by Bill Crider
What kind of a man is it, Earl wondered, that would burn down a man’s stable just to cover up a bank robbery? It had to be a man who didn’t care much about other folks and what belonged to them, that was for sure.
Nothing of the stable was left standing except part of one wall, and most of that was burned so badly that it looked as if it would fall to ashes at a good kick. Ashes and charred wood were about all that was left of the place. There would be some burned saddles under there, and some blankets, but there wouldn’t be anything left of them, either.
In the middle of the whole mess were the recognizable remains of a buggy and a wagon, part of their frames still standing on wheels that had not been quite destroyed by the fire. There was not enough left of either one to make salvage worthwhile.
Earl sighed, took off his battered hat, and wiped the top of his bald head, staring out over the heap of ashes. There were some birds singing off in the trees, but their song didn’t make Earl feel any better.
A man works hard all his life, he thought, and this is what it comes to. He jammed his hat back down on his head and walked around to what had been the back of the stable.
Now where the heck did I bury that jar? he wondered. It had been easy enough to find when the stable had been standing. The stable had given him a point of reference.
Ten paces out from the tenth board on the back end, he remembered. But how was he supposed to know where that tenth board had been?
He sighed again. There was no way to be sure. He’d just have to guess at it.
He could tell about where the wall used to be, so he estimated the width of the boards and when he got to where he thought the tenth one should have been, he took ten paces away from the burned structure.
Should be right about here, he thought. He looked down at where he was about to dig. There was something on the ground, and Earl bent down to pick it up.
It was what was left of a cigar. The rain had soaked it nearly to shapelessness, but Earl could tell what it was.
What the heck was a cigar doing there? he wondered. He didn’t smoke cigars, didn’t know hardly anybody who did, much less in back of the livery stable.
That was when he thought about Gerald Crossland. Crossland smoked cigars; Earl had seen him with one a time or two. And Crossland had come up and shaken Earl just before the fire started. Hell, it wasn’t before the fire had started. The fire was already blazing. And Crossland had come into town a roundabout way if he’d wound up at the stable.
Earl decided that as soon as he’d dug up his money and taken it to the hotel room where he was staying for the time being, he’d look for Marshal Dawson and tell him about the cigar.
Maybe it didn’t mean a thing.
But then again, maybe it did.
Burt Taine’s funeral didn’t last long.
The mourners, and there were quite a few of them, sang “Amazing Grace.” Abner Stone read the twenty-third psalm and said the usual soothing things about the goodness of Burt’s life on earth and the joy of the life eternal that a fine man like Burt could expect in the heavenly kingdom. After that, there was a prayer, and then the people stopped by to say whatever they could think of to Ellie before going back to their ordinary pursuits.
Ellie did not intend to stay to watch the grave filled. She wanted to get on her way, but she would have to go back to the Stones’ house first to change from her dress into the blouse and riding skirt that she had brought along.
She had no idea where she was going; she simply knew that she was leaving. She had a general idea of which way the robbers had gone. She’d gotten that much from Abner Stone. She would start in that direction. She had a strong feeling that somehow or other she’d find the men she was looking for.
That feeling was confirmed just after Marshal Dawson came by to shake her hand and comfort her by telling her what a brave man Burt had been.
“If one man coulda stopped those scoundrels, Burt would’ve done it,” he said.
Ellie nodded as if she agreed, but she said nothing. Dawson moved on, and as he did, Earl Whistler tugged at the sleeve of his shirt.
Ellie could hear them talking, and what they said was much more interesting than the conventional condolences that were being whispered to her.
“Gerald Crossland?” Dawson said. “You don’t really think he had anything to do with it, do you? Anybody can smoke a cigar, Earl.”
“All I know is, he was there when the fire started,” Earl said, “and there was a cigar in back of where the stable used to be.”
“Well, I guess I could look into it,” Dawson said, thinking that he might as well. It would be something to do. Since he had sent the telegram to the Ranger station the previous night, there was really nothing else he was needed for. The Rangers would be looking for the robbers, and they were a lot better equipped for finding them than Dawson was. They were probably out of his jurisdiction by now anyway.
Ellie was more interested in Earl’s speculations than Dawson had been. She had a place to begin looking now, and she could hardly wait for the consolations to end so that she could get started.
O’Grady had slept in Crossland’s barn, along with Ben and Jink. They planned to be up early to begin their search.
Ben and O’Grady were up and ready to go, but there was something wrong with Jink.
His face was flushed and feverish. “It’s my damn hand,” he said, holding it up for them to see.
He had taken off the bandage, and his hand wasn’t a pretty sight. The whole hand was swollen, but the finger that the woman had bitten after he cut it on the can lid was the worst part of it. It was half again its normal size, the skin stretched to the bursting point. The skin was so black that it was almost purple over most of the finger, though it was an angry red along the edges of the cut. The black was spreading down the finger and onto the back of Jink’s hand.
“Goddamn,” Ben said, looking at it.
O’Grady leaned down for a closer look. “Sweet Jesus,” he said. “And what did you do to yourself, Jink, my lad?” He remembered what Jink had told him in the saloon. “A cut, you said?”
“Yeah. I cut it on a can,” Jink said, thinking it best not to mention anything more of the circumstances.
Ben shook his head. “It’s done mortified,” he said.
Jink’s beady eyes widened. “It’s just a little cut, Goddammit. I got some salve in my saddle bags. I’ll put some of that on it.”
O’Grady thought it was a little late for salve. “We should open it,” he said. “Let some of the poison out.”
Jink sat on a hay bale, gripping his hand by the wrist and holding it between his legs.
“Shit,” he said. “That’ll hurt.”
“It hurts already, now doesn’t it?” O’Grady said.
“You’re damn right, it hurts,” Jink said. “It hurts like hell. Jesus, what causes something like this?”
“Infection,” O’Grady said. “Blood poisoning, most likely.”
He walked over to where his saddle hung on the side of a horse stall and looked around in his saddle bags for a second before bringing out a leather scabbard. He pulled a large single-edged skinning knife from the scabbard.
Jink’s eyes widened even farther. “Jesus,” he said. “Oh, Jesus.”
O’Grady reached back into the saddle bags and brought out a bottle of whiskey wrapped in a piece of an old blanket.
“Sure and it’s a shame to waste good whiskey like this,” he said. “But I suppose it has to be done.”
He pulled the cork from the bottle with his teeth and poured whiskey over the knife blade. Then he replaced the cork and set the bottle on a hay bale.
“You gonna cut off his finger?” Ben said, able to stand the thought of Jink’s pain fairly easily.
“No,” O’Grady said. “Just lance it. You can help me.”
The two of them walked over to Jink.
“You hold his hand down on the hay bale,” O’Grady said.
“I don’t need nobo
dy to hold me down,” Jink said.
“Just the same, I’d like Ben’s help,” O’Grady told him. “Go ahead, Ben.”
Ben gripped Jink’s arm and pressed down.
O’Grady touched the blade of the knife to the finger.
Jink screamed and tried to jerk his arm away from Ben, but Ben held it firmly.
“Oh, shit!” Jink said. “Oh, shit.”
O’Grady cut the finger and greenish-yellow pus burst from it, spattering on the hay bale. It continued to ooze from the cut, but Jink didn’t notice.
He didn’t even feel it when O’Grady poured whiskey in the cut.
He had passed out.
NINE
Jonathan had actually slept for most of the night.
It had not been a restful sleep, but it had been sleep, and that was a vast improvement over his recent inability to escape from consciousness at all.
Maybe he should have screamed sooner, let out some of his pain and frustration, but he wasn’t convinced that his outburst was what had allowed him to sleep. Besides, he hadn’t screamed on purpose. The scream had escaped him when he was trying to laugh.
To tell the truth, he was a little ashamed of himself. A man just didn’t give in to his pain like that, not for any reason.
All the same, he found that he felt better than he had for days. The pain was still there, all right, but it wasn’t hurting him like it had been. It was as if it had receded somewhere into the background. He felt almost like getting out of the bed and eating breakfast.
That would be a real change. He hadn’t eaten anything other than soup for nearly a month. Soup and crackers, for most of that time, until it had gotten to the point that he couldn’t stomach the crackers. After that, it had been just the soup. He was damn tired of it, but it was all he could keep down.
But now for some reason he found himself craving bacon and eggs. He wondered where Juana was.
Then he remembered Gerald and his friends, if friends was the right word for them. Gerald had sent Juana away and brought in three desperados, three men who, apparently with Gerald’s connivance, had robbed the bank in Blanco, hoping to get their hands on Jonathan’s money.
They hadn’t, thanks to Jonathan’s foresight, but there was no telling what they might do now.
Jonathan turned his head and looked out the window. He figured that the sun had probably been up an hour. Maybe the men were no longer even there. Maybe they had left during the night.
They hadn’t, however. He saw two of them coming out of the barn. He wondered where the third one was, and he wondered what they could be up to. Well, there was nothing he could do about it. His momentary good feeling would soon wear off, of that he was sure. About all he could do was pretend to be asleep as he usually did and hope that Gerald would come in and give him some clue about what was happening.
He lay there in the bed, and after a while, he could hear them rummaging about in the house. It occurred to him that they must be looking for the money, thinking that he’d hidden it somewhere around the ranch, as if he would be that stupid.
He wanted to laugh, but he didn’t allow himself to give in to the impulse. He didn’t want to scream again, not just yet.
They’d been looking for nearly an hour when Jink came into the house.
He didn’t look any better than he had earlier, when they’d left him passed out in the barn. If anything, he looked worse. His shirt was sweated through, and his hair was lank and falling down in his eyes. His face was still red, and his eyes were watery. There was a clean bandage on his finger, but that had been put there by O’Grady.
“Where is it?” he said. “Where’s the damn money?”
“Good Lord,” Gerald Crossland said. “What’s happened to him?”
“He cut his finger,” O’Grady said.
“And we ain’t found the money,” Ben said for Jink’s benefit.
“We better find it quick,” Jink said. “I think I need a doctor.”
Jink was right about the doctor, O’Grady knew, but he didn’t really care. Whatever troubles Jink had, he had brought them on himself.
Jink was also right about their needing to find the money quickly. There was no telling who might come by. The cook might return, or someone from the town might just drop by to see how the old man was doing. If that happened, there might be trouble.
They had already ransacked most of the rooms, including the one that Jonathan Crossland had formerly used as an office. There was a wall safe in there, but it held nothing besides some papers that were of no value to anyone other than maybe the old man himself.
They were rapidly running out of places to look, and O’Grady was ready to leave off searching. It wasn’t noon yet, but that didn’t matter to O’Grady. He was ready to shake the dust of the ranch off his feet. He thought that he could avoid capture easily enough if he stayed away from the main trails and separated himself from Ben and Jink. The law would be looking for three men, not a lone rider.
“Is there any other likely place to be looking?” he asked Gerald.
Gerald couldn’t think of one.
“What if the money ain’t in the house?” Jink said. “What if he hid it outside? Shouldn’t we look out there?”
“We can’t be going around and digging up the entire ranch, now can we?” O’Grady said. “I think it’s best that we split up the money now and go our separate ways.”
“How much would the shares be?” Ben said, looking meaningfully at Gerald.
“Now that’s what we’ll have to be deciding,” O’Grady said. “Why don’t we go out in the barn and count the money once again.”
“Sounds good to me,” Ben said.
“Fine with me, too,” Gerald said.
He could feel himself starting to sweat, but he wasn’t going to let them go and count the money without him. They weren’t going to cheat him out of his share. He couldn’t let them do that. After all, it wasn’t his fault there hadn’t been as much money in the bank as there should have been. And if he hadn’t burned the stable, they wouldn’t have gotten away with as much as they had.
They trooped out to the barn. Ben sat on a bale of hay, but Jink seemed filled with a feverish, nervous energy. His eyes burned in his head, and he paced back and forth while O’Grady counted.
Gerald Crossland stood off to one side. He was glad they hadn’t tried to stop him from coming with them. That must mean they were going to give him his share.
It took O’Grady a while to make the count. He did it slowly and carefully, wetting his thumb with his tongue as he separated the bills. He sorted the bills into stacks of different denominations, and he did the same with the gold coins.
When he was finished, he turned to them and said, “Nineteen thousand and thirty-one dollars.”
“Shit,” Jink said. “That sure ain’t close to no hun’erd thousand.”
“It comes out to almost five thousand a man, though,” Gerald said. “That’s not so bad.”
It certainly wasn’t as much as he’d hoped for, far from it. He would never be able to live the way he had planned, and the good life he had envisioned for himself was going to remain out of his reach. Nevertheless, five thousand dollars would get him by for a long time if he was careful. He might even be able to avoid having to get a job.
“Actually, it comes out to a little more than six thousand a man,” O’Grady said.
“I don’t see how you arrived at that figure,” Gerald said, though he was afraid that he did see.
“I ain’t much at cipherin’,” Ben said, “but I can tell you how he came up with it. It don’t include you.”
“But that’s completely unfair,” Gerald said. He went on to point out his contribution to the robbery’s success. “And you wouldn’t ever have thought of it on your own,” he added. “You wouldn’t have anything if it weren’t for me.”
“That may be true,” O’Grady said. “But who’s to know? We might have come up with the idea of robbing some backwater bank all by our
selves.” He looked at the money stacked neatly on the hay bale. “We could have gotten this much at any number of places. We didn’t have to come to Blanco.”
“But I helped you,” Gerald said. “I burned the stable. I took a risk. I demand a share of the money.”
“Shit on that,” Jink said.
His pistol appeared in his hand, and there was an audible click as he cocked the hammer with his thumb.
“Wait,” O’Grady said, turning at the sound of hoofbeats and looking out the barn door. “Who’s that?”
Someone had ridden into the ranch house yard.
Ellie changed her clothing quickly and looked around the room.
Mr. Fowler had brought her the clothes that Burt had been wearing when he was killed, but Ellie didn’t want them. She didn’t want the boots, either. She decided to leave them in the room. There might be someone in town who could use them; the Stones would know if that were true.
There were two things, however, that she did want: Burt’s pistol and gunbelt.
She took the pistol and held it in both hands. Burt had taught her how to use it, though she knew that she was not a very good shot.
The pistol was heavier than she remembered, but that didn’t bother her. She slid it back in the holster and strapped on the gunbelt. It sagged down on her hips, putting the gun butt too low for an easy draw, but then she did not expect to be involved in a shoot-out. She would be able to get the pistol when the time came.
She walked out of the house and to the small barn in back. She was accustomed to hitching the mules, and it did not take her long to get the team in harness.
She climbed into the wagon seat and turned to check that the shotgun was still there. It was, wrapped in the blanket with a box of shells.
Ellie was sorry to be slipping away without a word of thanks to the Stones, but she knew they would be curious about her rush to leave and about her clothing, and she didn’t want to have to make up an explanation.
They would also be curious about the pistol, another item she would prefer not to talk about. When she got back to town, if she ever did, she would stop by and thank them for their kindness. Right now, she had other things to do.