Borden Chantry (17 page)

Lang Adams shook his head. “I don't agree with you. The trouble is that nobody ever hears of the men who kill or steal and get away with it. You only hear of the ones who get caught.”

“Had a puncher who worked for me one time, Lang. Folks said he was the slickest horse and cow thief around, and he'd robbed banks, too. Some eastern feller came out here and wrote a song about him. You know, Lang, that man worked for me because he was hungry and needed a place to eat and sleep. And he worked hard, too. He was right proud of that song, and of all the talk about him. But one time we got to talking and from one thing and another it developed that here he was closing in on sixty years old, and he'd no place to go and nobody much who wanted him.”

“Could happen, I suppose.”

“It did happen. But that wasn't the worst of it, Lang. This slick crook they were singing that ballad about, he was sixty years old, and he'd spent forty years of that time in prison.”

Chapter 18

A
FTER LANG ADAMS went back to the store, Borden Chantry reached into his pocket and took out the tally book George Riggin had left hidden in the secret pocket of his saddle.

It was a thin little book with not much written in it, but enough.

He studied it for a long time before he closed the book and slipped it back into his pocket. He refilled his cup as Ed came out.

“Coffee all right, Marshal?” Ed sat down opposite him. “Pie's good, and it's on the house.”

“Thanks. I'll stick to the coffee.”

“That Baca was in…Seems like a nice boy.”

“He's all right. He just likes better horses than he can afford.” He tasted the coffee. “Ed, has Hyatt Johnson been in?”

“Not yet. Nobody's been in but Blossom Galey. She was looking kind of down in the mouth, I figured. Not right for a woman who's about to get married.”

“You mean to Lang?”

“They ain't keepin' it a secret, Marshal. Blossom's a good woman, and she surely has built that ranch into something. Does a sight better than when her old man had it. He was a good cattleman but had no head for business. Blossom, she's got both. That gal's no fool, no fool at all. Why, when she gets Ed Pearson's place—”

“Ed Pearson's place? How would she get that?”

“Figured you knew, Marshal. I think most folks do. Blossom grub-staked Ed two, three times. And the last time, she taken a mortgage on his place. And the way it figures, if anything happened to him, she would take possession.

“He's got good water out there, you know. And that sort of fills in that corner for her. Once she marries Lang, she'll have…or they will have…his place. I tell you, Marshal, that Blossom will be the richest woman in this corner of the state!”

What a damned fool he'd been! Blossom Galey was not only a pretty woman, but a smart one. And tough, too. She'd caught a rustler at one of her calves once, and she winged him when he went for a gun, then brought him in herself. She was a good shot, a dead shot.

And her pa had been a buffalo hunter. Just the kind of a man who might own a .52-calibre rifle of the old style.

He got up suddenly. Maybe…just maybe…he had it figured out.

There were still a couple of things he had to know. Just a couple.

He walked over to the jail. Big Injun was sitting in the chair outside. “You saw those tracks? The tracks left by the man who killed Sackett's horse?”

Big Injun just looked at him.

“Big Injun, you know the track of every horse in the country. You can read sign like I read a sign on a store-front. Whose horse was that?”

“Your horse. Big gray horse, not Appaloosa. Big gray horse from your pasture.”

He had seen the tracks but he did not believe it. He had not seen them clearly enough, or so he told himself, and that big gray was not really his…It belonged to Bess, and had rarely been ridden by anyone else.

What Big Injun was thinking, he knew not. To many Indians the white man's way was incomprehensible, anyway, and this might be just one thing more. Actually, Big Injun troubled himself very little with the concerns of the white man. The old ways were gone, and he had adjusted himself as well as might be. His own lands, or those of his people, lay far away to the east. And they had been driven from them by other Indians before ever the white man came. Soon his people had learned where the power lay, and he had in his own way accommodated himself to the future.

He was asked to sit in the jail from time to time, to track…which he loved doing…and he ate well, slept in a comfortable bed, and led a life of relaxed comfort. And if this was so, it was because of Borden Chantry, who had first made a place for Big Injun on his ranch. Then, when the freeze-up killed his stock, Chantry had brought Big Injun along when he came to town.

His horse…the big gray. Borden Chantry stared out the window at nothing.

The gray had been in the pasture. And of course, a number of people might have roped the horse, but not many could ride it. The gray loved Bess, but was notoriously edgy with anyone else, and would pitch violently if straddled by anyone she did not know.

This was a fact known to just about everyone in town. And it was highly unlikely such a person would attempt to ride a horse of such temperament when riding on a killing mission.

Big Injun rarely volunteered anything. He did so now. “Man ride him,” he said.

Chantry turned his head and looked at the Indian. “A
man?
”

“Big man…heavy.”

Big Injun would know that from the tracks, and a good tracker could judge very well when a horse carried a heavy man.

“As big as me?”

“Maybe bigger.”

Borden Chantry got slowly to his feet. He took out his six-shooter and spun the cylinder. Then he dropped it in its holster, and he did not put the thong back in place.

He went out into the street and stood there for a long time. Then he walked across to Reardon's saloon, and after a bit, down to Henry's, then to the Mexican café. Only then did he return to the Bon-Ton.

“When I was gone yesterday,” he suggested, “was anybody around asking for me?”

“No…” Ed shook his head. “Dot worked part of the day, but things was quiet. Prissy was in, but you were out of town and Lang didn't come around…Nobody asked for you, Marshal.”

“Thanks.” He sat down at the table near the window and thought about Hyatt Johnson, then about George Blazer. He was still thinking about each person, checking what he knew against time and place, when Ed called out.

“Marshal? I forgot. Blossom Galey was in. She asked for you. Wanted to know where you were, when you'd be back.”

Blossom Galey…She had been born in this town, and had lived most of her life on the ranch. Hyatt Johnson traveled a good bit, but.…

“Marshal? Look yonder!”

A man had walked his horse up to the hitching rail and swung down. He was lean and tall, carried himself very straight, and he had a dark, handsome face under his black, flat-brimmed hat. He wore a jacket of buckskin, but it was a short, Spanish-style jacket. He also wore a pistol.

Borden Chantry said, “Ed? Ask that man to come in and have a cup of coffee with me?”

Ed went to the door and spoke. The man looked around, nodded, then tied his horse. It was a buckskin, and a fine animal. Kim Baca had better not see that one, he told himself. He might even forget his resolution about not stealing from a Sackett.

The man stepped in, paused, then walked over. “Marshal? I am Tyrel Sackett.”

“Sit down. I am afraid I have some bad news for you.”

Then, quietly, Chantry told him what he had learned. Of Joe Sackett's arrival in town, his visit to Mary Ann Haley, to the bank, his stop at the hotel, and his return to Haley's. And also of the brief fight with Kerns and Hurley, so far as he knew of it.

“Then the man who killed my brother is still loose?”

“He is…but not for long.”

“You know who he is?”

“I do.”

“Then why isn't he in jail?”

“You can help me, Sackett. I need to know a few things from you that might help. I haven't made any arrest because I have had to work this out carefully. Your brother's murder was only one of several.”

“You are sure it was murder?”

“There's no doubt. And the man who did it is in town now…or was a short time ago.

“Sackett, you come from Mora. You've lived there awhile?”

“I have.”

“Do you know of any man wanted for murder or some other serious crime from your area?”

“Not right now. There've been some shootings, but most of them came out of land grant fights, or just simple arguments over cattle or cards.”

“About seven years ago…maybe eight. You were marshal there yourself for awhile, I think.”

Sackett stared out the window, then shook his head. “Nothing my family was involved in, nothing I can recall.”

“Know a cowhand named Pin Dover?”

“Sure. He worked for me. He was a good hand.”

“Did anything happen while he was in the country? Any unsolved murder, robbery, anything of the sort?”

“No…no, I can't think of anything. Of course, there was the Mason case, but that came to nothing.”

“Tell me about it.”

“There was a girl in Las Vegas…I've forgotten her name…very attractive, though. Her father ran several thousand head of cattle over there. And on the stage from St. Louis, she became acquainted with a man named Ford Mason. He was a good-looking man, carried himself well, and represented himself as a former officer in the cavalry, now a businessman.

“He had a way with horses, seemed to be able to handle the worst of them. And he did some trading around the country while he and this girl became better and better acquainted.

“There was a stage robbery about that time, and it carried a shipment of money from the bank, some of which had been paid into the bank by the girl's father. Shortly after, Ford Mason bought a drink for the father…his name was Cunningham, I recall…and Cunningham recognized the gold eagle that paid for the drinks as one he had deposited in the bank.

“He knew the coin because of two small notches cut into it just below the date. Of course, he said nothing, but it started him thinking, and he wrote to a friend of his in the War Department.

“No officer named Ford Mason was known, but the description answered that of a deserter who had since been involved in a bank robbery with Langdon Moore, a man named Wells, and a Charley Adams.

“Cunningham faced Mason with the facts, and there was a shooting. Cunningham was severely wounded and his daughter shot through the arm…I am sure that was accidental. In any event, Ford Mason skipped the country, and Miss Cunningham talked her father into dropping the charges.”

Borden Chantry listened without comment. The story was not an unfamiliar one. In the west, the man who sat beside you on a stage or in a restaurant might be a prince or a thief, and nobody was inclined to ask questions. Each man was accepted as he represented himself unless he showed himself to be otherwise.

“Are you staying in town, Sackett?”

“You say my brother was buried? Is there a marker on the grave?”

“Not yet,” Chantry shifted uncomfortably. “You see, when we buried him we didn't know who he was. We'd have marked the grave, though.”

“Thank you.” Sackett got to his feet. “I shall handle that myself. Having been an officer, I understand your problems, but if there is anything we can do, please let us know.”

He paused. “You understand, Marshal, we want the killer brought to justice. In fact, we insist upon it. If it turns out that you cannot find him, we would have to take steps.

“I'm not shipping cattle this year, so I've a few months to spare, and when my time runs out, there are always Bob, Tell and Orrin.

“Then I've some kinfolk here and there about the country, and they have a little time they can spare now and again. It might take a year, even two or three. But we'd sort of stay with it, Marshal. If it took five years or even ten…Or twenty, we'd still be sort of meanderin' around, lookin' into things.”

“Bye an' bye one of us would come up with him, somewhere, sometime.”

“You want to move the body?”

“My brother's? No. My ol' pappy used to say, ‘Let the chips lay where they fall,' and we reckon that's the way to do it. There've been a sight of Sacketts buried across the country, an' most of them are buried where they fell. So we'll leave Joe right there where you put him, only we'll leave a marker on the grave so's someday folks will know where he staked his last claim.”

Tyrel Sackett walked out the door and Borden Chantry sat alone, the cold coffee in his cup forgotten.

Now he knew, and now he had it to do. And he did not relish the job.

He went around the corner and on to his own home and opened the gate. For a moment he stood there, looking at the small white house. Only a rented house, but it had been their home. And Tom would remember this when even the ranch was forgotten—and the cave Tom had discovered by the spring.

He went inside and went to the wall and took down his spare gun and checked it. Then he thrust it behind his belt. Bess stared at him, her eyes wide and frightened. “Is there trouble, Borden?”

“I am hoping there won't be. I shall be making an arrest now.”

“Be careful, Borden.”

“That I'll be, but he's a foolish man. He's killed six men to cover up a crime for which no one wanted him. And I do not doubt he'll be foolish still.”

“Borden? Who is it?”

He lifted a hand. “Wait, Bess. I do not want to say the name until I must. Have a warm supper for me, Bess, I'll be wanting it.”

He walked outside and closed the gate carefully behind him. And then he walked, in long strides, toward the street.