by Noel Loomis
Ten minutes passed. Judd Lombardy entered, followed by a man Quist was to learn later was named Tank Janney, foreman of the L-Bar-D. Lombardy tried to appear friendly as he introduced Janney to Quist. All of Lombardy’s men appeared turned from the same mold, a matrix that turned out heavy-featured hard-eyed individuals with unshaven jaws and scarred gun-holsters. Lombardy asked Quist to have a drink, but Quist refused, indicating his unemptied bottle of beer. Kurtz served Janney and Lombardy. They downed their drinks at a gulp and Lombardy said, “I was hoping to find you in here, Quist.”
“Some particular reason?” Quist asked politely.
Lombardy nodded. “I want to apologize on Gilly Deray’s behalf for what happened today.”
“No apology necessary,” Quist said. “It wasn’t any trouble for me. Maybe it cleared the air some and showed Deray how far he can go.”
“He knows all right,” Lombardy agreed. “Trouble with Gilly, he just tried to mount a bronc on the wrong side and the critter throwed him. He realizes it too. He admitted frank that he was in the wrong. Only excuse he has, is he lost his temper.”
“I reckon,” Quist nodded. “A temper’s a bad thing to have, but a good thing to keep.”
Janney put in with a coarse laugh, “Gilly will keep his temper from now on I reckon, after the hide-strippin’ Judd give him.”
“That’s right,” Lombardy nodded. “I give Gilly plenty hell. ’Course, maybe you give him some provocation, Quist.”
“In what way?” Quist demanded.
“We-ell”—Lombardy seemed more uncertain now—“you sort of doubted his story about finding that dead hombre, and he was talkin’ Gawd’s truth, too. Then you mentioned the trouble between me and the Rocking-T outfit, like maybe somebody in my outfit was responsible for Porter’s death—if he is dead. Ferris swears he talked to—”
“I didn’t say that at all, but maybe it’s an idea, Lombardy. How do I know you didn’t kill Porter?”
Lombardy’s eyes bugged out. “You crazy, Quist?” he exclaimed. “Why should I kill Porter—?”
“I haven’t found out—yet.”
“Oh, now, look here, Quist—well, hell, yes, I’ve had some trouble over grazing privileges with the Thornton folks, but it wa’n’t no killing matter. Besides, Porter and me were friends. He used to visit regular and play poker—”
“Men have been killed in poker games before this,” Quist pointed out. “How do I know—?”
Lombardy swore an oath that carried through the room, causing others at the bar to turn from their drinks. “Goddamit, Quist!” He half shouted, “You’re just trying to make trouble for me and my crew. I could name three or four men who had more reason to kill Porter than I ever had—not that I ever had—”
“I doubt it,” Quist said insultingly. “I’d be surprised if you could name even one hombre who’d be li’ble to kill Porter—”
“I’ll show you, by God!” Lombardy snarled, voice rising higher than he realized. “One?” He laughed nastily. “Ask Morley Harper, of the Golden Wheel, about the time Porter hit him over the head with a whisky bottle. Find out if Harper has an alibi—”
“I never even heard of this Harper—”
“I’ll name names you have heard of then,” Lombardy raged. “Ask Jarv Fanchon what he was fighting with Porter about, down on the corner of Austin and Main, the day before Porter disappeared. Ask—”
From farther down the bar, Fanchon snapped, “What’s that you said, Lombardy?”
“—ask anybody that seen that fight if I’m not speaking truth,” Lombardy raged, carried beyond reason by his anger. “Hell! Why don’t you question the sheriff? Everybody in town knows he threatened to kill Porter.” His eyes blazed at Quist. “Tell me I can’t even name one name. And there’s Damaret Gilmore. Ask folks about the fight he had with Porter over Ellen Bristol—” Lombardy paused for breath. “And Kate Porter’s own brother said he’d kill Porter if—”
That was as far as Lombardy got. There came a rush of footsteps along the bar as Damaret Gilmore closed in, seized Lombardy by the shirt and swung him around. “You’ll keep her name out of this, you foul-mouthed skunk!” Gilmore roared as his right fist landed hard on Lombardy’s nose.
Lombardy sat down hard, blood running from mouth and nostrils, then heaved himself up from haunches, right hand clawing at his gun-butt. Gilmore backed off, also reaching to holster.
“Hold it!” Quist said sharply. As though by magic the .44 had appeared in his right fist. “You, Lombardy—Gilmore! Keep your paws off those guns—”
“An’ keep ’em off fast,” Mickey Kurtz growled, coming up from behind his bar with a sawed-off double-barreled shotgun, which he swung menacingly toward the two would-be combatants. “I don’t want no trouble in my place, you hear?”
Lombardy and Gilmore glared at each other, but slowly relaxed, and resumed their places at the bar, Lombardy muttering something about getting even before long. Jarvis Fanchon’s face worked angrily as he opened his mouth to say something to Lombardy, then he thought better of it, and lined up beside Gilmore.
“That’s better,” Quist said. “Maybe this was partly my fault. I goaded Lombardy into saying things he might not have said in a cooler frame of mind, but that’s no sign there’s going to be any killing here, on my account. Mickey, you can put that scatter-gun away. The boys have simmered down considerable, I figure.”
“Just the same, Mr. Quist, I’m obliged to you for acting quick like you did,” the bartender said.
Quist Smiled thinly. “I had a reason. There’re certain things to be learned before I leave this town, and I never yet heard of a dead man doing any testifying, did you, Mickey?” He turned to the others. “All right, certain names have been named. I hope everyone of them can prove an alibi when the time comes for a showdown—”
“Hell, Quist, you ain’t suspecting me!” Gilmore looked aghast. Fanchon voiced a similar remark.
“I’m suspecting everybody and anybody until they’re proved innocent,” Quist snapped. “Now think it over, you hombres. I’ll be glad to hear your alibis when you find a good one.” He turned back to Lombardy. “In view of what’s just happened, maybe it would be a good idea if you and your foreman did your drinking some place else for the evening—”
Lombardy flared up. “You ordering me and Tank out of here?”
“Not at all,” Quist said mildly. “I was just making a peaceful suggestion.” He looked steadily at Lombardy.
Lombardy’s gaze dropped after a minute. “Could be you’re right, Quist. C’mon, Tank, let’s drift across to the Warbonnet.”
Quist watched the two men leave. Gilmore edged along the bar. “Look here, Quist, I’ve just been talking it over with Jarv. On the day Doc Ingram figured Porter was killed, Jarv Fanchon was at my ranch. We’ve been working on a trade—”
“So you alibi each other, eh?” Quist smiled. “That’s fine.”
Fanchon bristled. “You act like you don’t believe us.”
“I didn’t say that, but think it over, hombres.” He paused, then, “Lombardy mentioned somebody named Morley Harper. Who’s he?”
“Owns the Golden Wheel—gambling house,” Gilmore said sulkily. “On the corner of Alamo, right across from the Mex restaurant. He’s not in town, at present. Up in Denver.”
“You know of any trouble he had with Porter?” Quist asked.
Gilmore hesitated. “You’d better ask Harper about that. There’s already been too much name-spilling here tonight.”
“But not enough facts made public,” Quist said coldly. “You and Fanchon think it over, and when you decide to tell me of your troubles with Porter, I’ll be glad to listen.” Gilmore growled something unintelligible and swung back to the bar. Fanchon glared angrily at Quist a moment, then followed suit. Quist laughed softly. “Sorry if I’ve disrupted your evening, gentlemen, but remember confession is good for the soul.” He nodded pleasantly and with an “Adiós,” to the bartender, sauntered out to the street and headed in the direction
of the depot.
He chuckled with some elation as he strode along. “Get a man mad and he’ll really spill over,” he mused. “Lord! Plenty of suspects. First, Lish Corliss, then Jarv Fanchon and Gilmore. Maybe I’d better rule out Gene Thornton—maybe. And some hombre named Morley Harper. All scrapping with Porter sometime or other. Until I know more, the little Ellen Bristol will bear watching perhaps…Hmmmm…”
At the depot he found a telegram from Jay Fletcher awaiting him. It read:
BOTH UHLMANN WHOLESALE AND DRUMM & TIDWELL SMALL COMPANIES. LATTER REFUSES COMPANY CLAIM SETTLEMENT FOR LOSS OF JAM. DEMANDS EXORBITANT SUM OR THREATENS SUIT. SUGGEST YOU EXPEDITE SEARCH STRAWBERRY JAM.
Quist read the telegram through a second time and felt his ire rising. Angrily, he crumpled the paper and stuck it into one coat pocket, as he left the lighted depot. “Expedite search strawberry jam!” he snorted, striding out to the deserted station platform. “Damn that Jay Fletcher! What in hell does he think I am, some grocery man’s clerk? All that fuss over a few cans of preserves.”
Abruptly, the humor of the situation rose above his anger and he burst into a howl of laughter. He was still grinning widely by the time he reached his hotel room. Here he lighted the oil lamp and started to remove his coat. His gaze strayed to the table where lay a small brown bonnet covered with cloth violets. Slowly, the grin died from his face. “Maybe,” he told himself, “my time for laughing hasn’t come yet.”
CHAPTER 14
A PAIR OF CLUES
The hotel dining room wasn’t yet open when Quist stepped through the lobby the following morning, and the night clerk was still on duty. The man said something about Quist being an early riser. Quist agreed and kept going through to the street. There weren’t many people abroad yet. None of the stores were open; hitch-racks were deserted Quist found a small all night restaurant and grabbed a hasty breakfast then headed for the White Star Livery where he had arranged the previous afternoon to hire a horse and saddle. Here a sleepy-eyed liveryman waited, yawning, while Quist saddled his mount, a rangy, clean-limbed buckskin animal.
Heading west on Main, Quist walked the horse to the edge of town, where a plank bridge crossed Clarin Creek—it was only a few yards wide at this point, though the banks were high and steep—before spurring the buckskin into an easy lope across the open range of waving mesquite, sagebrush and prickly pear; grama grass appeared here and there, though in insufficient quantity to provide good grazing. The horse moved steadily ahead, and at the end of a half hour, Quist was satisfied that he had a good mount under him.
His course was roughly paralleling the T.N. & A.S. right-of-way, the tracks of which ran to his left until they’d disappeared beyond Shoulder Bluff, which still lay nine or ten miles ahead. Shoulder Bluff marked the southernmost end of the Clarin Mountains, now touched with gold along their upper ridges. South of the big craggy bluff, the range flattened out to a wide spread of catclaw, creosote bush and gray sandy soil. Toward the northwest, lifting high against the turquoise sky, was The Devil’s Drum, its stratified rounded face detailed clearly in the bright morning sun, appearing closer than it actually was. The sun was warming on Quist’s back now, after the chill of early morning.
His forehead was creased with thought as he rode. “I don’t know,” he speculated dubiously. “Maybe I’m just wasting time, coming out here. Ten to one there won’t be a damn’ thing to see worth while. But when a man gets a hunch, it’s been my experience he’d best act accordingly.” He chuckled, “Anyway, I’ll be able to tell Jay Fletcher I visited the ‘scene of the crime,’ and he won’t be able to claim I’m neglecting my duty.”
Occasionally, great outcroppings of tall sandstone were passed, rising above the range plant growths. The terrain lifted gradually. Once Quist stopped to rest the horse, while he rolled and smoked a cigarette. He again mounted and pushed on. Abruptly the railroad tracks to his left began to hum, announcing an approaching train. Within a few minutes a passenger train, eastbound, rushed past, the fireman lifting one gloved hand to wave when he saw Quist. Quist raised one arm in reply, thinking, “Well, #16 wasn’t delayed by any landslide, anyway,” just before a cloud of black smoke rushed down to envelop him. The roar of the train faded at his rear, and the smoke dissipated in the clear air; cinders ceased showering down.
Three-quarters of an hour later, Quist had reached the point in the tracks where they curved widely to round Shoulder Bluff. He guided the pony up the slight incline of the right-of-way and the animal carefully picked its path across the ties and gleaming rails. A few yards beyond the tracks Quist turned the buckskin and pulled to a halt while he looked around. As he had half suspected, there was little to see.
High above him rose Shoulder Bluff, the signs of a dynamite explosion still visible in the cracked surfaces of sandstone and sandy earth. On either side of the right-of-way was considerable debris showing how the work train had disposed of tons of earth and great split rocks that the tracks might once more be cleared for passage of trains.
“I’ll bet that work crew slaved like hell to get the line cleared,” Quist mused. “It must have been a hell of a job.” Here and there plant growth was crushed flat by great chunks of sandstone. Gravel was piled high at spots. “It was a manmade landslide all right.”
He sat his saddle, surveying the scene, in his imagination seeing the point at which the locomotive had come to a panting halt. His gaze ranged along the tracks, counting a space where each freight car had stood waiting. “If I remember rightly,” Quist pondered, “that report Nugent showed me stated that the car that was opened was the fifth one from the rear, not counting the caboose.”
Acting on the impulse of the moment, he dismounted and dropped his reins on the earth. Then he started walking along the tracks, scrutinizing the ground on either side. Now there was no debris from the landslide to bar his path. Nothing but sandy gravelly soil and low sparse plant growth. What he was looking for, Quist had not the least idea. As he put it to himself, he was still following his hunch. After a month’s time, there’d be no footprints certainly, and whoever had placed the dynamite would have had no occasion to come to track level. That job had been done half way up the bluff itself.
Abruptly, a few feet from the left-hand track, Quist spied a splinter of raw pine wood. It looked fairly new and was only a few inches long by a half wide. It looked like something that might have been broken from a packing box of some sort. Quist remembered now something else in the report he had read: Conductor Fraley of train #24 had stated that when the boxes of preserves were being unloaded, teamster Pardee had dropped one box to the earth and it had burst open. Time had been lost while the contents of the box were retrieved and repacked.
And then something about three yards farther on caught Quist’s eyes. For a moment he just stared, then said softly, “I reckon those cans weren’t repacked very carefully. Just tossed in careless like I reckon. And teamster Pardee missed a couple.”
He took three quick strides, stooped and picked up a couple of tin cans, lying almost side by side. Tops and bottoms of the cans were rusted, but the labels, though faded by days of blistering sun, were almost intact. Quist read the label on one can: Drum Brand Strawberry Jam (though the red of the drum was a washed-out pink by this time); Contents 14 oz. gross; Drumm & Tidwell Co., San Francisco, California. There was further smaller lettering having to do with “finest fruit procurable” and sugar content.
Quist gazed at the cans he held. He shoved back his sombrero and scratched his head. “I suppose I might figure this is some sort of clue—two clues—but just how they help, I’m darn’d if I know.” Suddenly he chuckled, “I’ve got a notion to send a telegram to Jay Fletcher, saying, ‘Dear Jay. Search expedited. Two cans being forwarded.’ Wow! Jay really would fly off the handle.”
Finally he slipped a can in each coat pocket, strode back to the buckskin and mounted.
* * * *
It was nearing noon when Quist first sighted the Rocking-T Ranch buildings,
surrounded by stately old live-oaks. There was the ranch house proper, a low rambling building of rock-and-adobe structure, fronted with a wide gallery and overhanging roof. Fifty yards back of the house were barns, corrals, a blacksmith shop and combination bunkhouse and cook shack. Quist heard the steady clank-clank of a windmill as the vanes turned steadily in the warm breeze. “A darn nice looking spread,” he commented mentally, as he drew near.
There was no one in sight near the house, so Quist guided his pony down toward the bunkhouse. A couple of men in range togs sat on a bench near the bunkhouse door, both slightly under middle-age, and both grizzled bronzed specimens of the cowman of that day. One of them spoke to Quist and Quist gave his name, as he dismounted. The man proved to be Chan Yount, foreman of the outfit; the other was named Olcott and was one of the hands. Sowbelly Handson, the ranch cook, an individual with a thick middle, long mustaches and a red nose, put in an appearance from his cookhouse and got into the conversation, while Quist and Yount were shaking hands.
“Won’t be many in to eat today, Mr. Quist,” Handson invited, “but we’ll have some chow on the table inside the hour. You’re welcome to stay.”
“Thanks,” Quist nodded. “I’ll be able to use some food.”
Yount spoke to the hand, “Gus, you take care of Mr. Quist’s bronc. Put ’im in that corral with the other saddlers, when he’s been watered.” Olcott moved away with Quist’s horse.
Quist said, “I was hoping to see Mrs. Porter or Gene.”
“Miz Porter,” Yount said, “ain’t to home. Wyatt—that’s her paw—I reckon you knowed he was crippled up some—he was feelin’ pretty good this mornin’, and he allowed to do some ridin’. Miz Porter rode with him like she always does. Gene, he’s ’round some place. Last time I see him he was headed ’tother side of that barn yonderly. Had his paintin’ tackle with him, so like’s not he makin’ some picters. Gene’s right good at it too. Go stir ’im up. Tell him chow time’s nigh. Once he gits to paintin’, time don’t mean nothin’ to him and he forgets to eat.”
