BORDEN CHANTRY II

 

The First Ten Chapters of a Western Novel

CHAPTER 1

No man knew where the wind began nor how its shadows moved through the sun-silvered grass.

Borden Chantry sometimes thought such things but told no one, not even his wife. She was a good woman, one of the very best, but without poetry and she would have been made uneasy if he expressed such thoughts.

He took the roan diagonally up the slope of the long hill and from the crest could look four directions into infinity.

Only the grass where the wind played shadow-games, only occasional out-croppings of bare black rock, the broken bones of old lava flows breaking through the earthly flesh. He sat still in the saddle, listening to the wind, feeling it, sensing something upon it. A distant cloud of antelope floated across the plains.

This was not a place for a man but for the wild horses who ran, manes and tails streaming or the occasional buffalo, very rare now, remembering their distant thunder upon the earth.

These moments he loved, alone upon the plains that ran on for endless days of riding to the east, south and north. Only to the west, over beyond the horizon, did the plains come to an end against the vast eastern wall of the Rockies, the Sangre de Cristos here, but a part of the Rockies none the less.

A little more than two years ago he had been a rancher, with wide acres of land and over three thousand head of white face and long horn cattle. The land was still his but the cattle were gone, some caught in an unexpected five-day blizzard, others sold at a loss to pay his debts. To make a living he had become town marshal.

This, where he now sat in his saddle under the wind, this was where he belonged. Here he was at home. Here he knew what to do. In the town where he lived he was uneasy, restless for the hills, uncomfortable even among those who respected him and had asked for his services.

He frowned, watching a distant buzzard against the sky. Something was wrong in his town, something he should know about but did not. He was a sensitive man, and he felt an uneasiness that should not be there. He shook his head, irritated with himself. He was becoming a fool, imagining things that were not there.

He glanced again at the buzzard. Buzzards. There was more than one. A dead critter, no doubt.

The sooner he could save enough to re-stock his ranch, the better. He had saved money, then bought cattle with it just before the freeze-up. He reined his horse sharply around, turning away from the thought that never in his life-time could he save enough money to start over.

In the days when he began ranching it had been easier. Many cattle ran unbranded on the range and he had found strays in the valley of the Purgatoire that had been there for years.

It was different now. All cattle were branded, all the land claimed by someone, and even though he still owned land, starting over would be difficult. He had gone to Hyatt Johnson, the banker in town, but Hyatt hedged. Nobody wanted to loan money on land, there was too much of it.

He was riding toward the buzzards, still some distance away. His eyes cast for the tracks of horses. Nothing fresh. He would have been surprised had he seen any for this was empty country. Nobody came here except to hunt for strays at round-up time when they brought everything in. And last night’s rain would have wiped out signs of recent movement.

He saw tracks of unshod horses. That would be the wild bunch who roamed his own range. There were a dozen to sixteen in the bunch led by a gray stallion with black tail and mane. They knew each other, he and that stallion.

Five years ago he had come upon him suddenly in the Mesa de Mayo country. The stallion had stopped, facing him, nostrils flared, ready to fight or run.

“Go on!” he said tolerantly. “Get out of here before I put a rope on you!”

With an angry snort the stallion had turned and herded his mares back up the canyon.

Now he drew up and let his horse suck water from a shallow pool caught in a hollow of a rock they were passing.

He glanced again at the buzzards. He was closer now, and there were four or five of them. Something was dead down there, or something about to die. Whatever it was must be down in Sheep Canyon, in its lower reaches where it started to flatten out.

When he topped the next rise he could see it, something resembling a heap of discarded clothing, but he knew it was a man.

…Or had been. Death had been here and the man was gone; only the shell remained.

Nothing had been at it yet. The buzzard is a wary bird, and from long experience they know some creatures die very hard, indeed, and some will fight until the last breath.

Borden Chantry sat in his saddle and studied the situation. The worst thing he could do would be to charge down there and mess up any tracks that had been left.

The body lay sprawled on bare sand among patches of grass and clumps of brush. He had been a short, stout man wearing a store-bought suit and a town man’s shoes, incongruous in this wild and lonely place. A carpet-bag lay open beside the body. Somebody had gone through it and through the dead man’s pockets.

There was no horse, nor were there tracks of one. Borden Chantry had been walking his roan closer and now he drew up again to study the body and the position in which it lay.

A glance told him most of what he needed to know. The body had been lying there all night because there had been a brief shower, a hard-driven pelting shower that indented the well packed sand. It had left the clothing damp and muddy where it touched the ground.

Shot through the head. He could see the bullet-hole clearly enough. Borden Chantry dismounted and squatted beside the body. The pockets had been gone through, yet had they taken everything?

How did the man come to be here, of all places? It was only a short distance from Borden’s now empty ranch-house, a short distance, he reflected, by Western standards, but several miles, actually.

This was an area where no one came, not even he himself and nobody lived closer. A year might pass with no more than one or two riders even passing within several miles of this area. So how did this man, a stranger, come to be here?

Where was he coming from? And where was he going?

Back there was an area known locally as the Black Hills, and all that was wild country except for the stage station.

Had the man left the stage? If so, why? Was somebody pursuing him?

Beside the body was a stick, lying loose on the sand. That stick did not belong where it lay, and it was too short for the man to have used it as a cane or a staff to assist his walking. A stick lying among sage-brush or cacti acquires a fine silting of dust and the sand beneath it acquires an indentation where the stick has been lying. None of this was present, and yet one end of the stick had sand in among the slivers of the broken end.

Half-concealed by the body was a hole in the sand into which the end of the stick might have fitted.

“Well, I’ll be damned!” he said aloud. “I’ll be double-damned!”

He looked again at the position of the body and the way the stick was lying.

“Somebody,” he said aloud, “brought the body here, propped it up in a sitting position with that stick and then shot into the head.”

Now, why in the devil—! He sighted from the body’s position toward the bank of the arroyo, some sixty yards away. Leaving his horse ground-hitched, he walked toward the bank, climbed it, and looked around. It needed several minutes before he found anything, and it wasn’t much. Somebody had knelt on the ground, leaving a very slight knee-print and a somewhat deeper toe-print.

It was here a man had kneeled to take his shot into the body that lay below. Why anybody would go to such trouble he could not guess, but that was for tomorrow, today he was concerned only with this.

He looked around for something to use in measuring, but no stick was available and the yucca leaves were not long enough. Taking off his belt he measured the distance from the knee-print to the toe-print, then marked the edge of his belt and put it back in place.

This was none of his business as he was only the town marshal whose jurisdiction ended with the town limits. He would have to inform the sheriff or the Deputy United States Marshal.

Returning to the body he studied it again. Whatever he could learn might help his fellow officer, and in any event any crime in the area might sooner or later come to rest in town, his town.

Squatting on his heels beside the dead man, Borden looked him over with care. Not a very clean man, certainly. The under-side of his coat sleeve was polished as from rubbing on a desk or bench. The cuffs of his pants were somewhat frayed. The shirt was dirty at the collar and cuffs, unchanged for several days. The hands showed no familiar calluses but the nails were dirty and there was something dark, ink perhaps, on the fingers.

The pockets had been searched but he found a couple of small coins, unlikely in a Western man’s pockets as nothing was used smaller than a two-bit piece. Either this man was from the East or he had recently been East.

Several times he had stopped his examination to look around, and was becoming increasingly uneasy. The killer was probably miles away but he could not be sure. Borden’s roan was waiting patiently, not twenty yards away, yet suddenly he began wishing he had his rifle in his hands. He doubted if the killer was anywhere around but he had the uneasy feeling of a man who is watched.

Gathering brush he piled it over the body to keep the buzzards away. It would worry them for awhile and before they became confident he would have a wagon here to pick it up.

Mounting, he rode away at a rapid canter, his eyes alert for any movement or anything like a clue. He rode on to his own abandoned ranch-house, coming down from the north into the small valley with its big old cottonwoods and the shabby little cabin standing in their shade.

The corrals were empty; the open-faced barn that had offered shelter to his saddle-stock during good weather and the stronger, tightly built barn for winter storms remained as he had left them.

He walked his horse down the slope and looked at the cabin. He did not want to go in. Too many memories there. He had built that cabin with his own hands, and he had brought his bride here with some small pride, yet he remembered how she had looked when he carried her over the threshold and put her down.

“This? This is it?”

He would never forget her tone. Of course, she could not be expected to know how he felt about it, or how other such places were. She was an Eastern girl and evidently had expected more. Yet she had been a good wife, and was a fine person. He wished he could have had more, and but for that turn of bad weather he would have been a rich man by now, able to afford what he wanted, what she wanted.

He did not know what she had envisioned when he spoke of his ranch. Evidently it had not been this. He loved the place: the cabin, its cold spring, the rustling cottonwood leaves, the small vegetable garden he had planned so carefully. He sensed her disappointment yet he believed she had come to love the place.

Borden glanced around a little, walking his horse from place to place, then he took the trail for town. He would have to get a telegram off to the U.S. Marshal.

His thoughts returned to the body. He did not know but he was sure the man had already been dead when shot in the head. For one thing there was no blood. The air was crisp and cool, really cold at night, so there would be little change in the body.

Brought from some distance away, deliberately shot, then left. In such a place it might have lain there two or three years unfound, so why the bullet? Insurance, he suspected. Somebody wanted an obvious cause of death in the event the body was found.

Why not just leave the dead body? If found, the killer must have decided, there must be an obvious cause of death so investigation would go no further.

That implied there was something more to be found; it also implied the killer had something to be worried about, something he did not want investigated. It also implied that whoever disposed of the body knew the country, knew this was an empty area, that Borden Chantry no longer worked his ranch, that even a round-up in the area was unlikely. That implied somebody with local knowledge.

When he left his ranch behind he let the roan choose his own pace and settled down in the saddle to do some thinking.

Where had the dead man come from? What was he doing in this country, obviously a city man? Where had he been killed? And why? And by whom?

Somebody with local knowledge, and that meant somebody who knew him, somebody who might wonder where he had been riding today. Somebody with something to hide who was willing to kill to keep it hidden.

This was ranching country with a railroad that ran right across the state. His town was only a whistle-stop. It was cattle country, and sheep country as well. What could the dead man have wanted here, of all places?

And he had not been around town or Borden would have seen him. Borden swore softly, with amused exasperation. When he went to wire the U.S. Marshal, Harold, the telegrapher, would take the message. And what Harold Cuff knew, the whole town would soon know.

Nevertheless, he rode his horse up to the window overlooking the tracks. “Wire to the Deputy U.S. Marshal, Harold. To Thurston Jones…”

“No need to waste your money, Bord. Thursty’s in town. He’s up at the cafe, lookin’ for you.”

“Thanks.” He turned his horse.

Sometimes it helped to know Harold Cuff.

CHAPTER 2

Borden Chantry rode up to the cafe and swung down, tying his horse at the hitching-rail. Automatically his eyes took in the street. Big Injun was sitting in his chair outside the jail. Borden gestured to him, and the Indian got up and walked slowly down the boardwalk to him.

“You’ll need the buckboard, Injun,” he said, then explained where the body lay. “Cover it with a tarp and get it over to the old barn where Doc can have a look.” He paused. “And Injun? Take a look around. You might see something I missed.” He explained about the stick and the kneel marks he had found.

When Big Injun had gone he went inside. Thursty was seated at Borden’s usual table. He stood up and extended a hand. “Good to see you, Bord. Wish you were still sheriff around here.”

Chantry sat down. He wished he was, too. The additional money had helped for the two years he had been in office, but he was no politician, knew nothing about campaigning, and he had lost by a few votes to Nathan Johnson, Hyatt’s brother.

“Breaks of the game,” Chantry replied. “He knew how to run for office, and I stood on my record. It wasn’t enough.”

Ed brought coffee to the table. “You wanna eat?” he asked.

“Bess will have supper waiting, so I’ll just have the coffee and maybe a doughnut.”

“I have to take a run out to Frisco,” Thursty began. “Be gone a couple of weeks. I’m to testify in a court case out yonder, and I need somebody to stand by for me. I talked to the marshal and he suggested you.” The other man’s smile was hidden by his cup. “I was about to ask for you, anyway.”

“What’s going on?”

Thursty sipped his coffee and looked out the window at the gathering darkness. “Nothing that needs to worry you,” he spoke carefully, “except for Turren Downer.”

Borden Chantry accepted the coffee and doughnuts Ed brought to the table, then glanced out the window.

“What about Turren Downer? Isn’t he in prison?”

“Was. He isn’t now. He’s out and around.”

“Do you think he’ll come back here?”

“He’s already here. Somebody saw him over at Trinidad a few days ago. He got some time off for good behavior and there’s a story he saved a guard’s life when some rocks caved on him, but Turren’s a tough man and where Turren is, there’s always trouble.”

Borden Chantry knew all about Downer. He’d been a top hand on several outfits, then started running with a bad crowd. Borden had heard that was partly because he had a thing for Zaretta Clyde.

Zaretta Clyde? Borden frowned, disturbed by the thought of her, living so close yet out of his jurisdiction. She had made no trouble but from time to time there were rumbles of suspicion and gossip.

Zaretta lived well on a small ranch, running a few cattle and quite a few horses. The trouble was that she lived too well for the outfit she had. Of course, she might have money.

He did not even know what she looked like although she had been spoken of as a handsome woman.

“I’ll stand in for you, Thursty, but don’t be gone too long. I may give up the job and take the family back east.”

“You? You’re a Western man. This is your country.”

“I know it, but Bess came from the East and she’s wanting to go back. She figures I’ll do well there.”

Thurston Jones shook his head. He glanced at Borden. “You’re Western, Bord, as Western as any man could be. You’d die back there.”

“Tell that to Bess. She wants Tom to get a proper education and go on to college. She may be right, though. The country is changing.”

Chantry changed the subject. In as few words as possible he explained about the body he had found, that he had sent Big Injun to bring it in, and the puzzling aspects of the discovery. “Doesn’t make sense,” he summed it up, “a man like that in such a place. It’s a cinch whoever dumped the body did not expect it to be found right off. The bullet was a precaution.”

“Precaution against what?” Thurston wondered. “Why did they want an obvious cause of death?”

Borden Chantry was silent, thinking. After a moment he said what had been in his mind from the beginning. “I’m going to have Doc do an autopsy. There’s something funny about this. I think they did all they could to keep anybody from guessing who he was or where he was killed.

“First, they hoped the body would not be found until it was torn up by animals or wasted away, but they did not trust to that. Just in case they wanted an obvious cause of death that could be readily accepted.

“This one is for you. I’m a rancher, not a detective.”

“You did pretty well on the Lang Adams thing.”

“Just common sense, that was all, and cow country savvy. This is different.”

He finished his coffee. “Bess will be worried. I’m going home.”

“Bord? I’ll be gone for two weeks. Look into this and give me a report, then if you want me to take over I’ll do it.”

“Well…” He hesitated, but had to admit the hesitation was not honest. He did want to investigate. Puzzles bothered him, and leaving the body close to his own ranch, that almost made it his problem. “All right, but hurry back. Meanwhile I’ll see what I can scare up.”

---

—

Tom and Bess were at the table when he came in. Bess got up and went to the stove. “How are things at school?” he asked his son.

“All right, I guess, but Ol’ Lady Graham is sure piling on the home-work.”

“Old Lady? She’s no old lady, Tom. She’s young and almighty pretty.”

“You noticed that, did you?” Bess said.

“I sure did, Bess.” He smiled at her. “But I saw you first.”

He paused. “I came by the ranch. Those wildflowers came up where you scattered the seed, a whole mess of them.”

“Pa? Can I ride out there with you someday? I miss the place.”

“One of these days. We’ve a little trouble out there right now.” He explained about the body.

Bess brought his food to the table and sat down opposite him. “I wish you had another job. I live for the day when we’ll be away from here.”

“There’s crimes back east, too, Bess.”

“But you won’t have anything to do with it.” Or with anything else, probably, he told himself. What would he do for a living? What could he do? He had spent a lot of horse-back time just thinking, in the saddle. Or over a cup of coffee at the restaurant. He would have to come up with some kind of a plan, something he could do. They wouldn’t have much money because he wouldn’t sell the land for what Hyatt would give him for it, and he was sure that was just what Hyatt was waiting for. Sooner or later he expected Borden to get into a jam and come to him for money.

The night was cool and he added some sticks to the fire. Bess was knitting and Tom was at the table with a book open and writing on a tablet. He had never had much schooling himself and whenever Tom wasn’t around and his books were, Borden liked to dip into them and read a little. Someday, if there was time…

“Thursty’s going out to California,” he volunteered. “Got to testify in a case. I’ll be taking over for him for two weeks.”

“You’ll be investigating that murder?” Bess asked.

“Sort of. Nathan Johnson will be on it, too.”

He did not like Nathan Johnson nor did Nathan like him. It went beyond the election, and was, Borden realized, a matter of personality. Nathan had been county clerk before he ran for sheriff, and had visions of running for the state legislature. He would not be Borden’s choice for any office. Yet, the man had a way of making himself liked and he could get the votes. Better than I could, Borden reflected. Give the man his due. He knows his business. And his business was politics, it was not solving or preventing crimes.

Soon everybody in town would know about the body. Some must have overheard him talking to Thursty Jones, others would see the dead man when Injun brought him in. The talk might stir up a clue. After all, there was no other town within miles.

It also might warn the killer that his crime had been discovered sooner than expected.

Borden Chantry considered that and warned himself to walk carefully. So far the killer had been quite sure of himself. No doubt he still was, but there was always a point when fear came, and the instinct of a frightened killer was to kill again.

He did not fear for himself, but suppose, just suppose the killer tried to retaliate against his family? He glanced quickly at Bess and then at Tom. Maybe Bess was right. Maybe he should get out of this business.

Yet the discovery of the body and the talk about it might help. His experience, limited though it was, inclined him to believe that if a criminal is pushed he makes mistakes. And all criminals, he believed, were optimists. They had to believe they could get away with it, they had to believe everything would go right for them. The trouble was somebody was always noticing, and the criminal could never be sure he had not been seen or that he had not, inadvertently, left some clue.

Borden Chantry knew little about the detection of crimes, but of one thing he was sure. The greatest ally the law had was the mind of the criminal itself. In a larger city it might not work so well, but he knew what it could do, for better or worse, in a small town.

What he must find out was who the dead man had been, and how he came to be where he was.

The first thing was to find out how he got to this part of the country. He had to have come on the steam cars or from the south by stage. Obviously, he was no horseman.

Of course, he might have been driven in by somebody, by buckboard or wagon. The killer, perhaps?

Tomorrow he would begin inquiries. If he had arrived with somebody or been met by somebody someone would have seen it. People liked to talk. They liked to know, to be able to tell others what they had seen. It gave them a sense of importance. Of course, they might be afraid. Those who knew might be frightened by the killing.

He would talk to Cuff. The dispatcher rarely missed noticing who got on or off the train. After all, he sat behind his telegraph key looking out the window at the tracks where the trains stopped.

Then he would talk to the livery stable to see if anybody had hired a rig. A difficulty was that he had no time limits. He did not know when the man arrived, yet wearing those clothes he had not been here long.

Priscilla, at the post office, might know something.

In fact, she always did. She was uncommonly nosy, but on the other hand, she was not inclined to gossip and rarely spoke of what she knew.

If the killer was in town or even in the country close by he would soon know what Borden was doing. He would be able to observe every step of Chantry’s progress, and would know when Chantry was getting close and take the necessary steps to prevent discovery. In the morning he must see Nathan Johnson. By that time the body should have been brought in. He would have to get Doc Terwilliger on the job, too.

“I had a letter from Ethel,” Bess said. “She says the Dornbecker farm will be for sale. Old Charlie died and the boys are working in Boston now. I remember it well, when I was a child. They had such a lot of maple trees and we used to go over for the sugaring.”

“How big a place?”

“Eighty acres. There’s a small orchard, mixed fruit trees, just for their own use, and a big barn. The kind you always wanted out at the ranch.

“Ethel said they would sell it on time, to the right person.”

Borden shifted in his chair. He had enough of being in debt, of fighting the weather for crops. At least he knew what he was doing out here, and back there he would have it all to learn. Still, it sounded like a good place.

“Did she give you any idea what they were asking?”

“She said she’d find out.”

Ethel was Bess’s sister, a nice woman. He knew how they missed each other.

He got up and reached for his hat. “I’ve got to make my rounds,” he said. “Don’t wait up for me, Bess.”

“Borden? Be careful. Please?”

Outside he moved away from the door and stood listening to the night. Caution was as natural to him as breathing.

The piano was going in Time Reardon’s Corral Saloon, and he heard somebody ride down the street, heading out of town.

He supposed it must be hard on Bess. When a man was keeping the peace his wife never knew when he walked out of the door whether he would come back, or not. Yet things had been quiet in town, and the jail was empty. Nothing for Big Injun to do but keep the place swept out.

Kim Baca, his former deputy, now had a small horse-breeding ranch just out of town. Well, that was one thing he had done, if nothing else. He had turned Kim from a horse-thief headed for a hanging into a good deputy and a man on whom he could depend.

He did not go out through the gate in the low picket fence. Instead he walked under the cottonwood tree and stepped over the fence, keeping himself in the dark until he reached the street alongside the cafe.

Three horses were tied at the Corral’s hitching-rail and a buckboard with a sorrel team. He knew the horses. They were M-Bar-W stock, cowboys returning from a small drive over to Trinidad. The buckboard was one he had not seen before, but it was old.

He crossed the street to the saloon.

CHAPTER 3

Time Reardon was tending his own bar. He nodded briefly to Chantry. There was mutual respect between them, not friendship, but each understood the other very well indeed.

The three M-Bar-W cowboys were at the bar, and a stranger sat at the nearby table. He was a square shouldered man in a gray suit coat and matching vest. His ears were tight against his head and his eyes busy. In front of him was a stein of beer. He wore a handle-bar mustache and his face showed signs of the sun.

“How are you, Bord?” Reardon asked. “Everything quiet?”

“Yes, and I hope it stays that way.”

Time mopped the bar, then he said, “Hear you found some work for Nathan.”

“For me, too.”

Reardon looked up. “You? Here in town?”

“Thurston Jones has gone to Frisco. He asked me to handle whatever came up so Nathan and I will be working together.”

“Does Nathan know about this?” Was Reardon disturbed, or was it his imagination?

“Not yet. I thought I might find him in here.”

“He hasn’t been in.” Reardon leaned his forearms on the bar. “This body you found? Local man?”

“Stranger. City man.”

The M-Bar-W cowhands were listening. All three were known to Chantry as they had ridden on round-ups together when he was still a cattleman. “In Sheep Canyon?” The cowhand’s name was Hayes. “How the Hell did he get away out there?”

“Not by himself, he didn’t,” Hinge, another of the cowboys said.

“Murder?” Reardon asked.

“He’d been shot in the head. My guess would be a rifle, fired from fifty, sixty yards off. That’s just a guess.”

These men, if interested, could be a help. They rode the range south of where the body had been found, and they were friends. Borden Chantry was one of their own kind. When you ride an empty land you notice things another might ignore. You see the tracks of a strange horse or glimpse a rider in the distance, you are curious. It was a country where not too many were moving around and those who were knew each other, and understood what the other was doing and why he was where he was. Anything or anyone who did not fit into that pattern was reason for curiosity.

Nathan Johnson came in. He was a few inches shorter than Borden Chantry, and had grown a little fat sitting behind a desk.

“How are you, Borden? Hear you found some work for me?”

“For me, too, Nathan. Thursty asked me to stand in for him. He’s gone out to Frisco to testify in a case.”

“Glad to have you aboard.” Despite the fact that they had run against each other for office there was no obvious animosity. But so far there had been no need for cooperation, and their paths had gone off in opposite directions. “I’ll be glad to have any information you can give me. I’d like to get this closed up fast.”

Borden Chantry lifted one boot and rested it on the brass rail. “That may be tough,” he said quietly. “This isn’t any ordinary killing.”

Two men had come into the saloon and seated themselves at a table near the door. From the corner of his eyes he saw that one was a stranger, the other a man whom he knew slightly as a small rancher in the southern part of the country.

Nathan turned to face him. “Now what does that mean?” He was suddenly interested, and Borden could understand why. A big case now might mean much in the future, if as many believed, Nathan aspired to higher office.

“It is not a simple murder,” he said quietly. “The man himself, the obvious attempt to prevent his body being found until nature had destroyed it, and other aspects. It makes a man wonder, Nathan, just who would go to all that trouble, and why. If it was simply a robbery his body would have been left where it was robbed.”

He stepped away from the bar. “I’m having Doc take a look at the body. After that we should know more.”

He walked to the door, glancing at the newcomers as he went out. Their eyes were averted and they did not glance his way, which seemed unusual. One’s eyes almost automatically observe movement when close by, but neither looked up, either so engrossed in conversation they were not aware of his passing or deliberately avoiding his eyes.

Two horses had been added to those at the rail. Both wore the Double O brand. He knew the brand belonged to the man inside. What was his name? Mitchell? Hitchell? Something of the sort.

Borden Chantry walked along the street to the bank, then crossed the street to the front of the Express Office, where he checked the door. He waited there in the darkness under the over-hang, his eyes studying the street, alert for movement. He was expecting no trouble, but he was thinking as well.

Who was the man with Hitchell? And that other man? With the somewhat sun-burned face? He was not from around here and was also not used to exposure to the sun, or at least not lately.

The marshal of a small town had to know who strangers were and what their business might be. Usually he understood at once, but these were not stock buyers, nor were they prospectors. This was not mining country yet there were always a few optimists.

His thoughts returned to Bess and the East. He might try farming but he had done nothing like that since he was a boy when he had helped his father, before they came west. He knew next to nothing about raising crops, or even what crops might grow back where Bess wanted to live. He would have to look into that.

Was he actually thinking of it? Seriously? He took off his hat and ran his fingers through his hair, watching the street. He had to think of it. Bess was serious, it was clearly what she wanted. He hitched his gun into an easier position and checked to see if the thong was off the hammer. He only kept it in place when he was riding, and here in town, where he might need it quickly, he kept his gun free.

A light was on in the office when he stepped in. Kim Baca was playing solitaire on the desk, using their battered cards.

“All quiet?” Kim asked.

“Hitchell’s in town. Know anything about him?”

“Small outfit, runs about three hundred head, I think. Neat little place, neat house, backed up against some low hills. He doesn’t come this way very much. Usually rides into La Junta or Trinidad.”

“You seem to have him pegged?”

Baca shrugged. “A man can’t make a living with three hundred head, not with prices the way they are. It’s mostly young stuff, of course, and likely he’s building up a herd.”

“Does he own a buckboard?”

Baca shrugged. “Not that I know of, but it could be. He’s got a nice barn, well-built, strong. In fact, he’s got the best barn I’ve seen around this country.”

Except for the saloons and the cafe it was a nine o’clock town. By that time everybody was in their own home, concerned with their families and preparing for bed or tomorrow. He saw the three riders from the M-Bar-W come out and mount up and he walked out on the street where he could be seen.

As they rode abreast of him he said, “Hayes?”

They pulled up and he walked over to them. “You boys get around out there. If you see any strange tracks, I’d like to know.”

“Anything in pa’tic’lar?”

“Maybe a buckboard or a wagon, but just anything at all.”

“All right, Bord.” Hayes lifted a hand. “See you around.”

He strolled on down to Alvarez’s cafe and stepped in. There were a half dozen Mexicans in the place and a couple of Anglo punchers whom he knew. He nodded, went to his usual booth.

Alvarez came over with two cups of coffee and sat down opposite him. The population of the town was almost a third Spanish-speaking and Alvarez was something of a leader in the community. He had two sons and a daughter attending school and his sister was a teacher.

“Al? Is everything all right with your people? No problems?”

“Nothing, Bord. All is quiet.” The Mexican sipped his coffee, then put the cup down carefully. “But it is not among our people for you to look.” He paused. “You are my friend.” He drank his coffee, then looked over his cup into Borden Chantry’s eyes. “Be careful. Be very, very careful.”

Borden Chantry knew better than to ask questions. When Alvarez knew something, if he knew something, he would tell him. They talked idly of range conditions, of horses, and their families. Borden finished his coffee and got up to leave. Alvarez rose also and said quietly, “We have a new sheriff now. It is better that he handle those things not of the town.”

“Gracias, amigo.” Borden Chantry lifted a hand. “I think I shall go home now.”

When he looked back, Alvarez was still in the doorway, watching him go. Puzzled, Borden stopped in the shadows and looked around again. There was nothing, yet the Mexican had been trying to warn him, suggesting he confine himself to the town, and he could do just that. Thursty would not expect him to solve any crimes, just to keep the lid on until he returned.

Yet he had an uneasy feeling that he was missing something important. Crime in a community is like a cancer—it grows, eating away at the underside of a town until there is total corruption. It is all too easy to tolerate an evil if it avoids the public eye, and something was wrong here.

He had small experience with crime. He was no detective, and had come into law enforcement by the back door, so to speak. True, he had been asked to take the job, and without it his family might have gone hungry. Well, maybe that was stretching it a bit, but he had needed a job, and desperately.

Until he had taken the job as town marshal he had known the towns-people only casually. He bought supplies at the general store, picked up mail at the post office, ate occasionally in the cafe. Sometimes he dropped in at one of the saloons for a drink, although he wasn’t much inclined that way. He and his wife attended church here in town and, eventually, Tom had gone to school here.

Since he had become marshal the town had taken on a new look. These were people he had to protect. He had solved the murder of Joe Sackett and he had, with Tyrel Sackett’s help, frustrated the attempted bank robbery by the outlaws Monson and Clatt. If he was going to go back east he had to leave the town clean, so whatever was happening, he had to know.

---

—

Bess was sitting by the fire when he came in. She was reading Quentin Durward, by Sir Walter Scott. “You should read this, Borden, you’d like it.”

He filled his cup and sat down at the table. “Bess, what do you know about Zaretta Clyde? I mean, what are people saying?”

“What can they say? Nobody knows anything about her. She’s been here more than a year and hasn’t been in town three times, although they do say she has visitors.”

“Visitors?”

“Men, mostly, some of them city men. They don’t come to town, either. They get off the train at a place near her ranch and are met there. She meets them sometimes with a buckboard, and sometimes it is that foreman of hers, Clint Meyers.”

He chuckled, shaking his head. “You ladies don’t miss much.”

Bess shrugged. “It’s mostly Priscilla. There at the post office she hears about everything that’s said, and Clint Meyers gets his mail there. He writes to some woman in Denver. She used to be at Cheyenne Wells, according to Pris, but moved to Denver a few months ago. Pris knows it’s the same woman. She recognized the hand-writing.”

“And Zaretta?”

“Mr. Meyers picks up her mail, most of it business, judging by the printing on the envelopes. Pris thinks she has investments.”

Borden Chantry sat long over his coffee, thinking. All to no purpose, for he came up with nothing. Zaretta Clyde was the only new person in the area of whom he could think, and those men in Reardon’s place, but there were always travelers coming through. He would have to check with Elsie Carter at the hotel.

Morning dawned bright and clear. He sat by the window of his home and watched the train pull in. No passengers left the train and only a couple of packing cases were unloaded. “Bess? I’ll be around town all day.” He paused. “If you talk to Pris—”

“Why don’t you talk to her? You know she thinks the sun rises and sets in you. Really, she does.”

“Doesn’t act it. She’s scolding me most of the time for letting things happen over which I’ve no control.”

“That’s Pris. But she still thinks you’re the best and she would tell you things she would never tell us.”

His house stood on a narrow lane that ran along behind the stores and shops on Main Street, directly behind the cafe.

On the other side of the house and some hundred yards off was the railroad, and from his kitchen window he could watch passengers dismount from the train.

Kim Baca was at the desk when he entered the office.

“All quiet,” he said. “Doc says he wants to talk. He’ll be at the cafe.” Baca paused. “Said you an’ your corpse kept him up half the night.”

“You talked to Big Injun since he got back?”

Baca jerked a thumb toward the jail cells behind him.

“He’s back there, sleepin’. He was up most of the night, drivin’ down an’ back.”

Doc Terwilliger was alone in the cafe but for Ed, and Doc was dozing over a cold cup of coffee. Borden dropped into a chair opposite him. The doctor was a small man in a worn gray suit, a white collar and red tie.

He opened his eyes when Borden sat down. “Took you long enough,” he grumbled, “for a man who wants everything done right now.”

“Have you seen the body?”

“Seen it? Inside and out! White man, about forty-five years old, advanced case of tuberculosis and a bad heart along with it. And you were right. He was shot after he was already dead, been dead for several hours, I’d guess.”

Ed brought two cups and a pot of coffee, carrying the cold cup away.

“How did he die?”

Doc poured some coffee into his saucer and blew gently to cool it. He looked over the saucer into Borden’s eyes. “You ain’t going to believe this, Bord. You ain’t going to believe it at all.”

“Well?”

“He was drowned. He was held face-down in some shallow water by somebody with a mighty strong grip.”

CHAPTER 4

The coffee tasted good. He took another sip and put his cup down carefully.

Drowned.

A dead man found on the plains of eastern Colorado, miles from water, and death by drowning.

“Got any idea what kind of water he drowned in?”

Doc Terwilliger chuckled. “Now I just knew you’d ask that question! An’ not many would think of it. Matter of fact, that was almighty obvious. He was drowned in alkali water. Lungs, nostrils and throat had that white stuff. He swallowed a good bit of it in gasping for breath.”

“Shallow water, then. Face pushed down into it and held there.” Borden Chantry turned toward Terwilliger. “Have you told anybody about this, Doc?”

“Only you. Nobody else was around but that little McCoy boy. You know, the youngster who lives alone.”

“Billy won’t talk. He’s mighty cagey. Just the same, I’ll have a word with him.”

Doc nodded. “I like that boy, Bord. And I think he’s got a good feeling for medicine. He should get a chance to go to school.”

“Narrows it down, Doc. This narrows it down.” He glanced at Terwilliger. “Why would someone move a body in the first place? Simply because it was too close to home, or to something they didn’t want seen. No doubt they hoped it would be torn up by animals or would simply fall apart before anybody saw it. Nine times out of ten that would be exactly what would happen.”

“Only you happened along?”

“The buzzards found him first. And you know any Western man knows buzzards mean something dead. Whoever left the body wasn’t thinking of that.”

Borden Chantry looked at him. “You’d think of it, wouldn’t you? Billy McCoy would think of it, too, and Time Reardon or Ed here, they’d think of it.”

“What are you gettin’ at?” Doc asked.

“Whoever left that body wasn’t thinking of buzzards, and that, too, might narrow the field.”

He pushed back from the table. “What about his clothes?”

“Big Injun took them. Said you’d want to see them.”

“Good!” Chantry got up. “Doc, there are a lot of curious people around. The cause of death was a bullet wound, wasn’t it?”

Doc shrugged. “Of course! Anybody could see that. Right in the middle of his forehead.” He smiled. “Got to get over to see Elsie’s aunt. She’s ailin’.”

Borden chuckled. “Is she ailin’, or does she just want the good doctor to hold her hand?”

“You got enough to worry about without bothering about sick women. That’s my department. Besides that, she’s right handsome when you get down to it.”

---

—

The sun was bright when he walked into the street. He paused there, looking around. Ed had followed him from the cafe and was sweeping off the walk. Far up the street Judge Alex McKinney was talking to Priscilla in front of the bank.

There was nothing much to the town when you came right down to it, but he’d miss the place. He would miss the people, too.

Billy was loitering nearby, tossing small rocks at a circle marked in the dust. He was pretty good. Nearly every rock was landing in the center.

“Billy? I wouldn’t talk about being in the stable with Doc when he did that autopsy.”

“No, sir. I won’t.” He tossed another rock. “Mr. Chantry, I’d be careful if I were you. Somebody’s been staked out near your house.”

“What’s that?”

“Yes, sir. Last two nights. Maybe it’s not anybody watchin’ you, maybe he’s watchin’ the railroad, but he’s been behind that stack of ties yonder alongside the tracks.”

The stack of railroad ties were alongside the tracks and just opposite the house. A boy like Billy was a canny youngster. His father had been a good friend and Borden Chantry had brought justice to his murderer.

“Thanks, Billy. You’re a top hand in any man’s outfit. You be careful, now.”

He paused. “There’s something wrong around town, Billy, something very wrong, like when your father was killed.”

“I think they’re scared, sir. Why else would they be watching you? Maybe it’s like before.”

“How do you mean?”

“Like Lang Adams, sir. He killed all those people because he was scared, and there was no reason for it. I think these folks are scared.”

“Good thinking, Billy, but you stay out of it, you hear? I’ve got enough to do without looking out for you, too.”

“Yes, sir. But if I see anything—?”

“I’ll listen. You know that, I’ll always listen, just like your dad would have. You have any problems, you come to me, or if I’m not around, to Bess.”

He walked back to the office, hung his hat on the rack and sat down. The dead man had drowned, and in alkali water, shallow water.

He had been drowned and then taken miles away, probably by night, and his body dumped in a remote place. He had then been shot.

What did this imply? Just as he had decided, somebody did not want the body found where he had been killed. Somebody did not want the cause of death known. The pattern of thinking was not Western, although he could not rely upon that.

A body would attract buzzards, which any Western man would know. However, the buzzards might not be noticed as the area was rarely visited, so even that deduction was questionable.

The dead man was not from around here. The soles of his shoes did not indicate rough walking. The polished seat of his pants and coat sleeves to the elbow seemed to indicate some work at either desk or table.

Several things he needed to know. Who was the dead man? How did he get to this part of the country? What was he doing here? Why was it necessary to kill him? And above all, who had done the killing?

People had warned him to be careful, and Billy had said somebody seemed to be watching him. Billy was only twelve, but Billy missed little that went on around town and a small boy was often ignored. It also meant that he must not be seen talking to Billy or the boy might be endangered.

Where to begin? The answer was simple. He had the man’s clothes. He had gone through them once, but he must do so again, with more attention.

Borden Chantry went to the desk drawer where he kept Wanted sheets sent by other jurisdictions. Idly, he leafed through them, not hoping to discover a familiar face but to be nudged into thinking of something that would help. Many of the posters were of men or women not likely to be found in the West—pickpockets usually kept to large centers of population where they could work the crowds, and sneak thieves, too. In a Western town like this everything a body did was open to somebody’s eyes.

A safe-cracker now, he might try the bank or Reardon’s Corral Saloon where he occasionally kept valuables for people who were briefly stopping in town. The express office was another possibility, but a slim one. A man trying to rob the express office would be aware it was in plain sight of Hyatt Johnson’s house as well as the bank.

All in all, this town was not a good place for a criminal to operate. When Monson and Clatt tried to take the bank they had a good-sized gang but a plan that had not included him. Nor had they expected Tyrel Sackett to be in town.

Outlaws were fools to tackle these Western towns, anyway, because every man had a gun and knew how to use it. Not only that, they would use it.

He needed to think, and he did that better in the saddle, but first he would have a look at the dead man’s clothing.

Rising to go back to the cell where the clothes had been left he caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror.

He glimpsed a man with a lean brown face, a handle-bar mustache, carefully combed dark hair and quiet eyes. He paused for a moment, regarding himself speculatively. What would people think of that face back in those Eastern states? There were outdoorsmen there, of course, so in the country, at least, he would not appear strange.

He shrugged, looking away. He had never thought much of how he looked at any time. Mirrors were not found on the range and until he married Bess he had never owned anything beyond a piece of broken glass he used to shave with. If he went east he would be wearing a collar and tie most of the time, he supposed.

Again that question: What could he do? What work could he find that was within his range of abilities?

---

—

The suit taken from the dead man lay on the empty bunk in the nearest cell. He stared at the nondescript jacket and the shirt with the soiled collar. It was not much for a man to leave behind.

Of course, he had come too late. The killers had been through the pockets before he saw the man, removing everything that might offer a clue, and also whatever money the man had on him. Maybe there was nothing here. Maybe they had cleaned him out so thoroughly there would be no clue.

Borden Chantry pulled over a chair and sat down facing the suit.

After he had examined the clothes he would have Big Injun beat the dust from them and collect it. He did not know if that would help or not, but he presumed there might be some indication of where he had worked or lived.

The suit was several years old. The inside of the right coat pocket, particularly around the top edge, had a dark stain which might be ink. There had been ink on the man’s hands, washed off carelessly but still ingrained in the wrinkles and under the finger-nails.

The same was true of the right pants pocket. So the man had worked with ink or used it somehow enough to stain his hands and clothes.

A printer? Perhaps. Borden Chantry did not know much about the activities of city men beyond the usual sort of thing. Yet this man, an untidy one, had undoubtedly worked with ink.

There was no label on the clothing. The buttons were of bone, and of a common sort. He had picked up the coat when he heard a light step in the office, and then a woman stood in the door of the cell.

Unreasonably, the first thing he thought of was his gun. The thong was over the hammer.

Then he chuckled. Such a thought! For this was no outlaw, it was a woman, and a damned good looking one into the bargain.

“Howdy, ma’am.” He put the coat down and got to his feet. “I wasn’t expecting visitors.”

“And I thought it was about time a new resident became acquainted with the town marshal. I am Zaretta Clyde, how do you do?”

“Of course, Miss Clyde. If you would go back into the office—?”

He folded the coat and put it down on the bunk. When he followed her out he turned the key in the door.

“You lock your empty cells?” She was smiling at him. “Or is there a ghost in there?”

“A ghost? Come to think of it, there’s two ghosts. One is of the murdered man who wore that suit, the other is his murderer.”

She smiled again but her eyes were cool, measuring, studying him. “You mean the murderer is dead?”

“Not yet. But his shadow is somewhere close to that suit and when I’m through with it, I’ll find him.”

Her smile was gone. “You are confident, Mr. Marshal.” She sat down in a chair.

He shrugged. “I’m really not much of a marshal, Miss Clyde.” He waved a hand to indicate the town. “But the folks out there know me and are comfortable with me.”

He glanced at her again. “I have been meaning to run out to see you, but you’ve beat me to the punch. Same idea, getting acquainted with folks new to the area.”

On the desk lay the sheaf of the Wanted circulars. She glanced at them. “How interesting! Do you get those all the time? I mean is there one out for every criminal?”

“No, ma’am, just for those wanted for some reason. The marshal who was here before me kept ’em all, so we’ve got quite a library.” He glanced up at her, smiling. “When I’m settin’ around doing nothing I kind of leaf through them. Keeps me up on what’s happening.”

“But aren’t most of them out of date?”

“A criminal is never out of date until he’s dead. Mighty few ever go straight, so the law is always on the look-out. Of course, in a town of this size we never see the fancy big city crooks. Crime here is mostly local, unless it’s something like that Monson an’ Clatt outfit.”

“I hadn’t heard about that.”

“Happened before you came. Organized gang tried to rob our bank, but they didn’t quite make it.”

“What happened?”

“Two of them went to prison, got twenty years apiece. We buried the other five yonder on Boot Hill.”

Zaretta Clyde shivered. “I’d heard the West was violent, but—”

“No more than back east. It’s just more out in the open, like. I represent the law here, but every man an’ woman in town takes pride in the place and none of them want folks makin’ trouble. That Monson an’ Clatt outfit now? Most of the shootin’ was done by citizens.”

He paused. “You’ve got a nice place out there, Miss Clyde. Are you plannin’ to run cattle?”

“Horses, I think, but that’s not the reason I’m here.” She smiled at him, and it was a lovely smile. “Doctor’s orders. He said I must live where the weather is dry.”

“Sorry to hear that, ma’am, but you’ve got it here. Last few years we’ve had a spell of dry weather.” He shrugged. “It’s partly what did me in. Drought first and the grazin’ was bad for my stock. Winter came on with them in bad shape and it wiped me out. Wiped out some others, too, but most were in better shape financially than I was.”

She got up from her chair. “It has been nice talking to you, Marshal.” She paused. “How is the restaurant here?”

“Can’t be beat. Ed was an ol’ cow-camp cook, an’ most folks think that’s all he was, but as a matter of fact, Ed was raised to be a chef in one of them fancy hotels. He got his trainin’, worked some an’ was doin’ well, then he had the same trouble you’ve got, I guess. He had to come west for his health. He fell in love with the country an’ stayed.

“He cooks reg’lar for those who like it that way, but ever’ now and again he does somethin’ fancy. My Bess, she’s my wife, she takes to his fancy cookin’ so ever’ once in awhile he fixes somethin’ special for her.”

He was standing. Big Injun was outside the door, looking in. “You go along down there and tell Ed I said he was to fix you something special. You have any favorites, you tell him. Nothing he likes better than to throw together something for the women-folks. Most of us are steak an’ potato men, or steak and beans.”

When she had gone, Big Injun came in. He was well over six feet and despite his age the two braids that hung over his shoulders showed only a few strands of gray.

“Hitchell. He buckboard back of store. Buy many t’ings inside.”

Borden Chantry thought for a minute and then he said, “Maybe if you wiped out his buckboard he’d give you two-bits,” he suggested casually, “wiped it out with a sack, an’ bring the sack to me. If he gives you trouble, tell him Ed pays you.” A muscle twitched in Big Injun’s cheek; it was what passed for a smile. The man had no interest in impressing anyone, but he was no fool.

Borden dropped into his chair. What did Alvarez know that he did not? The Mexican was his friend, and he had warned him. Time, too, had seemed a little nervous. Saloon-keepers often knew things or heard things others did not, although sometimes they were only whispers of things. Unless he was wise and kept his ear to the ground, too often the last to know was the town marshal.

Why would somebody watch his home? Was somebody scared because of something they thought he knew, or might know? Was that why Zaretta had visited him today? The trouble was, he didn’t know anything. He didn’t know if there was danger, or where it might come from.

CHAPTER 5

Borden Chantry returned to the cell where he had left the dead man’s clothes. Seated again, he examined each article of clothing with care. On the vest now, he turned it over in his hands. That third button looked different. Obviously the original button had been lost and replaced with another. It was likely that the dead man had done the sewing himself. He had taken several turns of the thread, using more than was necessary. He had known little about sewing.

The button itself was not even bone, but some sort of metal of an almost identical color with the other buttons. Something was printed on the back. He rubbed the dirt from the button, some of it alkali, and cleaned it off. Gundy Min.

Gundy Min? What the Hell did that mean? Was it the name of a company? He doubted that. Or an organization? The button must have been one immediately available, and perhaps from another suit or buttons saved for an emergency.

In one of the hip pockets of the pants he found some broken leaves; evidently dried leaves had gotten into the pocket when the body was dragged along the ground, for there was some earth along with the leaves. Carefully, he put them in an envelope with some of the sand and earth and marked it as evidence.

Replacing the suit, neatly folded on the bunk, he left the cell, locking it behind him.

Gundy Min? The name meant no sense.

That is, it made no sense to him. Obviously, it would have made sense to the button manufacturer or to whomever the original garment had belonged. Idly, on a tablet, he scratched out diagrams and drew pictures, always thinking, wondering. He wrote Gundy Sunday, Gundy Mundy…

He tore off the sheet and stuffed it into his pocket. Irritably, he got up and went out on the street. Kim Baca was just coming in and Borden said, “I’m going for coffee,” and started down the street. At the post office he stopped abruptly, then went in.

Nobody was around. The mail distribution had been hours ago. Behind the wall of post office boxes he could hear Priscilla’s pen scratching.

“Well,” he said aloud, “somebody is working, anyway.”

Priscilla pushed back her chair and came over to the window. “I am not working, Borden. I am writing to my sister.”

“Ever hear the name Gundy?” he asked.

“No, I can’t say I have.” She brushed the question aside. “You had a visitor this morning. That Clyde woman.”

“Nice-looking woman,” he commented. “Just wanted to get acquainted with the town marshal.”

“You wait until I tell Bess about that!” Priscilla teased.

“She seems all right. Get mail here?”

“That’s her business, Marshal. Business mail, all of it—brokerage firms, seems like.” She paused. “Must be an orphan or something.”

“Why do you say that?”

“No personal mail. Women-folks like to keep in touch. Most of us write to a sister, mother, aunt or maybe an old friend. She never gets any mail like that.”

Or, he thought, she gets it somewhere else, some other post office or maybe—

He shook his head. That would be unlikely, he thought, but possible. “She invite you for tea?”

He was startled. “Me? I’m not a tea drinker. Bess is, but not me.”

“She’s invited Hyatt. Elsie Carter told me she over-heard it. Right in the door of the hotel. Invited Hyatt and he went, too.”

“Well, why not? She’s an attractive woman and a woman’s company might do Hyatt some good.”

He turned toward the door but she stopped him. “Marshal? You be careful, I’ve got a bad feeling about things.”

He nodded. “So do I, Pris. Worst of it is, I can’t think of any reason why I should feel that way.”

“I can,” Pris replied. “I’ve seen it happen, Marshal, but not always the same way. Maybe somebody in town knows something, or gets a hint of trouble in his family or close by. So he gets watchful and doesn’t talk as much. Somebody else notices it, maybe without even thinking of it, and begins to feel the same way. First thing you know a lot of people are on edge. There was a time there before you solved that Sackett killing when folks were right suspicious of each other, and nobody wanted to talk about anything.” She paused again. “It’s like that now, Marshal. You be careful.”

Borden Chantry walked back to the street and stood at the corner of the post office building. Between that building and the cafe there was a space maybe forty feet wide and he could see his own home, his corral and barn. Nothing was stirring there. Through the leaves of the big cottonwood he glimpsed the pile of ties Billy had spoken about. He scowled, then shook his head.

He went into the cafe and Ed brought his coffee. He curled his fingers around the big cup, the heat seeping into them. The smell was comforting.

Suddenly the door opened and Turren Downer came in. He was a broad, powerful man with big hands and shoulders, thick, curly bronze-like hair and a square jaw. He glanced over at Chantry, then at the badge on his vest.

“Marshal, is it? I heard you were marshal but couldn’t believe it.” He walked over and drew back a chair, sitting astride of it and leaning his arms on the back. “Heard you killed Boone Silva. Down the country where I was folks were almighty surprised. They’d have bet Silva would take you without turnin’ a hair.” He grinned. “I could have told them different. I mind the time we were roundin’ up strays over near Lone Butte an’ you killed that rattler. He never got finished with his rattle before you shot his head off. I told myself then I’d never get into a shoot-out with you.”

Borden Chantry shifted a little in his chair. He did not like talk of such things. Especially talk about himself. He was a modest man and it all made him uncomfortable.

“Who you ridin’ for, Turren?”

“On the loose. Saved up a mite and I’m sort of lookin’ around.” He wiped a hand across his face. “Time I shaped up. I’d like to get me a place of my own and go to raisin’ stock. You don’t need a deputy, do you? I might do all right in your line of work.”

“You might, at that.” Chantry smiled at him. “You’d have to lay off the hooch. Folks don’t take much to having a lawman who hits the bottle.”

Downer nodded. “You’d not believe it, but I haven’t had a drink in two months. Fact. Amazes me, but it’s so.”

Downer got up and swung his chair back into place. As he turned away, Borden Chantry said, “Turren? For old times’ sake? Be careful.”

Turren turned sharply around and seemed about to speak, then turned back to the door. As he reached it he looked back again. “I’ll do that, Bord, an’ you do the same.”

Borden Chantry shook his head. The Turren Downers of the world he could handle; the trouble was with things like this murder he did not know where to begin.

Drowned in shallow, alkali water, and there were a couple of dozen places in twenty miles where that might happen. After rains, anyway.

So what did he have? A body to be buried in an unmarked grave, an old suit of clothes and a lot of suspicion. Zaretta Clyde had just added to that suspicion. She had occupied that ranch property for several months now, so why take this time to come in and get acquainted with the town marshal? Why not before? Months ago? Was she trying to find out what he knew?

Borden tasted his coffee and put his cup down. Let’s suppose, he suggested to himself. Having no evidence, let’s speculate a little. Suppose somebody has a nice little criminal operation going. What it was didn’t matter for the moment. Suddenly, for one reason or another, one of their number gets killed? Or maybe he was not one of them but just somebody who knew too much? Suddenly the lid was off and the operation was in danger.

But what kind of operation? Operated by whom?

The line of thought intrigued him. It was the only solution that occurred to him to account for the body being found where it was, an obvious attempt to dispose of a body without risk of discovery.

Had it been murder by a traveler or even someone local, a murder for robbery, jealousy or what not it was unlikely the body would have been moved but left beside a stage trail or the railroad. A body found under such circumstances would certainly require investigation but would not have aroused the attention this one had. Somebody had tried to be too smart.

Rain had washed away any tracks near the body. He repeated that to himself then stopped. Near the body? What about further away?

I’m not cut out for this job, he told himself. Any fool would have considered that possibility and looked further away from the body. Horse or human tracks could well have been erased by the rain, but what of buckboard tracks? Places where the narrow wheels had cut through drifts of sand or over embankments.

A dead body was not the easiest thing to load on a horse, and that was given the fact that you had a horse who would stand for it all. A Western man might tie a body securely enough so it would not fall off, and some others might too, but it would not be easy.

From the first he had assumed a buckboard was used. Why, he asked himself, had he accepted that idea? Because it was the easiest way to move a body across country? Or because there had been no abrasions on the skin where a rope might have been tied? On a couple of occasions he had tied unconscious men into their saddles. He was a big man, considered unusually strong, and it had not been easy, and difficult if the horse side-steps. A body, dead or unconscious, is awkward to handle, being both limp and heavy.

Was that the only reason why he had so quickly accepted the idea of the buckboard? Suppose, just suppose he had unconsciously seen something that because of more immediate concerns did not register consciously?

Just so he might have passed over tracks or indications because he was not looking for them and because he was watching the buzzards or at last, the body. With his attention focused he might have over-looked much.

So what to do? To ride back, to swing in a large and then a larger circle about where the body was found, and to particularly observe those places in which a buckboard might most easily be driven. He doubted if the man he sought would have been thinking of hiding a trail. His attention would have been on getting the body to a place where it might be dumped and getting away without being seen.

Tomorrow. He would ride out tomorrow and look. He put his cup down and got up but as he did so the thought flashed through his mind.

He would be riding alone, away from observers, and if anyone did want him dead, their opportunity would be perfect.

A man alone on horseback in empty country makes a nice target.

CHAPTER 6

The roan he was riding was range-bred from mustang stock crossed with a Morgan stud, and it was a stayer, a horse who took to wild country and rough going. He started off to the west but when well away from the town and seeing no one on his back trail he swung toward the south. He took his time, stopping occasionally to give the roan a breather and to check behind him. Only when he was sure he was not followed did he turn toward his ranch and the place where the body had been found.

He was under no illusions. Whoever had killed would kill again if he believed himself at risk. The loneliness and the quiet gave him a chance to think, and slowly, for he was a slow-thinking man, he turned over all aspects of the problem in his mind.

Why had the man been killed? Over a woman? That seemed doubtful, although possible. Over money? Possible. Or had he known too much? Unlikely, although it was possible the man was engaged in something illegal. He was not a horse or cow thief, the first two possibilities in this country. He might be a yeggman preparing to rob the bank or the express office. As it happened that was one aspect of crime about which Borden Chantry knew something.

Long ago, maybe ten or twelve years back he had worked on an outfit with a yeggman who had gone straight. Well, he had gone straight for awhile. Chantry now knew that the man had told him all he did in hopes of recruiting Chantry into helping him, explaining in detail how yeggs operated and how easy it was to not only live off the country but to pull off a big one.

Could it be that? It was something to keep in mind, at least. Again and again he checked his back trail but saw no evidence that he was followed.

Or were they simply waiting for him?

He circled warily, taking his time, studying every aspect of the terrain. He was west of the place where he had found the body when he saw it. A narrow cut in a small drift of sand, such as might be made by the wheel of a buckboard.

For several minutes he sat his saddle studying the angle of the cut and looking for some sign of the other wheel. He saw nothing so slowly he began to back track. It was over a hundred yards before he found another track but this time it was double and there, under a bush, was an edge of track that might have been made by a horse’s hoof.

Four hours later he had tracked the buckboard almost a mile. Rain and wind had obliterated most of what might have been a good trail, and he found nothing with which to identify either the buckboard or the horses. The one clue with which he was left was the direction from which the buckboard had come.

The buckboard had come in from the east. Of course, it might have circled around but he doubted it. Whoever the driver was he would have wanted to be rid of that body as soon as possible. No doubt it had been covered by a tarp or some such thing, but the driver would not have wanted to be seen, and to have met anybody would have demanded some sort of an explanation.

How long would it have taken? At best, over this terrain the buckboard could have averaged three miles an hour, and he would be traveling by night.

Borden Chantry considered that again. Probably by night. He might have chanced the daylight hours, trusting there was no one about, but the risk would be great. Unless, of course, he was a man not of the country. A stranger might have believed this empty looking country was really empty and not realized that occasional cowboys might cross it at any time.

There was a point here that disturbed him. All the evidence inclined him toward believing whoever left the body was a stranger to the area, except for the place in which the body was left. Or had it been simply chance? Simply an accident as to his choice?

“Bord,” he said aloud, “you just ain’t cut out for this job.”

The sky was impossibly clear, and in the far-off distance he thought he could see the Spanish Peaks. The wind stirred the bunch grass and a tumbleweed left its resting place and rolled over, then again. He took off his hat and let the wind cool his brow, stir in his hair. “I’ll miss this country,” he spoke aloud again, and the roan twitched an ear.

He rode east, seeing no further sign, considering the nearest road over which the buckboard must have traveled. Thinking of that, he remembered Mable.

She was an Indian woman who lived on a lonely ranch with her two daughters. As a younger man he had worked with her husband, punching cows. A few years later Jacob had been killed when a horse fell on him. Several times while the girls were small he had taken sacks of groceries by the ranch, never stopping long, just dropping them off with a tip of his hat.

Mable, who lived on a low knoll, kept a few sheep, a couple of milk cows and some other stock as well as a few cow ponies. If anything was happening within miles, the chances were that Mable knew of it. Whether she would talk or not was another question. An Indian might simply not be concerned with certain things, and they were not as loose-tongued as a white man.

He rode across the mesa toward Mable’s ranch, in plain sight for well over a mile, and he took his time. When he reached the ranch there were three ponies in the corral but no one about. He stepped down from the saddle and led his horse to the creek for water. It was not considered polite to ride right up to the door, and he was giving them time. Finally, he tied his horse at the corral and removing his hat, walked over to the door.

Meralda came to the door. She was about fourteen, he figured, and bright-eyed and pretty.

“Howdy, ma’am,” he said, smiling, “I’m a stranger hereabouts and was wondering if you had coffee on?”

“You’re not a stranger! You’re Mr. Chantry. Will you come in?”

He ducked his head and stepped in. Mable was sitting near the stove, mending a dress with a torn sleeve. Felicia, the older girl who was seventeen now, went to the stove for the coffee pot. She was a quiet, serious girl, not as attractive as Meralda, but he remembered she had done well in school.

“Passin’ by,” he explained. “Wondered how you getting on?”

“It is a good year for the sheep,” Mable said.

He accepted a cup of coffee and relaxed. They talked idly, with long periods of silence. He knew they knew he wanted something and were waiting.

“Not many people out this way,” he suggested. “Have many visitors?”

“No.”

“I’ve been looking around,” he said. “Somebody in a buckboard, three or four nights ago.”

“We want no trouble,” Mable said.

He could not honestly say they would have none, and simply sipped his coffee and waited.

“At night there is no travel,” Felicia commented. She gestured, “It is a road that comes here, and goes on to Old Mike’s.”

And Old Mike had been dead for these past ten years, he reminded himself.

“The buckboard would go out and back,” he suggested. “Twice along the road.”

The coffee was good, the way he liked it, the way Jacob had liked it.

“Sometimes the dogs bark,” Mable commented.

“Dogs are like that.”

“They barked when Hitchell come by. He was with a big old man. They drank coffee, and the big old man wanted to pay. He say ‘I ’spect you can use this.’ He put ten dollars down.

“I tell him keep his money.”

“Mr. Hitchell tried to stop him,” Meralda said.

A stranger, looking around, might think they were poor, but such was not the case. Indians lived the way they wished to live, and to many the old ways were the best ways. Chantry was not sure they were mistaken, but even if there had been a bad time after Jacob died, Mable now owned over a thousand sheep. Hitchell would know that, a stranger would not.

Felicia refilled his cup. “Hitchell come this way often?”

Mable shook her head. “Never before.”

“The big old man,” Meralda said, “kept looking toward the road. Maybe he expected somebody.”

Or maybe he wished to see how far away it was, and if they could hear somebody passing. Why would Hitchell come unless something bothered him? His cattle rarely drifted this way, for there was water and grass closer to the southeast.

He finished his coffee. “Thank you.” He took up his hat. “I’ll be riding on.” He paused in the door. “I miss Jacob.”

Mable looked up. “Me, too.”

He went out to his horse and gathered the reins, taking his time. Felicia came to the door, then walked over to him. “Four nights ago, the dogs bark. It is somebody on the road. Again, before daylight, they bark again.” She paused. “Now they are with the sheep. Tomas is with them, too.” Again she paused. “They are not foolish dogs.”

He swung into the saddle. “Thank you, Felicia, and thank you for the coffee.”

He turned his horse away and headed for the road. When he reached it he hesitated briefly, then turned back the way he had come.

Hitchell again? And a big old man? Now who would that be? Somebody who did not know Mable. Somebody not from around here.

It was long after dark before he stripped the saddle from the roan and spilled some oats into the bucket. He stepped outside the shed, still standing in the shadow and looked toward the pile of ties. He was some thirty yards from the house and the yard was in shadow except for one place of about thirty feet which lay bathed in pale light. If they were scared, as Billy McCoy believed, were they scared enough to risk a shot at night in town? Had it come to that?

He doubted it. He reached the light spot and crossed with quick steps. He must remember. It would not pay to take chances.

Tom was already in bed, but Bess was up, reading. “How’s Quentin Durward coming along?” he asked, as she put the book down.

“You’d like it,” she repeated. “You’re riding late.”

“Stopped by Mable’s,” he explained.

“How are the girls?”

“Gettin’ prettier by the minute. At least, Meralda is. She’s doing well in school, I hear.”

He sat down, suddenly tired. Bess put food before him and he realized he had not eaten since rising. “Anything happen in town?”

“Priscilla was by, looking for you.”

“She came here?” Priscilla did not often leave Main Street.

He took his watch from his vest pocket. It was almost ten, too late to see her now. It was an early to bed, early to rise town and most of the houses were already dark.

Moreover the last thing he wished was to call attention to Priscilla. As postmistress he could see her at any time but if she called at his home or he at hers at this hour there would be comment which might alert the very people he wished to find.

Bess left for bed and he finished his small meal, took the dishes to the sink and spilled water over them. Turning, he cupped his hand over the globe and blew out the light. Sitting down at the table he pulled off first one boot and then the other, with a slight jingle from his spurs.

He leaned back in his chair. It felt good just to sit, to relax. Now if he could just—

Something moved in the darkness outside. He sat very still, every sense suddenly alert. It was a man, rising from behind that pile of ties, a man who seemed to be staring toward the house. Then slowly, he moved off.

For an instant Borden Chantry thought of following, but by the time he got his boots on the man would be gone.

There were other ways—there had to be other ways.

CHAPTER 7

He awakened at the first gray light. Borden Chantry had worked cattle too long to not awaken before sun-up, yet on this morning he did not immediately rise. Instead, he lay quiet, staring up at the ceiling.

Suppose Billy was right and they were running scared? He had done nothing to frighten anybody except to find the body.

It had not been intended that the body be found, but might there not be a reason why it must not be found now? Suppose, just suppose, the reason for taking the body so far was that it not be discovered at once? Suppose other plans or actions depended on not stirring up any dust?

He could think of no other reason why they should be alarmed. Possibly something was happening or about to happen that demanded no suspicion be aroused?

Suppose, and he was stretching the point, only a few weeks or days were needed to complete whatever it was?

The dead man was an Eastern man, so probably any crime he would be associated with would be known in his part of the country? The dead man had not been a cattleman or a sheepman, and had no indications of being interested in mines. So what remained?

Land? That did not make sense, either. Land was a drug on the market as he had reason to know.

Borden Chantry sat up as carefully as possible and swung his feet to the floor, reaching for his socks. He dressed quietly, not to awaken Bess, and tip-toed from the bedroom in his sock feet. By the time he had slipped on his boots sunlight was coming through the curtains of the kitchen windows.

He made coffee and sliced some bacon into a frying-pan, thinking all the while.

Hitchell? What did he know about Hitchell? He cut several slices of bread, toasted it lightly and carried it to the table with the bacon.

Hitchell had ridden on the last round-up before he, Borden Chantry, had gone bust. He had been repping for his own ranch and several others down that way, and he had been a fair to middling cowhand. Slowly, he dredged his memory, making little notes on a tablet as he did so. That must have been four years ago and it was the first time he’d seen Hitchell, a well set-up man on the slim side, who looked like he’d been sick.

Now why had he thought that? He looked pale, like he might have been in a hospital. It was easily seen because in that bunch they all had been burned brown by the sun, or red like Pat Costigan, who just burned as many of the red Irish do, and never got tan.

He had repped for Rocky Wade’s Four-Forty-Four outfit, too. Rocky ran a lot of cattle down in New Mexico, just below the line.

He looked down the railroad tracks toward the station. Harold Cuff was sweeping off the platform. Chantry considered him. Cuff talked a lot, but he knew a lot, too. Suppose despite all his talking there were things he never discussed? Perhaps because he did not consider them news? Or just from some reserve? He talked largely of things everyone would soon know, but what else was there?

Cuff was the dispatcher, and he would know when trains were coming, where they stopped, where they were side tracked. It might be worth talking to Cuff, or listening to him, a little push here and there, maybe.

He had no idea how a real officer investigated, yet a few things must be done. He must try to discover the identity of the dead man and just how he had arrived in the area. He had to have known someone here, yet Chantry was positive that the dead man had not left the train in town. There were sidings where trains occasionally stopped, however, and one was near Zaretta Clyde’s. Her visitors rarely left the train in town. Had the dead man been one of them?

He shook his head. The man was too untidy. It was unlikely such a man would be accepted socially by the Clyde woman, who was if nothing else, fastidious. From all he could see and learn, she herself was always neat and nicely gotten up and her place was a ranch with everything in place. Still, there could be a connection. What was Nathan Johnson doing, if anything? Attuned to the political winds as he was it was unlikely he would miss the chance to crack this case, especially if it looked like it could gain him attention. The more Borden Chantry thought about it the more certain he was that he had stumbled into something important.

He put on his hat and left the house, strolling down to the depot. As he walked by he noticed the pile of ties again. There were tracks around, some scuffing of the ground. Harold was working his key rapidly and Chantry merely nodded, walking on by. Several packing-cases lay on a baggage truck, all marked for the general store. To take time to look around would also let people in town know he was curious, for little passed that was unobserved.

He was turning back when he saw the suit-case. It was battered and old, standing in a corner of the baggage room. He walked over to it, a well used suit-case, bulging with what it contained and tied around the middle with a heavy strap.

Harold Cuff came out of his office. Today he was wearing his green visor and bright red sleeve garters.

“Found it, did you? I was fixin’ to call you, Marshal. That there bag showed up on the night train about five, six days ago and as it seemed to come from around here, the boys put it off to be claimed.”

“What do you mean ‘it seemed to come from around here’?”

“Bob Neighbors, he’s conductor on the night run, he said they found the bag settin’ just inside the door on the one passenger car, except there was no passenger.”

He studied the suit-case thoughtfully, then he said, “Harold, where’d your train stop that night?”

“Usual. They came out of Trinidad on time, made it in to here on time. No problems.”

“No stops?”

“Well, there was one stop, that siding near Iron Springs, name skips me at the moment. There was a signal there to pick up somebody but nobody showed.”

“Could that suit-case have been put on then? By somebody who might have planned to get aboard?”

Cuff shrugged. “It’s possible, but Neighbors didn’t mention that he saw anybody, and he looked around.”

“Harold, I’m going to take that suit-case as evidence. If anybody shows up to claim it, send them to me.”

“Glad to be rid of it. Sure, take it along. You just sign a release here, for taking unclaimed baggage.”

Suit-case in hand he walked back home. So far as he could see he was unobserved, but knowing his town he doubted it.

Borden Chantry sat down in his kitchen and looked at the suit-case, but he was not thinking of it, but of the problem itself. Possibly, the man had gotten his suit-case aboard and gone back to the ground for his carpet-bag, which had been found beside the body. At that moment something prevented him, or perhaps the train took off with him left on the ground?

What if the man was involved in something and wanted out, either scared or felt he was being cheated, perhaps. If this suit-case was his, and the circumstances seemed to fit, he had evidently planned on catching the train out of town where he would not be seen, and had gotten far enough to get his suit-case aboard, and something or somebody had then prevented him from following.

He knew the siding, and had loaded cattle there once, several years ago. That had been his first shipment of beef from the ranch. Just one car-load, but his first income.

Suddenly, he was worried. Suppose someone had seen him bring the suit-case home? Might they not try to recover it? And that would put his family at risk.

Going to the shed he got a couple of grain sacks and brought them into the house. Bess was away, shopping for groceries he suspected, so he unstrapped the suit-case. It was not locked, and contained some clothing, some papers, and a small roll of tools of some kind. Without taking time to examine any of it, he transferred the stuff to the grain sacks and carried the lot back to the shed where he left them in his small tack-room under the saddle given him long ago by the former marshal. Bundling up some old clothes he packed them into the bag, replaced the strap and carried it to his office, walking past the restaurant and the post office to the office. He wanted to be seen carrying the suit-case.

Ed was sweeping off the boardwalk. He glanced at the suit-case. “Leavin’ town, Marshal?”

“Unclaimed baggage. We’ll hold it until somebody claims it.”

Elsie Carter, who kept the hotel, was emerging from the post office. “I hope you don’t have to hold it as long as I’ve held some. One man stayed three days in the hotel and skipped without paying. All he left in his bag were some old newspapers and a couple of bricks. He hadn’t figured on paying at all.”

“Somebody will show up. If they can identify it and will sign for it, they can have it.”

He walked to the office, feeling pleased. The town now knew he had taken a suit-case to the marshal’s office, and that it was not in his home. He doubted if there would be inquiries. In fact, he doubted if the murderer or murderers knew there was another suit-case.

Kim Baca was in the office. He glanced at the suit-case and Chantry explained, then Baca commented, “Something’s stirring, so watch your step. Rowan MacAdam is in town.”

Borden Chantry sat down in his swivel chair. “Rowan MacAdam, here?”

Rowan MacAdam was a gunman who had fought in a couple of cattle wars down New Mexico way. He had done some shooting there and had been in a couple of gun battles up in Montana.

Why was he here? This was cattle country but it was the slack season. Anybody in his right mind would know that cattlemen were not hiring at this time. But then, MacAdam had been hiring his gun lately.

“Leave him alone, Kim. He may just be passing through, and we’ve trouble enough. That is, as long as he minds his own affairs.”

“Suppose he’s here to get you? He wouldn’t be the first.”

“Leave him alone.” Borden stared out the window. Bess was probably right. Maybe he should get out of this country, as he certainly did not want to be shooting it out with would-be killers all the time. He wanted the quiet life: his ranch, his cattle, Bess and Tom. That was all he wanted, all he needed. No, he told himself, you need money to start ranching again.

He got up and walked to the door, looking out upon the street. For the time being this was his town and he wanted no harm to come to it. As he stood looking absently down the dusty street his thoughts worried over the problem of the dead man.

He would return to Harold Cuff and after him, to the train crews. Someone must have seen the man at some time.

“Kim? I’m walking down to Ed’s. I need some coffee. I’ve got a couple of ideas and they need nourishment.”

Nathan Johnson was in the cafe, drinking coffee with Judge McKinney. Both looked up, nodding as he entered.

“Join us?” Nathan suggested.

“Another time, Nathan. I’ve got some studying to do.”

“Anything on the dead man?” Johnson asked.

Chantry shrugged. “He was in your territory, Nathan. I’ll do whatever’s necessary for Thursty, but I’ve enough to do right here in town.”

He dropped into a chair and Ed brought over a steaming cup of black coffee. He was hardly in his seat before the door opened and two men came in. The first one, he knew at once, was Rowan MacAdam. He was a couple of inches shorter than Chantry’s six feet two, but probably just as heavy. He spotted Chantry at once and walked over.

“Marshal? I’m Rowan MacAdam.”

“Sorry, I didn’t get the name? What was it?” Chantry looked up blandly.

“MacAdam! Rowan MacAdam.” He spoke the name as if he expected it to be greeted by a roll of drums.

“Nice to meet you, Mr. MacAdam. We’ve a nice town here. Not very busy right now, but things will pick up. If you’re thinking of going into business we could use a harness shop. Saddles, bridles, that sort of thing. We always welcome new folks. In fact right down the street we’ve a fine new church, and our school is a good one. Do you have children, Mr. MacAdan?”

“MacAdam,” he said, “Rowan MacAdam.” Then he added, “No, I’ve no children.”

“It’s too bad, children can be a comfort. Fine thing, watching some nice youngsters growing up. Too bad, a man your age—I had a black stallion one time. Never could sire a colt. Tried again and again. Finally had to sell him, but he did make a good draft horse. Spent the rest of his life pulling a dray, I imagine he was happy.”

He shook his head. “Don’t feel bad about it, Mr. MacAdan. You’re a young man yet.” Chantry could hardly force back laughter, but if he laughed now someone might die.

MacAdam was growing angry. “What the Hell are you talkin’ about? I said I was Rowan MacAdam!”

“Of course. No need to be upset. Everybody has their problems.” Chantry gestured to a chair. “Set down, won’t you? You’ll feel better in a few minutes.”

“I feel all right! There’s nothing wrong with me!”

“There! See? You’re feeling better already. Altitude sometimes has that effect on people. Will you have a cup of coffee? Ed here makes the best, believe me.”

“No, I won’t sit down! What are you, some kind of a fool?”

Chantry nodded, seriously. “Yes, that could be it. Each of us is a fool in his own way. I in mine, and you in yours.” The time for this foolishness was nearly over. “If you’re going to stay in town, Mr. MacAdan, I suggest you hang up that gun. It’s a good way to get into trouble around here. The people of our town,” he gestured, “no longer accept that sort of thing.

“In fact.” Borden Chantry’s gun was in his hand. “Maybe I’d better hold those gun belts while you’re in town. We wouldn’t want anybody hurt here. It gives the town a bad reputation. You just unbuckle very carefully now, very carefully, and when you’re ready to leave town, just drop by the marshal’s office and I’ll give them back.”

Rowan MacAdam froze, then he fumbled at his buckle with nervous fingers, and handed the belt to Chantry. Blindly, he turned toward the door. There he stopped. “Damn you,” he said, “how the Hell—?”

“I offered you a cup of coffee, Mr. MacAdan.”

“To Hell with you!” MacAdam said, and stumbled into the street.

For a moment there was silence in the cafe, then Nathan Johnson said, “Bord, do you know who that was?”

Chantry glanced around. “I know who he thought he was.”

CHAPTER 8

He sat down and Ed brought him a fresh cup.

Nathan Johnson crossed the room and straddled a chair. “This murder, Borden. I could use your help with it.”

“It won’t be easy,” Chantry agreed. “I don’t envy you.”

“You’re not working on it?”

“Just keeping an eye on things for Thursty. He’ll be back soon. You need to talk to Doc, and I’ll write out a description of what I saw when I found the body.”

Nathan talked awhile then wandered back to his own table and Borden Chantry stared out at the sunlit street. The first clue he had was that somebody did not want the body found at any time soon. He could not escape the conclusion that time was a key element here. Something else was nagging him, too, and he could not figure what it was. It was irritating. What had he missed? It was something, he was sure, that happened today.

So what had happened? The only thing out of the usual was the unclaimed suit-case and he had not examined it.

Yet he had emptied it of a bunch of nondescript clothing, some tools, what else he did not know. There might be a clue there. Slowly, he tried to examine every minute of the morning, among the odds and ends of rumpled clothing—

He scowled. There had been a spot of blue, blue ribbon. Now what the devil was a man like this one doing with blue ribbon?

He walked back to the house and got out the two sacks. The spot of blue was as he had recalled a strip of blue ribbon, wrinkled at a couple of points where it had been tied.

“Bess? Why would a man as untidy as this one have such a ribbon?”

“He probably received a present from his lady friend. That’s been tied to something, some small box. Maybe he was sentimental. Maybe he just neglected to throw it away.”

Wrapped around something, a small package of some kind? Who knew about packages? Priscilla knew. Borden put the ribbon in his pocket and walked back to the restaurant. The post office was not open yet so Pris would be unavailable. He would have another cup of coffee and do some thinking.

Except for the dead man there had been no crime, nor even rumors of one. There was just that veiled feeling of uneasiness about a town small enough to be sensitive to such things. He was still sitting there thinking when two men came in; one was the stranger he had seen in the saloon, a man with a bit of a sun-burn. As the man crossed the room to sit down, he almost stopped, staring at Chantry, then hastily turned away. As soon as he was seated he whispered something to his companion.

Borden was puzzled. Both men had seen him before and pointedly ignored him, yet now something arrested their attention. Self-consciously he shifted his coat, drawing it closer about him and his fingers encountered the blue ribbon. It had not been completely stuffed into his pocket.

So? Was that it? Why? What could it mean to them? Yet even as he considered that a small bell of warning sounded in his skull. They recognized his clue, if it was a clue, and it had caused them to worry, perhaps to fear. That might mean a cause to kill. He must be very careful.

One of the men got up and left the restaurant, mounted a horse outside and rode away up the street.

He finished his coffee. Pris should be open for business by now. He got up and went out on the street. One of the two horses was gone but the remaining one carried Hitchell’s brand. Borden walked up to the post office. The crowd that came to pick up mail had gone, and Pris was alone.

“Pris? I can use some help.”

“I could use some, too. You’d think it would be easy in a small post office like this but there’s always something more to do. What can I do for you, Bord?”

“Bess tells me this was probably tied around some small package and so I—”

“Terlandra.”

“What?”

“Terlandra. That new girl Mary Ann had. Only lasted a couple of months although she was one of the prettiest girls this season.”

“What about her?”

“She used to get those little boxes, about three inches square, always tied in pink or blue ribbon, but tied up tight under the ribbon. Looked like some admirer was sending her jewelry or something.”

“Notice where they came from?”

“Denver. Some place on Larimer Street.”

Bord walked to the window and looked down the dusty street. Now he had a lead, at least. He must talk to Mary Ann but not now. He did not like to be seen going to her house in the day time, and of course now there was the added reason that they would be watching.

The worst of it was he did not know what he was looking for. What was going on? If, as he suspected, time was all important, how much time did he have? Now they knew he was alert, that he knew something was in the wind, and they would be inclined to believe he knew more than he did.

Borden Chantry walked back to the cafe. It was time for some serious thinking and he must alert Kim Baca and Big Injun. And Bess, most of all Bess.

The sun-burned man? He heard him called by name, but what name? He searched his memory and after a bit it came to him. Somebody, somewhere had referred to the man as Ringwald, but that helped him none at all except to put a name to the man.

He finished his coffee and walked back up the street to the office. Kim was at the desk, his feet propped up reading a magazine.

“Kim? We’ve never talked much about Hitchell. Know anything?”

“He’s done time, if that’s what you mean. Did a couple of years for stealing a saddle. Personally, I never believed he did it, but he was convicted.”

So that’s why he was pale. And Ringwald? Might they have met in prison? Was that why they had come here in the beginning?

But that brought him no closer to the crime, if crime there was. The killing might have been some simple drunken disagreement and nothing more.

Yet it was more, and he knew it.

It was after nine before he crossed to Mary Ann’s back door. He was the only man allowed to enter there so the girls knew who he was. Mary Ann came down and poured tea. “I know coffee is your drink, Bord, but tea is all I have.”

“I drink it now and again, with Bess.”

She glanced at him. “I miss that, I really do. I miss talking with women other than the girls. You’d not think I’d admit that, but it’s true. I’d not say it to anybody but you.”

“I know. Life takes us down strange paths, sometimes. I never figured on being the law.”

“What is it, Bord? How can I help you?”

“You had a girl named Terlandra?”

“Yes, but not for long. She didn’t fit in—she was a snowbird. You know, on cocaine. I can’t put up with that, and never have.”

“But she was here for awhile?”

“She was liked, and she was prettier than most. She could talk to anybody and would. I was inclined to over-look her using the stuff until I found she was peddling it, too.”

“What was her source?”

“Denver, I think?”

He took the blue ribbon from his pocket. “Ever see anything like this?”

“Often. Terlandra used to get little packets from Denver, always tied with pink or blue ribbon, like gifts. She had only one steady customer of whom I know, a fellow named Wiemer, Harry Wiemer.”

Borden described the dead man. “Is that him?”

“Sounds right. He was an untidy little man and I didn’t want him around. You know how it is, once they’re into coke they lose interest in women, and you can’t trust them anymore. They’ll lie, steal, anything just to get the stuff.” Mary Ann paused, sipping tea. “That’s probably what happened to her.”

“What happened?”

“Terlandra was murdered. Not over a month after she left here. Less than a month, in fact. She was back in Denver. Probably by one of those she’d been selling drugs to.”

Murdered? By someone she had been selling drugs to or because she knew too much? Harry Wiemer? Where had he heard that name? The dead man had been killed and Terlandra also, but why?

“I need to know all I can about her. I’ll trust you to say nothing about that, Mary Ann.”

“I don’t know anything else, Bord, except that the last time he came here they had a fight. She was furious with him about something and he with her. I heard them arguing, something about money.”

They talked for a few minutes and then with the light out he eased himself out the back door, moved quickly to one side and waited, listening. Had they followed him here? Two dead, so they were not playing games. Not for a minute did he believe the two killings were unrelated, but how? Why?

Bess was already in bed and asleep when he eased himself into the dark house. The coffee was still on and he poured a cup and sat down by the window. Harold Cuff was working late. Bord liked it because the light from the dispatcher’s office was bright and friendly. It also gave him some light almost as far as the pile of ties.

Arguing about money? He understood that dealing in drugs, even with few laws to restrict them, was a cash on the barrel-head business, so what could be wrong?

Had Wiemer tried to short her? There must have been something wrong about the pay-off, something wrong about the money.

He put his cup down suddenly. Wrong about the money?

CHAPTER 9

Three men sat in the living room of Zaretta Clyde. The big old man sat on a sofa facing the door, Ringwald and Hitchell half-faced him, both nervous. The big man was truly big; he was also not that old. At fifty years he carried the look of a man of thirty, and the body of one. He was also mean, difficult, and uncommonly shrewd.

What his name had been in his early years had been forgotten, left behind when he led an escape through the abandoned sewers of the old prison. He was now known as Lev Larson. Nobody liked him but many needed him, for whatever involved his interest went down well. He had a reputation for success. In the world of crime there is no better name to have.

Rumor was that he had millions stashed away, just where or under what name nobody knew. It was also understood that if you crossed him you were in trouble, the worst kind of trouble.

As he looked out at the yard the gate opened and Turren Downer rode in. Lev sat up, irritated. “Who the Hell is that?”

Hitchell said, “Cowpuncher, a tough man. I think he’s sweet on Zaretta.”

“Tell her to get rid of him.”

Ringwald shook his head. “No can do, Lev. Zaretta does as she pleases and you know that. You cross her and this whole shootin’ match is gone.”

“We don’t need any nosy cowpunchers floating around.”

“Better leave him alone, Lev. He doesn’t know from nothing and Zaretta’s happy.”

Lev shifted his big body irritably. He did not like to be crossed and the presence of the big cowboy looked like trouble. “I’ll handle it,” he said.

Ringwald looked over at Hitchell and said, “There’s the other thing. That blue ribbon now. Looks like that town clown is onto something.”

“Don’t sell him short. Borden Chantry is no fool. I’ve worked with him, seen him operate,” Hitchell said.

Lev Larson snorted. “Smart? Some hick-town copper? He’s no problem. Before he figures which end is up we’ll be long gone from here.”

He glanced around at Hitchell. “If he worries you boys, take him out.”

Hitchell shifted his feet, stared at the toes of his boots and said quietly, “Leave him alone, Lev. He’s a bad man to trifle with. Nobody dreamed Lang Adams was involved in that Sackett murder, yet he figured it out and nailed him.

“The best thing we can do is what you’ve always said, keep our heads down, pull this off and you guys can get out of here.”

There was silence in the room and then Larson said, “That Zaretta woman’s gettin’ too big for her britches. Needs to be taken down a notch.”

“Don’t try it, Lev.” Ringwald’s voice was sharp. “She has the connections. If she tells the Chinese it’s no go they’ll fade out like they’d never been and we’ve shot our wad.”

Lev Larson sat up irritably. It was true, too damned true. Everything depended on Zaretta, and none of her clients wanted anything to happen to her. Her finger was in too many pies.

He sat very still, looking out the door. The big cowboy was tying up his horse at Zaretta’s rail, but he was not thinking of that.

No more than ten days now, if all went well, and he would be holding more than a million dollars. It was the biggest job he had ever pulled off and he could not have done it without Zaretta Clyde. He had gone to her with the idea and she had helped set it up.

She had known about Hitchell and his lonely ranch. She had known where to lay hands on Wiemer, who was the best there was, and she had known where and how to arrange for the buyers. Yet it had turned messy and he did not like that. First Wiemer and then that woman. Even that went off smoothly, at least until Ringwald spotted that blue ribbon. The hick cop seemed to have established a connection. But had he, really?

Zaretta was getting her hooks into that new county sheriff, Nathan Johnson, but Chantry was not sharing ideas with him, and Johnson did not believe Chantry knew anything. Still, the blue ribbon? Was it simply a coincidence? Lev Larson did not believe in such things. Everything had a meaning, a connection.

The sun was setting over the mountains to the westward—he had not seen the mountains but had been told they were there. Denver was out there somewhere, but Lev Larson was an Eastern man, and occasionally a mid-western man. Until now he had never been west of Kansas City.

Lev Larson did not like dealing with Zaretta Clyde. He had nothing but contempt for women and believed her much over-rated. He was a brutal, self-contained man who knew what he wanted and how to get it. He had developed this deal himself and then suddenly he found he needed somebody with connections, and Zaretta had them. She knew people he needed or where to find them; she was respected in certain major seats of power that even Lev Larson hesitated to challenge.

Ten days. He could sit tight for ten days. Even if the hick cop was onto something there was small chance he could put it together in time. The deal would be consummated and they would scatter to the winds.

Lev Larson had no love for anyone. He wanted to get his money and get out and he was covering all his bases. Where there was money there were people hungry for it, and he knew somebody was probably plotting to steal his end. Well, he was ready. He trusted no one.

That big cowboy out there? Was it that he was in the way, or simply because he was big and looked like a fighter?

Lev stirred irritably. He did not like waiting. If the Chinese were coming, why didn’t they come? Why so precise about the date? One particular old man had to view the merchandise, that was it. Everything hung on his word.

Lev had been warned. “Don’t try anything funny. The Hop Sing Tong has hatchet men everywhere and they’ll nail you, but good. They give their word, and it will be good, but they don’t stand for any fancy foot-work.”

Lev did not plan on any. He liked a clean deal himself. That was one of the things he liked about this from the first. It was clean. In and out, a big take, and everybody gets lost.

Never a patient man he was doubly impatient now, and staring at the big cowboy’s horse made him more so, yet he had to confess the deal had gone together like clock-work, fully as much because of Zaretta as he himself.

They made a team. He had to admit that, reluctant as he was to do so. This was the big one and hopefully the last one. A pitcher could go too often to the well, his own mother had taught him that, and except for the first time his skirts were clean. He had escaped, changed his name and grown bigger, no longer resembling the man who had been imprisoned. One of the men had died in that sewer and they believed it had been him, so his escape was clean and clear.

Lev Larson watched as the big cowboy came out and stepped into the saddle. He could handle that. He would get Turren Downer to pick a fight with him, then he would be in the clear with Zaretta, and after that he would decide about that two-bit country marshal.

He had to admit the accommodations were good and the food was excellent. Everything Zaretta Clyde did was out of the top drawer.

He watched the cowboy ride down the hill. He would be a charger and a swinger, made to order for Lev. Larson smiled. At least he could take his mind off the waiting, and he would teach Zaretta a thing or two.

If her man started the fight, what could she say?

Lev Larson watched the sun set without thinking of it. His mind was on Turren Downer and what he would do to him. The man was known as a fighter, so was vulnerable—that he got into a fight would surprise no one. Lev had whipped a number of the top professionals but had found easier ways of making a living than bare-knuckle fighting. Yet he liked fighting and he was so much better than anyone he had met that he had no problems. Moreover, different than most fighters he liked punishing his opponents. Many times when he could have scored early knockouts he had deliberately refrained to keep his opponents trying so he could administer a more thorough beating.

Ten days might not be too long after all. If he couldn’t trap the cowboy into a fight he might get that nosy small town copper; either would be fun.

He went back into his room and began leafing through magazines that lay on the table. There was a stack of old Police Gazettes with fight stories and illustrations on the well known sheet of pink paper. Occasionally he came upon old references to himself under one of the several names he used when fighting.

Often he had been imported into some small town or city by gamblers wishing to make a killing. He would work up a match with some local champion. He usually wore shabby, loose-fitting clothes that displayed none of his Herculean frame.

He discovered he could make more money working as such a “ringer” than with regular boxing matches. Only once had a gambler tried to short him. After word got around as to what happened to the gambler it never happened again.

Sitting alone he thought about all aspects of their deal. It still looked good, despite the necessity for the killings. Hitchell worried him a little. The man was not really a criminal although he had done time, and Lev did not trust an honest man.

And those Indian women? Had they heard anything? Had they talked to that country marshal? Did they know anything to tell him?

Borden Chantry. That was his name. If he wanted a fight he should pick one with him, put him out of action for the next ten days, but how did he do that without getting arrested?

He went to his luggage and opened a specially built leather case which contained two fifty pound dumb-bells. Getting them out he went to work and worked for a solid hour, then sponged himself off and went to bed. It was a three-times-a-week ritual, and he never missed.

He walked and climbed at every opportunity, wanting to be always ready. It had become a long established habit which he never ignored.

---

—

Ringwald stood by the window looking down at the lights of the town. It wasn’t much of a place, yet people seemed contented and it was a supply point for a good stretch of country in every direction.

He glanced around at Hitchell. “Lived here long?”

“Most of my life.”

“Do they know you did time?”

“I doubt it. That was in another state. Baca might. He’s that deputy marshal Chantry has. Used to be a horse thief and has connections everywhere, both sides of the law. Folks like him.”

“How’d you get into this?”

“Zaretta knew about me and she sent a couple of men to talk to me. The way they talked I had to listen. To be honest, I wanted no part of it.

“I’ll admit it looked good for me. They built that barn to work in, they bought me enough cows so I’d look legitimate, and laid in more supplies than I’d ever seen before. I figured, What the Hell? They’ll finish what they’re doing and I’ll be left sitting pretty.”

“Zaretta will remember. She makes her living knowing about people like you.”

Hitchell stared gloomily down the street. He liked this town and the country around. He had friends here. He had never wanted to be rich, just comfortable.

Ringwald looked down the dark street, only a few lights showing. He would like to be down there now, just having a drink, and no worries.

It was a strange thing. The biggest deal any of them had ever cut into and yet all of them were edgy, and he for one was like Hitchell—he was running scared.

CHAPTER 10

Borden Chantry was feeling better about the situation. Things were beginning to fall into place. What was coming off he did not know but he suspected, and he now knew why Wiemer had been killed and probably why Terlandra had been murdered.

The trouble was he did not know who all the players were in the game. Ringwald and Hitchell were involved but beyond that he knew nothing. Perhaps Zaretta Clyde was, but he had no evidence, only that she knew them and some of them were staying at her place. But others had stayed there also, before this. There was that big older man, too, Larson was his name, but his connection was doubtful. So far he had seen no more than a nodding acquaintance which would be natural with men staying at the same hotel or boarding place, if Zaretta’s place could be called that.

Ringwald and Hitchell were small figures on the board if he was guessing right. Any move to grab them would not only tip his hand but would give him nothing. He must know what was coming off and who was holding the reins.

Who were the top men in the game and what were they waiting for? If they were waiting. He had guessed that time was the key element, but why? Was somebody coming to make a pay-off? If his own timing was off he might miss on everything and the killers might escape him and suddenly all would be gone.

He doubted that Turren Downer was involved. Turren was Western. He was big, strong and tough, a mean fighter and a good one, and if he got into trouble it would be from brawling, a gun battle or something of that nature. He was not a criminal as such. Of course, he had now done time and there was no guessing what connections he had made in prison. That would have to be considered.

When he walked in the door Bess was putting supper on the table and Tom was deep in a book, as usual. He looked up quickly. “How’d it go, Pa? Are you any closer to those men?”

“A little. I believe I know what’s happening, and some of those involved, but I can’t talk about it now.”

Tom was full of questions but he knew his father well enough to know that he had said all he was about to say.

“If we go back east will you be an officer?”

Borden shook his head. “How could I be? I won’t know the country or the people as I do here. I’m not a good officer, Tom, I just know this country and use a little common sense.”

“Everybody says you’re the best.”

“That’s nice of them, but enough of them didn’t think so to re-elect me as sheriff.”

“Are we going east, Pa?”

“When I figure out what’s happening here we’ll decide. I don’t know how I’d make a living, son. All I know are horses and cattle.”

Tom was silent. His mother’s desire to go east and to have him in school there had blinded her to reality. Tom loved his father and knew that here, in the West, he was an important man. Back east that would simply not be true. Yet he himself wanted to go east, and to attend Eastern schools.

He had sneaked back on the street the day the outlaws Monson and Clatt’s gang had tried to rob the bank, and he had overheard Time Reardon, no friend of his father’s, say, “He’s one of the very best. Whatever you do, don’t low rate Borden Chantry. With a gun in his hand he’s as good or better than anybody I’ve ever seen.”

Tom was fiercely proud of his father yet he had a pen pal in the East who scoffed at the idea there might be such men. Gun-fighters and cattlemen were the stuff of romance. A lot of people believed that and Tom knew enough to know that having survived gun battles and having once built a ranch would do his father no good back there.

Sometimes he was jealous of his friend, Billy McCoy. He felt Billy was closer to his father than he was, yet he could understand why: Billy was part of this place, a boy at home in the harsh Western landscape just as his father was. He himself had been raised to think like his mother and, despite the influence of his father, he had taken on much of it, partly through the desire for a broader, deeper education.

---

—

Billy McCoy had his own ideas about those pink and blue ribbons. He had seen them in the rubbish thrown out at Mary Ann’s where the girls sometimes fixed meals for him. He had seen them and decided where they came from before Borden Chantry had. People talked a lot in front of a youngster, taking it for granted he did not understand. Or that he was not paying attention. No matter how busy or absent-minded Billy happened to be he was always paying attention.

---

—

Sitting in the kitchen by the window, but just far back enough not to be a target, even though it was early, Borden Chantry went over the few items he had in his mind.

Harry Wiemer had incurred somebody’s anger, enough so they wished him dead, and he was dead, his body left so hopefully it would not be immediately discovered.

How had he incurred the displeasure of those who killed him? And why had it been necessary to kill Terlandra as well?

Something had gone wrong, if Chantry was surmising correctly and there had also been a difficulty between Terlandra and Wiemer.

What had happened?

There had been a dispute about money. Had he not paid? Or had he not paid enough?

He certainly had paid or she would not have delivered. And for the same reason he had probably paid enough.

Harry Wiemer was a man who dealt with ink. An engraver? There had been a dispute about money. Suppose it was counterfeit? Suppose he had unwittingly or on purpose because he was short paid Terlandra with a phony bill and she had passed it on to her people? She would be in trouble and he would be in trouble with Terlandra.

And perhaps with his people?

Somebody had built a mighty fine barn for Hitchell. Suppose that barn had been used to make queer money? Suppose it had been made and was awaiting shipment?

To whom? Where?

Suppose that was the time element?

It was a lot of supposing with very little concrete evidence. He had seen no counterfeit money nor had he heard of any. Suppose that was the idea? Counterfeit money made in the West but for shipment elsewhere? Far from its point of origin?

And suppose in his need for cocaine Wiemer had spent, accidentally or on purpose, some of the counterfeit bills? Bills that weren’t his to spend. Even more likely, what if he told Terlandra about the operation? What if they were using some of the counterfeit on the sly to solve some problem that she might be having?

COMMENTS: Louis started planning this sequel to Borden Chantry in 1987, around the same time he began laying the groundwork for his memoir, Education of a Wandering Man. Although he had been plagued with heart issues and pneumonia throughout the year, it was only around January of 1988 that doctors discovered that both were caused by the lung cancer that eventually ended his life.

The chapters you have just read were written during a time when he was on oxygen and often dealing with the aftereffects of chemotherapy. I fear that even though I have done some judicious editing, you can still tell he was not as focused as usual.

Whenever Louis L’Amour characters sit around drinking coffee and asking themselves questions about what is going on, that is actually Louis trying to figure out what he wants to do with his story. In fact, you can pretty much bet that he either had just returned from doing the same thing himself or was about to go get himself a cup.

By the end of Chapter 8, he was still struggling to raise the stakes, get all the pieces in place, and keep the plot moving. However, it is interesting to see that shifting the point of view to include the bad guys sort of gave the story a second wind.

Writers of mysteries often face a problem where their detectives, especially if they work in law enforcement, have to be reactive rather than proactive—that is, unless enough momentum has been built up and a good chain of evidence created. Since Lev Larson, Zaretta, Ringwald, and Hitchell are the ones actually driving the story forward, shifting to scenes that included them added an energy that even Borden seems to feel is lacking. It also allowed Louis to live inside those characters for a while and figure out what they had done and what they would do in detail.

The other element that shows up while we are dealing with the criminals is the possible involvement of a Chinese Tong. Tongs are sworn brotherhoods or secret societies that often have political goals (in the last sixty years many have been pro-Taiwan, pro-Kuomintang, or anti-Communist groups), but that have also been tied to organized crime. Chinese criminals would have been an excellent way to dispose of counterfeit money, because they could spend it overseas, using it in places and in ways that would take U.S. authorities a long time to even notice. At the time of our story it would have been nearly impossible to trace.

The Tongs have a bit of a connection to Louis’s personal history. It is possible that Dad was exposed to Tong organization or activity, or at least to stories of the Chinese societies, while in the Far East. However, his closest connection to the criminal aspect of the Tongs was in Arizona. Louis was an eyewitness to the escape of five “Bing Kong” Tong assassins after they killed a member of the rival “Hop Sing” Tong, the owner of a restaurant in Kingman. Having just returned from Asia, Dad had enjoyed a number of conversations with Tom King, the murdered man.

Also of interest is Dad’s mention of “yeggmen,” a type of criminal that I imagine he got to know while hoboing around the country. Yeggs were itinerant crooks who were reputed to “peel” their way into vaults with a single jack and chisel, or an axe. They might also boil the nitroglycerine out of dynamite so that they could drip the unstable liquid through a hole in a safe door using a string to guide the droplets into place. Then, wrapping the safe in mattresses, they would hit the door with a sledgehammer to fire just enough of the explosive to break the door free.

One last detail taken from Dad’s history is his depiction of the stifling social atmosphere of small towns. He had lived in, and been an outsider in, many places where people’s every action became the subject of gossip. Even I have been in places (as late as the 1970s!) where a local police officer might hesitate to follow up a lead because he feared what being seen talking to a criminal, vagrant, or prostitute might do to his reputation.

There are two generations of notes for this story. The ones that apply directly to the chapters above begin like this:

Who? Was he?

Why? Was he killed?

How did he get there?

Who is involved?

What clues?

Ink ingrained in skin of hands

Unlikely if using pen.

Ink on inside of pocket-edges.

Who works with ink?

A printer -

Chantry visits newspaper, watches printing—doesn’t fit.

There was also an earlier concept that led to a very different version of the counterfeit money plot. It all started with the following note:

Queer as collateral? Never to be used?

Perhaps teller used some of it in emergency?

“Queer” in this case is old-time criminal argot for counterfeit money. Louis seems to have been considering a version of the classic bearer-bond con, where millions of dollars in fake bearer bonds are shown to the mark and validated by an “expert” of some sort. Then the con man takes out a loan that is just a small percentage of the value of the bonds, using the bonds as collateral, pretending it’s all so he won’t have to go through the “trouble” of cashing in the extremely valuable bonds. The con man then disappears with the loaned amount, leaving the mark with a safety deposit box full of worthless paper.

Later Louis expanded those two lines into a pretty complete treatment of the “counterfeit collateral” version of this story.

Borden Chantry Sequel

Hyatt Johnson appears preoccupied and worried. CHANTRY is sensitive to the feelings of his town, is disturbed by some premonition of trouble he cannot understand.

Some time before Chantry has met a newcomer in whom all are interested, a fascinating, interesting man with a couple of men who are his hostlers and guides. The newcomer is planning to invest largely. He will get r.r. [railroad] through the town, and may build a new and better hotel. He looks over the town, buys several lots for which he pays in promissory notes against a large sum of money he has held for him in the local bank. Hyatt has glimpsed this money, but it is being held, not on deposit, but simply held by the bank. Hyatt and his teller have each signed a receipt for it but the money is not to be deposited for several weeks.

Chantry is disturbed by the newcomer. Although he supposedly knows nothing of the country he has several times taken the right turn on the streets and seems to have a familiarity with the town. Chantry’s wife says he is too suspicious, Hyatt smiles tolerantly, the saloon-keeper is noncommittal but, it develops, has invested no money in the newcomer’s schemes. It is well known that the money is at the bank. The newcomer has borrowed several sums against it, for immediate cash needs; it finally develops that he has borrowed quite a lot of money from various citizens, or has obtained the money on false pretenses. An old man is found dead apparently killed by a fallen timber, Borden proves such was not the case. Yet he was a harmless, friendly old man who has no enemies and no possessions. Borden is sure it is murder. But why? Actually it is because he recognized a scar on the newcomer’s finger and knows him.

The newcomer has been entertaining some of the big ranchers in town, and also their cowhands. One young cowhand is found struck on the head, apparently left for dead, but he is not dead. Borden takes him to a woman on a nearby ranch who attempts to nurse him back to life. He has been struck hard and is in a coma.

Keeping this man’s existence a secret, Borden hopes to keep him alive and hopes he can identify his assailant. Borden spends time on her ranch, and his wife becomes suspicious. Borden believes the young man can tell who attacked him, and why. He is sure something is wrong and wishes to know, to uncover the mystery.

Boy from the ranch where the man is kept is buying items at the drug store to care for the young man, and newcomer is present; the old druggist asks if somebody has been hurt out that way? Boy says no, just usual stuff they keep on hand, but newcomer’s interest is aroused. The body of the cowpuncher has not been found, and this has worried him. [He was left for dead] not too far from the woman’s ranch.

Newcomer must find out if puncher is alive.

Meanwhile a rider returns from delivering some horses and is going back out to his ranch. He refuses a drink and in the altercation that follows, is killed in a gun battle. On the surface it is a fair shooting, all agree the puncher was armed, that he had an even break, but the henchman of the newcomer who killed him is obviously a deadly man with a gun.

Slowly Borden begins to tie things together. He believes there is some connection between the killings, although there is no outward tie. He is accused of trying to find a pattern as he did before [in the novel Borden Chantry]. One is a simple shooting, another an accident.

Borden goes about his job with the aid of Kim while the town prepares for a big fandango and celebration. There are to be some contests, cash prizes awarded, saddles, etc. and all the cowpunchers want to compete. An attempt is made to murder puncher in coma but he comes out of it, explains that he had gone up a draw where there were always cattle and there were none. He was studying tracks when slugged by a strange puncher who said “he was looking for strays.” Kim comes in to report there are no cattle, the range has been swept clean. Borden and Big Injun trace lost cattle to a distant valley where the cattle are held…several thousand head. Perhaps with Indians to help they move cattle to reservation or—?

Return to find big fandango going on, everybody enjoying themselves.

Hyatt obviously concerned; several others seem less than happy and it appears two or three citizens have compared notes and found all are holding notes from newcomer. Some have sought assurance from Hyatt, yes the money is still there. Then he becomes disturbed and Borden puts two and two together and goes to him with a suggestion he check the money. It is counterfeit.

One of the girls on the “line” has given Borden a clue without realizing it, when she mentions one of the newcomer’s followers reminds her of a man she knew who is now dead. Borden has routinely checked the name, discovers the man is now in prison for counterfeiting. He supposedly had been working hard at making money before arrest but it was never found.

Or…the murdered man had a packet he would not let out of his sight. Man was very jumpy at night. Thought he was followed.

Murdered man spoke of his old outfit in Civil War. Borden writes to Washington for info on outfit. He finds it had engaged in counter-guerilla action, including break-up of gang of counterfeiters. Equipment never found.

So, the newcomer murdered man with plates, made large amount of queer. Sells some, but due to fatal flaw in plates it cannot be passed…some other way of using it must be found.

Newcomer hates town, because of something that happened to his father. So he and his followers loot the town of money and the range of cattle wanting to effectually destroy it.

An earlier cash payment to a creditor has been held up so it would not be discovered that the money was counterfeit.

Borden kills gunman in a shoot-out and proves to newcomer his father was not framed but caught in the act.

Additional, though somewhat cryptic, notes on the plot read:

Con man using counterfeit money—Has left bad [bag?] containing $100 bills & [a few] gold eagles…This is left at the bank as surety to impress. Bag locked.–First he uses real money, deposits, withdraws deposits—leaves bag. He has successfully passed himself off [as] an investor—in land, cattle, mines.–Man has left large amt. in bills in bank to be deposited later.–…banker will over-extend counting on big deposit.–Draws on other money left at store for supplies, cattle. He buys much on credit due to money left.–He plans to loot town, milk it dry of cash.—…everybody seem[s] to profit.

It is interesting to follow the evolution of this plot from these notes, which explore a con game that relies on the townspeople’s naive belief in the money a man supposedly has in the bank, to the concept of selling imperfect counterfeit bills to a Chinese gang that may circulate them overseas. Clearly the latter version is more sophisticated and more in line with Louis’s desire to free the Western genre from its traditional conventions and connect it to the rest of the nineteenth-century world. The Chinese experience in the West was something that Dad always wanted to deal with but never really got around to. As with many subjects, it was really just a matter of having too little time.

In other notes Louis left behind, he mentioned that he was interested in using the fact that there are “two sides of the street, or an end of town [that separates classes or ethnicities or both].” He wanted to “have a poor woman speak longingly about the quality and style of the prostitutes’ clothes.” The “scarcity of Indians on the plains” was something else he wanted to comment on, as opposed to the “great village referred to in Spanish accounts.” This may be a note regarding the spread of disease that occurred after contact with Europeans and the other pressures on the Native American population. “Cover some of plains Indians activities before white man” is also a note in this section. Obviously, Louis had some social and cultural commentary in mind.

Reading through this fragment and the original novel, Borden Chantry, I sensed something familiar about the contrast in the relationship Borden has with his son, Tom, who is more protected, bookish, and under his mother’s wing, and Billy McCoy, who is a rough-and-tumble street kid and operates more in Borden’s world. It is quite similar to the relationship that Louis’s father, Dr. L. C. LaMoore, had with Jack, a boy that the family adopted. Jack Otto was a scrappy kid from an Eastern orphanage, and Louis occasionally seemed to feel that his father might have liked Jack better than him. The adoptive father and adopted son had a lot in common in their earthy approach to life, while Louis was more intellectual and introverted, a kid more interested in getting lost in a book than getting out into the world. It is ironic that Louis went on to have adventures beyond anything Jack probably could have imagined.

Buried deep in this manuscript there is also a brief moment out of my own past. When Tom Chantry asks, “Pa? Can I ride out there with you someday? I miss the place,” it is likely my father was remembering something I had asked about a number of times. In the early 1970s we moved from West Hollywood to a much nicer neighborhood near UCLA. But our old house didn’t sell for nearly two years. I was very attached to that place, and the fact that it was somehow still there, that no one else had taken it over and made it theirs, made it harder to give up.

The move occurred just at the time that I made the transition from grammar school to junior high school. I realize today that the few trips I made with my mother back to the old place to clean up this or that or to show the house (I really can’t remember what exactly) were like a haunting return to my childhood, a dusty, empty shell of what it once had been.

It’s amusing to realize, now that I am an adult, that many years later Tom Chantry would return to the ruins of his old home and be forced to take refuge in a place where he had played as a child. “The Hole,” in North to the Rails, seems to be a combination of the tunnels through the deep growth of hillside ivy that the neighborhood kids and I used to travel unseen (or so we thought) between the houses on our West Hollywood street, and the small grotto containing a spring that existed on some land we owned in the Tehachapi Mountains of Kern County. Looking back, I wonder how many times my sister and I were, at least partly, the models for characters in my father’s books.

Lastly, but perhaps most important, it is worth noting that my father chose to return to this particular story after finishing Education of a Wandering Man. He must have been fairly sure that one or the other would be his last book. After succeeding in his long struggle to publish material in other genres, he had clearly decided to try to complete one last, fairly traditional, Western. He knew that this was something his fans would enjoy and, as much as he had planned to write other, more personal, works, I don’t think he wanted to give in to any maudlin, self-absorbed acknowledgment that his time was ending. He wanted the last thing he did to reflect his life at its best. He wanted it to be about moving forward, getting the next thing done, and entertaining the people who had supported him for the previous four decades. While I’m sure he wanted to finish this book, I’m actually glad he didn’t. There was nowhere he was happier than in the middle of an unfolding story.

About eighteen months before Louis started this draft, and about ten months before he discovered he had cancer, he wrote the following in his journal:

Don’t know how much productive time I have left so must ration my work with more care. Sometimes I work like I had all the time in the world. I have 17 books I must do—34 I’d like to do and more coming all the time. But I will be 79 next March. Feel great most of the time and like I could go on forever…

And then:

I am on the verge of becoming a good writer, all I need is time.