Constable Bradshaw yelled at Rufe: “What was the shooting about? What the hell you and your partner done? By God, when we get out of here…!”
“Shut up!” snapped Rufe, glaring past the bars. Homer Bradshaw said no more, but the look of hatred and defiance upon his coarse face was an epitome of malevolence.
It was Matthew Reilly, from a seat upon the bunk in the adjoining cell, looking from Pete Ruff and old Abe Smith to Rufe, who seemed to be more worried than defiant. He did not make a sound, but Pete Ruff did. He peered out at Rufe as though sunlight pained his eyes, and swore.
Rufe ignored them all and returned to the front office, outward bound. He did not get very far. There was an angry crowd marching down the road from the direction of the saloon, some of them brandishing rifles.
Rufe looked around, found the gun rack, picked out a shotgun with a two-foot barrel, checked the breech, snapped the gun closed, and stepped back to the window. He had no intention of hurting any-one. All he wanted was a way out, so that he could find Jud.
On the rear skirts of that angry mob the old man in the long coat was shuffling along, happy as a clam and grinning from ear to ear. He did not have a gun in sight, but he had a half-empty quart bottle of some-one’s whiskey clutched in one of his mottled talons.
There were range men in the front of the crowd, but it consisted mostly of townsmen in shoes in-stead of boots. The range men halted at the tie rack, in tree shade, looked steadily at the brick wall, and called for Rufe to come out.
Rufe eased the double-barrels around into sight. Someone saw them, squawked like a wounded eagle, and men scattered every which way except for a grizzled, hard-looking old cattleman, and all he did was lean down upon the tie rack flintily staring back. He hardly more than raised his voice when he said: “What the hell you figure to do with that silly thing, cowboy? It don’t have a range of over a hunnert and fifty feet.” He spat, then said: “You better come out of there. So far, you ain’t done nothing that maybe should have been done long ago. Bull Harris’s no loss. But you shoot anyone else, and that’s going Tomake a heap of difference, so you’d better just walk out of there.”
Rufe listened, and pondered, then called back: “I got a better idea, mister, you come inside!”
The old stockman chewed, spat, looked left and right where the wary crowd was beginning to creep up again, then he said: “All right, I’ll come inside. But I got to warn you…we got a constable here in Clearwater, and, as soon as folks can find him, he’ll be along to arrest you.”
Rufe stepped to the door, raised the bar, and opened the panel a crack. “Come in,” he called. “And don’t any of you other fellers move!”
The cowman turned, said something gruffly to a range man nearby, then stepped around the tie rack bound for the jailhouse door.
Rufe pulled the door open a little wider, then slammed it behind the stockman, dropped the bar back into place one handed, and cocked the near barrel of his scatter-gun. “Put your six-gun on the desk,” he ordered.
The old cowman obeyed, and stood a moment looking at the other two guns already lying there. He turned his head. “This here weapon with the initials carved on the butt belongs to Constable Bradshaw.”
Rufe gestured with the shotgun. “Go over yonder and sit down, mister. Yeah, that’s the constable’s gun. He’s locked in a cell.”
The cowman’s jaw sagged. He stared for a moment, then turned and went to a wall bench, and eased down, still looking nonplussed.
Rufe put the scatter-gun atop the desk, also. It looked like a small arsenal with all those loaded weapons lying atop the litter of scattered papers on the desk. He then went to the water bucket, ladled up a dipper full, and deeply drank, with the old range man watching his every move. When he finished and dropped the dipper back into the bucket, he wiped his face with a soiled sleeve, jerked up a chair, swung it, and sat down astraddle the chair facing the cowman.
XIV
It did not take as long to tell the cowman the en-tire story as it might have, and, by the time the cowman had heard it all, his weathered, craggy features had settled into a fresh series of lines.
His name was Evart Hartman. He was a widower with two grown sons running the cow outfit with him. It had been his sons out there, on either side of him at the tie rack. They were still out there.
Hartman gazed at Rufe, after he knew the entire story, and said: “I hope for your sake you’ve told me the truth.”
Rufe shrugged that off. “Why should it make any difference now? None of you lowland cowmen would do a damned thing to help Elisabeth Cane before.”
The cowman considered that for a moment with-out replying, then he changed the subject. “Got any objection Tome seeing Homer Bradshaw?”
Rufe arose and went for the keys. He had no objections. He did not believe the constable would tell Evart Hartman the truth, but he had no objections to them talking, so he mutely escorted Hartman down into the cell room, and, when Hartman halted out front of the cell and Constable Bradshaw saw him, the cowman surprised Rufe. He said: “Homer, you always was a cheatin’, underhanded feller.”
Bradshaw sneered. “Why, because I was always a better man than your sons, Evart?”
Hartman’s tough gaze drifted past and came to rest on Matthew Reilly. He wagged his head at Reilly. “I told you last year, Matt. I told you not to get involved with anything Homer worked up. Didn’t I tell you that?”
Matthew Reilly arose from the side of his bunk, came forward, and gripped the bars along the front of the cell. “They was strays, Mister Hartman.”
The cowman gazed stonily at Reilly without speaking, then turned and looked in at Pete Ruff and Abe Smith. He knew Ruff, but not Abe Smith, and all he actually knew of Pete Ruff was that he was range boss for Arlen Chase. He did not speak to Ruff. They looked steadily at one another until old Abe Smith bleated a plea, and Hartman glanced from Ruff to the old cocinero.
Old Abe Smith bewailed the unkind fate which had landed him there, loudly lamented his complete innocence, and, when Evart Hartman asked him what he did for Chase, Abe told him.
“Cocinero is all. I swear to you, mister, I never even so much as brang in the saddle stock in the morning. Alls I ever done was the cooking. And they never told me a blessed thing. Never confided in me at all. Alls I did was slave over that gawd-damned cook stove from dawn until dark, and got treated like I was a…. ”
“If you worked on my outfit,” stated Evart Hart-man, breaking across Smith’s running flow of words, “and talked this much, we’d hang you just plumb out of hand.”
Hartman turned for a final face-off with Homer Bradshaw. “I been saying it for years, Homer. You always were an underhanded feller.”
“I’m the law here!” exclaimed Bradshaw, glaring.
Hartman was not very impressed. “I’ll go around town and see about that, now. You been running out o’ rope for a long while, Homer.”
Rufe, who had not said a word, accompanied the old cowman back to the office, locked the cell-room door, and pitched the ring of keys over atop all those weapons on the desk.
“Well?” he said to Hartman.
“Seems Tome someone’s got to find your partner and Arlen Chase,” stated Hartman. “Also seems Tome someone’s got to ride atop the mesa and get Elisabeth Cane’s side of all this.” Hartman fished for his makings and stood, stooped and thoughtful, while Rufe went to the roadway windows and looked out. The crowd was still out there, but its mood had changed, which perhaps was inevitable. No one could stand around in the hot roadway being consistently angry or excited or indignant, whatever had motivated most of those men.