Something twitched at Harrison’s left shoulder, a stinging blow that rocked him on his heels as he watched the man in front of him sag back against the door.
The man hit the door jamb and bounced forward, wilting as he bounced.
The gun leaped from his fingers, skittered and slid, a spinning wheel of blue across the lamplit floor. The man slumped to his knees, hung for an instant, then pitched forward, fell on one elbow and rolled over, face up, limp jaw hanging open, eyes rolled back.
Slowly, cat-footed, Harrison moved back toward the window. His eyes switched from the dead man in the doorway to the dead man at the desk and for the first time he saw the soft gleam of the chain that hung from Doc’s fingers. Stooping swiftly, he examined it … a gold watch chain, its fragile links snapped at both ends.
And as he looked at it, he knew why the man in the doorway had come back … knew whose hand had wielded the knife still sticking in Doc’s back.
Swiftly, he went across the room, stooped over the dead man, saw the two ends of broken chain that hung from the pockets of the flowered waistcoat.
A chain that Doc, rising in the moment before death had struck him down, had seized and broken as the knife-man backed away from his victim.
On the street below a door slammed open with a bang. Boots hit the steps.
Harrison spun around, raced for the window shattered by the gold-toothed man’s bullet, dived through it, crossed arms shielding his face. He landed on the lean-to roof and rolled. Sprawling on the ground, he scrambled to his feet. In front of him the tied horse snorted and reared. With one swift jerk, Harrison tore loose the reins from the post, leaped for the saddle.
From the window he’d just quitted a gun blasted in the night. The horse was spinning on dancing hind feet, forelegs reaching out. Harrison yelled and the animal came down with a jolt and ran. The gun spoke again and Harrison heard the whine of the bullet passing overhead.
Faint shouts came from the street. Harrison bent low on the horse’s neck, the drum of hoofs beating in his head. The cool wind smelled of grass that had been drying in the sun. The sickle moon hung low above the western horizon.
For the first time, Harrison became aware of the stiffness in his left shoulder and when he put up a hand, he found that the shirt was soaked.
Moving his arm, he knew no bones were broken. The stranger’s bullet had no more than creased him, tearing through muscles.
Something rustled in his shirt pocket as he moved his arm. Taking it out, he saw that it was a wad of crumpled paper. The duplicate of the letter that Doc had started, the letter to the marshal back at Omaha.
Wonder if you’d keep a letter for me…
Harrison crinkled his brow, thinking. There could be no doubt that this was the letter Doc had meant for him to keep. But why keep? If Doc had wanted to tip off the marshal, he could have mailed the letter himself. It was as simple as that. But he’d said that maybe he’d be back to pick it up. Did that mean that under certain circumstances he would not have mailed the letter?
Harrison shook his head. Carefully he smoothed the sheet of paper out and folded it, put it back into his pocket.
The man with the flowered waistcoat and the shiny gold tooth had killed Doc to get that letter. Had gotten it, in fact, and then came back to get the broken watch chain, knowing that it would be evidence that might convict him. Too rattled to take it the first time and coming back to get it. Or maybe not realizing that it had been broken until he’d left the place.
The man had come in on the stage and within the next few hours had plunged his knife into Doc’s back and stolen the letter. That must mean the man had come to Sundown to do that very thing … and if such had been the case, he must have known that Doc intended to write the letter. Harrison frowned. But that was impossible, he told himself. Doc wasn’t one to talk.
He told no one his business and maybe that was part of the reason that nobody really liked him.
The gold-toothed man had come on the stagecoach to kill Doc and while he’d been on the stage someone had kidnaped Carolyn Elden. Maybe fancy waistcoat had had something to do with the kidnaping, too. Maybe things hadn’t happened just the way he told them. He could have told any story that he wanted to, for there was no one to contradict him. Carolyn had been kidnaped and the driver of the stage was dead.
It linked somehow … what had happened to Carolyn and Doc, Doc’s letter, Westman in jail, even Dunham riding with the posse. For Sundown wasn’t Dunham’s town. Rattlesnake was more to Dunhams’s liking and Sundown seldom saw any of the Bar X men. Funny that Dunham should have been Johnny-at-the-rat-hole when the stage came in.
Harrison put his hand up to the shirt pocket and the letter crinkled under his touch. Grizzly Valley, the letter had said, and added that few folks knew its exact location. Harrison touched the letter again. Grizzly Valley, one of those places you hear about once in a while, but where no one’s ever been.
But Trapper Bill would know, Trapper Bill, at his cabin out on the south edge of the badlands.
The horse had slowed to an easy lope and Harrison urged it to greater speed.
«Hoss,» he said, «we’re dropping in on Trapper Bill.»
The sun was three hours up the sky when the horse and rider wound cautiously down the tortuous trail that led to the coulee where Trapper Bill’s cabin huddled under the looming cliff of vari-colored clay.
Smoke rose lazily from the chimney of the shack and Trapper Bill lounged against the door, watching Harrison ride up. Two decrepit hounds came bellowing and escorted the rider in.
Trapper Bill took the pipe out of his whiskers, spat across the chopping block.
«Howdy, young feller,» he said. «Where did you leave your wagon?»
«Back in town,» Harrison told him, shortly.
Trapper Bill eyed him speculatively. «Been in a ruckus?»
«Little argument,» Harrison explained. «Hombre shot me up a bit.»
«You shot back, I reckon.»
Harrison got down out of the saddle, stiffly. The horse stood with bowed head, sides heaving.
«Riding kind of hard,» said Trapper.
Harrison nodded. «The marshal took a dislike to me.»
Trapper snorted. «That there marshal don’t have right good sense. Probably the feller needed a little shooting to make a Christian of him.»
Harrison leaned against the other side of the doorway, took out papers and tobacco sack, began a cigarette.
«Tell me, Trapper. You know how to get to Grizzly Valley?»
Trapper pulled the pipe out of his whiskers.
«Figuring on going there?»
Harrison nodded. «Ain’t in your right mind,» Trapper told him. «Ain’t been there myself for ten years or more. Nothing to go for.»
«Have to meet a fellow there,» Harrison explained.
Trapper wagged his head. «Funny spot you pick for a meeting place. But if you’re bound set on getting there…»
He squatted on the ground, traced with his finger in the dust.
«You go straight north until you hit Cow Canyon…»
His voice mumbled on, his finger tracing the map.
«Figure you got it fixed square in your mind?» he asked.
Harrison nodded. Trapper smoothed the dirt with his palm, arose.
«You look all beat out,» he said.
«No sleep since yesterday morning,» Harrison told him.
«Better come in and take a nap while I cook you up some coffee.»
Harrison shook his head. «Got to be pushing on.»
«Hell,» said Trapper, «that marshal won’t nohow find you here. He’ll hit plumb for Rattlesnake. Figure that you streaked for there.»
«Not this marshal, he won’t,» said Harrison. «You wouldn’t catch this marshal dead ten miles in any direction from Rattlesnake.»