The Brave Ride Tall (A Sam Spur Western Book 9) Read online

  He looked around the edge of the boardwalk and tried to spot the man he was after, but could see nothing. One lamp burned in this part of the street, but it didn’t shed much light on anything. There were one or two lighted windows, but they gave nothing away. He thought the man was either opposite him or else a little nearer to Ben. But he couldn’t be sure. He couldn’t even be sure that there were only two men involved.

  ‘Throw out your gun and walk out with your hands up,’ he called. ‘You’ll get a fair trial.’

  The man didn’t show himself, didn’t answer and didn’t throw a shot back. So nothing was gained by that. Spur wondered if he had slipped away through one of the houses or stores on the opposite side of the street.

  He waited.

  Five minutes passed slowly. There was no sound and no movement. Like Spur and Cusie Ben, the town waited and listened.

  Spur Indianed slowly across the open space to the next boardwalk. This was risky because the alleyway he was crossing could have offered him danger. But no shot came from that direction. He reached the other boardwalk crawled up onto it and went along it. No shot came.

  ‘Sam Spur.’

  Spur whirled, ready for a shot.

  ‘This is Mike Student.’

  Spur relaxed a little.

  ‘Spur here, Mike. Listen—keep down and work your way slowly west toward the livery. Maybe there’s a man with a rifle on the sidewalk.’

  ‘All right, Sam,’ Student said. ‘Here I go.’

  Spur glimpsed him for a moment against a lighted store window, then he was gone into darkness.

  Spur wanted to talk to Ben, but he didn’t want to name him. Ben was most valuable under cover.

  ‘You by the livery, can you hear me?’

  ‘I kin hear.’

  ‘Cross the street to the south side.’

  ‘All right.’

  He heard Ben’s feet pound their rapid tattoo, heard him hit the sidewalk and stop. Now the unknown was in a crossfire and the law wouldn’t be shooting at itself.

  ‘Hold it right there, both of you,’ Spur called. ‘I’m going to move.’

  He got to his feet and started along the street. His nerves were tight and he was ready to fire at the slightest sound.

  He reached the spot opposite to where he guessed the man was and stopped.

  ‘All right,’ he said, ‘you’re caught. Come on out.’

  Silence.

  How the hell, Spur asked himself, could the man have disappeared? He just had to be there still. Just possibly he was dead. One thing for sure, he wasn’t waiting here like a fool till daylight to make sure.

  He started across the street.

  Nothing happened

  Mike Student called out: ‘I’m comin’ forward, Sam.’

  ‘Come ahead.’

  Spur waited, his eyes trying to probe the dark shadows, ears sharp for the cocking of a gun. Mike Student had sand, his footsteps were coming steadily.

  ‘Hold it right there, Mike.’

  Student halted.

  Spur reached the sidewalk. He walked dong it east and then west. There was nothing and nobody on it.

  ‘Nobody here,’ he called. He hoped Ben would have the sense to fade now. ‘Mike, go fetch a lamp.’

  Student was hammering on a door, bawling for those inside to open up, the danger was past now. At last a door opened and a shaft of light seemed to hit the street blindingly. A moment later, the deputy-sheriff walked along the sidewalk with the lighted lamp.

  ‘Hold it, Mike.’

  Student stopped.

  Spur came to the edge of the sidewalk and looked at the green boards. There was a dark mark on a board. He pointed and Student came forward and held the light near. It was the faint footprint of a man. Spur knew that the man was hit; he had dripped blood onto the sidewalk and trodden on it.

  Men were on the street now. The word was going around rapidly that the shooting was over. Spur turned to find that Ben was among the curious, playing the part of a moronic ex-slave consummately. Spur said to Student: ‘Keep everybody off this sidewalk.’ He reached out for the lamp and Student gave him it. The deputy-sheriff started shouting for everybody to keep back. The air was full of questions. The lawman was short with the questioners. The reaction to the risk he had just taken was setting in.

  Spur went carefully along the boardwalk till he found the spot where the man had been hit. The spots of blood were smudged as if they had been lain on. He now traced the footsteps and drips of blood along the sidewalk and found where they turned in at a door.

  A voice behind him said: ‘You’ll pay for that lamp, Spur. You deliberately shot out that lights I got witnesses.’

  Spur straightened and turned.

  It was the sad-faced barkeep from the Last Chance.

  ‘It’ll be paid for,’ he said.

  A man pushed through the crowd, a bearded well-dressed man. Kerby Blaxall.

  ‘Pay no heed to him, Mr. Spur,’ he said, ‘He’s merely looking after my interests. Anything I can do to help?’

  Spur said: ‘Tell me who this place belongs to.’

  It was a milliner’s. One of the windows had been broken by a bullet.

  ‘Why, that’s Miss Millicent Prayboy’s.’

  ‘Is there a rear exit?’

  ‘I guess there is.’

  Spur said: ‘Then I reckon we lost our man. That’s the way he went.’

  Student said: ‘He was hit. Maybe he didn’t get for.’

  That was a possibility.

  Spur turned to the men there.

  ‘Anybody here armed?’

  Several admitted they were armed. Spur said: ‘All pull back to the far side of the street and cover the front of this place. Mike, you go east and cut around the back. I’ll go west. And for God’s sake don’t cut down on me.’

  He heard Blaxall take charge of the men, shooing them back across the street. Student ran off and Spur walked down toward the livery. He cut down the alleyway alongside the bank. He knew that there could be danger in every shadow. He moved warily, ready to shoot. But he reached the backlots without anything happening. He turned right along the rear of the bank, covered twenty yards then sang out for Student.

  The man replied and a moment later they met.

  ‘This is the rear of Miss Millicent’s place,’ Student said.

  There was a wicket fence and gate. The gate was open. Spur started feeling around with his hands. He thought he could feel the marks of a horse’s hoofs. He decided to risk a light. He told Student to keep well away from him and struck a lucifer on his pants. The flame showed him the marks of a horse and on the wicket fence the marks left by a bloody hand. The man had escaped through the milliner’s and mounted here. They’d lost him. ;

  He decided it was too risky to go back to the street through Millicent Prayboy’s. One of those fools out there would shoot at them. They walked back around by the bank and found the men waiting where Blaxall had posted them, guns ready.

  Spur said to Blaxall: ‘You know Miss Prayboy, Blaxall?’ The man nodded. ‘Let’s visit.’

  He, Blaxall and Student crossed the street, the others following behind. When he put his hand on the handle of the milliner’s door, it opened. Spur paused. Would a lady living alone leave her door unlocked at night? Did Miss Prayboy live alone?

  Blaxall walked in, Student followed with the lamp.

  ‘You men stay back there,’ Spur. said. There was authority in his voice and they obeyed him. He noticed that Ben was no longer there. Good.

  Blaxall called: ‘Miss Millicent. You there, Miss Millicent?’

  It took some more calling before there came the sound of light footsteps on the stairs and a woman appeared through the curtained doorway to the rear of the shop. She carried a lamp in one hand and her hair was in disarray. She looked very frightened and she looked at the three men with eyes that were wide and dark in a pale face.

  She wasn’t a great looker, hot so far as her face was concerned, but her fi
gure was superb. She was fully dressed in a well-cut day-gown of coffee brown. She had taste. Her hands were delicate, well-shaped and were not used to hard manual work. She was aged, he estimated, about thirty. One of those women who went to church twice on Sundays, abhorred coarseness and drank with her little finger sticking out to show her breeding;

  She placed the lamp on a small and elegant table, placed a slender hand on her breast and looked as if she thought it proper that she should faint.

  Women like this scared Spur.

  Blaxall said smoothly: ‘You’re safe now, Miss Millicent. There’s nothing to fear.’

  ‘I heard …’ she whispered tremblingly. ‘I heard the shooting. Oh, Mr. Blaxall, this terrible place. Why, in heaven’s name did I ever come here?’

  ‘Sit down, ma’am,’ Student said, hovering. She looked around helplessly and he pushed a chair behind her that looked as if it would collapse under a weight heavier than a fairy’s.

  Spur said: ‘A man came through here just a few minutes.’

  ‘A man?’ The fright and alarm increased.

  ‘A man was wounded right outside your door, ma’am, and he escaped through here. He had his horse tied to your yard fence and he rode away.’

  ‘Oh, it isn’t possible.’

  ‘You mean you didn’t hear or see anythin’?’

  “I … when I heard the dreadful shooting, I fled upstairs and hid my head under the blankets.’ She looked bewildered, helpless, still ready to faint.

  Spur said: ‘Did you leave your door unlocked?’

  ‘My door?’ She gazed from one to the other of them. ‘Mr. Blaxall, who is this gentleman?’ She stared with horror at the gun that Spur still held in his hand.

  ‘This is Deputy United States Marshal Samuel Spur, Miss Millicent.’

  She gave a gasp of something like horror and distaste. The name was apparently not unknown to her.

  ‘Why ever,’ she said, ‘did I ever come to this terrible place?’

  ‘Ma’am,’ Spur said, ‘did you leave your door unlocked?’

  ‘Go easy, Spur,’ Blaxall said. ‘I mean, she’s had a shock. Miss Millicent’s a lady who—’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Student, ‘take it easy, Sam.’

  ‘Your door,’ Spur said ‘was it unlocked?’

  She raised her limpid eyes to him for a moment. You terrible man, they said. Gunman.

  ‘At this time of night, sir,’ she said firmly and with not a little indignation, ‘a lady’s door is never unlocked.’

  ‘Yet this man came through here after we had shot him and the door has not been forced.’

  ‘I am sure, Mr. Spur,’ she said, ‘I can offer you no explanation. And neither do I intend to at this time of night. I would be very grateful if you gentlemen would retire and leave me to recover as best I can from this shocking experience.’

  ‘Very well, ma’am,’ Spur said. ‘I shall visit with you in the morning and I hope that you will have by then an explanation of how this man managed to open a locked door to make his escape through your house,’

  He turned and walked out. Blaxall joined him on the sidewalk.

  ‘See here, Spur,’ he said, ‘I can’t say I like the tone you took with Miss Millicent. She’s a lady greatly respected in this town.’

  Spur said: ‘Blaxall, I’m dealing with a particularly unpleasant murder. Tonight somebody tried to cut me down with a shotgun. That raises some questions I mean to have answered. I’ll get ’em answered if I have to hurt the susceptibilities of every frail maiden lady in town.’

  Blaxall would have made an angry retort, but Spur was walking away from him up the street.

  A breathless Mike Student caught him up.

  ‘You was a mite rough back there, Sam,’ he said. ‘I don’t want to interfere, but—’

  ‘You did pretty well back there, Mike,’ Sam said, ignoring him. ‘You showed a lot of sand. Now let’s go find the man I cut down in the alleyway.’

  They reached the alleyway and headed down it. Spur still held his gun in his hand. Thirty paces down the alleyway, he stopped.

  ‘He fell around here,’ he said.

  He scratched a lucifer and held it up. He moved a few paces. ‘Gone,’ he said.

  ‘Maybe, he was only winged.’

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  The match went out.

  ‘Mike,’ he said, ‘we have a lot of this town against us. A wounded man gets away from us easy as kiss your hand. A dead man disappears. This shooting tonight was supposed to give me the lead I wanted. I don’t have a damned thing.’

  Chapter Seven

  Spur found Ben in the livery barn. He was sitting in the straw cleaning his gun by feel. Spur squatting by him.

  ‘You’ve done it again,’ he said.

  ‘What I done?’ Ben enquired.

  ‘Saved my life.’

  ‘Aw, that. What happens now?’

  Spur told him about the man who had been shot outside Miss Prayboy’s place and how he had escaped through her rear door. ‘You want that feller tracked,’ said Ben.

  ‘That’s about the size of it,’ Spur told him. ‘An’ you watch out for yourself.’

  ‘Fust light,’ Ben said, ‘an’ I’m on the trail.’

  Spur thanked him and walked back to his hotel, thinking about Ben. The Negro was bronco and he’d be the last to deny it. But some chord had been struck between the two of them way back along the trail when they had both been wanted men. Now they were both pardoned, but their reputations clung to them. The hardcase who killed Sam Spur or Cusie Ben could have drinks on the accomplishment for life. In Spur’s book, Ben was the straightest man he knew.

  He reached the hotel and there was nobody in the lobby. He heard the murmur of voices from the rear, a man and a woman talking, but he didn’t stop. He reached down his key and, mounted the stairs. He opened the door of his room and dropped to the floor with his gun in his hand. He wasn’t taking any chances. He waited a moment and heard not the slightest sound. Then he got to his feet, found a match and scratched it into life. When the lamp was lit, a voice said: ‘I don’t have a gun.’

  He didn’t know the voice. It was male and near. He dropped the cover over the flame and turned. A man stood behind the door. Fifty years old, gray-haired, lean. His eyes looked hopeless, He reached out and closed the door.

  ‘Who’re you?’ said Spur.

  ‘Milton Trask.’

  ‘Should that mean something to me?’

  ‘Not a thing. I’m not too important. Except that if I’m caught talkin’ with you, I could be killed.’

  Spur smiled.

  ‘That makes you important enough,’ he said. ‘Sit down.’

  The man pulled forward the one chair in the room and sat down. Spur sat on the bed. He liked the look of this man.

  ‘Could you turn the key in the door?’ Trask asked. ‘I don’t want anybody to come on us without warning.’

  Spur crossed to the door and locked it. When he had settled himself on the bed again, Trask said: ‘I had a spread east of here. Ran a few cows in a smallish way. I was makin’ out. Couple of years and I’d be showing some profit. Also ran some sheep in the hills. That wasn’t too popular. Had a Basque herder. Started to do so well with the sheep that I thought about givin’ up cows altogether. But I had a hankerin’ to run cows. My daddy was a cowman before me. That Basque of mine, he didn’t speak any English, but he knew a little Spanish and I did too. We got along fine. He was fixed to get his wife and kids out from Spain. I was goin’ to build him a small place. He was a smart fellow. Had a fine feel for the land. Couldn’t read or write, but he never forgot anything he saw. He saw a whole lot. Too much maybe.’

  The man’s impassive face broke a little. He passed a work-hardened hand over his face.

  ‘Just take your time,’ Spur said.

  Trask went on: ‘You know these sheep-herders. They’re loners. Hardly speak to a human soul for weeks at a time. I used to ride up into the hills maybe once a week to pas
s a few hours with this man of mine. One day I rode up and I found the sheep scattered all over. I looked around and I found his two dogs. They were dead. Shot through the head. Now that Basque, he was a loyal man. He had an old single-shot rifle and he could use it. On more than one occasion he’d fought off Indians and big cats. So I reckoned if his dogs were dead, he was dead. They were family to him. Sure enough I found him under some stones in a dry wash. Shot through the back of the head.’

  ‘You know why?’

  ‘Well, at first I thought thieves had done it. Maybe Indians stealin’ a few sheep. But I went through his clothes and I found this.’

  Trask reached into a pocket and brought out something that glittered in the lamplight. Spur readied out and took it. He was no expert, but it was about the biggest nugget of gold he’d ever set eyes on. He handed it back.

  ‘How do you read it?’ he asked.

  ‘He’d found it, an’ he was savin’ it to show to me when next I visited. He was honest. The way I see it, he’d found gold and he was killed by the men who wanted to keep the knowledge to themselves.’

  ‘Find any sign?’

  ‘Some. Looked like a half-dozen men had been there, all mounted. They headed out east into the hills.’

  ‘Does the story end there?’

  ‘No, sir, it doesn’t. Well, maybe it does. I can’t tell.’

  ‘Let me hear it all,’

  ‘There doesn’t seem any connection, but I’ll tell you just the same. I borrowed from the bank. Not a lot. If everythin’ had gone like I wanted it, I’d of paid off easily enough. But things started to go wrong after I found the Basque dead. First off, I had rustler trouble. Sure, everybody around here has a cow taken every now and then, but with me it got really out of hand. By God, they nearly cleaned me out. The notes fell due an’ I found I had to sell sheep to meet them. If I could of done that I might have pulled through. I got a Mexican to help me an’ I started gathering the woollies. Somebody ran the whole damn herd over a cliff. I never seen such a sight in my life. I was finished.’

  ‘So you sold out.’

  ‘That’s the size of it.’