Читать книгу Parade of the Empty Boots - Charles Alden Seltzer - Страница 5

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Like an ocean of dusky vapor, twilight settled down over the high desert behind Brent Stoddard. He faced the purple haze of an indistinct wooded valley as he rode down a dry wash to a timbered flat. He sank into the trapped heat of the low country, where a rank, wild growth concealed him from the higher levels.

The killer had pushed his mount relentlessly, hoping, as Stoddard knew, to reach this timbered region before Stoddard’s posse could overtake him, and from a distance, back there in a treeless world, Stoddard, his own horse failing, had seen the other riders and their mounts sink below the fringing treetops that marked the near edge of the wild lower country.

Stoddard’s horse followed a trail no wider than a foot-path. Physically spent, the animal pushed on into the deepening purple, Stoddard sympathetically patting its left shoulder, grimly noting the quivering muscles. It wasn’t his habit to push a horse inhumanely, and now a compassionate pressure of the reins brought the animal to a walk, and a stillness flowed over man and beast, enveloping them. That stillness was close. Into it, from a distance, came sound—a faint popping.

That would be Dollarbill McCarthy, who was riding the fastest horse, who owned a cold and deadly temper and a trigger finger to match it. Dollarbill could not be shaken off once he went after a man. No subterfuge deceived him. Yes, it would be Dollarbill. The other men were good, but Dollarbill would be leading them at the finish.

There was no more shooting. There wouldn’t be, with Dollarbill doing it. And no need of Stoddard crowding his tired horse. The silence flowed in again with nothing to mar its perfection, and the falling shadows deepened to a murky purple, then to black with a faintly luminous star haze filtering through the treetops.

The horse, Stoddard found, dismounting and loosening the cinches, was only winded. The animal sighed with relief from the release of pressure and softly whickered his appreciation.

“He knows this country,” was Stoddard’s thought of the killer as he rode on again. “His heading this way wasn’t an accident. There was plenty of room all around.”

The killing had been done from behind, with a knife, and the victim’s rifled pockets, some gashes in the flesh around his middle, together with the slashed waistband of his trousers, showed that a money belt and papers had been taken. One pocket the killer had missed. Stoddard had taken possession of a small package found in that pocket, and he now patted the left breast of his woolen shirt to make sure he had not lost it.

Killer and victim were strangers to him, and he would not know their identity until he looked over the victim’s effects and until he reached Dollarbill and the posse.

An ever-widening expanse of starry blue sky showed him that the valley was broadening and that he was emerging from the timber. The carpet of cedar and spruce spikes which had deadened the beat of the hoofs of his tired horse ended, and the iron shoes were now ringing upon a rock trail. When, rounding a hill, he saw a pin point of light glowing in the wall of darkness ahead of him he knew that the race had ended, that the killer was dead or captured. The men had built a fire to guide him.

Five men, including Dollarbill, greeted him with silence, for they had seen his swift glances comprehending the tragedy. The killer’s horse was picketed with the others; the killer himself, face down in the thick grass of the valley bottom, was a little distance off. Dollarbill was smoking a pipe, squatting there indolently. The men were all watching Stoddard. Their job done, they anticipated commendation, knew they would receive it. They were affectionately respectful, waiting. Even Dollarbill’s bleak eyes had softened. Standing there, the firelight playing upon him, Stoddard jerked his head toward the silent figure lying in the grass.

“Any trouble with him?”

“Hardly none,” said Dollarbill. “He went for his gun, but he had showed he was more handy with a knife.”

Stoddard staked his horse out, returned to the fire, dropped to the grass and stretched full length, hands under the back of his head, scanning the sky.

The men had ridden long and hard and were frankly tired.

He told them that they had done well. “You search him?” he asked.

“Thought you’d like to do that,” said Dollarbill. “It’s him though.”

“He’ll be there come daylight,” suggested a rider, flat on his stomach, head pillowed by an arm, his voice muffled.

They, too, would be there at daylight. They had earned a rest and they took it, leaving things to Stoddard.

A quarter of an hour later Stoddard, who had been lying flat on his stomach for a time, raised himself to his elbows. The men were sound asleep. Stoddard got up, strode to the killer, turned him over, searched him, took things from his pockets. Coming back to the fire, Stoddard dropped some papers and a money belt into the grass, sat down and inspected them. Once he got up and replenished the fire.

The killer’s name was Simon Gorty. His victim’s name was Pierre Villers. Stoddard separated letters and papers. The money belt, made of pliable leather with shallow pockets, was stamped with the victim’s name. The pockets contained three thousand dollars in gold double eagles.

Stoddard buckled the money belt around his own waist, tucked his shirt over it. By the light of the fire he read the details of the tragedy, supplying important links from Dollarbill’s previous verbal report of the killing and from his own knowledge of how these things were usually done. After all, it was simple and sordid and old. Robbery and murder. How Simon Gorty had discovered that Pierre Villers had a money belt would never be known, now. Nor was that detail important.

As marshal of Burgess City Brent Stoddard had performed his duty. Victim and killer were dead. The golden eagles and the victim’s other personal property would be forwarded.

Stoddard drew up a knee, clasped his hands over it and stared into the fire. The papers he had taken from the killer’s pockets were strewn about, where he had indifferently dropped them. He had forgotten. He hadn’t forgotten that he was tired of all this, that for many months he had meditated resigning and that at this instant he had decided he was through.

He wasn’t certain about his future. He had no definite plan of action. So far as he knew, no nostalgic yearnings possessed him. He had no home to return to; there would be no greetings, delighted or otherwise; no fatted calf. And no explanations. He was the last of his line.

He got up, threw some more wood on the fire, strode over, looked down at the dead man’s face, cold humor stirring him. What had the killer planned to do with the golden eagles? Nothing now. He sat down again near the fire and found himself staring at the face of a woman. A photograph had been among the papers he had taken from the killer’s pockets; he had accidentally disturbed the papers when he seated himself, and the photograph lay flat, the firelight gleaming upon it. He picked it up and swung around with his back to the fire so that the light came over his shoulder and instantly he knew that here was the explanation of the unrest that had tortured him.

It was a girl’s face, and more beautiful than his dreams.

Studying the picture, he fought the pangs of ecstasy that raced through him. He fought against the awed reverence that surged over him, arraying against it the cynicism and distrust that his experiences with certain types of women had built up in him. He fought a losing battle though, for he knew that the calm, steady eyes that gazed back at him from the photograph were as honest as his own better impulses.

Something in the girl’s eyes eluded him. He moved nearer to the fire, stirred the embers until a bright flame flared. Then, lying on his side, so close to the fire that the heat beat against him in a scorching wave, he sought, and found, in the eyes what he had been searching for: a gleam—a mere glint—a suggestion of mischief lying deep behind their cool, frank honesty. The discovery made her all the more desirable and appealing. Her face became animated, alive. He knew what was happening to him and with an effort he sat erect and dragged his senses back to the fire, to the sleeping members of his posse, to the dead man, the arching blue sky and the aloof stars. A guilty embarrassment surged through him.

A signature, penned upon the photograph, caught his attention, and he intently inspected it—“Marie Villers.” Above the signature, “affectionately, your niece.”

He carefully laid the photograph beside him, face upward, and searched among the letters and papers until he found the one he sought. It was from her to her uncle, the killer’s victim, Pierre Villers.

Dear Uncle Pierre:

I shall write the good news first, then the bad, because there is so much more of the latter. I am well but very lonesome. Everything is so unsettled here, and never a day passes peacefully. Some Southern soldiers are still here. They are the last remnants of the Confederacy who refuse to give up and are pursued by scouting parties of Union troops. And there are the guerillas, and Forbush, and Vauchain’s thieving, killing band. They would not be tolerated if it were not for Jim Craftkin, who supports them with his gang of ex-soldiers. It wouldn’t be so bad if Father were alive; and I am beginning to believe that Father was not killed in a duel as they claim. I always thought Father’s business was unencumbered, but now Asa Colder—who shot Father, as I told you in my last letter—claims that Father owed him three thousand dollars. He showed me the notes. There is something wrong, Uncle Pierre. I feel it, but I don’t know what it is. Judge Marston thinks so too.

I don’t ask you for money, Uncle Pierre, but I do wish you would try to come here and help me straighten out Father’s affairs and, above all, help me to get at the mystery of Father’s death. There are a great many things I want to tell you, but they will have to wait until I see you, which I hope will be soon.

Affectionately yours,

Marie Villers.

Stoddard folded the letter and photograph together and placed them in the inside pocket of his vest. And now he got up and walked away from the fire, to stand and gaze steadily into the southern distance where some mountain peaks caught the glow of a rising moon. He turned and looked at his riders, prone around the fire; at Dollarbill, his friend of many years; at the killer of Pierre Villers. He wondered about the killer; if the murder of Pierre Villers had been casual, or if it had been part of a premeditated plot perpetrated by the sinister forces arrayed against Marie Villers. In Stoddard’s veins ran a cold fire of contempt and fury which was expressed outwardly by a smile in which there was little mirth. At daybreak he would ride south, alone, personally to deliver to Marie Villers her uncle’s papers and the golden eagles which, he had no doubt, her uncle had been carrying to her.