by Abe Dancer
The brothers hurried away and Charlton gave Cole a hard look, mouth tight.
‘I’ll never forgive you if anything’s … happened to that boy, Cole!’
The sheriff met his gaze. ‘If something has, I’ll never forgive myself, Linus.’
It was a terrible night. Bonfires were lit and the search continued, even though no one considered it ideal conditions for looking.
The men were tired, their weariness increased by the earlier heavy drinking and gluttony. No one really thought they would do a thorough job and an hour or so after midnight, Cole called a halt. He had done as much searching as the others but knew it was hopeless in the dark.
‘No, damnit!’ gasped the puffing, sweating, staggering banker. ‘We are not abandoning this search!’
‘Show some sense, Linus,’ Cole said wearily. ‘Look at these men. Look at yourself. This isn’t a search party, it’s a bunch of stumblebums. The men are half-asleep, and with hangovers working on them. You can’t expect good results – any worthwhile results. I think we’ve pretty well established Donny’s not lying on the bottom of the swimming hole, but if he’s hurt somewhere, in this brush, and all the shadows, we could walk past him without even knowing he’s there.
‘If – if he is hurt,’ Linus huffed, ‘it’s important we find him and – get him medical help as soon as possible.’
They all agreed but backed Cole: no search was going to be successful in the dark. Some of the men were being dragged away by their womenfolk now, others just wandered off, stupid with fatigue.
Linus dropped onto a tree-stump, shoulders slumped, looking down at the ground between his feet.
‘I’ll give you a hand home, Linus.’
The banker looked up at Cole. ‘Go rest your leg! I hope you wake with the god-damndest hangover!’ He rose, swaying. ‘Where – where’s Bess?’
‘Some of the women took her home earlier….’
‘How am I going to face her?’
‘It was my fault. D’you want me to come in and—’
‘I want nothing from you, Cole! Nothing. Except to find that boy, unharmed! Now get your hands off my arm.’
Linus shook the sheriff off and lurched away, mopping his grimy face.
Cole, silent, grim, limped back towards the Star hotel.
The next long, long day’s search was fruitless, a shambles.
Hangovers killed any real efforts the sick and sorry men tried to make. But they did establish that there were no real tracks; there had been too many kids running about all over the picnic area and particularly around the swimming hole. Cole’s questioning, done with squinted eyes and shaking hands so he could barely read the notes he took, produced nothing worthwhile.
Sure, everyone had seen Donny – or at least had seen half a dozen tow-headed boys frolicking and getting up to mischief – and no one had taken any particular notice. There were several strangers in town, but none of them seemed particularly interested in the boys’ activities. Most, like the locals, had been looking for free booze and grub.
One man was mentioned, wearing a dark-green shirt, and Cole propped up his ears at that. Some dark-green cloth, obviously torn from a shirt, had been found near where he had fought the men who had jumped him.
The description of the man was vague: average height and build, looked like a cowboy, hard-drinking.
No one could put a name to him.
Later in the day Bess arrived with a few other women, bringing lunch for the searchers. She looked terrible. Normally a handsome woman, she was pale and drawn and her nostrils seemed pinched in, her mouth pursed, giving her a forlorn yet angry look.
She walked right up to Cole, who was leaning on his stick, trying to ignore the ache in his leg, and slapped him once across the face. It turned his head on his shoulders and silence fell around him. He blinked back tears stinging his eyes, looked down at her as her bosom heaved with tremendous emotion.
All he did was nod slowly, admitting he deserved the slap. She turned and lunged away, her hands covering her face, her shoulders shaking with sobs.
Somehow he got through the day but he was still suffering the after-effects of the moonshine when darkness fell and the search was abandoned until tomorrow.
He went to bed without food.
There was grey, cheerless light filling his hotel room when Cole slowly swam up through waves of sleep, wincing at the racket of a fist hammering at his door.
‘Jesus Christ!’ he said, holding his throbbing head. The thunder at the door kept on. ‘Who the hell is it? What’s up?’
‘It’s Linus. Open this door at once!’
Cole winced. He couldn’t even see clearly. He groped for clothes and sat on the edge of the bed, barely able to move. That damn rotgut! It was still affecting him!
What in the hell did they put in that moonshine! His head was exploding, his belly felt as if it had been ripped out, aflame, as if he had swallowed acid. He moaned as he bent forward an inch at a time, trying to find his trouser legs with his feet.
The pounding started on the door again.
‘Linus, I swear I’ll gutshoot you, you don’t get away from that goddamn door!’
He clutched his head again at the sound of his own raised voice. God, he was so damn tired….
‘Can you hurry it up, Cole? This is important.’ The banker sounded more reasonable this time, his voice had a tremor in it. ‘Very – important.’
‘Linus, if I thought you’d done this a’purpose, battered on my door at this ungodly hour just to roust me for … whatever the hell it is I did or didn’t do. Mind’s like a swamp. Can’t think clear.’
‘It’s – it’s about Donny!’ Charlton’s voice was quieter now, the tremor more noticeable.
Cole frowned, squinting, his eyes almost closed. Donny. Any news sounded like it was going to be bad.
‘Be but a coupla minutes, Linus,’ he called, reeling again from the sound of his own raised voice.
Wearing only trousers, he padded to the door, unlocked it. There were still wall lamps burning in the hotel passage and he held one arm across his eyes as the banker hurried in. The hangover seemed worse today, increased by fatigue.
Cole closed the door and leaned against it, favouring the left leg, bending it slightly and taking most of his weight on the good leg. He squinted at the banker, blinked, trying to clear his vision.
The man looked positively appalling. He was still wearing the clothes Cole had last seen him in at the river. His stubble was showing, and, with the shadows flickering in the room as Cole lit a match and applied it to the table lamp wick, Linus’s face was gaunt, despite its normal chubby look. His eyes were sunken and his mouth seemed to pull back tightly against his teeth.
‘You look like hell. What’s happened?’
Linus Charlton sank down onto the edge of the bed, the bandage on his left hand now grubby and grey, a part of it frayed and dangling. He raised his haunted eyes and his face tightened a little as he looked at the sheriff, who was obviously not in the best of shape himself.
‘I – I’ve called off the search.’
Cole stiffened, felt his belly swirl. ‘Ah, no, Linus! Not that! He – he’s surely – all right…?’
‘How do I know? How the devil do I know anything about him? Whether he’s all right, hurt, been knocked about or—’
‘Whoa, man! What the hell’re you saying? What’re you talking about?’
Charlton continued to stare for long moments and Cole thought he had passed into some sort of a trance. Then he stirred and began feeling in the pockets of his dirty, torn coat. He produced a crumpled piece of paper, smoothed it out on one of his fat thighs and stared at it for another long, silent spell. Then, without looking up, he lifted the hand with the paper in it, offering it to Cole.
The sheriff took the paper, moved closer to the lamp. His vision was slowly improving but he had to squint and turn the paper this way and that to read the words crudely printed upon it in pencil:
The
kid’s OK. He’ll stay that way long as you get $20,000 dollars together and keep it handy.
We’ll tell you when and how to pay it over. We’re not joking banker. Do what we say and you can have the kid back.
Cole read it again, looked up at the banker, sitting on the edge of the bed, shoulders sagging. He wouldn’t have been surprised to see a tear running down the grimy, stubbled cheeks.
‘Where did this come from, Linus?’
‘Pushed under the bank door. I – I went back to change. I keep some spare clothes in my office and didn’t want to go home and disturb Bess. She’d taken so long to go to sleep and …’ He paused, sighing, shaking his head. ‘I was stunned, sat there at my desk, just – staring at it, reading the words over and over, as if they would tell me something….’
‘You know what it is, of course?’
Charlton nodded slowly, but his voice was hoarse when he answered: ‘Of course I know what it is! It’s a – a ransom note. They – someone has kidnapped Donny and wants me to pay twenty-thousand dollars to get him back!’ He scrubbed a hand down his face. ‘Where the hell am I going to get that kind of money?’
Cole frowned. ‘Linus, you’re president of the local bank—’
The banker’s head snapped up. ‘Do you think I could touch the bank money! Don’t be a damn fool!’
‘Surely they’d bend the rules, lend you the money to pay the ransom? You’ve served them well for years….’
‘You don’t understand these people, Cole. They have stockholders from overseas, England, Scotland, Europe. Those men’re thousands of miles away. They’re not interested in some Wild West kidnapping! They want dividends, not debts!’
Cole scratched his aching head. ‘I believe they’d help you out, Linus, but if not … there’s Bess, isn’t there? It’s her child and she has a good deal of money if I’m to believe the talk.’
The banker scoffed. ‘Talk! Yes, there’s been lots of talk – and it’s mostly true. Curtis, her first husband, left her pretty well-off. But it’s all tied up in property and investments. There is a trust fund for the boy’s education and so on and that can’t be touched by anyone except his uncle, Carl, who’s executor of his brother’s will. Bess has access to a small amount for ‘expenses’ and while it’s quite liberal, it’s nowhere near the ransom these … bastards demand.’
‘This Carl … can’t he be approached? Donny’s his nephew. Surely he’ll release funds for the ransom?’
‘As well he might! But he’s a lawyer, Cole – dots every ‘i’, crosses every ‘t’. Knows all the legal books backwards. Even if he saw fit to somehow bend his rules, how long d’you think it’d take? With him in San Francisco!’
Cole’s leg was throbbing and he sat down on the bed beside the banker.
‘I don’t see what else you can do, Linus. Approach the bank or this Carl Curtis. If it was me, I’d certainly appeal to the bank.’
‘I’d rather they didn’t know anything about it.’ Linus looked uncomfortable under Cole’s quizzical stare. ‘I mean – well, you wouldn’t understand. When you’re responsible for so much money, every day, and there’s even a hint of – problems, that could involve money …’ He shrugged. ‘Even though I’m on good terms with head office – well, I don’t know, Cole.’
‘Then you have to go to Carl, through Bess.’
‘I – don’t want to bother her with this. She’s so – so distraught—’
‘Goddamit, Linus! Pull yourself together! You need to raise that money, you have two chances to do it – and you don’t want to try either one! You’ve got to make a decision, man! And be damn quick about it.’
Charlton didn’t seem to have heard. He was holding the note again, lips moving slightly as he read.
‘If I can’t raise the money, they – they’ll kill him.’
‘I doubt it. They do that and there’ll be no chance of them getting their hands on twenty-thousand dollars.’
It was pathetic to see the ray of hope flash across Linus’s ravaged face. Cole looked away.
They might not kill Donny – but they could well begin mutilating him, send back an ear, or some fingers….
‘What a helluva lousy deal,’ he said aloud.
CHAPTER 6
TURNING POINT
Bess was appalled at the news.
Linus was nervous and mumbled a lot and having to ask him to repeat everything made Bess really mad, jarred her out of her comfortless lethargy. Grief turned to anger.
‘Kidnapped! My God, Linus! You’ve truly excelled yourself this time!’
‘Are you mad, woman? It’s not my fault! I specifically asked that damn sheriff to keep a special eye on Donny. If you’re looking for someone to blame, blame Adam Cole!’
‘Oh, I will – I do. But don’t think it lets you off the hook!’
She started one of her tirades and Linus snapped, grabbed her by the shoulders – hurting his broken fingers but uncaring – and shook her until her head rocked violently on her shoulders. The words stopped and she looked startled, groped at him for support. He thrust her roughly from him and she stumbled back. She sat down heavily in an overstuffed armchair. She stared up at him apprehensively.
‘You silly woman! This is no time to be looking for someone to blame! We have to get the ransom organized. You have to get Carl to send the money by telegraphic transfer or an authority for us to draw against the trust. I can arrange the bank’s end of it but he’ll have to expedite things. I haven’t had a time limit named by the kidnappers but I’m sure it will be only a matter of days.’
His words got through and she realized the truth of what he said. ‘Surely it will be faster for you to make some arrangement through the bank? Borrow the ransom?’
His face tightened and he shook his head. ‘No. No, I don’t want to ask this of head office. You’ve no idea the complicated procedure. An intensive investigation of us both – even an audit of our accounts. In fact they might choose to do a complete audit of the bank at the same time. I can’t handle that and this crisis as well.’
‘For heaven’s sake, Linus! Tell them how urgent it is!’
Again he shook his head, his mouth a tight line. ‘It will cut no ice, Bess, believe me. I know the system. It’ll be much faster and satisfactory to have Carl wire us authority and put up the money. After all, it’s for his nephew.’
Her damp eyes narrowed and she frowned. ‘Is there something you haven’t told me, Linus? Have you had … trouble with head office, over your books or some other…?’
‘Goddamnit, no! It’s nothing like that. I just know what I’m dealing with here and it comes right down to this, Bess. If we want to see Donny alive again, we have to pay the ransom! Now, be sensible, get changed and I’ll walk you down to the telegraph office so you can get some wires away to California.’
She sat there, hands clasped in her lap, fingers tearing at the delicate lace of a perfumed kerchief, looking up at him without a trace of affection.
‘Of course I’ll do this, Linus. But I still think it would be quicker for you to arrange it through the bank.’
‘For God’s sake, woman! Will you get changed!’
Breathing heavily, he started for the door.
‘Your concern for Donny is admirable, Linus,’ she said with heavy sarcasm. ‘Considering how you feel about him.’
He paused, hand on the doorknob. ‘He’s only a boy, Bess. Give me some credit for genuine concern.’
‘Well, I suppose there’s a lot of guilt behind it. If not, there ought to be!’
He managed not to slam the door behind him.
It was the seventh of July.
Cole rode out of town early, headed for a place where he could overlook the river and the field where the Fourth’s celebrations had taken place. There was a little activity there, a few men scouting around, looking for sign that might come in handy later.
He ought to be down there with them, he supposed, but – no. This was a special day to him and he preferred to be
alone. Rolling a cigarette while sitting on a rock, his wounded leg straight out, boot resting a few inches above the ground between two rocks, he glanced at his grazing mount, a dappled grey mare. There was a bottle of bar whiskey in the saddlebags. It might be marginally better than the moonshine that had affected him so badly on Independence Day. Usually, he drank a full bottle, sometimes more, on July 7 – he had for the past five years, anyway.
But – maybe not today. Maybe it was time to just sit and think and remember why….
He had been alone since he was a button. Dragged around the cattle trails by his widowed father from the age of four, virtually reared by trail cooks and rough cowboys.
His father was killed trying to stop a stampede when the boy was six and he was passed from hand to hand amongst the trail men. Fortunately, he was intelligent and learned something of the rugged, dangerous life. He could rope and brand and ride, repair wagons, skin-out a slaughtered cow or a deer – many times the deer had been hunted, stalked and shot by him.
Ailing horses and cows frightened him at first but soon he learned how to treat their problems, or, if they weren’t treatable, to put them out of their misery as painlessly as possible.
There were men who enjoyed watching animals suffer, he found. And there were men who made these sadistic types suffer, too. So, by watching, and later by experience, he learned how to use his fists – and later still, how to use his guns.
He was a natural good rifle shot. Once a well-known gunfighter rode with the herd for a few days – obviously on the run from the law – and when two representatives of that law caught up with him, Cole saw how the man had earned his reputation. He wounded both deputies and the trail boss, pretty damn courageously, after witnessing the speed of the gunfight, ran the pistolero off with a shotgun. He cared for the wounded lawmen, took a detour to a town so they could get proper medical attention.