Borden Chantry

by Louis L'Amour

  Usually it was some cow rustler they couldn’t pin anything on, or a nester who squatted on some rancher’s best water. Silva had an idea this was something different.

  He had looked over the town on his way in, sizing up his chances, his easiest escape route, the best available places from which to shoot.

  Kim Baca strolled back and straddled a chair, facing the bars. “You treed yourself an ol’ he-coon,” he commented.

  “Yeah? He ain’t so much.”

  “Caught me,” Baca added.

  Silva rolled up on one elbow. “Then what you doin’ out there?”

  Baca explained. “Hell, why not? It’s better out here than in there, an’ he’s a square-shooter, Chantry is. Might see me on my way when this is over.”

  “‘This’?”

  “Been a string of murders,” Kim commented, “one after the other. And somebody’s worried the marshal is gettin’ close. That’s why they called you in…to kill him before he can lay it on them.”

  “Who?”

  “Figured maybe you knew.”

  “I don’t know nothin’. Wouldn’t tell you if I did.”

  “This here marshal. I don’t know him much better than you, but he stacks up like a square-shooter. You know as well as I do that he’s got a chance to clean off the record by just sticking you with all these killings, but he ain’t going to do it. He’ll keep you here to keep you out of his hair, and then he’ll turn you loose.”

  “And then I’ll kill him.”

  “Be a damn fool if you tried. You an’ me know there’s many a man around, ranchers, freighters, cowhands and whatever, that are just as good with a gun as some of the marshals and gunfighters. Only they don’t have the name, and they don’t want it.

  “Take me, f’r instance. I expect I’m as fast with a gun as you, but I just steal horses. Not any horse…I steal only the best, like that gelding of yours.”

  “You lay off that horse, Baca. You lay off, or—”

  “Or? You don’t scare me a mite, Boone, not a mite. You didn’t scare Borden Chantry, either. I’m not going to steal your horse because you’re going to need him to get out of town on before folks around here have themselves a necktie party with you wearin’ the tie. There’s been talk, you know.” Kim Baca was lying cheerfully. There had been no talk. The townspeople trusted in their marshal, and so did he, but it was one way to build a fire under Silva. And there was precedent. More than one western town had become impatient with lawlessness and proceeded to string up several who happened to be handy. And a couple of times they had picked up relatively harmless men who happened to enjoy the company of outlaws. Like that fellow Russian Bill, down in Shakespeare, New Mexico.

  Boone Silva tried not to look worried, but he looked around suddenly, like a trapped animal. “I got to get out of here.”

  “Don’t try it, Boone. As long as you’re in here, you’re safe. You get out there where the marshal can’t protect you, an’ you wouldn’t have a chance. You set right where you’re at, but take it from me. When he turns you loose…leave. Don’t get any fancy notions.”

  For a half hour then, Baca rambled along on other things, horses, killings, ways of making contact. And after a bit Boone Silva loosened up a little. He did not tell Baca where or how, only that there was a way he could be reached to do a job.

  “How many men know how to reach you? I’d be scared one of them would be loose-tongued.”

  “Not a chance! Only four men know how to reach me with a deal. And anybody wants me has to go to one of the four, and he passes the word along.”

  After awhile, Kim Baca left Silva and walked back into the office. He sat down and put his feet on the desk. It was almost as if he was a deputy…Well, that wouldn’t be a bad job, come to think of it.

  He was tilted back in his chair when Lang Adams stuck his head in the door. “Bord around?”

  “Down to the Bon-Ton. He thinks better with a cup of coffee.”

  “I hear he’s got Boone Silva in jail?”

  “He has…I’m just keeping him out of trouble, Mr. Adams, and out of Chantry’s hair while he solves this murder binge.”

  “He’ll solve it, too,” Lang commented. “Once he gets his teeth into it, he doesn’t let go.”

  “You’re right. Was I the killer, I’d pull my stakes. No matter what he wants out of this town, it won’t do him any good in prison or hanging at the end of a rope.

  “You know something, Mr. Adams? Folks around here don’t know what they’ve got. That Borden Chantry is the smoothest operator I’ve seen, and I’ve seen a few.

  “He took me slick as a whistle. No shooting, no sweat. It was cold-turkey. And he did the same with Boone Silva. Nine men out of ten would have turned both of those affairs into shootin’ matches, but he didn’t. I tell you, he’s just a whole lot smarter than folks give him credit for.”

  “I think you’re right, Baca.” Lang Adams leaned on the doorjamb. “I’ve heard you’re pretty good with a gun yourself.”

  “I don’t advertise it. When I have to use a gun, I use it. But I’ll never draw on any man if I can avoid it. A dead man makes a bad pillow for comfortable sleeping.”

  Lang Adams went back to the street. It was only a few steps to the Bon-Ton, yet he stopped in the post office and asked for mail. There was only his St. Louis newspaper, but no note from Blossom…He should ride out there.

  He glanced at himself in the post office window as he left. He looked thinner…Was he scared? A lot of people in town were, and many of them were not coming out on the streets at night. Lang Adams knew how they felt.

  Borden Chantry was alone at his table near the window. He looked up as Adams stepped in. “Howdy, Lang. Pull up a chair.”

  “Stopped by the office. Baca said you were down here.” Lang glanced at him. “You really trust him, don’t you?”

  “I do. He gave me his word, Lang, and I’ve known many a horse thief who wouldn’t break his word. Maybe elsewhere, but not in this country. And Kim Baca prides himself on it.”

  “Folks are getting edgy, Bord.”

  “They should be. There’s been more killings than in the last Indian outbreak, and nobody in jail yet. But I’ll get the guilty one.”

  “You think it might be a woman? You mentioned that?”

  “Could be. I can’t think of more than one or two women in town who could have run with George Riggin’s saddle. And the killer did.”

  “I meant to ask you about that. Why would George leave his saddle to you? You of all people? You’ve got some saddles.”

  “Oh, sentiment, I guess! George was always like a second father to me.”

  “He was a good man. Too bad he had to die that way, but accidents happen to all of us.”

  “It was no accident, Lang. I went back there and checked out the spot where that boulder fell on him, and I found where somebody used a lever to pry it loose. At that, it only knocked him from his horse and stunned him. Then the killer walked over him and dropped a rock on his head.”

  “I’ll be damned! How could you figure that out?”

  “I talked to Doc after I looked the ground over. And I found where his body had fallen, and Doc told me he’d been hit twice by that rock. The second time, the rock was dropped on him, on the side of his head as he lay on the ground. There’s no way a falling rock could have killed him.”

  “Baca was right. He said you were better than we knew.”

  Chantry shook his head. “No, Lang, I’m not. But a killer like this is his own worst enemy. Each time he kills he draws the noose tighter, just as he thinks he’s killing people that might pin it on him. After awhile he simply offers himself up on a platter.”

  Lang Adams shook his head. “I don’t agree with you. The trouble is that nobody ever hears of the men who kill or steal and get away with it. You only hear of the ones who get caught.”

  “Had a puncher who worked for me one time, Lang. Folks said he was the slickest horse and cow thief around, and he’d robbed ba
nks, too. Some eastern feller came out here and wrote a song about him. You know, Lang, that man worked for me because he was hungry and needed a place to eat and sleep. And he worked hard, too. He was right proud of that song, and of all the talk about him. But one time we got to talking and from one thing and another it developed that here he was closing in on sixty years old, and he’d no place to go and nobody much who wanted him.”

  “Could happen, I suppose.”

  “It did happen. But that wasn’t the worst of it, Lang. This slick crook they were singing that ballad about, he was sixty years old, and he’d spent forty years of that time in prison.”

  Chapter 18

  * * *

  AFTER LANG ADAMS went back to the store, Borden Chantry reached into his pocket and took out the tally book George Riggin had left hidden in the secret pocket of his saddle.

  It was a thin little book with not much written in it, but enough.

  He studied it for a long time before he closed the book and slipped it back into his pocket. He refilled his cup as Ed came out.

  “Coffee all right, Marshal?” Ed sat down opposite him. “Pie’s good, and it’s on the house.”

  “Thanks. I’ll stick to the coffee.”

  “That Baca was in…Seems like a nice boy.”

  “He’s all right. He just likes better horses than he can afford.” He tasted the coffee. “Ed, has Hyatt Johnson been in?”

  “Not yet. Nobody’s been in but Blossom Galey. She was looking kind of down in the mouth, I figured. Not right for a woman who’s about to get married.”

  “You mean to Lang?”

  “They ain’t keepin’ it a secret, Marshal. Blossom’s a good woman, and she surely has built that ranch into something. Does a sight better than when her old man had it. He was a good cattleman but had no head for business. Blossom, she’s got both. That gal’s no fool, no fool at all. Why, when she gets Ed Pearson’s place—”

  “Ed Pearson’s place? How would she get that?”

  “Figured you knew, Marshal. I think most folks do. Blossom grub-staked Ed two, three times. And the last time, she taken a mortgage on his place. And the way it figures, if anything happened to him, she would take possession.

  “He’s got good water out there, you know. And that sort of fills in that corner for her. Once she marries Lang, she’ll have…or they will have…his place. I tell you, Marshal, that Blossom will be the richest woman in this corner of the state!”

  What a damned fool he’d been! Blossom Galey was not only a pretty woman, but a smart one. And tough, too. She’d caught a rustler at one of her calves once, and she winged him when he went for a gun, then brought him in herself. She was a good shot, a dead shot.

  And her pa had been a buffalo hunter. Just the kind of a man who might own a .52-calibre rifle of the old style.

  He got up suddenly. Maybe…just maybe…he had it figured out.

  There were still a couple of things he had to know. Just a couple.

  He walked over to the jail. Big Injun was sitting in the chair outside. “You saw those tracks? The tracks left by the man who killed Sackett’s horse?”

  Big Injun just looked at him.

  “Big Injun, you know the track of every horse in the country. You can read sign like I read a sign on a store-front. Whose horse was that?”

  “Your horse. Big gray horse, not Appaloosa. Big gray horse from your pasture.”

  He had seen the tracks but he did not believe it. He had not seen them clearly enough, or so he told himself, and that big gray was not really his…It belonged to Bess, and had rarely been ridden by anyone else.

  What Big Injun was thinking, he knew not. To many Indians the white man’s way was incomprehensible, anyway, and this might be just one thing more. Actually, Big Injun troubled himself very little with the concerns of the white man. The old ways were gone, and he had adjusted himself as well as might be. His own lands, or those of his people, lay far away to the east. And they had been driven from them by other Indians before ever the white man came. Soon his people had learned where the power lay, and he had in his own way accommodated himself to the future.

  He was asked to sit in the jail from time to time, to track…which he loved doing…and he ate well, slept in a comfortable bed, and led a life of relaxed comfort. And if this was so, it was because of Borden Chantry, who had first made a place for Big Injun on his ranch. Then, when the freeze-up killed his stock, Chantry had brought Big Injun along when he came to town.

  His horse…the big gray. Borden Chantry stared out the window at nothing.

  The gray had been in the pasture. And of course, a number of people might have roped the horse, but not many could ride it. The gray loved Bess, but was notoriously edgy with anyone else, and would pitch violently if straddled by anyone she did not know.

  This was a fact known to just about everyone in town. And it was highly unlikely such a person would attempt to ride a horse of such temperament when riding on a killing mission.

  Big Injun rarely volunteered anything. He did so now. “Man ride him,” he said.

  Chantry turned his head and looked at the Indian. “A man?”

  “Big man…heavy.”

  Big Injun would know that from the tracks, and a good tracker could judge very well when a horse carried a heavy man.

  “As big as me?”

  “Maybe bigger.”

  Borden Chantry got slowly to his feet. He took out his six-shooter and spun the cylinder. Then he dropped it in its holster, and he did not put the thong back in place.

  He went out into the street and stood there for a long time. Then he walked across to Reardon’s saloon, and after a bit, down to Henry’s, then to the Mexican café. Only then did he return to the Bon-Ton.

  “When I was gone yesterday,” he suggested, “was anybody around asking for me?”

  “No…” Ed shook his head. “Dot worked part of the day, but things was quiet. Prissy was in, but you were out of town and Lang didn’t come around…Nobody asked for you, Marshal.”

  “Thanks.” He sat down at the table near the window and thought about Hyatt Johnson, then about George Blazer. He was still thinking about each person, checking what he knew against time and place, when Ed called out.

  “Marshal? I forgot. Blossom Galey was in. She asked for you. Wanted to know where you were, when you’d be back.”

  Blossom Galey…She had been born in this town, and had lived most of her life on the ranch. Hyatt Johnson traveled a good bit, but.…

  “Marshal? Look yonder!”

  A man had walked his horse up to the hitching rail and swung down. He was lean and tall, carried himself very straight, and he had a dark, handsome face under his black, flat-brimmed hat. He wore a jacket of buckskin, but it was a short, Spanish-style jacket. He also wore a pistol.

  Borden Chantry said, “Ed? Ask that man to come in and have a cup of coffee with me?”

  Ed went to the door and spoke. The man looked around, nodded, then tied his horse. It was a buckskin, and a fine animal. Kim Baca had better not see that one, he told himself. He might even forget his resolution about not stealing from a Sackett.

  The man stepped in, paused, then walked over. “Marshal? I am Tyrel Sackett.”

  “Sit down. I am afraid I have some bad news for you.”

  Then, quietly, Chantry told him what he had learned. Of Joe Sackett’s arrival in town, his visit to Mary Ann Haley, to the bank, his stop at the hotel, and his return to Haley’s. And also of the brief fight with Kerns and Hurley, so far as he knew of it.

  “Then the man who killed my brother is still loose?”

  “He is…but not for long.”

  “You know who he is?”

  “I do.”

  “Then why isn’t he in jail?”

  “You can help me, Sackett. I need to know a few things from you that might help. I haven’t made any arrest because I have had to work this out carefully. Your brother’s murder was only one of several.”

&nbs
p; “You are sure it was murder?”

  “There’s no doubt. And the man who did it is in town now…or was a short time ago.

  “Sackett, you come from Mora. You’ve lived there awhile?”

  “I have.”

  “Do you know of any man wanted for murder or some other serious crime from your area?”

  “Not right now. There’ve been some shootings, but most of them came out of land grant fights, or just simple arguments over cattle or cards.”

  “About seven years ago…maybe eight. You were marshal there yourself for awhile, I think.”

  Sackett stared out the window, then shook his head. “Nothing my family was involved in, nothing I can recall.”

  “Know a cowhand named Pin Dover?”

  “Sure. He worked for me. He was a good hand.”

  “Did anything happen while he was in the country? Any unsolved murder, robbery, anything of the sort?”

  “No…no, I can’t think of anything. Of course, there was the Mason case, but that came to nothing.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  “There was a girl in Las Vegas…I’ve forgotten her name…very attractive, though. Her father ran several thousand head of cattle over there. And on the stage from St. Louis, she became acquainted with a man named Ford Mason. He was a good-looking man, carried himself well, and represented himself as a former officer in the cavalry, now a businessman.

  “He had a way with horses, seemed to be able to handle the worst of them. And he did some trading around the country while he and this girl became better and better acquainted.

  “There was a stage robbery about that time, and it carried a shipment of money from the bank, some of which had been paid into the bank by the girl’s father. Shortly after, Ford Mason bought a drink for the father…his name was Cunningham, I recall…and Cunningham recognized the gold eagle that paid for the drinks as one he had deposited in the bank.

  “He knew the coin because of two small notches cut into it just below the date. Of course, he said nothing, but it started him thinking, and he wrote to a friend of his in the War Department.