Message on the Wind

by J. R. Roberts

  “Organ Pipe was wiped out years ago.”

  “Wiped out?” Clint repeated. “Wiped out by what?”

  “Mister,” Hickey said, “believe me, you don’t wanna go there.”

  “Why not?”

  “Organ Pipe was wiped out,” Hickey said, “by a plague.”

  TWENTY-ONE

  “What the hell are you talking about?” Clint asked.

  “Organ Pipe, Arizona, right?” Hickey asked.

  “All I know is Organ Pipe,” Clint said. “Could there be two towns with that name?”

  “Well, I suppose there could be,” Hickey said. “Maybe after the first town died, they started one up somewhere else with the same name.”

  “Are you sure about this?”

  “That newspaper editor brought you here, right?” Hickey asked.

  “That’s right.”

  “Well, that’s because nobody knows this area like I do,” Hickey said.

  “Can you tell me where Organ Pipe was?” Clint asked.

  “You actually wanna go there?” Hickey asked. “Why?”

  Clint took the newspaper clipping out and passed it to the shackled man.

  “Somebody wrote a note on here?” Hickey asked.

  “That’s what it looks like.”

  “How did you get it?”

  “It blew into my camp one morning.”

  “This note? But this is an old newspaper.”

  “I know.”

  “You think this has been blowin’ around Arizona all this time?”

  “I don’t know what to think, Hickey,” Clint said. “But somebody needed enough help to write that and toss it into the wind.”

  “Well,” Hickey said, putting the clipping down on the table carefully, “that town needed help, all right. If I was you, I wouldn’t be carryin’ that around too long. Might have plague attached to it.”

  “What kind of plague are we talking about, Hickey?” Clint asked.

  “The kind that can kill a whole town, that’s what kind,” Hickey said. “Ain’t no use in going to that town, Adams. It’s dead.”

  “Just tell me where it is,” Clint said, “and I’ll go and see for myself.”

  “Well, it’s kinda hard to tell you where it is,” Hickey said, “but I can show you.”

  “Which means you want me to get you out of here,” Clint observed.

  “That would be helpful.”

  “That’s not going to happen, Hickey,” Clint said.

  “The state is not going to let you out of prison just to satisfy a curiosity of mine.” Clint stood up. “So I guess we’re done here.”

  Hickey rattled his chains and said, “Wait, wait, don’t be in such a damned hurry!”

  Clint stopped, and saw the guard peering in through the bars to see what the commotion was. He waved the man away and turned back to Hickey.

  “Sit back down,” Hickey said. When Clint didn’t move, the prisoner added, “Please.”

  Clint sat.

  “The thing about Organ Pipe is where it’s located. You could approach it for miles and not see it, and then there it was, right in front of you.”

  “It’s hidden?”

  “It’s well hidden by the hills around it,” Hickey said. “More people would find it by accident than would actually go there on purpose.”

  “But you could tell me how to find it?” Clint asked.

  “I could tell you how to find where it used to be,” Hickey said. “I’m sure they musta burned the whole thing to the ground.”

  Clint looked down at the newspaper article, which he’d forgotten to pick up again—or had he? Was Hickey telling the truth about a plague wiping out the town? Clint shook his head and picked up the clipping. He folded it under the watchful eye of the convict and put it back in his shirt pocket.

  “Tell me how to find it,” he said.

  “Get me some paper and a pencil,” Hickey said, “and I’ll draw you a map—but you gotta agree to somethin’ first. I mean, I gotta get somethin’ outta this, right?”

  “What do you want?”

  When Clint was finished with Hickey, a guard walked him back to the warden’s office, where Steve Wynn and Warden Kelsey were sharing a whiskey and talking.

  “Did you get what you wanted?” Wynn asked.

  “I did.”

  “What did it cost you?” Kelsey asked.

  “I’ll be sending some packages in for Hickey from time to time, Warden,” Clint said. “Will you see that he gets them?”

  “As long as there are no weapons in them,” Kelsey said, “I don’t see why not.”

  TWENTY-TWO

  When Clint and Wynn got back to town, Clint said, “Buy you that whiskey?”

  “I had one with the warden,” the editor said. “That’s my limit, but I’ll take a beer.”

  Clint let Wynn pick the place, and he chose the Wagon Wheel.

  “It’s quieter,” the editor explained, “and closer to the paper.”

  They went inside, and found it fairly empty since it wasn’t yet noon. The bartender greeted Wynn by name—“Mornin’, Mr. Wynn”—and Clint and Steve ordered two beers.

  “So,” Wynn said, “what can you tell me that you didn’t want to say in front of the warden?”

  “Hickey wanted me to get him out so he could show me where Organ Pipe is.”

  “He knows?”

  “He says he knows where it was.”

  “Was?”

  “According to him,” Clint said, “the town died of the plague. He thinks it was probably burned to the ground.”

  “That’s odd.”

  “Why?”

  “You’d think that would be newsworthy,” Wynn said. “I never heard a word about it. So he told you where the town was?”

  “Drew me a map.”

  “And you promised to send him some . . . items?”

  “From time to time,” Clint said.

  “Like what?”

  “Things he likes to eat,” Clint said, “cigars, tobacco . . . easy stuff, but things he can’t get inside.”

  “Things he could use as currency inside, too.”

  “Whatever he wants to use them for, I don’t care,” Clint said.

  “Where is this Organ Pipe supposed to have been?”

  “Two days’ ride south from here.”

  “You goin’ alone?”

  “Can’t think of anybody I’d want to take with me,” Clint said.

  “How about a reporter?”

  “You don’t have a reporter,” Clint reminded him. “You want to come yourself?”

  “I can’t leave the paper,” Wynn said. “Shit!”

  “That’s okay,” Clint said, “I don’t really see the benefit to me to take a writer along. He’d just slow me down. But thanks for getting me in to see Hickey.”

  “Hey, don’t forget, you owe me before you owe Hickey,” Wynn reminded him. “When were you planning on leaving?”

  “In the morning.”

  “Then we better go over to the office and do this interview,” Wynn said.

  “Can’t we do it when I get back?”

  “And if you don’t get back?” Wynn asked. “What do I do then?”

  “Good point.” Clint finished his beer, put the empty mug down on the bar. “I’m hungry. How about we do this thing over a steak lunch?”

  “Sure. Why not?”

  “You know a place makes a good steak?”

  Wynn grinned and nodded, and put his half-finished beer down on the bar.

  “I know just the place,” he said. “Let’s stop by the office so I can pick up a pencil and some paper, and then I’ll take you over.”

  Over a delicious steak at a café the editor said had the best food in town, Clint tried his best to answer Steve Wynn’s questions, but before they started, Wynn had to ask that one question Clint had never heard before.

  “You know,” Wynn said, when they sat down, “I gave this a lot of thought, came up with a few questions, but discarde
d them all. I’m sure they’ve been asked before.”

  Clint remained silent. He didn’t want to give the man any hints.

  “But I think I finally came up with one you haven’t heard before.”

  “Okay, let’s hear it.”

  Wynn sat back, looked across the table, and asked, “What’s your favorite color?”

  Clint stared at the man, then laughed and shook his head.

  “You know, in all the years people have been asking me questions, you’re right, nobody has ever asked me that,” he admitted. “So go ahead, conduct your interview.”

  “Okay,” Steve Wynn said, “then let’s start with that one. What is your favorite color?”

  “Red.”

  TWENTY-THREE

  Steve Wynn fired questions at him for an hour, and he answered as truthfully as he could. There were times when a totally truthful answer might have incriminated him or someone else, so he had to be inventive. For the most part, though, he told the truth. And to his credit the editor came up with some other questions that had never been asked before.

  Over pie and coffee Clint told Wynn, “That wasn’t as bad as most.”

  “I guess I’ll take that as a compliment,” Wynn said.

  “That’s how I meant it. Sure you don’t want to jump on a horse tomorrow and go looking for a town that died of the plague?”

  “Oddly enough,” Wynn said, “it’s the jumping on a horse part of that that doesn’t agree with me.”

  “Not afraid of the plague?”

  “I still think if that was the case, a town dying like that, maybe being burned to the ground, it would’ve been big news. Burn a town to the ground—any size town—and that would have to make for a lot of smoke. Somebody would’ve had to see it.”

  “Well, I guess I’ll find out when I get out there. With a word like ‘plague’ connected to it, maybe that’s why folks have been unwilling to talk to me about Organ Pipe.”

  “What if Hickey has sent you on a wild-goose chase?” Wynn asked.

  “That’s something I’ll deal with if the time comes,” Clint said.

  “And your reason for all this is still . . . what? Just curiosity?”

  “Pretty much.”

  “And a cry for help.”

  Clint shrugged, pushed his empty pie dish away, and drank the last of his coffee.

  “I think I’ll go and talk to that senior deputy, see what he thinks of all this.”

  “That’d be Fellows, right? You think he was one of the ones who was lying to you?”

  “Maybe,” Clint said. “Let’s see what he says now that I know what I know.”

  “Well, if you do find that the town was burned to the ground and died of the plague, you will give me the story, right?”

  “Absolutely,” Clint said. “After you run my interview, I’ll want you to have a big story to make people forget it.”

  “I don’t think that’ll happen,” Wynn said. “In fact, I kind of think some Eastern papers will want to pick it up.”

  “Great,” Clint said.

  “Tell you what,” Wynn said. “I’ll buy lunch to ease the blow.”

  “You’ve got a deal.”

  When Clint entered the two-story brick sheriff’s office, the senior deputy, Fellows, was seated behind the desk, this time alone.

  “Mr. Adams.” He greeted Clint as he entered. “How have you been liking our fair town?”

  “I like it fine.”

  “And your visit to the prison?”

  “You heard about that, huh?”

  “I try to keep my ears open.”

  “Then you must have heard who I went there to see.”

  “Well, since you took Mr. Wynn with you, and his paper was very vocal about Joe Hickey’s conviction, I’m gonna guess it was Hickey. After all, Joe knows all of Arizona better than anybody I know.”

  “I’m glad to hear that,” Clint said, “because he’s drawn me a map to Organ Pipe.”

  “Organ Pipe?” Fellows said, frowning. “What’s that?”

  “It’s a town . . . or it was, according to Hickey.”

  “A town? Around here?”

  “Well, in Arizona, about two days from here.”

  Still frowning, Fellows said, “I don’t think I’ve heard of the place.”

  “Well, it’s supposed to have burned to the ground over two years ago.”

  “That would explain it, then,” Fellows said. “Like I told you, I’ve only been here eighteen months.”

  “I’ll bet your sheriff probably knows about it.”

  “I’ll bet he does, but unfortunately we don’t know when he’ll be back.”

  “By the time he gets back, I might have all the answers I need,” Clint said.

  As Clint turned to leave, Fellows asked, “You leavin’ town?”

  “Tomorrow,” Clint said, “but just to see if I can find Organ Pipe. I should be back within a week, either way.”

  “Stop in and let me know what happens, when you get back,” Fellows said. “I’ll be interested.”

  “Sure, Deputy,” Clint said. “I’ll see you soon.”

  TWENTY-FOUR

  “Where’d you hear that Adams went to the prison?” Mike Callum asked Deputy Bennett.

  “Deputy Fellows heard it,” Bennett said, “an’ he told me and Stone.”

  “What was he doin’ at the prison?” Callum asked.

  “I dunno,” Bennett said. “Neither did Fellows. All we know is he went out there with the newspaper editor, um, Wynn?”

  “Steve Wynn,” Callum said. He scratched his head. “Only reason Wynn ever goes out there is to talk to Joe Hickey.”

  “What’s the Gunsmith got to do with Joe Hickey?” Bennett asked.

  “I don’t know,” Callum said, “but it’s somethin’ I got to find out before I kill ‘im.”

  “You know Hickey, don’t ya?”

  “I know Joe Hickey real well,” Mike Callum said. “Real well.”

  “You’re pretty popular today, ain’t ya?” the guard asked Joe Hickey as he led him from his cell.

  “Who is it this time?” Hickey asked.

  “That friend of yours, Mike Callum.”

  Callum was no friend of his, but he visited Hickey to stay on the right side of him, just in case he ever got out. If things went the state’s way, though, not only would Hickey never get out, but his neck would get stretched. The only thing holding up his hanging so far was his lawyer, who was trying to make a name for himself.

  “We’re pretty much used ta you gettin’ visited by that newspaper editor and this jasper, Callum. What did the Gunsmith want with you?”

  “That’s my business, ain’t it?” Hickey said.

  “Sure, Joe, sure,” the guard said. “It’s your business.” The guard took him to the same room, chained him up, and left him there. While he was waiting for the door to open, Hickey wondered what the hell Mike Callum wanted with him now.

  When the door opened, Callum came right in and sat down across from Hickey.

  “Joe,” he said, “what the hell was the Gunsmith doin’ here?”

  “What’s it to you?”

  “I’m gonna kill ‘im.”

  “You’re gonna what?”

  “You heard me,” Callum said. “I’m gonna kill ‘im.”

  “No, you ain’t.”

  “What are you sayin’?” Callum asked. “You don’t think I can?”

  “Well, first, uh, no,” Hickey said. “He’d kill you just as soon as look at ya. But second, even if you could kill ‘im, I don’t want you to.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I got a deal workin’ with him, and I don’t want you foulin’ it up.”

  “What kind of deal?”

  “The kind that just might get me out of here.”

  “You’re in here for murder, Joe,” Callum said. “What the hell could he do to get you out?”

  “Well, for one,” Hickey said, “he could do what none of my other so-called friends c
ould do. He could break me out.”

  “Why would the Gunsmith break you out of prison?”

  “Because I just may have somethin’ he needs.”

  “Like what?”

  “Well, now,” Hickey said. “That’s my business, ain’t it?” Callum leaned forward. “Look, Joe, I got a chance to make a name for myself,” he said.

  “You can make a name for yerself later, Mike,” Hickey said. “I’m tellin’ you not to mess up what I got goin’ on. You hear?”

  “Yeah, I heard,” Callum said, “but fuck you, Joe.”

  “What did you say?”

  “You heard me,” Callum said. “You’re in here and I’m out there. What are you gonna do to me?”

  “Don’t try me, Mike,” Hickey said. “I’ll reach out from in here—”

  “How?” Callum asked. “You just said yourself your so-called friends are no good to you. So how you gonna reach out for me?”

  Callum stood up and headed for the door. Behind him he heard Hickey’s chains rattle as the man tried to stand up.

  “Mike, so help me—”

  “I was just showin’ you some respect by comin’ here, Joe,” Callum said, “but to hell with you. You don’t show me no respect at all, so fuck you.”

  “What the hell is wrong with you, Callum?” Hickey shouted. “Are you sober?”

  Callum banged on the door for the guard. Hickey sat down in his chair as the guard let Callum out.

  What was he worried about? There was no way Mike Callum could gun down the Gunsmith. No way.

  Unless he did it from behind.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  Clint went to the livery to check on Eclipse and to tell the liveryman to have the horse ready first thing in the morning.

  “Mister,” the man said, “my first thing in the morning is nine because I drink a lot. What’s yours?”

  “You know, I’ll have breakfast first and meet you here at nine,” Clint said. “That’s fine.”

  “I’ll have him ready, mister,” the man said, “but you’re gonna bring him back, right? I mean, I ain’t never had a horse like that in my house before.”

  “Your house?”

  “This is my house,” the man said. “Okay? I sleep in a damn shack, but this is my house.”