Milo Talon (6 page)

Yet I was jumpy and restless and I thought I knew why. I was being watched. Why was I watched? To see if I did my job? Or might I be treading on somebody’s toes?
Or did somebody want to know what I found out as soon as I found it?
Perhaps to move in and take over, eliminating me?

Right then I wished I could sit down over a cup of coffee at our kitchen table and talk it over with Ma. My mother, old Em Talon, who had once been Emily Sackett, was one of the shrewdest people I’d ever known. She had a way of getting right to the heart of things. But she was miles away on our ranch in Colorado and whatever I did would have to be done by myself.

Suppose I saddled up and rode off into the hills? Would I be followed? It might be one way of discovering who was interested in me and in my activities.

On the other hand, I wanted to be here to pick up that valise from St. Louis, if it came. By this time it might have been stolen, sold, lost, or given away.

Of one thing I was sure. If the baggage was still there, Portis would find it. Leave it to Portis, I told myself, and take that ride.

I
T WAS A clear, bright day. The town lay upon a flat with not a tree or a shrub that was so much as knee-high. In the distance the hills lay low upon the horizon, and glancing back toward town, I knew at once I would not be followed. There was simply no way it could be done in that stark and empty land.

A few miles out from town I found a hollow with a little water in its bottom and some fresh green grass. Ground-hitching my horse, I lay down on the slope to doze a little in the warm sun. Lying on the ground I could hear the sound of any approaching horse.

For my trouble I got nothing but a little sunshine and relaxation. My horse, however, got a belly full of good grass, which he seemed to appreciate. Nobody made any attempt to follow me, nobody even seemed to know or care that I had ridden out of town.

Was John Topp left behind to watch me? If so, was he the only one?

While I lay in the sun, my mind was not idle. With only the sound of my horse crunching grass, it was a good time to think, and slowly I turned every step of the case over and over, trying to reach some conclusion. At the end I was no further ahead than when I began.

When the train came in I was at the station, but there was nothing for me. Watching the train come in
was about the only excitement the town had to offer so I was not alone on the platform.

At least a dozen people were standing around, and there were several rigs. One was driven in by a rancher who was meeting his daughter, and when she got off the train every male in sight took a couple of steps closer.

She was something to look at and she knew it. She paused on the step a moment before she stepped down so the women could see what she was wearing, and she lifted her skirt just a little so she could step down easier, which gave the boys a glimpse of what was usually described as a well-turned ankle.

She glanced at me, quick to spot a stranger of the right age, but my eyes were on the baggage car. Not that I was missing anything, because I was standing where I could see both at once.

John Topp was there, seated on a bench against the wall of the station, his face revealing no interest in anything. Noting the size of the man and his hands, I made a mental note to be careful. Mr. Topp would be a rough package to handle. He looked as strong as a bull and just as determined. He seemed totally unaware of my existence and I hoped it would stay that way.

When the train pulled out the loiterers wandered back across the street to the stores or saloons. The saloon I chose was a squalid place with a fat bartender with heavy-lidded, piggish eyes. He provided the beer I asked for, then returned to the other end of the bar and hoisted his bulk on a stool and buried his face in a huge sandwich.

Three men, one of them a Mexican vaquero, sat at a nearby table beside the cobwebbed, flyspecked window.
They were drinking beer and talking in a desultory way, and without much interest. It was cooler here than out in the street where their horses switched their tails at the flies.

“Nowhere,” one of them said, “they went nowhere. They only sat. Even in their car it must have been hot. And the wind? There was always the wind. Day after day they sat there and nobody moved except sometimes to sit in the shade of the water tank. They are crazy, I tell you! Crazy!”

“Hah! You call
them
crazy? Who sleeps in a dirty bunkhouse? Who follows the cattle? Is it him? He lives in a car like a mansion! He eats of the best! He has to drink what he wishes! And you call
him
crazy?”

“If I could live like that I would not be where the heat is and the wind. I would live in a
town!
And they just sit there, day after day, and do nothing!”

“I think they wait.” The silent one spoke quietly. “I think they wait for something or someone. I think when that somebody comes, they go.”

“They did not go. They came here,” the first speaker replied. “Here! You think that is not crazy? What is here?” He swept his arms in a wide gesture. “Nothing is here, yet here they stay for more days, just waiting.”

“The car is gone,” the quiet one said, “but the big one is still here.”

“What does he do?”

“He sits. He walks along the street and comes back to sit some more. He does nothing.”

They were silent and I took a swallow of my beer. The vaquero looked up and caught my eyes on them. I lifted my glass. “Luck!” I said.

He looked into his empty glass and shrugged.

Motioning to the bartender, I said, “Beers for the gentlemen.” To them I said, “I have had good luck. An old debt … sixty dollars paid me. Two months’ wages!”

Reluctantly, the bartender withdrew his face from the sandwich and served the beers. I took mine and joined them. “For three days I shall sleep, I shall eat, and I shall watch the trains come and go. After that I’ll look for a job. Or maybe I’ll drift.”

“It is good to loaf sometimes, but you will find no work here. The cattle are gone, but for a few. It is sheep,” one of them said with disgust.

“There is money in sheep,” the quiet one commented. “You butcher a steer, he is gone. You clip the wool from a sheep and he is still there. Do not speak lightly of the sheep.”

“The one who had the car? Was he sheep or cattle?”

The vaquero shrugged. “I thought he was with the steam cars, but I do not know. He bought no stock, and from over the hill where I was holding some horses on the grass I could see him well.”

“I hear he had no visitors.”

“Hah! So you think!” The vaquero leaned across the table. “
I
know! Two! Two visitors he had and both by night. They did not come together, but each rode up in darkness, very quietly. When each came to the door there was a moment of light when the door opened, that was all.

“Each rode alone. Each rode in the night. It was four days after the first came before the second arrived.”

“It has an odor,” the quiet one said. “Why only in the night? Is the man in the car a thief?”

“There were no others? Only two?” I asked.

The vaquero shrugged, then hesitatingly, he added, “There was another night when I heard something. My dog was with the horses and he was restless. When something worries him, I know it. I suspected wolves, but I saw none. I saw nothing. But the dog … the dog was worried.

“I went back to lie down. All was still. Then I heard it in my ear. A man running.”

“A rider?”

“No rider. A man running. Running very fast, very frighten.”

“Running? Where would a man run
to
, Pablo? There is no place. It is all wide open.”

“It was a man running,” Pablo insisted. “I know what is a man running. It is not a horse. It is not a sheep or a cow. It is a man … running hard.”

“Where did he go?” I asked.

The scoffer shrugged. “That’s a question! A man could run for a day and come to nothing. Bah! You were dreaming!”

“The scream was not a dream,” Pablo said.

We all stared at him.

He stared back. “That was later. There was a scream. A single scream. I heard it.”

“An animal,” one said, “a mountain lion, perhaps.”

“Another beer?” I suggested. “Soon the money will be gone but while it is here … drink!”

We drank solemnly and were friends. Nor did they speak again of the car or of the man running. We talked of cattle and horses, of saddles, ropes and spurs, and two of us had ridden in brush country, and
we spoke of that, making the stories greater for the benefit of the two who knew no better.

After awhile I arose and left them. Later, on the street, I saw Pablo, the vaquero. “A strange thing,” I said, “a man running out there, and the scream.”

He was rolling a cigarette. “The scream was a man,” he said. Delicately, he touched his tongue to the cigarette paper. “It was a man in pain, very much pain.” He glanced at me. “Once, during the revolution, I have heard such a scream.”

He lit the cigarette. “The scream. I think it comes from the man who was in the cars.”

“Cars?”

“There were two.
His
car and another, a boxcar, always locked.”

This Mexican, he was not simply talking now. He was talking to me. Very quietly, I said, “Pablo, we need to talk, you and I, but not here.”

“I am with the horses, perhaps one more week. It is east and somewhat north. An hour or so of riding.”

“I shall come.” I turned away, then hesitated. “Pablo? Be careful.”

“Si.”
He brought a glow to the tip of the cigarette. “I heard the man scream.”

Seated over coffee at Maggie’s, I thought about that. If a man had been running there might still be tracks. There might be more than tracks. If anything had been left it might be long before it was found. After all, this was not a place where men rode.

“Jefferson Henry,” I told myself, “I am beginning to wonder about you.”

A
T DAYBREAK I went down the street to Maggie’s. The horizon was lifting yellow into the sky, but in the west a few laggard stars remained stubbornly in place. My boots echoed on the boardwalk.

One light showed from the station where the dispatcher was already at work. The only other lights were in the hotel behind me and at Maggie’s, which was ahead.

The single street opened to the prairie at either end, and the buildings along the street were false-fronted or two-storied frame structures. It was bleak and bare, the weather-beaten buildings taking shape from the darkness as the light grew.

Why here? Of all places?

German was drawing a cup of coffee as I came through the door. “Set,” he said. “I’ll have mine with you.”

“Know a vaquero named Pablo?” I took my coffee to the table.

“I know him. Good man. One of the best hands with a rope I ever did see. He’ll ride ’em, too. I mean he’ll ride the rough string, ride ’em straight up an’ to a finish.”

“Talked with him some. Holdin’ some horses back at the edge of the hills.”

“Rides for the Y-up. The boys call it the yup brand. Small outfit, havin’ a bad time of it now due to drouth. They’ve got stock scattered all over the country wherever they can find water an’ grass.”

“I like him.”

“So do I, but don’t take him light. He rode with one o’ them Mex outfits recruited to hunt an’ fight Apaches down below the border. He joined up when he was fifteen and did nothing else for the next seven years. He’s been shot, knifed, scratched an’ bit an’ chewed on, but he’s still ridin’ ’em straight up.”

German returned to the kitchen and I was just finishing my first cup and reaching for the pot when the door opened. It was that railroad man I’d seen on my first day in town. He crossed to me and put a letter on the table.

“Friend of ours said to give this to you. Didn’t trust it to the mails.”

“Thanks.”

“My name’s Ribble. If there’s anything I can do, let me know.”

He went off to another table and sat down. I let the letter lay for a minute and studied it.

Portis. It was his hand. If Portis didn’t even trust the mail—

Taking up the letter, I opened it. A baggage check fell out. At the same time my eyes caught the first line of the letter.