Novel 1965 - The High Graders (v5.0) Page 4

  But Gentry must be protecting somebody. If he had not killed Eli himself—and Brazos’ evidence implied he had not—he knew who had killed him.

  But why should Gentry go out on a limb to protect someone else? Who was that important to him? It was unlike Gentry to take credit for another man’s killing … especially the killing of Eli Patterson.

  As Mike Shevlin drank his coffee, he looked at the two men at the other table. The man in the tailored suit looked familiar, but Mike’s attention was diverted by one of the miners at his own table. He was a stocky, redheaded man, who had been staring hard at Mike, trying to attract his eyes.

  “You’ve come to the wrong town,” the miner said suddenly; “we ran all the cattlemen out of here long ago.”

  Mike Shevlin smiled pleasantly. “I’m double-action—cattle or mines. I can swing a single-jack or double-jack as good as the next man.”

  “Where’d you ever work in the mines?”

  “All over the country. Silverton, Colorado … down in the Cerbat Range in Arizona … over at Pioche and Frisco.”

  “They’re full up here. Nobody hirin’.”

  “Doesn’t look like I’ll find a job, then, does it?” The redhead was trouble-hunting. The type and the pattern were familiar. There was one in every town, always trying to prove how tough he was … sometimes there was more than one. And they were rarely the really hard cases. They had nothing to prove.

  Deliberately, Mike kept his tone mild. He understood the pattern and accepted it, but if Red wanted to push trouble he must do it on his own. He would get no trouble from Shevlin. There was trouble enough without that.

  At the other table the man in frontier clothes looked around. “If you’re a miner, I can use you,” he said. “I’m Burt Parry—I’ve got a claim in Cottonwood Canyon. If you’re serious about a job, meet me at six-thirty for breakfast here, and we’ll ride out.”

  Parry got up from the table. “I’ll have those figures for you, Mr. Merriam,” he said to the man in the gray suit. “I’ll have them tomorrow or the day after.”

  He paused by Shevlin’s table. “Tomorrow morning, six-thirty … right?”

  “I’ll see you,” Shevlin said. “I’ll be here.”

  The waitress placed a dish of food before him, and he picked up his knife and fork. Merriam, the man had said. That would be Clagg Merriam. Mike had seen him only once or twice in the old days, for Merriam was often out of town. He was a bigger man than Mike remembered, with a strong face and a smile on his lips that did not reach to his eyes.

  The redhead moved down the table opposite Shevlin. “You didn’t tell him your name,” he said.

  “He didn’t ask,” Shevlin replied mildly.

  “Well, I’m asking.”

  “None of your damn’ business.” Shevlin spoke in such a gentle voice that it was a moment before the meaning got to the redhead.

  When he realized what had been said, Red smiled. He wiped his palms on the front of his shirt. Then he stood up very slowly, still smiling, and reached across the table to grasp the front of Shevlin’s shirt.

  Shevlin dropped his knife and fork, and his left hand grasped Red’s wrist, jerking him forward. There was an empty dish on the table that had held mutton. With his right hand Shevlin pushed the miner’s face down into the dish and, gripping Red’s left hand, he coolly wiped his face around in the cold mutton grease.

  Abruptly, Shevlin let go and Red came up, half over the table and spluttering with fury. Shevlin jerked the butt of his palm up under the man’s chin and sent him toppling back over the bench to the floor beyond. During the entire action he had scarcely risen from his seat.

  For a second, Red lay stunned, then with an oath he started to rise. A voice stopped him.

  “Cut it out, Red! This time you’ve swung too wide a loop. This gent would clobber you good!”

  Shevlin looked around. There he was—older, of course, and heavier. Yes, and better dressed than Shevlin ever remembered him. His face was puffy, and he looked like a man who was living too well—something nobody could have said of the old Gentry.

  “Hello, Gib,” Mike said. “It’s been a while.”

  Gentry thrust out a big hand. “Mike! Mike Shevlin!” There was no mistaking the pleasure in Gentry’s voice. “Man, am I glad to see you!”

  Shevlin took the hand. It was all wrong, he thought. Whatever else Gentry might do, he would not kill a man like Eli. A tough man, Gentry was, even a cruel one at times, but a man who fought with fighting men.

  Shevlin was aware of the room’s attention. Clagg Merriam was watching them, his face unreadable. Red was slowly wiping the grease from his face.

  “Come down the street, Mike,” Gentry was saying, “and I’ll buy you a drink for old time’s sake.”

  Reluctantly, Shevlin got up from the table. The last thing he wanted was a drink. What he wanted was food and coffee, gallons of coffee.

  “The town’s changed,” Shevlin said tentatively as they emerged on the street. “I don’t see many of the old faces.”

  “Gone … gone with the cattle business.”

  Shevlin waited until they had taken a few strides, and then he asked, “What happened to Ray Hollister?”

  Gentry’s smile vanished. “Ray? Got too big for his boots, Ray did. He left the country … and just in time.”

  “He always did try to take big steps.”

  “Say!” There was obvious relief in Gentry’s tone. “I’d forgotten about the time you two tangled out at Rock Springs. You never did get along with him.”

  The thought seemed to please him. Gentry rested a big hand on Shevlin’s shoulder as they reached the door of the Gold Miner’s Daughter. Mike restrained his distaste. He had never liked to be touched, and had not cared for Gentry’s back-slapping good humor.

  To get to the point, he asked, “Are you ranching, Gib?”

  “Me?” Gentry opened the door, and went on speaking as they entered. “The cattle business is a thing of the past in this country. No, I’m in the freighting business. Hauling for the mines—supplies in, gold out, working twenty to thirty rigs all the time.”

  Mike saw no familiar faces in the saloon. Gentry lifted a hand and the bartender tossed him a bottle, which Gib caught deftly. Then the bartender tossed two shot glasses, which Gentry caught just as easily with the other hand. He had always been fast with his hands for a big man … and fast with a gun.

  Gentry was in a genial, talkative mood, and Shevlin was willing to listen. A cowhand, Gentry told him, had struck gold on the old Rafter H while sinking a post hole. Without saying a word to anyone he had gone off to San Francisco and obtained financial backing, then returned and bought the Rafter H headquarters area.

  Polluted water from the mill flowed into the creek, spelling ruin for the Rafter H and the other cattle outfits. They fought, and among the casualties was the cowhand who had discovered the gold.

  “Mighty convenient, I figure,” Gentry commented, refilling his glass, “but it didn’t do anybody any good. Turned out he had sold his entire interest to that Frisco outfit. There was trouble aplenty with Turkeytrack and Rafter, but nothing we couldn’t manage.”

  “We?”

  Gentry winked. “Now, Mike, you know ol’ Gib. I never let any grass grow under my feet, you know that, an’ there’s more money in gold than in cattle. The trouble started when I hired on as guard at the Sun Strike.”

  “Trouble?”

  “Shooting trouble, Mike. Ben Stowe was boss of the guards, an’ you know Ben. He knew where to pick up a few salty boys down in the Panhandle country, and after we’d buried two or three of the local boys that was the end of it.”

  Trust Ben Stowe to know who had to be killed. The backbone of any cow outfit lies in two or three fighting men whom the rest follow. Put them out of the picture, and the rest would be likely to lose heart. Mike Shevlin had seen it managed that way more than once, and had seen it tried at other times.

  “Gib, who is the law around here?”
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  “You on the dodge?”

  “Who is he?”

  “Aw, you’ve nothing to worry about. You know how it is with the law in these western towns. The law is always local law, so busy skinning its own cats it hasn’t time to worry about anybody who doesn’t make trouble. You could shoot half a dozen men in Denver or Cheyenne, and nobody would bother you anywhere else as long as you stayed out of trouble… . But the law here is Wilson Hoyt.”

  Wilson Hoyt, of all people! He was a burly bear of a man, broad and thick and muscular, but fast enough to have killed a man who had the drop on him. He was credited with seventeen killings, all on the side of the law. Of all the men who might be in this town, the one most likely to know about Mike Shevlin was Hoyt.

  Hollister, Gentry, and Mason only knew the boy who had ridden away, and ten years and more can deepen and widen a man, they can salt him down with toughness and wisdom. And Mike had been gone thirteen years. Of them all, Hoyt would understand him more than the others, and Hoyt had seen him looking at Eli’s grave and would know why he had come back.

  Gentry rambled on, taking a third drink while Mike was nursing his first. He talked about the good old days, and it came over Mike that Gentry still thought of him as a friend.

  “You got to hand it to Ray,” Gentry said confidentially. “He always wanted to be a big man, and when gold was discovered he grabbed at the chance.

  “He never came out in the open with it, and the cattle crowd never knew he’d thrown in with the other side. When trouble started—and I always figured his loud mouth caused it—Ray got in touch with the Frisco people and offered to handle negotiations with the ranchers. He and that shyster Evans called themselves a law firm, but you know Ben. When Hollister brought Ben into it he put a rope on trouble.

  “When a few of the miners started high-grading a little here and there, Ben argued Ray into looking the other way. But Ben, he said nothing to Ray about the setup he arranged for buying up the gold to keep it out of circulation.”

  “Where did Ben get that kind of money?”

  Gentry gave Mike another wink. “Now, that there is Ben’s own secret, but don’t you low-rate Ben. Buying up the high-grade kept the news from getting out that Sun Strike was big. They reported low averages from the mine, and nobody knew any different.”

  By this time Gentry was working on his fourth drink.

  “Smart—that was smart thinking,” Mike remarked.

  “You’re not just a-woofing,” Gentry said.

  Trust Eli not to go along with that, or Jack Moorman for that matter, for Jack had money invested in town business, and he owned Turkeytrack as well. So they had been killed.

  Had Ben Stowe realized that Eli Patterson was connected with the San Francisco owners? Shevlin’s guess was they had not known. Shevlin had known Eli better than any of them had, and he had never heard him make any reference to relatives or friends in San Francisco … or anywhere else, for that matter. Eli had come west from Illinois, and when he talked it was about life back there.

  Mike was scarcely listening to Gentry now, and Gib had gone back to talking of the old days, reliving the rough, tough old days of branding, roundups, and cattle drives.

  “Remember the time a rattler scared that line-back dun of yours? He went right over the rim an’ I’ll be damned if you didn’t stay with him all the way to the river! If anybody had told me a man could ride a horse down that slope I’d have said he was loco.”

  Gentry was drunk … it was possible that by morning he would have no memory of what he had told Shevlin, and Mike was sure that only the liquor—he had already had a few when they met—had made him talk as freely as he had. That—and something else Mike suddenly realized: Gib Gentry was lonesome.

  There was one other fact to consider. Gentry was in the freighting business, and when gold was moved he would do the moving, and there would be nobody to ask questions.

  If Ben Stowe had done the planning for this operation he had planned very shrewdly indeed. All the loose ends were nicely tucked in, and everything was under control—everything but Gib Gentry’s tongue when he’d had a few drinks. Did they know that?

  “What’s Burt Parry like?” Mike asked.

  “Aw, he’s all right. He’s got him a two-by-four claim over in the canyon. There’s nothing over there, but he sure ain’t willing to believe it.”

  Shevlin pushed back his chair and got up. “I’d better get some sleep.” For a moment he rested a hand on Gentry’s shoulder. “Good to see you, boy. You watch your step now.”

  “See you.” Gentry seemed about to say something more, but he only added, “So long, kid.”

  AT SIX O’CLOCK the next morning the man operating Eli’s old store was out sweeping the boardwalk. Mike Shevlin strolled inside and the man followed. Shevlin bought what digging clothes he would need, some candles, and a caplamp, and then said, “And four boxes of .44’s.”

  The storekeeper glanced up. “You expecting trouble?”

  “Man of peace, myself. Figured I’d be off up that canyon workin’ for Burt Parry and I’d have me some target practice. I never could hit the broad side of a barn.”

  Burt Parry was waiting in front of the Nevada House when Shevlin returned with his packages. “Lady waiting for you,” he said, “in the dining room. I heard her asking for you.”

  He went inside and passed under the arch into the dining room. It was Eve, and she was alone.

  “You wanted to see me?”

  “I want to offer you a job. At the Three Sevens.”

  “I heard the cow business was in a bad way around here.”

  Lowering her voice, she said, “Mr. Shevlin, we need men like you, and whatever else you are, you’re cattle.”

  He felt irritation mounting within him. “All right, you tell me. What kind of a man am I?”

  “You’ve used a gun, and we need guns.”

  He felt a vast impatience. “Lady, with all due respect, you’re talking nonsense.” He jerked his head to indicate the Sun Strike and the steady pound of its compressor. “Do you think guns will stop that? As long as there’s ore in the ground, they’ll be there.”

  “That’s not true. If Ray Hollister had been leading us, he would have run Ben Stowe out of the country!”

  Shevlin looked at her ironically. “You really believe that? As a fighting man, Ray Hollister couldn’t come up to Ben Stowe’s boot-tops.”

  Her anger flared. “If you believe that, there’s no job for you at Three Sevens!”

  “Sorry … but I already have a job. As a miner.”

  Abruptly, she got to her feet. “Jess Winkler said you were one of them, but I just couldn’t believe it. You’re just a thief, a common thief!”

  She walked out, heels clicking, and he followed to join Burt Parry outside. “Sorry to keep you waiting,” he said.

  Parry glanced at him. “The lady was in a hurry,” he commented.

  “When I told her I had a mining job, she called me a thief.”

  “If you worked for anybody but me,” Parry said wryly, “that might be true.” He looked straight at Shevlin. “What would you say if I told you some of the ore from the Sun Strike assayed as high as twenty thousand dollars a ton?”

  “I’d tell you there was a gent down in Chile found a nugget that weighed four hundred pounds. What I mean is, it could happen once.”

  “My friend,” Parry said seriously, “some of the richest ore I’ve ever seen came out of that mine, and not just a little bit.”

  High-grade … every miner knew what that meant. Ore so rich a man could carry a month’s wages out in his pockets, and two months’ wages in a canteen or a lunchbox. He had known of mines where the foreman was paid by miners for the privilege of working. Change rooms could only curb high-grading; they couldn’t stop it.

  “And nobody talks?” Shevlin asked.

  “They’re all in it. I’m not, but I don’t have much to say, and I don’t try to leave town. Sometimes I wonder if I could leave. Mayb
e I’m alive only because I haven’t tried.”

  “You’re taking a chance even telling me. How do you know I’m not their spy?”

  “You couldn’t be. You’re in trouble, Shevlin.”

  “I am?”

  “Don’t expect reason from any of them, Mike. They’re in too deep, and all of them are running scared. I was advised not to hire you.”

  “Why me?”

  “There was a man named Hollister—and there’s the fact that you arrived just at this time. They are deathly afraid of Hollister, Mike, and if they locate him, he’s a dead man.”

  “You know a lot.”

  “I wish I knew less. I have a friend or two, and they tell me things.” Parry looked at Mike’s gun. “Are you any good with that?”

  “I get along.”

  Parry started toward the livery stable and Mike walked along with him. He could feel eyes on them, eyes watching them down the street. Suddenly he realized that he could have done nothing worse than go to work for Burt Parry, the one man who was an outsider.

  No matter. He was in up to his ears, anyway, and he had a hunch that if he got out he would get out shooting. For the first time in years he was suddenly conscious of the gun at his hip.

  CHAPTER 4

  IN HIS OFFICE above the bank, Ben Stowe tipped back in his big leather chair and stared thoughtfully out the window toward the trees along the creek. He had come far since the morning fourteen years ago when Jack Moorman fired him off the Turkeytrack.

  He had never forgotten that day. Old Jack had been seated in his hide chair with a shotgun across his knees when he told Ben Stowe he was a cow thief, and probably a murderer as well, and also told him what would happen if he was ever found on Turkeytrack range again.

  Ben Stowe, big, powerful, and tough, had stood there and taken it, but even now he flushed at the memory, grudgingly admitting to himself that he had been afraid. In all his life he had feared no man but Jack Moorman. Dead now for several years, Jack Moorman still had the power to destroy him.