Adam Steele 35, page 13
Coles tore the cigar from his mouth and hurled it into the center of the gray ashes that were all that remained of the fire. And now was able to snarl a rebuke across the faintly guilt-toned chorus of agreement that the other Braddock men began.
‘Of course the animals are the point of all this!’ he yelled at the men with the rifles. But then wrenched his glinting-with-anger eyes across their sockets to glare at Steele. ‘But as Nat Curtis told you, son – we are not a band of lawless vigilantes! The legal system by which law and order is maintained in Braddock and the surrounding area is unorthodox, but it is fair. The accused has certain rights. And among these is that he should be fully aware of what charges have been leveled against him. You now know this?’
‘Does he get to ask questions?’ Steele asked.
Harrison Coles remained angry about what was happening, but was trying hard to regain his composure. He spluttered a little as he answered: ‘Provided they are pertinent to the case, son.’
‘What’s so important to you people about those animals?’ Steele said, nodding toward the Arabs which were now as docile as the black stallion to which they were hitched.
‘We want them back, Steele, and we got the money to pay you for them!’ Ernest Tucker snapped, and started down the open slope.
‘Wasn’t what I asked,’ Steele said to the Judge as the other four Braddock men joined Tucker in closing with the camp.
Coles nodded and sighed. Then asked a counter question. ‘You know horses, don’t you, son?’
‘Pretty well.’
‘Those two are worth a whole lot more than the five hundred dollars apiece you paid. You know that.’
‘If you say so, feller.’
The old man with the pain-drained face was now free of anger. And peered across at the Virginian with utter astonishment. ‘I honestly think you mean what you say, son,’ he rasped.
‘A man like him, you can’t believe—’ Peabody started as he and the other four men with rifles halted in an arcing line just outside the ruined building.
‘Keep quiet, Ralph,’ Coles interrupted, and while his tone was sharp his eyes remained interested in the mystery of Adam Steele.
‘My Pa ran some horses way back,’ the Virginian supplied. ‘I reckon to go into the horse breeding business myself. Know enough to recognize good horseflesh from bad stock is all, feller.’
‘You know, Judge, I believe the man,’ Harper said.
‘Believe him or not on that score, it doesn’t matter!’ Tucker claimed. ‘He’s guilty as hell, far as the business with Jo is concerned. Make him the offer, Judge.’
‘You already did that, Ernie,’ Nathanial Curtis pointed out.
‘Am I the judge, or not?’ Coles demanded, on the brink of a fresh anger. But kept himself under control as he glared around at his fellow citizens, finding it progressively easier to remain calm as each of them nodded their agreement with him. And he was as stone-faced as the Virginian when he again met Steele’s steady gaze. Said levelly: ‘You are an intelligent man, I’d say. Will have by now realized the proposition that is to be put to you?’
‘Having been found guilty of trying to lead the girl astray?’
‘Of course.’
‘How much?’
Coles delved his free hand into another pocket of his draped coat and withdrew two five-hundred-dollar bills. Fanned them and held them toward Steele, far from his reach. ‘The same amount you paid for them, son. The very money, in fact. In return for complete exoneration in the matter of—’
‘I meant, how much are the horses really worth, feller?’ the Virginian cut in, and began to scratch the outside of his right knee with his right hand. While his left fiddled with the kerchief at his neck, easing it out of its cravat form.
Coles raised just his uninjured shoulder in a shrug as he answered: ‘Who can say, son? In the matter of horseflesh – as in so much else – the value is what a buyer is prepared to pay. I can tell you that Jeremiah Haskins paid five thousand for the pair. And, as an acknowledged expert in the field, I will add my opinion that the late Mr. Haskins got himself a fine bargain.’
‘So you got an even better one, Steele,’ Peabody put in.
‘For a while,’ Nathanial Curtis added.
‘But take care, stranger!’ Tucker said in a tone of warning, as he sidestepped to get behind the Virginian. And inserted the muzzle of his rifle between the upturned collar of the sheepskin coat and the brim of the Stetson so that the circle of metal was pressed to the nape of Steele’s neck. ‘Or you could get more than you bargained for.’
The Virginian froze in his seated posture, right hand on his knee and left clutching one weighted corner of his kerchief. His eyes ignoring all the Braddock men he could see with the exception of Harrison Coles.
‘I and Byron Nolan warned everybody you wouldn’t stand for any plea bargaining and—’
‘Let’s forget all this legal claptrap, Judge,’ Oates growled. ‘At the end of the day, it don’t mean a thing. In this, it’s only right Braddock folks should get to keep the horses and that’s all there is to say. Except if they ain’t gonna be allowed to have them, then nobody else oughta get to have them, either.’
‘Tell this feller behind me,’ Steele said evenly after waiting with apparent stoic patience for Oates to finish, ‘that to agree to what you people want, I’d have to have a hole in the head. So—’
He began to rise, his mind forming the words that were to end the challenge. But then the muzzle of the Winchester was suddenly jerked away from the back of his neck. And before he could shape the next word with his lips, the side of the rifle barrel crashed viciously into the side of his head. And darkness came to the fall morning.
Chapter Fourteen
SOMEBODY SAID WITH deep concern: ‘Thank God, son. You’ve come out of it. Are you all right?’
The Virginian lay flat on his back, staring up at an endless blue that he recognized as a cloudless sky bright with sunlight at the same moment he put a name to the voice – Judge Harrison T. Coles. He felt totally paralyzed for stretched seconds after this – not even able to move his eyes across their sockets – let alone open his mouth to reply.
‘They should not have done this to you. I must accept my share of the blame, of course, for taking a part in this travesty of justice. Using my niece the way we did. But I wanted no part in what they did afterwards.’
Tentatively, his whole being tensed to absorb a possible bolt of agony exploded from the dull and nagging ache that was concentrated at the right side of his head, Steele moved his eyes. To the left and then the right. Up and then down. The pain got no worse. He saw he was still at the derelict building on the bank of the creek that ran smoothly and quietly down into the valley at this time of the year. Ernest Tucker who had landed the blow that was paining him and four of the other five Braddock men who had been present when the rifle barrel cracked against his skull were no longer in the vicinity. Neither was the girl who looked like a boy. Just the man they called the Judge was within the confines of two standing walls and two more that had been all but swept away. He was over by the ashes of the fire, looking anxiously across to where Steele was sprawled, on the spot where he had fallen after the blow.
‘Same day?’ Steele asked, experiencing a great sense of weariness.
‘What?’ the elderly man with one arm in a sling asked, and seemed startled to hear the Virginian speak. He came cautiously closer, clutching at his throat the lapels of the coat he wore as a cape, like he was feeling cold.
‘Same day?’ Steele asked, looking almost straight up at him. ‘The sun’s still low over the ridge. If it’s the same day, I wasn’t out for long.’
‘Oh yes, it’s the same day. It can’t be more than thirty minutes since it happened.’
‘They left right away?’
‘Yes, yes they did,’ Coles answered, and turned from the waist to look through the hole in the wall toward the badlands that lay between here and Braddock. Then he returned his sad-eyed gaze to Steele who was inert except for his respiration now – his eyes open and staring like those of a dead man and his lips slightly compressed into a faintly determined line. ‘I may explain?’
The Virginian’s chest rose and fell, and his nostrils moved almost imperceptibly.
‘Those stallions meant so much to the people of Braddock, Mr. Steele,’ Coles said, morose of tone and expression. ‘You saw it is not a prosperous community. People scraping a living with much back-breaking work on poor land where only grass grows in abundance. Some of the farms worse off than others in this respect. You are still able to hear me, Mr. Steele?’
‘I’ve been pushing my own kind of rock up a different kind of mountain for a lot of years, feller,’ the Virginian answered evenly.
Coles sighed. ‘Yes, life is seldom a bed of roses for anybody. Suffice it to say then, that Jeremiah Haskins was the envy of a great many of his neighbors when a distant rich relative died and left him sufficient in a legacy to purchase the stallions. But before the poor man was able to capitalize on his good fortune, he passed away. On the very day he and I were scheduled to start out for San Antonio to look for mares. There was nothing suspicious about the way he died. From old age. He was close to seventy, by all accounts.’
Now Steele startled the elderly Braddock man again. He had summoned up the confidence to try lifting his head off the ground, and it was this simple act that caused Coles to take a backward step with a gasp of alarm. The pain was suddenly sharper, but remained confined to the area of the point of contact by the rifle barrel. He decided he had hurt a great deal more at times after he took the bullet from a country lawman’s gun. But he had never felt so bad about anything before. Not when he was sure he was going to be lynched at Golden Hill … when he saw his father’s body swinging from the beam in the Washington saloon … when he choked Jim Bishop to death on a dusty trail in Tennessee. No! All of that was wrong. It was just because time had acted to dull in memory the sharp edges of his feelings at those times.
He had been hit over the head and had a couple of horses stolen, that was all.
‘Should you…’ Coles began to ask, but curtailed the suggestion he had in mind to make as he watched the Virginian come into a sitting position on the ground, then haul himself up on to the remains of the wall where he had been seated when the rifles were aimed at him. Then, after the grimace of effort left his features, Steele started to show what could well have been a tight smile of satisfaction. But this was immediately negated by a puzzled frown.
‘I insisted you should be reimbursed in full!’ Coles hurried on as Steele frowned down at his gloved right hand. Which, as he opened it from a tight fist, he saw had been clenched around two crumpled five-hundred-dollar bills. ‘Thus, nobody profits from the tragedy that has taken place hereabouts. And nobody loses, if we take a long, cool look at events, son. Haskins left no dependents and no will. Government—’
Now, just as he was becoming confident that his premise was finding acceptance with the again impassive-faced Steele, Coles was once more startled by the Virginian – who came slowly and silently erect.
Backing off, the old man began to speak nervously and quickly again. ‘And it is perhaps all for the better in the long run. Had the purchase of the horses by the Boones stood, envy would doubtless have been manifested in some other way. Just as if you had never happened by at the time of the sale and the horses had been purchased fair and square by a local man. Now they will all return to minding their own business and perhaps will have learned their lesson – be reminded by the new graves in the cemetery of the evil that greed and envy brought to Braddock.’
Still Adam Steele was able to handle the pain in his head without giving facial or vocal expression to it. The brightness of the morning appeared to diminish somewhat and he had to work hard at not swaying during the first few moments he stood upright. But after that he felt no better nor worse, physically, than when he had first opened his eyes.
‘They take my saddle horse as well, feller?’ he asked, and his satisfaction at making it to his feet was augmented when he heard his own voice and concluded it sounded normal.
‘What?’ the alarmed man asked, then looked to left and right, following the direction of Steele’s unemotional gaze. ‘No. You still have all your animals, son. They’re with my mount. On the other side.’
He indicated the wall with the window hole in it, and the creek beyond. When he returned his attention to Steele, saw the younger man was again looking at the thousand dollars in his hand with something close to bewilderment.
‘I’m sorry, son. I’m making rather a hash of this. I suppose it’s because I’m so very concerned you should understand. Over-anxious as it were.’
Coles began to chew on his lower lip as Steele started forward, heading for what had been the rear corner of the ill-fated building. Then he went on, shuffling his feet to turn around and watch the other man’s slow progress:
‘They knew you’d never agree to sell back the stallions, son! Guess they knew it right at the start! Couldn’t steal them off you, though! They’re decent people, in their own fashion! Even those shenanigans about my niece and a deal went against their grain! But they couldn’t let it rest as it was!’
Steele went briefly from sight around the end of the wall. Came momentarily into view again at the hole where the window had been, his face in profile as impassive as it had been before he was able to see the horses.
‘It was done well, son!’ the Judge hurried on, speaking to the blank wall. ‘Ralph Peabody’s a trained veterinarian! I know how you feel, son! It made me almost sick to my stomach! I used to breed horses back east!’
Now he could see the Virginian again. Standing beyond the hole in the wall, his features looking strangely pale under the burnishing of the elements, and as lacking in expression as the stones that formed the wall.
‘I told them, Mr. Steele. I said they’ll live to regret what they’ve done.’
‘Wrong, feller.’
‘What?’ Coles took a backward step and clutched more tightly at the coat at his throat when he saw the Virginian bring up the Colt Hartford to rest the barrel on the stone ledge.
And he squeezed the trigger of the already cocked rifle. Fired it from the hip in a one-handed grip, the stone on which the barrel rested serving to steady his aim so that the bullet blasted into the center of the intended target. Confident of this, the Virginian did not even watch as the old man was hit in the heart, flung his good arm to the side and corkscrewed to the ground, his coat falling over his humped form like a shroud. For while this was taking place, Steele was going to his mount, where he slid the rifle back in the boot.
And for the second time in two days had to fight an almost overwhelming compulsion to be sick to his stomach as he rasped:
‘They’re like you, Judge. They won’t live to regret anything.’
Nausea was threatened by the sight of the two white geldings.
Chapter Fifteen
THE VIRGINIAN MADE good time back across the badlands, unhampered by the white horses he had left with Coles’ mount at the derelict way station. And he spotted his quarry on a distant ridge less than an hour after he started the return journey.
He slowed the pace then, but did not rein his mount to a halt while he changed his hat and his coat – donned the Judge’s derby that was a size too small and draped the old man’s coat over his shoulders. And made no attempt to remain out of the sight of the five Braddock men and the girl whenever he glimpsed them. Something less than another hour later, when he had closed to within three miles of them, he saw the group come to a halt as one of the group called the attention of the others to him.
Some arms were raised in acknowledgement of the sighting, but Steele did not respond. Then all the Braddock people dismounted, as the lone rider dropped down a grade and he could no longer see them. What he did see, though, a few minutes later as he followed the constantly veering trail, was a column of smoke above the intervening outcrops and sand ridges. As they must have seen his smoke earlier that morning. He rode close enough to smell it. Then, a little later, caught the aroma of fresh-made coffee. Heard voices, but not the words being spoken. Did not try to distinguish who was speaking and in what tone. Started up the final slope and let go of the unfamiliar coat so that it slid off his shoulders to the ground; sent the derby in the same direction and donned his own Stetson. So that, as he crested the rise and saw the five men and a girl standing and sitting by the campfire four hundred feet away, he was instantly recognizable as the dude stranger who had triggered so much trouble in their town.
None of the men was armed, but each lunged toward his mount to get the Winchester from the boot. Screaming in anger, terror and confusion. As Steele reined in his mount and slid the Colt Hartford from where it rested, only one of its six chambers expended of a live bullet. Brought the stock to his shoulder and drew a bead on a target.
The liveryman and vet, Ralph Peabody. Then Oates, the lame man who ran the saloon in Braddock. Nathanial Curtis followed by Vernon Harper. Finally the third farmer, Ernest Tucker. The trigger squeezed and the hammer cocked with smooth precision, the barrel of the rifle moved fractionally one way and then another between times. Smoke spurting from the muzzle, then drifting slowly in the sunlit fall air. Air that was also briefly splashed with sprays of crimson blood erupted from the wounds as the coldly and carefully placed bullets tore into the flesh of the screaming men. Heart shots where the target was clear. Heads where the men were sideways on to the deadly Colt Hartford as they made their desperate and doomed attempts to reach the means of retaliation.
The screams died as the men died. And after the final corpse had thudded to the ground in the wake of the fifth shot, there was just the thud of hooves, diminishing in the distance, of the six horses put to panicked flight by the gunfire and the screams. Then came a silence that seemed to have a palpable presence over the scene of the slaughter. Until a twig in the fire cracked and the ashen-faced girl who looked like a boy said huskily:
