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Show USELESS g3ilm K cowboy AifiM THE STORY THUS FAR: Melody Jones and his side-rider George Fury rode into Payneville, a cow town on the route to California. Melody got into an argument with one of the natives, called Ira. A girl, called Cherry, came upon them and told them they were unsafe and had to leave town. She got their horses and directed them out. They saw posters and then realized that Melody was mistaken for Monte Jarrad, who was wanted for murder and robbery. They had mistaken Fury for Monte's half-wit uncle, "Roscoe." When they arrived at Cherry's ranch, they were greeted by a stranger, who also pretended that they were Monte and Roscoe. The stranger was Cherry's brother, Avery. CHAPTER V "It's certainly nice of you people to take me and my uncle in," Melody Mel-ody said with a complacence that chilled George Fury. "I expect we can just as well stay on a while, if it's all right with you." He let his eyes wander'off into the night as he spoke, but he sensed the stillness that instantly came over Cherry de Longpre and her brother. . "Might even be," Melody went on, "me and my Uncle Roscoe could bring ourself to do a little work around here, to kind of pay for our keep. I see you got plenty horse Hesh out there; maybe me and Uncle Un-cle Roscoe will set in to break a few haid, come morning." He smiled a little, contentedly, and let his eyes slide across the faces of the others to see what effect ef-fect this v announcement had taken. He got his answer at once. Cherry de Longpre looked Melody squarely and blankly between the eyes. Her tone was cool and perfectly per-fectly level, but there was a shaki-ness shaki-ness behind it. "Monte," she said with finality, "it's time to be on your way." "Oh, I ain't in any hurry," Melody Mel-ody said. Avery de Longpre's words came in a slow whisper. "Oh, yes, you are!" Until that mqment Melody had not known that Avery's gun was in his hand under the edge of the table. Melody didn't believe that Avery would actually shoot; at least not while everyone ' sat quiet. It was George Fury who scared Melody. George's hands gripped the edge of the table, and he had got his heels under him; he could uncoil like a spring from that position. And he was watching Avery like a pointer. Melody knew what George was going go-ing to do. He was going to overturn the table on Avery, making the gun miss as it fired, George would hope. That would put out one of the lamps, and probably the old, fool would try to kick down the other lantern, which hung from a rafter eight feet from the floor. There was a moment mo-ment of paralysis. "Take it easy, Uncle Roscoe," Melody said to George Fury. "He's got his gun in his hands," George grated. Cherry said quickly, "You shouldn't clean your gun at the table, ta-ble, Avery." She sounded out of breath. "He's holdin' it In his two hands," George repeated. "Where did you figure he would be holding it," Melody said, "if he's cleaning it? In his mouth?" Cherry's eyes were fixed hard on Melody, ignoring the others. "Saddle "Sad-dle your ponies," she ordered him. "Saddle up and get out of here! Right now!" Melody looked at her without hurry. hur-ry. "You look right pretty when you spark up like that," he said. "There's a posse after you," Cherry Cher-ry said desperately.. "Can't you get that through your head? The Poison-berry Poison-berry country is full of men who would be glad to kill you on sight. You'd be dead now if it wasn't for me! Now you get out of here, while you still canl" "Shucks, now," Melody began. "You heard her," Avery spoke. Fever Crick was sitting goggle-eyed, goggle-eyed, and his jaw was wobbling; but Avery was steady as a rock. Slowly Melody stood up, and George got warily to his feet beside him. George never took his eyes from Avery for an instant. "Ride fast," Cherry said, "and keep going! Don't turn your horses this side of the line, if you want to livp " Melody looked at her a moment, then back to George again. He said sadly, "Well, come on, Uncle Roscoe." Ros-coe." ' Melody and George rode off into the dark at a sullen walk, resenting the push - around. Five hundred yards below the Busted Nose they splashed into a little thread of mountain moun-tain stream, and let their ponies stop to drink, since the riding ahead promised to be both long and slow. "Far be it from me," George said, "to stick a spoke in your damn wheel. Well do I realize that you're three hoots and a yelp too smart for a man to tell you nuthin'. But a half-wit Injun that got hisself in your fix would have sense enough to die by his own teeth!" Melody wasn't listening to him. "I been thinkin'," he said now. "You know somethin'? I don't think this Monte Jarrad is up here at the Busted Nose at all." George Fury's hat seemed to rise slowly on his head. "You rode in there because you thunk he was there?" "Sure. But I see different, now. 6he wouldn't never of brung me here, except unless the real Monte was the farthest away place he could get. She's trying to use me to lead the posse off him, not at him." George stared at him angrily. "Let's get out of this," he said gruffly, pulling up his pony's head. "It just comes to me," Melody said. "I come up here to find out where Monte Jarrad is. And I come away without finding out." "Why didn't you ask them people?" peo-ple?" George said with all the sarcasm sar-casm he had. "Them's the ones that know! Are you going to set there all night, or come on?" "Neither one," Melody said, gathering gath-ering his reins. "I'm going back." He turned Harry Henshaw, and started back up the trail. Cherry and Avery stood listening to the receding hoofbeats of George's and Melody's horses. Avery Av-ery took off his black California-style California-style hat the one with the flat top and scratched his head with the same hand. When they could no longer hear the hoof-beats, Cherry and Avery looked at each other sidelong. side-long. Side by side they walked out to the barn now, moving a little reluctantly. reluc-tantly. Here Avery took down a canvas wind-breaker, and pulled out the nail upon which it had hung. A hidden latch lifted, and some of the boards swung inward a make-shift trick door. Beyond, an unexpectedly spacious cave was revealed under the hay tiers, made by blocking up the bales only one deep, like masonry. Avery had built this, and built it fast, while his father was off chasing wild horses. Fever Crick, whose jug-loose jug-loose tongue was trusted by nobody, had taken Avery's story that he had hauled in more hay. This crude "Monte, It's time to be on your way." hide-out was nothing anybody could have trusted long; the cool, brazen guts of the very idea was its only hbpe. Monte Jarrad was on a pallet of grain sacks, his head propped on his saddle. He lay on his back, very still, with the slack relaxation of a man who Is saving every pulse-beat of his strength. He smoked a rolled cigarette as slender as a match, and looked at them with humorless eyes. Monte Jarrad took no notice of Avery at all; but he looked at Cherry Cher-ry with a certain gleam of warmth, if anything. "Haven't you got any sense at all?" Monte asked her. He had the pepper of a man outraged by his own physical weakness astonished, irreconcilable, at being held down. "You know what you went to Payneville Payne-ville after! You was supposed to fetch holt of Lee and Virg!" "Mnntp " Cliprrv nM "T aa Virg positively have not showed patch or pants in Payneville. I don't know why, or where they are, or anything about it." "And so," Monte said, "so long as you was down there, you had to figure out the worst thing you could of done!" "You're here because you're the only man I ever looked at in my life," Cherry said with all flatness, "and because I've always thought you were all hell, from before I was fourteen years old." Monte said, "Oh." "It's not my fault that some tramp cowboy wandered into Payneville," Cherry followed up, "and it's not my fault that Payneville mistook him for you. Word ran all over town. Homer Cotton laid for him at the Denver Corral, hoping to kill him. He hadn't been in ten minutes before be-fore a rider went walloping out of town to fetch back the posse. The way he rode, I could hear his hat whistle a block . . . Maybe there was holes in it," she explained, as he looked at her queerly. "No feller looks like me. No feller fel-ler looks like any feller." I "I didn't say he did. He has the same initials, is all." Then as she looked at Monte, her eyes turned strange. "He looks he looks something some-thing like you used to look." Monte didn't go into that. "Avery and I did the only thing we could have done," Cherry went on. "The whole thing was a bad cut, that's all. Except for him, the posse would have dusted right on through to California, I suppose. As it is, they'll be back here by tomorrow tomor-row night. They'll comb this basin until a coon-cat couldn't hide in it. The only thing I could think of doing do-ing so long as they're dead set on thinking he's you, was to help them think so and send him tearing on his way. He's plenty stupid; but even he knows he's in trouble, now. He'll pound out of this country as fast as horse flesh can take him. The posse will be days catching up with him." "He hit Ira Waggoner," Cherry said. "Why?" "Didn't come out with no reason," Avery said. "Damn it, he must of said something!" some-thing!" "I swear, Monte, he never said 'Hurrah,' or 'Excuse me,' or nothing noth-ing He just walked up to him, and boom he's endways. I never see such a business." it was a picture," Cherry confirmed. con-firmed. "Naturally," Avery pointed out, his tone aggrieved, "everybody knew that you was the only one would have the nerve to hit Ira. Even Ira thunk it was you. He just picked hisself up and offered you a drink." Avery looked puzzled. "Offered him a drink," he decided. "I should have known Waggoner had no sense," Monte blamed himself. him-self. "Why was he a stage driver if he had any sense?" "Sure, Monte," Avery said again. "It was Lee and Virg picked him," Monte said. "Waggoner was supposed sup-posed to see that the shotgun messenger mes-senger got left behind at Stinkwater. He was supposed to drive the stage alone. It's Waggoner's fault that the shotgun rider got his. It's Waggoner's Wag-goner's fault that I'm lying herel" "Sure, Monte." "And it's his fault now that the posse's on top of me again." "Sure, Monte." "Quit saying thatl" "Okay, Monte." "Don't you see," Cherry said, "that the posse will only take off after this tramp cowboy?" As they stooped and wormed their way out of the hide-out under the hay, Monte called Cherry back. She turned reluctantly, anxious to be away. There s something you might better bet-ter know," Monte said, "and guide' yourself according." "Never mind this wrapping nobody no-body around no finger," he said. "Unless you want to get them shot right in the stummick. Understand?" Under-stand?" Cherry looked at him steadily, for quite a bit. She pinched her lids together, to-gether, but when she opened her eyes they were dry. "I don't know about you," she said at last. "Some days, I don't think you try." Nobody was in the lighted kitchen of the Busted Nose as George and Melody returned to it, leaving their horses hidden in the brush. Fever Crick, who now seemed to have passed out, was snoring in the lean-to; but otherwise their reconnaissance recon-naissance raised no one. Avery and Cherry de Longpre had disappeared. "I'm thinkin'," Melody said. "The girl knows where Monte is. So she' the one I got to find out from." "So naturally all you got to do Is ask her," George said. "Well, no; that's the part I ain't got figured yet," Melody admitted. "I don't rightly judge she'U say. That's where the hitch comes in." "Oh," said George. His eyes were flicking around the kitchen, tirelessly tireless-ly hunting a ray of hope. "Ain't there some way to git you out of this?" "Oh, now George don't start .11 that again. I'm tryin' to find out somethin'." "Then we might jest as well try to git 'er done," George said grimly. George had come to the foot of the ladder nailed to the wall; it gave access ac-cess to the loft above the kitchen. "Don't make a sound," he whispered; whis-pered; and suddenly skinned silently up the ladder into the loft. When George had disappeared, a considerable silence followed, during dur-ing which Melody had no clue to wnai ueuige was up to, nor what was happening. Melody began to show nervousness for the first time. He called up the ladder in a reacts ing whisper. "Hey, George!" There was no answer from above. Perhaps nothing in the world is so creepy as calling into the dark to some one you know is there, and getting no reply. And now Melody heard the voices of Cherry and Avery, Av-ery, outside; they seemed to be some distance off, but coming closer rapidly. Melody Jones swung up the ladder in a couple of long pulls, and stuck himself half way into the loft. "Come on! The rest of the way!" George spoke close to his ear "Quick!" "One thing." George whispered, "they'll never be figurin" on us her." (TO BE CONTINUED) |