The Collected Short Stories of Louis L'Amour, Volume Six (13 page)

“How much did Marshall have invested in this mine?”

“Not much,” she said. “It was mostly a job.”

Was that what she thought? I stared at the floor, faintly curious. Lew and Tom Marshall owned this mine, and from all the evidence it had turned into a whale of a rich hole. Well, maybe Tom Marshall was the cagey sort. Maybe he didn’t tell his wife everything.

“Are you going to stay here?”

“Here?” She spoke so sharply that I glanced up. Her voice and her expression told me what she thought of the town a lot better than what she had to say. “I wouldn’t stay here even a minute longer than I have to!”

She rubbed out her cigarette in the ashtray. Soderman got up. “Any more questions?” he asked. “We’d better move on.”

“I guess that’s right.” We all got up, and Soderman turned toward the door. He sure was one big man. When he moved you could see the weight of muscle in his shoulders.

Donna Marshall started after him, and it gave me a chance to pick up a familiar-looking magazine that lay on the table near the ashtray. It wasn’t exactly the thing to do, but I slid it into my coat pocket as casually as possible. They were going to the door together, so the move went unnoticed.

When we got outside in the sun, I mopped my brow again. “Good-lookin’ woman,” I said. “If I had a woman like that, I’d stay home nights.”

He looked around at me, a question in his eyes. They weren’t nice eyes when they looked at you like that, and I found myself being glad I wasn’t a crook who had to come up against him. This Soderman could be a rough customer.

“Where to now?” he asked.

“Let’s go up to their house,” I said, “up where they lived.”

“You got a craze for walkin’,” he said with disgust. “Can’t we let it ride until later? When it cools off a little?”

“You go on down if you want,” I said. “I’ll just look around a little more. I want to finish up and get out of here. I haven’t lost anything in this town.”

H
E LED THE WAY
along the path that led to the Marshall house, and we swung back the gate and entered.

Once inside, I stopped and looked back. From the door you could see all the way down the winding path to the town and the Dunhill mine beyond. You could see everything that happened in town from this viewpoint, and likewise, anyone on the street in town could see anyone who came and went from this house.

There was little enough to see once we were inside. There were three rooms in the house, and a wide porch. The kitchen and living room offered nothing. There were dirty dishes on the table and in the sink, and one thing was plain enough: Donna Marshall was no housekeeper.

I wandered into the bedroom, not sure what I was looking for. More than anything, I was looking and hoping for a break, because I didn’t even know why I was up here. Lew Marshall had given me little to nothing with which to work, merely telling me he wanted his brother’s murderer punished and wanted to be very sure they got the right person.

Soderman had seated himself on the edge of the porch outside. He was plainly disgusted with me, and he wasn’t alone. I was disgusted with myself, so when I’d taken a quick look around, I turned to go. Then I saw something under the head of the bed. I knelt quickly and picked up several fragments of dried red mud.

After studying them a few minutes, I put them into an envelope and slid them into my pocket. Then I took the head of the bed and, with a lift, swung it clear of the wall. The dust under the bed was thick, but it had been disturbed recently, for something had been lying under that bed, something long and heavy, something that could have been a man, or the body of a man. I also noticed the clock on the nightstand, though at the time I didn’t realize why.

“What’ve you found?” Soderman appeared in the door behind me, the last person I wanted near right then. He must have moved swiftly and silently when he heard me moving the bed. He was staring at me now, and his lips were drawn over his white teeth. I shrugged and motioned vaguely at the room.

“Nothing,” I said. “Just looking around.”

“Haven’t you had enough yet?” he demanded impatiently. “I’m gettin’ fed up!”

“Then suppose you go on down to town?” I suggested. “I can find my way around now.”

His eyes could be ugly. “No,” he said, and I didn’t like the way he said it. “If you turn up anything, I want to be the first to know.”

As we went out I palmed a map of the mine that I had noticed on the sideboard. It was creased where it had been folded to fit in someone’s, probably Tom Marshall’s, pocket. We started back down the steep path. I asked, “Rained around here lately?”

He hesitated before answering my question, and I could see he was weighing the question in his mind, trying to see what it might imply.

“Yes, it rained a few days ago,” he said finally. “In fact, it rained the day before the killing.”

The day before? I glanced off across the canyon. Whatever had been under that bed, it could scarcely have been Marshall’s body, although it looked like something of the sort had been lying there. No man, not even so powerful a man as Soderman, could have carried a body from here, across town, and to the mine shaft.

Not even if he dared take a chance in leaving the house with an incriminating load when he had to cross the town from here. Certainly, crossing the town was not much of a task, but at any time, even in the dead of night, he might meet someone on that path or in the street itself. And if he, or anyone else, had done such a thing, he would have had to pass several houses.

There was no way a car could approach the house. It was on a steep canyon side, and there was no road or even a trail beyond the path on which we had come.

One thing remained for me to do. To have a look at the mine itself, to examine the scene of the crime. There was, in the back of my mind, a growing suspicion, but as yet it was no more than the vaguest shadow bolstered by a few stray bits of evidence, none of which would stand for a minute in court under the examination of a good lawyer. And none of them actually pointed to the guilty party or parties.

There was the magazine, a bit of red mud that might have come from a shoe, and some disturbed dust under a bed. There was also a very attractive young woman of a type who might have caused trouble in more selective circles than were to be found among the lusty males of Winrock…and she was tied in with a mining engineer who did not sleep at home.

W
E WALKED BACK
to the jail. It sat close against the mountainside, and there had been some excavation there to fit the building into the niche chosen for it. There was a pump set off to one side of the entrance that leaked into the earth to one side of the path. Bright yellow bees hovered around the evaporating pool in a landing pattern like water bombers on their way to a forest fire. Soderman led the way inside. The jail office was scarcely more than the size of one of the cells.

“What did he have on him when he was found?” I asked.

Impatiently, Soderman opened his desk and dumped an envelope on the desktop. I loosened the string and emptied the contents. It was little enough. A box of matches, a tobacco pouch, some keys, a pocket knife, a couple of ore samples, and a gun.

The gun was a .38 Police Positive, an ugly and competent-looking gat, if you asked me. It was brand spanking new. There were no marks in the bluing from the cylinder having been rotated, no dirt between the rear of the barrel and the top frame, and no lead in the rifling. It was fully loaded and had never been fired.

That gun was something to set a man thinking, and it needed no more than a glance to tell me how new the gun was. Why had Tom Marshall suddenly bought a gun, apparently just a few days before he was murdered?

“Wonder what he had that for?” I mused.

Soderman shrugged. “Snakes, maybe. Lots of us carry guns around here.”

“He hasn’t had it long.”

“Listen.” Soderman leaned his big heavy hands on the desk and glared at me. “What are you gettin’ at? You’ve been nosin’ around all day, diggin’ into a closed case. We’ve got the guilty party right in this jail, an’ we’ve got enough evidence for a conviction.”

It was time to start something. If I was going to crack this one, I was going to have to get things rolling. If I could get the right people worried, perhaps I could jolt something loose. Anything I told him would get around. I hoped it would get to the right people.

“Then you can guess again,” I told him. “I’ve a hunch Campbell didn’t do it, and a better hunch who did!”

He leaned farther over the desk and his face swelled. “You tryin’ to make a fool of me? You tryin’ to come in here an’ show me up? Well, I’m tellin’ you now!
Get out!
Get out of town on the next bus!”

“Sorry,” I said, “I’m not leaving. I’m here on a legitimate job, and I’ll stay until it’s wound up. You can cooperate or not as you please, but I tell you this: I’m going to hang this on the guilty parties, you can bet your last dollar on that!”

Turning on my heel, I left him like that, and walked back to the hotel. He didn’t know how much of a case I had, and to be honest, I didn’t have a thing. The mine remained to be looked at, and I was hoping there would be something there that would tell me what I wanted to know. Above all, something concrete in the way of evidence.

Yet why had Tom Marshall bought a gun before he was killed?

Why was the alarm clock in the Marshall home set for five
A.M
., when Tom Marshall remained at the mine all night?

And who, or what, had been under the bed on that last rainy day?

These things and a cheap magazine were what I had for working points, and none of them indicated a warrant for an arrest. And I had nothing to offer a jury.

Had he been afraid of Campbell, would he not have bought the gun before his return? Tom Marshall had been a rugged specimen, much more than a physical match for Campbell, and he did not seem to be a man who resorted to guns.

Hence, it stood to reason that he bought the gun for a man he could not handle with his fists. Flimsy reasoning, perhaps, but there it was.

Tom Marshall had spent his nights at the mine, and Donna Marshall wasn’t one to rise at five in the morning. So who had set the alarm I’d noticed beside the bed? It was set for five, and Soderman and I had been in the house from a quarter to five in the afternoon until at least quarter after. No alarm had gone off.

Daylight came shortly after five. Supposing someone wanted to be away from the house while it was still dark…An interesting speculation.

That afternoon I sent a wire, in code, to my home office. Soderman would find out that I had sent it, and that coded message was going to worry him.

My feet ached from walking. I went up the stairs to my room and lay down across the bed. There had to be an angle, somewhere. I sat up and took off my shoes, but when I had the left one in my hand, I froze with it there and stared at the rim of the sole and the space in front of the heel.

Both were marked with still-damp red mud!

It hit me like an ax. That red mud came from the wet place around the pump near the jail! Anybody getting water from that pump would get mud on their shoes. On a rainy day, it would be much worse.

Soderman.

Certainly it might not have been Soderman who killed Marshall. And yet it could have been.

III

It was full dark when I opened my eyes. Groggily, soaked with perspiration, I climbed off the bed and passed a shaky hand over my face. My head ached and I felt tired.

Fighting a desire to lie down again, I stripped off my clothes and had another bath. I dressed in fresh clothing and slid my gun back into my waistband. Then I walked along the hall and down the stairs.

The usual gang was in the lobby. Four or five men loafed at the bar, and one of them was Soderman. He glanced up when I came down the steps, and he didn’t look friendly. He looked as if he hated my innards. Several of the townspeople looked at me, but I didn’t stop. Across the street was a small cafe, catering mostly to tourists. I walked over. I felt better, felt like eating.

A tall teenager waited on me, a girl who had not yet grown into her lanky body or her large, interested eyes.

When she put the glass of water on my table, she said, “There was a woman in here looking for you. Very pretty, too.”

“Yeah?” I was surprised. “Not Mrs. Marshall?”

The waitress made a face. “No, much nicer!”

I said, “I take it that you don’t care for Donna Marshall?”

“She’s none of my business. I don’t imagine she’ll be here long, now that she has his money.”

“This your home?”

“Me and my mother, she owns this place.”

“Father?”

“Dead. He was killed in the mine.”

“Cave-in?”

“Yes. It happened about ten years ago. They had to open a new drift into the mine, and sink a new shaft. The old one was down in the canyon, east of the new entrance.”

The coffee was good. So was the steak.

“They never use that old entrance?” I asked her.

“Oh, no! It’s very dangerous! No one has been in that way in years. It was tried, but there’s a hanging wall of stone that is all cracked and it might collapse. Nothing has ever been done about it as they never go that way, but Jerry Wilson was in partway, and he said he never saw a worse-looking place. A shout or a sharp sound might bring the whole thing down. Anyway, the new part of the mine is west of there and so it doesn’t matter.”

That was interesting. Mines weren’t new to me, especially hard rock mines. I’d run a stoper and a liner, those were drilling rigs, in more than one hole, and had done my share of timbering and mucking. I knew, too, that in a town of this size, in mining country, nearly everybody worked in the mines at one time or another.

A woman was looking for me. That would probably be the Campbell girl, but whatever she wanted would have to wait. I had plans. This was going to be my busy night, and with luck I could wind this case up tighter than a drum.

With luck.

It was going to take the devil’s own luck to help me, for I was going to stick my neck out, way out.