Slip Gun (26 page)

‘
All
right,’ Virgil said. ‘We’ll give you to noon. If you’ve not got
Lily Shivers and young Jeffreys back here by then, I’m going to
start talking.’

‘
You
want something?’ Smith asked, coming in.

‘
I will
do as you say,’ Yorck promised. ‘But I warn you that I will lodge
the strongest protest—’

‘
Time’s
a-wasting, Counselor,’ Smith warned. ‘If those fellers’ve a fair
way to go, you’d best not be long in getting my message fastened to
that door.’

‘
I’ll
go now,’ the lawyer answered, throwing a long glance at the
brothers. ‘And I hold you to your word not to jeopardize my clients
by interfering with the collection of your ultimatum.’

‘
Your
clients mean nothing to me, Counselor,’ Smith drawled. ‘It’s Miss
Shivers and my deputy I’m interested in.’

Returning to the ground floor,
Yorck accepted the note which Smith had already written and left.
He had only just gone when the Texan told Ottaway to follow him.
Ottaway was to keep watch, without being seen, on
Yorck
’s
activities. After the deputy had departed, Wil looked at
Smith.

‘
You
gave your word—’

‘
Not to
stop anybody collecting that letter I gave the Counselor,’ Smith
finished for her. ‘I never said I wouldn’t have a watch kept on
him. Nobody’ll come. The note he gave me hadn’t been pinned to a
door all night. There wasn’t even a pinhole in it.’

‘
So you
think that Yorck’s involved?’ Wil asked.

‘
Up to
his neck,’ Smith replied. ‘He’ll go to wherever they’re holding
Lily and Stan, or he’ll get the hell out of town. Either way, we’ll
have the answer.’

‘
What
if Yorck sits tight,’ Frith asked, ‘And the Joneses won’t
talk?’

‘
Then
I’ll do what I told them,’ Smith declared. ‘Like Miss Jeffreys told
the Counselor, if you once give way in this kind of a deal, you
may’s well kiss law and order good-bye. And I’ll be damned if I’ll
let it happen.’

Asking to be kept informed of developments,
Wil left to attend to her affairs as banker. With her went the
bartender, who had been asked by Smith not to talk about what he
had seen and heard. Smith and Frith remained at the office,
awaiting the next developments. At half past eleven, Ottaway
returned.

‘
Yorck’s just pulled out, on the East-bound stage. He’s not
seen anybody, nor left your letter on the door of the house where
he’s been staying.’

‘
What
now, Wax?’ Frith inquired.

‘
We’ll
go and see the Jones boys,’ the Texan replied. ‘They’ve been
sweating long enough. I reckon Morgan’ll be ready to
talk.’

Hearing the clatter of boots on the stairs,
the Jones brothers rose and came to the door of their cell.
Although Virgil still showed little emotion, Morgan exhibited a
mixture of alarm and expectancy.

‘
Your
lawyer’s caught the East-bound stage, gents,’ Smith remarked. ‘And
he hasn’t tried to get in touch with those fellers.’

‘
So?’
Virgil asked, nudging his brother in the ribs.

‘
So
you’re more stupid than I thought if you can’t figure out what’s
happening,’ Smith replied.

‘
Maybe
you’d best tell us,’ Virgil suggested.

‘
I
think they’ve sold you down the river,’ Smith declared. ‘They want
us to kill you.’

‘
Why
would they?’ Morgan demanded, ignoring Virgil’s warning glares.
‘They brought us here to get us our farm back.’

The hell they
did
,’ Frith
snorted. They fetched you to be used as goats, to be butchered by
the ranchers so there’d be trouble through the fair. Or arrested by
us. I’ll bet they didn’t tell you how Miss Jeffreys’d brought us in
to run the law instead of the regular officers.’

They didn
’t,’ Virgil agreed, while Morgan
muttered distractedly.

‘
How’d
you reckon we got to know you was in town so quick?’ Ottaway went
on.

Virgil and Morgan exchanged glances. Clearly
they had discussed that aspect of the affair and formed conclusions
which Ottaway was apparently confirming. So Smith decided to
continue rubbing home the hot iron.

‘
Likely
they didn’t expect to be so lucky as having Evan gun down the
cow-hand. Or maybe they did. Did the two young ’n’s give you
fellers any of their cigarettes?’

They offered, but only Evan took
one. I chaw and Brother Morgan rolls his own
makings.
’

‘
You
were the lucky ones,’ Frith commented. Them cigarettes was drugged.
I bet Evan acted strange after he’d smoked
^N
it.’

‘
He
did!’ Virgil admitted. ‘You reckon them cigarettes made him act
like he did, marshal ?’

‘
They
wanted one of you to make a fool play,’ Smith replied. ‘Or you
might’ve heard that Poona Woodstole didn’t aim to press that
slow-elking warrant as long as you kept clear of his
land.’

‘
You’re
the goats for sure,’ Ottaway drawled. ‘Maybe you didn’t know it,
but Wax Smith had somebody else pull the hostage game and he acted
just like he did with you boys.’

‘
I mind
Counselor Yorck wrote to the newspapers about how no peace officer
should be allowed to gun down prisoners, even if doing it did save
the hostages’ lives,’ Frith continued. ‘He knowed how the marshal’d
act over that letter.’

‘
Anyways,’ Smith said. ‘We figured you ought to know. ‘Cause
in one hour, I’ll be coming to keep my word.’

‘
It’ll
look like you was shot trying to escape,’ Frith went on. ‘With
Yorck gone, nobody’ll know different.’

‘
Miss
Jeffreys’s with us on this,’ Smith warned. ‘So we can do what I
said.’

With that, the Texan turned as
if to leave the basement. Showing an equal disregard, the deputies
followed him. The alarm and concern increased on the
brothers
’
faces. If Marshal Caster had made the threat, they would have
ignored it. Waxahachie Smith and his deputies were an entirely
different proposition. Hired gun fighters, they had nothing to lose
and no fear of killing if doing so would achieve their ends. As
Frith had pointed out, they could fake things so the brothers would
appear to have died in an escape bid. So the brothers did not doubt
that they would be killed at the appointed time.

‘
Marshal!’ Virgil yelled. ‘What’s in it for us if we tell
you everything?’

‘
Your
lives, if we get Miss Shivers and Stan Jeffreys out without them
being harmed,’ Smith promised. ‘And I figure we can do that, if
there’s time.’

‘
They’re being held at the Page place,’ Virgil said. ‘It’s
about four miles north along Widow’s Creek. You should be able to
get up to the house without being seen, it’s in thick woods and
there’s only them two young fellers there with Evan.’

‘
Huh
huh!’ Smith grunted. ‘We’ll go take a look. Tell me about the rest
of it, Mr. Jones. Why’d you come back?’

‘
Yorck
had us fetched to his office in Cheyenne and said he’d heard how
the Grange’d refused to help us get our farm back,’ Virgil
explained. ‘He allowed we should come back up here and stand our
trial for slow-elking ’cause he could get us off it. Those two
young fellers come to help get the farmers on our side.’

‘
He
reckoned that we’d get off with Governor Moonlight being here for
the fair,’ Morgan went on. ‘Hell, we didn’t want the farm for
ourselves but we could sell it.’

Smith could see the whole scheme
now. Wanting to embarrass the Grange and stir up trouble for the
ranchers, the Free Land Society had found the perfect dupes. Told
the basic facts, or a distorted version of them, people might
believe that the Jones family had received a raw deal. Neither the
Patrons of Husbandry nor the cattlemen would have emerged in a good
light from the situation created by the brothers
’ return. Faced with a range
war, which could easily have exploded and might even yet, the
Governor would be compelled to take firm action. No doubt the Free
Land Society, hovering like turkey vultures, hoped to gain a
considerable political advantage out of the conflict.

In which case, they might have hired the men
who had tried to kill Smith, Frith and Ottaway.

‘
Let’s
get going!’ Smith snapped to his deputies. ‘The longer we wait, the
more chance of the soft-shells learning things’ve gone
wrong.’

‘
Do you
reckon we should all go, Wax?’ Ottaway asked as the trio returned
to the marshal’s office. ‘This could be a trick on Yorck’s part to
draw us out of town and set the Joneses free.’

‘
It
could be,’ Smith agreed. ‘I reckon that Ric and me can handle it,
if you’ll tend to things here in town.’

‘
You
can count on me to do that,’ Ottaway promised.

Daylight had
come and gone several hours
earlier. Seated on the floor of a small room in a log-walled house,
Lily Shivers and Stanley Jeffreys watched Wymar leave the room.
Neither of them knew where they had been brought, but had
identified their captors as the two soft-shells and Evan Jones.
Apart from checking that their bonds were secure and giving them a
drink of water, the trio had ignored the blonde and Jeffreys.
However, from snatches of conversation they had heard, the
prisoners had gathered that they were being held as
hostages.

‘
What
do you think Wax will do, Lily?’ Jeffreys inquired.

‘
I’m
damned if I know,’ the blonde admitted. ‘Only I’ll bet it
will be something those three yacks don’t expect.’

‘
Damn
it all!’ Jeffreys groaned. ‘This’s me done as a deputy. Wax
Smith’ll not want a feller who got taken by surprise twice in one
day.’

‘
I’ll
bet he doesn’t hold it against you when he learns why. You stopped
to see what was ailing a feller lying on the sidewalk and got
cracked on the head from an alley. Fine lawman you’d make, walking
by something like that.’

‘
If I
could only get loose!’ Jeffreys growled, having told Lily how he
had come to be captured when dawn’s light had first showed him his
fellow-victim. ‘Damn it all, they’ve got me fastened with dad’s old
handcuffs. I’ve been carrying them since Wax took me on as a
deputy.’

‘
You
know, Stan,’ Lily remarked, wanting to take the young man’s
thoughts from his present position. ‘You’ve surprised me. Way you
was acting since you came home from college, I never expected to
see you take on as a deputy.’

‘
Didn’t
reckon Wil Jeffreys’ kid brother could amount to anything without
big sister’s help huh?’

‘
I
always figured you could, if you made a stab at it. And don’t
forget, I’ve near on been Wil Jeffreys’ little sister for a lot of
years,’ Lily replied, then grinned. ‘Way things turned out when we
tangled, I’m still that way.’

‘
You
sure tied into each other,’ Jeffreys smiled. ‘I wouldn’t’ve
expected it of Wil.’

‘
Do you
reckon I’d’ve got into a fight with her if I had?’

‘
I
reckon you might. Lily. I’m sorry about the way I acted the night
Wax hit town. Except that it made me think, that and the way he
acted next day at Wil’s office. I started to see myself as other
folks saw me and I didn’t like it. Trouble is that I’ve no head for
the banking business and, anyway, nobody took me seriously with Wil
around. So I decided to make a stab at being a lawman. Dad was
pretty good at that, so I’ve always been told.’

‘
He was
real good,’ Lily agreed. ‘Only I bet he made mistakes when he was
first starting, just like you.’

At that moment the blonde
realized that Jeffreys was not listening to her. Instead, he had
turned his gaze to the room
’s window which had long since lost its glass and
drapes.

‘
There’s a horse coming,’ Jeffreys said. ‘Just one and being
ridden without trying to hide it.’

Wriggling on to his back, he rolled towards
the window. There, he writhed around until he was sitting supported
by the wall. By bracing his back against the logs and forcing on
the floor with his feet, he eased himself erect. Still leaning
against the wall, he peered cautiously out of the window. He did
not find an enlightening view awaiting his efforts. Fairly thick
woods flanked the side of the house and, he assumed, surrounded it.
There was, however, a small and winding path approaching the
building within his range of vision and a rider was coming along
it.