He was considering some way of getting word to Logan without Planner’s spies telling of it when there was a tap on his window.
Con’s mind worked swiftly. Jake Planner or his men would come to the front door, hence if somebody came to the window it had to be an enemy of Planner’s, and an enemy of Planner’s was always welcome … so long as Planner didn’t know about it.
He opened the window a bare inch. “Who is it?” He was studying the background as he asked the question. It was unlikely anybody would be biding and watching the back of his store, which was also his dwelling, but he was not a trusting man.
“Open your door,” I said, and heard him mutter something from within. I’d left my horse under the cottonwoods beside the stream and had come on foot to the Wellington store.
There was a moment of movement within, and then after a bit, a door opened into darkness. “Come in then, and make it quick.”
Once inside, Con Wellington uncovered a lantern. “I had an idea it would be you,” he said. “There’s nobody else would come to me in the night.”
He sat down on his bed. It was an old four-poster and the springs creaked heavily as Wellington seated himself, leaving the chair for me.
“It’s about Planner you’ve come,” he said abruptly. “Well, understand me. I don’t like the man but he’s left me alone. Granted, my business is less than half what it was, but I’m alive, and some are not.”
He opened a cigar box and took one himself before pushing it over to me. He lifted his hands, gnarled and twisted from rheumatism. “I’ve as much nerve as the next man, I think, but with these nerve doesn’t matter. I can pull a trigger if I’ve plenty of time … I could still hunt buffalo. But to pull a gun against another man? I’d not have a chance.”
“It isn’t a gun you’ll need. It’s another thing I have in mind.”
Wellington looked at me sharply. “Logan, you’ve tied in with Em Talon … what’s in that for you?”
“We’re kinfolk. She was a Clinch Mountain Sackett before she married Talon.”
“A Clinch Mountain Sackett may mean something to you. It doesn’t to me.”
“It means little to anybody but us,” I told him. “We set store by kinfolk. We’ve our troubles, time to time, but when one of us is in danger, there’ll be help from any who are around.”
Wellington lit his cigar. “I wish my folks were like that. They were glad to be rid of me. My family had money, education, pride of family. So when I lost my money and got into difficulties they threw me out.”
“It happens.” I lit my cigar, too. It was a good one. “I had a hunch,” I said, “that you didn’t care for Planner. Now I want you to stand aside.”
“No more?”
“I’m gettin’ tired of him. So’s Em. Her son’s comin’ home but he may take a time gettin’ here and I want action. I’m goin’ to run him out.”
“You? And who else?”
“I don’t need nobody else. I figured you would know who his friends were. I don’t aim to hurt innocent bystanders if it can be helped.”
He looked at me, long and thoughtful, and then he said, “You know, I think you might do it.” He looked at the long ash on his cigar, then very carefully knocked it off on the edge of his saucer. “Most of the people here don’t like him, but right now there’s not more than twenty to twenty-five people in town aside from Planner and his men.”
He named them for me, told me where they were likely to be, described a few of them. “The hotel, saloon, and livery stable, and the bunkhouse back of the stable, that’s where most of his boys will be. Planner sticks close to the hotel.”
“How about that other one?”
“Johannes Duckett?” Wellington squinted his eyes. “He might be anywhere. He might be outside this minute. He moves around like a ghost.”
He paused a moment. “Dont belittle the folks here in town. Jake swings a wide loop but he’s left them strictly alone. He shows up at the dances, pie suppers, and the like, and he contributes to get the minister to come to town. They don’t like him much, but they’ve little to complain about.
“They figure his business with the MT is his business. Not many folks around here knew the Talons. They kept to themselves pretty much, and then after the old man was killed Em came to town mighty seldom … and after a while, not at all.
“Some of them are jealous. After all, the Talon outfit is big. Most of these folks were latecomers, and none of them realize what it takes to put a big outfit together, especially when the Talons came here.”
“They’ll stay out of it then?”
“I expect so. Naturally, I can promise nothing except for myself.”
What my next step would be I simply did not know. Like I said, I’m not long on planning. I just start moving and let things happen. The only planning I do, you might say, is to see that I don’t hurt any innocent bystanders. And that was why I risked my neck to come in and talk to Con Wellington.
Suddenly I had a hunch. I wasn’t going back the way I came in. If this here Johannes Duckett was laying for me it would be out back, so I’d go right out the front door.
Wellington didn’t like it much, but he agreed Duckett might be lying in wait out yonder in the dark, so I went to the front door of the store.
“If they see me and ask about it, tell them I’m running scared but wanted tobacco. I’m not that much of a smoker, but they don’t know that. I’ve seen men risk their necks for a smoke.”
Wellington took down a couple of sacks of tobacco. “Just in case,” he said.
The door was well oiled, and I slipped out to the boardwalk without a sound. Four long strides and I was across the street, ducking into the space between two buildings. Carefully I worked my way back to my horse.
When I was crouched down near some stumps, looking through the brush at my horse, I saw a man come out of the trees near the road. He looked left and right, then came on. He saw the horse and I heard him give a muttered exclamation, then he reached over and pulled the slip knot I’d tied in the bridle reins. He gathered the reins and was just throwing a leg over the saddle when I heard a shot.
The roan jumped and the strange rider toppled from its back into the grass. The roan ran out of there, head high, reins trailing.
From behind me and to my left there was movement. I waited, and then a tall, thin man came out of the trees and walked down to the dead man. He struck a match, then swore.
“Wrong man again, Duckett?” I yelled into the darkness.
He turned and shot. It was one move, only I had already fired. He had shot at sound and he missed by a hair. My bullet smacked hard against something metallic, then ricoohetted off into the night.
Moving swiftly, I went through the trees, angling toward the road to try to head off my horse.
There were no more shots, no sound. The moon was just showing on the trail and there was a smell of dust in the air. I walked along holding to the shadowed side of the trail, and sure enough, about of a quarter of a mile up the road I found the roan. The horse came to me when I spoke, and I petted it and talked to it for a while before stepping into the saddle.
It was near daybreak when I got back to the ranch.
11
Pennywell was on the lookout when I came in, and when I got inside she brought me a cup of coffee. “Em’s asleep,” she said, “catching up on some of that lost time.”
She studied me critically. I looked beat. After I’d caught my horse I’d had to hightail it for the MT, careful to leave no sign they could use, so I’d come right down the trail and through the main gate.
“Looks like you been out among ’em,” she commented. “I frown on that as Em would say.”
Explaining what happened, I added, “The way I figure it, Duckett spotted me when I came in and laid for me near my horse. Meanwhile some other of Planner’s men saw me in town, saw me go into or come out of the store, and got ahead of me, planning to get my horse and then me.”