Bounty Guns (13 page)

“That's been pretty obvious,” Lynn said.

There was amusement in his eyes as he looked briefly at Lynn, and then back to Anna. “Well, I came clean, Anna. I need your help. Will you give it to me?”

“I don't think so,” Anna said slowly.

Tip went on stubbornly. “We know you discovered Blackie Mayfell's body. We also know you didn't tell anybody, and that you let it be discovered later by Jeff or Murray Seth or by your dad. They took him and dumped him on Bridle Bit range. Why?”

“Haven't you heard we're fighting?” Anna asked dryly.

“Why?” Tip asked again. “They didn't tell Ball that they'd seen any of the Shieldses murder Blackie, so they didn't even do it for a frame-up. Why did they do it?”

Anna was silent.

“Why, when you found Blackie's body at first, Anna, didn't you tell your family?”

Anna was silent, her mouth set in a firm line.

Tip said, “You're not going to tell me?”

“I'll tell you this much,” Anna said hesitantly. “This man was dead when I came upon him. He'd been shot in the back.”

“I know that,” Tip said impatiently. “I want to know the rest of it. Who are you protecting? Why was Mayfell moved off your land, with no attempt to frame the Shieldses? Your brothers wanted to keep it quiet. You wanted to keep it quiet. I want to know why.”

Lynn was looking at Anna in breathless suspense. When Anna looked at her, Lynn's gaze fell away, and she relaxed her hold on the edge of the table. She laughed shakily and said, “For heaven's sake, Anna, nobody thinks you killed this man. Why don't you tell Tip, so he'll leave you alone?”

“I can't,” Anna said in a low voice. “I can't do it. You can do anything to me you want, but I won't tell!” She looked at Tip. “I won't!”

Tip looked helplessly from Anna to Lynn. “What's the matter with her?”

“Too much Tip Woodring,” Lynn said dryly. “Leave her alone, Tip. Or are you going to put her in jail?”

Baffled, Tip came to his feet. Lynn had been right. Anna wasn't going to tell him, and the way it looked she wasn't going to tell Lynn, either. He picked up his Stetson and held it by the brim with both hands, looking searchingly at Anna.

“I'm trying to help you.”

“Oh, I know you are, Tip. But I can't tell you. I would if I could, but it's no use asking.”

Tip said shortly, “Good night,” and walked to the door. He was going to have to do it the hard way, and that would hurt Anna. He nodded to Lynn and hobbled slowly downstairs.

Ball was at the office, and when Tip went in he looked over his newspaper. “Well?”

“She won't talk.”

“I thought so.”

Tip said suddenly, “I'll make a bargain with you, Sheriff.” When Ball became attentive, Tip said, “Ben Bolling knows something about this. They all do. I'm going to offer Bolling his freedom—
this time—
if he'll tell me what he knows about Blackie's murder.” Ball looked noncommittal, and Tip continued. “I'll corral him again, because he'll make a try for us or the Shieldses again. In a week I'll have him back in jail. Besides, you said yourself we haven't got grounds for holdin' Bolling.”

Ball said dryly, “Goin' back on what you said last night, eh?”

Tip flushed. “You're damn right I am.
I want to know about Blackie!
”

The sheriff folded his paper and sighed. “All right. Only you're a jughead, Tip. The whole U. S. Army couldn't take Bolling out of that camp again.”

“You watch,” Tip said. He hobbled up the stairs to the cell block, took down the lantern hanging in the corridor, and went over to Bolling's cell. Ben Bolling came to a sitting position at his approach. Tip set down the lantern on the floor, put his hands on the bars, and said, “Bolling, how'd you like to leave this place?”

“Come to your senses, have you?”

“Not any,” Tip said. “I'll tell you something, Bolling. I know you didn't kill Hagen Shields, because I saw you there at the Bridle Bit. But if you give an alibi that will free you, you've got to admit you were there tryin' to burn Shields out. And if you give that alibi you're puttin' yourself open to arrest again. So you've kept your mouth shut, because if you opened it, you'd be in jail either way.”

Bolling said nothing.

“We'll just forget about this whole business this time if you'll talk.”

“About what?”

“What do you know about Blackie Mayfell? You discovered his body after Anna discovered it. You took it over on Shields range. But you didn't try to frame Buck or Hagen or Cam Shields with the murder. Why didn't you? Who are you protectin'?”

Bolling shook his head slowly. “That's the bargain, is it? You let me out for that information?”

“Yes.”

“Go to hell.” He lifted his feet off the floor, ready to lie down, just as a rifle hammered out from across the street. The bar next to Ben Bolling's head clanged, and the slug sirened off into the wall. Tip kicked the lantern over, whipping out his six-gun. From the corner of his eye he had caught the gun flash from the room of a building across the street. He emptied his gun in a staccato roar at the gun flame, then wheeled and plunged downstairs. His leg knifed pain, but he hit the office floor, staggered, caught himself, and ran out after Ball, who was standing on the sidewalk.

“Across the street!” Tip said. He ran past Ball, dodged under the hitchrail, fell, got up, and Ball passed him. They knifed in between two buildings and ran back to the alley. They got only the sound of a horse galloping down that blackness, and they both emptied their guns at the sound, knowing it was futile.

“Did he get Bolling?” Ball asked.

“No.”

Ball breathed a relieved sigh. “Now, who could that be?” he murmured softly.

“Get the lantern,” Tip said. “I'm goin' to have a look around here.”

Tip didn't move until Ball returned with the lantern, then they set about looking for tracks. In the hard-packed cinders of the alley, nothing was plain. They saw where his horse had been ground-haltered, saw where he hit the ground after sliding off the roof. Tip said, “Give me a boost.”

“I'll go up,” Ball said. “You hand up the lantern.”

Tip gave him a leg up and then handed up the lantern. Ball traveled the ridgepole to the false front, and paused once to call, “There's a little blood up here.”

Tip grunted, and Ball went on. At the false front, over the top of which the bushwhacker could get a clean look into the second-story window of the jail, Ball found only a scattering of matches, indicating the man had been there a long time.

He came down, dropped heavily to the ground, and dusted off his hands. “He was forted up there waitin' for somebody to bring that lantern into the cell block, so he could see to sight.”

Tip cursed under his breath, and led the way back between the buildings. Suddenly he stopped and kneeled, holding the lantern close. There lay a Winchester carbine, its stock broken at the grip.

Tip said, “We must have stepped on it.” He picked up the stock and turned it over. There, on the other side, were burned the initials
C. S.

“Cam Shields,” Sheriff Ball murmured. “That fits right enough, don't it?”

Tip nodded, rising. “That's the best news we've had in a long stretch, Sheriff. Will the county commissioner let you have any money?”

“What for?”

“Why, put out a reward for Cam Shields and drive him out of the country. With him gone, we know what the Shieldses will do. They'll keep the peace. And it takes two to make a fight. Whenever the Bollings step out of line from now on, we'll nail them. The Shieldses,” he added slowly, “are out of this feud, I reckon.”

CHAPTER 9

When Cam Shields had achieved the end of the canyon and the lip of the rim, he pulled up, fighting down his panic in order to listen. For a long moment he sorted out the night sounds, but among them he could not hear the pounding of running horses. Slowly his heart stopped racing, and at the same time the throb in his left arm came into his consciousness. He put his hand there and it came away wet, and for a second he was dismayed. Then he ripped off his neckerchief, fashioned a bandage, and then gingerly raised his arm. The numbness was gone, and he could move it. He laughed softly. That wild devil of a Tip Woodring was lucky, but not that lucky.

He sobered instantly when he remembered the rifle he had dropped when he was hit. The slug had knocked him off balance, and he had dropped everything to grab for the ridgepole. After that, a wild and savage desire to get out of there came over him, but he knew that the rifle had slid off the roof to the ground. And no matter how much he repeated to himself that it didn't matter, that it wouldn't be found, he knew he was lying. Tip Woodring would find it, and on its stock read his initials.
C. S.

Cam sat there in the dark, knowing without putting it into words that this was one of those turning-points in his life. The past was dead, and he couldn't go back to it. If he did, it would be to face jail and the desertion of Buck and Lucy and Pate. Of Tip Woodring, he could be dead certain. If Tip would haul Ben Bolling from under the nose of eight of his men and jail him, he would take Cam for attempting the same crime. No, he couldn't go back, because the bridges were burned.

He had two choices now. He could ride out of this country, leaving his cousins to make their peace with the Bollings, or he could stay. The latter course meant that from now on he would ride the dark trails, a fugitive, often hungry and cold, hunted by both sides and in constant danger. A wave of self-pity washed over him then, but a throb of excitement came, too. They couldn't catch him, and alone he could do more to the Bollings than Buck and Tip Woodring put together.

He classed Buck and Tip together now, and hated them both—Buck with his sniveling justice, Tip with his tough John Law pose. Ever since Cam came here, he'd had his own ideas about fighting this fight. They included bushwhack and murder and rustling and long rifle shots on lonely roads. Haig had kept him in line, and Buck was worse. Well, he didn't have them to answer to now. There were the Bollings, the same as they had always been. And there was Tip Woodring, too. He'd pay them off in his own way.

The first thing, of course, was to get some food. Could he get back to the Bridle Bit before Sheriff Ball reached it? He'd try.

When he reached the Bridle Bit, his horse was almost foundered. He left his pony at the corral, and made a cautious circle of the house. It was quiet. Lucy, in the front room, was sewing, and Pate was reading at the table. Cam went back to the corral, cut out a fresh horse, saddled him, and led him up to the house.

When he stepped in, Lucy looked up, and Cam closed the door behind him. “Where's Buck?” he asked.

“Looking for you,” Lucy said. Then she caught sight of the bandage and came to her feet. “What happened to you, Cam?”

Cam smiled wolfishly. “Just a present from Tip Woodring, that's all.” He tramped into his room. Lucy and Pate followed, standing in the doorway, silently watching him.

Cam ripped two blankets from his bed, took down a belt of forty-five shells, a belt of .30-30 shells, and stacked them all on the kitchen table.

“Where are you going, Cam?” Lucy asked presently.

Cam wheeled to snarl at her, “I'm clearing the hell out of here!”

“But why?”

“To keep from roosting in jail,” Cam sneered. He went into Buck's room and came back with a rifle. “Tell Buck I'm taking this.”

“He won't like that,” Pate said gravely.

Cam said mockingly, “Oh, won't he, now? Well, suppose you tell him to try and get it back.”

Lucy said calmly, “Cam, you've been up to something. What is it?”

“Ask Woodring,” Cam jeered. He turned to survey the kitchen cupboards. “I want a sack of biscuits, a sack of coffee, a fry pan, two empty cans, and some matches. Make it quick!”

Lucy obediently did his bidding. Cam rolled all of it except the rifle in his bedroll, hacked Lucy's clothesline to pieces to tie it, then took rifle and bedroll and went out to his horse. Pate held the lantern in silence while he laced the bedroll behind his cantle. He had just finished when he turned his head to listen. He could hear a horse out there in the dark.

He wheeled, knocking the lamp out of Pate's hand, then bolted into the saddle and raced off into the dark.

In a moment Buck pulled up beside Lucy. “Wasn't that Cam?”

“Yes. He's in some kind of trouble.”

Just then Cam's rifle cracked out. The window Lucy was standing beside jangled down onto the hard-packed dirt, and Lucy ran for cover. Buck sat his horse, cursing in a half-whisper.

Cam sheathed his gun, laughing, and urged his horse onward. That ought to give them some idea of what he thought of the whole hard-scrabble lot of them. He'd win their fight for them, and then wouldn't even bother to go back and get their thanks. That, too, would show his opinion of them.

He rode on into the timber, headed roughly east, remembering a camping-spot in a lonely canyon. He arrived there past midnight, staked out his horse, and, not bothering to build a fire, spread out his blankets and crawled into them. He smoked a couple of cigarettes, thinking, before he turned over to sleep. Suddenly he laughed aloud.

Jeff Bolling was in a wicked mood at breakfast. Yesterday afternoon, fired by a bottle of whisky, he had sworn that he was going in and pull Ben out of jail. He had drunkenly cursed his riders, dared them to go with him, until Murray Seth, the coolest head in the lot, had to hit him. He did a good job of it. Jeff, nerves on wire edge, had needed the fourteen hours of sleep he had got last night. This morning, with a clearer head, he remembered only vaguely the things Murray said he had done. It made him shiver to think what would have happened had he gone into Hagen, primed with whisky-guts to break his father out of jail. Still, Murray shouldn't have hit him. And the crew was still smarting under the taunting they had received. They were being pushed almost to the limit, Jeff knew, and it wouldn't be long before they decided to drift on. And Ben was still in jail.