Read Online Deadman Canyon by Louis Trimble - Free Book Online Page A

impatiently at the door.
    Vanner came into the room quietly. He glanced at Damson and took a chair near him. “You were told to keep out of Molly’s room,” he said.
    “Whose money bought this place for her?” Damson demanded. “Who — ” He waved the question aside. “Listen,” he said. “Clay Belden’s got Bert Coniff hog-tied and he’s bringing him into town. I told you we shouldn’t wait to get rid of Belden.”
    He poured himself a third drink and swallowed it jerkily. “Coniff’ll talk and then what?” He pushed himself forward in the chair, glaring at Vanner. “You’re always bragging about how many brains you got. How you made me rich and you’re going to fix it so one of these days I’ll own the whole valley. All right, if you’re so smart, figure out what we do right now.”
    “I’ve thought of a number of solutions if Coniff should get caught,” Vanner said coolly. “The simplest one is to kill Coniff before he gets a chance to talk.”
    “He’s probably told everything he knows to Belden already,” Damson said. “I say get rid of Belden and Coniff both.”
    “Don’t be a fool,” Vanner said acidly. “It’s too late to do anything to Belden. It has been too late ever since you got drunk and made those threats against him. Why do you think I ordered Coniff to wait until he had a chance to drive Belden and his horse off a cliff and make his death look like an accident? Any other way and you’d be the first man everyone would suspect. You or I. We can’t afford that.”
    Damson poured himself another drink. “You think we can afford to have Coniff shoot off his mouth?” he demanded.
    “How much does Coniff know?” Vanner asked quietly. “Now put that bottle down. We have work to do.”
    Damson glared at him with drunken stubbornness. “We got work to do,” he mimicked. “You don’t do nothing but sit around and think of ways for me and the boys to wear ourselves out.”
    “And where would you be if it weren’t for my thinking?” Vanner said.
    He got up and took the bottle away from Damson. He said, “Everything that’s been done to make you a big man, I thought up.” His voice cut mercilessly at Damson. “The few times you’ve acted on your own, you got into trouble. You threatened Belden — behind his back. You told Coniff to shoot him the first night he came back into the valley. You sent Marnie and Pike to chase him away. All you’ve accomplished is to build up evidence that not even the sheriff will ignore one of these days.”
    “He sure ain’t going to ignore what Bert Coniff has to say,” Damson grunted.
    “Anything Coniff has told Belden, we can claim is a lie,” Vanner answered quietly. “Our job is to keep Coniff from talking to the judge or Ponders. Bert doesn’t know why we have to keep Belden from settling on that land of his, so he can’t hurt us by saying anything about that.”
    “Sure,” Damson jeered. “Go tell Roy Ponders you want to talk to Coniff real quick.”
    “You’re the one who’s going to talk to him,” Vanner said in his quiet way. “After it gets dark, you go to the window of his cell. I’ll make sure the sheriff isn’t in his office. When he goes to the hotel for his dinner, I’ll hold him there someway. You find out just how much Coniff has said. Then promise we’ll have him out in a couple of days —
if
he keeps his mouth shut.”
    A glimmer of understanding touched Damson’s eyes. “Then tonight one of the boys shoots him?”
    “Not tonight,” Vanner said quickly. “Tomorrow. It’s Saturday and I can arrange for it better then. A dozen men have been drifting in these past few days. By tomorrow, they’ll all be here. So leave things to me. Go eat something to soak up that whiskey inside you.”
    Damson lurched out of the chair. “That takes care of Coniff and the town, maybe, but Belden is still running around loose. He’s no fool. One of these days he’s going to figure out why we got to get him out