Walkers Creek - A Western Page 4

  Of course there is no harm in people thinking that she had a hand in blowing up the house so long as nobody can prove anything. It will be useful to have people a little fearful of her. It is the best way to stay strong and independent.

  The trap bounces along the rutted road out of the town. She hates it, it is so much more uncomfortable than riding a horse but fine dresses and saddles just don't go together. She could have ridden into the town in her ranch clothes but it is important to give the impression that nothing unusual is happening. Buying bandages and medicines can be laughed off as being paranoid and over-prepared when she doesn't seem in too much of a rush, but buying those things when she hasn't even got time to put her best clothes on would make tongues wag about who was hurt back at the ranch.

  Clear of the town, she is racing the trap along faster than she ought to. The horse is sweating at a brisk trot but she is keen to be back to see how Billy is getting on and to hear how Sanchez fared at the dam. She has forgotten, for the moment, about her sentinel from the morning, the deputy who had followed her.

  As she follows a slight bend in the road, she glimpses him out of the corner of her eye. Mannion had said his name was Wilson. Dressed in black, he is riding along a distance behind her. Not quite far enough back to be out of sight. Perhaps he wants her to know that he's there, that he's watching her. What does he know? Perhaps he knows nothing and just wants to scare her into thinking he knows something. If he knows something, surely he'd do more than just follow?

  Up ahead she sees another rider stopped in the road. He is waiting for her, she is certain of that. He has stopped just at the point where the road to the ranch forks off to the left. Damn this wagon. If she'd been on horseback she could have left the road, ridden through the stream and got away from these men. The trap will turn over if she turns off the road at this speed. She slows the horse to a walk as she approaches the stationary rider and slips one hand into her skirts to find the derringer she has concealed in there.

  'Miss Nixon.' He doffs his hat. He's not a young man, his face is weatherworn and craggy. His hair is stuck to his forehead by sweat. He is chewing lazily. She notices the little star pinned on his chest. Another deputy.

  'Is there a problem?' she says brusquely.

  'I believe there is ma'am. I believe there is.'

  She sits silently waiting for him to explain himself. Her horse fidgets, keen to get moving as it senses how close it is to home.

  'You see there's someone in these parts that seems to think it's a good idea to go about dynamiting people's houses. You might have heard about that?'

  She nods. She is aware that Wilson hasn't stopped and will soon ride up behind her.

  'Well it seems the sheriff thought we should be keeping an eye on you. Do you think he's troubled that someone might put some dynamite down your chimney?'

  'I'm sure my men can take good care of the ranch and that you boys can look after the other people hereabouts.'

  'In'eresting you should say that ma'am. Most in'erestin'.' He spits.

  She waits. Wilson is now standing his horse only a few yards behind her.

  'You see.' He goes on eventually after spitting some more. 'You see the sheriff tells me he's been speaking to one of your men who says that it was him that put the dynamite in Mr. McLaren's cabin. Now why do you think he would be saying that?'

  She is startled but does her best to conceal it. Her grip tightens on the little gun despite the knowledge that it is no match for two deputies.

  'It seems to me that your man is trying to get leniency by stating to the court that it was you that put him up to it. That would make some sense now, wouldn't it?'

  'I'm afraid what you're saying makes no sense to me at all.' There is a little waver in her voice.

  'Well in that case ma'am, you think on it. Perhaps it will come to you which of your men it might be that's been talking to the sheriff and whether or not a judge might be inclined to believe him. The sheriff himself seemed mighty convinced by him.' He spits again, a long foul-looking stream. A smile breaks onto his craggy face. 'It's been a long time since we dragged a woman through the streets by her heels. You think on it.'

  With that he pulls his horse to the side of the road. She doesn't need to be told to go on and neither does the horse who senses the slightest shift in the reins and sets off immediately up the fork to the ranch.

  She looks back to see the two deputies still standing at the junction.

  Was he telling the truth? It's always hard to tell with the sheriff's men. They're not beyond inventing things for their own ends. It's not as if she wasn't courting suspicion about the McLaren house. So it could be true. After all, Sanchez had his cunning idea of hiring a stranger from out of town to do the dirty work. It sounds as though this stranger, having no ties of loyalty to her or Sanchez has been caught and is going to drag her down with him.

  The plan had seemed so clever, so foolproof. The stranger would be gone as soon as he came and there would be no evidence that she was linked to the death of McLaren. Now it is all unraveling. McLaren survives the blast, and the mercenary has been caught and will talk. What a disaster. This morning she was simply worried about whether Billy would hang. Now she worries that they all will. The only solution is to find this mercenary, whoever he might be, and stop the sheriff ever talking to him again.

  Sanchez is sat on the steps to the porch idly flicking stones at a tin can while he waits for her to return. He doesn't look up as she rides up and climbs down from hurriedly from the trap.

  'Is everything alright?' She is troubled by his lack of welcome. 'Is it Billy? Is he alright?'

  'Billy is doing well.' he says, looking up. 'He sat up earlier. Laura is a good nurse.'

  'At the dam?' she says cryptically, not knowing who else can hear their conversation.

  'It was a big mess. Billy got him alright.' He shakes his head. 'I did what I could. It won't take an Indian tracker to work out what went on there. Too much mess.'

  'That's terrible. They suspect, you know.'

  'Is that not what you want?'

  'Yes, I guess. I don't know.' She can feel tears welling up in her anger and confusion. She sits down on the step next to Sanchez disregarding the dust on her fine dress.

  'Do they know about the deputy?' He still hasn't looked up.

  'No. I don't think so. Nobody in town talked about him. The deputies didn't mention him.'

  'The deputies?'

  She explains to him about the hold-up on the road and how they'd claimed that his mercenary was offering to tell the sheriff everything.

  'That is not right. The man I hired, he was...'

  'I don't want to know who he is.' She interrupts.

  'That is best, the less you know of him is better. But I do not believe the deputy. This man, he did not seem a dishonest man.'

  'An honest man puts dynamite in another man's house for money?'

  He nods slowly conceding that she has a good point.

  'Have you paid him yet?'

  'Half. The rest was to be paid when the job was done.' He looks at her. 'I hope you are not suggesting we fail to pay him the rest of the money. That will not go well for us.'

  'Just suppose that the deputies are telling the truth and that this man is talking to the sheriff about us. If that's true then we're both going to find ourselves on the end of a rope.' She sniffs back a tear of angry indignation. 'I don't want that. You don't want that. This man is a liability, a danger to us. He needs to be in the same hole you put that deputy in last night.'

  Sanchez shakes his head.

  'If you won't do it to save your own neck, then tell me who he is and I'll do it myself.'

  'I'll deal with him.' He says sadly. 'I must arrange with him a time to pay him the last of the money. I will deal with him then.'

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Breakfast at the hotel is a quiet affair. There are few guests staying at the hotel, the bustle in the daytime is almost entirely townspeople for whom it is a
place to be seen.

  A man stands up from his table, spurs jangling, and calls out loudly for Renault. They have a loud conversation about fetching his horse for him.

  Logan sips his coffee and watches. This should be his last day in this town. That is the plan. He should have been paid the rest of the money by now. That is all that is keeping him here. It makes no sense to stay around any longer while the town gossips and speculates about what happened up at the cabin. One rumor suggests that it was a whiskey still that exploded. Another that the dynamite was a trap for the sheriff and his deputies and that one of them was ambushed when they went to investigate. Such outlandish stories, it won't take them long to get round to pinning the blame on the recent visitors to the town. As the man clinks his spurs to the front door of the hotel, Logan wonders if there was a way of making it look as though that stranger was to blame.

  'Huevos, señor.'

  He looks up as a plate of eggs is put down in front of him. He is surprised to hear the girl speaking Spanish. Nobody has spoken Spanish to him since the Mexican arranged the McLaren explosion with him back at the mining camp. He tries to get a good look at her to see if he recognizes her, but she darts back into the kitchen as quickly and quietly as she arrived.

  The eggs are good. Satisfied, he pushes the plate away and as he does so he spots a piece of paper underneath. Checking that nobody else in the room is watching him, he teases the paper out without lifting the plate and sees that it is the message that he has been waiting for. In a careful hand, written in Spanish it says:

  - The chimney still stands at the broken house. Arrive at sunset. Your money will be there.

  So that is the plan then, to collect the money from the ruins of the McLaren house. Sunset is a damned inconvenient time. He won't be able to get far with the money he has collected. This smells like a double-cross. Perhaps the Mexican plans to get his money back as soon as he has handed it over.

  The kitchen door opens and he turns round hoping to see the Mexican girl who delivered his food so he can ask her about the message, but it is a fat woman with lank brown hair who waddles out carrying breakfast.

  'You've had yours?' She says, standing over his table. The food on the plate she's carrying doesn't look or smell as good as what he's just eaten.

  'Yes. A girl brought it out.'

  'Ain't no girls working here, just me.' She giggles at the idea of being called a girl. Her chins wobble as she giggles.

  'No, I'm quite sure. A girl, about this tall,' he demonstrates, 'Mexican looking. I'd quite like to speak to her if I can.'

  'Nope. No girls, just little me.' She giggles again and waddles back to the kitchen shaking her head as she goes.

  He is confused. He isn't imagining that a Mexican girl has brought him breakfast, there is certainly no way he could have been mistaken with that woman. Had the girl come into the kitchen just to deliver him that note? Perhaps she works elsewhere in the hotel, or maybe the kitchen woman is a few cards short of a full deck?

  He leaves the table, pocketing the note, and goes to ask Renault.

  'A Mexican girl you say?'

  'Yes. She brought my breakfast.'

  'I can assure you sir that there is no such thing in this establishment.'

  'What do you mean?'

  'I mean, sir, that there are no Mexican girls here. We aren't that sort of place. I mean that if you want that sort of thing you should go to the saloon. They have all sorts of girls there. Perhaps they'll have one to your liking.'

  He shakes his head in disbelief. Renault in his green velvet jacket and red cravat seems to be enjoying sneering at his customer.

  'And if you'd be so good as to not bring her back here when you do pick one out.' Renault adds as Logan turns to go.

  He is sure he sees the girl riding up a side street opposite the hotel. He might be able to overtake her if he can get after her quickly. He grabs his horse from the stables and swings up onto it bareback and rides out trying to spot where she has gone.

  The narrow street he saw her ride down is empty and there is no sign of her or her horse. A few people pass by on foot. Perhaps she has put the horse in one of these stables? Why would she do that? It would make no sense to mount up a horse for such a short distance. It seems she has only come to send him a message so if she rode away then she must have come from further away than this.

  He rides on to the end of the street and sees that it fizzles out into a narrow trail that winds its way up the hill, a trail just wide enough for a horse. Did he see her cresting the ridge or was that his imagination playing tricks? He kicks the horse on a little faster, finding the lack of saddle a real challenge on the uneven ground.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Emily rode out early hoping to catch her sentinels unaware, but they were awake before her. The black shirted deputy that Mannion said was called Wilson seems to have been replaced by another man, a tall man who sits with his back bent as though trying to keep his head down.

  She watches him from the corner of her eye as she does the rounds of the ranch. He keeps his distance but never lets her get out of sight. He doesn't seem to care whether or not he has been seen.

  Gradually she works her way round to the corner of the ranch closest to the town. This is the land that Humby most wants. The town will expand in years to come. He will want to build new houses here.

  She stops by the creek and dismounts, enjoying the sound of the water and the little flowers on the banks. Her sentinel is still watching from the hill behind her. She sees another rider coming quickly over the trail from the town. Is it another deputy? She stands by the head of her horse allowing him to drink. She is delighted to see that the rider isn't a deputy at all.

  'Good Morning Miss Nixon,' says Logan touching the brim of his new white hat. 'Did you see a Mexican girl ride this way?' he asks her.

  A Mexican girl? She can't help making the connection with the cheap whores she has seen with the miners.

  'Has Humby sent you out looking for girls for him? Tell him he should try the saloon.'

  He stops his horse beside the creek.

  'I should have put you right yesterday,' he says, 'I don't work for Humby.'

  'You don't?'

  'No, that was just a misunderstanding. I don't work for anyone but me.'

  She is a little confused to hear he doesn't work for Humby, but delighted. It didn't really fit, now that she thought about it, that she should find someone so nice working for the mayor.

  'So you're out looking for a Mexican girl for yourself? Now I didn't take you for that kind of man.' She teases him.

  'What sort of a man would that be?'

  'Well, I'd say the sort of man who--' she laughs. 'I hadn't taken you to be the sort of man who'd need that explaining to you.'

  'Would it help if I protested that it isn't what you think?' He is smiling too, enjoying the banter.

  'But you still chased her this far from town. Was she not willing or were you not paying?'

  'Like I said, it wasn't like that, and if it was don't you think I'd be a little more wary of telling you about it?'

  'Oh come now, let me have my fun.'

  He laughs. 'Fair enough. It doesn't seem to matter now, I was just intrigued. Nobody at the hotel seems to know who she is, but she served me breakfast.'

  'Perhaps you imagined her?'

  'Imagined?'

  'Or made her up so you'd have something to talk to me about?'

  'Yes, that must be it, I've been tracking you all morning but I needed to think of an excuse to be out here so I invented someone who sounds remarkably like a whore.' He shakes his head at her. 'You must be careful not to let your horse drink too much in this heat.'

  'I run a ranch Mr. Tanner. I know how to take care of a horse.' She pulls smartly on the reins to get the horse to raise its head. 'I just got distracted is all.'

  He slides off his horse beside her.

  'You really shouldn't ride a horse without a saddle you know.'

  '
I was brought up on a farm by dogs remember. I know how to ride a horse.'

  'So you were riding bareback for fun, or because you really were in that much of a hurry to find your girl? Was she really that pretty?'

  She finds herself feeling a little jealous of the girl, even though she doesn't know who she is or what is going on with Logan and her.

  'It's not like that. I was in a hurry--' he trails off.

  'That's it? You chased her all the way out here. What did you want her for?'

  He picks up a stone and tosses it into the creek.

  'It's a bit more complicated than just chasing a pretty girl. I wish it wasn't but there it is.'

  'You're not going to tell me another tall tale are you?'

  'No. I'm guessing you didn't see her come by so I lost her trail somewhere.'

  She is suspicious. What is he thinking about that he doesn't want to tell her? He looks distracted and unhappy.

  'It might help if you told me,' she offers.

  He shakes his head.

  'You're worried about telling me? Who am I going to tell?'

  'I didn't get to be as old as this without being a bit more cautious than that Miss Nixon. Why shouldn't I think she led me here to you deliberately?'

  If only she really had thought of that. She makes a mental note to consider something like that in the future.

  'You can call me Emily,' she says, to lighten the mood.

  He swings back up onto his horse.

  'You're going so soon?' she says.

  'You know, when we were talking yesterday I said I wasn't planning on staying in Walkers Creek. I still don't plan on sticking around, but every minute I'm spending with you makes me want to stay a bit longer.'