“NO, SIREE, ol’ Screwloose Pete wasn’t as screwy as most folks thought,” Cal Strenk said firmly. His faded blue eyes held a knowing gleam. He drank noisily through lips flattened against toothless front gums and wiped beer foam from drooping mustaches with the back of a gnarled hand. “Reckon I knowed Screwloose better’n most, and Mister, you git to know a man when you prospect these hills ’longside him for nigh on ten years.”
The aged prospector sat opposite Shayne and Sheriff Fleming in a booth at the rear of a musty beer joint on Main Street. The din of a string orchestra and the bang and whir of slot machines from an adjoining building almost drowned his nasal twang. Across the aisle from the booths, the crowd at the bar were mostly natives, with a sprinkling of tourists who had dropped in for local color.
Strenk was bareheaded. Thin, gray hair framed his parched face in wispy locks. Above a straggly growth of gray mustaches his faded eyes held the sly look of an unfrocked priest as he hunched forward, nursing his mug of beer in calloused hands.
Shayne asked, “Didn’t Pete ever speak of the past — didn’t he ever tell you that his name was Dalcor and that he had a family?”
“Nope, Never did. But shucks, that don’t mean nothin’. Not in these here parts. Plenty hereabouts that’d jest as soon not answer questions, eh, Sheriff?” Strenk cackled a toothless laugh and squinted at Fleming.
Sheriff Fleming pushed his hat back and scratched his forelocks.
Shayne asked, “Do you mean you think he had something to hide? A criminal record, perhaps?”
“Wouldn’t want to say that, Mister. I jest mentioned there was some others, mebby, wasn’t usin’ their right names.” Cal Strenk screwed up his face and appeared to be deep in judicial concentration. “I allus had me an idee Screwloose put on a hull lot of his actin’,” he went on, “to keep from answerin’ fool questions. He was quiet-like, you might say. I recollect onct we was gone three months together, packin’ on burros above timber-line, an’ we didn’t have but two talks in the hull of them three months.”
Shayne bent forward, folding his knobby hands. “What did you talk about those two times?”
“Waal, one time Screwloose tol’ me the pack burros had got their hobbles off an’ we’d have to hunt fer ’em. T’other time was when we was comin’ in after bein’ out prospectin’ fer four days an’ he ast me for a chaw off my plug. He’d run plumb out o’ tobaccy. Nossir, Screwloose weren’t one fer wastin’ words when ’twant no need.”