Shayne stiffened. In careful detail he described Two-Deck Bryant and his gunmen. “Would they be the men?”
“Could be, but the town’s so dang full of dudes it’s hard to say for sure.”
“Would you recognize them if you saw them?”
“Reckon so. Could try.” Strenk sucked on his half-filled beer mug.
Shayne turned to Fleming. “That might be an important lead, Sheriff. Sounds like a New York gambler who is suspected of being out here on the trail of a welsher. He has a reputation for collecting overdue gambling debts with a gun. It couldn’t be Pete’s trail he was on,” he mused wearily. “I don’t suppose he has been in New York recently.”
“Not in the ten years I’ve knowed him,” Cal Strenk said drowsily. “He ain’t been to Denver — or even Idaho Springs.”
Shayne said, “I’d like to have you see the men I’m thinking of. See if they’re the ones.”
“Glad to, Mister. Yes, sirree, I’ll be glad to ’blige you. Reckon it was one of them give it to Pete tonight?”
“Not necessarily, but there might be some connection.”
“You lead me to ’em” Strenk finished his third beer and combed his whiskers with broken nails. He took a red bandanna from his pocket and blew his nose violently. “Folks’ll mebby be tellin’ you that me an’ Pete had a failin’ out recent on account of I moved out from batchin’ with ’im, but Pete was still my friend an’ I’ll sure he’p all I can to find out who smashed his head in like that.” A watery film spread over the furtive glint in his eyes as they observed Shayne closely.
Shayne said heartily, “That’s fine, Strenk. I suppose you’ve got an alibi for the time Pete was killed.”
“You ain’t thinkin’ I done it?”
“Nothing like that,” Shayne said pleasantly. “Alibis are just a hobby with me when I’m on a case.”
“Waal, I can sure give you one, Mister.” Strenk’s voice trembled with righteous indignation. “But I won’t take it kindly for you to be thinkin’ I done it.”
Shayne waved a big hand. “All I want from you is an alibi.”
“I was playin’ dominoes with Jeff Wharthous, that’s what I was doin’. You can ast him.”
“I will,” Shayne said. “Rather, I’ll ask the sheriff to check it. Right now I want you to go around with me and see if you can identify Two-Deck Bryant. We’ll try the gambling joints first — I beg your pardon, Sheriff — the charity bazaars.”
The sheriff grinned. “From what I’ve heard and seen of the slot machines not paying off, I reckon it couldn’t legally be called gambling. It’s more like a cinch you’re donating to charity every time you pull a lever.”
“Rollered tight?”
“I don’t know what you call it, but it isn’t hardly gambling.” The sheriff pulled his big frame partially erect and squirmed out of the cramped quarters of the booth. “You two go ahead and mosey around some. I got to show my badge in public so folks’ll know there’s some limits in Central City tonight.”
Shayne and Strenk pushed their way out into the street while the sheriff loitered to speak with friends.
It was past midnight, and the night was clear and biting cold beneath a star-studded sky. Shayne shivered and drew the inadequate coat of his tuxedo closer about him while Strenk strolled along comfortably with a sweaty cotton shirt open at the neck and blue jeans flapping about his scrawny legs.
The streets were jammed, and sounds of revelry came from every lighted building. Shayne started across to the two main gambling casinos, saying, “The man I’m looking for is a professional gambler, but they’re always suckers for a game on their night off. Let’s look over here.”
“Them tourists sure go for this kinda trimmin’,” Strenk said scornfully. “They got a idee it’s like it was sixty years ago.”
“Isn’t it?”
Strenk guffawed and spat in the gutter. “’Tain’t no more a parcel of the ol’ times than a painted face is all of a sporty woman.”
Shayne chuckled and led the way into a large room crammed with crap layouts and roulette tables, chuck-a-luck games and faro dealers; with every game of chance besieged by players waiting to lay their money on the long odds against them. At two o’clock, an early hour for the night-long carousal, the crowd was riotously good-natured and still reasonably sober.
Shayne stayed close to Strenk as they made a slow circuit of the room, but neither Bryant nor his two gunsels were in evidence.
After a thorough search, Strenk said, when they reached the door again, “Didn’t see any of ’em in there.”
They repeated the procedure next door where a fraternal order was raking in charitable donations across the green baize, with the same negative result. When they were once again on the boardwalk outside, Shayne shivered and asked, “Any more joints open?”
“No more big ones like these city fellers’ve put up for the festival. Slot machines around most everywhere, an’ there’s a poker game runnin’ down to the pool hall. Small stakes, I reckon.”
“Bryant wouldn’t be interested in small stakes,” Shayne told him. “He’s a plunger.”
“Tell you what.” Strenk lowered his voice and tugged at Shayne’s sleeve. “I heard talk about a backroom game bein’ mebby open tonight. Not for no charity. Regular ol’ time gamblin’. It’s sorta secret-like, but I reckon you’re awright — not bein’ the real law.”
“Hell, no. I’m not the law. Haven’t even a private license in this state.”
“It’s down the street here — couple of buildin’s past Windrow’s store.” Strenk’s flapping jeans led the way past the old bank building on the corner, across Eureka Street and east, past the dark fronts of shuttered buildings on the north side of the highway leading in from Black Hawk.
“Right acrost yonder,” Strenk pointed south across the bottom of the canyon to the steep barren slope rising beyond, “is our ol’ cabin — Pete’s an’ mine. You can see it in the daytime, settin’ there all by itse’f—”
He stopped abruptly, sucking in his breath. “Looks like a light up there right now. That’s what it is. See it yonder?”
His voice and his pointing finger shook with excitement.
Shayne saw a light flicker like a will-o’-the-wisp a couple of hundred feet up the opposite slope and some distance east. It flickered out as he looked.
“Ghost lights,” Cal Strenk whispered, awed. “Nobody up there now with Ol’ Pete dead. Ghost lights. That’s what. Ha’nting our ol’ cabin.”
The light appeared again in the cabin high on the slope. It shone steadily.
“That’s a flashlight,” Shayne scoffed. “Ghosts aren’t that modern. How do we get up there?”
“They’s a path right acrost the street here. Leads over the end of the flume an’ up the hill. What you reckon—”
“I don’t reckon,” Shayne said curtly. “I want to take a look.”
He started across the street.
Strenk loped ahead of him, past a gasoline pump and down the sharp slope to the bottom of the ravine where the wooden flume emptied into the gulch east of town.
Their shoes thumped hollowly on the flume, mingling with the rushing sound of water that snarled downward; then they were following a narrow path angling up the rocky, precipitous incline.
The old miner went steadily, bent forward at the waist, as sure-footed and long-winded as a mountain goat. Shayne strained to keep pace with him. His heart pounded mightily and his lungs worked like bellows, striving to draw in enough of the rarefied atmosphere to keep him going.
They were halfway up the hill when the sharp report of a pistol spanged through the high stillness from the cabin above them.
Cal Strenk stopped abruptly and Shayne stumbled into him. The echo of the single shot continued to reverberate between the rocky walls of the gulch for a long time. There was no light in the cabin now. It was cloaked in darkness and in silence.