Passin' Through (1985) (21 page)

We both sat down and I said, "I was shot a while back. Lost blood."

"I know. Pan Beacham, wasn't it?"

"It was. He come on me in the mountains, thought he had me dead to rights."

"But you killed him?"

"He was comin' after me. Didn't leave me much choice." I paused. "He had some connection with them."

"So I gathered."

We sat quiet then, and I even dozed a little. Then she touched my arm, gently. "Something is coming!" she whispered.

That opened my eyes. Listening, I heard nothing. Then a faint sound of movement, something brushing through leaves. I stood up, shucking my pistol.

More movement, then the sound of a horse moving. Suddenly, I knew what it was. "Come on," I spoke softly, "come on over."

It was the roan.

"How did he find us?" Janet whispered.

"Some horses can follow a trail like a houn' dog. The wild ones are best at it, but mostly they follow other horses."

I rubbed his neck and talked to him. "We'll get out of here now," I said. "This is a good strong horse and he can carry double, for a ways, anyway."

Parrott was the place to go. Back to where there was people and I could get Janet into some kind of safety. Me, I was going to leave the country. With all this shooting, nobody would be wanting any part of me. The days for that sort of thing had about passed, and folks just didn't want it happening.

The rest had made me feel better, and I'd always been quick to recover. When a man spends his life with hard work in the fresh air in this mountain country, it takes a lot to kill him.

Things were quiet when we rode back into town, and as nobody new had come in, Janet was able to get her room back. The man who was the law around here had ridden into Animas City so I went back to the restaurant and the man I knew.

Nobody was in. "Come out and sit with me," I said, "I've some talkin' to do."

He took a good look at me and came with two cups and a pot of Arbuckle's.

Taking the will from my pocket, I showed it to him. "That ranch belongs to Janet Le Caudy," I said. "Half of it was hers, anyway. My guess is that Dory Hollyrood poisoned Phillips, forged a will or had her fancy man do it, and then she came out here figuring she'd gotten herself a real stylish layout.

"She surely didn't find what she expected, and then she began talkin' about sellin' out. Then Janet showed up with a claim." I laid it all out for him. "She'll be in, you can talk to her."

"Why tell me? I'm not the law."

"You're somebody who knows us. You know us a little bit, anyway, and I want the facts on record. That woman," I added, "is mean. I figure she planned to poison me for my stake. It isn't much but she'll settle for whatever she can get."

"You'd better talk to Reed Bell."

"The Pink? Is he still around?"

"Been in an' out all day, askin' for you." The cook grinned. "He said not to trust you."

"Not to trust me? Why?"

"He said not to trust you at guessin' a woman's age."

I shrugged. "With a horse you can look at their teeth, just try doin' that to a woman." I looked over my cup at him. "Where'd I miss on that?"

"He didn't say, but - he's comin' across the street now."

Bell came in, put his hat down on the table, and ran his fingers through what hair he had left. "You're a hard man to keep track of, Passin'," he said, "I never did see a man keep moving so much."

"I kep' my hair. I mean, nobody took my scalp."

"I've been scatterin' around some my own self. You said that Mrs. Hollyrood was an actress?"

"That's what she told me. Showed me some old playbills, too."

"Oh, she's been an actress, all right. A lot else, too. She still at the ranch?"

"So far's I know. They may cut an' run now that we got away from them." I cleared my throat. "I had a shootin' with Lew Paine."

"He's been askin' for it. The sheriff will probably give you a vote of thanks. Sooner or later he would have had to do it."

"He's alive. He come on me sudden an' he was standin' with brush in the background an' my shot was too quick."

"That Mrs. Hollyrood? You sent me off on a blind trail. You said she was fifty, sixty years old, if I recall?"

"She must be. She's got gray hair, an' >>

"Ever hear of anybody wearin' a wig? That's what she's got. Three or four of them, as a matter of fact. To tell you the truth, she's in her middle thirties, somewhere. And she's got dark hair when it's natural, which it rarely is."

"You going to arrest her?"

"Uh-huh. Soon as the sheriff gets back."

"Clinton, too?"

"Charles Pelham Clinton, know the man well. No, we just don't have evidence enough. Maybe if you and Miss Le Caudy make a statement -"

"We will, but I don't think we have much that would stand up in court."

Later, I went across the street and got a room for myself, then I hunted up the town barber and treated myself to a haircut and a shave, changed my clothes, and then stretched out on the bed to catch forty winks, as the saying is.

When I opened my eyes again it was full dark. Looking out the window, I couldn't see a light in town. The restaurant was dark and nobody was moving around, so I just undressed and went back to bed.

It was a few minutes before I went back to sleep, and lying there I wondered what was happening at the ranch and what Mrs. Hollyrood would do now. Most of all I wondered about Matty. She was caught up in something she should get shut of before they decided she knew too much and wasn't loyal enough. Of course, they did not know that she'd seen me outside the house nor that she had warned me away before that.

"Mr. Passin'," I said to myself, "you got yourself into a lot that didn't concern you. Now you'd better saddle up, pack up, and hit the trail for the high-up hills."

Another thing was naggin' at me. Here I was, twenty-eight years old with a lot of rough country behind me, and all I had in the world was three horses, a rope, some mining tools, and a few shootin' irons that I was having to clean all the time.

Right now, due to a streak of luck in hitting that pocket of ore, I had more money than ever in my life before, but when a man came right down to it the little I had didn't amount to much, and when that was gone, what was left? A job punching cows at thirty bucks a month or back to prospecting? Suddenly I began to feel I didn't want to spend my years looking a burro in the behind while I followed him over the mountains.

I sat up, put my hat on, and folded my arms around my knees. Somehow I always think better with my hat on.

Then another uneasy feeling came over me. Why, all of a sudden, was I thinking like this? Why, after all those rambling years, was I suddenly beginning to think like a taxpayer?

I'd been telling myself for years that I was a mean man, and there were some who would agree. Here and there I'd been hard to get along with, mostly because I don't take to getting pushed around, but all the while other men I'd ridden with had their own ranches, opened banks, I mean, legitimately, or had become lawyers or storekeepers. I mean, they were citizens. What was I but a saddle tramp?

Well, I took my hat off and lay back down and stared at the ceiling, feeling uneasy with myself. All right, I was twenty-eight. Where was I going to be when I was forty? Still riding the rough string for some other man?

When somebody wanted to know who I was, would I have to say I was just Passin' Through?

Well, that's what we all were doing, in a way, but when a man cashes in his chips he should leave something a little better than he had found it.

Matty now, Matty should get shut of those people. It was my feeling she had fallen in with them and was about to get herself into trouble through misguided loyalty. Sometimes a person gets to running with the wrong crowd and stays with them even when he knows he shouldn't. Maybe it's because he doesn't know anybody else or because it's become a habit. There had been a few times when I was younger that I had traipsed around with folks I'd sort of fallen in with, folks who, if I hadn't left them, would surely have gotten me hung.

There was that Texas outfit, a wild bunch, but not a good wild bunch, if you know what I mean. They weren't just blowing off steam like cowhands often do, there was a meanness to what they did. One night they started talking- of holding up a train and I listened, and when we rode off to our separate places that night I just kept riding, clean out of the country. I'd been sixteen then, man- grown and rugged, but with an ounce of brains picked up from somewhere. There were six in the outfit until I rode off and left them. They held up their train, all right, and when they split up the take, each man got twenty-six dollars and fifty cents. A year later two of them, showing less brains than I'd have expected, tried to hold up a stage on which Eugene Blair was riding shotgun. Those boys aren't with us anymore. Another was in prison, and two were hung by impatient citizens.

Tomorrow was another day, and when I fell asleep I was remembering the rope I'd had around my own neck.

Chapter
Twenty

First morning in my life when Fd been in bed past seven o'clock, but when I awoke I was rested for the first time in weeks. For a few minutes I just lay there thinking how good it felt, then I got up, shaved, and dressed. All the time I was conscious of what was happening in the street below, and whilst shaving could glance from the corners of my eyes up the street toward the tall building, all of two stories, that ended the street. Back of it the La Platas lifted toward the sky. No snow on them yet, but it wouldn't be many weeks.

From the Dutchman's blacksmith shop I could hear the clang of his hammer on the anvil where he was shoeing a horse or sharpening steel for some miner.

Up Deadwood Gulch where the aspens were turning to gold I could see the smoke from a chimney, vaguely blue against the pines.

Slinging my gun around my hips, I tried to think back to a day when I hadn't worn one. Ninety percent of the men down there in the street would be armed, but those days were passing. Would I pass with them? I shook my head to rid it of such thoughts. It was a wild and rough west we had come into and it needed men with the bark on.

By the time I reached the street, most men were at work. The morning sun was pleasant and I loafed along the street in front of the general store. A youngster came out with a small striped paper sack of candy in his hand. When I was his age most candy still had medicinal centers, but that was already passing off in the cities. A woman went into the door and when I went in she was buying some dress goods. Most women made their own clothes and a woman who couldn't sew was a rarity. The clerk was showing her a bolt of cloth, had it spread out on the counter. I walked across the room to look at a saddle, all carved leather and fancy, like no saddle a workin' cowhand could afford, although most times the saddles were worth more than the horse who carried it.

Idling around, looking at some spurs, some fancy, some workaday types, and ropes. Me, I always made my own riatas out of rawhide the way the Mexicans did. In fact it was an old Mex showed me the way of it. The best ropers around were the Californios or Mexicans, most of them using ropes twice as long as the average workin' cowboy whom I knew.

Truth was, I was kind of watching for Janet. I figured she would be on her way to the restaurant pretty soon and maybe I could get to eat with her again. Not that she'd have much use for me now that the trouble was over. I walked back to the street, hating to leave the wonderful smells of that general store, fresh ground coffee (they got the beans in big burlap bags and ground them on the premises), new leather, and dry goods.

There wasn't much happening in the stores. The men had gone to work and most women were about their household work and wouldn't be coming to shop for a couple of hours yet, maybe more.

The Dutchman had quit work and was walking across to the restaurant for coffee. There were a couple of strange horses tied to the hitch rail in front of a saloon.

At the distance I could not make out the brands, but then I didn't know much about the brands in this part of the country.

A few clouds were showing in the blue sky. I walked across the street, paused in the door of the restaurant to look around, then went inside. It was a mighty peaceful time, so why should I be feeling uneasy?

The Dutchman was at his coffee and he nodded to me. Most folks knew who I was by now. News gets around quick in a small town, and I could see folks stealing glances at me but nobody seemed anxious to talk. They'd heard about Houston Burrows and even Pan Beacham and my brief difficulty with Lew Paine, so I was trouble.

The Dutchman, a hardworking man, probably felt the same, although he knew I hadn't much choice. "You kill Beacham?"

"Left me no choice. He come for me."

The Dutchman's mug of coffee looked like a thimble in his hand, it was that big.

"I know him. Bad man." He gulped coffee and broke a piece from the corn pone before him. "I know him in Trinidad. He is brother to Clinton."

Well, now! That explained some things but left the gate wide open for trouble.

He looked over at me. "You bring much trouble with you. You go soon?"