Clifton Adams - Boomer

Boomer

Clay Randall

Ben Farley's Word Was Law!

No man challenged his gun or his oil-field roustabouts. Those who tried it saw their rigs burned, their supplies stolen, their men beaten.

Joe Grant knew this. But when his boss was killed and young Bud Muller was clubbed senseless, he had to fight back.

Farley's roustabouts rushed him, smashed his head with a gun butt, crashed their steel-capped boots against his ribs. Barely conscious, Grant rolled and went for his gun.

Farley smiled down at the prostrate man. Then he leveled the muzzle of his .38 at Grant's head.

CHAPTER ONE

A LIGHT SNOW had fallen the night before and Missouri had lain for a little while under a veil of white. Now the roads were glistening ribbons of black mud, churned up by farm wagons making their weekly pilgrimage to Joplin.

It was Saturday, and the streets of Joplin were crowded with farmers' teams and wagons, as they were every Saturday; the sidewalk was a mass of pink-cheeked, frost-breathing humanity. The invigorating tang of winter was in the air.

One man stood alone, apart from the crowd, oblivious to the activity that surrounded him. A fair, square-built man in his early thirties, he hunched into his sheep-lined wind-breaker, staring hard at the blank stone face of the bank building on the other side of the street. At last he reached into his windbreaker, took out a silver railroad watch and glanced with bleak satisfaction at the dial. “Almost four o'clock,” he told himself. “Well, there's no use putting it off.”

He waded through the ankle-deep mud of the street, stepped up to the sidewalk, and pushed his way toward the stolid stone building.

A breath of heated air struck him as he stepped inside the bank and closed the door. He raked the place with sober eyes, noting that most of the customers had become aware of the time and were leaving before the bank closed its doors.

The fair-haired man stepped up to a teller's cage and said, “I want to talk to Abel Ortway.”

“I'm afraid Mr. Ortway is...

“Tell him it's important.”

There was something about the voice that made the teller frown. “Well, I'll see...”

But at that moment a stout, florid-faced man came up front from the vault. “What is it, Ransom?” Then, looking at the fair-haired man: “Oh, so it's you again.”

“I want to talk to you, Mr. Ortway. Private.”

“You know the banking hours,” Ortway said with some irritation. “We close at four.”

“But this is important. I just got to town.”

The banker's eyes narrowed. “Did you get the money?”

“Let's talk about it in your office.”

Ortway hesitated, looking vaguely worried. Thoughtfully, he drew a cigar from his vest pocket and rolled it unlighted from one side of his mouth to the other. “All right,” he said at last. “But make it quick.”

Ortway's office was bare of ornaments but comfortable in a solid, mannish fashion. He sat at a roll-top desk and nodded for the other man to take a chair. “All right. Now what is it that's so important?”

“I want to ask you for an extension on my loan.”

Abruptly the banker laughed, the sound rolling out free and easy. “Now that's the damnedest thing I've heard all day! Why on earth should I give you an extension?”

The fair-haired man smiled. “No reason, I guess, except that you promised me one. Remember when you came out to my farm last spring and told me the place needed fencing on the south boundary? And a new windmill for the livestock? You told me to go ahead and make the improvements, and if I needed an extension on my loan you'd give it to me.”

“That was last spring.” Ortway smiled with heavy satisfaction. “Conditions change.”

“But there've been hard dry-ups two years running. These things almost never run in threes. Next year I'll make a crop and pay off the loan, plus any fair interest you want to name.”

Ortway shook his head, still smiling. “What kind of businessman would I be to listen to a story like that? I hear the same yarn fifty times a year from you hard-scrabble farmers. You can't make a go of it and you want somebody else to stand good for your failure.”

For some strange reason the fair-haired man never lost his even temper. “I see. You're going to foreclose. You're going to take my farm.”

“Put yourself in my shoes. It's the only sensible thing to do.”

“Maybe...” He sat quietly for a moment, his thoughts turned inward. Then, “I want to tell you about that farm, Mr. Ortway. It's not so much, but it's something I worked five years to get and two years to improve. I trailed cattle, Ortway. Maybe five thousand miles I trailed them back and forth across Indian Territory. I saved my money and told myself that someday I'd stop killing myself working for other people and be my own boss. Seven years of my life, Ortway, that's how much I've got in that farm. I never would have gone into debt for those improvements if you hadn't promised to help.”

“As time goes on,” Ortway said easily, “you'll learn that promises don't mean a thing unless they're on paper.”

The man sat lost in contemplation. “I didn't want to do this,” he said finally, “but I guess there's no other way.” Slowly, almost wearily, he reached into his windbreaker and drew out a well-used .45 revolver.

Ortway made a startled sound and then stared mutely into the deadly muzzle. “I've got it all figured out,” the man said quietly. “I paid three thousand for the farm and borrowed another thousand from you to make the improvements. Now, I figure if you take the place over you'll be making two thousand dollars clear on the deal, plus the cost of the windmill and fencing. To say nothing of the two years' work I've put in the land. Twenty-five hundred dollars, that's about what you stand to make on the foreclosure, isn't it, Ortway?”

The banker could not take his eyes from the muzzle of the revolver. He licked his lips nervously. “What... what do you mean to do?”

“I mean to take that twenty-five hundred dollars. That's what your broken promise cost me.”

Behind the fear in his eyes, the working of Ortway's brain was almost a visible thing. “Look,” he said quickly, “I'll keep my promise! I'll give you any kind of extension you want! I'll put it on paper!”

“It's a little late for that, Ortway. I'll take the money.”

“You'll never get away with this!” Ortway almost whined. “I won't be bullied!”

There were two metallic clicks as the fair-haired man thumbed the hammer back on the .45. “Call the teller,” he said coldly. “The one named Ransom. Tell him to bring the money—that you've just made a loan.”

“I won't do it!”

For a moment Ortway locked his jaws in stubbornness, but he began to swallow nervously when he saw the man's hand tightening on the butt of the revolver. Several seconds must have passed. Sweat formed in glistening beads on the banker's forehead as the hand drew tighter and tighter, the trigger starting to give under the pressure. A drop of sweat fell on Ortway's desk and the sound could be heard clearly in the silence of the room.

“All right!” the banker said hoarsely. “Only put that gun away!”

The man smiled slightly, then took off his battered Stetson and covered the revolver. But the muzzle was still leveled at Ortway's chest.

“Ransom!” the banker called. And when the teller appeared in the doorway, Ortway said, “Get twenty-five hundred dollars out of the vault and bring it to me.”

The teller looked surprised, but evidently he was not one to question Ortway's wishes. “Very well, sir. How do you want it?”

The fair-haired man raised his head and said thoughtfully, “Bills, not too large. That will be all right, won't it, Mr. Ortway?”