“I’m the closest thing to family that Bill has.”
MacMurphy shrugged again, as if to say that he took no responsibility for what he was about to reveal, and said, “He suffers from palpitations and weakness of the heart.”
“Bad ticker, eh? I suppose that can come on a person without much warning.”
“There are nearly always symptoms.” MacMurphy’s voice took on a smug tone as he added, “I suspect that as a layman, you simply never noticed them.”
Thackery mulled over what had been said, then asked, “Is he likely to just drop dead?”
“That’s always a possibility in such cases, but as long as he receives proper care, Mr. Williams has a reasonable expectation of living for a number of years yet. I hesitate to put an exact number on it . . .”
“That’s all right. But since he’s not here anymore, he won’t be getting that proper care, will he?”
“I’m sure I can’t say, since I don’t know where he is or what he’s doing.” MacMurphy blew out a breath and shook his head again. “It was quite cold the night he disappeared. In fact, it was snowing. I don’t like to think about him being out there in such extreme conditions. To be honest with you, sir, he was not one of our most amiable patients, but he was a patient, and I feel a certain amount of responsibility for his welfare.”
A faint smile appeared on Thackery’s lips. He said, “Yeah, Bill was never all that friendly to anybody. He had a way of always coming out on top, though, so I think there’s a good chance that he’s all right, wherever he is.”
“I hope so.”
“But you can’t tell me where to look for him?”
“Honestly, I have no idea, Mr. Thackery. I couldn’t even tell you which direction he went. The snow covered up any tracks he might have left.”
Thackery started to get up, saying, “I reckon I might as well go, then—”
“Just one more moment, if you will. Do you know a man named Ennis Monday?”
Thackery settled back down on the red leather and frowned.
He said, “Why do you ask?”
“Because Mr. Monday, who was also a patient here, disappeared on the same night as Mr. Williams.”
Thackery looked utterly baffled. He said, “You’re saying they ran off together? Were the two of them friends?”
“No, I’m not saying that they left together. I have no way of knowing that. As for them being friends, they were acquainted, certainly. I’ve seen them playing cards together on many occasions.”
“Bill liked to play poker, all right.”
“And Mr. Monday, at one time in his life, was a professional gambler, I understand. I have no reason to believe the two of them were close . . . but I have no reason not to believe it, either.”
Thackery sat there in silence for a long moment, then said, “I wish I could help you, Doctor, but I never heard of any Ennis Monday. I don’t recall Bill ever mentioning the name, I’m sure of that.”
“I was hoping you’d know something about Mr. Monday that might lead us to both him and Mr. Williams. But Mr. Monday was here of his own free will, too, so as things stand now, there’s really nothing we can do.”
“This fella Monday, what else do you know about him? Does he have any family?”
MacMurphy thought about it and then said, “There are two young men who come here to visit him from time to time, and he receives letters from them. I gather that they move around a lot, though, so I don’t have any reliable way to contact them.”
“You remember their names?” Thackery asked.
“Jensen,” the doctor replied. His upper lip curled a little as he added, “I believe they go by the unlikely names of Ace and Chance.”
* * *
A short time later, Lane Thackery walked into Tilly’s Saloon in the settlement near the sanitarium. Normally, the saloon didn’t do much business at this time of day, but this afternoon half a dozen men were sitting at a big table in the back of the room, drinking idly. An empty whiskey bottle sat on the table, in addition to the one they were passing around.
A couple of townsmen stood at the bar, each casting an occasional nervous glance toward the men at the table, all of whom had hard-bitten, dangerous airs about them. Tilly Howard, the plump middle-aged woman who owned the saloon, stood on the other side of the bar and regarded the men at the table with equal wariness, as if a pack of two-legged wolves had strolled in and set themselves down.
That was a pretty good description of the group. There wasn’t one of them who wasn’t wanted in at least one jurisdiction, mostly for serious crimes. Thackery had gathered them with the promise of a good payoff, after the men he’d been running with before had all drifted away.
The men were getting impatient, though, and Thackery knew that what he had found out at the sanitarium would just make them more so. They had all hoped that the search was finally nearing its conclusion. If he was going to keep the bunch together, he needed something to make them believe they hadn’t hit another dead end.
Thackery thought maybe he had an idea that would keep them feeling that way.
The men appeared not to be paying attention as Thackery approached, but he knew that was a sham. Men who lived close to the edge of death, as these did, were aware of everything that went on around them. If they weren’t, they didn’t survive very long.
One of them, dark, lean Del Bryson, glanced up and asked, “How’d it go at the lunger hospital, Lane? Did you find Malkin and make him talk?”
“It’s not just a lunger hospital,” Thackery replied as he pulled out an empty chair to sit down. “From the looks of it, they treat all sorts of ailments there. Some of the patients I saw didn’t look like there was anything wrong with them except for being too damned old.”
One of the other men asked, “Yeah, but what about Malkin?”
“He’s not there.”
That made all of them drop their casual poses and look sharply at him. Bryson said, “You told us you had a good lead on him this time. We’ve been traipsin’ around for months now, tryin’ to find him. It’s gettin’ a little old, Thackery.”
“The lead was good,” Thackery replied in a flint-edged tone. He wasn’t going to allow Bryson or any of these other men to disrespect him. “Malkin was there, but we just missed him by a few days.”
“The hospital let him out? He was cured?” Bryson asked.
Thackery grated a curse and said, “I don’t know that he was ever sick. Maybe he was. He seems to have convinced the quack who runs the place, anyway. But I know damn well the real reason Bill went there. He thought it was a good place to hide out.”
“He was right,” Jack Eberle said. Eberle was the oldest member of the bunch, pushing fifty, but he was nobody’s friendly grandpa. In his case, his age just meant he’d had time to get even meaner and more dangerous than when he’d started out on the owlhoot trail. “He hid out there for a long while before we picked up his trail.”
“So what happened?” Bryson asked. “Where’d he go?”
Thackery shrugged and said, “The people at the sanitarium don’t know. He just up and disappeared a few nights ago. Ran off into the cold and snow, maybe with a gambler named Ennis Monday, who vanished at the same time.”
A man named Bud Hawkins said, “Is that Doc Monday? I knew a tinhorn called that, and it seems to me his right name was Ennis. I could be wrong about that, though.”
Thackery could only shake his head and say, “I don’t know. I never ran across anybody by that name. But there’s got to be a reason he and Malkin went missing on the same night.”
“Maybe they’re planning on pulling some sort of job together,” a man suggested.
“Not likely. Bill never worked with anybody but professionals, like me. If Monday’s just a tinhorn gambler, I can’t think of anything they’d get mixed up in together.” Thackery reached for the bottle. “I was pondering on it during the ride back from the sanitarium, and it makes more sense to me that Malkin is after this fella Monday fo
r some reason. Maybe Monday stole something from him, and Malkin wants it back. That would explain why they both disappeared the same night.”
“The fifty grand you boys took off that train,” said Eberle. He leaned forward with an avaricious look in his eyes.
“Not likely,” Thackery said. “I still believe Malkin hid that money somewhere after he double-crossed me and the rest of the gang and took off with it on his own. But this fella Monday could have found out somehow where Malkin stashed the loot. He could have gone after it. And Malkin could be trying to catch up and keep him from getting his hands on it.”
Thackery had mulled over that theory, and it made sense to him. Now, as the other men thought about it, several of them began to nod slowly, as if they agreed.
“I reckon it’s worth checking out, anyway,” said Bryson. “But if they vanished into thin air, how are we gonna find them?”
“According to the doc at the sanitarium, Monday has a couple of young friends who visit him and write letters to him now and then. He might try to reach them, so they can help him get the money.”
“You know where they are?”
“No, but I know their names,” Thackery said. “Ace and Chance Jensen. There’s somebody else named Jensen who has a ranch not too awful far from here. If he’s related, we might be able to pick up the trail there.”
Bryson frowned and asked, “You’re not talkin’ about Smoke Jensen, are you?”
“That’s right.”
“Smoke Jensen has a reputation for being hell on wheels where trouble is concerned,” Eberle said. “You want to get mixed up with him, Thackery?”
“For that fifty thousand dollars Bill Malkin stole from me, I’d charge hell and spit in the Devil’s own face,” Lane Thackery said.
CHAPTER 28
Big Rock
Always on the hunt for news, Phil Clinton, the editor and publisher of the Big Rock Journal, made it a habit to be on hand at the railroad station whenever trains rolled into town. It wasn’t always possible for him to show up at those times, of course, but he did so as often as he could.
He was at the station today as the westbound from Denver arrived with a squeal of brakes and billows of smoke from the diamond-shaped stack on the Baldwin locomotive. The train lurched and rattled to a halt with the passenger cars lined up alongside the depot platform.
The platform was crowded. People traveled a lot during the holiday season, and quite a few were on hand today because it was only a few days until Christmas. Some were about to board and head off to faraway places, while others were there to welcome family members and other visitors who would soon disembark from the train.
Clinton stood back out of the way, a pad of paper in his left hand and a pencil in his right, in case he needed to make any notes about who he saw coming or going.
He was most interested in those who were arriving in Big Rock. You never could tell when someone newsworthy might show up in town. With the practiced eye of an editor, he cataloged the people who got off the train: families who’d come for a visit with relatives; middle-aged women traveling alone, most likely mothers-in-law here to make life miserable for their sons’ wives; single men in shabby suits, who were probably drummers trying to make one last sale before Christmas.
Phil Clinton abruptly straightened from his casual pose where he’d slouched against the wall of the station building. An old man had just gotten off the train and turned back to help an old woman down the steps to the platform. The woman was rather handsome, despite her age. The man had a distinguished air about him and didn’t look a day older than he had the first time Clinton had laid eyes on him, several years earlier.
“Preacher!” called the newspaperman as he began making his way through the crowd and across the platform.
The old mountain man linked arms with his female companion. His gaze darted swiftly around the platform before coming to rest on Clinton, who knew that Preacher was checking for the presence of enemies. Preacher always did that, no matter where he was. He didn’t want any threats taking him by surprise.
As Clinton came up to the couple, Preacher gave him a friendly nod and said, “Howdy, Phil. Still livin’ the life of an ink-stained wretch, I reckon?”
“Always,” Clinton replied with a grin. “It’s in my blood, I’m afraid. Have you come to visit the Sugarloaf for Christmas? I thought you might.”
“That’s right.”
Preacher didn’t offer to introduce the woman, even though Clinton glanced at her and then gave him an expectant look.
“It’s good to see you again.” The newspaperman chuckled. “You always bring excitement with you, and that sells copies of the Journal.”
“Not this time,” Preacher said. “It’s gonna be a nice, quiet holiday.”
Clinton didn’t believe that for a second, but he didn’t argue. “Would you like to make a statement for my readers?”
“Nope,” said Preacher. “We’re just here to celebrate Christmas, that’s all.”
He nodded again and started walking with the woman toward the baggage car. Clinton stared after them and debated whether he should trail along and pester them with more questions.
That probably wouldn’t be wise, he decided. Preacher didn’t cotton much to pestering, and even though he was getting on in years, he still had the bark on, as the old-timers might say. For now, Clinton would mention in the next edition of the paper that Preacher was in town visiting Mr. and Mrs. Smoke Jensen at the Sugarloaf Ranch for Christmas, and that would be enough to interest his readers.
He turned around and almost bumped into a nondescript middle-aged man who had gotten off the train and was headed for the station’s lobby. Clinton didn’t spare the gent a second glance.
* * *
Doc Monday hurried into the lobby and moved quickly over to one of the windows that looked out on the platform. He watched the crowd intently, hoping that he wouldn’t see Bill Malkin’s burly form.
On the other hand, if Malkin had managed to catch the train, Doc wanted to spot him and be warned.
He stayed where he was until everyone who was leaving Big Rock had boarded the train and the locomotive pulled out with the usual melody of puffs and whistles. Doc hadn’t recognized anyone on the platform.
He told himself that he ought to breathe easier because of that, but his nerves were still taut. When he lifted his left hand and looked at it, the tremor was very noticeable. The painful stiffness had returned across his shoulders and the back of his neck. He didn’t know if that was from his medical condition or the strain of being on the run from a merciless outlaw who wanted to kill him. Probably some of both . . .
Once the train was gone, Doc went to the ticket window and spoke through the wicket to the clerk.
“Can you tell me how to find the Sugarloaf Ranch?”
The clerk raised his eyebrows and said, “Mister, anybody who’s been around these parts for more than five minutes can tell you where the Sugarloaf is. Take the main road out of town to the west for seven miles. You’ll already be on Jensen range by the time you go that far, but that’s where the trail to the ranch headquarters turns off to the north. You’ll see a sign. Follow that trail for about half a mile, and you can’t miss it.”
“Thanks,” Doc said. “One more question. Where can I rent a horse and tack?”
“Patterson’s Livery is the best place in town.” The clerk gave Doc directions, then asked him curiously, “Why are you looking for the Sugarloaf? Are you friends with Smoke?”
“We have mutual friends,” Doc replied.
That didn’t appear to satisfy the clerk, but Doc didn’t offer any more details. He turned away from the window, still watching warily around him. No one seemed to be paying any attention to him, which was just the way Doc wanted it.
The way he felt now, the idea of riding all the way out to the Jensen ranch was pretty daunting. He didn’t have much money left from his poker winnings, though. Enough to rent a horse, but that was about all.
With that thought in mind, Doc left the train station and walked toward Patterson’s Livery Stable.
* * *
Many of Big Rock’s citizens knew Preacher from his previous visits. Dicky Patterson greeted him with a smile when he walked in with Adelaide DuBois on his arm.
“Hello, Preacher,” the stableman said. “I heard that you were coming to spend Christmas at the Sugarloaf. Pearlie was in here last week and said something about it.”
“Yep, lookin’ forward to seein’ the whole bunch again,” Preacher replied. He hadn’t introduced Adelaide to Phil Clinton, because he knew Clinton would put something in the newspaper about her. Having her name in the newspaper like that might make it easier for her grandson to track her down. He knew he could trust Patterson, though, so he went on, “This here is an old friend of mine, Mrs. Adelaide DuBois. I’d be obliged to you, though, if you’d keep that name under your hat, Dicky.”
“Sure, Preacher. Be glad to.”
Adelaide smiled and said, “When introducing a lady, Preacher, it’s probably best to refer to her as a ‘friend,’ rather than an ‘old friend.’”
“Dang it, I should’a thought of that. I’ve spent too much of my life way out in the high lonesome, a far piece from civilized folks.”
“I thought that was the way you liked it,” Adelaide said.
“Well, I got to admit, that’s where I always felt it was the most like a real home to me. Smoke’s ranch runs it a pretty close second, though.” Preacher turned back to Patterson and went on, “You got a buggy on hand we can rent?”
“I sure do,” the stableman said. “And a couple of good horses to hitch to it. Give me fifteen minutes and I’ll have you all ready to go.”
Preacher nodded and said, “That’ll work out just fine. One of the porters from the train station is bringin’ over Mrs. DuBois’s bags in a few minutes. He can load ’em in the buggy whilst you’re hitchin’ up the team.”
A Jensen Family Christmas Page 19