Border Fever

by Pronzini, Bill

  Chapter Four

  Returning to La Hacienda, M’Candliss went up to the second floor and rapped on the door of the room belonging to Flynn and Meckleburg. Flynn answered, and asked him if he had learned anything about Holmes’ whereabouts.

  “Hell, no,” M’Candliss growled. He kicked the door shut, then tersely briefed his men on the contents of the telegram, his questioning of the bartenders, and the attempt on his life.

  Meckleburg asked, “You figure Esteban is behind it all?”

  “I don’t know,” M’Candliss replied moodily. “I honest to God don’t, not with all these Americans cropping up in his supposedly Mexican revolutionary band. I suspect there’s a tie-in, though.”

  “Yeah? How?”

  “That’s what we’ve got to find out, and fast.” M’Candliss turned toward the door. “An idea occurred to me on the way here from the telegraph office. Come on, you can help me.”

  He went out and down the hall to Holmes’ room. With the lock broken, the door swung open at his touch; he moved directly to the window, Flynn and Meckleburg trailing behind him. As he had before, he raised the sash and put his head outside. The main street was noisier than ever, as the saloon and crib trades increased with nightfall. But the walkway beneath M’Candliss, and the rear stoop and yard of the hotel, were deserted, shrouded in deep pockets of shadow.

  He turned to glance back at his two men. “I’m going down onto the shade-roof below,” he said.

  Meckleburg asked, “What for?”

  “Because of something I found up here. I’ll need a hand coming up again.”

  “Sure thing, Cap.”

  M’Candliss swung his legs over the sill and eased downward along the clapboard wall until he was hanging by his fingers. He dropped easily onto the shade-roof. It was a sloping wooden affair, like the gangplank of a ship; it sagged a little under his weight, but held him without cracking.

  He hunkered down and studied the rough, dust-covered boarding. In it were scrape marks the same distance apart as the scratches he’d found previously on the window sill. Straightening, he went to the far end of the roof and looked down around the rear corner of the hotel; the back yard stretched on toward a bank of scrub brush, with barren land and rock beyond that.

  Satisfied, he returned to the spot beneath the window and was helped back into the room by Flynn and Meckleburg.

  “What’d you find out there” Flynn asked. “Anything important?”

  “I think so,” M’Candliss said tightly. He pointed out the scratches on the sill, told of the similar scrape marks on the roof boarding. “Way I figure it, the gouges on the roof were made by the legs of a ladder. And the ones here on the sill by hooks nailed to the ladder’s top.”

  “You mean Holmes was snatched out of here by men climbing onto the roof, then laying a ladder to reach up here?”

  “It’s the only thing that fits,” M’Candliss said, and went on to explain. “You know how hot it’s been, so it’s not surprising for Holmes to have left the window cracked to let air in. It would’ve been easy for the kidnappers to have hooked their ladder to the sill, climbed up into here, and carried Holmes back down again—all swift and silent, so you wouldn’t hear them.”

  “That don’t make sense,” Flynn objected. “Even if we didn’t hear them, Holmes surely would’ve. Hell, he’s a light enough sleeper so he’d have woken up before they got to his bed and gagged him, or hit him over the head, or whatever.”

  M’Candliss said, “Not if he was drugged first.”

  “Drugged? But how—?”

  “Didn’t one of you tell me earlier that the clerk left a bottle of medicine when he came up?”

  “You mean Beasley put something in that bottle?”

  “That’s just what I mean.”

  “Hell,” Meckleburg said, “it makes sense, at that. I didn’t figure the ladder angle because of the lack of noise, but it would work if Holmes was drugged beforehand.”

  Flynn nodded agreement. “Reckon we ought to have a talk with Beasley, eh, Cap?”

  “First thing,” M’Candliss said. “Either of you know where we can find him?”

  “No. But the clerk on duty now might know.”

  The three Rangers left the room and hurried downstairs, where they grouped in front of the desk. M’Candliss asked the bespectacled clerk, “Where can we find the gent who was on duty just before you?”

  “Beasley?”

  “That’s right, Beasley.”

  “Can’t I help you instead?”

  Meckleburg shook his head. “It’s personal.”

  “I see. Well, he’s probably over at the Agave. That’s where he usually goes after his shift. He likes his liquor, you see, and he—”

  “No, he’s not at the Agave,” M’Candliss said. “I’ve checked all the saloons except for the Bird of Paradise.”

  “Oh, Beasley would never set foot in that place. It’s much too rowdy for him.”

  “Where does he live?”

  “Well, it’s against hotel policy to give out information like that—”

  “To hell with hotel policy,” Meckleburg said.

  He reached across the counter, grasped the clerk by his lapels, and almost dragged him over the top. “If you don’t tell us, and damned quick, I’ll thump you so hard you’ll have to unbutton your fly to blow your nose.”

  “Shingle-roof house,” the clerk stammered. “Picket fence, north edge of town. Please let go—you’re hurting me!”

  Meckleburg released him. The terrified clerk staggered back against the bank of pigeonholes, his face flushed and his glasses askew. “The house belongs to Beasley’s spinster sister,” he said, “b-but she’s visiting friends out of town, so Beasley is living there by himself.”

  “Thanks,” M’Candliss said. “We’re obliged.”

  The three of them left the hotel and hurried up the street. Beasley’s house proved easy to find. It was, as the clerk had said, a tiny, cottage-like, shingle-roofed house, set back from a neat white picket fence. A tall cottonwood grew in the front yard, and there were prickly pear cacti and flowering shrubs to add color.

  The three Rangers had reached the front gate, and M’Candliss had his hand on the latch, when a man’s scream split the quiet darkness.

  M’Candliss shoved the gate open and raced across the yard, drawing his Colt as he ran. Flynn and Meckleburg were right behind him, their weapons out and ready as well. Another scream came from the house, high and piercing, and then was cut off into a gurgling cry of pain. M’Candliss jumped onto the narrow front porch, braced himself, and slammed his boot against the door near its latch. It had been unlocked and it gave easily, snapping inward to bang off the wall with a sound like a rifle shot.

  He went into the house crouching, his Colt extended in front of him. In the neat feminine parlor he saw Vern Beasley slumped against a sideboard—and saw, too, the thick-bodied figure of a second man, the one who had tried to knife him in the alley.

  The attacker had straightened and wheeled around, and M’Candliss glimpsed the knife in his hand, the blood coating its long stiletto-like blade. Beasley was holding his stomach, groaning and whimpering; blood oozed out from between his interlocked fingers. But M’Candliss was aware of him only peripherally. His attention was on the man with the knife.

  “You again!” the man snarled. Lightning-swift, he reversed the knife with a flip and hurled it at M’Candliss, while with his other hand he cross-drew a Civil War-vintage Remington .44 Army revolver.

  M’Candliss had already started to dodge to one side, shouting a warning to Flynn and Meckleburg behind him. The slender blade sailed past his head and stabbed into the wood of the doorjamb, quivering. He angled his Colt to bear and fired. He saw the man’s Remington buck as it echoed his shot, but the impact of M’Candliss’ bullet in the man’s chest half-spun him and sent the answering slug off-target. The bullet from the .44 exploded a porcelain bowl on a shelf to M’Candliss’ left, then burrowed harmlessly into the wall.
The attacker, slack-jawed, twisted all the way around, staggered, and finally crumpled as his legs gave out beneath him. He landed face up, with blood still pumping out across his shirt front.

  M’Candliss kicked the Remington out of the man’s limp grip, then bent to look into the ravaged face. The blood stopped pumping as he did so and the eyes went blank; the man was dead. M’Candliss straightened again and went to where Beasley lay.

  The hotel clerk was bleeding from a deep stab wound in the abdomen. Fear and pain contorted his chinless face; he knew how badly he was hurt. Whether he lived or died, M’Candliss knew, depended on how promptly he was doctored and how serious the wound was. If the blade had sliced through a vital organ, he wouldn’t last long. M’Candliss had seen enough belly wounds to know that.

  “No doctor to be had and the sheriff’s out with his posse,” he muttered to himself. Then, over his shoulder to Flynn, he said, “Find out where the druggist is, Jay, and fetch him.”

  “Right, Cap.” Flynn headed back out the front door.

  Meckleburg helped M’Candliss carry the wounded man back into the nearest bedroom, his anguished whimpers trailing off into raspy breathing as he lapsed into unconsciousness. They stretched him out on the coverlet and loosened his clothing. His skin was pale and moist, and he was having difficulty taking air.

  M’Candliss put pillows under his head and shoulders, covered him with a blanket, then kept watch to make sure he continued to breathe without strangling.

  Ten minutes later, Flynn returned with a thin, balding man. “Had some luck,” he said. “Found him in his apothecary.” He began removing packages of gauze and medicaments from his pockets. “I also picked up what he thought he’d need.”

  “Listen,” the man said diffidently, “I’m not a doctor—”

  “You’re the closet thing Adobe has to one right now,” M’Candliss said.

  “But the responsibility—”

  “I’ll take that, don’t worry. You wouldn’t have been asked if it wasn’t an emergency. This man is the only lead we’ve got to Esteban and his renegades; we’ve got to get him patched up at least long enough to talk.”

  “Well, get out of here while I try.” The druggist gestured to Flynn to leave the supplies on the table next to the bed. “But I’m telling you, I refuse to be held responsible.”

  “Just do your best, that’s all.”

  M’Candliss left the bedroom, Flynn and Meckleburg trailing, and they grouped around the body in the parlor. M’Candliss went through the dead knifer’s pockets, and was not surprised by the lack of identification. He did find a pencil stub, cigarette papers and a sack of Dime Durham tobacco, a couple of tokens to a whorehouse in Nogales, and, most important, three hundred dollars in paper currency. “Blood money,” M’Candliss said. “His pay for killing Beasley.”

  “And you, Cap,” Flynn said.

  “Yeah—two for the price of one,” Meckleburg added. “Well, let’s hope he’s as unsuccessful with Beasley as he was with you.”

  M’Candliss nodded. Somberly, the men waited for the druggist to emerge from the bedroom with news about Beasley. An hour passed. M’Candliss began to pace the parlor, his muscles knotted with the need for action, for movement of some kind toward accomplishing his mission. But he knew there was nothing he could do, that he had no direction unless Beasley survived and could tell what he knew.

  Finally, the druggist came out, a sheen of sweat on his brow. “Reckon he’ll make it,” he said wearily. “But he’s weak, and infection could set in later.”

  “Can we talk to him?” M’Candliss asked.

  “Not now, I’m afraid. He’s still unconscious, and no telling when he’ll come to. It’d be dangerous to wake him forcibly.”

  M’Candliss cursed in frustration.

  The druggist left the house, and the three Rangers began taking turns watching Beasley for some sign of returning consciousness. More hours passed; the night seemed to stretch on endlessly. Whenever it wasn’t his shift to sit by Beasley’s bed, M’Candliss whiled away the time by stalking back and forth, rolling cigarettes, and repeatedly reviewing with Flynn or Meckleburg what little was known or might be deduced.

  Then, while Flynn was watching the clerk and the dull gray of an early false dawn was just starting to crease the horizon, Beasley awoke with a high, tormented whine, as if coming out of a nightmare. M’Candliss and Meckleburg rushed into the bedroom. They all gathered around the bed, studying the twitching, frightened, pain-filled man.

  “Beasley,” M’Candliss said in a low voice. “We’re here to help you, Beasley.”

  “L-leave me alone... No, don’t...”

  “Snap out of it. We have to talk to you.” Beasley’s eyelids fluttered. “Wh-wha...? You...?”

  “Who did it, Beasley? Who knifed you?”

  “No! Don’t let him... !”

  “He’s dead, he can’t hurt you anymore. Now who was he? Why’d he do it?”

  “I... don’t know. I never saw him before. But he did it because...” The hotel clerk hesitated, as if realizing that to continue would be to talk himself into a prison cell. Yet the attempt on his life had robbed him of all resistance; after a moment, he blurted: “I was to get a hundred dollars for putting laudanum into that elixir bottle and taking it up to Mr. Holmes. A hundred just for that and for keeping my mouth shut, enough money to get me out from under that shrew of a sister of mine. You don’t know what that means to me, to get away from her.”

  “Who arranged the deal with you?”

  “Deney... Bruno Deney.”

  “Who’s he?”

  “Owner of the Galleon silver mine, out in Refioso Valley, a ways east of here.” Beasley coughed, grimaced, but went on. “The mine’s played out—never was much good to begin with. I didn’t think of it when Deney first came to me, but the Refioso Valley is nothing but wilderness, and his mine would make a perfect spot to hide somebody.”

  “D’you know why this Bruno Deney would want to take Holmes?”

  “No... No, I didn’t even know that was what he had in mind when he hired me to dope the bottle. When it happened, it was too late for me to do anything; you understand that, don’t you? So I waited here for my money like I was supposed to, only instead of giving me my money, the fellow came and stabbed me.” A fever seemed to be burning in Beasley’s sick eyes. He struggled to rise, his gnarled fingers clawing at M’Candliss. “But you’ve got to believe me, I didn’t know they were going to grab Mr. Holmes, and I still don’t know why they want him.”

  “Easy,” M’Candliss cautioned, forcing Beasley to lie flat. “You’ve got to rest, get some strength back.”

  “Y-you’re not going to leave me, are you?”

  “Sorry, but we’ve got to. We’ll leave word for the druggist to look in on you later on. You won’t be alone for very long.”

  “But that man... his friends... they might..

  “The one out in your parlor won’t be bothering anyone except maybe the devil, and his pals are long gone by now.” M’Candliss stood from where he’d been sitting on the edge of the bed and frowned down at the hotel clerk. “The only thing you better be praying over is that we get to Holmes and find him alive and unharmed. Your cooperating like this will make it go easier on you, but if Deney or the bunch he’s with decide to kill him, you’ll be a partner to murder.”

  Beasley sank lower under the coverlet and began to weep.

  The three Rangers wasted no more time. They hurried out of the house and down toward the livery stable, intent on saddling their horses and riding to Reñoso Valley.

  Some delay, they knew, would be inevitable, what with having to rouse the hostler, get directions, and leave messages for the druggist and for Sheriff Tucker when he returned. But they were determined to be quick about it, damned quick.

  They were literally racing against time.

  Chapter Five

  The Rangers topped out on a ridge above Refioso Valley and reined in their horses. Dawn was two hours past now,
and the pale blue of the early-morning sky was being eroded by a heat-shimmering brassiness. It was difficult to focus against the glare, but M’Candliss, squinting, was able to gauge the sunlit vastness of the shattered land below.

  Meckleburg spat a stream of tobacco juice. “Down there, eh?”

  M’Candliss nodded, stretching his weary muscles. “According to the hostler, Deney’s claim would be between here and the valley floor, along with a few others that were staked.”

  “Too bad he couldn’t be more exact,” Flynn said. He eyed the narrow trail which wound through the boulders and scrub.

  “Well, I figure he did pretty good, considering. These smaller claims must’ve changed hands and names faster than poker chips at the Agave, and now that they’re deserted, it’s amazing anybody can remember much of anything about them. Luckily, the Galleon was one of the few fair-to-middlin’-sized mines, so if we just keep to the path, we should come across it and be able to pick it out.” M’Candliss rubbed the stubble on his chin. “Best to take it slow, anyway. We want to catch ‘em by surprise.”

  He edged his horse forward. Walked the clay bank down the slope, watching for signs of recent activity, of men in the area within the past few days. The others followed. They were unable to find any clue to where Deney’s claim might be, until Flynn spotted the butt of a “short-six” cigar. After scouting, Flynn and Meckleburg came upon tracks leading off the narrow trail toward a distant hillock, where mounds of tailings and debris could be seen.

  The three men decided to work their way to the mine by moving quietly off the secondary trail and scattering along the hillside, staying under cover and out of sight from both above and below. They made their own trails, weaving through the undergrowth and rock, clawing up steep slopes and easing down declivities where their horses almost slid on their hindquarters.

  “We can’t go much further on horseback,” Flynn told M’Candliss. “Too dangerous—and too noisy, once we get close to the mine entrance.”

  M’Candliss nodded his agreement, and they all swung out of their saddles. Leading their mounts, they continued to make their way across the desolate land, over brush and around boulders, occasionally sinking leg-deep in soft shale. For a quarter of a mile they wound in and out, always keeping the secondary path within sight. They realized that whatever guards had been posted at the silver mine would be watching the same path and not anticipating an attack from another direction.