Ernest Haycox - The Greatest Westerns of Ernest Haycox

"Expectin' me, I guess," he murmured, transferring his glance to that room above Tilton's store where Doc Fancher kept office. Naturally the panes glowed with the reflection of Fancher's lamp. Fancher never seemed to go to bed. He debated, half of a mind to detour and visit the county coroner. Fancher was a stout friend and absolutely safe. But supposing Fancher was being watched with the knowledge he, Jim Chaffee, might make just such a visit? It was more or less known, the close regard these two had for each other. Of a sudden Chaffee chuckled softly. "Won't do that—but I'll do the next best thing."

He retreated, circled the town at a safe distance, and gained the back of Tilton's dry-goods store. This was another of those buildings with a flat roof and a triangular false front rising before the roof. Chaffee chinned himself up a porch post, set foot on a window ledge, hooked his fingers across the cornice, and teetered out in space. He achieved the tar-papered roof and went tiptoeing across it. He was directly above Fancher's office; in going to the street side of the building he passed the rectangular box that capped the roof trap door. If he opened that he could look down on Fancher's very head. But he resisted the temptation and curled himself in a corner, shielded by the false front and the yard high coping that ran around the other sides. It was very cold, but he alternately dozed and woke till full daylight.

There were small ports cut through the coping and false front to let water flow off the roof top. Flat on his stomach and one cheek to the tar paper he could command a partial view westward on the street through these. And as the morning passed a great many citizens crossed his vision. Locklear, looking more taciturn and unmanageable than ever; three of the hired gunmen walking abreast—at which Chaffee murmured some mild oath; Callahan the saloon keeper, jowls looking very fat and unhealthy by day. These and others were familiar faces. But he saw a great many new faces—rawboned and sunburned men who slouched idly here and there; who fell into pairs and by degrees collected into a crowd. Then the crowd would split and move away. But it was a singular thing that this drawing together occurred many times, and each time seemed to be larger and to hold longer. Men gestured with short jabs of elbows and arms; sometimes the parley appeared to grow heated.

Beyond noon, Perrine and his gang rode into town. Chaffee's interest sharpened. Even from the roofs eminence he made out the giant's sleepy eyes and sand-grimed cheeks. Perrine had been riding most of the night, so much was plain; and the burly one's temper lay heavily on the scowling brow, The whole party dropped reins by Callahan's saloon and went in. There happened to be a group of homesteaders—Chaffee had decided they were such—clustered by the livery stable at the time, and Chaffee noted how these men turned to watch Perrine's crew. That united scrutiny wasn't the ordinary type of interest. Something more was in the air. Then Doc Fancher marched into sight, his bowed legs stretching toward the courthouse. Immediately after, Chaffee became aware that he himself was being sought. Fancher had hardly disappeared beyond Callahan's when there was a creaking of boards below and the squealing of Fancher's office door. The rumble of talk sifted through the thin roof. They were moving about.

He felt the insecurity of his own position. It might very soon occur to them that it was but a step and a jump through the trapdoor. Turning over, he rose and with infinite care walked to the center of the roof. Even as he settled himself prone across the trapdoor he heard a chair being dragged along the office floor. Fancher's desk groaned. A man stood on it, fingers brushing the under side of the trapdoor head near enough to render audible what he said.

"—Look anyhow. Better hurry. Fancher's apt to come back any minute."

The trapdoor moved slightly, pressure coming against Chaffee's stomach.

"Nailed down. Couldn't be up there. Let's skin out."

The other seemed to be protesting; the near fellow's answer was impatient. "What would he be climbin' up from outside for? Lots of better places to hide. Let's skin away before that wildcat Fancher gets back. Me, I don't hone—"

They left. Chaffee waited a long time to make sure. In fact he held down the trapdoor the best part of an hour, hearing the traffic of the street grow heavier. It sounded as if a great many men were riding into Roaring Horse. Leaving the door he crawled to a port and studied the street. More homesteaders were assembling in groups. He also noticed Locklear, the three hired gunmen and Perrine's crew posted indolently here and yonder. Woolfridge appeared from the direction of the courthouse and walked rapidly across Chaffee's line of vision, looking neither to right nor left. The afternoon slid along, the sun's rim tipped toward the western hills, blurred by intervening clouds. Darkness threatened to arrive prematurely. And Fancher was back in his office, swearing to himself in full, irascible accents. Chaffee, cramped and cold and hungry, felt that the time for patience was at an end. He crawled to the trapdoor, listened a moment, and struck it sharply by way of warning. Fancher challenged: "Who in the name of—" and stopped. Chaffee dragged the door half away and looked down. Fancher's face was wrinkled in anger, but that shifted to concern when he found who was above him. Chaffee dropped to the desk, dragging the door back into place.

"So you was the one who moved my furniture—"

"Nope. Couple of gents investigatin' while you were gone. I heard 'em. They tried the trap but I spraddled it, belly flat."

"They done it before. Boy, I'm certainly glad to see you back and alive. But it ain't any place for a fellow with a price tag on his jeans. You're sittin' on a crater. Whoever moves first starts somethin'. But if said fellow don't move first he's apt to be blown to perdition. Jim, unless I'm as crazy as a loon that street is goin' to run red before long."

"Who's so sore as all that?"

Fancher was genuinely disturbed. He was nervous; the mark of worry lay in his eyes. He crossed to the desk and pulled up a copy of the county weekly, indicating a story spread over the center of the front sheet and surrounded by the black border of reversed column rules. "Read that."

It was the story Gay Thatcher had brought from the governor. No attempt had been made to stretch it out or to dress it up. The first paragraph began it and the second paragraph ended it, but these two paragraphs linked together made the story stark and bitter:

This newspaper, along with several other newspapers in the territory, received from the Roaring Horse Irrigation and Reclamation Corporation copy for an advertisement to be published in our columns. The substance of the advertisement, as readers will recall, was to invite settlers into this country to buy land on the implied promise that a dam was to be built. We received the copy for this advertisement on the eighteenth of November. Remember that date.

We have since been informed by the governor of the territory of a letter written to him—and printed below—by the president of the Power Company in which that official says the Roaring Horse Irrigation and Reclamation Corporation was notified as early as the fifteenth of November that no dam was to be built. Compare that date with the one above.

Chaffee dropped the paper, turning his head from side to side. It both surprised him and confirmed a doubt. The doubt was of Woolfridge's honesty, but the surprise came of having to believe that Woolfridge would ever expose himself to such a backslap. "Doc, this is an awful strong statement. What it deliberately says is that Woolfridge knew there wasn't going to be any dam two days or three days before he sent out the ad."