Humphrey couldn’t suspect that he knew Bob Custer…probably no one in town even suspected Custer had been involved in the holdup. And that only made the visit more senseless than ever.
Burns let smoke trickle from his nostrils, knitted his brow.
Funny, that Custer could be tangled with a bank gang. Never had a wild streak in him. Always wanting to stop somewhere and settle down.
Bob Custer and some other ranchers were driven out of the valley by a bunch of cow thieves that didn’t act the way cow thieves should act. Cow thieves as a rule don’t burn and kill. They gather them some critters and get the hell out as fast as they can go.
Custer took part in the holdup of a bank, but it was a funny sort of holdup. Not the way bank men ordinarily work. The bunch was too big for one thing and …
Burns jumped as the door creaked, hand reaching for his gun. But even as his fingers touched the grip, he stopped, frozen in astonishment.
A girl stood in the room, back against the door, hands behind her, looking at him with blue eyes that seemed to sparkle in the smoky lamplight.
“You Steve Burns?” she asked.
Burns nodded, staring at her. The faded levis she wore were splotched with dust and the sleeves of the blue work shirt were so long she’d turned up the cuffs. Brown hair spilled around her shoulders and her hat hung at her back by a thong around her throat.
“Bob Custer sent me,” she said quietly.
Burns rose slowly, fumbled his hat off his head and stood with it in his hand.
“I was figuring maybe that he would get in touch with me,” he said, “but I never thought he would send a girl.”
“I was the only one that could come. It would be too dangerous for any of the others. But no one would pay any attention to me. Probably wouldn’t even know me.”
Her eyes laughed at him. “Besides, I sneaked around in back after it was getting dark.”
“Look, miss,” pleaded Burns. “Maybe you would just slow up a bit and let me get it straight. About it being dangerous. About the bank robbery this…”
“That’s what Bob wants to talk to you about,” declared the girl. “He’s afraid you’ll think that he really is a bandit—that all of us are out robbing banks and shooting folks and…”
“You were doing a right good job of it today,” said Burns.
Her hand reached out and gripped his arm. “But don’t you see that’s what Bob wants to talk to you about. Wants to explain how we are hiding in the hills, fighting back against the men who drove us off our land.”
“Wait a second,” gasped Burns. “You mean that Carson, Osborne and the Lazy K were the ones who drove the ranchers out?”
“Only Carson, really,” the girl told him. “He’s the town boss here. Osborne plays in with him and Newman out at the Lazy K is just the foreman. Carson owns the ranch and uses it as a hideout for his gunslicks.”
“I should have guessed it,” Burns said, almost as if talking to himself. “I should have spotted it right off. The phoney story about the rustlers and the burning…”
Steps came rapidly along the hall and Burns, reaching out, pulled the girl away from the door, stepped toward it, hand reaching for a gun.
Breathlessly they waited, but the steps went past, turned in at another door farther down the hall.
“You got to get out of here,” Burns whispered. “There’s too much chance of someone spotting you.”
“Bob asked me to bring you out to the hills,” the girl whispered back. “You’ll come, won’t you?”
“Sure, I’ll come. What the hell. Bob Custer’s the best friend I ever had. If he’s in trouble, it’s time I was sitting in and calling for a hand.”
“I’ll meet you on the road just west of town.” She started for the door, but Burns halted her with a gesture. Swiftly, he stepped to the table, blew out the lamp.
“I’ll be there just as soon as I can get my horse,” he said.
He heard the doorknob turned.
“Just a minute,” he said.
“Yes?”
“Since you know my name, miss, maybe …”
“Ann,” she said.
The door opened and closed softly and her footsteps were faint tappings.
Burns stood for a moment, listening, then socked his hat on his head, walked out of the room and down the stairs. There was no sign of Ann. Probably, he told himself, she sneaked out the back way. Probably had her horse out there, back of the hotel.
There was no one in the lobby and he strode across it, came out on the porch.
The town was quiet. Somewhere a drunken puncher gurgled on a song and two horses stood slack-hipped at a hitch rack across the street.
Steve shucked up his gunbelt, stepped swiftly from the porch and headed for the livery barn.
A whining thing brushed past him and thudded into the hotel’s side. A heavy rifle coughed hollowing in the night.
Burns flung himself toward the dark alley between the hotel and barber shop, hands clawing for his guns even as his legs drove him toward the place of safety.
The rifle coughed again and another bullet chewed into the siding, throwing bright splinters that flashed like tiny spears of light in the glow that came from the window just above them.
Burns hit the alley running and kept on, stumbling in the darkness.
And as he ran, thoughts hammered in his skull.
Someone knew who he was. Probably Carson had planted that rifleman in the building across the street.
The livery stable, he remembered, was to the west. He had to reach there quickly, get his horse and ride—west out of town to meet the girl.
A sudden thought stopped him in his stride. That girl! Was she really who she said she was? How was he to be sure that Custer had sent her? Maybe she was nothing more than bait to Carson’s trap. A ruse to get him out of the hotel. If he rode to meet her, that might be another trap.
He shook his head, befuddled. He’d been a blundering fool, should have demanded some proof of the girl’s identity. But it was too late now.
Carson was out to get him—for no one else would have planted that rifleman. Probably out to get anyone who rode into town and looked as if he might be troublesome.
Carson had said a word for him, he remembered, but that probably meant nothing now. Maybe Carson had figured on hiring him for one of his gunslicks until he’d shown too much interest in the empty valley and had asked about Bob Custer.
There was no one in sight at the alley’s end and Burns swung to the west, slipped along the buildings, gun out, eyes and ears alert for danger.
From the street behind him came the uproar of shouting voices. Probably, he thought, grimly, those rifle shots had emptied every business place.
“Got to be fast about it,” he told himself. “Another minute and the whole town will be on top of me.”
Out of the silence ahead a pebble clicked and Burns froze against the building. Behind him the boards gave way and pushed inward as his shoulder pressed against them. In the darkness there was another sound, the slither of a foot, of a man moving up ahead coming toward him.
Steve froze tighter against the building, felt the boards against his back swing farther inward. Putting his hand behind him, he pushed and a hinge squealed faintly, like the sound of a cricket in the grass.
It was a door, he knew. A door leading into the rear of one of the buildings, although he could not know which one.
Backing silently into the darkness, he felt the floor beneath his boots, ducked swiftly into the cavernous blackness.