Stranger in Thunder Basin (Leisure Historical Fiction)

by John D. Nesbitt

  Ravenna was surprised to see Ed, but she was busy at work and didn’t have time to chat. She did say, however, that Mr. Shepard had not been feeling well of late and didn’t come out of his room until the middle of the day. That left Ed at loose ends, so he went back to the stable to rest and to keep out of the public eye.

  He returned to the boarding house to take noon dinner, and after the meal he contrived to strike up a conversation with Cam Shepard. The man looked worse than Ed remembered, as he had a pasty face, swollen and rough-textured, with a bulbous nose that looked as porous as that part of the turkey called the Pope’s nose, with the exception that Shepard’s nose shaded from scarlet to purple. His eyes were small and bleary, and several of his teeth were missing. His stomach protruded in a shape that should make anyone feel uncomfortable, and his shirt fell away straight down. The shirt fit loose on his shoulders, which looked meager, and his trousers billowed around bony hips and thin legs.

  In the presence of such a wreck, Ed tried to act as if everything was normal. “I was talkin’ to Tyrel Flood this morning about one thing and another, and he said you might be a person to talk to about a certain topic.”

  Shepard’s eyebrows lifted. “And what topic might that be?”

  “Maybe a ruler of ancient Egypt and a beady-eyed individual.”

  “Oh,” said the older man, with a knowing look. “Sometimes I go for a walk this time of day.”

  “Really?” Ed cast a glance over the wasted physique.

  “You bet. I just don’t walk fast.”

  “That would be all right with me. Do you have a hat or a cane?”

  “Don’t need ’em.”

  Ed gave the man his shoulder to hang on to as they went down the front steps. When they came to a stop on the sidewalk, Ed asked, “Which way do you like to go?”

  “Don’t be foolish. Did you or did you not offer to buy me a drink?”

  “I suppose I did.”

  “Then you know which way we’re goin’.”

  The walk seemed to take forever, and Ed felt doubly conspicuous, shuffling along in broad daylight with a man who looked as if he had crawled out of a crypt. At last they came to the door of the Rimfire Saloon, where they passed from glaring sunlight to dusky shadows. Ed steered Shepard to a table and helped him to a seat, then took a chair himself about two feet around the curve.

  The older man heaved a long sigh. “I don’t get out very much,” he said, “so I appreciate this.”

  “It’s my pleasure,” Ed replied, feeling a bit guilty that he might not be telling the complete truth. All the same, he knew Cam Shepard did appreciate being able to go out and visit the sort of old haunt he used to frequent so easily. Ed had understood, during his stay at the boarding house that winter, that Mr. Shepard drank his liquor in his room while Mrs. Porter pretended not to notice. Sometimes Cam ventured out to visit Tyrel Flood if there wasn’t too much ice on the walkways, but an excursion to a saloon was a rarer event, because of the cost as well as the effort. So even if the present visit was not a complete pleasure for Ed, he didn’t mind helping Cam Shepard find his.

  At a signal from Cam, the bartender appeared with a bottle of whiskey and two glasses and set them down. As he went to pour the first glass, Cam said, “Go ahead, Henry, but leave the bottle here for right now.”

  Ed nodded to the barkeep and pointed to himself, as a way of saying he would take care of the cost. Henry made a bow of the head in return and glided away.

  Cam held up his glass. “Well, here’s to it, kid, and many thanks.”

  “You bet.” Ed moistened his tongue and upper lip with the liquor and set down his glass.

  Cam’s throat looked like a horse’s when the animal drank upward from a trough. “Ahhh,” he said, then licked his lips and set down the glass. “Now, to pick up where we left off.”

  Ed tipped his head back and forth. Keeping his voice low, he said, “You told me once that you used to work on a ranch where I’ve been working.”

  “That’s right.” Cam closed his eyelids and opened them.

  “As you may have guessed, I’ve had an interest in what you might call the history of one or two of the people out there.”

  Cam gave a faint nod.

  “I went to Tyrel to see what he could tell me. He asked me if I was a junior detective, and I told him I’m not, in the sense that I’m not working for anyone else. My interest is purely personal.”

  With his face relaxed and his eyes looking dull, Cam gave another dip of the head.

  “Tyrel doesn’t seem to be interested in talking much about details. For one thing, he says others know more than he does, and for another, he says it’s not worth it.”

  “Probably isn’t.” Cam had his lips set tight.

  Ed took a slow breath to strengthen his own resolve. “If you’re dead set against it, I won’t try to convince you. But I can tell you why I’m interested. I trust you that it won’t go any further, ’cause it has some risk to it as well.”

  “Sure.” Cam raised his eyebrows and took another drink.

  Ed moved his chair closer and spoke in as low a voice as he thought he could and still be heard. “It goes like this. About fifteen years ago—no, more like sixteen now, but about the time you would have begun work there, from what you said—this fellow Bridge did something. I was there.”

  Cam, who seemed to be holding his eyes open with difficulty, said in a muffled voice, “Go on.”

  “I was a little boy, not quite five years old. He came to the place where I lived, I got sent away for a few minutes, and I heard a gunshot. This man Bridge rode away, and the man who had cared for me like a father was dead in the snow.”

  Cam’s face was cloudy, but he moved his head in agreement.

  “Now, what I’ve wanted to know is whether he did it on his own or whether he was working for someone else. It makes a difference, a hell of a big difference, as to what I do next.”

  With his mouth still set tight, Cam breathed in and out through his nose. Then he licked his lips, took a drink, and licked again. “You’re lookin’ to open up a lot of trouble, kid. There’s more than one reason a couple of people want to keep it all undercover.”

  Ed shrugged. “Well, I don’t blame you if you’d rather not say anything. If you know someone else I could ask, though, I would appreciate it.”

  Cam’s upper body rose and fell as he breathed through his nose again and made a whistling, wheezing sound. Then he fell to coughing, hawked, and pointed at a spittoon by the bar. Ed fetched it for him, and after the older man spit he said, “Let me tell you something, kid. I don’t expect to live much longer, so in a way I don’t care who knows what or who doesn’t.”

  Cam raised his shirt and gave Ed an appalling sight. His belly swelled out tight and round, and beneath the crest of it his navel poked out in an additional excrescence, not unlike the blown-out rear ends of some hogs and sheep Ed had seen. The difference was that the growth on Shepard’s belly was pink and self-contained, not broken open.

  Ed widened his eyes and could not find anything to say.

  Cam held the underside of his belly as Ed had seen him do before. Then the man continued speaking. “You see, my guts are all shot to hell. They say it’s the liver. They can drain water off this, and then it fills up again. Nothin’s worth a damn. I can feel it.”

  “I’m sorry to know that.”

  “No reason for anyone else to be sorry. I’m just tellin’ you why, in one way, I don’t care.” Now he took a breath in and out with his mouth open. “But in another way, if I thought I was just helpin’ these other sons of bitches, I might wish I’d said something.” Drawing his brows together and lowering his voice, he said, “You haven’t mentioned the name of this man that got killed. I think I know who it might have been, and if you don’t want to say, I don’t want to ask point-blank.”

  “I was prepared to say, if I thought it would lead me to an answer to my question.”

  Cam moistened his lips with his tong
ue. “It could.” He motioned with his head as he glanced at the shallow bit of whiskey he had left in his glass. “Pour me some more whiskey if you would.”

  Ed uncorked the bottle and poured a good three fingers’ worth.

  The older man nodded and said, “Go ahead.”

  Ed leaned his head closer and said, “His name was Jake Bishop.” He leaned back in his chair.

  Cam took a drink and seemed to have to force himself to swallow. With his voice still lowered so that Ed had to lean in to listen, he said, “I thought that was what you would say. And here’s what I think I can tell you. You ought to talk to a woman named Leah Corrigan. She lives in Ashton.”

  Ed nodded as he placed the town in his mind, east of Glenrose. “And can you tell me what part she has in it?”

  “She used to be married to Mort Ramsey.”

  Cam sat back and waved his hand, and Ed understood that the confidential part of the conversation was over. He resumed a normal position in his own chair.

  “And that’s the last time I got bucked off a horse,” said Cam, his voice much louder now.

  Ed picked up his drink and took a small sip. The taste made him shudder as it brought back memories of his recent misery with the stuff. “How long did you do that kind of work?” he asked.

  “Just five years. I came out west when I was forty-two, worked five years in Thunder Basin, then came to town and went to clerkin’. Did that until a couple of years ago, when I couldn’t get around very well anymore.”

  “Oh, I thought maybe you’d been a ranch hand longer than that.”

  “Nope. And I don’t expect to go back to it.” Daylight poured into the saloon as the front door opened. Two men walked in, silhouettes at first until the door closed and Ed recognized the two punchers who had not yet returned to the King Diamond Ranch. The one in front seemed to hesitate when he saw Ed, and then the two of them came over.

  “Hello, Tom. Hello, Fred.”

  The one in front, Tom, did the speaking. “Looks like we’re not the only ones late gettin’ back. We’re just on our way now, stopped in for a snort in case we get bit by a snake on the way. When are you goin’ back?”

  “Actually, I’m not.” After a couple of seconds Ed added, “Bridge fired me.”

  “The hell he did. He might fire us, too. But we’re ridin’ company horses, and we need to go back and get our gear anyway, even if we are fired. Did he say anything about that—about us?”

  “Not while I was there.”

  “Huh. What did he fire you for, or is it something I shouldn’t ask?”

  “Not at all. He just seemed to get fed up with something, and he told me to scram. You might hear a different story from him, but I don’t care. I’m finished there.”

  “Well, you never know,” said Tom. He and Fred nodded to Cam, said “So long” to Ed, and went to the bar.

  Cam went through a short coughing spell and expectorated into the spittoon. “I don’t think you mentioned that you’d been fired.”

  “I guess I didn’t. But now that I had to leave there, I’ve had all the more reason to have to get my answers somewhere else.”

  “I wish you well, kid.” Cal glanced at the other two punchers, who were standing down the bar a ways. “Just be careful. That fella Bridge would just as soon put a bullet through you as look at you.”

  “He may already have wished he did.”

  Chapter Twelve

  When Ravenna finished her evening’s work, she suggested that they sit on the back porch so they could be by themselves, but Ed said he didn’t want to have to worry about eavesdroppers. He and Ravenna settled on the dining room, and they sat at the far end, away from the kitchen, the door to the sitting room, and the one lit lamp. From the beginning, they spoke in low tones.

  “I was surprised to see you in town again,” she said. “How soon do you have to go back to the ranch?”

  “Well, I don’t have to go back. I’m not workin’ there anymore.”

  “Did you quit?”

  “I think that’s probably the closest. When I first came to town, the face I put on it was that I was here on business, which is the truth, but it turned out pretty thin by itself. When I ran into a couple of the other punchers, I went ahead and told them what I told the cook, which was that I got fired.”

  “And that’s not what happened?”

  “Not exactly. Well, no, not at all. There’s quite a bit more to the story, but I think I’d better wait to tell you the rest. For one thing, the less you know, the easier it is for you to stay out of any trouble.”

  “Are you in trouble then?”

  “I might be pretty soon.”

  She gave him a studied look. “Does it have anything to do with the fight you got into the other night?”

  “With Jeff? No—actually, it might, in the sense that I had some trouble with a fellow who seemed to have heard something from Jeff. But I don’t think that’s going any further.”

  “Well, that’s good. As I’ve said before, I don’t like him.”

  “Neither do I, as you can imagine.”

  She gave a little sigh, then assumed a more energetic tone as she picked up the conversation again. “And your main plan? You were hoping to find out about those two men. I would guess that if you’re not working there anymore, you either found out everything you needed to know or ran into some trouble.”

  “I ran into a dead end. I had no question about who had done it, you know, but I got to a point where I could see I wasn’t going to get any information as to whether the other one had a hand in it. So I had to pull out and see if I could learn something in some other way.”

  “So that was the business you came to town on.”

  “Right. I went to Tyrel Flood and asked him what he knew, and he suggested that I talk to Cam Shepard. So that’s what my visit with him was about. He used to work there, you know.”

  “I think he might have mentioned it. I do know he worked in a store for several years. Poor man, he hasn’t had an easy life.”

  Ed rolled his eyes. “Not from the looks of him.”

  “Mrs. Porter said he had a fall in life. She never said what kind, just that he had a fall.”

  “That might have been why he came out west. He said he came out here about fifteen years ago, so he wasn’t a youngster looking for adventure and fortune. He said he’s fifty-seven, and he was forty-two when he came here. That’s a whole life for a lot of men.”

  “And then to lose it all, or what ever happened. Poor man, it could happen to anyone.”

  Ed could not imagine it happening to himself, but he did not have a very clear picture of himself at forty-two either. “Well,” he said, “I hope I didn’t get him into much harm today. He did enjoy the drinks he had.”

  “It’s good that he can enjoy something, but he’s really not well at all.”

  “That’s what he told me.” Ed recalled the grotesque image of the man’s belly and navel. “Anyway, he had a suggestion of what I could do next.”

  “Oh, really?” Ravenna seemed to be glad to change the subject also.

  “Yes. He told me of another person I could go ask.” Ed looked around the room and lowered his voice. “A person I don’t know who lives in a town east of here.”

  Ravenna nodded.

  “I’m not trying to be mysterious, but again, there’s some of this that I think would be just as well if I told you later.”

  She gave a faint smile. “That’s all right. Do you think you’ll come back here after that, before you go somewhere else?”

  “I think so. It looks like a long day’s ride there, maybe a day to ask my questions and lay over, and then a long day’s ride back. Something like that. I’d give it three days.”

  She put her hand on the tabletop and touched his. “Is it the kind of trip that might have trouble in it as well?”

  He smiled as he took her hand. “I don’t think so. If there’s trouble, I think it’ll be waitin’ for me somewhere else.”

&nb
sp; “At the ranch.”

  He tipped his head to each side. “Probably.” To himself he added, Or here in Litch.

  “So do you plan to start out tomorrow?”

  “That’s right. And I think there’s something I should do before I go.”

  “What’s that?”

  “I should have done it before, but I didn’t think of it.” He paused and then went on. “I ought to give someone a detailed description of me and my effects in case anyone would ever need to know it.”

  “In case—”

  “Well, yeah, in case something happened.”

  “So you want to give this inventory to me?”

  “If you don’t mind. Do you have a pencil and paper?”

  “I can get it. Just a minute.” She got up from her chair and came back in less than a minute with a pencil and a sheet of letter-writing paper.

  He then gave her a description of himself, his horse, his saddle, his rifle, his pistol, and his pocketknife. “I don’t carry a watch or any keys,” he said, “or any photographs. I don’t have any fillings in my teeth, or any scars or birthmarks.”

  “No keepsakes?”

  He shook his head. “Never had any. I’m used to travelin’ light.”

  She gave him a tender smile. “Would it weigh you down very much if I gave you one?”

  His heartbeat picked up a little as his eyes met hers. “Do you have a picture of yourself?”

  “No. And you say you don’t have one of yourself either?”

  “Me? Oh, no. But what do you have for me?”

  “I can give you a lock of my hair.”

  His eyes swept over her dark, flowing tresses. “I wouldn’t want you to take a gouge out of your beautiful head of hair.”

  “Don’t worry,” she said, her dark eyes softening. “I can take some out where it won’t be noticeable.”

  Long shadows stretched across the open range as Ed rode east from Litch the next morning. The buckskin was stepping out just fine, and Ed felt well equipped with his rifle, rope, pistol, warbag, and bedroll. Although he had a sense of trouble pending and had no knowledge of how things had developed at the Kind Diamond Ranch, he hoped to be left alone on his present journey. Only Cam Shepard and Ravenna had an idea of where he was headed, and someone would have to squeeze to get information out of either of them.