Message on the Wind Read online

  Oddly, not all the buildings looked new. This did not have the appearance of a town that had been built within the last two years. The sheriff’s office, in fact, looked as if it had been around for decades.

  He entered without knocking, and found himself inside a small, cramped, good old-fashioned sheriff’s office, with all the comforts of home for a sheriff, including the potbellied stove.

  A man wearing a badge was standing before a gun rack, holding a carbine and a rag. The metal of the rifle gleamed with oil.

  “Help ya?” he asked.

  He was fairly young for a sheriff, mid-thirties. He put the rifle back on the rack and laid down the rag, then turned to face Clint head-on. He wore a well-cared-for Colt on his right hip.

  “I’ve got a question,” Clint said. “Thought I’d ask the local law rather than just stop somebody on the street. Besides, they all seem to be staring at me funny.”

  “What’s the question?”

  “Where am I?”

  “Come again?”

  “What’s the name of this town?”

  “You don’t know where you are, friend?”

  “If I did, I wouldn’t be asking,” Clint said.

  “You lose your memory or somethin’?” the lawman asked. “Hit your head?”

  “Nothing like that,” Clint said. “I just didn’t see any signposts, and none of the businesses have the name of the town on them.”

  “So you just want to know the name of the town?” the sheriff asked. “That it?”

  “That’s about it.”

  “I got a question for you first.”

  “Go ahead.”

  “What’s your name?”

  “Clint Adams,” Clint said. He could see the name scored a bull’s-eye with the man. “Now can you answer mine?”

  “Sure, friend, sure,” the sheriff said. “You’re in the town of Organ Pipe.”

  THIRTY

  “Are you sure?” Clint asked.

  “Now, what kind of fool question is that?” the lawman asked. “Of course I’m sure.”

  “No, sorry—look, that’s not what I meant,” Clint said,

  “but all the information I’ve gotten about Organ Pipe lately is that it was burned to the ground because of some kind of plague.”

  The sheriff put both hands on the front of his gun belt. Clint had a feeling the man could get to his Colt just fine if he had a mind to.

  “Where’d you hear that?”

  “Around.”

  “And to hear it, you must’ve been askin’ questions,” the sheriff said.

  “That’s right.”

  “Why?” the man asked. “What’s your interest in Organ Pipe?”

  “What’s your name?”

  “Patterson,” the man said, “Sheriff Harry Patterson.”

  “How long have you been sheriff?” Clint asked.

  “Long enough,” the lawman said.

  “How long has this town been here?” Clint asked.

  “A couple of years, maybe less.”

  “You got a newspaper here?”

  “Sure.”

  “Called the Organ Pipe Register?”

  The sheriff frowned.

  “What’s all this to you, Adams?” he asked. “What’s the Gunsmith’s interest in Organ Pipe?”

  “I got a message saying somebody here needed help,” Clint said.

  “Message from who?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “And you came running?” the sheriff asked. “Because you got a message from somebody you don’t know?”

  “It’s become a bad habit,” Clint said.

  “Bad habits can be hard to break.”

  “Don’t I know it.”

  “Look,” Clint said, “something’s going on here. I don’t know what, but I intend to find out.”

  “What makes you think somethin’s wrong?” Patterson asked.

  “Can I have a seat?” Clint asked.

  “Be my guest.”

  The sheriff relaxed for the first time since Clint entered the office, and sat down.

  Clint took the newspaper clipping from his pocket and handed it to the sheriff across his desk. The man took it and looked at both sides.

  “This is what brought you here?” he asked. “A scribble on an old newspaper?”

  “Is that from your town newspaper?”

  “Looks like it.”

  “It’s dated over two years ago.”

  The sheriff looked at it again. “When did you get this?”

  “Not long ago,” Clint said. “It came into my camp on the wind.”

  “Blowing on the wind, you mean? It could’ve been blowing around Arizona for a long time.”

  “I know it.”

  “Why would you respond to somethin’ like this?” Patterson asked. “Don’t you have other things in your life to keep you busy?”

  “Not at the moment,” Clint said. “It started out as curiosity, but then people started lying to me about Organ Pipe, until I talked with a convict at Yuma Prison named Joe Hickey.”

  “Hickey?” The sheriff sat up. “You talked to Joe Hickey?”

  “That’s right.”

  “He’s in Yuma?”

  “Right again.”

  “Son of a bitch!”

  “You know him?”

  “Oh, I know him,” Patterson said. “I know him real well.”

  “Well, he’s the one who told me Organ Pipe was burned to the ground because of a plague.”

  “A plague?” Patterson laughed.

  “You find that funny?”

  “You got your horse outside?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Come with me,” Patterson said. He stood up and grabbed his hat, headed for the door.

  “Where we going?” Clint asked, standing and falling into step with the lawman.

  “First to the livery to get my horse,” Sheriff Patterson said, “and then I’m gonna show you somethin’, Mr. Adams.”

  THIRTY-ONE

  The ride took about three hours. Clint never asked Sheriff Patterson where they were going, because he had an idea. Finally, they came to the site of what looked like an old fire. It covered enough acreage to have been an entire town.

  “Organ Pipe?” Clint asked.

  “The original town of Organ Pipe,” Patterson said. “This is where it stood.”

  “What happened?”

  “I’ll tell you what happened,” Patterson said. “That is, I’ll tell you what I think happened, but I can’t prove it.”

  “Okay.”

  “Joe Hickey burned it to the ground,” Patterson said. “Hickey and his men.”

  “How many men?”

  “Four. Five. I’m not sure.”

  “Why?”

  “You’d have to ask Hickey that,” Patterson said. “The Joe Hickey I know might have done it just for fun.”

  “And his men? Why would they have done it?”

  “Because he told them to.”

  “Were they that loyal to him?”

  “They were that frightened of him,” Patterson said, “as was the rest of the town.”

  “Were you sheriff then?”

  “No.”

  “Who was?”

  “A man named Bockwinkle.”

  “The man who is now the sheriff of Yuma?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Why isn’t he the sheriff of the new Organ Pipe?” Clint asked.

  “He didn’t stay around,” Patterson said, “didn’t think Organ Pipe could be rebuilt.”

  “Well, it wasn’t rebuilt, was it?” Clint asked. “You just named this other town Organ Pipe, right?”

  “Wrong,” Patterson said. “The people rebuilt their town. They just didn’t want to do it here.”

  “Your Organ Pipe doesn’t look all new.”

  “It isn’t,” Patterson said. “There were some buildings there already, but they’d been abandoned. The people decided that an abandoned town was a good head start
, so they built on that site.”

  “Your Organ Pipe doesn’t look fully populated, either.”

  Patterson explained, “We’re still working on that.”

  “What about all the people from this Organ Pipe?” Clint asked.

  “A lot of them moved on rather than rebuild.”

  “Why?”

  “You’d have to ask them,” Patterson said. “My guess is they thought Joe Hickey might come back.”

  “You knew Hickey, and suspected him of burning down the town,” Clint said. “Why didn’t you go after him?”

  “I wasn’t the sheriff then.”

  “Deputy?”

  “No,” Patterson said, “I wasn’t wearin’ a badge. I was . . . a merchant.”

  “How’d you get to be sheriff?”

  “Somebody had to take the job once we rebuilt,” Patterson said. “I came forward and the town council hired me.”

  “Why didn’t the people just rebuild the town right here?”

  “They took a vote, decided to move west,” Patterson said. “Too many bad memories here.”

  Clint scanned the site with his eyes. The buildings had almost all been burned to the ground. The remnants were black, and so was the ground around them.

  “Looks like a pretty intense fire.”

  “It was,” Patterson said. “It was a dry season, the town went up like a tinderbox.”

  “Any fatalities?”

  “Some.”

  “So Hickey and his men committed murder.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Did Sheriff Bockwinkle go after them?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “He said he had no proof they did it.”

  “So he didn’t share your theory?”

  “My knowledge,” Patterson said, “and no, he didn’t share it.”

  “So let me get this straight, Sheriff,” Clint said. “You’re telling me that the burning of Organ Pipe had nothing do with a disease of any kind?”

  “That’s what I’m tellin’ you.”

  “So why was that message written?”

  Patterson shrugged.

  “You’ll have to find the person who wrote it, and ask them yourself.”

  THIRTY-TWO

  They rode back to Organ Pipe, got there just before dusk.

  “You gonna stay awhile?” Sheriff Patterson asked at the livery.

  “Overnight, for sure,” Clint said, “maybe a day or two after that.”

  “What for?”

  “Like you said,” Clint answered, “to find out for myself.”

  They put their horses up at the livery, and the sheriff walked Clint back to his office.

  “Hotel down the street is nice,” he said. “Quiet. In fact, the whole town is quiet, and I’d like to keep it that way.”

  “Why do you think Joe Hickey told me that Organ Pipe had been burned because of a disease?”

  Patterson shrugged.

  “I’m sure he wouldn’t want to admit that he burned it down just to see it burn.”

  “And you don’t know who any of his other men were?” Clint asked.

  “I know a couple he used to hang around with,” the sheriff said, “but I can’t say they were with him when he burned the town down.”

  “What were their names?” Clint asked. “The ones you know about.”

  “Charlie Cross and Dick Lawford.”

  “Where are they now?”

  “Far as I know,” Patterson said, “they’re dead.”

  “How’d they die?”

  “They were killed in separate robbery attempts last year,” the lawman said. “At least, that’s what I heard.”

  Clint was carrying his saddlebags and rifle.

  “I’m going to go get a room and leave my gear. Where’s a good place to eat?”

  “Right across the street from the hotel,” Patterson said. “Best restaurant in town.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Do me a favor, will you?” Patterson asked.

  “Yeah?”

  “Let me know when you decide to leave town.”

  “I’ll do that, Sheriff,” Clint said.

  The hotel was small and clean, with no dining room, but that was okay. Clint left his things in the room and went across the street to the restaurant recommended by the sheriff. Not only was the food good, but it was served to him by a lovely waitress in her thirties who had a sunny personality. He wondered if she was new to Organ Pipe, or if she was one of the citizens who had stayed to rebuild the town.

  He was thinking steak as he entered, but the waitress’s suggestion and the smell changed his mind and he went with the special of the day, beef stew.

  He drank coffee with his food, and afterward had more coffee with a slice of peach pie.

  “Don’t get too many people askin’ for peach,” the waitress said. “Usually apple, or sometimes rhubarb, but we keep peach on hand for special people.”

  She gave him a hint as to how special she thought he was by bumping him with a firm hip. He could feel the heat emanating from her body right through her apron.

  It was dark out by the time he finished his supper.

  “Just get into town today?” the waitress asked him.

  “That’s right,” he said. “I’m staying at the hotel across the street.”

  “Business or pleasure?” she asked.

  “Somewhere in between, I guess.”

  “Oh, a mystery man,” she said, with a big smile. “I like mysteries.”

  “You do?”

  She nodded.

  “This town is sort of a mystery to me.”

  “Really? Why?”

  “Well, I remember a town called Organ Pipe, but it wasn’t here. It was farther . . . east.”

  “That was the old Organ Pipe,” she said. “This is the new Organ Pipe.”

  “What happened to the old one?”

  “Oh, it burned down.”

  “Really? When?”

  “A couple of years ago.”

  “What happened?”

  She lowered her voice and said, “Well, nobody really knows the whole story, but—”

  “Rachel!”

  She cringed, then turned and looked at the man standing in the kitchen doorway.

  “You got work to do, girl,” the man said.

  He wasn’t just standing in the doorway, he filled it. Well over six feet, and almost that wide, he had black, wiry hair on his arms, which, assuming he was the cook, Clint was glad he had not found on his plate.

  “I gotta go, mister,” Rachel said.

  “Clint,” he said, “my name’s Clint. Maybe I’ll see you later.”

  She smiled and said, “Yeah, maybe.”

  Clint got up to leave, and the big cook stared at him the whole way to the door.

  THIRTY-THREE

  Clint went to his room to read and wait. If he was any hand at reading women, he figured the waitress, Rachel, would be at his door as soon as she could. She was interested in him, and he was interested in her; only his interest was twofold: He wanted to see what she looked like without her apron, and he wanted to talk to her some more about “old” Organ Pipe.

  He was sitting on the bed reading Mark Twain when a knock came at the door. It was soft, and gave every indication of being a woman’s knock, but he took his gun to the door with him anyway.

  It was Rachel. She smelled of beef stew and pie, not a bad combination.

  Shyly, she asked, “Was I predictable?”

  “Not at all,” he said. “Come in.”

  “So you weren’t waitin’ for me?” she asked, as he closed the door.

  “Well,” he said, turning to face her, “I was hoping. I mean,” he showed her the gun, “would I be holding this if I’d thought it was you?”

  She seemed pleased that she hadn’t been too predictable—even if he was lying.

  He holstered his gun on the bed rail and turned to face her again. He could smell her beneath the cooking smells
, which excited him even more.

  “I probably should’ve went home and took a bath first,” she said, suddenly uncomfortable.

  “I don’t think so,” he said, moving closer to her. She’d removed her apron, but was wearing the same cotton dress. She was buxom, with clear white skin and long dark hair. Her skin betrayed her job, since she didn’t spend much time out in the sun.

  He took her by the shoulders, pulled her to him, and kissed her. Her lips were tentative at first, then softened and became responsive. He wrapped his arms around her, pulling her to him tighter so that her full breasts were crushed against his chest.

  “I—I don’t do this all the time, you know,” she said, pressing her head to his chest. “Go to the rooms of strange men.”

  “I told you my name,” he said. “That means I’m not a strange man.”

  “Clint,” she said, to prove she remembered.

  “That’s right,” he said, pressing his lips to her soft neck, “and you’re Rachel.”

  “Oh my . . .” she said. She shivered as he kissed her neck.

  Slowly, he began to undo the buttons on the back of her dress. When he had more of her skin bare, he ran his fingertips over it and she shivered again. She stepped back long enough for him to remove the dress all the way and peel her undies from her so that she was naked. Her breasts were full, with rounded, heavy undersides, dark brown nipples, and just the a slightest hint of sag. He cupped them in his palms and flicked at the nipples with his thumbs.

  “Who was the big mean-looking guy in the restaurant?” he asked.

  “Who, Andy? He’s just the cook. And the owner.”

  “Not your boyfriend?”

  “No,” she said, closing her eyes as he squeezed her breasts, “not my boyfriend. I—I don’t h-have a boyfriend.”

  “That’s good,” he said, pressing his lips to the upper slopes of her breasts. “So there’s nobody waiting for you at home?”

  “No,” she said, in a breathy voice, “I live by myself.”

  He lifted her breasts and touched the tip of his tongue to her nipples. He flicked then easily, then took them into his mouth and sucked them hard.

  “Clint?”

  “Yes?”

  “It’s been a long time for me,” she said. “Can we make this last? I—I don’t know when the next time will be.”

  “Well,” he said, “as far as I’m concerned, the next time won’t be long after this time. I mean, we have all night, right?”