“I wasn’t planning on hanging around in Durrance,” said Jim.
“When I said find a place to stay,” frowned Lundy, “I meant for just a couple days—not for a half-year. Consarn you, Rand, you sure are impatient. Checkin’ around this burg, askin’ about this Jenner hombre, it’ll all take time.” He finished his beer, reached for a pad of writing paper and a stub of pencil. “How much else can you tell me about him?”
“The sketch is a good likeness,” said Jim. “He has sandy hair and a mustache. Height about five-ten. He was kind of skinny, back when he killed Chris. Since then he just might’ve put on a little weight. His voice is high-pitched. He drinks brandy—raw. He likes pearl jewelry and he’s a sore loser—can’t abide to lose at any gamble—always turns mean.”
“Anything else?” prodded Lundy, scribbling busily.
“He gunned Chris with a .38,” frowned Jim. “The witnesses described it as a Smith and Wesson. They were probably right but, since that time, Jenner could have changed his brand of hardware a dozen times. He might be packing a Remington, a Colt, a Merwin and Hulbert—anything at all.” Noting that Lundy was folding the sketch and stuffing it into a pocket, he said sharply, “I’ll want that back.”
“You’ll get it back,” Lundy assured him, “after I’ve showed it around. Lookin’ for wanted men is my chore, Rand, not yours. What I want you to do is check into some roomin’ house, catch up on your sleep and keep your nose clean.” He patted his chest. “I'll ask all the questions. I'll do all the investigatin’.”
“What do you mean to do?” demanded Jim. “Check all the gambling houses?”
“You gotta admit that makes sense,” said Lundy. “If Jenner’s a tinhorn, there’s no use askin’ about him at the Baptist chapel. A saloon is where he’d head for, and I’m gonna check ’em all.” He glanced towards the door and, from this angle, the unprepossessing Benito Espina was clearly visible. So were the black stallion and the burro. “Where’d that greaser come from? I never saw him before.”
“You’re probably looking at Benito Espina.” Jim shrugged philosophically. He was becoming accustomed to the puzzlement of people who couldn’t understand why two such contrasting drifters should choose to drift together. “Where I go, he goes.”
“I guess you just ain’t particular, eh?” challenged Lundy. He darted another glance in Benito’s direction. “Well, he sure don’t look like a man I could trust.”
“I don’t trust him either,” drawled Jim, “but we manage to get along.”
He got to his feet, because Lundy had risen and was reaching for his hat.
“Briscoe’s place oughta suit you fine,” the lawman told him, as they moved out onto the porch.
“What does Briscoe operate?” asked Jim. “A hotel—or a doss house?”
“Well …” Lundy gestured impatiently, “I guess you could say it’s just a doss house.”
“Thanks for the compliment,” Jim acknowledged, and the sarcasm was wasted on the fat badge toter. “I’d as soon take my chances at a hotel—one where they change the bed sheets once in a while.”
“All right,” grunted Lundy. “The Marris House on North Main.”
“That’s where I’ll be,” Jim assured him.
Lundy was eager to be gone, anxious to confer with certain parties, but he purposely fumbled over the chore of securing the street door of his office and waited until Jim and the Mex were leading their animals uptown before beginning his short walk to the Cimarron Saloon.
By way of a back alley, he made the rear entrance of the saloon, passed through the none-too-clean kitchen and emerged into the barroom. At the bar, he was told by the burly dispenser of firewater, “He’s upstairs still.”
The fat man climbed the stairs slowly, out of deference to his immense bulk. Then, waddling a few yards to a closed door, he rapped for admittance and called to the men beyond. The door was opened by a sharp-featured local named Ed Larkin, a horse dealer whose place of business was located in the next block uptown. Scrawny of build and short on temper, Larkin was gnawing on an unlit cigar. He moved aside for Lundy to enter, then closed and re-secured the door.
This was Trantor’s office, a fairly sizeable room with a window and balcony overlooking Main Street, upholstered chairs and a sofa, an oak desk highly polished, a swivel chair for the saloonkeeper, a liquor cabinet and, to the left, a door that opened into Trantor’s bedroom. Trantor was seated at the desk. Lounging in chairs fronting the desk were his two table hands, the beefy, florid-faced Lee Burch, the scarred and lynx-eyed Rollo Yuill. Lundy beat Larkin to the most comfortable chair that remained. It groaned in protest as he sank into it. Scowling, Larkin strode across to perch on a corner of the desk.
Trantor gave the lawman no time for a greeting, but abruptly announced, “We’re still undecided about postponing the project. If we hold off this time, it means waiting for quite a few months.”
“Yeah, sure,” nodded Lundy.
“If we don’t postpone,” said Trantor, “it’s possible we’d be riding into an ambush. Those troopers would be alerted, reinforced—more than ready for us—and we wouldn’t stand a chance. You do realize that, Gus?”
“What you mean,” grinned Lundy, “is Curtis will tip our hand—unless we cut him in.”
“He’s feeling mean,” muttered Trantor. “I think he’d make good on his threat.”
“I’d admire to get my hands on that snooping sonofabitch,” growled Burch. He made talons of his hands, as he added, “Just for a couple minutes.”
“In a way, we deserve to be blackmailed by that lousy tinhorn,” drawled the scar-faced Yuill. As the other men glowered at him, he grinned mirthlessly. “We got careless, didn’t we? We sat in this same room and planned how we’re gonna steal a fifty thousand dollar payroll from the army— and none of us thought to check this damn-blasted balcony.” He jerked a thumb to the open window. “Curtis was squattin’ out there all the time—listenin’ to every word we said.”
“And the very next night—the very next night,” stressed Larkin, “Ernie had to throw him out of the saloon, give him fifteen minutes to get out of town.”
Red faced with rage, but speaking almost in a whisper, the saloonkeeper demanded to be told, “How was I to know he’d been eavesdropping? He was a stranger in town. I scarce noticed him until he called Lee a sharper.” He eyed Lundy resentfully. “Gus—what the hell are you grinning about?”
“There’s a funny side to it.” The fat man paused to emit a wheezy chuckle. “Curtis rode out of Durrance with our little secret locked snug in his greedy brain, and now he can sit back and demand a cut of the loot. You’d like for one of us to go find him and shut his mouth, but the hell of it is he knows us all. He’d spot us at once, and shuttin’ his mouth wouldn’t be an easy chore.”
“We can’t even be sure where he’s holed up,” muttered Burch.
“The letter I got from Curtis,” said Trantor, “was mailed from Lewisburg.”
“Why would he stick to Lewisburg?” challenged Larkin.
“Why wouldn't he stick to Lewisburg?” countered Trantor. “Why should he run? He figures himself for a winner—sitting behind a pat hand. With fifty thousand at stake, he likely doesn’t believe we’d try to shut his mouth.”
“Sure.” Lundy nodded in agreement. “If any of us showed our faces in Lewisburg, he’d hightail it to the sheriff and blab the whole story.”
“And I don’t want to hire a gun to silence Curtis,” said Trantor. “Hiring a gun is like inviting somebody else to blackmail you.”
“Well, you can quit frettin’, Ernie boy,” grinned Lundy. “I got it all figured out. I know a feller who’d give his eye-teeth for a shot at Curtis—and it won’t cost you a cent. What’s more, he won’t try to blackmail you.”
“Somebody who’ll kill Curtis—just to do me a favor?” jibed Trantor. “You’re crazy.”
“Like a fox I’m crazy,” countered the fat man. “You hear what I got to say—then tell me I’m crazy.�
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Three – Thieves’ Conspiracy
The crooked lawman had been talking for ten minutes, during which time Rollo Yuill played barkeep and poured double shots of Trantor’s private bourbon for all hands.
There were no interruptions. Every word uttered by the fat man was heeded, weighed, assessed.
Not until Lundy was pausing to take a pull at his drink did Trantor fire a question.
“How smart a hombre is this Rand?”
“Plenty smart, I’d say,” shrugged Lundy. “But what difference? He’ll still go for it, Ernie. He’s a man hungerin’ for revenge. It’s eatin’ away at him, and he ain’t never gonna be satisfied till this Jenner feller is bleedin’ on the ground in front of his gun—this Jenner feller, or some galoot he thinks is Jenner.”
“Let me see that picture again,” said Trantor, and the sketch of Jenner was passed back to him; all five men had studied it with care. After another scrutiny, the saloon owner remarked, “There isn’t all that much resemblance.”
“I still say you could fool Rand,” insisted Lundy. “He’ll believe it because he wants to believe it—and you’re a man who can always find the right words, Ernie.”
“It’s a chance, Ernie,” Burch suggested. “You get rid of Curtis—and it don’t cost you a thin dime.”
“But I’d want to know a lot more about Rand,” muttered Trantor. “We have nothing to gain by sending him to Lewisburg unless we can be sure he’ll put Curtis away. Gus claims he’s big, tough and smart. I don’t doubt that—but how do we know he’s fast with a gun? Can we afford to take it for granted? If he hustles to Lewisburg, has a shootout with Curtis and loses—where does that leave us?”
“Ernie’s got a point there,” drawled Yuill. “There’s many a big man—many a tough hombre—that can’t shoot worth a damn.”
“All right, why don’t you do this?” offered Lundy. ‘I'll send Rand to you, give you a chance for a parley, so you can size him up.”
“Yeah, that’s what you’d better do,” nodded Trantor.
Grinning, the fat man finished his drink, heaved his bulk out of his chair and waddled to the door. A short time later, upon enquiring for the big stranger at the Marris house, he was informed that Jim had gone to Bigelow’s a nearby barber shop-cum-bathhouse.
“The Mex, too?” Lundy asked the desk clerk.
The clerk grimaced.
“Him? Hell, no. I wouldn’t know where he is—and he sure isn’t the kind to patronize a bathhouse.”
“Not partial to soap and water, eh?” chuckled Lundy.
“If you get close enough to him,” scowled the clerk, “you’d damn soon know what I mean.”
At Bigelow’s, the fat lawman found Jim relaxing in a barber’s chair. Bigelow had clipped his thick thatch of brown hair and was now shaving him.
“Got a little news for you, Rand,” Lundy announced.
“Good information—or just a hunch?” challenged Jim. “Well, it doesn’t much matter. I’ll settle for anything.”
“Can’t make you no promises,” shrugged Lundy. He remained in the doorway, and the tonsorial parlor became darker; there was no free space through which daylight could filter when Gus Lundy filled a doorway. “But I reckon it’s worth checkin’ on.”
“What’s the word?” demanded Jim.
“Ernie Trantor figures Jenner could be the same feller he threw out of his saloon a little while back,” said Lundy. “He owns the Cimarron, downtown a ways. That’s where you’ll find your picture of Jenner.”
“Get a hustle on,” Jim briskly ordered the barber.
“No hurry,” grunted Lundy. “If this feller really is Jenner, you could find him inside a couple days.”
“He isn’t still here in Durrance?” asked Jim.
“Nope. Up north in Lewis County,” said the fat man. “He was seen in Lewisburg a few days ago, and it looked like he was workin’ there—which means he ain’t apt to skedaddle before you get there.”
“I wouldn’t want to take any chances on that,” frowned Jim.
“You’d have to wait till tomorrow mornin’ to cross the river,” said Lundy. This was true enough. A storm had caused the Cimarron River to run high, flooding its banks in the Durrance area. Locals familiar with the waterway’s fractious habits had asserted that no safe fording could be made before dawn of the morrow. He explained this to Jim, and added, “You gotta hand it to these old timers. When they’ve lived close to a big river for a long time, you can rely on anything they say about it. If they say wait till tomorrow to put a horse across that old Cimarron, a man’d be a fool to try it any sooner.”
“In that case,” Jim told the barber, “you don’t need to hustle—and I’ll still have that bath.”
“Well, I got chores,” yawned Lundy. “ ’Be seein’ you, Rand.”
“One last thing,” said Jim.
“Yeah?” The fat man raised his eyebrows.
“Just how reliable is this Trantor?” challenged Jim. “Maybe he really believes he’s seen Jenner—and maybe he has too much imagination. What’s your opinion?”
“Ernie Trantor’s a mighty reliable feller,” Lundy solemnly assured him. “Level headed and likeable, too. He’d never lie to you, and I can tell you the Cimarron is the squarest saloon in this man’s town—were you gonna say somethin’, Bigelow?”
He broke off to aim that challenge at the barber, who frowned, shook his head and muttered, “No. Nary a word.”
“Like I was sayin’,” the fat man continued, “Ernie runs an honest house. Every game of chance at the Cimarron is fair and square. Anything Ernie tells you—it’s the gospel truth.”
“Fine,” nodded Jim. “I’ll be along to see him in a little while.”
After availing himself of the facilities of the Bigelow bathhouse and donning clean clothing, he felt a great deal more comfortable. The clinging itch of trail dust was inevitable to outdoors men. He bore with it while on the move, but saw no reason to suffer such discomfort when hot water, soap and tubs were readily available. After toting his travel stained clothing to a Chinese laundry, he made his way to the Cimarron Saloon. En route he was briefly reunited with the Mex.
Benito was lounging in a boardwalk chair, his sombrero tipped over his face, his battered guitar on his lap. He looked to be dozing, until Jim paused and bent to lift the headgear. Revealing seventy-five per cent of his bucked-teeth in a leer, the Mex greeted him.
“Saludos, Amigo Jim.”
“Saludos yourself,” frowned Jim. “You staying out of trouble—minding your own business—picking no pockets?”
“These questions are an insult!” Benito plaintively protested.
“Let’s have a straight answer,” Jim suggested, “to my insulting questions.”
“I harm nobody,” mumbled Benito. “I sit in the sun. I rest. I smile at the Señoritas. Is this a crime?”
“I might be quitting this burg tomorrow morning,” said Jim. “If you’re in jail by then, I’ll let you stay there—you savvy, cucaracha?”
“Si,” sighed Benito. “I savvy.”
“You eaten yet?” demanded Jim.
“No,” said Benito. “And I am much hungry.”
Jim dug out a coin and flipped it. The Mex caught it deftly, flashed him another leer, got to his feet and ambled away. Jim moved on to the Cimarron. It was afternoon now and the barroom was thronged with thirsty locals, some of whom were helping themselves to the counter lunch.
Lee Burch easily recognized Jim from the marshal’s description. As the big man breasted the bar and ordered beer, the poker dealer materialized beside him, introduced himself and told him, “You’ll find Ernie upstairs in his office. Make yourself to home, Rand. Grab a platter of chow. You might’s well eat while you parley with the boss. He’s eating anyway.”
Jim had an appetite and was in no need of a second invitation. He helped himself to a platter of sandwiches, curled the fingers of his right hand about the handle of his tankard.
“All right.”
He nodded his thanks to the gambler. “I’ll go see Trantor rightaway.”
“The feller you’re after,” mused Burch, “could be the one we threw out. Fancies pearls, does he?”
“A pearl stickpin and a pearl ring.” Jim paused to nod emphatically.
“Uh huh. He sold me a ring and a pin,” lied Burch, “the night before we threw him out. But don’t ask to see ’em, friend. I sold ’em to a whisky drummer the very same night—at a profit.”
Jim’s pulse quickened, as he toted his beer and his lunch to the stairs. A boldly curved percentage girl with dyed red hair came to the bar to join Burch, and to ask,
“Who’s the handsome stranger?”
Burch glowered at her. She had been employed at the Cimarron for some little time and was familiar with the machinations of its owner and staff. Her name was Joanna Gifford and, like all of her kind, she had a weakness for flashy bangles and beads, silken gowns and an easy dollar. For quite a few months, Burch had considered her to be his own personal property. He reminded her of that now, emphasizing his words by gripping her bare arm.
“You coax the suckers to the tables or make ’em buy more liquor than they need—and that’s all, Jo, and don’t you forget it. I’m the only one who takes you home—you hear me?”
“With you growlin’ in my ear like an old bear,” she frowned, “how can I help but hear you?”
“And you can forget about the big feller,” said Burch.
“Who is he, anyway?” she demanded, as he released his grip of her arm.
“His name is Rand,” said Burch, “and that’s all you need to know about him.”
With both hands occupied, Jim was obliged to use his boot toe to knock at the office door. Trantor was in his shirtsleeves now, and alone. He opened the door, gestured for the big man to take the chair in front of the desk.
“Pleased to meet you, Rand.”
“Likewise,” Jim acknowledged. “And don’t stop eating on my account.”
Having closed the door, Trantor resumed his seat on the other side of the desk. He was, like Jim, lunching on a platter of sandwiches and a tankard of beer. Carefully, he refolded and returned Jim’s picture of Jenner.
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