Milo Talon (1981)

by L'amour, Louis - Talon-Chantry

  All guesswork, but nonetheless, all very possible.

  I needed to know more about Albro and more about Henry also. There was a chance Penny Logan could tell me. If not, she could tell me where and how to find out.

  It was sundown when I rode into town and left my horse at the livery stable. Carrying my rifle and saddlebags, I returned to the hotel.

  My room was undisturbed. Taking out the suitcase, I opened it again. For a long time I studied the painting. Those had to be Digger pines, and the ghost-like tree could be a buckeye. The patch of gold in the distance looked like California poppies, and the masses of small blue flowers looked like what was sometimes called baby blue eyes—

  This was probably the same area in the background of the photographs. California … the high desert, perhaps the San Joaquin Valley, but more likely the former.

  If I played my cards right I might not even have to go there to find out.

  And if they didn’t kill me first.

  Chapter Ten.

  Lying in bed, I considered the situation. The three men who had come to Pablo’s horse camp had been acting on their own, I believed. They undoubtedly worked for somebody else but when they followed me to the camp, if that was what had happened, I believed they were not under orders.

  I sat up suddenly, locking my arms around my knees, and looked out into the night.

  If only I knew what was going on! If I knew what the stakes were!

  Item by item I went over what had happened and what I knew, but there were holes everywhere. I simply did not know enough.

  Why had Newton wanted to get Nancy away from her mother? Who had killed the Magoffins?

  Was Tut trying to sell out the Newton faction or was he working on his own?

  This was not for me. I needed to be out in wild country, hunting, working cattle, or just drifting. Why had I ever got myself into this? Because I needed the money, that was the reason.

  Who sent for the Arkansawyer? Was he hunting me?

  Finally I lay back on the pillow and went to sleep.

  When I tiptoed past Molly Fletcher’s door the next morning there was already a crack of light showing at the bottom of the door. I went on downstairs and walked along the street to Maggie’s.

  The air was fresh and cool. The dog was lying on the step this time but he flopped his tail at me. I squatted on my heels and said, “How you doin’, fella?”

  He flopped his tail again and I ruffled the hair on his back a mite, then went around him to Maggie’s. It was still gray with early dawn but lights were showing here and there. As in most western towns people were early to rise, but I would have blamed nobody for staying in bed on this morning. It was dull and gray and looked like rain.

  As I stopped at the door of the restaurant I saw a reflection of an upstairs window across the street, saw a curtain fall back into place.

  Now a lot of people look out of windows, but I was in no position to make any wrong guesses. Once inside, with nobody in the place but German, I said, “Who lives upstairs across the street?”

  “Woman who owns that building lets rooms. There’s four rooms up there and she rents ‘em by the week or month.” He brought me four eggs easy-over and some fried potatoes.

  “Old woman, pays no mind to much except that she gets what’s coming to her. This time of year those rooms are usually empty. Roundup time, they’re apt to be full, with buyers comin’ in.”

  The eggs tasted good. I was sitting back to enjoy my coffee when Molly came in. She gave me a quick smile and went on through to the back, soon coming out, tying her apron. “I was afraid you were gone,” she said.

  “Ever know a man called Tut?” I asked, just on a chance.

  Her hands, tying the apron, stopped. She then finished tying it and came over to my table and sat down. “Milo, I wish you would drop all that. Leave it alone.”

  “What do you know about it?”

  She hesitated, then evaded the question. “I just don’t want you to get hurt.”

  “Tut did get hurt,” I said. “They killed him.”

  She started to speak, then stopped. I said, “Molly, you’re going to tell somebody, sometime, so why not me? Sooner or later they will find out who you are, they will find out that you know something, and you will be in trouble.”

  “I am Molly Fletcher. That’s all I am.” She went to get coffee and came back, sitting down again. “Yes, I did know Humphrey Tuttle. I am not surprised that he’s been killed. He was always mixed in something shady.”

  “Did you know Newton Henry?”

  “Yes, I did, and he was an evil man. He was very smooth and polished and he talked well, but he was vindictive and cruel.”

  “And his father?”

  “I never knew his father. Newton hated him, I do know that much.”

  “Did you know his daughter?”

  “He never had a daughter.”

  “What? But-?”

  “Nancy was not his daughter.”

  “Not his daughter? But I thought-”

  “So did everybody.”

  Well, I stared at her. Now I had been around enough to know that nobody can complicate their lives more than just average people. “But I thought Stacy was married to Newton.”

  “She was. Nathan Albro was a good man but stern. He was also kind and generous enough, but Stacy didn’t understand him until too late. Eventually she ran off with Newton, then divorced Nathan so she could marry Newton. The worst of it was, she took Nancy with her.”

  Well, I just sat there. Molly went about her work and I began to mull that over in my mind. It changed a lot of things but brought up even more questions.

  “Molly?” She stopped by my table. “What about Jefferson Henry? He claims Nancy is his granddaughter.”

  “By marriage, I guess she is. He doesn’t want to find her because she will inherit from him. He wants to control her so he can have the power her property will give him. That’s why Newton married her.”

  “To help his father?”

  “Newton hated his father. He married Stacy to get her away from his father, and from Nathan Albro, too. You see, and I only know what I’ve heard, Jefferson Henry wanted to use some mines in which both he and Nathan as well as others had money for some stock manipulation. Nathan was a strictly honest man and would not allow it. Jefferson Henry always considered Nathan his rival.

  “There were attempts to kill Nathan so he put all that property in Nancy’s name, but it was quite awhile before Jefferson Henry found out.”

  It was too much for me. I had a feeling I was in the wrong business. What I should do was go to Jefferson Henry, give back what money remained, and tell him I hadn’t found her.

  Again the question came … why me?

  Also, I had the uneasy feeling that quitting would not be that easy. Maybe that was why Baggott was here, to ensure that I would be put out of the way if anything went wrong. The more I thought about it the more I wanted to quit, but I’d never left a job undone in my life and the thought was one I couldn’t abide.

  A thought suddenly occurred to me. “Molly? Who knows how much you know?”

  “I-I don’t know. I don’t think anybody does, but-”

  “How did you happen to come here? I know what you told me, but was that the only reason?”

  She hesitated, and I said, “Molly, I don’t want to frighten you but I think you should know that the men in this game plan to win, regardless of who gets hurt. Did you notice the rather stern looking old man who ate in here the other day? The man with a somewhat southern accent?”

  “Yes, I remember him.”

  “They call him the Arkansawyer. Actually, I think he’s from Missouri but it doesn’t matter. His name is Baggott and he make a profession of eliminating people who are in the way of his employers. I don’t know why he is here. Probably for me, but I don’t know that and it might be somebody else. My advice is, stay away from windows and don’t leave at the same time each day.”

  When I left
I went by the back door.

  Hoping that I would find Pablo, I went to the small saloon where I had been a few days before. He was not there. Two rather rough-looking Mexicans were seated at the table where Pablo had sat on that other day. I thought one of them looked familiar, and nodded. He merely looked back at me from cold black eyes.

  At the bar I ordered a beer. The door opened behind me and two men came in. One walked to the other end of the bar from me and the other sat down in a chair near the door.

  I took up my bottle and refilled my glass.

  That man who sat down near the door bothered me. When a man came into a saloon he usually wanted a drink, so why-?

  Turning my left side to the bar I lifted my glass with my left hand, looking along the bar at the man who now for the first time turned to face me. It was Shorty.

  “I come in to say goodbye,” he said.

  “Are you going somewhere, Shorty?”

  “No. You are. You got two choices. Ride out or get carried out.”

  Two of them, but I had not thought Shorty had that much sand. The other man was on my right but a little back of me, and to make both shots was going to call for a lot of luck. Only … suddenly I saw it clearly enough. Shorty would make the challenge and before I could draw the other man would shoot me.

  It was a neat trick, and evidently from their attitude they had done it before.

  “You and that Mexican partner of yours,” Shorty said, “are holding a lot of horses.”

  That was it. He was going to call me a thief, and-

  “You’re just a couple of damned-!”

  What he might have said was cut sharply off by the short, ugly bark of a gun behind me.

  Backing away to get the room in my range of vision without turning my eyes from Shorty, I saw the man by the door half rise from his chair then slump to the floor, a gun falling from his hand.

  The Mexican with the hard black eyes was standing now. He looked at me and smiled, showing all his teeth. “He drew a gun, senor. I thought he was going to shoot me.”

  “Of course,” I said.

  Then he added, “Any friend of Pablo’s is a friend of mine.”

  He slipped his gun back into its holster, bowed slightly, and went out the door, followed by his friend.

  Shorty’s face was a sickly yellow behind the stubble of beard.

  “You started to say something, Shorty. What was it? We’re all waiting to hear.”

  He tried to speak and the words would not shape themselves, then finally he made it. “Nothin’. I was just makin’ talk.”

  “You know, Shorty,” I said, “I don’t think much is going to go right for you here.

  Why don’t you just mount up and ride? There’s a lot of country south of here.”

  He fumbled in his pocket for some change, his eyes empty, his face slack.

  “Don’t worry about paying for your drink, Shorty,” I said. “It’s on me.”

  He started for the door, and as he stepped around the body I said, “Take him with you, Shorty, but leave the gun.”

  He took up the body, dragging it clumsily through the door. The bartender looked after them, then poured himself a stiff drink.

  Penny Logan was making coffee when I came through the door. She smiled and motioned me to the table where we had sat before. “Find what you wanted?” she asked.

  “I haven’t had time to look at it all yet,” I admitted. “I’ve been doing some riding around.”

  Accepting some coffee and doughnuts, I said, “Ever hear of Nathan Albro?”

  “Of course. Mining, railroads, lumber, and ranching. He’s been into all of it, and made all of it work for him.”

  “What’s he have that Jefferson Henry would want?”

  She was thoughtful. “Almost everything he had, I’d expect, but if you are talking of particular things, Nate Albro held a controlling interest in at least three good mines and a railroad. He owned sufficient stock in several other mines to control them if he voted with one or two other large stockholders.

  “Nate Albro always worked for control of anything in which he invested. Jefferson Henry was more interested in selling stock than in development. Albro didn’t like Henry and made no secret of it.

  “To understand all that has happened,” she continued, “you have to understand Jefferson Henry. He really is a small-natured man who wants to be considered important. He always envied Albro and tried several times to move in on him without doing more than annoying Nate. He is revengeful, never forgets an injury, even an imagined one.

  “When Nate was killed Henry pulled some political wires to get himself appointed guardian of Nancy, and he almost made it. Newton had married her mother and was officially Nancy’s guardian and he moved them away from the reach of his father.”

  Penny Logan knew about all that any outsider could pick up, partly from newspaper accounts and in part from the gossip of others who came to her for advice or assistance.

  A good deal came from a shrewd appraisal of the situation. She had done well with her own investments and many of the cattle and sheep men depended on her advice and suggestions.

  On the train, I went over everything step by step and found myself no further ahead.

  The fact that men looking for Nancy had come to our ranch puzzled me until I considered the fact that they might have a description or partial description. An opening into high mountain meadows and valleys. Our ranch was one such, and another, I realized suddenly, was right behind us.

  A hidden place in the mountains with a higher mountain valley behind and above it. F A ride into that country might be just what was needed. But| first, the notebook.

  Chapter Eleven.

  Once I got back to the hotel I ended up tucking the notebook in my pocket for later reading and saddling my horse. Stopping by the desk on my way out, I picked up answers to some of the letters I’d written, but I tucked them in my pocket along with the notebook.

  Remembering that moving curtain in the window across from Maggie’s, I left the livery barn by the back entrance, rode around the corral, and came up behind Maggie’s where I tied my horse.

  German looked around as I came in the back door. “You’re late. She’s been worried.”

  John Topp was already seated at a table and he glanced up as I came in, looking from me to the kitchen entrance. For a moment I was inclined to mention the moving curtain, but did not. Molly came over with coffee as soon as I sat down. “You’re late,” she said.

  “Had to get my horse,” I replied. “I’m taking a ride. I need to get out of town, get some fresh air.”

  She laughed. “You could walk out of town in not more than a minute,” she said, “starting from anywhere.”

  “It’s a big town to me.” I was joking, but part of it was for John Topp. “Biggest town I ever saw before I was twenty was three teepees and a chosa.”

  “What’s a chosa?”

  “A dugout. They had to drag me into town with a rope. I’d never seen so many people all at one time in my life. Why, there must have been six or seven in sight when we rode in!”

  She filled my cup. “That was the year of the big dry-up. We kids just couldn’t wait until Sunday.”

  “To go to church?”

  “To get a drink of water. Ever’ Sunday, Ma would give us a drink. The rest of the time we sucked on stones. That’s why in my country the ground is covered with small stones; they were bigger once but we kids sucked them dry tryin’ for moisture. You could always tell just where the river was by the dust.”

  “Dust?”

  “The fish swimmin’ up river. They raised quite a lot of it. When the first rains came some of the fish were so unused to water they drowned. You would walk all along the bank and just pick ‘em up by the dozen.”

  “Drink your coffee.”

  It was in my mind that one day I’d have to tangle with John Topp. I wasn’t hunting trouble, but he just made me uneasy and I figured maybe that was why Jefferson Henry had him arou
nd, to handle any trouble that developed. If this case went the way it looked we were going to have plenty of trouble. Nonetheless, I didn’t want him to get killed before we had a chance.

  The trouble was that for the first time in my life I wasn’t sure. Off and on I’d had it out with quite a few, and figured that at rough-and-tumble, root-hog-or-die sort of fighting I was as good as the best. But there was something awesome about Topp. He had those big hands and shoulders that bulged with muscle, and big as he was, he moved like a cat.

  So I didn’t want anybody shooting him until I’d put a bunch of five against his chin.

  Baggott might be laying for me, but maybe for him. Worst of all, he might be trying for a shot at Molly, who knew more than she was telling and maybe knew too much for the comfort of some. So it was in my mind to tip him off.

  “Molly? Has Mr. Baggott been in?”

  Out of the tail of my eye I saw Topp’s head come up and his fork pause halfway to his mouth.

  “He has been back once or twice. Most of the time I think ,c M, he buys what he wants down at the store. I see him down the street with a sack in his hands once in a while.”

  “I was wondering,” I continued, “if that was him had a room on the second floor across the street. Somebody is living up there and Baggott doesn’t stay at the hotel.”

  She brought my breakfast and I did no more talking. Now he knew, and so did anybody else who was in the room, and by now there were a half dozen others. When breakfast was finished I slipped out the back way, took a quick look around, and stepped into the saddle.

  First, I rode west to the water-tower. There was nothing there but the tower itself, a cool, shady place with water dripping and a side-track where the private car had stood. I scouted around but saw nothing but a few old horse and cow tracks.

  The railroad crossed the river at this point, so I turned my back to railroad and river and headed for the Hooker Hills and the trail along Huerfano River toward the mountains. It was a long ride to where I planned to go but I had an idea I might stop at Pablo’s horse camp for the night, or at least for a meal.

  A few days ago the hills had been brown and yellow, but the rains had turned them to green. Close up the sparse grass did not show so clearly, but from a distance the low hills were beautiful. Here and there was an outcropping of sandstone or sometimes of shale. I let my mount pick his way westward, keeping an eye on the country and constantly checking my back-trail.