The Brave Cowboy (23 page)

Outside in the street a car backfired; another spasm
of wind swished by and dust pattered like rain against the windowglass.

“Gonna be another dirty day,” the radio operator said.

“Somebody’s trying to get you,” Johnson replied. A little red eye was flashing on the radio control board.

The operator pulled one earphone over an ear and flicked a switch on the panel; he spoke into the heavy radial microphone on his table. “This is CS-1,” he said, “this is CS-1. Come in, CS-4.”

“The speaker,” Johnson said.

The operator flipped a second switch and the black round screen on the receiver began to rasp and crackle. “This is Glynn,” the screen said; “where the hell is R.D. 4? Repeat: Where the hell is R.D. 4? Over.”

“Let me talk to him,” Johnson said, as the operator hesitated. He heaved himself out of his chair, lumbered over to the radio and grabbed the microphone by the neck as if he were strangling a chicken. “That Glynn,” he mutteerd, “—so dumb he doesn’t know whether Christ was crucified or kicked by a mule.” He growled into the microphone: “This is Johnson. Where are you now, Floyd? Get me?—where are you now? Over.”

“I’m on North Guadalupe Road,” the voice in the speaker said. “North Guadalupe. Over.”

“Listen, Floyd: go north to Coral Street, then east till you hit Highland Road. Follow Highland Road on north. Understand? When you get past the city limits start watching the numbers on the mailboxes until you come to 424. Do you get me? Repeat my message. Over.”

The voice from the screen said: “Okay, Morey, I get you. North to Coral Street, east to Highland Road, north on Highland to Box 424. Am I right? Over.”

“That’s right, you simple Mick. Now get going. Over and out.” Johnson returned to his desk and sat down, scratching at his armpit. “Did you notify Socorro?” he said to the operator.

“Socorro?”

“Give them the information on this fella Burns; tell them he may be coming their way.” Johnson thought for a moment. “Tell them to check on Mr. Henry Vogelin this evening. Explain why.”

“Okay, Moray.” The operator reached for his clipboard and notepad.

Johnson put his feet on a desk drawer and allowed himself about five minutes of complete relaxation. Then, idly and without interest, he glanced through his morning mail. There was a letter from the National Sheriffs’ Association containing an invitation to a national convention of county sheriffs in Orlando, Florida; also, a wistful reminder to Sheriff Johnson that he was four years behind in his dues; Johnson filed the letter in his wastepaper basket. A letter from the Peerless Prison Equipment Company of Providence, R.I., announcing a revolutionary new device for the immediate detection of prison break-out attempts: an electronic seismograph which, when properly installed, registers, measures and announces, with appropriate alarms and lighting effects, any effort to tamper with any metallic part of the structure of a standard cell-block, or any effort to tamper with the seismograph apparatus itself; at a price any progressive community can afford: $795.50 plus delivery charges. Johnston flipped the letter into his wastebasket. Then there were letters from his public, mostly unsigned, containing accusations and suspicions directed against their neighbors—wife-beating, the starving of children, disturbances of peace. Among the other anonymous letters was one composed in shaky but unequivocal English with words cut out of a newspaper and pasted to a sheet of brown butcher paper: I AM GONE TO KILL YOU SHERIFF JOHNSON. Johnson examined the envelope of this communication, found it addressed with the same technique; he looked for the postmark; there was no postmark.

This letter and the complaints that were signed he placed in a box of papers and letters destined for
the desk of his Deputy Sheriff, Richard Hernandez. His official correspondence—requests, reports and inquiries from state and county functionaries, all of it-he filed away in a drawer containing in addition to a confusion of other letters, a U.S. Forest Service canteen, a box of twelve-gauge shotgun shells, a pair of dirty tennis shoes stuffed with dirty socks, a Smith & Wesson .38 with holster and belt, several small chunks of carnotite, chewing gum wrappers, apple cores, little photo magazines, crumbs, pennies and sand. Johnson leaned back, closing his eyes and clasping his hands together behind his head.

The office phone rang. He let it ring a second time, then leaned forward and picked it up. “Yeah?” he said.

The voice of his secretary in the outer office: “Mr. Hassler would like to see you, sir.”

Johnson scowled and swung slowly around in his chair, turning his face to the wall. I’m busy,” he said; “don’t let him in.”

The door opened and a young man slipped in smoothly, hardly making a sound. “What’s the matter, Morey?” he said; “you got secrets?” He wore an inconspicuous tan suit, shell-rimmed glasses and a complexion like fried liver. “I’ll only take a minute. I gotta make a living too, you know.” He came forward and sat on a corner of the sheriff’s desk, pushing the In-Out box aside. Johnson remained in his averted position, eyes half-closed facing the wall. “About these three jokers that walked out of your jail this morning,” Hastier began; “—is it true that one of them is an Anarchist?”

Johnson growled. “They didn’t walk out, they worked their way out.” he said.

“Is it true,” Hassler said, “that the two Indians are sex offenders?”

“No. Who the be-jesus told you that?”

“They attacked a woman on a bus.”

“They didn’t attack anybody. They were drunk and
they made this old lady a proposition.”

“An indecent proposition?”

“Yes, considering her age.”

Hassler scribbled in shorthand in his notebook. “About this man Burns,” he said: “What kind of an Anarchist is he?”

“How many kinds are there?” Johnson said.

“Is it true he belonged to a secret Anarchist society at the State University?”

“I don’t know if it’s true or not.”

“The FBI says he did.”

“You’d better check with them before you print that.”

“How about this manifesto advocating civil disobedience? Did Burns sign that?”

“Who told you all this?”

Hassler smiled. “Just guessing,” he said. “Burns did sign it, didn’t he?”

“It seems so,” said Johnson, still facing the wall. He proceeded to unwrap a stick of chewing gum.

Hassler added to his notations. “Do you think these three men are dangerous, Sheriff?”

“No.”

“Do you expect any difficulty in re-capturing them?”

“No.”

“Where do you think they’re probably hiding now?”

“In New Mexico.” Johnson put the chewing gum in his mouth and started to chew.

Hassler smiled again. Then he said: “Is it true that this man Burns is kind of a character?”

“Never met him.”

“I mean, that he’s kind of… eccentric?, Offbeat? Queer?”

“I don’t know anything about him.”

“For instance,” Hassler said, “we found out that he rides a horse everywhere he goes. Doesn’t own a car. Rides horseback all the time.”

Johnson stopped chewing his gum for a moment; after the pause he said: “Who told you that?”

Hassler laughed. “I told you, Morey: I’m telepathic I got powers. Isn’t it true what I said?”

Johnson was silent. After a while he said: “I can’t understand why you boys are so curious about this Burns fella—as far as I can make out he’s just another dumb cowhand that’s fell on his head too often.”

“Why?” said Hassler; he closed his notebook and stood up. He grinned. “Human interest,” he said. And then he turned and walked out.

Johnson remained facing the wall for several minutes, sombre and ponderous in his ruminations. Finally he swung around and toward the radio operator, who was now reading Glynn’s comic book. Johnson squeezed his nose thoughtfully; a faint belch escaped him. The operator looked up. “Any livery stables in this town?” Johnson asked.

“Livery stables?” said the operator; he turned his gaze slowly from Johnson to the window. “Livery stables… ”

“If you wanted to leave a horse somewhere overnight what would you do with him?”

“If I wanted to leave a horse somewhere I’d just leave him,” the operator said: “I can’t stand them brutes.” He saw Johnson begin to frown and added: “I don’t know, Morey… I guess I’d take him to one of the riding stables.”

“Okay,” said Johnson. “Call every riding stable in town or near town, find out if anybody’s left a horse there and if they have get the details.”

“Okay, Morey.” The operator went to work with his telephone.

Johnson sat for a spell chewing his gum, scratching at his belly, then got up and went into his private toilet and urinated. He was beginning to feel hungry; after he had buttoned up and attempted to hoist his trousers up to the height of what was once his waist line—they promptly sagged down again—he pulled out his old pocket watch and looked at it: three-twenty. He grunted and held it up to his ear and found it had run
down; he wound the watch and put it back in his vest pocket. Then he washed his hands in cold water and gave his gray hair a quick inefficient combing—using his fingers; he couldn’t find the pocketcomb that his daughter had given him just two days before or the one that his wife had given him a few days before that He scratched briefly between his buttocks and went out.

“I called four places,” the operator told him. “Was all I could find in the telephone book. Four places countin the Fairgrounds. Nobody was boardin any horses this week that wasn’t regular customers. One of these places told me to try Buddy Mack out in the Canyon so I called Mack and sure enough a man left two horses at his stables just three days ago and picked them up this morning.”

Johnson stood by the window watching the wind chase sand and scraps of paper, spin in eddies, raise skirts. “Two horses?” he said.

“Yeah—Tennessee walkin horses, Mack said.”

“What was the man like?”

“Mack said he was kinda sawed-off at each end and spread out in the middle, like a knocked-up Shetland pony. He had a red mustache.” Johnson said nothing, continued to stare out the window. The operator, allowing this information to soak in, went on: “He was wearin a polo shirt, white shorts, black knee socks and a beret with a red bonbon on top. He hauled his horses in a aluminum trailer and pulled it with a green Cadillac with California plates. Mack said he pulled off in the direction of the Mississippi River.”

“Did Mack tell you what he was drinkin last night?”

“No, he didn’t.” The operator grinned. “But he said that now he did recall that this fella had a kind of sinister look in his eye and that he wouldn’t let his two horses associate with Mack’s horses. And he sprayed the stalls before he put his horses in. And he had his own nigger with him to groom the horses and shovel
shit. Mack said the nigger had a Oxford accent and wore plus four minus shoes.”

Johnson brooded over the windy streetscene before him; he stood there for a long time, silent, occasionally scratching himself. The clock in the window of Koeber’s Department Store said fifteen minutes still twelve. “Any word from Glynn yet?” Johnson said, staring out the window.

The operator lowered his comic book. “Not a word,” he said. “He must’ve stopped at a bar somewhere to get directions.”

Johnson raised the window sash, spat his wad of gum out into the hedge below, closed the window and turned and picked his dust-colored Stetson off the hatrack. “I’ll be back in about an hour,” he said. “If Glynn calls in while I’m out tell him to stay right where he is till I get back. Unless he’s already got our man.”

“Okay, Morey.” The operator reached for his lunch-bag.

“Tell him not to bother anybody till I tell him what to do.”

“Sure, Morey.” The operator began unwrapping the wax paper from around a ham-and-Swiss-cheese sandwich. When the door closed behind Sheriff Johnson he spread the comic book out on his knees and started to eat. The name of the comic book was TRUE CRIME STORIES.

Johnson did not return in an hour—it was nearly two hours. He came slowly into the office, parked his hat on the rack without looking, and forged heavily, like an abandoned barge, across the room and into his berth behind the desk. There he settled, sinking in thought, obscured in the solemn atmosphere of a man engaged in prolonged, difficult and crucial introspection. The radio operator, whose face revealed signs of a moderate internal agitation, and who obviously contained news, did not dare to interrupt him. But after several minutes had passed, Johnson raised his massive head
and quite suddenly fired a question at the operator: “Well?”

The operator almost flinched. “It’s Floyd,” he said. “He thinks he’s on the trail of something.”

“Let me talk to him.” Johnson rose slowly from his chair and crossed to the radio bench.

The operator, his earphones in place, flicked on a switch and spoke into the microphone: “CS-1 calling CS-4. CS-1 calling CS-4. Come in, CS-4. Over.” He flipped the speaker switch.

The black screen vibrated and from the interior of the loudspeaker floated the strangely transmuted voice of Deputy Glynn: “This is CS-4, this is CS-4. When the hell do I get off for lunch? I’m sick of fig newtons. Where’s Johnson? Over.”

Johnson reached for the microphone. “Floyd,” he said, “this is Johnson. Where are you and what’ve you found? Over.”

The voice in the speaker: “Izzat you, Morey? Hi. I’m out at this Paul M. Bondi’s place. I’m parked in his backyard. There’s nobody here right now. The house ain’t locked; I’ve searched it. It looks like a woman and a kid is livin in it now—must be Bondi’s wife and kid. No sign of the cowboy guy in the house—except there’s
three
dirty dishes in the sink and
three
forks and two cups and a glass. But I found somethin outside: bootprints. Somebody’s been walkin around here with cowboy boots on. A full-grown man, I mean. Wasn’t this Burns guy supposed to be wearin boots? How long do I have to stay out here? Morey? Over.”

“Look, Floyd,” Johnson said to the microphone, “is there a horse around there? Or any sign of a horse? Or a barn or a pasture? Over.”

“I don’t see no horse now but I sure stepped in the sign of one not ten minutes ago. You think this guy has a horse?”