Collection 1986 - The Trail To Crazy Man (v5.0) (24 page)

He got to his feet, and he could have been nothing over five feet four but weighed all of two hundred pounds, and his shirt at the neck showed a massive chest covered with black hair and a neck like a column of oak. “The fact that you’ve the small end of a fight appeals to me.” He jerked his head toward the door. “Katie has said I’m to go to work for you, an’ she’d not take it kindly if I did not.”

“You’re Katie’s man, then?”

His eyes twinkled amazingly. “Katie’s man? I’m afraid there’s no such. She’s a broth of a woman, that one.” He grinned up at me. “Is it a job I have?”

“When I’ve the ranch back,” I agreed, “you’ve a job.”

“Then let’s be gettin’ it back. Will you wait for me? I’ve a mule to get.”

The mule was a dun with a face that showed all the wisdom, meanness, and contrariness that have been the traits of the mule since time began. With a tow sack behind the saddle and another before him, we started out of town. “My name is Brian Mulvaney,” he said. “Call me what you like.”

H
E GRINNED WIDELY when he saw me staring at the butts of the two guns that projected from his boot tops. “These,” he said, “are the Neal Bootleg pistol, altered by me to suit my taste. The caliber is thirty-five, but good. Now this”—from his waistband he drew a gun that lacked only wheels to make an admirable artillery piece—“this was a Mills seventy-five caliber. Took me two months of work off and on, but I’ve converted her to a four-shot revolver. A fine gun,” he added.

All of seventeen inches long, it looked fit to break a man’s wrists, but Mulvaney had powerful hands and arms. No man ever hit by a chunk of lead from that gun would need a doctor.

Four horses were in the corral at the Two Bar, and the men were strongly situated behind a long barricade. Mulvaney grinned at me. “What’d you suppose I’ve in this sack, laddie?” he demanded, his eyes twinkling. “I, who was a miner also?”

“Powder?”

“Exactly! In those new-fangled sticks. Now unless it makes your head ache too much, help me cut a few o’ these sticks in half.” When that was done he cut the fuses very short and slid caps into the sticks of powder. “Come now, me boy, an’ we’ll slip down close under the cover of darkness, an’ you’ll see them takin’ off like you never dreamed!”

Crawling as close as we dared, each of us lit a fuse and hurled a stick of powder. My own stick must have landed closer to them than I planned, for we heard a startled exclamation followed by a yell. Then a terrific explosion blasted the night apart. Mulvaney’s followed, and then we hastily hurled a third and a fourth.

One man lunged over the barricade and started straight for us. The others had charged the corral. The man headed our way suddenly saw us, and wheeling, he fled as if the devil was after him. Four riders gripping only mane holds dashed from the corral, and then there was silence. Mulvaney got to his feet chuckling. “For guns they’d have stood until hell froze over, but the powder and the flyin’ rocks an’ dust scared ’em good. An’ you’ve your ranch back.”

W
E HAD EATEN our midday meal the next day, when I saw a rider approaching. It was Olga Maclaren. “Nice to see you,” I said, aware of the sudden tension her presence always inspired.

She was looking toward the foundation we had laid for the new house. It was on a hill with the long sweep of Cottonwood Wash before it. “You should be more careful,” she said. “You had a visitor last night.”

“We just took over last night,” I objected. “Who do you mean?”

“Morgan. He was out here shortly after our boys got home. They met the bunch you stampeded from here.”

“He’s been puzzling me,” I admitted. “Who is he? Did he come from around here?”

“I don’t know. He’s not talkative, but I’ve heard him mention places back east. I know he’s been in Philadelphia and New York, but nothing else about him except that he goes to Salt Lake and San Francisco occasionally.”

“Not back east?”

“Never since we’ve known him.”

“You like him?”

She looked up at me. “Yes, Morgan can be very wonderful. He knows a lot about women and the things that please them.” There was a flicker of laughter in her eyes. “He probably doesn’t know as much about them as you.”

“Me?” I was astonished. “What gave you that idea?”

“Your approach that first day. You knew it would excite my curiosity, a man less sure of himself would never have dared. If you knew no more about women than most western men you would have hung back, wishing you could meet me, or you would have got drunk to work up your courage.”

“I meant what I said that day. You’re going to marry me.”

“Don’t say that. Don’t even think it. You’ve no idea what you are saying or what it would mean.”

“Because of your father?” I looked at her. “Or Morgan Park?”

“You take him too lightly, Matt. I think he is utterly without scruple. I believe he would stop at nothing.”

There was more to come, and I was interested.

“There was a young man here from the East,” she continued, “and I liked him. Knowing Morgan, I never mentioned him in Morgan’s presence. Then one day he asked me about him. He added that it would be better for all concerned if the man did not come around anymore. Inadvertently I mentioned the young man’s name, Arnold D’Arcy.

“When he heard that name he became very disturbed. Who was he? Why had he come here? Had he asked any questions about anybody? Or described anybody he might be looking for? He asked me all those questions, but at the same time I thought little about it. Afterwards I began to believe that he was not merely jealous. Right then I decided to tell Arnold about it when he returned.”

“And did you?”

There was a shadow of worry on her face. “No. He never came again.” She looked quickly at me. “I’ve often thought of it. Morgan never mentioned him again, but somehow Arnold hadn’t seemed like a man who would frighten easily.”

Later, when she was mounting to leave, I asked her, “Where was D’Arcy from? Do you remember?”

“Virginia, I believe. He had served in the Army and before coming west had been working in Washington.”

Watching her go, I thought again of Morgan Park. He might have frightened D’Arcy away, but I could not shake off the idea that something vastly more sinister lay behind it. And Park had been close to us during the night. If he had wanted to kill me, it could have been done, but apparently he wanted me alive. Why?

“Mulvaney,” I suggested, “if you can hold this place, I’ll ride to Silver Reef and get off a couple of messages.”

He stretched his huge arms and grinned at me. “Do you doubt it? I’ll handle it or them. Go, and have yourself a time.”

And in the morning I was in the saddle again.

VI

High noon, and a mountain shaped like flame. Beyond the mountain and around it was a wide land with no horizons, but only the shimmering heat waves that softened all lines to vagueness and left the desert an enchanted land without beginning and without end.

As I rode, my mind studied the problem created by the situation around Cottonwood Wash. There were at least three and possibly four sides to the question. Rud Maclaren with his Bar M, Jim Pinder with his CP, and myself with the Two Bar. The fourth possibility was Morgan Park.

Olga’s account of Arnold D’Arcy’s disappearance had struck a chord of memory. During ten years of my life I had been fighting in foreign wars, and there had been a military observer named D’Arcy, a Major Leo D’Arcy, who had been in China during the fighting there. It stuck in my mind that he had a brother named Arnold.

It was a remote chance, yet a possibility. Why did the name upset Park? What had become of Arnold? Where did Park come from? Pinder could be faced with violence and handled with violence. Maclaren might be circumvented.

Morgan Park worried me.

S
ILVER REEF LAY sprawled in haphazard comfort along a main street and a few cross streets. There were the usual frontier saloons, stores, churches, and homes. The sign on the Elk Horn Saloon caught my attention. Crossing to it I pushed through the door into the dim interior. While the bartender served me, I glanced around, liking the feel of the place.

“Rye?” The smooth-pated bartender squinted at me.

“Uh-huh. How’s things in the mines?”

“So-so. But you ain’t no miner.” He glanced at my cowhand’s garb and then at the guns in their tied-down holsters. “This here’s a quiet town. We don’t see many gun handlers around here. The place for them is over east of here.”

“Hattan’s?”

“Yeah. I hear the Bar M an’ CP both are hirin’ hands. Couple of hombres from there rode into town a few days ago. One of ’em was the biggest man I ever did see.”

Morgan Park in Silver Reef! That sounded interesting, but I kept a tight rein on my thoughts and voice. “Did he say anything about what was goin’ on over there?”

“Not to me. The feller with him, though, he was inquirin’ around for the Slade boys. Gunslicks both of them. The big feller, he never come in here atall. I seen him on the street a couple of times, but he went to the Wells Fargo Bank and down the street to see that shyster, Jake Booker.”

“You don’t seem to like Booker?”

“Him? He’s plumb no good! The man’s a crook!”

Once started on Booker, the bartender told me a lot. Morgan Park had been in town before, but never came to the Elk Horn. He confined his visits to the back room of a dive called the Sump or occasional visits to the office of Jake Booker. The only man who ever came with him was Lyell.

Leaving the saloon, I sent off my telegram to Leo D’Arcy. Then I located the office of Booker, spotted the Sump, and considered the situation. Night came swiftly and miners crowded the street, a good-natured shoving, pushing, laughing throng, jamming the saloons and drinking. The crowd relaxed me with its rough good humor, and for the night I fell into it, drifting, joking, listening.

T
URNING OFF THE street near Louder’s store I passed the street lamp on the corner and for an instant was outlined in its radiance. From the shadows, flame stabbed. There was a tug at my sleeve, and then my own gun roared, and as the shot sped, I went after it.

A man lunged from the side of the store and ran staggeringly toward the alley behind it. Pistol ready, I ran after him. He wheeled, slipped, and was running again. He brought up with a crash against the corral bars and fell. He was crawling to his feet, and I caught a glimpse of his face in the glow from the window. It was Lyell.