Collection 1989 - Long Ride Home (v5.0) (16 page)

“He could.” Meadows squeezed her arm gently. “Believe me, honey, he could!”

Turning, he started down the street, aware that Tom Passman was watching him. He knew one reason for the man's curiosity. He was wondering if Meadows carried a gun, and if so, where it was. And if not, why not?

Snap was sitting on the wagon tongue when Tandy rode up to the camp in the creek bottom. Snap got to his feet and strolled out to meet Meadows, the shotgun in the crook of his arm. He was grinning expectantly. “You got a bet?” he asked softly.

Meadows nodded, smiling. “We sure have, Snap! And a lively hunch Tollefson would like nothing so much as to be safely out of it! We're going to have to be careful!” Meadows paused, then added:

“The man's no gambler. He's got a good horse, we know that, A mighty fast horse. We've got to hope ours is faster.”

Snap nodded gravely. “You know I've seen that Lady Luck run, Mistuh Tandy. She's a mighty quick filly.”

“Think she can beat Cholo Baby?”

Snap smiled. “Well, now. I reckon I'm some prejudiced about that! I never seen the horse I figured could beat our baby. But it will be a race, Mistuh Tandy! It sure will!”

The race was scheduled for the following Wednesday, three days away. By the time Meadows rode again to El Poleo, the town was buzzing with news of the bet. Tandy had done much to see the story got around, for the more who knew of it the less chance of Tollefson backing out. Yet the town was buzzing with more than that, for there was much speculation about Tandy Meadows, where he came from and where he got the money to make such a bet.

Nobody in town knew him but several had seen Janet Bates greet him like an old friend, and that in itself was puzzling. Art Tollefson was curious about that, and being the man he was, he went directly to the source, to Bates's small ranch forty miles north of El Poleo. Johnny Herndon, a Bates hand, was hazing a half-dozen cattle out of the brush, and his eyes narrowed when he saw Tollefson.

“You off your home range, Tollefson?” he said abruptly. “Or are you figurin' on pushin' us off this piece, too?”

Tollefson waved a hand. Yet his eyes had noted the grass and that some of it was subirrigated. It was an idea, at that. “Nothing like that,” he replied shortly. “Just ridin' around a little. Saw a puncher down to El Poleo with some fine horses, a man named Meadows.”

“Tandy Meadows?” Herndon had heard nothing of the bet, and he was instantly curious. “So he came back, did he? I sort of reckoned he would. Does he have some racin' stock with him?”

“Some, I reckon. Is he from around here?”

“Meadows? He's from nowhere. He rode in here one night over a year ago, shot to doll rags and barely hangin' to his horse. That was the first any of us ever saw of him. Gene Bates took him off his horse and they spent two months nursin' him back to health. Then he loafed around another month, sort of recuperatin'.

“Personally, I never figured he'd leave, for Janet sort of took to him, and the way they acted, it was mutual, but he finally pulled out.”

“You said he'd been shot up? How did that happen? He doesn't even carry a gun now.”

“No? Now, that's funny. They tell me he was some slick. I heard of him after he left here, but it was the story of some shootin' scrape down to Santa Fe before he drifted this way. Good two years ago. He never did say who shot him up, but some of us done some figurin' an' we reckoned it was the Alvarez gang. Story was they stole a bunch of horses off him, and that must be so. He got me to help him ride north and haze a bunch out of a canyon up there, and mighty fine stock.

“He'd evidently left them there when he was shot up, but he just had to close the gate as they were in a box canyon hideout with plenty of grass and water. They were somewhat wild but in fine shape.”

“You mean the Alvarez gang had taken the horses there? Did you see any of them?”

Herndon shrugged, rolling a smoke. It was a bright, sunny morning and he had talked to nobody in three days. “Didn't figure I would. Meadows told me there wouldn't be any trouble, and he's the sort of man who would know.

“No, we saw hide nor hair of nobody. At the up end of that canyon there was an adobe, and Tandy advised me to stay away from it. But once I did get sort of close and there was somethin' white lyin' there that I'd swear was a skeleton.”

“Has he got any money?”

“Who, Tandy?” Herndon chuckled. “I doubt it. He's a saddle tramp. Thinks of nothin' but what's the other side of the hill and racin' his horses. If he ever had more than a thousand dollars in his, life it would surprise me.”

CHAPTER 3

Trickery

A
RT TOLLEFSON WAS a cautious man, and he had been very lacking in caution when he had allowed his pride to trap him into the bet with Meadows, but now he was doing a lot of serious thinking. The following morning he mounted up, and saying nothing to anyone, he rode north, avoiding the Bateses' range and heading for the area in which the box canyon had been.

From Herndon's comments it was not too hard to find, although had he not been expecting it, a man could have ridden by within a dozen yards and never guessed its existence. The bars were up, but he took them down and rode into a pleasant little canyon, grass covered and shady with probably two hundred acres of rich land in the bottom, and a good spring at the head of it.

Nearing the adobe he rode more cautiously, and when several yards away, he drew up. Obviously, no one had been this close to the cabin for a long time, and Herndon's surmise had been correct. It was a skeleton.

Buzzards had stripped the bones bare since, but the chaps and gun belts remained, their leather stiff as board from weathering. Not far from the bones lay a rusted six shooter.

Tollefson trailed his reins and walked up to the door. He stopped there, his mouth suddenly dry. Here three men had died, and they had died hard. The table was turned on its side and nearby lay another skeleton, face down on the dirt floor. Another slumped in the corner with a round hole over the eye, and the third was sprawled under some fallen slickers in a corner.

The scene was not hard to reconstruct. They had been surprised here by a man who had walked in through the doorway. The fourth man had evidently been drawn by the gunfire or had come up later. It was a very thoughtful man who turned his horse toward El Poleo somewhat later. If Tandy Meadows had walked away from that cabin alive, he was nobody with whom to play games. The sooner Passman knew, the better.

At four o'clock on the afternoon of the day before the race, Tandy Meadows watched Snap prepare an early supper. He was as good a hand with food as with horses, and he worked swiftly and surely, yet his eyes were restless and he was obviously on edge. “You reckon he'll make trouble, Boss?”

“I'd almost bet on it,” Meadows replied, “but you can't tell. His pride might keep him from it. He figures Lady Luck will win, I know, but he's not a gambling man, and he'd like to be sure.”

“You'd better watch that Passman,” Snap advised. “He's a bad man.”

Tandy nodded. He was the last man in the world to take Tom Passman lightly, for he had seen him throw a gun, and the man was deadly. Moreover, he was a tough man with a lot of pride in his skill, no braggart, and, no four flusher. Only death itself would stop his guns.

Cholo Baby, a beautiful sorrel, lifted her head and whinnied softly as he approached. She was fifteen hands high, with wide-spaced and intelligent eyes. She stretched her velvety nose toward his hand and he touched her lightly. “How's it, girl? You ready to run for me tomorrow?”

Baby nudged him with her nose and Tandy grinned. “I doubt if you ever lived a day when you didn't feel like running, Cholo. And I hope there never is!”

He strolled back to the wagon, his eyes alert and searching the mountainside, the willows and the trail. He ate without talking, restless and disturbed despite himself. So far everything had been too quiet. Much too quiet.

He could neither rest nor relax. A hint of impending danger hung over the camp and he roved restlessly about. Snap seemed to feel it, too, and even the horses were alert as if they sensed something in the air. Of course, Tandy reflected, if anything happened to Cholo Baby, he could ride Khari, the half-Morgan, half-Arabian horse he usually rode. Not so fast as Cholo Baby over the quarter, but still a fast horse for one with so much staying power.

He still carried his rawhide riata. He was a California rider, and like them he valued the use of the riata, and was amazingly proficient with it. The California riders always used rawhide riatas of great length, and used them with such skill they were almost part of them. Suddenly, Tandy Meadows stopped. Hard upon the trail he heard the pounding hooves of a hard-ridden horse!

Snap was on his feet, leaning against the off wheel of the wagon, his shotgun resting over the corner of the wagon box to cover the trail. Tandy fell back near the wagon where his Winchester stood, and waited, his lips tight, his eyes cool. Yet when the rider drew nearer he saw it was Janet Bates.

She drew up sharply and dropped to the ground. “Oh, Tandy!” Her face was pale. “What have you
done
? I just heard today you'd made a bet with Tollefson for his whole ranch! Tandy, you know you haven't that kind of money! If you lose, what will you do? One man did fail to pay off Tollefson once and he had been lashed to a tree and whipped by Tom Passman! He'd kill you, Tandy!”

Meadows smiled at her anxiety. “So you do worry about me? You do like me a little, then?”

“Be serious.” Her eyes flashed. In the dusk she seemed even more lovely than ever. “You're in trouble, and you don't even know it. Lady Luck always wins, Tandy. He'll kill you!”

“He must have figured my bet was all right,” Meadows replied. “Clevenger backed me.”

“Oh, I know, Tandy! But you fooled him somehow. I just know you fooled him! If you don't win, what will you do?”

“I'll win,” he replied simply. “I've got to win. I've got to win for you, Janet, and for your father and Jim Whitten. I came back here to force Tollefson out of the country, and I'll not rest until I do! Your dad was mighty kind to me when I was all shot up and dyin'. Without you two I'd not be here, so when I heard of what had happened, I figured this out. I'd heard of Lady Luck, and I knew Tollefson was a mighty big-headed and stubborn man, so I deliberately worked on his pride.”

“That isn't all I heard,” Janet persisted quickly. “Tollefson was up near our ranch twice. He talked to Johnny about you, asking all sorts of questions. He seemed very curious about how you'd been wounded that time, and the next day Johnny Herndon saw him riding north toward the box canyon where you left your horses that time.”

Meadows scowled. What did that mean, anyway? The Alvarez gang had been notorious outlaws, and the killing of them would be considered a public service. Or would have at the time. Yet with such information a man of his influence might find some way to do him harm.

“Boss,” Snap's voice was, urgent, “somebody comin'.”

Tandy Meadows turned and watched the horsemen. There were four in the group and one of them he recognized instantly as Tom Passman. When they drew nearer he saw that another was Fulton, while the two riding with them were Sheriff George Lynn and his deputy Rube Hatley.

“Meadows,” Lynn said, “we rode out here after you. You've got to come back to town and answer a few questions.”

“Always glad to answer questions, Sheriff. Can't I answer them here?”

“No.” Lynn's voice was testy. “You can answer them in my office. There's a place for such things and this isn't it!”

“All right, Sheriff,” Meadows agreed. “But how about lettin' Hatley stay here to guard my horses?”

Lynn hesitated, disturbed by the request. It was reasonable enough, but when Art Tollefson had told him what to do, George Lynn had been reasonably certain what lay behind it. If he left Hatley he would be defeating the purpose of the trip. “Sorry,” he replied abruptly, “I need Hatley with me!”

“Then of course you'll be responsible for my horses?” Meadows persisted. “I don't think they should be left alone.”

“They'll be safe enough.” Lynn was growing angry. “The responsibility is your own. Are you coming,” he asked sharply, “or do we take you?”

“Why, I'm coming, Sheriff I've never suggested anything to the contrary.” He put his foot into the stirrup, then swung aboard Khari. “Snap,” he said loudly, “if any varmints come around, don't take chances. Shoot to kill.” Then he added, “You'll be perfectly safe because nobody would be fool enough to come near racin' stock on the night before a race. So don't forget, shoot to kill!”

“Sure thing, boss. I got me a shotgun loaded for bear!”

Nothing more was said as they rode back to town. Several times Tandy saw Passman watching him, but when they reached town only a few loafers noticed them ride down the street to the sheriff's office.

Inside, Lynn came to the point at once. “I've brought you in to ask you questions about a shootin' scrape, some time back.”

“Why, sure!” Meadows dropped into a chair. “I didn't figure Tollefson rode all the way up to that canyon for nothing. He must be really worried if he's tryin' this hard to find a way out of his bet. But aren't you and Passman buckin' a stacked deck? Who will you work for if I win?”

“I work for the county!” Lynn said sharply. “That horse race has nothing to do with this inquiry!”

“Of course not! That's why Fulton and Passman were with you, Sheriff! Because the race has nothing to do with it! That's why you waited to bring me in until the night before the race! I hope somebody tries to bother those horses tonight! Snap's a whiz with a shotgun!”

He turned his head. “Passman came along hopin' I'd make some wrong play so he could plug me.”