Fiddlefoot (16 page)

“Hugh said you wanted to see me,” Moore said.

“I do,” Hannan said. “Do you know where you were between July fourth and ninth?” he asked pleasantly.

“Yeah,” Virg said promptly. “On July fifth, I and five other fellas was in the Moab jail.”

Hannan grunted. “And the sixth?”

“Still in jail.”

“What about the seventh?”

“I camped with Frank.”

Hannan showed no sign he was interested in this fact. “The eight, now?”

Moore inclined his head. “With Hugh.”

“That right, Hugh?”

“That's right,” Nunnally said.

“And you were with Frank the seventh. That right, Frank?”

“If I knew the date, I'd have told you,” Frank said, playing his part in this farce.

Hannan was silent a moment, then he asked Moore, “How come you camped with Frank? How do you remember it?”

Moore grinned. “I was supposed to be with Frank all that week. I was kind of throwin' my hat in the door to see if Nunnally had heard about me cuttin' out and gettin' drunk on the Fourth. Frank didn't know because he hadn't seen Nunnally, so I took a chance and saw Hugh the next day.”

Frank saw how skillfully Nunnally's alibi for him had been framed. Virg Moore had been in the Moab jail on the fifth and sixth, as the records, when Hannan wrote for them, would show. There was Moore's word that he was with Frank on the seventh. Since it was impossible for Frank, leaving on the fifth, to ride here and return to Moab by the seventh, Frank could not have killed Rob. The simplicity of it was beautiful and final.

Hannan looked at Frank now and said dryly, “Is he lying? You were afraid he would, remember.”

“Not this time,” Frank said.

Hannan nodded curtly and said, “It looks like I'm through with you, then, doesn't it?”

Frank nodded and Hannan murmured his thanks to Nunnally and went inside. Hugh grinned meagerly now at Frank and said, “Go have fun,” and he and Moore went down the stairs. Inside, the fiddles were sawing away and Dick Afton's hoarse voice was calling the last of a set.
This is the way you turn a corner in your life
, Frank thought bleakly, and went into the hall.

All through supper, which he had with the Judge and the Maases and Carrie, Frank tried to frame a way of telling Carrie about his change of mind regarding Saber. She would welcome it, he thought bitterly. Of her reaction to his taking Rhino Hulst as partner, he wasn't sure, but she must be told tonight.

The opportunity came in the interval between the end of supper and the resumption of the dancing. The Maases and Judge Tavister were deep in a conversation which excluded him and Carrie. They were sitting in the corner contentedly watching the crowd, Carrie's hand resting in his. He said quietly then, “I had a chance to do some thinkin' while I was away, Carrie. I've decided I won't put Saber away. Bedamned to Hannan.”

Carrie slowly turned her head to regard him, and he could see the happiness in her eyes. She squeezed his hand in silent token of her approval and happiness.

Frank went on then, in a purposely hesitant voice: “But I'm such a knothead about the money end of it, Carrie. You reckon I should get someone in with me, a partner, say?”

“Yes,” Carrie promptly answered. “I know the man, too. Rhino Hulst.”

The look of amazement in his face brought a laugh from Carrie. “I know what you've been planning, Frank, but I thought I'd let you tell me. Dad told me about Rhino coming in to talk over your offer of partnership with him. Dad thinks it's sensible, and so do I.”

Frank looked down at her small hand resting in his, and now he tasted the full measure of his defeat. Rhino had been so sure of him that he had gone to the Judge, paving the way for the deal. And the Judge and Carrie approved. The irony of it was too bitter for his taste, and he found a slow anger stirring within him. Couldn't they see what Rhino was after? Of course not, he thought bitterly, and was contrite and wholly glum.

When the music started again, he pulled Carrie to her feet and swung her into the dance. Afterward, he lost track of her. He danced with the girls he had known as a youngster, with their mothers, and he talked with their fathers and with the men he had grown up with, and he found no pleasure in it all. He should never have come, he knew now.

It was much later that he recognized Tess's white dress, and he recalled Jonas. He made his way across the floor to her and took her away from three Horn Creek punchers, and as a waltz began, she settled gently into his arms. Oddly, it was disturbing to touch her, and they didn't speak for a full minute. Presently, Frank glanced down to surprise an expression of utter gravity on her face as she watched the other dancers.

“Not having fun, Tess?” he asked.

She looked up at him searchingly. “I was, until a few minutes ago.” She hesitated. “I saw Carrie a moment ago. She said you'd taken a partner for Saber.”

Frank felt a hot embarrassment then, and Tess looked away from him. “I wish you well,” she said softly.

There was nothing he could reply to that, and they finished out the dance in silence and he left her.

The party began to break up in the small hours of the morning. Families living way up around the Grand Peaks began to leave, the children sleeping in the arms of the menfolk. It was then that Frank remembered he had not told Tess of Jonas.

He mentioned it to Carrie then, and as the dance finished he sent her into the coatroom to tell Tess he would show her across the street. He waited outside the coatroom, standing among the men who were tired and talked out and content, and he felt a leaden discouragement.

When Tess came out, he fell in beside her and they said good night to couples as they made their way across the floor and down the stairs. On the corner, they waited while a spring wagon, Otis Baily driving the team, pulled past them, and Baily called to them, “Good dance, folks. Good night.”

The hotel lobby was deserted at this hour. A single dim-lit lamp over the desk was the only light here, and their footsteps echoed loudly in the room.

Frank halted at the foot of the stairs, and Tess mounted the first step and paused. “I'm sorry about Jonas,” Frank said stiffly.

Tess looked at him searchingly in the half-darkness, and then she said, “And I'm sorry about you, Frank.”

Frank said bitterly, “Tess, I—” he fell silent, desperately wanting to explain himself, and knowing he never could.

“It isn't as if you didn't know him, is it?” Tess asked simply.

“No, I know him.”

“Are you that hungry for money?”

“Don't, Tess! Quit it!” Frank said miserably.

“Do you think you'll ever laugh again?” Tess asked then.

He looked imploringly at her, and saw the troubled sweetness in her face. She was waiting for an explanation he could never give. He said obscurely, “Tess, you don't know. Don't be rough, because I can't help it.”

“You're afraid of something,” Tess said accusingly, and her tone was bitter, too. “I don't like fear in anyone. Especially, I don't like it in you. Good night, Frank.”

She turned, and he watched her go up the stairs, and somehow it seemed the most important thing in the world at the moment that she should turn and come back and tell him in her easy friendly way that it didn't matter. But she didn't. She vanished at the top of the stairs and he stood there a full minute, oddly without hope, before he turned and went out.

Chapter 15

After Frank and Nunnally had gone, Jonas lay awake in the darkness of John's room stating at the ceiling. His mind was fogged with alcohol and his head ached blazingly, but there was no mistaking the words he had just heard. Hugh's blow had stunned him, but it had not driven consciousness from him—and he had heard something not intended for him.

He rose unsteadily to his feet now and listened. The last faint sound of their footsteps died, and now he took a slow turn around the dark room. His head throbbed solidly and it was an effort to think, but he reviewed Hugh's words, trying to read meaning into them. Frank Chess had killed somebody called Pete, someone who worked for Rhino, and knowledge of this was being used by Rhino and Hugh to blackmail Frank into signing something.

Pete who?
he wondered. He recalled the men who worked for Rhino and then it suddenly came to him. Pete Faraday, that damned Ute half-breed, of course.

Now he went out into the other room and poured himself a drink of whiskey and stood motionless, a gray foreboding touching him. He liked Frank and always had, and he found himself examining the reasons why he should. He had discounted the current story of Frank's mother, for he had worked around animals long enough to know that a good breed does not come from worthless stock. And he accepted all the stories of Frank's reckless ways without feeling any censure, because those ways had never hurt anyone. People like himself, Jonas thought, drudged their way out of mediocrity and acquired a liking for people and a kind of trust of them on the way, but Frank had never needed that. There was a deep and careless generosity in him that was as much a part of him as his gentle mockery and his heedless love of fun. He was gay and quick and easy; he could break any woman's heart, and he didn't know that he could, and he was too honest to care, even if he did know. Frank was a man who gave everything and he should get everything, Jonas thought without any envy, and now he was being milked by Rhino.

Jonas cursed Rhino and Nunnally then in an impassioned whisper. The two of them were like a blight, killing everything they touched, and even if Jonas hadn't liked Frank, he would have wanted to help him now.

But murder was murder, even if a dog like Pete Faraday was the man who was murdered. A sensible caution that alcohol could not entirely dim told Jonas to stay out of this.

He sat down on the edge of the bed now, thinking laboriously of this. The more he thought, the more he knew he didn't want any part in this. The thing to do was stay here, and not even go back to the dance. No use risking Hugh's suspicion that he might have overheard the conversation. Tess could get home easily enough, and there were enough men there to show her fun.
I don't know anything
, he thought.

And then it all went sour deep inside him, and he felt an obscure guilt. Frank was in trouble and needed help, and Jonas was backing out of it.

Jonas shook his head and lay down. It was all too confusing, and his head hurt and he'd had too much to drink. He felt sleep coming like an avalanche to envelop him now, and he welcomed it.

When he awakened next morning the sun was high. He sat up and his head felt as if it were loaded with loose shot that rolled around at his every movement. Slowly, then, the events of last night came back to him, and remembering it all, the feeling of guilt returned.

He rose now and doused his face with cold water, then stripped out of his clothes and put on a worn pair of denim pants. After that he shaved unsteadily. Today he would ride out to O-Bar to begin work tomorrow, but first, of course, he must see Tess and square things for last night.

But his mind kept returning to Frank.
All right, I tell him I beard and what does be do?
Jonas thought. He couldn't answer that. If Frank was being blackmailed, then it meant that he must have murdered Faraday, and what could he, Jonas, do about that? Nothing. The kindest thing to do was to keep Frank's secret for him.

Once that was settled, Jonas finished shaving, climbed into his shirt, picked up his hat and went out. At the foot of the stairs, he paused and looked over at the freight yard. It was locked up tight, boarded shut; the sight of it brought a quiet curse to his lips.

He got breakfast, and while he was eating, he heard the church bell ringing, signifying church was out. Afterward, he strolled back toward the hotel, meeting a few stiffly dressed people taking the quiet main street home from church.

At the hotel, he waved to Mr. Newhouse behind the desk and climbed the stairs to Tess's room. Her door was open, and he knocked softly on the frame and was bid enter.

He tramped in and saw Tess at the open window. She had been leaning out, and now she turned to see who it was. She was dressed in a dark suit that made her hair seem pale as taffy and she was, Jonas thought, utterly beautiful. And not for him. She smiled at him and looked out the window again and then said, “I smell a change in the weather, Jonas.”

“If I looked at the sky, my head would roll off,” Jonas said gloomily. “How are you, Tess?”

“Sort of sleepy.” She came back into the room and lifted some things from the lone armchair, motioned Jonas into it and seated herself on the bed.

Jonas sat down and regarded her uncomfortably. “I'm sorry about last night, Tess. I just went to sleep over in my room.”

Tess grinned tolerantly. “Maybe that's the best thing that could have happened to you.”

Jonas made a wry face. “I make a hell of a cut-up.”

Tess really laughed then, and Jonas grinned crookedly.

“How'd you get home?” Jonas asked.

“Frank brought me,” Tess said.

A shadow seemed to cross her face then, and Jonas, noticing it, wondered. He said, “Did Frank have fun?”

“Yes, he was celebrating, too,” Tess said. There was something in her voice that made Jonas look curiously at her.

Tess, seeing it, said, in explanation, “He was celebrating his partnership. I guess it's no secret.”

“Partnership in what?”

“Partnership in Saber. With Rhino.”

Jonas sat motionless several seconds, and he felt something like a cold touch of wind that raised the hair on his neck. Saber was what Frank was going to sign away. This was the blackmail. Jonas thought of that with a deep, shocked soberness, remembering Saber's vast acres.

He was silent so long that Tess said, “Well, doesn't that mean anything to you, Jonas?”