the Outlaws Of Mesquite (Ss) (1990) (23 page)

"Not since they put Leo away, it ain't," Old Pap agreed, "but truth's a luxury the old can afford. There's nothing they can take from me but my life, and that's no use to me. And to do that they'd have to shoot me down from behind, and that's the sort of thing they'd do unless they could hang me legal, like Leo Carver's to be hung."

Nobody said anything, but Chafee looked gloomy as he stared at the gallows. There was no living doubt that Leo Carver was an outlaw. No doubt that he had rustled a few head here and there, no doubt that he had offended the nice people of the town by carousing at the Palace and down the street of the cottonwoods.

There was no doubt, either, that he'd stuck up the stage that night on the Rousensock-but from there on there was doubt a-plenty.

Mitch Williams was dead, buried out there on boot hill with the others gone before him-Mitch Williams, the shotgun messenger who never lost a payload until that night on Rousensock, the night that Leo Carver stuck up the stage.

It was a strange story no matter how you looked at it, but Leo was a strange man, a strange man of dark moods and happy ones, but a man with a queer streak of gallantry in him and something of a manner all his own.

Mitch had been up on the box that night when Leo Carver stepped from the brush. Oh, he was wearing a mask, all right, wearing a mask that covered his face. But who did not know it was Leo?

He stepped from the brush with a brace of six-guns in his hands and said, "Hold those horses, Pete! You can-was He broke off sharp there, for he saw Mitch.

Now Mitch Williams was a hand. He had that shotgun over his knees but the muzzle was away from Leo. Mitch could never have swung that shotgun around under Leo's gun, and he knew it. So did Doc Spender, who was stage driver. Leo Carver had that stage dead to rights and he had Mitch Williams helpless.

"Sorry, Mitch!" He said it loud and clear, so they all heard him. "I thought this was your night off. I'd never rob a stage you were on, and I'd never shoot you or force you to shoot me." He swung his horse. "So long!" And he was gone.

That was Leo for you. That was why they liked him along the Gila, and why as far away as the Nueces they told stories about him. But what happened after that was different.

The stage went on south. It went over the range through Six-Shooter Gap and there was another holdup.

There was a sudden blast of fire from the rocks and Mitch Williams toppled dead from the box, and then another blast-it was a shotgun- and Doc took a header into the brush and coughed out his life there in the mesquite.

Inside they were sitting still and frightened. They heard somebody crawl up to the box and throw it down. They heard it hit, and then they heard somebody riding off.

One horse, one rider.

The next morning they arrested Leo.

He was washing up at the time, and they'd waited for just that. He had his guns off and they took him without a fight. Not that he tried to make one. He didn't.

He just looked surprised.

"Aw, fellers," he protested. "I never done nothing! What's the matter?"

"You call that nothing? You robbed the stage last night."

"Oh, that?" He just grinned. "Put down those guns, boys. I'll come along. Sure, you know by this time I didn't rob it. I just stuck it up for a lark, and when I seen Mitch, I knowed it was no lark. That hombre would have sat still while I robbed it and drilled me when I left. He was a trusty man, that one." "You said "was," so I guess you know you killed him." Leo's face changed then.

"Killed who? Say, what is this?" And then they told him, and his face turned gray and sick. He looked around at their faces and none of them were friendly.

Mitch had been a family man, and so had Doc.

Both of them well liked.

"I didn't do it," Leo said. "That was somebody else. I left greater-than 1 his em be.

"Until you could get a shotgun!" That was Mort Lewand, who shipped the money for the bank. "Like you said, Mitch would shoot. You knew that, and he had the gun on you, so you backed out. Then you came back later with a shotgun and shot him from ambush."

"That's not true." Leo was dead serious. "And he didn't have me covered. Mitch had that shotgun pointed the other way. I had the drop and if I'd been planning to kill him, I'd've shot him then."

Oh, they had a trial! Judge come over from Tucson to hold court. They had a trial and a big one. Folks come from all over, and they made a big thing of it. Not that there was much anybody could say for Leo.

Funny thing, that is. Most of us, right down inside, we knowed the kind of man Leo Carver was, but most of what we knew wasn't evidence. Ever stop to think how hard it is to know a man isn't a murderer and yet know that your feeling he isn't ain't evidence?

They made it sound bad. Leo admitted he had killed seven men. Fair, stand-up fights, but still the men were dead by his gun. He admitted to rustling a few cows. Leo could have denied it, and maybe they couldn't have proved it in a court of law, but Leo wasn't used to the ways of courts and he knowed darn well we all knew he had rustled them cows. Fact is, I don't think he ever thought of denying it.

He had stuck up a few stages, too. He even admitted to that. But he denied killing Mitch Williams and he denied getting that box.

Twenty thousand, it held. Twenty thousand in gold.

Everybody thought Webb Pascal would defend Leo, but he refused, said he wanted no part of it. Webb had played poker with Leo and they'd been friends, but Webb refused him. Leo took that mighty hard. Lane Moore refused him, too, so all he could do was get that drunken old Bob Keyes to handle his case.

Convicted? You know he was. That's why they are hanging him. Keyes couldn't defend a sick cat from a bath. When they got through asking questions of Leo Carver, he was a dead Injun, believe me.

He had tried to stick up the stage once. He was a known killer. He had rustled cows. He traveled with a bad element in Canyon Gap. He had no alibi. All he had, really, was his own statement that he hadn't done it-that and the thing we knew in our hearts that isn't admissible as evidence.

"Shame for you fellers to go to all that trouble," Leo said now. That was Leo. There's no stopping him. "Why don't we just call the whole thing off?"

Mort Lewand stood in his doorway chewing his cigar and watching that gallows go up, and it made me sore, seeing it like that, for if ever one man had hated another, Mort Lewand had hated Leo.

Why? No particular reason. Personality, I'd guess you'd say. It was simply that they never tied up right. Mort, he pinched every dime he made.

Leo spent his or gave it away. Mort went to church regular and was a rising young businessman.

He was the town's banker and he owned the express company, and he had just bought one of the finest ranches in the country.

Leo never kept any money. He was a cattleman when he wanted to be, and as steady a hand as you'd find when he worked. One time he saved the CY herd almost singlehanded when they got caught in a norther. He took on the job of ramrodding the Widow Ferguson's ranch after her old man was killed, and he tinkered and slaved and worked, doing the job of a half-dozen hands until she had something she could see for money enough to keep her.

Leo never kept a dime. He ate it up, drank it up, gave it away. The rest of the time he sat under the cottonwoods and played that old guitar of his and sang songs, old songs like my mother used to sing, old Scotch, Irish, and English songs, and some he made up as he went along.

He got into fights too. He whipped the three Taylor boys singlehanded one day. I remember that most particular because I was there. That was the day he got the blood on Ruth Hadlin's handkerchief.

The Hadlins were the town's society. Every town's got some society, and Judge Emory Hadlin was the big man of this town. He had money, all right, but he had name too. Even in the West some folks set store by a name, and whenever the judge said his name it was like ringing a big gong. It had a sound. Maybe that was all some names had, but this one had more.

Honor, reputation, square dealing, and no breath of scandal ever to touch any of them. Fine folks, and everybody knew it. Mort Lewand, he set his cap for Ruth but she never seemed to see him. That made him some angered, but tickled most of us.

Mort figured he was mighty high-toned and it pleased us when Ruth turned him down flat.

Don't get the idea she was uppity. There was that time Old Pap come down with pneumonia. He was in a bad way and nobody to look after him but little Mary Ryan from down on the Street. Mary cared for him night and day almost until Ruth Hadlin heard about it.

She came down there and knocked on the door, and when Mary opened it and saw Ruth she turned seven colors. There she was, a mighty pert little girl, but she was from the Street, and here was Ruth Hadlin-well, they don't come any further apart.

Mary flushed and stammered and she didn't know what to say, but Ruth came right on in. She turned around and said, "How is he, Mary? I didn't even know he was ill."

111, that's what she said. We folks mostly said sick instead of ill. Mary was shocked, too, never guessing that anybody like Ruth would know her name, or speak to her like that.

"He's bad off, Miss Ruth, but you shouldn't be here. This is the-it's the Street."

Ruth just looked at her and smiled, and she said, "I know it is, Mary, but Old Pap is ill and he can be just as ill on the Street as anywhere. I just heard about it, Mary, and how you've been caring for him. Now you go get some rest. I'll stay with him."

Mary hesitated, looking at that beautiful blue gown Ruth was wearing and at the shabby little cabin.

"There ain't-isn't much to do," she protested.

"I know." Ruth was already bending over Old Pap and she just looked around and said, "By the way, Mary, tell somebody to go tell Doctor Luther to come down here."

"We tried, miss. He won't come. He said all his business was the other side of town, that he'd no time for down here."

Ruth straightened up then. "You go tell him that Ruth Hadlin wants him down here!" Her voice was crisp. "He'll come."

He did, too.

But that was Miss Ruth. She was a thoroughbred, that one. And that was where she first met Leo Carver.

It was the third day she had been sharing the nursing with Mary Ryan, and she was in the shack alone when she heard that horse. He was coming hell bent for election and she heard him pull up in front of the house and then the door opened and in stepped Leo Carver.

She knew him right off. How could you miss him? He was two inches over six feet, with shoulders wider than two of most men, and he was dark and clean-built with a fine line to his jaw and he had cold gray eyes. He wore two guns and his range clothes, and right then he had a two-day growth of beard. It must have startled her. Here was a man known as an outlaw, a rustler, and a killer, and she was there alone with a sick man.

He burst in that door and then drew up short, looking from Ruth to the sick old man. If he was surprised to find her there, he didn't let on.

He just swept off his hat and asked, "How is he, Miss Hadlin?"

For some reason she was excited. Frightened, maybe.

"He's better," she said. "Miss Ryan and I have been nursing him."

Mary had come into the room behind him, and now she stepped around quickly. "He's a lot better, Leo," she said.

"Maybe I can help nurse him, then," Carver said. He was looking at Ruth and she was white-faced and large-eyed.

Old Pap opened one eye. "Like hell," he said expressively. "You think I want a relapse? You get on out of here. Seems like," he protested plaintively, "every time I git to talk to a good-Iookin' gal, somebody comes hornin' in!"

Leo grinned then and looked from Ruth to Mary.

"He's in his right mind, anyway," he said, and left.

Mary stood there looking at Ruth, and Ruth looked after Leo and then at Mary.

"He's-he's an outlaw," Ruth said.

Mary Ryan turned very sharp toward Ruth, and I reckon it was the only time she ever spoke up to Ruth. "He's the finest man I ever knew!"

And the two of them just stood there looking at each other and then they went to fussing over Old Pap. That was the longest convalescence on record.

But there was that matter of the blood on her handkerchief.

Ruth Hadlin was coming down the street and she was wearing a beautiful gray dress and a hat with a veil-very uptown and big city.

She was coming down the boardwalk and everybody was turning to look-she was a fine figure of a woman and she carried herself well-and just then the doors of the Palace burst open and out comes a brawling mass of men swinging with all their fists. They spilled past Ruth Hadlin into the street and it turns out to be the three Taylors and Leo Carver.

They hit dirt and came up swinging. Leo smashed a big fist into the face of Scott Taylor and he went over into the street. Bob rushed him and Leo ducked and took him around the knees, dumping him so hard the ground shook.

Bully Taylor was the tough one, and he and Leo stood there a full half-minute slugging it out with both hands, and then Leo stepped inside and whipped one to Bully's chin and the pride of the Taylors hit dirt, out so cold he's probably sleeping yet.