by Bill Crider
He needed sleep, but he would wait for a report from Long and Barson. He hoped the report would be a good one. Ryan had caused him more than enough trouble the first time they had tangled. Where the devil had he been all those years, anyway?
Kane thought idly that maybe they had killed Ryan the first time. This new Ryan was probably just a ghost who had come back to haunt him and to punish him for the death of his sister.
Not being a man usually given to whimsical thoughts, Kane almost had to laugh at himself. But at the same time, he caught himself taking a nervous glance over his shoulder at the darkened corners of the room to see if there was anything lurking back there.
He forced his head around and looked down at the top of the desk where he was sitting. Ghosts! The thought was absurd. Kane wondered if he was getting old.
Finally he dozed in his chair.
A scraping sound in the room awakened him.
He sat up straight in the chair and opened his eyes. What he saw was not a ghost. It was Barson and Long, dripping and covered in mud. Long's face was almost unrecognizable, and Barson had a vague look in his eyes, as if they were focused on something no one else could see.
"My God," Kane said, looking at them. "What happened to you?"
Long had been thinking for several minutes about how to answer that question, which he was certain was inevitable. "Ryan happened to us," he said.
"Ryan?" Kane said. His voice was mild, but in the lamplight Long could see the color rising to Kane's face.
"He took us," Long said. He had thought of and rejected a couple of possible lies and decided to tell the truth.
"It wasn't my fault," he added. "Billy helped him." Part of the truth, anyway. Not all of it.
"Billy?" Kane's disbelief was plain.
"You think a one-armed man could whip both of us?" Long said. "Look at Barson. Billy pistol-whipped the hell out of him."
At the mention of pistol-whipping, Barson's fingers went to his head. Kane saw the throbbing knot.
"Why would Billy help Ryan?" The disbelief was gone, but the tone was colder than ice in January.
"I don't know," Long said. "You think he don't trust us?"
"Would he have a reason?"
"Not one that I can think of," Long said. His beady black eyes stared straight at Kane, though he wanted to cut them toward Barson to see if the big man was about to blurt out anything. He needn't have worried. Barson was still generally unaware of what was going on.
Kane didn't try to stare Long down. He knew that Long would win any such contest that they engaged in. Like a snake, Long never seemed to blink.
"What would Ryan be wanting with Billy?" Kane said.
"I don't know that, either," Long said. "Not unless he just wants to cheat the state and kill him himself."
"Or unless he thinks Billy knows something that didn't come out at the trial. Do you think that could be it?"
Again their eyes locked briefly. "Don't have any idea," Long said.
"He could have been saving Billy from us just to be sure he got hanged this morning," Kane said.
"That could be it, all right," Long said.
Barson said nothing during any of this. Now and then a low moan would escape him.
"Well," Kane said, "no matter what, we've got to find out. You've got time for a few hours' sleep. Get Barson to bed and take a short rest. I want you to go to town early in the morning and find out what's happening. See what people are saying. Try to find out what Sheriff Bass has on his mind. Then let me know."
Long didn't think much of his assignment, but Barson wasn't going to be up to it, and McGee had been shot. "How's McGee?" he said. It wasn't that he cared. He was just curious.
"He'll be all right," Kane said. "But he won't be up to going into town by morning. That's your job."
"I wasn't tryin' to get out of it," Long said. "What if I should find out that Ryan brought Billy back and they're goin' right ahead with the hangin'?"
"That better not happen without your getting back here to me and telling me," Kane said. His white face twisted in the lamplight. "If Ryan does try something like that, we'll have to stop it."
Thinking about McGee being wounded and Barson being addled, Long said, "How?"
"We'll worry about that when the time comes," Kane told him.
Ryan had no intention of going back to town, at least not until after dark. He thought they could risk part of the day in the cave, and then they would have to start moving around, avoiding both the sheriff's men and Kane's.
He spent most of the morning questioning Billy about what had happened the day of Sally's murder, but he found out nothing more than he already knew.
Billy had gone to the shack to see Sally. She was dead when he arrived.
Stricken with grief—and, Ryan surmised, a great deal of fear—Billy had lingered too long in the shack, not knowing where to go or what to do. He had been there when Congrady arrived.
"I tried to explain to him," Billy said. "But he wouldn't listen. He was like a crazy man, yelling at me about how I'd killed her and now he was gonna kill me. He nearly did, I guess. I think I hit him back a time or two, but nothin' like what he did to me. When he finished with me, he hauled me back to the jail and told the sheriff that I'd killed your sister."
"You know a man named Jack Crabtree?" Ryan said.
"He works at the stables," Billy said. "What's he got to do with this?"
"I'm not sure," Ryan said. "I wondered if he knew Congrady."
"I don't know about that. He knew Sally, though.”
“I thought he was a married man," Ryan said.
"He is, I guess. If you call that married. He's fooled around some, if you know what I mean."
Ryan thought he knew.
"Anyway, that's not the way he was interested in Sally. I mean, he might have been, but I didn't know about it."
"What way was he interested, then?" Ryan said.
"Well, Crabtree might not care much about his wife, but he sure likes that old yeller dog of his. It got sick one time and wandered off. He like to have worn out ever'body in town askin' if they'd seen his dog and if they thought it could be dead or if they knew where it could have got off to."
Billy smiled, as if at a memory. "You know how Sally liked dogs?"
"Yeah," Ryan said.
"Turns out she was the one with Crabtree's dog. It had wandered clear out to her shack, sick as could be, weak and straggly, tannin' at both ends. Sally found it and nursed it, gave it some kind of medicine she made up. It got well, and she took it into town and gave it back to Jack. You never saw anybody so happy over such a sorry dog as he was over that one."
It was still cool in the cave, but the air outside was sizzling. The mud had dried on Ryan's clothes and was beginning to crack and flake off. He was sitting on the ground, with his back against the cave wall. It wasn't comfortable, but it was better than standing all day.
"She always did like to take in strays," Ryan said. He wondered if Crabtree had gone to see her to thank her for what she'd done. He wondered if Crabtree had ever tried to develop the relationship.
"She sure did," Billy said. "She even liked me."
Tularosa was buzzing when Long got to town. He had changed clothes and made himself presentable, not wanting to look like he'd been wading around in the mud all night, but there was nothing he could do about his nose, which now hurt worse than ever. It looked worse, too.
George Maze was one of the first people he saw. "Damn, Long," George said. "What happened to you?"
"I ran into a door," Long said. The way he looked, Maze didn't question him. "What time's the hangin'?"
"You haven't heard?" Maze said.
"Heard what? I come to town for the hangin'."
"Hell," George said. "You're way behind. Somebody broke Billy Kane out of the jail last night."
Long was not much of an actor, but he tried to pretend surprise. "I'll be damned," he said. "Who was it?"
"Tell you the truth, I d
on't think they know yet. Sheriff tried to get up a posse last night, but nobody'd go out. Storm was too bad. So he and a few men are out this morning. They won't find much, though, I bet. That storm we had probably wiped out any trace of a track."
That was something Long hadn't even thought about, but he was grateful for the news.
Maze looked shrewdly at Long's nose. "Some folks are saying that your boss was behind things."
Long just looked at him.
"Of course, I wouldn't say a thing like that myself," Maze said. "Not me. But you know how folks in this town talk. Whoever it was that did it, they blew up the whole damn jail. Shot one of the deputies, too."
"Kill him?" Long said. He hoped they had. He didn't like the sheriff or any of his deputies, and maybe they could lay it off on Ryan.
"Naw, but he'll be laid up for a while. Broke his shoulder."
"Too bad," Long said.
Something in his tone made Maze glance at him sharply, but Long went on talking. "Anybody seen Ryan around here today?"
Maze thought about it. "I don't think so," he said.
"You wouldn't think he'd want to miss this hangin', would you?" Long said. "You'd think it'd be a big event for him."
"Come to think of it, you would," Maze said. "I wonder where he is."
"I wonder where he was last night," Long said. Then he walked off toward Wilson's Cafe before Maze could say anything.
Maze stood and watched him go.
All the talk in Wilson's that morning was about the escape of Billy Kane. Business was booming, and Virginia Burley was kept hopping from one table to the next, but the conversations were all the same.
Ryan's name was hardly ever mentioned. Most people were mentioning Kane's name pretty freely, however. There wasn't one that doubted he was responsible for the jailbreak.
When Long walked in, there was a sudden break in the buzz of talk. All heads turned to see him take a table.
Then the buzz picked up again, but most of it was barely above a whisper. None of it was audible to Long. Virginia Burley heard bits and pieces of it.
"Look at that nose."
"How you think he got that?"
"Reckon he got hit by a brick?"
"Somebody hit him, more likely."
"Who you think done it?"
Long sat at his table and let the talk run on, and soon it turned back to other topics—disappointment at missing the hanging, speculation about the jailbreak and Kane's part in it, various theories about where Billy Kane was hiding right at that moment. Everyone was careful to avoid any mention of Long.
Long sat there until almost ten o'clock. Then he went back to Kane's to tell his boss that no one really knew anything at all.
"All right, then," Kane said. "I want you to get Barson up and go and look for Ryan. And you'd better find him. When you do, kill him."
"What about Billy?"
"Bring him back here. I'll see about what to do with him."
"He might not want to come."
"Bring him anyway."
"All right. What if we can't find them?"
"Try very hard. Meanwhile, I'll be thinking about what to do with you if you don't."
Long wasn't afraid of Kane, but for a minute he wished he was McGee, who would get to stay behind and nurse his wound. "You got any ideas about where to look?" he said.
"A few," Kane told him.
Barson wasn't much help. Hell, thought Long, he wasn't any help at all. He could hardly stay in the saddle, and he seemed to be halfway between going to sleep and passing out.
As the day got hotter and hotter, the sun blazed down and seemed to burn a hole right through the top of Long's hat. It was like a big yellow bullet up there in the sky, shooting a hole in your head. Long knew that the sun was bothering Barson even more than it was bothering him, but he didn't make any allowances. They kept looking in all the places Kane had named for him to search.
The first one was the shack.
"Damn, Ryan'd have to be plain crazy to go back there," Long had said. "That's the first place the sheriff and the posse are gonna look."
"And once they look there, they won't be going back," Kane said. His face seemed even whiter to Long than it ever had, probably because Kane had been sleeping in the chair for most of the night. It wasn't a restful kind of sleep. "Ryan might hide out in the grove all night and then go back to the shack after the posse searches there."
Long had to admit that was a possibility. Ryan was plenty smart, and it was the kind of thing he would think of. Long's mind didn't work like that. He wasn't subtle, any more than Barson was. But he could recognize the validity of Kane's idea. "I'll go by there," he said.
"You do that," Kane said. "And search all around it. There might be a convenient place nearby for him to hide."
The next place was the cave.
"I thought about that," Long said. "I don't even think the sheriff knows about that place."
"Probably not," Kane said. "But you can be sure that Ryan does."
"All right. Where else?"
"In town. At Wilson's Cafe. It may be that Ryan still has some sort of special relationship with Mrs. Burley."
The thought of Virginia Burley brought a feeling of tightness to Long's groin. He had often thought about her when he was hitting some whore; about her dark hair, and how it would look if it was down and swinging from side to side as he slapped her face; about her dark eyes and how the tears would run as he bruised and bloodied her lips.
"Long? Are you listening to me?" Kane was staring hard at him.
"Yeah. Just thinkin'."
"About what?" Kane wasn't paying Long to think.
"About Ryan," Long said. "Why didn't he bring Billy back to jail?"
"That's worried me, too," Kane said. "I think I've got it figured out, however. He's going to use Billy to get back at me. He thinks Billy killed his sister, so he will somehow try to strike at me through my brother. An appropriate action, no doubt, to Ryan's way of thinking."
Long didn't follow the argument, but he didn't care. It wasn't what he had been thinking about in the first place. "Anywhere else we ought to look?"
"Maybe something will come to you," Kane said.
Nothing had, though. They had looked at the shack, and there were tracks all around it. The posse had been there, no doubt of that, but there was no way to tell if Ryan had been there, too. Long wasn't much of a tracker in the first place, and he didn't know anything about Ryan's horse's tracks in the second.
One thing for certain, there was no one there now. Long had left Barson with the horses and sneaked up carefully and quietly on the cabin, pistol in his hand. He'd almost shot a horned toad that skittered across his path, but that was about the only thing he'd seen. There was no sign of Ryan or Billy, not around the shack or the well or anywhere else.
The cave was a different story. They'd been there, all right, but they weren't there now. It had to be them. Long couldn't track, but he could see that horses, or at least one horse, had been around since the rain. Who else could it have been?
"Damn," he said. "Wonder how much we missed 'em by?" He searched all around the area, but there was nothing, no other sign.
Barson tried to help, but he didn't accomplish much. His eyes looked funny to Long, who thought it might be a good idea to get him out of the sun for a while. Long didn't know much about head injuries, but it looked to him like Barson might have got his brain shaken up, what there was of it.
There was no use in getting Barson any crazier than he was, so they rested for an hour in the cave. It was cooler in there, though the place was hardly large enough to be much shelter. Barson leaned against one of the walls and dozed.
Long thought about searching Wilson's Cafe. He was looking forward to doing that.
Long and Barson went in through the front door. There was no one in sight. They walked through the dining room and into the kitchen. Barson's little nap seemed to have cleared his mind a little, and Long had told him again what th
ey were doing. This time, Barson seemed to understand.
Virginia Burley was in the kitchen, along with two other women, the cook and the dishwasher, both of whom were Mexican. All three of them looked at the door as it swung open.
"We're really not serving right now," Virginia said. "If you want lunch, we might be able to fix you a cold plate, but there's really nothing prepared." If she was surprised to see Kane's men standing in her kitchen, she did nothing to show it.
The two Mexican women watched them with large liquid eyes that gave away nothing. They were used to keeping their faces blank in Tularosa.
"We're not lookin' to eat, ma'am," Long said. The polite tone of his words hardly expressed what he was really feeling. Virginia Burley had been helping wash the noon dishes. Her sleeves were rolled up, and Long could see the whiteness of her arms, how smooth and strong they looked. Her hair was up, but coming loose, and he wondered how long it would take it to fall if he could slap her as he wanted to.
"Well," she said, "what do you want?"
"We—that is, Mr. Kane—was wonderin' had you seen Ryan today. He wants to talk to him."
Virginia's mouth hardened. She put her hands on her hips. "You can tell Mr. Kane that I have no more dealings with him. If he wants Ryan, let him find him without me this time."
"That mean you ain't seen him?" Long said.
"It means whatever you want it to mean. Now if you don't mind, I have work to do." She turned to the sink full of dishes.
Long looked at her straight back. "Fine with me," he said.
He and Barson left the room. Long wondered what Kane would do now.
Chapter Fourteen
There were times now when Ryan actually missed the old man in black and the days they had spent together. They had shared a time of silence and healing, and Ryan had grown used to the quietness, with nothing but the sound of the wind for company—the sound of the wind and the old man's serene presence. Sometimes whole days would go by with neither of them saying a word, days that nevertheless seemed somehow filled with a kind of communication.