by Paul Lederer
He heard a cry from above – they had found him.
Despite his conviction that a horseman could not follow that trail, he glanced back to see two shadowy mounted men riding down the steep, winding trail. Joe watched them for a minute in disbelief. They were mad! He knew that he was carrying a small fortune, and that they considered him worse than a thief, a traitor to the gang – illogical though that was. They also knew by now that he had killed Stiles. Rage and greed drove them on. There was no telling which was the master emotion.
Joe heard a clumsy, scrabbling sound, and as he looked toward it, he saw one of the horsemen on a frantically striving horse which, striking its hoofs against slippery stone and failing to find purchase, tumbled toward the canyon depths below, the rider shrieking a curse as both fell, the horse slowly turning in the air, the man cartwheeling toward the rocks below. The second man – Frank Singleton – continued grimly on.
As did Joe. He had reached level ground once more and he raced on as quickly as his badly-healed leg, his lungs and heart would allow him to. He once more entered wooded land, though the trees were more widely spaced. Ahead of him a dark, bulky figure lifted its head to study him as he approached.
It was Stiles’ roan horse, standing dismally alone in the forest.
Joe approached with ultimate care, speaking in a low voice, holding out his hand as if offering the animal some treat. The roan had run itself out, that was obvious. It stood shuddering in the dark, watching Joe’s approach with wary, starlit eyes.
Amazingly the animal which stood trembling in the night let him approach and put a hand on its bridle, stroking its neck. Perhaps now weary, confused and lost, it welcomed the attention of a human to direct it.
Horses cannot moan, but the sorrel made a low unhappy sound as Joe swung into the saddle. It was hungry, tired and abused. Joe started it through the pines towards Flagstaff. Its walk was not much quicker than his own, but it provided his leg some relief.
From time to time Joe glanced back over his shoulder, expecting to see Frank Singleton charging down on him. But Singleton’s horse had to be every bit as weary as the roan. The horse stumbled beneath him and Joe fought to keep its head up, vowing that he would find a place to stable the defeated animal and see that it was cared for – if the roan could even make it that far.
It was not more than an hour later, with the horse dragging its hoofs, that they entered the lower end of Flagstaff. Uptown the night seemed to be alive with the merrymakers. One gunshot sounded from that direction. Here, the town lay dark and still. In front of him now loomed a stable and Joe guided the animal that way. Sensing food, water and other horses, the roan’s steps were a little more lively. Joe only then realized that he was riding yet another stolen horse. He hadn’t even noticed what brand it was wearing, but the chances were good that Stiles, himself, had not come by it honestly.
When roused, the stablehand came forward sleepily and took a long look at the lathered, heated roan.
‘Man,’ he said to Joe in a disparaging tone, ‘you sure know how to use them up.’
‘There wasn’t any choice,’ Joe replied, removing the saddle-bags from the roan’s back as the stableman undid the cinches on the horse’s saddle.
Flinging the saddle, aside, the man asked Joe, ‘Do you want to stable him or hospitalize him?’
‘A little of each,’ Joe answered. The man meant no harm, he knew, and obviously cared about horses. ‘Just treat him as well as you can.’
The man nodded. Thankfully he did not ask Joe for money before leading the horse away. For Joe had little if any. But stables seldom asked for money in advance. If a man didn’t return to pay for his horse, they simply took it over, and even a beat down roan like the one that Joe had been riding was worth more than their feed bill could come to.
Saddle-bags over his shoulder, the side with the green box making the load uneven, Joe stepped out into the night and tried to orient himself. He knew now what he meant to do, but Flagstaff was a large town and he had returned to it from a different direction than he had used before.
Which way?
He figured he could ask anyone he met, but there were few people at this end of town; all of the revelers were busy on the other side. He trudged along the dusty streets. His leg had begun to stiffen up. It did not hurt as much as it had, but it felt almost useless. Something like a man with a peg leg would feel, Joe imagined. He was lucky, he reflected, that he himself had not ended up with a wooden leg. The doctor in Yuma must have been better than Joe had feared and suspected after all.
For now he felt as if he could not go on. Entering an alley he found a loading dock and pulled himself up on it to rest and recuperate. The place was silent, dark, smelling of damp wood and creosote. A horseman passed by the head of the alley and Joe’s head snapped up. But it was not Frank Singleton, who might be on foot himself by now after running his pony into the ground. Besides, no one hunting Joe would think to explore this dark alley.
A door behind Joe creaked open and Joe spun to see a woman in the darkness. She had her arms filled with litter of some kind. In the darkness she did not at first see Joe, and she walked toward a dustbin on the side of the landing and dropped whatever she had been carrying into it. He heard her sigh. It was not a desperate sound, exactly, but one that seemed to carry the weight of human experience with it. Joe squinted into the darkness, staring at her, trying not to make his own presence known.
Young, she seemed. Slender at the waist. She touched her dark hair and looked skyward. By starlight Joe could see her lips move in some silent prayer or invocation. Her dress was dark blue with tiny white tufts worked into it. There was lace at the throat and at her wrists. She wore a tiny pair of red boots.
Joe smiled in the darkness, Why the red boots should amuse him so, he couldn’t have said, but they did. A cat in the alley made a sound and the girl jumped, her eyes going toward Joe. Seeing him she called out:
‘Hey, you! Be on your way!’ In a voice that was meant to be menacing but emerged fearfully from her lips.
‘I mean to,’ Joe said apologetically. ‘As soon as I can manage it.’
‘Are you hurt?’
‘More beat-up, beat-down and weary. My leg doesn’t seem to want to work,’ Joe said.
‘You are hurt, then,’ the woman, the girl said.
‘Yes, Miss,’ Joe admitted. ‘I am hurt, but if you’ll let me rest here a little more, I will be on my way.’
She was nearer now. She bent over him and peered down, her eyes wide, her dark hair shifting as she bowed her head. ‘You’d better come inside.’ she said.
‘I thought you—’
‘You’d better come inside. I take care of all the hungry, injured dogs I come across down here. I suppose I can spare some of my time for a fellow human being.’ She paused and asked quite seriously, ‘You’re not dangerous, are you?’
‘Only to myself,’ Joe Sample answered.
He heard the little boots click away and the door was opened again, showing a bright rectangle of lamplight. Well, he thought, I may as well. But when he tried to stand up to follow, he found that he could not. Now, frustratingly, his leg had stiffened up on him.
‘Here, I’ll help you,’ the girl said. She tugged and hefted until finally they had him on both feet. She walked him toward the door to the building, Joe moving his legs cautiously, deliberately, the saddle-bags gripped firmly in his hand.
Beyond the door was an almost square shop with a smaller room beyond. The main room contained rack after rack of women’s boots and high-button shoes. The racks lined every wall and drew a line down the center of the floor. There was a counter with a clutter of laces, button hooks and tins of saddle leather, bottles of polish and shoe dyes.
The woman led Joe past all of this into the smaller room beyond. There was a desk in there, a wooden two-drawer filing cabinet, midget-sized stove with its black pipe escaping through a round hole in the wall.
‘Sit down,’ Joe was instructed. ‘I d
on’t keep much around here, but I have cheese, bread and some country ham. I can boil some coffee, if you’d like.’
There was no bed, so obviously the girl did not live here. Joe watched as she crouched and placed some wood into the miniature black iron stove, started the fire, placed a pot on the plate then went to the counter beyond to open a breadbox.
‘You’re a boot salesman,’ Joe said as she sliced off a few thick slices of bread. Smiling over her shoulder, she asked:
‘How did you guess?’
‘But I didn’t see any men’s boots. By the way, my name is Joe Sample.’
‘Pleased to meet you, Joe Sample. I’m Irma Tate.’ She removed half a circle of cheese from one of the small cupboards and proceeded to cut a few hearty wedges from it. ‘My father,’ Irma told him, ‘was a cobbler. After he died I had a little money and decided to make a try at selling footwear – everyone has to have shoes, after all.
‘My brilliant idea,’ she went on, slicing thick slices of ham, ‘was to have a little place just for women. So they wouldn’t have to go to a boot shop crowded with rough men.’
‘Sounds like a good idea,’ Joe said from his seat at the small, cluttered desk.
‘Maybe it was, maybe it wasn’t. My problem was I couldn’t afford a place near the center of town where the ladies usually shop, so I took this place because it was available. I suppose I was over-eager then, because I seem to have bought too much stock. The place almost supports itself,’ she said, placing a plate in front of Joe before tending to the coffee, ‘but there is little profit.’
The coffee continued to boil. ‘So, Joe, tell me – how did you come to be in the position you’re in?’
‘Do you have the time to listen to a long story?’ Joe asked.
‘Plenty. I was just going home to try to figure out a cheap way to spend an evening.’
‘No one waiting for you?’ he asked as she poured him a mug of coffee.
‘No one at all.’
Joe looked at her before he began. She was a nicely fashioned woman, of twenty or so, at a guess, with plenty of dark hair now coming loose from its pins here and there. When she smiled it was pleasant if a little weary. Joe made up his mind, nodded and said:
‘Well, then, if you want to know, this is what happened …’ and went on to relate events from the time the steer had crushed his leg in that Yuma holding pen; the Dog Stain Hotel; meeting Pierce Malloy; the events at the chicken ranch; following the map to the hidden treasure trove; the encounter with Solomon and Moses; the visit to the Malloy gang’s hideout to search for Tess; the narrow escape over the hills; the deaths of Cornish and Stiles, leaving out only a few unimportant details. Irma, seated across the desk, watched him, her elbow on the desktop, chin cupped in her hand, her eyes bright. When he was through talking, when his rough meal was finished, she shook her head in amazement.
‘You still have the money, then?’
‘In there,’ he nodded toward the saddle-bags he had been lugging around.
‘How much is in there?’ she asked.
‘I only looked in a couple of times. I think about $20,000.’
‘You never counted it?’
‘What for – it isn’t mine.’
The lady shook her head, ‘You are a strange man, Joe Sample.’
‘People are always telling me that,’ Joe answered with a smile.
‘What will you do with it now – now that Tess is dead?’
‘I was planning on taking it to the courthouse. I know there is a United States marshal in Flagstaff now. I’ll simply turn it in and let him try to find out where it came from, who it belongs to.’
‘And then?’ Irma asked in a softer voice as she rose to clear away the dishes. ‘Where are you going afterward?’
‘Why, back to Socorro, to the Double Seven. With my leg as it is, I’m in no condition to be a working hand now. But I have to talk to Poetry Givens. He promised me that he would keep me on the payroll until I was healed, so he should owe me a few dollars’ back pay. He might even take me on as a yard man,’ Joe said doubtfully, ‘although he’s already got two old men more crippled up than I am working for him doing chores around the ranch.
‘The problem now is finding enough money to buy a horse. I suppose I could try all the stables, see if they need someone to rake out the place or cool the ponies that are brought in.’
‘Joe,’ Irma said seriously, ‘that is the lowest work you could find.’
‘I don’t have much pride.’
‘I mean as far as wages! Do you know how long it would take you to save up enough to buy a decent horse and saddle – and eat at the same time? Months!’
‘I suppose so,’ Joe said miserably. ‘I just don’t have any other ideas.’
‘Maybe someone would lend you a horse,’ she suggested. Just to get to Socorro and take care of business.’
He shook his head heavily. ‘I don’t know anyone in Flagstaff.’
Irma returned to the desk and stood looking down at him. He could smell the woman-scent of her as she took his hand in her own small, dainty hands.
‘You know me,’ she said.
‘I don’t see—’
‘I have a saddle horse, Joe. I don’t ride it often enough for it to even get proper exercise because I don’t really go anywhere except from home to the shop and back again. You can borrow it.’
‘Socorro is hundreds of miles from here.’
‘I know where it is,’ she said.
‘Why on earth would you trust a stranger with your horse?’
‘Joe,’ Irma told him, ‘anyone honest enough to carry around $20,000 of someone else’s money without even counting it, can be trusted not to steal an 8-year-old horse.’
TEN
It was with some confusion that Joe Sample awoke to the sounds of a mockingbird chattering on the windowsill and the smell of coffee and frying bacon drifting on the air. As he lay in a soft bed watching the Arizona sun rising above the pines he could see on the hilltops beyond the window. He yawned and then sat up with a start. Where was he!
He dressed and staggered out of the room which he now saw was a woman’s. It contained little gee-gaws and had a collection of powders and perfumes on the dresser. Proceeding into the interior of the small house, he followed his nose to the kitchen. Irma was there, wearing a pink apron, her dark hair piled high on her head.
‘Finally,’ she said. ‘I was just getting ready to wake you up. I made you breakfast and the coffee’s on the stove. Now, I’ve got to get to work. I sent one of the neighbor boys off to the stable to fetch my gray horse. He should be back by the time you’ve finished eating.’
‘This is all very kind of you,’ Joe said, meaning it. ‘I don’t even remember making my way here.’
‘You were in pretty bad shape. I had a hard time managing you.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Joe said. ‘Sorry to put you through all this.’
Irma smiled in response, and it was a bright, cheerful smile. ‘Don’t be. Maybe you can return the favor sometime.’
‘I’d like to, but … I don’t know if I’ll ever be back this way, Irma.’
‘Oh, yes you will,’ Irma said in a sharp tone although her eyes were humorous. ‘I’ll be wanting that horse back, Joe Sample!’
‘As soon as I can get it back to you,’ he promised, not knowing when that might be. He would have to first ride down to Socorro, talk to Poetry Givens and wrangle another horse for himself, then lead her horse back here. A long, complicated business, but he had given his word, besides, he had no other way out of Flagstaff.
Irma served him scrambled eggs, thick-sliced bacon and white grits on a platter. ‘You can get your own coffee,’ she said. She glanced at a little watch pinned to her bodice and removed her apron. ‘I’ve got to be getting to work. I can’t chance missing a customer, as few as I get.’
Joe looked at the small woman and said simply, ‘Thanks, Irma – for everything.’
‘Eat your breakfast before it gets co
ld.’ she instructed him. There was a far away look in her eyes which settled on him for a long minute before he heard her sniff and turn away, walking toward the door, the heels of her little red boots clicking on the flooring.
The boy with the gray horse arrived just after Joe was through eating and rinsing off the plates the best he could, his thoughts oddly fixed on Irma Tate. Why that should have been, he did not know. He had more important things to consider, but the little woman with the bright smile could not be kept from his mind.
On the gray horse, Joe started uptown after inquiring of the boy who had brought the gray which way the courthouse stood. He found the brick building with its elm saplings in front easily and started up the steps with his saddle-bags slung over his shoulder. Entering the long corridor he started toward its head. The office he had seen the United States marshal enter was that way. He read the gilt-painted ledger on the glass door: ‘Hugh Donnely, US Marshal,’ and entered. Among the polished wood cabinets, gun racks and newly painted white walls, he saw a single man seated behind the desk. It was not the marshal he had seen the other day, but a young, hawk-eyed man wearing a deputy’s badge.
‘Help you?’ the deputy asked, rising.
‘I wanted to see the marshal.’
‘He’s in court this morning – probably won’t be back until after noon. Anything I can help you with? I’m Brad Tabor.’ Joe introduced himself and the two shook hands. Joe dropped his saddle-bags on to an upholstered chair and removed the green box.
‘I want to return this.’
‘To who?’ the deputy asked eyeing the box.
‘That, I do not know. I figured the marshal could poke around, send letters to other lawmen in the territory and find out who has a claim to it.’
By then Tabor had opened the box. He looked at it, whistled softly and asked, ‘How much is in here?’
‘I never counted it. I’m guessing it’s $20,000 or so.’ He knew that Trace Banner and Marcie had pilfered some of the money to buy their fancy carriage. ‘Enough so that someone will be wanting it back – I would guess a bank lost it in a robbery.’