A few days later the grapevine brought added information to the grist of Sam Tinker’s mill.
Clay Bell had been wounded when he charged the lumberjack camp in The Notch. Sam Tinker had listened to their excited talk, and all agreed that Bell had used his gun with his left hand. That his right side was bloody and he looked haggard.
Sam Tinker said nothing of these things, but sat quietly, listening, watching, and thinking. Jim Narrows came walking up the street to dinner. Jim’s wife was gone to Denver and he was eating out these days.
“Howdy, Jim!” Tinker spat a stream of tobacco juice at an unoffending ant. “What’s new?”
“Nothin’ much.” Narrows took his pipe from his mouth. He stood there, enjoying the coolness after the heat of the day. Then, low-voiced, he said, “Sam, what’s got into Wheeler?”
“Wheeler? What’s wrong?”
“He sent a wire down state tryin’ to get that old killin’ case against Monty Brown reopened.” Narrows took his pipe from his mouth and stared into the bowl, then knocked it out against the edge of the porch. “A body would think Bell was havin’ trouble enough without his own folks openin’ up on him.”
“Clay shippin’ cows . . .”
“No cars—orders come down from main office. No cars for Bell.”
“Devitt?”
“Prob’ly.”
Sam Tinker turned the matter over in his mind. Bell owed Wheeler money. If Devitt logged off Bell’s best range, Bell could never pay that money. It scarcely made sense that Wheeler would cut his own throat that way.
“Now I wonder?” he said aloud. Then added, “You know, Jim, we folks here in town, we should oughta stick together. This here Devitt—tryin’ to ride roughshod over ever’body.”
He rolled his quid in his jaws and spat again. It was too dark to see if he had nailed the ant again.
“Jim, you see any of the B-Bar outfit, you tell ’em to see me. That means Bell himself, too.”
Jim Narrows put his pipe in his shirt pocket. “Never liked Noble Wheeler, anyway.”
Sam Tinker did not follow Narrows into the dining room, although he customarily ate at this time. Instead, he sat in the darkness listening to the familiar evening sounds of the town. The lumberjacks were off the street now. They were a morose lot, not like the jacks he had known in his earlier days in Michigan, in the Saginaw country. Nor like the old days in Tinkersville when sixteen thousand belted men had been marching down to Hell the hard way.
It had been young and lusty then, with Indians in the hills and every man packing a gun and a chip on his shoulder. That was when there had been a big strike back in the hills and Cave Creek was alive. The old Tinker House had worked three shifts a day, nine bartenders to the shift, never closing its doors.
The Homestake had been big, too, and going all night. The old Diamond Palace had burned down twelve years ago, the night of the big wind when most of the town was snuffed out like a candle.
His thoughts returned to the present. Noble Wheeler had gone to the hills with a rifle, and he had never been known to do any shooting before. Never even hunted deer or sage hens. And he was not known to possess a rifle. Showed you never really knew about a man.
One idea led to another, and this was Sam Tinker’s night for ideas. Somebody had told Devitt about that timber on Deep Creek. It was not known to many away from the town itself. It was not easily seen. Somebody knew it was there, somebody who knew Devitt needed timber.
Sam Tinker heaved himself erect and walked into the hotel. Beat all what a man could learn, “jest settin’.” Folks wasted a lot of time and tired a lot of horseflesh just gallivantin’ around the country. Thing to do was “set to home” and keep your eyes and ears open. Only ask questions when you had to. That was the ticket. Most folks admired to talk. Just get them started and set by, they’d tell you all they knew or suspected, soon or late.
Sam Tinker had no liking for Noble Wheeler. Nor for Jud Devitt. More important, he had a warm affection for Clay Bell.
Wheeler believed he knew a lot about Bell. In outward facts, he knew a good bit. But he could have learned by listening to Sam Tinker, who understood Clay, and who knew on what shaky ground both Devitt and Wheeler walked.
Had he not liked him before, he would have begun the day he saw Devitt’s lumberjacks, who had been swaggering big around the town, come beefing it into town on their swollen and bloody feet.
The story had set the whole town to chuckling. Like Bell or not, and most people did, he was one of their own. Jim Narrows had passed the story down the wire until there were a lot of people laughing in Santa Fe and Las Vegas, and even Denver. Clay Bell had walked Jud Devitt’s tough lumberjacks over twenty miles of desert in their sock feet. It was a story worth telling.
They heard it in Dodge, and there were some who were not surprised. “Know that boy,” Bob Wright said. “They got off easy.”
Sam Tinker sat in his nightly pinochle game with Jim Narrows, Ed Miller, and the postmaster. Pinochle helped him to think.
Jud Devitt was across the room, sitting over dinner with Judge Riley and his daughter. Jud had become aware during the day that he was losing prestige in Tinkersville. Not that it mattered, except to his ego. This was a small town in a backwater of the West—and he would show them. In his pocket was an appointment for a Deputy U. S. Marshal.
Yet despite the satisfaction of that appointment that rested in his pocket, to confer upon whom he liked, Devitt was not pleased. Judge Riley was not talkative tonight. He seemed preoccupied. And Colleen was, if not cool, at least no more talkative than her father.
Several times Devitt tried to warm up the conversation and guide it down pleasant channels, but without success. Colleen excused herself and retired to her room. Judge Riley crossed the room to watch Sam Tinker and his cronies at their pinochle game. Restless and irritable, Jud Devitt got to his feet and walked outside.
He had made his decision as to the marshal. It would be Morton Schwabe. The Dutchman disliked Bell, but Judge Riley, who would be asked to recommend the appointment, could not know that. The appointment of a local man who knew conditions was what Riley wanted.
The night was cool. He walked slowly clown the street toward the corrals. If all panned out as he hoped, this situation would soon be right in the palm of his hand. But what else might Bell have up his sleeve? Irritably, Devitt looked at his dead cigar. The man had an uncanny way of planning ahead.
Colleen was not in bed. She had gone to her room, but she stood now beside the window looking out into the night.
She had changed. The few weeks that she had lived in Tinkersville had brought about a change in her feelings such as she had experienced in no previous period of her life. It was not only her feelings toward Jud, although they, too, had altered. It was something within herself. Her own world, the world of cities and parties and gaiety, seemed suddenly far away and very empty. Out here—she looked into the night and toward the lonely stars—it was different. She felt different, she was different.
Her friends had warned her against going west. She would be bored in a small town. There would be nothing to do. Jud would be busy. She had come on her own decision, overcoming Jud’s objections and those of her father. And she was glad she had come.
The wind from the desert was soft. It brought intangible scents—sage, distant wood fire, the coolness of night. Somewhere a horse stamped and blew, and a tin-panny piano sounded from the saloon down the street, from the Homes take.
Down the street were empty buildings, and the foundations of those destroyed in the Fire. They always spoke of it so, for the Fire had been the biggest thing in their lives here, and it had been the final culmination of the mining boom. During her days in the town, while Jud and her father were busy, she had walked much and listened a lot. Dr. McClean was a man who enjoyed talking, and especially to a pretty woman. Sometimes when she helped him with Bert Garry she had listened to his talking of the old days. Once she had asked him about Bell.
“Clay?” The doctor paused, and seemed to be considering. “Colleen, he’s a fine man. Sincere, hard-working. He drives himself harder than his men, but he’s got a vein of poetry in him, too. And something else.”