“You mean with Janes?” he demanded.
“Yeah.” Sallie nodded wildly.
“But that was just to pay you to keep your Indians away from Ten Bar cattle.” Bull eyed the man with callous regard. “Maybe we should tie another piece of rawhide around your neck and see whether you strangle before your head cracks open.”
“No. He paid me to sic the Indians on the Triple C,” Sallie insisted.
“He did, huh?” Bull mocked.
“Dammit, yes!” he cried angrily. “It wasn’t my idea. Don’t make me die like this!!”
Bull slowly turned to face Benteen. “I set up a meeting ‘tween him and Janes. Boston said it was just to buy protection and keep the Indians away from the Ten Bar.” Bitterness and pain twisted through his face. “I didn’t know …” He choked on the words.
Benteen had seen Bull too many times with Arthur to doubt the man’s grief. He felt anger at the confession, but it was tempered by cool reason that said Bull had been used merely as a go-between.
“I’ve never killed a man for being a fool,” Benteen snapped.
“What do you want done with him?” Barnie jerked his head toward the renegade.
“Hang him.”
29
Nervous sweat ran from his pores as Judd Boston sat behind his desk in the bank’s private office. He kept dabbing at the moisture beading on his upper lip and forehead until his fine linen handkerchief was damp. He looked again at the clock and the tic-tic-ticking of the pendulum that seemed to prove time was running out.
At the knock on the door, he grabbed the gun from his desk drawer and forced himself to speak calmly. “Yes?”
“It’s me—Janes,” came the muffled reply.
Returning the gun to the drawer, he got up quickly to unlock the door. He locked it back when Loman Janes walked through.
“You wanted to see me?” Janes said.
“What in bloody hell did you tell that renegade?” Boston exploded. “Can’t you carry out a simple damned order and get it right?”
Janes stiffened at the unwarranted attack, his light gray eyes growing cold. “I told him exactly what you told me to. Why?”
“Why?” Boston raged. “Because Benteen Calder’s son was shot and killed when those Indians tried to run off the herd the other night! That’s why!”
“That’s hard luck.” Loman shrugged. “But he shouldn’t have had the kid along on a roundup. What’s it to us, anyway?”
“Us! There is no ‘us’!” Boston flung his hand in the air to dismiss the idea. “I’m the one that gives the orders! And you seem to foul them up!”
“Now, you wait a minute.” A deadly quiet was settling over Loman Janes, an ugliness sweeping into him.
“No, you wait a minute!” Boston slammed his fist on the desk. “I told you I wanted no war with Calder! The orders were to take his cattle and leave him alone! I should have known when that rider of his got shot up, you had messed things up.”
“I don’t like being talked to like this,” Janes warned.
“I pay you. I’ll talk to you any damn way I please,” Boston hurled angrily. “You don’t think Calder is going to let his son die without going after the ones who did it, do you?”
“So? Let him chase the Indians back to Canada.”
“My God, you must think the man is as simpleminded as you are,” he declared with contempt. “What happens if Bull Giles talks? What if he mentions arranging that meeting between you and the renegade?”
“If it’s Giles you’re worried about, I can shut him up,” Janes said, still glowering under the insults.
“By killing him, I suppose,” Boston snorted. “What if it’s already too late?”