Dad realized of a sudden that he had worked up quite a head of steam. A smile came to his face. “You’ve been leading me on, Jase.”
After the dishes were done, after living-room talk not related to religion, we went to bed.
At 6 A.M., before her own getting-up time, Mother woke me up to say I was wanted on the telephone. Dawn had given way to a gray day. Charleston was on the line. He asked me to come to the office as soon as I could.
Jimmy Conner, who usually had something to say, gave me only a nod as I passed into the inner office. That was his way of indicating serious business. Charleston sat inside, talking to a little hard knot of a man whom he introduced as Dave Becker.
“Becker found F. Y. Grimsley dead at his doorstep early this morning,” Charleston said. “We’re going out there.”
“Had a regular goddamn furrow in his head,” Becker explained to me. “Not a furrow, though. No skin turned over. A trench-like, it was.” As Charleston got up, so did he. I saw then that his legs must have been shaped by a horse, a fat one.
“Jase, take time to call Doc Yak and Felix Underwood. Then we’ll go. I’ll bring you back to town, Becker.”
Neither Doc nor Felix seemed delighted at being called so early, though Felix perked up when I said the dead man was Grimsley. Grimsley’s estate could afford funeral expenses. Doc Yak wouldn’t have been pleased in any case. He said over the phone, “Damn your young soul, you said you weren’t contagious.”
We filed out to the car. I had a pad and a couple of pencils. I knew something about shorthand, though I seldom used it, relying on my memory instead.
The car was Charleston’s old Special, which could run like a jackrabbit and had even more clearance. It was quiet enough that, from the back seat, I could hear what Charleston and Becker said.
“And you told me you were first up?” Charleston asked.
“Yep. Always am. Been with Grimsley ten years. I was comin’ from the bunkhouse when I saw him lyin’ there.”
“Already dead?”
“Dead as a slab of lutefisk. Cold as a fish, too.”
“And you got right in the pickup?”
“Sure. Didn’t need to be told what to do, not with the boss dead. So here I am, and out of a job to boot.”
“What was Grimsley doing?”
“Nothin’. I said he was dead.”
“Sorry. Before then, I mean. Why outside?”
“How do I know? Goin’ or comin’ from the privy, I guess.”
“No indoor plumbing? A man like Grimsley?”
“None of that. He always said a flush toilet constipated him.”
The country roads had improved in the two years I had been away. The county had bought a rock crusher, which had pulverized some boulders and given a beating to others that a scraper had tumbled off to the side. A light rain was falling, and the landscape was misted so much that the mountains to the west were just hazy lines. We made good time.
Grimsley’s place had a verandahed house at the front and a helter-skelter of outbuildings in the rear. A calf, an orphan I supposed, was blatting out there.
“Who else is here?” Charleston asked as Becker led the way to the back.
“Nobody,” Becker answered. “Damn cook up and left last week, and Grimsley was scouting around for more help. We been bachin’. A little more of his grub and I’d be lyin’ dead with him. There, now. See for yourself.”
Grimsley lay, face up, near the back doorstep. He had his clothes on, the same clothes I had seen in town. His bullet mouth was open, but what struck you, first off, was the indentation in his bare skull. At the moment one glimpse was enough for me. The depression appeared long, blood-spotted and at its edges swollen and red.
Charleston knelt by the body. “You haven’t moved him?” he asked Becker.
“Not by an inch, except I felt his wrist. No pulse, and his hand was as cold as hung beef.”
Charleston lifted the head, which moved stiff. The mark made by whatever had killed Grimsley ran from front to back, over the curves. Charleston put out his hand to pick at the wound. What I saw chilled me then—four red hairs, medium long. It was as if the skin-graft head had sprouted growth overnight. Charleston put the hairs in an envelope, saying nothing.
Doc Yak drove up, scratching gravel. He was out of his car before it came to a stop. The car quit rolling when it bumped the corner of a shed, which put a small dent in one fender. Felix Underwood followed him, driving an ambulance.
Doc Yak bustled up to us, his satchel in his hand. He didn’t take time for a greeting. He bent down and looked at the wound. His hand explored it and felt the flesh of wrist and chest.
Charleston waited until Doc straightened up. Then he asked, “How long would you say?”
“How in hell do I know?”
“Dead for some time, I would say.” It was Underwood speaking. He had moved up beside Doc.
Charleston said, “That’s kind of indefinite. Come off it now, Doc. Give me an estimate.”
“Six, seven, eight hours. I’ll know better later.”
“Couldn’t be more than seven,” Becker put in. “I found him about sunup.”
“And never even put a towel over his face?” Underwood said, respecting the dead. “You could have done that.”
“Sure. I could have planted him, too, and saved you the trouble.”
Charleston was casting around, maybe looking for footprints, looking for anything that might be a clue. He turned toward me and shook his head.
Underwood asked him, “Well?”
“Might as well. The body doesn’t tell me anything more.”
“Just the old blunt-instrument job, huh?”
Charleston’s hand ran the shape of a skull in the air. “When did blunt instruments get flexible?”
“Should have seen that. Make it a blackjack.”
I helped Underwood place the body on a stretcher and carry it and roll the stretcher into the back of the ambulance. Already Doc Yak was reversing his car, though he bumped the shed again first, having chosen the wrong gear.
Charleston wanted to inspect the house. Becker led the tour. We found nothing inside but the disorder expected of a man living alone.
We were silent on the return, silent until we were again in the sheriff’s office where, after Jimmy Conner had reported a quiet morning, we sat down.
“A few more questions, Becker,” Charleston said. “I gather you didn’t hear anyone prowling around last night?”
“That’s what I told you, and that’s the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the by-God truth.”
“Or see anyone, not a shadow of anyone?”
“True again.”
“No noises? Nothing?”
“I heard a cow bawl. Or was it a calf?”
“No need to smart off, Becker.”
“No need to ask questions I’ve answered already.”
“All right. What about enemies? Did Grimsley have bad trouble with anyone lately?”
“No more’n usual.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“All ranchers got troubles, one way or another.”
“Yesterday he told me someone was making off with his beef.”
“Did he, now?”
“He pointed toward Breedtown.”
“He had a down on Indians in general.”
“And he was losing cows?”
“One now and then. Maybe two.”
“Did you yourself suspect anyone, you yourself?”
“Nope.”
“What about Eagle Charlie?”
“Him and Grimsley got along fair enough.”
“You said you’d been working for Grimsley for ten years. Did you know him before?”
“Never laid eyes on him. I was a long piece away, workin’ in west Texas and then around the Tonto Basin.”
“Mogollon Rim country.”
“Right. Different from here, but cows is cows.”
“What is your opinion of Grimsley? D
id you like him, dislike him, hate him?”
“He paid pretty good, and he paid prompt.”
“That’s all you have to say?”
“What else? Never speak bad of the dead. That’s what my old man taught me.”
“This is a murder case, Becker. Don’t you want to find out who killed your boss?”
“That’s your job.”
Charleston sighed and rose from his chair. “You’ll stick around?”
“Till somep’n shows up.”
“Do that. I advise you to do that.”
Becker walked to the door. I thought again he needed a horse under him.
Charleston sat down as the door closed. “I guess you’d better take a tour around town, Jase. Better show we’re playing town marshal.”
“All right, but there’s some things—” I began, thinking to tell him about being at the Bar Star and what happened there.
“Not now. They can wait.”
I was letting myself out when he said, “Jase, Becker knows more than he tells. We’ll have to work on him.”
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About the Author
A. B. Guthrie Jr. (1901–1991) was an award-winning American novelist, screenwriter, historian, and environmentalist. Born in Indiana, he was six months old when his father brought the family west to the Montana territory. Guthrie graduated from the University of Montana with a degree in journalism and worked as a reporter and editor for two decades before receiving a Nieman fellowship from Harvard University. During his grant year, he began to seriously pursue his interest in writing fiction. His first major novel, The Big Sky (1947), was followed by the Pulitzer Prize–winning The Way West (1949). Guthrie’s popular mystery series featuring Montana sheriff Chick Charleston earned a Silver Spur Award from the Western Writers of America and an award from the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum. The five books in the series are Wild Pitch (1973), The Genuine Article (1977), No Second Wind (1980), Playing Catch-Up (1985), and Murder in the Cotswolds (1989). In 1954 Guthrie’s screenplay for the film Shane was nominated for an Academy Award.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1973 by A. B. Guthrie Jr.
Cover design by Drew Padrutt
ISBN: 978-1-4976-5284-2
This edition published in 2015 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
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Wild Pitch Page 19