The trail was gone! Wiped out in cow tracks.
He drew up, pushed his hat back on his head and studied the situation. This was another indication that the murderer, if it was indeed the man who was riding the sorrel, had been familiar with the town and its people. For he had come toward this spot, knowing that it was along this lane Old Man Peterson drove his dairy herd, the herd that supplied milk and butter to the town.
Each morning and each evening that herd went along this lane, successfully wiping out any tracks that might have been left.
Yet this again made Chantry puzzled. Whoever had done it had gambled the tracker would quit here, or had not known how a good tracker works…a mistake Johnny McCoy would not be likely to make.
For Borden Chantry simply rode out of the lane where the cattle had traveled and rode as closely parallel to it as possible, owing to the crowding brush. Unless the rider of the sorrel was going into Peterson’s home corral he had to turn off somewhere. And on the other side there were barns, corrals, the backs of yards belonging to people of the town.
Taking his time, studying the ground as he rode, Borden Chantry worked his way in and around the brush until suddenly he saw the tracks where the sorrel had turned off. Riding through thick brush he had even left a few hairs on the stiff branches of the brush. A little bored by the obviousness of it, Chantry fell in behind and followed the trail at a canter…It dipped into a dry wash, up the other side after a hundred yards or so, then through a scattered forest of juniper and up to shelving rock where the rider had held to the rock as much as possible.
Obviously he was trying to leave no trail, but Chantry held his pace. The white hoof scars made by iron shoes upon the rock were obvious enough. Suddenly he lost the trail, swung in a wide circle and picked it up again.
The trail merged with another, made by a track that looked familiar, then they separated…The first track was older. Since the last shower, but older.
And then, as if lifted upon a magic carpet, the trail of the sorrel disappeared!
No tracks…nothing.
A wide circle left and another right…still nothing. He retraced his steps to where he had lost the trail. There was a place where the horse had stood, had moved about a bit, then vanished.
Stepping down from the saddle and standing beside his horse, he studied the ground. The wind was cool, stirring his hair at the forehead. He brushed the hair back and looked back toward town, only a few miles away, but out of sight.
There was a faint smell of dust and crushed cedar. How did he ever get himself into this fix, anyway?
What had somebody said? If he started getting too close he might get shot himself. And the worst of it was, he had no idea who would be shooting at him.
His thoughts suddenly reverted to Kim Baca, the horse thief he had gone after. At least, you knew where you stood with horse thieves…Which brought up another idea. What was Kim Baca doing in this area, anyway? It was out of his bailiwick entirely.
That was something he should ask about…just out of curiosity, and the answer might give him some further clue as to how the outlaw mind operated.
He studied the ground again. Now what could have happened here? There were no magic carpets in eastern Colorado in this day and time. Nor did horses disappear into thin air.
Yet this horse had vanished…how had it vanished? If it left this place it had to walk. Nobody could fly it out, nobody could carry it. He saw no brush marks, as if a trail had been brushed away…something always pretty obvious but sometimes attempted.
There was no sense moving on. Sometimes a man can just wear himself out moving around when he is just a sight better off to stay put and ponder. That was how he came to see that thread. It wasn’t more than an inch or two long and it was hung up under a prickly pear, but it was a thread from a tow sack. What some folks call burlap. There it was, plain as shootin’.
Whoever had been riding that horse had gotten down and wrapped its hooves in burlap.
Now that horse wasn’t going to go far with those contraptions on its feet, and it didn’t.
About a quarter of a mile further he found a place where the arroyo bank had caved, and as he pulled up on the Appaloosa a coyote went slinking away down the canyon.
There below him was a heap of rock and dirt that had fallen from the rim some ten feet above. It had either caved or been caved.
Leaving his horse standing. Chantry dug in his heels and went down the slide. Pulling loose a large rock he toppled it off to one side, then scraped at the dirt. As the dirt came away a bit of sorrel hide was revealed.
It took the better part of an hour to get enough dirt moved, what with more caving, and to get at the horse’s side, then to uncover it to look for the brand.
It was gone.
The brand had been cut away in a neat circle, taking off a piece of hide about eight or nine inches in diameter.
The brand was gone, and with it all chance of identifying either horse or man.
Borden Chantry swore softly, bitterly. Then he started to rise and one leg cramped and he staggered. It was all that saved him.
He felt the sharp whip of the bullet as it passed!
Chapter 4
* * *
BORDEN CHANTRY WAS a quiet, easygoing but serious-minded man who had known little but hard work most of his life and expected nothing to be that easy. Although an expert with both pistol and rifle, he had never felt the necessity of proving it to any man, and the few fights he had were with fists. A man with a quiet sense of humor and laugh wrinkles at the corners of his eyes, he was not amused now.
That bullet had come too close, and whoever fired was shooting for the money.
His reaction was instinctive and correct. He threw himself down, and rolled over into the shelter of the opposite bank of the arroyo.
His horse was on the bank some thirty yards away and across the arroyo, and he was of no mind to try getting to his horse with a rifleman waiting for him to do just that.
Working his way swiftly along the bank he came to a place where the bank curved sharply west, which was in the direction from which the would-be killer had fired.
He rounded the curve, rifle up and ready for a shot from the hip, and when the wash was empty before him he scrambled up a notch where additional water had trickled down, and lying there, he listened.
Nothing.
He had ridden over this area several times in rounding up strays and knew that some dozen yards from where he now lay there was a nest of brush and boulders. It would be a perfect spot from which to survey the area, but it might be the spot where the killer waited.
He considered that. Normally a cautious man, anger made him aggressive, and he did not like lying still, waiting for another shot. His were the instincts of the hunter, and for the moment hunting was what he was paid for. So he came out of the notch at a run and sprinted for the nest of boulders. A rifle barked somewhere off to his left but the shot came late and too far back, and the next instant he was into the rocks and getting lined up for a shot.
Then he heard the drum of horse’s hooves, and slowly he relaxed. Undoubtedly the unknown marksman was getting away, so let him go. Yet Borden Chantry waited. He hunched down in a good spot where he could see all around him and where he had his horse in his field of vision.
He waited a slow half hour, then got up and walked slowly off in the direction from which the shots had come. The air was cool…coming on to rain.
A half hour’s scouting brought him nothing. Yet the man’s horse had to have been tied somewhere, and reluctantly Borden gave up the search and crossed the arroyo to get his own horse. Mounting, he rode back and searched again.
No luck. With more time, maybe.
He turned his horse toward home, stripped the gear and turned it into the corral.
* * *
KIM BACA WAS a slender, wiry young man, half-Irish, the other half Spanish and Apache. No more than twenty-two, he was already a known man in four states, two territorie
s and Mexico. He had a lean, saturnine face, a quizzical sense of humor, and was known to be a dead shot, yet he had never been involved in any shooting scrapes.
Borden Chantry picked up his keys and walked back to the cell. Over his shoulder he called, “Big Injun? Bring us a pot of coffee and a couple of cups.”
He opened the cell and stepped in, leaving the door ajar for Big Injun.
Kim Baca looked up at him, smiling faintly. “Aren’t you scared I’ll get away?”
Chantry grinned and shrugged. “Go ahead…if you feel lucky.”
Baca laughed. “Not me. The odds are all wrong. Besides, I saw you in a couple of fights. You’re no bargain.”
“Thanks.” Chantry tilted his chair back against the wall. “Kim, what in God’s name made you pull a fool thing like lifting Johnson’s horses? Everybody in the country knows that team.”
“How was I to know that? Anyway, I was mad. Somebody beat me to the horse I was after.”
Was it a hunch? Or had he guessed it before this? Chantry looked up at him. “Big sorrel? Three white stockings?”
Baca stared at him, then took the toothpick on which he was chewing and threw it to the floor. “You mean you had me pegged? You even knew what horse I was after?”
“Mighty fine horse,” Chantry replied, admitting nothing. “I wouldn’t blame you.”
Baca got up. “Marshal, you just don’t know! That was one of the fastest-stepping horses I ever saw! Gentle as a baby, yet it could go all day an’ all night! I tell you, I could have loved that horse! I mean it! I never wanted anything so bad in my life!”
“Know who owned it?”
“Hell, no! I picked him up in Raton Pass. I saw that horse coming and figured it might be the law on my tail, so I put my glass on him. You never saw a horse move like that one! I just told myself, ‘Kim, this is it. That’s your horse.’ So I fell in behind him.
“I had to watch my step, too, because that rider, whoever he was, was canny. I hadn’t been followin’ him more’n a few miles before he knew it. Somehow or other he gave me the slip and I lost him until I rode into Trinidad and saw the horse tied to a hitching rail there.”
“Remember the brand?” Chantry spoke casually, yet he was mentally holding his breath.
Did Baca hesitate? “No,” he said, “I can’t say that I do.”
“You see any more of him?”
“No.” Was there another instant of hesitation? “I heard him ask after this town, so I came on ahead. Rode in here an’ waited for him to make it…Then he never showed.”
“You never saw him again?”
“Marshal,” Kim Baca spoke slowly, “I got a thing about horses. I wouldn’t admit to a thing in court an’ if you say I said this, I’ll say I never…But I never stole a horse to sell. I stole ’em because I wanted ’em. I wanted ’em my own self. Except that team of Johnson’s. I never figured to steal them horses, just got mad an’ stole ’em out of spite when I didn’t get the sorrel.”
Borden Chantry filled Kim’s cup and his own. He had an idea what was in Kim’s mind. He was a known horse thief, caught with the goods. In many places that would have meant an immediate hanging, yet Chantry had arrested him, brought him back and was holding him in jail.
A man had been murdered. That man’s horse had disappeared. What more likely suspect than Kim Baca? What easier way to close the books on a crime?
“Baca,” he said slowly, “you punched a lot of cows in your time. You had the name of being a top hand. Now you’re in trouble. We can send you to the pen, and you wouldn’t cotton to that any more than me.
“Back yonder when I nabbed you, I could have shot you and nobody would have cared or even asked how come. I didn’t. I took you in without a fight.”
“You was slick. I got to admit it. And I was too damn sure of myself.”
“Well, whatever. Thing is you know I’ll play square if there’s a way I can do it, and I’m not against givin’ you a break if you come clean. You know a good deal more than you’ve said. You tell me and I’ll try to talk Johnson out of pressing charges.”
Kim stared into his coffee cup, and Chantry felt sympathy for the man. Right now Baca was trying to study out how much he could trust Chantry.
“All right…You’ve been square. Trouble is I don’t know much…Only that somebody stole that sorrel before I could. Right from under my nose.”
“Did you see it done?”
“No, I never.”
“Do you know who did it?”
That hesitation again. “No…no, I don’t.” Kim put down his cup. “Look, Marshal. I stood around the street watchin’ for that horse ’n rider. They never showed…and then I saw the rider.
“So where’s the horse? I studied on that, an’ knowin’ which way the man would come into town, I started studyin’ on places that horse might be. I pegged it for one of two places. Either that stable with the corral and the two-room shack over east or Mary Ann Haley’s.”
The shack over east would be Johnny McCoy’s…but why Mary Ann’s?
He asked the question, and Baca shrugged. “He went there…that rider did. He went mighty early in the morning when they aren’t receivin’ guests as a rule, only they let him right in.
“I figured they knew him, the way they opened up for him, so I checked their stable. No horses but their driving horses for their rig. So then I went to the other place…That horse was sure enough there, but I heard stirrin’ around inside and I took myself away from there.”
“And then?”
“I come back that night, real late…and I seen a man ridin’ off on that sorrel, slippin’ off mighty quiet-like. I know a thief when I see one, and that man was a thief.”
“Would you know him if you saw him?”
“N…no. No, I don’t think so. He was kind of humped over in the saddle so’s you couldn’t make out his height.”
Borden Chantry opened the cell door and stepped out, closing it after him. “Take your time with the coffee, Baca, and give it a thought. You’re a good man on a trail. You help me, and I’ll help you.”
He went into the street and stood there, pulling his hat brim down against the glare. A wagon was coming slowly up the street and Johnson’s dog got up lazily and moved out of the way.
Well, what did that get him? That Mary Ann Haley had seen the dead man. Had welcomed him…or somebody had…like a friend.
He shook his head. That didn’t jell with what he already knew or surmised about the victim…What business could he have with a woman like Mary Ann? That early in the morning when they weren’t in the habit of receiving guests?
He tried to add it all up, and came to nothing. “You’re not much of a detective, Borden,” he told himself.
A stranger had ridden into town with a poke of money, gold, probably. The following morning he was dead…murdered. His horse had been taken out and killed…the brand cut away.
Two things he knew—or was sure of in his own mind: The murderer was a local man, and he had not wanted the victim identified.
Which made the brand all-important.
He turned to start down the street and came face to face with Frank Hurley.
Hurley made as if to turn away but Chantry saw him in time. “Frank!”
Grudgingly, the man stopped. He was a lean, hard-visaged man who now carried a badly swollen eye, a split lip, and a swollen ear.
“You look like you tangled with a buzz saw,” Chantry said, “or somebody with a bunch of knuckles.”
“You want to see me about somethin’? If you do, say so, or I’m goin’ down the street.”
Chantry smiled. “Frank, if you take a step before I tell you to, I’ll throw you in jail for loitering. Now you tell me. Who gave you the eye?”
“None of your damn business!”
“Where’s Puggsey?”
“Up at the shack, I reckon. He minds his affairs, I mind mine.”
“Tell me about it, Frank. If the story sounds good I may not arrest you for mu
rder.”
Frank Hurley’s skin tightened. He glanced quickly, right and left. “Now see here, Marshal, that kind of talk can get a man hung. I never murdered nobody. Nobody, d’ you hear?”
“The dead man had skinned knuckles. You have been hit, obviously. I could build a case out of that, Frank.”
“I never done nothing. You lay off…lay off, d’ you hear? Time Reardon says—”
“You can tell Time for me that unless you boys tell me what you know I may throw all three of you in jail. You’ve all had it coming for a long time. The murdered man was in Time’s place, there’s evidence you were in a brawl and so was he…and I haven’t heard of a fight all week. You think about it, Frank. Then if you’re in a mind to talk, come around.”
He went home for dinner.
At the table he told his wife about the case, reviewing it as much for himself as for her. “I got to talk to Mary Ann,” he said, at last.
Bess stiffened. “Is that necessary, Borden? Is it really? What could that woman know? Of course, the man went there, but isn’t it rather obvious?”
“Not at that hour.”
He sat long over dinner, staring out at the sunlit street. It was a whole lot simpler out there on the range herding cows, branding stock, or doping the stock for screwworms. He could chase down a horse thief or throw a drunk in jail or take a gun off somebody, but figuring out a murder? He shook his head.
The one thing he had not mentioned to Bess was the shot taken at him. No use to worry her. She disliked the job in its every aspect, but what would they do otherwise? Money was scarce…What had become of the stranger’s money?
Talking to Frank Hurley had been just a straw thrown into the wind. He knew pretty much what had happened that night, and although he could prove none of it, he could have written a report on it with what he knew was true.
“I’d lay a bet,” he told Bess, “that Frank an’ Puggsey followed that stranger into a dark street somewhere, an’ jumped him. Only that stranger knew how to take care of himself and whipped ’em both, whipped ’em good.
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