CHAPTER 21
Buckhorn saw the stagecoach rolling into town as he was crossing the street, headed toward the livery stable after dropping off a bundle of soiled clothes at the house of a washerwoman recommended by Isobel Fletchler. He’d previously noticed the Chalmers & Obrey stage office located at equal angles across the street from the Traveler’s Rest and the other, larger hotel in the next block, but it was the first sign he’d seen any activity around the place. He recalled hearing somebody say that the coach made a twice-weekly run from Farragut to the northeast.
“Look at ’em,” said Nick Hebly, the stable proprietor, from where he stood to one side of the open barn door with a three-tined pitchfork over one shoulder. He was watching the handful of townsfolk milling around the general area of the stage office, hanging back a bit until the roiling clouds that had followed the coach in had a chance to settle down.
“Circling around like a bunch of hungry crows watching to see if any juicy-looking kernels of corn drop off the picking wagon as it rolls in out of the field. It’s the same way two days out of every week, like the blame fools ain’t ever seen a stagecoach before or like they expect somebody who really amounts to something is gonna climb out and step down.”
“You have a bleak outlook on the human condition, my friend,” Buckhorn told him. “All they’re looking for is a break in the monotony of their lives, maybe a glimmer of something or somebody new and exciting.”
Hebly was a long-necked, narrow-shouldered specimen with a bulbous potbelly pushing against the front of the bib overalls he wore over pink long underwear with the sleeves hacked off at the shoulders. His long, stringy-muscled arms were pale, almost sickly white above the elbows. In response to Buckhorn’s remark, he said, “Huh. They wouldn’t know excitement if it came along and bit them on the butt. Nobody paid any particular attention to you when you first showed up, did they? And then, lickety-split, you turned into the most excitement we’ve seen around here since . . . since . . .”
“You keep working on it, you’ll think of something,” Buckhorn said. “In the meantime, I’m gonna see my horse.”
“Your horse is fine. I’m taking good care of him.”
“I know you are. If I thought otherwise, he wouldn’t be here. I’m just gonna talk to him a minute, let him know what’s going on. He gets lonesome if he doesn’t see me regular.”
Nick reached up to scratch his head. “I never heard of a horse getting lonesome, not when there’s other horses around. You say you’re gonna talk things over with him?”
“That’s right.” Buckhorn started into the barn and back toward Sarge’s stall. “In this case, I figure I may have to tell him a joke or two.”
“Jokes? You tell your horse jokes?”
“Not always,” Buckhorn said over his shoulder, “but if I keep him penned up here around you and your sour disposition for very long, I may have to take drastic measures in order to keep him from coming down with a case of melancholy.”
* * *
When he was finished at the stable, Buckhorn headed back to his room. He still had more than an hour until he was scheduled to meet with Justine. He figured he’d use the time to strip down and clean his guns. Any man who made his living in Buckhorn’s line of work was a damn fool and destined for a short career and a short life if he didn’t religiously take care of his weapons.
It was still cool in the room though the sunshine pouring into the street outside promised another scorcher of a day by the middle of the afternoon. Buckhorn spread out his gear atop the small writing desk, his well-practiced fingers going nimbly through the necessary motions as if they had minds and eyes all their own. He started with the derringer, his habit being to work with only one gun at a time, never having all of them broken down and unloaded at once.
The knock on the door caused his right hand to drop automatically and come to rest on the grips of his still-holstered Colt. He sat out of direct line of the doorway. “Yes? Who is it?”
A male voice answered. “I have a message for Mr. Joe Buckhorn.”
“A message from who? I don’t know anybody in this town.”
“I brought it in on the stage. Be a lot easier if I just handed it to you. Let you read it for yourself.”
Buckhorn rose to his feet and walked over to stand on what would be the back side of the door when it opened. Drawing the Colt and letting it rest down along his thigh, he said, “Door’s unlocked. Come ahead in.”
The door opened and the man behind the voice entered slowly but not hesitantly, sweeping one hand to close the door again behind him and then glancing over to look at Buckhorn as if expecting him to be exactly where he was.
The visitor was tall, thirtyish, thin almost to the point of looking like a stick figure clad in a light blue frock coat, darker blue trousers with a pinstripe pattern, and a wide-brimmed, pale yellow plantation hat. His sparse sideburns were a rusty brown in color, matched by brows of the same above washed-out blue eyes. In his right hand he carried a sealed envelope.
“Good morning, sir. Thank you for seeing me without prior arrangement.” He shifted the envelope to his opposite hand and extended his right, adding, “My name is Martin Goodwin.”
Buckhorn continued to hold the Colt down at his side and made no attempt to shake the offered hand. “You said something about a message.”
“Yes. Of course. Right here.” Goodwin held out the envelope.
Buckhorn took it, glanced down at it briefly, then lifted his eyes once again to meet Goodwin’s expectant gaze. “If that’s all, I thank you for your time and trouble.”
An awkward pause followed during which Goodwin grew visibly a bit flustered. “I . . . er . . . I was expecting you would read the message before excusing me. I think that’s what Mr. Haydon—the sender—expected, too. After you’ve seen what he has to say, I believe there’ll be a good deal more details for you and I to discuss.”
“Mr. Haydon, you say? Andrew Haydon?” Buckhorn glanced again at the envelope in his hand. “He sent you with this?”
“Yes. That is correct.”
Buckhorn regarded Goodwin more closely, running his eyes up and down the considerable length of him. “You armed?”
Goodwin grinned sheepishly, holding his coat open wide. “No. It’s not a habit I ever developed. Though I’ve become increasingly aware, the farther I travel west, what an oddity that seems to make me.”
“Don’t call it odd,” Buckhorn said. “One of the best things about the West is that it gives a man the freedom to make his own choices. Not that I’m saying going around unheeled is a particularly smart one, mind you. But if that is your choice, stick to it and don’t sound like you’re apologizing for it.”
“All right. I’ll remember that,” said Goodwin.
Buckhorn jabbed a thumb at the room. “I’m not set up real good for visitors, so you’ll have to settle for the edge of the bed. Take a seat, give me a chance to have a look at what this has to say, then we can do our talking or whatever from there.”
Resuming his own seat at the writing table, Buckhorn tore the envelope open and found Haydon’s message to be a handwritten note.
Buckhorn,
Hope this finds you safely arrived in Wagon Wheel by now and engaged in the matter you were sent to deal with. In the meantime, my further investigations into the situation out there have revealed that the area’s water shortage problem is something Wainwright is using for great advantage in whatever he is up to. Given that, I have sent along Mr. Goodwin, a renowned dowser who has had great luck finding underground water sources where none were previously known to be. It occurred to me that someone of his ilk showing up at this time might go a long way toward rattling Wainwright good and proper and thereby aiding you in knocking him off his perch. Use Goodwin as you see fit. If nothing else, to give the good folks out there some hope for relief in their water needs.
Sincerely,
Haydon
Buckhorn carefully read the message through twice, then lowered the piece of paper, smiling. He admired Haydon’s craftiness as well as his determination to do whatever it took to bring down his hated former captor.
While no immediate plan on how to use Goodwin’s skills leaped to Buckhorn’s mind, he certainly could see how the revelation of them would be viewed as a threat by Wainwright. How rattled the former general would be was yet to be determined. But if it did cause a strong reaction, that was something Buckhorn had to be prepared to use to his advantage.
“You know what this says?” Buckhorn asked Goodwin, holding up the paper.
“I was there when Haydon wrote it.”
“Then you understand he didn’t send you down here to provide water for the lemonade stand at the Sunday school picnic.”
“I understand fully the ramifications of what my being here might mean.” Goodwin’s jaw muscles bunched visibly and his washed-out blue eyes took on an intensity Buckhorn wouldn’t have guessed possible. “The thing you need to understand, Mr. Buckhorn, is that my brother was in that same Northern prison as Haydon. He didn’t make it out alive. My parents’ demands on the Army for the details of his death came to the attention of Mr. Haydon. Unpleasant though the task was, he took the time to journey a long distance—displaying what he himself had lost in that hellhole—to fill them in on the brave struggle Virgil had fought before finally succumbing to the torturous conditions. It soothed them greatly.”
“Knowing Haydon even just a little bit, I can see him doing that.”
Goodwin’s eyes held their intensity. “So when he asked me to come out here and see if my dowsing skills could be of any assistance to you and at the same time work to the disfavor of General Wainwright . . . well, any inconvenience or danger that might also be involved was not really an issue.”
Buckhorn nodded. “Bravely spoken. At the same time, it sorta brings us back around to that other subject we touched on a minute ago. Namely, you not wearing a gun.”
“For the record,” Goodwin said, holding up a finger to make his point, “I said I don’t make a habit of carrying a gun. That wasn’t meant to imply I don’t know anything about them or am in some way opposed to their use under necessary conditions. As a matter of fact, though I’m probably a little rusty, at one time I was quite proficient with a hunting rifle.”
“That’s a start, I guess,” Buckhorn said, trying not to smile. “How about a handgun?”
Goodwin shook his head. “Never had call to use one . . . but I’d be willing to get one, acquire the feel for it if you believe it’s necessary.”
“I don’t know. Carrying a gun and not knowing how to use it can be as bad or worse than not having one at all.” Buckhorn frowned. “I’ve got to think on this some. When you do this dowsing thing of yours, how do you go about it?”
“I look over the land, study its contours,” Goodwin explained. “When I decide on some places that look promising, I bring out my dowsing rod and use it to see if it can help me pick the best spot to sink an artesian well.”
“Dowsing rod? Artesian well? To me you’re practically speaking a foreign language.”
Goodwin smiled tolerantly. “A dowsing rod, sometimes called a divining rod, is an instrument used for pinpointing an underground water source. There are those who also claim it can be used for locating rich ore or buried treasure, even buried bodies in criminal cases of searches for lost loved ones. But finding underground water is by far the most common practice. Some consider it a science, some plain bunk, some a Satanic device. In any event, it usually involves an instrument such as a Y-shaped hazel or witch hazel twig, like I use, that is held in a certain way and moved around above ground until it dips downward, indicating the presence of water below the surface. An artesian well is a nonpumping type of well where a hollow point is driven down until it hits the water source, which, because it’s under great pressure, jets to the surface.”
“No offense,” Buckhorn said, arching a brow skeptically, “but fresh out of the gate, I’m afraid you’d have to put me in the category of thinking it sounds like bunk. You really believe there’s a chance of finding water, no matter by what method, in this arid land?”
“I studied the contour of the terrain out the stagecoach window as we were coming in and, yes, I believe there’s a chance. Some of the low-lying areas would naturally be the most likely. But you have to remember that the great High Plains Aquifer runs all the way down from Nebraska and the Dakotas and reaches into Texas and pieces of New Mexico off to the east. No reason to think that some outlying pockets of it couldn’t be found over this way as well.”
“Now you just spit out another foreign word. Aquifer?”
“It’s an underground water table contained by layers of permeable rock. Pressure in this rock layer has been built up for tens of thousands of years. That’s why, when it’s tapped, the water is forced to the surface.”
Buckhorn shook his head. “You make it all sound too simple, too easy. In that case, why is there ever a shortage of water for anybody anywhere?”
“Because it’s not that simple or easy. For one thing, there aren’t aquifers everywhere. Maybe there’s not one here.” Goodwin paused and his mouth curved into a faintly sly smile. “But even if there isn’t, if I start going through the motions with my dowsing and it’s enough to cause Wainwright to believe I have the chance of finding alternative water, won’t that pretty much accomplish what Haydon sent me in hopes of doing?”