Dead Man’s Cañon

by Paine, Lauran; Burns, Traber;

  DEAD MAN’S CAÑON

  LAURAN PAINE

  Copyright © 1998 by Lauran Paine

  E-book published in 2017 by Blackstone Publishing

  Cover design by Djamika Smith

  Book design by Blackstone Publishing

  Cover art © igorigorevich; EvanTravels / Adobe Stock

  All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Library e-book ISBN 978-1-5047-8827-4

  Trade e-book ISBN 978-1-5047-8828-1

  CIP data for this book is available from

  the Library of Congress

  Blackstone Publishing

  31 Mistletoe Rd.

  Ashland, OR 97520

  www.BlackstonePublishing.com

  DEAD MAN’S CAÑON

  LAURAN PAINE

  Chapter One

  This time of year the roads were excellent. Dry, hard, rutted, and dusty, with some traffic, mostly stages going as far as Rockland on the border, then back up north again, so if a man chose another route he’d have his private reasons. Or, as Claude Rainey, sheriff of Apache County said often enough, when a man chose the Gila monster, rattlesnake, and tarantula country off to the east, for entering Arizona out of Mexico, only a fool would assume he had nothing to hide.

  Just how right Rainey turned out to be came to light the first of April, two months earlier, when some Hightower cowboys, hunting strayed horses, came upon the mummified corpse of a man and his horse over along the north slope of one of those lonely cañons that ran like large funnels straight down to the border and broadened out across the line down into Mexico, becoming the Tamaulipas Plains.

  But Claude Rainey’s statement about men slipping over the line because they had something to hide meant that they were the hiders—those lonely men who rode the barren trails. It didn’t mean they literally wanted to hide something, which is where the double play on words came in, because those Hightower cowboys found something within fifty feet of where that dead man lay. He’d obviously come up out of Mexico to that godforsaken place where he’d died to dig the hole, place the box in it, then cover the hole and walk fifty feet before someone shot the top off his head, then gave his horse a third eye.

  There was nothing on the body, no letters, no newspapers, not even a name inked inside the expensive gray Stetson hat. No one would have recognized him after a month of lying out there under a sun that burned everything a chocolate color after fifteen days anyway, even if his face hadn’t been hopelessly stretched all out of shape by the bullet that killed him.

  Hightower’s foreman, Al Trail, backtracked as best he could but no one down in any of those little Mex towns over the line had ever seen anyone answering the dead man’s description. That surprised no one, either. Border villages south of the line existed only because American outlaws brought their money down there. It would indeed be an ungrateful—and foolish—cantina keeper or a vaquero who would point a finger at any of those gringo desperadoes. It would also, in all probability, be fatal. The fact that one man had died didn’t mean he might not have friends who’d look darkly on any mention of him to strangers.

  So Trail rode back to Springville, made Sheriff Claude Rainey buy him three cool beers for his trouble, and said there was nothing known—or at least said—about the mysterious stranger, over the line in Mexico.

  Ordinarily none of this would have been necessary. The town of Springville had a Boot Hill cemetery just like every other border town also had. There were four solid rows of headboards with unknown painted across them. One more wouldn’t make one bit of difference—except for that box the Hightower cowboys had dug up and handed over to Sheriff Rainey when they brought word of the corpse out there in the grassless, treeless, brushless, wide and lonely cañon. It had five packets of bloodstained one hundred dollar bills in it.

  Sheriff Rainey confided sourly that if those damned cowboys of Al Trail’s had just taken the money and said nothing about the corpse, or better yet, had buried it, Rainey would have been delighted. Trail said, with a broad smile, that the only reason they hadn’t done just exactly that, was because they figured it out, and to dig a grave in that ironlike, summer-hardened gritty soil, big enough to hide the man and his dead horse, was just plain worth more money.

  Trail had been teasing, of course, and Rainey knew it. Those five packets of one hundred dollar bills, with the blood on them, were thick enough to choke an alligator. There was ten thousand dollars in spendable cash in that box, more money than nine-tenths of the men in Arizona Territory had ever seen in one pile, in one place, in their lives. The only logical excuse those horse-hunting Hightower cowboys’d had for bringing in that box was that they were honest men.

  Rainey told that to Al Trail at the bar. He also told it to the US marshal who came on the southbound coach from Tucson in response to Rainey’s letter. And finally, Claude told it to Newton Douglas, the man who owned more of the town of Springville than anyone else, and who also ran more cattle on the northerly desert than anyone else. Rainey also told Douglas that unless he sure was guessing wide, that fellow had stolen the box full of cash and was running with it when someone he’d either stolen it from, or who he’d double-crossed to get the money, caught up with him in that blast furnace cañon, and killed him.

  Then Newton Douglas asked the same question Al Trail had also asked. “Why, since they killed him for it, didn’t they take the damned box with ’em when they left?”

  Claude Rainey had no answer to that. Neither did anyone else. In fact, that’s what became the biggest riddle of all.

  The facts that the dead man had been young and in his prime, had been riding a good horse, and was wearing a stag-handled six-gun, were completely lost sight of. What everyone preferred to speculate about was why, after he’d killed the mysterious stranger, hadn’t he dug up that box full of bloodstained money?

  There were ten dozen reasons advanced, and not a one of them made a lick of sense. As Al Trail said, after they’d planted the nameless dead man, “There just can’t be any good excuse … unless someone killed that man without giving a damn about his money.”

  That was hard to swallow, of course, since everyone liked ten thousand dollars. Al shook his head over that. “Nope. Go look at that stuff over in Barney Whitsun’s safe at the general store. Blood on it. Now someone put that blood on there, and someone … whoever killed the stranger … wasn’t trying to rob the dead man. He was out to avenge that blood.”

  It was as good a theory as any other. Claude Rainey said he was satisfied with it. But he also said, “Just what am I supposed to do … keep that money in Barney’s safe forever?”

  Trail had the answer to that one, also. “Just sit back, Claude. Just sit back and wait. At least one man knows where that money was. Sooner or later someone’s going to ride into Springville looking for it. Sooner or later … someone will come.”

  Barney Whitsun’s store, up the road two buildings from the jailhouse and on the opposite side of the road, was the favorite hangout for cowmen and range riders of the desert country. There was a saloon on up the roadway, northward, run by Jack Mather, a big, swarthy, laughing man with a badly reset broken nose and scarred eyebrows, but at least part of the time loafers hung out down at Barney’s place.

  After Barney had that bloodstained ten thousand dollars in his steel safe, he had more loafers than ever.

  Once, when he met Claude Rainey over at the café that adjoined—and was owned by the same man who owned the hotel, Springville’s only hotel—Barney said he wished Cl
aude would find some other place for that money, that while it brought him a lot more folks, they didn’t buy anything, they simply cluttered up the store and endlessly argued about the money.

  But there was no other place, unless Sheriff Rainey put it under his mattress, because Barney had the only real steel safe in Apache County. In fact, Barney had the only genuine general store in Apache County. There were other villages, mostly Mexican, and other stores, but none that carried Barney Whitsun’s inventory of goods. A man could buy a pint of liniment or a new N. Porter saddle at Whitsun’s place. He could buy guns of all makes and calibers, ammunition for everyone, and he could also buy bolt goods to placate the squaw when he’d been out all night.

  Barney had a thriving business; the idlers, as he’d said, rarely bought anything greater than a five cent sack of Bull Durham tobacco, yet they stood in the coolness of the old building, leaning on the counters, and interfered with Barney’s real customers.

  Sheriff Rainey sat and sweated over at his jailhouse with the roadway door open in case a breeze happened along, and pondered. He’d had one hour with the US marshal; they’d talked; the marshal had examined the dead man’s gun, his saddle, bridle, and blanket, then he’d got on the next stage heading south and that was the last Claude had seen of him. Worst of all, he’d been a lanky, redheaded man with a mouth like a bear trap who grunted occasionally, but never volunteered a word unless Claude had dragged it up out of him. That left Claude exactly where he’d been before—in the dark.

  The second week after they’d buried the mummified corpse, Al Trail was at Mather’s bar when Claude walked in, and jokingly said he’d heard the Mexican government was going to send someone from one of those Mexican border armies up after that ten thousand dollars.

  Claude had snapped his answer right back. “Suits me fine. I’ll even meet ’em at the edge of town and hand the damned box over. Be that glad to get shed of it.”

  The dead horse still lay where he’d fallen. Claude rode out for a final look, and where badgers had tunneled under the carcass for their feast, Claude saw something. Part of an old brand burned into the dead horse’s lower left stifle.

  He got down, kicked the hide around until he got a fair look, then drew a reproduction of the mark in his notebook, and very thoughtfully drifted back into town before most folks had even missed him.

  There was no telegraph office at Springville, but the stage company often carried private letters for Claude when he wanted fast service. He wrote a letter to the registrar of brands over at Phoenix, made a faithful drawing of the mark on that dead horse, asked for all the available information, sealed the letter, and took it up to the stage company office where a clerk said it would go out with the very next northbound coach.

  That made Rainey feel much better. Until those badgers had cooperated he hadn’t had a single thing to go on. The next afternoon when he encountered Al Trail over at Hank Smith’s shoeing shop, he took Al’s quiet ribbing in good humor and said he thought, if no one showed up to claim that ten thousand dollars pretty quick, he’d appropriate it in the name of Springville, and get a school built with it.

  That same night, up at Mather’s bar, which had a sign outside proclaiming the place as The Springville Oasis, he ran into Newton Douglas. Newton was a large, spare, dry man in his late sixties, who’d come to the border country as a young man—some said with a posse close behind him—and who’d been working hard ever since. He wasn’t talkative except with a few men, of whom Claude Rainey was one, and he so seldom smiled or laughed folks said that’s how often it rained in Springville and the desert country—only when Newton Douglas smiled.

  But there was a twinkle in his eyes this evening; he knew how the Hightower bunch had been ragging Claude over his private mystery and the ten thousand dollars, so, as he signaled Jack Mather to bring down another drink for the sheriff, he said, “Claude, there’s some kind of a law … bound to be one … that lets folks put a claim on money no one is willing to say belongs to them. Now I was thinking, if we split it down the middle and …”

  “Newt,” said Rainey softly, breaking into the other man’s drawled speech, “I’ve got a better idea. Let’s build a school for Springville with that money.”

  Claude wasn’t joking. He’d been joking down at the blacksmith shop, but he wasn’t joking now, because he’d had all afternoon to think it over. The more he pondered, the better he liked the notion. So now, with Newton Douglas, he wasn’t joking at all.

  “A school with a cupola on it with a good bronze bell up there, all painted white with one big room and real desks, and a fine pair of his and hers out back, along with some sheds and corrals for the ranch kids to leave their horses in.”

  Claude stopped talking. Jack Mather was listening to him over the bar. Newton Douglas was gazing at him, all the hint of humor gone. Throughout the barroom men turned and gazed at him. Springville didn’t have a school; it hadn’t ever had one. The children now studied in the harness maker’s back room.

  Chapter Two

  The mysterious stranger was well in his grave and even some of the loafers had stopped hanging around Barney Whitsun’s store by the time that tall Mexican rode into Springville, looking for Sheriff Rainey.

  He asked about Claude up at the Oasis late in the afternoon when there was a fair-sized crowd of range men at the bar hiding from the sun blast, so it only took moments for word to sweep up and down through town that a big Mex was looking for Claude, probably to lay claim to the town’s ten thousand dollars.

  Claude was over at Newton Douglas’ cow camp six miles west of town and didn’t return until the sun had set, which was the best time to travel the desert if one couldn’t postpone his trip until just before sunup, which was an even better time.

  By the time Claude got back to town and put up his horse, everyone knew about the tall Mexican, except Claude, and he learned of him almost before he’d stepped down from the saddle.

  The Mexican had already eaten at the café and was drowsing on the bench outside Rainey’s jailhouse in night’s long layer of desert gloom by the time Claude caught up with him. He introduced himself, sat down, and offered the big Mex his makings. The stranger refused, lighting up one of those foul little black cigars of his country, instead.

  He was a handsome man, young and poised with fine features and expressive large eyes. He said his name was Fernando Bríon, that he ranched quite some distance below the border in Tamaulipas state, and he had some effects for Sheriff Rainey which he’d preferred to deliver personally. Then, from inside his short charro jacket, Fernando Bríon brought forth a six-gun with a stag handle, a gold watch and chain with the name Jonas Gantt engraved on the inside of the front cover, a wallet with both US and Mex money in it, and—finally—a US marshal’s badge.

  Claude sat looking at the stuff. He picked up the badge and fingered it for a while. So that’s why he had never again seen that federal marshal.

  Bríon said softly, “All I can tell you, señor, is that he was shot by someone no one saw. South of the border we think, since there are many americanos, he was probably killed by some pistolero he was tracking down. It has never been wise for lawmen to come down to Tamaulipas from the Estados Unidos.” Bríon gave a little shrug. “Of course this one wasn’t wearing his badge. It was in his pocket. But these men know one another. Outlaws and lawmen have a private world, Sheriff … they know one another, usually.”

  Claude picked up the dead man’s belongings. He’d scarcely known Jonas Gantt. The only time they’d met, Gantt had sat like stone making only an occasional grunt in response to Claude’s questions. It wasn’t Gantt’s killing that disturbed Claude so much as it was the fact that evidently Gantt had been after someone, probably the murderer of the mummified stranger, when he’d been assassinated. That meant the ten thousand dollars very probably had living heirs. Then Bríon casually made a statement that brought Claude’s eyes around to him in a rush.<
br />
  He said, “I would’ve brought back his saddle and bridle, but they were scarcely worth the effort … old and battered. Besides, the same man who shot him also shot his horse. Shot them both through the head. It was good shooting. I went with my men where they found the bodies and stepped it off. From where the assassin knelt to fire … and left his ejected carbine casing … to where the US officer died, was two hundred yards, yet the man was hit in the head, then his horse was shot the same way, from the same distance. Very fine shooting.”

  “Yeah,” agreed Claude, studying Fernando Bríon. “Did anyone down there backtrack the killer, or get a look at him, señor?”

  “Well,” replied Bríon in his careful English, “if they did, Sheriff, they have been very careful not to say a word about it. You see, the place where the officer was killed, while it’s on my land, it lies ten miles from my hacienda and it is so barren over there not even the cattle wander into that area very often.”

  “What the hell would Jonas Gantt be doing down there, then?” Claude asked, and the handsome, tall Mexican lifted his shoulders, dropped them, and wagged his head.

  “Who knows, señor? There were no other tracks, but of course he’d been dead some time before anyone happened on to him. He’d been dried out by the sun … you understand?”

  Claude understood. The same thing had happened to the one he’d had to bury. Just a bunch of angular bones fixed rigidly in place by a skin that had dried hard and dark, like old rawhide.

  “Anyone else live thereabouts?” asked Rainey.

  The Mexican’s response didn’t help at all. “No one, señor. I own all that desert down there. Not even Indians live on it. For one thing, there’s no water. For another, no grass for horses, so there is no game for men … even Indios … to live off. No, amigo, I’ve gone over it all in my mind. It just makes no sense … unless your friend was on his way to some secret place, perhaps to meet another man, perhaps on a trail only he knew about.”