Packard jerked the man even closer.
“You say that Randall’s gang holds up the stages. Who else knows this? Everyone in town?”
Craig gulped unhappily. “No sir, they don’t. Just me now. You see, Cardway found it out and told me and now—”
“And Cardway figured on beating Randall to the draw. Figured on robbing the office before the stage ever started out.”
Craig gulped again and nodded.
“And how much were you to get?”
“A quarter, Cardway said. Said I’d get a quarter and you and he would get the rest. But now that he’s dead, I figured maybe you could do some better by me.”
“Want me to tell you how much Cardway really would have given you?”
“He said a quarter.”
“Not a damn ounce,” said Packard coldly. “He’d use you and he’d shoot you down. You see, I knew Preston Cardway.”
“But he said—”
“You shouldn’t have stopped me here,” snarled Packard. “Don’t do a thing like this again. Don’t speak to me again. Don’t act like you’ve ever seen me. I’ll look you up when it’s safe to talk.”
He released his hold upon the vest.
“Make tracks,” he told Craig curtly.
A grim smile on his lips, he watched the man scuttle down the alleyway to be swallowed in the shadow.
Back on the street again, Packard sat down on the hotel steps and built himself a smoke.
So it had been gold that Cardway had been after. An inside job, fixed up with the office guards. Probably could have pulled it off, too, if it hadn’t been for Randall. Randall, naturally, wouldn’t have wanted anyone horning in and so Randall had fixed up a vigilante deal.
Packard’s head hurt and it was hard to think and even through the pain of the throbbing head, he was so sleepy that his eyes drooped shut as he nodded over the cigarette.
Steps sounded on the boards and he snapped awake. Before him stood a little man with a checkered suit.
“Oh, it’s you,” said Packard.
The man squinted at him with his one good eye.
“Haven’t seen an eye?” he asked. “A glass eye. I lost it and I’ve looked everywhere …”
“Oh, hell,” exploded Packard. “I’m going up to bed.”
He rose and climbed the stairs to the porch. The little man in the checkered suit stood and watched him go.
Chapter III
LIKE FATHER, LIKE SON
Jason Randall was sitting in the chair beside the window, smoking a cheroot and with a whisky bottle on the table at his elbow, when Packard awoke. ‘You sleep innocent,” said Randall.
Packard swung himself off the bed, located his boots, stomped his feet into them. “What the hell,” he asked, “are you doing here?”
“Wanted to talk with you,” said Randall, smoothly.
“I haven’t got a thing to talk with you about,” snarled Packard.
Randall did not press the point. “Weren’t taking any chances, were you?” he asked. “Sleeping like that with your clothes on.”
“I was too tired to take them off.”
“Wouldn’t want to be set for a quick getaway?”
Packard shucked his gunbelt to a more comfortable position.
““Look, Randall,” he said, “I’m not making any quick getaway. When I leave this town I ride out, on my own horse, in broad daylight.”
“I hope so,” said Randall. “I most sincerely hope so.” But he sounded as if it was just too much to expect. He reached out for the bottle, tipped it toward one of the two tumblers setting on the table. “Drink?” he asked.
Packard nodded. Watching Randall pour, he saw that the sun was slanting through the window before which Randall sat. It must be late afternoon, he told himself. An hour or so to sundown.
He crossed the room and took the tumbler, sat down on the edge of the table. “Let’s have it, Randall,” he demanded. “What’s on your mind?”
“It’s the job,” said Randall. “The one that you turned down.”
“I’m still turning it down,” said Packard.
Randall clucked sympathetically. “And with jobs so hard to get … and keep.”
“I’ll find one,” said Packard.
“Look,” Randall told him, “there’s no use of running a bluff on me. You can’t keep a job and you know it. Your old man was an owlhooter and pretty well known at that. When whoever you’re working for finds that out, you’re hunting another job. You tried to change your name and it didn’t work. Too many people knew your old man.”
“Hurley’s been talking to you,” Packard said.
“Sure, why not? Hurley works for me.”
“I didn’t know, though I should have. So that deal with Stover was all cut and dried. Except maybe that you figured it would work out the other way.”
“Don’t go blaming Hurley,” Randall warned. “If it hadn’t been for him, you’d be buzzard meat right now. I was pretty sore, you see, the way you acted, and I told Stover to go out and finish you. But Hurley told me who you was, and said you should have a chance.”
“A chance! With Stover sneaking in the door behind my back?”
“It wasn’t planned that way,” Randall told him. “It was to be fair and square. But Stover, the dog, double-crossed us all! Well, he got what was coming to him. It probably seemed pretty raw to you, but it wasn’t meant to be. And a man who handles guns like you do is too good a man to let get away.”
Packard shook his head. “I got other things to do.”
“Like holding up the express office?” asked Randall.
The liquor in Packard’s tumbler jerked and slopped, but he held his face steady. “Something like that,” he admitted.
If Randall knew, there was no use denying it. “You saw Cardway out on the trail?” asked Randall. And when Packard nodded:
“Hell of a way to die,” Randall said.
“Never aim to die that way,” said Packard.
“Neither did Cardway,” Randall told him.
He emptied his glass and set it down. “If it’s gold you want, why not come in with me. It’s safe. I run the town.”
He drummed his fingers on the table. “Leastwise, I’m still running it. But I been sort of lax. One man I have to tighten up on.”
“Preacher Page,” said Packard, casually.
Randall nodded. “Threatening to ask for martial law,” he said. “But it’s not going to happen. I’ll take care of Page.
“Let’s put down our cards. You came here to hold up the express office. Probably you’d never done anything like that before, but more than likely you figured since you couldn’t keep a job, you might as well be what people thought you were. You figured what the hell.”
Packard nodded soberly.
“Well,” continued Randall, “you can’t hold up the express office, for I’ve got the gold staked out. Anyone that lifts a finger toward it is signing his death warrant.”
He stared hard at Packard. “Agreed?” he asked.
“Agreed,” said Packard.
“All right, then,” said Randall, “let’s get together. You can’t hold any other sort of job than the one I’m offering you, for people always will find out just who you are and then out you go. And I need a man like you.”
“I suppose,” guessed Packard, “that if I refuse you’ll try to fix it up so I don’t leave town alive.”
“Your reasoning,” Randall told him, “is downright uncanny. Of course, if you have some ideas of your own … ?”
“Not a one,” Packard told him.