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The sheriff of Tightbutte liked to read. His favorite reading matter was a fuzzily illustrated fiction weekly that sporadically found its way to his office from back East. A fat weather-beaten man of fifty-six, he was sitting at his desk reading about pirates when the blond girl walked in.
She was tall and slender, very pretty. Dressed not like the girls of the modest-size town of Tightbutte, but in brand-new blue jeans and a buckskin jacket. A twist of leather cord held back her long hair. "Sheriff Plundell?" she asked, in her back-East voice.
Sheriff Plundell, placing the paper face down, straightened in his chair. "Yes, mam, I am."
She crossed to his desk. "I'm Katharine Hare."
"A pleasure to meet you, Miss Hare."
"It's Mrs. Hare," said the blond girl, perching on the edge of his desk. "My husband is waiting for me over at your Tightbutte Imperial Hotel, where we're registered."
"What can I do for you, mam?"
Katherine Hare said, "We came out here from Boston because of my brother. His name is Ollie Potts, and I...."
"Wait now," said Plundell. His lips puckered and he rubbed a knuckle over two of his chins. "Seems to me I heard that name just lately."
"Oh?"
"Yepper." The sheriff continued rubbing at the bottom of his face. "It'll come to me."
Katherine said, "I'm here to find Ollie. He came to your area several months ago, with three other men. They were looking for gold and apparently....."
"Not much chance of finding gold in these parts, though once in a while....hey, that's what I heard."
"You heard something about my brother?"
Nodding, the sheriff said, "It was because of the murder."
"Murder? Is Ollie...."
"Oh, nope, I didn't mean to scare you that way, mam," the fat sheriff apologized. "It was somebody else got himself killed, fellow name of Logan something, or...."
"Logan Brock?"
"That's the one. You know him, from back in Boston or somewheres?"
"No, but Ollie mentioned him in one of his letters. Logan Brock was one of the three men he found the gold with."
The sheriff's thin grizzled eyebrows climbed. "You say they for sure found themselves some gold?"
"Yes, up in the mountains beyond here somewhere," answered the slim blond girl. "That was in the last letter I got from Ollie. He wrote it the day after his discovery; that was over two months ago. Since then there's been no further word. Which is why I persuaded my husband we had to come out here."
"Well, now," said the sheriff. "The way I hear it, there was some kinda trouble up there in the mountains. This Logan fellow got his head bashed in with an ax--- if you'll excuse the grim details, mam."
"What about the others? There were two other men, a John Robinson and a man called simply Morisson."
"Morisson's the one took the ax to this Logan Brock," the sheriff told her. "I haven't heard anything as to whereabouts your brother or the Robinson feller might be by now."
"And where's Morisson?"
"That's how I come t' hear 'bout all this. Seems he came a'ridin' into the fort a couple weeks back with this Logan fellow slung over a saddle. Claims somebody else did it, but nobody believes that. Morisson, way I hear it, he ain't what you'd call bright. Sorta a wild man, kind who'd kill ya jus' fer lookin' at him cockeyed."
Leaning toward the sheriff, Katherine asked, "Are they still holding Morisson at the fort?"
"Last time I heard they was, mam," said the sheriff. "Got him chained to the wall, seeing as how he's such a wild...."
"How far is it to the fort?"
"Oh, it's about twenty miles north of here," answered Plundell. "But I wouldn't advise you and your spouse t'go there. Now, Tightbutte here ain't Boston by a longshot, but from here on out things get even worse. On top o' which, they been havin' some trouble with the Utes, too. They're particularly mean, and they been raidin'....
"There's nothing else you can tell me?" cut in Katherine. "About my brother, about what happened up there in the mountains?"
"Nope, mam, sorry. What I just been telling you is all I know."
"Well, thank you for your time, sheriff." Katherine hopped from the desk and walked out of the office.
Sheriff Plundell watched her hurry away across the bright yellow morning, then he returned to his fiction.390Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ9chaBWwh0l
