The Hider

by Loren D. Estleman

  Rick said, “Yes, sir,” and went out the front door.

  “What are we going to do?” I asked Jack. It was dark in the cell, and I could barely make out his outline against the feeble yellow glow of the lamp on the constable’s desk fifteen feet away.

  “Not a whole lot we can do, except wait,” he said. He picked up his hat and stretched out full length on the cot, placing the hat over his eyes. “Meantime, this here’s the closest thing I’ve had to a real bed in near ten years.” With that, he lapsed into silence.

  I couldn’t see how he could be so calm under the circumstances, but I knew he was right. Whatever happened now was out of our hands. The thought didn’t cheer me up any.

  Jail wasn’t as uncomfortable as I’d always imagined it to be. Maybe that was because I’d spent the last four days in the saddle and the last three nights sleeping on the hard ground; I guess the difference between what’s good and what’s bad depends on what you’re comparing it to. About eight feet square, the cell was constructed of the same sturdy stone as the rest of the building, and it had a second cot along the left wall that looked as if it had been added recently to make room for more prisoners. That meant the town was growing. The only other concession made to comfort was a chipped enamel chamber pot showing underneath the cot.

  I tried to get some rest, but it was no use with my nerves as tight as they were, so I settled for sitting on the edge of the cot with my back resting against the damp stone wall. I was still sitting there when the front door opened and the fat old deputy Jack and I had spoken to in front of the undertaker’s parlor came into the office. He looked exhausted. His face was shiny with sweat and the barrel of his shotgun was almost dragging on the floor. He nodded to the constable and placed his weapon next to the others in the varnished wooden rack beside the door.

  “Where you been, Otis?” asked Fowler. He was seated with his feet propped up on his desk and his hands folded across his stomach. His eyes were closed. I gathered that it had been a long day for both of them.

  “Where the hell you think?” the deputy returned. “Over at Jorgenson’s, where I been all day, guardin’ stiffs. You gone soft in the head or something?”

  “I told you to knock off at four o’clock. What you trying to prove, Otis? That you’re as good as the best of the deputies? Hell, there ain’t a one of them don’t know you’re worth more than the whole lot.”

  Otis took a fresh plug of tobacco from his shirt pocket, picked off all the lint, then cut himself a healthy chew with his jackknife and thrust it into his mouth. “Don’t try to slicker me, Bud,” he said, chewing. “My eyes ain’t half as good as they was five years ago and I wind easy. Last week I went to see Doc Grundy about this pain in my belly; by the time I got to the top of them stairs, I was puffin’ like that steamer car that come through here last December. I’m runnin’ down fast. But I can still stay on my feet as long as any of them gun-totin’ young grocery clerks you been pinnin’ badges on lately and callin’ deputies.” He dropped into the wooden captain’s chair that faced the desk with a thud that shook the building.

  “So why’d you quit?” asked the constable. “Ma Granger show up yet with her brothers?”

  “Not yet. I reckon Jorgenson figured he’d grabbed enough free advertisin’, ’cause he had the bodies carried inside. I left Sweeney guardin’ the door. The others’ll likely be checkin’ in after they’ve et.”

  Fowler nodded. “We got two new prisoners.” He jerked his thumb over his shoulder to indicate the cell Jack and I were sharing.

  Otis glanced over at us. There was no surprise on his face when he recognized the old man and the boy he had passed the time with while guarding the dead bank robbers earlier. There was just sadness. “What’d they do?” he asked after a moment.

  “Murdered a injun policeman over by Quartz Mountain, or so I’m told.” The constable rummaged through the papers on top of his desk, found the one he was looking for, and handed it to his deputy. “This come in from Oakland yesterday,” he said.

  The fat man took a pair of wire-rimmed glasses from a case in his other shirt pocket and put them on to read it. He looked up after a moment. “Who’s George Crook?”

  Fowler shrugged. “Reckon we’ll know that when he gets here.”

  “Things sure have changed,” Otis lamented, returning the wire to the top of the desk. “Time was when we held injuns for whites to pick up.”

  “Them days is past.”

  “Yeah.” The deputy looked glum for a moment, then his face lit up as if he’d just remembered something. “One thing ain’t changed, though,” he said. “Effie Ross over at the dry goods says some kid heaved a rock through her front window again last night.”

  “Not again!” Fowler looked pained.

  “Again. I run into her on the way back here, and that’s when she told me about it. Says she been tryin’ all day to report it, but you’re never in the office.”

  “If she didn’t charge such high prices they’d leave her alone.” Fowler sighed and got up from behind the desk, picking up his shotgun. “I suppose I ought to go talk to her. Keep an eye on them prisoners till I get back. If this injun Crook comes, make sure you see his warrant afore you let him have them.” He took his hat from the peg beside the door and went out.

  With an effort, Otis Ledbetter heaved himself out of his chair and stepped around behind the desk. For a moment it looked as if he might come over to speak with me or Jack, then he seemed to think better of it and sank into the constable’s chair instead. Rick had left his dime novel on the desk. He picked it up, glanced at the cover, then shrugged and began reading from where the nervous young deputy had left off. Soon the book slid into his lap and his head lolled to one side. In a few minutes he was snoring loudly.

  In the adjacent cell, Billy Granger had left his cot and was pacing the stone floor, muttering to himself beneath his breath. A couple of times I caught the words “Ma” and “Ben,” and once I heard him mention Crawfordsville, but the rest of it was impossible to make out. He was a skinny kid, as skinny as I was, and he had long blonde hair which, parted in the middle, hung in unruly locks on either side of his high forehead. I say “kid” because he was so much younger than anyone else I’d been in contact with for several days; actually, he was several years older than I was, though he didn’t look it. I think his face was what a girl would call handsome, kind of delicate and fair-complexioned, but I can’t swear to it because the light in that part of the building was far from good. Also, I’m not a girl.

  Jack tried to speak to him once. Lying on the cot with his hat over his face, he turned out not to be asleep as I’d thought, but only resting. He had missed nothing that had happened since the fat deputy entered the office. “Billy,” he said quietly, “this here’s Jack Butterworth. You probably don’t recollect me. I seen you when I was in Kansas. I knowed your pa. We fit together in the war.”

  There was no answer from the other cell. The young outlaw had stopped pacing when he heard his name, but now he resumed, his boots scraping ceaselessly on stone.

  Jack didn’t try again. Then, ten minutes later: “Mr. Butterworth?”

  Jack lifted his hat brim a little. “Yeah, Billy.”

  Billy was standing still again. His face was a blank shadow. “Pa used to talk about you. A lot. Said you and him was the meanest of all John B. Hood’s shock troops.”

  Jack chuckled softly. “I reckon he was right, Billy. Them was mean times.”

  “What you want to talk about, Mr. Butterworth?”

  “Oh, nothing in particular. Your family maybe. How’s your ma and your sister Sharon?”

  “I ain’t seen Ma in months.” Billy’s voice was little more than a whisper. “Sharon died last July. Smallpox.” “I’m right sorry to hear that.”

  “She never was what you call robust. Seems like a week didn’t go by but the doc didn’t pay a visit to see how Sharon was gettin’ along. Bills piled up pretty regular.”

  “That why you left home?�
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  There was a pause. “I guess that was part of it.”

  “That don’t explain why you went with your brothers.”

  “Man’s got to make his livin’ somehow.”

  Jack didn’t say anything to that.

  “Mr. Butterworth?”

  “Yeah, Billy.”

  “You reckon they’ll hang me?”

  This time the pause was on Jack’s end of the conversation. “I reckon so, Billy.”

  “But it was Ben fired the shot that killed that old man, not me!” Panic had crept into the young outlaw’s voice. “Why do they want to hang me? They already got Ben and Bob and Charlie. Al and Pima Pete had their hands up when they got them. I seen it. Ain’t that enough? Why me, too?” He was gripping the bars that separated the two cells in his hands.

  “I could answer that, Billy, but you might not like it.” Jack had taken off his hat, and now he sat on the edge of his cot, crimping down the brim between his thumb and forefinger.

  “Why me?” repeated the other. His voice cracked. He was closer to hysterics than I’d thought earlier; had been right along, despite his outward calm.

  Jack went on crimping his hat as if it were the most important job in the world. “Billy, did you ever tie a tarp down on a wagon?” He must not have expected an answer, because he went on without pausing. “You want to tie down all them corners. If you don’t, and leave one of them flapping, first good wind that comes along’ll take hold of it and tear the whole sheet off. I reckon that as far as this town is concerned, you’re one of them loose corners.” He waited to see if Billy had anything to say to that. He didn’t. A long silence stretched between them. Jack broke it. “I told you you might not like it.”

  The last of the Grangers returned to his cot and stretched out with his hands clasped behind his head, staring toward the ceiling. Well, there wasn’t much to say after that anyway.

  I said to Jack, “You been thinking about how we’re going to get out of here?”

  He inspected his handiwork on the battered old campaign hat, then put it back on and swung his legs up onto the cot, tilting the brim forward over his face the way he’d had it before. “Thought about it,” he said.

  “And?”

  “Figure we’ll get out when they open that door to let us out.”

  “When will that be?” I asked.

  “When George Crook comes to get us.”

  Something dumped open in the pit of my stomach. “Well,” I said quickly, “what about Logan?”

  “What about him?”

  “Don’t you think he’ll try to help us?”

  “Can’t rightly say. Don’t know why he’d want to.”

  I grew angry. “We helped him when he needed us!”

  “We had a stake in it then. Can’t think why he’d walk into a trap when he can just keep going and save his skin.”

  I was about to say something else when I heard voices outside the office door. I turned my attention in that direction.

  “Let’s get out of here,” urged one of the voices. “They ain’t gonna let nobody see Billy till the trial.” It was a young voice, a boy’s.

  “We can always ask,” said another. This one was a little deeper.

  They came into the office, a pair of boys in overalls and floppy gray hats faded by the sun and stained with sweat. One, a redhead with a face covered with freckles, looked to be about twelve. The other was a couple of years older and had dark hair and buck teeth. I pegged him right off as a troublemaker. I hadn’t been out of school so long that I didn’t know a rowdy when I saw one.

  “Hey, it’s old Otis,” Buck Teeth said. He appeared pleased with this discovery. He led the way up to the desk behind which the old deputy was sleeping and snoring loudly.

  “He sure sleeps noisy,” commented Freckles.

  “My pa says he sleeps all the time when he’s supposed to be workin’.” Slowly a wicked grin spread over Buck Teeth’s face. “Hey, you got a match?”

  “Sure, from burnin’ trash,” said the other.

  “Gimme.”

  The younger boy dug into his right side pocket, came up with a handful of wooden matches, and laid one in his companion’s outstretched palm. “What you gonna do?”

  “Watch.” Buck Teeth struck one of the matches on the edge of the desk. A flame erupted from the red bulb on the end and sizzled loudly. When all the sulphur had burned off, he leaned forward over the desk, and, cupping the match in his hand so that the heat was deflected from his victim’s face, he held it under the old deputy’s flowing moustache.

  Suddenly the chamber pot in our cell clattered across the floor and came up against the bars with a horrendous crash. I jumped at the noise and looked quickly at Jack. He was sitting on the edge of his cot, where he had been when he had hooked his right hand inside the pot and sent it flying. At the same instant, Otis Ledbetter awoke and sprang to his feet with a speed and an agility I would not have thought possible in a man so huge. The boys backed up quickly. Buck Teeth shook out the match.

  “What the hell!” exclaimed Otis, confused. Then he saw the burned-out match in the older boy’s hand and his face turned cherry red. “Get out of here!” He snatched up the broom that leaned in the corner next to the desk and brandished it like a club. “Git!”

  Freckles lit out the door as if the Indians were after him, but Buck Teeth held his ground a moment longer. “I could of burned off all your whiskers and you wouldn’t of knowed it, you old tub of lard!”

  “Git!” Otis advanced, swinging his makeshift bludgeon. The brat fled. When it was obvious that neither he nor his friend was going to return, the deputy put away the broom and went back to the desk, but not before nodding to Jack. “I’m mighty obliged to you for that warning, friend,” he said. They were the first words he’d spoken to either of us since coming into the office. “I’ve had these here whiskers for forty years; I’d of hated to lose them.”

  “White hair attracts trouble like an unbranded cow,” said Jack.

  The fat man sat down heavily in the constable’s chair. “I reckon the boy was right, though,” he said quietly. “There ain’t much use in holdin’ onto a deputy who lets kids set fire to him. What if someone was to try and bust Billy, there, out of jail? Likely I’d sleep right through it. Maybe I ought to retire right now.”

  The front-door handle rattled. Otis spun around in his chair, the color returning to his face. “I thought I told you kids to git!” he shouted.

  The door opened and a big man in a leather vest and a broad-brimmed Stetson entered. He had a six-gun strapped to his right hip and a star glittered on his shirt. I recognized him as one of the lawmen who had been helping the fat deputy guard the dead bank robbers earlier. “Back off, Otis,” he said joshingly. “I ain’t that much younger’n you that you can get away with calling me kid.”

  “Sweeney, I thought I left you over at Jorgenson’s.” Otis was obviously upbraiding him to change the subject. He didn’t want the younger man to know what had just happened. “Who’s watching them stiffs?”

  “Nobody. Old Lady Granger and that pair of mooses she calls her brothers showed up to take them back home. I just come back here to check in before I go home. Wife’s waiting supper for me. I hope.”

  “Did Ma say when she’d be comin’ in to see Billy?” asked the old deputy.

  “She ain’t. They loaded them stiffs into their buckboard and took off ten minutes ago.” Sweeney dragged out his makings from the fringed pocket of his vest and began building a cigarette.

  “She ain’t comin’?” It was Billy who spoke. He was on his feet and gripping the bars at the front of his cell. The lamplight painted his face a ghastly yellow.

  Sweeney licked his cigarette paper, rolled it, and smoothed it between his fingers. Then he lighted it with a match from his pocket and watched it burn down to the tobacco before he put it to his lips. “Nope. Your name didn’t even come up, Billy.”

  “What’d she say?” Otis wanted to know.


  “Nothing.” The younger deputy puffed contentedly on his homemade smoke. “Jorgenson claimed she owed him for fixing up Ben, Bob, and Charlie, but she just ignored him. He tried to get me to lock her up. I just smiled. Her brother Josh sort of backed him into a corner and held him there while the other one, Francis I think his name is, wrapped up the bodies in some wet sheets they had with them and stacked them in the wagon like fireplace logs. Then they left. Of course, they didn’t take Al and Pima Pete, but I don’t think we have to worry much about them. The Grangers is what everybody’s interested in.”

  “She ain’t comin’,” repeated Billy. This time it was a statement, but I don’t think the words had really sunk in yet. He just stood there and stared out between the bars. He didn’t appear to be looking at anything.

  “Well,” said Sweeney, “I got a wife and a stew to get back to, if she’s still there and the stew ain’t in the dog’s belly. Tell Bud I was here.”

  With that he turned and breezed out of the office, leaving a yawning silence behind him. Well, it was almost a silence; it was broken only at ragged intervals by Billy Granger’s subdued voice, intoning over and over, “She ain’t comin’.”

  There is something about being in danger that won’t let you give up hope. Jack had been right, of course, when he’d said that there was no reason to expect Logan to risk his life to save us; after all, hadn’t he come at me with a knife just the night before? But then I remembered how patient and willing the Indian had been to treat my horse’s wounded thigh when, armed and in possession of a good mount, he could have left us both to George Crook’s mercy and ridden to safety. Maybe he would feel that way again. It was a ray of hope, faint though it was, and I clung to it. I had to. Logan was all we had.

  Meanwhile, it was a good idea to relax. I didn’t know what lay in the near future, and it didn’t do any good to wonder about it. After so many nights sleeping on the rocky ground, the iron cot was a welcome relief to my aching muscles. I fell asleep without half trying.

  I didn’t sleep long, because when I awoke, it was still dark and Constable Fowler had not yet returned from his meeting with Effie Ross at the dry goods store. Nevertheless I heard muffled voices. I sat up and peered through the gloom toward the amber globe of light that surrounded the kerosene lamp in the office. Otis Ledbetter, turned halfway around in his chair, was conversing soberly with another man, whose face I couldn’t see because it was above the lamp’s reach. It didn’t matter, though, because I could see the light reflecting off the shield of metal that the visitor wore pinned to his chest. Once during the conversation the man standing turned his head to look at us in the cell, and that’s when I saw the gleaming black hair that fell about his shoulders in the Indian style. They were speaking so low that I couldn’t hear a word of what was being said. I didn’t have to hear. The Indian had to be George Crook.