The pose was stiff but Carmody had to agree. The face was arrogant, the eyes defiant and sort of wild. He handed back the picture without saying anything.
“She ran away with Frank Garrison,” Ledbetter explained. He didn’t have to explain who Frank Garrison was. “Mr. Yates says she was kidnapped. That isn’t what the facts show now, but nobody argues with Mr. Yates, especially when it comes to his daughter. They don’t get on, never have. I guess you might say she hates the old man.”
“How much did the old man pay?” Carmody asked.
Ledbetter looked at him sharply. “How do you know he paid anything?”
“These things have happened before,” Carmody said.
The fat man gave a wheezing laugh that sounded like a steam boiler at low-pressure. “You’re right,” he said. “About two weeks after the girl ran off with Garrison the old man got a ransom note asking for fifty thousand dollars. If he didn’t he’d get the girl’s head back in a basket, and so forth.”
“You think Garrison and the girl wrote the note together?”
“That’s what I think,” Ledbetter said. “Mr. Yates sent his mine superintendent with the money. Mr. Yates didn’t get his daughter back. He didn’t get the mine superintendent, either. Garrison took the money, then killed him.”
“That sounds like Frank,” Carmody remarked. “He always liked things neat.”
Ledbetter got up and took off his coat. The fancy vest underneath was soaked through with sweat. Carmody walked over to the window and opened it. The heat came in, bringing dust with it. The bed creaked as the fat man sat down again.
“That made Mr. Yates real mad,” Ledbetter said, shaking his head as if he couldn’t believe any man could be crazy enough to cross Marcus Yates. “Inside of a week there was more law looking for him than for the Youngers and the James boys put together. Mr. Yates even got the Army out beating the bushes. Looks like they turned over every rock in south Colorado and didn’t come up with a thing. No girl, no Garrison. I tell you, Carmody, old man Yates is fit to go crazy.”
There was another bottle of tequila in the dresser drawer. Carmody asked the fat man if he wanted any. Ledbetter shook his head. Carmody drank and put the cork back in the bottle. He reminded himself again to ask that girl for a scoop of salt.
“What about Pinkerton men?” he asked Ledbetter. Years on the dodge had given Carmody a healthy regard for the Chicago-based private detective agency. It seemed to him that getting back missing daughters was more a job for the Pinkertons than anybody else. They had men and money and branch offices all over the country.
Ledbetter said, “Mr. Yates has the whole agency out looking for his daughter. The Denver office sent three men down to Las Animas County, the last place Garrison was seen. Three weeks later they were found dead in a juniper patch near a town called Segundo. It could have been Garrison that killed them. Nobody knows for sure.”
Carmody had a question. “Did any of them have their earlobes shot away?”
The fat man looked startled, then suspicious. “One of them did,” he said slowly.
Carmody didn’t bother to explain and Ledbetter knew better than to ask him, at least before they made a deal. One of the things Carmody didn’t like about Frank Garrison was the way he liked to play with men before he killed them. That didn’t mean he was ready to give Ledbetter any kind of information, not yet anyway.
“All right, Ledbetter,” he said. “What’s the deal?” Ledbetter carried the smell of money around with him wherever he went. The whole thing smelled of money. Carmody thought of the seventy-five dollars in his pocket. It would be a downright pleasure, he thought, if he could pool his seventy-five dollars with Marcus Yates’ millions.
Ledbetter sweated harder when the money talk started. He took off his bowler hat and ran his finger around the sweatband. “You find the girl, you get five thousand dollars,” he said. “That’s just for finding the girl and bringing her back. Mr. Yates would like to see Frank Garrison dead, but he’s ready to settle for his daughter. If you kill Garrison, you keep all the reward money.”
“You’re goddamned right I do,” Carmody told him. “Just let me get one thing straight. Old man Yates wants his daughter back, like it or not. Suppose she doesn’t want to go?”
Ledbetter got impatient. “Come on, Carmody, you know the girl has no say in this. Mr. Yates wants her back. That’s what counts. Tie her, gag her—I don’t care what you do with her. Just get her back.”
“You think I can do this job because me and Frank rode together up in New Mexico,” Carmody said. He grinned at the moist fat man. “What you’re asking, Ledbetter, is for me to double-cross an old friend for a stinking five thousand dollars. Steal away his woman and maybe kill him for the reward money.”
Ledbetter’s smile was as crooked as Carmody’s. “Terrible the things we do for money, ain’t it. Besides, I’d say you probably done worse for less in your time.”
“You’ll have to try harder,” Carmody advised him. “You’ll have to try twice as hard. And don’t paw it over too long or I’m likely to lose interest. You just don’t know how hard it’s going to be for me to leave Salida. Nice town, fine climate, friendly folks.”
“Ten thousand is as high as I can go,” Ledbetter said. “Ten is the limit. You’d be smart to take it, Carmody.”
Carmody knew a threat even when it was just a hint. “Why would I be smart, Ledbetter?”
The fat man looked ready to run, but he kept talking. “What you said about staying here in Salida won’t work, Carmody. This wasn’t my idea, but Don Emiliano will turn you out on my say-so. I’d be talking for Mr. Yates, you understand?”
Few people still alive talked to Carmody that way. He asked the fat man in a quiet voice, “How’d you like to have the wind let out of you, sowbelly? I’m not mad yet—just asking.”
Ledbetter’s eyes darted to the Bowie knife hanging from Carmody’s belt. He knew how handy Carmody was with the pig-sticker. Without thinking about it, he patted his huge belly, making sure it was still where it was supposed to be.
“I told you this wasn’t my idea,” he complained.
“I think it was.”
“I tell you no, Carmody. Sure it was me mentioned you to Mr. Yates, but it was him that figured out this business with Don Emiliano. Him and the Arizona Governor. If you don’t take the job, Don Emiliano is warned to turn you out. If he doesn’t the Arizona Governor promises to clean out this town for good.”
“The Mexicans wouldn’t like that,” Carmody said, “seeing as how Salida is in Mexico.”
He was just testing the fat man. He knew the Mexicans didn’t like a lot of things the gringos did, but they had to put up with it.
“They’ll burn this place to the ground,” Ledbetter said. Carmody believed him. Marcus Yates could do just about anything he pleased, except maybe get his daughter to come back. “They’ll be goats grazing in the street of this town ...”
Carmody grinned at Ledbetter. “That don’t seem like such an awful threat,” he said. “We got goats in the street now. Now if you were to say a herd of dirty, stinking fat men.”
“Don’t worry about my fat, Carmody. Someday I’ll be back in Philadelphia eating oysters like Diamond Jim Brady.”
“You’ll never make it.”
Ledbetter asked, “Yes or no?”
“Oh, all right,” Carmody said. “Seeing as how we’re such good friends. Of course, there could be expenses you haven’t figured on.”
“No,” Ledbetter said firmly. He said it so firmly his chins shook.
“Then how much do I get as a retainer, as the lawyer fellers say?” Carmody asked.
“Five hundred.”
Carmody didn’t say anything. He looked at the back of his big, scarred hands. When he got tired of looking at the back of his hands he turned them over and looked at the palms. It took about thirty seconds to do all that.
“A thousand,” Ledbetter said.
Carmody drank from the bottle and pas
sed it to Ledbetter without being asked. “You say the last place old Frank was seen was Las Animas County?”
The fat man nodded his head.
Chapter Three
The old coyote, scarred and lonesome, watched Carmody ride across the lower mountain meadow rippling with mariposa lilies. The sun was bright in the blue sky; in the foothills of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains there was still some cold left from winter; up beyond the timberline there was snow on the peaks.
A rock wren fluttered into the air, mildly alarmed by horse and rider. With ancient cunning, the coyote crouched low as Carmody’s horse went slowly through the wind-stirred meadow grass.
Carmody didn’t see the coyote. The horse whinnied and Carmody’s .44 came out easy, not in a fast draw, just ready. Gun-wise and man-wary, the old coyote saw the movement of Carmody’s hand, and disappeared into a tangle of dwarf juniper. Carmody caught a sideways look at the long grey shape and put his gun away.
He was thirty miles west of Segundo, Colorado, twenty-five miles from where the Pinkerton agents had been killed. It was something more than three weeks since his talk with the fat man in Salida, and he was heading west into the mountains, skirting along the lower slopes of the Sangre de Cristos, riding easy.
Three weeks had taken him back into Colorado, first into Arizona, then northeast along the New Mexico line. After the fierce heat of the desert the mountain air felt good and cold at first, but then as he climbed higher up from the valley floor he began to miss the blood-warming sun of the baked flatlands. That was how it was if you lived in the desert for too long. A man’s blood got used to the furnace heat and needed it even while the man himself cursed it.
Reining in his mount beside a pool of cold, still water on the far side of the meadow, he unfolded a sheepskin coat and put it on. While he was doing it, the fool animal tried to nibble at the flowers on a monkshood plant. Carmody decided he might as well eat something by the pool as anywhere else.
He got down and tied the horse to a pole pine. It was just like a fool horse to try and eat monkshood and go loco in the middle of the mountains. A fish jumped in the pool. It made a cold, plopping sound in the mountain silence. Carmody thought of a baked fish lunch with some interest until he decided the fish in the pool would most likely be squawfish, not firm-fleshed rainbow trout. The thought of fish baking on hot coals made his belly rumble, but even if he had time to waste catching squawfish, the damn things were more bones than anything else.
Carmody wished there was some way for a man to tote some cooking gear without having to bring along an extra animal. It was a thought that had come to him many times on the trail. He unwrapped a chunk of salt pork from an oilcloth cover and sliced off a piece with the Bowie knife and laid it on a flat stone. After the small fire of crackling poplar sticks burned down, he raked the coals together with a stick and laid the flat stone in on top of them. The smell of spitting pork mixed with burning poplar was a good smell. It wasn’t as good as plump rainbows frying in butter in an iron skillet. Nothing was better than that.
While the pork was cooking he dug out a bottle of tequila and a tin cup. Since he still didn’t have the goddamned salt he’d been meaning to ask about, he might as well drink his tequila with good, cold mountain water. One good thing you could say about the Colorado high country—you could drink the water and like it.
He walked down to the edge of the pool and stooped to dip the cup. He straightened up and a bullet blatted the cup out of his hand. The smashed cup flew out over the water and made a splash as it came down. Carmody was flat on his face in the shore muck by the time the cup hit the surface of the pool, before the rifle fired again. This time the bushwhacker did better; the bullet spat mud into Carmody’s face. Carmody yelled and rolled into the tall reeds growing along the edge of the pool.
Smelling the black mud, he heard the rifleman let off two more shots. There was an alder thicket on the other side of the pool. That was where the shooter had to be. It was quiet after that and a fish jumped in the pool. Carmody stayed still. He didn’t draw his gun until he was hidden by the reeds, and after that he didn’t stir at all. He listened to the fish jumping in the pool. He hoped the ambusher wouldn’t take a notion to kill his horse.
The rifle cracked again—one shot! That was supposed to make him jump if the waiting had nerved him up. The water seeped up through the mud, wetting his clothes. There was another wait of maybe a minute, then he heard boots squelching in the shore mud on the far side of the pool. He figured how far it was from where he was to the alder thicket on the other side of the pool, and he counted the squelching sounds in the mud. There might be two of them, maybe more. Only one man was coming after him through the shore mud; there could be others hiding in the thicket, rifles ready for the first move he made.
Carmody wanted to take the bushwhacker alive. He didn’t know if he could do it; it could make the job a lot easier if the bushwhacker was one of Frank Garrison’s men. It seemed likely that he was, but he couldn’t be sure of anything.
Carmody raised his head through the waving reeds and saw a thick-waisted man in a red shirt bringing a rifle up to kill him. The two shots sounded together. To the bushwhacker, Carmody was just a long outline in the reeds. He missed, and before he could shoot again Carmody blew away his left elbow and put a bullet in his right shoulder. The bushwhacker screamed and lurched and toppled into the pool.
The bushwhacker was face down in the shallow water, his booted feet kicking in the mud. Carmody stood up and let him kick a while before he went after him. There was no shooting from the alder thicket. Carmody hoped there wouldn’t be. When there wasn’t, he waded into the pool and dragged the bushwhacker out by the back of his belt.
The bushwhacker was on the far side of fifty, ham-faced and jowly, with a droopy moustache. Heavy too; Carmody had to pull hard to get him out of the muck. Old or not, bushwhacker or not, he still had some fight left—not much but some. “Quit it,” Carmody said and kicked him in the back of the thigh when he made a feeble attempt to go after his belt gun.
Carmody bent down and yanked the weapon out of the bushwhacker’s holster. It was a percussion weapon, an old Army type converted to shells. Carmody didn’t like bastard guns like that, even when the conversion job was done by a master gunsmith. He tossed the gun far out into the pool and dragged the wounded man onto dry land. The bushwhacker groaned and stayed face down in the grass.
There was something familiar about the shape of the man. There wasn’t time to think about the face while the shooting was going on. Carmody cursed the black muck on his duds and turned the groaning bushwhacker over with his boot. The bushwhacker didn’t want to be turned over, and Carmody could understand that. He helped the oldster along with a kick in the side.
“Been a long time, Milo,” Carmody said when he saw who it was.
The bushwhacker opened his eyes and Carmody gave him another kick. He closed them again, making out to be hurt worse than he was. Carmody kicked his eyes open again. He kicked him again to get his attention, like the mule trainer said.
“Up on your feet, Milo,” Carmody said, taking the bushwhacker by the front of his red shirt, tearing it.
“Carmody!” the bushwhacker said, trying to lift his wrecked left arm toward the hole in his right shoulder. With the elbow shattered, he didn’t make it. The ruined arm fell back and dangled. The pain of the extra movement made him yell. He looked ready to pass out until Carmody put the .44 between his eyes and cocked the hammer.
“Just step over to my camp and we’ll fix you up, Milo,” he said, turning the man about and prodding the base of his spine with the muzzle of the .44 Colt. He still couldn’t recall the bushwhacker’s last name. He didn’t know if he’d ever heard it spoken or seen it written. It didn’t matter a damn. Milo was one of the old-timers with Garrison. Carmody had once laid Milo’s skull open with the barrel of a Winchester for trying to kill a woman teller in a bank in eastern Arizona for no reason at all. Sometime later there had been more tr
ouble with Milo about something else, and Carmody had done the same thing. Carmody knew that Milo didn’t see him as a brother.
The chunk of pork on the flat rock had burned to a frazzle. Carmody looked at the twist of blackened pig meat, then back to the groaning Milo. “That’s another black mark agin you, friend. Don’t you have no manners at all?”
The hole in Milo’s shoulder looked clean, but the left elbow was a mess. With holes like that in him, Carmody decided, it was time for Milo to retire, permanently. There was savage pain in the older man’s eyes; he tried to stay tough. “There’s the bottle,” Carmody said, pointing with the barrel of the .44 to where the tequila was. “Drink what you want and we’ll see.”
If Milo hadn’t been hurt so it pained so much, Carmody would have stood him up until he begged for a drink. Milo had so much pain there wasn’t any point talking about other, possible, probable pain. He didn’t offer to help the wounded man. Cursing, Milo got his left hand around the neck of the bottle and bit down on the cork with what teeth were left in the front of his mouth. There were four teeth on the bottom, three on top; they weren’t lined up right; it wasn’t easy for Milo. Some of the cork broke off and he cursed at Carmody.
Carmody smiled at the ageing killer. “Try to think of that cork as a young girl in a bank and you’ll do fine, Milo,” he said.
“There!” he said when the cork came loose. He figured Milo was thinking more of him than the girl in that Arizona bank, all those years before. Carmody knew Milo was tough; he didn’t know how hard or easy it would be with him. The fact that Milo was the sort of man who liked to kill women for no reason didn’t bother him. Milo had killed his last woman, Carmody decided, and that was for sure. Only Milo wasn’t supposed to know that yet.
Milo’s good arm trembled as the tequila spilled into his gap-toothed mouth. At first, his chest heaved and his thick throat convulsed; tequila was like that for men who didn’t drink it and, sometimes, for men who did. Tough or not, tequila didn’t let a man talk for a while after he drank it.
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