Ghost Canyon

by John Russell Fearn

  “Oh?”

  “You see,” Terry explained, “the assayer is the one man who has good maps of the district. He has to in his job. I want to find out what there is in this territory that might be worth having if the people could be driven out.”

  Hilda nodded, then after a while she got on her feet. Terry rose beside her, and together they returned to their horses. On their way down the lonely trail back to Verdure, Terry asked a question.

  “Not my business, really, 1 guess, but what does your father do for a living? I don’t suppose he keeps that house of yours going on nothing. So—how come?”

  “Has that question anything to do with the four horsemen?” the girl, asked directly.

  “Could be. I’m just trying to tie up your Dad’s queer attitude to our investigatin’ this phantom business. I don’t like saying it, but mebbe it’s to his advantage to keep us away from the phantoms.”

  “Why? You don’t suppose he has anything to do with them, do you?”

  “I dunno, Miss Marchland. I’m just fishin’, I reckon.”

  Hilda rode on in silence for a while, then she said quietly: “My father’s retired from active work. About five year: ago he sold his holdings in the Roaring-J., which he owned. It was a pretty prosperous ranch, but he didn’t actually live there. As he told you, he’s lived in our present home all his life. Acquiring the Roaring-J through good cattle deals, he put men in to work it, made a good profit from it for several years, and then retired. So he now lives on his savings. How much those savings are worth I don’t know. I get the impression sometimes that he’s running out of money. Which is one reason, I think, why he doesn’t want to pull up sticks and start again elsewhere.”

  “Mmmm.…” Terry reflected as he cantered his horse along. “And you did say you think the sheriff has some kind of a hold over him?”

  “It’s only a suspicion. Don’t think of it as anything anymore.”

  Terry nodded and said no more, but he did a good deal of thinking as the ride into Verdure was completed. Once in the main street the girl pointed out the assayer’s office to him, and they rode towards it. In some surprise Terry contemplated the activity of the place now daylight had come. Men and women were going back and forth along the boardwalks and in and out of the various stores: the shutters had gone from the windows: even the top-to-bottom doors of the Black Coyote had given place to the normal half-pint batwings.

  “Will you be safe enough while I’m in the assayer’s?” Terry asked, dismounting outside the office.

  “I’ve my gun.” Hilda patted it. “Don’t worry about me. I’ll be okay.”

  Terry nodded, looped Smoky’s reins round the hitch-rail, then went up the steps into the assayer’s. The assayer himself was a small, narrow-faced man with steel-rimmed spectacles. He came from behind his private partition as Terry thumped the hinged counter for attention.

  “Yeah?” the assayer asked, peering at him. “Somethin’ to declare, stranger?”

  “Nope—guess it’s your turn to declare. I want a look at your territory maps.”

  The assayer frowned. “I reckon that ain’t legal, stranger. Or, leastways, it ain’t without Sheriff Harrison’s say-so. You’ll find his office jus’ down th’ street—”

  “Listen, fella.…” Terry’s gun was suddenly in his hand. “If I want to look at a map, I’m going to, see? An’ don’t hand me that bromide about gettin’ permission. There’s no such law. All you are tryin’ to do is be awkward.”

  The assayer raised his hands slightly and had to back as Terry sat on the counter, swung his legs easily across it, and stood up on the other side. He looked towards the far wall beyond the partition and nodded in satisfaction. As in most assayers’ offices, there was a huge, scale-drawn relief map spread out, tacked to the faded plaster wall, a map covered in green and red circles which represented private markings on the part of the assayer himself.

  “What the hell’s the idea?” the assayer snapped, his mood changing. “What right have yuh to—”

  “Shut up and sit down!” Terry gave him a push and he landed with a thump in the worn swivel chair. There he remained, afraid to challenge the .45 which Terry kept in readiness in his hand as he studied the map. Unfortunately it did not tell him much. At length he turned back to the assayer.

  “If you’ve finished, git outa here!” the man snapped.

  “I’m not—yet. I want some information which isn’t given on this map. What’s so valuable in the territory that it’s worth drivin’ everybody out of it?”

  “Huh?” The assayer’s eyes widened behind the spectacles.

  “You heard, fella.” Terry aimed the gun at his forehead. “I guess a lot of folks in Verdure here are plain pop-eyed over a collection of phantom horsemen—even to the extent of some of you quittin’—but I’m an outsider an’ ghosts don’t scare me none. I figger there’s some reason for the set-up and I mean to find it. You’re one man whose business it is to know every yard of the territory. So what’s valuable around here?”

  “There’s nothing valuable,” the assayer panted. “Yuh can see that from the map! I guess Verdure is one of the few towns in Arizony that ain’t worth having. No gold—no oil—not even a water course worth mentioning.”

  “There’s something,” Terry insisted. “There’s gotta be!”

  “Cross me heart, stranger. You’re crazy. Verdure’s one town that ain’t worth the land it stands on, apart from grazin’.”

  Terry relaxed and sighed. He slipped his gun back in its holster.

  “Okay,” he said quietly. “I don’t believe you, but I guess I’d have to take you apart to make you talk, and you mightn’t even then. So I’ll find out some other way. Truth of the business is the people of this town are scared to say anything to anybody. Right?”

  The assayer gave a shifty glance, and that was all.

  “Sheriff Harrison bein’ the cause,” Terry added, and the look he got satisfied him that he had hit a bull’s-eye.

  He said no more. Swinging back over the counter, he returned to the outdoors, where he found Hilda still waiting for him on her horse. She aimed a questioning look.

  “No dice,” Terry said, shaking his head. “Though I do get the impression that that assayer knows a durned sight more’n he’s telling. Look, Miss Marchland, just how much power has Sheriff Harrison in this town?”

  “Pretty well all of it,” she answered. “He, Mayor Burridge, and Grant Swainson seem to run Verdure between them.”

  “Yeah? Who’s Grant Swainson?”

  “He runs the ‘Black Coyote’ down the street.” Hilda nodded to the saloon. “Incidentally, he’s another man who’s always asking me to marry him.”

  “Is he crooked or straight?” Terry asked.

  “I guess nobody’s straight in this place if they have power,” Hilda answered.

  “Three men running a town on gun law.” Terry mused for a moment as he swung back into the saddle. “Mebbe I’ll have t’do something about that. Seems to me that Harrison, Burridge, and Swainson have got things too much their own way around here. Right now, I reckon we can’t do better than return to your home and work out some kind of plan.”

  Hilda nodded, and flicked her horse’s reins. Terry followed behind her, pondering as he rode. In the rear yard of the girl’s home he alighted and she preceded him into the living-room. Then, as she crossed the threshold, she stopped dead. A horrified gasp escaped her

  “What the—?” Terry began, coming up behind her; then he gave a start and quickly hurried forward.

  Sprawling across the skin rug near the fireplace was old man Marchland, face down, motionless. As Terry reached him and turned him over, a tell-tale red stain became visible on Marchland’s white shirt.

  “Is—is he?” Hilda could not get the words out. Her eyes were staring fixedly.

  Terry’s hand moved to Marchland’s wrist as he felt for the pulse. He looked up grimly.

  “’Fraid so,” he said quietly. “He’s been shot d
ead—clean through the heart.”

  The words flung Hilda forward. She gripped her dead father’s shoulders tightly, shook him, wept over him. Terry turned away, tight-lipped, looking quickly about the room. After a moment or two he spotted a Colt lying under the table. He lifted it gingerly and broke it open. One bullet had been discharged. Then, as he looked about him, he saw something else—a letter folded once and propped up on the mantelshelf.

  He did not cross to it there and then. He waited for Hilda to recover a little from her grief; then he took the folded note down and handed it to her. Her eyes brimming with tears, she read it, Terry looking over her shoulder:

  My dear Daughter,

  Money troubles and deals of which you haven’t known anything make it impossible for me to go on. Had we moved out of town as I’d figured on doing later, we could have straightened out—but since you’ve decided to take the side of Carlton and stay on that just can’t happen. Seeing no way out I’ve decided to put an end to it.

  Always your loving

  Dad

  The note fluttered from Hilda’s fingers to the floor, and she broke into a fresh outburst of weeping. Unable to control it, she dashed to her bedroom, went within, and slammed the door. Terry stood for a moment, then he picked the note up, re-read it, and finally put it away in his shirt pocket. The Colt he wrapped up in a piece of scrap paper from the bureau and stuffed inside his hip pocket. The details attended to, he raised the dead body of Marchland, put it on the couch, then unfastened the dead man’s kerchief and spread it over his face.

  The door clicked. Hilda reappeared, her eyes red from weeping, but the tears had stopped. She was plainly making an effort to control herself.

  “Feeling better?” Terry asked quietly, and she gave a nod.

  “Got over the first shock, anyhow. It’s so—so terrible, Terry. I never suspected Dad would ever do a thing like that, no matter how tough things might be for him.”

  The informal use of his first name made Terry move forward. He put an arm about the girl’s shoulders.

  “I didn’t get to know him very well in the short time I saw him,” he said, “but he sure struck me as being the kind of character who’d stick anything out to the end.”

  “Evidently he wasn’t,” Hilda sighed. “That suicide confession shows that—”

  “He puts the blame on me,” Terry broke in. “But for my being here, you could have moved on,” he said. “But that doesn’t bear out what he told me last night. He told me then that he didn’t move on because his roots were too deep. And there’s something else. Why was his gun under the table?”

  Interest began to kindle in Hilda’s troubled eyes.

  “Why?” Terry repeated with a grim glance. “Your father’s body was some six feet away from the gun—in front of it. Are we to assume he wrote his confession, shot himself, and then threw the gun six feet away from him? He’s been shot through the heart, Hil, and that means death would be instantaneous. The gun ought to have dropped right in front of him and him on top of it.”

  Hilda gave a bewildered look around her. “You—you mean that maybe he—he—”

  “I mean I think he was murdered!”

  “B-but who? Why?”

  “At a rough guess, Sheriff Harrison. Why? In case he started talking too much to the one man who ought to be kept in the dark—myself.”

  Hilda sat down heavily at the table and spread her hands.

  “I just don’t understand, Terry.”

  “I’ll explain,” he said, his eyes glinting. “You’ve told me that you think Harrison had some kind of a hold on your father. The sheriff knew I intended staying around, and—to put it bluntly—poking my nose into things. Now, if your father knew something that was dangerous, it was possible he might pass on that information to me sometime. So the surest way to stop it was to kill him and make it look like suicide. The note was probably written at the point of a gun—and even in that a weak attempt is made to poison you against me, probably with the idea of sending me packing. Summed up briefly, I think this is a move of Harrison’s in repayment for the way 1 kicked him out this morning.”

  “I suppose you could be right,” Hilda said, thinking. “But what do you think Dad could have known that it might have been dangerous to pass on?”

  “The answer to the four horsemen, perhaps,” Terry responded. “He defended them with unnatural stubbornness every time they came into the conversation. You say you always suspected your Dad was getting short of money. One man who might have known that is Sheriff Harrison. Doesn’t it occur to you, Hil, that your father may have been paid to keep his mouth shut about something? That would account for him wanting to leave, and yet not doing so. In other words, his natural inclinations were overpowered by the money he was being paid to keep quiet.”

  “It’s all so terribly confused,” Hilda said, shading her eyes.

  “Not to me it isn’t.” Terry took out his gun and examined it critically before returning it to its holster; then he said: “I’m going right into town to see the sheriff, Hil. This so-called suicide has got to be reported, if only to cover the law. And at the same time I’m going to find out a few things on my own. I wouldn’t advise you to come with me.”

  “I—I haven’t the heart to,” Hilda whispered. “I’ll be glad to just sit here and try and get things straight in my mind. 1 guess you’d better advise Bill Carson, the blacksmith. He’s the parson and undertaker around here.”

  “I’ll do that,” Terry promised. “And I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  Sheriff Harrison was enjoying a long, black cigar and reading a lurid-covered magazine when the door of his office flew open and was kicked shut again just as rapidly. He looked up with a scowl.

  “Well, our ginger-headed stranger, huh?” he asked dryly, and tossed his magazine aside to survey Terry as he stood before him, thumbs latched in his pants belt.

  “On your feet, Harrison,” Terry ordered levelly.

  “Huh? Who in hell are yuh talkin’ to? Or have yuh forgotten I’m sheriff around here?”

  “I’m forgettin’ nothing, Harrison. The only thing that says you’re a sheriff is that tin badge on your chest. I might be minded to knock it off. As far as law an’ order goes, you don’t know the first thing about it.”

  “Meanin’ what?” Harrison demanded, glaring.

  “Meaning Marchland!”

  Harrison tightened his lips. He didn’t like the steely glint in Terry’s eyes.

  “Marchland?” Harrison rubbed his stubbly jaw. “What ’bout the old critter?”

  “Murdered. And I said get on your feet!”

  Harrison obeyed, but at the same moment he whipped out his left-hand gun—and dropped it as Terry’s fist crashed straight into his mouth and flung him helplessly against the desk. Blood trickling from his lip, Harrison stood glaring.

  “I’m going to knock some information out of you, fella,” Terry explained, kicking the fallen gun to a far corner of the little office. “I’ve reason for thinking you had something to do with Marchland being shot through the heart.”

  “Then you’re loco,” Harrison snarled.

  “We’ll see. I’ve a Colt here in my pocket with which Marchland was murdered. Out in this burg you mugs don’t know much about fingerprint identification, but they do at police headquarters, and I’m banking on that.” Terry remembered seeing an article about Sir Francis Galton’s book, Fingerprints, and how it was bound to revolutionize criminal investigation. “I’ve taken care not to blur these gun prints, and I’m taking some of your prints as a sample. If they match, there will be a marshal down here to talk to you. Before I go I mean to get as much information from you as I can, starting right now.”

  On the last word Terry slammed out his right fist, and it hit Harrison clean in the stomach. He gulped, breath exploding from him, and for a moment his face purpled. Then he groaned as the fist struck him again like a pile-driver, flattening him amidst the papers on his des
k. Hardly able to breathe, he struggled up and held his excruciating middle.

  “What do you know about Marchland?” Terry asked deliberately.

  “Nothin’! Yore a damned fool, Carlton! I don’t know the first thing about—”

  Harrison swung round and dropped flat on his face on the floor, hardly realising what had hit him. The blow, clean on the jaw, had half-paralysed him for a moment. Then he found himself hauled to his feet and slapped mercilessly back and forth across .the face until he thought his head would explode.

  “Okay—okay,” he whispered finally, his lips bleeding and one eye closing. “I’ll—I’ll start talkin’. It wus becos of Marchland that—”

  Harrison got no further. The sudden deafening explosion of a gun from the slightly open window took care of him. He clapped a hand to his forehead, then lowered it again. Blood was trickling from a round hole in his skull. Pole-axed, he dropped to the floor.

  Instantly, Terry whirled to the partly open window, slammed it up, and peered outside with his gun cocked. The assailant had disappeared. There were only one or two men and women on the boardwalk in the distance, certainly not near enough to have heard a shot. Terry compressed his lips, and drew the sash back into position. It was plain enough to him what had occurred. Somebody had been about to call on Harrison—somebody who counted in the whole mysterious set-up—and, noticing the open window, had looked in and realised that Harrison was about to shoot his face off.

  So now what? Terry made a quick examination of the sprawling sheriff and satisfied himself that he was dead. He pondered for a moment about taking some fingerprints, then decided against it. Even if they checked it wouldn’t do any good with their owner in the grave. And, anyhow, it had only been intended partly as a scare to make Harrison talk.

  Finally, he made his way to the door, peering around it cautiously on to the boardwalk in order to be sure nobody was I about to see him leave. The coast was reasonably clear, so he went further along the boardwalk to Mayor Burridge’s office and walked in.