The Range Detectives Page 5

  “Don’t believe ’em, Sheriff,” the deputy said. “I’ll bet they’re part of that gang o’ rustlers that’s been raisin’ hell all over the basin.”

  “Rustlers, eh?” Stovepipe said quietly. “Sounds plumb lawless around here. Maybe Wilbur and I never should’ve drifted in this direction.”

  Olsen grunted and said, “You got that right, cowboy.” He turned toward the other members of the posse, jerked his head at the prisoners, and ordered, “Get them on their horses. I want to get back to Hat Creek and lock them up before anything else has a chance to happen.”

  Wilbur said, “We’re just gonna go along with this, Stovepipe?”

  “Don’t see as we have any choice in the matter right now,” Stovepipe replied with a meaningful nod at the heavily armed men surrounding them.

  “We could—”

  “Naw, we’ll just go along without any trouble. I’m sure the sheriff’ll get everything sorted out the way it should be.”

  “Damn right I will,” Olsen said, “and you’ll be sorry when I do.”

  * * *

  Hat Creek was the only settlement of any size in the area. It served the supply needs of the Box D, the HS Bar, the Cholla, the Big Nine, the Double R, the Leaning T, and all the other spreads in the basin. It was built around a courthouse square. The courthouse was a square, sturdy, stone building with two floors. The sheriff’s office took up part of the first floor, along with the other county offices.

  The entire second floor was the jail. All the windows had iron bars set into them, and only one door, made of thick beams and reinforced with iron straps, led in and out of the cell block. Once a man was locked up there, getting out wouldn’t be easy.

  A crowd gathered quickly as soon as the posse and its prisoners came in sight of the town. People lined the boardwalks as if they had assembled to watch a parade. Stovepipe supposed it was a parade of sorts, with more than a dozen riders traveling slowly along the street. The three prisoners were in the middle, surrounded by men holding rifles at the ready.

  If the bystanders were expecting a show, they were disappointed, because nothing unusual happened. The closest thing to entertainment was the way Deputy Warren Purdue managed to preen even though he was on horseback. He was mighty proud of himself for having masterminded the capture of the accused murderer Dan Hartford and two apparent accomplices.

  Stovepipe wasn’t surprised by the interest the townspeople showed. Anything that broke up the monotony of frontier life was always appreciated. Also, although Stovepipe had no way of knowing at this point how folks in the basin felt about Abel Dempsey, anybody who owned a big ranch like the Box D was important. Important people always got more attention in life—and in death. That might not always be fair, but it was the way of the world.

  The group drew up in front of the courthouse. Sheriff Olsen dismounted first and ordered his deputy, “Take them upstairs and lock them in, Warren. Separate cells with some space between ’em. I don’t want them working together on anything.”

  “No need to worry, Sheriff,” Deputy Purdue said confidently. “That jail’s escape-proof.”

  “There ain’t no such thing,” growled Olsen, which struck Stovepipe as the most sensible thing the lawman had said so far. “Just do what I told you.”

  “Sure, boss, sure,” Purdue said. He swung down from the saddle, drew his revolver, and pointed it at the prisoners, whose hands were tied in front of them but whose legs were free because they had to be able to ride. “Get down from those horses and don’t try anything funny.”

  “Funny’s about the farthest thing from my mind right now,” Wilbur said with a sour look on his normally affable face.

  The prisoners were marched into the building at gunpoint and then up a broad staircase to the second floor, where a couple of men would stand guard at a desk right outside the cell block door. That door stood open at the moment. Evidently no other prisoners were locked up in the Hat Creek jail.

  Purdue ushered Dan into a cell on the right side of the aisle, then put Stovepipe and Wilbur in separate cells on the left side. He left an empty cell between the two of them, as Sheriff Olsen had ordered. The cells had bars between them, so the prisoners would still be able to talk, but they couldn’t make physical contact with each other.

  “Reckon you’ll be wantin’ a lawyer,” Purdue said to Dan.

  “I don’t know any lawyers around here.”

  “Well, the judge don’t like it when somebody comes into court without a lawyer.” Purdue scratched his long jaw and frowned in thought. “I’ll send Simon McGilvray up to talk to you.”

  “I don’t know—Wait a minute. McGilvray. Isn’t he that old drunk who’s always hanging around the Blue Oasis Saloon cadging drinks? He’s a lawyer?”

  “That’s what the sign on his office says. Of course, he ain’t usually there, because he’s at—”

  “The Blue Oasis Saloon,” Dan finished bleakly.

  Purdue grinned and said, “Yeah. That’s your attorney, all nice and legal-like.” He looked over at Stovepipe and Wilbur. “I reckon he can represent you fellas, too.”

  “I didn’t notice any tracks coming into town,” said Wilbur.

  “Tracks?” repeated a puzzled Purdue.

  “Yeah, this sure seems like a railroad job to me.”

  Purdue snorted and went out, slamming the cell block door behind him. With a heavy thunk! the key turned in the lock.

  Dan grasped the bars of his cell door, sighed, and shook his head as he looked across the aisle at Stovepipe and Wilbur.

  “I’m mighty sorry you men got into this mess on my account,” he told them. “I’ll talk to that lawyer and make sure he understands that you didn’t have anything to do with killing Abel Dempsey.”

  “You said you didn’t, either,” Stovepipe pointed out.

  “I didn’t. I know that things, well, look mighty bad for me . . . but that doesn’t mean I’m guilty.”

  “No, it sure don’t,” agreed Stovepipe. “So why don’t you tell us the whole story . . . and start at the beginnin’.”

  “Why do you want to know?”

  Wilbur said, “Remember what I told you about how Stovepipe gets curious and starts asking questions? He’ll keep at you until you tell him everything he wants to know, mark my words.”

  “Well, what harm can it do now?” Dan laughed bitterly. “We’re already locked up, and they’re probably fitting a noose for my neck right now. So if you want the story, here goes . . .”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  “It started back in Saint Louis,” Dan said. “I was a driver for a freight outfit. I’d been knocking around the river, up and down from Saint Louis to New Orleans, doing whatever work I could find, since I left my folks’ farm back in Ohio and set out on my own.”

  “Fiddle-footed, eh?” said Stovepipe. “I know the feelin’.”

  “If it had been forty or fifty years ago, I would have headed for the mountains and become a fur trapper. There was an old fella who grew up on a farm not far from my folks’ place, and that’s what he did. He came back for a visit every now and then and told stories like you wouldn’t believe about the adventures he had out there in the Rockies. But the fur trade’s been over for a long time, so I decided I’d be a cowboy instead.”

  “You didn’t start reading those yellowback novels and get a bunch of crazy ideas about what it’s like out here, did you?” asked Wilbur. “The gents who write those yarns don’t know anything about the real frontier. They just make it all up.”

  “I might have looked at one or two of them,” Dan admitted grudgingly. “Anyway, I figured to go west, but I hadn’t taken into account the fact that you need money to do that. So I worked at those odd jobs, like I told you, and saved my money to buy a horse and a gun and everything else I’d need to outfit myself.”

  Stovepipe tossed his hat on the bunk, ran his fingers through his tangled dark hair, then stuck his hands through the bars on his cell door and rested his forearms on one of the horizo
ntal bars. As he leaned there casually, cool as could be under the circumstances, he said, “Reckon this is about the point in the story where a girl shows up.”

  “How’d you know that?” asked Dan with a frown.

  “Because every fella’s tale of woe has a gal in it somewhere.”

  “Stovepipe’s what they call a misshogamist,” Wilbur put in.

  “Not hardly,” objected Stovepipe. “I like gals just fine and think the world of ’em. But I know how bein’ around ’em sometimes makes a fella’s thinkin’ take some mighty odd turns.”

  Dan said, “Well, as a matter of fact, I did meet a young woman in Saint Louis. Her name was Laura Tyson.” The cowboy’s voice took on a wistful note as he went on, “I’d never met anybody quite so beautiful, or so nice . . .”

  “See?” Stovepipe said. “That’s just what I was talkin’ about.”

  “She felt the same way about me, too,” Dan said. “Problem was, her father was well-to-do. Owned some warehouses and other property along the riverfront.”

  “And he didn’t cotton to the idea of his daughter gettin’ mixed up with a young, would-be cowboy who didn’t have two coins to rub together,” Stovepipe said.

  “You’ve got that right,” said Dan, sounding bitter now. “He did everything he could to keep Laura away from me, including throwing her at a friend of his, somebody who had fought in the war with him. He was bound and determined to get the two of them hitched so that Laura would go to live on the fella’s ranch, all the way out in Arizona Territory.”

  Stovepipe’s casual attitude vanished as he straightened. He closed his hands around the bars.

  “Wait a minute,” he said. “Are you tellin’ us this gal Laura was married to Abel Dempsey, the hombre you’re accused of killin’?”

  “I’m afraid so.”

  “You’re right to be afraid,” muttered Wilbur. “You’re so far up the creek it’d take you a year to get back, even if you had a paddle, which it sounds like you don’t.”

  “Go on with the story,” Stovepipe said. “How’d Miss Tyson wind up gettin’ hitched to Dempsey? Her pa forced her into it?”

  “Pretty much,” Dan replied with a nod. “He wrote to Dempsey and had him come to Saint Louis for a visit, then sent Laura back out here with him to the Box D. Tyson sent his old maid sister along as a chaperone, so there was nothing improper about it, but he and Dempsey both hoped Laura would like the place, so she’d be more likely to agree when Dempsey asked her to marry him. But it didn’t work out that way.”

  “Gal’s got a stubborn streak in her, eh?”

  “She does,” said Dan. “When Dempsey proposed to her, she told him she’d have to think about it and went back to Saint Louis. She didn’t intend to ever come back here.” He sighed. “But Dempsey followed her, and he and Tyson finally pressured Laura into going along with the marriage idea.”

  “Wait a minute, wait a minute,” Wilbur said. “If Dempsey knew that you and Laura were sweet on each other, why in blazes would he hire you to ride for him?”

  “You’re sort of gettin’ ahead of the story, Wilbur,” Stovepipe said. “But I got to admit, I was wonderin’ the same thing myself, Dan.”

  Dan shook his head and said, “Dempsey didn’t know who I was. He never laid eyes on me back there in Saint Louis, and Laura never told him my name. All he knew was that somebody Laura’s father didn’t approve of had been courting her.”

  “All right, I reckon that makes sense,” said Stovepipe as he nodded slowly. “But it don’t explain how you come to be ridin’ for the Box D in the first place. And Miss Laura was bound to have recognized you.”

  “She did,” Dan admitted. “As soon as we laid eyes on each other, we both knew.” He sighed and went on ruefully, “The best thing to do would have been if I had gotten back on my horse and rode away. Instead, I told myself I could stay—you know, sort of keep an eye on things and look out for Laura’s best interests—and that it would be all right. It didn’t have to go beyond that.”

  “Reckon it must’ve, though, or you wouldn’t be in the fix you’re in now.”

  “That’s right. Back in Saint Louis, after Laura told me she was getting married, I quit my job with the freight company and came west to follow that dream of being a cowboy. I figured I could still have that, even if I didn’t have her. I rode for several spreads over in New Mexico and here in Arizona, but I always got restless after a while and had to go on the drift again. I heard the Box D was hiring—”

  “Now, hold on,” said Wilbur. “There you go again. You didn’t know that Dempsey was the fella who married this Laura gal?”

  Dan shook his head.

  “She never told me his name, just that he was a rich rancher who was an old friend of her father’s. I know it sounds far-fetched, but that’s the way it happened, I swear.”

  Stovepipe said, “All right. We been jumpin’ around in the story, but I reckon I’ve got the straight of it now, up to the time this trouble between you and Dempsey got started. Go on about that.”

  “Well, Laura and I had more and more trouble staying away from each other—”

  “Who’da thunk it?” muttered Wilbur.

  “And after a month or so, we couldn’t stand it anymore,” Dan went on as if he hadn’t heard the redhead’s comment. “Now, don’t go getting that puritanical look on your face, Stovepipe. I admit, I kissed her one night when the two of us were alone in the barn, but that’s all that happened. That’s as far as I compromised her honor. And after that, I resolved all over again to keep my distance from her. I didn’t really trust myself—or her, to be honest.” He shook his head. “She wasn’t happy being married to Dempsey. He treated her decent enough, I suppose, but . . . well . . . he was a lot older than her. Sometimes that works, I reckon, but they weren’t a good match.”

  “You must not’ve been able to keep your distance.”

  “I did until that blasted birthday party,” said Dan. “It was Laura’s birthday, and Dempsey threw a big celebration for her. She insisted on dancing with me. That’s what really set the match to the fuse. You see, even though Dempsey didn’t know about what happened between her and me back in Saint Louis, he was really jealous of her. He’d caught her talking to me one day out on the range, and he didn’t like it. When he saw us dancing, his temper slipped loose from its reins.”

  “That’s when he slapped you and those other fellas jumped you,” Stovepipe guessed.

  “That’s right, and when the fight was over—it wasn’t much of a fight, I’m afraid, outnumbered like I was—he fired me and told me to stay off his range.”

  “But you couldn’t, because you were worried about Laura.”

  Dan nodded and said, “I rode off, heading east, so the men Dempsey sent to run me off the place saw me going in that direction. But then I circled way back around to those breaks, and I’ve been camping there ever since, sneaking out every now and then to see Laura.”

  “So she knew you were still around?”

  “That’s right, and why the hell shouldn’t she?” Dan challenged. “After what happened, I knew I couldn’t leave her with a man like Abel Dempsey. I got word to her through a friend on Dempsey’s crew—no need to mention any names—and she started meeting me on the range when we knew none of the Box D riders would be around. We were making plans for her to leave him. We figured we’d go to California and start over there.”

  Stovepipe nodded and said, “California’s not a bad place for that. But then somethin’ else happened, didn’t it?”

  “Yesterday . . .” Dan had to stop for a moment before he forced himself to go on. “Yesterday Laura and I met at a place called Apache Bluff. That was one of our usual spots. We were talking when we heard a gunshot close by. I told her to light out for home while I went to see what had happened.”

  “That’s when you found Dempsey’s body,” said Stovepipe.

  “Yeah, it doesn’t take a genius to figure that out, does it?” Dan said wryly. “He was dead. He’
d been shot in the back at close range. Whoever did it was still close by, too, close enough to take a shot at me from some rocks. Without thinking, I grabbed my gun and fired back . . . and right about then, Lew Martin—he’s the foreman of the Box D—rode up with several more of the hands. They saw Dempsey, saw that smoking gun in my hand . . . I guess I can’t blame them for thinking what they thought. A couple of them opened fire on me, even though Lew told them to wait, and I did the only thing I could unless I wanted to stay there and shoot it out with them. I lit a shuck.”

  “Forget what I said about the creek and the paddle,” Wilbur told him. “You’re halfway up the gallows’ steps.”

  Dan sat down on the bunk in his cell, put his head in his hands, and said miserably, “I know.”

  Stovepipe didn’t want the young man sinking into self-pity. Not before he had told the rest of the story. Stovepipe asked sharply, “What happened today?”

  “I snuck out of the breaks in the hope of seeing Laura. We had a rendezvous scheduled at one of our usual spots, and I hoped she would show up, even though I knew it was unlikely. Instead that posse was waiting for me—”

  “She tipped ’em off,” said Wilbur.

  “I . . . I don’t want to think so. Maybe they just happened to be there . . .”

  Stovepipe let that go for the moment, although he agreed with Wilbur. Chances were, Laura Dempsey had told the law about the rendezvous.

  “What about the rustlin’?” he asked. “How’s that tied in with what happened to Dempsey?”

  “Those two things don’t have anything to do with each other,” Dan said.

  “Tell me anyway.”

  Dan scratched his head and then said, “A lot of the ranches in the basin have been losing stock over the past few months. Some of it happened before I got here, so I don’t see how the law can blame me for that. Of course, they probably will anyway . . .” A frown creased his forehead. “You know, I said there wasn’t any connection, but maybe I was wrong. Abel Dempsey isn’t the first cattleman who’s been killed in these parts.”