“I sure haven’t seen her,” the sheriff said. “Not since she was up the hill there.”
“Have you been around all the time?”
“You bet. Right up and down the street, sort of keeping an eye out to see no trouble comes of all this drinking and whoopee. We want folks to cut loose and have a good time, but we got to be careful.”
“Of course. But, damn it, that girl started out to find you three hours ago. If you were around all the time, how did she miss you?”
“By golly, I don’t know. Mighty big crowd out here, but she could of asked anybody.”
“That,” said Shayne, “is just what I’m afraid she did — asked the wrong person.” He shrugged and rubbed his lean jaw. “Any leads on Pete’s death?”
“Haven’t had time to do much work on that.” Fleming was apologetic. “Been asking questions around. Screwloose has been in town a couple of weeks celebrating his new prospect up on Arrow Mountain. Poor old devil. First time in ten years he’s hit pay-rock, and all he gets is a smashed head.”
“Do you mean to tell me he has recently located a rich mine?”
“Plenty rich, I reckon. I heard Pete had turned down a cold hundred thousand for his third share just on the first assays. With that kind of money offered for a prospect, you can bet your boots it’ll pan out near a million.”
Shayne whistled softly. “I thought all the gold was taken out of the hills forty years ago.”
“All the gold in them mountains? Look at ’em.” The sheriff waved his hand toward the peaks rising black and ominously against the sky. “The surface hasn’t hardly been scratched yet. Why, there’s a dozen mines producing gold the year ’round in a mile of here.”
“A million dollars,” Shayne mused, “is motive enough for a dozen murders. You said he had a third share. Who are his partners?”
“Well, sir, there was another old-timer in with him by the name of Cal Strenk. And Jasper Windrow grubstaked them both. So it’s got to be split three ways.”
A muscle twitched in Shayne’s cheek. “The storekeeper?”
“That’s right.” Fleming cleared his throat elaborately. “Fellow you had a run-in with this afternoon. He’s been grubstaking Pete and Cal for years, and now he’s due to clean up.”
“Then Strenk and Windrow will profit by Pete’s death,” Shayne mused aloud.
“I don’t rightly see how,” the sheriff said. “I reckon Pete’s girl will get his third.”
“But, if the daughter hadn’t shown up?” Shayne said harshly. “No one knew who Pete was until tonight. Suppose he had died without an heir? Wouldn’t his share revert to his partners?”
“I don’t know what the law’d be on that. But I don’t see how it matters. His own girl identified him. You saw her do it. She’ll come into his share, all right.”
“It does matter,” Shayne grated. “Whoever killed him didn’t know he was Nora Carson’s father — that by a strange coincidence she was going to see and recognize him a few minutes before he was murdered. That was pure chance. Something the killer hadn’t reckoned on. Looking for a motive, we can leave the girl’s identification of Pete out of it. See what I mean?”
“I reckon maybe I do,” Fleming said dubiously, “but I think you’re barking up the wrong tree. Nobody hereabout would of killed Pete. I’m betting it was one of these city dudes the town’s got more of than a hound dog has fleas.”
Shayne said, “Maybe. But Westerners aren’t immune to gold-fever any more than they were sixty years ago. They’ve murdered each other for gold plenty of times.”
“That’s just fool talk,” the sheriff said angrily. “Central City has been a gold town sixty years and nothing like that ever happened here. But when you start bringing in Easterners, look out. Liquor does funny things to a man when he’s a mile and a half up.”
“Thanks for the tip. I’ll wander into the bar and investigate that angle.”
Shayne was half a dozen long strides away when an excited man ran past him shouting, “Sheriff! Sheriff Fleming! Come here quick!”
Shayne stopped to listen.
“There’s a man in the bar threatening to kill one of the actors — fellow named Carson. You better get hold of him before there’s trouble. He’s shooting drunk.” The sheriff bolted through the crowd, his bronzed face perplexed and angry.
Chapter seven
SHAYNE FOLLOWED FLEMING into the barroom. Circled by a group of men and women spectators, a big, ruddy-faced man was pounding the mahogany and proclaiming loudly:
“You bet I’m not taking it lying down. Not John Mattson.” His pudgy hand caressed the butt of a long-barreled, single-action.45 thrust into the waistband of his gray business suit. His voice was thick with liquor and rage; bloodshot eyes peered around defiantly at the circle of amused faces. He should have been a ludicrous spectacle of middle-aged drunkenness, but he wasn’t even slightly funny to Shayne, who stopped in the doorway while Fleming pushed his way forward.
John Mattson was dangerously in earnest. Drunkenness removed the normal inhibitions that govern civilized man. He thumped an empty glass on the bar and straightened his bulky body, folded his arms across his chest in a posture of dignified solemnity, and delivered a speech which brought nods of approval from the crowd:
“This is still a free country where a man can fight for his rights and his home. Trying to steal my wife, by God. Thinks he’s back in N’York where people trade wives like we trade horses out here. Sneaking behind my back and making up to her with his slick talk. That’s what he did. Where is he? That’s all I wanta know. Where is he?”
He took a step forward, but swayed back against the bar. His right hand dropped to the butt of his frontier weapon again.
“Somebody bring him here,” he shouted. “Tell him we still shoot coyotes when they sneak into our back yards.”
Sheriff Fleming was efficiently working his way toward Mattson, moving slowly, his rugged face now retaining its good humor as he spoke quietly to open a passage through the circle. He stopped in front of the drunken man and laid a sinewy hand on his broad shoulder. In the silence his slow drawl was clearly heard throughout the barroom:
“Better take a walk in the cold air with me, Mister. Seems sort of stuffy in here.”
Mattson’s bloodshot eyes glowered at Fleming, then wavered away. Behind the sheriff’s drawl was the cold ring of authority, and Shayne began to understand why Gilpin County had remained crimeless with Sheriff Fleming in office.
“Best to come on along with me,” Fleming urged. “Cold air is mighty fine medicine for what ails you.”
Mattson squinted between puffy lids at the sheriff’s badge. He squared his shoulders and thrust out a blunt jaw and shouted, “I’m taking the law in m’own hands. I’ll handle things in my own way.”
“Why, no. I reckon we can’t have anything like that. You’re disturbing the folks that came up here to have fun.” The sheriff’s big hand tightened on Mattson’s shoulder and drew him forward, though Mattson hung back like a balky mule.
From his position of vantage on the threshold, Shayne’s attention was attracted by a gasp from a tall, willowy woman standing in the doorway leading to the lobby. Her brown eyes were riveted in terror upon the sheriff and his unwilling companion, and there was a shocked look of comprehension upon her white face. She was quite tall, sheathed in a trailing gown of ice-blue. Diamonds glittered on her fingers and pearls circled her thin neck. Shayne guessed she would be on the short side of forty.
Shayne’s gaze moved to the right. Standing a few feet back of the woman, he saw Two-Deck Bryant’s saturnine features. He, too, watched the sheriff and Mattson with more than a normal spectator’s interest.