the Man Called Noon (1970) (2 page)

The trail dipped down to a small creek. He knelt and drank a little, and then as there seemed no other route he walked upstream in the water. He had gone no more than a quarter of a mile when a low call arrested him. "Up here!"

He turned and went up into the rocks, where his unknown friend stood waiting.

Without a word the man turned and forced his way through a narrow crack in the rocks, followed a path for perhaps forty yards, and then ducked under some leaning boulders and into a small hollow among brush and huge rocks. He went through another crack and into a great cave formed by huge sandstone boulders that had fallen against each other.

A stack of firewood against one wall showed the place had been prepared, and there was a circle of stones and the blackened ashes and charcoal of old fires.

The stranger gathered sticks and commenced building a fire.

"Won't they smell the smoke?"

"Not much chance. Except the way we came, there's no way to get within half a mile of this place on horseback, and you know no cowhand is goin' to walk unless he's forced to. This hideout's been used forty years or more, and nobody the wiser."

From some unknown well of wisdom he said, "You just better hope no outlaw has turned lawman. It happens."

The man had his fire going. He stood up, brushing his hands on his jeans. "Could happen," he agreed. He looked curiously at his companion. "My name is Rimes, J. B. Rimes," he said.

It was light enough to see him now. Rimes was short, wiry, sandy-haired. His blue eyes were cool, shrewd eyes. Obviously he had expected his name to bring a response, but when it did not he threw the other an odd look, went back into a corner, and emerged with a coffeepot and cups ....

"You surely must be somebody, stirring them up like that," Rimes was saying. "I haven't seen so much action in that town since the last Injun raid ... quite a few years back."

He said nothing because he had nothing to say. His head throbbed dully, and the reaction from his running had set in. He was dog-tired and bone-weary. But he was wary. He did not know this man who had befriended him, or why he had done so. He was grateful, but cynical. What did the man want? Who was J. B. Rimes?

"What do they want you for?" Rimes asked.

"It doesn't matter, really." How could he explain that he did not know why they wanted him? "I guess I was in the wrong place at the wrong time."

"It's your business. You got a name?"

"Call me Jonas. And thanks for helping."

"Forget it. Here, have some of this coffee while I have a look at that wound."

His fingers went to the cut on the head.

"I don't know what it was, either a bullet... or the fall I had."

"Bullet," Rimes said. "Somebody creased you."

He went to the corner from which he had taken the coffeepot and brought out a pan. Then he went to a corner in the rocks and filled the pan with water.

Suddenly the man who called himself Jonas was frightened. He thought he must have blacked out for a minute or two. Rimes must have gotten water and made the coffee .. . and then there was a blankness. He remembered his head aching, remembered Rimes getting the coffeepot.... He suddenly felt cold.

Had Rimes noticed? Would it happen again? Was it simply exhaustion, or was something wrong with his head?

"Odd wound," Rimes said, "looks like somebody was laying for you."

"Why do you say that?"

"He shot at you from above. Must have been in an upstairs window or on a balcony ... maybe on a roof."

"Why not from some rocks?"

"You were shot in town."

Jonas was sharply aware of his empty holster. "Now how did you know that?"

Rimes glanced at him out of cool blue eyes that revealed nothing. "You came out of town, staggering and falling. I seen you a-comin'."

"You were at the station?"

Rimes chuckled. "That's not likely. No, I was sitting out in the tall grass, same as you, and just as anxious nobody would see me."

Rimes was bathing the wound with a damp cloth. "Cut right to the bone. Scraped it a mite, it seems like." He rinsed out the cloth. "Seems as if they've got you lined up, boy. When they hit you once, they hit you again."

"What makes you say that?"

"Old scar on your skull. Looks as if somebody had clobbered you before, sometime or other. This here bullet cut right across it just like somebody had aimed it."

An old scar? He might have many of them. He had no idea what he even looked like, let alone what scars might be on his body.

"Jonas ... that's not a familiar name," Rimes commented.

"Maybe that's why I use it."

"Good a reason as any." Rimes squatted on his heels, stoking the fire. "Whoever shot at you didn't want to be seen. Figured you for a mighty dangerous man."

"I doubt it."

"It figures. There's a good many men running around who'd shoot you for fifty dollars, pick a fight and make it look all fair and honest where witnesses can swear it was a fair fight; so if they tried to ambush you they did it because they figured you'd shoot back, and fast."

He made no reply. The coffee tasted good, and when Rimes started frying bacon his stomach growled. He stirred uncomfortably.

"That empty holster worries me," Rimes said.

"I fell from a window, I think. I must have lost the gun when I fell, or a minute or so before."

"You don't remember?"

"No."

After a moment Rimes said, "I can let you have a gun. A man in your position had better go heeled."

Rimes went into the recess in the cave wall again and returned with a Colt and a box of shells. He tossed the gun to Jonas, who caught it deftly and spun the cylinder to check the loads, then holstered it.

"Well," Rimes said dryly, "you've used a gun before." He handed him the box of cartridges. "You may need these. I see you have some empty loops."

"Thanks."

The gun was new, a Frontier model, and the weight of it on his hip was comforting. "You trust me," Jonas commented.

Rimes's eyes wrinkled at the corners. "You need me," he said. "I don't need you."

"Yes?"

"Because, Mister Jonas whoever-you-are, you're playing it by ear. You don't know which way to turn. You don't know who your enemies are, or even if you have any friends, or where to find them if you do. You need me to bleed for information until you get yourself located.

"You're a lost man, Jonas. I've been watching and listening. I never knew a man so alert for every word that might be a clue, or so jumpy at every sound. Everything you say or do, you do as if you expected it to blow up in your face."

"Supposing you are right? What then?"

Rimes shrugged. "I don't give a damn. I was just commenting, and as far as you bleeding me for information, just go ahead, and bleed me. I'll help all I can. After all, you'd help me."

"Would I?"

Rimes gave a faint smile. "Well, how should I know? Maybe you wouldn't."

They ate the bacon from the frying pan, picking out the strips with their fingers.

"What are you going to do?" Rimes asked. He was interested, for this man had problems of a sort not many would encounter, and as a man interested in puzzles, he was curious as to what Jonas would do now.

"Look for the pieces, and try to fit them together."

"Somebody wanted to kill you. They still want you dead. Seems to me you're running a long chance, trying to pick up those pieces. The first man you run into may be one of those who are out to kill you."

"What about you?" Jonas asked.

"I sit tight. In a few minutes I am going to climb out of there and set up a signal. The sun will catch that signal and they'll read it off across the valley. Then they'll come for me."

"And when we get where we're going?"

Rimes smiled thinly. "Why, there just might be somebody there that knows you. It just might happen." His smile widened. "That's why I gave you the gun."

On the second morning he opened his eyes on a tiny band of sunlight that streamed through the smoke hole, which was itself a mere crack in the rock above the fire. He had worried about their smoke being seen until Rimes told him it was covered by brush and a cedar that leaned above it. The rising smoke thinned itself out and vanished in rising through the foliage.

Rimes was asleep.

For several minutes the man who called himself Jonas lay perfectly still, staring up at the ceiling of the cave. He felt restless and on edge. He was too close to his enemies, whoever they were.

The day of rest and thinking over his problem had brought him no nearer to a solution. He had no memory of his past. He had no knowledge of who he was, where he had come from, or what he was supposed to be doing there.

Well, the solution to that seemed simple enough. He must first of all discover his identity, and from that he would know all he needed to know. Or so he hoped.

Rimes had commented on it. "Bronc fighter I knew one time, he lit on his head and it was seven or eight months before he knew where he was, or who. But I've heard of others who came out of it very soon."

"And then there've been some," he had added slyly, who could remember but didn't want folks to realize it."

"That isn't true of me."

"You ought to tie in somewhere." Rimes was puzzled. "Of course, I've been out of touch, and I don't know of any outlaw outfit working this country except ours - and if there was a range war I think I'd have heard of it.

"You dress like a city man, but I've got a hunch you're not one. You might be a gambler who killed some citizen back yonder, but that wouldn't fit you being shot from ambush, if you were."

He had lighted his pipe with a stick from the fire. "What are you planning to do now?" he asked.

Jonas hesitated, wondering how much to tell; but this man had helped him, and seemed genuinely concerned. "Did you ever hear of a man named Dean Cullane?" he asked.

Rimes's eyes were on his pipe bowl. When he looked up they were bland, too bland. "Can't say I have."

"Or Ben Janish?"

"Everybody knows Janish." Rimes drew oil his pipe, then dropped the stick into the fire. "Seems to me you're remembering things."

"No, I heard them talking back there by the railroad. Probably there's no connection."

Now, lying upon his back in the cave, he considered the conversation. Had Rimes known Cullane's name? And if so, why had he concealed the fact?

The more Jonas considered his situation the more he wanted to be alone. He needed to get away to some quiet place, where he might recover some memories while not risking his neck by encountering unknown enemies.

He needed time to think, to plan, time to remember. Rimes had explained nothing. He had not told him where he was or where they were going; he had only implied that he might encounter an enemy there .... or anywhere.

Was Rimes truly his friend? Or was he trying to learn something from him, some plan, some secret? How had Rimes happened there so opportunely? Of course, that could happen. Many men rode freight trains, and it was logical enough that they should help each other.

Rimes was no youngster. He was a man who had been through the mill. His advice to Jonas had been good. "Tell nobody anything. Say you had a run-in with the law, and let it go at that. Folks'll be almighty curious, being what they are, but if I were you I'd tell them nothing ... nothing at all."

Rimes had taken him up the steep, winding stair, part natural, and part cut by hand, to where the signal mirrors were placed on the mountainside.

The valley below was relatively flat, semi-arid country, the hillsides dotted with cedar, the bottom largely sagebrush. Beyond lay a string of small mountains, actually low, rugged hills, broken by canyons and cliffs. "There's fifty trails going into those hills," Rimes commented, "and most of them just circle around, or go nowhere."

Jonas held up his hands and looked at them. What had they done? Why had men tried to kill him? Why, even now, did they search for him? Had these hands killed? Oh had they been used for some good purpose? Were they the hands of a doctor, a lawyer, a laborer, a cowhand? Had they swung a hammer or an axe? That they were strong hands was obvious.

He leaned back and closed his eyes. He might never discover his identity. He might be shot by the first person he saw; and if he was forced into a fight, what would he do? What manner of man was he?

The blow on his skull had wiped clean the slate of memory, so why not pull out now? Why not go far, far away and begin anew?

Yet how did he know that some memory, now in his subconscious, might draw him right back to the scene of his trouble? How could he go far away when he did not know in which direction to go? His enemies might be anywhere. What he had to do now was find out who and what he was.

He got up, tugged on his boots, and stamped his feet into them. He belted on his gun and reached for his hat.

"Well," Rimes said, "you're no cowhand. A cowhand always puts his hat on first."