The Desperate Deputy of Cougar Hill (8 page)

During his time in prison he read through the warden’s library. And because the warden had once been a mining lawyer, Larabee came to know a great deal about the subject. After his release, he put his knowledge to work — he acquired properties cheaply and sold them at large profits. He made a good deal of money over the years, and he spent it — buying a home in San Francisco, buying land of speculation with long term profits in mind, and buying information about Roy Cameron.

At one time Larabee had four Pinkerton men working for him. And slowly he built up a picture of Cameron during the long, hate-filled years. More than once he was tempted to appear where Cameron worked and denounce him as a criminal masquerading as a lawman. But each time he curbed himself, knowing that in most western towns such a background would not be to Cameron’s disfavor. Too many lawmen had ridden the wild trails. But finally Cameron settled in Cougar Hill, and Larabee knew that here the temper of the people was different. Here, Cameron could be hurt.

And then, as if to mock all of Larabee’s efforts, his investments began to fail. His money disappeared. He mortgaged his home, sold his properties, and he found himself without the capital he needed to work the one big deal he hoped would make him a truly rich man.

The report he had received from the Pinkerton man who found Cameron in the Cougar valley country told Larabee a good deal about the town itself. And as he read it, he realized he might have found the way to finally revenge himself for those three years in prison and at the same time get the capital he needed. By train and then by stage, he worked his way to Idaho Territory. Here he learned all he could about Cougar Hill and the valley. He hired the Dondee brothers, men he had used before, and sent them ahead of him. He heard about Rafe and waited patiently for him to be released from prison.

Thinking about Arker made Larabee smile with satisfaction. He had handled the man perfectly. As far as Arker knew, their meeting a half day’s ride from the prison had been lucky coincidence. And Arker would go on thinking this, never realizing that he was being used. Or not realizing it until nothing he could do would change the inevitable. The fact that Arker would be destroyed did not bother Larabee. He despised men of Arker’s type. In his opinion, the world would be better off without them.

As he rode up the wagonroad to the benchland, Larabee thought of how easily he could have destroyed Roy Cameron. He could have killed him last night. Or he could have stood by and let him be killed. But that would not have been enough. Cameron had to know the pain of loneliness, of being without friends. He had to know the humiliation of defeat. And above all, he had to live long enough to know who had brought him the pain, the humiliation, the defeat.

A narrow trail led Larabee from the wagonroad into a box canyon. Here the Dondees had their shack and their mine. Fresh dirt scattered on a pile of weed grown tailings testified that they were actually working. Larabee was pleased and surprised to see this. He was more surprised to hear sounds of a pick and shovel coming from the large hole that was the entrance to the old mine the Dondees had taken over.

He whistled shrilly and in a few moments Jupe Dondee appeared. He tossed down the shovel he was carrying and hurried down the path to where Larabee waited.

“This is Sunday,” Larabee said. “You don’t have to overdo the business of being a miner.”

Jupe Dondee grinned behind his straggle of beard. “Hell,” he said, “look at this!” He pulled a poke from his pocket and opened it. He shook glittering flakes into the palm of his hand. “Look!”

Larabee looked. He took the poke and upended it, letting a glittering stream fall to the ground. “What the hell you think you’re doing? That’s a week’s hard work!” Jupe cried angrily.

“These are iron yprites,” Larabee said disgustedly. “Fool’s gold. Your week’s work is worth less than that poke. Now stop wasting my time and call Hale down here. We’ve got business to take care of.”

Jupe Dondee stared from the mineral in his palm to the pile on the ground. He lifted his head and carefully studied Larabee’s expression. His suspicion was obvious, but after a moment it faded reluctantly away.

He emptied his palm and brushed his hands. “I guess you ought to know,” he said grudgingly. Turning aside, he shouted for his brother.

Hale Dondee came out of the hole and down the short, steep trail. He was carrying a good-sized sack and showing his broken teeth in a wide grin. “I guess you out-foxed yourself, Larabee, when you said we could keep anything we made mining. Look at this!” He slapped the sack with his free hand.

Jupe Dondee grabbed the sack from his brother and upended it, spilling the glittering pyrites onto the pile. “Larabee says this is fool’s gold,” he grunted. “It ain’t worth as much as the dirt it’s laying on.”

Hale swore loudly. He stomped around, accusing Larabee of trying to cheat them. But after a time, he calmed down and shrugged philosophically.

“There’ll be plenty of the real stuff come Saturday night,” he said finally. He laughed. “How’s the lawman today? You think he’ll bother us when we make our hit?”

“Cameron won’t bother us,” Larabee assured him. He frowned. “But you gave him more of a beating than I wanted. If I hadn’t stopped you when I did, he’d be in that hospital for a month. As it is, we’ll be lucky if he’s up and around by Saturday.”

Jupe stared at him in open amazement. “Lucky! You gone crazy? What do you want the law up and around for?”

Larabee turned on him savagely. “I know what I’m doing. I told you before that I want him alive and on his feet when we make the hit.”

Jupe rubbed his knuckles. “That still don’t make no sense to me. Cameron’s a wildcat. The next time I tangle with him, I want an army behind me and a gun in my hand.”

Larabee started for the small shack. “Make me some coffee and I’ll try to get the idea through your head.”

Inside, the cabin’s one room was fairly neat. At least, Larabee thought, it didn’t stink like Rafe Arker’s place. He dropped onto one of the two chairs and stretched his booted feet in front of him. “Here’s the plan,” he said. “Get it clear and don’t try to change it. The army will be here at the end of the week. They’ll look over the stock Beggs and his crews are bringing down from the hills and buy what they want. From what I hear, they’re hungry for horses and mules and the ranchers have some good stock for them. That means there’ll be even more money than I thought at first. Stedman, that banker, estimated between eighty and a hundred thousand dollars all told.”

“That’s a lot of gold,” Hale Dondee breathed.

“And it’s all ours if we play things right,” Larabee answered. “The way they work things here is for this Obed Beggs to take charge of everything. The army pays him every man’s share. He puts the money in the bank as it comes to him. Most of it will be there by late Friday with the last dribbles in on Saturday morning. By Saturday afternoon the last of the army will be gone with the stock. The bank is locked up and the ranchers go about their regular business until Monday. Then they come to town and Beggs parcels out the shares, including the wages for the townsmen and such people.”

Jupe Dondee finished lighting a fire in the cook stove and set the coffee pan on the hottest part of the rusty surface. “So most of the gold will be in the bank by Friday night and all of it by Saturday afternoon — waiting for us.”

“There’ll be more money than this Cougar country ever saw at one time,” Larabee said. “And you can be sure that the law will have its eye on that bank.”

“But you said …” Jupe started to protest.

“I said I wanted Cameron up and around — and guarding the bank Saturday night,” Larabee snapped. “I don’t want Balder or some valley rancher nervous enough to shoot at shadows. I want Cameron there because when the time comes for us to make our play, he’s the one man who won’t interfere.”

Both men gaped at him. Hale Dondee snorted loudly. “You trying to tell me Cameron’ll let us bust open that bank? Not him, Larabee. I watched him operate long enough to know that he won’t help us if we was to give him all the gold and the bank building too. You got the wrong man, thinking that Cameron’ll …”

“I know what I’m doing,” Larabee retorted. “I said Cameron won’t bother us, and he won’t. When the time comes, he’ll be looking the other way.”

He smiled coldly. “And I intend to fix things so that Balder and the rest of the town’s big men will be spending their time accusing Cameron of having helped in the robbery instead of going after us. They’re either going to think that Cameron was part of the gang or that his beating made him run scared.”

“And if he don’t run scared?” Jupe Dondee demanded. “Or if he don’t do things the way you want him to — what then?”

“He will,” Larabee said softly. “That’s my job — to see that he does nothing while we help ourselves to over eighty thousand dollars worth of gold.”

I
T WAS
Tuesday night before Cameron realized he was alive. Before that his mind held only vague blurs of memory. He recalled the ambush, the coming of Sax Larabee, and Tod’s helping him to the doctor’s house. After that there was mostly darkness, with now and then a faint bit of light — remembrance of Balder, of Obed Beggs, of Sax Larabee, and especially of Jenny Purcell. But there was no recall of Tod at all, and Cameron lay wondering at this.

He rolled his head on the pillow as the door to his room came open. The spare figure of Doctor Draper appeared. “Ah, I hoped you’d come awake tonight,” he said. “How’s the appetite?”

“I have one,” Cameron said dryly. “My stomach feels like it missed Sunday dinner.”

“And a few more meals,” the doctor agreed. “This is Tuesday, Roy.”

Surprise brought Cameron sitting up. Pain lanced at his ribs and into his right shoulder. He fell back.

“You’ll need a while yet before you can get up and around,” the doctor said. “You got a nasty crack on the head and some badly bruised ribs.”

Cameron lay back, his eyes closed, and tried to comprehend that he had lost three days out of his life. He thought of the roundup and grunted. Both Obed and Balder could have used him those three days.

And then his mind turned to Sax Larabee and cold shadows of trouble clouded him. The memory of Sax appearing in the alley rescuing him brought the shadows into harsh focus. There was something wrong with that scene, something Cameron felt he should be able to put words to. But his mind was too tired, and he felt Sax Larabee drift out of it.

The doctor appeared with chicken soup. He said, “Jenny made it for you. She’s on the roundup most of the time, but she said to tell you she’d be back by Friday at the latest.” He added as if this needed explaining, “I assured her you were all right; otherwise she would have spent all her time right here.”

“I guessed as much,” Cameron said. He sat up, carefully this time. “By the time she gets here, I should be ready to ride.”

“By next month, maybe,” the doctor said. “You try moving too soon and you’ll be back in bed — for a long stretch.”

Cameron said nothing but started eating. When he was through and Draper had taken the empty soup bowl away, he threw back the covers and tried standing up. He moved too quickly at first and dizziness forced him back to the bed. But after a time he managed to stay on his feet for five and then ten minutes at a time. Satisfied, he turned down the lamp and went to sleep.

It was late on Wednesday before he had a chance to test his legs again. Balder came in the morning to talk about the ambush. Cameron had little to offer and Balder nothing.

“I asked Tod to look around for me,” Cameron said. “But he hasn’t shown up.”

“He left for the roundup Sunday,” Balder said. He obviously didn’t consider anything Tod might have to say worth much in the way of help. “I figure it was Rafe and Farley. So do most folks. But that Larabee who busted up the fight claims neither one of the pair was big enough for Rafe. Besides, I hear he’s been in bed mostly since last Thursday night. If it wasn’t Rafe, who was it? Who else had any reason to jump you that way?”

This question was one Cameron had spent a good many hours turning over in his mind. He felt sure he had part of the answer — but not enough of it to make any real sense yet.

He said, “Right now I’m worried about Tod. When he says he’ll do something for me, he usually does it.”

“Obed Beggs’ll be in for grub later today or early tomorrow. I’ll ask him about the kid,” Balder said. He had little more to say except to relieve Cameron’s worries about the law work, remarking that the army men had arrived and set some of their own troups to patrol themselves.

He hadn’t been gone long when Obed Beggs wandered in, grinning his pleasure at seeing Cameron sitting up and wide awake. “The work’s going better’n I expected.” he told Cameron. “So there’s no need for you to fret yourself about helping out. Just do what Doc Draper says and stay put in this bed.”

His grin widened. “Besides, Jenny’s doing enough work for the both of you. She knows the high country better’n anybody in these parts, so we’ve got all but a couple of mountain meadows cleaned out. It looks like we’ll have most everything corralled and turned over to the army by Saturday noon.”

“Tod knows the high country pretty well too,” Cameron said: “Between him and Jenny, everything in it should be cleaned out.”

Obed snorted. “That kid. I don’t know what’s got into him. He was supposed to drift in Sunday night, but I ain’t seen nor heard a thing. I don’t know where he’s got himself to.”

Up to now Cameron’s concern for Tod had been a mild thing, built mostly on surprise that the boy hadn’t come to tell him what he’d found in the alley. But as the meaning of Obed’s words sank in, Cameron felt a cold finger of fear touch him. What if Tod had found something that pointed to the ambushers? He would have come here, of course. But then he would have been told Cameron was still unconscious. And Cameron knew with frightening certainty exactly what Tod would do in such a case. Wanting to make Cameron proud of him — and perhaps to revenge the beating — he would go after the ambushers himself.

Cameron tried to brush aside the shadows in his mind. He was guessing, imagining too much. Tod just as well could have attached himself to one of the small crews working far in the hills, having forgotten in his excitement at working the roundup all about his obligation to report to Obed Beggs.