Blackjack

5

When Virgil and I walked to the hospital with Skinny Jack, the streets were busy with activity. Fact was, Appaloosa was always bustling these days, and every day it seemed the population was continuing to grow.

With the growth, the police force had tripled; Senior Deputy Clay Chastain was now Sheriff and deputies Skinny Jack Newton and Lloyd “Book” Daniels were no longer the inexperienced greenhorns they once were. Skinny Jack had grown from scrawny and skinny to lanky and lean, and Book, once just a hefty bookworm kid with rosy cheeks and spectacles, was now a grown man with a good head on his shoulders. Skinny Jack and Book taught, managed, and wrangled the group of deputies Sheriff Chastain hired to keep the peace, and every month it seemed a new deputy was in training.

Appaloosa was not hell-bent and rowdy like Muskogee, Deadwood, or Abilene, but Chastain’s force was always busy handling one kind of situation or another.

When we got to the end of 5th Street we walked up the hill to the recently reconstructed, bigger, cleaner hospital and saw Sheriff Chastain and Deputy Book sitting in the shade under the porch overhang.

“What’s the situation?” Virgil said.

“Well,” Chastain said with his Texas drawl as he got to his feet, “last we heard from Doc Burris, he’s still alive. Doc’s in there with him now.”

Chastain was a tough, rawboned man from Dallas with a scar from eyebrow to jawbone that supported his no-bullshit manner.

“Were you able to talk with him?” I said.

“No.”

“What about Boston Bill Black and Truitt Shirley?”

Chastain shook his head.

“Not to be found.”

“Big Boston Bill Black is hard to miss,” I said.

“I know,” Chastain said, “but we looked all over, so far nothing. I got pretty much everybody looking for him. So far all we got is the sonofabitch is gone.”

“Anyone, seen him?” I said.

Deputy Book pointed up the street.

“Mrs. Bowen, over at the front desk of the Colcord, where he stays, said she saw him. Said he came in, went up to his room, was there a few minutes, then left.”

“What about Truitt Shirley?” I said.

“Him, too,” Chastain said.

“Gone?” Virgil said.

“Yep,” Chastain said. “No sign of him and that other fella that was with him.”

“Somebody has had to seen them,” I said.

Chastain nodded.

“They could be around someplace,” he said. “Most likely we’ll find someone that can point us in the right direction or at least tell us the direction they left, but we have yet to do so.”

“What was Truitt doing there,” Virgil said, “with Bill Black?”

“Not real sure, but we think he was working for Boston Bill,” Book said.

“Doing what?” I said.

“Truitt has not done an honest day’s work in his life,” Skinny Jack said.

“I don’t know,” Book said. “What one of the workers told me is all, and he was the one standing next to Boston Bill that shot the Denver policeman.”

“I have not seen him in town, didn’t know he was around till this,” Skinny Jack said. “But Truitt has always run with a bunch of no-goods. Hell, I knew him as a kid. His old man was the same way. Both them apples got worms. Don’t do much but connive folks and gamble.”

Book said, “Didn’t you tell me that Truitt and his bunch held up some westerners on the trail?”

Skinny Jack nodded.

“That’s what I heard,” he said.

“Whatever he is,” Chastain said, “he’s up till this moment not to be found, and now he’s a wanted man himself, for killing this Denver policeman.”

“He’s not dead yet,” Doc Burris said as he walked out the door, wiping his hands on a white cloth, then slapped the cloth to rest over his shoulder. He struck a match on the porch post and lit the pipe he had wedged in the corner of his mouth.

“Doubtful he’ll pull through,” he said, puffing on his pipe. “But he’s still breathing.”

“Is he alert, Doc?” I said.

“No,” he said. “He’s not.”

Chastain looked to Virgil.

“You want me to round up a posse,” he said.

Virgil shook his head.

“Right now,” he said, “let’s get out there and find someone that has laid eyes on Boston Bill, go from there. Truitt, too...”

“Witnesses said Messenger had a Colt in a belt holster when Truitt shot him,” Book said. “But Messenger never went for it. They said he put his hand in his knapsack and that is when he got shot.”

“What witnesses?” I said. “Who have you talked to, who was there when it happened?”

“Construction workers, mostly,” Chastain said. “There was also Mr. Pritchard.”

“Hollis Pritchard?” I said. “He was there?”

“He was.”

Virgil looked at me.

“The owner of the gambling hall?”

“He is,” I said.

“You talk to him?” Virgil said.

“A little bit,” Chastain said. “He seemed upset and confused by what happened.”

“So what the hell did happen?” I said.

“Workers I talked with said the Denver fella walked out from the boardwalk across the street,” Book said. “He had a few words with Boston Bill and then come out of his knapsack holding that warrant you got in your hand.”

I held up my hand with the rolled-up warrant Skinny Jack had handed to us on Virgil’s back porch.

“Did Boston Bill see this,” I said. “Know about this?”

“Don’t know,” Chastain said. “We don’t have any idea about that.”

Chastain looked to Virgil. Virgil was looking off as if he were thinking about something else.

“What now, Virgil?”

Virgil waited a moment as he thought, then looked back to Chastain.

“Contact Denver,” he said. “See what you can find out about Roger Messenger, about the warrant, about who was murdered.”

Chastain nodded.

“Book, you and Skinny Jack and the rest of your hands keep looking around, see if anyone knows anything,” Virgil said. “Don’t approach, just find out. Got one lawman shot, I damn sure don’t want another.”

Book and Skinny Jack nodded.

“Everett, let’s you and me go have us a visit with Pritchard.”

“Murdered?” Doc Burris said.

Doc Burris looked back and forth between Virgil and me.

“What, may I ask,” he said, pointing to the warrant with his pipe, “is the nature of all this dismay, what’s this drama?”

I held up the note. Doc leaned in and read it, then leaned back.

“So rolls the tumble of the dice,” he said.