Dawn broke cool and cloudy over the town. Sleepy, and still tired, Bowdrie came down to the hotel door and scanned the street. Already there were horses in front of the saloon and the café. Then he saw Wilse Kennedy striding toward the hotel.
Chick drew back inside. Bill Culver, wide-eyed and pale from an obviously sleepless night, sat in a big hide-covered chair. Lisa was nearby, and beside Culver was Rita Mendoza, clutching one of his hands. Pete Mendoza, square-shouldered and thick-chested, leaned against a newel post at the foot of the stairs, his face somber.
Sheriff Kennedy shoved open the door and stepped in. “I heard you was here,” he said to Culver. “I come after you!”
Josh Chancy, King Cowan, and Ross Yerby crowded into the door behind Kennedy. With them were several others.
“What are you doin’ here?” Josh asked Culver. “I figured you’d be halfway to Mexico by now.”
“He told me to stay.” Culver gestured at Bowdrie. “He said he could prove I wasn’t guilty.”
Kennedy gave Chick an angry glare. “What business is it of yours? I thought you was ridin’ for Yerby?”
“He hired me. I am quitting as of now. My name is Bowdrie.”
“Chick Bowdrie?” Josh exclaimed.
“I happened to be in town,” Bowdrie explained, “on some business of my own. It seems your bank trouble and my case are sort of tied together, so I declared myself in.”
“We got a sheriff to handle our affairs,” Cowan declared. “I’ve been a friend of that boy’s since he was a baby, but if he steals and murders, he pays the penalty! We don’t need no Ranger comin’ in here to tell us our business!”
“You’re damned right!” Kennedy said irritably. “And if he ain’t guilty, why’d he run? And who could have opened that safe? He was the only one knew the combination.”
“You’ve been so busy,” Bowdrie replied, “that I’ve had no chance to report another crime. Steve Farago’s been murdered.”
“Farago?” Kennedy looked over at King Cowan. “If he’s been murdered, you ought to know, King. That was where you were goin’ when you left the posse.”
All eyes had turned to the cattleman. His face flushed. “You ain’t suspectin’ me of killin’ Steve?”
“Why did you go to see him?” Kennedy demanded. “You an’ Steve have had trouble for years, off an’ on.”
“I needed to have a talk with him. Me an’ Steve have had no trouble for months. Maybe a year. He did raise a fuss about some stock he thought was his, but he was an old sorehead, anyway.”
“Did you see Steve? Did you get over there?”
“He was dead when I got there. He’d been shot, and the body was still warm.”
“What did you do?”
“Got away from there as fast as I could. If folks found me there with him dead, they’d be thinkin’ just what you all are thinkin’ now. The trouble I had with Steve was no killin’ matter.”
“Plenty of men have been killed over rustled cattle!” Josh was skeptical. “An’ if I hear right, Farago was carryin’ a lot of money.” Chancy turned toward Yerby. “Didn’t you buy some cattle off him?”
“Yes, and I paid in cash. He wanted it that way. He said he could take care of his money as well as any bank could.”
“Just like the old coot,” Josh put in. “He never did care for banks!”
“We’re gettin’ away from the subject,” Kennedy interrupted. “I don’t see how that Farago affair could have anything to do with the bank robbery and the killin’ of Tom Lindsay.
“Bill Culver, you worked for Lindsay. Who had the combination besides the two of you?”
“Nobody.”
Lisa’s cheeks were pale, and when her eyes turned pleadingly to Bowdrie, they showed her fear. Her lovely lips seemed thin and hurt.
“The safe wasn’t blowed, was it?” Kennedy persisted. He was the center of attention and was enjoying it. His sharp little eyes were triumphant.
“No.”
“Then how do you reckon that money was stole, if you or Tom Lindsay didn’t take it? And if Tom took it, he’d have to make it good out of his own pocket, wouldn’t he?”
He paused, looking around, impressed with his own presentation of the facts.
“Now, where was you when the shot was fired that killed Tom?”
“I don’t know,” Bill protested. “I have no idea. I’d saddled my horse earlier and then went in to tell Lindsay I was quitting. Then he sprang that business about the missing money on me. He said I couldn’t leave. He was having me arrested. I told him I did not steal his money and that I was leaving.
“Rita and I were getting married and we were going to El Paso. We’d postponed it several times, and she told me this was the last time. If I wanted her, it was now or not at all. Well, I wasn’t going to have it postponed again, so I told Tom Lindsay to figure things out the best he could, and left.”
“You just went out an’ rode off?”
“That’s right. I got my horse and rode away.”
“Were there any other horses in that stable?” Bowdrie asked.
All eyes turned to him. Kennedy, irritated, started to interrupt.
“Not in the stable. There was a sorrel pony with three white stockings tied behind the stable.”
“Whose horse was it?” Bowdrie inquired.
“I don’t know,” Culver replied. “I never gave it a thought.”
“I seen that horse,” Josh Chancy said. “That horse was stole from Jim Tatum two weeks ago.”
Kennedy broke in angrily. “All this talk is gettin’ us nowhere! The fact is, nobody could have done it but Culver, and I’m arrestin’ him for robbery an’ murder!”
Lisa jumped and cried out, but Pete Mendoza stepped forward. “You touch him over my dead body!”
Wilse Kennedy started to speak, then looked again at Mendoza, knowing all too well the Mexican could give him every break and still kill him. He started to splutter something about bucking the law, when Chick broke in.
“Hold your horses, everybody! Pete, you back up and sit down. The law’s in charge here, and you aren’t helping one bit.
“I’ll take charge now. Bill Culver is completely in the clear. The man who killed Tom Lindsay also killed Steve Farago, and robbed him as well.”
All eyes switched to Bowdrie. Ross Yerby moved forward as if to speak, and King Cowan’s face was stiff with apprehension.
“You are wondering what a Texas Ranger is doing here in town, anyway.” Deliberately he scanned each face in turn. “I came here on the trail of a wanted man.”
He paused. “That man doesn’t even know he’s wanted, but I’ve been tailin’ him, and when I hit town, I had a hunch I wasn’t far behind him.
“Matter of fact, I was close behind him, but I didn’t expect there would be a killin’. That was somethin’ neither me nor the killer reckoned on. He didn’t know I was chasin’ him, and he didn’t expect anybody would even suspect him until he and his money were long gone.”
Bowdrie’s eyes dropped to Bill Culver. “The man I’m talking’ about figured on leavin’ here fast!”
Bowdrie pushed his hat back. “As to that safe, it was no problem to the man I’m talkin’ about. In the first place, he made a duplicate key to the front door, prob’ly from a wax impression from a key left on the desk. I’ve been in town only a few days, and I saw those keys lyin’ on the desk in plain sight with nobody near.
“The thief came to the bank at night. That safe has a knob that could be unscrewed from the combination lock. I spotted it when I first walked in, knowing what kind of a safe it was. He slipped a piece of paper under the combination lock, and then screwed the knob back on. That way, every time the combination was twirled, it would leave a mark on the paper.
“All the thief had to do was take off that knob, get his paper, screw the knob back on, and open the safe. He could read the combination by the marks on the paper.”
“If he could open that safe,” Kennedy asked skeptically,
“why didn’t he just take the twenty thousand and go?”
“Wait a minute,” Bowdrie replied, “I’m not through.” He turned to Culver. “How often has Lindsay had that much in the bank?”
“That’s the first time, so far as I know. He keeps about five or six thousand on hand, and that’s enough for the business we do.”
“And who knew he had more?” Kennedy said. “Culver, that’s who!”
“He knew,” Bowdrie said, “and the killer knew. I told you I came here trailin’ a wanted man. This man thought he was safe, in the clear. He figured he would still be in the clear when this job was completed. He knew Culver was leavin’ town and planned to hang it all on him.
“Only, he hadn’t left the clean slate behind him he believed he had. He thought he had killed a man in New Orleans, but the man was not dead. He lived to give a description and to tell us his killer stole thirty thousand dollars in counterfeit money.”
“Counterfeit?” Cowan exploded.
“That’s right. That’s why the bank was robbed, to recover the money before anybody knew it was counterfeit. That is why Lindsay was killed, because Lindsay found out! An’ Farago was killed before he tried to spend any of it.”
“But who …?” Kennedy demanded.
Bowdrie was looking past him at Ross Yerby. “That’s right, Yerby! You bought cattle with counterfeit money! You pulled the bank robbery to get it back, then you’d have had the counterfeit, six thousand extra, and the cattle, too!
“Two things you didn’t count on, Yerby! That man in New Orleans livin’ long enough to talk, and Lindsay takin’ any of that money before night. Lindsay was short of cash, so he slipped a bill out of your bundle to spend for drinks, and recognized it as queer money.”
“You’re lyin’! You can’t prove any of that!”
“I took three of the counterfeit bills from Farago’s body before you had a chance to rob him. You have the rest of it in your possession now. Also, you have flour on your boot soles from where you spilled it last night in Farago’s place!”
“Let’s see those boots, Yerby! Turn ’em up!”
Yerby backed up. “That’s nonsense!” he said. “This whole charade has been nonsense!” He glanced toward the door, but Kennedy was between him and the door. Cowan was on his right. “I’ll have no more of this!”
He turned toward the door, but as Kennedy moved to stop him, Yerby’s hand flashed to his waistband. As the gun was coming up, Bowdrie shot him.
Yerby backed up another step, and the gun slipped from his fingers. He slid down the wall to the floor.
“He’s yours, Sheriff,” Bowdrie said.
He took the three bills from his pocket. “These will match the ones from Farago’s packet.”
“About the safe? Was that how it was done?” Culver asked.
“It was. It’s used quite a bit back East, with that brand of safe. If you run that bank, you’d better get you another.”
He climbed the stairs, gathered up his blanket roll and haversack. For a moment he glanced around the room.
A bed, a chair, a stand with a white bowl and a pitcher, two pictures on the walls. How many such rooms had he seen? How many times had he slept in nondescript hotels in nondescript towns? And how many more would there be?
Some men would operate cattle ranches or stage lines or banks. While they got rich, he would be keeping the peace so they could make it, but it was a job somebody had to have; somebody was needed to hold the line against lawlessness.
He went down the steps. The lobby was empty. They had gone. Bill Culver and Rita to be married, Pete Mendoza and King Cowan to their ranches.
Lisa?
He hesitated. She had gone back to wherever she was when it all began.
As for him, there was a man down toward the border who had been losing cattle, and there was an outlaw killer who had just disappeared into the Big Thicket.
He strapped his roll behind the saddle and swung aboard.
Josh came to the door. “Cuppa coffee before you go?”
“It’s a long trail, Josh! Another time! Come on, Crowbait,” he said to the roan. “Move it!”
The Road to Casa Piedras
Chick Bowdrie hooked his thumbs in his belt and watched the dancers. Old Bob McClellan and his two strapping sons were sawing away on their fiddles, lubricated by Pa Gardner’s own make of corn whiskey.
Pa, flushed with whiskey and exertion, was calling the dances from a precarious platform of planks laid over three benches. Any platform would have been precarious, for Pa had been imbibing freely from his own keg of corn. Being the owner of the whiskey as well as the tin cup hanging from the spigot, he was the only one aside from the musicians who could take a drink without paying.
Emmy Chambers, blond and beautiful, whirled by Chick and smiled at him. A strand of her cornsilk hair had fallen over her eyes but she looked excited and happy. Chick couldn’t see it himself, but womenfolks seemed to think a lot of dancing. Personally, he thought, it was better out on the sagebrush country with a good horse under him.
He never had been given to duding up, but lately some of the Rangers had been getting themselves some pretty slick outfits, so he followed the trend and had gotten himself up for this dance. He was wearing a black broadcloth shirt of the shield variety with a row of pearl buttons down each side, and for the first time in months he had his collar buttoned and was wearing a white string tie. It made his neck itch and he felt like he was tied with a rope halter.
His gunbelts were of black leather inlaid with mother-of-pearl and silver, likewise the holsters. His trousers were black, and he wore new hand-worked boots with California-style spurs with two-inch rowels, all shined up and pretty.
Emmy Chambers was the prettiest blond in the room, and Mary Boling the prettiest brunette. Mary was a dark-eyed girl with a hint of Spanish blood. This town was not his usual stamping grounds so he knew none of these people beyond a few names. He was about to leave when Emmy Chambers ran up to him.
“Chick, it isn’t fair! Why aren’t you out there dancing? Now, come on!”
“Now, ma’am,” he protested, flushing, “I’m not a dancing man. I—” His words were cut off by the sharp report of a pistol shot, then another. An instant later they heard the pounding hooves of a racing horse.
Bowdrie caught up his hat and as he swung toward the door his eyes caught Mary Boling’s. There was a strange brightness in them, almost a sort of triumph. Did that big cowhand affect her that way?
Chick stepped into the street, men and women crowding past him and around him.
Aside from the schoolhouse, where the dance was taking place, there was but one lighted window in the place, the stage station next door. With sudden realization, Bowdrie sprinted for the station. He was the first to arrive.
Shoving open the door, he saw John Irwin sprawled across his desk, his life’s blood staining the clustered papers on which he had been working. His right hand dangled limply over the edge of the desk and his six-shooter lay on the floor beneath the hand. Irwin had died trying.
Bowdrie picked up the gun and sniffed the barrel. Then he checked the cylinder. The gun had been fired and one chamber was empty except for the cartridge shell.
“They got the money!” Ed Gardner exclaimed. “Twelve thousand dollars!”
Bowdrie glanced at him. “How’d you know that?” The fact that Irwin had the money in his safe was supposed to be known to but three men.
“When I stopped by before the dance, Irwin was countin’ it.”
Aside from Bowdrie himself, only Irwin, Sheriff Sam Butler, and Deputy Tom Robley were supposed to know the money was here. Butler and Robley had been at the dance. Bowdrie had seen them not three minutes before the shots were fired.
Bowdrie looked over at Butler. “You notify his folks, will you? No use doin’ anything until morning. We’d just mess up whatever sign was left.”
The crowd filed out and disappeared toward their homes. The dancing was over for tonight.
John Irwin had a cash deal for a herd of cattle, and as there had been several recent hold-ups, he notified the law that he would have the money on hand. Pa Gardner, who had seen the money, was not, despite his faults, a talkative man, yet somebody had known.
Bowdrie walked back to the schoolroom where the dance had taken place. A few couples stood around, reluctant to end the festivities or talking about the murder and robbery. Tom Robley was there.
“A pity,” he said. “Irwin was a nice old man.”
“Somebody else knew the money was there. If you come up with any names, let me know.”
Tom stared at the knuckles of his big fists. He seemed unnaturally tense. “I will,” he said, “believe me I will.”
Mary Boling came over to them. “Hello, Tom!” Then to Chick, “You’re the Texas Ranger, aren’t you? I heard there was one in town.”
Bowdrie’s dark features were impassive. “You look mighty pretty in that dress,” he commented.
She wrinkled her nose disdainfully. “This ol’ thing? It’s all right, but I’ll have prettier dresses. I’ll be going to New Orleans for my clothes. Or to New York.”
“You’ll keep some young rancher busted,” Bowdrie said dryly. “Clothes are costly.”
“Maybe the man I marry won’t be just a rancher.” Mary tossed her curls, smiling at both of them. Tom Robley looked miserable.
“Ranchin’ ain’t so bad,” Robley protested. “Anyway, Al Harshman’s a rancher, and Jim Moody’s a cowhand.”
She laughed at him, squeezing his arm. “And you’re a deputy sheriff!” she said. “But you might become almost anything. As for Al, he won’t always be a rancher. Al’s got ambition.”
“So’ve I,” Robley protested. “You’ll see.”
Ten miles out of town, Chick Bowdrie reined in the hammerhead roan, indicating the track on the edge of the shallow hole where rain had formed a pool.
“Headin’ northeast. That track was made followin’ the heaviest part of the rain, but before the last shower. Reckon he’s our man, all right.
“Doesn’t know the country too well. He’s ridin’ by landmarks. The trail’s just a half-mile off to the east, but this gent is headed for Pistol Rock Spring, usin’ that thumb butte over there for a marker.”
The Chick Bowdrie Short Stories Bundle Page 13