Sheriff on the Spot

by Brett Halliday

  “You mean about—Sam?”

  “Yeh.”

  “But if you’re going to bring him back—”

  Pat said, “Maybe I won’t bring him back.”

  There was a little silence while the two men finished tying on the bedroll behind Pat’s saddle. Then Morgan said, “I don’t blame you none, Pat. Whatever you do, I’ll keep things mighty quiet here.”

  Pat said, “Thanks.” He went to the hitching post and untied his horse’s reins. Morgan came to stand beside him, and Pat held out his hand. “I got a lot of thinkin’ to do,” he said slowly. “I dunno, Harold, what’s right an’ what isn’t.”

  “You want I should stay deputized and keep hold of things till you get back?”

  “If I come back.” Pat’s voice was low and brooding. He drew the reins over his horse’s neck.

  “Do you mean—” Morgan’s voice was also low.

  “I don’t know what I mean,” Pat said savagely. “I swear to God, I don’t know. How can I come back if I don’t bring Sam back with me? I’ll be worse than him, Morgan. You know I will. I’m the sheriff an’ there’s been two murders in Dutch Springs tonight.” He put his foot in the stirrup and lifted his body into the saddle.

  Harold Morgan stood by the hitching post and watched him ride away. He was sorry as Hell for Pat Stevens. Like Pat said, how did a man know where his duty lay when friendship was involved?

  Pat trotted slowly up Main Street, past the Gold Eagle and on to the Jewel Hotel. He had a funny feeling in his stomach as he rode past the familiar buildings. This might be the last time he’d ride down the main street of Dutch Springs. Tomorrow, men might curse the name of Pat Stevens as a betrayer of their trust. The same men who tonight were his best friends.

  He stopped his horse in front of the hotel and got off heavily. In the lobby, he stopped at the desk and asked Tom Forrest: “What did Miss Kitty an’ Joe do tonight after I run out after the bank robbers?”

  Old Tom shook his head and frowned. “I dunno, Sheriff. I run out the door, too, an’ stayed out while the shootin’ was goin’ on back of the bank. By Gosh, Pat,” he went on eagerly, “what’s goin’ on upstairs? Won’t nobody tell me nothin’.”

  Pat said, “There’s a dead man up in Kitty’s room.” He turned away from the desk and went to the door leading into the saloon.

  Kitty Lane and Joe Deems were standing with their heads close together near the bar. Kitty saw Pat, and he beckoned to them.

  “You find out anything from Jeth Purdue?” Joe asked eagerly as he approached with Kitty.

  Pat shook his head. “Purdue ain’t talkin.” He paused a moment, then asked Kitty harshly, “Just what did you say about fixin’ things with Purdue when you talked to Ezra?”

  She wet her lips nervously and avoided his boring gaze. “I don’t know exactly. I begged him not to worry too much. Told him I thought maybe Jeth would help us.”

  “Did you tell him you’d talk to Jeth?”

  “I don’t know. I can’t remember what I said, I was so excited and frightened.”

  Pat sighed and asked, “How much have either of you told anyone about things?”

  “Nothing,” Deems said quickly. “We thought we’d let you handle it.”

  “Good. The less you talk about things for awhile, the better it’ll come out. I’m leavin’ Harold Morgan in charge. He’ll bring the undertaker up for the body pretty soon. All anybody has to know is that the man is dead. Let ’em think he stabbed himself.”

  Kitty put her hand on his arm. She breathed, “What are you going to do?”

  “I’m ridin’ after Sam an’ Ezra—alone.”

  “You’re not—you’re not going to—?” she faltered.

  Pat’s face remained inscrutable. “I don’t reckon anybody knows what they’ll do till the time comes, Ma’am. There’s one more thing. I never did finish searchin’ through your bureau after I found out you were Mrs. Ralston.”

  Kitty flinched at mention of the name. But she said bravely, “You’re welcome to finish searching now if you want.”

  “I reckon I’d better. You want to go up with me to make sure I don’t steal nothing?”

  “Of course not.” Kitty laughed shortly. “Go right ahead.” She turned and went back to the bar.

  The door of Kitty’s room stood open and the lamp was still lit. The body of Fred Ralston had not been touched. Pat stood on the threshold for a moment, then went to the bureau to which his attention had been directed by Joe Deems, and pulled out the second drawer.

  There were neatly folded handkerchiefs with perfumed sachets between them, and many other dainty articles of feminine underclothing which brought a slow blush to Pat’s sunburned face as he poked among them awkwardly with a hard forefinger.

  He closed that drawer with a sigh of relief after finding nothing. The bottom drawer held a heavy-stayed corset and several pairs of slippers, along with several pairs of very thin and very long (it seemed to Pat’s uninitiated eyes) pairs of lady’s stockings.

  He felt around the drawer dubiously, and then pushed it shut with a sigh of relief. He straightened up and mopped sweat from his face, wondered irritably what the hell he was looking for anyway.

  Yet, somehow, he was loath to leave the death-room. He had an uneasy feeling that he hadn’t done all a sheriff should, that he might be overlooking an important clue.

  He moved around the room slowly, scratching his head and looking in the corners and under the bed. He finally went into number 15, carrying the lighted lamp from Kitty’s room, and dumped out the contents of Fred Ralston’s suitcase in the middle of the bed.

  He had been a mighty dudish dresser, all right. Right down to his skin. Silk underclothes, by golly, and bright colored socks and ties. Even a little thing that squirted sweet-smelling perfume when you pressed a rubber bulb.

  But there wasn’t any writing in the suitcase, not a single thing that Pat recognized as a clue except the evidence of the dead man’s dudish taste in clothes. Pat even looked in the empty bureau drawers and the clothes closet, but it was evident that Ralston hadn’t done any unpacking whatsoever.

  That fact, in itself, Pat mused, might be a clue. Generally, when a man checked in at a hotel, the first thing he did was to unpack his suitcase. But Ralston hadn’t taken a single article from his bag. It almost looked like he knew that death was planned for him, and hadn’t thought it worthwhile to unpack.

  Pat pondered over that theory for a time, but in the end had to discard it. No man would plan his own death, though he knew definitely that Ralston did have some plot up his sleeve when he got off the stage in Dutch Springs.

  Pat sighed and picked up the lamp and went back into the room with the dead man. There were a lot of questions that had to wait until he caught up with Sam and Ezra, and he could only hope that they would have the answers for him.

  He set the lighted lamp down on the bureau and turned for one more final survey of the room. His gaze lighted on the bottle of whisky, and he realized that he could use another drink before starting the ride to his ranch. The thought of going into one of the bars didn’t appeal to him because he knew the questions that would inevitably be asked.

  He picked up the bottle and took another drink from it, set it down carefully and recorked it.

  His gaze was caught by a strip of sheer white cloth hanging half in and half out of a metal wastebasket by the side of the oilcloth-covered washstand.

  He moved over slowly and stooped down to pick it up. His gray eyes narrowed as he recognized the top portion of a lady’s white lisle stocking. There was a little black clock along it, with an arrow pointing upward, considered very daring and sporting in the West.

  The foot of the stocking had been cut off with a pair of scissors at a point well above the ankle.

  Pat frowned down at the gauzy material in his hands, wondering why any woman would ruin an expensive stocking like that by cutting off the foot. He examined it closely, found that it was quite a new stocking, perhaps neve
r even worn.

  He carried it back to the bureau and pulled out the lower drawer again, began poking dubiously among the other stockings he had seen there previously. Most of them were black, either of cotton lace or sheer lisle. There was only one other pair of white stockings in the drawer.

  Then Pat’s eyes glinted at sight of a small ball of white lisle rolled up and tucked back in one corner of the drawer. He shook it out, found it to be the exact twin of the stocking he held in his hand except that it still had the foot attached. And he had been right about the other piece. The whole stocking was in perfect condition, certainly had not been worn more than a few times.

  This puzzled Pat more than ever. He knew enough about women’s clothing to know that such stockings were quite expensive, and that the ruining of one stocking meant that a pair had been ruined.

  Why had Kitty Lane cut the foot off an expensive stocking?

  Pat Stevens didn’t know, but he had a feeling that the answer might be important.

  He stuffed the cut-off stocking in a pocket of his jacket and put its unharmed mate back in the drawer and closed it. Then he went out and downstairs to take the road north-eastward toward the Lazy Mare ranch where his wife would be waiting for him.

  9

  Riding east from Dutch Springs, Pat Stevens pulled his horse up at the crossroads where he had sent the posse in the wrong direction earlier in the evening. He hesitated there for a time, his face bleak and uncertain. He finally shook his head and turned his horse in the same direction the posse had ridden. His ranch lay along that road. It was too late, now, to hope to overtake Sam Sloan and Ezra on the southern road. Better to ride on home and change horses, prepare for a long trail ride. He knew where Sam and Ezra would head for. Just as well as though he were with them, he knew how their minds would work, the trails they would choose in riding south from Powder Valley.

  He could cut straight down across country from the Lazy Mare ranch and it would be a shorter ride than from here at the crossroads to a point where he could cross their trail.

  The lumpy moon was high in the heavens, now, casting a golden glow down upon the peaceful valley, limning remembered landmarks to Pat as he rode along at a slow lope.

  Everything that he saw in the bright moonlight, all the memories they brought to him, seemed to hold a special significance to Pat on this homeward ride tonight. For, though he refused to give it place in the forefront of his thoughts, there rode with him the realization that he might never look upon these familiar things again.

  He kept putting the thought away from him, but he could not put away the depressed mood that gripped him. He wasn’t sorry for what he had done back in Kitty’s room in the Jewel Hotel, and in the back door of the bank building. He was merely sorry that it had been necessary for him to do those things. He didn’t blame Sam and Ezra for what had happened. They, too, had become enmeshed in a tangle of circumstances that had forced them to act as they had.

  The dull rumble of many horses’ hooves approaching him from the road ahead brought Pat’s thoughts back to reality with a jerk. He stiffened in the saddle, and his features settled into grim lines as he realized that it must be the posse returning from a hard and fruitless ride.

  He saw them soon in the moonlight, a close-packed group of riders moving at the slow trot of thoroughly winded horses. He pulled up in front of them and signaled out Mark Johnson to ask, “Any luck, Mark?”

  “Not a damn bit, Pat. Didn’t see hide nor hair of that critter though we rode the legs off some of our hawses. You shore he went this way, Pat?”

  “I don’t make many mistakes on a thing like that,” Pat reminded him curtly.

  “I know you don’t.” Johnson lifted his hat and doubtfully scratched his head. “Mighta turned off some place, I reckon. But we looked for signs an’ never saw none. What’s doin’ back in town that kep’ you from ridin’ with us?”

  “Plenty.” Pat hesitated, reminding himself that they would find out soon enough anyhow. “Two killin’s.”

  “Two killings?” The members of the posse began to cluster around him excitedly. “Who was it? How-come? Who done it?”

  “A dude from Denver. Got knifed up in the Jewel Hotel. An’ Jeth Purdue. He got it while I had him locked up in jail.”

  “You had Jeth Purdue locked up?”

  “That’s right. I ain’t got time to explain it all now,” Pat went on swiftly. “I locked Jeth up because I figured he had somethin’ to do with the other killin’.”

  “You reckon it was the same feller held up the bank, Pat?”

  “I ain’t rightly sure. But I’m takin’ out after ’em. An’ you can tell the people in town that Pat Stevens promises ’em he’ll have the money stole from the bank when he comes back.”

  “You got a line on ’em, Pat? You know where to go?”

  “I got a line on ’em. And I’m goin’ alone.” Pat spurred his horse and slowly pushed through the group of riders.

  They didn’t hold him back for any more questions. Pat Stevens’ word was good with those men and they were willing to let him ride on alone if that was the way he wanted it.

  Pat put his horse to a steady lope after he left the posse behind him. His body was slumped in the saddle, welded to the easy movement of his mount. He met no one along the road, held the same even pace until a light in the front window of his ranch house came into view.

  The sight of that lighted window brought a lump into Pat Stevens’ throat. It meant that Sally was waiting up for him, as she had so often waited up for his return in the turbulent past. He dreaded what he had to tell her tonight. Not that Sally wouldn’t understand. She always understood. That was what amazed and humbled Pat. In the past, he’d made the mistake of trying to hide things from her, things that he thought a woman would be happier not knowing. Always, though, she had managed to get the truth from him somehow, and he’d always been glad in the end that she had.

  He slowed his horse to a trot, and headed down past the big barn and corrals to the unlighted bunkhouse. Pat was not the kind of a rancher who expected a hired man to care for his horse when he came in, but tonight was different. He had a lot of things to do, and he’d already wasted too much time.

  He swung off at the door of the bunkhouse, opened it and called in a low voice, “Anybody awake?”

  “Yeh. That you, boss?” a young voice responded almost instantly.

  “Curly?”

  “Yeh. It’s me, Pat. Somethin’ wrong?”

  “I’ve got some hard ridin’ to do,” Pat said quietly. “Wish you’d get up an’ help me, Curly.”

  “You bet.” There was a creak of bedsprings. “What you want I should do?”

  “Unsaddle this hawse an’ turn him in the corral. Then catch out—lemme see, Curly—is that big roan in the corral tonight?”

  “Big Red? Yeh. He ain’t been rode for a week. You want him saddled?”

  “Sure do, Curly. An’ pick out a good lead hawse to go along. One that’ll trail with a pack-saddle an’ carry me if I have to change. Throw a pack-saddle on him an’ tie on that bedroll behind my saddle. Then gather me up some campin’ stuff, Curly, a frypan an’ coffee pot—not much, but enough to keep me goin’ a few days. I’ll bring down some grub from the house an’ be ready to pull out in half an hour.”

  “Look, boss. If you want some company—”

  “Nope. I’m ridin’ alone, Curly.”

  Pat turned and strode away from the bunkhouse, up the gentle slope leading to the pleasant ranch house which Sally had turned into a real home during the ten years they had lived there.

  Sally jumped up from a low rocking chair by the huge stone fireplace when Pat opened the door. She spilled some sewing out of her lap onto the floor, but disregarded it as she turned to smile at Pat.

  Her years of marriage had been kind to Sally Stevens. Her hair was still bright golden, and her eyes danced as eagerly at sight of her husband as those of a young girl might dance at sight of her lover. Her face was unlined, a
little fuller than when Pat first met her, and much more beautiful. The slim, girlish slenderness of her body had rounded into soft maturity with the passing years, but her step was elastic as she came toward him holding out both hands, and her voice was vibrant and strong. “I almost went to sleep by the fire waiting for you, darling. What kept you so long in town?”

  Pat tossed his hat on a chair and caught his wife up in his arms. He put his cheek against her golden hair and muttered, “Gosh, you smell good, Sally. No perfume neither.”

  She twisted away from him, laughing gaily. “What would I want with perfume? Soap and water is best.”

  He said, “Some folks think they need perfume,” and went past her to poke a smoldering log into flame in the big fireplace.

  “I’ve got some hot cookies in the warming oven. And I’ll get a glass of cold milk. We’ll have a little party, darling, to celebrate your becoming a private citizen again.”

  Warming his hands over the fire, Pat said, “Hot cookies will taste mighty good, Sally. But, how about coffee instead of cold milk.”

  “You know coffee keeps you awake, Pat.”

  Without turning from the fire, he said gently, “That’s why I want coffee tonight, old lady.”

  Sally paled a trifle and caught her underlip between white teeth. When Pat called her “old lady” in that gentle tone, she knew she was going to dread what he was going to tell her. She started to reply, then shook her bright head resolutely and said, “All right. I’ll put the coffee pot right on.”

  She went into the kitchen quietly and began to put kindling on the hot coals in the big wooden range. Pat waited until she had left the living room, then went through another door into the rear bedroom they occupied together and lifted his saddle gun in its leather boot down from a nail in the wall.