“I don’t believe it. And I’m beginning to wonder about that nervous breakdown you claim you had.”
“Is there any way I can coax you to mind your own business?”
“Maybe there is. Will you answer one question honestly? Bill, are you in trouble? Are you running from anything? Is there anything I can do to help?”
“I’m not in trouble. I’m not running from anything. I don’t need any help. If that was one question you must be triplets. Now let me ask a question. Are you going to worry about that gun?”
She studied his face earnestly. “I wonder,” she said, “if you’ve changed a lot since the days when I tagged around after you.”
“What’s that got to do with it?”
“If you haven’t changed much, I won’t worry.”
“You better pick another way to judge me. I’m a different guy.”
“I’m not sure,” she said. “Well, I have to get the others to that rodeo. I’ll tell you later if I’m worrying.”
She walked out of the room. He closed the door and locked it. There was certainly no danger that his former pals would ever blow his brains out, because they wouldn’t have anything to aim at. It took real genius for stupidity to leave the door unlocked and fall asleep and then jump up waving the automatic at Holly. For all he knew, she might go running to Doc Brown to ask how you cured homicidal mania.
He went to the window and watched as Holly shepherded the Treasure Trippers into the bus. She seemed fairly calm, and didn’t pull Doc Brown aside for a conference, but you couldn’t tell what was going on inside her head.
There wasn’t anything he could do but go on with his plans, and hope that Holly would decide he was still her football hero. He watched the bus leave, and then dressed for the trip into town. He put on a flowered sports shirt, dark blue slacks and two-toned shoes. He slung a camera on a leather strap over his shoulder. The costume made him officially a tourist, entitled to ask all kinds of questions and poke his nose everywhere without exciting suspicion. He gave the Treasure Trippers a good head start, and walked down the highway into Cheyenne. Nobody paid any attention to him. Now and then he passed tough-looking characters in tight blue jeans and sweaty shirts and broad-brimmed hats, and found that they were inclined to step carefully around him like kids trained not to trample on flower beds. His tourist disguise must be good.
What he wanted to do was check on Russ Nordhoff’s address, make sure he was in town, and work out a plan for moving in on him after dark. In case Russ was out of town —and of course he might be—the idea was to case the setup thoroughly. Then he could return to Cheyenne, at some future date, and know what to do without asking questions that would leave a suspicious trail.
At the first drug store he went in and looked up Russ in the phone book. Nordhoff, Russell J. The guy had an auto repairing shop, which seemed logical. Russ had been a good mechanic when you could get him working. He went into a booth and called the number.
“Hello,” a voice growled. “Hello.”
Good old Russ. Imagine bumping into you here. He said in a high thin voice, “This is Jimmy Smith out to the Bar 4 ranch. I got a car I’d like to sell you, but I can’t get in till tonight. Are you gonna be open tonight, or could I maybe bring it around to your house?”
“Cars,” Russ said disgustedly. “All guys want to do is sell cars, never buy them. I got used cars coming out my ears.”
“I wouldn’t want too much for it. I won it off a guy and I already have a car of my own and if I can get a couple hundred out of it that’s all I want.”
“Bring it around, then. I’ll be working here till ten tonight.”
Something had happened to good old Russ. The guy must have insomnia. Back in the Air Force what he had was sleeping sickness. “Okay,” he said, “I’ll be around.”
He hung up and left the drug store. This ought to be like shooting fish in a barrel, except that Russ was a little too big to get in the average barrel. It might be a good idea to keep remembering how big Russ was, and that he had once done some fighting in the pro ring. Anybody who wanted to get tough with Russ ought to do it from a greater distance than arm’s length.
He checked the address of the garage on his map of Cheyenne and took a walk down that way to make sure he knew the route. It was on a quiet side street east of town, with no houses close. Very convenient. The garage was also within half a mile of the tourist court on U. S. 30 where the Treasure Trip party was staying overnight. Russ couldn’t have chosen the place more thoughtfully.
After returning to the tourist court, he sat around feeding half-smoked cigarettes into ash trays, waiting for the Treasure Trip bus to return. It was nearly six o’clock when he heard it easing to a halt with a tired sigh from its air brakes. He went out to see if there were any signs that Holly had been babbling about the gun to Doc Brown.
First off the bus were Mrs. Craig, Mrs. Anders, Mrs. Cooper and Mrs. Allingham. They were plump middle-aged women who always called each other girls, maybe in the hope that somebody would think they were. Ordinarily he tried to avoid them but now he couldn’t. They closed in on him with squeaks of pleasure and began telling him how much he had missed by not going to the rodeo. The show at the ranch had left them breathless; you might think that a cowboy had tried to fling each of them over his saddle and ride away into the sunset. Other people getting off the bus seemed to be excited, too. Mr. Jorgenson—hardware, Peoria—was telling Mrs. Jorgenson with rare firmness that he thought he would have three fingers of whiskey before dinner, and for once Mrs. Jorgenson wasn’t telling him to remember his stomach. Clara Oakes, the thin girl of about twenty who usually followed her mother like a new calf, had turned maverick and was giggling with the bus driver.
He kept looking for Holly. She hadn’t got off the bus yet.
Mrs. Craig and Mrs. Anders and Mrs. Cooper and Mrs. Allingham kept chattering at him. The reason for all the excitement, he gathered, was a handsome cowboy who had been in the rodeo staged by the ranch. Compared to him, other cowboys were not quite fit to ride on a merry-go-round. After the rodeo the handsome cowboy had apparently talked man-to-woman with Mrs. Craig, Mrs. Anders, Mrs. Cooper and Mrs. Allingham, and had talked man-to-man with Mr. Jorgenson, and had talked boy-to-girl with Clara Oakes. He was very tall and had floppy yellow hair and either blue eyes or gray eyes, according to whether you believed Mrs. Anders or Mrs. Cooper.
Doc Brown got off the bus with Mrs. Brown, waved cheerfully at him and called, “Great show, Wayne. Should have been there.” That sounded innocent enough. The guy wouldn’t have been so casual if Holly had told him about the gun.
George M. Blakeslee climbed out, telling everybody that it had been pretty fair, for a strictly amateur rodeo, but that it didn’t touch the real professional rodeos. Although, of course, everybody knew that in the big rodeos the riders arranged in advance who was to win.
That emptied the bus and Holly hadn’t appeared. He broke in on something Mrs. Allingham was saying, and asked, “Where’s Miss Clark?”
“She was a naughty girl,” Mrs. Anders said playfully. “She stole our cowboy. Didn’t she, girls?”
“Indeed she did,” Mrs. Cooper trilled. “She’s back there in his car.”
He looked where Mrs. Cooper was pointing, and saw a convertible with the top down parked behind the bus. Holly Clark was in it. She was talking gaily to the driver, who wore a big white Stetson slanting back on his floppy yellow hair. That would be the champion cowboy.
“What do you think of that?” Mrs. Allingham asked breathlessly.
He thought it was a pretty good idea. While Holly was playing with her cowboy, she wouldn’t have the time or desire to worry about the problems of Bill Wayne. He said, “She’s been working hard running this tour. Glad to see her having a little fun.”
Mrs.