The Lawbringers 4 Page 5

In one corner was haphazardly piled a fitter, like a pack rat’s accumulation, of old saddles and ropes and bridles and hackamores all tangled together, of tin cups and dishes, hung strips of jerked beef and a huge half-empty sack of flour, an ash scuttle by the stove, fire tongs and wooden water bucket, and, arrayed in a proud row on a shelf behind the bar, a good dozen bottles of whiskey, probably the old white mule. There was no still in sight, but the old squaw-man was likely a practiced distiller.

  And there were the five men, all facing him with mute stares.

  At the far end, warming themselves by the great open maw of the fireplace, faces painted red by the flames and eyes reflecting the yellow glitter of lamplight, were an old shrunken man with a solid wooden stump in place of one leg—Michaela’s father—and a huge bull of a man with steel-gray hair and a square-jawed countenance that seemed hewn from granite. From this man came the pressure of an aura of self-assured authority; he was probably Wayne Lutz, the cattleman.

  Closer, near the bar, seated in one of the leather-bottom chairs and letting his silent glare brashly challenge Brand, was a heavy man with round jowls and a belly beginning to sag over the beltline.

  His shoulders were beginning to fatten up and he had a growing bald spot. His face was broiled lobster-red and slurred in outline by a weak-old beard stubble of indeterminate hue. That one would be the homesteader, Mitch Andrews. His clothes bespoke his calling: denim overalls, low-heeled farm boots, a heavy woolen shirt, faded and patched.

  Of the other two, the most dangerous was easily the Mexican, Armando Elias. The last time Brand had seen him, his name had been Augustin Pesquiera, but no matter; one name was as good as another, and now it was Armando Elias. As Brand recalled, he had a reputation of being a man quick with his knife; he liked crib ladies and money and cigarillos and disliked most other things, and his quality of mercy was always strained.

  The Mexican’s partner, Billy McCasford, was not past twenty. There was a daring insolence in his eyes, partly defensive as if he had to challenge every man who looked at the empty sleeve where his left arm should have been.

  The whole scene painted itself on the canvas of Jim Brand’s quick perceptive mind in just a split moment, a stretching frozen interval during which no one moved and no one spoke. He distinctly heard the dull thump of the wind and the crackle of the distant fire and the in-and-out apprehensive sawing of the girl’s breath behind him. He stood with his left hand resting on the door latch, holding the door open, his body tilted just a little in that direction. His eyes flashed from face to face.

  The first to speak was the Mexican. He swung one long leg over, uncrossing his legs, and turned in the chair to face Brand more directly. His lips were turned into a cool smile; his teeth glistened; he said in a soft and musical voice, “Tardes, Señor Jim.”

  “Elias?”

  The Mexican’s strong white teeth showed wider; his glance went momentarily to the girl and came back again. “Ah, yes—yes. Welcome to our little circle, señor.”

  A heavy voice, self-important and peremptory and ponderous, came down the length of the room from the thick lips of Wayne Lutz: “You know this gent, Elias?”

  “Sure,” the Mexican said, “I know him. He’s Dandy Jim Brand—a gambler with a quick gun, they say. Very quick. Is that right, Señor Jim?” The mock-friendly grin was painted securely across his mouth. He was looking at the exposed butt of Brand’s gun.

  “That’s right,” Brand murmured without humor. He released the door and let the girl step inside, then closed the door and stood motionless a moment longer, letting them all size him up.

  The one-armed kid, McCasford, said. “You must be pretty well frozen through, friend.”

  “I’m all right.” Brand was still meeting the aroused challenge of Elias’ eyes.

  Down by the fireplace, old Manning was getting up and balancing himself on the wooden leg. His eyes seemed to swim slowly into focus and he frowned in a puzzled way, then turned angry. “What you doing out in that barn with my daughter, bucko?”

  “Why, now,” Brand said, eyes restless and smiling, “that could be quite a question, old man.”

  His answer brought a short soft laugh from the Mexican. “Relax,” the musical voice said. “You are cold. Take off your coat and come up to the stove.”

  “Facing you,” Brand said gently, “eh, Armando?” Lamp shine danced wickedly against Elias’ black glance; he said nothing and in a moment the easy grin returned. Brand slid out of his mackinaw and dropped it on a stack of cordwood near the stove, and bellied up to the warmth, spreading his hands before it.

  Behind him he heard Michaela walk across the room; she settled in a chair watching her father. Old Manning grumbled something that Brand didn’t catch, and sat down again, pivoting on his wooden leg.

  While his eyes swept the room slowly, it came to Jim Brand that the atmosphere of the place was charged and deadly. Everyone sat with an air of half-fearful expectancy. Outside, the storm cried in angry frustration and slammed its fists against the building, sending strange echoes pounding down from the second-story roof, curling anxious little fingers in through the fireplace and a few long chinks, making lanterns flicker and fire jump.

  They all had their eyes steady on Jim Brand and they all sat with their hands gripping their chair arms, as if they were waiting for some deadly action, waiting for him to challenge them or set them at ease, to smile or to shoot—he was an unknown quantity to them, and now they watched him and suspicion hung strong and thick in the air. Only the girl, her gaze cool and dark and a little mocking, seemed to hide all emotion behind her Indian heritage, careless but guarded.

  The stove’s red warmth gradually worked its way through his body and brought a soporific steadiness to him, a calm that soothed his jumpy nerves and took some of the wary bite out of his glance.

  Then he realized that not all the room’s apprehensive taut silence was the effect of his sudden presence among them. Some of it had been here before. Thick currents of intrigue plied the air. The intolerant massive glance of the cattleman Lutz shifted from Jim Brand’s face to lie spitefully against Mitch Andrews, and the homesteader glared back with equal open malice.

  The Mexican and his youthful uncertain companion watched each other and Jim Brand and the others with equal care, their suspicion and defensiveness evenly distributed. The old man looked at no one, but sat with glazed eyes staring into the fire; once he looked up with brief awareness and displayed a petulant displeasure at this wholesale invasion of his private home. He bit his lips and pounded his wooden leg softly against the floor and stared angrily into the leaping fire, and then his gaze went dead again. Silence was a thickness accented by the steady belting of the storm.

  The girl got up and went through a door that evidently led into a kitchen; the door was hung on rusty spring hinges, and squeaked when it flapped shut behind her. There was another door beyond the end of the bar, which probably gave entrance to a corridor behind, and there was the bannister-railed staircase going up the side of the room beyond the fireplace. Brand could hear his own breathing.

  He said, “Friendly little gathering, here,” and his words shattered the charged silence.

  Wayne Lutz tucked his lips into a thin smile. “Mostly a man knows who his friends are,” he said.

  “That’s so,” Brand replied. “I see none here.”

  “Harsh judgment,” Lutz murmured. His murmur was deep-chested, almost a growl. “What are you doing here, mister?”

  “Same as the rest of you. Waiting out the storm.”

  “Cozy,” Lutz said.

  “You object, friend? You propose to throw me out in the blizzard? Or maybe you just don’t like the color of my eyes.” Brand put deliberate challenge into his voice. He had faced many men of Wayne Lutz’s stripe over card tables and he knew that to display any weakness at all before them was tantamount to surrender.

  “Easy,” the big man muttered in a rumbling bass. He stood up to come forward, and facing him afoot
now, Brand was startled by the man’s sheer size. Lutz stood a good six and a half feet tall and probably weighed well over two hundred and fifty pounds, none of it easy flesh. A gun hung holstered at a careless angle high on his hip, as if he had little regard for it; it seemed dwarfed by his great girth. His slab like hands, wide trunk and columnar legs might have been cut in great square slabs from a solid hunk of rock.

  He came to a stand not far from Jim Brand and said, “We’re all a little spooky, and it shouldn’t be hard for you to figure out why.” His suggestive glance whipped from the Mexican to Billy McCasford, who stared back at him with bland innocence. “You come prowling around in the middle of the worst storm of the past five years and it’s no wonder we might be a little curious.”

  “That’s just fine,” Brand said. “While you’re at it, you might satisfy a curiosity of mine.”

  “Such as?”

  “Out in the barn you’ll find a dead man—deputy from down in the valley. I packed him up here from the flats. You might want to wonder who bushwhacked him.”

  Lutz’s thick black nests of brow lifted. “In the barn?”

  Without saying more, he bulled past Brand and flung the door open, tramping into the tackshed with the lantern Brand had brought.

  Brand looked around the room. The girl’s half-amused eyes met his. The old man was picking at a sliver on his wooden leg, intent on it; the young one-armed man stared vacantly at Brand. Room full of cripples, Brand thought, and not all the crippling shows. The Mexican watched him with a slight smile and the half-bald homesteader was pressing his paunch against the mahogany bar, trying to reach over it to the racked whiskey bottles on the shelf.

  Unsuccessful, he said something shortly and walked around the end of the bar, coming back to the shelf and taking down a bottle. Then he stood in the trough behind the bar while he uncocked the bottle with his teeth, spit out the cork, put the bottle to his mouth and lifted it high to drink.

  “You folks show a lot of concern,” Brand observed. Elias showed his teeth. “Por nada. Every man tastes death, amigo. We’ll take your word about the deputy’s.” His voice sounded smooth and lazy.

  Lutz came back, filling the doorway, a massive block against the darkness of the tackshed behind him. “How do we know you didn’t kill him, Brand?”

  “And then packed him all the way up here through the blizzard?”

  The Mexican’s breezy laugh touched the air. Brand said, “A big bore slug killed the deputy. Not out of my gun.”

  “Maybe,” Lutz said.

  “And one more thing. Some joker used me for target practice down the trail.”

  “You look all right to me,” Lutz said pointedly. “He must have been a pretty rotten shot.”

  “Long range,” Brand said. He indicated the kerchief-wrapped bullet burn on his arm. “He singed me once. I had cover. But that’s not the point.”

  “What is the point then?”

  “I want to know which one of you gents sports a piece of artillery big enough to make that hole in the deputy.”

  Lutz shrugged his heavy shoulders. “Don’t ask me,” he said, and slammed the door. “Better think about burying the fellow before he stinks up the stable enough to spook the horses,” he said, and tramped down the room to his chair by the fire’s warmth.

  “I’m impressed,” Brand said, sarcasm edging his tones, “with the amount of concern you people show.”

  “Relax,” Elias said again. “You cannot bury him in frozen ground.”

  Brand held the man in a corner of his vision; his face was darkening. “If I have to, I’ll search this place top to bottom for that buffalo gun. Who owns it?”

  No one offered to save him the trouble. Lutz merely glared. The old man was whittling on his leg; the homesteader was busy drinking. Neither met Jim Brand’s eyes. The girl came back from the kitchen with a heavy black coffeepot steaming at the spout; her look was enigmatic and faraway, aimed into nowhere as if perhaps she was seeing the shadows of her life.

  Young McCasford watched Brand uncertainly and Elias merely produced a toothpick and began concentratedly to work it around in the corner of his mouth. His ironic glance followed Brand but his lips said nothing; he sat sprawled comfortably in the chair with his long legs stretched out. The rowels of his spurs were big but blunt. “In that case,” Brand said, “I’ll have a look around.”

  “Hold it,” Lutz said. “Who made you responsible for finding Kirby’s killer?”

  “I don’t much care about Kirby. It’s the man who ambushed me that I want. Maybe he’s got me branded as a witness.”

  “Are you?”

  Lutz’s question was followed by a stretch of silence. Brand could make no significance in anyone’s expression. He made no answer to Lutz’s question; he said, “The same gun shot at me that killed Kirby. I’ll find it sometime. It would save us time if the gent in question would face me now.”

  Mitch Andrews stopped with the bottle half-lifted to his lips and sent a sideward glance at Brand, who did not miss that little movement; but the homesteader continued to drink, and the room was soon again filled with the soft musical chuckle that came mildly out of Elias’ throat.

  “Somehow you don’t fit the picture of a lawman too good, Brand.”

  “It’ll do till something better comes along. You got anything to tell me, Armando?”

  The Mexican’s index finger traced the scar along his face. “I don’t know nothing about any deputies or any buffalo guns.”

  “Maybe the deputy was chasing after you and your friend, hey?”

  “Maybe,” Elias said amiably. “Maybe he was. But you’d have a hell of a time proving it, now, wouldn’t you?” The toothpick jutted defiantly upward from his mouth corner.

  The barn was as likely a place as any to begin. Brand turned to the tackshed door. A final glance over his shoulder showed him the level, drily biting glance of the girl Michaela resting thoughtfully on him. Outside, the wind howled angrily, demanding to be let in.

  CHAPTER IX

  WHEN THE DOOR closed behind Brand, Wayne Lutz launched his big frame from the chair and stood with feet braced apart, hands cocked on his hips, glaring around the room at the others with malice he did not bother to dampen. “Michaela, let’s have some of that coffee.”

  The girl had sat down by her father; all she said was, in a deadened tone, “Get it yourself.”

  Lutz gave her an angry glance and went to the coffeepot, which she had left on a flat stone by the fire. He poured a tin cup full of black steaming liquid and stood up drinking, looking over the rim of the cup at the Mexican and at Mitch Andrews.

  He said, “The gambler’s got something. I don’t want to sleep in the same building with a killer. Who’s got that buffalo rifle?”

  His answer came from the Mexican. Elias maintained his sprawled easy posture and continued to pick his teeth, so that some of his words came out slurred. “That’s a poor question for you to ask, amigo.”

  “Why?”

  “Two reasons. One, if there is a killer and he did not break down confessing to Brand, why should he admit anything to you? And two, suppose you are the killer yourself?”

  “Hogwash.”

  “Is it?” Elias made an eloquent shrug.

  Lutz swung his ponderous attention toward Mitch Andrews, who stood with both arms leaning against the bar, moodily regarding the bottle. Lutz said, “You … nester. You’re the one. You knew I’d gone down to Arrowhead and talked to the sheriff about those six steers your brother shot over by Tie Creek. Maybe the sheriff sent the deputy and you caught up with him on the trail.”

  “You’re crazy,” the homesteader muttered. “Anything at all happens, and you big boys try and pin it on us little fellows. In your book we’re all fair game for the big outfits.”

  “Funny,” Lutz said, “I always figured it was the other way around. You don’t fool me, Andrews. You and your brother have both got a rabbit’s brood of kids to feed by your stealing. You knew your brother sh
ot those steers, and you knew he couldn’t afford to go to jail for it, or his family would starve. So one of you killed the deputy to keep from getting thrown in jail.” The big man spread his hands. “I leave the rest to you boys.”

  “You’re crazy,” Andrews said again. He picked up the bottle, staring at it gloomily, and lifted it to drink.

  Lutz went across the room with long booming strides and batted the bottle out of Andrews’ hand. It wheeled across the bar and shattered on the floor, spreading a dark stain across the threadbare piece of carpet. A gust of the storm smashed against the outside wall; the fire flickered. Andrews looked up through angry red eyes.

  “Don’t call me a crazy man,” Lutz said.

  “Lutz, I’m in no mood to fool with you. I’m sick of your cowhands busting my fences, riding down all our crops. I’m sick of watching our women sorrow and our kids go hungry after you big sons of bitches run roughshod over our places. Now get away from me before I bust something over your fool head.”

  “Watch that,” Lutz said threateningly.

  The Mexican’s voice broke in softly between them. “Let’s have a fight, eh, amigos? It’s going to be a long blow, I think. A man needs a little—entertainment.”

  The norther pounded at the shuttered windows and reached a long arm down the chimney; the big fire jumped and danced. By the fireplace, the old man sat with drowsy lids, tapping his wooden limb on the floor. The girl had moved to stand in front of the blaze, staring wide-eyed into it, ignoring the byplay between the two men.

  Young McCasford came along and swept the broken glass against the base of the bar with his boot. “Wouldn’t want to step on that in the dark,” he murmured, and went back to his chair, expertly spinning up a cigarette with his one hand and his teeth.

  When he had it constructed, he got up again and walked to the stove, opened it and poked a stick inside. The fire ignited the tip and he used it to light the smoke, then tossed the stick inside and closed the iron door, and once more sat down.

  All the while, Andrews and Lutz continued to glare balefully at each other. Presently Lutz uttered a low sound and turned heavily to return to his seat. “One thing’s sure,” he said. “I lose one more cow, I’m going to burn you out, nester. You and all your friends along the creek.”