Should I ride into Box Elder and tell Marshal Jennison what was planned for tonight? Or warn Mr. Satterlee, which amounted to the same thing? The Colonel would never forgive me, not that his approval mattered to me any longer. I might not love or respect him, but he was still my father; I didn’t want to be the one to have him arrested and put in jail. Yet neither did I want Mr. Satterlee to suffer grievously at his hands.
I had to do something.
Jim, I thought then, he’ll know what’s best.
There was still plenty of time to ride to Keystone, and then to Box Elder to keep Kinch from carrying out his orders. I slipped quietly away from the house and down to the stable. Kitchi, our Blackfoot stableman, was forking hay into the stall feeders. I told him I was going for a ride, and he fetched Southwind for me. His brows lifted when he saw me pick up a Dakota ranch saddle instead of the sidesaddle, but he didn’t say anything. When I had it cinched down and the bridle on, I walked Southwind out through the rear doors past the corral and the outbuildings. A couple of the hands saw me when I mounted and rode off, but that couldn’t be helped. The Colonel would know soon enough I was gone, but he wouldn’t have any idea where I’d gone or for what reason.
I rode cross-country to the river ford, then to Keystone, at a gallop. But when I got to the ranch, there was no sign of Jim or his chestnut gelding. That would have been upsetting enough, but what I found when I opened the door for a look inside the house was really disturbing. Something had happened here not long ago, something bad. Furniture had been knocked askew, small items littered the floor, and there were splotches of coagulated blood in front of the horsehair sofa.
The thought that Jim had been hurt filled me with dread. Where was he? Chasing someone? Gone to town to seek medical attention, or to fetch the marshal?
Was the Colonel responsible for this, too?
I mounted Southwind again and rode like the wind for Box Elder.
SAM BENSON
Most sodbusters don’t have a pot to piss in or a window to throw it out of, but every now and then one of ’em’ll surprise you. Like this young Scandahoovian, Halvorsen, who showed up at the livery wanting to buy a horse and a buckboard. He was a newcomer, just arrived by covered wagon from Minnesota with his wife and relatives. The wagon belonged to the relatives, so all he had was a few belongings and money in his jeans that he’d saved up for the trip. Not a lot of money, but enough to buy the buckboard and a “gude horse for plow, pull wagon, ride.”
I showed him what I had available and dickered with him some—he was willing to spend just so much—and we settled on a price for the blue-tick roan I’d rented to Jim Tarbeaux and a buckboard that had seen better days but would hold together well enough. We went inside to my office so I could write him a receipt, and on the way Halvorsen spied the broke-down Mother Hubbard saddle I’d let the tramp printer, Jones, leave with me. It was still lying where I’d tossed it next to one of the stalls. Neither Robbie nor I had gotten around to moving it into the tack room.
“Saddle is for sale, Mr. Benson?”
It wasn’t worth a tinker’s damn, that Texas saddle, twenty-five years old if it was a day and all wore out. I hadn’t wanted it and neither had Rufus Cable; I figured I’d just burn it if Jones didn’t come back to claim it when he left town.
“Well, now,” I said, “it don’t rightly belong to me. I’ve got a couple of better ones of my own for sale.”
I took Halvorsen into the tack room and showed him the saddles. He liked them all right, but the prices were too high for him and I couldn’t afford to come down any. I could have sent him to Cable’s shop—Cable had a stock of secondhand saddles for sale—but he wouldn’t sell cheap, either. I was loath to direct business his way anyhow, him being an unsociable cuss.
When we went back along the runway, Halvorsen stopped and took another look at the Mother Hubbard. “This is saddle I like,” he said, showing his ignorance. “You sure is not for sale?”
“Well…”
“I give you five dollars for it.”
Could’ve knocked me over with a feather. But I covered up my surprise and said, “I reckon the owner would take five dollars for it, all right. No reason why he wouldn’t, it’s a fair price.”
He grinned like he’d just put one over on me. “Is a deal, then?”
“Sure thing, Mr. Halvorsen. It’s a deal.”
When he drove off in the buckboard, the Mother Hubbard in the bed, I had me a chuckle. Halvorsen had put one over, all right—on himself. Good thing for Jones I’m an honest man; if I wasn’t, I could keep the five dollars with him none the wiser, long as he didn’t come back asking about the saddle.
I thought about taking the money down to the newspaper office and, if he wasn’t there, leaving it with Will Satterlee or his son. But that seemed like a lot of trouble. Robbie lived in Shantyville and Ma Stinson’s, where Jones was lodging, was more or less on Robbie’s way home. I could give him the money … no, I couldn’t. You can’t trust Indians with cash that don’t belong to ’em, not even half-breeds. But what I could do, and what I did, was tell Robbie to stop by Ma Stinson’s and leave word that I’d sold the Mother Hubbard and Jones could come pick up his four dollars whenever he was of a mind to.
Four, not five. Hell, I was entitled to a dollar brokering fee, wasn’t I?
WILL SATTERLEE
I was locking the door to the Banner office, about to head home for supper with R.W., when I spied Jim Tarbeaux and another man, a cowhand judging from the clothes he wore, trot up Central on horseback and turn on Lincoln toward the jailhouse. Jim held the reins to the other horse, and the cowboy appeared to have his hands bound behind his back. Neither of them paid any attention to the stares of the few citizens abroad.
I hurried downstreet after them. By the time I reached the jailhouse they had dismounted in front and gone inside. Seth was still on duty and Jim and his prisoner were facing him in front of his desk when I burst in. Prisoner the cowhand was, for his hands were tied with a piggin’ string. Bruises and streaks of dried blood marked his sullen, weathered face.
Well, now. This was certainly a week for news!
Of the three, the only one to glance my way was Seth, with an expression of mild annoyance, but he knew better than to attempt to turn away Will Satterlee on the trail of a story. He returned his attention to Jim and the cowhand.
“What’s this all about?” he asked Jim.
“Malicious mischief, destruction of property, attempted extortion at the point of a gun.” Tarbeaux’s lean countenance was set in lines of grim determination. Using two fingers, he dipped a Colt six-shooter from his coat pocket and laid it on the marshal’s desk. “This gun. Likely he’d have shot me if I hadn’t taken it away from him.”
“Hell I would,” the other man muttered.
“Where’d all this happen?”
Jim said, “Keystone. I was out hunting work all day and this yahoo was waiting for me in the house when I got back. Masked, gun aimed at my belly. He’d been there a while.”
“Doing what?”
“Looking for that damned fifty-four hundred dollars—money I never stole, never had.” Jim’s voice was sharp, his manner truculent, as if he expected once again to be disbelieved.
There was no disbelief in me. This scruffy cowhand had obviously succumbed to the false claims and the lust for easy mammon—another insidious attempt to victimize Jim Tarbeaux. No wonder Tarbeaux was short-tempered and on the defensive.
“Seen you around a time or two, mister,” Seth said to the prisoner, “but I don’t know you. What’s your name?”
“It’s Yandle,” Tarbeaux said, “Al Yandle. He works for the Square G.”
Ah, I thought, the Square G. Wouldn’t it be glorious if Greathouse had put Yandle up to the attempt? Not that that was very likely, but the Colonel was certainly capable of any underhanded scheme to further his own ends. This business was news at any rate, but if he was involved …
“Your own idea to head to Ke
ystone, was it?” Seth asked the prisoner.
“I never went to Keystone,” Yandle said. “Tarbeaux’s making the whole thing up. He jumped me on the road on my way into town.”
The lie was obvious to me from the tone of the man’s voice, the darting shift of his eyes. It was surely obvious to Seth, too, but all he said was, “Why would he do that?”
“How should I know? Ask him.”
“I told you exactly what happened, Marshal,” Jim said. “You can believe me or not.”
“I take it you want to press charges.”
“Damn right I do.”
Yandle said, “You gonna take a jailbird’s word over mine?”
“You want more proof?” Jim said to Seth. “Here, look at this.”
He removed something else from his pocket, laid it beside the weapon. Seth studied it with narrowed eyes; I moved closer to do the same. It was a photograph that had been torn, crumpled, smudged with dirt—a tintype of Flora Tarbeaux.
“Would I do something like this to my mother’s picture, Marshal? Not hardly. Yandle did it with his boot heel.”
Seth gave the cowhand a dark look before saying to Jim, “Untie his hands. I’ll put him where he won’t do no more harm.”
When Yandle’s hands were free, Seth unlocked the door to the cell block and ushered him into a cell. From the doorway I watched him sit on the bunk and finger his battered face, wincing. “I need a doc. Bastard busted my nose.”
“You’re lucky I didn’t cave in your skull,” Jim said.
Seth said, “Enough of that kind of talk. I’ll fetch the doc when we’re done here, Yandle. You ain’t that bad hurt.”
In the office, with the cell-block door shut, he asked Jim to go over again what had taken place at Keystone. Then he had him sign a complaint form. Jim had lost his bitter defensiveness by then, mollified by the marshal’s acceptance of his story and Seth’s subsequent actions. He nodded to me on his way out, acknowledging my presence for the first time.
I said to Seth, “I’ll talk to you later,” and quickly followed Tarbeaux outside. He was untying his horse’s reins from the hitchrail when I stepped up to him.
“Where to now, Jim?”
“Back home, where else?”
“Have supper with me at the hotel.”
“Not hungry, thanks.”
“Coffee or a drink, then. I’d like to ask you a few questions.”
He hesitated. “You already heard me tell what happened today.”
“Yes,” I said, “but for my account in the Banner I would like more details, perhaps a quote or two. I intend to emphasize the fact that Al Yandle, whether he acted on his own or on Colonel Greathouse’s instructions, was on a senseless errand.”
A corner of Jim’s mouth quirked in a wry half-smile. “In that case, Will, I’d be pleased to sit down with you.”
He left his horse where it was and we walked back to Central and on down to the hotel. When we entered the crowded dining room, a few of those seated at table cast open or covert looks at Jim. He ignored them, as did I—all but one. Rufus Cable, seated alone at a corner table. Jim’s gaze was on Cable all the way across to the last empty table, and when we sat down there he took a chair facing in Cable’s direction.
The waitress, Molly Unger, set menus before us and I ordered two cups of coffee. Jim was still staring at Cable. At first, Cable returned the stare; then he moved his chair a little to one side, his eyes on the plate in front of him. But he was no longer eating, just poking his fork at whatever food was on it.
I said in a lowered voice, “Have you spoken to Cable yet, Jim?”
“Once.”
“And the result?”
“No result. Not yet.”
“Is what was said between you private?”
“Yes. Just between him and me.”
“What do you intend to do?”
“Clear my name, like I told you before.”
“How?”
“My business. Suppose we let it go at that, Will.”
I didn’t press him. To do so would have been a mistake. I ordered a light meal and he followed suit—he was plainly hungry—and I asked my questions and wrote down his answers in my notebook. It was his opinion that Al Yandle had acted entirely on his own, driven by greed, and that Colonel Greathouse had no knowledge of what had been done at Keystone. I tended to agree with him—reluctantly, to be sure. In all fairness I could not and would not even hint in my account of the incident that the Colonel was implicated.
Molly had just served our food when Cable stood from his table and left the room in a stiff-backed stride, not looking our way. Jim watched him out of sight before he picked up his fork and began to eat.
RUFUS CABLE
I have little appetite these days, and when Tarbeaux walked into the hotel dining room with Will Satterlee I lost all taste for food. But I wasn’t unhappy to see him. On the contrary. Him being in town tonight might just have solved the problem I had been fretting about—how to get word to him that I wanted to see him alone after dark, without leaving traces or making him suspicious.
What was he doing with Satterlee? Providing more fodder for those damn editorials defending him and by inference damning me, probably. Had he told Satterlee about our meeting the other day, that I’d faced him with an empty shotgun in the hope that he’d put me out of my misery? False hope, and now I was glad it had been. The new plan I’d come up with would prolong my life for a while, not end it fast like the old one would have, and I’d have some peace before I wasted away. If the plan worked, it wouldn’t make any difference what he told Satterlee. And it would work, it had to.
Tarbeaux kept staring knifepoints at me across the room, but that was all right because people at the other tables took notice and would remember. Testimony to back up my story when the time came. Still, I couldn’t put up with it for long or it wouldn’t look right. Instead of staring back, I kept my eyes on my plate for a time and then, as if he were making me nervous, I stood up quick, left four bits on the table to cover my bill, and hurried out.
But I didn’t go far when I left the hotel, just up to the corner. I leaned against the side wall there, waiting. It was coming on dusk now and there weren’t many people on the boardwalks, the street all but empty. I had a brief yearning for a cigar to help pass the time, but the way my lungs were I wouldn’t dare have smoked one if I’d had it. Smoking affected my wind, set me to wheezing so bad at times I felt like I was suffocating, and after the last cigar I’d tried, a couple of weeks ago, I had coughed up flecks of blood. What I was fixing to do tonight, if I could get Tarbeaux alone, would be hell enough on my lungs.
The wait seemed long, but it couldn’t have been more than twenty minutes before Tarbeaux and Satterlee came out of the hotel. They turned upstreet in my direction. I ducked farther back into the shadows until they passed, then followed them to the newspaper office. They shook hands, Satterlee turned to unlock the door, and Tarbeaux went on downstreet. Good! Now if I could just get to him with nobody else around. I already knew what I would say.
Satterlee lit a lamp in the Banner office. I could see light leaking around the shades over the door and window as I came near. But he didn’t pull up either shade, so I passed without being seen. Tarbeaux cut diagonally across Central and turned onto Lincoln. A wagon rattled past, and I crossed over behind it. His horse was tied to the rail in front of the jailhouse; I reached the corner just as he mounted. If he turned in the other direction—
He didn’t. He came my way, riding slow. The shadows were lengthening and there was nobody nearby on either Lincoln or Central when I stepped out and called his name, not too loud, as he drew abreast.
He reined up. “What do you want, Cable?”
“To talk to you.”
“Go ahead and talk.”
“Not here, not now.”
“Why not? What’s on your mind?”
“Seeing you in the hotel tonight, the way you were staring at me … I can’t go on dreading
the sight of you.” I didn’t have to fake the tremor in my voice. I could feel myself sweating. “I … I think maybe we can work something out.”
“Such as what?”
“I don’t know, something that will satisfy both of us—”
“The only thing that will satisfy me is your signed confession.”
“Please, Tarbeaux. My shop in an hour, all right?”
“Why wait an hour?”
“I need time to calm down, settle my thoughts…”
He made a snorting sound. “Shore up your nerve with liquor.”
This had gone on long enough. I said, “One hour,” and turned and walked away from him on Lincoln without looking back. No need to fake the falter in my stride, either. I really did need that hour to shore up my nerve, though not with liquor. I had never been much of a drinking man.
I walked straight to the shop, lit the Argand lamp in the front room, then sat down on my work stool to catch my breath. I felt a little sick, more than a little scared, but I was pretty sure I could go through with it if Tarbeaux showed up. No, not pretty sure—I would go through with it. And he would come. How could he resist?
I hung on to that thought, waiting for the sick spell to pass. When it did, I went into the storeroom to finish making preparations.
HOMER ST. JOHN
Doc Christmas and me closed for business at six o’clock, tied down his dentist’s chair and put away all the tools. The marshal had stopped by earlier to tell us he’d got a wire from the county attorney saying there wasn’t no need for an inquest, just as he predicted, so we was free to leave Box Elder any time. Which Doc decided might as well be tomorrow morning. We’d done just about all the business there was to do, more in the past two days than the whole two weeks before we come here. Once word spread about the self-defense shooting, folks flocked to the wagon to get a look at the gent who’d rid the community of that canker sore of a blacksmith. And plenty of ’em stayed to partake of the doc’s services.
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