Rufe stepped to the door, raised the bar, and opened the panel a crack. “Come in,” he called. “And don’t any of you other fellers move!”
The cowman turned, said something gruffly to a range man nearby, then stepped around the tie rack bound for the jailhouse door.
Rufe pulled the door open a little wider, then slammed it behind the stockman, dropped the bar back into place one handed, and cocked the near barrel of his scatter-gun. “Put your six-gun on the desk,” he ordered.
The old cowman obeyed, and stood a moment looking at the other two guns already lying there. He turned his head. “This here weapon with the initials carved on the butt belongs to Constable Bradshaw.”
Rufe gestured with the shotgun. “Go over yonder and sit down, mister. Yeah, that’s the constable’s gun. He’s locked in a cell.”
The cowman’s jaw sagged. He stared for a moment, then turned and went to a wall bench, and eased down, still looking nonplussed.
Rufe put the scatter-gun atop the desk, also. It looked like a small arsenal with all those loaded weapons lying atop the litter of scattered papers on the desk. He then went to the water bucket, ladled up a dipper full, and deeply drank, with the old range man watching his every move. When he finished and dropped the dipper back into the bucket, he wiped his face with a soiled sleeve, jerked up a chair, swung it, and sat down astraddle the chair facing the cowman.
XIV
It did not take as long to tell the cowman the en-tire story as it might have, and, by the time the cowman had heard it all, his weathered, craggy features had settled into a fresh series of lines.
His name was Evart Hartman. He was a widower with two grown sons running the cow outfit with him. It had been his sons out there, on either side of him at the tie rack. They were still out there.
Hartman gazed at Rufe, after he knew the entire story, and said: “I hope for your sake you’ve told me the truth.”
Rufe shrugged that off. “Why should it make any difference now? None of you lowland cowmen would do a damned thing to help Elisabeth Cane before.”
The cowman considered that for a moment with-out replying, then he changed the subject. “Got any objection Tome seeing Homer Bradshaw?”
Rufe arose and went for the keys. He had no objections. He did not believe the constable would tell Evart Hartman the truth, but he had no objections to them talking, so he mutely escorted Hartman down into the cell room, and, when Hartman halted out front of the cell and Constable Bradshaw saw him, the cowman surprised Rufe. He said: “Homer, you always was a cheatin’, underhanded feller.”
Bradshaw sneered. “Why, because I was always a better man than your sons, Evart?”
Hartman’s tough gaze drifted past and came to rest on Matthew Reilly. He wagged his head at Reilly. “I told you last year, Matt. I told you not to get involved with anything Homer worked up. Didn’t I tell you that?”
Matthew Reilly arose from the side of his bunk, came forward, and gripped the bars along the front of the cell. “They was strays, Mister Hartman.”
The cowman gazed stonily at Reilly without speaking, then turned and looked in at Pete Ruff and Abe Smith. He knew Ruff, but not Abe Smith, and all he actually knew of Pete Ruff was that he was range boss for Arlen Chase. He did not speak to Ruff. They looked steadily at one another until old Abe Smith bleated a plea, and Hartman glanced from Ruff to the old
Old Abe Smith bewailed the unkind fate which had landed him there, loudly lamented his complete innocence, and, when Evart Hartman asked him what he did for Chase, Abe told him.
“If you worked on my outfit,” stated Evart Hart-man, breaking across Smith’s running flow of words, “and talked this much, we’d hang you just plumb out of hand.”
Hartman turned for a final face-off with Homer Bradshaw. “I been saying it for years, Homer. You always were an underhanded feller.”
“I’m the law here!” exclaimed Bradshaw, glaring.
Hartman was not very impressed. “I’ll go around town and see about that, now. You been running out o’ rope for a long while, Homer.”
Rufe, who had not said a word, accompanied the old cowman back to the office, locked the cell-room door, and pitched the ring of keys over atop all those weapons on the desk.
“Well?” he said to Hartman.
“Seems Tome someone’s got to find your partner and Arlen Chase,” stated Hartman. “Also seems Tome someone’s got to ride atop the mesa and get Elisabeth Cane’s side of all this.” Hartman fished for his makings and stood, stooped and thoughtful, while Rufe went to the roadway windows and looked out. The crowd was still out there, but its mood had changed, which perhaps was inevitable. No one could stand around in the hot roadway being consistently angry or excited or indignant, whatever had motivated most of those men.
A number of men were idly standing over in front of the general store, talking. Others were southward and northward, but on the same, opposite, side of the road, also idly talking. The men out front, at the tie rack and in the vicinity of it, were mostly stock-men who were so accustomed to the heat they did not appear to be aware of it.
Rufe turned when the old cowman spoke through a thin drift of fragrant smoke.
“Where do you reckon them two went…Chase and your partner?”
Rufe had absolutely no idea. The last he had seen, Jud had just punched Arlen Chase through the doors of the saloon, and had jumped out behind him. There had been no gunfire, no great shouts by either man, but, of course, there had been the stun-ning aftermath of his shoot-out with Bull Harris to interfere with his own, and everyone else’s concern, about Jud and Arlen Chase.
He told the cowman that, if he could keep the townsmen and those range men out there as well from interfering, he would try and locate his partner. Hartman smoked, and thought, and finally said: “I’ll go with you.” He did not explain why he would do this, and Rufe, eyeing the shrewd older man, felt that he understood. Evart Hartman was not an incautious man. He had seemed entirely convinced by the story Rufe had told him. In the cell room his attitude had reinforced Rufe’s feeling that this was indeed so. On the other hand, Hartman’s offer to accompany Rufe was not based entirely upon a desire to help. He wanted to be along just in case all his partial convictions turned out to be incorrect. He looked like that kind of a man, shrewd, careful, completely and analytically poised.
Rufe went to the desk, picked up Hartman’s weapon, and handed it to him, then he motioned to-ward the door, and Hartman crossed over as he holstered his weapon. When he stood in the doorway, looking out, he spoke to the cowmen at the tie rack, but the moment that jailhouse door had opened, all those other men up and down the roadway, and upon the opposite plank walk, came straight up to listen.
Hartman was brusque. “Homer Bradshaw’s locked in a cell in here, boys, along with Matt Reilly and a couple of Arlen Chase’s men…his range boss is one of’em. Those rumors we been pickin’ up around town now and then about Chase making trouble for old Amos Cane’s girl atop the mesa been pretty much true. This feller in here with me, Rufe Miller, and his partner, the feller who’s missing along with Arlen Chase, work for Miz Cane. Me and this feller are going to ride out and see if we can’t find his partner and Chase. Someone’d ought to set here in the jailhouse and mind the town, and make certain none of the prisoners in here gets loose.”
Hartman did not ask for volunteers. He pointed over the heads of the men nearest him to a portly, dark- haired man over in front of the general store. “You, Lemuel. You’re head of the town council this year, and you got a clerk in the store to mind the business. You better come over here and ramrod this matter, because, sure as hell, Clearwater don’t have any law at all right now.”
Hartman dropped his arm, watched the distant storekeeper a moment to see whether he would agree, would start across toward the jailhouse, then called to Rufe to come out.
