“I couldn’t swear he’s never been here,” frowned Croy “If a stranger passes through this town—stays out of trouble—there’s a strong chance I’d never notice him. Our population is growin’ fast, and we get a lot of passers-through—what with the railroad and all. I’ll ask my deputy when he gets back from patrol, but that’s about the most help I can offer. Sorry, Rand.” He leaned back in his chair. “This is no easy chore you’ve given yourself—searchin’ all over the Southwest for a killer that had a head start on you.”
“It’s a big country,” grunted Jim. “That’s what they all say.” He rose to his feet, dug out his wallet and checked his bankroll. “I’m running short on cash, and I don’t have time to hang around and take a job, so it seems I’ll have to find me an honest game.”
“At poker,” warned the sheriff, “you could lose your last dollar in no time at all.”
“That’s a chance any gambler has to take,” shrugged Jim. “How about it? Can you recommend a square game in this town?”
“Leo Bracken that runs the casino in the next block ...” Croy jerked a thumb, “has a good reputation.”
“Muchas gracias,” said Jim. “I’ll see you around.”
“Rand would you satisfy my curiosity?” begged Croy. “I never in my life saw such an ugly little polecat as that Mex you got taggin’ along with you. You mind tellin’ me how you ever took up with the likes of him?”
Jim grinned wryly. Over the past few weeks, he had become accustomed to this question—this question to which he always offered the same answer, which happened to be the gospel truth.
“Benito saved my life,” he told Croy. “A little while later, I saved his. So there you have it. I feel beholden to him. He feels the same way about me.”
“Man to man, Rand.” Croy eyed him dubiously. “How could a puny little skunk like him save the life of a man as big as you?”
“A big man is as helpless as a new-born babe,” Jim soberly pointed out, “if he gets a rattlesnake bite in the middle of his back, right where he can’t reach it to doctor it—and in lonely country.”
“That happened to you?” challenged Croy.
“That happened to me,” nodded Jim. “I could see for miles, and I was all set to flop and write my Will, when—”
“The Mex showed up?” prodded Croy.
“And doctored me,” said Jim.
“You said you saved his life, too,” frowned the lawman. “How?”
“Some of his own countrymen hankered to lynch him,” drawled Jim. “I helped talk ’em out of it.”
“From the looks of you,” mused Croy, “I’d guess they didn’t take much convincin’.” He raised a hand in farewell. “Luck to you, Rand. If my deputy recalls a hombre answerin’ Jenner’s description, I’ll come find you at Bracken’s Casino.” Jim was halfway through the entrance, moving out into the porch, before the sheriff thought to ask, “Why’d his own people want to hang him?”
“Well,” said Jim, “it seems he trifled with a lady’s affections and then—uh—refused to marry her.” He grinned again, as he added, “Quite a ladies’ man is Benito.”
“You got to be joshin’ me!” breathed Croy. “What woman could take a shine to such a—a squint-eyed, bucktoothed little no-account ...?”
“You can never guess how a woman feels,” Jim sagely asserted, “about anything.”
He descended from the porch, swung astride the big charcoal and, with his small shadow at his side, rode slowly toward the next block. Benito drawled the inevitable question. He shook his head and replied:
“Maybe Jenner’s been here, but the sheriff doesn’t think so.”
“Meantime, we get drunk, no?” Benito eagerly suggested. “You and me—we have damn fine time—mucho tequila ...?”
“The hell with that,” growled Jim. “We’re gonna take it easy. I aim to try my luck at a few hands of poker.”
“No tequila?” blinked Benito.
“Enough to satisfy your thirst,” shrugged Jim, “but not enough to scramble your brain and over-heat your blood. I don’t want you proposing to half the women in Burnett Junction.”
“This is my fate,” Benito bragged. “Am I not irresistible?”
“Like hell,” grunted Jim.
Bracken’s Casino won his immediate approval. The atmosphere was cool, albeit acrid from the odors of tobacco-smoke and cheap perfume, and pungent from the fumes of many varieties of frontier firewater. The staff and patrons appeared relaxed. There was a vacant chair at the poker table where the proprietor presided. At other tables, cowhands and townsmen patronized various games of chance or conversed with Bracken’s weary-eyed, over-painted percentage-girls. One unusual sight, something to appeal to Jim’s discerning eye, was a slightly built man seated with a large sketchpad on his knees, making a black and white portrait of a dice-playing cowpoke.
“One small sign of culture in the wilderness,” he quietly remarked to Benito.
“Ah, si,” agreed the Mex.
He eagerly accepted the coin offered him by Jim and strutted to the bar to order tequila, while Jim sauntered across to the poker table and was invited to sit in. The other players were locals of mild disposition and, over the next twenty minutes, Bracken proved himself a genial host as well as a square dealer. Bracken was also an expert poker-player, but so was Jim. He lost a little, made up for it and, after forty minutes of play, was gratified to note that his bankroll now amounted to a handy hundred-fifty dollars. He was enjoying his beer, the company and the game.
And then, suddenly, he wasn’t enjoying the game anymore. It was no reflection on the saloonkeeper or the other players, nor did Benito distract him. The little Mex was behaving himself, sitting alone at a nearby table, nursing a shot of tequila and puffing at a cigarillo. The impending violence could have been considered none of Jim’s business, but he found it difficult to sit idly by while a man of advanced years and slight physique was backhanded and kicked by one heftier and younger than himself. The artist had finished his chore, had torn the page from his pad and had offered it to the subject, but it seemed the brawny cowpoke was somewhat dissatisfied. He was waxing wrathful, when the artist mildly suggested: “Two dollars isn’t much to pay for an original sketch. That’s the price you agreed to pay, and ...”
“It don’t look like me!” raged the cowhand.
“Gage,” grunted Bracken, without raising his eyes from his cards, “let up on that bull-roarin’.”
“It’s a fair likeness,” protested the artist.
“You callin’ me ugly ...?” snarled Gage.
It was then that he gave the artist the back of his hand, knocked him to the floor and aimed a kick at his belly. And it was then that Jim muttered a request to Bracken.
“Cash me in, will you?”
He pocketed his winnings and rose to his feet. Nobody else had attempted to discourage the hefty cowpoke from battering the hapless artist. The artist was lurching to his feet. Gage was bunching a fist to swing another blow at him, when Jim stepped between them.
“Steady, cowboy,” he chided. “He’s near old enough to be your father.”
“He insulted me, so I’m gonna beat his brains out!” fumed Gage. “Any man says I look like this ...” He exhibited the sketch for Jim’s inspection, “is a liar!”
Jim briefly studied the portrait. The subject was ugly, and the artist had achieved an excellent likeness. Calmly, but perhaps not diplomatically, he assured Gage:
“You have no cause to complain. He sketched you just as you are.”
Gage turned beetroot-red.
“You say I look like this ...?”
“That’s what I’m telling you, boy,” nodded Jim, “and I’m also telling you not to lay a hand on—on ...”
“Tully ...” panted the artist, as he flopped into a chair. “Owen Tully—at your service.”
“No man could be so all-fired ugly!” roared Gage. His bunched right came swinging toward Jim’s head, and Jim’s reaction was prompt and effect
ive. Ex-Sergeant Rand of the 11th Cavalry, the hardest hitter and the deadliest shot of that famous regiment, was ready, willing and able to give his would-be assailant a lesson in the art of fisticuffs. He blocked Gage’s wild swing by throwing up his own left arm. He drove hard with his right, a punishing blow that caught Gage cleanly on the jaw and sent him lurching back against the bar.
“Hallet ...!” snarled Gage. “Moon ...”
Two burly men in range clothes were emerging from a corner of the barroom, rushing headlong at the wary and formidable stranger. One of them reached him. The other’s rush was delayed; he tripped over a chair that was neatly slid in front of him by the lunging boot of Benito Espina, who managed that neat diversionary action without rising to his feet. As the burly Hallet measured his length, the equally burly Moon advanced to within arm’s length of Jim, rushing into a powerful uppercut that lifted him off the floor and sent him somersaulting over a table. Hallet scrambled up and continued his rush, attempting to tackle Jim low, and all this maneuver won him was Jim’s left knee in his face. It stopped him as decisively as if he had hurtled into a rock wall. He flopped like a pole-axed steer.
Mumbling oaths, Gage began drawing. The proprietor yelled a warning, but Gage ignored it. Startled men and screaming women overturned chairs in their haste to get clear of the line of fire. And then coldly, curtly, Jim Rand said:
“Freeze, boy! Suicide is for fools!”
Two – Fastest Route North
The stranger had a right to describe any further belligerence on Gage’s part as suicide. His gun, a Colt .45 with the cavalry-length barrel, had cleared leather while Gage was still jerking at his six-gun. It was cocked, and its muzzle was pointed unerringly at Gage’s third shirt-button at a range of less than five feet.
Gage did freeze. His eyes bulged as he stared in anguished fascination at the muzzle of Jim’s .45. He hadn’t released his grip of his own revolver, but he speedily did so when Jim sourly advised him to, “Let go of it.”
That gun-butt might have been white-hot for all the speed with which Gage relinquished it. He raised his hands to shoulder-level. Groggily, Hallet and Moon began the struggle to resume the perpendicular.
“Now,” growled Jim, eyeing Gage grimly. “Pick up your portrait—then dig out two dollars and pay Tully for it.”
“That won’t be necessary—thanks anyway,” muttered Tully. “I never accept payment when a client expresses dissatisfaction. At the same time ...” He rose up, trudged to the discarded sketch, bent and scratched a match, “I reserve the right to destroy what I have created.”
“Tully,” called Bracken, “try not to set fire to the whole damn house.”
“Of course, Mr. Bracken,” nodded Tully.
Having crumpled the sheet into a ball, he touched the match-flame to it and dropped it into an empty spittoon.
“Well,” frowned Jim, “if that’s how you want it ...”
“That’s exactly how I want it,” the artist assured him. “I abhor violence, but I realize there was no other way you could stop Gage from pounding me to pulp—so I thank you most heartily.”
“You’re entirely welcome,” said Jim. And then, scowling at Gage and gesturing with his Colt, he offered a few words of advice. “Vamoose—all three of you. Leave town, or just stay out of sight. One thing or the other.”
He was destined never to see those three roughnecks again. Jim returned his Colt to its holster, and the saloon owner called to him.
“You didn’t finish your beer.”
One of the poker-players toted Jim’s half-empty flagon to the bar. Jim thanked him and, as he finished his drink, some of the tension eased; Bracken’s staff and clients resumed their normal pursuits. The artist had retrieved his hat and donned it. Now, he was bending to pick up his sketchpad and pencils. The color hadn’t returned to his cheeks, Jim noted. To be kicked in the midriff by a man as powerful as Gage must have been a painful experience.
“You live far from here?” he asked the artist. “I’m thinking you ought to go on home and get a load off your feet.”
“I find that suggestion most appealing, my friend.” Tully grinned ruefully, as he propped an elbow on the bar and studied both strangers. “My home is one room in an establishment two blocks from here. Small but comfortable—at least for a man of my simple tastes.” He glanced at Jim’s empty beer-mug. “Bracken’s whisky isn’t the best. I happen to have a bottle of good bourbon. A satisfied subject insisted on paying me with liquor some little time ago. Are you, by any chance, partial to bourbon, Mr ... .?”
“Rand—Jim Rand.” Jim nodded to the Mex. “This sawed-off hombre is called Benito Espina.”
“Mucho gusto,” grinned Benito.
“And,” finished Jim. “I hardly ever say ‘no’ to good bourbon.”
“The least I can do is buy you a drink,” Tully opined. “This disagreement with Gage and his friends was building up to an ugly incident.” He touched his stomach and winced. “I’m indebted to you, Mr. Rand.”
“Forget it,” shrugged Jim. “But I’ll take you up on that offer.”
They escorted the artist out into the sunlight and along Main toward a room and board establishment with a faded paint sign proclaiming it “LOGAN’S”.
To a nomad of Benito’s predatory instincts, Owen Tully’s bedroom-cum-studio was something of a wonderland. His mercenary eyes flicked from one painting to another, from the paintings of New Mexico’s arid and sprawling prairies to the smaller canvases, pictures painted right here in town, a sorrel and a bay standing shoulder to shoulder at a hitch rail with a general store in the background. The gleam of their coats, the fine detail of their manes and their saddles were so lifelike that the Mex was moved to remark:
“One can almost feel these caballos—almost smell them.”
“Another compliment.” Tully grinned affably as he opened a closet and produced a bottle and glasses “Muchas gracias, amigo.” And then his gaze fastened on the tall man, who hadn’t advanced beyond the threshold. Jim was standing tense, staring, his mouth set in a hard line. “Mr. Rand—what is it?”
“Caramba!” breathed Benito, upon noting the big man’s expression. “You have seen the ghost, no?”
The room was of average size, but appeared smaller for all that the artist had crammed into it—his easel and canvases, the bed, several chairs and stools, an old-fashioned dresser, a hat-stand. Directly opposite the doorway, stacked against a rear wall were a half-dozen or so large canvases. The one to the fore, clearly visible from where Jim stood, depicted four men gathered about a roulette table, obviously the roulette layout at the Bracken Casino. This was graphic art at its best. The figures, their faces and apparel were typical of the frontier. And one of the figures had won Jim’s immediate attention.
Slowly, he moved across the threshold and pulled the door shut behind him. He walked to the large canvas and, as he instinctively reached out to touch it, Tully said: “I’d rather you didn’t. It hasn’t dried.”
“If the paint’s still wet,” muttered Jim, with his pulse quickening. “I guess you finished this picture only a little while ago.”
“Three nights ago, at Bracken’s,” nodded Tully. He grinned wryly, as he eyed his handiwork. “I’m indebted to these gamblers. They were very patient, very obliging. Not that they needed to stand for a long time. I work fastest when I’m painting the human animal.”
“The man furthest to the rear,” prodded Jim. “Didn’t he object to being painted?”
Tully studied the group and put his memory to work. The figure slightly to the rear of the others was that of a blond and saturnine man, flashily garbed and sporting a pearl cravat-pin.
“Oh—this fellow? Well, he wasn’t actually in the picture in the first place.”
“He’s in the picture now,” Jim impatiently reminded him. “You mind explaining exactly what you mean, Tully? It’s important to me.”
“He could be the one?” Benito demanded. “This gambler with the cold blue eyes?�
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“It’s as though he came alive from the descriptions given at the inquest,” growled Jim. “And, don’t forget, I talked to the witnesses.” He eyed Tully expectantly. “How about it? What can you tell me about him—and how did he get into the picture? Believe me, he couldn’t have known you were painting him—not if he’s the man I’m hunting.”
“Hunting?” frowned Tully. “You’re a lawman of some kind?”
“I used to be a sergeant of the Eleventh Cavalry ...” Jim briefly recounted his reasons for searching for that certain gambler, that tinhorn who took his brandy neat, favored pearl jewelry and bitterly resented to lose at any game of chance. Then, “Think now, Tully,” he urged, “try to remember.”
“Remembering is the easy part,” Tully assured him. He had poured three generous shots of bourbon and, to his own, had added a little water. Now he gestured for them to seat themselves. They accepted the whisky and the proffered chairs. “If, for instance, I wished to sketch a likeness of either of you, I wouldn’t have to start at this moment. I could do it many days after you’ve left Burnett Junction and, believe me, it would still be a good likeness.”
“That’s a rare talent,” Jim conceded.
“As for the gambler to the rear of this group ...” Tully looked at the picture again. “I added him as an afterthought. At the beginning, I meant to make it a trio gathered about a roulette-wheel, but the composition seemed to lack something.”
“So you added a fourth figure,” frowned Jim. “All right now—can you recall where you first saw him?”
“Easily,” said the artist. “It was at Bracken’s a couple of nights before. I didn’t really work from memory when I painted him into this group. I’d done a pencil sketch of him two nights earlier. I was able to refer to it when I decided to make this trio a quartet.”
“He didn’t know he was being sketched.” Jim made it a flat statement rather than a question.
“I’m sure, he didn’t,” shrugged Tully.
“Any special reason you chose to sketch him?” asked Jim.
Meet Me in Moredo (A Big Jim Western Book 2) Page 2