Early's Fall

by Jerry Peterson

  “Cactus, that's got nothin' to do with the world.”

  “Right. I'm fourteen minutes out, going off the air.”

  Early thought better of that last statement. He pulled off onto the shoulder and clicked his frequency selector to Riley County. From the high ground of Indian Hill, he thought he had an off-chance of hitting his tower on Bluemont Hill.

  Early spoke into his microphone. “Sheriff's office, anybody in?”

  A voice came back, faint. “Go ahead, sheriff.”

  “Alice, ask Gladys when she comes in to call Thelma, would you, see how she's doing?”

  “We'll take care of it.”

  “Sure was bull-headed when I left. Intends to teach today.”

  “Got it.”

  “So you know, I'm on my way to Cowboy town. Be back in the afternoon. Early out.” He hung his mic over the mirror at the top of his Jeep's windshield. Early rolled onto the highway and down Indian Hill, clicking the frequency selector back to Dickinson County. That done, he picked up the RC bottle tucked between his thighs and chugged a swallow. He had left Keats at sunup, driven south across country until clear of Fort Riley, then headed west to Junction City where he had breakfast with the Geary County sheriff. There he worked out a deal to put a repeater on the Geary tower so he could broadcast to and monitor the radio calls from the three sheriff's departments to the west. State law forbade the sharing of frequencies, but Early and the Geary sheriff—and the Pottawatomie County sheriff to the east—called it intercounty cooperation.

  Early gazed about at the parched milo fields that bordered US Forty. Rain, he concluded, was as desperately needed here as it was at home.

  A truck appeared on the horizon, rolling his way, wavering through the heat shimmering up off the concrete. As the truck came closer, Early could see it, the snub nose of a GMC semi huffing along, a trailer behind. Before he met the truck, he put his thumb over the top of his pop bottle. The driver sounded his air horn, and Early responded with a wave. And the Humphrey's freighter rumbled by, roiling up dust from the gravel shoulder, swirling it around Early and his Jeep.

  Early coughed. He spit and, after he popped out of the far side of the freighter's storm, took another slug of RC and spit that overboard, too.

  When Early topped the rise over which the freighter had come, he saw wheat fields harvested and more fields of milo, and on the horizon two grain elevators, gray concrete sentinels arrayed against a cloudless azure sky. This, Early felt, is Kansas . . . you see the elevators long before you see the towns that cluster around them. An elevator also meant a railroad track lay nearby because wheat grown here was railed out to markets in Chicago and Minneapolis where the great grain millers had their factories. Abilene's railroad was the U-P, the same that went through Manhattan, Topeka, Kansas City and beyond to the east, and Salina, Goodland, Denver and beyond to the west, the railroad that employed Bill Smitts.

  At Detroit City, US Forty veered from southwest to due west. Early passed a star route carrier stopped on the shoulder, stuffing a newspaper and letters into a rusted mailbox at the end of a rancher's lane. And he waved to a mess of kids at the end of another ranch road, kids he knew were waiting for the school bus. A bus appeared a mile later, pulling onto the highway from a side road, a county highway—a single track of dust and dirt.

  Early spoke into his microphone again. “Ronnie, countdown begins. I'm at the edge of town.”

  “Already?”

  “Your road's as straight as a bee's flight home.”

  “S'pose you expect some hospitality.”

  “I'm drinking RC today. Like it on ice.”

  “An' I'd like a pay raise.”

  The Jeep jolted, and Early grabbed for his hat to keep from losing it as his vehicle bucked through a pothole vacated by broken concrete. Less than half a mile on, he slowed and turned left onto Abilene's only other paved thoroughfare, State Fifteen, the north/south main street of Abilene—Buckeye Street—and ahead saw what he was looking for, Abilene's ice plant. Early parked in front.

  As he came in, he asked a woman reading a newspaper, “Could a fella get a bucket of chipped ice here?”

  She, built wide for work and dressed in Montgomery Ward overalls, glanced up, then barked over her shoulder. “Archie! Got a man out here wants a bucket of ice.” She eyed Early from the toes of his dusty boots to the top of his equally dusty cattleman's hat. “Not seen you in here before.”

  “From Manhattan, here to see your sheriff.” Early parked his butt against the wall. “Thought I'd take him some ice. Got to be darn hot in that courthouse.”

  “Darn hot everywhere, but that's good for business, mine at least.”

  Early motioned at the squat red box-cooler across the room. “Got anything other than Coke in there?”

  “Grape Nehi, Orange Crush, a root beer we make here, and RC. Root beer's awful good if I say so myself.”

  A man in a leather work apron, hugging a bucket of ice, came through the door by the counter.

  “How about stuffing a half-dozen bottles of RC and a halfdozen of your root beer in with the ice?” Early asked.

  The woman pointed at the pop cooler, and her helper went to it. He pulled the cover up until it leaned against the wall. One by one, he rattled bottles along and off the tracks that suspended them in the cooler.

  “Nickel each if you tell Ronnie to bring my bottles back, dime if you think I got to run him down,” the woman said.

  “And the ice?”

  “Quarter, and you tell Ronnie I want my bucket back, too.” She took the dollar Early held out, and punched keys on her black and gold National cash register. When she pulled down on the register's handle, a ka-ching sounded and up went a dollar sign, a zero, a decimal, and an eight and a five in the window at the top of her machine.

  Early accepted his fifteen cents change. As he pocketed the coins, he asked, “Who should I tell Ronnie wants the bottles and bucket back?”

  The woman grinned, a gap showing between her front teeth. “His wife.”

  Early trotted up the limestone steps to the propped-open doors of the redbrick Dickinson County Courthouse, the ice bucket and drinks cradled in one arm. “Sheriff's department still in the back?” he asked the first person he met, a young woman coming out of the county agent's office.

  She gestured down the hall, and Early went on in no particular hurry. He stopped halfway. There he studied a huge photo of a stockyard at trail's end eighty-two years ago, the rangy, horned cattle in pens nothing like the sleek grain-fed, red-and-white Herefords ranchers in the area now trucked to market. Early could taste the dust of the Chisholm, knew it wasn't much different from the dust of the state's highways and county roads except the dust now lacked the smell of cattle and sweaty horses and cowboys three months without a bath.

  “Cactus, that's the life you were cut out for,” came a rumbly voice from the end of the hall.

  Early pushed his hat onto the back of his head as he turned to the hog-fat giant who filled the doorway. “Ronnie, when I was a single fella, yup. But I'm married now. And speaking of married, I met your wife,” he said as he pressed the bucket into the meaty hands of the Dickinson sheriff. “She wants the bottles and the bucket back.”

  Sheriff Galt grinned, the gap between his front teeth matching that of his wife. “Just like my Ruthie to say that.”

  He stepped aside and held the door open for Early. Once inside, Galt banged a bottle of root beer down on the desk of his secretary. He grabbed out two more bottles before he set the bucket in front of a small, elderly man at the counter, the man bald as a honeydew melon. “Curly, take these out to the jail and let our two prisoners have a cold one courtesy of our guest, the high sheriff of Riley County.”

  The little man, in bib overalls and an undershirt, bobbed his head. He gathered the bucket and went toward the back door that would take him outside to the jail.

  “You got bad people in your county?” Early asked.

  Galt put the crimped edge of a bot
tle's cap against the edge of the counter. He struck down on his hand holding the bottle, snapping the cap away. “Oh yeah. Caught me two boys who would be rustlers, but they weren't very good at it.” He gave the root beer to Early. “Sad souls. Feed in the jail is probably the best they've had in a month.”

  “Your judge going to send them to Leavenworth?”

  “Not if I can help it.” Galt whacked the top from his bottle. He clicked it against Early's before he chugged half of it. “You like it?” he asked, aiming his bottle at Early's, also half empty.

  “ 'S' all right.”

  “My own recipe. When I quit this damn job, Ruthie and me, we're thinking of franchisin' this stuff. We could make us a nice little bundle.”

  “Your bad boys?” Early asked.

  Galt set a stack of wanted circulars off a straight-back chair and gestured for Early to sit. For himself, Galt settled on a well-worn horsehair couch. “The rancher got his cows back, so there was no real damage done. I'm on the judge to give them boys to me for six months. Have them work for the county, sleep in the jail at night. We get some things done that need doin' and all it costs us is a couple meals a day. But you didn't come here to talk about my bad boys.”

  Early squinted at his bottle.

  “It's the murder, idn't it?” Galt said. “You finally figured out who done it, an' the old boy's got an alibi.”

  Early rubbed the coldness of the bottle against his wrist. “Tell me about the manager of your elevator.”

  “Gilly? Everett Gilson? 'Bout the most honest man ever walked God's green earth, least most folks here think that.”

  “And you?”

  “I got a doubt or two.”

  “How so?”

  Galt chugged the rest of his root beer. After a belch that rattled the windows, he set his empty on the floor. “When I heard what he told yer caller, I went to asking a few questions around. No one saw yer man in town that day except Gilly.”

  “So he wasn't here?”

  “I didn't say that. It's possible yer man could have hopped off the train at the elevator when it slowed for its stop at the depot, he and Gilly talked in Gilly's back office, then he hopped the next train drifting by a couple hours later. It's possible. . . . You want to go talk to Gilly?”

  “Better. Want to come along?”

  “Tell you what,” Galt said with a wink, “let's make it a threesome.” He twisted toward his secretary. “Hezzy, get the head bull of the town police for me, wouldja?”

  She took the receiver from her desk phone and dialed.

  “Dickie Eisenhower,” Galt said, turning back to Early, “he's as mean a sonuvabitch as I am.”

  “Eisenhower?”

  “Yeah, got some shirttail relative who was a big-time general in the war, now president of some fancy-assed college in New York City, if you can believe that. Dickie says he's gonna run for president someday and we all gotta vote for him.” A laugh rolled out of Galt that shook his body to its rhythm.

  “Got him, sheriff,” the secretary said. She held out the receiver, and Galt took it. He stretched the phone's cord to its limit.

  “Dickie?” he said into the mouthpiece. “I got the sheriff of Riley County in my office. Gilly over at the elevator alibied the man who killed that schoolteacher in Leonardville. We're gonna sweat him. You wanna come along? . . . Oh, say, five minutes . . . See ya there.”

  Galt tossed the receiver back toward his secretary's desk. The receiver bounced off a stack of file folders, and the secretary snatched the receiver from the air before it could bang against her typewriter. She gave Galt a tired look that he ignored.

  Galt leaned hard on the arm of the couch as he pushed his bulk up. “You're not still drivin' that dinky Jeep, are you, Cactus? 'Course you are. You're too cheap to buy a real car. You wanna ride in my Hudson?”

  “I'm for that.”

  “Hezzy,” he called back when he got near the door to the outside, “be over at the Midland if you need me.”

  “You got a meeting with the county commissioners at eleven.”

  “Give 'em any sody pops left in Cactus's bucket. That'll hold 'em 'til I get back.”

  The lawmen went out and rattled down the steps to a car as dust covered as Early's Jeep. Might have been green underneath, but Early couldn't be certain. What he was sure of was that Galt's Hudson Hornet was one aerodynamically designed car, perhaps the best looker of the postwar vehicles. He opened the passenger door and climbed in, shocked when he sat down that he couldn't reach the dashboard. Someone had jacked the seat so far back that anybody in the backseat had no knee space.

  Galt got in and the car sagged to his side. “Pure comfort, ain't she?” he said as he fired the engine. “Got a cousin in Kansas City who got me a deal. Then I turned around an' sold it to the county for full retail. Profit got me an' Ruthie a nice little vacation last year.”

  He wheeled out of the dirt lot, his hand out the window, Galt waving as he talked. “My gawd, this had to be some town in Eighteen and Sixty-Seven when the railroad first terminated here. All those Texas cows and cowboys comin' up the trail, had to be wild. See that dog over there?” He gestured toward a tan mongrel flopped down on the sidewalk. “Times he sleeps in the middle of Buckeye an' nobody disturbs him.”

  “He's gonna get run over, Ronnie.”

  “Not by any of our locals. Dog belongs to the judge an' everybody knows it.”

  Galt herded his cruiser off onto Northeast First Street, a graveled road that paralleled the Union-Pacific's tracks. Less than two blocks on stood the grain silos of the Abilene Flour Milling Company and, beyond, the silos of the Midland Grain Elevator. Galt pulled up in front of the Midland's office, white paint peeling from the structure. As he and Early got out, a pickup truck came up and parked behind the cruiser. A tall man in pressed tans stepped out. He touched two fingers to the bill of his police cap in salute to Galt.

  “Dickie,” Galt said, “this here fine fella is Jimmy Early, sheriff over in Riley. Guess you two have never met.”

  “Not had the pleasure,” Eisenhower said. He shook Early's hand. “You think our man might be fibbing some?”

  “We got to find out.”

  “This is your case, so I'm here as a courtesy. If it's all right with you, I'll just lean against the wall and keep my mouth shut.”

  “Eisenhower,” Early said, mulling the name as the three strolled toward the office door.

  “Yes,” the police chief said, “that name'll get you elected to anything in this town.”

  “I worked for the general in Europe kinda, several levels down as a two-striper toting a rifle.”

  “I was Navy myself. Thought I'd see the world. Just saw a lot of water.”

  Galt opened the door, and the three lawmen tramped inside, the air of the office permeated by the sweet smell of warm wheat. “Mavis,” Galt said to a brunette beating out a drummer's tattoo at a typewriter, “Gilly in?”

  She nodded toward a frosted glass door without breaking her typing speed.

  “Guess that's an invitation.” Galt opened the door. He pushed on in, Early and Eisenhower behind him.

  A nondescript man waved while he both talked on the telephone and fanned himself with a sheaf of papers. He gestured to the captain's chairs against the sidewall of the office.

  Galt dragged one over to Everett Gilson's desk and shoehorned himself into the chair. Early pulled a chair over too, but not Eisenhower. He instead did as he said he would—leaned against the wall, his thumbs hooked through his belt loops.

  Early gazed around. A chalk price-board on one wall took his attention. Before he got too deep into it, a teletype to the side clattered to life. It rattled on for less than half a minute and shut down. Weather information? Early wondered. Shipping news? Updated prices from a buyer at a distant destination? Then words of Gilson drew him back. . . . “So that's six railcars for Amsterdam. Is that firm? . . . I can fill four cars and get the rest from a couple other elevators.”

  Gilson dro
pped his fan. He pulled over a booklet that, to Early, looked like a railroad timetable. “Give me three days to get them out of here. You willing to pay for fast freight to New Orleans or do you want me to ship to Saint Louis and barge from there? . . . Barge it will be. . . . Gotta go now. Got company.”

  Gilson set the receiver on his telephone's cradle. He glanced up at Galt and reached for the man's great mitt of a hand. “To what do I owe the pleasure?” he asked with a salesman's smile.

  “A matter's come up we gotta check out,” Galt said.

  “Can I get you all a soda?” Gilson asked as he stood, the back of his shirt ripping away from the wooden slats of his swivel chair. He held out the front of his shirt, airing himself, wet circles under his arms and a wet band above his belt. “This heat, water's just running through me.”

  “You need to get yerself a fan, Gilly.”

  “Burned ours out yesterday. The Montgomery Ward store's got one on backorder for me. . . . Sodas, gentlemen?”

  “Jimmy and I tanked up before we come over,” Galt said. He twisted around to Eisenhower. “Dickie?”

  “I'm fine.”

  “Well, I'm going to get me one,” Gilson said. He left by a side door and, a moment later, returned with an Orange Crush, the bottle dripping water. Gilson took an opener from his center drawer. He jacked the top off, pitched it in a wastebasket, and drank, his Adam's apple bobbing with each swallow. When Gilson stopped, he rubbed the cold bottle across his forehead.

  “Feel better,” he said as he sat down. “Now how can I help?”

  “This is the sheriff from Riley County,” Galt said, thumbing at Early. “You remember a month or so ago telling somebody from his office that the husband of that murdered gal over there was here with you the day she was killed?”

  Gilson set his bottle aside. “That would be Bill Smitts, yes.”

  “There's a problem, Gilly.”

  “What's that?”

  “Nobody else saw that Mister Smitts in town that day, not even Mavis out front.”

  “But he was here.” Gilson picked up a pencil. He poked the eraser end at some of the papers on his desk.