Hart the Regulator 9 Read online

  The kid grinned almost from ear to ear and whispered: ‘Monterey.’

  ‘Monterey, huh?’

  ‘Si, señor.”

  ‘Why Monterey? He goin’ sailin’?

  ‘He looks for his father.’

  ‘Okay. So why look in Monterey?’

  ‘Because that is where his father is.’

  ‘How d’you know?’

  ‘I do not know, señor.’

  ‘How does Robert reckon he knows?’

  ‘Somebody tell him.’

  ‘Sure, that much I figured. Who told him?’

  The boy’s arm snaked out and the palm looked pretty itchy again. Fowler wished every cent he’d given for information was staying in his own pocket. He soothed the kid’s itch with another fifty cents and waited for the answer.

  ‘He hear it from the sheriff.’

  ‘How come?’

  ‘That is where Robert’s father was staying before he left Salinas, señor. In the jail.’

  Fowler grunted and thanked the boy and went back to where Hart was patiently waiting, nursing a beer. ‘Let’s go see the local law.’

  ‘Trouble?’

  ‘For Jordan MacPhail, maybe.’

  ‘Meanin’ what?’ Hart downed the beer, stood up, reached his hat from the back of the chair.

  ‘Meanin’ that the reason not too many folk got to know much about the disappearing mister MacPhail could be on account of the fact he spent most of his time in town locked up in the hoosegow.’

  ~*~

  Sheriff Bob Reinhardt was a man with two wives: it was a subject that was well known to him and tended to prey on his mind some, especially when he’d eaten too much and his insides were playing him tricks. While it was never far from his thoughts, then, it was a secret to both women.

  Nora Reinhardt was a strong-minded, strong-bodied woman of middle age who’d met Bob through a mail order catalogue and made him agree to sign a paper stating that half the land they were going to live on and farm in New Mexico was hers by legal right and should remain so, whether their marriage took or it didn’t. Nora had been married before and that hadn’t lasted more than two years on account of her husband getting bit by a snake in the buttocks and Nora not being able to bite and spit the poison out fast enough. She’d been more than willing but her first husband had been a strongly religious man who’d never take his pants off in front of his wife, not to speak of his long Johns, and so even as dire an emergency as a rampant rattler couldn’t drive his long-held prudery aside right off. It was only after Nora had first argued with him and then – as he got weaker – all but tore his clothes off him, that she got any kind of agreement.

  Of course, it was too late. His fever lasted two days and he died with the look of embarrassment and shame still on his face.

  They hadn’t had much and what was left Nora sold to pay the doctor and secure her late husband a decent burial and a solid oak marker with a verse from Revelations carved on it underneath his name.

  After seven years of trying to make her own way, she gave in and accepted Bob Reinhardt on the basis of one letter and a rough penciled self-portrait, both of which proved to be highly inaccurate. Still, Nora gritted her teeth and hoped that the fact that he lacked the accomplishments of spelling or drawing or even plain observation wouldn’t mean he possessed no other talents or virtues.

  She was wrong.

  The ranch made a little money because she worked from dawn to dusk seven days a week and drove the occasional hired hand so hard that every one of ’em quit after as much as a month.

  ‘There you go,’ Bob would say from his seat on the small porch, pausing to spit tobacco juice down onto the cabbage plants. ‘You can’t treat a man like that an’ expect him to stay round you.’

  Nora ground her teeth hard together and choked back on her words and got on with whatever chore she was tending to. Anything but the most straightforward task seemed to leave Bob either winded or perplexed and he’d often as not leave her to it and go wandering off into the hills with a couple of the dogs and a Sharps over his shoulder. One thing he could do, and she couldn’t take that away from him, he could shoot and hunt better than most folk she’d ever known. If they had rabbit or deer or pigeon or anything else more than their six-mile neighbors, it was on account of Bob’s skill with a rifle.

  In fact he got so darned skillful he took to taking out the occasional animal belonging to a sheep farm in the valley to the north.

  Which was fine until the farmer found out by dint of catching him red-handed, Sharps still warm and the sheep slung over his shoulder, dogs trotting by his side pleased as you like.

  Bob Reinhardt reckoned it was time to move on and Nora didn’t have it in her to change his mind. She did get him to skin the sheep before he left on their second-best mare, promising to write and send for her as soon as he got himself out of New Mexico and settled somewheres else.

  Nora waved him goodbye, sent the following posse in the wrong direction after hiding all evidence of the slaughtered sheep and waited for the letter. After a while she stopped waiting, other than to wish it wouldn’t arrive. She found, at last, that she could manage just as well without a husband as she had with one. Better, in that there was one less mouth to feed.

  As for Bob, he did what a lot of men on the run from the law do – he became a lawman himself. A display of fancy rifle shooting at the Salinas Valley Fair was enough to have the good citizens of Salinas offering him a sheriff’s badge and a near-new jailhouse with ample living accommodation built on the back.

  Bob Reinhardt took the badge and a month’s salary in advance so’s to stock up on ammunition and suchlike and pretty soon decided that his new quarters were so ample they were wasted on one person. Besides, there were socks to be darned and clothes to be washed, the prisoners had to be fed and their beds had to be cleaned up once in a while; he could eat for free at the Santa Ana, but once a week, say, it would be kind of good to sit down to a fresh-cooked stew in his own place.

  So Sheriff Bob sat out on the sidewalk alongside the jail-house entrance and rocked slowly back and forth watched the women sashay back and forth likewise. It wasn’t long before he’d picked out Sally Clarke, a spinster of twenty-nine with a thin, kindly face and enough of a swish about her skirts to suggest that given the opportunity she wouldn’t be lacking in interest when it came to snuggling down between the sheets—which was something else Bob was missing. Not that Nora had been partial to indulging often, but when she had it had been with the hard-working thoroughness she applied to every task, little or great.

  Needless to say, the sheriff didn’t tell Sally about Nora, nor did he write to Nora inviting her to what was a quick and cheerful little ceremony on a quiet September Sunday in Salinas. It seemed to be a good arrangement all round: Nora had her own place and worked it hard the way she liked and needed; Sally scrimped and saved and slaved and was content enough to do so; Sheriff Reinhardt got fatter and slower and got off his rocking chair less and less often unless it was to prove yet again that he’d lost none of his skill with that old Sharps.

  When Fowler and Hart wandered down the street that afternoon there he was, the chair taking him back and forth, back and forth, hat stuck down almost on top of his face and the sunlight catching the silver of his badge.

  ‘Sheriff.’

  Bob Reinhardt steadied the chair to a halt, pushed back his hat and blinked into the light. ‘Strangers, ain’t you?’

  Fowler took his wallet from his pocket, picked a card from the wallet and stuck it into the sheriff’s hand. The lawman read it slowly a couple of times, chewing all the while like a reflective steer out on the range. Then he handed the card back and averted his head just far enough so’s he could spit down into the dirt without splashing either visitor.

  ‘How ’bout your friend here?’ He eyed Hart speculatively, letting his gaze hold on the holstered Colt long enough to figure a man who looked like Hart did likely knew how to use it and use it well.

&n
bsp; ‘He’s workin’ with me,’ said Fowler, pulling at one of the lapels on his creased coat and cursing the heat, ‘an’ we was wonderin’ if you could give us a little help.’

  ‘Help?’ blinked Reinhardt, hoping that whatever it was didn’t occasion him getting up from his chair and stepping off the porch. Not before evening anyways.

  ‘Information.’

  The sheriff shrugged and clicked his tongue lazily against the roof of his mouth. Out behind where the two men were standing a brown dog, not much more than a pup, chased a ginger cat forty yards up the street and then just gave up and sank down in the heat, patting the end of its tail against the packed earth.

  ‘Feller named MacPhail. Jordan MacPhail.’

  Reinhardt cleared his throat as if about to spit again, but that proved too much for him, too. He swallowed what saliva he’d dragged up and said, ‘What about him?’

  ‘That’s what we hoped you’d tell us.’

  ‘How come you want to know? There some bounty or somethin’ in this? You fellers ain’t chasin’ after him for nothin’.’

  ‘He went missing a long time back, lit out on his wife and kid. Now the kid’s taken it into his head to go lookin’ for him. Run off from home. We figure to track MacPhail down. Find the old man, we’ll find the boy.’

  Reinhardt shifted a couple of inches in his chair and made it look like some effort. ‘Sounds logical.’

  Fowler nodded; Hart scuffed his boot in the scattering of loose dust over the hard ground and wished to hell they’d get to the point. Standing out there with the sun beating down on the back of his neck wasn’t exactly his favorite way of passing the time.

  ‘So what about him, MacPhail? We heard you arrested him a while back.’

  ‘Sure did. Slapped him back in jail there for ten days.’

  It was difficult to imagine Sheriff Bob Reinhardt arresting anyone without they walked over to his porch and gave themselves up. Which, as it turned out, was pretty much what had happened.

  Reinhardt set himself rocking and told them what had happened. MacPhail had come to town with an actress named Louise Langrishe, who was due to give a performance at the Salinas Palace Theatre, which was a run-down barn of a building which was used as a warehouse when it wasn’t putting on shows. The usual performers they drew to Salinas Valley were fourth-rate stars who’d been booed out of San Francisco and were trying to work their way back east. Either that or young no-hopers who wanted to make a name for themselves and move on to better things.

  Miss Langrishe came into the former category. She had acted in the legitimate theatre in Boston and Washington for a number of years, the size of her parts getting smaller as her name appeared lower and lower down on the playbills. Eventually she made the switch to musical comedy, where her figure looked good in a variety of striking gowns but her voice had all the subtlety of a double-edged saw in combat with a redwood.

  An engagement in San Francisco proved short-lived and she was rescued from a hail of abuse and rotting tomatoes by a handsome if less than well-dressed gambler who introduced himself as Jordan MacPhail. Louise was eight or nine years older than MacPhail and there was something about his good looks that made her thanks to him rather more lingering than might otherwise have been the case. She made MacPhail her manager and bodyguard and he somehow set up a tour of California for her which was what brought them, by stage, to Salinas.

  The local audience was less than delighted by Miss Langrishe’s act—a mixture of speeches from Romeo and Juliet and The Taming of the Shrew and musical comedy songs performed to a less than certain piano accompaniment. It became obvious to MacPhail that the tour was about to sag to a stop and they’d be lucky to get paid for their present engagement. Duly, he pocketed the one half they’d been paid on arrival, helped himself to whatever of Louise stage jewels might find a buyer and slipped out to where he’d left his horse ready and saddled. When he got there he found himself face to face with an enraged Louise, a derringer pistol in her gloved hand. MacPhail tried to grab it from her and she shot him in the ear, taking the lower part clean off. He wasn’t about to risk where the second one might go.

  Louise marched him over the street to the sheriff’s place and demanded that he be thrown into jail. Reinhardt promptly fined him fifty dollars, which he took from the bills he found in his pocket and which represented Miss Langrishe’s wages, and locked him up for ten days. On the fourth day Jordan knocked the cell door back into the sheriff’s wife’s face when she brought him his breakfast, stole the sheriff’s best horse and galloped west as fast as he could.

  ‘You set out after him?’

  ‘Sure did. Rounded up a ten-man posse and chased that bastard twenty mile.’

  ‘But you didn’t catch him?’

  ‘Only tracks.’

  ‘Headin’ which way?’

  ‘Ain’t but one place to head an’ that’s Monterey.’

  Fowler nodded and thanked the lawman for his help. Hart asked if he knew anything about a kid in town looking for MacPhail and Reinhardt allowed that he might’ve heard of someone goin’ round askin’ questions but he’d never seen hide nor hair of him. Certainly didn’t know where he was now.

  ‘Could’ve spoke with someone else on that posse though, couldn’t he?’

  ‘Could.’

  ‘An’ they’d’ve said Monterey, same as you did.’

  ‘Reckon so.’

  ‘Thanks, Sheriff. You take it easy now.’

  Bob Reinhardt raised a hand in acknowledgement. ‘Don’t you worry yourself none ’bout that. An’ good luck lookin’ for … lookin’ for ... oh, hell, whatever the feller’s name was.’

  Fowler shrugged his shoulders and grunted. For a man who’d been shot in the ear by an actress, Jordan MacPhail sure didn’t stick in folks’ minds for long. But then maybe that kind of thing happened just about every day in a lively place like Salinas.

  Hart stepped over the sleeping pup and suggested he step up the street and check with someone at the Palace if they knew any more about the affair than the sheriff. Fowler agreed and set himself to find the doctor who’d tended to MacPhail’s ear and sewn what was left of it back together again.

  Less than an hour later they’d succeeded in checking the sheriff’s story as far as they were able; nothing new turned up except that Louise Langrishe had lasted another two nights of her engagement before boarding a stage for Los Angeles.

  ‘She’ll never make a name for herself in that one-horse town,’ growled Fowler. ‘Makes Salinas look like San Francisco on a fast night.’

  ‘When we headin’ out towards Monterey?’ asked Hart.

  ‘Come mornin’, I guess. Ain’t no point ridin’ through the night. If MacPhail’s there, he’ll likely be there a while longer.’

  ‘An’ if the boy’s found him?’

  ‘Depends how he reacts. Might not want to see the kid after all this time. Walked out on him, didn’t he? Didn’t seem too worried about that.’

  Sometimes, Hart was thinking, a man walks out on things he’d rather stay around on account of there don’t seem any other way to play it.

  ‘Yeah,’ he said to Fowler, ‘guess he did at that.’

  ‘I’d hate to be that kid if he catches up with his father after all this time an’ the man no more’n turns his back on him and tells him he don’t want to know.’

  Hart nodded his head and eased himself back in the chair where he was watching Fowler make a mess of yet another bottle of bourbon. He was trying to figure out what might pass through MacPhail’s mind when a boy came up to him and said he was the son he’d ridden away from thirteen years ago. He wondered how the boy would be feeling at the same moment. Wondered what it would have done to him if instead of being in that coffin, his own father had survived, only to walk back into his life all those years later.

  When he didn’t want to think about it anymore he pulled Fowler’s bottle towards him and poured himself a stiff shot.

  Monterey would see it over, he guessed, whic
hever way it jumped.

  Chapter Twelve

  Monterey hung tight to the coast, pressed in by weathered cypresses whose branches hung with fog like old man’s beard. Pines pointed the way to the lazy cluster of hills that tumbled back along the peninsula. The waterfront quay stood out of the turning blue of the water on stilts that glowed yellow-red; here and there men sat dangling their legs and fishing. Behind them the warehouses and boat houses fought for space, the rusted iron roof of one angling down against another. Gulls rose and swooped and harried the small fishing boats as they tied up, their screeching greed threatening to cut out all other sound.

  ‘What do we do when we find him?’ Hart stood in the temporary shade of the livery door, his gray being led away behind him.

  Fowler hunched against the opposite side of the high arch, fumbling inside his pockets for a match to light the short stub of a cigar clamped between his teeth. ‘Which?’ he muttered. The father?’

  Hart shook his head. ‘The son.’

  The match head scraped and spurted and the end of the cigar slowly reddened; Fowler drew hard, coughed, watched as a funnel of soft gray smoke drifted out into the warm air. ‘Kinda late to ask, ain’t it?’

  ‘Meanin’?’

  ‘Meanin’ you ride all this way, all these miles sayin’ nothin’.’

  Hart shrugged, pushed the heel of his boot hard against the wood at back of him. ‘Two reasons I’m here. One, you asked.’

  Fowler concentrated on the end of his cigar.

  ‘Two, it’s a job. You hired me on. Agency rates. I’m gettin’ paid.’

  ‘Then I don’t see your problem.’

  ‘Didn’t say there was a problem. Just want to know what you got in mind.’

  Fowler broke into a sudden laugh which quickly became a splutter; he pulled the cigar clear from his mouth as he half-choked, drew the flask from his pocket and had a quick swig at the bourbon.

  ‘Maybe you should know me better’n to ask that?’ There was a smile somewhere around Fowler’s eyes, recessed as they were between the folds of flesh screwed together on his face.