the Rider Of Ruby Hills (1986) (14 page)

His heart pounded against his ribs, and his mouth felt dry. He paused, flattened against the building, and listened once more. Only the wind made a sound to be heard, a soft soughing that seemed to whisper of the impending rain. The clouds towered in the sky now, higher and closer, and the rumble of thunder was close, like a lonely lion, growling in his chest as he paced his cage.

Carefully, his hand went to the knob. In the darkness the metal seemed strangely chill. His right hand moved back to his gun butt, and then, ever so carefully, he turned the knob.

It was locked.

Gently he released the knob. The pause irritated him. He had built himself to a crisis that was frustration in this most obvious of ways, and the piling up of suspense made him reckless. A glance toward the ranch assured him he was unobserved and probably could not be seen against the blackness along the cabin wall.

This was a puzzle he must solve, and now was the time. There might never be another.

Behind this locked door might lie the answer to the mystery, and he moved forward suddenly and placed his shoulder against the flimsy panel.

Light streamed from the bunkhouse windows, too. From the ranch, there came only the continuing rattle of dishes and once a loud splash as someone threw water out onto the ground. Taking the knob in his hand he turned it, and then putting his shoulder to the door and digging his feet into the earth, he began to push.

The construction was flimsy. Evidently, whatever was kept here was guarded enough by Dahl and his partner. Haney relaxed and took a deep breath, and then putting his shoulder to the door again, he shoved hard. Something cracked sharply, and he drew back, hand on his gun, waiting and listening.

From within there came no sound. From the ranch, all was normal. He put his shoulder again to the door and heaved, but this time the damage had been done and the door came open so suddenly that he sprawled on hands and knees inside!

Catlike, he wheeled, back to the door and gun in hand. His eyes wide for the darkness, he stared about. The light wind caught the sacking with a ghostly hand and stirred it faintly. Lightning flashed, and the room lay bare before him for an instant. A wooden chair on its side, a worn table with an empty basin, a cot covered with odorous blankets, and against the wall, several stacks of boxes.

Puzzled, Haney crossed to them. They were not heavy. He hesitated to risk the screech of a drawn nail, but by that time he was almost beyond caring. With his fingers, he got a grip on one of the boards that made up the box, and pulled hard. It held, and then as he strained, it came loose. If it made any sound it was lost in the convenient rumble of thunder.

Inside the box there was more sacking and, when that was parted, several round cans, slightly larger and not unlike snuff cans. Lifting one to his nostrils, he sniffed curiously, and from the box came a strange, pungent odor.

"So that's it?" he said. Then he scowled into the darkness. It did not clarify the position of Sherry or her brother. And yet-his heart seemed to go empty within him-maybe it did!

Pocketing several of the boxes, he replaced the boards as well as he could and turned the box so as to conceal the more obvious damage. Then he slipped outside and pulled the door to behind him.

Confused by the unexpected turn of events, he returned to his horse, whispered reassuringly, and then went around the stable toward the house.

Nearby was a window, and he moved up under the trees and looked through into what was the dining room of the ranch house. Three people sat at the table: Bob and Sherry Vernon and, at the head of the table, Star Levitt!

The window was slightly open, and he could hear their voices. Levitt was speaking: "Yes, I think that's the only solution, my dear." His tone was suave, cruel, and decisive. "We shall be married in this house on Monday. You understand?"

"You can't get away with this!" Bob burst out angrily, but the undercurrent of hopelessness in his voice was plain. "It's a devil of a thing! Sherry hates you! What sort of a mind can you have?"

"Sherry will change!" Levitt smiled across the table at her. "I promise you both, she will change. Also, it will be convenient for her to be my wife. She cannot be made to testify against me, and I scarcely believe that with her as my wife you'll care to bring any charges, Bob. Also, I'll have control of this ranch, and as the others are in my hands, the situation is excellent."

"I've a good notion to-" Bob's voice trailed off into sullenness.

"Have you?" Levitt glanced up, his eyes ugly. "Listen, Vernon! Don't give me any trouble! You're in this deeper than I am! You've got murder against you, as well as smuggling! If I'm ever exposed, you know that you and Sherry will both go down with me! What will your precious father think then, with his fine family pride and his bad heart?"

"Shut up!" Bob cried angrily. He leaped to his feet. "If it weren't for Dad, I'd kill you with my bare hands!"

"Really, Bob," Sherry said quietly, "perhaps we should talk this over. I'm not so sure that prison for both of us wouldn't be preferable to being married to Star!"

Levitt's face went white and dangerous. "You're flattering!" he said dryly, striving to retain his composure. "What, I might ask, would have happened to Bob if I hadn't gotten him away from that mess and brought him here? The killing of Clyde Aubury was not any ordinary killing."

Aubury? Ross Haney's brows drew together, and he strained his ears to hear more.

"Yes, I think I should have earned your gratitude," Levitt continued. "Instead, I find you falling for that drifting cowhand."

Sherry Vernon's eyes lifted from her plate. "Star," she said coolly, "you could never understand through that vast ego of yours that Ross Haney is several times the man you could ever have been, even if you hadn't become a thief and a blackmailer of women."

Haney's heart leaped, and his lips tightened. In that instant, he would cheerfully have gone through the window, glass and all, and cheerfully have given his life if it would have helped. Yet even in his elation at her praise of him, he could not but admire her coolness and composure. Her manner was quiet, poised. He stared into the window, his heart pounding. Then she lifted her eyes and looked straight into his!

For an instant that seemed an eternity, their eyes held. In hers he saw hope leap into being and then saw her eyes suddenly masked, and she turned her head, passing something to her brother with an idle comment that ignored Levitt completely.

"Well," she said after a minute, her voice sounding just a tone louder, "everything is all right for the time. At least I have until Monday!"

He drew back. That message was for him, and between now and Monday was a lifetime- three whole days!

Three days in which many things might be done, in which she might be taken from here- in which he might even kill Star Levitt.

For he knew now that was what he would do if the worst came to the worst. He had never yet actually hunted a man down for the purpose of killing him, but he knew that was just what he would do if there were no other way out.

Tiptoeing to the corner of the house, Ross started for the stable and his horse, and then as he stepped past the last tree, a huge cotton- wood, a man stepped out. "Say, you got a match?"

It was Kerb Dahl!

Recognition came to them at the same instant, and the man let out a startled yelp and grabbed for his gun.

There was no time to grapple with the man, no chance for a quick, soundless battle. Too much space intervened, so there was only one chance. Even as Dahl's hand grasped his gun, Haney plucked out his own gun and fired!

Flame stabbed from the muzzle, and then came a second stab of fire. Dahl took a hesitant step forward, his gun half out. Then his gun belched flame, shooting a hole through the bottom of the holster, and Dahl toppled forward on his face.

Behind Dahl the bunkhouse door burst open, and there was a shout from the ranch house itself. As quickly, Ross ducked around the stable and hit the saddle running.

The palouse knew an emergency when he felt one, and he lit out, running like a scared rabbit. A gun barked and then another, but nothing in that part of the country could catch the palouse when he started going places in a hurry, and that was just what he was doing.

On the outskirts of Soledad, with the pounding hoofs of the pursuit far behind, Haney leaped the horse over a gully and took to the desert, weaving a pattern of tangled tracks into a trail where cattle had been driven and then cutting back into the scattered back alleys of Soledad, leaving town a few minutes later, crossing a shale slide and swinging around a butte to hit his old trail for Thousand Springs Mesa.

"Rio, you saved my neck tonight, an' we took a scalp. I'd as soon never take another, but if we have to, let 'em all be hombres like Dahl!"

Yet what was all this about a murder charge against Bob Vernon? And what was their connection with the smuggling and the cans of opium he had found in the cabin? He had known the smell the instant he lifted the can to his nostrils, for it is a smell one does not soon forget. He remembered it from a visit, a few years before, to some of the dives along the Barbary Coast.

And now he must think. Somehow, some way, he must free Sherry from this entanglement, and as a last resort, he would do it, if he must, by facing Star Levitt with a gun!

Chapter
XV

Captured

Haney's course was clear. Whatever other plans he might have had must be shelved and the whole situation brought into the open by Monday. Studying the situation carefully, he could see little hope, unless the sheriff and the investigating officers from the outside arrived on Monday. Then, if he could present his case-but Levitt would take every measure to avoid that, and his only chance would be to get into town before time.

On Sunday night, in absolute blackness, the three rode down the back trail toward Soledad. Outside of town they slackened pace. Ross turned in his saddle as Burt and Mabry came up beside him.

He gestured toward the town. "It looks quiet enough. You two leave your horses at May's. Put them in the stable, and I'll leave mine there, too. Then you two either hide out in the stable or get down to the hotel and see Kinney. I'm going direct to Scott, and he'll see Allan for me.

"If the worst comes to the worst, and there is no other way, I'm going gunning for Star. I'd rather die myself than see that girl forced to marry him, or to see him win after all this murder and deceit.

"However, I may give myself up when the sheriff gets here."

Mabry nodded thoughtfully. "Who are these hombres Levitt's bringin' in, Ross? Are they really the law?"

"Yeah. You see, he calls Chubb the sheriff; actually, he's only a town marshal. The county seat is over a hundred miles away by trail, an' there's no deputy up there. Star Levitt is shrewd. He knows that sooner or later some word of this scrap will get out. Somebody, on a stage or somewhere, will talk. The chances are they already have.

"Well, so he sends to the governor for an investigating officer, wanting the whole thing cleared up. That puts him on the map as a responsible citizen. He'll do the talking, and the men he selects will back him up. The whole situation will be smoothed over. The chances are, one of his men will be made a deputy sheriff.

"Then the investigatin' officers will go back to the capital, and Levitt's in a nice spot. If any trouble comes up, they will always remember him, apparently rich, a stable citizen, a man who called on the law. They wouldn't believe a thing against him. His skirts will be clear, an' we three will be outlawed.

"Somehow, we've got to block that an' expose the true state of affairs."

"What is this joker you said you had?" Mabry asked.

"Wait. That will do for the showdown. Nobody knows about that but myself an' Scott. We'll have this whole show well sewed up."

He was the first to move forward, walking the palouse through the encircling trees to May Ashton's cabin on the edge of Soledad. There was no one in sight, but a light glowed in the cabin. He moved up and led his horse into the stable and left it there. Then he slipped along the wall of the house until he could glance into a window. The waitress was inside, and alone.

She opened the door at his tap, and he slipped inside. "You!" she gasped. "We were wondering how to get word to you! Star Levitt is marrying Sherry tomorrow!"

"I know. What about the officers from the capital?"

"They'll be in tomorrow, too. In the morning. The sheriff is coming up from the county seat, and some attorney from the capital named Ward Clymer. Two state rangers are coming with them. I've heard it all discussed in the restaurant."

"They will have a hearing? Where?"

"In the lobby of the hotel. It's the only place large enough, aside from the Bit and Bridle. I heard Voyle talking with Syd Berdue about it. Incidentally," she added quickly, "there's a warrant out for your arrest. Emmett Chubb has it. They want you for killing Kerb Dahl. Was that you?"

"Uh-huh, but it was a fair shake. In fact, he went for his gun first. I had no choice but to shoot."

"Well, the order is out to shoot on sight, and they have reward posters ready to go out tomorrow morning. They will be all over town for the officers to see when they come in. You're wanted for murder, dead or alive, and they are offering a thousand dollars."