Nest of Vipers (9781101613283) (18 page)

THIRTY-EIGHT

Harry Pendergast was tired and sore from sitting in the saddle. He was in a sullen mood and not very good company for the other men who rode with him. Harry kept wiping his face with a sodden handkerchief and guzzling water from his canteen. The canteen clanked against his leg where it hung from his saddle horn, and that was another irritation.

“This blamed heat,” he said to Peter Farnsworth, who rode alongside him.

“It's a hot one, all right,” Farnsworth said. He was one of Harry's detectives and had been a big help when the two men interrogated Jack Trask in the Denver jail. Trask had been reluctant to give out any information until Harry made him an offer.

“If you tell us who's behind this horse thieving ring, Trask, I promise you won't hang.”

“Can you guarantee I won't swing?” Trask had said.

“He can and I can,” Farnsworth had said. “We've already talked to the judge. If you tell us who's the big boss, you'll get a short sentence in jail, that's all.”

“I got to see it in writing,” Trask said. “From the judge hisself.”

“You've got a deal, Jack,” Harry said. “We'll have it here first thing in the morning.”

“I ain't sayin' a word until I see that judge's signature on his official letterhead.”

“Tomorrow,” Harry said.

He and Pete had gone to see Judge Phillip Wormser that very afternoon. They were ushered into Wormser's office by his court clerk, Timothy Evans.

Harry knew Judge Wormser well, but he had never asked him for a favor. After he and Pete were seated, the judge entered his office and sat behind his desk. He was in court at the time, which was in recess, and still wore the black robe of his office. Pete felt a trifle intimidated because Wormser was a tall man with a ruddy face and a shock of flowing gray hair. He wore expensive spectacles and was, indeed, a commanding presence.

“Make it short, Harry,” Wormser had said. “I've got a full docket and this is a very brief recess.”

“We are investigating a ring of horse thieves,” Harry said. “They're very organized. We have one of the thieves in custody at the jail. But he's a small fry and I'm after the big fish. This man knows who the boss is. We have solid evidence against him and his gang, but we've only managed to capture this one man.”

“So?” Wormser said, his gray-blue eyes piercing through the glass of his spectacles.

“He's booked on a hanging offense, Your Honor,” Harry said. “He won't talk unless we offer him a chance to live.”

“You mean you want to have him tried on reduced charges?”

“Yes. But I need a letter from you to take to this man guaranteeing that he won't face hanging in court.”

Wormser doubled up his fists and glared at Pete and Harry.

“The court views horse thieves as among the lowest of the low,” he said. “The court has dealt harshly with horse thieves in this country and sees no reason to change its attitude toward such criminals at this point.”

“Judge,” Harry said, “I know I'm asking a lot, but this man has valuable information that would result in the arrest of the entire gang. They are not only horse thieves but have murdered the wife of one of my agents. I want them all to hang, but this one man is the key to my uncovering the identity of their leader and perhaps all of the culprits.”

“I see,” Wormser said. “But can't your agents find the ringleader without granting a lesser penalty to the man we have in custody?”

“They are trying, Your Honor. I have two agents out in the field, but I have not heard from them in some time. And time is precious. This involves a number of honest ranchers who have lost valuable horses to these thieves.”

The judge pulled out his watch and glanced at it. The watch was gold and so was the chain. He tucked it back in his watch pocket.

“I am reluctant to grant favors to criminals. Especially before they are deemed guilty in my court. I am further reluctant to put such a guarantee in writing.”

Wormser seemed adamant.

Tim, the judge's secretary, came into the office.

“Five minutes, Judge,” he said, and then left.

“Your Honor,” Pendergast said, “if we don't get the information from this man that we need, we may very well be unable to solve the case and bring the rest of the gang to justice. It is essential that we get this man's cooperation. A great deal of money is at stake. The horse breeders are up in arms, and they wield a great deal of influence in these parts.”

Wormser leaned back in his chair. He took off his spectacles and pinched the bridge of his nose. Then he put the glasses back on.

“I see the importance of your case, Harry,” Wormser said. “I also see that losing the case, not breaking into the inner circles of the ring could have far-reaching consequences. What would the lesser charges be for this prisoner you have in custody?”

“Possession of stolen property, Judge,” Harry said quickly.

Wormser harrumphed and drew a sheet of paper out of a desk drawer. The paper bore the imprint of the court and the judge's name. He picked up a pen from the well on his desk and began writing rapidly. When he finished signing the document, he raised it in both hands, held it level, and blew the ink dry.

“Here you are, Harry,” Wormser said. “I hope it helps you in your investigation.”

“Thank you, Judge,” Harry said. He took the paper and handled it as if were a delicate treasure. He and Pete left the office, went to the Brown Palace and had a drink in celebration.

The following morning, Harry, Pete, and Cliff Jameson rode out of town.

“This map that Trask drew for us, Harry,” Pete said, “do you think it's accurate, or is he just sending us on a wild-goose chase?”

“I told Trask that if we did not find this ranch and this Jordan Killdeer, that the judge would rescind his order and he would hang.”

Pete looked back over his shoulder. Then he leaned over and whispered his question to Harry so the man riding behind them would not hear what he had to say.

“Did we have to bring Jameson along?” Pete said.

“Cliff might be a big help. He's got a lot at stake in this case.”

“But he might want to take revenge when we arrest Killdeer.”

“No chance of that. Cliff wants to see that gang stand up on the gallows with ropes around their necks. I want him with us so he can look over the horses at Killdeer's ranch and see if he recognizes any of them as being stolen from him or the members of the association.”

“All right,” Pete said. “You're the boss, Harry.”

They rode into Cheyenne and passed the nightclub owned by Kildeer.

“Trask said he doesn't go there until evening,” Harry said.

“I know. I heard him.”

“Let me take a look at that map that Trask drew for us, Pete.”

Farnsworth slipped the folded map from his pocket and handed it to Harry.

Cliff rode up alongside Harry.

“That the map?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“I ain't been to Cheyenne in some time, but I know about where that ranch is,” Cliff said.

“You take a look at it then, Cliff. See if we're on the right road.”

He handed the map to Jameson.

Cliff looked at it and then at the buildings they passed, and as soon as they had reached the outskirts of Cheyenne, he nodded and handed the map back to Harry.

“This is the right way,” Cliff said.

They reached the ranch gate and halted their horses.

“Check your guns,” Harry said.

“It looks deserted,” Pete said. “I don't see no riders, nobody tendin' to the horses.”

“What do you think, Cliff?” Harry asked.

“It does look awful quiet.”

He saw that there were no horses in the corral. A few were grazing in a couple of pastures.

“Shall we go in?” Harry asked. “Do you recognize any of the horses, Cliff?”

“Too far away,” Cliff said.

“Well, we'll just ride up and knock on Killdeer's door. If he answers, we'll arrest him.”

“I'm all for that,” Pete said. He rode up to the gate and opened it.

They rode up to the silent house. Cliff rode around the house to the stables, but he did not dismount or go in. He sat there for a few moments and listened, his right hand resting on the butt of his pistol.

“I'll knock on the door, Pete. You be ready if he makes a move.”

Harry dismounted and walked up to the door. He rapped on it loudly.

There was no answer. He knocked again.

“Either he's not home or he's hiding,” Harry said.

“Man don't have no maid, no hands out workin'. I'd say he ain't here.”

“I think you're right, Pete.”

Harry walked to his horse and stepped into the stirrup as he gripped the saddle horn. He pulled himself up into the saddle. Then he and Pete rode around to where Cliff was waiting.

“Anybody home?” Cliff said.

“Nope,” Pete said.

“Let's ride out and look over those horses in those two pastures,” Harry said. “But keep your eyes open in case somebody was in that house and decides to chase us off.”

They rode out and opened the gate to the first pasture. Harry and Pete waited outside the fence while Cliff rode up to look at the horses and check their brands.

“Nothing here,” he said. “Horses have the Killdeer brand on 'em. And they ain't been altered with a runnin' iron neither.”

Cliff checked the horses in the other pasture with the same results. No altered brands, no stolen horses.

“Well, I'm disappointed that Killdeer isn't here,” Harry said. “I wonder if he's at the Silver Queen.”

“We could find out real easy,” Pete said. “And wet our whistles at the same time.”

“A wasted trip,” Harry said.

“Looks like,” Pete said.

“Well, you found out something anyway,” Cliff said. “He ain't keepin' any of the stolen horses on this spread.”

“I wonder what he does, or did, with all the horses he stole,” Harry said.

Pete shrugged and Cliff said, “When we find out, we'll have him where we want him.”

But Harry was dejected. He realized now that he had made a bad bargain with Jack Trask. Jack had directed them to Killdeer's ranch, but Killdeer was gone.

He wondered, as they rode back into Cheyenne, if Joe Blaine and Brad Storm might have lured Killdeer away from his ranch. Maybe, he thought, they might even have him in custody by now, along with the rest of his gang.

Then there was the alternative, which he did not want to think about.

Brad and Joe might both be dead.

He pushed the thought aside, but it nestled in the back of his mind like a rat in its hole just waiting to sneak into a kitchen after dark.

THIRTY-NINE

As Jordan Killdeer led his men into the mountains, past Lookout, he felt as if he were coming home. He felt that same strong tug he had known as a young boy, when he had lived there with the Arapaho. He had been captured in Oklahoma by Cheyenne and Arapaho warriors when he was ten years old.

He had been told by his parents and the elders of his tribe that if he was captured, he would be tortured and made into a slave. Neither had happened to him. When the tribes returned to the north, with many ponies, he had been adopted into the Arapaho tribe and they had made him into one of their own. He rode and hunted with young boys his own age and they had given him the name of Kills Deer because of his prowess with a bow and arrow. When he had rejoined the white race, he kept his given name, Jordan, and shortened his Arapaho name from Kills Deer to Killdeer.

He had kept his childhood a secret from all, and had listened to the patois of cowboys so that he could imitate their speech until it became second nature to him. The Arapaho had taught him much, but the main inheritance he had gained from them was the value they had put on horses. That stayed with him, so he had learned from the white man how to acquire and breed good horses. This love of horses had shaped his life to the point where he sought wealth not only in the breeding of fine horses but also in illegal ways to acquire them and sell them to miners, prospectors, and lumberjacks for a quick profit. He saw nothing wrong in this practice because he had been on many raids with both the Arapaho and Cheyenne when they raided other tribes and white men for horses and ponies.

While he lived with the Arapaho, he discovered that they used Wild Horse Valley to keep their wealth away from other tribes, including the Ute.

When Jordan was sixteen, he stole away in the night with the three horses he owned, horses he had captured himself on a Kiowa raid with the Arapaho. He wandered around until he met a rancher who agreed to hire him on and let him keep and breed his horses. Jordan left with a stallion and two mares. The rancher had been impressed with Jordan's knowledge of horses, and when he died, he left his ranch to Jordan, when Jordan was in his mid-twenties.

Now in his thirties, Jordan owned a successful horse ranch but wanted more. He wanted more land and more horses. And he had found a way to raise the cash the way he had been brought up by the Arapaho. By stealing horses.

“You ain't takin' the usual way up to the valley,” Toby said as they rode through a thick stand of timber where the elk were bedded down.

“No. This is the old way up there,” Jordan said. “You can't see it, but there's a wide trail here. It's all growed over now.”

Toby looked around him at the ground. All he could see were rotting deadfalls, craggy rock outcroppings, and plenty of pine and spruce. There was a juniper tree that looked as if it had been blasted with dynamite, a tree that a bull elk had rubbed the previous fall, to sharpen its antlers, mark its territory, and attract a mate.

“I don't see sign of no trail in here,” Toby said.

“Ain't been used in years, like I said, Toby.”

Toby snorted and continued to look for anything that resembled a trail. He shook his head after a few minutes and gave up.

They climbed ever higher and it did seem to Toby that Jordan knew where he was going. There were a lot of fallen pines, and he detected the scent of bear scat near one log that had been ripped open in the bear's search for grubs. The bear smell made the horses nervous, and Toby rode on with one hand on the butt of his pistol.

They left the timber and crossed a swale of grass before Jordan spurred his horse to jump across a small creek and then they were in the timber again. It seemed to Toby that they were climbing straight up and the horses were straining to climb the steep slopes that were sparsely dotted with all kinds of trees, including a few firs, a blue spruce, smaller pines that had been stunted by the wind, and a few more junipers that had been ravaged by bull elk.

“Figured out when we should get to that valley?” Clete asked. His horse was streaked with sweat and panting from the exertion of the climb.

“Yeah,” Jordan said. “Noon or shortly after. And it looks like we'll have clear weather all day.”

“Seems like we used to ride up there on a more roundabout way,” Cletus said. “Warn't so steep.”

“This is the shortest and quickest way.”

“If we was bein' chased, maybe,” Clete said, half under his breath.

Jordan said nothing. When the Arapaho had used the trail before, they were being chased and it was the quickest way to get to the valley and leave their pursuers behind. It had not seemed so steep then, but he was much younger in those days. Some of the Arapaho braves were bleeding from wounds, and some had arrows in their legs or backs and wanted only to lie in the valley next to the creek where they could tend to their wounds.

The men riding behind Jordan, Cletus, and Toby were cursing the brush and the flies, batting at the insects with their hands, and slapping their horses' necks to kill the deer flies.

Jordan rode a black Arabian, fourteen and a half hands high, with a small star blaze on its forehead. The small hoofs made it more sure-footed in mountain terrain, and the horse did not struggle like those ridden by the others in Jordan's band. He called the horse Sugarfoot and spoiled it by feeding it apples and sugar lumps when the animal was at pasture.

The sun climbed higher in the sky as the earth turned in its orbit, blazing down through the trees and heating up the thin mountain air.

Jordan looked up and marked the sun's position in the sky. On a narrow strip of grassy plain, he raised his hand and called a halt.

“We'll rest here for a few minutes,” he said. “We're about two miles from the mesa. From there, we follow a road to the valley. I want the horses rested before we make the last climb and we'll halt again once we hit the tabletop.”

“The horses are plumb tuckered from all that climbin',” Jinglebob said. “That's for sure.”

“It's good for their lungs,” Jordan said. “You do that once or twice a week, you got yourself a champion runner.”

“I don't want a champion runner,” Jinglebob said. “I just want a horse that'll carry me from sunrise to sunset without founderin'.”

“You'd have that, too, Jinglebob,” Toby said. “Jordan knows horses. Look at that Arab he's ridin'. It ain't hardly broke into a sweat.”

The men stepped down from their saddles, rolled smokes, or bit off chews, and urinated into the brush. The horses shook themselves off, their tails switching at deer flies. They, too, urinated and dropped apples onto the turf.

Jordan felt the muscles in Sugarfoot's chest, squeezing them and kneading them with his supple fingers. He patted the horse on its rump and Sugarfoot tossed its head, making a waving shawl of its mane.

The men slapped at flies on their necks and blew smoke at others that zizzed past their sweat-streaked faces.

Then Jordan called for them to resume their trek up the mountain.

The going was rough the rest of the way, and the horses doubled up their legs and propelled themselves up the steep incline like mountain goats. When they reached the tabletop, Jordan called another halt.

“No smokes. Stay mounted,” he said. “It ain't but a half mile or so to the rim of the valley.”

“About damned time,” Terry grumbled.

“Just a stretch of the legs,” Lenny said, as he worried a gob of tobacco back and forth in his brown-stained mouth.

“Be quiet from here on in,” Jordan said. “Startin' now.”

The men snuffled and closed their mouths.

One of the horses snorted, and Jordan gave the rider a sharp look of disapproval. Then he raised his hand and pointed down the road. “Stay sharp,” he said in a low tone of voice.

They rode slowly toward the lip of the tabletop. When they reached the edge at the drop-off, Jordan stopped. The other riders rode up and lined up alongside him.

They all looked down at the grassy valley and the dark shapes of horses grazing. One or two of the men sucked in their breaths at the sight of so many horses in one place. Their gazes roamed from side to side.

Jordan looked down at the wagon cocked at an angle on the side of the road.

“What the hell's that wagon doin' there?” he said to no one.

“It's probably broke down,” Toby said.

“Anything in it?” Jordan asked.

“Not that I can see,” Cletus said.

Jordan listened in silence for a long time. Some tic of suspicion began to twitch in his mind.

It was very quiet. Too damned quiet.

He saw no men anywhere he looked. He saw only a valley full of his horses.

Where in hell was this Brad Storm?

“I don't like it,” he muttered.

“Looks like there ain't nobody here,” Toby said.

“No, and there should be. You watch your p's and q's,” he said. “Somethin' sure as hell ain't right.”

Nobody said a word.

Jordan eased Sugarfoot onto the down slope of the road. He kept his eyes focused on the empty wagon. He looked at both sides of the road where there was thick brush. He looked for any sign that he might be riding into an ambush.

He walked his horse very slowly, and his right hand dropped to the butt of his pistol.

Some of the men held on to the stocks of their rifles.

It seemed to Jordan that none of his men were breathing.

He, too, was holding his breath, his nerves tingling like a dark cave full of jiggling beads on long strands of electrified wire.

And the sun stood directly overhead, burning down onto hat brims and sweat-oiled faces.

Even the horses in the valley were silent. The whole world was silent in those first few moments when all the riders began their descent into the peaceful valley that seemed rife with danger.