Travelin' Money Read online

  Travelin’ Money

  Paul Lederer writing as Logan Winters

  ONE

  It’s rare to have someone help you out when you really need it. Especially if you happen to be down and out in the middle of a white-sand ocean without a spar to cling to. Which was where Joe Sample found himself. A rangy, sandy haired man who just now was forced to walk using a cane, not only was Joe broke, he was crippled and on the dark side of hope, sitting in the shadow of the gallows in a desert oasis called Dog Stain in Yuma, Arizona.

  The gallows mentioned were very real. Just about every other day the hangman at Yuma prison took center stage at the noon hour and dropped the trap rehearsing for Sunday when the drop would be real beneath the feet of some condemned man or other. Joe Sample was used to the sound by now, but the first time he heard the grate and snap of the device it had jolted him out of his own self-pity and nearly caused him to spill his morning coffee on the floor of the Dog Stain Hotel.

  The hotel had been built before there was a prison in Yuma, Arizona. A lady of dubious origin named Desiree Delfino had come there with her crusty man-friend, a desperado named Larkspur, or so Joe had been told, to build the most luxurious hotel in the territory – its name had originally been the Desiree-Royale – built to pave the way for Miss Delfino’s grand entrance into Yuma’s society, such as it was. The hotel was elegant, it was plush, with gilt fixtures on the walls and Arabian carpets on the floor, purchased with money the two pilgrims had made quickly somewhere and never wished to return to. The Royale was all Miss Delfino could have wanted. Until a mongrel dog sneaked into the main ballroom – as it was then called – and performed a natural, disgusting act on the sixteenth-century Persian carpet there the night of the Royale’s grand opening.

  Miss Delfino, witnessing this, flew into a rage which caused her to fall into an epileptic fit, Larkspur, in a way that could only have been expected of a highly indignant man of the West, began shooting at the scurrying perpetrator of the foul deed just as the local dignitaries began arriving. Larkspur shot the glass out of a window, wounded a city councilman and winged an impressive blue peacock imported for this special occasion.

  Miss Delfino never recovered from the episode. The dignitaries fled before Larkspur’s salvoes, and the Desiree-Royale surrendered to its inevitable decay, forced to accept the ignoble moniker it had borne forever afterwards: The Dog Stain Hotel.

  Now it was butted up next to the white menace of the Yuma Territorial Prison, gutted of gilt and carpets, and surviving as cheap accommodation for penniless or near-penniless travelers, of which Joe Sample was one of the former.

  Joe who had come to Yuma as a drover with a cattle herd owned by Poetry Givens with a gather of 300 Double Seven beeves meant to sustain the staff of the prison and the army garrison there, had gotten himself pinned up against a pole in the corral by a wild-eyed, half-ton brindle steer which did not know when to stop pushing, and awakened in bed at the Dog Stain with his leg broken in two places.

  At first Joe Sample had enjoyed his rehabilitation at the Dog Stain. His upstairs room was one of pleasant decrepitude – unraveling carpet, faded wallpaper – but there was a high cathedral-type window from which he could gaze. Although the view was nothing but a few tumble-down adobes and a shack or two stretching out along the street in an easterly direction before the implacable desert resumed dominion, the sunrise was pretty through the smeared glass, and the bed, though a little noisy when he settled, was comfortable enough. It had everything over sleeping on the desert. But as the days, then weeks, passed by and his leg refused to heal properly, he got a little weary of the vista and squeaky bed, of staring at the faded, stained wallpaper.

  At first Joe had enjoyed having kitchen-cooked meals, juicy steaks and homemade apple pie, followed by coffee and then a few beers at the adjacent saloon.

  But after a while the money Poetry Givens had paid him off with ran out: ‘Enough to see you through until your leg is better. You’ll always have a job on the Double Seven, Joe,’ was what Poetry had said at the time, and no doubt he had believed it. But the money was not enough. Eventually as his damaged leg continued to defy him, Joe had cut down on his food expenses, settling for biscuits and gravy for supper. The beer was now a luxury he could not afford. Joe spent most days at a table in the hotel restaurant sipping coffee, which he now had to request if he wanted his cup refilled, and this was done grudgingly by the help.

  What was a broken-down cowboy to do when his game leg didn’t allow for any travel?

  Not so slowly, Joe Sample went broke. He had not a friend in Yuma, and the stable man had sold Joe’s horse to cover what he owed for its keep.

  This was Joe Sample’s condition when, that Sunday morning, hanging day at the prison, Pierce Malloy entered the restaurant, a wild look in his eye, his head swiveling as if searching frantically for assistance or unknown enemies. It was both, Joe discovered later. Malloy’s eyes locked with those of Joe Sample and he walked heavily forward across the wooden floor toward Joe’s table. Joe did not know Malloy except by name. The unusually well-dressed man had been in town for a week or so on private business and the two had nodded at intervals as they passed each other on the stairs or in the lobby.

  Malloy approached Joe’s table and sagged on to the wooden chair opposite. The usually impeccable man’s black suit was dusty, his formerly waxed mustache fluffed out into untidy tufts of silver hairs. As he had crossed the room, Joe had noticed that Malloy was limping badly, more heavily than Joe himself, and there were spots of blood on his scuffed boots. That the leaking fluid seemed to be dripping from the top of the boot seemed to indicate that the entire boot was filled with blood. Malloy seated himself, placing his hands flat on the table to ease his change of position. Seated, he threw back his head, and breathed in heavily through his mouth. A shallow sigh emerged from his throat. Malley composed himself and thrust out a hand.

  ‘Joe Sample, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ Joe said, taking Malloy’s hand which was pale, had long tapered fingers like a musician’s but with an unusually strong grip.

  ‘I thought I remembered,’ Malloy said, sighing again. He touched his fingers to his heart and breathed in deeply, slowly, ‘I’d like to offer you a proposition, Mr Sample.’

  ‘Me?’

  ‘I understand that you are down on your luck.’

  ‘That’s an understatement,’ Joe answered. ‘I’m close to the bone – can’t pay for my hotel or board, can’t buy a horse. …’

  Malloy went on as if Joe had not spoken. ‘There isn’t much time,’ Malloy said in a whispery voice. He looked back across his shoulder. ‘I’ll never make it out of Yuma, let alone back to Newberry Town. You see, I just shot the prison warden.’

  As if to emphasize his confession, the trap of the gallows banged open as it was tested for the Sunday execution. Joe started a little. ‘I don’t see—’ Joe began. Malloy cut him off.

  ‘I’ll be next,’ Malloy said, glancing toward the window beyond which the gallows could be seen within the prison courtyard. ‘I tried to do right but…. I understand you need some help, Joe. I can help you,’ Malloy said, his eyes growing anxious, eager, ‘if you will promise to help me.’

  ‘If the law’s after you, I can’t get involved,’ Joe replied, holding his hands up, palms toward Malloy.

  ‘I don’t want you to get into my fight. Nothing like that,’ Malloy said, glancing toward the door behind him again. ‘You see, I can’t travel either. Not now. I think my shin bone’s cracked.

  ‘What I’m willing to do, Joe Sample, is to grubstake you – I’m offering you a little traveling money if you will ride to Newberry and deliver something to the woman who’s about to be widowed there.’

  ‘Your wife?’ Joe
asked.

  ‘Not mine.’ Malloy glanced toward the gallows where a thin figure was being led up the steps. ‘His! That’s my brother, Amos. I thought I could get to the warden – he’s been known to take a bribe – and work out a way that Amos could beat the noose. Amos has a new bride, pretty little thing and … but the warden wouldn’t listen. It seems he took a particular dislike to Amos. Well, I lost my temper, he lost his.’ Malloy nodded toward his leg. ‘I’ve failed my brother, failed Tess.’

  Malloy reached into his jacket pocket and withdrew a billfold. ‘I want to give you this – a little traveling money, Joe, if you’ll ride up there and tell Tess what has happened, and give her something my brother has hidden out for her. I won’t lie to you – it’s ill-gotten gains, but she will need it more than the Territory of Arizona does. That’s what I was going to offer to the warden if he’d let Amos off. …

  ‘Take this, Joe,’ Malloy said and he shoved four large banknotes and a small stack of gold money across the table. It was, Joe saw at a quick count, around $200. A fortune for someone in his situation.

  ‘A little traveling money, you’ll need it. I just want you to do this one favor for me. I’ll draw you a map of where Amos left his package.’ Malloy had produced an envelope and was hastily sketching on the back of it.

  Joe said, ‘You’re talking about a stash of stolen money?’

  ‘It was taken from someone who shouldn’t have had it in the first place – it was Amos’s money. I can’t explain it all right now, Joe. There’s little time. I just want you to do this for me, since I won’t be able to do it myself.’ Malloy slid the map across the table. Joe pocketed it hesitantly.

  ‘How do you know you can trust me, Mr Malloy?’ he asked, and Malloy answered thinly.

  ‘I don’t really have a lot of choice, Joe. Not now,’ he added as the back door of the restaurant banged open. Six men burst in, two of them wearing prison guard uniforms.

  One of them shouted out. ‘Here he is!’ and raised the rifle he was carrying. Malloy, quick as a cat, drew his revolver and rolled to the floor, firing upward. He shot two of the pursuers, before they gunned him down, the bullets driving those present to seek cover behind the counter, under tables, as the acrid smoke roiled across the room.

  One of the jailers nudged the inert body of Pierce Malloy with his boot toe. Another turned on Joe Sample, who was just rising from behind the table, bracing himself because of his gimpy leg. ‘What part do you have in this?’ the man in uniform demanded roughly.

  Joe said truthfully: ‘I don’t even know the man. He wanted to sit in the first chair he came to. It was at my table.’

  ‘Are you saying you aren’t involved?’ the guard demanded.

  ‘I don’t even know what I’m not involved in,’ Joe answered with a poor attempt at a smile.

  The members of the pursuing band watched with doubt and some impatience as the crippled cowhand picked up his cane from the floor and hobbled off toward his room. Joe heard one of them say, ‘That man knows something,’ and another answer:

  ‘What’s the difference now? We got Pierce Malloy, didn’t we?’

  That was that, Joe thought as he sat on his bed, the money Malloy had given him spread out on the sun-faded blue bedspread. Two hundred and twenty dollars. A fortune. Enough riches to escape this trap he found himself in. Payment for a small favor. Transporting stolen treasure.… Joe Sample frowned as he pondered that. Pierce Malloy hadn’t actually said that it was stolen, but that it was ‘illgotten’. But Joe had gotten the idea.

  What did it matter to him! If it was stolen, let the law take care of that. The money he had in front of him now had been freely given to perform a task. Deliver the package, the fortune – whatever it was – to a woman named Tess living in Newberry. Joe didn’t know where the town was, but someone would know. There weren’t that many self-sustaining towns in the desert.

  If the ‘treasure’ was stolen, too bad for whoever it had come from. Joe only knew that he had taken money to deliver this ‘package’, and he had made his promise to a dying man. A vow like that has to be taken seriously.

  It was too bad there hadn’t been time to hear the whole story, but the prison guards had taken care of that. Joe would have liked to know where the money came from, why they had hanged Amos Malloy, what Pierce Malloy’s role had been in acquiring the money, and who it was supposed to belong to.

  For now, Joe Sample concentrated on his own business.

  He threw his spare shirt and handful of other worn clothes on to a blanket and rolled it tightly. After consideration, he left his cane behind. He would make it somehow.

  Assuming a calm reserve he did not feel, Joe paid the panther-eyed man at the downstairs hotel desk. The clerk who had been eyeballing Joe hard during this last week now turned on the charm as money exchanged hands, and even told Joe that he valued his patronage.

  Joe needed a horse – that was the first thing. Shouldering his bedroll, he walked out into the blinding light of the heated south Arizona day. Tugging his hat lower, he limped toward the stable where he had left and then lost his little sorrel pony. The shade cast by the stable interior did nothing to cool anyone on this sun-bright, desolate day when not a breath of wind blew. The inhabitants of Yuma were hiding out in their dwellings or in the saloons; not a dog wandered the streets. The local teamsters and laborers had started their work before dawn and were now finished for the day. The pale sky above the prison shimmered as if smoke were suspended there in the hundred-degree heat.

  ‘What can I do for you? Oh, it’s you. Look, mister, you hadn’t paid for—’ The narrow stableman had a truculent voice, fear in his siesta-blurred eyes. He glanced around as if for a weapon, remembering Joe’s temper the last time the two had met. Joe’s ire at finding that his little horse had been sold to a cash buyer had triggered his anger and frustration with events.

  ‘Take it easy, Wolfe, I just came over here looking to buy another horse.’

  ‘Oh, is that so? Sure, Mr Samples. What’d you do? Turn up the right card?’

  ‘Something like that,’ Joe said. He dropped his bedroll to the ground and drifted down the musty walkway between the stabled horses’ stalls. Wolfe – a tall, gaunt man in striped gray coveralls and a torn straw hat – was nearly on his heels. Joe paused to stroke the muzzle of a fine-looking bay horse with lively eyes.

  ‘That horse is stabled up here privately,’ Wolfe said. ‘Fact is, only the tall black down at the end and this little buckskin are for sale. The others are all owned.’ Joe nodded, frowning. Too bad – he liked the spirited look of the bay.

  Wolfe told him, ‘I got other stock around back. I keep ‘em outside. Those who pay for their horses’ keep get the de-luxe accommodations. I’d be happy to show them other animals to you.’

  The stableman led the way out into the brilliant, heated sunlight where a dozen or so horses could be seen crowded together in the scant shade of a lean-to constructed of unbarked poles and brush. Horseflies troubled them. Tails and ears twitched futilely trying to keep the insects away. There was only half a troughful of greenish, brackish water for the horses. Joe took a liking to two of the animals. There was a spry looking blue roan three or four years old, built for speed, and a dumpy wide-built buckskin with a black mane and tail that looked like it was a long-walking horse.

  The young, prancing blue roan was tempting, but it seemed a little fragile for hard traveling, so eventually, after checking teeth and ligaments, eyes and hoofs, Joe decided on the buckskin. ‘I will need tack,’ Joe said as Wolfe led the buckskin out of the pen by its mane.

  ‘I think I’ve got a saddle that’ll suit.’

  He did. It was Joe Sample’s own old saddle. Apparently the new owner of his lost sorrel horse was more particular than Joe was. It grated a little, buying back his own saddle, but it wasn’t Wolfe’s fault that Joe hadn’t paid him for keeping his horse.

  Wolfe voluntarily saddled Joe’s new horse for him in deference to Joe’s injured leg and the ca
sh money with which he had paid him. As the stableman was tightening the twin cinches on his Texas-rigged saddle, Joe asked him:

  ‘Did you ever hear of a place called Newberry?’

  ‘Newberry?’ Wolfe’s long face creased with deep thought. ‘I believe it’s up toward Flagstaff, if it’s the place I’m thinking of. Was it ever called Newberry Falls?’

  ‘I wouldn’t know.’

  ‘I believe that’s the place. The county recorder has maps of the entire territory – you might want to stop and ask him.’

  ‘I probably will. Thanks,’ Joe said, letting Wolfe give him a leg up into the saddle. He had spent hours, days, years perched on it, but it felt new and different after his long rehabilitation.

  ‘Is that where you’re headed?’ Wolfe asked. ‘Newberry?’

  ‘I don’t really know,’ Joe said. ‘I suppose I’ll get there eventually.’

  ‘Well, thanks,’ the stableman said. ‘I hope you have a safe trip. And I hope we’ll be seeing you back in Yuma one day.’

  Joe stifled a laugh. ‘When the desert starts sprouting pomegranate trees.’

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘Thanks for the help, Wolfe,’ Joe said, turning the buckskin horse’s head toward the open twin doors at the front of the stable.

  Joe rode the horse at an easy walk down the main street of town. He glanced at the mostly-illegible sign on the hotel face. Beneath the sun-blistering he could still make out the once-gilt lettering, ‘Desiree Royale’, faded and beaten as the lady who had built the place must be by now.

  He went in to see the county recorder’s maps and emerged in minutes. Wolfe had been right – Newberry was in the direction of Flagstaff – a long, long way off. He stopped at the general store to purchase a few supplies from a fat, sun-reddened, almost hostile, desert-defeated woman, and started on his way again. He wondered if the storekeeper knew that she was better off now than the flamboyant Desiree Delfino.

  Before taking his final leave of Yuma, Joe halted the buckskin horse in the scant shade of a lone cottonwood, its curling dry leaves stirring in the rising wind from the east. He withdrew the envelope with the treasure map Pierce Malloy had scrawled on its back, tried to orient himself, and then started on. He wasn’t sure he could ever find the location Malloy had sketched, let alone deliver whatever it was to Amos Malloy’s widowed bride. If there was blood on the money, so be it – that was something for the widow Malloy to carry on her conscience, not him.