Читать книгу Curse of Texas Gold: A Walt Slade Western - Bradford Scott - Страница 7

THE SUN WAS SETTING in scarlet and gold behind the gray wall of the Guadalupes when Walt Slade rode into Sotol. His face was lined and weary, but his eyes were bright, his carriage erect. Shadow’s glossy coat was streaked with sweat and powdered with dust. However, he, too, showed no other signs of an exhaustive trek and a nerve shattering race with death.

In front of a weatherbeaten building, Slade pulled to a halt. Across the large window was legended, SHERIFF’S OFFICE—Clem Baxter, Sheriff.

As Slade looked at the building, which was unlighted and the door closed, a voice spoke pleasantly behind him, “Looking for somebody, cowboy?”

The sheriff’s front window, with darkness behind it, provided a fair simulacrum of a mirror. In it Slade had watched the speaker approach, noting with interest that he wore a badge on his shirt front and that his holster was “tied down.” He was a fairly tall man with a frank-looking face marked by keen eyes that were, like his hair, dark in contrast to his otherwise blond coloring.

Slade turned in his saddle and glanced down at the man as if seeing him for the first time. “Why, yes,” he replied. “I was looking for the sheriff.”

“He’s not here,” said the other. “Rode out of town a little while ago, over to one of the ranches west of here, I suppose. He didn’t mention where he was going. Perhaps I’ll do. I’m Clifton Yates, one of his deputies.”

“Yes, I suppose you will,” Slade conceded. “I just wanted to report that there are three dead men lying at the foot of the east wall of the big canyon about sixteen miles southeast of here on the Mojo Trail. And another one at the foot of the west wall right opposite.”

The deputy’s eyes widened. He recoiled a step and stared at Slade. “How’s that again?” he asked, a bit dazedly it seemed to Slade. “Four dead men? How do you know they’re dead?”

“Well, for one thing, if they aren’t, they sure grew wings on the way down,” Slade replied drily. “The wagon the three were riding is down there, too, smashed to flinders, and the horses to a pulp. They went over that five-hundred foot cliff.”

“Good God!” gasped the deputy. “Horses ran away, I suppose.”

“Yes, they ran away, all right,” Slade conceded. “The horses were alive when they went over the cliff. The men were not.”

Deputy Yates appeared utterly bewildered, which, Slade was forced to admit, was not unreasonable under the circumstances.

“Listen, cowboy, will you please explain what you’re talking about?” he said.

Slade gave him the details of the tragedy on the Mojo. Yates listened with rigid attention. He licked his lips with a nervous tongue. “And you downed the one on top of the cliff?” he said. “Of course he was dead when you found him.”

“I’d estimate it to be close to a thousand feet from that cliff top to the canyon floor,” Slade replied obliquely.

Yates nodded. “And the wagon—did you notice what it was packing?”

“Flour and beans and grain scattered all over the canyon floor,” Slade answered. “Appeared to be a provision wagon if one was to judge from the load.”

“Uh-huh, but it might have been packing something else besides flour and beans,” muttered the deputy. “That all you saw?”

“Yes, that’s all, except a smashed rifle and an equally smashed sawed-off shotgun,” Slade returned. “Do they guard flour and beans with scatterguns and Winchesters in this section?”

“No, they don’t,” grunted the deputy. “Uh-huh, you get the idea, all right I’m willing to bet a hatful of pesos that somebody had gold in that wagon. Blast it! I wish the sheriff was here. He’d be pretty apt to know for sure, but he’s close-mouthed and don’t talk much to anybody. He sure didn’t mention anything about a gold-packing wagon to me. Well, I suppose I’d better get a couple of the boys and ride down there. You coiling your twine here for a spell? ’Pears you’re the only one who saw even part of what happened. We’ll want you for the inquest.” He hesitated, eyeing Slade speculatively.

Slade smiled down at him. “Remember, you don’t know there are any bodies in that canyon,” he said.

The deputy’s eyes widened again. “What!” he exclaimed. “Why, you just told me there are!”

“Yes, but I could have been joking,” Slade smiled. “You want to know before you think about locking me up.”

The deputy flushed a little. “I didn’t say anything about locking you up,” he growled.

“No, but that’s what you were turning over in your mind,” Slade stated.

Deputy Yates stared at him, then grinned, showing good teeth. “I told you I’m sort of new on this job,” he said apologetically. “I don’t know what to think. I’ll look up Tom Horrel, he’s been a deputy a long time, and see what he has to say.”

Slade nodded. “A good notion,” he answered. “Could you direct me to a livery stable and a place to sleep?”

“If you ride right around the next corner, just the other side of the Dun Cow saloon, you’ll find a stable. Frank Nance, an old-timer, runs it and he’s okay. Across from the stable is a rooming-house that I reckon is as good as any. Cowhands favor it. Nance runs it, too.”

“Thanks,” Slade said and gathered up his reins.

Again Yates seemed to hesitate. “By the way,” he said, “did you happen to get a good look at those hellions down in the canyon? Think you’d know them if you saw them again?”

Slade shook his head. “At five-hundred feet, especially looking down into the shadows, faces are just a whitish blur,” he explained. “Besides, I got just a glance at them before I had other things to think about, and when I next saw them they were riding up the canyon and several-hundred yards distant.”

Yates nodded his understanding. “Be seeing you,” he said and hurried away. Slade followed him with his gaze, his eyes fixed thoughtfully on the tied down holster.

Slade knew old-timers ’lowed that a man who wore the bottom of his holster strapped to his thigh never lived overly long after he began packing a gun. They insisted it was the trade mark of the professional gunfighter who sooner or later got his comeuppance, usually sooner.

Walt Slade, however, had his own theory. He had known peace officers who favored the arrangement. He held that the tie-down was a quick-draw man who was never quite sure of himself. A sure steady hand would pull a gun from its sheath without fear of dragging the sight against the leather, which was what the tie-down was supposed to guard against. The corollary, to Slade’s way of thinking, was that the tie-down man still wasn’t sure of himself after he cleared leather, which was the reason why he often fell victim to the man with greater confidence. Just a theory, he had to admit, but personal experience had proven him right on more than one occasion.

Slade located the livery stable without difficulty. Shadow was provided with comfortable quarters and all his wants cared for.

“Sure you can have a room,” said the proprietor, who was a grizzled old-timer with a twinkle in his faded eyes. “Come on across and I’ll fix you up.”

Slade was satisfied with the plainly-furnished but clean room old Frank Nance showed him. He deposited his saddle pouches and rifle in a corner.

“Lock your door,” Nance warned, handing him a key. “No, we ain’t bothered with thievin’,” he said with a chuckle at Slade’s inquiring glance. “But if you don’t, you liable to find some sociable gent in your bed when you aim to coil your twine for the night. The way they come, they just fall through the first unlocked door they find. Hey, who’s down there?”

“How about a room for tonight, Pop?” replied a man in rangeland clothes and carrying a warbag, who had just entered the tiny office and was peering up the stairs.

“Yep, I got one left,” said Nance. “Right next to this feller, only he shoots through the wall at gents that snores, just like John Wesley Hardin used to do,” he added with a wink at Slade.

“Never heard myself snore,” answered the new arrival, “so I reckon I can take a chance.” He grinned, revealing crooked teeth badly tobacco-stained, and entered the room Nance pointed out, closing the door behind him.

“Sort of a mangy-lookin’ critter, but you can’t be too choosy in this business,” Nance confided to Slade as they left the building. “Hope he doesn’t snore.”

“Chances are I wouldn’t hear him, the way I sleep when I’m tired,” Slade returned cheerfully. “Where’s a good place to eat?”

“Good chuck at the Dun Cow,” Nance replied. “You don’t want to miss the Dun Cow. Fellers have been known to ride from clean down in the Davis Mountain country just to get a look at the Dun Cow. She’s a lolapaloozer, all right. I’ve been as far west as California—spent quite a while there—and I ain’t never seen anything to equal the Dun Cow, and hope I never will. Shows what kind of place a feller with delirium tremens can build.”

As he turned the corner, Slade saw Deputy Clifton Yates and two other horsemen riding east in the fading light. Behind them rumbled a light wagon. Evidently they planned to bring the bodies back with them.

Slade agreed that the Dun Cow was all his landlord claimed. Before leaving the roominghouse he had gotten a brief resume of the Dun Cow’s history and he chuckled amusedly at old Sam Yelverton’s conceit and his hankering for French windows.

Incidentally, the one old Ben Sutler rode his skewbald through had been replaced.

The French windows did not look so out of place in the new Sotol as they had before the metamorphosis took place. Nor did the big beamed room, nor the mirror blazing back bar crowded with bottles and the cedarwood front bar crowded with gentlemen interested in what the bottles contained.

Slade found a table and was soon eating an appetizing meal, but his eyes were as busy as his teeth. He had not failed to note the interest his entrance aroused in certain elements among the crowd at the bar and the gaming tables. Not an obvious interest—casual, a bit too casual—better described it. The kind of interest shown a stranger by men who were always thinking about what might happen if yesterday should catch up with today. Slade felt that there were quite a few of that sort in the Dun Cow. Yes, it was a salty pueblo, all right, and very likely the Dun Cow was the hub of the wheel.

He noticed that a counter had been rigged up at the far end of the bar, upon which rested a set of delicately-balanced scales. Behind the scales presided a tall, sinewy man with a pleasant face and keen blue eyes. He was good looking, Slade thought, in a steely, polished way, with his alert eyes and think wavy hair of a pale ash color. He reminded Slade of somebody, but whom he could not at the moment recall.

From time to time a man in rough mining clothes would approach the counter and tender the tall man a plumped-out poke or two. The gold the pouches contained would be poured into the scale pan. The owner would be given a receipt which noted the weight of his nuggets and dust. Sometimes a sum in gold coins would also be handed him and the deduction noted on the receipt.

“Crane handles a good deal of the gold that comes out of Jericho Valley,” the waiter who had brought Slade his supper and noticed the direction of his glance remarked. “He ships it to Boraco, where the railroad takes it to the assay offices that buy it. Charges a mite more than the other shippers, but he uses more guards on his wagons and so far his shipments have always gotten through, which is more than can be said of some of the others.”

“Crane?” Slade remarked interrogatively.

“Uh-huh, Crane Arnold. That’s him behind the counter. He’s the owner of this place. Bought it from old Sam Yelverton—that’s Yelverton over at that poker game just this side of the faro bank, the old fat feller with the mustache and whiskers. He sold out to Crane because the place was making too darn much money and interfering with his poker and drinking. Some folks are sure hard to please!”

“Would seem that way,” Slade smiled agreement and favored Yelverton with a keen glance. “Yelverton’s an old-timer hereabouts, I presume?” he observed.

“Just about the oldest, except old Ben Butler, and nobody’s seen Ben for quite a spell now, and I reckon that makes Yelverton the oldest,” the waiter explained. “It was Ben who first discovered the gold in Jericho Valley. Him and Sam were pretty good friends. Sam likes to talk about him when he’s feeling his likker. Reckon he’ll be feeling it before long, now, the way he’s downing it this evening. He’s winning at poker and feeling good. Sociable gent, old Sam.”