“Evening, ma’am,” Smith said, tugging at his Stetson.
“Why, it’s Carson!” she cried, as if she had just discovered something very wonderful. “And…and is that Bill Wayne?” First somebody brought a lovely apple to teacher and then she found a worm in it.
“Yes,” he said. “Sorry.”
She peered at them more closely and gave a little scream. “You’re hurt!” she cried. “Oh, look at you!” “It’s not bad,” Bill said. “I’m all right.”
“You?” she said. “I’m talking about Carson. There’s blood all over his shirt! Oh, and look at his poor scraped knuckles! Whatever happened to you?”
“A guy named Wayne,” Bill said, “bled on him.”
“I don’t think that was a very nice thing to do,” she said. “Don’t tell me you skinned his knuckles too.”
“Yeah. With my face.”
“What was your face doing there?” she said. “Please come inside and let me fix you up, Carson.”
“Shucks, ma’am, it ain’t nothing,” Smith said, letting himself be towed into her cottage.
Bill followed them inside. He didn’t want them getting talkative and swapping a lot of information about him. Holly went to work on Smith as if he had come apart and had to be patted softly together again.
“You’re sure your chest isn’t hurt?” she asked anxiously.
“His chest is all right,” Bill said. “That swelling you see is just manly pride.”
“Oh hush!” she said. “Now Carson, the way to get the blood out of your shirt is with cold water. If I gave it a quick soaking right now—”
“I reckon maybe you better not, ma’am,” Smith said, his face coloring like a western sunset. “It’s like this, well, uh—”
“He doesn’t wear an undershirt,” Bill said.
She said angrily, “Lots of fine people don’t wear undershirts.”
In another minute she would have the guy’s shirt off and be swooning over his muscles. Bill didn’t think he could stand watching that. “I know,” he said, “but Smith might catch cold wearing a damp shirt around at night.”
Holly sighed. “I suppose you’re right. How do you feel, Carson?”
“Mighty fine, ma’am.”
“But if he needs a blood transfusion,” Bill said, “call on me. No use wasting all this I’m losing.”
“It’s nothing but a nosebleed,” Holly said. “It’s the altitude, six thousand and seventy-five feet. That will do it.”
“It was not done by the altitude,” Bill said. “It was done by a fist.”
“Well, really!” she cried. “If you will go downtown and do a lot of drinking—and don’t think I can’t smell it!—and then get in a fight I don’t know what else you can expect. And you don’t seem the least bit grateful to Carson for rescuing you.”
“He rescued me by deciding not to hit me any more.”
Smith said reproachfully, “That don’t make it sound very neighborly, Wayne. It was like this, ma’am. Wayne here was beating up a soldier in an alley when I come along.”
“A soldier,” she said. “Shame on you.”
“A small soldier, too,” Smith said. “He was the kind of little feller you would think would run twenty to the squad instead of just a dozen. So when I saw this little feller go down, I stepped in to haul Wayne off him. It was dark and maybe I looked small too and Wayne come up from a crouch and hit me. I’ll admit I cuffed him around a little. Then the Cheyenne police come by and I talked them out of jailing Wayne, and I brung him back so he wouldn’t get in no more trouble.”
“I think it was wonderful of you,” she said warmly.
“Just bein’ neighborly, ma’am,” Smith said, getting up. “Well, I got to hit the trail. Might drop by tomorrow mornin’ to say goodbye before you folks move on, if you wouldn’t mind.”
“I wouldn’t want to miss saying goodbye,” Bill said. “My cottage is the second down the line. If I’m not up when you come around, rap three times on my face and I’ll know it’s you.”
“Please ignore him,” Holly said. “I’ll be glad to see you, Carson. Our bus won’t leave before eight-thirty.”
Smith ambled back to his car and Bill went to his own cottage and shut the door. He was studying his face in a mirror, and deciding that worse-looking things had come out of train wrecks, when somebody knocked on the door. He opened it and saw Holly, carrying her first-aid kit.
“Now,” she said briskly, “let’s get you fixed up.”
“Don’t bother,” he growled. “I can still feel a pulse beating faintly.”
“You’re not as badly off as you think. Now this bruise—” she touched one on his face and made him wince “—takes away that gaunt look from your cheek.”
“I’ll ask Smith to slug me on the other side so I balance.”
“I didn’t hear you deny that you hit him first. Now, we’ll prop this door open with a chair so nobody will think anything’s wrong, and go to work on you.”
He watched her spread out the first-aid kit and start work on his face. “Was that play you were making for Smith on the level?” he asked. “You’re too smart a girl to use such a corny line.”
“It was all an act,” she said. “I’m really madly in love with a gorgeous hunk of stuff named Bill Wayne and I’m trying to make him jealous and—”
“Oh, stop it. You—” Just then she poked one of his bruises. “Stop it!” he said.
“I heard you the first time. Please hold still. And— oh, look at this!”
“What’s the matter now?”
“Nothing that can’t be fixed with needle and thread.” “Wait a minute. I don’t have any cuts that need stitches.”
“I’m not talking about your face. I’m talking about the buttons on your jacket. They’ve been cut off.”
Trust her to spot whatever he didn’t want noticed.
“You ought to take better care of your clothes. What happened to the buttons?”
“They were all loose when I started out tonight. So I cut them off. I carry needles and thread. I’m quite capable of sewing them on. I’d just as soon doctor myself, too, so if you’ll—”
“I’m getting around to you,” she said coldly, and began to pat his face with something that felt like the blast of a blowtorch. He squirmed, and she said, “I don’t know why you wriggle so.”
“It isn’t my face going up in flames that I mind. It’s just the smell of it charring.”
“This is a perfectly harmless antiseptic. I only hope that poor soldier you beat up is getting as good attention. Shame on you, picking on a soldier. I suppose during the war you were one of those officers who had nice safe jobs in the rear and bullied enlisted men whenever you had a chance.”
He said angrily, “A safe job in the rear, huh? Listen, I had that lovely safe job of flying the Hump into China and—” He stopped abruptly. Why did he have to tell her that? The papers might mention Russ Nordhoff’s war record. And if Holly read the story and remembered what he had just said, the coincidence of Russ having flown the Hump might make her curious. On top of the fact that she knew he had a gun, it might spell murder to her. He stared at the heart-shaped face so close to his. She had gray eyes with sort of gold sparks in them. Her eyes also contained something else: a very alert look. She would remember, all right.
The touch of her fingers became suspiciously gentle and she cooed, “Yes? Go on about the Hump.”
“You made that crack on purpose, didn’t you? Just to see if I’d blurt out what I did in the war.”
The patting turned businesslike again. “You insist on treating me like a stranger who has no right to know what you’ve been doing. You never tell me anything about yourself when I ask directly. I have to find out some way, don’t I? There. I think that fixes you up. By morning you won’t look any worse than usual.” She stood up.
She walked out with a lilt in her step and with the silly tuft of bright hair at the back of her head wagging impudently. Definitely a dame to wor
ry about.
He closed the door and switched out the light and waited in the darkness for everybody in the tourist court to go to bed. He should have used the time for thinking about his many problems but his head was acting like a bell and thoughts merely clanged around inside it like clappers. At twelve-thirty every cottage was dark. He sneaked outside and worked his way through shadows to U.S. 30 and walked down it to the little park and recovered his .45 and brought it back. After the other four guys learned what had happened to Russ, he might need it badly and very fast. He repacked it in his suitcase. That wasn’t really dangerous; if the cops worked up to searching his luggage, a gun more or less wouldn’t matter much.
He started to take off the sports jacket and his fingers touched the stubs of threads where the buttons had been. He paused, forced his head to stop chiming and to think. Holly knew the buttons were missing. Suppose he never wore the jacket again. And suppose
Holly read in a newspaper about a Cheyenne murder case in which an important clue was a coat button. Would she make a mountain out of that molehill? Maybe, maybe not. The safe thing to assume, however, was that she would make a whole range of Himalayas— Hump, for short—out of it.
After making sure his window curtains were tightly closed he switched on the light and got out needle and thread. He had a brown coat with buttons nearly the right size and shade. Holly had never seen the sports jacket before tonight, and fortunately it didn’t have any sleeve buttons. If he switched buttons from the brown suit she would have no reason to question his statement that the buttons on his jacket had been loose and he had cut them off. Quite a girl, Holly. It was remarkable how she had noticed that they had been cut off, not ripped off. It—
A chill the size of a Wyoming blizzard hit him. Now wait. That middle button must have been ripped off. He picked up the jacket with frostbitten fingers and studied it. The threads of the lowest button had been cut cleanly and of course he had done it. The threads of the top button had been cut cleanly and he had done it. But the threads of the middle button had been…had been…
All right, Wayne, face it. They were cut too. Clean and sharp and straight across. You don’t lose a button that way in a brawl. Ragged ends are left. Maybe a bit of fabric is torn. And yet he was ready to swear he had the button when he entered the auto repair shop and didn’t have it when he left. What was the answer?
He pictured himself once more diving for the .45, hitting the floor groggily, grabbing the gun left-handed, clawing at the safety catch, blacking out. Five seconds before making the dive his right arm had been so numb he couldn’t use it. Did the fingers at the end of that right arm suddenly get clever enough to flick off a safety catch? As he blacked out did he really have beginner’s luck shooting left-handed? Did the bullet really lift Russ up and back and drop him eight feet away? All that could have happened. Anything was possible.
It was also possible that somebody who didn’t like Russ very much had spied on them. And maybe just as the fight ended the guy walked in with a gun and put it on Russ and leaned down and got the .45 and then coolly shot Russ with it. What sweeter alibi could a man want? Then, just in case the guy Russ had beaten up recovered before the police arrived, the killer reached down and cut off a button of the sports jacket to leave as evidence. Anything was possible. It was a flimsy case, though. He wouldn’t want to try to prove it in court. You could say it hung by a thread.
He began cutting off the coat buttons and sewing them on the sports jacket. It took a long time because his fingers kept shaking. It would relieve his mind some to think that he hadn’t killed Russ. But he didn’t get a very good bargain when he traded in his sense of guilt; in its place, he bought himself a chance to worry about who did the killing. Russ had enemies, all right. Any guy who owns a share of a hot half-million bucks has enemies. Maybe Russ had some others around Cheyenne. But, for the time being, it was enough to list the half-million-dollar ones: Ken in Salt Lake City and Frankie in Reno and Cappy in Frisco and Domenic in L.A.
Russ had been willing to see the other four get knocked off. Maybe one of the others felt the same way and was doing more about it than just hoping. It might be worthwhile to remember his hunch that, ever since leaving Philadelphia, somebody had been tailing him.
Six
The next morning he was up early, shaved what he was using for a face these days, and walked to a roadside diner. The bus was taking some of the other tourists downtown for breakfast but he didn’t want to join them and have a post mortem held on his appearance right in the middle of Cheyenne. He climbed onto a stool at the counter and ordered bacon and eggs. The man on his right was reading a newspaper. There might be a story in it about the murder, and Bill leaned closer to take a look. But the newspaper was folded so that only part of two columns of the front page were showing.
The man peered at him warily: an average American greeting the new day as if it had come to the door to collect a bill.
Next to him the average American suddenly snapped the paper all the way open. Eight columns of black headline exploded into sight:
MYSTERY KILLER SHOOTS GARAGEMAN.
Then the guy refolded his paper and got up slowly. Bill trembled.
The average American looked at him sharply, as if he had been reading a few thoughts along with the news. “Here,” he said. “You want it? Death and taxes, death and taxes, that’s all you get in the paper these days. And the Giants dropped a double-header.” He shoved the paper into Bill’s sweating hand and walked out.
This called for a little privacy. Bill moved his stuff to an empty booth. His nerves were in pretty good shape; as he made the switch not more than half the coffee spilled into the saucer. He read the story. Shot through the heart… evidence of terrific fight… robbery apparently not motive…body discovered shortly before midnight by so-and-so returning to his home a block away and noting lights still on…somebody heard shot about 9:45 P.M. but it being Cheyenne on Saturday night thought it was just a shot…Sheriff’s office investigating and—
Sheriff’s office. Apparently Russ’s garage was outside city limits. That meant Deputy Sheriff Carson Smith might be working on the case. Coaxing Smith to beat him up had been a good investment; he had a gilt-edged alibi.
He finished breakfast and went back to the tourist court, leaving the newspaper in the diner. The fewer copies that came within range of Holly Clark, the better. As he packed his things he decided to wear the sports jacket, so that Holly would have no reason to think about the buttons that had been missing last night. Then he went outside to wait for the bus to return from the breakfast trip downtown.
He was standing by the bus when a voice drawled, “Howdy there, Wayne. Yuh look right good today. Feel ready to lick yore weight in small boys again?”
Bill looked around. There was Deputy Sheriff Carson Smith, on leave of absence from a dude ranch advertisement. “Hello,” he said. “Did your knuckles recover from that severe bandaging they got here last night?”
Smith blew on his knuckles and polished them on his two-toned shirt and admired the luster. “Why shucks, I didn’t begrudge the little lady a chance to fix me up. She around?”
“You must be death on rustlers if you chase them the way you chase dames. Don’t, you ever have any work to do?”
“Well now, we got a little killin’ to clean up today, but I don’t reckon it’ll take too long. I got time to wait.” He took a coin from his pocket and flipped it idly and caught it. “Why don’t you hop on the bus?” he said. “I don’t need yore help in talking to the little lady.”
“I’ll toss you for it. Heads I stay out of your way. Tails you gallop off in your convertible. Flip your coin and we’ll see.”
“This?” Smith said. “This ain’t no coin, pardner. Look.” He thrust out his hand.
Bill stared at the object. It was as nice a thing to have within range of his sports jacket as a grenade with the pin out. It was the missing button. When you looked at it next to the sports jacket you saw that it matc
hed the fabric much better than the set he had sewed on last night. That wasn’t the sort of thing the average man was likely to notice. A girl would, though. Especially Holly.
He wet his lips, which felt as if he had been staggering across the plains looking for a waterhole, and said, “What’s it supposed to be, a lucky piece?”
“No-o. I reckon you could call it an unlucky piece. Feller done the killin’ last night left it behind. That’s unlucky for him.”
There was a queer glint in Smith’s eyes, and for a moment Bill thought it meant something. Maybe the guy was hiding some brains behind that wide-open-spaces look on his face. That would be bad. It might mean that Smith was suspicious of him and was setting a trap. If he fell into any trap Smith set, he was cooked. He wouldn’t be able to look for any breaks, such as talking the guy into checking whether Ken or Frankie or Cappy or Domenic had done the killing.
He said carefully, “I should think you’d be out looking for your murderer, instead of standing around here.”
“I am looking. Can’t hardly tell where he might be. One place is as good as another. It—why, hello there, ma’am.” He swung around and smiled at Holly.
“Hello, Carson,” she said softly.
Smith gave the button a final flip and put it in his pocket. Bill started catching up on some of the breaths he had skipped in the last minute. That glint in Smith’s eyes hadn’t meant anything. Obviously all the guy had on his mind was Holly; the way he stared at the girl you might think he had just struck gold. Smith couldn’t seem to find any words to express the wonder of it all.
Under any other circumstances Bill might have walked off and let them coo at each other, but he couldn’t take the chance that they might trade notes about guns and killings. He said, “Would you like me to make conversation? Reckon it’s a nice day, ma’am. It certainly is, Carson. Yore looking’ mighty pert this mornin’, ma’am. You look glorious yourself, Carson. Why, thank you, ma’am, that makes pore little ugly me feel right good. I—”
Say It With Bullets Page 6
