Blue Lonesome

12

The old mine road was little more than a half-formed series of ruts that hadn’t been graded or repaired since it was built. A metal arrow sign, rusted and bent and bullet-pocked, said BOOTSTRAP MINE, with a mileage figure that had been worn away. Bullet holes in the center of the two O’s in Bootstrap made them look like a pair of dead, staring eyes.

Messenger saw the Jeep and then Dacy Burgess less than a minute after he turned onto the ruts. The terrain here was rumpled, just beginning to rise into the stark, sunburnt hills. A narrow arroyo, steep-sided and strewn with fractured rock, angled down from the higher elevations, and where it paralleled the road for fifty yards or so the Jeep was drawn up in the meager shade of an overhang. On the far side of the wash, barbed-wire fencing stretched upward in an irregular line — obviously put there to keep cattle from straying into the wash. That was where Dacy was, standing now with her back to the fence, watching as he drove up behind the Jeep.

He walked to the edge of the wash. “Morning.”

She said, “I figured it was you soon as I saw the dust. Lonnie tell you where to find me?”

“Yes.”

“He’s a good kid but he talks too much.”

“All right if I come over where you are?”

“Better not — you’re liable to bust a leg. I’ll come over there. I’m done here anyway.”

At her feet was an open tool kit. She closed and hoisted it, then made her way quickly and agilely down into the arroyo and up the loose-shale bank to where he stood. The look she gave him was neither friendly nor unfriendly. Tolerant, he thought. A little speculative, too, as if she were seeing something in him that she hadn’t noticed yesterday.

“What happened to the fence?” he asked.

“Wind blew a section down. Happens all the time. Damn soil is too loose to keep a post down tight.”

“Hard work, repairing it?”

“Not so hard, if you don’t have to string new wire. I didn’t, this time.” She put the tool kit into the Jeep, shed the heavy work gloves she’d been wearing. “Why’d you come back?”

“For one thing, to apologize. I didn’t handle our talk very well yesterday.”

Dacy shrugged and adjusted her sweat-stained Stetson. “No need. I didn’t handle it very well, either. What else?”

“To give you this,” and he handed her the paper he’d written out before leaving the motel earlier.

“Who’s George Del Carlo?” she asked after she’d glanced at it.

“Police inspector in San Francisco. He’s the one to contact to identify Anna. He’ll explain the procedures to you.”

“What procedures? I told you yesterday, I don’t want Anna’s blood money.”

“You don’t have to keep it, but you might think about claiming it. This seems to be a fairly poor county; give it to charity here. Otherwise, it’ll go to the state of California, and that’s not right.”

She seemed about to argue, changed her mind and said, “Maybe it isn’t. All right, I’ll think about it.”

“You’ll have to make arrangements for burial or cremation, too. Del Carlo will put you in touch with whoever handles that in the coroner’s office.”

“Christ, they still have her in the morgue?”

“Yes. Frozen storage.”

One corner of Dacy’s mouth twitched. “Well, I can’t afford to have the body shipped back here for burial. Even if I wanted to, which I don’t. Put her in the damn ground out there.”

“That’s up to you. But at least give her a marker with her real name on it. She deserves that much.”

“Does she? If you think so, why don’t you pay for a headstone?”

“Maybe I will, if you don’t.”

She shook her head, tight-lipped, and tucked the paper into her shirt pocket. “Now if that’s all, how about if you head out to Vegas or wherever you’re going and let me get on with my work.”

“I’m not going anywhere just yet,” he said.

“No?”

“No. You know it, too. You saw John T. after I did last night and he told you I’m staying.”

“How do you know I saw John T.?”

“Sheriff Espinosa. He looked me up this morning.”

“That baked apple. John T. sic him on you?”

“Seemed that way to me,” he said. “Baked apple?”

“Brown on the outside, white on the inside.”

“Is that the kind of man Espinosa is?”

“A lot of people think so, most of them brown.”

“Does John T. run him too, along with everything else around here?”

“John T. doesn’t run me or mine.” She paused and then said, “Ben does what he pleases about half the time. And John T. doesn’t like you worth a damn. What’d you say to rile him up last night?”

“Didn’t he tell you?”

“No. He says you’re a fucking troublemaker — his words.”

“Do you agree with him?”

“No. I think you’re probably a damn fool.”

“Why? Because I refuse to accept your sister’s guilt?”

“Because you’ll end up getting people mad as hell at you if you try to prove different. Mad enough, maybe, to do you a meanness.”

“Hurt me?”

“That’s what the expression means.”

“What if I’m right, Dacy? You don’t mind if I call you Dacy?”

“Why should I mind. It’s my name.”

“What if I’m right? What if Anna didn’t do it?”

“You’re not right. But if by some miracle you were... I guess it’d depend on just how right.”

“I’m not sure I understand that.”

“On who did it. Nobody liked Anna much; they can all live with her being a murderer. But if it turned out to be one of Beulah’s select citizens instead... well, you wouldn’t be doing the town any favors.”

“Why didn’t people like Anna?”

“Same reason they don’t like me,” Dacy said. “The Childresses have always kept to themselves and we do things our own way. Plus there’s the fact that our old man was a pretty shrewd horse trader. He once screwed John T.’s old man out of some land, or so old Bud Roebuck always claimed. If the Roebucks don’t like you, nobody likes you.”

“Dave Roebuck must’ve liked Anna.”

“Sure. And that made John T. dislike her all the more.”

“Did he get along with his brother?”

“No. Never did. It got worse after—”

“After what?”

She hesitated. And shrugged and said, “Dave hit on John T.’s wife once. John T. threatened to horsewhip him if he did it again. But don’t try to make anything out of that. It happened four... no, five years ago.”

“Maybe it happened again, more recently.”

“Uh-uh. Too many women said yes to Dave for him to keep after the ones that said no. He hit on me once too; I told him I’d rather screw a snake and he never bothered me again.”

“Isn’t it possible Lizbeth changed her mind and went after him?”

“Not hardly. You don’t know Lizbeth. She’s got her faults — booze, for one — but she knows who’s buying and buttering her bread and she doesn’t play around. Besides, she’s a cold fish. In bed, I mean. Wouldn’t think it to look at her, would you?”

“How do you know she’s cold?”

“John T. let something slip once.”

“Well, what about him? Does he play around?”

“If he does he’s damn discreet about it.”

“You don’t like him much, do you.”

“I don’t like him at all. He’s a user and a first-class son of a bitch. All the Roebucks were and are. They either get their way or they make you pay for fighting them. Sometimes they make you pay even if you don’t fight them. But not in blood, if that’s what you’re thinking. Ruining people is John T.’s way, not killing them. And family means a lot to him. He didn’t get along with Dave, maybe even hated him, but he fought like hell more than once to protect him.”

Messenger asked, “You have much trouble with John T.?”

“Some. Now and then.”

“Then why do you keep living here, this close to him?”

“Now that’s a stupid question, Jim. Why do you suppose? It’s my home. Where else would I go?”

“You could always make a new home.”

“Like Anna did?”

“That’s a different thing and you know it. She didn’t want to leave; she was forced to.”

“Well, I don’t want to leave either. And nobody’s forcing me out. I wouldn’t give John T. the satisfaction of leaving after what happened with Anna, and I’m sure as hell not going to do it now.”

“Did he try to force you out then?”

“He took a couple of shots at it.”

“What kind of shots?”

“Ones that didn’t hit anything. That’s all I’m going to say about it. My business and his, nobody else’s.”

He nodded, glanced up along the road to where it vanished into the heat-hazed hills. “How far is the mine from here?”

“The Bootstrap? Why?”

“I thought I’d take a look at it.”

“Why?”

“No particular reason. I just want to look at it.”

“You won’t find anything to prove Anna was there the day of the killings.”

“I don’t expect to. How far?”

“About a mile and a half.” Dacy lifted her chin in the direction of his Subaru. “But you won’t get there in that.”

“Bad road?”

“Bad enough. Four-wheel-drive country up there. You’d have to quit a mile below the mine or risk busting an axle.”

“Could I walk the last mile?”

“Sure, if you don’t mind an uphill climb most of the way. And these hills are full of rattlers, so I wouldn’t recommend it.”

Messenger said, “Your Jeep has four-wheel drive.”

“So?”

“Would you let me borrow it for an hour or so?”

“You’re something, you are. No, you can’t borrow it. Nobody drives that Jeep but Lonnie and me.”

“Will you take me up to the mine?”

“Take you? You think I got nothing better to do? I don’t play at ranching, I work at it.”

“Drive up, quick look around, drive back. It wouldn’t take very long.”

“Long enough.”

“I’ll pay you for your time...”

It was the wrong thing to say. Anger kindled in Dacy’s eyes. “Ranching, that’s all I work at. I’m not a guide or a goddamn chauffeur.”

“I didn’t mean to insult you. Will you do it as a favor?”

“I don’t owe you any favors.”

“No, you don’t.”

Her gaze moved over his face, as if seeking an understanding of how the wheels and cogs worked inside. “I swear,” she said, “you’ve got more balls than a three-peckered bull,” but she was no longer angry. It was almost a compliment.

“Will you take me?”

“I don’t know why I should, but all right. Ten minutes maximum at the mine, then I’m coming back down whether you’re ready to leave or not.”

“Fair enough.”

He went around to the passenger side of the Jeep. The wind kicked up again, so violently that his hat was nearly snatched away. Grit stung his eyes again, got into his mouth and nostrils, and made him cough. When his vision cleared he saw that Dacy had tucked her head down and lowered the brim of her Stetson; she sat waiting patiently until the wind subsided. Then she started the Jeep and bounced them upward along the track.

He said, “Is it like that often around here?”

“Like what?”

“The wind. Blow hard and stop, blow hard and stop.”

“Oh, that. Sometimes. You get used to it.”

“Makes me a little edgy.”

“You should be here when it goes on that way for days on end. Your nerves feel like they’re baking inside your skin, like a potato inside its jacket.”

“I hope I’m not here when that happens.”

“Chances are,” she said dryly, “you won’t be.”

The road twisted and turned into the naked hills, rising for the most part, dipping now and then. A hawk wheeling lazily in thermal updrafts was the only sign of life. Nothing grew up here but sparse clumps of sage; the rest of the landscape was gray broken rock, whitish dust, brown crumbling earth. For the last half mile to the mine, all that remained of the road was a pair of rock-studded ruts so deeply eroded in places that even the Jeep had to strain through them. Dacy was a good driver; she managed to miss most of the deeper pits and larger juts of rock. But it was a bone-jarring ride nonetheless.

The track hooked along the shoulder of one of the taller hills, with a steep fall-away on one side. From there Messenger could see a long way out across the desert plain. The southern reaches of Beulah were visible; and a cluster of ranch buildings that he thought must be John T.’s place. Dacy confirmed it.

When they dropped down on the far side of the hill he had his first look at the abandoned mine. There was not much left of it. Once there had been three good-sized buildings; two were now nothing more than jumbles of collapsed boards and sections of rust-eaten sheet metal. The one still standing, about the size of a two-car garage, listed a few degrees off-center and looked as though it would soon suffer the fate of its neighbors. Above the buildings, on another ash-colored hillside, was a long, flat-topped pile of ore tailings and the mouth of the mine tunnel.

Dacy parked near the one upright structure. Nearby a metal sign, bullet-riddled like every other sign in this country, hung from a pair of tall wooden posts: BOOTSTRAP MINE. Below it a newer and equally abused sign, probably put up by the BLM, read: BUILDINGS AND MINE UNSAFE. ENTER AT YOUR OWN RISK.

“Well, there it is,” Dacy said; “Not much, is it.”

“No, not much.”

Desolate, he thought. A hermit’s aerie in the middle of nowhere. The wind, much more constant up here, was the only sound. No — sounds, plural. Flutters and whistles, little moans and long, rattling sighs. Whimpers, too, clear and mournful. Wind music, almost jazzlike: a kind of natural blues melody, dirty-sweet and atonal, full of all sorts of keening improvisation and so emotionally charged it was as if he were hearing an outrush of suffering that verged on the human.

“Did Anna come here often?” he asked.

“Often enough.”

“I’m not surprised. It’s a kind of place I associate with her.”

“Cradle of loneliness,” Dacy said.

He looked at her; she was staring straight ahead, thinking about something that didn’t include him. He swung free of the Jeep, picked his way uphill through fractured rock to the mine entrance. Before he reached it he heard Dacy following. The opening was covered with a narrow shedlike structure, to protect it against slides from above; the shed and the mouth’s sagging support timbers were silvery with age. What he could see of the floor inside was clear except for wind sweepings of dust and dead matter. The smell that came out of the earth’s bowels was one of warm must.

“Better not go in there,” Dacy said as she came up beside him.

“I wasn’t planning to.”

“Main tunnel was blasted out of solid rock and most of it’s safe, but the stopes are bad. A couple have caved in already. You know what stopes are?”

“Step layers where the ore was mined.”

“Right. Mining one of your interests?”

“I read a lot. Lonnie said Anna didn’t find much gold in there. She didn’t really come up here to prospect, did she.”

“No. She came here to hide.”

“From what? Her husband?”

“Whenever they had a fight, which was pretty damn often in the last year, she’d head straight here. But he was only part of what she was trying to hide from.”

“Herself, you mean,” Messenger said.

“Only she couldn’t. Hell, nobody can. That’s why she ran off to San Francisco. That’s why she killed herself.”

“Did she always come here alone?”

“Brought Tess along once in a while. Not very often.”

“What made her come the day of the murders?”

“If she was here at all.”

“Why did she say she came?”

“Another screamer with Dave.”

“Screaming fight? Over what?”

“Same old crap. His women, his good-for-nothingness.”

“Something must have started it.”

“He’d been out all night,” Dacy said, “didn’t come home until around eleven o’clock. He’d been drinking — was still about half drunk she said.”

“Where did he spend the night?”

“He wouldn’t tell her. One of his women, though, where else?”

“You used the word ‘screamer.’ Was that all it was? Just a lot of yelling back and forth — verbal abuse? Or did their fights get physical?”

“He wasn’t above slapping her around.”

“Nothing more serious than that?”

“No busted bones, if that’s what you mean.”

“Did he hit her that day?”

“Well, she didn’t have any marks on her that you could see.”

“If he was half drunk, maybe violent, why did she leave Tess there alone with him?”

“He never took his meanness out on Tess. Besides, I told you, that’s what Anna always did when things got bad. Ran up here, ran off by herself.”

“Nobody else was at the ranch when she left, nobody expected?”

“No.”

“Lonnie told me you and he were away that day.”

“That’s right. I had to drive up to Tonopah and he was in school.”

“He wouldn’t have any reason to go over to Anna’s ranch, would he? When he got home from school, I mean.”

“No, no reason. Why?”

“Just wondering. How did he get along with his uncle?”

“Not any better than I did. What’re you getting at?”

“I’m only asking questions.”

“Well, you ask too damn many,” Dacy said. “Lonnie wasn’t at Anna’s and he doesn’t know anything about what happened that day. If he did he’d have said so.”

“Dacy, I’m not trying to—”

“Your ten minutes are up. I’m leaving.”

He trailed her downhill, hurrying to match her quick stride. She had the Jeep’s engine revving before he finished buckling his seat belt.

“I guess I owe you another apology,” he said.

“You don’t owe me anything.” She popped the clutch, slid the Jeep around in a dust-swirling arc.

“I just don’t want you angry at me.”

“Why should you care how I feel toward you?”

“I don’t know,” he said, “but I do.”

Her glance still had heat in it. She said nothing, then or on the ten-minute jounce down to where his car was parked. But by then she was no longer miffed; her expression had smoothed and the look she gave him when he got out was neutral.

“What’re you up to next?” she asked.

“Nothing definite. Back to town and kill some time until four o’clock.”

“What happens at four o’clock?”

“I have a date with Lynette Carey.”

Dacy raised an eyebrow. “Lucky you.”

“Not that kind of date.”

“With Lynette, it’s almost always that kind of date.” She studied him. “You want a piece of advice, Jim?”

“People have been giving me advice ever since I arrived in Beulah.”

“Not like this piece.”

“Go ahead.”

She said, “Get yourself a different belt.”

“... What?”

“The one you’re wearing doesn’t go with those Levi’s. You need a good wide one, with a big buckle. Not too big, though, and not too fancy.” Her smile was lopsided and faintly mocking. “If you’re going to dress Western, man, do it right.”

The Ford Ranger pickup, its dirty green paint gleaming dully under the brassy sun, was angled across the road, blocking it, just west of John T. Roebuck’s ranch gate. Two men had been sitting inside; they got out, almost leisurely, as Messenger approached. Waiting for me, he thought. That damn telltale dust.

There was no way around the pickup, even if he’d had the inclination to try; the earth on both sides of the road was crumbling soft, as ensnaring as beach sand. He slowed, watching the men stand together at the driver’s door, arms folded, one booted foot each flattened back against the hot metal. Two peas in a pod: lean, weathered, wearing side-slanted cowboy hats, faded jeans, scuffed and manure-stained boots. The only difference between them, at a distance, was that one stood a few inches taller, wore a bandit’s droopy mustache the same tawny color as the desert landscape. Inside the truck, a long-barreled rifle with a telescopic sight was conspicuously visible.

He knew he ought to feel at least some anxiety, but he was perfectly calm. Funny. If this were the city a week ago, and he was about to be braced by a couple of tough-looking types, he would probably have peed in his pants. Today, here, even though it was their turf, he felt equal to the confrontation. Maybe the sense of courage had to do with his early-morning thoughts about risks and edges. Well, one thing for sure: Just how sharp this edge turned out to be depended as much on him as it did on the two cowboys.

He drew a couple of deep, slow breaths. Then he set the parking brake, shut off the engine, and eased himself free of the sticky leather seat — keeping his movements deliberate, the way the men had. He stood for a few seconds, measuring them, before he closed the door and walked forward.

The mustached one said, “Mr. Jim Messenger,” and spat into the grit a few inches from Messenger’s right foot. “He don’t look like much, does he, Tom?”

“Sure don’t,” the other one agreed. He was a few years older, around forty. The stubble on his cheeks was flecked with gray. “Hardly seems worth all the fuss.”

“Reckon he’d break easy?”

“Oh, sure. Neither of us’d even work up a sweat.”

“How about that, boy?” the mustached one said to Messenger. “You figure you’d be easy to break?”

“Not as easy as you think.”

“By God, Tom, he’s got sand in him after all.”

“Might be we let some of it out.”

Messenger said, “Tom Spears, right? And you’d be Joe Hanratty.”

That stirred them a little. They exchanged a quick look. “How in hell’d you know that?” the mustached one, Hanratty, demanded.

“Lucky guess.”

Spears did the spitting this time. The gob spattered against the toe of Messenger’s hiking boot; he didn’t move his foot.

“It’s too hot to play games,” he said evenly. “Why don’t you just say what you’re here to say and get it over with?”

Another shared glance. They didn’t like the way he was behaving. They’d thought they could intimidate him, and now that he’d refused to let it happen they weren’t sure what to do next.

Hanratty was the leader; he made up his mind first. He shoved off the Ford, crowded up close with his face a few inches from Messenger’s, and poked him in the chest with a callused forefinger. Messenger didn’t move, didn’t react except to start breathing through his mouth. Hanratty’s breath smelled sourly of cigarettes and beer.

“I don’t like you messing around my sister, you hear?”

“I’m not messing with her. I talked to her while she served me breakfast this morning.”

“That ain’t all you did. Made a date with her for four o’clock this afternoon.”

“She tell you that?”

“She didn’t have to tell me. Ain’t nothing you do in Beulah, city boy, that’s a secret more than five minutes.”

“I know it. But I’m not looking to keep secrets. Not from anybody, including you and your friend here.”

“I don’t want you messing with Lynette.”

“I offered to buy her a beer, that’s all.”

“Yeah. What do you get in return?”

“Not what you’re thinking. I don’t have any romantic interest in your sister.”

“Why not?” Spears said. “Ain’t she good enough for you?”

Messenger said, “Talk, that’s all I want with her.”

“Talk about Dave Roebuck,” Hanratty said harshly. “She don’t have anything to say about that pile of shit.”

“She was seeing him. She broke up with him not long before he was killed.”

“So what?”

“I’d like to know why.”

“None of your goddamn business.”

“Something must have happened between them. You had a fight with Roebuck about it.”

“Fuckin’ outsider — it’s none of your business! He’s dead and damn straight good riddance. Anna did us all a favor, blowing his head off.”

“Did he hurt Lynette in some way, Joe?”

The question earned him another poke in the chest, hard enough this time to make him wince. “Joe to my friends. Mr. Hanratty to you. Ask about Roebuck one more time, I’ll knock you on your ass. Bother Lynette and I’ll kick your ass until it’s purple. Keep poking your nose in where it ain’t wanted and I’ll rip it off your face. You hear what I’m saying?”

“I hear.”

“You believe it?”

I believe you’re another one who’s hiding something.

“Well? You want that kind of trouble, city boy?”

“Not particularly.”

“Not particularly, he says. Not particularly.”

“Ain’t got so much sand at that,” Spears said. “Good thing for him he don’t.”

“Damn good thing,” Hanratty said. His eyes raked Messenger’s face; then he snapped, “Just remember what you been told,” and turned on his heel and stalked around to the pickup’s passenger side.

Spears grinned, aimed another gob of spit onto Messenger’s boot. When Messenger didn’t move Spears lost the grin, slid in under the wheel, and slammed the door. The starter ground, gears clashed; the Ford bucked away, spewing dust, and then turned in through John T.’s gate.

Messenger had been holding his hands tight against his sides; he lifted them, extended them palms down. Steady. Not even the hint of a tremor.

Test passed. The first edge hadn’t been very sharp at all.