Nobody went to the inquest, an’ you never heard less talk about anything. Seemed like they was all too anxious to get their fists into the honey-pot.” “They say Gentry did it,” Shevlin said.
“Why, now. He was the one showed up at the inquest an’ took the blame.” “You don’t think he did it?” “You take a hostler now–he’s like a bartender or a waiter,” was the way Brazos answered.
“Folks just naturally talk as if they wasn’t there at all, or else was born without ears.
Folks get so used to ’em they even forget they’re around.
“I heard the shot that killed Patterson,” Brazos went on. “Heard it plain–only shot fired that afternoon–but at the time I thought nothing of it. Some drunk is always shootin’ around.
“I didn’t have no time to get curious, even if I was of a mind to. Gentry, he come ridin’ in about that time. He’d promised to top off a bad horse for Clagg Merriam, so he took off his coat and his gun belt and hung them on the nail by the stall.
“Whilst ever’body was at the corral, I took a look at Gentry’s new guns. They was Smith and Wessons, and I’d heard tell of ’em, but never looked at ’em before. Mind you, I’d no idee anybody had been shot.
“Mike, Gentry’s guns was full-loaded and clean as a whistle. There’d been no time for him to clean ’em after that shot was fired… couldn’t have been more than a minute until he came riding in, and he was in plain sight for a few seconds before that. About ten minutes later somebody came runnin’ in and said Patterson was dead.” “Who did they say did it?” Shevlin asked.
“Nobody had any idee. Then along about sundown it got around that Gentry’d done it, and had turned himself in to the sheriff. There was a hearin’, an’ Mason testified he seen it an’ it was fair shootin’.” “Thanks, Brazos. You keep your ears open, you hear?” A buckboard driven by a girl was turning in to the door as he spoke.
“You better cinch up tight, boy,” Brazos said, “you’re ridin’ in rough country.” Mike Shevlin, carrying his duffle, crossed the street to the Nevada Hotel without glancing back. Had he turned, he might have seen Brazos gesture toward him, although he could not have heard the words that were spoken.
“Ma’am,” Brazos said in a low tone as he helped the girl from the rig, “you ever need he’p, you talk to that man there. If I was headin’ into grief, there’s no man I’d rather have ridin’ point for me. When that man wants to go somewhere an’ there ain’t no hole, he just naturally makes himself one.” Mike Shevlin registered at the Nevada House, where the clerk was a stranger, then he went upstairs to his room and dropped his gear. He had finished shaving and was buttoning his shirt when there was a light tap at his door.
His. 44 Smith and Wesson Russian lay on the bureau. He picked it up, draping the towel over it as if about to dry his face, and then he said, “All right, come in with your hands empty.” The door opened and the girl from the buckboard stepped in, closing the door swiftly behind her.
She was slender and tall, her cheekbones were high in her triangular face, her lips a shade full. She was beautiful, but hers was by no means an ordinary beauty, nor was she pretty in the accepted sense.
“Mr. Shevlin, I am Laine Tennison, and I am here to talk business.” “Sit down,” he suggested, “and start talking.” “Brazos is my friend, Mr. Shevlin. The only friend I have in Rafter… unless it is the people with whom I am staying.” He said nothing, waiting and wondering. She was a lady… he had known very few in his lifetime, but this was, definitely, a lady. She looked it, carried herself like one, and dressed it–not,t, quite plain for the times, and with style.
“Mr. Shevlin, I want you to find out why certain men want to buy the Sun Strike Mine from me.” He tucked the pistol behind his belt, her eyes following it. Then he folded the towel and placed it on the bar beside the bureau.
“No one knows that I own that mine, Mr.
Shevlin, and I do not want them to know. My grandfather bought the mine from the original locator.
He bought it through a company he controlled, and his name did not appear. I inherited the mine.” Her hair was auburn, with soft waves, her eyes green and slightly slanted. Rather like a cat’s eyes, but large.
“Nobody knows you own that mine?” Mike Shevlin asked.
“Only Brazos… and now you.” “You spoke of the people you are staying with. Don’t they know?” “Dottie Clagg is an old friend–we went to school together in Philadelphia. But she believes I am here for my health.” “Clagg?” “Her husband is Dr. Rupert Clagg, a physician and surgeon.” “Related to Clagg Merriam?” “A second cousin, I believe. It was Mr. Merriam who influenced them to come to Rafter, I think.” Mike Shevlin combed his hair as he looked in the mirror. He knew too little of what was going on here. He felt that he was like a blind man in a strange room filled with objects unfamiliar to him, whose design had no meaning for him.
Clagg Merriam had been a silent partner of Eli Patterson’s, but he had his hand in half a dozen enterprises. He had owned this hotel, and probably still did. He speculated in cattle, too.
Shevlin remembered him now, a tall, too handsome man who dressed well and never seemed to do anything, yet actually did a great deal.
“If you’re that cautious,” he said to the girl, “you must have a reason.” The green eyes looked directly into his.
“I will be honest with you, Mr. Shevlin. I sent a man here to investigate. He was killed. They said it was an accident. He had gone to work in the mine and somebody dropped some drill steel down a manway when he was coming up the ladder.” That was an ugly way to die. In the narrow limits of the manway there was no chance of escape from falling drills–and small chance of accident, when it came to that. His miner’s lamp would have been clearly visible, and one was supposed to call “Timber!” before dropping anything. Or at least that had been the rule in hard-rock mines where Mike had worked.
“Why would they want to kill him?” he asked.
She opened her bag and removed an object wrapped in a handkerchief. She unfolded the handkerchief and placed a chunk of ore in his hand.
It was heavy, and it was literally cobwebbed with gold. High-grade… high-grade ore. “If there’s much of that, you’re making a mint,” he said.
“That is just the point, Mr. Shevlin. The mine barely pays for itself. There are some months when it does not even do that. That piece of ore came to me in a package with no return address and no comment. It was then I sent the man to investigate.” She hesitated. “Mr. Shevlin, when I was growing up I lived in California and Nevada, where there were mining towns and cattle towns, and in coming here I passed through several such towns. I do not believe I have ever seen a town so prosperous as this one.” “What is it you want me to do?” “I believe a rich strike has been made, and that my gold is being high-graded… stolen.
I want you to find out if this is true; and if it is, who is buying the gold, and where it is kept.
Then”–she lifted her eyes to his–“I want you to stop the high-grading and recover the gold.” He gave her an incredulous smile. “I don’t know what Brazos told you, Miss Tennison, but I don’t believe any one man could do what you ask.” “You can do it.” He crossed to the window and looked down at the town. Until she mentioned the town’s prosperity, he had not given it a thought. His mind had been too preoccupied with his own weariness when he arrived, and with the problem of Eli Patterson; yet some subtle atmosphere about the town had worried him, and now he knew what it was.
Brazos had phrased it perfectly: everybody rolling in money, and everybody scared.
But how did you fight corruption when all were corrupt?
Turning back from the window, he asked, “You said somebody wanted to buy the mine?” “The first offer came from Hollister and Evans.
That was quite a while ago. I refused to sell. The second came a few months later from a man named Mason. He wished, he said, to close down the mine and reactivate the Rafter H cattle company.