RIVERTON, THE next town south of Yavapai on the trail to Tucson, was almost a carbon copy of its northern neighbor. The dirt street, the straggle of buildings of timber, ’dobe, or mixtures of both were different only in the signs on them. In Riverton’s street the dust was hock-deep, and a stiff westerly breeze tossed handfuls of it into the eyes of pedestrians hurrying about their business. Unlike Yavapai, Riverton boasted no bank, and its only eating place was a hash-house run by a wooden-legged ex-cowboy named Casey, who had been trampled in a stampede many years earlier and, after a few years as a trail cook, had decided to go into business for himself. His food was eatable; nothing more. The lack of competition kept him busy, and at around one o’clock in the afternoon he was usually able to stand with his greasy hands on his ample hips and count a satisfactory full house. He was doing this very thing when the stranger came in, and he bent his full attention upon the newcomer. Tall, but stooped as though his shoulders bore some heavy weight, the man was dressed in cheap Levi’s, a woolen shirt that looked as if it had been cast off in the War Between the States, and cracked, battered boots without spurs. He wore no gun belt, but Casey could see the butt of what looked like an old cap and ball revolver protruding from the man’s trouser waistband. The man removed a grease-stained old sombrero from his head, revealing hair matted with dirt and sand, and whose color might once have been dark brown or black. Steel-rimmed eyeglasses and a heavy stubble of beard adorned the face, and when the newcomer smiled sheepishly at him and took a seat at a table Casey noted that the man’s teeth were stained and yellow. Casey was a great one for taking note of his customers’ personal appearance. He had several times, when he first opened for business, made the mistake of serving panhandlers like this one only to find, after they had consumed his food, that they had no money. He had extracted his price from their faces with his own meaty fists, but it wasn’t the same. He had vowed therefore to make sure which of his customers could pay before he served them. Casey stumped over to where the man had taken his seat, and the man cringed at his approach.
‘Good … good day to you, sir,’ he mumbled. ‘I’d … I’d like …’
‘Afore yu tell me what yu’d like, let’s see the color of yer money,’ Casey told him peremptorily. ‘This ain’t no charity I’m runnin!’
One or two of his regular customers grinned. Casey’s preference for cash on the barrel was well known in Riverton; they watched, half hoping that the nondescript newcomer would have no money, for Casey would surely thereupon provide an entertaining few minutes before the penurious one was thrown into the dusty street. They were disappointed, however; the man produced a greasy buckskin sack, and showed Casey a dollar bill-creased and battered almost beyond recognition, but a dollar it surely was. Casey nodded and, returning to his kitchen, dished up the meal. He thereupon forgot about the man, as customers finished their meals, and paid; others entered and ordered. Around the middle of the day was always busy, and it was not until about two-thirty that the wooden-legged hash-slinger noticed that the stranger who’d paid with the ragged dollar bill was still in his chair, smoking a vile-smelling cigar. He stumped across the room, now empty except for the smoking one, and stood facing him, arms akimbo.
‘Yu’ve finished.’ It was not a question, and the man nodded nervously. ‘Yu’ll be leavin’, then.’ The man nodded again.
He rose to go, and then hesitantly stuttered, ‘Mi-might I ask yore help, mister?’
‘If it’s money yu want, the answer’s no,’ Casey told him flatly.
The stranger shook his matted head. ‘No … heh, heh … not money, got plenty o’ money. Well … as good as money.’ He tapped the side of his nose and winked at Casey knowingly, while that worthy maintained his outward air of puzzled indifference.
‘What’s yore name, mister?’ Casey barked.
‘Name’s Smith,’ the man told him. ‘John Smith.’ His cracked smile was evil, and the stink of liquor on his breath was strong enough to cut with a carving knife. ‘Yu reckon I could find me a buyer for some cows I got?’
‘How many head?’ Casey wanted to know. ‘An’ what’s the brand?’
‘Fifty,’ replied the man who had called himself Smith. ‘As to the brand … heh, heh, heh … it’s the Variable brand … heh, the Variable.’ He spluttered and wheezed as though these words were mountainously funny, while Casey regarded him stonily.
‘What makes yu think I can help yu find a buyer?’ he snapped. ‘I ain’t in the cattle business.’
‘Never said yu was,’ cackled Smith. ‘If yu don’t know nobody, no harm done I’ll be off to the saloon, then.’
Casey watched the man leave his premises, and waited until Smith had loped across the street and into Buckmaster’s Long Branch saloon. Then, with surprising speed, the hash-handler doffed his apron, clapped a Stetson on his bald pate, and quit his establishment, following a route which led him around the back of the houses on the east side of the street to an alley shaded by a tall cottonwood. He knocked on a heavy timber door, and a cold voice said, ‘Who is it?’
‘Casey,’ puffed the old man, winded by his effort in the afternoon sun. The door opened, and a cold-eyed man in a dark suit bade him enter.
John Smith sat in the rear of Buckmaster’s saloon nursing his drink. From beneath the forward-tilted brim of his battered Stetson he watched the flow of customers in and out of the saloon with keen eyes. At this time of day there were not many faces to watch, but he kept on guard none the less. A faint smile, completely out of character with the cackling, dirty character who had spoken to Casey, crossed his face. ‘If Philadelphia seen me now,’ he murmured, ‘he’d probably say I was loco – an’ I ain’t shore but he’d be right.’ Sudden – for such was the identity of the itinerant who had so completely foxed the hash-handler – saw no signs that his very broad hints of stolen cattle for disposal had been directed at the right man, but it seemed obvious that someone who had contact with practically every visitor to the town would know what Green wanted to know. This was his reason for coming to Riverton. He had asked Harris for some old and battered clothes, ignoring the older man’s curious stare, and, shortly prior to entering Riverton, had rubbed sand and earth sparingly into his hair to give it a tangled, matted effect. Unshaven jaws had also been rubbed with earth to heighten the look of unvarnished scruffiness, and as a finishing touch Green had found the steel-rimmed glasses in the Harris house just before he had left. The result, when he altered his height by stooping, stained his teeth by chewing tobacco, and swilling whisky round his mouth to make his breath stink of liquor, and changed his normally lithe walk by replacing it with a lop-sided loping gait, was a complete transformation of his appearance.
‘Mightn’t be necessary a-tall,’ he had told himself. ‘But it’d be a mite unfortunate if anyone in Riverton reckernised me.’
As he sat at the table thinking, he saw two men come in, and his eyes narrowed. They let their gaze wander, apparently with only the mildest interest, about the saloon, not remaining on him any longer than anyone else there. One of the two men was a tall, cadaverous-looking individual with a wide-brimmed, flat-crowned white hat such as those worn by plantation owners. The appearance of a rich Southern landowner was heightened by the dark suit, the brocaded waistcoat, and the shining knee-boots, worn without spurs. The man was trimming a long panatela cigar, and Sudden heard him order bourbon whisky with branch water. ‘Riverboat gambler,’ was Green’s guess as he bent his attention upon the man’s crony. This one was almost uncomfortably fat, and perspiration lay upon his face like melting lard. The man stood no more than five feet high, and was almost as wide across the middle. He wore only white linen shirt and trousers, and a pair of flat-heeled half-boots. Around his enormous middle hung a gun belt. As far as the cow-puncher could see, the gambler was unarmed, but he bet himself the man would have a hideaway gun somewhere on his person.
‘Shore looks the type,’ he told himself. ‘Wal, here goes!’
So saying, he rose to his feet, assuming once more the half-crouched gait of the John Smith whose role he was playing, and approached the bar. He ordered beer, and stood next to the tall gambler to drink it.
‘Mighty hot today, ain’t it?’ offered the fat man, mopping his face with a large white bandanna. Sudden nodded, smiling weakly.
‘Kind o’ weather makes a man wish he didn’t have to work for a livin’,’ pursued the fat man.
‘Know … know what yu mean,’ grinned Green fatuously. ‘Feel the same way. Yu gents care to set down, jine me fer a snort?’
‘Don’t mind if I do,’ agreed the fat man. ‘Ranee?’ He turned to his companion, who affected to notice ‘John Smith’ for the first time.
‘Ah beg yo’ pardon?’
‘This gent’s invitin’ yu to jine him,’ the fat man said.
‘Ah don’t b’lieve Ah’ve had the pleasure, suh?’ the man named Ranee said to Green. Green introduced himself as John Smith, and the man nodded and, dusting the seat with a handkerchief, sat down at the table.
‘What business yu in, Mr. Smith?’ asked the fat man.
‘Heh … this ‘n’ that,’ Green mumbled. ‘Sellin’ an’ buyin’.’
‘An’ what brings yu-all to Riverton, Mr. Smith,’ asked the gambler silkily, ‘buyin’ or sellin’?’
Green smiled. ‘S-sell … say: yu boys ain’t the Law, or anythin’? I mean …’
The fat man held up a deprecating hand. ‘My dear feller,’ he said. ‘Thisyere is Ranee Fontaine. He’s one o’ the biggest businessmen in these parts. Runs a ranch up north o’ here.’
‘Ah’m shoah Mr. Smith heah didn’t come to talk about me,’ said Fontaine. His voice changed, became businesslike and sharp. ‘Who told yu to come here, Smith?’
Sudden smiled grimly to himself at the disappearance of Fontaine’s pose, although no trace of his satisfaction appeared on his face, which was, to the watchers, a study in confusion and nervousness.
‘Why … I … yu … I was told …’ he stuttered, apparently almost frightened out of his wits.
‘Who told yu, Smith?’ snarled the fat man, leaning forward. In the same moment Sudden felt a solid poke in the ribs, and knew that the fat man had drawn his gun under the concealment of his huge midriff, and that the barrel was now flush against his, Sudden’s, heart.
‘Yu … yu gents got me … heh, heh … all wrong,’ he managed. ‘I done heard a feller could offload a few head … down here. Nobody mentioned no names. I just … I just heard it. In a saloon … Tyler’s, I think it was called.’
‘Where’d yu get the cattle?’ snapped the fat man. His former bumbling appearance had dropped away. Green mentally saluted him for his acting ability; he imagined very few people in Riverton paid more than passing attention to this perspiring fat man, yet it was plain to see he was as dangerous as a cornered pack-rat.
‘Picked … picked ’em up in a canyon up in the Yavapais,’ he said. ‘I was … I was just prospectin’ up there, tryin’ to raise a few ounces o’ dust. Hoss broke his hobbles an’ I … had to track him down. Found him in this box canyon.’
‘Where d’yu say this was?’ the fat man demanded.
‘Up in the Yavapais, northeast o’ Apache Canyon,’ Green told them.
‘An’ yu say yu found the cattle in this canyon?’
‘Yeah,’ Green told them. ‘Couldn’t unnerstand it. Nobody around. No riders. Yet these cows all bunched in the one canyon. I figgered somebody had rounded ’em up … mighty kind, heh, heh, I figgered. I hazed ’em along the river-bank, movin’ at night. Never seen a soul the whole time I was in that country.’
The fat man looked at his colleague, and that worthy jerked his head. ‘Stay put,’ the fat man told Green, and rose to walk off a few yards away from the table. Green covertly watched their expressions. The tall man was telling the shorter one that there was something peculiar about the story they had been told; the fat man kept shaking his head and sneering.
‘Ranee Fontaine b’lieves my story the way I b’lieve his,’ Green told himself. ‘Let’s hope Fatty there persuades him.’ It seemed as though his hopes were to be realized, for a moment later the two men returned to the table.
‘Where’s the herd, Smith?’ asked the fat man.
‘In a safe place,’ replied Sudden, putting a fatuous smile on his face. ‘I got ’em cached tight.’
They dickered for a few moments about prices, and agreed on a figure. The tall Fontaine stood up. ‘Vince here’ll make arrangements about payin’ yu,’ he said. He turned on his heel and walked away without another word.
‘He … ain’t too perlite,’ said Green surlily, playing his part. Vince’s smile was anything but warm.
‘He don’t have to be,’ he told Green. ‘Now where’d yu say yu got yore camp?’
Green gave him directions for getting to a watering hole that he had passed, north of town, and told him he would wait for him there.
‘I’ll be along at nightfall,’ Vince promised him. ‘Yu be keerful with that shootin’ arm o’ yourn, Smith. I don’t aim to get shot by no nervous cow-thief.’
Sudden nodded, maintaining his nervous pose until the fat man finally bade him farewell and left the saloon. The man from the Mesquites moved apparently carelessly across the room as Vince crossed the street. Through a window he was able to pinpoint the man’s path and notice that he disappeared up an alley farther up the street. Green nodded once and then shuffled out of the back door of the saloon. Behind one of the houses he had tethered Midnight, and in his saddlebags were stowed his own clothes and guns. Dousing himself quickly with water from a nearby trough, Green removed the dirt and grime from his hair and face. A few minutes later, the identity of Smith completely shed, he emerged once more into the street of Riverton, his hat pulled low over his face to avoid the million-to-one chance that someone in the town would know him.
On silent feet he slipped up the alleyway he had marked as Vince’s route. The sound of hearty laughter emerging from a slightly open window drew him near; crouching, he edged to a position below the sill of the window. The voices were those of the two men he had met in the saloon.
‘ … money from home,’ Vince was saying, to the accompaniment of gusts of laughter from Fontaine. ‘The old geezer tells me where he’s got the cows. I ride out there to pay him an’ he hands the cows over to me.’
‘On’y yu pay him in lead, ‘stead o’ silver,’ said Fontaine. ‘It’s easy pickin’s.’
‘Ol’ fool musta been born yestiddy,’ laughed Vince. ‘He shore oughta be put away, anyways. If Jim Dancy gets ahold o’ him he’ll salt his tail shore!’
‘Yu don’t reckon …’ Once again Fontaine burst out laughing. ‘Yu mean … this ol’ soak found Dancy’s canyon?’
‘It’s gotta be, Ranee,’ hooted Vince. ‘There couldn’t be two that close to Apache Canyon.’
The two men laughed again, and the listening puncher smiled grimly to himself. His ruse had worked like a charm, better than he had dared hope. If Jim Dancy was selling these two cattle, as their conversation indicated, then he was stealing them from either Saber or from the homesteaders. If Dancy was behind the rustling, then someone else was behind Dancy and it wasn’t Lafe Gunnison, who would hardly be likely to steal his own cattle. Sudden’s half-smile changed to a grim one; it looked like he was overdue a long chat with Mr. Dancy. He edged back from his listening post and swiftly walked the few yards to where he had hitched Midnight.
The idea of arranging a reception for the fat man when he went to the waterhole that night intending to kill poor, defenseless ‘John Smith’ occurred to him, and caused a frosty smile to play around his eyes, but he dismissed the temptation.
‘There’s more important things to do,’ he told himself. ‘I’d best head back for the Mesquites. Jake’ll be wondering what’s happened to me.’