Beyond Fort North

by Peter Dawson

  Clears had been kneeling alongside the settee. He got up wearily now and stepped over to the desk and set the glass on it. Then he leaned back against the desk’s edge, eyeing Gentry soberly, speculatively, feeling vastly relieved as Gentry shifted around, dropped his feet to the floor, and sat, holding his head in his hands.

  Abruptly Gentry spoke: “Why did you clip me, Mike? Just when I had him.”

  “It was Ewing, not me.”

  Gentry’s head came up, and their glances met. “How did I get here?”

  “I brought you. Ewing would have brained you.”

  Gentry ran his hands gingerly along the back of his head, and when he looked up again, the pain, both physical and mental, betrayed itself in a feverish look in his dark eyes. “Don’t know why you bothered, Mike. But you have my thanks.”

  Clears stood staring down gravely at him. “You’d better be heading out as soon as you feel like it.”

  Gentry nodded. But then he thought of something that made him ask: “And what about the girl?”

  “What about her?”

  “Just before Ash jumped me I’d asked you to do me...her a favor.”

  The saloon man frowned. “She’s not my look-out.”

  “But Ash is trying to get away with something, Mike. She doesn’t have a soul to help her.”

  “Suppose she doesn’t? She means nothing to you. Or to me.”

  There was a faint scorn in Gentry’s glance as it clung briefly to the saloon man’s face, and then dropped to the desk. He saw the half full whiskey glass, stood up, and came across to get it. He tilted it to his mouth, drained it.

  Watching this, Clears asked: “More?”

  Gentry nodded, handed over the glass, and Clears went on out with it. As Clears passed Ben Qualls in the barroom beyond the door, the oldster asked: “Still out?”

  “No. He’s coming around.”

  “That’s a shame,” Qualls said feelingly, really meaning it.

  Clears went on in behind his bar, filled the glass, and came back to the door again. He eyed his man obliquely, saying in a musing way: “I don’t know what to think, Ben. I just don’t.”

  “By God, I do!”

  The saloon man shrugged and stepped on into the office. On the point of closing the door he went motionless. The room was empty. The alley door stood open.

  He went quickly across there and out onto the back platform. The Grulla stood as he had left her, tied to the rail, head hanging in weariness. The blackness along the alley showed him nothing. He called sharply: “Dan!”

  The stillness out there remained unbroken, and finally, after listening for a brief interval, Clears went on back in and over to his desk. As he sank tiredly into the chair there, he was becoming really worried, thinking back on Ben Quall’s attitude toward Gentry. Nine out of ten people in the town who knew Gentry would feel the same as Ben had, and if Gentry was seen, there was no telling what would happen.

  Yet, despite his worry, Clears was feeling a gloating satisfaction over the thorough mauling Gentry had given Ash up there by the post gate. He had never quite trusted Ash. He didn’t like the man’s too positive heartiness and the way he had taken advantage of the circumstances here in demanding, and getting, outrageous prices for horses and his freighting services. Clears himself was doing business on a fair basis, sensing that when this boom quieted down, he would keep his trade where the money grubbers like Ash would fast lose theirs.

  But now he forgot Ash in trying to see through the enigma of Gentry’s behavior. He didn’t understand Gentry’s hasty disappearance but sensed that his own refusal to meddle in the Tipton girl’s affairs might be the direct cause of it. He was regretting the stand he’d taken on that, for he knew he had already decided to do what he could to help Faith Tipton and had argued with Gentry out of sheer contrariness.

  How long he sat there, pondering those difficulties, he had no way of knowing. It might have been twenty minutes, even a half hour. But the end of that interval was punctuated by the sound of a solid tread mounting the platform steps from the alley.

  It was Dan Gentry, who came on in and slumped down on the settee. Something had gone out of the man and, noticing it, Clears said brusquely: “You’re in no shape to travel. Better wait till morning.

  Gentry gave no indication of having heard, instead saying lifelessly: “Couldn’t find him.”

  “Who?”

  “Shotwell. That teamster of Tipton’s McCune had in here today.”

  Clears frowned. “What about Shotwell?”

  Gentry looked across at him vacantly. “He might be able to help the girl. Tipton might have told him.” Abruptly his glance took on life. “Mike, you’ve got to find him and see what he knows.”

  Clears understood now and nodded. “All right, I’ll do what I can. But you turn in. Go on across there to the cave. Give the mare some grain, and then get some sleep. No one’ll bother you and you can head on out in the morning.”

  “That’s a promise? About the girl?”

  “I said I’ll do what I can.”

  The way Gentry got up and walked to the door and out into the night without another word made Clears at once regret the uncalled-for irritation and gruffness he had put in his last words. It was a painful thing for him to witness a quality in Gentry that made the man look almost beaten, humbled to a far greater degree now than he had been at noon when he had been carrying the even heavier burden of his own troubles. And the saloon man halfway understood then what an added shock and strain these past few hours had put on Gentry. A man could stand so much and he marveled now that Gentry hadn’t broken under the mental and physical beating this long day had given him.

  Usually at this hour of the night Mike Clears would go out into the saloon and have a glass or two with his customers, do his only drinking of the day. But tonight he had no appetite for either liquor or company, and for a good half hour he sat on at his desk, thinking of Gentry and growing more puzzled than ever about the man. The contradictions he saw in Gentry’s actions today as opposed to the findings of the courts-martial were enormous, beyond his comprehension. And gradually the conviction came that he would have no peace of mind until he understood them.

  Mike Clears’s nature was a strongly speculative one, and as he considered what he knew of Gentry, his impression strengthened that he was annoyingly close to discovering something that lay just beyond his grasp. He didn’t know what it was, but something was there, something that would explain Gentry’s inconsistencies.

  It was this certainty that finally straightened him in his chair to call loudly: “Ben!”

  Qualls opened the door, and at a nod from Clears came on in. Then the saloon man was asking: “How long since you took a day off, Ben?”

  The oldster lifted his bony shoulders. “Can’t remember. Why?”

  Clears’s look was thoughtful, and, staring down at the desk, he said with a trace of absent-mindedness: “You could be across at the agency by sunup.”

  “If I wanted to be there.”

  “Pack along enough grub to last you two or three days,” Clears went on, ignoring the remark. “I want you to go to the ones you can trust, Ben. Men like Cut Nose and Bird Claw. Find out everything...every blessed thing, mind you...that they know about that tangle with Gentry’s detail in the cañon. They usually....”

  “Boss, you gone loco? Forget that sidewinder! Or go up to the fort and read what they wrote about his trial. They got it all down in black and white.”

  “I know.” Clears’s tone was so impatient that it at once overruled the other’s protest. “What I’m after are the things that didn’t come out at the trial.”

  “Like what?”

  “If I knew what they were, I wouldn’t be sending you. Get everything you can, the whole story. What men Sour Eye finished off himself? Why they didn’t kill Gentry and Tim McCune? And what di
d they think of young Fitzhugh as a scrapper? Get your friends to talking. They know plenty. Every other time those wild bucks have busted out, the others have known every move they made.”

  Qualls shook his head in unfeigned disgust. “Suppose they’re off on a hunt?” he argued.

  “Then chase ’em down. Take as much time as you need.”

  “What if they won’t talk?”

  Mike Clears smiled faintly. “It’s no use trying to get out of it, Ben. I want to know about this, and you’re the only man who can get what I want. Those Apaches stole you from your folks, then turned around and raised you like one of their own. You know them like no white man alive. There isn’t....”

  His head swung around and he stopped speaking as the door’s latch clicked and the door opened. The man who stood there was heavy-bodied and middle-aged. His ruddy face wore a worried cast as he asked: “Got a minute, Mike?”

  “Come in, Ralph.” Clears nodded to Qualls, then, saying: “That’s all, Ben. Don’t waste any time but stay long enough to get all there is to get.”

  Ben Qualls edged on past the newcomer and was muttering as he went out.

  “How’s Sarah, Ralph?” Clears asked after the door had slammed.

  “Fine. Got her new room nearly finished for her.” Ralph Blake, who ran a butcher shop up the street, was just as obviously stalling for time as his look was uncomfortable, almost embarrassed.

  Clears detected this strangeness in the man’s behavior at almost the exact instant he noticed the tarnished nickel shield pinned to Blake’s vest pocket. And now, grinning broadly, the saloon man asked: “Is this an official call, Ralph?”

  “For a fact, it is.” Blake glanced down guiltily at the deputy sheriff’s badge he so seldom wore. His duties as a law officer were so meager that he took a lot of ribbing over the $15 the sheriff’s office in Santa Fe sent him each month. It was a standing joke in the fast-growing community that he was too mild-mannered and shy to be a peace officer, that he nicely avoided trouble on the theory that most such difficulties resolved themselves. The fact that Blake was flaunting his badge tonight was an ominous sign to Clears, though he didn’t show his awareness of that.

  Clears decided now to let the other do the talking, and after a short silence the deputy blurted out: “Now don’t get sore, Mike. But they say you been seen a couple times today in his company. So maybe you can help me.

  “Who’ve I been seen with?”

  “This Captain Gentry.”

  Wariness touched Clears’s glance as he drawled: “What about him?”

  “He’s been combing the town tonight looking for that fella that got away from them wagons downcañon. Sims across the way says he was there and he was at Belle’s place and a couple more. One of them Swedes from the placers tangled with him when he come into Jake’s restaurant. Named him for what he is. Gentry swung on him, busted in a couple of his teeth.”

  “If you’re making arrests on that count, you’d have half the town in the lockup inside a week, Ralph.”

  Blake shook his head vehemently. “But that ain’t it! It’s about Shotwell. Y’ see, Gentry caught up with him.”

  “He did?” Clears sat straighter in his chair.

  “He did,” Blake echoed solemnly. “A man from up the cañon just found Shotwell lying in the creek with his head under water. His skull’s busted open like a melon. If you can tell me where this Gentry is, I’ll do my damnedest to arrest him and get him on out to the sheriff before they string him up.”

  Mike Clears sat dumbfounded, too stunned to utter a word as his panicked thinking tried to take all this in. And as though this moment had been reserved particularly as one to confound him utterly, he now caught the mutter of angry voices sounding from the saloon and knew that Ralph Blake hadn’t come here alone. The crowd out there knew about Shotwell, about Gentry. It had the makings of a mob.

  Suddenly and without a trace of doubt Mike Clears knew that Dan Gentry could never have done this thing. He came up out of the chair now, his jaw set in anger as he fixed the deputy with a scornful stare. “That’s a fine theory, Ralph. It might hold water if I didn’t know how wrong it was.”

  Blake asked testily: “What’s wrong with it?”

  “Just this. I know Gentry was out looking for Shotwell. I know because I followed him, tagged right along behind him while he stopped at all those places you mentioned. When he clipped that Swede at Jake’s, I was looking through the window and nearly bought into the scrap. But Gentry cleared out, and afterward I brought him back here. How long ago was it they found Shotwell?”

  Blake stirred out of his surprise to answer: “Twenty minutes or so.”

  Clears shook his head now and deliberately added to his bald lie. “You’re barking up the wrong tree. Gentry left here maybe five minutes before you walked in.” He nodded down to the glass on the desk. “We had a long talk and some drinks. He hasn’t been out of my sight all evening.”

  The deputy’s face took on color. “How come you’re sticking up for that no-account, Mike?”

  “Why shouldn’t I? Dan Gentry’s my friend.” There was a strong lift of pride in Clears as he made the statement. And he had the feeling that this somehow made up for his never having spoken one word in Gentry’s defense over the long weeks since the beginning of the man’s trouble.

  Ralph Blake sighed in a baffled way. “You can say that after what he’s done?”

  “I damned well can. Do you walk out on a man when his luck’s gone back on him?”

  “But, God Almighty, he’s....”

  Clears waved the man to silence. “We won’t argue that. You came here with your mind made up to something that isn’t so. Now get on out there and tell those people how wrong you were.”

  Blake stared helplessly at the door, listening to all the voices out there. He looked at the saloon man. “Mike, you got to do it for me. These folks think the sun rises and sets right out of your vest pocket. Me, I’m just something they laugh at every time I pin on this damned badge.”

  Mike Clears shook his head. “You started it, you finish it.”

  “But what’ll I tell ’em?”

  “Just what I told you. This afternoon I loaned Gentry a horse so he could leave. You know what happened, why he had to come back. He was trying to help that Tipton girl when he went looking for Shotwell. He had nothing against the man, absolutely nothing. I’d made up my mind he was to get out of here without any more trouble. So I stayed with him the whole evening. He couldn’t have killed Shotwell even if he’d had a reason.”

  “Suppose they won’t believe me?”

  “They will.”

  The deputy stepped hesitantly to the door now. Before he went out he squared his shoulders and stood straighter.

  Once the door had closed Mike Clears went across there and stood with his ear close to the panel, listening. He heard the solid thump of some heavy object being pounded against the bar. Most of the loud talk died away. Then Ralph Blake’s voice rose over the others that hadn’t quieted. Clears couldn’t distinguish the deputy’s words but the man’s tone was surprisingly forceful. Once, another voice interrupted, and Blake answered tersely, evidently convincingly, for afterward the room gave out its normal sounds, and there was the continuous dull thumping of the swing doors up front, evidence of a heavy traffic Mike Clears hoped was on its way out.

  When he at length turned out across the office again, the saloon man mopped his damp forehead and was surprised to find that his hand was shaking. He took up the full glass of whiskey from the desk and emptied it in long swallows that left him gagging for breath but feeling steadier.

  This had been a close thing, and Clears was feeling the strain now. He had no regrets, nor was there a moment’s question over what he had done. This much he owed Dan Gentry. He felt a cleaner and a better man. All these weeks he had stood idly by, saying nothing, doing nothing
in Gentry’s defense. Now he had said something, done something.

  He was tired, sleepy, and for a long moment he stood there eyeing the narrow stairway that climbed the far wall to his living quarters above. But then, reaching a sudden decision, he stepped across to lift down one of the double-barreled shotguns from its wall bracket. In one of the desk drawers he found some brass loads of buckshot. He loaded the weapon, and dropped some spare shells in his coat pocket. Then he went out across the alley, down across the footbridge, and started up the road to the cave.

  He was breathing heavily when he reached the cave mouth and he paused there to get his breath and look out across the town. He neither heard nor saw anything to make him uneasy and he briefly considered going back down to the Lucky Find, almost giving up the idea that had brought him up here. But then finally he walked on into the cave.

  He knew every square foot of this place and made his way surely on back past the horse stalls in the pitch-dark until he knew he stood close to the haystack. He stopped, lit a match, and saw Gentry lying sprawled and asleep within ten feet of him. He shook the match out and went across there, kneeling and shaking Gentry by the shoulder.

  “Got something to tell you, Dan,” he said when he felt Gentry stir. “Better sit up and listen.”

  He heard Gentry move and began talking then. Briefly, but omitting nothing, he told about Shotwell’s death and the visit Blake had paid him. Finished, he laid the shotgun across Gentry’s lap, telling him: “This is just in case. It’s loaded. Here are some extra shells.” And he took the loads from his pocket and handed them across.

  He was rising when Gentry said quietly: “I could be the one they’re after. How did you know that...?”

  “You damn’ well aren’t the one,” Clears cut in. “That’s all that matters. Now get back to sleep.”

  He had started back toward the cave mouth when Gentry asked soberly: “Why did you do it, Mike?”

  Clears halted, asking incredulously: “You think I did it?”

  “No, not that. Why did you lie for me?”

  As his astonishment drained away, Clears answered querulously: “How would I know? Does a man have to explain everything he does?” And he walked on away.