PUFFS OF DUST rose from the roan’s shambling trot, and Chick Bowdrie shifted his position in the saddle. It had been a long ride and he was tired. From a distance he had glimpsed a spot of green and the vague shape of buildings among the trees. Where there was green of that shade there was usually water, and where there were water and buildings there would be people, warm food, and some conversation.
No cattle dotted the grassland, no horses looked over the corral bars. There was no movement in the sun-baked area around the barn.
He walked the roan into the yard and called out, “Anybody t’ home?”
Only silence answered his hail, the utter silence of a place long abandoned. The neat, carefully situated and constructed buildings were gray and weather-worn, and the gaping door of the barn showed a blank emptiness behind it.
It was strange to find no people in a place of such beauty. Trees shaded the dooryard and a rosebush bloomed beside the door, a rosebush bedraggled and game, fighting a losing battle against the wind, the dust, and the parched earth.
“Nevertheless,” he said aloud, “this is as far as I go tonight.”
He stepped down from the saddle, beating the dust from chaps and shirt, his black eyes sweeping the house and barn again. He had the uneasy sense of a manhunter who knows something is wrong, something is out of place.
The hammerheaded roan ambled over to the water hole and dipped his muzzle into its limpid clearness.
“Somebody,” Chick muttered, “spent a lot of time to make this place into a home. Some of the trees were planted, and that rosebush, too.”
The little ranch lay in the upper end of a long valley that widened out into a seemingly endless range that lost itself against the purple of far-off hills.
The position of the house, barn, and corrals indicated a mind that knew what it wanted. Whoever had built this place had probably spent a lot of days in the saddle or up on a wagon seat planning just how he wanted it. This was not just a ranch for the raising of cattle; this was a home.
“Five will get you ten he had him a woman,” Bowdrie said.
Yet why, when so much work had been done, had the place been abandoned? “And for a long time, too,” Bowdrie told himself.
There were tumbleweeds banked against the side of the barn and caught under the water trough in the corral. This place had been a long time alone.
The dry steps of the house creaked under his weight. The closed door sagged on its hinges, and when he tugged on it they creaked protestingly, almost rusted into immobility. Yet when the door opened, his boot rested on the step and stayed there.
A man’s skeleton lay on the floor; his leather gunbelt, cracked and dried to a stiff, dead thing, still clung to his waist.
“So that was it. You built it but never got a chance to enjoy it.”
Bowdrie stepped into the room, glancing around with thoughtful attention. Here, too, was evidence of careful planning, the keen mind of a practical man who wanted to make life easier both for himself and for his woman.
The neat shelves, now cobwebbed and dusty, the carefully built fireplace, a washbasin built of rocks with a drilled hole from which a plug could be removed to drain off the water, all contrived to eliminate extra steps.
Bowdrie stepped over and looked down at the body. From the bones of the chest he picked up a bullet, partly flattened. “That was probably it. Right through the chest, or maybe even the stomach.”
He glanced again at the skull. “Whoever killed you must have really wanted you dead. He finished you off with an ax!”
The skull was split, and nearby lay the ax that had been used. The man had been shot first; then the killer made sure by using the ax.
A gun lay not far away, evidently the dead man’s gun, an old .44. The killer had used a .41.
In another room he found a closet, the warped door open. Inside were a few odds and ends of women’s clothing. He studied the closet, some items hanging askew, some fallen to the floor. “Whoever killed you probably took your woman,” he muttered, “an’ whatever clothes he took, he just grabbed off the hangers an’ the hooks. At least, that’s what it looks like.”
A man’s clothing hung in another corner of the closet, a black frock coat and pants, obviously his Sunday best. In the inside coat pocket was a letter addressed to “Gilbert S. Mason, Esq., El Paso, Texas.”
Dear Gil:
After many days I take my pen in hand to address you once more. It is pleased I am to learn that you and Mary have found a home at last, knowing as I do how long you have wished for one. It will be a lovely place for little Carlotta to grow up. I am completing my business in Galveston, but before returning to Richmond I shall come west to see you.
Your friend,
Samuel Gatesby
Folding the letter, Bowdrie placed it carefully in a leather case he carried inside his shirt. He then began a methodical search of the premises.
Other than the clothing, there was no evidence of the woman or the child. If dead, their bodies had been disposed of elsewhere, but after another glance at the closet he decided they had been hurriedly taken away.
In a drawer of an old writing desk that he had to break open he found a faded tintype. It was a picture of an attractive, stalwart young man and a very pretty young woman, taken, according to the note on the back, on their wedding day.
Gilbert S. and Mary Mason, and the date was twenty years earlier. In the drawer was an improvised calendar. Made from year to year, the dates were crossed off until a period in September, sixteen years ago.
In the kitchen he glanced at the skeleton again. “Well, Gil,” he said, “you had a right beautiful wife. You had a little girl. You had a pretty home and a nice future, and then somebody came along. Gil, I’m goin’ to make you a promise. I’ll find who it was and what became of your family, even if it has been sixteen years.”
The West was often a hard and lonely land where heat, cold, drought, and flood took a bitter toll in lives, but in this valley Gil Mason had made a home, he had found all a lonely man could dream of, only to lose it to a murderer.
“My guess, Gil, is that you didn’t have horses and cattle enough, and not very much money. You were killed for your woman.
“You were a good-lookin’ man who’d fixed up a nice home, so I’m bettin’ she didn’t go willingly.”
He buried the bones, wrapped in a blanket and placed in a crude coffin slapped together from some extra planks stored in the barn. He buried them behind the barn, and from another section of plank he placed the name and added “Murdered, September…” and the year.
A month later, with other business out of the way, Bowdrie was loafing around a stage station called, by some, Gabel’s Stop. There was nearby a general store, a saloon, and a few other activities. What Bowdrie had come to think of as Mason’s Valley was only a few miles back in the country.
The stage station was operated, dominated, and had been constructed by Gabel Hicks. Tipped back against the wall of the station, Gabel Hicks spat a stream of tobacco juice into the dust of what he called a street. It wasn’t often that he found a listener like this young sprout.
Chick Bowdrie, his own chair tilted back and his toes on the porch on either side of the chair, listened absently. Hicks was an old-timer and a talker, but he had a lot to say, and had lived through it all. Bowdrie, long since, had learned that one learns a lot more by listening than by talking.
The sun warmed the street into dozing contentment. “Yep! Been here nigh onto forty year! Come west in a covered wagon. Fit Injuns all over these here plains and mountains. You youngsters, you think things is rough now! You should’ve been here when I come! Why, even twenty years ago! Now? The country’s ruined! Crowded too much! Why, there’s a ranch ever’ fifty, sixty miles now! A body can hardly ride down a trail without runnin’ into somebody else!”
“She must’ve been quite a country fifteen, twenty years ago,” Bowdrie commented. “I’ll bet this was wide-open, empty country back then! Not many riding the trails then.”
“More’n you think.” Gabel Hicks spat again, drenching a surprised lizard. “Some of them still around, like Med Sowers, Bill Peissack, Dick Rubin. They were all here. Old Johnny Greier, the town loafer, he was here. He wasn’t no loafer then. He was a hardworkin’ young cowhand…before he took to drink.”
Chick Bowdrie let his chair legs down and picked up a stick. With a flick of his hand to the back of his neck he took out a razor-sharp throwing knife from under his collar and began to whittle. “Must’ve been a hell of a country then. Mighty little water, and no women around. Must’ve been right tough goin’.”
“Women?” Hicks spat. “There was women. Even Johnny Greier had a woman when he came into this country. Purty, too, although not as purty as some. That Mary Mason, now, she was a humdinger!”
Chick Bowdrie’s knife cut a long splinter from the stick. “Where’d they all get to?” he demanded. “I ain’t seen a pretty woman since I hit town! Come to think of it, I haven’t seen a woman!”
He inspected the stick. “Some of those pretty women must have had girl-kids, and they’d be about right for me now. What happened?”
“Sure they had kids. Some of them still around, but they surely don’t come down here, except to the store. That Med Sowers, now? He’s got him a right purty daughter. Accordin’ to what I hear, she’s due to be comin’ home soon. Been away to school most of her life. Boardin’ school for young ladies. Med asked me to kind of watch out for her.”
“Daughter? Well, maybe I’ll just hang around and look.”
“No chance for no driftin’ cowhand! That Med’s a wealthy man, although you’d never guess it to look at that place of his! Like a pigsty! Yessir, like a pigsty!”
He spat. “O’ course, she ain’t rightly his daughter, comes to that. She’s his ward. I guess that means he has the handlin’ of her.”
Hicks’s face turned grim. “He’s had the handlin’ of more than one woman. Can’t say I’d want any gal of mine in his hands. He’s a bad ’un.”
Chick yawned and got to his feet; the knife disappeared as he did so. Hicks’s wise old eyes measured him, the two guns, coupled with the hawklike face and the deep, dimplelike scar under the right cheekbone.
“Stayin’ around long?” he asked.
“Maybe.” Chick hitched his gunbelts into an easier position. “Might stay longer if I get a ridin’ job.”
“Averill’s been takin’ on a few hands.”
Bowdrie grinned. “Not while I’ve got forty dollars!” he said.
Hicks chuckled. “Don’t blame you none. When I was a young feller, I was just the same. If I had me an extry dollar, I was a rich man.”
Chick Bowdrie walked across the street to the Lone Star. It had taken him nearly a month, but he was learning things. McNelly had been doubtful at first. After all, sixteen years was a long time. Finally he told him to go ahead.
Bowdrie had begun by using the Rangers’ services to get information from Richmond and Galveston. Samuel Gatesby had been a respected businessman, a Southerner who had good New York connections and came back strong following the Civil War.
Gilbert Mason had been a major in the Confederate Army who married a childhood sweetheart and who had come west full of ambition and energy as well as love for his lovely young wife. The West, according to reports, had swallowed them.
Bowdrie checked further on Gatesby. The man had acquired large cotton and shipping interests, but had been a lifelong friend as well as a brother officer of Mason. Bowdrie paused under the awning of the Lone Star to reread the letter he had received a few days past:
Samuel Gatesby disappeared after leaving El Paso sixteen years ago. His two brothers, both wealthy men, offered rewards of several thousand dollars for information. Gatesby was never heard from again. Tugwell Gatesby wishes to be informed of anything you may learn. If necessary, he will come west to make identification.
There was a crude grave marked by an unlettered stone near the house in the valley. Bowdrie had a theory about that grave but did not believe it contained Gatesby’s remains.
Johnny Greier looked hopeful when Bowdrie entered the saloon, as the rider in the black flat-crowned hat had been good for a drink several times in the past three weeks. Bowdrie took a seat at a table and gestured for Greier to join him.
Johnny hurried over, lurching a little, and the disgusted bartender heaved himself out of his seat at the far end of the bar and brought two glasses and the bottle. “Bring us a couple of plates of that free lunch,” Bowdrie suggested, and dropped a coin on the table.
Waiting until the bartender had returned to his seat, Bowdrie poured a drink for himself, and after Greier had taken one glass, Bowdrie refilled it for him, then moved the bottle away.
Johnny looked up, hurt showing in his eyes. “You eat something before you have any more,” Bowdrie ordered. “We’ve some talkin’ to do.”
“Thanks. Most folks don’t ’preciate an ol’ man, just because I take a drink now and again.”
“Johnny, there’s something I want to know, and you may be the only man in town with gumption enough to tell me.”
Johnny’s features seemed to sharpen, and the blood-shot eyes stared, then fell. “I don’t know anything,” he said. “Whatever I knew, the whiskey’s made me forget.”
“I think you do know, Johnny,” Bowdrie said quietly. “I think that’s what started you drinkin’.”
Chick filled Johnny’s glass again, but the old man did not touch it.
“Johnny, what became of Mary Mason?”
Johnny Greier’s face went white and sick. When he looked at Bowdrie again, the alcoholic haze seemed gone from his eyes. Chick Bowdrie’s black eyes were hard and without mercy.
“She’s dead. Now, don’t ask me no more.”
“Johnny…” Bowdrie spoke gently, persuasively. “A man named Gil Mason built himself a home, something he always wanted, and he brought his wife out to enjoy it, and their small daughter was with them.
“I want a home too, Johnny. So do you. Every man west of the Brazos would like one, but Gil Mason made it. He realized his dream, and then he was murdered, Johnny. I want to know what happened.”
“He’d kill me!”
“Johnny, most people around here take you for nothing but a drunk. I know better, Johnny, because I’ve looked into the past. You were a top hand, Johnny, one of the very best. You rode with all the good ones and you were one of them. It took a man to be what you were, Johnny, and it took a man to win the kind of respect you had. What happened, Johnny?”
Greier shook his head, staring at the full glass in front of him.
“Johnny, in a little while there’s a stage coming in. On that stage, a pretty young girl will come in. She is Mary Mason’s daughter and she is coming home to live on the ranch with Med Sowers. She’s never seen him. She doesn’t know what she’s gettin’ into. She’s been away at school all these years.”
Johnny stared at the glass, then pushed back a little from the table. “There wasn’t many of us here then, an’ Med Sowers had all those gunmen around him, men who would kill you at the drop of a hat.
“There was no law here then. The country hadn’t been organized. A man did whatever he wanted, and Med Sowers had the power.”
Johnny stared at Bowdrie out of red-rimmed, bloodshot eyes. “I knew what happened. I seen it comin’, an’ I did nothing.”
“What could you have done?”
“I dunno. Maybe nothing. I was nowhere as good with a gun as any one of that outfit. I seen Sowers watchin’ her, and I could see what was in his mind. I started out to the ranch to warn Mason, but it was too late. That was the day they done it.
“Med will kill me for talkin’, but I guess my time’s about up, anyway. Med Sowers killed Mason for his woman.”
He stared into the glass. “He taken her to his place an’ kept her there. She lived a dog’s life. He sent her girl away to school and held that over her, that if she didn’t go along, he’d see the kid killed.
“Later he said he might as well raise him another woman. ‘Let her grow up,’ he said, ‘and then she’ll be mine.’
“First chance she got, Mary ran off. He followed her an’ killed her. Afraid she’d do it again and talk to somebody.”
There was a chorus of wild yells from the street, and the pounding hooves of racing horses.
“That’s him. That’s Med now, he an’ that murderin’ bunch of his. Dick Rubin, Hensman, Morel, and Lute Boyer. Rubin an’ Boyer were with Med Sowers when he killed her.”
Chick Bowdrie heard another sound above their yells. It was the incoming stage. Under the deep brown of his face, Bowdrie paled. His thoughts raced. What could he do? What could he legally do? There had been no law then, but there was now, and she was Sowers’ ward.
The chances were that the girl on the stage was Carlotta, mentioned in the letter. Now she would face what her mother had faced, and there was as yet no evidence beyond the word of Johnny Greier, even if he lived to speak.
Bowdrie walked outside and leaned against the awning post. It was the first time he found himself wishing he was not an officer of the law. He might walk out there, pick a fight with Sowers, and kill him.
He shook his head. That was no way to think. That was what the old Bowdrie might have done, the one before McNelly recruited him.
The stage rolled to a stop in a cloud of dust, the door was opened, and a girl got out.
Chick Bowdrie straightened with an indrawn breath. She was the image of the girl in the picture he had, a very pretty girl, every inch the lady.
Then his eyes shifted to Med Sowers. He saw the shock of recognition as the big man saw the girl’s mother in her face. Then the shock faded, giving place to triumph and a sort of animal eagerness. Sowers pushed forward. His checkered shirt, far from clean, was open halfway down, revealing a massive hairy chest.
“Howdy, Mary!” he said. “I’m Med Sowers, your guardian!”
Mary? Why Mary?
She smiled brightly, but Bowdrie was close enough to see the dismay in her eyes.
“I am glad to see you,” she said. “I do not remember you, of course. I was so very young.”
“Think nothin’ of it.” He hitched his belt over the bulge of his stomach. “We’ll make y’ feel right t’ home. You just wait’ll we get to the ranch. You cost me a sight of money, but I reckon it’ll pay off now.”
“Thank you.” She turned to the tall, good-looking young man standing slightly behind her. “Mr. Sowers, I would like you to meet Stephen York, my fiancé.”
Med Sowers’ hand stopped even as it started for the handshake. His face went dark with angry blood. “Your what?” he bellowed.
York stepped forward. “I can understand your surprise, Mr. Sowers, but we thought it best to tell you at once. Miss Mason and I wish to be married.”
“Married?” Sowers was ugly with rage and frustration. “I’ll see you in hell first! I didn’t spend all that money gittin’ her eddication for you to take her away!”
Chick Bowdrie stepped into the center of the gathering crowd. “What did you raise her for, Sowers?” he asked.
Med Sowers turned impatiently, seeing Bowdrie for the first time, but realizing for the first time also that an interested crowd had gathered. “Who’re you?” he demanded.
“Just a very curious bystander, Sowers.” His eyes moved slowly over the faces of Rubin, Morel, Hensman, and Boyer. “I find it odd that you should be so mad because your ward has found her a young man.”
Bowdrie indicated York. “He looked to me like a right nice young man who would do right by the girl, and also,” he added, “one who would go a long way to protect her.”
Med Sowers was aware of the waiting, somewhat puzzled crowd. Perhaps only one or two aside from Sowers and Bowdrie knew what was implied.
Sowers made up his mind quickly. “Well, no wonder I was surprised! Here I’ve had no word…you kind of sprung it on me, Mary. I guess I kicked up the sod, some.” He grinned at York. “Better let her get out to the place an’ git settled, then we can get acquainted. If you’re the right man, I couldn’t be more pleased.” He turned, reaching for her suitcase. “Well, let’s get out to the ranch!”
Chick caught the girl’s eye and shook his head ever so slightly. Her brow puckered, but she turned to Sowers.
“Oh, please! I want to stay in town tonight! I am so tired! Anyway, I have some shopping to do, some things I need.”
Sowers hesitated, fighting back the angry protest before his lips could shape it.
Bowdrie turned to walk away and found himself facing Dick Rubin. “Get out of town!” Rubin said. “Don’t let me find you around after daybreak.”
Rubin did not wait for a reply, but moved away into the crowd. As Rubin moved off, Bowdrie noticed the other passengers who had descended from the stage. They were city men. One was tall, gray, and handsome, the other a shorter man with a broad, tough jaw and a cigar clenched in his teeth.
The shorter man was already leading the way toward Bowdrie. “Chick Bowdrie? I’m Pat Hanley, Pinkerton agent. I’m employed by Tugwell Gatesby here. Do you have some news for us?”
“Not very much, Hanley, but if you would like to help, you can get at the records of the stage company. I think Sam Gatesby arrived here from El Paso, and was taken into the hills and murdered. I believe I know by whom. Can you check and see if he arrived here?”
Whatever happened, Chick knew, must happen quickly now. Sowers would not take defeat. Yet despite his wealth, whatever was done now must at least have the cloak of legality. Formerly there had been no law but Sowers’ own; now the country was settling up and there were different standards.
Chick did not discount the danger to himself. He had interfered in a situation in which he had no part that they could see, as his status as a Texas Ranger was not known. Sowers could not know who he was or why he had asked his question, but the question itself was a threat.
Stephen York was in an even more precarious position. Chick was sure that before the night was over one of Sowers’ men would pick a quarrel with either him or York, and try to kill whichever one it was…with maybe a stray shot to kill the other by “accident.”
With Sowers and York, Carlotta Mason had gone to the two-story frame hotel. Morel, Hensman, and Rubin had gone into the Lone Star. Hanley had gone to the stage station and Gatesby to the hotel. Chick Bowdrie started to move toward the hotel himself, when he saw Lute Boyer watching him. As their eyes met, Boyer walked over to him. He had a lean, cadaverous face and eyes that always held contempt.
“I’ve been lookin’ forward to runnin’ into you sometime, Bowdrie,” he said. “I nearly came up with you down around Uvalde, and again at Fort Griffin. I’ve heard you’re good with your guns.”
“Your friend Rubin warned me to get out of town before daybreak,” Bowdrie said.
Lute Boyer drew the makings from his pocket and began to build a cigarette. “Wait’ll Dick learns who you are. He ain’t even guessed, and you a Texas Ranger!”
“Lute, you ain’t done all the guessin’ that’s comin’ to you. Let me give you some advice. Don’t you be the one they send to get Stephen York.”
The Herrick House was not much of a hotel. A frame building with a large lobby and a rarely used bar. The Lone Star drew the town’s liquor business. There were thirty rooms in the ramshackle old hotel. One of these was where Chick Bowdrie was staying. In others Gatesby, Hanley, York, and Carlotta Mason were staying. She was now known as Mary Sowers.
Med Sowers was seated in the lobby when Bowdrie came in. As he started for the stairs, Sowers sprang to his feet. “Don’t go up there!” he said angrily.
Chick Bowdrie had found few people whom he disliked profoundly, but this man was one of them. He had never wanted to kill a man, but if ever one deserved killing, it was Med Sowers.
“Don’t be a fool!” he said impatiently. “This is a hotel, and I live up there! Dozens of others do, too.” He paused briefly. “Smarten up, Sowers. You aren’t runnin’ this country anymore. You’ve a lot to answer for, and your time’s up.”
He turned on his heel and started up the steps. He heard Sowers move, and he turned around. “I could kill you, Sowers. You’d better wait.”
He went to Stephen York’s room.
The tall young man was standing in front of the mirror combing his hair. His coat was off and he wore a shoulder holster, something rarely seen. He turned as Chick entered, and they stood facing each other.
“I’m glad she found herself a real man,” Bowdrie commented. “She’s going to need him!”
“You know about me?”
“It’s my business to know. Two years back, some of the riverboat companies hired a special officer from Illinois and sent him to New Orleans to put a stop to the robbin’ and murderin’ of their passengers. In four months he sent thirteen thieves to prison, and there were several who chose to fight it out and were buried.”
Chick pulled a chair around and sat astride of it; then he related the story of the Mason ranch, his quest for evidence, and all the indications that Medley Sowers was the guilty man. He revealed how Sowers planned to keep the daughter even as he had enslaved the mother.
He explained about the murder of Samuel Gatesby, and why Tugwell Gatesby and Pat Hanley were here. “Let’s go see them,” he said.
Hanley was explaining something to Gatesby as they reached the room. “Your hunch was right,” he advised Bowdrie. “Samuel Gatesby arrived here three days after leaving El Paso. Hicks remembers him well. Gatesby rented a horse from Dick Rubin after inquiring as to the location of the Mason ranch.”
“Something I was about to explain to Hanley when you gentlemen arrived. The man you call Sowers is wearing a Chinese charm on his watch chain that I gave Sam in sixty-seven. I recognized it this afternoon.”
Bowdrie turned and left the room, walking down the hall to Carlotta’s room. That was how he thought of her, despite the fact she had been using another name, that of Mary Sowers.
He tapped, there was no reply, and he tapped again more sharply. Hanley stepped into the hall and looked his way. Suddenly apprehensive, Bowdrie opened the door.
The room was empty!
“Hanley! York! She’s gone!”
He hit the steps running and reached the lobby in time to hear a clatter of hooves. As he stepped into the street, he saw Sowers go by with Lute Boyer. The girl was between them.
As he ran out to the street, he saw Morel across the street in an alley lifting a rifle to his shoulder. His reaction was immediate, and as the rifle settled against Morel’s shoulder, Bowdrie’s bullet took him right between the eyebrows.
It was two hundred yards to the livery stable, and his own horse was unsaddled. A fine-looking black horse stood at the hitching rail, and without hesitation he loosed the slipknot and swung into the saddle. He was going down the street on a dead run when the others rushed from the door.
There was an outburst of shooting behind him and a bullet whined near his head. Ahead of him was the dust of the kidnappers of Carlotta.
If Sowers had time, there was no telling what he might do. Money and his followers had made him confident. For twenty years he had been the local power, and he could not grasp the fact that an era had ended.
Dick Rubin and Hensman were still in town. Between them they might wipe out York, Hanley, and Gatesby. With nobody to press charges, they might evade punishment and go on as they had.
If Sowers reached his ranch, where more of his outlaw hands waited, there was no telling what he might do. The townspeople had no idea of the evidence against him. With the witnesses eliminated and everybody believing that Mary Sowers was his ward, they could go scot-free.
The black horse had heart, and he loved to run. He ran now.
Yet Bowdrie saw that overtaking them would be impossible. They had turned from the trail into a maze of canyons, and with the coming of darkness Bowdrie could not hope to keep to a trail. Yet, details were beginning to appear that were familiar. He had ridden over this country when he first discovered the Mason ranch and the remains of Gil Mason.
Moreover, there was no water of which he knew, except for the ranch, and the chances were, Sowers was taking a roundabout route to that very place.
If he went directly there now, he would arrive ahead of them and with a fairly fresh horse.
It was completely dark when he rode into the ranch yard. Riding directly to it, he had been sure he would arrive before Sowers.
The buildings were dark and there was no sound. Chick watered the black horse, then led him back into the brush to a patch of grass seen earlier. There he picketed him. He walked back to the ranch yard and settled down beside a big cottonwood not far from the water trough.
He had dozed off, and awakening suddenly sometime later, he saw a man’s head between him and the water. He recognized the shape of the hat.
“York!” he whispered.
York came back to where he was. “Bowdrie? They are coming in now. They must’ve stopped somewhere. Rubin’s already here. There was some shooting in town. Rubin’s wounded and Hensman was killed along with one other man. I think they ran into some more of their men who were on the way into town.”
“Where are Gatesby and Hanley?”
“Close by. Unless they bother Mary, we’d better hang back until daylight.”
It was hard waiting in the dark. Every sound was crystal clear, and they could hear movements and talk near the house, but words could only occasionally be distinguished.
“There’s seven of them!” Hanley said as he came up.
Chick nodded. “They’re holding the girl in the yard. They have her hands tied, but not her feet. I just saw them walking her over from the horses.”
He turned. “Hanley, you an’ Gatesby slip around and cover the out trail. Don’t let them get away.”
He touched York’s shoulder. “You wait awhile an’ then slip down an’ get into the house. There’s a back door. Get in if you can, and lie quiet.”
“What about you?”
“I’m goin’ down there an’ get her out of there before the shootin’ starts.”
“That’s my job!” Steve protested.
“I can move like an Indian. I’ll do it.”
Flat on his stomach, the side of his face to the ground, Bowdrie moved himself with his hands, elbows, or toes, inching along until he reached the hard-packed earth. He dared go no farther by that means. His clothing would scrape against the solid clay, making too much sound.
He could see the girl lying on the ground, near her a guard. Bowdrie could see the glow of his cigarette in the dark. Seated with his shoulder against the corner of the barn, the guard would turn his head at intervals to glance all around him.
Chick worked his way to the side of the barn, and then, standing erect, he began to glide closer and closer to the guard. Once the guard turned, and Bowdrie froze to immobility, waiting, holding his breath. He saw the guard’s elbow move, saw his hands come up—he was starting to roll a fresh cigarette.
He was still rolling it when Chick’s forearm slipped across his throat from behind. Putting the palm of his right hand on the guard’s head, he grasped his right arm with his left hand and shut down hard. The movement had been swift and long-practiced.
The guard gave a frenzied lunge and the girl sat up with a startled movement. Holding his grip until the man’s muscles slowly relaxed, then releasing him, Bowdrie moved to the girl. Touching her lips with his hand to still any outcry, he swiftly cut her free.
Using the unconscious man’s neckerchief and belt, he bound him tightly. It was not a good job, but all they needed was a minute or two.
Already it was faintly gray in the east. He had not realized they had waited so long, nor that so much time had elapsed since he began his approach to the girl.
He had Carlotta on her feet moving away when there was a startled movement. “Joe? What you doin’ with that girl?” The man came to his feet. “Joe? Joe?” Then he yelled, “Hey! You!”
“Run!” Bowdrie hissed; then he turned, drawing as he moved.
Flame stabbed the night. Then a shot came from the stable, and he replied, rolling over instantly, trying for the partial shelter of the water trough.
At the first sign of trouble, Sowers lunged for the shelter of the house. Lute Boyer came up, gun in hand. “Got you, Bowdrie!” he yelled, and fired.
An instant late. Bowdrie saw Lute stagger back, blood running from his mouth as he tried to get his gun up. Bowdrie fired again, and Boyer turned and fell to his hands and knees, facing away from Bowdrie.
Hanley and Gatesby, their original plan foiled by the discovery, burst into the yard, firing.
Bowdrie ran for the front door, coming in from the side just as York tripped and fell, losing hold on his gun. York grabbed, got it, and rolled back from the door as Med Sowers started after him, firing. Sowers’ concentration on making a perfect shot caused him to step without looking. The ball of his foot came down, something rolled under his foot, and he fell, catching himself against the doorjamb, half in, half out of the door.
Bowdrie fired as Sowers’ body loomed in the doorway. The big man’s body sagged and he slowly slipped to his knees on the step. He stared at Bowdrie, his face contorted. The gun slipped from his fingers, and slowly he pitched forward on his face.
Bowdrie walked closer, and stooping, took the pistol from Sowers’ hand. It was a .41.
York came up. “He had me dead to rights. What made him fall?”
Bowdrie stooped and picked up a lead bullet, its nose partly flattened. “I dropped it when I was burying Gil Mason. He must have stepped on it.”
Bowdrie took the bullet and rolled it in his fingers. “Fired from Sowers’ own gun, sixteen years ago!”
In the gray light of morning, over a campfire a quarter of a mile from the ranch house, Carlotta looked across the small fire where they were making coffee.
“Steve has been telling me what you did. I want to thank you. I had never known anything about my parents. I was only three years old when I started living with Mr. Sowers’ sister.”
“He probably kept you first as a hold over your mother,” Bowdrie said, “but when you got older and he’d seen some pictures his sister sent, he began to get other ideas.”
“This was my father’s place?”
“He built it for your mother and him. He put in a lot of work. He was a happy man. He had the woman he wanted and the home he wanted.”
Bowdrie got up. He should be back at the hotel writing up his report.
“It was built for two young people in love,” he said.
“That’s what Steve was saying—that care and thought went into every detail of it.”
“No reason to waste it.” Bowdrie accepted the reins of the horse Hanley led to him. “See you in town!”