"I think I know who the murderer is," Addie said softly, a note of sadness creeping into her voice.
"Well, for gosh sakes, speak up!"
"Not yet, Paul. I want to be sure. If we pick the wrong man, the right man will go free. When you're through eating, come up to my room." With that, Addie rose and went through the bar and up the stairway.
Paul went into the bar and saw Alonzo Finch drinking at the bar with a couple of miners.
Paul sauntered up to the bar, caught Finch's attention and said, "How about drinks all around?"
The miners looked at Paul with respect and friendliness. "We sure would be proud to drink with you, Scott."
"Does hay hauling pay so well that you can afford to treat, Paul?" Finch asked.
"It doesn't pay as well as some other things, Finch," Paul replied. He took out Big-head's purse and tossed it on the bar in full view of Finch.
"Where did you get that?" Finch said, the slightest hesitation in his guarded voice.
"Do you recognize it, Alonzo? I took it off Big-head Larson."
"But I thought you said you didn't kill him."
"I didn't. But you know what I think, Finch? I think you paid him what's in that purse to kill me!"
The miners moved uneasily. Finch, though his gun was hidden, was armed, and Paul wore his forty-five in full view on his hip.
"Paul, you're still a nuisance. One of these days you're going to find yourself in trouble," Finch said evenly. His soft-looking body appeared to harden and grow taller.
"How about now?" Paul asked, pushing back from the bar.
Finch shrugged. "Why should I do the law's work?"
Addie appeared at the foot of the stairs and beckoned to Paul. He picked up the purse that had belonged to Big-head, threw a coin on the bar and told the others to order up. Then he turned to follow Addie to her room.
For a moment he felt uncomfortable and out of place in the luxuriously furnished room, that smelled of perfume and cosmetics. Candles shed a soft radiance upon the silk bedspread and the brocade furniture.
"You've got a right pretty place here, Addie," Paul complimented her.
"I've got some good brandy, too," she said. "That stuff at the bar isn't much good, but it's all I can get here. I have this sent out from New York."
She poured him a small glass of the amber fluid. Her every movement was graceful and yet dead sure. Paul sipped the brandy and felt it burn in his stomach.
"Why did you want me here, Addie?" he asked, watching her.
"Don't you like it?"
"I reckon it's real nice—too nice for a rough man in a rough country to appreciate. It would soften him."
"A man like you can get too hard, Paul."
"I wouldn't know. I know only that somebody is bent on making it tough for me. They're willing to go to any extreme except meeting me face to face. That meeting's got to come, and I can't afford to be soft about it, Addie."
"I was gauging you," she said with ill-concealed pleasure. "We want to hire you as a man to keep the law here…"
Before Paul could reply, there was the scrape of feet in the hall, and Addie let Carmody and Farrow into the room. These men, too, felt uneasy in such feminine surroundings. Addie poured them all drinks and invited the men to sit. Carmody was a typical railroad man, broad of chest, thick of arm. His hands were huge, and the whiskey glass appeared fragile and helpless in his grasp. Farrow was different, a tall, rawhide man of loose construction. His face wore the pallor of the mines, and his eyes were squinted, but at home, in the candlelight.
"You do the talking, Addie," Carmody said gruffly.
"There's not much talking to do. This camp is going to start booming like a mushroom once things get started. We're the people in on the ground floor, and if we keep a tight grip, the town will run our way. You've proved yourself here, Paul, as a man who can fight and isn't afraid. We want to hire you to keep things honest and quiet."
Paul looked about at the serious faces and felt flattered by the offer. "Look here," he said. "Even if I agreed to accept your offer, it wouldn't stick. You couldn't just hand me a lawman's job. I'd have to be appointed…"
"That would come. Right now we need you," Carmody put in earnestly. "Day after tomorrow I've got the payroll coming in. It was stolen once right off the stage."
Farrow, his voice a little wheezy, said, "We've hit a vein of gold up on the hill; danged near pure metal. I've got a special crew mining that gold, men I can trust. But if rumor gets out that I'm holding that kind of stuff, it will be stolen before I can get it to Salt Lake. We can tell folks hereabouts that you were deputized by mail. When the marshal comes, he can do it proper."
"I hope to have him do it proper," Paul agreed, "but just so I can take Finch back to Oklahoma with me. You see I won't be here long enough to do much good."
"Why don't you try it, Paul?" Addie said. "It might give you a chance to find Big-head's killer. Much might happen before you leave here."
"Look, Addie, the warrant I'm waiting for might be here day after tomorrow."
"Will you take a special job?" Carmody asked, then, his big hands fondling the empty whiskey glass.
"Doing exactly what?"
Carmody looked around as though making sure nobody outside the room could hear. "I want you to ride out and meet the stagecoach when it comes in, and act as a special guard."
"Don't they carry a guard?"
"Sure, but I want to make it look good. It's just for looks, to keep 'em guessing."
"How do you mean that?"
Carmody grinned, his big, round face lighting up slyly. "The payroll won't be on the stage. This is a secret between us here. Addie knows about it, and so does Farrow. We've all used the same trick now and then. The payroll money is coming with an old trapper in a dilapidated buckboard. It's a hard-scrabble outfit nobody would suspect was worth thirty cents. We've banking on him getting through, but to make it look right, I want the extra guard on the stage. Do you savvy?"
"I savvy all right, Mr. Carmody, but I'm not sure I want to get shot up guarding something that isn't there."
"You don't have to carry it as far as bullets. Besides, the mail will be on the coach. It might carry the warrant you're wantin' so bad."
"Things are getting worse here lately," Addie took up the argument. "I don't like men being shot at, I don't like murder. We'll hire you as a sort of special agent until we see how it works out. Grievy was once a deputy, and I've still got his star. What do you say, Paul?"
"Keep your star, Addie," he said, and saw the accusation in her eyes. They all looked at him, judged him, and thought he was afraid. "But I'll take the special job, Carmody. I'll guard the stagecoach, because I've got a stake in the job myself. I want that warrant or any other kind of orders that come through that will give me a legal hold on Finch. Reckon, though, the marshal from Salt Lake might bring the warrant personally."
Addie said, disappointment in her low, husky voice, "That's your answer, then?"
"I'm sorry, Addie," Paul said softly.
Farrow said solemnly, his pasty face grim, "I think you're making a mistake, Scott. I don't know what Finch did to you back in Oklahoma, but if you're not there it can't hurt you. You're cut out for this land, Scott. It's a growing land, and you can grow with it. There's stuff to fight for here, and you can fight."
"What Finch did to me in Oklahoma isn't important only to me. My folks are still alive there. They're entitled to the respect and trust of the community. My brothers did some bad things, but not so bad as they were painted. I want to take Finch back and force the truth out of him."
"Suppose he murdered Big-head," Addie said. "Then you could get him here in the territory for murder."
"Oklahoma has first chance at him," Paul said stubbornly. "If he has any time left, this territory can have him."
Farrow rose and stretched. "You're your own man, Scott. Don't stand in your own way." Farrow said good night to Addie and went out.
"I'll see you tomorro
w," Carmody said. "The stage comes in day after tomorrow; that will give you time to make plans."
He found himself alone once more with Addie and the perfume and silk and lace.
"You can share the room off the kitchen with the night cook. It's warm there, and safe," she told him.
Thanking her, Paul went on down the stairs and outside without looking toward the bar.
When Norah awoke after a restless night, she appeared in the kitchen for breakfast dressed in her flannel shirt and buckskin pants. At sight of her, her mother's face lost its animated glow and changed to an expression of critical disapproval.
"What's the matter with you, child? Why in the world do you have to dress like that?" Helen asked.
"I intend to haul the hay to the post today, Mother."
"Don't you realize you're a grown woman? That job isn't for you any more. It was all right to do it once in a while when you were tomboying around here, but now you need some dignity."
"I don't feel, Mother, that dignity suffers through honest labor. It's a job I can do. I feel responsible for Paul being thrown off the post."
"Eglund can do it," Helen said. "What do you think Major Hornaby will think of you, dressed like a man and doing a man's work?"
"It isn't important to me what the major thinks," Norah replied, her voice level. "As for Eglund hauling the hay, he's got too much to do already. If he hauls the hay, it means that Uriah will have to do double work."
"I thought Alonzo Finch might become interested enough in you to marry you and take you away from here. I see now that it's hopeless," Helen said.
"I don't want to go away from here," Norah said fiercely. Then, changing the subject, she asked, "Did you see the letter Uriah brought for Paul night before last?"
Busying herself over the table, where she mixed the biscuit dough, Helen hesitated a moment before answering. When she spoke, there was accusation in her voice.
"Why do you ask me about that? You took charge of it."
"Yes, I know. I'm sorry I asked you."
"Why should you be sorry?" Helen asked stubbornly. "Did you think I had taken it?"
There it was, bare and ugly and in the open, the suspicion she did not want to acknowledge.
"No, Mother. I must have lost it. I thought you might have found it," Norah said too quickly.
"Perhaps Eglund found it," Helen said coldly, "or Paul Scott himself."
Norah ate her breakfast. No, Paul had not found the letter, of that she was sure. She almost bolted her food, as though she had to rush after something that was mocking and threatening her; some monster which, if she did not contrive to capture and strangle it, would eventually destroy her.
It was mid-morning when Paul met Carmody in the Lone Chance. The big-chested contractor with his high boots and big, floppy hat looked like a dressed-up bear. From his hairy face the stump of a cigar protruded, and he was puffing smoke faster than a donkey engine going upgrade.
"Hope you ain't changed your mind about that job, Scott," he said around his cigar.
"I gave you my word," Paul said levelly.
"Farrow, up at the mine, is running into the trouble he was afraid of. Somebody's getting their fingers into the pie."
Paul frowned. He recalled Farrow's story about the high grade gold ore. Well, Farrow would have to protect that ore himself. Paul knew that, if he started taking on that job, he'd find himself stuck there. The only other occupant of the Lone Chance at the time, besides the bartender, was Alonzo Finch. He was playing a haphazard game of solitaire, ostensibly disinterested in everyone and everything about him. But he had ears like an elephant's.
"Sorry about that," Paul said.
"But not sorry enough to do anything about it? Farrow would pay big—bigger than me."
"No," Paul said.
Without looking up, Finch said, "I heard a rumor that you're taking on some weight around here, Paul."
"Maybe it isn't just a rumor," Paul said.
"You know, Paul, sometimes stage scouts get hurt —hurt real bad, especially if they're armed. What makes you think you could ever kill a man? You've never been bloodied."
"That's right, Finch," Paul said. "I hope you're around when I have to make my first try."
"I'll probably be around before, and after. Will you?"
"That's an interesting question," Paul said, and went out on the porch to sit and watch the railroad crew far up the side of the mountain grading the roadbed for the switchback track.
At noon he ate dinner at the Lone Chance, and Addie came to share his table, but she said little. It was as though she had said everything there was to say. There was a pensiveness about her that Paul had not seen before.
"What're you thinking, Addie?" he asked, then added quickly, "No, don't tell me if you don't want to."
"I have a strange feeling, Paul," Addie said slowly. "I can't understand it. I have a frightening sense something is going to happen, something horrible, but I don't know just who it's going to happen to."
"Didn't know you were a fortune teller, Addie." Paul smiled.
"I'm not."
"Then forget it. It's just because of the way things have been going lately: Big-head killed, me shot at—"
"Maybe that's part of it. This new job you took on for Carmody might make the killer the more determined."
"I've been thinking it over. Maybe that shot missed on purpose the other night. They might just have wanted to scare me."
"They didn't try to scare Big-head; they cut a hole in his back. Be careful, Paul."
Later in the afternoon, he went back of the Lone Chance toward the stables to check his gear. It was then he saw Norah on her pinto, still dressed in flannel and buckskin, riding toward him. She was upset, sad, her eyes were clouded with despair.
"Will you go for a ride with me, Paul?" she asked without any preliminaries.
"I'd like to, Norah," he said. "What's wrong?"
"I'll tell you as we ride," she answered without enthusiasm.
Paul saddled up quickly, realizing that whatever secret it was Norah had to tell, she wanted to divulge it at once. That it was bothering her was apparent. When he was in the saddle, she said, "Let's take the mountain trail that leads back toward the cow camp."
Paul agreed, and for the first few minutes a heavy pall of silence hung between them. They rode north toward the mountain where the railroad crews worked; after crossing a deep swale, the cow camp trail swung to the left and skirted Gull Canyon. The sun was hot and the smell of sage rose sharp and bitter from the dark bushes that lined the trail. At last Norah spoke slowly, uncertainly.
"I don't know just what you think of me, Paul," she said.
"Neither do I know what I think of you," he surprised himself by saying. "I mean there are some things that are confusing."
"Yes, there are. For instance, that letter I had for you," she went on, her eyes on the trail.
Yes, the letter. How was she going to explain that? Paul wanted to spare her.
"What happened to it," he asked without rancor.
"That's just it. I don't know!" she said in a low, agonized voice. "I had it in the pocket of my jacket that night I brought a horse for you. But Uriah made me take his heavier coat, and he took mine back into the house. In all the excitement, I forgot the letter that night, and when I looked for it in the morning, it was gone."
She paused so long that he prodded, "Lost?"
"I thought I had lost it in the yard when Uriah and I surprised the prowler, but I looked everywhere for it. Then Big-head's murder came up, and the questioning at the post. I didn't get a chance to see you. Then you moved out without saying goodbye or anything. You saw Uriah, and he mentioned the letter, and you must have thought—"
"Of course I was curious, Noah, but I never really believed you had kept the letter. I knew there must be some mistake. If it wasn't lost, then where is it? Uriah didn't have it. Who—" Paul halted lamely. Helen was the only other one who might have appropriated it. It was not for hi
m to accuse her.
"I know what you're thinking. I don't blame you, but I can't see why Mother would do a thing like that. Anyhow, she denied it."
"Let's not accuse her. It could have been lost. Did you notice the postmark, where it had come from?"
"It was from Oklahoma, all right."
Paul felt a deep concern, because that letter might have been the most important thing in the world to him right now. There might be no other communication from the sheriff back home, and the letter could have contained the information necessary to get Alonzo Finch back to face trial. But the letter was gone. If the stage tomorrow carried nothing further, then what?
They were riding up a steep part of the trail now, with Norah riding ahead of him, so they could not carry on a conversation very well. The horses breathed hard at the climb, their sharp hooves edging into the soft earth. The pinion and cedar trees, scrubby and dwarfed, were giving way to real pines. The valley dropped away below them, green and gray and purple. Smoke rose from the Indian village, all but invisible to the south. The fields of the ranch were huge emeralds strung together along the stream. The army post was a blurred scar in the lighter green of the greasewood.
When they reached the flat summit of a long escarpment forming a natural lookout point, they dismounted, letting the horses' reins hang. Norah sat on a big boulder, her eyes looking into the valley; Paul stood near her.
"It's beautiful, isn't it?" he hazarded.
"Nature's always beautiful," she said vaguely. "It's man who rejects and mars nature, who destroys the beauty."
"But men are nature, too, Norah. Nobody's perfect, but every man does what he must do. Some achieve great things, others small things, but they all try— Oh," he interrupted his thought, because it sounded pompous, "I don't know how to put it. If things were different—"
"I know," she said with some bitterness. "You're trying to apologize for being the way you are. Your hate comes before your love; your pride comes before your happiness."
There was no point in arguing, so he held his tongue and watched a cloud shadow racing across the flat below. Then, looking around, he saw that his horse had strayed some distance away around the curve of the mountain, so he went quietly to catch him. When he rounded the shoulder of the mountain, he had a clear view down into Gull Canyon. Then he tensed and looked back over his shoulder. From where he was, he could just see Norah, but she could not see down into the canyon, for which he breathed a prayer of thanks. As he looked down, the line cabin was plainly visible beside the road in the canyon. Behind the cabin, hidden from the road but easily seen from that high trail, stood the Youngs' buggy, and tied to a wheel of the buggy was Finch's horse.
Twisted Trails Page 9