The Eye of the Hunter (8 page)

Suddenly he noticed something that made him laugh. They looked at him.

“Men,” he said, “I wonder if one of you soldiers can tell me why in hell we're walking down the middle of the street, like Wyatt Earp going to a shoot-out? Are sidewalks off-limits for shoot-outs?”

They voiced a little nervous laughter.

Then Henry said, “Leo?” and the man moved close to him. “Is this the kind of reporting Ambrose usually does?”

Leo held his rifle across his shoulder like a tramp's stick, front sight first. “Ben is as tricky as a blind bull, Henry. He persecuted Frances Parrish's father so cruelly—she was a Wingard, you see, Dr. Wingard's daughter—that he up and died.”

Henry looked at him and wrinkled his nose in distaste. But he was loving it, finding out about Frances while discovering Ambrose's weak points.

“It was over the Narcotics Act. You know about it, of course.”

“Put controls on narcotic substances? Yes, but what did Ambrose have to do with that?”

“Well, every last doctor in the country had his own pet syrup, or bitters, or whatnot, and every last concoction was laced with opium! Except Doc Wingard's. It had cocaine.”

Budge Gorman put his face close to Henry's and bawled, “Henry, it was hell to pay when they took away all them drugs! Mrs. Ormsby's Bitters would cross your eyes and set you to singing ‘Camptown Races.' And don't you know people was scurrying around like fire ants trying to find something just as good?”

Henry laughed. “No fooling!”

The tall, bearded man called Elmo said, “Dr. Wingard called his the Viennese Doctor's Wine of Coca. He was my doctor, and I used his concoction when I felt poorly. But he always said, ‘Don't overdo it, Elmo—don't overdo any drug.' He was a fine man. Yes, indeed. But don't quote me....”

Henry looked at him in disbelief. “Don't quote you? I think that's a pretty nice thing to say about a man.”

“Uh, well—Ben's got everybody believing ... I mean, nobody wants to stand out, do they?”

Henry put his rifle on his shoulder. “Okay, I've got it.” And he thought with relish of how he was going to make the foppish publisher stand out that night.

As they walked, he was appraising each store they passed—a drugstore, several saloons, Proto Brothers' General Store, another drugstore called Chenoweth and Mix, a music store, a meat market. Complete little town, hidden away here on the border! Like a model, a creche.

“Why did he call it the ... whatever?”

“Some recipe he read in a medical magazine. A famous Austrian doctor was boosting it as a tonic.”

“A doctor for crazy people,” Leo said. “A Dr. Freud, in Vienna. So Wingard compounded this coca stuff, no worse than anything else, and Ambrose took it—took quarts of it, Frances told me, after the trouble. Half the stuff he published made no goddamn sense at all. But when Doc Wingard wouldn't give him any more, he began printing stories about him selling it in secret! Wingard tried to sue him, but the court threw out the case. Oh, they was wild times in Nogales!”

“And then he died?” Henry prompted.

“Yes. He'd lost most of his patients. And a fine doctor, I reckon.”

“But don't quote you?”

“Well ... a lot of women cut Frances dead as well, and then—after all that!—Ambrose had the nerve to go to the doctor's graveside service!”

“No!” Henry looked at his rifle, as though to share with it the appalling story.

“And Frances slapped him in the face with his own bouquet! There was rose petals and cigar ash all over him. Ambrose has never forgiven her. Now it sounds like he's out to persecute
her.”

“If that isn't that the damnedest, rottenest thing I ever heard. Come on, boys. I've got to hear Ambrose's side of the story. I hope for his sake he's got one.”

He halted before the
Globe
office; it was on the left and the Frontera Hotel was on the right. Not far beyond, sprawled in a chair before the sentry box, a soldier sat puffing a pipe, a rifle leaning against the fence. Not much like guard duty in Cuba, thought Henry.

“Yonder's the newspaper office,” said Leo Lucas. “Ben may not be there, but if he ain't, the general will be.”

“That's Milo Stockard? Brave tracker of the wily Apache?” Henry was aware of being feverish. Was it malaria or excitement?

“Yes, sir,” said Leo. “That's the old general. Tougher'n a night in a south Georgia jail.”

Henry ran his eyes up and down the tall, narrow building, like a carpenter, maybe; or a demolitions expert deciding where to place his charges. Downstairs, a light burned behind the mullioned window. The name of the newspaper was emblazoned on the glass in gold leaf and boldly outlined in black. Above the walk, turning slightly in the breeze, the golden globe hung from a wooden boom extending over the sidewalk. In the final rays of the sunset it had the greenish look of a tarnished catalogue watch.

Rubbing the Winchester's gun stock thoughtfully, Henry said, “Why don't you boys have a beer while I talk to Ambrose? I don't want him to say he was outmanned.”

They scattered, one of the Grand Army men hurrying into the hotel and the others heading for saloons, obviously planning to pass the word that the famous Kansas City gunman was calling Ambrose's bluff. He swung the loading lever down and back to punch the first of fifteen shells into the chamber with a slick, oily sound; a fat .44-105 bottleneck shell was now hammer-ready, a cartridge nearly as large as his index finger. He snapped his fingers and set his feet apart.

“Ben Ambrose!”
he shouted. “You lying gasbag! Get your polecat carcass out here!” Is that wild Western enough? he wondered.

A man came into the doorway and stared at him, his sleeves rolled up and a printer's stick in his hands. He was a short, bandy-legged, grizzled old badger of a man with a bald head and a black patch over one eye, and he was Captain Logan's old commanding officer.

“He's not here, friend!” he called. “But do you know who I am?”

“Yes, sir. Indeed I do. Do you know me?”

“Reckon I do! You're Black Jack Logan's boy!”

“No, sir, I'm just plain Henry Logan. It's between Ambrose and me. My father don't come into it.”

“Suit yourself. Come back tomorrow morning.”

“I will. But I beg to leave a message.”

“Shoot,” the general said.

“Right, General! Right in the old ten-ring. That's exactly what I had in mind.”

He squeezed the gun stock between his biceps and ribs and fired the first crashing shot without aiming. The general yelled and ducked. After the golden lightning flash of flame, the thunderclap that followed shook windows all along the street. He heard horses snorting and stamping. The golden globe resounded with a loud
whanggg
! It leapt and began to swing, while glittering strips and sequins of gold leaf drifted in the air. On the hotel veranda, men were laughing and yelling and stamping on the wooden deck.

Henry bared his teeth, snapped another shell into the chamber, and started a deafening rapid-fire fusillade.

The big metal ball rocked and swung; it clanged and thumped against the front of the shop as the big blunt-nosed slugs hammered at it, caving it in, tearing pieces of tin loose. Ambrose's personal world lurched and danced, banged hollowly, and shed gilt in patches like sunburned skin, or butterflies, or certain kinds of fireworks.

The smoke from the gunfire generated some coughing, and Henry's ears rang. He was aware that the hotel veranda was clustered with yelling, howling, laughing men, while others lined the walks bawling encouragement. With only a few shells left, he lowered the gun and flexed his shoulders. Inside the newspaper office he could see the general standing coolheaded, arms crossed, waiting.

Looking almost pensive, Henry rocked another shell into the chamber, his eyes on the swinging wreckage of the sphere, his front sight trailing it back and forth like a metronome, but with the gun still at the offhand position. At the precise moment, he squeezed off the shot. The globe was ripped from the boom to which it was bolted.

A man bawled,
“There she goes!”

The globe made an arching flight and landed in the street. It bumped along a few yards and came to rest in the dirt. Henry pulled the loading lever down and threw the breech open, like an antagonist offering another man his hand after some bitter words.

“General?” he called.

Stockard came to the walk, still clutching the printer's stick, and he looked unruffled.

“The hell you aren't Black Jack's boy!” he shouted. “Now, if I ever knew a Logan, you'll get drunk on Bushmill's and sing till sunup!”

“I said I was my own man. I'm going home and clean my rifle. Tomorrow we can talk about the kind of man Ambrose is.”

His ears still ringing, Henry poured water from a pitcher into a basin, scrubbed the powder-smoke grime from his hands, and then used the soapy water to sluice out the barrel of his gun. Afterward he ran oily patches through it and wiped the gun with affection. He chuckled as he put it away in its case.

Then he noticed a small religious postcard lying on the white candlewick bedspread.

He picked it up. It represented a crucifix, more gruesome than most he had seen, with great gouts of blood running down Christ's body and face and a crown of thorns like barbed wire. Was Allie the religious person who was slipping the message to him? More likely Miss Leisure was the culprit; who, however, was bound to be a Southern Baptist. So who was his secret pal? He turned the card. A message was written in careful handwriting on the reverse, but the language of the author was Spanish.

Yawning, Henry trudged down the hall to the kitchen, where he found Alice Gary washing up the supper things with the help of the same little Mexican girl who had led him to his room. “Hey, Allie!” he said, and she started and looked at him.

“Henry! Thank heaven! I heard a lot of shooting....”

“We had a little turkey shoot down there,” Henry said. “I was wondering if you could translate this for me.”

Allie looked at both sides of the card and spoke to the girl. The girl whispered in her ear, twisting at a chocolate-brown braid and rubbing her knees together.

“She says a boy brought it from Father Vargas, at the Catholic church. That's on the other side, the other Nogales. It says, let's see ... ‘
Esteemed—dear
—Señor Logan, please to, to ... please do me the favor of, of to visit me ... at the church, as fast, as
early
as you can.
Mañana!'—
know that one? You'll learn it!—‘on negotiations ... no, business, of the more great, greatest delicacy....' Well! have you been sparking some Mexican lady?”

“No, ma'am! I don't get this,” Henry said. “Is my soul a matter of the greatest delicacy?” He scratched his armpit, yawned again.

Allie said she didn't savvy, either. Henry said, “I reckon it'll keep till
mañana
,” and went to bed.

Roosters, donkeys, dogs, and bells, wagon tires grinding along the street, horses clopping, and finally a train whistle down the hill woke Henry early the next morning. The window curtain glowed with the clear rose of an Arizona dawn. He groped for his watch, squinted, and saw that it was five-forty. Still groggy, he sat up, wound the Ingersoll, and began to feel sudden excitement about the day ahead.

By the time he had shaved, breakfast was ready. Arthur Cleveland was eager to hear about the shoot-out, but Henry offered no news. Finally Arthur said, “I hear you shot the windows out of the newspaper office! Drove Stockard clean out the back door!”

Henry hooted. “Come on, Arthur—you must have read that in the
Globe
. I just gave a shooting demonstration. Pass the butter, please.”

In the warm morning he sauntered down the hill. Smoke from breakfast fires brimmed in the basin. People were going to work on horses, in buggies, and on foot. He decided to walk and headed south on International Street, underneath the wooden awnings. Passing the
Globe
office, he could see two men inside. The remains of the globe had been carried away, and most of the gold leaf was gone.

At the ten-strand barbed-wire fence, a yawning sentry on the American side waved him on. There was no guard on the Mexican side, and he wandered into the village, noting similarities to pueblos in Cuba. The stony hills rising on either side looked skinned, rockier than those of the Fort Bowie area, and the town itself resembled a camp, the street irregularly defined by pitted dirt walks. What awnings he saw were made of cactus wands supported by crooked poles, and all the buildings were constructed of unplastered adobe bricks. Dogs and children were setting up a racket everywhere, while burros trotted north with loads of firewood. Women in black dresses, with black rebozos over their heads, hurried along with buckets of water drawn up from a pump somewhere.

He saw no church steeple, but finally, peering down an alley, spotted a high whitewashed wall, perfectly plain, but with a round belfry rising from behind it and a deep blue sky setting off the tower.

He walked through the alley to the wall and passed through an opening in the church wall to a bleak forecourt outlined by small whitewashed rocks, a few cactus growing in this defined area. The building itself looked as solid as the Alamo. The walls were thick; the big, iron-studded double door was set several feet back to form a sort of alcove. As he was looking for a bell to ring, a priest in a black cassock parted the tall doors and greeted him by name.

“Señor Logan? Thank you for coming, sir. I am Father Vargas. Please come in.”

The priest's hand felt cold and fragile in Henry's. Vargas was a small man of about forty who had a look of nervous intensity, the pallor and half frown of a man who often had stomach trouble. As he stepped back into the church, one thin hand massaged the other, as though comforting it. He was, Henry believed, a very troubled man.