The Collected Short Stories of Louis L'Amour, Volume 2 (44 page)

He might be one of the Bonelli outfit, even Bonelli himself. He knew that several of the outfit had been in Texas. The man who had robbed the Pecos Bank had been in town at least an hour before the hold-up, had bathed the dust from his chest, shoulders, and arms in the corral trough, eaten a meal, and loafed about near the bank.

It had been there that Bowdrie found the small grayish seeds. Hoary saltbush, or wingscale, did not grow in the vicinity. Their seeds were often gathered by the Zuni to grind into meal, or even eaten as they were collected.

Travis puzzled him. Was the man a public-spirited citizen who wanted law in Almagre, or had he some more devious purpose in giving the marshal's job to Bowdrie?

Did he want Bonelli killed? Or—and Chick became speculative—did he want Bowdrie himself killed? Travis was a big, well-set-up man. Could he be Wiley Martin?

Certainly one of the trails he had followed from Texas might have been that of Travis.

Bowdrie returned to the street and wandered about. People looked at the badge either with contempt, or pity, or irritation. He spotted a buffalo hunter whom he remembered from other towns, although the man seemed to have no memory of him. Buffalo Barton had always been a decent, law-respecting man, so he made him a deputy. Next he arrested a cowhand who objected to checking his guns.

Nobody could tell him anything about Wiley Martin, although he asked few people, and those few chosen discreetly, and he asked no direct questions. He did check records in the marshal's office and found no arrest record for such a man or for anyone answering to the description.

One thing was obvious. The town was waiting for him to be killed. A few, however, hearing about how he had faced Bonelli and made him back down, were betting on him. No one wanted to be anywhere near him when things began to happen. That much was obvious.

Travis, he learned, kept a gray horse in the livery stable. The killer had ridden such a horse. If he could see the tracks, it might be evidence enough to tell him he was at least on the right trail.

As the evening wore on, the feeling that he was marked for death became stronger. It was not an unfamiliar feeling, but never a comfortable one. Yet the night passed quietly, and after he turned in, he slept comfortably.

At daybreak he made a quick check of the town, noticing the new horses in the livery stable and in the corrals. With a friendly warning he freed the cowhand he had arrested, then walked the streets again, paying close attention to horse tracks.

He was sitting over a late breakfast in an empty dining room when Amy Chapin entered. She came to his table. “I couldn't sleep, knowing you might be in trouble because of us.”

“It would not be your fault. I came here hunting a man … Wiley Martin.”

Her lips tightened and her eyes were grave. “Tex, you have friends here. You are admired for the way you made Bonelli back down. Why don't you forget about Martin?”

“Does he have that many friends?”

She hesitated. “Something like that. Tex,” she said impulsively, “why don't you quit this job and come to work for Dad? He needs help, and with you beside him he wouldn't be afraid of Bonelli. We have good range, and it can be built into something. He needs help and he likes you.”

“Especially,” Bowdrie said, “if I stop hunting Wiley Martin?”

She flushed and half-started to rise, then sat down again. “My offer was sincere, and it comes from Dad.”

“Amy? Do you know who Wiley Martin is?”

An instant of hesitation. “Not really.” Her voice sank almost to a whisper. “I think I do.”

“Do you know why I'm huntin' him?”

“No, I don't, only somebody is always hunting him, and he's a good man, Tex, a very good man.”

“Amy, a man believed to be Wiley Martin or somebody he knew robbed a bank in Pecos and killed two honest, decent men. He left two widows and five orphans. Is that the kind of man you wish to protect?”

Her face was ashen. So she did know him, then! “I don't believe it! It simply can't be true!”

Three tough-looking men had stopped outside the door and were arguing loudly. All three were wearing guns.

From where Bowdrie sat, he could see out the window and across the street. Through the shutters of a closed saloon across the way he could see sunlight, a few threads of which showed through the shutters evidently from a back window. Twice in just a few minutes somebody or something had blocked off that sunlight, so somebody was inside the closed saloon, peering out through the shutters.

The setup was too pat, even amateurish. He was supposed to step outside to stop the argument and take the guns from the three men, and as he did, the man in the saloon would cut him down.

Excusing himself, he stepped to the door. One of the men glanced his way and threw his cigarette into the street.

A signal? Or just getting his hands free? Chick stepped out quickly and just as quickly moved to the left, putting one of the men between himself and the window.

His move was totally unexpected That he had judged the trap correctly was obvious from the disconcerted expressions on the faces of the men.

“All right, shuck your guns! Let 'em drop! Right in the street!”

“Like hell!” It was the bearded killer of the previous day. As he spoke, he stepped quickly aside. Only Bowdrie's awareness saved him. As the bearded man moved, he caught a glint of sunlight on a gun barrel, and he palmed his gun and fired.

Two guns boomed with the same report, Bowdrie's a hair faster. Bowdrie felt the whip of a bullet past his face, but he swung his gun and shot at the bearded man, who was drawing his own pistol. Chick's bullet broke his arm, and he dropped his gun, backing off.

The action was so swift the two remaining men were caught by the surprise of the trap's failure. With a chopping blow from his gun barrel, Bowdrie dropped the nearest man into the dust, then jammed the muzzle of his gun into the third man's stomach.

“Shuck 'em! Or I'll let you have it!”

Trembling visibly, the third man unbuckled his belt with shaking fingers and let the guns fall. Spinning the man around, Bowdrie lined him up with the other prisoner.

On the walk, not fifty feet away, was Buffalo Barton with a shotgun. “Didn't see no call to step in, you handled it so fast.” He glanced at Chick. “A man would think you'd done this afore.”

“Take 'em down to the jail and throw 'em in. Get a doctor for that wounded one. If they give you any trouble, shoot to kill.”

Walking across the street, his gun still in his fist, Bowdrie lifted his boot and kicked hard at the old-fashioned lock. It needed three sharp kicks with his boot heel to knock the door open. Then he stepped inside. After a moment the bystanders followed.

Hank Cordova lay sprawled on the floor, his Winchester lying beside him. The .44 slug had smashed through his throat, breaking his spine. He lay dead in a pool of his own blood.

Almagre awakened slowly from the shock of the shooting. Wherever men gathered, they were talking of it. The very least many expected was a raid by Bonelli to wipe out the new marshal. Others dissented. “Bonelli won't want any part of him.”

The obvious fact was that Bowdrie had seen through the plot to kill him, and Bonelli had lost one of his best men. Three others were in jail, two of them disabled. One had a broken arm, the other a scalp laid open and a very aching head.

“I've seen that marshal somewheres before, but his name was nothing like Tex.”

Bowdrie walked the streets, noting the horses, studying the people. It was a good town, a booming town with most of the rough stuff taking place on the wrong side of the tracks. They were having a pie supper at the Methodist Church, and two volunteers were painting the school.

He was not worried about a raid. That was the foolish talk of some alarmist. By now Bonelli would have heard that Cordova was dead and he would be doing some fast thinking. There was a chance that if he were not Martin himself he might surrender the man in exchange for Bowdrie leaving town.

Down the street, Amy Chapin was talking to Bob Travis. Bowdrie walked back to his desk. His job was not cleaning up boom mining camps but capturing men wanted in Texas. No doubt Hank Cordova would prove to have a long record of cattle theft in Texas, so it had not been a total loss. Still, that was not getting his job done.

“Saw you talkin' with that Chapin gal,” Barton commented. “Mighty pretty youngster. Her pa's got a good spread out yonder, if only Bonelli will let him alone.

“He was mortgaged pretty heavy, but after he come back from Texas, visitin' his brother, he was able to pay it off, all eight thousand dollars of it.”

Chick Bowdrie had been cleaning a gun. He glanced up at Barton. “Chapin was in Texas? Just recently?”

“Uh-huh. He's got a brother in Fort Griffin. Jed owed the bank down to Santa Fe, but his brother loaned him money. Now, if he can keep Bonelli off his back he should do something with that ranch.

“Bonelli wants him out of there, and partly I suspect because that ranch sits right astride Bonelli's rustlin' trail from the Panhandle.”

So Jed Chapin had been to Texas and had returned with money?

“How about Travis? Has he been out of town lately?”

“He comes an' he goes. Nobody knows where, because Bob Travis isn't a talkin' man.” He spat. “Shrewd … smart businessman. He owns the general store, the livery stable, the Silver Dollar Saloon, an' the hotel.”

“Does he have trouble with Bonelli?”

“None that I know of. They sort of walk around each other. A fine man, that Travis. A finer one, you never met.”

Chick Bowdrie walked down to the telegraph office and sent two wires. The operator stared down at them, then watched Bowdrie walk away. His eyes were speculative. Pausing at the corner, Bowdrie started to put his pencil away, and it slipped from his fingers.

Stooping to pick it up, he saw right before his eyes the unmistakable print of the hoof he had been looking for. To a skilled reader of sign a track once seen is as unmistakable as a signature. And this was the track Bowdrie had followed all the way from Texas. He straightened up, glancing around.

He stood in front of the general store, where not long before Amy Chapin had sat her horse talking to Bob Travis!

It was late before Bowdrie left the office. Buffalo Barton, who had been sleeping on a cot in the office, awakened to take over the task of keeping the peace.

No reply had come to his wires, and he had waited until the office closed. The street was empty, but there were several rigs still tied along the street, and a dozen saddle horses dozed at the hitching rails.

The streets were brightly lighted, there was a sound of tin-panny music, and up at the Silver Ledge Mine there were lights and sound. His black eyes swept the street, probing shadows, searching, estimating. He started to move down the street, making a last round, when he heard a rider coming from between the buildings.

It was Bonelli.

Bowdrie waited, watching. “Tex?” Bonelli spoke softly. “I'm not huntin' trouble.”

“What's on your mind?”

“Look”—he leaned on the pommel—“I've got a nice thing here. Things goin' my way. You've no call to push me. You're a Texas man, Bowdrie.”

“You know me?”

“Took me a while, but I figured it out. Then today I got a tip. You're huntin' Wiley Martin.”

“I'm huntin' a killer from Pecos. He could be the man.”

“Suppose you were to find Martin? You'd go back to Texas?”

Bowdrie hesitated. Bonelli was a tough enough man when faced with average men, most of whom wanted no trouble, but he had no stomach for bucking a really tough man. “If I find the man I want, of course I'll go back to Texas.”

“I know where Martin is, and I know who he is.”

“Who is Martin, then?” His eyes were on Bonelli's shadowed face. He saw Bonelli's hand go to his mouth and heard his teeth crunch.

In a lower tone Bonelli said, “Don't say where you heard it. I would rather it wasn't known that I told, but Wiley Martin is Bob Travis!”

“Thanks. I'll have a talk with him.”

“You'll not take him now?” Disappointment was obvious. “He's your man! He just got back from Texas!”

“So did Jed Chapin. So did your man Jeff Erlanger. Maybe you, too, for all I know. I want to talk to Martin. I have some other evidence that will have to tie in.”

When Bonelli was gone, Bowdrie walked down the dark street. Bob Travis was sitting at his usual table in the Silver Dollar, but Bowdrie did not enter. He had reached the end of the street when he saw a light in the telegraph office again.

Bowdrie crossed to the railroad-station platform, glanced around, and then pushed the door open and went in. The operator glanced up. “Any message?” Bowdrie asked.

The operator hesitated, started to say there was none, trying meanwhile to shuffle some papers to cover another lying there.

“All right,” Bowdrie said, “let me have it. And after this, don't be running to Bonelli with stories, or you won't have a job!”

“You can't accuse me of that! Besides,” the operator said, “how would you get messages without me?”

“I can handle one of those keys as well as you, and from the speed you were sending, I can do a lot better!”

“You're an operator?”

“When necessary. Learned it as a youngster, an' worked at it a mite. Too confining for me, so I quit.”

Grudgingly the operator passed messages through the barred window. Bowdrie glanced at one page, then the other. “You know who I am.” His black eyes pinned the operator. “Now destroy the copies.”

“I can't! I don't dare!”

Bowdrie slapped a hard palm on the window ledge. “You heard me! Destroy them. I will be responsible. And if one word of this gets out, I'll be back. I'll take over that key and report to your headquarters just what has been going on here.”