Borden Chantry

by Louis L'Amour

  “Only I’d like to know where the stranger was going and where he was coming from. I think Time will have them tell me. He’s no fool.”

  Any man who would kill a horse like that wasn’t worth shooting. So why had he killed it? Why not just take it out and turn it loose to go home?

  To go home and perhaps start somebody back-trailing to see what happened to the rider…That had to be the reason. The killer did not want that tough outfit Reardon had referred to riding into town. So he had killed the horse, cut away the brand so it and its owner could not be identified, then caved dirt over it in hopes it might never be found.

  If the dead man had been treated like others who had fallen in drunken fights, as the killer planned, no clue would have been left.

  Picking up his hat, he went to the door. “I’ll be back for supper, Bess. If you need me I’ll be up on the street.”

  “Or at that Haley woman’s place.”

  “Part of the job, Bess. When a man sets out to enforce the law he doesn’t expect to move in the best company. Anyway, from all I hear she’s not a bad woman…maybe not a good woman, but not a bad one.”

  He went out quickly before Bess could reply to that, and walked slowly up the street. He stopped on the corner, thinking. People went by and nodded or spoke, and he knew how he looked to them. He wore the badge. He was authority. He was the personification of the law. He looked strong, invulnerable, capable. Yet if they only knew!

  He grinned ruefully at nothing at all.

  What did he have? Puggsey and Frank were definitely suspects…They’d undoubtedly had a fight with the victim, and might have murdered him later.

  Johnny McCoy was a drunk, not always responsible for his actions, and Johnny had stabled the man’s horse, knew he had gold on his person.

  Time Reardon…a lawless, ruthless man, who also knew the stranger carried gold. A man who often went for rides in the late afternoon or evening…Rides to where? And for what?

  He thought of old Mrs. Riggin. George had a murder in his day, too, and maybe she would know how he handled it. Any help he could get, he could use. So he would go see her…and he would see Mary Ann.

  Oddly enough, he felt uncomfortable about that. Essentially a shy, lonely person, he had known few women. There had been a girl in Leavenworth when he was a boy, and another in Sedalia when he’d gone back there with some cattle, and then he had met Bess and after that no other girl really entered his thoughts. He had talked to Mary Ann more than once on the street, and at least once in her kitchen, but he avoided the girls, and as he wore the badge, they avoided him.

  He frowned in sudden memory. People had mentioned the murder victim crossing and re-crossing the street…going where? The restaurant, Reardon’s…George Blazer had seen him on the street…What about the bank?

  What about Hyatt Johnson?

  Chapter 5

  * * *

  LEANING ON AN awning post in front of the General Store, Borden Chantry chewed on a match and tried to put it all together. Unwillingly, he kept thinking of Hyatt Johnson, feeling guilty all the while because he had never really liked Hyatt.

  In that part of the country in that period, there was no great affection for bankers or railroad men. The former had foreclosed on too many properties when poor men were unable, due to weather and grazing conditions, to pay their bills. The latter because the rates the railroad charged were felt to be too high.

  Borden Chantry, with a large ranch and a good reputation, had no success in getting a reasonable loan and reasonable rates that might have kept him in business. Hyatt had offered to buy his land at a price far below its value, or had offered a mortgage at rates he had no chance of ever paying, so Borden had refused both offers.

  He had his land, but he had no cattle. He would have thought Johnson merely shortsighted if he had not known that the banker wanted his land.

  Yet, the banker had to be considered. The murdered man had gone to the bank. He had been carrying money. Sometime during those few hours that money had disappeared. Had it been deposited?

  If so, would Hyatt tell him? It was a common saying around town that money went into Hyatt’s bank, but none came out. That wasn’t, of course, literally true, yet it betrayed the town’s feeling about Hyatt Johnson—for which there had been some reason.

  Since he had been turned down for his loan almost a year before, Borden Chantry had not entered the bank, and his exchange of greetings on the street had always been coolly formal.

  Crossing the street, he strolled up toward the bank. Ed Pearson was in town, Chantry observed, buying supplies for his mining claims. Ed lived off to the north and Chantry had intended to stop all night there when bringing Kim Baca back to jail, only Pearson had not been home.

  Of a sudden, Chantry stopped and looked back, mentally estimating the load Pearson was putting on his wagon. He whistled softly…Ed must be doing well, for he was buying heavy, very heavy.

  The interior of the bank was cool and shadowed. Lem Parkin was behind the wicket, wearing a green eye-shade and sleeve garters. “Howdy, Marshal! Don’t often see you in here!”

  “Not much occasion for it, Lem. My salary doesn’t leave much. Is Mr. Johnson in?”

  “In the office. Door’s open. Just walk on back.”

  Hyatt Johnson was a cool, hard-eyed man with a level gaze and less expression than a hard-boiled egg. He looked up at the tall, broad-shouldered young man with no pleasure. He did want Chantry’s land, and intended to have it. The ten sections Chantry owned were worth little at land prices of the day, and Hyatt Johnson knew that at the moment less valuable land was going for a dollar an acre, and sometimes less, with times the way they were. Borden Chantry’s land was a different story, for he had a good creek running through it as well as several year-around water holes, and Hyatt knew a dozen men who would pay ten to twelve dollars an acre for the place, and jump at the chance. He also knew there were banks in several western towns not too far off who would give Chantry a loan with no argument, and at the best rates.

  Fortunately, Chantry did not know this and Hyatt had no intention of telling him. He wanted the Chantry land. Once he had it, and he was sure he would get it eventually, he would sell off a small piece to recover whatever it cost him and hold the rest.

  Borden Chantry lived off his salary, and no western marshal could be expected to live long, so Hyatt was waiting…not too long, he hoped.

  His lips were a little dry when he looked up. Chantry wasted no time. “Hyatt,” he said shortly, “I am investigating a murder.”

  “Murder?” Hyatt was startled. “You mean a killing?”

  “I mean a murder. Tall, nice-looking man, thirty or so. Might be less. Wore a beaded buckskin jacket…Plains Indian-style, but I figure he came from the southwest.”

  Hyatt Johnson sat back in his swivel chair. “You mean you are of the opinion this was not simply a drunken brawl? A casual shooting?”

  “I do. It was murder. Then he killer tried to cover it up. He changed the dead man’s shirt, put on his coat. Before he put the coat on, he shot him in the chest so he would have a wound to prove he’d been shot from in front. Then he took him out and dropped him in the street.”

  “What has all that to do with me?”

  “The first step in figuring out who killed him is to identify him, find out where he stayed, and why he came to town in the first place. Also, he was known to be carrying a poke filled with gold coins.”

  Hyatt Johnson shrugged. “I still can’t see where I come in?”

  “He was in your bank before he was killed. All I want to know is what he wanted here, and if he gave you a name.”

  Hyatt Johnson was disturbed. In all his dealings with ranchers he had found most of them were relatively poor business men, knowing little aside from cattle and grazing, and often with only a rudimentary knowledge of those subjects. To turn a herd of cattle loose on free range and then to make a gather and sell off the fat, mature stock required very little intelligence, as he s
aw it.

  Now Borden Chantry was showing a brand of reasoning he had not suspected…pure chance, no doubt. Yet why would he take off a man’s coat and shirt when he had obviously been shot?

  “Yes,” he replied, “I believe…Yes, the man was in here, but he didn’t give me a name. His business, however, was confidential. I am afraid I cannot divulge any part of it.”

  “I’m speaking for the law, Hyatt. Not for myself.”

  “Nevertheless—”

  Chantry stood up. “Looks like I’ll have to get a court order,” he said. “If that’s the way you want it.”

  Hyatt Johnson was irritated. Now where did this cowboy ever hear of a court order? “Very well,” he replied tersely, “now if that is all—?”

  “For the time, Hyatt, for the time.”

  Borden walked back to the street, feeling his defeat. To tell the truth, he knew nothing about court orders. He had read or heard somewhere of somebody getting one to get at some papers. Well, he could try.

  He would see Judge Alex McKinney.

  For a few minutes he simply stood in the street. It was an easy street, lazy-seeming and dusty, too warm part of the time, too cold and windy at others, yet it had the advantage of being familiar.

  He knew all the people on that street, knew what they were about. He recognized the rigs that stood there, knew the brands on the saddled stock along the hitching rail, and knew who rode most of the horses. Most of them were men he had worked with, men he knew and trusted. Yet somewhere among them was a murderer, which proved there was at least one man he did not know.

  Who? Who killed the stranger, and why? Why would a man want to kill?

  For gold…the most obvious reason, or for revenge, for fear, or over a woman. In a sudden fit of anger, maybe, in a dispute over a card game or horse-race or something. Yet a man in such a shooting had every chance of not even being arrested, and if you wished to kill a man you could find some reason for drawing on him.

  Unless, of course, you knew the other man was better with a gun than you were. Or…even if he might be al-most as good. Such a man might die but kill you in the process.

  Sorting over what he knew, he realized that nobody had told him the whole truth. Kim Baca knew more than he admitted, and so did both Johnny McCoy and his son. It was very likely that Hyatt Johnson knew enough to clear up the case.

  Hyatt…a cool, hard, careful man. A good shot at deer or antelope…or turkeys, for that matter, and a man who always played with the odds in his favor.

  Johnny, who drank too much, who was notoriously short of money…and Kim Baca, who had the skill, the intelligence, to outwit any of them. “Including me,” he said aloud.

  He had to see the judge about a court order and he must talk to Mary Ann. He walked across to the Bon-Ton, feeling guilty because he was procrastinating. He was avoiding going out to Mary Ann’s. Some of the town gossips would see him going in there and their tongues would wag.

  Prissy was over from the post office. She usually brewed her own tea in the back of the office, so if she was here it was because she was either picking up gossip or spreading some. Still, Prissy was a good woman, a good postmistress, and a public-spirited citizen. She was also a good person to have on your side if it came to politics or business about the town or country. She not only would say what she believed, but she believed a lot of things and said it about all of them.

  He sat down near the window where he could watch the street. He knew she would be inquiring, but he was also curious about what she had come over for. It took no more than a minute to find out.

  “Mary Ann’s a sick woman, that’s what Doc Terwilliger says. He says she’s got consumption. She needs rest.”

  Elsie Carter was over from the hotel, and she half-turned in her chair. “Wonder some of those folks out west wouldn’t show up. Just don’t know, prob’ly, but Mary Ann Haley helped them when they needed it. Least that’s what they say.”

  “What’s that?” Prissy demanded.

  “Why, it was out Nevada way. Or maybe it was in Montana. Smallpox hit that mining camp an’ everybody come down with it. Most of the womenfolks in town got scared and they ran. They got out, and those men that could travel, they went, too.

  “There was maybe twenty, twenty-five men left in town, and most of them down with smallpox, and Mary Ann, she just pitched in an’ nursed them all. She got them together in the town hall and she stayed right with them, morning, noon, an’ night. Least that’s what they say.”

  Nobody said anything for awhile, and then it was Prissy who suggested, “We could take up a collection.”

  Elsie shook her head. “Nobody’s got much, Prissy, and there’s a good many would say it was the Lord’s will, what’s happening to her. I doubt we could get enough for a ticket on the stage, let alone anything for her keep when she got there…wherever she goes.”

  He said nothing, staring out the window. They were right, of course, something should be done, but he also knew there was no way a collection could be gathered for Mary Ann…unless, he chuckled at the thought, they would do it just to get her out of town.

  His thoughts returned to Johnny McCoy. With luck the Irishman might be sober now, and if he was, he might have a deal to say. He filled his cup and stared up the street, and Prissy had spoken twice to him before he realized.

  “Marshal? You found who killed that man?”

  “It takes awhile, ma’am. I’m workin’ on it.”

  She sniffed. “Doesn’t ’pear to me like you’re doin’ much but settin’.”

  “Now, Prissy, a man’s a fool to go off half-cocked. A thing like this, a man’s got to think on it. He’s got to figure.”

  Prissy looked at him, and shook her head. “I don’t know, Marshal, maybe you’re not the man for the job. Why, that nice Lang Adams. We could have had him for marshal, and he’s a bright man whose thoughts aren’t all taken up with cows and horses.”

  “Lang would have been a good marshal,” he admitted. “And I hear he’s a good hand with a pistol. I know he can shoot turkeys.”

  “That’s all you men think about…shooting. Shooting’s got nothing to do with it. You’ve got to think, Marshal. Think!”

  “Yes’m, I know that.”

  “Now, old George Riggin, he was marshal here for a long time, and a good man, too. He always said that Dover shooting was a murder, but nobody really believed him. Of course, nobody knew what George was really thinking. He just went about his business and if he talked to anybody it was to Helen. If he hadn’t died…well, I always did say that if he hadn’t died he would have found out who killed Pin Dover.

  “Why, I talked to him just a day or two before he was killed and he told me then that he thought he had the answer…George wasn’t one to talk. Not him. He was a stern man, and very quiet, but I’d known George more than ten years and when he was in the post office asking about some mail, he told me that he’d have the killer.”

  “Nonsense!” Elsie said sharply. “There was no killer. George was just a-funnin’. He did that now and again. And those folks who thought somebody did him in! Why, he just got killed by a rock slide, happens all the time!”

  “Does it?” Prissy said tartly. “One day he says he’ll have the killer, next day he’s dead. I’d say that slide happened mighty nigh right for the killer, whoever he was.”

  Borden remembered the funeral. He had known old George as he had known everybody in town…to speak to. They had talked a time or two, and a couple of times he’d ridden on posses with the old man…he was no fool, George Riggin wasn’t.

  “Nonsense! Some folks see murder under ever’ rock. Why, take that young man who got killed! I don’t believe for a minute he was murdered any more than any of those drunks who get all whiskeyed up and shoot or knife each other!”

  Most of them thought he was a fool, making a mystery out of something so simple. Borden Chantry looked down at his empty cup and could not remember taking those last swallows. He pushed back his chair and got up.
It was time to go see Mary Ann.

  “Priss,” he suggested, “if you see the judge, tell him I want to see him. I’ll be back in a short time.”

  “Ain’t been down for his mail, so I reckon you’ll see him right here. He coffees up whenever he gets mail and reads it whilst he drinks. But I’ll tell him. Just you be back to see him when he gets here.”

  They all heard the shot.

  It was some distance off, but it had a clear, distinct report that cut across their conversation, stilling their tongues, leaving them staring.

  Shots were not uncommon at night, occasionally in the daytime, but rarely in the late afternoon before the drinkers got well started and after the hunters had come in…if any.

  Yet there was something about that shot that hit them all, and for a moment they just stared, frightened and wondering.

  Borden Chantry got up and went outside. He knew it as well as if he’d seen it happen.

  Somebody else was dead.

  Chapter 6

  * * *

  HE LAY SPRAWLED at the door of the stable, his face in the fresh straw, one hand outflung and holding a bridle, the other by his side, empty.

  The hands were seamed and gnarled with work, such work as even the months of hard drinking had failed to eradicate. From earliest childhood Johnny McCoy had only known work, and had never shirked his share, only to have the drink catch up to him at last.

  Billy stood beside the body when they came running, his face white, his eyes wide and staring.

  “Bill,” Chantry put a hand on the thin shoulder, “I’m sorry, boy.”

  Even as he spoke he was noting the bullet hole in the side of the skull, his eyes sweeping the area for the place of the marksman.

  There was no use running and chasing, for the man would be long gone, and to rush in now with a lot of would-be pursuers would only trample any evidence that might have been left.

  There were a dozen men there, and as many women. Borden turned slowly to face them. “Now listen,” he said loudly, “and hear me plain. You’re each to go directly to your homes, and stop for nothing on the way. Go directly there and stay in until morning, or settle with me.”