“Arrest Ben Stowe? He hired me.” “Hired you to do a job.” Shevlin walked off. He was going back to the claim. Tomorrow was another day, and he had a job to do; and what better place to do some thinking than there with a shovel in his hands?
Suddenly he thought of Burt Parry. Where was he? He had left the claim for town, but Shevlin had seen nothing of him… and the town was not that big, not unless he had a girl and was staying with her.
But Shevlin realized that he himself wanted no more of the town, or its people. He had not liked Eve Bancroft, but she had been young and alive, and she had believed in her chosen man. To waste such a faith… that was the sad thing, and he had no stomach for what had happened.
All he wanted now was to ride away to where the mountains reached for the sky, where the pines brushed at the clouds. He paused by the stable, and his thoughts were gloomy. He was an old lobo who ran the hills alone, and he had best get used to the idea. There was no use looking into the eyes of any girl. He was the sort who would wind up in the dead end of a canyon, snarling and snapping at his own wounds because of the weakness they brought.
There was nothing here he wanted, nothing but for that old man up on the hillside to rest easy, not buried as a man who died in a gunfight, but as one shot down with empty, innocent hands. For old Eli had never been a man of violence, just as Mike himself was his opposite, a man who walked hard-shouldered at the world.
He got the black horse from the stable and rode him out of town. He avoided the trails, scouting wide upon the grassy hills, and riding the slopes away from the tracks left by horses and men.
When he came to the canyon he had to take the trail, and it was then his horse shied. He drew up, trusting his horse. He sat the saddle silently, listening to the night. At first he heard no sound, and then only a brushing whisper, as of a horse walking past brush that touched his saddle as he went by.
Mike Shevlin stayed still and waited. He was anxious to be back at the claim, and he was irritated at this interruption. There was a faint gray in the far sky, hinting at the dawn that would come soon.
Then he saw the horse, a horse with an empty saddle, head up, looking toward him. The horse whinnied, and his own replied. Coldly, he still waited, his Winchester up and ready for a quick shot.
Nothing happened..
He walked his horse nearer, and saw the white line of the trail, and something dark that lay sprawled there. Shevlin had seen many such dark sprawlings in the night, and he knew what lay there. He stepped down from the saddle, for his horse warned him of no other danger.
He knelt and turned the man over on his back. Then he struck a match, and looked into the wide-open dead eyes of Gib Gentry.
Shevlin struck another match. The front of Gib’s shirt, where the bullet had emerged, was dark with blood, almost dry now. In the flare of the match he saw something else.
Gib had crawled after he had fallen. He had crawled four or five feet, and one hand was outstretched toward a patch of brush.
Striking yet another match, Shevlin looked at that outstretched hand and saw, drawn shakily in the sand under the edge of the brush: Shev look out. Lon C– The last word trailed off into a meaningless scrawl.
Shevlin straightened up and looked around. Even in the few minutes since he had first seen the horse, it had grown faintly light, and the country around was slowly defining itself. The half-hour before daybreak brought out a pale gray world with dark patches of brush. Only one or two late stars showed in the sky.
Leaving his own horse, he walked to Gentry’s mount. There was blood on the saddle, blood down one side of the skirt. Walking still further back, Shevlin saw where the horse had shied at the bullet, and there he found a spot or two of blood. Gentry had come no more than a dozen yards before toppling from the saddle.
Mike Shevlin pushed his hat back and lifted his face to the fresh coolness of the morning breeze.
He looked about him.
There were no other tracks. The hidden marksman had been sure of his shot, or else he had not dared to risk a closer approach to make certain of a kill.
Gib Gentry was dead–but how did that fit into the larger picture? Gentry had been Stowe’s strong right hand. Why should he be killed? Gentry had owned the express and freight line, and was necessary to any movement of gold. Looked at coldly, his death was inopportune. The time for it was not now.
Shevlin did not trust Stowe, and he was sure that Stowe would kill any man with whom he had to share as soon as that man was no longer necessary. But as Shevlin saw it, Gentry was necessary…. And why kill him here?
He might have been followed from town, and if he had been killed intentionally, he obviously had been followed. But this was not a place where Gentry would normally come, so far as Shevlin knew.
So what was the alternative? Gentry must have been killed by mistake. Shot in the dark, mistaken for someone else.
What someone? The answer was plain. For Mike Shevlin himself.
That also made sense of Gentry’s message.
Gib had been riding to warn him, and he had been mistaken for Shevlin and killed.
Lon C–… Shevlin knew no such name. Yet Gib had evidently thought the name would mean something to him, or he would not have tried so hard to write it.
With the toe of his boot, Shevlin erased the name written in the sand. Then he hoisted Gib’s body to the saddle, tied it there, and hung the bridle reins over the pommel. Gentry’s horse would go home.
All was dark and silent when he rode up to the claim. He stripped the rig from his horse and picketed it on a grassy slope near the spring, where it could drink from the run-off. He waited in the darkness, listening. After a while he walked back to the cabin and turned in.
He awakened with the sun shining in his eyes through the open door. Burt Parry was standing outside, looking up the canyon, a peculiar expression on his face. For some reason that expression surprised Mike Shevlin.
At that instant Parry seemed anything but the casual man he had been before. He was holding his Winchester in a position to throw it to his shoulder for a quick shot.
Unable to restrain his curiosity, Shevlin swung his feet to the floor. The bunk creaked and Parry looked around quickly.
“Thought I saw a deer,” Parry said, lowering the rifle. “We could use some venison.” “Now that’s an idea!” Shevlin exclaimed.
“How about me going for a hunt?” Parry chuckled. “You tired of mucking already?
I’ll have another round of shots ready to fire almost any time.” He took Shevlin’s appearance in at a glance. “You look like you could use some sleep. What time did you get in?” “Daybreak, or thereabouts.” He expected a comment on the happenings in town, but none came. He volunteered nothing, and the two men ate breakfast, talking idly of the mining claim and Parry’s plans for doing some exploration work in an effort to find the lode he hoped would lie deeper in the mountain.
There was only one explanation for Parry’s lack of interest: he simply did not know what had happened in town. And that meant he had not been in Rafter at all.
Where, then, had he been?
CHAPTER 11
Deliberately, Mike Shevlin offered no comment on the happenings in Rafter, and Burt Parry asked no questions. But Mike knew that the town and all the country around must be talking with excitement about the killing of Eve Bancroft.
The killing of a girl in a western town was itself enough to start such talk, but Eve Bancroft was owner of the Three Sevens. It was not the largest ranch in that region, but it was one of the big ones.
As he worked, Mike Shevlin tried to find a way through this situation, but there seemed to be none.
He had attempted to stir up the hornet’s nest, but the cattlemen and Ray Hollister had done more than he ever could have. Yet nothing in the situation had changed.
A girl was dead. Ray Hollister was disgraced. Eve Bancroft had called upon him to back his words with action and he had welshed. He had hung back, and Eve had ridden to her death.