A Grave for Lassiter Read online

  Tears filled her eyes and she put her head down. Lassiter gently pressed a clean handkerchief into her hand. She nodded her thanks and used it to wipe her eyes.

  “Where’s Josh?” Lassiter asked, looking beyond the office into the vast warehouse with its scattering of crates and boxes.

  “He . . . he’s dead.”

  Lassiter gave a deep sigh. He leaned both hands on the table. “How did it happen?”

  “He . . . he just up and died.” She wiped her eyes again.

  “You must be Melody,” Vanderson said. “Herm has a daguerr of you. Of course you don’t look the same. Now you’re kind of . . . well, rounded out.” He gave her his boyish smile. His hazel eyes acquired a glow of excitement. He rubbed slender hands together. “That means the freight line is yours, now that Josh is no longer among the living. . . .”

  “It will belong to Uncle Herm, of course,” she said, straightening up in her chair. “And the sooner he gets here . . .”

  “And he just might not,”Vanderson stated wryly.

  Her head came up, the damp handkerchief clutched in one hand. “Surely he’s not that badly wounded.”

  “He might lose a leg.”

  Lassiter gave him a hard look. “Herm’ll be all right.”

  Lassiter noticed Vanderson’s eyes locked on the shapely breasts outlined by the thin material of Melody’s white dress, with its decoration of small yellow flowers. Vanderson irritated him.

  “Your Uncle Josh’s death must have been sudden,” Lassiter said. “Herm got a letter from him about two weeks ago.”

  “It was because of a . . . a woman.” Taking a deep breath, Melody Hale told of her late uncle and Marcina. A sorry tale of an older man infatuated by a beauty who had drifted into Bluegate. He had tried to impress her by building a new stable, a warehouse, and an office, topping his reckless expenditures with a fine house at the north end of town. Although he tried to get her to marry him, she hesitated.

  “By then he had taken all his money out of the bank to put up the buildings, so Uncle Josh told me,” Melody whispered. “She demanded to see a profit from the freight line before she’d let him put a ring on her finger. He had neglected business terribly because of her.”

  “Go on, Melody,” Lassiter urged.

  “They . . . they got married. And she was with child. She and the baby died. Uncle Josh . . . well, he wrote for me to come live with him. By the time I got here he was in terrible shape.”

  “We’re here to help you, Melody.”

  “If it’s not too late. So much has happened since Uncle Josh died,” Melody said in despair.

  “Tell me about it?”

  “There’s a man. He’s been giving me all kinds of trouble.” She wiped her eyes again, but her firm chin came up. “I’m still trying to fight him, but . . .”

  “His name?”

  “Kane Farrell.”

  Lassiter’s lips tightened at the mention of a man who had been his enemy for so long. Seeing him today in Bluegate had revived old hatreds. And now their paths were interlocking once again. . . .

  Chapter Two

  Melody’s gray eyes began to fill again. Lassiter reached across the cluttered desk to grip her hands and told her about the money, eleven thousand from Uncle Herm, seven from him, hoping to make her feel better.

  “That’ll keep things going,” he assured her. “And Herm’ll be here as soon as his leg heals. . . . Vance and I will help get the company rolling again. Won’t we, Vance?”

  But Vanderson seemed too bewitched by the girl’s figure to listen. When Lassiter repeated it, he lifted his head. “Yeah . . . sure we’ll help.” He beamed at her.

  One of Northguard’s current problems, Lassiter learned, was a shortage of rolling stock. A wagon had been wrecked, another had a broken tongue and a missing wheel. The only serviceable one was mired in mud, five miles above the town of Aspen Creek.

  “And I have freight to move and I don’t know what to do,” she said, spreading her hands in a gesture of defeat.

  “Vance, let’s go get that wagon out of the mud,” Lassiter said.

  “The very thing I was going to suggest.” Vanderson flashed his boyish smile again, his eyes merry.

  But first there was the business of depositing the money. They all went down to the bank where the two sacks of gold coins were removed from the pack animal that Lassiter had led along the tree-bordered street.

  The banker, Donald Edgerton, bald and pompous in a tight black suit, supervised the deposit. Melody and Lassiter affixed their signatures, then signed as witnesses under Herman Falconer’s name.

  Edgerton revealed small teeth smiling at Melody. “My dear, now you have fresh blood in your organization. Too bad your Uncle Josh couldn’t have lived to see this glorious day. Ah, well, the good die young, as the saying goes.”

  Lassiter speculated on the lack of sincerity in the banker’s voice.

  When they were outside, Vanderson spoke to Lassiter in a low, tight voice. “Seems to me, I’m part of the family, yet I didn’t get my name on anything.”

  Melody had gone ahead to make a purchase at the Bluegate Mercantile. The walks were crowded with ranchers and townsmen. On the streets were buggies and buckboards, farm wagons, and a stagecoach just leaving for Montclair, many miles to the north.

  “You’re Herm’s stepson,” Lassiter pointed out. “Herm will take care of you.”

  “I’m as much family as Melody and she gets to put her name on the bank account. . . .”

  Lassiter turned on him. “Don’t go building big dreams in that head of yours. Could be bad for the digestion.”

  When Lassiter said he and Vanderson would stay at the hotel, Melody insisted they take the spare bedrooms at the big house her Uncle Josh had built.

  Staying under the same roof with a young, pretty, and unmarried female, Lassiter pointed out with a smile, might give the local gossips something to chew on.

  Melody laughed, saying she had retained her uncle’s housekeeper. The presence of another woman should make the arrangement acceptable, she said. Over the passing hours, she seemed to have shed her mantle of gloom, Lassiter noticed.

  The next morning he and Vanderson got ready to leave for the mountains. Melody offered to draw a map of the area, but Lassiter knew it well. “I guess you’ve forgotten that I tried to help Josh hunt a vein of silver in his mine,” he finished.

  Her cheeks colored and she lowered her eyes. She needed no reminder, for young as she had been, Lassiter had fascinated her. The dark man of mystery, Uncle Josh had said with a smile, who would show up all of a sudden and then not be seen for some years. “I haven’t forgotten,” she said. “But it was a long time ago. . . .”

  “We’ll get your wagon out of the mud,” Lassiter promised.

  She was so confident that he would succeed where her men had failed that she suggested he pick up a team of mules at Aspen City.

  Vanderson cleared his throat. “You go do the job, Lassiter. I’ll stay here and keep an eye on Melody. . . .”

  “We’re both going to do the job. Because I’ve got a hunch we’re the only ones Melody can trust.”

  “You and Dad Hornbeck,” Melody cut in. “He runs the office at Aspen City. He worked for my Uncle Josh.”

  When they were ready to ride, Vanderson was still grumbling. “She’s got men working for her and I don’t see why they can’t help you while I stay here and . . .”

  “Too much has gone wrong. Her men couldn’t get the wagon out of the mud. We will.”

  They left Bluegate on a bright fall day. Lassiter wondered how Herm, down in Rimrock, was making out. He hoped to God the doctor didn’t have to take off his leg. There was no telling what Herm’s reaction would be. Lassiter ground his teeth. He wanted to be moving on before he got mired down in the affairs of Northguard. With Vanderson a dead weight, if something happened to Herm, and with Josh dead, things didn’t look too promising. But he had given his word to Herm and he would do his damnedest to save some
thing for the niece, Melody Hale. . . .

  On the same hour they had made the bank deposit the day before, Farrell came along the boardwalk, two large men flanking him. At the sight of Lassiter down the block, he grabbed both men by the arms and brought them to a halt.

  “There he is now,” Farrell hissed. “The gent I was talking about.”

  “You mean the one with the mustache?” Dutch Holzer asked, squinting out of black eyes.

  “That one’s about as deadly as a sick gnat. Hell, no, the other one, about your size, Dutch . . . .”

  “Hell, I know Lassiter,” towering Ed Kiley spoke up. “I recollect him when he used to come a visitin’ Josh Falconer.”

  “I want him dead,” Farrell hissed through his teeth.

  “Every time I get the money mill swinging my way, it seems that bastard horns in. But not this time.”

  “How much you pay, Farrell?” Ed Kiley asked, turning his large head to Farrell.

  “The job’s worth two thousand.”

  Dutch Holzer whistled. “A thousand each, huh?”

  “Don’t do it in town. Wait till he leaves—which he will. I have a hunch he’ll be trying to get Northguard’s wagons rolling again.”

  Chapter Three

  Dad Hornbeck, a bald and graying man, shook hands with Lassiter and said he was glad, for Melody’s sake, that the freight line had two stalwarts to help out now that Josh was gone and Herm was laid up. But when the old man spoke, he gave Vanderson a slightly dubious look.

  There was one fairly large bedroom in the Aspen Creek office where Hornbeck slept. He offered them the bed, but Lassiter said they’d spread their blankets on the office floor. Vanderson pointed out that they would have more comfort at the town’s small hotel.

  “We’re trying to save every dollar,” Lassiter reminded the younger man.

  Early the next morning, Lassiter herded eight mules up the steep grade out of Aspen City. A grumbling Vanderson drove a light wagon that held ropes and harness for the team. It was a clear day, without a cloud to mar the azure dome of the sky. Golden aspens lined the steep road and the cottonwoods were dropping their leaves. Wild geese formed long triangles in the sky as they headed south. Nature seemed to be holding a deep breath before the first onslaught of snows that would block some of the passes till spring.

  Lassiter knew there was no time to waste. A freight wagon had to be put back in service so shipments could be made before the cold months settled in.

  Finally Vanderson got over his grouch long enough to speak civilly. “Tell me about Josh. I never did get to meet him. And even what I don’t know about Herm would fill a barrel.”

  “Herm gave me one of my first jobs. He was foreman of a cattle outfit over in New Mexico. He had a nice wife, but she died young.”

  “Then he married my ma and she died as well.” Vanderson shook his head.

  “I met Josh when he came through one time and stopped over at the ranch. The two brothers were never close in those days. But they mellowed later on.”

  An hour later Lassiter had his first look at the mired wagon. It rested in the center of a swiftly flowing stream, sunk in mud well above the hubs. One quick sweep of his blue eyes enabled Lassiter to get the picture. Someone had widened the creek to accomodate the whole wagon and had also dug into the creek bed to make it soft enough for the wheels to sink.

  When Melody saw the wagon a week before, she had despaired of ever getting it out. The men she took along had confirmed the impossibility.

  When the wagon was freed and Lassiter returned to Aspen City, he intended to look the crew over and fire those he suspected of having helped put her rolling stock out of commission. He hadn’t had a chance as yet to look at the two disabled wagons higher in the mountains, but this job of miring the wagon had been done deliberately. He confirmed it by wading around it a time or two and studying the creek bed. Everywhere else the bed was solid.

  Vanderson sat on the creek bank watching Lassiter flounder around the wagon, the waters flowing just below his knees.

  “Got a strong hunch that Kane Farrell is mixed up in this,” Lassiter called to the younger man, who evidently preferred not to get his boots wet.

  “Why this fellow Farrell?”Vanderson wanted to know.

  “The kind of stunt he likes to pull.”

  “Reckon you know him well.”

  “Too damn well. I’ve been able to cut him off at the pockets a few times.”

  Lassiter’s face hardened at the memory of Farrell down near the border, rustling Mexican cattle, altering the brands then selling them in the States for half the market value. When a widow, desperate to recoup cattle losses, had purchased a herd from Farrell, Lassiter had moved in. And this just before the Mexican owner, with the help of a sheriff, was about to reclaim his cattle. Farrell had done a sloppy job with a running iron so that the Mexican brands, though blotched, were easily detected.

  When Vanderson made no move to lend a hand, Lassiter said, “Get off your butt, Vance, and let’s get this job done.”

  Flushing at the rebuke, Vanderson helped Lassiter herd the mules into the creek. Some of them were reluctant and Lassiter had to use his catch rope. Finally, with the cold water pressing at his knees, they got them harnessed. Then he told Vanderson to get in the seat of the freight wagon and use the bullwhip that had been brought along. Not to cut an animal’s flesh, but to pop it above their heads to frighten them into movement.

  “You must have been in the army,” Vanderson said with a tight grin, “the way you like to give orders.”

  “I’m trying to save this outfit for Herm and his niece. Not to mention myself. . . .”

  “I figured you were worried about the money you put into it.”

  “You must stay awake nights trying to figure out ways to rub people the wrong way.”

  Under the impact of Lassiter’s cold blue eyes, Vanderson’s rather handsome face slowly drained of color. “Didn’t mean anything, Lassiter. Guess I’m still shocked that my Uncle Josh is dead. . . .”

  Lassiter looked at him. Not your Uncle Josh, he wanted to tell him. You’re no blood kin at all.

  “. . . and I’m still worrried about Uncle Herm getting shot,”Vanderson continued.

  There was a relationship there, Lassiter had to admit, but only because Herm had married a woman with a gangling adolescent son.

  “You drive the team,” Lassiter instructed. “I’ll prod these bastards,” meaning the mules.

  He had cut off a ten-foot aspen limb with an ax he had brought along in the light wagon. He trimmed the pole, then mounted up and used it to give each mule a jab while Vanderson cracked the bullwhip. At last Lassiter got the mules lunging into their collars. After several attempts, the wheels creeped a few inches in the mud.

  When Lassiter took a breather to rest the mules, he pointed downcreek some thirty yards at an opening in the long, rounded hill. “That’s where I helped Josh cut timber for shoring. He had bought the claim after the owner’s wife took sick and the man wanted to go back to Missouri.”

  Vanderson, hunched in the wagon seat, splashed from creek water, said, “Don’t look like much to me.”

  Again they tried to dislodge the wagon. Lassiter yelled at the straining mules. But the wheels settled back into their original grooves.

  Lassiter finally gave Vanderson his horse and climbed into the wagon where he stood, feet wide-spread, reins in one hand, bullwhip in the other.

  “Jab ’em, Vance!” Lassiter shouted as the whip cracked like rifle shots.

  All of it, combined with Lassiter’s authoritative roar, caused the mules to expend additional effort. Hooves dug into the well-spaded creekbed. With a creak of wagon frame and wheels, it began to move, inch by inch, Lassiter’s whip popping, Vanderson jabbing with the pole. With a great sucking sound the wheels finally pulled free of the mud and reached the solid creek bottom.

  Lassiter turned the wagon onto a grassy strip beside the road. Mules and wagon dripped onto the dry ground. Vanderson
rode Lassiter’s horse up beside the wagon and dismounted. Lassiter took the reins and looped them around the saddlehorn.

  “Why’d you do that?”Vanderson accused, pointing at the reins.

  “I’m training him.” But by then Vanderson had lost interest.

  “Well, we did it, Lassiter. I knew it would work the minute I suggested I use the pole and you handle the reins. . . .”

  “I don’t recollect you suggesting it.”

  “You never want to give anybody credit for a damn thing.”

  Lassiter decided to let it go. Vanderson had walked down to the mine tunnel and was peering in. After tying the mule team to a stump, Lassiter followed him.

  “So this is Uncle Josh’s silver mine,” Vanderson mused.

  “A hole in the hill is all it is now,” Lassiter said, after looking into the maw. Someone had removed all the shoring he and Josh had erected with the help of a crew. Lumber pulled out to be used as firewood, perhaps. Or shoring for another mine. The nearby mountains and hills were pock marked with shafts. Lassiter glanced at the sky. It was mid-morning. If they hurried, they might be able to get the wagon down to Bluegate before sundown.

  “Did Josh ever get much silver out of here?” Vanderson asked.

  “Not much that I know of. He gave up on it.”

  “When was that?”

  Lassiter thought back. “Seven or eight years ago. Melody and her mother were visiting. Melody was just a bony kid.”

  “Not bony now,”Vanderson mused, “but dimpled and rounded.”

  “I noticed you making sure of that.”

  Vanderson stared at the tunnel opening. “Be something if there was silver in there after all. I’d be rich.”

  “You’d be rich. Herm and Melody would be, maybe, but . . .”

  “You always leave me out of everything.” Vanderson looked petulant. “I’m family too, you know.”

  “Simmer down, Vance.” Lassiter was getting tired of his whining. But he’d have to put up with it till Herm arrived. Because the mules had had such a hard pull out of the mud, Lassiter decided to give them a further rest. “Want to go inside and have a look?”