“But you sure as hell know how to shoot, son!” the mayor interrupted enthusiastically. “Right now that’s what counts around Saint Joe. What do you say? Will you take the job?”
A rueful grin spread on Griff’s face. “Fact is, there’s no denying that I could use the pay. And I want to be here next spring when the wagon masters and scouts come back. So, yes, Mr. Mayor. I accept. I’ll take the job.”
Chapter Six
AN ICY BLAST howled down out of Canada. Three feet of snow lay on the level, and only beings possessed of some special madness subjected themselves to such unbearable conditions. One such was Griffin Stark. He rode slowly down Main Street in St. Joseph, his exhausted stallion, Boots, shoving snow out of the way with his knees. The street had been cleared only the previous day and the recent accumulation brought with it a promise of more to come. Griff turned in at the livery and rapped on the tightly closed doors.
“I’m comin’! I’m comin’,” Hiram Newby shouted from inside.
A groan of protest rose from frozen hinges and one tall barn door grated open against the mounded snow. Steam billowed out on a warm draught of air. Newby stood in the opening, arms wrapped around his shoulders, mittened hands slapping at his back.
“Come on, bring him in. I’m freezin’ my hindquarters off standin’ here.”
“Then get out of my way, Mr. Newby,” Griff returned good-naturedly.
In the warmth of the stable, Griff removed his hat, a shower of powdery flakes cascading from it. Tiny star points of ice clung to his eyelashes, and his brows and newly grown mustache bristled with thick coats of frost. He stamped his feet, slapped and pounded himself until relatively free of the worst nature had done to him.
“Find him?” Newby inquired.
“No. This new snowfall … hell, it’s gonna be a blizzard.” He used the unfamiliar word with force to impress it in memory. “This blizzard that came up has wiped out all tracks. By the time it clears, he’ll have that much more lead on me. Sometimes … Well, I’d like to take this badge and shove it in a place Mayor Higgins wouldn’t like.”
“Then what would we do for a lawman? Ain’t many people crazy enough to run around in weather like this.” A sharp crackle of laughter punctuated Newby’s remark.
“And I’m one of them. Why do you think I came back? Any coffee?”
“On the stove.”
In the tiny office of the livery stable, a potbelly stove glowed cherry red, its sides seeming to pulse with the heat it radiated. A battered coffee pot steamed on the top plate and Griff went to it gratefully. He studied the tattered engravings on the walls, yellowed with age, mostly advertising for tack and farm machinery. Newby sat at his small, roll-top desk and fiddled with a stub of pencil.
“Some says Archer had every right to gun down Bill Sweet. Ol’ Bill was supposed to be samplin’ a little of Amy Archer ev’ry time Tom went off to Saint Louie for supplies.”
“Gossip. Those things are for a court to decide. All I do is bring ’em in and lock ’em up ’til the trial, then hold ’em for the penitentiary wagon or the gallows.”
“An’ you’re dang good at it, Griff Stark. Best lawman we ever had. I wonder if it’s right to keep you here.”
“You know, as well as everyone else, including the mayor, that come spring, I’m going to look for my boy. Nothing will change my mind on that.” Newby slapped an arthritis-swollen hand on his knee. “Hey, an idea just came to me. Now, ol’ Tom Archer is a crafty one. Real plains-wise. Where’s the last place anyone would think to look for him?”
“His cabin. But he’d be a fool to go back there. A wisp of smoke, a light at night, and word would reach me fast enough.”
“So he don’t use a fire or a lamp. For talkin’s sake, say he felt in his bones that this storm was coming. Say, he lit out, then—”
“Then circled wide.” Griff took it up. “Cut a trail away from town, in a big circle that brought him back here after the storm started. No tracks, nothing to follow. He could keep warm enough until the blizzard ended and other people got out again. His sign would be impossible to follow then, mixed in with a lot of others/’
“You’re a bright boy, Griff. What’re you gonna do about it?”
Griff finished his coffee and came to his feet. “I’m going over to the Archer cabin and see for myself.”
His footsteps crunched through the snow as Griff approached the Archer cabin ten minutes later. He paused and listened frequently, a skill he had picked up in the Army of Northern Virginia. No sound came from the abandoned-looking dwelling. Griff took every advantage of the natural ground cover in the area. The light buff color of his canvas outer coat had been merged into a uniform white by the constantly falling snow. He edged forward in quick, zigzag spurts, providing less of a target that way. Twenty yards from the cabin door, he halted again and studied the low structure from behind an irregular mound, a drift formed by snow blowing over a bush. Still nothing to indicate Tom Archer had come home.
Griff made a concerted rush to the door. Pain knifed up his leg from his right knee. The itching numbness in his left thigh made him think of frostbite. His breathing rate, he noted with satisfaction, had not increased. He put his ear to the pine plank and concentrated.
A faint scrape and rustle came to his tightly tuned senses. Could it be a rat? He waited. Scrape and sizzle of a lucifer match. His sensitive nose caught the faint odor of tobacco smoke. Someone had to be inside. If not Archer, then who?
A quick check showed that the latchstring was not out, further evidence that the cabin held an occupant. Griff drew his Starr and braced himself. Then he hauled back and gave the door a solid kick.
Pain nearly blinded him as the door flew open, but not before he saw the dark form of a man leap from a chair. The figure held a Henry repeater in his right hand, finger on the trigger.
The Henry exploded during Griff’s momentary darkness and he instinctively jerked to the side. The bullet cracked past his ear. Then the .44 Starr bucked in his hand and he heard the slug moan off the fieldstone mantel of the fireplace. He cocked it again while he dived in through the open doorway.
Another round from the .44 rimfire rifle moaned overhead and then Griff could see his target.
Tom Archer stood, spread-legged, in the center of the room, Henry held at his hip with both hands. He cycled the lever and tried to line up another shot. Griff’s shout froze him for an instant.
“Don’t do it, Tom! You’ll get a fair trial. Your side will be heard.”
“It’s too late for that,” Archer said through a broken sob. “When I come back, Amy … Amy was still here. She laughed at me, called me no man a’tall. Said I didn’t have enough dingus to pleasure a sparrow. Said she’d always had to find other men to satisfy her. Taunted me. I … I kilt her an’ now there’s nothing for me to live for.” He whipped the Henry to his shoulder and took dead aim on Griff’s head.
A blossom of flame appeared at the Starr’s muzzle. The heavy .44 slug struck Tom Archer’s chest with a slapping sound. He jolted backward, tried to aim again, then sagged slightly. The Henry went off, its detonation blended with the crack of the Starr.
Archer’s slug plucked the hat from Griff’s head and buried itself in the door casing. Griff’s bullet punched a hole a quarter-inch from the first in Tom’s chest. The Henry clattered from Archer’s hands. He made a weak, wheezing sound and sprawled on the floor.
“Another week and we’ll be pulling catfish out of there. Ja, sure,” Ansel Thorson told Griff Stark on a clear afternoon in April as they stood on the bank of the Missouri River. Already the ice had broken up, large, flat cakes of it bobbing in the frigid water. Along the near shore, a thick crust remained.
“When do the wagon masters and crews get here?” Griff’s obsession had become known and was tolerated by everyone in St. Joseph.
“End of the month, maybe. Ja, sure. First train’s out, usually the second week in May. The immigrants will be flooding in here any day now.”
“And after I talk to Captain John Fallon, you’ll be taking me out behind the barn?”
Ansel looked down at his feet, embarrassed. “After the way you stood up for the law in this town, there’s no reason that I’d be doin’ that, I’m thinkin’. Ja, sure. You’re a good man, Griffin Stark, even if you are a Rebel.” He cleared his throat nervously. “Ja, sure. I’ve been thinkin’ that I might like a bit of a change of scenery. See some of these places the immigrants are so anxious to get to. If you’d welcome a partner on the way to find your son, I’d be honored to be the one. Ja, sure.”
“What? And give up a good business here?”
“It’ll be just as good next year, maybe better.”
“I … hadn’t counted on anyone going along. After all, what’s my harebrained search to anyone else?”
“You can be sure that I never believed I would clasp hands with a Johnny Reb, an’ sit at the same table with him, an’ go fishin’ an’ shootin’ prairie chicken and dove. All the same, I did those things. Ja, sure. Now I want to go along with him and see his dream fulfilled. Maybe that way I can understand a little better … about my brothers and all … and …” Moisture formed in Ansel’s eyes.
He raised a wide, big-knuckled hand and ground the tears away before they fell. His bright blue eyes shone like beacons in his wide face and a stray lock of yellow hair dangled down over his high forehead. He squared his massive shoulders and Griff noticed that some of the stoop had left him. Some burdens a man carried in his mind weighed him down like lead. He knew that only too well.
“All right, Ansel. If … if you are positive, I’ll consider it.”
A beaming smile revealed white teeth. “You will? That pleases me a lot. Ja, sure.” Standing fully erect now, Ansel topped six foot three inches. “I can’t wait to begin.”
“Marshal! Marshal Stark!” A boy’s shrill voice interrupted their close communion.
“What is it, Artie?”
A slender youngster in bib overalls and high-top brogan shoes clomped up, eyes wide. “Mayor Ormsby says to come at once. Snuffy Webber has been killed.”
Griff and Ansel exchanged glances. Snuffy Webber was the only resident wagon-train crewman in St. Joseph that winter. Griff shrugged and left with the boy toward the center of town.
“His body is laying in the slush behind Sheehan’s Saloon,” Mayor Ormsby told Griff when the lawman reached a cluster of people blocking the center of Main Street. “He’s been stabbed.”
“I’ll get a look at him. Someone called Doc Miller?”
The town’s coroner/mortician/used furniture dealer conjured few pleasant images in most people’s minds. Griff, though, had found him helpful in providing information he could use to track down an unknown assailant or murderer. Mayor Ormsby made a face and answered primly.
“First thing I did, after I sent for you. Who could have wanted to kill Snuffy?”
“That’s what I hope Doc Miller can help me find out.”
Face down in the final dregs of melting slush, Snuffy Webber resembled a bag of discarded clothing more than a man. A long, scarlet-tinted rent opened like demonic lips in the back of his coat.
“That fleece-lined coat and the mud under him soaked up most of the blood. It must have been a mess though.” Griff offered an opinion.
“What do you think?” the mayor asked anxiously.
“That someone knifed him.”
For a moment, Ormsby bristled. “No call to get smart with me.”
“I’ve been here thirty seconds, if that much. I can’t tell you the killer’s name, or what he looks like or anything else without some time to study the situation.”
“How do you find out the things you learn?”
“Luck. Intuition. Ask the right questions. The truth is that I don’t know how I do it. People come to me. They tell me one thing or the other about the victim—who his enemies might be, any of those who have left town recently. You can’t get lost in St. Joe easily and it’s harder to keep secrets, and the chances are I have the murderer. Assaults, robberies are harder.”
“When you took that badge last summer, I had no idea you were a real policeman, a detective.”
“I’m not,” Griff said through a smile. “People only think I am. They get scared, try to run … I have them. Or they think I already know something and they blurt out what they have. Thing is … with this one … Snuffy said …” He let it hang.
The mayor didn’t pick up the interrogative string left out for him. At least that eliminated one suspect. If Snuffy had been killed because of something he knew, the killer had to know it, too. Simple logic. The sort they taught the cadets to apply to military tactics at the Point. Or to engineering problems. Doc Miller arrived and Griff busied himself with learning from a master at the art of deduction.
“Hmmm. Not stiff yet. No lividity,” the doctor pronounced after stripping the clothes from the body. “He couldn’t have been dead more than a half hour, hour tops in this weather. Unless he was killed somewhere else and carried here.”
Griff examined the ground below Snuffy’s corpse. Only a slight discoloration. Hardly red at all. A picture began to form in his mind. Snuffy had, in fact, told Griff he had some important information he’d learned on his last trip to St. Louis. Something about the Railroad Protective Association. The same ones who had put out the wanted flyer on him, Griff realized the moment the old man spoke the name. Could that have been the cause of his death? Strangers in town, he began his mental list. Start there.
Doc Miller’s examination took fifteen minutes. A crowd gathered and Griff dispersed them. A few idlers drifted back to watch while the coroner changed hats and became mortician. Doc Miller sent a boy for his driver and funeral wagon, loaded Snuffy’s remains aboard, and departed for his business establishment. Griff began his rounds.
“Strangers checking in?” The clerk at the Frontier Hotel returned Griff’s question. This was Griff’s last stop, having checked out the lower-priced hostels first. The clerk spun the register and peered myopically at it, ignoring the wire-rimmed pair of Franklin half-glasses perched on his nose. “Let’s see … there was only three in the past two days. A whiskey drummer, a pig-iron salesman waiting for the immigrant camps to open, and a feller who said he was a bare-knuckle, champeen prize fighter. He and his manager are supposed to tour the West. Only the manager ain’t here yet.”
“No one else?”
“Nope, Marshal Stark. They’re the only ones.”
“Are they in now?”
“The knuckle artist is. He’s in his room, samplin’ some of the drummer’s wares. You ask me, I don’t think he could go two rounds with Mort Dolby, the blacksmith.”
“What room? I think I’ll pay him a call.”
“If that’s you, Crowder, you no-good sumbitch, you can go away,” a slurred voice called in response to Griff’s knock on number six. “How come I never get any of my money? I gotta eat grits and beans and you wear fifty-dollar suits. I wan’ a new manager.”
“This isn’t Crowder, Mr. Sparks. This is Marshal Stark. Open the door.”
“Wha’ the shit Marshal? I ain’t done nothin’. Ain’t even broken one tweeny-weensie head since I got in this end-of-the-line burg.”
“Open up, Sparks!” Griff got ready to kick in the flimsy door, his Starr in his left hand, the hammer back.
Suddenly the panel flew open. An ape of a man, huge, hairy, scarred, stood in the harsh light from a street-side window. “H’lo, Marshal. Come in and have a little drink.”
“How long have you been like this?”
Sparks examined his gigantic bare chest, soiled trousers. “Huh … I … I … sorta got on the sauce yes’erday some time. Uh … it woulda been after dinner time. I got gravy stains on my pants.”
Eliminate another suspect. Griff thanked the drunken pugilist and returned to the lobby. “Any idea where I could locate Phillby, the whiskey drummer?”
“Probably at one of the saloons,” the clerk opined.
“Anybody that big, I imagine you’d be willing to give ’em up, too.”
“You could be right.”
Griff found the steel-mill representative a block down the street in the cafe. He introduced himself, ordered a cup of coffee, and pulled out a chair. “Mind if I sit? I have a few questions to ask you.”
“Go right ahead, Marshal. Say, it’s too bad about your predecessor. He was a good man. Considerate. Used to play checkers with him. Do you …?”
“No. I’m not good at it. Where were you this morning, say between nine and ten fifteen?”
“That’s easy. I got an order for ten kegs of nails from the general mercantile and went to the telegraph office to send it in. Then I wandered down to Ansel’s place. He wasn’t there. That would be about ten on the nose.”
“He was with me down by the river. Anyone see you at Ansel’s?”
“No. Except for the Hunt kid – Dennis, is it? – who was playin’ hooky from school and havin’ a smoke in Ansel’s wheel loft.”
“I can check that. Anything else you want to tell me?”
“Like about a wagon train cook gettin’ himself murdered?”
“You are most perceptive, Mr. Lowe. When did you hear about that?”
“The moment I came in here for dinner. I’m fairly well known around town. Gossip gets to me right quickly.”
“Clerk at the Frontier said you were a stranger.”
“I’ve been coming here three years now. I usually stay at a … ah, lesser establishment. Business was good last year, so I decided to try the, ah, quality accommodations. If the name applies to Saint Joseph.”
“I see. Well, thank you, Mr. Lowe.”
“If you want a little observation?”
Griff’s smile was genuine now, inviting. “What is that?”
“I’ve been on the road a number of years now. I’ve never met a whiskey drummer that didn’t have a red nose, broken veins in his cheeks.”
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