by Jim Thompson
But wait a minute! Why did Four Trey have a grudge against everyone in the gang? How could he have when he didn’t know who they were? And, of course, he didn’t. No one did, outside the gang itself. He would know who they were when they all came together for the robbery or their getaway, but until then…And how would that change anything? To have a grudge against them, all of them, he would have had to know them beforehand. So, why, since that wasn’t possible…?
Night after night, I lay in my bunk and puzzled over the riddle. Probing its contradictory parts until I was worn out and fell asleep. Repeatedly coming up with an answer that was no answer.
Four Trey hadn’t been willing to let the law settle with the gang. He’d meant to do it himself, and there was only one way he could do that.
By killing them! Killing a minimum of a dozen men, practically all of them strangers to him!
It didn’t make sense…did it? Or if there was logic to it, if he did hate them that much, then why had he suddenly abandoned the plan—as he had to in dragging-up and leaving camp?
Or had he had to? Wasn’t that merely a necessary part of the plan?
The Longs had wanted to know why he’d brought them all here for a job when no more than two would be needed. He couldn’t tell them why, so he’d had to leave, and—
And…?
I didn’t know, but I knew I was coming close to knowing. The why of his grudge. The why of his killing men he didn’t know. The why of his apparent dropping of a plan he had been determined to carry out.
I was thinking, really thinking, for the first time in my life, and I could feel myself drawing closer to the answer. And finally I reached it—almost.
It was during my second week as head-shooter. I’d come in from work too dirty and sweaty for ordinary washing, so after supper I walked down to the Pecos for a bath. The river roughly paralleled the line for much of its distance, and it was only about a mile away at this point. I worked my way through the scrub-growth along the bank, then paused at its edge to look down into the stream bed.
In this season, the Pecos was more a series of pools than a river; ponds of various sizes, with only a narrow film of water running over the stretches of gravel and sand between them. Now, in the cool shade of evening, animals and birds were clustered around the pools, coming and going from them in a peaceful and orderly procession.
I saw a wolf, two coyotes, three of the big woodcats who considered the river their own happy home; more rabbits and quail and pheasant than I could count. Sometimes there was just a little teeth-snapping when a bathing bird wing-splashed water on a drinking animal. But it was just a warning, nothing more. This was the end of the day, and everyone had fought and fed enough, and now was the time of truce. Up and down river, as far as I could see, they stood drinking side by side—the natural enemies, so-called—and I watched and kind of wondered if there were any natural enemies, or whether there was ever any enemy anywhere but hunger.
I hated to disturb them, but I couldn’t stay there indefinitely, so I went on down the bank and began to bathe in the nearest pool. Some of the birds made a fuss about it, screeching and batting at me with their wings. The animals moved leisurely away to another watering place. Hardly looking at me after the first deceptively lazy glance, apparently sizing me up as a party to the general truce.
I still reckon it as the nicest compliment I’ve ever had.
When I had washed good, I sauntered naked up the sandy shore, letting the sun dry my body. It was nice to walk there, with all the life around me and none of it afraid, and I went further than I intended to. So at last, I saw it—something up against the shelving bank of the river. I hunkered down in front of it, my pulse beginning to pound with excitement.
Gray ashes. The remnants of a tiny fire. A recent one apparently, since the ashes were unlumped with dew. I sifted them through my hand and came up with something else. A tiny shred of wood shaving. And probing through the surrounding bushes, I found what it had come from.
A piece of board, the kind that boxes are made of. Just what kind I couldn’t say, since it had been pretty well shaved for fire.
I sniffed it, and I still wasn’t sure. There was a very faint odor of dynamite, but it was likely that it came from me.
I put the piece of wood back in the bushes and glanced around casually. Pecos River water was drinkable if you didn’t mind a few wiggle-tails. As for food, well, there was all that a man could want for the taking. He could live here forever, and as long as he kept his fire small and his eyes open, no one would know it.
I went back downstream to where I’d left my clothes. I dressed slowly, wondering what my next step should be, finally deciding that there was no next step to be taken here.
He didn’t want to be found. That being the case, it wasn’t likely that I could find him even if I tried, and there would have been no point to it, anyway. He was too determined. He wouldn’t have gone to these lengths if he hadn’t been dead-set on going ahead.
Yet—I went back up the riverbank and headed for camp—yet it wasn’t like him to do what he apparently intended to do. He just didn’t care enough, you know? He wouldn’t let himself care. And when a man’s like that, when he just doesn’t give a damn, how can he get sore enough to kill?
Of course, he hadn’t always been that way. He’d cared so much—possibly too much—for his wife that when he lost her…
I stopped dead in my tracks. Lost her how?
He hadn’t said, but suddenly I knew. I was almost positive. To make absolutely sure I would have to talk to someone—but not yet. Not until the very last, the night before payday. Not until it was too late for him to talk.
Meanwhile, there were other things to be done.
30
I was wearing my shirt when I rode in from work the next night. I kept it buttoned good and my shirttails tucked in tight, and I was plenty careful how I moved around.
Instead of heading right for the wash bench when I got in, I made like I was going to the latrine, then hustled on out of camp until I reached a certain clump of bushes. I got rid of what I was carrying there, caching it so it couldn’t be seen. The next night I brought in another load, and another one the third night. You’ll understand that they couldn’t be very big loads—not loads at all, in the ordinary sense. But I figured that the three loads would be enough for the job I had to do…if I had one to do. If I just wasn’t acting nutty like Four Trey had hinted I did.
I reckoned a gun might have been better, handier and safer and all. But there was just no way I could come by one, and I needed a weapon, so I used what I had.
I had a couple of cigars and a supply of tying twine in the cache. Also two eight-once bottles of jake that I’d coaxed out of the cook.
That was it, then.
And, then, it was the night before payday.
I sidled up to Wingy Warfield as he was setting out basins on the wash bench. He scowled at me, starting to tell me off with his jackass bray, but I shut him up with a five-spot and began talking fast.
“I sure owe you an apology,” I said. “I shouldn’t ever have believed Four Trey when he said you’d been dirty-naming me all over camp. That’s why I was sore, see, an’.…”
“Why, the dirty—! That just ain’t so, Tommy! I—”
“Sssh, not so loud!” I said. “I know it isn’t so, Wingy. He just did it to make trouble between us, because that’s the kind of a guy he is. Now I know you don’t like to talk about people—it just isn’t your way. But I figure you know plenty of dirt about him—”
“Damned right, I do! Why, I been on the boom since—”
“Sure, sure,” I said. “So if you could give me the word, I’d spread it around with everyone, and…not here! He’s a dangerous man, and he’s probably still got friends in camp. And if they saw us talking together…”
“Uh, yeah.” He wet his lips uneasily. “Maybe we better make it outside of camp, huh? After dark.”
“I know just the place,” I said.
31
He hunkered down near me behind the clump of bushes. Jerking his head to an offer of a drink. His voice shaky with fear.
“Uh, I been thinkin’, Tommy. Me’n Four Trey has always been good friends, an’ I, uh, reckon I don’t really know no dirt about him. I sure wouldn’t want to say anything that would hurt his feelin’s or, uh, make him sore at me, so—”
“Sure,” I said. “I kind of feel the same way, Wingy. Why don’t we just have a drink and forget it?”
“I don’t drink, Tommy. You know that. I sure wouldn’t drink no jake if I did.”
I said I sure wouldn’t either. I’d never done it in my life and I was too old to start in. Wingy frowned puzzledly, staring at the bottle in my hand.
“Ain’t that what you’re drinkin’?”
“Of course not,” I said. “It’s one hundred per cent pure Jamaica ginger like it says on the label. See? It’s right there in plain sight.”
“Uh, yeah, but—”
“It’s not jake until you foul it up with juice like the jungle-bums do. Catch me doing a thing like that! No, siree! I just follow the doctor’s advice, and mix it with pure water. Like this, see? That makes it into a medicine, what they call an antiseptic. It kills the deadly germs a guy picks up from handling dirty washbasins and so on.”
He glanced uneasily at his hands; scrubbed them nervously against his pants. I said I’d probably be dead right now of syph or clap if it wasn’t for dosing myself with good old 100 per cent pure Jamaica ginger like the doctors had advised me to.
“There’s an awful lot of dirty diseases going around a big camp, you know. And the guys that have ’em are always the ones that make messes for other people to clean up. They’ll filthy up a wash bench or a basin, and leave it for some poor devil to—uh—well, never mind,” I said. “What kind of germ-killer do you use, Wingy?”
“I, uh, I sort of disremember,” Wingy said. “You mind fixin’ me a drink of that 100 per cent pure Jamaica ginger?”
He didn’t have anything useful to say at first. Just lies, mostly, about how Four Trey cheated at dice and dirty-named people who’d never spoken anything but good of him. Then, when he was near the end of his second bowl of jake and water, he mentioned that Four Trey had been in the pen. I said I’d heard that, but I’d never found out why.
“Well, I’ll just tell you, then!” Wingy took a big slurp of his drink. “Damn, that’s good germ-killer! Best I ever used—hic! An’ here’s why Four Trey got sent up. Leastwise, it’s why folks say he was sent up. I wouldn’t want you to say I said so, because all I’m sayin’ is what was said t’me, an’ that’s not the same as if I was sayin’ I said, uh—Le’s see, le’s jus’ see. Oh, yeah. He served time for breakin’ and enterin’. That’s it! Breakin’ and enterin’.”
“Aw, come on, Wingy.” I laughed, pretending not to believe him. “Four Trey’s too smart to do anything like that. He sure as hell wouldn’t get himself caught if he did.”
“An’ what if he was drunk, huh? What if he’d been drinkin’ s’long it was runnin’ out of his ears, an’ his brains along with it? What if—hic, hup! Gimme another drink of that 100 per cent pure Germaica killer!”
I mixed it very slowly, still pretending not to believe him. Wingy said it was so, irregardless, because he’d got it straight from a guy who knew a guy who had a second cousin livin’ in Four Trey’s hometown.
“It was on account of his wife, see? He went haywire after his wife got killed an’ he finally wound up breakin’ and enterin’, like I told you!”
“Lay off,” I laughed. “Now, you’re getting worse and worse. There’s not a woman in the world who could throw Four Trey Whiteside!”
Wingy took the drink from my hands; swallowed a sulky sip of it. He didn’t say anything for a minute or two, and I was afraid I might have pushed him too far. But then he belched, the jake fumes tickling his nose, and he laughed good-naturedly.
“Is kind of stupid, ain’t it? But, anyways, that’s the story. Four Trey an’ her, they’d knowed each other since they was kids, wasn’t much more’n kids when they got married, an when she got killed—hic!—well.…”
“Y’know, it just might be true,” I said. “It’s just wild enough to be true. What was her name, anyway?”
“What’s the difference? How’n hell’s anyone gonna know a stupid thing like that?”
“Well, I just supposed it was in the papers—it usually is when someone gets killed—and—”
“Huh-uh! Aw, no, it ain’t! Not unless it’s someone important. Because no one gives a damn, right? You ’r me ’r poor li’l girl gets killed n-nobody ca-ca-cares. Jus’ throw us all inna ditch, you ’n’ me ’n’ poor li’l girl an’—an’—”
He began to cry. I patted him on the back and comforted him, and after a stiff drink he got squared away again.
Four Trey’s wife, he said (just sayin’ what had been said to him) had worked in a factory or a bank, “or somethin’ like that.” It had been held up, and there had been a hell of a big commotion, and when the smoke cleared away and the holdup gang had cleared out, she was dead. Yessir, that poor li’l girl was shot deader’n dead. An’ then Four Trey had started goin’ to pieces, an’ a year or so later he’d got sent up for breakin’ and enterin’.
“Pretty rich, ain’t it?” Wingy glared angrily into his drink. “They can’t catch the fellas that killed his wife—least they never tried no one for it. But they grab him right off f’r breakin’ into a guy’s house when he was too drunk to know better!”
“Hmm,” I said thoughtfully. “I wonder if he ever found out who did it? I mean, he might have been in prison at the same time some of the holdup guys were, and they might have peeped to him without knowin’ who he was.”
“Wha’ ya mean they wouldn’t know?” The jake was making Wingy cross. “Knew his name, didn’t they?”
“But they didn’t know hers. It hadn’t gotten any publicity, and there’d never been a trial or—”
“G’dammit, wouldn’t have made no difference, nohow! Couldn’t find out somethin’ that nobody knows, could he? Lotsa shootin’ goin’ on. Big gang o’ guys an’ all shootin’. S-s-soo—hic!—couldn’ say which one did it. On’y way t’ make sure of gettin’ the guy’d be to get ’em all.…”
The last sentence was the clincher for me. It took the babbling, drunken meanderings, the gossip of the camp loudmouth—a guy who would climb a tree to lie when he could stand on the ground and be truthful—to tie them into fact.
On’y way t’ make sure of gettin’ the guy’d be to get ’em all.…
Which was just what Four Trey intended to do.
I had been reasonably sure of it before talking to Wingy. I—a guy on the outside—had seen itand if I had then Longie had. And Four Trey must have figured that he would. So why he was going ahead anyway, one man tying into a dozen—all of them armed and waiting for him—
There was no time for puzzling out the riddle. All hell was about to pop, and Carol and Four Trey would be caught right in the big middle of it. And all I could do was be on hand to help them.
Back in camp, the motor of a flatbed roared to life, then the engine of a pickup. They pulled out of camp together, both ostensibly heading for the long run to Matacora. Either one could return with the payroll money, and the gang had no way of knowing which. But I reckoned that that wouldn’t make any problem for Longie Long. He’d know just what to do about it.
Wingy mumbled, “Gimme ’nother drink o’ that…’at…” Then he laughed, tossed his bowl in the air with a “Whoopie!” and went over backwards.
I caught him, eased him down to the ground and pulled his jumper around his shoulders. He began to snore deeply, dead to the world.
I left him there, feeling a little guilty about it, although there was no reason why I should have. He was a boomer, the longest-time boomer around. He’d boomed through every field from Wyoming to West Virginia, from Sweetwater to Seminole. He’d done more sleeping on
the ground than he had in bed and he’d been bitten and chewed on by everything that walked or crawled. And I doubted that anything could hurt him short of a two-legged animal with a gun.
32
The night wasn’t dark, and it wasn’t light. It was one of those middling nights, the kind where you can see something if you’re straining to. If you know what you’re looking for and where to look for it. So, careful as the guy was, I saw him.
He was crawling under the row of flatbeds and pickups. Remaining only a minute or so under each one, then moving on to the next one. I don’t know what he could do to them in so short a time, but you could bet he knew exactly what he was doing. Whatever was necessary to knock them out of commission. Cars and trucks were put together a lot simpler in those days, and it was easy to get to a vital spot in their innards.
He crawled out from under the rear of the last vehicle—a flatbed—and kept on crawling until he was well out on the prairie. Then, he stood up and sauntered away in the darkness.
The rest of the gang had already gone ahead of him. He had had to stay behind, unable to do his job until the flatbed and pickup had pulled out for Matacora. And now he was gone to join the others.
I stood up, on the point of trailing him, then decided that the risk wasn’t necessary. The gang would collect at the place where Carol had been camping. They would want to be sure that Four Trey would find them, and that was the only way they could be sure.
I went around the end of camp and headed across the prairie. Straight toward the place where the gang and Carol would be—and maybe Four Trey, by this time. And, then, again I had a change of mind. Because they’d probably be anticipating trouble from camp. If trouble was going to come, it would have to come from there, so they’d be watching for it. Quite likely, they’d be looking for me to blunder in on them, because I sure hadn’t been very smart in the past.