Clattering Hoofs Read online

  “How would I feel if one of their bullets got you instead of me?” Sloan wanted to know.

  “They have not molded the bullet yet that will get me,” the little gamecock retorted. “I’m sittin’ in, boy. Done bought chips. Where do we go from here?”

  “We go and have dinner first if there’s a restaurant in this burg.”

  “Best place is Ma Skelton’s. I eat there. Let’s go.”

  They strolled across the street to an adobe house that had been plastered once on the outside but was beginning to scale.

  “Remember that my name is Cape Sloan,” the man who claimed it warned the other.

  A few moments later Fraser introduced the stranger to Ma Skelton. She was a large angular woman in the late forties with a hard leathery face and a brusque manner behind which was concealed a warm and generous heart open to all in distress. More than one cowboy with a broken leg had convalesced at her home in spite of the fact that he had not saved a nickel to pay for food, lodging, and rough nursing. No matter how tough an hombre the invalid might be, that was always one debt he paid later if his span of life was not cut short. In case he was inclined to be forgetful, Ma’s other guests prodded his memory forcibly.

  12. Sloan Renews a Promise

  “DINNER’S READY,” MA SKELTON SAID. “SIT DOWN. ANY place.”

  Sloan and Fraser stepped across a bench that ran along the table close to a wall and sat down. Several others joined them at the table.

  A long dark man came into the room and closed the door behind him. He stood there for a moment, poised and wary, his gaze sweeping the place in a check-up of those present. Cape Sloan understood that look. It was both furtive and searching. He had himself acquired one much like it from months on the dodge. The man had a livid scar across the left cheek, stretching almost from ear to chin.

  The newcomer circled the table and sat down with his back to the wall beside Cape. From where he was he could see instantly anybody who came in either from the outside or the kitchen. The forty-four at his side pressed against Sloan’s thigh. Without a word of greeting to those present he reached for the platter of steak the waitress had just brought, chose the largest portion, slid a half dish of fried potatoes to his plate, and began to eat voraciously.

  “Anything new up San Simon way, Scarface?” Fraser inquired amiably.

  The disfigured man slanted a resentful look at the corral owner. When he came to town he did not care to have his name bandied about. For though the local residents knew him there might be law officers around who had never met him. He growled out that nothing ever happened in his locale.

  Since Sloan had half guessed that this man was Scarface, his poker face betrayed no least interest in the rustler. The business of eating appeared to absorb his full interest. Under other circumstances he might have felt it his duty to help arrest the fellow, but he was himself a fugitive and had been for years wholly on the side of the hunted lawbreaker rather than the pursuing officer.

  Dinner was nearly over when the door opened to let in four men who quite evidently had been lined up in front of a bar prior to adjournment for eating. The one in the van was a big redfaced man in the clothes of a town dweller. He gave the hostess a placatory smile.

  “I reckon we’re a few minutes late, Ma,” he said airily.

  She stared at him with a wooden uncompromising face. “At this house dinner is served at ten minutes past twelve, as you very well know.”

  “Now, Ma, we had a little business to finish and couldn’t get here any sooner,” he protested. “You wouldn’t deny food to hungry men?”

  “Yore business was at O’Brien’s saloon,” she told him bluntly. “This is the third time in ten days you’ve pulled this on me, Rip Morris. You know my rule, and I’ve warned you before. Get here on time—or stay away.”

  “Two cowboys got in here after one o’clock yesterday and you fed them,” Morris reminded her.

  “So I did. They had been on a cattle drive since five in the morning and not idling before a bar. That was an exception. This isn’t.”

  One of the others who had just come in spoke up sourly. He was a mean-looking fellow with a face that would have curdled cream. “So we don’t get dinner,” he snapped. “Is that it?”

  “Not here you don’t.”

  A snarling oath slid out of the corner of his thin lips. “We’ll take our trade where it’s wanted, Rip,” he sneered. “There are other places to eat beside this.”

  “Then go to them, Pete McNulty,” Ma Skelton snapped. “And never show yore face in this house again if you don’t want to stop a flatiron with yore ugly mouth.”

  Uhlmann was another of the four. At sight of him and McNulty the escaped convict had become at once watchful. He observed that both of them had nodded a greeting to Scarface with no evidence of animosity. This was surprising. A few days ago they had been clamoring for his blood. He had stolen their stock and killed the rider of a neighboring cattleman.

  As McNulty turned sullenly to go, Scarface murmured out of the corner of his mouth. “Be seeing you later.”

  Uhlmann’s glassy eyes fell on Sloan. “Look who’s here, Pete,” he snorted.

  McNulty glared at the young man. “Blast my eyes, Rhino,” he cried, “if it ain’t our friend the rustler again.”

  The hard gaze of the convict bored into the man. “Wrong on both counts,” he said very quietly. “Not yore friend and not a rustler. This makes twice you’ve called me a thief.”

  “Caught you in the act, didn’t we?” shrilled McNulty.

  Scarface looked suspiciously from the little ranchman to Sloan and back again. “What’s eatin’ you, Pete?” he wanted to know. “You got anything against rustlers? Or is it just this one that annoys you?”

  “He claims I was helping you run off a bunch of stolen stock the day of the Lopez raid,” Sloan explained.

  “I never saw you before,” Scarface retorted. “I don’t get what this is all about.”

  “We trapped him in Two-Fork Cañon with our stuff and he tried to play he was innocent and you guilty,” McNulty explained. His frown was meant to warn Scarface that he would tell him all about it later. “Course Rhino and I knew better than that.”

  Sloan said, still without raising his voice, “When I meet you in the street later, McNulty, if I do, I’ll wear you to a frazzle with my quirt.”

  Ma Skelton addressed herself sharply to Sloan. “Young man, we won’t hear any more out of you. Nobody can bring quarrels to this house and unload them here. I won’t have it.”

  “I’ve said all I’m going to say, ma’am,” Cape promised, and busied himself with his pie.

  “If you fool with me, fellow, I’ll let daylight through you,” McNulty warned.

  He retreated hurriedly, for Ma Skelton was striding toward him. Two of his companions clumped out of the boarding-house at his heels. Uhlmann lingered a moment, the little eyes in his leathery face fastened on Sloan.

  “I’ve seen you some place before that time we met in the gulch,” he said, a puzzled frown on his forehead.

  “Maybe at Delmonico’s in New York,” Cape suggested ironically.

  “One of these days I’ll remember when and where, fellow.”

  “Then we’ll sing about auld acquaintance.”

  “Don’t get funny with me,” Uhlmann snarled.

  Sloan looked up at Ma Skelton, a grin on his face. “No comment to make. All I’ll talk about is the weather.”

  An angry animal growl rumbled from Uhlmann’s throat as he lumbered out of the room.

  “A nice pleasant gent to keep away from,” Fraser commented lightly.

  Nobody else had any remark to add. As the corral owner had suggested, Uhlmann was a good person to let alone. Presently Scarface rose, paid for his dinner, and departed.

  Fraser and Sloan walked out into the dusty unpaved street and stood on the wooden sidewalk the planks of which were falling into decay. The buildings were of adobe and frame, the latter all with false fronts upon wh
ich the lettering was faded. In the days of John Ringo and Curly Bill Charleston had been a riotous little town, but its hour of glory was noyr in the past.

  13. McNulty Has a Bad Five Minutes

  “WHAT THE SAM HILL IS THIS ABOUT YOU BEING A rustler?” Fraser asked.

  His friend smiled grimly. “Mr. McNulty had a rope around my neck the other day. They were set on hanging me to the nearest tree. Their story was that I belonged to the Scarface gang, which had just raided a bunch of cattle and killed one of John Ranger’s cowboys.”

  “I heard something about that, but I didn’t know you were the man they caught. John was with them when they caught you, I was told.”

  “Yes. He and Russell Hart. All four of them thought I was one of the rustlers, but Ranger and Hart were willing to wait and make sure. Uhlmann and McNulty wanted me hanged right then. At the time I thought they were just a pair of cold-blooded ruffians, but I’m not so sure now. They claimed they wanted to get Scarface and were full of threats against him. It doesn’t look now as if they are so crazy to get him. In the dining room they acted as if they had some kind of understanding. Scarface told them he would be seeing them later. Why, if they are honest cattlemen and he is stealing their stock?”

  “Doesn’t look too good, does it? Ten-fifteen years ago Pete McNulty had a bad name. His neighbors thought he was stealing their stuff but couldn’t prove it. Maybe he is up to his old tricks.”

  “There were one or two of his and of Uhlmann’s animals in the drive,” Sloan said. “But that might be a blind. These fellows might be along with the hunters to make sure they didn’t get the thieves. And when they caught me that suited them fine. They could hang me and go home, leaving Scarface to slip away. I’ll bet that’s how it was.”

  “You certainly get around where the trouble is,” the old-timer commented with a grin. “It ain’t enough for you to have a reward out for you as an escaped convict. You’ve got to get into a jam for rustling too and escape the noose by a miracle. On top of that you build up a nice little feud with McNulty and Uhlmann. For a guy who is supposed to be not lookin’ for notice you sure gather a lot of attention. You don’t really aim to quirt this bird, do you?”

  “Not if I don’t meet him.”

  “There ain’t two hundred people in town. If one of you don’t light out pronto you’re bound to meet. Try to give this fellow leather, and he’ll plug a hole in you.”

  “I don’t think so. He’s yellow.”

  “That makes him more dangerous. He’s liable to get scared and let you have it.”

  “Well, it’s too late to help that now.”

  “With yore past you’re in no shape to go around with a chip on yore shoulder. The thing to do is sing small. My idea is to light out of here this evening. I’ll get Mose Tarwater to look after the corral while I’m gone.”

  “Why go at all?” Sloan asked. “You’re under no obligation to go butting into my grief.”

  “That’s done settled,” Fraser told the younger man irritably. ‘We’ll go sit in my office where you won’t be noticed.”

  “All right. In just a minute. I want to get some Bull Durham.”

  Sloan stepped across the road to the store on the corner. He passed two saddled horses tied to a hitch rack. They were drowsing in the sun. A quirt hung looped over the horn of the saddle nearest him.

  Out of the store McNulty came. He stood lounging against the door jamb, his head turned over the left shoulder. He was talking with somebody in the store.

  Sloan stepped back and flicked the quirt from the horn. A moment later McNulty caught sight of him. The rancher jerked a Colt forty-five from its pocket in his leather chaps.

  “Don’t you come any nearer me,” he yelped, his voice shrill with alarm. “Not a step, or I’ll plug you.”

  Cape’s stride did not falter. It brought him forward evenly and deliberately. “Not you, McNulty,” he said quietly. “Not while I’m looking at you.” On his lips was a contemptuous smile, but the man in the doorway found no comfort in it. The implacable blue-gray eyes shook his nerve, told him with dreadful certainty that he was delivered into the hands of his enemy. That his own boasting had brought punishment home to him made it no easier to face. The hand holding the gun trembled. Under his ribs the heart died within him. He could not send a message from his flaccid will to the finger crooked around the trigger.

  “Rip—Rhino!” he shrieked. “Here’s that Sloan lookin’ for you. Hurry!”

  Uhlmann’s huge shapeless body appeared back of his companion. Sloan was not five feet from the wavering revolver. He said, still with no excitement in his steady voice, “A private matter to settle between me and McNulty, one you’re not in, Uhlmann.”

  Cape plucked his victim from the doorway with his left hand as the lash whipped round the wrist holding the weapon. McNulty let out a cry of pain, and the forty-five clattered to the sidewalk.

  The German put his hands in his pockets and grinned. This was no fuss of his. He did not like this stranger who had come into his life, and he knew that if they continued to meet there would be trouble some day. But he lived by the code of the outdoor West, at least when he was in the public eye.

  “Hop to it, Pete,” he encouraged. “Knock hell out of him. Whale the stuffing outa the brash fool.”

  The quirt in Sloan’s hand wound itself with a whish around the thighs of McNulty. It rose and fell again and again. The tortured man cursed, threatened, screamed. He tried to fling himself to the ground to escape, but Cape dragged him back to his feet. The lash encircled Pete’s legs like a rope of fire. He howled for help from Uhlmann and begged for mercy.

  Sloan flung the writhing wretch from him and dropped the whip. He looked around, to find himself the focus of a score of eyes. They were watching him from doors and window, from the road and the sidewalk. Uhlmann’s big body still filled the doorway, one thumb hitched in the sagging belt at his side.

  Fraser put a hand on his friend’s arm. “Come on, boy,” he said. “Show’s over.”

  “What was it all about?” somebody asked.

  Rip Morris laughed. He shared the opinion of many others about Pete McNulty, that the fellow was a rat, and he had enjoyed seeing him brought low. “Pete said this fellow Sloan was a cow thief, and I reckon he objected.”

  The breast of the thrashed man was still racked by sobs he could not control, but he made a feeble attempt to save face. “He had a quirt—and I slipped.”

  “That’s right,” Uhlmann retorted scornfully. “All you had was a gun, except yore fists. You certainly showed up good, Pete.”

  “You’re a fine friend, Rhino,” whined McNulty. “Stood there and let him use a whip on me, when I was kinda stunned and couldn’t fight back.”

  Uhlmann’s beady eyes were cold and expressionless. “You’re a grown man, ain’t you? Toting a forty-five in your hand. Whyfor would I interfere? If you can’t back yore play, don’t call a man a thief.” The German turned to the owner of the corral. “You a friend of this bird who goes around hunting trouble?” he demanded.

  “No, I don’t reckon Pete would call me a friend of his,” Fraser answered.

  “I’m not talking about Pete, but this bird Sloan here.”

  “Why, yes, I’ve known Bob some time.”

  “Bob? Thought his first name was Cape.”

  Fraser hastened to cover his error. “So it is. But when he was a kid some of us called him Bob. Kind of a nickname.”

  “Well, whatever you call him, tell him from me that I don’t like the color of his hair, nor his face, nor anything about him. Tell him if he wants to stay healthy to keep outa my sight.”

  Sloan said his little piece. “And tell Mr. Uhlmann from me, Stan, that he’s got me plumb scared to death. If I could find a hole handy I would certainly crawl into it.”

  Fraser grinned cheerfully. “Now, boys, let’s not start a rookus. A pleasant time has been had by all, except Pete. Why spoil it now? Come along, Bob.”

  Sloan turned and
walked across the street with Fraser. They picked their way along the sidewalk, in order not to tread on broken boards. Stan slid a look compound of irritation and admiration at Bob Webb’s son.

  “I’ve sure enough tied myself up with a wampus cat,” he said reproachfully. “I wonder how near that yellow wolf came to filling you with lead. Don’t you know better than to walk up to a forty-five pointed at you?”

  “It wasn’t pointed at me most of the time,” Sloan defended apologetically. “The point of the gun was wandering all over Cochise County.”

  “Yeah, in the hands of a man scared stiff. That kind is most dangerous. I looked to hear his gun tear loose any moment. If that’s the way you expect to fight Jug Packard and his gunmen you won’t last longer than a snowball in hell.”

  “This fellow wasn’t Packard or one of his warriors. He was just a rabbit.”

  “You’re the luckiest fighting fool I ever saw. If McNulty didn’t happen to be a guy everyone despises you would never have got away with it. I could see that Rhino was half a mind to butt in, but he wanted to see Pete get what was coming to him. When he got nasty later I wasn’t surprised.”

  “Nor I. But I figured him out right—guessed he would decide, the way we all do out here, that a grown man has to fight his own battles.”

  “Hmp!” grunted Fraser, “Uhlmann has plenty of sand in his craw, but he hasn’t any code you would dare bank on. The fellow would just as soon shoot you in the back as not, if nobody saw him.”

  “He didn’t recognize me anyhow.”

  “No, but he’s edging close. One of these days he will. You have some of yore dad’s ways, and it will come over him all of a sudden that you are young Webb. I didn’t help any when I called you Bob twice.”

  “I’ll try to keep out of his sight after this.”

  They had reached the Rawhide Corral. In one of the stalls they found a big bay horse that had not been there when they left.

  “That is Scarface Brown’s horse,” Fraser said. “When he is in town he usually leaves it here. He’s coming over from the store now.”