DOC, yuh might as well come clean,” Reb told Lantry soberly. “What do yuh know about this business?”
The lights and the activity of the Cameron ranch were far behind. They were riding over the dark range in the crisp, star-lit night.
“I don’t know anything about it!” Doc flared up. “Yuh seen where I was all evenin’.” He sounded injured, and at the same time argumentative.
Santee beheld Lantry’s belated appearance at the party in a new light, or he thought he did. He had long since learned that hardly a move the man made was as innocent as it appeared. Doc’s protestations now didn’t even make him hesitate. They rasped and exasperated him. But Doc headed off his questions, denying all knowledge of what had taken place at the C 8 bed grounds. His attitude was that somebody else had beaten them to a good thing.
“Yuh sound mighty interested, now it’s all over,” he sneered, unable to resist the opportunity for so telling a thrust.
Reb ignored it. He didn’t see fit to explain that of all the chances for rustling in the Basin, the beef herd belonging to Ronda Cameron’s father would have been his last choice.
“It don’t matter who done this,” he declared bluntly. “They was damn careless to go killin’ a man.”
Doc reserved his opinion, turning Reb off with a growl.
Ghost Creek was reached in a silence fraught with antagonism. Reb wasn’t done yet. He proved it by making his own investigations. In the ranch yard he found fresh droppings and sign enough to tell him that riders had been there recently, four or five in number.
“So this is why yuh turned up at Cameron’s party—an hour late! Damn yuh, Lantry, yuh lied to me, an’ now I know it.” In the light of the lantern, Reb’s grin was conspicuous by its absence. “Who was they?” he broke off.
Doc glowered. Reb had him cornered and he knew it. “The Logans,” he muttered.
“The Sundance Kid an’ his crowd?” Santee had not expected that answer. He was surprised, and disgusted too. “Yuh knew they was doin’ it, an’ yuh covered ’em ... . Come on; tell the rest of it!” he grated.
Sullenly Lantry admitted the truth. The Logans, Bob Leigh, Flat Nose George Curry and Harry Lonabaugh had pulled in a few minutes after Reb left, with plans to run off the Cameron steers. They were driving them into the Lost Cabin wilderness. It would be daylight before Cameron could hope to pick up the trail, Doc pointed out. That would give the Kid and his friends all the time they needed.
Doc’s attitude, as he explained all this, was one of angry indignation. Reb’s cool domination of the affair rankled in him, a cankering worm burrowing deeper and deeper. “What the hell’s eatin’ yuh?” he snapped, as he concluded. “If somebody else makes a haul, an’ folks know our hands are clean, that’ll make it easier fer us later on!”
Reb was not satisfied with any such superficial reading of the situation. The openly voiced suspicions against Ike Lucas and Stony Tapper had told him that Cameron and his men would ride to their place and question them. He said so.
“Yuh was free with them two, an’ now they got a line on us,” he charged. “How do yuh know they won’t steer that posse over here to save their own hides?”
Doc scoffed the suggestion away, or tried to. But Reb knew that Tapper and Lucas hated him; they would do anything in their power to strike back. He was disinclined to take any chances.
“I’m goin’ to ride to their place right now an’ have it out with ’em,” he decided with characteristic promptness.
“Lot uh sense in that, ain’t there?” Lantry blasted him sarcastically. “Yuh ought to git there jest in time to meet Jube Cameron.” His tone said there was little doubt what would happen in that event.
Reb had already taken that possibility into consideration. He knew he would have to reach the little spread in the Owl Creek Mountains before the cattlemen arrived there, and get away, too. If Cameron took his men to the bed grounds at Upper Shoshone Meadows before he did anything else, there was a chance.
“When Jube gits up there, he won’t find anything but the leavin’s of Lucas an’ Tapper,” he said with grim assurance.
Lantry’s thin lips curled in a scornful smile. He offered no further deterrent, nor would Santee have listened to any. He was already busy with hasty preparations for getting a start.
A few minutes later he pulled away from Ghost Creek on a fresh horse. The early morning hours held a steely edge of frost. Reb let the pony warm up and then struck out at a distance-eating pace. He knew where Tapper and Lucas’s place was. It had been pointed out to him by Lantry himself.
Following a ridge up the flank of the Owl Creeks, he kept a sharp lookout. There was every likelihood that Cameron had dispatched a handful of men up here direct. Reb had no intention of showing himself to anyone but the men he had come to see.
Dawn light streaked the sky as he drew out at the head of a gulch and entered the fringes of pine and aspen. The shack occupied by Lucas and Tapper was not far ahead now. He approached it cautiously, making sure that no one had been before him. The way seemed clear.
The pair had not gotten up yet. No smoke curled from the rusted tin pipe jutting above the roof of the weathered shack. The door was propped shut from the inside. Reb battered it with the barrel of his six-gun.
A groaning yawn sounded from within. After a moment, “Who’s there?” came in a gruff voice. Reb had no desire to be greeted with a gun barrel stuck through a crack. He banged again. Feet thumped; someone muttered curses; a stick clattered. The door creaked back.
There was a momentary silence. Then: “Whut in hell’re you doin’ here?”
Stony Tapper stood in the opening in his stocking feet, his hair tousled, the clothes he had not bothered to remove all awry on him. In that first instant of recognition his eyes had blazed up, then were as swiftly veiled. His tone was hostile.
Santee wasted no time in explanations. “Get ready to pull out of here, both of yuh,” he directed curtly.
Tapper’s swarthy face gradually set in lines of opposition. Behind him Ike Lucas burst into invective, venting a savage morning temper. He had taken in the import of that brief, distinct order, as had his partner; recognized the voice that delivered it.
Reb pushed into the shack to have them both under his eye. Tapper showed resistance. It only earned him a thrust that sent him reeling back. He caught himself and crouched, his lips working, his thought darting frantically to his gun, hanging on a broken chair ten feet away.
“Do we have this all over again?” said Reb. He was grinning now, eyes a-dance; but there was something wolfish about him that counseled caution.
The two heeded it. Ike Lucas had not made a move, arrested on the edge of his bunk, shivering slightly at the rawness of the air.
He said: “Where d’you git off, tellin’ us what t’ do?”
Reb surveyed them both alertly.
“Are yuh goin’, or not?” His soft words made them jump; but after a moment’s recovery, Tapper jerked out intolerantly:
“No!” He glared an inarticulate hatred, and added: “Did Lantry send yuh to us, or was it yore own brainstorm?”
Reb read instantly the set of the wind. The pair were convinced that Doc Lantry and himself wanted the Basin all to themselves. Their first impulse was to resist eviction for any such reason.
“If it’ll help yuh any to know, Jube Cameron’s beef herd was run off last night, an’ a man killed,” he told them.
“An’ so yuh want us to ride away with the blame, eh?”
It was Tapper who spoke; or rather, snarled. Reb turned his blue eyes on him, and his smile broadened. “Yuh can ride away with it, or yuh can take it here. Tapper, no less than five of the boys at Cameron’s party voiced suspicions of you two. They’re on the peck now. Prove to ’em yuh know no thin’ about last night’s work, an’ there’s still a few activities you’ve got left to explain away. You know better’n I do whether yuh can or not. They’ll be here before yuh have time to agree on a story, if yuh don’t make it fast.”
Ike Lucas sputtered into noisy vituperation, but Stony Tapper was the dominant one of the two. A look of shrewdness crept into his hard features as he made decisive rejoinder:
“It don’t go over, Santee. We’re wise to yore game—all of it. Yo’re tryin’ to put us away, an’ I will give it to yuh, yuh come flat out with it. But I reckon we’ve got ’nough on you an’ Lantry to return the favor.” He had become defiant. “Why, dammit, it’s no news to me that yo’re hooked up with the Sundance Kid’s crowd I Mebbe Jube Cameron’ll be interested to know that, an’ a few other things, like where them hosses come from he was buyin’ off of yuh.”
Reb began to sweat. Would these men prove too obstinate? If they remained now to meet Cameron’s men, the course they would take was certain. He saw with real annoyance that in Stony Tapper he had a certain shrewd intelligence to cope with. He made an effort to be equal to it. His laugh was jarring.
“I should’ve thought yuh had Harve Logan’s part in this figured out the first time I told yuh where to get off,” he responded coolly. “Shore I belong to his crowd.” He felt safe in making the statement, for it was pretty widely known among the night-riding gentry that a yeast of rapid growth had begun to work through the Wild Bunch, as the gang headed by the Logans and their friends was called. In careless words, Reb elaborated on his connection with them. “Since yo’re so wise about other things,” he wound up, his voice thin with the barely-veiled threat, “mebbe buckin’ me won’t learn yuh much till it’s too late.” He affected an indifference to the outcome that was telling in its boldness.
Lucas and Tapper stared at him intently. Reb had put another face on the situation in a hurry. They had no desire to be marked for extermination by the Wild Bunch. Although nothing of the kind had been put into words, they were keenly alive to its possibility.
Lucas floundered up from his bunk, haste in his actions. He pulled his boots on without a word, and Tapper followed suit. It was the latter who stole a glance out of the window. He had not forgotten Santee’s warning—disbelieved at the time it was given—that Cameron’s riders would soon arrive. He suddenly did not want anything to do with them, bereft as he was of the story he would have told.
Reb, for his part, was ready to withdraw without further parley. He could only hope that the seed he had sown would bear fruit. The stubbornness of these two had already consumed more time than he could well spare.
“Yuh can make up yore own minds what you’ll do,” he said, turning toward the door. “I’m goin’.” He stepped out.
He was back in an instant. “An’ I wouldn’t waste no time, either, if I was you,” he flung at them. “They’re comin’ at yuh right now.”
Still without anything to say, Tapper and Lucas hustled through the door for a look. Santee didn’t have to point out the distant horsemen for them. Nor did the fact that these riders were converging on the place from both the south and west leave any doubt as to the nature of their errand.
“We better be leavin’,” Lucas exclaimed nervously, shooting a look at Tapper. Stony made answer by starting for the tumbledown corral. Stepping up on his own mount, Reb watched them saddle their horses. They were soon ready.
“Which way yuh ridin’, Santee?” Tapper snapped out as he swung aboard.
“With you,” Reb responded tersely. “D’yuh think I want to explain to them fellers why I got here first?”
There was no more to be said. Without delay they turned into a canyon and followed its winding course upward. Cameron’s men were several miles to the rear, but they had seen the hasty departure from the shack. There would be no time lost while they closed in and came on.
Reb prudently kept Tapper and Lucas ahead of him. He found himself in a position of double jeopardy. The last thing he could afford now would be to have the pursuing riders overhaul him. At the same time he was not entirely safe in the company of these two small-time rustlers. Ike Lucas, if not Tapper, would have no compunctions about shooting him out of the saddle. It was up to him to give the man no shadow of a chance.
For miles they were hard pressed. The posse had drawn up with surprising speed. The determination that drove this pursuit was not pleasant to contemplate. Lucas, at least, showed signs of cracking under the gruelling strain. “Gawd!” he burst out once. “Why’d we take it on the run? Mebbe we could’ve talked our way out. Blast you, Santee; yo’re to blame fer this!” He spat blistering oaths and screwed around in his saddle repeatedly, hampering his horse.
“Shut up an’ ride!” Reb told him, brutally brief.
Tapper unexpectedly seconded him in this. “There ain’t nothin’ to be gained by bellyachin’,” he averred.
The trail became rougher and rougher as they penetrated deep into the untracked wilds of the Owl Creek Mountains. Though it was not far behind, the pursuit had been lost to sight for several hours by the time Santee judged he could afford to pull away from the others.
He chose his opportunity with care. Ike Lucas presented no difficulties; prodded by fears, he pushed on with no regard for the saving of his horse. Tapper was more cautious, keeping reasonably close to Santee and a little ahead. Nevertheless he was unaware of what had taken place until Reb had been gone a good five minutes, swinging sharply aside on ground that was unlikely to show tracks, and striking away at right angles. Santee spent an anxious hour before he was sure he had flanked Cameron’s posse safely. Then he set his course in a wide curve back toward the Basin, taking his time now, but not relaxing his vigilance until there could be no question he was in the clear.
The sun swung low in the west when he rode up to the ranch on Ghost Creek. Doc Lantry met him, hawkfaced.
“Lord, yuh shore had me guessin’ when yuh didn’t come back,” he ejaculated his relief. “What happened up there?”
“Lucas and Tapper are ridin’,” Reb informed him easily. “They was pushed purty hard. I had to go with ’em a ways.”
Lantry stared, his face reddening. “They took out, when yuh told ’em to?” he demanded incredulously. “The damn fools! ... How’d yuh manage it, Reb?”
“I know how to manage in a pinch,” was Reb’s cool response. “It’s dog eat dog, in this game. A man’s got no place in it if he can’t take care of himself.”