the Broken Gun (1967)

by L'amour, Louis

  Belle stayed seated beside me, her face a little pale, her eyes unnaturally large.

  Doris had reached the bar. The Mexican in the white coat was there, his face impassive.

  "Brandy or a liqueur?" Colin said.

  "Do you have Calvados?" I asked.

  "We have it," Colin replied, too sharply. "Whatever you want, we've got it."

  With an attempt at a diversion, I commented, "I'd been thinking of an article on the Indian remainspicture-writing, that sort of thing."

  "It's been done," Colin replied irritably.

  "They may have missed something."

  Colin swirled his brandy, then looked up at me, his eyes coldly amused. "If you want to see picturewriting, and if you can ride well enough to stay in a saddle, I'll show you some of the best. We can ride over that way tomorrow." He smiled. "In fact, we'll show you the handwriting on the wall."

  "I'd like that. As for staying in a saddle, I can give it a try." I got to my feet.

  "Now, if you will excuse me, I've had a long day, and after Riley woke me up I didn't get much sleep last night."

  "That's right, city boy," Jimbo taunted. "You'll need all the sleep you can get."

  Doris had turned her head and was looking directly at me. "You say Riley woke you up last night? Now, what Riley would that be?"

  "Sergeant Riley. He was investigating a murder." I kept my face expressionless and my tone casual. "A man named Manuel Alvarez was murdered in the alley near my motel."

  They were all looking at me now. Jimbo was no longer sneering. He looked belligerent, but scared too.

  "Why would they want to question you?" Doris asked.

  "They found a newspaper clipping in his pocket that mentioned my being in town, and he had tried to make an appointment with me. In fact, he made one, but was killed before he could keep it."

  "Then you never talked to him?"

  "No, I knew nothing about him." Suddenly I decided to buy myself a little insurance, slight though it might be. "I'm not sure Riley believed me. He told me to keep in touch, so I left him a note before coming out here."

  I stifled a yawn. "Good night, everybody. It was a wonderful dinner."

  Out on the terrace I looked at the night, inhaling deeply. The sky was alive with stars. Down at the corrals a horse stamped and blew through his nostrils.

  Belle came out and stood beside me. "You're a fool, Dan Sheridan, if you ride into those hills tomorrow. Colin means to kill you."

  "Don't be silly."

  "Make a wrong step on one of those trails and you can fall five hundred feet. There wouldn't even be an investigation."

  "Are you kidding?"

  "You're forgetting that Colin is a big wheel in this state. He contributes to both parties at election time, and he's well liked in important circles. He is also a deputy sheriff, empowered to investigate such accidents."

  "Accidents?"

  "What else? It will be a case of a greenhorn who couldn't handle a horse on a mountain trail. They will say a rabbit jumped, or a rattler scared your horse.

  "After all," she added, "you are an invited guest. There will be no known motive.

  Who would investigate an obvious accident?"

  Who, indeed?

  "Riley... Riley would be curious," I said.

  "tom Riley-and I know him well-is a city officer who investigates city crimes. The chief of detectives is a poker-playing pal of Colin's, to whom Colin loses money occasionally. He has been a guest here himself, has slept in the very room you are sleeping in. Believe me, tom Riley would have to present a very strong case before there would be any investigation of Colin.

  "Besides," she went on, "you're not only beyond the city jurisdiction, you're in another county."

  But there was one thing none of them considered. Such a man as Manuel Alvarez may go through life unnoticed and unimportant, but if he is murdered then suddenly he is the focus of attention. The newspapers, the officials-every cog in the enormous wheel of investigative officialdom goes to work.

  Already the papers had mentioned the deaths of the two brothers, one of them having happened on this ranch. I doubted very much if another death on the same ranch could be quieted down. However, I was naturally reluctant to die to prove my point.

  I would be careful. I would see Lost River, and I would get away. Or so I hoped.

  Chapter 4

  The ridges of that sun-baked land lie high and broken, and there are no easy paths.

  The best trails were made long, long ago, and not by Indians, but by Those Who Went Before ... by the Old Ones.

  Those earlier men made the trails, or followed those made by wild animals, and the Old Ones left their cairns, loose piles of stones left there one by one as an offering to the god of the trail or as a symbolic lightening of the burden. Such casual piles looked as if they had been raked together, like dried leaves, but each stone had been left by someone who had passed that way.

  There is old magic in those stone piles. The Indians who came later realized this, and continued the practice; and occasionally a white man who respected the mountain gods did likewise.

  Such piles of stone are found, too, on the high passes of Tibet, and in Mongolia.

  The idea is ancient; and the men who began it here first passed over these trails ... how long ago?

  Here and there some latecomer had dug into the piles looking for treasure, but there is no treasure to be found there except the treasure of wonder, and for that no man need dig... unless he digs within himself.

  Wild horses, wandering cougars, or bighorn sheep know the piles. The buzzards leave no trails, but they know the rock piles too. High in the blue where the buzzards fly all trails are visible, and they share among themselves an ancient, secret knowledge of them. Where trails are, men may go; and where men go there is often death, and the buzzards have a pact with death.

  The interest of the lone buzzard that flew above the basin that morning was casual, but where such parties rode there was a possibility, and buzzards exist upon possibilities.

  This one hung silent against the silent sky, and waited.

  Floyd Reese was there-going along, he said, to care for the stock. He wore a belt gun and carried a rifle. A picnic lunch had been prepared, for this was to be an outing.

  Reese took the trail first, with Colin Wells directly behind him. The hammer-headed bronc they led out for me looked like trouble, but I made a clumsy attempt to get in the saddle, doing so deliberately, for they were watching. Jimbo Wells turned away with a snort of disgust, but surprisingly, the horse stood still.

  Belle rode just ahead of me, Jimbo close behind.

  Nobody talked. It was clear and cool when we started, with the sun still low over the mountains in the east. Colin, I thought, was probably nursing a hangover.

  The trail we took led immediately into rough country, and I rode with care, studying my mount, and wondering what to expect from him. On every ranch there is at least one bad horse, and often several with peculiar quirks all their own. It has been a standard joke to provide a bad horse for a tenderfoot visitor, and the horse I rode certainly looked unprepossessing. I had expected a bucker, but he had seemed most docile. Nevertheless, there had to be a catch somewhere.

  Obviously, the easiest way to kill me, if that was what they really wanted, was to get it done by a bad horse. In that case nothing could ever be proved, and the most of which they could be accused would be bad Judgment in giving such a horse to a stranger.

  The bronc walked along easily enough, although once, when skirting a wash where the bank was steep, he shied a little from the edge, and that set me thinking. Suppose the horse hated heights? And suppose we rode out upon one of those eyebrow, cliff-hanging trails?

  The trail, following the contour of the land, wound steeply upward, reaching toward the top of the mesa. The bronc I was riding had so far shown no real itch for trouble, but I was a skeptic, and I kept remembering that shying for even a small drop-off.

  I was bot
hered, too, by the fact that Jimbo Wells was close behind me. Instinct warned me that if anyone was to do the rough stuff it would not be Colin. It would be Jimbo or Reese. The latter would not hesitate to do what he was told, and he would do it coldly and efficiently. Jimbo would do it out of pure delight... and it was obvious enough that he did not like me.

  Belle's horse slowed, and she fell back beside me. The trail was narrow, but there was room for horses to double up. Doris, in fact, had pulled ahead to join Colin.

  "Be careful," Belle warned softly. "Be very careful."

  "How about you?"

  "What do you mean?"

  "Well, if something happens to me, you may be a witness. And as you say, you're not really a member of the family."

  She was startled, and for a moment she made no response. "I don't think they would harm me," she said finally, but without any real assurance.

  "Why do they want your place?" I asked her.

  She shrugged. "I think they would like to own everything in the area. They have tried off and on for several years to buy it. They even tried to buy my sister's share."

  "You owned it together?"

  "Yes."

  "What happened when she was killed? I mean to her share of it?"

  "It reverted to me. That was the way Grandad's will was written. If she had had children they would have inherited, but she had none."

  We rode on then in silence. An idea had occurred to me that I hesitated to suggest, but finally I did. At least, I asked a question that was tantamount to a suggestion.

  "Did they know that? I mean, did the Wells family know about the will?"

  "I didn't even realize it myself until they were settling her estate. And I am sure she herself didn't know."

  Something had been disturbing me as we rode along, as something sometimes will that edges into the outer hinge of one's consciousness. Suddenly it came clearly to my attention.

  There were horse tracks, fresh ones, that must have been made only a short time before we had come along. Here and there the tracks of the horses ahead of me in our group had wiped them out, but the earlier rider had kept his horse off the trail or on its very edge most of the time. He had ridden carefully, and several times he had stopped to look back. I could see the tracks where the horse had half turned, and there would be several tracks, as of an impatient horse dancing about, eager to be going on.

  "Is this trail used often?" I asked.

  "Almost never, I think. Unless somebody is riding to the Rincon or over into the New Mountains, they take the jeep trail that leads to my place on Cougar."

  But I was almost sure that rider had ridden along the trail ahead of us earlier that morning. He had ridden that trail since dewfall, that much I knew.

  Jimbo rode up beside us. "You two seem to be hittin' it off." He looked at me. "Won't do you no good," he said. "She's a cold babe. Won't do you no good at all."

  I ignored the remark. "Are you working cattle up this way?" I asked.

  "Nothin' but strays over here. We drift our stock over toward Shirt-tail this time of year. Grass is better over there. And up along the Verde bottoms."

  So it was unlikely anybody from the ranch had come this way, unless it was somebody whose chief concern was to prepare for our arrival. I could not forget that Pio Alvarez was somewhere about, and if there was one thing I was sure about it was the mind of Pio Alvarez.

  At least, I knew it in terms of violence, and I knew he was as cunning as a wild animal, and far more dangerous. Two of his brothers had been killed, at least one of them by a Strawberry rider. Unless I had forgotten all I had learned, Pio would be somewhere on Strawberry at this instant.

  Benton Seward had left early to drive back to his own ranch, the Bar-Bell... or so he had said.

  Where was Mark Wilson?

  Suddenly I broke into a cold sweat. Slowly but surely, fear had been coming upon me. No matter what happened, I could expect no help. I was in this alone.

  This ranch and the land for miles in any direction belonged to Colin and Jimbo Wells.

  This was their world. The men employed on the ranch were their men. I was an interloper, and would be considered so.

  What they did not realize, I thought, was that my death would stir up more trouble than they could hope to quiet. I had too many connections, too many people knew of my ranch background, and any story of my accidental death would immediately arouse interest and bring demands for an investigation. This was something that I felt Colin had not grasped, for he was too rilled with a sense of his own security, with confidence in his invulnerability.

  But how much good was that going to do me?

  Riding carefully, my eyes began to search out an escape route. Somehow or other I had to get away from them, and I must ride warily while thinking about it. If this horse I rode was dangerous on the high mountain paths, I must be ready to jump from the saddle at any time. So I rode with only my toes in the stirrups, every muscle alert for trouble.

  We came down off the mesa by an easy trail, dropping into a small valley perhaps a mile in length and half that wide. I remembered from my study of aerial photos that there was a trail going out of this valley to the northwest, a trail that led back over the mountains toward Copper Creek.

  That was a way out, and for a moment I fought the temptation to wheel my horse and take it on the run. I had never run from anything yet, but this time I'd let myself get boxed in, and I didn't like the feeling.

  What about Belle? Would they dare attempt a move against her while I was free and able to talk?

  Suddenly I felt like a fool. What was I getting in such a stew about? If my room had not been bugged, Colin certainly had showed up at a most inopportune time for me. They weren't people whom I could like, but what had actually happened? True, I had been warned by two people, but on what basis?

  If I escaped at this moment, what could I report to a sheriff? Nothing that would stand up in court, or to which any officer was likely to listen. Yet all my reasoning did not do away with that body in the alley, the body of a man who had planned to meet me.

  Was he killed to keep him from seeing me? And if so, why? What had he planned to say to me?

  A thought occurred to me. Suppose that Pete Alvarez had known something that threatened the Wells family? He might have taunted them with it, letting them know for the first time that someone else knew about it.

  Suppose that Manuel, with that same knowledge, planned to revenge his brother's death by bringing that knowledge to me, of whom he knew through his brother Pio?

  Or was the danger to me because of my reference to the Toomey brothers during that TV interview?

  Floyd Reese drew up sharply. "Something moved up there!" He spoke to Colin, but we all heard him, the small column having telescoped at the sudden halt.

  "Coyote, probably... or a rabbit," said Colin.

  "It was a man."

  There was a low-voiced argument of which I heard one phrase only: "... couldn't be."

  My horse was restless at our halting. He shifted nervously, but I made only a slight attempt to curb him, for if he should suddenly start to run I wanted it to seem accidental. In that way I might get a good start before anyone realized what I had in mind.

  Then Floyd Reese led off again, only now he carried his rifle free of its scabbard.

  The trail grew narrower. I rode half turned in the saddle, trying to watch both Reese and Jimbo. The latter saw my attitude and mistook it for fear. "Scared, city boy?

  Scared you'll fall? Hell, you wait until you see what's up ahead!"

  I'd had a bellyful of Jimbo, so I gave it to him. "Hell," I said, "these mountains wouldn't make a patch on the San Juans of Colorado ... or the Bighorns in Wyoming."

  He started to speak, but I had the ball and kept it. "Up in Wyoming where I punched cows as a kid this country would pass for flat land."

  He simply gawked at me-there was no other word for it. "You punched cows?"

  "I was punching cattle when you wore p
ajamas with feet in them."

  Belle was smiling, and I began to feel better. I'd had about enough of Junior.

  The riders had stopped again, and were looking at something among the grass and rocks just off the trail, on a little bank, half facing toward us. Jimbo swung out and cantered up, anxious to talk to Colin, I thought, and I followed close so as not to give him a chance.

  When I got there they were looking at an arrow made of stones. The earth clinging to some of the stones was still slightly damp-they had been plucked from their beds only a little while before.

  Underneath the arrow was a sign with a word and a number: Fox 38.

  "What the devil does that mean?" Colin demanded.

  Nobody needed to tell me what it meant, but there was no need for me to tell them.

  Reese was studying it, and finally he said, "You know what that looks like, Mr. Wells?

  It looks like one of those army signs, pointing out a company or battalion area."

  "There never was any army up here," Colin protested, "and that's a fresh sign."

  I knew the sign was intended for me, and for me alone. Both Pio and I had been with Fox Company- F Company, if you will-of the 38th. It was a tough, fighting outfit that made a name for itself, and we had done some of that fighting before being moved as replacements to another company. Pio Alvarez knew I would read that sign for what it was; and where that arrow was he might be. Either that, or he was showing me this was my chance to get out, to get clear before it was too late.

  It wasn't in me to let them rest easy. "If Reese is right, Colin," I said cheerfully, "you may be in trouble. If that stands for Fox Company of the 38th Infantry there's somebody around who was a first-class fighting man. They did a beautiful job in Korea."

  They simply looked at me, not knowing what to make of it, but it gave Jimbo the chance he wanted. "This guy claims he used to punch cows!" he said. "I mean this writer here."

  They didn't believe it. Their minds had formed a picture, and what Jimbo told them didn't fit into the frame they had accepted for me. Nor did it interest them very much, for they were wholly concerned with the fact that somebody unknown to them was obviously in the vicinity, and that interfered with their plans.