Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 43, No. 7 & 8, July/August 1998
- Автор: Alexander Gary, Crawford Dan
- Год: 1998
- Язык: английский
- Год: Dell Magazines/Crosstown Publications
- ISBN: ISSN: 0002-5224
- Жанр: Другие детективы
Электронная книга - «Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 43, No. 7 & 8, July/August 1998». Краткое содержание книги:
Concho Jimmy had recently been convicted in a bank theft and was doing seven years. Placido Geist thought to visit him, but his attention was distracted by reports of Wind River Bob Ketchum in New Mexico. Wind River Bob didn’t cheat the rope, but he cheated Placido Geist of justice when he fell victim to lynch law. That left Concho Jimmy, but he’d broken jail when Placido Geist got back to Texas. He was variously sighted, but it took another ten years before he was captured near Del Rio and sent back to prison to finish his first term, with five added for the break.
In the year of our Lord 1918, Placido Geist was himself well past sixty, and Jimmy Pringle was no spring chicken when he was released from jail. The boy who’d been sent west on the orphan trains was now closing fifty. Prison and the outlaw life had made him old before his time, embittered and mistrustful and with scant remorse, but Concho Jimmy wouldn’t have lasted this long if he hadn’t already been mean as a snake.
“He may well have done,” the young constable said in answer to Placido Geist’s question. He studied the handbill. “I’ll admit I couldn’t rightly say.”
The town was a whistle-stop called Longfellow, and the constable’s name was Nightingale. He’d offered Placido Geist a chair and a cup of jailhouse coffee, trying to put him at ease with these courtesies, but in fact it was Constable Nightingale himself who felt awkward in the presence of this near-legendary figure out of the rough-and-tumble past. He’d heard many of the stories.
“If he got off the train with the intention of packing into the Chisos, he’d need a horse and tack, grub, some other possibles,” Nightingale said. “We can ask at the Every.”
“I’m glad of your assistance,” Placido Geist said.
“I’d like to do what I can to help,” Nightingale said.
“I’ll have some more of that fine coffee,” the manhunter said pleasantly, leaning back in his chair.
Nightingale thought the old man was probably ribbing him, or just being polite. The coffee in question was more than six hours old. The worn enameled pot had been simmering on the kerosene stove since first fight.
“This robbery your man’s wanted for,” the constable said to him, pouring them both another cup of coffee. “I don’t seem to recollect it, not since I’ve had the badge. When did you say it took place?”
Placido Geist told him the date.
Nightingale’s surprise was plain on his face. The crime had been committed before he was born.
“There’s no statute of limitations on homicide,” Placido Geist reminded him.
“No,” Nightingale admitted, and paused, unsure of himself. He examined the writ from Judge Lamar again. “I don’t mean to offend you,” he said, “but I’m inclined to find this summons of dubious provenance. I doubt if a magistrate in Pecos or Presidio County would feel bound by it. I certainly couldn’t hold a man on an unproved charge that old.”
“I wouldn’t want to cause you embarrassment then,” Placido Geist said, his expression mild.
Constable Nightingale wasn’t sure he cared to read between the lines. “Let’s go pay a call down at the stables,” he suggested, standing. He put on his hat.
Placido Geist was unexpectedly short, Nightingale saw, when measured against the younger man. His reported image would not have had him quite so stout, either.
They walked down to the other end of town on a wooden sidewalk. Nightingale apologized, explaining that they didn’t have the money for brick as yet. Longfellow was no more than a wide spot in the road, it should be observed, but even so, the main street was a metalled roadway made of rolled peastone to accommodate automobile traffic, and there was a local telephone exchange as well. Placido Geist found nothing to object to in a wooden sidewalk, and he could just as well have done without the telephone, but he didn’t remark on this to Nightingale. He figured the young peace officer would think him a stick-in-the-mud. He had to admit he liked automobiles, preferring them to horses at his age.
“What prompted you to get off here?” Nightingale asked.
“Longfellow and Marathon are the closest stops along the rail line to the Big Bend,” Placido Geist said simply.
Which made sense, Nightingale realized, if he’d thought it through before he asked the question. He felt foolish not to have worked it out already.
“Of course there’s no guarantee,” Placido Geist said. “He could be halfway to El Paso or Matamoros and I’m carrying my water in a sprung bucket.”
Nightingale felt better, but he recognized that might have been the older man’s purpose, and he began turning quite a different question over in his mind.
They made inquiries of the ostler, who remembered a sale to a man answering Concho Jimmy’s particulars.
“Sold, not hired?” Nightingale asked.
The gelding was no hack, the stableman told them. He had a soft mouth and good wind. Not some snake-eyed canner, either, but a four hundred dollar horse. The animal he described to them was what the Mexicans called a grullo, the slate blue of a sandhill crane with a dark mane, tail, and socks, and faint zebra striping across the withers. In local parlance a mouse dun but a distinctive horse all the same.
Placido Geist had climbed the fence and was looking over the cavvy of saddle horses in the corral.
“How much for the claybank?” he asked the stableman.
The dealer quoted a price.
Nightingale knew it was absurd, but he waited to see how Placido Geist did his business.
The chunky old man heaved himself over the fence and let himself down, picking his way gently through the horses, not spooking them. He offered a caramel candy to the hammerhead mare. Jesus, she was ugly, Nightingale thought.
The horse took the sweet and whickered, her breath whistling as if her vocal cords were stiff.
Salado, Nightingale thought. Windbroke.
Placido Geist led the horse back toward the fence, holding her familiarly just under the chin.
“A hundred dollars,” he said.
“I can’t let her go for that,” the stableman said. He’d have let her go to the knackers for fifty.
Placido Geist shrugged and started to climb the fence. The mare nipped at the seat of his pants. The old man hooked his leg over the top rail. “One twenty-five,” he said.
The stableman shifted his eyes. “One fifty,” he said.
Placido Geist got down and spat in his palm. They shook hands. “She’ll be needing fresh shoes,” Placido Geist said.
The livery owner tried to jerk his hand free, but it was caught fast.
“I’m offering you a fair price,” Placido Geist said. “You’d as soon be rid of her.” He glanced over his shoulder at the horse. “She’s got pretty feet, but I can’t say as the rest other’s much.”
The livery owner nodded sulkily-
“I take you to be a fair judge of horses,” the constable said as they walked back up the street. “Why the mare?”
“Looks aren’t everything,” Placido Geist said, smiling.
“And men?” Nightingale asked.
Placido Geist stopped and looked at him.
The question had come out unrehearsed. Nightingale felt suddenly abashed and dropped his gaze.
“There’s no trick to telling a good man from a bad one,” the bounty hunter said.
“Do you mean to bring Pringle in alive?”
“If he’ll come peaceable.”
It was an unsatisfactory answer. “I don’t feature being made an accomplice to a killing,” Nightingale said.
“You mean your mouth’s not quite made up for it,” Placido Geist said, but not unkindly.