The Trail West (10 page)

“Why? Is he lookin’ for me?”

Butch stepped down to the lobby floor. “Seems to me he was lookin’ for you. I mean, you were involved in the arrest of Alf Baylor this mornin’. Or have I got the wrong Dooley Monahan?” He cocked his brow.

“Why you askin’? You found you got some time to kill?”

“Thought I might walk up there with you, iffen you don’t mind. I’d like to have a look at this killer who’s been doggin’ us all over the territory.”

Monahan walked toward the door. “No skin off my hide.”

Sweeney scurried to catch up, which he did only after following the old cowboy’s spur-jangling steps halfway to the café.

By the time suppertime rolled around, Monahan and Sweeney had been at Carmichael’s mercy for several hours. The sheriff’s office—also the jail and the courthouse—was cramped and only half-heartedly tended to.

Two cells sat side by side not ten feet from the back wall, and less than five feet from the sheriff’s desk. On the opposite wall stood a spare chair and the requisite row of filing cabinets—topped by a teetering stack of unfiled paperwork and a jumbled pile of hardware so mixed Monahan couldn’t tell what it was . . .or what it used to be. Two stacks of old newspapers swayed on the floor at the end of the file cabinets, and a door behind the desk led, according to the crooked sign, to the courthouse.

He’d got a good, close-up look at Alf for the first time, and allowed that he’d never seen him before, only heard of his handiwork, and showed the tattered voucher for his brother. Pulling his wallet out again, he handed over the precious clipping to Sweeney with a low, “Don’t you lose that, hear?”

Sweeney filed it away in his pocket without looking at it.

Alf didn’t seem like such a bloodthirsty killer when he was behind bars. He was so thin and lanky he fairly rattled in his clothes, although the age and condition of his frayed and grimy trousers and shirt indicated his physical condition was nothing new.

His visage revealed nothing more. His dull eyes were cloudy, which might explain his poor marksmanship. Or he could very simply be a bad shot.

Monahan didn’t much care. He plain took a dislike to the man right off the bat, would have disliked him even if he hadn’t been in Alf’s sights earlier in the day. It was just the general principle of the thing.

As for his opinion of Sheriff Carmichael, well, that hadn’t changed much since the night out at Blue’s place. He still found the sheriff too sold on himself to be of any interest, let alone even a feigned friendship.

Sweeney was of a similar opinion. At least, he was no more polite than he had to be, and spent most of the interview slumped in the spare chair, staring at the floor or out at the street.

When the sheriff finally sent them on their way, Monahan was sure of two things. First, Alf would be free of Carmichael’s custody within twenty-four hours. He could tell by Alf’s confident manner and the state of the jail itself. Even if Dev Baylor turned out to be a seventy-year-old fat widower with rheumy joints and cataracts covering his eyes like peony petals, he could break Alf out of jail between drags on his smoke and never lose a flake of ash.

Unless he was a jackass as dumb as Alf.

Monahan didn’t think that was possible. God could play nasty, which was true enough, but He wasn’t outright cruel.

Second, Carmichael didn’t seem to give a whit about securing his prisoner. The deputy who had been on guard at the door when they arrived had long since gone off duty, and it didn’t look much like the sheriff was expecting anybody to take his place. In fact, when Carmichael followed them out, he made a show of locking the jailhouse door behind him, as if that was that.

Monahan was pretty certain a kid could have picked that door lock open with a half-sharp stick. He and Sweeney wandered up the street a bit to let the Arizona air blow the jail stench from their clothes, and then they turned around and walked back down the street to the café.

“Here or the saloon?” Sweeney asked.

“Here, I reckon. Promised the girl I’d bring her some café supper.”

Sweeney nodded, and Monahan opened the door and stepped inside.

“Whoa! Ain’t seen you fellas for a few minutes!” Sheriff Milton J. Carmichael laughed and stepped back, narrowly avoiding a collision with Monahan. “Crowd got thin in here all of a sudden. Hope it wasn’t me what caused it.” He gave a wave to the waiter at the front counter.

“Wasn’t you, Milt,” said the waiter, looking up from his newspaper. “Crowd thins out right about six on weekdays.” He jabbed his thumb toward the clock on the back wall. The black, curlicued hands read six-twenty.

Sweeney gave a tip to the brim of his hat. “Be seein’ you, Sheriff.”

“Yeah, later,” Monahan echoed, and they moved toward the rear of the establishment. He slid into the first empty chair they came to.

Sweeney seated himself across the table and picked up a menu. “I hear right? You takin’ supper back for that girl?”

Monahan nodded. “‘Less you’d rather let her starve.”

“I’d ruther she took her meals at her own place.”

Monahan raised a brow. “Ain’t like you’re payin’ for ’em.”

Sweeney let out a heavy sigh and put down his menu. “This ain’t got nothin’ to do with money. It’s got to do with—”

“Can I take your order, gents?” The waiter stood next to their table, pencil poised over his pad of paper.

Sweeney ordered first, and Monahan ordered the fried chicken dinner, plus one to go. When they had the table to themselves again, Monahan said, “Eat up. You can tell me what you know about Julia and I’ll explain what I know when we get back to the hotel.”

While they were leaving the café, Dev Baylor was quietly letting himself into the jail. The front door proved no problem, and, as he had guessed, there was no official presence on the other side. Nobody but his stupid, addlepated, lousy shot of a brother, who stood up in the cell and smiled at the sight of him.

Alf started to say something, but Dev shushed him before he had his mouth all the way open. Alf had a tendency to shout when he was excited, the last thing Dev needed at the moment. He growled, “Don’t say nothin’ ’less you know where the key is.” Alf cocked his head to one side, looked at Dev like he was a loon, and pointed to the wall next to the desk, from which depended a large iron key ring. Dev snatched it off the wall and began to sort through the keys, saying softly, “Any minute. Any minute and we’ll have you outta here, Alf.”

 

 

Monahan and Sweeney exited the café, well satisfied, and bearing a paper-wrapped dinner for Julia. Sweeney stopped for a moment outside on the boardwalk.

Curious, Monahan stopped too, following Sweeney’s line of vision. He found himself staring straight up the street at the jailhouse. He couldn’t see too clearly, but it looked to him like there was movement around the front door. “What’d you see?”

Sweeney shook his head. “Dunno. Coulda sworn the front door closed. I mean, it was wide open.”

“Maybe it was the sheriff. Was he goin’ back to the office? Did he say anythin’ to you?”

“Fat chance. Of him goin’ back to work or tellin’ me about it, I mean.”

“You thinkin’ what I’m thinkin’?”

“Thinkin’ you’re probably wantin’ to get Julia’s supper to her ’fore she perishes or it goes cold or both, aren’t you?” Sweeney offered, his voice wavering slightly.

“Yeah,” muttered Monahan. “Yeah, that’s the ticket.” Turning, he hurried back down the boardwalk. Sweeney ran after him.

They dropped Julia’s supper, complete with rhubarb pie and a tall glass of buttermilk, off at her door and went on upstairs. Sweeney went straight to the chair by the window, sat down, and stuck out his legs. “All right. What the hell’s goin’ on?”

Monahan scratched at his head.
Where to start?

“C’mon, Dooley!” Sweeney insisted. “What’s the deal with the gal, and with that deal up to the sheriff’s office, and—”

“One damn thing at a time.” Monahan sat down on the side of his bed and began to pull off his spurs. “First, Miss Julia.” He stopped and stared down at the floor, unsure of how to tell the kid about such an awful thing.

Finally, in response to the third prodding, he cleared his throat and started talking. “About . . . about Miss Julia. She don’t wanna go home. Fact is, she ain’t got no home to go to, no people, either. Her uncle ain’t really her uncle at all. He’s a no-account that took her in after her folks died of the smallpox—she was eight, then—and moved her out here. He waited till he thought she got old enough—you know, started with her monthlies—and then he set in to rapin’ her every chance he got.”

Monahan’s head shook with saying it out, and with the weight of knowing it. Once again, he was internally urged to go beat the hell out of Julia’s ‘uncle,’ just
because
.

“Jesus,” muttered Sweeney. By the look of him, the information had hit him hard. “That’s why she said . . . I mean, that’s why she talked so tough when we found her. You know, all that stuff about making a livin’ on her back just to get away and well, you know. I didn’t think she knew what she was talkin’ about. But, Jesus.”

“Since she was just turned eleven,” added Monahan. “And she’s thirteen now. Two years is a big chunk of a little kid’s life.” He dropped the final spur on the floor.

“Of anybody’s. So we’re takin’ her along, then.”

“Can’t rightly leave her here.”

“Nope. We’ll have to get her a horse.”

Monahan nodded. “I know. Reckon we can get one from Tommy, over at the livery.”

“Who?”

The old cowboy smiled, despite everything. “Tommy Hawk. The Indian kid they got workin’ over at the stables.”

“Tommy Hawk?” asked Sweeney incredulously. “
Tommy Hawk
? You gotta be kiddin’ me!

Chuckling, Dooley shook his head.

“Well, hell!” Sweeney thumbed back his hat. “Maybe he should just up and go with us, too!”

“Mayhap he should,” Monahan agreed. “He’ll have to get a move on if he wants to leave with us, though.”

Butch’s brow furrowed.

“That thing up to the sheriff’s office. I’m willin’ to bet we was witness to a jailbreak.”

Sweeney’s head dropped forward to hang limply from his shoulders. “Aw, damn.”

“Anybody ever say you got a way with words, boy?”

Sweeney snorted.

 

 

Just before dawn the two men and the young girl finally set out for the livery. Sweeney saddled the horses while Monahan looked over the rest of the stock and made a mental list of those he found unacceptable and those with promise. Tommy showed up about the time the first fingers of morning light appeared in the east, and Monahan quickly made a good deal on a bay gelding and some used tack.

Julia had been hoping for a wilder-colored, flashier horse, but accepted the bay gratefully. When Tommy admitted he didn’t know the horse’s name, she christened it Parnell, for reasons known only to her.

To Monahan’s mind, it didn’t much matter what name you gave a horse, so long as the horse knew it and it wasn’t silly. Of course, he had ridden a washed out palomino gelding called Blondie for a while. It wasn’t the best name, but then, it wasn’t his horse. It was only a loaner after his old horse, Chesapeake, got gored by a Mexican fighting bull and died over in Alamogordo. He’d been against bull fighting before that—he thought it was pointless and not a sport at all—but afterward, he retracted his former opinion. Those bulls were mean through and through and deserved whatever life—or death—handed them.

At any rate, they rode out of town just past five-thirty, before hardly anyone else was up. Keeping to his word, Monahan asked the stable boy if he’d care to accompany them, but Tommy, who apparently didn’t care about his joke of a name, declined.

“All right, then.” Monahan threw a leg over General Grant. “You change your mind, you can track us.”

“Understand.” Tommy nodded as he stepped away from the horse. “Good luck to you. To all of you.”

“Thank you, Tommy.” Monahan reined out into the street to join Sweeney and Julia. “Let’s go,” he said softly.

They headed on down the street.

Shortly after eight, they stopped for breakfast, and Monahan announced over his coffee mug where they were going. Sweeney and Julia were rapt, for he’d given them no clue earlier. They’d been drifting generally southward with no destination either one of them could think of.

“Got a friend down here, lives on the Old Mormon Trail.” Monahan said, out of the blue. “Got a ranch right smack-dab in the middle o’ nowhere.”

Sweeney frowned. “Mormons in Arizona?”

“Yeah. A battalion of Mormon volunteers marched through here to fight the Mexicans about twenty-five years ago. I figure we can bide there for a spell. At least, until the heat overtakin’ Julia dies down.”

“Takin’ me?” Julia sat up ramrod straight, her spine stiff with umbrage. “You didn’t ‘take’ me. Nobody takes me!”

Sweeney mumbled something just under Monahan’s hearing range, and then all hell broke loose. Monahan ducked under Julia’s plate, which came sailing through the air without warning and then dove behind a prickly pear. The shouts got louder as Julia screeched something wretched about Sweeney’s mother.

Sweeney yelled, “Why you so damned touchy? Ouch! That hurt!”

“I wouldn’t be so touchy if you could keep your dirty mind outta the gutter!”

“The gutter? What the hell you talkin’ about? All I did was make a remark, one you weren’t supposed to be hearin’!”

“You badger’s butt!”