“Maybe there is. Will you answer one question honestly? Bill, are you in trouble? Are you running from anything? Is there anything I can do to help?”
“I’m not in trouble. I’m not running from anything. I don’t need any help. If that was one question you must be triplets. Now let me ask a question. Are you going to worry about that gun?”
She studied his face earnestly. “I wonder,” she said, “if you’ve changed a lot since the days when I tagged around after you.”
“What’s that got to do with it?”
“If you haven’t changed much, I won’t worry.”
“You better pick another way to judge me. I’m a different guy.”
“I’m not sure,” she said. “Well, I have to get the others to that rodeo. I’ll tell you later if I’m worrying.”
She walked out of the room. He closed the door and locked it. There was certainly no danger that his former pals would ever blow his brains out, because they wouldn’t have anything to aim at. It took real genius for stupidity to leave the door unlocked and fall asleep and then jump up waving the automatic at Holly. For all he knew, she might go running to Doc Brown to ask how you cured homicidal mania.
He went to the window and watched as Holly shepherded the Treasure Trippers into the bus. She seemed fairly calm, and didn’t pull Doc Brown aside for a conference, but you couldn’t tell what was going on inside her head.
There wasn’t anything he could do but go on with his plans, and hope that Holly would decide he was still her football hero. He watched the bus leave, and then dressed for the trip into town. He put on a flowered sports shirt, dark blue slacks and two-toned shoes. He slung a camera on a leather strap over his shoulder. The costume made him officially a tourist, entitled to ask all kinds of questions and poke his nose everywhere without exciting suspicion. He gave the Treasure Trippers a good head start, and walked down the highway into Cheyenne. Nobody paid any attention to him. Now and then he passed tough-looking characters in tight blue jeans and sweaty shirts and broad-brimmed hats, and found that they were inclined to step carefully around him like kids trained not to trample on flower beds. His tourist disguise must be good.
What he wanted to do was check on Russ Nordhoff’s address, make sure he was in town, and work out a plan for moving in on him after dark. In case Russ was out of town—and of course he might be—the idea was to case the setup thoroughly. Then he could return to Cheyenne, at some future date, and know what to do without asking questions that would leave a suspicious trail.
At the first drug store he went in and looked up Russ in the phone book. Nordhoff, Russell J. The guy had an auto repairing shop, which seemed logical. Russ had been a good mechanic when you could get him working. He went into a booth and called the number.
“Hello,” a voice growled. “Hello.”
Good old Russ. Imagine bumping into you here. He said in a high thin voice, “This is Jimmy Smith out to the Bar 4 ranch. I got a car I’d like to sell you, but I can’t get in till tonight. Are you gonna be open tonight, or could I maybe bring it around to your house?”
“Cars,” Russ said disgustedly. “All guys want to do is sell cars, never buy them. I got used cars coming out my ears.”
“I wouldn’t want too much for it. I won it off a guy and I already have a car of my own and if I can get a couple hundred out of it that’s all I want.”
“Bring it around, then. I’ll be working here till ten tonight.”
Something had happened to good old Russ. The guy must have insomnia. Back in the Air Force what he had was sleeping sickness. “Okay,” he said, “I’ll be around.”
He hung up and left the drug store. This ought to be like shooting fish in a barrel, except that Russ was a little too big to get in the average barrel. It might be a good idea to keep remembering how big Russ was, and that he had once done some fighting in the pro ring. Anybody who wanted to get tough with Russ ought to do it from a greater distance than arm’s length.
He checked the address of the garage on his map of Cheyenne and took a walk down that way to make sure he knew the route. It was on a quiet side street east of town, with no houses close. Very convenient. The garage was also within half a mile of the tourist court on U.S. 30 where the Treasure Trip party was staying overnight. Russ couldn’t have chosen the place more thoughtfully.
After returning to the tourist court, he sat around feeding half-smoked cigarettes into ashtrays, waiting for the Treasure Trip bus to return. It was nearly six o’clock when he heard it easing to a halt with a tired sigh from its air brakes. He went out to see if there were any signs that Holly had been babbling about the gun to Doc Brown.
First off the bus were Mrs. Craig, Mrs. Anders, Mrs. Cooper and Mrs. Allingham. They were plump middle-aged women who always called each other girls, maybe in the hope that somebody would think they were. Ordinarily he tried to avoid them but now he couldn’t. They closed in on him with squeaks of pleasure and began telling him how much he had missed by not going to the rodeo. The show at the ranch had left them breathless; you might think that a cowboy had tried to fling each of them over his saddle and ride away into the sunset. Other people getting off the bus seemed to be excited, too. Mr. Jorgenson— hardware, Peoria—was telling Mrs. Jorgenson with rare firmness that he thought he would have three fingers of whiskey before dinner, and for once Mrs. Jorgenson wasn’t telling him to remember his stomach. Clara Oakes, the thin girl of about twenty who usually followed her mother like a new calf, had. turned maverick and was giggling with the bus driver.
He kept looking for Holly. She hadn’t got off the bus yet.
Mrs. Craig and Mrs. Anders and Mrs. Cooper and Mrs. Allingham kept chattering at him. The reason for all the excitement, he gathered, was a handsome cowboy who had been in the rodeo staged by the ranch. Compared to him, other cowboys were not quite fit to ride on a merry-go-round. After the rodeo the handsome cowboy had apparently talked man-to-woman with Mrs. Craig, Mrs. Anders, Mrs. Cooper and Mrs. Allingham, and had talked man-to-man with Mr. Jorgenson, and had talked boy-to-girl with Clara
Oakes. He was very tall and had floppy yellow hair and either blue eyes or gray eyes, according to whether you believed Mrs. Anders or Mrs. Cooper.
Doc Brown got off the bus with Mrs. Brown, waved cheerfully at him and called, “Great show, Wayne. Should have been there.” That sounded innocent enough. The guy wouldn’t have been so casual if Holly had told him about the gun.
George M. Blakeslee climbed out, telling everybody that it had been pretty fair, for a strictly amateur rodeo, but that it didn’t touch the real professional rodeos. Although, of course, everybody knew that in the big rodeos the riders arranged in advance who was to win.
That emptied the bus and Holly hadn’t appeared. He broke in on something Mrs. Allingham was saying, and asked, “Where’s Miss Clark?”
“She was a naughty girl,” Mrs. Anders said playfully. “She stole our cowboy. Didn’t she, girls?”
“Indeed she did,” Mrs. Cooper trilled. “She’s back there in his car.”
He looked where Mrs. Cooper was pointing, and saw a convertible with the top down parked behind the bus. Holly Clark was in it. She was talking gaily to the driver, who wore a big white Stetson slanting back on his floppy yellow hair. That would be the champion cowboy.
“What do you think of that?” Mrs. Allingham asked breathlessly.
He thought it was a pretty good idea. While Holly was playing with her cowboy, she wouldn’t have the time or desire to worry about the problems of Bill Wayne. He said, “She’s been working hard running this tour. Glad to see her having a little fun.”
Mrs. Cooper said, “It would be nicer if he rode around on a horse instead of in a car. But I suppose he needs a car. After all, being a deputy sheriff—”
“A what?” Bill said sharply.
“He’s a deputy sheriff.”
A chill skated over him. “I thought you said he was a cowboy.”
“Oh no! He’s a deputy sh
eriff. He just happened to be at that ranch and he wanted to make sure we saw a good show and he was wonderful, just wonderful.”
He didn’t go for this. Holly had talked about his health with a doctor. Maybe she wanted to talk about his .45 with a deputy sheriff. He’d better try to break up this little party, if things hadn’t gone too far already. “I think I’d like to meet him,” he said, and walked toward the convertible. Holly didn’t see him coming because she was chatting too happily. He paused beside the car and said, “Sorry to interrupt, but is this one of the nights when we pay for our own dinners?”
Holly gave a guilty jump, turned to him. “Oh, it’s Bill,” she said. “Why…why yes, it is. Treasure Trip only pays for meals when we’re staying at American Plan hotels.”
“Thanks,” he said, without making a move to leave.
She waited a moment, then said in an embarrassed way, “Bill, this is Carson Smith. Deputy Sheriff Smith. Carson, this is Bill Wayne.”
The big man behind the wheel flipped a hand casually. “Howdy, Wayne,” he said. He had a drawling voice with guitar tones in it.
That sounded casual enough, Bill thought. Not as if Smith had been told anything about the .45. Smith hadn’t looked at him with special interest, either. “Hi,” he said. Now the idea was to get Holly away from the guy and eliminate any chance that she might talk about the gun.
“Bill is one of our party,” Holly said. “But he had a headache and stayed here to rest this afternoon.”
“I hope you done got over that headache,” Smith said. “Had a headache once myself, account of a bronc kicking me in the head. Warn’t no fun, neither. Sorry you had to miss our show.”
Maybe the guy had talked man-to-man with Mr. Jorgenson, but now he gave the impression that he was talking man-to-boy. It was annoying. It was going to be a pleasure to mess up the guy’s play for Holly. “From what people tell me,” he said, “your show was the most exciting thing that’s happened out west since Custer’s last stand. But I got the impression that if you had been at the Little Big Horn, it would have been Sitting Bull’s last stand.”
Smith gave a pleased chuckle. “Why, thank you, pardner. Glad the folks liked it.”
What did you have to use to get through this character’s hide—spurs? Let’s try again, Wayne. “They said when you rode you were just like a part of the horse. Which part would that have been?”
“Bill!” Holly said. Then she turned to Smith and explained, “He’s just making a joke. Don’t mind him.”
Carson Smith considered that idea as if sizing up a spavined cowpony “Only thing is,” he said, “a joke had ought to be funny, hadn’t it?”
There was an awkward pause, and Holly said, “Did you have a nice rest this afternoon, Bill?”
“Yes, thanks.”
Another pause. They were waiting for him to go away, but he wasn’t planning to. Holly said rather desperately, “Would you like to know a good place to have dinner? Carson has been telling me about some good places.”
“Fine,” Bill said. “And by the way, I was hoping you might, have dinner with me.” He didn’t want to take her to dinner, and it might be awkward to get rid of her afterward, but it was one way to block out Smith.
She looked startled. “I’m afraid I couldn’t,” she said. “You see, I…” She paused, looked hopefully at Smith.
Bill frowned. It wasn’t nice to see a girl fish so openly for an invitation. He said smoothly and quickly, before Smith could take the hook, “Of course. I forgot you have to take care of the whole party of us. Selfish of me. She’s a very dutiful girl about her work, Smith. Never lets anything interfere.”
Holly looked at him as if he were coiled in the dust making rattling noises.
Carson Smith blinked his eyes—blue, by the way, as Mrs. Anders had claimed—and rumbled, “Well, I reckon I better say goodbye then, ma’am. Been mighty nice.” He got out his side of the car and spent a few seconds rising to his full height. Probably he wasn’t over six feet four, however, if you didn’t count six inches of hat and two inches of high-heeled boots. Everything about the guy was king-size including the revolver in a hand-tooled holster on his hip. He came around the car and helped Holly out and tipped his hat and said goodbye and drove away.
“Well!” Holly said furiously. “That was a lovely performance you put on. Like a Russian at a peace conference. Did you have some reason to interfere?”
“I thought you were neglecting your job. Aren’t you supposed to take care of the rest of us?”
“You certainly haven’t wanted me to do anything for you. As for the rest of them, I’m not on call every minute. Carson asked if he could drive me back and I saw no reason why I shouldn’t accept. For a change it was nice to talk to a man with charming manners.”
“I wasn’t very charmed. The moment he heard about my headache, he had to brag that it took a kick from a horse to give him one.”
“You deliberately went out of your way to get rid of him. He was going to ask me to dinner.”
“Probably I saved you from baked beans around a campfire.”
“Oh, I don’t understand you at all!” she cried. “First you don’t want to have anything to do with me, and now you come around interfering. I would have had a wonderful evening with Carson if you hadn’t spoiled things.”
“I must say he stampeded easily. I don’t think he would even have worked up to holding your hand. Well, all this talk about dinner has made me hungry. Believe I’ll run along.”
“You’ll run along?” she said indignantly. “You can’t do that. You just cheated me out of a nice dinner. A gentleman would try to make it up to me.”
He grinned. “If you’re hinting for another dinner invitation from me, no sale. But I will do something for you. If I see a gentleman around, I’ll tell him to look you up.”
He turned and walked away. She was quite a girl. If she didn’t have so many bad qualities, and if he didn’t have some personal business in Cheyenne, it might have been fun to take her to dinner.
He located a quiet restaurant in Cheyenne and ordered dinner and then found that he wasn’t hungry. All he could think of was the fact that he had to move in on Russ in a few hours. He would stand there with the .45 in his hand and tell Russ to come clean and maybe Russ would balk and then he would have to find out if he could put a slug through the guy. Other men in the war had been luckier. They had been taught how to kill. All the Air Corps had taught him was how to take up a transport plane and bring it down in one piece.
After leaving the restaurant he went back to the tourist court and slipped into his room and got out the .45. He removed the clip and shucked out the bullets and wiped them to remove any excess grease. The bullets were big ugly things and he didn’t like the feel of them in his hand. However, he hadn’t liked the feel of the one that had ripped into his back, either.
He stayed in his room with the light off. Sunset flared in the west like the fires of an Indian massacre. He waited until the light faded, then put on a sports jacket, buttoned it, and went out trying to look like a man with a heavy dinner rather than a .45 automatic under his belt. Nobody was around, but just to be on the safe side he walked toward the center of town before cutting away from U.S. 30 and heading for the garage.
As he walked, his imagination started to give him a bad time. The window curtains of houses seemed to quiver as if people were spying on him. A cottonwood tree dangled a dead branch against the sky like a gallows. Odd rustlings trailed him down the street and halted abruptly when he jerked his head around to see what was causing them. By the time he reached the garage his heart felt ready for a carbon and valve job. He walked past the place several times on the far side of the street, studying the setup. Lights were on in the repair shop and the overhead doors were up. Off in one corner a big guy in coveralls was working at a bench. It was like old times to see Russ in coveralls standing at a bench, except for the fact that Russ was working. Back in the old days he would just have been standing.
Nobody else was in sight, and the nearest house was a block away. He got out the automatic and jacked a cartridge into the chamber. Then he walked across the street and into the shop. Russ didn’t realize he had a visitor, because his back was turned and he was using a power tool that made a high spitting whine.
The guy’s back looked like a wonderful target. His own back must have looked that way just before the slug tore into it in China. Maybe he ought to think about drilling Russ right now, while his back was turned, while the power tool was making such a racket. He had a hunch that Russ wasn’t going to talk. So plugging him now would save trouble. Why was it worse to shoot a man in the back than in the front? The result was the same. In fact it was probably the humane thing to do because it was all over before the guy knew what hit him. Lots of guys had been shot in the back and hadn’t objected to it.
He looked at the automatic and at Russ’s back. His stomach began feeling as if he were pulling out of a steep dive. It was no use arguing with himself. He hadn’t been brought up in a tough enough school. He was trained to pat a guy on the back, not to put a bullet in it.
Four
He reached out disgustedly and flipped the switch that controlled the overhead doors. They came clanking and rumbling down behind him. Russ turned. He stood there like a big startled grizzly, mouth open, eyes staring, long arms dangling, rolling his head slowly from side to side and sniffing as if to get the scent.
“Bill,” he said. “Jeez, it’s Bill.”
“I’ll take it from there. The next line is, jeez, Bill, I thought you was dead.”
“Jeez, no, I didn’t. Some guy I knew in Philly sends me a story out of the paper saying you was alive and back home and I figure papers can’t make up stuff like that and—Bill, old guy, it’s good to see you!”
He came shambling forward, wiping his right hand on the coveralls and then holding it out in front of him like a man groping through a dark room. A smile oozed onto his face and froze there. It made him look as happy as if he had broken a leg and a doctor was starting to set it.
Say It With Bullets Page 3
