Dead Man’s Cañon

by Paine, Lauran; Burns, Traber;

  Fernando Bríon stood up. Claude stirred himself to do likewise. He hadn’t mentioned the bloodstained money and neither had the younger man. Bríon smiled. “You wonder why a Mexican takes the time to come up here and bring you these things along with the news of that man’s death. Well, amigo, my father came from New York. His name was Bryan. In Mexico the nearest anyone can come to that is Bríon. You understand?”

  Rainey understood. He thanked Bríon, shook his hand, and watched him head down toward the livery barn, on his way back to Mexico and his hacienda.

  Rainey went inside, lit a lamp, examined the dead US lawman’s effects carefully, found nothing that would offer any kind of a key to the assassination, sighed mightily, and pushed the things aside to write another one of those letters that he afterward took to the stage office to be delivered at Phoenix, where the nearest US marshal’s office was.

  Beyond that, he could only speculate, which is precisely what he did. Furthermore, since it was now definitely established that someone did know about the mummy he’d buried out on Boot Hill, that same someone undoubtedly had killed the US marshal, which of course was too bad. But more to the immediate point, that same killer unquestionably knew about the ten thousand dollars. Sheriff Rainey could see his dream of a fine white-painted schoolhouse for Springville slowly dissolving.

  Even if he’d wanted to, which he had no desire to do particularly, he couldn’t have kept the purpose of the handsome Mexican’s visit to Springville a secret. Of course all the waning interest flared to life again. Wild rumors and even wilder speculations started up again. Barney Whitsun, who normally was shrewd and level-headed, wanted to know why Claude hadn’t locked up this Fernando Bríon. When Claude irritably asked on what grounds, Barney had said on the grounds that he knew too damned much. Claude’s reply to that had been blunt. “Then I’d have to lock up all the other folks around the country as well, you included, Barney, for as I hear it, everyone knows a heap more about this mess than I do.”

  * * * * *

  One week and one day later, another stranger rode down Springville’s wide and dusty main thoroughfare. Because folks were by this time keyed up to their limit, every man or woman who saw the stranger enter town from the west, powder-fine trail dust whitening his shoulders and hat, eyed him with quick, hard suspicion.

  He was a heavy-boned youngish man who stood under six feet and had a face as dark as any Indian, from looking into the desert sun most of his life. He moved with a quiet confidence and his pale eyes, which contrasted sharply with the bronze of his skin, lent him a sinister appearance in the view of those who’d become almighty suspicious of any stranger.

  His horse was leggy and deep-chested, a powerful chestnut gelding with dark mane and tail. It was a young horse full of vitality and honed-down stamina. In short, it was the kind of horse men rode who might have reason to run far and long on a moment’s notice. That kind of an animal cost a great deal of money. Outlaws usually owned horses like that. Honest men could neither afford them, nor had much need for that much speed, stamina, and power.

  It was a Saturday with most of the range riders and owners in town, when this new stranger rode in and put up his beast at the livery barn, and afterward beat off dust and drank beer up at the Oasis under the covertly appraising eyes and closed, suspicious faces of the local cowmen and townsmen.

  The stranger, Jack Mather noticed, made a leisurely long study in his backbar mirror of the saloon’s patrons. He had to feel the suspicion, the antagonism, in the air, yet he stood there all loose and slouching, sipping his beer as relaxed as a man could be.

  After he left the voices started. No one bothered to wander outside and see where he went from Jack’s place. Rumors began anew; he was the assassin; he’d come for the money in Barney’s safe; he was a hired killer; Claude should lock him up at once.

  But Claude didn’t lock up the stranger. The idea never once crossed his mind, for the stranger’s next stop after leaving Mather’s place was Claude’s office down at the jailhouse, where he showed Claude his badge and said his name was Arch Clayton, deputy US marshal from the Raton, New Mexico, office. He’d been sent to Springville because there were no deputies available from the Phoenix office.

  It all sounded perfectly sound and logical. Claude had brought forth Jonas Gantt’s effects for Clayton to examine minutely, and Claude also told him about Fernando Bríon’s visit. Beyond that he felt his way, giving all the details about the dead man he’d buried at Boot Hill, and minimizing the part about the bloodstained money. He couldn’t of course just omit mentioning the money, but he didn’t overemphasize it, either.

  Still, Arch Clayton said he wanted to see it, so Claude reluctantly took him over to Barney’s general store office and showed it to him. The loafers outside at once figured out Clayton was another federal lawman, and spread out over town to pass this along. It didn’t change anything; the rumormongers simply transposed the truth over the lies and went right on regarding Clayton with strong suspicion and distaste.

  It was Newton Douglas, in town this same Saturday night with all his riders from the ranch, who made it a point to walk down to Rainey’s office after supper and barge in upon the talk Claude and Clayton were having. He informed the lawmen what was being said. This annoyed Claude but it seemed to only amuse the deputy US marshal. Clayton’s pale eyes were droll as he said, “It’s the same everywhere a deputy marshal shows up. There’s just one bad feature to it. In large towns no one pays very much attention. In small places like Springville the talk gets back to the man or men. I’d just as soon have no notion there was another lawman around. Especially in cases like this one where the killer seems to be the bushwhacking type. I never grew an eye in the back of my head, and just about anyone can slip up behind a man two hundred yards away. If he’s a good enough shot …”

  Douglas gravely nodded, then he said, “Mister Clayton, everyone’s been wondering. I reckon it’s natural. But my particular question is … why, in over a month, hasn’t someone tried to get hold of that ten thousand dollars?”

  “That’s the easy part,” Clayton replied. “The first man to ride into Springville to prove he’s got legitimate claim on that money will immediately have to explain away two murders. Not even a fortune such as this bloodstained ten thousand dollars is going to inspire very many men to stick their necks into that kind of a noose.”

  Douglas had evidently thought about this, too, because he spread out his hands and said deprecatingly, “Accusing a man of something and being able to hang him with proof, when as I understand it there’ve been no witnesses at all, are two different things.”

  Clayton’s smile wavered slightly while he made a narrow study of Newton Douglas. “Under the law, Mister Douglas, neither your sheriff nor I have to let a suspect wander around until we can nail his hide to the wall. Suspicion of murder is a good enough charge to lock a man up and keep him locked up for a long while. That’s the one element in crime folks generally don’t understand … once you commit a crime, you can’t undo it. You can’t even change anything about it. But the law can dissect it over and over again, until something is found that’ll eventually lead to an arrest.”

  Newt sat a while in deep thought, then departed, looking pensive. Clayton asked about him, and Claude told him all he had to know, which was enough, really, to allay the stranger’s suspicions. Then Clayton said he’d be leaving Springville in the morning and Claude’s eyes clouded.

  “Gantt operated the same way,” he said. “If you go south of the border, someone’ll eventually bring me back your gun and badge.”

  Clayton fished out the badge and tossed it upon Claude’s desk. “Rule number one,” he said. “Gantt overlooked it or just plain didn’t care. Never go down into Mexico packing a US lawman’s badge.” He stood up. He was a deceptively built man. Muscle was punched down hard under his skin. He didn’t look it at first glance, but there wasn’t an ounce of fat on A
rch Clayton anywhere, and he weighed two hundred pounds despite the fact that he was only five feet and ten inches tall.

  Claude, who’d made a lifelong study of men, recognized in this one all the attributes of the genuine killer. Not an assassin, or a professional gunfighter; those kinds came and went without living to get gray over the ears. But this kind of a man, who could kill equally as well with gun, knife, or fists, without giving that impression at all, was the real natural killer.

  Claude escorted him out into the settling dusk and watched Clayton stride across to the hotel. He had a feeling that Arch Clayton would go down into Mexico and come back. He also had a feeling of quiet resignation; someone was going to end up getting that ten thousand dollars after all. Claude’s dream of a white-painted schoolhouse faded again, in his mind, as it had faded a time or two before. In irritation he growled at himself for ever entertaining such a grandiose idea. Springville didn’t have but thirty or forty kids anyway, and that included the whole blessed countryside.

  He turned, locked the jailhouse, and started up toward the Oasis, changed his mind across the road because he didn’t feel like answering a hundred questions, and headed instead for his room, and bed, at the hotel.

  Chapter Three

  In due course, which was logical because the registrar of brands had a prosaic job and did everything in a properly prosaic manner, one of the stages brought a letter to Sheriff Rainey about the mark on the dead horse. It wasn’t actually a registered brand, only the mark of a small horse raiser over by Raton used to identify his animals. There was of course no law as yet requiring all livestock markings to be registered, which the registrar pointed out almost mournfully in his letter, therefore he couldn’t do much more than give an outline of the brand, based upon little more than cursory information, frequently erroneous. But that horse rancher up near Raton specialized in steel dust cross animals. He had quality horses. The only ones he used his little mark upon were the best of his herds. And, oh, yes, his name was Archer Clayton.

  Claude sat for a long time gazing at that letter. Something jangled discordantly in the back of his brain. Of course there was no law saying a deputy US marshal couldn’t also own a ranch and breed up fine quality horses. Pat Garrett, killer of Billy the Kid, had ranched on the side while he’d also been a peace officer.

  But there seemed to Claude to be just too much coincidence here. That dead man’s horse had come from Clayton’s herd, which meant also, in all probability, that both the man Claude had buried, as well as Clayton, came from the same area—Raton, which lay up against the mountains of New Mexico not very far south from Colorado’s craggy uplands. Now Clayton shows up down at Springville, too, which was just about as far from the Raton country as a man could get, unless of course he went in the other direction and fetched up in Canada.

  Claude decided to ride out and have another look at the mummified remains of that dead horse, and also to have another look around that sere, desolate cañon. He left town with the heat rolling in, passed at a slow gait downcountry to the east, and saw nothing but two dust devils whirling up out of Mexico until he got to the northerly rim of Dead Man’s Cañon. But even then the sensation of being the only human being alive on earth persisted, for there was no movement, no sound, no brushy growth except only very occasionally, in all the world around him.

  He descended uncomfortably into the wide, barren cañon. Heat lifted from the shimmering ground and piled up all around him. The air was sterile down here; it had scarcely enough oxygen. Claude’s shirt darkened and his horse plodded along, glistening, until they came to the mummified remains of the horse.

  The tunneling badgers had given up, evidently because they’d gotten all the sustenance that could be gleaned. They’d heaved the carcass around apparently with little effort, for what had once been a thousand-pound horse was now little more than a brittle, brown envelope with some stiffly encased bones inside. One factor that helped, under the circumstances, was that mummified horses—or men for that matter—were practically scentless. There was no putrefaction; dehydration was too swift for the carcass to sour and rot as it would have done in damper or cooler country.

  Claude dismounted, kicked the carcass over, and stood studying that place where the brand had been. The mark had been cut out—it was no longer there! Since Sheriff Rainey’s last visit, someone had come up here and cut away the section of hide with a sharp knife; no other implement could have made the neat, square incision. Bone showed through and there were spider-web ligaments.

  Claude turned slowly, gazing at the flinty earth. There were no tracks. But all that meant was that the man who’d removed the section of hide with the Clayton brand on it hadn’t done so within the past day or two, for while it rarely rained in this desert country, hot winds sometimes blew up out of Mexico, off the shimmering Tamaulipas Plains, and filled the faint indentations with dust and sand. An Apache could have picked up the sign without doubt, but there hadn’t been any Apaches down here—at least that anyone ever saw—in many years.

  Claude stood hipshot in the shade of his drooping mount and rolled a smoke. Clayton could have done it; at least he’d been somewhere close by when that section of hide had been carved out. Of course it could just as easily have been some damned curio seeker, too, or perhaps Señor Bríon himself, although that didn’t make a whole lot of sense to Claude as he stood and smoked and puzzled the thing over until the faint and distant whiplash sound of a gunshot brought him crashing back to the present.

  His horse gave a little jump and switched its tail but Claude didn’t see where the bullet struck. It wouldn’t have kicked up enough dust in this dead, gravelly world anyway. Claude went to the horse, stepped up, and reined back a hundred or so feet before he paused, looking all around. His first calm thought was that either this wasn’t the marksman who’d done the other killing here—and probably the Gantt killing down in Mexico, too—or else he was off his feed, because he’d missed clean.

  His second thought was that, since he knew this country as well as any man alive, he just might be able to catch a glimpse of his private bushwhacker.

  He reined up along the heat-blurred slope that he’d descended about a half hour earlier, paused to rest his mount on the rim, then dropped far enough northward to be out of sight of anyone down below in Dead Man’s Cañon, and rode straight southward in the direction of the international line.

  Where the higher desert began to slope downward and on ahead in the distant blue-blurred reaches he could make out the endless expanse of the Tamaulipas Plains over the border in Mexico. He searched hard for sign of a horseman, and found none at all. In every direction the land was as empty as the surface of the moon. He rode slowly and carefully, staying well away from the occasional little arroyos that splayed out like fingers, east and west. If that rifleman didn’t have wings, he’d have to be down here somewhere. The view was uninterrupted in every direction. Since Claude couldn’t see him, he was probably crouching in one of the little fingerlike gullies.

  There was a way to determine that and Claude set about doing it. After all, a man didn’t follow the lawman’s trade for nearly forty years without ending up under a plank, and fail to learn a few worthwhile tricks. He looked around, then headed for the nearest lift in the land. He’d be in perfect view up there, an ideal stationary target except that he picked a place which was well beyond gun range of even the closest arroyo, and there he dismounted, got into the shadow of his horse to make the ambusher’s target even less inviting, then he squatted down and became simply another layer of the horse shadow.

  For twenty minutes he squatted like that, until his horse got impatient and stamped a couple of times, but he still saw nothing. He commanded a decent view down into every blessed arroyo and cañon for several miles, and saw nothing, only the same tawny red-brown earth with its infrequent little stunted sedge bush no more than a foot high, and occasionally a lizard or horned toad or hairy spider, whi
ch went to make up the life and substance of this dead world.

  Finally, with the heat sucking sweat off his hide before it even got to his shirt, Claude stood up resignedly, got back on his horse and debated whether to turn back or go on. He went on. He had two-thirds of the day left to squander and he was very curious. In the old days an Apache could have blended into the landscape like this, but only a very experienced Apache. Nowadays there weren’t even any Indians left who could do what this bushwhacker had just done—dissolve into thin air in a place where there wasn’t a decent hiding place in any direction.

  The trick, of course, was to stay well out in the open as he rode southward, and to get the hell out of this country before dusk settled. He knew if his enemy was still around—and he felt certain that this one was handy at disappearing in the evening shadows—he could raise up off the earth and shoot a man out of his saddle at less than ten feet. That, too, had been one of the old-time Apache tricks.

  Claude rolled a pebble under his tongue, tilted his hat brim forward, and rode straight down the gentle slope until he ran out of uphill country. He was then at the mouth of Dead Man’s Cañon. If his enemy was anywhere close by, he’d have to be either back up the cañon in hiding—although only the Lord knew where—or else he’d have to be down across the line into Mexico, and Claude knew for a damned fact he hadn’t gotten away in that direction because he’d squatted up there for twenty minutes watching for just such movement.

  It never once occurred to him, for understandable reasons, that the ambusher might’ve skirted along under the base of the same hill Claude had ridden up and over, heading westward, not southward, in the direction of Springville, until he decided to ride up the middle of the broad, desolate cañon and see if he couldn’t find the place from which the would-be assassin had fired at him.