The Collected Short Stories of Louis L'Amour, Volume Six (12 page)

Ash hesitated no longer, but tossed the gun toward Monte. Jackson picked it up by the trigger guard, carefully wrapped it in his handkerchief and dropped it into the haversack.

Their faces were fiery red and there were ugly streaks on the man’s cheek where it had been raked by Paula’s fingernails. She stared at Monte, her eyes sullen with hatred. She was no longer pretty, for the desert sun and the bitterness of her hatred had etched lines into her face.

“There’s water in the radiator of your jeep,” he told them.

“Huh?” Hope flared, then died in the man’s eyes. “Aw, hell, man, give us a break!”

“Like she gave her husband? Like you planned to give me? Many a man’s been damned glad to get water out of a radiator and stay alive. It’s only five miles from here.”

He watched them, studying their faces. “Or, you can write out complete confessions, one for each of you, and then I’ll see that you both drink.”

Their faces were sullen. “You know,” he added, “you’re not really in a bad way yet. Soon it’ll start getting complicated. You’re losing salt, without it your bodies won’t be able to process water even if I give you some…you could die of dehydration in a swimming pool.” He took a salt pill out of his pocket and popped it into his mouth. “Soon water really won’t be the problem.”

They looked at each other in something approaching horror. He could see that they could just barely imagine what another two days would be like.

“That’s not human!” Paula protested. “You can’t do a thing like that to a woman!”

“Look who’s talking! You started this!” He shook his head. “I don’t care what happens to you. When a woman starts killing she is entitled to no special treatment.”

He sat down on a rock, but it was much too hot and he got up immediately. Neither of them was sweating now. Their skins looked parched and dry. “Ash could probably get off with a few years. You’ll have as much of a lawyer as you can buy, and who knows what a good lawyer can do. Out here it’s a different thing…there’s going to be no appeal when the sun comes up tomorrow.”

Without warning, Ash leaped at him, swinging, and instantly, Paula darted forward, her eyes maniacal.

Monte sprang back and, swinging the rifle, clipped Ash alongside the head with the barrel. He turned, and sank the butt into Paula’s stomach. They both went down, though Monte had pulled the blows. Ash wasn’t even bleeding.

“Don’t be foolish,” he said. “Exertion will only make the end come quicker. You’ve both stopped sweating, that’s usually a bad sign.”

Ash cursed, glaring up at him from the ground.

Monte Jackson walked away and when thirty yards off, lifted the canteen and took a long pull, then sloshed the water audibly. They stared at him, their hatred displaced only by thirst. Knowing the desert, he knew neither of these people were as badly off as they believed, but by noon tomorrow…

“You think it over.” He took a pad and pencil from his pocket, the pencil strapped to the pad with a rubber band. “When you’re ready, start writing.” He laid it on the ground.

Then he turned and walked into the desert toward a small corner of shade. His life, his freedom, everything depended on success, and if he failed now it would leave him in an even worse position with the law.

T
HE HOUR DRAGGED
slowly by, then another half hour. They were no longer at the fork when he walked back, but their tracks were plain. They were returning to the utility wagon.

He turned off toward Dodd’s Spring, drank, then refilled the canteen. They had taken the pad and pencil with them. He walked slowly after them; when he caught up, they were still a mile from the jeep, and both were seated. Ash, behind a clump of brush, was writing on the pad, squinting his eyes against the sun’s glare on the paper.

T
HE SHERIFF CAME
at noon on the following day, driving up to Dodd’s Spring in an open jeep with Ragan on the seat beside him, and Slim Garner in the rear to show the way. Behind them was a weapons carrier with three more deputies. Monte Jackson walked down from the rocks to meet them.

“How are you, Jackson?” He had talked several times with the sheriff in Baker and elsewhere. “Ragan tells me you’ve had some trouble.”

“Did Slim tell you what I told him?”

“He sure did. You know where they are?”

“Up the road a few miles. Let’s go.” He got into the jeep beside Garner. While they rode he handed the two confessions to Ragan. “That about covers it. Right now there’s a chance they will both talk. Ash figures he will get off because he didn’t actually kill anybody.”

“We got a few facts,” Ragan admitted. “Somebody planned to burn the house, all right. We found the oil-soaked rags and some spilled kerosene on the counter in the kitchen. Lucky for all of us the place didn’t burn completely. Then we found out about Ash Clark, he’s the guy down there, right? He promised his landlady payment in a few days, said he was coming into money. It’s definitely a case with a few loose ends.”

Monte took the pistol from the haversack, and Ragan accepted it as the trucks rolled to a stop. Paula Burgess was haggard and the blazing desert sun had burned her fiercely. Ragan cuffed them and put them in with the deputies. Then they all turned and headed for town. Monte Jackson relaxed, looking back as the long desert road spun out behind the jeep. Long shadows stretched across the landscape, and dust devils danced like ghosts on the wide, sandy flats. A mirage glowed in the distance, looking for all the world like a cool and placid lake.

The desert, he thought, can be a friendly place…if only one showed it the proper respect.

Under the Hanging Wall

I

T
he bus bumped and jolted over the broken, heat-ribbed pavement, and I fought my way out of a sodden sleep and stared at the road ahead. My face felt sticky and my head ached from the gas fumes and heat. Twisting and turning in my sleep had wound my clothes around me, so I straightened up and tried to pull them back into place again.

We were climbing a steep, winding road that looked as if it had been graded exclusively for mountain goats. I ran my fingers through my hair and tried pulling my pants around to where they would be comfortable. In the process, my coat fell open and revealed the butt of my gun in its shoulder holster.

The fat man stared across the aisle at me. “Better not let ’em catch you with that rod,” he advised, “or you’ll wind up in jail.”

“Thanks,” I said.

“Insurance is my line,” he said, “Harbater’s the name. Ernie Harbater. Do a lot of business up this way.”

It was hot. The air in the bus was like the air over a furnace, and when I looked off across the desert that fell away to my left, the horizon was lost to dancing heat waves.

There were five people on the bus. Harbater, who wore a gray gabardine suit, the trousers stretched tight over fat thighs, his once white shirt bulging ominously over his belt, was the only one who sat near me. He looked as uncomfortable as I felt, and lying beside him on the seat was a crumpled and dog-eared copy of a detective magazine with a corner torn off the cover.

Three seats ahead a girl with stringy and streaked blond hair, and lipstick that didn’t conform to the shape of her mouth, sweltered in her own little world. Across the aisle from her was another girl, who wore a gray tailored suit. The coat lay over the back of the seat beside her.

The fifth passenger was another man, with the rough physique and pale skin of a mining man. He squinted placidly out the window as the bus groaned unhappily and crept over the brow of the mountain. For a moment there was a breeze that was almost cool, and then we started down from the wide world in which we had existed, and into the oven of a tight little canyon.

We rounded a curve finally, and Winrock lay ahead of us, a mining town. Most of the buildings were strewn along the hillsides, empty and in ruins, the one graded street lying along the very bottom of the canyon. The business buildings were all frame or sheet metal but two. One was the brick bank, a squat and ugly thing on a corner, the other an ancient adobe that had once been a saloon. One of the reasons that I had gotten this job was because I’d worked in places like this, but that didn’t mean I was wild about coming back.

Harbater had dozed off, so I shucked my gun from its holster and thrust it beneath my belt, under my shirt. Then I stowed the holster in my half-empty bag and slid gratefully out of my coat. My shirt was sweat-soaked.

The bus ground to a halt and dust sifted over it. Groggily, I crawled to my feet. Coat over one arm, and my bag in the other hand, I started for the door. The girl with the stringy hair was gathering up some odds and ends, and she looked up at me with that red blotch that passed for a mouth. Her lips, normally not unattractive, were lipsticked into what passed for a cupid’s bow, and it looked terrible.

The other girl had awakened suddenly, and when I glanced down at her, I looked into a pair of wide, intelligent gray eyes. She sat up, pushing back a strand of hair. I swung down into the street, bag in hand.

Several loafers sat on a bench against the wall of the Winrock Hotel. I glanced at the sign, then walked up on the porch and shoved the door open with my shoulder.

A scrawny man in a green eyeshade got up from behind the desk and leaned on it. “Got a room?” I asked.

“Got fifty of ’em,” the clerk said. He dug out a key and tossed it on the desktop. “End of the hall, second floor,” he said. “Bath’s next door.”

I picked up my bag.

“That’ll be ten dollars,” he said.

I put the bag down again and fished for some bills. I pulled off two fives and handed them over, then went up the worn steps and down the creaky hall. If anybody ever dropped a match, the place would go up in one whopping blast of flame. It was old, and dry as tinder.

“You got yourself a lulu this time!” I said disgustedly. “What a guy will do for money!”

Tossing the bag on the old iron bed, I threw the coat over the back of a chair and peeled off my shirt. It was so wet it stuck to my back. Then I took off my shoes and socks and had started on my pants when I recalled the bath was next door. Still disgusted, I picked up a towel and, barefoot, stuck my head into the hall. There was nobody in sight, so I came out and went into the bathroom.

When I’d bathed and dressed, I put my gun back in my waistband and, taking my coat over my arm, walked downstairs.

The wide, almost empty room that did duty for a lobby had a bar along one side, two worn leather chairs and an old-fashioned settee down the middle, and four brass cuspidors.

Two men loafed at the bar. One of them was a big-shouldered, brown-faced man with a powerful chest. He was handsome in a heavy, somewhat brutal fashion and had the look of a man it would be bad to tangle with. The other was a shorter man, evidently one of the oldest inhabitants. I put a foot on the rail and ordered a bourbon and soda.

The brown-faced man looked at me. He had hard eyes, that guy. I turned to the bartender, who was an overstuffed party in a dirty shirt. He had a red fringe around a bald head, and red hair on his arms and the backs of his hands.

“Where do I find the law around here?”

He opened his heavy-lidded eyes, then jerked his head toward the brown-faced man. “He’s it,” he said.

“You the deputy sheriff?” I asked. “Are you Soderman?”

He looked at me and nodded.

I walked down the bar and flipped my badge at him. “Bruce Blake, I’m a private detective,” I said. “I’m here to look over the Marshall case.”

“It’s closed.” His hard eyes studied me like I was something dirty he’d found in his drink.

“His brother wanted it looked into. Just routine.”

He hesitated, tipping his glass and studying his drink carefully. Then he shrugged. “All right. It’s your time.”

I shrugged my own shoulders and grinned. “Actually, it’s Lew Marshall’s time. I’m just going through the motions.”

“You want to talk to Campbell? He’s in jail, waitin’ trial.”

“Uh-huh. Might just as well.”

O
N THE WAY
to the jail, Soderman told me about the case. “This Campbell owned the Dunhill mine. It had been rich once, then the vein petered out and they shut down. Campbell, he wouldn’t believe the hole was finished. He’d helped locate the original claims, he an’ Dunhill together. Ten years he worked around, tryin’ to find what happened to that vein. Then he found a pocket and got enough ore out of it to hire an engineer. He hired Tom Marshall.

“Marshall came in here and worked for two months, and then quit, turning in a report that it was useless, the mine was played out. Campbell gave up then, and he took a regular job, mostly to pay his daughter’s tuition at some school she was goin’ to out in Los Angeles.

“Finally, he got an offer for the mine. It wasn’t much, but it was something, and he sold. Sold it out for a few thousand dollars.”

Soderman looked up, grinning wryly. His teeth were big, white and strong looking. “When the new outfit moved in, Marshall was the superintendent. They opened the mine up an’ he had the vein uncovered in less than a week!”

“That’s bad. He finds the vein, lies to Campbell, then gets backing. That was dirty.”

“You said it!” Soderman’s voice was hard with malice. I couldn’t blame him. Probably most of the townspeople sympathized with Campbell.

“Anyway,” he continued, “the day shift came out of the hole, and Marshall went down to look it over. They didn’t have a night shift, but were plannin’ one. Nobody ever saw Marshall again alive.”

“How does Campbell tie in?”

“Weber, he was watchman at the mine, saw Campbell go into the mine. He ran to stop him, but Campbell was already inside. So Weber let him go.”

“When did they find Marshall?”

“Day shift man found him when he came on the next morning.”

“Nobody looked for him that night? What about his wife?”

Soderman shook his head. “Marshall usually worked at night, slept during the day. He’d been working night shifts a long time, and got used to it. Habit he had.”

“Work at home?”

“He had an office at the mine.”

I shifted my coat to the other arm and pulled the wet sleeve free of the flesh. Then I mopped my brow. The jail was at the far end of town. It was hotter than blazes, and as we plodded along in the dust, little whorls lifted toward our nostrils. Dust settled on my pantlegs, and my shoes were gray with it.

This looked like they said, pretty open and shut. Why was Lew Marshall suspicious? He had told me nothing, just sent me along with a stiff retainer to look into the killing.

The jail was a low concrete building with three cells. It was no more than a holding tank for prisoners who would be sent on to the county building up north.

“You got him in there?”

The big man laughed. “The old fool cussed the prosecutor at the preliminary hearing. He wouldn’t post a bond, so the judge sent him back here.”

The air was like an oven inside. There was an office that stood with the door open, and we walked in. As we stepped into view of the three barred doors, I saw the gray-eyed girl from the bus standing in front of one of them. She started back as she saw us.

“Who are you?” Soderman wasn’t the polite sort.

“I’m Marian Campbell. I’ve come to see my father.”

“Oh?” He looked at her, then he smiled. I had to admit the guy was as good-looking as he was tough. I left him looking at her and stepped to the cell door.

Campbell was standing there. He was a short, broad man with heavy shoulders and a shock of white hair.

“I’m Bruce Blake, a private detective,” I said. “They sent me down here to look into Marshall’s death. You the guy who killed him?”

“I haven’t killed anybody an’ I told ’em so!” He looked right straight at me and his gray eyes reminded me of the girl’s. “Tom Marshall was a double-crossing rat, an’ maybe he needed a whippin’, but not killin’. I’d not waste my time killin’ him.”

“What did you go to the mine for?” I mopped my brow. Soderman and the girl were both listening.

“To get some of that ore for evidence. I was going to start a suit against him.”

“You see him?”

He hesitated. “No,” he said finally. “I never saw hide nor hair of him. The snake!”

If I was going to ask intelligent questions I was going to need more information. I ran my fingers through my hair. “Whew!” I said. “It’s hot here. Let’s go.”

Soderman turned away and I followed him out into the white heat of the street. It was a climb back, and that didn’t make me any happier. Certainly, Campbell had motive and opportunity. The guy looked straight at you, but a lot of crooks do that, too. And he was the type of western man who wouldn’t take much pushing around. However, that type of western man rarely dodged issues on his killings.

“What do you think?” Soderman wanted to know. He stopped, sticking a cigarette between his lips. He cupped a match and lighted it.

“What can a guy think? Crotchety. Seems like he might have the temper to do it.”

“Sure. Ain’t even another suspect.”

“Let’s talk to the wife.”

“Why talk to her?” Soderman said roughly. “She’s been bothered enough.”

“Yeah, but I can’t go back and turn in a report when I haven’t even talked to his wife.”

Grudgingly, he admitted that. When he started up to the house, it was easy to see why he’d hesitated. It was a climb, and a steep one.

“What the devil did they live up here for?” I asked. “It would be a day’s work to climb this hill, let alone anything else!”

“This ain’t their home. She’s just livin’ here a few days. The Marshall house is even further up, but it’s easier to get at.” He pointed to a small white house with two trees standing on the open hillside in full view of the town. “That’s it.”

II

Donna Marshall was sitting in the living room when we rapped on the door. She looked up quickly when she heard Soderman’s voice and started up from the divan.

“Private detective to see you,” Soderman said sharply. “I tried to head him off.”

She was something to look at, this Donna Marshall was. She made a man wonder why Tom Marshall worked nights. On second thought, if they had been married long, you could imagine why he might work nights.

She was a blonde, a tall, beautifully made woman who might have been a few pounds overweight, but not so that any man would complain. She was a lot of woman, and none of it was concealed.

“Come in, won’t you?” she said.

We filed into the room and I sat on the lip of an overstuffed chair and fanned myself with my hat. “It’s too hot,” I said.

She smiled, and she had a pretty smile. Her eyes were a shade hard, I thought, but living in this country would make anything hard.

“What is it you wish to know?”

“I just thought I’d see you and ask a few questions. It looks like Soderman here has the right man in jail, so this is mostly routine. Anyway, it’s too hot for a murder investigation.”

She waited, a cigarette in her fingers. There was a bottle of beer on the stand beside the divan. I could have used one myself.

“Been married long?”

She nodded. “Six years.”

“Happy?”

“Yes.” Her answer was careless, and she didn’t seem very positive or much interested. Her eyes strayed past me toward Soderman.

“Like living in these hick mining towns?”

For the first time she seemed to look at me, and she smiled. “I don’t see how anybody could,” she said. “There’s simply nothing to do. I didn’t care for it, but Tom had his work to consider.”

Somehow I couldn’t picture her fitting into such a town as Winrock. She was the sort of woman who likes nightclubs, likes dining and dancing. I didn’t blame her for not liking Winrock, however, I didn’t care for it myself.