Stowe sat quietly, smoking his cigar and thinking, considering every aspect of the loading of the gold, the route the shipment must take, and its protection on route, without it seeming to be protected.
The next few days would settle the affair.
The shipment, if the timing was to be right, must leave within the next forty-eight hours.
Only yesterday he had given that list to the man at Boulder Spring, a list of five men to be shot on order, and they were five men carefully selected. He considered that again, wondering if there were others, but he could think of none. All but one of those whose names were on that list would have been shocked to realize that such a thing could be; and not one, Stowe told himself, would suspect it of him. Of them all, Mike Shevlin might guess his own name was there, but none of the others could imagine themselves on such a list.
Gib Gentry was finishing his third drink at the bar of the Blue Horn Saloon when Red pushed through the doors and came up to the bar beside him.
Gib had been staring at his image in the mirror without pleasure. All the fun had gone out of things lately, and he might as well face up to the fact that he was no longer a youngster.
He was nearing forty… oh, there were a couple of years to go, but a man had to face the fact that he was closing in on it. He owned a stage line with two vehicles and a steady business, and a freight line operating sixteen big wagons, with barns and corrals at each end. He was making money.
Ben Stowe was his silent partner, but he took no pleasure in that. More and more he had realized in these past few days that after ten years of association with Ben he did not like him, and did not really know him. But to pull out and leave all he owned, and start over at his age–well, that made no sense, either.
Like many another man in his position, he allowed himself to remain tied to a situation that worried him, and only because of the little property it represented.
He brooded while he sat there drinking, and he had just refilled his glass when Red entered the door.
Irritated, for he wished to be alone, Gentry said, “You’d better watch your step. You took in too much territory the other day.” The taunt had a bite, but Red chuckled, though without humor. “Maybe, but he won’t be pullin’ that on me again… not him.” “He could murder you in any kind of a fight.
I know him.” Resentment fought with caution, and resentment won for the moment. “He ain’t goin’ to bother me, nor anybody else for that matter. Not any more, he ain’t. He’s had it.” Gentry’s glass described a slow circle on the bar. Through his brain, dulled by whiskey, the idea filtered slowly. He started to ask a question, then restrained himself. If he questioned Red, the miner would simply clam up and he would get nothing from him, nothing at all. Yet he had a feeling Red wanted to talk–he wanted to brag about how much he knew.
“Don’t you go counting on that. Shevlin will be around for a good long spell.” Red had some remnants of caution, but he did want to talk and he knew that no one was closer to Ben Stowe than Gentry; so it certainly could do no harm to tell him.
He downed his drink. “Not after I come back from Boulder Spring, he won’t be. Not for long.
He’ll have a day, maybe two or three.” Red was guessing, but he had a feeling he wasn’t missing the mark very far. He had seen Shevlin exchange some angry words with Stowe, and after that had come the message. And he knew that Shevlin was causing trouble… by now everyone in town knew that.
Suddenly another thought came to Red. Stowe had said, “Scratch the first name.” The first name? That implied there was a list, it implied there were more names. If Shevlin’s was the first name on the list, whose were the other names?
“That Ben,” Red confided, “he’s a cagey one. Always knows what he’s about.” Gentry was silent, thinking of Red’s information.
So the word was out–Shevlin was to be killed.
Anger filled him. Ben was a damned fool.
Didn’t he know a man like Mike Shevlin would take a lot of killing?
There were some who might low-rate Mike Shevlin, but Gentry was not one of them. He had always known there was a tiger in Shevlin, and he had seen it loosed a time or two. And this Shevlin who had come back to Rafter was a far cry from the tough but unseasoned boy who had left.
Red was a stupid man, and a talkative, boastful man. As he finished his second drink he realized that he held an enormous piece of information, and it was too much for him. Deep within him he understood that he should repeat nothing of what he knew–but wasn’t Gentry one of the outfit?
“Gib,” he said, leaning closer, “you don’t figure me for knowing anything, but I bet I know something you don’t. Ben has him a little list, a death list. And Shevlin is number one on that list.” Red put down his glass, waiting for some kind of reply, but Gentry waited, seeming to ignore him.
“You’ll see, when Shevlin turns up missing.” Red walked outside, the batwing doors swinging behind him. Within a few minutes he would be on his way, and he would have forgotten his loose-tongued talk. But Gentry would not forget it, for Gentry knew who was at Boulder Spring.
He had stumbled on the knowledge by accident, and had kept it to himself. He had used his head in not mentioning it to Stowe, but now he realized that he was starting a bit late to use his head.
He was, he reflected bitterly, just beginning to grow up, and he was coming to realize that he had spent most of his life being something of a damned fool. When the country was overrun with cattle, many of doubtful ownership, it had been fun to brand a few head, drive them to some out-of-the-way market, and then spend the money on a big wing-ding -comriding horses into saloons and shooting out a few street lamps or windows had been part of the fun. And when the high-grading started it had seemed no different from the rustling.
Befuddled with drink as he was, his mind began to gnaw slowly at the problem, puzzling over it in a way he never would have done if cold sober. Red had said that Shevlin was first on that list, but who else was listed?
Ray Hollister?
He sorted around in his mind for other names.
Shevlin and Hollister, both logical enough. But a list implied more than two. Who, then, were the others?
Gentry himself was to come in for a large share of that high-graded gold when it was finally disposed of.
but suppose, just suppose, that his name was also on that list?
He tossed off the rest of his drink and turned from the bar. His shoulder collided with the doorjamb as he went out, lurching across the walk to the edge, where he stared up the darkening street.
That man out at Boulder Spring was Lon Court. Gentry, who fancied himself good with a gun, was simply a hell-for-leather, draw-and-blast-’em type of fighter. Lon Court was a killer for pay. He was a meat-hunter, a man who worked with a long-range rifle and careful planning, who killed the way some men branded stock or stacked wheat. He was cold, deadly, and efficient.
Standing alone on the empty street, Gentry suddenly knew he was no longer in a quandry.
For the first time, his life held definite purpose.
In that stark moment on the street his mind cleared. When most men had gone to their suppers he stood there alone, and was aware of his aloneness; and he realized that in all his careless, heedless young manhood the closest thing to a friend he had ever had was Mike Shevlin.
The rest of the old crowd were gone. They had drifted away, become family men, or had been killed at work or died at the end of a rope or by the gun. He and Shevlin were the only ones left.
There was Ben Stowe, of course, but where the others had been wild and reckless, Ben had always been cold and ruthless, working for every last buck, and the hell with anybody who got in the way.
Of just one thing Gentry was sure now. Mike Shevlin was too good a man to be shot from ambush by a man like Lon Court. He strode down the street to the livery stable and claimed his horse.