Inside, the office was sparsely furnished, but well maintained. There weren't more than a few specks of dust to be found. A slender man with short-cropped blond hair sat behind a modest desk, reading a newspaper that still smelled of fresh ink.
“Marshal Lind?” Clint asked.
Without lowering the newspaper, the man replied, “That'd be me. Can I help you with something?”
“I was wondering if you might be able to answer a question for me.” Clint waited for a few seconds to see if the marshal would even look in his direction. When it became obvious that he had no intention of doing so, Clint went ahead with his question. “Have you ever heard of a man named Matt Fraley?”
“Sounds familiar.”
“From where?”
The marshal paused, turned a page and replied, “Couldn't say for certain.”
“Do you have any reward notices posted?”
That caused the newspaper to come down. Marshal Lind glared at Clint with no small amount of distrust in his eyes. “You a bounty hunter?”
“No.” Although Clint had more he could have said, he held back to see if it was necessary.
It wasn't.
“They're tacked to the wall by the coat rack,” Lind said as he lifted his paper and shook out some of the creases.
Clint headed for the coat rack and found a small bundle of papers hanging from a long nail protruding from the wall. The papers slid right off, and Clint flipped through them one at a time. There weren't many of them, so Clint was able to get to the back of the pile before too long. When he flipped to the last notice of the bunch, Clint found himself looking at a fairly accurate drawing of Matt Fraley.
TWENTY
It had obviously been a few years since that drawing was completely accurate, but the younger man in the picture was most definitely the same one Clint had ridden into town with. The biggest difference between the two versions of Matt's face was in the eyes.
In the picture, Matt's eyes were cold and sharp like a blade that had been stuck into a block of ice. The eyes Clint had seen the night before were more weary and weathered.
“You find something?” Lind asked.
Clint shook his head while glancing at the rest of that notice. “Nope.”
According to the notice, Matt Fraley was wanted on several counts of robbery and for killing a man in Santa Fe. The price on his head was five thousand dollars and was being offered whether Matt was marched into a lawman's custody or if he was hauled there inside a pine box.
“How old is this one?” Clint asked casually.
The marshal seemed reluctant to look away from his newspaper yet again, but he did so in order to squint at the notice Clint showed him. “That's been here awhile.” He said. “I'd say at least five or six years. Maybe more since it ain't even valid no more.”
Clint took a closer look at the notice and saw that the marshal was correct. A notice scribbled across the bottom marked the reward as forfeit. Clint hadn't seen that too many times, but knew it sometimes happened when whoever was offering a bounty no longer thought the outlaw was worth the price.
“Have you been working this town long?”
“Sure.”
“Do you recall who this is?” Clint asked, trying to keep his frustration from his voice.
“Can't say as I do. Is he a friend of that fella you were asking about before?”
Clint didn't bother answering. Instead, he placed the notices back onto the wall. He figured the marshal wouldn't bother checking to find out there was one less than there had been before.
When he got back to the hotel, Clint found a pretty brunette sitting behind the front desk. The moment she spotted him, the brunette put down the papers she'd been straightening and showed Clint a wide, friendly smile.
“Were you too cold last night?” she asked.
“Pardon me?”
Laughing quickly, she shifted her feet and said, “I brought you those blankets, but had to leave soon after. I hope you were warm enough and didn't need anything else.”
“Oh, I was fine. Thanks. Do you know if the man in room number eight is still here?”
“He's right in there,” she replied, pointing to a doorway to Clint's right. “Breakfast is just being served and you're welcome to help yourself.”
“All right.” Clint started walking to the doorway, but was stopped when the brunette quickly spoke up again.
“If you need anything else,” she said, “just ask for me. My name's Laura.”
Just then, Clint realized how pretty Laura's face was. Perhaps that was because she was smiling so widely at him that she was practically beaming. The cut of her dress was modest, but the curves of her trim body were plain enough to see.
“Thanks, Laura,” Clint said. “I'll keep that in mind.”
She nodded, confident that her point had gotten across, and settled back in behind her paperwork.
Clint stepped into the next room and immediately spotted Matt sitting at one of eight tables. A few of the other tables were occupied, but the only real movement in the room came from a pair of servers who bustled back and forth between the tables and the kitchen.
Sitting down at Matt's table, Clint slapped the notice he'd taken from Marshal Lind's wall and asked, “Look familiar?”
“Well, good morning to you, too,” Matt said.
“And to you. Now answer my question.”
“You should try some coffee. It sounds like you could use a cup.”
When Matt saw that he'd failed to get Clint's expression to change, he looked down at the yellowed paper under Clint's hand. “I haven't seen that one in a while.”
“That's a pretty healthy sum they're offering for your scalp.”
Matt nodded. “One of the higher ones, too.”
“Maybe you should tell me why I shouldn't hand you over to the marshal.”
Scooping up some of the scrambled eggs from his plate, Matt shook his head and grinned. “I already told you I was wanted.”
“Then maybe I'm coming to my senses after getting a good night's sleep.”
“In that case, you should know that I could have torn out of here anytime I wanted if it was my intention to get away. For that matter, I never even had to allow you to come along with me at all.”
“What is your intention here?” Clint asked.
“To finish up my breakfast. You should order some for yourself. It's the daily special.”
Clint maintained his stare until Matt got the hint.
“There's a banker I crossed paths with the last time I was here,” Matt explained. “I was making a withdrawal and he got in the way, so I shot him.”
“You killed him?”
“Not so far as I know, but I did hurt him pretty bad. I even heard he could barely form a complete sentence for months after being scared so bad.”
“How do you know that?” Clint asked. “Do you keep up with the people you shoot?”
“Not hardly, but I did some checking and I heard that the man was still living here in town. I figured I'd pay him a visit and see about putting his mind to rest.”
Clint let out a sigh and motioned for one of the servers to take his order. “I'm sure you could throw some money at him and everything will be just fine.”
“I doubt it. That's why I was hoping you'd lend a hand.”
“You were hoping that, huh?”
“Sure,” Matt replied. “Isn't that why you tagged along?”
TWENTY-ONE
“Is this really necessary?” Matt asked as he stood outside of the livery with his hand resting on his holstered pistol.
Clint stood directly in front of him with his arms hanging loosely at his sides. He wasn't making a move for his own modified Colt, but he could get a grip on the weapon at a moment's notice. For the time being, he simply nodded.
“Yes,” Clint replied. “It's necessary.”
“Why?”
“As a show of good faith.”
“I could get another gun if I wanted, you know,” Matt said. “You're not keeping me from anything.”
“If you want me to help, you'll do me this favor. Besides, I won't let you out of my sight long enough to visit any firearms stores.”
Matt let out a sigh, took his gun from its holster and spun it around so the handle was facing out toward Clint. Handing over the weapon, he said, “Then take it. I don't see why you'd think I'd come all this way to shoot an old man anyhow.”
Clint took the gun and stuck it under his own belt. “Thanks for humoring me. Now, would you like to lead the way?”
Matt climbed into his saddle and rode out as Clint was mounting Eclipse. Both men rode through the town of Lohrens, which was still in the process of waking up and coming to life. Although a few of the locals looked over at them, they didn't seem too interested in where the men were going.
Clint, on the other hand, was plenty interested in seeing where Matt was headed. After rounding a corner, Matt snapped his reins and got moving a bit quicker through a stretch of deserted street. Clint followed behind, but never let his eyes stray too far from Matt.
Plenty of men would have gone to a lot more trouble to distract Clint long enough to take a clean shot at him. Even though Matt hadn't exactly shown himself to be a threat, Clint wasn't in the habit of giving known killers the benefit of the doubt.
He also wasn't in the habit of riding beside known outlaws and letting them lead the way. For some reason, however, Clint was doing just that in the case of Matt Fraley. Despite the fact that common sense would say it was a bad idea, another set of Clint's instincts told him to see it through. Even stronger than those things was the curiosity that made Clint wonder just what the hell was on Matt's mind.
After all the times that Clint had been burned by curiosity, he might have thought that he would have learned his lesson. For that reason, Clint kept Matt where he could see him and waited until Matt rode ahead before taking a few simple measures to disable Matt's gun.
Clint might not have had many of his gunsmithing tools available, but he didn't need much of anything more than years of experience with crafting weapons to make the modifications necessary for him to rest a bit easier. When he looked up again, he saw Matt coming back to where Clint was waiting.
“He's still living there,” Matt said.
“You knew where this guy lived?” Clint asked.
Wincing a bit, Matt nodded. “I . . . sort of paid him a visit before robbing the bank. Kind of for insurance.”
“What sort of insurance?”
“The kind a man gets when he holds another man's family hostage and threatens to shoot up his house and home if he don't let me rob that bank.”
“Jesus,” Clint muttered.
Matt nodded slowly and lowered his head as if he didn't want to look him in the eye. “I know. It was a bad one. That's why it sort of stuck in my mind.”
Before Clint could respond to that, the door of the little house Matt had picked out swung open. The hinges creaked loudly and made a grating sound that was soon followed by the knocking of wood against wood. The man who stepped forward wasn't exactly old, but he carried himself as if an additional twenty years had been tacked onto the forty or so that he'd already earned.
The man was skinny, balding, and had a sunken face. A bristly black mustache sprouted from his lip and waggled as he grunted and groaned with the effort of walking outside. Most of that effort was stemming from the fact that he only had one full leg at his disposal and needed to lean on a crutch so he could move.
As soon as the man spotted Matt, his eyes widened and he turned to hustle inside. Considering his predicament, he actually moved pretty fast.
“Pardon us,” Matt shouted toward the house. “I wondered if you might be able toâ”
Before Matt could finish his question, the one-legged man hobbled back through the door. Along with the crutch, he also brought along a shotgun, which he propped on one arm and then pulled the trigger.
“Holy shit!” Matt shouted as the shotgun roared and sent a plume of smoke into the air.
Clint had pulled Eclipse away from the front of the house as soon as he'd seen that shotgun. Unfortunately, considering the one-legged man's haste, that only put Clint in more danger. Between the man's rush to pull his trigger and his problem balancing on his crutch, the shotgun blast wound up coming closer to Clint than to Matt. Even as the buckshot blazed past Clint's head, the man who'd fired the shotgun was still glaring intently at Matt.
“It's you!” the one-legged man shouted.
Matt's horse had reflexively turned from the house to get away from the shotgun blast. Coming around in a full circle, Matt faced the house again while patting the air with his free hand. “It's not what you think,” Matt said.
The one-legged man was trembling, but had collected himself enough to pull the shotgun away from Clint's direction and point it at Matt. His aim might not have been perfect, but it was close enough for the shotgun to put Matt into a world of hurt.
“Just give me a moment to explain,” Matt said.
Slowly, the one-legged man shook his head. “No. I remember you. I won't let you hurt me again.”
The shotgun in the one-legged man's hands was still shaking, but it wasn't about to be taken away from its target. The look in the man's eyes was full of fear, but there was enough determination mixed in to make his intentions plenty easy to distinguish.
As the roar of the shotgun rolled through the air, the sounds of some distant voices could be heard. Matt's voice cut right through all of that as he leveled his eyes onto the one-legged man and spoke with cool determination.