The Kid’s eyes were accustomed to the gloom by the time he had been in the Dodge house for ten minutes. Still, he felt his way along the wall, careful not to bump into anything. He found a long, cool corridor and went down it. The voices were clearer now and suddenly he heard the voice of Toma Dodge. The words weren’t hard to understand and they sent a chill over the Kid.
“No. You’re both wrong. He told me about the two bullet holes, and I saw them for myself.”
A masculine voice interrupted. “I told you we should’ve finished off the damned horse.”
Another voice, garrulous and sullen, answered: “All right, I was wrong. As soon as she signs the deed, we’ll go back an’ kill the damn’ critter.”
The first voice answered swiftly and there was the sound of a man rising from his chair. “Come on, Toma, we ain’t got all night. Sign it an’ nothin’ll happen to you.”
“And if I don’t?”
There was an unpleasant silence that the Kid felt and understood. He let his hand rest caressingly on his gun butt. “An’ if you don’t, you’ll get what your old man got.”
“You’d do that to a woman?” Her voice was high and incredulous.
Apparently the man nodded because Toma’s voice came again, softly, as though a dismal apathy had swept over her. “You’ll never be able to get away with it.”
“Let us worry about that, Toma. You jus’ sign the deed.”
The Vermilion Kid was as tense as a coiled spring. He was prepared to go into violent action on an instant’s notice. There was a long silence from the other room, then the Kid relaxed and turned away as he heard one of the men sigh and speak: “That’s more like it, Toma. Now you’re as safe as can be.”
The Kid was lowering himself out of the window when Toma answered, but he couldn’t hear her reply. He thought: You’re not safe, though, Jeff Beale. You’ve made the greatest mistake of your life.
The Kid ran in a crouched, zigzag course back to his waiting horse. He slipped off the hobbles after pulling on the split-ear bridle, mounted in a flying leap of frantic hoofbeats, and rode down the night like a wraith of doom, thundering along the trackless range, a faint, ghostly figure bent on an act of justice that would thwart, if timely enough, the evil plans of two ruthless murderers.
Holbrook was noisy in a desultory sort of way. It was a weekday night and the revelers that inundated the town on Saturday night were mostly asleep in the bunkhouses across the cattle country. Even so, however, there was enough noise to mute down the thundering approach of hoofbeats. The raucous screech of a protesting piano, accompanied by a nasal tenor, frequently drowned out by the laughter, shouts, and curses of the saloon clientele, ignored the narrow-eyed rider who swung down inside Tallant’s livery barn, tense and with probing, hard eyes of smoke-gray.
Disturbed in his secret libations, the bleary-eyed hostler came grumblingly out of a dark stall where a mound of unclean hay served as couch, bed, and bar. Looking up when he was close enough to discern the night traveler, the hostler gave a small start and shook his head. “Too late, pardner, too late.”
The Kid stepped forward. “What d’ya mean, too late?”
“Jus’ what I said. Sheriff Dugan’s got a warrant out for you. Dead or alive. You’re a goner.”
The Kid appraised the man. He wondered if the man was too drunk to trust. “Pardner, just how drunk are you, anyway?”
The hostler’s face got a sullen smear of color in his cheeks and his eyes were surly. “Not so drunk that I don’t know a thing or two. Why?”
The Kid jumped in whole hog. He had no other choice. “Because, pardner, a man’s life depends on you tonight.”
“That so? Whose?”
“Mine, amigo, mine.”
The hostler looked owlishly at the Kid and a stray strand of his old-time decency flared up in a quick, final effort to assert itself. The man’s voice was suddenly very steady and sincere and his jaw shot out a little. “All right, pardner, start at the beginnin’.”
“Tallant an’ Jeff Beale are on their way here to kill Dodge’s horse tonight.”
The hostler made a forlorn little clucking sound in his throat. “An’ the poor critter’s on the mend, too. Damned if I don’t believe he’s goin’ to pull through, after all.”
The Kid let the interruption run its course. “Listen, pardner, I want you to hide my horse in one of those back stalls. Don’t unsaddle or unbridle him. Jus’ close the door to the stall and fork him a little hay so’s he’ll be quiet.”
“That all?”
“No. I want you to take a note over to Sheriff Dugan an’ then stay out of the barn until the shootin’s over. Understand?”
“I reckon. Where’s the note?”
“Take care of my horse an’ I’ll write it.”
The hostler nodded, took the Kid’s reins, and led the black horse off into the dark recesses of the old barn. The Kid tore a handbill of himself off the barn wall, scrabbled a stubby pencil out of a shirt pocket, and wrote frowningly until the sot returned. He folded the coarse paper and handed it to his accomplice. “Pardner, here’s where you’ve got the whip-hand. If you double-cross me an’ hand that there paper to Tallant, Beale…or anyone besides the sheriff…I’m done for.”
The old cowboy pulled himself up in his filthy rags and his watery brown eyes were stern. “I’m a lot of things, compadre, but a bushwhacker ain’t one of ’em.”
The Kid nodded softly. “I believe you, pardner. On your way.”
The hostler had disappeared down the plank sidewalk and the Kid had hidden himself behind some loose planks in the gloom of the building, before the sound of horses came to him over the sounds of revelry. He watched, motionless, as Beale and Tallant swung down, tied their horses in tie stalls, loosened their cinchas, and looked at one another.
Beale spoke first. “Went off like clockwork.”
“Yeah. All we got to do is make two more killings. Blast the damned horse, then go back an’ get the girl, an’ the whole shootin’ match is ours.”
Tallant nodded. “Yeah. It come off better’n I expected. Two more killin’s an’ the whole country’ll be after the Vermilion Kid with orders from Dugan to shoot on sight. Hell, that dang’ would-be owlhooter’ll never get close enough to anybody to convince ’em he ain’t guilty.”
“Yeah, but what about the horse?”
Tallant rubbed his hands together. “That’s the easiest part. We kill him, drag him off out on the range behind town, an’ the coyotes’ll have him torn to pieces in twenty-four hours. Nobody’ll ever see them two holes again.”
Beale swore gruffly. “Yeah. But if it hadn’t been for that damned Kid, nobody’d ever’ve noticed there was two holes to start with.”
Tallant laughed smoothly. “Don’t make no difference now. Come on, let’s go in the office an’ have a drink afore we finish off the horse.”
Beale nodded heavily. “Sure, we’ll be ridin’ again, back to the D-Back-To-Back for Toma before this night’s work is done, so I reckon we’ll need the lift, eh?”