Tinhorn's Daughter (3 page)

CHAPTER THREE

Gun-Smoke Baptism

A
T
four the following afternoon, when shadows grew long and blue in the pine-scented canyon, a stone rolled sharply down the slope to land in the brook with a small splash.

Sunset had been sitting against the wall, legs crossed Indian fashion, cleaning his already burnished
Colts
. He sat forward, looking up and ahead, eyes alight with the awareness of danger. Mechanically his hands swung the cylinders back into place.

Betsy had not heard the stone but she could not mistake Sunset's tenseness. She sat very still on the bunk, watching, holding her breath.

With two quick strides Sunset carefully stepped to the window and peered out. Apparently the canyon was deserted. And then a blue jay began to scold high in a sighing pine. A squirrel took it up in another quarter. A magpie's black-and-white body swooped up the creek as it shrilled indignation.

“They've come for you,” said Sunset. “Get down.”

Betsy's words came spontaneously and at the moment she did not realize their meaning. “They'll kill you!”

“They can only attack from the front if they want to keep their cover. Lie down on the floor. A bullet might plow through that
chinking
.”

The word bullet was hard reality. With an awed glance at Sunset who was still erect by the window, Betsy crouched on the floor.

Sunset took a rifle down and checked its load. He pulled the other to him and worked the lever once. She saw the bright yellow glint of the cartridge as it slid out of the magazine into the chamber. She did not miss the hardness which had come into his face or the way he stood forward on the balls of his feet, listening intently.

Then, so swiftly she could not follow the motion, he threw the rifle to his shoulder, aimed through the window and fired. The thunder of the
.44
deafened her. The acrid white fumes of black powder were shredded by the wind as they blew back into the room.

Another rock rolled on the hill. Or was it a rock? It started slowly, gathered speed and sound. Metal clinked and slithered over granite and then there was a thump and splash in the creek.

Sunset casually levered the Winchester and the black-barreled empty tinkled as it hit the floor to roll smokily across the rough boards within an inch of her hand. She drew her fingers back swiftly as though they had touched the hot metal.

Looking up again at Sunset, her small face was drawn with the pain of knowledge.

He had killed a man with that bullet.

Suddenly all thought was lost in the blasting eruption of hammering guns outside. Lead smacked into the cabin walls, ricocheted from the open window to scream through the room with the sound of a broken banjo string.

She hugged the floor. The louder concussions came from Sunset's .44 Winchester. She was choked with the biting smoke, dizzy with the intensity of the noise. A bullet whacked into the bunk just above her head and a splinter of wood twitched at her yellow hair. She felt very small, very vulnerable as she pressed her face against the floor.

The sudden, savage brutality of this battle had left her dazed. There had been no prelude. Men were striving to kill men in the quickest possible time. There would be no
quarter
here.

Sunset stabbed slugs into the pall of smoke which drifted above the ridge of the canyon. As he changed rifles he caught a glimpse of the girl and for an instant his expression softened.

“Poor kid,” he muttered.

And then, as he fired, he found himself assailed by the strange impossibility of his position. Trotwood was up there on the ridge trying to kill him. He was shooting at Trotwood, this girl's father, hoping that any slug might find a home in Double-Deck Trotwood's heart.

He thought he heard a hail and stopped firing. In an instant all was silent in the canyon, and Sunset, looking across the creek, out of which two upturned boots protruded, felt the insecurity of his position. He could not kill Trotwood as long as she thought her father was worthy.

“Maloney!” came Trotwood's voice, thin in the distance. “Send her out or we'll come down and get her ourselves!”

Sunset turned. “That's your father talking, ma'am.”

She lifted her blanched countenance to his. “What would they do if I went?”

“Keep hammering at me. You'd better go.”

As he watched her throw her jacket about her shoulders, he felt empty and heartsick. He had no claim upon her and she was going to leave him without speaking again.

What would Trotwood do to her?

His voice sounded flat and dry. “Are you responsible for sending this money into Puma Pass?”

She was almost to the door. She stopped. “Yes.”

“Then he's bleeding you for what you've got. Don't let him have any more. Wait. You don't know what might happen to you, ma'am. He's a skunk. You don't know him. You've never …”

“Please.”

Sunset shrugged. He should not let her go. He ought to hold her as a hostage, use her to trap Trotwood.

But he couldn't.

She had the door half open as she turned again. She saw he was not watching her. He was staring up at the ridge and his knuckles were white as he gripped the hot Winchester.

Her voice was small, “Goodbye.”

He did not face her again or answer her. He heard the door close, saw her walk across the clearing, saw her recoil from the boots which stuck up out of the creek, watched her as she balanced herself over the log bridge. She vanished into the pines. Twice after that he glimpsed her bright, full skirt as she ascended the windy slope. Then she disappeared over the rim.

A moment later, guns started up on the ridge.

Sunset sighted a dark hat and hoped as he pulled the trigger. A man in a red shirt sprang backwards into view and began to roll downward, starting a small avalanche. It was not Trotwood.

He had watched for a moment, exposed to view. A jagged stab of lightning ripped through his shoulder. His hand let go the Winchester stock and he could not lift his arm. He looked down at the bright gush of blood which stained the buckskin of his shirt. Again he tried to lift his arm and could not.

Up above they must have realized something of this.

Sunset sat down on her wicker trunk. He picked up a petticoat with his good left hand. He started to tear it and then stopped. He laid it carefully back and walked painfully to the small package of his own clothes. He took out a scarlet headsilk and began to wind it around his shoulder, tightly, so that the artery would be stopped.

He looked up through the window. Two men were coming carefully down the slope, guns ready, walking crouched, eyes beady under the flat brims of their wide hats.

Betsy watched them go down. Trotwood had not given orders. He had merely nodded and Simpson and another man had started. And then Trotwood had watched. Something in the blackness of his eyes had chilled her.

He had said no word of greeting. He had not asked her if she was all right. He had merely nodded and the two men had started down.

“They'll kill him,” she whispered, almost to herself.

“Yes,” said Trotwood.

“Won't … won't he have a trial?”

Trotwood faced her, amused. “A trial? Oh, well, I suppose I was as green as you when I first came out. There's neither judge nor policeman within half a thousand miles. I say, you aren't sympathizing with him, are you? After all, my dear, he's a bandit, a murderer, and you're lucky to get away from him so easily. He has almost put a stop to my operations here, using some silly pretext or other. He has seventy-five thousand dollars of your money down there. We must get it back, you know.”

“Do you
have
to kill him?” she said.

Trotwood's scrutiny of her was more puzzled than before. But he was too wise to press her for her reasons. It worried him, a little, the way she looked down at the cabin from between the cleft in the rocks. She was an uncommonly beautiful young woman, blond as her mother and quite as charming. Strange to see her against this setting of pines and gun smoke. Why had the little fool come?

Simpson and the other had reached the creek and Trotwood was eagerly giving them all his attention. He was glad to let them do this work for him. It was not a matter of bravery with Trotwood, but of authority. He had made a reputation already in other parts of the West as an excellent shot and a fast draw from a shoulder holster.

No shots came from the cabin and Betsy felt the dread within her increase until it lay like lead upon her heart. She could not understand why she felt this way; she did not try to understand.

Simpson started over the bridge.

Suddenly a bullet geysered in the stream under his feet. He hurriedly scuttled back into the shelter of the pines. His companion looked wonderingly at the cabin.

“It didn't come from there,” said Simpson.

“It's a trap!”

Simpson tried to stifle the growing desire to run. He did not know where the next one would strike. They might even have their backs to this unseen marksman.

Another shot showered Simpson with bark.

He ducked and glanced up to see powder smoke hanging on the opposite canyon rim.

An instant later three rapid shots blasted straight from rim to rim. Two more ripped into the depths of the canyon.

The targets ducked hastily. He raised himself now to peer across the canyon. He could not see the sniper nor could he understand why the sniper was there. A bullet snapped viciously overhead and Trotwood's hat went sailing up and back. He ducked anew.

A loud, rough voice from nowhere bellowed, “C'mon, Sunset! I'll keep the
lobos
down!”

Bat laid down another barrage from the vantage point of the rim. He kept his Winchester hot as he churned the earth and wood around Simpson and his companion, the stone and dust about Trotwood and the other man above.

Nobody saw Sunset leave the cabin.

When the firing stopped, Sunset's horse was gone and only a scattered pile of empties marked the spot where Bat had lain.

Disgusted and out of temper, Trotwood loaded the three messenger boxes, the unwanted girl and his two dead men, and started back to Puma Pass.

CHAPTER FOUR

Murder Threat

F
OR
two months, Betsy Trotwood heard nothing of Sunset Maloney and the chill of the fall which came early to these high mountains seeped into her heart.

At first she had argued unceasingly with herself against the unreasoning love she knew she bore for the tall, flame-haired frontiersman. She told herself that it was the drama she had experienced with him. She added that it was the strangeness of his type which had attracted her. But no amount of hereditary calm could talk down the fact that she did love him, bandit and killer though he might be.

The night she had found herself alone in the cabin had become symbolical of what he meant to her. In Puma Pass she was out of place and felt it keenly. She seemed to dwell at some distance from the town and though broad hats were always tipped and men made way for her with gallantry wherever she went, she could feel the bars between herself and these hard-living Westerners. They treated her with much restraint for two reasons. She was a “good woman,” the first to come to Puma Pass, and she was the daughter of Slim Trotwood, otherwise Double-Deck, otherwise Boston Slim, whose reign in the mountains had become intolerable.

With cash in his pockets, with Simpson and a dozen hard-lipped gunmen at his back, Trotwood was buying up the pass right-of-way, foot by foot, for miles on either side of the range. Deed after deed found its way into his pocket. Now and then men were missing, but no one dared ask how or why. Great Western, said Trotwood smoothly, had to have the right-of-way and mere settlers could not stand in its steel path. He paid fifty percent of the recognized value and men accepted it, knowing the fate of others.

Trotwood's black frock coat, flowing tie and white-topped boots were always an occasion for whispers and sullen stares in Puma Pass. But Trotwood told them bluntly that with all of unsettled Montana for range, men should not feel badly about giving up their few acres in the Continental Divide. The Oregon Trail trade, which was prospering, meant nothing to him but much to Puma Pass.

And though Betsy might sense some of this, she had no reason to feel suspicious of her father. To her he was cool and polite as a gentleman from Boston might be expected to be.

Even the promise of riches he had given her when she had first come had been delivered with well-bred restraint. Boston Slim Trotwood could be most convincing, especially so to this small young lady who had arrived so unexpectedly and whose arrival had been so financially welcome.

While there was still another seventy-five thousand dollars in her mother's estate, Betsy did not need to worry about her treatment at Trotwood's hands. It would be excellent.

At the end of the first month, he had requested additional capital. And, mistaking the restraint of the town toward him for respect, seeing how well he was doing, she could not refuse.

Two weeks later he had required more and he had received it via stage and the bank at Virginia City, to which the funds were relayed from the East.

She had felt no alarm at the dwindling numbers in her account book. They were numbers only and she knew nothing of finance. She experienced a certain excitement at being so important to Trotwood's undertaking.

And then, a week before, she had written the last check she was able to write, not in the least alarmed at the fact that she was now penniless, two thousand miles from home, in a strange land which seemed to want to keep her a stranger. Trotwood had been very certain of swift returns. He would double her money in a month.

She sat, at evening, at the window of the crudely furnished cabin which fronted the town's only street. The long mountain dusk had faded into the lamplighted night. A train of emigrants had left the dust stirring lazily in the road as they went to their camping ground higher in the pass. Scouts in buckskin, cowboys in high-heeled boots, cavalrymen in blue, mud-spattered miners all mingled in the parade which passed her door. But Sunset was not there.

She turned as Trotwood entered the dim room and watched him light the table lamp. Her skirt of pale blue silk rustled as she stood.

“The stage came in a moment ago,” Trotwood informed her.

“Was … was it held up?” she said, hiding the eagerness in her voice.

“No. Maloney must have died or left the country.”

The light was too dim for him to see the sadness of her small face.

“We have all of it now,” he continued. “Tonight I shall close the last deal.”

“And then we'll leave this place?”

He shrugged and went to his desk. She wondered a little at his curtness as it was unusual for him. She sat down, watching him write lengthily and listening to the scratch of his pen.

Again she turned to the street, watching for a buckskin shirt and a wide hat in this passing multitude. It seemed as though all the West was going past her door, but the only portion of it she desired was not there.

So deep was her concentration that she did not hear Trotwood rise from his chair and leave. She was startled to see him crossing the dusty street, shouldering through the crowd, as she thought he was still behind her. By the light which streamed in square pillars from a saloon door, she saw him stop Simpson and give him a letter. The instructions were long and Trotwood seemed very careful about them. He went on into the saloon and Simpson turned to his horse at a hitch rack and
forked leather
.

She watched Simpson depart. Two more of Trotwood's men swung up the saloon steps and went in. They came out a little later, crossed the street and walked toward another saloon.

She heard their voices through her open window.

“About time we was paid off.”

“Yeah, I'm dead for a spree. Where next, Peewee?”

“Oregon, I guess. Plenty gunwork over the mountains.”

They went out of her sight and she sat puzzling over what they had said. Trotwood was through here but she felt oddly about this payoff. It was strange to have another spend her money without consulting her. Still, as she always told herself, he was her father and he needed her help.

The night air was growing colder and she moved to the fireplace and laid sticks on the coals. Doing that gave her pain, somehow, and yet there was pleasure in that pain. Sunset had done that.

She sat back, watching the blaze fan to life, thinking far thoughts. What was it she had seen in that frontiersman? She had been with him for such a short time. And yet it seemed, in retrospect, that she had lived with him for months, even years.

Dwelling upon his image, her head sank further back against the chair. She dozed fitfully, waking at long intervals to put more wood upon the fire. And then a change in the tone of the street roused her.

Puma Pass, always noisy after dark, began to double its volume. Something was happening out there.

She got up and hurried to the window, throwing back the shutter to look out. Men were standing in small groups talking or hurrying down the street or up the street to get into other groups, talk and then hurry onward.

Presently two horsemen came riding through the yellow patches of light from the east. No. One horseman. The other mount had something dark dangling from either side of the saddle.

She stepped back with an involuntary gasp as the mustangs walked slowly past. Simpson's body was lashed over his saddle.

The horseman, one of Trotwood's riders, pulled up before the Palace Saloon. In an instant the collected crowd opened on either side of the doors and Trotwood's tall black silhouette stood on the porch against the light.

The crowd was still.

“It's Simpson,” said the rider.

Trotwood took one step down and stopped. “Who killed him?”

“He was headin' out of town,” said the rider, “and I met up with him and offered to go along. We went about half a mile when a feller rode out in front of us and stopped. Simpson told him to get out of the way but he wouldn't budge. We recognized him both at the same time and Simpson drawed. But he wasn't fast enough. Sunset Maloney drilled him twice before he hit ground.”

“What were you doing?” said Trotwood acidly.

“What
could
I do?” protested the rider.

“Did Maloney examine the body?”

“Sure. He took a letter out of Simpson's pocket.”

“And you let him get away with it?”

“What could
I
do?”

Trotwood stepped down beside the horse and gruesome burden. He ran his hands into Simpson's pockets and brought them forth empty. He walked back up the steps and turned at the top.

“Somebody get a shovel and bury him.”

He went on inside the saloon.

Betsy closed the shutters and turned to the fire which seemed cold and gray. She sat down and stared long at the dying embers, trying not to think.

The street noises faded as the excitement decreased and were again normal. She did not hear them. She heard nothing.

But suddenly she looked up and there was Sunset standing beside her chair, looking at her.

She was startled but she showed none of it. Her poise was her mother's, too great to be shaken easily.

“You came back,” she said.

“I had to come back,” replied Sunset.

He relaxed a little and sat on his heels before the fire, tossing sticks on the coals. She looked down on the broad expanse of his buckskin-covered back. She had thought she would challenge him for the murder of Simpson but she did not. She could think of only one thing. He cared enough to dare all this to come to her.

“I been having a hard time of it,” said Sunset in a soft drawl. “You sure messed things up, ma'am. Long as I could keep money out of his hands, I had him licked. But when I found out it was your money, I couldn't take it. So I been layin' off, waiting for my chance. I hate to have to come to you saying these things. I'd rather be saying things a whole lot easier to take.”

He was not looking at her. He was troubled. She wanted to reach out and touch the shoulder fringe of his shirt.

“You ain't packed up, ma'm.”

“Should I be?”

“Accordin' to the stars, it's close to midnight. I had to hurry for fear you'd be gone. But you don't seem to be leavin' with him.”

“With my father?”

“Yes. Have you … did you give him
all
your money?”

“Of course.”

“I see. You got any idea about what you'll do if he leaves you flat in Puma Pass?”

“Why should that be necessary? If he leaves, he'll take me with him.”

“Nothing can shake your faith in him?”

“He's my father.”

“God shore plays some funny tricks sometimes.” Sunset stirred the coals and the heated sticks blazed up, crackling, painting his strong profile with light.

“I had ideas, ma'am. I'm a presumin' cuss. I thought maybe something would happen to straighten this out. But nothin' has. He's got deeds to the right-of-way. He's bought out everybody at a shameful price and killed them that wouldn't sell.…”

“Please.”

He pivoted to look at her face. “I had ideas. I thought maybe you would think as much of me as I have of you. But I couldn't expect that. You wouldn't touch me. You've seen me kill men. You know what I am. And no amount of arguing could ever convince you otherwise. I'm not worthy to touch the hem of your skirt. But that's not sayin' I won't take the right to help you.”

In alarm she could not explain, she said, “What do you mean?”

He threw more sticks on the flames and they leaped eagerly upward to light the whole room. Sunset stood up. His spurs jingled and his cartridge belts creaked. His right-hand gun was on the level of her eyes.

She could feel the strength of him.

Sunset's voice was quiet. “I tried to tell you that he's Double-Deck Trotwood. You won't believe me. Right now, he's aimin' to walk out of Puma Pass and leave you helpless and broke. He ain't goin' to leave.”

“Sunset!”

“He can take care of himself. I tell you he's Double-Deck Trotwood, fast as a strikin' rattler with his shoulder gun. You needn't worry about the odds.”

She was on her feet, eyes wide as she tried to find ways to protest. But she was too much afraid of his strength, of the way he stood there.

Sunset walked to the door. “I'm sorry it had to end this way, ma'am. I wanted it otherwise. But it's my last card.”

“Sunset!”

He was gone.