The Bounty Hunters, page 12
“Where?” Colman repeated.
“What difference does it make?” Travis asked.
Nita Ramsey was lying on the hard bed that her late husband had built for her and himself. She had her head turned on the pillow and her large dark eyes were filled with bitterness as she looked at Travis. “It don’t do no good to talk to him,” she said. “He wouldn’t tell you the time of day.”
“She’s right,” Travis said to Colman. He was almost smiling, but it was the sort of smile that hid more than it revealed.
“It don’t matter,” Colman said. “It ain’t hard to figure out. You ran into some more of Grayson’s men and they got the worst of it, as usual. Grayson’s going to be real pleased to see you, Travis.”
“You’ll have to find him first, Colman,” Travis said. “And that won’t be so easy. Even his own men don’t know where he is half of the time. He doesn’t trust anyone. That’s how he’s stayed alive this long.”
“I’ll find him,” Colman said. “And you’d better keep one thing in mind, Travis. All I really need when I do find him is your head in a sack. So don’t cause me any trouble.”
Nita Ramsey looked at him in horror, her mouth wide open. But for once she had nothing to say.
Colman got up, came over to Travis and checked the ropes binding his wrists and ankles. He was not very gentle about it. “You’ll keep till morning,” he said. “When I tie a man he stays tied. But you’ll have to find that out the hard way, like everyone else. You’ll spend half the night trying to get loose, and all it’ll get you is sore wrists and broken fingernails.”
Colman bedded down on the floor near the fire and was soon asleep, or seemed to be. Travis sat in the corner and tested the rope on his wrists. Nita Ramsey raised up on the bed and said to him, “I hope Grayson kills you for killing Billy.”
“If he kills me it won’t be for killing Billy,” Travis said dryly. “It will be for killing the man you said raped you.”
“I never told you to kill him,” Nita retorted. “And I never told you to kill Billy either.”
“I notice it doesn’t bother you too much that Billy killed your husband.”
“I gave that old man the best years of my life and he hid his money so I wouldn’t find it,” Nita said bitterly. “That’s the thanks I get.”
“You sure he brought it with him?” Travis asked.
“He said he was. I never saw it.”
“Except for what you and Billy stole.”
“Ha! We would have stole it all if we could have found it.”
Travis saw Colman open one eye and look at him, and he said deliberately to Nita Ramsey, “If you want to untie me I’ll help you look for it.”
“If she unties you, neither one of you won’t be able to look for it,” Colman said. “Now both you shut up and let me get some sleep.”
“Who do you think you are, ordering me around all the time?” Nita Ramsey asked. “This is my house.”
“Show me a deed,” Colman told her.
“It wouldn’t matter if I had one,” Nita said angrily. “You’d still act like it belonged to you. You’re as bad as Travis.”
“I’ll tie you up too if I have to,” Colman said. “And gag you if you don’t be quiet.”
“Ha! I’d like to see you try it!”
Colman started to get up, then apparently changed his mind and lay back down on the floor. He saw Travis smiling and scowled at him.
The next morning Travis stood in front of the old shack with his hands tied behind his back and a cigarette between his lips that Colman had rolled for him. The horses stood saddled and waiting. Colman came from the shack carrying his Winchester and the two pistols he had got from Travis. He rammed the Winchester in his saddle scabbard and put the two pistols in his saddlebag, then gave Travis a boost into the saddle, saying, “I’m leaving your rifle here for her. She might need it to keep off claim jumpers.” He gave Travis a sour look out of his dark eyes, then mounted his own horse.
Travis glanced at the shack. Nita Ramsey was staying out of sight inside, which seemed unlike her somehow. “Is she going to stay here?”
Colman reached over and took the cigarette from Travis’s lips and dropped it to the ground. “That’s what she says. I guess she’ll stay till she finds that money or gets tired of looking for it.”
“Are you actually going through with this, Colman?” Travis asked, as Colman reached for the sorrel’s reins.
Colman gave him a hard look. “You better believe it,” he said.
Travis was silent until they were riding along the faint trail through the pines. Then he said, “By now Grayson must have heard you killed a couple of his men. News like that travels. He’ll never pay you for bringing me to him. He’ll just kill us both.”
“I intend to take certain precautions,” Colman said. “You may still think I’m a fool, Travis. But you’ll find out I’m not.”
“I never thought you were a fool,” Travis said. “That’s why I don’t believe you’ll go through with this.”
“We’ll see,” Colman said.
After the swaying stagecoach, the train car seemed like luxury. Lorna Mason had a seat to herself, although a bald-headed man across the aisle occasionally tried to talk to her. After a time she did not bother to answer, but merely gave him a chilly smile and he finally fell silent. Then she sat looking out the window at the passing scenery. But actually it was the things in her head that she saw. Her husband’s cold silent rejection in the hotel room in Nowhere. Herself and Travis walking along the cold windy street of Ringtown, with the dark mountains rising on either side of the frame buildings. Barney Pierce waiting out there for her somewhere.
She could not shake the feeling that she was doing a foolish and reckless thing. She was not in love with Barney Pierce. In his way he was almost as dull and boring as Joe Mason, despite the dangerous life he had lived. Their affair had not been anything to inspire poets or even dime novelists. It had begun with two lonely people thrown together on a stagecoach and later in a strange town—and should have ended there but hadn’t. She did not look forward to resuming the kind of like she had known briefly with him. But it seemed that she had nothing else to do, and he had asked her to come to him if things did not work out with Joe. Well, things had not worked out with Joe and she considered it unlikely that she would ever see him again.
The last thing in the world she would have expected was that Joe was on the same train, in the coach directly behind hers. Even if she had gone into that car she probably would not have noticed the rather slight, sandy-haired man in the brown suit and narrow-brimmed hat. But he wasn’t taking any chances. He had a newspaper in his lap that he could hide behind if necessary.
The train was crossing one of the most barren and desolate stretches of Utah. Off to the south the country was broken with buttes and mesas and strange rock formations.
Then the train chugged to a stop in a small town, and Lorna Mason found herself looking out the window at a tall, broad-shouldered man in a frock coat. It was a moment before she realized that it was Barney Pierce, for she had expected to find him in Carson City, Nevada, not here in this sun-baked little town in the Utah desert.
Exclaiming in surprise, she got her small bag and hurried out onto the platform and descended the steps. Pierce came forward and took the bag from her and escorted her away from the train and down the street.
“I’ve been standing out here every day for a week, hoping you’d see me and not go on to Carson City,” he said. “I was beginning to think you weren’t coming or I had already missed you.”
“What are you doing here?” Lorna Mason asked. Then she suddenly exclaimed, “Oh, good Lord! My suitcase!” When she turned the train was already pulling away. She did not notice the slender man in the brown suit who quickly turned and stood with his back to her, watching the train go by.
“It’s too late now,” Pierce said. “And I’d rather you didn’t attract attention if you can help it. I realize that’s not easy, the way you look.”
“All my clothes are in that suitcase!” Lorna said in dismay, still watching the departing train. “I’ve worn this old green dress so much I’ve been thinking about giving away. And now it’s the only one I’ve got!”
“Can’t be helped,” Barney Pierce said, anxious to get away from the staring people who had gathered near the tiny depot. “There’s something I should tell you, Lorna. Then you might wish you’d stayed on the train.”
“What?” she asked, a little alarmed by his low voice and anxious manner.
“I’m on the run again,” he said. “Sam Grayson turned up in Carson City looking for a place to lay low for a while and I let him stay with me. I didn’t know how to turn him down. But a nosy young tin badge got curious about us and looked through some old wanted posters. Well, to make a long story short, we had to light out. We came here and rented a little house on the edge of town.”
“You mean Sam Grayson’s here now?” Lorna asked. “Staying with you?”
Pierce nodded gravely. “He’s got an old hideout south of here. I wanted to wait here for you and he wouldn’t go on without me.”
“Don’t tell me you’ve joined up with him again.”
Barney Pierce sighed. “I didn’t have much choice. We had to shoot that deputy. Sam has sent word to the rest of the gang to meet us at the old hideout. What’s left of it anyway. I’ve never seen him like he is now. He’s jumping at every sound. We’ve been keeping two saddled horses in the shed behind the house—that’s it up ahead there. The old shack off by itself.”
Lorna looked at the old, unpainted frame house with a strange feeling of depression and even dread. She had a terrible fear that something very bad would soon happen there. She slowed her steps and tried to think of some excuse to refuse to go there even for a minute. But her mind seemed to have quit working and her feet kept moving as if of their own volition. A minute later Pierce was escorting her up the narrow weed-grown path and into the dismal house.
The room they entered was depressingly small. She saw a lumpy double bed, an old bureau and a homemade bench against an otherwise bare wall. At the far end of the room there was a closed door that led to a rear room, perhaps the kitchen.
“Sam,” Pierce said quietly. “It’s all right, Sam. Someone here I’d like for you to meet.”
There was no answer and Pierce stepped to the door and knocked hesitantly. “You in there, Sam?” There was still no answer and Pierce turned back to Lorna, gesturing at the bench and saying, “Have a seat. I guess he stepped out for a minute.”
Lorna did not want to sit down. She did not want to wait till Sam Grayson got back. She wanted to leave this instant. But she didn’t know how to tell Barney Pierce that. She had known almost from the first that he was an outlaw. If she ran out on him after coming this far to be with him again—what sort of woman would behave that way?
After a moment she sat down and heard herself say, “Barney, I thought we agreed you wouldn’t go back with that bunch no matter what happened.”
Pierce sat down wearily on the edge of the bed and folded his arms on his broad chest. He shook his head. “I had no idea how hard it would be to go straight, Lorna. Any kind of job I might get, I’d always be worried that any minute the law would show up to arrest me. It was bad enough before that fool deputy in Carson tried to make a name for himself by arresting me and Sam Grayson all by himself.”
“Did you kill him?” Lorna asked, shivering with a strange chill.
“I’m afraid so,” Pierce said. “We didn’t hang around to find out.”
Lorna heard a slight sound outside the house and saw Pierce’s eyes leap toward the door. She assumed it was Sam Grayson returning from wherever he had been. But a moment later the door crashed open and Joe Mason stood there with a gun in his hand and a look of pure murder in his pale blue eyes. His face, by contrast, was strangely expressionless, the same dull narrow face she remembered so well.
Before she could move or speak or even think, the gun in his hand roared and an expression of numb surprise came over Barney Pierce’s face. He looked at her in an odd way and then slumped forward and slipped off the bed to the floor.
Lorna jumped to her feet and stared at Pierce in horror. She heard the click of Joe’s gun and when she looked that way she saw the gun pointed at her. But it was not the gun that frightened her as much as the cold hatred in Joe Mason’s eyes. He stared at her that way for what seemed an eternity and then she heard an explosion that shook the house. But the bullet did not strike her—it was Joe Mason who staggered and fell!
Through the doorway, over her dying husband on the floor, she saw a swarthy, chunky man in his forties, with a pug nose and bright dark eyes, one of which was noticeably larger than the other. He held a smoking gun in his hand and she knew this would be the notorious Sam Grayson, although he did not look at all like she had expected. Under different circumstances she would have found his appearance almost comical.
Joe Mason gave a slight groan, stiffened and then went limp. Lorna knew he was dead and she said softly “Oh God” and started to go to him.
But Sam Grayson waved her back with his gun and came through the doorway stepping over Mason’s body. He bent down to look at Barney Pierce with anxious eyes. “Barney,” he said, shaking the dead man. “Don’t you die on me, Barney. Not now when I need you.”
Pierce did not respond, and Grayson raised his bitter eyes to Lorna. “Bitch!” he hissed at her. He rose and came at her waving his big pistol in her face. She crouched against the wall, trembling in fear. His left hand came up from nowhere and gave her a burning slap across the face. Above the ringing in her ears she heard him say, “This is your fault, you whore! I knew this would happen when I heard he’d gone off with a woman.” Grayson had a gold tooth that was larger than his other teeth. It gleamed when he talked. He grabbed Lorna’s arm in an iron grip. “Come on, you bitch. You’re coming with me.”
She tried to jerk her arm free. “I am like hell!”
“You are like hell,” he told her, gripping her arm so hard it felt numb. “And if anybody tries to follow us they ain’t gonna like what they’ll find.” He noticed her bag on the floor and said, “You better bring your bag, lady, ‘cause you ain’t comin’ back.”
Then he literally dragged her out of the house to a small shed directly behind it. Still holding her arm, he grabbed the reins of two horses and led them out. “If you can’t ride, lady, you better learn how fast.”
“I can’t ride in this dress!” Lorna protested, as he was about to throw her bodily onto the horse.
Grayson whipped out a razor-sharp bowie knife and slit the dress down the front between her legs. “You can now!” he told her, and with surprising ease lifted her onto the horse. Then he mounted the other horse and galloped away from the small town leading her horse.
Lorna looked down and saw how the slit dress rode up on her thighs almost to her hips.
Sam Grayson had also noticed, and his gold tooth gleamed in a smile. “You’ve got some real nice legs there, lady! No wonder old Barney lost his head. I knew he musta had a purty good reason to run out on me that way.” Grayson wiped his mouth. “I’m beginnin’ to hope Pinky and them don’t show up for a while. The fun me and you can have!”
Chapter 15
One day Colman and Travis rode into Nowhere and dismounted in front of the Golden Nugget Saloon. Travis’s hands were now tied in front so that he could get off his horse and wrap the reins around the hitchrail without assistance.
The town seemed almost deserted. The “new strike” of a few weeks back had fizzled, and one of the mines had shut down. Many of the laid-off miners and camp followers had gone elsewhere.
Travis and Colman entered the saloon. Several hard-faced men sat at two tables close together drinking and playing cards, and Red Hickey stood half asleep at the bar, nursing an empty glass. He did not seem to notice Travis and Colman until they stopped at the bar and asked for whiskey. Then he looked curiously at them and noticed the rope binding Travis’s wrists.
“Hello, Dan,” he said. “He bringing you back for shooting that Primrose fellow—or is he after that bounty Sam Grayson offered for you? I heard you were known as Ben Travis now. It don’t surprise me somehow.”
Both Travis and Colman glanced at the hard-faced men playing cards, who were watching and listening with interest.
“Three of Grayson’s men were here looking for you a few days back, Dan,” Red Hickey added. “Then another one showed up and said Grayson said to come back with him. They talked like they wasn’t a bit worried about the law. Course, there ain’t no law in this town. Maybe that had something to do with it.”
“You hear them say where Grayson is?” Colman asked.
“I heard them mention a place in Utah called Dry Wells. But I ain’t sure that’s where Grayson’s at.”
“You talk too much,” Travis said mildly.
“Yeah, I reckon I do,” Hickey said. “You need help, Dan?”
Travis shrugged. “I guess not.”
“You Ben Travis?” one of the card players asked. He was a big man with high cheekbones and prematurely gray whiskers, although his dark hair did not have much gray in it.
“That fellow with the big mouth just said he was,” one of the others muttered. “Worth five thousand to Grayson dead or alive. That’s a lot of money.”
Colman paid for the drinks and said to Travis, “Let’s get out of here.”
“I hope I didn’t cause you no trouble, Dan,” Red Hickey said.
Travis shrugged. “So long,” he said quietly.
“Hold on a minute,” the gray-whiskered man said, looking at Colman. “You ain’t no lawman, are you? If you was you wouldn’t be taking Travis to Grayson. He ain’t even wanted by the law, is he?” He pointed at Travis.
Colman and Travis were almost to the swing doors. Before turning Colman loosened the battered Colt in his waistband. It was the gun that had belonged to Coon Hooks. Then he turned and fixed his hard black eyes on the gray-whiskered man.
