Slip Gun (16 page)

‘
Well?’
Lily asked, with a challenging, defiant grin.

Although not yet completed, the picture on
the board had sufficient detail for Wil, Smith and the ranchers to
know what it would depict. A very obvious bull stood proudly in the
centre of a group of equally obvious cows. Every external
anatomical feature had been marked in prominently.

‘
Good
God!’ Wil gasped. ‘You can’t mean to put that thing up?’

‘
Why
not?’ the blonde demanded. ‘That sure is one happy bull, don’t you
reckon, Poona?’

‘
Possibly,’ the Englishman answered and his voice had lost
all its earlier cordiality.

‘
I
can’t allow it to be put up!’ Wil stated.

‘
You
can’t?’ Lily challenged.

‘
As
mayor of Widow’s Creek, I have a responsibility to the
town—’

‘
Just
how do you reckon to stop me putting it up?’ the blonde
interrupted.

‘
Any
way I have to,’ Wil warned.

‘
Such
as?’ Lily demanded.

There was a savage,
brittle air of
tension in the room. The two beautiful women were eyeing each other
like alley-cats meeting on a fence-top. If Wil had been another
saloon-worker, Smith would have expected claws to be raking at
flesh. As it was, the lady-banker stood with clenched fists and
bust heaving. Facing her, Lily crooked long-nailed fingers and
seemed to be crouching ready to meet any kind of attack her enemy
chose to launch.

‘
We’ve
that meeting soon, Wil,’ Woodstole remarked quietly. ‘It wouldn’t
do for us to keep Mr. Bilak waiting.’

The soft-spoken words sounded loud and broke
the tension. Letting out her held-back breath in a long sigh, Wil
opened her hands.

‘
You’re
right, Poona,’ she said, hardly louder than a whisper. ‘Shall we
go, gentlemen?’

‘
How
about my new sign?’ Lily insisted. ‘What do you think to it,
Poona?’

‘
We’ll
go, Wil,’ the Englishman said and turned on his heel.

Lily stared at the departing ranchers with
more than a hint of consternation, as if realizing that she had
gone too far.

Watching her, Smith could see the worry on
her face and thought that she might relent. Instead, she braced
back her shoulders and tightened her lips in lines of grim
determination.

‘
Don’t
put it up, Shivers!’ Wil snapped, swinging away from the blonde and
leaving the room.

‘
Don’t
hell!’ Lily hissed and lunged forward with fingers curved like
talons ready to drive into flesh.

‘
Hold
it!’ Smith snapped, shooting out his left hand to catch the blonde
by her right bicep and bringing her to a halt.

‘
Take
your hand off me!’ Lily spat.

‘
Not
until you show sense,’ the Texan replied and glared at the painter.
‘If you want to stay healthy, stand right where you
are.’

Although he had been tensing as
if to leap to the blonde
’s rescue, the artist refrained from doing so. He
could see the anger on Smith’s face and read it in the Texan’s
voice. That was the man who had killed another human being across
the width of the barroom and in an incredibly swift movement. There
had been no hesitation in how Smith had acted then and the man
sensed there would be none if he disobeyed the grim
command.

‘
I
thought we were friends, Smith!’ Lily said bitterly, standing
still.

‘
So did
I,’ the Texan answered. ‘Same’s I thought you were a smart woman up
until we come in here.’ He released his hold. ‘Do you reckon even
your friends’d stand for you jumping her over that blasted sign?
They’d have you closed up afore sundown.’

‘
You’d
close me down,’ Lily corrected.

‘
If I
was told and figured I’d good cause,’ Smith agreed. ‘Which I reckon
I’d have if you put it up.’

‘
I hate
Wil Jeffreys’ guts!’

‘
That
figures. And she doesn’t cotton none to you either, I’d say. Only
this’s not just between you and her any more, Lily. Put up that
sign and you’ll be rubbing the whole town’s face in the
dirt.’

‘
It’s a
chance I’m game to take!’

‘
Then
you’ve not got the good sense you’d made me figure you for
having.’

‘
I’m putting that sign up, Wax!’
Lily declared grimly. ‘And there’s only one person who can stop
me.’

‘
Who’d
that be?’ the Texan asked.

‘
Wil
Jeffreys,’ Lily replied, glancing at the open door. ‘You tell her
from me that she’ll have to come and beg me not to put it
up.’

On leaving
the backroom, Smith found Wil
and the marshal standing close to the open door. Apparently Caster
had just joined the mayor, but Wil’s face showed that she had
overheard the conversation—particularly Lily’s conditions for not
putting up the sign. However, Wil made no mention of it, but stood
stiffly almost at attention, with tight lips and angry eyes, as
Caster addressed the Texan.

‘
They’d
about sixty dollars a-piece on them, Wax. Nothing else.’

‘
Their
maw and pappy run a cap-and-ball outfit down near Tucson,’ Smith
replied. ‘Pima County sheriff’ll know it and can take Tod ’n’
Arnie’s leavings to them. Their horses and gear’ll sell for
something and, likely, their folks could use the money. Did you
look in their saddles?’

‘
I
will, when I find them,’ Caster promised.

‘
Aren’t
they at the hitching rail ?’

‘
Nope.
Them three belong to the Rocking V boys over by the chuck-a-luck
table.’

‘
Are
they local hands?’ Smith inquired, glancing at the men indicated by
the marshal.

‘
Come
from over on the Antelopes,’ Caster answered. ‘Not what you’d call
next-door neighbors.’

Not, Smith admitted to himself,
that the proximity of the trio
’s ranch would prove anything. It was unlikely
that Wood-stole and Hopkirk could identify every horse in their
immediate neighbors’
remudas,
especially when the animals had been standing with
their right, unbranded, sides showing as the ranchers walked by.
The three cowhands wore Texas-style clothing
and
so
were almost certain to
use
double-girthed rigs.

So Hopkirk and his partner had
duplicated Smith
’s mistake in the matter of who owned the
horses.

‘
The
meeting, Mr. Smith!’ Wil prompted, glancing at the door of the
backroom in a pointed manner.

Suddenly the Texan realized that
the black-haired beauty was straining every nerve and
fiber to hold her
temper in control. Wil had the expression of a woman who had all
but reached the end of her tether. Thinking back to comments made
the previous night, he decided that the new sign was only the
latest of a series of actions by Lily aimed at goading and
humiliating Wil. If the blonde should come out of the room, Wil
might not be able to restrain her anger. Then there would be an
unpleasant, ugly scene, if nothing worse.

‘
Sure,
Miss Jeffreys,’ Smith drawled. ‘We’d best get to it. I’ll see you
at one, Bert.’

That
’ll give me time to go around and
pick up those jaspers’ horses, if I can find them,’ Caster replied.
Their sidekick’ll be long gone by now, I’d say.’

‘
It’s
not likely he’d hang around,’ Smith agreed. ‘I’ll see you,
then.’

While crossing to the batwing
doors, Smith hoped that he would be able to discover the cause of
the hatred existing between Wil and Lily. If he knew that, he could
estimate how much danger or difficulty it posed to him in his work
as temporary marshal. There was no direct evidence to connect the
blonde with Hardy, or the Sheppey brothers. Even the latter being
in the saloon without horses close by could have an innocent
explanation. Smith decided that he must have a long and
confidential talk with his employer before sundown. Until then, he
would walk warily
—especially in Lily’s presence.

The ranchers were waiting on the sidewalk
when Wil and Smith emerged from the saloon. That ended his hopes of
satisfying his curiosity straight away. None of them spoke as they
walked away from the Happy Bull and Smith reconciled himself to
waiting for a more opportune moment to talk privately with the
mayor.

The silence continued as they entered a
large square with a neatly laid-out garden in its centre. On each
side of the square stood civic buildings, or the homes of prominent
citizens.

Smith guessed that this was the centre of
the town, socially and administratively if not geographically.

Several farmers hovered in front
of the big, stone-built town hall, which also housed the court and
law enforcement offices, on the western side of the square. Among
the crowd, two men caught Smith
’s eye. Tall, slim, in their early twenties, they
dressed like their companions; but their sallow, hollow-cheeked
faces did not indicate long hours spent working in the open.
Smoking what looked like hand-rolled cigarettes, they kept their
gaze on Wil’s party and twisted their loose lips in mocking
sneers.

Followed by the farmer who had travelled on
the stagecoach with Smith, a big bearded man left the crowd.

‘
Good
morning, Mr. Bilak,’ Wil greeted.

‘
Miss
Jeffreys,’ the big man replied, without a trace of an accent.
This’s Cyrus Cushman. I said he would be coming to the
meeting.’

‘
I’m
pleased to meet you, Mr. Cushman,’ Wil stated, shaking hands.
‘Shall we go inside, gentlemen?’

‘
See
you brought friends along, Bilak,’ Hopkirk growled as they entered
the building.

‘
The
Patrons of Husbandry is a democratic organization,’ Cushman
answered, instead of the Grange’s local representative. ‘Its
members are permitted to attend any meeting which may concern
them.’

Was it your idea to have them
come along?
’
Smith inquired as he, the ranchers and the Grange’s representatives
followed Wil into the building.

‘
They
came of their own free will,’ Cushman declared, eyeing the Texan
with open distrust and thinly veiled hostility. ‘But I don’t
understand your presence.’

‘
I
asked Mr. Smith to come,’ Wil told the man. ‘He is town marshal as
of today and I felt that his presence was necessary. Do
you
object, Mr.
Bilak?’

‘
Can’t
say I do, Wil,’ the burly man replied.

‘
I
thought this blasted meeting was supposed to be secret,’ Hopkirk
challenged. ‘We didn’t bring in any of our boys on account that it
was.’

Again Smith felt uneasy
stirrings inside him. If the meeting was supposed to be held in
secret, somebody had betrayed it to
the homesteaders. That same person might
be hoping to ruin any hope of peace between the ranchers and the
nesters. Did this desire tie in with the attempts on Smith’s life?
Whoever had learned about the meeting could also have gained
information concerning his coming and taken steps to stop him
arriving.

Smith studied Bilak as the party
entered a big room on the ground floor. There was nothing of the
newly-arrived immigrant about the burly farmer. If his lack of
accent and appearance were anything to go by, he had been many
years in the United States and might even have been born there.
Such a man would be aware of Smith
’s potential in the event of a range war
and might suspect that the Texan’s sympathies could rest with the
cattle industry.

The Grange, the Patrons of
Husbandry, was a very vocal organization devoted to protecting the
interests of farmers. Nor did it restrict itself to words. On
occasion, the Grange was said to have resorted to more violent
means when talking had failed to bring about the desired results.
If they had decided on direct action against the C Lazy P, the
local chapter of the Grange could have concluded that
Smith
’s
presence in Widow’s Creek would be detrimental to their plans.
Maybe Bilak had been behind Hardy, Moxley and Hayward. He could
even have marked his message with Poona Woodstole’s name in case
the affair went the wrong way, to throw suspicion on to his
enemy.

‘
I’ll
stand, if you don’t mind, ma’am,’ Smith drawled as Wil waved the
men to take seats around the long table in the centre of the
room.