Bounty Guns (3 page)

There was a long pause, then the same iron voice said, “Strike a light, then.”

“Strike it yourself!” Tip said savagely. “I'll hold my gun.”

There was indecision in the man's immobility. He said, “If you're a Bolling kin, you're a dead man.”

“If I was, Buck would be dead now,” Tip said, his voice still sharp in anger.

There was another long moment of waiting, and then Tip saw the man make a move. Suddenly a match flared, and the shadows took form. The man regarding him might have been an older, harder, more disillusioned, more humorless replica of the Buck who lay at his feet. He had a craggy, bitter face that could have been chiseled out of leather-colored stone. Only his eyes, hot and wicked and ruthless, and a raw and livid scar running from temple to jaw on his right cheek seemed alive. The scar at the temple throbbed steadily.

“Put that gun down,” he said. His was the iron voice that Tip had heard before.

“Not till I'm ready,” Tip said softly.

There was a long silence, during which Tip wondered if the man would shoot when the match died. But he didn't. He said to the boy next the bar, “Light that lamp, Pate.”

Pate struck a match and pulled down the lamp. When its glow mounted, Tip saw the man leaning over Buck. From the doorway, a lean, high-built puncher strode toward Buck, holstering a gun.

Then the older man looked up, still kneeling by Buck, and this time he did not look at Tip, but to one side of him.

“What are you doing here?” he asked meagerly.

Tip shifted his glance, and then half caught his breath. It was a girl in a dry slicker who was climbing out from the tangle of chairs. She stood erect, catching hold of the back of a chair to steady herself, and on her neck Tip could see the livid bruise made by his fist when he swung in the dark. The girl didn't look at him, only looked at the man kneeling beside Buck.

“I was trying to bring this stranger a gun,” she said calmly, no fear in her voice. “I've seen this happen too many times to like it, Hagen.”

She glanced briefly at Tip. In that movement the coils of auburn hair lighted up in the play of the lamp shadows. Her face was pale, unnaturally so, and the lips of her wide and friendly mouth were drained of color. Only her eyes, of a cool gray, denied that she was scared and admitted that she was hurt. Her slicker, open now, revealed a blue basque, full at the breast, and a slim waist, belted with some material which held a six-gun.

Hagen Shields looked wickedly at her and then shifted his glance to Tip. “You hit him.”

“To get him down!” Tip countered harshly. “I'm the second person in this town that doesn't like murder.”

Hagen Shields rose, the other two on either side of him. “If that's so, I'm obliged. But obliged or not, you'll get out of this town.”

To the tall puncher, who must have been Cam, Hagen Shields said, “Lug him out the back. Don't come till I tell you to.” He strode out the alley door of the saloon, silent a moment, then called, “All right.”

Neither of the remaining two spoke or looked at Tip or the girl. They carried the slack figure of Buck, a welt of blood glistening on his temple, out the door into the rain. It was as if they had forgotten Tip.

Tip watched them go and then turned to the girl. “I'm sorry about that. I was a little wild, I reckon.”

The girl laughed shakily, in a low voice. “So was I. I don't blame you.”

Tip walked over to her, bent down, and looked at her throat. She watched him with a kind of reserved suspicion in her eyes until she saw the concern in his face. She pulled her slicker collar up. “It hurts, but it'll go away.”

“I—I didn't know you were in the room,” Tip said humbly.

“How could you?” She looked over the room, and a weary disgust came over her face. Tip handed her out over the tangle of chairs, and followed her into the dark lobby. He waited while she lighted the lamp on the deal desk.

Only now anger was having its way with Tip. His eyes were wicked with it as he looked at the girl.

“I'm not going to like this town,” he said quietly. “What did I walk into?”

“Buck Shields's yearly drunk,” the girl answered calmly. “The Bollings wait for it, and always make a try for him. Buck gets disgusted every so often. He was ugly enough this time to drive his family away from him. That's when the Bollings made the try.”

“Plain murder,” Tip murmured, watching her.

The girl shrugged. “Hagen Shields would have done it to a Bolling.” Then she added quietly, “Now will you go?”

“You, too?”

The girl nodded. “It's no threat this time, or no more than you've seen already. Last week they killed a whisky drummer out there in the street. He lay there for three hours, because this town is afraid. Can you understand that? Afraid to help a man!” Her eyes were dark with anger and contempt.

“But you're not,” Tip pointed out.

“Once, no. Twice, yes. A man who stops here when he can ride around it is a fool, and you don't look like a fool!”

Tip walked over to the desk, opened the canvas-back register, took the pen from its glass of buckshot, and wrote his name in the book. It was not a brag; it was the only way of showing this girl without arguing that he was going to stay. Putting down the pen, he looked up at her. “Do I pay you?”

“You're going to stay?” she asked unconcernedly.

Tip nodded.

She looked at him, puzzled for the moment, then said in her quiet voice, “All right. Come along.” She led the way up the dark stairway and down the corridor to the first door. She knocked, was answered, and said, “Wait, please,” to Tip. As the door opened, he had a brief glimpse of a girl, face in hands, sitting on a chair beside a bed which held a gaunt, white-haired old man. When the girl stepped through the doorway, it was a picture that Tip would never forget. The blond girl sprang out of her chair, her face wild with fear, and said in a choked voice, “Did they get him, Lynn?”

Lynn, starting to close the door behind her, shook her head, and with a wild cry of relief the other girl was in her arms, great sobs wracking her body. The door, which Lynn had meant to close, remained open a few inches, and Tip settled slowly back against the wall. Lynn? Lynn Mayfell? Blackie Mayfell's girl?

And above the sobbing, Tip heard her speak to the other girl. It was spoken softly, with undertones of bitterness.

“Your dad's men will get him another time, Anna. Can't you understand that? They'll get him next time.” Then, “Oh, darling, I don't mean to be cruel, but it's true!”

A man's voice, deep and rumbling and sick, said, “Did they wreck the place, Lynn?”

There was silence, and Tip could imagine her nodding. Then Lynn said, “There's a man here wants a room.”

“What man?” the man asked.

“A stranger.”

“Tell him we're full.”

“It won't work, Uncle Dave. He knows, and he was in that fight, and he's stubborn.”

There was a long silence, in which the sobbing died out. Then the old man said, “Ain't seven made up? Sure. All right, show him that.”

Tip stepped away from the door, and Lynn Mayfell came out. She went down the hall, and he swung in beside her. At one of the doors, she paused and entered, striking a match on her boot. After lighting the lamp, she looked around and, satisfied, said coolly enough, “Good night.”

“No key?” Tip inquired mildly.

She looked him full in the eye, and Tip could not tell if it was malicious pleasure he saw there. “No key,” she echoed. “They don't do any good. Nobody steals anything, because there are no guests. And when they want in your room at night, they batter the door down. At least,” she finished quietly, “they always have.”

Tip grinned faintly. “Thank you, Miss Mayfell.”

It was as if he had struck her across the face. For a moment Tip thought she was going to faint. Then she ran to the door, closed it, and leaned against it, stark fear in her face.

“Why—did you call me that?”

“It's your name, isn't it?” Tip asked, puzzled.

“No, no! It's Lynn Stevens. I tell you, it's Lynn Stevens!”

Tip walked across to her and faced her, his bony face curious.

“You're afraid. Of what? That pack of gun hands?”

Lynn said softly, “How did you know?”

“I'm huntin' your father's killer, miss. So are you, aren't you?”

“You've got to go!” Lynn said swiftly. “Last month a marshal came in here after the same thing. He was found dead! Don't you see? They'll get you!”

“And what about you?”

“They don't suspect me. And I can do more—a thousand times more than you! Don't you see—you'll spoil it! Spoil everything I've done!”

Tip shook his head, not answering.

“Will you go?” Lynn asked.

Again Tip shook his head. A kind of terror-driven hardness crept into Lynn's face. “If you don't, I'll tell them you're a marshal!”

“Go ahead,” Tip said quietly.

She stared at him, then put her hand to mouth. “Oh, you fool, you blind, blundering fool!” she said softly. She went out, leaving Tip standing there frowning.

CHAPTER 3

Tip went to sleep thinking about what Lynn Mayfell had told him, and he woke thinking of it. Only in the morning his mind was made up. The rain still held, and thin wisps of low clouds floated over the street, riding on a raw, driving wind out of the north.

There was nobody at the desk when Tip came downstairs. A glance at the saloon revealed a middle-aged pasty-faced man lackadaisically cleaning up the wreckage of yesterday evening. He glanced sourly at Tip and didn't speak as Tip retrieved his slicker from the bar top.

At the Oriental Café, a cubbyhole of a place run by a Chinaman, Tip wolfed down his breakfast in silence. It seemed to him that the grinning Chinaman, with his affable gibberish, was the first friendly soul he had met in Hagen. Afterward, having inquired directions, he set out in the rain, his slicker collar up, the raw rain in his face. Across the narrow mire of a street, in mid-block, he saw the weathered sign across the front of a shabby building:
Hagen Inquirer.
It brought a faint smile to his face. He crossed the street, the mud sucking at his boots, and came up on the boardwalk in front of a two-story building, long and narrow. Its upper windows were barred, but it was barren of any legend on the ground-floor windows or door. This, the Chinaman said, was the courthouse.

Tip stepped inside, stomping the mud from his boots on the sill, then looked up to confront two men. One of them wore a carefully pressed black suit and he was standing. The other was seated at a roll-top desk, and on his vest was the badge of the sheriff's office.

“Mornin',” Tip said cheerfully.

“This is a private conversation,” Sheriff Harvey Ball said flatly. He made no move to rise and it was plainly written on his harried face that he was a hostile man by nature. That he was past middle age was evident, in spite of the luxurious black mustaches amply bisecting his face. A pair of hard shoe-button eyes under thick brows, black as crow's wings, glared at Tip. The other man had a high-colored, squarish face as shrewd as an Indian's.

Tip said, “I said good mornin'.”

“And I said this is a private conversation!” Sheriff Ball repeated irritably.

Tip sat down on a straight-backed chair and held his dripping Stetson between his legs. “It ain't any more,” he said with mild truculence.

The three of them stared levelly at each other, and then Sheriff Ball said hotly, “Will you get out of here, mister?”

“No.” Tip grinned faintly, challenging them both.

It was the man in the black suit who moved first. He said, “I'll be back later.”

“No. I'll stop in at the bank later, Joerns.”

Joerns went out, and Tip sat there while Ball swung around to face him. “Now what do you want?” Ball said bluntly, unpleasantly.

“Help.”

“You won't get it from me. On what?”

“A friend of mine came in here last spring, Sheriff. Two months later his body was found about six miles out on the south road.”

“You mean Blackie Mayfell, that prospector?”

Tip nodded.

The sheriff said, “Well?”

“What happened to him?”

“He was shot in the back.”

“I read that,” Tip said. “I wondered who shot him and why?”

“If I knew I'd arrest him,” Sheriff Ball said bluntly.

And that,
Tip thought,
is the first lie you've told me.
He said aloud, pacifically, “But you must have some idea.”

Sheriff Ball's eyes were plainly hostile now. “And if I have, can you give me a good reason for telling you?”

Tip's temper was edging him, but he kept his voice unruffled. “No. I was just Blackie's friend, that's all.”

“There's been a man in here who wasn't even Blackie's friend and he wanted to know, too,” Ball said meagerly.

Tip looked levelly at him. “I heard about him, too.”

“Then you better think awhile about what happened to him,” Ball said belligerently.

Tip said quietly, “Is that a threat?”

“Yes,” Ball said immediately. He leaned forward a little, his eyes bleak. “There's no law in this county says I have to invite marshals in here to snoop. There's no law here says I got to give them any help. And I never asked for help.” He leaned back. “We get along all right here. I was elected to office to carry out the will of the people.”

“And that lets you stand by and let six men try to kill a drunk not a block from your office.”

Surprisingly enough, the sheriff answered without heat, “Yes. That appears to be the will of my constituents.”

Tip stood up. “Then everything I find out about Blackie's killer, I have to dig up myself?”