Dawn was streaking the sky when Rae Marsh swung down off the weary bay in the cover of the great shadow cast by the decaying log fort outside Bent’s Crossing. Usually, after a night of raiding with Ford, he managed to make it back to the town itself before daylight, to ease into Crystal’s place and to bed down in the tiny closet of a room upstairs that she had allocated to his use. But he was running late this time; the argument about the captive had held him up, and he did not dare be seen riding into Bent’s Crossing on a hard-traveled horse, obviously having been up all the night himself—not after the released captive might have pinpointed to Anders exactly when and how this latest cattle-theft had taken place.
But the old fort offered cover and a chance to catch forty winks. He had watered the bay at the last stream, and it would have to do without fodder until he put it in the livery stable later in the day. There were a few rotting box stalls in the fort; he hid the bay in one of those and found a crevice behind some fallen roof joists where he could roll up in his blanket and get some sleep.
But, tired as he was, sleep was a long time coming tonight. This whole deal was souring more and more. Three hundred head, he thought as he lay there; his half of that should be enough to get court action started. And if they kept up, if they tried to rustle the entire fantastic third, a thousand cattle, somebody innocent was going to get killed in the process. He did not care about Ford’s men; he did not care about Anders or any professional gunmen Anders might hire; he did not even care about himself. But he cared about the ordinary Circle M riders who were only doing their duty to their brand—and most of all, he cared about Will. Sooner or later, if there was fighting, Will was bound to be sucked into it.
Maybe the best thing to do, the smart thing, the sensible one, would be to call off Ford. The cattle thief had made a good haul and he was smart enough to understand that their luck had been pushed about as far as it would go.
Well, he would think about it in the morning. Right now, he had to have some shuteye. He rolled over, pulled the blanket up around his ears, put his hat over his eyes, and with his head on the seat of his saddle, finally dropped into exhausted, dreamless sleep.
Daylight awakened him, lancing through gaps in the tumbled down roof above him. He sat up, as instantly alert as a waking wolf, head swiveling, hand reaching for gun, but all was still. He could hear the bay stamping in the stall, even hear the rumbling of its empty belly. Rae relaxed and slowly got to his feet, brushing chips of rotten wood from shirt and chaps.
There was a brush and curry comb in his bag of possibles, and he used them to brush the crusted foam and curled hair of a hard night’s travel off the bay. Then, after making careful reconnaissance to make sure no one was around the fort to see him emerge, he saddled the bay, tied his blanket roll behind, and loped across the flat toward the town.
Boldly, as if he’d been out for a morning’s ride, he rode down the town’s main street. The bay needed feeding, but first he had to get his signals straight with Crystal. She was his alibi, she and Hallie.
The younger sister, who had no idea what was going on, had been confused and reluctant at first, but she depended on Crystal and had to trust her. Along with a few of Crystal’s most trusted employees, she would swear, if necessary, that Rae had been at Crystal’s place all night. So far it had not been necessary for either Crystal or Hallie to perjure themselves on Rae’s behalf; there was no scrap of evidence to link him with the rustling, and Anders had stayed well away from Rae. But Rae did not fool himself that the beating he had given Anders had hammered fear into the man; Anders was only biding his time.
In the meanwhile, Rae got a certain heady pleasure out of openly defying Anders in front of the town, of exhibiting himself as proof that here, at least, was one man who refused to dance when Anders called the tune. In a way, it was as much a method of striking against Anders as the rustling; it undermined the respect, awe, and fear in which he was held by the townspeople.
The swinging doors of Crystal’s place closed behind his back. It was late enough now so that customers were in here and Crystal had come downstairs; decorous in a high-necked black dress, she moved from table to table, greeting, laughing, joking. When she happened to look up and saw Rae Marsh crossing the room, she put one hand to her breast quickly, then dropped it. As soon as she could, without seeming hasty, she came to where he had sat down at a vacant able.
“Whiskey?” the man from behind the bar asked, as she came up. Rae shook his head.
“No,” he said. “Coffee.” The man nodded and turned away. Crystal sat down across from him. Her face was very white.
“How did it go?” she asked tautly.
“All right, I guess,” Rae said.
“There wasn’t any trouble?”
“No. None to speak of.” He frowned. “What’s the matter with you?”
“Anders is in town. Over at the marshal’s office.”
Rae leaned back in the chair, took out his makings. “I don’t know that that’s got anything to do with me. I was here all night, wasn’t I?”
“Yes,” Crystal said. “Of course. Only I—I don’t like it.”
“If they got no evidence,” Rae said, “they can’t arrest me.”
“You don’t know Anders and the marshal.” Her index and middle finger linked themselves together. “They’re like that.”
“I don’t care what they’re like,” Rae said. “Far as they’re concerned, I’m clean.” He leaned forward. “As long as you stand by me.”
“You know I’ll stand by you,” Crystal said. There was an odd tremor in her voice. “All the same, it might be a good idea if you—”
“Run? Once I start that, I’ll have to keep it up.” Rae waited until the barman had set down the coffee and moved off. Crystal poured a cup and pushed it toward him. “Anyway, I’ve been thinking—”
“Thinking what?”
“Thinking that maybe I’m far enough along so I can go to court. That maybe—”
Boots on the sidewalk outside, the boots of several men, interrupted him. He turned quickly, hand sliding under the table where it could get to his gun if need be. The batwing doors vibrated behind Anders and a lanky man with a star on his vest and two other punchers behind them—and, at the very tail end of the procession, Will Marsh.
They stood there for a second or two, eyes sweeping the room as all sound in it died. Then, spotting Rae, they came toward him slowly, carefully, the rawboned marshal, a man of about forty, in front.
Anders stayed beside the marshal. The others, including Will, fanned out into a semi-circle.
Rae looked up at them coolly.
“All right, gentlemen,” he said softly. “What is it?”
The marshal had a hoarse, braying voice. “Rae Marsh, you’re under arrest.”
“If you’re smart,” Anders added, “you’ll come peaceable.” His mouth quirked wolfishly. “If you ain’t smart, we’ll take you out feet first.”
Rae kept his temper in check. His eyes went from the marshal to Anders and back again. “Under arrest,” he said. “Well, well. Any particular charges?”
“There’re charges,” Anders said.
“Let the lawman talk,” Rae snapped. “The charge is murder,” the marshal said.
Crystal let out a gasp. Rae felt his own blood seem to freeze. But he kept his voice steady, even. “Murder? What’re you talking about? I ain’t killed anybody. Who’s been murdered?”
“One of my hands,” Anders said. “A feller named Clyde Brennan. Bushwhacked. He must have been dropped by rustlers that run off some more of my beef last night. We found him out on the edge of my north range this mornin’. Buzzards led us to him.”
“Clyde Brennan,” Rae said. His brain was racing, even as his stomach knotted sickly. “That would be the hombre held the gun on me the day you tried to stomp me into the dirt.”
“Brennan disarmed you when you tried to shoot me,” Anders said coolly. “Yes. He’s the man. And you never forgot your grudge against him, did you?”
“Brennan’s dead?” Rae was still fighting for time.
“As a doornail.”
Clyde Brennan. Last night’s prisoner. The one Rae had striven to save, risked his own life for. And . . . he double-crossed me, Rae thought. Damn him. Damn Ford.
It was plain to him what had happened now. As soon as Rae had left Ford’s outfit and was away from the herd, Ford had sent a man after Brennan. Dead men can’t shoot off their mouths. . . .
Rae licked his lips. “I didn’t kill Clyde Brennan,” he said. “I haven’t killed anybody ... on this range.”
Crystal’s voice was surprisingly clear, steady. “You say Brennan was killed last night?”
“By the signs of it,” Will Marsh said. He moved forward a little, hands hooked in his crisscrossed shell belts.
“Then Rae Marsh couldn’t have done it,” Crystal said coolly.
“Why not, ma’am?” The marshal’s voice was respectful enough.
“Because,” Crystal said, “because he was . . . upstairs all last night.”
“He’s got a room up there?”
“Yes,” Crystal said. Her face was pale, a spot of color on each cheekbone.
“A man can go into a room and come out again,” Anders sneered. “You don’t know he was in his room.”
Crystal drew in a deep breath. “He wasn’t in his room,” she said.
Rae looked at her, startled. She was crucifying herself, smearing her reputation before all the town, with this lie designed to save him. And she . . . she didn’t even truly know whether he had killed Clyde Brennan or not. For all she knew, he might be guilty of the murder. Yet she would still go this far to save him. . . . Something clenched inside Rae. “Crystal—” he began.
“It’s the truth,” Crystal said. “I’ll swear to it.”
“Hush,” Rae said. “Hush, Crystal.” He took his right hand from under the table, slowly, cautiously. With equal slowness, he got to his feet. His eyes swept over them for a long second before he spoke. “I’ll tell you again. I didn’t kill Clyde Brennan. You got a warrant?”
“Warrant,” Anders jeered. “Who’s going to ride all the way to Grand River City to git a warrant? There ain’t no judge in Bent’s Crossin’.”
“Then you’re arrestin’ me illegal. Suppose . . .” His hands were high, his voice cool. “Suppose I won’t come in?”
“You’ll come,” Anders said, “or we’ll take you. Eh, Will?”
Will Marsh stepped around to confront Rae. His thin face was white, his eyes feverish with excitement. He looked like a child playing with his father’s guns, Rae thought. His voice shook with stress; Rae saw immediately that Anders had been working on him all morning.
“You’ll come,” Will parroted his stepbrother. “Don’t you forget, I’m half owner of Circle M. Clyde Brennan was one of my riders. You’ll come in or I’ll take you myself.”
The flare of hatred for Anders that rose in Rae then was almost too great to contain. But the man was smart all right—oh, he was clever as a lobo wolf. Use Will to make the arrest, whip him up until the kid was half-crazy with excitement. And Anders knowing all the time that Rae would hold his hand, not go up against his half brother.
He was whipsawed, and there was nothing he could do. “All right,” he heard himself say, still with that surprising coolness. “All right, I’ll come in.”
Crystal rose from her chair. “I swear to you—” Her voice shook.
“Hush, Crystal,” Rae said again, and he raised his hands.
Anders gave a grunt of satisfaction and moved in quickly, fishing the gold-worked Colt from Rae’s holster. He looked at it and then at Crystal, his mouth twisting. Then he tossed it to Will. “Hang on to this. I want it for a souvenir.”
“Cleve Anders,” Crystal said quietly, but with an undertone of dreadful hatred, “as long as there’s breath in you, you had better be afraid of me . . .”
“I’m not afraid of any woman,” Anders grinned. “Or in your case, maybe the word slut suits better.”
Rae tensed; a gun muzzle rammed his back. “Stand hitched,” the marshal grunted. “That’s enough, Cleve.”
“Always like to give things their right name,” Anders said. He whirled. “Okay, it’s enough of palaver. Let’s take him over and lock him up. Only it’s a damn shame we can’t hang the skunk right now. Clyde Brennan was a good man.”
“Anders,” Rae said in a tone so soft it was hardly audible, “you may not be afraid of Crystal, but you had better be afraid of me. Because now, if I ever git the chance, I’ll blow a hole in you on sight.”
“Buddy, you’re goin’ where you won’t blow no holes in nothin’.” Anders said. He pulled his gun and rammed it hard into Rae’s side. With a big hand he gave Rae a shove that nearly rocked him off his feet. “Git movin.”
It was midweek and early in the day and Rae Marsh was the only tenant of the small, tight jail tacked on as a lean-to behind the marshal’s office. As the procession, Anders in front, then Rae, then the marshal and Will, both with drawn guns, entered the office, a burly, black-bearded man got to his feet from where he had been dozing in a tilted-back chair in the corner. He was almost apelike in build, freakishly long arms suspending his ham-sized hands at the level of his knees. His hair was a dirty-looking black shag that hung tousled over a low forehead. There was a star on his shirt.
“Ya got him, huh?” His voice was a thick rumble.
“We got him, Boze.” Anders’ voice rang with triumph. “Now it’s up to you to see he don’t git away. You sabe?”
Boze grinned, revealing yellow teeth. “They don’t nobody leave thisahere jail until they’re turned loose er stretch rope. Don’t worry, Mister Anders, Boze ain’t never lost a prisoner.” One big hand reached out, seized Rae by the slack of the back of his shirt. “’Sides, I always kinda liked Clyde Brennan. Git in thar, you!” He shoved Rae through a cell door with such force that Rae lurched all the way across the tiny space and slammed into the log wall. Boze clanged shut the steel-barred door and turned a big key in the padlock that fastened it. “Don’t you worry none at all, Mr. Anders. He’ll stay here long as you want ’im.”
“See that he does.” Anders fished in his pocket; a gold double eagle glittered in the air briefly and Boze caught it. “The day we take him out an’ hang him, there’s another one just like it,” Anders said.
“That’ll sure be a fine day,” Boze said.
The marshal looked from Boze to Anders. “Cleve,” he said, “the town pays Boze.”
“Not enough to keep him awake twenty-four hours a day,” Anders said. “That’s how I want this lousy murderer watched.”
The marshal made a hoarse, disgusted sound. “All right.”
Anders looked at him, a faint grin on his face. “You don’t sound happy, Ira. What’s the matter? Ain’t you forgot somethin’?”
“I ain’t forgot anything,” the marshal snapped.
“Oh, yeah you have. You forgot I’m Cleve Anders. That’s a bad thing for a man to forgit. Especially when he holds public office in Bent’s Crossing.”
The marshal had the look of a man trying to gather the remnants of his manhood. “You never helped me in no election. It was John Marsh—”
“But John Marsh is dead,” Anders said coldly. “And I’m the he-coon in Fletcher’s Hole now. And that’s somethin’ you don’t ever want to forgit, Ira—not ever.” His eyes locked with those of the marshal; the lawman met them only for an instant and then turned away.
“We’ll take good care of him,” he muttered.
“I don’t want you to take good care of him,” Anders grinned. “I want you to make life miserable fer him. But keep him locked up.” He laughed. “Come on, Will. We done a good mornin’s work. I’ll stand the bunch of you to a drink.”
“I got things to do here,” the marshal said.
Anders frowned. “I swear, Ira, you’re gittin’ hard to live with. Didn’t you hear me say I’d stand you to a drink?”
The marshal raised a hand and dropped it. “Oh . . . hell, all right.” He followed as they all filed out, leaving Rae and Boze alone.
Rae looked around him at the cell.
Its walls were of square-hews, close-fitted logs, each a full twelve inches through, with no gaps between them. A tiny window, not more than eight inches by eight inches, had been notched out at a height well above a man’s head; it was the only break in that solid wall. The floor was of rock slabs sunk deep in dirt, and the hand-made cell door was a massive affair with a giant padlock through a hasp guaranteeing that only a key would open it. There was a slop bucket and a couple of filthy blankets in one corner on the floor, no other furnishings.
And Anders was worried enough about his escaping from this escape-proof hole to pay a man twenty dollars to keep constant watch on him! For the first time Rae realized just how afraid Anders was of him. . . .
But that was small consolation now. He began to pace the narrow confines of the cell like some captured animal. He forgot Anders in the bitterness of self-disgust and self-hatred with which he lashed himself.
He had been a fool, a first-class fool all along. A fool to try to take on an outfit like Circle M; a fool to trust an outlaw like Tom Ford. Only one good thing had come out of all this mess—Crystal. As he thought how she had lied, sacrificing her reputation, to save him, he stopped pacing, filled for a moment with a warmth of a kind that was strange to him. If she had gone that far for him, maybe she was not quite so indifferent to him after all. Maybe he even dared hope—
Hope? He jeered at himself for thinking the word. Hope? Locked up in an escape-proof hole? With Anders determined that he would hang? And with Anders drawing water enough so that any trial would be only a formality? Hope? He cursed himself under his breath.
“I wish you’d stop that damn pacin’,” Boze growled from outside the cell door. He had dragged his chair around to where he could see everything that went on in Rae’s cell, and there was a sawed-off double-barreled shotgun cradled in one long arm. “It makes me jumpy.”
Rae’s bitterness welled over. “You go to hell,” he snapped.
Boze got slowly up out of the chair, his little black eyes glittering. “Now, friend,” he growled, “you done let yourself in fer trouble, talkin’ that way to me. I don’t let no prisoner in this here calaboose speak disrespectful to Boze. I reckon you got to be taught a lesson.” He cocked the shotgun. Holding it in one hand, his finger on the trigger, he fished a key from his pocket. Grinning through his beard, he unlocked the cell door.
“You wouldn’t be smart to jump me,” he growled. “It wouldn’t take but one little jerk of my finger t’ spray this cell with enough lead to cut you plumb in two.” Fumbling behind his back, he re-locked the cell. “Now,” he said, advancing on Rae, “turn around and stand up there in the corner, like a little boy’s been bad in school.”
Rae just stood there. He was half on the verge of making a desperate try. But the twin bores of that shotgun advancing on him brought him back to sanity. He wouldn’t have a chance.
“Didn’t you hear me?” Boze grated. “I said, into that corner. Face first.” He made a thrusting motion with the shotgun. Rae saw little flecks of froth and spittle at the corners of his mouth, wetting his beard. There was a glitter in his eyes that was far from sane. He was aching, Rae realized, to use that shotgun, and if he did, far from being reprimanded, Anders would probably reward him.
Slowly, tensely, Rae turned, facing into the corner.
“Fine,” Boze grunted. “Now jest stand there. Real still—”
Rae almost screamed with pain then. Boze had reversed the shotgun, slammed the butt of it with terrific force just over Rae’s right kidney. His legs sagged, he tried to twist, but then the gun butt slammed him on the other side and the room spun and whirled crazily. He felt his knees crumpling.
Then he was on all fours on the floor. It was all he could do to keep from sobbing in agony.
“Mebbe that’ll teach yuh to listen when I talk,” Boze said, his voice rich with satisfaction. Dimly, Rae heard the cell door slam behind him, the key turn in the lock. “It just don’t pay to be disrespectful to Boze. . . .”
Rae stayed there on hands and knees for a long time, deathly sick. At last he crawled across the cell and collapsed on the filthy blankets. It seemed forever before the pain began to ebb, his swirling head to clear. As rationality returned, he made one vow. If he ever got a chance at Boze, he would show the jailer no more mercy than Boze had shown him.