Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine, Vol. 41, No. 4, October 1977

The man started to speak again, then changed his mind and went on his way without another word. Rudell watched his sailor’s walk, watched him check the next building, and the next, and the next. Watching, Rudell saw the man give only cursory attention to the stable and the old mortuary and the smithy. He paid his main notice to those buildings which had been living quarters.

Through most of the remainder of the morning, Rudell sat and smoked and watched that hardfaced stranger as he quartered the town and never missed a thing. Around noon, Rudell knocked out his pipe and walked over to Tod Spencer’s.

Back in the Thirties, after the gold market had gone to hell, the town of Glory gave its last convulsive kick and died for good and all. The big mill closed down, a fire destroyed half the dwellings and the entire red light district, a record snowfall buried the town that winter, and almost everyone packed up and left.

Ten families remained to scrape the leavings because they couldn’t afford to go anywhere. The parents died, the sisters went off to find obscure relations, two of the sons were killed in War Two, another went away to die in a drunk tank somewhere, still another just plain disappeared. Now five men were left, all in their fifties.

Each had his family claim, each worked it steadily enough to produce enough gold flakes to keep him in essentials, and each ignored the state government which turned their town into a barely-accessible tourist attraction (only one road led here, an unmarked, thirty-miles-long collection of jagged rocks). Warren, the live-in ranger, passed gradually from a state of being tolerated by the five remaining natives of Glory and into a twilight zone of acceptance.

Tod Spencer, who owned the biggest house, had turned it into the town’s working general store. Actually, it was the communal pantry of the five. Tod kept a rigid accounting of all supplies, and his books and shelves were always open to the other four. It was a workable arrangement, and Tod’s house had become the stereotyped country gathering place.

Joe Morgan was already there with Tod, and after Rudell arrived, Phil Boyer walked in. When Larry Dobbs got there, the five of them sat on the wide veranda and drank coffee and watched the stranger who was not a tourist at all.

“Now just what in the hell does he think he’s doin’?” asked Phil Boyer of no one in particular.

Tod Spencer, his Lucky Strike centered in his thin lips, coughed his dry cough and said, “Looks to me like he’s headin’ up toward the mill.”

“He ain’t payin’ no attention to them Keep Out Danger signs.” This from Joe Morgan.

“You notice somethin’ peculiar about that fella?” asked, Phil Boyer.

“Walks funny,” Larry Dobbs grunted.

But Rudell had noticed what Phil had. “He ain’t walkin’ on that dirt road. He’s walkin’ on the side of it, in the brush. Watchin’ the road...” Rudell let his voice trail off.

Joe Morgan said that it wouldn’t be long before Ranger Warren noticed that the fella was heading up where he wasn’t supposed to, and would start yelling pretty soon. He wasn’t off the mark by more than half a minute.

“Hey! Hey, you!”

None of the five could see Ranger Warren, but they knew he must be somewhere on the other side of the old schoolhouse by the sound of his voice. They looked back up the hill and saw the stocky man standing with arms akimbo, his back to the town, staring at the dirt road leading into the leaning walls of the mill. He did not give any outward sign of having heard the ranger.

“Get down outa there! Hey!”

Finally, the stranger turned. No hurry about him. Looked over toward the school.

“Get down off there! Go on!”

The stocky man paused a moment, the started leisurely down the hill. This time, he didn’t worry about staying off the road, but marched straight down its dusty surface. Ranger Warren appeared then, walking across the sparse sagebrush, his strides long and angry-looking, to meet the man. He started talking before he reached the stranger.

The stranger just kept walking his rolling, side-to-side walk, now and then glancing at Ranger Warren, who was now alongside keeping pace. The stranger just kept moving, never changing his speed, until finally he stopped and turned toward Warren, his movement seeming impatient, irritated. Warren stopped talking and stood still. Watching the two of them, Rudell thought of a rattlesnake and a jackrabbit.

The stranger was talking quietly. Warren, a tall man in his late thirties, listened, jerked, shook his head. The stranger asked him something. Warren spoke, the words carrying clearly back to the five by a stray gust of air.

“No, I haven’t. You know how many people I see here every day?” The stranger spoke some more. “No, I said! If somebody like that came around here, I’d know about it!” The stranger asked something else. “Listen, what are you trying to pull, here? This is state property and you can be ordered off if you try any funny stuff! Now you just—”