Part 5 (1/2)

”We're only tellin' you what happened,” Lyans said defensively.

”You accuse Joe of clubbin' a man to death with an iron. It's a lie. Much as I hate his guts, I won't believe that of him.”

Lyans glanced around at the others for support. None came.

Blaze gave only half his attention to what was said after that, for he was puzzled by this change in Yace, in the cowman's defending his son now, where four hours ago he had driven him from home a second time. Trying to see what lay behind the old man's stubbornly defiant att.i.tude, Blaze came to the gradual realization of a truth that had escaped him all these years.

That other time it had been the same, Yace publicly defending his wild and reckless offspring, while privately making Joe's life unbearable. Then, having driven Joe into committing a foolhardy act, having forced him to make that attempt at independence, Yace had turned on his son with an awesome intensity. The reason, Blaze knew now for the first time, was that Yace Bonnyman put a higher value on public opinion than he did on understanding. Just now he was confused, hiding behind his natural belligerence until he made up his mind which way the wind blew. Perhaps he really believed what he claimed, that Joe wasn't capable of coldblooded murder. But stronger than that belief, Blaze knew, was anger at these men for having branded his own flesh and blood with the mark of suspected murder. Yace was being prodded at his most tender spot, his pride, and he rebelled. And Blaze now saw in him not the ma.s.sive symbol of brute strength and power he had always seemed, but simply an old man, harried and uncertain, more to be pitied than admired.

The foreman's glance strayed around the big cavernous living room. Even the dozen men grouped here at its far end were lost in its immensity. It was a dreary room where once it had been gay and cheerful. Most of its feminine touches were gone; its high-beamed ceiling sent back hollow echoes of the subdued voices; its somber emptiness was a far cry from those days when Caroline Bonnyman had filled it with countless guests and parties and good times. Like the night we celebrated their twentieth anniversary, Blaze was thinking. Seven cases of champagne and the table saggin' under all that food. Yace with his arm across Joe's shoulders, both of them bellowin' like a pair of tomcats over there by the piano. Couldn't hear yourself talk for the laughin' and the music. These days the room, always closed, was a striking symbol of Yace Bonnyman's last few barren years.

Yet for a brief moment now, as Yace countered a statement of Lyans's with-”Blast it, he had money! Why would he bust open a safe?”-Blaze had the feeling that the room might once again come awake before a revival of the old carefree days. He was momentarily inclined to think that he had been mistaken, that maybe this time Yace meant what he was saying, that he was with his son once more. They would make an unbeatable pair, come what might. Then, dully, he realized that this was wishful thinking, that Yace was merely keeping a hold on his pride by this defense of Joe, that there could never be a reconciliation between father and son. And it would take that, nothing short of it, to bring alive the haunting memories Blaze always a.s.sociated with this room.

With an effort, Blaze brought his attention around to what Lyans was saying, hearing: ”All right, I'll go along with you in hopin' it wasn't Joe. But who was it?”

Blaze himself was speaking before he quite realized it, wording the first idea that struck him: ”Why not check on where Neal Harper was tonight?”

The deputy's glance narrowed as it came around to Blaze. ”What's Harper got to do with this?” he queried tonelessly.

”He's out of a job, him and his gun-slick crew, now that Middle Arizona's saved itself a sc.r.a.p.”

”So he's out of a job,” Lyans agreed warily.

”Supposin' he figured it this way.” Blaze paused a moment to think the thing through. He looked at the others before continuing. ”Winter's on the way and him and his hardcases will be ridin' the grubline. He's sore because Vanover can't pay him fightin' wages any longer, so he decides to collect what he figures the outfit owes him. He blows open the Acme safe. As he hightails, he runs into Merrill.”

A weighty silence followed his words. It was Yace who finally said: ”Now we're gettin' somewhere. It'd take a cold-blooded devil like Harper to kill that way. When you do find your man, it'll turn out to be something like Blaze says, some . . .”

”Hold on!” Lyans cut in. ”What about that hatband of Joe's? We can't just settle on a man we'd like to see guilty and say he done it.”

”No,” agreed Blaze, ”but that hatband don't prove anything. Joe could have lost it. I'm only tryin' to point out that there are other angles to look into. You'll admit Harper's a possibility. He's proddy, dangerous as a sidewinder, and probably riled over bein' fired. He might've found the hatband and worked a frame-up around it. All I say is . . . check up on a few like him.”

The eyes of the gathered men left Blaze as the ma.s.sive door leading out to the portal opened and Shorty Adams, an Anchor crewman, gaunt even in the shapeless loose hang of his poncho, came through it and closed it in a hard slam against the rush of wind. His glance drifted over the group, and then swung to the room's far end.

”Where's Sam Thrall?” he queried, frowning.

”Not here,” answered Clark Dunne.

”Then Quinn's right,” Shorty breathed, and their attention came more sharply to him. ”Somethin' mighty queer's happened, Lyans. Quinn says Sam dropped back to fix his cinch a mile or so below Sommers's place. He hadn't caught up by the time you pulled in here. Couple of minutes ago, Quinn says, he wondered what was slowin' Sam, so he took a look out the cook shack door to the head of the lane, to see if he was on the way in. Then he seen somethin' movin' over by the wagon barn, a rider. He swears it was Sam's black, the one with the two white stockings. So he calls out. Instead of answerin', this jasper fades out of sight down by the big corral.”

”Quinn's spooked over nothin',” Lyans said. ”How's breakfast comin'?” He had delegated Adams and Quinn to cook a meal for the posse in the absence of the cook, who was somewhere up Porcupine Caon with the Anchor chuck wagon and crew.

”It'll be ready in a minute.” Shorty's face didn't lose its look of gravity. ”You'd better come have a look, Bill. We went over to the shed and found a lot o' gear and harness layin' around, and maybe half a bushel of oats scattered on the floor by the bin. That ain't the way we keep the place, is it, Blaze?”

”Shucks, no,” Yace answered for his foreman. Although he wore only underwear, Levi's, and boots, having been roused from bed by the posse's arrival, he was the first to start toward the door.

Following Yace out across the broad portal, Blaze took down the lantern that was hanging on a roof post to light the house's main entrance. He tilted his head against the frigid bite of the wind and buckled his windbreaker tightly at the neck as he and the others started over to the wagon shed. Beyond the far corner of the house he found it hard to walk against the wind and keep up with Anchor's s.h.i.+rtless owner, for there it blew in off the mesa with full force. A foot-deep drift of snow had already piled up at the lee corner of the wagon shed, and Blaze was thankful for the relief of stepping in behind that building's protection. He grunted-”Here, let me.”-when Yace fumbled awkwardly with cold-numbed fingers at the door hasp.

As Shorty Adams had said, the floor below the front rack was strewn with a disorderly array of harness. Across the way, by the grain bin, a couple of scoops of oats lay scattered across the worn planks. But Blaze saw something else, something Shorty hadn't noticed, before the others came over to the bin, Yace now carrying the lantern. On a high broad shelf over the door to a side lean-to close by were stored an a.s.sortment of odds and ends, boxes, trunks, two old battered suitcases, and a few tools. As Yace's step sounded behind him, Blaze was seeing a chisel handle projecting beyond the shelf's edge and, directly above it in the shadow along the wall, a freshly gouged mark in the wood. That mark was an arrow pointing upward.

Sight of it made Blaze quickly lower his glance and peer at the spilled oats at his feet. His fervent hope was that no one had seen him staring toward the shelf. Mentally cataloguing what should be up there, he knew instantly that at least one item was missing-Joe's canvas-jacketed bedroll, stored there since he had left five years ago, was gone.

”Now who in tarnation could have been that sloppy?” he growled. ”It wasn't this way at noon, when I grained our horses, Yace.”

The face of Anchor's owner was a study in perplexity as the others gathered behind him. ”Then Quinn wasn't seein' things,” he drawled. ”Who could it have been?” He had lost some of his certainty, and was as mystified as the others. He seemed to feel Bill Lyans's glance on him and turned. When he caught the studied severity of the deputy's stare, he asked querulously: ”Well, who was it?”

Lyans didn't answer that, but turned to the others. He spoke quietly, his voice barely audible over the moan of the wind. ”A couple of you make a fast circle south. Shorty, you're good at sign. You and I will swing north. There's enough snow so that we may be in time to spot his tracks showin' through to the ground.”

”Whose tracks?” Yace asked, irritable under the deputy's ignoring of him and his ordering around an Anchor man.

Lyans gave a grunt of disgust. ”Joe's, of course. He's been here all the time. I'd arrest anyone else who tried to run this kind of a sandy on me, Bonnyman.”

”What kind?” Yace bridled.

”Stallin' us while Joe made his getaway.”

”Why, you . . .” Yace checked his outburst as the deputy turned his back and headed for the shed's wide door. The others filed out after him, all but Yace and Blaze.

When they were gone, Blaze drawled: ”I'd give my right arm if what he said was true about your helpin' Joe make a getaway. Only it ain't.”

”How could it be? I didn't know he was here.”

”No. If you had, you'd have turned him in.”

Yace's jaw muscles corded in sullen anger, but he made no reply. He was plainly too baffled to rise to Blaze's baiting.

”So you're as sure as they are, eh?” Blaze queried dryly.

”Did I say so? Sure of what?”

”About Joe beefin' Merrill.”

”He wasn't on that train, was he?”

Here, indirectly, came the admission Blaze had been after, the admission that Yace Bonnyman thought his son a murderer, that his bl.u.s.tering back there at the house had been only a device to gain him time to make up his mind. Now it was made up. Blaze was suddenly angry, so full of emotion that the lantern's light wavered before his eyes.

”Yace,” he drawled, ”there are times when I wonder why I stay on here lookin' after a bull-headed old fool like you. Them times I wonder what I ever saw in you in the first place. By Satan, I don't know, now that I think of it.”

He had wanted to hurt Yace. But now a strange tranquility seemed to be settling over the old rancher's face, and he breathed: ”He'll shake 'em, if it was him. They won't lay a hand on him. But why didn't he come to me for help?”

”To you? After the glad-handin' you gave him at the depot tonight?” Blaze laughed. He didn't know what to think. First Yace hinted one thing, the next moment another.

Yace's expression sobered. He shook his head. ”No tellin' why I did that,” he said in a surprising admission.

Blaze was puzzled, sore. He had an impulse to tell Yace about the mark over the shelf, about Joe's being headed for Hoelseker's abandoned Broad Arrow cabin high along the Troublesome, but he checked it. There was no trusting Yace's hair-trigger moods. A minute ago he had been halfway convinced of his son's guilt; now he was trying to persuade himself that he would have helped Joe had he had the chance, that he didn't believe him guilty. No, Blaze decided, he wasn't going to let Yace in on this, wasn't going to trust him with the safety of a man's life. And he knew it amounted to exactly that. Joe Bonnyman was in a tight spot. So he drawled: ”Well, you goin' to let Lyans ride up Porcupine this mornin' and deputize your crew to hunt Joe down?”