Last Train to Bannock [Clayburn 02] (3 page)

    Clayburn didn't think much of their chances. They wouldn't be able to start tracking the redhead till dawn. He wouldn't even have to concentrate on losing his trail so he couldn't be followed. With that much head start, and two horses for speed, he could get beyond the sheriffs jurisdiction before the posse got anywhere near him. If he wanted to do it that way. He'd been heading northwest the last Clayburn had seen of him. That way lay Indian territory and land that still had no law. All he had to do was keep going.

    While Marshal Kavanaugh went off to talk to Farnell's partner, one of his deputies took Clayburn and the stage driver to the jailhouse office. They looked at the pictures on a stack of wanted posters that had come in from all over the southwest during the past couple of years.

    They finished going through the stack, without spotting any picture or description that fitted the red-haired killer, by the time Marshal Kavanaugh returned. He was a big, raw-boned man with a florid face dominated by the kind of eyes to be expected in a man who'd tamed four hell-towns in succession over the past ten years.

    "Any luck?" he asked in a friendly, businesslike voice that didn't go with his eyes.

    His deputy shook his head. "Cora Sorel have any notion who the redhead is?"

    "Nope. Nor who hired him. She says."

    "Somebody," Clayburn said quietly, "must have some ideas about it."

    Marshal Kavanaugh eyed him thoughtfully for a moment, sizing him up. "Sure, people've got suspicions. Lots of 'em, all going in different directions and not worth a damn. I got a couple myself. Both of which are probably wrong."

    "I'd like to hear them, anyway."

    The marshal shook his head. "Suspicions aren't proof. Making accusing statements without proofs against the law."

    The stage driver spoke up. "Can I go now, marshal? I ain't needed a drink so bad in a long time."

    Marshal Kavanaugh nodded. The driver unbuckled his gunbelt and left it on the desk. As he hurried out, the marshal turned to Clayburn.

    "I'll take yours, too. Only lawmen are allowed to carry weapons in Parrish."

    "You must have a real peaceful town."

    Kavanaugh grunted. "Ain't had a quiet night in Parrish since I came here. Men got a right to let off steam, long as they do it in the right part of town. I don't care what they do to each other with their fists, boots or anything else they can get hold of-long as it doesn't start a riot or break up too much property. But weapons mean killing. And killing usually means the city has to pay for burial. Taxpayers don't like that."

    Clayburn took off his gun belt, put it with his carbine on the marshal's desk.

    Kavanaugh went on eying him. "The rule includes concealed knives, Clayburn."

    His tone was deliberately quiet and not intended to give offense. His past ten years testified to his readiness to stand up against all kinds of men. But it also testified to his ability to judge men. He'd already decided that Clayburn was not the kind of man he'd care to tangle with, unless forced to it.

    "Those men that were after Farnell thought they'd disarmed you," he went on quietly. "But you came up with a knife from someplace."

    "I hope," Clayburn said just as quietly, "that you're this careful about everybody that comes into your city."

    Marshal Kavanaugh nodded. "I got a collection of derringers and knives in that closet to prove it. Nobody fancies thirty days in the quarry digging rock for the new town hall. And that's the penalty for carrying any concealed weapon inside city limits. Penalty for using one is hanging."

    "Hung many?"

    "Some. None lately, though."

    A suggestion of a smile touched the corners of Clayburn's mouth. He pulled up the left sleeve of his frock coat, unbuttoned and rolled up his shirt sleeve.

    The marshal looked at the knife strapped in its sheath to the inside of Clayburn's forearm, hilt toward his wrist, "So that's where you had it."

    Clayburn unstrapped the knife and put it down beside his holstered Colt. "I may be back for the guns. If I find somebody that'll pay me enough for them to last me through a few hands of poker. That redhead just about cleaned me out."

    "You want to eat meanwhile," Marshal Kavanaugh said, "you can get a meal at Henry's Diner, around the corner. Tell 'em I said to put it on my bill. I figure you earned it, out there at the stage station."

    "Thanks. Where can I find Cora Sorel?"

    "Princess Hotel. Up the street." Marshal Kavanaugh indicated the direction with his thumb. He asked no questions about why Clayburn wanted to know. But his eyes were thoughtful again as they followed him out of the jail-house and up the street.

    The Princess Hotel was the best in prosperous Parrish, and its carpeted lobby showed it. Learning that Cora Sorel had just gone into the hotel dining room, Clayburn went in and spotted her alone at one of the corner tables, studying the menu.

    She was exactly as he remembered her. Though he'd only seen her once before, and that time briefly, Cora Sorel was not a woman a man could forget easily. She was dark-haired, with bold, beautiful lips and a knowing, sensuous kind of loveliness. There was slim strength in the assured way in which she held herself and moved. Only her dress was different from the last time he'd seen her. It looked like a French import. It was cut modestly enough, but the material, its darkness matching her hair, clung softly to her curves, flaunting them. She had a figure that didn't need much help at flaunting itself.

    Cora Sorel looked up as he approached her table. Lustrous dark eyes took his measure, found him interesting.

    Clayburn took off his black hat, "Good evening, Miss Sorel. My name's Clayburn. I was around when your partner got himself killed."

    Her interest in him became more definite. "The marshal told me about you. That was quite a thing you did. Won't you join me for dinner?"

    "I'm broke."

    "My treat, then. Or would a woman buying you a meal offend your manliness?"

    "I don't know about my manliness, but my stomach wouldn't mind at all."

    As he seated himself across the table from her, a waiter came over. Cora Sorel ordered and passed the menu to Clayburn. She studied him as he ordered. When the waiter was gone she said, "Marshal Kavanaugh thinks you're a gambler. Are you?"

    He nodded. "And how have the cards been running for
you
, lately?"

    She leaned back a little in her chair, surprised. "You know me from some place?"

    "I saw you once a couple of years back in a gambling house in San Francisco. Bucking the biggest poker game in the place." He smiled at her. "As I recall, you were winning pretty steadily."

    Her beautifully curved lips quirked. "I usually manage to win more than I lose."

    "Uh-huh. A good-looking woman is a natural draw for the big-money suckers."

    She smiled at him more fully. "So we're both in the same line of business. How nice."

    "I heard you'd changed your line. Gone into freighting."

    "That's strictly a one-time thing. Harry Farnell made me a proposition too good to pass up." Her face clouded as she named her dead partner. "I've got almost every cent I've saved invested in a shipment coming in by train from St. Louis tomorrow. That was our deal. My money and Farnell's wagons, mule-teams and knowhow. Equal shares in the profits."

    "How does the deal stand with Farnell dead?" Clayburn asked softly.

    "The same. Except that it's going to be harder without him."

    "And the profits?"

    She stiffened just a bit. "I was to get half. That hasn't changed. Only now Farnell's share will be going to his family."

    Clayburn was silent, his greenish eyes on her face.

    She met his gaze directly. "That's one thing I never cheat on, Clayburn. I always pay what I owe."

    The waiter brought their food. Over the meal she told Clayburn about how she'd met Harry Farnell in St. Louis. He'd gone there to try buying a big shipment on credit, without success. A mutual acquaintance, a big cattle buyer who didn't seem to mind having lost a considerable amount to her over the poker table, introduced them. Farnell loosened up with her more than he might have with a man. He'd told her of the plan he had for recouping his business losses, if he could only get his hands on a big shipment of supplies.

    Farnell had just come from Bannock, up in the mountains some fifteen days riding northwest of Parrish. Shortly before he'd left there'd been a big gold strike there. Miners were pouring into Bannock by the hundreds-and the place was very short of supplies. It was already beginning to snow up there. In another few weeks, more or less, Bannock would be snowed in and it would no longer be possible to get freight wagons through to it.

    Anybody getting there with supplies before the big snows blocked the way would make a fortune. Every item brought in would bring twenty times its worth-in gold. With that kind of payoff as a reward, Farnell hadn't had to do much persuading to get Cora Sorel to sink her money into the venture as his partner. Outside of his cash shortage, he apparently had no troubles with anyone.

    "He had trouble, ail right," Clayburn said. "Trouble worth killing over."

    "Not that he told me about."

    "He could have been afraid to. Afraid you'd pull out of your deal with him."

    "If so, he misjudged me. I've played in some risky games before. For smaller profits. I'd have stuck, no matter what."

    Clayburn guessed that she would have. There was steel in her, under that soft, provocative exterior.

    "Without Farnell, who're you planning to have take your freight wagons through to Bannock for you?"

    "I'm taking them through myself. With men I'll hire to follow my orders."

    "That's a rough trail for a woman," Clayburn told her. "First a stretch of desert. Then Bad Lands that won't be any picnic either; I've been up that way. And those mountains are usually crawling with Apache war parties."

    "I know all about that. I'm going. Just as I intended to from the start."

    "Even when Farnell was alive to take the wagons up?"

    "That's right. Farnell seemed a decent enough sort. But I don't trust anyone that much. Those supplies are going to trade for an awful lot of gold. I intend to be there to keep count when the gold is paid over."

    They were finishing the meal when a man entered the dining room, glanced around, and then walked straight toward their table. He was a stocky, well-dressed, cold-eyed man in his early forties, with thinning gray hair and a strong-featured, handsome face. Clayburn remembered seeing him among the first of the crowd that had gathered when the stage pulled into Parrish.

    Behind him and a little to either side trailed two other men, not so well dressed. Clayburn had never seen either before, but he knew the look and the manner. They were acting as bodyguards. One was a massively built bruiser with huge hands and a face that looked as if it had been scrambled by several blows from a sledgehammer sometime in his past. The other was a slim, surly-faced kid who kept irritably brushing the fingertips of his right hand over his thigh as he moved, missing the feel of the gun he'd ordinarily be packing there.

    The well-dressed man in the lead stopped at their table, his cold eyes flicking over Clayburn to settle on Cora Sorel. "Miss Sorel, I haven't had the pleasure of being introduced to you, so may I introduce myself? My name's Adler. George Adler."

    Watching Cora Sorel's lack of expression as she sized Adler up, Clayburn saw part of the reason for her success as a gambler.

    "How do you know who I am?" she asked, nothing in her voice but natural curiosity.

    "You were pointed out to me earlier today."

    "Pointed out?" Her eyebrows arched just a bit. "For what reason?"

    "A pretty woman interests everyone." He smiled at her, but nothing warmed in the depths of his eyes. "I have a business offer for you," he went on smoothly. "May I sit down?"

    "Of course. Business offers are something I'm always willing to listen to."

    Adler took one of the other chairs, giving his full attention to her. But his bodyguards, standing and watching, kept their eyes on Clayburn.

    "I was sorry to hear about the death of your partner," Adler told Cora Sorel. "I knew Harry Farnell slightly. Last met him up in Bannock, just before he left for St. Louis. As a matter of fact, it seems that both of us got the same idea after the gold strike. The idea of taking supplies into Bannock before the snows close the way. I also have a shipment coming in on the train tomorrow afternoon, this being the closest point on the railroad to Bannock. And I have wagons ready to carry the stuff."

    Adler paused and hunched forward a little on his chair, his face earnest. "Miss Sorel, with Farnell dead and unable to take your wagons to Bannock, you're stuck with all those supplies you paid for. My offer is this: I'm prepared to take those supplies from you. I'll pay what you put out for them-plus a tidy profit."

    Clayburn leaned back in his chair, forcing his shoulders to relax against the tension suddenly building up in him.

    Cora Sorel asked thinly, "Parrish-type profit, Mr. Adler? Or Bannock-sized profit?"

    Adler fashioned another smile for her. "We're in Parrish. It's right here I'd be buying. I'll pay you what the goods are worth here, and enough extra to make it worth while selling to me rather than any of the general stores in town."

    Cora Sorel smiled back at Adler. "Those supplies will be worth twenty times that much in Bannock."

    Adler moved his hand impatiently as though brushing aside her statement. "My offer is your only way out, financially. Unless you plan to hire some man to take Farnell's place in getting your freight to Bannock. And I advise you strongly against trusting anyone that far, with so much temptation."