All the Old Lions (A Thea Barlow Mystery, Book One) Read online

  She pushed the book away and turned to me. Her eyes had lost the far-away look.

  “Well, that’s the story, Thea. Lil was the one who got me interested in writing. The only thing she read were magazines like Western True Adventures. Devoured them, complaining all the while that she knew better stories and urging me to write them. Always steered me clear from events around this part of the country, though. Claimed nothing interesting ever happened here. Anyway, after she died and I got over the first shock of finding out her…It took awhile, but I could finally read Jersey Roo’s diaries for what they were, an interesting bit of history, and thought I could make some money from them. Then when the lease on this land came due I realized I could move out here to the home place. I’d had some health problems and thought, well, now was the time. I told myself it was for the good of the book, research and all, you know, but mostly I wanted to find…”

  Her hand hovered helplessly above the scrapbook for a moment, then she rose and fussed a bit, straightened magazines and papers into neat piles.

  “You know,” she went on, her composure regained, “there was a big scandal in Hijax before Lil left. Some sheepherder camped outside of town got accused of setting a fire that burned down the general store. They hung him on next to no evidence. The courts didn’t hang the sheepherder, mind you, vigilantes did. Locals. This was cattle country. It didn’t take much to condemn a sheepherder. Anyway, the lynching proved to be a big embarrassment for the town of Hijax. The range wars between the cattlemen and sheepmen had been over for a long time, and nobody wanted to see that kind of lawlessness start again. So of course they had to find a scapegoat. My sister, Lil. The do-gooders labeled Halfway Halt a hell-hole of conspiracy and accused Lil of instigating the vigilante action, egging the men on. They ran Lil out of town yet didn’t even try to find out who was in the lynch mob. A handy cover-up. The more I read about it the madder I got.”

  She settled back in her chair and pulled the scrapbook towards her, turning to the last page. An obituary notice was taped in the middle of a new, creamy sheet. Sympathy cards surrounded it, with more stuck loose in the page.

  “Lil was a good honest woman. She had a hard life, but managed to turn it around for me. I want people to know that, particularly the snobs around here. I decided to add a couple of chapters to the book, complete the history of Halfway Halt. That’s what I went to town for that day, to call you and tell you what I wanted to do, but when I picked up my mail I found this, Thea.” She scrabbled in the piles of magazines and newspapers, returning them to their usual disarray, and found a creased and crumpled sheet of paper. She gave it to me.

  The letters were spiky and dark: Go back where you came from, bitch. Your kind’s not wanted in Hijax. We do worse things to whores than run them out of town. Get out. Now!

  The words swam in front of my eyes. I felt like I was in a bad movie. “That’s awful, Minnie. Did you show it to the sheriff?” No wonder she had sounded shaken when I talked to her.

  “No. I—” Then to my horror, her face crumpled, cheeks sagging into furrows that circled her quivering lips. Her eyes filled with tears that were quickly blinked back and replaced with tiny hot flames.

  “All those years I loved this place. This house, the town and all the people Lil told me about. These people are my family, Thea, but they don’t want me here. All they see is the sister of a whore and they think I’m one too.” She slammed the scrapbook shut, sending pieces of brittle paper puffing into the air.

  She crumpled the crude note into a ball. “They’re not going to scare me off, Thea. Not the sheriff, not a bunch of nosy old ladies, or anybody else. This is my home. Danger,” she muttered, shaking her fist like a miniature Cassandra calling down the Gods. “I’ll show them danger!”

  Six

  “Danger,” I said, surprised to hear my voice crack. “What do you mean by danger?” I’d barely whispered, but the words echoed hollowly against the walls. My eyes flickered around the ugly room, oppressed by the tall ceiling, unfinished and dingy. The room was unbearably stuffy.

  Minnie was staring at me, as well she might. The old brothel was turning me into a blathering idiot.

  “I didn’t mean to frighten you,” she said, placid now as pudding. “There’s no real danger. I just meant that I wasn’t going to let anyone—including Max and that damn sheriff—scare me off. I know small towns. I’ve lived in them all my life.”

  “Some pretty vicious crimes are being committed in small towns these days.”

  “Sure, if you’re threatening to take away the farm or something. I’m just a pesky little gnat nipping at proud folks’ ankles. They’ll talk nasty behind my back and snub me in person. I don’t care. It’s just not fair that Lil had all the blame put on her.”

  What she said made sense, and I was beginning to think she was right. Max was an alarmist, for whatever reason. One thing remained clear: I needed to distance myself from these people. The manuscript was my job. And that’s where I intended to focus my attention.

  “I need to see the manuscript, Minnie, and also any photographs you plan to use. I don’t have a problem adding the chapters about Lil, if that’s what you want to do, but I’ll have to see how it all fits together, then we can talk about it. And I plan to reap some publicity from this harassment, or whatever it is. I’d like to get started on that as soon as possible.”

  “Publicity?”

  “Yes. Newspaper or magazine items. Maybe a write-up in People. Would you like that?”

  “Well, I don’t know,” she said hesitantly. I could tell she’d never thought of that kind of thing, and she was mulling it over.

  “I want to take the manuscript with me when I leave. How close to finished are you?”

  “The first part needs some clean-up typing, and I’m still working on the last chapters. How long can you stay? Can you give me two days?”

  Max chose that moment to storm in through the back entry.

  “Lunch,” Minnie said. “Two days?”

  I nodded and followed her into the kitchen. Max stomped the dust from his feet and hurled his hat at the rack by the door. He missed. His look was as black as the hat.

  He jerked his head at me, but addressed Minnie. “She tell you the fence was down again?”

  Minnie nodded and retrieved the sandwich makings from the refrigerator. “Did you fix it?”

  “Yes, and I didn’t find a bull in the pasture, but who knows how long the fence was down? If Enright’s bulls get to those heifers, you stand to lose a lot of money.”

  “It’s your job to see that they don’t.”

  “You know damn well what I’m trying to say. No matter what you think, you’re being sabotaged. Someone wants those heifers to get bred, they want your wells to run dry.”

  “What they want is me out of here. Right?” She threw the words at him like a fistful of stones. “How do I know it’s not you, Max Holman? Tell me that. You’ve got a vested interest in getting me to leave this place, now, don’t you?”

  She turned back to her preparations, and wrenched open a large can of soup.

  Dark color flooded Max’s face and the tiny pulse I’d noticed before twitched back to life. I watched him make a visible effort to relax, ease out the anger. Curious. He’d had no compunction about yelling at me. Was all this admirable self-control in deference to Minnie’s age, or a prudent concession to employee relations? Or could it be a simple case of not wanting to rock the boat for reasons unknown? And of course, I was dying to know what his vested interest was. But something else nagged at me, something concerning Max that I wanted to remember. I couldn’t quite grasp the thought.

  The basin of water still sat on the table. I dumped it and set out the luncheon things. Minnie brought the food and I took my place beside Max. The sandwiches were filled with last night’s stringy dreadful in some new disguise, and the soup looked strangely unappetizing. How can you ruin canned soup?

  Silence dragged on. I had to smile. The two of them looked
like a pair of recalcitrant sixth graders. How Max managed to keep such a sour expression while wolfing down those awful sandwiches, I’ll never know. I toyed with the idea of mediating; Little Suzy Insufferable offering lessons in communication to those in need. But no. I intended to keep my distance, stick to my job. If I could drum up some publicity, fine, but no entanglements.

  I was hungry. I picked up half a sandwich and put it down again. Urged on by the bony specter of starvation, I said, “Minnie, why don’t you let me cook dinner tonight?”

  It took a moment, but then the tension broke. Her face blossomed into the dimpled softness I found so appealing.

  “Oh, Thea, would you? I hate to cook. I’m used to TV dinners and a grocery store on the next corner. Can you make stuffed pork chops? I haven’t had any in years.”

  Actually, I was thinking more along the lines of salmon fillets, but what the hey. What difference did it make?

  Max’s face lightened as well. Minnie leaned across the table, grinned and patted his hand. Really, was a pork chop all it took to erase the tight-lipped accusations and barely controlled fury that went before? I wondered.

  “Max, take Thea to town for groceries. The wells can wait. We deserve a decent meal.”

  I would have preferred going on my own, but wasn’t quite ready to face that awful road again. “All right,” I said with a laugh. “I need to call the office, anyway. Did you say the closest phone is in town?”

  “Not the closest. I’m welcome to use the Enright’s phone anytime. They live five miles down the road in the other direction.”

  I didn’t want a phone in someone’s home; I needed more privacy. I wanted Roger to get started on the publicity. I should buy a camera, too, I thought. I wasn’t sure exactly how these things were handled, but it wouldn’t hurt to have pictures on hand if they were needed. The driving sense of direction felt wonderful. This was what I wanted, a project I could control, something to push to goal.

  Once again I found myself in the front seat of the pickup with Max Holman. We were getting to be great buddies.

  “The sheriff came to call this morning.”

  “Oh? What did he want? He’s not still giving Minnie a bad time about running a house, is he?”

  “He claimed it was just a friendly visit, but I think he was checking me out. Wanted to make sure I wasn’t a tarnished dove in disguise. Minnie wasn’t giving him an inch, but he seemed a decent sort, kind of a teddy bear, actually.”

  “Don’t kid yourself. Sheriff is an elected position around here and he’s held office for close to twenty years. Has his thumb firmly on everything, I’d bet.”

  “He doesn’t look that old.”

  “He’s not, he’s just got a hell of a lot of relatives. There’s a Beesom under every other rock in the county.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “That’s what keeps him voted in.”

  “You mean he doesn’t do the job? Is he corrupt?”

  He shrugged. “He’s probably a good enough sheriff, but I’m sure he takes care of his own. Don’t they all?” He paused then asked, “Did Minnie tell him about the fences getting cut?”

  “No. She barely spoke to him.”

  “I’ll probably have to tell him myself,” he said, more to himself than to me.

  Minnie wouldn’t appreciate Max going over her head, but if he was really concerned about Minnie’s property being damaged, maybe that was the best way to go. Someone should tell the sheriff about that nasty note, too. Was Max aware of it? I didn’t think Minnie would ever go to the sheriff for anything less than murder. Maybe I could clue him in about the note. Minnie seemed so vulnerable, and so stubbornly determined not to ask for help.

  I wondered what Max’s opinion of the sheriff was based on, fact, or inbred cynicism? I suspected the latter. But really, I couldn’t worry about it. Minnie had a right to do things her own way. I just wanted to get the manuscript and get out of here.

  I must have been squirming with impatience. Max said, “Relax. That’s something else about country life: you learn how to wait”

  He was right. Right, at least, in that I couldn’t fight the distance. If it took X amount of time to get to town, then X amount of time it would take, and letting my stomach knot with impatience wouldn’t change anything. I decided to sit back and try to enjoy the ride.

  Apparently, the trick to driving on the road was speed, hovering above the rocky roadbed rather than traveling on it. When I mentioned my observation he slowed some and even began pointing out things of interest, though I had a hard time picking out the deer from the sagebrush and rocks. If something didn’t move, I couldn’t see it.

  My eyes needed to get their sea legs, Max told me, indifferent to his mixed metaphor. “You’re not used to distance yet.”

  We jounced along and I pummeled him with questions. What did the cows eat? There wasn’t any grass. Why were all the buttes and ridges the same height as if they’d been sliced off with a knife? Why weren’t sage hens an endangered species when they were too dumb to get out of the way of the truck? Why did antelope crawl under the fences instead of jumping over them as the deer did? He seemed to have all the answers, at least they sounded sensible to me. An easy camaraderie soon lulled me into forgetting my earlier resolves about noninvolvement.

  “What was Minnie talking about at lunch?” I asked. “What are your ‘vested interests’?”

  He had a disquieting way of sizing me up before he spoke, as if trying to calculate what effect his words would have.

  “She’s right,” he said, and turned his eyes back to the road. “I’d head a list of people who’d benefit from her leaving Hijax.”

  “Why?”

  “I want to buy her ranch; we have an agreement of sorts.”

  That was a surprise. “I didn’t know she was going to sell.”

  “She might not.”

  Nothing Minnie had ever said to me indicated she planned to leave Halfway Halt. “But I thought she was going to make this her home.”

  “So did she. When I heard Enright lost the lease, I called her in Iowa to make an offer. She wasn’t interested in selling then. In fact she was excited about coming home to Hijax. I tried to tell her, prepare her for the reception I knew she’d get, but hell, I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t even know her. Like all the kids who grew up around here I’d heard of Lil Darrow and Halfway Halt. Halloween wasn’t Halloween without a bunch of us trying to break into the old place. Minnie never had a chance; the ostracism hit her hard.”

  My heart wrenched for her. I could still see her caressing the old photographs and her dreamy two-step into the past.

  “When things were at their worst,” Max went on, “about the time the sheriff paid his call on Minnie, I made another offer.”

  Incredulous, I swung my head to look at him. How fortuitous for you, Max Holman. I mean, really! No wonder Minnie was suspicious. Had he set her up? Kept the wheels of rumor whirling? Or as Minnie suggested, cut the fences, fouled the wells and done whatever it was they were worried about with the stupid cows?

  He must have felt me staring at him. He turned those hooded gray eyes on me and cocked his head in an inquiry I ignored. But there was no outward sign of any difference that I could detect, no show of concern that perhaps he’d given himself away. Or did he think I was incredibly stupid? I concentrated on the scenery.

  “Minnie’s not a quitter,” he said. “She turned the offer down, but didn’t slam the door in my face. We kind of hit it off right from the start.”

  My snort of derision wasn’t intended to be heard, but his ears were as sharp as his eyes.

  He laughed. “We have our moments. She’s crusty, but that’s one of the things I like about her.”

  Yes, I thought, rather surprised, and recognizing for the first time that I, too, liked Minnie Darrow very much. There was a leavening tang to her personality that made the vulnerability even more poignant when it pierced her tough surface.

  “I guess I fe
lt sorry for her,” he continued. “I knew what she was looking for…and that she wouldn’t find it here. Not in this dammed town.”

  “And what was she looking for?”

  “Her home. Her past. Roots, if you will,” he said, each word gaining more bitterness than the one before. He shifted his weight uncomfortably, embarrassed, I thought, by revealing too much.

  “Minnie and I are a lot alike,” he added. “We’re loners, but always looking for something more.”

  I wasn’t sure what I wanted to reply to that, so avoided it. “What kind of agreement do you have?”

  “Nothing official, a handshake deal.”

  “Code of the West, and all that?”

  “Right.” This time I got the super deluxe smile, the one he saved for special effect. And rightfully so. It was a powerful weapon, and sent my stomach into silly school girl flutters that made me feel like a marionette whose strings had been pulled.

  “Since Enright was using the leased land for summer pasture,” he went on, “Minnie thought the least she could do was let him continue, so she signed a grazing contract. Unfortunately, there’s a bit more to grazing other people’s stock than she expected. Enough at least, so that she needed to hire someone to keep an eye on things. I was at loose ends for the moment and agreed to help out for a month or so until she decided whether to stay or sell. In turn, I got first option to buy. I wanted some thinking time, and it was a good chance to get a close look at the property and the problems that go along with it.”

  As well as an excellent opportunity to manipulate Minnie into a most advantageous decision for him. Something she was not unaware of. Well, I wasn’t ready to take him at face value, either.

  So I stuck my foot in further. “Does Minnie really think you’d ruin her fences, or whatever? You didn’t say much to defend yourself.”

  His heavy shoulders moved noncommittally. “Minnie likes to needle people. That flinty core keeps things interesting, but I try not to give satisfaction when she hits her mark. I get the idea she doesn’t like men much; a typical old maid.” He added blandly, “A lot like you.”