Free The Desperate Deputy of Cougar Hill by Louis Trimble Page B

and a hundred thousand dollars all told.”
    “That’s a lot of gold,” Hale Dondee breathed.
    “And it’s all ours if we play things right,” Larabee answered. “The way they work things here is for this Obed Beggs to take charge of everything. The army pays him every man’s share. He puts the money in the bank as it comes to him. Most of it will be there by late Friday with the last dribbles in on Saturday morning. By Saturday afternoon the last of the army will be gone with the stock. The bank is locked up and the ranchers go about their regular business until Monday. Then they come to town and Beggs parcels out the shares, including the wages for the townsmen and such people.”
    Jupe Dondee finished lighting a fire in the cook stove and set the coffee pan on the hottest part of the rusty surface. “So most of the gold will be in the bank by Friday night and all of it by Saturday afternoon — waiting for us.”
    “There’ll be more money than this Cougar country ever saw at one time,” Larabee said. “And you can be sure that the law will have its eye on that bank.”
    “But you said …” Jupe started to protest.
    “I said I wanted Cameron up and around — and guarding the bank Saturday night,” Larabee snapped. “I don’t want Balder or some valley rancher nervous enough to shoot at shadows. I want Cameron there because when the time comes for us to make our play, he’s the one man who won’t interfere.”
    Both men gaped at him. Hale Dondee snorted loudly. “You trying to tell me Cameron’ll let us bust open that bank? Not him, Larabee. I watched him operate long enough to know that he won’t help us if we was to give him all the gold and the bank building too. You got the wrong man, thinking that Cameron’ll …”
    “I know what I’m doing,” Larabee retorted. “I said Cameron won’t bother us, and he won’t. When the time comes, he’ll be looking the other way.”
    He smiled coldly. “And I intend to fix things so that Balder and the rest of the town’s big men will be spending their time accusing Cameron of having helped in the robbery instead of going after us. They’re either going to think that Cameron was part of the gang or that his beating made him run scared.”
    “And if he don’t run scared?” Jupe Dondee demanded. “Or if he don’t do things the way you want him to — what then?”
    “He will,” Larabee said softly. “That’s my job — to see that he does nothing while we help ourselves to over eighty thousand dollars worth of gold.”

VIII
    I T WAS Tuesday night before Cameron realized he was alive. Before that his mind held only vague blurs of memory. He recalled the ambush, the coming of Sax Larabee, and Tod’s helping him to the doctor’s house. After that there was mostly darkness, with now and then a faint bit of light — remembrance of Balder, of Obed Beggs, of Sax Larabee, and especially of Jenny Purcell. But there was no recall of Tod at all, and Cameron lay wondering at this.
    He rolled his head on the pillow as the door to his room came open. The spare figure of Doctor Draper appeared. “Ah, I hoped you’d come awake tonight,” he said. “How’s the appetite?”
    “I have one,” Cameron said dryly. “My stomach feels like it missed Sunday dinner.”
    “And a few more meals,” the doctor agreed. “This is Tuesday, Roy.”
    Surprise brought Cameron sitting up. Pain lanced at his ribs and into his right shoulder. He fell back.
    “You’ll need a while yet before you can get up and around,” the doctor said. “You got a nasty crack on the head and some badly bruised ribs.”
    Cameron lay back, his eyes closed, and tried to comprehend that he had lost three days out of his life. He thought of the roundup and grunted. Both Obed and Balder could have used him those three days.
    And then his mind turned to Sax Larabee and cold shadows of trouble clouded him. The memory of Sax appearing in the alley rescuing him brought the shadows into