Rex Stout: The Rodeo Murder

Cal Barrow was standing at the tail end of the horse with his arm extended and his fingers wrapped around the strands of the rope that was looped over the horn of the cowboy saddle. His gray-blue eyes — as much of them as the half-closed lids left in view — were straight at me. His voice was low and easy, and noise from the group out front was coming through the open door, but I have good ears.

“Nothing to start a stampede,” he said. “I just wanted to ask you how I go about taking some hide off a toad in this town.” To give it as it actually sounded I would have to make it, “Ah jist wanted to ask yuh how Ah go about takin’ some hide off a toad,” but that’s too complicated, and from here on I’ll leave the sound effects to you if you want to bother.

I was sliding my fingertips up and down on the polished stirrup strap so that observers, if any, would assume that we were discussing the saddle. “I suppose,” I said, “it’s a two-legged toad.” Then, as a brown-haired cowgirl named Nan Karlin, in a pink silk shirt opened at the throat and regulation Levis, came through the arch and headed for the door to the terrace, lifting the heels of her fancy boots to navigate the Kashan rug that had set Lily Rowan back fourteen thousand bucks, I raised my voice a little so she wouldn’t have to strain her ears if she was curious. “Sure,” I said, rubbing the leather, “you could work it limber, but why don’t they make it limber?”

But I may be confusing you, since a Kashan carpet with a garden pattern in seven colors is no place for a horse to stand, so I had better explain. The horse was a sawhorse. The saddle was to go to the winner in a roping contest that was to start in an hour. The Kashan, 19 × 34, was on the floor of the living room of Lily Rowan’s penthouse, which was on the roof of a ten-story building on 63rd Street between Madison and Park Avenues, Manhattan. The time was three o’clock Monday afternoon. The group out on the terrace had just gone there for coffee after leaving the dining room, where the high point of the meal had been two dozen young blue grouse which had come from Montana on man-made wings, their own having stopped working. As we had moseyed through the living room on our way to the terrace Cal Barrow had got me aside to say he wanted to ask me something private, and we had detoured to inspect the saddle.

When Nan Karlin had passed and was outside, Cal Barrow didn’t have to lower his voice again because he hadn’t raised it. “Yeah, two legs,” he said. (Make it “laigs.”) “I got to ask somebody that knows this town and I was thinking this bozo Goodwin is the one to ask, he’s in the detective business here and he ought to know. And my friend Harvey Greve tells me you’re okay. I’m calling you Archie, am I?”

“So it was agreed at the table. First names all around.”

“Suits me.” He let go of the rope and gripped the edge of the cantle. “So I’ll ask you. I’m a little worked up. Out where I live I wouldn’t have to ask nobody, but here I’m no better’n a dogie. I been to Calgary and Pendleton, but I never come East before for this blowout. Huh. World Series Rodeo. From what I see so far you can have it.”

He made it “roe-day-oh” with the accent on the “day.” I nodded. “Madison Square Garden has no sky. But about this toad. We’re supposed to go out with them for coffee. How much of his hide do you need?”

“I’ll take a fair-sized patch.” There was a glint in his eye. “Enough so he’ll have to lick it till it gets a scab. The trouble is this blamed blowout, I don’t want to stink it up my first time here, if it wasn’t for that I’d just handle it. I’d get him to provoke me.”

“Hasn’t he already provoked you?”

“Yeah, but I’m leaving that out. I was thinking you might even like to show him and me something. Have you got a car?”

I said I had.

“Then when we get through here you might like to take him and me to show us some nice little spot like on the river bank. There must be a spot somewhere. It would be better if you was there anyhow because if I kinda lost control and got too rough you could stop me. When I’m worked up I might get my teeth on the bit.”

“Or I could stop him if necessary.”

The glint showed again. “I guess you don’t mean that. I wouldn’t like to think you mean that.”

I grinned at him, Archie to Cal. “What the hell, how do I know? You haven’t named him. What if it’s Mel Fox? He’s bigger than you are, and Saturday night at the Garden I saw him bulldog a steer in twenty-three seconds. It took you thirty-one.”

“My steer was meaner. Mel said so himself. Anyway it’s not him. It’s Wade Eisler.”

My brows went up. Wade Eisler couldn’t bulldog a milk cow in twenty-three hours, but he had rounded up ten million dollars, more or less, and he was the chief backer of the World Series Rodeo. If it got out that one of the cowboy contestants had taken a piece of his hide it would indeed stink it up, and it was no wonder that Cal Barrow wanted a nice little spot on a river bank. I not only raised my brows; I puckered my lips.

“Ouch,” I said. “You better let it lay, at least for a week, until the rodeo’s over and the prizes awarded.”

“No, sir. I sure would like to, but I got to get it done. Today. I don’t rightly know how I held off when I got here and saw him here. It would be a real big favor, Mr. Goodwin. Here in your town. Will you do it?”

I was beginning to like him. Especially I liked his not shoving by overworking the “Archie.” He was a little younger than me, but not much, so it wasn’t respect for age; he just wasn’t a fudger.

“How did he provoke you?” I asked.

“That’s private. Didn’t I say I’m leaving that out?”

“Yes, but I can’t leave it out too. I don’t say I’ll play if you tell me, but I certainly won’t if you don’t. Whether I play or not, you can count on me to leave it out — or keep it in. As a private detective I get lots of practice keeping things in.”

The gray-blue eyes were glued on me. “You won’t tell anyone?”

“Right.”

“Whether you help me or not?”

“Right.”

“He got a lady to go to his place last night by telling her he was having a party, and when they got there there wasn’t any party, and he tried to handle her. Did you see the scratch on his cheek?”

“Yes, I noticed it.”

“She’s not very big, but she’s plenty active. All she got was a little skin off her ear when her head hit a corner of a table.”

“I noticed that too.”

“So I figure he’s due to lose a bigger—” He stopped short. He slapped the saddle. “Now, damn it, that’s me every time. Now you know who she is. I was going to leave that out.”

“I’ll keep it in. She told you about it?”

“Yes, sir, she did. This morning.”

“Did she tell anyone else?”

“No, sir, she wouldn’t. I got no brand on her, nobody has, but maybe some day when she quiets down a little and I’ve got my own corral... You’ve seen her on a bronc.”

I nodded. “I sure have. I was looking forward to seeing her off of one, closer up, but now of course I’ll keep my distance. I don’t want to lose any hide.”

His hand left the saddle. “I guess you just say things. I got no claim. I’m a friend of hers and she knows it, that’s all. A couple of years ago I was wrangling dudes down in Arizona and she was snapping sheets at the hotel, and we kinda made out together and I guess I come in handy now and then. I don’t mind coming in handy as long as I can look ahead. Right now I’m a friend of hers and that suits me fine. She might be surprised to know how I—”