanting to warn Larabee by running onto him. But he was almost to Cameron’s spread before he had a glimpse of the bay and its rider. And that, he thought, was pure luck. The valley floor was empty ahead of him except for a few grazing cattle. But when Tod looked east from a high spot, he saw Larabee working his way along the ridge that ran behind the timber sweeping up from the valley floor.

Tod frowned, wondering why Larabee would ride a hard trail when he could take an easy one. It was a lot shorter way from town onto the bench, but because of the deadfalls and the washed-out bridges over the creeks, it made for hard riding. It could save time, all right, if a man was in a hurry. But from what Tod could see, Larabee was picking his way along like he was out for a Sunday ride.

Riding the ridge trail was one way to cut down the risk of being seen, of course. But who would Larabee be hiding from? The very fact of the man taking so many pains increased Tod’s suspicion. And now to protect himself, he rode closer to the edge of the timber, out of Larabee’s sight.