Coroner Creek (14 page)

He was waiting in the street before the livery stable when she rode out and he put his horse in beside hers without a word. Kate noticed he carried his bandaged hand out of the way and high on his chest, hooking his little finger in the left pocket of his shirt.

When they were beyond the town, she mentioned it. “Your hand. Doesn't it bother you?”

“Yes.”

There it is again
, she thought. That maddening business of speech, that iron self-sufficiency that needed nothing and gave nothing. She could almost hate him anew as she thought of it. She did not speak another word to him on the ride, and, being honest with herself, she thought he didn't care.
But he cared enough to ride out here to prove something
, she thought immediately afterwards, and pondered that until they approached Briggs' shack.

Yordy was out by a shed chopping wood as they rode up. He was shirtless and in his sock feet, and he was attacking the wood on the block with a kind of sullen fury.

The story was there for anyone to read it. Yordy had laid abed until early afternoon when hunger drove him to get up. There was no wood cut in this shiftless and shabby place, and Yordy, before he could eat, had had to cut some.

He didn't hear them until they were in the can-littered yard between him and the house. Then he turned suddenly, surprised, and Kate saw him recognize Danning and back up a pace and get a firm hold on his ax. They reined up before him and Yordy looked from Danning to Kate and back to Danning again. He was more puzzled than alarmed now.

He made a swipe with his free hand to smooth his awry hair, and said, “Hello, Miss Hardison. You lookin' for Joe?”

“No. You,” Danning said. “I want to ask you a question.” He paused, and Yordy's red-rimmed eyes became wary.

“Did you offer to sell Younger Miles a way to kill me?”

For a moment, Yordy didn't comprehend. Then, when he understood, he said hotly, promptly, “That's a lie! I never did, so help me God!”

There was more than a little fear in his answer, but his puzzlement had been genuine. Kate felt Chris' gray glance on her, and when she met his gaze he said, “That's not much proof. Is it enough?”

Kate looked at Yordy and said sternly. “Tell the truth, Frank. I sat beside Younger Miles this noon at the hotel and he told us—Mac, Truscott and me—that you'd offered to sell him a safe way to kill Danning. He even said he got it out of you what the way was. It was for him to put a man on top of that shale where the trail to the bench crosses it, and when Danning passed it would be easy to start a slide and bury him alive.”

Yordy's jaw was sagging a little in amazement as Kate finished, and then the temper came. Only Kate's presence stopped the torrent of abuse that was in his face. A wild anger was in Yordy's loose face then, and there was something else besides anger. Whatever it was, Kate saw, it held Yordy silent, furious.

She heard Danning say then in a soft, derisive tone, “You've stayed here too long, Frank. Somebody—maybe me or Andy West or Leach Conover—is going to get shot at in the next couple of days. And MacElvey's coming straight for you on account of Miles' yarn. It's worked before.”

Yordy's angry glance held Danning's unwaveringly for a full five seconds, and then a kind of startled expression came into his face.

“You've stayed too long,” Chris repeated.

“I reckon I have,” Yordy said bitterly, slowly. “But I'm goin'. And you can have Miles, Danning.” He hesitated, almost uncertain, and then blurted out, “And you can have the light story of what I said to Miles, and be damned to his black heart!”

He told them then of his plan to get money and revenge on Danning and the Henhouse by selling Miles the suggestion of the fire. As he talked, angry and abject and defiant by turns, Kate felt a quiet despair. It was like turning over a loose board to expose the white nameless slugs under it to sight and then wanting to turn it back quickly, as instinct prompted. She wished she had not heard this, and she looked over at Danning.

He was listening attentively, his dark face impassive, as Yordy's story ended and she heard him say, “You better move, Frank, tonight, and keep to cover until you're out of the country.”

Chris looked over now to Kate, ready to go. She pulled her horse around, not even wanting to look at Yordy again, and they rode off the place.

Kate did not speak for many minutes, and she was humble enough at the end of that time to say, “Well, I was wrong, and I'll admit it.”

“But I was wrong, too,” Chris replied thoughtfully. “Miles isn't going to bushwhack me. I misjudged him.”

“Then you don't believe Yordy? You don't believe that's why Miles told that lie, to make Yordy guilty beforehand?”

Chris was quiet a long time, looking out over the flats, and finally he shook his head in negation and glanced over at her.

“You didn't like that back there, did you?”

“I hated it.”

“You'll hate this worse. What I think. Do you want to hear it?”

Kate nodded in spite of her reluctance, watching him, and Chris said:

“Miles would have met him at Station, maybe paid him and ridden for the pass with him. But he would have shot him and left his body in the brush for somebody to find a week from now.

“Why do you say that?” Kate asked.

“Two reasons. He can't trust Yordy not to talk once the grass fire is set, no matter where Yordy is. The other reason is the main one. If Yordy was shot, it would stand to reason I shot him because he was trying to have me killed. With me out of the way in jail, and the grass fire over with, Della would quit.”

Before she could answer, he said quietly, “I'll prove that, too. And to your father.”

Kate said bitterly, “You'll have to, and to me too.”

“I'll be on that porch at the hotel in Station, Sunday night. Let your father have a man—not MacElvey—in Station where he can see it. If Miles comes, can you doubt it?”

“You can doubt his intention to kill Yordy.”

“But not his intention to pay Yordy off and see him out of the country, so he could burn the canyon.”

Kate said softly, reluctantly, “No. I couldn't doubt that.”

“Then tell him.”

They were at the Coroner Canyon road now and Kate knew Chris would turn off to Box H. She reined up and so did he and raised his bandaged hand to touch his hat.

“You hate Younger Miles, don't you?” Kate said abruptly.

“Why—don't you?” Chris replied, surprised.

“But you knew this about him—his hatefulness. You already knew it.”

Chris only touched his hat and said, “Good day,” and rode off, but not before Kate had seen a sorrow mingled with that wild secret anger in his gray eyes.

CHAPTER X

Chris waited until Leach and Andy got up from the big Sunday dinner Della had prepared them and strolled off to their separate chores. Della relaxed in her chair and contemplated the table without much enthusiasm. Chris knew she missed her mother, and that cooking for three men was a lonely and confining job that chafed her spirit. He thought, too, that while she approved of their moving into Thessaly Canyon, she was afraid of what it might bring.

He finished his dinner slowly, eating clumsily with his left hand, his useless right, hand in his lap. The nagging ache of it had never ceased, but he was used to it now and had banished it from his immediate awareness.

Della handed him the cigarette Andy had rolled for him and left in the middle of the table. He lighted it, and presently said, “Della, whose notion was it to hold those two-year-olds over this winter?”

“Yordy's, I guess,” Della replied. “Why do you ask?”

“You're shipping them this fall,” Chris said. “Miles could try that, but you can't risk it. You'll pour feed into them this winter, and they'll run off every pound of tallow you've bought them on the shipping drive. You're too far from a shipping point. Didn't Yordy know that?”

“But I've already borrowed money for feed and contracted for most of it,” Della protested.

“Take what feed you have to, cancel what you can. Ship them this fall and pay back your money. Buy all the cows you can, because we'll have the grass. But leave the feeding to other people.”

He could see the protest in Della's eyes.

“Do you know what prime three-year-olds will bring?” Della demanded, almost angrily.

Chris nodded. “Those are the three-year-olds you take half the summer to push sixty miles to a railroad. Over prairie in belly high grass. We've got a hundred and forty miles over a mountain range and two dry drives to a railroad.” He shoved back his chair, but before he rose he said, “I know, and you don't, Della, but it's your money. Which'll it be?”

Della's face had the sullen look of a scolded child's. “I'm not foolish enough to go against my foreman. We'll ship.” She hesitated, and then added resentfully, “It's just the way you say things, Chris. You make a person want to say ‘black' if you say ‘white.'”

Chris rose and said indifferently, “I'm sorry, but that's my way.”

“I know. But why is it?” Della said defiantly.

Chris regarded her closely, and then, asked, “Sorry for your bargain, Della?”

“What makes you—” Della began defiantly, and then ceased talking and looked sullenly at Chris. “All right, I am, a little. This is no life, Chris. Mother's in town, and there are only three of you men and me against Miles. You've hurt his foreman, but he's got fifteen men left. What'll he do to us? We've moved in Thessaly. How will we hold it? What's going to happen?”

“Want to quit?”

“No, damn you, I don't!” Della flared, and then she flushed deeply, and presently she said with contrition in her tone, “I'm sorry, Chris. I'm not tired of my bargain, either. I suppose I'm just used to giving orders, not taking them.” She looked at him and smiled faintly. “So are you.”

Chris didn't answer and Della sighed, and then stood up. Chris went out, then; he was puzzled and did not like this.

It was another cloudless day, with a hot ground wind stirring, and as he headed for the corral his rendezvous at Station tonight was already in his mind, Della out of it. It was of her cattle up there in Falls Canyon which was a ready fashioned weapon for Younger Miles. Younger wouldn't move until he was sure Yordy was safely out of the way, he thought, but he did not like to take the chance.

He caught his sorrel and spent long and laborious minutes left-handedly saddling him, and, as he worked, he came to his decision. The safest thing to do, even though Miles wouldn't move now, was to shove the beef out of the canyon today. But if he did that, some fiddle-footed Rainbow rider might see them or chance on the sign and report it to Miles who, knowing Yordy's plan was useless, would not bother to meet Yordy tonight. And Chris wanted Miles there tonight, had to have him. For he could then prove to Hardison's man and to all these people beyond any reasonable doubt that Miles wasn't simply a land-hungry man with a pretty wife and a solid place in the community, but a man who was a lawless killer. No, the cattle must stay there, then, but he could minimize the risk.

He led his sorrel over to the bunkhouse and stepped inside. Leach Conover was seated at the big table, mending bridle; he had the scraps already piled neatly, as if he wished to make as little mess as possible.

“Where's Andy?” Chris asked.

“Town,” Leach said curtly. Since Chris' ultimatum, Leach hadn't bothered to hide his dislike of Chris. He did competently and slowly what he was ordered to do, and kept his counsel, even avoiding Andy when he could. It was as if Andy, by his decisive action at the shack that morning, had automatically stepped out of Leach's world of safe and friendly things, never to be readmitted.

Chris stood hesitant for a moment. He wanted Andy, because he knew Andy now, and he didn't know Leach. He silently berated himself for not having spoken to Andy before, but the harm was done.

“I've got a job for you, Leach,” Chris said then. “Take your blankets and ride up to Falls Canyon this afternoon. I want you to camp there tonight, right at the brush fence. Don't make a fire, and sleep light. If anybody drifts up there, run 'em off.”

Leach put down his punch. “Now that's the first time I ever heard Rainbow called cattle thieves, if that's what you mean.”

“I don't. Just do what I said.”

Leach picked up his punch and went to work again and Chris waited a moment for his assent, and when it did not come he said sharply, “Hear me, Leach?”

“I ain't deaf,” Leach said sullenly.

Chris after a moment decided to let it go at that, and he went over to his bunk. His carbine in its scabbard hung on a nail in the wall, and he took it down and went out. He tied the scabbard to his saddle and mounted and rode out, and presently picked up the trail he and Andy had taken to the Bench. A kind of grim hopelessness touched him for a moment. Della's flare-up troubled him, and he knew that at last the reaction had set in. She had hired him on the whim of the moment, and when things had got rough and were on the verge of getting rougher, she hadn't much stomach for it. There was, Chris knew, little faith in her and little resolution, and he was glad she did not know of what Miles was planning for the Falls Canyon steers.

Once on the Bench, he took the trail pointed out to him yesterday by Andy which led through the climbing timber past a series of open parks to Falls Canyon and beyond. Once there, he surveyed the canyon briefly. Yordy had been right. The pine boughs of the temporary brush fence, itself only some forty yards in length across the narrow mouth of the box canyon, were brown from a summer's sun and tinder dry. The small stream which flowed under them trickled out of the deep sun-cured grass of the canyon which was mostly meadow and held only an occasional jackpine. A half dozen fat steers eating their way up the canyon stopped to watch him and then returned to grazing. Where they had trampled the grass, it was a thick brown mat; where they hadn't, their heads were lost to sight as they grazed it. The red sandstone walls of the canyon were deep and straight, making it the perfect trap Yordy had described.