BUCK HALLIDAY LAY on his back with his feet propped on a stall rail, staring at the dusty rafters above his head and the sunlight streaming through a thick lacework of cobwebs. He felt at peace with himself, or as much at peace with himself as he could ever be. Random Creek was nothing but trouble. However, in his own peculiar way, he felt it was a town he didn’t feel like leaving just yet—not with so many loose ends still untied.
He lay there and wondered what kind of man he was apart from being a drifter. He liked his life, and knew how to enjoy himself. He didn’t mind work, and as far as possible, he gave back to life as much as he got out of it. Yet trouble always seemed to dog his trails. He sighed wearily, getting no answer from the spiders or the raw sunlight.
The thunder of hoofbeats outside broke into his thoughts and he was instantly alert and up on one elbow, gun in hand. His sorrel moved restlessly, but when the sounds died, it returned to its feeding. Halliday rose, holstered his gun, brushed himself down and walked to the doors of the old barn. Through a crack in the wall, he saw a bunch of riders swing past the corral and head out across the prairie. The dust they’d lifted in the street hung thickly in the air, refusing to settle for some time.
Halliday returned to the stall and took a knife and a bar of soap from his saddlebag. He removed his shirt, wet the soap with whiskey and worked up a lather on his stubbled jaw. He’d had better shaves and cheaper ones, but under the circumstances, it would do.
Most of the bristles removed, he helped himself to a drink, a little more jerky, and was about to bed down to get some sleep when he heard a footfall outside the barn’s rear door.
Coming to his knees, he crouched behind the stall rails, pushing his gun between the two top rails. The door creaked open and he saw a slim white hand on the timber. Then a slender arm and finally a tense, young face appeared, framed by long, loose, black hair.
“Mr. Halliday?”
Halliday came to his feet, and slid his gun back into leather.
“Here,” he said.
She appeared startled and the tension in her face deepened. Halliday could see she was no more than five feet tall, rather slender, but every inch a woman.
“I’m Ike’s niece,” she said, and her voice was soft but surprisingly deep. She came toward him, smoothing down her skirt and fussing nervously with her hair.
Halliday came out of the stall and crossed to his sorrel. He put the soap, whiskey and the rest of the jerky back in the saddlebags together with his hunting knife, and studied her calmly for a moment.
“Did I frighten you?” the young woman asked.
“No, ma’am. I gave up being scared of your kind years ago.”
“My kind?” she asked, pouting a little.
Halliday gave her a pleasant grin. “Unexpected visitors, ma’am, especially pretty ones.”
She blushed a little but was not offended by his comment.
Halliday decided if she was in fact no more than a girl, she’d need little encouragement to become a disturbingly provocative woman.
“You said you’re Ike’s niece?”
“My uncle sent me here to tell you it’s all clear, except for Sheriff Pritchard. He said to tell you to come and he’ll buy you that drink.”
She paused, then looking at him with round-eyed, feigned innocence, went on to say;
“But then, you’re not scared of Sheriff Pritchard, are you, Mr. Halliday?”
“I can take lawmen or leave ’em, ma’am,” Halliday answered calmly, meaning it.
He had already decided that if Pritchard continued to resent his presence in town, it was his bad luck.
“They say you beat him up, Mr. Halliday. Nobody’s been able to do that since Lem’s been in office. And many have tried.”
Halliday shrugged and freed his sorrel, turned it, and slapped the saddle on its back. As he settled the saddle in position, the young woman moved closer to him, her perfume subtle and inviting.
“My name’s Sharon, Mr. Halliday.”
Halliday nodded and slapped his horse’s belly, making it exhale before tightening the cinch strap. Then he led it out of the stall.
“Uncle Ike wants you to come for dinner. Most of the others from the hill have ridden out. Maybe you saw them go.”
“I did.”
A crooked smile moved across her pert mouth and a gleam of amusement came into her eyes.
“I’m sure you don’t miss much, Mr. Halliday,” she said. “But I’m not so sure that what the men in the saloon are saying about you is true.”
“What are they saying, Sharon?”
She stood close to him, face suddenly grave again.
“That you beat up Lem and killed Jude Cassidy. A couple of the men who claim they’ve been places and seen things, said they’d never seen anybody as confident, or as fast, in all their lives.”
Halliday scrubbed a hand wearily across his neck. “That’s just talk, Sharon. Besides, they’ve got it in for me.”
“I don’t think so.”
“This Cassidy feller ... he popular in this town?”
“Jude was a foulmouthed, bad-mannered swine.”
“Will he be missed?”
“Not by me. His friends will make a great deal of noise, and they’ve already sworn to kill you if they meet up with you again. But all in all, Jude was just another of Denton’s hirelings. He’ll be easily replaced.”
“That’s the second time today I’ve heard that feller’s name.”
“Jay Denton.” Sharon frowned. “Are you really just a drifter who freed young Nathan even though you didn’t know what trouble he was in?”
“He looked pretty damn pathetic to me lashed to that corral rail while a crazed mob was off hanging his father. Why didn’t anybody else go to his aid?”
“Because Denton’s crowd tied him up and were about to hang Jake Birch. That’s why. Everybody knew that to free young Nathan would only be looking for trouble.” She lowered her eyes and toyed with the ribbon of her blouse for a moment, then stared hard at him. “And I guess if you’d known what you were getting yourself into, you’d have looked the other way, too, wouldn’t you?”
Halliday grinned until his silence caused her to answer her own question.
“I guess your silence means yes. You’re not all that big and brave, Mr. Halliday, no matter what they say.”
Halliday led his horse out the back way and looked in the direction of the cluster of houses and stores that made up Random Creek. He decided that maybe he had not looked deeply enough into this whole affair, and perhaps it was time he did.
He turned and studied the girl intently as she followed him through the doorway. The sunlight cut through her skirt and blouse outlining her slender, well-rounded body. He drew in a sharp breath as Sharon’s eyes met his. She had stopped just outside the doorway and held his gaze provocatively, as if completely aware of the emotions she was stirring up within him.
Several seconds passed and neither moved, until finally Sharon drew in a quick breath and asked;
“Well, Mr. Halliday?”
“If this was an auction, I’d bid as high as I could.”
“Bid for what?”
“Whatever was on offer.”
Color tinged her cheeks and her eyes flashed.
“I’m not for sale, Mr. Halliday.”
Halliday grinned and turned his horse’s head away, saying as he moved into the back street, “Just as you say, ma’am. But you ever change your mind, let me know.”
She moved ahead of him as he headed for the back stairway. “You sure have a hide, Mr. Halliday.”
He pulled on the reins, looked down at her and asked; “Anybody got claims on you, ma’am?”
“That is none of your business, nor will it ever be. I’d suggest you accept my uncle’s hospitality, make your peace with this town, then be on your way. This town has nothing for you.”
Halliday hitched his horse to the fence and made his way into the saloon through the back door. The saloon was packed with the four card tables occupied and men lined up along the length of the bar, while others were bunched together in small groups around the room. As he walked toward the counter, the noise gradually died so that by the time he had reached it, silence had settled.
Halliday knew every eye in the room was on him, so he put change on the bar top and stared straight at Old Ike. The barman’s eyes traveled over the room before he reached for a bottle and a glass and placed them on the counter, letting Halliday pour his own.
“Food okay?” Ike asked casually, picking up some coins.
“Fine.”
“Horse?”
“Rested, watered and fed.”
“Then you aim to be on your way?”
Halliday shrugged and sipped his drink. Further down the bar, a group of townsmen stared curiously at him, their drinks untouched in their hands.
“I’ll see how things turn out. Your niece told me to come here.”
The barman pursed his mouth and gave a slight shrug.
“You impressed just about everybody up on that hill, Halliday, with the exception of Jay Denton and his crowd, and Lem Pritchard, of course.”
“The sheriff around?”
“He’ll be in later. Comes in for an hour or so every night.”
“What about Denton’s men?”
“They won’t be in for at least two or three days. Lots of things happenin’ out on the range. A lot of men with small holdings have been moving out, some of those who’ve been here for a long time are thinkin’ about doing the same.”
“Times that tough?” Halliday asked, sipping his drink again.
“Nothin’ but dust, heat and flies. A rancher told me yesterday his herd has been halved, and if the dry keeps up for much longer, it’ll have to be halved again. If we don’t get rain soon, he’ll be busted.”
“How’s Denton coping?” Halliday asked.
“He’s buyin’ up when everybody else is sellin’ out. Guess he’s every inch the gambler.”
“What else can you tell me about him?”
Ike Creevey glanced down the counter and found all the men looking at him. He seemed unaffected by the grim silence.
“Like to let you make up your own mind. I’m still tryin’ to work him out.”
Creevey wiped his counter and moved away. Halliday helped himself to another drink, pushing more coins across the counter. He leaned forward, closing his hands around the glass and stared into the contents. A chair scraped, a man coughed, and as if these two isolated sounds were a signal for everything to return to normal, talk broke out around the room.
Halliday had three more drinks and wondered what to do next. The fact that nobody had approached him didn’t matter a damn. He was always happy in his own company. Yet he had the feeling that sooner or later, this town would erupt.
While he was pouring his fourth drink, the batwings leading to the front street creaked open. All sound in the room ceased so suddenly that Halliday lifted his eyes to look into the big mirror behind the bar.
Lem Pritchard stood framed in the doorway, huge hands on the open batwings, his face distorted with bitterness.
“You’re early tonight, Sheriff,” Creevey said, his voice carrying across the silent room.
Pritchard ignored him, took a step inside and let the batwings go. They swung behind him, hinges creaking, until they settled together and shut out Halliday’s sight of the street.
He’d seen nobody enter with the lawman, so he turned side-on to the bar, leaving freedom of movement for his right hand, but his body remained relaxed, his expression showing cool indifference to the lawman’s arrival.
Pritchard’s jaw muscles worked, but although his nose was slightly swollen, he seemed none the worse for the beating Halliday had given him.
He moved with measured steps into the room, finding a way cleared for him. Halfway to the bar, he stroked his flabby chin, then licked his puffy lips. Looking straight at Halliday, he said thickly;
“You’ve got a nerve, mister.”
“So I’m told.”
Halliday picked up his glass, sipped the whiskey and kept the glass in his hand, his stare never leaving Pritchard’s eyes. “You got the kind of nerve gets right under my skin.”
“Pity,” Halliday said coolly.
Creevey pushed a glass Pritchard’s way, and the big hand of the sheriff folded around it. He made no attempt to lift the glass to his lips, but instead planted his feet solidly, his body tense.
“I’ll put it on the slate, Lem,” Creevey said, trying to break the tension. “You fix me up end of the month, like always.”
Pritchard shot him a sullen glance then lifted the glass and emptied it. After sliding the glass back across the counter, he strode aggressively down the room toward Halliday and asked; “You figure I should forget what happened?”
“Up to you, Sheriff,” Halliday said quietly. “All I did was untie a boy, follow him to where his pa had been hanged by a lynch-crazed mob, and stood by while I saw him shot down.”
“He pulled a gun on those men!” Pritchard threw back angrily.
“And he was a mighty big threat against all those guns.”
Pritchard’s face tightened. “Halliday, everyone could see he was kill-crazy. You even saw that.”
Halliday nodded. “His father was hanging from that tree. Who could blame him?”
Pritchard’s eyes narrowed and his hand edged toward his gun butt. Halliday remained relaxed.
“What about Jude Cassidy, Halliday? You expect me to ignore that you killed him?”
“I don’t reckon any lawman should ignore a killing that happens in his town, Sheriff. But I don’t figure he should make a big thing about a back shooter losin’ his life in a fair fight, either.”
“Who said Jude was a back shooter?”
Halliday grinned easily. “I didn’t see him draw, Sheriff, I heard him. Any man who doesn’t square up face-to-face, has to wear that tag.”
Pritchard’s mouth became no more than a hairline in his mottled face. “You were asking for trouble,” he snapped.
“Maybe I was,” Halliday agreed. “But I had good reason.” He reached for his glass and Pritchard’s body tensed. Lifting the glass, Halliday went on, speaking easily.
“It boils down to a boy bein’ killed after his father was hanged by a mob, and a back shooter whose aim wasn’t good enough. Where do you think that leaves us, Sheriff?”
Pritchard looked uncomfortable as he ran a finger around the inside of his collar, which all of a sudden appeared to be too tight. He was annoyed at himself for not being able to come up with an answer. The silence in the room meant each word that was spoken could be heard by everyone present. This didn’t help settle him, either.
“You’ve got a glib tongue, Halliday, and you’re a troublemaker to boot. I want you out of this town.”
Halliday put down his glass and wiped his mouth on his sleeve. “You speaking for yourself or for Jay Denton, Sheriff?”
Halliday noticed a sly grin work across Creevey’s lips as the barkeep made a pretense of polishing his counter. Pritchard scraped a boot on the floor and mouthed a curse. But before he could find an answer, a voice came from one of the tables.
“You called it right, stranger. Lem ain’t spoke a word this year that Denton hasn’t put there. Just about everybody in this town can vouch for that.”
Pritchard swung angrily around and his black look settled on a man seated at the nearest table. The man’s work-gnarled hands were shuffling a much-used pack of cards. At the same table, three other men sat silently, eyes downcast, clearly wanting no part of their companion’s brush with the lawman.
“You got something to say, Hanover,” Pritchard growled, “say it straight. And keep playin’ with them pasteboards so I c’n see your hands.”
Halliday studied the card player intently. He was a man of average build, dressed in range garb with a face weathered by many years of living out on the plains. Pritchard’s outburst seemed to have no effect on him whatsoever. The man remained seated and opined;
“I’ve said it many times before, Lem. But you won’t listen. You don’t listen to anybody but Jay Denton. But I’ll tell you this, loud and clear. Denton’s scum, through and through. You’ve thrown in with the wrong bunch, and one day you’ll regret it.”
Anger boiled up inside Pritchard, and for the moment, he forgot about his argument with Halliday. That suited Halliday fine, because he had sensed that the lawman was fast backing himself into a corner and would suffer a complete loss of face. He strode toward the card player and snarled;
“Okay, Hanover, you asked for it. You came to me with a cock-and-bull story about Denton cheatin’ you outta your place. I checked up and found out you were up to your neck in debt to Jay Denton and couldn’t meet your obligations. So he waived your debt and threw you off, although all he got in return for his charity was a dust-bowl and fifty head of mangy cattle who mightn’t see out the month.”
Pritchard reached out and plucked Hanover from his seat. Halliday noticed that nobody lifted a hand to help the man, and there wasn’t a single voice raised in protest.
Then Pritchard’s fist smashed into Hanover’s face, breaking skin and causing blood to flow.
Halliday pushed himself away from the bar, but had taken only two quick steps when a gun barked.
The bullet burned past his neck and smashed into the wall behind the bar. It was then that Halliday lost all interest in the lawman.
His left shoulder dipped and his right hand slashed downward. By the time his gun cleared leather, he was facing the stairway which led to Creevey’s upstairs quarters. A thin cloud of smoke partly screened a man in black clothes kneeling behind the stairway rail. Halliday’s gun bucked as he triggered and the bullet whined upward to smash into the center of the man’s chest. A howl of pain was quickly drowned by the splintering of timber as the man’s body crashed to the saloon floor fifteen feet below.
Halliday took two steps back to the bar, his gun now trained on Lem Pritchard. At the sound of the first shot, the lawman had heaved Hanover across the card table, sending it and the other three men crashing to the floor. Above the babble of their angry shouts, Pritchard snarled;
“This damn time you’ve gone too far, mister!”
His fingers were clawing at his gun butt when Halliday lifted his gun and said;
“You’ve made your quota of mistakes today, Sheriff. So back off.”
Pritchard looked at Halliday’s gun and slowly took his hand away from his gun butt. He shot a look across the room to where the man with Halliday’s bullet in his chest lay under the splintered rail. A curse broke from the lawman and he hipped a second table out of his way and strode to the dead man’s side. He knelt and felt for a pulse, and when he rose a minute later, his face was gray and drawn.
“Dead,” he said, for all the room to hear.
“Coulda just as easy been Halliday,” Creevey put in from behind his counter.
Pritchard glared across at him, his anger rising. “That’ll be enough outta you, Ike. Keep outta this.”
“Just sayin’ what I seen, and what everybody else musta seen, Sheriff. Jolson tried to even the score for Jude, is how I’m seein’ it.”
Pritchard was breathing heavily now, trying hard to control his anger. Halliday holstered his gun, left the bar and joined him. He didn’t bother to examine the dead man, but stood directly in front of Pritchard and said tonelessly;
“How come he waited till you and Hanover locked horns, Sheriff?”
Pritchard’s stare thinned. “Meanin’ what?”
“Meaning I’ve been standing at that bar for over an hour until you came in. Meaning, maybe all the time you were crowding me, he was getting into position. Maybe that’s how you planned it.”
Pritchard lashed out with both hands and Halliday drew his gun, leveling it on the wild-eyed lawman.
“Let’s talk it out elsewhere, Sheriff. I don’t think these men need to see you make a fool of yourself anymore.”
“We’ll talk it out with you behind my bars.”
“I don’t think so,” Halliday growled.
“Walk.”
“Go to hell!”
Halliday reached out, grabbed Pritchard’s shoulder and shoved him off-balance. Halliday then spun him around and sent him staggering toward the batwings. Pritchard banged into a card table, kneed it away then lunged back at Halliday, who stepped aside and said coolly;
“Won’t you ever learn, mister?”
He then brought his gun butt down hard on the side of Pritchard’s head.
The lawman dropped to the floor and Halliday grabbed a boot and dragged him out through the batwings. As Pritchard lay unconscious on the boardwalk, Halliday looked back into the saloon. He saw Hanover and his three companions standing together at the bar while the tense and worried barkeep had hold of Hanover’s forearm, restraining him.
“Stay put all of you,” Halliday said. “I want to know what’s got into this town, and some of you have the answers.”
With that, he pulled a stunned Pritchard to his feet, and shoved him along the boardwalk. By the time they reached the jailhouse, the sheriff’s head had cleared and he swung back on Halliday, only to be met by a gun driven into his soft stomach.
“I’m sick of beating you up, Sheriff. So don’t buck me again,” Halliday said, very clearly.
Pritchard ran a hand across his mouth and swallowed a curse. “I’ll kill you for this,” he threatened.
“Try tomorrow, mister. Tonight I’ve had my fill of you.” He forced Pritchard inside the jailhouse, unbuckled the man’s gunbelt and let it drop to the floor. Then he pushed him into the first of three cells. After he had locked the door behind the lawman, Halliday opened the back door of the jailhouse and hurled the bunch of keys out into the yard, then followed them with Pritchard’s gunbelt. Closing the door, he bolted it then walked back to the cell and said easily;
“Maybe you should count your blessings, Sheriff.” Pritchard swore violently, and when Halliday opened the door to the street, he yelled fiercely, “No rules from now on, Halliday. You’re good as dead.”
“I’ve heard that before,” Halliday responded, and locked the door behind him.
He walked lazily along the boardwalk, noticing that only a few of the houses had lights still showing in their windows. The street itself was as quiet as the graveyard and completely deserted. A dying town, he thought, one from which a man named Jay Denton was choking all life. He hadn’t met Denton, but he was certain that would change if he stuck around much longer.
He turned back into the saloon to find everybody breasting the bar, every man trying to have his say. But when the batwings closed with a clatter, all conversation died. He made his way to the bar, seeing a lone figure at the top of the stairs where the railing used to be.
It was Sharon Creevey and confusion showed on her beautiful face. Halliday ordered a drink, watching color rise in her cheeks, until suddenly she spun on her heels and was gone.