“Just set,” ordered Jud. “Don’t start hollering or rattling the doors, because if we got to come back for you… hell, it’ll be like shooting at fish in a rain barrel, won’t it?”
They returned to the front office where Rufe tossed down the gun he had taken from the lawman. There were now a pair of Colts atop the constable’s desk. He turned to Jud with a suggestion. “Suppose we go fetch Smith and Ruff down here, too.”
Rufe was not thinking about the welfare of the pair of men in the bootleg hole; he was trying to think of a way to separate Chase from his gunfighter. The idea of going up against Arlen Chase, who was no better than Rufe or Jud probably, because he, too, was a cowman, caused Rufe no particular anxiety. But going up against Bull Harris, the professional, was altogether different, and facing them both did not appeal to Rufe at all.
“They can stay in the damned hole,” Jud growled, and went to a barred window to lean, looking up the roadway in the direction of the cafe and the saloon.
Rufe said: “We got to cut Chase out and get him by himself. Otherwise, the odds aren’t too good.”
“Easy,” replied Jud, so nonchalantly that Rufe began scowling. “I’ll amble around until I find them, then I’ll get Chase aside and ask him for work. He don’t know me from General Grant. While I got him to one side, you can have Bull Harris. How’s that sound?”
Rufe continued to scowl. “How’s it sound? Like you’re trying to get me killed, that’s how it sounds.”
Jud considered. “Yeah, it does sound a mite like that, don’t it? You ready?”
“Hell, no.”
Jud nodded. “Fine. Then let’s go.”
They walked out of the jailhouse together, locked the door after themselves, and paused a moment in the golden, warm sunshine.
XII
The cafe man shook his head. He hadn’t seen Mister Chase since the evening before at suppertime, and that black-bearded, mean-looking feller with Mister Chase hadn’t been around this morning, either. Maybe, the cafe man suggested, they were having breakfast at the saloon. There was a corner of the bar where folks who bought drinks up there could slice up some meat and bread and make sandwiches.
The sun was rising a foot at a time, rather than inches, the way it always seemed to do on the summertime desert. It had not yet crested above the roof peaks of the town, but it was getting close, and the lower-down shadows were getting paler and were also retreating.
The battered wagon of some cow outfit appeared in the roadway at the lower end of town, scuffing runnels of tawny dust from beneath its steel tires. Otherwise, excluding a pair of horsemen entering from the opposite end of town, up where Rufe and Jud had entered last night—or early this morning—there was only walking traffic so far. But it was early yet.
Across the road, the jailhouse was still partially in cool shadows. It was also quiet, and no one was around to try the locked door, which was perhaps just as well. Rufe said: “I don’t know how much time we got, Jud, but it can’t be a hell of a lot.”
They started in the direction of the saloon. From far off, and up along the slope of Cane’s Mesa’s easternmost side, a quick, blinding flash of intense white light appeared and was gone. Jud saw it at the same time Rufe caught the same reflection. They stopped, peering off miles northwesterly.
“Someone coming down off the mesa,” stated Jud. “Maybe those fellers in Elisabeth’s barn got loose somehow.”
Rufe nodded. That was possible, but it did not re-ally interest him very much. What did interest him was the clear fact that their advantage was finally running out. Whoever that was coming down off the mesa would surely be heading for town. And even if it took them a couple of hours or more to get here, those two men in a bootleg hole weren’t going to stay down there forever, either.
Rufe said: “Let’s get this over with before we got a whole countryside jumpin’ down our gullets.”
They went to the saloon, and Jud entered first, leaving Rufe ostensibly loitering outside, watching the roadway. Not because he felt it needed watching—not yet anyway—but because, if Chase were in there and he could be braced about a riding job, the chances of one man being hired was a lot better than two men being hired.
A pair of slouching cowboys passed Rufe, looked over, and nodded. Rufe nodded back. The man with the battered cow-camp wagon was turning down into a narrow little roadway south of the general store. No one had to tell Rufe where he was going. To the rear loading dock of the store for sacks of flour, sugar, pinto beans, most likely, and tins of molasses.
A graying, slightly stooped older man, thin as a rail and with a perpetually saturnine expression, hauled up out front of the saloon’s inviting doors and looked in over their tops, then he grunted when he saw Rufe, and said: “I’m the doctor. I look in every morning to see which of the damned alco-holics’round town are backsliding.” He turned to squint out into the sun-brightening roadway. “You an early morning drinker, by any chance, young man?”
Rufe grinned. “Nope. I’m not even a very good nighttime drinker, Doctor.”
The old man grunted again. “Good. Stay that way, and you’ll keep your liver. Bad enough, being in the saddle most of your life, young man. Most cowboys, by the time they’re my age, got a bunk-wetting problem. That’s bad enough…but heading for a damned saloon every time they hit town compounds it. A man’s not one damned bit better’n his liver, young man. You remember that, eh?”
Rufe said—“I’ll remember it.”—and amusedly watched the gaunt old stooped man go walking stiffly southward down in the direction of the general store.
A wispy, elfin figure was hurrying northward, in the direction of the saloon’s doors, head down, features pinched in concentration. At the very last minute the elfin man looked up, and saw the medical practitioner bearing down and whisked so swiftly into a store-front doorway that Rufe marveled. He had recognized the elfin man as the livery barn nighthawk. Apparently he was one of the early morning drinkers the doctor had been seeking.
After the doctor had marched past, looking neither right nor left, the hostler peeked out, made certain the doctor was far down toward the general store, stepped forth, and hurriedly came on.
Rufe pretended to be looking the other way when the elfin older man turned and disappeared beyond the spindle doors. Moments later Jud ambled out, lighted cigarette trailing smoke, his eyes narrowed in thought, and said: “They got surprisingly good beer in there. You should have come in and had one.”
Rufe frowned. “Where’s Chase?”
“Not there. Neither is the gunfighter. But the barman told me they’re due any minute.” Jud’s eyes lifted to the faraway tawny barranca where they had seen that flash of brilliant light of someone’s silver cheek piece or
Rufe also turned to gaze out across the flat country in the direction of Cane’s Mesa. If Jud’s worry was valid, then there was going to be some serious trouble, because, sure as hell, when Chase got to his camp and found it empty, he was going to ride for the Cane place—with his gunfighter.
“Luck might be runnin’ out,” muttered Jud, and spat out the cigarette. He rallied then, and said: “You take the yonder side of the road, I’ll take this side, and by God we’d better find those two fellers by the time we get down by the livery barn, or, sure as hell they’ll be on their way back, and we’ll have to go hightailing it after them.”
Rufe shoved off the log wall and, without speaking, ambled out into the morning warmth bound across the dusty roadway.
From now on, they could not afford to be secretive and clever; they had Tomake their determination about Chase and his man killer the quickest way possible, and that meant they might also come up against exactly what Rufe did not want them to come up against—a head-on meeting, two for two. He was not a professional gunman and neither was Jud. They were fast, and they were also accurate with handguns, but they were no better than most range men, which meant they were not in the same class Bull Harris was in.
Rufe’s side of the road had about a dozen business establishments, and most of them had front windows allowing someone outside to look the length and breadth of the inside counters and shelves. One place, the harness and saddle works, had that same kind of a big window, but it had been so cluttered with heavy sets of leather and
