Gunsmoke Masquerade

  First Skyhorse Publishing edition published 2014 by arrangement with Golden West Literary Agency

  Copyright © 2009 by Dorothy S. Ewing.

  “Gunsmoke Masquerade” first appeared as a seven-part serial in Western Story (3/28/42–5/9/42). Copyright © 1942 by Street & Smith Publications, Inc. Copyright © renewed 1970 by Dorothy S. Ewing. Copyright © 2009 by Dorothy S. Ewing for restored material.

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  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available on file.

  Cover design by Brian Peterson

  Print ISBN: 978-1-62914-381-1

  Ebook ISBN: 978-1-62914-975-2

  Printed in the United States of America

  Chapter One

  The clump of giant cottonwoods by the spring at Agua Verde was the only spot of bright greenery along the whole vast sweep of the desert’s eastern rim. Years back, the stage road had made a wide detour from its north/south line to touch at the springs. The station under the trees, now abandoned except for the corrals, had offered the traveler a pleasant spot to lay over and ready himself for either the northward or southward remaining half of the three-day journey across Dry Reach from Johnsville to Fort Sawyer.

  When the high valley footing the lofty peaks to the east attracted settlers, another road came down to Agua Verde from that direction, and freighting wagons became even more numerous than the stages. A small town mushroomed along the foot of that east road close behind the cottonwoods, the buildings set far back from the wheel ruts out of respect to the dust. The town hadn’t thrived for long, even though an occasional freight hitch still lumbered up the road out of the desert, for the heat along the wide street was close to intolerable except at night, and traffic went on through instead of stopping.

  Still, the settlement didn’t completely die. For the last several years it had remained in a suspended state of slow disintegration, the saloon and the hotel and one general store doing enough business to keep open, the stage corral still busy and boarding the teams and saddle animals of outgoing and incoming men from the east upcountry as it always had. And each mid-morning and late afternoon the townspeople, except for a few women, would drift toward the corral to watch the arrival of the stages as they had since the first adobe hovel was built on the town site. It was as though they awaited some happening, a summons to a less dreary life, perhaps, that never came.

  This early evening the stage was an hour overdue. It finally made its appearance far out across Dry Reach, its progress marked by what looked like a lazy dust devil. Still, as that dust smear neared and the sun’s brassy glare died with a faint breeze out of the eastward hills stirring the furnace-hot air, not a man or a woman came onto the street. They had good reason for staying indoors. Two hours ago a buckboard had rattled in off the east road. Its driver had pulled in at the hotel, tied his team to the rail there, and taken a chair on the wide portal fronting the low adobe building. His age was indeterminate, for his corn-silk hair and longhorn mustache gave him the look of an old man, while the lack of lines on his hawkish face, along with a springy yet awkward stride, were tokens of a saddle man in his prime. Boots cocked on the rail of the hotel verandah, he presently took a blackened brier from pocket, filled it with care, and began smoking. Those few townspeople already up from their siestas saw him and knew him to be Mike Sternes, foreman of one of the big upcountry outfits, and were incurious over his presence here.

  He had barely got his pipe going when another traveler appeared at the head of the street, coming in from the same direction Sternes had. This second man rode a roan horse. When he first saw the rider, Sternes took the pipe from his mouth, knocked the tobacco from it against the heel of his boot, and returned it to his pocket. His face settled into cool impassivity as the horseman neared and, almost abreast the hotel, reined to a stop. By that time Sternes had his feet off the rail and was sitting straighter than before.

  A brief and hostile glance passed between the two. Sternes’s stare at length moved off the man, apparently ignoring him, yet not far enough so that he couldn’t watch him out of the corner of his eye. The rider in the street smiled meagerly at the other’s apparent disinterest. He was a tall and handsome man, young and with deep sorrel hair, and he sat the saddle with a carelessness that was cocksure, almost defiant. Shortly he said in a quiet drawl that, despite its low tone, carried to the other: “Want to settle this now, Mike?” His right hand lay carelessly against the inside swell of the saddle, within easy hand spread of the low-slung holster thonged to his thigh.

  Sternes’s glance swung directly on him again. “Not now, Dallam,” was his slow answer.

  That sparse exchange of words was overheard by three men watching from the saloon down and across the street from the hotel. By the time Dallam had put his horse to that side of the street and entered the saloon, those three had left by the back door. Within five minutes every soul in town knew that Pete Dallam and Mike Sternes were finally within shooting distance of each other. And one and all decided that it would be wisest to stay indoors, out of range of any stray lead that might fly at any moment. For the feud of these two upcountry men had long passed the stage of threats; neither would talk about the other; both had sought a final and deciding meeting. It looked as though this might be it.

  The saloon remained empty except for a wary barkeeper whose anxiety must have showed on his face. For, as Dallam called for a bottle, he remarked: “Just stay set and you’ll be all right.”

  The apron nodded but slopped a little whiskey over the edge of the shot glass as he filled it for his unwanted customer.

  Dallam had three straight drinks before he sauntered back to the street door, went out, and leaned idly against the pushed-back window shutter. He looked across at Sternes, and there was a wicked deviltry on his handsome full face. He was this way when he drank, which was often.

  “Changed your mind, Mike?” he called presently.

  Sternes looked at him casually, then away, not bothering to reply.

  “Why put it off?” Dallam taunted. “You’ve saved up enough to pay the undertaker.”

  This time Sternes completely ignored him.

  With a low laugh, Dallam reentered the saloon. As he came back to the stained pine counter, he told the bartender: “The old bird’s hard to rile. I’ll hand him that much.”

  “Yes, Mister Dallam.”

  “What’s the matter, you scared?”

  “So bad I can taste it!”

  “I ought to be, too,” Dallam said, and reached again for the bottle. The orange wash of the sun’s last light was fading when the stage took the sharp rise up out of the sand and rumbled in toward the corral. By that time, Sternes had left his chair and was well down the street, almost to the arched gateway under the cottonwoods that marked the stage lot entrance. Dallam took a last quick drink, left the saloon, and rolled a smoke as he strode down the hard-packed dirt walk.

  Sterne
s came up onto the corral’s loading platform as the Concord’s high door swung open. He took off his curl-brimmed Stetson, said—“Cathy, you’re a sight for sore eyes! Glad you’re home.”—and reached up to help a slim, raven-haired girl down off the step.

  “You’re not half as glad as I am, Mike.” The girl gave Sternes her hand and a warm welcoming smile that let him know she meant what she said.

  The sheen of her hair and contrasting light blue eyes would have made Catherine Bishop striking-looking even if she lacked any semblance of prettiness. But she was quite pretty. Her good looks weren’t shallow, and, feature by feature, she wasn’t beautiful. Her mouth was a shade too wide for perfection, but it made the face all the more expressive. Her slender nose had the hint of an uptilt, not flawless but adding to the vivaciousness of her quick and usually merry eyes. Her ridiculously small but becoming blue hat was powdered with dust, as was her puff-sleeved print dress, but in spite of this badge of her desert journey she looked remarkably wellgroomed.

  Sternes stepped back for a better look at her, his expression mock sober. “Are them doodads what they’re wearin’ back East these . . . ?” He broke off when he saw she wasn’t listening. Turning, his glance following hers, he saw Dallam coming in the lot gate, and now his face turned genuinely grave. “I didn’t know he was comin’ or I’d have stayed away,” he said in a low voice.

  “Never mind, Mike,” was the girl’s quick answer. “But promise you won’t make trouble?”

  “Ma’am, I been a saint ever since he showed up. Reckon I can hold out.”

  “Thanks, Mike.”

  She left his side then, going out across the platform to meet Dallam. Sternes watched until Dallam gathered the girl in his arms. Then he swung around irritably, quickly, intending to unload her things from the big mail coach’s back boot.

  His move brought him jarring against a stranger alighting from the stage. “Watch who you’re pushin’!” he said angrily. The next moment he was looking closely at the man, his anger gone. The stranger laughed easily and said—“My fault.”—as he turned away.

  He was a tall man, heavy in the shoulders, and he had the look of a cowpuncher uncomfortable in his Sunday suit. As he moved away, Sternes noticed his dark-red hair. There were other things to notice about him—the ease with which he swung Cathy’s heavy trunk down off the boot board so as to get at his own war bag, his Texan’s drawl as he spoke a brief word to the hostler. Then Sternes’s interest lagged, for Dallam and Cathy were approaching.

  “You two are going to promise me you’ll be gentlemen tonight,” the girl said as she came up. “If you will, we can eat together before we start back.”

  “I’ll get my feed across . . .” Dallam began in a surly voice.

  “Pete,” Cathy cut in, “I’m asking you to do this for me!”

  He shrugged, said—“Sure, I’ll be good.”—and left her side, stepping around Sternes to go to the coach’s rear and reach for a suitcase in the boot marked with Cathy’s initials.

  In the act of lifting down the heavy bag, he saw the stranger and momentarily paused, eying the man carefully, a little surprised. He heard the stranger say to the hostler: “If you say I can make it tonight, I’ll get started. Is there a place here a man can get a good meal?”

  “Hotel up the street. We eat their grub.”

  “Then it’s good enough for me,” said the stranger, turning away. “See you later.”

  Dallam stood there, watching the man go out the gate. Then he asked the hostler: “Who is he?”

  “Y’ got me,” was the reply. “He’s hirin’ a jughead to get up to Ledge. Want me to hang onto the lady’s possibles till you get down to pick ’em up?”

  Dallam nodded and walked off, his glance still on the stranger disappearing into the dusk upstreet.

  The fact of the girl’s being with the two upcountry men when they went up to the hotel somewhat eased the worry of the townspeople. Still, they were curious and a good majority of the men presently gathered in the obscurity of the walk awning fronting an empty store next to the saloon. From its protective shadow they could look straight across and into the hotel’s shabby dining room and see something as unbelievable to them as it would be to most upcountry men when they heard about it. Pete Dallam and Mike Sternes were eating at the same table, and Frank Bishop’s daughter was sitting between them. They watched closely every mouthful of food taken by those three across the way; they saw every unheard word spoken during that meal, and, by the sparseness of the two men’s talk and the profuseness of the girl’s, they sensed what a strained feeling held the trio. When she finally rose from the table and left them, someone in the group under the awning breathed: “This is it.”

  But it wasn’t. Dallam and Sternes sat at the table coolly ignoring each other. Once it was apparent that they spoke. But even with that, neither made a threatening move. The watchers, knowing they were witnessing the unbelievable, took in every move of the two upcountry men.

  At length, Dallam left the table to appear a moment later on the verandah, where he stood long enough to roll and light a smoke before coming out onto the street. He headed for the saloon. But instead of going in there, he went to his roan, untied his reins from the pole, swung into the saddle, and rode out the head of the street. The rhythmic thud of his pony’s hoofs could be heard fading into the night’s stillness out the road that led to the hills.

  “That’s that,” a man in the crowd said, expelling his breath in eloquent relief.

  “Sternes is drivin’ her up in his rig,” said another. “No use in Dallam hangin’ around any longer.”

  Now the group began to break up slowly, a man or two drifting down the walk, a few more entering the saloon. But some stayed on. They saw the stranger who had come in on the late stage, who had also eaten in the hotel but left before Dallam, ride past on a horse they recognized as belonging to Hank Snyder, the stage yard hostler; it was a grulla gelding Snyder didn’t often use himself, an animal gone splay-foot from age and neglected hoof care.

  It was less than ten minutes after Dallam had ridden away that Sternes came out of the hotel and went across to the saloon. Now the last remnant of the small crowd left the walk, most of it going into the bar where they expected they would find Sternes and maybe get him to talk. But he wasn’t there. The barkeep announced that Sternes had left by the alley door after a quick drink. He hadn’t said where he was going.

  Some time later, not long, the hotel owner came across to ask for Sternes.

  “Gone,” the barkeep told him.

  “Gone where? The girl’s across there ready to go.”

  “He didn’t say.”

  The hotel man glanced at the others. “Any of you see where he . . . ?”

  The faint but sharp echo of a gunshot rode in out of the night. Every man in the saloon faced the door. Before anyone could move, four more quick-timed and muted explosions sounded. Then the night was still, the utter lack of sound strangely ominous.

  “That came from over east,” someone said sharply.

  As though they had been waiting for the silence to end and release them, men made for the saloon’s street door, hurried out onto the walk, and into the street. Gathered there, facing east, they listened again.

  From across the street Cathy Bishop called: “Who was doing the shooting?”

  The hotel man left the others and went across and onto the verandah where she stood. They heard him say: “We don’t know yet, ma’am. Sternes is gone. No one seems to know where he went.”

  Two men left the crowd now and ran down to the stage corral after horses. The rest started up the street afoot, headed out the trail.

  They found the bodies lying beside the trail less than a mile from town along a rocky hill slope. It was gruesome enough without the light of the lantern someone brought along later. Sternes lay to one side of the trail, face down, his upper body and head hanging over a low shelf of rock and his .45 still clutched in his hand. The shirt along his back was torn a
nd splotched with crimson where a single bullet had gone through him from the front.

  They threw a coat over Dallam when they first looked at him by the light of the lantern. There was nothing left of his face.

  Chapter Two

  Pleasant City’s jail was hot and dark, smelly, too. U.S. Commissioner Guilford stopped in the doorway as he took his first breath of the foul air. “Isn’t there a window you can open in here?” he queried.

  The fat sheriff, who had gone in ahead of Guilford and was now only faintly visible in the gloom between the cell rows, stopped and took the chewed stub of a cigar from his mouth. “I told you we was makin’ sure of him,” he said. “We bricked up the window.”

  “How does he get air?”

  “The chimney.” The sheriff indicated with a jerk of his fat hand a hole in the roof just inside the jail office doorway, adding: “I’ll leave that door open if you say.”

  “No. Close it when you go out.” Guilford was curt, for he was beginning to dislike heartily this representative of the law. Now that his eyes had focused to the feebler light, he could see well enough. He noted with a dry inner amusement the way the sheriff stopped and drew his gun before approaching the end cell to the left.

  “Inside or out?” the sheriff queried. “If you go in, I’ll have to lock the door on you.”

  “I’ll go in.”

  “You got a lot of faith in your luck.” The sheriff unlocked the cell door and pulled it open. “Mathiot!” he bawled. “Here’s a gent wants to see you.” The commissioner knew then that the sheriff was afraid.

  A shape stirred on the cot in the deep shadow of the cell’s back wall. “Send him away,” said a slow-drawling voice.

  “Not this one, I don’t,” the sheriff told him. “This’s a federal commissioner. Looks like Uncle Sam’s interested in you, too.”

  Guilford had come in close behind the sheriff and now looked at the man on the cot and moved his head in a brief negative. He wasn’t sure the prisoner understood until Mathiot said dryly: “You don’t say. What’s on his mind?”