Bounty Guns (4 page)

“That's right.” The sheriff hesitated, then added mildly, “Only don't dig, mister.”

Tip smiled faintly. “You know, I'm not a marshal, Sheriff, but I've run onto towns like this before—little towns cut off from the rest of the country. They think they're tough around here, a pack of hard-scrabble cowmen feudin' between themselves. But let a down-country hardcase drift in, a man a little handy with a gun, and that don't scare easy, and you'd be surprised at what big tracks he can make.”

Ball's eyes glinted coldly. “You're the hardcase, eh?”

“Well, I come from down-country,” Tip said gently. “Figure it out.”

“We'll see,” Ball said.

“You and a lot of other folks,” Tip murmured. He stepped out into the rain and headed upstreet, not feeling anger so much as contempt. Whose man was Ball—the Bollings' or the Shieldses'? And how was a man to get his teeth into this business, if a sheriff was afraid to talk? He passed the
Inquirer
office, glancing obliquely at its dusty window, and then halted suddenly, staring at the sign. He backtracked, after a moment's pause, and went inside.

A wooden railing separated the press shop from the editorial office, which consisted of a rickety desk, three chairs stacked with books and papers, and an overflowing wastebasket. A lamp was lighted over the job press, where a printer was turning out handbills. Beyond was the gloom of the press, and beyond it in the rear another lamp was lighted.

The man sitting at the front desk was a spare, dry man, and he looked over iron-rimmed spectacles at Tip, who tramped up to his desk, put both hands on the desk top, and said mildly, “I'd like some information.”

The seated man blinked a little and cleared his throat and said, “All right.”

“Where can I go to buy any information about the murder of Blackie Mayfell last spring?”

A subtle change came over the man's face. He said, “There's just two things I don't talk about in this town, mister. Just two names I don't print in my paper. One is Shields, and the other is Bolling.”

“I'm not asking about them,” Tip said.

“You are,” the man said, “only maybe you don't know it. There hasn't been anyone shot in the back in this country that didn't take sides. And he took either the Shields side or the Bolling.”

Tip lounged erect, his face impassive. “Can I put an ad in this paper?”

“That's what it's for. What kind of an ad?”

“An offer of a hundred dollars to anyone bringin' me information as to how Blackie Mayfell met his death.”

The editor leaned back in his chair. “I hate to rob you,” he said mildly. “Nobody will bite.”

“I'll take the chance if you'll print it.”

The editor pointed to the light in the back of the shop. “They'll take your ad back there. The paper is out this afternoon.”

Tip walked through the low gate, past the job press, past the type cases and the press, and came to an abrupt halt.

The girl reading proof at a low desk against the back wall was Lynn Mayfell. She looked up at his approach, momentary surprise on her face. Then she said quickly, in a low voice, “Remember my name is Stevens.”

Tip nodded.

“What do you want?” she asked.

“I want to put an ad in this week's paper. Get your pencil.”

She got a clean sheet of paper and poised her pencil over it, eyeing Tip inquiringly. She was very pretty, Tip noticed—lovely and angry.

“Head it ‘Reward,'” Tip said, and went on dictating. “‘The undersigned will pay one hundred dollars cash to anyone bringing me information that leads to the arrest and conviction of the man or men who killed Blackie Mayfell last spring.' Sign it ‘Tip Woodring.'”

The girl ceased writing and, still looking at what she had written, said, “I wouldn't do this,” in a low voice.

“I know you wouldn't,” Tip said stubbornly. “All I want is some information. Maybe you'd like to give me some?”

“I wouldn't,” she said steadily. “And you won't get it this way. All you'll get is trouble.”

She looked up at him, her face worried, and Tip said unsmilingly, “That'll keep me busy then until some information comes along. How much is it?”

“You're sure you want me to run it?”

“If you're not afraid,” Tip said dryly.

Lynn coldly told him how much it was, and he paid and went out. That made three people who wouldn't talk, who were afraid to talk—Lynn Mayfell, the editor, and Ball, the sheriff. He'd give the town this one more chance. If nobody came in answer to his reward notice, then he would go after them. He didn't know how, but he was going to.

At the feed stable, he got his chestnut and rode out down the canyon south.

After five miles or so, the canyon spread out into a long, grassy park bisected by a creek that had cut in from the mountains to the east. It was a cheerless place in this rain, with the evergreens dark and foreboding. The red trunks of the jack pines were the only color here, those and the fat whitefaces grazing along the creek. Later, where a plank bridge spanned the stream close to a bottleneck in the park, Tip had his choice of two roads, and he chose to go straight on.

At the bottleneck, the timber crawled down almost to the stream, and the road, a clayey mire, swerved toward the stream.

Tip had been traveling the rain-soaked grass but now he pulled his horse into the road and slogged around the bend. The view from there was a spacious sweep of timber-stippled valley, broad and long, with curtains of rain obscuring the whole view.

His horse suddenly shied, and Tip pulled him up, looking around. Buck Shields, a rifle slacked across his saddle, was pulled just off the road into the edge of the trees.

He and Tip regarded each other in silence, and finally Buck spoke. “The road ain't public from here on.”

Tip folded his arms and leaned on his saddle horn, the slow rain pelting his back. “I've been wonderin' about that all day,” he observed tranquilly. He gestured toward the valley ahead. “This is the Shields country, then.”

Buck nodded. Suspicion seemed to be warring eternally with the good nature apparent in his face. But it was a strong face, swart, almost heavy, and certainly stubborn.

“What country do the Bollings claim?”

“You passed the road across the bridge,” Buck said flatly. “They're in a string of
cienegas
up in higher country.” He was studying Tip, as if he were trying to place his face.

Tip smiled faintly. “Remember any of it?”

Buck's thick hand rose toward his temple, and halfway there, he checked the gesture. “Some,” he said. “You hit me.”

“I had to get you down.”

Buck looked at him a long time. “Thanks,” he said finally.

Tip said quietly, “I did you a favor, Shields. I'm going to claim one in return.”

Buck said nothing.

“Blackie Mayfell was a friend of mine,” Tip went on. He was going to continue, but he decided he'd let it go at that.

Buck didn't say anything.

Tip said, “I'm going to find out who killed him. All I know now is that he was found on this road.”

Buck said, “Then you know about all there is to know.”

“Not everything.”

“All you will know,” Buck amended.

Tip regarded him thoughtfully. Here it was again, the same hostile silence. But of all the people he had seen here thus far, Buck Shields, human enough to get drunk, sick enough of this mess to turn on his own kin when he was drunk, reckless and foolish enough to dare the Bollings to take him, fair enough not to shoot a stranger who walked up to him in a tight spot, seemed the most vulnerable man for what Tip planned.

Tip shifted in his saddle and said, “Not all I will know, either. For instance, it's a damn funny thing that Blackie was found on the only stretch of road that's open to everybody around here.” He paused, wanting to isolate this, wanting it to jar Buck. “It's even funnier that a Shields put him there.”

Tip was guessing. If he was wrong, Buck Shields's expression would tell him, so he could put the same question to one of the Bollings. If he was right, Buck would give it away, and with great care he watched Buck's face now. Because a man can't entirely mask surprise, Buck's face altered slightly, but the anger that came into it was not swift enough to serve as a protest of innocence. Tip saw Buck's big fist take a stronger grasp on his rifle.

“Whoever told you that is a liar,” Buck said flatly. Somehow the statement lacked conviction and sounded curiously as if he were talking to fortify a spurious anger.

Tip felt a small elation. He pulled his horse around, lifted his reins, and said, “I'm not a marshal, Shields, but I'll bust this countryside open unless somebody talks. In two more days I'm going to the sheriff with what I know. If he won't help me, I'll do it myself. Think it over.”

Buck watched Tip disappear around the bend, and even when Tip was gone he didn't move. Presently he put his horse down onto the road, walked him over to the bend, and thoughtfully watched Tip's disappearing figure.

Then he pulled his horse around and set off at a long lope across the park, heading south.

The Bridle Bit was a one-story sprawling log affair squatting on the edge of the timber. Caution or foresight had caused the barns and corrals to be built away from the timber, as if the Shieldses placed less importance on their own safety than they did on that of their possessions. The peeled logs, a deep red in this rain, were huge; five of them made a wall. A roofed passageway joined the biggest sod-roofed house with a smaller one, the cookshack. Behind it and at right angles was another house, what had been the bunkhouse in the days when the Shields herds were big enough to warrant riders.

Buck rode up to the corral, slipped the saddle off, turned his horse in, went over to the shed, and slung his saddle on a bar, then started for the house at a trot.

A movement by the high barn caught his attention, and he swerved his course. His uncle, Hagen Shields, had a spring wagon up on blocks in front of the open barn door, and he was greasing the hubs. His rifle lay within reach, propped against the loft underpinnings. He wiped his hands on a wisp of hay as he saw Buck coming toward him. Paused there, watching Buck, he was a hard-looking man, with implacability written all over his face. Even his Stetson, greasy and battered, rode his head at an uncompromising angle.

Buck pulled up short and walked into the barn.

“I just met this stranger down at the line.”

“Coming here?” Hagen Shields asked.

“I dunno. But he knows,” Buck said simply.

His uncle's face didn't change. “What did he say?”

“He asked me who killed Mayfell. I told him to find out somewhere else.” Buck looked squarely at the older man then. “He said he knew a Shields put Mayfell's body out there on the road.”

“He's guessing,” the older Shields said. “Nobody saw you.”

“Guessing or not,” Buck said, his voice rising, “he's right. That's all Ball needs.”

Hagen Shields studied Buck with bitter contempt in his eyes. “You're not going to cry, are you?”

Buck said warningly, “Careful what you say, Haig.” His face was pale, and his thick-muscled fists were knotted.

Hagen Shields turned around and picked up another wisp of hay, aware that Buck's hot eyes were on him and superbly indifferent to the fact. “What I can't understand,” he said gently, with irony in his tone, “is why you're afraid of something you didn't do.” His eyes flicked to Buck. “Or did you?”

He seemed unaware of Buck's anger, because he went on in the same iron voice. “When you found that old desert rat dead, you told me yourself there was every sign that he'd been dumped on our land. I told you who dumped him there. I even told you to dump him back. But you knew better.” His lip lifted in contempt. “You were a wrong-guesser, Buck. No, you weren't. I'll change that. You were soft.”

Buck took a step toward him. The older man didn't move. He just stared at Buck, and presently Buck's eyes shifted.

“You can get drunk in town,” the older Shields went on implacably. “That's a normal risk an old man has to take on a young man, Buck. But don't ever try to be fair again to any Bolling.”

Buck said miserably, “What about Ball?”

“If he knows, then he'll swing in with them. It's the hole he's needed and he'll crawl into it.” He laughed shortly, without humor. “If you'd put that old man off the trail on one of the Three B
cienegas
where the roundup crew would have found him, then Ball would have been on our side, Buck.” He looked thoughtfully at Buck. “You think he would have been any help?”

“No. But he's got the law behind him.”

“Wrong,” Hagen Shields said sparely. “There's no law here, Buck.”

Buck watched him, getting some kind of strength from the older man's quiet confidence. Hagen Shields continued, his voice musing. “But I wouldn't let this stranger get to Ball with his hunch.”

Buck's face altered, an expression of grim determination coming to it. “No, I won't do that, Haig.”

“Suit yourself. It'll have to be done sooner or later. He's a troublemaker.”

He went back to the wagon, dismissing Buck, who hesitated a moment, then tramped across the yard to the house.

At his entry into the kitchen, a girl, kneeling before the oven door with pans of bread in her hands, looked at him and said, “Hello,” and went back to her work.

Buck paused in the middle of the room. A large table flanked by five chairs abutted the inside wall. The kitchen smelled of yeast, and it made Buck suddenly hungry.

“Where's Pate, sis?”

Lucy Shields rose and brushed a wisp of black hair from her forehead. She was a pleasant-faced girl, strong-looking, with violet-blue eyes and a full-lipped mouth, and with a kind of black Irish impudence in her uptilted nose, her round face. She looked at her brother and instead of answering him, asked, “What's the matter, Buck? What's happened?”