Jack The Roper (Axel Hatchett Mystery Book 6)

by Steven Nelson

  “Ugh!” said curly-haired Mabel. “Slugs! I hate them. We have them in our garden.”

  “I didn’t realize you were injured,” said Hawk, coming over and grabbing Lucky’s bridle. “Get on down. I’m sorry. I’ll get you a good horse.”

  I stayed where I was. I was getting ready to dig my heels into the horse, but Tracy gave me a look.

  “I don’t want to be a widow,” she said. “Quit showing off. Get down.”

  If it hadn’t been our honeymoon, I wouldn’t have listened to her. I got down.

  “You sure nobody can ride this horse?” Tracy asked Hawk.

  “Nobody ever has, ma’am.”

  “You’d be willing to bet money?”

  “I’d give twenty dollars to the man who could stay on that horse for five minutes.”

  “What about a woman?” Tracy asked, and before anybody could stop her she jumped into Lucky’s saddle, grabbed the reins, and swatted the horse with her silly cowboy hat.

  The horse jumped the corral fence. Tracy stuck to its back like a molasses-soaked thistle. Lucky jumped and dived and squirmed and got all lathered up. But he couldn’t shake my wife. Tracy hung on like a Gila monster with a mouthful of prospector. The saddle finally pulled loose and Tracy and it landed on a nice grassy spot. I ran over to her.

  “You OK? What got into you?”

  “Look who’s talking. I’m fine. I landed on my caboose.” She walked back to the corral and looked Hawk in the eye. “Was I on five minutes?”

  “Ma’am, I reckon you were. I don’t have twenty dollars on me now, but I’ll pay you in the morning. Will that be all right?”

  “Sure. Nobody’s going to let you forget. When I was a kid in 4H, I had the meanest horse this side of Mars.” She turned and looked off into the distance. “I think Lucky’s going to be gone for a while.”

  I noticed her glasses weren’t on her face. Damn it! She never wore the things and now she’d worn them to ride a rodeo monster. I looked around on the ground and found the glasses. Amazingly, they weren’t broken. I walked over and handed them to her, shaking my head.

  “You could have gotten yourself killed, potato head,” I said.

  “That’s my line, skunk cabbage.”

  When you meet a swell girl like Tracy, you’d be a fool not to marry her.

  The show was over. Hawk picked out horses for all of us, including one for me. My new horse was an old buckskin named Butter. He looked at me with come-hither eyes and almost begged me to ride him. Hawk arranged us in single file and led us up a long crooked trail that led into some nice hills. The joke he’d played on me had lowered him in the opinion of the dames. I could tell by the way they looked at him. But he did his best to make up for it. He put me right behind him in the line. He’d picked up my hat — Lucky had stepped on it — from the corral dirt and returned it to me.

  “You got some sand, mister,” he told me, loud enough for everyone to hear.

  Walter, the sulky guy married to Betsy, called out to Hawk.

  “Don’t be playing anymore of those tricks, Cowboy,” he said. “I didn’t come up here to get my neck broken.”

  “I just hope my horse likes me,” said Mabel, with a nervous giggle.

  When we’d been riding for half an hour or so, Hawk started singing. His voice was a smoky baritone, and he sang about dusky-eyed senoritas, and grim-lipped lawmen. By the time he was through, he’d gained back the admiration of the damsels. We stopped in an open area where a space had been cleared of rocks and grass and cactus. There was a split-rail fence nearby, and Hawk had us tie up our cayuses. He opened up his saddle bags and brought out half-a-dozen glass globes about the size of baseballs.

  “I’m fixing to put on a little shooting exhibition,” he told us.

  He laid out the glass balls on the ground and drew his revolver and twirled it and threw it in the air and caught it. I noticed he’d switched guns from the first time I’d seen him. Instead of the fancy pearl-handled Colt he’d worn before, this new gun had a longer barrel and wood grips. It looked worn and well-used.

  He tossed one of the balls about twenty feet in the air and shot it to pieces when it reached its zenith. He did the same thing with the other glass globes. It was impressive, but I knew the trick. The gun was a special one for showmen, invented when Wild West shows were still popular. I was sure of it. No doubt Hawk’s revolver had a smooth bore, like a shotgun, and the cartridges were loaded with sand. When he fired off a shot, the sand spread out a couple of feet and blasted the glass balls to pieces. It was a lot easier than using regular bullets. But it looked good, and we all ooed and ahed. Except for me, but I’m just a sour old gumshoe.

  We got back on our mounts and rode through some pretty country with stands of pine, with the breeze blowing through them, and tinkling streams of clear water, and plenty of big rocks and boulders to look at. Then we turned and headed back to the ranch and our lunch. None of us fell off our horses.

  6

  It’s hard to talk to folks when you’re riding single file. Maybe when we got back to the grub house I’d be able to chew the fat with my fellow dudes and the ranch hands. I wanted to get to know everybody so I could make a guess as to who might be the best suspect for Brice Holcombe’s murder. Every dude except for me and Tracy had arrived this morning, but that didn’t mean they couldn’t have snuck up the night before and strangled the cowpoke. That thought actually seemed kind of silly to me. Maybe I was already missing working on a case instead of playing cowpoke. Still, I wanted to talk to Panhandle. I wanted to get his side of things before I called his aunt and told her where her DeSoto was. I just hoped Tracy didn’t catch on to what I was doing. Hell, I can’t help it. I’m a nosey guy!

  We got the horses back to the corral. All the dudes filed down to the pump behind the cabins to wash the trail dust off their paws and mugs before lunch. I didn’t like that the outhouses were so close to the pump, but the water tasted OK. Then we went to the chow house and Sissy Dell led us out back to a grassy place with picnic tables, a native stone barbeque apparatus, a croquet lawn, and horseshoe-throwing pits. There was even a little concrete shuffleboard area. Panhandle was busy burning burgers. I told Tracy to pick a spot for us at one of the tables, then I moseyed over to Panhandle.

  “Howdy Panhandle!” I greeted him. “You remind me of a guy named Billy. Ever hear of him? Nice ride, by the way.”

  Panhandle flinched, but recovered his cowboy stoicism quick enough.

  “Why, if it ain’t my cousin Miles. Or is it Axe?”

  “Axe. What are we having for grub? Rabbit?”

  “That was Ned that took the rabbit. Me, I’m innocent. What are you, a peeper?”

  “Good guess.”

  “I knew you weren’t no lost cousin. Aunt Aggie can’t fool us that easy.”

  “Sure, I did a job for her. She wanted me to stick around and recover her car for her, but I was otherwise engaged.”

  “Engaged? I thought you was married.” He laughed a big horse laugh. “Listen, I can explain about the car.”

  “You mean you can tell me how you stole the battery first, and then the rest of the DeSoto?”

  “It wasn’t like that. Honest. Before you and Auntie took off to rescue Percy, I was waiting for a phone call from the ranch. When I got the call, I had an errand to run. I needed to get some cash to my bookie. I like the dogs and the horses. That pickup that Ned and me own wouldn’t start. I couldn’t even crank start it. The damned jalopy doesn’t run half the time.”

  “So you decided to take Miss Weatherby’s car to get to your bookie,” I said.

  “Yeah, that’s how it was. But the damned DeSoto wouldn’t start either. I popped the hood and found the battery gone.”

  “Neighborhood hoodlums?”

  “Naw. I’m guessing it was Ned. He snuck out in the night and kiped the battery to get even with Auntie for wanting to burn his feet. So, anyway, I thumbed a ride to the gas station and bought a new battery.”

  “Ver
y kind of you.”

  “Don’t get smart. That’s how it was. One of the grease monkeys gave me a ride back and I put in the new battery, then went over to see Sal, my bookie. I haven’t heard yet if I won. Twenty smackers on Pogo Stick, a long shot.”

  “Is that a horse or a dog?” I asked.

  “A pony. Who’d name a dog Pogo Stick?”

  “Sure. I should have guessed that. Then what happened?”

  “I waited around for you and Auntie to get back. You sure took your sweet time. What were you doing, necking in the woods?”

  “None of your business.”

  “I waited as long as I could, but I needed to get to the Carefree Buckaroo. So I ended up borrowing the DeSoto.”

  “Sure. I’m tempted to call your aunt and tell her where her car is.”

  “She already knows. I left her a note on the little table next to the front door. She always looks there. She’ll likely send the girls up here to fetch the car.”

  I thought about it. The story actually made some sense. But none of it explained where he got the money for his fancy duds. Maybe he’d been dipping into Aunt Aggie’s purse.

  “How’d you end up so flush?” I asked.

  “I’ve been saving up. I do pretty well with the doggies sometimes.”

  “You didn’t tell your aunt, or the others, that you were going to be working up here?”

  “Naw. They’d do something to screw things up. That’s just how they are.”

  “OK. Get back to your barbequing. Don’t burn my burger.”

  “Which one’s yours?”

  “The one that’s not burnt.”

  I joined Tracy at the table. Walter and Betsy sat across from us. Walter seemed sulky. Betsy was friendly. Maybe too friendly. She kept giving me the eye. What kind of dame turns on the charm for a mug like me?

  “Where are you folks from?” Tracy asked them.

  “Back East,” said Walter.

  “Any particular state?” I asked.

  “We move around a lot.”

  “We’re living in Jersey,” Betsy volunteered. “Walter has a restless foot, though. We’ll be moving to Pennsylvania pretty soon.”

  “What do you do, Walter?” I asked.

  “He’s an inventor,” said Betsy.

  “I work in a warehouse,” said Walter.

  “Sure, he’s working in a warehouse now, but he’s just getting started as an inventor. He’s working on a bread toaster that’s powered by water. You hook it up to your kitchen faucet.”

  “I don’t see how that would work,” said Tracy, frowning.

  “It doesn’t,” said Walter. “It’s a flop, a failure, like everything else I come up with.”

  “He’s just being modest,” Betsy gushed. “Tell these nice people about the cigarette filter you invented. It’s made out of ground glass.”

  “It stinks,” said Walter. “Nobody wants it, none of the cigarette makers. I’m a lousy inventor.”

  “Someday Walter will be rich and famous,” said Betsy.

  “We’ll die in the gutter,” sighed Walter. “I’m a loser.” He took a long swig from a bottle of beer and shook his head sadly.

  “What do you do, Betsy?” asked Tracy. “Any kids?”

  “No, not yet. I work at the Woolworths.”

  “We can’t afford kids,” said Walter. “And Betsy’s got to work because of me.”

  Betsy gave me a big smile and winked. I don’t know how Tracy didn’t notice.

  Sissy Dell and Panhandle started bringing trays of food over to the tables. The chow was pretty good, even if Panhandle had burned some of the meat. I had two hamburgers and two barbeque sandwiches, a ton of potato salad, and a field’s worth of corn on the cob. And this was the ranch’s idea of a light lunch. I was ready for a nap. When they brought out the ice cream, I sneered.

  “Axe doesn’t like ice cream,” explained Tracy. “Isn’t that crazy?”

  “I thought everybody loved ice cream,” said Betsy.

  “I invented a new kind of ice cream maker,” said Walter. “Diesel. Everybody hated it. Lost money on it.”

  “This ice cream is great,” said Betsy. She made calf eyes at me. “Won’t you try just a bite, Axe? I’ll make choo-choo noises.”

  “I had a bad experience as a child,” I said. “I found a frozen baby rat in a hot fudge sundae.”

  “He’s lying,” said Tracy. She’s always spoiling things for me.

  “I invented a new rat poison once,” said Walter. “It made them grow. They loved the stuff.”

  “Why don’t you tell them about all your successful inventions, dear?” Betsy asked him.

  “Honey, there haven’t been any.”

  “Like I said, he’s modest,” said Betsy. She caught my eye and pouted her mouth.

  “What are we doing after lunch, I wonder?” asked Tracy.

  “Sleeping, I hope,” I said.

  “I heard we were going for a walk,” said Betsy. “Up to the big ranch house where the owner lives. I guess it’s something to see.”

  “Primus Roan is the rancher’s name,” said Tracy. She had strawberry ice cream all over her mouth. I didn’t kiss it off. “He’s Panhandle’s great uncle, I think.”

  About the time we were through eating, the bandy-legged guy named Sheepy Burdell made an appearance.

  “Folks,” he told us, “I reckon you’re about stuffed with Sissy Dell and Panhandle’s fine lunch. We’re going to help you with that by taking you all for a walk. It’ll help your digestion and work the kinks out of your joints from riding. You’ll all be the better for it. You finish up now and we’ll get going.”

  There were some groans from some of the diners, but everybody got up and we followed Sheepy. He took us out onto the main road and we started hiking up it. Sheepy’s bowed legs made it hard for him to get up speed, and that was fine with the rest of us. Since we weren’t on a narrow trail and forced to go single-file, we strung out along the road in little groups. I took Tracy’s arm and guided her over to where Dr. Rumdab and Lilly were walking side by side.

  “I want to talk to these folks,” I whispered to Tracy.

  “No murder talk,” she whispered back. “Say, what’s with you and the hussy?”

  “Who, Betsy? I didn’t think you noticed. I don’t know what’s up with her. Maybe she wants to ditch laugh-a-minute Walter. I didn’t encourage her. I ignored every one of her amorous glances.”

  “Just make sure you keep that up. I think the doctor’s a sourpuss.”

  “Let’s find out.”

  We caught up with the doctor and his wife.

  “We’re Tracy and Axe,” Tracy introduced us.

  “I’m Lilly, and this is my husband, Karl.”

  Karl gave us a curt nod. He had something gray on his upper lip. I think it was supposed to be a mustache. Lilly was heavily made-up, but she couldn’t have been much past thirty. I wondered if Karl was a baby doctor and had robbed one of the cradles. Lilly was a peach, pretty and vivacious. Karl was an old stick with indigestion.

  “This trip was my wife’s idea,” he told us. “I wanted to go to a spa in Zurich.”

  “You can go to a spa anytime, dear,” said Lilly. “Riding horses and eating beans will do a lot more for you than going to an old spa and soaking in smelly water.”

  “I didn’t realize I required improvement,” Karl grumbled.

  Lilly turned to us and stage whispered. “He’s just upset about the murder.”

  “We might be next, you know,” said Karl.

  “There isn’t likely to be any more killings,” I said, as if I knew what I was talking about.

  “Is that so?” asked Karl, twitching his little mustache. “How is it that you know this?”

  “My husband’s a detective,” said Tracy.

  “Oh, that’s right,” said Rumdab. “I believe you brought that up at the corral.” He turned to me. “How are you feeling, by the way? You took some terrible tumbles.”

  “I’m all right.
I’ve got some sore ribs and a bruised shoulder. What kind of a doc are you?”

  “A general practitioner, to my infinite regret. I should have become a specialist, or a pathologist.”

  “Karl’s bedside manner could use some work,” said Lilly, laughing. She had one of those laughs that seem more like a seizure.

  “Great lunch, huh?” said Tracy.

  “I’ll say,” said Lilly, rubbing her stomach.

  “It was entirely unhealthy,” said Karl. “We’ll have to engage in a strict diet and exercise regime when we return home.”

  “Don’t be a wet blanket, honey, you know you loved that barbeque.”

  “I admit that it was appetizing,” said Karl.

  Sheepy stopped us and pointed to a driveway at one side of the road. He led us up it. Some of the dudes were starting to puff and pant. Flatlanders!

  “This here’s the house,” said Sheepy, after we’d walked about half a mile.

  It was a log-built monstrosity, two-stories high, with twin towers and a wealth of windows, but it might have been too small to hold dog races in. I wondered if Primus Roan lived alone. There was a barn and corral on one side, and a stream — with a bridge — roiled along the front. The dudes, including me, were impressed.

  “Mr. Roan is laid up now,” Sheepy said. “He got throwed by a stallion some years back. The Roans have made most of their money off of raising and breeding horses. Hop-A-Long Cassidy rode a horse from this ranch in some of his movies. And there’s been some mighty fine race horses bred here.”

  “Was Lucky bred here?” I asked.

  “Lucky? Why, yes, he was. They don’t always turn out good. You folks can take pictures if you want.”

  “Can we go inside?” asked Mabel, the hardware guy’s wife.

  “No, ma’am, I’m sorry. Mr. Roan favors privacy.”

  Some of us took pictures. Tracy tried out the new Brownie she’d bought for the trip. Then we turned around and headed back to the dude ranch. Some of us were getting pretty footsore.

  “Folks,” said Sheepy, when we were once again standing in front of the dining hall, “there’s horseshoe-pitching and croquet out back, or you might want to start up a card game. But some of you might want to take naps.”