“His name is Douglas Redding, Marshal,” Church said, opening the book and running a finger down the list of today’s guests. “Sage City man. Must have picked up his key when I was away from the desk, which is why I couldn’t identify him before.”
Chessman entered the name on the back of a grubby envelope for his official report to the coroner. In the act of closing the book, his eye caught Jace Blackwine’s signature two lines above Redding’s.
“Take the sergeant to Room F,” the lawman instructed Church, “and fetch back the man who rents that stall. Tell him I want to see him.”
Laury Church started for the door, then turned on his heel, a new excitement glittering in his eyes.
“Room F’s Jace Blackwine, Marshal. Paid me his week’s tariff in advance. You don’t figger he killed this Redding?”
Chessman spat out a shred of tobacco and glared at the clerk. “I think this was a case of suicide, son, and I figger the coroner will concur. This hombre worked for Blackwine. I want Jace to confirm the identification before we move the body.”
Church hesitated. “Jace has got a woman with him, Marshal. Fifi. Agin the rules of the house, you understand, but Jace slipped me a sawbuck to look the other way. If the boss—”
Chessman’s pudgy face purpled. “Damn you, Laury, a man’s been kilt under this roof. Rustle Blackwine down here and leave Fifi out of it.”
Two minutes later the hotel clerk re-entered Room B, accompanied by Jace Blackwine. The big mustanger was shirtless and in his sock feet. His ruddy face was mottled with drinking, and his eyes held a long-festering contempt for his old enemy, the marshal.
Chessman stood looking out the balcony door, thick fingers laced behind his back. Blackwine growled, “You want me, Dorf?” and stood waiting, his eyes fixed on the blanket-shrouded shape on the cot.
Chessman turned ponderously, his eyes bright with pleasure at the prospect of grilling his long-time feuding opponent. At a savage gesture from the marshal, Church and the blue-coated sergeant retired from the room, leaving Blackwine and the marshal facing each other across a fog of cigar smoke.
“Been in your room these past thirty-forty minutes, Jace?”
Blackwine ran a horny hand through his cinnamon whiskers. “Damn you, Dorf, I didn’t shoot this hombre, so keep your hints to yoreself. I been chattin’ with Fifi Latroux since eight o’clock, not budgin’ a hoof outside o’ Room F.” After a long pause during which his glare challenged the marshal to dispute his statement, Blackwine added, “I was pourin’ Fifi a drink when we heard the shot. She’ll back my word as to that. You don’t pin this gunplay on me, Chessman.”
The marshal grunted. “Take more’n Fifi’s word to convince me you weren’t lyin’, if I thought so, Jace. So happens I ain’t tryin’ to pin this killin’ onto you—not sayin’ I wouldn’t like to.”
Chessman rolled his cigar across his lips for a moment, savoring his fun with Blackwine, and then stepped over to the cot and drew the blanket back to expose the Rickaree Kid’s blood-laced head, the blue-green cavity of a bullet hole punched through his left eyebrow.
“You can identify this hombre?” Chessman asked.
Staring down at the dead face of his mule packer, Jace Blackwine experienced a genuine shock. When the hotel clerk had summoned him from Room F a moment ago with word that Doug Redding had been shot to death, Blackwine had accepted the news without question. Now, seeing the Rickaree Kid lying here, Blackwine felt the alcoholic fog lift abruptly, leaving him somberly alert.
“Sure, I can identify him,” Blackwine grunted. “One of my mustangers, as you well know.”
“What’s his brand?”
Blackwine took a moment before answering. “Wouldn’t know. I made out his pay check to cash. We called him the Kid.”
“His name,” Chessman supplied, “is Douglas Redding.”
The Paloverde marshal stepped over to the washstand and reached in the bowl there to remove a ball-pointed silver star, the furbished metal shedding sparks of light from the high-wicked lamp. Chessman tossed the law badge over to Blackwine, who juggled it a moment as if it were a poisonous thing.
“Range detective’s tin star,” Jace Blackwine muttered. “What you showing me this for, Marshal?”
Chessman blew a smoke ring toward the ceiling. “Found it in the dead man’s pocket, Jace. You didn’t know you had an Association man on your wild-hoss hunt, eh?”
A shine covered Jace Blackwine’s steamy temples as he met the marshal’s glance. There was a slight tremor in his hand as he passed the star back to Chessman, saw the marshal replace it in the china washbowl, which contained the other items removed from the dead man’s pockets.
“News to me, Marshal. Come to think of it, the Kid-Redding, you say his name is—always played his cards close to his chest. I had him sized up for a man with a bounty on his topknot.”
Chessman jotted something on the grimy envelope. “I got to telegraph SPA headquarters in Sage City about this matter,” he said. “Redding being a range detective changes the whole aspect of this business. You knew Redding shot the keno man, Lew Graytrix, over at the Crossed Sabers tonight?”
Blackwine made a vague gesture. “Told you I spent the evenin’ with Fifi, here in the hotel. I was in the saloon long enough for one drink, yeah. You expect me to play nursemaid to my boys?”
Chessman grinned. He had waited a long time to get Blackwine where he wanted him. He was savoring the sweet nectar of fulfilled revenge now.
“This will be your last spree in Paloverde, Jace. I’ll give you all day tomorrow to round up your mustangers, sober ’em up enough to fork a saddle, and clear ’em out. You’re finished in this town. Like I warned you when your bunch breezed in tonight.”
A rap sounded at the door, and one of Chessman’s deputies poked his head in. “Nobody on the roof, Marshal, and no snake sign under the balcony. You know what we think? We think this hombre was drunk and used his own gun on hisself. Knew he’d be caught sooner or later for shootin’ Graytrix over at the saloon, and—” Jace Blackwine moved over to the washstand and turned to regard the marshal’s broad back as Chessman interrupted his deputy’s theorizing.
“We’ll let the coroner do the thinkin’, Bob.”
“Well, he’s waitin’ out here with his pallet now, Dorf. Ready to have the body moved?”
Under cover of this talk, Blackwine poked a big hand into the washbowl and, from the odds and ends of loose change and matches and tobacco which comprised the gleanings of the dead man’s pockets, grabbed the law badge the marshal had shown him. He dropped the star into his pocket just as Chessman was pulling the door wide to admit the contract surgeon from the fort, who also ran a civilian undertaking parlor and the coroner’s office here in town.
“You finished with me, Marshal?” Blackwine demanded.
Chessman turned to lay the flat strike of his gaze on the red-bearded mustanger he had warred with for so long.
“Finished for keeps, Jace. ’Y Gawd, any mustanger I find inside the town limits by sundown tomorrow gets jailed.”
Blackwine’s grin held no malice. “Ultimatum accepted, Marshal. We’ll take our trade elsewhere.”
As Blackwine shouldered into the jam of people blocking the outer corridor he caught the tag end of what Chessman was telling the coroner, “—a case of suicide, Provart. No evidence to p’int to its being murder. But I’d give plenty to latch eyes on the big feller who helped him make his getaway at the saloon tonight.”
Blackwine elbowed his way free of the crowd and went back up the hall, turned the corner, and paused a moment outside the door of his room, his big fist opening and closing on the law badge he had purloined from Room B.
“Way I see it,” he mused, trying to arrive at the truth behind this tangled skein of events, “Redding pulled the Kid out of a tight at the Crossed Sabers and stashed him in his room. Question is,
where was Redding when Tondro shot the wrong man?”
After a moment’s puzzling, Blackwine gave up. Of one thing he was positive. Doug Redding was still on the loose. And he was a Johnny Law, as Blackwine had suspected. This tin star might prove to be worth its weight in diamonds in future, if revealed to the right man at the right time. Obviously, Redding had visited the Rickaree Kid after the shooting, in order to plant the SPA badge in the dead man’s pocket.
“One thing,” the mustanger decided, “I got to make sure none of my boys attend the Kid’s funeral and let the cat out o’ the bag. The marshal wantin’ us out o’ town will take care of that.”
Stepping into Room F, Blackwine put his beady gaze on the woman who was brushing her peroxide-bleached tresses in front of a blistered mirror. Fifi Latroux’s washed-out eyes held the sharp fixity of the fear that was in her as she waited for the big mustanger to close and bolt the door.
“It appears one of my boys blew his brains out down the hall,” Blackwine announced, in a too-loud voice. “Douglas Redding. Had his gun still in his hand.”
“Fifi sure hopes nobody got wise to Blaze ducking in here,” the jezebel said, showing a snag-toothed grin of relief.
Blackwine stepped over to a curtained corner of the room and whipped the soiled burlap aside to reveal the beefy shape of a man pressed against the wall there.
“Coast is clear, Tondro. The marshal just wanted me to identify the corpse. He’d already figgered it was Doug Redding from the hotel book.”
Blaze Tondro emerged from hiding, his half-breed face never looking more Indian-like as he relaxed from the strain of these past ten minutes. Raking brown fingers through his white-streaked shock of raven hair, the Navajada rustler stepped over to a bedside table and poured himself a stiff drink of whisky in a tumbler, downing it with a quick snap of his head.
“And you were right about Redding being a star-toter,” Blackwine said, giving Tondro a glimpse of the silver badge. “Thought you’d like proof that you tallied the man you were after, Tondro.”
A grin lifted the drooped corners of Tondro’s wide mouth as he watched the law badge disappear into Blackwine’s pocket. “You think it’s bueno for me to leave now?”
Blackwine shrugged. “So far as Paloverde is concerned, you’re just a stray saddle bum. And that thickheaded Chessman has already written off Redding for a suicide. Heard him tell the coroner as much. Provart won’t argue the matter.”
Relief showed on the sunken planes of the half-breed’s cheeks. “I’ll drift, then,” the rustler said. “Sorry I broke into your party, Fifi.”
Fifi went on with her hair brushing, ignoring Tondro.
“Chessman’s give me and the boys the heave-ho, honey,” Jace Blackwine remarked, dipping his cigar butt into a shot glass of whisky and sucking it. “Looks like we’re finished in Paloverde.”
Blaze Tondro donned a flat-crowned sombrero with greasy ball tassels girdling its brim. Blackwine and Fifi had already forgotten his presence; this room had served its purpose as a temporary refuge.
Stepping out into the hall, Tondro headed down the annex corridor and took the back stairs to the dining room below. He left the hotel by the Agave Street door, an unnoticed shadow against the background of the night.
He was in time to see the body of his ambush victim being lugged into Coroner Provart’s lean-to morgue across the street.
Tondro lighted a black-paper Mexican cigarillo and made his unhurried way down Agave until he reached an adobe-walled, tarpaper-roofed shanty down by the river. The place was dark, but the door opened as Tondro mounted the steps.
The tense whisper of Teague Darkin met Tondro. “Job finished?”
“Si.”
“No hitches?”
“An hombre chased me down the corridor right after I shot, but I ducked into Blackwine’s room and whoever it was figgered I had skun out the window.”
The Crowfoot Ranch foreman joined Tondro outside, and the two started skirting the river bend toward Colburn’s stable.
“You’re positive Redding hadn’t visited Joyce in her room?”
Tondro’s cigarillo coal bobbed sideways to a negative shake of the head. “I saw her go into her room, señor. Redding was not in the annex at all.” After a pause, Tondro added, “Blackwine was called in to identity Redding. He choused Redding’s law badge.”
Darkin bent a sharp stare at his partner. “Blackwine doesn’t know I’m in town? I can’t have that nosy mustanger suspecting I got cards in this deal.”
Tondro laughed softly. “Blackwine knows I got reasons of my own to go after range detectives, amigo.” They approached Colburn’s barn from the rear and waited while Joe, the game-legged hostler, saddled their horses for the return trek up Cloudcap Pass. This Joe had once ridden with Tondro’s wild bunch, until a line rider’s slug had smashed a kneecap and ended his border-hopping career.
“Funny thing,” the hostler commented as he turned the reins over to the waiting riders. “Feller name of Redding got himself shot at the hotel tonight. One of Blackwine’s hunters. Left his bronc here.”
Swinging into stirrups, Teague Darkin laughed. “He won’t be calling for his bronc, Joe.”
The hostler grinned. “I know that. Somebody hears about the shooting, belts it down to the livery here, and steals the dead man’s bronc. What do you make of that?”
Tondro, in saddle now, pondered this information briefly. “One of Blackwine’s boys, most likely,” the border hopper vouchsafed, and then he and the Crowfoot foreman spurred away toward the Rio Coyotero Bridge and melted into the night. The hollow rumble of their ponies’ hoofs wafted back to where the stable hostler stood.
“Shouldn’t have left the barn to find out what the brawl was about,” Joe said aloud. “There’ll be hell to pay if Colburn finds out a hoss was stole out of his place while I was playin’ hooky.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
The Golden Lizard
Dusk was pooling the vast reaches of Lavarim Basin when Redding arrived in Trailfork, after an all-day trek from Cloudcap Pass, where he had camped overnight.
The only event to break the monotony of his entry into this range land which for the past decade had known the raids of Blaze Tondro’s rustlers from south of the border was a minor one. At noon, encountering a horse trader at Willow Springs on the stage road out of the Pass, he had swapped his roan for a white-stockinged sorrel which bore a brand from outside the Territory. There might be men who would link the roan with Doug Redding—and Doug Redding was supposed to have been killed in Paloverde last night.
He stabled the sorrel and engaged a room at the town’s only hotel, the Emigrants’ Tavern. According to Colonel Regis’s letter, an ally to contact in Trailfork was Val Lennon, the local sheriff. That meeting, Redding decided, could wait until he had had a night’s rest and a chance to get rid of his whiskers.
The day’s ride had served to point up his knowledge of Lavarim Basin’s geography. This was his first visit here, but he had seen the Basin almost daily from the high roof of the Navajadas, as a member of Blackwine’s horse hunt.
The Basin was roughly two hundred miles long by sixty wide, bracketed on the east by the Navajadas and on the west by the granite-toothed lift of the Axblade Mountains. The two ranges met at the north, deep in the Territory, and at the south, below the Mexican border. Ever since the Spanish regime, Lavarim Basin had been plundered by rustler bands similar to the one now ramrodded by the elusive Tondro.
Redding had had plenty to occupy his thoughts during this day-long journey. Uppermost in his mind was his own personal crusade, knowing that the rugged western slopes of the Navajadas, flanking his left stirrup all day, held the secret of Tondro’s hideout, a secret which his brother Matt had learned at the cost of his own life.
As an SPA operative, he already faced a problem with many facets. Major Sam Melrose’s murder at unknown
hands; Joyce’s doubts that Tondro had bushwhacked him. Teague Darkin, who had somehow learned of Joyce’s visit to Paloverde and had followed her there with an unknown accomplice. The British-owned Wagonwheel Ranch, across the Axblades, and its annual beef contract with the Pedregosa Indian Reservation.
At a Chinese restaurant, Redding got on the outside of a square meal. Full darkness had come to the town when he stepped out on the main street, relishing a cigar.
Strolling the spur-scuffed sidewalk, taking in the night smells and sounds of this typical border town, Redding was aware of a brooding melancholy, wondering if Matt had left his footprints in the thick dust of these streets.
He located the Wells Fargo station, where on the morrow he would see Joyce Melrose alight from the stage from Paloverde, to be met by Teague Darkin. Opposite the stage stand was the big Fandango Saloon, obviously the center of Trailfork’s night life, a deadfall built on the same lines as Paloverde’s Crossed Sabers Saloon.
A vagrant impulse caused Redding to enter the Fandango. He found himself a spot at the bar and waggled his finger for a drink.
Waiting for the apron to serve him, he had his casual look at the inevitable poker games in progress along one end of the barroom. In an adjoining annex, percentage girls in gaudy crinoline were dancing with buckaroos in off the range for a week-end session of bucking the tiger and whooping it up.
Paying for his drink, he was toying with the shot glass of amber liquor when he observed one of the dance-hall girls approaching him, a striking Spanish-American type with ivory skin and a resplendent costume of rainbow colors, twinkling with sequins and set off with gold pumps.
The girl had spotted him as a newcomer and prospective customer. Glancing in the back-bar mirror, Redding watched her pause to adjust the red rose in her combed-back hair of glossiest black. For a dance-hall hussy, she was uncommonly beautiful, young and yet to reap her harvest of disillusionment which was the inevitable prospect for a girl plying her profession in a town as rough as this one.
A half-drunk cowpoke at Redding’s elbow swung around and swayed forward to touch the girl’s bare shoulder as she approached. Redding heard the waddy’s thick greeting. “You look perty as a li’l red waggin in that git-up, Zedra. You hopin’ to shake a hoof with ol’ Monte, hey?”
The Sixth Western Novel Page 28