Trouble At Mesquite Flats by Will Keen

Author:Will Keen [Keen, Will]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Robert Hale
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Ten

‘Give that to me again,’ Dan McReady said, ‘because I’m damned if I can make sense of it.’

He was leaning against the wall outside the jail, soaking up the hot sun. His son Pete was in the doorway, smoking. They were both looking idly across at the livery barn where Mesquite Flats’ second deputy was talking to George Plant about a night-time intruder.

‘I talked to several people at the Yuma Penitentiary. I discovered that Bradley Shaw told a colleague he had evidence proving Bodene Rich had been wrongly imprisoned.’

‘Right. But Shaw didn’t give details.’

‘No. This colleague pressed him for more information, but got nowhere. He politely suggested to Shaw that by releasing Rich the warden was putting his job on the line. Shaw kept his mouth shut, grinned sort of secretively, and that was that.’

‘Not quite. What was it this colleague said? Shaw told him he would be putting all relevant details, including the guilty man’s name, into a letter?’

‘Yes.’

‘But why would Shaw send a letter to his place of work? What does that suggest?’

‘Shaw was finished. When he left Yuma that day, he had no intention of ever going back to the prison.’

‘Which is neither here nor there, but is still mighty interesting,’ McReady said softly. ‘Dammit, he had a name, kept it to himself, then got bushwhacked before he could put anything in writing.’

‘But the information he had must have come from somewhere, from someone. Someone out there knows who attacked Red Booth. And that someone has to be here in Mesquite Flats.’

‘Yeah.’

Dan McReady nodded, watched a loaded buckboard trundle by in a cloud of dust, spat within inches of basking lizard.

‘What was it Rich said when he rode into town the day Shaw was plugged?’

Pete flicked his cigarette into the street.

‘He told us to look at Al Ferris for the attack on Red Booth.’

‘Ferris works for Dieter Bauer, and that was the point Rich was making. But talking to Bauer would be a waste of time.’

‘Same goes for his son, Kris. But there is one person at the Bauer spread blessed with some intelligence.’

‘Ellie Bauer; and it’s no secret that married woman was pretty thick with Warden Bradley Shaw,’ McReady said, and he pushed away from the wall. ‘You’d best go out there and talk to her.’

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