Play a Lone Hand (5 page)

Giff nodded.

“Did you ever hear of a rancher here by the name of Sebree, Grady Sebree? He's manager and biggest stockholder in the Torreon Cattle Company.”

Giff said flatly, “Yes.”

Fiske looked surprised. “What do you know about him?”

“Well, in the space of five minutes yesterday I met one man scared to death of him and another who'd run from him. Why?”

“Well, Albers' letter accused Sebree along with Earl Kearie, the
Free Press
publisher, and Ross Deyo of being in on a tremendous land swindle. You remember Deyo's the man we were introduced to outside yesterday, the register for the local land office?”

Dixon was watching him with surly attention.

“The swindle works this way: Sebree has his riders file homestead entries on waterholes and springs that his company wants. Deyo obligingly predates the entries for the land office records, and Sebree's cowboys swear that his phony entrymen have lived on the land and improved it. But before a title can be given for any homestead, the land office and the public have got to see proof of publication—that is, a legal form printed in a newspaper stating that so-and-so has filled all homestead requirements for a certain piece of land. That's where Kearie comes in.”

Dixon was watching him, listening closely.

“Kearie has his printer run off an ordinary issue of the
Free Press
. But the type is left set up afterwards. Then Kearie has his printer—Albers in this case—lift out some advertisements and insert in their place the fraudulent final proof notices of Sebree's riders. He runs off two copies only, then destroys the type.”

Giff scowled. “Who are they for?”

“One for Sebree, and one for Deyo. Deyo has to file proof notices in Washington. Kearie takes one of these phony issues over to a crooked J.P. named Arnold. Kearie fills out an affidavit of publication swearing that these notices appeared in four consecutive issues of his paper. Arnold notarizes it. Then Kearie takes the affidavit and the phony paper to Deyo. Since everything appears in proper order to Deyo—after all, he sees a copy of the paper with his own eyes—Deyo passes them on to the Land Office in Washington. Pretty soon, Sebree's riders get a certificate of title to the homesteads. If anybody is interested enough to kick when they find Sebree suddenly owns that land, the land office records are trotted out.” Fiske shrugged. “There's the certificate of title which Washington wouldn't have granted unless everything was legal, Deyo says. Certainly final proof notices were published. Just hunt up a copy of the
Free Press
and see for yourself.”

“Where does a man get a copy of a month-old newspaper?” Giff asked.

“At the newspaper office,” Fiske said dryly. “And he gets the same story you got yesterday. ‘No, we haven't got a copy of that issue. It's gone.'Ý

Dixon was silent a long moment, and then he asked skeptically, “Could it be done?”

“I never heard of it, but it could,” Fiske said grimly. “Anyway, Albers wrote Welling that's the way it worked.”

“And Albers is dead.”

Fiske looked at him a long moment, then nodded. “What more proof do you need that it worked?”

“So Sebree's the man who killed him, the man who had me beat up?”

“Sebree, Deyo or Kearie.”

It's Sebree, all right
, Giff thought thinly. It all meshed perfectly, from Sebree's hiring him in hopes he could get inside information down to the beating he received last night for butting into something that wasn't his business.

Giff's voice had a rough edge to it as he asked, “If you knew all this already from what Albers wrote, why did you send me to get him?”

“No good reason,” Fiske said wearily. “In his letter, Albers said he once had two copies of the April seventeenth
Free Press
for last year—one a true run copy, the other a fixed-up phony—and that they'd been stolen from him.”

“Who stole them?” Giff asked skeptically.

“That's what I wanted to ask him—if he had any idea who could have them. I'm sorry I sent you.”

Some of Giff's truculence fell away at Fiske's disarming honesty. He wanted to clear up the rest of it now, and he asked, “What if I'd found the April seventeeth issue in the
Free Press
files?”

“That would have proved Albers' charge.”

“I don't see how.”

Fiske spread his hands. “Because the phony final proof notices of those five men are in the land office records in Washington. We could get them. If we found a true run copy of the April seventeeth
Free Press
and found those proof notices weren't in it, we'd prove fraud. Sebree, Deyo and Kearie would go to jail.”

Giff understood it now. He asked, “What's so hard about finding a copy? There must be one somewhere outside of the newspaper files.”

“Who saves fifteen-month-old newspapers?”

“Advertise and ask.”

“In Kearie's own newspaper?” Fiske asked coldly. “No, nobody keeps old newspapers except a newspaper itself. Since we can't ask everyone to look in their woodsheds, it's pretty hopeless, isn't it?”

Giff supposed that was true and was silent, but anger was still in him. In spite of Fiske's candor, he had the feeling that he had been used. He had been offered a simple work hand's job, and had accepted it in order to eat. In the space of one short day, he had become involved in an intrigue he had no taste for, and had got a beating for his pains.
Not a beating, a kicking
, he thought bitterly. The thing to do now was pull out, quit. He had his saddle, and he'd paid for it by taking his beating. He owed none of these people any loyalty, and Cass, once he understood, would not blame him for quitting. No, he'd borrow a horse from Cass and ride out today.

Fiske drank his coffee and then reached in his pocket for his pipe. Stuffing it with shaggy tobacco he seemed to carry loose in his jacket pocket, he regarded Giff frowningly. “I suppose you're through working for the government.”

Giff nodded. “You can get another packer easy.”

Fiske sighed. “Don't blame you.” He lighted his pipe, and then said, “You'll have to go to the hearing.”

“All right.”

“I'll see you afterward and pay you.”

Giff rose. “What do I say at the hearing?”

“Just what you've told Edwards.”

Giff accepted that and tramped out. Once on the street, he turned toward the livery, wondering where Edwards' store was. Already there was a feeling of relief upon him at his decision to leave. He'd left a job working for a drunken fool and near helpless old man at a job whose deadly danger he was only beginning to realize. He had worked long enough in the bitter anonymity of the trail drives to know that his life was valuable only to him. Here in this strange town, he was a saddle tramp with only a name to distinguish him from other broke drifters. Nobody would question his death, or if they did, the questioning would cease at Sebree's command.

Passing Henty's saloon, he had not seen a store marked Edwards. He halted, about to ask directions from a man approaching when his glance fell on the
Free Press
office.

Remembering his conversation with Fiske, a kind of perversity settled upon him as he regarded the sign. What was it Fiske had said when he suggested advertising for the missing copy of the
Free Press? In Kearie's own newspaper?
Giff was remembering Mary Kincheon's remarks about Kearie's total indifference to his publication. It just might work, he thought, and stepped off into the street, heading for the
Free Press
office.

Mary Kincheon, apronless and neat, was seated at the front desk. She wore a dark blue serviceable dress, and was bent over the desk writing. Paper cuffs protected her sleeves, and Giff could hear them scratching as she wrote.

Looking up, presently, she smiled and leaned back in her chair, regarding him with a swift mockery. “The clay pigeon,” she exclaimed. “You're off to a good start, so I hear. Who pasted all that pretty color on your face?”

Giff felt a faint irritation at her words, but he dredged up a grin. He noted as he walked over to the desk that the press in the rear was silent, and he thought
Maybe it'll work
.

“There was sand on my pillow.”

She regarded him levelly, her face altering into soberness. “They're just playing patty-cake now. Wait until they get serious.”

“Who is ‘they'?”

She shrugged. “Why, whoever gave you that. Do
you
know?”

“No. They won't do it again, either.” He asked, then, before she could comment, “Is the paper printed?”

“Hah!”

Giff waited, then asked, “What does that mean?”

“It means is isn't. It means it won't be until Kearie remembers he owns a newspaper.”

“Can I get something in it?”

The girl frowned. “What's so importatnt around here it can't wait a week? Land office business?”

At Giff's nod, she rose and started back to the print shop. Falling in behind her, Giff noticed how straight she carried herself, and he wondered suddenly
Is she in with Kearie?
He would know in a minute, he thought, as she paused by the type case, picked up a composing stick, and rested both hands on the stand. “What is it, now? It better be short.”

“Head it ‘Fifty Dollars Reward,'” Giff directed.

Her hands moved so swiftly it was only seconds before she looked up at him, ready, and he went on, “Will be paid for a complete April seventeenth, 1882, issue of the
San Dimas County Free Press
by V. Welling, Territory House, Corazon.”

For a long moment her hands were motionless, and Giff could not tell if she were memorizing, or making up her mind to refuse the advertisement. When she looked up at him, her face was composed. “What's so special about the April seventeenth issue of last year?”

“They didn't tell me,” Giff said idly.

She hesitated another long moment, then her hands went into swift action. Giff felt a faint elation. He was past the worst part, the accepting of the advertisement. With any luck, the paper would be printed and distributed before Kearie ever saw the item, and then it would be too late to do anything about it.

He waited until Mary Kincheon had finished, then watched her move over to the composing stone, unlock the forms, pull a filler out, insert the advertisement and lock the forms. When she was finished, he said, “Welling will stop by and pay you.”

Mary nodded and observed acidly: “From what I hear, you'll have to count it out for him and tie it in a handkerchief. Why do you work for him?”

“Food.”

“I understand.” She gave him a brief and friendly smile before he turned and tramped out.

Of the first passerby he inquired for Edwards' and was told it was a hardware store across the street from the hotel. Retracing his steps, he felt an odd sense of satisfaction. He would be long gone out of town when the advertisement appeared this afternoon. If it did Fiske any good, he was welcome to it. If it did Sebree harm that was fine, too. In a way, it would compensate for the beating.

Entering Edwards', he was told by a clerk that the hearing was to be held in a back room. He went to the back of the store and behind the counter to the left he stepped through an open door into a large room containing folding chairs facing a table at which a slack-faced elderly man sat. He was in conversation with Sheriff Edwards, who had a leg up on the table.

A dozen or so men besides Welling and Fiske were scattered around the room in several groups; Gus Traff was talking to a pair of men in the far corner, and he did not look at Giff as he entered.

Giff spied Cass Murray sitting alone on a chair toward the front of the room, his arms folded, a generous chew of tobacco pouching his cheek. There was something lonely and independent and be-dammed-to-you about the man that Giff did not wholly understand, but he liked him. When he slipped into the chair beside Cass, ignoring both Welling and Fiske, Cass turned and winked solemnly at him.

“You've got something better to do than this,” Giff suggested.

Cass grimaced. “As a taxpayer I got a right to be entertained. It's always the same; nobody'll know nothing.” He looked levelly at Giff. “You know anything?”

The answer to that question was what had brought Cass to his room early this morning, Giff knew. It was a question he had ducked, mostly because he had not known if Fiske wanted him to talk. Now he ducked it again, but for another reason. “Wait and see,” he said.

Before Cass could probe further, Giff asked, “Who's at the desk?”

“Arnold, the J.P.”

Edwards called out six names now of men who were in the crowd of loafers, among them Gus Traff, and these men filed up to the six chairs set along the wall. They were the jury for the murder hearing.

Only now did Gus Traff look at Giff. It was a long, down-bearing look holding a kind of careless triumph that Giff readily understood. He remembered that Gus Traff had been watching Albers all through the afternoon; it was doubtless Traff who shot Albers—or who waited at the alley mouth to administer Giff's kicking. Giff felt a slow wrath uncoil inside him as he held Traff's glance, and then Sebree's foreman looked away.

The proceedings that followed were informal to the point of carelessness. Arnold stated the purpose of the investigation was to determine the cause of Perry Albers' death. He called him “Albert” and pronounced his first name “Peery” and Sheriff Edwards, bored, did not correct him.

As Arnold droned on, an idea slowly grew within Giff. It was, he knew, a reckless one, but he knew he was going to carry it out.

The first witness was Henty's bartender, who had not bothered to remove his apron. His testimony was brief. Around eight-thirty he had removed Albers from the premises because he was using up a poker table that was wanted for a game. The removal had been gentle, he insisted.