Raw Land (15 page)

Still keeping his eyes on the deputy, Will said, “Pablo, lie down on the floor away from your cot. When Phipps comes in, don't move, don't say anything. You
sabe?
”

“
Sí
, I'm seeck,” Pablo said.

“That's right.” To the deputy Will said, “Phipps don't smoke, does he?”

“No.”

“Give me your tobacco.”

The deputy was too scared to be mystified at the request. He handed over his sack of dust, and Will pocketed it. Then Will said, “If that door squeaks when you open it, I'll shoot you in the back. Hurry it!”

The deputy went over to the corridor door and silently pulled it ajar under Will's gun. Getting Will's nod, he came back to Pablo's cell, where the Mexican was lying on the floor, and then called, “Hey, sheriff! Bring in them cell keys, will you?”

It was good. There was just enough urgency and excitement in his voice to arouse curiosity. Will sank on the cot, put the gun behind him, and waited.

Phipps stalked in, hand on gun. When he got into the cell block the deputy pointed. “He's sick or somethin'. You want to look at him?”

Phipps was an old hand at all the dodges. He came up to the cell, looked at Pablo, who was jerking his legs in a strange manner.

“Go out and get a doc,” Phipps said meagerly.

The deputy looked at Will, and Will realized he'd have to stop him.

Will came to his feet, gun in his waistband in the small of his back and drawled, “No need for that, sheriff. You got the keys?”

“I got 'em.”

“Then roll him over and blow tobacco in his nose. It makes him sneeze and he comes out of them fits.”

Phipps looked as if he didn't believe it, but he said to the deputy. “Got some tobacco?” The deputy, deprived of his tobacco, shook his head.

“Here,” Will said, and held out the sack through the bars. The deputy made a start for it but hauled up at Will's warning glance. Phipps didn't notice it. He came over, reached absently for the sack, and then Will grabbed his wrist. He swung him round, yanked him to the bars, and wrapped his arms around Phipps's neck, choking him. Phipps kicked like a horse and tried to grab his gun, but Will had his hand on it. Will said swiftly to the deputy, “Unlock this door, fella.”

“Don't!” Phipps gasped.

And then the deputy caught his meaning. He stopped, undecided, and Will saw he was wavering. He clamped down on Phipps's throat and yanked out the gun and pointed it at the deputy.

“Open up or I'll gut-shoot you!”

“No!” Phipps gasped.

Will knew he would have to act, regardless of the danger. He shot once. The slug plucked at the deputy's sleeve and slammed into the stone wall. The report bellowed in the cell block.

“Next time it's dead center!” Will snarled. “Get them keys!”

The deputy was really scared now. He lunged for the keys in Phipps's pocket and the game sheriff tried to fight him off. But Will was choking him savagely.

The deputy got the keys and fumbled them into the lock; the door swung open. Will dived through it, brushing the deputy aside. Phipps was just coming to his feet then, and Will swung a left into his jaw that knocked him flat. Will didn't even wait to watch him. He swung the gun on the deputy and said, “Open the rest!”

“Go on, Will!” Ollie yelled. “You ain't got time for us!”

Already they could hear shouting in the street.

But Will stubbornly prodded the deputy over to the end cell. He let Pinky and Ollie out. Just as they came through the door they heard footsteps pound through the office.

Will raced for the corridor door, and he was halfway to it when it slammed open and a puncher tumbled through shooting wildly. Will shot low and the puncher went down, and then Will yelled, “Come on!” and jumped over the downed man and through the door. Two more men from the saloon across the street boiled into the office and slammed into Will. Immediately they were at such close quarters they couldn't shoot, and Will slashed out with his gun. He caught one man on the side of the head, and he went down, and then Will kicked out at the other, who was bringing up his gun. The shot boomed hollowly in the room, and the slug slammed into the roof, and then the gun went kiting after it. Will picked up a chair and smashed it down on the man's head, then turned to look back. The downed puncher had Ollie and Pinky covered, and they were backed against the wall, hands overhead. Ollie saw him and yelled, “Go on, Will!” and the puncher turned and snapped a shot at him. At the same moment someone from across the street let go with a rifle, and the slug bored into the doorjamb beside Will's head. It was too late to help his crew now, Will knew. He lunged out into the night, and was immediately caught in a cross fire along the boardwalk. He vaulted the tie rail and then saw the stream of men pouring out of the saloon toward the sheriff's office. It was so dark out here that nobody was recognizable, and Will knew they couldn't spot him unless they heard the shouting of their companions. He ran out into the street, shouting:

“Surround the place! Get around in back!” Exhorting each man as he passed him, he ran for the horses at the tie rail in front of the saloon.

But now he was in the dim lamplight cast through the saloon windows, and he heard men yelling behind him. He was recognized now.

He piled into the protection of the horses and swiftly untied the reins of one. Before he mounted, he looked across the street. Men were running up the boardwalk now, flanking him, cutting him off. As soon as he pulled out from the tangle of horses he would run a gantlet of fire. And yet he had to have a horse to escape.

He made up his mind after one bitter moment of indecision. He swung into the saddle of a big chestnut, crouching low on his neck. He roweled him through the narrow passage between two tie rails onto the boardwalk. Then he reined him straight into the door of Hal Mohr's saloon. A tattoo of gunfire beat on the sign above the door.

Will savagely roweled the horse which brushed open the door with his shoulder and ran across the sawdust floor of the saloon. Will lifted him over one long table and snaked him in between two others. Hal Mohr's shotgun blasted across the room, and Will heard the buckshot slap on the opposite wall. Will reined him through the back door, the horse slipping and almost going down and catching himself, and then lunging forward through the open door into the alley. A parting blast from the shotgun stung Will's back and the horse's rump, but the distance was ineffective for shooting.

Will turned the horse up the alley and let him stretch out into a lope, heading north. He knew that darkness would hide him until he was swallowed up hours later in the Sevier Brakes.

Chapter Eleven

F
UGITIVE

Case had left the house for the barn some time ago, and Becky was cleaning up in the kitchen. There was a worried frown on her face, and a kind of dread excitement within her. Case was going to town this afternoon, and she was going with him. Sometime during the evening she would call on Will in jail, and when she left he would have the gun she smuggled to him. She had given much thought to how she could help, and had settled on the gun. All other ways were closed to a lone woman, and she was exasperated by her helplessness. What if they caught Will with the gun, using that as an excuse to shoot him?

She put that out of her mind and ran through the things she must finish before she left. There was Tomás to see. Last night in the darkness he had walked into his quarters in the barn where Pres Milo had forbidden him to have any light. Some one of the hands, during the day, had thrown a harness into Tomás's room for him to patch. When Tomás came in, he tripped on the harness, fell into the table, and peeled two square inches of hide off his shins.

Becky found her salves and stepped out the back door. The slow wind rustled her skirts, and she smelled the warm summer scent of wind on grass and the faint smoky odor of cedar.

She had passed the bunkhouse, humming softly to herself, when she saw Pres Milo ride through the gate and out directly toward the big corral where a couple of hands had the wheels off a spring wagon and were greasing it. Becky wondered why he was in such a hurry, but she made her way to the barn.

She saw Pres start for the barn and one of the hands called, “He's in the loft, Pres.”

Pres dismounted at the door of the barn, ground-haltering his horse, and strode inside, not even seeing Becky. She made her way to Tomás's door, knocked, heard no answer, and went in. Tomás was asleep on his cot, snoring softly. On his legs were two bloody bandages. Becky came across the room, intending to wake him, when she heard Pres's voice say gruffly from behind the partition, “Well, Angus, he's done it! Damn his eyes, he busted out!”

“Danning?”

“Shot his way out last night. Fought through the whole gang from Mohr's and rode his horse through the saloon and made it.”

Case said wearily, “So your little frame-up was wasted?”

Pres swore savagely, but Becky didn't even notice. A wild elation was in her. She heard Pres say, “What nobody can figure out is how he got the gun. Phipps claims nobody but that U. S. marshal could have give it to him.”

“Nonsense.”

Pres said grimly, “Well, he's out, and he'll be harder to catch than a muley steer.”

Her father said nothing, and Becky heard Pres sit down on a bale of hay.

“Tomás inside?” Pres asked.

“He's sleepin'.”

“All right. I want to talk to you, Angus. I want to know some things. What are you goin' to do about that deed that's missin'?”

“Just what I told you,” Case said flatly. “The Gold Seal outfit has a record of who they deeded that land to. It'll be Hale. I'll get another deed. That's all there is to it.”

“And you won't sell it to me?”

“Not ever,” Case said flatly. “That's out. If a buyer comes to me and wants it and takes it to court, I'll buy it myself before I'll let it get out of my hands.”

Pres laughed nastily. “Would you buy it, say, if you found it was worth a lot of money?”

“Of course I would,” Case snapped. “It isn't worth money, though, except to a crook. And I'll tell Chap's heirs that, too.”

“It is, though,” Pres murmured.

Case was silent for a long moment, and Becky tried to picture him. She couldn't, nor could she understand what Pres was driving at.

“Why is it?” Case demanded.

Pres chuckled. “You don't think I'd be sucker enough to tell you, unless I had a signed and sealed paper givin' me half of it, do you?”

“And you don't think I'd give it to you, do you?” Case countered.

“I think you will,” Pres drawled. “You just make out a deed sayin'
if
I can prove that Danning's place is worth more than a hundred thousand dollars to a buyer, then I'm to share half the profits with you in further development.”

Case said softly, “Did you say worth more than a hundred thousand dollars?”

“That's it. If I can't prove to you that it's worth more than that to anybody, then I don't get a cent. But if it is, then I get a fifty-fifty cut.”

“On what?”

“On the money we'll make.”

Becky's heart hammered riotously and she held her breath.

Her father said, “What is it over there, Pres?”

Pres laughed. “Hell, for three years I've known it. I've tried to get the money to buy the place, so I'd have it all to myself. But I couldn't swing it. Then Danning came in. I tried to drive him off, but all I done was make him mad. There's only one way left now, and that's to split it with the only gent that can buy it. That's you, Angus.”

“But split what?” Case demanded. “Gold. Is that it?”

“You'll know when you sign the paper. Will you sign it—a ten-thousand-dollar risk on more than a hundred thousand?”

“I'll have to see what you're talkin' about first.”

“You will like hell!” Pres snapped. “You'll buy the place blind and take my word for it. Even if I'm lyin' to you, and I ain't, you'll still have the place, won't you?”

“Yes.”

“Then you're goin' in town with me this afternoon and buy it for yourself. Make out a deed to yourself, get the deed from the Gold Seal, deposit the ten thousand, and you've got the place.”

“If you're lyin' to me, Pres, I'll—”

“Lie to you!” Pres shouted angrily. “I'm comin' to you because I can't swing it any other way! You think I like you good enough to make you rich, you damned old fool?”

Becky heard her father answer wearily, “No, I don't. If you ever came to me for help, it's because you couldn't help it.”

“Then saddle up,” Pres said. Becky heard him get up, and she fled out the door, leaving Tomás still sleeping.

She was in the kitchen again when she saw the two men come out of the barn. Becky thought swiftly. Will Danning was being cheated out of his rightful property. She'd told her father that, but her father was stubborn in his intention of resorting to legal trickery to keep Will off the place. And now he was going to cheat Will out of a fortune by the same method. She was sick at the thought, angry at her father, and bewildered. What did Pres have on her father that he could make him do these evil things?

Case came into the kitchen and said, “Ready, Becky?”

“I've got a headache, Dad. I think I'll stay home.”

Case looked at her and frowned. “I'll be away a week.”

Becky laughed and came over and kissed him lightly. “Since when have I been afraid to stay here alone?”

Her father grumbled a bit more and went out. Soon he and Pres rode off toward Yellow Jacket together. Becky, now that they were gone, sank into a chair and considered what she had heard. She felt a weak excitement and a kind of pride when she thought of Will's escape. If she could only get to him now with the news she had heard. But what could he do if she did reach him? Nothing. He was a fugitive. Besides, she couldn't reach him. He'd be smart enough to stay away from the Pitchfork, because they'd watch that. All she could do was sit by, helpless, and watch this steal.