Brazos went on. "Heard it plain--onl y shot fired that afternoon--but at the time I thought nothin g of it. Some drunk is always shootin' around.
"I didn't have no time to get curious, eve n if I was of a mind to. Gentry, he come ridin' i n about that time. He'd promised to top off a ba d horse for Clagg Merriam, so he took off hi s coat and his gun belt and hung them on the nai l by the stall.
"Whilst ever'body was at the corral, I t ook a look at Gentry's new guns. The y was Smith and Wessons, and I'd heard tell o f 'em, but never looked at 'em before. Mind you , I'd no idee anybody had been shot.
"Mike, Gentry's guns was full-loaded an d clean as a whistle. There'd been no time for hi m to clean 'em after that shot was fired ... couldn't hav e been more than a minute until he came ridin g in, and he was in plain sight for a few second s before that. About ten minutes later somebody cam e runnin' in and said Patterson was dead."
"Who did they say did it?" Shevlin asked.
"Nobody had any idee. Then along abou t sundown it got around that Gentry'd done it, an d had turned himself in to the sheriff. There was a hearin', an' Mason testified he seen it an' i t was fair shootin'."
"Thanks, Brazos. You keep your ear s open, you hear?"
A buckboard driven by a girl was turning i n to the door as he spoke.
"You better cinch up tight, boy," Brazo s said, "you're ridin' in rough country."
Mike Shevlin, carrying his duffle, crosse d the street to the Nevada Hotel without glancin g back. Had he turned, he might have see n Brazos gesture toward him, although h e could not have heard the words that were spoken.
"Ma'am," Brazos said in a low tone as h e helped the girl from the rig, "you ever need he'p , you talk to that man there. If I was headin' i nto grief, there's no man I'd rather have ridin' p oint for me. When that man wants to go somewhere an' t here ain't no hole, he just naturally make s himself one."
Mike Shevlin registered at the Nevad a House, where the clerk was a stranger, then he wen t upstairs to his room and dropped his gear. He had finished shaving and was buttoning his shirt when ther e was a light tap at his door.
His .44 Smith and Wesson Russian la y on the bureau. He picked it up, draping th e towel over it as if about to dry his face, and the n he said, "All right, come in with your hands empty."
The door opened and the girl from the buckboar d stepped in, closing the door swiftly behind her.
She was slender and tall, her cheekbones wer e high in her triangular face, her lips a shade full. She was beautiful, but hers was by n o means an ordinary beauty, nor was she prett y in the accepted sense.
"Mr. Shevlin, I am Laine Tennison , and I am here to talk business."
"Sit down," he suggested, "and star t talking."
"Brazos is my friend, Mr. Shevlin. Th e only friend I have in Rafter ... unless it is th e people with whom I am staying."
He said nothing, waiting and wondering. She was a lady ... he had known very few in his lifetime, bu t this was, definitely, a lady. She looked it , carried herself like one, and dressed it--not,t, quit e plain for the times, and with style.
"Mr. Shevlin, I want you to find out wh y certain men want to buy the Sun Strike Min e from me."
He tucked the pistol behind his belt, her eye s following it. Then he folded the towel and place d it on the bar beside the bureau.
"No one knows that I own that mine, Mr.
Shevlin, and I do not want them to know. My grandfather bought the mine from the original locator.
He bought it through a company he controlled, and hi s name did not appear. I inherited the mine."
Her hair was auburn, with soft waves, he r eyes green and slightly slanted. Rather like a cat's eyes, but large.
"Nobody knows you own that mine?" Mik e Shevlin asked.
"Only Brazos ... and now you."
"You spoke of the people you are staying with. Don't they know?"
"Clagg?"
"Her husband is Dr. Rupert Clagg, a physician and surgeon."
"Related to Clagg Merriam?"
"A second cousin, I believe. It wa s Mr. Merriam who influenced them to com e to Rafter, I think."
Mike Shevlin combed his hair as he looked i n the mirror. He knew too little of what was goin g on here. He felt that he was like a blind man in a strange room filled with objects unfamilia r to him, whose design had no meaning for him.
Clagg Merriam had been a silent partner o f Eli Patterson's, but he had his hand in hal f a dozen enterprises. He had owned this hotel , and probably still did. He speculated i n cattle, too.
Shevlin remembered him now, a tall, to o handsome man who dressed well and never seemed to d o anything, yet actually did a great deal.
"If you're that cautious," he said to the girl , "you must have a reason."
The green eyes looked directly into his.
"I will be honest with you, Mr. Shevlin. I sen t a man here to investigate. He was killed. The y said it was an accident. He had gone to work in th e mine and somebody dropped some drill steel dow n a manway when he was coming up the ladder."
That was an ugly way to die. In the narro w limits of the manway there was no chance of escap e from falling drills--and small chance of accident , when it came to that. His miner's lamp would have bee n clearly visible, and one was supposed to cal l "Timber!" before dropping anything. Or at leas t that had been the rule in hard-rock mines wher e Mike had worked.
"Why would they want to kill him?" he asked.
She opened her bag and removed an objec t wrapped in a handkerchief. She unfolded th e handkerchief and placed a chunk of ore in his hand.
It was heavy, and it was literally cobwebbed wit h gold. High-grade ... high-grad e ore. "If there's much of that, you're making a mint," he said.
"That is just the point, Mr. Shevlin. The min e barely pays for itself. There are some months when i t does not even do that. That piece of ore cam e to me in a package with no return address an d no comment. It was then I sent the ma n to investigate."
She hesitated. "Mr. Shevlin, when I wa s growing up I lived in California and Nevada , where there were mining towns and cattle towns, and in comin g here I passed through several such towns. I do no t believe I have ever seen a town so prosperous a s this one."
"What is it you want me to do?"
"I believe a rich strike has been made , and that my gold is being high-graded ... stolen.
I want you to find out if this is true; and if i t is, who is buying the gold, and where it is kept.
Then"--she lifted her eyes to his--"I wan t you to stop the high-grading and recover the gold."
He gave her an incredulous smile. "I d on't know what Brazos told you, Mis s Tennison, but I don't believe any one ma n could do what you ask."
"You can do it."
He crossed to the window and looked down at th e town. Until she mentioned the town's prosperity , he had not given it a thought. His mind had bee n too preoccupied with his own weariness when h e arrived, and with the problem of Eli Patterson; ye t some subtle atmosphere about the town had worrie d him, and now he knew what it was.
Brazos had phrased it perfectly: e verybody rolling in money, and everybody scared.
But how did you fight corruption when all wer e corrupt?
Turning back from the window, he asked, "Yo u said somebody wanted to buy the mine?"
"The first offer came from Hollister and Evans.
"The Mason offer was repeated a short tim e ago, but the letter was from the Rafter Mining Company , saying their man Mason had made a previou s offer. It was simply repeated in the sam e terms."
"Who signed that letter?"
"A man named Ben Stowe."
Ben Stowe!
The last time Shevlin had seen Stowe he wa s living in an abandoned homesteader's shack , rustling a few head of cattle, and riding with a wild bunch. And now he was offering to buy a mine!
"What you say about the town," he said softly , "is true--it is prosperous. My guess woul d be that everybody connected with the mine i s high-grading, if the stuff is actually there, and ever y place of business in town is taking gold i n trade, or buying it. As to recovering your gold , I'd say it would be impossible. By now it must b e lost in the normal channels of trade."
"I do not think so."
She leaned forward, her hands in her lap.
"Mr. Shevlin, I believe all that gold i s right here in Rafter. I believe someone wit h capital--perhaps the people who wish to buy the mine--ar e buying the gold from the stores and holding it. I b elieve they intend to buy the mine with my gold , then dispose of the remainder after they own th e property."
She got to her feet. "Mr. Shevlin, gol d is not easy to conceal; and as you undoubtedly know, th e gold from no two mines is exactly the same.
It is difficult to dispose of gold without it bein g known, and no sales have been reported from this area , no gold has appeared that cannot be accounted for.
"You think I am only a foolish girl, bu t believe me, Mr. Shevlin, my grandfather treate d me like a son in many respects, and among othe r things he taught me a great deal about business , and a great deal about gold and the marketing of gold.
"The Pinkertons checked on gold sales fo r me, beyond what I could do through the normal channel s of exchange. I do not believe the Pinkerton s could find out what is happening here. I believe i t will take somebody with local knowledge."
He glanced at her with respect. This was a girl who knew her own mind, and was uncommonl y shrewd along with it.
High-grading, the stealing of rich ore from a min e or smelter, was always difficult to control.
Opening a change room where the miners changed fro m their digging clothes to their outside clothes could sto p some of it, and checking lunchboxes or canteen s could, too, but where there was high-grade ore there woul d always be ways to steal it.
If what she believed was true, the men wh o controlled the working of the mine must have deliberatel y permitted the miners their chance to high-grade i n order to involve them, and the community itself, in th e crime of high-grading. Then the operators of th e mine simply kept the vastly greater amount o f gold for themselves, allowing only a small amoun t to go through legitimate channels, and this smal l amount was bought from the storekeepers to keep it out o f circulation.
It required capital, rigid control, an d some shrewd operation to make it work. Once the min e was owned by the operators of the high-grade ring, the n they might take other steps; certainly they mus t realize such an operation could not long continue.
"I will pay, Mr. Shevlin," the girl wen t on. "I will pay well. I will give you ten pe r cent of all you recover, and if my calculation s are near the truth the recovery might reach a half a million dollars."
"You'd have to trust me. What's to keep me fro m locating the gold and keeping it for myself?"
She smiled at him. "Mr. Shevlin, you have a very bad reputation. You are said to have stole n cattle, it is said that you are a gunfighter, that yo u have engaged in public brawls, that you were onc e friendly with the very men who are robbing me. I have hear d all that. Nevertheless, I believe in you."
She gathered her skirts and stepped to the door.
"You see, Mr. Shevlin, Brazos was not th e only man who told me you could be trusted. Lon g ago my uncle told my grandfather, when I wa s present, that there was one man in Rafter who could b e trusted under any circumstances. He said that n o matter what anybody said, Mike Shevlin wa s an honorable man, and an honest man."
Now who the hell would say a thing like that about him?
Turning away, he walked to the window again to kee p her from seeing how much her words had touched him.
"Your uncle can't have known me very well," h e said.
"He thought he did, Mr. Shevlin, and h e believed in you. I think you knew him very well , Mr. Shevlin. His name was Eli Patterson."
Chapter 3
The storm had broken. Scattered cloud s raced across the sky, and between them the stars shone like th e lights of far-off towns.
He stood alone on the wet street, wit h enemies all about him. It was after midnight, an d only a few lights looked out upon th e rain-darkened walks, the muddy streets, and th e blank faces of the false-fronted stores acros s the way.
Now, at night, it might have been any littl e western town, but it was not just any town. It was a town built on deceit and theft, a tow n corrupted by its own greed, a town that had arrive d at this point without realizing how deep were the depth s into wh it descended.
Mike Shevlin looked gloomily from under th e black brim of his hat. He looked upon the tow n with no hatred. Here his best friend had been killed , brutally shot down in an alley because he had th e courage to stand against evil. But Mike Shevli n knew all too well how easy it was to accept tha t first dishonest dollar, and he knew all th e excuses a man could give himself.
After all, a man would say, the gold comes ou t of the ground, why shouldn't I get some of it?
Everybody else is getting it, why shouldn't I?
There were a multitude of easy excuses , useful in all such cases; but the trouble was tha t evil can plant a seed, and the seed can grow. Fro m easy acceptance of a minor misdemeanor, one ca n come to acceptance of a minor crime, and from a mino r crime to a major one. And this town had no w accepted robbery on a large scale ... perhap s larger than any one man knew, except for th e leaders. And they had accepted murder.
Thereby came fear. For murder breed s murder, and those who have killed once for gain, wil l kill again; and those who have agreed to ignore a murder, will ignore another if it is to protec t some small security of their own--property, o r guilt they themselves possess.
Mike Shevlin knew this because there had been a time when he had himself been guilty. It ha d seemed a great lark to run off a few steer s to sell for a spree in town. And then suddenly h e had wondered how he would feel if those had been hi s father's cattle, or his own.
There comes a time for a man to draw a line, an d Mike Shevlin had drawn his, and he ha d ridden away from Rafter, from Gib Gentry, Be n Stowe, and all the rest of them. And now he had com e back to a changed town. The old, easy friendshi p was gone. The hospitality of the West wa s no longer here. This town was alive with fear, wit h suspicion, and with hatred, and he, of all people, woul d find no welcome.
For surely every man here, and every woman too, wa s his enemy. What he had been asked to do and wha t he wished to do were bound together. If he found the ma n who had killed Eli Patterson, he would als o expose the plot to high-grade gold; and if h e did that the prosperity of this town would end.
What was right, and what was just? Had he the righ t to come into th place and shatter its prosperity? Her e people dressed better, lived better, had bette r houses than in other such towns. There was more mone y spent over the bars, more money in the stores; but with th e prosperity there would be, for some men, a sense o f power. The leaders of all this, the men who created an d planned it, had won acceptance of corruption, an d now there was no limit to what they might ask an d force the town to accept--or was there?
There must be people here, good people, restless with what wa s happening, people who wanted to be free of fear. Bu t he did not know these people, and had he known them h e knew they would not trust him, not Mike Shevlin.
What he did he must do alone. And now h e stood there pondering on it.
Across the street and down a few doors, a man stepped out to the edge of the walk and looked acros s at Shevlin. Mike knew that look, tha t attitude. The man was suspicious.
To be a stranger in this town, an unaccounted-fo r stranger, was enough to excite fear. Mik e Shevlin's every ins
tinct warned him he was in danger , danger increasing with every minute. These people had bee n parties to theft and had turned their eyes from murde r ... and they would turn their eyes from another.
There were too many pairs of new boots, to o many expensive saddles here; too many men ha d ivory- or pearl-handled guns. Somebody ha d been shrewd enough to let a whole community get it s fingers sticky. By simply looking the other wa y while the miners high-graded a little gold, the me n who operated the mines had made the townspeopl e accomplices to their own theft.
Each buyer of high-grade, each tradesma n who accepted it over a counter, took a portion o f profit from the transaction, and because it was known by al l to be stolen gold, they took a higher profi t than usual.
Eli Patterson and Jack Moorman wer e dead, and they were men Mike Shevlin ha d respected. Each in his way had been kind to th e lonely, half-starved boy who rode hi s crow-bait of a horse into town. Each in his ow n way had helped to make him a better man tha n he had any right to be. ... Some things Mik e Shevlin had told no man.
It was true he had worked with his uncle on a mining claim, but it was a miserable claim that mad e them a living, no more. And then there had come the da y when the roof caved in, burying his uncle under th e mountain.
The boy who was Mike Shevlin had walke d away, leading his horse down the mountain because it wa s in bad shape to carry him over the rough terrain.
The mine tunnel was a fitting grave for hi s uncle, and he lay buried there with the hopes h e had never quite lost.
Of his father, Mike had never talked. He ha d been killed out on the plains by men who found hi m selling whiskey to Indians. His mother had died a few years later in a miserable shack on the edg e of town, a far-away cow town. But she ha d taught him a few things: to make his own way in th e world; to accept nothing he had not earned.
That had been little enough on which to build a lif e until, after leaving his uncle's claim, he ha d come to Rafter and met Eli Patterson, an d afterwards Jack Moorman. Instinctively h e honored these men who stood staunchly by what the y believed. The thought of these men was in his mind now.