Clete waited for me where the trail reached the valley floor. "That's a fine-looking animal you're riding," he called out. "Wanna sell him?" Clete's old roan scarcely raised his head when the bay and I got there.
"No, not if it means I have to ride that poor creature you're on."
"Didn't think you would. Let's go see what this man knows," he said, turning the roan and spurring him into a fast trot. The fellow we watched before had went back to his digging, but he stopped and stood with his hands on his hips when we come up to him.
"How do, gents?" he said, kind of surly and friendly together. "You're a long ways from nowheres, you know that?"
I'd seen from up above that he was a short man, but I didn't understand exactly how short 'til Clete stepped down. This man had a crookedy sort of smile on his face, but at the same time it looked like a thundercloud too. From a little distance, you might think he was a Mexican, so dark was his skin, but up closer you could see he was all freckles–freckles on top of freckles, too. Like a lot of short men, he was short mostly in the legs. He stood looking up at Clete with his weight on one foot, and, my, was he bowlegged. If someone could of throwed a strap around his knees and pulled them together tight, he would of been about as tall as the next fellow.
"Shannon's my name, and this is Willie Goodwin," Clete said, tilting his head in my direction. I nodded. "Seen anyone ride through this morning or yesterday?"
"Nope," the man said, just standing and looking at us like we was some kind of bugs that'd caught his fancy, but that he would as soon squash. Clete waited for him to say something more, but when it was plain after a while he wasn't going to, Clete walked up closer to him.
"We're from east of here. The law's our business. Man we're looking for killed some people in Two Scalp."
"Never heard of it," the short man said, and went back to scraping at the muddy clay.
"What are you doing there, anyway?" I ask.
"Why, I'm diggin'," he said, spitting the words out of his mouth real fast and sassy, but his tone made it sound like he was explaining something to children. "This here's a shovel," he declared, holding it up and pointing to it with his other stubby hand. "And I use it to dig the dirt. See that pile there? I done that." That man had the queerest ways. He wasn't exactly what you'd call nasty. I'd seen that plenty, a man saying kiss-my-ass with his eyes while his mouth curved up. No, it wasn't that, but you couldn't exactly say he was the kind of fellow you took to right off, either.
"You have a name, you little sawed-off sonofabitch?" Clete asked, "Or didn't your daddy figure you'd ever grow up enough to-"
I seen it in the little man's face before he done it, of course, for his eyes bugged out and the veins at the side of his neck swole up. He swung his shovel at Clete's head, but Clete was ready for that. He grabbed the shaft and yanked it down past his side, though the blade struck his shoulder a glancing blow. With his other hand, he punched the runty man square in the mouth. A short punch with plenty of steam on it. After that, it wasn't no trouble for Shannon to wrestle that shovel away and toss it down. No sooner did it hit the ground than Clete smacked him a backhander that spun him around and landed him on his arse in the dirt, leaning back on his hands. What you saw first when his hat come off was the color of his hair, somewhere between flame and a brand-new penny. I didn't notice 'til then that the man wore no gun, but I figgered my pardner must have. Strange, because short men always have a pistol around somewheres. Often they tote the biggest damn gun they can find, sometimes two.
Clete drew his pistol slow, cocked it, and aimed that big-bore Remington right at this little man's bleeding nose. "Now, I'm going to ask you the same question he did. And if you want to be a full head shorter than you already are, you little shit, just come out with another smart-ass answer. What're you doin here?"
The short man sat up straight and quick, got his hat and stuck it on. "Why, I'm collectin' bones for O. C. Marsh. What the hell you think I was doin, anyway, pannin' gold?"
I feared Clete was going to shoot him. But instead he holstered his Remington, walked over to where the man'd been digging, hunkered down, and brushed some dirt away from the thing that was sticking up. I got out the shotgun, just in case.
"Looks like a bone, all right," Clete said to me. "But it looks like it's turned to stone."
"Well, of course it has," the little man said, standing right up. "'t's a fossil bone, not a fresh one. That's what Perfessor Marsh pays me for, collectin' fossils." Then he strutted over to Clete and stuck out his hand like nothing at all had happened, even though there was still a trickle of blood dripping off his chin. "Name's Foote, Thomas Bell Foote, but most everbody calls me Banty. Banty Foote."
Clete looked at me and I had to laugh. "Go on and shake the man's hand," I told him. "Looks like he don't hold nothin' against you, you big bully."
Clete pushed his hat back and looked bewildered for a minute. For a while it appeared he was going to say something sharp to the little man, but then he changed his mind and shook the bowlegged bone-digger's hand. "Glad to meet you, Mr. Foote. I guess."
"Call me Banty. Everbody does. Mr. Marsh, the students, ever-body." All of a sudden he pulled hard on Clete's hand and stuck his face right up into my partner's, and I thought there was going to be more trouble. Clete was trying to draw back some, but they was so close their hatbrims was bumping into each other, and Foote wouldn't let go. "Wasn't no lie. I don't lie. Can't abide a liar, no I can't. Nosiree, Sheriff, I didn't see no one. Not this morning or yest'day either." The little man turned Clete's hand loose and walked straight over to his pony and mounted.
"Where ya goin'?" I asked him.
"You'll want to talk to the Perfessor. He's the one to talk to. C'mon, you two men. Haven't got all momin'."
"Don't you want to gather up your gear?" Clete ask as he walked back to his horse.
"Naaah," Banty Foote said. "I'll be coming right back here anyhow."
Foote took off on that thick-necked, stubby cayuse of hiscouldn't of been more than eleven hands-and Clete and me followed at a good clip. Banty knew the trails, all right. We dodged between them clay mountains and galloped into gullies that twisted and turned through little canyons and big ones, goin' like hell both uphill and down after the short man. I seen there were plenty of sign here, leading every which ways, but our guide wasn't following none of them. Half an hour later we come out into a fiat place with scrubby grass between a couple of low sod tables and there we hit a pretty big encampment. Maybe not so large as a trail drive outfit will have, but big enough. Five military tents in a row and as many or more of some other kind in a circle around the blackened stones of a campfire. Looked like they cooked on a stove, though, for they had one-with big pots and pans and kettles and basins scattered around it. A fellow cooking something there or cleaning up turned and watched us ride in. Four wagons-one that looked like it hauled provisions, one with forage, I saw, and two others, big ones, I couldn't tell what they carried. A stack of heavy wooden crates was piled behind the wagons.
They had a good rope corral made, and in it was draft horses and maybe ten riding horses. Beside a bigger tent, off by itself a little ways, someone'd strung some tarps up on poles to cast some shade and keep off the rain, and underneath them were tables and benches and desks and chairs and I don't know what-all. Whoever this was had been here a while and intended on stayin' longer. Banty trotted us right up to where the tarps was rigged, and two men walked out from under them and come toward us, one a wrangler by the look of him, and the other a hefty fellow with a mostly white beard, wearing a rawhide vest and a funny-looking Eastern kind of hat slanting toward the side of his head.
"Hal-ooo, Banty!" the hefty man called before we was there, giving a big friendly wave.
Banty tied up and hurried up to the big man I guessed was the boss of this outfit. "These here men are lookin' for somebody," he said.
That good-size man bent over some and looked at Banty's face. "Why, Mr. Foote, you're injured. Have you been fighting again?"
Banty looked at the ground and gave it a good kick. "Yes, I was, Perfesser Marsh. I know I said I wouldn't, but I did. It was this man here I fought. Wasn't his fault, though. I ast for it."
The hefty fellow put his hand on Banty's shoulder and looked at us with a long, sad face. "I see you've met our Mr. Foote," he said. "I'm very sorry, for his sake. I hope you will accept his apology."
Clete said nothing so neither did I.
"He's a fine collector, takes great care not to damage the specimens, but he has an odd personality aberration. A peculiar aggressiveness that's associated with his diminutive size, I believe." I would have described Mr. Banty Foote a little different. I'd a said he was a feisty halfpint and let it go at that.
"We're looking for a man who rode through here, maybe last night, maybe this morning," Clete said. "My name's Shannon and I'm the sheriff of Two Scalp, about a hundred or so miles east of here. This's my deputy, Willie Goodwin. We'd appreciate it if you could ask your men if anyone saw the man we're chasing-tall and skinny, riding a paint mare. He's a killer is why we're after him. Been trailing him for several days, but the rain last night washed out the sign we were following."
"I see, I see!" the hefty man said. "I'm Professor Othniel Charles Marsh of Yale College, leading the Summer Paleontology Brigade. I would be happy to-" He walked up close and looked from Clete to me and back to Clete. "Are you men waiting to be asked to dismount?" he ask.
"Folks around here generally wait 'til they're invited," Clete said.
"Yes, of course. Please step down from your horses, gentlemen." He swept his arm in such a way as to welcome us, I guessed.
"Please excuse my rudeness," he said, giving Clete's hand a good pump and then mine. "The customs here are quite different from those I'm used to. I meant no offense."
"None taken," Clete said, touching his hat brim. Marsh touched his hat too, but it looked like he was saluting a Mexican general.
"Will you take tea with us, or is your business too urgent, gentlemen?" the professor ask.
"Thanks, but we'd best ride on," Clete said. "Where are your men, anyhow?"
"The students are in the western field this morning, searching for mammal bones."
"You brought a bunch of boys out here and let them run off by themselves?" I asked.
"The Yale students are young men," Marsh said, kind of uppity. "The youngest is twenty, I believe. And our military escort is with them, eight soldiers."
I felt kind of taken back then. "When you said students, I thought-"
Professor March had a good belly laugh, throwing his head back and roaring, but he didn't seem to be making fun of me by doing it. "Imagine, bringing young boys out here for field work!" He finished up his laugh and shook his head a couple of times, but then he noticed that Clete still had business on his mind. "Come and look at my map," Marsh said. "I'll show you where the students from Yale are digging, and where we are, exactly, and then I'll take you up there to talk to them, if you like."
Banty and the wrangler fellow who hadn't said anything went off together while Clete and me followed Marsh under the main tarp. We stopped at a big map of just this washed-out country, laid out on a table. I seen the way we had come into this place and where Clete's camp of the night before was. These badlands was a lot bigger than I thought, for we'd come only a short ways through them, with better than thirty miles more stretched out to the southwest.
Thin wavy lines connected places of the same level, and you could see the shape of the hills and the steepness of things real plain. "What are these pins for?" I ask.
"Those represent our major digs," the professor explained. "We're working some Jurassic beds for dinosaur fossils here at this red one. This blue one shows where the students are today, recovering the petrified skeletons of Eohippus, the dawn horse."
I took a step back from the table and looked at him. "You mean you come all the way out here from the East to dig up dead horses?" I could tell Clete was itching to move, but I had never heard nothing to beat this.
"Yes, the calcified bones of all sorts of prehistoric species–reptiles, birds, and mammals-one of which is the horse."
"Could we go talk to your men now?" Clete ask. "This is important work for you, I can see, but ours is catching a killer, and it's important to us."
"Of course, Sheriff. If you're sure you won't have tea first, I'll just have a word with my men here and then we'll leave."
"No tea," Clete said.
I shook my head. "No tea for me, neither. I'm feeling all right." Marsh give me a odd look and went out from under the tarp. While he was seeing to whatever he had to see to, I looked around in there. There was leg bones longer than a man, and one skull with three curved horns, a head the size of a boulder off some creature I hoped never to run into. "What do you make of all this?" I ask Clete.
"Reminds me of some bone pickers I came across on the way up from Abilene. Only they were after buffalo bones on top of the ground. These fellows are a whole lot pickier about the bones they want, and more polite, but beyond that, I can't see a lot of difference between the two. Bones are bones, and they don't interest me much right now, unless they're the neck bones of that bastard we're chasing."
Marsh come back wearing a regular hat. "We can go speak to the Paleontology Brigade now, gentlemen."
Clete studied the map. "How far is it to the river from here? Looks nearly three miles."
"Yes, I'd say that's accurate," the professor said.
Clete looked at the map some more. "And about twelve miles up to where the students are working?"
"Perhaps a bit more," Marsh said. "It will take us about two hours to get there. Pretty rough going right here." He pointed to a spot on the map that looked all cut up and steep.
Clete turned to me then. "We could cover more ground if we split up," he said. "How about you go along with the professor here and I'll go scout the river, unless you want to do it the other way." I could see what he was gettin at. If none of them young fellows had seen our man, we'd be burning nearly five hours and getting nowhere for our time. If there was sign along the river, Clete could see them as good as I could, since the rain'd turned this clay into some of the easiest tracking ground there is-fresh mud.
"Makes sense to do it that way. Suit yourself who goes where," I told him.
"I'll take the river, then. If I find his sign, I'll follow them and leave a broad trail-like you did coming up along the Bad. You catch up with me this time. Shouldn't be hard, that damn nag I'm riding. If I don't see anything, I'll come back here tonight. That is, if you don't mind us camping with you, Mr. Marsh."
"Not at all!" the professor said. "The hospitality of the camp is yours. Not very elegant, I'm afraid, but we do have fresh elk steak for this evening's supper, which our hunter brought in last night. You know, I'm very fascinated by this business of yours, chasing-"
"I'd best go," Clete said, nodding his head and then starting toward our horses.
Professor Marsh seemed surprised to be cut off and left hanging like that. He was a man who was used to finishing off his ideas to a high polish, I guessed, no matter how long-winded they was. Only Clete was a man who knew when he'd heard enough.
"Just you and I, then, will be going out to the dig, Mr., uh … "
"That's right," I told him. "And you can call me Willie."
Clete was already mounted up when we got over there. "If I'm not back by morning, come after me," he said.
"All right, but don't go trying to find his campfire along the river tonight," I warned him.
I didn't notice 'til then that Banty Foote'd climbed up on that little animal of his and here he come along and pulled up right beside Clete, who looked down at him for a minute.
"Where do you think you're going?" Shannon ask him.
"I'm goin' with you," Banty said.
"No, thanks," Clete told him. "I'll look for him by myself."
"Well, I'm goin' anyway," the little man said, looking right up at my pardner. "Free country, ain't it?"
"The sheriff has to go by himself, Banty," Professor Marsh said. "He feels your presence may hinder him in his search, and he may not be coming back here. Is that correct, Mr. Shannon?"
"Close enough," Clete said, spurring that old roan into a trot, the best it would do. I'd intended to trade horses with him, but he rode off before I could offer. Marsh and me and Banty Foote watched him coax his horse up onto the sod table to the south.
"An impetuous man, your Sheriff. Obviously a solitary man of action," the professor said. I didn't know just what to make of him saying that about Clete, but he didn't sound like he was taking my pardner down any, so I let it ride.
"I wouldn't a been in the way," Banty said, almost bawling the words.
"You come with Willie and me, Banty," Marsh said, walking toward the saddled horse his wrangler was bringing over. "We'll need you along if we run into the Sioux."
Well, I didn't see what good a midget without a gun would do if we run into a war party, but then I figured out the professor was only trying to gentle the little fellow. Marsh and me climbed up and the three of us started west. I saw that Foote kept watching Clete ridin' toward the south, and we didn't get more than a hundred yards 'til Banty spurred his pony hard in the flanks and pulled him off sharp to the left, after Clete.
The professor called after him, but that little man was ridin' like thunder, bent low over that pony's neck and he didn't even look back. "Oh, well," Marsh said. "I suppose it will be all right-if he doesn't go too close to your sheriff, and if Mr. Shannon doesn't decide to shoot him."