Puzzle of the Red Stallion (12 page)

“
Good-bye, old Paint, I’m a-leaving Cheyenne….

Good-bye, old Paint, I’m a-leaving Cheyenne….

I’m leaving Cheyenne and I’m off for Montan’ …

Good-bye, old Paint …
”

In spite of the singing Latigo could hear the voice of his employer shouting, “Go on, do as I tell you!”

But Highpockets didn’t want to wield the strap. “You don’t understand,” he was half sobbing. “This big sorrel horse, he’s just like a brother to me….”

“Hold him then!” said Maude Thwaite through clenched teeth. “I’ve got to be the only man in this place, as usual!” And she thrust the rope twist back into the hands of the colored boy. Then she took up the strap which he had thrown aside.

Siwash, eyes staring, nostrils twisted away from his big front teeth, danced sideways. But the cruel rope around his lip tightened….

Sparks flew from the cement floor as he pawed with his front feet. “Kick, will you?” said Maude Thwaite. “I’ll teach you to kick, you red bastard!” Which, to a horse whose ancestry could be traced back to one of the first Arab mares imported into England, was a singularly ill-fitting appellation.

She took up the length of heavy strap and with front teeth biting into her upper lip until she could almost taste her own blood, Maude Thwaite swung it across the rump of the red horse.

Siwash reared against the twist and vented—from injured pride rather than from the pain—a shrill and almost human scream.

“Maude, don’t you really think …” began her husband, backing against the farther wall.

In the front office Latigo Wells gritted his teeth and then swung more loudly than ever into the later verses of the ancient ballad of the range…

“
I’m leaving Cheyenne, I’m off for Montan’….

Good mornin’ young ladies, my hosses won’t stand …

Good-bye, old Paint—
”

He broke off suddenly, glad of any interruption, and went to the front door. Back at the rear of the stable Maude Thwaite swung the strap again, with all her strength.

Siwash screamed and tried to lash out with his hind legs. Again the woman promised that she would teach him to kick. “Maybe with half the hide burned off your back you’ll learn some manners,” she gasped. Again she raised the strap … and Siwash winced in anticipation, half crouching on his hind legs.

But the brawny arm of Maude Thwaite stopped short in midair. “Hit him again,” promised a cultured if not too calm voice just behind her, “and I—I’ll stick this pitchfork into you!”

Mrs. Thwaite whirled to stare into the face of an embattled spinster whose blue eyes now flamed green and chill. In one hand Miss Hildegarde Withers held aloft a pitchfork as if it were a javelin, the sharp tines gleaming wickedly.

“I mean it,” she finished. Latigo Wells, who lurked behind her still clutching his guitar, knew that Miss Withers spoke the truth. So did Thwaite, who backed still farther into the shadows.

For a long, long moment the two women stared at each other. Maude Thwaite spoke first. “At your time of life I’d think you’d learned to mind your own business,” she said, her voice a little dry, a little throaty. Her eyes flickered doubtfully.

“I happen to be a member in good standing of the S.P.C.A.,” said Hildegarde Withers. “Apart from that anything that involves a poor dumb animal is my business—
so put down that strap
!”

Maude Thwaite put it down.

Instantly Highpockets loosened the twist and Siwash burst past him and into his empty stall. His heels kicked twice against the side wall, sounding hollow as a drum.

Mrs. Thwaite smiled with a certain amount of difficulty. “I can understand how this looks to you,” she said, her voice spreading with honey. “But there never was a horse who didn’t need a sound beating once in a while. And Siwash just tried to kick and bite me at the same time when I was saddling him.”

“Since his owner is dead,” Miss Withers said evenly, still clinging to the pitchfork, “I don’t see why you found it necessary to saddle him.”

Mrs. Thwaite’s smile was even more strained, but it still showed. “I was going to have some pictures taken mounted on Siwash,” she explained. “For our advertising booklet. My husband rented a camera….”

She pointed to a heap of wreckage which Miss Withers with difficulty identified as the remains of a Graflex and a flash-gun. “Siwash just missed my husband and got the camera,” she explained. “I considered myself perfectly justified in using Siwash—after all, his board bill hasn’t been paid in three months.”

“He’s still not your horse,” Miss Withers pointed out. “He belongs to Violet Feverel’s sister now, and I shall use my influence with that young lady to have him taken out of your hands at once!”

“Splendid!” said Mrs. Thwaite. “But first you can tell the young lady who has inherited this red demon that his board bill is over two hundred dollars!”

“One hundred seventy-five,” said Latigo Wells feebly.

“Hmm,” murmured Miss Withers. “That’s a lot of money for a horse.”

At last Mrs. Thwaite agreed with something. “Especially for an outlaw,” she snapped. “Siwash is beautiful and he has lovely gaits, but he’s just plain outlaw….”

“Since when?” inquired Miss Withers, borrowing a phrase from her current crop of young hopefuls at Jefferson School.

“Well,” said Mrs. Thwaite, “he’s been worse today, but I always said he had a mean streak in him. Didn’t I, dear?”

Thwaite hurriedly came forward, insisting that his wife had talked of nothing else but Siwash’s hidden traits.

“You didn’t happen to notice a spot of dried blood on his flank, did you?” inquired Miss Withers casually. “Today, I mean.”

“Certainly not …” began Mrs. Thwaite. Even Latigo shook his head. But Highpockets burst in.

“I sho did, ma’am—and that big red horse, he didn’t like it when I sponged him off, neither….”

“Well, if all you experts will get together and make an investigation,” Miss Withers snapped, “you’ll find that Siwash is carrying a bullet under his skin. Which, though I admit I’m nothing but a rank outsider, would seem enough to make even a pet horse cantankerous when bumped.”

“Nonsense …” began Mrs. Thwaite. But her husband had stepped into the stall and was gingerly approaching the nervous thoroughbred. He touched the horse’s side and Siwash winced.

“Sensitive, surely,” he muttered. “But there’s no wound!”

“Blood doesn’t drip from heaven,” Miss Withers told him. “It comes from a wound—sometimes from a very tiny one.”

Thwaite polished his glasses and tried again. “There’s inflammation anyway,” he announced. “Highpockets, go get my kit out of the office!”

“I know you’ll do all you can for the horse,” Miss Withers continued happily, “because of his late mistress. Miss Feverel was a very lovely girl, I understand.”

There was a faint sniff from Maude Thwaite, but the little veterinary nodded. “Beautiful … charming …” he said. “One of the most—” He stopped short and licked his lips. “Or so she seemed. Not that I’d know …” he laughed nervously.

“Wouldn’t you?” Miss Withers pressed on wickedly. Thwaite’s neck had turned a bright red as he leaned against the horse, but his wife stepped into the breach.

“Whoever told you that there was anything between my husband and that Feverel girl was a liar,” she said. The honey was all gone from her voice and the glance she gave Latigo was not pleasant. “They were seen together only during the time we were schooling Siwash to the saddle and naturally my husband rode out on the bridle path with Miss Feverel on the days when I couldn’t go….”

“Naturally,” said Miss Withers. “By the way, Mrs. Thwaite, where were you at quarter of six this morning?”

There was another long pause, this time a pause which snapped and crackled.

“I was in my bed, in my bedroom upstairs,” said Maude Thwaite angrily. “Where else would I be?”

Miss Withers looked toward Thwaite, who was already beginning preparations for the minor operation on poor Siwash. “Is that right, Mr. Thwaite?”

He looked up startled. “What? No—I mean yes. I really don’t know, I mean to say …”

“Your windows, Mrs. Thwaite, open out on the street?” went on Miss Withers.

“Yes,” snapped the woman. She looked longingly at the strap which lay beside her as if she could think of another use for it.

“You didn’t happen to notice that as usual your earliest rider was Miss Violet Feverel, did you?” the schoolteacher went on.

“I did not,” snarled Maude Thwaite. “Not until I was awakened by the quarrel between Violet Feverel and her sister. They made noise enough to wake the dead.”

Miss Withers digested this information. “Thank you very much,” she said. “Oh, by the way, are you a good shot with an air rifle?”

Maude Thwaite suddenly went stiff as a poker. “I’m a good shot,” she admitted through lips like cardboard. “But when I shoot I don’t monkey around with popguns!”

“I got it!” Thwaite suddenly cut in upon them. He came out of the stall, rolling in the palm of his hand a tiny pellet of lead slightly flattened. “Nothing but a BB, after all. But it must have felt big as a cannon ball to old Siwash, for it was lodged in a nerve center.” The veterinary seemed to find it very funny. “Haw!”

Mrs. Thwaite felt she had stood enough. She faced Miss Withers suddenly. “Are you a police officer?” she demanded.

“Not exactly….”

“Then I must ask you to come back someday when we’re not so busy,” she was told. “Latigo, will you be good enough to show Miss. What’s-her-name out of here?”

Miss Withers put down the pitchfork which, until this moment, she had clutched like grim death.

“I’ll be back,” she said softly. And she followed the young man to the door.

He eyed her with respect. “Say, how did you get wise to that fact that Thwaite made eyes at Miss Feverel?” he wanted to know.

“Simple as A B C,” Miss Withers told him. “Given a little man with a waxed mustache and a big dominant wife—let a beautiful girl come into the picture …”

“Listen,” Latigo said seriously, “don’t get Miss Feverel wrong. She may have lived a fast life among her own ritzy friends, but down here at the stables it was Siwash and nobody else she was interested in. There was never an icier dame in the world than she was. And she wouldn’t have touched Mr. Thwaite with a ten-foot pole….”

“Maybe his wife didn’t know that,” said Miss Withers. She leaned closer to the bronzed young westerner. “Promise me one thing, young man—if that woman tries any more whipping parties, let me know.”

Latigo nodded. “But you don’t need to worry, ma’am. Mrs. Thwaite knows her stuff. After she’s got a horse well broken she never is very mean to him. Why, I’ve even seen her give sugar to her pets—oftentimes to Salt, that white mare over there….”

Miss Withers looked where he pointed. “Hmm … one of the hack horses, eh? What a difference between her and Siwash!”

Latigo laughed. “You think so? Well, Salt came to this stable a year and a half ago looking better than Siwash does. She’d been a crack polo pony. But eighteen months of hacking sort of brought out her ribs and brought down her spirit….”

Miss Withers’s clear blue eyes clouded. “Life is rough on horses, as it is on people,” she admitted. “We all have to be broken. Even that fresh-faced sister of Violet Feverel’s—she has to face it….”

The schoolteacher’s gaunt and kindly face was bland. Latigo nodded. “Plenty of spirit in that little filly,” he said.

Miss Withers smiled. “Then you did witness the scene between the two sisters! You know, I rather like you for not talking about it!”

Latigo fidgeted. “I got to be getting back into the stable….”

“Of course you have,” Miss Withers counseled. “I don’t suppose you have much time for the gayer things of life—girls and so forth.”

“Well, I dunno …”

“I only thought,” the schoolteacher sailed calmly on, “that there’s a little girl who is in need of a friend right now. I mean Barbara, of course—Violet’s sister. I happened to find out that she thinks you’re a pretty nice young man….”

“Awk!” said Latigo. He rubbed one shoe against the other, staring thoughtfully at the ground. He gulped. “Say—that’s right. Barbara didn’t laugh, like the others did—at my Sunday suit. I mean, the night her sister asked me to come up to her apartment. I thought—well, I was mighty tickled with the invite. But when I got there I found out all they wanted was for me to sing cowboy songs and I didn’t have my guitar.”

“A word to the wise!” quoted Miss Withers happily and took her departure.

For a minute she hesitated on the corner. It was getting late in the afternoon, and her meals and toilet had been most sketchy this day. Moreover, she knew that at home a little muzzy-faced dog named Dempsey was by now awaiting her impatiently, with dinner and a long walk foremost in his mind. But something else came first. She was on the hot scent of murder and could no more turn aside than she could have allowed that strap to fall once more across the red thoroughbred’s glossy back.

So it was that Miss Hildegarde Withers came hurrying into the lobby of the Hotel Harthorn. As she debated whether to be announced or to go directly to the apartment she noticed a brightly clad and familiar figure standing near the desk. It was Eddie Fry, puzzled and disconsolate.

“Miss Foley says she is so sorry,” the clerk was intoning, “but she can’t see anyone today.”

Foley—of course, that was Barbara. Somehow Miss Withers liked the name far better than Feverel. She came up beside Eddie and nodded brightly.

“Never mind,” she said cheerily, “the girl has had a great shock.”

“Yeah?” Eddie looked dubious. “It shouldn’t be such a great shock to lose a half-sister that you haven’t seen for fifteen years or so. I can’t figure what’s got into the kid. She wouldn’t let me go down to the morgue with her and now she won’t let me see her….”

Eddie thrust both hands deep in the pockets of his topcoat, which seemed to have been cut out of a material designed originally for horse blankets.

“G’bye,” he said hopefully. But Miss Withers was not so easily discouraged.

“Young man,” she began, “even if Barbara doesn’t want to talk to you, I do.” She half dragged, half led him toward a settee. “Don’t you realize Barbara feels guilty about you? Her sister is dead—and Barbara took you away from her.”