The Collected Short Stories of Louis L'Amour, Volume 2 (40 page)

“Are you crazy?” Karns protested. “What's this nonsense about Valverde?”

Chick faced Karns across the table, his left side toward him. Karns still held his gun in his hand, and the range was point-blank.

“You framed DeGrasse. You planted that money bag, expectin' me to find it. You had him register that brand, knowing it would be additional evidence, and all the while you were plannin' to gyp the bank of their money.

“You owed the bank money and you owed Ramey money, so you stole the fifteen thousand and murdered Ramey. The bank could go ahead an' foreclose, because you had already rustled your own stock and moved it to the Spectacle, on the Canadian.

“You intended me to find that Mark had registered the Spectacle, but you'd already registered it yourself, in Tascosa. I checked both places by telegraph.

“I still didn't have you pegged until I recalled a horseshoe I'd seen at the blacksmith shop. Then this whole rotten deal cleared up. It was the same deal you tried to work six years ago in Dimmit County. That went sour on you, so when you pulled out, you robbed the Valverde Bank and killed Tomkins.”

Lee Karns held his gun on Bowdrie. “I killed one Ranger, and I can kill another!” he shouted.

Bowdrie had never holstered his own gun, holding it at his side away from Karns. As Karns spoke, Bowdrie lunged hard against the table, throwing Karns off balance. As Karns caught himself and straightened up, gun lifting, Chick Bowdrie shot him.

Karns stood still against the wall, staring at him. “I had it made,” he said. “I was winning.”

“You never had a chance, Karns,” Bowdrie said. “You hurt too many people, an' you left too many tracks.”

Karns slid slowly down the wall, leaving a bloody streak behind him.

Bowdrie ejected a shell, then reloaded the chamber. He dropped the pistol into its holster.

Karen came running into the room. “Are you all right, Chick? Are you hurt?”

“I'm all right. Let's get out of here!”

Seated in the sunlight in front of the hotel, Bowdrie slowly let the tension ease from his muscles. He closed his eyes for a minute.

“You've got some money comin',” he said to Karen. “We'll sell those cattle an' you'll get what you have comin'. Your pa was a good man.”

He opened his eyes and leaned forward, resting his forearms on his knees. “I'd move away from here, if I were you,” he suggested. “Go to San Antone or somewhere. This country is hard on women.”

“I thought I'd buy some cattle and start ranching on my own. If I could—”

“Get Al Conway to help. He's rustled a few head, but he's really an honest man, and he wouldn't cheat a woman. Al could do it.

“Me,” he added, “I never learned to live with folks. Most youngsters learn to live with people by playin' with other youngsters. I never had any of that. I never really belonged anywhere. I was a stranger among the Comanches an' a stranger among my own people when I got back. I never belonged anywhere. I'm like that no-account horse of mine.

“Look at him. He's got him a mean, contrary disposition, he spends his time lazin' around at that hitch rail, just layin' for a chance to kick the daylights out of you.

“He'll bite, too, given the chance. Just look at him! He's ugly as sin! Ugly inside an' out, but you know something? He can outrun a jackrabbit, and once started, he'll go all day an' all night.

“He can get fat on grass burs an' prickly pear, an' some other cowhand's saddle is frosted cake to him. He'd climb a tree if he wanted to or if you aimed him at it, and he could swim the Pacific if he was of a mind to. He doesn't like anybody, but he's game, an' nothin' this side of hell could whip him. He's my kind of horse.”

Bowdrie got to his feet. “That Conway, ma'am? He's a good man. He'll build you a good ranch, given time, an' a nice girl like you could gentle him down to quite a man.”

Later, with a few dusty miles behind him, Bowdrie commented, “That there's a fine girl. Horse, you reckon you an' me will ever settle down?”

The hammerheaded roan blew his disgust through his nostrils and pricked his ears. He, too, was looking toward the horizon.

Case Closed—No Prisoners

On the third day after the robbery, Sheriff Walt Borrow gave up and wired Austin. On the fifth day, late in the afternoon, a rider swung down at the hitch-rail in front of the saloon. Leaving the roan standing three-legged at the rail, he passed the saloon and went into the sheriff's office next door.

The rider was a young man, lean, and broad in the shoulders. Watchers glimpsed a hard brown face, wide at the cheekbones, a firm straight mouth, and a strong jaw. But it was the rider's eyes that stopped those who saw him face-on. They were intensely black, their gaze level and measuring. There was something about his eyes that made men uneasy, with a tendency to look quickly away.

“Looks like an Indian,” Bishop commented. “Reminds me of Victorio, the Apache. I seen him once.”

“I know him,” Hardy Young said. “By sight, anyway. He's a Ranger from the Guadalupes.”

Within the hour everybody within a radius of five miles knew that Ranger Chick Bowdrie was in town. What they did not know was that the saddle tramp who loafed in the Longhorn Saloon was Rip Coker, also a Texas Ranger.

Coker had drifted into town the day before, a grim, blond young man looking down-at-heel and broke. He let it be known that he was down to his last few dollars and ready for anything. With his horse for a stake he sat in a poker game and won enough for eating money. Most of the time he was just around, drinking a beer now and again and keeping his eyes and ears open.

The story of the robbery was being told around. Outlaws had hit the Bank of Kimble just before daylight to the tune of forty thousand dollars, and as Hardy Young commented to John Bishop, “That's a nice tune!”

Awakening as they did each morning, the townspeople had no idea what had taken place until Mary Phillips stopped Sheriff Borrow as he passed the Phillips home en route to breakfast and asked him to look for Josh.

“Ain't he to home, ma'am?” Borrow was mildly surprised. He had no idea that bankers got up so early.

“Somebody came to the door just before daylight and Josh answered it. He called back to me that he would be back in a minute, then he stepped out and I heard the door close. I dropped off to sleep and when I awakened he was still gone. That isn't like him.”

Walt Borrow was undisturbed until he saw the bank's door ajar. Pushing it wider, he found Josh Phillips lying in a welter of gore, and the banker just managed to gasp out a few words before he died.

“Forced me!” he gasped, and lifted a hand horribly blackened by fire. “Threatened to burn … Mary, too!”

A question from Borrow elicited a few more words.

“Strangers! A … hawk …” His voice broke and he struggled for words. “Red!”

The town was enraged, but the rage was tempered by wonder, for there were no tracks, and nobody seemed to have seen anything. The outlaws had come and gone unseen, unheard. Only the body of Josh Phillips, the safe they forced him to open, and the forty thousand missing dollars proved their visit.

Stabling his horse in the livery stable an hour after his arrival, Bowdrie seemed not to notice the saddle tramp currying his horse in the next stall.

“Forty thousand was the most money the bank had in four months.” Coker spoke softly. “How does that sound?”

“Like somebody was tipped off,” Bowdrie agreed. “Keep your ears open.”

John Bishop intercepted Bowdrie as he was entering the hotel with his saddlebags. Bishop was a tall young man with a crisp dark beard and an attractive smile.

“I led the posse that hunted for tracks,” he said. “I'd be glad to help in any way.”

“You found nothing?”

Bishop had a fine-featured but strong face. He looked like a man who knew what he wanted and how to get it. “Nothing I could swear to. There was some wind that night, and blown sand would make the tracks look older.”

Bowdrie thanked him and went into the hotel. He wore a black flat-crowned, flat-brimmed hat, a black silk neckerchief, gray wool shirt, and black broadcloth trousers over hand-tooled boots with California spurs. His two guns were carried low and tied down, a style rarely seen. His eyes, as they slanted across the street, missed nothing.

Leaving his saddlebags in his room on the second floor, he returned to the lobby and passed through the connecting door into the restaurant adjoining. Only two tables were occupied, the nearest one by a man wearing a black suit, his hair plastered down on a round skull and parted carefully. His face was brick-red, his eyes a hard blue.

The girl who waited on Chick had red hair and a wide, friendly smile. She put down a cup of coffee in front of him.

“I always bring coffee to a rider,” she said. “My pop taught me that.”

“He must have been a wise man as well as an Irishman,” Bowdrie said. “May I ask your name?”

“Ellen. And you are right about the Irish. My other name is Collins. My father was a sergeant in the cavalry.”

A shadow loomed over the table. The big man in the black suit stood there, a napkin tucked under his chin, a cup of coffee in his hand.

“Howdy, suh! Mind if I join you?” Without waiting for a reply, he seated himself. “Name's Hardy Young. Cattle buyer. Ain't so young as I used to be, but just as hardy!”

He laughed loudly, then leaned over and whispered hoarsely, rolling his eyes from side to side as if to see who might be listening.

“Heard you was in town, suh! Frightful thing! Frightful! Always aim to help the law, that's what I say! Now, if there's anything you want looked into, you just ask Hardy Young! I know ever'body hereabouts!”

Bowdrie measured him for a cool half-minute before replying, and the hard blue eyes became uneasy. Hastily the man gulped a swallow of coffee.

“Thanks,” Bowdrie replied. “This job will not take long.”

Young stared, momentarily taken aback.

“None of them are very complicated,” Bowdrie replied. “The ones planned so carefully are often the easiest. This case doesn't appear to be as difficult as many we get.”

Hardy Young mopped his mustache with the back of his hand and sucked his teeth noisily. The blue eyes were round and astonished.

“That sounds like a Ranger!” he said. “It surely does!”

Bowdrie was irritated. He was nowhere near as confident as he sounded, but the man angered him. Yet he knew that once a job was complete, thieves were always somewhat worried. Had they been seen, after all? Had they forgotten some vital thing? In a robbery so carefully planned, the planner might have overlooked something. Hardy Young was obviously a busybody and a talkative man. If he repeated what Bowdrie had said, it might lead the thieves into some impulsive act.

If they acted suddenly, they might betray themselves, and without doubt they had a spy in the town. Somebody had informed them of the amount of money in the bank.

“Then you figure to close this case right up?”

Bowdrie shrugged. “No great rush. This is a nice little town and as soon as I report back to Austin they'll give me another job, maybe tougher than this.

“This case won't be tough. Their boss forgot one important item, and it will hang them all.”

“
Hang
them?” Young looked startled.

“Phillips was killed, wasn't he? We'll hang them all—except,” he added, “the man who gives us information. He'll get off easy.”

Young clutched his knife and fork desperately. The food he had ordered brought to Bowdrie's table lay untouched before him.

He leaned forward. “There is such a man, then? You already know such a man?”

Purposely Bowdrie hesitated. “If there isn't,” he said, “there will be. There's always one man who wants to dodge the noose.”

After Young had left the table, Bowdrie lingered over his coffee. Something about the man disturbed him. At first he had believed him an irritating busybody; now he was not so sure.

Despite his comments to Young, Bowdrie had literally nothing upon which to work. Bishop had found no tracks, but as suggested, the wind might have wiped them out. Phillips's last words seem to imply the outlaws were strangers, and then there were his incomprehensible words about a “hawk … red.”

The thieves had known when to strike and their clean escape seemed to indicate that they had covered the distance to their hideout under cover of darkness.

There seemed no answer to that, unless … It came to him with shocking suddenness. Unless they never left town at all!

Strangers, Phillips had said, and in a town the size of Kimble the banker would know everyone, and Sheriff Borrow had told him there were no strangers in town but the saddle tramp called Rip who had arrived after the robbery.

Ellen returned to his table with the coffeepot and sat down opposite him. “You should be careful,” she warned. “Men who would rob a bank and torture a man as they did Mr. Phillips would stop at nothing.”

“Thanks.” He glanced at her thoughtfully. “You must see everything and hear everything in here. Have there been any strangers in town? They all come here to eat, don't they?”

“No, not all. But there was a man … I used to see him around San Antone when I was a little girl. His name was Latham, I think. He was here, but I saw him only once.”

“What became of him? Did he have a horse?”

“I don't think so. He walked along the street, then he stopped outside and smoked a cigarette. After that he went around the corner and down the alley. I did not see him again.”

Bowdrie's dark features revealed nothing, but his heart was pounding. This might be the first break.

Latham, the man she had seen, could have been Jack Latham, one of the Decker gang of outlaws.

Standing in front of the restaurant, he would have had a good chance to study the bank. Yet he had been on foot and he did not disappear in the direction of the livery stable or the town corral. Behind the double row of business buildings that faced Main Street there were only dwellings. If Latham had turned down an alley it could only have been to go to one of them.

Jack Latham was on the Fugitives List as a cattle rustler, a horse thief and killer. He was known to have worked with Comanche George Cobb and Pony Decker.

Ellen was right, of course. Such men would stop at nothing. They were utterly ruthless, dangerous men. Yet this robbery was unlike them. Behind this one was a different kind of intelligence, someone with new techniques, a new approach.

He talked for a while to Ellen, simply the casual conversation of the town, the restaurant, the people. He learned nothing new but did acquire some knowledge of the community, its thinking, and its ways.

Returning to his room, Chick dropped on the edge of the bed and pulled off his boots. Then he sat very still, thinking.

And in the stillness of the unlit room he heard a movement.

His eyes went left, then right. Nothing. The hair prickled on his scalp and then he felt rather than heard a stealthy movement.

He sprang from the bed and turned swiftly, gun in hand. The rising moon illumined the room, but he could see nothing. It was empty, ghostly in the moonlight.

Once more he glanced around the room; then very cautiously he lighted a lamp. He had started to move away when he detected a faint movement among the blankets on the bed. Gun in hand, he reached with careful fingers and jerked the blanket back.

There, in a tight, deadly S, lay a sidewinder, one of the deadliest of desert rattlesnakes, a snake that does not coil but simply draws back its head and strikes repeatedly.

The snake's gaze was steady, unblinking. Man and reptile watched each other with deadly intensity. The room was on the second floor and the chance that such a snake had come there of its own choice was next to impossible.

Moving carefully, Bowdrie got a broom left standing in a corner, and a broken bed slat standing beside it. Using them as pincers, he lifted the snake and dropped it from the window. He heard the soft
plop
when it hit the ground.

After a careful examination of the room he undressed, got into bed, and went to sleep. He slept soundly and comfortably.

The sun was chinning itself on the eastern mountains when he awakened. His door was opening softly, stealthily. A big, carefully combed head was thrust into the room. Hardy Young found himself staring into the business end of a Colt.

“Stopped by t'see if you was havin' breakfast! I'm a-treatin', such! I was tryin' to be careful so's if you was still asleep I'd not wake you up.”

The blue eyes roamed uneasily over the room. Chick sat up and reached for his pants with his left hand. “Mighty kind of you.” He invited, “Come in an' set. I'll get dressed.”

Young was manifestly uneasy and kept looking around as Chick dressed. “Sit down on the bed,” Bowdrie suggested. “It's more comfortable.”

He slung on his gunbelts and dropped the free gun into its holster. As he did so, he brushed lightly against Young, enough to make him stagger and drop to the bed.

His face gray, Young bounded to his feet as if stabbed.

Bowdrie smiled pleasantly. “What's the matter, Hardy? Scared of something? You needn't be. I threw it out of the window.”

“Threw what out?” Young blustered. “I got no idea what you're talkin' about.”

The man's guilt was manifest and Bowdrie gripped the front of his stiff collar and twisted hard. His fingers were inside the collar and as his hand turned, his fist pressed against Young's Adam's apple. He shoved Young hard against the wall, still twisting.

The man's eyes bulged, he gasped for breath, and his face began to turn blue. Bowdrie slowly relaxed his grip, letting Young catch his breath. Then with his free hand he slapped Young across the face.

“Who's in this with you, Young? Talk, or I'll skin you alive!”

Bowdrie relaxed his grip a bit more. Gasping hoarsely, the big man said, “I don't know what you're talkin' about! Honest, I don't!”