Bounty Guns (7 page)

“Please! You don't know my uncle. He'd—kill me if he knew I talked to you!”

“I won't tell him,” Tip said.

“And you'll go?”

“No.” There was a long pause, and he added, “Thanks for the help, though.”

“You were kind to Buck once,” she said. “I'm only trying to warn you that you're in danger.”

Tip said, “Thanks again,” and listened to the hay stirring. Presently he was alone in the dark. He sat there pondering the reason for this girl's visit, cursing himself for a suspicious fool. She meant well toward him. What had that old man said? Buck and Lucy and Pate he liked; Cam and Hagen, he hated.

Tip settled back into the hay. After tonight, he thought, he had chosen his side. Hagen or no Hagen, he was for the Shieldses.

CHAPTER 5

Tip slept late. When he came awake, he was aware that the sun was shining, that it was a crisp fall day, that the hostler out in the corrals was whistling, and that he was hungry.

When he stretched, his very bones seemed to cry out in agony, and he discovered that he had only half the usual visibility in his right eye. He touched it gingerly, and felt other bruises.

Somebody walked down the centerway below him, and there were voices. Tip became still, listening.

It was Sheriff Ball, and he was saying, “For the thousandth time, Miss Stevens, I don't intend to arrest him. All I want is to talk to him.”

“I don't believe you,” Lynn said coldly. “I hope he shoots you.”

“He probably will,” Sheriff Ball said. “May I call now?”

“All right,” Lynn said.

Ball called out, “Woodring! Tip Woodring!”

Tip peered over the edge of the loft. Ball saw him first. They regarded each other, Tip with suspicion in his face, Ball with curiosity.

Ball finally said, “I haven't got a gun. I want to talk to you. Come down here.”

Lynn wheeled and watched Tip hit the floor. He was covered with hayseed; the blood on his face and on his swollen, cut hands was dried an ugly brown color. His right eye was tinged a purple, and his red hair was tousled. There was a kind of ingrained belligerence on his face that suddenly made Lynn Mayfell laugh.

Tip growled, “What's funny?” and then he grinned. This girl had the most contagious laugh he had ever heard. As a matter of fact, he had never heard her laugh. His grin faded, however, when he saw the black-and-blue spot on her neck where he had hit her. He was still ashamed of that.

She nodded to Ball and said, “I guess my business is done.”

“Thank you, Miss Stevens,” Ball said. Erect, Ball was something of a banty rooster. He had a pouter-pigeon chest, and the effect was enhanced by his thick mustaches. He lifted his hat to Lynn, who nodded in a strangely friendly manner to Tip and went out.

Afterward Tip and Ball regarded each other without much to say. Finally, Ball said, “You look like hell.”

“I feel like hell,” Tip said. “Is that what you wanted to talk to me about?”

Ball's expression was one of long-suffering. “You know, I've seen and heard some hot tempers in my time, but never one like yours.”

“If you think I'm going to tell you I'm sorry I shut that desk on you last night, I'm not.”

“I know you're not,” Ball said grimly. “Let's get some breakfast.” When Tip still looked suspicious, Ball said, his voice pleading, “Look, son, all I want is a talk with you. Don't fly off the handle till you hear me out.”

Tip said reluctantly, “All right.” He nodded his head toward the street. “Is it safe out there?”

“The Bollings went home in a hired buckboard last night. As for the rest of the town, I think it will be glad to let you alone.”

Tip said nothing, but fell in beside Ball. They stopped at the Oriental Café and ordered breakfast. Ball, friendly enough, was uncommunicative, and Tip couldn't guess what would follow. Finished eating, they stopped at Sig's Neutral Elite while Tip bought a new shirt, then they proceeded to the sheriff's office. It was a shambles, with one window out, the chair a pile of kindling, and one leg off the table. Calendars and reward dodgers were scattered over the floor, smeared with mud and blood.

Tip put on his clean shirt under Ball's contemplative eye, then took the swivel chair Ball offered. He sat down, a rather truculent-looking redhead, ready for and expecting the worst.

Ball cleared his throat and said, “That was a nice, tidy job you did last night. It needed doing.”

Tip said carelessly, “You ought to know. They're your friends.”

“They'll shoot on sight, from now on, of course.”

Tip nodded, unimpressed.

Ball said placidly, “Lying on my back there last night until someone stepped in and lifted that roll-top off my feet, I saw a lot of things besides just the ceiling.” He looked sideways at Tip.

“For instance.”

“I saw that I'd got pulled into this fight by the scruff of my neck.”

“On whose side?”

“Nobody's side,” Ball said, shaking his head. “I've just decided I'm through bein' a tinhorn lawman. I'm goin' to try to fill my pants, from now on.”

“Maybe.”

Ball shrugged. “You ought to know, because it's goin' to depend on you.”

Tip was suddenly alert. “Me?”

“Yes. I want you to take a deputy's badge, Woodring.”

Tip's jaw slacked open in honest amazement, and he stared at Ball in utter disbelief.

“Wait a minute, before you shoot off your mouth,” Ball said hurriedly. “I used to be something of a scrapper, Tip. I like a good fight. But I don't like a gang fight, and especially I don't like odds of twenty to one. So I've stayed clear of this row here. I've seen men murdered. I've seen them shot in the back, and I've seen them bushwhacked. And I've seen the misery and the suffering and grief it's caused.” His voice was low, in dead earnest. “I've kept on the fence in this fight, because I was scared—just plain scared. And it was useless to do anything else. I could have tromped on either side a dozen times, but I'd have been shot for my pains. Can you understand that?”

“Sure. It's natural, I reckon.”

“It's me that sent for that marshal who was killed, Tip. I sat in this office and cussed him to anybody who'd listen, like I cussed him out to you. But I sent for him. And I tried to help him—in secret. But it was no good. I kept hopin' the commissioners would send me a git-down, cold-steel, hell-for-leather fightin' man that I could take a risk on. If I'd got a man like that, I would have throwed all my weight behind him. I'd have come out in the open and fought with him, takin' on all comers.” He paused and shook his head. “But all they sent me was just another lawman—and he wasn't good enough.”

He came off the table now and faced Tip, hands on hips. “You are,” he said simply. “You got a wild temper, and I dunno why, but you seem to savvy this kind of fightin'. They talk tough to you and you knock their teeth down their throats. You're the kind of man I wanted, Tip. You say you want to find Blackie Mayfell's murderer. Throw in with me, and together we'll find him.” He paused. “Well, what about it?”

Tip was seeing Sheriff Ball in a new light. All the sourness, the suspicion, the irritability, and the truculence were gone from him. And Tip suspected that this Sheriff Ball, the little wise man who hated murder, was the real one.

Tip said, “One thing, Sheriff. Are you holdin' out information about Blackie Mayfell on me, hopin' to blackmail me into takin' this job?”

Sheriff Ball shook his head. “Blackie Mayfell was found on that south road. That's the only blamed thing I can tell you about the man.”

Tip made up his mind then, quickly and definitely. “It's a deal. How you goin' to start?”

Ball grinned under his mustache. It was a tight grin, full of meaning. “They'll start it, one side or the other. And it don't matter which starts. Whoever it is, we'll tromp on 'em. They'll find out there's a law in this country for decent people. They'll be decent, I reckon, or they'll die.”

A half hour later, his deputy's badge in his pocket, Tip left the sheriff's office. At the
Inquirer,
he stepped inside. The editor was not there, but the pressman was working again at the job press. And in the rear against the back wall the overhead lamp was burning, and Lynn Mayfell, by its light, was at work proofreading tax notices.

Tip strolled up and took off his Stetson, smiling. Lynn almost smiled in reply, and leaned back in her chair.

“I haven't had a chance to thank you for last night,” she said gravely.

“For what?”

“Well, after all, Jeff Bolling was pointing a gun at me.”

Tip made a deprecatory gesture, but Lynn said quickly, “That's just your trouble, Tip. You take this all as a sort of brawling joke.”

Tip said curiously, “You mean you think he'd have shot you, a woman?”

“There have been women hurt in this fight,” Lynn said gravely. “You see, I understand it. And your way, the hot-tempered, reckless way, isn't going to help.”

Tip put a leg on her desk and sat down, saying nothing.

Lynn, after a pause, went on. “I think you have the worst temper of any man I've ever known.”

Tip's eyebrows rose, but he still kept silent.

Lynn laughed, a little embarrassed, and added, “Uncle Dave wants to see you again.”

“Who is he?”

“He owns the hotel. He was here with the original Shields and the original Bolling. He's an old man, and a fair one—and he's going to die.”

“Does he know who you are?”

Lynn nodded assent.

“And he knows what you know about your father's killer?” Tip asked gently.

A change came over Lynn. Whatever pleasure she was having in this conversation vanished, Tip noticed. She said quietly, “I can't tell you that.”

“And you won't tell me what you do know?”

Lynn shook her head, and the color crept into her face. “You have no right to ask.”

“Are you sure about that?”

Lynn was really angry now. “I'm sure of it, yes. If you did know my father, you didn't have the slightest interest in him. And certainly his family didn't ask you to help. Because I'm all the family he's got.”

Tip said, “And you won't tell me?”

“No.”

Tip reached in his pocket and pulled out the deputy's badge and laid it on the proof sheets in front of Lynn. Without a word, she picked it up, read the legend on it, then laid it down.

“You're Ball's deputy now. Why?”

“I'm goin' to make people in this town talk,” Tip said grimly. “If I got to use the threat of the law to make 'em, then I'm goin' to do it.” He looked levelly at her. “I'm givin' you one more chance to tell me. You admit you know something about Blackie's killer, and the sheriff's office doesn't. You better tell me.”

Lynn folded her arms defiantly. “And what will happen to me if I don't?”

“Jail.”

Lynn glared at him for a full half minute, and then the thin line of her jaw set. “I won't tell you,” she said passionately, “and you won't take me to jail!”

“That's final?”

“It is.”

Tip stood up, pocketed his badge, moved over behind Lynn's chair, put an arm about her waist and lifted her out of the chair, off the floor. She kicked futilely and beat out with her fists. Tip, face grim, tucked her under one arm and started for the door.

“Let me down! Let me down!”

Tip stopped and stood her upright. The printer, who had heard her cries, came running back past the press and stopped abruptly, looking first at Lynn and then at Tip.

“He botherin' you?” the printer asked Lynn.

“What if I am?” Tip said belligerently.

Lynn stepped in between them. “Please,” she said. “Jim, he didn't do anything. Now go back to work. Please.”

The printer glared at Tip, growled, “He better not,” and went back to his work.

Lynn turned to Tip, who was standing there with his hands on his hips and a stubborn look on his freckled face.

“You're not only vile-tempered, you're a bully!” she said hotly.

“Sure,” Tip agreed. “You aim to walk to jail or do I carry you?”

Lynn was defeated. She sighed bitterly, and walked back to the desk, Tip following her, and sat down.

“I'll tell you,” she said in a flat voice. “But first, I think it's wrong and wicked and unfair to make me!”

“Sure it is,” Tip agreed readily. “Now tell me.”

“Buck Shields put my father's body on that south road. He carried it from their land.” She added quickly, “But that doesn't mean Buck Shields killed him. Buck wouldn't do that!”

“Where'd you find that out?”

Lynn hesitated. “I—I got Cam Shields drunk one night in Uncle Dave's room.”

“Oh,” Tip said, a touch of resentment in his voice. “So that's the way you go about it?”

“If your dad had been murdered, wouldn't you do that to find out who killed him?” Lynn asked hotly.

Tip flushed and nodded. “It's nothin' to me how you go about it. And now you say you know Buck didn't do it. How do you know?”

Lynn's eyes flashed. “Because Buck is decent. He's protecting somebody, I think.”

“Hagen?”

“I don't know!”

Tip said curiously, “You know what your dad was after?”

“Of course I do,” Lynn said angrily. “He had discovered gold, and a lot of it.”

“And you don't think Buck would kill him to hide that? Or Hagen?”

“Hagen would, but Buck wouldn't!” Lynn banged a fist on the table. “Why don't you let me alone?” she cried. “I like Buck, and I know him, and you don't! Now I suppose you'll arrest him and lose whatever chance I've got of getting the truth from him.”