Rex Stout - Death of a Dude

She put her coffee cup down. "You're suggesting that I hire a native to help you."

"Not to help me. If he's any good he wouldn't help me. He would just go to work."

"Oh." Her blue eyes widened and fastened on me. "You're checking out."

"I am not. In the letter I just mailed to Mr Wolfe I said I hoped to be back for the World Series. I'm staying and making motions, but damn it, I'm handicapped. I'm only suggesting that maybe you should ask Dawson."

"Escamillo." Her eyes had relaxed and were smiling. "Now really. Aren't you the second-best detective in the world?"

"Oh, sure. In my world, but this isn't it. Even Dawson, haven't you noticed? You've paid him a ten-grand retainer, but how does he take me? You must have noticed."

She nodded. "It's one of the milder forms of xenophobia. You're a dude, and I'm a dudine."

"You own a ranch. That's different."

"Well." She picked up her coffee cup, looked in it, decided it was too cool, and put it down. "It's too bad Harvey can't be bailed out, but Mel can handle it-for a while. How much time have we got?"

"Until Harvey's tried and convicted, apparently two or three months, from what Jessup says."

"And it's two months to the World Series. You know, Archie, what I think of you personally has nothing to do with this. Not only are you a better detective than any native would be, but also you know darned well Harvey didn't shoot a man in the back. But after a week or two of nosing around, the native would probably think he did. Dawson does. Admit I'm right."

"You're always right sometimes."

"Then may I have some hot coffee?" My milk glass was empty, so I had coffee too. When we had finished it and I had paid the check, we left, and as we made our way through the clutter of tables and chairs about twenty pairs of eyes followed us, and about twenty other pairs pretended not to. Monroe County was pretty worked up about the murder of Philip Brodell. Its basic attitude to dudes was no help in bringing on the brotherhood of man, but after all, they brought a lot of dough to Montana and left it there, and shooting them when they were picking huckleberries was not to be encouraged. So the eyes at Lily and me weren't very friendly; it was her ranch boss that had pulled the trigger. So it looked to them.

At the parking lot behind the cafй I put my bag in the back of Lily's station wagon, among the items she had had on her list, before I got in behind the wheel. She was sitting straight so her back wouldn't touch the seat back, which the slanting August sun had been trying to fry. My side was okay. I backed out from the slot. On a list of the differences between Lily and me it would be near the top that I park so I won't have to back out when I leave and she doesn't.

It was only two short blocks to the Presto gas station, where I turned in and stopped at the pump. The gauge said half full and the gas in the tank at the ranch cost nine cents less per gallon, but I wanted Lily to have a look at a person named Gilbert Haight who might be there. He was-a lanky loose-limbed kid whose long neck helped to make up his six feet-but he was wiping the windshield of another car, and Lily had to twist around to get focused on him as I told the other attendant to fill it up with Special. But when the other car rolled off, the kid stood looking at us for half a minute and then walked over to my open window and said, "Nice morning."

Actually he didn't say, "Nice morning"; he said, "Nice mahrnin'." But I'm not going to try to give you the native lingo, at least not often. I only want to report what happened, and that would complicate it too much and slow me down.

I agreed that it was a nice mahrnin', to be polite, though it was more than an hour past noon, and he said, "My dad told me not to talk to you."

I nodded. "Yeah, he would." His dad was Morley Haight, the county sheriff. "He has practically told me not to talk to anybody, but I can't break the habit, and anyway it's how I make a living."

"Uhuh. Fuzz."

Television and radio certainly spread words around. "Not me," I said. "Your dad is fuzz, but I'm private. If I asked you how you spent the day Thursday a week ago, you could say it was none of my business. When your father asked me I told him."

"So I heard." His eyes went to Lily and came back to me. "You've been asking around about me. I'd just as soon save you some trouble."

"I'd appreciate that."

"I didn't kill that skunk."

"Good. That's what I wanted to know. That narrows it down."

"It's a insult. Look at it." He ignored his colleague, who had filled my order and was there behind his elbow. "The first shot, from behind, got his shoulder and turned him around. The second shot, from in front, got him in the throat and broke his neck and killed him. Look at that. It's a insult. I have never used more than one cartridge for a deer. Ask anybody. I can take a popgun and slice off the head of a snake at thirty yards. I can do it every time. My dad told me not to talk to you, but I wanted you to know that."

He turned and went, toward a car that was stopping at the other pump. His colleague took a step and said, "Two-sixty-three," and I reached for my wallet.

When we were under way again, heading northeast, I asked Lily, "Well?"

"I pass," she said. "I wanted to have a look at him, that's all right, but you told me once that it's stupid to suppose looking at a man will help you decide if he's a murderer. I don't want to be stupid and I pass. But what he said? That it's an insult?"

"Oh, that." I bore right at a fork. "He can shoot all right. Three people have told me so. And any damn fool knows that if you're going to plug a man, not just hurt him, kill him, you don't go for his shoulder. Or his neck either. But he may also be sharp. He might have figured it that everybody knew he was a good shot, so he made it look as if he wasn't. He had had plenty of time to think it over."

She considered that for a couple of miles and then asked, "Are you sure he knew that Brodell had-that he was the father of her baby?"

"Hell, everybody in Lame Horse knew it. And beyond. Of course they also knew that Gil Haight was set on her. Last Tuesday-no, Wednesday-he told a man that he still wanted to marry her and was going to."

"That's love for you. The sharp right is just ahead."

I said I knew it.

The twenty-four miles from Timberburg to Lame Horse was all blacktop except for two short stretches-one where it dived down into a deep gully and up again, and one where winters pushed so much rock through and around that they had quit trying to keep it surfaced. For the first few miles out of Timberburg there were some trees and bushes, then broken range for the rest of the way.

The population of Lame Horse was 160, give or take a dozen. The blacktop stopped right in front of Vawter's General Store, but the road went on, curving left a little ahead. Having been to Timberburg, we needed nothing at Vawter's, so we didn't stop. From there it was 2.8 miles to the turnoff to Lily's ranch, and another 300 yards to the turnoff to her cabin. In that three miles you climbed nearly 2000 feet. To get to the ranch buildings you crossed a bridge over Berry Creek, but from there the creek took a swing to make a big loop, and the cabin was in the loop, only a few hundred yards inside the ranch boundary. To get to the ranch buildings on foot from the cabin you had to cross the creek, either by the bridge or, much shorter, by fording just outside the cabin. In August there was a spot where it could be done by stone-stepping. A better name for it would be boulder-bouncing.