Hell's Jaw Pass by Max O'Hara

Author:Max O'Hara [O'Hara, Max]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pinnacle Books
Published: 2021-05-21T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 20

Daniel Stoleberg knocked on the closed door lightly with the back of his hand. “Pa? Can I come in?”

Stockburn heard only muttering on the other side of the door.

Frowning, Daniel twisted the knob and opened the door. “You have a visitor, Pa.”

Stockburn waited in the hall, hat in his hands, while Daniel limped into the room, which was no larger than the average bedroom. Beyond Daniel, Wolf saw a cluttered rolltop desk and some simple pine shelves bowing under the weight of many books and papers. A clock on a wall showed the wrong time.

Young Stoleberg turned his head to his left and said, “I have a visitor for you, Pa. Isn’t that nice? We don’t get many visitors.”

“Oh?” came a low, phlegmy voice. It sounded like someone waking up from a nap. “Who is it?”

Daniel glanced at Stockburn.

Wolf stepped into the room, shuttling his gaze to the left. Rufus Stoleberg sat on one end of a battered sofa partly covered by an old Indian trade blanket. The man looked ancient and lumpy and unshaven in his longhandle red underwear and frayed plaid robe loosely tied about his bulbous waist. He wore thick wool socks; his big toe with a thick yellow nail protruded from a hole in the right one.

The room was badly cluttered with disarranged chairs and a couple of low tables on which sat glasses, bottles, playing cards, and overfilled ashtrays. There were plates with old food scraps. A small plate bearing an uneaten sandwich sat on a pile of yellowed papers on a low table to the old man’s left, accompanied by a half-full glass of milk with a faint vertical steak on one side, where the man had recently taken a sip maybe a half hour ago.

The room was foul with old-man odors and stale cigar smoke.

Rufus Stoleberg looked at Stockburn, squinting each eye in turn, his heavy gray brows moving out of sinc with each other, like two hovering moths above eyes as blue as the autumn sky over the Wind Rivers.

“Hello, Mister Stoleberg,” Wolf said. “I’m Wolf Stockburn. I’m a rail detective from Wells Fargo. I’m here to investigate the murder of the Hell’s Jaw Rail crew.”

Stoleberg appeared not to have heard the question. He stared at Stockburn with a strange expression, the moths of his brows still fluttering above his eyes. His face looked like an ancient hide water flask only half-full, creased where it fell in around itself. It was carpeted with several days of steel-filing beard stubble.

Stoleberg sat slumped back in the sofa, his neck bulging out and forming a thick, fleshy pedestal for his bullet-shaped head.

“Did you hear me, Mister Stoleberg?” Wolf asked. “You let me know if I need to speak loud—”

“Sandy?” the old man said, his blue eyes slowly widening and glinting with a strange recognition. He jerked to life, squirming around, twisting his shoulders, struggling to sit up. “Sandy-boy?”

Stockburn glanced from the old man to Daniel, who returned the look then turned to his father. “No, Pa.

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