Halliday 2 Page 2

  Mahoney looked up at him, and the sad old eyes were filled with bitter disappointment.

  Halliday shrugged his heavy shoulders.

  “Seems like he’s holdin’ all the high cards,” he muttered.

  “Like hell!” Mahoney bristled. “I’m not sellin’ at his price, and that’s all there is to it!”

  Rudder leaned forward on the rails of the cattle pen and grinned. The buyers were still hesitant, but now they put their horses into a run.

  “Five dollars was the boss’ best price,” he smirked. “Who knows? Maybe now he won’t figure your cattle are worth that much.”

  The gunman turned and waved toward the stationary train with its line of empty boxcars.

  Almost immediately, a barrel-chested man in overalls climbed down from the engine and made his way along the rails. When he reached the gunman, he said;

  “What’s it to be, Mr. Rudder?”

  Rudder pointed to Halliday and then to Mahoney.

  “If anybody tries to load them cattle cars without my say-so, what would you do?”

  The man frowned and rubbed the back of his neck. The slow grin did nothing to brighten his surly features.

  “Why, I guess I’d just start shootin’, Mr. Rudder,” he said. “I know who’s paid for all these cars, and it ain’t either one of them fellers over there.”

  “If you started shootin’, I guess you’d just naturally expect me to back you, wouldn’t you?” Rudder asked.

  “Well, naturally. It’d be you and me against whoever was tryin’ to take somethin’ that they didn’t pay for.”

  Rudder nodded and turned to Mahoney. “You want five dollars a head now? Make up your fool mind, because I got better things to do than stand around here all day.”

  Mahoney’s face lost most of its color. It was plain to Halliday that the old man figured he was beaten.

  He was surprised to see Mahoney square his shoulders and shake his head.

  “Nope, Rudder,” the rancher said firmly. “No deal. You suckered me into bringin’ my cattle here, and you scared off my buyers ... but, by hell, McPhee ain’t goin’ to make no profit outta this. So we’re both gonna lose. I’ll take my cattle home and get nothin’ for ’em ... and your boss is stuck payin’ for a string of boxcars he can’t use.”

  Rudder grinned and waved the engineer back to his locomotive. Mahoney turned back to Halliday and said quietly;

  “Anyways, I’m obliged for your help, mister. If I was better placed, I’d invite you home for a slap-up meal and a drink or two. That’d be the least I could do ... but the way things stand, we got some real hard drivin’ ahead of us now.”

  “Takin’ them back home?”

  “Nothin’ else for me to do,” Mahoney said.

  “Then I’ll ride along with you, and maybe you can show me the way to Redemption.”

  “Don’t mind if I do,” Mahoney said, striding past Rudder as though the gunman wasn’t there.

  He opened the gates himself and told his men to get the cattle moving.

  Halliday worked his horse across to the gate before the first of the cattle came out. He saw that they were lean but still saleable, especially if they could be freighted and fattened at the other end of the line.

  Mahoney walked across to a gray mare and swung into the saddle. He was a tired old man, but he was not about to give in to a man like Harp McPhee.

  Rudder waited for the cattle to clear the pens before he went to retrieve his gun and then his horse. Like his clothes and his gunrig, his gelding was black.

  When he was in the saddle, the gunman looked straight at Halliday and gave an almost imperceptible nod.

  “Redemption,” he said, and then he rode toward the locomotive.

  Before long, the train began to puff black smoke from the stack, and then the wheels began to turn.

  The cattle were moving, too, and Halliday rode ahead to chase a stray back into the tightly bunched herd.

  Two – A Town Called Redemption

  “Straight up the slope,” said Tom Mahoney, “and then find your own way through the timber. The town’s on the other side.”

  The rancher extended his hand to Buck Halliday, and Halliday noticed the deeply etched lines of worry on the old man’s face as he gripped his paw.

  Halliday picked up his reins and ran them through his fingers.

  “Drought might break,” he muttered.

  “Might find a gold nugget in the bottom of my coffee cup, too,” Mahoney offered with weak jocularity.

  The cowhands had driven the cattle to the yard behind the ranch house and left them to forage for what little feed there was on the baked, bare ground.

  Halliday gave the rancher a nod and turned the sorrel toward the slope.

  He had taken coffee with Mahoney on his porch and listened to the old man’s tale of woe. The rancher had come to this country ten years earlier with almost nothing to start with, but careful management and hard work had seen him amass a herd of seven hundred head, ten milkers, and a dozen quality horses.

  The drought had been with them for over a year now, and any money he had saved for bad times had been eaten up by the hiring of more hands to keep his herd moving to what pasture remained.

  Now that all the grass had been eaten, he had decided to sell his entire herd to meet a bank loan and settle back to wait for the good times to return. Harp McPhee had changed all that, and now Mahoney did not know what to do.

  As Halliday rode over the hill and came out of the trees, he got his first look at Redemption. It looked like it had grown faster than anyone could plan it—sprawling out in all directions from the three wide streets that ran from east to west.

  The sun had just set, and the air was cooler already. Lights were winking into life all over town, on the main streets and in the homes further back.

  Halliday picked the liveliest of the three wide streets and rode in slowly, taking in the storefronts, cottages, and a double-story saloon ablaze with lights and overflowing with music and the cacophony of many voices talking at once.

  On the upstairs balcony, four young women gazed down into the street. Halliday grinned and returned their waves.

  He turned the sorrel in toward the hitch rail and was coming out of the saddle when he heard glass breaking somewhere up the street.

  When he turned to look that way, he was treated to the sight of four men, standing in the middle of the road and throwing rocks at the facade of the bank.

  Another window shattered, and then the door of the bank flew open. A tall, lean man in a brocaded vest stepped out and seemed about to speak when a stone hit him squarely in the face. He staggered back inside with his hands covering his face.

  Although there were plenty of people around, no one seemed to want to know about what was happening on the steps of one of the town’s most substantial buildings.

  Halliday went back into the saddle and set the sorrel running straight at the four men in the street. Before he could reach them, the injured man was back on the bank steps and dropping his hand to his gun butt. His hand came up and he fired wild, possibly because the blood from his head wound was affecting his vision. It was enough to make the four men turn and run, though, and they came close to ending up under the sorrel’s hoofs.

  As they struggled to avoid him, Halliday saw that at least two of them had their guns out.

  “Get the hell away from here!” the man on the bank steps yelled, but now the four men were firing back at him.

  A bullet came close to Halliday, and he ducked low in the saddle and raced the horse past the bank, dropping to the ground near the boardwalk and making a dive for the man on the steps.

  They came together with a thud, and Halliday evaded a swinging fist and brought up his own hand to clamp the man’s wrist and force the man back against a wall.

  The four rock-throwers had disappeared now, but the man from the bank was still trying to shake Halliday free.

  “Dammit, Finch, it’s me—Buck Halliday.”
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  Finch Rogan stiffened and stared at Buck Halliday in disbelief.

  A moment passed before Rogan relaxed and shrugged.

  “You can let go of me now,” he muttered. “I’m all right.”

  “I hope so,” Halliday told him. “You just about put another part in my hair when you were throwin’ lead in all directions.”

  Rogan wiped his bloodied face on his sleeve, and then he glared up and down the street, which now was suddenly empty and silent.

  Cursing softly, he turned and inspected the broken windows and the bullet-pitted door. Returning his gaze to Halliday, he said;

  “Sorry, Buck. Hell, I figured you was one of them.”

  Halliday shrugged and whistled up the sorrel. It came immediately to the hitch rail, and Halliday gave it a pat and looped the reins over the rail.

  “Let’s get inside and take a look at that face of yours,” Halliday said. “Might be a good idea if you tell me what this is all about, too ...”

  The banker grumbled something under his breath and pushed the bank door wide. Halliday followed him inside, and that was the first he saw of the young woman waiting near a table piled high with papers.

  She was staring at them blankly, with the look of a rabbit too scared to run. She seemed very close to tears as she reached out for Rogan.

  The banker locked the door and went to take her hand and led her deeper into the room. Their feet crunched on broken glass as they walked, and the papers on the table were covered with glass as well.

  Halliday strode to the big window to look out into the street. A crowd was gathering directly across from the bank now, and it included a big man with a star on his shirtfront.

  When Halliday turned back to the room, the girl had regained some of her composure. She was holding a handkerchief to a thin cut on her right cheek and looking past Rogan to Halliday.

  “Thank you,” she said. “Finch might have been killed.”

  Halliday shrugged. He did not think it would have come to that. He had been more worried about Rogan killing one of the men and getting into more trouble than was warranted by some drunks throwing stones.

  He had been surprised by Rogan’s fierce reaction—it seemed nothing like the quiet, careful-thinking man Halliday had known years before.

  Rogan went to wash his face at the basin in the back of the bank. When he returned, it was clear that there had been more blood than any serious injury, although his nose was swollen and the cut across the bridge of it would have stung.

  “Well, Buck,” he said, “I sure am glad to see you.”

  “Looks like I came at the right time, huh?” Halliday said easily.

  Rogan smiled, and there was a warmth in his deep-set eyes that showed he was genuine.

  Halliday saw few visible changes in the man he had known except that the clothes were better—the kind of conservative attire that befitted a banker.

  Rogan put his arm around the girl and said, “Buck, this is Melissa Hahn. We’re engaged to be married. You two better get to know each other.”

  Halliday nodded at the girl. She was stunning, but the only thing that seemed out of place with the demure dress and the low voice was the appraising, almost brazen stare that met Halliday’s gaze.

  No, not brazen, he decided. Those china-blue eyes were giving him the look of a woman who knew where she was going and what she wanted.

  “What was the trouble all about, Finch?” Halliday asked.

  Rogan brought up a chair for Melissa and then he fetched a bottle and three glasses from somewhere behind the teller’s cage.

  “I think you should have one, too,” he said as he offered the first glass to Melissa. “It’ll help settle your nerves.”

  Handing the next glass to Halliday, he said;

  “It’s about money trouble. What else?”

  “Dissatisfied customers?” Halliday asked.

  “Yes. They want blood out of stones.”

  Rogan patted Melissa’s hand and smiled at her, but her glance went past him and settled on Halliday again.

  Although he kept his attention on Rogan, Halliday could feel the woman appraising him, and he was wondering how she had recovered so quickly from the intense distress he had witnessed only minutes before.

  Whatever was going on in that pretty head, there was no denying that Rogan had picked himself a woman that any man would be proud to have as his wife. Melissa Hahn was lovely, and she had the confidence that comes so naturally to a beautiful woman. And there was something more, Halliday thought for the second time, something ... inviting. This was not one of those look-but-don’t-touch looks she was giving him.

  “You were so quick, Mr. Halliday,” Melissa said, finally breaking the silence. “I really thought those big oafs were going to kill Finch ...”

  “I thought he might kill them, Melissa,” Halliday said, and he saw Rogan’s mouth tighten. “Maybe they were no-account, but to my mind, it just doesn’t look right for a banker to be acting like a gunhawk.”

  “A man has a right to defend himself, Buck!” Rogan snapped.

  “It didn’t look to me like you were in much danger until you drew that hogleg,” Halliday reasoned. “What happened? Did you lose your temper?”

  “What about this?” Rogan protested, pointing to his swollen nose.

  “You never used to be that quick on the trigger, as I recall,” Halliday demurred. “I’ve seen you talk your way out of a lot of scrapes that were a damn sight worse than this one. Remember that big hullabaloo in Memphis ... what was the name of that saloon anyway?”

  “That’s in the past and forgotten!” Rogan snapped. “Hell, I’d bent over backward to explain the situation to those men, but instead of listening to sense, they decided to stand outside my bank and throw rocks at me. The only thing that makes a bank work is that folks trust its manager. You let a thing like this happen tonight, and you’d have a run on the bank by first thing tomorrow.”

  “Those fellers live in town then?” Halliday asked.

  Before Rogan could answer, someone outside began to rattle the front door.

  Halliday was closest to the street. He went first to a broken window that gave him a sideways view of the front porch. Satisfied with what he saw, he then went to the door and freed the latch.

  It was the lawman Halliday had seen in the crowd across the street, and his face and neck were red with anger.

  He glared at Halliday, then without so much as a glance at the young woman, he fixed his attention on Finch Rogan.

  “Well,” he said, “you sure done it this time. Somebody coulda got killed, the way you were throwin’ lead so indiscriminately up and down the street.”

  “I wasn’t about to stand still and get stoned to death!” Rogan snapped. “Where the hell were you anyway? And how come a mob could get so out of hand before the law took an interest, Hahn?”

  “From where I stood, it looked like four men, not a mob,” the sheriff snorted.

  When Halliday heard the lawman’s name, he looked back at the young woman again. He thought there was a resemblance in the shape if not the size of their slightly turned-up noses.

  Rogan scowled back at the lawman.

  “You oughta know that’s just real trouble starts,” he said, “when there’s nobody with a mind to nip it in the bud.”

  Hahn looked at the girl for the first time, and asked;

  “Did you see who they were?”

  “No, pa, I didn’t. Someone yelled something out in the street, and then the window was smashed.”

  “What about you, Rogan? Can you identify them?”

  “No,” the banker said dejectedly.

  “Well,” the sheriff said with a shrug, “I guess that’s it then. The way things are goin’, it could’ve been just about anybody in town ...”

  Rogan shot him a disgusted look but said no more. Melissa kissed him lightly on the check and said;

  “It’s time for me to go home now, Finch. I’m sure there’ll be no more trouble.” Tu
rning to her father, she said, “Are you coming, pa?”

  When Hahn shook his head, she said;

  “Well, I’ll see you tomorrow then.” She looked back at Halliday from the doorway and said, “Good night. I expect I’ll see more of you.”

  When they could no longer hear her light footsteps on the boardwalk, Halliday pulled a tobacco pouch from his pocket and began to make himself a cigarette, all the while knowing that Hahn was still watching him. Then the lawman asked;

  “What about you?”

  “What about me, Sheriff?”

  “Got a name you ain’t scared to tell, mister?”

  Halliday studied the lawman over the flame of his vesta.

  “Buck Halliday.”

  “You got a reason for showin’ your face around these parts?”

  Halliday drew on the cigarette and took his time to answer, letting the smoke trail from his nostrils.

  “Finch is an old pard of mine, and I always said I’d look him up one day. Today is the day.”

  Hahn gave Halliday and Rogan an icy glare as he moved to the door.

  “On your way,” he said to the small crowd that still lingered outside the bank’s door. “Trouble’s over and it doesn’t have a thing to do with you, anyway.”

  The sheriff went on his way without looking back, closing the heavy door behind him.

  “Well, Finch?” Halliday asked.

  “Well what?” Rogan snapped.

  “I think it’s time you explained what’s goin’ on here, don’t you? There’s more to this than meets the eye. Like I said, you’re not actin’ the way I remember. Once you would’ve told those fellers where to go and let it go at that. What’s brought about the change in you?”

  Rogan sighed and dropped into the chair beside the table. There was a minute’s silence and then his hand shot out and swept the papers and broken glass to the floor.

  “It’s been awhile, Buck.”

  “Four years.”

  “Yeah. If I had the chance to do it all over again, I think I would’ve stuck with what I had. There’s worse things than eating dust all day.”

  “What’s so bad about this that you can’t handle it, Finch?” Halliday asked.