The café man shook his head. He hadn’t seen Mister Chase since the evening before at suppertime, and that black-bearded, mean-looking feller with Mister Chase hadn’t been around this morning, either. Maybe, the café man suggested, they were having breakfast at the saloon. There was a corner of the bar where folks who bought drinks up there could slice up some meat and bread and make sandwiches.
The sun was rising a foot at a time, rather than inches, the way it always seemed to do on the summertime desert. It had not yet crested above the roof peaks of the town, but it was getting close, and the lower-down shadows were getting paler and were also retreating.
The battered wagon of some cow outfit appeared in the roadway at the lower end of town, scuffing runnels of tawny dust from beneath its steel tires. Otherwise, excluding a pair of horsemen entering from the opposite end of town, up where Rufe and Jud had entered last night—or early this morning—there was only walking traffic so far. But it was early yet.
Across the road, the jailhouse was still partially in cool shadows. It was also quiet, and no one was around to try the locked door, which was perhaps just as well. Rufe said: “I don’t know how much time we got, Jud, but it can’t be a hell of a lot.”
They started in the direction of the saloon. From far off, and up along the slope of Cane’s Mesa’s easternmost side, a quick, blinding flash of intense white light appeared and was gone. Jud saw it at the same time Rufe caught the same reflection. They stopped, peering off miles northwesterly.
“Someone coming down off the mesa,” stated Jud. “Maybe those fellers in Elisabeth’s barn got loose somehow.”
Rufe nodded. That was possible, but it did not re-ally interest him very much. What did interest him was the clear fact that their advantage was finally running out. Whoever that was coming down off the mesa would surely be heading for town. And even if it took them a couple of hours or more to get here, those two men in a bootleg hole weren’t going to stay down there forever, either.
Rufe said: “Let’s get this over with before we got a whole countryside jumpin’ down our gullets.”
They went to the saloon, and Jud entered first, leaving Rufe ostensibly loitering outside, watching the roadway. Not because he felt it needed watching—not yet anyway—but because, if Chase were in there and he could be braced about a riding job, the chances of one man being hired was a lot better than two men being hired.
A pair of slouching cowboys passed Rufe, looked over, and nodded. Rufe nodded back. The man with the battered cow-camp wagon was turning down into a narrow little roadway south of the general store. No one had to tell Rufe where he was going. To the rear loading dock of the store for sacks of flour, sugar, pinto beans, most likely, and tins of molasses.
A graying, slightly stooped older man, thin as a rail and with a perpetually saturnine expression, hauled up out front of the saloon’s inviting doors and looked in over their tops, then he grunted when he saw Rufe, and said: “I’m the doctor. I look in every morning to see which of the damned alco-holics’round town are backsliding.” He turned to squint out into the sun-brightening roadway. “You an early morning drinker, by any chance, young man?”
Rufe grinned. “Nope. I’m not even a very good nighttime drinker, Doctor.”
The old man grunted again. “Good. Stay that way, and you’ll keep your liver. Bad enough, being in the saddle most of your life, young man. Most cowboys, by the time they’re my age, got a bunk-wetting problem. That’s bad enough…but heading for a damned saloon every time they hit town compounds it. A man’s not one damned bit better’n his liver, young man. You remember that, eh?”
Rufe said—“I’ll remember it.”—and amusedly watched the gaunt old stooped man go walking stiffly southward down in the direction of the general store.
A wispy, elfin figure was hurrying northward, in the direction of the saloon’s doors, head down, features pinched in concentration. At the very last minute the elfin man looked up, and saw the medical practitioner bearing down and whisked so swiftly into a store-front doorway that Rufe marveled. He had recognized the elfin man as the livery barn nighthawk. Apparently he was one of the early morning drinkers the doctor had been seeking.
After the doctor had marched past, looking neither right nor left, the hostler peeked out, made certain the doctor was far down toward the general store, stepped forth, and hurriedly came on.
Rufe pretended to be looking the other way when the elfin older man turned and disappeared beyond the spindle doors. Moments later Jud ambled out, lighted cigarette trailing smoke, his eyes narrowed in thought, and said: “They got surprisingly good beer in there. You should have come in and had one.”
Rufe frowned. “Where’s Chase?”
“Not there. Neither is the gunfighter. But the barman told me they’re due any minute.” Jud’s eyes lifted to the faraway tawny barranca where they had seen that flash of brilliant light of someone’s silver cheek piece or concha. “What’s botherin’ me, Rufe, is that maybe they took off from town, heading back for the cow camp.”
Rufe also turned to gaze out across the flat country in the direction of Cane’s Mesa. If Jud’s worry was valid, then there was going to be some serious trouble, because, sure as hell, when Chase got to his camp and found it empty, he was going to ride for the Cane place—with his gunfighter.
“Luck might be runnin’ out,” muttered Jud, and spat out the cigarette. He rallied then, and said: “You take the yonder side of the road, I’ll take this side, and by God we’d better find those two fellers by the time we get down by the livery barn, or, sure as hell they’ll be on their way back, and we’ll have to go hightailing it after them.”
Rufe shoved off the log wall and, without speaking, ambled out into the morning warmth bound across the dusty roadway.
From now on, they could not afford to be secretive and clever; they had Tomake their determination about Chase and his man killer the quickest way possible, and that meant they might also come up against exactly what Rufe did not want them to come up against—a head-on meeting, two for two. He was not a professional gunman and neither was Jud. They were fast, and they were also accurate with handguns, but they were no better than most range men, which meant they were not in the same class Bull Harris was in.
Rufe’s side of the road had about a dozen business establishments, and most of them had front windows allowing someone outside to look the length and breadth of the inside counters and shelves. One place, the harness and saddle works, had that same kind of a big window, but it had been so cluttered with heavy sets of leather and chain harness, fine driving harness, saddlery, boots, bridles, and odds and ends that it was impossible to see through.
Ruff stepped back to the doorway and sauntered into an atmosphere wonderfully fragrant of leather and harness oil and pipe smoke. The bald, grizzled man in the canvas apron at the cutting table peered over the tops of his steel-rimmed eyeglasses, puffed smoke a moment, then removed the stubby pipe to say: “Welcome, amigo. Don’t just stand there, come right on in. Don’t make a damn whether you buy anything or not.” The old man’s shrewd, light blue eyes studied Rufe thoughtfully, then made a common enough misjudgment. “There’s work to be had around the Clearwater country, and some of the out-fits stick notices on the wall in here…except that there ain’t none stuck on the wall today. But if you care to set and talk a little, maybe someone’ll come in looking for a rider, and you’ll get hired on.”
Rufe went over and leaned upon the counter, looking at the harness maker. “I’m hunting for a man named Arlen Chase,” he said.
The old man’s face showed the faintest of very fleeting shadows of disapproval, but if Rufe hadn’t been looking squarely at the old man, he wouldn’t have seen it come and go.
“He don’t come in here much,” stated the saddle maker, wiping palms upon the canvas apron and looking down at the flat-out half hide of skirting leather atop his cutting table.
“But you know him?” asked Rufe, watching closely.
This time the shadow came and went more slowly. The old man was hostile to the name of Arlen Chase, no question about it.
“Yes, I know him. Known Mister Chase many years. Knew him when he first elbowed his way in atop Cane’s Mesa.” The pale eyes glinted behind the shiny glasses. “And I can tell you, son, if old Amos Cane was still above ground, he’d have Arlen Chase for breakfast, and afterward pick his teeth with Mister Chase’s buckle tongue.”
Rufe smiled. “I believe you. I’m not looking for him for a job. I just want to find Chase, and right quick.”
The old man reached and slowly dragged off his glasses, staring steadily. Finally he softly inclined his head. “All right, mister. All right. I seen Mister Chase and some bushy-faced, ornery-lookin’ cuss go into the abstract office down the road below the general store a couple of doors about fifteen minutes ago.”
Rufe nodded. “Thanks.” He turned and walked out into the roadway, looking southward across the road, and saw Jud just entering the general store.
There was more traffic now, both in the roadway and along both plank walks. In fact, Rufe was delayed in reaching the general store because of the traffic. Over across the road a heavy-set, raffish-looking man was rattling the jailhouse front doorway Rufe saw this, and also saw the stranger turn away with a curse and go stamping along in the direction of the livery barn.
Rufe entered the general store, looked over the heads of half a dozen browsing women until he caught sight of his partner, then worked his way along as far as the steel goods section where Jud had just finished speaking with a man wearing alpaca sleeve protectors up to his elbows. As the store-keeper walked briskly in pursuit of a customer, Jud saw Rufe coming, and relaxed against a pistol case, shoved back his hat, and looked forlorn.
“They’re not in town,” he said before Rufe had stopped moving. “Nobody’s seen’em. Sure as hell they’ve headed back to the mesa.”
Rufe gestured. “Down a couple of doors…in the abstract office.”
Jud straightened up without a word and followed his partner back out into the bustling roadway. Southward, the first shop was a bakery; the second store front had gold letters arched across a window which announced that it was the Abstract Office.
Jud studied the window, the lettering upon it, the front door, which was closed, then looked quizzically at Rufe. “You sure they’re inside?”
“The harness maker saw them enter,” Rufe explained, and pointed. “I’ll go stand down there, south of the place, and, when they come out, you try to get him to hire you on…and cut him loose from Harris like we figured.”
Jud nodded, hitched at his trousers, waited until Rufe was down the walkway a short distance where he would be in a position to flank Harris and Chase if shooting erupted, then Jud stepped up close to the bakery’s front and started rolling a smoke.
People came and went, and so did the time. Jud had his cigarette half smoked, ready to drop and trample underfoot, before the door of the abstract office opened. He held his cigarette poised to drop, watching intently. A tall, raw-boned, granite-jawed woman with iron-gray hair and a choker-type neckline to her white blouse stepped out and closed the door, looked up and down the plank walk as though she were seeking a challenge, then she turned northward and, with her formidable jaw tilted like the bow of a battleship, marched past Jud without looking at him, and kept right on marching.
Rufe glanced into the busy roadway, glanced at the sun, which was coming close to the rooftops finally, and eventually looked up where Jud was standing—and got a high shrug from his partner, which indicated that Jud was willing to wait a bit longer, but which also indicated he thought they were wasting more time.
Rufe was beginning to think this was so when the office door opened again. This time five men walked out. Bull Harris was identifiable by his black beard and the way he was dressed and wore his ivory-stocked Colt. Arlen Chase was also identifiable be-cause one of the other men, older, heavy-set, wearing a vest and holding a pen in one hand, was very earnestly speaking, using Chase’s name now and then. But the other men were completely unexpected. It had not crossed either Jud’s or Rufe’s mind that Chase and Harris would not come out together, just the pair of them.
Jud leaned and watched, and did not make any move at all when Chase and Harris, along with two of the other men, broke off the discussion in the doorway, and started walking northward, like the woman, without looking left and right.
Bull Harris was silent. Arlen Chase was also silent, most of the time, but the pair of men with him were leaning and talking, one on each side of Arlen Chase, as though their lives depended upon explaining something to him.
The cavalcade passed; Jud glanced down at Rufe with an ironic little smile, and the partners strolled to a meeting out front of the abstract office where they stood and watched Chase and Harris head for the saloon, still with those other two men flanking them.