Adam took Julia’s horse to the livery stable. All was quiet there, so he unsaddled her mount and turned it into the corral. He took the tack into the barn and left it.
Usually the fun was in full swing at the saloons around midnight, but tonight the street was quiet. Maybe the murder had subdued folks and kept them home this evening. Adam was glad—he wouldn’t feel too guilty if, instead of making the rounds, he went to his cot in the jail and slept for a few hours.
As he rode past the intersection, he glanced toward the third house down the cross street. A light shone in his uncle’s house. It wasn’t in the front room. Someone had lit a lantern in the room where Uncle Royce treated patients.
Adam swerved his horse toward it. He’d made up his mind to ride down the stage robber. If Uncle Royce was up, he might as well tell him of his plans.
He dropped Socks’s reins and left him standing in the street. The front door was unlocked, as always. Adam went in and followed the light to the doorway of the treatment room. His uncle had a cupboard open and was taking out some of his medical instruments and putting them into a wooden crate on the table.
Adam cleared his throat. “Hey, Uncle Royce.”
The gray-haired man turned and gave him a nod. “I wondered when you’d come by.”
“I almost didn’t, but I saw your light and thought I’d stop in and see how you’re doing.”
Royce shot him an odd look. “I’m…fine, Adam.”
“Thought you might have a patient when I saw the lamp was on in here.”
“No, no patient.”
“Well, I wanted to tell you that I’m heading out first thing in the morning.”
“Heading out? Where are you going?”
Adam took off his hat and scrubbed his hand across his brow. “I’m going after the stage robber, Uncle Royce. You heard about that?”
“Oh, yes.” The old man sounded a little vague. He turned back to the cupboard and took out a pair of forceps.
Adam looked over at the desk. A bottle of Kessler whiskey stood on the blotter, with an empty glass beside it. The bottle was still nearly full, and Adam decided not to mention it. The old man wasn’t drunk now. If he wanted a glass before he went to bed, why should his nephew interfere?
“Lionel should have called you to look Bub Hilliard over,” he said.
Royce shook his head as he put the forceps in the box. “Don’t worry about that.”
“Well, it was too late, anyhow, but folks shouldn’t ignore you, just because there’s a younger doctor in town now.”
“This is as it should be, Adam.” Royce picked up a small metal case and placed it in the crate. The cupboard was nearly empty now.
“What are you doing, anyway?” Adam stepped closer and peered into the box. His uncle appeared to have stripped the cabinet of instruments and packed them all.
“My practice is finished now. I thought perhaps Dr. Browning could use some of these things. Of course, he has a lot of newer instruments, but he might find some of them useful.”
“Oh come on, Uncle Royce. You can still see patients.”
“Actually, I don’t think I can. The time has come for me to retire.”
“Well, we’ll talk about that when I come back, you hear me? Don’t give that stuff away yet.”
“I’m too old, Adam.”
“Hogwash. You still know how to cure people.”
Uncle Royce shook his head. “My time is over.”
“Quit that.” Adam clapped him on the shoulder. “I’ll be back in a few days, as soon as I run down this road agent. You and me will have dinner at the boardinghouse, all right?”
“Sure, Adam. I’ll see you then.”
“So long.” Adam walked out unsatisfied. If his uncle gave up seeing patients, what would happen to him? He didn’t want to see Uncle Royce wither away. He’d have to come up with a scheme to get a few of his old patients to give him some business. It didn’t have to be a lot—just enough to keep the old doctor interested.
He reached the jail and tried to put it out of his mind. Right now he needed sleep, so he’d be sharp when he went after the outlaw.
The pounding continued. Julia threw off the bedclothes and groped for her robe. With trembling hands, she lit the lamp. As she hurried down the stairs, the knocking was renewed. What news could be so urgent? Oh please, God, not Oliver!
“Who is it?”
“Name’s Harrison.”
Julia hesitated. Did she know anyone named Harrison? On the other hand, would a man intending to harm her announce his name? She set down the lamp, threw back the bolt, and opened the door a crack. Staring at her in the light of the lamp was a grizzled old man.
Julia wished she’d fetched the pistol she’d bought before her trip home, but it was too late now. The old man grinned at her, showing a gap in his upper jaw where a tooth was missing. His mottled beard looked as though it hadn’t seen soap and water for months. He yanked off his felt hat.
“Don’tcha remember me, Miss Julie?”
She looked him over, trying not to shudder. “I guess not. Help me out.”
“I’m Clew Harrison.”
She eyed his face closely, though she didn’t want to, and this time she caught a glimmer of a remembered face.
“Oh, sure. You came to Canyon Diablo when we lived there.”
“That’s right.” He slapped his thigh and laughed. “You been there lately?”
“No. Not since my father died.”
“Aw, yeah. That was a sad day for you, I’ll bet. The Diné sure liked him when he was up there.”
Julia’s father had served as Indian agent at the Canyon Diablo trading post from 1899 to 1902, when Canyon Diablo was little more than a ghost town. The trading post served the Navajo community, and most of the friends the Newman family made during that time were Navajo, or Diné as the tribe members called themselves.
“I remember when that town had fourteen saloons,” Clew said. “Wildest place this side of Tombstone.”
“It was pretty quiet by the time my family lived there,” Julia said. She remembered climbing about the ruins of the town with her brother. “Nothing left but the trading post now.” Most of the buildings had been dismantled and removed on the train to the next spot where the track crews needed a town.
“Yup. I used to haul supplies up there for your daddy.”
“That’s right.” Now that he mentioned it, Julia recalled Clew Harrison coming to their home a few times and stopping for a meal with her family after his business at the trading post was finished. “May I help you, Mr. Harrison? It’s very late.”
“Oh, I know, and I’m sorry about that. But I got to tell you something.”
Julia hesitated. Could this unorthodox visit have something to do with Oliver? She swung the door open wider. “Come in then.”
He walked in and looked around at the comfortable room, nodding with satisfaction. “Yup. Your ma was a real lady, and she always kept a snug house.”
“Thank you, Mr. Harrison. What—”
“You always called me Clew when you was a little nipper.” He winked at her.
Julia swallowed hard, trying to reconcile her vague memories of a kindly freighter with this rather repulsive old man.
“How long was you folks at Canyon Diablo?” he asked.
“About three years, all told. Then my father became a sheriff’s deputy here in Ardell.”
Clew nodded. “Well, I been working for two years now at the High Desert Mine.”
“Oh?” Julia’s pulse picked up. “What do you do there?”
“I’m just their general fetch-it man.”
“Then you must see Oliver regularly.”
“My, yes, he’s a good chum. It pays to have a friend in the front office, you know?”
Julia couldn’t imagine what good Oliver had done for this man, but she nodded. “Do you know where Oliver is now, Clew?”
He smiled and stuck his hand in his pants pocket, fished around for a few seconds, and pulled out a crumpled piece of paper.
“What’s this?” She took it and smoothed it out on the arm of the nearest chair. She caught her breath. Sketched in pencil were several simple drawings. “Where did you get this?”
“Why, your brother, of course.”
Of course. The crude figures were symbols she and Ollie had found when they were children, carved in the walls of a cave near Canyon Diablo. Through the rest of their childhood they’d used the “rock writing” as a code. She looked at the old man again. “You saw him. When?”
“This afternoon. The sheriff came out to the mine and told Mr. Gerry about the robbery. While he was there, they found out Oliver was missing. After the sheriff left, Gerry and the other bigwigs were saying that Ollie must have stolen the payroll—and the sheriff would have to catch him.”
“How do you know what they said?”
Clew shrugged. “They don’t pay any attention to me. I’m just an old man who totes wood for their stoves and sweeps up the bark chips. ‘Course, I didn’t believe a word of it. Ollie would never do a thing like that. So I went out to the stable and waited for him. Figured wherever he’d got to this mornin’, he had to come back sooner or later.”
“Did he?”
“Sure enough. He come back about a hour after the sheriff was there. He’d been down to the miners’ village. Well, I told him everything.”
Julia stepped closer to him, her heart pounding. “What did he say?”
“Well, he was stunned. Couldn’t believe they’d think that of him—robbing the stage and killing a man. Why, Bub Hilliard was a friend of his’n.”
Julia nodded. The relief that swept over her drained her strength, and she sat down in one of the overstuffed chairs. “Go on, please.”
“Well, he wrote this here paper and told me his sister was coming home—maybe today.” Clew grinned again. “He was mighty tickled that you were coming, Miss Julie. He told me to get the message to you as soon as you arrived in town, but to do it when nobody else was around.”
Julia’s head whirled. “But I was already here by then.”
“Yes’m. You’d got back when the stage came. I found that out. But you wasn’t here.”
“That must have been when I rode back to the place where we were robbed.”
Clew nodded. “I just hung around town, keeping my head down so to speak. I seen you once, talking to somebody at the store, but Ollie had said not to tell you when there was anyone about, so I waited. I came back here after supper, and you was gone again. Finally it occurred to me to check at the livery. Sam come in after dark, and he told me you’d rented a horse and ridden outta town. Well, I wasn’t sure what to do, so I walked over to the saloon.”
Julia had to credit him with not drinking himself under the table in the intervening hours. “I’m sorry you had such a hard time finding me. But I’m glad you’re here now. Where is Oliver? Can I see him?”
“Don’t rightly know. He said he’d keep outta sight and I should just give you that paper. I expected it would tell you where he was.”
She looked down at the paper again. The first symbol was a lizard, the one she had used for her name. The last one was his symbol—an eagle. She’d need some time to rack her memory and decipher the runes in between.
“It may at that. I need time to work it out, though.”
“Well, I’m sorry things are going so bad for you. Most folks in town seem to think Ollie’s guilty, but I know he ain’t.” Clew shook his head. “I heard Lucas Morley say that boy oughta be hung. It ain’t right.”
Julia felt weak. What if the angry townspeople got to Oliver before he was proven innocent? She managed to stand, though her knees wobbled.
“Why don’t you tell the deputy sheriff that Oliver’s innocent?”
“Naw. Adam Scott wouldn’t listen to me, no more’n the bosses at the mine would.”
Julia wondered about that. She had no idea how Clew was perceived in the community. She did know that Adam had made up his mind about the robber, and the old man might be right.
“Thank you very much for bringing the message, Clew.”
He nodded and patted his hat on. “Anytime. And I won’t tell anyone else.”
“I appreciate that.”
She walked with him to the door and bolted it behind him. She went shakily back to her chair and sat down to ponder the message. Her heart refused to slow down. Oliver was alive and in good health, but he was in danger—not from outlaws, but from his friends here in Ardell. She had in her hand the only way to save his life.
For fifteen minutes she pored over the paper, trying to recall the code. She recognized the symbols they’d used for the desert and the trading post. Why hadn’t she kept a copy of their code?
She jumped up and hurried up the stairs to her room. In the bottom of the wardrobe was a box of old letters and school papers. She carried it to the bed and rooted through it. Near the bottom she found a couple of coded messages from her brother. Half an hour later she had worked out the new message. She knew where Oliver was—or at least, where he was headed.