This rider had not dismounted but had remained in the saddle while talking to the others, then had turned around and ridden back along the original trail. Chances were, it was a casual meeting between some range riders who had stopped for a smoke.
By nightfall, Shanaghy had traveled a distance equal to three days for the herd, and he made camp under some cottonwoods in a little draw where he found the remains of a campfire. He was learning that most places suitable for camps had been used by others before him, but there was water here, some shade, fuel and grass, whatever any traveler might need.
At daybreak he was again on the trail. From what Carpenter and Pendleton had said, he surmised that Patterson would be no more than five or six days’ drive from town, and so he rode with his eyes on the horizon to the south, looking for dust or any sign of moving cattle.
It was almost sundown on the second day when he topped out on a small rise and saw them.
They were still miles away to the south, but he could see the long dark line of the moving herd and a few smaller dots that would be outriders. He was still several miles from them when he rode down into a long, shallow valley and saw their chuckwagon, and the thin trail of smoke rising from the campfire. This, then, was where the herd would bed down.
As Shanaghy trotted his horse down the long slope toward the camp, he saw the cook, a man in a once-white apron and battered hat, draw a Winchester from the wagon and lay it across the corner of the tailgate. He slowed down as he approached, and walked his horse up to the fire. “I’m looking for the Patterson herd.”
The cook, a sour-looking man with a handlebar mustache, noted the badge on Shanaghy’s shirt with no approval. “You found it.” “Mind if I wait?”
“Light an’ set.” Then after a bit of kneading at the dough on the board before him, the cook said, “Where’s Rig Barrett?”
“I came in his place.”
The cook glanced at him with grim, unfriendly eyes. “They sendin’ a boy to do a man’s job?”
Tom Shanaghy shoved his derby back on his head. “I been doing man’s work since I was twelve,” he replied calmly. Then he said, “You must be about the best trail herd cook there is.”
The man straightened up. “I do my job.” Then he added, “Where’d you get that idea?”
“They tell me Vince Patterson never has anything less than the best.” “Well,” the cook’s tone was now less surly. “I do what I can. Those are hungry boys, yonder.”
“Hope there’s enough left for a hungry marshal,” Shanaghy said. He looked up to see two men riding into the hollow. One of them, he immediately guessed, was Vince Patterson. The other was probably his trail boss. Shanaghy got to his fet. He had decided long ago that he could not fight Patterson and hope to win. One look at the man told him he had decided well. But it had been said that Patterson was a reasonable man, although hardheaded. “Mr. Patterson?” he said. “I’m Tom Shanaghy, and I need your help.” “Help?” Patterson was surprised. He had expected a warning or a challenge. “What do you mean, you want my help?”
He swung down from the saddle as did the other man. That second man was lean and hard, not a large man but wiry … and dangerous. Shanaghy sensed that at once. The man was a fighting man, probably hired for the job.
“When Rig couldn’t make it,” Shanaghy said, “I had to take over the job for him. But Rig was no damn fool, and he saw right away there was something else involved than a fight between a trail driver and a town.” “What’s that mean?”
“Rig figured, and I think the same, that somebody decided to use you.” Patterson stiffened. “Use me? I’ll be damned if anybody is using me or is going to use me. What kind of talk is that?”
“You’re mad at Hank Drako, and rightly so. They heard you were coming up the trail to burn the town where your brother was killed. Now I never put any stock in that, because you’re too bright a man to punish a lot of innocent people for what one damn fool did. But there are some others who figured you would do it and that the town would fight … which they would, of course.” “So?”
“So these other folks, and I’m not sure who they all are yet, decided that while you and the town were fighting they would steal the money brought in to pay for your herd and to pay off your hands.”
Patterson stared at Shanaghy, then turned to the cook. “Fred, give us some coffee, will you?” Then he turned back to Shanaghy. “Sit down. I want to talk to you.”
When they were seated, Patterson looked him over cooly. “I don’t know you.” “No way you could. Like everybody else out here, I’m a newcomer. The people there in town decided they wanted me to be marshal.” “What happened to Hank Drako?”
“He’s around, he and those boys of his.” Then he added, “They told me to fire him, and I did.”
“You fired Hank Drako?”
“I did.”
“And he took it?”
“Well, I don’t think he liked it very much.”
The other man was watching Shanaghy, and Tom knew he was being sized up carefully by a fighting man who knew his business. That part was good. Such men were less apt to make mistakes than a cocky youngster or a would-be tough guy trying to show how bad he was.
“Rig knew something was crossways, Mr. Patterson. He went to Kansas City working on the case. Something happened to Rig there and I had to take over.” Patterson looked at him. “Did Rig feel you were up to the job?”
Shanaghy shrugged. “Well, that’s Rig’s shotgun over there tied to my saddle.” Somehow or other he had to win this man over to accepting him and his story. He had to get Vince Patterson to stop and think, to help if he would-at least to hold off on whatever he meant to do. And Tom Shanaghy meant to use every artifice he could.
“By the way, Mr. Patterson, I’m carrying a message for you.”
“A message? For me?”
“Yes, sir. A very lovely young lady said to say hello and give her love to her Uncle Vince.”
The rancher flushed. “That sounds like Jan.” His tone was gentler. “Do you know Jan?”
“I’ve talked to her,” Shanaghy said quietly, “I don’t know her as well as I’d like to, but I’m quite sure I never will.”
Patterson and his trail boss were both looking at Shanaghy and he flushed beet-red. “She’s a mighty fine young lady and I’m nothing but an Irish lad who’s been given a marshal’s job nobody else wanted.” Nobody spoke for a few minutes. The slim man rolled a cigarette and Patterson finally said, “If nobody else wanted the job, why’d you take it?” “First, because it had to be done. Second, because I thought I could do it. I knew damn well that while I might whip one of your men, or even two or three, I couldn’t whip all of you. I was also relying on something Rig said.” “And what was that?”
“He said you were a stubborn, hardheaded man who was also a decent man, and that you were reasonable. He intended to do just what I’ve done, ride down the trail to talk to you.”
“And if I don’t listen?”
“I’ll protect my town with whatever means I have. If I win, you lose some good men. If you win, you destroy a fine town that’s just becoming something. And then you have to drive your herd a hundred and fifty miles across grazed-over ground to another market. And while you and the town are fighting, these other people will steal all that money and we will have aided and abetted them in their crime.
“I know you’re an honest man, Mr. Patterson, and no matter how much you hate our town, you don’t want to help a bunch of crooks steal the money that was to be paid to you and your men.”
The herd was streaming into the valley, and Patterson’s trail boss swung into the saddle to help turn them and round them up. Patterson drank his coffee, thinking, and Tom Shanaghy kept his mouth shut. Finally, Patterson said, “These other people? Who are they?” “Mr. Patterson,” he said slowly, “I’m working on that and right now I just don’t know. I think I have three of them spotted, but where they are holed up and just who or how many are involved, I don’t know.