The Eye of the Hunter (9 page)

“If you will follow me ...”

Henry trailed him into the fragrant dusk of the church. “You speak English but you don't write it?”

“Not a word! But I trusted you would get the letter translated somehow.”

Inside, the church was lighted by a few candles in sconces; near the altar at the rear, a tableful of votive candles provided haven. The air was cold and dusty, heavy with incense.

Father Vargas opened a door and Henry walked into a small office furnished with little more than a desk and chair; a second chair, tall and crude-looking, appeared much too upright to be comfortable. An ivory crucifix hung against the adobe wall, it silver candelabrum holding three candles lighting it. Vargas indicated the uncomfortable chair. Henry sat down, thinking, actually, about Frances Parrish. Had she been married here? If she were on the outs with the churches of Nogales as well as the people, she might have been. Vargas's fingers patted the desktop and his mournful eyes finally came to Henry's.

“Señor,” he said, “I am in a ghastly dilemma! I face the most barbarous decision of my life!”

Henry grinned. “So naturally you sent for a gunsmith.”

“You might be surprised at how much you can help, Mr. Logan. I could write my bishop, but it would take a month for the letter to reach him, and then another month for his answer to come. And there is simply not that much time!”

Henry tried to get comfortable on the chair, which was short in the seat and had a tilt that kept him crouching forward as though he were about to rise.

“Would it be a good guess that you read about me somewhere?” he asked.

Vargas patted a newspaper on the desk. “I immediately wrote the note to you.”

“I'm sorry, Father Vargas, but it's hogwash! Throw the paper away. Wrap meat in it. I came to Arizona as a favor to a lawyer friend. I simply need to find this man, Parrish, and get an explanation of why he doesn't answer his letters.”

The priest was shaking his head. “You won't find him, Señor Logan. And that is no hogwash.”

Touched by an uneasy hunch, Henry said, “Why not?”

“Because, sir, Señor Reep is dead!”

Henry's spirits soared into the air like a hawk. “Are you positive?”

“A woman in my parish told me she saw him shot to death.
Una puta
, you see.”

Henry knew the word from Cuba; it meant “prostitute.” “A pity. I suppose an, er, whorehouse fight?”

“Not exactly ...”

Henry waited, pleased yet puzzled. His own problem was solved, and in the best possible manner. But he did not see why a whorehouse murder should cause the priest such distress, nor why he had sent for him.

“Is that your cruel dilemma?” he asked.

“No, señor. Not precisely. Señor Reep was a jolly man, and he gave me the candelabrum you see behind me, although he is not a Catholic.
Was
not. And I admire his wife very much—excuse me, his widow. I wish Frances would come to see me. Perhaps I could help the poor lady.”

“Oh? Does Frances have a problem, too?” (Of course! She was a widow. Henry just happened to view this tragedy differently.)

“Ah, señor! A most grave problem, indeed. According to the woman who told me this, Frances is the one who shot him!”

“Oh, my God!” Henry said.

Numbed, he sat staring at the priest. He started to say something, but his throat was dry and he made a croaking sound. “Excuse me. No, Father, this woman must be as crazy as Ben Ambrose! What would Frances be doing in—in such a place?”

“I didn't say she was, Señor Logan. The woman said that she lived with Señor Reep for several weeks last year, at the place on his ranch that they call Spanish Church. He was digging for treasure, she said.”

Henry squinted at the silver candlestick on the wall. For some reason he felt very skeptical of the ornament, and he wanted to see this bit of treasure dug up by a man now dead. He crossed the floor to the little flickering shrine and examined the candlestick. The handwork was hold, the decoration crude, the silver pitted. A date was engraved on the underside of it: 1723. The artifact looked disappointingly genuine.

“Is this something Rip is supposed to have dug up?”

“I don't know, sir. He gave it to me ... oh, I suppose a year ago.”

“Just how did the woman's fairy tale go?”

“Well, according to her, Frances rode out to Spanish Church last August and caught them together. Cata—this woman, I should say—rode her burro away. But she got trapped in a box canyon and had to ride back an hour later. Rip was sitting beside his campfire, in the dark now, playing his banjo, when the woman heard a shot and saw him fall to the ground. She rode off into the dark. She was sure she wasn't seen.”

His mind squirming like a jail-house lawyer, Henry detected a sour note here, and he raised his finger. “Wait. It's dark, right? She hears a shot—and she says Frances fired the gun. Why? Did she actually
see
her shoot?”

“She says she saw it all. I'm inclined to believe her. She was as distressed by the murder as I was. We all love Frances—Panchita, as we call her. She speaks better Spanish than most Mexicans, in fact, and has nothing but friends here. Her father took care of many of us. Panchita has often nursed our own sick people.”

“What kind of gun was it?”

“A revolver, she told me. She'd seen it banging in the little rock house out there. It belonged to Reep. A very beautiful weapon—if that is not a contradiction.”

Thinking sharp and hard, Henry replaced the candlestick. “Has she told anyone else?”

“No. She told me in the confessional. ”

Aha! “Then how can you tell me this, Father? Or anyone else? Isn't there a ... you know, a canonical law ...?”

“Of course. But the woman came to me again just a few days ago. Now she wants me to write a letter to the sheriff for her to sign, telling about the murder! She's afraid of being arrested for adultery if she goes over there.”

“Did she say what happened to the body?”

The priest looked surprised. “No—no, she didn't, come to think of it. And I didn't think to ask.” He shrugged. “Apparently it was dragged away, or buried.”

“By Frances? Come on, Father, you know as well as I do that she's not a cold-blooded—”

“No, I'm sure she isn't. You have a point ... I'll ask the woman about that.”

“I think I would, Father! I mean,
no body
? Ha! Then how could a murder charge be brought?”

Henry followed his lead on down the dim trail.

This crazy fellow, this Rip Parrish, gambler and roustabout, had been living with a Mexican woman while Frances had tried to run the ranch alone. Frances had caught him red-banded. Then—maybe—she'd had to defend herself against him. Maybe he'd been drunk—had tried to beat her. And possibly the quarrel had wound up with her accidentally shooting him.

Maybe.

The priest was speaking softly.

“What?” Henry asked.

“La problema,”
said the padre, “is that murder usually comes to light. But I respect this woman so much that I can't report it! Yet I must! Do you see?”

“Yes, I see. But I don't understand about the body!”

“I don't, either. But there's an old mine there. Someone could have dragged it inside and covered it with rocks. Otherwise the buzzards—”

“In Spanish, do you have our saying, ‘Let sleeping dogs lie'?”

“I'm afraid this dog will wake up, sooner or later. The woman will tell one of her lovers from the other side, and the lover will tell Sheriff Bannock. And the sheriff is not a friend of Panchita's. Her father did a little operation on his throat once, and now—now his bellows can't be heard across the room—he can only whisper. He blames the doctor. But he always had a husky voice, and he barbecues his throat with cigars—twenty a day, they say!”

Henry was looking at the candlestick again. “Wouldn't you think,” he said, “that handing old church ornaments around would give people the idea that there's treasure there?”

“I suppose. I've made no secret of it. ”

“So that he'd be taking the risk of having his treasure stolen, or being murdered, wouldn't he? Doesn't that seem peculiar?”

“Yes, it does!”

Smiling, Henry rested his palms on the desk and leaned toward the priest. “Want to know what I'd do?” he asked.

“Tell me!”

Henry straightened. “Nothing!” Then he raised both arms melodramatically. “Nothing at all! I wouldn't lift a finger, Father. I'd hold my peace. Why not talk to Frances? Maybe the Mexican woman hates her. Maybe Frances really read her the articles of war out there. Would it be surprising? Damn woman stealing her husband?

“So this woman may come back one of these days to confess again—that she lied!—you see? And, my
God
, Padre, if you've told the sheriff, then Frances is in jail and maybe she'll never be the same. Didn't they hang a woman in the Yuma prison a while back? I read about it. So whatever you do, don't tell Whispering George. I'll talk to Frances,” he announced. “And I'll let you know what I find out.”

“Bless you! It's exactly what I hoped for. Here—please take this rosary to Panchita for me, and ask her to visit me someday soon.”

Henry looked it over, a rather lumpy silver necklace, and dropped it in his pocket with a wry smile. “Well, I was baptized a Presbyterian or something, but what the hell. Be glad to.”

And just what am I going to say to Frances?
Henry thought, plodding back through the dark church. Interesting how people who had a cruel burden to bear usually managed to hang it on somebody else. In fact, the situation was almost humorous.
I'm going to ride out there to Spanish Church with her, and she's going to tell me the true story according to her—which according to this Mexican woman was a pack of lies!

He looked at his watch. Time to have it out with Ben Ambrose and the fine old Apache-murdering general....

An hour before his rendezvous with Frances Parrish, Henry rapped on the door of the
Globe
. Glum with misgivings, he had plodded north from the Catholic church among burros overloaded with desert firewood. Children switching them along pointed at the red-haired man in the undertaker's suit and laughed. Making quick draws, he cocked and fired his thumb at them; without, however, feeling very playful.

He sensed that he was being watched from inside the newspaper office; and perhaps from the hotel, whose guests he had given such an exciting evening. He turned his head: Men seated along the shaded hotel porch were indeed aware of him. He gazed up and down the street. A wagon was unloading beer barrels before Brickwood's Saloon; businessmen, cattlemen, and professional men were on the walks, many heading for the hotel. From the railroad yard came a series of short, sharp hoots. As he was about to rap again, a lock rasped, a man coughed, the door was yanked open, and General Stockard was staring at him.

Stockard, grinning, gestured with his cigar. “Come in, Logan, come in!”

Henry went as far as the doorsill, checking the interior of the shop for the general's foppish and possibly dangerously emotional partner. In the glare of a hissing carbide ceiling fixture, he saw a printing press with iron scrollwork like that of a sewing machine, a walnut box telephone resting on the desk, a stick of type lying on a marble slab, and long galley proofs hanging from hooks in the wall. But there was no sign of the editor.

Stockard gave a harsh laugh. “Relax, Henry! Ben'll be along. He's not dangerous. Probably having a cup of coffee across the street. Care to step over and have a cup? Or a whiskey? Like to show off my famous gunman-guest.”

Henry shook his head. Entering the cool building after the hot street was like slipping back into early spring. The dry, chilly air felt good on his skin. The general looked him over, chuckling.

“Brave man, though, Henry! Walking unarmed into a place you shot up last night!”

Henry smiled, extended his right arm, and looked at it, with the impression of a magician proving there was nothing up his sleeve. “What gave you the idea I was unarmed?” He gave his arm a hitch, the right cuff slipped back, and for an instant the silver, over-and-under barrels of a derringer gleamed. Then he performed the same magic with his left sleeve.

“Ha! That's the stuff!” Stockard cried. He planted himself beside a desk, his chin up and his one green eye sharp as acid. He was a tough and grizzled old warrior, and with the patch over his right eye he looked like a desperado. His head was bald, his jaws frizzed with badgerlike gray hairs as were his ears, and his eye looked as though it should be in the eye socket of some predatory animal. His skin was thin and shiny, blemished with liver spots.

Suddenly he smashed his hands together. “By God, Henry—if we haven't got a parcel of things to talk about! Let me look at you! Black Jack Logan's own son! Your father would have been proud of you.”

Henry dropped into the office chair at one of the desks. “For a little show like that? No, sir. For what your partner did, my father would have burned this place down, with Ben hanging from the pole. Somebody's going to give that popinjay an Apache haircut one of these days, General. Yet the town seems afraid of him! What's the secret?”

“Come on, Henry—you mustn't take Ben too seriously. Nobody does. Ben fancies himself a Horace Greeley. Making newspaper history out here where half the subscribers can't read—they just want to impress the neighbors by having the paper on the front porch. Well, how is your mother, Henry? Remarried, I suppose?”

“Yes—to a gunsmith. I was eighteen when he died and took over the shop. Mother died three years ago.”

“Ah, pity. My own wife—did you know Emily? You were pretty young.”

“I used to see her at the post.”