Slip Gun (14 page)

‘
I
think you’d best head for Laramie
before
the meeting,’ Woodstole declared to the
old timer. ‘Don’t mind him, Wax. He always get this way if I let
him go out in the rain. It must rust what passes for his
brains.’

‘
Just
for that,’ Hopkirk threatened, ‘I’ve a danged good mind to
go
afore
it and leave you to handle them ba— Grange
gentlemen
yourself.’

‘
Come
on. If you’ll promise to go, I’ll buy you a stirrup-cup to speed
you on your way,’ Woodstole answered. ‘We’ll see you at noon,
Wil.’

‘
That
will give me time to show Mr. Smith the marshal’s office,’ Wil
replied. ‘Unless you have other plans, Mr. Smith?’

‘
Nary a
plan, ma’am,’ Smith admitted, drawing on his glove and taking his
hat from where it swung by its
barbiquejo
chin-strap on the back of his chair.
‘It’ll help if you’re along to talk to your marshal.’

The three men accompanied Wil
from her office. Informing her tellers that she would not be back
until one o
’clock, she led the way to the front door. Following close
behind, Smith heard Wil’s sharp intake of breath and saw her pause
with her hand on the handle. He looked over her shoulder and
through the door’s glass panel, wanting to find out what had caused
the reaction. Carrying a canvas bag and dressed as she had been in
the barroom the previous night, Lily Shivers was strolling across
the street. Stiffening her shoulders, as if going to face an
unpleasant ordeal, Wil opened the door and stepped out on to the
sidewalk.

‘
Hi,
Poona, Charlie,’ Lily greeted as the men emerged from the bank,
then indicated a pair of excellent saddle-horses standing tied to
its hitching-rail. ‘I thought I knew those two flea-bitten,
cow-hocked crow-bait when I saw them. Well, hello there, Wax.’ She
looked at the badge on his vest for a moment. ‘I didn’t know I was
entertaining the town’s new marshal last night.’

‘
Neither did I,’ Smith admitted.

‘
Sure
hope it won’t stop you coming with Poona and Charlie to the party
on Saturday night,’ Lily went on.

‘
Party?’ Hopkirk put in, displaying lively interest. ‘What
party?’

‘
It’s
what you might call my un-wedding party,’ Lily explained and held
up a left hand devoid of rings. ‘My divorce’s come through at last,
boys, and I’m a free woman again.’

‘
Do you
want to see me, Miss Shiver?’ Wil asked, with icicles in her
voice.

‘
At the
party?’ the blonde grinned. ‘Why it’d be a pleasure and a
sure-enough delight to have my banker and the town’s esteemed mayor
as a guest.’

‘
I mean
now!’ Wil gritted, knowing that several ‘good’ women were watching
and being aware of how they felt about the owner of the Happy Bull
saloon.

‘
Nope,’
Lily answered, sharing Wil’s knowledge without it causing her any
concern. ‘I was just going to pay some money
into the bank. Old Ryall likes
me to come dressed this ways, it gives him pleasure to see a real
woman in there.’ She had raised her voice, to make sure the
listening women could hear. When Wil did not speak, she went on
louder than was necessary, ‘Say, though, why don’t all of you come
on over, have a snifter on the house and take a look at the new
sign I’m having painted special in honor of the county
fair?’

‘
It
might prove interesting,’ Wil replied, contriving to sound as if
she doubted that it would. ‘Unfortunately, we all have other things
to attend to.’

‘
That’s
our mayor talking,’ Lily said, in mock admiration. ‘Always business
first with him—her. Why Wil’s a regular day-and-night,
rip-roaring
businessman.
Isn’t she, Poona?’

Stiffening slightly and losing
his smile, Woodstole made no reply. A red flush crept into
Wil
’s cheeks,
but she said nothing.

Watching the by-play, Smith
could almost smell the waves of hostility flowing between the two
women. They could be caused from jealousy over a mutual interest in
the British rancher. Or they might have older, deeper roots. Either
way, Smith
’s
work could be adversely affected. As far as he had seen last night,
Lily ran a clean, well-kept, honest place. Unless he missed his
guess, it would be the gathering point for the male civic
dignitaries and important visitors. In consequence, it would need
supervision to prevent any untoward incidents occurring. Lily’s
whole-hearted co-operation would be needed in that.

Which posed a question.

Would Lily
Shivers
’
obvious hatred of Wil Jeffreys cause her to try to spoil the fair
and discredit the town?

If so, Lily could have learned
of Wil sending for Smith and the other gun-fighters. She had been
in Laramie when Smith arrived and might have sent for Hardy to meet
them at Gilpin
’s way station to prevent him reaching Widow’s Creek. Her
mention of having seen the gambler coming from Wil’s private office
could have been said to make him distrust his employer. There were
a number of explanations why Poona Woodstole’s name had been
imprinted on the paper found by Capey, all innocent, if Lily had
sent it.

‘
Come
on, Charlie, Poona,’ Lily continued after a moment.

‘
You
can make time to see it. And I’ll bet Wil’s just itching to take a
look. Only she’s one business-maw who doesn’t dare come into a
saloon.’

‘
I’m
not particularly interested—!’ Wil gritted.

‘
Maybe
we’d best take a look at it, Miss Jeffreys,’ Smith suggested,
recalling the blonde’s comments the previous night and deciding
that the new sign might be worth seeing before its completion and
erection. ‘It’ll not take us far out of our way, or much of our
time.’

‘
And
you’ll have a snort of Old Stump-Blaster before you look?’ Lily
inquired, flickering a long, appraising look at Smith.

‘
Not
right now, ma’am,’ the Texan refused.

‘
No
drinking on duty, huh, Wax?’ the blonde challenged.

‘
It’s a
right good rule to stay alive by,’ Smith answered. ‘But I’ll hold
you to the offer when I’m not.’

‘
Maybe
it won’t be open then,’ Lily warned.

Smith looked at the blonde,
meeting her eyes until she turned her head. Up to the conversation,
he had liked Lily and respected her as a shrewd woman competing in
a man
’s world
on male terms. By her behavior, she was asking to forfeit his
friendship and respect.

‘
I’ve
bought my own liquor afore and expect to again,’ Smith told
her.

‘
So you
finally got free from that no-account varmint, Lily,’ Hopkirk put
in, clearly considering that the subject should be changed. His
diplomacy did not continue. ‘He wasn’t never a lick of good. Wil
had the right notion when she told him to go to hell.’

‘
Wil’s
always been the one for right notions,’ Lily replied and the edge
of bitterness in her voice gave Smith an inkling of the cause of
the girl’s enmity. Then she gave a harsh, mirthless laugh. ‘Come
and see the sign. It’s in the back-room, but maybe our mayor
daren’t go through the front door into a saloon—?’

‘
There’s a door around ba—’ Hopkirk began.

‘
I
don’t suppose I’ll get too contaminated, the short time I’ll be
inside,’ Wil interrupted, stepping by Lily as if the blonde did not
exist and starting to cross the street. ‘It can’t be as bad as all
that.’

If looks could have killed, Wil
would not have taken three
steps before she died. Lily showed all the
symptoms of a gambler whose bluff had been called. Clenching her
fists and gritting her teeth, Lily led the men after the other
girl. Going by the few horses secured to the saloon’s hitching
rail, Wil stepped up and crossed the sidewalk with an air of cold
determination. Even so, she seemed to hesitate at the batwing
doors. Then she pushed them open and stepped through.

Trailing along behind the girls, Smith
glanced at the horses. Two had army McClellan saddles and stood a
few feet away from three which toted Texas rigs. The latter had no
special significance, for many Texans rode the Wyoming ranges. At
that moment, Smith was more interested in watching Lily and
Wil.

Already the saloon was doing a
brisk trade. The arrival of the mayor caused surprise, if not
actual consternation, amongst the majority of people in the
barroom. Townsmen stopped their conversations, put down their
drinks and stared at Wil. A low giggle broke from one of
Lily
’s girls,
but the remainder scowled their animosity at the invasion of their
domain by a ‘good’ woman—and one who their well-liked boss had
reason to hate.

Always alert, as a man in his
line of work must be to remain alive, Smith scanned the room for
enemies. His attention came to rest on three men standing at the
bar. All had their backs to him and two of them held their heads
inclined forward so that he could see no more than the tops of
their hats reflected in the big mirror behind the bar. Tall,
wearing ordinary cowhand clothing in the fashion of the Southern
ranges, gun-hung, they might have been no more than a trio of ranch
employees visiting the town
’s best saloon to see how it stacked up in
comparison with their more usual haunts north of the
river.

Glancing at the newcomers
reflected in the mirror, the man whose face Smith could
see
—but did
not recognize—addressed his companions. Up tilted the Stetsons,
while hands crept surreptitiously towards the butts of guns. Two
tanned, unshaven, heavily-mustached faces came into view. Smith
identified them as belonging to the Sheppey brothers, Arnie and
Tod. What was more, Smith could guess how they would react to being
in the same room as himself.

‘
Look
out!’ Smith barked.

Giving the warning, he lunged to the right
and away from the rest of his party. Flying across as he moved, his
left fingers met and closed on the right glove. There would be
little enough time for him to save his life. Already the three men
were turning from the bar and drawing their revolvers.

At Smith
’s words and the sight of the trio of
customers’ behavior, Lily dived to the left and down. Showing an
equally astute and rapid grasp of the situation, Wil matched her
blonde rival’s movements. They landed side by side on the floor,
flattening belly-down regardless of the layer of sawdust that
covered it, and stayed there.

Continuing the motion which
snatched his right hand from its leather covering, Smith snapped
out, cocked and fired the slip gun in a single blur of motion. At
the end of his sideways bound, he let both legs bend until he was
crouching almost on his knees and with a considerable decrease in
his normal height. Lead from Arnie Sheppey
’s Colt passed above Smith’s head,
but he had assumed the stooping posture in time to save himself
from injury.

By the time
Smith
’s
bullets reached Tod Sheppey, always the faster of the brothers,
they had separated a little from their line-ahead flight. Three
holes formed a small triangle in Tod’s forehead just before his
brother got off a shot. Jerking, Tod staggered against the third
man and disturbed his aim. Although Tod’s Colt cracked, it had been
fired by a dead hand and its bullet did no more than spike a hole
in the floor-boards at the far side of the room.

Although concentrating on the three men at
the bar, Smith was also aware of how his companions were reacting.
Reflected in the mirror, he saw the women sensibly throwing
themselves out of the danger area. Woodstole and Hopkirk clearly
intended to take a more aggressive role in the proceedings.

Which could prove mighty
dangerous for Smith, if it had been the Englishman who sent the
three killers to meet him at Gilpin
’s way station.

Flashing across at some speed,
Woodstole
’s
right hand gripped and slid the big knife from its fancy black
sheath. It had a blade as strange and Oriental-looking as its hilt.
Extending straight from the bolster of the hilt for about six
inches, the back of the blade curved downwards to form the upper
curve of the spear-point
^vii
At first narrow, the
blade’s cutting edge widened into a semi-circle to complete the
point. An inch ahead of the choil on the edge, a notch like a very
shallow
W
had
been cut.

To eyes accustomed to American
knives, the weapon drawn by the Englishman appeared heavy, awkward
and badly-balanced. Certainly it did not seem to be the kind of
knife a man would select if he intended to attack an enemy standing
several yards away; the distance separating
Smith
’s party
from the trio at the bar.