Chapter Five: STRAWS IN THE WIND

If Johnny did not set up drinks for the whole county in each of the dozen saloons for a week, he did other things designed to offset Baily Blue’s whisky buying. On the quiet, he managed to see every merchant in town and point out the advantages of a law-and-order term. To them he promised a deputy who would act as marshal. Then he went to the mine owners and operators, and to them he promised he would stop holdups, or anyway cut them down to the place where insurance rates on the bullion shipments were not prohibitive. It was a busy week, but in the midst of it he took the time to go down to Hugo Miller’s assay office and talk with him.

Hugo was a quiet man, a graduate engineer, middle-aged, not given to talking much about his past. But Pick had found him thoroughly honest and he had often spent evenings in the back of Miller’s workshop talking over ores and minerals and mines, and Johnny sometimes listened. He, too, liked this pale, sensitive-faced man who forever had a pipe in his mouth, and who minded his own business.

Miller was working at his scales; at Johnny’s entrance he quit and pulled up two chairs. After a few minutes of small talk, in which Miller bitterly lamented Pick’s death, Johnny said, “Did Pick have any samples with you, Hugo?”

“About ten.”

“Anything good show up?”

“They weren’t worthless,” Hugo said carefully. “Pick knows too much about the game to lug rock down to me that isn’t good. But on the other hand, they were run-of-the-mill samples for him. They all assayed about the same.”

“No one better than the others?” Johnny asked hopefully.

“We’ll see,” Hugo said, rising. He got his reports and glanced over them briefly. “Here’s one that’s better than the others. Not much, though.”

Johnny’s heart sank. He had hoped Hugo could show him a rich assay, something that would indicate Pick had struck it and had been murdered by claim jumpers, but there was nothing here pointing to it.

“Know where any of these claims were located?” he asked glumly, and then he went on to explain. Surely Pick had been murdered for his gold—it was certain that he had found gold, for some of it was found on his burros. In view of this, it was almost certain that he had the location papers on him when he was murdered. “Maybe he found this gold at a place he’d been workin’ a long time. I thought maybe he’d told you of a place that looked good.”

Hugo shook his head. “He never told me.”

Johnny sighed. “That’s out, I reckon.”

“Maybe not,” Hugo said quietly. “He’s brought me a lot of ore to assay, Johnny. Most of it lately has been a peculiar kind of ore—what a geologist would call volcanic breccia, and my guess is that it’s in a long dike, or fault. Every one of his last thirty samples has been of this ore. Maybe he struck gold in this volcanic breccia dike.”

“That’s a lot of help,” Johnny said dryly. “What do I do? Hunt the Calicoes for volcanic breccia?”

“There isn’t much of it,” Hugo said.

“I know. But it may be only a mile long. It’d take years to find it.”

“Let someone else do it for you,” Hugo said calmly. Johnny was about to protest, when he closed his mouth and looked hard at Hugo. “What do you mean by that?”

Hugo took his pipe from his mouth and pointed it at Johnny. “Each one of these samples Pick has brought in is higher-grade stuff than the one before it. That argues that Pick was following this breccia dike to its head, doesn’t it? He was getting closer and closer to a really good thing. All right, if the man who killed him did it because Pick had something, the chances are he’ll bring in this ore to be assayed. It’ll have this volcanic breccia in it. And I’d know the looks of that anywhere, because in ten years of assaying for this town and the Calicoes, it’s the first I’ve run across.”

Johnny turned this over in his mind. “Then if a jasper brings in some samples with volcanic breccia, you’ll know it come from Pick’s workings?”

“More than likely it will. Prospectors don’t usually work near each other unless they’ve already found good color and staked claims.”

“That’d be it,” Johnny murmured. “It wouldn’t be a sure thing, but it might be.” He rose. “You’ll let me know, then, Hugo, if anyone brings in samples that jibe with Pick’s?”

“Gladly.”

Johnny left then. Here was something to work on; slim enough, it appeared, but nevertheless something. It would take patience and a lot of it. He stopped in at the sheriff’s office and found Baily Blue loading his pockets with half dollars. He grinned up at Johnny and said, “That’s my ammunition. Fifty cents a drink. You ought to take a tip from an old campaigner, son.”

Johnny shook his head. “Got the mail yet?”

“Uh-uh. I’m on my way.”

“Don’t bother. I’ll pick it up,” Johnny said. He turned down toward Bledsoe’s Miners’ Emporium, where the post office was. A section in the front of the store had been partitioned off to make the post office. This partition consisted of a rack of pigeonholes, opened at both ends. The mail had been brought in on the stage only a few minutes before, and Bledsoe, the fat postmaster, who always waited to rack up the local mail with that brought in on the stage, was busy behind the partition. Most of the waiting crowd had already received its mail and was reading it.

Johnny looked in his pigeonhole and saw that it was vacant and stuck his head through the wicket. “Nothin’ for me, Bledsoe?”

“A lot,” Bledsoe said, and reached up to haul it out. He withdrew his pudgy hand, looking surprised. “Why, you had a whole boxful not ten seconds ago, Johnny,” he said slowly.

Johnny wheeled to confront the crowd. Miners, punchers, men, and women were standing in small clusters in the front of the store, most of them reading, some conversing. They had not heard Bledsoe’s conversation with Johnny, for they were paying no attention to him—all except one dirty and unshaven puncher. Johnny’s gaze whipped past him, and the man turned down-store. As he wheeled, Johnny saw a sheaf of envelopes peeping out of his pocket.

Johnny started toward him, and then stopped. It would look mighty foolish to go up and accost the puncher and ask to see the letters. If that story got around, Baily Blue would turn it into a laugh, and no one knew better than Johnny how easy it is to laugh a man out of office. But still, he wasn’t sure, and he loafed back through the store keeping a good distance between the puncher and himself.

The puncher stopped down the counter and asked the clerk for a box of shells, then turned and glanced obliquely at Johnny, who was pretending to examine a gun lying on the counter.

When he looked up again, the puncher was walking rapidly toward the rear of the store. Johnny, his suspicions thoroughly aroused now, took after him.

Outside, the puncher turned up the alley and out of sight, and Johnny ran to the back door, yanked it open, and raced out into the alley. Ahead of him, the puncher was running as fast as he could. Johnny lit out after him, drawing his gun. He shot once into the air and yelled, “Better pull up, fella.”

For answer, the puncher stopped abruptly, whirled with gun in hand, and started to shoot. Johnny cut off to his right for the shelter of a shed, and he emptied his gun in swift rat-a-plan. He saw the puncher go down, and he stopped, then loaded his gun and walked carefully toward him. He hadn’t expected this, and he cursed himself for losing his head. What if the man had only been trying to get out of the way of what he thought was an officious lawman? One look at him and Johnny saw he was dead. One of the slugs had caught him in the neck, and he lay on his back, head twisted awry. And Johnny remembered that it was himself who had shot first.

Men started to collect in the alley. Swiftly, Johnny knelt down and rolled the man over and pulled the letters out of his Levi’s pocket. A glance at them brought a wave of relief over him, for they were his.

To the first few men around him—hardcase loafers at Prince’s Keno Parlor—Johnny held out the letters. “Stole them,” he drawled calmly. “When will these tinhorns learn they can’t hooraw everybody in this town?”

He could see the dislike in the eyes of these men. One of them said, “You couldn’t’ve asked him for ’em, I don’t suppose?”

“If you see a man ridin’ off on your horse, you don’t ask him to get off, do you?” Johnny drawled.

“It ain’t the same thing,” the man countered.

Another said, “This a sample of that law and order you’re talkin’ about?”

Johnny picked out the speaker and walked over to him. “It is. Don’t you like it?”

“Not much.”

“This is a wide country, friend,” he said gently, ominously. “If you don’t like it, there’s lots of roads out of here.”

“I’ll stick,” the speaker sneered. “We ain’t worried much about your gettin’ in. Even if you do, we ain’t exactly frettin’.”

Johnny said, “Saturday night, I may start to worry you.” He indicated the dead puncher. “Any of you know him?”

None of them did. They had seen him, they said, but they didn’t think he worked here or was known except to maybe a few barkeeps.

“Just a harmless pilgrim,” Johnnly drawled dryly. “Like so many rannies I could name around here. In a couple of weeks maybe these pilgrims will decide it’s a little safer to ride on through Cosmos.” And with that he left them to hunt up a teamster who would deliver the corpse to the coroner.

When that was finished, he went down to the hotel. In his pocket were the letters—and they were the ones he had been expecting today from the ten ranchers he had consulted. In them would be the names of all the undesirables the honest ranchers wanted run out of the county. Obviously somebody knew what these letters contained and wanted to destroy them.

Nora wasn’t at the Cosmos House, but Johnny went into the deserted dining-room, shut the door behind him, and pulled up a chair, spreading his letters on the table.

He opened all eight of them, for two of the ranchers were not represented. The lists were all printed, giving no clue to their writers.

With a stub of pencil and a sheet of paper, Johnny tabulated the names, and when he was finished, he sat back in his chair, amazement in his face.

“So Major Fitz heads the list!” he murmured. “Well, I’ll be whupped! I’ll be double, triple hog-whupped!”

It didn’t make sense, yet there was the evidence. Six of the eight ranchers put Major Fitz’s name at the head of their lists. Johnny pulled out a sack of tobacco and thoughtfully rolled a smoke. He’d got more than he bargained for here, but what did it mean? Originally, he had wanted to give these men a chance to express their honest beliefs without having to present inadequate proof and explanations. But Major Fitz? In cow country, no company outfit is ever loved, but to accuse the manager of the Bar 33 of rustling beef was another matter. Of course they would seize this opportunity of telling it, for they wouldn’t dare say so in public. And it couldn’t be one man’s grudge; too many had hit on Fitz’s name.

He heard the door open and he swept the lists into one pile as Nora stepped into the room. She looked at him accusingly as she walked over to him, peeling off her coat.

“Hiding something?”

Johnny only grinned, and then, on that chance that two heads might be better than one, he decided to tell her. “Remember that scheme I told you about—having the honest ranchers send in the names of the bad hombres?” Nora nodded. “Guess who’s the most unwanted jasper in this county.”

“Johnny Hendry,” Nora said, and then became serious. “Who?”

“Major Fitz.”

Nora’s face fell. “Let’s see.” When she’d looked over the lists, she put them down and said flatly, “Honest ranchers, nothing! Who all did you go to, Johnny? The bums and cattle thieves?”

“Ten men you like.”

“But I like Major Fitz!”

“So do I. What do you make of it?”

Nora said hotly, “I just think it goes to show that some men will do mean and underhanded things if they don’t have to sign their names to them!”

Thoughtfully, Johnny struck a match and touched off the lists and shoved them in the fireplace. “Mebbeso,” he said slowly, but he couldn’t help thinking about that puncher who had attempted to steal the letters. Had he been sent by Major Fitz, who might have guessed that his name would lead the list of undesirables? Johnny didn’t know. “But whatever it is,” he told Nora, “it’s a secret between us.”