The Bounty Hunters, page 14
He sat down on a rock near the fire, poured himself a cup of coffee and opened the newspaper.
“Did you collect your bounty money?” Travis asked.
“Not yet,” Colman said. “It usually takes a while. The sheriff is checking those boys out to see how much they’re worth. I can pick the money up on the way back.”
“Well, it’s all yours,” Travis said. “Except what this coat cost you. You’re out that much.”
He got to his feet and picked up his saddle. “I guess I’ll ride. You don’t need me, Colman. Just wait till Grayson’s alone and sneak up behind him.”
“Wait a minute before you run off,” Colman said. “You may change your mind after you’ve heard the news.”
Travis stopped and turned. “What news?”
Colman looked up from the newspaper. “I heard about it in town. That Mason woman met Barney Pierce in Dry Wells and they went to the house he had rented there. Seems her husband followed them and killed Pierce. Then Sam Grayson shot Mason in the back and kidnapped his wife.”
Travis eased the saddle to the ground. There was no expression on his face, but it looked a little harder.
Colman studied him a moment. “Wasn’t it near Dry Wells that you killed Red Grayson?”
“Not far from there,” Travis said.
“That’s what I thought.”
Travis picked his saddle up again. “Let’s go,” he said.
Late one windy, hazy afternoon, Colman stood on a barren ridge studying the bleak, empty country to the west. In the distance he saw a finger of dust inching along. He watched it with interest until in vanished in the twilight.
Then he turned and went back down the slope to the waterhole at the base of a tall rock. Three leafless cottonwoods had led them to the spot, and finding water they had made camp early. Supper was behind them and the fire had burned down, but the coffeepot still simmered on some hot coals. Colman squatted near the fire and poured himself a tin cup of the strong black coffee. Warming his hands on the cup, he glanced at Travis, who sat on a rock cleaning his long-barreled Colt. The tall blond fellow didn’t intend to let his gun become useless through neglect.
“See anything?” Travis asked.
“Some dust over to the west. Two or three riders, I’d say. Maybe four.” Colman sipped his coffee in silence a moment. “Think it might be Grayson’s men?”
Travis shrugged. “Not likely. We’ve still got a piece to go.” He reloaded the Colt and slipped it back into the holster, then drew the Smith & Wesson from his waistband.
“That Smith & Wesson’s a better gun than that old Colt, Travis,” Colman said.
Travis broke the Russian model open and ejected the cartridges into his hand, put them in his coat pocket and began cleaning the gun. “I like the Colt,” he said. “I guess it’s just what you get used to.”
“How much farther is Dry Wells?”
“We should get there tomorrow afternoon.”
“Anywhere you haven’t been, Travis?”
“I haven’t been anywhere lately that didn’t look familiar,” Travis said. “It’s beginning to worry me. My face has been seen in too many places and too many people remember it—with or without this.” He indicated the two week’s growth of chestnut beard. “That makes it too easy for Grayson’s men to follow me.”
“All the more reason to wipe them out before they recruit some new help,” Colman said. “You can’t go on the way you’re going. Sooner or later your luck will run out.”
Travis smiled a faint smile. “I think my luck ran out when I ran into you, Colman.”
“That was the best thing that ever happened to you, Travis.” Colman said. After a moment he asked, “You ever thought about taking up bounty hunting as a regular thing?”
Travis looked at him in surprise. “What gave you that idea?”
“You’d be good at it,” Colman said.
Travis shook his head. “No, I wouldn’t,” he said. “I know what it’s like to be hunted. The truth is, Colman, I haven’t got much use for bounty hunters.”
“That include me?” Colman asked, his dark brows lowering in a frown.
“I meant bounty hunters in general,” Travis said, reloading the Smith & Wesson. “You’ve caused me a lot of trouble and you’re about as likable as a knotty oak, but I’ve got a feeling you meant well. Or, you wanted to prove you could collect that bounty if you wanted to, but I don’t think you actually intended to go through with it.”
“There were times when I seriously considered it,” Colman said, his black eyes hardening at the memory. “When you took my horse and left me afoot in the desert—I still ain’t forgot that, Travis. I almost wish I’d kept your guns and made you sweat it out a little longer.”
Travis closed the Smith & Wesson and held it idly in his hand, pointed in Colman’s general direction. “If you want them back,” he said quietly, “you’ll have to take them.”
Colman shrugged and dashed the rest of his coffee on the ground. “Wouldn’t serve any purpose now,” he said. “You already know what my plan was.”
“Is that still your plan?” Travis asked.
“Can you think of a better one?”
“I haven’t yet,” Travis admitted. “And time is getting short.”
The next afternoon they rode into Dry Wells. Travis’s hands were tied in front, with about a six-inch length of rope between his wrists, so that in an emergency he could handle the gun under his coat. His other gun and the shell belt were in his saddlebag.
As they rode down the dusty street of the small town, Colman studied the two rows of buildings with his sharp black eyes, his face like stone. Travis’s face showed no expression. It seemed masked by the short chestnut beard. His clear gray-blue eyes saw what there was to see without showing any particular interest. Yet Colman knew he was on guard and alert by the absence of the wry, distant smile that always came to his face in relaxed moments, when he had time to ponder the whims of fate.
Down the street Slim Perkins came out of a saloon and stopped in his tracks when he saw Travis and Colman. He waved to them, then ducked back into the saloon.
Colman looked at Travis. “Friend of yours?”
“Slim Perkins,” Travis said. “I imagine he’s the one who rounded up Pinky Rudd and the others. I don’t know how Grayson got word to him. Maybe sent him a letter or telegram.”
“Think the others are in the saloon?”
“We can soon find out,” Travis said.
They reined in before the saloon, tied their horses and went in through the swing doors, Colman marching Travis before him and Travis holding his bound hands out in plain view. But there was no one in the saloon except for Slim Perkins and the bartender. Dry Wells was a pretty dead place most of the time. It had no law and not very many people. That was why Sam Grayson returned to the town from time to time—that and the fact that he had an old hideout a day’s ride south.
The lanky Slim Perkins looked at Travis and Colman with scared eyes and finished his drink, heading for the door as they stepped up to the bar.
“If you see Grayson tell him to get that bounty money ready,” Colman said. “Tell him I’ve got Travis and I’m on my way with him.”
Perkins looked at Travis and said, “Well, I’ll tell him if I see him.” Then he hurried from the saloon, mounted his horse and galloped out of town.
Colman fixed his hard black eyes on the bartender and studied him silently a moment. “You seen Grayson lately?”
The bartender yawned as if bored, but his eyes were worried. “Not lately,” he said. “He used to come in here sometimes, but that was years ago. I didn’t even know he was in town this last time until we had that shooting. He’s a lot more careful nowadays. Barney Pierce was about the only one he trusted, and now Pierce is dead.”
“What about Pinky Rudd and Yetman and Kerner?” Colman asked. “They been in here lately?”
The bartender glanced uneasily toward the door. “They came in here several days back. Barely stayed long enough for a drink. That fellow who just left rode in with them. Been hanging around town ever since, till just now. Reckon something spooked him. The others barely wet their whistles and rode out again.”
“I think that’s what we’ll do,” Colman said, glancing at the silent Travis.
Before leaving town Colman entered a store and came back out with a sack of grub that would not have to be cooked. Late that night, in a rock-walled canyon twenty miles south of Dry Wells, he and Travis dined on canned tomatoes and peaches, crackers and cheese. They had decided that a fire would be too risky. They were too close to Grayson’s hideout. His men might be out looking for them by now. For Grayson did not trust bounty hunters and he was not going to pay out five thousand dollars unless he had to.
“Our plan ain’t going to work, is it?” Colman said after a long silence.
“I don’t think so,” Travis said. “If we ride into his hideout neither one of us will leave there alive.”
Chapter 17
“Damn,” Colman said softly. “All this time I’ve been planning it so carefully, and now at the last minute I’ve got this feeling in my gut that it was all for nothing. My brilliant plan just ain’t going to work.”
“We haven’t gone about it right for one thing,” Travis said. “You should have sent word to him by Perkins that he’d have to meet you somewhere—alone. But that wouldn’t work either. He’d smell a trap. The trouble is that we’re not dealing with a fool. He looks and talks like a fool, but he thinks like a genius. An evil genius. And he has two obsessions. One is staying alive. The other is seeing that I don’t.”
“Where did you learn all them big words, Travis?”
“What big words?”
“Never mind. Isn’t there any way we can sneak in there and take them by surprise?”
Travis thought for a moment, then shook his head. “I don’t think so. It’s at the top of a mesa and there’s only one way up—a steep narrow trail with a lot of loose rocks. They’d be sure to see us in the daytime and hear us at night.”
“How big’s the mesa?”
“Maybe half a mile across.”
Colman reached for one of his cigars, then put it back. He stared off down the dark canyon into the cold wind. Even in his bearskin coat he shivered from time to time and debated chancing a fire. The hideout was ten miles away and it seemed unlikely that the remnant of Grayson’s gang would be out on such a bitter cold night.
He looked at Travis who seemed strangely relaxed and unworried, although he was the one Grayson wanted so badly to kill. Even the cold did not seem to bother the blond man very much. Nothing seemed to bother him very much.
“Hell, let’s get some sleep, Travis,” Colman grunted. “They ain’t out this late, on a night like this.”
“Not likely,” Travis agreed.
They got in their blankets and it seemed that they had barely closed their eyed when they were awakened, in the false light of dawn, by three riders coming down the canyon. The riders were as surprised as they, but not as hazy-eyed and groggy from sleep. One of the riders yelled and fired a shot and all three spurred their horses, trying to ride over them. Travis and Colman rolled and scrambled out of the way and Travis whipped out a long-barreled revolver and got off a shot before the riders disappeared in the gloom down the canyon. Colman’s guns were buttoned up under his bearskin coat and the horsebackers were gone before he could get into action.
“We’re a fine pair!” he said, fighting off his blankets. “What damn sorry luck! We can forget about selling you to Grayson now.”
“I’m afraid so,” Travis said, looking down the canyon the way the riders had gone. “I think I hit one of them.”
“I know you did,” Colman said. “He nearly fell off his horse. But how the hell did they know it was us?”
“Maybe they were just guessing,” Travis said.
“What the hell do we do now?” Colman asked harshly. “We’ve come too far to turn back. And what about Lorna Mason? How much longer will she last in that wolf den?”
Travis sighed, but did not say anything.
Colman gave him a hard look. “What happens when Grayson finds out she was following you around?”
Travis’s eyes turned cold. “Who’s idea was that?”
“What difference does it make? Grayson will think it was hers.”
“Damn you, Colman,” Travis said in a quiet, hard tone. “There are times when I don’t like you very much.”
“Don’t blame me for what’s happened to her,” Colman retorted. “She got herself in that fix leaving her husband and running off with an outlaw. It would serve her right if we rode off and left her with Grayson.”
“You sure do believe in punishment, don’t you, Coleman?” Travis said, looking about in the growing light.
“Don’t you?” Colman asked. “Ain’t that why you killed Red Grayson and Billy Primrose?”
Travis gave him a cold look, but did not say anything.
“I don’t want to argue with you,” Colman said. “I’m just trying to point out that we ain’t as different as you like to think. We both like to see people get what they deserve, and it don’t happen very often. A long time ago I got tired of seeing bastards like Grayson and his bunch get away with robbery and murder and everything else, and I decided to do something about it. But it don’t bother you too much till somebody close to you gets hurt. Then you go after the ones who did it and let the rest alone. That’s about the only difference between me and you, Travis.”
“Are you finished?” Travis asked.
Colman nodded shortly. “I’m finished. I just wanted you to know I don’t do it just for the money. The money just makes it possible for me to keep doing it.”
“You enjoy it too much,” Travis said. “That’s what I don’t like about you and your breed, Colman. You enjoy your work too much to suit me. It makes you too much like the people you go after. They just happen to be on the other side of the law.”
“Travis, if you can’t see the difference between me and them, you ain’t half as smart as I thought you were,” Colman said.
“I can see the difference,” Travis said. “But things are not always the way they seem. Sooner or later you’ll go after a man with a price on his head and after you bring him back across a saddle you’ll find out he was innocent. What will be the difference then, Colman?”
Travis did not wait for an answer. He picked up his saddle and saddle blanket and went toward the picketed horses.
After a moment Colman grabbed his own saddle and tramped after him. “Where you going?” he asked. “We need a new plan. The old one won’t work now.”
“That’s for sure,” Travis agreed, smoothing his blanket on the sorrel’s back before throwing on the saddle. “There was enough light for them to see us both reaching for our guns. They know we’re working together now. I imagine Grayson figured something like that all along. He’s got a mighty suspicious mind.”
“He wasn’t always that way, from what I hear,” Colman said as he saddled the roan. “It began about the time he made the mistake of trusting you.”
“He never trusted me. That’s why he sent Red with me that day. He always sent someone with me when I went for a ride to give my horse a little exercise. I just waited till he sent Red.”
“So that’s how it happened,” Colman muttered.
“That’s how it happened,” Travis said, and led the sorrel back to the rest of his gear. He rolled his blankets and spare clothes into a tight roll and lashed them behind the saddle, on top of the saddlebags.
Colman was doing the same thing nearby and stepped into the saddle only a moment behind Travis. He scowled at the blond man and followed him down the canyon, soon riding alongside.
“You never did say what you aim to do,” the bounty hunter said.
“We can’t go after Grayson,” Travis replied. “So I’m going to let him come after me.”
“He won’t come after you,” Colman said. “He’ll just send his men, like always.”
“He’s running out of men to send,” Travis said. “He’ll soon have to come himself.”
“He may wait a while before he does that.” Colman looked at Travis’s hard profile. “Maybe a good long while. And in the meantime he’s got Lorna Mason up there with him.”
“Well, like you say, Colman, she got herself into this fix.”
“Who you kidding, Travis? She’s the only reason you’re here.”
“No, she’s not,” Travis said. “I’m tired of running. I’m tired of Grayson sending men to kill me. I was about ready to go after him even before you came along.”
“The hell you say!” Colman exclaimed. “Then why did you let on like you didn’t want any part of it?”
“It was your big plan I didn’t want any part of. I figured I’d have more luck working alone. I usually do.”
“How did you plan to do it alone?” Colman asked.
“Not this way,” Travis said, studying the canyon rim. “I planned to catch Grayson alone, when he least expected it. But you had to make a big show of catching me and advertising the fact that you were bringing me to him. Now my plan won’t work either. The only way to get him alone now is to kill off the rest of his men first.”
“And for that you’ll need me.”
“Not really,” Travis said. “There aren’t that many of them left, and they aren’t that good. The best ones are all dead.”
“You ought to know,” Colman grunted. “You killed most of them.”
Travis nodded. “Some of them. This has been going on since ‘74.”
“Travis, we’re in this together now whether you like it or not,” Colman said. “I’m beginning not to like it too much myself. But we’re stuck with each other till this thing is over.”
“Looks that way.”
“I made up my mind to get Grayson and I’m sticking right with you till one of us does get him. I at least want to be there, even if I’m not the one who brings him down. I’ve got to have a part in it. I’ve come too far to give up now. After that you can go your way and I’ll go mine.”
