Chapter 8

I asked the bartender about Jack Harrison, and he could be no more helpful than the first bartender. Dammit, maybe I am not going to get back to Joan as soon as I thought. I had almost finished my terrible excuse for a beer when a man walked through the butterfly doors.

“Hello, Smitty. This here gent is trying to find Jack Harrison. Have you heard any more from him?”

“Naw, I ain’t heard from that bastard since yesterday. If I ever do see him again, I aim to blow a big hole in his gut. He sold me a pair of mules what were supposed to be first class stock, but turned out to be completely busted. That bastard owes me $190, and I aim to collect it out of his hide if he ever shows up!”

I asked, “Where did you last see him? Maybe he is still there.”

“It ain’t likely, but you might try the old McGruder place. He was staying in the abandoned house for the past three weeks. If he ain’t there, then your guess is as good as mine.”

“Thank you, Sir. I will do that. Please tell me how to find the old McGruder place.” I got a series of directions that would take me southwest of Sweetwater. There were some hills in that direction similar to the ones west of Cheyenne. That could explain why Harrison was staying there. It gave him plenty of options if he had to run. It didn’t look like I had much choice, so I planned to head out there tomorrow.

I spent the night with the bedbugs in the local hotel, but I had a decent breakfast to make up for it. At least, the coffee was good. I left town with little real hope for success in finding Harrison, but this was my only lead, so I had to follow it. The McGruder house was easy to spot. It sat atop a low hill and had a good view of the surrounding countryside. Dammit, why couldn’t I come across an easy one once in a while?

From my current position, I couldn’t see anything that would give me some cover as I approached the house. I could see from the style of architecture that the house had been built when the local Indians were at their most troublesome. That would explain why the house was located where it was. It would be damned cold in the winter with the wind whistling around it with no windbreaks, but it sure would let a person know when there were hostile Indians lurking around.

Well, nothing for it but for me to ride up to the house bold as brass and to see what happened after that. There was an obvious path to the front of the house, and I followed that since I had nothing else to go on. I got all the way to the front porch steps without a shot being fired, and that was a pretty good indication that there was nobody hiding out in the house. Nevertheless, I had to look.

I hitched my horse to the rail in front of the house and walked inside. Naturally, the place was well covered with dust except for the paths through it made by somebody walking from room to room. I checked the kitchen and found no food lying about, though I did find some trash in one corner. Further searching of the house did not tell me any more, except that there was no one living here now.

I picked up my horse and headed to the barn. There were signs that a horse had been stabled here for a little while, but nothing else that I could use. I wandered around a little bit just to see what there was to see. That was when I found my first useable clue: a train schedule with a circle drawn in pencil around a particular time of arrival at Bracer Junction.

That town was only 17 miles away, and I could get there before dark if I pushed my horse a little bit. I mounted and headed in the proper direction. The particular train indicated by the pencil mark did not travel every day. In fact, it only operated on Tuesday and Friday, and tomorrow was Friday. That meant that I might find Harrison in Bracer Junction at the train station at 10:57 AM tomorrow. I planned to be there just in case he did show up.

My horse was damned tired by the time we got to Bracer Junction, and I was too. I registered at the hotel after stabling my horse. I was in time for a beef and beans supper with coffee in the hotel dining room, and I was tired enough to go that route. If I had not been so tired, I might well have shot the cook over the quality of that beef and beans. I was pretty damned sure that the cook never ate any of it. Oh, well, this was the back side of the boondocks, so I had to cut them some slack. At least, the coffee was drinkable.

I did not have to hurry the next morning so I found a different place to eat, and I had a much better breakfast than I expected. This was a five-star restaurant compared to the place where I ate supper, and I planned to come back here if I was still in the area the next time I wanted something to eat.

I got to the station a few minutes early. That was a waste because the train was nearly an hour late. So much for the timetable. The thing that bothered me was that I did not see any sign of Jack Harrison. Where the hell could he be? Well, I was not going to waste the trip to Bracer Junction, so I watched the passengers as they got off the train, and that was when I forgot my mad at Jack Harrison. Who did I see but Asa Fletcher leaving the train?

Now this looked interesting. I was willing to bet that Fletcher was about to meet up with Harrison some place, and I could find them both if I just followed Fletcher until that happened. The trick was to keep track of Fletcher without letting him see me. That was going to be tough if Fletcher left Bracer Junction because there was so little natural cover to be found. I figured that I could do it, but it was not going to be easy.

Fletcher went to the hotel and took a room. He went up to his room, and I was pretty sure that he was going to sleep for a while. It was difficult to sleep in a coach seat, so he was probably exhausted and would sleep for several hours. I know that I would under similar circumstances.

That was the perfect opportunity for me to see if Fletcher was registered under his own name or was he using an alias. It probably was not a significant point, but I had a chance to find out, so I did. The hotel clerk usually did not wait behind the counter in the hotel lobby but spent his time in a room back in the nether regions of the hotel. He was summoned by a bell on the counter, so he probably slept back there.

That way, it was easy for me to get a look at the hotel register without anybody being the wiser. I waited until the lobby was empty, and that was a short wait. All I had to do was to go up to the counter and turn the register so that I could read it. I had not paid attention when I checked in, but now I noticed how much variability there was in the penmanship exhibited by the signatures in the register. Anyway, the only one I was interested in was the last entry, because that would have been Fletcher signing in. Yep, he signed in as Asa Fletcher, so he probably did not plan to stay in Bracer Junction very long. That was just a guess, but I was a pretty good student of human nature.

By the way, I was relieved to see that Fletcher’s entry was on the next page from mine. He would not have seen my name unless he was deliberately looking for it. Also, like most “modern” people, I tended to scrawl my signature so that it was actually difficult to read if you didn’t know what you were looking for. That combination was probably enough to keep Fletcher from knowing that I was in town.

My major problem at this point was in keeping track of Fletcher. I had to keep a pretty close watch to be sure that he did not slip past me while I was busy doing something else. Certainly, I was not going pub crawling tonight. Meanwhile, I wondered where on Earth Jack Harrison could be keeping himself.