Novel 1966 - The Broken Gun (v5.0) (3 page)

Beyond the pool was Colin Wells, seated at a table with a drink; with him was a short, stocky man who looked familiar.

It was the fat man from the hotel. Only he was not fat; at least, most of that solid, all too solid flesh was not fat. It was sheer brute strength, the strength of a man naturally powerful.

Colin must have said something, for the man turned around. He was smoking a long black cigar, and even the cigar was familiar.

Belle turned to face me. “Oh? You’re not swimming?” she said.

“The shower was what I wanted, and I wouldn’t spoil the effect for anything. Although,” I added, “I’m glad you’re swimming.”

“Do you mean me, or Doris?”

“The blonde girl? Yes, I’m glad she’s swimming, too.”

She was poised on the end of the diving board now, a position that allowed her to exhibit every aspect of her figure to best advantage.

A white-coated Mexican appeared beside me. “A drink, sir? May I get you something?”

“Vodka and tonic.” The Mexican did not move, and I turned to look at him, wondering why he hesitated.

“
Sí,
señor, vodka and tonic.” There was more than acknowledgment of the request, there was respect and an unexpected friendliness in his eyes. “Thank you, sir.”

“Colin will be disappointed,” Belle said to me. “He’s very proud of his pool, and he likes everybody to swim.”

I did not like to swim among strangers. Even when there were no comments on the scars, I could see the curiosity they created, and I had not grown accustomed to it. They were so obviously bullet wounds.

“Colin likes everybody to take part in everything,” Belle added.

Inadvertently I glanced at the girl on the diving board. “Everything?”

“That,” Belle replied coolly, “is Mrs. Wells.”

“A fortunate man, Mr. Wells.”

With the undivided attention of everyone, Doris Wells dove, and a beautiful dive it was. Her lithe body slipped into the water like a knife into a sheath, and with no more sound. When she surfaced she swam to the side of the pool, and got out, and walked over to me.

“I’m Doris Wells. Excuse the wet hand. Colin forgot to tell me you were so handsome.”

Belle saved me a reply. She also opened an escape route. “Are you going to be with us long, Mr. Sheridan?”

“I can’t stay, much as I should like it. I’ve been browsing around the country looking for an idea for a book, but I have a meeting shortly with my publisher in Los Angeles. I was thinking,” I added, “of doing something on the Apache wars.”

“Then by all means stay here.” Doris pointed toward the horizon. “That peak over there is Turret Butte where Major Randall trapped some Apaches. There was quite a fight.”

I knew the story. I even knew the date. It had been April 22, 1873. Randall had scaled the steep sides of the peak in the dark, and for once the Apaches were taken by surprise. It had been a brief but savage battle. Several Apaches had leaped over the almost sheer sides, to escape or die.

That fight and the one in the Salt River Canyon somewhat earlier had broken the back of Apache resistance in the Tonto. It was on the heels of that attack that John and Clyde Toomey had driven their cattle into the country.

The cattle, four thousand head, meant a packet of trouble. Until they reached the New Mexico country it had been easy to drive the two herds. After the extra hands left, it was difficult but not so bad as it had been early in the drive, for the herd was broken to the trail and easier to hold.

“I’d like to stay on, but my schedule won’t permit it,” I said.

I accepted my drink from the Mexican and followed Belle Dawson to a seat at a table near the pool. The view from the terrace looked toward the far-off mountains, the Four Peaks of the Mazatzals, and the ridges between.

“Why did you come here, anyway?” Belle asked.

I glanced at her and shrugged. “I wanted to get out of town. It’s as simple as that. And I’ve always liked this part of the country. It was a chance to breathe some mountain air, refresh myself on the Apache country…and then…well, I just wanted to get away.

“I suppose,” I added, “Colin told you about the murder?”

“Murder?”

She was startled at the word, even more than she should have been, I thought.

“A man was killed outside my motel. His name was Alvarez.”

She was very still, and then she said, “Pio?”

“Manuel…I don’t think Pio would be so easy to kill.”

She turned around to face me. “You
know
Pio Alvarez?”

“We were in the army together. He’s what a western man would term ‘salty,’ very salty.”

She looked about her quickly. Then she said, “Dan, don’t even whisper that around here—that you know him, I mean. The name Alvarez isn’t popular here.”

“Manuel wasn’t popular with somebody.”

“I wasn’t hinting, don’t even imagine I was. I know nothing about Manuel, beyond recognizing him on the street, but Colin claimed the Alvarez brothers had been stealing his cattle for years.”

“That detective in town—Tom Riley—he said Manuel was an honest man.”

“Possibly. Colin didn’t believe it, though. And they caught Pete Alvarez in the act.”

It was my turn to be surprised. “Then it was here? Pete was killed
here?
”

“Of course. Floyd Reese killed him.”

Chapter 3

F
OR SEVERAL MINUTES I said nothing, for I was hurriedly taking stock. My trip to Arizona, planned to be brief and thorough, was suddenly developing into something resembling a nightmare.

A man had been killed who was seeking me; his youngest brother had also been killed, and on the very ranch where I was now a guest. The third brother, a very tough, dangerous man, would surely be somewhere around. Leaving town to escape any further involvement in the Alvarez affair, I had plunged myself right into the middle of it.

Belle Dawson was right, of course. The quicker I got out of here, and out of the state, the better for me and all concerned. As for the police, if they wanted me they would know where to find me. I was not exactly unknown.

Yet the question remained: Why had Colin Wells invited me out here in the first place?

An answer came to me, but I dismissed it as improbable and foolish. What bearing could a ninety-year-old disappearance have on the present situation?

The answer was obvious…nothing at all.

We sat there quietly, watching the swimmers, from time to time letting our eyes drift toward the faraway hills.

Whatever happened, I must be on my guard. That was not difficult for me, because I have never been what might be called a trusting man. Having lived alone under such odd circumstances as I had, I was friendly but wary. I know the wariness did not show, for I have frequently been called too trusting by people who knew me only slightly. It was their viewpoint and they were welcome to it, but the fact was that the reverse was the case.

“If you want to go in tomorrow, I’ll drive you,” she offered.

“Now there’s incentive if I ever heard it. Of course I’ll go, and thanks for the offer. However, there are a couple of things I’d like cleared up.”

“Such as?”

“You…you do not speak as if these people were your friends, yet everything seems to point to the idea that they are just that.”

“I have a ranch on the Little Cougar.” She gestured. “It’s right over there.”

Little Cougar…I knew it by reputation, a narrow canyon, quite deep, that ended in a valley…and right in the country where I wanted to ride.

“I don’t want trouble, that’s all.” She spoke quietly. “If trouble starts here a lot of people are going to be hurt. As for Colin, I’ve known him since I was a child. I was born in town, but my folks lived on the ranch, and we spent a good deal of time there for a while, but for some reason I never understood we went there less and less. Finally, we went to Los Angeles to live. After my parents died I came back here, and in the meantime Sis married Aukie Wells.”

“You stayed on, though?”

“No, I lived in New York and Los Angeles, and then after Sis and Aukie were killed I came back here. I’ve always loved the old place and wanted to build there, but Colin was against it.”

“Any reason?”

“There was no good road in there, and it was lonely. He invited me to stay on here, and then made an offer for the place.”

“You’re planning to sell, then?”

She shrugged. “I don’t want to, and yet common sense tells me I should. And to be honest, I have the feeling they’d like me away from here.”

I looked at her in surprise. “I thought you were friends?”

“Not really. Although I don’t know any reason why they should want me to go…unless…But that was a long time ago.”

“What?” I insisted.

“Colin wanted to marry me.”

Wells and the other man were walking around the pool toward us, and Belle said, “Colin had the pool put in two years ago. He likes the Olympic size, and he’s really a very good swimmer.”

As they stopped before us, Belle looked up. “I was just telling Mr. Sheridan about your swimming, Colin. I hadn’t gotten as far as the medals.”

He smiled deprecatingly, yet with obvious satisfaction. “Yes, I was pretty good,” he commented, “and I can still swim. I like distance, though.”

He turned toward his companion. “Sheridan, this is Mark Wilson, my cousin. He operates a car agency and rental outfit in town. But we’re in a lot of deals together,” he added.

Looking up, I met a pair of the coldest eyes I had ever seen, but eyes that also held a sort of casual contempt. It was an expression with which I was familiar. I had seen it first in the eyes of a Red Chinese officer to whom I was merely a thing to be questioned and then shot.

His handclasp was dead. He had thick, strong hands, but the clasp was the same as that I’d encountered in many fighters and wrestlers or other very powerful men, either subconsciously afraid of hurting, or so conscious of their strength they have no need to impress.

“How ya?” he said carelessly.

Then, ignoring me, he said to Colin, “I’m going down an’ talk to Floyd.” Looking past me, he leered at Belle. “See you, honey.”

Belle’s lips were tight and her eyes hard with anger, but a moment later her face had changed and she had relaxed.

Colin dropped into a chair beside the table. “If you really want to see this country, Sheridan, you’ve got to ride. You ever been on a horse?”

“A few times.”

“Good! We’ll take us a ride then. Would six in the morning be too early? You city boys sleep late, I know.”

“Six would be fine.”

Colin got up. “See you at chow.” He walked off, ignoring Belle.

“I had better get dressed,” Belle said, but she did not move. Then she said, “Mr. Sheridan…Dan…can you ride? I mean, can you
really
ride?”

“I grew up on a ranch in Wyoming.”

“Be careful.”

When she had gone I sat watching the deepening shadows. There is no peace greater than that of twilight on the desert, but there was more to my waiting than a desire to watch the fading light. The time to study a land is when dawn or sunset lies upon it, with shadows to reveal every draw, hollow, or canyon. One can never know a desert land until one has seen it in those moments before and after sunset or sunrise. By day the glare of the sun erases the hollows and smooths out the terrain.

Out there was an answer to my problem, a problem suddenly important to others as well as to myself. There was a hint of some connection between the ninety-year-old mystery and the deaths of Pete and Manuel Alvarez. What the connection was I did not know, but I was now sure that it had some relation to my invitation to visit here.

But oddly, after I had been invited here, none of them showed any desire to talk to me, leaving me alone with Belle, who seemed almost as much an outsider as I.

Why the strange feeling of animosity? What was Belle warning me against? Why had the clerk at the land office immediately reported my request for information about the Toomeys?

Of course this was the place. It had to be. The landmarks mentioned in the journal were here, the stone house was here, and somewhere within range of my vision, no doubt, the mystery of John and Clyde Toomey had been resolved.

What
had
happened here so long ago? Had all the riders been massacred by Apaches? There was no record of such an attack. Had some of their own riders turned on the Toomeys and killed them?

Two things I wanted here. To identify other spots mentioned in the journal, and if possible to locate the rest of that account.

Whatever happened here, must have happened suddenly, causing John Toomey to tear those sheets from the journal—perhaps awkward to hide in itself—and thrust them down the barrel of the broken gun.

Even now, with the little I had, I could write a fairly consistent account of that long trek across the country and of their arrival here. It might have been about like this, that first evening they spent here on the Verde.

Belle was right, of course. I should get away from here. No book was worth being involved in a murder, or what could easily become several murders. There were plenty of other books to be written.

While I sat there, the last canyons gave up their shadows to the night, and only the stars remained, and the dark, serrated rims of far-off mountains. Getting to my feet, I walked slowly back to my room.

The arcade was deep in shadow, for no lights had been turned on, and my room was dark. But as I opened the door I was immediately aware that I was not alone. Was it instinct? Or some subconscious perception of movement?

“No lights, señor.” The voice was unfamiliar.

“I am a friend, señor, and I come from Pio.”

“He is a good man,
amigo
.”

“He said you would remember. He thinks much of you, señor. And there are not many whom he respects.”

“What do you want,
amigo?
”

“To warn you, señor. They mean to kill you.”

Suddenly something happened to me. Possibly it was the low voice in the dark room, but all at once I was thinking clearly again, thinking the way a man should who plays a dangerous game. This meeting in the dark brought things back, and I realized I had better continue to think clearly, to be constantly watchful. Or they would kill me, whoever
they
might be.