“All right,” he said, his misgivings showing in his expression and tone.
Caradec turned and looked at a short, stocky man with a brown mustache streaked with gray. “Grant,” he said, “what kind of a curtain have you got over that window above your harness and saddle shop?”
Grant looked up. “Why, it ain’t rightly no curtain,” he said frankly. “It’s a blanket.”
“You keep it down all the time? The window covered?”
“Uh-huh. Sure do. Sun gets in there otherwise, and makes the floor hot and she heats up the store thataway. Keepin’ that window covered keeps her cooler.”
“It was covered the day of the shootin’?”
“Shore was.”
“Where did you find the blanket after the shootin’?”
“Well, she laid over the sill, partly inside, partly outside.”
Rafe turned to the jury. “Miss Rodney and gentlemen, I believe the evidence is clear. The window was covered by a blanket. When Bonaro fell after I shot him, he tumbled across the sill, tearin’ down the blanket. Do you agree?”
“Shore!” Gene Baker found his voice. The whole case was only too obviously a frameup to get Caradec. It was like Bonaro to try to sneak killing, anyway. “If that blanket hadn’t been over the window, then he couldn’t have fallen against it and carried part out with him!”
“That’s right.” Rafe turned on Tom Blazer. “Your eyes seem to be as amazin’ as your brother’s. You can see through a wool blanket!”
Blazer sat up with a jerk, his face dark with sullen rage. “Listen!” he said, “I’ll tell you–”
“Wait a minute!” Rafe whirled on him, and thrust a finger in his face. “You’re not only a perjurer but a thief! What did you do with that Winchester Bonaro dropped out of the window?”
“It wasn’t no Winchester!” Blazer blared furiously. “It was a Henry!”
Then, seeing the expression on Barkow’s face, and hearing the low murmur that swept the court, he realized what he had said. He started to get up, then sank back, angry and confused.
Rafe Caradec turned toward the jury.
“The witness swore that Bonaro had no gun, yet he just testified that the rifle Bonaro dropped was a Henry. Gentlemen and Miss Rodney, I’m goin’ to ask that you recommend the case be dismissed, and also that Red and Tom Blazer be held in jail to answer charges of perjury!”
“What?” Tom Blazer came out of the witness chair with a lunge. “Jail? Me? Why, you–”
He leaped, hurling a huge red-haired fist in a roundhouse swing. Rafe Caradec stepped in with a left that smashed Blazer’s lips, then a solid right that sent him crashing to the floor.
Rafe glanced at the judge. “And that, I think,” he said quietly, “is contempt of court!”
Pat Higley got up abruptly. “Gargan, I reckon you better dismiss this case. You haven’t got any evidence or anything that sounds like evidence, and I guess everybody here heard about Caradec facin’ Bonaro down in the store. If he wanted to shoot him, there was his chance.”
Gargan swallowed. “Case dismissed,” he said.
He looked up at Bruce Barkow, but the rancher was walking toward Ann Rodney. She glanced at him, then her eyes lifted and beyond him she saw Rafe Caradec. How fine his face was! It was a rugged, strong face. There was character in it, and sincerity…
She came down with a start. Bruce was speaking to her. “Gomer told me he had a case or I’d never have been a party to this. He’s guilty as he can be, but he’s smooth.”
Ann looked down at Bruce Barkow, and suddenly his eyes looked different to her than ever before. “He may be guilty of a lot of things,” she said tartly, “but if ever there was a cooked-up, dishonest case, it was this one. And everyone in town knew it! If I were you, Bruce Barkow, I’d be ashamed of myself!”
Abruptly she turned her back on him and started for the door, yet as she went she glanced up. For a brief instant her eyes met those of Rafe Caradec and something within her leaped. Her throat seemed to catch. Head high, she hurried past him into the street. The store seemed a long distance away.
Chapter VIII
When Bruce Barkow walked into Pod Gomer’s office, the sheriff was sitting in his swivel chair. In the big leather armchair across the room Dan Shute was waiting. He was a big man, with massive shoulders, powerfully muscled arms, and great hands. A shock of dusky blond hair covered the top of his head, and his eyebrows were the color of corn silk. He looked up as Barkow came in, and when he spoke his voice was rough. “You shore played hob!”
“The man’s smart, that’s all!” Barkow said. “Next time we’ll have a better case.”
“Next time?” Dan Shute lounged back in the big chair, the contempt in his eyes unconcealed. “There ain’t goin’ to be a next time. You’re through, Barkow. From now on this is my show, and we run it my way. Caradec needs killin’, and we’ll kill him. Also, you’re goin’ to foreclose that mortgage on the Rodney place.”
“No,”–he held up a hand as Barkow started to speak–“you wait. You was all for pullin’ this slick stuff. Winnin’ the girl, gettin’ your property the easy way, the legal way. To blazes with that! This Caradec is makin’ a monkey of you! You’re not slick! You’re just a country boy playin’ with a real smooth lad!
“To blazes with that smooth stuff! You foreclose on that mortgage and do it plumb quick! I’ll take care of Mr. Rafe Caradec! With my own hands or guns if necessary. We’ll clean that country down there so slick of his hands and cattle they won’t know what happened!”
“That won’t get it,” Barkow protested. “You let me handle this. I’ll take care of things!”
Dan Shute looked up at Barkow, his eyes sardonic. “I’ll run this show. You’re takin’ the back seat, Barkow, from now on. All you’ve done is make us out fumblin’ fools! Also,” he added calmly, “I’m takin’ over that girl.”
“What?” Barkow whirled, his face livid. In his wildest doubts of Shute, and he had had many of them, this was one thing that had never entered his mind.
“You heard me,” Shute replied. “She’s a neat little lady, and I can make a place for her out to my ranch. You messed up all around, so I’m takin’ over.”
Barkow laughed, but his laugh was hollow, with something of fear in it. Always before Dan Shute had been big, silent and surly, saying little, but letting Barkow plan and plot and take the lead, Bruce Barkow had always thought of the man as a sort of strong-arm squad to use in a pinch. Suddenly he was shockingly aware that this big man was completely sure of himself, that he held him, Barkow, in contempt. He would ride roughshod over everything.
“Dan,” Barkow protested, trying to keep his thoughts ordered, “you can’t play with a girl’s affections. She’s in love with me! You can’t do anything about that! You think she’d fall out of love with one man, and–”
Dan Shute grinned. “Who said anything about love? You talk about that all you want. Talk to yourself. I want the girl, and I’m goin’ to have her. It doesn’t make any difference who says no, and that goes for Gene Baker, her, or you.”
Bruce Barkow stood flat-footed and pale. Suddenly he felt sick and empty. Here it was then. He was through. Dan Shute had told him off, in front of Pod Gomer. Out of the tail of his eye he could see the calm, yet cynical expression on Gomer’s face.
He looked up and felt small under the flat, ironic gaze of Shute’s eyes. “All right, Dan, if that’s the way you feel. I expect we’d better part company.”
Shute chuckled. His voice was rough when he spoke.
“No,” he said, “we don’t part company. You sit tight. You’re holdin’ that mortgage, and I want that land. You had a good idea there, Barkow, but you’re too weak-kneed to swing it. I’ll swing it. Mebbe if you’re quiet and obey orders, I’ll see you get some of it.”
Bruce Barkow glared at Shute. For the first time he knew what hatred was. Here, in a few minutes, he had been destroyed. This story would go the rounds. Before nightfall everyone in town would know it.
Crushed, Barkow stared at Shute with hatred livid in his eyes. “You’ll go too far!” he said viciously.
Shute shrugged. “You can live, an’ come out of this with a few dollars,” he said calmly, “or you can die. I’d just as soon kill you, Barkow.” He picked up his hat. “We had a nice thing. That shanghaiin’ idea was yours. Why you didn’t shoot him, I’ll never know. If you had, this Caradec would never have run into him at all, and would never have come in here, stirrin’ things up. You could have foreclosed that mortgage, and we could be makin’ a deal on that oil now.”