The clothes were his, the house was his. He had the deed in his pocket. But obviously the cabin had been occupied by Ruble Noon before the deed was made out … no doubt it came to him as part payment for what he was to do, or as an outright gift.
Suppose then that Tom Davidge had been the “Nebraska” cattleman who originally hired him? No . . . the Pinkerton report said that cattleman had been a friend to Tom Davidge.
Davidge had permitted outlaws to stop on his land before, so why not Ruble Noon?
Four men … he had taken money to kill four men.
He got up and walked to the window and looked outside. Sunlight fell through the pines and the raw-boned ridges were starkly beautiful. In this place there was only the wind, and sometimes the rain, the snow, and the cold. Here change came slowly; a rock crumbled, a tree grew, a root pushed deeper into a crevice, forcing wide the jaws of rock. Here there was only one problem, the problem of existence alone. Down there in the valleys where men walked there were many problems.
He went over to the bookshelves and looked at the titles: Locke’s Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Mills’s On Liberty, Blackstone’s Commentaries on the law, and dozens of others. Could the man who read such books kill for hire? If so, what had happened to him?
The Pinkerton report had accounted in general outline for six years of his life, but what of the time before that? What of the time before he arrived in that Missouri town and went to work for a tie-cutting camp? If he was a mystery to others, he was even more of a mystery to himself.
Ben Janish, now … Ben had tried to kill him, and he had apparently taken payment to kill Ben, but he felt no desire to kill him, or anyone else.
Was that why Ben Janish had tried to kill him – because he knew he was a hunted man? Or had he himself tried to kill Janish and failed, and been shot in return?
He knew what he had to do. He must go back, search out his past; he must find out who and what he was. He would go to El Paso. He had the address of Dean Cullane.
He went to the closet again and carefully went through the pockets of every garment. There were no letters, no papers, no addresses .. . nothing.
The desk next. Again failure. There was a quantity of writing paper, there was ink, and there were pens, and there was an account book with a list of figures in it, apparently sums of money running into several thousands, but there was no clue unless it was the initials after several of the sums.
Suddenly he thought of the mirror … he had not looked in a mirror since he had become “Jonas,” and he had no idea what he looked like.
The face he saw was strange. It was a rather triangular face, with strong cheekbones and a strong jaw. It was a handsome face, in a rugged way. He studied it critically, but saw nothing there that reminded him of anyone or anything.
His eyes went to the patch of bandage on his skull, which needed changing. He removed it, and then, after getting a fire started, he heated water and bathed the wound with care.
He went back to the mirror. There was an older scar there, evidently from a severe blow on the skull. The present cut had glanced across a corner of it, ripping his scalp.
He searched about, found a small drawer of medical supplies, and bandaged the wound again. It was healing fast, and a bandage would soon not be needed. A bandage attracts attention, and he hoped he could do without it before he reached El Paso.
Finding a carpetbag in the closet, he packed a suit, several shirts, and a few other necessary items; then he went out to the stable, stripped the gear from the dun, and turned it loose.
At the mirror he trimmed the several days’ growth of beard, and sat down and shined the boots he was wearing. From some storehouse of memory he remembered something: “If you want the law to leave you alone, keep your hair trimmed and your boots shined.” There was something to it.
After this he entered the closet, closed the door behind him, and went to the shaft. The arrangement of block and tackle had been done by an expert, and would have handled several times his weight. Taking the bag, he lowered himself down the shaft, taking it easy.
Once men had climbed part way up here … he could see where steps, now almost obliterated, had been carved into the sandstone. They stopped at a shelf that showed a black cave beyond. Sometime he would take the tune to examine that cave.
At the bottom of the shaft he took time to listen, then stepped out. He was in a large, roomy cave. At the front was part of a ruined wall, and he had to walk around fallen rock to reach the outer cave, which was formed merely by an overhang hollowed by wind and rain.
Beyond this a steep path led diagonally down to a sheer cliff that dropped some twenty feet. He looked around and saw a notched pole tucked into a crevice. He took it out, descended by this means, and hid the pole in the brush. From below he could see nothing of the path, only the roof of the overhang.
He looked all around carefully. He saw a trail, an ancient one by the look of it, that led away along the face of the rock and angled down the slope. There were no tracks on the trail.
He went slowly, stepping on rocks where he could, avoiding making any sign of passage. Suddenly he paused. Around a corner of rock he saw a cabin built of native stone, with a pole corral, some chickens, and a few guinea hens. In the corral were several horses and three cows.
He went up to the cabin, walking warily. An old Mexican came out and went to the corral. Taking down a rope, he caught a horse and led it outside.
He spoke to the Mexican, who merely lifed a hand, and then went to the cabin and returned with a saddle and the rest of the rigging.
In his own mind he was now quite sure that he was Ruble Noon. He said, “Has anyone been around?”
The Mexican shook his head. His eyes went to the bandage, just visible under Noon’s hat, but he said nothing. He was an old man, square and solid, a muscular man with a seamed and scarred face.
Noon touched the bandage. “Dry-gulch,” he said, “I was lucky.”
The Mexican shrugged, then gestured toward the house and made a motion of eating. When his mouth opened, Ruble Noon saw the man had no tongue.
Noon shook his head, and believing the saddled horse was for him, he went to it and gathered the reins. The horse nickered softly, seeming to know him. ‘
‘I’ll be back in about a week,” he said, and the old Mexican nodded.
The trail dipped down, went through a notch in the cliffs, and headed southeast. At first, he saw no tracks on the trail, then a few, obviously many days old. After an hour’s ride he saw something gleaming in the sun, still some distance off … it was the railroad.
He continued on the trail and suddenly found it was parallel to the railroad and perhaps a mile away from it. There were rocks and brush at that point, but a space behind them was beaten by the hoofs of horses, or of one horse tethered there many times. It was a perfect observation point, where a man could wait unseen, watching the railroad and the station.
The station was simply a freight car without wheels, with a chimney made of stovepipe, and a signal for stopping trains.
After watching for several minutes he decided that the place was deserted, and he rode on again along the trail. It wound among a maze of huge boulders, with several other trails coming in to join it, and then it pointed toward the tracks and the station.
The door of the station was on the latch. He opened it, and stepped inside. There was a pot-bellied stove, a woodbox, a bench, and a few faded magazines. He went back outside and raised the stop signal, and settled down to wait.
The fly-speckled schedule told him the train would be along in two hours-a freight train.
All was quiet. Somewhere out on the flat he heard a bird call, but there was no other sound. He looked off across the flat country toward the farthest mountains.