by Alan Lemay
Edith Prescott and Doc Garrett and Art Dwyer were waiting for us in that little adobe-walled house of Doc's. As Pete met Edith Prescott's eye, he sort of bristled up. "What's the meaning of this?" he snapped at her.
"Pete," Edith said, "you're in an awful tight place. 1 want you to listen to Old Man Coffee."
He turned on me, looking like a buck deer that the dogs has brought to a stand.
"Son," I said, "I've certainly made it easy for you. Chamberlain was killed by one of two men. 1 can't say which it was. But, Pete, you can."
"Name them, then," he said.
1 got out the little hunk of lead. "About an hour ago Art Dwyer come to me with this Thirty-Eight slug. According to Doc, here, it's one of the bullets that killed Chamberlain. Art's idea was to try to find out what gun this bullet come from, by comparing bullets through a microscope.
"Art Dwyer also had with him a gun. It was a Thirty-Eight gun, one that some folks thought had been used. We tried that first. Well, sir, this here bullet was from that same gun."
"Whose gun was it?" Crabtree demanded.
"Now naturally," 1 said, talking him down, "you'll ask how 1 know that Art Dwyer didn't kill Chamberlain. Because, after all, the next place anybody seen that gun, after the murder, was in Art Dwyer's hands. But look! If Art Dwyer had killed this man with this gun, would he make it his first act to get it proved that the death bullet come from that gun? 1 doubt it. Therefore, Art Dwyer didn't do it, and that answers your question."
"1 didn't ask no such question," said Pete. "1 asked whose gun it was!"
"Now you look here, Crabtree," 1 said. "We got you up here because it's your rightful place to solve this murder..."
"Whose gun was it?"
"It was your gun," 1 said.
When Pete finally spoke, 1 thought he was going to make a grab at me. "Are you accusing me?"
"1'm asking you where that gun was?"
"That gun was in my room ...it couldn't possibly have killed that man. I heard the shots that killed Homer Chamberlain, and that Thirty-Eight was in my plain sight when 1 heard 'em!"
"That sure makes it very simple," 1 said.
"Simple? How does it make it simple?"
"Pete," 1 said, "I ask you one straight question, and then I'm through. Did you kill Homer Chamberlain?"
"1 did not!" said Pete.
"And there you are," I said.
"And where is who?"
"No one," 1 said, "could have killed Homer Chamberlain except you or the one other feller. Well, if you didn't do it ...what the hell! Go ahead and arrest the other guy."
"What other guy?"
"Do 1 have to draw a diagram? If this Thirty-Eight of yours isn't the one that killed Chamberlain, then this bullet that Doe Garrett offers us isn't the bullet that killed Chamberlain, either."
I was watching Doc Garrett out of the corner of my eye, but 1 couldn't read his face. It had a set look like a man who has played poker all night, but still don't aim to quit.
"You mean to say...?"
"I don't know," 1 said, "where Doc Garrett got a bullet once fired from your gun. But how is it that Doc hands us a bullet from a gun that wasn't nowhere near the crime?"
There was one of them all-fired shaky quiet spells, and I heard a kind of a shuffling, trampling sound, like a herd of cattle coming in. The mob was on the move at last.
"I don't know the answer," I finished up. "Why would Doe make that switch? Unless...?"
"Unless," said Crabtree, "he killed Chamberlain himself."
I wasn't looking at Doc. 1 had my eyes on the floor where I could watch everybody's boots. By watching a man's feet, you catch his first move nearly as quick as if you're looking him in the eye, and you have the extra advantage that he doesn't know you are watching him so good as you are.
So it couldn't have been more than a fraction of a second after Doc Garrett went for his gun that I went for mine. Only, 1 didn't need it. One shot banged, and Doc Garrett's gun dropped on the floor beside his boots that 1 was watching, and, as I looked up, Doc was bent over, his left hand hanging onto his gun arm that Crabtree's shot had busted. Pete Crabtree's gun was smoking in his hand, and all that stubborn, steamed-up look had gone out of his face, and he was smiling as he looked at Doc.
Then, in the little quiet that followed, 1 heard that sound of walking in the street, so near and plain that you couldn't get away from it or shut it out, a hundred boot heels coming along the board walk, and three hundred more pairs of boots a-scuffling in the dust.
"In God's name, Pete," began Doc Garrett, "in God's name...!"
"What?" said Pete.
"Don't ever turn me over to that crowd, Pete," Doc said. "That's all 1 ask. I swear, Pete, 1 never meant to hang it on you. I didn't suppose there was anybody around here had sense enough to compare a bullet with a gun. 1 picked up this bullet when you was shooting targets this morning. But all I was thinking was that it was a Thirty-Eight, and everybody knows 1 don't have a Thirty-Eight to my name. I swear to heaven, Pete, I never meant to hang it on you!"
"Doc," said Pete, "you killed Chamberlain."
Doc Garrett's long face had gone slack, but his eyes was like the bowls of lighted pipes.
"What if I did kill him?" he come out. "Didn't you hate him...didn't everybody hate him? 1 tell you, 1 knew that man! I knew him down to the ground. Why, over in Lordstown...."
There you had it! Folks always look for the man who has the nearest and the latest motive. They don't take into account that there may be twenty others who have stronger motives that everyone but themselves has forgot.
"Don't worry, Doc," Pete said. "I'll never turn you over to the mob."
Art Dwyer said: "Well, what are we going to do?"
For just a moment uncertainty came across Pete's face again. Quick as he was in action, when he knew what he ought to do, that slow brain of his was with him still.
Then Edith Prescott said: "You go out there, Pete."
Pete looked at her and nodded, sober and cool, but not scared or anxious any more. He put his gun in his holster and turned to the door. 1 blew out the light inside, and Pete opened the door and stepped out.
I heard a big growl go up in the street, and 1 tell you that was a terrible sound. Then the growl died away, and we heard Pete's voice, strong and slow. "Rollie Marshall," Pete said, "a hundred men can shoot to get me from where they stand. But, by God, Rollie, if it comes to that, I'm going to get me one man. And that one man is going to be you."
Right there I kind of relaxed and put away my gun. 1 don't know for sure if Marshall was the leader of that mob - I kind of think it didn't have any leader. But Marshall being who he was, and singled out by Pete, 1 knew the rest would wait to see what Rollie would do - and, of course, Rollie didn't want to die.
But the main thing was that the mob could see now they wasn't tackling the spirit-busted man they thought he was, but, instead, they had got hold of the same Crabtree that had took Hanrahan and the Gormsons. If Art Dwyer had tried to face down that mob, they would have shot him, and if I had tried it, they would have laughed at me and maybe rode me on a rail. But with Pete Crabtree back to life again, he could do more for himself than an army could, and the mob was done.
Out in front 1 heard Marshall say: "Crabtree, we can't let a killing like this pass by."
"There isn't anything going to be passed by," Pete said. "I've located the man that killed Chamberlain, and I've got the evidence against him, and 1 got his confession. The shot you heard just now was when 1 took him. 1 had to bust his arm when he drawed."
"Who is it?" somebody yelled in the crowd.
"You'll know who it is," Pete growled, "when I get ready to tell you. This is my prisoner, and 1 aim to handle him in my own way. If anybody thinks different... step out!"
It was all over. Pete Crabtree had played out his hand pretty good, 1 thought - once he had had his cards read to him.
I kind of straightened up and filled my chest with air. And 1 was fixing to look modes
t and kind of laugh it off, as I turned around to Edith Prescott. But she wasn't looking at me at all. She was at the window, looking out at where Pete Crabtree was putting on his little show. Dumb adoration. Yes, sir, that's the only name for the look on her face. Dumb adoration.
Still, why should a girl like she was waste them violetcolored eyes on a lion-hunting old rip pretty near a thousand years old? If Edith had not gone ahead and given the credit to Pete, 1 would have had to figure out some way to make her give him credit, wouldn't I? So, after all, once I thought it over, 1 was real tickled that it had worked out the way it done.
Polly Collins sat on a corral fence in Las Cruces, looking at the rodeo stock, and many a young broncho rider found it hard not to stare at her discreditably. Her soft silver-dust hair, setting off her deep olive tan, and her dark, restless eyes always made the riders highly aware of her, whenever she had been among them. But just now she was happy - not blithely, but tremulously and uncertainly, and the new, gentle, entirely wistful radiance this gave her transformed her into something very lovely, so that they thought they must have forgotten what a honey she was, in the year that she had been away.
Polly herself could hardly believe it was really a year since she had last come out of these same saddling chutes raking a contest bucker, with the roar of the crowd curiously distant in her ears. Just now, on the eve of tomorrow's rodeo opening, the big grandstand was empty, and the arena was a deserted twenty acres, but around the cattle pens and the horse corrals was gathered a high-spirited bunch of thirty or forty people who would contest tomorrow - broncho men, bulldoggers, crack ropers, all living by their occasional ability to win a year's pay in one day's ride. These she had known in many contests, in all parts of the West. Polly herself had ridden often against the half dozen girl riders who were there. No one had forgotten her. They waved hats at her, whooped greetings, sought her out to ask where she had hidden herself. It was like coming home.
She had come to Las Cruces on a last moment's impulse, and partly against her will. But now that she no longer con cealed from herself why she had come, every remembered voice took on a new meaning, and became peculiarly stirring. She knew that Lee Macklin was somewhere here. Presently he would seek her out, as inevitably as dust settles to dust. And then the long, unhappy emptiness of the year in which they had been separated would be ended - perhaps.
For now she was ready to admit to herself - to him, too, if he asked it - that the barrier which she had raised between them was a foolish and trivial thing compared to her need for him and his need for her. A year ago, when she had finally turned back Lee Macklin's headlong lovemaking, she had had a stubborn belief in the fairness of her side of their quarrel. That belief was gone now, lost somewhere in the dreary vacancies of the empty year. The surrender was responsible for that new and unexpected happiness - a happiness made almost tearfully unsteady by the fact that she did not quite know whether or not she was wanted any more.
Lee Macklin, completely reckless, utterly carefree, living strictly in the moment, always gave the effect of having the world by the tail and making the world like it. He was a lean, long-legged, blue-eyed humorist; his loose, lazy half-swagger concealed the muscular cordings of the rough-string horseman. You could hardly think of Lee Macklin separated from bronchos. Leather and dust, and bronchos and cows, those things had set the pace of his life - almost were Lee Macklin himself. if ever they wanted to put up a statue of the spirit of broncho fighting, it would have to be a statue of Lee Macklin.
These were things Polly Collins had tried to forget. Now, with the smells and sights and noises that represented Lee all around her, she knew completely, once for all, that the effort had been a foredoomed folly. Tears were very near her eyes, just from the knowledge that he was somewhere near, but she didn't care.
A hoarse whoop went up immediately below her, and big old Rowdy Kate Hutchinson hauled Polly off the fence to half crush her in an enthusiastic embrace. Old Rowdy Kate, big and clean and rough handed, was the nearest thing to a mother most of the rodeo girls had. When Kate's own riding days had ended, she had stayed in touch with the rodeo game by marrying Jake Hutchinson, owner of broncho strings, and no rodeo seemed the real thing without Rowdy Kate's familiar whoop and bawl.
"Glory be, child! 1 thought you'd lost yourself! You just got in, huh? 1 didn't see your name checked in at the hotel. Say.. .know where you're going to sleep?"
"1 don't, Kate. Las Cruces is sure full up."
"Uh-huh. Well ...I was splitting a room with Rose Moran, but she run out on me. So 1 guess that fixes you up. Don't thank me! `S pleasure! Seen Lee Macklin yet?"
"Well, no, Kate."
"That's funny. Still, of course, you just now got in. You all set to do them gals out of first money?"
"1'm not even going to ride. No," - as Kate's laughter boomed - "I mean it, Kate."
"Well, child, it's all right with me. There ain't many of your age has twisted as many cayuses as you have. How old are you, honey? Going on twenty-two? Uh-huh. And how many first moneys did 1 hear you had...ten in three years, was it? 1'd give something to know why you quit the game!"
"1 don't know, Kate. It looked to me for a while there as if broncho fighting was just a racket for wasting good cow folks. The boys that start in are the cream of the crop, then pretty soon they slip, and get punk.. .and they're all through."
"Like Lee Macklin," said Kate, looking at her.
Polly Collins's eyes were dreaming into the dust that drifted through the poles of the broncho corrals. If she had been looking at Kate, perhaps she would have got more out of that last remark. But she nodded. "The cream of the crop."
Rowdy Kate grunted and looked at Polly curiously. "Well, I'll say one thing for him...he ain't so much as looked at another girl since you gave him the gate."
"Kate," said Polly, "are you...you wouldn't tell me that if it wasn't so?"
Rowdy Kate studied her. "Oh, that much of it's 0 K.Well, say, most likely he'd come over here and answer the rest of the questions himself, if 1'd flog out of the picture."
Polly said in a weak voice: "Kate, is he. ..is he here?"
"Heck, don't you even know him when you see him? He's right over there, talking to Jake."
Polly Collins turned and followed Kate's glance. And the year that she had let slip out of their lives turned on her and took its revenge, cruelly, all in a moment for which she was unprepared.
You could hardly say, first off, just how Lee Macklin had changed. He was still tall and lean and careless-looking, and though he had not shaved that day, that was true of half the cowboys there. Some might not even have seen the difference in him at first. But Polly saw it instantly, in that first glance, and her breath held still for a moment, exactly as if the head of a rearing horse had struck between her eyes. Something was missing, so that the whole picture of the man had a different meaning. She had looked for a swaggering youngster who had the world by the tail, and, instead, she saw a man who was tired, unhopeful, and - licked.
For a moment she could not even believe that this was Lee. She turned to where Rowdy Kate had stood. "Kate! That isn't...?"
Then Lee Macklin turned and caught her eye. He hesi tated, then came across the corral to her slowly, not swaggering, but with a sort of hitch in his walk that might have been the ghost of his swagger.
"Hello, Polly."
She heard herself answer - "Hello Lee." - and her voice sounded even and natural. But she felt faint and dizzy, as if she might possibly be going to fall. This was not Lee Macklin. This man that looked like Lee and answered to Lee's name was just another lanky, unshaved cowboy, reminiscent of what used to be called the malaria school. And though he grinned at her slowly, as he used to do, no trace of the old irrepressible humor was there.
He met her gaze steadily, and his eyes were the eyes of a man who looks at something fine - that he has long ago got used to thinking will never be his. "Sure have missed you from the pitchings," he said. "You aim to ride tomorrow, Polly
?"
"No, 1 hadn't figured to ride."
"Well, you're wise, I guess. Not much in it these days, taking it all around. 1...well ...I'll be seeing you." He grinned again, without humor, not meeting her eyes this time, then crawled through the fence and moved on.
He had come, and he had gone. He left her with a swelling lump in her throat, and a dazed bewilderment before her eyes. Polly turned from the corral, found her car, and drove back to town, not radiant any more.
She was waiting for Kate in the room Kate had offered to share with her when Kate came in at half past eleven that night.
"Why wasn't you over at the dance, child? You sick? You look like the wrath of God!"
"Kate... what's happened to Lee Macklin?"
"Who? Oh, him."
"Kate! You've got to tell me! Something has...."
"Easy, honey. Sit down quiet, here on the bed. What's got into you?"
"What's happened to Lee Macklin?"
"Him? Why, he's had a kind of a bum year, I guess. What do you care?"
"What do 1 care? 1 care a lot."
"He's just proved out you were right, that's all."
"That 1 was right?"
"You sure knew what you was doing when you wouldn't tie yourself up to no common broncho fighter. Short hoss, soon curried. That's the average broncho rider, all right. And that's Lee Macklin."
"But how.. .how could...?"
"Well, while you was away from things, Lee went down here to Tucson and got himself bucked down by a new hors, name of Black Powder, and that was about all from him. He hasn't amounted to a hoot since."
"Do you mean ...he was smashed up and can't...?"
Kate's voice rose in an end of patience. "1 mean he went yellow, that's what 1 mean! What's left of a broncho rider when he loses his guts? Nothing!"
