by Lauran Paine
His sister was not back there as he motioned them toward the popping cookstove. The kitchen was pleasantly warm and fragrant as Boss and Charley put their backs to the source of heat, unmindful of the steam that began to rise almost immediately from their soaked clothing. It had a unique aroma.
Doctor Barlow handed each of them a mug of hot coffee, then wagged his head. “You’re getting to be well known in town,” he told them. “I’ve heard several stories of your adventures crossing the road.”
Boss was not interested. The heat on his back had a relaxing effect on his muscles, and the hot coffee did something similar under his hide. He said, “How’s the boy, doctor?”
Barlow got himself a cup of coffee and stood by the kitchen table while he answered. “I have to tell you we were close to giving up on him last night.” He drank coffee before continuing. Both the men by the stove had their eyes riveted to his face. Barlow smiled slightly. “Strange thing about fevers. I’ve seen people have them so bad they were hot to the touch, their lips dried and cracked, and they went out of their heads and were weak as kittens with sweat pouring out of them like rain.”
Charley put his half-empty cup on the table. “That’s real interesting. We don’t give a damn about all those unfortunate folks, doctor. How is Button?”
Barlow’s smile disappeared as he regarded Charley. At other times Waite had impressed him as a quiet, perhaps even a slightly diffident individual, but right now the look on Charley’s face prompted Walt Barlow to make an adjustment of his earlier judgment. “The fever broke sometime after midnight,” he said. “My sister heard the lad asking for water and fetched him some. He’s still weak as a kitten but he’s on the mend.” Barlow took another sip of his coffee, still looking at Charley Waite. “He’ll be too puny to be moved for a few days. Even if he wasn’t, taking him down to your wagon in this weather might be the end of him; there’ll be pneumonia going around. In his weakened condition . . . More coffee, gents?”
They politely declined. Even though steam was still rising from their soaked clothing, they felt warm and relaxed for the first time in several hours. No doubt the coffee contributed to that feeling. Boss approached the table, hauled out a chair to sit on, and asked if Button had made any more statements when he was out of his head. Doctor Barlow sat down too, shaking his head. “Not that I know of. But Sue’s been closer to the lad than I have.” He watched Charley come to the table before also saying, “It’s been one thing after another, mostly old people. I’ve been in houses where there was a couple of inches of water covering the floor. I’m afraid when this is over there might be an epidemic.”
He saw the look he was getting from Charley Waite and cleared his throat. “I don’t know of any more statements he’s made. I suppose you know who Butler is?”
Boss nodded woodenly. “One of Denton Baxter’s men.”
Barlow avoided their eyes and reached for his cup as he said, “Yes.”
They waited for him to finish drinking. He saw the way they were gazing at him and pushed the cup aside, then leaned and clasped both hands atop the table. “Mister Baxter’s a bad man to have for an enemy. He’s got a lot of influence in the territory. The folks who aren’t afraid of him, or who don’t work for him in one capacity or another, don’t like him.”
Boss said, “You, doctor?”
“Well . . . I have reason not to like him. Not just for what he did to you men, but other things he’s done to other people. He’s a surly, overbearing, cold-blooded man.” Doctor Barlow straightened up off the table and leaned back in his chair, looking from one of them to the other. Finally he said, “The surest way to lose your trade in my business is to buck whoever runs the countryside.” He paused, continuing to look from one of them to the other, and said, “Stay away from your wagon tonight, gents.”
Boss acted as though he had not heard. He arose in his drying clothes to refill his cup at the stove and return to his chair without looking at the medical man or speaking.
It was Charley who broke the silence. “It’ll be Marshal Poole, because Baxter can’t reach Harmonville.”
Barlow nodded in silence. When someone entered from the roadway he jumped up and went toward the parlor. Boss looked at Charley Waite. “What was that you said while we were standin’ out there gettin’ drowned, about jumpin’ him before he jumps us?”
Charley had no opportunity to repeat it; Sue Barlow entered the kitchen holding a soggy cape and bonnet. She smiled at them as her brother went after another cup of coffee. “Walt told you his fever broke,” she said, taking a chair at the table and holding up a small gray bottle. “The apothecary made it up to strengthen Button’s blood.”
Charley took the little bottle, removed its cork and smelled it, then blinked and handed it back. “It ought to do that,” he said dryly. The medicine had smelled to Charley as though it was at least seventy percent alcohol.
As her brother put a full coffee cup before her, he said Waite and Spearman were interested in whether Button had said anything that would interest them when he’d been out of his head, after mentioning the man named Butler.
She had to disappoint them. “He mumbled a little. If it was speech I couldn’t understand it. Then last night the fever broke and this morning when I asked him who someone named Butler was, he didn’t know. He had no recollection of hearing the name used at the wagoncamp.”
Boss’s thick brows climbed like caterpillars as he gazed at the handsome woman. “Well, now,” he began, as he usually did when he did not understand something, “now, Miss Barlow, Button don’t remember an’ no one but you heard the name Butler . . . .”
She put a dead-level, gold-flecked tawny stare upon Boss Spearman. “He said it very distinctly. Butler. The rest of his raving was not as distinct, but that name was. That, and something about a one-armed man.”
Charley took the initiative from Boss. “That’s plenty good. We asked around town to find out who Butler is. I’m satisfied, Miss Barlow.”
Later, almost dry and pleasantly revitalized by the coffee, they went out to the parlor where Sue Walton pointed to a closed door. “He’s probably sleeping. It’s late and he was worn out, or otherwise you could see him. I know he’d like that. He talks about you two as though you are a large part of his life. You and the man who was killed, Mister Harrison.”
Her brother went over to the roadway door but did not open it. “They’re waiting for you down at the wagon.”
Boss regarded the doctor thoughtfully. “How many?”
Barlow did not know. “Marshal Poole and probably three or four of the men he uses as possemen and vigilantes.” Barlow glanced at his sister, then back to Boss. “I’ve had to sew up people they overhauled. Quite a few over the years.”
Charley had a question. “Just how much will Marshal Poole do for Baxter’s interests?”
Sue answered. “Anything he has to do. There is a story around town that when Mister Baxter stampedes freegraze cattle, the owners are lucky if they recover half their animals. The other half go over the mountains to be sold, and Marshal Poole is paid to make sure no posse leaves town. They say Poole can be very persuasive when he wants to be, especially with the men he uses from time to time as possemen. Vigilantes, folks call them.”
Her brother relinquished his grip on the doorknob. “We have a spare room off the kitchen. If you go down to your wagon there’s a good chance you’ll end up wrapped in blankets on the floor of the jailhouse storeroom.”
Boss looked at his companion, and Charley stepped past Doctor Barlow to open the door. Neither of them said anything until they were on the porch, then they both thanked the Barlows for their hospitality and their help.
Chapter Twelve
More Mud But Less Water
Their ponchos were wet inside and clammy, but kitchen warmth as well as their partly dried clothing made them indifferent to this.
So did something else. The rain was no longer coming down in sheets, nor were the drops as large. The men halted be
yond the Barlow picket fence to look upward. Nothing they could see up there indicated that the storm might be diminishing. Nevertheless, the rainfall lacked most of its furious intensity of an hour or two earlier. The squalling wind was weakening, and although the roadway more than ever resembled a wild river, the noise it made as it scoured Main Street down to bedrock was louder now than the rainfall.
Charley looked southward. There was not a soul in sight as far as he could see: no horses, wagons, or people. But there were occasional lighted windows. Understandably, merchants with perishable inventories were in their stores fighting the rising water to prevent it from flooding their buildings.
Boss faced his companion. Charley, who had been studying the farthest visible lights, said, “Is your handkerchief dry?”
Boss nodded.
Charley started down the awash plankwalk, stopped in a recessed doorway, and without saying a word, lifted out his six-gun, tugged the dry handkerchief from his rear pocket, and went to work unloading his six-gun and ridding it of silt. Boss did the same, but without being so quiet. “Instead of sneaking around in the dark trying to find them—if they’re waiting to ambush us down there—it’d be better, an’ a hell of a lot less chancey, if we just walked into the jailhouse and grabbed Poole.”
Charley was wiping each individual bullet when he replied. “If he’s alone, boss. And if he’s in there.” Charley hoisted up one side of his poncho, hooked it beneath his shell belt, holstered his weapon, and cocked an eye at Spearman. “Time to go around to the back alley,” he said, and led off.
They sank to their ankles in mud the moment they left the duckboards to reach the alley through a littered space between two buildings. It made a man sweat just lifting one foot, then the other, each boot carrying forward more than a pound of mud.
The wind had died completely. The rainfall, although without its previous force, was still steady.
The alley was a quagmire. When Charley reached a rickety fence to lean on as he flung mud from his feet, he said, “If that back door isn’t barred I’ll eat your hat.”
“Then what’n hell did we come around here for?”
“Because I don’t like walkin’ into a lighted room with maybe three or four enemies in it.”
Boss had to be satisfied with what, to him, was not a complete answer, because Charley was moving in the direction of the jailhouse’s rear wall. Boss shrugged and followed. When they were close to the rear door of the jailhouse, he tucked up his poncho on the right side and dried a wet palm on the protected part of his britches.
The door was not barred.
Charley opened it very carefully. Smoke scent and lamp glow came back toward the doorway. They stepped into a large storeroom, tiptoed ahead to another door, this one open, and looked into Marshal Poole’s office.
It was empty.
Charley looked back and wagged his head. When they returned to the muddy alleyway Boss said, “What did you expect when you found the door unbarred? He left by the alleyway.”
“Left for where, Boss?”
The larger, older man raised an arm from which the shiny black poncho hung suspended like a glistening wing, pointing southward.
They could not see down there for more than a dozen or so yards, and the monotonous drizzle of the rain drowned out whatever southward sounds there might have been.
Charley finally said, “We got to be right the first time, Boss, because sure as hell he isn’t alone down there. They’ll maybe have one man in the wagon, another one or two inside the livery barn down near the alley, and depending on how many there are, they might have another one or two hidden in other places.”
Boss stood with rainwater trickling down from the front of his hat, peering southward. When he eventually spoke he was bitter. “My moneybox, Charley.”
“Yeah. Right now I’m more worried about our hides. They’ll be watching.”
Boss continued to look southward. “Damned rain,” he growled.
Charley’s retort was offhand because he really was not thinking about the storm. “Yeah. But if it wasn’t raining and if it was daylight, we’d never get near the wagon. . . . Boss, sure as hell they know every approach we can make: the roadway out front, this here alley, even the opposite side of Main Street where we’d come out if we used the alleyway over there to keep ’em from seein’ us when we got down there.”
When Boss said, “Yeah,” Charley nudged him and began walking across the alley westward. Within town limits the ground was trampled and mushy. Out farther where rooted grass made walking a springy business without much sinking, they made good time.
Boss hiked along, humped slightly forward, in appearance for all the world in the shrouded, misty night like a large, perhaps prehistoric bird. He said nothing. Neither did Charley as he continued due west. Out where he finally stopped, though, he faced around and spoke. “If we angled right, we’d ought to be in line with the wagon across from the livery barn, but about a half mile west.”
Boss understood finally, looked back, and let go a rattling breath. Walking that far, even on firm ground, was something he had not done in years. That’s why God, or someone anyway, had given horses four legs and a small brain: so folks wouldn’t have to walk.
Charley looked at his companion. Boss nodded, so Charley started back just as a biting little vagrant wind came knifing southward. It passed as swiftly as it had arrived, and while there was no more wind, it had pretty well chilled the ponchoed hikers before hastening southward. Boss said, “Has it come to you, Charley, that maybe Gawd don’t like freegrazers neither?”
Up ahead the scattered lights from house windows were beginning to wink out. Evidently a lot of apprehensive townfolks had been listening to the diminishing rainfall and had finally decided to go to bed because the storm was either wearing itself out or was moving on. In either event the worst seemed to be over.
Something that had been noticeably lacking before, and which probably no one in Harmonville had been concerned about, occurred now: Several town dogs began barking. Boss plodded along, adding this to their other problems, but Charley was not that pessimistic. Dogs usually barked at night. Until recently they’d had little to bark at and most likely had been inside either houses or sheds to avoid the fury of the storm. With the storm abating they were once again out where they could pick up scents.
Charley ignored the dogs and concentrated on seeing the public corrals, their wagon, and a couple of sheds across the alley from the livery barn.
He saw the barn first. It had once been whitewashed. The rain had heightened what little color was left. By daylight the whitewash was barely noticeable. They were making a slow advance when the diminishing rainfall turned into a drizzle. Moments later, while the drizzle continued to come down, the low clouds began to be shredded by what must have been a high wind. The resulting moonlight helped visibility.
They continued toward the rear of the barn until they heard horses in a corral and stopped to listen. It may have been the end of the downpour as well as weak moonlight, which was a little better than no light at all, that had started the horses milling in their enclosure.
Boss reached to tap Charley’s shoulder. He pointed a few degrees southward of the barn where someone just lit a sulfur match. The match flared briefly and sputtered. Charley had not thought they were as close as they were. Now he could see the silhouettes of two men lighting smokes very briefly before the match flared out.
Boss said, “They were in the barn.”
Charley nodded. He had already made the same guess. They had been inside the barn near the alley opening to remain dry and had emerged when the moon arrived and the rain dwindled to a drizzle.
Now at least they knew where two of them were.
Charley removed his hat, pulled the poncho over his head, and dropped it. Wet ponchos reflected light.
Boss also shed his poncho as they began moving again, more slowly and cautiously now. Once Boss leaned over and whispered, “You figured right. They aren’
t watchin’ open country west of town; they’re watching the roadway an’ the alley.”
Charley’s reply was curt. “Hope so. It’s about time we had some luck.”
They used the rear of an old shed to mask their approach. When they got up there and moved to the southern corner, they could see the wagon. In fact, they could have hit it with a rock. They could also see a yard or so into the livery barn. Farther in was pitch dark.
What they did not see was men, and they were what Charley sought. He wanted something better than a guess as to how many there were.
Boss whispered, “If we can get inside the shed it’ll be dark an’ we can take our time locating them.”
Charley did not respond. The trick would be to slip down the side of the shed without being detected. He led off toward the opposite side, waited, watched and listened, then inched around and moved furtively with the water-darkened old dry wood as his background. What put his heart in his mouth was that damned moonlight.
Someone stamping through alleyway mud stopped Charley until he knew the man was south of the shed, not north. He led off again. They reached the corner, hesitated briefly, then whipped around, hugging wood all the way, and got inside the old shed.
There was a big untidy stack of firewood in there. The entire front of the shed was open, as was the case with most woodsheds. They were feeling their way to avoid rattling any wood, when a man’s words were carried distinctly to them.
“They ain’t up there. Doc only said they’d been there.”
Another voice, this one reedy-high, asked how long ago that had been, and the original speaker answered shortly. “He didn’t say. In fact, he wasn’t real helpful at all.”
The reedy-voiced man spoke again. “Well, if it was maybe an hour back an’ they ain’t showed up down here, why then they’re maybe at the roominghouse—or somewhere else.”
A third voice spoke, this one deep, resonant, and drawling. “You want us to search for them, marshal? They got to be in town.”
