“Let’s eat,” Butler suggested. “I’m hungry as a Panhandle wolf.”
It was boarding-house style, and Bowdrie seated himself, turning a cup right-side-up, then reaching for the coffee. Another hand reached at the same time and only Chick’s dexterity prevented the pot from being upset. Bowdrie looked around into a pair of frosty blue eyes. The man had reached for the pot with his left hand.
Chick smiled. “Help yourself,” he suggested. “Coffeepots are bad luck when they are upset.”
Sam Butler nodded sagely. He speared a triple thickness of hotcakes and lifted them to his plate. “Sure is. Wust kind of bad luck.” The frosty eyes turned ugly. For an instant they flickered to the badge on Butler’s chest, then shifted to Bowdrie.
“Uh-huh,” Bowdrie agreed. “I knew a gent once who got drilled right through the heart whilst holding a coffeepot in his right hand. Never had a chance.”
“Sho nuff?.” A big blohd cowhand at the end of the table glanced up. “A man sure couldn’t let go of a pot fast enough, could he?”
“That’s what the murderer figured,” Bowdrie replied. “This just happened a few hours ago, over at Pistol Rock Springs.”
The cowhand stared but the man with the frosty blue eyes continued to eat. “Been to those springs many a time,” the cowhand said. “Who was it got hisself killed?”
“Name of Jim Moody. He robbed the stage station over yonder last night, shot John Irwin, then cut across country to the spring. His partner was waitin’, an’ the way he was ridin’, I figure Moody expected his partner had a fresh horse waitin’. Instead of that he got lead for breakfast. This partner of his shot him, took the money, and lit out.”
“Now, that’s a dirty skunk if I ever heard of one!” the blond cowhand said. “He ought to be hung! Hell, I knew Jim Moody! He used to spark that Boling gal from over the way. Seen him at dances, many’s the time.” He turned to the man with the frosty blue eyes. “Sho, Al! I reckon you won’t be none put out. I’ve heard tell there was a time you was sweet on that Boling gal yourself”
Al shrugged. “Talked to her a few times, that’s all. Same as you did.” Something clicked in Bowdrie’s brain. Al … Al Harshman, a rancher. The ambitious one.
Al got to his feet. “I’ll be ridin’,” he said, to nobody in particular. Then he asked, “How much did he get away with?”
“Twelve thousand,” Bowdrie replied, his face inscrutable. Al was wearing his gun on the right side, butt forward, and pulled slightly to the front. “But he won’t have it long, Harshman. He left a plain trail.”
Harshman stiffened angrily and seemed about to reply, then turned toward the door. He glanced back. “I wouldn’t want the job of trailin’ him,” he commented. “He might prove right salty if cornered.”
“When a man is murdered without a chance,” Bowdrie commented, “we Rangers make it a point of honor to hunt him down. A Ranger will get that killer if it is the last thing he ever does.”
“Rangers can die.”
“Of course, but we never die alone.” Bowdrie smiled. “We always like to take somebody with us.”
When he had gone outside, Butler glanced over at Bowdrie. “How’d you know his name was Harshman?”
“He looked like a harsh man,” Bowdrie replied, smiling. Strolling to the porch outside, Bowdrie sat down on the bench after retrieving the burlap sacking from the saddlebag. He began to go over it with painstaking care.
The Mexican boy who had returned the horses stood watching, eyes bright with curiosity. “What you look for, senor?”
“Somethin’ to tell me who the hombre was who used this sack. Nobody uses anything for long without leaving his mark on it.”
The outside of the sacking was thick with damp sand; much more must have come off in his saddlebags, Bowdrie reflected unhappily. Stretching the fibers, he searched them with keen eyes.
Suddenly the Mexican boy reached over and plucked a gray hair from the sacking, then another.
“So? He had a gray or steeldust horse, Pedro?”
“The name is Miguel, senor,’” the boy protested,, very seriously. He bent over the sack, pointing at a fragment of blue clay. “See? It is blue. The sack has lain near a well.”
“Near a well, Pedro? Why do you say that?”
“The name is Miguel, senor. Because there is the blue clay. Always in this country there is blue clay in the hole of wells, senor. Always, it is so.”
“Thanks, Pedro. You’d make a good Texas Ranger.”
“I? A Texas Ranger? You think so, senor?” His expression changed. “But, senor, the name is not Pedro. It is Miguel. Miguel Fernandez.”
“All right, Pedro.” Bowdrie stood up. “Just as you say.” He glanced once more at the sacking, and suddenly, in the crease near the seam, he noticed a tiny fragment of crushed, somewhat oily pulp. He took it out, studied it, then folded it into a cigarette paper.
“Wait for me,” he said to Butler. Swiftly he crossed the street to the store. A little old man with gold-rimmed spectacles looked up. Bowdrie asked him a question, then another. The old man replied, studying him curiously. Bowdrie walked back to Butler. “Let’s go. I think we’ve got our man. I only hope we’ll be in time.”
“In time?” Butler asked. In time for what?”
The Mexican boy caught his hand. “Senor.’” he pleaded. “If I am to be a Ranger, you must know my name! It is Miguel! Miguel Fernindez!”
Bowdrie chuckled and handed him another dollar. “If you say so, Pedro! Miguel it is! Adios, Pedro!”
He swung to the saddle and started out of town, Butler beside him. “In time for what?” he repeated.
“To prevent another killing,” Bowdrie told him. “Robley knew,” Bowdrie continued. “He guessed it when he saw the dead man was Jim Moody. He knew who it was when I said the killer was left-handed. He was away ahead of us.”
“You think it was Harshman? But how could he have known about the money? For that matter, how did Moody find out?”
The desert flat gave way to rising ground, the hillsides scattered with juniper. The sage had taken on a deeper color and there were clumps of grama grass. Chick dipped into an arroyo and skirted a towering wall of red sandstone, into a shaded canyon, then across another flat. The trail dipped again and they rode into the yard of a lonely ranch house. Nearby there were several pole corrals and three saddled horses.
Bowdrie dropped to the ground. As his feet touched the earth, Al Harshman stepped from the door. Narrow-eyed, faint perspiration showing on his brow, he looked from Butler to Bowdrie and back. “Huntin’ somethin’?”
“You,” Bowdrie said. “I am arrestin’ you for the murder of Jim Moody and complicity in the robbery and murder of John Irwin.”
Harshman took a step into the yard. He was smiling, a taunting smile. “All you’ve got is suspicion. You can’t prove nothin’. I ain’t been away from here but that ride to town, where you saw me.” He smiled again. “You can’t prove I was anywhere near Pistol Rock Spring. And how would I know about the money? How would Moody know?”
“I know how you knew about the money.” Tom Robley stepped around the corner of the house. His eyes flickered to Bowdrie and back. “I’d have beat you here, but I was looking for the girl first.”
“What girl?” Butler demanded.
“Mary Boling. It was she told them about the money. She with all her talk about New Orleans and fancy clothes. She put poor, Jim Moody up to it. She’s partly responsible for both Irwin an Moody being’ dead. Me, I’m mostly responsible.”
“You?” Butler exclaimed. “Now, Tom, you just—“
“Don’t get me wrong. I’d nothin’ to do with stealin’ the money or the killing. It was my mouth. I was so busy tryin’ to convince Mary what an important job I had that I just ran off at the mouth. Because of my loose tongue, two good men are dead.”
Harshman laughed. “You think Mary had a hand in it? You’re a fool, Tom Robley, a double-damned fool. Suppose you had told Mary? What could that m
ean to me?”
Chick Bowdrie stood listening and curious. Watching the scene, every sense alert, quick to hear every word, he was also aware that three saddled horses, packed for the trail, stood at the corral. The big rancher wore a dark blue shirt, two of the front buttons unfastened. His boots were highly polished, and he looked quite the dandy.
Bowdrie smiled, understanding a few things. “You’re pretty sure of yourself, Al, but Sam Butler and me, we trailed you. We know a left-handed man sat against a rock at Pistol Rock Spring and smoked cigarettes. He tossed the matches at the fire with his left hand. “We trailed you from the spring, and it wasn’t even hard. You wrapped your horse’s hooves in burlap sacking so you wouldn’t leave a trail. We have the sacks.”
Harshman shrugged. “There are a lot of sacks around. Can you prove those sacks were mine? Don’t be foolish! Those sacks could have belonged to anybody.”
“I found gray horsehairs that will match your gelding, and there’s blue clay on them, as there is around your well.”
“So? There’s blue clay around half the wells in the county, and as for horsehairs, how many gray horses are there?”
“We’ve got somethin’ else, Al,” Bowdrie said. “Folks told me you were ambitious. That you had brains. Mary spoke mighty highly of you back there at the dance.
“You were smart, all right. You had ideas. You decided to try something new, Al. You had some cottonseed shipped in here so you could try planting it.”
“So? Is that criminal?”
“Not at all. You were away ahead of everybody else around this part of the country. You sent for cottonseed and you got it. Some of it came in that sack you used, Al. I found some of the cottonseed in the sack.”
“Bowdrie!’” Robley shouted. “Look out!” Robley’s hand slashed down for a gun, and a shotgun roared from the window of the house and Tom Robley staggered, firing toward the house. It was one of those breathtaking instants that explode suddenly, and Bowdrie saw Harshman grab for a gun—with his right hand! The hand darted into the gaping shirtfront and the gun blasted, but a split second late. Bowdrie had palmed his six-gun and fired, then took a long step forward and right, firing again as his foot came down.
Al Harshman was on his knees, his face contorted with shock and hatred. Vaguely Bowdrie knew other guns were firing, but this was the man he had to get. Harshman had dropped the derringer hideout gun and was coming up with his other pistol.
Bowdrie held his fire and the gun slipped from Harshman’s fingers. Butler was at the cabin door, gun in hand. Robley was down, covered with blood. Sam Butler turned to Bowdrie, his face gray. “I never killed no woman before,” he muttered. “Dammit, Bowdrie, I—!”
“You did what you had to do. Anyway,” he added practically, “it might have been Tom.”
Robley was dying. Bowdrie knew it when he knelt beside him. “Mary? Wha … happened?”
“Mary’s gone, Tom. She was killed. So is another man in there.”
“Her brother,” Butler said. “We didn’t even know he was around.”
“Mary… it was Al all the time,” Robley was saying. “It wasn’t Jim or me.”
He lay quiet and Bowdrie got slowly to his feet. “Too bad,” he said. “He was a good man.”
“All because she was greedy. She couldn’t be content with the looks she was born with an’ clothes like the other gals had.” Butler swore softly, bitterly.
“Me,” Bowdrie said, “all I want is a good horse under me, the creak of a saddle, and a wind off the prairies in my face.
“An’ maybe, Sam, just like you, maybe I want to make things a little more peaceful for other folks. A man can’t build anything or even make a living when there’s somebody ready to take it from him.”
“Maybe that’s it,” Butler said. “Maybe you just said it. I never could figure why I took this job in the first place.” Butler walked to his horse, and Bowdrie followed. “Ain’t more than six miles over to the Fernindez place. She fixes the best frijoles anyplace around. We’ll just ride over there an’ hire him to haul these bodies into town.”
“All right,” Bowdrie said, “let’s ride over an’ see Pedro.”
“Miguel,” Sam Butler said. “The name is Miguel!”
BOWDRIE PASSES THROUGH
There was no reason to question the authority of the Sharps 50 resting against the doorjamb.
“Hold it right there, mister!” The voice behind the Sharps was young, but it carried a ring of command, and it does not require a grown man to pull a trigger.
Chick Bowdrie had lived this long because he knew where to stop. He stopped now.
“I didn’t know anybody was to home,” he said agreeably. “I was lookin’ for Josh Pettibone.”
“He ain’t here.” The youthful voice was belligerent.
“Might as well rest that rifle, boy. I ain’t hunting’ trouble.”
There was no response from the house, and the gun muzzle did not waver. Chick found the black opening of the muzzle singularly unattractive, but he found himself admiring the resolution of whoever was behind the gun. “Where is Josh?”
“He’s .. . they done took him off.” Chick thought he detected a catch in the boy’s throat.
“Who took him off?”
“The law come an’ fetched him.”
“Now, what would the law want Josh Pettibone for?”
“Claimed he poisoned a horse of Nero Tatum’s,” the boy said. “He done no such thing!”
“Tatum of the Tall T? You’d better put down that rifle, boy, an’ talk to me. I’m no enemy of your pa’s.”
After a moment of hesitation the rifle was lowered to the floor and the boy stepped out. He wore a six-shooter thrust into his waistband. He was towheaded, and wearing a shirt that had obviously belonged to his father. He was probably as much as twelve, and very thin.
Bowdrie studied him, and was not fooled. Young he might be, but this boy was no coward and he was responsible. In Bowdrie’s limited vocabulary, to be responsible was the most important word.
The boy walked slowly, distrustfully, to the gate, but he made no move to open it.
“Your pa poison that horse of Tatum’s?”
“He did not! My pa would never poison no stock of anybody’s!”
“Don’t reckon he would,” Bowdrie agreed. “Tell me about it.”
“Nero Tatum, he hates Pa, and Pa never had no use for Tatum. He’s tried to get Pa off this place two or three times, sayin’ he didn’t want no jailbirds nestin’ that close to him.”
When the boy said “jailbirds” he looked quickly at Bowdrie for his reaction, but Chick seemed not to notice.
“Then Pa got that Hereford bull off of Pete Swager, and that made Tatum madder’n ever. Tatum had sure enough wanted that Swager bull, and offered big money for it. Pete knowed Pa wanted it and he owed Pa a favor or two so he let Pa have it for less money. Pete was leavin’ the country.”
Chick Bowdrie knew about that favor. Pete Swager had gone to San Antonio on business and had come down sick. His wife and little boy were on the ranch alone, and two days after Pete left, they came down with the smallpox too. Josh Pettibone had ridden over, nursed them through their illness, and did the ranch work as well. It was not a small thing, and Pete Swager was not a man to forget.
“Tatum’s black mare up an’ died, an’ he accused Pa of poisonin’ her.”
“What have they got for evidence?” Bowdrie asked.
“They found the mare close to our line fence, an’ she was dyin’ when they found her, frothin’ at the mouth an’ kickin’ something’ awful.
“When she died, he accused Pa, and then Foss Deal, he claimed he seen Pa give poison to the mare.”
“You take it easy, boy. We’ve got to think about this. You got any coffee inside?”
The boy’s face flushed. “No, we ain’t.” Then, as Chick started to swing down, he said, “There’s nothin’ in there to eat, stranger. You better ride on into town.”
Bowdrie
smiled. “All right if I use your fire, son? I’ve got a mite of grub here, and some coffee, and I’m hungry.”
Reluctantly, and with many a glance at Bowdrie, the boy opened the gate. He glanced at the roan. “He’s pretty fast, ain’t he?”
“Like a jackrabbit, only he can keep it up for miles. Never seems to tire. There’s been a few times when he really had to run.
The boy glanced at him quickly. “You on the dodge, mister? Is the law after you, too?”
“No, I’ve found it pays to stay on the right side of the law. A few years back I had a run-in with some pretty tough people, and for a spell it was like being’ on the dodge.
“Nothin’ romantic about being’ an outlaw, son. Just trouble an’ more trouble. You can’t trust anybody, even the outlaws you ride with. You’re always afraid somebody will recognize you, and you don’t have any real friends, for fear they might turn you in or rob you themselves.
“The trouble with being’ an outlaw or any kind of criminal is the company you have to keep.”
As they neared the house. Chick heard a slight stir of movement within, and when he entered, the flimsy curtain hanging over the door opening into another room was still moving slightly.
It was growing dusk, so Chick took the chimney from a coal-oil lamp and lighted the wick, replacing the chimney.
The boy stared at him uneasily, shifting his eyes to the curtain occasionally.
“Tell your sister to come out. I won’t bother her, and she might like to eat too.”
Hesitantly a girl came from behind the curtain. She might have been sixteen, with the same large, wistful eyes the boy had, and the same too-thin face, but she was pretty. Chick smiled at her, then began breaking kindling to build a fire.
Chick glanced at the boy. “Why don’t you put up my horse, son? Take your sister along if you’ve a mind to, and when you come in, you might bring my rifle along.”
While they were gone, he got the fire going, and finding a coffeepot that was spotlessly clean, he put on some coffee. Then he dug into the haversack he had brought in for some bacon, a few potatoes, and some wild onions. By the time they returned, he had a meal going and the room was filled with the comforting smells of coffee and bacon.
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