There had been more drinks at the Golden Moon, and all of them had a fling at the roulette tables. There, too, Carol had displayed a sweetness and discretion that pleased him. She hadn’t begged for money to throw away on the spinning wheel, but had even remonstrated with him in a nice way when he insisted on buying her a second stack of chips.

  An extremely well-mannered and nice girl, Mr. Winters thought happily. He wondered what her background was, how she happened to be a friend of a cheap little flirt like Caprice—and whether it might be possible to get her address from Mr. Grant so he could write her a little note of thanks for the pleasant evening she had shared with him.

  His head didn’t ache so much, and his outraged stomach became less jumpy as he indulged in these pleasant reveries. He thought perhaps he shouldn’t stay away from the city so long this time. After all, six months was quite a long time between buying trips. It would be nice to see Carol again, he thought vaguely, not in the company of Mr. Grant and Caprice.

  Carol had showed him last night that she didn’t think him so old. She had expressed surprise when he admitted to forty-five years, ten years less than his actual age, and said that he seemed much younger than that when he danced.

  Things got a little hazy in his memory after that. There’d been more drinks after the gambling—and more dancing, he thought. Then the ride through the night in the back seat of Mr. Grant’s carriage with Carol snuggled up confidingly against him beneath the robe like an unafraid child.

  He had been quite drunk by that time. He wished now that he hadn’t been so drunk. He thought she might have liked it if he had slipped his arm about her waist and perhaps tipped her face up to be kissed.

  He forgot all about his pounding headache as his thoughts dwelt on what-might-have-been.

  Then the little combination train was jolting to a stop, and the brakeman came through the coach yelling, “Hopewell Junction,” and he sat up and blinked his tired eyes and got down his leather valise from overhead and prepared to get off the train.

  He was the only passenger to leave the train at the small way-station, and it pulled away again with a great grinding jerk as soon as he stepped down onto the cinder-covered platform in front of the unpainted frame depot.

  Hopewell Junction consisted of a small collection of small houses huddled together dejectedly on the broad Colorado plain, sun-baked and desolate, and without apparent reason for its existence.

  Actually, it was no more than a shipping point for cattle from Powder Valley, and the wooden railroad pens covered an area twice as large as the town itself.

  Mr. Winters tugged the brim of his hat down over his eyes against the glaring, white-hot, mid-afternoon sun and walked past the railroad station down the dusty street toward the stage depot where the stagecoach waited to pick up passengers and mail and express shipments for Powder Valley and beyond.

  A team of four horses stood listlessly in harness in front of the coach, and the driver was stowing away some limp mailbags in the space on top of the vehicle when Mr. Winters walked up and set his valise down with a sigh.

  The driver was a wizened little man known as Taw Drummond. He had been on this run for many years and had often driven the Dutch Springs storekeeper back from his trips to Pueblo. He grinned down knowingly from his perch high up on the coach, and called, “Howdy there, Mr. Winters? Have a good trip this time?”

  Winters took off his hat and mopped his sweating face. “So-so, Taw. It’ll be good to get back home.”

  “Rest up fer another six months, hey?” Taw Drummond cackled at his own wit. “Mighty high times they have in thuh city, I do hear tell.”

  Winters replaced his hat and sighed again. “I go to the city only on business trips.”

  The driver cackled more loudly as he climbed down. “Monkey bizniss, hey? I notice yo’re allus mighty droopy an’ fagged out when yuh git back. Them city gals are great ones fer draggin’ a man around, hey?”

  Winters said, “That’s utter nonsense, Taw.” He felt his face growing hot under the little man’s grinning scrutiny, and he picked up his valise and opened the stagecoach door. “As a matter of fact I don’t feel too well today. Something I ate last night must have disagreed with me.” He leaned forward to look inside the hot, dim interior, adding, “I hope you haven’t too many passengers this trip.”

  “Nary a one but you, Mr. Winters. It’d be cooler if yuh sat up front with me.”

  “No thanks,” Winters declined stiffly. “I can settle back inside and close my eyes. Just don’t take it too fast around the curves.”

  The driver chuckled loudly as his passenger stepped inside the swaying coach. “I got my schedule tuh keep. You know that. I ain’t bin late in Dutch Springs since thuh washout three years ago.” He slammed the door shut from the outside, and Mr. Winters sank back gratefully on the back seat.

  It was stifling inside the coach, but it was quiet, and the swaying of it on its oiled springs after Drummond crawled up on the high driver’s seat in front and put the four-horse team in motion was soothing and sleep-inducing.

  Mr. Winters settled back and closed his eyes and started thinking about Carol again. He wished he knew her last name. Last night, he hadn’t cared, hadn’t even thought it was queer when Grant introduced her only by her first name. All the dancehall girls in the city were known only by their first names, and he’d supposed she was just one of those whom Grant had picked up to entertain him for the evening.

  But now he could scarcely believe that’s what she was. She seemed much too refined to be a mere dancehall entertainer. He had a feeling she didn’t do that sort of thing regularly—that she had accepted Grant’s invitation just as a sort of lark, perhaps. Or (and this thought made him feel warm and comfortable inside) perhaps because she knew who Grant’s masculine guest was going to be and had taken that opportunity to become acquainted with him. After all, Mr. Winters reminded himself, he wasn’t totally unknown in Pueblo. It was quite possible he had been pointed out to Carol on the street.

  It was a pleasant thought. He dawdled with it while he let his head lie back comfortably and the swaying of the coach brought on slumber.

  In his sleep he dreamed of Carol. He dreamed he was bolder than he had dared to be and instead of kissing her cheek had put his fingers beneath her chin and lifted it to kiss her sweet lips.

  It was a nice dream. The nicest dream Mr. Winters had had for more than twenty years.

  Halfway between Hopewell Junction and Dutch Springs, the stage road climbed from the flat plain and entered a rough and broken area of steep ridges and deep ravines leading upward over a low mountain pass and down into the upper end of Powder Valley itself. The road twisted and wound precariously along man-made ledges hewn out of the mountainside, and at times there was a sheer drop of several hundred feet on one side of the road while the steep slope rose abruptly several hundred feet on the other side.

  At one such point not more than two miles from the entrance to the Valley, the overhanging cliff above the road actually jutted out so it was a sheer drop of almost five hundred feet to the narrow ledge below over which the coach must pass.

  On this hot afternoon a man on horseback might have been seen silhouetted against the rough escarpment overlooking the stage road. He sat easily in the saddle, motionless and waiting, not more than ten feet back from the brink itself.

  His horse faced away from the edge of the cliff, and the end of his lariat was twisted several times around his saddle-horn with the knotted end securely in his hand.

  From the saddle-horn, the rope stretched tautly behind him, circling the trunk of an aged oak tree that in past generations had somehow caught a root-hold on the very face of the rocky precipice and leaned outward at an angle that defied gravity, gnarled and twisted, and defiant of the elements that sought to deny it the right to live.

  From around the trunk of the tree which acted as a rude sort of pulley, the lariat led back at an angle to the looped end which was fastened tightly about a jutting protuberance on the top of a huge boulder balanced on the very rim of the cliff above the road.

  The edge of the cliff beneath and in front of the tons-heavy boulder had been loosened and dug away with a pick-axe to a point where the boulder was almost ready to fall from its insecure perch directly down to the roadway beneath.

  Horse and rider waited patiently in the still, hot air. As Taw Drummond had boasted to Mr. Winters, he had an undeviating schedule for his route, and the rider knew the lumbering stage was due to pass beneath the balanced rock within a very few minutes.

  He smiled grimly and straightened in the saddle when he heard the creaking of the stage and the sound of trotting hoofs from the still canyon below as the unwieldy vehicle climbed upward along the shelf road toward the waiting doom from above.

  The rider tightened his reins and leaned forward to speak soothingly to his horse who snorted and pointed his ears toward the sound of the approaching stage.

  “Steady, boy,” the rider said softly. “We don’t wanta be too quick on the trigger an’ mess things up.”

  He waited tensely, leaned forward in the saddle with his big-roweled spurs ready.

  The stage was close now. He could hear Taw Drummond amiably cursing his lead team, could hear the sharp crack of his blacksnake whip above their ears.

  When he judged the lead team was directly beneath the balanced death on the edge of the cliff, he struck his spurs into the sides of his mount.

  The horse lunged forward, throwing more than half a ton of straining weight against the taut rope from his saddle-horn.

  The pull was transmitted around the leaning oak tree and back to the boulder. It swayed ponderously and gave way, plunging directly downward on top of the stagecoach and its unsuspecting driver and sleeping passenger.

  The loop of the lariat slacked and fell loose from the rocky protuberance as the huge boulder went crashing down, and the rider gathered it up swiftly, reining in his horse who sprang away as the rope suddenly went limp.

  There was a resounding crash from the road below. The sound echoed upward from the narrow canyon and was followed by the shrill screams of mortally frightened horses as stage and horses were inexorably swept off the narrow ledge and down the steep slope beneath the road to the floor of the canyon several hundred feet below.

  The rider nodded with savage exultation at these sounds indicating the complete success of his murder scheme, wheeled his mount to gallop forward a few hundred feet to a point where the downward slope flattened out enough to permit a descent.

  He put his horse over the edge at a headlong gallop, down to the winding road beneath, and on over that to the floor of the canyon a short distance from the tangled wreckage of the smashed coach and screaming horses who fought to get free of their harness.

  He galloped forward, disregarding the anguished squeals of the two lead horses who had survived the crash with only broken legs, and surveyed the scene of wreckage with grim satisfaction.

  He had planned his deed well. The huge boulder had fallen directly on the rear quarters of the wheel team and the front of the coach, crushing the driver beneath its weight.

  The body of Winters had been thrown free from the crushed wreckage of the coach by some freak of fate, and he lay motionless on his back ten feet away.

  The rider spurred his trembling horse forward with a curse, leaped off and leaned over the storekeeper to ascertain if he still lived. He cursed again when he felt a faint pulse beating in the storekeeper’s wrist, stepped back and drew his gun.

  He hesitated a moment, and then resheathed the weapon. All his careful planning and work to make this appear an accident would go for nothing if Mr. Winters was found with a bullet wound as the evident cause of death.

  He searched around for a moment and found a rough rock weighing about ten pounds, stalked back with it and leaned over the unconscious man, smashed the heavy rock down into his face with a snarling sigh of satisfaction.

  He stepped back to study the corpse a moment, satisfied that the death blow would be accepted as one of the natural injuries resulting from the accident, then remounted his horse with the blood-stained rock still clutched in his hand.

  He carried the rock with him back along the bottom of the canyon to a point where the slope made egress possible, tossed the rock away into a clump of bushes and spurred up to the roadway above, then pushed his horse into a gallop toward Powder Valley, smugly certain that no one would ever suspect a crime had been committed behind him.

  9.

  Pat Stevens and Ezra and Sam Sloan were grouped closely together at the end of the bar in the Gold Eagle Saloon waiting for the afternoon stagecoach to bring Mr. Winters home from Hopewell Junction.

  Like all the other decent citizens of the Valley, big, one-eyed, hulking Ezra had been aroused to violent anger when he heard that his old friend Bill Freeman had been cold-bloodedly murdered in his bed, and like many others he had ridden into Dutch Springs immediately to learn what was what.

  There had been a lot of excited milling around and a lot of wild talk about stringing up Dick Freeman for the crime that first afternoon, but Pat had deputized Sam and Ezra, and several other more sober citizens, and had passed the word around that there was no conclusive evidence against Dick so that the lynching talk had gradually died away.

  Only a few people knew the real reason for the presence of the two Easterners in town, and they had been sworn to secrecy. Until Mr. Winters returned and corroborated their story, Pat had advised them to remain quietly at the Jewel Hotel and do no talking; Pat’s idea being that if Freeman’s murder had no connection with Joan Wilcox’s claim against his estate, it would be better to keep the entire affair quiet in the hope that the real murderer would make some slip and reveal himself.

  Up to this time, Pat was very much on the fence about the whole thing. Doc Trimble’s examination of the dead rancher’s body and his findings had not clarified the issue at all. It was Doc’s opinion that Freeman had been murdered within an hour of the time he ate supper. He arrived at this conclusion, he explained to Pat, by studying the contents of the rancher’s stomach to ascertain how far the process of digestion had gone before death had interrupted it.

  He made it about an hour after supper-time, but that was still inconclusive. According to Clay Porter and Bill’s adopted son, Freeman had been accustomed to eat about sundown. They had stated, in fact, that he had told them he would fix his own supper if they weren’t back from town by sundown. But no one knew for sure that he had said that; nor that he had done it even if he had said so.

  It was quite possible, Pat figured, that he might have waited until well past his usual supper-time, expecting them to return. On the other hand, alone at the ranch he might have gotten hungry earlier than usual so there wasn’t any way of setting the time of death definitely.

  Even if you did accept eight o’clock as the most probable hour, that didn’t clear Dick Freeman of suspicion. He and Clay both admitted leaving town about seven, and taking about an hour for the ride home. According to their stories, Bill might even have been killed before they arrived, or he might have been murdered afterward while Dick lay in bed in a drunken stupor.

  There just wasn’t any way of proving any of it. If you believed Clay and Dick, Clay hadn’t entered the house at all after returning from town, and Dick had been so drunk he stumbled straight to his own bedroom without seeing his foster-father.

  This left the whole thing wide open again. If Dick had been as drunk as they both claimed, it was entirely possible that Clay could have entered the house and killed his employer before riding over to spend the night at the neighboring ranch. Or maybe Dick was lying about being drunk when he got home. Maybe he waited until Clay rode off, and then strangled Freeman and crawled into bed with a quart of whiskey to drink himself into unconsciousness.

  “We’ve just got to wait until we know why Bill Freeman was killed,” Pat said patiently for perhaps the hundredth time while he and his two partners stood at the bar waiting for the stage to arrive. “As far as we know he didn’t have an enemy in the world. But that’s just as far as we know. He hadn’t made any enemies in the ten years he lived here, but we don’t know anything about his life before that.”

  “It’s shore the truth,” Ezra marveled, twisting his scarred face into a grimace and lifting a glass of whiskey. “I bin out talkin’ around to people all day like you told me, an’ nary a one of ’em ever heard Bill talk about things before he come here.”

  “Except jest that he was from Texas an’ sold out down there for cash when the drought got bad,” Sam Sloan added with a shake of his head. “Bill was plumb close-mouthed ’bout his bizniss.”

  “Stands tuh reason he was killed on account of this purty gal an’ her man poppin’ up from thuh East to claim him for a pappy,” Ezra put in sourly. “You cain’t get away from the fac’ that it happened that very night … after Bill had lived here peaceful for ten years.”

  “It shore looks like there’s got to be some connection,” Pat agreed soberly. “Somebody went through his desk lookin’ for something.”

  “Dick’s the only one that’d have a reason for killin’ him before the gal put in her claim.”

  “All that depends on if he was her daddy,” Pat pointed out. “We still haven’t any real proof of that. She don’t even know. When I took her over to look at him in Doc Trimble’s office, she admitted she couldn’t tell after all these years, an’ with his face twisted up like it is. She was only nine years old when she saw her father the last time.”

  “There’s a mighty spunky gal,” Sam said admiringly. “Come thousands of miles to find her daddy, an’ then have him murdered the night she gets here ’fore she even sets eyes on him. It’s enough tuh give most gals thuh screamin’ meemies. But not her. She’s got a tough streak in her that’s plenty like ol’ Bill Freeman. I’m bettin’ she’s his gal awright.”

  “We’ll find out mighty quick.” Pat glanced up at the big clock over the bar. “Stage is mighty nigh due.”