Quitting Time

by Robert J Conley

  “No. No,” he shouted. “Not now, please.”

  He looked over his audience once again, then took a deep breath.

  “To continue,” he said, “a second theory was put forth. If the killings were not the work of a madman, then the only explanation seemed to be that the killer must have known all of the victims. As Mr. Colfax pointed out to me, the only people in Pullman who know all of us are—us.”

  “So the killer must be one of us?” said Carpenter.

  “Well, yes. If that theory is the correct one.”

  “So why point the finger at me?” said Chase.

  “You hated Dallas,” said Dixon. “We’ve all heard you call him an uppity nigger.”

  Samuel Chase paled and poured himself another drink.

  “Well,” he said, “what about Woody and Tyndall? I never had anything against them. They were friends of mine.”

  “What about it, Adrian?” said Carpenter.

  “The theory is—that Sammy might have murdered Dallas for the reasons just alluded to. Then perhaps Woody and Tyndall, having heard, seen, or surmised something, became threats to Sammy. To avoid exposure, he had to murder them as well.”

  “It makes sense,” said Dixon.

  “But where’s the proof?” said Carpenter. “Like Adrian said, it’s only a theory.”

  “There is one other—small matter,” said Channing.

  “Well, go ahead,” said Dixon. “Tell them.”

  “Dallas Potter’s murderer left behind a bloody boot print. The boot was a cowboy boot with a slashed right sole—about a size seven or eight.

  “That’s not very exact,” said Chase. “So I wear a size seven and a half. If you take all the sevens, seven-and-a-halfs, and eights, that’s a lot of suspects.”

  “We’ve all seen you in cowboy boots,” said Dixon.

  “It seems to me,” said Carpenter, “that we could resolve this rather easily by checking the sole of Sammy’s right boot.”

  “Mr. Colfax and I attempted to do that,” said Channing, “and the boots were nowhere to be found.”

  “Of course not,” said Chase. “I threw them away. They pinched my feet.”

  Carpenter stood up and took a step toward Chase. He folded his arms across his chest and looked down at his fellow actor.

  “Where are they, Sammy?” he asked. “Where did you toss them?”

  “I tossed them while we were down in New Mexico.”

  “The boots would have proved his guilt,” said Dixon, “so naturally he got rid of them. How much more do we have to hear? He’s the killer.”

  “I think that one of us had better go for the sheriff,” said Carpenter.

  “No,” said Chase.

  “The sheriff is out of town, I’m afraid,” said Channing, “on a rustler hunt, I believe.”

  Chase lurched to his feet, bumping into the edge of the tabletop and knocking over his bottle. Rum ran across the tabletop and onto the floor.

  “You can’t believe this,” he said. “This is insane. You all know me.”

  “There’s a deputy or something, isn’t there?” asked Carpenter.

  “Yes,” said Channing. “I believe so.”

  Carpenter turned to leave the room, presumably to follow his own advice and seek out the law, but when his back was turned to Chase, Chase reached out and grabbed him by the shoulders.

  “No, you won’t,” he shouted, and he jerked Carpenter by the shoulders, flinging him backward to the floor. Then he started to run toward the door, but Dixon was in his path. He swept her aside with his left arm, only to find his path again blocked. This time it was Adrian Channing who had stepped up deliberately to stop Chase. He put his two large hands out in front of himself and shoved, giving Chase a hard bump on the chest and sending him backward a couple of steps. By then, Carpenter was back on his feet, and as Chase staggered backward, Carpenter wrapped both his arms around him from behind. Chase struggled, but Carpenter’s powerful bear hug was more than he could take. He finally gave up and let his body hang limp in the big man’s grasp.

  “One of you men run down to the sheriffs office and bring the deputy,” said Channing.

  Chase was panting heavily. Finally he caught his breath long enough to speak.

  “I didn’t do it,” he said. “I didn’t do anything.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  Samuel Chase was manhandled down the street and into the jail, where Haskell Gibbs, after hearing the case against him, locked him in a cell. Chase shouted out his innocence through the bars.

  “Well,” said Gibbs, “I ain’t going to charge you with nothing. I’ll just hold you here until the sheriff gets back, and then he can decide what to do with you.”

  “Then what the hell are you holding me for?”

  Gibbs scratched his head, a perplexed expression on his face.

  “Questioning,” he said finally.

  Chase grabbed the bars with both hands and pressed his face into them.

  “Adrian,” he shouted. “Adrian, get me out of here.”

  “I—I can’t, Sammy,” said Channing. “Not just yet, anyway. We’ll have to get this whole thing cleared up. I’m sorry.”

  The old man was looking at the floor rather than at Chase.

  “You know I didn’t kill anyone, Adrian. Adrian, you know me.”

  “Sammy,” said Channing, “I just don’t know. I wouldn’t have thought so, but it—it’s all so horrible. I just don’t know what to think. I’ll talk to Mr. Colfax as soon as he returns.”

  Channing turned and walked out of the jail. Just as he pulled the door shut behind himself, Chase shouted after him.

  “You talk to the sheriff and get me out of here.”

  Outside, a small group of Pullman’s citizens had gathered on the sidewalk in front of the jail. As Channing stepped out, one of them put a hand on his shoulder.

  “What’s going on in there?” he said. “Is that the killer in there?”

  “We don’t know,” said Channing. “He’s being held for questioning. That’s all.”

  The citizen turned away from Channing to address his friends.

  “Damn, boys,” he said. “They’ve got that murderer in there.”

  “There’s been nothing proved yet,” said Channing. “He’s only being held for questioning.”

  But the citizens had already lost interest in Channing, and they ignored him completely.

  Youngblood and Hughes rode along side by side on the trail which ran alongside the river. They had passed the Wheelers’ home several miles back and would soon be at their camp. Behind them rode the three remaining members of the band of rustlers. They rode easy. It had been a long and hard ride, and they knew better than to push their mounts, even this close to home. They had gotten rid of the stolen cattle that would have incriminated them, and they had money in their pockets. They felt good.

  “We’ll just lay low for a while, Youngblood,” Hughes was saying. “Take it easy. If we take off out of here, Colfax will surely put it all together and come after us. But he won’t do anything without evidence. He’s dead set that way. I’ll keep riding along with him until he gets tired of this game and decides to fire me. You and the boys just stay put up here. Go ahead and pick up some strays now and then. We’ll just wait him out.”

  “Why don’t we just kill him and have it done with?” said Youngblood.

  “That would set off Lanagan for sure. No, we’ll wait it out. At least for a while.”

  “You’re the boss,” said Youngblood, but his tone indicated that he wasn’t particularly happy with the plan.

  Hughes turned in his saddle to look at the riders coming up behind him.

  “Jonsey,” he said, “is that stuff in your saddlebags safe?”

  “Hell, yes, Rondo,” said the man addressed as Jonsey. “Ain’t no way I’m going to let a bottle of good whiskey get broke.”

  “Just a few more minutes,” said Hughes, “and we’ll be passing it around.”

  Billy O. had
discovered the same rock perch overlooking the trail from which Denny Doyle had fired upon Colfax and Hughes a few days earlier. He saw Hughes and Youngblood round a curve in the trail below and, immediately after, the three other riders. He scampered down off the rock, jumped into his saddle, and raced back to the Youngblood camp.

  “They’re coming, Mr. Lanagan,” he said.

  “Get your horse out of sight,” ordered Lanagan. The other horses had already been hidden away. Billy O. hurried to hide his, as Lanagan turned to Boyd Gruver to issue further orders. “Get everyone into position, Boyd,” he said. “Now.”

  Gruver shouted a few quick commands and punctuated them with directional gestures. Cowboys hustled around the camp, moving into the tents, behind rocks and trees, some on one side of the river, some on the other. Tiff Lanagan and Sheriff Dort sat side by side on a log by the ashes where the fire had burned itself out. They waited.

  Back in Pullman, the Wheeler brothers had left Dora to do some shopping, agreeing to meet her at a specified place and time later in the day. They had just walked out onto the sidewalk when they saw the mob approaching the jail. There were at least a dozen men in the unruly group, all shouting at once. In the lead was a man the Wheelers recognized from their infrequent visits to town. His name was MacGowan, and he was carrying a rope. Some of the men in the mob still had bottles in their hands. They had apparently worked themselves up to do their civic duty in one of the local saloons.

  “Damn,” said Lark Wheeler. “I ain’t never seen one before, but if that ain’t a lynch mob, I’ll ride naked down main street at high noon.”

  “That’s a pretty safe bet,” said Spud. “They ain’t going to no tea party.”

  “What?” said Tommy. His eyes opened wide in horror. “Those men? What are they going to do?”

  “They’re going to drag that actor out of jail and hang him,” said Spud.

  “How come?”

  “They think he killed them other actors.”

  “They’re drunk,” said Lark.

  “They shouldn’t do that,” said Tommy. “Should they? That’s bad, ain’t it?”

  “Well,” said Lark with a heavy sigh, “it ain’t legal and proper. They ought to have a trial first, at least.”

  Tommy turned and started to hurry away.

  “Where are you going?” said Lark.

  “I’m going away from here. I don’t want to see them.”

  “Well, don’t go far,” said Lark. “You know where to meet us?”

  “I know.”

  “And when?”

  “I know,” said Tommy, and he ran down to the comer and disappeared around the edge of the building.

  “Tommy’s right for once,” said Lark.

  “About what?”

  “They shouldn’t be doing that. The man ain’t even had a trial. They don’t know if he done the killings or not.”

  “Well, it ain’t our worry,” said Spud, but the expression on his face belied his statement of unconcern. “Let’s go get a drink.”

  “Sheriff’s out of town,” said Lark, ignoring his brother’s suggestion. “So’s Colfax.”

  “They picked a good time, all right,” said Spud. “They ain’t too drunk for that.”

  The mob had reached the door to the sheriffs office and jail and found it locked. Someone was rattling the door. The shouting was louder than before.

  “Break it down,” someone shouted.

  “Someone ought to do something,” said Lark.

  “Let it go,” said Spud. “He’s probably guilty anyhow. It won’t make no difference to him whether they hang him with or without a trial.”

  “Well, I ain’t going to just stand here,” said Lark, and he headed for the jail.

  “Lark,” shouted Spud. “Damn it.”

  Lark was about in the middle of the street when Spud turned and ran toward where the Wheeler wagon stood waiting, but once Lark started moving, he didn’t look back. He had no idea what Spud might be up to. He rushed up to the mob and fought off an impulse to smash right into them. Lark stopped in the street just behind them, pulled his Remington Army .44 out of his waistband, and fired a shot into the wall of the sheriffs office above the heads of the mob. The shouts stopped, and the mob turned slowly to face Lark. From his position up close to the door, MacGowan pushed his way through the crowd.

  “Lark Wheeler,” he said. “What’s your interest in this?”

  “I just don’t like what you’re doing here, MacGowan. Why don’t you all just wait for the sheriff to get back?”

  “We done talked all that over, Wheeler,” said MacGowan. “Put your gun away and walk off, and we’ll just forget about what you done here. We got no quarrel with you.”

  “You do if you try to hang that man in there without a trial.”

  “Without a trial? Hell, what’s a trial? They get twelve men together to decide whether or not a man’s guilty. Right? There’s twelve of us right here, and we decided. He’s guilty, and we’re going to hang him.”

  Lark deliberately aimed his revolver at MacGowan’s chest and pulled back the hammer for a second shot.

  “Not if I can stop you,” he said.

  MacGowan kept his eyes on Lark, but spoke to the eleven men behind him.

  “Spread out, boys,” he said. The mob on the sidewalk began to move, and soon it was no longer a mob but a long line of men. Lark had to shift his eyes back and forth even to see from one end of the line to the other. MacGowan watched Lark’s eyes flit back and forth a time or two, and he grinned.

  “You can’t take us all,” he said. “Give it up.”

  “I’ll take you down,” said Lark. “You first.”

  MacGowan held his hands out to his sides, palms open toward Lark. He moved his fingers in a beckoning gesture. His eyes stayed on Lark.

  “Come on down, boys,” he said. “Slow and easy.”

  The ends of the long line eased down into the street, and it began to form itself into a horseshoe shape around Lark. Lark turned from one end of the line to the other.

  “Hold it,” he shouted. “Back up.”

  “You just got four shots, Wheeler,” said MacGowan. “You use one of them to kill me, these boys’ll be all over you. They’ll hang you first and get the actor next.”

  Lark felt a sense of panic developing deep down in his gut. MacGowan was right. He had four shots left. He only loaded five for reasons of safety, keeping the hammer on an empty chamber, and he had fired one over the heads of the mob. He was beginning to feel like a damn fool for taking on a mob with nothing but a revolver. Spud had told him to leave it alone. He should have listened. He could still put down the weapon and back off. They would let him go if he did. But he couldn’t bring himself to do that. He couldn’t shoot MacGowan while the man was just standing there, not making any move toward him, but if he didn’t do something soon, the horseshoe would become a circle and enclose him. Then they would get him from behind. MacGowan grinned again.

  “You don’t have a chance against us,” he said.

  “But I do.”

  MacGowan looked toward his right over the heads of his cohorts to see Spud Wheeler standing in the street, a long-barreled shotgun aimed generally at the mob. When Spud had seen his brother make his initial move toward the jail, he had run for the Wheeler wagon to get the shotgun out from under the seat. It was a Remington 10-gauge with two twenty-eight-inch barrels.

  “They’re both loaded,” said Spud. “Both cocked. I can probably cut all of you in half.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  Colfax had estimated that he was about a half mile below the Wheelers’ place when he noticed the black begin to favor her right foreleg. He eased up on her, but continued to move ahead. In a few more steps, she had developed a decided limp, and Colfax stopped her and dismounted. He moved around to her right side and lifted the leg.

  “Damn,” he said, following a brief examination of the sole of her hoof, “stone bruise. Hell, I can’t ride you up this hill like that,
old girl. Come on. Let’s walk.”

  He took the reins in his left hand and started walking up the trail. He hoped that his estimate of the distance to Wheeler’s place was at least close to correct. He sure didn’t want to walk more than half a mile, and he was in a hurry. Some things just can’t be hurried, though, he thought. He recalled that the Wheelers had gone to town in a wagon. Their saddle horses should be in the corral then. He would leave the black there in the corral to be dealt with later and borrow one of Wheeler’s mounts to get on up to Youngblood’s camp. Or should he call it Hughes’s camp? Damn that Rondo Hughes. From the beginning, he had thought that Rondo might possibly be mixed up with Youngblood, but he had decided not to judge the man prematurely. He had thought that it was just as likely that Rondo was telling the truth about himself. He had hired Rondo in order to help himself resolve the question. If Rondo was straight, then he would be some help to Colfax. If Rondo was crooked, he would eventually reveal himself and probably the other rustlers. It was the second possibility that had eventually proved to be true, but Colfax didn’t like it. He had developed a kind of fondness for Rondo Hughes. Damn, he thought, there was a time when I’d have thought the worst about Rondo or about any other man. Sarge has ruined me for this kind of work. Sure as hell, it’s quitting time.

  Wheeler’s corral didn’t have a real gate, just a couple of rails laid across the opening in the fence. When he reached the corral, Colfax tossed the rails down and led the black inside the enclosure. He replaced the top rail and unsaddled the black, then gave her a couple of pats.

  “Someone will be along and tend to you real soon,” he said.

  He turned to look over the horses in the corral. He had been right. There were three cow ponies milling around. They seemed just a bit nervous at the intrusion of a stranger into their midst. He intended to take the bridle and bit off of the black and put it on one of Wheeler’s horses, but out of the corner of his eye he noticed a hackamore lying in the dirt beside the fence on the back side of the corral. It had probably been thrown across the top rail of the fence carelessly and had fallen to the ground. Colfax moved over to the spot where the hackamore lay and bent to pick it up, and there beside it in the dirt something else caught his attention. He knelt in the dirt to inspect it more closely, to be sure.