Milo Talon (12 page)

“She was. Nathan Albro was a good man but stern. He was also kind and generous enough, but Stacy didn’t understand him until too late. Eventually she ran off with Newton, then divorced Nathan so she could marry Newton. The worst of it was, she took Nancy with her.”

Well, I just sat there. Molly went about her work and I began to mull that over in my mind. It changed a lot of things but brought up even more questions.

“Molly?” She stopped by my table. “What about Jefferson Henry? He claims Nancy is his granddaughter.”

“By marriage, I guess she is. He doesn’t want to find her because she will inherit from him. He wants to control her so he can have the power her property will give him. That’s why Newton married her.”

“To help his father?”

“Newton hated his father. He married Stacy to get her away from his father, and from Nathan Albro, too. You see, and I only know what I’ve heard, Jefferson Henry wanted to use some mines in which both he and Nathan as well as others had money for some stock manipulation. Nathan was a strictly honest man and would not allow it. Jefferson Henry always considered Nathan his rival.

“There were attempts to kill Nathan so he put all that property in Nancy’s name, but it was quite awhile before Jefferson Henry found out.”

It was too much for me. I had a feeling I was in the wrong business. What I should do was go to Jefferson Henry, give back what money remained, and tell him I hadn’t found her.

Again the question came … why me?

Also, I had the uneasy feeling that quitting would not be that easy. Maybe that was why Baggott was here, to insure that I would be put out of the way if anything went wrong. The more I thought about it the more I wanted to quit, but I’d never left a job undone in my life and the thought was one I couldn’t abide.

A thought suddenly occurred to me. “Molly? Who knows how much you know?”

“I—I don’t know. I don’t think anybody does, but—”

“How did you happen to come here? I know what you told me, but was that the only reason?”

She hesitated, and I said, “Molly, I don’t want to frighten you but I think you should know that the men in this game plan to win, regardless of who gets hurt. Did you notice the rather stern looking old man who ate in here the other day? The man with a somewhat southern accent?”

“Yes, I remember him.”

“They call him the Arkansawyer. Actually, I think he’s from Missouri but it doesn’t matter. His name is Baggott and he makes a profession of eliminating people who are in the way of his employers. I don’t know why he is here. Probably for me, but I don’t know that and it might be somebody else. My advice is, stay away from windows and don’t leave at the same time each day.”

When I left I went by the back door.

Hoping that I would find Pablo, I went to the small saloon where I had been a few days before. He was not there. Two rather rough-looking Mexicans were seated at the table where Pablo had sat on that other day. I thought one of them looked familiar, and nodded. He merely looked back at me from cold black eyes.

At the bar I ordered a beer. The door opened behind me and two men came in. One walked to the other end of the bar from me and the other sat down in a chair near the door. I took up my bottle and refilled my glass.

That man who sat down near the door bothered me. When a man came into a saloon he usually wanted a drink, so why—?

Turning my left side to the bar I lifted my glass with my left hand, looking along the bar at the man who now for the first time turned to face me. It was Shorty.

“I come in to say good-bye,” he said.

“Are you going somewhere, Shorty?”

“No. You are. You got two choices. Ride out or get carried out.”

Two of them, but I had not thought Shorty had that much sand. The other man was on my right but a little back of me, and to make both shots was going to call for a lot of luck. Only … suddenly I saw it clearly enough. Shorty would make the challenge and before I could draw the other man would shoot me.

It was a neat trick, and evidently from their attitude they had done it before.

“You and that Mexican partner of yours,” Shorty said, “are holding a lot of horses.”

That was it. He was going to call me a thief, and—

“You’re just a couple of damned—!”

What he might have said was cut sharply off by the short, ugly bark of a gun behind me.

Backing away to get the room in my range of vision without turning my eyes from Shorty, I saw the man by the door half rise from his chair then slump to the floor, a gun falling from his hand.

The Mexican with the hard black eyes was standing now. He looked at me and smiled, showing all his teeth. “He drew a gun,
señor
. I thought he was going to shoot me.”

“Of course,” I said.

Then he added, “Any friend of Pablo’s is a friend of mine.” He slipped his gun back into its holster, bowed slightly, and went out the door, followed by his friend.

Shorty’s face was a sickly yellow behind the stubble of beard.

“You started to say something, Shorty. What was it? We’re all waiting to hear.”

He tried to speak and the words would not shape themselves, then finally he made it. “Nothin’. I was just makin’ talk.”

“You know, Shorty,” I said, “I don’t think much is going to go right for you here. Why don’t you just mount up and ride? There’s a lot of country south of here.”

He fumbled in his pocket for some change, his eyes empty, his face slack.

“Don’t worry about paying for your drink, Shorty,” I said. “It’s on me.”

He started for the door, and as he stepped around
the body I said, “Take him with you, Shorty, but leave the gun.”

He took up the body, dragging it clumsily through the door. The bartender looked after them, then poured himself a stiff drink.

P
ENNY LOGAN WAS making coffee when I came through the door. She smiled and motioned me to the table where we had sat before. “Find what you wanted?” she asked.

“I haven’t had time to look at it all yet,” I admitted. “I’ve been doing some riding around.”

Accepting some coffee and doughnuts, I said, “Ever hear of Nathan Albro?”

“Of course. Mining, railroads, lumber, and ranching. He’s been into all of it, and made all of it work for him.”

“What’s he have that Jefferson Henry would want?”

She was thoughtful. “Almost everything he had, I’d expect, but if you are talking of particular things, Nate Albro held a controlling interest in at least three good mines and a railroad. He owned sufficient stock in several other mines to control them if he voted with one or two other large stockholders.

“Nate Albro always worked for control of anything in which he invested. Jefferson Henry was more interested in selling stock than in development. Albro didn’t like Henry and made no secret of it.

“To understand all that has happened,” she continued, “you have to understand Jefferson Henry. He really is a small-natured man who wants to be considered
important. He always envied Albro and tried several times to move in on him without doing more than annoying Nate. He is revengeful, never forgets an injury, even an imagined one.

“When Nate was killed Henry pulled some political wires to get himself appointed guardian of Nancy, and he almost made it. Newton had married her mother and was officially Nancy’s guardian and he moved them away from the reach of his father.”

Penny Logan knew about all that any outsider could pick up, partly from newspaper accounts and in part from the gossip of others who came to her for advice or assistance. A good deal came from a shrewd appraisal of the situation. She had done well with her own investments and many of the cattle and sheep men depended on her advice and suggestions.

On the train, I went over everything step by step and found myself no further ahead. The fact that men looking for Nancy had come to our ranch puzzled me until I considered the fact that they might have a description or partial description. An opening into high mountain meadows and valleys. Our ranch was one such, and another, I realized suddenly, was right behind us.

A hidden place in the mountains with a higher mountain valley behind and above it.

A ride into that country might be just what was needed. But first, the notebook.

O
NCE I GOT back to the hotel I ended up tucking the notebook in my pocket for later reading and saddling my horse. Stopping by the desk on my way out, I picked up answers to some of the letters I’d written, but I tucked them in my pocket along with the notebook.

Remembering that moving curtain in the window across from Maggie’s, I left the livery barn by the back entrance, rode around the corral, and came up behind Maggie’s where I tied my horse.

German looked around as I came in the back door. “You’re late. She’s been worried.”

John Topp was already seated at a table and he glanced up as I came in, looking from me to the kitchen entrance. For a moment I was inclined to mention the moving curtain, but did not. Molly came over with coffee as soon as I sat down. “You’re late,” she said.

“Had to get my horse,” I replied. “I’m taking a ride. I need to get out of town, get some fresh air.”

She laughed. “You could walk out of town in not more than a minute,” she said, “starting from anywhere.”

“It’s a big town to me.” I was joking, but part of it was for John Topp. “Biggest town I ever saw before I was twenty was three teepees and a
chosa.”

“What’s a
chosa?”

“A dugout. They had to drag me into town with a rope. I’d never seen so many people all at one time in my life. Why, there must have been six or seven in sight when we rode in!”

She filled my cup. “That was the year of the big dry-up. We kids just couldn’t wait until Sunday.”

“To go to church?”

“To get a drink of water. Ever’ Sunday, Ma would give us a drink. The rest of the time we sucked on stones. That’s why in my country the ground is covered with small stones; they were bigger once but we kids sucked them dry tryin’ for moisture. You could always tell just where the river was by the dust.”

“Dust?”

“The fish swimmin’ up river. They raised quite a lot of it. When the first rains came some of the fish were so unused to water they drowned. You would walk all along the bank and just pick ’em up by the dozen.”

“Drink your coffee.”

It was in my mind that one day I’d have to tangle with John Topp. I wasn’t hunting trouble, but he just made me uneasy and I figured maybe that was why Jefferson Henry had him around, to handle any trouble that developed. If this case went the way it looked we were going to have plenty of trouble. Nonetheless, I didn’t want him to get killed before we had a chance.

The trouble was that for the first time in my life I wasn’t sure. Off and on I’d had it out with quite a few, and figured that at rough-and-tumble, root-hog-or-die sort of fighting I was as good as the best. But there was something awesome about Topp. He had those big
hands and shoulders that bulged with muscle, and big as he was, he moved like a cat.

So I didn’t want anybody shooting him until I’d put a bunch of five against his chin.

Baggott might be laying for me, but maybe for him. Worst of all, he might be trying for a shot at Molly, who knew more than she was telling and maybe knew too much for the comfort of some. So it was in my mind to tip him off.

“Molly? Has Mr. Baggott been in?”

Out of the tail of my eye I saw Topp’s head come up and his fork pause halfway to his mouth.

“He has been back once or twice. Most of the time I think he buys what he wants down at the store. I see him down the street with a sack in his hands once in a while.”

“I was wondering,” I continued, “if that was him had a room on the second floor across the street. Somebody is living up there and Baggott doesn’t stay at the hotel.”

She brought my breakfast and I did no more talking. Now he knew, and so did anybody else who was in the room, and by now there were a half dozen others. When breakfast was finished I slipped out the back way, took a quick look around, and stepped into the saddle.