The Bounty Hunters, page 9
Nita Ramsey came running out of her shack and gazed at the dead Primrose with wide, horrified eyes. Then she saw Travis at his window and cried, “You!”
Travis nodded, pushing his hat up with the muzzle of his gun. “Afraid so,” he said.
Old Quigley came out of the hotel wringing his hands and looking at Travis with bitter, accusing eyes, as if Travis had betrayed him. Then a crowd gathered as if from nowhere. Travis saw Lorna Mason in the bunch, looking in at him. Then she took Nita Ramsey by the hand and led her away and came back later by herself after Quigley and some men had carried the body away and the crowd had dispersed. She knocked on Travis’s door and said when he opened it, “She wants to see you. She’s in her shack.” Lorna gave Travis an odd look and then went away without saying another word or waiting for him to reply.
Travis sighed and got to his feet. He stepped outside and went down the narrow lane to Nita Ramsey’s shack. He found her in tears, wringing her hands, pacing the floor, and rolling her large dark eyes. She talked so fast he could not keep track of all she said, and he did not try to. Later he remembered her saying, “You! Why did you have to kill him? Now what will I do? What were you doing here anyway? I know! You came to kill him! Don’t deny it!” That was about all he remembered, but she said a lot more than that before he ever got a word in edgeways.
He stood turning his hat in his hands, blank-faced and angry, staring at her in silence and waiting for her to run down. It was quite a wait and he began to get a little impatient.
“Now what will I do?” she said for the third or fourth time. “All alone in the world, in a strange town full of hateful gringos, and not a penny left in the world!”
“Don’t tell me Primrose already gambled away that forty thousand dollars,” Travis interrupted.
Nita Ramsey stared at him in wide-eyed amazement. “What forty thousand dollars? What on earth are you talking about? We barely had enough to pay the rent on this miserable shack! That old man charged us twice what it was worth! Three times!”
“What happened to the money you took from Chet when you went back and killed him?” Travis asked.
“He wouldn’t tell us!” she exclaimed. “That’s why Billy killed him. He said he would unless Chet told him where the money was, but Chet wouldn’t tell him. So Billy shot him and we tried to find it, but we never found a penny. We were afraid to stay around there long because we knew you’d be after us.”
The bitterness and scorn in her face was a thing to behold.
“Then you never found it?” Travis asked.
“That’s what I just got done telling you!” she said. “I gave that old man the best years of my life and what have I got to show for it?” She wept bitterly.
“You’ll get by all right,” Travis said, getting ready to leave. “In no time you’ll find yourself another rich old fool like Chet to buy you things and maybe even another young one like Primrose to amuse you when the old one’s not around.”
“Wait!” Nita said, grabbing his arm. “You can’t go off and leave me alone in this wild town! You’re the only one I know here!”
“That’s one too many,” Travis said. “I think you’ll get along better among strangers. And so will I.”
“Wait!” she said again. “We could go back to that old shack and find all that money! We could even stay there! Grayson’s men would never find us there!”
“You didn’t like it there before,” Travis reminded her.
“Not with that old fool,” she said. “It would be different with you. I wouldn’t mind staying there with you.”
Travis stared into her deep dark eyes and she did not look away. She was as good as offering herself to him, and she was a very beautiful, desirable woman in spite of all her faults. But he knew it wouldn’t work. Her talk would soon drive him crazy—just as his silence would soon drive her crazy. Not that she had very far to go, in his opinion.
“Thanks,” he said. “But there are too many Billy Primroses left in the world. One of them might show up someday and you might decide to do unto me as you did unto Chet.”
“That was Billy did that!” Nita exclaimed. “You can’t blame me for that!”
Travis sighed. “Billy wouldn’t have been there if it hadn’t been for you. None of this would have happened if you hadn’t lied about what happened at the ranch that day. Quite a few people have already died because of you and God knows how many will die before it’s over. Yet everyone is to blame except you. How you’ve managed to come through it all feeling so innocent and righteous is something I’ll never be able to understand if I live to be a hundred. But thanks to you that’s not very likely.”
“Where are you going?” Nita Ramsey asked. “Take me with you!”
Travis paused at the door. “I don’t think you’ve been listening,” he said. “Maybe I should have said it in Spanish.”
He said goodbye in Spanish.
Chapter 11
By the end of the day Joe Mason felt as if he were breathing through a dusty bandanna, and he ached with weariness. He was not cut out to be a miner. He was not cut out to be much of anything, he thought bleakly.
He had failed as a husband. He had failed as a man, and somehow he had failed as a human being. He was scrupulously fair and honest in all his dealings. He would not have cheated an honest man or even a crook, had it been in his power to do so. He went out of his way not to cause anyone any trouble. But people did not like him. He had no friends among the miners, many of whom seemed to enjoy watching the fun Dag Vogler and Deke Hutter had at his expense. Those two, although known toughs and troublemakers, had a lot of friends. It was a strange thing that made him wonder about himself and the rest of the human race. There was, he decided, something badly wrong with people, some basic flaw that made them perverse, even though most of them tried to hide it.
He found Vogler and Hutter waiting for him in front of the boarding house. They had not worked that day. “Come one, Mason,” Vogler said. “Let’s go get a drink.”
“I don’t want a drink,” Mason said and started to go by them.
Vogler put a big hand on his arm, stopping him.
Joe Mason looked down at the hand on his arm. It was as big as both of his, and could have crushed his neck with one little squeeze.
“We want to talk to you,” Hutter said, with a cold glitter in his yellow cat eyes. “If you don’t want a drink, we can talk here.”
“What about?” Mason asked.
Hutter and Vogler exchanged a look. Then Vogler wiped his mouth to hide a grin and said, “Yore purty wife done left town with that fellow who killed that dude.”
A strange cold sickness seeped into Joe Mason’s soul. His wife had already left. With some man. The rest made no sense to him. He didn’t know anyone had been killed, although killings were not very rare in Nowhere.
“At least they left on the same stage,” Hutter told him. “Her and that handsome blond feller. You know who that man is, Joe?”
Mason shook his head.
“That’s Ben Travis, the man who killed Red Grayson,” Hutter said. “Tubby Jones et at the hotel today and he heard them talking. It took us a while to figger it out, but it finally come to us who he is. Sam Grayson’s offered five thousand dollars for him, dead or alive. But by the time it come to us, the stage had already left, and we ain’t even got a horse. Ain’t hardly anyone in this town got a riding animal except you, Joe. We thought you was dumb to keep yours and feed him through the winter, but maybe you never planned to stay here all winter.”
“You got any notion where they’re headed?” Vogler asked.
“No,” Mason said. “And I don’t care.”
Vogler grinned on one side of his mouth. He had two teeth missing on the other side. “Like hell you don’t,” he said.
“You must have some idea where they went,” Hutter said. “Me and Dag have been talking it over. If you’ll go with us, we’ll let you have your wife back. All we want it Travis.”
“I don’t want her back,” Mason said. “And I have no idea where they’ve gone.”
“She’s your wife,” Hutter said. “You must know all the places she might head for. You should tell us, Joe. We’re your friends.”
“That’s the first I’ve heard of it,” Mason said.
Dag Vogler started to reach for him, but Hutter put a restraining hand on Vogler’s arm and said, “We’ll give him a little while to think about it. We’re going down to the saloon to get a drink, Joe. You better be in a different mood when we get back.” The very softness of Hutter’s voice was more threatening than his words or the cold glitter of his yellow eyes. He and Vogler went down the street toward the nearest saloon, which was between the boarding house and the livery stable where Mason kept his horse.
Mason went into the barnlike boarding house and soon came back out with his carpetbag. He went down the street carrying the carpetbag with his left hand, his right gripping the gun in his coat pocket.
Hutter and Vogler must have seen him through the window for they came out of the saloon and stepped into the street in front of him.
“Where you headed, Joe?” Vogler asked. “You wasn’t thinkin’ of leavin’ without us, were you?” Even as he spoke, Vogler pulled up the sleeves of his heavy wool shirt and spread his big feet apart, grinning with anticipation. He looked forward to the beating he intended to give Joe.
Mason drew the gun from his coat pocket and shot Vogler in the chest. Then he shot Hutter as Hutter tried to draw his own gun. They fell in the street and Joe Mason put the gun back in his coat pocket and walked by them, going down the street to get his horse from the stable. No one else tried to stop him.
Three people had left Nowhere on the stage. One of them got off at the first way station, to spend the night there. The stage went on.
It was then, when they were alone in the jolting coach, that Travis said to Lorna Mason, “How did you know I’d be leaving on the stage?”
She laughed quietly. “Actually I didn’t. I knew you’d be leaving soon, but I didn’t know which way you’d be going. And you had a horse the last time I saw you.”
“I sold my horse before I left,” Travis said. “It was about played out, and it wasn’t much of a horse to begin with.”
“Joe did have a horse,” Lorna said. “I don’t know if he’s still got it or not.”
“I just hope he doesn’t think you’re running away with me this time,” Travis said.
Lorna Mason smiled uneasily. “I’ve been thinking about that myself. We were seen in the hotel dining room together, and then boarding the stage. He’s sure to hear about it.”
Travis sighed.
“You must think I’m a very bad woman,” Lorna Mason said, still smiling.
“What worries me right now is what your husband thinks,” Travis said.
“I don’t think you’re really worried,” Lorna said. “You don’t even seem worried about the Grayson gang.”
“Oh, I’m worried all right,” Travis said. “I’m also worried about your friend Colman. I keep wondering how far he is behind me.”
“Is that why you keep looking out the window?” Lorna asked.
“Mostly habit. It’s getting too dark to see anything.”
“He’s not my friend,” Lorna said. “I don’t even like him. He wanted me to keep track of you and let him know where you are.”
Travis smiled a very cold smile. “I figured that was what you were doing now,” he said.
The smile left Lorna Mason’s face. “Do you really believe that?” she asked in surprise.
Travis merely shrugged.
“I don’t guess there’s any reason why you should trust me,” Lorna said. She smiled again. “It’s beginning to seem to me like one of us must be following the other.”
Travis nodded. “The question is, why?”
“Maybe it’s not what you think,” Lorna said, as though they were still joking about it. “We’re both fairly attractive people. That might have something to do with it.”
“And if that doesn’t work out, you could always get in touch with Colman,” Travis said, with his chilly smile.
“You really are serious, aren’t you?” Lorna said. “You say it like you’re joking, but you really mean it. You think I might betray you.”
“You haven’t betrayed Pierce, as far as I know,” Travis said.
“And I don’t intend to.” Lorna Mason said. “I guess I might as well tell you, I’m on my way now to meet him. When we get to the railroad, I’m going to take the westbound train to Carson City.”
“I won’t be going that far myself,” Travis said, and they both fell silent. They had become strangers again.
But then Travis had always been pretty much of a stranger everywhere.
He again raised the leather curtain and looked out. He was not really expecting trouble. He just wanted to see if the country looked familiar. But he could not tell much about it in the dark. The forested hills sloping up from the stage road looked like a thousand others he had seen.
The trouble was, he had seen too many hills, too many towns, too many people. There were fewer and fewer places left where no one would remember his face. And usually the people remembered the name he had used before even if he did not, he had changed his name so often.
In the town up ahead, called Ringtown because it was ringed by mountains, someone was apt to remember a boy named Dan Britton and the three men he had killed there.
Travis remembered that boy with affection and a strange regret. Because somehow the boy had died when he had killed those three men. A stranger had walked away from that shooting, someone he realized he did not know very well. And he had been a stranger ever since, not just to others, but to himself as well.
Everyone was supposed to get sick when he killed his first man. But that was only a cliché perpetuated by dime novelists. Travis had killed three men and he had not been sick. He had not felt anything much. The three men had needed killing. They had been human only in form. Inside they had been animals, worse than animals.
And yet it was because Travis had not gotten sick that he realized he was not like other men. That was when he had begun to see himself as a stranger. Perhaps it was when others had begun to see him as a stranger as well. But sometimes he suspected that he had always been a stranger.
Lorna Mason spoke after a long silence. “Nita Ramsey is very beautiful, isn’t she”
“If you like the type,” Travis said.
“You don’t?” Lorna asked.
“No,” he said, and did not bother to explain. It would have taken a lot of explaining. There was nothing he liked about Nita Ramsey except her looks.
“Does she really know where forty thousand dollars is hidden?” Lorna asked.
“So she told you,” Travis said, his mouth twisting in the dark. “I figured she’d tell everyone she saw.”
“She came to my room later and borrowed a hundred dollars from me,” Lorna said. “She said she’d pay me back as soon as she found all that money. I told her just to forget it. I didn’t figure there was any money. I’ve heard such stories before.” After a moment she added, “I’m surprised you didn’t help her out.”
“I don’t reward people who cause me trouble,” Travis said. “And she hasn’t caused me anything else.”
“You want to tell me about it?”
“No.”
Lorna Mason shrugged in the dark coach. “I didn’t think you would. But I guess I already know some of it.” She was silent a moment, then said, “I didn’t mean to tell you where Barney was a little earlier. It just slipped out. I’m not even sure I’ll find him in Carson City. There’s no telling where he may be by now.”
“Pierce doesn’t interest me,” Travis said. “I saw him in Tucson and he told me his version of what happened. It sounded more convincing than Nita Ramsey’s. She’s never told it the same way twice. But she did admit that Pierce didn’t bother her. It was only Red Grayson.”
“That’s what Barney told me,” Lorna said. “But after seeing Nita Ramsey, I almost wondered. It’s not just the way she looks, though that’s part of it. She’s the type who might give the impression that’s exactly what she wants without intending to.”
Travis offered no comment. He was wondering how many others Nita would tell about the money before she got done talking. Before it was over, there would probably be a stampede of treasure hunters to the old shack. Travis would no longer be able to go there when he needed a safe place to hide out.
“Maybe you think I’m that type myself,” Lorna Mason said in a guarded tone.
“No, I was thinking about something else,” Travis said. “I imagine you look to most people like a very proper lady.”
“I guess that’s the impression I try to give people,” Lorna said. “I guess that’s how I used to see myself. But I’ve been practically throwing myself at you and we hardly know each other.”
Travis thought she was smiling again, but in the dark he could not be sure. She was on the far side of the coach.
“Most men would have taken advantage of the situation,” she said. “I keep wondering why you haven’t. Is it because of Barney?”
“It was your husband I was thinking of,” Travis said. “I keep thinking I wouldn’t like it if I was in his place. And I wouldn’t like it if he found us together. I don’t imagine he’d like it much either.”
“He doesn’t want me,” Lorna said. “He as good as told me he never wanted to see me again.”
“I guess my trouble is I can’t forget what I was taught as a boy,” Travis said.
“What was that?”
“Not to take something that belongs to someone else.”
“I see,” Lorna Mason said stiffly, and fell silent again. Neither she nor Travis spoke again until the stage arrived in Ringtown.
Travis got out of the coach and helped Lorna out. Then he glanced curiously at the town. It had been a raw mining camp ten years before, a narrow street lined with shacks and tents. Now the street had been widened and straightened and was lined with substantial frame buildings marching away for nearly half a mile. Travis was a little surprised. He had not figured the place would last more than a few years. But the town had evidently prospered.
