Death Rides the Night (11 page)

They weren't used to being wakened like this for a night drive and were reluctant to leave the rich pasturage in the coulee, but the dun was an experienced cowhorse and with his help Pat got them moving ahead of him after only a few minutes of delay. They trotted along slowly and refused to be bullied into increasing their speed, and it took him almost half an hour to make that last half mile to the corner.

There was a gate in the wire fence at the corner, and Pat circled ahead just before they got there, rode his dun close to lean from the saddle and lift the wire loop holding the gate-stave tight to a post. He threw the gate open and loped back before the heifers had made up their minds to scatter, pushed them through the gate and closed it behind them, then continued the drive in a straight line for the VX fence-line two miles ahead.

The stars were beginning to pale in the sky overhead and the moon was sinking low toward the horizon when he reached his destination. He knew it must be nearly three o'clock, not long before day would break in the east.

There wasn't any gate in the VX fence where he hit it. Pat dismounted and got wire-cutters from his saddle-bag, cut the three barbed strands without the slightest compunction. This was one of the worst crimes possible in the cattle country, but Pat had his own reasons for doing it.

He drove the six fat heifers bearing his brand through the gap in the cut fence, and then choused them on toward the VX headquarters. He stirred up other VX cattle along the way and got his heifers intermingled with a small herd, and turned back after driving them more than a mile from the gap.

He galloped back and rode through it into Ezra's pasture just as the first streaks of red were coloring the eastern sky. It was less than a mile to the slab house that Ezra had been fixing up to move into, and it would be almost an hour yet before day would really come light enough to allow the work Pat hoped to get done.

He knew Ezra had been laying in some supplies at the house, and cooking his own midday meals there, so he turned his dun in that direction with the thought that he could boil up a pot of coffee at least while he waited for day to come. He left the cut wires of the fence down behind him.

The old Spangler house was set back on the edge of a draw underneath four aged cottonwood trees. It was built of untrimmed pine slabs chinked up with clay and moss. A decrepit windmill creaked lazily in front of the house pumping a small stream of water that overflowed from the watering trough Ezra had recently repaired.

Pat stopped his dun at the trough for a long drink, and then rode up to the side of the house and tied the reins to a cottonwood sapling. It was still quite dark and he fumbled his way around to the back door and found it unlocked. He struck a match as he went in the kitchen and looked around for a lamp or candle. A wooden box of groceries stood in the middle of the floor, and there was a coffeepot and frying pan on the old wood stove, but Pat didn't see anything to make a light with.

As the match burned out in his fingers he remembered that Ezra hadn't started staying here at night yet, so there wasn't any good reason why there would be a lamp in the house.

He struck another match and went over to the stove, found a neat box of kindling with wadded up newspapers to start a fire with.

He laid a fire in the darkness and put flame to it, then hoisted the coffeepot from the back of the stove and grimaced when its weight told him it was half-f of stale coffee and used grounds.

He had expected it to be that way, of course. That's the way Ezra kept house. He used a big pot and started out fresh about once a week with a clean pot and a few handfuls of coffee in the bottom along with a few cups of water. Ezra didn't believe in wasting the grounds after each pot of coffee. After drinking all he wanted, he set the pot back on the range, and the next time he wanted coffee he simply added a handful of coffee to the old grounds and poured in more water and brought it to a boil. He kept this up until the pot was so full of grounds there wasn't room for any more water, then he dumped it out and started over. By the feel of, the pot, Pat knew it held a collection of grounds that had been accumulating for several days.

He blundered across the dark kitchen to the door, went out and emptied the pot on the ground, carried it around to the horse trough where he rinsed it out and filled it about half full of fresh water from the trough.

He grinned to himself as he thought what Sally would say if she could see him doing it. She had some fool notion that water from a horse trough wasn't sanitary enough for cooking. Just as if boiling it wouldn't kill all the germs. But all women were sort of finicky about things like that.

He carried the pot back to the stove where his kindling fire was beginning to roar, set it on to heat and replenished the fire box with bigger pieces of wood. He struck another match and rummaged around on the shelves until he found Ezra's coffee sack, poured a sufficient amount in the pot to make a brew strong enough to float an egg, then found a broken-backed chair and settled back comfortably against the wall to smoke a cigarette while he waited for the pot to boil.

He wished Ezra was with him. He hated to think about the big, one-eyed, red-head being cooped up in jail. Ezra was funny about jails. He'd been locked up in plenty of them in his time, but he never had got used to the idea. It sort of gave him a smothery feeling to be locked up, he said, and he got mighty restless after a few hours.

Pat tried not to think about the way Ezra had looked at him in the Gold Eagle when he turned him over to Tripo. Like Ezra figured the end of the world had come. Like he'd lost his last friend in the world. More curious than angry. Sort of like he pitied Pat instead of hating him.

Still, even now, Pat didn't see how he could have done differently. There wasn't any doubt that Ezra was safer locked up in jail for a few days than anywhere else. If Sam and he would have just listened to reason in the back room of the Gold Eagle Pat would have explained what he planned to do. But they were a couple of hotheads who thought they could whip the world with one gun and a pair of fists. After all the scrapes Pat had got them out of, they still hadn't learned that sometimes more could be accomplished by guile than by brute force.

Well, he hoped he had fooled Harlow as he had Sam and Ezra. All he needed right now was a little time. If he was lucky, as soon as it came daylight and he was able to locate the VX critters mixed in with Ezra's stuff and get them back into their own pasture before any one saw him, he would have Ezra out of jail quick enough. For Pat didn't have any doubt that there were some of the VX cows in Ezra's herd, as Harlow claimed. Harlow was too smart to make such an accusation without the proof to back him up. He would have seen to it that the cows were there before he had Ezra arrested.

Still, it was a kind of foolish charge to make against a man like Ezra. Everybody in the Valley knew he wouldn't rustle a neighbor's stock. Harlow must know he couldn't hold him in jail very long on a trumped-up charge like that. It didn't make good sense. Pat couldn't see what Harlow hoped to gain by it.

That had bothered him all night; He didn't think Harlow was foolish enough to hope Ezra would ever be convicted. Not even if a few of his cows were found in Ezra's possession. No jury of Powder Valley ranchers would ever believe Ezra guilty. They would think the cows had strayed if they didn't go so far as to suspect Harlow had put them in Ezra's pasture to frame him.

Harlow must know that, Pat thought. He wasn't a fool. He knew Ezra's reputation for honesty in the Valley.

Then, why in hell had he gone to the farce of arresting Ezra?

That question kept pounding at Pat, and he couldn't find any satisfactory answer to it. He didn't make the mistake of underestimating Eustis Harlow. He was pretty sure the wily Texan had some other trick up his sleeve, but for the life of him Pat couldn't figure what it might be.

The coffee boiled over and spattered loudly on the hot stove. Pat jumped up and hurried over to pull it back where it would simmer gently. He heard a horse coming up to the front of the house, and he stood still and listened with a deep frown on his face. It was almost dawn now, plenty light enough to distinguish objects outside the kitchen window.

Pat heard the horse stop right outside, and heard a rider dismounting. His own horse was tethered at the side of the house out of sight. He loosened his guns in their holsters and moved silently to the door leading out from the kitchen.

He stood there waiting with his hands on the butts of his guns, listening to slow, solid footsteps approaching the front door.

The front door opened and a bulky figure was outlined against the red glow of dawn in the sky.

Pat saw red whiskers and a single eye peering inside at him in the darkness, and he called out harshly:

“Ezra! How'd you get out of jail? You danged fool …”

His hands fell away from his guns as he spoke, and he took a long stride forward.

A gun streaked a lance of flame at him from the doorway. Pat felt an impact in his left shoulder as though a heavy club had struck him there. It twisted him sideways and he went down.

He lay there and cursed angrily, “Ezra! It's me. Pat. Don't you hear me? Don't you know …”

The big whiskered man was striding toward him wordlessly. He bent over Pat and struck him a savage blow on the back of his head with the barrel of his sixgun. Pat sank into a soft pit of blackness and didn't know any more.

11

Sally Stevens woke up promptly at daybreak the next morning. She was lying on her side and she could see the eastern horizon through the drooping leaves of a weeping willow tree outside the window. The long slender leaves formed a delicate pattern against the flaming backdrop of orange and crimson, and Sally made pictures out of the leaves as she lay very quietly without moving. She liked this moment at dawn each morning before anyone or anything was astir for the new day. She always planned the things that lay ahead of her, mentally laying out the sequence of small things that needed to be done about the ranch.

It gave her a good feeling to plan things ahead in an orderly fashion. It relegated the necessary tasks of the day to their orderly place in the scheme of things, and it was a daily source of satisfaction to Sally to know herself well able to take care of everything that lay ahead.

This morning a little feeling of trouble nagged at her as she lay half-awake peering out the window. She couldn't think what it was and she didn't know why she felt that way. She cautiously checked over the things she had planned to do, and found no cause for worry or alarm there. In her sleepy condition it seemed to her everything was serene.

She puzzled over it for a time and threw back the covers to get up. The men would be trooping in from the bunkhouse for breakfast soon, and she had to get it started.

As soon as she threw back the covers she realized what had been subconsciously troubling her. The other side of the bed was empty. Pat wasn't there.

Recollection of last night flooded back into her mind. How could she have forgotten? Ezra was in trouble and Pat had ridden away into the night to do something about it. Right now he might be in terrible danger.

She sat up on the edge of the bed and her eyes were wide and frightened. Some hidden danger menaced the entire Valley, and Pat had buckled on his guns at midnight and ridden off to fight against it. Her sense of security was shattered and she trembled as she got up and started to dress. It was foolish of her but she couldn't help it. She always felt like this when Pat was in danger. She knew he would come back unhurt. He always had. But she was frightened and there wasn't anything to do about it.

She tried to clear her mind of fear by thinking back to the daily routine that confronted her. There would be two less mouths to feed at breakfast this morning. That meant one skillet of ham and half a dozen eggs less to prepare.

She dressed swiftly and went out to the kitchen where a fire was already laid in the cold range. That was one of Dock's tasks; the last thing he did each night before retiring.

Sally struck a match to the fire and resolutely busied herself getting breakfast. She beat up a pan of biscuits and slid them into the oven as soon as it was heated, put the coffee on to boil and got down a big home-cured ham from a hook in the pantry. She cut off half a dozen thick slices and arranged them in two heavy iron skillets on the back of the stove where they would cook slowly and remain juicy, and then went back to call Dock.

He was curled up in his own bed with his face buried in the pillow and a blanket twisted and wrapped around his wiry young form. Sally hesitated by the side of the bed with her hand outstretched toward his shoulder.

For a moment she was sorely tempted to let him sleep on this morning. It was going to be difficult to explain to him about Ezra and his father. Dock was wild about big, easygoing Ezra, and he thought his father was the finest man on earth. He wasn't going to understand why Pat had seemingly taken sides against Sam and Ezra last night and aided Tripo to lock Ezra up in jail. It was going to be a shock to the boy to learn that his father was no longer sheriff of Powder Valley. He was so young, Sally thought dismally, so terribly young to try and understand these grown-up things.

But she compressed her lips and took hold of his thin shoulder and shook him. He was Pat's son and he had to learn to face things. It wasn't right to shield him.

Dock muttered something in his sleep and tried to twist away from his mother's hand. She stripped the blanket off of him just as she did every morning, warning him sternly, “Breakfast is 'most ready, son. Just time to hop up and get your face washed.”

“Aw gee, Mom.” Dock rolled over and protestingly screwed up his eyes against the bright morning light. “Can't I sleep a little longer? I'm not hungry. Honest, I ain't.”

“You're always hungry,” she reminded him briskly. “Roll out now. I have to get back to the kitchen.”