The Collected Short Stories of Louis L'Amour, Volume 2 (31 page)

Tom Robley suddenly broke the silence. “I'm headin' for town. Nothin' more to be done here.” Without waiting for a reply, he turned back toward town.

Butler stared after him. “Now, what's eatin' that youngster? Never seen him cut up so.”

Bowdrie was concerned with the matter at hand. Moody was dead and Robley would report it in town. But what did he know about the man they must now pursue? That he was utterly ruthless, left-handed, and knew this desert well. The rock shelf was no accident. The man had planned well. That was indicated by his choice of a meeting place. Bowdrie gestured toward Moody's body. “He was a tool, Butler. The real criminal is the man who killed him. He worked all this out ahead of time.”

Bowdrie was searching for more than an obvious trail across the desert. He was trying to find the trail left by the man's secret thoughts. Each move the man made helped to outline his character. His cold-blooded planning indicated he did not intend to leave the country. If he had so planned, he would have paid less attention to his trail and just kept going.

He had been looking, looking … His eyes caught at something tangled in the cat claw. It was a low clump of the brush growing close to the ground. One of its vicious thorns had caught …

Burlap!

He held up the thin strand to Butler. “Wrapped his horse's hooves in burlap sacking so's it would leave no trail. No wonder we couldn't find where he left the rock shelf.”

He swung to the saddle. “Sam, that gent, whoever he is, won't be wanderin' around. He won't travel fast with that sackin' on his horse's hooves. From here there's just three trails that lead to water. To Horse Thief Mesa, to Casa Piedras, or to someplace on the upper Cibolo.”

“My guess would be either of the first two. He wouldn't be gettin' noplace goin' up to Cibolo.”

Bowdrie agreed. “You take the Casa Piedras trail. I'll head for the mesa. Scout for some of that burlap fiber, or tracks. If you see any, holler or give a shot.”

They separated and Bowdrie began painstakingly to search the desert, yet scarcely ten minutes had gone by when he heard a long cowboy yell from Butler. When he rode over to him Butler pointed out a thin thread of burlap caught on some prickly pear.

For an hour they followed at a walk, picking up occasional smudges or signs of passage. Suddenly the trail they followed merged with a cattle trail and the ground was torn by their passing.

Butler swore. “Lost him! Too many critters come this way.”

“We'll follow along. He'll get rid of that burlap soon, I think.”

A mile farther they found it, half-buried in hurriedly kicked-up sand. Bowdrie picked it from the sand, shook it out, and brought it along. From time to time as they rode he turned it over as if trying to read something from the sacking itself. Then he stowed it in one of his half-empty saddlebags.

In Casa Piedras Bowdrie called to a Mexican boy. “Want to feed and water these horses? Then bring them back and tie them here.” He tossed the boy a bright silver dollar.

Bowdrie glanced at a horse hitched nearby as Butler joined him on the walk. “That steel-dust's wearing a bronc saddle with an undercut fork,” he commented, “and the horse has been ridden hard.”

“Let's eat,” Butler suggested. “I'm hungry as a Panhandle wolf!”

It was boardinghouse style, and Bowdrie seated himself, turning a cup right-side-up, then reaching for the coffee. Another hand reached at the same time and only Chick's dexterity prevented the pot from being upset. Bowdrie looked around into a pair of frosty blue eyes. The man had reached for the pot with his left hand. Chick smiled.

“Help yourself!” he suggested. “Coffeepots are bad luck when they are upset.”

Sam Butler nodded sagely. He speared a triple thickness of hotcakes and lifted them to his plate. “Sure is. Wust kind of bad luck.”

The frosty eyes turned ugly. For an instant they flickered to the badge on Butler's chest, then shifted to Bowdrie.

“Uh-huh,” Bowdrie agreed. “I knew a gent once who got drilled right through the heart whilst holding a coffeepot in his right hand. Never had a chance.”

“Sho nuff?” A big blond cowhand at the end of the table glanced up. “A man surely couldn't let go of a pot fast enough, could he?”

“That's what the murderer figured,” Bowdrie replied. “This just happened a few hours ago, over at Pistol Rock Springs.”

The cowhand stared but the man with the frosty blue eyes continued to eat. “Been to those springs many a time,” the cowhand said. “Who was it got hisself killed?”

“Name of Jim Moody. He robbed the stage station over yonder last night, shot John Irwin, then cut across country to the spring. His partner was waitin', an' the way he was ridin', I figure Moody expected his partner had a fresh horse waitin'. Instead of that he got lead for breakfast. This partner of his shot him, took the money, and lit out.”

“Now, that's a dirty skunk if I ever heard of one!” the blond cowhand said. “He ought to be hung! Hell, I knew Jim Moody! He used to spark that Boling gal from over the way. Seen him at dances, many's the time.” He turned to the man with the frosty blue eyes. “Sho, Al! I reckon you won't be none put out. I've heard tell there was a time you was sweet on that Boling gal yourself!”

Al shrugged. “Talked to her a few times, that's all. Same as you did.”

Something clicked in Bowdrie's brain. Al … Al Harshman, a rancher. The ambitious one.

Al got to his feet. “I'll be ridin',” he said, to nobody in particular. Then he asked, “How much did he get away with?”

“Twelve thousand,” Bowdrie replied, his face inscrutable. Al was wearing his gun on the right side, butt forward, and pulled slightly to the front. “But he won't have it long, Harshman. He left a plain trail.”

Harshman stiffened angrily and seemed about to reply, then turned toward the door. He glanced back. “I wouldn't want the job of trailin' him,” he commented. “He might prove right salty if cornered.”

“When a man is murdered without a chance,” Bowdrie commented, “we Rangers make it a point of honor to hunt him down. A Ranger will get that killer if it is the last thing he ever does.”

“Rangers can die.”

“Of course, but we never die alone.” Bowdrie smiled. “We always like to take somebody with us.”

When he had gone outside, Butler glanced over at Bowdrie. “How'd you know his name was Harshman?”

“He looked like a harsh man,” Bowdrie replied, smiling.

         

Strolling to the porch outside, Bowdrie sat down on the bench after retrieving the burlap sacking from the saddlebag. He began to go over it with painstaking care. The Mexican boy who had returned the horses stood watching, eyes bright with curiosity. “What you look for,
señor
?”

“Somethin' to tell me who the hombre was who used this sack. Nobody uses anything for long without leaving his mark on it.”

The outside of the sacking was thick with damp sand; much more must have come off in his saddlebags, Bowdrie reflected unhappily. Stretching the fibers, he searched them with keen eyes. Suddenly the Mexican boy reached over and plucked a gray hair from the sacking, then another.

“So? He had a gray or steel-dust horse, Pedro?”

“The name is Miguel,
señor,
” the boy protested, very seriously. He bent over the sack, pointing at a fragment of blue clay. “See? It is blue. The sack has lain near a well.”

“Near a well, Pedro? Why do you say that?”

“The name is Miguel,
señor
. Because there is the blue clay. Always in this country there is blue clay in the hole of wells,
señor
. Always, it is so.”

“Thanks, Pedro. You'd make a good Texas Ranger.”

“I? A Texas Ranger? You think so,
señor
?” His expression changed. “But,
señor,
the name is not Pedro. It is Miguel. Miguel Fernández.”

“All right, Pedro.” Bowdrie stood up. “Just as you say.”

He glanced once more at the sacking, and suddenly, in the crease near the seam, he noticed a tiny fragment of crushed, somewhat oily pulp. He took it out, studied it, then folded it into a cigarette paper.

“Wait for me,” he said to Butler.

Swiftly he crossed the street to the store. A little old man with gold-rimmed spectacles looked up. Bowdrie asked him a question, then another. The old man replied, studying him curiously.

Bowdrie walked back to Butler. “Let's go. I think we've got our man. I only hope we'll be in time.”

“In time?” Butler asked. “In time for what?”

The Mexican boy caught his hand.
“Señor!”
he pleaded. “If I am to be a Ranger, you must know my name! It is Miguel! Miguel Fernández!”

Bowdrie chuckled and handed him another dollar. “If you say so, Pedro! Miguel it is!
Adiós,
Pedro!”

He swung to the saddle and started out of town, Butler beside him. “In time for what?” he repeated.

“To prevent another killing,” Bowdrie told him.

“Robley knew,” Bowdrie continued. “He guessed it when he saw the dead man was Jim Moody. He knew who it was when I said the killer was left-handed. He was away ahead of us.”

“You think it was Harshman? But how could he have known about the money? For that matter, how did Moody find out?”

The desert flat gave way to rising ground, the hillsides scattered with juniper. The sage had taken on a deeper color and there were clumps of grama grass. Chick dipped into an arroyo and skirted a towering wall of red sandstone, into a shaded canyon, then across another flat. The trail dipped again and they rode into the yard of a lonely ranch house. Nearby there were several pole corrals and three saddled horses.

Bowdrie dropped to the ground. As his feet touched the earth, Al Harshman stepped from the door. Narrow-eyed, faint perspiration showing on his brow, he looked from Butler to Bowdrie and back. “Huntin' somethin'?”

“You,” Bowdrie said. “I am arrestin' you for the murder of Jim Moody and complicity in the robbery and murder of John Irwin.”

Harshman took a step into the yard. He was smiling, a taunting smile.

“All you've got is suspicion. You can't prove nothin'. I ain't been away from here but that ride to town, where you saw me.”

He smiled again. “You can't prove I was anywhere near Pistol Rock Spring. And how would I know about the money? How would Moody know?”

“I know how you knew about the money.” Tom Robley stepped around the corner of the house. His eyes flickered to Bowdrie and back. “I'd have beat you here, but I was looking for the girl first.”

“What girl?” Butler demanded.

“Mary Boling. It was she told them about the money. She with all her talk about New Orleans and fancy clothes. She put poor Jim Moody up to it. She's partly responsible for both Irwin an' Moody bein' dead. Me, I'm mostly responsible.”

“You?” Butler exclaimed. “Now, Tom, you just—”

“Don't get me wrong. I'd nothin' to do with stealin' the money or the killing. It was my mouth. I was so busy tryin' to convince Mary what an important job I had that I just ran off at the mouth. Because of my loose tongue, two good men are dead.”

Harshman laughed. “You think Mary had a hand in it? You're a fool, Tom Robley, a double-damned fool. Suppose you had told Mary? What could that mean to me?”

Chick Bowdrie stood listening and curious. Watching the scene, every sense alert, quick to hear every word, he was also aware that three saddled horses, packed for the trail, stood at the corral.

The big rancher wore a dark blue shirt, two of the front buttons unfastened. His boots were highly polished, and he looked quite the dandy. Bowdrie smiled, understanding a few things.

“You're pretty sure of yourself, Al, but Sam Butler and me, we trailed you. We know a left-handed man sat against a rock at Pistol Rock Spring and smoked cigarettes. He tossed the matches at the fire with his left hand.

“We trailed you from the spring, and it wasn't even hard. You wrapped your horse's hooves in burlap sacking so you wouldn't leave a trail. We have the sacks.”

Harshman shrugged. “There are a lot of sacks around. Can you prove those sacks were mine? Don't be foolish! Those sacks could have belonged to anybody.”

“I found gray horsehairs that will match your gelding, and there's blue clay on them, as there is around your well.”

“So? There's blue clay around half the wells in the county, and as for horsehairs, how many gray horses are there?”

“We've got somethin' else, Al,” Bowdrie said. “Folks told me you were ambitious. That you had brains. Mary spoke mighty highly of you back there at the dance.

“You were smart, all right. You had ideas. You decided to try something new, Al. You had some cottonseed shipped in here so you could try planting it.

“So? Is that criminal?”

“Not at all. You were away ahead of everybody else around this part of the country. You sent for cottonseed and you got it. Some of it came in that sack you used, Al. I found some of the cottonseed in the sack.”

“Bowdrie!”
Robley shouted.
“Look out!”
Robley's hand slashed down for a gun, and a shotgun roared from the window of the house and Tom Robley staggered, firing toward the house.

It was one of those breathtaking instants that explode suddenly, and Bowdrie saw Harshman grab for a gun—with his
right
hand!

The hand darted into the gaping shirtfront and the gun blasted, but a split second late. Bowdrie had palmed his six-gun and fired, then took a long step forward and right, firing again as his foot came down.

Al Harshman was on his knees, his face contorted with shock and hatred. Vaguely Bowdrie knew other guns were firing, but this was the man he had to get. Harshman had dropped the derringer hideout gun and was coming up with his other pistol.