Trouble Shooter (1974) (9 page)

"Leave them alone for about three or four days. Then take a ride out and see what they've done. They'll be busy for a while, and that's one reason I wanted Cameron out there. I don't want him nosing around town."

"Who do you reckon killed old man Peavey? Think it was Cameron?"

"I doubt it." Tredway looked up from his table. "Where did you get that idea?"

"Folks are talkin' it around. Nobody puts much stock in it, but he was seen with him."

Tredway shrugged. "Not likely, I'd say."

Bill Saxx went out and Colonel Justin Tredway leaned back in his chair. It was the old familiar pattern, but this time it would be different. He would not be riding where the shooting was, he would be sitting back, planning. And he would plan carefully.

He had already made up his mind about what to do to Cameron and the man and wife who helped him. Tredway had seen neither of them, and did not care to. His ideas were clear and sharp. When they had done about all he could get out of them,

they would never come out of that brush. It had been a long time since he had been into that chaparral, but he knew a few things about it, a few important things. And there was no better place to dispose of a body... who should know that better than he?

During the following days Hopalong and Pike worked hard. It was a grueling, bitter task, and they battled it out through heat, dust, and the stabbing brush. Branches lashed their faces, thorns ripped their shirts, gouged their cheeks. Hopalong rode into town and bought a couple of extra horses, and he broke them to work in the brush. In the outer corral, at the end of the first five days of work, they had thirty head of cattle, all wearing Box T brands, while in the inner corral they had sixty-two head, most of them unbranded. It had been a good beginning, but as the cattle grew wilder it would become increasingly harder to get them out.

Midway of the sixth day they were standing their horses on the edge of one of the small clearings. Only one steer was in sight and he was a rangy black animal that weighed nearly a ton. He was not feeding except for an occasional bit of grass, but he was watching them, his every move showing belligerence. "Huntin' trouble," Pike said, grinning.

In these days of hard work the two men had grown closer together. They understood each other now as only men do who have worked and sweated together and who have learned each to respect the other as a man and a workman.

"What do you think about that place we're using?" Cassidy inquired. "Think it was Ben Hardy's corral?"

Pike shook his head. "No, I don't. He knew of it, I'll bet, because he knew all this country pretty well. The story goes, he knew this brush country better than anybody but one man, one of his own gang."

"Which one was he?"

"Fan Harlan. The name came from his gun fannin', an' he was good at it. Fast as any, an' mighty slick. Last anyone heard of him was when the Hardy gang held up a gold shipment east of Longhorn.

"Hardy was wounded, but he got away. Black John was killed. Nobody ever saw hide nor hair of Harlan, Purdy, or Diego, the other three, again. A lot of folks always figured the posse caught up to 'em, wiped 'em out, an' split the money themselves."

"Much money?"

"Sixty thousand in gold. That's a lot of money, most times." Pike rolled a cigarette and looked at the black steer with speculative interest. "Lots of rustlers worked this country from time to time. That place, the corral, I mean, it was probably used by rustlers from time to time. But I wouldn't doubt that Harlan knew of it."

Hopalong took his rope from the saddle horn. "You want

that one?" He nodded at the black steer. "Or shall I take him?"

Pike Towne grinned. "You take him. I ain't as young as I

once was."

Topper moved forward, carrying his head low and looking the belligerent steer right in the eye. The steer didn't like it. He

shook his heavy horns and pawed dust with a tentative hoof. He backed up a step, and then, suddenly, he dodged. Instantly Topper was there to meet him, cutting him back toward the open. Then, as the steer wheeled to run, Hopalong's rope shot out like a bullet and whipped around the big horns. The steer hit the end of the rope with a lunge and was jerked from his feet and flopped hard.

He took a minute to get shakily to his feet, but when he got up, the fight was gone out of him. Hopalong turned Topper toward the narrow passage from the clearing, and as the rope tightened, the steer moved forward, hesitantly, wary of the rope.

Halfway down the passage he decided suddenly that he didn't like it. Hopalong, watching over his shoulder, saw the steer gather himself for a sudden charge. There was no chance to maneuver, so he slapped Topper, and the white horse sprang into swift flight with the steer charging after. Topper reached a turn and whipped around it, spinning the steer into the brush. The black steer scrambled to his feet and lunged again, but closing in from behind, Pike nailed him with a second rope and his horse braced himself. The black steer was astonished. Nothing like this had ever happened before, and he found himself pulled from both directions. It took a half hour to get him to the corral, where they turned him loose.

Rig Taylor was loafing at camp when they got there. He looked at Hopalong and grinned. "Can you use another hand?" he asked. "A volunteer? I'd like to see if I've forgotten how to use a rope. Miss Blair has some riding around to do and I think she's getting tired of me."

"We sure could!" Hopalong admitted. "That's tough work. After you catch 'em, they have to be taken through those alleys to the corral. It isn't easy."

"You had a visitor today," Rig commented. "He didn't come down to camp, but he rode along the hillside up there and he looked the place over."

"I was expecting that," Hopalong confessed. He picked up a deep pan and dumped water into it with a gourd dipper and began to splash water on his face and hands. As he washed he considered the unknown watcher. It was probably a hand from the Box T, but it also could have been the man who first shot at Rig.

Leaving Rig Taylor to work at the wide northern part of the chaparral, Hopalong took a winding opening in the brush that led to the east. Pike and Rig could work together, and he would move out by himself. He was well started before he sighted Shep. The dog loped up to him, grinning happily and wagging his tail, fairly begging not to be sent back.

"All right, Shep, we'll work together. First we'll get an idea where this goes. That will be something to know. Plenty of cow tracks, anyway."

The tangle grew fiercer, and several times Shep yipped when stabbed by thorns he inadvertently brushed against. At points the wall of the pear forest closed in so tightly that the ugly spines thrust out with barely space enough to work a way through.

Rounding a tight corner in the alley between the prickly pear, a big, mouse-colored steer suddenly loomed not a dozen yards ahead of them. Had their appearance been a moment less instantaneous than it was, it might have been dangerous. As it happened, their sudden appearance so startled the animal that he threw up his head and, rearing, turned almost completely around on his hind feet, and led off in a lunging run.

Aware that he might stop at any moment and decide to fight, Hopalong took a chance. If he could keep the steer running! Topper saw only a running steer and it was his job to chase and round them up, and he knew his job. Springing from a standing start, Topper darted after the steer. A branch--luckily it was only mesquite--slapped Cassidy across the face, and then they rounded a bend and the steer wheeled off the narrowing track and hurled himself squarely at the wall of brush!

Surprisingly, it gave with his weight and he plunged through. Topper waited for no orders. Turning so sharply that Hopalong might have touched the ground with his foot, he dashed after the steer. The lunge carried them through whipping branches, and something slashed Hopalong along the arm, and then they were through and into what a few years before must have been a clearing but was now covered by a beginning growth of chaparral.

The mouse-colored steer was heading across it, tail up and running. Hopalong swung Topper to avoid a bristling barrel cactus and then the steer was running full tilt at the wall of brush. Yet here, too, he must have known where he was going, for he plunged through into a still-larger clearing. Shep dashed on ahead, circling to get ahead of the steer, and then, past the head

of the horse* beyond the running steer, Hopalong saw something else. It was a low cabin or shelter!

Reining in the eager horse, he stood in his stirrups and looked over the tops of the young brush. Here where he now was there had not long ago been a large clearing, but already the chaparral was claiming it. Yet the cabin, old as it was, still stood.

The steer ran on and away, but Hopalong called back the dog and then moved cautiously forward. His hand went back to his pistol and slid off the leather thong that bound it in place while brush-riding.

Several times he drew to a halt, listening. There was no sound but the low wind, scarcely discernible in the thick brush. On the edges of the clearing, giant pear stood up eight or nine feet, a fierce entanglement denying all entry or exit to the clearing for most of its circumference. There was no path, no trail.

The shelter itself was built of logs and had a pole roof, heavily thatched. The lower walls, however, had been piled high with rock, obviously for defense. Somewhere Hopalong Cassidy heard water running.

Suddenly he stopped dead still.

An old corral had fallen away, only the posts and a few rotting poles left, but on the ground where the gate must have been was a whitening skull!

Hopalong moved nearer and saw the skull was only a few feet from the scattered remains of a skeleton. The leather gun belt was stiff as iron, the heavy guns rusted. One bony hand was still clasped to a gun that had never been drawn. The hole through the skull was adequate explanation.

Hopalong swung down and bent over the body. A leather scabbard, dried and stiff with age, was affixed to the belt. There was no knife in the scabbard. This man had been shot from behind, the small hole in the back of the head and the smashed frontal bone of the head proved that. The walnut butt plates on the six-shooters were carved with a large letter D.

Turning away from the skeleton, Hopalong moved toward the dark opening of the cabin. The door had long since fallen from its crude leather hinges and it lay flat upon the ground. Evidently it had been left ajar.

Stepping to the door, Hopalong peered in, then froze, startled at what he saw. Another skeleton lay collapsed against the far wall!

His face pale, Hopalong struck a match. Within was a table with a candle stuck in the neck of a bottle. Its sides were covered with tallow from the candle drippings, and obviously it had seen much use. Hopalong touched his match to the wick and as the flame sprang up, lighting again after so long a time, he looked around.

There was a heavy stone fireplace, a table, two crude benches, hastily and awkwardly made, and two tiers of bunks, enough for four men at least. Then he turned his eyes to the skeleton.

It lay with its back to the door, one bony hand clutching a rusty rifle. Moving closer, Hopalong saw a long-bladed knife had gone in through its left side right below the fifth rib and slanting slightly upward. Examining the log wall, he could see where the point of the knife had sunk in at least two inches before the weight of the corpse had pulled it free!

For an hour Hopalong wandered about, studying the room, examining everything in it. Some ancient burlap in a corner, stiff now, but still holding its former shape, completed the picture. Unless all his conclusions were wrong, Hopalong Cassidy knew that this was the final scene in the long-ago robbery of a shipment from the mines. The gold bars had been wrapped in that burlap, and three men had come here, to this place, before their greed had played its final hand.

No doubt each of these men was thirsting for possession of all the gold. Black John lay dead back at the scene of the robbery. Probably they thought Ben Hardy was also, for the story was that he had been badly wounded and they had probably seen him shot. That meant sixty thousand to split three ways, but without doubt each was thinking--why not only one way?

Possibly this conclusion maligned the man whose skeleton lay there against the wall. Maybe he had wanted to await the possible return of Ben Hardy. Maybe he had merely been the unfortunate one to die. The knife was carved with the name Diego, and it was the knife from the scabbard of the skeleton outside.

The three had come here, and Diego had awaited his chance. A hard-thrown knife had done the work as soon as the man turned his back. Perhaps he was placing his rifle on those nails, perhaps he was taking it down. In any event, the knife had settled that. And then Diego had gone to the corral after horses, and he, in turn, had been shot. The survivor had ridden away with sixty thousand dollars in gold!

A stiff leather wallet, fallen from rat-gnawed clothing, identified the second man. The first part of the name was obliterated, but the last name was Purdy.

Then the missing man with the sixty thousand dollars and the murder of his friends on his soul was Fan Harlan!

Hopalong Cassidy walked outside. A faint breeze somehow found the clearing and dried the sweat on his face. He looked around, and Topper nickered. The white horse was standing over a pool of water and Shep was panting contentedly beside him, lying on the hard-packed earth.