Riders From Long Pines (11 page)

“I said I don't have my
deputy
badge,” said Mandrin. “But I've got a sheriff badge I stole out of a desk once whilst I was delivering a prisoner to Yuma to be hanged.”

“Well, hell, that's even better,” said Parks. “Let me take a look at it.”

“In good time,” said Mandrin, not trusting Parks with such a rare treasure. “All we've got to do is kill these four cowhands, take the money and ride away?”

“Yep, that's it, more or less,” said Parks, “if you can pose as a lawman when we catch up to them.”

“I can do that easily—I've got enough practice at it.” Mandrin stood up. “Let's go kill them and get done with it.”

Parks stood up and said, “We're going to have to lure them out of town first.”

“Why?” Mandrin asked. “There's nobody here to stop us. We can do as we damn well please.”

Parks grinned “I like your way of thinking, but we want to do this in a way that neither the law nor Grissin and his men ever suspect us of anything. After acquiring this much money, I don't want to be looking over my shoulder for the rest of my life, do you?”

Considering it for a moment, Mandrin said, “No, I don't.” He rubbed a hand across his dry lips. “Let's go get a bottle and you tell me everything I need to know about this deal.”

“Now you're talking, Mandrin,” said Parks, “or should I say,
Sheriff
Mandrin?”

 

As soon as a boy had been summoned from the livery barn and the spare horses taken away, the drovers moved their own mounts to the hitch rail out in front of the Blue Belle Saloon. Tad Harper had volunteered to stay with the animals while the other three accompanied Bart Frazier to his office in the rear of the barroom.

Frazier sat listening closely to everything Jet Mackenzie told him, about the stagecoach, the dead robbers and coachmen, the unopened strongbox and the bag of money belonging to Davin Grissin. The only thing Mackenzie didn't tell him was that the money was out front, divided and hidden among each of the drovers' personal affects.

“Just where is all of this money?” Frazier made a point in asking, showing great concern. “Somewhere safe, I hope?”

“Very safe,” is all Mackenzie replied in a tight-lipped voice. Then he went on with the story, mentioning how they had gotten a raw deal from Grissin and were afraid that this fact alone might cast suspicion on them.

“Yes, I see how one might think that,” Frazier said, rubbing his chin thoughtfully.

When the young drover finished, Frazier picked up the half-f bottle of whiskey standing on his desk, poured himself a shot, tossed it back and sighed. He looked studiously at Brewer, then at Thorpe, then back to Mackenzie.

“It's most fortunate for you young men that you came to me,” he said. He pointed at Mackenzie and told the other two, “Your ramrod here has a head on his shoulders. I always admire a man who can think on his feet.”

Mackenzie stared at him. He didn't need to be told what a good job he was doing. He only wanted to get things straightened out. “Obliged, Mr. Frazier,” he said humbly. “Do you think you can help us out? All we want to do is get this money to the stage line and get shed of it. We don't want to get blamed for something we didn't do.”

“Certainly I can help you out,” Frazier said with confidence. “Put your minds at ease.” He gave an even pearly white smile. “Can you do that for me, while I go send a wire to some of ‘the right people' I know in Flagstaff?”

“We can sure try,” said Mackenzie, making an effort to return Frazier's smile.

“Very good,” Frazier said. “I'll bring you back their reply, so you can read it for yourself.” He reached out with the bottle and filled the empty shot glass sitting in front of Mackenzie. Then he filled Brewer's and Thorpe's shot glasses as they held them out toward him. “Of course I have to say, it would be much easier to declare your innocence if I could tell ‘the right people' that I have the money sitting safely in front of me.”

“Don't worry,” said Mackenzie, “as soon as we know that your folks believe us and will get us off the hook, we'll put the money at your feet.”

Frazier considered the matter. “Well, I certainly can't ask for better than that, now, can I?”

“No, you can't,” Jock Brewer replied.

“Well, then,” Frazier said, appearing undisturbed by the reply, “please make yourselves at home, gentlemen, while I get a wire off to Flagstaff.” He turned, walked out and shut the door behind himself.

After a moment of tense silence, the three listening to the sound of Frazier's footsteps walking away across the plank floor, Brewer and Thorpe stepped closer to Mackenzie. “Do you trust this man?” Brewer asked.

“Yeah,” Mackenzie said quietly, “but only because I don't see that we've got much choice.”

The three remained quiet for a long moment, the only sound in the room that of a tall pendulum clock. Mackenzie finished his glass of whiskey. Brewer did the same. Then he glanced at the clock, poured himself another glassful and sipped it.

“I think he's a slick, grinning rattlesnake,” Holly Thorpe finally said in a whisper, eyeing the closed door as if Frazier might be standing on the other side, listening all this time. “I think we'd best get out of here while the getting's good.” He looked to Brewer for support.

“As soon as your
grinning rattlesnake
shows us a reply from Flagstaff, we
are
getting out of here,” said Mackenzie. “We're not going to trust him any longer than we have to.” He looked all around. “But, pards, we've got to get this money off our backs. Once Grissin hears about this, I've got a feeling he's not going to listen to anything we've got to say on the matter.”

Brewer said to Thorpe, “I'm sticking with Mac on this. He's still our ramrod. He's never steered us wrong yet, has he?”

Thorpe settled. “Sorry, Mac. I just get a bad belly listening to the man talk.” He fidgeted with his wire-rims and pushed them up on the bridge of his nose.

“Take it easy, Holly,” Mackenzie said firmly, the ramrod giving his trail hand an order as if the two were seated atop their horses alongside a moving herd of longhorns. “A few minutes, it'll all be over.”

Thorpe only nodded. “You're the boss, Mac.”

Something had been gnawing at Mackenzie ever since Frazier had told them he knew
the right people
in Flagstaff. There was something he had noticed riding into Red Hill, but he couldn't quite put his finger on it.
What is it?
he asked himself, sipping his whiskey, looking across the room and out the window. Finally, he stood up, set the shot glass down, walked over and leaned both hands on the window-sill. Behind him, Brewer and Thorpe only gave each other a puzzled look and remained silent.

Through the dusty wavy windowpanes, Mackenzie gazed back and forth along the dirt street. He caught a glimpse of Frazier's swallow-tailed coat hurring into an alleyway; he saw two men with rifles hurry in behind him. Then he searched back and forth again, this time up along the rooflines, until suddenly he stopped and stood as if frozen for a second.

“Mac, what is it? What's going on?” Brewer asked, seeing a change come over the young trail boss.

Mackenzie didn't answer. Instead he turned from the window, walked past the desk and swiped his hat up and shoved it atop his head. “Let's go, pards. He's jackpotting us.”

“Who's jackpotting us, Mac?” said Thorpe. He noted the pale, drawn look on Mackenzie's face as he and Brewer fell in behind him and started toward the door. “What do you mean, he's jackpotted us?”

“Yeah, boss,” said Brewer, squeezing through the office door right beside Mackenzie, “jackpotting us how? What did you see out there?”

“Nothing,” Mackenzie said in a clipped tone as he walked on toward the batwing doors leading out to the street.

“Nothing?” said Brewer. “It sure don't appear that you seen nothing, the way you're—”

“I saw
nothing
,” said Mackenzie. He lifted his Colt from his holster as he walked, checking it and keeping it in his hand. “I looked from one end of this town to the other. There's not a telegraph pole in sight.”

“That grinning rattlesnake,” said Thorpe.

“Stay close 'til we hit the street and get Tadpole covered, then spread out and get ready for a fight. But don't shoot until I tell you to. Both of you got that?”

“Got it, boss,” said Brewer, his Colt already up, checked and cocked.

“Thorpe?” said Mackenzie, pushing his way through the batwing doors.

“Right behind you, boss,” said Thorpe, his right hand levering a round up into his rifle chamber.

Out in front of the Blue Belle Saloon, Tad Harper had already caught sight of Bart Frazier and three riflemen step out of the alleyway and start walking in his direction. Along the dirt street, buggies and wagons hurried away as if in premonition of a coming gun battle. On the boardwalks people ducked into doorways. Atop the roofline to his right, Harper saw the glint of gunmetal in the harsh sunlight.

Easing away from the hitch rail, he started toward the batwing doors to warn the others. But before he'd made it halfway there, the three barged out. “Mac!” Harper said. “There's gunmen everywhere!”

“We saw them, Tadpole. Good work,” said Mackenzie, staring past Harper toward Bart Frazier. Two of the three riflemen flanked the saloon owner. The third had drifted off to the side, covering the entrance to a narrow street leading out of town.

In the middle of the dirt street, Bart Frazier said to the gunman nearest him, “Damn it, they caught on to me too soon! If we'd surprised them in my office, there wouldn't have been a shot fired.”

“But that ain't how it worked out, Frazier,” said one of the riflemen.

Frazier stopped suddenly, raised his voice and called out loud enough for the whole town to hear, “Those four drovers robbed the Albertson stage. They killed the driver, the guard and three passengers! One of them was Colonel Tanner, a man this territory held in the highest esteem—”

Mackenzie cut him off with a raised voice. “You're a liar, Frazier, you grinning rattlesnake! Don't listen to him, folks,” he called out to faces peeping from behind closed doors and windows. “We come here to tell the law about the robbery—”

Now Frazier cut him off. “I am the law when it comes to dealing with bandits and far-handed rogues like you,” he shouted for the townsfolk to hear. “If you're truly innocent, throw down your guns. The whole town is backing me up on this. Am I right, folks?” He looked back and forth along the street.

“We'd like to hear what the young man has to say about it,” a voice called out from the cracked-open door of the barbershop.

But Frazier ignored the voice. “Tell your men to throw down their guns, Mackenzie,” he demanded as the young drovers spread out along the boardwalk in front of his saloon. He brought his own gunmen forward with a gesture of his hand. “You're not leaving Red Hill,” he called out to Mackenzie.

“They're getting too close, boss,” Brewer said in a harsh whisper, getting anxious. “Say the word, let us commence!”

“Hold your fire,” Mackenzie said sidelong to the two drovers. In front of him Tad Harper stood watching quietly, his rifle in hand, cocked and ready. Then Mackenzie called out to the listening townsfolk, “Frazier told us there's no sheriff here, but that we could trust him. We told him that we found the robbed stage, but we wouldn't tell him where the money is hidden until we knew we were safe. Now he figures if we're his prisoners, he can force us to tell him—”

The young trail boss's voice was cut short by a rifle shot resounding from the street. The bullet whistled past his left knee and thumped into the front of the Blue Belle Saloon. Splinters flew from a large hole in the clapboard siding.

“Damn it, Sadler!” said Frazier to the gunmen flanking him. “Don't shoot up my place. Wait until they make a run for it. Take that trail boss alive, but kill the others.”

“Yes, sir,” said the rifleman who had just fired at Mackenzie's leg. He levered a fresh round into his rifle chamber and gave a hand signal to two more gunmen atop the roofline. “Wait until they try to make a break. Leave the trail boss to me, boys, we want him alive,” he said, repeating Frazier's words up to them. “Kill the others.”

Hearing part of the rifleman's words, Thorpe and Brewer glanced at each other, then stared at Mackenzie, their hands tight around their guns. “You heard him, Mac!” Brewer said through clenched teeth. “Say the word before they kill us.”

“Hold your fire,” said Mackenzie, noting how low the bullet had been zipping past his knee. “Wait until I tell you.”

“Dang it, Mac, let's do something!” said Brewer, his nerves pressing him hard.

“Do as you're told, Brewer,” Mackenzie said in a harsh rigid tone. To Harper he said, “Tadpole, unhitch the horses. Get ready to make a run with them.”

“Right, boss.” Harper stepped forward, reached out and quickly unhitched and gathered the reins to all four horses along the rail.

“Jock, you and Holly get ready to cover him,” Mackenzie said to the other two.

“What are we fixing to do here, Mac, try to make a run for it?” Brewer asked, his confidence in the trail boss wavering a bit. His eyes darted back and forth between Mackenzie and the men advancing slowly along the dirt street.

“No,” said Mackenzie, “we just left the best cover in town.” He gave Brewer a determined look. “We're going back inside Frasier's saloon . . . only we're taking our horses with us. If he wants us out of there, he'll have to burn us out.”