by E. R. Slade
“You boys ever see this fellow here before?” Underwood asked them.
Turner looked at Coe again appraisingly, shook his head. Gordon glanced at Turner, then shook his head in a vehement negative.
“I want to know why,” Coe said. “I don’t have to ask if you threatened to kill me if I came back to town, or if you gave me a lump on the back of the head to remember it by. I know those things. What I don’t know is why you did it.”
“What’s he talkin’ about?” Turner asked, trying to sound curious. He almost got it sounding real, too.
Underwood looked from one of them to the other. It was plain he was puzzled.
“What happened to Pete?” Coe demanded. “He dead? What have you two got against the Dolans? He work something on you? If he did, I wouldn’t be surprised, but don’t figure I’m like him just because we’re brothers. Did you drive him out of town? Kill him? What?”
He was met with a blank stare from both men, though Gordon’s was more fidgety than Turner’s.
“Were you in town last night?” Underwood asked them.
Coe could see wheels turning in Pole Turner’s mind, figuring up the odds.
“Yes,” he said, finally.
“Both of you?”
They both nodded. Gordon clearly was taking his lead from Turner.
“What for?”
“Just some fun,” Turner said.
“Warn’t a Saturday night.”
Turner shrugged. “Felt like a couple of drinks, that’s all.”
“When’d you get back to the XBT?
“Wal, I don’t rightly recall.”
“I heard it was close to dawn.”
“Might have been.”
“It don’t figure, Pole. You swear you never laid for this fellow Coe here in his hotel room? He does have a lump.”
“Lot of people in Killer Ledge that might have done that to him.” Turner was dismissive. “I can’t hardly figure what this is all about somehow. But I swear that all me and Frank done was have a few drinks and then ride on back to the XBT. Sometimes you need somethin’ in the middle of the week, you know?”
“I guess.” Underwood said. He seemed to be out of questions. He eyed the ground a minute, and then he said, “Stay out of trouble,” and swung his mount off towards the east.
When they had ridden a good piece, Deputy Sam Underwood gave Coe a sidelong glance.
“I know these boys. I don’t know you. But it’s plain somebody’s lookin’ for trouble. I got to figure things’ll go easier all around if you leave town. I want you out by tomorrow morning.”
Chapter Four
A blood red and burnished gold sky silhouetted the Calicoes’ jagged peaks as the two men rode into Killer Ledge. Coe had tried to talk Underwood around a couple of times on the ride back, but had met with complete silence. The only thing he got an answer to was, “Where’s the best place to eat in this burg?” which he asked as they stepped out of the livery. Underwood replied, “Kittie’s.”
Kittie’s was a boarding house. It was a modest building directly across the street from the sheriff’s office. Kittie was a bright-eyed, bantam hen of a woman who had a way of sizing up what you wanted before you asked for it.
“Lookin’ for supper,” she said to him. “But you already got a place to stay?”
“That’s right, ma’am,” he said, suddenly remembering his hat. There was a row of hooks on the wall just inside the door, and he left his hat and bandanna there.
“You’re just in time. Go on in and set. It’ll be served in a few minutes.” She raised her brisk voice. “Lynn! Lay another place. Another chowhound’s lickin’ his chops.”
Coe stepped through into a cozy dining room. Fireplace at one end, no fire since it was the middle of the hottest part of the season, a few pictures on the wall, of Washington crossing the Delaware, of an Indian fight, and of mountains with a sunset beyond them. The table was crowded with people, nearly all men. A girl of about twenty-five was putting out silverware in front of an empty chair down the far end of the table.
She smiled when she looked at him, and said, “Howdy.”
“Howdy,” he returned, taking a long look at her even features. She had a few freckles in the hollows beside her nose and the corners of her mouth stretched wide revealing a lot of even white teeth.
He sat down.
“Passing through?” she asked.
“Something like that.” He paused, decided it was worth a try and asked, “Ever meet a seedy sort of fellow named Pete Dolan?”
She shook her brown hair. “I don’t think so. You’re looking for him?”
“He’s my brother.”
She arched her eyebrows at him. “That’s a funny way to talk about your brother.”
“I can’t help the way he was. He went in for selling patent medicines and cheating at cards and suchlike. But he wasn’t all bad. He just had the most lazy streak you ever did see. He’d lift a chicken, or a suit of clothes off a line, and then turn right around and give them to you if he thought you were in need. That was just his way.”
“You talk like he’s dead.”
“He may be. I don’t know. Been missing three days. Know a couple of XBT men called Pole Turner and Frank Gordon?”
“I know Pole. He sometimes eats here when he’s in town.”
“What kind of fellow do you take him to be?”
“I don’t know. I never thought he was anything but just an extra tall cowpoke. Why, is he mixed up in it somehow?”
“Lynn!” Kittie called from the kitchen door.
“Quit clackin’ with the customers and get out here and help me.”
“Go on,” Coe said. “I’ll tell you more later, if you want.”
“Sure,” she said, and went off.
An older fellow across and down the table, sitting with his knife in one fist and his fork in the other, ready to attack his food once it was set before him, began to chuckle.
“What’s funny, Pokey?” somebody asked.
The grizzled old man shook his head and went on chuckling for a while, and then he said, “Was just thinkin’ about this fellow Pete Dolan the man’s been talkin’ about. He sure did have a smooth tongue. Could talk the smoke right back down the chimney, I’ll wager.” The old fellow, who Coe judged might be a prospector, chuckled some more.
“You saw him then?” Coe asked. “When was that?”
The old prospector, if that was what he was, looked right at Coe appraisingly. He had the most sardonic eyes Coe had seen anywhere. Came of finding the main ledge was on somebody else’s claim one too many times, probably.
The old prospector looked away from Coe and addressed the table at large again. “Yes sir, he did indeed have a smooth tongue. The trouble was, he didn’t have no brain. I seed him acomin’ a good ways off, I did. He started in talkin’ about how he was just passin’ through, and how he was curious if any of this talk he was hearing round town about gold and silver was for real true. Said he was on his way to a big meetin’ up north with some other businessmen, and it was possible a friend of his from up there might be lookin’ for ’nvestments. Well, I seed well enough he warn’t no businessman. And the only meetin’ he was likely headed for was with a bottle. But I didn’t let on.”
The two women began bringing in the food then, and the old man’s eyes glowed at the sight of it. When a platter full of steaming steaks and beans and potatoes was set before him, he appeared to have forgotten completely that he had been telling a story, and attacked the platter as though he hadn’t eaten in a month. Maybe he hadn’t, for all Coe knew.
About halfway through, the old man stopped eating, wiped his mouth with his sleeve, and sat back.
“Well, fellows,” he said. “I had me a notion. I knew old Hanson had a lot of shares in the Joyful Day, which is nothing but a copse of mesquite and greasewood down the crick from here about ten miles. He’d been took, of course—you know old Hanson, always buying anything anybody waves under his nose. Well, I
went down and bought off the whole of the Joyful Day from Hanson for ten dollars. Then I come back to the Dizzy Lizzy and located Pete Dolan.” The man paused to look at Coe.
Coe motioned with his hand at the man to keep going.
“Says I to Dolan, ‘There is this one place around here that looks like money. But nobody knows it yet. It’s been passed around and around without anybody takin’ a look. I went and took a look and found some things.’ I shown him some samples a friend of mine give me that works in the Main Course. Worth six hundred the ton. ‘I need some capital,’ I says. ‘If you care to send down your friend, maybe we can strike a deal.’ Well, Dolan’s eyes brightened up like he was lookin’ at one of Miss Wanda’s girls. He says, actually, he might even make a small purchase himself, if it looked right. Could I show him something to he’p him make up his mind? Well, that there was right easy. I showed him the assays of those rocks that didn’t have nothing to do with the Joyful Day, and he glanced them over and said he wanted to see the place. I figured it was good for fun anyway, and took him to look. He kicked at the dirt real casual, and looked once this way, once that, and clumb aboard his hoss. He didn’t know no more about mines and mining than a catfish knows how to fly, but he let on to be very knowledgeable. Talked about the color of the soil and the importance of how big the mesquite grew on it, and whether it give off the right kind of smell, and whether the moon shined blue on it and all manner of other tommyrot. He was spreading it mighty thick for me, but I didn’t keer. I was enjoyin’ myself. Pretty soon he says he ain’t really very interested, that it didn’t seem a likely spot to him, and that there was too much humbugeriedoodlededoo and diddlingfiddleree hereabouts, or words to that effect. Oh, he knowed how to butter his talk on both sides, that feller did. But I know a little somethin’ about prospecting, and plenty enough to know he was just puttin’ on airs.
“When he got all done, he was offerin’ to buy what he called ‘organizational rights.’ He said for a small consideration from him, I would give him the stock and assays and he’d take ’em north to his friend and see what he thought, and maybe bring down some ‘soundings’ experts to look over the ground, since he could be wrong, and there might be some gold there after all. He said what he was buying with his small consideration was rights to the ground for six months. If the soundings experts found anything, then we’d all sit down together and work something out. He said how did two hundred dollars sound, and I said it sounded fine. I passed across the stocks and assays and took the two hundred. I bit it and it was all good money. That was the easiest hundred-and-ninety-dollar profit I ever did make. I’ll be livin’ pretty high for a good while on it, too.”
A general laugh of appreciation for the joke went around the table, though men were glancing Coe’s way out of the corners of their eyes, in case he might take it wrong.
But Coe was thinking. Pete’s style would have been to take that handful of stock and the assays and maybe spend another hundred on salting the ground with a shotgun loaded with gold dust, and then work up a regular campaign, and a general excitement in a “big” find. Having this old prospector around—who’d thought he’d pulled a good joke and gotten a stake from it—would be the icing on the cake. As long as he got the prospector convinced there was gold on the spot after all—and that was why he’d paid $200 for what seemed worthless ground—and said that he considered he’d bought the claim outright and didn’t plan to bring the prospector in on it, he’d have it made, as the man would be out to try to take the place back, and word of that would get around town and built the thing up even more.
Oh, he knew how Pete’s mind worked. Pete had played this kind of angle at least once before that Coe knew about. That time, Pete would have gotten rich, if a real expert hadn’t taken a look at the ground at the wrong moment. Pete cleared out about three feet ahead of a bunch of folks who had tar and feathers on their minds.
Since the town wasn’t full of talk about any big find on the Joyful Day claim, something had gone wrong this time even sooner in the process. The question was, what?
Chapter Five
“When was the last you saw Pete?” he asked the old man.
“The day he give me that two hundred for six months rights to a patch of greasewood and mesquite.”
“When was that?”
“Let’s see. Four days ago, I guess. On Monday.”
“What time of day?”
“Evenin’.”
“Where’d he go after he left you?”
“Don’t know.”
It didn’t much matter. He’d been seen after that. Probably he’d been trying to raise money enough to salt the ground. Otherwise he’d have started spreading the word immediately.
Coe asked of the table in general, “Anybody seen Pete Dolan in the past three days? Since Tuesday?”
There was a general shaking of heads.
When he’d finished eating, Coe stayed sitting at the table after the others had left. The two women cleared off, and then Lynn said, “Come on into the kitchen while I do the dishes. I’m curious to hear all about it.”
She washed, and since he was standing there jawing, he dried. He told her all about what had happened since he’d ridden into Killer Ledge, ended by telling her how he was supposed to get out in the morning.
“Why that isn’t fair,” Lynn exclaimed, turning to look at him. Her eyes blazed so indignantly you might have thought it was she who’d been misjudged. “You’ve got as much right here in town as anybody. You’re trying to do something decent by your brother.”
He set another plate in the rack. “Underwood’s doing the best he can, I reckon. If I was him, maybe I’d figure the same way.”
“Well, then, you’d be wrong, too,” she returned briskly. “What are you going to do about it?”
“Not much I can do about it. Underwood’s the law.”
“I think you ought to talk to Gerald Mulberry. He’s the sheriff. And he’s fairer. He’d give you the benefit of the doubt.”
“Think so?”
“I know so.”
“Course, he isn’t here now. You know where he went, exactly?”
“To chase some men who’ve been stopping the stage to Tucson.”
“How long’s he been gone?”
“Since the day before yesterday.”
“Which way did he go?”
“North. He thought he’d pick up the trail and follow them to the place they’re hiding.”
“He told you all this?”
“Before he left. He always tells me before he goes away overnight.” When he looked at her in bafflement, she added, “He’s my uncle. He’s all the family I’ve got in the world.”
“So that’s the way of it. When’ll he be back?”
“Whenever he catches up with them. It could be tomorrow or it could be next week.”
“Well, maybe I’ll start looking for him in the morning,” he said, and left the boardinghouse.
On the walk outside, he stopped, settled his hat comfortably and reflected how strange the world worked sometimes. He ambled off down the street listening to the tinny pianos and occasional bursts of laughter coming from the various saloons. Things were fairly quiet, the evening still in the chute, so to speak. But it was humping itself and getting ready to give a most thorough good bucking when the chute opened, he could sense that. For one thing, some pokes were swaggering around town, maybe here with a trail drive, though it was the wrong time of year for trailing, being midsummer.
The cool of the evening felt good after the heat of the broiling sun. He wondered how he could best make use of his last night in town. He decided he’d like to know more of what his brother had done while here, and how long he’d been here. Maybe get a line on how he was trying to scare up money for salting the ground, if that had been his plan.
Coe started with the flabby man behind the hotel desk.
“He showed up last Saturday night,” the man informed him. “He paid cash money, one night at a time, and
I don’t ask no questions.”
“Anybody come here looking for him?”
The man shrugged. “Dunno. Don’t recall anybody.”
“Well, thanks.” He started for the door, then turned again. “Have a horse?”
“Dunno.”
Coe nodded and went out.
There was a stable boy at the livery busy unrigging a couple of dusty cow ponies.
“Sure did have a hoss,” the boy said. “Had a JN brand. Never seen that brand before. Handsome bay. Spirited, but not too spirited. Ought to had a name, but Mister Dolan, he said he just never thought about it.” The boy shook his head.
Probably stole the horse back a ways, Coe reflected. Or maybe won it in a poker game.
“Seen the horse since he rode out of here three days ago?”
“Nope.”
“Seen Dolan since?”
“Nope.”
“Seen anybody with Dolan?”
“Nope.”
“Ever tell you what he was doing in town?”
“Nope.”
“Well, thanks.”
“Yep.”
Coe went out and looked one way and the other along the street. Laughter and boasting talk drifted out of the various saloons, along with singing and clashing pianos.
Well, seemed he’d pretty well run out his ideas for the moment. Might as well enjoy a last evening on the town. Tomorrow he’d have to make up his mind what to do next. The way he saw it, he could either hunt up Mulberry and hope he’d believe him rather than Turner and Gordon, and put some pressure on them to make them talk, or he could go see them himself and lean on them his own way.
What he wanted was to do the latter, but he also realized that might not be so smart in the long run, because if something went wrong, he’d wind up locked in that stout adobe jail beside the sheriff’s office. From there he couldn’t do much towards looking for his brother.
He went into the nearest saloon, called the Fine and Dandy, and got himself a shot of red-eye at the bar. As he sort of expected, the barkeep had never heard of Pete Dolan. Coe wandered around between tables of card players, taking glances at hands and at piles of coins and gold backs.