I heard them talking about it.”
“You mean, the men?”
“Yes, I do, but it was Anne. She was telling them just what to do.”
Anne?
Chapter Seventeen.
The last stars were lonesome in the sky when we rode down the street. There was light enough so the old buildings were taking shape from the darkness and light reflected from the blank black faces of the windows.
There was a light showing from the back of the restaurant so we rode there, made a quick tie at the hitch rail, and went inside.
German came from the kitchen with a washcloth in his hand and I saw the bulge of the six-shooter tucked behind his belt.
“Molly?” His worry was in his voice. “You all right?”
“Milo found me,” she said.
“Take her inside, German,” I advised, “and keep that six-shooter handy. I’ll stash these horses. And keep her away from windows.”
Took me only minutes to get my horses stalled in the livery barn, and I came out of the stable on the watch. My number was up but I wouldn’t know who all the shooters were. This was one where I wished I had Em around or that brother of mine, Barnabas.
Better still, one of those Sacketts.
The sun wasn’t up when I left the barn but there was the gray light of early morning that left every little detail showing. My dog friend came trotting up the street, stopping to greet me. I dropped a hand to his head and petted him a little. He seemed surprised but pleased. I suspect it had been a long time since anybody petted him.
>
Gave me time to sort of look around, notice the windows and such. From now on I had to be a caring man. Turning suddenly, I went down an alley between two buildings, but instead of going on to the back door of Maggie’s, I went between two other buildings and back to the main street where I stood looking around before I emerged.
That window opposite the restaurant was open a crack at the bottom. Maybe it always was, maybe not. I went down the street and into Maggie’s. It was only about five long steps but; taking them I felt naked as a jaybird.
German came out, drying his hands. “Set up,” he said, “I got somethin’ for you.”
“Where’s she?”
“Restin’. She’s back in my room, lyin’ down. I don’t know where y’all been but she’s tuckered.”
Falling into a chair, I reached for the coffee. It tasted good, mighty good. I’d taken a long look down the track. The train I’d seen had pulled out and the place where the private car had stood was empty.PS
“Seen the Arkansawyer? “Seen nobody. Only that Mexican friend of yours. The mean one.”
“What did he want?”
“Didn’t say. He took a look around, then let the door go shut{, and walked off. Had a notion he was lookin’ for you.”
German brought food and I ate, my mind elsewhere. Trouble was, I was tired and it was hard to keep my thoughts on the problem.’
Anne … I couldn’t believe it of her, yet who knows what; goes on inside a person? And what did I know of her but that; she was a pretty girl?
What had been taken from Nathan Albro’s safe? Something to do with that missing five million in gold or the railroad, I’d guess. Jefferson Henry wanted Nancy Henry found.
Pride Hovey … no trouble figuring what he wanted. He wanted money, maybe power, but money of course. My head bobbed and I; straightened up again and took a swallow of coffee. No use fighting it, what I needed was rest.
“German?” I called.
He came from the kitchen. “Can you keep her here? If they get their hands on her I’m afraid they will kill her. We can’t take a chance.”
“What’s it all about?”
What I hadn’t told him before, I explained now, as best I could. The trouble was, I knew too little myself. When I left Maggie’s and went back to the hotel, I walked easy and kept a loose gun in my holster. Seemed like they were trying to keep from attracting attention but a body never knew when that might change.
When I rode into town I had taken the job of finding Nancy Henry or Albro or whatever her name was, but all I had done was upset somebody’s applecart and start all kinds of things happening. Or not to give myself credit for too much, I’d ridden into the midst of somebody else’s upset applecart. After all, Tut had been killed before I came into the picture.
Since then Pride Hovey had shown up, and Arkansaw Tom Baggott, too.
All I wanted now was to keep Molly out of trouble and finish the job I’d been paid for, or else quit. I was thinking of that, although I didn’t take much to quitting.
Any time I had taken on a job I’d finished it.
Molly was asleep and German was between her and trouble. Me, I was right out in front.
Once back in my room I had taken off my boots and stretched out on the bed, but not until I’d propped a chair under the knob. I was dead tired and if I didn’t get some sleep I was going to fall asleep standing or riding or whatever.
The Magoffins now, they’d been tied in with Newton Henry and had evidently decided to sell him out to his old man … or somebody. Maybe they had gone to Pride Hovey.
Either Newton, Jefferson, or Hovey had poisoned them. The killer had gone through what they found of the Magoffins’ gear but the important part had still been unclaimed baggage so they’d probably come up empty. Somehow they’d laid hold of Tut and had tried to get what they could from him. He’d gotten away and they’d killed him. That killing was almost surely Jefferson Henry’s men.
My eyes closed. In the street I could hear the passing of a buckboard, the jangle of harness, and somebody saying “… if I’m going to feed that stock I’ll need hay.”
There was a mutter of voices from the next room and the sound of a beer wagon passing, loaded with barrels, and the particular sound it made. Somewhere along there, I fell asleep.
When next I opened my eyes it was dusk. The room wasn’t quite dark and the only sound I heard was a door slamming and the sound of boots on the boardwalk.
Yet I opened my eyes remembering what Molly had said, that she’d hid something in my room.
I sat up and swung my sock feet to the floor. What had she hidden, and where?
And what about the notebook I still hadn’t read? Oh, I’d taken a glance at it, here and there, but not to really read it.
Taking off the globe, I struck a match and touched the flame to the wick, then replaced the globe. Then I got out the notebook.
It was a sort of daybook and had belonged to Nathan Albro. The first few pages were notations on purchases and sales of stocks as well as land. The purchases had been small at first, growing in numbers and values as time passed. It was a small record of a man making himself rich. Here and there were losses, but generally he chose well and sold at a profit. The writing was extremely fine, with many abbreviations.
There was a list of property sales and the sums realized but no account of their disposal.
Then suddenly there were some brief notations: N-? Something odd there. Months later there was: S
Then what must have been a confession:
Never learned to talk to a woman. Never could tell her how much I loved her, needed her.
Then there were several pages of notations of business deals, some more sales but no mention of what had happened to the money, then:
Empty! Empty! Empty! S meant so much. N … ? Only a child but cold … cold … and cruel.
There were wide gaps in the dates then. Occasional deals, usually for big money.
Then simply the word: Divorced. And somewhat later:
Married Newton Henry. My God! That scoundrel! I fear for Stacy.
Page after page of business deals, each noted with mere initials and figures.
Molly to see me. Has been putting flowers on my desk! Such a pretty child! If my own daughter could have been so gentle and kind! NH has no idea what a nettle he has grasped!
I put the notebook down. My eyes were heavy with sleep. NH … th
at would be Newton Henry. What nettle? Not Stacy, Nathan wrote of Stacy with affection despite her running off. Nancy? She was but a child. Yet he had said Nancy will survive.
Sleepy as I was, I turned the page.
From Topolobampo. All goes forward. Tai Ts’an met with us. Approves Topo as terminal.
In confidence, later, told me somebody living on the place. A man, a woman, and a young girl.
Turning over, I awakened. For a moment I lay still, trying to remember where I was.
In my room at the hotel, reading the notebook. Quickly, I put out my hand. It was there. The chair was still under the knob but it was still completely dark. Sitting up I crossed the room, poured some water in the bowl, and splashed it in my eyes and on my face.
The memory of what I had been reading returned. Living on the place. What place?
A moment of listening, all was still. Standing at the window, I looked down into the empty street. All was dark and still. Nothing moved. Turning away, my eyes caught a flicker of movement from a roof across the way.
A man was there, or the shadow of a man, crouching near the stone chimney.
Chapter Eighteen.
One of the reasons I’ve lived as long as I have is that I never stand squarely in front of a window. When I want to look out I stand on one side or the other, and that was what I was doing now.
The man yonder had a rifle, but I couldn’t make out whether he was looking toward my window or some other farther along. From his position he would be unable to see the bed where I should be lying, so he must be gunning for somebody else.
Molly?
But Molly was not in her room. She was down at Maggie’s/ restaurant where German Schafer could protect her.
Or I thought she was.
It was in my thoughts that I had fallen asleep with the lamp still burning, but sometime during the night I had obviously awakened and blown it out, too sleepy to actually recall the action. The room was completely dark and the man opposite could not see in, although he might detect movement.
From deep inside the room I could still see the roof opposite, and the man with the rifle was on one knee, half-behind the chimney. Watching, I pulled on my pants and shirt and strapped on my gun-belt. Shucking my watch from the watch-pocket of my pants, I tried to make out the time, but it was too dark and I daren’t strike a match.
Judging by how quiet the town was, I had an idea it was long after midnight.
Whoever the man opposite was, I was positive it would not be the Arkansawyer. Baggott was too shrewd to take a chance on being trapped on a roof. This had to be somebody else.
Yet that was the building Baggott was living in, and unless I overrated the man, Baggott, if in his room, had heard that movement on the roof.
What would he do? Nothing, probably, but he’d be irritated. If there was any shooting it would attract attention and that was the one thing Baggott avoided.
Had Molly returned to her room? Was she in there now, sleeping?
Or was the man on the roof waiting for a shot into the restaurant? German was an early riser, always on the job before daylight, and unless my guess was wrong the man on the roof had a perfect shot for anybody in the window of Maggie’s or on the walk, and German always swept the walk early in the morning.
My window was open as I was a man used to lots of fresh air, sleeping out more than half the time. At the side of the window, on one knee, I waited.
Whatever he was planning he had better be at it. Already the light was better, and in a short time others besides me would see him. Just as I thought that, he lifted the rifle.
Who he was going to shoot I did not know, but he was aiming right at Maggie’s. He was no more than sixty feet away, and as the rifle came to his shoulder I said, in a tone just loud enough, “I wouldn’t do that.”
My six-shooter was in my hand when I said it. I had no desire to kill him, so I continued talking. “You can walk off that roof or fall off.”
He lowered his rifle and straightened up, then he turned sharply and fired.
He wasn’t as good as he thought he was. His bullet bit the window frame a foot above my head, and my return shot, so quick the two sounded as one, seemed to hit the action of his rifle. He dropped it like it was red-hot and went off the roof in the back like a scared rabbit.
Quickly, I closed the window, slipped a cartridge into my pistol, and pocketed the empty shell. Then I sat down on the bed and started to pull on a boot.
Running feet came along the hall, excited questions, then pounding on my door. Boot in hand, I pulled the chair from under the knob and opened it.
“You looking for somebody?” I asked.
“There was a shot! It came from here!”
“Shot? Hell, mister, I just dropped my boot. It surely didn’t make that much noise!”
The clerk pushed into the room with several other men, staring around. There was nobody there but me and my window was closed, the glass unbroken.
Sitting down, I began to tug on the other boot. John Topp loomed in the doorway, his eyes on my bed. He started forward but I was too quick. I picked up Nathan Albro’s notebook and stuck it in my hip pocket.
“You must have heard that shot?” the clerk said.
“I heard something. It could have been a shot, but why be surprised at that? I’ve been in a hundred towns like this and there’s always some drunken cowboy blowing off steam.”
That clerk was no fool. He stared at me, one eyebrow raised. “Come to think of it,”
I said, “I believe I saw somebody on the roof yonder. Out of the corner of my eye, like. But what would a man want, shooting off a roof? Unless he was trying to kill somebody.”
I looked at Topp. “A man can’t be too careful these days.”
They trooped out of the room and I glanced around quickly, then took up my vest and donned it, then my coat.
When I reached the lobby John Topp was waiting. He spoke to me for the first time.
“The boss would like to see that notebook.”
“He may, in time.”
“He’ll want it now.”
“Sorry.”
“You’re workin’ for him, mister.”
“Only to find a girl, that’s all. How I find her is my business.”
His expression did not change. It never did. Only his eyes moved and he had large, somewhat solemn eyes. “He’ll want that book, mister. He’ll want it now.”
“I’m sorry.”
“All right,” Topp replied mildly, “I’ll tell him.” He half turned away and then he threw a punch. He was big and he was fast and I was as much off-guard as I ever will be. He threw a right-hand punch and I just stepped off to the left. I’ll never know whether it was because of some subconscious warning or if it was pure accident, but when I stepped off to the left his punch missed me completely and he fell, carried by the impetus of his blow, and he half-fell across a table and some chairs.
“Tsk, tsk,” I said, and walked on out the door.
Molly was gathering dishes from a table when I came in. “If you’re going to do that, stay away from the windows.”
“Milo, what are we going to do? What can we do?”
Now if I’d been like some I’ve heard of I’d have come up with a quick solution, a nice easy one, but I’d no idea what to do. What I needed was time to consider.
Molly was looking to me for help, and German Schafer was expecting me to come up with answers I did not have. Looking out at the sunlit street, I felt trapped, and furthermore, I was scared. I had a girl depending on me, a girl they wanted to kill, and now they wanted to kill me, too.
Topp knew I had the notebook, and he would be wanting to make up for his blunder in taking a swing at me. He hadn’t thought it out. There was the book, they wanted it, and a quick blow might knock it from my hands and he might be in possession.
That I’d come off lucky I knew full well. I would not be so lucky again.
“German,” I spoke through the door to the kitchen,
“better keep an eye on that back door.”
Looking out into that street a man would think it just a sleepy western town. Folks were going about their business, buying supplies in the stores, getting boots repaired, horses shoed, walking up the stairs to the doctor’s office, talking cattle, sheep, and politics, and ninety-nine percent of them totally unaware of what was going on, that a few steps away a young woman was in danger.
We could run for it. We could take out for Denver and hope we could make it. We’d have to go horseback as they’d be watching the train. Molly knew too much and I had information they wanted … or they believed I had. f % Molly brought me some coffee and sat down with me. “Milo?
What are we going to do?” “Run,” I said, “and I don’t like to. But this is all too open. One of these days when we step out on the street they’ll nail us.
“They’re watching, you can bet on it. They don’t want any thing obvious and they don’t want either of us left alive to talk.
I think if we could get into the mountains we could lead them a chase.
“I don’t know how John Topp is on a trail, but I know these mountains and I’ve friends in Denver. Far as that goes, we; could go to the Empty.”’
“Empty?”
“Ma’s ranch. MT is the brand, stands for Em Talon. We’d be safe there but that’s a long ride, and when there’s that amount of money at stake they won’t take any chances. Neither will* she.”
“She?”
“Anne. She’s in it somehow.”
Molly looked at me. “You mean you don’t know? She’s the girl you’ve been looking for. Nancy is a name that began as a-nickname for Anne.” Well … I should have known. Reluctantly, I’d been giving up on Anne. When she visited* the Empty I built a lot of dreams around her. The trouble was, I had been building my dreams around the girl I wanted her to be and hoped she was. We all do that. All too often the man a girl thinks she loves or the girl a man believes he loves is just in their imaginations. A body makes excuses for their mistakes*y because he or she wants to believe. Anne … Nancy … even Nathan Albro had said she was; cold and cruel. Whatever else he was, Nathan was perceptive. “I think she always hated me,” Molly said suddenly. “I thought of her as my friend.
Milo Talon (1981) Page 13