SHERIFF COPE WAS in a better mood that afternoon than he’d been in for weeks. He attributed it to the fact that he’d picked Buck Halliday as a troublemaker from the start and was successful in making him move on. That Halliday had killed a man meant little to him—there was enough evidence to back Halliday’s claim that it was self-defense. Whether he was implicated in the return to town of the wounded Kirk Nesbitt, was yet to be resolved.
Nesbitt, so far, had not been able to shed any light on who had shot him. But since Halliday had taken the sheriff’s advice and left town, he felt there was no rush to solve the riddle, at least until Nesbitt’s fate was determined. The thought that disturbed him most was that Halliday might have spoken the truth about the shooting in the saloon and that he had, in fact, been mistaken for Nesbitt.
Cope discounted the idea that the three men in the card game five years ago had returned to avenge their friend’s death. The sheriff’s memory was not all that reliable, but as far as he could recall, the man Halliday had killed in the saloon bore little resemblance to any of that trio. Until that third man was found, there was little he could do.
He stepped off the boardwalk, meaning to pay Nesbitt another visit. He still wanted to ask him a few questions. If Nesbitt was able to give him even a loose description, he could at least mount a search and go after the would-be killer. That was what the town would expect ... and that was what he would give it. If he ran down the assassin, on top of getting rid of Halliday, there would be no telling how tall he would stand in this town.
“Keep walking straight ahead, Sheriff.”
Cope drew to an abrupt halt on recognizing the voice, chilled by the knowledge that Halliday had returned. He spun on his heel and looked into Halliday’s expressionless eyes.
“I thought I told you to—”
“Hap Mooney’s dead, Sheriff.”
Halliday walked on, reached the boardwalk outside the doctor’s residence, and waited for the crimson-faced Cope to join him.
“You sure? Where’d it happen?”
“On the trail out of town. Before he died, he told a passing cowboy who did it. I came back to pass on the message. It concerns Nesbitt, and maybe you.”
For the first time since the two men had met, Cope saw a deadly, dangerous look in Halliday’s eyes.
“Give me the name.”
“I can’t ... yet. But I need you with me. I’ve got something to do and I don’t want a half-baked lawman getting in my way and messing things up. When I’ve done what I have to, I’ll get out of your hair ... permanently.”
“When you’ve done what?” Cope asked, struggling to hold his temper in check.
“You’ll see.”
“You can’t hold on to that sort of information from a duly-elected peace officer, Halliday ... even you should know that. Tell me the man’s name or when this is over, I’ll see that you stand trial.”
Halliday knew the lawman spoke the truth. He had little option but to give in to the man’s request.
“Dolan.”
Cope frowned heavily. “Never heard the name.”
“Could be he’s masquerading as a cowpuncher on the Nesbitt ranch. It doesn’t matter much now. I want to talk to Nesbitt, get a few things straight and then go look for that feller. Whatever the old man was, he didn’t deserve to be shot down like a dog.”
Cope licked nervous lips. He held Halliday’s stare locked in his own, and despite renewed feelings of misgiving, he said:
“You want to make a report, Halliday, I’ll look into the matter. But you’re not goin’ to walk around this town takin’ the law into your own hands ... not while I’m wearin’ the badge. Got it?”
Halliday brushed the lawman aside and walked up the path that led to the doctor’s front door. He was already on the porch when Cope caught up with him, but before the lawman could say another thing, Halliday had entered the house.
Met by the old doctor, he asked to see Kirk Nesbitt, then followed the doctor to a back room.
Nesbitt was covered with a sheet and his face was so pale it was difficult to see where the sheet ended and the man’s face began. Halliday drew up a chair, rested a foot on the seat and looked questioningly back at the medic.
“He regains consciousness now and again. The last time was two hours ago. If it’s important I don’t think it will hurt to try to rouse him,” the old medic said.
“Will he make it, doc?” Halliday asked.
Cope had come into the room but remained near the doorway, feet planted wide as if determined to block Halliday’s exit. He remained silent.
The medic shrugged lean shoulders and said calmly:
“He might. He lost a lot of blood and infection had set in before I could get to him. His condition, for a man of his age, isn’t what it should be, but I guess we can’t blame him for that.”
While they were talking, Nesbitt’s eyes flicked open. He became slightly agitated when he realized he was not alone, then relaxed when he recognized Buck Halliday. His left hand moved a couple of inches as Halliday bent down beside him.
“It’s me, Kirk, Buck Halliday.”
“Goin’ home ... shot at ... red-haired man ... mean ... big.”
“Hap gave me your message, Kirk.”
“Where is he?” Nesbitt asked.
Halliday was afraid to give him the news, but when he looked at the medic, the old doctor nodded his head in approval.
“Hap was killed on his way back to town.”
“Who’d do that ... to a harmless old coot like that?” Nesbitt sighed and closed his eyes.
“Hap said he recognized the man ... said his name is Dolan.”
Nesbitt moved his fingers but his hand remained on the bed. He opened his eyes again and looked about the room.
“Do you know that name, Kirk?” Halliday pressed. “Was he in prison with you, by any chance?”
“Can’t ... recall it.”
Then Cope eased Halliday aside and said:
“Some people are claimin’ your stepbrother is mixed up in this, Kirk. Along with your fiancée. They figure he wants the ranch for himself, including your girl, instead of being happy with what he’s been left.”
A deep frown furrowed Nesbitt’s brow and he shook his head again.
“Not ... Jane. She wouldn’t. Jerome ... isn’t like that, either. You’ve got this ... all wrong, Sheriff.”
“Three hired guns were sent to cut you down on your first day out of prison, Kirk. They mistook Halliday for you, but their intent was the same. Then, when they missed Halliday in Dingwall’s saloon, the third must have discovered their mistake. Guess you’re being shot like this has seen them get what they came after.”
“I still ... won’t believe ... Jane or Jerome ... are behind it.”
“That’s the way it looks to me, Kirk,” Halliday interjected. “The best way to find out if there’s any truth behind it, is to ride out to your place and have it out with Jerome. When I show up there, I have the feelin’ Dolan will be there and might just try to take another shot at me. I’ll have Sheriff Cope along, and between us we should be able to catch him before he tries to kill me again.”
Doc Carstairs started fussing around, worried when he could see his patient was getting agitated.
But Halliday had already seen the signs for himself in the young man’s face.
“You take things easy, Kirk. We’ll do all that we can. Hap was an old friend of mine. I’ll be doing it as much for him as for you.”
With that, Halliday headed for the door, crossed the street and went down the alley beside the saloon. Cope followed him, hurrying to catch up. Halliday stopped on the track leading to the livery stables and said:
“You better stay close, Sheriff, because I have an idea the killer will come after me again and I don’t want you chargin’ me with murder.”
“Jerome Nesbitt?” Cope queried. “Who else stands to gain by Kirk’s death?”
“I still haven’t discounted the theory that maybe that dead feller’s friends are trying to avenge his death. That card game has all the hallmarks of a setup. By killing Dean Jepson, Kirk only kept himself alive for so long. He was supposed to die in that shoot-out. Now he’s out and about, he’s a claimant to a fine piece of land, isn’t he? And to a beautiful young woman to boot.”
“You’ve met Jane?”
“Not yet.”
“But you aim to,” Cope suggested.
Halliday looked toward the livery stables. “If I aim to find out who’s been taking potshots at me, I figure that’s a certainty. So go get your horse, Sheriff. I’ll need you to show me the way.” When the lawman hesitated, Halliday grinned crookedly and said:
“You clean up this mess and the town’ll give you polish to brighten your badge. Leave it all to me, and they’ll start wondering how much backbone their lawman has got.”
Halliday moved off, leaving Cope to think things over. He knew it wouldn’t take the lawman long ... and it didn’t.
Half a mile from town, Cope caught up with him, and despite brooding looks and plenty of grumbling, led the way toward the Nesbitt ranch at an easy lope.
Leon Cope was in the cover of a stand of trees when a group of cowboys appeared on the rise a mile from the Nesbitt ranch. Buck Halliday sat his sorrel alongside him and waited to hear Cope’s impressions.
“Just the regular bunch, as I see them, Halliday.”
“You recognize them?”
“To a man. Some of them have spent the night in my cells after a rowdy Saturday night. Nothing much worse than that.”
“Dolan’s not with them?”
Cope flicked a sharp glance Halliday’s way, “I just said that—”
“What about Jerome?”
“He’s not with them, either. Anyway, Jerome doesn’t go out riding with his men. Eatin’ dust isn’t one of his favorite pastimes.”
“You don’t like him, either?”
Cope shifted uneasily in his saddle. In the past, he had always kept his opinion of people to himself ... especially important people like Jerome Nesbitt. But now he saw no reason why he shouldn’t speak his mind.
“He’s got too high an opinion of himself.”
“Was it you who discovered he tried to bribe a witness at Kirk’s trial?”
“It sure was.”
“How’d you get onto it?”
“It’s my job, remember?”
Halliday dropped a hand on his horse’s nose to quieten it as it pranced about a little at a noise from the undergrowth.
“Sheriff, you may not believe this, but I didn’t exactly have you tabbed as the smartest lawman on the frontier. Fact is, if your feet were any bigger, I figure you’d spend all your waking hours tripping over yourself.”
“Dammit, Halliday, who the hell—?”
“But,” Halliday continued, ignoring the interruption, “I’ll grant you’re honest, in a bumbling kind of way. You do your job to the best of your ability. However, can you honestly say a shrewd cattleman of the likes of Jerome Nesbitt couldn’t have got to those witnesses without you knowing it?”
Cope glared furiously at him. “I got wind of what he was up to and put a stop to it. I didn’t care if Kirk was his stepbrother or not.”
“What I’m trying to say, Sheriff, is maybe he let you get wind of what he was up to,” Halliday suggested. “That’d make him look good in the eyes of the town, and more importantly, in Kirk’s eyes, wouldn’t it? If that was the way it was, it would give him a free hand in the running of the ranch and allow him to have his stepbrother’s fiancée by his side, without anybody being suspicious.”
Cope gaped at him. “You mean—?”
“It’s just another idea that’s been floating around my head. But so far I’ve nothing to go on but my suspicions. Let’s go down there and have a talk to those boys.”
Halliday rode out of the trees and Cope was quick to follow him. As soon as the Nesbitt hands saw them, they drew rein and bunched up together. Cope told Halliday that it might be best if he did the talking, and Halliday was keen to leave it to him. After a moment of heavy scrutiny, he said sternly:
“I’m out here on official business, boys, and I want all the cooperation I can get from you.”
The men exchanged glances and showed more interest in Halliday than in their sheriff.
“I’m looking for a feller named Dolan.”
More glances were exchanged but no comment was forthcoming from any of the men.
“He’s a big man with red hair and heavy sideburns. He’s mighty capable with a gun, too ... from behind cover.”
This brought frowns to some of their faces, deeper interest to others.
“So what’s this feller’s part in it, Sheriff?” one man asked.
“Why doesn’t he tell us?” another put forward.
Cope looked quickly at Halliday, who said:
“I used to know an old man named Hap Mooney ... the same old feller who worked with you recently.”
“You sayin’ old Hap’s dead?” the first man asked.
“Dolan killed him. Hap identified him before he died. There’s no mistake Dolan’s our man—”
“Now hold on, Halliday,” Cope broke in, “that’s not exactly true. We’ve only got that cowpoke’s word that it was Dolan.”
“Hap’s last words as he was dying was that Dolan was his killer. That’s good enough for me and I reckon it should be good enough for you.”
“The poor old buzzard,” one man said. “But I cain’t say as how I’m all that surprised. The way he carried on, it was clear that none of his trails would be easy.”
Halliday studied the man, a rangy individual whose battered hat threw a deep shadow over his well-tanned face. Yet his eyes were somehow youthful, as if the strain of hard living hadn’t changed his easygoing attitude to life.
“Do you know Dolan?” Halliday asked him.
The cowboy shook his head. Undeterred, Halliday added:
“He rode with two sidekicks, a fat man named Jase and a mean cuss named Bart. Between them, they spent most of their time trying to run down Kirk Nesbitt. You probably know Kirk is out of jail after five years. What you might not know is that he’s also been shot and might not pull through. A bushwhacker’s bullet got him in the chest when he was on his way back here to the ranch.”
There was a rumble of talk which Halliday interrupted by saying:
“Dolan killed Hap and I figure he shot Kirk, too. That’s why we’re lookin’ for him now.”
“For Hap’s sake, I hope you catch up with him, Halliday,” an older man said vehemently as he puffed on a corncob pipe.
“Can you help?”
“No way that I can see.” He looked at the others, and when they offered no comment, he shook his head sadly. “We’ll keep our eyes open for a feller like you described. But hell, we don’t get to town more’n for a couple days a month.”
“Then you haven’t sighted him out at the ranch?” Halliday asked.
Cope was twisting in his saddle, straining at the bit to buy in.
“Ain’t nobody called Dolan signed on thet I can remember,” said the pipe smoker. “And I been with the Nesbitt outfit way back to when Henry was alive and runnin’ things.”
Halliday looked down at his saddle horn, feeling the trail had petered out. Not for a moment did he think any of these men were lying to him.
“Well, thanks for your time,” he said.
He moved back to Cope but still within earshot of the Nesbitt crew and shrugged. Straightening in the saddle, Cope muttered:
“I could have told you that you were barking up the wrong tree. Jerome might be full of himself but he’s never struck me as a killer.”
“There’s a lot of land, money and a beautiful woman at stake, Sheriff. He could have hired those three.”
Cope’s face reddened but a voice from the rear of the cowboys stopped him from giving Halliday the sharp end of his tongue:
“Wait on there.” He came through a gap made for him and studied Halliday grimly. “Hired guns, you say? Hired by Jerome?”
“It’s a possibility,” Halliday allowed.
The man was thickset with a round, moon face. He looked thoughtfully at three men alongside him, then sought out another at the rear.
“Luke, didn’t we see three sneaky-lookin’ jaspers leavin’ Nesbitt’s house one night about a week ago?”
“We sure did,” came the quick reply.
The thickset man looked to Halliday again.
“We were looking for Luke’s stray dog. The cook generally feeds it scraps at his kitchen door. We were approaching that door when we seen three men leaving the house the back way. Jerome was with them and we heard him tell the trio that he wanted ‘no mistakes.’”
Halliday sat up straighter in the saddle and looked evenly at Cope, who snapped:
“That doesn’t prove anythin’, Halliday. Hell, sayin’ that could mean almost anythin’. What it does prove though, is that Jerome’s a mighty careful man.”
“Sneaky, too,” Luke said. “There was not a lamp on in the house when Jerome showed those fellers the way out. It was dark in the yard and being newcomers, I’m sure they would’ve appreciated seein’ where they were treadin’.”
Halliday nodded his thanks to the pair, then kneed his sorrel beside Cope’s and said:
“Three men, visiting late at night, sneaking off with a mission to accomplish and with a warning to not make any mistakes. And the time’s right—a week ago, about the time Julie overheard three men in her father’s saloon.”
Cope’s face tightened. He looked sullenly at Luke and the thickset cowboy, then turned his horse.
Halliday waved a farewell to the men and added, before heeling his horse into a run:
“Whatever work you’ve got lined-up for the rest of the day, make it last.”
Then he headed across the range toward a line of hills toward the Nesbitt house. He rode hard, leaving the sheriff behind, but when he topped the last rise and saw the house below him, he drew rein and waited for Cope to catch up. Looking down, he said:
“The pieces of the puzzle are starting to fit together, Sheriff. The way I see it, Jerome arranged for Kirk to meet up with trouble in that card game five years ago. I’m not sure that he got the right result, and maybe Kirk getting jailed wasn’t all he had hoped for—”
“All supposition, Halliday,” Cope growled, unconvincingly.
“He also made himself look good in front of the town by openly trying to bribe a witness. Maybe he knew they wouldn’t accept a bribe, and maybe he also knew why they wouldn’t.”
“Why would that be?” Cope asked sourly.
“Because he hired them in the first place.”
“There’s no proof—”
“Kirk told me that when he was in jail, he mentioned to another inmate that the reason for him being locked away was because he had shot a man named Dean Jepson for cheating at cards. It turned out that this inmate knew Jepson and swore that nobody, certainly not an amateur like Nesbitt, could ever expose Jepson as a cheat unless Jepson, and here’s the point, wanted to be found out.”
When Cope gaped at him now, Halliday continued, speaking very quietly, as if still putting the final pieces of the puzzle together.
“Those three left Crag Creek—probably for good. When Kirk was ready for release, Jerome hired another trio to kill him on his way home. So far they’ve botched about every move they’ve made ... except for killing poor old Hap.”
Cope wiped the sweat from his face, then sat shaking his head. “Don’t think any court in the land could convict anyone if that was the only proof you had.”
“Having got rid of Hap and with Kirk not expected to live, Dolan’s most likely in another state by now.”
“So how do you expect to get any proof for all your theories? If we waltz straight in and make all these accusations against Jerome, he’s either going to laugh in our faces or hire someone to put us away.”
“I hope that’s exactly what he tries. If he does ... we’ll be ready,” Halliday said, moving his sorrel down the slope toward the back of the Nesbitt house.