The Desperate Deputy of Cougar Hill Read online

  Cameron realized he was staring at the doorway. Sax Larabee would be coming through there soon, coming to remind Cameron of his threat of so many years ago — coming to lay out the past for everyone to see. Slowly Cameron pulled out his gun and laid it on the desk top, ready to his hand.

  He rolled and lit a cigarette. He laid his hand on the gun, finger resting on the trigger guard, thumb ready to the hammer. He heard the light, rapid footfalls. His gun came up and steadied, aimed at the doorway.

  Sax Larabee appeared. He stopped, framing himself momentarily in the doorway. His dark eyes touched the gun and moved on to Cameron’s face.

  “You haven’t changed that much,” Sax Larabee said.

  “No,” Cameron agreed. With a sudden motion, he thrust the gun back in its holster.

  Sax Larabee smiled and moved with his catlike grace to the one extra chair. He looked almost the same, despite the long years that had flowed by. But then, Cameron thought, Sax was still a young man. And that deceptive slenderness would hide the same wire-rope muscles, just as his faintly mocking smile and saturnine expression hid the same shrewd brain, still honed as fine as a good barber’s best razor.

  Cameron had always been a little in awe of the speed with which Sax’s brain worked. And a little surprised at the streak of malevolence that could turn Sax into a wild-eyed fury. Now he remembered those things and cold fear touched him.

  Sax Larabee stretched his long legs, selected a cheroot from a silver carrying case, and leaned back in the chair. “You got around over the years, Roy. But I hear you plan to stay here, become the local law, be a big rancher.”

  He lit his cheroot carefully. “You didn’t leave that big ox of an Arker much to be proud of.”

  “I didn’t intend to,” Cameron said quietly.

  “You did that to him because you’re a lawman and he’s fresh from prison. Is that what you want to do to me too, Roy? Is that the way you feel about me?”

  “I feel nothing about you,” Cameron said. “No more than I would about any other stranger. If you’re here on legal business, I’ll forget you. If you aren’t, I’ll see that you leave.”

  Sax Larabee’s smile tilted his finely shaped lips. “No,” he said. “No matter what I do, you won’t roust me. Not you, Roy. And you won’t let the marshal do anything either.”

  The threat was plain enough but Cameron chose to ignore it. “What did you come here for?” he demanded.

  Sax laughed. “I’m a businessman. I deal in properties — mines, ranches, farms. I’ve made a lot of money since those three years ended.” He continued to smile but his eyes held the cold darkness of water deep in a well.

  “This is a little man’s country. There’s nothing here for you.”

  “I’ll judge that,” Sax answered. “I may find just the thing I’m looking for. And if I do, I might want some help — for old time’s sake.”

  He rose. “Until then I’ll be just another stranger — as you put it. Unless you want things otherwise. Unless you want to introduce me around as an old friend — from, say, Alamoso.”

  The wild, hot anger washed up in Cameron, bringing him to his feet before he could get himself under control. He took a step toward Sax Larabee and stopped. Sax was still smiling but the darkness in his eyes had turned colder, splintered into shards of black ice. They froze Cameron.

  “You can whip me — with a gun or your fists,” Sax said. “But don’t try it. Don’t try anything with me. I’ll leave your country when I’m ready. How I leave it and what I leave behind — that depends on you.”

  V

  CAMERON ROUSED himself and turned away from the door Sax Larabee had just gone through. He still had his night rounds to make and so he went out the rear door and on down the alley. He checked carefully, but automatically, probing each shadow, testing the locks on windows and doors. But his mind was on Sax Larabee, not on this routine.

  He was trying to find Sax’s reasons for having come here. Not just to find him, Cameron was sure. Knowing the man as he did. he guessed shrewdly that Larabee could have found him any time he chose. More than likely, Cameron decided, Sax had learned he was here and then had sought a way to capitalize on that knowledge — to get his revenge and to make money at the same time.

  And how long, he wondered, had Sax Larabee waited for just this opportunity, waited for the time when Cameron had achieved enough to make him worth destroying?

  But that didn’t matter now. What did matter was Sax Larabee’s presence here, and the other reason for it. Because obviously he had a plan of some kind. And more obviously, he expected to use Cameron to make his plan work.

  Cameron steadied the anger threatening him again. He had to keep his mind clear. He had to think, to try to find a way to outmaneuver Sax Larabee.

  But when he thought of going up against that cold, deadly mind, the finger of hopelessness laid its weight on him. Whatever he might try, Sax would inevitably be there first, waiting to block him. Waiting to use him and then to destroy him.

  Finally Cameron realized that there was only one possible line of action he could take right now. He would follow the usual pattern when a stranger came to town and stayed.

  And so in the two days that followed, he kept himself informed on Sax’s comings and goings. In the mornings, when Cameron was asleep, Balder took note of the places Sax went, the people he spoke to. In the afternoons, Cameron did the work himself, with volunteer help from Tod Purcell.

  According to Balder, Larabee usually appeared in mid-morning and strolled around town, talking to the bankers or one of the other businessmen. Both days, Cameron saw him lunching with Stedman; and on Friday evening he spent his time in a poker game with McTigue, Judge Bellow, and Roper, who owned the bigger mercantile store.

  Saturday afternoon, Cameron watched Sax stroll over to the bank with Stedman, talk briefly, and then leave. Cameron waited until Sax entered the hotel and then he walked into Stedman’s office.

  “I notice that stranger talking to you quite a bit,” Cameron said bluntly. “Is he here on business?”

  Stedman was a long, bony man with bushy graying eyebrows over deep-set eyes. He let his eyebrows go up as he stared in mild surprise at Cameron. “I suppose it’s your affair to find out,” he said. But he sounded none too pleased.

  “If you have a business deal going, don’t think I’m trying to pry into it,” Cameron said. “But a stranger is always the law’s affair. There’s more than one confidence man making his living from towns the size of ours.”

  Stedman acknowledged the point with a brief nod. “Mr. Larabee is interested in investing in some land,” he said. “He’s especially interested in the mines. I told him they were about played out, but he claims modern machinery has brought a fortune from more than one played-out mine. And he’s been looking them over for himself.”

  The answers were almost always the same, no matter which businessman Cameron asked. Sax Larabee seemed to have legitimate interests and he talked knowledgeably enough about the subject of mining. He was, Cameron thought with grudging admiration, revealing nothing of his real reason for being here.

  Cameron was having supper with Tod Purcell when the first glimmering of a useful idea came to him. Tod said, “That city man must have wore the skin off his tailbone these last two days. Both yesterday morning and this one, just before I go off duty, he’s come in and rented a horse. According to the ledger, he stayed out four hours each time.”

  “Do you have any idea which way he went?” Cameron asked.

  Tod chewed a mouthful of roast beef. “He never said, but tonight just before I come here I had to curry the horse he used this morning. McTigue got busy and left the job for me. I found pricklebush leaves around his fetlocks.”

  He glanced to the north. There high mountains enclosed the valley, running to the westward and a short distance east. “Seeing as he couldn’t have had much place to ride except the southeast and south ends of the country and seeing as pricklebush don’t grow anywhere bu
t the hillsides up above your spread, I figure he must have gone that way.”

  Cameron laughed. “That’s good reasoning,” he said. He was thinking about the places where Sax Larabee might have ridden these past two mornings. But there were too many for him to find an easy answer. Besides his own place, a half dozen miners, including the Dondee brothers, worked in that area; Rafe Arker’s stump ranch was there; and so was the cut-up land where Obed Beggs ran some of his scrub stock. Cameron could imagine no connection between Sax and Rafe Arker and Obed Beggs. That left the miners, and for a moment he wondered if the man could have been telling the businessmen the truth — if he really was interested in reworking old mines.

  Tod said, “I don’t reckon he’s taken to visiting Rafe. Nick Ramey was out that way chousing strays this morning and he told me Rafe’s still not moving around good. Joe Farley had to get a buckboard to pack him home the other night after the fight and he ain’t been off his back since. He wouldn’t be in any mood to welcome a stranger.”

  Cameron frowned. “Rafe Arker wasn’t hurt that bad,” he said flatly. He started to say more when Obed Beggs came over to their table and asked to sit down. Settled and with a plate of roast beef in front of him, Obed said, “I hear you mention Rafe Arker?”

  Tod repeated what he’d told Cameron. Obed frowned. “I was hoping Rafe’d be up and about enough to help with the roundup.” He grinned in his dry way at Cameron’s surprised expression. “Sure, I know Rafe’d be more likely to help himself to the horses instead of running them in for the army to take, but I’m desperate. It’s going to take every man in the valley riding from sunup to sundown to bring in all the stock them cavalry boys want. Sometimes I wish we hadn’t bred such good horses and mules these past few years.”

  He looked at Tod. “I already told McTigue he either had to ride with us or work nights so you could come. He decided you’re a better size to fit a horse.” He chuckled. “Why, I even got that stranger to agree to join us for a few days. And he said he’d see if he couldn’t talk some of them miners into putting in time.”

  Cameron saw that it was time to relieve Balder. He rose. “As I said, I’ll give you the afternoons, Obed.”

  “It all helps,” Obed said.

  Cameron found Balder writing a letter. Finishing, the old man waved the paper around to dry the ink. “I wrote to Boise,” he said, “about this stranger Larabee. He says he’s from San Francisco in California, and maybe he is. But he talks like a man from southern Colorado or western Kansas to me. Billy Rogers from those parts is working in the sheriff’s office in Boise and I’m asking him if he ever heard the name or saw a man looks like this Larabee.”

  Cameron busied himself checking his gun, not wanting Balder to see the concern he knew must show on his face. It had never occurred to him that the marshal would go this far investigating an apparently harmless stranger. This Rogers just might know of Sax Larabee and then there could be trouble that neither Cameron nor Sax could stop.

  “From the way Stedman and the other businessmen talk, he seems to be all right,” Cameron said.

  Balder glanced sharply at him. “You don’t seem to think so — the time you put in checking on Larabee.”

  Cameron revealed part of the idea that had come to him while Tod had been talking in the café. “I was concerned because he came so close to the time the army will be here. If he was a con man, I wanted to know it before those cavalry troops showed up. More than one of them has been victimized before.”

  Balder nodded his approval. “Stedman’s pretty smart,” he said. “If he thinks this Larabee is all right, he most likely is. But it still don’t pay for the law to be careless. And this letter can’t do no more harm than waste a little time.”

  He folded the letter and put it into an envelope. He wrote the address with his flourishing hand and rose. “Roper’s hired out two of his wagons to go to Boise and bring in supplies and liquor for the big invasion next week,” he said. “I can send this down there with one of the drivers and have him bring back the answer.”

  He nodded good night and left. Cameron realized he was still making a pretense of inspecting his gun and he rammed it back into the holster with a snort. Taking the desk chair, he finished some of the paper work Balder had left and then, when darkness settled in, he rose to make the first of his Saturday night rounds.

  On weekends he had to make more trips than at other times and so he moved at a faster pace than he liked. He had found that he gained time by hurrying past those places where there was little chance of trouble — the rear of the hotel and the barber shop and McTigue’s Hay and Feed had always been quiet. But the little lane that separated the Hay and Feed from the livery he always inspected carefully. It led from Main Street to the alley and more than once on a Saturday night Cameron had found a drunk from one of the saloons sleeping there out of the wind, an open invitation to someone bent on robbery.

  On his left was the fence that separated the alley from McTigue’s home. The fence was hedged with roses and where the gate opened onto a graveled pathway leading to McTigue’s house, two bushy syringas threw deep shadows onto the alley dirt.

  Cameron was almost even with the gate and just short of the lane between the two buildings when he heard the soft click of a .44 hammer being thumbed back. He stopped and swung his eyes to the left. The sound had come from near the gate, he judged, and now he saw the faint gleam of starlight on gun metal. Someone had his gun barrel resting on the gate top, the muzzle held steadily on Cameron’s chest.

  Cameron’s hand reached automatically for his own gun and then stopped as he realized the futility of this. Before he could begin to clear leather, a bullet could smash him to the ground. He let his hand fall away and stood waiting for the next move.

  A dark figure moved out of the lane between the buildings. It was past Cameron, around behind him, before he could turn far enough to the right to make out more than the vaguest shadow. A bootsole scuffed in the alley dirt, and the sound of a heavy object slicing the air filled Cameron’s hearing. He tried to throw himself forward, but not quickly enough.

  A gun butt drove against the crown of his hat and slid off the side of his head. Pain drove through him in a fiery burst. A second blow caught him on the point of the shoulder. He staggered forward and went to his knees.

  The man behind him grunted and caught him by the arms. Cameron was jerked to his feet and held there. He shook his head in an attempt to clear the mist from his eyes, but he could manage only the faintest of blurred outlines. Now the man at the gate opened and shut it and came quickly forward to stop in front of Cameron.

  Even through the daze of pain filling his head, Cameron knew what to expect. He had been mousetrapped by one of the oldest tricks — allowing his attention to be turned one way while an assailant came against him from another direction. He had let his guard down after the soft months here and now he was going to pay the price.

  While the man behind held him helpless, the man in front was going to whip. him. With fists or gun barrel, it didn’t matter. As long as the pain gripped him in an icy paralysis, he had no choice but to take his beating.

  A fist lashed out, splitting the skin over his cheekbone. His head jerked to the side. Jarring knuckles against his temple snapped him back. Then man in front grunted with pleasure and stepped forward. He began cutting at Cameron’s face, twisting his knuckles with each blow. The shock cleared Cameron’s head and he felt a slight surge of strength through his muscles. At the same time, he found that he could see again.

  The man in front was in dark clothing, with a dark handkerchief drawn up to cover him to the eyes. With his hat pulled low over his forehead, he was only a dark bulk in the greater darkness of the alley. But now Cameron could see the movement of his fists and he managed to lean away so that two vicious blows cut air at the side of his head.

  The man grunted again, but with less pleasure this time, and drove hard knuckles into Cameron’s midriff. Cameron gasped as if he had lost his win
d and sagged in the gripping hands holding him from behind. He felt the faintest relaxation of the fingers digging into his biceps, and he surged upward, driving from the knees, throwing himself forward with his head lowered, at the same time twisting his body to wrench his arms free.

  The man behind him swore thickly. Cameron’s head caught the assailant in front at chest level and forced him back. Cameron kept his legs driving, his torso swinging. His arms came free and he wrapped them around the man giving ground. The one behind clawed wildly at Cameron’s back. The three men went into the dust together, Cameron on top of one and under the other.

  For a moment he thought he had a chance to work free. But the blood dripping into his eyes blinded him and an elbow slashing against his windpipe cost him the last of his breath. He struggled feebly as he was rolled onto his back and then onto his face and finally pulled again to his feet. He could hear both men panting now, but still neither one spoke.

  A boot toe drove out and caught his kneecap, sending a wave of pain and nausea through him. The hands holding his arms let loose and he plunged forward, reaching. Two hands clasped into a single huge fist lashed down against the back of his neck, sending his face toward the thick dust of the alley. As he fell he reached out blindly. His fingers caught cloth, ripped, came loose and he stretched his length in the dirt. He could feel a small bit of the cloth still in his fingers and he clenched his fist, thinking foolishly, flannel, as if he had made an important discovery.