The fresh air refreshed Spur after the heat of the dining room. He finished a smoke, crushed it under the heel of his boot and walked back into the hotel.
He found Mike Student in the lobby. The deputy looked both shaken and proud.
‘I done it, Spur,’ he said. ‘I arrested him.’
‘Nice work.’
Student sounded a little indignant when he said: ‘You didn’t tell me it was—’
Spur said quickly: ‘Come up to my room.’
He looked around. Silena Dueby was standing outside the dining room doorway. He smiled at her, she tossed her head and turned away. When they reached Spur’s room, Spur said: ‘Did he give you any trouble?’
‘No, but you should of told me.’
‘Would you have done it if you’d known?’
That stopped Student. He admitted: ‘I guess not.’
‘Did he give you a name to charge him under?’
‘Tom Dolan. That his real name?’
‘One of ’em. What did you charge him with?’
‘Horse stealin’.’
‘Can you make it stick?’
‘I’ll make it stick all right.’
‘When can you take him to court?’
‘Tomorrow.’
‘Good. But horse stealin’s a pretty bad charge. Hell, I’ve known men hang for that.’
‘It just come out. But I’ll think of somethin’. I’ll get a fine.’ Spur raised his eyebrows. Student was transparent.
‘It’ll be a pretty big fine for liftin’ a horse. Profit for the sheriff’s office, huh?’
Student had the grace to blush.
‘I’ll come down and see him in the mornin’,’ he opinioned. ‘A night in jail’ll do the Kid a world of good.’
Student left.
Spur put a chair under the handle of the door, pulled off his boots and lay full length on the bed. He thought comfortably for an hour, then got between the sheets. They were very white and very cool. He would have expected as much in a place that belonged to a girl like Silena Dueby.
The last thing he thought about was the woman’s garter that had been found on the sheriff’s body.
~*~
He was up before the heat of the day hit the town. He washed, shaved and went down to breakfast. Manuela served him. Silena was nowhere in sight. He flirted a little with the Mexican girl, then walked down to the sheriff’s office. Student was taking breakfast in to his prisoner.
‘Morin’, Kid,’ Spur said. He smiled benignly.
The Kid left his breakfast and stood gripping the bars. He was quietly and venomously mad. Spur wasn’t surprised. The Kid told him about his ancestry to way back and there wasn’t a legitimate birth in the whole bunch.
Student said: ‘My God, you goin’ to take that from him?’ Spur smiled.
‘Pay no heed. He’s just bein’ sentimental.’
Student said: ‘What’s he like when he gets nasty?’
‘He kills you, I reckon,’ Spur said.
The Kid shook the bars of his cell door like an infuriated wild beast.
He said: ‘Lettin’ a pig like this arrest me could ruin my rep. I musta been crazy to let you talk me into it.’
Spur said: ‘Use your head. Don’t get Student here mad or he’ll make the charge of horse stealin’ stick.’
‘Aw, no,’ the Kid said with some bitterness. ‘You won’t let that happen. No, sir, you need me an’ you need me bad.’
‘All right—calm down an’ I’ll tell you what you do.’
The Kid still looked as if he’d rather bend the bars and step out But Spur talked just the same. The Kid was going to be free that day. Did he have enough money to pay a fine? The Kid said he wasn’t goin’ to spend no money of his on payin’ a fine which Spur had incurred. To hell with him. Spur thought there was some justice in this. He handed ever a roll of bills to the Kid. Then he said: ‘I see Ben’s in town. Don’t you contact him unless you have to.’
‘Just get me out of here,’ the Kid said.
‘Now,’ said Spur, ‘I’m goin’ to tell you what you do when you get out of here.’
When he finished, the Kid groaned in a kind of agonized despair.
‘Hell,’ he said, ‘I oughta spit right in your eye. You know that? You just tell me what I get outa this?’
‘A righteous glow maybe,’ Spur said.
‘A bullet up my butt more like. I can’t see why I do these things for you.’
Spur turned away. Over his shoulder, he said, ‘You just know a better man when you see him.’
The Kid tried to walk through the bars to get at him. Then resisted the attempt.
Mike Student said: ‘Beats me why he strings along with you, Mr. Spur.’
‘Beats him too,’ said Spur. ‘You watered your charge down a mite?’
‘Resistin’ arrest. Ten-twenty dollar fine.’
‘What were you arrestin’ him for?’
The deputy-sheriff looked confused.
‘I—er—wa-al ... I told him to move along, git outa town and he give me some sass. One thing led to another an’ I had to arrest him.’
‘Sounds pretty weak to me.’
‘Yeah,’ said Student, ‘it does at that. I can’t git a witness to swear to that.’
‘You won’t need witnesses. The Kid’ll plead guilty.’
The lawman’s face brightened.
‘That’ll help some,’ he said.
Spur walked out onto the street. Walking into the heat was like walking into a brick wall. No wonder men did violent things in a place like this. He paced the street thinking over the little he knew. It didn’t amount to much. He wondered if anybody would be fool enough to bite at his bait of knowing who the murderer was. He doubted it.
Somewhere there was the man Furbee had hit. He was mighty badly hurt or he was dead. It shouldn’t be too easy to hide out a dead man or a badly wounded man. Mort Gaines had said that the gunman had ridden out of town to the east. A man as badly hit as that went the shortest way home because he was afraid of dying. He needed help.
But could he be sure that the man had left town? Mightn’t the smartest ploy be to stay right here in town.
He’d soon find out.
He went to the livery. The old man there hobbled out and Spur told him he had come for his horse. Just going a short ride. The old man could go back to his snooze. The old man did just that.
Spur walked into the barn and there he found a very ugly Negro asleep in the hay. He stood looking down at the man and said: ‘I thought you couldn’t keep out of it, you old bastard.’
Cusie Ben grinned.
‘When did you ever make out on your lonesome?’ he demanded softly.
Spur smiled.
‘The Kid’s arrested,’ he said. ‘He’ll be let out this mornin’. You see where he goes an’ what he does. Maybe he won’t be able to let me know. Find a nice dozin’ place in town where you can see it all. Be a nice peaceful stupid ole nigger now. Don’t get proddy.’
Ben said: ‘I natcherly an innocent no-account darky.’
‘Like hell you are,’ Spur said, went to the stall where the mare stood and brought her out. He saddled and, bridled her and led her out into the yard. He stepped into the saddle, walked her to the street and turned left to go east. He could feel the eyes watching him.
He rode out into a land blasted by the sun, the little grass that there was burned off, the brush parched; the mountains sprawled titanically, pale in their distance, the giant sierra shouldering the heavens. The nearer hills slumbered darkly in the heat. The man Spur sought could be up there in the wilderness by now, alive or dead.
He rode a mile or so along the hard rutted road; the land broke slightly before him and there before him were a few sun-washed trees, below the general level of the land so that he had not seen them previously. Here was a little water, poorly seeking its way through the thirsty land. He heard the bleat of goats. To his right, off the trail was a jackal. There were chickens pecking in the dust; a pen for the goats, a smell of goats hung in the air.
At the sound of the hoofs a woman came to the door, not old, not young, more than half Indian; two or three small children clung to her wide dusty skirts, one of them naked. He greeted her in Spanish and she flashed him a smile, showing strong white teeth. Her man was with the goats, over yonder to the south. He asked her if she had seen the wounded man riding away from town. No, she had seen nothing. He couldn’t tell if she was telling the truth. He would have to ask her man. It wasn’t far to the spot where he grazed the goats. Spur thanked her and rode around the house, going through the trees, alongside the water, south.
He found the man by the sound of his music and found him under a tree playing the flute. He got to his feet at Spur’s approach, smiling and greeting him politely. When Spur put his question, he looked a little afraid. It didn’t pay his people to know of the affairs of the gringos. But he admitted it—yes, he had seen the man in the darkness. That is, he had seen a man go by all bent forward in his saddle as if he were hurt, but he had seen nothing of him but a dark shape. Spur thanked him and turned back for the road. So far so good, he had established that the man had left town and headed for the hills. But the man’s trail was lost in the sign already on the road. Spur turned back for town.
As he entered the place, he could feel the eyes watching him again. Student stood outside the sheriff’s office. He lifted a hand in greeting as Spur rode past. Cusie Ben was sitting on the edge of the sidewalk outside the Last Chance. Spur went down the street and turned into the livery. The old man showed himself, but Spur waved him back to sleep again. Inside the barn, Spur unsaddled and put the mare in her stall, gave her a rub down. Cusie Ben came in.
The Kid was free. He’d booked in at the hotel and he was now in the Last Chance drinking. Spur told him the little he knew. Now he wanted to know if anybody contacted the Kid and who it was. Maybe nobody would. Maybe he was wrong and the killings were solely the work of one man. Ben sniffed and shuffled his way back onto the street.
Spur stood thinking. He reckoned he wouldn’t see any action till dark. Killers of the kind he was dealing with worked in the dark. On the street, he asked the way to Mart Walker’s place and went there. He closely examined the interior and came to roughly the same conclusions that Will Furbee had. There had been a woman there and there had been a fight. Most likely Walker had been killed here and taken out of town. He strolled through Mex town, met the priest and talked with him. These local priests knew their people inside and out. This one was intelligent. Spur went to his house with him and drank a little cool wine. He came away with his feel of the town more sensitive.
He ate lunch at Nick the Greek’s. The customers were Anglos to a man and none of them knew anything about the killings or, if they did, they weren’t telling. Nick himself, fat and sweating, who must have been a mine of information on the town and its inhabitants, swore vehemently that he knew nothing. But his eyes were uneasy and Spur promised himself that he would have the man talking before he was through.
He walked out onto the street after the excellent meal and paced to the Lucky Strike. Here he talked with a plainly alarmed Mort Gaines and the just as frightened girls. From the Irish girl, Molly O’Keefe, he learned what Furbee had learned, that the dead girl, Lily Minden, had been a secret friend of Mart Walker. He couldn’t find out why the friendship had been secret. The only conclusion he could come to so far was that they had been secretive people.
As he walked back to the sheriff’s office he realized that he now had a pretty good picture of the town, but really he was no further forward with the solving of the mystery. And he had to solve it pretty quick or there might be another killing. He had the feeling that he might be the next on the list. He smiled grimly to himself at the thought. It was not the first time he had been in such a situation and he hoped fervently that it would not be the last. Maybe he was a damned fool to try short cuts. His reaction could slow for the wrong second and he could be dead. A man could not be fully alert every minute of the day.
He stopped, turned and looked back idly along the street. This was an example of such a lapse. He had been in the Lucky Strike and only now it had come to him that the Kid was no longer in the saloon. He should have realized that right off. The sidewalk where Cusie Ben had been sitting was deserted. The Kid was gone and Ben had followed him.
A German in a white apron outside the General Mercantile was watching him with curiosity. A dog scratched its fleas in the dust in the center of the street. A man lounged near the bank watching him from the shade under his hat brim. A curtain moved in an upstairs window. The town wasn’t missing a trick. The murderer himself might be watching him. He walked onto the sheriff’s office and found Mike Student inside doing some paperwork.
‘I ain’t doin’ nothin’ to help, Mr. Spur.’ he said. ‘I feel kinda useless.’
‘Call me Sam,’ said Spur. ‘The time’ll come when you’ll have more action than you can handle.’
‘That’s nice,’ said Student.
‘How did the trial go?’
‘Twenty dollar fine. The Kid’s been drinkin’ at the saloon. Been there all day. I been watchin’.’
‘Is he still there?’
‘Sure.’
So the Kid hadn’t left by the front entrance.
‘Stick around this evenin’,’ Spur said. ‘Maybe I’ll have a customer for you.’
‘Sure. You expectin’ somethin’ to happen?’
‘Hope so.’
Spur left and went back to the hotel. It was an hour for dusk. It wouldn’t be long before somebody tried for him if they were going to at all. There was only one problem, would anybody risk killing a United States Marshal? The answer—only if there was enough at stake.
Thoughtful, Spur passed through the hotel lobby, saw Manuela, slapped her bottom and climbed the stairs. He washed up and changed his shirt. Clean linen was one of the things he enjoyed. Being unwashed had been an integral part of being an outlaw. Being clean was like a shot in the arm. Spruce, he went down to dinner. Manuela waited, Silena Dueby presided. She was chilly. Spur wondered about her. A girl like that must have a man, that was one of the laws of nature. Find the man. She was important. He wasn’t quite sure why, but he had a nose for these things and he trusted that nose.
The same crowd came in for dinner as he had seen before. They greeted him and came over one by one as they entered to his table to ask him how he was progressing. He talked cheerfully as if he had no doubt of the outcome of his investigations. Keeping a good public face was all a part of the business. Kerby Blaxall stayed the longest and Spur found him an engaging man. He seemed intelligent, well-read and urbane. Almost too civilized to be hacking out a career in a place like this. During the day, Spur had learned a good deal about the man. He ran the stage line and owned the Lost Chance saloon. A solid citizen, universally popular. He had put up the money to pay for the funerals of the dead girl and of Mart Walker. He was now raising subscriptions for a reward for the catching of the killer.
Spur’s questions during the day had partly to answer the question if Blaxall had ever tried to buy out Clance Damyon. He seemed the obvious man to want to run the passenger and freighting business in and out of town. But Spur had not heard a whisper to that effect.
Spur finished his dinner, sat for a while watching the others, assessing them, listening to Charles Beddoes’ booming voice. Then he strolled out and headed for the livery. It was full dark now. A few lamps burned on the street, a few stars twinkled overhead. It was a little cooler than it had been during the day, but it was still hot. He promised himself a cold beer later. Maybe he would have it at the Last Chance which as yet he had not entered.
A light burned outside the barn. He walked into the darkness of the building and called softly—‘Ben.’
Straw rustled.
‘Here.’
Ben was beside him in the darkness.
‘You learned anythin’?’
‘Not much. The Kid went into the Last Chance. He got talkin’ to a man. I didn’t want to make myself conspicuous. You know. Next time I look, they both done gone. Musta gone out the rear. I cut around the back, but didn’t see no sign of ’em. I ain’t seen hide nor hair of him since.’
‘What was this man Mike?’
‘Didn’t git to see much of him. Just his back. Big feller. Maybe all fat. Long fair hair. Brown coat. Gun on left side. That all I see.’
‘That’s somethin’. Go back to sleep now.’
Ben straightway went and settled back in the straw. Spur walked out of the livery and headed at an angle to the right across the street to the Last Chance.
The place was comparatively quiet. There were no more than a dozen men present. There was a hum of talk which stopped immediately Spur entered. He walked to the bar and ordered a beer. The barman was a tall thin man with a wart on the side of his nose. He looked like he had a grudge against life. Spur reckoned that was bad business on the part of Kerby Blaxall. A barman’s face should welcome a man like the rising sun.
Spur said to him as he paid: ‘You know the boy the deputy sheriff arrested yesterday?’ The man nodded morosely. ‘He was in here drinkin’ this afternoon?’
‘Drinkin’?’ said the man almost in despair. ‘I never saw a kid drink like it. Never saw a man drink like it for that matter.’
‘You see him talkin’ to a man?’
The man’s eyes blinked, once, hard.
‘No, sir. I never saw him talk to nobody. A solitary drinker, that’s what he was. Mighty unsociable. Drank till he couldn’t stand. I took him out back so he could sleep it off.’
‘Is he there now?’
‘Ought to be.’
‘Can we look?’
‘I reckon.’
The man led the way through an open doorway to the right of the bar, along a short passage and into a dim room. In it was a table, four chairs and a bureau. The place smelled of liquor. There was no sign of the Kid.
The barkeeper looked amazed.
‘I left him here,’ he said. ‘He didn’t come through the bar.’
‘Maybe he went out the rear,’ Spur suggested.
The man led the way down the corridor to the rear of the building and opened a door leading to a loading platform. Beyond was a vacant lot littered with the trash of such a town. Beyond were a few buildings on the next incomplete street. Spur thanked the man politely for his help and tramped along the alley that ran along the side of the saloon.
He paused in the darkness just before he reached the street, conscious that a sudden stillness seemed to have fallen on the town. True, he could hear the familiar sounds—the tinkling ill-tuned piano, the voice raised raucously in song. A horse moved restlessly at a hitching rail.
Spur thought: I have a dark alley at my hack. I’m silhouetted against the light of the street.
He could have passed an armed man back there without seeing him.
A man passed the mouth of the alleyway, going almost silently. A Chinese, maybe the ubiquitous laundryman; the familiar target of malignant jokes on the part of the Anglos.
Spur wondered where Ben was.
To his left and a little in front of him was a water barrel. Across the road was the bank with an alleyway alongside it. Spur’s sixth sense warned him—this was it. Exactly the right spot and the right conditions. Mike Student was most likely sitting in his office playing patience with dog-eared cards and praying for action. He’d most likely be too late for it.
If action was to come now, the main question was who was in the alleyway opposite? If Spur stepped around the corner into the street would he be safer or in greater danger?
Of course, his instincts could be playing hell with him. This could just be the case of nerves of a man who used a gun and could expect it every now and then.
A faint sound behind him. Short, metallic. It was repeated.
Behind him a double-barreled shotgun had been cocked.
He didn’t wait for anything more. There couldn’t be more danger out front there than there was behind him.
He flung himself down and forward.
He landed on his shoulders and the back of his head rapped against the barrel as he landed on his back. His gun was cocked in his hand.
He heard two sounds—one close at hand and one at an angle across the street.
The one near at hand was a shotgun going off.
The marksman wasn’t too close. Already the load was scattering. Shot peppered the building to his right, hit the barrel behind him and stung him in several places. Most of the charge crossed the street.
The other sound from across the street was from a rifle. Two men at least were after him. They were flattering him with plenty of attention. But they didn’t know Ben was around here someplace. Correction. He hoped Ben was around here someplace.
He placed the gun flash ahead of him and fired two shots quickly.
The second barrel boomed like thunder.
Spur was now in the act of rolling violently across the alley. Dust in his eyes and up his nose. Again a few of the pellets reached him and stung like hell. He hit the far wall, thumb- cocked and fired. He knew that he was now out of the line of fire of the man on the street.
Feet started to pound away down the alley.
Spur fired one shot high and yelled: ‘Hold it.’ He had one shot left If he used that on a man he couldn’t see most likely he would waste it.
A rifle slammed on the far side of the street.
The footsteps stopped abruptly. A body fell heavily.
Hastily, Spur was punching out the empties and reloading.
‘Sam?’
That was Ben.
‘Here.’
‘You all right?’
‘Sure.’
‘There’s another with a rifle on my side of the street fifty paces down.’
Spur called: ‘Keep him pinned down there.’
He finished loading his gun and ran down the alley. Twenty paces and he nearly fell over the body lying there. He ran on, climbed on the loading platform to the rear of the saloon, charged across it and barged through the door. When he reached the bar, everybody there was keeping low.
He stopped in the doorway and said to the man behind the bar: ‘Get these lights out and fast.’
The man reached out and turned the one on the bar low.
‘I can’t reach the high one,’ he said.
Spur raised his gun and shot it out. There was a tinkle of glass and a man swore, either in anger or fright. The man on the street now knew that danger could be coming from the saloon. Maybe he tried to make a break for it for Ben’s gun opened up.
Spur ran across the darkened saloon, hit the swing door with a shoulder, went through and turned sharp right. A rifle slammed from across the street and a window collapsed. Spur was running hard. The rifle tried for him again. Lead thudded into planking. Spur flung himself flat, rolled off the edge of the boardwalk and hugged dust. He wished he had a rifle with him. A belt-gun wasn’t the tool for this kind of work.
He looked around the edge of the boardwalk and tried to spot the man he was after, but could see nothing. One lamp burned in this part of the street, but it didn’t shed much light on anything. There were one or two lighted windows, but they gave nothing away. He thought the man was either opposite him or else a little nearer to Ben. But he couldn’t be sure. He couldn’t even be sure that there were only two men involved.
‘Throw out your gun and walk out with your hands up,’ he called. ‘You’ll get a fair trial.’
The man didn’t show himself, didn’t answer and didn’t throw a shot back. So nothing was gained by that. Spur wondered if he had slipped away through one of the houses or stores on the opposite side of the street.
He waited.
Five minutes passed slowly. There was no sound and no movement. Like Spur and Cusie Ben, the town waited and listened.
Spur Indianed slowly across the open space to the next boardwalk. This was risky because the alleyway he was crossing could have offered him danger. But no shot came from that direction. He reached the other boardwalk crawled up onto it and went along it. No shot came.
‘Sam Spur.’
Spur whirled, ready for a shot.
‘This is Mike Student.’
Spur relaxed a little.
‘Spur here, Mike. Listen—keep down and work your way slowly west toward the livery. Maybe there’s a man with a rifle on the sidewalk.’
‘All right, Sam,’ Student said. ‘Here I go.’
Spur glimpsed him for a moment against a lighted store window, then he was gone into darkness.
Spur wanted to talk to Ben, but he didn’t want to name him. Ben was most valuable under cover.
‘You by the livery, can you hear me?’
‘I kin hear.’
‘Cross the street to the south side.’
‘All right.’
He heard Ben’s feet pound their rapid tattoo, heard him hit the sidewalk and stop. Now the unknown was in a crossfire and the law wouldn’t be shooting at itself.
‘Hold it right there, both of you,’ Spur called. ‘I’m going to move.’
He got to his feet and started along the street. His nerves were tight and he was ready to fire at the slightest sound.
He reached the spot opposite to where he guessed the man was and stopped.
‘All right,’ he said, ‘you’re caught. Come on out.’
Silence.
How the hell, Spur asked himself, could the man have disappeared? He just had to be there still. Just possibly he was dead. One thing for sure, he wasn’t waiting here like a fool till daylight to make sure.
He started across the street.
Nothing happened
Mike Student called out: ‘I’m comin’ forward, Sam.’
‘Come ahead.’
Spur waited, his eyes trying to probe the dark shadows, ears sharp for the cocking of a gun. Mike Student had sand, his footsteps were coming steadily.
‘Hold it right there, Mike.’
Student halted.
Spur reached the sidewalk. He walked dong it east and then west. There was nothing and nobody on it.
‘Nobody here,’ he called. He hoped Ben would have the sense to fade now. ‘Mike, go fetch a lamp.’
Student was hammering on a door, bawling for those inside to open up, the danger was past now. At last a door opened and a shaft of light seemed to hit the street blindingly. A moment later, the deputy-sheriff walked along the sidewalk with the lighted lamp.
‘Hold it, Mike.’
Student stopped.
Spur came to the edge of the sidewalk and looked at the green boards. There was a dark mark on a board. He pointed and Student came forward and held the light near. It was the faint footprint of a man. Spur knew that the man was hit; he had dripped blood onto the sidewalk and trodden on it.
Men were on the street now. The word was going around rapidly that the shooting was over. Spur turned to find that Ben was among the curious, playing the part of a moronic ex-slave consummately. Spur said to Student: ‘Keep everybody off this sidewalk.’ He reached out for the lamp and Student gave him it. The deputy-sheriff started shouting for everybody to keep back. The air was full of questions. The lawman was short with the questioners. The reaction to the risk he had just taken was setting in.
Spur went carefully along the boardwalk till he found the spot where the man had been hit. The spots of blood were smudged as if they had been lain on. He now traced the footsteps and drips of blood along the sidewalk and found where they turned in at a door.
A voice behind him said: ‘You’ll pay for that lamp, Spur. You deliberately shot out that lights I got witnesses.’
Spur straightened and turned.
It was the sad-faced barkeep from the Last Chance.
‘It’ll be paid for,’ he said.
A man pushed through the crowd, a bearded well-dressed man. Kerby Blaxall.
‘Pay no heed to him, Mr. Spur,’ he said, ‘He’s merely looking after my interests. Anything I can do to help?’
Spur said: ‘Tell me who this place belongs to.’
It was a milliner’s. One of the windows had been broken by a bullet.
‘Why, that’s Miss Millicent Prayboy’s.’
‘Is there a rear exit?’
‘I guess there is.’
Spur said: ‘Then I reckon we lost our man. That’s the way he went.’
Student said: ‘He was hit. Maybe he didn’t get for.’
That was a possibility.
Spur turned to the men there.
‘Anybody here armed?’
Several admitted they were armed. Spur said: ‘All pull back to the far side of the street and cover the front of this place. Mike, you go east and cut around the back. I’ll go west. And for God’s sake don’t cut down on me.’
He heard Blaxall take charge of the men, shooing them back across the street. Student ran off and Spur walked down toward the livery. He cut down the alleyway alongside the bank. He knew that there could be danger in every shadow. He moved warily, ready to shoot. But he reached the backlots without anything happening. He turned right along the rear of the bank, covered twenty yards then sang out for Student.
The man replied and a moment later they met.
‘This is the rear of Miss Millicent’s place,’ Student said.
There was a wicket fence and gate. The gate was open. Spur started feeling around with his hands. He thought he could feel the marks of a horse’s hoofs. He decided to risk a light. He told Student to keep well away from him and struck a lucifer on his pants. The flame showed him the marks of a horse and on the wicket fence the marks left by a bloody hand. The man had escaped through the milliner’s and mounted here. They’d lost him. ;
He decided it was too risky to go back to the street through Millicent Prayboy’s. One of those fools out there would shoot at them. They walked back around by the bank and found the men waiting where Blaxall had posted them, guns ready.
Spur said to Blaxall: ‘You know Miss Prayboy, Blaxall?’ The man nodded. ‘Let’s visit.’
He, Blaxall and Student crossed the street, the others following behind. When he put his hand on the handle of the milliner’s door, it opened. Spur paused. Would a lady living alone leave her door unlocked at night? Did Miss Prayboy live alone?
Blaxall walked in, Student followed with the lamp.
‘You men stay back there,’ Spur. said. There was authority in his voice and they obeyed him. He noticed that Ben was no longer there. Good.
Blaxall called: ‘Miss Millicent. You there, Miss Millicent?’
It took some more calling before there came the sound of light footsteps on the stairs and a woman appeared through the curtained doorway to the rear of the shop. She carried a lamp in one hand and her hair was in disarray. She looked very frightened and she looked at the three men with eyes that were wide and dark in a pale face.
She wasn’t a great looker, hot so far as her face was concerned, but her figure was superb. She was fully dressed in a well-cut day-gown of coffee brown. She had taste. Her hands were delicate, well-shaped and were not used to hard manual work. She was aged, he estimated, about thirty. One of those women who went to church twice on Sundays, abhorred coarseness and drank with her little finger sticking out to show her breeding;
She placed the lamp on a small and elegant table, placed a slender hand on her breast and looked as if she thought it proper that she should faint.
Women like this scared Spur.
Blaxall said smoothly: ‘You’re safe now, Miss Millicent. There’s nothing to fear.’
‘I heard …’ she whispered tremblingly. ‘I heard the shooting. Oh, Mr. Blaxall, this terrible place. Why, in heaven’s name did I ever come here?’
‘Sit down, ma’am,’ Student said, hovering. She looked around helplessly and he pushed a chair behind her that looked as if it would collapse under a weight heavier than a fairy’s.
Spur said: ‘A man came through here just a few minutes.’
‘A man?’ The fright and alarm increased.
‘A man was wounded right outside your door, ma’am, and he escaped through here. He had his horse tied to your yard fence and he rode away.’
‘Oh, it isn’t possible.’
‘You mean you didn’t hear or see anythin’?’
“I … when I heard the dreadful shooting, I fled upstairs and hid my head under the blankets.’ She looked bewildered, helpless, still ready to faint.
Spur said: ‘Did you leave your door unlocked?’
‘My door?’ She gazed from one to the other of them. ‘Mr. Blaxall, who is this gentleman?’ She stared with horror at the gun that Spur still held in his hand.
‘This is Deputy United States Marshal Samuel Spur, Miss Millicent.’
She gave a gasp of something like horror and distaste. The name was apparently not unknown to her.
‘Why ever,’ she said, ‘did I ever come to this terrible place?’
‘Ma’am,’ Spur said, ‘did you leave your door unlocked?’
‘Go easy, Spur,’ Blaxall said. ‘I mean, she’s had a shock. Miss Millicent’s a lady who—’
‘Yeah,’ said Student, ‘take it easy, Sam.’
‘Your door,’ Spur said ‘was it unlocked?’
She raised her limpid eyes to him for a moment. You terrible man, they said. Gunman.
‘At this time of night, sir,’ she said firmly and with not a little indignation, ‘a lady’s door is never unlocked.’
‘Yet this man came through here after we had shot him and the door has not been forced.’
‘I am sure, Mr. Spur,’ she said, ‘I can offer you no explanation. And neither do I intend to at this time of night. I would be very grateful if you gentlemen would retire and leave me to recover as best I can from this shocking experience.’
‘Very well, ma’am,’ Spur said. ‘I shall visit with you in the morning and I hope that you will have by then an explanation of how this man managed to open a locked door to make his escape through your house,’
He turned and walked out. Blaxall joined him on the sidewalk.
‘See here, Spur,’ he said, ‘I can’t say I like the tone you took with Miss Millicent. She’s a lady greatly respected in this town.’
Spur said: ‘Blaxall, I’m dealing with a particularly unpleasant murder. Tonight somebody tried to cut me down with a shotgun. That raises some questions I mean to have answered. I’ll get ’em answered if I have to hurt the susceptibilities of every frail maiden lady in town.’
Blaxall would have made an angry retort, but Spur was walking away from him up the street.
A breathless Mike Student caught him up.
‘You was a mite rough back there, Sam,’ he said. ‘I don’t want to interfere, but—’
‘You did pretty well back there, Mike,’ Sam said, ignoring him. ‘You showed a lot of sand. Now let’s go find the man I cut down in the alleyway.’
They reached the alleyway and headed down it. Spur still held his gun in his hand. Thirty paces down the alleyway, he stopped.
‘He fell around here,’ he said.
He scratched a lucifer and held it up. He moved a few paces. ‘Gone,’ he said.
‘Maybe, he was only winged.’
‘I don’t think so.’
The match went out.
‘Mike,’ he said, ‘we have a lot of this town against us. A wounded man gets away from us easy as kiss your hand. A dead man disappears. This shooting tonight was supposed to give me the lead I wanted. I don’t have a damned thing.’