Читать книгу Smoke of the .45 - Harry Sinclair Drago - Страница 11

THE FIRST CLEW

Scanlon’s fear that the night was ruined as far as he was concerned proved well founded. Gallup paused to buy himself a drink. Kent and his foreman came down as the coroner went out. Hobe’s face was glum. The old man’s run-in with Johnny and his pal was only another evidence of his coming decay. For all of his fault, Johnny was a good man, and a better vaquero than Madeiras was not to be found this side of the Humboldt. Kent might figure that, come spring, they would be back asking to be taken on again. Hobe knew better than this. Johnny’s pride more than matched his temper.

Times there had been in the past when old Jackson Kent had not balked at winking an eye at the law. This present deference to it nettled Hobe. The Diamond-Bar was big and powerful enough to lay down its own law. No one more than Ferris had built up its traditions. A few men there are like him who can become so much a part of their work that a subconscious sense of ownership of the tools with which they toil takes possession of them. It was that way with Hobe. He was the Diamond-Bar.

Kent’s daughter, Molly, had healed some previous sore spots between the foreman and the old man, but this arbitrary handling of the Diamond-Bar men was poaching on authority long since held by the foreman. Kent would have been hard put to have found a way to hurt the man more.

“You better git the boys to bed,” the old man said.

Hobe’s face was sullen.

“Yes, sir.” It was the first time in years that Hobe had “sirred” the boss. Kent looked at him sharply, feeling the implied unfriendliness. He had the good sense, though, to say nothing.

Five minutes later the barroom was clear of Diamond-Bar men. Stuffy Tyler had fallen asleep, but big Hobe easily picked him up, and throwing him over his shoulder as if the man were a sack of meal, carried him to his bed.

Doc Ritter brought in a stretcher, and with the aid of Johnny and Tony, the dead man was carried to Ritter’s undertaking parlor.

Scanlon and Vin faced each other.

“Beats hell, don’t it,” the former asked sullenly, “how one man can put a town to bed? You’d almost think we knew the man—comin’ in here and dyin’ thata-way. You know what we stand to lose, don’t you?”

“We don’ lose not’in’, Scanlon. Money? We get heem by an’ by. Next election, though, we lose somet’ing.”

“Gallup, eh? Maybe so. The man ain’t got no ideas. You ’tend to the lights and close up, Vin. I’m dead tired. I’m goin’ to bed.”

“Let ’em burn,” the Basque snapped. “I can swim!”

Scanlon smiled as he recognized his own words of the early evening. But Vinnie put out the lights.

For half an hour after the hotel was in darkness, Johnny and Tony sat in front of the Palace. The rain was over.

“You go to baid, Johnny?” Tony asked.

“No. I couldn’t sleep. Tell me again just what that man said to you that night on the North Fork.”

The big Basque smiled. He had already told his story twice.

“I jus’ remember I look at hees hat, and he smile. That’s fonny hat, you know—so small brim, great beeg crown. No mens wear hats like those now. He geeve it to me for tak’ good look. The ban’ on eet is ver-ry fine. ‘Yes,’ he say, ‘that’s Indian ban’. Moqui Indian mak’ those ban’. Mak’ eet out of horsehair.’

“But more fonny that those hat is little green snake he have fasten on that ban’. That snake have green eyes. Eet’s a gold snake, too. ‘Press the haid of that snake,’ he say. Por Dios, that snake fall into my han’. ‘That’s beeg medicine,’ he say, ‘those snake. Been on that hat forty year!’

“‘Why you wear those old hat?’ I ask. He tell me; but he don’ smile. ‘Plenty hats like theese, long time ago in Santa Fe and Tombstone,’ he say. ‘Some day I fin’ the man what owns theese hat. He’ll remember eet!’”

“Yuh can’t git away from it, Tony,” Johnny exclaimed. “He was lookin’ for somebody, and that somebody got him. Horsehair hat-bands ain’t uncommon. He wouldn’t have ripped it off his hat to keep folks from rememberin’ it. That Indian snake was what he’d have hid and he’d have unsnapped it and put it in his pants. But it’s against all sense to believe that he took off even the snake. He wanted to be recognized.”

Johnny slapped his knee emphatically. “I tell you,” he declared, “the man what killed him tore off that band!”

Tony shrugged his shoulders. “Quien sabe!” he muttered.

Johnny was still for a minute. Then suddenly: “Say! That man had a horse when he came here. He didn’t walk into town.”

“Diga, Johnny! He have beeg horse—Spanish horse.”

“Come on! I’m goin’ to find him. The man must have had a bed-roll or a saddle-bag. We’ll have a look-see.”

The places in Standing Rock where a man might stable a horse were not so numerous that it took Johnny and Tony any great time to find the big stallion. He was in Ed Brackett’s barn.

It was Johnny’s intention to become possessed of the man’s personal effects if any there should be. For this very excellent reason he entered the barn without disturbing Brackett.

Tony immediately recognized the big horse. The stallion eyed them nervously. A flow of liquid Spanish from the Basque reassured the horse. Johnny searched the pegs along the wall for the missing roll. A low word to Tony told the Basque that he had found what they came for.

“Come on,” came the whisper. “We’ll drift back to the hotel and look this stuff over.”

In their little room in the Palace they sorted out the man’s belongings—shirts, socks, handkerchiefs, and a little bag containing a sewing kit and odds and ends a lone man might be expected to carry.

“Not much here,” Johnny said slowly. “Seems like a man would carry somethin’ personal. Anyways, it proves he didn’t hide that hat-band or Indian luck piece. It’d be here if he had.”

Tony grunted in answer. Johnny picked up a shirt to stuff it back into the leather bag. As he did so a black wallet slipped out and fell upon the bed.

“There’s somet’in’,” the Basque exclaimed.

“Four hundred dollars! He wasn’t robbed, Tony! And here’s a picture—a kid’s picture!”

Tony crowded close to look at it.

“That’s too bad,” muttered Johnny. “Thought maybe I might recognize it. That was hopin’ for too much. But it’ll help some day. That’s a clew! I’ll just freeze on to it.”

Putting the small photograph into his pocket, he proceeded to replace the other things in the old saddlebag. Tony watched him for several minutes. The Basque’s face showed dismay. At times he could not understand his gringo friend. He felt ignored now. Johnny caught the signs of distress.

“But, Tony, you didn’t know the kid. You was back in that dear Spain when that little photo was snapped. Muchachito, you go to bed. Tomorrow we got plenty work to do. I got a clew now.”

“Clew? Damn my soul, Johnny, you talk like deeteckteeve.”

“Companero, you string along with me. We’re goin’ to see the sights before this thing’s over.”

Tony went to sleep; not so Johnny. He brought forth the photograph which he had found, and sat for half an hour studying it; trying to whip his mind into finding some likeness in it to some one he knew.

“That’s all I got,” he murmured. “It’s got to tell me somethin’.”

He placed the picture on the bed before him, and bent over it, his eyes screwed into a squint. Minutes slipped by unnoticed. Something vaguely reminiscent about the photograph began to torture him. Try as he would, he could not say what it was that was playing a sort of mental hide and go seek with him. At times he wondered if he were not the prey of his own desires. And yet, a little voice persisted within him. There was something here that stirred memories!

When it came to him, it came suddenly. His face went white.

“My God!” he whispered, clutching the picture. “The thing around that kid’s neck is the locket Molly Kent wears!”

From staring at the picture he turned to the sleeping Tony. He even started to arouse him, but thought better of it.

“No,” he said to himself. “I’ll keep this secret. This is a clew!”

He tried to argue that the child in the picture bore some resemblance to Kent’s daughter; but he could not convince himself.

“This picture might be a boy’s, for all that,” he muttered. “Looks somethin’ like the dead man, too.”

He gave up puzzling his brain over it, and kicking off his boots, made ready for bed. The locket in the picture and the one Molly wore were the same. That was enough. How she came by it, he’d try to learn tomorrow. Maybe old Jackson had bought it for her.

Jackson Kent! That started a new line of thought. Johnny became wide awake. Kent had fired him; the old man had seemed deaf to certain facts; and now this locket of Molly’s! A broad-side struck Johnny Dice.

“My God!” he exclaimed loud enough to wake up his pal. “Is that why he shut me up? Did Jackson Kent kill that man?”