Play a Lone Hand Read online

  Dixon was silent a long moment, and then he asked skeptically, “Could it be done?”

  “I never heard of it, but it could,” Fiske said grimly. “Anyway, Albers wrote Welling that’s the way it worked.”

  “And Albers is dead.”

  Fiske looked at him a long moment, then nodded. “What more proof do you need that it worked?”

  “So Sebree’s the man who killed him, the man who had me beat up?”

  “Sebree, Deyo or Kearie.”

  It’s Sebree, all right, Giff thought thinly. It all meshed perfectly, from Sebree’s hiring him in hopes he could get inside information down to the beating he received last night for butting into something that wasn’t his business.

  Giff’s voice had a rough edge to it as he asked, “If you knew all this already from what Albers wrote, why did you send me to get him?”

  “No good reason,” Fiske said wearily. “In his letter, Albers said he once had two copies of the April seventeenth Free Press for last year—one a true run copy, the other a fixed-up phony—and that they’d been stolen from him.”

  “Who stole them?” Giff asked skeptically.

  “That’s what I wanted to ask him—if he had any idea who could have them. I’m sorry I sent you.”

  Some of Giff’s truculence fell away at Fiske’s disarming honesty. He wanted to clear up the rest of it now, and he asked, “What if I’d found the April seventeeth issue in the Free Press files?”

  “That would have proved Albers’ charge.”

  “I don’t see how.”

  Fiske spread his hands. “Because the phony final proof notices of those five men are in the land office records in Washington. We could get them. If we found a true run copy of the April seventeeth Free Press and found those proof notices weren’t in it, we’d prove fraud. Sebree, Deyo and Kearie would go to jail.”

  Giff understood it now. He asked, “What’s so hard about finding a copy? There must be one somewhere outside of the newspaper files.”

  “Who saves fifteen-month-old newspapers?”

  “Advertise and ask.”

  “In Kearie’s own newspaper?” Fiske asked coldly. “No, nobody keeps old newspapers except a newspaper itself. Since we can’t ask everyone to look in their woodsheds, it’s pretty hopeless, isn’t it?”

  Giff supposed that was true and was silent, but anger was still in him. In spite of Fiske’s candor, he had the feeling that he had been used. He had been offered a simple work hand’s job, and had accepted it in order to eat. In the space of one short day, he had become involved in an intrigue he had no taste for, and had got a beating for his pains. Not a beating, a kicking, he thought bitterly. The thing to do now was pull out, quit. He had his saddle, and he’d paid for it by taking his beating. He owed none of these people any loyalty, and Cass, once he understood, would not blame him for quitting. No, he’d borrow a horse from Cass and ride out today.

  Fiske drank his coffee and then reached in his pocket for his pipe. Stuffing it with shaggy tobacco he seemed to carry loose in his jacket pocket, he regarded Giff frowningly. “I suppose you’re through working for the government.”

  Giff nodded. “You can get another packer easy.”

  Fiske sighed. “Don’t blame you.” He lighted his pipe, and then said, “You’ll have to go to the hearing.”

  “All right.”

  “I’ll see you afterward and pay you.”

  Giff rose. “What do I say at the hearing?”

  “Just what you’ve told Edwards.”

  Giff accepted that and tramped out. Once on the street, he turned toward the livery, wondering where Edwards’ store was. Already there was a feeling of relief upon him at his decision to leave. He’d left a job working for a drunken fool and near helpless old man at a job whose deadly danger he was only beginning to realize. He had worked long enough in the bitter anonymity of the trail drives to know that his life was valuable only to him. Here in this strange town, he was a saddle tramp with only a name to distinguish him from other broke drifters. Nobody would question his death, or if they did, the questioning would cease at Sebree’s command.

  Passing Henty’s saloon, he had not seen a store marked Edwards. He halted, about to ask directions from a man approaching when his glance fell on the Free Press office.

  Remembering his conversation with Fiske, a kind of perversity settled upon him as he regarded the sign. What was it Fiske had said when he suggested advertising for the missing copy of the Free Press? In Kearie’s own newspaper? Giff was remembering Mary Kincheon’s remarks about Kearie’s total indifference to his publication. It just might work, he thought, and stepped off into the street, heading for the Free Press office.

  Mary Kincheon, apronless and neat, was seated at the front desk. She wore a dark blue serviceable dress, and was bent over the desk writing. Paper cuffs protected her sleeves, and Giff could hear them scratching as she wrote.

  Looking up, presently, she smiled and leaned back in her chair, regarding him with a swift mockery. “The clay pigeon,” she exclaimed. “You’re off to a good start, so I hear. Who pasted all that pretty color on your face?”

  Giff felt a faint irritation at her words, but he dredged up a grin. He noted as he walked over to the desk that the press in the rear was silent, and he thought Maybe it’ll work.

  “There was sand on my pillow.”

  She regarded him levelly, her face altering into soberness. “They’re just playing patty-cake now. Wait until they get serious.”

  “Who is ‘they’?”

  She shrugged. “Why, whoever gave you that. Do you know?”

  “No. They won’t do it again, either.” He asked, then, before she could comment, “Is the paper printed?”

  “Hah!”

  Giff waited, then asked, “What does that mean?”

  “It means is isn’t. It means it won’t be until Kearie remembers he owns a newspaper.”

  “Can I get something in it?”

  The girl frowned. “What’s so importatnt around here it can’t wait a week? Land office business?”

  At Giff’s nod, she rose and started back to the print shop. Falling in behind her, Giff noticed how straight she carried herself, and he wondered suddenly Is she in with Kearie? He would know in a minute, he thought, as she paused by the type case, picked up a composing stick, and rested both hands on the stand. “What is it, now? It better be short.”

  “Head it ‘Fifty Dollars Reward,’” Giff directed.

  Her hands moved so swiftly it was only seconds before she looked up at him, ready, and he went on, “Will be paid for a complete April seventeenth, 1882, issue of the San Dimas County Free Press by V. Welling, Territory House, Corazon.”

  For a long moment her hands were motionless, and Giff could not tell if she were memorizing, or making up her mind to refuse the advertisement. When she looked up at him, her face was composed. “What’s so special about the April seventeenth issue of last year?”

  “They didn’t tell me,” Giff said idly.

  She hesitated another long moment, then her hands went into swift action. Giff felt a faint elation. He was past the worst part, the accepting of the advertisement. With any luck, the paper would be printed and distributed before Kearie ever saw the item, and then it would be too late to do anything about it.

  He waited until Mary Kincheon had finished, then watched her move over to the composing stone, unlock the forms, pull a filler out, insert the advertisement and lock the forms. When she was finished, he said, “Welling will stop by and pay you.”

  Mary nodded and observed acidly: “From what I hear, you’ll have to count it out for him and tie it in a handkerchief. Why do you work for him?”

  “Food.”

  “I understand.” She gave him a brief and friendly smile before he turned and tramped out.

  Of the first passerby he inquired for Edwards’ and was told it was a hardware store across the street from the hotel. Retracing his steps, he felt an odd sense of s
atisfaction. He would be long gone out of town when the advertisement appeared this afternoon. If it did Fiske any good, he was welcome to it. If it did Sebree harm that was fine, too. In a way, it would compensate for the beating.

  Entering Edwards’, he was told by a clerk that the hearing was to be held in a back room. He went to the back of the store and behind the counter to the left he stepped through an open door into a large room containing folding chairs facing a table at which a slack-faced elderly man sat. He was in conversation with Sheriff Edwards, who had a leg up on the table.

  A dozen or so men besides Welling and Fiske were scattered around the room in several groups; Gus Traff was talking to a pair of men in the far corner, and he did not look at Giff as he entered.

  Giff spied Cass Murray sitting alone on a chair toward the front of the room, his arms folded, a generous chew of tobacco pouching his cheek. There was something lonely and independent and be-dammed-to-you about the man that Giff did not wholly understand, but he liked him. When he slipped into the chair beside Cass, ignoring both Welling and Fiske, Cass turned and winked solemnly at him.

  “You’ve got something better to do than this,” Giff suggested.

  Cass grimaced. “As a taxpayer I got a right to be entertained. It’s always the same; nobody’ll know nothing.” He looked levelly at Giff. “You know anything?”

  The answer to that question was what had brought Cass to his room early this morning, Giff knew. It was a question he had ducked, mostly because he had not known if Fiske wanted him to talk. Now he ducked it again, but for another reason. “Wait and see,” he said.

  Before Cass could probe further, Giff asked, “Who’s at the desk?”

  “Arnold, the J.P.”

  Edwards called out six names now of men who were in the crowd of loafers, among them Gus Traff, and these men filed up to the six chairs set along the wall. They were the jury for the murder hearing.

  Only now did Gus Traff look at Giff. It was a long, down-bearing look holding a kind of careless triumph that Giff readily understood. He remembered that Gus Traff had been watching Albers all through the afternoon; it was doubtless Traff who shot Albers—or who waited at the alley mouth to administer Giff’s kicking. Giff felt a slow wrath uncoil inside him as he held Traff’s glance, and then Sebree’s foreman looked away.

  The proceedings that followed were informal to the point of carelessness. Arnold stated the purpose of the investigation was to determine the cause of Perry Albers’ death. He called him “Albert” and pronounced his first name “Peery” and Sheriff Edwards, bored, did not correct him.

  As Arnold droned on, an idea slowly grew within Giff. It was, he knew, a reckless one, but he knew he was going to carry it out.

  The first witness was Henty’s bartender, who had not bothered to remove his apron. His testimony was brief. Around eight-thirty he had removed Albers from the premises because he was using up a poker table that was wanted for a game. The removal had been gentle, he insisted.

  Giff was called then and took the chair in front of the table facing Arnold. This was the man, he remembered, who notarized Kearie’s perjured affidavits of publication according to Fiske. He was a long-jawed, long-faced, old man, dirty and slack-eyed, and his air of petty authority did not become him.

  Once Giff had given his name, his occupation as land office packer, his age as thirty, he was asked to tell what had happened last night. Talking easily he told about stopping on Henty’s corner to watch Albers’ progress from the saloon. The man was so drunk, he said, that he needed help, and he gave it to him. Halfway down the alley they heard men running toward them. No, he didn’t recognize any of them, Albers did, though, and began to run.

  “Albert did?” Arnold cut in. “How do you know that?”

  Giff made the plunge. “From what he said.”

  “And what was that?”

  “He said, ‘Help me. Grady’s after me,’” Giff lied calmly.

  There was a long moment of utter silence during which Giff looked levelly at Arnold. He saw Arnold’s brief frightened glance at Gus Traff, and then the J.P. swiveled his glance back to him. It was Edwards, however, who found his voice first.

  “Do you know any Grady here, Dixon? Do you know who he was talking about?”

  “No.”

  “Go on,” Arnold said hurriedly. “Then what happened?”

  “We ran, and then there were two shots. Albers fell. I didn’t have a gun and there was no way I could help him, so I ran for the head of the alley. They were waiting for me there as I turned into the street.”

  “What happened?”

  “I got beat up and kicked,” Giff said thinly.

  Arnold’s next question was asked offhandedly, reluctantly, “Have you any idea who did it?”

  “Only the name of the man who ordered it done,” Giff said calmly.

  “How do you know that?” Arnold pounced on him.

  “From what I heard them say.”

  Arnold looked pleadingly at Edwards and then away. He didn’t want to ask the next question, but he had to. “What did they say?”

  “One said,’ That him?’ and the other said, ‘He’s the one Gus said.’ That’s all I remember because someone kicked me in the head then.”

  Again there was a long and ominous silence, and then Sheriff Edwards said, “Judge, I’d suggest we put this witness under oath. We’ve been too informal by the looks of things.”

  Arnold looked at him blankly, and then Edwards’ intent seemed to dawn on him. He looked wrathfully at Giff, opened a drawer in his desk, took a Bible from it and then said sternly, “Stand up!”

  Giff did, and was sworn in, then sat down. Arnold looked questioningly at Edwards, who was watching Giff. Edwards said, “Go back to what Albers said in the alley. What did he?”

  Giff knew he’d been caught and he didn’t care much, for he had accomplished what he had set out to do. Just what that was he didn’t frame in words, but he had intended it as a parting shot at Sebree and Traff. His listeners could read into it anything they wished, but the facts which he was retracting were nevertheless true, and he hoped they knew it.

  He said indifferently, “Albers said, ‘No. No, I didn’t!’”

  “Know what he meant?” Edwards prodded gently.

  “No.”

  “Now go back to the attack on you. Did you hear any talk while you were being beat up?”

  “None.”

  “Your witness, Judge,” Edwards said dryly.

  There was a crash of talk in the room then, and Arnold pounded the table for silence. The talk subsided, and Judge Arnold turned his attention to Giff; he had his mouth open to speak when someone in the rear of the room said loudly, “If it please your honor.”

  The voice was Welling’s, Giff knew without turning to look. Arnold’s gaze lifted, and Giff saw the bitter dislike in it as Arnold asked sourly, “What is it?”

  “On behalf of the Land Office I would like to disclaim any responsibility for Dixon’s testimony. He was instructed to cooperate with the county officials in every way.”

  Arnold said coldly, “Is that all?”

  “Yes, your honor.” Welling’s tone was fawning, respectful, and a soft murmur of amused laughter came from the back of the room. Even Arnold smiled.

  Then his face altered to sternness again, and he returned his glance to Giff, “I don’t suppose there’s anything I can do to you since you told the truth under oath. But I warn you, you’re headed for trouble. Murder is a serious business.”

  “Beginning when?” Giff asked disinterestedly.

  “Step down!” Arnold ordered angrily.

  “Just a minute,” a voice put in. It was Gus Traff’s and he was looking at Arnold. “Is a juryman allowed to question a witness?”

  “Of course,” Arnold said. “We’re only trying to get at the truth, no matter how.”

  Traff looked at Giff and said slowly, “You might tell the real reason you’re so anxious to involve Mr. Sebree and me in tr
ouble—any kind of trouble.”

  He didn’t wait for Giff to answer, but addressed Arnold. “He walked into Burton’s saddle shop yesterday, claimed he was working for Torreon, and took his saddle that he’d sold Burton. He told Burton Sebree would pay him for it.” Now he looked levelly at Giff and said, “Mr. Sebree never saw him before. He never promised him a job, and never told him to pick up his saddle from Burton. Know what I think?”

  He was looking at Arnold now, and Arnold said, “What?”

  “I think he used a saddle tramp’s gall to steal back his saddle. I think he’s trying to blacken Mr. Sebree’s character now, beforehand, so that when Mr. Sebree turns the saddle stealing over to the sheriff’s office, he can point to his own lying evidence here as proof that Mr. Sebree is a liar and that his word is not to be trusted.”

  Arnold slowly turned his head to look at Giff. “What have you got to say to that?”

  “Nothing you’d listen to,” Giff said.

  Arnold glared at him a moment, then said, “Step down.”

  Giff rose, his glance falling briefly on Gus Traff. Traff’s eyes met his, and they held a look of sleepy malice, of unworried patience and of triumph. Instead of taking his seat again beside Cass, Giff started on through the room toward the doorway into the store.

  “Oh, Dixon.”

  It was the sheriff’s voice, and Giff halted.

  “I’d like for you to stay around town until we get this saddle business straightened out,” Edwards said.

  Giff wheeled and went out. He heard someone rise and follow him, but he did not turn to see who it was. He was descending the steps when he heard a voice say sharply from behind him, “Wait, Dixon.”

  He halted, and waited for the agent’s approach. The anger in Welling’s face was evident as he hauled up and regarded Giff.

  “I want to talk to you.”

  “You are.”

  “Not here.”

  “What’s the matter with the saloon?” Giff asked with open malice. “That’s where you talk best.”

  Welling didn’t answer, only wheeled and headed downstreet toward the Plains Bar four doors down. Giff followed at his elbow, and they went into the saloon together. A few riders were conversing at the bar, and they looked incuriously at the pair as they entered and took a front corner table.