The Desperate Deputy of Cougar Hill Read Free Page B

straightened out quickly enough and left when his true nature became plain, Balder refused to trust any of them.
    “You keep Rafe reminded where he’s been and he won’t be’ so eager to do something that’ll get him put back there,” Balder went on in a sharp tone. “The same thing goes for his friends. Make them know what being a jailbird is like.”
    Cameron had no desire to rake through the ashes of an old argument and so he said nothing. Balder glared challengingly at him. “Unless you don’t figure you can stand up to Rafe,” he snapped. “He ran my last two deputies out.”
    “So I heard — a dozen times,” Cameron answered dryly. “I’ve faced up to men as big. I think I can handle him.”
    Balder made a snorting sound. “If you aim to prove who’s boss by outdrawing him, you’re wasting your time. Everybody knows you got the fastest draw around here. The town won’t think you a hero for running Rafe away on the end of a six-shooter. Especially when the law says that nobody but you and me can carry a gun inside the city limits.
    “If you want to put Rafe down and keep him down, you’ll have to whip him with your hands,” Balder went on. “And that’s a chore many a man has tried but none ever finished. Just remember that, because Rafe’ll try to make you fight him — no holds barred. If he gets you in that position and you use your gun instead, the whole town’ll think you’re afraid.”
    He paused and added heavily, “If that happens, I won’t have any choice but to find me another deputy.”
    “I’ll worry about it when the time comes,” Cameron said. “Right now I want some supper.”
    Balder pushed the paperwork aside. “So do I,” he said. In a characteristic sudden change of mood, he grinned at Cameron. “I’d like to have seen Farley draped all over Rafe there in the cut!”
    “It’s not something Arker will forget quickly,” Cameron said. With a nod, he went out. He stopped on the edge of the board sidewalk and automatically glanced both ways along the dusty street. Things were still quiet, with no lights south of Hill except for the two saloons on the west side and, far down, the livery on the east.
    He was about to start on again when a tall, slender figure came out of the hotel and crossed diagonally to the southwest corner. He walked just beyond the range of lamplight spilling from the bank, so Cameron could make out little detail. But the memory brought back by the way the man carried himself, the way he moved, was even stronger than before.
    The sound of singing same softly from the north. The Widow Crotty was playing the organ and her determined contralto almost drowned out the music. Cameron smiled. The Widow was holding her Thursday night singfest, as she called it, and all of her boarders except Cameron would be grouped around the organ, not to mention other town and valley people she had managed to corral, he thought.
    Then the name of the song being sung struck him. It was
Lorinda
. And now the memory of Saxton Larabee came sharply to his mind. Memories of the times they had ridden together, drunk together, fought together. Sax was a little older, just enough to have been in the war near its end. He had a good voice and he had sung
Lorinda
a lot, had whistled it softly many a time when he rode night herd. But most of all, Cameron remembered him singing it softly and sadly in his cell at the Colorado prison.
    This was a memory Cameron tried to keep far back in his mind, but there were times when it refused to stay there. A time like now — because he knew who the stranger reminded him of. In size and build, in the way he walked and held himself the man could have been Sax Larabee.
    Cameron laughed shortly, mocking himself. To think that a man like Sax Larabee would come to an isolated mountain town such as Cougar Hill was absurd. His concern about Rafe Arker was making him dream up ghosts, Cameron thought. Sax Larabee was part of a past dead and buried all