Authors: Bill Pronzini
The road wiggled its way along between marshland on the west and a mix of pastureland and low, wooded hills on the east. I met no one, saw nothing as I neared the ruins that testified to a recent gunfight. Ahead, finally, I could see what was left of the crumbling right-of-way where the S.F. & N.P. spur had cut away in a long northward diagonal from the town. There was a screen of trees along the near side of the landing's wagon road, and when I came around them, onto the overgrown track, the old tycoon's leavings were visible.
Storms and salt-erosion had knocked down all but one of the abandoned houses and two walls of the dancehall; the only building still standing whole was the heavy black-wood roundhouse, and it would not be for long: part of its roof sagged near collapse. Pigweed and salt grass and swamp oak grew over the site, reclaiming it for the marsh. Boggy backwaters clogged with tules and cattails had begun to encroach on the land as well.
The long wharf and the remnants of the steamer docks were bent and broken jumbles of boards sinking into the ragged stands of tules along the shoreline. Southward over the creek a pelican flew screeching above a melon boat that was making its ponderous way downstream toward San Pablo Bay. Otherwise the sun-struck morning was still, wind-less, with no movement within the range of my vision.
After fifty yards, marsh growth completely obliterated the track, so that I had to pick a random course toward the center of town. There were no signs of other recent passage through here, but a feeling of unease began to work inside me just the same. I loosened the Bisley in its holster, let my hand rest on the handle.
Marsh sounds, faint but audible now—insects, a frog croaking, small-animal rustlings. From some hidden place near the creek, a wild mallard rose quacking. I stood up in the stirrups, trying to see farther ahead over the tall swamp growth. The roundhouse was a hundred yards away, at an angle to my right. I reined the chalk-eye over that way, around a mound of grass-covered rubble where a building had once stood.
In that instant, something slashed the air a few inches from my right cheek. It caused me to jerk my head, then froze me for an instant—just long enough for a hollow echo to roll over the ruins like the crack of doom, and for me to realize that what had gone by was a bullet.
Somebody was shooting at me with a rifle!
ROWDY BALKED, DANCING SIDEWAYS—AND A SECOND bullet whipped past me at a lower angle and struck him somewhere on the hindquarters. He screamed, reared straight up on his back legs and then went over and down hard on his right side. The weight of him would have crushed my leg, and perhaps the rest of me when he flopped onto his back, except that I had long since thrown myself out of the saddle. Grass and pigweed and wet spongy earth cushioned my fall, so that I was able to roll clear of him fast when he went down. Noise seemed to swell in my ears like air pumping into a balloon—Rowdy's scream and the hammering echo of the second shot and the grunt and gasp of my breathing.
I fetched up belly-flat in a matted tangle of tules and fumbled for the Bisley at my hip. It had not been jarred loose in the fall and roll; I yanked it free, thumbed the hammer back. Through a haze of sweat I saw that the chalk-eye was not badly hurt. He had got his legs under him, and when he was up, a few seconds later, he loped off the way we had come.
There hadn't been any more firing, just those two rounds while I was up on Rowdy's back. The shots had come from somewhere in front and to one side of me . . . inside or near the roundhouse, I thought. Cautiously I raised up for a look in that direction, but from down on the ground like this I could see only the upper half of the building. There was nothing else to see, except for a cloud of blackbirds that had been scared up by the shots and were winging away over the creek.
I lay still for a time, dry-mouthed, listening. Once the blackbirds were gone, there was utter silence. Even the insects were quiet now.
The place where I lay was one of the swampy backwaters. The upper half of my body was on a pad of tules, the lower half in black mud that made little sucking sounds whenever I moved. Swamp flies and mosquitoes had begun to swarm around me, to bite at my face and neck. The bog smell in my nostrils was thick, fetid, like an outhouse on a hot day.
At an angle to where I was, near where the remains of the long wharf were sinking into the creek, a weeping willow stood with its low-hanging branches brushing the ground. I dragged myself through the tules, out onto the firmer, drier earth, and began to crawl toward the willow, stopping every few feet to listen again. Once I thought I heard the faraway nicker of a horse that was not Rowdy, but the sound wasn't repeated.
It took me the better part of ten minutes to get into the dappled shade under the willow. I stood up slow behind the bole, parted the branches just enough so I could peer out. From this vantage point I had a better look at the front and west sides of the roundhouse. One of the big engine doors was gone, the other standing closed; as far as I could tell, nothing moved in the murkiness inside. Nor was there movement outside anywhere. The creek was empty now, the melon boat and the pelican both gone.
Between where I was and the roundhouse doors, the ground supported marshy growth and not much else. I judged the distance at about seventy-five yards. Hell of a long run in the face of a rifle; a man did not have to be a marksman to hit a running target on open ground like that. I worked some spit through the dryness in my mouth, trying to make up my mind. I could not stay here all day. And I was damned if I would go crawling back through the bog, hunt for the chalk-eye, and then ride off for help. Even if help were close by and easy to find, which it wasn't, it would be the same as running scared; and if there was one thing I was not, it was a coward. Besides, there was the fire of rage in me, the hot taste of it on the back of my tongue.
I was still thinking about risking a zigzag run to the roundhouse when the horse and rider came plunging out of the shadows inside.
The suddenness of it held me motionless for a couple of seconds, gawking. By the time I slapped through the clinging screen of branches, into the open where I could see more clearly, he was better than a hundred yards away on a course toward the road.
Sorrel horse, and the man stretched out over the saddle with head tucked down and left arm flopping loose at his side, as if it might be broken or injured in some way: splotches of red-brown staining the shoulder and sleeve of his light-colored coat that might be blood. The horse looked like any sorrel, nothing distinctive about it from a distance; and I could not see the rider's face, or enough of him the way he was wrapped low around the animal's neck to even tell his size. Dark hair, denim trousers, tan coat with those red-brown splotches . . . those were the only things I could make out for sure.
Hot temper and frustration sent me to one knee, led me to squeeze off two rounds from the Bisley even though he was well out of handgun range. The reports rolled over the marsh, faded, and when the afterechoes were gone all I could hear was the far-off muffled pound of the sorrel's hooves.
The thought came to me then, belatedly, that I made a fine target kneeling out here in the open for anybody still forted up inside the roundhouse. I flattened out in the grass. Lay there for a time, feeling helpless and foolish, listening to the hoofbeats diminish to silence.
Nobody else in the roundhouse, I thought. He would have fired on me long since if there was. Just the same, I raised up slow, watching that dark opening where the horse and rider had emerged.
Nothing happened. Seemed certain now that nothing else was going to.
On my feet again, I scanned the terrain to the north! No sign of the man on the sorrel. No sign of Rowdy, either. The chalk-eye would not have wandered far—he wasn't the kind of horse to bolt and run for home. But by the time I found him, it would be too late to have a hope of catching up to my would-be assassin. And what if Rowdy was hurt worse than I had thought? Hell! If I could pick up the man's trail at all, it would be cool or already cold.
I kept looking at the roundhouse. One man, hurt, on a sorrel horse. Bodeen? But then where was his brother's roan? And where was the other man?
I had a little debate with myself—find the chalk-eye first or investigate the roundhouse—and the roundhouse won. With the Bisley on cock, I walked over there at an angle to the rectangular opening where the one engine door had been. When I got to the half that was still standing I eased along its warped boards, put my head around the edge and peered inside.
Sections of the roof had collapsed and there was enough sunlight coming in through the gaps to dilute the gloom, crowd the shadows back into corners of the cavernous interior. Grass and weeds had grown up through the cinder- strewn flooring, in places obscuring the debris that littered it in pieces and mounds. Empty workbenches made bulky, skeletal shapes along the walls. The black engine pits yawned like doorways into Satan's lair.
Soft-footed, I slid around the door and inside. Stood still for a minute—the rank-smelling space looked and felt empty—and then began to make my way forward. The turntable had been removed, I saw, although some of the machinery that had operated it was still there, pocked and corroded from the salt moisture. The engine pits were choked with the same sort of debris that cluttered the floor: chunks of roofing lathe and tarpaper, shattered timbers and loose boards, lengths of steel, rusting tackle, twisted things I couldn't name.
At the rear were two windows, the glass long ago broken out, framing bright daylight beyond. I moved toward them, being careful of where I put my boots. I was closing on the nearest window when something red and green caught my eye atop one of the workbenches. I changed direction to see what it was.
Horse blanket, made of wool and dyed the two colors— fairly new, fairly clean. When I took a closer look I saw the blood. Big dried splotch in one place, streaks and spots else-where on the fabric. He had been wounded, all right. Shot in that skirmish last night and too badly hurt or too weak to ride any farther, he had come in here with the sorrel and spread his blanket before he passed out—that seemed the most likely explanation. Then, a while ago, he had heard or seen me coming, recognized me or just plain panicked, and pumped those two shots in my direction. Had to be because he was hurt, in need of doctoring, that he had ridden out instead of holding fast to make sure his bullets had done their work.
But that still did not give me a clue to his identity, or to what had happened to the second man. Mortally wounded in the gunfight, lying dead along the road or here in Donahue? Or just wounded and holed up somewhere else close by? Or had he got away clean and unhurt?
Scurrying sound behind me. I spun around, crouching . . . just in time to see a big gray shape burrow under a pile of rubble. Marsh rat. Some of them, this one included, grew as big as cats. They repelled me at the best of times; here, as tensed up as I was, I felt my gorge rise. I had spent enough time in here, breathed enough of the foul, rot-smelling air.
The blanket was evidence, so I folded it carefully, with the bloodstains on the inside, and put it under my arm. Then I made a quick check of the area to see if the man had left any other traces of himself. He hadn't. Finally I went ahead to the near window, leaned my head out for a look at what lay to the rear of the roundhouse.
What I saw back there was death.
The hairs went up on the nape of my neck; a sudden gnawing began under my breastbone that was nothing at all like a hunger pang. I gripped the rotted sill with my free hand, staring.
Storage shed, half crumbled now, and to one side of it a swamp oak that had been struck by lightning once, a long time ago, for its bole was split and fire-scarred.
And from one of its branches, a man hanging by the neck-
another
dead man, strung up the same way as Jeremy Bodeen and Jacob Pike.
Victim number three.
The corpse was facing away from me: I could not tell from here who he was.
Bit I had a sudden feeling, a bad feeling—what Ivy would call a foreboding—as to this one’s identity.
I pouched the Bisley and clambered out through the window opening, walked slow past the shed and around the oak to where I could look straight up into the hanged man’s black-mottled face.
And the bad feeling stayed with me, like a slow poison, because the face was just the one I had been afraid I would see.
The dead man was Emmett Bodeen.
BITTERLY, I CUT HIM DOWN—THE THIRD TIME IN FIVE days I'd had to do that kind of disagreeable job.
There was caked blood on the side of his head, more caked blood above his right shoulder blade: two bullet wounds, neither of which looked to have been fatal. But if he'd been riding when he was shot, the loads would have knocked him out of his saddle and probably rendered him unconscious. Even a wounded man could do pretty much as he pleased with an unconscious foe.
The backside of Bodeen's clothing was torn and grass- stained, and there were rope fibers on the front of his coat, bruises and lacerations on his hands and forearms. Dragged here face up from wherever he was shot, I thought, and then strung up. No wonder that crazy son of a bitch had been too weak to ride any farther last night.
But why go through all that? Why not just put another bullet into Bodeen where he lay? Why the driving urge to hang him, as he had hanged the other two?
I examined Bodeen's knuckles. The contusions on them were from the dragging; they were not the kind of skin- scrapes that come from a fist fight. No fight marks on his face, either. Jacob Pike
had
been fight-marked, though, and had likely marked his attacker some too. If I needed any more proof that Emmett Bodeen was innocent of Pike's murder, there it was.
The same killer in all three cases, then: the man on the sorrel horse. A good bet he was also the prowler I had tangled with—that he had been after Pike on Saturday night too. Twice now I had come close to being another of his victims: I had no doubt that he would have hanged me on Saturday if Pike and Badger in tandem hadn't scared him off. And he would have done the same to me today, if one of those rifle slugs had punctured my hide and put me out of commission long enough.
Bodeen's pockets were what I examined next. And what I found in one of them cleared up the robbery part of last night's muddle: money, more than six hundred dollars in greenbacks. It was Bodeen who had broken into the Far West offices and Fred Horler's cashbox. He had set the fire inside the saddlery, too; not only did his description fit the man Walt Barber had seen running away, his right hand smelled of kerosene. Kerosene gets into the pores if you don't take time to wash it off right after it spills on you, and the smell lingers for a long time.
Straightening, I put the six hundred dollars into my own pocket. I was thinking that now I had enough information to pretty much piece together last night's sequence of events. Must have gone this way:
Some time past midnight, Bodeen broke into the Far West office and stole the money. But he had also worked up a hate for me and Boze and the town-at-large, because of the way he'd been treated and the way his brother had died. So he went from the milling company to Sam McCullough's place— the nearest one to where Jeremy Bodeen had died—and started the fire.
His intention then was to take his brother's roan from the livery and ride out. But he got to the stable at about the same time as the madman was making
his
escape, on foot or al-ready on horseback, after hanging Jacob Pike. Bodeen went inside the barn, spied Pike's corpse, figured out that the man he'd just seen must have killed his brother too, quick-saddled the roan, and gave chase.
He was a few minutes behind the madman at the ferry; finally caught up with him somewhere over this way. A challenge, maybe—an exchange of shots. Both men were hit, but Bodeen's wounds were the more critical: mortal, in fact. For his own reasons, the madman put a rope around Bodeen and dragged him in here to lynch him. The shooting scrape must have taken place close by; no point in dragging Bodeen far, or to go far to find shelter for himself and his horse.
Why?
Who?
Well, his killing streak was finished now, by God, one way or another. His wound had to be serious; he had lost a lot of blood, judging from the stains on that blanket. Chances were he could not ride far. And even if he managed to get home he couldn't hide a gunshot wound and a marked face from friends, relatives, neighbors—not for long.
I left Bodeen's corpse lying there and went hunting for the chalk-eye. Took me fifteen minutes to find him. He had drifted in among the trees at the joining of the Donahue wagon road and the main road, and he was standing there, calm as you please, nuzzling grass. The rifle bullet had raked a shallow furrow across his croup, about an inch and a half long; it hadn't even bled much. He let me walk right up to him but he fought me when I got up on his back, frog-stepping and rearing, as if it were my fault he had been stung and frightened. I had to work at him and talk to him to get him gentled, and at that he went dauncy on me twice more before I coaxed him back behind the roundhouse.
But he would not go near Bodeen's body; and if I had tried to rope it on his back he would have gone wild and I'd have had a real fight on my hands. There was nothing to do but leave the corpse and send somebody back for it.
I found the irregular swath through the marsh growth where the madman had dragged Bodeen, and followed it, and as I expected it led out to the road. I got down there to have a look around. Some spots of dried blood but no shell casings or anything else that might have been helpful. There was no sign of Jeremy Bodeen's swaybacked roan. That old mossy- back could have wandered five miles by now, all the way down to Sonoma Landing or all the way up to Petaluma.
I rode to the nearest ranch—owned by a cattleman I knew slightly named Alvin Smith—and told him as much as I had to and then asked him if he and one of his helpers would take a wagon to Donahue, load on Bodeen's corpse, and deliver it to Hobemeyer's General Store. Alvin was not keen on the idea but I got him to agree to it, and also to agree not to say anything to anyone once it was done.
When I returned to Lakeville I found old Leo Hobemeyer behind the counter in his store. Which was a relief. He was much easier to deal with than his sly fop of a son, especially after I promised him five dollars for keeping Emmett Bodeen's remains out of sight until further notice.
My stomach had started to give me hell: It was well past noon and I had not eaten anything since supper last night. Not that I had any appetite, after my experiences in Donahue; it was just that the cavity needed filling, for fuel to keep me going. I bought some jerky and a couple of apples and a bunch of grapes, and a bottle of Edward's Cream Ale to wash it all down with.
Then I went hunting.
*****
I didn't bag a damned thing. I did not even get a sniff of the deadly game I was after.
I talked to people in and around Lakeville. I rode as far east as Stage Gulch and the Valley of the Moon road, as far north as General Vallejo's Adobe rancho outside Petaluma; questioned every traveler I saw, talked to men working in the fields, stopped at farmhouses and cattle pens. Nobody had seen the wounded man on the sorrel horse. It was as though he's vanished into thin air after leaving Donahue.
But the truth of it was, he either lived close by or he had holed up somewhere to wait for nightfall. The second possibility struck me as the most likely. There were hundreds of places to hide in the Lakeville-Donahue area, both on public and private land—groves of trees, hollows, brush-choked defiles, even a cave or two. Anyone who knew the area could find a safe place with little difficulty.
Some before dusk, I was back in Lakeville. Dog-tired but too stubborn to give up just yet. I waited there, out back of Hobemeyer's store, until half an hour past dark, on the slim hope that the madman might have enough brass to show himself on one of the country roads after leaving his hiding place. But he was too cunning for that. The only two people who passed through while I was there were local residents with lawful reasons for being out after nightfall.
I called it quits finally; the chalk-eye was cranky and I was too weary to do any more senseless prowling. I took the levee road, and when I had ferried us across I roused Pop Baker out of an after-supper doze—one last little prayer on my part that went unanswered. Pop had not seen the wounded man on the sorrel horse, either.
*****
It was coming on nine o'clock when Rowdy and I trudged into Tule Bend. Tule Bend Road was deserted and so was south Main. The livery barn stood dark, closed up tight— nobody around. Morton Brandeis must have shut down temporarily, on account of Jacob Pike's murder. Which surprised me; Morton was neither a fearful nor a compassionate man. It nettled me some, too, because now I would have to take Rowdy up to the Union Hotel and beg a stall and feed for him at their stables.
The burned-out leavings of this morning's fire bulked up along the creekbank, all broken and jagged-edged, like ravaged black skeletons in a moonlit graveyard. The town might have
been
a graveyard, too, for all the life it appeared to contain. Main Street was a deserted lamplit path through it, not a soul in sight; except for lights in houses and saloons, the place might have been abandoned—a plague town whose citizens had all fled for their lives. Well, in a way it was a plague town now. Only the plague was murder, not a pestilential disease, and the citizens had retreated inside, behind locked and barred doors and with weapons close to hand.
There were two men I needed to talk to before I gave in to my body's demand for rest—Obe Spencer and Doc Petersen. Boze could wait until morning, unless he had found out something important in my absence; if he had, either Obe or Doc would know about it.
Spencer's Undertaking Parlor was closest, so I stopped there first. Obe lived on the premises, upstairs—alone since his wife passed away two years ago and the last of his sons moved out. There was lamplight in the upstairs front window, behind a drawn shade. I got down at the gate and went up onto the porch and gave the handle of his doorbell a twist. He didn't answer right away—not that I blamed him—and I had to work the bell twice more before he finally came down.
Without unlatching the door he demanded in wary tones, "Who's there?"
"Linc Evans. Let me in, Obe."
He let me in. There was a big Colt Frontier in his right hand, which he allowed to hang down at his side when he saw me; but he did not let go of it while we talked. And Obe and I had known each other all my life and most of his.
"You find him, Linc?" he asked first thing. "You find that Emmett Bodeen?"
"I found him, all right. Over in Donahue. He's dead."
"Dead? Mean you killed him?"
"No. Somebody hung him, same as with his brother and Jacob Pike."
"Good Lord!" Obe's face was white now, the fear in his eyes bright and moist. "Mean Bodeen didn't kill Pike?"
"No. The same person did all three murders."
"Who, Linc? You know who?"
"Not yet. But I do know he's hurt, wounded in a gunfight with Bodeen." I gave him a brief account of the day's events and my surmises.
"Somebody who lives
here
?" he said. "Somebody we all know?"
"That's how it looks."
"Jesus, Mary and Joseph."
"Anything happen today I should know about?"
"Let me think." His free hand shook a little as he passed it over his face. "Verne Gladstone sent for Sheriff Perkins again, but he still hadn't come as of sundown. Probably won't be here until tomorrow, now."
"That all?"
"Well . . . just loose talk."
"What kind of loose talk?"
He said, "About you, the way you been handling things," and he would not look at me as he spoke.
"So it's out in the open now. Folks blaming me."
"Only some put the blame on you. Others . . . well, you're only one man. And Boze is just a part-time deputy."
"I've done all anyone can do," I said with some bitterness. ''So has Boze. What does the town want? Martial law?''
"Armed patrols. Sheriffs' or citizens'."
"Oh, fine. Fine! Vigilante days again."
"Lordy, Linc,
something's
got to be done."
"I told you, the man responsible is wounded. How far can a wounded man go, how long can he hide? It's only a matter of time until he's identified and caught."
"Some won't want to wait, once word about Emmett Bodeen gets out."
"Word's not going to get out, not for a while," I said. "I swore Alvin Smith and the Hobemeyers to secrecy and I'm doing the same with you. First thing in the morning, no later than first light, I want you to take your hearse over to Lakeville and pick up the body and bring it back here."
"Alone? You want me to go all that way
alone
?"
"Obe, nobody's going to jump you on public roads!"
"That's what you say. I'm not going alone. You can't force me against my will."
I wanted to take hold of him and shake him; I had precious little patience left, as tired as I was. But how could you blame a man for fearing for his life at a time like this? You couldn't, really. It was every man's right to protect himself.
I said, "Ask one of your sons to go with you. Will you do it that way, with company?"
He thought about it, nodded reluctantly. "But what if somebody sees us, asks who we got in the hearse?"
"Say it's a farmer who died of natural causes. Man new to the area. No one will see the body if you keep it covered. Just make sure you keep quiet about who it really is—and that your son does too."