Ernest Haycox - The Greatest Westerns of Ernest Haycox

"Casabella style, Casabella fever."

"Always some sort of reason for fevers," countered Clint. "It appears to me there must be a nigger in the woodpile we've overlooked."

Seastrom's reply was slow and cautious. "Any names to add to the list?"

"None. But I believe there's some motives, at present unknown, to add to the list."

"Mebbe, but what of it? We've got plenty of motives to start all the needful friction. We'd better turn off to hit Angels behind the slaughterhouse. It's deserted. Easy place to leave the horses."

Accordingly they veered and slid off from the town's front side. A quarter hour of slow travel brought them near the slaughterhouse. Dismounting, they went forward, Seastrom leading. The windmill was turning and the joints squeaked badly; water trickled in the gloom. Seastrom kept swerving one way and another until he stopped Charterhouse in the lee of a stinking shed.

"Safe enough here," he whispered. "What next?"

"You keep to this side of town, Heck. Cruise along back with your eyes and ears open. I'm cutting around the plaza. Want to see if Shander's in town. We may get some ideas out of the trip. Don't take any chances. Meet me here in about an hour."

"Listen, I ain't so strong for splitting up. This is one tough joint."

"I know, but we'll stand a better chance of getting information that way. But if I don't show up in time, you wait an extra hour and pull out alone. That's to keep Fitz from becoming too nervous. He ain't to move away from the clearing until I get back."

"You're the doctor," assented Seastrom.

They walked the length of the slaughterhouse and reached the back of a store building. Seastrom halted. Charterhouse murmured, "Take it easy," and slipped off. He paused at a narrow alley and saw a small section of the dark plaza down the far end; men crossed his vision and vanished. There was the sudden lure to follow the alley and come out among them, but he disregarded it and went on, studying a beam of light that came through a back door and lay directly across his path. He hesitated, heard voices, and shot over the revealing rays on the run to find himself at the stable's rear. Familiar territory.

Peering down the length of the interior, Clint discovered sundry citizens of Angels leisurely loitering under a lantern suspended from the rafters. A gust of laughter came to him, and he put aside temptation for the second time, pressing around a corral and reaching the open desert. Soundlessly he faded into it.

He had only that moment disappeared when a man flung open the same back door he had recently skirted and ran forward as far as the stable. The man crouched in the darkness, staring all about the shadows of the corral; then he rose and ran beyond the stable and swept the cloaked prairie carefully. A grunt of dissatisfaction escaped him. Doubling back, he went down the stable's vault, out the front and across the plaza hurriedly. About the same time a rider came loping into Angels from eastward and hauled his pony to a cruel stop by Studd's saloon. Dismounting, he thrust a surly question at one of the bystanders. "Where's Wolfert?" The bystander nodded his head, and the rider tramped beyond the saloon a few buildings into a door.

Clint Charterhouse, flat on his belly at the plaza's southwest corner, saw the rider go in. It was too dark to determine the fellow's identity but there was a familiar carriage about those shoulders that interested him. Silently he considered the proposition. "Looks like he was in a hurry. Good news or bad news, maybe, which he wants to impart. Who'd he impart it to if not the wise gents in charge of this scrap? That means he's gone in yonder door to find them. Proceeding from which—"

He got up and slid into the shadows, fouled himself in baling wire and scented the proximity of stale beer kegs.

He was behind Studd's, hearing the swell of talk that emerged. A second-story window lifted to considerable profanity and an empty bottle fell beside him. Farther on he began to listen for particular voices. The building next to Studd's seemed empty and adjacent to that was a store. Beyond the store ran a shorter tenement containing a back porch. He settled on the porch and put his eye to a keyhole, discovering only darkness.

"Let's consider," he muttered. "The fellow went one, two, three doors from Studd's. This must be it. No lights, no sound. I wonder if there's a room between me and the front end—and what am I getting into?"

He stepped away from the porch, scanning the upper windows. "Grated, which means jail above and sheriff or marshal's office below. Now—"

Unexpectedly he discovered men poking along the back of town. A boot slammed into a box near the saloon and somebody's surly curse rolled sluggishly through the darkness. At almost the same time another questing citizen moved up from the opposite buildings, speaking with impatience. "Why don't you sound the fire bell and let everyone know where you are? For the love o' gosh, be quiet about it. Tim, see anything?"

"No, and it's a fool business."

"Well, he's skulking around these premises somewhere. Come this way. We'll drag along every building."

Several men came toward Clint Charterhouse, pinching him in from both sides. He was trapped in the small area. Crawling over the porch, he tested the knob of the back jail door; it gave to pressure and emitted the smell of musty leather and burlap sacks. More important, it also gave him the rumble of talk from some front room of the place. Momentarily the searchers approached. He even saw their dim outlines swaying forward.

"Try that jail yard. I'm telling you he's around somewhere. But don't wake the dead. We want to catch him off balance."

"Who is it?"

"Charterhouse, who'd you suppose? Didn't Haggerty—" Clint slid inside the room and softly closed the door against them. A shaft of light seeped below an inner portal, along with the aroma of tobacco smoke. A chair scraped. Immediately he recognized the sullen, surly tones of the Box M foreman. Haggerty himself!

"I'm taking a big chance in coming away from the ranch. It might mean my hide."

"You was sent, wasn't you? That's a fair excuse."

"Yeah, I was sent down to warn the bunch at Bowlus' place. But I ought to've hit right back instead of dallying into Angels. Seastrom and Charterhouse are both here. Fitz told me they was. Said Charterhouse had given orders for the bunch to stay put until they scouted this joint."

Studd's unmistakable rumble came through. "I call that gall. Seastrom's crazy enough to put his head in a trap, but this Charterhouse is a cool, hard number. I'm thinking we got a man to deal with as stiff as old John was himself. And the gal gave Charterhouse a free hand?"

"Absolutely," growled Haggerty.

"I'd sure like to know how Mister Buck Manners takes that," said Studd ironically. "Him expecting to marry Sherry Nickum and still nosed out by a total stranger. Hell, that's rich."

Charterhouse stood in the middle of the black little room, mind devouring every scrap of phrase that came to him. Haggerty was a traitor, yet the news somehow failed to surprise him much. His estimate of the man's character had not been high in the first place and this new revelation only bore out the judgment he had formed. But what did Haggerty mean in saying he had come from Box M to warn the men at the Bowlus place? Listening intently, Clint was disturbed by the nearing sounds of the search party outside. They were going around the area with a fine-tooth comb.

"It don't make things no easier for us," put in Haggerty.

"Nor harder," was Studd's reply. "If they start scrapping among themselves, for control of Box M, we get all the breaks."

The almost girlish voice of Curly cut in. "Quit shaking hands with yourself, Studd. I lost men tonight and I don't propose to sit around and grin about it. Get busy and give us some ideas."