Play a Lone Hand (11 page)

Giff stepped from behind the rider. “I was,” he said. “I'll probably shoot again, too.”

The woman looked levelly at him and said, “I forbid you to. There is no gunfire allowed at Torreon. Any man who works here should know that.”

Giff's voice was dry. “I don't work here, and unless I get three horses saddled right now, you'll likely hear more shooting.”

The woman frowned, “Who are you?”

“It doesn't matter,” Giff said flatly. “A couple of Torreon hands set three of us afoot this afternoon. I've come for our horses. Since they're not here, I'll take three of yours.”

“You're working for the Land Office.” It was a statement, rather than a question and Giff nodded. “I'm Mrs. Sebree. Please come to the house with me.”

Giff said quietly, “As soon as I have our horses.”

Mrs. Sebree said to the crew, “Where are they?”

There was a moment of silence and then a man cleared his throat and said, “Tied to the west gate.”

“Get them. Meanwhile give this man as many of our horses as you drove away.” Without further words Mrs. Sebree turned and stepped out into the evening. Welling warily circled the table, his gun held at his side, and Giff started after him. He saw his hat on the floor and said flatly to the closest man, “Pick it up.” The man obeyed and handed it to him, and afterward he holstered the gun, circled the table and went out.

Mrs. Sebree was waiting outside for them. She asked, “Which one of you is the special agent?”

Welling cleared his throat and said, “I am, Mrs. Sebree.” Already his voice held its old note of affability.

Mrs. Sebree said, “Then you'll want to stay here and make sure your horses are satisfactory. There won't be any more trouble, I assure you. Mr. Dixon, please come with me.”

It was not quite rudeness, but her point was plain enough. It was Giff she wanted to see, not Welling, and he was excused. She turned then and walked toward the carriage house. Surprisingly, she moved at a normal pace in spite of her limp, and Giff walked beside her in silence. Passing the carriage house, they achieved a gravel driveway. Here Mrs. Sebree rested a moment and Giff unsuccessfully tried to read her thoughts in the lowering darkness. Mrs. Sebree asked abruptly, “Did I hurt that man's feelings?”

“Everyone hurts his feelings.”

Mrs. Sebree laughed quietly and started off up the drive toward the big house. At the wide steps of the main house, Giff held out his arm to her. She said, “Thank you, but I do this by myself.”

Once on the long veranda, she turned toward a cluster of chairs, halted before one, slipped the crutch from under her arm and sat down. She indicated the chair next to her and Giff, removing his hat, also sat down.

She said, “I would offer you supper but I don't think you are in the mood to accept it from Torreon.”

“No, ma'am.”

Mrs. Sebree leaned forward, “Tell me, what is it you plan for us?”

“No, ma'am.”

Mrs. Sebree was silent a long moment. “You're the man who clouted Gus Traff with the bottle, aren't you?”

Giff said he was. He felt a stiff wariness in talking with this woman. His skinned knuckles were smarting now, and the bones in his hands ached. He felt both irritable and impatient, and only an uneasy politeness kept him seated. The woman might have been holding him for Sebree to punish, or she might only have an invalid's unspoken need for dominating a well person. Giff didn't know which, but instinct told him that he should be out of here, and soon.

Mrs. Sebree said abruptly, “I have been trying for the last ten days to think of how I could help the government trap Grady. I don't think there is any way.”

The strangeness of her words held Giff mute. He wondered if he had understood her. She had spoken as casually as if she were discussing the weather. Then he picked the flaw in her statement. “Ten days?” he asked. “The special agent hasn't been here that long.”

“Perhaps I should have said, ever since I heard an agent was coming.” She hesitated. “Grady's guilty, you know; so is Deyo and so is Kearie. So, too, are all the men behind Torreon, from Senator Warrenrode down through Modesto Salazar to that sniveling old Judge Arnold. It touches some of the biggest names in the Territory.”

“Strange you should say so,” Giff murmured.

“Why strange? I'm an honest person and no honest person likes Grady.”

“Does he discuss business with you?”

“None of it. All I know is what I pick up. Such as, for instance, the reward notice for last year's April seventeenth issue of the
Free Press
. I can guess why that is valuable to you.”

Giff said nothing.

“You'll never find it, of course. Perry Albers had it, didn't he?”

Still Giff said nothing.

Mrs. Sebree said bitterly, “I suppose it's difficult for you to trust me.”

Giff moved uneasily in his chair but did not speak. There was nothing for him to say.

Mrs. Sebree went on, “Maybe there's something I could tell you. I don't know if it's worth anything. There's a stage stop on the way to Taos called Taltal. It's up in the mountains. Grady keeps a girl up there and her name is Mrs. Bentham. Maybe she could help you.”

Giff considered this. “But would she?”

“Of course, any woman who ever had anything to do with Grady turns on him willingly. I think it's time she did.”

Giff stood up. “I'll remember that. Thank you. Good night, Mrs. Sebree.”

He turned and had taken a step when Mrs. Sebree said, “There's something else you might be interested in. Grady is afraid of Mary Kincheon. Now, good night, Mr. Dixon.”

4

When Sheriff Edwards mounted the balcony which held the business office of his store, it was midmorning. He spoke pleasantly to Arthur Miles, his bookkeeper, who was seated on the high stool before the slanted desk that held an open ledger. Miles was a dry frail man, past middle age and, because he had gambled away the business that Edwards took over from him, he was deeply sensitive to Edwards' treatment of him. The sheriff knew this and he made it a point to be unfailingly kind and courteous with the man.

With the county work, much of which rested in the hands of his deputies, out of the way for the day, Edwards looked over the balcony rail at the bulging shelves and counters and felt at home. The sheriff's duty was a chore he did not relish; he was a merchant down to his very bones.

By the time Edwards was ready to sit down at his desk, Miles had already left a stack of invoices on top of it and returned to his desk. Edwards seated himself and immediately saw the copy of the
Free Press
which he had abandoned the night before when he closed the store. His curiosity of last night was still with him. He bent down and again read the reward notice for a copy of the April seventeenth
Free Press
and again speculated on its meaning. He supposed it had something to do with the land office records and their publication, but just why any printed matter of public knowledge was worth fifty dollars to Welling he did not understand.

He was certain that in the store's files was a copy of the April seventeenth
Free Press
of last year. As a careful businessman, he kept a copy of all the store's advertising in the
Free Press
and of their dodgers and throwaways. This system was several years old and it served as a general price index for the products of all the merchants in the town. It both amused and instructed him to see how the cost of goods fluctuated over the years.

The April seventeenth issue of a year ago was undoubtedly stacked away neatly in a corner of the basement set aside for old records, but before he dug out that certain issue and produced it for Welling, he must know to what uses it would be put. He considered that only simple caution, for he was remembering the perjured evidence which Dixon, a land office employee, had retracted under oath at the hearing. Grady Sebree and Torreon were involved in this investigation in some manner, Edwards felt. Before risking possible offense to them, Edwards intended to learn just how they were involved. He would ask Welling today, he thought—and then he remembered that Welling, Fiske and Dixon were all out on a resurvey of some Torreon holdings. It would have to wait.

He was aware with a mild irritation that Miles was standing behind his chair. He detested the silent, furtive way in which Miles moved, and had often thought of belling the cat by giving Miles all the keys to the store and insisting that he wear them on a watch chain across his shabby vest.

“Have you gone over those invoices, Mr. Edwards?” Miles asked. He never referred to Edwards' title of sheriff. An elected county official in Miles's book was something beneath his recognition.

Edwards reached for the invoices and said, “No, Arthur, I'm late on everything this morning,” and he promptly forgot the files of the
Free Press
.

Arthur Miles, however, did not. He too had seen the reward item in yesterday's paper, and it had been in his mind half the night and all of the morning. Because Edwards entrusted the filing of all records to him, it was natural that he should remember the basement files—and the fifty dollars reward made it impossible for him to forget it. He was aware of Edwards' interest in it too, and as he worked that morning, he wondered if his employer would speak of it. Sometimes in the late morning Edwards put the newspaper containing the reward notice in the filing drawer, and Miles breathed easier. He was reasonably certain that Edwards, busy with store affairs and with outside interests, had either forgotten it or would forget it.

During the noon hour, Miles, who got off at one o'clock for his midday meal, was relatively alone in the store. One of the clerks, always the youngest, remained downstairs while he
the oldest
, he thought bitterly, kept watch over the records so that no pricing mistakes could happen.

Today, after Edwards had picked up his hat and gone across to the Territory House, Miles descended from the balcony, turned toward the rear of the store and went down into the basement. It was a long dark room, lit only be one dirty basement window on the side street, but he made his way unerringly toward the far front corner where the records were stored. Here he lighted a lamp in a wall bracket, then moved over toward the high stack of
Free Presses
. The April seventeenth issue of the newspaper he found easily, and simple curiosity prodded him into spreading it out on the waisthigh stack of wash tubs beneath the lamp and opening it.

He could see nothing relating to land office business in its news columns, and its advertising columns carried the usual final proof notices required of homesteaders. After noting that Cassel's Hardware in Las Vegas, as of a year ago, was underselling them on cedar fence posts, he folded the paper under his arm and went upstairs.

He smiled without humor at the thought that Edwards, even if he suspected him of the theft would never mention it. Edwards' unfailing tact and consideration for him were a source of malicious and secret delight to Miles. Ever since Edwards had bought the store from Henty, to whom Miles had lost it gambling, Miles's air of humble pride, of sensitivity to his failure had worked a small magic in his relations with Edwards. It was a coin he spent freely, aware that Edwards was too gentle to protest.

Back at his desk he slipped the paper into the drawer and resumed his work. If he had thought about it, which he did not, he would have seen no shame in taking a few cents' worth of stale newsprint and turning it in for fifty dollas. Some day his luck would turn at Henty's monte game; maybe this was the stake that would turn it. All he needed was one run of luck, just one.

When his day's work was done at six, he fussed around until Edwards said, “Be sure the night latch is on, Arthur. I'm leaving. Good night.”

When Edwards had gone, Miles turned down the night lamp, then unbuttoned his vest; placed the newspaper against his body, and rebuttoned his vest. Then he closed the store and went down four doors to the Plains Bar where he bought himself his usual six o'clock glass of whiskey. Afterward he crossed to the Territory House, took his customary place at a side table in the dining room, and selected as usual the cheapest meal on the menu. Essentially a friendless man, he did not need company and did not miss it. After finishing his deliberate supper, he went out into the lobby, halted at the desk, nodded good evening to the clerk—a man as old as himself, whose name he had never bothered to learn—and asked, “What's the number of Mr. Welling's room?”

“Number two,” the clerk replied. “He isn't in, though.”

“When will he be?”

“Can't say. I understand they're all out on a resurvey.”

A kind of distress clouded Miles's sallow face. He wanted this done with immediately, since there was always the risk that Edwards would discover this certain copy missing from the files. Besides, Henty's monte table was waiting.

The clerk, seeing Miles's disappointment, eyed him closely. “Is it about the reward?” he asked.

Miles glanced at him uneasily, and uneasily nodded. “After a fashion, yes.” Unthinkingly, he brought his hand to his chest to feel the newspaper under his vest. Its muted crinkle was nevertheless distinct enough so that the clerk looked down at his vest. Then the clerk's glance rose swiftly to Miles's face. “Would you want to leave it in the room?” he asked.

Miles said hurriedly, “No! No! I just wanted to talk with him.” He turned and beat a swift retreat to the street.
I handled that badly
, he thought irritably.
He'll tell Edwards about me
.

He halted then on the boardwalk to think this out. Why should the clerk tell Edwards? What was so strange about a man having a copy of a wanted newspaper that the clerk would even remember it or think it unusual enough to mention?
Nothing, of course
. He'd let his silly feeling of guilt stampede him. The thing to do was wait until Welling returned to town, show him the paper and explain that he found it rummaging around his attic. Edwards be damned!