A number of men were idly standing over in front of the general store, talking. Others were southward and northward, but on the same, opposite, side of the road, also idly talking. The men out front, at the tie rack and in the vicinity of it, were mostly stock-men who were so accustomed to the heat they did not appear to be aware of it.
Rufe turned when the old cowman spoke through a thin drift of fragrant smoke.
“Where do you reckon them two went…Chase and your partner?”
Rufe had absolutely no idea. The last he had seen, Jud had just punched Arlen Chase through the doors of the saloon, and had jumped out behind him. There had been no gunfire, no great shouts by either man, but, of course, there had been the stun-ning aftermath of his shoot-out with Bull Harris to interfere with his own, and everyone else’s concern, about Jud and Arlen Chase.
He told the cowman that, if he could keep the townsmen and those range men out there as well from interfering, he would try and locate his partner. Hartman smoked, and thought, and finally said: “I’ll go with you.” He did not explain why he would do this, and Rufe, eyeing the shrewd older man, felt that he understood. Evart Hartman was not an incautious man. He had seemed entirely convinced by the story Rufe had told him. In the cell room his attitude had reinforced Rufe’s feeling that this was indeed so. On the other hand, Hartman’s offer to accompany Rufe was not based entirely upon a desire to help. He wanted to be along just in case all his partial convictions turned out to be incorrect. He looked like that kind of a man, shrewd, careful, completely and analytically poised.
Rufe went to the desk, picked up Hartman’s weapon, and handed it to him, then he motioned to-ward the door, and Hartman crossed over as he holstered his weapon. When he stood in the doorway, looking out, he spoke to the cowmen at the tie rack, but the moment that jailhouse door had opened, all those other men up and down the roadway, and upon the opposite plank walk, came straight up to listen.
Hartman was brusque. “Homer Bradshaw’s locked in a cell in here, boys, along with Matt Reilly and a couple of Arlen Chase’s men…his range boss is one of’em. Those rumors we been pickin’ up around town now and then about Chase making trouble for old Amos Cane’s girl atop the mesa been pretty much true. This feller in here with me, Rufe Miller, and his partner, the feller who’s missing along with Arlen Chase, work for Miz Cane. Me and this feller are going to ride out and see if we can’t find his partner and Chase. Someone’d ought to set here in the jailhouse and mind the town, and make certain none of the prisoners in here gets loose.”
Hartman did not ask for volunteers. He pointed over the heads of the men nearest him to a portly, dark-haired man over in front of the general store. “You, Lemuel. You’re head of the town council this year, and you got a clerk in the store to mind the business. You better come over here and ramrod this matter, because, sure as hell, Clearwater don’t have any law at all right now.”
Hartman dropped his arm, watched the distant storekeeper a moment to see whether he would agree, would start across toward the jailhouse, then called to Rufe to come out.
No one said a word. No one more than shuffled his feet a little when Rufe came forth from the jail-house, until he was fully out there on the plank walk, then the old man in the long coat, still clutching someone’s whiskey bottle, reared up from along the north doorways and said: “You sure done a job that’s been a long while finding someone to do it, sonny.” He did not explain, but the assumption was that he had in mind the killing of Bull Harris.
Evart Hartman called to a range man. “Jamie, fetch my horse down to the livery barn, will you?”
He strolled along with Rufe, and, as they entered the shady area out front of the barn, Rufe recognized a heavy-set, unkempt-looking individual standing in the runway of the barn that he had seen earlier rattling the jailhouse door, then stamping off, cursing, because that door had been locked. It was the livery-man. He greeted Hartman and Rufe with a palpably false smile and turned to pace along with them until Rufe located his horse, then the liveryman offered to do the rigging. Rufe declined, did his own saddling and bridling. Then he leaned across the saddle seat and said: “Hour back, or more, you wanted to get in-side the jailhouse, mister. I saw you up there shaking the door. Why?”
The liveryman’s coarse, florid features creased up into a smile that nearly completely obscured small, porcine eyes. “Just lookin’ for old Homer. Me and him usually share a cup of coffee in the morning. Been doin’ that for years, me an’ old Homer.”
Rufe had a feeling about the liveryman, but he neither knew the man personally nor had anything except that small feeling, so he scooped up reins and led his horse out front.
They did not have to wait long. When Hartman’s animal arrived, the cowboy who brought it looked closely at Rufe, but spoke to the old cowman. “You know what you’re doing, Pa?”
Hartman smiled for the first time. “No,” he told the young cowboy, “but that don’t have Tomean much. Mostly, in my lifetime, I’ve been doing things I wasn’t sure about.” His eye turned kindly. “You send your brother back to mind the ranch. You and the other boys hang around town until this here is settled, and don’t fret about me.”
For Rufe, the mystery of Jud’s disappearance seemed to be a case of pursuit. It had seemed to be that ever since Rufe’s last glimpse of his partner, lunging out through the saloon doorway behind Arlen Chase.
He knew that neither Jud nor Chase had fired a shot, because, thus far today, there had only been one gunshot around town—the one that had resulted in the death of Bull Harris. He also knew that Chase had the advantage of being familiar with Clearwater, while Jud was not. Also, Chase was familiar with the desert cow range on all sides of Clearwater.
Rufe led the way up the alley behind the livery barn, located the shed where he and Jud had put Ruff and Chase’s cocinero down in the bootleg hole, and took Hartman inside, just in case Jud had re-turned to this place with Chase.
Hartman knew the hole. He said that just about everyone else in the countryside knew about it, and remembered the old-timer who had at one time made some of the finest whiskey in the entire territory down in that hole.
But neither Chase nor Jud was there.
Hartman, it turned out, was also very knowledgeable about the town. They made a very thorough and painstaking search of it—without turning up any sign of either Rufe’s partner or Arlen Chase.
Hartman shook his head about this. “They ain’t here. No way under the sun for’em to be here, and us not have found them this morning.”
Rufe considered, and decided that, if Jud had pur-sued Chase out of Clearwater, the most logical route for Chase to have taken would have been back in the direction of his camp atop of Cane’s Mesa, because he would believe he had men up there to reinforce him.
There was another consideration. Whoever that had been hours earlier Rufe and Jud had seen coming down off the mesa in bright sunlight should by now be fairly well along on their way to town— which should put them between Chase, pursued by Jud, and the top of the mesa.
He explained all this to Evart Hartman. The cow-man stoically listened, then turned and without a word led off back up toward the northwesterly desert beyond Clearwater, tipping down his hat, now that the full heat of hot daytime was over the land, and even a wide hat brim did not help a lot, because brilliant sunshine bounced up off millions of mica particles in the soil and sand, but the hat brim was better than no protection at all as they rode to the edge of town, then headed forth into the desert.
Rufe sashayed back and forth, but, as Evart Hart-man pointed out, there were always fresh-shod horse tracks this close to Clearwater. Unless Jud’s animal had very unusual shoes, his tracks would be indistinguishable from all those other tracks, and Hartman was correct.