«Sure would,» said Harrison. «That is, if I can.»
«Only one around here that could do it,» Doc told him. «Only one that knows enough to keep his mouth shut. Wonder,» said Doc, «if you’d keep a letter for me and forget you ever saw it.»
«Sure,» agreed Harrison.
«I may come and ask you for it,» said Doc, «and again I might not. If I don’t come back in five days or so you mail it.»
«Sounds like you figure on something happening to you,» said Harrison.
«Something may,» Doc told him.
«You usually camp at the spring below town, don’t you?» asked Doc.
Harrison nodded.
«I’ll get off there and walk in the rest of the way,» said Doc. «Thanks for the lift.»
«About that letter …»
«I’ll give it to you in the morning.»
At the spring, Harrison stood for a long time beside the wagon, watching Doc and the horse continue their slow way up the trail to town.
Harrison shook his head. «Queer jasper,» he told himself.
Folks in Sundown didn’t like Doc Falconer … mostly because they didn’t understand or appreciate the dry humor that made the wrinkles at the corners of his eyes.
And that gold mine yarn. To Doc himself it was just another joke, to many of Sundown’s citizens it was actual truth … how Doc would go riding off and be gone for several days, then come back and pay up bills that had been accumulating in the stores for weeks.
Harrison shook his head again. It was no business of his … Doc’s gold mines or Doc’s letters.
Hurriedly he made camp, watering the horses and picketing them out, spending an extra moment with Satan, who whickered and nipped playfully at his shoulder.
«Good horse,» said Harrison and gave him an extra pat, then hurried up the trail to town.
Marshal Albert Haynes was sprawled in a chair behind his desk, picking with a knife at a sliver in his finger.
«Howdy, Johnny,» he said. «Somebody steal some pans?»
«Nope,» said Harrison. «Got a message for you.»
«Shoot,» the marshal invited.
«Some gents stopped me out on the trail with guns. Told me to tell you that if you didn’t turn Jim Westman loose they’d come in and tend to it themselves.»
The marshal bounced up in his chair, stabbed the knife deep into the desk.
«Oh, they did, did they?»
He glared at Harrison. «You go back and tell them hombres to go plumb to hell. I ain’t turning loose no murderer.»
«I’m not telling them a thing,» said Harrison. «They didn’t ask me to. They told me what to tell you and you’ve said no and that’s an end of it.»
Haynes hunched forward. «I ain’t so sure that’s the end of it,» he snarled. «Don’t look good to me, you coming and telling me all this bosh about being held up and told a message for me. Don’t look good …»
«Why, you —!» Even as he spoke, Harrison moved forward, one swift step that brought him towering above the desk. One powerful hand shot out and grabbed the marshal by the shoulder, hauled him to his feet. The other hand, doubled into a sledge hammer fist, moved even as the marshal, face twisted with fear and rage, clawed desperately for gun-butts.
The fist smacked with a hollow sound, a thudding sound that almost echoed in the room. Pain shot through Harrison’s wrist with the force of the blow and he felt Haynes go limp within his grasp. He opened his hand and the man slid down behind the desk and out of sight.
Harrison turned on his heel and walked out onto the street.
Dusk had come and the first lamps of evening were being lit in the business houses that ran along the single street. Two horses stood slack-hipped at the hitching rail in front of the Silver Dollar. Harrison glanced at them as he went past, his eyes barely sliding along them, then stopping in surprise. A sorrel and a blaze-faced bay!
He halted and stared at the horses. Possible, but not likely. Not likely that two other men would ride a sorrel and blaze-faced bay.
He swung around quickly, but the saloon’s porch was empty. From inside came the low buzz of voices and the clink of glasses on the bar.
For a moment, Harrison stood in indecision, then shrugged.
«No business of mine,» he told himself. «I’m getting out before that gang starts hemstitching this town with their forty-fives.»
Rapidly he strode along the sidewalk. The smell of ham and eggs from a restaurant hurried his gait—he recalled the campfire to be built, the supper to be cooked.
There was a light in Doc Falconer’s office over the bank and inside his general store Jake Smith leaned elbows on the counter and talked with a rancher in to buy a month’s supplies. Nice business, Harrison thought. And Ma said it could be gotten cheap. Only I bought a horse instead.
And socked the marshal, said his accusing mind. That’s a hell of a way to start business in a town.
The horses nickered at him companionably as he came up to the wagon.
«Hello, fellers,» he told them. «How’s everything?»
They stamped at him, champing grass.
Only there was something wrong, something that it took a long minute for him to place. Then he knew.
There were only two horses, the team.
Satan was gone!
Heart thumping, he strode toward the place where he’d picketed the black.
Maybe he just pulled the pin and wandered off. Maybe …
But the pin was there, planted solidly in the ground, with the rope trailing from it. He picked up the rope and hauled it in, ran exploring fingers across the free end.
Cut! Slashed with a knife!
Satan had been stolen!
Chapter Two
A Gun Deal from the Bottom
The sorrel and the blaze-faced bay were gone from the hitching rack in front of the Silver Dollar, but there was some excitement going on up the street in front of the Eagle hotel.
For a moment Harrison hesitated, trying to decide whether to go inside the saloon and ask about the men or to hurry up the street in hopes that he might find some trace of them. Ben, the bartender, he remembered, was a surly hombre and probably wouldn’t tell him a thing.
After all, he told himself, standing there in the spatter of light that came from the saloon’s dirty window, he had no evidence the two men had taken Satan; no evidence, even, that the men were the ones who had held him up that afternoon. He had only seen the horses … and other men might ride horses that looked exactly the same.
Slowly, Harrison turned from the saloon, started up the street.
«Johnny!»
He swung around. Ma Elden had stepped out of the crowd in front of the hotel and was waving at him. And suddenly he remembered … remembered a thing that had been shaken from his mind. Carolyn was coming in tonight … coming on the stage.
He turned around, walked slowly back toward the crowd in front of the hotel. Ma hurried out to meet him. She was upset, he saw … upset and a little angry.
«Johnny, I’ve been expecting you. And the stage is late. What do you think has happened?»
«Had some trouble, maybe,» said Harrison. «Broke a wheel or something.»
But even as he said it, he knew the explanation was a weak one. Jack Carter, who drove the stage, prided himself on the time he made. And the road was good.
«I just know …»
«Listen,» snapped Harrison.
From up the street came the faint sound of pounding hoofs and rattling wheels.
«It’s him,» someone shouted. «It’s Carter and the stage!»
Ma beamed happily. «Maybe there ain’t nothing wrong, after all. Maybe it’s just …»
Her words cut off and one hand went to her mouth. The stage had swung around the corner and was coming down the street, not more than a block away, the horses at a dead run, the stage swaying drunkenly, the long reins dragging in the dust, coiling and looping like snakes behind the frightened horses.