THE SHOOTING
Racey Dawson, riding back to Moccasin Spring, was in a warm and
pleasant frame of mind. With him rode Old Salt, and with Old Salt rode
Old Salt's check book. Racey had, after much argument and persuasion,
made excellent arrangements with Mr. Saltoun. The latter, anxious
though he was to own the Dale place himself, had agreed to pay off the
mortgage bought by Lanpher and Tweezy and take in return a 6 per cent.
mortgage for ten years. No wonder Racey was pleased with himself. He
had a right to be.
As they crossed the Marysville and Farewell trail Racey's horse picked
up a fortuitous stone. Racey dismounted. Mr. Saltoun, slouching
comfortably back against his cantle, looked doubtfully down at Racey
where he stood humped over, the horse's hoof between his knees,
tapping with a knife handle at the lodged stone.
"A ten-year mortgage is a long one, kind of," he said, slowly.
"I thought we'd settled all that." Racey lifted a quick head.
"Shore we've done settled it," Mr. Saltoun acquiesced, promptly.
"That's all right. I'm going through with my part of it. Gotta do it.
Nothing else to do. I was just a-thinking, that's all."
Racey merely grunted. He resumed his tapping.
"Alla same," Mr. Saltoun said, suddenly, "I don't believe this Jack
Harpe feller had anything to do with this mortgage deal, Racey."
"Don't you?"
"No, I don't. You can't make me believe they's any coon in _that_
tree. If they was why ain't Jack Harpe done something before this?
Tell me that. Why ain't he?"
"Damfino."
"Shore you don't. You was mistaken, Racey. Badly mistaken. Yore
judgment was out by a mile. She's all just Luke Tweezy and that lousy
skunk of a Lanpher trying to act spotty. No more than that."
"Well, ain't that enough?"
"Shore, but--"
"But nothing. Where'd you be if I hadn't found out about it, huh?
Wouldn't you look nice feedin' other folks' cows on yore grass?"
"Alla same, they wouldn't 'a' been Jack Harpe's cows."
"Which is all you know about it. You never would take warning, and you
know it. How about the time when Blakely was the 88 manager, and they
were rustling yore cattle so fast it made a quarter-hoss racing full
split look slow?"
"Well, but--" interrupted Mr. Saltoun, beginning to fidget with his
reins.
"And the time Cutnose Canter tried to run off a whole herd of hosses
on you?" Racey breezed on, warming to his subject. "You wouldn't let
Chuck warn you. Oh, no, not you. He didn't know what he was talking
about. No, he didn't. And how did it turn out, huh? What did that li'l
party cost you? Yeah, I would begin frizzling round if I was you.
You'll generally notice the feller who's the last to laugh enjoys it
the most. I'm that feller--me and Swing both."
"Aw, say--"
"Yeah, me and Swing will be thanking you for a healthy big check
apiece when our time-limit is up. Yes, indeedy, that's us."
"Is _that_ so? _Is_ that so? You got another guess, Racey, and it's me
that will get the most out of that laugh. If it's like I say, even if
Lanpher and Tweezy are trying a game you don't get paid a nickel if
Jack Harpe and his cattle ain't in on the deal. You done put in the
Jack Harpe end of it yoreself. I heard you. So did Tom Loudon, and
Swing, too. Jack Harpe. Yeah. He is the tune you was playing alla
time. And up to now I can't see that Jack Harpe has made a move, not a
move."
"But--"
"Lanpher and Tweezy wasn't in the bet," insisted Mr. Saltoun. "It was
Jack Harpe, and you know it. 'If Jack Harpe don't start trying to get
Dale's ranch away from him and run cattle in on you inside of six
months you don't have to pay us.' Them was yore very words, Racey. I
got 'em wrote down all so careful. I know 'em by heart."
"I'll bet you do," Racey told him, heartily. "I'll gamble you been
studying those words in all yore spare time."
"It pays to be careful," smiled Mr. Saltoun. "Always bear that in
mind. I ain't wanting to rub anything in, Racey, but if you'd been a
mite more careful, just a mite more careful, you wouldn't be out so
much at the finish. Drinks are on you, cowboy. And when you stop to
think that I'd 'a' made the bet just the same if you'd wanted Lanpher
and Tweezy in on it. Only you didn't."
"Guess I must 'a' overlooked 'em, huh?" grinned Racey. "Feller can't
think of everything, can he?"
"I'm glad to see yo're taking it thisaway," approved Mr. Saltoun.
"Working for six months for nothing don't seem to bother you a-tall."
"I ain't worked six months for nothing--yet," pointed out Racey. "The
six months ain't up--yet. You wanna remember, Salt, that a race ain't
over till the horses cross the line."
"You gotta prove Jack Harpe's connection," began Mr. Saltoun.
Racey topped his mount, but as the horse started he held him up.
"Lessee who's coming," he suggested, jerking his thumb over his
shoulder.
He and Mr. Saltoun both turned their heads. Someone was riding toward
them along the trail from the direction of the Lazy River ford--Racey
had caught the clatter of the horse's hoofs on the rocks of a wash
wherein the trail lay concealed.
"Siftin' right along," said Mr. Saltoun.
Racey nodded. Horse and rider slid into sight above the side of the
wash and trotted toward them.
"Looks like Punch-the-breeze Thompson," said Mr. Saltoun.
"It is Thompson," confirmed Racey. "Didn't it strike you he sort of
hesitated a li'l bit when he first seen us--like a man would whose
breakfast didn't rest easy on his stomach, as you might say."
Mr. Saltoun nodded. "He did sway back on them lines at the top."
"And he ain't boiling along quite as fast now as he was in the wash,"
elaborated Racey.
"I noticed that, too," admitted Mr. Saltoun.
They waited, barring the trail. Punch-the-breeze Thompson did not
attempt to ride around them. He pulled up and nodded easily to the two
men.
"They's been a fraycas down at McFluke's," Thompson said.
"Fraycas?" Racey cocked an eyebrow.
"Yeah--old Dale and a stranger."
Racey nodded. He knew with a great certainty what was coming next.
"Anybody hurt?" he asked.
"Old Dale."
"Bad?"
"Killed."
Racey nodded again. "Even break?"
"We don't think so," Thompson stated, frankly.
"Who's we?" queried Racey.
"Oh, Austin, Honey Hoke, Doc Coffin, McFluke, Jack Harpe, Lanpher, and
Luke Tweezy. We all just didn't like the way the stranger went at it,
so I'm going to Farewell after the sheriff."
"Yo're holdin' the stranger then, I take it?" put in Mr. Saltoun.
"Well, no, not exactly," replied Thompson. "He got away, that stranger
did."
"And didn't none of you make any try at stopping him a-tall?" demanded
Racey.
"Plenty," Thompson replied with a stony face. "I took a shot at him
myself just as he was hopping through the window. I missed."
"Yet they say yo're a good snap shot, Thompson," threw in Racey.
"I am--most usual," admitted Thompson. "But this time my hand must 'a'
shook or something."
"Yep," concurred Racey, "I shore guess it must 'a' shook
or--something."
Thompson faced Racey. "'Or something,'" he repeated, hardily.
"Meaning?"
"What I said," replied Racey, calmly. "I never mean more'n I
say--ever."
Thompson continued to regard Racey fixedly. Mr. Saltoun was glad that
he himself was two yards to the right, and he would not have objected
to double the distance.
Racey's hands were folded on the horn of his saddle. Thompson's right
hand hung at his side. Racey had told the truth when he spoke of
Thompson as a good snap shot. He was all of that. And he was
fairly quick on the draw as well. It would seem that, taking into
consideration the position of Thompson's right hand, that Thompson
had a shade the better of it. Racey thought so. But he hoped,
nevertheless, by shooting through the bottom of his holster, to plant
at least one bullet in Thompson before the latter killed him.
The decision lay with Thompson. Would he elect to fight? Racey could
almost see the thoughts at conflict behind Thompson's frontal bone.
Mr. Saltoun, hoping against hope, sat tensely silent. Racey's eyes
held Thompson's steadily.
Slowly, inch by inch, Thompson's right hand moved upward--and away
from the gun butt. He gathered his reins in his left hand and with his
hitherto menacing right he tilted his hat forward and began to scratch
the back of his head.
"If you don't mean more'n you say," offered Thompson, "you don't mean
much."
"Which is all the way you look at it," said Racey.
"And a damn good way, too," nipped in Mr. Saltoun, hurriedly, inwardly
cursing Racey for not letting well enough alone. "What was the fight
about, Thompson?"
"Cards," said Thompson, laconically, switching his eyes briefly to Mr.
Saltoun's face.
"And the stranger cold-decked him?" inquired Racey.
"Something like that, but I can't say for shore. I wasn't playing with
him. Doc Coffin was, and so was Honey Hoke and Peaches Austin. Peaches
said he kind of had an idea the stranger dealt himself a card from the
bottom just before old Dale started to crawl his hump. But Peaches
ain't shore about it. Seemin'ly old Dale is the only one was shore,
and he's dead."
"And yo're going for the coroner, huh?" asked Racey.
"I said so."
"But you didn't say if anybody was chasing the stranger now. Are
they?"
"Shore," was the prompt reply. "They all took out after him--all
except McFluke, that is."
Racey nodded. "I expect McFluke would want to stay with Dale," he
said, gently, "just as you'd want to go to Farewell after the coroner.
Yo're shore it is the coroner, Thompson?"
"Say, how many times do you want me to tell you?" demanded the
badgered Thompson. "Of course it's the coroner. In a case like this
the coroner's gotta be notified."
"I expect," assented Racey. "I expect. But if yo're really goin' for
the coroner, Thompson, what made you tell us when you first met us you
were going for the sheriff?"
"Why," said Thompson without a quiver, "I'm a-goin' for him, too. I
must 'a' forgot to say so at first."
"Yeah, I guess you did." Thus Racey, annoyed that Thompson had
contrived to crawl through the fence. He had hoped that Thompson might
be tempted to a demonstration, for which potentiality he, Racey, had
prepared by removing his right hand from the saddle horn.
"It don't always pay to forget, Thompson," suggested Mr. Saltoun,
coldly.
"It don't," Thompson assented readily. "And I don't--most always."
"Don't stay here any longer on our account, Thompson," said Racey.
"You've told us about enough."
"Try and remember it," Thompson bade him, and lifted his reins.
"We will, and, on the other hand, don't you forget yore sheriff and
yore coroner."
"I won't," grinned Thompson and rode past and away.
"He ain't goin' for the sheriff and the coroner any more'n I am,"
declared Mr. Saltoun, disgustedly, turning in the saddle to gaze after
the vanishing horseman.
"Of course he ain't!" almost barked Racey. "In this country fellers
like Thompson don't ride hellbent just to tell the sheriff and the
coroner a feller has been killed. Murder ain't any such e-vent as all
that. Unless," he added, thoughtfully, "Thompson is the stranger."
"You mean Thompson might 'a' killed him?"
"I don't think it would spoil his appetite any. You remember how fast
he was pelting along down in the wash, and how he slowed up after
seeing us? A murderer would act just thataway."
Mr. Saltoun nodded. "A gent can't do anything on guesswork," he said,
bromidically. "Facts are what count."
"You'll find before we get to the bottom of this business," observed
Racey, sagely, "that guesswork is gonna lead us to a whole heap of
facts."
"I hope so," Mr. Saltoun said, uncomfortably conscious that the death
of Dale might seriously complicate the lifting of the mortgage.
Racey was no less uncomfortable, and for the same reason. He felt sure
that the killing of Dale had been inspired in order to settle once for
all the future of the Dale ranch. No wonder Luke Tweezy had been so
positive in his assertion that Old Man Saltoun would not lend any
money to Dale. The latter had been marked for death at the time.
Despite the fact that Tweezy and Harpe were at last being seen
together in public, thus indicating that the "deal," to quote Pooley's
letter to Tweezy, had been "sprung," Racey doubted that the murder
formed part of Jacob Pooley's "absolutely safe" plan for forcing out
Dale. While in some ways the murder might be considered sufficiently
safe, the method of it and the act itself did not smack of Pooley's
handiwork. It was much more probable that the killing was the climax
of Luke Tweezy's original plan adhered to by the attorney and his
friends against the advice and wishes of Jacob Pooley.
"Guess we'd better go on to McFluke's," was Racey's suggestion.
They went.
"Looks like they got back mighty soon from chasing the stranger,"
said Racey, when they came in sight of the place, eying the number of
horses tied to the hitching-rail.
"Maybe they got him quick," Mr. Saltoun offered, sardonically.
They rode on and added their horses to the tail-switching string in
front of the saloon. Racey did not fail to note that none of the other
horses gave any evidence of having been ridden either hard or lately.
Which, in the face of Thompson's assertion that the men he left behind
had ridden in pursuit of the murderer, seemed rather odd. Or perhaps
it was not so odd, looking upon it from another angle.
The saloon, when they had ridden up, had been quiet as the well-known
grave. It remained equally silent when they entered.
McFluke, behind the bar, wearing a black eye and a puffed nose, nodded
to them civilly. In chairs ranged round the walls sat an assortment of
men--Peaches Austin, Luke Tweezy, Jack Harpe, Doc Coffin, Honey Hoke,
and Lanpher. The latter was nursing a slung right arm. They were all
there, the men mentioned by name by Thompson as having been in the
place when Dale was killed.
"What is this, a graveyard meetin'?" asked Racey of McFluke, glancing
from the assembled multitude to McFluke and smiling slightly. It
was no part of wisdom, thought Racey, to let these men know of his
encounter with Thompson. He had Thompson's story. He was anxious to
hear theirs.
'"A graveyard meeting,'" repeated the saloon-keeper. "Well, and that's
what it is in a manner of speaking."
Racey stared. "I bite. What's the answer?"
The saloon-keeper cleared his throat. "Old Dale's been killed."
"Has, huh? Who killed him?" Racey allowed his eyes casually to skim
the expressionless faces of the men backed against the walls.
"A stranger killed him," replied McFluke, heavily.
Racey removed his eyes from the slack-chinned countenance of the
saloon-keeper to thin-faced, foxy-nosed Luke Tweezy. Luke's little
eyes met his.
"You saw this stranger, Luke?" he asked.
Luke Tweezy nodded. "We all saw him."
"He was playing draw with Honey Hoke and Peaches Austin and me," Doc
Coffin offered, oilily.
"And the stranger?" amended Racey.
"And the stranger," Doc Coffin accepted the amendment.
"What was the trouble?" pursued Racey.
"Well, we kind of thought"--Doc Coffin's eyes slid round to cross an
instant the shifty gaze of Peaches Austin--"we thought maybe this
stranger dealt a card from the bottom. We ain't none shore."
"Dale said he did, anyhow," said Peaches Austin.
"He said so twice," put in Lanpher.
Racey turned deliberately. "You here," said he, softly. "I didn't see
you at first. I must be getting nearsighted. You saw the whole thing,
did you, Lanpher?"
"Yeah," replied Lanpher.
"Who pulled first?"
"The stranger." The answer came patly from at least five different
men.
Racey looked grimly upon those present. "Most everybody seems shore
the stranger's to blame," he observed. "Besides saying the stranger
was dealing from the bottom did Dale use any other fighting words?"
"He called him a--tinhorn," burst simultaneously from the lips of
McFluke and Peaches Austin.
"Only two this time," said Racey, shooting a swift glance at Jack
Harpe and overjoyed to find the latter dividing a glare of disgust
between McFluke and Austin. "But you'll have to do better than that."
Mr. Saltoun shivered inwardly. He was a man of courage, but not
of foolhardy courage, the species of courage that dares death
unnecessarily. He was getting on in years, and hoped, when it came his
time to die, to pass out peacefully in his nightshirt. And here was
that fool of a Racey practically telling Harpe and the other rascals
that he was on to their game. No wonder Mr. Saltoun shivered. He
expected matters to come to push of pike in a split second. So, being
what he was, a fairly brave man in a tight corner, he put on a hard,
confident expression and hooked his thumbs in his belt.
Racey Dawson spread his legs wide and laughed a reckless laugh. He
felt reckless. He likewise felt for these men ranged before him the
most venomous hate of which he was capable. These men had killed the
father of Molly Dale. It did not matter whether any one or all of
them had or had not committed the actual murder, they were wholly
responsible for it. They had brought it about. He knew it. He knew it
just as sure as he was a foot high. And as he looked upon them sitting
there in flinty silence he purposed to make them pay, and pay to the
uttermost. That the old man had been a gambler and a drunkard, and the
world was undoubtedly a better world for his leaving it, were facts of
no moment in Racey's mind. He, Racey, was not one to condone either
murder or injustice. And this murder and the injustice of it would
cruelly hurt three women.
He laughed again, without mirth. His blue eyes, glittering through
the slits of the drawn-down eyelids, were pin-points of wrath. His
hard-bitten stare challenged his enemies. Damn them! let them shoot
if they wanted to. He was ready. He, Racey Dawson, would show them
a fight that would stack up as well as any of which a hard-fighting
territory could boast. So, feeling as he did, Racey stared upon his
enemies with a frosty, slit-eyed stare and mentally dared them to come
to the scratch.
But in moments like these there is always one to say "Let's go," or
give its equivalent, a sign. And that one is invariably the leader of
one side or the other. Racey Dawson saw Luke Tweezy turn a slow head
and look toward Jack Harpe. He saw Doc Coffin, Honey, and Austin, one
after the other, do the same. But Jack Harpe sat immobile. He neither
spoke nor gave a sign. Perhaps he did not consider the present a
sufficiently propitious moment. No one knew what he thought. Had he
known what the future held in store he might have gone after his gun.
Tense, nerves wire-drawn, Racey and Mr. Saltoun awaited the decision.
It came, and like many decisions, its form was totally unexpected.
Jack Harpe looked at Racey and said smilelessly:
"Wanna view the remains?"