Death Waits Here

Chapter Three Renegade Reckoning

Pace rode his dun alongside the wagon. Town dropped behind, and the country became rolling, green-touched hills that echoed a potential promise of paradise. Good country, a land waiting for people. And some of the people were here. After their first stop or two to drop supplies at new, rough cabins, Pace saw why Nancy wanted the people to stay. The nesters were without exception thrifty, clean, slow spoken, polite folks. The weaklings had already been weeded out.

Pace relaxed and found himself talking to Nancy. He told her of his boyhood in Texas, the way his dad had got caught miles from home in a howling norther and never returned. Pace found himself looking at his life with a new perspective. A drifting cowpoke, enjoying life, working when he needed to — that’s mostly what he’d been. But he hoped that Nancy sensed that wasn’t enough now. He hadn’t known this girl long, but he wished he could have met her, with a good job and money in his jeans. And he wished he did not have to omit that one chapter in his life he didn’t like to think about. She’d mentioned something in her own past that she hadn’t told him. Well, he couldn’t bring himself to tell her all the truth about himself right now, either.

He met Mitch Crowder at the next stop. Crowder, Nancy said, had emerged as the natural leader of the farmers. He lived in a snug cabin in a small cove. He was a lean, raw-boned man in his forties, with a neck as red as a dominecker’s. His wife was a small woman, with the quick movements of a squirrel. There was a passel of children underfoot, and Pace noted that, to them, he was more welcome than Santa Claus, the groceries more precious than Christmas toys. The children carried the supplies tenderly and cautiously into the house.

Mitch Crowder stood by the wagon a moment before it left. “We’ll not let you down, Miss Dinsmore. If necessary we’ll stand guard over our fields. Nothing can stop us, as long as the store gets supplies to us.” He looked over his plowed fields, where green shoots were beginning to appear. “Gar Testerman and two men rode over this morning.”

“A stocky, red-bearded man and a wirier one who looked as if they’d been in a fight?” Pace asked.

“No, these were two cowpunchers from the Bar-J. Said the cattlemen might consider buying us out. They know we’re going to lick ’em in the end. We haven’t scared and bolted, and they don’t dasn’t go further with physical violence. We’re filed here legal and proper, and the United States government might have something to say about serious night riding. The government would talk with a cavalry detail, and the cattlemen know that.”

“Which makes our spot hotter than ever,” Pace said.

“I reckon that’s true,” Crowder said. “Cutting our supply line is their last hope. Say, you mentioning them two men is a funny thing. My oldest boy saw a pair like that up near a line shack on the creek. The boy was out hunting and figured to spend the night in the shack, thinking it abandoned. But when he saw these two men, he just moseyed on, strangers being unfriendly as they are in this country.”

Pace felt his breath quicken. “How do you get to the place?”

“Straight up the creek about two miles.”

Pace mounted the dun. “You want supplies in the future, arm your oldest boy and send him with this wagon.”

“I’ll do more than that,” Crowder said. “I’ll ride guard myself.”

Nancy climbed on the wagon seat. Her eyes were worried, and she was white about the lips. Pace guessed every fiber of her wanted to beg him not to go to the cabin. He watched her stiffen her back. “Good hunting, Texas.”

Her courage warmed him. “I can’t miss,” he said.

He left the dun ground-tied behind a knoll and approached the line shack on foot, taking his time. He sighted the shack; it looked empty. Then as he moved, changing his angle of vision, he saw a single horse hobbled near the creek. He felt the afternoon sun beating on the tenderness of his cheek and jaw, and his eyes slitted. The flesh of his face tightened, making the bones stark and ugly. He checked the shotgun, then pulled the revolver he’d thrust into his waistband before leaving the store. He broke the gun, spun the cylinder, to see the weapon had picked up no dust or dirt.

A line of brush afforded cover enough for him to get close to the shack. He removed his spurs to avoid their tinkling, and crossed the intervening thirty feet to the wall of the shack, running on tiptoe.

He edged along the wall, mounted the sagging front porch, and heard a man snoring inside. A single board creaked as Pace entered, but the sound did not awaken the man. A near-empty whisky bottle stood on the rickety table in the center of the room. The man sighed, stirred on the burlap-and-brush matressed bunk. He was facing outward, beginning to snore again, light falling on his face. He was not Penick or Searcy, but the face was familiar. Then Pace remembered. This was the man who’d brought the corn to be ground.

Pace crossed the room. The man on the bunk was long, loose-jointed, sallow-faced, and lantern-jawed. A day’s growth of dark beard matted his cheeks.

Pace pointed the pistol at the man’s face, reached out with his other hand, and shook the sleeper’s shoulder.

The man’s eyes flicked open. He did not appear normally cross-eyed, but as he snapped soberly awake, each eye fastened itself to the yawning gun bore inches from his nose.

He shivered, cowered back on the bunk, the brush rustling beneath him. “Who are you?” he said, “and what do you want?”

“The name is Pace Jernigan — and, since you seem to like making little stones out of big ones, I figure we can fix you up with such a job, about five years of it.”

By moonrise, Pace was replete with a hot supper and a day of accomplishment. Nancy smiled as she washed, dishes and handed them to him to dry.

“We didn’t get much out of the prisoner,” he admitted. “His name is Ellis Callaway. He denied putting the dynamite cap in the corn all the way back to town, and even after Bigby Barnes jailed him. But I think our testimony’ll stand up in court. The corn definitely came from his wagon, and, as soon as the grain went in the hopper, he got out of there.”

“Bigby didn’t find out who hired him?”

“Bigby didn’t find out anything. He locked the man up and hurried back to his pinochle game.”

Pace dried the last dish, hung the towel on the rack over the sink. “It’s my hunch somebody’s going to be bad worried with Callaway in jail, fearing the man just might talk. Tomorrow morning I’m going to speak to Crowder about setting up a chain of guards along the supply route.”

Nancy studied him a moment. He colored faintly. “What’s the matter?”

“Ever have a thought come unbidden to your mind, Pace?”

“Plenty of times.”

“I can’t help it. I’m wondering why you, a stranger, are doing all this, conceivably risking your neck.”

“You trust me?”

“Of course. But you must admit it seems odd.”

“Not if you knew me better, Nancy. Sometimes I make on-the-spot decisions. Like this one.” His hands touched her shoulders. He drew her toward him and kissed her. She surrendered to the kiss momentarily, then she pushed away with a sob in her throat.

“Since you’re bullheaded enough to stick in Fairfax town, Texas, you’re going to learn that I’ve got a brother in the penitentiary. I lied to you when I said Kyle had gone East. He’s doing time on a Federal charge. After Dad died, Kyle wanted money faster than the store could earn it. He was young, and foolish. Not inherently bad, just too impatient. There was corn meal in plenty, and he could buy all the sugar he wanted without arousing suspicion.”

She shook her head as if remembering a bad dream. “The Federal men began watching him, though he didn’t know it of course. Maybe somebody with a grudge tipped them off. They caught Kyle red-handed, making illegal liquor. To make it worse, he got panicky and tried to fight his way out. He drew a stiff sentence.”

Pace moved toward her. “You think it makes any difference to me?”

Her lips quivered. “But you don’t understand. I shielded him. Even after I suspected what he was doing, followed him one night and found out for sure. I tried to protect him. I’m as guilty as Kyle, Texas.”

“No,” he said, “you’re not — and you’ve let this thing prey on your mind too much. The law of family survival is stronger than any man-made law. You were doing just what any sister would do.”

“Thanks, Texas,” she said. “You always seem to do and say the right thing at the right time. But don’t say anything more to me now, something you might be sorry for later, after you’ve had time to think about a convict in the family. Kyle has matured, I can tell from his letters. Merciless as it sounds, I’m glad prison stopped him from something worse. He was drifting, but I believe he’ll have his feet on the ground when he comes out.”

“Sure he will,” Pace said, coaxing the words to his lips. Now is the time to tell her, he thought, don’t miss this chance.

Then the door closed behind her, and the chance was gone.

Pace slept fitfully, bunking on a cot in the rear of the store with a shotgun nearby. Though she hadn’t said it, Pace added to Nancy’s story a previous remark she’d made about Oliver Frady. The saloon would have been a natural outlet for Kyle Dinsmore’s untaxed liquor. A young, foolish Kyle would have felt loyally bound not to squeal on his partner, leaving Frady free. Was it Frady, after all, who wanted the Dinsmores gone from here for good, for a reason deeper than the presence of the nesters?

About ten o’clock Pace heard a group of horsemen ride out of town. Pace rose, fully dressed except for boots. He slipped these on and walked to the window. He saw the dust cloud in the moonlight; from the size of it, he guessed most of Fairfax had hit the trail for some reason.

He stepped quietly out of the store, crossed the street to the saloon, where the only lights were visible.

Oliver Frady was alone, turning off the lights as Pace entered. “The customers all went with the sheriff.”

“Trouble?”

“That Ellis Callaway turned out to be a hand, newly hired, on the Bar-J, one of the ranches Gar Testerman has an interest in. Somebody slugged the sheriff and busted Callaway out of jail not twenty minutes ago. Soon as the sheriff came to, he got a posse together and lit out after Callaway.”

Pace let his shoulders relax. So it was Testerman after all. With the sheriff, it was logical to assume that he’d round up every available townsman to go after Callaway. He wouldn’t do the job alone. Which might mean that the breaking out of Callaway had been for the simple and express purpose of taking most of the able-bodied men out of town. Callaway’s capture had shown that Pace, Nancy, and the farmers weren’t fooling. Given time, they would win. But in a suddenly deserted town, anything might happen to the store or to Nancy.

Pace tried to keep from running as he headed back toward the store. He slipped inside as he heard a muffled scream. He grabbed a brace of revolvers from the rack behind the counter and cursed the moment lost in loading them in the dark.

A door opened and closed. The shadow of a man moved. Coal oil splashed, spreading its pungent odor into the store. Pace laid the second revolver down quietly, not having time to load it. The shadowy man struck a match. Pace recognized the heavy bush of red beard.

“Hold it!”

Instead of obeying, Jack Penick dropped the blazing match and grabbed for his gun. Pace fired. Penick choked and fell. Flames were already racing over the pool of coal oil. Pace vaulted the counter, dragged the man away. From the bullet crease along the temple, Penick would not be conscious for quite awhile. Pace shoved Penick through the front door; then skirted the spreading fire toward the living quarters in back.

He saw Nancy pulling herself to her feet with the aid of a chair in the middle of the room. “Alec Searcy, Pace,” she said. “The shot warned him. It gave me a chance to break away, and he lunged outside. Watch it, Pace, he’ll shoot you in the back!”

He slid through the rear door. A gun went off almost in his face. The bullet sang by his ear. He fired back and saw Alec Searcy break from the corner of the building. Pace held the trigger and began fanning the gun. He was shouting crazy words without realizing it.

His knees went limp as he saw Searcy stumble and fall. He walked over to Searcy, who was whistling breath out through a hole in his chest. Searcy had dropped his gun and was trying to crawl toward it. Pace kicked the gun away.

He stood looking down on the fallen man, moonlight giving his face an icy look. “You weren’t above burning out a girl, Searcy, risking the chance of killing her. Now you’re dying. Do one decent thing. Who hired you?”

“Oliver Frady,” Searcy said after a moment.

“He wants the land?”

“Yes. Trip to Denver. He found the railroad’s figuring to come this way. Made a deal with one of the officials to deliver the land in one lump, cheaper than the road could buy it piecemeal from the farmers. In return the official promised to use his power to give Frady time. Official crooked gent...”

“Thanks, Searcy.”

But the man had stopped breathing.

Pace moved down alongside the building. He reached the front of the saloon, eeled through the door. The saloon appeared to be empty. Then Pace heard a sound behind the bar and knew it was Frady, warned by the shooting across the street.

“Frady,” Pace said. “You’re going to help fight some fire — with this gun on you every minute. And you’re paying for every dime damage she’s suffered.”

When the posse returned with a bedraggled prisoner in tow, they found a girl and a Texan standing guard over a smoke-blackened, blistered saloon owner who slumped on the edge of the boardwalk, face in hands, sobbing for breath, one gunman, dead, and a second hired hoodlum moaning with a bullet crease along his scalp.

Sheriff Bigby dismounted. Gar Tester-man slid off his mount beside him. The two men approached him, coming along the boardwalk.

“Looks like you been right busy here,” Testerman said. “We got the skunk that sneaked on the Bar-J payroll.”

“And we got the one who had him do it,” Pace said. “You’d better screen your hands. Frady might have found it convenient to slip several in here and there. A prime way of keeping them close to call and point suspicion the other way in case they were caught.”

“We’ll do that,” Testerman said. He started to turn away, then paused. “I tried for twenty-one and busted the hand.”

Pace watched the posse gather in its fresh prisoners and move down the street. The night was quiet, studded with stars.

A soft voice touched the night with added beauty: “You’re wonderful, Texas.”

“No — not so much so,” he said. His limbs felt suddenly heavy, his throat dry. “You had your secret. I got mine. You don’t think I came here by accident, do you? I was a little young, fiddle-footed, and crazy once myself, like Kyle Dinsmore. I thought it was high adventure to smuggle some \vet cattle across the border, but the Feds waiting on this side didn’t agree. I had to share their opinion when I had time to think it over — in company with Kyle Dinsmore.

“He wanted me to tell you he’s fine, Nancy. And he is. Fine as they come. He saved my life in a prison riot once. So you see, a beating couldn’t drive me away when I promised him I’d look in on you when I was released. He suspected things were tough, even though you did try to keep your letters cheerful.”

He touched lips that felt parched with his tongue. “Well, I guess that’s it, Nancy.”

He started to turn away; then she spoke, and he turned back, and she was suddenly in his arms.

She had said only one word: “Texas!” But the way she’d said it told him all he needed to know.