The Hopalong Cassidy Novels 4-Book Bundle Page 9

  “Hear you got yourself a partner, Dick. This Sparr a good man?”

  For the space of two minutes there was no reply. Silence hung suspended in the room, and Hopalong could almost feel the impulses in conflict here. Much of what he did not know he was guessing from the vantage point of his old friendship for Dick Jordan. He knew the great love the man had possessed for his wife and for his daughter, who was not only all a daughter could be, but the living image of the girl he had married so long ago. Danger to her would be fought in every way.

  “Yeah, Sparr’s a good man.” Jordan spoke quietly, and, so far as it went, honestly. “He knows cattle, an’ he knows men.” In this last Cassidy believed he detected bitterness.

  “Soper goin’ to be a partner too?”

  A spasm contracted the old man’s face and for an instant a living, fierce hatred blazed in his eyes. “No! No, he’s not! Where’d you get that idea?”

  “Oh, just surmisin’!” Hopalong stretched his legs. “Buck wants to pay you for the cattle, Dick.”

  “You bring the money?” From Jordan’s attitude Hopalong decided Jordan was actually hoping he had not.

  “Not with me,” Hopalong said cautiously, “but I—”

  Jordan spoke hastily, as if to interrupt. “All right, if he ain’t got it now, he ain’t got it.” Then he added, more quietly, “If anything happens to me, I want my daughter to get that money, an’ if anything happens to her, you an’ Buck keep it.”

  “Nothin’,” Hopalong said flatly, leaning slightly forward, “is goin’ to happen to Pamela—or to you. Take that from me. Dick”—he leaned forward—“what are you doin’ with Sparr on this place? The man’s a killer and an outlaw!”

  Jordan sighed deeply and refused to meet Hopalong’s eyes. “A man can hire who he likes,” he muttered, “an’ sell out to who he likes. You would do me a favor, Hoppy, if you would straddle your hoss an’ ride back to Buck. Then stay there. Pam an’ me,” he said painfully, “have our own problems. We got to work them out ourselves.”

  Cassidy got to his feet slowly. “Dick,” he said sincerely, “I ain’t doin’ a particle of good, sittin’ here like this, but I promise you, like it or not, I ain’t leavin’! I aim to stay right here until things are straightened out an’ you are on your feet again.”

  There was a gleam in the old man’s eyes, and Pamela came quickly to Hoppy. “Oh, if—!”

  “Don’t say it.” Hopalong hitched his gunbelts a little.

  “I ain’t so dumb. That old frazzle top of a dad o’ yours never was a poker player. He never bluffed me in his life. Ever’ time he tried to make like he was holdin’ a full house, I knowed it was a mighty small pair!”

  Hopalong put his hand on the latch. “So long. I’ll be back.”

  “Hoppy”—Pamela caught his hand—“be careful!”

  He chuckled. “I said I’d be back, didn’t I?”

  He started to open the door, then closed it again. He turned and looked at Pamela. “Can your dad straddle a hoss—if he had to?”

  She hesitated, then nodded. “Yes, Hoppy, if he had to, and I think he’d love to.”

  Hopalong walked slowly across the intervening room. They had told him nothing, or less than nothing, but that they were held prisoner here, he knew. Obviously each one feared to do anything to incur the anger of Avery Sparr for fear that that anger would be vented on the other. Pamela believed she was protecting her father, and he believed he was protecting her. Yet, studying the situation, Hopalong could see no flaws in Sparr’s plan had not he, Hopalong Cassidy, drifted into the game.

  Sparr looked up quickly as he came through the door, Soper more lazily. “Ain’t the man he used to be, is he?” Sparr said, leaning back in his hide-covered chair. “Purty run-down.”

  “Yeah,” Hopalong agreed, “only a shell.”

  “You pay him for that stock?” Sparr asked casually.

  “Huh? Oh no, not t’day.” Hopalong was equally casual. “Didn’t bring the money out because I had some stops to make. I cached it.”

  Hopalong could scarcely repress a grin at the expression on Avery Sparr’s face. Fifteen thousand in cold cash was a nice item, and knowing the big gunman’s greed, he could understand how his mouth must have watered when he heard of it. Now he dared not kill Hopalong without chancing the entire loss of the money—something he was neither ready nor willing to do. Yet he wanted Hopalong dead.

  Dropping into a chair, Cassidy reached for the steaming coffeepot and filled his cup. Some doughnuts were on the table, and he helped himself and began to eat, drinking coffee. “Start back t’night,” he said, “around about half an hour from now. I’ll stick around Horse Springs until the boys get here.”

  “Have to talk to the old man about that stock,” Sparr objected uneasily. “Nothin’ was said to me about sellin’ any. Y’ say some o’ your boys are already out here?”

  “Should be,” Hopalong lied.

  “Ain’t heard nothin’ of them,” Sparr interposed. “Mebbe they strayed off.”

  “Yeah, that could be.” Hopalong tried his coffee and then broke another doughnut. “They sure like to hunt rustlers. Those two”—his blue eyes were innocent—“would rather hunt rustlers than eat, an’ both of them are good feeders.

  “Ever hear,” he asked conversationally, “about the time Mesquite started after the gang that dry-gulched me?” He chuckled. “He’d killed eight out of twelve before I could get back into a saddle. He can read sign like an Injun, an’ he trailed that slick horse thief Shanghai all over the country. The old sidewinder couldn’t shake him, either, an’ finally Mesquite cornered him an’ brought him in. He was a good man, a deputy sheriff for a while. The only trouble that Mesquite ever had was gettin’ prisoners back alive.”

  Avery Sparr shifted irritably in his chair, but Soper was listening with interest. He had his own plans, and fighting did not enter them. Not that he was averse to bloodshed if no other way could be found, but he had laid his own plans well, plans that would be much better carried out if Hopalong Cassidy and Avery Sparr eliminated each other. The fewer in at the payoff the better, and while he had made his own arrangements for conducting the elimination proceedings, nevertheless a few gun battles would eliminate not only some of those who might insist on a share, but also considerable expense.

  Sparr thought of something that had not occurred to him since Hopalong’s arrival. “Say”—he turned abruptly—“you sure come up on us quick outside. Which way did you come? From Thatcher’s?”

  Hopalong shrugged. “I came in from the north. I’d decided to go back across Circle J range an’ look over some of that young stuff, so when I started back for this place I crossed the Middle Fork a couple o’ miles west o’ Canyon Creek. Seen a shack there,” he added, lying cheerfully, “an’ there was a hombre inside fast asleep.”

  Actually, it was the south from which he had come and across the head of West Fork and the Whitewater. It would do no harm to create a little friction among the members of the Sparr outfit, and some discontent.

  “Come all the way from Thatcher’s?” Sparr demanded suspiciously.

  “Uh-uh. Spent the night on Circle J’s north range. Near Double Spring.”

  The places mentioned were carefully catalogued in his mind from the information culled from the old cowhand’s talk on the T Bar. Yet as he talked he was thinking of what might be done. From where he sat the corrals could be seen. Two horses from there, and his own. It might be done. The risk lay in how much Dick Jordan could stand, and Hopalong was willing to bet there was enough fight in the old man to keep him in the saddle for some rough and wicked miles. It was upon that fight he was planning to gamble.

  It would do no good to take them back to Thatcher’s even if he got them away from the Circle J. Despite the fact that Sim Thatcher’s place was admirably situated for defense, and built for it, the T Bar was too far away over country too easy to cover. If escape was to be made, and he intended to start nothing that could be avoided until Di
ck and his daughter were safely away, it would have to be into those mountains to the west.

  It was all unknown country, and he might run them into a box canyon from which escape would be impossible, yet he knew terrain, even if not this particular area, and he had an idea that he could find a way through to hit that trail to Alma. A lot would depend on obtaining a head start and getting into the hills past Lily Mountain. After that he would have to depend on his own skill in covering their trail and in every trick he could think of to escape pursuit, for without Dick Jordan and his daughter all of Sparr’s schemes must fall through.

  He arose finally. “Glad to have met you,” he said, grinning at Sparr, “and Mister Soper. Maybe we’ll get together again sometime. O’ course,” he said mildly, absently, “if you’re still here when I bring the boys after that young stock, we’ll see yuh.” He looked up, grinning. “Some o’ the boys would sure like to meet you, Sparr.”

  He was at the door before he stopped again, and why he said what he did then he never knew, except that it often pays to keep an enemy confused as to how much you know and what you are implying. “By the way”—his blue eyes went from Sparr to Soper—“either of you know a tinhorn named Goff?”

  Sparr frowned, but Soper’s head came up sharply. “Sure we know him,” Sparr said, scowling. “What about him?”

  “What would he be doin’ ridin’ around the Elk Mountain?”

  Soper’s face went white, then deadly, as he stared, nostrils distended, at Avery Sparr.

  The gunman was half out of his chair. “Goff?” He was incredulous. “Around Elk Mountain?”

  “Oh, well!” Cassidy was cheerful. “Some idea of his own, I guess. Gamblers,” he added sagely, “are odd folks. Always gettin’ ideas about makin’ money for themselves. Fact is, most folks are like that. Always ready to make a few extry dollars. Like Johnny Rebb said to me the other night—” He paused. “But that was in confidence.”

  Avery Sparr arose so abruptly that he tipped over his chair. “What was it Rebb said?” he demanded. His voice was harsh, his gray eyes dancing with a cold and ugly light.

  “Oh, he was just talkin’!” Hopalong waved an airy gesture of dismissal. “At that, you can’t blame a man for lookin’ out for his own interests.”

  He crossed the hard-packed ranch yard chuckling to himself. That would give them something to think about! If it did no more than worry Sparr, it would help. Better yet, it might take Sparr, Soper, or some of the others off the ranch and leave him a freer hand in getting away with the Jordans.

  So far as Hopalong knew, Goff was still playing cards at Clifton’s, and Johnny Rebb might be anywhere, and the guard on duty at the ford on Middle Fork might never have slept a wink in his life. Men of criminal instincts and aspirations are men born with and filled with suspicion. They live with the cherished idea that all men are out for their own interests.

  They judge others by themselves; hence, seeds of suspicion fall on fertile soil and easily flower into a lot of trouble. And with Soper, Cassidy was quite sure he had struck such soil. The man had obviously been frightened of the construction Sparr might put on Cassidy’s remarks and genuinely upset when he heard that Goff was riding in the vicinity of Elk Mountain.

  Speaking of Johnny Rebb had turned Hopalong’s thoughts upon the buck-toothed gunman. There was nothing about him, really, except those buck teeth, that in any way distinguished him, but somehow the young man’s image stayed in Hopalong’s mind, and the fact disturbed him. Somewhere, deep within him, some wellspring of memory or some unconscious construction had attached importance to Johnny Rebb. And the fact that he could not guess why disturbed Hopalong and made him restless.

  Once in the saddle he started east by north, heading for a route that would put him on the Indian Creek Trail, which was the main-traveled route to Horse Springs. As he rode he studied the country with great care, pausing from time to time and reining the buckskin off the trail to make sure whether or not he was followed. It was not until the third attempt that he actually did spot his trailer. The rider was about a half mile behind him and just coming down into the broken country that was the approach to the canyon of the Middle Fork.

  Dropping the buckskin swiftly down the trail to the floor of the canyon, Hopalong started it up the opposite side, then swung it to a narrow shelf of rock he would have hesitated to take with another horse, and rode back to the river. Entering the water, he walked the horse up the canyon, staying close to the edge of the river and the trail that ran along the bank.

  Following the river for almost two miles, he finally found a canyon and entered it.

  More and more he was admiring the buckskin. The horse had not only courage, but an almost instinctive sense of what was safe and what was not. Once it decided a trail was safe it would push along regardless of the narrowness of the ledge or the depth of the canyon. Climbing up from the bed of the Middle Fork, Hopalong followed a mere eyebrow of trail where for almost half the distance one boot brushed the rock wall while the other stirrup was suspended over space. And the buckskin plodded as if it were walking along a bridle path in a park.

  Keeping to the timber and brush, avoiding trails, Hopalong rode steadily west, crossing Canyon Creek without seeing anyone. The country grew steadily more wild and the mountains to the west loomed up sharp and clear against the sky.

  Even from here he could see how rough they were and how few passes there must be. Among the jumble of massive mountains three peaks lifted high above the others. All of these, he had been told, were more than ten thousand feet in altitude, and the northern of the three was Whitewater Baldy. He found a hollow among heavy growth where there was grass and made camp.

  Picketing his horse, he carefully built a hasty fire from dried and weathered branches under a tree where even the thin smoke from the dry wood could be thinned more and dispersed by the needles of the pine. When he had cooked and eaten a meal, he rolled up in his blanket and went to sleep. It was not quite sundown when he closed his eyes. It was after ten when he awakened suddenly.

  Instantly he was on his feet. Rolling his bed, he saddled up, strapped on his bedroll, and swung into the leather. The buckskin humped its back irritably, but not very seriously. “Take it easy, Buck,” he whispered companionably. “You’ll need that energy before another rest, b’lieve me.”

  An hour was used in covering the six miles back to the ranch house, but once there he swung down in the trees where he had stopped that morning.

  The air was clear and cold, sharp and fresh as cold water, and every breath felt like he was actually drinking. The air smelled faintly of pines and wood smoke, and there were lights in the house and also in the bunkhouse. For several minutes he waited, studying the layout anew, and then he worked his way around and behind the corrals, eased past them to the wall of the bunkhouse, and looked within. Anson Mowry sprawled in his bunk, half asleep. The tall hand Hopalong had seen earlier was at a table playing solitaire and facing the door. There was no one else in sight.

  Huddling against the log and adobe wall, partly concealed by the corner ends that jutted out from the wall, Hopalong waited and listened.

  “Hey, Anse! Wake up! What happened around here t’day? Where’d ever’body go?”

  Mowry spoke drowsily, half asleep. “Cassidy was here. The one that shot Barker.”

  “Here? Is he loco?”

  “Naw! You should o’ seen the way they invited him in! Like he was their rich uncle or somethin’. Sometimes I think this whole outfit got throwed on its head.” Mowry sat up and fumbled for the makin’s. Hopalong could see him only slightly, as his body was partly hidden behind the card player. “I gotta notion to drag it.”

  “Huh! You never had it so good! They feed good here, good money, an’ durned little work. I ain’t a-scared of this here Cassidy. Anyway, he’s Sparr’s problem. Let the boss have him.”

  “Mebbe.”

  “Or Johnny Rebb.”

  “Rebb?” Mowry’s voice was edged with contempt. �
�What makes you think he’s good?”

  “Ever see him throw a gun?” The card player looked up casually. “B’lieve me, Anse, an’ you’re my friend. Don’t you ever stack up against him. That long-haired, homely galoot is fast!”

  “Aw!” Mowry was irritated. He got to his feet. “You talk like a crazy man! Who’d you see him with?”

  “Remember”—the tall cowhand lifted a bone-ribbed face of sun-tanned leather—“I was at McClellan. That was skittish, mighty skittish! But not Rebb! He stood there cold as ice, talkin’ easylike, an’ no more worried than nothin’.” Then he added, “It was him killed Duke Brannin.”

  “What?” Mowry whirled. “Him?”

  “Uh-huh. I’ve knowed it three, four months. Brannin an’ him had trouble up Utah way. Rebb lit out because Brannin had friends an’ he didn’t. Duke Brannin follered Johnny an’ cornered him at Lee’s Ferry. I come up a few minutes after, an’ folks said Brannin never had a chance.”

  Anson Mowry scowled, and Hopalong could share the gunman’s feelings. It was good to know these things. Usually, gunmen are well known, but such a one as Johnny Rebb, young and comparatively unknown, could be dangerous.

  “Funny he never said nothin’ about it. You sure?”

  “Practic’ly seen it. O’ course I’m sure. It’s just that Rebb ain’t one o’ these talkative hombres. I wouldn’t be surprised if he was slicker than the boss.”

  “Say!” Mowry turned. “Does the boss know that?”

  “Uh-uh. Don’t think so.”

  “Maybe Rebb is lucky. The boss was friendly with Duke Brannin.”

  Mowry sat down on the bunk again and rubbed out his cigarette with a bootheel. “All right, shut up an’ let me sleep. Wake me up at one.”

  “I’ll wake you at twelve!”

  The card player gathered in the pasteboards and riffled them, then shuffled and cut. Finally he began to deal. From the bunk came a slow snore, then another.