“Sack- ett,” he said slowly, “maybe we’ve got something. Let’s run it into the corral and read the brands.” Chantry paused. “This here job was wished on me, but when it was offered I sure needed it. I’m no detective or even a marshal excep’ by the wish of these folks in town. I went broke ranchin’, Sackett. Drouth, rustlers, an’ a bad market did me in, and when I was mighty hard up these folks asked me to be marshal. I’ve done my best.” “You solved the murder of my brother, Joe.” “Well, sort of. It was kind of like tracking strays. You know where the feed’s best, where there might be water, an’ where you’d want to go to hide from some dumb cowhand. It was just a matter of puttin’ two an’ two together.” “Like this.” “Sort o* You done any work on this?” “A lot of riding an’ thinking. Sort of like picking up the cards and shuffling them all together again, then dealing yourself a few hands faceup to see what the cards look like.
“Only in this case it wasn’t cards, but news items.” Tyrel Sackett reached in his breast pocket and brought out three clippings and spread them on the table facing Chantry.
All three were of holdups, and the dates were scattered over the last two years. Robberies, no shooting, no noise, no clues. The robbers appeared, then disappeared. One robbery was in Montana, one in Washington, one in Texas.
“Mighty spread out,” Chantry commented. Only in Montana had there been an organized pursuit, and the bandits had switched to fresh horses and disappeared. “Had the horses waitin’,” he commented.
“The rancher says no. They were horses he kept in his corral for emergencies, like going for a doctor or something like that.” “And somebody knew it.” Chantry looked over the descriptions.
They were vague except for a tall, slim man wearing a narrowbrimmed hat. “Funny-lookin’ galoot” was the description of the man in the bank. “I think he was meant to be,” Sackett suggested. “I think he was meant to be noticed, like that man wearing the polka-dot shirt in Mora.” “You mean they wanted somebody to be able to describe him?” Chantry asked. “Look at it. What happens is over in minutes, and your attention focuses on the obvious. You’re asked to describe the outlaws, and that polka-dot shirt stands out, or your tall man in the narrow-brimmed hat. You see the obvious and ignore the rest. You don’t have a description, just a polka-dot shirt or a tall man in a narrow-brimmed hat. What were the others like? You don’t recall. You’ve only a minute or two to look, so you see what’s staring at you.” Chantry ran his fingers through his hair.
“Sackett, until now I’ve been wonderin’ if I’m foolish or not.” He got up and walked to the sideboard and opened a drawer, taking out a sheaf of papers. “Looks like you an’ me been tryin’ to put a rope on the same calf.” He sat down and spread out the papers.
They were wanted posters, letters, news clippings.
“Nine of them,” he said, “Kansas, Arkansas, Wyoming, California, Texas, and Idaho. Two in California, three in Texas.
Seven of them in the last four years, the others earlier. Nobody caught, no good descriptions, no clues. “Nor were any strangers noticed hanging around town before the holdups. In four cases they got away without being seen so as to be recognized.” Chantry picked a wanted poster from the stack. “But look at this: Four bandits, one described as a tall man wearing a Mexican sombrero.” “The same man, with a different hat?” “Why not?” Sackett finished his coffee. “All over the west, the same pattern, clean getaways, and nobody saw anything.” Borden Chantry nodded toward the stack of papers. “Got two of those in the mail on the same day, and there seemed to be a similarity. I was comparing them when I remembered the wanted poster. Since then I been collecting these, and then I went over to the newspaper and went back through their files. They keep a stack of Denver and Cheyenne papers, too, so I ran a fairly good check.” Chantry got up and went over to the stove and, lifting the lid, glanced at the fire, then poked in a few small sticks, enough to keep the coffee hot.
“I’m glad you came over, Sackett. Now we’ve got to do some figuring.” “Let’s start with your horse.” “You don’t suspect me?” Sackett smiled. “I suspect everybody, but I’ve got a theory. Suppose you tell me how you got him.” “It was roundup time, and it was late. Work had been held up and we got off to a bad start, so we were working our tails off when this gent came riding up to the chuck wagon leading five horses.
“He asked the cook if he could eat, and of course we fed him. I came in for coffee about that time, and he commented that we were shorthanded. I agreed, but added that what we were really short of was horses.
“He set there chewin’ for a minute like he was thinkin’ it over, and then he waved a hand at his stock.
“I’ve five head there you’re welcome to use,” he said, “all good stock horses. All I ask is that when you’ve finished the roundup you keep them up close to your house, in the corral or a small pasture where I can pick ‘em up when I come back through. An” keep “em together.” “That gent got up, threw his coffee grounds on the grass, and started for his horse. “When will you be back?”’ I ask him, an” he says he’s ridin’ on to the coast and it may be, six months or even a year, but don’t worry. He’ll be back. Maybe if we’re drivin’ stock we may just leave the horses we’re ridin’ an’ pick up these. He turned his horse around and said, “Treat “em gentle. They’re good stock.” An’ he rode away.
“Those horses made all the difference, and so when we finished the roundup I did like he said, only once in a while I’d catch one of them up and ride him to town, like that black.
“That sort of thing isn’t that unusual, and I gave it no thought until after they appointed me town marshal. When I was cleanin’ out my desk over in the office I come on this reward poster. Seems like there’d been a holdup over east of here, just a few days before.
“Our newspaper wasn’t operatin’ then, and I’d been too busy tryin’ to make ends meet, and nobody had mentioned any holdup to me. “Four or five men, they said. Nobody seemed right sure. Well, I filed it with the others and gave it no thought, but I was roundin’ up and sellin’ off some of my own cows, tryin’ to pay bills, and ridin’ past my horse pasture I saw those five horses were gone but there were five others in their place. “Five horses, all good stock, but they looked like they’d been used mighty hard, an’ just lately. That’s when I started puttin’ it all together.” The fire crackled in the stove, and the clock ticked in the silent room. Neither man spoke for some time. “Smart,” Sackett said, at last.
“Somebody is all-fired smart. his “How could they guess that a two-bit, rawhide rancher like me would someday be marshal?” Chantry said.
Sackett answered, “And they plan, they plan way ahead, like with your horses and that note of Orrin’s. was He gestured toward the papers.
“There’s twelve holdups or more, an’ who knows anything?” “I wonder how long it’s been goin’ on?” Sackett shrugged. “Who knows? Or how many other robberies there have been of which we have no record?
It would be my guess this is only the fringe.
We’re only two men in two mighty small towns.” He tapped the stack of papers with his finger. “This makes the James boys look like pikers. his “They were pikers,” Chantry said. “They advertised themselves too much. Everybody knew who they were, and they were two bloody, too many people killed for no reason, like that schoolboy who ran across the street in front of them.” “They’ve been getting away with this for years,” Sackett commented, “but when they picked you to keep some horses for them they made their mistake. It only takes one. his “So what do we do now?” Sackett indicated the stack of papers. “We go through that and look for something common to all of them. That tall man, for instance, who wears funny hats. And we write to places where there have been holdups.
We look for some item common to them all, and there will be something.” “We’ve already got something,” Chantry said.
“We’ve got one thing, anyway.” “What’s that?” “Utah. There have been no robberies in Utah.” Borden Chantry got to his feet, stood there for a moment thinking, then went over to a big, hide-covered chair and dropped into it. “You think they’re Mormons?” “No,” Sackett replied, “I don’t.