“I cannot believe you were bad.”
“Don’t gamble it. When Kissling attacked me I did not think. Whatever I did, it was in me to do.”
“What will you do now?”
He shrugged, and finished his coffee. “Ben Janish will be coming back, and if he is gunning for me I must kill him or be killed. They say he is an expert, and I do not know whether I can even shoot straight.”
He got up. “I think I will go away for a while. I will try to find out something about myself – who and what I am. If it is something worthwhile, I will come back.”
“I would like that.”
For a few minutes they talked quietly, and then he excused himself and went outside. The night was cool and quiet, and he stood very still, listening to the night sounds and breathing deep of the fresh air. But there was no quiet in him, there was only torment. Still the same questions: Who was he? What was he?
There was something within him that responded easily and naturally to Fan Davidge. He was at ease with her, he felt right with her; but at any moment his whole life could blow up in his face.
What if he was an escaped criminal? What if he was wanted by the police for some crime?
And who was Matherbee? Who was “the man who was best for the job”? Who was Ruble Noon? Or Dean Cullane?
He knew he must go to El Paso. But first he must return to the cabin in the mountains, search it for some clue to Ruble Noon, and then find the other way out. Then it would be time to go to El Paso.
If he lived that long …
Chapter Six
The last stars of night clung to the sky, and there was a growing light in the east when he rolled silently from his bunk and dressed. He was outside when he heard a faint step. It was Henneker.
The old man stared at him sourly. “Pullin’ your freight?”
“Yes.”
“What about her?”
“You told me she wasn’t for my kind. Maybe you’re right.”
“I don’t mean that. I mean Ben Janish. He was your job, wasn’t he?”
The man who called himself Jonas tightened a strap. There was something here he did not understand.
Henneker spoke impatiently, keeping his voice low. “Arch doesn’t know a thing, but the old man talked to me. I told him you were the only man for the job. He already knew of you, though, and I think he’d been studying on it. I think he knew when he left that he’d never come back, so he had to decide.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” The morning was cold, and he wanted to be away before any of the others were around.
“All right,” the old man said testily, “you don’t know anything, and if anybody asks me, neither do I, but if that girl’s to have any decent kind of life you’ll have to do what you was paid for.”
“And what was I paid for?”
Henneker snorted. “I told you Davidge talked to me. Four men – that’s what you was paid for, four men who needed their hair lifted. You was paid for Dave Cherry, John Lang, Cristobal, and Ben Janish.”
“Why didn’t he include Kissling?”
“He wasn’t here at the time. Anyway, he’s small stuff. I could handle him myself.”
“You?”
Henneker stared at him. “I never taken up your kind of work as a business,” he said. “I done it for a hobby. Although,” he added, “I don’t figure I was up to Ben Janish even when I was a kid. Maybe Wes Hardin could do it.”
“You think I can?”
Henneker shrugged. “You taken the money. You got the job. You do it in your own way an’ your own time … only time is runnin’ out.”
Jonas swung into the saddle and reined the dun around. “I’ll be back,” he said, and walked his horse away into the night.
Behind him he heard a door close and John Lang’s hard voice. “Who was that?”
“The stranger,” Henneker answered. “He’s goin’ out to tally cattle.”
Jonas drew rein, listening. After a moment Lang said, “Well, he won’t do no harm. He can’t get past Kissling, anyway. He’s at the gate.”
Once away from the ranch, he put the dun into a gallop. This time the trip to the cabin took less time, even with the extra precautions he took. At the cabin he stabled the dun, and taking a scythe from the wall, cut enough grass for the horse to keep busy.
The builders of this cabin seemingly had prepared for anything, and he felt sure they had planned a way out of this high valley as well. The larger part of the structure was old, and it was that part built under the overhang that was oldest. He wanted to find what lay behind the cabin, beyond the rock knoll against which it was built.
He scrambled to the top of the rock, and walked over it toward the far side. He stopped so suddenly that he almost fell. Before him the rock dropped sheer away for several hundred feet. Far below him he glimpsed a dim trail that seemed to point toward the rock on which he stood.
Suppose that trail dead-ended against the cliff? Suppose there was some way up from within the rock? The rock dropped so steeply that to go further was to risk a fall, although a man in his socks might work his way down to the lip of the overhang, the chance was too great.
He went back down to the cabin, keeping the distances in mind. Obviously, the back of the house must be within a few feet of the face of the cliff. Had there been a wind-hollowed opening there before the cabin was built? There were many such “windows,” as they were called in this country, in Utah, New Mexico, and Arizona, as well as in Colorado.
Inside the cabin he looked around slowly and carefully. In his earlier examination of the place he had given only a few glances around. He had sat in the chair, but he had not taken time to look at the books or to examine the guns-to open the door of the closet… doors, he should say.
He opened them, and there, in neat rows, hung half a dozen suits, several pairs of jeans, several kinds of boots, and half a dozen hats of different styles. Whoever had used this place had evidently wanted to alter his appearance from time to time. Suddenly his eye was drawn to something on the floor of the closet… sand.
From the boots?
Shoving the clothing aside, he saw there a small door, which was not over five feet high and four feet wide.
His hand felt for the almost concealed latch and swung the door outward. A cool breath of air fanned his cheeks. He peered through into a cavern and saw, some thirty feet away, an oval of blue sky.
He stepped through the opening, and saw at one side of the cave a winch and ropes that hung into a hole. He bent over and looked down.
It was a chimney in the rock face, varying from about four feet wide at the top to ten at the bottom. Suspended in it was a crude platform about three feet square that could be raised and lowered by the windlass.
This, then, was the way in which supplies were brought to this place and the way in which access could be gained from the outside. Once up here, and the platform pulled up, there would be no way to reach the cabin, even if anyone knew it was there. No more perfect hideaway could be found anywhere. What about a horse?
It was likely that the man who used this hideaway kept horses at both places, in the valley below and up here. Yet there was no evidence that whoever had stayed here had ever used the trail to the Rafter D, and it was sheer chance that he himself had found it.
Once more he sat down to think things over. Slowly his mind went back over his conversation with Henneker.
The old man had obviously mistaken him for somebody else … or had he? Suppose he was a hired killer, hired by Tom Davidge to rid himself and his daughter of the men who had moved in without invitation, and had remained?
Suppose … just suppose that he himself was Ruble Noon? Suppose his finding his way here was no accident? That he had been guided by some latent memory?
He got up suddenly, and slipping out of the ill-fitting jacket, he opened the closet and took down one of the coats, a city man’s black broadcloth coat, excellently tailored. He slipped it on … a perfect fit!