“By the way,” asked Culver, “what’s your name?”
“It’s Harvey,” said the man, “but they mostly call me Crip.”
He poised the pencil above the notebook. “Now, if you will tell me how to spell Atwood?”
Culver told him, then asked a question: “How do I get across the street? Have to wade?”
The peg-legged man chuckled. “Feller up the street has a plank throwed across the mud. He charges you a buck.”
Across the street and his dollar paid, Culver stood for a moment in front of the Golden Slipper, listening to the sound of revelry that came from behind the door.
“Brown will snap you up,” Hamilton had said.
Culver shrugged. If the worst came to the worst, he would have to do it, but not yet.
He went on past the place, turned in at the printshop door.
The man sitting on the stool looked up as he came in.
“You’re Jake, I suppose?” said Culver.
The man put aside the type stick, slid off the stool and came toward him.
“That’s it, stranger. Jake Palmer is the handle.”
“Mine is Culver.” Culver put out his hand and the man took it in his bony, ink-stained paw.
“You must be the gent that plumb perforated Stover.”
Culver nodded.
“What can I do for you, stranger?” Jake asked. “Any hombre that removes a skunk like Stover is a friend of mine.”
“Thought maybe you could help me,” Culver told him. “I’m looking for a friend by the name of Farson. Mark Farson. Thought maybe you had heard of him.”
Jake put up one hand and scratched his hair-thin head. “Seems as how there was a gent by that name around a while back. But I can’t rightly remember. Didn’t hang around long, seems to me.”
He showed snagged, tobacco-stained teeth in an apologetic grim. “Sorry I can’t be no more help than that.”
“Crip told me about you,” said Culver. “I figured maybe you might know.”
Jake shook his head. “That Crip gets me into more trouble. Goes around claiming he’s collecting news for me. If it wasn’t that he was cracked he’d been buzzard meat long ago. Got enough stuff in that danged notebook of his to convict half the town if it could be proved.”
“He seemed all right to me,” said Culver.
“He ain’t,” insisted Jake. “He’s crazy as a coot and everybody knows it. That’s why they don’t pay attention to him. If they did, he’d be so full of holes he downright wouldn’t hold whiskey.”
“Seems like a lively place,” declared Culver. “Crip probably finds plenty to write down.”
“Mister,” Jake declared, solemnly, “this town ain’t seen nothing yet. Hell is bound to pop one of these days and when it does you’ll walk up to your ankles in blood out there in the street. Hamilton and Brown are getting all squared off. …”
“Hamilton?”
“Bet your boots. Him and Brown, you see, have got the only two big places here. The little ones don’t count. Don’t amount to shucks to them palaces of sin run by Hamilton and Brown. Both of them making money hand over fist and they still ain’t satisfied. Each one of them wants to run the other out. Been importing gunslicks and one of these days there’s going to be a showdown.”
From the back of the shop came a high, shrill voice:
“Pa, you worked long enough. Quit your jawing and close up. Land sakes, you work all the time.”
Jake grinned lop-sidedly. “That’s my wife,” he said. “Guess you better go, mister. Thanks for dropping in.”
It was almost as if a weight had been lifted from Culver. For long miles on the way from St. Louis, he had thought of Farson, had argued with himself, blamed himself for the black suspicion that hovered in his brain. Mark hadn’t run away, he told himself, exultantly. He hadn’t run away.
When Culver got back to where the plank had been the plank and man were gone. Gazing ruefully at the muddy street, he sat down on the step of a harness shop and rolled up both pants legs. If he had to wade that muck out there, there was no sense getting his pants muddy as well as his boots.
From up the street came a tapping sound, a broken, hobbling sound. He listened for a moment, puzzled, then it came to him. It was Crip stumping down the walk. He rose from the step, walked to the edge of the sidewalk and stepped into the mud.
Suddenly the tapping ceased, then began again, faster, hurried, as if the man were running, dodging and ducking as he ran. Boots thumped heavily and there was the sound of scuffling.
A gasping voice cried: “No! No!”
Spinning around, Culver leaped back to the sidewalk, sprinted up the street toward the noise that suddenly was silent. And as he ran his hand snapped back and snatched the sixgun from its holster.
Ahead of him orange flame blossomed in the night and even as it did a howling thing went past him and smashed into the window of a building. Glass crashed and tinkled and the bright orange flame flared again.
Culver brought up his gun, worked the trigger swiftly, ducking sideways as he fired, heading for the pitch-dark mouth of an alleyway between two buildings.
Out ahead of him the six-gun yammered, its blasting reverberating between the buildings, and Culver heard the sodden chunking of the bullets slamming into the clapboards by his side. Then he was in the alleyway, backing on cat-like feet, six-gun ready.
Something caught the back of his ankles and tripped him. He tried to catch himself, but failed, flung back his left hand to break the fall, felt the harshness of coarse fabric underneath his fingers. He hit a yielding, rounded object and rolled to one side, put out an exploring hand, stiffened with horror at the thing he found. It was Crip.
In the darkness, Culver slid his fingers along the dead man’s back, found the sticky place that surrounded the horn hilt of a knife. Crouched in the darkness between the two buildings, Culver’s mind clicked rapidly.
The peg-legged man had been knifed out there on the street, had crawled into the alleyway before death had overtaken him. Killed by someone who had used a knife for silence, but someone who had been desperate enough to use a gun when he faced detection.
Crazy, Jake had said back there in the printshop, crazy as a coot. Dead long ago if he hadn’t been. And now he was dead. Even craziness couldn’t hold off death.
Tensed above the body, Culver found the dead man’s pocket, slid his hand swiftly into it. His fingers touched the notebook and closed about it, pulled it free.
Then, on his feet again, he was racing down the alleyway, ears strained for the sound of running boots that did not come.
Back in his hotel room, Culver closed and locked the door behind him, stood for a moment listening for the slightest stir to come out of the blackness of the room. But the room was dead. He found the lamp and lighted it, strode to the window and pulled down the blind.
Pulling a chair close to the lamp table, he took the notebook from his pocket, leafed swiftly through the pages. Items caught his eyes and he stopped to read:
Black Jack rolled for 100 dolars at Golden Slipper. Jim done it.
July 16—Col. Newhouse came to town. Frank Smith found gold. Geo. Johnson lose 80 dolars playing poker with Big Steve.
July 17—H. Jackson kiled by Nelson. Old Henry dide.
July 18—Stover kiled stranger, got 500 dolar. No one nos this.
Stover, thought Culver. Stover had been the man out on the walk, the man with the bushy beard and the pig-like eyes. So Stover had robbed a stranger of $500 and no one, said Crip’s crabbed scrawl, knew about it. No one but Crip, who had written it down. Crip, who wasn’t so good at other spelling, but liked to get the names right. A gossip book, things that Gun Gulch knew and things it didn’t know. Things that a man would know only if he hung around and listened and put two and two together … a man who was a little cracked or he’d been dead long ago.