Читать книгу Smoke of the .45 - Harry Sinclair Drago - Страница 9

BY HIS OWN HAND

In the Palace bar all was merry. To the casual eye Scanlon might have appeared an exception, a frosted flower in a garden of flaming blooms; but even his moroseness was giving way to a sly smile. Four mysterious aces had but recently appeared in Stub Rawlings’s hand. The Scanlon bank roll had been severely injured. The source of that handful of cards had sorely troubled the red-headed boss of the Palace. He had become conscious of the storm raging without, but he had not so much as cast a glance at the streaming windows. Mr. Rawlings’s play was of greater interest.

Lady Luck began to smile on the house. Scanlon’s stack of blue chips increased to dizzy heights. He now held Mr. Rawlings’s aces. He played them much better than Stub had. In fact, so well did he maneuver that when the Diamond-Bar man called, the game was over as far as Stub was concerned.

In the interval Scanlon flashed questioning eyes at the windows. Impatiently then he called to Vin: “The windows, Vin! Upstairs—shut the windows! This damn place’ll be floatin’ away if you don’t.”

Vin had been much the busier of the two. But that was as usual. He scowled now, though. Scanlon had been piling straws on the Basque’s back for some years. This threatened to be the one too many. Tomorrow he would brood over any damage done to the hotel; but now he was angry only with Scanlon. “Madre de Dios!” he growled. “I do all these worries for theese firm. I scrub those floors, I mak’ those bed, I wash those window—by Chris’, I not close them.”

“Aw, go on, Vinnie,” the boisterous Stuffy exclaimed, “and be damn glad you ain’t livin’ in Awregon where they really got rain.”

“That’s him!” Scanlon snorted. “Always tellin’ what he does round here. Jest workin’ yerself to death, ain’t yuh? Humph! If it wasn’t fer my brains we wouldn’t have no hotel.” He turned back to his game. “Let ’er rain,” he roared. “I can swim.”

This indifference to their mutual prosperity seared the Basque’s soul, but he rolled up his apron and started for the stairs, the air blue with his cursing. “By damn, I soon git my own hotel, you Irish gringo!” he hurled at his partner.

The crowd tittered. Vin’s troubles were well understood. A moment later the Basque was back at the head of the stairs, white of face, hands shaking.

“Socorro—help! Man ees keel heemself! I guess you come like hell now, Scanlon.”

A hush fell upon the crowded barroom. Little noises were stilled until only the soft slip-slip of the cards running through Scanlon’s fingers broke the silence. Sudden, or mysterious, death was quite as chilling in Standing Rock as in more sophisticated circles.

The tension held for a brief spell. Hobe Ferris was the first to move. A moment later the crowd was pouring up the stairs.

Traynor lay as the killer had left him—half out of bed, his gun near his lifeless hand.

Scanlon bent over and examined the powder marks on the man’s forehead. “Never seen him before,” said he as he straightened up. “This is Stuffy’s room, Vin. How’d he git up here?”

“Man came ’fore supper. Say he only want to sleep till the rain ees past. I say take theese room. What diff’rence eet make? Stuffy not go to baid tonight.”

“You said somethin’, Vinnie. I ain’t ever goin’ to sleep in that bed.”

“Dry up,” Hobe ordered. “We’d better git Doc Ritter. The doc and the old man are playin’ pinochle in his office. I saw ’em across the street. Run over and git him, Stub.”

“Ain’t no need gittin’ a doctor,” Scanlon said positively. “This is a job for the coroner. The man’s as dead as a man can git. Gallup is the only one that can be of any use here.”

“Yeh, I guess yo’re right, Scanlon. Fine lookin’ man, that. Wonder where he came from? Ain’t none of y’u boys ever seen him?”

The crowd edged closer to the dead man; but no one seemed to remember him.

“I’ll go for Gallup,” Stub offered. “He’ll sure be riled, gittin’ out of bed this time of the night. He goes to the hay with the chickens.”

Stub’s going seemed to unloosen the crowd’s tongue. A dozen conjectures were voiced, and either denied or affirmed. Hobe brought them up, standing, by his discovery that no one had heard the shot which had killed the man.

Scanlon turned on his partner, his mouth sagging a trifle. This thing had a queer draw to it. “Vin,” he argued, “you ain’t been out of the house. Didn’t you hear nothin’?”

“I don’ hear anyt’ing. But theese señor have foony look in hees eye. Mak’ me feel leetla chill in the back. I ask hees name; Caramba! He say he ees pretty well forget how to mak’ those writings in book.”

“Sort of a mysterious gent, eh?” Scanlon asked, unpleasantly.

“His name’s his own business,” Hobe flared back. “He might have been considerate enough to bump hisself off somewheres else; but I pretty well wouldn’t like to have anybody tellin’ me my name wa’n’t my own business.”

The Diamond-Bar foreman rightly suspected that Scanlon’s annoyance was largely due to the fact that this affair would throw a wet blanket on the spending of money. He had been waiting some three months for this harvest.

Gallup, the coroner, and Stub returned at this moment, and Scanlon was saved replying to the challenge in Hobe’s words.

“What’s all the trouble?” Gallup demanded when he had entered the room.

“It’s a job for you, Aaron,” Ferris replied. “Vin just found him a few minutes ago.”

Gallup surveyed the dead man.

“Humph! Did a good job, didn’t he? Guess he wouldn’t ’a’ been no deader in the mornin’. Gittin’ so I can’t git a good night’s sleep no more.”

“Yo’re still drawin’ down yore wages reg’lar, ain’t yuh?”

Old Aaron wiped his nose with the back of his hand at this query from Ferris.

“Sorta reg’lar, Hobe,” Gallup answered with a wise little smile. “All due to me, though. Any man that can git fifteen hundred a year out of this county has earned it. If you folks ever start raisin’ my wages I’m goin’ to quit cold.”

While he talked, Gallup had been examining the dead man’s clothes and his gun.

“This bird sure knew what he was doin’,” he muttered. “Ain’t a mark on him to identify him. Queer old gun he used. Well, we got men enough here. I guess I’ll swear you in and git done right now.”

“We’re shy one, Aaron,” said Hobe. “Where’s Johnny? Ought to have him, he’s so up on these things.”

“Him and Tony’s over to the Bud. They’ll be comin’ soon as the news gits round.”

“I got enough,” Aaron answered. “Johnny Dice ain’t law-abidin’ no more, anyhow.”

Without further delay he began swearing them to the truth. Before he had finished the jingle of spur chains below caught Scanlon’s ear. “There’s someone now.” He went to the stairs and looked down. “Say, Johnny, you’re just in time. Need another man up here.”

“Surest thing, old dear. What’s the limit?”

“No limit. It’s a dead man. Gallup’s here.”

“Do I know him?” demanded Johnny.

“No one’s ever clapped eyes on him ’cept Vin. But he don’t know nothin’, either.”

Johnny had stopped to shake the rain from his hat. He turned now to Madeiras. “Come on, Tony. What you grumblin’ about?”

Tony smiled. “I t’ought Scanlon say Gallup ees daid.”

“You sound disappointed. What you cookin’ up for old Aaron?”

“You forget my name, Johnny. I am a Madeiras. There ees lots of Madeiras.”

“Still thinkin’ ’bout that, eh? You best tell your people not to borrow no money from Aaron. He’s a money hound, boy. I tell yuh he knows those gents on the greenbacks personal.”

Tony tapped his chest. “Somet’ings we don’t forget, Johnny.”

They were upstairs by this time. Aaron scowled at the Basque, but he chose him in preference to Johnny.

“One of you is all I need,” the old man muttered. Johnny was defeated, but not stilled.

“They certainly keep you busy, don’t they, Aaron?” he asked provokingly.

“That’ll be enough talk from you, Johnny,” Gallup snapped. “If you want to stay in the room you keep still.”

“Serves me right. The idea of a loose character like me tryin’ to edge in on the law! Ain’t no hard feelin’s on my part, Aaron.”

The old man ignored this sally.

“Now, Vinnie, you tell us how you found this man,” he began in a more or less official manner.

Vin explained how he had come up to close the windows, and so forth.

“You hain’t touched nothin’?”

“No, I call downstairs right away I see he ees daid.”

“Humph! Nobody here knows this man, either, eh?” He cleared his throat importantly. “Well, gentlemen, there don’t seem to be no use wastin’ any more time. This man came here intendin’ to kill himself. It ain’t accidental-like for a man to go round without some mark of identification on him. He cut off every sign by which he might be traced. He’s got his watch and his money; so it wa’n’t robbery. And you all see where the powder burned his forehead. The gun’s there on the floor, just where he dropped it, too. Guess that makes the answer plain. Best you bring in the usual verdict; death by his own hand, this day and date. That agreed?”

A muttered chorus of assenting grunts greeted him as he began making out the death certificate.

“Say, Aaron,” Johnny interrupted. “There’s somethin’ under the bed. The man’s hat, I reckon.”

Aaron glanced at him over the rims of his glasses.

“Why don’t you wait a little longer? You ain’t tongue-tied, be yuh?”

“You told me to shut up.”

“Little good comes from tellin’ you.”

The old man grunted as he crawled beneath the bed to recover the hat.

“It’s a hat, all right,” he grumbled. “His hat, no doubt. Ain’t a mark on it, though.” He held it up for his jury to gaze at it. “Jest about proves what I contend. The man wanted to die unidentified.”

Tony Madeiras’s eyes bulged as he saw the hat Gallup held aloft. Pushing his way forward he took the hat in his hand. Gallup watched him closely.

“Son of a gun!” Madeiras exclaimed slowly and turned to face his friends. “I change my min’ about those daid man. I know thees hat!”

“What?” exclaimed Johnny.

“Sí. I know thees hat. Only t’ree, four days ago I see eet.”

“Yeh!” There was open doubt of the Basque puncher’s word in the coroner’s voice. “You remember a hat without a band or mark on it that you saw three or four days ago? It ain’t even a grown-up hat. It’s just a little runt of a thing. But you remember it, Madeiras?”

Tony’s eyes narrowed as he answered the old man. “I said I remember theese hat.”

“Well, you’ve got some memory, bosco.”

Big Hobe put his hand upon Gallup’s shoulder as the coroner gave tongue to the western term of contempt for the Basque.

“Listen here, Aaron. You won’t make no friends for yoreself with that kind of talk. This Diamond-Bar bunch don’t exactly like to hear Tony called a bosco. It ain’t good for the health to say it more than once. You git that? Now if Tony allows he remembers that hat it ain’t up to you to call him a liar.”

“That’s all right, Hobe,” Tony smiled. “Maybe some time he find out my people have pretty damn good memory. What he thinks, I don’t care. But for you, Hobe: last Monday I was on the North Fork. Evening time I come down to the river. Theese man be there. He have plenty hair on hees face then. Big whiskers. He spik Spanish. Ask lots of question. Me, I ask some, too. He come long ways theese man.”

“You find out his name?”

“Tony Madeiras don’ ask man hees name.”

“Good for you, Tony,” Johnny called. “It ain’t bein’ done.”

Gallup turned on Johnny with face flaming.

“If I hear any more talk from you, out you go. This is your crowd, but the law is the law, and I ain’t goin’ to stand no impudence from you.”

Doc Ritter and Jackson Kent came in as Gallup admonished Johnny. The coroner nodded to Kent.

“Maybe you can put some sense into him,” he said, pointing to Johnny Dice.

“What’s the matter, Johnny?” asked Kent. “We just heard a man had killed himself up here.”

“Nothin’ the matter with me. Gallup’s runnin’ things here. And he ain’t makin’ no hit with it, either. Hobe had to call him a minute ago.”

“Mr. Gallup’s a good man, boys. Don’t rear and tear too much. Jest what is wrong, Aaron?”

When Gallup had finished explaining; the Diamond-Bar owner did his best to restore harmony.

“Now you go on, Tony, and tell the coroner what you know,” he said, pleadingly. “We don’t want no run-in with the law.”

“That’s sense,” Gallup seconded. “If you saw this man, and talked with him, tell us what he said.”

“Well, he say—er—he say——” Johnny Dice was coughing so violently that Tony could not go on. The Basque turned on his pal questioningly. Johnny was bent nearly double; but Tony caught the wink and the slight shake of the head which were meant for him. He started to speak again:

“Well, he say how ees the cattle? How ees the water? How ees the sheep? How ees——”

“I don’t care about that,” Gallup growled. “Did he say anythin’ that has any bearin’ on this case? We ain’t interested in anythin’ else.”

“No—I guess not. All he say ees how ees these, how ees that?”

“Then all this talk’s been for nothin’. What do you say, men? Are you satisfied it’s suicide or not? Raise your hands if you are.”

Tony saw that Johnny was telling him to say yes. When the Basque’s hand went up, Gallup turned to Doc Ritter.

“Here’s your papers, doc. Take the body any time you want to.”

Aaron scrawled his signature and handed the certificate to the town’s doctor and undertaker.

Gallup read aloud:

“Party unknown. Died this 4th of October by his own hand; no reason given. The foregoing being the sworn verdict of the jury convened by me on this day and date.

“(Signed) Aaron Gallup,

“Coroner of Shoshone County, State of Nevada.”

Aaron paused to glance at his listeners. “There it is, gentlemen; in my own hand.” He smiled superiorly. “Somebody count the man’s money and we’ll adjourn.”

He glanced at Kent, but the old man was staring at the body.

“You oblige me, Jackson?” Gallup asked.

“No,” he muttered; “let Doc do it. I don’t fancy counting a dead man’s money.”

Old Aaron smiled. “All right,” he drawled patiently. “Guess Doc ain’t so finicky. He knows that dead men don’t hurt no one.”