by Lauran Paine
“It’s nothing, ma’am. Now I reckon we’d better be hiking on back. He’ll miss you and get to worrying. It’s getting late.”
She started strolling back with him, her head bowed, her thoughts evidently running on ahead of them. Finally she said: “Deputy, did you also suggest that Sam Logan move on?”
He was mildly surprised at that and said: “No, not exactly. It worked out about the same way with Logan. He told me. I didn’t have to tell him.”
She said no more until they were passing the jailhouse and a pair of horsemen loped past out in the roadway, southward bound, their free and easy banter musical in the otherwise gloomy hush. “I suppose you’ve figured out that Mister Logan has his load to carry, too, Deputy.”
He looked closely at her. “Like I said down yonder, we all have some scars.”
“Yes, but a man like you, Mister Whittaker, doesn’t really know what scars people can acquire in this life.”
He stopped and said: “Miss Abigail, my paw was a drunk and disappeared. My mother got carried off in an epidemic on the Kansas plains. I’ve been cutting my own trail since I was twelve. It’s been a long haul from there to here.”
She seemed a trifle confused by his sudden intensity. Before, he’d sounded quietly confident and quite unemotional. “I’m sorry,” she whispered without raising her face. “I was carried away, Mister Whittaker.” She swept his face with an upward tilt of her eyes and made an ironic little smile with her heavy mouth. “It was self-pity, I guess. I’m sorry. I don’t really blame you. Not really. And we’ll go on like my father said.”
“I wish you didn’t have to!” he exclaimed in the same disturbed, sharply intense tone of voice. “What I meant back there about being selfishly sorry … I meant you.” He paused, breathed deeply, collected his thoughts, and said: “I meant, if you weren’t leaving, I’d feel a whole lot better.”
Now her expression turned smooth and impassive toward him. For a fraction of a second something dark and turgid stirred in the depths of her eyes, then it was gone and she said softly—“Good night, Mister Whittaker.”—turned and walked slowly away from him.
He stood without moving for a long time even after she was no longer visible, then he said a terse swear word at himself. But at once his candid defenses rallied, he’d meant what he’d revealed to her. If he’d handled the matter clumsily, that was his fault, but otherwise he’d been honest.
Still, the whole thing was confused and confusing. He stepped down off the plank walk and started shuffling across through roadway dust toward the opposite side of the road on his way home.
A man could be mature and seasoned, even hardened, in all the little intricacies of everyday existence—everyday survival—and still, at thirty years of age, feel like the sand was being sucked from underneath him when he came against a woman who drew him like a magnet.
He could be hard as iron and as tough as whang leather. He could read men like a book and weather patterns as easily as his own palm. He could tell a horse’s disposition from one good look into the critter’s eye, and still be as helpless as a gummer cub bear in something like this other thing. There was a light on at the boarding house. He scarcely saw it as he turned in at the gate and clumped on up the boardwalk toward the porch. There was a man sitting, slouched and easy, on the porch swing, too, but until Perc was reaching for the first step with an extended foot, he didn’t see him, either.
It was Doc Farraday smoking a long cheroot and pensively studying the clear-purple heavens. He stirred, the swing squeaked, and Perc stopped stonestill for as long as it took to run a searching look on ahead.
“Been waiting for you,” said the medical man, removing his cheroot. “It’s a pleasant night and this is a quiet spot. You know, Deputy, a man’s greatest pleasures come from things that don’t cost him a dime. Look at that sky.”
Perc moved on up, gazed at Farraday’s thin, ascetic profile, read the expression correctly, and reached for a chair.
“And maybe his greatest disappointments come from the same things, Doc,” he muttered. “What’s on your mind?”
Farraday straightened up, drew in his thin, long legs and removed his cigar. His eyes, grave and hooded behind the half droop of lids, shone with a shrewd, hard glitter. “In my line of work, Deputy, after you’ve been at it a number of years, you develop a sixth sense about people. This evening a man came to me with a suppurating bullet wound in his right arm. Now my sixth sense told me he was not the kind of man I’d enjoy meeting on a dark night if I had a money belt full of greenbacks on me.”
“Stranger?”
Farraday nodded. “And I’d say from the looks of him and his exhausted condition, he’d been traveling a long time.”
“What was his name, where’d he say he came from?”
“My friend, his kind say nothing. He took off his coat and hat and tossed down a ten-dollar bill, ripped off a filthy bandage, and glared at me. Once, when I was cleaning the wound, he swore. That was the total extent of our conversation.” Doc Farraday leaned back and gazed sardonically over at Perc. “I can tell you one thing, I’ve seen hundreds of wounds just like that one in my time. That man was moving away from whoever shot him at the time he stopped that bullet.”
Perc waited but Farraday was finished. He took a long pull off his cheroot and let the smoke trickle up past his deep-set, hooded eyes.
“Is he still in town?” Perc inquired, and got a shrug for an answer.
“I saw him to the door. There were two horses at my rack out front and another man was out there, sitting on one of them.” Farraday paused, gazed at the end of his stogie, and said thoughtfully: “I’d hazard a guess they didn’t go far. The man I worked on was gray around the mouth from sheer exhaustion. Even if he’d wanted to, he couldn’t have ridden another ten miles without collapsing. And one last thing, Deputy, that bullet wound was acquired at least a week back. Possibly two weeks back.”
“How bad was it?”
“Well, there was no blood poisoning, although I don’t know why. The man had wrapped a filthy handkerchief around it. But I’d say he’ll be at least two months recovering whereas, if he’d stopped somewhere for competent treatment, it wouldn’t have troubled him for perhaps three weeks or a month.”
Farraday stood up. Perc got up with him. That uneasy feeling was becoming stronger in Perc again. When Farraday said —“Good night.”—and walked down off the porch, Perc answered mechanically without actually being aware of answering at all.
Chapter Eight
In a town no larger than Ballester that had very little transient trade it would have been impossible for a pair of strangers such as Doc Farraday had described to go unnoticed. Particularly if one of them was ill from a festering arm wound. But Perc found no one aside from Farraday who’d seen any such men. He even made a personal inspection of Fuller’s barn, seeking ridden-down horses, and the stores around town for some sign of strangers buying supplies.
He had no idea who the illusive strangers were but he was curious about the one who had been shot from behind. Men were either ambushed from behind, or else they were fleeing from someone when they were winged like that. His private guess was that these two had been fleeing, had probably committed some lawless act somewhere south of Ballester, and one of them had stopped lead in the course of a wild flight.
He rode up the stage road out of town, looking for tracks that might branch off somewhere, perhaps leading toward one of the many arroyos over the range. He found plenty of such tracks, but they all turned out to belong to range riders who were heading for Snowshoe or Rainbow range. He knew most of the places where an injured man could hide out for a while. He scouted water holes and grassy glades and turned up nothing, not even any signs where two riders had paused a while to rest their jaded mounts.
He spent the entire day like that, rode back into town late in the evening, tired, hungry, and thirsty, lef
t his horse with Ab, and went across to the café. Afterward he strolled on up and had a little conversation with Everett Champion. But the only strangers Ev remembered were those two floaters who had drifted through a day earlier and who had recognized Sam Logan.
Then Perc made a discovery. After almost two months of punctually perching either in front of Fuller’s barn or up at Champion’s saloon, Sam Logan was gone. There was no trace of Logan at all. Fuller didn’t even know when Sam had removed his horse from the public corral.
Perc went over among the shacks beyond town, located the one he’d thought Logan had been sleeping in, found where someone had flung down his bedroll, where he’d smoked and scuffed the earthen floor removing his boots, but found nothing else, no boots, no bedroll, no Sam Logan.
He went back to his office at the jailhouse, shuffled through the mail that had come since his departure from town earlier, found nothing interesting, remembered that he’d meant to write the sheriff, and shrugged that off as now being unimportant. He then went along to Doc Farraday’s place and asked the medical practitioner to accompany him back to his office.
There, he put Farraday down at his desk, set a pile of dusty old Wanted posters in front of him, and said: “Find him, Doc. If he’s not in there, I’m stumped. I’ll be over talking to Ab Fuller, but I’ll be back before you get through that stack.”
Farraday cocked an eyebrow at the pile, then went to work. Perc went up the road as far as the livery barn and found Ab leaning unconcernedly in his doorway shade, mopping his neck and face. “Summer’s finally here,” grumbled Fuller. “Even the dog-goned sun doesn’t have wits enough to go down until nine o’clock.”
“Ab, there were a couple of strangers in town last night. I went through your barn early this morning looking for tucked-up, strange horses. You weren’t around. I didn’t find anything, but I thought you might have seen a couple of men like that during the day.”
Fuller furrowed his brow in thought and was totally quiet for a while, then he ruefully shook his head. “I’m sure sorry,” he muttered. “Actually, though, it’s been so blessed hot today I’ve been sort of keeping back in the shade. There could’ve been such a pair … only I sure never saw ’em.” Fuller’s hangdog expression brightened. “Have you seen Ev? Maybe he saw these fellers you’re looking for if you left early this morning.”
“Yeah,” Perc said wearily. “I’ll talk to him later.” He turned and went slowly back through the evening heat to his jailhouse. Just before he reached the building, a lounging man straightened up off the front of another building and stepped forth with a slow, amiable smile. The man was unknown to Perc; he was clearly a range rider from his appearance and his dress.
“’Evenin’,” he said in a drawling voice. “I been sort of keepin’ an eye peeled for you, Deputy. I wanted to ask you a question. Me ’n’ a friend of mine come into town yesterday and stopped off for a cool beer at the saloon up yonder. We seen a fellow sittin’ up there with a pearl-handled gun. His name’s Sam Logan. What I wanted to know … did you know who he was?”
Perc placed this stranger right away from his statement. He’d be one of the two men who’d recognized Logan the day before and who’d warned Everett Champion about Logan.
Eyeing this man closely and remembering also what Logan had said about this man and his pardner, Perc said: “Well, I can’t rightly say I know too much about Logan. He’s had two gunfights in Ballester.”
“Yeah,” grunted the lanky, drawling man making a cruel smirk. “An’ I’ll bet you a new hat you buried both them boys, too.”
“We did. What about Sam Logan?”
“Well, Deputy, I’m fixin’ to tell you. Sam’s a hired gun. He’s been operatin’ down south, sometimes in Arizona, sometimes over in New Mexico.”
“Is he wanted?”
The cowboy’s smirk faded and was replaced with a shadowy look of doubt. “I can’t rightly say whether he is or not, Deputy. But he was. A few years back there was a thousand dollars on his hide.”
“How did you and your pardner happen to recognize him yesterday?” Perc asked, watching the drawling range rider closely.
“Oh, we used to work the same range he did. That was a year or so back. We’d know him all right. Everybody down around Wolf Hole’d recognize Sam Logan.”
Perc stiffened. Wolf Hole. That was where John Reed was from; he’d said so himself. It dawned very gradually on Perc that it was no coincidence—Logan riding in one week and John Reed arriving the next week. He lifted his left arm and pointed with it toward the onward jailhouse. “March, mister,” he said.
The cowboy looked over his shoulder, saw the jailhouse door, and looked back again with a shake of his head. “Not me, Deputy,” he drawled. “I got a phobia about bein’ inside jailhouses.”
“March anyway,” stated Perc, his right fingers closing around the .45 on his hip. “Maybe this one’ll cure your phobia.”
The cowboy smiled very softly. “Tried to do you a good turn,” he drawled, not budging an inch. “Sure an ungrateful little town you got here.” The man thrust his jaw out. “Look behind you, Deputy.”
Perc felt like swearing. He knew what was behind him in the dusty night before he even turned. There were two of them, Ev had told him that, so had Sam Logan. So, in fact, had the sneering man in front of him. He sighed and turned. The other one was standing blanketed in gloom in the recessed doorway of the saddle shop. He had a naked six-gun low in his right hand, pointing straight at Perc’s back.
“No hard feelings, Deputy,” the drawling man said as Perc faced forward again. “All we was tryin’ to do was place you in a position to maybe pick up a little extra spendin’ money for Sam Logan. Now don’t go ’n’ do nothin’ foolish when I walk off, Deputy. We got nothin’ ag’inst you at all. Just tried to do you a neighborly favor is all.”
Perc did not do anything foolish. He didn’t do anything at all except turn and take a long look at the other one standing back there out of sight of the roadway covering Perc while his friend strolled off. Neither of them had sore right arms. The one he’d faced had been wearing only an old, faded blue butternut shirt; there had been no bandage under it. The one in the doorway was holding his .45 in his right hand. There was nothing wrong with that one, either.
Those two, then, were obviously not Doc Farraday’s callers of the evening before. He thought of something else, too, as the second one stepped forth from his recessed doorway and started tiptoeing backward into the darker night. Ev had said they were floaters, drifters passing through on their way north. Well, obviously they hadn’t floated or drifted. Obviously they were hanging around the Ballester country.
He turned and went on down to the jailhouse, entered, and looked over where Doc Farraday was standing by the stove, lighting a stogie. Farraday waved his hand over toward the desk.
“There’s the one I worked on,” he said, puffing. “The other one’s probably also in that stack, but as I told you, he was out by my tie rack and it was too dark for me to get a look at him.”
Perc stepped over, picked up the poster, and considered the tough, iron-eyed man staring back at him from the flyer. “Charley Ringo,” he read aloud. “Wanted in Arizona … five hundred reward. Wanted in Texas … five hundred dollars. Wanted in Kansas … five hundred dollars.”
“He’s valuable,” murmured Farraday, strolling over to peer across Perc’s shoulder at the black-eyed, swarthy, thin face looking back at them. “Murder, mail robbery, jail break. Nice fellow.”
Perc put the poster aside, sat down at his desk, and began going through the posters. Farraday watched a moment, then said: “What’re you doing? I told you, the other one …”
“There is someone else I’m looking for,” said Perc, flicking the posters over as he glanced at them. “I just met this one outside the jailhouse a few minutes ago. He had a pardner with him, too. Seems nowadays they just don’t travel alo
ne any more.”
Farraday watched a moment, then headed for the door. “If you don’t need me any further, I’ll be getting along.”
“I’m obliged,” muttered Perc, turning the posters over one at a time. “Thanks ever so much, Doc.”
Farraday departed.
Perc went completely through the stack without finding the cowboy he’d met a few moments earlier outside on the dark plank walk. He leaned back, felt around for his tobacco sack, and bent his head as he scowlingly worked up a smoke. It didn’t make a whole lot of sense, whatever was happening in Ballester. There had to be some connecting link, had to be some reason or explanation, but it quite eluded him.
The disappearance of Sam Logan worried him the most. Patently those two informers, whoever they were and whatever their purpose was in hanging around town after indicating they were just passing through, hadn’t known Sam had left town when they’d stopped Perc outside. And yet Perc was sure that Logan had pulled out long before, probably about the same time Perc had also left town early in the morning.
But why? Of course Sam had said he was going to leave, but he’d indicated he wasn’t going to do it for several days yet. And the wounded man? He also had to be somewhere around, according to Doc Farraday who was an undeniable authority on gunshot wounds, but where?
The door opened and Everett Champion walked in, his expression troubled. “I’ve been looking around for you all day,” he grumbled, closing the door and stepping away from it. “You remember those two drifters who came in and told me about Logan?”
“Yeah, I remember,” said Perc, taking a big drag off his cigarette. “Only they weren’t drifters. They’re still around town somewhere.”
Champion’s face smoothed out. “Oh, you talked to ’em.”
“Well, sort of, Ev. A kind of one-sided conversation. What about them?”
“They came into my place this afternoon and hung around until about an hour ago.”
“Until they saw me ride back into town,” mused Perc. “What’d they have to say this time?”
