Читать книгу Riders of the Night - Eugene Cunningham - Страница 4

Table of Contents

Judge Amblet looked thoughtfully at the swinging bodies of Shorty Willets and Pedro Garcia. He was a tubby little man with round, expressionless face, clean-shaved on cheeks and upper lip. He stared with small, deepset, and round blue eyes at the bodies, tugging with fat hand at the paintbrush chin whisker. He jerked his head at the marshal.

‘Cut ’em down, Faraday,’ he ordered nasally. ‘Help him, Tooley. Hold ’em up while he cuts ’em down.’

Faraday moved a thought deliberately toward the grisly figures. A smallish youngster of stupid yellow face, wearing a deputy sheriff’s star upon red flannel shirt, clumped after him.

As he reached up toward the rope that suspended Shorty Willets, involuntarily Faraday’s head came turning for a swift glance across the open at that crest in the flat from which he had been fired on. It was not yet nine——

‘I wisht I had a watch!’ Turkey Adkins cried anxiously from the watchers. ‘Awful thing if a mistake was made, now ... jist when ever’thing seems all right. But that’s the way things do go—jist when yuh think yuh’re safe, yuh git piled. Bad enough in Yatesville as ’tis—with some part of a marshal. But to lose that part an’ not have any——’

‘Go ahead! Cut ’em down!’ Judge Amblet snapped irritably. ‘You shut up, Turkey Adkins! This is official business an’ I don’t want any interference. You let Faraday alone.’

From that little rise came no more shots. Nobody really expected any. For a posse of wild-riding cowboys had burned the ground getting out there after the shooting. They had asked nothing more than a glimpse of something to shoot at—and had found nothing but the spot where a horse had stood waiting in an arroyo, the place where a man had sprawled comfortably with both elbows propped to hold his rifle the better to steady it, and—this was the telltale thing—two empty .44 shells and a third one, set very prominently upright near by, on a carefully smoothed circle in the dust.

‘The One-Gang, all right!’ the cowboys had said to each other. ‘Yeh... That’s the sign.’

But now, as gently the two dead men were lowered to the ground and carried into the justice-court, there was no further objection by the gang which had hung them there.

Doc’ Stevens made an examination and reported to Judge Amblet, who nodded heavily. Rufe Redden was the first witness. He stood with big freckled paws clenched on his hipbones, red hair falling tousled over his forehead. Belligerently, he told of opening the front door of his store, diagonally opposite the corral gateway, and observing the bodies. Recognizing them instantly, too. Faraday testified concerning the attack made on him and snarled at Turkey Adkins when the bandy-legged little cowboy nodded grave approval of the account. One of the cowboys who had ridden out to the rifleman’s ambush testified concerning the single shell stood upright in the dust.

‘I reckon that’s plenty,’ Amblet nodded gravely. ‘It’s my verdict that the deceased—Shorty Willets an’ Pedro Garcia—they came to their death by bein’ strangled an’ ’twas at the hands o’ parties unknown to me personal but callin’ theirselves the One-Gang. It’s a mighty sad affair, folks. The authorities’ll do all that’s humanly possible to clear it up——’

‘I’m shore glad to hear that!’ Rufe Redden growled. ‘Because, with all the other things this sneakin’, murderin’, bushwhackin’ gang’s done, it does seem to me that the authorities is about due to try somethin’—or git clean off the driver’s seat an’ let in a new bunch o’ office-holders that can do somethin’! By God! I’m sick an’ tired o’ this way o’ doin’! The most o’ you people gi’ me a big pain right where it hurts most! Looks like we can’t git a grand jury that’ll do more’n pass resolutions endorsin’ the sanctity o’ the home, or somethin’!’

He turned his angry red face upon the bench.

‘Will you quit poundin’ that gavel, Amblet? You said you was done. Well, me, I’m just beginnin’! I’m sick an’ tired o’ this dam’ One-Gang! All o’ you know that things is dam’ bad an’ gittin’ a sight worse. Gittin’ so a man can’t call a cow or a horse or a dollar his own, no more—no! nor his woman, for that matter! I’m sick an’ tired o’ the way Yates County’s bein’ mismanaged. You know dam’ well that if that lousy gang was to ride into this justice-court right now an’ yell for your shirts an’ the fillin’s out o’ your teeth, the bulk o’ you’d let out a howl an’ start beatin’ your foreheads ag’inst the floor! Action’s the thing this county needs. I want to see some!’

He whirled and stalked toward the door. Turkey Adkins, squatting in a corner with inevitable brown cigarette drooping from his mouth-corner, lifted his hat solemnly as Rufe passed him. The big red storekeeper stopped short.

‘What the hell you tippin’ your hat to me for?’ he snarled.

‘Dam’ if I know,’ Turkey shrugged. ‘Do’no’ if it’s because yuh’re a dam’ brave man, Rufe—or because yuh’re apt to mightily soon be a dead man!’

Judge Amblet took it upon himself to resent Rufe Redden’s outburst—when Mr. Redden could be seen through the doorway, halfway across the street. He said that, as an official of the county, naturally he knew how hard all officers had worked on a very difficult case. This One-Gang was notorious for leaving never a bit of evidence that the authorities could twist into a clue—and into a noose. But, speaking for the county administration, even though he was but one of the humblest of elected officials, the sheriff’s office and every other department of the county government was working diligently. If any man there felt as Rufe Redden seemed to feel, he had only to produce some evidence on which a warrant might be issued——

He broke off, scowling at that corner in which a little group was talking and from which rose an annoying drawl that interfered with the judicial flow of eloquence. He stiffened angrily and asked that the last remark be repeated.

‘I was jist a-sayin’,’ Turkey Adkins shrugged, ‘that we shore had things different in Yates County when Ol’ Burk Yates was alive... Yuh never hear o’ any One-Gang business them days! Nahsir! Blame’ good reason, too: Ol’ Burk he never liked that sort o’ doin’s an’ he never stood for it!’

There being no indication of anything of further interest here, Turkey got up from where he had been hunkering against the wall. As he went out at reeling horseman’s gait, he whistled his favorite tune. He was well outside before Judge Amblet had marshaled a crushing rejoinder.

‘Is that so?’ the Judge flung after Turkey’s back. ‘Is that so!’

Turkey sauntered on with hat-rim low over his eyes, whistling dolorously. A buckboard, coming into town, drew quietly up behind him. Softly as the team’s hoofs fell upon the dust, Turkey heard the noise. He turned, still whistling, as it stopped and his name was called.

‘Why—hello, Myra,’ he drawled tonelessly. ‘How’s ever’ li’l’ bitsy ol’ thing, anyhow?’

‘You know how everything is!’ the slim girl in the buckboard said shakily. ‘You know that everything’s bad—and steadily getting worse. That is—if they could be worse than now!’

‘Oh!’ Turkey nodded. ‘Sounds mightily like yuh heerd about—Shorty...’ He jerked his head mechanically toward the corral.

‘God! I—I can’t believe it, Turkey! I—I can’t believe anyone would be so—cold-blooded, so cruel! To deliberately murder poor Shorty Willets, simply because he worked for us—I heard about it as I came in. The—inquest? It’s been held?’

‘Umhmm! Shore! Held an’ done with. Settled ever’thing. Ol’ Amblin’ Amblet has done gone back to sellin’ calico.’

He fished a sack of Duke’s Mixture from one pocket of his brown duck jumper and hunted from another a book of brown ‘saddle-blanket’ cigarette papers. Carefully, as if it were a religious rite, he sifted tobacco into a paper held troughlike. He squinted critically down, put three grains back into the sack, and hard brown fingers flickered. He licked the edge of the paper and looked up at her as he thrust the cigarette into his mouth.

‘What’d the blackbird say to the crow?

’Tain’t goin’ rain no mo’!

’Tain’t goin’ hail—’tain’t goin’ snow;

’Tain’t goin’ rain no mo’!’

Myra Yarborough sat patiently, regarding the little man steadily. She knew the bandy-legged, bristlingly independent cowboy very well. Very well, indeed! for he had demanded his pay just as she had been on the verge of flinging it into his face. But that had been six months ago. Six long months ago when Shorty Willets had been riding for the Y, capable, willing to handle the range-affairs. Now——It was different, now!

‘What do you mean by what you said? That they settled everything?’ she asked slowly, turning sideways in the buckboard seat, a slender, blue-eyed girl with hair yellow as corn and a red, pretty, and self-willed mouth.

‘Huh? Mean? Why, Amblin’ Amblet give the matter due considerin’ an’ decided that the deed was done by parties unknowed to him personal an’, o’ course, the duly elected authorities’ll bring in the dirty murderers—mebbe...’

‘Don’t start that infernal song again!’ she exploded, recognizing the symptoms in the Y’s ex-foreman. ‘Turkey... I’ve been thinking... I—Do you think—I mean, will you——’

Turkey’s hand dropped from his cigarette and disappeared into a side pants-pocket. Ostentatiously, he drew out one silver dollar and sufficient fractional silver to make seventy-five or eighty cents more.

‘Nah ...’ he drawled. ‘Nah! I got too much money. Too much money en-tire-ly!’

He separated the coins on his palm, leaving a silver dime isolated. He squinted with gray eye down at the lone coin.

‘I could take an’ th’ow away all but that much,’ he said meditatively, ‘an’ still I’d have too much money to go back to work for the Y. Yuh know, Myra, I reckon that when I’m done with a place or a body, I git jist a li’l’ bit doner than anybody yuh ever see! An’ I shore was plumb done with yuh, the day I rolled my bed an’ hightailed off the place.’

‘I was going to fire you, anyway!’ she flared. ‘I’ll have no back-talk from any of my——’

‘Servants,’ Turkey supplied, with a small grin, but by no means a humorous grin. ‘Yeh, I knowed right well yuh meant that. Funny! Reminds me o’ somethin’ I was oratin’ to Judge Amblin’ Amblet a spell back: It shore was different when Ol’ Burk Yates was alive. Yes—ma’am! It shore was that!

‘The Y them days, it was run like a cow-folks’ cow-outfit. Wasn’t run, then, accordin’ to the last letter o’ instructions from the head-wrangler up to Vassar nor yet at Culver. Burk Yates, he had a mind an’ he could make it up without callin’ in no outside help.

‘Take this rustlin’ business: When some Y stuff was stole, them days, we jist sort o’ got together, an’ counted noses an’ seen that ever’body had plenty grub an’ ca’tridges. Then, off we ’loped jist as pleasant as ary Sunday-School picnic ever yuh did see. We kept a-splittin’ the breeze till we come up to the hairpins we needed—them that done the stealin’. We give ’em the cottonwood prance, if they was physical-able to stand her. Else we jist buried ’em without. Then we sa’ntered back home to work!’

‘I take back my offer!’ she said furiously. ‘I don’t want you on the Y. I don’t want you working for me!’

‘Then that makes two o’ us with mightily like notions!’ Turkey nodded impassively. ‘Besides, yuh don’t need nobody like me to rod that spread—when yuh git so much valuable help—free, gratus an’ for nothin’!—out o’ Lance Gregg an’ the Wallop-8.

‘What d’ yuh hear from Burk, these days? Has he learned how to do that jiggle in the saddle—what d’ they call it—postin’?—back East at Culver? An’ how to lift his li’l’ finger dainty-nice when he picks up his teacup? Well... I did figger it was a kind o’ shame, about that boy. I sort o’ figgered he must have some amount o’ whalebone an’ whangleather in him, bein’ Ol’ Burk’s git. But—shucks! Them colleges has ruint better’n Burk, I reckon—boys an’ gals...’

Furiously, she lifted the lines from her lap. Then she stopped, cheeks still blazing red and blue eyes snapping. For a second buckboard was coming into town from the west—from the direction of the railroad at Cottonwood Crossing, a village of sorts nearly twenty miles over.

Turkey, too, stared at the other buckboard. Brown face tightened; sun-squinted gray eyes drew to narrow and shining slits. Then he was taken by a sour grin. He hummed quite audibly and Myra’s yellow head jerked back to him. She frowned uncertainly.

‘Who is that, in the buckboard?’

‘That?’ Turkey cried amazedly. ‘Yuh mean to say yuh cain’t read the brand? Well, if my ol’ eyes ain’t plumb gone back on me, that-there’s the Last o’ the Fightin’ Yateses. Yes, sir! Mister Burk Yates, o’ Yatesville, Yates County, Texas—an’ Culver, Pennsylvania, o’ course. Half-owner, along o’ Miss Myra Yarborough, o’ the one-time amount-to-somethin’ Y Ranch. Watch him, will yuh! Watch him! Blamed if he ain’t a-practicin’ that postin’ business in Froggy’s buckboard seat! Shore is hell, now ain’t it, what them colleges do to country boys an’ gals!’

But Myra had slapped the lines on the pintos’ backs. She jerked away, and when the buckboard rolled downstreet, Turkey loafed over to lean against the wall of the nearest building. He stared thoughtfully at Myra’s buckboard while it drew up to Froggy’s and stopped beside it. His weathered face was like a mask carved from brown stone, now. He ground the butt of his cigarette to rags and powder with flashing movement of his fingers.

Under his breath he swore furiously, a torrent of savage rangeland oaths. For all morning he had been under the bitterest of restraints, bottling up the killing rage that had come with sight of Shorty Willets dangling from that corral gate cross-bar with insolent, challenging placard upon his breast. Now, the sight of Young Burk Yates coming back to the range his father and Duke Yarborough had settled, back to the county and the town Ol’ Burk had founded and named, had power to snap the iron control Turkey Adkins had kept upon himself. For Shorty Willets had been his good friend; had been his very good friend.

‘If only he was Yates kind, not jist Yates blood!’ Turkey said helplessly to himself, when his fit of fury had passed. ‘But his ma, she was one o’ them elegant town-ladies, she was! I reckon there’s a streak o’ soft in his bacon. If he’d been worth a hoot in hell, he’d have stuck down here last year, when Ol’ Burk cashed in, an’ took up the work o’ bossin’ the Y, instead o’ leavin’ it to that crazy, mule-stubborn gal...

‘Nah, Turkey Adkins! I reckon yuh’ll jist have to play the li’l’ ol’ lone lobo this trip. Where yuh’ll be ridin’—an’ how—there’ll be no postin’ in a postage-stamp saddle that could lift the scalps none... Still—an’ yet——

‘The last o’ the Fightin’ Yateses. Man! I shore wisht he was that!’