the High Graders (1965) (16 page)

And now Shevlin had brought Clagg Merria m into the picture. Hoyt hated to think Merriam wa s involved, yet in the back of his mind he must hav e sensed it all the time. His surprise had bee n purely vocal ... within himself he had felt n o such surprise. A man could not move around such a small town without knowing a great deal that was not on th e surface.

"All right, Mike," Hoyt said at last , "I'll see what I can do."

He looked up with sudden discouragement.

"Hell, Mike, what's a man to do? I f igured this was my place to roost. I thought I'
d dug myself in for life."

"Maybe you have. Look at it this way , Hoyt. You straighten up this mess, straighten ou t the town, and with no more fuss than necessary, and you may b e home. They may want you to stay."

Wilson Hoyt nodded slowly, doubtfully.

As Shevlin walked out, Hoyt stared bleakl y across the street at nothing at all.

Ben Stowe pushed the heavy ledgers away from hi m and pulled open the drawer where he kept hi s cigars. He selected one, bit off the end, an d lit up. Then he sat back and put his fee t up on his desk, inhaling deeply. He exhale d the smoke slowly and stared out of the window toward th e mountains.

Clagg Merriam was right. They would have to shi p some gold. Their working capital was finished. Withou t cash from somewhere, they could buy up no more gold; an d when they stopped buying they would lose control , once and for all. When gold was shipped from the tow n through business channels, questions would be asked, me n would come flooding in.

The deals for the mines must be closed at once , but there had been no response from Sa n Francisco since his last offer. were the y investigating? And if so, who?

Clagg Merriam, he knew, was worried abou t Laine Tennison, the pretty girl over at th e Doc's place. ... Well, Lon Court woul d take care of that.

Ben Stowe scowled with irritation. That damne d Gentry! He would have to go riding out just when Cour t was expecting Mike Shevlin. Ben was not in th e least disturbed by Gentry's death, for the time had bee n appointed ... but he had needed him to handle th e gold shipment first.

With Gib Gentry dead, all his nicel y arranged setup was spoiled. Moreover, wh o did he know who could be trusted with that much gold?

Above all, trusted not to talk, and trusted no t to let it be taken away from him?

He could handle it himself, but the town needed a tight rein right now, and he dared not be away. An d most important, the offer might come from the min e owners, and he must act promptly.

Who, then, could he get?

Wilson Hoyt would be perfect, but Hoy t had been acting strange the past few days, an d Ben Stowe hesitated to approach him. Hoyt , he felt, was an honest man, or he seeme d to be, but he had always been a man who kept hi s eyes strictly on the job, and did not worr y about anything outside it.

Mike Shevlin ...

Ridiculous as the idea was, Ben kept comin g back to it, for Mike had the guts to deliver tha t gold, come hell and high water; and Mik e wouldn't talk. Of all the men he knew, Mik e Shevlin was the best man to handle that gold.

The trouble was, Mike was bucking him.

Ben Stowe glanced at the gathering ash on hi s cigar. Carefully, he assayed all he kne w of Mike Shevlin. He had been a tough kid , handy with a gun, and not above driving off a few cow s once in a while. He had balked at outrigh t robbery when the rest of them went into x; but that, Be n decided, was mostly because Mike had just wante d to drift--he just wanted to get out and see mor e country.

Ben had heard a lot of the conflicting storie s about Mike Shevlin. He had been mixed up i n some cattle wars, in some gunfighting, and he ha d ridden the side of the law a time or two. Tha t needn't mean a thing, for Ben knew of severa l outlaws who had been town marshals, and good ones.

He had never really liked Mike Shevlin, bu t this was not the time for that. Suppose ... just suppos e ... that he made an offer? Gib's piece o f action, for instance?

There were not many who could turn their backs on a quarter of a million dollars. Of course , Shevlin would never live to collect, no more tha n Gib Gentry would have.

What fool would give up money of that kind whe n he could keep it for himself?

But one other thing worried him. Ra y Hollister was still out there, and Hollister had to die.

Chapter
13

Where was Ray Hollister now? Three men wer e thinking about that.

Mike Shevlin, riding back to the claim in th e canyon, was asking himself that question. Ben Stowe, in hi s office, was worrying about the same thing; an d Wilson Hoyt, turning his mind from hi s recent words with Shevlin, thought again of Hollister.

Not one of them believed he was through. Mik e Shevlin, riding warily, and well off the trail , knew that Ray Hollister would never be abl e to convince himself he was through in Rafter. The thought o f going elsewhere would not occur to him, or if it did , it would be dismissed.

Like many another man, he was committed to the hom e grounds. He could not bring himself to move, although al l the world offered a fresh start--notew ranges, ne w towns, places where he was unknown, and where hi s abilities might have made a place for him.

Right now Hollister was sitting beside a fire i n a remote spot among the bare hills. He wa s alone except for Babcock, and Babcock wa s for the first time looking on his boss with some doubt.

Only a part of his doubt was the result of hi s conversation with Shevlin in the stable. His loyaltie s were deep-seated, and he hesitated, feelin g uncertain for the first time in years.

"Where the hell is Wink?" Hollister said , looking up.

"He'll be along."

Winkler had gone down to the Three Seven s to pick up some grub. They had nothing to eat an d he knew the cook there. Winkler would have to b e careful, for there would be no friendly feeling for them a t the Three Sevens. Nor at any of the othe r ranches, for that matter.

Ray Hollister looked haggard, his face wa s drawn, his eyes deep sunken. "Bab," h e said, "they've got to move the gold. And if the y try to move it, we can get it."

Babcock straightened his thin frame and wen t over to the nearby brush to pick up sticks for th e fire.

"If we can get that gold," Hollister wen t on, "we'll have them where the hair's short."

"How'll they move it?" asked Babcock.

"Gentry's freight outfit. That was why he wa s set up that way."

Babcock had squatted on his heels to pic k up the sticks, but now he turned his scrawn y neck and looked back at Hollister. "That'
s good figurin'. How'd you know that?"

"I know plenty."

Babcock came back to the fire and added som e of the fuel to it. Then he squatted down beside it.

Ray Hollister had forgotten, for the time being, tha t Babcock knew nothing of his previou s arrangements with Ben Stowe. He was thinking alou d rather than planning; and weariness as well as th e defeats of the past days had dulled his senses.

Babcock had room for two loyalties an d no more, and he believed them to be one and the same.

He was loyal to Hollister, and he was loyal to th e cattle business. He had grown up aroun d cattle, had worked cattle since he was a child, an d had never considered anything else. The discovery o f gold at Rafter was a personal affront. H
e disliked the miners, disliked the camp followers, an d most of all he disliked the dirty machinery and th e pound of the compressor. When the mines began usin g great quantities of water and returning some of i t muddy and filthy, he was deeply angered.

He had known of the firm of Hollister an d Evans, but he had believed it to be a land an d investment operation. He had largely ignored it , for Ray was always going off on some new scheme, bu t he always came back when the scheme proved to b e a swindle or a fool notion. While Ra y Hollister took off on his other activities , Babcock was minding the cattle.

After the water was polluted, it had been necessar y to drive the cattle back from the stream where they ha d always watered, something it was not easy to do. The onl y other water was too far away for the good of the stock , and the grass there was poor. He could have use d Hollister's help then, for they were short-handed; s everal of the newer boys had gone off prospectin g ... as if they knew anything about finding gold!

With the hands that remained Babcock had pushed th e cattle back from the water with only a few lost , and there had been a time when he had been up to hi s ears in work far on the other side of the range.

Anyway, Babcock himself had never been much of a hand for raising hell in town.

Now, Babcock's mind had not let go o f Ray Hollister's comment on why Gentry ha d been set up that way. Of course, he thought, i t was something a man might guess at, or figur e out. He looked across the fire at Hollister , considering him thoughtfully, and remembering wha t Shevlin had said.

He was a man slow to arrive at an y conclusion, and he was taking great care in tryin g to think this matter out. But as he considered it, littl e bits and pieces of half-forgotten conversation s returned to mind.

"They've got to move it!"

Hollister exclaimed again suddenly. "The y daren't take a chance on running short of cash , or being caught with the gold." He looke d shrewdly at Babcock. "Bab, we could have a piece of money out of this."

"I'm no thief." Babcock spok e irritably, for he did not like to have his thinkin g interrupted. "That money ain't mine."

"It's not theirs, either," Hollister protested , and then added, more slyly, "Without that money thos e mines won't operate long."

That made a kind of sense, Babcoc k agreed. "It would be guarded," he suggested.

Hollister dismissed that with a wave of the hand. "O
f course it would. But we'd have surprise on ou r side, and that counts for a lot." He paused.

"We'd need a couple of good men, aside from yo u and Wink and me.

"There's Halloran ... and John Sande."

Yes, they were good men. Ray Holliste r considered the route the gold would be likel y to take. Understanding the problem, as probabl y nobody else did quite so well, he knew th e gold must go east. On the west coast th e channels of finance were narrow, and there would be to o much chance of talk. California was filled wit h rumors upon rumors, everybody was agog fo r discoveries, and the slightest suggestion of gol d appearing from a new source would set off a rush.

Such an amount of gold as this might be more easil y handled if it could be shipped to the East.

One by one he went over the routes in his mind , and one by one he eliminated them until only tw o were left, and of these one was very doubtful.

Winkler rode in before midnight. He sa t down on a rock and listened to Hollister'
s plan. "All right," he said, "count on me.

... What about Halloran and Sande?"

"They'll go," Babcock said.

Suspicion was not a normal attitude fo r Babcock. He was a man who did his job , whatever it was, did it simply and directly , and with no nonsense, nor did he allow an y nonsense from anyone else.

The handling of cattle was not only his job, it wa s his vocation; it was the biggest part of his life, an d aside from the problems of cattle, nothing had eve r seemed important for any length of time. He wa s always concerned with range conditions, wate r supplies, noxious weeds, and the amoun t of beef that could be packed on a steer's frame.

From the hour of rising, usually before sunup , until dusk or after, he lived, breathed, an d thought cattle. If Babcock ever dreamed, it wa s only of greener pastures, clearer water, and a short drive to market. He had never taken tim e out to consider Ray Hollister as anything but a boss who permitted him freedom in the job h e knew best; but now the ugly thought was growing in hi m that Hollister might actually have been involved wit h Ben Stowe.

The arrival of Jess Winkler had interrupte d his thoughts. He had a sort of respect for th e wolfer, but had never liked him, for, as is often th e case, the hunter had taken on some of th e qualities of the creature he hunted. Winkle r could not approach anything--a strange camp, a house, a person, or an idea--without circlin g warily and sniffing the breeze from every angle. H
e was a man with the suspicions of a wolf. He ha d trapped, so he feared traps.

Winkler had held a rough affection for Ev e Bancroft, but he had considered her to o notional, too feminine. He did not trus t Hollister, and he also did not trust Babcock , nor anybody else he could think of at th e present time. He was a hard old man whos e rifle was an extension of himself.

It had not yet occurred to him that his stake in th e game had gone with the death of Eve Bancroft. Th e idea of taking gold away from the mining outfi t appealed to him, and gave direction to his days , at least for a little while.

Two days later, Halloran and Joh n Sande rode in, and as Babcock had promised , they were ready. Winkler would ride in to town to nos e about and see what he could discover. The others, afte r some discussion, decided upon a rendezvous a t Boulder Spring. It was close enough to Rafter, ha d good grass and water, and yet was out of the way.