VIII
There were only eight or ten diners in the dining-room. None of Peery’s men was there. Milk River and I sat at a table back in one corner of the room. Our meal was about half eaten when the dark-eyed girl I had seen the previous day came in.
She came straight to our table. I stood up to learn her name was Clio Landes. She was the girl the better element wanted floated. She gave me a flashing smile, a strong, thin hand, and sat down.
“I hear you’ve lost your job again, you big bum,” she laughed at Milk River.
I had known she didn’t belong to Arizona. Her voice was New York.
“If that’s all you heard, I’m still ’way ahead of you,” Milk River grinned back at her. “I gone and got me another job—riding herd on law and order.”
Something that could have been worry flashed into her dark eyes, and out again.
“You might just as well start looking for another hired man right away,” she advised me. “He never kept a job longer than a few days in his life.”
From the distance came the sound of a shot.
I went on eating.
Clio Landes said:
“Don’t you coppers get excited over things like that?”
“The first rule,” I told her, “is never to let anything interfere with your meals, if you can help it.”
An overalled man came in from the street.
“Nisbet’s been killed down in Bardell’s!” he yelled.
To Bardell’s Border Palace Milk River and I went, half the diners running ahead of us, with half the town.
We found Nisbet in the back room, stretched out on the floor, dead. A hole that a .45 could have made was in his chest, which the men around him had bared.
Bardell’s fingers gripped my arm.
“Never give him a chance, the dogs!” he cried thickly. “Cold murder!”
“He say anything before he died?”
“No. He was dead when we got to him.”
“Who shot him?”
“One of the Circle H.A.R., you can bet your neck on that!”
“Didn’t anybody see it?”
“Nobody here admits they saw it.”
“How did it happen?”
“Mark was out front. Me and Chick and five or six of these men were there. Mark came back here. Just as he stepped through the door—bang!”
Bardell shook his fist at the open window.
I crossed to the window and looked out. A five-foot strip of rocky ground lay between the building and the sharp edge of the Tirabuzon Canyon. A close-twisted rope was tight around a small knob of rock at the canyon’s edge.
I pointed at the rope. Bardell swore savagely.
“If I’d of seen that we’d of got him! We didn’t think anybody could get down there, and didn’t look very close. We ran up and down the ledge, looking between buildings.”
We went outside, where I lay on my belly and looked down into the canyon. The rope—one end fastened to the knob—ran straight down the rock wall for twenty feet, and disappeared among the trees and bushes of a narrow shelf that ran along the wall there. Once on that shelf, a man could find ample cover to shield his retreat.
“What do you think?” I asked Milk River, who lay beside me.
“A clean getaway.”
I stood up, pulling up the rope. A rope such as any one of a hundred cowhands might have owned, in no way distinguishable from any other to my eyes. I handed it to Milk River.
“It don’t mean nothing to me. Might be anybody’s,” he said.
“The ground tell you anything?”
He shook his head again.
“You go down into the canyon and see what you can pick up,” I told him. “I’ll ride out to the Circle H.A.R. If you don’t find anything, ride out that way.”
I went back indoors, for further questioning. Of the seven men who had been in Bardell’s place at the time of the shooting, three seemed to be fairly trustworthy. The testimony of those three agreed with Bardell’s in every detail.
“Didn’t you say you were going out to see Peery?” Bardell asked.
“Yes.”
“Chick, get horses! Me and you’ll ride out there with the deputy, and as many of you other men as want to go. He’ll need guns behind him!”
“Nothing doing!” I stopped Chick. “I’m going by myself. This posse stuff is out of my line.”
Bardell scowled, but he nodded his head in agreement.
“You’re running it,” he said. “I’d like to go out there with you, but if you want to play it different, I’m gambling you’re right.”