After waiting, Gewald said, “Forget it for now. Have you an idea, any idea at all, about the murder of Eagle Charlie? Any notion about who wanted to kill him?”
If she did, it stayed within the dark stone of her.
Abruptly Gewald turned to Rosa. “Doesn’t she speak English?”
“No, sir.”
“Can’t or won’t speak it?”
“She won’t if she can. You can ask her.”
“How in God’s name do I ask her? In the unknown tongue?”
Rosa turned half-around to me in appeal. Innocence beleaguered and in need of help. I didn’t fall into that trap, if that’s what it was. She shrugged at Gewald.
“You ask her then, you Rosa. You can translate what she says. Didn’t she have it in for Eagle Charlie?”
Rosa asked, talking Indian, and got the same reply Gewald had. None.
Gewald switched his attack. “All right, Rosa or Mrs. Charlie or whatever they call you, she did hate Eagle Charlie. Right?”
“They argued, that’s all.”
“About what?”
“He wasn’t Indian enough to suit her.”
“In what ways?”
The girl spread her hands. They were small. They seemed too delicate for Breedtown. Her moccasined feet were small, too. “Little things,” she said. Her hands, spread, accented proud breasts. “She is Indian, all Indian. That’s how she wants to be. Eagle Charlie wasn’t that way. He was a good friend of white men. He was—how do I say it—one of the boys. They bought him drinks. He bought them drinks. He cut his hair.”
“And that’s all?”
“My husband was a chief like his father and grandpa. She wanted him to act like the old chiefs. That’s all I know and all I will say. We go now.”
“No, by God!” Gewald took a wheezy breath. Heat had been building up in him. The lines in his face, not his complexion, showed that much. He was a man who wanted to go places and couldn’t get started. “You’ll stay right here till I’m through with you. Hear?”
The girl appealed to me again. I tried a smile.
“How did you feel about Eagle Charlie?” Gewald asked her. “Not good, I bet?”
“He was my husband.”
“Some husband he was. Traded you off for a piece of beef. Traded you to Grimsley, for Christ’s sweet sake! That suited you, did it? It was fine and dandy?”
The girl bowed her head. She looked at me under fine brows. She was not innocence beleaguered but innocence betrayed, needing a friend. She answered, “I did what he said.”
“But you didn’t like it? Or did you?”
If the old woman had moved, I hadn’t noticed. She seemed immovable except for the dark beads of her eyes. They slid this way and that. Charleston sat silent. I was glad for the pauses, my notebook and fingers and I were.
“What do you say? It was all right?”
“I came back to my husband. I didn’t kill him. He was good to me.”
Gewald snorted, or came as close to a snort as he ever would. “Sure he was. Like hell he was. Now tell me, who were his enemies. Who wanted him dead?”
“I don’t know.”
“Luke McGluke? Red Fall?”
“Why would they?”
“That’s what I’m asking. Who?”
“I don’t know.”
“Eagle Charlie died right on your doorstep, and you say you don’t know. Nuts. Did you hear anything? Did you see anything? Anything out of the ordinary? Some little thing, maybe? Some clue? Don’t hold back on us, I warn you.”
“I was asleep.”
“You bet. Everybody was asleep. Eagle Charlie and the man who killed him were awake, though. Yet nobody heard. Nobody suspected.”
Rosa shrugged again. “I’ve said all I know.”
“You expect us to believe that? We don’t. We’ll prove it. You can expect more questions, you and your dummy here. Don’t you want us to find the murderer? You are the widow.”
“It won’t bring my husband back. But, yes. Find the man if you can.”
Gewald asked Charleston, “You have any questions?”
Charleston said, “I’m satisfied. Will you be around tomorrow?”
Gewald’s face asked a question that Charleston didn’t answer. He said, “I can be. Later maybe you’ll tell me why. Now the thing is to get these two women home. Beard, how about doing that? The truck’s outside.”
Charleston gave me a bare nod. For once I was glad to oblige Mr. Gewald.
Chapter Eighteen
Early as I turned out that next morning, after a phoned request from Charleston the night before, Mother was in the kitchen before me, busying herself with bacon and waffles. A fresh-squeezed glass of orange juice was at my place on the table.
“Mother,” I said, “for goodness’ sake, you didn’t have to get up at this hour. I can rustle for myself.”
She turned away from the frying pan and smiled. “I know you can, Jase, but I do what I like. One of these days—” The fork in her hand made a little going-away gesture as she turned back.
“Don’t fret yourself about that,” I said. “It looks like I’m a permanent guest.”
I ate and then kissed her good-bye.
I was a half-hour ahead of my regular starting time when I entered the office. Charleston was waiting for me. Jimmy was just tidying his cot. He said, “Bunch of damn early birds, and no worm in sight.” It was a good-natured comment.
Charleston put on his hat. “We’ll take off right away. No excess baggage this way. Gewald will be around later. I asked him to.”
He didn’t say we were going out to get Becker. I knew that much without being told. Why he wanted Gewald around for the questioning was another matter. Maybe it was just to show that our office knew its business better than he did.
Charleston buckled on the six-shooter that he seldom carried. He didn’t explain, and I didn’t ask.
“The temporary bridge is in,” he said as we walked out to the Special. “I checked, of course.”
I repeated, “Of course,” and he turned with a grin, as if to acknowledge it was idle to tell me.
The morning was as fair as ever nature could give. The sky was tall, to the end of sight and beyond. The horizons lay peaceful and distant, drowsing under the early sun. I thought of a statement I had read somewhere: values arise by contrast. So, sure, we needed cold and wind and rain for a full appreciation of days like this one.
The Special ran with low chuckles as if it found the fuel mixture just right. The low hills to our right showed a beginning green. To the west the mountains lifted, blue and white. Not a bad combination, either. More restful than red and black. The road was dry, but the borrow pits held the remembered rain. Two pairs of ducks, returned migrants, swam in a small lake that we passed. They had recalled the gorgeous days, too, and come back to enjoy them.
We crossed the temporary bridge over the ditch. A couple of earth movers stood at the side of the road there, idle and silent until hands made them growl. The bridge was narrow, its approaches rough, but it sufficed. Water lay in the ditch, not running. The head gate must have been closed.
Maybe eight miles farther on, we turned to the right, off the highway, and for about three more miles churned along a muddied dirt road and pulled up in front of Chuck Cleaver’s house.
Cleaver answered our knock and smiled a welcome. Charleston greeted him civilly before asking, “Dave Becker here?”
“He’s here but not quite. I got a cow calving late, and she’s in trouble, so he’s pulling the calf. Won’t be long.”
“All right,” Charleston said.
“I told you he’d come back here, didn’t I? I had a damn lock on him like I said. Come on in.”
He showed us into a small living room, made smaller by lumpy, overstuffed furniture with purple coverings. Purple wasn’t my favorite color. Mrs. Cleaver—I guessed it was Mrs. Cleaver—could be heard moving around in the kitchen out of sight.
“I was thinkin’ you could have c
alled me,” Cleaver said, “but hell. Something out of whack, like the damn telephone, and I keep forgettin’. You know how it is.”
“Do it myself.”
“Sit down, you two.”
My seat was on a spring that was trying to push through the purple.
“I wouldn’t ask, of course,” Cleaver said, asking, “but I don’t know why you’re so hot after Becker? He’s a good man. I got no kick on his work.”
“We may have missed something.” Charleston was being patient. “He may have missed it. We’re going over the killings again, bottom to top. People forget. People pass over things that didn’t strike them in the first place. They need to be nudged. The second or third or fourth time over, they may recall that little something that gives us a clue.”
“Maybe so, but Becker says you’ve pumped him clear dry.”
“You never know.”
Cleaver cocked an ear. “I think I hear Becker out in back now. I’ll go see. It’ll be a minute. He’ll have to clean up. Messy business, pullin’ a calf is.”
After he left us, we waited and listened, hearing men’s voices and the clatter of a wash basin. A little later the two came in, Cleaver in the lead. “Cow and calf doing fine,” he announced cheerfully.
Becker pushed ahead of him and faced Charleston. “Now what in hell do you want?” He stood bareheaded, indignant on his bowlegs, his face tight with what might have been outrage.
Cleaver said, “Take it easy, Dave.”
“Take it easy! I’ve come clean with these jokers. Told them everything that I know. But here they are again with their goddamn questions. Same old questions, same old answers. Jesus Christ! Buttin’ in on my work.”
Charleston had risen. He said, “Get your hat.”
“No, by God! Shoot your questions, Mr. Sheriff. Here or nowhere.”
Cleaver asked, “Why not here, Charleston?”
“Because I’m taking him in.”
I saw Becker’s hands open and close into fists. I saw his eyes go to Charleston’s revolver. It struck me that Charleston carried the gun only for effect. I never had known him to use it.
“Shit!” Becker said in a voice loud enough to be heard in the kitchen. He looked again at the revolver. “Be back, Chuck,” he said. “Be back after playtime.” He went out the front door, followed by us, and walked around to the back and got his hat from a peg over a wash bench decorated with a basin and one dirty towel.
Charleston asked me to drive and got in the back with Becker. Considerate of him, I thought, or plain careful, but, if I had to, I could handle Becker myself.
Not one word was said all the way back to town. Not a one. The only sounds were the hum of the engine and, once, the squawks of two ducks flushed from their home in the borrow pit.
It was hard to believe, on this quiet and tranquil morning, that murder could have been done, that violence could exist. Had the killer only counted to ten, so to speak, a day like today would have soothed him. The whole sky said peace.
Gewald was waiting when we entered the office. At Charleston’s bidding he got up and followed us, not into the file room but this time into the inner office.
We sat ourselves at Charleston’s direction, me with my notebook. He settled himself behind his desk. Facing Becker, he asked a peculiar question. “Knock-em-dead?” He paused. “That ring your bells, Becker?”
Becker seemed honestly puzzled. He looked at Gewald, then me, as if to find answers there. At last he said, “Knock-em-dead? What in Christ’s name? Sure, I’ve heard it. Football fans yell it, prizefight fans, too, and hockey fans for all that I know. Make sense, man.”
“Never mind,” Charleston said, waving the question aside. “It’s just that two men were knocked dead.” He leaned forward, his eyes hard on Becker. “We’ve got plenty against you.”
“Plenty bullshit.”
“We’ll start small. A case of assault and battery.”
Before he took time to think, Becker answered, “I betcha. I beat men up all the time.”
“Did I say a man, Becker?”
I could almost hear the gears turning in Becker’s head. He burst out, “That little bitch! That little bitch whore!”
“No, Jase,” Charleston said. “Sit back down.” To Becker he went on, “You admit to that charge, huh?”
“What of it? It’s a little damn thing. Hell, nothing. She was selling it but still turned me down, me with money in hand. That burns any man. So I cuffed her, not much. I’ll pay the fine, put up bail, or whatever, and that’s the end of it.”
Charleston pointed a finger. “That’s just the beginning, nothing by comparison. I can tell the whole story, or maybe you’d rather?”
“I love to hear fairy tales.”
“You don’t have to speak.”
“I haven’t heard nothin’ to speak of.”
“You can call a lawyer.”
“I know my rights, but them bloodsuckers!”
Charleston took a couple of deep breaths as if to find wind for his story. Gewald sat motionless except for his eyes, his hands clasped in his lap. He would break in on the interview if he thought it went wrong. Becker perched forward in his chair, ready to fight.
“You and Eagle Charlie were in cahoots,” Charleston said, his tone quiet but firm. “You were rustling Grimsley’s beef.”
“Bullshit!”
“You got the cows to Eagle Charlie,” Charleston went on, ignoring the interruption. “He got them away. And until the last Grimsley trusted you. He trusted your head count. Then he began his own tally. The two didn’t agree.”
“So what? Whose count always comes out the same? It was them breeds made off with what few was stole. Grimsley said so himself.” Becker clamped his mouth shut, his point made.
“He said so, yes, but that was to keep you from knowing he suspected you, too. He wanted to get the goods on you, and you knew it.”
“Next thing,” Becker said, “you’ll say I killed Grimsley.”
“That’s what I am saying.”
Becker started half up from his chair. “You goddamn fool, you! Killed him, for Christ’s sake!”
Charleston went on quietly. “Now Eagle Charlie didn’t mind making off with a few cows, but he was kind of a friend of Grimsley. He had a good thing in him. He didn’t want Grimsley killed. He was upset and sore about that. He made you uneasy.”
“It’s this crazy crap that makes me uneasy.”
“There was another little matter, Becker. You wanted to bed Rosa. You didn’t just want to, you were wild to do that.”
“All right, I had my eye on her. I own up I wanted to have her. That’s natural. What man wouldn’t?”
“That would depend on the man,” Charleston said dryly, “but let’s go on. You knew Rosa had been farmed out to Grimsley. You tackled Eagle Charlie. But you’re a tightwad, Becker. You wouldn’t pay what he asked. You had words about that.”
“We talked, sure. But twenty dollars a night!”
“So you quarreled. You got hot. Damn him, anyway!”
Becker just replied, “So you say.”
We all waited for Charleston to continue. Gewald, still attentive as a hawk, seemed about to say something but restrained himself. I hoped my incomplete notes were enough for a final report.
“Two pretty good motives, Becker,” Charleston went on after the pause. “Two very persuasive motives. Fear that Eagle Charlie would talk, pants on fire for the wife he wouldn’t sell cheap.”
Becker hunched forward, his hard face working. “Good God, you crazy fool! Good God! Now you’re saying that I killed Eagle Charlie!”
“That’s right.”
“That’s wrong. I was haulin’ cattle for Cleaver when Eagle Charlie was kilt.”
“That’s your word. We have other witnesses. You stuck around long enough to do in your partner.”
“A pack of lies, that’s what you’re tellin’. A loco imagination you got. Guessin’ this and guessin’ that and no proof at all.”
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br /> “Enough,” Charleston replied. He fingered papers on his desk like a lawyer in court. “I have records of your account at the bank. They show regular deposits of your paycheck, but that’s not all. You made irregular deposits, often in amounts bigger than your pay.”
“It’s a man’s own business where his money comes from,” Becker answered. His voice still sounded with bluster, but he appeared suddenly smaller, shrunken somehow, as he slid back in his chair.
“So long as it’s legal, Becker. Was this money legally made? Where did it come from?”
Becker’s tongue darted over his lips like a snake’s. “I own up to one thing, and you’ll build a mountain.”
There was inquiry in the tone and words, a sort of hopeful self-serving, as if he hunted for a way out, but all Charleston said was, “Things follow each other.”
“All right about Eagle Charlie and me. We stole a few head. Grimsley could damn well afford it. If he was lookin’ toward me, I didn’t know it.”
“Not even a hint, huh?”
Becker licked his lips again. “I wasn’t plumb easy at any time. You know how it would be? The idea of gettin’ caught?”
“I can imagine. Now about Eagle Charlie, about him and the killing of Grimsley?”
“To tell the truth—”
“It’s about time.”
“We shied off from each other after Grimsley got bonked. That was plain sensible. We didn’t want to be seen together after makin’ off with a few of his cows. Understand? Too easy to point a finger at us.”
“Did Eagle Charlie suspect you?”
“What of?”
“You know what of. Maybe that’s why he wouldn’t let you have Rosa?”
“Thinkin’ I was the killer, you mean? So he put the price out of sight? How nuts can you get?”
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