Authors: Lauran Paine
Rufe, seeking some approximation of the time, searched for a moon glimmer through those fishbelly clouds, and had no success whatsoever. He surmised, though, that it had to be perhaps about two o’clock in the morning.
The only reason that time might be relevant was because he and Jud wanted to hit Arlen Chase’s camp at the quietest time of the night, for even though anyone who might be sitting up over there, listening and waiting, might think oncoming horse-men would be the arsonists returning and would therefore be unlikely to ambush Jud and Rufe, it was Rufe’s opinion that under these circumstances a man needed all the help he could get from a dark night, from a mistaken listener, and of course from a benign fate—if there were such a thing.
It was a good thing they had been able to get a good night’s rest the previous night, Jud said, as they rode along, because, sure as hell, they weren’t going to get any sleep tonight. He also said he had a feeling that if they could keep on hitting Arlen Chase as they had been doing, they just might accomplish something.
“He’s likely lyin’ in his bedroll sleeping like a baby, confident his boys came over, fired the barn, and rode off clean. Instead, we got the three of them. With some luck, we’ll get him while he’s sleepin’ too.” Jud smiled through the darkness. “Hit him hard and of-ten, Rufe. Never let him get his feet square under him. How’s that sound for strategy?”
Rufe laughed. “Great. Tell me something. Smart as you are, how’s it come you didn’t become a general in the Army?”
Jud made a gesture. “I figured a little on it, you
see, but blue ain’t my color. Always made me look like I got dark bags under my eyes, so I chose range ridin’ instead.”
Rufe snorted in derision, and Jud leaned over his saddle horn, laughing.
T
hey had to retrace their earlier route and be-yond for several miles, and, while they had every reason not to expect another encounter as they’d had earlier, they were within a mile or so of the mesa’s eastward rim when they distinctly heard horses again.
This time, though, it turned out to be animals in a large corral. In fact, when they finally got up close enough Tomake the animals out, it appeared that the corral was almost a small pasture. It looked as though its post-and-rider fence encompassed three or four acres of land.
The cow camp would be somewhere beyond this enclosure, so they left their horses tied in a clump of second-growth jack pines and reconnoitered forward, fanning out a little, but doing this in a manner that allowed them to sight each other all the while they were moving stealthily forward.
There were no lights. If someone was awaiting the return of Arlen Chase’s night riders, he was doing it in darkness.
They finally made out a structure. It was crude and lowroofed, the walls made of rough logs that had not been fitted very well, and between were liberal coatings of mud plaster.
They came together and considered this building. It looked like either a large storage house, or perhaps a bunkhouse. They split off, each man coming around toward the front of it from one rough side. When they met out front, they had their answer. It was a storehouse. If it had been Chase’s bunkhouse, it would not have had that huge iron hasp and lock on the outside of the door.
There were several other buildings, and one in particular held Rufe’s attention. It was longer than the others, and a mudwattle chimney arose above the east wall. Rufe tapped his partner’s arm. “Cook shack,” he whispered.
Jud agreed, and offered a suggestion. “Yeah. By rights Chase’s old dough belly ought to be sleeping in there. Want to look?”
They went carefully around the building in utter silence and starless gloom, found a door ajar whose leather hinges were on the verge of wearing through, and without a sound walked inside.
The table was long and an iron stove stood against that distant east wall with its stovepipe shoved up the mudwattle chimney. They divided the room between themselves, with the long gang table in the center, and went step by step along until they came to the cook stove and, beside it, the big kindling box. Here, wooden pegs in the log wall held every size of cooking pan and cow-camp utensil, suspended downward. Here, too, they found a wall bunk behind a flour sack partition with a lumpy, bedraggled-looking shape in it, peacefully sleeping. Jud remained beside the bunk while Rufe went on along to complete their examination of the cook shack. He stood longest beside a window that overlooked the main yard.
What puzzled him was that no one at Chase’s cow
camp seemed to be awaiting the return of the night riders. Of course, there could be many reasons for this, including the basic one which suggested that no one
had
to wait up for men sent out to do a job no one thought would amount to anything more than riding up, sneaking in, setting the fire, then loping for home.
Rufe turned back, and, when he stepped behind the flour-sack partition, he saw an awry-haired older man sitting straight up in bed, wide awake, his long John underwear pale in the darkness to match his beard-stubbled face, and Jud standing above the old man, smiling wolfishly downward. When Rufe stepped from behind the flour sacks, the man in the bed jumped his astonished stare to Rufe. He was obviously nonplussed. Since he had never seen either of the armed men standing at his bedside like a pair of wraiths, he had reason to be nonplussed. Also, his conscience might have had something to do with it; those two lanky men eyeing him in the silent night did not look as though they had arrived to commend him for his dumplings or his crab-apple pies, and, like most older range men, this one, whose name was Abe Smith and who was Chase’s camp cook, had not dedicated his total lifetime to altruistic pursuits.
Rufe said—“Where’s your gun?”—and the old man did not so much as hesitate. He pointed to a pair of pack boxes that doubled as his chest of drawers.
Jud leaned, shoved a hand under the pillow, and withdrew it, empty.
The old man said: “The only gun I got is yonder in them boxes.” He looked from Jud to Rufe as though he had in mind asking a question, but he said nothing.
“Where’s Mister Chase?” Rufe asked quietly, and got an unexpected answer.
“Him and Mister Harris done rode out for town just ahead of sunset.”
Jud leaned down. “You’re lying.”
The cook vehemently shook his head. “I ain’t lying, mister. Him and Mister Harris left for town just ahead of supper. They figured to spend the night down there.”
Jud continued to lean close, staring at the cook. “Maybe you’re not lying, you old bastard. Maybe they sent Fenwick and his friends over to fire the Cane barn, then lit out for town so’s folks would see them down there when the barn burned down.” Jud smiled again coldly. “Does that sound reasonable, you old bastard?”
The cook fidgeted. He was over the astonishment now, and it seemed rather clear that normally he was an irascible man, quick-tempered and sharp-tongued. But whether he liked the deliberate way Jud referred to him as an aged illegitimate or not, fidgeting seemed right at the moment to be about as far as he had ought to go in registering a protest. He said: “I don’t know why Mister Chase and that gun-fighter went down to Clearwater. I’m only the cook here. Folks never confide in cooks. They bellyache to high heaven if the grub ain’t served up hot and on time, and fit for a king, mind you, but otherwise a cow-camp cook might just as well be a…. ”
“Shut up,” murmured Jud, still leaning down. “How do you know Harris is a gunfighter?”
Abe Smith hung fire, looking left and right a moment before answering. “Well, hell, I know it the same as you boys’d know it if you seen him. They got a special look to’em, don’t they?”
Jud nodded solemn confirmation of this. “Yeah, you old bastard, they got a special look to’em. What
kind of a man is Chase, to hire a gunfighter to kill the Cane woman?”
Abe Smith snorted. “Not
her
, for Chriz’ sake,
them.
Hell’s bells, a man don’t hire a woman killed, he….”
“Yeah? He what…old bastard?”
Abe Smith’s sudden spurt of indignant denial had been entirely impromptu, so he sat there looking up, cursing himself in silence, because now, finally, he knew exactly who these two strangers were—the very men Chase had hired the gun-fighter to kill. Abe Smith watched Jud straighten up very slowly, and, although this act was not of itself at all menacing, the overall attitude of both the lanky men in the darkness beside his bed definitely was menacing. It was no good, relying upon range-land custom of old men being safe, unless the old men knew with whom they were confronted. Abe Smith did not know, and, furthermore, these two armed strangers shouldn’t even have been able to get over here. They were supposed to be fighting a barn fire and maybe getting shot at by Charley Fenwick and the others.
Abe said: “Do you boys work for Miz Cane?”
Rufe answered. “You answer, you old bastard, you don’t ask. Finish what you were going to say about the gunfighter…Chase hired him to kill…who?”
Abe Smith swallowed, hard. “Well, he hired Harris to get rid of them two range riders workin’ for Elisabeth Cane.”
Jud cocked a skeptical eye. “I thought you said no one confided in you?”
“No one does,” averred the older man. “But that don’t mean, when I’m feedin’em all, I don’t listen a lot. Otherwise, hell, I’d never know nothing. I’d
be like one of them monks who folks don’t never talk to.”
Rufe exchanged a look with Jud. It was a disappointment, not being able to find Arlen Chase, but it was also helpful to know who the man Bull Harris was, and why Chase had brought him to Cane’s Mesa.
Rufe said: “Who else is in camp tonight, besides you, old bastard?”
Abe Smith fidgeted a little more furiously this time. “One feller over in the bunkhouse, which is that log house bigger than the main house, but beside it and off a dozen yards. His name’s Pete Ruff, and he’s sort of the straw boss when Mister Chase ain’t on the mesa.”
Rufe gestured. “Get your boots and pants on, and let’s go over and rouse up Pete Ruff.”
Abe Smith swung spindly, saddle-warped legs clad in ancient long Johns over the edge of his bunk, groped for trousers and boots, gruntingly dressed himself, scooped up his shirt, and arose. Standing up evidently made him feel a little more like a two-legged critter, because he looked Rufe squarely in the eye and said: “You
are
them two from the Cane place, ain’t you?”
Jud tapped the old man’s shoulder and growled: “Shut up, lead the way, and the first mistake you make, old bastard, I’m going to bust your skull like a punky melon.”
The cook clumped out through his cook shack into the warm, heavy late-night atmosphere, did not look back and did not hesitate as he struck out directly for a particular crude log house. This one had a little overhang out front, several crude benches, and a wooden box held empty beer and whiskey bottles.
Rufe reached and halted Abe Smith with a hard grip. “Poke your head inside, yell for him to come out, that the horses are spooked about something, then stand over against the wall and don’t move nor make a sound. You understand?”
The cook nodded, and reached for the door. When he shoved his head inside, Jud’s cold gun muzzle eased into his back above the kidneys and Abe Smith flinched. He growled loudly for the sleeping man to rouse up and come out and help him quiet the damned horses, and he swore a little, which made it sound very authentic. Then he stepped over alongside the wall and flattened exactly as he had been instructed to do.
The man, who came sleepily forth buttoning his britches with a disreputable old hat upon the back of his tousled head and clutching a shirt under one arm, was dark-haired, dark-eyed, and with a slightly hawkish face. He could have been a half-breed Indian of some kind, but whatever he was, Rufe’s first good glimpse of him encouraged a belief that
this
member of Chase’s cow camp was trouble.
Not now, though. He not only had both hands occupied, but he was unarmed when Jud stepped up and shoved the cold gun barrel into the man’s side. Ruff turned in swift astonishment and stared. Jud was a complete stranger to him. He seemed unwilling or unable to speak for a moment, but only that long, because when Jud said—“Turn around and go back inside, mister, and keep both your hands up high.”—the cow-camp range boss recovered and glared at Jud.
“Who the hell do you think you are?” he snarled.
Rufe answered, from behind the man. “Go in-side!”
The range boss had not been able Tomake any kind of a worthwhile assessment until now. He turned his head and craned around, saw Rufe, and decided he was, indeed, outmatched. Then he curled a furious lip in the direction of old Abe Smith, but whatever he might have said was cut short when Jud jammed him hard with the gun barrel, making the range boss gasp as he turned to reënter the bunkhouse.
They turned up the lamp inside. Ruff shrugged into his shirt, staring quizzically at his captors. Abe Smith confirmed the range boss’s dawning suspicions.
“They’re the pair Elisabeth Cane hired on couple days back.”
Pete Ruff looked at Rufe. “What you doin’ over here?”
“Looking for Arlen Chase.”
“He ain’t here. He ain’t nowhere on the mesa,” snapped Ruff.
“Yeah,” retorted Rufe, “we know. He’s down in Clearwater with his gunfighter. Well, directly now we’re going to ride down there and look him up, but first off we’ve got Tomake blessed certain no one’s behind us, skulking along for a chance to back-shoot us.”
“How you figure to do that?” asked Pete Ruff.
Rufe shrugged. “Kill the pair of you, like we did those other three, the ones you sent over to burn the lady’s barn.”
Old Abe Smith acted as though he were going to faint, and even the hard-eyed, tough half-breed range boss turned suddenly much less hard and abrasive.
“It wasn’t my doings,” said the half-breed. “Mister Chase come up with it, lock, stock, and barrel. I never even picked the fellers to ride over there.” He
turned toward the cook. “Is that the truth, or not, Abe?”
Smith’s voice was reedy when he replied: “Don’t you ask me nothing. I’m just the…. ”