Long Shadows
Chapter 6
The livery stable was no more than half a mile from the Busted Flush; Endeavour being such a small and compact town. The consequence was that when the shooting began at about two that morning, it was clearly audible from where Farrance lay tossing and turning and sleeping fitfully on the spiky and uncomfortable hay bales.
Colonel Farrance had taken off his gun belt for the night, but laid it close to hand. He found the hilts of the pistol easily enough in the darkness and drew the gun to himself. His rifle was propped up in a corner and he went over and fetched that as well. Then he sat and listened carefully. He was tolerably sure that he had been jerked from his slumbers by a volley of shots and the sound of shouting. He pulled on his boots and then went to the little door which was above the entrance to the hay loft. This gave access to a pulley which was used to hoist sacks and suchlike up into this chamber. The colonel eased open the door a crack and was immediately aware of a ruddy glow over towards the other end of the street; in the same general direction as the saloon.
“Hey,” he said to Wilson, jabbing that person ungently in the ribs, “Wake up. There is mischief afoot.”
Wilson sat up and said, “What’s the case?”
“There’s been shooting down the street away and there is a fire as well. I’ll take oath it is at the Busted Flush.”
“That sounds about right,” said Wilson, “But what’s it to us? We are safe up here.”
“That won’t answer,” said Farrance, at once, “If there is any gunplay up there, then it is because of us. I could not rest easy unles I was sure that we have not brought anybody else into hazard.”
“Ain’t you got a tender conscience?” grumbled Ikey Wilson, but Farrance could see him pulling on his own boots and buckling on his gun belt. “What the hell was the point of staying up here Bob, if as soon as the lightning strikes, we go rushing out to place ourselves in harm’s way?”
“It won’t do. I can’t stay here if somebody else if being shot at because of us. You stay here if you will, I am going to investigate.”
In the end, Wilson went with him, as he had known he would.
Just as they had both known it would be all along, the fire proved to be at the saloon. Part of the upper story was blazing and despite the hour being so early, quite a crowd had gathered to watch. Inside the building, the owner and others were frantically carrying buckets of water up the stairs and throwing them onto the flames. From talking to people watching, it was possible to piece together what had happened, which was this. Some half a dozen men on horseback, all with scarves tied round the lower half of their faces, had broken into the saloon at dead of night and made their way upstairs to the room where until lately Farrance and Wilson had been lodged. They had kicked down the door and poured a perfect fusillade of shots into the room; presumably focusing their fire upon the bolsters which the recent occupants of the room had tricked out to look like sleeping figures.
Either by accident or design, a lamp had been overturned or perhaps caught by a stray bullet and the result was that the room had gone up in flames. The saloon was a wooden building, coated with creosote and dry as a tinder-box. Although men were gradually getting the blaze under control, it looked as though a large part of the upper story had been burnt out. There was no sign of those responsible for this vicious act.
Colonel Farrance took Wilson by the arm and drew him aside from the crowd of onlookers. He said, “I reckon that we owe our lives to your foresight there, Ikey. Had we been in that room, I believe that we would have been done for.”
“Yes, I’m of the same mind.”
“What do you say to our chances of Crawley paying up in an honourable way after this night’s entertainment?”
“Well,” said Wilson, “I don’t see that this alters the case overmuch. I’m not surprised to see him try and wriggle out of his debt in this way by mayhem and murder. That does not mean that when such tricks prove fruitless, he will not pay up.”
The next morning, after another spell of tossing and turning in the hay loft, Farrance was hobbling about like a cripple. Ikey Wilson, on the other hand, looked as spry and lively as though he had spent the whole night in a feather bed. The two of them breakfasted together at the only eating house in Endeavour. The conversation they heard was all of the shooting and fire-raising the previous night. Meaningful glances were shot at Farrance and Wilson; the story of the shooting in the Busted Flush and the earlier beating and humiliation of Crawley’s foreman in the lot behind the saloon, now being common currency in the town.
“Where did you disappear to last night?” asked Farrance, “I mind you were up to something. Was it something as touched upon this present undertaking?”
“You might say so,” replied Wilson, “I rode out to the Double Star, just to have a little look around. I did not see much of it last time I was there, you know.”
“Why, you damned fool. You will queer the pitch for sure. Were you seen?”
“No, I wasn’t seen. I will tell you what though. Crawley is not making his money from breeding horses. I don’t believe that he is running a stud farm or anything like it up there.”
“I will confess,” said Colonel Farrance, “I was a bit puzzled about that. There is no railroad near here and I don’t know who is buying all these horses of his. I thought that there was something odd about that aspect of the thing. What is he up to?”
“I couldn’t say. Something criminal, I guess. Beyond that, I could not go. Moonshine liquor? Giving a base to robbers and outlaws? I don’t know. I can tell you though, there are maybe a dozen men up at that Double Star and no more than twenty horses. I only saw a couple of foals. I think he might have a band of his own up there who ride out and get up to different sorts of villainy.”
“The question is, will Crawley be able to lay hands on that eleven thousand dollars? If he is not a legitimate businessman, he will not be able to raise a mortgage on the land or anything like that.”
“It’s a damned nuisance. Perhaps I will have to settle for less?”
“Not if I can help it. Having got this far, I mean to see the matter through. You might say that I am like that fellow in the Bible, who having put his hand to the plough, never looks back.”
“What say we ride on up to the Double Star and have a look around? From a distance, that is,” said Wilson, “We might be able to work out our next step.”
“I do not wish to talk further here. Let’s take a turn up the street aways.”
As they strolled along, Colonel Farrance said, “This puts me greatly in mind of an old proverb. You might have heard it.”
“Which proverb might that be?” asked Ikey Wilson.
“Why, the one as says that ‘Old sins cast long shadows’. You ever hear that?”
“Heard it,” said Wilson, “But I do not know that I rightly understand it.”
“It’s simplicity itself. You know when the sun is on the point of going down, how long the shadows get? You might have a little bush, no more than five or six feet high, but at sunset, its shadow stretches for hundreds of feet. That’s how it is betimes with sins and wrong actions from long back in our past. Their shadows stretch for years and years and touch us when we had forgotton about the deeds themselves long since.”
“You’re getting to be a regular poet, Bob,” said Wilson sourly, “I don’t know aught about old sins. It will be enough for me if we can get enough out of Crawley for me to go off and settle down quietly somewhere and live a peaceful life.”
“Yes, I mind that is what we all want when we reach this age, Ikey. Look at me. There I was a few days ago with all my life as quiet and respectable as you could hope for. Then, out of the past comes the shadow of an old sin of mine and before you know it, I’m off on the scout again, like a young buck.”
“All this high falutin’ talk is beyond me. I am a simple man. Will we go out to the Double Star to take a look?”
“Yes, I suppose that we must. Truth to tell, I am beginning to be of the opinion that Andrew Crawley never had the least intention of handing over any money and has chosen to cross swords with us instead. So be it. It is some good,long while since I suffered any man to dictate to me what I could and could not do and I’ll be damned if Crawley will be the one to change my habits.”
The Double Star ranch lay an hour or two’s ride north of Endeavour as the crow flies. It would have been madness though for Colonel Farrance and Ikey Wilson to ride there along the public highway. They might come across an armed party of men from Crawley’s outfit and then it could be a tricky and embarrassing encounter. Wilson knew of an Indian path which led up through the hills. For most of this way, they would not be visible at all from the road and it would bring them out overlooking the Double Star at a distance of about a quarter of a mile.
As they walked their ponies along, Wilson said, “I don’t know why you are sticking to me in this, now that the going has got rough, but I want you to know that I am right grateful. When I showed up at your spread, I was ready for you to turn me out at once and that would have been the end of it. You did not need to go to all this trouble.”
“Hell Ikey, when I say I’ll do a thing, then by God I will have it done. You ought to remember that from back when we rode together. I am not one of those lily-livered types who backs off when the going gets tough. I said I would help you get your rights from that bastard and I tell you now that I will do it or die in the attempt.”
“Well, it will not be forgot,” said Wilson awkwardly, “You have played the man and there is no denying it.”
“Crawley is a snake. I knew it even when he was my right-hand man and I never fully trusted him. For the last sixteen years or so, I have had reason of my own for killing him. I would have done too, had I not somebody more important in my life, somebody to care for.”
“You mean your daughter,” said Wilson, “I tell you now Bob, I never met a nicer girl since first I drawed breath. She is so kind and friendly and natural. I never could have dreamed that you had it in you to raise a child so, especially a girl child, but she does you credit.”
Farrance was embarrassed at the compliment and sought to hid his emotion by becoming excessively brusque and businesslike. “We must set out above this ranch of Crawley’s for a time, so that I too might get a feel for the place. Not that I doubt you to be right, as touching upon the fact that he is not making his money in the main from breeding horses. I always thought that odd.”
When they were almost in sight of the Double Star, Farrance and Wilson dismounted and led their ponies to where the buildings and fields of the Double Star lay pread out beneath them like a counterpane. They came over the crest of a hill and then halted, so that they would scarcely be seen from below, unless somebody were looking directly in their direction. Even then, the sun was at their backs and so they were even less apt to be spotted from those on the ranch.
The first thing that Colonel Farrance saw was just the same thing that had struck Wilson; there were hardly enough horses about the place to make sense of this as a prosperous stud farm. It looked rather as though somebody had decided to represent the place in that character and provide a window dressing of horses to maintain the fiction. The colonel said to Wilson, “If that man is making money from this outfit by buying and selling horses, then I’m a Dutchman. No, you are right Ikey, there is something else driving this enterprise. Hallo, what’s that?”
From a track on the other side of the buildings from where they were standing, a cart was rumbling towards the ranch-house and its surrounding buildings. It was not altogether possible to see what the wagon was loaded with, but it did not look to Farrance’s practiced eye to be anything in the agricultural line. A man came out of the house and directed the driver to take whatever it was on a ways to a barn or large shed, about a hundred yards from the main house. The man who had sent the cart in that direction went back into the main house and then reappeared with two other men. The three of them then followed on towards the litte barn.
The four men, which is to say the driver of the wagon and the three from the house, then commenced to unload whatever was loaded in the back of the cart. Farrance watched curiously as they picked up large, flat bundles, each about the size of a door and heaved them, two men to each bundle, into the outbuilding. The parcels, which is what they appeared to be, seeing that they were covered with brown paper and looked as though they were held together with string, were flexible in the middle and sagged distinctly as they were lifted up.
“What do you make to it, Bob?” asked Wilson.
“If I didn’t know any better, I would say that they were unloading paper there. Large amounts of the stuff, like they were going to be producing a newspaper or something of that nature. It is a mystery.”
“What had we to do?”
“Why,” said Farrance, “I wonder you even need to ask, Ikey. We must come prowling along here tonight after dark and see what’s what. Are you game?”
“Game?” said Wilson indignantly, “I was game when you first knew me as a boy and I ain’t changed much now that I am well into middle age. Game!”
“Well then, that what we shall do. I am not sure how we stand with the owner of the Busted Flush. I would suppose that he had guessed by now that it was because of us he had half his house burned down last night. He might not be so ready to offer us another room.”
“Ah, that don’t signify. We can stay in the hay loft again. We must offer the man that runs the livery stable a few dollars, but it’s nothing to him.”
Once back in Endeavour, the two of them had practically the whole of the day to dispose of and agreed to separate again. It occurred to Farrance that his companion might be in just as much need of solitude as he was himself. After being locked up with other men for eleven years, he was probably gaining pure pleasure from the simple experience of walking about unrestrained by walls and locked doors.
Just as he had suspected, the man at the Busted Flush was not at all keen on seeing either him or Wilson spending another night at his place. “I find,” said the barkeep, “That since you and your friend fetched up here, you have shot dead one man in my bar-room, your friend beat up another out back and now I am nearly ruined by a fire. You will oblige me by keeping away from my house, you and your friend both.” Which was, reflected Farrance, fair enough, all things considered. You cannot damage a man’s livlihood in that fashion and not expect him to be a little ticked off about it.
He did not know which way Wilson had gone, in his search for solitude, so the colonel just wandered the town of Endeavour more or less at random, his mind occupied largely with the casual remark he had made to Ikey Wilson about that old saying about old sins and long shadows. Ikey, of course, did not know the half of it. He thought that Farrance was referring to their activities as bandits, back before the war. Well he had, in a sense, but this dealing with Crawley had brought the other matter into the forefront of his mind; the thing which had never really left him in the last sixteen and a half years.
On the edge of town, he came to a place where an old log lay fallen. It was as good as a bench in a park and so Colonel Farrance sat himself down upon it and began to brood about the past. In particular, he was casting his mind back to the worst time that he had ever known; far worse than anything which he saw or experienced in the war or even as the leader of a gang of ruthless outlaws. You could put such things out of your thoughts entirely, but the pain of what happened back during those terrible days in 1874 had never left him and sprang unbidden to his mind every time he looked at his beloved daughter. It had begun in March of 1874.