The Eye of the Hunter (20 page)

“What's he celebrating this time?” Henry poured coffee from his saucer into his cup.

“God knows. But I claim this calls for a beer.”

Henry wiped his brow with his napkin. “I'll drink to that. My last alcoholic beverage, sir—there's a story for you!”

Ambrose shouted for the Mexican waiter, sent the coffee away, and ordered
cervezas de Anchor
.

Henry sipped the cold red beer with voluptuous enjoyment as Ambrose took out his silver hunting-case watch, read it, grimaced, and said, “Get on with your fairy tale, Sergeant. A man's coming to see me. If I understand it, you're
pretty sure
Rip Parrish has gone to his reward, you're
positive
you have the cartridge that killed him, and you'd
probably swear
that my ex-partner fired it.”

“I'll draw you a picture,” Henry said.

Ambrose found a fold of newsprint in his coat, and Henry adjusted his mechanical pencil. He smoothed the paper and reflected; then, with meticulous strokes, sketched the juniper stump that had become an executioner's chair. He drew a towering butte across the page from it and indicated with military symbols where a couple of trees interfered with a straight shot from the dome to the stump.

“All right,” he said, “from the stump to the top of the butte is over five hundred yards. Rip was sitting on the stump. It was dark. So to put the cross hairs on him, the general—let's call him the Hunter—would have had to aim on the campfire itself and allow about a foot and a half of elevation to reach his wishbone. He's using a Malcom 3X scope, probably-impossible to see it with iron sights.”

He frowned. Sipped some beer. Then tapped the paper. “But look here, Ambrose! The trees are in the way.”

“Aha!” Ambrose exclaimed. “'With a sneer the Hunter took from his saddlebag a magic target rifle that would fire around corners!'”

“Oh, no—the Hunter's used to solving tactical problems. He accepted the givens and broke the equation. It took time and money, but he was gambling for a ranch and what he thought was buried treasure. He started with a Sharps cartridge like this—old buffalo load, .50-caliber, a hundred and forty grains of powder, seven-hundred-grain lead slug. The kind of shell that kills at one end and cripples at the other.

“But he knew that to clear the trees, a cannonball like that would have to cut so high a trajectory that it would come into camp falling like a rock—damned near vertically, and without enough velocity for a sure kill. He needed a special load—the bullet had to be lighter, a little smaller, and propelled by a bigger charge of powder. Best to use a paper-patch shell, for maximum accuracy. With a load like that, the bullet would come in with about the force of a Colt .45 slug at close range. So that's what the Hunter invented. And the gun he showed me the other day would handle this—and no other shell you'll find. Because it's tailor-made.”

Ambrose tossed the brass case on his palm. “You're wrong. This thing would never go into Milo's gun. The gun you saw is plain old '85 Winchester—common, ordinary .45-caliber. This is too fat. Try again. Of course, he could have used a different gun.”

Henry felt a flush of armorer's fever. “Never! Shooters like him are married to their favorite guns. Have you ever really examined it? It's a .50-caliber now. Ever heard of the Browning brothers, of Ogden, Utah?”

Ambrose leered. “No! What bank did those rascals rob this time?”

“They're gun makers—the elite in the field. He had that old '85 rechambered by them. I almost saluted when I saw their little
BB
engraved on the wall of the rifle. They made it into a .50-caliber target rifle, necked down to .45 for the lighter load he had to have. Also, it's a paper-patch gun now—they throated it to make sure the patch contacted the rifling, to give it the spin he wanted for maximum accuracy.”

Blank-faced, Ambrose looked at him. “I'll be damned. I'll ... I'll have to look at it. But surely you're not going to the sheriff with no more evidence than this?”

“Oh, there's more!
This
is the lead slug that went through Rip's brisket and buried itself in the chair. I dug it out yesterday, before a witness. Look at that thing!”

He dropped a deformed bullet on the table. In the dull gray flattened slug, small pockets of bone were embedded like chalk in a chunk of rock. Ambrose used his pencil to turn it.

“My God!” he said.

“You'll notice Frances Parrish's little
F
on the base.”

Again Ambrose looked at his watch. “What about the possibility,” he said, “that she shot Rip herself? This man I'm waiting for—he has a story about Parrish, too.”

“Yes, Father Vargas told me about Catalina's hair-raising experience. Is Budge selling you her story? Then keep in mind that she was scared senseless and it was dark, so that she had no idea what was going on.

“Think about this, too: When Rip's body is exhumed, the path the bullet took through his carcass will prove either that Frances was hanging by one hand from the branch of a tree when she shot her husband, or that somebody else shot him from the bluff. The bullet was traveling downward—descending from a six- or seven-foot trajectory.”

A couple of Mexican cowboys rode by. Ambrose lighted another cigarillo. “I'll tell you what I know for sure, Logan. But anything about the murder would be pure speculation on my part.”

“That's all I'm asking.”

“All right, this is the truth, naked as a jaybird: I do not know whether Parrish is dead or not! I do not know where he's buried, if indeed he's dead. If he is, I do not know who killed him. I agreed to go out with the Hunter, as you call him, but I warned him never to tell me about any game he shot. I wished he hadn't confided in me at all, but he did so because, without a spotter, he could have spent the rest of his life zeroing in for that shot. It's a half-hour climb to his roost. He made a dozen shots, and I waved a flag to tell him where he was hitting. Rip was at Spider, on one of his rare visits home—on conjugal business, I presume.

“When the Hunter had logged five shots in a six-inch circle, he started down—and I left. I came home. I suppose he stayed out there. Did he shoot him? I don't know. Is he blind in that eye? I don't even know that.”

Henry sipped, wiped foam from his lip. “Tough old rooster. And an unbelievable shot. A single leaf could have spoiled it.”

“And yet do you know what I wondered? Why Rip didn't notice the practice holes in the damned stump?”

“Because the Hunter filled each hole with a juniper twig and smoothed it off so flush, you couldn't see it without a magnifying glass. What do you think? Is that a story you can use?”

Ambrose looked down, his eyes closed as if in prayer. “Henry,” he murmured, “I'd almost die to run that story. But not quite.”

A man crossed the street and made for the hotel, walking slowly and giving Henry the impression that he was drunk but trying to walk sober. Ambrose's mouth twisted into one of his derisive grins and he touched the brim of his hat.

“Sheriff?” he called. “Friend of mine wants to pay his respects.”

The man, on the steps now, made a choking sound, barely audible, a sort of anguished croak, and came toward the table, a very large man in black pants and a pinto horsehide vest ornamented with a star. He carried thirty pounds too much weight, most of it bulging above his silver-and-turquoise belt buckle. His red face was given an authoritative look by a thick gray mustache. He was puffing a bit when he reached the table and looked down at Henry, who remembered uneasily what Frances had told him about her father having removed a growth from the sheriffs throat. He appeared to be a sick man, uncomfortable with his goitrous belly—embarrassed, no doubt, about his voice.

“You've read about the famous Henry Logan, Sheriff,” said Ambrose. “Actually, I'm afraid he's not as bad as I cracked him up to be. In fact, Henry's rather astute.”

Sheriff Bannock forced grotesque sounds from his throat. “Hello, Henry,” he said, croaking. “Stick around. Town needs 'stutes.”

“Reminds me of a joke of Rip Parrish's,” said Ambrose. “‘Be alert,' he would say. ‘The country needs 'lerts.'”

Bannock whispered, “Too damn many 'lerts as it is! Think I hear one. Coming, in fact.”

Up the street, a man was shouting. On the walks, men laughed. A familiar overalled figure in a black Civil War hat came tramping up the middle of the street, waving a paper and bawling, “Catalina! When I find you, you bitch, I'll whip your ass!”

“Disgusting,” said the sheriff, and when the editor suggested that he join them, he shook his head and whispered, “meeting someone.”

“Christ,” Ambrose said through his teeth. “Now I've got to tell that hound-faced idiot I won't buy his story.”

“Why not, if you're not using mine?”

“Because I know his is nonsense!” Ambrose clutched Henry's forearm. “I wish to God I could run it, but ... well, for one thing, I don't think Milo's quite sane anymore. That cannon of his—think I want a cannonball right through my shop, and me in it?”

“I'll sleep on your roof till he's locked up.”

“He won't be locked up—never. He'd be in Mexico before I ran the second installment. But first he'd kill me. If I dared, though, I'd run an installment every day for a week! Maybe as fiction, at first!
Two Days in the Life of a Hunter
.'”

Ambrose gazed into the sky, pain and glory in his eyes. “'He prepares meticulously—then, on the last day ...'” In his hands he held an imaginary target rifle. “‘
The Hunter lowered his smoking gun and watched as his target toppled slowly from the stump, his hand still plucking at the strings of his banjo
....' And that's when I'd tell who the characters were. But you see, Henry—the risk is just too ... too ...”

Henry said, “I've got a better story still. Take your dagger in your teeth, Ben, and run it first. Do you like stories about men disappearing into Mexico?”

“What's this?” Ambrose looked at the blemished envelope Henry had laid before him. In the upper right-hand corner was a blue-green stamp, heavily canceled and obviously foreign. He turned the envelope to a scrutinize the reverse, where the word
CENSORED
had been stamped, along with some Army lieutenant's name.

He smirked. “Souvenir of the late war? Some girl who thought the world of you, but—”

“It was from my father—reached me in Cuba.”

Ambrose shrugged. “Held up in some Arizona post office for years?”

“No, no, Ben—it came from Costa Rica, while I was in Cuba.”

“Then I guess I don't know what you're talking about.”

“I made a copy of this letter, and if you do a nice job on the general, I'll let you have this letter and the picture he sent with it. It's signed 'Your loving papa, Captain John “Black Jack” Logan.'”

“Your stepfather?”

“No, my real father. You see, Ben—
he wasn't in that barn when the outlaws burned it!
He was up in the rocks, hiding the payroll bag! Those murderers weren't Indians, either—they were outlaws. Pulled the shoes off their horses' hoofs to lay it onto Indians....”

Ambrose looked up at the hillsides above the pass; his eyes roved the fleecy morning clouds and came back to Henry's face, and he looked like someone else now. Some god he had fervently believed in had been revealed as a myth.

“Oh, my
God
!” he said.

But now Budge Gorman stood before the hotel, shirtless and black-hatted, waving a hairy arm at the editor. “We're all set, Ben!” he bawled. “I got her John Henry on it!”

Ambrose muttered, “In a pig's eye!”

Budge Gorman slapped the paper he carried on the table before Ben Ambrose, stepped back, and stared at both men with his head tipped up and his eyes rolling to show the whites.

“What have we here?” said the editor.

“Look 'er over, Ben!” shouted Gorman. “It's my wife's sworn statement!”

“I can hear you, Budge—have mercy on our eardrums. Has she signed the statement?”

Gorman pulled up a chair, turned his head, and bawled,
“Mozo!
Where's that goddamn waiter?” He smelled of horses, manure, wine, and sweat. His long, mournful face was unshaven and his hair straggled from beneath the Grand Army hat.

“Patience,” the editor said with a sigh. “He's coming. Let's see now....”

“Right there! Are you blind? The
X
! Catalina can't write her name, either, so she makes an
X
, like me. Ain't that what you wanted?” He gave Ambrose an anxious look and added, “I always use an
X
myself, and then somebody writes, ‘Alonzo Gorman, his mark.' I reckon you'll have to write her name down.”

Shaking his head, the editor said quietly, “No, Budge, because I didn't witness it. And that isn't an X, man, it's a plus sign—like you use yourself. You made it, didn't you? Not Catalina.” He chuckled, patting Gorman's arm amicably.

Gorman pounded the table with both fists. “No, you idiot! She done it herself. What's the matter with you?”

Henry saw clearly that the meeting could only end in disaster. He realized that the editor carried a pistol with good reason. As he sat back, looking more like a gambler than a journalist, he said quietly, “Settle down, Budge. The sheriff happens to be inside the hotel, if we should need him. You've got to understand that I cannot run a bald-faced accusation of murder without a signed statement by the person I'm quoting. Can you comprehend that?”

“But you promised me! Is it the fifteen dollars? Is that what's the matter?”

“As it stands, you couldn't pay me to publish the charge. In fact, I now believe you should report Catalina's story to Sheriff Bannock, and I'll run the story when a warrant is issued for Frances Parrish.”