The Brave Cowboy (24 page)

“Is there a barn out there?”

“No. Just a little shed full of hay, and a corral with two goats. No place big enough for a horse except the
corral or the house. Why, do you think this guy is on a horse? Over.”

“Maybe. Are there neighbors around there?”

“Not many but there’s some. You think he’s hidin in one of the neighbor’s houses?”

“No. Now listen, Floyd: go around to those neighbors and ask them if they’ve seen anything unusual lately. Ask them if they’ve seen a man on horseback in the last two or three days. Ask everyone within half a mile of the place until you get some information. Do you get me? Over.”

“Okay, Morey. Anything else? Over.”

“That’s all. Over and out.”

The radio operator closed the speaker switch and lifted his earphones. Johnson set the microphone down on the table, sniffed moodily, staring at the blank wall beyond the operator’s head, then went back to his chair and sat down to wait. To wait, to scratch, to reflect and trouble himself.

The little red jewel on the receiver panel started to flash. The operator lowered his earphones, knocked down a toggle switch and listened; after a moment he reached for his pencil and started taking notes.

“Is that Glynn?” said Johnson. The operator shook his head. Johnson turned back to his hands and troubles. He heard a jet plane scream by far overhead and felt a twinge of envy. He might have… He tried to think of something else. What was it his wife wanted?

The radio operator turned toward him. “Morey?” Johnson did not look up. The operator said: “They got one of the Navajos.”

Johnson sighed and rubbed his ear.

“State Police found em,” the operator said. “They was chasin this pickup out west of Grants. When they stopped it two squaws jumped out of the back and started running across the boondock. They shot one in the leg and the other got away. These two Navajos was dressed up like squaws.”

“Okay,” said Johnson.

“Thought you might like to know,” the operator said. He waited, opened his mouth again—“One down, two to go.” Johnson made no reply. After a moment the operator turned back to his comic book.

They waited for twenty-five minutes. Then the message came from Glynn. “This is CS-1, this is CS-1,” the operator was saying; “come in, CS-4. Over.” He switched on the speaker, while Johnson rose ponderously and hauled himself toward the microphone.

Through a haze of static came Glynn’s voice, sifted and tinny: “Hello CS-1, this is CS-4. I found out some thin. Is Johnson listening? I found out somethin very interesting. Over.”

“This is Johnson,” the sheriff said. “Go ahead, Floyd. Over.”

“None of the people around Bondi’s house would tell me anything,” the radio voice said, “but a little way down the street there’s a little grocery store run by a man named Hedges. He says that the day before yesterday, around noon, he saw a man on a chestnut mare ride around the corner from the west, go down the dirt road and turn into Bondi’s lane. He says that about three, four hours later he saw the same man walk past going toward town. And he says that the mare was in the goat corral all day yesterday. He says that he didn’t see or hear any horse this morning; he doesn’t know what happened to the horse. What’ll I do now? Over.”

“What did the man look like, Floyd? Over.”

“Hedges says the man was tall and skinny, he had an ugly face and he looked vicious and dangerous. Says he wore a black hat. Over.”

“I see.” Johnson sighed and said nothing for a minute or so. Then: “Floyd—you must be out on the edge of things there, huh? No houses north or east of Bondi’s place, are there? How about it?”

“There’s nothin at all east of here. No road, no
houses. There’s a few more houses along the road goin north. Pretty scattered. Over.”

“All right, Floyd, you check those houses to the north you haven’t already been to and find out if anybody saw or heard a man go by on horseback sometime this morning. Maybe before daylight. And if you don’t get any information that way here’s what I want you to do: I want you to go back to Bondi’s place, get out of your car, go to that corral and see if you can find tracks going off east toward the mountains. How’s the dust blowin out there? Over.”

“It’s pretty windy but there’s not too much dust in the air yet.”

“Fine, You look for those tracks. You know what hoofprints look like, Floyd. If you don’t find a trail right away you keep walkin in half circles, bigger and bigger, until you do. You think you can do that? Over.”

“Sure, Morey. If he took that horse anywhere east of the city I’ll find the tracks, don’t you worry. Okay?”

“That’s all, Floyd. Over and out.” Johnson set the microphone down on the table and went to the window again and stared out, hands clasped behind his back. There was nothing to see out there, of course, nothing new—the hardware store, the First National Bank on whose barren wall someone had scrawled JESUS SAVES, the office building, the passing cars and human bodies, the streetlights, the street itself—all of this had long ago lost any but the most perfunctory interest for his eyes. He looked at them without seeing them; he looked at the street as into a mirror.

The telephone. The mechanical wrangle of the telephone drilled into his consciousness: grudgingly he turned and went back to his desk. He picked up the receiver: “Yes?”

His secretary said: “U.S. Marshal’s office, sir.”

“All right, put em on.”

“That you, Morey? This is Daugherty. Say, you’ve got a Federal prisoner in your establishment by the
name of Bondi, haven’t you? I hope you still have him.”

Johnson frowned, then answered slowly: “He’s still here. You want him now?”

“That’s’ right. I’ve got orders to pack him off to Leavenworth. I’m sending a man over in the morning to pick him up. Is he in good shape for shipment?”

“He’s all right.”

“Fine. I’ll have a man over there in the morning, about nine o’clock. You’ll have Bondi’s papers ready and everything, won’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Thanks, Morey. I’ll be seeing you. So long now.”

“So long.” Johnson hung up.

The radio operator glanced up from his comic book. “Was that the Marshal?”

Johnson grunted. He stood for a while by his desk, vacant-eyed, scratching his ribs; his shirttail was coming out. Then he spoke to the operator. “You go upstairs,” he said: “Tell this fella Bondi if he wants to make any phone calls he can do it this afternoon. Tell him he’s leaving in the morning. And tell him he can have visitors this afternoon if he wants any. Between three and four—no earlier, no later, I’ll watch the radio.”

The operator put down his comic book and slowly, reluctantly, got up out of his chair. “It ain’t visitors’ day,” he mumbled.

“Don’t fret over it,” Johnson said.

“Sure, Morey. Okay, Morey.” The radio operator went out.

Johnson sat down, waiting and scratching. The public telephone rang again. He let it ring several times, then picked it up. “Yes?”

“Mrs. Johnson calling, sir.”

He closed his eyes and slid far down Into his chair. “Okay,” he said.

The brittle, galvanized voice of his wife: “Morlin? Is that you, Morlin?”

“Yes. What do you want?”

“You don’t sound right, Morlin. Are you sick?”

“What do you want?”

“I just wanted to remind you to pick up Elinor and to get an extension cord before you come home. You haven’t forgotten, have you? Remember: Elinor, five-thirty—”

“—school, extension cord.”

“That’s right, Morlin. Goodby, dear.”

He hung up, sighed deeply and slid farther down in his chair, picking at his nose. He hoisted his feet to the desktop, crossed them, and backed his squawking swivel chair solidly against the wall under the picture of President Harry S Truman. He sat motionless for some time, bulky and noiseless and self-absorbed as a praying monk.

The radio operator returned. “I told him,” he said. “They’re lettin him make a call now.” He resumed his seat by the radio equipment.

“How did he look?” said Johnson.

“How did he
look?
”

“That’s right; does he look all right?”

“Oh.” The operator considered. “Sure, he looks all right—no marks on him. He walks good enough. Only thing wrong with him was, he didn’t look very happy.”

“He didn’t say anything about Gutierrez? No complaints?”

“He hardly said a word, Morey. He was hardly even polite.”

Johnson asked no more questions. He folded his hands on his stomach and stared at the toes of his boots. His secretary came in and picked up the letters and papers in the box on his desk. “Where’s Hernandez?” Johnson said to her: “I haven’t seen him all day.”

“Mr. Hernandez left early this morning,” the girl said. “He’s investigating a knife incident. Somebody got it last night.”

“Where was this? I didn’t even hear about it.”

“Lead Hill.” The girl returned to her outer office. Johnson stared at his boots and thoughtfully rubbed his nose.

“Did you hear about Old Heavy?” the operator said. “Somebody called him out on a knife job once.”

“Who’s Old Heavy?”

“Wallis—the coroner they got out in Lead Hill.” The operator paused, watching Johnson for a sign of interest. There was none but he went on: “Old Heavy got called out one day to look at this knife job. He drove to the place and there was this dead Mex layin face down in the middle of the street with a knife in his back. Old Heavy didn’t even get out of his car: ‘Suicide,’ he said, and turned around and drove home.” The operator smiled eagerly at Johnson but there was no response. “Didn’t even get out of the car,” the operator repeated, lost in admiration.

Johnson made no answer, relapsing again into the profound state of abstraction which had enveloped him most of the afternoon. He was interrupted several times by telephone calls from indignant citizens wanting to know what he was doing about the escape of the Anarcho-Red and the two Indian sex-fiends; but after each interruption he seemed only to sink deeper into his morose cerebrations. He still scratched himself, but infrequently.

The red eye twinkled on the radio panel. The operator closed his comic book—a new one—and went into action. In a few moments the spectral voice of Deputy Glynn was issuing from the loudspeaker, while Johnson listened gravely, his big red left hand clutching the neck of the microphone. Glynn was saying, in his faltering but earnest manner: “…. Nobody saw or heard a horse at all. No sign of a horse along the road. In either direction. So like you said I went back to Bondi’s goat corral and looked around. Plenty of hoofprints there. I looked all around like you said, Morey, and pretty soon I found a trail. Goin straight from the back porch of the house toward the big mother ditch. I fol
lowed the trail to the ditch and across a little wooden bridge and to a field. The ground’s so hard and dry there I couldn’t make out much from there on. But I did find where somebody cut a hole in the barbed wire fence at the edge of the mesa. A new cut—no rust on the ends of the wires. I think this must be our man, Morey, if you’re sure he’s ridin a horse. Whatteya want me to do now? Over.”

“What direction do the tracks go in, Floyd? East?”

“Yeah, that’s right, they go east.”

“Toward the mountains?”

“Yeah… straight toward the mountains. Say—you think that’s where he’s hidin, Morey? Want me to drive out there?”

Johnson scratched his chin; his chin and jaw were gray with the resurgent roots of whiskers. “What time is it?” he said to the operator.

The operator looked at his wristwatch. “Almost four-thirty,” he said.

Johnson spoke into the microphone. “Come on home, Floyd, we’ll go out there with a search party in the morning. That’s too big an area for one man to cover, even you. Come on in and get something to eat Do you hear me? Over.”

“Okay, Morey, I hear you. I’ll be there in twenty minutes. Over.”

“Over and out.” Johnson went back to his desk and sat down. He scratched his neck, while the radio operator waited for him to speak.

The operator waited for several minutes and then, impatient, spoke first himself: “Ain’t you gonna send anybody out there to look around, Morey? He might get away.”

Johnson did not answer immediately. Then he said: “If Burns has gone out there to the mountains it’s because he wants to hide for a few days, which means he’ll still be there tomorrow. If he hasn’t gone to the mountains there’s no use lookin for him there.” The operator was silent. Johnson said: “You might put in
a few more calls, though. Call the Forest Ranger at El Sangre station and ask him to check on any campfires not burning in an authorized campground. After you do that radio the relay station up on the rim and ask them to tell us if they see a campfire down below in one of the inner canyons. That’s about all, I guess.” The operator scribbled notes, while Johnson went on: “You might ask the State Police to send a plane out that way this evening, if they get a chance. And tell them we’ll need a plane and maybe some other help in the morning. You got all that?”

“Sure, Morey.” The operator pulled his telephone close.

Johnson stood up then and stretched his arms toward the ceiling. He lowered his arms and made an attempt to stuff his shirt back into his pants and then forgot about it, wandering instead toward the window.

The wind had died, gone away, blown south to Mexico. The sky was clear now, vivid as wine and deep with a premonition of night. Far beyond the city, reaching for twenty miles north and south in an unbroken five-thousand foot wall of granite, the Sangre Mountains rose up amid their rubble of foothills and crags and canyons, the naked rock luminous and golden in the slanting light.

Johnson stared at the mountains. That’s where he is, he thought; there he waits. Out there among the rocks and yellowpine, watching the city. Might just take a run out there after supper.

He knew the time had come to call Barker. His mind was bent on decision, finality. He went slowly to his desk, put his hand on the private telephone: the benign serious wistful face of Harry Truman watched him from the wall. Johnson raised the telephone receiver to his ear and dialed a number—two one two one four… He waited…

“Rio Bravo Development Company.”