“Talk. Talk! Jesus Christ! Talk about what?”
“Maybe about what makes you a damn fool.” The tone was still soft.
Junior lunged off his stool and charged up. For a minute I thought he would swing, star or no star. Charleston looked in his eyes, not moving, his face composed. In the end I think it was that very control that got Junior. It fazes you, at the moment of action, to face a man who sits calm, not angry but not afraid either. Anyhow, Junior didn’t swing. He held on to his storm long enough for a last bolt. “Talk! I’m a son of a bitch!”
Charleston nodded, to either the first or the second part of Junior’s reply or to both. “Then, later, who knows? No rule says I have to take my star to bed with me.”
“Meanin’?”
“Just what you think. Let’s go to the office.”
Junior turned slowly, like a man just reconciling himself to a compromise, and commanded, “Simon! Come on.”
Simp yelled, “Ho!” loud enough to be heard down the block, left his stool and came toward us.
I got up as Charleston did.
Junior said, pointing to me, “He goin’ to play catch with us?”
“Want to bring your sandwich along, Jase?” Charleston asked. That answered that, though I abandoned the sandwich.
We went out, the four of us, leaving a rising chatter behind us. There would be talk about where the fight would be if there was one.
In the office the sheriff motioned us all to seats after I had brought in a chair. He let himself down at his desk. Old Jimmy poked his head through the rear door, announced he had nothing to report and asked if it was all right if he went. A man who’s known everything has no curiosity left.
Charleston started easily. “Two things first, Junior. One, I’m after the man that shot your father. Second, I haven’t downgraded him. If I mentioned his deal with Ben Day, it was only in the hope it would help me locate the sniper. I did mention it, to old McNair. That’s who told you. You and I know, so do others, that the deal was on the shady side. That doesn’t matter now.”
“The goddam Forest Service.”
“All right. I’ve talked to most of the people present at the picnic, I admit with no results. I can’t even guess yet. I need your help. Let’s start with McNair.”
“Old Taller-Ass is our friend. Good reasons, but I wouldn’t tell you even if I knew all of it.”
“No need to. Statute of limitations applies to everything except murder.”
Charleston picked up a pencil and studied it. While he studied, Simp muttered, his eyes blank. Charleston’s gaze flicked to him before he went on. “Obligations,” he said. “Sometimes they weigh on a man.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“Like losing a friend by loaning him money.”
“Nuts! McNair is an ornery old bastard all right, but you’re on the wrong horse.”
“I’m not on him. I’m just sizing him up.”
Simp blurted out, “Yah,” not to second the motion.
“People I haven’t seen, Jase and I,” Charleston went on. He was making pencil marks on his blotter. “Professor Powell Hawthorne, for one.”
“Stuck-up son of a bitch. Goes for his girl, too, or part of it.”
“You know them well?”
“Not well but enough. Christ, she wouldn’t speak to you if you were the last man on earth.”
Charleston’s eyes lifted to Junior. I wondered if he was wondering the same thing that I was, even if Junior did have a wife.
Junior hitched in his chair. “Shut up, Simon!”
Simon answered, “Yo,” and went on jabbering. Charleston was looking at him.
“To me it’s not so goddam mysterious,” Junior said, hitching back.
“You mean Ben Day?”
“Well?”
“On the face of it, yes,” Charleston answered, making more marks on the blotter. “That’s the trouble. Too obvious. Whatever Day is, the first thing is cagey. Unlikely to put his foot in a plain-to-see trap. Yes or no?”
“I could see myself doin’ it, bein’ Day.”
“Sure. But you aren’t. Let’s get on. Doctor Ulysses Pierpont? We haven’t seen him.”
“That fake!”
“Oh?”
“What I mean is—what the truth is—anyone says he can cure what’s wrong in a head is loco himself. Or a damn cheat.”
“Seems you know him?”
“Some. He came to the ranch once, all polite business. What he wanted was to buy land off us. We laughed at him. Hell, we don’t sell land, we buy it, and so we laughed. Later on—”
“Later on, what?”
“Nothin’. He don’t wear well.”
Charleston heaved in a breath and sighed it out. “I guess that’s all, Junior. But I aim to find that sniper. I aim to bring him in, no matter who he is or who sets up a howl. Got that? That what you want?”
“Well, of course, sure I do.”
“If I don’t, I’ll turn in my badge. That’s a promise.”
As if reminded, he took his star off, laid it on his desk and looked at Junior, his eyes questioning.
It took Junior a minute, but finally he said, “I don’t guess so. Not now, anyhow.” Then for the first time he got my sympathy by saying, “It’s my own father.”
“I know.”
Junior got up and motioned to Simp, who might as well have been in the next county for all the attention he paid.
“By the way,” the sheriff asked, “you happen to own a Savage three-oh-three?”
Junior looked puzzled. “We did once. I guess it’s still lyin’ around the ranch somewhere, maybe in the bunk-house. Why?”
It was then that Simp sprang his fit. He came out of his chair as if goosed, shouting commands or alarms to his unseen company, and lunged for the door, knocking Junior half out of his chair.
Junior said, “Simon. Now, Simon. Easy, boy.”
But Simp charged from the office, still howling, and Junior went after him.
We sat still, the sheriff and I, and after a while, from far down the hall, heard Simp say, “Please, Junior, isn’t it time to go home?”
“Psychological,” Charleston said then. “Out of my reach.”
I doubted it was and knew later it wasn’t.
He went on, “First thing in the morning I’ll call Doctor Pierpont and ask him to drop in soon as he can.”
“About Simp?”
All Charleston answered was, “Pitiful.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
From the protection of a sheep panel Ben Day was shooting at me. I could see him through the slats, sneaking from one position to another, and could see the rifle poking through. It was a Savage .303. Against the gun I had a baseball, but I couldn’t throw it, wild or true. My arm hung paralyzed.
Day called as he aimed, “Now, boy,” but it was my father speaking. Through the mists I heard him add, “I thought you’d want to get up, son. It’s pretty late.” His hand tousled my hair.
I rolled over. “Thanks, Dad,” I said. “My arm’s asleep.” I waved it and rubbed it with my other hand. “Thanks double. I was having a bad dream.”
“Well you might,” he told me. “Buster Hogue is dead, according to the radio.”
I came fast out of bed. “So now it’s murder!”
He said, “I fear so,” and left my room, shaking his head. He would rather I pitched ball than pried into crime. On the mound a man could get shelled: history couldn’t cite a case in which one had been shot.
Only Halvor Amussen was in the sheriff’s office, working the day shift so’s he’d have the night off. He was a big man, big enough to eat hay, and I often wondered about his well-known if unauthenticated exploits in bed. It was hard to picture him wrestling on a regulation four-poster.
He told me the sheriff was attending a sheriff’s sale out in the country but had learned about Buster Hogue’s death before setting out. “A blessing, I call it,” Halvor said. “What the hell? Who wants to live without brain
s?”
“Lots of people do and seem to like it all right.”
“Uppity, are you?” he asked. “But, looking at you, I guess you’re right.”
There was nothing to do except wait for lunch and the sheriff’s return later on. So I spent some time in what I thought of as thought. Suspects? Old Man McNair, whom Charleston showed some unaccountable interest in. Loose Lancaster, who reported Hogue had taken off a hat later shown to be punctured. Plenty Toogood was out. He couldn’t see to drive, let alone aim a rifle by moonlight. Out, too, I supposed, were Blue Piatt and Oscar Oliphant, whom Charleston had talked to the night I rolled the hearse to the hospital. No need to think about Guy Jamison and his dudes. Ben Day? Unlikely. Too cagey. Chouquette? Small potatoes and few to the hill. Though we hadn’t talked to either, to suspect the psychiatrist or the professor was to need a psychiatrist’s help. In my mind it all simmered down to Simp Hogue, that crazy, lost bastard. Motive? One of his secret own that made no sense to sane men.
Having solved the case, I decided to write a report of all that had gone on, beginning with Buster Hogue’s delivery by truck. A straining of memory, you might think, but it wasn’t, not much. In my old-fashioned grade school, where you were required to memorize line after line after line of pieces the English teacher thought great, I won steady A’s without effort. Things read or heard imprinted themselves on my mind, there to stay. I can’t see any special, personal benefit in being able to recite “Evangeline” or “The Man with the Hoe” or “The Lady of Shalott” line by line without a bobble, but the faculty of remembering served me well in making out the report, which I left unfinished and hidden at lunchtime. I would go on with it later. Until after completion, no one, Charleston particularly, was to see it.
The sheriff returned to the office at 1:30 by the clock on the wall, said hello, he was tied up for a while, but would I like to take a trip later on, say, after supper? I said I would and, wondering how to spend a long afternoon, assembled my fingerprinting kit and took it home. Whenever Halvor saw me working with it, he addressed me as Sherlock or Hawkshaw.
Along the street and in the Commercial Cafe, where I stopped for a Coke, as well as in the post office and Bar Star, I supposed, people were talking and shaking their heads, saying, even those who had not liked him too well, it was too bad Buster Hogue had kicked off. A good man, Hogue, whatever his not-mentioned failings. A solid Republican who had never sought office, a man who gave of himself and his cash to causes thought worthy. For years a member of the state central committee, from which his work for sound party policy had been felt far and wide. A good man, yep, and too bad. Everybody’s loss.
Ranchers and cowtowns are generally Republican, which partly accounted for the general sentiment. Irrigation districts and wheat elevators mark the Democrats’ habitats, where the blight of government interference is promoted. Once, having been smarted up by a teacher, I asked a cattleman if the tariff wasn’t government interference. It wasn’t.
A shower came up while I walked, and I hurried on home, where Mother remarked that a beef stew wasn’t a beef stew without the rutabagas she couldn’t find in the stores.
In my room I fiddled with my fingerprinting kit. It included an ink pad, paper, lifting tape, powder and brush, but not the camera that would have accompanied a costlier set. There was in the room, in addition, a book on fingerprint classification that the FBI had sent me on being assured of my interest. To date I hadn’t got far with it.
After experiments, using a square of glass for the purpose, I lifted a couple of pretty fair sets of my own prints.
My old man came from the office a little later, and we ate. Both he and I thought the stew was damn good, though neither of us used the adjective, it being as contrary to his principles as the stew was agreeable to his taste.
When we were done, I said I might be out late, seeing as I was going on a trip with the sheriff.
“To where?” my dad asked.
“He didn’t tell me.”
“Keep in mind,” he said, “that a murder has been committed. The guilty man wouldn’t hesitate at a second.”
Mother chimed in. “Must you go?”
“Theirs not to reason why. Theirs but to do and die,” I answered, and tried to ease my mother’s worry with a good-bye kiss.
I went to the sheriff’s office and waited. It was at long light, with the sky bright but the sun itself lost over the mountains, that Charleston came in and asked was I ready.
God knows I was.
On the way to the Special I asked him, “Where to?” but all he answered was, “West.”
So we tooled out the highway and took that rocky-assed road again. We were keeping it hot, no matter how cold the trail grew. After the shower the air was newborn. Even the engine enjoyed it, purring along as if heaven had sent just the right mixture. The mountains scalloped the western sky as if scissored. Our dust rose lazily behind us and settled to rest. If there were sermons in stones, there was music in this quiet hour, music accompanied by the soft throb of the motor and the low drum of wheels against gravel. Neither of us spoke.
It wasn’t until we turned to the right off the road and crossed a cattle guard into a lane that I knew where we were going. To Professor Powell Hawthorne’s. That was where. I had identified him—and her—by asking, as if I didn’t care, who was that duded-up old gent with the whiskers who had showed up at the ball game.
There were lights in the house, friendly lights that beamed into the gathering dark. A dog came out of somewhere to welcome us. You could tell from his bark that he wouldn’t bite.
We eased to a stop and got out, and a door opened, and the professor stood there with his Vandyke and raised a hand in salute. “Come in, Mr. Charleston,” he said, “you and your deputy. It was kind of you to phone first.” As I came into fuller light, he went on, “Don’t I recognize you? Yes. The ballplayer.”
“Jason Beard,” I told him.
He shook hands with Charleston and me and motioned us in. The girl was there. She was what I noticed at first. She was all I noticed.
Though nearly every one of them does on occasion, not many women can wear slacks without discouraging masculine interest. Too bulgy in front or too broad behind, or both, they suggest unbaked bread dough on the high rise. But she wore them and didn’t. She had on, too, a bright blouse, mostly red, that showed she was female all right. Yet there was more to her than shape. There was a sort of radiance, like a dimmed light that could be switched to high beam.
“Marguerite,” the professor said, “I don’t think you have met Sheriff Charleston or Jason—”
I helped him with “Beard.”
“My daughter, gentlemen. I call her Geet for short, disliking the common Maggie.”
She nodded nicely and on second thought came to us and offered a hand. It was strong enough but small and short-fingered for the Little Leagues.
The room we were in—the lodge room, he called it later—struck me as just right. Not big, not small, well-furnished but not cluttered, it showed easy taste. It had a beamed ceiling and a native-stone fireplace in which a just kindled fire worked on aspen twigs. Against the end wall facing me was a high, solid-fronted cabinet with double locks. I saw a picture of Geet and one of an oil well gone wild. A coffee table supported books and magazines. They looked technical.
After we were seated and had talked about the weather and what-not and the professor had mentioned my pitching approvingly, he asked if we wouldn’t like some refreshments. He and the sheriff settled for bourbon and water. I said I wasn’t thirsty or hungry, either, though Geet brought in soft drinks and some homemade cookies that I could have gobbled.
The sheriff picked up and examined a piece of stone that had been laid out with others on a small stand table close to his chair. “I confess with regret,” he said in his best manner, “that I know little about your profession, Professor.”
“I haven’t been teaching for years, so the ‘professor’ is—shall we say—vestig
ial,” Mr. Hawthorne said after a thoughtful sip from his glass. “I suppose I’m still a geologist, but no longer a petroleum geologist. No longer. No.”
“No?”
“They are on my conscience, my ecological conscience, the oil fields I was instrumental in finding. That work, those findings, have enabled me to retire, and so I shouldn’t complain, I suppose, but sometimes I have the feeling I am living on the proceeds of wrong-doing.” He gestured toward the picture of the oil well gone wild. “There is a reminder of my leisure and my sin. Blessings have their price.”
Though I came of a good family myself, I was about to decide he was too fine-haired for me. Who in hell didn’t dream of striking oil?
Charleston nodded and smiled. The girl’s eyes were on him as he spoke. “I know a cattle rancher who curses the day oil was found on his land. An ex-rancher, I should say. But I doubt that stockholders and General Motors share your sentiment.”
Mr. Hawthorne dismissed them with a wave of his hand. “Now I am far more interested in the history of earth. How it came to be. How it grew through the ages. What flora and fauna it supported in the years of its becoming. So I study and think and look and now and then gather a stone. Call me a rock hound, a fossil lover, a seeker of evidence of things, circumstances, creatures long vanished.”
As speeches go, it seemed a pretty good speech, though rather airy. Good or bad, it was heightened or excused by the felt presence of Geet. No common-run father could have fathered her.
“I am done with the exploitation of earth,” the professor went on. “Much better to do what Geet is doing. Next year she will have her degree in zoology. The order of Lepidoptera is her immediate interest.”
It must have been my look of ignorance that caused the girl to explain, “Butterflies and such.”
All right. Butterflies and such. But here she was about to get a college degree when I had yet to earn my highschool diploma. That difference removed her yet made her more fetching. I told myself there was no rule against catching up.
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