Travis stood looking out the marshal’s window, watching as the streets filled with people. There were those standing outside the saloon, waiting to enter, and those who were at the feed store and those at the general store. There was a kid chasing a dog and a man with a rake trying to clean the street, sweeping the manure up under the boardwalks and out of the way.
“You don’t know who the men were?” asked the marshal.
Travis turned. ‘They were in the saloon yesterday. First time I ever saw them.”
“I doubt they’ll be back,” he said.
Travis nodded. He moved toward the desk. A small desk pushed back against the wall. There was a cabinet over it holding a rack of rifles, a chain through their triggerguards. A pot bellied stove stood in the corner with a coffee pot on it, but it didn’t look as if either had been used in a long time.
“Man said that he had a daughter, but I don’t know her name or where to find her. He asked me to take his belongings to her.”
“You inclined to do it?”
Travis shrugged. “I’ve nothing better to do except that I don’t know who she is.”
“Man’s name,” said the marshal, “was Crockett. . . ”
“That’s right,” said Travis, remembering. “Caleb Crockett.”
The marshal bent and lifted a well-worn saddlebag to the top of his desk. “This is all the old man had except for his mule over in the stable. I guess it all belongs to the daughter now.”
Travis nodded at it. “Any clue about where she might be?”
“Hammetsville. A little town about fifty miles from here. Not much more than a stage stop.” The marshal pushed a leatherbound book from the saddlebag. “Name’s in here.”
Travis rubbed a hand over his face. He glanced at the saddlebags and then thought of the old man in the street, dying because he had told a story of Spanish gold. He touched the soft leather. “I’ll take it to her.”
“Not much here. An old shirt, a knife, and some papers. And the book.” The marshal looked up at Travis. “A lifetime of work and it can be stuffed into one small bag.”
“There is the daughter,” said Travis.
“There is that,” replied the marshal. He pushed the saddlebag across the desk. “When do you think you’ll be leaving? Today?”
“There some hurry?”
The marshal narrowed his eyes. “We haven’t had much trouble around here lately.”
Travis understood, though he didn’t like it. He’d only found the results. He hadn’t starting anything, but then the marshal was just protecting his job. Get everyone out of town except those who belong and things would continue to run smoothly.
“As soon as I get my gear at the hotel, I’ll be gone.”
The marshal grinned, nodded, and stood. He held out a hand. “We’re delighted that you visited our town. Please come back soon.” He did not sound sincere.
Jake Freeman stood on a ridge just outside of town. The sun was hot on his back and he held one hand up to shade his eyes from the brightness of the desert around him. Behind him Matthew Crosby sat on one horse and held the reins of the second. He had pulled his hat down low and had closed his eyes against the brightness.
“Can’t see the son of a bitch,” said Freeman. “Went into the marshal’s office and hasn’t come out.”
“The old man has a daughter,” said Crosby.
Freeman dropped his hand and turned so that he was looking up at Crosby. “That piece of information does us no good because we don’t know where she is.”
“If you hadn’t been quite so fast with the knife, we might have found that out.”
“That old man wasn’t going to talk to us, and I didn’t want him talking to anyone else.”
“Well he did.”
Freeman nodded and said, “But he won’t talk anymore. Now we’ll just wait here and see what we can see.”
He turned back to watch the main street. He saw someone exit the marshal’s office carrying a bag. The man walked to the hotel and disappeared inside.
“Looks like our boy has found himself something,” said Freeman.
“We going to visit him?” Crosby pushed his hat back so that he could look down into the street.
“If we wait, he might come to visit us and that way no one will be able to see or hear anything.”
Travis buckled on his gunbelt and then turned slowly, taking a last look around the room. Satisfied that he had picked up everything that belonged to him, he grabbed the saddlebag and left. Outside, he walked across the street to the livery stable. He entered there and moved toward the rear where his horse waited.
A man came out of the shadows. “Help you?”
“Thought I’d pick up my horse.”
“Leaving us?”
“Yes.”
“While you saddle up, I’ll figure the bill.”
“I’ll be taking that mule, too,” he said, pointing into a stall.
“Can’t do that. Belongs to someone.”
“He’s dead,” said Travis. “I’m taking it to the relatives.”
When the man hesitated, Travis added, “You can check with the marshal.”
“No. I suppose it’s okay, if the marshal approved it.” He cocked his head to the side. “Who pays the bill?”
Travis shrugged and then said, “I’ll do it.”
“Be with you in a moment.” The man turned and vanished into the shadows again.
Travis opened the stall and entered, moving along the side of it, watching where he put his feet. He put a hand on the horse’s flank and rubbed it, letting the beast know that he was there. When he reached the front of the stall, he patted the horse’s nose, and then gently pushed so that the horse would back up and out.
When he got the horse saddled, the livery man reappeared. “I make it six bits.”
“You’re sure?”
“Six bits.”
Travis paid the man and then waited as he got the mule ready to move. The man gave him the leader, and Travis walked his horse and the mule out into the sunlight. He put a hand up to shade his eyes and scanned the street and the ground beyond it. That had been something he learned in the army. Survey the terrain, when possible, before riding up into it. That could save some nasty surprises.
Travis swung up into the saddle. He sat for a moment, wondering why he was about to ride fifty miles to tell a woman he didn’t know that her father, whom he hadn’t known either, had died. He owed her or her father nothing. Except that a dying man had asked him to do it. Travis had said he would and now felt obligated to do it.
He rode out of town and followed the road up to the top of a ridge. He stopped briefly and looked back down at the town. Not much more than a flyspeck on the map. A few houses, a few buildings, and nothing around it except open desert. Hot winds and dust devils swirled.
He turned again and rode on into the next valley. It stretched out into the distance, a glowing gray hell with no sign of water or green vegetation. Far away was the hint of mountains. They were vague shapes shimmering in the heat.
Travis let the horse have its head. It followed the road along the floor of the valley. It didn’t bother with the dried clumps of sagebrush and ignored the sharp spines of the prickly pear. It had been well fed at the stable. Well fed and well watered.
He had come to a sharp bend in the road, next to a dry riverbed. There was a stand of stunted trees growing in the corner, their leaves rattling in the light breeze, and across the riverbed was a rocky ledge sloping upward.
There was no warning. Travis saw nothing and heard nothing. There was a sudden splash in the dust of the road and an instant later, the report of a rifle. Without a thought, Travis rolled to his right, off his horse and to the ground. As he landed, the horse leaped forward, ran a few steps and then stopped, confused. The mule turned, bucked, and headed back up the road.
Travis continued to roll, his eyes on the rocks across the riverbed. He scrambled into a slight depression and drew his revolver, knowing that it would do him no good. Not if his attacker was in the rocks with a rifle. The range was too great for it.
For ten minutes he lay there, his eyes moving slowly up the slope, searching for the rifleman. He felt sweat trickle down his back and his side. He wiped his forehead on the sleeve of his shirt and continued to search.
Finally he knew that he would have to move. If the gunman was still there, Travis could wait all day. He was probably in the shade with a canteen. Travis, on the other hand, was in the blazing sun with no water. In an hour it would be unbearable in the depression. In two, he would not be able to think rationally as the sun baked him. The only thing he could do was make a run for it and hope that the first shot indicated how bad a marksman the man in the rocks was.
Taking a deep breath, Travis pushed himself to his feet and then sprinted toward his horse.