“Was another one here,” he remarked, coming up with the same conclusions that Danny had earlier. “Smallish, not too heavy-built feller I’d say. Took out pronto when the shooting started, with somebody after him, both riding fast. Then the small feller come back later, cut free some calves and led the others off.”
“That’d be the ones they’d branded he took,” Jerome guessed.
“Maybe that other feller led Gooch so far he couldn’t find his way back to here,” Tommy put in.
“Could be,” admitted the rancher. “Only I can’t think of anybody round here as fits that description, smallish and light built. Can hardly believe that Sammy and Pike were stealing from me, neither. Why Sammy was fixing to get his-self married to one of Ella Watson’s gals real soon.”
“Yeah,” Tommy said bitterly. “Sammy and Pike were my pards. They’d never steal from anybody, boss. Maybe they was trying to stop the cow thieves.”
“Maybe,” grunted Jerome. “Where’d they go last night, boy?”
“Into town. Sammy wanted to see his gal and Pike went along for the ride. I was fixing to go with them, only one of my mounts was needing tending.”
Danny listened to the conversation without asking any questions or making any comments. Above all else, he must not show too much knowledge of Caspar County affairs. A chance-passing drifter would be unlikely to know much about the situation and showing that he was acquainted with the affairs of the county would cause suspicion. So he kept quiet and listened, which had always been a good way to learn things one wanted to know.
“Let’s go into town,” the rancher suggested. “You’d best come along with us, Danny, the sheriff’ll want to see you.”
“Sure,” Danny agreed. “I was headed that way when I came on this lot.”
“I’d best take the running irons with me, Boss,” Lyle remarked.
“Do that Ed,” answered Jerome. “Only don’t let on that Sammy and Pike were using them. I know their folks and they were good kids.”
The words increased Danny’s growing liking for Jerome. Some men would have started ranting about ingrates, or damning the cowhands as stinking, untrustworthy cow thieves and not giving a damn who knew that the youngsters had gone bad. From Jerome, Danny turned his attention to the younger of the hired men. Clearly Tommy was badly shaken by the death of his two friends. But did he possess any guilty knowledge of how they came to die? Maybe the youngster had an idea of the identity of the third cow thief. Or perhaps he was merely thinking that, but for a stroke of luck, it might be him lying by the fire.
Mounting their horses, the men rode out of the clearing, Lyle and Tommy leading the dead cowhands’ animals, each toting its stiff bundle. None of them spoke until they came out on to open land. Then the sight of the whirling vultures recalled what brought them together.
“How about those buzzards?” asked Danny.
“They’re on our way to Caspar, we’d best check,” Jerome answered. “Ed, go scout around and see if you can track down that third jasper. I’ll lead Sammy’s hoss in for you.”
“Yo!” replied the foreman and gave Danny a calculating glance. “I’ll look around real good.”
Much as he would have liked to accompany Lyle, Danny restrained himself. He guessed that the foreman intended to check on his tracks also, making sure that he was what he pretended to be. Not that Danny blamed Lyle. Under similar circumstances he would have done the same; and Lyle could learn little enough by back-tracking Danny for a few miles.
While riding toward the cottonwood, Danny started to get an uneasy feeling that he could guess what they would find. So he did not feel unduly surprised when, from over two hundred yards distance, he saw a body lying beneath the spreading branches of the cottonwood.
“Another,” Jerome breathed. “Who the hell this time?”
A few seconds later Tommy supplied the answer. “It’s Bat Gooch. I recognize that hoss of his there.”
At thirty yards Jerome halted the party. “Hold the hosses here, Tommy. I don’t reckon Farley Simmonds’ll make much of it, but we’ll not muss up the sign in case he wants to come out.”
Leaving their horses, Danny and Jerome walked toward the bounty hunter’s body. Both kept their eyes on the ground, studying the sign and reading much the same conclusions from what they saw.
“Can you read sign, Danny?” asked the rancher.
“My pappy was a hunting man. Taught me to know whether a foot pointed forward or back.”
“Huh huh. Way I see it is that the feller Gooch was chasing got swept off his hoss by a branch. Fell just here and Gooch left his hoss to come over to him. Only the other feller wasn’t hurt bad and started to throw lead. How d’you see it?”
“Just about the same,” replied Danny.
However, although he did not intend to mention it, Danny saw more; a whole heap more than the rancher’s description of what happened. First thing to strike Danny was the fact that Gooch’s gun lay in its holster. No man who knew sic ’em about gun fighting would approach a potentially dangerous enemy without taking the elementary precaution of drawing his gun. Certainly a man like Gooch would not fail to take so basic a piece of self-preservation. The second significant fact to Danny’s mind being the powder burning and blackening around the two bullet wounds in the body. Whoever shot Gooch had been close, real close. As the shooter appeared to have been lying on the ground, Gooch must have been bending; no, that would have put him too high to catch the burning effect of the other’s weapon’s muzzle blast. Which meant either the other had been allowed to rise, or that Gooch knelt by his killer’s side.
Only Gooch would never have allowed the other to rise, or knelt by the fallen cow thief’s side, without holding his gun and being sure he could shoot at the first wrong move. Gooch knew gun-fighting and had more sense than take such chances with any man under such circumstances.
And there, Danny figured, he had touched the answer to Gooch’s apparent folly. On approaching the fallen cow thief, Gooch would have not only held his gun but would most likely to have sent a bullet into the other just to make good and sure there was no danger to his bounty hunting hide—unless he saw something to make him figure he would not need such precautions.
Something that told him the shape on the ground be a woman, not a man.
Maybe Captain Murat’s information about the identity of the brains behind the Caspar County cow stealing had been correct after all!
Chapter 7 THE LAWMEN OF CASPAR COUNTY
CASPAR CITY LOOKED LITTLE DIFFERENT, NOR HAD any greater right to such a grandiloquent four letters after its name, than a hundred other such towns that existed on the Texas plains for the purpose of supplying the cowhands’ needs for fun and the basic necessities of life. It consisted of at most forty wooden, adobe, or a mixture of both, buildings scattered haphazardly along half a mile of wheel-rutted, hoof-churned dirt going by the title of Main Street. However, Caspar bore the supreme mark of solidarity and permanency which so many other towns lacked; a Wells Fargo stage station and telegraph office stood proudly on Main Street between the adobe county sheriff’s office building and Ella Watson’s Cattle Queen saloon.
To Danny Fog’s way of thinking as he studied the town, those silvery telegraph wires contained a menace to his well-being in that they could be used to obtain information about him far more quickly than by using the mail services.
The coming of Danny’s party, each man leading a horse bearing a stiff, unnatural, yet easily recognizable burden, brought people from the various business premises along Main Street. Questions were tossed at Jerome, but for the most he ignored them, saving his story to be told to Sheriff Farley Simmonds.