Buchanan Gets Mad by Jonas Ward

Author:Jonas Ward [Ward, Jonas]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-4405-4899-4
Publisher: F+W Media
Published: 1986-10-15T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Nine

IT WAS not possible, Hallet kept telling his harassed deputies that night, for a good-looking Mexican girl in a distinctive black dress to disappear within the precincts of Salvation. The search for her had been instituted as soon as Buchanan had been remanded to his cell, with all three deputies fanning out over the countryside, questioning everyone they met, returning empty-handed.

She had not had time to reach River Street, not on foot, but Bull Hynman had ridden there immediately. He had taken Birdy’s place apart, he reported, and she was not hiding there. He had searched the livery with a lantern from top to bottom, gone through the other stores—even made a wild room-to-room search of Maude’s in the hope that the girl might have returned to the very place she was trying so desperately to escape.

Lafe and Enos had gone over Sinai and Genesis Streets as carefully as they knew how, gone out of town over every possible trail she might have followed, returned to the office of the stormy-faced sheriff to report no sign of her.

Hallett had gone out himself, in the gleaming black buggy, for he took it as a personal affront that Salvation, the town he owned, could dare to hold any secret from him. Three times that night he drove past Renton House, oblivious to the old man who rocked back and forth on the porch—old, arthritic, ineffectual Pete Nabor who had made Juanita disappear right under the sheriff’s hawkish nose.

Pete had been a keen observer to the happenings all that late afternoon—the roundup of the half-senile jury, the transportation of first the girl to the church, then the big stranger—and when he’d seen her running frenziedly into Sinai Street, obviously with no idea which way to turn, he had waved to her, called out for her to come to the porch.

And something in the tone of his voice had reached the girl’s intuition, persuaded her against anything that was purely reasonable that he wanted to help. So she came to him, and in half-forgotten pidgin-Spanish he showed her the little doorway in the side of the staircase that opened onto a surprisingly spacious stone-walled room. Nabor knew about its existence for the simple reason that he had built this hotel twenty years ago, when all this country had been known as the San Joaquin Strip. He’d been one of the first mountain men to come down and trade with the Mexicans. Now it was Salvation, and the Mexicans had been driven out, but there were still a few things about it that Sidney Hallett would have to learn for himself.

The hours dragged by, the fruitless search was repeated over and over again, and Juanita, of course, stayed safe and snug in her hideout. Nabor kept up a running conversation with her, enjoying to the hilt this measure of satisfaction against the sheriff he so cordially hated. He even managed to smuggle down the supper of ham and beans that the maid served to him on the porch.

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