Dead Man's Blood, page 18
In this way he reached the bunk with Tevis pressing what he thought was his advantage. But as the homesteader swung at him viciously, Magill’s head bobbed to one side. Tevis’s fist whistled by his ear and connected with the bunk upright, bringing an agonised grunt from him. And then Magill went into swift action.
Burying his left in the homesteader’s belly, he lifted his right from his hip with all the power of his wide shoulders and with his body and hips backing it up. His fist crashed to the point of the homesteader’s jaw. Tevis’s big body arched like a bow and he stretched upward until there was nothing but his toes on the floor.
And as he went backward, Magill repeated that blow, burying once again his fist into the homesteader’s exposed abdomen, and following it up with another right to the jaw that this time sent the homesteader crashing backwards to lie still on the floor with his eyes staring sightlessly at the ceiling.
In spite of the pain of his injured hand, Magill snagged Tevis’s gun from his holster, leaped to the bunk and blew out the lamp. And now there came an insistent pounding on the door. Those outside had heard the crash of Tevis’s body. They had thought it was Magill who had been knocked out and when no one answered, when Magill slid to one side so that the opened door would shield his body, it was thrown open.
It was too dark for Magill to see which of the men it was, but he knew when Gordon Tevis said: “Where are you, Harry? Why in tarnation did you blow out the lamp?”
The others were crowding in back of him now, and the weight of their insistent bodies forced Tevis farther into the room. He saw his son’s big frame spread-eagled on the floor and he cursed and tried to turn, realising that somewhere in this room Magill was hiding.
“Hold that pose,” Magill rapped out.
There was an instant’s silence broken only by the frightened breathing of the reed-like homesteader. Then Magill heard Lawson’s voice raised in sudden fury. “Shut the door, you fools. He can’t get out of this valley.”
Almost instantly the door was banged shut, leaving Magill with the lanky homesteader and perhaps one other man. He could not tell just yet which one, and then a gun flamed and the roar of the weapon was like thunder in the narrow confines of that closed room.
Magill shifted his position quickly, driving a quick shot at the bloom of light, and snaking swiftly away to another angle of the room. And he was none too quick, for two guns reverberated, lighting momentarily the room with their orange flashes of fire, and lead drove suddenly into the logs close by him.
And now Gordon Tevis’s shrill voice, filled with hatred, shrieked across the blackness. “Blast his innards out, Slim. He’s killed Harry.” There was frenzy in that call and a father’s agony. The homesteader apparently believed that his son was dead. Harry Tevis’s big body still lay sprawled on the floor and no sound came from him. Magill’s final blow had knocked him into temporary oblivion.
The rancher’s hand pained him terribly, but he could still work the hammer of the weapon he had snaked from Tevis, and as the homesteader’s call died, he drove two more quick shots at the place where the gun had bloomed and was instantly rewarded with a sudden grunt of pain and the sound of a body crumpling to the floor.
The other man, the one Tevis had called Slim, had apparently decided that discretion was the better part of valour and was trying to make himself as small as possible. Magill was content too, for the moment, to let matters rest as they were and await some movement of the other.
For a long time there was no sound, although the rancher’s own breathing sounded like thunder in his ears, and then Lawson’s voice raised across the valley, calling to his men.
“Get dry brush and spread it around the cabin. We’ll burn the son out.”
Spiker’s voice reached Magill’s ears in protest. “Gordon, Harry and Slim are in there. You’re not going to roast them alive too.”
“Why not?” the judge replied with a snarling laugh. “I’ve got no further use for those three jaspers. Let them roast too.”
“You hear that,” Magill called softly through the darkness. “Your friend is figurin’ to double-cross you. That’s what comes of sidin’ with a rattler.”
The man did not answer, and as the silence lengthened and Magill could hear the men outside piling brush about the cabin, he moved his position stealthily. And then suddenly two guns laid a spanging fusillade of sound across the valley.
There was a moment of confusion outside, followed by the booming reverberation of more guns and Lawson’s shrill commands. Magill could not tell what was happening out there, but it was evident that some new threat had struck the outlaw camp which had surprised them and for the moment they had forgotten Magill in their anxiety.
The incessant hammering of the guns continued and Magill used the cover of the sound to see if he could not locate the body of the man Slim. The outlaw was doing the same. He had realised that his only safety lay in killing or wounding Magill. And if he waited too long, the cabin would be a mass of flames from which it would be impossible to extricate himself.
In this way they suddenly collided in the darkness. Slim’s gun flamed and Magill felt the sear of the slug along his ribs and the sudden swift burn of the powder. He had no time to trigger his own weapon, but he brought it down and across the white blur of his opponent’s face like a whip.
The man’s weapon clattered to the floor as he threw up his hands in quick agony. Magill’s hands reached for his throat and locked there. Like two clawing, snarling catamounts they rolled across the room until the sprawled body of Harry Tevis stopped them.
Fingers gouged in Magill’s eyes and tried to break his grip, but he clung tenaciously, deriving a keen satisfaction from his opponent’s gasping and gurgling cries. And when the man’s body relaxed, Magill gave him a final shake like a terrier does a rat.
Climbing to his feet again he searched the rough planked floor until he had found a gun. He knew nothing about the cabin, but it was customary to build a shed or lean-to for the storage of wood and there was usually a door that led to it. Sometimes it was boarded up from the outside and at other times it was not. In any event it offered an avenue of escape.
Stepping over the bodies of the two men, he felt along the log wall. The guns were still hammering away outside. Magill wondered if it might be the sheriff and a posse or what. And then he found the door, kicked it open with his boot and stepped out into blackness that was even more solid than that of the room. His knee collapsed as his foot failed to find the same level, and with a gasping grunt he pitched head first into the dirt.
Picking himself up and grinning there in the blackness he put his hands out, moving slowly, testing each step, and feeling for the barriers of this shed. His shins barked against a wood-pile, bringing a swift grunt of pain from him. And there was no outlet. This shed had been boarded up and was part of the house.
He tested each plank in the wall hoping for a loose one, but it was obvious they were tight and that cross-planking of some kind on the exterior made it virtually impossible to break them out. Maddened a little by this he tried throwing his shoulder against the rough planking.
It did not give, and finally suddenly tired he sat down on the woodpile. The incessant hammering of the guns had ceased now and he could hear men calling to each other across the valley.
“I wonder how many jaspers there are out, there?” he said to himself. “I’ve knocked out three, that’s sure. There’s Spiker and Lawson, and from the noise they make there must be more. But I wonder who was tryin’ to blast a way into this valley? It would hardly be a posse. Langford was probably glad to get rid of me. In fact he’s most likely in on this deal.”
And then he shrugged there in the darkness and wished that he might take the chance of lighting a quirley. But as he sat there pondering the situation from which there seemed to be no escape he heard Lawson’s voice raised again, this time in uncontrolled triumph.
“Bring them over here, Farmer.”
Magill, instantly tense, realised that whoever had surprised the outlaws had been caught. He could hear the crunch of gravel as boots came closer to the cabin, and then Naida’s voice, angry and high-pitched, shrilled into the night.
“You dirty little embalmer. Keep your hands off of me.”
“Leave the girls alone, Lawson,” Spiker protested.
Lawson’s laugh was ugly and menacing. “I’m not interested in the women, Sam. I just wanted to thank them for coming in the nick of time. I was wondering how we were going to get Magill out of that cabin without burning it down and perhaps killing him in the bargain. I know now.”
Lou’s husky voice answered him, and Magill’s muscles became as rigid as stone as he strained his ears to hear what she said.
“You’ll hang for this, Judge Lawson. There’s still law in this valley. The sheriff and a posse of twenty men will be here any minute.”
“I know all about that posse, Miss Lucas,” the little coroner’s voice laughed back at her derisively. “I’m not in the least worried. They were over the ridge two hours ago and couldn’t find our little paradise here. Langford, Tumbleweed and Bagby have headed for my little homestead in the Rattleknobs. Your father took the rest of the men and returned home.”
This was news to Magill and he was as much surprised at the knowledge as he was to hear the voice of the two girls. He knew too what the little coroner had planned now. He would use Naida and Lou as a dub over his head to make him sign over that Dry Lake acreage. And thinking that, Magill shrugged and realised that he had no alternative. The girls’ freedom was of more importance than the land that fronted the lake.
Now Lawson’s voice cut through the night, calling Magill’s name. “We’ve got Naida Tevis and Louella Lucas out here prisoners, Magill. I’m marching the two girls in ahead of me. If you try to shoot me, both of them will die.”
Hearing that threat Magill’s first thought was to do as ordered, to give Lawson the signed deed, in order to protect the two girls, but then suddenly he realised that such an action would neither help the girls nor himself. Lawson could not afford to have any of them alive to testify against him. One dead rancher and two dead women could tell no tales. The judge was cunning enough to find some way of explaining their death. He had successfully hidden the killer of Walter Magill for two years. He might do the same now.
Standing there in the darkness of the woodshed, Magill pondered this new realisation until Lawson’s voice lifted again. “Here we come, Magill. I’ve got a gun in the back of both the girls. The first wrong move you make means their death.”
CHAPTER TWENTY
It was a tense moment for the Lazy Y rancher. The lives of the two girls hung by a single thread. Lawson was merciless and Magill knew that. The little coroner was not bluffing. If he thought he could gain his ends by killing the two girls in cold blood, he would not hesitate. And now Magill could hear the crunch of sand and gravel underfoot as Lawson and the girls approached the entrance.
Lawson’s voice lifted again, steadily and without fear. “We’re coming in, Magill. I’d advise you to hold your fire. Naida and Miss Lou will be right in front of me. If you shoot at me, I’ll blast their backbones out.”
The door swung in. From the blackness of the shed where he could not be seen, Magill could see the two silhouettes of the girls framed in the doorway. It was almost as dark in the valley outside as it was here in the cabin, but there was enough light for him to see Lawson backing up the girls, and beyond and waiting outside were Spiker and two other men.
The little coroner’s voice lifted once more, warningly and filled with menace. “Better speak up, Magill.”
The rancher had the words on his lips when Gordon Tevis’s pain-racked voice crackled across the room. “He’s gone. Judge. He winged me in the hip and the sides. I can’: move.” And then, as the homesteader’s glance apparently focused on the shadowy forms of the two girls, he demanded: “Who’s that with you?”
“Just your daughter and Jeff Lucas’s girl,” Lawson rapped back irritably. “But how could Magill get out? That window’s nailed shut and we were watching the door.”
Magill listening intently heard Lou’s sigh of relief, and then the elder Tevis was talking again, each word seemingly a terrible effort.
“I don’t know how he got out. Harry’s cold here on the floor. Magill knocked him out. Slim’s lyin’ there in the corner maybe with a broken neck. I think Magill strangled him. Light the lamp, will you? I want to see Naida ‘fore I die.”
Lawson called over his shoulder to Spiker and the two men, who promptly pushed by him and entered the room. A match flamed and cast its flickering light over the room. Magill saw Gordon Tevis sitting on the floor with his back propped against the wall. Harry Tevis’s huge bulk of flesh was still there on the planking. His breathing was regular, but to all appearances he was sound asleep, and Magill grinned. He had done a better job than he thought on the big bully. Slim’s thin body was curled up grotesquely in a corner. Like the younger Tevis, he was either unconscious or dead.
Then one of the men found the lamp and the wick leaped into flame, bathing the scene in a brighter glow, and Magill’s glance, drawn like a magnet for some reason to Gordon Tevis’s face, saw something there that stayed his own hand. The homesteader still had his gun in his fist and the muzzle of it was slowly but surely lifting to level on the coroner.
Lawson had relaxed a little now that he thought his quarry had somehow escaped. The twin guns that had prodded the backs of the two girls were hanging down in his long arms. His quick bird-like glance raked the room, taking in the results of Magill’s handiwork.
It was Gordon Tevis’s voice that brought his glance back to the homesteader. “You said awhile back that you was through with me, Judge,” Tevis rasped. “You was figurin’ to roast us all alive. I ain’t long for this world, and after seein’ what you had planned for Naida I reckon there ain’t much else I can do under the circumstances.”
The coroner saw then what the homesteader intended, and with a quick throwing aside of his body, he tried to beat Tevis to the trigger. He was too late. The homesteader’s gun flamed and the roar of the heavy calibre weapon was like thunder in the room. Lawson’s gun flamed too, but a split second late. Tevis’s slug caught him in the throat, bringing a swift gush of crimson from the wound and frothing his mouth with bloody bubbles.
Using every remaining ounce of his willpower, Lawson tried to raise one gun and fire again. His eyes still burned with a consuming anger that made twin spots of colour in his pasty cheeks. He could not make it. With a sudden expelling of breath and a rattle in his throat, his knees buckled and he pitched forward on his face to lie still, a grotesquely huddled figure of a man whose life had ended.
It was the break Magill had been hoping for, and with a spring like a puma that earned him through the door and into the room, he covered Spiker and the other two men with his guns.
“Lift high,” he cried. “Lift high or I’ll send you where Lawson went.”
The banker was too frightened and astonished to do more than gape for a moment, but one of the others was not, and Magill, seeing the man’s hand snaking for his weapon, drove a swift shot at him, a shot that broke his wrist and wrung a cry of agony from him. It was enough for the other Owl-Hooter, a tall rangy looking man with a rectangular face and yellow-tinted eyes. He got his hands up shoulder high in a hurry.
“Ain’t no need to break a man’s wrist,” the other outlaw protested. “I wasn’t aimin’ to draw.”
“Maybe not,” Magill answered with a sour grin, “but you gave a good imitation of it.”
Striding quickly across the room, he snaked their guns from holsters, dragged one from the banker’s shoulder strappings, and tossed them in back of him and out of their reach. Lou stooped quickly and picked one of them up, ranging her slender body alongside of him and covering the men as well with her weapon.
Naida went over to her father and knelt beside him, taking his head in her arms and whispering to him Gordon Tevis’s voice came again, weaker now. “Lawson’s the one, Magill. He murdered your uncle, him and Spiker. It weren’t Harry’s nor my fault. But Lawson caught us rustlin’ cows and threatened to turn us over to the law unless we strung along with him. We didn’t dare do anythin’ else.” And then his glazing eyes turned upward to stare for a long moment at the tall rancher watching him, and the faintest of smiles creased his thin lips.
“Look after Naida for me, Magill. I don’t want her marryin’ some saddle tramp. She’s too smart and pretty to end up the way I’ve done. And I want you to know this, that any man who can lick Harry Tevis is sure all man and—” His voice trailed off and stopped. His eyes rolled upward until the whites showed, and then with a last gasp his head dropped forward on his chest.
Lou went over to Naida and helped her to her feet. There were tears in her eyes and she brushed them away with the back of her hand. “Look after Harry, Naida,” she said. “Limberleg and I have work to do here.”
The lanky outlaw with the yellow-tinted eyes said: “We weren’t in on any of this business, Magill. Give us a one-way ticket to the border and take the banker. We don’t want none of him nohow.”
The rancher’s glance raked the two men. It was going to be difficult enough to bring in Harry Tevis and Spiker and Slim without making it doubly difficult with a pair of border cut-throats. He doubted anyhow if they had had anything to do with his uncle’s death. Undoubtedly they were nothing more than paid hands of the coroner’s.
“That suits me,” he answered finally with a shrug. “Fork your ponies and git.”
“Thanks, pard,” the tall man said, and, both turned out into the night. In just a moment Magill heard the receding drum of their mounts.
Magill looked at the Diamond F girl and smiled. “It seems as if we’ve reached the end of the trail, Lou,” he said. “Remember I told you that it wasn’t either your father or Cole who killed my uncle.” And then his glance shifted to the face of the banker. “I’m thinkin’ that you’re the goat, Spiker, which is the way these kind of deals usually end. Tevis and Lawson have both died with their boots on, but you’ll live to feel a rope around your neck.”
