by Ray Hogan
“You go in then, make something of that?” Starbuck asked hurriedly. There had been some remark to the effect that Lynch had been seen; he wasn’t exactly certain of the details.
“Nope—just stood around outside. Wasn’t sure what I wanted to do—or could do, not knowing how Marie would feel. I was still hanging around when Kit came out, couple hours later.”
“Anybody else show up around there?”
“Not that I saw. Once I thought I heard somebody walking in the road, coming from town, but I never did see who it was. Anyway, Kit came out, started across the street for the old stable where he’d left his horse.”
“That was when the man you say killed him showed up?”
Mason smiled tiredly, wagged his head. Starbuck, catching the unfortunate way he had phrased the words, said: “Don’t take that as meaning I don’t believe you—it was just how it sounded.”
“Sure, sure,” Lynch murmured. “Fellow came out of the stable. Guess he must’ve been in there all the time, or maybe he was who I heard on the road. He walked out into the middle of the street and met Kit. They just seemed to be talking. Then I hear a shot, all sort of muffled, like when you cover a gun with a blanket or something and pull the trigger. Kit just stood there for a few seconds, then fell.
“The man turned and ducked back into the stable. I guess I was a little surprised or something, and I wasn’t hankering to get mixed up in it, so I didn’t do anything, just stood there for a little bit. Then I finally went out to where Kit was laying. He was dead.”
“Shot with his own pistol,” Shawn said. “They found it under him.”
Lynch swore, recognizing the implication immediately. “Guess that’s the cincher for a lot of folks—them that knew I wasn’t carrying a gun.”
Shawn made no reply. Mason, head bowed, tossed the broken bits of the twig aside one by one, said: “Came to me right then that people’d all figure it was me who did it because of the trouble I’ve had with the Canfields, and that I might as well forget trying to start over again.”
“Didn’t you go into the stable looking for the man who did it?”
“No point. Heard him riding off about the time I was looking at Kit. Headed west, it seemed.”
“West?” Starbuck asked, frowning. “What’s in that direction?”
“Not much—leastwise there didn’t use to be. Things could’ve changed since I was there last but once there was only the folks’ place—Canfield’s now—and the road that hooks up with the one going to California.”
“Somebody figuring to head out that way would’ve had to get himself all set—grub, water and the like. No towns for a lot of miles. You get any look at all at the killer?”
Mason shook his head. “Too dark. Couldn’t see his face at all.”
“Was he dressed any special way?”
“Regular cowhand clothes, I reckon. Did notice he wore some kind of a checked vest.”
“Was it a plaid shirt?” Starbuck asked quickly, remembering that Marshal Virgil Huckaby had been wearing such a garment.
“Could’ve been,” Lynch said, not making the connection. “Like I told you, it was hard to tell much about anything.”
Shawn considered what Mason had said. There was indeed very little to go on; only one thing could have meaning—the checked vest or shirt being worn by the killer. Such were common but not necessarily plentiful. They had that and the belief that the man had ridden west after the murder.
“What happened then?”
“Somebody yelled in the street. The shot had been heard inside the house, too. I looked, saw a man bending over Kit, and another one coming through the yard. Right then I decided the best thing I could do was get my horse and leave town fast—try to make it across the border into Mexico. Was plain to me I’d have a hell of a time getting anybody to believe it wasn’t me who done the shooting.”
“Probably be harder than you think,” Starbuck said. “You were seen standing there in the doorway of the stable. One of the women from the house. Says she didn’t know the man she saw but that she could recognize him if she ever saw him again.”
Mason swore raggedly. “You see? What’s the use? Man can’t buck a stacked deck!” He looked up, faced Shawn squarely. “One thing I’d like to know—you’ve heard my side of it, where do you stand? You believing me or not?”
“I believe you,” Starbuck said without hesitation. “Thought all along that killing was something you’d not let yourself in for—not after spending ten years behind prison walls for one. Kept thinking, too, about the way you felt over being free and having your own place.”
Lynch sighed. “Makes a difference to me. I’m obliged to you. Wish there was more I could tell you about that killer. Ain’t much there to go on.”
“Enough—maybe. A man in a plaid shirt or vest, and the fact that he rode out of town, going west—that’s a little something. Thing we’ve got to decide is what we ought to do next.”
“Plenty clear what I’d best do,” Lynch said glumly. “Only way I can keep my neck from getting stretched is leave the country, like I was planning to do.”
“Give up everything you want—your place in the Mescals? That girl—Marie?”
“Not much chance of seeing either one again, way things are lined up. Barney Canfield, big as he is and pushing Huckaby around like he does—and that woman seeing me there—hell, I’d be a fool to risk staying around. If you’re honest with me, you’ll admit I’m right.”
“Maybe, but I don’t like to see you just up and quit. If we could get some kind of an idea who the killer was, by tracking maybe, could be we could come up with something we could tell the law.”
“Not Huckaby—be a waste of time. I don’t trust him.”
Starbuck was silent for a while, then: “Not sure I do either. Few things about him that’s got me wondering, but we’ll not bother with him—not yet anyway. If we can turn up something, we can ride to Tucson, talk to the sheriff there.”
“I don’t know,” Mason said slowly, growing colder to the idea. “Lawmen sort of hang together. Nothing says he wouldn’t clap me in a cell and send for Huckaby.”
“Not if we had something solid to tell him, give him to work on.”
Mason frowned, interest picking up. “You think we can make something of what I told you?”
“Have to. It’s all we’ve got.”
Lynch reached for his now dry socks, began to pull them on. There was a briskness to his movements that bespoke the hope stirring within him.
“Know that country west of town. Grew up roaming all through it—hunting and such. I’m remembering a few places where a man could hole up for a spell.”
Shawn studied Mason Lynch for a few moments as he began to draw on his footwear. He had built up that hope in the man, was now wondering if he could deliver; there was so little to go on!
“No doubt in your mind the killer rode west?”
“Sure as I know my name,” Lynch replied. “You figure there’d be any use looking for tracks?”
“Doubt it,” Starbuck said, rising and stamping into his boots. “Never find the right ones along the edge of town. Too many riders coming and going. Might get lucky but I sure would hate to bank on it.”
“Expect that’s going to be the whole story,” Mason said soberly. He was standing off to the side, his features bleak, voice lifeless. “Could all be for nothing—like shooting at the moon. With my kind of luck, we’ll likely come up with a flat nothing.”
“Maybe so,” Shawn murmured, “but we’ve got to try.”
Mason Lynch raised his head, glanced at Starbuck. A grudging smile parted his lips. “I reckon we do,” he said, and moved toward his horse.
Sixteen
Keeping to the creek until they reached a wider, well-graveled area, Shawn guided the sorrel out into the shallows, halted. Mason drew up beside him.
“Something wrong?”
“Looking for the tracks you made when you came down this way.”
Lynch raised himself in his stirrups, gazed around thoughtfully. “Be over there—by that gooseberry patch. Recollect walking by it.”
Starbuck scrubbed at the sweat on his face. “Like to get over there to them without making any new ones. That Indian Huckaby’s got will be hard to fool. More we mix things up, the better.”
Mason glanced downstream. “We’ve been in the water for quite a ways. He sure won’t find tracks there.”
“That’s how we want to keep it,” Shawn said, and touching the sorrel with his spurs, angled for the trail.
“Could go right through them gooseberries,” Lynch said as they broke out onto dry ground. “He won’t find no tracks in them.”
“No tracks but there’d be plenty of broken branches and mashed leaves that we couldn’t fix. No job to cut a switch and brush out the prints we’re leaving now.”
Mason nodded. “Guess you’re right . . . What are you aiming to do, backtrack my trail?”
“Best thing. The Indian may never get upstream this far, but if he does, I want everything plenty confused.”
“He’ll puzzle it out—see how I came down alone, then went back up with somebody else—and they’ll guess that somebody else’s you.”
“Maybe, but it’ll take time—and that’s something we need a lot of.”
They reached the berry thicket, swung onto the faint path bordering its east side, halted.
“Stay in the saddle,” Shawn directed, dropping to the ground. “This’ll only take a couple of minutes, and the fewer tracks we have to cover, the better.”
Thrusting a hand into a boot, he drew the keen-bladed knife he carried in a stitched-in leather sheath, cut a thickly leafed branch from the back side of a gooseberry clump. Doubling back to the edge of the shallow water, he carefully swept out the prints the horses had made, pausing now and then to sift a bit of loose dirt and litter over the places that appeared to have been disturbed.
Then, once again on the gelding, he resumed the trail, keeping exactly to the line taken by Lynch when he came down into the valley. One good thing, he noted, was that the soil was firm on the long grade, being a type of solidly packed sod in which a tough, narrow-bladed grass grew. Trailing them, if the Yaqui managed to get to this point, would not be easy.
But he knew better than to sell the tracker short, and as they wound their way toward the plateau lying north of the valley, he was continually taking precautions, doing everything possible to cover signs of their passage.
Sometime before noon, with the sun blazing down in unabated strength, they climbed out of the basin and found themselves on fairly level ground. Pulling into the shade of a scatter of pines, they dismounted, easing their own sweaty bodies as well as resting the sorrel and the ailing bay, whose condition was steadily worsening. But there was no time to spare and within a half-hour they were again in the saddle, riding due west, challenging the hot wind that now was blowing in from the distant desert.
Little conversation passed between them, only an occasional and necessary comment as each man, wrapped in his own thoughts, felt inclined to keep his peace. Starbuck, for himself, was again thinking of his purpose for being in the Rockinstraw Valley country—that of looking up the man called Jim Ivory, and discussing, hopefully, the possibility of him being his long absent brother Ben.
It irritated him to become sidetracked when following out a good and definite lead, not only because of time lost but because it brought about another complication, money. The small amount of cash granted him by the lawyer handling old Hiram Starbuck’s estate had long since run out, and it was now a matter of halting the quest at intervals while he took a job—one of cowhand, deputy marshal, stagecoach driver, or shotgun guard—anything available if it paid hard cash—long enough for him to accumulate sufficient funds to see him through a few more months.
He was about to that low point now where the necessity for finding temporary work would be the next thing in order. If Jim Ivory proved to be Ben, then there would be no problem; if not, he’d ride on—to Las Cruces, perhaps. There was a sheriff there, according to Virg Huckaby, who was looking for a man trained as a boxer—a boxer who might be Ben. As well look for a job there and find out more about—
“That cabin—in the clearing—”
Mason Lynch’s voice cut into his thoughts. He roused, looked to the direction in which the man pointed.
“It’s one of the places I figured the killer might use as a hideout.”
Starbuck, a little surprised at having reached the area so quickly, swung in behind a clump of oak, eyed the sagging, weathered structure.
“Old prospector, name of Tait, used to live there. Was a friend of my folks, more or less—his kind don’t ever get too friendly. Apaches killed him.”
“Raid?” Shawn asked, wondering why the structure had not been burned to its rock foundation.
“Nope, wasn’t that. Tait caught himself a young Apache gal, somehow, kept her tied up inside the place so’s he’d have a woman for himself. Got by with it for a whole winter, then a party of braves, still hunting for her, I reckon, found her.
“They hid out in the cabin and when Tait come in that evening about dark from working his claim, they jumped him. Spread-eagled him to the wall, then stood back and threw knives and tomahawks at him. Finished him off by shooting him full of arrows.
“Killed the squaw, too, only they done it quick, didn’t make her suffer like they did him. Took me a long time to understand why they killed her—her being their own kind and all. Pa said it was because she’d been a white man’s woman—it not making any difference whether she wanted to be or not.”
“Probably the answer,” Starbuck said. “But it could’ve been that Tait had come to mean something to her, and she tried to help him. They’d lived together for a whole winter. Seems kind of strange she couldn’t have got away from him during all that time.”
“Is sort of funny,” Mason said. “My pa was the one who found them. Buried them back there in those trees. Can’t remember all the details—only what Pa told me—and that was in private. Ma wouldn’t stand for such being talked about in front of her. They were both heathens, according to the way she looked at it.”
Shawn continued to study the weathered structure. After a bit he shook his head. “Don’t think there’s anybody using that place. Ground’s not chopped up like it would be if there was a horse coming and going. Best we be sure, though. You stay here, keep me covered. I’ll circle around, come in from the hind side.”
Swinging away, Starbuck followed the thick brush that fringed the clearing, pulled up shortly in a small grove directly behind the cabin. It was in worse condition, at closer range, than it had appeared at first look. That someone could be living inside seemed most unlikely.
Tying the gelding to a stout cedar, he drew his forty-five, moved quietly around the north side of the hut, and came in to the front. There were a few hoof indentations in the grass-covered sod, but all were old. Nowhere did he see any droppings.
Crossing to the partly open door, he stopped, looked down. Dust had accumulated thick on the sill; it was unsullied except for the tracks of packrats and field mice. Holstering his weapon, he placed a hand against the ax-fashioned slab, shoved it aside, and stepped into the gloomy, stale-smelling room.
A double-width bunk had been built against the wall directly in front of him. Gray ashes in the rock fireplace was proof of occupancy by some drifter or possibly working cowhand, seeking shelter from a winter storm—but they were months old, perhaps over a year. Turning, Shawn stepped out into the open, signaled to Mason Lynch, and retraced his steps to the sorrel.
“Been a long time since anybody was in there,” he said as they rode on. “Any other old cabins or line shacks around?”
“Not that I remember,” Mason said, his voice reflecting the disappointment he felt in not finding any evidence that could lead to the killer. “Some caves over in the next canyon.”
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Mason nodded. “Indians once did. Sort of like cliff dwellings.”
Shawn remembered such an area up in northern New Mexico, and a larger settlement farther to the west on the Colorado border; sheer embankments with living quarters gouged out of the face.
“A whole village?”
“No, nothing like that. Just a couple of caves. Probably one family driven off by the tribe, crawled in and stayed a while. Or it could’ve been a small party hiding from others.”
The caves, no more extensive than Mason had indicated, proved as fruitless as the prospector’s old cabin. The sole tenants, according to all evidence, were a pair of coyotes.
The effect it had upon Mason Lynch was immediately apparent. The bitterness in his eyes became more pronounced and a sort of surly indifference possessed him. Squatting on his haunches, toying with a palm full of sand, he muttered a curse, said: “Reckon that lays it out plain.”
Shawn considered the man quietly, fully aware of the change. “Meaning what?”
“I’d be a damned fool to hang around now. I’d best be lining out for the border.”
“What about the plan we set up—that of us trying to run down the rider you heard heading west?”
“Figured we’d find some trace of him—but I should’ve known there’d be no trace. Hell, what’s the use!”
Mason raised his arm, slammed the grains of sand he held to the ground. “Nothing—never a goddam thing—works out right for me! You got to admit it.”
“Only thing I’ll admit is that we haven’t given it a chance—our searching around, I mean. Now, if you’ll feel better about it, why not hole up somewhere for a spell and let me do the looking. Or, if you’re willing to trust Huckaby, I’ll wait until the posse goes back to town, slip in and have a talk with him. Maybe, after I tell him what you saw—”