“You speak well yourself, Bardoul,” Coyle said with interest. “Where did you attend school?”
“I didn’t. And it seems to me the advantage of academic education is somewhat overrated. Excellent, perhaps, if one takes full advantage of it, but how many do? Benjamin Franklin and Abraham Lincoln were self-educated. As for myself, I’ve done a lot of reading.”
Clive Massey studied Matt thoughtfully, aware of a growing uneasiness. He could sense Jacquine’s interest and the growing friendship of Coyle himself, and it was no part of his plan to allow that. “From what I hear,” he said casually, “you learned other things on the frontier besides sympathy for the Indians. I’ve heard you were quite good with a gun, good enough to have killed fourteen men.”
Steel glinted in Mart’s eyes, but he smiled. “We live as best we can in the west, and it isn’t a tame country. Sometimes,” his eyes were bland and innocent, “it is necessary to protect the innocent against the plans of the criminal.”
It was a chance remark, but Matt saw Massey’s face darken and knew he’d landed a good one. Massey started to speak, but Matt avoided the issue by turning to Jacquine. “You like the west?” he asked.
“What I’ve seen of it is wonderful!” she exclaimed. “However I don’t believe all this killing I hear about is necessary … nor do I like killers!”
Her eyes flashed, and when he smiled, he saw resentment flare up.
“Now, Jackie,” her father interposed, “that’s not a good way to speak.”
Matt pushed back his chair and got to his feet. “On the contrary,” he said, “I like it. I’m a direct person myself, and I always believe in saying what I think and in expressing my intentions.” He turned his head sharply toward Massey. “Don’t you?” he demanded.
Clive Massey jerked. Then anger flooded him. The question had caught him off balance and that filled him with irritation. He looked up at Bardoul. I’ll kill you someday! he thought, but even as he thought it, he smiled. “Yes, I do. Of course!”
Matt picked up his hat and turned away through the crowd, but as he went he saw a man standing against the wall waiting for a table. The fellow’s eyes met his, and he looked away, blushing oddly. Matt glanced at him again. He was a slender fellow with brown hair and dark brown eyes, curiously soft. Oddly disturbed, he walked on outside.
Behind him, Jacquine watched him go. She turned toward Massey. “Who is he? I mean, what do you know about him?”
Massey shrugged. “A drifter and a gunman. He was a trail driver, and they are all a pretty rough crowd. He always has money and never seems to work, but just what he is or does I don’t pretend to know.”
“I think you do him an injustice,” Coyle objected. “He strikes me as a strong, capable young man.” Clive Massey excused himself and wandered out to the bar. He was irritated and disturbed. That remark of Bardoul’s about protecting the innocent against criminals hit too close to the truth to make him happy. Could something of their plan have leaked out? He dismissed the thought. That wasn’t possible.
He could surmise, but he could not actually know. He was irritated that his plan rested on such a shaky foundation, for he had hoped to eliminate all such men as Bardoul and Murphy, for they knew the Big Horns too well.
Something would have to be done about Matt Bardoul.
He thought of Logan Deane. It was too soon to use him, for Deane must remain a sheathed sword to be used only in dire necessity. A killing now might frighten off many of their best men if it was done by Deane, who was going along. Hammer was of no use for he had already backed down from Bardoul. If Bardoul were dry gulched now the finger of suspicion would point directly at Hammer, and Massey was under no misapprehension about his tool. Under pressure Bat Hammer might talk.
Then he thought of Spinner Johns.
That would serve a double purpose for then he would be rid of Johns as well. If there was a killing Johns could be persuaded into flight, and above all, Massey did not want him along. He was too volatile a substance, dangerous as a cobra, and uncertain as Texas weather.
Johns sat at a table occupied by Tate Lyon and Batsell Hammer. Massey avoided them as much as possible, both because he disliked the men personally and because it would do him no good to be seen frequenting the company of such characters. This was a necessity, and no time for hesitation.
Tate Lyon was a man of slightly less than medium height, always unshaven, always untidy. His buckskins were odorous and shabby, and between his lips he carried the stub of an old pipe. His lips were thick and loose, and he continually kept them working around the stem of the pipe, shifting it from place to place in his lips.
He glanced up at Massey, and put down the greasy deck of cards he had been riffling. “Look,” he said, “ain’t there some way we can get rid of that Bardoul? He knows that Shell Creek country, an’ knows it a durned sight better than I do. I’m afraid when he finds out where we’re headed he’ll smell a rat.”
“What difference would it make?” Hammer demanded. “They couldn’t prove nothin’, an’ we could always say they was tryin’ to talk folks out of it so they could get it all for themselves.”
Massey drew a long black cheroot from his pocket and lighted it. Tate Lyon had expressed his own fears, and from the conversation at dinner he was aware that if anything was to be done there was no time for delay.
Their plan was well conceived and with any sort of luck could be carried through without a hitch. Once the wagon train was well on the trail to the Big Horns he would know how to handle the situation. Bardoul and Murphy were the two most likely to dissent from the carefully prepared plans laid down by himself, and while he believed Coyle would listen to him, the men had a good deal too much sense not to pay attention to anything Matt Bardoul would say.
There were going to be times when the movements of this wagon train would seem very erratic to a man who knew the country.
“Gettin’ rid of him ain’t goin’ to be so easy,” Hammer said, “that Coyle has taken a fancy to him, an’ you all heard Phillips speak up for him. They all know that, so we’ve got to be careful.”
Spinner Johns’ nose was like a parrot’s beak and his face was cold. He had been long in the west and yet no sun seemed ever to tan his face. It was white and still, almost without whiskers and without lines. “Why not kill him?” he said. “Why fool around?”
Hammer glanced at him. “He ain’t easy killed. I’ve seen him throw a gun an’ I don’t want any part of him.”
“You don’t,” Spinner sneered. He lighted a cigar and looked at Massey through the flame of the match. “That doesn’t speak for me. I’ll cut him down, all neat an’ pretty … for a price.”
Massey looked around the room uneasily! There was no evading the issue now. He would have preferred to get Johns off to one side and make the issue plain without putting it into bald words.
He wanted Matt Bardoul out of the picture but he had no idea of eliminating himself. Under most circumstances he would have welcomed a fight with Bardoul, but at the moment it would have been the worst possible thing for him to attempt. Looking at the matter cold-bloodedly, he was quite sure he could kill him, but the reaction would be most unfavourable to his plans.
Spinner Johns would not hesitate to take the job, he knew that. The gunman from the Rio Grande was one of the most poisonous of the breed, a sure thing killer but one who was lightning fast. Left alone he was sullen and morose, contemptuous and irritable. When he killed he exploded into a blind, murderous rage that would not leave him until his guns were empty. He would kill a man without a gun as quickly as one who was armed. He would abide by no rules, and eaten by envy and hatred, he was like a rattlesnake during the blind, and would strike out viciously at anything that moved near him.
Clive Massey knew something of the man’s reputation, and in a country where there were many bad men. Spinner Johns ranked with the worst. Born in Missouri he had migrated with his family to the Texas border country, and when sixteen he killed a man near Uvalde. The man was unarmed at the time, and Johns left the country with speed. Joining a trail herd from the Brazos, he rode north up the Chishohn Trail earning a reputation for being surly and dangerous, quick to flare into temper, yet when he cared to work, a top hand. He rarely cared to work.