• • • • • THURSDAY, MAY 5 • • • • •
Chapter 37: WHAT'S IN A NAME?
Osprey Camp, morning... Murdoch, Paul and Cat had made the rounds the evening before, surreptitiously studying each brown face they encountered within the appropriate age range. Murdoch enthusiastically glad-handed everyone, committing new names to memory. Paul approached anyone he could catch not doing something, asking innocuous questions while his 'aide' industriously scritched notes on her clipboard. Some of the men were happy to contribute, others not interested in doing so... but at least he could get close enough for a good squizz and a name to check off his list while they were objecting and backing away. When the trio regrouped, weary and more than ready to turn in, they were dismayed to find they'd accounted for less than half of the rostered crew at this camp. The rest were still cold camping out in the hills somewhere.
Daybreak found them seated at a makeshift trestle table over by the chuckwagon, waiting their turn at breakfast—Murdoch had decreed the 'working men' be served first. They'd reached the unhappy conclusion that the only way to deal with the rest of the men was to intercept them one at a time as they came in to eat. Although anxious to move along, they were resigned to having to hang around the chuckwagon the rest of the day.
Spread out on the table was the master list Teresa had transcribed from the two original hire lists and the breakdowns by camp assignment. Almost as an afterthought Paul had requested those two original lists—one rendered in an elegant cursive and the other clumsily block printed. It was these that he was now studying. Murdoch could almost hear mental gears grinding.
"Who made these out?" Paul queried.
Murdoch craned his head for a look. "One of those is Scott's handwriting... the other's John's... he can read and write but not very well and often transposes letters."
Paul's forefinger was tapping thoughtfully on the table. "There has to be a clue in here somewhere... it's just not leaping out at me..." There were, of course, no 'Jodys' or 'Jordans' or 'Monteros' to be found... not they were expecting to find any.
Open conversation was hampered by the lurking presence of an assistant cook who'd been stationed by the cocinero in case the patrón and his guests required any more coffee.
"Can't we get rid of him?" Paul murmured.
"Milk," Cat muttered.
"Excuse me?"
"Tell him your assistant has a delicate constitution and requires milk with her coffee."
"Where do you expect him to get milk?"
Cat looked up with an evil grin. "Why... from one of those two or three hundred cows over yonder..." She jerked her chin in the direction of the herd.
"Don't be ridiculous. Those aren't dairy cows... none of them are going to stand quietly while..."
Murdoch got it, barely containing a snort of amusement. He beckoned to the assistant and made his request. The man nodded unhappily and trotted off with a small tin pail in hand.
"It'll take two men to rope one of those animals and hold her steady while that one tries to squeeze some milk out of her. He'll be awhile..."
All three laughed and returned to their puzzle. Paul explained that most people on the run invariably chose aliases that are variations on their real names or initials, or very often those of family members. Producing a clothbound notebook from his satchel, he announced that he'd earlier compiled yet another list—of possible aliases their quarry might be using. There were two pages' worth, what with everyone in the Montero family having those impossibly convoluted names, many of them not gender-specific. Handing Scott's list to Murdoch and Johnny's to Cat he said they were going to cross-check these possible pseudonyms with actual names.
"And then we're going to cross-check... again... against these." Paul slid a sheet of doodled-on foolscap over to the rancher. "Do you know the derivation of the name 'Jody'?"
Murdoch furrowed his eyebrows. "No. Why should I?"
"No reason," Paul explained. "The etymology is English if it's a diminutive of 'Joseph,' 'Jude' or 'Judah'. Or Hebraic if it's short for 'Jordan'. I've listed all the variations."
"This is exhausting!" Murdoch complained, doing a quick rundown. "None of these are on these lists! There must be a better way. What makes you so sure he's here?"
"We're not sure... but this is as good a place as any to start looking..." Paul shrugged.
"Seems like a colossal waste of time!"
Cat laid a cool, consoling hand on Murdoch's. "Look at it as an exercise in the process of elimination... at least we're ruling out where he isn't!"
Once more they bent to the frustrating task of trying to suss out what alias Jody might have selected... assuming he was even among the hirees in the first place. It wasn't until mid-morning that they achieved a break-through.
Paul had squinched his eyes closed to relieve the strain and was pinching the bridge of his nose... "Cat, when Jody's speaking English, does he do so with a Latino accent?"
"Not that I've ever noticed. His is a sort of generic coastal accent, like mine, I suppose... or like Johnny's."
"All right. Suppose someone's giving you his name, and you're perceiving that person as either Mexican or Indian, and he gives as his name any one of diminutives I've listed—all of which are uncommon names, by the way... what common American name might you hear instead? And write down? Murdoch?"
The rancher hesitated for only a few seconds. " 'Joe' or maybe 'Joey'?"
"I agree," Cat said.
A quick scan of the lists revealed three 'Josephs', four 'Josés', four 'Joes' and six 'Joeys'. "Let's concentrate on the 'Joes' and 'Joeys' for the time being," Paul suggested. "Two are assigned to this camp and we can already write off one of those—Joey Burghoff, definitely not our man. The other one is Joey Morales and we've already interviewed we're waiting for the rest of the men to show up, let's examine last names."
The next camp list they looked at was Eagle, with a Joe Jackson. Hawk had a Joey Montoya. Condor claimed Joey Atkins, Joe McCullough, Joey Marrón and Joe Melendez. Falcon had a Joe Baker and a Joey Lancero. Murdoch pounced on that last one, crowing "That has to be the right one!"
"No! Too obvious... he's smarter than that," Paul said firmly, slapping the Falcon list in frustation.
"At the rate we're going—interviewing everybody—it'll take more than a week to do all five camps," Murdoch said.
"Wait!" Cat exclaimed. "Brain fart!"
"Excuse me?" Murdoch said, instantly diverted.
"Bear with me here, Murdoch. Paul... didn't you mention earlier that using a middle name... or a mother's maiden name... is a frequent ruse?"
"Yes... because it's easily remembered." Paul was nodding affirmatively.
"Marín is Pilar's maiden name, as well as Jody's middle name... Johnny could well have misheard 'Marín' as 'Marrón', and written it that way."
"But... marrón means 'brown', doesn't it?" Murdoch queried.
Paul grinned. "It means other things, too... crayfish, a Spanish chestnut... and, in Cuba, a runaway slave."
Cat said, "Betcha a dollar to a bent hatpin Johnny wrote down what he heard—phonetically, concluding Jody's last name as being the Spanish version of 'Brown'. Ergo, Joey Marrón at Condor."
"She might be right," Murdoch said to Paul. "Johnny probably didn't bother to ask him to spell his name because so few of these men are literate. What's your take on this theory? Could we be that lucky... to get it right on the first try?"
"It's possible, Murdoch. Sometimes things do shake out that way. Not often, so don't get your hopes up too high, you two."
"Cat, what are your thoughts?" Murdoch asked.
"Could I see the map again, please?"
"Sure." From the leather messenger bag Murdoch extracted a folded green ledger sheet on the back of which he'd drawn a crude map of the ranch and its salient features, including the hacienda and the five cow camps. He unfolded it and spread it on the table, turned around so that the girl could peruse it. Distances had been annotated in pencil.
"Is this to scale?"
"Not hardly... but the mileage is accurate."
Cat studied it for a few moments before looking up. "My first instinct would be to pack up and go immediately to Condor camp, where this Joey Marrón is supposed to be working..."
Murdoch sighed. "I thought about that, too... but it's probably better we follow the plan and visit the next two camps in turn. We don't want to arouse suspicions. Believe me, I can't step behind a bush to answer a call of nature that the news doesn't travel ahead of me. You'd think my people had some kind of wireless telegraph. There's no way I can go anywhere on this ranch without everyone being warned so they have time to tidy up and and get their patches ship-shape before I get there."
"It's good to be the king, isn't it?" Paul laughed.
"Sometimes. It can also be a huge nuisance when no one wants to admit to anything being out of order. They do their damndest to cover up anything they think I might find displeasing. And I have to pretend I don't notice."
"Doesn't bother you, knowing your employees are hiding things from you?"
"Not usually... I know they do it to keep me from being worried, not so much to protect themselves. I can afford to let little things slide... like a cow gone missing. Something really important—like a death or outright rustling... those things they're quick to report."
Cat steered them back to the subject, pointing to the elbow-shaped Oak Ridge enclosing Cedar Canyon. "Is there a pass through here that would take us to Falcon camp?"
"On horseback, yes... not by wagon."
"Does it matter which direction we travel—clockwise to Falcon and Condor... or counterclockwise to Eagle, Hawk and then Condor?"
"I don't suppose it does..."
"Well, then... it seems to me we could save time and quite a few miles by cutting through Cedar Canyon to Falcon. How long of a ride is it?"
"Two, two and half hours at most."
"So if we left here around lunchtime, we could roll into Falcon by mid-afternoon, interview the two Joes there plus a couple of others to make it look good... spend the night and ride to Condor on Saturday morning. If it turns out I'm wrong about Joey Marrón, we still have two more camps to check."
Murdoch rubbed his chin. 'Yes... that would work... if you folks are up to that much riding."
"I'm sure we'll manage," Cat said. "Although there's no need to rush on my account... if he's there, he'll still be there. No one knows who we really are except Ray and the Camerons."
How wrong they were.