Fiddlefoot (7 page)

“He said so,” Cass replied. “He was out yesterday.”

Frank felt a faint chill of premonition. Nunnally was at work, then.

“He wants you to come in and see him,” Cass added, and now he looked at Frank. “That why you gave up Saber?”

Frank nodded. Cass stood up now and said off-handedly, “We figured a week ago you'd come back and rooster around, maybe pension Jess off and fire the whole bunch of us that heard Rob name you.”

“How do you know I wouldn't have, if Hannan had let me alone?”

“You could have kept the outfit long enough to fire us, couldn't you?”

Frank remained silent, wondering what this was leading up to, and Cass seemed satisfied. He took his pipe out of his mouth and looked at it, scowling, and then he said, almost shyly: “Johnny saw some of your ponies over by the Horn Creek line camp last week. He'll drive 'em over tomorrow. You go on down and see Hannan, and Johnny and me will bring down your string.”

Frank stared at him uncomprehendingly, and Cass met his glance. Finally, Frank asked, “Why, Cass?”

“Damned if I rightly know,” Cass murmured. “For ten years I watched Rob kick you into somethin' I didn't much like. And then, when you're finally rid of him, Hannan tries it. That's too much.” He paused. “Can Johnny and me help?”

“Sure,” Frank said softly.

Next morning at daybreak Frank turned his string of horses out of the corral, and he and Cass ran them for a couple of miles until the edge was off them. Cass turned back then, and Frank made the drive alone down to Saber, which he reached at midday.

Turning the bunch into the big corral at Saber, he held them long enough to rope out a close-coupled bay and change his saddle to him, after which he turned the remainder into the horse pasture.

Riding past the cookshack he got a reluctant wave from the cook standing in the doorway, and that was all.

He made the ride down to Rifle at a mile-eating walk and jog, and now he speculated on what Hannan, prompted by Hugh's misinformation, might say to him. Anything could happen; he didn't know. In late afternoon he came to the break in the timber on the grade above Rifle. Below him, and downriver, he could see the town and the crawling antlike figures making up the traffic in the main street.

Off toward the river below town, he heard faint shouts and whistles. Raising his glance, he saw a band of horses being hazed out of Rhino's horse lot and downriver by a trio of riders. The uniform solid color of every horse told him what he wanted to know. This was part of the bunch he and Hugh had brought in from Utah—all solid color, all under sixteen hands high, all flat-backed and close-coupled geldings between six and nine years old. They met the requirements of the United States Cavalry, and were now being driven downriver on the way to Fort Crawford, a hundred and twenty miles away. He remembered the long drive through the desert to Crawford that he had made in early summer for Rhino, and he was glad he was not with them.

Rifle's main street, when he came into it later, was busy with late afternoon traffic. A five-team hitch on a big corn wagon just unloaded at Rhino's was hauled up in front of the Pleasant Hour. A half-dozen kids were playing noisily in the high-sided empty wagon, and as Frank pulled in at the hotel tie-rail Barney Josephson came out of his saddle shop across the street to quiet them lest they stampede the half-broken teams.

Frank dismounted at the tie-rail of the Colorado House on the corner opposite the brick bank. The usual row of idlers in their barrel chairs on the boardwalk in front of the hotel windows regarded him curiously, some nodding to him. He went past them into the lobby and was making for the desk when he saw Hannan in the far corner of the lobby. The sheriff was alone, seated in a deep leather chair under a motheaten mounted elk head, and in his hand was what looked to Frank like a slim whalebone corset stay. Frank halted and watched him a moment in curious puzzlement. Suddenly, Hannan flicked the corset stay at his knee. A faint smile of satisfaction appeared around the cold cigar in his mouth. He flicked again at the arm of the chair, and then Frank understood. Hannan was swatting flies.

As Frank approached, Hannan looked up. He didn't rise, didn't offer to shake hands, only said mildly, “Hello, Frank,” as he tucked the stay back in the inside pocket of his coat.

Frank said, “Hello, Buck. How's the hunting?”

“They're hard to hit,” Hannan observed tranquilly. He regarded Frank a moment and said, “Who pasted that black eye on you?”

“Nobody you have to worry about, Buck.” Frank sat on the arm of a near-by chair and came directly to the point. “They said you were looking for me.”

“Worried?”

Frank nodded. “Some. I'd like to know where I stand.”

“A little closer to a trial than you did a couple days ago,” Hannan observed. He chewed thoughtfully on his cigar before he said, “I suppose your memory is a sorry thing.”

“Memory of what?”

“You wouldn't, for instance, know where you were the five days between the Fourth of July and the ninth, would you? Do you recollect anybody shootin' anvils, or celebrating the Fourth?”

Frank's face went bland and blank. “No. I didn't carry a calendar, Buck. I don't remember.”

“I thought so. You remember a man named Booker?”

“Should I?”

“You bought five horses from him on the Fourth. You remember a man name of Headly? No, of course you don't. You bought eight horses from him on the ninth.”

“Who said I did?”

“Nunnally,” Hannan said. “I been checking dates on bills of sale with him. He claims you bought horses from both Booker and Headly on those dates and turned the bills of sale over to him. He can't recollect your buying any in between those dates. Can you?”

Frank didn't answer immediately. Almost imperceptibly, Nunnally was drawing the noose tighter, and there was nothing he could do to stop it. If he contradicted this latest fiction of Hugh's, Hannan would make him prove the contradiction. He said now, “Where did I run across Booker and Headly?”

“Around Moab.”

“That would give me time to leave Booker, ride here for Rob, track him down, kill him, and get back in time to buy Headly's horses on the ninth. That what you're thinking, Buck?”

“You said it, I didn't,” Hannan observed dryly. He was watching Frank closely.

“Have you and Doc Breathit decided when Rob was killed? What date?”

“The last time he was seen was on the Fourth. He picked up a drunk O-Bar puncher that night and put him back on his horse, the puncher says.”

“And why did I kill him?” Frank murmured.

“You hated him.”

“Did
you
like him?” Frank countered. “Can you find me anybody who did?”

“That's different.”

“No,” Frank said flatly. “Ever since I was ten I've been mad enough at Rob to kill him. Lots of times. But I never did. Why should I sneak back from Utah to do it?”

“He said some pretty hard things about your mother the night you left, so I hear.”

Frank nodded. “Hard enough things so I could have pulled a gun on him and killed him then, and nobody would have blamed me. But I didn't.”

Hannan said nothing, only studied Frank's face.

Now Frank said, “That reason is no good, Buck. What others have you got?”

“There's Saber. You got that.”

“And I'm not taking it,” Frank said slowly. “Not until you find Rob's killer. If you never do, I never take Saber.”

Hannan sighed and said, “Yeah, I heard about that at Saber.” He reached in his pocket and pulled out the corset stay. There was a fly on his pants leg, and he flicked at it viciously. The fly fell to the floor and did not move, and Hannan moodily returned the corset stay to his pocket. Then he said worriedly, “You got me there, Frank.”

“Then let me alone,” Frank said flatly.

Something in his voice made Hannan look up, and Frank rose.

“I mean it, Buck,” Frank said.

Hannan sighed and rubbed his chin and said, in an almost inaudible voice, “I know you do.”

Frank went out through the lobby then, and on the boardwalk he paused and rolled a cigarette. His hands, he noticed, were shaking. How well had he succeeded in checking Hannan? There was no way of telling except that, by his own admission, he couldn't offer a reason for Rob's murder by Frank. Frank took a deep drag of his cigarette now and contemplated the next move. He might as well see Judge Tavister and get the Saber business over with. He waited until a team pulling a buckboard passed him, then crossed to the opposite corner and took the stairway that mounted to the second floor of the brick bank.

Judge Tavister's office was the corner one, and looking down the corridor through the open door, Frank saw him seated at his desk talking to someone whom Frank could not see.

Approaching the door now, Frank saw the Judge was talking with Carrie. She was sitting on his desk amid a scattering of papers, her feet swinging, and when Frank appeared in the door, her face lighted up. She was dressed in a long-sleeved street dress of green and gray bombazine. When she looked at Frank's face, however, her feet which had been swinging against the desk, became motionless.

She said slowly, “Who've you been fighting with?”

Frank only grinned and shook his head. Judge Tavister was regarding him without any cordiality in his face. He gestured toward a chair which Frank, after placing his hat on the long table, dragged up. Carrie slipped down off the desk, and coming up beside him, touched his eye tenderly. There was a look of silent reproof in her face, Frank noticed.

Judge Tavister said, “Come about the business?”

At Frank's nod the Judge rose, opened the cabinet beside his desk, and took several papers out and laid them on the table, swiveling his chair around to face the table too.

“Want me out, Dad?” Carrie asked.

“Don't go,” Frank said. “It'll save me telling you, Carrie.” He looked at the Judge. “I don't want Saber for a while, Judge. How do you go about putting it away?”

There was a long silence, and then Carrie echoed, “Don't want Saber?”

Frank nodded, not looking at her. “Hannan seems to think I killed Rob,” he said. “He thinks I did it because I wanted Saber. I'd like to put Saber away until he's found Rob's killer. If he doesn't find him, I don't want it.”

Judge Tavister could not hide the distress in his face, but before he had a chance to speak Carrie said hotly, “That fat fool of a Hannan! I'll kill him!”

“Now, now, don't say that even in fun, Carrie,” her father admonished.

“But it's blackmail!” Carrie said hotly.

Judge Tavister looked at Frank now. “That's absurd, Frank. The property is legally yours. Let Hannan try and make a case against you.”

“He can't, if I don't take Saber.”

Carrie said indignantly, “But what about you? You give up a big ranch!”

The Judge said temperately: “Exactly. You're doing it backwards, Frank. Our law is founded on the assumption that a man is innocent until proven guilty; not that he is guilty until proven innocent—as you seem to believe. Let Hannan prove it.”

Frank said dismally, “What if he can make out a good case?”

“How can he? Can't you account for your time?”

“No,” Frank lied.

“Weren't you traveling with Rhino's men?”

“Not all the time,” he lied again.

A look of bitter accusation mounted in Judge Tavister's eyes, and Frank knew what he was thinking. This was the “hurt” he mentioned that night in the quiet darkness, the disgrace shaping up that would break Carrie's heart, and Frank saw the Judge understand this and accept it with a wry dislike. The Judge said stonily: “It's yours to dispose of, Frank. I'm Rob's executor. I suppose I could arrange to put Saber in escrow under the terms you wish.”

Carrie looked from Frank now to her father, and the protest mounted in her green eyes and she looked levelly at Frank. “So all you said the other night was fluff? You said you'd run Saber and prove to me you weren't a drifter, that you'd accept that responsibility, didn't you?”

Frank nodded miserably.

“And now you won't. You've seen a chance to dodge and duck again.”

“What am I dodging?” Frank asked wearily.

“You have a chance at last!” Carrie said passionately. “You've got a ranch to run, a crew to pay, cattle to raise and ship! You've—you've even got a wife to win—if you want her!”

Frank looked down at his hands a long moment, and he tasted the full bitterness of this. The one thing that could free him he could not tell her, because in telling her he would lose her. He rose now and shook his head and said miserably, “You've got to let me work it out my way, Carrie.”

“Yes,” Carrie said quietly. She managed a faint and unenthusiastic smile. “Maybe a few more months added onto six years won't kill me. But you can't dodge forever, Frank.”

She came up to him then, raised on tiptoe and kissed him. “There. I've stopped scolding.”

Afterward, Frank went down the stairs and turned aimlessly into the street, a gray despair riding him. Carrie was still loyal to him, but he had disappointed her again, and this time deeply. The most he could hope for was time, time in which to prove to her that he would work at other things, if not at Saber.

He found himself teetering on the edge of the boardwalk, staring blankly at the hotel across the street. A sudden hunger moved him into the street, headed him for the hotel dining room—a slim-hipped, restless man with misery in his face.

Chapter 7

Hugh Nunnally drifted into the lobby of the Colorado House and idled up to the desk. He said good evening to Mr. Newhouse, the owner, bought a couple of cigars at the counter by the desk, and then strolled over to one of the deep leather chairs and sat down. Passing the dining room, he didn't even bother to look in. He knew Frank was there.