“It’s still there,” Monk said. “You can see it and you can smell it.”
“So close your eyes and plug your nose.”
“I’ll die of asphyxiation,” Monk said. “If my skin doesn’t rot off first.”
“Why would your skin rot off?”
“Did you see what’s in the street?” Monk said. “What I need is my own telegraph, in my cabin, connected directly to the sheriff’s office.”
“I’m sure he’d love that,” I said. “But since it may take some time to build a telegraph line, I’d better go fetch Sheriff Wheeler myself.”
I started back towards Main Street but, as it turned out, I didn’t have to go far. The sheriff was riding by on horseback with his deputy, Parley Weaver. I ran into the street and flagged him down.
The sheriff drew up beside me. He had a bountiful moustache that looked like he’d skinned a raccoon and hung the pelt from his nose. I’d heard he’d been a gunfighter before he settled in Trouble in search of a peaceable life. Most sheriffs had the same story.
Deputy Weaver was reed thin and lazy, but moved as fast as a jack rabbit when food, drink, or the attentions of a sporting woman were involved.
“What’s the problem, Mrs. Guthrie?” Wheeler asked me.
“It’s Mr. Monk, Sheriff,” I said.
“You need to arrest Clem Janklow,” Monk yelled from where he stood, a safe distance away from the sheriff, Deputy Weaver, and their horses.
Wheeler groaned. “I got bigger problems than Clem’s pissing, Monk. There’s been a murder. Somebody killed Bart Spicer and stole his poke.”
“Did it happen at his mine?” Monk asked.
“As a matter of fact, it did,” the sheriff said. “I’m on my way out there now.”
“Why are you going there when the murderer is right here in town?”
The sheriff raised his eyebrows. “He is?”
“He’s having a drink in Bogg’s Saloon,” Monk said. “Now can we please go find Clem Janklow?”
The sheriff and his deputy looked perplexed, and I suppose that I did, too. Wheeler asked the question the three of us were thinking.
“How can you be sure that Spicer’s killer is sitting in Bogg’s Saloon when you didn’t even know that Spicer was dead until I told you?”
“Was Spicer killed with a mine timber?” Monk asked impatiently.
“Someone dropped a timber on his head while he was sleeping,” Deputy Weaver said. “How’d you know that? Did somebody tell you?”
“The murderer did,” Monk said.
“He was bragging about what he done?” Weaver asked.
“He didn’t say a word about it,” Monk said. “He didn’t have to. He was wearing his confession.”
“What’s this feller’s name?” Wheeler asked.
“I don’t know,” Monk said. “He just rode into town and messed the whole place up.”
Wheeler groaned. “How did he do that?”
“He spit tobacco in the street, brushed dirt onto the sidewalk, walked into the saloon with muddy boots, and his horse did the rest.”
“Because of that, you think he’s also got to be a murderer,” Wheeler said.
“I can prove it,” Monk said.
If it had been anybody else but Artemis Monk who’d said that, the sheriff would have ignored him and rode on to Spicer’s mine. But Monk wasn’t anybody else.
The sheriff turned to his deputy. “Go over to Bogg’s and invite the cowboy to join us.”
Weaver rode away. Sheriff Wheeler got off his horse and tied him to a hitching post.
“We’re wasting time, Sheriff,” Monk said. “Clem might be getting away.”
“He’s not going anywhere, Monk. And even if he was, he wouldn’t be hard to track,” Wheeler said, then turned to me. “How are you, Mrs. Guthrie?”
“I’m getting along fine, Sheriff.”
“Monk hasn’t driven you crazy yet?”
“No, sir,” I said, mindful of who paid my wages and gave me room and board.
“It’s early yet,” the sheriff said just as Weaver approached with the cowpoke at his side.
“This here’s Bud Lolly,” Weaver said.
Lolly smiled when he saw Monk and me. “You again? Is there a law in this town against spitting?”
“Not yet, but I’m working on it,” Monk said.
“Believe me, he is,” the sheriff said. “But we do have a law here against murder.”
“I ain’t killed nobody,” Lolly said.
Monk took a handkerchief from his pocket, squatted down, and removed some mud from Lolly’s boot. We all stared at him as he did it.
“You want to shine my boots, mister, I’ll be glad to take ‘em off for you,” Lolly said.
“This dirt is from Bart Spicer’s property,” Monk said. “I recognize the hue, which is indicative of the unusually high silica content.”
“I ain’t never heard of no Bart Spicer,” Lolly said. “And even if I did, you can’t know where I’ve been from the mud on my boot.”
“Actually, he can,” I said. “Mr. Monk is the town assayer. He knows his dirt.”
“The geology and metallurgical content of every piece of property is unique, and so is the gold that comes out of it,” Monk said. “This mud definitely came from Bart’s claim. I can match it to the sample I kept of Bart’s rocks. I’m sure if I saw the gold dust in your poke, I’d recognize the color of that, too.”
“That don’t prove nothing,” Lolly said. “I might have walked across his land without even knowing it. And there’s lots of gold dust being passed around in these parts. I got no idea where my gold was before it ended up in my pouch.”
“He’s got a point,” Wheeler said. “I can’t hang a man because he’s got mud on his boots and gold in his poke.”
Monk looked Lolly in the eye. “Do you swear that you’ve never been in Bart Spicer’s mine?”
“I’ve never been in nobody’s mine,” Lolly said. “I’m a cowhand, not a gold digger. I earn an honest wage.”
“That’s not what your clothes say.”
“What are you talking about?” Lolly said.
“Mines are held up with bracing timbers that are covered in bark and splinters. They’re prickly as a cactus and coated with coal tar,” Monk said. “So if you’ve never been in a mine, or picked up a bracing timber, maybe you could tell us how you got those splinters in your chest and that tar on your shirt?”
He couldn’t. Lolly hesitated for a moment, then went for his gun. But he wasn’t as fast as Wheeler, who had his gun out and aimed before Lolly’s hand even reached his holster.
“Go ahead, Lolly, it’ll save the town the trouble of hanging you,” Wheeler said.
Lolly raised his hands and glared hatefully at Monk. “I should’ve followed my gut and killed you when we met. But I don’t shoot unarmed men.”
“You just smash in their skulls while they’re sleeping and steal their gold,” I said. “That’s much more noble.”
“Parley, take Lolly back to the office and lock him up,” the sheriff said.
Deputy Weaver took Lolly’s gun and aimed it at him. “Let’s go. You walk in front of me. No funny stuff or I’ll shoot you full of holes.”
“What about the mess his horse made in the street?” Monk asked the sheriff.
“Parley,” Wheeler said, getting his deputy’s attention. “Have Lolly pick up his horse’s droppings on the way.”
“Yes, sir,” Weaver said. “Where are you gonna be, Sheriff?”
Wheeler glanced at Monk. “Hot on the trail of that rascal Clem Janklow.”
We found Clem Janklow a few minutes later sitting on a bench outside of the general store, surrounded by bags of supplies. His bloodshot eyes peeked out from a face full of mangy whiskers and wild hair and he reeked from days of sweating in the hot sun in clothes that hadn’t been washed in weeks, if not months. The once-red wool shirt had faded to a ghastly purple and was caked in a fine layer of dirt. His ragged pants hung from his shoulders from frayed suspenders, the leggings tucked into his mud-caked boots.